The music year in review

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This was an exceptional year in many ways for the ever-thriving Louisville music scene. LEO received almost a hundred records from our neighbors alone, a healthy sign of a fertile bed.

Americana quartet Houndmouth came from out of seemingly nowhere (well, OK, New Albany) and went from playing to dozens to selling out Headliners Music Hall, releasing their first EP through London’s Rough Trade Records, recording their first full-length, and touring around the country.

The Forecastle Festival celebrated its 10th anniversary with the biggest and best fest yet, co-curated by My Morning Jacket, who enjoyed another year of touring, seeing a million faces, and rocking them all.

Wax Fang returned, though without drummer Kevin Ratterman, who finally moved his recording studio out of his family’s funeral home, making it slightly less weird but much more functional.

In the wake of ear X-tacy’s demise, several smaller, more niche-oriented stores popped up (often inside other stores) and kept buyers supplied with everything from vintage vinyl to new underground cassettes.

The most important news this year was also the worst, as musician, artist and writer Jason Noble passed across the eighth dimension, after a three-year fight for his life. The legacy he left was far greater than his circumstances, and he will live on forever in the hearts of everyone he impacted.

On a happier note, here’s a look back at some of the music LEO critics enjoyed listening to, discussing and writing about this year:

The Filthy Fifteen
Filthy Rich
Producer, bassist and beatmaker Richard Herrell worked his contacts list to put together his first “producer album” with some of the city’s nastiest emcees. Rich’s production is dark, brooding — think Dre’s minor key melancholia with a boom-bap bend. — Damien McPherson

Grand National Dreams
Jalin Roze
Grand National Dreams is, simply, great. The title is a double entendre, a paean to the 1980s car, but more fittingly, a horizon-deep look at the future — a glimpse to Jalin’s expanse beyond our borders and to his grand national reality. — DM

Half Asleep Upon Echo Falls
Whistle Peak
Highly recommended for lovers of sounds both familiar and surprising, this makes quiet sound confident and vibrant while retaining bouncy hooks and harmonies. — PB

Little Heater
Catherine Irwin
Catherine Irwin is nothing if not patient. Her songs are leisurely and deliberate, seductive in their Southern Gothic charms for those who let them take over. Irwin’s songs are beautiful but dark, tinged with a pinch of humor and a pound of lonesome, and her country has more in common with Hank Sr. or Hazel Dickens than modern pop stars like Blake Shelton. — PB

Look Harder
Actual People
CJ Prof is one of the most aggressive yet nimble emcees you’ll ever hear. The passion, anger and humor he displays throughout the disc will carry the group as far as they’re willing to travel. The production is a dense, at times murky gumbo of rock guitar, breakbeats and live deejaying. — DM

Melt
The Pass
Melt stands out in contrast against a wash of hybrid indie-disco-punk-dance bands with accomplished songwriting and remarkably pristine production. — Jon Paul Hill

On a Passing Cloud
Murals
Murals have been subtly honing their craft for a while now, concocting an indie-psych buzz sound from an earlier era, or at least a different time zone. — PB

Our Home Is a Deathbed
Xerxes
With a multidimensional approach to hardcore — from thrashing caustic punk to more emotional, swelling melodic moments — Xerxes craft a focused vision that gives Home a dense and unique vibe. — Austin Weber

Red Parole
Seluah
Seluah’s long-gestating first full-length album is nothing short of a masterpiece. A hypothetical soundtrack for a chilling, sexed-up Nicholas Ray film noir filled with double-crossings, misbegotten sex and stolen money, Red Parole is a precise, sensual overload of cutting riffs, floating rhythms and haunting vocals. — PB

Sandpaper Dolls
Sandpaper Dolls
Each song, although a cappella, has percussive elements, a bassline and a melody. That percussion is reflected in various shapes and forms on their self-titled studio album. The occasional echo gives the three-part harmonies an otherworldly, timeless quality. — Danielle Sills

We’re looking forward to a lot next year, including new music from Wax Fang, Liberation Prophecy, Cheyenne Mize, Johnny Berry & the Outliers, Appalatin, Justin Paul Lewis, the aforementioned Houndmouth, plus Jim James’ long-awaited first solo album. We’re excited to get our world rocked by the next left-field surprise, and thankful for another year of sharing the adventure with you.

Photo by Ron Jasin.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

People Issue - The Healer: Kim Carpenter

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When you go to see Dr. Kim Carpenter, she does not play around.

“Our approach to health is looking at you as a whole person, and then we address the way you eat, the way you move, the way you think, and the way that you live your life through your nervous system, to see what you would need to do to be healthier over the next five years.”

Dr. Carpenter is an athletic mother of two young kids, a chiropractor and the owner of Awaken to Wellness in St. Matthews. She agrees with my attempt to summarize it as a one-stop shop combining trips to the doctor, the gym, yoga and other medical hot spots.

Her facility also includes massage and acupuncture treatments, and they work with people’s eating issues, customizing meal plans. These plans help weight loss as well as balancing blood sugar and helping to wean people off processed foods, what she calls “getting you to eat real, live food.”

Some people come because they’re in physical pain. Some “know that, with our current health care system, the average person is sicker in five years, not healthier, and they want to find out ways that they can stay well.” It takes a variety of approaches to work with a variety of problems, and they see patients from babies to the elderly.

If it sounds like an alternative approach to medicine, Carpenter doesn’t disagree. Do people ever tell her what she does sounds weird? “Oh, yeah!” she laughs. “Unfortunately, in our culture, what I do is alternative medicine, or alternative health, and I think until our country decides that being pro-active would be the norm, then we will continue to be a sick culture … When mainstream health care is about lifestyle, that’s when we’ll see a shift in the way people live.”

Carpenter played volleyball in high school and college, and doctor visits for back pain led her to change her diet, improving her health and reducing those Ohio Valley allergies. By high school, her life’s work was laid out for her. Today she also continues to work with athletes in high schools, at the University of Louisville, and at the pro level.

But Carpenter isn’t the only successful professional in her family. Her sister Jennifer, who knew what she wanted to do while still in grade school, has carved out a career playing some of the unhealthiest Americans in fictional entertainment, as the title character in the movie “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” and as the foul-mouthed, brother-loving Debra Morgan on Showtime’s “Dexter.”

“Both my parents are very driven individuals in their own way,” Carpenter says. “They both gave us freedom, taught us the value of things, and the quality of not only material things but of people. They both just let us be who we were … We had no idea that certain things, to some people, wouldn’t seem possible. Anything we wanted to achieve was possible with hard work, determination and confidence.”

Family is central to Carpenter in every way; she says that families do even better with her program than individuals because they’re accountable to each other, not just to the doctor. Not everyone is ready for her approach, but she’ll be there when they are.

“The challenges in life are the exact same reasons why I’m happier and healthier down the road,” she says. “They teach you the most.”

Photo by Frankie Steele.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

People Issue - The Radio Host: Berk Bryant

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When public radio is at its best, it brings music, community and a strong point of view together in a way that can’t be faked. And while WFPK-FM has a heaping handful of local talent, none can quite be compared to Berk Bryant, the authentically genial host of “Sunday Bluegrass.”

Aged 82 years, Bryant’s both a radio and Army veteran, and a bluegrass lifer. He got his start in radio in his hometown of Lynchburg, Va., in 1954. “Then,” he says, “bluegrass was country. It was all called country” before mainstream country music evolved and became more distinct from the pure ’grass, old time and traditional country Bryant shares each week. “I like my bluegrass bluegrass. If you don’t know what to call what you’re playing, don’t call it bluegrass!”

Bryant served in Korea, worked for 12 years as a counter-intelligence special agent, and ran the closed-circuit radio station at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In his last decade of active service, Bryant was sent to Oahu, Hawaii (“somebody messed up,” he laughs), then Fort Knox, and in his last year, back to Korea. “I didn’t mind that, because there are a lot worse places,” says Bryant. He retired in 1982, having reached the rank of sergeant first class.

Through the years, he met a young Elvis Presley and befriended John Hartford, the riverboat man and influential singer-songwriter, and Ralph Stanley, the “Man of Constant Sorrow.” He doesn’t play any instruments himself. “When they’re talking about music and say ‘key,’ a key to me is something you start the car with,” he laughs.

He began his WFPK show — say it with me now, “the shortest, fastest and bestest three hours in radio” — in 1989, seeking to fill a void in the station’s programming. “Friends of mine in Radcliff,” where he lives now, “who knew about my love for the music asked me, ‘Why don’t you go to public radio?’” A couple years later, he showed up.

“I didn’t know anybody there, and nobody there knew me. I just asked to see the manager.” That manager was interested in Bryant’s idea but commented that the station didn’t really have much bluegrass. Bryant told him he had plenty at home. The manager asked, “Do you think you have enough to sustain a one-hour show?”

“‘Yeah, I think so’ … 23 years later …” laughs the man who gave himself the nickname “The Country Gentleman.” Two years later, the show had expanded to its present three-hour length, heard Sunday nights from 8-11 p.m. On New Year’s Day, he’ll also continue his two-decade-long tradition of playing nothing but Hank Williams music between noon and 3 p.m. on WFPK.

He drives in from Radcliff each week to share the best of today and yesterday from his collection of more than 1,000 CDs, some 45s and “close to 20 linear feet of LPs.” A large part of his happy longevity on the air can be explained by one simple fact: “No one tells me what to play.”

Photo by Casey Chalmers.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Vice Tricks jump up and down

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I’m not a sick boy, I’m not a well boy
I’m just a man who likes his music really, really loud. —“Rock & Roll”

King and Verity Vice are a couple made for each other, like Lulu and Sailor in “Wild at Heart” or Johnny and June. The leaders of the self-described “Psycho Rock” band Vice Tricks, they are proud parents of a new album, the self-titled full-length debut of their four-year-old band.

After releasing a couple of EPs recorded with friends “in exchange for getting them stoned,” the band — which also includes guitarist Jeremy Climer and drummer Ian Bottomley — went to Sneak Attack Studios in Lexington to document their sound professionally, having won the studio time in a competition.

Singer/songwriter/guitarist King, who downplays his first name, Jeremy, professionally, and Vice — known to the government as Verity Jones — met 15 years ago at a show he was playing at Pandemonium on Bardstown Road and quickly became “best friends,” they agree, from the motorcycle ride they took through Cherokee Park the next day through today.

Vice began playing her signature upright bass while King was still playing with his old band, Dead City Rejects, which lasted a decade. When that ended, “I wanted to start something new,” King says, “so I asked her to join, and we started this band.”

They were called Parlor Tricks first. “We changed it because we thought it didn’t really fit the direction of the music,” Vice says, as King adds, “Plus, there were five other bands out there called Parlor Tricks,” in addition to the long-running local band Parlour.

Their band is “a weird twist on a couple different genres,” King says. “We mix in kind of the old rockabilly, the faster psychobilly, but then we have pianos and keytars in it, but the overall feel is … I think we’d compare it to the Stray Cats meets Social Distortion …” Vice chimes in, “Meets Nekromantix meets … I would just, as a broad generalization, call it psychobilly/punk rock/rock ’n’ roll.”

“I would describe it as awesome,” she concludes with a big laugh. “Awesomeness on a stick!”

Vice had always loved the upright bass, and a friend working at Doo Wop Shop gave her a good deal on one. “I fell in love with it, and I love the physical challenge of it, and — I love it. I wouldn’t play anything else.”

“It’s fun to jump on,” adds King. “I do a lot of tricks with it,” Vice laughs.

Guitarist Climer joined the band a year ago, helping the spry King be able to put his guitar down more often, and “jump around and climb on things,” adding to the appeal of the live show.

The Vice Tricks album also documents the contributions made by their keyboardist, Evmenios Poulias, better known to fans as Dr. Evil. Poulias has returned to his native Greece, where he is a third-generation dentist in his family’s practice. Having come to the United States four years ago for a residency, Poulias joined the band a year and a half ago, having been recommended by “a friend of a friend of a friend” on Facebook.

“It was love at first sight. We practiced and it was like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s it!” says Vice. “We miss him terribly.” Poulias is scheduled to return to Louisville for Saturday’s record release show.

“We were sad to see him go,” agrees King. “The last show we did, his friends kept bringing up shots of Drambuie. He ended up on the ground — playing with one hand, drinking with the other.”

They’re not going to replace him. “There’s no way,” says Vice. “We’re gonna rock it out as the band we are without him.” His girlfriend has roots in Louisville, so he’ll be back often.

It’s a band made up of “do-it-yourself people,” Vice says, though they’ve used Kickstarter to try to keep going. True to their worldview, they asked for $666.

We’ve heard it all again that rock ’n’ roll is dead/
Not one time, not two times, but it’s your time/
Never believe it, never receive it/
cut you like a knife ’cause rock ’n’ roll ain’t dead.

Vice Tricks with The Queers, The Manges and Stoner Moms
Saturday, Dec. 29
Diamond Pub
630 Barret Ave.
diamondpubandbilliards.com
$10 (adv.), $12 (doors); 9 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Black and Blue and White

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White Reaper is a fuzz-rock explosion made up of two: guitarist and vocalist Anthony Esposito and drummer and “cassette tape technology” specialist Nick Wilkerson. Their debut album, White Aura, was released on Halloween. “We’re really influenced by fuzzy 1960s and 1970s kind of stuff, like Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath, but we’re also really influenced by more poppy stuff like the Beach Boys,” Esposito says.

When asked how they get some of the sounds that distinguish them, Wilkerson explains, “We use a delay pedal to make cool noises, and we recorded drums on a 4-track in our dear friend Hank Paradis’ barn.”

The North Oldham natives are finishing up their studies at MTSU and are returning to Louisville full time. Their next chapter starts with a show at the Rudyard Kipling tonight (Dec. 19), headlined by another of Wilkerson’s bands, The New Mexico, which has also included his twin brother Sam and Esposito.

“We grew up in Louisville, and we met each other when we went to school in Oldham County,” Wilkerson says. They bonded over hardcore shows and started playing together four years ago. They both decided to go to MTSU, 30 minutes from Nashville, to study audio production.

“We really liked Nashville, we went to some awesome shows, but we always had to bum rides from kids who had cars, so we also missed a lot of awesome shows,” Wilkerson laments. “We’re really excited about moving back because it was a lot harder for us to properly jam in a dorm room.”

Discouraged by the commuter nature of their school, the duo is excited to return home.

“Louisville is a place where we can practice whenever we want, record whenever we want, and we know a little bit more about how the Louisville scene works,” Wilkerson says. “Our plan is to write a ton and tour as much as possible. Basically, we want to do everything that we were too young to do in our previous bands. Now that we are older, we can work harder and we have bigger plans.”

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

We are young

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Jordan Trabue’s folk-rock quartet, Beady, was approached by sonaBLAST Records boss Gill Holland about a year and a half ago. The band has been playing together for three years, and half of the band (Jesse Weber-Owens, 17, who plays cello, banjo and percussion, and violinist Sarah Trabue, 16) is still in high school.

Jordan Trabue, 21, plays guitar, mandolin and banjo, and graduated from Middle Tennessee State this year. Dylan Weber-Owens, also 21 and also a guitarist and banjo player, is at U of L. The pair of siblings seems to have simple goals: “We play a bunch of different instruments, sing some harmonies, and generally try to have a good time,” says Jordan. But there might be more ambition under that laid-back approach.

“sonaBLAST has been great to work with,” he says. “They financed our first professionally recorded album, as well as our first music video.”

The album, the aptly named Youngest Days, was released earlier this week. The first video was for their song “When I’m Twenty.” Though half of the band has already passed that point, “We kept the song, though, because it’s fun and catchy.”

With a nod to the Beatles, Trabue is asked where he might be when he’s 64. He replies, “I hope that by the time I’m 64, we’ve made more songs so I’m not still singing about being 20. It might weird some people out.”

Another song, “You Belong in Louisville,” sounds like another contender for an anthem. Trabue acknowledges that it’s been suggested that he pitch the song to the tourist board, but he downplays the possibility.

“I’m not sure if it would work to attract tourists. I think it’s certainly a good song, if I’m allowed to say that about my own songs, but it’s sort of this sweet, low, mumble of a love song rather than something bright and catchy that tourist boards might go for.”

Beady performs live on WFPK’s “Live Lunch” on Friday and at the Douglass Loop Heine Brothers on Saturday at 3 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Sid Griffin finds himself

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Louisville native brings bluegrass overseas

“I have made about 16 albums, so I kinda have the hang of that,” says Sid Griffin, mandolinist and singer with the London-based band The Coal Porters.

It sounds like a boast, but it’s a well-earned statement of fact. While Griffin’s success in the marketplace hasn’t always equaled the level of respect he’s earned from other musicians and serious music junkies, he’s had a long, strange trip taking him from the seedy Hollywood clubs of the 1980s to today’s London pubs. And it all started in Louisville, back in 1955.

“To me, it was a dying city growing up,” Griffin says now. “Safe, kinda fun, full of my friends, but not a very adventurous or dynamic town to me at all.”

That may have just been a child’s perspective, or a fair assessment of that somewhat dull point in history, but as he grew, Griffin found some kindred spirits.

“Years later, when I got into NRBQ and remembered seeing the Oxfords about 1970, then I realized I had it all wrong — there was local talent.” Griffin also remembers attending a Trinity dance around 1967 and seeing a band called the Alphabetical Order, whose cover of the Stones’ “Under My Thumb” received airplay on WKLO.

He also saw Motley Kru — not the hair-metal legends — at another dance. “Musically, all the local bands in bars that I saw either played covers or were not very imaginative.”

Today, Griffin says, “parts of Louisville seem so vibrant.” He attributes this to the influence of hippies, punk rockers and gays. “You got a legitimate scene happening from the very people society doesn’t really like or respect.”

Even with a family and solid career, Griffin remains an outsider. He moved to England 15 years or so ago for love. The author of two books on Bob Dylan, Griffin has also seen his identity shift throughout his life in music. With his first popular band, The Long Ryders, Griffin was a pivotal figure in the early ’80s development of what is now often called “alt-country.”

Perhaps some of his eighth-generation Kentuckian roots were coming through — he has written a book on bluegrass, as well — but on the surface, at least, Griffin was merely continuing the legacy of Gram Parsons, another subject of a Griffin book.

His current band has been around for most of those 15 years. Time has seen The Coal Porters evolve from a rock band to what Griffin calls “the world’s first alt-bluegrass band.”

“There is a small scene for American roots music in England, but not nearly as big as Americans think. Not nearly,” he says. “All these folks come over to tour here or live here three months and think they can break it like Hendrix did by coming over in September ’66 … but that so rarely works.”

Griffin has seen other Yanks draw a crowd in London and think they’re on the way up. “Then they do a tour, and in Glasgow they draw 35, in Birmingham they draw 20, and in Newcastle upon Tyne they draw 15. I mean, it is tough out there.” Even Dolly Parton has trouble playing in England outside London, he notes.

“I think The Coal Porters stand out here as we have never thrown in the towel, and hence have a good reputation building up under us,” Griffin says. They were featured recently on NPR’s “Morning Edition” and on BBC Radio 2. “Certainly we are known for having an American in the band … I reckon we are about the only British ‘Americana’ act with an actual American in the ensemble. Which makes me laugh.”

It’s a relatively good time to be in a British Americana band, as Mumford & Sons have experienced, but Griffin has seen too much to expect a repeat of that story for his band. Find the One, their eighth album, was released in September, featuring production by John Wood and an appearance by guitar god Richard Thompson. It’s another chapter in the book of Griffin’s musical life, and it won’t be the last. About his current bandmates, he says wryly, “Some of the guys were making their first or second album when they made Find the One, the newest smash by The Coal Porters.”

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Father Figures’ zombie jazz

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There aren’t a lot of jazz musicians who are also good at marketing their music, but Father Figures’ leader Adam Schatz has found a hook. The band explains that “Zombie Jazz” is a name “… we made up to describe the music we made up: instinct driven. Wild when it wants to be, other times deliberate.” It certainly gets more attention than simply stating, “We’re another jazz band,” which they definitely aren’t.

Father Figures are five musicians with training and interest in jazz, rock and other forms of musical expression. Now based in Brooklyn, they came together in 2006 having met in music school at NYU, intending to form a mostly improvised group who sounded so in sync with each other that the audience would assume they were performing already completed material. “And all the while, we move toward the collective goal of listenability, fun and spontaneity.”

When they’re not having fun together, the members have also sat in with a diverse group of newer artists in the indie rock and electronic scenes, such as Matthew Dear, Buke & Gase, Hospitality, Those Darlins and Adam Green. When LEO spoke with Schatz recently, he had just been in the studio with cult favorites Man Man working on their upcoming album.

They come through Louisville on a brief tour heading from New York to New Orleans, hitting bars, art galleries and colleges in lieu of traditional jazz clubs. At Oberlin College, they’ll also be leading a workshop.

“One of the cool things about this tour is that we can do a lot of sides of the equation,” Schatz says. “We were sort of having a crisis in rehearsal, saying, ‘What are we going to be able to teach college kids?’”

They’ve led workshops before, teaching improv to high schoolers, but this will be their oldest group so far. They show students how they use physical cues to communicate with each other while improvising, then let students try before the band joins in with the kids. “It should be great, I don’t have any sincere fears about it,” Schatz continues, “but it’s funny when we’re in the basement, making each other laugh and being ridiculous, and then thinking about how we’re going to be teaching people.”

It’s their chemistry, in the basement and onstage, that keeps them going, says Schatz, despite the financial difficulties involved with such music. Having met in college, Father Figures has given them an excuse to stay friends, and a home base to return to with new tricks learned playing with others.

“I think audiences really connect with that, and I think it’s super-apparent that we want people to have as much fun listening to us as we do playing the music.”

Their latest release is an EP called Bad Bad Birds, and it’s available through their Bandcamp page, as is their self-titled debut album. They know they’re selling themselves to a younger audience, one infrequently attentive to jazz music. For this tour, they’ve also handmade unique beak creatures, akin to sock puppets, which contain copies of the EP in a USB port stored on the beak’s tongue. It’s music with a history, file-shared in a brand new way.

Father Figures with Mindhorn and Camera Lucida
Thursday, Dec. 13
Haymarket Whiskey Bar
331 E. Market St.
haymarketwhiskeybar.com
$5; 9 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Snow job

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What’s the deal with Jewish Christmas records?

Each fall, for too many years, record store clerks have watched a familiar scenario unfold, as predictable as falling leaves and as unattractive as naked, soaped-up Santa in the shower — otherwise intelligent adults groping through hundreds of Christmas CDs, forced to pick one for Mom/Grandma/Secret Santa/party ambiance, when they’d rather not be throwing away their $15.99 on more disposable, hard-to-stomach crap at Christmastime.

For Rod Stewart or Tony Bennett, it’s a sure thing, easy money. For the labels and the stores or download sites, it’s an annuity, a tradition that stays steadily strong even as it gets bigger and more grotesque. It affects not only our best — 1957’s Elvis’ Christmas Album has sold 12 million copies — but also our worst (Kenny G has the second biggest seller, Miracles, at 7 million sold since 1994).

This cultural plague has affected many who seem to think that their “White Christmas” will make you forget versions by Manheim Steamroller or Celine Dion. The plague has also affected those who have no other reason to celebrate the Christian holiday: Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka, Carole King, Barry Manilow, Bette Midler, Bob Freaking Dylan! And don’t forget that Kenny G.

Why are these singers of Jewish descent, who would be even less likely to be seen in a church on Sunday morning than Abu Nazir, recording odes to the joy of the Gentile holiday — and trying to sell it as an artistic statement?

The reasons might be slightly more complex than what’s obvious. Money drives many motives, and early 1990s Neil Diamond was as artistically pure as Lindsay Lohan borrowing money from Charlie Sheen on the set of “Scream 5.” But this shit works, so his The Christmas Album sold 2 million copies, followed two years later by The Christmas Album, Vol. II.

Even by the most generous assessment, it’s hard to deny how horrifically bad A Neil Diamond Christmas can be. The heavily synthesized production is stuck in the worst of the ’80s, and he barks out lines like He’s gonna find out/who’s naughty or nice like he’s yelling at a cheating wife. Then there’s the reggae version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Uncool runnings, Neil, uncool.

His third collection, 2009’s A Cherry Cherry Christmas, features 10 songs from his first two mistakes plus five new recordings, including a cover of Adam Sandler’s lonely classic “The Chanukah Song.” “There are so many beautiful Christmas songs around, and so few Chanukah songs,” Diamond laments in the intro, ignoring the fact that he has had 50 years in which to write at least one.

Then there’s Carole King, one of the most successful songwriters in human history. Her unnecessary 2011 entry, A Holiday Carole, includes a “Chanukah Prayer” in the middle of 11 less Yiddishkeit-friendly tunes, and features a duet with her pre-pubescent grandson — practicing for the day when he becomes a man. Glad you spent that $15.99?

There’s no way to not be kinder when discussing Streisand’s approach to Christmas music. Her first, A Christmas Album, came out in 1967 when she and her career were still somewhat young, hungry and jazzy. Her breathless rendition of “Jingle Bells” is firmly in the beatnik coffeehouse style of the day and holds up well — especially when compared to her 2001 follow-up, Christmas Memories. What memories, Yentl? Those Christmases you and James Brolin spent in Aspen? It’s not even that bad, musically, but it sounds like exactly what it is: a pampered old rich lady demanding more attention and money.

And Dylan? Well, he likes to do the unexpected, and what was less expected than a Bob Dylan Christmas album? If you let his slurry delivery distract you from the lyrics, it sounds more like a mid-’70s Tom Waits album than Garth Brooks’ Beyond the Season. He told journalist Bill Flanagan that, having grown up in snowy Minnesota, the songs were “part of my life, just like folk songs.”

So perhaps his album — all these albums — are less crass commercial ventures than just another chapter in the American Experiment, the Great Melting Pot where we all become one. Or maybe a music critic, who hates pretty much everything about a world where “American Idol” and its copycats dictate what popular music is in America, is the wrong person to ask.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Joking around

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An older, wiser, yet still harmonious A Lion Named Roar have released a new EP, Foreign Land, which they recorded over the past year. The pop-rock quintet celebrate with a show at Headliners on Dec. 7. LEO spoke with singer Chris Jackson and guitarist/singer Tyler Anderson.

Chris Jackson: Our last album came out in, I think, ’09? It was Americana folk-rock. We went in a different direction, trying to figure out what kind of music we really wanted to play … get back to the heart of why we play music.

Tyler Anderson: The cool thing about this EP is that we came together with very specific ideas in mind. We threw everything we could potentially be bad at out the window (laughs).

LEO: Your album Said & Done had a song called “Jazz Kazoo.” Why aren’t there more song titles like that on your new EP?

CJ: (laughs) That song was such a novelty, in our eyes, because we joked about it so much. Come to find out, a lot of people really enjoyed it. People would ask for that song more than any of them.

LEO: Your booking agent is named Keith Richards. How could someone with a name like that ever hope to make it in the music business?

TA: (laughs) I know, right! That is so incredible. When he came at us, we were like, “OK, OK. This is awesome. You are the man!”

LEO: You were called “MTV Buzzworthy.” What does that mean?

CJ: You tell us! (laughs)

TA: We’re really looking forward to being on VH-1’s “Pop-Up Video.”

CJ: We’re joking, but when we heard about “Buzzworthy,” we were like, “That is awesome. That’s really cool that they found it in their hearts to put us up on their ‘Buzzworthy.’” My internal 16-year-old who used to stay up till 2, 3 in the morning to watch music videos … it was an amazing accomplishment, for sure.

Find info, photos, inauthentic colas and more at facebook.com/alionnamedroar.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Matmos' mind games

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Louisville native Drew Daniel and his partner M.C. Schmidt founded experimental electronic duo Matmos in the mid-1990s, and they’ve become known for their high-concept works, like an album of music made from the sounds of surgical procedures.

Matmos released a new EP last month, The Ganzfeld EP. It’s their first release for Chicago’s Louisville-friendly Thrill Jockey label and serves as a teaser for a follow-up full-length album, The Marriage of True Minds, due on Feb. 19. The release of Ganzfeld celebrates the 20th anniversary of both the label and the couple.

Both recordings are based upon the concept of telepathy. Matmos subjected strangers and friends to the ganzfeld (“entire field” in German) experiment, which tests for ESP.

“Our work is almost always described as ‘conceptual,’ and our albums are always described as ‘concept albums,’” Daniel says. “I decided to try to push that logic as far as I possibly could and wanted to create a situation where a concept was somehow causally responsible for actions in the world.”

A telepathy experiment seemed to make sense, so over a four-year period, the duo filmed subjects who were isolated in rooms, lying down on a mattress with their eyes covered and white noise-filled headphones on their ears — “basic sensory deprivation,” Daniel notes cheerfully.

“We would be in another room, either adjacent or beneath them, send a signal out, and attempt to transmit the concept of a Matmos record into their minds,” he continues. “They were encouraged to relax and empty their mind, and just try to describe out loud anything they were seeing or hearing. We would record this, and then turn the transcripts into songs.

“Of course, there’s a tremendous amount of leeway about how you turn it into a piece of music, so, far from being constrained by what they generated, we found it really helpful.”

Though both electronic and experimental music are often seen as overly serious, Daniel — a professor of Shakespeare by day who has written a book-length essay about the British industrial music group Throbbing Gristle — saw the exercise as being “like a great sort of parody of artistic communication and of conceptual creation. It seemed like a nice way to isolate the thought and the mind of artists, and to send up the idea that that is what is creating music.”

Their subjects ranged from a teen to a 70-something, and by nature of their world, included some music people (a Pitchfork contributor, a death metal bassist and more). “That helps in some ways,” Daniel says, “because they already know how to describe something in musical terms. It’s bad, too, because you can feel like, ‘Oh, they’re just feeding me something that they know I want.’ So it’s not authentic, it’s somebody going, ‘Oh, an ostinato.’ Inside-baseball stuff.”

Instead, he hopes it works as “a wonderful return to a lack of control in that distance between what I hope people will get out of it versus the conditions in which they might actually listen to it.”

In an era where people treat music like files to be downloaded, Matmos’ response is to include moments that are raw, spontaneous and unable to ever truly be re-created. A tour planned for next year will incorporate onstage ganzfeld experiments at each stop, as the musicians play along.

Daniel returned to his hometown in September to speak at the memorial service for his late friend and collaborator, Jason Noble. (Noble’s group, Rachel’s, released a split record with Matmos in 2000.)

“Yeah, that was a really powerful day … So many people, I thought, rose to the occasion.” Daniel was glad so many paid tribute to how funny and grounded Noble was without sacrificing the integrity of his memory.

“I was definitely nervous about the risk of pretentious, over-inflated language, because funerals can make us want language to become sublime, to confront our terror about loss. I was really glad that people resisted that and instead kept the focus on Jason as a person. That was an amazing day. A really sad day, too, because the more we were reminded of Jason, the more we were reminded of the person that’s gone.

“It’s hard to talk about, because I get upset. I get angry.”

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

album review: Scott Staidle

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Scott Staidle
Nuts for the Holidays
SELF-RELEASED

You know those cheesy horror movies from the ’80s that show up on cable when it’s late at night, you can’t sleep, and infomercials are screaming at you but there’s nothing else — not even a “Law & Order” rerun — to watch? You know the ones with an evil Santa? Well, imagine that on top of a “Grand Theft Auto” Christmas edition (Is there one? How could there not be?), and you’ve already got its soundtrack. You’re probably wondering, do I need another Christmas CD? Of course you don’t. There’re 30,000 of them already, mostly horrible. Is this horrible? No. But it sounds like something to ice skate to, and impressive as it is that Staidle performs 10 of the 12 instruments heard here, the end result is as underwhelming as Grandma’s fruitcake on Jan. 2.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

L.A. punks in living color

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‘We Got Power!: Hardcore Punk Scenes from 1980s Southern California’ By David Markey & Jordan Schwartz. Bazillion Points Books; 288 pgs., $39.95.

In 1981, David Markey and Jordan Schwartz were teenagers in the right place at the right time. Los Angeles had become ground zero as punk evolved into hardcore, led by Black Flag and dozens of others who, while unknown to the mainstream at the time, would influence two generations of musicians and fans.

The duo began photographing the early Reagan-era scene, taking shots of bands like the Minutemen, the Descendents, Suicidal Tendencies, and Social Distortion. More than 400 of their best fill the book, originally published in their homemade zine “We Got Power!” In 1983, “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening (then a little-known L.A. Weekly cartoonist) called the zine “Essential reading … the funniest of the local mags.”

All six issues of the zine are reprinted in the book, which also includes essays from others who were there, including Black Flag’s Henry Rollins, Keith Morris of the Circle Jerks, and SST Records’ Chuck Dukowski.

“The culture of fanzines was interesting — how information spread, and how it was interpreted,” Markey says. “There was no other way to get that information out. What you did with it was entirely up to you.”

It’s funny to look back at Reagan now, he says, after the various Bush eras and after Paul Ryan revealed himself to be a Rage Against the Machine fan. “Reagan seems like a warm, fuzzy memory in retrospect. I think Ronald Reagan really made hardcore happen, nationally. It was sort of a call-to-arms, something that everyone could agree on.”

Putting the book together has put Markey, who turns 49 in a couple of weeks, back in the mindset of himself as a 17-year-old, getting into music and learning about the world. “I’m totally filled with gratitude about getting to witness all of that. It really set me up for the future, in a lot of ways,” he laughs. “At the same time, nothing has ever really matched that. I’m not trying to recreate that — or that I only live in that era, at all. But I know that I’ll probably never get to see that kind of scene again.

“I wasn’t looking 30 years into the future back then,” laughs Markey, now a filmmaker who recently directed a Circle Jerks documentary, “My Career as a Jerk.” “I probably didn’t even anticipate there being a future back then.”

In the summer of 1991, he followed Nirvana and their friends around the festival circuit, capturing the band just before they became international stars. His documentary, “1991: The Year Punk Broke,” has become a music-movie classic. “Witnessing their whole massive overnight explosion, that was a trip, too. That came 10 years after, for me, from ’81 to ’91. I got to witness both things happening, and see just how different the outcome was.”

Before Nirvana, before the Internet, underground bands stayed underground. “If you sold 50,000-100,000 records, you were basically the Beatles, or the Rolling Stones, of punk,” Markey notes. The bands seen in “We Got Power!” paved the way for today’s independent bands, sonically and in the way bands on that level are able to tour.

In the early ’80s, zines spread the word about bands too punk for mainstream magazines to have an interest in and helped grow that audience. “Rolling Stone? Forget about it!” he exclaims. “The whole generation that all came out of the ’60s counterculture — by the time the late ’70s and early ’80s came around, that counterculture had totally flipped. That had become the mainstream. It got just as conservative as the Woodstock generation turned into yuppies.”

All that festered for a long decade until Nirvana brought in a new era, followed quickly by Democrat Bill Clinton presiding over a so-called Alternative Nation.

Today, he cites the Russian group Pussy Riot as an heir to punk’s legacy, but asks otherwise, “Where’s the outrage? I don’t think this generation knows where to begin, or even has a clue as to what the hell’s going on.”

Perhaps forgetting about the Arab Spring, he continues, “I think now people are just really self-involved, and there’s no looking out. Everyone’s in front of a touch-screen. There’s this great tool that we have with the Internet — it should be an age of enlightenment. But you realize, there’s never been more corporate control.”

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Positive thinking

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Tom Boone is “61, and trying to act like a teenager.” He grew up in Louisville (DeSales High, since you’re wondering), lives in Lebanon Junction now, and didn’t start playing publicly until he was 50, which is about as old as he looks today. “Everyone always judges my age wrong,” he laughs. “I love that.”

Boone started playing the Hideaway Saloon six years ago, and he can be seen there every Monday night with his band, the Back Porch Pickers. His new album, Getting Back to the Old Time Ways, includes a theme song, “Hideaway Song.”

“I’m not good with fiction,” he’s learned. “If I write about what I know, what I’ve lived, most of the time it flows pretty good.”

His songs are mostly drawn from his life, though not entirely. “You got to make it a story,” he says. Boone discusses one song, “Ain’t Gonna Let It Bug Me,” inspired by a man he encountered who had a visible anger management problem. “I always tell everybody, the 11th Commandment is ‘Thou shalt not go through life pissed off.’” He didn’t think the guy deserved a song, but it inspired him.

Boone decided to pursue songwriting after listening to his favorites — Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and Jackson Browne — for years. A Sam Bush concert inspired him to push past the stage fright he had been experiencing. “He had family there and a lot of friends, and everybody — the audience — was having a good time. That was my turning point. ‘If you’re gonna do this, have fun and forget about it.’”

Boone celebrates with a record release show at the Hideaway on Saturday. He’s been writing new songs for the next album. “This one took about three years, pecking at it a little here, a little there,” in between performing, working during the days and taking care of his mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. “I’m hoping this time it won’t be another three years in the making.”

Look up “Tom Boone and the Back Porch Pickers” on Facebook to learn more.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Wax Fang 2.0: This time it’s personal

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One day recently, Wax Fang’s Scott Carney glanced at a poster for the release show for his band’s most recent album, La La Land. The date was Nov. 17, 2007.

From the start, it was all too easy. Wax Fang’s first gigs in late 2005, before they even had a name, drew big crowds. The buzz spread quickly about the band led by a little-known singer/guitarist who wrote catchy but weird and glorious art-rock songs, supported by the powerhouse drummer who had toured the world with Elliott and the supple bassist who had recently left the popular Cabin.

They toured with My Morning Jacket, who mentioned them in The New York Times. Pavement invited them to play the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in England. They signed with indie label Absolutely Kosher. And then … not much happened.

Between real life situations (jobs, relationships, family issues, band dynamics) and music business situations, Wax Fang’s momentum began to stall.

“I started to feel like my soul and essence was being pulled in all these different directions,” Carney says.

A new EP, Mirror Mirror, was released last month, but beyond fulfilling promotional duties, the EP hasn’t been on Carney’s mind much. “My girlfriend texted me (that) morning, ‘Happy release day!’ and I didn’t know what she meant. I wrote back, ‘What’s release day?’ ‘Your EP, you idiot!’”

The songs were written in 2009 and ’10, mixing and mastering was finished several months ago, and the band is currently mastering their next record. “That project is, like, two projects behind at this point.”

Some of the frustrations he was dealing with at the time came out in the song “Dawn of the Dead of the Night of the Hunter,” which he jokingly calls “a jolly jingle — about zombies!”

The closing number, “In Memory,” was written after being present as his grandmother died, seeing her take her last breath.

Carney is ready now to begin the second phase of what will hopefully be a long life for Wax Fang. Drummer Kevin Ratterman left last year, busy running his successful recording studio, but bassist Jake Heustis remains, and the duo have been working with various drummers as they search for the next permanent member.

“We were literally playing the same set for, like, four years,” Carney notes, as the founding trio struggled to find time to work together. Carney and Heustis have enjoyed the casual nature of having musician friends sit in, and this week’s show will add former Cabin drummer Dave Chale and Jeremy Perry of the Deloreans on guitar and keyboards.

What’s next is the remainder of the “Astronaut” trilogy. The first song — a 17-minute journey into sonic space — was released in 2010. Carney was drawn to the concept by “the challenge of it. Just one simple idea, drawn out to … some giant monstrosity.”

It was also an inventive way to keep the band moving forward when they needed something to be excited about.

“At the time, when we finished part one, it was kind of a joke: ‘Yeah, maybe we’ll write a part two someday!’ The next thing you know, that’s what we were doing.” The story will be completed with two remaining songs added on the upcoming collection that Carney calls “a 40-something-minute concept prog-rock album.”

“Part two is probably the most similar to part one. And its length and scope probably takes it to the next level … if you can imagine that,” he says, sounding giddy at the prospect.

“Part one requires a lot of patience, I think, in places, like when you have a six-minute abstract section right in the middle of your song — where, in part two, there’s more momentum, it just keeps moving.

“Part three — there’s a lot more electronic influence in it. I went in a very different direction with that one … It’s got a lot of synthesizer and drum machines, electro-drum overdub things that are very ’80s, for sure, but it’s still, like, guitar/bass/drums. But it’s poppy, for us, as of late.”

It was also a way to expand the possibilities of what Wax Fang can be, he says, folding elements of other genres into their rock trio format. “Space has no boundaries, so why should I?”

WAX FANG WITH OLD BABY AND ANWAR SADAT
Saturday, Nov. 17
Headliners Music Hall
1386 Lexington Road
headlinerslouisville.com
$10; 9 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Jerry Douglas takes a vacation

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Jerry Douglas has made a lot of friends after 40 years in the music business. The 56-year-old, called the world’s greatest dobro (resonator guitar) player, has earned 13 Grammys after performing on something near 2,000 recordings, when he’s not at his day job as a pivotal member of Alison Krauss & Union Station.

The Nashville resident released Traveler, his 13th solo album, in June, his first with an outside producer and the first to feature his vocals. He also plays lap steel and slide guitar on it. The album features appearances by Eric Clapton, Dr. John, Keb Mo’, Marc Cohn, Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, Del McCoury — and on his cover of Paul Simon’s “The Boxer,” not just Simon himself, but also Mumford & Sons.

“Those guys have been friends of mine for a few years,” he says. “We’d been planning on recording together at some point.” He stayed over in London after a Union Station tour to record with the then-rising band. When he thought it was finished, Douglas played it for Simon. “He wanted to play on it, too! My band opened for him a few years ago, and every night, Paul and I would end the whole show with ‘The Boxer,’” Douglas says. “So it’s sort of a mish-mashed version of his version and Emmylou Harris’ version, I’d say. Because the Mumfords knew it from Emmylou.”

Simon approved but wanted the recording to end the way he’d ended it with Douglas onstage. The recording also appears on the deluxe edition of Mumford & Sons’ hugely popular Babel, released in September.

Douglas says he doesn’t care about how that might affect him financially. “It’s more about friendship than dollars and cents … it’s music.”

He’s seen the occasional windfall before, like when the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack sold millions a decade ago. “Everybody’s ready for something honest, and they certainly are that.”

It’s been “a long time,” he says, since he’s played a solo show in Louisville. (Union Station’s 2002 Live album was recorded at the Louisville Palace.) He used to come back every year for the IBMAs, the bluegrass awards, until they moved to Nashville. “It’s a fickle bunch,” he laments. “Nashville’s actually the perfect place, I think, but I think it’s too expensive for a lot of the folks … it’s country music, and a lot of them just don’t like the big city.”

When LEO spoke with Douglas in October, he was in the Florida panhandle vacationing with his family and celebrating his 25th wedding anniversary before starting his current tour, which brings his quartet to the KCD Theater this weekend. “I’m on the beach — I’m actually in the water!” he said, sounding like a man who’s figured out how to make even a work phone call obligation into something fun.

“I’m on my first and last vacation of the year,” says Douglas. “Oh, man, it’s great, it’s 75 or 80 degrees here now. The water’s warm in the gulf. I’m watching schools of fish go by. It’s nice.”

On his vacation, he’s discovered a band who play Sundays at a seafood joint on the beach. Even off the job, he can’t help but sit in with another band.

“It’s a really great place to retire and start an empire,” he notes.

So, in your mind, retiring also involves a chance to do more work?

“Yeah! I’ll just have a revolving band I can play with — play what I want to.”

Jerry Douglas with Ashleigh Flynn
Saturday, Nov. 17
KCD Theater
4100 Springdale Road
kcd.org/theater
$35-$42; 8 p.m.

Photo by Jim McGuire

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

album review: Karass

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There’s something about the deliberate approach of most instrumental post-rock bands that is reminiscent of U2 guitarist The Edge. As the beginning chords of the opening track slowly begin to reveal themselves, stealthily approaching from some unseen vista far, far away, the clean, stuttering tone becomes engorged on the structure of all the rock music that’s come before it. The riffs become massive as the rest of the band — always a bassist, drummer and either a keyboardist and/or another guitarist — announce themselves to the world, wet as an otter. Those that don’t vary from the format don’t survive, roadkill, while the best — like Karass — turn the formula on its head, transmogrifying from the expected model to an interstellar, post-John Carpenter soundtrack immersion. Also, no Bono, often a bonus.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Punk President

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Anwar El Sadat was born in 1918 and served as the president of Egypt between 1970 and 1981. He won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in achieving the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, an act that led to his assassination.

Punk rock was developed in the United States, England and Australia in the mid-1970s. Led by notable acts such as the Ramones and the Clash, it is an oft-political form of music created in reaction to mainstream conventions.

The band Anwar Sadat is currently one of the most viscerally thrilling bands in Louisville. After touring last month, they will open for Wax Fang at Headliners on Nov. 17.

Vocalist/bassist Shane Wesley answered LEO’s very important questions.

LEO: What do you tell older relatives your band sounds like?

Shane Wesley: “Punk.” They know what that is, at least. I don’t think any of our relatives are too far removed from popular culture.

LEO: How did the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty influence your decision to form a band?

SW: It didn’t. We seriously just looked at the name, imagined it on a T-shirt, and decided that this was it.

LEO: If cassettes become “cool” again to folks like Pearl Jam and Urban Outfitters, would you still want to release cassettes?

SW: I don’t think whether something is “cool” or not factored into the decision of releasing a cassette. It’s mostly just really cheap to produce, and we needed something to sell on tour since we sold out of 7”s.

LEO: How do you feel about Wax Fang?

SW: Cool dudes who are very good at what they do.

LEO: If death is no vacation, then what is it?

SW: The last great unknown.

Listen to the music at anwarsadat.bandcamp.com.

Photo by Bryan Volz

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Amigos del art

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Louisville artists Jeral Tidwell and Justin Kamerer have become known well beyond these borders for their dark-tinged artwork, full of fast cars, interesting women, kooky characters, tattoos, decay and beauty. This week, they celebrate the release of their new book, “Amigos de los Muertos” (made in collaboration with fellow artists Roberto Jaras Lira and David Lozeau), and its inspiration, Mexico’s Day of the Dead holiday.

The holiday honors those who have died, and in tribute to the traditional practice of building sugar skulls to be used as part of altars, sugar cookies are planned for the signing at Ultra Pop.

The book began when Tidwell and Kamerer, partners in Crackhead Press, were in Northern California on a business trip. Facebook called them into their headquarters to make some art last spring, and, on a side trip, they stopped into the headquarters of Last Gasp Publishing, a leader in underground comics and books since 1970.

Though the Louisvillians have published their own “Ink Alchemy” book series with another publisher, they were excited to work with Last Gasp, who have also published legends in the field from R. Crumb to Mark Ryden. Ryden’s 2003 book “Blood” offered a template, from its size to its structure.

Kamerer designed the book, which includes a faux leather cover, gold foil stamping, gilded edges and a purple ribbon tucked inside. Having access to Last Gasp’s printing facilities helped produce the high quality publication, which he modeled after “Bible-y stuff.”

“I wanted it to look, at first glance, like it was actually a mini-Bible. Originally, we were going to have it in the tiny pocket ones that they give out on campuses. But then we realized that our art shrunk down that tiny would be a big, blobby mess.”

The Day of the Dead theme also offered a chance to do some drawing in the style of Mexican artist Jose Guadelupe Posada, known for his satirical work with skeletons. Religious imagery runs throughout the four sections of the book, along with the grim reaper, skulls, beasts and other animals.

The locals met Jaras, who lives in Santiago, Chile, when he came to Louisville to visit a cousin. A fellow artist at the UnFair recommended him to Tidwell, and he has returned to work with them. He will be in attendance at the signing on Friday, which will also feature deluxe editions of the book.

“It was cool watching him learn really quickly, watching his skills enhance with us pestering the crap out of him,” Kamerer says.

As a Chilean, Jaras is quick to point out that the Day of the Dead holiday is as foreign to him as it is to Americans. Still, it’s a fun theme for art.

“I’m pretty sure that all four of us are in love with religious iconography, in general,” Kamerer says. “So that’s fun to do.”

Death has always been appealing to Jaras because it’s an integral part of life. “For some reason, unfortunately, Judeo-Christian culture has given it a different twist,” he says. “My intention was to bring some of the cheerfulness and goofiness that permeates both life and death. We’ve become too scared of death, and like my grandfather used to say, we should be worried about the variables, not the constant,” he notes. “It’s the ending of one thing, but the beginning of a new life. That’s the whole purpose behind these flowers coming out of skulls — life coming out of death.”

‘Amigos de los Muertos’
Friday, Nov. 2
Ultra Pop
1414 Bardstown Road
ultra-pop.com
Free; 6 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

The Pass moves on up

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The Pass have been taking a shot at surpassing VHS or Beta’s ability to fill up venues with ’80s-style arena-sized hooks, grooves and beats for two and a half years, and now find themselves at the edge of glory. They’ve toured around the country, made popular videos and been heard on a half-dozen TV shows — but can they take it to the next level?

Their second and latest full-length album, Melt, will be released officially on Nov. 6 (though copies will be available at their 18+ Headliners show). It took a couple of years to get here. They wrote 30 songs, recorded 20, then picked 11 favorites.

Bassist Will Roberts is especially proud of singer Kyle Peters’ lyrics this time around. “The lyrics are cool and really original. That’s one of the things that makes us a weird band, I guess; our songs are kind of poppy, but you’ll never hear a lyric like an Ooh baby baby type thing. The lyrics are really deep. I’ve asked (Kyle) before, ‘Dude, what’s going on here?’ He explains them, and I’m like, ‘Oh, man!’” exclaims the impressed New Jersey native. “… ‘I’m not just saying that because you’re my roommate and my good friend. That’s sick!’”

“Psycho” is a song on the new album that Roberts, who wrote the music, points out for Peters’ contribution. The singer came up with a story about a long-term relationship ending, leaving the protagonist in a fragile state. Roberts says the second verse is his favorite on the album: You’ll want to be ready, when the voices start to call your name. / And you’ll try try to ignore, but it’ll fall like rain when you’re trying to stay dry. / And it’ll test your patience, it’ll test your mind.

At first, he hated what he heard coming from Peters’ voice. “Sometimes you can’t tell what he’s saying when he’s singing, that’s just the way he sings … a lot of people have trouble understanding him sometimes, the way he phrases stuff.” When he read what his singer had written, though, Roberts was “amazed.”

Growth has been a focus for The Pass this year. For their first year and a half together, they were happy to just play “straight-up, loud, raucous dance music.” But, Roberts says, “We got better at writing songs.”

They didn’t want to completely change styles, but “you can only do so much, trying to play a four-on-the-floor dance beat and write music to it. We’re sick of it a little bit. We still want to do dance music, but I think that’s why there’s more quote-unquote rock tunes on this album. More song-oriented.”

The band has begun seeing some early success in unexpected places.

“We get random comments on Facebook, like from Arizona. ‘Hey, we heard you in The Gap!’” he laughs. “That’s the coolest thing in the world. I just saw the royalties lately — we’re getting checks for, like, $2,000 from The Limited or something. Like, ‘what?’”

And so far, the biggest challenge they’ve faced is deciding what to be called. “Naming bands is the hardest thing ever. It’s just such an important thing, and everything you think of, you find a reason not to like it. It’s like naming a kid, I imagine — although kids have their own names. You can’t name a band ‘John,’” Roberts laughs. “I guess you could, that would be original.”

The Pass with The Deloreans and Skyscraper Stereo
Friday, Nov. 2
Headliners Music Hall
1386 Lexington Road
headlinerslouisville.com
$10; 9 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

album review: The Coal Porters

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The Coal Porters
Find the One
PRIMA

They call it “alternative bluegrass,” but all that is alt about their ’grass is that the Coal Porters don’t let the genre’s limitations hold them back from adding new flavors to their plate. Also, they’re based in London. Leader Sid Griffin was raised in the bluegrass state, in the Southern town named for King Louis XVI, and his ragtag group features three lead singers, members older and younger, American and British, male and otherwise, plus, a guest solo here from Richard Thompson; it’s that grab-bag approach that distinguishes the Coal Porters. The band celebrates Americans who play like Bill Monroe, the Scotch-Irish who originated a form of this music, and throws in crowd-pleasing versions of two modern British standards (Bowie’s “Heroes” and the Stones’ “Paint It, Black”), which sound pretty gosh darn good reconstituted as ballads and barn-burners.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

The Big Band Theory

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Saxophonist Drew Miller might have looked normal enough on the outside, but for a few years, he was carrying around an atypical idea for a band. “The inspiration behind the band’s inception came primarily from Tortoise, Jaga Jazzist, Zappa, Orchestre National de Jazz, The Sun Ra Arkestra, my time playing with Lucky Pineapple and Another7Astronauts, and as an outlet for me to write and arrange for a larger ensemble.”

His dream band, D’Arkestra, is now releasing their first album, Ghost Town, with a release show at the Tim Faulkner Gallery on Halloween. Miller likes the location because “it is a non-traditional type of venue with great atmosphere, especially the performance space that we will be using,” he says. “So we want to put on a relaxed, informal performance, and a really fun hang.” The $3 all-ages event starts at 9 p.m.

Miller says he realized his creativity hadn’t been fully satisfied merely playing others’ music. He started writing and arranging. “As I got deeper into the process, I was really energized by the endless possibilities that the instrumentation and size of the group presented in terms of texture, ‘arkestration,’ and ways to use the instruments.”

He collected some favorite colleagues to add sax, trumpet, trombone, keyboards, guitar, bass, drums, and other effects, and two songs on Ghost Town feature vocalist Dane Waters.

Miller realized early on that being focused on one form would never satisfy his musical impulses. He put himself into many different settings, from rock to jazz to experimental music, and approached even being an audience member as a form of research.

“I decided a long time ago that, to be viable and relevant, I needed to gain as much perspective as possible … If you are proficient on your instrument and are hungry to make music and be creative, you will feel at home no matter what style or genre.”

To hear the music, go to darkestra.bandcamp.com.

Photo by Ashley Stinson

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Taking shots with Watt from Pedro

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To many who came up in the ’80s punk scene or ’90s alt-rock explosion, Mike Watt remains a folk hero. His influential bass playing, with The Minutemen and Firehose, inspired countless bands from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Fugazi, and his avuncular blue-collar hipster persona helped send others, like Sonic Youth and Nirvana, into Econoline vans to find their kindred spirits.

Watt is currently taking a break from playing alongside Iggy Pop in The Stooges to tour with his solo band. The famously productive 54-year-old recently participated in four different collaborative albums and a Firehose reunion; his second book, “On and Off Bass,” a collection of photos, poems and prose, was released in May.

The book was inspired by his early morning routine: Seven days a week, he’s pedaling his bicycle around his lifelong home of San Pedro, Calif., or paddling a kayak. “I like the early morning, when no one else is out: ‘Wow, this all belongs to me.’ But I also like the potential — what is to come?”

LEO: How did this book happen?
Mike Watt: The first thing was digital cameras. When these things came along, yeah, you just deleted the lame ones (laughs) and went for it. The other thing was, I started to ride a bike again, after 22 years. Some cat was moving, sold me a 10-speed for $5. I remember seeing these in people’s pads growing up, not using them, just using ’em like fuckin’ clothes racks. I figured, “I’m not gonna let that happen, I’m gonna peddle again.”

My town is Pedro, San Pedro, it’s the harbor of Los Angeles. So we got a weird mix of nature and industry. Early in the morning, when I rode, not as many people would see me fall down — which I did a lot at first — but I also learned to look and listen. It started hurting my knees, so a few years in, I started kayaking to break it up. I was born with bad knees and shit.

The trippy thing about the pictures is, in both situations, you can’t really put together the shots. They just come to you; you’re lucky enough to capture them. You learn to wait. All this stuff that’s much different from riding in the car, being in your own world, a lot of control over your own environment.

Last year, there was an art show, in Santa Monica at Track 16, where they picked 35 of my thousands of pictures to put up there. I’d never seen them printed. Soon after that show, Three Rooms publishing in New York asked to put a book out.

They picked out 30 other pictures and then some diary — because I write diaries on tour. They’re impossible to re-read, ’cause they’re embarrassing as hell. But it gives me focus when I’m doing them, in the moment. I told them, “You pick some.”

So that’s what the book is. The editor picking little spiels, and then Track 16 picking these pictures. They’re all my works, but they kinda, I don’t know, distilled them according to their … journey of life (laughs).

Obviously, I love sunrises and pelicans! (laughs) When I told Ig (Iggy Pop) about it, he laughed. But it’s genuine. What do I call them? ... “eye gifts,” you know? It’s like when you’re a boy and you just play to play. You’re just out there to see what happens, while you’re piddling and peddling.

It’s being connected, where in other ways we’re not so connected, through devices and machinery, social paradigms, you know? It’s just being there and witnessing. I love it! I don’t think it’s better, it’s just part of the whole … thing. Whatever my journey is.

And music remains at the forefront of Watt’s journey. “I’m into my trios, playing with two guys live, like the Minutemen. There’s always going to be that for me, that same, familiar thing. That old power-trio thing. And traveling around in the boat (his slang for the tour van), working the towns … I like that part, too. But then there’s the parts I didn’t do as a younger man, like wild collaborations. I was more afraid then (laughs). I was a lot more (afraid).”

Mike Watt + the Missing Men with Old Baby
Tuesday, Oct. 23
Zanzabar
2100 S. Preston St.
zanzabarlouisville.com
$12; 9 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Laura Marling's American detour

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Laura Marling is a rising star back home in England and in larger American cities, but when the java lover walks into Sunergos Coffee before her show at Zanzabar, chances are she won’t be recognized. At 22, the prodigy has already released three albums of Joni Mitchell-esque folk/pop, earning acclaim but not yet breaking through commercially.

Though her low-register voice and classy accent hide her youth somewhat, she still has plenty to see and experience. Her fall tour takes her through some lesser-known parts of this country.

LEO: Was this tour your idea?

Laura Marling: Yeah, it was my excuse to come to those places. I’ve wanted to see them all for a very long time. I’m doing it in a simple way, just a guitar and a rental car.

LEO: Did you pick out the itinerary?

LM: Yeah, I did. I put pins on a map and sent it to the powers that be.

LEO: How did you pick Louisville?

LM: I have a friend from Louisville, Morgan, who told me a bunch of magical stories about it, and Kentucky is a place I always wanted to see.

LEO: How did you meet him?

LM: Through music.

LEO: Is he a performer?

LM: No, he’s an ... interested party.

LEO: A superfan?

LM: (laughs) A superfan. You can say that.

LEO: We have some well-known musicians from here, like Bonnie Prince Billy —

LM: Yes!

LEO: Have you met him?

LM: No, I haven’t. I’ve seen him play many, many times. But no, I’ve never met him.

LEO: He’s been around lately, maybe he’ll come out to see you here.

LM: Oh, god, that’d be terrifying! (laughs). In a great way.

LEO: What are some of the other parts of America that interest you?

LM: I’m very much looking forward to New Orleans. I’ve never been that far south. I saw a lot of the West Coast last time I was here. That drive, in particular, the 101 … I’m a slightly romanticized tourist, I suppose.

LEO: That’s the fun of it, right? The escape and the fantasy of it?

LM: Yeah, exactly. I think I deserve to get lost for a little while.

LEO: Have you been feeling the pressures of the business?

LM: Yeah, I mean, the main idea behind this is to remind me of how simple it can be, if you put your mind up to it. You don’t need anything other than a bit of transport and a guitar.

LEO: The Woody Guthrie ideal.

LM: Yes, yes, I’m the female rambler! (laughs)

LEO: Have you been writing new songs?

LM: Yeah, I actually just finished the fourth album. So that’s been really nice. That’s coming out in February, I think.

LEO: How did you approach recording this time? Any differently?

LM: Yeah, I’ve done this album, just me and Ethan (Johns), who produced my last two albums. Just me and him in the studio, really. He’s a very good percussionist and instrumentalist. Between me and him, we’ve done what we can to orchestrate it in a way that doesn’t sound like a band. It doesn’t sound like a group of us sitting down and playing live-to-tape. It sounds like instrumentation on top of songwriting.

LEO: What inspired the songs for this collection?

LM: Umm … that’s an interesting question. I don’t think I’m far enough removed from it yet to know. I think … whatever I’ve been doing in the last year. Whatever’s been occupying my mind. I think a continuing theme from the last album would be natural morality. But at the same time, it’s very, very different from the last album. It’s more of a story, this one. There’s characters in it. Yeah … I couldn’t really answer that question.

LEO: Is there a concept running throughout it?

LM: Yeah, I mean, I haven’t listened to it back yet. Kind of consciously. When I hear the mixes and the master, those shall be the only two times I’ll listen to it back. And then I’ll kind of realize the themes or the characters within it, because I’ve had a bit of space from it. But I haven’t had that yet.

Laura Marling
with Bro. Stephen
Saturday, Oct. 20
Zanzabar
2100 S. Preston St.
zanzabarlouisville.com
$15; 8 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Trampled By Turtles: dads rock

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When Trampled By Turtles hit the road, they make it work. The Minnesotans return to Louisville after less than five months away, and this year has seen them play everywhere from “Letterman” to CNN to SXSW. Their sound is flexible enough to get them booked at many festivals. “You name one, we’re probably playing it,” agrees mandolinist Erik Berry.

“We did a 21-day tour that had 19 or 20 actual performances, contracted gigs,” earlier this year. “And we did an additional 12 appearances or recording projects: in-studios, in-stores, radio station appearances. Something like 30 appearances in 21 days,” Berry summarizes.

A couple of the members are family men now, and they’ve instructed their management to send them on the road for shorter but more intensive periods. “Time home is important, so when we’re out, we’re like, ‘Work us.’”

One way Berry has managed to balance work and family is “I went and turned my oldest into a fan of the band. That helps a lot,” he laughs about his 5-year-old. “The only other record (of ours) I listen to with any regularity is Palomino, and that’s because that’s the one my son likes so much.

“There’s tricky stuff I have to deal with, like him wanting to hear ‘Wait So Long’ 10 times in a row in the car, but … As opposed to him being like, ‘Why do you have to go out on the road again?’ He gets it.”

Stars and Satellites, the sixth full-length album for the bluegrass-inspired quintet, was released in April on their own BanjoDad label and debuted at No. 32 on the Billboard charts. They had recorded it near their Duluth homes, focusing on getting it right fairly quickly so they could see their families at the end of each day. The collection features some slower, more somber songs than the band has previously tackled.

“It was the batch of songs that (singer/guitarist) Dave (Simonett) had for us,” Berry says. “About six songs into the project, we were like, ‘Well, this is gonna be a little bit slower than other ones. Are we OK with that?’ But we were enjoying the tunes so much that it seemed like, ‘What are we going to say? This isn’t any good? This isn’t fun’? We liked it.”

Simonett was one of the new dads, contributing to his altered state of mind. Additionally, various friends and members of the band members’ families passed away between albums. “Grandpas got lost. Stuff like that,” says Berry. “I know that was going into his head.”

Though the band would surely be glad to have a big radio hit, or find some other way to spend less time touring, they can’t say they’re not glad to return to Louisville. “We’ve recorded a couple of our videos down there,” Berry recalls. “The live footage for ‘Where Is My Mind?’ was shot at Headliners, and then both ‘Victory’ and ‘Wait So Long’ were shot in Louisville.”

“We didn’t know what the deal was, but a few years ago, outside of Minneapolis and Duluth, our strongest retail was Portland (Ore.) and Louisville, Ky.!”

TRAMPLED BY TURTLES
WITH HONEYHONEY
Thursday, Oct. 18
Headliners Music Hall
1386 Lexington Road
headlinerslouisville.com
$18 adv., $20 DOS; 8 p.m.

Photo by Pieter van Hattem

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Fiddle sticks

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Fiddler Rayna Gellert of Asheville, N.C., has had a prolific career playing with everyone from Bela Fleck to Robyn Hitchcock, and now steps out with a new solo album. She plays at Please & Thank You on Wednesday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m.

LEO: Can you tell me about working with Kentucky boys Nathan Salsburg and Ben Sollee?
Rayna Gellert: I love Kentucky boys! Excuse me: Kentucky men. Both of those fellas are an absolute joy to play with. Ben is such a fun musician. We met because Otis Taylor threw us in the studio together to play on his record, and as soon as we started playing, Otis was like, “Are you two related?” It just clicked. And I’m so indebted to Nathan — he was involved with my album from the get-go and brought so much musicality and thoughtfulness to the whole process. He’s a dear friend and deeply knowledgeable musician. And we love all the same dead guys!

LEO: Is it harder to step out front and be the singer/bandleader, or to be part of an ensemble?
RG: Right now, I’d definitely say stepping out front to be the singer and bandleader, because that’s what’s new and challenging for me. I’m excited to learn how to do it, though. And I still have plenty of opportunity to be a sideman, which I love. These days, I’m mostly getting that fix from playing with Scott Miller, who’s a great inspiration for me as a songwriter.

LEO: How do you balance playing traditionally inspired music in the modern era? How do you keep it sounding fresh and new?
RG: Good traditional music always sounds fresh to me — I don’t think anything needs to be done to keep it that way. My current musical adventure isn’t about sounding “new” so much as it’s an attempt to follow my own creative vision in a way I haven’t previously. One aspect of this is writing songs, and another is treating traditional songs differently than I have before.

Learn more at raynagellert.com.

album review: Dark Dark Dark

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Who Needs Who is not just the latest Dark Dark Dark album, it’s also the latest great album that should be taught in schools and known by all citizens. The gypsy folkers, now sprawled from Minneapolis to New Orleans, suffered from some Fleetwood Mac-style drama; after making loving fun, they wisely stayed together instead of going their own ways and, as with Mac’s Rumours, have produced a stunning collection of songs. A description of their various parts — goth, indie, folk, with dashes of European horns and accordions, propelled by the unsurpassable vocals of pianist Nona Marie Invie — might not sound like an obvious crowd-pleaser, but fans of Feist, Bat for Lashes, or even Adele should be won over. And those Adele people need a second record to buy this year, right? It is October already.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Weird Al — A life in the arts, examined

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What can be said about Weird Al Yankovic? If you don’t know by now, you’re probably a child and/or a terrorist. So, because there’s only so much room here, and we don’t get many chances to chat with the musical satire star and subject of the new book “Weird Al: The Book,” here are some highlights from LEO’s interview.

LEO: Do you ever think about your legacy when you’re in the shower or clipping your toenails?
Weird Al Yankovic: (laughs) You know, putting together my coffee table book, I gave it a whole lot of thought. It was kind of a daunting experience to look over your entire life and try to make sense of it all.

LEO: Did you make sense of it?
WAY: It’s an ongoing process.

LEO: Putting together a retrospective package, did it feel like “How much more do I have left to give?” or “I’m halfway there”?
WAY: All of the above. I’m not quite done yet. I still enjoy what I do, and people seem to have not gotten completely sick of me yet, so I’d like to continue with my career. But it has been three decades worth of stuff, and there’s a lot of stuff that’s gone down, and once you look at everything, in its entirety, it’s pretty overwhelming. For me, at least.

LEO: You’ve lasted this long without any serious competition and survived huge changes in the music industry, and MTV, so you seem to be here to stay.
WAY: I guess there’s nobody that’s doing it, specifically what I do, at the level I’m doing it at, but there’s 100,000 people on YouTube doing song parodies. The market is a little more crowded these days. But I keep on and hope that people will still appreciate what I do. I’m perhaps not as unique as I was in the ’80s and ’90s.

LEO: That may be true, but who else can fill up a 3,000-seat theater, charge $25 or whatever, and people will be happy to be there?
WAY: (laughs) That’s probably true.

LEO: The book — how big is it? What kind of stuff is in it? Were the literati clamoring for the Weird Al book?
WAY: Well, I don’t know about the entire literati, but Abrams Books thought it was a good idea. I was happy to be involved with it, but I didn’t really feel like writing an autobiography. It didn’t seem like a pleasant job. Also, it didn’t feel right for me; it’s not like I was trying to get my story out there. It seems like I’ve been talking about myself nonstop for 30 years. I don’t think there’s anything I haven’t said about myself in various interviews and podcasts over the years.

I felt like for a fresh perspective, I should have somebody else tell the story. So I had them hire Nathan Rabin, who’s the head writer of The Onion’s A/V Club. He did all the heavy lifting of going through the details of my life and trying to make it interesting, have it make sense.

LEO: Did he go back to Lynnwood and talk to old teachers and old girlfriends?
WAY: I don’t think he talked to old teachers, but he talked to various people in my life: the band, Dr. Demento, managers — the people who have had an effect on me. Then he put it all together.

LEO: What can you tell people who haven’t seen your live show about why they should come out?
WAY: It’s a high-energy, rock and comedy multimedia extravaganza. I’m on the stage with the same band I’ve had since the beginning of recorded history, and we’re playing a lot of stuff from the Alpocalypse album, all the greatest hits and a few surprises here and there, costume changes, film clips … it’s never a dull moment onstage.

LEO: What’s the worst thing about your show?
WAY: When’s it over, there’s an overwhelming feeling of depression among the crowd (laughs).

LEO: Is there anything you haven’t done that you’d like to do?
WAY: I’ve been thinking possibly about writing a musical, but I don’t know.

LEO: Can you tell me one thing about yourself that you’ve never told anyone before?
WAY: Uhh, I am currently wearing plaid underwear.

Weird Al Yankovic
Sunday, Oct. 14
Palace Theater
625 S. Fourth St.
louisvillepalace.com
$19.50-$75; 7 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Dance party USA

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pictured: Java Jews

KlezmerFest returns to Temple Shalom on Sunday, Oct. 14, at 1 p.m. with three bands: Iowa’s Java Jews, Indianapolis’ INDYKLEZ, and Louisville’s Lost Tribe. Founder Kathy Karr takes us behind the music.

LEO: How do you explain klezmer to the hundreds of thousands of locals who might have not even heard of it, let alone heard it played?

Kathy Karr: Klezmer music has gypsy, Romanian, East European, jazz, and Dixieland influences. Klezmer music is dance music and soulful music.

LEO: How did this fest get started?

KK: I envisioned a music festival of klezmer music in 2009. I had purchased a bunch of klezmer music CDs and listened to them so much in my car that I actually wore out a few CDs! I fell in love with the upbeat, energetic music that really touched my soul. I looked forward to getting in my car to drive somewhere so I could listen to klezmer music and escape my crazy, hectic world.

When I took over as fundraising vice president of Temple Shalom, I was mulling over some ideas, and then it hit me: organize a music festival to feature several klezmer bands and share with the entire community the music I loved, and make some much-needed funds for Temple Shalom.

My hard-working, passionate committee spent a year organizing the festival, and in May 2010, Temple Shalom’s first KlezmerFest happened. We were planning an outdoor event, but it ended up being a rainy, cold day. But we were prepared for rain or shine, and moved indoors. I never expected the huge crowd that attended! Young children, students, congregants, community members, musicians, senior citizens flocked to Temple Shalom in spite of the rainy day to hear our three featured bands.

Learn more at templeshalomky.org.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly