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