Amy LaVere: dark, suspenseful and fun

Think there’s only room for one redheaded spitfire woman who started out playing a mix of early rock and earthy Americana but has evolved into a more mature, finely textured artist? Well, move over, Neko Case. Memphis-based singer/songwriter/double bassist Amy LaVere is not just on the road, she’s on the road to recovery. Her new album, Stranger Me, is a collection of goodbye songs, composed in the wake of losing a guitarist to the Hold Steady, a drummer — her boyfriend — to a romantic break-up, and her mentor, legendary Southerner and producer Jim Dickinson, to the great beyond. Such times would surely undo a lesser mortal, but LaVere perseveres. The drummer returned to make the record, and a new producer, one whose previous project was engineering last year’s Grammy-winning Album of the Year, by Arcade Fire, was hired.

LEO: Are you able to do music as a full-time job?
Amy LaVere: Well, I would say mostly full-time. When I have a little too long of down time, I end up getting in a situation, scrambling around to put up work. Typically, I do music full-time. At least, I’ve been able to for the past 5 months…

LEO: Your persona in your songs is that of a bad-ass. How much of that is what you’re really like, and how much is playing a role?
AL: (laughs) Interesting question … I don’t know. I guess I’m pretty comfortable. Some days more than other days, but… I guess I do have some pride in the fact that I am a really hard worker; I think I have a pretty broad perspective on my life and how to run it, I suppose.

LEO: Do you think your experiences, and getting older, have helped with that?
AL: Absolutely. I think it’s helped with not taking myself too seriously. I think I’ve got a healthy sense of humor. I actually kind of welcome the challenges that this sort of lifestyle brings. It’s a very bi-polar lifestyle (laughs), you know, it’s really good and really bad.

LEO: Do you identify with that personally? Or just have a good perspective on it?
AL: I wouldn’t say that I was bi-polar! It’s the lifestyle that’s bi-polar. No, I’m pretty good about rollin’ with it. I have a great ability to compartmentalize in my life, and I’m getting a lot better at it. I’m not overly prepared, and I don’t look backwards. I live in the moment.

LEO: Did moving around a lot as a child influence that?
AL: I traveled a lot as a child… I guess so.

LEO: Do you think that that helped make you a better observer of people?
AL: Well, I would think so; but, I have an older sister that was brought up with this gypsy lifestyle, like I was, and – I definitely think that we gained a much bigger, broader perspective than a lot of kids we were meeting – I think it definitely influenced my decision to have a nomadic lifestyle as an adult, whereas my sister, she’s married with three kids and has lived in the same house for sixteen years. It was really important to her that her children knew the same kids that they went to elementary school with throughout their lives. I don’t think that she really wanted that for her children, for her adult life. I’m somewhat addicted to it.

LEO: Do you feel bad for her in some ways?
AL: No, really, we go back and forth about being envious of each other. I was just there this last weekend, I flew in to go to my niece’s graduation. I hadn’t seen them in a year and a half. They have such a beautiful family, it’s really nice to see. Sometimes I look at it and go, “God, I’m missing so much…” I’m sure some times – well, I know from her, “Oh, you’re so lucky, you get to see so much and do so much…” It’s one of those things.

LEO: It's probably good that you're not both out there, competing for record sales.
AL: (laughs) No, I 'd probably help her out. I don't have much of a competitive spirit.

LEO: Does that hold you back?
AL: No, I do try to challenge myself, at every opportunity that comes up. I blindly take on things that are out of my realm of experience, I do that all the time. I enjoy it, whether I'm bad at it or good at it; I'd rather be doing that than sitting on the couch being a fat American.

LEO: (laughs) Well, I can understand that. Your restless spirit reflects itself in your music, which jumps from genre to genre. Do you think that helps you or holds you back in any ways?
AL: Oh, well, umm... No. I really don't put a whole lot of energy into that, because you never know what someone might make of it or think of it, and I just don't really concern myself too much with it. If I don't like it, then I'm failing myself. And I mean, hell, nobody likes just one style of music anyway, as far as I know. Different stories that I'm telling demand a different sort of feel or production on them. I just sort of get in the middle and swim in it, when it comes to what the production's going to be or how the song's going to come out. I just can't worry about it so much. I mean, I understand how people to label things or compartmentalize things when it comes to describing music, for sales and things, but I'm not in marketing. That's not my responsibility. I just do my part, the best I can, and hope that it gets sorted out.

LEO: When you meet someone, and they ask, "What kind of music do you play?", what do you tell them?
AL: My blanket statement is, It's an amalgamation of all kinds of great music. (laughs). It's really tough. Sometimes I'll just say, "It's rock 'n' roll." What would you say it is?

LEO: I like what you said.
AL: (laughs)
LEO: I don't think I could do any better than that. You could put it on a shirt, even.
AL: (laughs) Yeah! "It's the music I like."

LEO: What can we expect from your live show?
AL: It's a four-piece band. I think it's suspenseful. It's dark, suspenseful and fun.
LEO: That sounds good.
AL: Yeah, I think it's good. Music from tense moments.
LEO: Tense in fun ways?
AL: Yeah, tense in fun ways. It's definitely a listening show.

Amy LaVere with Tristen
Wednesday, July 20
Uncle Slayton’s
1017 E. Broadway • 657-9555
www.amylavere.com
$13; 8 p.m.

c. 2011 LEO Weekly

Cheer-Accident, in a Louisville context

Since 1981, Chicago’s Cheer-Accident has been thrilling a loyal gang of followers with their fluctuating art-rock attack, often embellished by a rotating collection of some of the Windy City’s many fine and simpatico musicians. They return to Louisville to promote their 17th album, No Ifs, Ands or Dogs. LEO caught up with founder and drummer Thymme Jones.



LEO: How would you describe your music to someone who hasn’t heard you yet?
Thymme Jones: I’ve given up on that one. Literally, I just tell people, “You just kinda have to hear it.” I could just go the “blank-meets-blank-meets-blank” route, but a lot of people would just draw a blank on the blanks. Plus, I like to think the whole is much greater than the sum of its blanks.

LEO: Where do you find ideas for your songs?
TJ: Where I’ve misplaced them.

LEO: How do your surroundings inspire your music?
TJ: By keeping quiet.

LEO: Do you consider your group more of a rock band or experimental project?
TJ: Rock/pop/experimental in equal measure. And we measure often (way more often than we cut).

LEO: In the studio, how much do you try to capture your live sound? How free do you feel to experiment with sounds you might not be able to recreate live?
TJ: I consider the studio and live to be completely different animals. We feel 100-percent free to experiment with sounds we would never (in a million years) be able to recreate live. The word “recreate” is key here: I think what I like best about both live performance and the studio is, in either context, we are not really recreating, but creating. There are things that can happen with a live song, in terms of it being a real-time event with an audience, that could never happen in a studio setting. We may have played a song a hundred times, but we’re still making many varying choices (ostensibly, improvising within a given structure) each time we play it, and so it is a creative act. Conversely, we’re not recording a song in the studio merely so we can successfully recreate it at a later date — we’re trying to come up with something that makes sense in that moment, with those particular sounds.

So many contradictions, so little time! As you can see, the studio setting and the live setting are exactly the same in that they both involve interacting with the present moment, with little concern for subsequent re-enactment. However, we never feel any need to “capture” our live sound in the studio (“sound” isn’t the only aspect of “live,” so why bother?), and we never feel any need to “play the song exactly the way it is on the album.” Or, for that matter, play any of the songs on the album at all. I’m a big fan of context: Sitting at home listening to music is much different than being at a venue listening to music, so it seems like a good idea to treat the two quite differently.

LEO: Does your music ever make you horny?
TJ: That’s a chicken-or-the-egg question if I’ve ever heard one! OK, well, I’ll kill two chickens with one egg here: Music, and all art, is a result of horniness. Horniness is just a god-awful word, though, so let’s just stick to the trumpet.

LEO: What do you think of Louisville?
TJ: I love Louisville. Louisville used to love us. And then it stopped. But I think it’s going to pick back up with that idea again.

Cheer-Accident with The Teeth and Softcheque
www.cheer-accident.com
Friday, July 22 • Cahoots
1047 Bardstown Road
454-6687
$5; 9 p.m.

c. 2011 LEO Weekly

J.D. Crowe and the new generation

Native Kentuckian J.D. Crowe is a legendary bluegrass banjo player who started with Jimmy Martin 55 years ago and then, in the early 1970s, went on to lead his own influential group, the New South. He returns to us for a free concert on the square in downtown Corydon, Ind. LEO enjoyed a warm conversation with the master.



LEO: Where do you call home these days?
J.D. Crowe: I live in Nicholasville, Ky. It’s a suburb of Lexington — now (laughs). I’ve seen a lot of changes through the years, yes. I think it’s good.

LEO: You’ve seen a lot of changes in your music career, too.
JDC: Ninety percent of it’s been good, 10 percent of it not too good. But for the most part, it’s been good, the growth and everything — you gotta have it. If you don’t, things get stale. There’s some parts of it that’s … I won’t get into that, some of that’s kind of a personal thing. I tell you what, the recording industry is kind of in a slump. I think the Internet, it may be all right, but I think it’s hurt, in a way. It sure hurts our CD sales, from people going to the music stores and buying them like they used to. It’s definitely hurt, but in other ways, you can get on there and instead of buying the whole CD, you can buy one song. It comes out about the same, probably.

LEO: Has the Internet been helpful for gaining new fans?
JDC: Oh, yeah. I think the Internet has helped as far as getting exposed to the music where they can’t be exposed otherwise. Because not that many bands travel abroad to play, so they don’t get to hear a lot of the pure bluegrass that we do over here. But they get on the Internet, and everybody’s got a website where they can hear and see cuts of the bands. I’ve had requests from other countries to send them a CD. I’ve had some notes from France, Australia, Finland — of course, Japan. I’ve been in Japan and Europe a couple of times. It’s very sparse, though.
LEO: Do you mostly tour in the summer these days?
JDC: I’m on the road about 50 days a year. That’s all I want. It’s tiresome. I been there, done that, those 200-days-a-year deals; I don’t want to do that anymore.

LEO: You’ve also played with some rock bands and jam bands.
JDC: It’s amazing how many people they draw, (laughs) as opposed to bluegrass. That’s what always amazed me. And I know why, too — it’s the media. They’re always pushing the rock ’n’ roll; it just appeals to these younger people. That’s the whole deal. I’m not specifically talking about Louisville or Lexington — I’m talking about worldwide. Your TV, your big musical stations — it’s all over, it’s not local. It’s a different era right now than it used to be. People think different, everything’s just different. You just roll with the flow, that’s it. I don’t worry about it, there’s no use to do that. So just do what you’re doing and let everybody do what they do — everybody’s happy.

LEO: You have some younger bluegrass fans, too, who’ll come to see you.
JDC: They do, they do. Probably not enough (laughs). But hopefully they’ll come around.

LEO: Any plans to make a new record soon?
JDC: I’ve slowed down on that. I probably should. My last’s been out probably five or six years. We’ll probably do another one. At this stage of the game, I don’t worry about things too much. It is important to have a new CD out, I think it’s very important, it’s just that I don’t right now. We’re looking for songs, I’m trying to do something different; when we get ready, we’ll go in and start.

LEO: What can we expect from your live show?
JDC: I think we do probably about an hour and 15 or so. You can bring anyone. It’s a family-oriented show, that’s for sure. You don’t have to worry about that. I can’t guarantee the rest of it … (laughs), but I know what we do! Basically, it’s a good show, sure is. It’s a listening show. As I tell people, we’re not a dance band. We don’t do dance music. We prefer not to, let me put it that way (laughs). That’s a little out of our league.

J.D. Crowe and the New South with Hog Operation
Saturday, July 23
Corydon Square
310 N. Elm St., Corydon, Ind.
888-738-2137
www.thisisindiana.org
Free; 4 p.m.

c. 2011 LEO Weekly