Skip Pitts (left) and Howard Grimes of the Bo-Keys

By Barry Gilbert

Listening to the Bo-Keys on Friday night at the latest Wood House Concerts show was absolutely sublime.

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

By Barry Gilbert

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?

DA: Well, yes and no, it’s a lot of stuff. Amy Farris, the violinist in the group I had, the Guilty Women, Amy passed away midway through touring for that record. (Farris committed suicide on Sept. 29, 2009.) She lived a block away, two blocks away, from me. I produced a record for her, I’d known her for years. I’d actually known her since she was a little teenage girl and would sneak into X shows in Texas. So a lot of that was kind of floating around, because of a lot of people, not just Chris. … When you’re 19 or 22, you write songs about trying to meet girls, and the longer you write songs, they kind of change around a little bit.

BG: I talked to Steve Earle a few weeks ago and he said, talking about when his dad died three years ago, that when the generation before you goes, you’re next. And that really affected his writing on his new record (and book, both titled “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive”).

DA: Those are big events. Part of songwriter’s job description, I guess, is to reflect those changes, and music’s always been a therapy of sorts, and it can make you feel like you’re a kid again, it can make you feel happy, can make you feel sad. There’s a lot of power in music.

BG: How would you describe the new CD? Is there a theme that you intended, or something that you realized was there that you hadn’t intended, at least consciously?

DA: Yeah, sometimes after it’s all done, or when you near the end, you go, oh my God, you know. I put a list in the liner notes of the record of 11 things the songs are about, keeping with the “Eleven” theme. (The 11 things are “life, love, death, loss, money, justice, labor, faith, doubt, family and friendship. The usual stuff.”)

But when I was writing it, well, let me put it this way. I don’t travel really swanky, you know (laughing). I don’t have a tour bus with my own room in the back to sit and write songs, to replicate some kind of work conditions like some people can. So it’s been very hard for me over the years to really write on tour because usually I’m out with one or two vehicles, and I love to drive, so I’m driving all the time.

With the Guilty Women, there was a plethora of drivers, so I could turn over driving to the singer, Christy McWilson, and I would sit shotgun and write songs. And then throw out lines to her, hey is this line good? … And then I’d go home for a week and go into the studio and cut a song, and go back out on tour and come home and cut a song. So I didn’t really sit down and say the songs are going to be about this and this and this, but near the end I realized … I was trying to touch a lot of bases, not just mortality, but I was trying to work in all 11 themes into every song, just about.

(One of the songs on “Eleven Eleven” is “Murietta’s Head,” and I asked Alvin whether he had read “L.A. Outlaws” by T. Jefferson Parker, the first of Parker’s Charlie Hood series. In that book, a woman claiming to be a descendant of Joaquin Murietta, an iconic 19th-century California figure who was variously thought of as a Robin Hood type or a simple murderer, robs from the rich and gives to charity. Alvin had not read the book, but he said Murietta folklore runs deep in California.)

DA: It might be a requirement for California folksong singers that everybody’s got to have a Murietta song. I kind of like dabbled with it off and on over the years, trying to write one, but most of them tend to be in the Robin Hood vein, which is fine, but there’s just been a lot of them.

What I wanted to do was write about – how do I put this nicely – I wanted to write about how in hard times, in tough times, the poor fight the poor, and the victims tend to take it out on each other. A lot of the characters in my story songs tend to be people who are caught between gigantic forces that they have no control over. … For “Murietta’s Head,” I try to tell just a little bit of the Murietta story but not get too Robin Hoody about it, and make it a story about, well, (he) may be Robin Hood, but I need money, so I’m going to kill him (for the reward) or die trying.

BG: When I was listening to “Gary, Indiana 1959,” it reminded me that when we talked last time, you told me about your dad, who was a union organizer, and you heard all of his stories at the dinner table. Have you ever been tempted to write an overt protest song?

DA: Well, I’ve written a couple, and I would consider (“Gary, Indiana 1959”) overt in its way. I’m sure some people may not like it, I don’t know. It’s not going to get me invited to a certain political convention, I’m sure.

My problem is, if you just write it overtly, the nature of the media now, if you write a story about it, it’s out of date within a week. By the time you write it, get it to the band, record it, mix it and get the record out, you’re already ancient history. So to me, any sort of political stuff has to be couched as something else, either in a story song or a love song. They don’t hold up well just flat out overtly. If you look at a lot of Dylan’s stuff, the best ones are the ones like “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” things like that that are story songs that talk about universal things, things that are timeless, as opposed to zeroing in on like, ‘I don’t like Bob Jones, he’s a jerk.’

And the other thing is, usually the issues are so complicated that it’s hard to just do the cut and dried, this is this and that’s that. I always try to look for all the nuances and subtleties. On that song, “Gary, Indiana,” it goes back to the thing about people getting smashed between forces that are bigger than them. And when that strike happened in 1959 across the country, it was one of those times, rare times, when working people actually had power, had a voice. And it’s not that way anymore, for a variety of reasons. So it’s both a celebration of that voice and a sad comment on the fact that that voice is gone, or it’s been diminished.

BG: Speaking of that track, Gene Taylor’s piano on that thing is just great.

DA: Yeah, he sounds great doesn’t he?

BG: We’ll get to Phil in a moment, but you’ve worked with ex-Blasters like Gene on this record for the first time. What’s changed? (Phil is Phil Alvin, Dave’s older brother and lead singer of the Blasters, in which Dave was the chief songwriter and lead guitar player.)

DA: Oh, going back to that mortality thing, we may not be around forever. So it was a combination of that and when I got into town off the road – because Gene lives in Europe, but he was in town and we’ve done a couple of gigs with this thing called the Gene Taylor Blues Band, which was basically the Blasters without my brother singing and Gene doing all the vocals. So it was kind of like, hey, Gene, what are you doing Tuesday? If you’ve got the afternoon free, come in and cut a couple of tracks. So this was like a combination, as I said, we may not be around forever so every now and then, we can make some music together. So it was a combination of that and happenstance.

BG: How did it happen with Phil? (Phil and Dave do a duet on “Eleven Eleven” titled “What’s Up With Your Brother?”) Did you even sing backup vocals with the Blasters?

DA: No. There’s one track on the “Hard Line” LP (1985), the last record with the Blasters, I sort of do. (Dave put his vocal on the demo) so the band could play along because my brother wasn’t in the studio when we were tracking that particular song, and so when Phil showed up to do the vocals, Don Gehman, the producer, said let’s just leave those on in the background on the chorus. So you kind of hear me singing, but no, we never looked at each other and sang.

Growing up, Phil was such a great singer, starting pretty early he had a pretty loud voice, and we weren’t like the Everly Brothers, we didn’t sing harmonies together. It was strictly: I’m the singer, and you’re not. … (On the new album) we finally did it, and poking fun at each other.

BG: Was it fun to do?

DA: (pause) Ninety percent of it! (Laughing) We got into one little argument, you know, but that’s to be expected. But, yeah, it was great. And the little sort of vaudeville routine at the end was totally spontaneous. Because we tracked it live, all the songs were recorded live in the studio. And we both had microphones, and we’re sort of looking at each other and, as the song ended, we were just going to sort of fade out, and I said, hey Phil, it’s fun singing with you, and he just took it from there. (Laughing) If we had scripted that out, it wouldn’t work. He sort of curve-balled me.

BG: Was that line about you leaving the band a reference to the Blasters’ history?

DA: Oh, yeah (laughing), oh totally. He claims that he was the last person to know (that Alvin had quit the Blasters). It’s one of those things that, before I left the band, I was always yelling in his face, “I’m gonna quit this band!” so it was sort of a little good-natured ribbing.

BG: I was looking at your discography on All Music Guide, and it gives “Romeo’s Escape” a rating of 4 1/2 stars. (The album was originally titled “Every Night About This Time” in its UK release. Subsequent U.S. pressings were titled “Romeo’s Escape.”) I remember you told me (during a 2004 interview) that it was not your favorite album because you hated your singing on it. What have you learned about your singing over the years?

DA: One of the things is not to do it drunk. (Laughing) When we recorded that record, Steve Berlin was the producer, and the band’s great, but I was so scared. I never sang (before the sessions for that record). There was some beer and vodka involved in the vocals. We got through it.

You know, guitar players tend to want to sing in guitar keys, like E and A, and I used to never use a capo. So I started discovering thanks to (producer, guitarist and pedal steel player) Greg Leisz and a couple of other people what my keys were and what my voice was.

I did some gigs in the very early ’90s with Richard Thompson, and watching Richard sing was a real education, where he would place his voice. Richard’s a really good singer, and he would place his voice inside the song as opposed to outside. The singers that I grew up admiring, like my brother or Big Joe Turner or Muddy Waters or Al Green, were guys who put their voices above the song – because they could – and so to me, that was how you sang — you belted it out.

And what I learned from Richard and some other singers was to kind of relax and do it, almost how to sing like Bing Crosby, because Crosby had that relaxed way of doing songs, where he tried to sound like he wasn’t singing, you know what I mean? And so, the more I practiced that, it just became easier and easier to interpret the song, and I started worrying less about singing the songs and more about how to interpret the lyrics, how to get it across without pushing it.

BG: Your songs are so wrapped up in California. To those of us who don’t live there, some of us think of the beach, some of us think of Hollywood. What is California to you, and have you written a song yet that nails California for you?

DA: Have I? Not that I know of. It’s a pretty big state. I guess all states are schizophrenic, or have multiple personalities. California is no different. The (personality) that gets the most attention, the stereotype of the Brian Wilson (Beach Boys) California, is there certainly, but it’s such a small part of the state.

Once you get a mile away from the coast, everything changes. … Merle Haggard’s born and raised in California, same as Brian Wilson, so there you go. So I think it’s really hard to sum up in one song. Probably the one that sums it up the best is “King of California” just because it deals with the dream versus the reality pretty bluntly.

BG: I guess I think of “Dry River.”

DA: Yeah, that could work, too. That’s one of those songs that when I was writing it, I just thought, what a horrible song, nobody’s ever going to understand this but me, and it’s actually turned into one of the more universal songs of mine.

Sometimes, the more personal you make a song, the more universal it becomes. And when I try to write a universal song, I tend to fall on my face. I did it (successfully) once or twice, like with “American Music” (one of the Blasters’ signature songs).

BG: Well, Dave, I’ll let you go, thanks for your time, and I look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks.

DA: Yeah, sorry I was so bleary-brained! Just shape it up and make me sound smart!

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.”

Baseball Project set list

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

1976

Ted Fucking Williams

The Straw That Stirs the Drink

Broken Man

Don’t Call Them Twinkies

Fair Weather Fans

The Death of Big Ed Delahanty

Ichiro Goes to the Moon

Gratitude (For Curt Flood)

The Closer

El Hombre

Harvey Haddix

Panda and the Freak

Past Time

Aw Shit Man (Minus 5)

Encore

Lies of the Living Dead (Minus 5)

(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville (R.E.M.)

The Days of Wine and Roses (Dream Syndicate)

Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3 set list

Halloween

Bruises

Cindy It Was Always You

Colored Lights

Consider the Source

We Don’t Talk About It

Resolution

That’s What You Always Say

Death Valley Rain

John Coltrane Stereo Blues (Dream Syndicate)

Amphetamine

Encore

When You Smile

High tide at the Duck Room

By Barry Gilbert

(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.

]]> http://dosgibbys.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=70 2 http://dosgibbys.com/blog/?p=54 http://dosgibbys.com/blog/?p=54#comments Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:00:12 +0000 elgibby http://dosgibbys.com/blog/?p=54

By Barry Gilbert

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

–A review of Supe Granda’s bandography, “It Shined: The Saga of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils”

– A review of the Daredevils’ CD “Rhythm and Joy: The 1980 Reunion Concert”

– A story from 2004, “Old stunts are new again”

– A story from 1999, “Band keeps on strummin’ ”

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.

BG: Are you doing any side work? Any session work?

Supe: Yeah. I do a lot of it. Of course, I do my own, I’m still doing Supe and the Sandwiches records. Lately I’ve been working with Burrito Deluxe, which is a derivative of the Flying Burrito Brothers. Plus, I get hired to do these odd gigs. They’ll call me and say, ‘What you doing next Tuesday?’ and they’ll bring a person in from out of town, a songwriter who just wants to make a record with some Nashville cats. And I’ll get introduced to the guy and we’ll just write charts to his songs and play songs. Everybody here is so good, we can get an album done in a couple of days. So I do a lot of work.

BG: Are you in Nashville, or in East Nashville with Todd Snider and that crowd?

Supe: No but I’m close (laughs). I know all those guys.

BG: So now you’re embarking on this whole new thing — Garrison Keillor of the Ozarks!

Supe: (Laughs) Well, it’s so cool, man, I’m having such a good time. It started about a year ago when I put the book out ["Let It Shine: The Saga of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils"], and I started doing these book signings. And I started getting introduced to people in the literary world. I started to bring my guitar along and, right where there’s a lull in the action, I get my guitar out and just start playing it. Just start playing my songs, and all of a sudden a crowd gathers, and I said, “Hey, wait a minute.”

So then I play some songs, and then I would read one of the stories from the book, and people came to really enjoy it. So I said, “Wait a minute, let me think about this, maybe I can turn this into an entity.” So I did it a couple times, and it went over like gangbusters.

So I started getting invited to these folk festivals and these acoustic series, where it’s just me and my guitar, and halfway through the show I pick up the book and read a couple of passages and went, “Wow!”

It only took me 60 years to figure out that I didn’t have to carry a bunch of equipment around and the drummer and all his drums and my big-ass basic amp. So I’ve been doing this lately, I just walk in with my acoustic guitar and sing silly songs. And people laugh and they dance, and at the end of the night I don’t have to haul a bunch of equipment in the rain.

BG: What do you classify as silly songs?

Supe: The songs I write. You know, I’ve got my songs covered on the Dr. Demento show, so that’s where my songs have ended up. I don’t think Toby Keith is going to be cutting any of my songs — or Taylor Swift (laughs).

BG: Well, thank God for that! Well, maybe you don’t think that way — that would be a good payday.

Supe: Well, that would be a great payday. But did you watch that show the other night [country music awards]? 0hhhhh, good Lord…

BG: I saw a list of the nominees and decided I would do something else.

Supe: Yeah, it was just … terrible. But thankfully, I don’t have to depend on [contemporary, establishment Nashville and radio] to make my living.

There’s a whole strata of artists down here, like Todd Snider and Tom Mason and Peter Cooper and those kind of guys. We make our living. We don’t have to rely on getting a Brad Paisley or a Brooks and Dunn [to cut one of our songs] to pay my rent. I pay my rent with what I do. Thank God.

BG: Did you think it would come to this? Traveling with the Daredevils and, all these years later, you’re doing a Hal Holbrook thing or maybe it’s the Ray Davies thing? [References are to Holbrook's famous "Mark Twain Tonight" and Ray (the Kinks) Davies' "Storyteller" one-man shows.]

Supe: Did I think it would come to this? No, I didn’t. But I didn’t think it would come to me living in Nashville, either. I’ve gotten to the point that whatever happens won’t surprise me. What happens tomorrow, no matter how crazy or harebrained it may sound, it won’t surprise me. [But]this little project ["Supe's On!"] has pleasantly surprised me.

BG: This show at the Ivory Theatre will be the first formal one, other than the book tour. What does the Ivory hold?

Supe: It’s only a couple of hundred people.

BG: Well that’s nice and intimate.

Supe: Yeah. If I get 100 people, it looks great. I get 100 people on the Fox, it looks horrible (laughs).

BG: So why did you pick the Ivory?

Supe: I don’t know. I heard about the theater and in talking with [St. Louis writer Terry Perkins] and asked him about it. He said it’s a cool little place. And I told him about what what I was doing, and he said it would be perfect for what I’m trying to do. Then I went and met with the people, and they were very, very cool, they were very very open to my ideas. We sat down one afternoon and talked about it, boom there you have it.

BG: What will you be doing at the show? I assume a few Dardevils songs.

Supe: Yeah, a small handful. I would say two or three, and then the show basically will be my catalog along with the stories I’ve written.

BG: Any chicken clucking likely to break out? [A reference to his work on the Daredevils' "Chicken Train Stomp"]

Supe: I’ve been known to (laughs).

BG: What’s the status of the Daredevils at this point?

Supe: We’re still playing. It seems that with the Daredevils, we always seem … we won’t go away. But we do take large chunks of time off, and I’m talking six months to a year. But this year we kind of put together yet another incarnation and, in 2010, we look to get out and play some more.

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.

Jon Langford, a graduate of the roots-punk Mekons and a mainstay of Chicago’s country music movement since he settled there 16 years ago, led the Wacos through punk-fueled songs about President George W. Bush (“Cowboy in Flames”), Hiroshima and history (“Hell’s Roof”) the “Death of Country Music,” and the blue-collar ethic (“Plenty Tough Union Made”).

Ha Ha Tonka’s 45-minute set was remarkable in its range. Front man Brian Roberts, bassist Lucas Long, keyboardist-guitarist Brett Anderson and drummer Lennon Bone played loud, and they played tough. But they were equally adept at playing soft and with nuance – plus, they can all sing.

The big Off Broadway crowd exploded after they stepped up for an a capella version of the traditional folk ballad “Hangman,” their solid four-part harmonies filling the bar.

Opening was the Everybodyfields from Johnson City, Tenn., and St. Louis Country singer Caleb Travers.

Twangfest 12 also scored earlier in the week with its other headliners:

Chuck Prophet, Wednesday at the Tap Room: The San Francisco singer-songwriter and his Mission Express played a solid set of soul-tinged rock and power pop. His interplay with second guitarist James Deprato was a highlight of the set.

The Gourds and the Dynamites, Thursday at Blueberry Hill: Veteran soul singer Charles Walker, backed by Nashville’s Dynamites, took Twangfest off the front porch and uptown for an exciting set of funk, blues and soul. Texas’ Gourds closed the night with a laid-back stew of folk, country and Cajun rhythms.

The Old 97’s, Friday at the Pageant: This was the big show of the week, and the Dallas rockers delivered an electric two-hour set featuring the inexhaustible charm of front man Rhett Miller. Houston country singer Hayes Carll gave the festival a much-needed injection of twang in his supporting role.

Elsewhere in the Twangfest notebook:

Missing in action: The women. As the festival has broadened its definition of twang, the ranks of female artists has dwindled. Last year’s lineup included Elizabeth Cook, Carrie Rodriguez, and strong front women in Blue Mountain, Dolly Varden and Wussy. This year: only Masha Marjieh of the Deadstring Brothers and Jill Andrews of the Everybodyfields, plus sax player Hope Clayburn of the Dynamites. What’s up with that?

Missing in action, part 2: Traditional country music and bluegrass. From a majority of country acts, this year’s festival boasted only Carll and Travers, the Everybodyfields, perhaps the Gourds, and the Builders and the Butchers. The closest Twangfest 12 came to traditional country was George Jones piped over the PA before the Old 97’s set at the Pageant.

Diversity: Charles Walker. Say it again: Charles Walker. The veteran soul man thrilled Thursday at the Duck Room, providing a solid link to the blues side of roots music. If Twangfest is to continue to be a big tent, it needs more of the vital contributions made by African-Americans to American music.

Around the dial: It was said many times from the stage, but most if not all of this year’s performers can be heard on St. Louis radio in only one place: KDHX (88.1 FM). The not-for-profit, volunteer Twangfest is sponsored by that treasure of a station, and all proceeds after paying for the musicians go to keeping it on the air.