How Did We Get Here: The Road of Influence

The roads that bring us to certain music can be fascinating. They can also be embarrassing. This came to the forefront of my mind when a friend posited the idea that I write a post about acts from early in my music-enthusiast career who have had great influence over my current tastes. I realized that the biggest influences were my parents’ music… and Duran Duran.

Hey, who were you listening to when you were ten years old?

Yeah, I thought so.

I believe one of the best moves I ever made was to listen my parents’ music. My dad is an Elvis man, no two ways about it, and stubbornly holds to the idea that anything recorded after 1969 is, more often than not, crap. (I couldn’t even get him into the Brian Setzer Orchestra.) My mother has always been more open to current music, but she also played the music of her youth at home alongside the then-current crop of country music superstars (Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, etc.) and whatever I could influence her into liking. The soundtrack for car trips was always supplied by Majic 105.7 – a station that has now, sadly, abandoned most of the classics of the ’50s and brought, in my opinion, far too much late ’70s and early ’80s music into their rotation – and I would often lay down in the backseat while giving my attention to the Beatles, Elvis Presley, the Supremes, the Coasters, the Rolling Stones, Fats Domino, Little Richard and whatever else rolled through the speakers (except Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons – I never liked them).

While some of the bigger stars from those earlier days of rock and pop have been so overplayed that I’d be perfectly okay never hearing some of those songs again (sorry, Beatles. Sorry, a section of the Rolling Stones back catalogue), I still happily listen to some of those artists today. As a matter of fact, I’m listening to the Coasters as I write this.

Allowing myself to be open to this music that came “before my time” eventually led me to seek out music that came even earlier. The blues of Mississippi, the jazz of Harlem, the country of Appalachia. I was a roots music fan before I even had the phrase “roots music” to reference. This bedrock music forms the template of the music that appeals to me most now.

Now to address the… less-cool side of my musical influences.

Duran Duran was not the first music that I went crazy for. Before them, there were flirtations with Michael Jackson and Rick Springfield, the kind of music you could hear on any Top 40 radio station in the United States at the time. If you lived in certain areas of the country, you probably heard Duran Duran on your local Top 40 station, as well, but I grew up in the boonies, nearly an hour away from Cleveland. We coudldn’t get cable television until satellite dishes came into affordable use, a few years after I moved away from home. I was exposed to Duran Duran via the music video programs that were popular at the time, like Friday Night Videos and a great program called 23 Music Magazine that came out of Akron on one of our UHF channels.

Then, as now, I ate up music-related information, and when I accompanied my mom on the weekly grocery run, I would head off to the magazine section where I would thumb through the pages of the teen rags and music mags until my mother came back to collect me, when I would inevitably plead with her to buy whichever magazine appealed to me most that trip. I would gravitate toward the magazines that had the best pictures of and information about Duran Duran. This usually meant I’d go home with a copy of Star Hits, sister publication to British mag Smash Hits. I don’t know if the music covered in these magazines was considered “alternative” in Britain, but it was practically alien to my little patch of the U.S. I remember the surprise and delight I felt the first time I saw a picture of Robert Smith, with his Sputnik of hair and smeared lipstick.

Once I plundered whatever Duran Duran-centric information was contained in these magazines, I would read about all these bands I had never heard of and ended up accumulating reams of information about bands like the Cure and Depeche Mode before I ever had the opportunity to hear their music. Eventually, I found my way to a radio station run by the Akron City Schools system that played a block of alternative music in the afternoon (but would sometimes fuzz in and out of reception) and an alternative music store on the campus of the College of Wooster that helped me finally tap into the sounds I was reading about. With this came the revelation that the very best music available had to be searched out. I’ve been searching – and finding – ever since.

These two influences converge nearly perfectly in some of the artists I love most today, like the Felice Brothers and A.A. Bondy, who take their cues from roots music and release their work on small, independent labels. Despite the heralding of the “death of indie”, independence is still alive and well in music. And despite the worldwide availability of music and music information thanks to the internet, you still have to know where to sit in order to have the best music fall into your lap.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB-Crjeqa5M]

Baby Dee: And Yet

On the surface, it can seem like an anomaly that someone like Baby Dee could come out of Cleveland, Ohio. At a glance, Cleveland looks like a blue-collar town that’s lagging ten or twenty years behind the times. People in Cleveland still think the Michael Stanely Band is a big deal (Dear Clevelanders – No one outside of northeastern Ohio has heard of the Michael Stanley Band. I know. I’ve asked). But when you dig into Cleveland, pushing aside the curtain of low self-esteem that the city has blanketed itself with, you find that it’s a complex, layered place. In this regard, it makes complete sense that a town like this could produce a performer like the singular Baby Dee.

When I first learned of Baby Dee, she seemed like a slightly eccentric but mostly unassuming musician, but when I began to dig, I discovered that she has been a member of the Coney Island Sideshow, has been a tree climber and has worked companionably alongside such artists as David Tibet and Current93, Will Oldham, Andrew WK and Marc Almond. This is just a hint of what Baby Dee has done.

Baby Dee’s music is just as complex. She is an accomplished musician (playing harp, piano and accordion) and a fearless performer with an indelible sense of humor. Baby Dee’s oeuvre ranges from theatrical cabaret numbers to quietly touching ballads, all performed with a naked heart, on display for all to see. That is probably what draws people to her the most. To see a person, a fellow human being, put herself out there in the way that Baby Dee does – in a way that so many of us might want to but can’t – is captivating.

Baby Dee promises us a new album this March, and she will begin a European tour on February 22 in Newcastle, England, working her way back to our shores in April, making an appearance at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland on April 15 before continuing to weave her way around the States and Canada.

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

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRJIbvKy-1g]

Baby Dee Official Website
Baby Dee MySpace

Baby Dee photo by Rose

mr. Gnome: I Can See My Soul from Here

This is a good example of why I try to avoid saying “Artist X sounds like Artist Z” – aside from the fact that I have found many of those sorts of comparisons can project the wrong idea into a reader’s mind depending upon their relationship with Artist Z’s work – I would have to use three or four different artists to describe the sound of Cleveland duo mr. Gnome. Just within one song. Moving from gauzy dreamscapes to razor-sharp nightmares, sometimes within seconds of each other, mr. Gnome is the sort of band whose willingness to experiment with sound and whose ability to pull it off with confidence makes me proud to be a fellow Clevelander.

A couple of things you should know before listening to mr. Gnome: Nicole Barille will crush your head with her guitar. And if she can’t finish the job, Sam Meister will be right in to beat the pulp to liquid. But then they’ll sing a pretty lullaby and smile down at you just before you pass out.

Yes, Barille’s voice can sound childlike and pixieish (something I have confessed to often disliking), but it also howls like an apocalyptic wind through an industrial warehouse. No, there isn’t a bass, but Meister will make you forget about that with his muscular, sometimes tribal beats. And, yes, you can catch them live. They will be playing Musica in Akron, Ohio, on February 27 (with If These Trees Could Talk and Simeon Soul Charger) and are getting ready for another leg of touring which will bring them back home sometime in May. Keep an eye on their Myspace page for future dates. Give them your money. They’re nice people.

mr. Gnome – Night of the Crickets
mr. Gnome – Sit Up & Hum

mrGnomeWeb

Hell and Half of Georgia: You Could Fix Me Up with a Smile

Okay, here’s what you do: Go download Hell and Half of Georgia’s self-titled album, play it through once, then set it aside and go do something else.

Now, come back and listen again.

The first thing you’ll notice is that you’ve gotten adjusted to the raggedness of Sean Fahlen’s voice and can now hear the sweet center of it. The second thing you’ll notice is that the band’s simple and friendly melodies have already lodged themselves in your brain. These are the best kind of country songs, made of heart and backed by solid musicianship. These songs feel like they belong inside a barn that has been cleared for a dance or at an old gas station during a rest stop on a long roadtrip through the dusty Southwest. When you listen to these songs, you feel like you’re listening to good friends play. And you can practically feel the sun of the band’s homestate of California shining down on your skin (which is very helpful as I sit next to a Cleveland window through which I can see several inches of Ohio snow – thanks, boys).

Hell and Half of Georgia – made up of Sean Fahlen, Kevin Burwick, Mike Troolines, Charlie Breneman and Captain Ed Brady – don’t have a label and, at the time of this writing, they are preparing to play their first show. But they are not new to the world of music-making, and, as Fahlen puts it, “we gots our fill of chasing any music dreams”. HaHoG began as a two-man (Fahlen and Burwick) project that they ended up liking so much that they decided to turn it into a full-fledged band, just for the love of the music and sharing the music. “[W]e just wanna play some songs,” says Fahlen, “tour round th southwest in a 88 chevy van with no radio, drink some whiskey nd make new friends along th way.” They back up this philosophy by offering their album for free to anyone who wants to download it. “[W]e are putting our music out for this moment here, you diggin it and sharing your feedback with us and anyone else that you want to share something you like with.”

“Sharing and connecting” could be a rally cry for HaHoG, putting them in good company with NTSIB favorites the Felice Brothers and A.A. Bondy. They will put in their time with websites and Facebook pages because they know these tools are a useful means to an end, but what they want most is to “connect person to person when we can”. In an unrelated conversation, Fahlen said, “[S]ometimes runnin round th country playin music pays off. [N]ot literally pays rent that is, but pays off one way er another…”

Hell and Half of Georgia – Bellingham
Hell and Half of Georgia – California

Hell and Half of Georgia Official Site (Scroll down for free download of their album)

Hell and Half of Georgia on Facebook

Notable shows in the greater Cleveland area & a PSA from the Felice Brothers

Shows worth checking out this week in and around Cleveland:

The Beachland Ballroom & Tavern

  • Sat, Feb 13| 9 PM (8:30 PM door)
    The Whiskey Daredevils
    CD Release Show!
    Uncle Scratch’s Gospel Revival / Scoliosis Jones
    $7.00
    Tavern | All Ages
  • Thu, Feb 18| 8:30 PM (7:30 PM door)
    Cory Chisel & The Wandering Sons
    Dawes
    Jason Boesel
    $10.00
    Tavern | All Ages
  • Sat, Feb 20| 8:00 PM (7:30 PM door)
    Bluegrass Barn Dance
    Pete McDonald & The Wax Wings String Band / JP & The Chatfield Boys / Hiram Rapids Stumblers / Heelsplitter / Misery Jackals / Timber Wolves / One Dollar Hat
    $5.00 adv / $7.00 dos
    Ballroom | All Ages

House of Blues

  • Tues, Feb 16| 9:00 PM (8:00 PM door)
    George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic
    $32.00 – GA- Standing Room Only – Advance
    $35.00 – GA- Standing Room Only – Day of Show
    $45.00 – Reserved Seats
    All Ages
  • Thurs, Feb 18| 8:00 PM (7:00 PM door)
    Snoop Dogg w/ The Constellations, DJ Steph Floss
    $35.00 – GA Standing – Advance
    $38.00 – GA Standing – Day of Show
    $59.50 – Balcony Reserved Seating
    All Ages

Oberlin College

  • Tues, Feb 16| 8:00 PM
    B̩la Fleck РThe African Project
    Finney Chapel @ 90 North Professor St
    $10 OCID/Senior Citizens
    $25 General Public
    Tickets at Wilder Information Desk or at Oberlin College Central Ticket Service (1-800-371-0178) or www.oberlin.edu/tickets

Now the Felice Brothers have some important words for you, shared during their most recent visit to Ohio, if you happen to hook up with a fellow music-lover at one of these shows:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCDeq3uiBgg]

Festival Round-Up: The Lesser-Knowns

It’s festival line-up announcing season. NTSIB trusts that you can find your own way to the artist listings for Coachella, Bonnarroo, etc., because we’re going to focus on some lesser-known but just as worthy festivals and concert series.

Aside from Oxford, Mississippi’s annual Double Decker Arts Festival and Gulf Shores, Alabama’s first Hangout Music Festival, which we’ve mentioned previously, there is:

  • NoisePop, February 23-March 1 in San Francisco, California (taking place at various venues all over the city), will have the Magnetic Fields, Atlas Sound, the Mumlers, Thao Nguyen, Mark Eitzel, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Mark Kozelek and so many more
  • Pickathon, August 6-8 in Portland, Oregon, featuring Billy Joe Shaver, the Heartless Bastards, Bonnie Prince Billy & the Cairo Gang, Langhorne Slim, the Cave Singers, Megafaun and more
  • The Black Keys and Pavement will play New York’s SummerStage
  • The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, April 23-May 2, will feature so many huge acts that it would be an exercise in futility to try to list all the notable artists here
  • Jim Jarmusch, NTSIB’s favorite filmmaker, is guest-curating All Tomorrow’s Parties’ third annual ATP New York, September 3-5, and is bringing in a typically diverse range of acts from Raekwon to the Vivian Girls to Brian Jonestown Massacre and more

Bonus: Pitchfork has a video from last year’s ATP New York of Jarmusch covering Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer” in a hotel room with Bradford Cox and Randy Randall. Aside from it being awesome because IT’S JARMUSCH, it’s also a beautiful rendition.

http://assets.delvenetworks.com/player/loader.swf

Fellow Travellers: One new blog & one triumphant return

Duke Street Blog has the jump on NTSIB having launched their video-centric blog on January 2nd, and they are already loaded up with wonderful content. They have live clips, filmed up close and personal, of acts such as the Duke and the Dutchess, the Roadside Graves, NTSIB favorites the Bowerbirds and Dawes and, most recently, a couple of excellent videos from A.A. Bondy’s recent tour-closing show at Union Hall in Brooklyn.

Duke Street Blog

After becoming a bloody statistic in musicblogicide 2010, I Rock Cleveland has returned to the fold. It’s proving a little bit of a bumpy transition, so be gentle with him, folks.

I Rock Cleveland

Rebirth of the Cool: John the Revelator

This is the first installment of what may become a regular feature focusing on covers or different takes on a single song.

One of the much bandied about cliches of modern music is that the devil gets all the good music. But anyone who has delved into the different forms of sacred music knows that that is a very arguable statement. (There is some damn fine gospel music out there, and the gospel influence can be heard in some of today’s more exciting bands, like The Builders and the Butchers.)

I would posit the theory that the best music is performed by those whose ultimate fate (if one is given to beliefs of the spiritual) remains in question. Take the blues classic “John the Revelator” as an example. The first noted recording of the song was recorded by Blind Willie Johnson in 1930. While he played in the blues style and has been covered by artists such as Led Zeppelin, the White Stripes and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, all of Johnson’s lyrical content centered on the sacred, and he was known to preach to anyone who might listen.

 

Blind Willie Johnson - John the Revelator

 

While Johnson’s take on this old call-and-response field song is compelling, due in no small part to his gravelly voice, the song became a different beast in the hands of Son House. House held early dreams of becoming a preacher, but was ulitmately more compelled by the blues music that the church stood firmly against. He served time at Parchman Farm prison for murder and was later publicly berated by Howlin’ Wolf for his problems with alcohol. House’s version of the song is haunting, especially in this filmed performance.

 

http://youtu.be/9GgkvFJ–G8

 

In his 2007-2008 live shows, A.A. Bondy travelled his own road with “John the Revelator”. While the use of religious imagery in Bondy’s songwriting is often cited, his take on the Revelator steers the story in a more secular direction. Yet, in Bondy’s version, the apocalyptic side of the Book of Revelation seems closer than ever.

 

AA Bondy - Live at The Waldron - 8/12/08

The Heartless Bastards: I’m Gonna See What Tomorrow Brings

I am guilty of misogyny in my listening practices. I am not the most girly of girls, and hearing twee and breathy vocals can turn me off to a song faster than mentions of pina coladas and getting caught in the rain or riding through the desert on a horse with no name. I find a great many female singers either sound alike to me or give me nothing I can connect to. This is one reason I am grateful for Erika Wennerstrom and her band the Heartless Bastards.

[Author’s note: In recent years, this line of misguided chatter has haunted me, and I feel shame whenever I think about it. I’d like to offer my apology for it. Women in music, women in general, people in general, deserve better.]

To say Erika Wennerstrom has a powerful voice is a bit like saying meteor showers are pretty. True as it is, it doesn’t get the whole idea across. By all accounts a diminutive woman, Wennerstrom can belt out vocals like she’s eight feet tall. Though her power is not just in volume, but also in the emotions she can convey: weariness, toughness, heartache, hope. Backed up by the Bastards with buzzsaw guitars and stomping beats, one might be inclined to dub the Heartless Bastards listening experience “empowering”. I prefer to think of it as bringing out my inner badass, and Wennerstrom effortlessly takes her place alongside rock ‘n’ roll heroines like Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Kim Gordon and the Deal sisters. (One might be tempted to posit a theory that there’s a correlation between being from Ohio and being a wickedly cool lady.)

The Heartless Bastards will be playing two stateside dates at the end of this month (February 25 in Shreveport, Louisiana, and February 26 in Houston, Texas) before heading out on a Eurpoean tour. There has also been talk of a Heartless Bastards headlining tour with A.A. Bondy playing support for several shows, which seems like a perfect match.

On a sidenote, I would love to hear Erika Wennerstrom and A.A. Bondy duet. What stories those two voices could tell together!

The Heartless Bastards – The Mountain
The Heartless Bastards – Sway

The Heartless Bastards official site

News Bits & Bobs: Southern Festivals, Waits Reads, New Lidell & Scott-Heron

  • Gulf Shores, Alabama, will host the Hangout Music Festival May 14-16, 2010. The fest will feature A.A. Bondy… and some other people. A lot of really good acts, actually, like the Blind Boys of Alabama, John Legend, Matisyahu, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears and Michael Franti & Spearhead, among others.
  • The Felice Brothers will be down in Bondy territory when they play the Double Decker Arts Festival in Oxford, Mississippi, on April 24, 2010. The free festival will be headlined by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and will also feature performances by Jimbo Mathus and Those Darlins, among others.
  • Tom Waits reads Charles Bukwoski. ‘Nough said.
  • Mercurial soul singer Jamie Lidell’s new album Compass comes out in May. This time around, he’s getting a hand from Beck, Feist, Pat Sansone of Wilco and a few members of Grizzly Bear. You can hear the title track at Stereogum and Pitchfork.
  • I don’t know how long ago this was posted, so it may no longer count as news to anyone else, but the Bowerbirds played a few songs for Pitchfork’s Cemetery Gates series.
  • Gil Scott-Heron’s first album in over a decade drops tomorrow, and you can take a listen below. I owe him a few bucks just for the number of times I listened to it yesterday. Gorgeous work.

http://gilscottheron.net/widget/gilscottheronalbum.swf