Jul 19, 2009
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Jul 11, 2009
Wes Hartley
Episode 9: The Wrong Color Purple
6.24.09
The Band: Wesley Hartley
Wes: Vox, Guitar
A word to the reader:
My "w" key is broken. It won't capitalize with the left shift key, and I'm untrained in hitting the right shift. The Artist's first name will no longer appear capitalized.
The Scene:
wes greets us at his South Portland apartment where he lives below another musician, Chriss Sutherland. we're led into his living room, a spacious arty area dominated by a great TV monolith in the middle: a hulking Zenith sits unplugged on a cabinet on the cushiony carpet. A Left Pedestal Desk sits in a bay window with a typewriter and a sewing machine on top.
Treasures abound in the room, transistor radios in every corner, a small grey CRT television sits on a shelf in front of rows of books. One wall is covered in wesley's art. On another wall hangs a floor to ceiling collage of band photos culled from Rolling Stone when they were still hard, cutting and new. There's some blank space at the top.
"Mandy's Dad made that," wes grins, "He stopped when The Beatles broke up."
wesley leaves us to set up in the living room, pushing a box of guitar equipment out of the way. He's copying lyrics onto plain printer paper from his computer screen while we examine his house. The space he shares with his lady, Mandy. His artspace. The kitchen. The bedroom, recently painted with the wrong shade of purple.
we meet the cat, Charlie - named after local meteorologist Charlie Lopresti. She snakes between our feet and goes out on her cat missions.
wes is the lead voice of Dead End Armory, but he has been performing solo for longer than that. He doesn't do it much, maybe three times a year. Every time he performs it is a unique and singular experience.
The treasures around the room, the old radios, the televisions, they have become part of wes' music. They add an ephemeral quality, a transience to his music. Performing the same song in the same rhythm, hitting the same notes at the same time isn't enough to create the same song because of his radios and TVs, his background noise channeling dead American noise.
wes sets up three transistor radios, one tuned to an empty channel, buzzing static in the corner. Another catches a baseball game and the third squawks in and out of silence, belching spanish in fragmented syllables. He turns on the little grey Cathode Ray television and the clock blinks insistently that it is 12:00.
Some things will never die as long as there are artists out of time. wes is such an artist, if you took a photo of him it'd look in place in just about any of the last three decades.
He picks up a toy helmet and presses is down over his hair, "Is this going to be too goofy?"
He takes it off and puts some sort of wisk-like thing on his melon instead.
Absurdism.
Of course, that popped off two songs in, but whatever, it was for The Moment anyway.
wes' solo acts often have that sort of unplanned charm to them. He confesses to sometimes not knowing what he's going to do in a show until he just does it. It's a disservice to say wes is a jester, but it is not honest to say there is nothing fun and ridiculous in his music. I mean that in a serious way.
His latest music channels America handily. He uses a lot of simple, country chords the day we record him. He tunes in radios and televisions, his treasure collection is a testament to the Great American Habit of collecting and gaining. And America can be a kind of ridiculous country. with the radios and TVs, wes is catalyzed by the American spirit, running it through his cheap guitar and his shrill-yet-meditative voice.
watching wes nail a song and get it absolutely how he wanted it is great. He wears it, grinning afterwards and looking around to see that everyone else heard the same song he just heard.
we break for a moment, wes moves to the couch and picks up a lazer pointer. Charlie perks up. wes zigs it and zags it across the floor, Charlie in hot pursuit. He leaps halfway up the wall to get that little dot. Charlie loves that impossible red point.
6.24.09
The Band: Wesley Hartley
Wes: Vox, Guitar
A word to the reader:
My "w" key is broken. It won't capitalize with the left shift key, and I'm untrained in hitting the right shift. The Artist's first name will no longer appear capitalized.
The Scene:
wes greets us at his South Portland apartment where he lives below another musician, Chriss Sutherland. we're led into his living room, a spacious arty area dominated by a great TV monolith in the middle: a hulking Zenith sits unplugged on a cabinet on the cushiony carpet. A Left Pedestal Desk sits in a bay window with a typewriter and a sewing machine on top.
Treasures abound in the room, transistor radios in every corner, a small grey CRT television sits on a shelf in front of rows of books. One wall is covered in wesley's art. On another wall hangs a floor to ceiling collage of band photos culled from Rolling Stone when they were still hard, cutting and new. There's some blank space at the top.
"Mandy's Dad made that," wes grins, "He stopped when The Beatles broke up."
wesley leaves us to set up in the living room, pushing a box of guitar equipment out of the way. He's copying lyrics onto plain printer paper from his computer screen while we examine his house. The space he shares with his lady, Mandy. His artspace. The kitchen. The bedroom, recently painted with the wrong shade of purple.
we meet the cat, Charlie - named after local meteorologist Charlie Lopresti. She snakes between our feet and goes out on her cat missions.
wes is the lead voice of Dead End Armory, but he has been performing solo for longer than that. He doesn't do it much, maybe three times a year. Every time he performs it is a unique and singular experience.
The treasures around the room, the old radios, the televisions, they have become part of wes' music. They add an ephemeral quality, a transience to his music. Performing the same song in the same rhythm, hitting the same notes at the same time isn't enough to create the same song because of his radios and TVs, his background noise channeling dead American noise.
wes sets up three transistor radios, one tuned to an empty channel, buzzing static in the corner. Another catches a baseball game and the third squawks in and out of silence, belching spanish in fragmented syllables. He turns on the little grey Cathode Ray television and the clock blinks insistently that it is 12:00.
Some things will never die as long as there are artists out of time. wes is such an artist, if you took a photo of him it'd look in place in just about any of the last three decades.
He picks up a toy helmet and presses is down over his hair, "Is this going to be too goofy?"
He takes it off and puts some sort of wisk-like thing on his melon instead.
Absurdism.
Of course, that popped off two songs in, but whatever, it was for The Moment anyway.
wes' solo acts often have that sort of unplanned charm to them. He confesses to sometimes not knowing what he's going to do in a show until he just does it. It's a disservice to say wes is a jester, but it is not honest to say there is nothing fun and ridiculous in his music. I mean that in a serious way.
His latest music channels America handily. He uses a lot of simple, country chords the day we record him. He tunes in radios and televisions, his treasure collection is a testament to the Great American Habit of collecting and gaining. And America can be a kind of ridiculous country. with the radios and TVs, wes is catalyzed by the American spirit, running it through his cheap guitar and his shrill-yet-meditative voice.
watching wes nail a song and get it absolutely how he wanted it is great. He wears it, grinning afterwards and looking around to see that everyone else heard the same song he just heard.
we break for a moment, wes moves to the couch and picks up a lazer pointer. Charlie perks up. wes zigs it and zags it across the floor, Charlie in hot pursuit. He leaps halfway up the wall to get that little dot. Charlie loves that impossible red point.
Jul 6, 2009
Jun 28, 2009
Episode 7: I would do anything for a Klondike bar
Episode 7: I Would Do Anything For A Klondike Bar
6·17·09
The Band:
Loblolly Boy
Luke Kalloch - Guitar, Vox
Katy Pearson - Ukelele, Banjolele, Clarinet, Drums, Mandolin
The Scene:
It's a drive. And by drive I mean a haul.
Nick and I are heading up Downeast to pay a visit to Loblolly Boy and Bearkat. We're heading out past Damariscotta to a small fishing village known as Round Pond.
Loblolly Boy - A.K.A. Luke Kalloch - is staying with Katy in a house there.
And by "house," I mean a free house. The Loblolly Boy Myspace page says his location is "Anywhere that's free, Maine." He doesn't mean that in some hippie-utopia sense. Not entirely, anyway. Through a complicated web, he is staying at a free house in Round Pond. He and his Lord of the Rings tattoos and Katy-also-known-as-Bearkat.
Also, Luke is from Round Pond - which sweetens the prospect of free house. His mother, he happily points out, is about two miles down the road.
Round Pond is, lamentably (for us) just an extended layover in the post-college journey for Luke and Katy. They're leaving for the Other Portland in early July... but they are doing it in style, with a tour. You can catch 'em at the Northstar Café on July 6th.
Luke and Katy have been playing together since January. They complement each other well. As Luke sings, you can see Katy watching back. More than watching, she peers into him as he plays. She strums and thumps along, adding dulcet melodies to lovelorn tales of woe.
A little sneak preview for next week: It happens the other way around, too. Although Katy admits she can't look at him while he sings. You'll have to ask her why that is.
Loblolly Boy sings a lot about death and destruction. He also sings a lot about love and loss. Apocalypse and Heart are key elements in his music, even as he plays in a domestic home in coastal Maine.
Or maybe especially as he plays there.
The sea is harsh and fishermen live rough lives. Missing fingers, miserable, deadly weather, long weeks on choppy seas where salt-water spray, high winds and harsh sun beams tan skins into leather. Fishermen's wives are known for being just as rough, attached to men they love but knowing that at any moment, Poseidon could strike and make her a widow.
Fishing communities snap Loblolly Boy's dichotomies into focus.
Even the wanderlust in Luke's life is echoed in the long trips to sea. Luke and Katy have stories from all over the country, crushing bread in Denver parking lots, eating canned tuna in Seattle, and the drive through Virginia's foothills.
Man, they've been everywhere.
But Luke shares a happy connection with Downeast. He rattles off facts about the lighthouse on the Maine State Quarter and the coast. He laments the old stories he'll miss that the old fishermen tell. Stories about the history of the place. He knows that everyone in town knows he was visited by Nick and I because a few residents in town saw my car crawling down his road.
And he's got a bit of a history bug. Take for instance, his name. A "loblolly boy" served on 18th and 19th century ships, doing anything the surgeon wouldn't do. Holding down patients, cleaning tools, tossing amputated limbs overboard and "bedpan duty."
Consequently, his music sometimes feels like songs you'd hear in a wharfside pub. A whiff of sea air as he whispers and wails about being together at the end of it all. There is a connection in his songs between death and love and sea life. As much as Luke sings about bombs dropping, there is a Downeast boy under it.
But he knows he's got to move on, ramble on. Sights to see, places to be. There's a positivity that beams electric from Luke after a few minutes of meeting him, where you can't help but feel the same wanderlust. Maine's home, sure, but you've got to get out sometimes.
Fishermen head out on the open waters and breathe salty air and face death for a simple trade. Loblolly Boy heads to an inland sea, breathes dust and exhaust and breath and sings simple songs.
6·17·09
The Band:
Loblolly Boy
Luke Kalloch - Guitar, Vox
Katy Pearson - Ukelele, Banjolele, Clarinet, Drums, Mandolin
The Scene:
It's a drive. And by drive I mean a haul.
Nick and I are heading up Downeast to pay a visit to Loblolly Boy and Bearkat. We're heading out past Damariscotta to a small fishing village known as Round Pond.
Loblolly Boy - A.K.A. Luke Kalloch - is staying with Katy in a house there.
And by "house," I mean a free house. The Loblolly Boy Myspace page says his location is "Anywhere that's free, Maine." He doesn't mean that in some hippie-utopia sense. Not entirely, anyway. Through a complicated web, he is staying at a free house in Round Pond. He and his Lord of the Rings tattoos and Katy-also-known-as-Bearkat.
Also, Luke is from Round Pond - which sweetens the prospect of free house. His mother, he happily points out, is about two miles down the road.
Round Pond is, lamentably (for us) just an extended layover in the post-college journey for Luke and Katy. They're leaving for the Other Portland in early July... but they are doing it in style, with a tour. You can catch 'em at the Northstar Café on July 6th.
Luke and Katy have been playing together since January. They complement each other well. As Luke sings, you can see Katy watching back. More than watching, she peers into him as he plays. She strums and thumps along, adding dulcet melodies to lovelorn tales of woe.
A little sneak preview for next week: It happens the other way around, too. Although Katy admits she can't look at him while he sings. You'll have to ask her why that is.
Loblolly Boy sings a lot about death and destruction. He also sings a lot about love and loss. Apocalypse and Heart are key elements in his music, even as he plays in a domestic home in coastal Maine.
Or maybe especially as he plays there.
The sea is harsh and fishermen live rough lives. Missing fingers, miserable, deadly weather, long weeks on choppy seas where salt-water spray, high winds and harsh sun beams tan skins into leather. Fishermen's wives are known for being just as rough, attached to men they love but knowing that at any moment, Poseidon could strike and make her a widow.
Fishing communities snap Loblolly Boy's dichotomies into focus.
Even the wanderlust in Luke's life is echoed in the long trips to sea. Luke and Katy have stories from all over the country, crushing bread in Denver parking lots, eating canned tuna in Seattle, and the drive through Virginia's foothills.
Man, they've been everywhere.
But Luke shares a happy connection with Downeast. He rattles off facts about the lighthouse on the Maine State Quarter and the coast. He laments the old stories he'll miss that the old fishermen tell. Stories about the history of the place. He knows that everyone in town knows he was visited by Nick and I because a few residents in town saw my car crawling down his road.
And he's got a bit of a history bug. Take for instance, his name. A "loblolly boy" served on 18th and 19th century ships, doing anything the surgeon wouldn't do. Holding down patients, cleaning tools, tossing amputated limbs overboard and "bedpan duty."
Consequently, his music sometimes feels like songs you'd hear in a wharfside pub. A whiff of sea air as he whispers and wails about being together at the end of it all. There is a connection in his songs between death and love and sea life. As much as Luke sings about bombs dropping, there is a Downeast boy under it.
But he knows he's got to move on, ramble on. Sights to see, places to be. There's a positivity that beams electric from Luke after a few minutes of meeting him, where you can't help but feel the same wanderlust. Maine's home, sure, but you've got to get out sometimes.
Fishermen head out on the open waters and breathe salty air and face death for a simple trade. Loblolly Boy heads to an inland sea, breathes dust and exhaust and breath and sings simple songs.
Jun 21, 2009
Episode 6 - Mustache Wall
Dog And Pony Episode Two-point-two - D. Gross: Mustache Wall
1.23.09 + 5.21.09
The Band:
Dana Gross: Vox, Guitar, Mississippi Sax, Banjo
The Scene:
Nick and I pull up to a quiet South Portland suburb. Everything is white from recent snow, the street has about an inch coating.
The car crunches snow into a dense layer. The area's so quiet that as we approach Dana's house, you can hear some music emanating from within. It's something old, sounds like maybe one man and a guitar. Sounds like maybe it was recorded on a Texas Porch next to a glass of whiskey. It adds a surreal quality to the general atmosphere of a Puritan winter as we walk up to the front door and press the buzzer. Dana answers the door promptly. It's Lightning Hopkins playing out of an iPod.
Dana shows us in to a very domestic living room. The room has a certain simple style. Not that there isn't decoration... and colorful decoration at that. There are multiple serapes and a large painting of a Paper Doll Ballerina. But something about the room suggests simplicity. There are plants at all corners and under all the windows, echoes of July reaching out in defiance of the January hush.
The whole effect is very southwestern feeling... with hints of the Far East. Although I must point out that the fireplace mantle feels very New England. Which makes sense. Buildings in the southwest have no need for a fireplace. So the pine and berries on the mantle fit.
A southwestern living room in a Yankee winter.
But that was then. That was four months ago. This episode really starts now, in the spring. Lilac blossoms fragrant, trees budding and bees getting to work. A time of new life and growth, a natural resurrection from the North's bitter winter.
It's the perfect time to pay a visit to D. Gross.
Answering the door today, there's no music in the air. Folks are tending to their gardens across the street. Dana answers the door in a white t-shirt and rolled up pant legs, looking a little peaked from recent exertion.
A puppy twists around his legs to sniff out visitors.
"We've just run around outside, trying to wear her down," Dana says as Lily noses our shins. Satisfied we like dogs and aren't there to ransack the house, Lily retires to a pad in the corner, flopping down and stretching out for puppy nap time.
Sam James lauds D. Gross, calling him "the only guy who can write a song about nature that doesn't sound corny." It fits, then, that we visit Dana's house at the height of vernal budding, the heady green stasis of summer has yet to sink in and the memory of winter clings in nighttime frosts and adds import to every budding leaf.
Dana's music plays to something similar, a natural awakening in the ol' corpus. The songs often have a simple enough structure... but the precision and intricacy of the picking and strumming, the interplay of vox and harmonica add new depth and complexity.
It is a simple enough thing to enjoy a flowering rose bush, but the red petals represent long seasons mining the earth for water and nutrients, drinking in light and feeding off the very air. A simple rose is anything but, complicated chains of hydrocarbons and chemicals waft through the air, waking other plants and stirring bees into pollenatory action.
And suddenly a simple song is not so simple.
Suddenly Dana's fingers are hitting eight notes a beat and he's playing the B minor chord in three different spots on the guitar neck so he can pluck out an enchanting melody. Suddenly the hypnotic steadyness and drone of a song becomes a baffling display of virtuoso technique.
He straps a harmonica around his neck intermittently, blowing and drawing like a man possessed. His banjo is tiny, it has no resonator and is rather old. It was made for his grandmother. She passed it along to his father, who learned to play about three songs on it and passed it along to Dana. Dana's using it well, just listen to the steady strum and thrum of Hummingbird in the video.
He had to be persuaded into the purchase of his guitar. It's a 1973 A. LoPrinzi that a fisherman had had on layaway at Buckdancer's Choice. The fisherman went out to sea and never returned.
"Never returned?"
"He died." It sounds like Dana's realizing the heaviness of the situation every time he says it.
It sure is a nice guitar, though.
And finally there's his voice. He sings rich and weathered out the side of his face in a way that masks a soft sibilance in his speaking voice. Watching him play you can see him concentrating on the music, dialing in and knocking it out.
Dana has been playing solo after years with Los Federales, recording, teaching, working construction etc. etc. He went solo to improve his focus and concentration. He has a tendency, he says, to drift in band situations. Which can be good or bad, depending on where you are in the song and the band. Performing solo has forced him to concentrate more, to focus in on the music he's making. As a solo performer, drift and sway can hold no court, no one but you can hold down the song.
But after two and a half years of solo performances, Dana says he's been practicing with some other folks. An exciting prospect, to be sure.
After stomping, strumming, singing through about twenty minutes of material, Lily wakes up. We break from the music and the living room and step outside into a suburban yard. A chair and a cup of coffee are set up in the morning sun, evidence of a morning spent outside among the verdant growth, the new life.
D. Gross stands amongst it.
1.23.09 + 5.21.09
The Band:
Dana Gross: Vox, Guitar, Mississippi Sax, Banjo
The Scene:
Nick and I pull up to a quiet South Portland suburb. Everything is white from recent snow, the street has about an inch coating.
The car crunches snow into a dense layer. The area's so quiet that as we approach Dana's house, you can hear some music emanating from within. It's something old, sounds like maybe one man and a guitar. Sounds like maybe it was recorded on a Texas Porch next to a glass of whiskey. It adds a surreal quality to the general atmosphere of a Puritan winter as we walk up to the front door and press the buzzer. Dana answers the door promptly. It's Lightning Hopkins playing out of an iPod.
Dana shows us in to a very domestic living room. The room has a certain simple style. Not that there isn't decoration... and colorful decoration at that. There are multiple serapes and a large painting of a Paper Doll Ballerina. But something about the room suggests simplicity. There are plants at all corners and under all the windows, echoes of July reaching out in defiance of the January hush.
The whole effect is very southwestern feeling... with hints of the Far East. Although I must point out that the fireplace mantle feels very New England. Which makes sense. Buildings in the southwest have no need for a fireplace. So the pine and berries on the mantle fit.
A southwestern living room in a Yankee winter.
But that was then. That was four months ago. This episode really starts now, in the spring. Lilac blossoms fragrant, trees budding and bees getting to work. A time of new life and growth, a natural resurrection from the North's bitter winter.
It's the perfect time to pay a visit to D. Gross.
Answering the door today, there's no music in the air. Folks are tending to their gardens across the street. Dana answers the door in a white t-shirt and rolled up pant legs, looking a little peaked from recent exertion.
A puppy twists around his legs to sniff out visitors.
"We've just run around outside, trying to wear her down," Dana says as Lily noses our shins. Satisfied we like dogs and aren't there to ransack the house, Lily retires to a pad in the corner, flopping down and stretching out for puppy nap time.
Sam James lauds D. Gross, calling him "the only guy who can write a song about nature that doesn't sound corny." It fits, then, that we visit Dana's house at the height of vernal budding, the heady green stasis of summer has yet to sink in and the memory of winter clings in nighttime frosts and adds import to every budding leaf.
Dana's music plays to something similar, a natural awakening in the ol' corpus. The songs often have a simple enough structure... but the precision and intricacy of the picking and strumming, the interplay of vox and harmonica add new depth and complexity.
It is a simple enough thing to enjoy a flowering rose bush, but the red petals represent long seasons mining the earth for water and nutrients, drinking in light and feeding off the very air. A simple rose is anything but, complicated chains of hydrocarbons and chemicals waft through the air, waking other plants and stirring bees into pollenatory action.
And suddenly a simple song is not so simple.
Suddenly Dana's fingers are hitting eight notes a beat and he's playing the B minor chord in three different spots on the guitar neck so he can pluck out an enchanting melody. Suddenly the hypnotic steadyness and drone of a song becomes a baffling display of virtuoso technique.
He straps a harmonica around his neck intermittently, blowing and drawing like a man possessed. His banjo is tiny, it has no resonator and is rather old. It was made for his grandmother. She passed it along to his father, who learned to play about three songs on it and passed it along to Dana. Dana's using it well, just listen to the steady strum and thrum of Hummingbird in the video.
He had to be persuaded into the purchase of his guitar. It's a 1973 A. LoPrinzi that a fisherman had had on layaway at Buckdancer's Choice. The fisherman went out to sea and never returned.
"Never returned?"
"He died." It sounds like Dana's realizing the heaviness of the situation every time he says it.
It sure is a nice guitar, though.
And finally there's his voice. He sings rich and weathered out the side of his face in a way that masks a soft sibilance in his speaking voice. Watching him play you can see him concentrating on the music, dialing in and knocking it out.
Dana has been playing solo after years with Los Federales, recording, teaching, working construction etc. etc. He went solo to improve his focus and concentration. He has a tendency, he says, to drift in band situations. Which can be good or bad, depending on where you are in the song and the band. Performing solo has forced him to concentrate more, to focus in on the music he's making. As a solo performer, drift and sway can hold no court, no one but you can hold down the song.
But after two and a half years of solo performances, Dana says he's been practicing with some other folks. An exciting prospect, to be sure.
After stomping, strumming, singing through about twenty minutes of material, Lily wakes up. We break from the music and the living room and step outside into a suburban yard. A chair and a cup of coffee are set up in the morning sun, evidence of a morning spent outside among the verdant growth, the new life.
D. Gross stands amongst it.
Jun 14, 2009
Tower of Song - Episode 2
[dog] and [pony] - Tower of Song Sessions
Episode 2 - Lady Lamb The Beekeeper
05.23.09
The Band:
Aly Spaltro - Vox, Guitar, Tambourine, Floor Tom, Whistle
TJ Metcalfe - (Drums), Vox, (Bass, Synth), Acoustic Guitar
The Scene:
There is a glee - quiet and meditative at first, then expanding outwards to fill the room, the corner, the street, the city. The glee starts inside a person, or people - as it may be, it spreads out through finger tips into instruments, it flutters vocal chords and parts teeth as it gets picked up by microphones. It vibrates ear drums and sternums and windows and wires. It bounces off brick and tar and glass and bone.
That glee is music. It took over Portland toward the end of May. It grabbed the microphone at the Tower of Song and wouldn't let go for hours.
That glee is Lady Lamb the Beekeeper. For about an hour, anyway.
Front woman - and currently the only member - Aly Spaltro is the little girl with the big voice. I remember the first time I heard her at Dead of Winter '09 as a watershed moment in Portland music - for me, anyway. Tiny Aly Spaltro took the stage. Hidden behind an acoustic guitar, Spaltro stood in front of a room of carousers, drinking and conversing, making merry.
But they all shut up when she sang.
The room turned to absolute, cricket-chirping, pin-dropping silence save for Spaltro and her voice and her guitar crashing around the room. Spaltro's presence controlled the room as a pebble dropped into still water controls the waves.
The silence was religious, awing. It was pure and real.
Lady Lamb will do that.
The songs are, at first, at least, simple little tales. Naïve observations. But that betrays a purity at the core of the music. Giggly pop delight abounds as Spaltro coos sweet nothings to the fast food drive through box. But beyond that, Lady Lamb the Beekeeper muses on the simple things that you care about when you're younger. These first values are true values - truer than many that accrue as years pass by.
The irreverence-at-first that shows through Lady Lamb The Beekeeper's music is another facet of the Tower of Song. The festival is a joyous celebration of Portland's music. It's a pop festivity. Songs ring giddy down Congress street as bands blast their music over the crowded square. But that joyous celebration belies a deeper core. The celebration is more than a simple get-together. Just the fact that the Tower of Song exists says something profound about the Portland music scene. It is packed with talent. It is diverse. It is brimming with celebration and passion for the scene.
The Tower of Song is ostensibly just a show. But look deeper and it's a community. The festival had beaming organizers, rows of vendors, corporate sponsorship. The festival had nine bands featuring dozens of performers. The dedication, devotion and worship of a scene coming together for something that is, superficially, just a rock and roll show is so much more.
So when Spaltro vacillates on what size fry to order, she's singing not only about treating herself to a delicious and unhealthy snack - she's singing about everything behind that decision. She's singing about every moment of dread about waistlines, dollars, and commitments to a greener living. She's singing about the desire for a simple loved thing and all the drive and yearning and satisfaction behind that.
The Tower of Song is a festival, Lady Lamb The Beekeeper sings about ordering take-out. But the simplicity of ordering a cheeseburger and Dr. Pepper is fallacious. There's desire and anticipation. And calling the Tower of Song simply a rock and roll show is a lie, too. There's a community coming together beneath every note. Every banjo-pluck and drum kick represents commitment and drive on the part of the organizers, the band members, the vendors, the sponsors.
The performers at The Tower of Song had a level of anonymity. The names, the music, that was there for everyone to witness. But the performers remained locked up in the tower. There was no face to the music. So when Aly sings into a faceless drive-through intercom, she's experiencing that same level of anonymity. She and her greasy paramour are just voices in the night as she waxes romantic about the life they could have.
Eventually these performers will come face to face with their audience. They leave the apartment and mill about in Congress Square. They play a venue. They sell T-Shirts and CDs. Eventually Aly will get her meal, she'll hand over a wrinkled five dollar bill and exchange a look with her confessee. She'll get a burger and some fries and a Dr. Pepper, Dr. Pepper, Dr. Pepper.
That's the final element, of course, is the interaction. Putting musicians up in a Tower will separate them from the city physically, but having them play ties them in spiritualy. The musicians and the city are not oil and water. Without the one there would not be the other. Sure, Portland would exist without the scene, but not the Portland we love. And sure the musicians would exist without Portland, but they wouldn't have this community which breeds, fosters and foments their music.
So it's all give and take. Spaltro sings sweet nothings and gets a meal. Portland gives support, an audience, a base and gets art, pride and music.
Musicians give their sweat and blood and passion.
Portland gets glee.
Episode 2 - Lady Lamb The Beekeeper
05.23.09
The Band:
Aly Spaltro - Vox, Guitar, Tambourine, Floor Tom, Whistle
TJ Metcalfe - (Drums), Vox, (Bass, Synth), Acoustic Guitar
The Scene:
There is a glee - quiet and meditative at first, then expanding outwards to fill the room, the corner, the street, the city. The glee starts inside a person, or people - as it may be, it spreads out through finger tips into instruments, it flutters vocal chords and parts teeth as it gets picked up by microphones. It vibrates ear drums and sternums and windows and wires. It bounces off brick and tar and glass and bone.
That glee is music. It took over Portland toward the end of May. It grabbed the microphone at the Tower of Song and wouldn't let go for hours.
That glee is Lady Lamb the Beekeeper. For about an hour, anyway.
Front woman - and currently the only member - Aly Spaltro is the little girl with the big voice. I remember the first time I heard her at Dead of Winter '09 as a watershed moment in Portland music - for me, anyway. Tiny Aly Spaltro took the stage. Hidden behind an acoustic guitar, Spaltro stood in front of a room of carousers, drinking and conversing, making merry.
But they all shut up when she sang.
The room turned to absolute, cricket-chirping, pin-dropping silence save for Spaltro and her voice and her guitar crashing around the room. Spaltro's presence controlled the room as a pebble dropped into still water controls the waves.
The silence was religious, awing. It was pure and real.
Lady Lamb will do that.
The songs are, at first, at least, simple little tales. Naïve observations. But that betrays a purity at the core of the music. Giggly pop delight abounds as Spaltro coos sweet nothings to the fast food drive through box. But beyond that, Lady Lamb the Beekeeper muses on the simple things that you care about when you're younger. These first values are true values - truer than many that accrue as years pass by.
The irreverence-at-first that shows through Lady Lamb The Beekeeper's music is another facet of the Tower of Song. The festival is a joyous celebration of Portland's music. It's a pop festivity. Songs ring giddy down Congress street as bands blast their music over the crowded square. But that joyous celebration belies a deeper core. The celebration is more than a simple get-together. Just the fact that the Tower of Song exists says something profound about the Portland music scene. It is packed with talent. It is diverse. It is brimming with celebration and passion for the scene.
The Tower of Song is ostensibly just a show. But look deeper and it's a community. The festival had beaming organizers, rows of vendors, corporate sponsorship. The festival had nine bands featuring dozens of performers. The dedication, devotion and worship of a scene coming together for something that is, superficially, just a rock and roll show is so much more.
So when Spaltro vacillates on what size fry to order, she's singing not only about treating herself to a delicious and unhealthy snack - she's singing about everything behind that decision. She's singing about every moment of dread about waistlines, dollars, and commitments to a greener living. She's singing about the desire for a simple loved thing and all the drive and yearning and satisfaction behind that.
The Tower of Song is a festival, Lady Lamb The Beekeeper sings about ordering take-out. But the simplicity of ordering a cheeseburger and Dr. Pepper is fallacious. There's desire and anticipation. And calling the Tower of Song simply a rock and roll show is a lie, too. There's a community coming together beneath every note. Every banjo-pluck and drum kick represents commitment and drive on the part of the organizers, the band members, the vendors, the sponsors.
The performers at The Tower of Song had a level of anonymity. The names, the music, that was there for everyone to witness. But the performers remained locked up in the tower. There was no face to the music. So when Aly sings into a faceless drive-through intercom, she's experiencing that same level of anonymity. She and her greasy paramour are just voices in the night as she waxes romantic about the life they could have.
Eventually these performers will come face to face with their audience. They leave the apartment and mill about in Congress Square. They play a venue. They sell T-Shirts and CDs. Eventually Aly will get her meal, she'll hand over a wrinkled five dollar bill and exchange a look with her confessee. She'll get a burger and some fries and a Dr. Pepper, Dr. Pepper, Dr. Pepper.
That's the final element, of course, is the interaction. Putting musicians up in a Tower will separate them from the city physically, but having them play ties them in spiritualy. The musicians and the city are not oil and water. Without the one there would not be the other. Sure, Portland would exist without the scene, but not the Portland we love. And sure the musicians would exist without Portland, but they wouldn't have this community which breeds, fosters and foments their music.
So it's all give and take. Spaltro sings sweet nothings and gets a meal. Portland gives support, an audience, a base and gets art, pride and music.
Musicians give their sweat and blood and passion.
Portland gets glee.
Jun 7, 2009
Tower of Song - Episode 1
[dog] and [pony] - Tower of Song Sessions
Episode 1 - Sam James and Chriss Sutherland
05.23.09
The Bands:
Sam James - Vox, Guitar, Foot Stamps
Chriss Sutherland - Vox, Guitar
Episode 1 - Sam James and Chriss Sutherland
05.23.09
The Bands:
Sam James - Vox, Guitar, Foot Stamps
Chriss Sutherland - Vox, Guitar
The Scene:
The Tower of Song is set in an apartment living room looking over Congress Square. Four roads meet in a blocky, red arena home to coffee shops, grocery stores, the Portland Museum of Art and so on.
The day of the festival the square is home to a few rows of white tents as vendors set up shop. People gather and mill, blankets are laid out, picnics are had.
Portland comes together.
Tower of Song is a celebration of community. Nine bands steam up one fourth floor apartment, stomping, strumming, pounding, wailing, moaning. Hip Hop and folk, jangly pop and indie-rock come together in a beautiful testament to Portland's diverse music scene.
And it makes sense that the festival blasts against the old State Theater. Jesse Pilgrim, the first performer of the day's events, has a theory that because Portland spent so many years without a mid-level venue, the local scene had to improve, step up and throw down. If your only options are whoever's at The Civic Center and what's going on at Slainte, you're going to want to see some good stuff at the cheaper venue.
Filling this gap has given Portland a rich and diverse music scene. For a relatively small city, we've been gifted with a varied pastiche of local music. From Pilgrim's country strumming to Sam James' blues-picking. From Spencer and the School Spirit Mafia's joyous-cult-pop-rock to Fire on Fire's indie-orchestra commune. From Dilly Dilly's Ukulele to ... well, basically anything else she does. The scene is wide, it is filled with talent and it is something that deserves reveling in.
So if Tower of Song only happened because The State theater closed down, I say good. I miss the mid-level acts the venue drew but I think I'm much happier with the eclectic mix Portland has now, the breadth and depth that only happen in a borderline isolated community.
Which brings us to Sam James and Chriss Sutherland.
These two feast on yesterday's music. But they do it in separate ways. Sam's a foot-stomping, string-pickin' hollerin' blues-man. Chriss picks and strums, he sings and moans. Sam sings to his bouncing feet or the neck of his guitar, Chriss rolls his eyes back and sings to the ceiling fan.
And the music these two are blasting from The Tower... Sam James is singing a Leonard Cohen number about the music community, a song with such echoing portent the whole god-damned festival bears it's name. A song written to address music's place in the land and a musician's place in music. Music's import, it's reverence, it's worship.
Musicians are elevated instantly onto a tower.
Chriss Sutherland sings a country-folk staple written by one hero for another. The community of music represents itself another way through Chriss as he wails and moans on Angel From Montgomery. Sam's song is philosophically meta, Chriss' abandons the meta for a self-aware celebration. It doesn't expound on what it means to be a musician, but at the same time it acknolwedges that the players are musical. When John Prine wrote that for Bonnie Raitt to sing, he did it without philosophizing on what it means to make music. Prine and Raitt know that already. Angel celebrates music, Tower celebrates making music.
Both Sam and Chriss have a tendency to keep alive the communal tradition of music. They play songs that you want to hear and songs that are easy to learn and play along to... but they do it in a professional, hypnotic and singular way. Sam and Chriss play simple music in a way that makes you want to listen, want to join in. You want to help this music, you want to be there and experience it.
Sam James and Chriss Sutherland are perfect for Tower of Song. They represent a fundamental, uncomplicated togetherness in music. They aren't pumping out music for money, they aren't defiantly challenging the status quo (though they do challenge it). They are residing in music.
Allow me to clarify that last statement. There is some musicality in all of us. It is a basic element of humanity that draws us to tunes. Songs represent a whole of humanity. When was the last time you were at a party that music wasn't played at? Even solo acts - such as these two - help to bring us together.
People seek out music. We're drawn to it.
Bands, of course, represent a community just by being together and creating something beautiful, but the fact remains that we're bewitched by what Chriss and Sam do. Without their plucking and strumming and wailing and humming we'd be a little more lost and a little less unified.
Maybe you don't like their particular styles, their idioms of playing - this is where they challenge the status quo. Take your genre of choice, it works across the board. Swaying to dreamy electro-pop or grinding to grungy metal or if you're at a bar and RATT comes pumping through the speakers and you see someone else grinning and bobbing their heads, you feel a connection.
That is the essence of the music these two play - of the music anyone plays. Their essence goes back a hundred years, though - again, this is where these two challenge the status quo. The essence of Chriss and Sam is pure community. Their music has roots in a time when this was the only music you were likely to hear. A time when radios weren't all that popular. A time when it was live or nothing. This is the music by the people, of the people and for the people.
The tradition Chriss and Sam are continuing is long and noble. At the Tower of Song Chriss sang, for instance, a song called "All The Little Horses" or, alternately, "Hush-a-Bye." This is a song older than the Civil War. No one knows who wrote it or how many versions of it there are. But you can be sure the version we heard at the Tower of Song was unique and Chriss' own while also being a part of a sesquicentennial tradition. Sam performed mostly originals, but if you ever hear him live you've got about even odds on hearing something old. Real old. He'll tell you he doesn't know who wrote it, but that's only because nobody knows who wrote it.
Chriss Sutherland - All The Little Horses (Live @ Tower of Song)
The songs have lasted that long without an owner and they'll last that long again. Partly because of traditions like The Tower of Song. There is a pure and driven need to rejoice, to get together and to collaborate on music. Music represents community and joy and revelry. There's no better excuse to commiserate or to celebrate, to weep into a bottle or to dance around a bonfire. To ache and to yearn and to breathe and to pity and to love and to gush... music fills all these primal urges.
At the Tower of Song, a fundamental, sublime urge is filled. At the Tower of Song, Nine bands come together. At the Tower of Song, a community rallies at the doorstep to listen. New songs, old songs and cover songs ring through the streets of Portland. Those at the Tower of Song thirsty for new noise leave filled with centuries of humanity.
At the Tower of Song, Portland comes together.
Apr 3, 2009
Dog And Pony Episode 4: This Place Is Tilty
Dog And Pony Episode 4: This Place Is Tilty
1/24/09
The Band: Sam James - Guitar/Vox
The Scene:
Sam James is not an anomaly.
Sometimes, though, I think he should be.
One man and his guitar up on stage seems to be such an affront to the traditional four piece, to the swelling ranks of the indie-rock and indie-pop acts. And it's not just the fact that it's one man and his guitar, it's the music he's playing. Delta and Piedmont blues hollered through a cigarette stained larynx.
Take that nasal indie darlings and dulcet toned songsters.
But he's not an anomaly. Sam James is not only in good company, but his music is just as much a reaction to the scene as the indie-orchestras, as the 80s and 90s rock revivals, as the ever-present folk singer-songwriters.
Sam practices in the living room shared with his roommate. "That's Will, the best potter in Portland."
The house is covered in pots and masks. Seated on the futon around the corner from where his roommate practices his throwing, Sam practices his playing.
Sam's wild, loud style of playing is almost in no way reflected by the space he plays in. There's art and movie posters, and I noticed with pleasure a copy of Watchmen on the bookshelf. A Winslow Homer perhaps? There's a small TV.
But there's also art everywhere... these pots are on every flat surface and frankly, I'm surprised they haven't been smashed to pieces by Sam's wild foot-stomping as he cranks out dusty blues songs.
What I'm trying to say is the place is quiet. It's clean. It's not busy or loud. It's not confused or dark or smokey. His music suggests perhaps a shack or spartan bedroom.
But he plays in a living room on a futon with a TV and bookshelves and art and pottery everywhere. And a staircase to Narnia.
OK, maybe from his music you'd guess there'd be a staircase to Narnia. But I bet you wouldn't guess there'd be pottery and snowboarding boots on said stairs.
The practice space is just a space. It's clean, it's modern. It suggests that perhaps the incredible music Mr. James makes is attainable. That anyone who can keep an apartment in order could do it. I would say that BUT HERE IS WHERE IT GET'S TRICKY, good reader.
Mr. James practices four hours a day.
What do you do four hours a day? Your job? You hate that! You take breaks and read your websites. You look at that stain on the acoustic tiling. You joke about the shit coffee.
Mr. James practices four hours a day. Of his own free will. A quarter or his waking life is spent axe-in-hand. At least. What is it that draws Mr. James to pickin'?
For starters, Mr. James is half-black. And he quite happily traces his history back up that tree. His grandfather, born in the 1890s, was a bluesman. A string-pickin', post-emancipation bluesman.
His father was given ivory-tickling fingers. Was taught piano lessons. Mr. James' grandmother would encourage his grandfather to NOT play with his father. "He's learning classical music," she'd say with an air of importance.
So of course his father went on to play jazz.
So of course Samuel, as his sister calls him (his father calls him Sam) went on to learn classical piano. And then something ached inside him. Some constant burn flared up to know his history. And who hasn't been similarly afflicted? The big question here: Who has acted upon it as Mr. James has?
He picked up a guitar after years of the piano. He picked up a guitar after years of black culture leaving it behind. He picked it up and he's been trying to figure out what made black people really pick it up in the first place.
I think he's got it. I think he's figured it out. I don't know if he knows it and I don't know if he SHOULD know it. But this instrument, the guitar, mind you, this instrument used to be the epitome of classical music and also a handy folk instrument. It's size and versatility means it crossed the bridge from classical music halls to the living room. Learning classical guitar was quite a feat, but just being able to accompany the inevitable folk tune was even more important. So when former slaves picked it up and turned this once white-person's instrument into a weapon of black culture, white folks paid attention. They'd never heard this instrument played this way before.
Blacks were, of course, just using what was around. They had their history and they had this instrument. Their abilities just happened to reframe the way Whites looked at this particular instrument.
Blacks continued to define the guitar's voice until the late 50s. Then you get the Elvis and The Everly Brothers and The Beatles and so on bursting in, stealing the scene. There was a period of collaboration and then Whites took control of the direction guitar music was taking.
But this is no forum for politics.
But Mr. James wondered what it was exactly that drew Blacks to the six strings in the first place. He wondered what is so special about the guitar.
He's figured it out. He has figured out how one man with one instrument can completely captivate and entertain. How you only need one properly trained dude and one properly strung guitar to make some incredible noise that is both familiar and new. His love affair with the guitar is rooted in segregation and violence but played out in a time when orbiting satellites - satellites further above us than Boston is south of us - can snatch a picture of your mother leaning out the window to check the laundry.
Knowing what we know now about Samuel James, I think it would be interesting to hear some keys banged upon. Apart from the banjo, there was also a keyboard around the corner. I assume that means he plays it every now and again.
My guess is this probably won't happen until Blue gets a house upright piano. But I feel like it'd be interesting to see Mr. James sit down and slam out some stride while stamping his foot and screaming to the rafters.
On to Mr. James' startling lack of singularity. Portland has an cluster of acoustic, solo guitarists specializing in yesterday's music. Moses Atwood, D. Gross, Meantone and a smattering of others have all dabbled in acoustic blues at one point or another. I feel like Mr. James is their ringleader, though.
The fact that there is a cluster of this acoustic blues is indicative of something. In my opinion it's a reaction to the music of the last twenty years, which is a reaction to the music before that and that's a reaction to the music before that in a beautiful chain of reactions that goes back to when folks were just pounding rocks together and singing.
Today's music scene is loaded up with acoustic acts. With people, consciously or not, evading, avoiding or ignoring the electronic advents of the past twenty years. The synthesizers, the effects pedals, the vocorders and the auto-tuning. All of it is eschewed in the indie world for simpler music. Often just a Dylan-fan and his guitar.
It's not always that good.
Mr. James' reaction to the blossoming singer-songwriter scene is to make his guitar sound like several instruments at once. He's got a clear bassline and melody in all of his songs, and often times there's a harmonizing rhythm, too. No single strum captures the change and scope in his songs. In fact, the parts of his music generally take several people to fill them out.
The other direction on the scene are the ever-swelling bands. Arcade Fire, of course, has five or six regular members but depending where on the continent they are or what song they're playing, there are parts written in many of their songs for an additional three or four musicians.
Samuel James is just Samuel James. No bassist, no drums, no french horn. Just a man, his guitar, his fingers and his lungs belting sweet music into the ether. It's just Sam James and his guitar.
And the most beautiful part about this whole thing: the fine guitar work, the history, the semi-punk aesthetic, is his wonderful accessibility. He's delightfully prolific, playing (almost) every Thursday at the bar Blue on Congress Street. Of late he's been accompanied by one Mr. D. Gross and it's an entirely worthy experience. For the precision, for the energy and for the stories that accompany the songs. He tours constantly and he's working on yet another album.
Sam James is Sam James and he's not an anomaly.
1/24/09
The Band: Sam James - Guitar/Vox
The Scene:
Sam James is not an anomaly.
Sometimes, though, I think he should be.
One man and his guitar up on stage seems to be such an affront to the traditional four piece, to the swelling ranks of the indie-rock and indie-pop acts. And it's not just the fact that it's one man and his guitar, it's the music he's playing. Delta and Piedmont blues hollered through a cigarette stained larynx.
Take that nasal indie darlings and dulcet toned songsters.
But he's not an anomaly. Sam James is not only in good company, but his music is just as much a reaction to the scene as the indie-orchestras, as the 80s and 90s rock revivals, as the ever-present folk singer-songwriters.
Sam practices in the living room shared with his roommate. "That's Will, the best potter in Portland."
The house is covered in pots and masks. Seated on the futon around the corner from where his roommate practices his throwing, Sam practices his playing.
Sam's wild, loud style of playing is almost in no way reflected by the space he plays in. There's art and movie posters, and I noticed with pleasure a copy of Watchmen on the bookshelf. A Winslow Homer perhaps? There's a small TV.
But there's also art everywhere... these pots are on every flat surface and frankly, I'm surprised they haven't been smashed to pieces by Sam's wild foot-stomping as he cranks out dusty blues songs.
What I'm trying to say is the place is quiet. It's clean. It's not busy or loud. It's not confused or dark or smokey. His music suggests perhaps a shack or spartan bedroom.
But he plays in a living room on a futon with a TV and bookshelves and art and pottery everywhere. And a staircase to Narnia.
OK, maybe from his music you'd guess there'd be a staircase to Narnia. But I bet you wouldn't guess there'd be pottery and snowboarding boots on said stairs.
The practice space is just a space. It's clean, it's modern. It suggests that perhaps the incredible music Mr. James makes is attainable. That anyone who can keep an apartment in order could do it. I would say that BUT HERE IS WHERE IT GET'S TRICKY, good reader.
Mr. James practices four hours a day.
What do you do four hours a day? Your job? You hate that! You take breaks and read your websites. You look at that stain on the acoustic tiling. You joke about the shit coffee.
Mr. James practices four hours a day. Of his own free will. A quarter or his waking life is spent axe-in-hand. At least. What is it that draws Mr. James to pickin'?
For starters, Mr. James is half-black. And he quite happily traces his history back up that tree. His grandfather, born in the 1890s, was a bluesman. A string-pickin', post-emancipation bluesman.
His father was given ivory-tickling fingers. Was taught piano lessons. Mr. James' grandmother would encourage his grandfather to NOT play with his father. "He's learning classical music," she'd say with an air of importance.
So of course his father went on to play jazz.
So of course Samuel, as his sister calls him (his father calls him Sam) went on to learn classical piano. And then something ached inside him. Some constant burn flared up to know his history. And who hasn't been similarly afflicted? The big question here: Who has acted upon it as Mr. James has?
He picked up a guitar after years of the piano. He picked up a guitar after years of black culture leaving it behind. He picked it up and he's been trying to figure out what made black people really pick it up in the first place.
I think he's got it. I think he's figured it out. I don't know if he knows it and I don't know if he SHOULD know it. But this instrument, the guitar, mind you, this instrument used to be the epitome of classical music and also a handy folk instrument. It's size and versatility means it crossed the bridge from classical music halls to the living room. Learning classical guitar was quite a feat, but just being able to accompany the inevitable folk tune was even more important. So when former slaves picked it up and turned this once white-person's instrument into a weapon of black culture, white folks paid attention. They'd never heard this instrument played this way before.
Blacks were, of course, just using what was around. They had their history and they had this instrument. Their abilities just happened to reframe the way Whites looked at this particular instrument.
Blacks continued to define the guitar's voice until the late 50s. Then you get the Elvis and The Everly Brothers and The Beatles and so on bursting in, stealing the scene. There was a period of collaboration and then Whites took control of the direction guitar music was taking.
But this is no forum for politics.
But Mr. James wondered what it was exactly that drew Blacks to the six strings in the first place. He wondered what is so special about the guitar.
He's figured it out. He has figured out how one man with one instrument can completely captivate and entertain. How you only need one properly trained dude and one properly strung guitar to make some incredible noise that is both familiar and new. His love affair with the guitar is rooted in segregation and violence but played out in a time when orbiting satellites - satellites further above us than Boston is south of us - can snatch a picture of your mother leaning out the window to check the laundry.
Knowing what we know now about Samuel James, I think it would be interesting to hear some keys banged upon. Apart from the banjo, there was also a keyboard around the corner. I assume that means he plays it every now and again.
My guess is this probably won't happen until Blue gets a house upright piano. But I feel like it'd be interesting to see Mr. James sit down and slam out some stride while stamping his foot and screaming to the rafters.
On to Mr. James' startling lack of singularity. Portland has an cluster of acoustic, solo guitarists specializing in yesterday's music. Moses Atwood, D. Gross, Meantone and a smattering of others have all dabbled in acoustic blues at one point or another. I feel like Mr. James is their ringleader, though.
The fact that there is a cluster of this acoustic blues is indicative of something. In my opinion it's a reaction to the music of the last twenty years, which is a reaction to the music before that and that's a reaction to the music before that in a beautiful chain of reactions that goes back to when folks were just pounding rocks together and singing.
Today's music scene is loaded up with acoustic acts. With people, consciously or not, evading, avoiding or ignoring the electronic advents of the past twenty years. The synthesizers, the effects pedals, the vocorders and the auto-tuning. All of it is eschewed in the indie world for simpler music. Often just a Dylan-fan and his guitar.
It's not always that good.
Mr. James' reaction to the blossoming singer-songwriter scene is to make his guitar sound like several instruments at once. He's got a clear bassline and melody in all of his songs, and often times there's a harmonizing rhythm, too. No single strum captures the change and scope in his songs. In fact, the parts of his music generally take several people to fill them out.
The other direction on the scene are the ever-swelling bands. Arcade Fire, of course, has five or six regular members but depending where on the continent they are or what song they're playing, there are parts written in many of their songs for an additional three or four musicians.
Samuel James is just Samuel James. No bassist, no drums, no french horn. Just a man, his guitar, his fingers and his lungs belting sweet music into the ether. It's just Sam James and his guitar.
And the most beautiful part about this whole thing: the fine guitar work, the history, the semi-punk aesthetic, is his wonderful accessibility. He's delightfully prolific, playing (almost) every Thursday at the bar Blue on Congress Street. Of late he's been accompanied by one Mr. D. Gross and it's an entirely worthy experience. For the precision, for the energy and for the stories that accompany the songs. He tours constantly and he's working on yet another album.
Sam James is Sam James and he's not an anomaly.
Mar 10, 2009
Episode 3: Daddy? You Wish
Dog and Pony Episode 3 - Daddy? You Wish
1/23/09 - Episode 2 left out for respect of the Lost Session.
The Band: Highway Jackson
Kris: Vox and Guitar
Tyler: Guitar and backing vox
(not pictured)
Corey: Bass
Brandon: Guitar
Mike: Drums
The Scene:
The basement is oppressive. It's a mess, and as you come down the stairs, you see a couch that was built during the fashionably worst part of the Carter administration. And it's beat to hell, to boot.
Beyond the couch, bags of trash lie helter-skelter among empty cardboard boxes, ramshackle furniture decays in heaps, a menacing barrel sits on a homebrew sawhorse. It looks to be full of oil. Rags and boxes lead an incendiary trail to the oil burner. The oil tank stands across from that. The place is a tinder-keg. The slightest spark will send the whole building up like Pompeii.
And yet it still smells like someone smokes cigarettes here regularly.
The band sits at the far end of the basement in a pool of orange and white light. The walls around them shed bricks into piles on the floor. "The band" in this case is a loose interpretation. Two members of a five person band play acoustic guitars in a thoroughly dank basement. Generally the band, Highway Jackson, is absolutely plowing through some Classic Rock shit in a dingy bar. But when they do it, they positively blow it out. It's the garage band you wanted to hear in the Seventies. Highway Jackson brings back the oldest meaning of "Rock." The band is energetic and effective. Their music, while brutal, is finely rehearsed, well practiced. It's an effective weapon of localized intensity. The sonic wall strikes powerful and precise like a heavyweight's jab.
But tonight it's just Kris and Tyler, sitting in a fire hazard and playing acoustic music. To each other. It's like bringing a tyrannosaurus to a flower show. Completely emasculating.
But they still Rock. It's like trying to take away all that raw power just makes it stronger. Or maybe it's just that these guys just Rock.
And we're talking about Rock with a capital 'R' here. We're not talking about rock like the word has been bandied about lately. We're talking about the music that made your grandparents cringe. We're talking about the music that was burned in vinyl bonfires in front of Baptist churches.
We're talking about Rock.
And they say "Rock is dead." They say the scene has moved on. They say "Rock? Isn't that, like, so 1970s?"
Well... yes. In a way they're right. But Highway Jackson - these guys - these guys make you pine for when Rock wasn't a dirty word. These guys bleed Rock. When you hear this music, just about anyone can acknowledge a new desire... a desire to actually Rock.
Hearing the music over the radio your whole life, you associate the term "Rock" with your parents and what they listened to. You don't understand its hugeness. So when contemporary musicians re-examine it, Rock becomes so much more powerful. It's an epiphany. It's the mythology happening again. All those things you'd heard about... they're happening in front of you.
Highway Jackson brings back the meaning of rock. You can't help but think, "Yeah... I'm rocking." Don't hide it! It's nothing to be ashamed of! Highway Jackson can be that release you need. You don't have to restrain the Rock when you're listening to Highway. You just let this music take you to that raw, primal place.
Highway Jackson represents the past of rock and roll in a lot of ways. When you hear the covers, for instance, they're spot on. HJ gives a show where you can call for "Freebird!" unironically and where you can feel comfortable rocking out to it.
A True Story: Highway Jackson was playing a show I was attending. They started playing Freebird and the house went crazy. It was the driving power behind the song that infected everyone... foot stamping, wild thrashing, jumping and headbanging were reinvented in the living room that night. I was pounding away to the beat in the back of the room with a bottle against a counter. The bottle smashed and I was so into the crazy frenzy Highway had created in that living room, I kept pounding.
Highway Jackson makes music that will cut your knuckles.
And there's good news for those about to Rock. Highway Jackson has an album set to drop this winter. The Dirty Bar Campaign. The title is a tribute to how they raised the money to record the album. Highway Jackson played shitty, dirty bar after shitty, dirty bar to raise the funds.
Maybe that's why Tyler and Kris didn't look so out of place in that arsonist's paradise.
And now, what's more impressive is that they've vowed to never play a cover gig again. They are focusing now on their music, on Highway Jackson. This album is their Rubicon and they're crossing it. The phrase 'Point of No Return' is a bit cliche, but it's true in this case. If TDBC tanks, that's it. You won't get a chance to truly Rock again.
That's such a Rock statement, too. Paying tribute to their Dirty Bar Campaign... and promising to leave it.
1/23/09 - Episode 2 left out for respect of the Lost Session.
The Band: Highway Jackson
Kris: Vox and Guitar
Tyler: Guitar and backing vox
(not pictured)
Corey: Bass
Brandon: Guitar
Mike: Drums
The Scene:
The basement is oppressive. It's a mess, and as you come down the stairs, you see a couch that was built during the fashionably worst part of the Carter administration. And it's beat to hell, to boot.
Beyond the couch, bags of trash lie helter-skelter among empty cardboard boxes, ramshackle furniture decays in heaps, a menacing barrel sits on a homebrew sawhorse. It looks to be full of oil. Rags and boxes lead an incendiary trail to the oil burner. The oil tank stands across from that. The place is a tinder-keg. The slightest spark will send the whole building up like Pompeii.
And yet it still smells like someone smokes cigarettes here regularly.
The band sits at the far end of the basement in a pool of orange and white light. The walls around them shed bricks into piles on the floor. "The band" in this case is a loose interpretation. Two members of a five person band play acoustic guitars in a thoroughly dank basement. Generally the band, Highway Jackson, is absolutely plowing through some Classic Rock shit in a dingy bar. But when they do it, they positively blow it out. It's the garage band you wanted to hear in the Seventies. Highway Jackson brings back the oldest meaning of "Rock." The band is energetic and effective. Their music, while brutal, is finely rehearsed, well practiced. It's an effective weapon of localized intensity. The sonic wall strikes powerful and precise like a heavyweight's jab.
But tonight it's just Kris and Tyler, sitting in a fire hazard and playing acoustic music. To each other. It's like bringing a tyrannosaurus to a flower show. Completely emasculating.
But they still Rock. It's like trying to take away all that raw power just makes it stronger. Or maybe it's just that these guys just Rock.
And we're talking about Rock with a capital 'R' here. We're not talking about rock like the word has been bandied about lately. We're talking about the music that made your grandparents cringe. We're talking about the music that was burned in vinyl bonfires in front of Baptist churches.
We're talking about Rock.
And they say "Rock is dead." They say the scene has moved on. They say "Rock? Isn't that, like, so 1970s?"
Well... yes. In a way they're right. But Highway Jackson - these guys - these guys make you pine for when Rock wasn't a dirty word. These guys bleed Rock. When you hear this music, just about anyone can acknowledge a new desire... a desire to actually Rock.
Hearing the music over the radio your whole life, you associate the term "Rock" with your parents and what they listened to. You don't understand its hugeness. So when contemporary musicians re-examine it, Rock becomes so much more powerful. It's an epiphany. It's the mythology happening again. All those things you'd heard about... they're happening in front of you.
Highway Jackson brings back the meaning of rock. You can't help but think, "Yeah... I'm rocking." Don't hide it! It's nothing to be ashamed of! Highway Jackson can be that release you need. You don't have to restrain the Rock when you're listening to Highway. You just let this music take you to that raw, primal place.
Highway Jackson represents the past of rock and roll in a lot of ways. When you hear the covers, for instance, they're spot on. HJ gives a show where you can call for "Freebird!" unironically and where you can feel comfortable rocking out to it.
A True Story: Highway Jackson was playing a show I was attending. They started playing Freebird and the house went crazy. It was the driving power behind the song that infected everyone... foot stamping, wild thrashing, jumping and headbanging were reinvented in the living room that night. I was pounding away to the beat in the back of the room with a bottle against a counter. The bottle smashed and I was so into the crazy frenzy Highway had created in that living room, I kept pounding.
Highway Jackson makes music that will cut your knuckles.
And there's good news for those about to Rock. Highway Jackson has an album set to drop this winter. The Dirty Bar Campaign. The title is a tribute to how they raised the money to record the album. Highway Jackson played shitty, dirty bar after shitty, dirty bar to raise the funds.
Maybe that's why Tyler and Kris didn't look so out of place in that arsonist's paradise.
And now, what's more impressive is that they've vowed to never play a cover gig again. They are focusing now on their music, on Highway Jackson. This album is their Rubicon and they're crossing it. The phrase 'Point of No Return' is a bit cliche, but it's true in this case. If TDBC tanks, that's it. You won't get a chance to truly Rock again.
That's such a Rock statement, too. Paying tribute to their Dirty Bar Campaign... and promising to leave it.
Episode 1: The Horse's Ass Fits The Horse
[dog] And [pony] Episode One - Dead End Armory
1/20/09
The Band: Dead End Armory
Wes: Vox and Guitar
Chris: Drums and Backing Vocals
Mike: Guitar
Matthew: Bass
The Scene:
Nick and I are driving to the practice space, a house near outer Washington Avenue. We've got the street it's on but the directions given to Nick were "I think it's number 25."
We pass a jeep and a motorcycle parked in the street by the snowbank. I don't know if the motorcycle has been driven lately... but it is the middle of January and the road isn't all that well plowed.
"That's probably the house," I say. Nick calls.
It is.
As we unload our equipment someone pokes his head out, "Just come on in and down into the basement!"
We walk down dark stairs to a dark and scattered basement practice area. The whole place is an incredible testament to some mad, DIY architect. Makeshift walls abound, some wooden, some curtains, one tarp. I spent three hours down there and I'm not sure I saw everything.
The bassist, Matthew, is setting up his equipment against the wall. "There's another band that practices on Nevada Street, you know."
"Oh? Who?" asks Nick as I take in the room.
"The Rattlesnakes," says Wes.
As Nick and Wes rattle on about what they sound like, I try and take in the room. It's not small - it's not big either - but it's cramped by a low ceiling that hangs at odd angles. There's foam egg crate patches stapled pell mell on the walls.
"Sound Baffling?" I ask.
"Yeah," says Matt, "They never finished the sound proofing."
Wes, Matthew and Mike are setting up while Chris drags his extra drum kit out of the space.
Wes tries to explain why the basement looks like it does, "That's Brent. He's the architect."
He's stooped over cables, yells, "BRENT!"
No response.
I'm directed out of the practice room, across the stair landing and into a sort of waiting room. Couches, ash trays, empty cans of bali shag. A leaking furnace. One of the walls is tarp, the other is curtains.
"You gotta sorta go through the curtains... you'll see it."
I pass under the curtains but I can't really see anything. It's dark. There's what looks like a wide door with a light behind it. As my eyes adjust I see various and sundry electronic bits lying around. There's an anatomical poster hanging up. I see the room extends back a bit.
I hear bubbling.
Matthew sticks his head in and points at the door. "It's a swinging trap door. Brent sleeps back there, under the stairs."
I never did meet Brent.
Back in the practice room the band is ready. I'm directed to the back to a small booth with a computer and several mixing boards in it. Dead End Armory likes to record their practices. A lot of published material is generated from just tooling around at practice. They've learned that good things happen in practices... but they can't always be replicated even a cigarette later.
Dead End Armory started in 2005. They called themselves The Easterlies for about a month, then another band in West Coast Portland (it's always the other fucking Portland) challenged their name. They've been Dead End Armory ever since.
The lineup has changed over the years, although Wes, Mike and Chris have been the core. As they break into their first song you can tell they're used to each other. Wes, Chris and Mike all know what the others will be doing. Matthew watches for cues, trying to read the rest of the band.
He's only been playing with them for three weeks or so now, though.
We all chat and joke. Every now and then Wes will stand up to open the basement window and vent the room of smoke.
It's Mike's house. And Brent's, I assume, although he might've come with the house for all I know. Another guy who lives there used to play bass for the band, Chris tells me.
Chris also says Wes is a resident. "I'm on the couch," he clarifies.
We go back to playing for a bit. The band's sound is pretty good. Unique. Wes's voice is unique. Nasal and grating in just the right way. He can't sing in a way that just works. He hits the notes and makes the growls. He screams right.
Wes says he can pick melodies out of Chris's drumming. I believe it. He slams away even between songs.
From observation over the years, I think every drummer does this. Pay attention the next time you're at a gig.
And as Mike explores the chord progressions... emphasizing and plucking along... it all just... gels. It's nice. It's energetic. It's got a wild focus.
Matthew's basswork is simple and fills the sound out... but the ad requesting a bassist was tailored to get just that. It's what they need. A simple line to anchor on to as vox, guitar and drums swing wildly about.
The band and the space they play in are in synch. They're home there. The music is wild and unpolished and the basement's labyrinthine, unfinished rooms reflect that.
That might sound a bit negative, I don't mean it to be. Both basement and music are purposed. Both resonate. Both are ultimately cool. It's a place you want to experience and it's music you should hear. Even if it doesn't suit your particular style of music, it's worth experiencing at least once.
Much like it's worth at least one trip to a basement on outer Washington.
1/20/09
The Band: Dead End Armory
Wes: Vox and Guitar
Chris: Drums and Backing Vocals
Mike: Guitar
Matthew: Bass
The Scene:
Nick and I are driving to the practice space, a house near outer Washington Avenue. We've got the street it's on but the directions given to Nick were "I think it's number 25."
We pass a jeep and a motorcycle parked in the street by the snowbank. I don't know if the motorcycle has been driven lately... but it is the middle of January and the road isn't all that well plowed.
"That's probably the house," I say. Nick calls.
It is.
As we unload our equipment someone pokes his head out, "Just come on in and down into the basement!"
We walk down dark stairs to a dark and scattered basement practice area. The whole place is an incredible testament to some mad, DIY architect. Makeshift walls abound, some wooden, some curtains, one tarp. I spent three hours down there and I'm not sure I saw everything.
The bassist, Matthew, is setting up his equipment against the wall. "There's another band that practices on Nevada Street, you know."
"Oh? Who?" asks Nick as I take in the room.
"The Rattlesnakes," says Wes.
As Nick and Wes rattle on about what they sound like, I try and take in the room. It's not small - it's not big either - but it's cramped by a low ceiling that hangs at odd angles. There's foam egg crate patches stapled pell mell on the walls.
"Sound Baffling?" I ask.
"Yeah," says Matt, "They never finished the sound proofing."
Wes, Matthew and Mike are setting up while Chris drags his extra drum kit out of the space.
Wes tries to explain why the basement looks like it does, "That's Brent. He's the architect."
He's stooped over cables, yells, "BRENT!"
No response.
I'm directed out of the practice room, across the stair landing and into a sort of waiting room. Couches, ash trays, empty cans of bali shag. A leaking furnace. One of the walls is tarp, the other is curtains.
"You gotta sorta go through the curtains... you'll see it."
I pass under the curtains but I can't really see anything. It's dark. There's what looks like a wide door with a light behind it. As my eyes adjust I see various and sundry electronic bits lying around. There's an anatomical poster hanging up. I see the room extends back a bit.
I hear bubbling.
Matthew sticks his head in and points at the door. "It's a swinging trap door. Brent sleeps back there, under the stairs."
I never did meet Brent.
Back in the practice room the band is ready. I'm directed to the back to a small booth with a computer and several mixing boards in it. Dead End Armory likes to record their practices. A lot of published material is generated from just tooling around at practice. They've learned that good things happen in practices... but they can't always be replicated even a cigarette later.
Dead End Armory started in 2005. They called themselves The Easterlies for about a month, then another band in West Coast Portland (it's always the other fucking Portland) challenged their name. They've been Dead End Armory ever since.
The lineup has changed over the years, although Wes, Mike and Chris have been the core. As they break into their first song you can tell they're used to each other. Wes, Chris and Mike all know what the others will be doing. Matthew watches for cues, trying to read the rest of the band.
He's only been playing with them for three weeks or so now, though.
We all chat and joke. Every now and then Wes will stand up to open the basement window and vent the room of smoke.
It's Mike's house. And Brent's, I assume, although he might've come with the house for all I know. Another guy who lives there used to play bass for the band, Chris tells me.
Chris also says Wes is a resident. "I'm on the couch," he clarifies.
We go back to playing for a bit. The band's sound is pretty good. Unique. Wes's voice is unique. Nasal and grating in just the right way. He can't sing in a way that just works. He hits the notes and makes the growls. He screams right.
Wes says he can pick melodies out of Chris's drumming. I believe it. He slams away even between songs.
From observation over the years, I think every drummer does this. Pay attention the next time you're at a gig.
And as Mike explores the chord progressions... emphasizing and plucking along... it all just... gels. It's nice. It's energetic. It's got a wild focus.
Matthew's basswork is simple and fills the sound out... but the ad requesting a bassist was tailored to get just that. It's what they need. A simple line to anchor on to as vox, guitar and drums swing wildly about.
The band and the space they play in are in synch. They're home there. The music is wild and unpolished and the basement's labyrinthine, unfinished rooms reflect that.
That might sound a bit negative, I don't mean it to be. Both basement and music are purposed. Both resonate. Both are ultimately cool. It's a place you want to experience and it's music you should hear. Even if it doesn't suit your particular style of music, it's worth experiencing at least once.
Much like it's worth at least one trip to a basement on outer Washington.
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