Wednesday, May 30, 2012

They’ll have another

Here
Pop-punkers Late Ones have returned with new album … Like the Day After a Heavy Rain, out this week from Little Heart Records, and the band is playing at Cahoots on Saturday night. LEO toasted the occasion with bassist Duncan Cherry.

LEO: What is the connection between your favorite beverage and your music?

Duncan Cherry: Our name originally comes from Brendan (Johnson), our guitarist’s, hands. He has the words “Late Ones” tattooed on his palms! We all love the stuff, it’s literally the best soda in the entire world. It’s probably why Joey (Hodson) can play drums so fast.

LEO: What do you think Little Heart Records can do for you? Why not do it yourselves?

DC: Little Heart is one of the best independent labels out there because they love the music they put out. They support us with any crazy ideas we come up with and are always keeping us in the loop with new stuff happening with the label and cool stuff they’re doing. They have really pulled us into their family, and we’ve met a lot of really cool people and bands through them. We put out our demo by ourselves, and we’ve all been in bands who have taken a DIY approach to doing things, but Little Heart helped us with their connections to bring our ideas to the surface. We still design almost all of our shirts, I co-engineered and recorded both our 7” and full-length at Treehouse Audio here in town, and we all help in booking shows, promoting and putting together designs and songs. We still do a lot by ourselves when we can.

LEO: Top three Louisville bands we should be listening to?

DC: We all really back our friends in Fast Friends, Xerxes and Vaderbomb. If you haven’t heard them, check them out. I’m assuming you mean current bands ...

LEO: How many different bands have the members been in so far?

DC: Oh, wow — I think combined it would be somewhere in the realm of 41 bands. We like to play.

LEO: Do you know what you’re doing this summer?

DC: The same thing we do every summer, most likely: playing lots of shows, hanging out with our friends, and making fun of each other.

Learn more at facebook.com/LateOnes.

Photo by Jeff Radcliffe

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Alejandro Escovedo and his friends

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At 61, Alejandro Escovedo still looks and moves like a young rocker with something to prove, but he’s been kicking around for 35 years. From early punks The Nuns to the groundbreaking roots-rock bands Rank and File and True Believers, followed by two decades of influential solo work, Escovedo still seeks out new experiences.

For his latest album, Big Station (out June 5), he co-wrote songs with old pal Chuck Prophet in Baja, then went home to record them with producer Tony Visconti, best known for his 1970s work with David Bowie and T. Rex. Escovedo also recently received praise for performances with Bruce Springsteen.

LEO: How do you write with Chuck? Do you guys sit together in a room, or work individually?

Alejandro Escovedo: No, we sit in a room together. We go to visit each other, he comes to Texas or I go to San Francisco. We work pretty hard, we have a lot of fun doing it. I’ve been writing with him since (2008 album) Real Animal, and this is our third record together.

LEO: What about Tony Visconti? Some of his best-known productions are fairly grandiose, but you’re more of a street-level guy.

AE: Yeah … it’s really easy to work with Tony. We’ve done three albums now, and he’s become part of the band, pretty much. I think we work very well together, I think the combination is great because … I mean, he brings such a vast musical vocabulary and history with him — those are the kind of records I still listen to and have listened to all my life. I feel very comfortable with him, the way we both bring really great things out in each other. I love working with Tony, and I hope to make many more records with Tony.

LEO: We’re in an election year, so with this new album coming out, there’s some songs you wrote about your heritage and border issues. Were you consciously thinking about the ugliness of the political world, like some of the problems in Texas and Arizona?

AE: You know, when Chuck and I sat down to write this album, we knew that it was going to be about … observing the world, rather than writing about what was internal; more about the world around us. Chuck and I went down to Mexico to write, so there were a lot of things that we saw down there that we wanted to write about. As a result, we wrote “Sally Was a Cop,” “Can’t Make Me Run,” “Bottom of the World,” songs like that. It was a result of that experience.

LEO: Were you in a beautiful beach area or a poor rural area?

AE: : Well, it’s both. It’s all there. It’s beautiful. But it’s sad to see how intimidated people have become as a result of the violence and everything.

LEO: You got a lot of good attention at South by Southwest in March. What’s it like having that extra Bruce spotlight shine down on you?

AE: Well, you know, it’s wonderful. He’s a great guy, a very generous man, he’s very cool. I just like playing with him. It’s all very, very good for me.

LEO: Did you know each other before you hooked up with his management team?

AE: No, I didn’t know him. He picks the songs that are played before his concerts, and he used to play me — he even played Rank and File songs.

LEO: You’ve been to Louisville many times before and did some recording recently in Lexington. Why didn’t you record there again?

AE: Big Station we did in Austin, I wanted to come home and do it. I’m glad we made the record here … but I love Lexington, and that studio is amazing. Those two albums sound so good, and I really enjoyed the crew there and the experience there is amazing. I hope to go back and make another record there.

Alejandro Escovedo with Jesse Malin
Sunday, May 27
Headliners Music Hall
1386 Lexington Road • 584-8088
headlinerslouisville.com
$15; 8 p.m.

Photo by Todd Wolfson c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Dry the River: The LEO interview

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Dry the River play tomorrow (May 23rd) at Uncle Slayton’s. LEO asked a few silly questions:

LEO: You’ve cited a love for Fugazi, who are my all-time favorite band. First, thank you. Second, what are your 13 favorite Fugazi songs?
Matt Taylor: The 13 songs on 13 Songs will be my answer.

LEO: Who’s worse: The Beatles, The Stones, or Mumford & Sons?
MT: What are we trying to achieve here? (laughs) There can be no worst when all candidates hold merit. Obviously, Mumford and Sons, but they’re great. But it’s Mumford and Sons. No, wait; The Beatles. What a load of old shit!

LEO: Which one of you lads smells best?
MT: I do. Me or Jonny. We shower at least twice a day. Never together. Sometimes at the same time. Not together.

LEO: If you could have lunch with any five women, who would they be?
MT: Rihanna – I think we could be friends, she seems cool.
Bjork – she would make great conversation and I love her accent, so I could listen to her talk for ages about the universe, taking the pressure off me.
Natalie Portman – clearly needs no explanation.
Alison Brie – My friend Oliver introduced me to “Community” last year. And we also spent a night watching the series “Hot Sluts”. Say no more.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus – We’re all “Seinfeld” obsessives and I have always had a crush on Julia. She’s older than me and would be able to give me life advice, as well as looking great. Maybe she could advise me on how to keep looking great.
I think she would get on best with Bjork at the table.

LEO: Which bands, 10 or 20 years from now, will be heavily influenced by your music and will discuss you often in interviews?
MT: All music will have been done by then, won’t it? Maybe some new bands that just miss the nu-nu-folk comeback and then turn into a confused mess.

Thanks for the entertaining questions!

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The Aquabats’ super family fun

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Christian Jacobs has lived many lives in his 40 years on this planet. Today he is star, co-creator and executive producer of the campy Saturday morning show “The Aquabats! Super Show!,” which stars his long-running New Wave pop-punk band, The Aquabats. It took 15 years for the band to achieve their dream of having their own TV series, and it took the success of Jacobs’ previous creation, “Yo! Gabba Gabba,” to ease the way.

Jacobs began his show business career early — as a child actor, appearing on “Married … with Children,” “Major Dad” and more. A role in the skate movie “Gleaming the Cube” led the L.A. resident to the local skate and punk scenes. In 1995, the Aquabats released their first album, standing out with a costumed stage show and storylines about superheroes battling villains. (Jacobs’ character is known today as “MC Bat Commander.”)

After the band’s initial success wore off, Jacobs and writing partner Scott Schultz developed “Yo! Gabba Gabba,” the hugely popular and weirdly psychedelic series hosted by a hip DJ for pre-schoolers (and their still-with-it parents, and/or stoned college students). Their vision finally confirmed by a mainstream audience, Schultz, Jacobs and the rest of the band premiered “The Aquabats! Super Show!” on the new kids’ channel The Hub in March. The first season has featured guest appearances by “Weird Al” Yankovic, Jon Heder of “Napoleon Dynamite,” comedian Paul Scheer, and ’70s game show star Rip Taylor, and follows in the tradition of Saturday morning cross-generational classics like “H.R. Pufnstuf” and “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.”

“We really wanted to be put on Saturday mornings, in the tradition of that,” says Jacobs, “and we’ve been getting a lot of feedback from fans online and friends, saying, ‘It’s so awesome, we can’t wait to wake up and watch the show on Saturday mornings.’”

LEO: The last great network Saturday morning show was “The Weird Al Show,” which ended in 1997. You probably could have had this show on back then, but it took almost 15 years. Did Al give you any tips?
Christian Jacobs: Yeah, we talked about his show, actually. I was a big fan of his show as well … Al was like, “I’d been trying to do a show for a long time, and it came together, but there were so many rules and regulations, the network has this-and-that-and-the-other-thing; it was really an unpleasant battle to make that show,” which surprised me. He’s saying that standing there in a superhero outfit (laughs), because we were in between takes.

Jacobs praises cable and the Internet for giving writers and performers more chances to make shows like his, and with less restrictions. And though the initial broadcast audience might be smaller, such offbeat productions now have many more ways to be discovered.

LEO: The Hub’s target audience is between 6 and 11 years old. How difficult is it to balance making it fun for them and for adults?
CJ: I want to say “it’s impossible, you can’t do it, I don’t know how we discovered this magic formula,” but … “Spongebob” did it great, “The Simpsons,” so many shows do it great. For the kinds of things we’re referencing and homaging, I didn’t know it if would work for kids. I knew I liked it, I knew our peer group would enjoy it; it was just making sure it was appropriate for kids, that it wasn’t too violent, that kids could still benefit from watching it somehow. But being so close to the Aquabats, I always wondered, “Is this really going to be accepted by kids?” Or are kids just gonna go, “Oh, this is old, I’m gonna go watch ‘The Avengers’ or ‘Iron Man.’” There’s all these way more slick things out there, but we’re seeing that kids really do like it.

After so many years with the band, I’m just so glad that people are responding. It’s really surprising and satisfying for us, and I think the show can only get better and better as we keep reaching out there, do stuff that’s different and unique. It does come from a real punk-rock sensibility that we all grew up with. We grew up in a good time with punk and hip-hop and underground culture becoming mainstream; we’ve basically been applying that DIY ethic to making a television show.

‘The Aquabats! Super Show!’
Saturdays at 11 a.m., The Hub, hubworld.com.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Lee Ranaldo’s new sonic life

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For 30 years, Lee Ranaldo was one of the two guitar heroes of the ultimate guitar/noise/cool band Sonic Youth. While he sang some songs, Ranaldo was perceived as being more of a worker and less of a centerpiece than guitarist Thurston Moore and bassist Kim Gordon, who sang more and stood out for their long, seemingly ideal marriage.

The couple announced their separation last fall, and the future of the band was put on hiatus. Ranaldo, now 56 and a tireless collaborator who has already released eight solo albums of experimental music, had been working with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley and others on his first solo “song record,” as he calls it. The result, Between the Times and the Tides, was released in March, and Ranaldo and band come to Louisville in between dates opening for M. Ward.

Lee Ranaldo: I have a lot of friends who live in Louisville, and I’ve loved a lot of different music that’s come out of Louisville over the years. To me, it’s a really cool town, it’s a music town, and I really like hanging out there. There’s definitely local musicians I really like a lot, that I play with a fair amount, so I’m definitely psyched to come.

Some of his local friends include percussionist Tim Barnes, who often played with Ranaldo when he lived in New York, and singer-songwriter Will Oldham. Also, “There’s this poet/writer guy named Ron Whitehead down there that I’ve been longtime friends with.

“Louisville’s one of those places where it’s a small town but had a big impact on a lot of people,” says Ranaldo. “There’s been a lot of great music coming out of there.”

LEO: As a fan for two decades, this is the solo record I’ve been wanting you to put out.
LR: Oh, cool! Well, it’s definitely the record I’ve been wanting me to put out, as well. I’m super happy that it finally happened. It happened at the point when I least expected it. I’ve tried to make a solo record in the past, force it into being; either I’d get distracted by Sonic Youth going on tour, or going in the studio or whatever, it never happened. I’d always written songs like this — most of them are on cassettes in drawers. But this time, it snuck up on me at a time when I was preoccupied by a bunch of other stuff. It happened in a really natural way, which I think adds to how nice it sounds.

LEO: Did you feel that your time to do this was running out, after 30 years with a band?
LR: No, it didn’t feel that way at the time of making this record. But if you’d asked me four or five years ago, I probably would have said, “Yeah, if I don’t make a solo record soon, it’s never gonna happen.”

LEO: Did it feel like fate taking over?
LR: It was weird. Especially with the timing — it was mostly complete when it was revealed, all this stuff internally with Sonic Youth … I don’t think I could have made this record knowing that the band was gonna stop, for a while at the very least, or whatever. I made it in our downtime, oblivious to all that stuff that was going on … My band played our first gig the day after Thurston and Kim announced their split.

LEO: Did part of you feel like, “Hey, this is my moment!”?
LR: No, not really. If anything, I just felt sorry to see them going through this kind of pain.

LEO: I’ve thought before that if Sonic Youth had broken up around 1997, there would be millions of dollars waiting for you to reunite.
LR: Maybe. That wasn’t the important issue for us. We used to joke, “Yeah, we should break up and then come back six or seven years later, do a reunion tour, and make a lot of money,” but it wasn’t really ever the object of it for us. It’s been a lot of fun to do a small tour like this. It’s a lot of work to put it together; we’ve been spoiled in Sonic Youth by how faithful and devoted our crew’s been. It’s really, on a lot of levels, like starting from scratch … if I didn’t feel like the music was worth it, I wouldn’t be doing it.

Lee Ranaldo with Wooden Wand and Sea Hero
Saturday, May 19
Zanzabar
2100 S. Preston St. • 935-9227
zanzabarlouisville.com
$16 adv., $18 DOS; 9 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Artis more

The first full-length album by the band Artis Gilmore, The Narwhal and the Dinosaur, is 42.9 minutes of pure indie-pop, an unexpected fusion of singer-songwriter Rebecca Williams and Nerves Junior members Cory Wayne and Chris Snow. They play Zanzabar on Friday, and their album will be commercially available this week. How did Artis Gilmore happen? Are we safe?

LEO: Artis Gilmore doesn’t obviously sound like either of your own projects. How did you find this sound?

Rebecca Williams: I met Cory and Chris while I was in the studio recording this album, and several months later, we decided to collaborate as a live band and eventually started writing songs together. I wrote this album two years after my first, which allowed me time to listen to different music than I had been listening to before, and (I) found a thicker sound for the new material I was writing. The sound of this album is solely due to (engineer) Kevin Ratterman’s and (ex-Nerves Junior) Stuart Phelps’ distinct styles; I came to the studio with skeletons, and they gave them blood and guts.

LEO: Who else has inspired you in developing this band?

RW: The live act is heavily inspired by Björk and Matmos, the stuff that they did at the Royal Opera House.

LEO:
Where do you go from here? Videos, touring, festivals? Or is this just for fun?

RW:
Graduation parties and Bat Mitzvahs, occasional Hall of Fame inductions and/or ribbon cuttings. We’re still in the planning stage.

Learn more at facebook.com/ArtisGilmore.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Mr. Cosby is ready for you

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Pudding pops. Sweaters. Based on the reactions of some of the people I talked to about interviewing Bill Cosby — America’s dad, the savior of the sitcom, bestselling author and failed movie star — these are the things they first associate with the man who prefers to be called “Mr. Cosby,” even though, technically, he is Dr. William H. Cosby Jr., holder of a doctorate in education, and a trailblazer not only in entertainment but in all of modern American life.

In 1983, he released a landmark concert film called Bill Cosby, Himself, which defined his legacy as our greatest storytelling comedian. He recently discussed his approach to comedy, noting that he was willing to go out of his way to help sell tickets for this tour, as the economy was hurting advance sales. LEO was thrilled to have the chance to speak with the legend.

LEO: So, why should people come to your show?
Bill Cosby: (deadpan) I have no idea. (I laugh). Now, you have to write all this stuff down, you know, because it might be funny. I’m not gonna go through anything except: I know I’m good — that’s first of all. I know I’m a master at what I do. No. 3, I’m a performance … funny man. A storyteller.

Mr. Cosby then told a long, random story about a man who approached him on the street, laughing. The man said, “I’m not alone,” then continued walking. Mr. Cosby got in his car and was driven away. At a traffic light, he saw the man, still walking and laughing. The encounter stuck with him.

BC: I recently played a hall in Carmel, Ind. That’s “car-mul,” not “car-mell.” The driver turned to me about halfway through our drive to the airport and said to me, “I was listening to you work while I waited for you. How many people are in your show?” I said, “It’s just me!” He said, “Well, it sounds like four or five people are up there.” So that’s a part of the performance. I don’t do voices anymore. I may do attitudes, or I do characters ... I do what I’ve seen, and what I imagine. I’m my own editor, my own director, my own writer. And I’m aiming to make people feel comfortable.

Mr. Cosby then asked if I would hold for a minute. I said yes, wondering if he would return.

BC: (returning) OK!
LEO: You were talking about telling stories.
BC: Well, see, when I went out to perform in the second show, what he’s talking about, I decided to do something about our daughter, my wife and I, when she was about to enter college. So I had to do the character of my wife. I did the character of my daughter. I did the character of the president of the school, the president’s secretary, I did the character of the president giving the graduation speech, and then some characters going up and receiving diplomas. That’s what he was talking about.

I know what I’m going to do the last 10 minutes before going on, but once I get out there, I know what I want done. And that is for people to feel, as they leave, exactly what I told you before. Because I often wondered, in the beginning, the first 20 years of my career — maybe the first 30 — it became a question with comedians, that if a comedian, man or woman, goes on stage and they do rock-sock and people are laughin’, how they don’t have a shelf life that a funny play would have. That a funny play could come to town and play with, let’s say a star, who … could do that funny play, and it would be sold out! For a whole week! Why can’t a comedian who gets 50 times the laughs do the same kind of business? And I figured that the reason would be because there’s no performance, so to speak.

Comedians come up and they start talking and they, you know, do this and, “Why does the chicken cross the road to get to the other side hohohaha.” I’ve had people come to me after 30, 40 years — “We saw you in 1973 and we laughed so hard!” and then they start telling me about the damage it did to them — which may be the reason they didn’t come back — but they were laughing so hard and their sides were burning and their face was hurting, and I’m thinking, “And when did you see me again?” “Well, I think this is the second time.” How come you can’t remember? What is it that didn’t bring you back? … I decided 30 years ago, “OK, we’re gonna start forming and making these stories longer, and fitting characters in, so that there are things they will really and truly get to want to see and hear, just like a play.”

LEO: There have been so few comedians who have followed in that tradition. You’re kind of alone out there.
BC: (ruefully) Yeah.

LEO: Why do you think that is?
BC: Well, I think — look, it’s like the argument, “Can you teach comedy?” And the answer is, “Yes.” And then a big (roaring sound), “You can’t do that!” No, no, no — you’re talking about the people who can play Carnegie Hall. I’m talking about the ones you can sit in a classroom and you can teach them. Just like pianists who don’t make it to Carnegie Hall. You’ve got levels of people who can take lessons, learn, understand — but then it takes the special ones. And comedians are, many times, similar because it is show business … they’ll have a one-hit joke, or whatever, and never get another one … And I think there are more comedians than ever before because all these little clubs are around, and the source of entertainment is not necessarily “clean comedy.” It’s sort of like, “OK, people are ashamed, and putting their hands up to their mouths in embarrassment.” To just flat-out laughing out loud at the profanity and whatever, so there’s that level, which I sort of put not at … “burlesque” is not the word … yeah, burlesque! That’s burlesque comedy. Where you can actually say the curse words, for that reason. And until it was made legal, they couldn’t do it. Poor Lenny Bruce.

LEO: Don’t you think there’s been some merit to the ways George Carlin and Richard Pryor were able to use that language?
BC: OK, now, so that’s two (laughs).

LEO: Right.
BC: And they were vanguard. They were vanguard. Then came people who just heard that they could now curse. (Mr. Cosby sings a vampy fanfare).

LEO: Like you said, it’s a form of burlesque. It’s a different style of entertainment for a different crowd.
BC: Yeah! Yeah!

LEO: And you think it sets comedy back as an art form?
BC: No. No. The art form is unto itself. There are great performers who can say those words and they have the material to match. And they’re wonderful. I don’t name them. And then there are others who will always be at that level, where the guy walks out and says, “Do 15 minutes,” and they come out and they curse (laughs). “And now, ladies and gentlemen, we have a strong line-up of professional cursers …” And that’s entertainment!

Mr. Cosby then spent eight minutes teaching me more about how to be a good comedian, a lesson I will always treasure, if not necessarily use professionally.

Bill Cosby
Saturday, May 12
Kentucky Center for the Arts
501 W. Main St. • 584-7777
kentuckycenter.org
$42.50+; 7:30 p.m.

Photo by Erinn Cosby

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Pierced Arrows’ old-time rock ’n’ roll

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The golden garage rockers finally hit Louisville

At the age of 63, most rock musicians are expected to be retired, dead or continuing to desperately hit every state fair possible to bleed pennies out of those two hits from 1966. Most people aren’t Toody and Fred Cole.

The happily-ever-after couple are best known — to the very small group who know them at all — as the duo behind Dead Moon, a band from rural Oregon who lasted for 20 years and was the subject of a full-length documentary film in 2006 called Unknown Passage. While even most rock fans with some intact social skills can be forgiven for not being aware of Dead Moon, or the Coles’ latest band, Pierced Arrows, Pearl Jam are fans and have performed some of their songs. A Dead Moon song can be heard in the video game “EA Skate 3,” and Vice Records released the latest Pierced Arrows album, Descending Shadows. Their din of psychedelic garage rock might scare the average Pearl Jam fan, or inspire them.

Guitarist Fred Cole has been performing since his teens, scoring a minor hit with a group in the mid-’60s, in fact. He and Toody ran a music instrument shop and made their own records for many years, living simply out in the country with their three kids in what she refers to as “a creepy old place” when they weren’t touring Europe repeatedly, where they built a following they couldn’t locate in the United States. “We’ve got way too much shit to ever move again!” she exclaims.

Today Toody, the bassist, continues to work on many of the tour details, booking vehicles and hotels and maintaining their website and correspondence. Having never played Louisville before, Toody included Possibility City on her wish list when looking at routing for their current tour. “It’s always really exciting to hit a new town,” she notes, citing “the people, the club, the vibe of the thing” as what they seek out on the road.

“In the Dead Moon era, we were amazingly popular in Europe, we did extremely well. Now with Pierced Arrows, over the past five years, Europe doesn’t have the incredible turnouts that they use to. We’re playing smaller clubs, so it’s not too much different, at this point, from touring in the U.S. — except that it’s to see all the people we’ve grown with over the past 25 years, that’s still incredibly cool.”

Drummer Kelly Halliburton, whose father played in a band with Fred in the early ’70s, came back into the Coles’ lives shortly after Dead Moon broke up and kept them from retirement. Not that they needed much encouragement.

“I think that self-motivation, self-drive, is something you’re just born with,” says Toody. “As far as doing something for this long, loving it enough to go through the pain for the hour of fun and glory.”

The Coles have literally done it themselves for years, homesteading, building their store by hand, and hand-manufacturing each of their early records. “There’s a great sense of accomplishment to dabble with enough different things to where you know how to do a little bit of everything. When we first started doing it, it was an economic necessity, there was just no other way around it. Fred happens to be one of these renaissance kind of guys who loves learning how to do everything.”

The years are catching up, slowly but surely, for the grandparents (their oldest grandkid is already in college). “You get to the point where going up and down stairs, lifting heavy equipment, carrying gear and stuff, gets to be real old. But that was always a stress before. It bothers Fred more than it does me. We’re pretty lucky — Kelly’s a big strong kid, so he takes care of the big stuff, I take care of all the small stuff, and Fred takes care of 90 percent of the driving … We each have our own roles.”

So, at 63, how old do they feel?

“Probably about 50,” Toody replies with a hearty smoker’s laugh.

Pierced Arrows
with Don’t and Old Baby
Wednesday, May 16
Headliners Music Hall
1386 Lexington Road • 584-8088
headlinerslouisville.com
$10; 9 p.m.

Photo by Pod

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Jumping on the Bridge

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After four years of playing together, Audrey Cecil and Amanda Lucas have made it official. Their first album as Bridge 19, The Fall Back, is being released this week, with a performance at the Kentucky Center on Saturday (8 p.m., $10).

“Fans kept asking, ‘Where’s the CD with you both singing together? We want that.’ … We are friends first, bandmates second. We’ve been pals since we were little kids. It just so happens we have the ability to make pretty music and run a business together.”

As kids, both listened to the country music their parents enjoyed, and Cecil was also exposed to bluegrass and classic rock. As teens, both fell hard for Alanis Morissette. Lucas was also turned on by No Doubt and the Dave Matthews Band, while Cecil gravitated toward early Sheryl Crow. In college, “I really started getting obsessed with the stuff that shapes me now,” says Cecil. “Fleetwood Mac, Indigo Girls, Sarah McLachlan, Paul Simon.” Today, in their 20s, both listen to a lot of singer-songwriters. Lucas also cites pop/rock, while Cecil loves “a lot of classic R&B.”

LEO: How many of your songs about relationships are “happy” songs, lyrically?

AL: About half of the songs I’ve written about relationships are “happy” songs, lyrically. Sometimes the “happy” songs don’t make the cut for the album for various reasons — too slow, too cheesy, etc.

AC: Amanda’s definitely the one to answer this question. She’s got the relationship songwriting covered. My songs tend to fall all over the spectrum in terms of topics. Sometimes about relationships, sometimes not, sometimes written using a relationship as a metaphor for something else.

LEO: If you got fat, would you consider changing your name to Fridge 19?

AL & AC: We considered “Refrigerate After Opening” for a band name, so, yes, we would — but only if “fridge” is capitalized. How about FRIDGE 19.5?

Learn more at bridge19.com.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

MCA’s legacy

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Beastie Boy influenced and helped many as he evolved

When I was a young white boy, I hated the Beastie Boys.

In 1986, as their first album, Licensed to Ill, conquered the suburban world, the popular and/or stupid kids all around me constantly quoted them and tried to act as we saw them on MTV: drunk, crude and aggressive. They seemed no different to me than Mötley Crüe or Spuds MacKenzie.

Today, even a casual observer might know they evolved into a unique and genre-defying live band, and global ambassadors for freedom and tolerance. That first album was originally supposed to be titled Don’t Be a Faggot — and no one more than the Beasties themselves were glad, in hindsight, that their corporate bosses denied this juvenile notion. The trio came so far in their 30 years that one must imagine Snooki, at 50, as an internationally beloved poet, philosopher and our nation’s first female president, to fully comprehend what the Boys — Michael “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, and Adam “MCA” Yauch, who died last Friday — accomplished together.

Their initial success had led these well-educated sons of New York artists and teachers to forget that the frat boys they had become were not who they really were. The group, which began as a punk rock band before morphing into rappers, picked up their instruments again and started playing all the different music they loved: everything from punk to funk, pop to jazz, hip-hop to dub. Though their second album, Paul’s Boutique, was largely ignored in 1989, seen as a hitless attempt by a novelty act, it’s seen by many today as a defining, influential work.

Their third, Check Your Head, in 1992, was the album that, in many ways, changed my life. An unprecedented mélange of many different styles bouncing off each other while working together to create something entirely new, it opened my mind to the possibilities it presented. I read their liner notes and every interview to trace their inspirations to the sources, learning more about different cultures, from Jamaica to Japan, in the process. Their playful, subversive sense of humor restored, they started a record label and a magazine, both called Grand Royal, which furthered their view of the world as a big playground full of ideas and inspirations.

As Check and its even more popular follow-up, Ill Communication, took their place in popular culture, their success helped insecure college-aged me see that one can be successful doing what one enjoys, and thinks is right, even when others are telling us to do what we used to do, or what makes more sense on paper. Their apologies for past mistakes confirmed that I had been right to hate them, at the time, and was right to love them now.

Yauch, the oldest, was always the seeker, the George Harrison of the group. His yearnings and wanderings led to his embrace of Buddhism, which led to his work on behalf of Tibetan refugees, which led to meeting his wife, with whom he had a daughter. In his later years, he spoke out against war, and against stereotyping Muslims. He also, notably, rapped about respecting others and finding peace within.

When Yauch was diagnosed with cancer in 2009, at 44, it seemed unlikely that this mid-life scare could be more than that. But I have a friend a little under that age who has been fighting the same battle, and he, too, is one of the kindest, most gracious people I’ve ever encountered. This all makes me want to be more of an asshole, so I can live as long as Dick Cheney.

Photo by Phil Andelman

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Faun Fables plays with a younger crowd

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Some bands develop a special relationship with Louisville as they tour and tour again around this great nation. From the V-Roys and the Features to Faun Fables, friendships are formed and tours become routed around seeing Possibility City yet again. Faun Fables, the Oakland-based underground gypsy carnival “songtelling” group led by singer Dawn McCarthy and guitarist/partner Nils Frykdahl, is so confident in the fanbase they’ve established, they’re playing here on Derby night.

McCarthy may be best known for her collaboration with a Louisvillian, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, singing with him on most of his 2006 album The Letting Go. “I’m going to be doing sort of a surprise, kind of a secret record in Nashville. And you’ll hear more about that in the months to come,” McCarthy tells LEO.

LEO: I do know from your website that it’s with Mr. “Prince” Billy.
Dawn McCarthy:
Oh, did I say that on the website? (laughs) Oh, god! I wonder if he’s OK with that. OK, I’m not going to say anything else about it ... but it doesn’t give out too much info, right?
LEO:
It says it’s with him, and it’s for the holiday season. So, can I assume they’re holiday songs?
DM: You know, there is a song that is a holiday song ... But that’s a good idea, just do a whole holiday record. People rake in cash doing those holiday releases, you know? (laughs) Man, maybe that’ll be the next one for me and him.
I’ve been interested in the idea of writing my own holiday Yule/Christmas songs. I have one that was on the Light of a Vaster Dark record called “O Mary” that combines the Virgin Mary character in the time of Christ’s birth with winter solstice and the sun returning, the whole connection of those traditions. I love all that kind of stuff, I love digging in, past the Christian stuff, and seeing the connections of the traditions, and how all the modern holidays we celebrate are shreds of much older stuff — it’s interesting how much of that is out of the mainstream knowledge right now, and hopefully will come back more in years to come. I’d love to just write a bunch of songs to help with that process.

In recent years, McCarthy and Frykdahl have started a family, raising two daughters, which led to another new form of songwriting early each day. “We have a good breakfast. We have our bells we ring, we sing our breakfast song,” she laughs. “It’s a time, too, when Nils is around, he works later in the evening — so it’s a family time when we can all hang out together, and we dance and jump around. The girls have a costume trunk. We play, and change diapers, wait for the morning poops to happen. It’s good fun!”

The family is also looking forward to touring together, “at least until kindergarten starts up.” Part of the current challenge for Faun Fables is to win over some new fans, as some of their audience have also started families and can’t go out as much anymore.

“I’m interested in working with that, and being able to have venues and shows that are really family-friendly. I’d like to explore that more. I don’t need to do more smoky bar/nightclub adult playgrounds (laughs) — that doesn’t work for me at all anymore. I’ve had enough! Twenty years of it. So, it’s meeting a new population, and that’s nice, too. It’s nice to have a chance to be fresh, for new people, again.”

Faun Fables with Softcheque, Parlour, Ford Theater Reunion, Madame Machine, and w.n.b.a.
Saturday, May 5
The Mammoth • 744 S. 13th St.
$10; 7 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

New Now Next



After recording a demo as Jackalope, the band now called via animo has a new guitarist, and guitarist Kyle Thompson has switched to bass.

“I think we are a completely different band now, and I’m really excited about the new sound we have,” says Thompson. “Without sounding too pretentious, I think we went from being a boring four-chord punk band to having something that mixes the aesthetic of ’80s hardcore with indie rock ... That definitely sounds pretentious.”

Their new EP, This Courage Is Bittersweet, was recorded by Mike Stewart at the House of Wax last fall. They then sent it to J. Robbins, in Washington, D.C., for mixing. In addition to leading several influential bands of his own, including Jawbox, Robbins has also worked with Louisville’s Slamdek Records, and the bands Black Cross and Coliseum.

LEO: Did you get to work with J. Robbins in person?
KT: Unfortunately, we did not, due to time constraints and everyone’s school schedule. We did everything over the phone and email, but I still feel like he got a feel for what we are going for, and I’m super pleased on how the songs turned out … We’re stoked to be able to keep the Louisville/D.C. connection alive!

LEO: Who are some of your other favorite bands?
KT: Whenever we talk about covering songs, I notice that none of us listen to that much music in common. To me, two bands that have had a huge influence on how I approach via animo, especially live, are Hot Water Music and Fugazi.

LEO: Do you prefer playing house shows to playing in bars?
KT: There are definitely benefits to both. I feel like bars are a little more inviting; a lot of people are kind of hesitant to go to house shows sometimes because they can feel exclusive. But, with that being said, we definitely prefer house shows. We’re great friends with the people that live at those houses, and all-ages is a huge plus.

via animo will play a house show on Tuesday, May 8, in Louisville. Listen to the EP at facebook.com/viaanimo and buy it at viaanimo.bigcartel.com.

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c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Brendon Small's metal blasts

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When Brendon Small — the Berklee College of Music-trained guitarist and showrunner of the popular Adult Swim TV series “Metalocalypse” — decided to release his first solo album on April 29, he was advised to stick to the music industry practice of releasing albums on Tuesdays. The clean-cut, 37-year-old metalhead said no.

“I said, ‘I am gonna put out a record on a Sunday, because I don’t think anyone really gives a shit.’ Because I’m not putting it out in stores — it’s available for download on my website and a couple of other places where you can get it — I’m doing the whole thing myself. So I figured, ‘What’s the cleanest way for me to put this record out? When I have the new premiere of my series.’”

“Metalocalypse” returned for its fourth season last week, following the animated adventures of a popular and powerful death metal band called Dethklok. The series has released two soundtrack albums of music Small composed for the fake band, with him playing the real guitars. For his new album, Galaktikon, Small has done it himself, paying for everything from the other musicians to the mastering, because Adult Swim and their parent company, Time Warner, own the rights to all things “Metalocalypse,” and paying for — and owning — his own personal material is “cleaner,” Small says. “At some point, you want to own it yourself and not get six lawyers on a phone call.”

Adult Swim has been supportive in many other ways for Small. In 1999, the then-23-year-old was discovered by TV producer Loren Bouchard while performing in a Boston comedy club. Bouchard was looking for talent for his new animated series, “Home Movies,” and Small not only voiced and shared his name with that series’ main character, he also found ways to add his guitar playing to its soundtrack. As the show progressed over four seasons, Small’s music became heavier, more reflective of his personal obsession. That music birthed the idea for his follow-up series.

Though Small developed and runs the show, writes dialogue, does voice acting, and writes and performs music for “Metalocalypse,” he bristles at the term “control freak.”

“If a guy’s running a TV show and he’s not a control freak, that show’s gonna suck. I’ve known guys like that … You’re always only three bad decisions away from it all going down the toilet. I’m not a control freak with humans — I don’t tell ’em how to dress or how to speak or anything like that. (The show) has to be a certain way, or it’s not the thing.”

Commitment is a common thread between the music and the comedy. “(Real death metal band) Cannibal Corpse takes itself dead seriously. If it didn’t for a minute, it wouldn’t work. It’s almost like a great actor — they’re not gonna go, ‘I’m not really a wizard, but I’m playing one right now.’ You can’t drop the veneer, even for a second. I think even the people who find the ridiculousness fantastic will also be hurt by that. ‘Oh … they’re joking?’ You have to commit 100 percent in performance, album cover art, lyrics — all that stuff.”

Galaktikon is a concept album about a superhero going through a divorce. It’s more melodic than Dethklok’s brutal sounds, closer in sound to the ’80s European metal bands that thrilled Small as a teen.

“That young boy lives within me. It was such an important time for me, discovering metal and guitar; those are the years you start developing your personality and making choices.”

Small, who still performs comedy, understands the fine line most heavy metal walks between earnestness and parody, perhaps better than most. “It’s grandiose, and you’re giggling at it, as a 15-year-old, but you also recognize its awesomeness.”

Even in his youth, Small recognized metal’s cartoon-like qualities, theatricality and storytelling potential. For Small, creating a TV series like “Metalocalypse” seemed obvious: “If we hadn’t done it, somebody else would have, and that was part of my pitch. ‘Somebody else is going to fuck this up — we can do it right.’”

‘Metalocalypse’
Mondays at 12:15 a.m. on Adult Swim
metalocalypsetv.tumblr.com


c. 2012 LEO Weekly