Louisville’s loudest art gallery comes alive in Portland

The Tunesmiths

Portland Rock City ain’t no thugs and cheats / Tunesmiths breakin’ the wall west of Ninth Street.

“Portland Rock City, that’s what we’ve been calling it. Although I’m sure it’ll get a NuLu-esque name soon.” That’s how Bryce Gill, a driving force behind the music program at the Tim Faulkner Gallery, summarizes their approach to creating Louisville’s loudest art gallery.

“There is live music nearly every night of the week at the gallery,” Gill says. “Some are sporadically booked shows, and others are weekly open mics and rehearsals. Tim has been building his connections around town and with national touring artists since before their recent move.”

Faulkner opened his eponymous gallery in NuLu in 2009, as that neighborhood was still taking baby steps toward becoming the shopping and dining destination it is today. The art-first punk attitude of the artist and his gallery director, Margaret Archambault, inspired them to move to a larger space in Butchertown, a little bit off the map of the NuLu trolley hop free-wine crowd. Though that sprawling space became a hub for artists, musicians and other free spirits, not all of their neighbors were as excited by the noise generated there.

Faulkner and his crew jumped at the chance to occupy a 25,000-square-foot space (plus extended courtyard) offered at 1512 Portland Ave. as part of a larger plan to fill the neighborhood with some of the art and dining found in NuLu. The gallery also rents studio space to numerous artists and recently welcomed a small shop, McQuixote Books & Coffee, inside their single-story property.


The studio space at the Tim Faulkner Gallery

Gill and his band, the post blues-rock band The Tunesmiths, had been holding open practices every Wednesday night in Butchertown, and that continues in Portland. The band also books shows for other acts. “I’ll remember these years for the rest of my life,” he says. “To say the gallery helps my band is a massive understatement. The number of people that visit the gallery and hear about us grows every week.”

Additionally, the band now gets to rehearse on a big stage with a pro sound system. The concert hall is 10,000 square feet, with a capacity of 1,574 (such capacity is similar to the Brown Theatre). “I have not heard of any other bands in town with such an ideal rehearsal space for a rock band,” Gill says. “We started as a garage band, and now people have described our sound as more of an arena sound.”

Popular cellist/singer-songwriter Ben Sollee spent a few days there rehearsing before his recent WFPK Waterfront Wednesday set, even sleeping over. The Tunesmiths have started a monthly series for friendly traveling bands coming through on a Wednesday night. The next one is Nov. 12, headlined by Greg Martin of the Kentucky Headhunters, with a vinyl records and music gear expo added for extra oomph.

A Halloween show, “Bella Muerte – A Halloween Masquerade Ball,” has been booked with D’Arkestra, Billy Goat Strut Revue and Small Time Napoleon. The latter will be playing songs by Tom Waits that night.

Gill says he’s seeing locals, business owners, nonprofit workers and churchgoers dropping by on a regular basis, alongside the developers trying to figure out how to make their profits.

“I have seen the plans for all of the new developments, and I tell everyone they have no idea what’s coming in Portland!” he says. “The gallery is one of the first establishments in Portland that you can see a massive amount of progress and consistent activity. We were invited to play at the Portland Festival and several other upcoming events in the area. My band also helps local musicians find secure and affordable rehearsal spaces in the warehouse district.

“We help Tim anytime there is an opportunity,” Gill adds. The gallery is his home away from home. “Tim, Margaret and the whole TFG family are now a part of my life and my band’s entire operations. I couldn’t be happier with their progress and impact on the local music and art community. I feel very proud and excited to be a part of it. To see it firsthand and get to experience even half of the activities there is priceless.”

c. 2014 Insider Louisville

Leo Kottke – fingers on the pulse of the American guitar

“His contributions to guitar technique are staggering and are still not fully understood. His brilliant synthesis of vernacular tradition and classical intent has fostered a new tradition in guitar music.” That’s John Stropes, director of the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, describing why his institution was honoring Leo Kottke with an honorary doctorate in 2008.

“For a long time, the guitar has been my primary interest,” Kotte told Innerviews in 1999. “I see everything through the guitar. My day is almost always built around it. The guitar is almost always beside me, wherever I am.”

Though his career has been further bolstered by Grammy nominations and a place in the Guitar Player magazine Hall of Fame, Kottke has also survived severe physical problems and the losses of his closest peers.

Born in 1945, Kotte moved often throughout his childhood. A benefit of this path was his exposure to different music, including blues, folk and country styles. A firecracker took some of the hearing in his left ear, and his right ear also became permanently damaged during firing practice while in the Naval Reserve.

Upon discharge, Kottke hitchhiked for a while, because it was the 1960s. He landed in the Minneapolis area, where he released his first album of acoustic, finger-style, steel string American Primitivism guitar work, 12 String Blues (Live at the Scholar), in 1969, at the age of 24. Only 1,000 copies were made, and Kottke would re-record some of its songs for his third album, 1970’s Circle Round the Sun.

But his second album, 6- and 12-String Guitar, unveiled in December of 1969, would be the one to cement his reputation. The album was released by Takoma Records, the label founded by John Fahey, himself a legendary finger-style guitarist. Though it was Kottke’s breakthrough, going on to sell a half-million copies, it also established him as the master of a style that would later hurt him.

The album is also known for its armadillo-centric cover art, and Kottke’s note saying that he preferred arrangements without vocals because his singing voice “sounds like geese farts on a muggy day.” On a positive note, the album became a major influence on guitarist Michael Hedges, who would become a friend and tour mate to Kottke.

A Rolling Stone critic at the time wrote, “(His) music can invoke your most subliminal reflections or transmit you to the highest reaches of joy.” Kottke went on the road, winning over large crowds with his beautiful playing and surprisingly funny between-song monologues. His fourth album, 1971’s Mudlark, was his first for a major label. Capitol. It was also his first to add other musicians, including members of both L..A.’s freak scene and Nashville’s country music scene.

As he ventured into the early ‘70s, Kottke began adding vocals, feeling pressure from his label to become more of a James Taylor-style singer-songwriter. He would record seven albums for Capitol, leaving in 1975 for Chrysalis. He continued on a steady path there until 1983, when his career took an unplanned, surprising new direction.

Out of the spotlight for three years, Kottke dealt with tendonitis that he had suffered through years of vigorous guitar playing. Signed to the independent Private Music label,where his quasi-New Age style made more sense than on a major label (especially in the gross, grubby ‘80s), Kottke returned with 1986’s A Shout Toward Noon, displaying a more classical influence on his playing.

Fun fact: around this time, Kottke also scored the Troma movie Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid.

By the late ‘80s, he had returned to fighting form (like contemporaries Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Paul Simon – the ‘80s were not good for anyone). His next album won Kottke his first Grammy nomination.

In the ‘90s, he collaborated on and off his own albums with like-minded artists such as as Rickie Lee Jones, Lyle Lovett, Chet Atkins, Nanci Griffith and Van Dyke Parks. Michael Hedges and John Fahey both passed away around the turn of the century, and Kottke began a partnership with a younger musician and fan, bassist Mike Gordon of Phish. The title of Kottke’s 2004 album, his last solo to date, summed up his approach cleverly and succinctly: Try and Stop Me.

Leo Kottke
Wednesday, October 29
Clifton Center
2117 Payne St.
cliftoncenter.org
$29-$34; 7:30 p.m.

c. 2014 Clifton Center

The Carolina Chocolate Drops and their umbrella revolution

There was a moment after the biracial Barack Obama was elected to the presidency that the punditocracy declared the United States a “post-racial” society. Unfortunately, issues of racial disparity and strife continue to plague us (or do you still think of the Scottish TV host when you hear the word “Ferguson”?). In the world of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, though, the best of both worlds do coexist. The quartet plays a blend of old-time musical styles, with elements of jug bands and string bands, country and western, Celtic, blues, hot jazz and traditional African approaches all informing a self-described “folk” band whose membership recently included a beatboxer.

It’s also a new world for the Drops now, once again. After winning a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album for their first widely-distributed album, Genuine Negro Jig (on the acclaimed Nonesuch label), in 2010, founding members Rhiannon Giddens (vocals, banjo, fiddle, kazoo) and Dom Flemons (vocals, banjo, guitar, jug, harmonica, kazoo, snare drum, bones, quills) replaced fiddler Justin Robinson with the aforementioned beatboxer, Adam Matta, and Hubby Jenkins (vocals, guitar, mandolin, banjo, bones). A year later, they added cellist Layla McCalla. By the end of 2013, Flemons had left for a solo career, and Matta and McCalla were gone, too. Giddens and Jenkins now play with cellist Malcolm Parson and new multi-instrumentalist Rowan Corbett (guitar, bones, snare drum, cajon, djembe).

That type of evolution shouldn’t be very surprising for a group determined to live in the present, looking back only to hold on to the best elements available to make the best music possible. It’s an approach that has won them endless love from theaters worldwide like our Clifton Center, roots music festivals, public radio programs and venerable publications like the New York Times (their writer Brian Seibert called Giddens “ridiculously charismatic” in a recent review of a concert he described as “rollicking, revelatory”).

That review pointed out the band’s intent as a dance band, one trying to educate their audience to a new way of hearing and seeing the world without making it feel educational. The band’s reclamation of the banjo, in particular, has helped fuel new interest in mostly forgotten music like jug band music, and the band – who plays for two nights at the Clifton Center – has proven especially popular in Louisville, where that genre was created. Dom Flemons spoke to journalist Michael L. Jones for the new book Louisville Jug Music, noting that “A lot of the history around the Louisville jug bands has not been written down in a way that is easy for people to digest,” a situation alleviated by Jones’ contribution to that story.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops came together in Durham, North Carolina, almost a decade ago. They found their sound in the traditional music of the Piedmont region of the Carolinas, studying with elder master fiddler Joe Thompson. Their most recent studio album, Leaving Eden, was released by Nonesuch in 2012. It had a touch more of a country/folk edge to it, aided by producer Buddy Miller (known for his work with Emmylou Harris, Solomon Burke and on the Nashville TV series). It was a transitional period for Giddens and her men, and the latest line-up revision promises another new dimension when the band returns to the studio.

Upon the release of Leaving Eden, Giddens said it like this: “We want to remain true to the roots of how we started. We’re always going to have a string band on our records. But we don’t want to just do Piedmont style fiddle-banjo-guitar tunes; there’s more to our musical life than that. We grow in a healthy, slow way that reflects our true development as musicians and as a band.”

Flemons recently further clarified their mission in an interview with Durham’s Indy Week newspaper. “When we first started the Carolina Chocolate Drops, it was always a three-person collective. For it to be a collective, each individual has their own intentions, their own ways of doing their material and the way they decide to play it. The idea of it being a band lessens the purpose of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. It’s an umbrella. It should be a place where we help out musicians.”

Carolina Chocolate Drops with Birds of Chicago
Wednesday, Oct. 22 & Thursday, Oct. 23
Clifton Center
2117 Payne St.
cliftoncenter.org
$29; 7:30 p.m.

c. 2014 Clifton Center