Author: April

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Notable shows in the greater Cleveland area & Shane MacGowan… tweets

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Shows worth checking out this week in and around Cleveland:

The Beachland Ballroom & Tavern

  • Sun, Mar 14| 9 PM (8:30 PM door)
    Koffin Kats
    Scoliosis Jones / Scarlet Fever
    $10.00
    Tavern | All Ages

Grog Shop

  • Sat, Mar 13| 9 PM
    Mykal Rose
    Dub Tonic Kru / Carlos Jones P.L.U.S. Band
    $23

  • Sun, Mar 14| 9 PM
    The Tossers
    Lords Of The Highway / Labor Force
    $10

  • Thurs, Mar 18| 9 PM
    RJD2
    Break Science / Happy Chichester
    $15 adv
    $17 dos

Now That’s Class

  • Sat, Mar 13| 7 PM
    The Chinese Stars
    Fang Island/Uno Lady
    $7

Musica

  • Fri, Mar 19| 7 PM
    AKRON ROCKS FOR HAITI
    Featuring:
    Umojah Nation
    Ryan Humbert
    House Popes
    Freez-R-Burn
    Roxxymoron
    & Peep

Did you all know Shane MacGowan is on Twitter now? Has a series of words strung together ever made less sense than what you just read?

Shane MacGowan’s Twitter

I don’t expect he’ll stick with it long, especially since he and his partner Victoria have been trying to reply to every @ that comes their way and seemed a bit overwhelmed last night, so experience it while it’s fresh.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf69vIQL_u8]

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The Hiram Rapids Stumblers & Carolina Chocolate Drops at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland, 3.10.10

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The first thing to stop me short after entering the Beachland Ballroom Wednesday night was the rows of chairs. The second thing was all the grayhairs who were sitting in those chairs. And they all seemed to know each other. I began to wonder if I’d missed news of a venue change or had somehow arrived on the wrong night. It was only when the Hiram Rapids Stumblers took the stage that I was sure I was at the right place at the right time.

The Hiram Rapids Stumblers setlist
I totally dropped the ball on this one. Here are the songs I’m sure they did:
Hop On Lula
Baltimore Fire

Yeah. I know they did an Uncle Dave Macon song concerning a mule and a semi-original composition that set a Langston Hughes poem to music, and there were a couple of tunes about gals with similar names (Susannah and Susie Anna?), but that’s as detailed as I can get. If anyone can help me fill out the information there, just drop me a line.

The Stumblers are a decent band – a downhome string band whom I suspect were toting moonshine in that shiny, little flask that sat in front of Scott Huge – but they seemed to be suffering from a slight lack of confidence. Perhaps, like me, they were put a little off kilter by the audience composition for the night. They did manage to build up a good head of steam for “Hop On Lula” and the little story about Scott riding a mule backwards while naked in the middle of the night was more along the lines of what I was expecting from this bunch. I’d like to see these guys again in a more intimate setting, perhaps with more liquid courage involved.

Carolina Chocolate Drops setlist
Trouble in Your Mind
Cindy Gal
Your Baby Ain’t Sweet Like Mine
Will Adams Breakdown
Two-time Loser
Sandy Boys
Peace Behind the Bridge
There’s a Brown Skin Girl Down the Road Somewhere (adapted by Flemons for harmonica)
Lights in the Valley
Black Annie
Snowden’s Jig (Genuine Negro Jig)
Cornbread and Butterbeans
Hit ‘Em Up Style
Sourwood Mountain
Travelin’ Shoes [encore]

Introduced by a vibrant woman (whose name I have shamefullly forgotten) from the Roots of American Music organization who met Carolina Chocolate Drops at that fateful Black Banjo Gathering where the seeds for the formation of the band were first planted, it was clear from the start that CCDs were there to entertain and educate. With Dom Flemons as the Performer, Rhiannon Giddens as the Mouthpiece (with a strong touch of the Performer) and Justin Robinson as the Quiet One, CCDs tore through a set heavy with songs from their new album, Genuine Negro Jig, and sprinkled with stories of where the songs came from and how CCDs came to the songs. It didn’t take long until everyone in the place, including (especially?) the comfortably-seated grayhairs, were whooping and hollering their appreciation. While CCDs don’t change up the songs they play much between album and stage, hearing those songs played live brings a whole different dimension, and the energy of the band is inarguable. Robinson spends most of the show standing while Flemons and Giddens are seated, but there is no shortage of motion from those chairs, Flemons windmilling his dobro and double-foot stomping (causing his stylish hat to fall off more than once, prompting someone behind me to comment that he needed a “hat roadie”) and Giddens chair-dancing. They engage the audience immediately with a warm and friendly rapport and build on that rapport with songs spanning genres from traditional string-band music to blues to R&B; to the gorgeous three-part harmony of the a capella show-closer.

With an education-minded band like the Carolina Chocolate Drops, you even get book recommendations. I have added to my to-read list Way Up North in Dixie: A Black Family’s Claim to the Confederate Anthem by Howard L. Sacks, which tells the story of the Snowden family of Mount Vernon, Ohio, whom, it is argued, taught the Confederate-minded tune “Dixie” to the historically-accepted composer of the song, Dan Emmett. As you can gather, “Genuine Negro Jig” was also a Snowden family song.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops will be coming back around in May for the Oberlin Folk Festival at Oberlin College (where Giddens went to school), and NTSIB greatly encourages all you NEOers to make the drive out to see them.

Carolina Chocolate Drops Official Website
The Hiram Rapids Stumblers MySpace
Roots of American Music
Music Maker Relief Foundation

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The Famous: Really working to be happy

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On first listen, the Famous’ new album, Come Home to Me, sounds like the soundtrack to a roadtrip* wherein Very Bad Things Happen. Can’t speak for your world, but in NTSIB’s world, that’s more than enough to merit a second listen.

The Famous has a birth story reminiscent of the birth story of the Rolling Stones, but instead of Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters albums, the chance meeting of Laurence Scott and Victor Barclay hinged on them both owning the same car: the ’65 model Ford Galaxie. The Rolling Stones comparison could be extended to the way the Famous take an old American songstyle (in their case, country & western) and mix it up with modern sensibilities… but that would be facile and trite, so we won’t do that. We could exaggerate the facts to make it seem that Laurence Scott left his life of farming for the life of a rock ‘n’ roller, but we’ll leave Scott’s 2nd place award in the 1983 Junior Farmers competition at the Dallas Farmer’s Market for excellence in radishes and swiss chard for the tabloids to uncover and twist when the band blows up big.

Though we can tell you that Scott and Barclay have secret identities, Barclay masquerading by day as a UI developer and Scott missing the whole “secret” part by being a reporter/anchor for the San Francisco Bay Area arm of NBC. And we can tell you that, both being veterans of the Bay Area music scene, they know their way around the phenomenon known as “rockin’ it”.

(We can also tell you that Barclay is the kind of noble man who will save sweet, innocent beer from being poured down the drain just because it happens to be a little past the expiration date.)

Come Home to Me is a follow-up to their 2005 debut, Light, Sweet Crude, and it is an all-around tighter and more focused album. Their penchant for down-and-dirty roadhouse country is brought to the forefront, and Scott’s voice is now strong and resonant in its timbre and twang. On closer inspection of their lyrics, there is a lot of love-gone-wrong here, but of the sort many can relate to, as evidenced in the succinct first lyric of the album opener, “Off My Mind”: This makes me sick. But I’ll make myself sicker. There are guts spilled all over this album, from the words to the guitars to Scott’s agonized howl midway through “Cold Tonight”.

But there is a lot of fun to be had in the listening. (Doubly so if you are a word nerd – “Perspicacious” had me laughing out loud the first time I listened to it.) So pop open a beer, no matter the expiration date, and have a listen.

Come Home to Me

Ain’t Much Wrong

The Famous Official Website

*NTSIB may be a little fixated on the idea of roadtrips at the moment.

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Test Pattern

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I’ve got nothing today, kiddoes. The tank is empty. But it will be refilled shortly, and I’ll have a Carolina Chocolate Drops show review for you and a post about the Famous. For now, have some A.A. Bondy covering Hank, Sr. This is a beauty.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnzDFa-ioDg]

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Bits: Travel with Over the Rhine, new Sunny Day Real Estate on the way, new Band of Horses, Ian McCulloch at Daytrotter, new album from the Liars

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04domJ7F0oY]

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John Fahey: Poor Boy

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It seems that when one falls in love with music, when it becomes something one feels the need to know everything about, the more one moves forward, the further back one ends up. Or perhaps that’s just my own experience. I may be a special case (feel free to define “special” however you want there), but I find when I fall in love with a new artist, I want to know what moved him, who influenced her, what did they listen to that caused them to pick instruments and play? I’ve found many favorite artists whom I might never have heard otherwise that way: Doc Watson, Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, Django Reinhardt, etc.

So when A.A. Bondy listed “John Fahey’s right hand” alongside influences/inspirations like trains, people who play bowed saws and James Jamerson’s pointer finger, I had to look Fahey up to satisfy my curiosity. And, as with many of these backwards discoveries, I felt stupid for having never heard of the man before.

John Fahey was an exceptional finger-picking guitarist who was born in Washington, D.C., in February of 1939 and died in Salem, Oregon, in February of 2001 after a sextuple heart bypass operation. In between, he heard Bill Monroe’s cover of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel No. 7”, bought his first guitar from a Sears-Roebuck catalogue, released his own albums (sometimes secretly slipping them in amongst the stock at record stores and thrift shops), graduated college with degrees in philosophy and religion, created the legend of Blind Joe Death, earned a Master’s degree in folklore, brought bluesmen Bukka White and Skip James back into the public eye, drew on influences from the blues to classical to Gregorian chants, did a hell of a lot of finger-picking and influenced a number of artists, who in turn have been influential themselves – like Sonic Youth, down the line.

Sadly, not dissimilar to so many of the stories of the blues greats who influenced him, Fahey died poor after years of miserable health. But, also similar to those blues greats, his influence keeps reaching forward and lacing its way through music today.

http://www.lala.com/external/flash/SingleSongWidget.swf

John Fahey Official Site
Blind Joe Death Memorial Site

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Notable shows in the greater Cleveland area & the Hiram Rapids Stumblers

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Shows worth checking out this week in and around Cleveland:

The Beachland Ballroom & Tavern

  • Sat, Mar 6| 9 PM (8 PM door)
    Beachland 10th Anniversary Weekend!
    Roky Erickson
    The Alarm Clocks / Living Stereo
    $30.00
    Ballroom | All Ages

  • Sat, Mar 6| 8:30 PM (8 PM door)
    Beachland 10th Anniversary Weekend!
    JJ Magazine
    Remember / Modern Electric / Admission is free with the purchase of a Roky Erickson ticket
    $5.00
    Tavern | All Ages

  • Wed, Mar 10| 8 PM (7 PM door)
    Carolina Chocolate Drops
    Hiram Rapids Stumblers / Presented with support of Roots of American Music
    $10.00 adv / $12.00 dos
    Ballroom | All Ages

  • Thu, Mar 11| 8 PM (7 PM door)
    Benefit for the family of
    Greg Stiles
    feat. Mifune / Whiskey Daredevils / Living Stereo
    $10.00
    Ballroom | All Ages

  • Thu, Mar 11| 8:30 PM (8 PM door)
    Dear Companion feat. Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore
    Family of The Year
    $12.00
    Tavern | All Ages

  • Fri, Mar 12| 9 PM (8:30 PM door)
    My Dad is Dead
    The Lawton Brothers / All Comers
    $7.00
    Tavern | All Ages

House of Blues

  • Sat, Mar 6| 8 PM (7 PM door)
    Boys From the County Hell
    Hey Mavis / Pitch the Peat
    $14.00 – GA standing room
    All Ages

Grog Shop

  • Thurs, Mar 11| 8 PM
    Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
    Title Tracks
    $15.00

  • Fri, Mar 12| 9 PM
    We Were Promised Jetpacks
    The Lonely Forest / Bear Hands
    $10.00 adv
    $12.00 dos

Oberlin College

  • Thurs, Mar 11| ?
    Bowerbirds
    Horsefeathers
    The ‘Sco
    Call 800-371-0178 for details

Here’s a little intro to the group who will be opening for the Carolina Chocolate Drops at the Beachland, the Hiram Rapids Stumblers from Hiram, Ohio.


Powered by iSOUND.COM

The sounds get rowdier over at their MySpace page. Looking forward to seeing what these guys can give live.

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Friday Fun: A Singing Invitation to a Party

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Friday is fun day, and what could be more fun than watching a bunch of supremely stoned dudes perform on national television? Well, lots of things could be more fun, but if you’re stuck at work right now, this is about as good as it’s going to get. Thanks to the direction of Travis at Buddyhead, enjoy a twofer from Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy7zX2SMPz4]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdygv-8KbYA]

As you’re sitting in your fluorescent-lit cubefarm, punching buttons on a cash register or working the line at the factory, think about this: people actually get paid to do that shit for a living.

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Down the Old Plank Road: Carolina Chocolate Drops, Frank Fairfield & Blind Boy Paxton

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As has been mentioned in a previous post – and as would likely be obvious from the overall content of NTSIB – I am a roots music fan. This used to mean mainly old blues: Robert Johnson, Son House, Howlin’ Wolf. It would be disingenuous to deny the role of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack album in opening me up to more styles of roots, or “old timey”, music, like Southern gospel-style music, string bands, bluegrass, etc., but it was the advent in my musical life of modern string band hustlers Old Crow Medicine Show that led me to discover that there are a number of young artists keeping the basics of the old music alive while also adding their own, up-to-date flair into the mix. One of the most exciting of those acts is the Carolina Chocolate Drops who are bringing the black string band tradition back to the forefront while evolving the possibilities of string band music with the injection of their modern sensibilities. This confluence of old and new is on exhilirating display in their treatment of Blu Cantrell’s “Hit ‘Em Up Style”, performed below during their appearance on WDVX’s Blue Plate Special.

 

Carolina Chocolate Drops performing "Hit 'Em Up Style"

 

There are also artists who keep so closely to the essence of the original sounds and styles of roots music that they almost defy belief and have you checking the calendar to confirm what century you’re in. Frank Fairfield and Blind Boy Paxton are prime examples. And they look the part, Fairfield with his Brylcreemed hair and shirts buttoned up to the neck, a piece of rope serving as the strap on his banjo, and Paxton sometimes sporting a suit and fedora, sometimes a pair of overalls. Their sound is so authentic that you wait to hear the hiss and pop of old vinyl after each verse. Indeed, it’s so authentic that some have been led to ask, “Why bother?” Why recreate so precisely the sound of the old string bands or the old bluesmen when those original recordings are still available to hear? I’m sure part of the motivation is purely selfish: for the joy of playing the music. But Fairfield and Paxton also perform an important service to the music itself: they bring it to the attention to people who might otherwise not listen to old time music. If the old music is not listened to, it can’t continue to influence musicians today and, it could be argued, future music would lose much of its soul. Also, if old music is not listened to, it can’t be preserved, and the loss of these roots would be a shattering crime.

 

Plus, damnit, it’s just fun to listen to.

 

Here Fairfield and Paxton jam with Dom Flemons of the Carolina Chocolate Drops:

Nouveau Oldtime Jam: Blind Boy Paxton, Dom Flemons, Frank Fairfield (Boing Boing Video)

 

Old Crow Medicine Show Official Site

Carolina Chocolate Drops Official Site

Frank Fairfield MySpace

Frank Fairfield Daytrotter Session

Blind Boy Paxton MySpace

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Ponderous Wank: “Remember the days when Grandpa would take us upstate to play in the country.”

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Adding to the lists of reasons why I love the Felice Brothers: It seems there upbringing was not terribly different from mine, and I can feel that familiarity in their words and actions. Just now, I was listening to “The Country is Gone” from their album Tonight at the Arizona, and I heard sounds that made tears catch in my throat. It was the distant call of a Blue Jay and the almost-subliminal rise and fall of the sound of Cicadas. Just in the background, just like the way I heard it as I went about my daily life in the country.

It’s an interesting thing… I spent so much of my youth just waiting for the time when I could get away from the countryside, but now that I am in the city (or near enough to it), I realize how the country left its mark on me, in a not-unpleasant way. I have always loved the lights and sounds and motion and tall buildings of the city, and I often feel filled with an electric energy when I’m surrounded by it, but it’s those sights and sounds and smells of the country that can move me to tears now and give me some peace at times.

As I was writing that last line, a train started passing on the tracks near my house. This is one of my most cherished sounds, a sound that I have been able to take with me from the country to the city, a sound that comforts me even as it might drown out whatever else it is I am listening to. The safest and calmest I ever feel is when I awake in the middle of a summer night and hear a freight train passing nearby.

Photograph by Richard Jacobs