Micah6 A blog about social justice, politics and religion. Play It All Night Long St. Louis freelance writer Daniel Durchholz blogs about music. Rock Candy / St. Louis The Blender The blog of St. Louis Post-Dispatch pop music critic Kevin C. Johnson
Micah 6: A social justice, politics and religion blog
This retro but modern take on classic Memphis soul – the grit of Otis Redding, the groove of the MGs, the brass of the Memphis Horns – was just a joy to hear. And I couldn’t help thinking how much poorer we are for the corporatization and lack of adventure in modern radio, as the Bo-Keys reminded me of the days when you could snap on an AM radio and hear Aretha and the Animals, and Sinatra and the Stones, and keep up with the Joneses, Booker T and George. (Repeat after me, St. Louis: Thank God for KDHX 88.1 FM.)
The Bo-Keys have been together as a recording unit for only a decade, but some of the members of this interracial and intergenerational band go back to the glory days of Memphis soul. Co-founder Charles “Skip” Pitts played the signature guitar parts on Isaac Hayes’ “Theme From Shaft” and the Isley Brothers’ “It’s Your Thing.” Drummer Howard Grimes kept the beat at Hi Records during the heyday of Al Green and can be heard on his great single “Love and Happiness.”
The band performed all three songs last night, with Pitts growling through Hayes’ part and the terrific singer Percy Wiggins standing in for Green and Ronald Isley.
Although the band also performed a wonderful cover of Eddie Floyd’s “Knock on Wood,” most of the tunes were originals, many from the band’s new CD, “Got to Get Back.” Led by the bedrock rhythm of co-founder and bassist Scott Bomar, and the electrifying guitar and infectious smile of Pitts, the Bo-Keys played two sets of about 45 minutes each and had the audience of about 70 people in Rick and Nancy Wood’s Clayton family room rocking in their seats and occasionally dancing in place.
All of the players impressed with tight and expressive solos, including new keyboardist and aptly named Lotsa Papa, Kirk Smothers on saxophone and Marc Franklin on trumpet. Pitts was a standout on the ballad “Sundown on Beale,” and Wiggins, a singer at Atlantic Records back in the day, was a consistent pleasure, especially on the new “Catch This Teardrop,” which he sings on the CD.
The audience loved these guys, and the band was apparently surprised and unprepared for a demanded encore. But it obliged with a reprise of Wiggins’ “Catch This Teardrop.”
And the Bo Keys loved playing the house concert. Pitts was so impressed with the venue, he said he hoped to start something similar back home in Memphis, and he all but pleaded to be invited back to the Wood House Concerts series.
For me, the Bo-Keys can’t return soon enough.
(Here is a video of the Bo-Keys, with Otis Clay on lead vocal, on the title track of “Got to Get Back.”)
Dave Alvin has become one of America’s greatest songwriters and guitar players. His early work with the punk-fueled R&B/rockabilly band the Blasters has matured into an adventurous exploration of American roots music encompassing folk, country and the blues.
His story and love songs are rooted in real people, ordinary working people facing personal and societal challenges yet somehow hanging on to a sliver of hope. Among his best: “Fourth of July,” “King of California,” “Ashgrove” and the new “Gary, Indiana 1959,” plus exquisite co-writes with Tom Russell on “Haley’s Comet,” “California Snow” and “Out in California.”
I interviewed Alvin for a Post-Dispatch story on June 14, 2011. I reached him on a tour stop in Asheville, N.C., about 11 o’clock in the morning — early for a working musician — and he apologized for not being totally awake. Here is a transcript of that interview, lightly edited for length and clarity.
We began by talking about Chris Gaffney, a fine singer-songwriter and accordion player and Alvin’s best friend who died of liver cancer at age 57 on April 17, 2008. Gaffney recorded with his own band as well as the great Hacienda Brothers, and he was a member of Alvin’s Guilty Men.
I told Dave I bought my first Gaffney album, “Chris Gaffney & the Cold Hard Facts,” in 1989 based only on the title and band name and became a fan instantly. I talked to Gaffney a couple of times at Alvin shows, and enjoyed the conversations.
Gaffney’s death hit Alvin hard.
DA: I could go on for hours. He was my best friend. He got all my jokes.
BG: Yeah, that is the mark of a best friend, isn’t it.
DA: That is the mark of a best friend (laughing).
BG: And if they don’t, they just pretend they do.
DA: He never pretended. He would let me know, on a scale of 1 to 10, how good the jokes were.
BG: “Two Lucky Bums” (on “Eleven Eleven”) of course is a duet with Chris. You had originally offered that as a download. And it’s that version I assume that’s on the CD.
DA: Yeah. I cut a couple of other songs for the record, and when I was piecing things together it kind of made sense to put it on and hold a couple of other things. … That just kind of summed everything up.
BG: There is a subtext of mortality on the new CD. Is that the influence of Chris’ passing, or is it bigger than that?
Steve Wynn (from left), Mike Mills and Scott McCaughey of the Baseball Project at Twangfest 15, June 11, 2011
By Barry Gilbert
The Cardinals may have dropped out of first place in the NL Central on Sunday, but on Saturday night they led the majors in song as the Baseball Project hit it out of Blueberry Hill’s Duck Room to close out Twangfest 15 in St. Louis.
Veteran rockers Steve Wynn, Mike Mills, Scott McCaughey and Linda Pitmon, wearing their twin passions for music and baseball like a uniform, tore through 14 tracks from their two CDs as the Baseball Project. And for extra innings, they connected on songs from some of Wynn, McCaughey and Mills’ other bands: Dream Syndicate, the Minus 5 and R.E.M., respectively.
Twangfest, which became Flood Fest on Friday night when storms outside caused floor drains inside the Duck Room to back up and leave an inch or so of stinky water underfoot, was threatened again Saturday when water started rising just about showtime. But the Blueberry Hill crew dealt with it quickly, and opening act Marah went on just a bit more than a half-hour late.
Four of the Baseball Project’s songs were inspired by Cardinals:
• “Broken Man,” about baseball’s steroids era and Mark McGwire’s home run chase: “No one seemed to care when it brought back the fans./ It’s a broken record, strike up the band for the broken man.”
• “Gratitude (For Curt Flood),” about how Flood’s challenge of baseball’s reserve clause paved the way for today’s super-rich stars, but “five years later they were rolling in clover but nothing for me, my career was over.”
• “The Closer,” inspired by Al Hrabosky’s late inning mound heroics: “All my heroes had colorful names and a bad attitude, short-lived fame with an even shorter fuse.”
• And “El Hombre,” in which Albert Pujols insists he is not El Hombre because “Stan’s the Man.”
The band took the stage within hailing distance of midnight as McCaughey said, “Here’s a song we wrote in 1876”: “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
The musicians insisted that they aren’t “Fair Weather Fans,” each taking a verse to explain the origin of their baseball allegiances, and they questioned whether all the changes in baseball have sent the “Past Time” past its prime.
Other songs, rich in nuance and perspective, tipped their caps to Ichiro Suzuki, Reggie Jackson, Ted Williams, Tim Lyncecum and many more.
To close out the main set, however, the Project gleefully jettisoned Mom and her apple pie for McCaughey’s Minus 5 song “Aw Shit Man.”
But perhaps Mom had already covered the kids’ ears after the band earlier played “Ted Fucking Williams.”
“I love to play that for toddlers,” McCaughey joked, explaining that for a performance at a Single A game, the band changed the lyric to “Ted Freaking Williams.”
McCaughey led off the encore with the Minus 5’s “Lies of the Living Dead,” followed by Mills’ R.E.M. hit “(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville” and Wynn’s Dream Syndicate track “The Days of Wine and Roses.”
On Saturday afternoon, the Baseball Project played an acoustic set at a special Twangfest house concert, so the nighttime show was its second gig of the day — xcept for Wynn and Pitmon, for whom it was No. 3.
That’s because they preceded themselves on the Duck Room stage with bassist Dave DeCastro and guitarist Jason Victor for a set as Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3. Their 12 high-octane rockers from Wynn’s solo career included “Colored Lights,” “Consider the Source” and “Resolution” from the new CD “Northern Aggression.”
Those kids from Philly, Marah, opened the night with a much different lineup from their previous Twangfest appearance in 2004. Front man Dave Bielanko, continuing without brother Serge but still pouring sweat from under a fur-lined hat, came out to the theme from “Rocky” and established a visceral connection with fans. It was an exciting opening set featuring “Limb,” “Faraway You,” “Within the Spirit Sagging” and “Walt Whitman Bridge.”
(Thanks to recording fiend Jeff Regan for an mp3 of “Wet Vac.”)
Friday night’s thunder and light show again flummoxed University City’s storm and sanitary systems. As drains backed up and the tide rose across the floor of Blueberry Hill’s Duck Room, I remembered that Nora O’Connor had the perfect song for the occasion in her catalogue: her cover of Tom Waits’ “Looks Like I’m Up Shit Creek Again.”
It wasn’t needed, because she and the rest of the crowd on the third night of Twangfest 15 listened in delight as headliner Robbie Fulks riffed twice on improvised songs.
As fans in sandals and flip flops sloshed in an inch or so of stinky water, Fulks and O’Connor battled a wet vac droning what Fulks judged to be middle-E and inspired what we’ll call “Wet Vac”:
“While the water came into the club/ the wet vac worked very hard./ Twangfest would not be ruined by the water/ so we diverted it into someone’s back yard./ While the rain in St. Louis couldn’t stop the Twangfest when they brought the wet vac out/And to the sound of the wet vac E/ all the (unintelligible) got to scream and shout/ (shouting) WET VAC … WET VAC … WET VAC … wet vac.”
Later, Fulks improvised the more involved “The Duck Room’s Goin’ Down.”
Despite – or maybe inspired by — all that, Fulks turned in a memorable set that covered all of the prolific Chicago-based singer’s obsessions, from traditional country music to Michael Jackson.
Thanking the crowd for “standing in sludge and sewage,” Fulks opened with “I Push Right Over” and “Busy Not Crying” before O’Connor joined him onstage for “Parallel Bars” and her own “My Backyard.”
Along the way to his set-closing anthem, the raucous and joyous “Let’s Kill Saturday Night,” Fulks paid tribute to Gram Parsons, who with Emmylou Harris famously covered “Love Hurts”; George Jones, whose duet with Melba Montgomery on “Flame in My Heart” was beautifully re-created with O’Connor; and a pair of covers of songs by Jackson, the late King of Pop.
For years, Fulks talked about doing an album of Jackson songs and, last year, he finally released the 14-track, irony-free “Happy.” Fulks, bassist Mike Fredrickson, guitarist Grant Tye and drummer Dan Massey tore into “The Girl is Mine” and had the crowd splashing to a killer take on “The Way You Make Me Feel.”
Then it was back to Fulks originals, including his tribute to Buck Owens on “The Buck Starts Here” (“and Hank’s sure to follow”), “Cigarette State” and “Let’s Kill Saturday Night.”
For an encore, Fulks blazed through “She Took A Lot of Pills (And Died),” a country stomper aimed at the life-coping challenges of some celebrities.
That seemed to be it, until musician John Wendland (Rough Shop), a DJ at festival sponsor KDHX (88.1 FM) and a Twangfest board member, grabbed a mike and shouted: “We’re standing in sewage, for God’s sake! You’d think they’d come out one more time.”
And out Fulks came – for a do-over on his guitar solo earlier on “Bluebirds Are Singing for Me” and the uptempo country-pop weeper “Tears Only Run One Way.”
The first act to face the flood was North Carolina’s Chatham County Line (“Is Robbie Fulks taking a shower backstage?”). The four-man powerhouse from North Carolina adheres to some of the conventions of traditional bluegrass performance, including wearing suits, but stretches the boundaries musically.
CCL uses a single microphone in the style of early bluegrass stars such as Bill Monroe – who were limited by the technology of the day – but augmented with two smaller, waist-high mikes to better pick up the band’s unamplified instruments. So unlike some bands whose players never look at each other, these guys need to keep their eyes open to avoid taking an elbow or, worse, a fiddle bow in the eye as they slide in for a solo, slide out and change places to make room for the next player, and lean in for four-part harmonies.
Lead singer and guitarist Dave Wilson, mandolin and fiddle player John Teer, bassist Greg Readling and banjoist Chandler Holt have built a loyal following over five albums and touring by marrying this traditional presentation with original songs that mix bluegrass, folk and country. And while each is an accomplished picker, their soloing is focused and always in service to the songs.
Standout tunes Friday night included the new “Wildwood,” “Chip of a Star,” “Let It Rock” and “Speed of the Whippoorwill,” as well as fine and unexpected cover of the Traveling Wilbury’s “Handle With Care.”
A special treat was their tribute to the late University City native John Hartford with a heartfelt cover of “Tear Down the Grand Ole Opry.”
Preceding Chatham County Line was Michigan’s Frontier Ruckus, whose ambitious folk-rock is built around the lyric-intensive songs of Matthew Milia and flavored with horns and bowed saw.
And opening the evening was the fine St. Louis bluegrass quartet Cumberland Gap. Led by songwriter and singer Greg Silsby, the Gap got the evening off to a warm start with a mix of originals and covers including the traditional “John Henry.”
Rock ‘n’ roll returns to the Duck Room on Saturday for the final night of Twangfest 15 featuring the Baseball Project, Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3 and Marah.
The wait was more than worth it. Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis dazzled in a rare performance together Thursday night, their songs simultaneously reaching out to the head, the heart and the gut.
Headlining the second night of Twangfest 15 at Blueberry Hill’s Duck Room, Mr. and Mrs. Robison, backed by Will Dupuy on bass and Geoff Queen on pedal steel and guitar, offered 20 tunes over an hour and 20 minutes.
The set list mined the catalogues of each to good effect. But what made the night extra special was a handful of new duets that the couple unveiled, hinting of a career merger after about two decades of individual success.
It’s simply criminal that their mixture of country, pop and folk isn’t played on radio here, with the notable exception of Twangfest sponsor KDHX (88.1 FM). From the opening notes of “Sweet Sundown” to the closing masterpiece “Angry All the Time,” Robison and Willis displayed the honesty and simplicity that makes great songwriting.
Unfortunately, the crowd had thinned considerably by the time Robison and Willis took the stage at 11:20 p.m., perhaps discouraged by a low-energy first couple of hours.
Willis reached back to her rare 1996 EP “Fading Fast,” her liquid alto caressing the lyrics of “What World Are You Living In,” which she wrote with Gary Louris of the Jayhawks. She then jumped to the future for the new and unreleased “Say Goodbye,” written with the prolific Chuck Prophet.
She also featured songs written for her by Robison, including “He Don’t Care About Me” and “Not Forgotten You.”
The slight Willis matched Robison in every way but height, her husband seemingly 10 feet tall on the raised Duck Room stage. And the stature of his songs fed the illusion.
All of Robison’s songs are standouts, but four reach for perfection and were uplifting live:
• “My Brother and Me,” about four generations of the Robison family that produced the singer and his singer-songwriter brother Charlie.
• “Wrapped,” a song both have recorded and that was covered by George Strait (“Thought I was doing fine/ About to get you off my mind/ I see your face and then I’m wrapped/ Around your pretty little finger again”).
• “Angry All the Time,” a raw relationship song covered by Tim McGraw (“The reasons that I can’t stay don’t have a thing to do with being in love/ And I understand that lovin a man shouldn’t have to be this rough/ You ain’t the only one who feels like this world left you far behind/ I don’t know why you gotta be angry all the time”).
• “Travelin’ Soldier,” a Vietnam-era story about a young girl waiting for her young soldier to come home.
That Robison and Willis kept the energy in the room cranked was no mean feat given that they followed a dynamic set by Eileen Rose and the Holy Wreck, featuring the Legendary Rich Gilbert – and we’ll keep the quotes off “legendary.” That guy can play.
Rose, a “half-Gaelic, half garlic” woman from Boston, is a powerful singer with an ear for rhythm and dynamics. She also has a bubbly and enthusiastic stage presence, and her banter was as entertaining as her music.
She also was 100 percent correct when she called herself a “very lucky chick singer” to be backed by Zach Shedd (Hank Williams III) on standup bass, Johnnie Barber (Merle Haggard, Johnny Paycheck) on drums and fellow former Bostonian Gilbert (Human Sexual Response) on guitar and pedal steel.
“Showoff!” she kidded Gilbert after a fiery solo on “Trying to Lose You,” which sports a guitar line that recalls the tone of the Stones’ “Satisfaction.”
Rose scored with originals including “20 Dollar Shoes,” “Third Time’s a Charm,” “Trouble From Tomorrow” and “Silver Ladle,” interspersed with two terrific covers: Tommy Duncan and Bob Wills’ “Time Changes Everything”; and Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man,” for which she trotted out “my big girl voice.”
Preceding Rose and the Holy Wreck was Tennessee native Jill Andrews, a lovely soprano who presented several songs from her new CD, “The Mirror,” and St. Louis’ Cassie Morgan and the Lonely Pine, featuring Beth Bombara on harmonies and a wildly inventive percussion and keyboard kit that might have been acquired from yard sales.
Their music was sincere and well-performed but would have been better suited to a venue other than a basement bar and a crowd psyched for a festival. However, Morgan’s and Andrews’ sets weren’t helped by some in the crowd, whose rude conversations later had to be shushed midsong by Robison.
“Doesn’t anyone care about truth anymore?” roots rocker Hayes Carll asked Wednesday night at the Pageant, then answered his own question: “Maybe that’s what songs are for.”
That lyric, from the wonderfully titled “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart,” closed out Carll’s encore and the opening night of Twangfest 15 at the Pageant, and a lot of what came before it from Carll and Elizabeth Cook had a lot to do with truth, broken hearts and, yes, bad livers.
Both artists are veterans of St. Louis’ roots music festival. Cook was making her third visit, Carll his second. But Carll’s represented a huge career leap from three years ago, when he opened for the Old 97’s at the same venue.
This time, fronting a full band led by guitarist Scott Davis, Carll was talkative, funny and charming, both in song and between them. He played 10 of the 12 songs from his new CD “KAMG YOYO,” military slang for “kiss my ass guys, you’re on your own.”
Carll and band brought out the CD’s stunning musical variety, from the rock of “Stomp and Holler” to the Irish-folk of “Bottle in My Hand” to the classic country sound of “Chances Are.”
Introducing “Hard Out Here,” about a musician’s life on the road during tough economic times, Hayes thanked the crowd for coming out on a weeknight when “for $20 you could’ve bought a case of Pabst and a porn movie and stayed at home.”
The adult theme and Carll’s laugh-out-loud humor continued with a new song co-written with Bobby Bare Jr., “One Bed, Two Girls and Three Bottles of Wine,” a self-deprecating account of a three-way encounter that ended, um, prematurely.
Carll’s good humor propelled “Another Like You” — a duet on the CD with Cary Ann Hearst about political opposites finding common ground through physical attraction and alcohol – into a winning solo as he sang both parts facing, in turn, in opposite directions.
For the funny and pointed “She Left Me for Jesus,” Carll explained that he wasn’t attacking Jesus, a point some have missed; he was attacking “Christians who would probably pick a fight with Jesus if he walking into their local bar.”
From older tunes such as “Drunken Poet’s Dream” and “Little Rock” to a cover of Tom Waits’ “I don’t Want to Grow Up” to the wistful “It’s a Shame,” Carll was in total control.
Cook, accompanied by husband Tim Carroll on guitar and a bass player, hit the high points of her recent CD, “Welder.” Blessed with a natural and beautiful country voice, Cook’s songs are a mashup of rock and rockabilly, bluegrass and blues, folk and country.
“El Camino,” for example, ostensibly about a car, is a steamy number that combines rock rhythms and talking, almost rapping, blues. “Times are Tough in Rock N’ Roll” name drops Britney Spears, and “Yes to Booty” warns that beer and booty don’t mix.
The breadth of her material is shown in two songs, the Tammy Wynette-answer song “Sometimes It Takes Balls to Be a Woman,” and the aching “Heroin Addict Sister,” which Cook said was drawn from her large, extended family.
But perhaps the best song of her set, perhaps of the night, was Carroll’s “Till Then,” sung by Cook on “Welder” but given to Carroll as a solo: “We’re gonna find a pot of gold/ We’re gonna get out of the cold/ We’re gonna reach the top again/ But what’ll we do til then.”
Opening the show was St. Louis’ Kentucky Knife Fight, which warmed up the crowd with a convincing mix of rock, country and punk.
Twangfest 15 continues Thursday night at Blueberry Hill’s Duck Room with Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison, Jill Andrews, Eileen Rose and the Holy Wreck with “the Legendary” Rich Gilbert, and Cassie Morgan and the Lonely Pine.
Michael “Supe” Granda, St. Louis native and bassist for the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, has added a new series of gigs to his parallel solo career: “Supe’s On: An Evening of Songs, Stories & Serious Silliness.” The show, which debuts this weekend in St. Louis, features Supe singing songs from his Daredevils and solo catalogues, and telling stories drawn from his book on the band.
We had a very enjoyable chat last week, and my story from that interview appears in this week’s Go! magazine (EDIT: Apologies for the broken link; check back, it will be fixed soon) n the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Also, here are some links to some earlier Supe/Daredevils stories
For fans of the Daredevils, Supe and the Sandwiches, Supe de Jour and the Garbonzos, here’s the interview Q&A, edited a bit for length and clarity.
————————
BG: I see by your area code that you’re still down in Nashville.
Supe: I’ve been in Nashville 19 years. Almost as long as I lived in Springfield. I love it down here. I got access to the greatest musicians in the world. For a musician and writer, it’s like being a kid in a candy store.
Yes, the Roots Cellar is reopening for business. We’ve spent the past year house hunting, rehabbing and finally moving, and life is returning to normal.
I’ll be bringing this site up to date as quickly as possible, and trying to solve any technical glitches. The design might change, as well.
Look for a new story later this week, and a Q&A interview with Michael “Supe” Granda of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.
David Egan
“You Don’t Know Your Mind”
Out of the Past/Rhonda Sue Records
**** (out of five)
By Barry Gilbert
Pianist David Egan, who stepped out of the songwriter/sidemen shadows four years ago at the age of 54, is back with his sophomore release, a tasty stew of New Orleans sounds called “You Don’t Know Your Mind.”
Egan conjures up the likes of Doctor John, Professor Longhair and Huey “Piano” Smith over 11 tracks of blues, R&B, rock and roll, zydeco and even some cool 1 a.m. lounge music. He is once again aided by producer/guitarist Joe McMahan, a St. Louis favorite after visits with, among others, Kevin Gordon, who also gives Egan a hand.
Standout tracks include the sultry “If It Is What It Is (It’s Love)” with Jennifer Nicely; “Proud Dog,” in which Egan writes a manifesto for survivors (“well the cat gets nine and you only got one/so you better just have a little doggone fun”); and the funny and touching “Small Fry,” in which Egan sings a love song to his “darling son” — and “blue-eyed beast.”
Egan paid his dues, writing for Joe Cocker and Percy Sledge, and playing in bands such as Lil’ Band o’ Gold with Cajun guitarist C.C. Adcock. Now it’s Egan’s time, and he’s making the most of it.
The following post is an unedited version of my report for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which ran in a shorter form on Monday, June 9, 2008.
June 15, 2008
By Barry Gilbert
The Waco Brothers, an irreverent band of post-punk, country-leaning Brits from Chicago, and Ha Ha Tonka, young tradition-minded rockers from the Ozarks, closed out the four-night Twangfest 12 in style Saturday [June 7, 2008] at Off Broadway.
St. Louis’ not-for-profit, roots music festival came full circle with the Wacos, who inaugurated the series at Off Broadway in 1997.
– Review of Day 1: Chuck Prophet, Centro-Matic, the Butchers and the Builders
– Review of Day 2: The Gourds, the Dynamites featuring Charles Walker, the Deadstring Brothers
– Review of Day 3: The Old 97’s, Hayes Carll, Miles of Wire, I Love Math
– Review of Day 4: The Waco Brothers, Ha Ha Tonka, the everybodyfields, Caleb Travers
Clad in a variety of black Western shirts, the Wacos played for an hour and 45 minutes and tore through 20 songs, a set list that would have been longer if not for the Wacos’ nonstop onstage banter that ranged from British sexual practices to U.S. politics, with numerous checkpoints in between.
