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June 30, 2008

* "these are hard times, these are precious times...."

Due in part to a show I attended over the weekend, I spent some time this morning re-reading a feature story I wrote for No Depression many moons ago -- March-April 2003, to be exact. The article, about a band called the Drunk Stuntmen, was initially intended to be a one-page profile in our Town & Country section, where we generally presented up-and-coming acts that most of our readers probably hadn't heard about yet.

I recall writing the piece in early 2003 and, as I got deeper into it, finding that I just couldn't stop at the initially-intended 1,000 words. Pretty quickly it had gone twice that, and by the time I'd wrapped things up, it was triple the assigned length. Grant took pity -- maybe appreciated that I seemed to care so much about this relatively unknown band -- and suggested we move it into a feature-slot; he even took some photos of the Stuntmen when they coincidentally had a Nashville gig in the days leading up to our deadline.

Sometimes we were proven right with these instances when we went out on a limb. There was a certain pride we took, over the years, in being the first national publication to write about dozens, possibly hundreds, of artists who went on to bigger and better things.

Bigger and better is partly in the eye of the beholder, though if by "bigger" you were to mean moving up from the small clubs to the large clubs, or moving from self-released CDs to an established record label, it generally hasn't happened for the Stuntmen. This past Friday night, they played to a crowd of about 75 at the Berkeley Cafe in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina; it was largely the same devoted crowd of regulars who have remained loyal to the band since their first appearance at the long-running N.C. State campus-area hangout Sadlack's in January 2002. The Stuntmen are touring behind State Fair, the latest in a string of self-releases; there's been no rise to the ranks of a Bloodshot or Yep Roc, although that may simply reflect the increasingly DIY-nature of the record business as much as anything.

Still, quite a bit has happened with the Drunk Stuntmen in the five years since our ND feature story. Most notably, they hooked up with a collective from their hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts, called the Young At Heart Chorus. In recent months, you may have heard quite a bit about this group of senior-citizen singers covering the likes of Springsteen and Hendrix, as they became the subject of a widely-acclaimed documentary and were featured on 60 Minutes, The Tonight Show and other national TV programs. (A couple of the Stuntmen accompanied the Chorus on some of the TV appearances.) There's also a live DVD (separate from the documentary) of collaborative performances between the Stuntmen and the Chorus -- with the Chorus singing many of the band's own original songs, lending a whole new perspective to them. But by and large, the Drunk Stuntmen seem to have mostly been left off the coattails of the movie's success.

Which is a rather long way of saying that it feels like somehow these guys just can't seem to catch a break. And yet their performance in Raleigh on Friday reaffirmed everything that made me want to write far longer than I was supposed to write about them in the first place, back in 2003.

There has been attrition in the years since. Drummer J.J. O'Connell was replaced by Dave Durst; and most visibly, State Fair marks the departure of co-founding guitarist and occasional songwriter Terry Flood, who'd been a substitute teacher to frontman Steve Sanderson back in the latter's high-school days. It's logical that Flood, being a little bit older than Sanderson and his longtime bandmates (guitarist/singer F. Alex Johnson, bassist J. Scott Brandon, keyboardist Scott Hall), might be the first of the original lineup to depart; that said, he is clearly missed, even as the band has become perhaps more focused as a five-piece.

Back in February of this year, shortly before State Fair went to the pressing plant, Sanderson dropped me a line and asked if I might be willing to write some quick liner notes for the album. I ended up declining -- between an anniversary trip, SXSW, and finishing our final issue of ND, there just wasn't time to give it the necessary attention -- but I suggested to Steve that perhaps a note he included with the advance-disc he'd sent had said what really needed to be said. They wound up not using any liner notes in the simple cardboard CD packaging, but I still feel like Sanderson's words summed up a lot about who this band is, and what their art means to them:

"State Fair was written and recorded when this 15-year-old band was going through the death of a mother, a father, and two beloved dogs. It was also a time when a founding member decided it was time to move on. The result is the most emotional piece of art this group of friends has ever created."

Though it's Sanderson's songs, and his beacon of a voice, that have largely been the Drunk Stuntmen's bread-and-butter over the years -- check out this YouTube link for a solo take on one of the band's best songs -- the one on the new record that hit me hardest was one that Johnson sings, called "Halcyon Times". It's a sort of family chronicle -- more poignant, perhaps, because Johnson is the one whose mother passed away while the album was being made -- with personal verses that lead into a more generalized chorus: "They were hard times/They were precious times/They could all sing along/Dance from dusk until dawn/Those halcyon times."

The second time it comes around, Johnson keenly shifts to present-tense, allowing the song strike a much more universal and contemporary chord:

These are hard times
These are precious times
We can all sing along
Dance from dusk until dawn
These halcyon times.

These are hard times, indeed. In revisiting that Drunk Stuntmen feature I'd written five years ago, I was struck by a section near the end in which the band members were discussing what the future might hold:

At some point, perhaps, all the hard work will pay off. Though they're also soberingly aware of the other possibility -- that "at some time it will all break down, and we'll all go home and get regular jobs," Hall says.

"Right. And then we'll end up resenting music entirely, and be going, 'Shut that video off!'" Flood mocks.

Johnson has the last word on the matter: "I'll see a No Depression in a bar when I'm 50 and say, 'I was in that fuckin' magazine!'"

Johnson's not 50 yet, but he won't see a new copy of No Depression in a bar when he gets there. Today, June 30, officially marks the end of our era as a bimonthly magazine, the May-June issue having run its full and final course.

And yet, the Drunk Stuntmen are still going, in these halcyon times.

adios,
peter

Posted by Peter at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

June 23, 2008

* The (Still) Fabulous Sounds Of The Pacific Northwest

Well before the heydays of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and other grunge-centric denizens of early-'90s Seattle, the Emerald City was home to a different variety of rock 'n' roll revelation.

An auspicious foursome who called themselves the Young Fresh Fellows helped to put the Northwest on the underground-music map in the early/mid-1980s, a few years before Sub Pop arrived on the scene. They played with an abandon and devotion similar to that of the grungesters who followed; but rather than drawing their emotive power from angst and desperation, they thrived on a spirit of whimsy and humor. They were, in a word, fun. And fabulous. (It was tongue-in-cheek, yet fitting, that the Fellows' first album was titled The Fabulous Sounds Of The Pacific Northwest.)

A quarter-century later, their legacy lives on, having carried the day long past the dissolution of Seattle's grunge scene. The city has supported other sytlistic surges and swells over the years -- roots bands have had occasional upswings, adventurous jazz players have found a small but significant niche, and indie-rock is at a fair peak right now -- but the Fellows' style of old-school garage-based rock 'n' roll has carried on throughout. One could argue, in fact, that this is the true Seattle Sound.

A visit to the area this past weekend reaffirmed that notion. Although Fellows ringleader Scott McCaughey moved a few years ago to Portland (where he continues his Minus 5 exploits and tours with R.E.M.), his various cohorts still carry on in Seattle, spinning amid several main-projects and side-projects. (Perhaps they're all side-projects of each other, or just on the side of whatever everyone may do during the daytime hours.)

Two of the best held court at a couple of relatively new venues over the weekend. Friday night, the High Dive played host to the Tripwires, which features Fellows bassist Jim Sangster, his guitar-slinging brother Johnny Sangster (an accomplished producer), drummer Mark Pickerel (who has his own solo deal with Bloodshot Records), and frontman/songwriter John Ramberg.

Everyone in the band is essentially overqualified for the Tripwires' humble local-bar-band stature, but none of them seem to mind; on the contrary, they all appeared to be having a blast sharing the stage, and the band's repertoire features the best songs Ramberg has written since the early days of his mid-'90s group the Model Rockets. (As it happens, the Model Rockets will be reuniting on July 4 to celebrate a reissue of their 1994 debut disc Hilux.)

Jim Sangster was the common denominator to the show I saw on Saturday, a headlining slot at the new Slim's Last Chance Tavern by a group that seems to call itself either Sergeant Major or Thee Sergeant Major III. (Which is sort of a carry-over from the Fellows' playfulness with band monikers; they once released an album under the name 3 Young French Fellows 3.) Name-games aside, this is a truly engaging bunch, largely because they seem to have hit on a naturally compelling and musically conducive lineup: a guitar-bass-drums power-trio fronted by two full-throated singers (one male, one female).

The instrumentation is top-of-the-line garage-pop, with Sangster joined by longtime Fellows and Fastbacks guitarist Kurt Bloch plus drummer Mike Musburger (who's played with the Posies and Love Battery among many others). Bloch is the primary songwriter, and thus the material reflects the sort of twisted pop-punk edge that was the hallmark of the Fastbacks (a long-running Seattle band fronted by female singer Kim Warnick that in its early days included Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan).

But it's the two singers, Bill Coury and Leslie Beattie, who launch those songs into the stratosphere. Sometimes they're trading off the vocals, sometimes they're singing in harmony, or in melodic unison; but the vocals are always out-front, even against the propulsive wall-of-sound being bashed out by Bloch and his mates. This is in-your-face stuff, but in a glorious and inspirational way; with Bloch and Sangster kicking and grinning their way through the set -- on this night, wearing jumpsuits featuring logo-patches that read "Waste Management" and "Coroner" -- they make it nigh impossible not to get swept up in the grand spirit of their rock 'n' roll.

The audience is, perhaps, not what it once was for bands such as these; both nights, the crowd capped out at around 100, whereas in decades past a draw of 200-300 might have been more typical. Still, this has never really been a thousand-capacity-venue type of thing, and probably never will be. Yet it seems quite clear to me, after basking in this weekend's double-shot of Fabulous Sounds, that it's also never going to go away. Long live the rock 'n' roll pest control.

adios,
peter

Posted by Peter at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

June 17, 2008

* "the college town with a musical sound, and everyone had a new face...."

The Chapel Hill/Carrboro axis is a pretty small downtown corridor, drawing largely upon the various populations associated with the University of North Carolina just down the street. On a summertime Monday evening, things can be pretty slow, as they were last night at Cat's Cradle, where singer-songwriter Maria Taylor and her band were holding court.

A crowd of around 60 or so would've seemed pretty good a few blocks east at the cozy Local 506, but at the comparatively cavernous Cradle, it felt like, well, one of those slow summer schoolnights in "a college town with a musical sound" (to borrow a phrase from Taylor's song "Two Of These Too", which she played solo at the end of the night for a couple in the crowd who'd requested it). Thing is, though, some of my best memories have come from nights like this. A Tuesday night at the Continental Club in the mid-'80s with Camper Van Beethoven and a few dozen fellow Austinites. A Sunday night in '93 at Lulu's in Athens, Georgia, with Alejandro Escovedo and his violinist and cellist. A Thursday night in '91 at Club Congress in Tucson, Arizona, with the incomparably versatile band Tiny Lights.

The common denominator there is major talents playing intimate shows to small crowds, and Maria Taylor's thirteen-song set (the headlining slot after openers Jonathan Rice and Nik Freitas) had precisely that same feel to it. While the Birmingham, Alabama, native, a former member of the duo Azure Ray, has so far received relatively modest renown on her own, her two solo albums on Saddle Creek Records -- 2005's 11:11 and last year's Lynn Teeter Flower -- are confident, enchanting confirmations of an artist reaching full bloom.

A digital-only EP (physical copies were for sale at the show) called Savannah Drive, recorded with Andy LeMaster, is the latest addition to her catalogue, collecting acoustic versions of a few songs from her first two records plus a couple of new ones. The EP's new tracks, along with a couple other new songs she played Monday night, suggest her third record (tentatively slated for a fall release, probably to be called Ladyluck) may well be Taylor's best yet -- and she didn't even play the catchiest of her recently written tunes, a Buddy Holly-esque number that she played in a set opening for Josh Ritter at this same venue last November.

Taylor seems to fall quite easily and evenly into the indie-rock and acoustic-folk camps, which ultimately is evidence that her writing stands beyond genre limits. Like most really good songs, Taylor's are sturdy enough to find new life through reinterpretation, as per the stripped-down presentations of "A Good Start" and "Song Beneath The Song" which highlighted the early part of her set. (Both are also on the new acoustic EP.)

Reference points? Best I can come up with is Lori Carson, who produced some of the best atmospheric/emotional music of the 1990s, spiking her hushed and deeply personal songs with just a touch of electronic rhythms and echoes to create something that went well beyond coffeehouse-confessional folk. Taylor's doing a similar thing here, though it's not the least bit imitative; chances are she's never heard Carson's music.

It helps that she has a really good band behind her. The guitar-bass-drums trio of Taylor Hollingsworth, Van Hollingsworth and Michael Shackleford (respectively) provide spot-on support of Taylor's songs and singing; they're subtle when they need to be, which is often, but they're also plenty able to kick things up a notch when Taylor turns toward a more aggressive or incandescent mood.

A telling cover near the end of the set was Skeeter Davis' 1963 country/pop crossover smash "The End Of The World", a tune well-suited for Taylor's often-wistful vocal expression; she left the instrumentation to her bandmates, softly tapping a tambourine against her back as she sang. She followed that with the most fully-fleshed-out number of the night, "Xanax"; as the band began to crank up the volume, Taylor motioned toward the merch table at stage left and asked her sister Kate (who'd been selling CDs and T-shirts) to join her.

That spontaneous rush of sibling harmonies provided a perfect encapsulation of the beauty which arose from the Cradle on this unassuming Monday night. Near the end of the song, the two sisters leaned on each other at center stage, smiling as they shared a secret murmur beneath the din of glorious noise.

It's nights like these that keep us coming back -- both the players, and those of us out there listening.

adios,
peter

Posted by Peter at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

June 11, 2008

* "a full cup of coffee, a full tank of gas, an open road and a real good idea is all you'll ever need."

Sunday night I made the hourlong drive over to Raleigh to catch the fine Salt Lake City group Band Of Annuals, who I'd been fortunate enough to stumble upon a few months ago during a visit to Seattle. Sadly I discovered upon arriving at the Pour House that the band's van had apparently broken down en route to the gig, and they were stuck in the middle of nowhere on a Sunday with no prospects for getting it fixed until at least the following day. (Longtime local stalwarts Regina Hexaphone, with guest Jeffrey Dean Foster, had been scheduled to open and stuck around to play a quite enjoyable set, which kept the trip from being all-for-naught.)

Still, in this age of gas prices at $4 a gallon and rising (to paraphrase/adapt the old De La Soul title), the investment involved with just going to see a show strikes home a lot more forcefully these days. Even in a car like ours that gets decent gas-mileage (25-30mpg), going to Raleigh from where we live is a minimum $15 round-trip.

And if that's the dilemma for fans wishing to attend shows (particularly those who, like me, have moved further out to find an affordable house), it's difficult to fathom the toll gas prices have taken on the bands themselves. Never mind the risk of breaking down and missing gigs while waiting for the van to get fixed; the expense of just getting from one show to the next, driving hundreds of miles in a gas-guzzling Econoline with gas prices more than double what they were just five years ago, seems like it might be enough to kill a lot of young bands. (Especially given the shrinking value of CD sales in the digital age, to which the answer was supposed to be, "But you can still make money by going on tour.")

I'd be interested in hearing some thoughts from touring musicians about this. Just how much is the price of gas affecting or curtailing your plans to hit the road this year? Are we nearing (or have we perhaps already passed) a tipping-point where it just isn't worth it anymore?

Leave comments below if you're so inclined. And thanks for stopping by.

adios,
peter

p.s. -- bonus points if you can name the artist whose quote appears in the subject-line of this post.

UPDATE: Here's a link to a good piece about this very subject:

http://blog.oregonlive.com/popmusic/2008/06/bands_on_the_run_from_high_gas.html

Posted by Peter at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

June 8, 2008

* an introduction, and an update...

You may have noticed that a new blog has shown up on our homepage alongside the ones Grant and I have been doing for a few years now. If you've been a longtime reader of our print publication, the name David Cantwell will not be new to you, as he'd been a No Depression senior editor since...well, since we started having senior editors. I'm not sure if his writing appeared in every single issue of ND, but if not, it was pretty darn close. He also co-authored, with fellow ND senior editor Bill Friskics-Warren, the fine book Heartaches By The Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles. We're quite pleased to have David aboard.

You may also have noticed that we've re-tagged the personal-blogs section as "ND Columnists" -- the notion being that what we're seeking to provide in our respective web-havens on the ND site is perhaps more akin to the thoughtful and extended writing long done by columnists, as opposed to the more off-the-cuff and link-related text which has come to be common on the blogosphere. Call 'em our "blogs" still, if you wish -- we probably still will at times as well, from force of habit -- but it's our goal to give you writing that consistently delves deeper than just scratching the surface or pointing you in another direction.

Finally, just to keep you updated as to what all we're up to on the web-front: You may have heard us discuss, either here or in our final issue or in various media reports, our plans for a significantly revamped website. Things are still on-course for that expansion; what you're seeing here, for the moment, are merely small steps toward the major overhaul which we will unveil in the fall. Such full-scale rebuilds take time not just to plan but to execute, but rest assured that we're well into working on it. Meantime, we'll continue adding a few new things here and there on the current site, such as more reviews and new columnists and perhaps a couple other trial-balloons as well.

And we'll also be back in-print this autumn via our first "bookazine" with University of Texas Press, as announced in our final print issue (and on this site a few weeks ago). What seems like down-time is in fact very much gearing-up time, and we're very much looking forward to sharing the fruits of it all with y'all in the fall....

adios,
peter

Posted by Peter at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)