Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Andy made it after all



Louisvillian Andy Sturdevant left his hometown in 2005 for Minneapolis. Since, he has thrived as an artist, writer, arts administrator and man-about-town, connecting creative types of all stripes. His first book was published recently, and LEO checked in with the man himself about his new life.

LEO: Would you not be the “you” you are now if you had stayed in Louisville?

Andy Sturdevant: I don’t know if I’d be doing exactly the sort of work I’m doing now if I’d stayed, since so much of it has been specifically shaped by the cultural landscape in the Upper Midwest and so many of the people here. So much of the path I’ve followed is so specific to Minneapolis as both a physical place and as a stand-in for a specific set of cultural values. And so much of the writing and art has been about the place, it’s hard to imagine making it in quite the same way about another place, even one where I grew up.

But at the same time, I don’t know if I’d make that kind of work if I hadn’t spent years going to shows at the Rudyard Kipling, or performing for 20 people at Pandemonium Arcade with Mickey Hess, or reading Burt the Cat, or working at Preston Arts Center selling acrylic paint to artists, or renting weird cult movies at Around the World Video and Wild and Woolly. I might have had roughly equivalent experiences anywhere, but I wonder if they might have been touched quite the same way by that wild, smart-ass Louisville quality.

LEO: The music scene here was a big influence on you as a teen. Were you also making art back then? Writing?

AS: The music scene certainly was a big part of my life in Louisville, but that really didn’t come along until later. I was scribbling away making cartoons and writing weird little short stories years before I’d ever helped load an amplifier into the back of a minivan. LEO, WFPL and The Courier-Journal were all, in their own ways, enormous influences on me growing up. In some ways, it was easier to absorb art and writing influences than it was music influences, especially when I was a teenager out in the suburbs and not really involved in the music scene. The music scene seemed really distant and inaccessible and too cool for me personally when I was 14 or 15 — it wasn’t until I read “Slamdek A-Z” that I thought, “Oh, gee, I probably could have been part of this” — but the newspaper came right to the house, and LEO was easy to find anywhere. I read both voraciously and admired all the personalities.

LEO: Many would expect a fellow with your widescreen view of the world to live in Brooklyn or San Francisco. Is Minneapolis actually a more rewarding place to make a career?

AS: At my going-away party in 2005, there was actually a poster I’d made with some friends hung on the wall by the front door, where I’d written the names of other major cities where I might have considered moving, like Brooklyn and San Francisco and Chicago and Detroit and a few others. They all had some disqualifying factor scrawled in next to them — “too gritty,” “too granola,” “too easy,” etc. At the bottom it said something like, “Nothing else left — looks like it’s Minneapolis!” So there was a certain glibness to my initial decision, but it really turned out to be a great fit. I wouldn’t say categorically it’s more rewarding than anywhere else for a person to make a career, but it has been for me.

There is a fantastic artistic community, the two cities are always interesting to explore and investigate, and there’s a deep and well-tended-to artistic and political heritage. You can live fairly cheaply and eat and drink well. It’s a great place for high-quality dairy products, bike riding, literary reading series, nice duplexes and public art. Something about the understated quality of the culture was a good fit for me, too. I really don’t think for a minute a 25-year-old version of me would have done very well in Brooklyn or San Francisco in 2005. I think that would have been a classic flame-out cautionary tale.

‘Potluck Supper With Meeting to Follow’
By Andy Sturdevant. Coffee House Press; 224 pgs., $22.

Here
c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

RuPaul’s family affair: 'Drag Race' comes to Headliners



“RuPaul’s Drag Race” has proven to be much more than just another reality TV show. In six seasons, it’s become a groundbreaking platform, introducing people from all walks of life to what goes into becoming a drag queen and what goes on behind the scenes, as well as introducing the real and varied people who go into drag as a performing art.

The show’s popularity has also defined its cable home, Logo, and raised the profiles and fortunes of dozens of its queens along the way. On Sunday, some of them stop by Headliners for a touring version of the show. The Louisville stop will include Sharon Needles, Jinkx Monsoon, Ivy Winters, Carmen Carerra, Pandora Boxx, Phi Phi O’Hara and Mimi Imfurst.

For host RuPaul — who became famous in the early 1990s but saw the culture change back on him during the Bush years — its success has been doubly satisfying, as issues like gay marriage concurrently become mainstream.

“Even though I’m a former contestant and winner, I’m still the world’s biggest fan of this damn game show,” says Needles. All of the backstage knowledge leaves when he tunes in, he says, adding with characteristic sass, “I believe it’s just 42 minutes of live competition! Not 36 hours, two days, 40 cameras and a lot of editing!”

One straight friend RuPaul brought along on his journey is sidekick Michelle Visage, a former pop singer who’s now a married mother of two and a judge on the series. The host of the live show, Visage reveals that life on tour is less exciting than fans might hope. Traveling on their compact tour bus, “Most of us are so tired, most of the queens are sleeping or working on their computers, editing their videos or music for their numbers. So it’s really quiet. It’s not like the sing-along bus you’d think it would be.”

For Visage, whose dream is to perform on Broadway, the “Drag Race” live show is a chance for her to sing again. She says the production is different than seeing a show at a club like The Connection or Play. “There are theatrical elements you don’t usually get in a bar. It’s a video-incorporated show; it’s seamless, the way it runs from queen to queen.”

Visage and Needles agree that the “Drag Race” experience gives all queens, from pageant-style beauties to more creative, personality-driven types, a chance to show their best and let the audience decide which style they prefer. Both also note that the pageant-style queens are less comfortable speaking on stage, and aren’t expected to on tour. Visage and Needles were inspired by punk rock-type icons from Divine to Joan Jett and Jayne County. “You were so impressed by their personalities that you couldn’t help but see the beauty in them,” Needles says.

“If you look like the Western standard of consumeristic beauty — sure, you’re gorgeous, but ain’t nobody gonna remember yo’ ass,” he adds.

Needles notes that what makes RuPaul special is that, “While he has a very classic beauty, he can use that juxtaposition of being extremely witty and also very inspiring … RuPaul was a club kid punk. And then I think she realized that she wanted to be the first drag queen that could push beyond the nightclub and into every home, and make a niche in the pop culture.”

The live show gives some queens chances to show more than TV time allows. “We want to change the perception some people have that drag’s not an art form, that these are just boys dressing up as girls,” Visage says. “They don’t give enough credit to these amazingly gifted, talented performers.”

Visage remembers one amazing performance that happened here in 1990. “I haven’t been in Louisville since (her group Seduction) opened up for Milli Vanilli … It was amazing, it was their opening night. I’m excited to be back! I can’t believe it’s been that long.”

She also can’t believe she’s talking to a straight man about her show. “It’s like talking to my husband. There are some out there … it’s great when I get emails or Facebooks from them. It’s wonderful that they’re a part of it. Some, they watch as a family, the kids love it — it’s fantastic. RuPaul’s bringing families together.”

‘RuPaul’s Drag Race: Battle of the Seasons’
Sunday, April 27
Headliners Music Hall
1386 Lexington Road
headlinerslouisville.com
$30; 10 p.m.


Here
c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Mono: The LEO interview



Beautifully rocking around the world for 15 years now, Japan’s Mono has earned many fans, especially for their live performances. Mono plays Headliners Music Hall on Friday, and LEO asked leader/guitarist Takaakira Goto a few questions:

LEO: You play an average of 150 shows a year – so how do you balance time for family, friends, and other interests?

Takaakira Goto: It is complicated, but everyone you mention – friends and family – they understand how much music means to each of us, and how this is our passion. Because of this, they are forgiving and generous about the time we must spend away. When we are home, we don’t have other jobs. So we are able to spend as much time as possible then with family and friends.

LEO: How do people in different countries define, or talk about, your music? Does it vary based on which country or continent you are in?

TG: It seems that fans in most places are similar when talking about music. We have a wider audience elsewhere in the world, as does most music. In Europe, for example, it would not be uncommon for older people (50+) to be at a show, and possibly be people who simply read an article about the band and decided to come hear it. American audiences seem to be less adventurous than that, and we are mostly playing to people who know about the band.

LEO: What is your favorite way to compose music? Solo, together, at home, on the road?

TG: I write the music solo, and mostly at home alone. Sometimes I have the time during soundcheck to work on ideas or play through them late at night in the hotel, but mostly tour is too busy to accomplish much.

LEO: You plan to record a new album again this fall. Is this an especially productive time for the band, or a normal pace?

TG: We will record immediately following this tour in late May. We recorded our last album almost 2.5 years before that, but the album before that was three years. It’s sort of a normal schedule for us. When we first started as a band, we put out albums every two years, but now the touring involved is longer, which makes less time for writing new music, taking a break, etc. So it seems like regular pace now.

LEO: Your American label, Temporary Residence Ltd., is run by Jeremy DeVine, who is from my hometown, Louisville, Kentucky. What is your relationship like with him and his crew? Do you have a favorite TRL band (besides yours)?

TG: We’ve worked together with Jeremy and TRL for about 13 years. He is my hero, and also a part of our family. I feel we’ve been growing together all this time, and I am always telling him we will be releasing new albums on TRL even when we are 80-year-old rock guys. There are many great bands and artists on TRL who are long-time friends, especially Explosions in the Sky, Envy, Bellini, The Drift, Eluvium, Tarentel, Majeure and Maserati.

Here
c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Partially famous



It sounds like a movie, but with a Kentucky twist: Four guys who played together in the 1970s went their separate ways; one became a star. Now, decades later, they got the band back together.

Harry Bickel (banjo, vocals), Harry “Sparky” Sparks (guitar, vocals) and Doc Hamilton (fiddle, mandolin) were the core of the Buzzard Rock String Band in 1975. They were all in their 30s; the Harrys had careers. But Bickel had bought a 12-room Victorian in Cherokee Triangle, and it also became home to an instrument repair shop, a practice space, Hamilton and the 18-year-old guitarist from Oklahoma who had just joined the band the Bluegrass Alliance — Vince Gill.

The 1960s and ’70s were a vibrant time for old-time, bluegrass and newgrass music in Louisville, and Bickel’s house, “The Bluegrass Hotel,” became its center. Soon, though, Gill left for California. By 1980, Sparks and Hamilton had also moved away. New members joined Bickel; an album, I’ve Got the Blues for My Kentucky Home, was released in 1988 by June Appal Records. The Buzzards were soon comatose.

The four friends stayed friends. In 2012, 55-year-old Gill and his now-retired former bandmates met up at Gill’s home studio in Nashville. For two days, the men, augmented by bassist Charlie Cushman and accompanied by Gill’s dog Chester, laid down the tracks that would make up Nobody Special, their new album.

In the album’s liner notes, Bickel writes, “It is really good that the four of us did this now. Sparky and Doc are both in their seventies. Of the original band, I’m the youngster in my late sixties. Vince, of course, is still just a kid to us. One day, one of us will be gone and the four of us will never have this opportunity again. We’re just glad that we had the opportunity at all.”

Several current and former members play Sunday, April 27, at 5 p.m. in the U of L Red Barn. Will Gill be one of the performers?

Here
c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

New World Order: Punk rockers and children



For an activist and rebellious musician like Efrim Menuck, one of the hardest parts of touring these days is finding a good playground. Or a museum, or someplace else to go during days on the road. Not exactly for him, though — Menuck and his partner, Silver Mt. Zion violinist Jessica Moss, have a son, Ezra Steamtrain Moss Menuck, who will be 4 years old this summer.

“It’s exhausting! It’s tiring having a kid out on the road with you, but he’s having a good time. I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, but it works for us,” the elder Menuck says. “But it’s hard to come up with activities some days.”

What does Ezra like to do? “What doesn’t he like to do? Lots of arts and crafts, lots of running around — he’s got a push scooter, he likes to roll around on that. Mostly, he just likes hanging out with the band.”

One might think that a 43-year-old with a young child would be carrying around less rage about injustice. Such a person doesn’t know Efrim Menuck well yet.

“I feel more angry since my son was born than I did before he was born,” he says. “It’s a lot harder to just resign yourself to things with this innocent little creature that’s pure of love and hope and innocence and light … and you know you’re hoisting him into a world that’s gonna do its darndest to beat the shit out of him. That’s a horrible state of affairs to try to grapple with.”

“I feel like things have gotten a lot worse in my lifetime — and they didn’t start out that great,” he adds. “It’s not like we were born into a glorious, hopeful age. But it seems to get heavier year after year after year.”

Surely things must be getting better now, years beyond Bush and Cheney?

“It doesn’t seem like that, right? I guess viscerally, not seeing those ass clowns on TV every night, but functionally, things seem a lot worse. I mean, in Canada — I can’t pretend to speak for the United States.”

In the U.S., some Louisville music has inspired Menuck through the years — Will Oldham, The Sonora Pine and “Slint, obviously,” he says. “For sure, a good town for bands.”

A discussion of Slint leads Menuck to address the notion of “post-rock,” the genre some label his bands as falling into. “The ‘post-rock’ thing is pretty lazy, because there’s not a lot of commonality with a lot of the bands (that get lumped into the genre tag). There’s some generic, like, ‘win-the-race’ kind of music that’s uplifting in that way, but in Godspeed and Mt. Zion, we’ve rejected that term.”

The guitarist/pianist/vocalist, also known for his groundbreaking work with fellow Montreal band Godspeed You! Black Emperor, still identifies as a punk rocker. “We’re coming out of rock, we’re coming from a rock place, and we make no bones about it. But we came of age in a time where we’re familiar with the limitations of rock music, but we’re still able to love it.”

The latest Mt. Zion album, Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything, their seventh full-length, was released in January. (A new remix EP, Hang On To Each Other, will be in stores on April 29, and possibly for sale at shows.) It’s arguably their rockist work to date. If there’s a theme to it, it speaks to the troubles of raising a child in today’s world.

In the past, Menuck says, they’ve usually worked songs out live before going to record them in a studio. This time was different, as the band went to the studio without much written or honed. “We had a couple songs we’d been playing live; the rest, we wrote a couple weeks before we went in the studio,” he says. “Definitely, this time there was more freedom to come up with a thesis and write the songs to fit the general thesis.”

One thing Menuck can’t do is intentionally try to make a hit to pay for Ezra’s expenses. “I don’t know if we could write a popular song if we tried.” Though life on the road is different now, “Whatever impact (having a child) had has been more existential.”

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra with Amen Dunes
Thursday, April 17
Headliners Music Hall
1386 Lexington Road
headlinerslouisville.com
$12-$15; 9 p.m.

Photo by Yannick Grandmont

Here
c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Mystical pizza



Brooklyn’s Phantom Family Halo includes some notable Louisvillians, and we caught up with one, bandleader Dom, to discuss their new album. Catch them live Friday at the New Vintage.

LEO: The Halo line-up has changed again. Why?

Dominic Cippola: The changes have really only been minor. The line-up of myself, David Lackner, Ben Lord and Christian Lee has been pretty solid for almost two years now. We have some auxiliary folks from time to time if the live set calls for it. We are bringing a couple guests with us especially for Louisville. This often helps us by adding a fresh approach to what we might be trying to do.

LEO: How hard — or easy — is it for you to conjure mystical atmospheric vibes in your music?

DC: Easy, maybe? Not sure.

LEO: For this album (Raven Town Witch), the band’s made an almost 10-minute video for one song. Do you feel it represents your vision in the same way the music does?

DC: Alice Millar and Gabriel Mueller are the excellent people behind that. Gab is Lackner’s wife, as well. They had used some music of ours in some past projects, so it was a very natural collaboration. I feel that video perfectly accompanies the uncomfortable theme present throughout the song.

LEO: You’ve toured with and/or opened for some older icons. What have you learned from them?

DC: Bodies need rest. We all need our rest.

There are also two collaboration records coming out this year: The Funeral Party with Lydia Lunch, and Straight Starlight with Kawabatta Makoto. We are trying to carve out time to record the next record with Martin Bisi in the next few months. I’m also playing drums in a project with Martin Bisi called FANGS that we hope to bring through Louisville at some point this year.

LEO: Seems like New York’s been pretty good for the Phantom Family Halo. But you miss Louisville, yes?

DC: I love New York very much; I also love Louisville very much. It’s easy to miss Louisville.

Here
c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Lady of the night: Legendary drag queen Plays in Louisville



The Lady Bunny grew up in Chattanooga, Tenn., in the ’60s and ’70s with very supportive parents. The Lady, raised as Jon Ingle, was always open about his sexuality and wore long hair. When a teacher threatened to cut it, his dad marched down to the school threatening legal action “if she touched a hair on my head.”

“It was interesting growing up as the child of the town’s lefty liberal,” Bunny says. “I didn’t always understand it and hated missing ‘The Brady Bunch’ so my dad could watch Watergate footage, but looking back, I think he taught me the right values.”

Upon graduation, Ingle moved to Atlanta — and it was burning. “It was the first big city I lived in,” he says, “and as youth will do, I went wild with booze, drugs, nightclubs, sex and colorful friends like RuPaul.” He went there to attend Georgia State, but got an education in nightclubs instead.

Moving to New York in 1984, Bunny organized the annual Wigstock festival, which helped launch her profile nationally. Today she tours, DJs, acts, writes and continues to use her personality to pay the bills. Off the road, she hosts a regular show with Bianca Del Rio, currently seen on “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” About her friend Bianca, Bunny says, “She’s obviously hilarious but also a sweet person and very talented … But if she wins, they might have to change the show’s name to ‘RuPaul’s Dog Race.’ She’ll kill me for that one!”

LEO: Why didn’t you become a judge on the original “RuPaul’s Drag Race”?
The Lady Bunny: I was never asked. There’s a bizarre Internet rumor that I turned down the offer, which isn’t true. I was asked to do (spin-off) “Drag U” and was a judge on (it) for all three years. So I certainly wouldn’t turn down a role on Ru’s more popular show!

LEO: What’s most important for a queen — the look or the personality?
TLB: I think all kinds of queens should be able to shine — there isn’t one path to success. Is Dame Edna pretty? No, but she’s incredibly funny and a huge star. A lot of “Drag Race” fans are constantly weighing in on whether the show should be based on comedy queens or prettier, more polished, pageant-looking queens. Well, get your own show and you can feature what you want on that one — don’t tell RuPaul and (producers) World of Wonder how to run their hit show because of your pre-conceived notions of what drag should be. RuPaul feels it’s his job to showcase every type of queen, from club kid to beauty. He’s from a club kid background, and I know he’s fought the network to include nuttier queens like Tammie Brown.

LEO: Can I start a new Wigstock here?
TLB: Well, there is a licensing fee involved, since it’s trademarked. So if you’d like to pay that, by all means, let’s do it. We’ve had Wigstock events in New York, San Francisco and Chicago. But we worked very hard to create that name and have to protect it. That said, there is something magical about a wig festival. In New York, we’d see dogs in wigs, body builders, straights and known queens prancing around. Wigs transform you and push your adrenaline button — and really can bring a community together!

The Lady Bunny
Friday, April 18
Play Dance Bar
1101 E. Washington St.
playdancebar.com
$TBA; 10 p.m.


Here
c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Wednesday, April 09, 2014

Trying to find my way home: The sun rises again for musical innovators Slint

When former Slint bassist Todd Brashear is asked what a story about his band should be called, he suggests, “Genre inventin’ ain’t easy!” The story of Slint is unlike any other, a resurrection story unique to these times and this place. It’s a story with multiple layers, where facts and myths meet, past where the river bends, past where the silo stands, past where they paint the houses.

Who — what — is Slint? That question is easier to answer today than it was a decade ago, but it’s still a long answer that might not make sense to everyone. The Slint most refer to, essentially, was four college-age guys from Louisville who spent a summer creating an album that would inspire thousands of music fans and fellow musicians … eventually. Some say they created a new genre given the open-ended and mostly nonsensical name “post-rock.” Others call it “math rock.” The appeal of Slint’s music, and their story, continues in part due to its timelessness, and its uniqueness, and how unexpected and weird the whole thing would all turn out.

Some say Louisville is a weird place. Some of its residents are crazy, they say; some are brilliant, and some have gone wild from isolation or from a lack of appreciation. One of these people is filmmaker Lance Bangs. As a college student in Athens, Ga., in the early 1990s, he earned a chance to work for R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, who had started a film production company. Bangs was also in a band at that time. While at an all-ages venue in Asheville, N.C., in 1991, Bangs heard Slint’s recently released album Spiderland. He fell in love — not only with the music and the atmosphere it created, but also with the mystery the band had formed through the design of the album itself.

Bangs began traveling to Louisville with his cameras, befriending and filming musicians like Jon Cook, the colorful Crain leader and scene catalyst, and attending as many parties and live shows as he could. Bangs would ask his new friends about this mysterious band that had broken up before their album could make its mark: Who were these guys? What were they like? Did they still make music? He heard rumors: that one or more of them had gone crazy, that they had magical powers — stuff like that. But he was still living in Athens, and then moved to Portland, Ore., and spent a lot of time on the road, working on films and videos for everyone from Kanye West and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to Odd Future and Pavement, as well as stand-up comedy films and the TV series “Jackass.” He was a kid from the underground who began popping up all over modern culture, though most of it was more commercially appealing and found mainstream success: The Black Keys, Arcade Fire, The Shins (Bangs paid tribute to Slint and a related band, Squirrel Bait, in the Shins’ 2001 video “New Slang”). But if any band changed Lance Bangs’ life, it was Slint.

“Breadcrumb Trail” is the name of Bangs’ new film. The 90-minute documentary, which Bangs will show Monday night at Headliners (he’s also showing other films at the NuLu arts space Dreamland on Sunday night), is the most definitive account we will get of Slint, and probably of the 1980s Louisville underground music scene that gave birth to it. Over eight years, Bangs interviewed band members, notable local colleagues and some esteemed peers (including Dischord Records’ Ian MacKaye, LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and David Yow of the Jesus Lizard). Two of the people interviewed for the film, Cook and Jason Noble, have since passed away.

Arriving now, 23 years after Spiderland, Brashear says it was planned for a 2011 release to mark the album’s 20th anniversary, “but it just took longer.” A book about the album for the popular 33 1/3 series, written by Scott Tennent, was released at that time; Bangs’ film is now available as part of a box set that includes a remastered Spiderland; a bonus album of outtakes, demos and live recordings from that time; and a 106-page coffee-table book, which includes photos of the band, fliers and other memorabilia and an introduction by Will Oldham, the Louisville musician who took the album’s iconic cover photo.

Baby Hardcores
The first 20 minutes of the film takes viewers on a tour of the world Slint’s members — vocalist/guitarist Brian McMahan, drummer/vocalist Britt Walford, guitarist David Pajo, original bassist Ethan Buckler and his successor, Todd Brashear — came up in. Even those who don’t like punk or indie rock would have a hard time not smiling at photos of middle-school best friends McMahan and Walford, known then as “baby hardcores” for their precocious love of the loudest, most abrasive music available. Imagine if Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and some of their friends had a band; now imagine those guys being even weirder than Mark Twain himself could conjure.

The boys, Brown School students with notably supportive parents (Mr. and Mrs. Walford appear happily in the film, and LEO’s interview with band members was briefly interrupted when Mr. Walford and his friends showed up at the same location, looking for lunch; Britt, a laconic interviewee, fell into conversation with the older men for several minutes), started their first band, Languid and Flaccid, in sixth grade.

They soon started another band, Maurice, which they hoped would be even more aggressive. In the documentary, fellow local musician Brett Eugene Ralph describes Maurice as “like Slint, but fast. It was unbelievable.” While in high school, the band would get to go on tour opening for Glenn Danzig’s band Samhain, an adventure documented gleefully in the film.

Walford briefly played drums in Squirrel Bait, who in 1985 became the first Louisville band to achieve some modicum of success through touring and releasing albums nationwide, earning fans and making contacts outside of town (but only after Walford left). Walford, already a noted drummer, also began learning how to play guitar, though he wouldn’t display his skills until Slint dropped Spiderland on the world. McMahan quit Maurice and joined Squirrel Bait; Pajo, the kind of 15-year-old who practiced his guitar for hours each day, replaced him. Pajo’s technical skill, coupled with a love of heavy metal, further pushed Maurice away from the conventions of the hardcore music scene.

Wanting to get back to a more conventional sound, Maurice bassist Mike Bucayu started a second band, Solution Unknown. That band would soon include Brashear. As Maurice fell apart, Pajo and Walford stayed together, drafting Buckler as the bassist in the new band they were calling Small Dirty Tight Tufts of Hair: BEADS (told you they were weird). Buckler was looking to start something fresh, something unusual. Pajo says, “I told him Britt wanted the same thing … maybe they should meet.” Adding to their unusual ideas, the band’s first gig was during a Sunday service at Buckler’s familiy’s Unitarian church on Brownsboro Road. McMahan was in the crowd that day. He soon joined the band, which changed its name to Slint (Walford says the source of the name was his fish).

The Breathing Process
One of the fans and friends Squirrel Bait had made was Chicago musician and budding recording engineer Steve Albini. Slint hired him to work on their first record, Tweez, in 1987. Albini’s production choices would lead to Buckler’s frustrated departure from Slint, though the former wasn’t completely to blame for the goofy teen-boy audio tricks heard throughout the record. At its beginning, the band kept in a recording of McMahan complaining to Albini about the quality of his headphones in the recording studio; what would become a hip-hop cliché in years to come was accidentally created by Slint being goofy.

Other phantom voices are heard; someone is heard drinking, or laughing; odd breaking-glass-like sounds can be heard under the surface (one of the coffee-table book’s most surprising photos shows the high school student band members with minimalist New York composer Philip Glass, who appears to be signing autographs). The song titles, such as “Ron,” “Warren” and fan favorite “Carol,” came from the band’s parents and pets. While the nine pieces on Tweez are undeniably songs, they are off-kilter, some still ahead of their time today; some suffer from Albini’s heavy processing technique at the time (it was the ’80s, even for the best of them). McMahan debuts his spoken-word (or, at times, shouted-word) approach to vocalizing in-between proggy instrumentals. The documentary spends time detailing the fabled existence of what’s known as “The Anal Breathing Cassette,” which may or may not have wound up on Tweez.

They were mischievous boys who shared many in-jokes; outsiders soon realized that a unique language was being spoken around them. Walford, especially, seemed to lack inhibition, a drummer who really did march to the beat of his own drum. McMahan, the “responsible” one of the pair, says, “I needed that” in his life.

Between 1987 and 1990, “a lot happened in those three years,” McMahan says. He and Walford went to college at Northwestern in Chicago, where Squirrel Bait’s Clark Johnson was also enrolled. Quiet McMahan and manic Walford continued to stand out; Walford, who in many ways is the star of “Breadcrumb Trail,” is described variously as unique, crazy and a genius, especially during this period. David Yow acknowledges how Walford influenced the Jesus Lizard song “Mouth Breather.” Now, Walford says, watching others describe him like that “… feels pretty weird, actually. It seems like … not really who I am.”

McMahan says that depiction is not so clear-cut. “It would be hard for me (to describe Walford),” says McMahan. “I think, also, it would be different at different points in time. Like most people — if you know someone for 30 years, it becomes less and less easy … but definitely ‘super-creative.’”

Brashear joined in 1988; Slint had one brief recording session in 1989. In the summer of 1990, the band came back together again in the Walford family house’s basement, an environment Pajo says was “super tolerant,” with Walford’s parents being “cool about all the weird stuff going on down there.” Five days a week, all day, Walford, McMahan, Brashear and Pajo practiced the same six songs over and over again.

“Breadcrumb Trail,” which McMahan calls a “loss of innocence” song, leads off the album they would make of those songs. Looking for a simpler, purer sound than Albini achieved, they hired engineer Brian Paulson, whom McMahan knew, and went to River North Recorders in Chicago in August of 1990. It took four days to make their second record, Spiderland.

Sublime and Strange
None of the Spiderland songs were under five minutes. McMahan’s vocal technique — for the most part, reciting a short story while the band played alongside him, stories about fortune tellers, storm-battered ships and love — was not only not “rock,” but still stands as a fairly unique approach in modern music making. The band’s sense of dynamics — going from soft to loud and back again — would end up paying off better for Nirvana, whose breakthrough album was released six months later.

The combined effect of their innovations gave their songs an epic, cinematic effect that likely compelled some to call it “post-rock.” The band members say they still don’t understand what the term is supposed to mean. Whatever you call it, it was a big leap forward for the band, a more adult and complex vision of the world. Aside from a rave review written by Albini for England’s Melody Maker music newspaper — a review that would, eventually, help spread the word about Slint — the album went unnoticed by the vast majority of the world. And by the time Spiderland was released on March 27, 1991, the band had broken up.

“Spiderland is a majestic album, sublime and strange, made more brilliant by its simplicity and quiet grace. Songs evolve and expand from simple statements that are inverted and truncated in a manner that seems spontaneous, but is so precise and emphatic that it must be intuitive or orchestrated or both … Spiderland is flawless. The dry, unembellished recording is so revealing it sometimes feels like eavesdropping. The crystalline guitar of Brian McMahan and the glassy, fluid guitar of David Pajo seem to hover in space directly past the listener’s nose. The incredibly precise-yet-instinctive drumming has the same range and wallop it would in your living room … Ten fucking stars.”
— Steve Albini, excerpts from his Melody Maker review

Interested and Vocal
Slint played less than 30 shows in their day. The cumulative audience who saw them live then probably totals fewer than 1,000. Albini’s review helped listeners begin to catch up to Slint. Fans scrutinized the album’s liner notes for details — publishing the Walford family address in the Highlands as theirs (though slightly misspelled) would lead to two decades of fan mail and unannounced visits. Characteristically, Mr. and Mrs. Walford seem delighted by the response. McMahan was uncomfortable with his lead-vocal duties, so the band encouraged “interested female vocalists” to reach out. “We thought our music would sound really good with a female vocalist,” he says. Plus, “I felt like we were making very dude-centric music,” and his tastes had shifted to more female-driven acts like Julee Cruise, Sally Timms and My Bloody Valentine. One interested female vocalist, the band confirms, was Polly Jean Harvey of Dorset, England. While her letter did not receive a response from the band, she nonetheless started her own band, PJ Harvey, within a year, and has done quite well even though she never got to sing with Slint.

In those final pre-Internet days, fans could only learn more about the band if they knew the quartet, or knew or met someone else who knew of them — easy enough in Louisville or Chicago, but the band now had many new fans rising up all over the world. When a two-song single was released in 1994, with even less information attached, it was like a ship in a bottle. Fans didn’t know then that those songs had been recorded at the 1989 session. Fans also didn’t know then that Slint had tried to reform in 1994, and in 1992, but the timing wasn’t right, for whatever reasons the band today claims not to remember.

Interest continued to grow in Slint as time passed. Spiderland’s best song, closer “Good Morning, Captain,” was used in the 1995 movie “Kids,” and its soundtrack became popular and influential. Sales of Spiderland became good enough each year that McMahan says he didn’t need to find a job, and it freed him to travel. He started a new band, The For Carnation, which sounded close enough to a next-gen version of Slint to satisfy some. (The For Carnation’s 2000 self-titled album inspired, among others, the Louisville band King’s Daughters & Sons; Walford plays drums on one song on the album.) Brashear used his earnings to help start his Highlands video store, Wild and Woolly, which is now 17 years old. Pajo went on to play solo and with a variety of bands, including Tortoise, Stereolab and Zwan.

After playing with the band Evergreen in the mid-’90s, Walford’s musical output stalled. He worked construction and in restaurants. The documentary asks the cliffhanger question, “Will he ever return to songwriting?” But that has been answered already; his new band, Watter, with multi-instrumentalists Zak Riles and Tyler Trotter, will release their first album on May 27. Their label, Temporary Residence, calls it “monolithic mood music.” They are promoting it, in part, as Walford’s “opportunity to play a substantial role in a new active band for the first time in nearly 20 years.”

Oh, and there’s one big thing the documentary forgets to mention: Slint reunited in 2005, touring around the world and playing to thousands of ecstatic fans (minus Brashear, who has a family, in addition to his business; Chicago musician Matt Jencik now tours with the band). They did it again in 2007 and say they will keep it up as long as people are interested, though McMahan laughs as he says, “Sometimes I feel like I’m playing in a Slint cover band.” Bangs began filming the band in 2005, thinking it would be for a live DVD. Over the years, the scope of his film expanded. Slint did the work they’re known for when they were still in school, but part of what made their reformation so potent was how they were able to make their music sound even more powerful 15 and 20 years later, having grown and matured as musicians during that time. While reunions can be hit-or-miss, none of the others — from the Pixies to Led Zeppelin — have seen their members go from boys to men in the process.

Slint plays Nelligan Hall in Portland on Tuesday, April 15, at 7 p.m., and the Forecastle Festival on July 19.

“Slint was a part of a mass of events that centered around the Louisville punk rock scene, around the independent/underground record scene of the 1980s, around the personal lives of the makers of this music, and very little of this is accessible to the world outside, or the world moved on. So the reception of Spiderland is a confusion of entitlement, justification and misinterpretation for some of us. There is nobody to help anybody understand what has happened.”
— Will Oldham, from his book introduction

Photo by Marty Pearl

Here
c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Revolution Louisville-style now!

The Louisville Outskirts Festival is currently being planned for this fall. The fest will celebrate musical acts that include women, from solo artists to multi-piece bands that include at least one member who is female. It is a not-for-profit, volunteer-run operation, which means they need money to bring in acts from outside Louisville (though the fest will also feature many local acts, as well) and pay for other expenses — promotion, officially endorsed permits, paperwork and much more.

The weekend-in-progress will also go beyond music, making educational outreach and other community-based programs part of their mission. Ultimately, their goal is, in their words, “to encourage, support, inspire and highlight the music made by women and female-identified members of Louisville’s independent music scene as well as showcase influential and inspiring musicians selected from other parts of the country and world.”

To raise some of the necessary funds, the fest — thought up and being run by half of Julie of the Wolves, guitarists/vocalists Stephanie Gary and Carrie Neumayer (the latter is also a LEO columnist) — is throwing a party that should help give locals a sense of what to expect this fall. After opening sets by the Debauchees, a band that includes two women and a man, and the Wolves, four women, headlining attraction Screaming Females will make hairs stand up all over everyone’s bodies. The decade-old New Jersey-based rock trio (one woman, two men) released their Live at the Hideout album yesterday. Having recently survived a van accident while on the road, LEO wanted to check in and see how they are doing now.

LEO: After triumphing over death and delivering a definitive live document of the band at the top of its game, what do you do to follow that up?

Jarrett Dougherty (drums): I don’t think we are really thinking about it that way. We always want to be working on and releasing different projects. It is exciting to be releasing this record because we have been talking about it for so long. It is still fresh. We are already headed into the studio to work on a new album that should be out in the fall. It is going to be a big year for Screaming Females. I hope everyone has been saving their pennies.

LEO: I invested poorly, and only have enough money for one record this year. Should I buy Screaming Females or (side project) Bad Canoes?

Marissa Paternoster (guitar/vocals): The Bad Canoes tape is $5. How poorly did you invest your money?

JD: You should buy our records, because I play on them.

LEO: You’re touring with The Julie Ruin — is that a dream come true? Do you see (frontwoman) Kathleen Hanna as an idol or as a peer?

MP: I view Kathleen Hanna as a stellar human being whom I deeply admire, who was in a bunch of bands (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre) that meant a lot to me and continue to mean a lot to me.

LEO: Chris Christie — what’s up with that guy?

MP: He’s an idiot.

JD: He’s a politician. Clearly he is a terrible person.

LEO: Your show here in Louisville is to benefit the Louisville Outskirts Festival, a new festival promoting female-centric bands. How do you feel about there needing to be such a festival now, 40 years after women started achieving something like equality in this country? Sorry to have to ask the “woman in rock” question, but the context demands it this time.

MP: Until being a woman who happens to play music professionally (or otherwise) becomes less of an oddity and doesn’t create chaos within the minds of everyday folks, I suppose music festivals of this nature are somewhat of a necessity to show the general population that not only are women often in bands, but they are often quite good at what they do.

LEO: Follow-up question for just Jarrett and (bassist King) Mike — what’s it like to be a guy in a rock band? Does Marissa have to play all your parts in the studio for you?

JD: There are no stupid questions, except that one.

Screaming Females with Julie of the Wolves and The Debauchees
Thursday, April 10
The New Vintage
2126 S. Preston St.
newvintagelouisville.com
$10; 9 p.m.

Photo by Christopher Patrick Ernst

Here
C. 2014 LEO Weekly

Wednesday, April 02, 2014

Okkervil River: Austin, cities and limits



“You’re not the first to ask me this question, like, ‘Are you trying to grab for some brass ring?’ or ‘trying to be more respectable?’” says Okkervil River frontman Will Sheff. “The truth is, the record was finished before we signed with ATO. It was a pretty organic process.”

ATO is the RCA-affiliated label started by Dave Matthews. For most of their decade-plus career, Okkervil River’s records have been released by the Bloomington, Ind., label Jagjaguwar. The band’s latest record, The Silver Gymnasium, is a concept album inspired by Sheff’s memories of growing up in the 1980s.

The setting finds the band adding more mainstream instrumentation, including synthesizers and an unironic saxophone. The album has a more lush sound than 2011’s I Am Very Far, which Sheff calls “confrontationally big and spiky and angry … I kind of designed it to push people away.” He was ready to do something different this time.

“I had this idea to write about childhood, and it was a really important idea to me, and a really interesting idea to me, so I didn’t rush into doing it,” Sheff says, clarifying that he initially had the idea several years ago. “I was working on it in the back of my brain, and it was … just time.”

The question about reaching for a more mainstream crowd also tied in to the fact that, on the day of our interview, Okkervil River was playing at the North Carolina club Cat’s Cradle, for the “I don’t know — fifth time? Sixth time?” Sheff says. Their Louisville show finds them breaking newer ground, as the first to play Louisville’s newest club, the Mercury Ballroom. The band wasn’t picked intentionally for the opening, and Sheff wasn’t aware of the significance of this date until our interview — but it is something new for a band that’s now a veteran act, yet still not a mainstream entity.

Sheff, 37, has lived in Austin, Texas, for almost 15 years now, and remembers when its SXSW music festival was smaller. A question about the fest provoked an epic rant:

“I hate it. I think it’s horrible. I think it’s a cancer on rock ’n’ roll. I think it’s deeply, deeply evil … Once upon a time, it was good. Once upon a time, it was this wonderful way to get exposure for these little bands that were really special; it was also very embracing of the Austin community. Any Austinite who had $5 in his pocket could go out to a local club and see five really cool bands you wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Now it’s this whole corporate gangbang where that same little band SXSW was created to help — they pool all their money, they try to travel down there, they have to buy plane tickets or rent a van, and it costs $4,000, and the festival gives them no money at all. Then they put them on Wednesday night at some weird non-venue, and nobody comes, and the people who come are just staring at the goddamn telephones, or drunk on free booze from some fucking corporation.

“Then you have the megastars, like the Lady Gagas of the world, who turn it into this staging where they try to keep their own megabrand current, and every fucking corporation — they’re all trying to get their piece of it. And there’s a very small group of very wealthy people in Austin who are just raking in so much fucking money, and the way they’re raking in money is by pimping out the spirit of Austin to all these fucking out-of-towners who feed their egos: ‘Oh, I love Austin! Have you had the migas at this place?’ It’s disgusting. It’s everything I think is bad about the music business.”

He laughs and apologizes for venting, but the depths of his feelings about his work have been revealed. In a follow-up question about The Silver Gymnasium, Sheff discussed why he doesn’t have children.

“I don’t know if it’s feasible for an artist like myself to have kids. I have a really low overhead, and that’s part of the reason why I’m able to do as much work as I do. My most important thing is my work.

“The world doesn’t need more of them, anyway. There’s a fuck-ton of them,” he laughs. “I think we need to work on making fewer people who are better.”

Okkervil River with Hundred Visions
Friday, April 4
Mercury Ballroom
611 S. Fourth St.
mercuryballroom.com
$25; 8 p.m.


photo by Alexandra Valenti

Here
c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Riding out tonight to case the Promised Land: Poet finds inspiration on Thunder Road



Confession:
I did not love Bruce Springsteen until
I turned thirty and set my own home on fire,

walked away from the ashes and looked
my declining self in the face. Like love,

Bruce is wasted on the young.


— Erin Keane, “The Dream and What Follows”

Erin Keane loves a project. The WFPL arts reporter knows how to tell the stories of others, but that’s not what her three books have been about. “Demolition of the Promised Land,” her latest, is her newest collection of poems (some, but not all, of which feature Bruce Springsteen). Like Springsteen’s most recent album, it’s a new release, but not her most recent writing.

“I started writing this after my second book was written, before my first book was published,” Keane says. “And I don’t have another one waiting — this is it.”

Her first, “The Gravity Soundtrack,” was published in 2007; her second, “Death-Defying Acts” (about life in a circus), hit stores in 2010. The new book took so long because “it didn’t really have a coherent theme for a very long time. It didn’t have anything to tie it together,” she says. “When the Bruce Springsteen poems started happening ... that started to really shape how the book was going to come together.”

That was in 2011. She had begun working on the other poems in 2007 with a Lent-inspired daily writing exercise. “I had finished this other project, the circus book, and I wanted to get back to writing in my own voice. I didn’t really know what that was at that point — I’d spent a couple years writing in the voices of these other characters.”

She wrote around 40; of those, maybe 10 made it, she says. “They were the ones worth sticking with.” Over the last few years, the rest started to take shape. “I’m slow, because I work a lot,” she laughs. “This book was a mess, a total mess, when my editor (Lindsey Alexander) got her hands on it. It was really an intense collaborative process.”

The most important way her editor helped was by challenging Keane to clarify who was speaking — or being spoken to. She pushed Keane away from “using the second person instead of the first person: ‘You do this’ and ‘you do that,’ which you think is a way of generalizing your poem,” says Keane. Writing in persona, as she did for her circus tale, “You’re either a fictional character or fictionalizing a real character. It’s still the way you dream that this character would interact, which has some percentage of me, the writer.”

The edits gave her poems “a strong sense of authority,” she says. “Except for the Bruce Springsteen poems — well, some of them are weirdly autobiographical, also. The poem ‘Decomposition Studies’ is about my mom.”


“The Springsteen poems were never going to be in the voice of Bruce Springsteen, because I find that to be the most presumptuous thing,” she laughs. “So instead, it’s my narrative voice that’s moving him around in fictionalized situations … like a superhero or an action figure. It’s all my version of the truth. This is a very personal book, and that’s entirely frightening to put out there.”

Erin Keane
Wednesday, April 9
Carmichael’s Bookstore

2720 Frankfort Ave.
carmichaelsbookstore.com
Free; 7 p.m.


photo by Drew Zipp

Here
c. 2014 LEO Weekly