Son Volt’s latest finds the beauty in a forlorn American Dream
by Brady Vredenburg
Last year, when Jay Farrar finally sat staring at a memo pad, to pen what was to be his sixth full-length studio album with his band, Son Volt, the future was looking bleak. His homeland’s international image had been dragged through the dirt, smeared by an administration dedicated to the depth of its own pockets over any semblance of a commonwealth. A war with no end in sight crawled on, consuming lives; gas prices boomed at home, industry rusted, and a nation of cynics took to the front lines. Most American songwriters might have turned to spinning tales of tear-in-beer woe. Farrar rallied around a dire, fleeting optimism, surrounded by the blanket theory that everything might just be OK.
Les Claypool’s fun-filled funk-o-rama anchors into Omaha
by Jesse D. Stanek
To be sure, Primus never played mainstream, Top 40 music. And while the alternative legends achieved a semblance of popularity during an iconic career, opening for acts like U2, headlining Lollapalooza in 1993, playing multiple late-night TV shows in 1995 and recording the theme song for the TV’s animated “South Park” in 1997, their goofy, yet tight-as-hell sound never caught on with conventional listeners. Both 1990’s Frizzle Fry and 1991’s Sailing The Seas of Cheese remain fixtures in the canon of relevant ’90s albums.
Last Friday, on a white-knuckle cab ride to the Conor & MVB show at Anchor Inn, our cabbie confessed he didn’t know who Michael Jackson was. You’ll find a scant few who can say the same as that speed-demon. Below are some reflections on MJ’s passing:
“You just can’t learn to do what he did … Earlier generations remember a man walking on the moon; our generation will never forget the moonwalk.” — Jason Birnstihl, The 9’s
“For decades he showed musicians what artistic creativity could accomplish. This being that music could be the world’s common language and that art could achieve anything … As a musician he gave us all the blueprints, but there can only be one king of pop.” — Greg Edds, Little Brazil
* Near the close of the summer of ’61, a six-year gang war began in Boston between the McLaughlin Gang of Charlestown and the Winter Hill Gang of Somerville. Disrupting years of armistice between the two gangs, Georgie McLaughlin accosted the girlfriend of Winter Hill’s Alex Rocco at a party during Labor Day weekend. McLaughlin was beaten by members of the Winter Hill Gang and left for dead on the stoop of a hospital, insulting the McLaughlins. It led to Boston’s Irish Gang War. Morgan Slade, guitarist for goth-a-billy outfit Miss Derringer, relayed the story to me as the main inspiration for the band’s third album, Winter Hill. “I was on Wikipedia one day,” Slade explained while resting on a bus en route from Boston to Columbus. “I thought the girlfriend personified Miss Derringer perfectly — the girl that starts a mob war.”
Brooklyn-via-Missouri’s White Rabbits know It’s Frightening
by Brady Vredenburg
The temperamental sophomore album. The daunting task of attempting to coax lightening into a bottle, twice. The hefty decision to either package more of the same, or entirely depart at the risk of an entire fan base and infinite critique. The White Rabbits is a six-piece, punky, beat troupe from Mizzou that understand this musical crux all too well. After all, their second outing is dubbed It’s Frightening.
“You have your entire life to write your first record but eight months to write your second,” vocalist/guitarist Greg Roberts said from the middle of the Arizona desert, framing their not-so-unfamiliar transitional dilemma. Unscathed, however, Roberts’ Rabbits have stared down any preconceived notions of failure and simply carried on the only way the band knew. “We were more than ready to move on [from our first album], which overshadowed any fears and doubts.”
* Friday, June 26, is a special day (partly as it’s my birthday, but also … ) as it brings an abundance of fine concerts of all shapes, sizes, tendencies and tonalities to the area. A few highlights: The annual Bank of the West Fourth of July concert and fireworks display at Memorial Park this year features Grand Funk Railroad and The Guess Who. Conor and Co. with Tilly and the Wall, Deep Sea Diver and Michael Runion play the Anchor Inn. The Pornhuskers rock the Sydney with Bloodcow and Coffin Killers. The Beat Seekers play a CD release show at Slowdown backed by Shiver Shiver, Rock Paper Dynamite and Surreal the MC. Downtown’s Summer Arts Fest offers a variety of sounds, in addition to sights, throughout the day (summerarts.org). O’Leaver’s hosts No Blood Orphan. The Waiting Room features Pomeroy and Anchondo. And the fabulous Matt Cox Band plays the Barley Street.
The premier North American music festival known as Bonnaroo returned to Manchester, Tenn. June 11-14, drawing 75,000 fans in its eighth consecutive year and providing another eclectic lineup. In an economic climate where tickets sales have plunged, Bonnaroo again proved its worth with 2009 ticket sales actually topping last year’s receipts.
Jazz vocalist Karrin Allyson cut her teeth in Omaha music scene
by Leo Adam Biga
Even after three Grammy nominations, top festival and club gigs and comparisons to iconic divas, jazz vocalist Karrin Allyson remains focused on what’s ahead. Staying hungry is a survival instinct. Your passion and talent either grow or stagnate.
“There’s always a sense of having the feeling of doing what you need to do and following what you love,” Allyson said by phone from New York City. “It’s essential for any artist to question where they’ve been, where they are and where they’re going. It’s always a journey.”
Matthew Sweet has always walked that dangerous line somewhere between superstardom and obscurity. His iconic records Girlfriend, Altered Beast and 100% Fun (just to name three) put his name on the table in the ’90s, each record showing a different side of this prolific songwriter. Sweet seemed to be telling the world that he would be making a living doing what he loves no matter what everyone thinks.
Over the years the Lincoln-born Sweet garnered substantial respect in the music industry just by being himself. He’s produced records for others, was part of the collaboration known as The Thorns, and had face-time on the big-screen alongside Austin Powers.
Sweet’s current release, Sunshine Lies, again unleashes a variety of musical styles and lyrical subjects. Recording on the Shout Factory label, Sweet lays down tracks comfortably in his home studio in Los Angeles, finally free of major label pressures.
* I almost tripped over a strip of masking tape last week. It was a bleary-eyed Saturday morning and I was rushing to the bank. And there it was in the middle of the sidewalk, about one-inch thick, three-and-a-half feet long, and it read: “Boy Noises — Slowdown — 6.19.”
At age 23, Deer Tick singer/songwriter John McCauley sounds like a grizzled rock veteran.
A son of Providence, Rhode Island, McCauley started his career like so many other hopeful musicians — booking his own solo tours and selling CDRs out of his trunk, performing at house shows, coffee shops, art galleries, anywhere anyone would let him play his unique brand of twangy, low-fi alt-country rock.
This year Deer Tick emerged as one of the hottest new bands in the crowded indie scene, picked by Rolling Stone Magazine as the top attraction at this year’s South by Southwest Festival. Even “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams is a devoted “Tick Head,” bragging up the band’s first album, War Elephant, backstage at a taping of “The Rachel Ray Show.”
After eight years of anticipation, The Prairie Cats releases third album
by Joshua R. Hoyer
Like a fine wine, the music of The Prairie Cats has gracefully aged over the last eight years. But now it’s time to pop the cork and savor the goods.
For Jeff Koterba and the rest of the Prairie Cats, this Sunday’s release of Fires Below is a highly anticipated event. Many of the songs have existed years, but as they say, life happens. Koterba, like many other creative souls, came to realize a deadline was a necessity.
* Harrah’s Stir Concert Cove added another date, and this one I am really excited about, as it’s a hodgepodge of classic, powerful and eccentric. The Pretenders, Cat Power and Juliette Lewis perform August 20, at the Cove.
The Pretenders touring lineup is Chrissie Hynde, Martin Chambers, James Walbourne, Eric Heywood and Nick Wilkinson. The band is touring in support of its ninth album, Break Up The Concrete (Shangri-La Music). Although The Pretenders are classics, the disc has reinvigorated the band’s contemporary appeal. Recorded in just 12 days in Los Angeles, Break Up The Concrete is getting excellent reviews for its raw, urgent sound — a throwback to the Pretenders’ golden years.
Norman, Oklahoma’s Starlight Mints and its cerebral sightseeing tour
by Brady Vredenburg
Thirty seconds into a telephone conversation with someone purporting to be drummer Andy Nuñez of Norman Oklahoma’s Starlight Mints and I was all but convinced I’d gotten a wrong number. Certainly, this wasn’t the rhythmic pulse behind the esoteric surrealism and space cadet glow of the Bible-belt heirs to the whacked-out crown jewels currently held by their hometown comrades The Flaming Lips. Or maybe — as it has been duly documented with Lip-master Wayne Coyne — just maybe, this was exactly whom I should’ve expected: a candid portrait of unyielding normalcy. After all, the Mints’ approach strictly adheres to the adage that in order to be reckless in one’s art, one must remain organized in life.
The New Mastersounds and the international ebb and flow of funk
by Jesse D. Stanek
Popular styles come and go in the music world. But sonic tastes are cyclical — what was hot last year or even last month may not be welcome at the clubs in six months; but, if you wait long enough that style is sure to come back. While the funk-jazz sound is enjoying a kind of worldwide rebirth, with bands like The Greyboy Allstars and The Diplomats of Solid Sound selling more albums than ever, Leeds-based guitarist Eddie Roberts and his band The New Mastersounds are enjoying the ride while waiting for their sound to again rock the club scene back home.
“In Europe the whole funk-jazz scene has come and gone a couple of times,” Roberts said. “In Britain the sound is actually kind of tapering off right now, but in Spain and Germany it is re-emerging. I think the sound is gaining momentum in the States as well. There certainly seems to be an interest in dance music, but more and more people want it to be live music. They are wanting that live kind of dance element.”
* Remember the good ol’ days when cruising Dodge Street was legal, Crossroads Mall actually had a food court and you and your underage friends snuck booze into Sprite Night at the Royal Grove? Now you can relive the dream, as Sprite Night is back for a night, complete with a DJ dance party hosted by none other than former Sweet 98 DJ, Hot Scott. Although Peony Park is now a Hy-Vee, you can get your groove on just like you did when you were a hormonally charged teenager, except this time you won’t need to sneak in the Mad Dog 2020. Sprite Night: All Grown Up (a Reader-sponsored event) is Friday, June 5, 8 p.m., at Harrah’s Stir Lounge with tunes from DJ Ritchie Ritz, and host Hot Scott. The cover is $10, and the Sprite flows from 8 p.m.-1 a.m. — Wayne Brekke
Gavin Rossdale never wanted Bush to break up. Rossdale told me this over the phone as he drank his morning coffee in Florida, while watching a pod of dolphins jump above the ocean and porpoises glistening in the spring rain. You know, just a normal day.
“The guitar player from Bush didn’t want to tour anymore, which is why the band stopped,” Rossdale said in his prim British accent. “It’s f***in’ crazy! Because how can you have a rock band that doesn’t tour? What are we, Michael Jackson in the ’80s?!”
Nearly eight years later he remains frustrated by the breakup.
It came after a long hiatus during which Rossdale released an album with a side project, Institute. That band, initially designed to accelerate interest in Bush, was derailed because sales of its album Distort Yourself didn’t satisfy Rossdale’s label.
Young, old master’ Alisa Weilerstein pluckily perseveres
by Leo Adam Biga
Dynamic cellist Alisa Weilerstein’s breakthrough moment as a child had nothing, and everything, to do with her previously planned music career.
At age 9 she was diagnosed with Type I diabetes, the kind of news no one wants to hear, least of all someone with a fragile dream of performing on stage with the world’s finest symphony orchestras.
But a setback doesn’t stop the doers in life from fulfilling their wishes, and Weilerstein is on the fast track to classical music superstardom.
She will appear in Omaha to perform Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Concerto in C Major for Cello and Orchestra,” a piece long thought to be lost, but rediscovered in 1961. It received its first modern performance in 1962. The concerto’s three movements display the soloist-orchestra concertante “agreement” of Haydn’s time — an 18th century classical music call and response style, mixing symphony and concerto genres. The serene centerpiece adagio is for strings only. It’s bracketed by spirited passages in which cello and orchestra go wild.
Romanian Names and the impeccable downsizing of John Vanderslice
by Brady Vredenburg
Not getting laid can pave quite a lucrative career path. At least, that is to say, if you’ve got the elusive ability to weave one helluva story around why, exactly, not. For Bay-area indie troubadour John Vanderslice, and the tales spun on his latest album Romanian Names, pondering these pubescent landmarks and setting them to chords is the reason he’s here.
“I wasn’t getting laid in high school,” he chuckled in a recent phone interview, then quickly shedding the crass lingo for a trademark Vanderslice turn of phrase. “It’s all very real,” he says. “It’s essentially the history of song, and the reason why so many begin writing.”
While Vanderslice speaks fast and loose of his origins, he quietly grew into a studio-tested, road-approved independent music icon in the last decade, releasing several successful albums on Barsuk, one of the nation’s premier indie labels, and opening a proverbial Wonka factory for analog junkies and successful international recording artists.
* I’ve reported on “the world’s only genuine recap rock band,” Previously on Lost, previously in Backbeat. Refresher: POL is a Brooklyn duo that birthed the genre of “Recapitulation Rock” during season four of ABC’s “Lost,” writing and recording songs recapping each episode of the twisting, turning serial.
Although originally independent of ABC, the network has now hired POL to write a musical recap for season five’s finale. It was commissioned by the folks behind the comedic, recapping, action figure-starring web series, “Lost Untangled.” The web series’ finale will serve as a music video for POL’s sonic summary.
POL is an appropriate addition for Disney-owned ABC as Wired.com said of the band, “The songs are hilarious and cool, somewhat like a frantic mash of Frank Zappa and Flaming Lips with a dose of old Disney musicals for good measure.”
