Music and fart jokes: ‘The Book of Mormon’ is so much more than that

At some performances of the national touring version of the musical “The Book of Mormon,” 90-year-old couples in the front row will jump up, eager to sing and dance along. So says Christopher John O’Neill, 32, who plays the leading role of Elder Arnold Cunningham. When word first spread that Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creative minds behind “South Park,” had teamed with composer/lyricist Robert Lopez from the adult comedy “Avenue Q,” audiences expected the filthiest, most scabrous show Broadway had ever seen. Turns out it’s a family show. Sort of.

“The cool thing about the show is it’s not just, like, two-and-a-half hours of fart jokes,” O’Neill says. “They actually wrote a musical, you know? It wouldn’t be so successful if it was just what some people might think it is. I think (the writers) want people going away saying, ‘Hey, I really liked that! I didn’t know they could write like that.’”

It’s not like the men haven’t written songs before. Throughout the 17 seasons of “South Park” and feature films like “Team America,” Parker and Stone have made their love of musicals crystal clear. “When you look back at what they’ve done,” O’Neill says, “you’re, like, ‘OK, that makes sense.’”

Behind the scenes, some wondered how the show would translate in different regions of the USA. Going to Dallas, O’Neill says, they worried about potential Bible Belt problems. But, “The places people warned us about — ‘Oh, they might not be into it,’ they’re the most into it. It’s weird. We were in Schenectady, N.Y., and everyone was, like, ‘Why the hell are you guys going to Schenectady?’ It’s like a huge small town, and it was the best crowds we’ve ever had. It’s bizarre. I’ve learned to just go with it, because I have no idea how it’s going to be. And it differs night to night, let alone city to city.”

The coolest part is feeling out each crowd, he says, knowing that the cast will be winning them over sooner or later. It’s just a question of how soon. For O’Neill, a veteran of the sketch comedy scene with partner Paul Valenti in “The Chris and Paul Show,” the tour has also been a wealth of potential future sketch material.

“It’s ridiculous, the amount of characters you run into out on the road — it’s cool, you just meet so many people. That’s the thing that’s keeping (me interested) — my brain is ADD, I’m constantly looking for new stuff to write. My comedy partner and I, we used to write a new hour show every month for three years. I like new things,” says the musical newbie whose role was originally played on Broadway by Josh Gad.

His castmates have been welcoming and kind, he says, if a little surprised by his background. “Oh, god, they think it’s hilarious. They were all really cool when I first started with the cast, but obviously, the singing — the people in the cast are so talented, their voices are ridiculous. It’s awesome, from where I started to where I am now, it’s been really cool. Being able to sing — everyone’s been so supportive. Singing every night, eight times a week, I feel like I’m a little theater person now.”

That being said, he acknowledges being an outcast of sorts. “I’m the only one in the cast who hasn’t seen every musical ever. People in the cast are, like, ‘Have you seen ‘Lion King’? And I’m, like, ‘No!’ I’m so far behind with musical trivia and all that stuff.”

He’s an important part of the marriage of comedy and music that makes “The Book of Mormon” stand out from other plays, including choreography by Casey Nicholaw, Tony-nominated for his work on “Monty Python’s Spamalot” and a Tony winner for directing the original “Mormon” with Parker. The show won eight other Tonys, including Best Musical. Lopez has also had subsequent success with songs he wrote with his wife for the hit movie “Frozen.”

“This is a cool show to see if you’re not that much into musical theater” but love comedy, O’Neill says. The “South Park” guys “were my idols growing up, so doing this show is a ball.”

‘The Book of Mormon’
May 28-June 8
Kentucky Center for the Arts
501 W. Main St.
kentuckycenter.org
$43+; various times

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c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Mood music vets open up the Watter works

A recently released documentary about Slint, the landmark band from Louisville, asked when their visionary composer/drummer Britt Walford, who has not played in a band making new music in almost 20 years, might ever return to active duty — and possibly change the face of music all over again? It’s a lot to ask of anyone, but the 44-year-old has joined forces with two other progressive musicians to form the new band Watter. The trio’s first full-length album, This World, was released yesterday.

What is now Watter began a couple of years ago when Tyler Trotter and Zak Riles met and decided to play together. Riles, who has played guitar in the Portland, Ore.-based instrumental band Grails since 1999, moved to Louisville so he and his wife could be closer to family. They started a business, the Bluegrass Green Co., which soon moved to the NuLu district on East Market Street. Trotter played guitar and synthesizers in the band Strike City and then traveled the world with the California Guitar Trio as a soundman. He had opened his first business, the Louisville Beer Store, a block away from Riles’ store.

It was inevitable that the two men, who shared much musical taste and overlapped in many ways — Trotter’s subsequent businesses, the Holy Grale bar and Gralehaus eatery, are even similar in name to Riles’ band, Grails — would find each other. Riles had built a studio, where the pair could play late at night, free from the obligations of the domestic world. And once conversations with Walford suggested further possibilities, a new band came to life.

With the members’ collective pedigrees, they have already received attention from influential ears outside Louisville. The A/V Club and Spin drooled over the idea of the band, and Jonathan Cohen, music booker for “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” and a supporter of many things that came out of the ’90s post-punk/post-rock scene, posted an exclusive Watter bonus song on the TV show’s Tumblr, promoting them as “an awesome new band” and the album as “nothing short of an instant instrumental rock masterpiece.”

This World also features contributions by some of Louisville’s other finest players — pianist Rachel Grimes, vocalist Dane Waters and bassist Todd Cook (who toured with Slint when they reunited in 2005). But it was a favor Trotter called in from his CGT adventures that got even more attention.

“Tony Levin? That was Tyler’s doing,” Riles says. “He suggested just calling Tony Levin. Britt and I both kind of laughed. We were, like, ‘Whoa! Funk fingers,’ you know?”

Known to fans of adventurous music for his work playing bass for the English band King Crimson, Tony Levin has also played on more than 500 sessions, in the bands of Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, Pink Floyd and Yes, and as the inventor of the bass-playing technique mentioned by Riles. Levin recorded his part in his home studio and emailed it to Watter. Riles says, “He did one take and we were, like, ‘Yeah, that’s amazing.’”

The album begins with a piece called “Rustic Fog.” Dedicated LEO readers might notice that the title sounds similar to a nightclub in our region that sometimes features live music, among other things. Riles confirms the title was inspired by “a magical evening” the band spent there watching country outlaw David Allan Coe perform. “It’s a pretty weird scene over there. Amazing, for sure.”

While Coe’s sound didn’t influence theirs, the members’ shared love for ’70s and ’80s dark movie scores, psychedelia, Krautrock, modern classical and New Age-y soundscapes helps them stand out from most other new bands. While Riles focused on guitars, Trotter worked on the keyboard parts that further evoke different eras and vibrations. “When we were mixing it, we weren’t really sure what it sounded like,” says Riles.

The trio has only played in public a handful of times, and their next Louisville show is being planned for mid-October. It’s part of an East Coast tour that has to wait until Walford has concluded his current Slint obligations. Meanwhile, Riles and Trotter are building a new band space, where they hope to begin work on a second Watter album. “It’s smaller, tighter … It will probably create a totally different-sounding record.”

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c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Mothers of re-invention

Axel Cooper spent most of his 20s in Louisville, playing with Tyrone, Instant Camera, The Phantom Family Halo and Sapat. But after he rounded 30, he found his life changing rapidly: expecting his first child, out of the city and farming in small-town Ramsey, Ind.

He wrote the songs for the first New Mother Nature album in 2011 while anticipating the baby, expecting he would soon no longer have a spare second for music. He asked guys he had played with before to help out. The quartet of 30somethings — Cooper plus Neal Argabright, Kevin Molloy and Corey Smith — quickly jelled. “They were all no-brainers for people to help make the songs build into something recordable,” Cooper says.

A one-time recording session led to shows, and now a second record (called 2 to distinguish it from the first album). This time, the band worked on songs together, changing the energy if not the overall sound of the lo-fi/rural rock band.

“There is still the underlying theme of social and environmental despondence. But in this new version, all four members of the group have drawn on the yoke simultaneously,” Cooper wrote in a press release.

They had more time — months instead of a weekend. Cooper learned he could juggle music, family and work. (In Ramsey, he farms, and while he has focused on vegetables in recent years, his wife has been having success lately with flowers.)

“I feel less and less connected” to Louisville, Cooper says, though he’s here often for farmers markets. Songwriting lets him communicate feelings he wouldn’t otherwise be able to share. These days, his focus is more on the natural world. He’s “not letting go of the dream,” he says, just making music for himself first now. He elaborates, “The members of this group would more likely say they are engaging a part of their brains that, if left dormant, would fester and discolor their personal lives.”

New Mother Nature plays a record release show Friday at Zanzabar.

Photo by Tim Furnish

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c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Cher Von: Beauty and the beast

Harlan native Chervon Koeune, who performs as vocalist and sound stylist Cher Von, has had a busy 2014 — playing and organizing shows, and releasing a new EP, Klik. Klak. Why so busy? “Making up for lost time!” she says. “I felt so creatively stagnant for years, and now there is a strong sense of urgency … I’m sure I’ll have to learn a hard lesson about saying ‘yes’ to everything — eventually.”

LEO: Can you describe your process?

Cher Von: The recordings and live performances rely heavily on improvisation. When I decide to record a song, it starts as a very bare-bones concept, usually having more to do with instrumentation and combining found sounds that complement each other, and not so much a narrative or song structure.

Performing these songs, being unable to recreate all of the layers that are heard in the recordings, has been a whole other experiment. There are many versions of each song when I perform them, most of which don’t even attempt to sound like the original other than a familiar melody here and there. As I’ve started to perform more often, I’m really happy with this approach, because I don’t get sick of playing the same song over and over.

LEO: While grounded in experimentalism, your music also has accessibility and an undeniable beauty. Do you straddle worlds intentionally?

CV: It’s somewhat intentional and also happens that way organically. While I do enjoy a good splash of drone and free noise, I tend to gravitate more toward melodic experimental music with lots of movement. It’s what I listen to the most.

LEO: How do you feel about the state of experimental music locally?

CV: The more I come across, the more I’m impressed. Discovering these folks has actually inspired me to host monthly shows that showcase local experimental artists, just so I can get these guys in a room regularly … There seems to be an open and attentive audience for experimenters here, from what I’ve experienced, and I think it will just keep getting better.

Cher Von plays Friday at Haymarket Whiskey Bar and Saturday at OPEN Gallery.

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c. 2014 LEO Weekly

Patrick Smith’s wild life

"St. Ursula" by Patrick Smith

Lexington artist keeps it very real

“Too Wild for Mass Consumption” — that’s what Lexington artist Patrick Smith posted on his Tumblr last December as he worked on the series of paintings opening this week at Swanson Contemporary. Smith’s subject matter is mainly his peers, a sometimes-troubled gang of bohemian Southerners who celebrate what he calls “a really eccentric sex life … promiscuity, but safe promiscuity.”

Smith, 27, began painting when he was “pretty old, actually, like 19. It was something I started doing, and then I could do it for as many hours as I had in front of me. That was different than most things I had tried to do.”

The largely self-taught Smith threw himself into his new love of painting. To make something new, he’s learned, he’s needed to use new materials. “I use the highest-end kind of non-traditional materials I can get. So I have DayGlo that’s, like, industrial, and it looks like it. I use aluminum paint, and then I use a variety of different glitters.”

Gallerist Chuck Swanson came into his life after a few years of showing work in “less official venues,” as Smith calls it. “There was this moment where I really needed something to change in my life. And I thought, ‘I’m going to get a show at a gallery, and then that will be Act Two of where I can go.’ And it worked! … I just walked in and said, ‘Can I get a show?’ and he said, ‘Sure,’” Smith laughs, clarifying that Swanson agreed after seeing Smith’s portfolio. “It was not an arduous process.”

One piece that’s on view in this month’s loosely heaven-and-hell-themed show is “St. Ursula,” a favorite of many who saw it in progress. Smith thinks that one worked especially well because “it was a piece that had layers of experimentation — and every layer worked.”

If there is an intentional theme running through the show, he says it’s a reflection of his collaborations with photographer/sculptor Bob Morgan. More than half of Smith’s show came from drawings Smith did over Morgan’s photographs. “Those are definitely the more homoerotic parts of the show,” says Smith. “Not all of them, because I take homoerotic photographs, too,” he adds, laughing.

Smith knows it isn’t common in Kentucky to see such bold depictions of male bodies in art galleries, but “I’ve found that people get that — I haven’t had a hard time explaining that to anyone,” he says. “It’s pretty unprecedented, but we’re just going with it and seeing what the response is going to be. And I’ve gotten exclusively positive responses from people. And largely from the feminist community, actually, who’ve been relieved to see naked men (instead of women).”

Six of Smith’s pieces have been purchased by 21c Museum Hotel, whose Louisville location features a statue of the naked David out front. Smith notes that his show goes further by depicting erect nudes. But he ensured that the effect wouldn’t seem like a cheap ploy for attention. “There’s a lot of layers to them. So you can’t say, ‘Oh, Patrick’s trying to have a hit show by having a bunch of naked men on a canvas.’”

That’s not usually a formula for a hit, he’s told. “Oh, is it not?” he laughs.

So who does he do it for? “Wild people. I’ve found that what I want people to do in front of a camera is something that is on the level of ‘wild’ that … I can call it ‘realism,’ in how I experience people in my actual life. I don’t want anything sanitized. And I’ve found that the models who know what that is are also living an extremely wild life. So they just act like themselves, and I take a picture. I know a lot of them personally.”

Is he as wild, or a voyeur capturing moments? “I’m definitely wild,” Smith says. “Yeah. Definitely.”

‘Red, Yellow, Kill a Fellow’
May 16-June 21
Swanson Contemporary
638 E. Market St.
patricksmith859.tumblr.com

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c. 2014 LEO Weekly

School’s out for Spanish Gold

My Morning Jacket’s drummer went to Texas and all we got was this band

Some music was just meant for the summer, and Spanish Gold’s first album, South of Nowhere, is being released on May 27 precisely because it sounds like summer. The following night will find the band (whose drummer is from Louisville, though his two bandmates are both Texans) headlining WFPK’s Waterfront Wednesday concert series, spinning ’70s and ’80s-style groove-based rock to an adoring crowd of thousands. The crowd has consistently enjoyed the drummer, Patrick Hallahan, when he has played there with his other band, My Morning Jacket.

Though he expects to see smiling faces, “A lot of people haven’t heard any of this stuff before, which I find interesting and challenging,” Hallahan laughs, joking, “Hopefully, we won’t offend too many.”

It’s his first try with a new band in over a decade, and Hallahan says it’s been fun not only because he’s gotten to try new things, but because it’s also given him new perspective on his role with MMJ that he has brought back to that band. Their upcoming album, expected out later this year, was recorded after Spanish Gold finished their debut.

Hallahan met new bandmate Dante Schwebel (guitar, vocals) when Hallahan was hired alongside members of Schwebel’s band, Hacienda, to play together as The Fast Five, the backing band of Dan Auerbach (of the Black Keys), as Auerbach promoted his 2009 solo album. “We struck up a strong bond through that,” says Hallahan, who joined MMJ in 2003. “I had in the back of my head that I’d like to do something with them at some point.”

After Hacienda broke up, Schwebel found himself with a backlog of songs he had written. He called Adrian Quesada (guitar), who has played in the bands Grupo Fantasma and Ocote Soul Sounds and owns a recording studio in Austin. Quesada was a friend of Schwebel’s going back to their high school days in Laredo (a parallel to Hallahan’s relationship with MMJ leader Jim James, who he met in grade school in Louisville). “They were the two guys who made it out of a small border town and made a musical career for themselves,” Hallahan says.

The Texans got together and made some demo recordings. Schwebel kept Hallahan up to date on their progress, and then asked if the drummer would be into playing on some songs. “I’ve loved his songwriting from the get-go, and it seemed like they were going in a great direction,” says Hallahan, who then had time on his hands while MMJ went on a break after a long tour, and as James worked on his solo album.

Suddenly, a new band was born — though Hallahan didn’t meet Quesada until the band’s first day together in the studio. They recorded in Auerbach’s Nashville studio and Kevin Ratterman’s La La Land in Louisville, starting in November 2012, where “I was flying blind,” Hallahan says, “creating with someone I didn’t know — which was part of the allure. It was supposed to be a little side recording project, but it was instantaneous, the camaraderie.”

The album has already been reviewed by Rolling Stone, whose critic noted similarities between its first single, “Out on the Street,” and the ’80s hit “Somebody’s Watching Me” by Rockwell, while also comparing Spanish Gold to the Black Keys. “It was not an intentional move,” Hallahan notes about the Rockwell rhythm. “At this point in music history, it’s really hard to do anything that doesn’t sound like something that’s already been done.”

It’s not a new experience for Hallahan, whose 2005 MMJ co-write “Off the Record” was also compared to an earlier hit song, the “Hawaii Five-O” theme.

The good news about the album is, “My mom’s having a blast with it,” he says. “It’s definitely hookier than some of the stuff I do. It’s got more of a pop element to it, I guess.”

Spanish Gold plans to tour through the summer, including a performance on “The Late Show with David Letterman” on June 3 and a set at the Forecastle Festival on July 19. “It’s definitely grown some wings,” Hallahan says, laughing as he adds, “I didn’t plan on joining another touring band. But I’m a believer in this. It’s very honest music, it’s very fun music, and it’s a complete departure from what I’ve made with My Morning Jacket.”

WFPK Waterfront Wednesday featuring Spanish Gold, The Broken Spurs and Starbilly
Wednesday, May 28
Waterfront Park, Big Four Lawn
wfpk.org
Free; 6 p.m.

Photo by Alysse Gafkjen

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c. 2014 LEO Weekly

The life and death of Young Widows

What happens when the lights go out for the dark rockers?

Evan Patterson reinvents Young Widows each time. “It’s intentional. The idea of a band releasing the same record over and over again, I’ve always tried to stray from.”

Easy Pain, which comes out May 13, is the third Young Widows studio album guitarist/vocalist Patterson, bassist/vocalist Nick Thieneman and drummer Jeremy McMonigle have made for label Temporary Residence Ltd. since 2008 (a first album with a different drummer and label home was released two years prior).

“Some people always go, ‘I don’t really like the new record’ — it’s because it’s not the same thing as the last one,” Patterson says. “They might not like the mood of the new record, or the general approach to how the entire record flows — but we’ve always tried to make very cohesive albums, rather than just a bunch of songs on a record that don’t make sense together.”

Easy Pain is not a concept album, but there is an overarching theme. “It turned into this whole idea about accepting death. The more you accept death, the more exciting life becomes, and the more you live to your full potential,” he says.

“The last song on the album is called ‘The Last Young Widow.’ In my mind, it’s about a mother birthing a fatherless child, and the mother actually is on her deathbed at the same time as she’s birthing the child. And whether or not she’s going to go to heaven or go to hell, or just die. It’s more about accepting life, being prepared to die, and not worrying about what happens after you die.”

If it sounds like it’s heavy spiritually as well as musically, then you might be on Patterson’s wavelength.

“Yeah, it is, actually,” he says. “It speaks to me more … I feel like my lyrics in Young Widows had been more self-absorbed and more personal, and this record’s not very personal at all. It’s more storytelling. They’re songs I can sing at any point, and they’d still have the same energy and meaning they did when I wrote them.”

He had “a very specific idea” about how Easy Pain should sound, from the instruments to the vocals. One inspiration was the recording of John Lennon’s “How Do You Sleep?,” produced by Phil Spector. Another was Iggy Pop’s album The Idiot; Pop’s vocal approach changed the way he sang this time, as did Patterson’s experience playing in two different bands lately, Old Baby and Jaye Jayle. “I used my voice in ways I haven’t been able to attempt.”

He approached the creative process differently this time around, part of his continued evolution. In the past, Patterson says, he would write down lyrics for the music the band had written together, often working up lyrics from demos.

This time, as the band played their new music live, Patterson sang “jibberish,” sometimes finding words as he vocalized. “I didn’t have any clue what I was saying … Other times, it was just, like, howls and moans that were creating melodies. The whole idea is that I was hoping I would find something I wouldn’t find just sitting down (and) listening to it, writing down lyrics and thinking of melodies that way. Instead, it was more of an organic approach to the live energy of playing the songs.”

Some older songs bring him back to specific moments that have since passed. He doesn’t feel the same anymore, or care as much as he once did. “With these songs, I can feel this way for the rest of my life,” Patterson says. “I feel like I’ve summed up my attitude, the way I feel about life and religion and science and the whole thing.”

In addition to his three bands, his brother Ryan has, for a decade, led the band Coliseum, now also part of the Temporary Residence gang. Evan Patterson agrees music is his religion. “No doubt. I depend on music as an outlet and as a form of expression and family and communication.”

Church, he says, can be going to the practice space, or going to a friend’s house to listen to records. ”A lot of times, where the magic happens, the more spiritual side of playing music, is when you’re sharing it with other people.”

Young Widows with Helms Alee and Anwar Sadat
Tuesday, May 13
The New Vintage
2126 S. Preston St.
newvintagelouisville.com
$10; 9 p.m.

Photo by Amber Estes Thieneman

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c. 2014 LEO Weekly