An offering of love

Honor: opening for the Dalai Lama at the KFC Yum! Center. Bummer: because His Holiness is running late, your 45-minute set gets cut down to 15 minutes. Also, as a Buddhist, the Dalai Lama only listens to spiritual music, shunning all the rest, including your jazz.

For some, this would be a problem, but most people aren’t Dick Sisto. The veteran vibraphonist and radio host also practices spiritual work. A protégé of Thomas Merton, Sisto has been a seeker for decades.

Sisto’s latest album, Engaging Compassion, a duo with pianist Kenny Werner, is comprised of six new songs — three written by each composer — worked up for the event that occurred on May 19. “The gig sometimes dictates the inspiration,” Sisto explains. “There was great inspiration, but at the same time, it was daunting, because I knew I didn’t want to play some straight-ahead jazz.” He checked out Tibetan music on YouTube, learning that there are some exiled Tibetan musicians here “looking more like punk rockers. But, still, very Tibetan. It was very interesting.”

The inspiration flowed, faster than normal, including the album’s opener, “Save Tibet,” which features Sisto playing a talking drum. He recruited Werner because the pianist has a similar interest in meditation, and both men share a love for Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans.

All proceeds from the album go directly to Tibetan nuns to help with housing and meditation space. Discs can be purchased at Heine Bros. Coffee and Rainbow Blossom locations.

Most of it was recorded in a donated studio at the Kentucky Center. Another downtown landmark, the Seelbach Hotel, was Sisto’s musical home for two decades until recently. But now the hotel has brought back Sisto for a limited run on Friday nights in their gorgeous Rathskeller, ending this week. The concerts are free, and Sisto notes that, sonically speaking, more people filling up the room makes the acoustics sound even better.

Photo by John Nation.

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c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Jessica Hernandez: A natural woman

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As Jessica Hernandez was readying her full-length debut album for a February 2014 release, she was in El Paso, Texas, finishing the album’s mixing process. Initial problems connecting with LEO’s reporter, she said, were due to the studio being located “on a pecan farm, in the middle of nowhere. It’s hard to use a cell phone out here.”

It’s an example of how far the Detroit native has come in her journey from local popularity to possible Next Big Thing. The first-generation American, whose band describes their sound as “big-indiefolkestraljazz&B,” is the child of parents who own a bakery, and the hardworking singer stood out in the scene in part due to the stage she built in the loft above the bakery, hosting shows by her band and many others.

Another standout feature for the 25-year-old is her voice, a big instrument equal parts soulful, jazzy and rockin’. At 5 feet, 5 inches tall, Hernandez might not look like her body can support such a voice. She’s not hearing what her audience hears, anyway.

“I hear my voice one way, and I’m used to the way it’s always sounded in my head,” she says. “Now, recording a lot, it’s weird to me (hearing it played back). I’m just, like, ‘I don’t sound like that!’” While working on her current record, Hernandez found herself consistently wanting to redo her vocals.

“My producer’s, like, ‘We love you, but you’re fucking crazy. It sounds great, you’re just being weird,’” she laughs. “I’ve had to learn to trust everyone else around me to tell me when it sounds good. It’s the same thing when people hear their voice on a voicemail: ‘That’s not me …’”

She found another solution to her dilemma recently in Pontiac, Mich. The band decided to release a single, with a new song on the “A” side and a Conway Twitty cover on the back, and went to an analog-only studio to record it. Hernandez says, “We went there and recorded live-to-tape, just one take through, and it was such a different experience. There’s just such a warmth to everything: The vocals and the drums and everything just sound so warm, so natural that you wind up not wanting to do anything to it.

“It’s weird,” she continues, “There’s so many imperfections when you’re doing something live and you don’t have the ability to go in and mess with things, but at the same time, it’s so forgiving. The flaws have so much character. Now I only want to record analog (laughs). I’m really dorky about it.”

She’s unable to hide her dorkiness, introducing the song “Young, Dumb & Drunk” on the band’s live EP Live at the Magic Bag by telling the audience, “We’re nervous, too, so don’t be embarrassed to dance or … somethin’ …”

Hernandez and the Deltas got their big break when a Capitol Records radio representative from Detroit passed the band’s CD around to employees at Capitol’s Blue Note division. “Somehow the president of Blue Note got a hold of it and ended up calling me on my cell phone one day,” she says. “We started talking about music, and all about life and everything, and talked for an hour, and then we worked out a plan to see me on my own stage, with our hometown crowd and all that. That ended up being really cool.”

Upon playing a triumphant show in front of all their friends and signing to Blue Note, the Deltas made their album — and then watched as everyone who believed in them lost their jobs after Universal took over the company. “It’s super-stressful over there,” says Hernandez. “I talked to the president of Blue Note about what that meant for me. He was pretty straightforward, saying, ‘I don’t know, because I don’t know who has a job here at this point.’”

Hernandez was lucky, getting the rights to her album back and stopping it from being buried in a vault. Now she’s working on starting her own label to release it. “I’m doing a self-release of the record I recorded with a major-label feel. It’s kind of a cool thing — we had this major label budget and attention to it, and now we’re releasing it as a self-release. It’s kind of a weird thing, but I’m excited for it. And nervous.”

Jessica Hernandez and the Deltas with Dr. Vitamin
Wednesday, Sept. 18
Zanzabar
2100 S. Preston St.
zanzabarlouisville.ticketfly.com
$5; 9 p.m.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Hip to be square: Revenge of The National

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Though none of the Berninger kids were musical while growing up in Cincinnati, their taste as listeners had a profound effect on their personalities. In the 1980s, older sister Rachel was a classic John Hughes character, falling for The Smiths, Violent Femmes and R.E.M. Brother Matt, two years her junior, enjoyed “a typical Midwestern suburban upbringing,” he says, aware of music as entertainment but otherwise disinterested until Rachel’s cassettes changed his life. Youngest brother Tom, born nine years after Matt, turned to heavy metal as his passion, perhaps as a way to define himself apart from his siblings.

This year saw the release of Matt’s band The National’s sixth album, Trouble Will Find Me, which sold almost 75,000 copies in its first week of release. A feature-length documentary about the band, “Mistaken For Strangers,” directed by Tom Berninger, has been playing at festivals, following the metalhead as he travels with his brother’s band.

Matt Berninger says he was attracted to “artsy” music as an awkward teen who felt out of place, in school and in his own body — “like every freshman in high school does …”

Berninger defines himself first now as a writer, and says he’s always been attracted to bands like those for their lyrics first, even above the catchy melodies. “The boldness and the courage, some of the weirdness — I particularly remember the Violent Femmes records, like, ‘I can’t believe he just said that! Wow, he had the guts to say something that’s creepy, that’s sexual, racially ambiguous …’ Morrissey, too, was representing, in a pop song, something silly or pathetic, which I loved,” he continues. “I instantly connected to people who made fun of themselves, and exposed their awkwardness. I think it’s the most direct and potent sort of form of art that I’ve connected to emotionally, as opposed to books or movies or anything.”

As he learned more about how music could speak to him, Berninger added artists like Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Nick Cave to his playlists, “and other writer/musician heroes, people who had the courage to be uncool and weird.”

Though today he is known for wearing smart suits on stage, the popular singer says he has always been “thin and gawky … I have a big nose and I would not be described as ‘classically handsome.’ I’m average-to-weird looking.”

He says about many rock musicians, like Keith Richards, The Who and the Ramones, “There’s a lot of dorks who, if they weren’t in rock ’n’ roll … it’s one of the ways dorks can be cool.”

In high school, he says, “I don’t think I was a pretentious douchebag,” but he began to think “more highly of myself … and I started to become more confident.”

Berninger didn’t know his future bandmates, all native Cincinnatians, as kids. He met bassist Scott Devendorf in the early ’90s when they were both attending University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. Their first band, Nancy, was overly inspired by Pavement and Guided By Voices, though it inspired Berninger to take music-making more seriously.

After college, Berninger moved to New York, got a design job, and through Devendorf, hooked up with their future bandmates; Devendorf’s brother Bryan, the drummer, had been playing with twins Aaron Dessner (guitar, keyboards) and Bryce Dessner (guitar) in a different band. Berninger, who is now 42, was already in his late 20s before The National came together.

The members came from different scenes — Bryce Dessner, a serious composer, went to Yale; Aaron is more of a classic singer-songwriter; Bryan Devendorf is a jamband guy. The National’s first two records were the guys trying to figure out who they were together. It took two and a half records, Berninger says, with their Cherry Tree EP, before they nailed it.

It’s been a long, slow rise to the top for a band that saw their early peers — The Strokes, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol — find their audiences more easily. In the early days, every mention meant a lot; Berninger still remembers a nice write-up in Buffalo. “We used to call in sick to our day jobs from Europe,” he laughs.

It’s been almost a decade since they didn’t have to work day jobs. Today, 14 years into The National, Matt Berninger says he feels cool.

The National with Frightened Rabbit
Friday, Sept. 13
Iroquois Amphitheater
1080 Amphitheater Road
iroquoisamphitheater.com
$36; 8 p.m.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Won more

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Guitarist Nathan Salsburg’s latest is titled Hard For To Win and Can’t Be Won, and it’s another striking collection of mostly instrumentals by the former LEO columnist. He plays a release show Tuesday, Sept. 17, at Greenhaus.

LEO: You’ve made two solos and a duo album in the past couple of years, in addition to working your job and producing box sets. What inspired this especially prolific period?

Nathan Salsburg: I hope the last few years’ worth of output isn’t a period, in that it’ll come to an end. I’d like to think that I just got myself into shape, and the productivity owes less to inspiration and more a practical and satisfying sense of vocation. There’s a Ned Rorem quote, paraphrasing Colette, that I keep close: “No one expects you to be happy — just get your work done.”

LEO: What’s the concept of this album?

NS: The album was largely written over this past winter, which I spent in Maine. Wintering in Maine is serious business — especially this one, which was the coldest one in decades — and some combination of the bitter cold, the dark, the proximity to water and the great local beer helped get the songs out. The record ended up being a means of making sense of that experience in that part of the world, and a meditation on what Donald Hall called “necessities of feeling” with regard to place and to home.

LEO: Can you explain the album’s title?

NS: In 1930, an Eastern Kentucky singer and banjo player named Hayes Shepherd — aka the Appalachia Vagabond — cut a version of an old lyric song that he called “Hard for to Love,” the first line of which is It’s hard for to love when you can’t be loved / it’s hard for to change your mind. It’s one of my favorite performances; the album title is a riff on it.

LEO: Ideal setting to hear your music?

NS: I think that’d be best addressed to someone who enjoys listening to my music, but my preference is un-amplified and outside.

Photo by Tim Furnish.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Drinking games

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Which came first, the music or the alcohol? For CatFight, the answer might be “both.” With their first EP coming out, the band plays a release show at Haymarket Whiskey Bar on Saturday. LEO spoke with guitarist Erica Sellers about drinking, music and drinking.

LEO: Have any of you gotten in a catfight with each other lately?

Erica Sellers: Umm … not lately. Only if we drink too much does that occasionally happen, but then we make up the next day. It’s all fun and games. We’ve all learned to avoid the bourbon.

LEO: Do you have any Gaga-esque plans for your show?

ES: We thought about getting some live cats on the stage while we played, and then we decided that would probably be a horrible idea. No, we’re just all going to be ourselves and have fun on stage, buy everybody shots …

LEO: If that goes in print, it’s going to cost you.

ES: I know, right? I feel like every time we go to Haymarket, any money we make we end up putting back into the bar.

LEO: So what’s the real priority here?

ES: The real priority’s obviously the playing — and, after our shows, we do like to drink. We focus on putting on a good show for everybody, which requires us to drink hardly any before the show, and then afterward, we like to chill with everyone who came out, have a good time and get to know everyone.

LEO: What’s your favorite song to play live?

ES: I really enjoy playing “Who Gives a F—” Oh, sorry.

LEO: You can say it.

ES: “Who Gives a Fuck” is one of my favorite songs to play. I like what it’s about, and everybody seems to really enjoy it. Their mouths drop when they realize there’s about 50 fucks in the song. That’s really fun.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Cotton tales

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Whiskey Bent Valley’s new album has just about the cutest cover you’ll see this year. It’s a drawing you might expect to see on the cover of a classic kids’ book, not on the cover of a new album by an old-time bluegrass band from Pewee Valley. But there it is.

LEO asked Whiskey Bent Valley’s guitarist, Col. Mason Dixon, to walk us through the band’s latest album (the line-up also includes fiddler and vocalist Junior, bassist McElroy Jones and Petey Bob Wagner on “banjer”).

Col. Mason Dixon: The new album is entitled Peter Tracks. It is full of traditional old-time banjo and fiddle songs. This album is a true representation of “What you see/hear is what you get.” There are zero overdubs on the album, hardly any retakes were ever used — we were trying to catch that true instrumentation and sound of acoustic instruments playing old traditional music.

We recorded the album at Dead Bird Studios in Louisville. We had intentions of having guests on the album, but things just did not work out exactly how we planned. However, I think in the long run it ended up being better, because you get that true representation of what us four musicians bring when we are together.

Some of the songs we enjoy playing most live would have to be “Police Man,” “Let Me Fall” and the old traditional tune “Soldier’s Joy.” On the back of the CD, there is small print that says, “Recorded live on the floor.” That’s an old-time saying meaning no overdubs — a true live sound.

The artwork was done by a guy in New York City named Eric Losh. He has done many different bands’ albums, including the Hackensaw Boys and Pokey Lafarge. The cover image was just something I thought of … I wanted something true, and what’s better than an old rabbit in a creek bed?

Whiskey Bent Valley plays on “Great Day Live” Thursday at 10 a.m., at Manny & Merle on Friday and at the Kentucky Bluegrass & Bourbon Festival on Monday.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

No Sleep ’til Bangalore

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Red Baraat brings the world to Louisville



Here’s the kind of guy Sunny Jain is in 2013: He’s been working so hard that, even during a week-long vacation on a Cape Cod beach, he’ll step out of the water to take a phone call to talk about his music.

Jain’s band, Red Baraat, has been a thrilling surprise in the five years since they emerged in Brooklyn — a dance-party band steeped primarily in Indian wedding music but merged with enough New Orleans funk and jam-band exploration to make sense to an increasingly global American audience.

It’s a sound that transcends age, as well. Red Baraat is playing Louisville for the third time in two years, and Jain fondly remembers the crowd at their first, in the Bomhard Theater, whose dance floor included 80-year-olds and 6-year-olds getting down together.

Since the release of their second studio album, Shruggy Ji, in January, the band has played everywhere from the White House to Austin City Limits, and have their first band dates in India and Pakistan scheduled in mid-September — in between dates in Seattle and Minneapolis. That’s quite a unique routing issue, yes?

“Right!” Jain laughs. “Exactly ...” A Midwestern tour had been scheduled, but the band couldn’t turn down such an opportunity, which is why the band will play Indiana’s Lotus Fest shortly after playing in India.

The trip is a dream come true in two ways: “It’s been a special musical aspiration to get the band over to India,” Jain begins, “and, also, a personal one — to get to go. And I’ve never been to Pakistan. My parents were originally from there, before Partition happened in 1947. They fled to the eastern side, which remained India.”

It’s rewarding for Jain, who was raised in Rochester, N.Y., to “get back there and soak up the roots of where my family originally comes from — that northwestern region of the subcontinent.”

That trip, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, includes gigs planned in Mumbai and Bangalore, with additional visits to Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. It will be really cool, Jain says, to see a whole other part of the world, to meet people and to see how his band’s music works so far away from home. The government won’t have any more involvement beyond supporting the band’s travels; Jain says they don’t plan to speak about diversity or politics, content as always to let their onstage music and interactions speak for itself.

He’s not worried much about music purists, though, noting that India, too, has its share of Western-style DJs and pop groups. “I think folks like that exist everywhere, and they have their beliefs … The idea of blending together different kinds of music, I think that exists all over the world.”

Most of his relatives reside in Delhi, and the band’s visit coincides with a Jain family event in Delhi that weekend. Trumpeter Sonny Singh and percussionist Rohin Khemani have family closer, as well as local musician friends, and the band hopes to see them.

The band has become popular enough on the festival circuit that they have already begun their own fest, Festival of Colors, which pays homage to India’s Holi celebration. Having already added a Philadelphia date on top of its Brooklyn home, the band hopes to expand it further next year.

By the end of this year, the band plans to take a few months off the road to work on their next album. In June, Red Baraat issued a bonus EP, Big Talk, which features new songs as well as remixes done by members of their Brooklyn neighbor bands, Antibalas and TV On the Radio.

The baseball fan is also looking forward to returning to Louisville and seeing where Sluggers are produced. “I’ve heard about (WorldFest) for a minute now, so it’s nice to be invited to come and play,” says Jain. The Brooklynites first heard about it when Appalatin, their local opener in February at Headliners, suggested it and helped connect the band and the fest.

Jain says he hasn’t yet woken up on the road and not known what city he is in — but he has woken up in his own bed and forgotten that he’s not on tour. He enjoys the chaos, and “When the normalcy of life sets in — that throws me,” he laughs.

WorldFest with Red Baraat and many more
Friday, Aug. 30
The Belvedere
louisvillewaterfront.com
Free; Red Baraat plays Friday at 9:30 p.m.

Photo by Erin Patrice O'Brien

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Getting Zen with Angel Olsen

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The first thing you need to know about Angel Olsen is that she’s very funny. If you’ve heard her solo albums — especially her most recent, 2012’s Half Way Home — then you might have an impression of her as depressed, angst-ridden, dramatic. But that’s only part of her story.

She’s multi-dimensional and full of promise waiting to be revealed. A native of St. Louis who has lived in Chicago for six years, Olsen plans to move again soon. This week, she returns to Louisville, where she has already spent quality time due to her role as supporting vocalist with Bonnie “Prince” Billy for several tours.

So what’s her impression of our city and our people and our music? “I like your city and your people and your music,” she says. “There was a band called Humungous that everybody was always talking about that I wanted to see,” she notes, adding that they have a song called “Awesome” she likes, laughing as she shares that fact. “I think the line is Awesome, give her what she wants, over and over and over again. I think it’s pretty amazing.”

She’s enjoyed spending time in Louisville because it reminds her of her hometown, in parts — she enjoys the many hidden gems, the funky stores one can only find in the artsy neighborhoods, and being able to enjoy some natural beauty without having to travel far.

“I like Louisville,” she allows in a noncommittal tone. “Maybe I’ll live in a little cave there.”

When Olsen moved to Chicago, she made friends in the music scene, and they soon booked her to play house shows. Her powerful voice leapt out of what the Chicago Tribune called her “petite and moon-faced” body, leading to work with guitarist Emmett Kelly, who recommended her to Kelly’s frequent collaborator, Will Oldham of the Bonnie “Prince” Billy band.

This July, Olsen and her band recorded a third album in Asheville, where her previous label is based, with a possible year-end release date penciled in. She released a pair of songs earlier this year as a teaser. “Wellllll,” she begins with a fake drawl that somehow also works as a Valley Girl impression, “I put out some sonnnngs this year, and it was kinda funnnnn —” she cracks up, unable to continue the charade.

She got sick the day she arrived for recording. She had been unable to sleep, excited but also worried about all the what-ifs facing what will be her most scrutinized album to date. “It’s pretty common, I think. A lot of artists psych themselves out.”

“I’m really proud of the progress we’ve made. We’ve only been a band since last winter,” she explains. “There are things I’m learning about that process, because I’ve always played solo, and (her new bandmates) have always played in a band together, so they’re learning, too.”

She’s even been singing in new ways, or finding new ways to bring sounds out, as she develops her technique.

It sounds cheesy, she says, but it takes a while to find the right people to work well around. It’s less cheesy than a simple and common truth; she’s had to learn to play with others while the others learn to play more like her: sometimes off-kilter, able to veer from folky to operatic and back, sometimes scripted but appearing to be improvised.

Recording, this time, turned out well. “It was an amazing experience,” she says, having relayed tales to LEO of waterfall swims and homemade kombucha. “I’m really psyched that, with all the worry … as much as you can prepare for any situation, there’s no point losing any sleep over it. Something can come totally out of nowhere and mess it up for you.”

About the new album, she’s even willing to say it’s something she would listen to, though she doesn’t sit at home listening to her previous recordings. This leads Olsen to a recital of fake passions she assumes people would want to hear her talk about: “getting Zen,” “finding her shakra,” all of which sound funny to her. She adds, “I would recommend you do yoga and go on a raw-food diet … and then talk about it nonstop. And then … start rock climbing. Actually, I don’t know how you get Zen. I think it’s what you do when you watch ‘30 Rock.’”

Angel Olsen with William Tyler
Thursday, Aug. 22
Zanzabar
2100 S. Preston St.
zanzabarlouisville.ticketfly.com
$10-$12; 9 p.m.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Reverse Menudo

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Indie pop-rock band Deer Meet has returned with a new seven-song EP, Drums and Impressions, and to celebrate, they play Saturday at Zanzabar. LEO checked in with vocalist Jimmy Angelina and guitarist Morgan Keator.

LEO: How did you get Better Days Records involved with this album?

Morgan Keator: (Better Days owner) Ben Jones and I go back over 25 years. He has always been interested (in) and supportive of my music … When the topic came up of Deer Meet recording again, he simply told me he would put it out for us. He didn’t even have to hear it. To me, Ben is family and is one of the most influential Louisvillians in my life.

LEO: How does the writing happen?

Jimmy Angelina: I do most of the songwriting. (Drummer) Nicholas (Layman) and Morgan write, as well. As far as my stuff is concerned, I bring in a more or less finished song — in a basic, structural sense. Tunes and lyrics. Then everyone throws their parts in. Then we hash all that out and work toward an arrangement. It’s always great to hear what everybody brings to a song. Some of the songs have undergone massive reinterpretations, thanks to everyone’s input, which is great.

LEO: How do you think the band has progressed?

JA: I think — I hope — the band has progressed over time. If so, I think part of that is due to my becoming more comfortable with the process of writing songs. I’ve gotten much more confident as I’ve gone on, and with that confidence comes more of a willingness to stretch out a bit. The other thing that’s perhaps made us progress is the fact that the band has changed line-ups with each album. It’s gotten a bit Menudo-y at this point (although, maybe a reverse Menudo, as I’m the oldest member, and I’m still here). The changes have kept things sparking and have meant that a wide variety of creative voices have gone into the mix.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

The Handsome Family’s hairy tales

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The Handsome Family is a couple, Rennie and Brett Sparks, married 24 years now and based in Albuquerque since 2001. Their ninth studio album of new, weird Americana, Wilderness, was released this spring, along with a companion book of essays and drawings by Rennie (who writes the band’s lyrics, while Brett writes the music). The theme of Wilderness is animals of all kinds, fertile ground for a woman who tells tales like a member of the Tom Waits family.

Our phone conversation began with Rennie advising LEO, “Brett’s here, if you want him to corroborate my stories.”

LEO: You guys have been married for a long time. What do you like best about him? And I’m asking, of course, because he’s there —

Rennie Sparks: His beard! I married him for the beard. I tell him that if I could have married a grizzly bear, I would’ve. But it’s not legal.

LEO: We’re kind of known for our beards in Louisville. I hope he’s not the jealous type.

RS: I’m excited now! It’s a good time in America for beards in general.

LEO: So, the new record — I’m curious about how much of your writing comes from stuff you’ve read for fun, versus how much you sit down and say, “I want to research this so I have something else to write about.”

RS: I do find that, whatever you think of these days, if you search for it on the Internet, there’s amazing things you can find out (laughs). People have so many strange postings, there’s endless stuff to learn about. So when I go to read about termites, I read all these papers from Creationists talking about how termite mounds are proof of God. Things like that are kind of mind-boggling to me. Also, then you find these scientific articles talking about how termites communicate by banging their heads on the floor of the little dirt corridors inside their mounds.

Plus, one of my favorite things to do these days is to download all those 99-cent books on Kindle that are from the 19th century. You can find these amazing books that are natural histories and zoological treatises from a different point of view. There’s one I was reading last year that’s one of my favorites — it talks about different animal intelligence. This guy’s argument is that orangutans are clearly smarter than chimps because you can train an orangutan to put on trousers and light a cigar, where a chimp will not do that. A chimp can ride a tricycle but … clearly, an inferior species (laughs).

LEO: I’d think the one who didn’t smoke would be the intelligent one (laughs).

RS: This guy had a gorilla living in his house! With his 4-year-old child! He was very proud that the gorilla mastered the front door, he mastered the steps, and the gorilla and the baby were playing really nicely with each other! I don’t know how it turned out, but ...

LEO: As a fiction writer, does it give you inspiration to go online, where there’s so much false information people are trying to pass off as true?

RS: Oh, I don’t care if it’s false! To me, a good lie’s just as good as a truth, really. In my book that goes along with the record, I have a list of fake woodpeckers — the skin-walker woodpecker and the invisible woodpecker and the giant cave woodpecker — and people keep asking me, “Why’d you forget this woodpecker?” (laughs), and they couldn’t even imagine why anyone would make up things. They have to accept the fact that there is a giant cave woodpecker.

LEO: I assume it’s more fun to make up new woodpeckers than to just rehash old woodpeckers.

RS: Well, you know, woodpeckers are amazing, but yeah. And my theory of life is, there should be a giant cave woodpecker. I just haven’t found them yet.

Our place in this world, we never really look at anything with clear eyes, anyway. The human eye’s always subjective, so what we see is always going to be kind of false. We can’t look at animals in the natural world and see them as they are. I would say it’s impossible to look at a weeping willow and not think it’s a little sad — but it probably isn’t.

The Handsome Family with Danny Barnes and Catherine Irwin
Friday, July 26
Headliners Music Hall
1386 Lexington Road
headlinerslouisville.com
$12; 9 p.m.

Photo by Jason Creps

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Jade Jolie — ‘Equality is like rainbows’

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Cute and bubbly Jade Jolie got off to a decent start as a contestant on the reality competition series “RuPaul’s Drag Race”’s recent fifth season, but the pressure soon caught up, leading to her elimination halfway through the season. The Gainesville, Fla., native known to the government as Josh Green also became scandalized when past work as an adult film actor (called Tristan Everhard — also a good drag name!) emerged once she entered the spotlight.

The drag queen says, “My style has always reflected my personality, giving you a taste of the crazy rainbow.” She took her stage name from a combination of the “Mortal Kombat” character Jade (“the character who would always give me life with her monstrous tatas and great physique”) and a movie star (“who, in my opinion, is the queen of queens”).

Jade Jolie headlines this month’s edition of the LGBT party “Hard Candy.” VIP tickets include a meet-and-greet, photo and specialty cocktail at 9 p.m.

LEO: What do you do at your live appearances?
Jade Jolie: Clearly, from my final episode of “Drag Race,” I’m not a live singer (laughs). I don’t wanna scare anyone, and I enjoy having people in the audience for my shows, so lip-syncing is a must. I serve the children with high, fun energy and crazy costumes. Drag, to me, should hold your attention and be a blast, so I do my best to make things visually exciting and entertaining as possible.

LEO: What did you learn about yourself from seeing yourself on TV?
JJ: There’s nothing like some seIf-evaluation after watching yourself on TV. One thing I did learn is to edit (laughs). I also thought, prior to the show, I was America’s sweetheart — and it turned out I was America’s sweet and sour patch kid (laughs).

LEO: Which version of RuPaul do you prefer, the “Tim Gunn” version or the “Covergirl” version?
JJ: I’ll take any version! She is one fierce muthatucka.

LEO: Did you make it all the way through that movie Angelina made with Johnny Depp?
JJ: I feel like a terrible fan saying no — but it’s a no (laughs). Some of my all-time faves from her is in “Original Sin,” “Tomb Raider” and “Gia” ... oh, and she was a clearly a goddess in “Alexander.”

LEO: What is your biggest goal?
JJ: To be a queen to be remembered.

LEO: How do you feel about the recent Supreme Court decision about marriage equality?
JJ: I know to some it seems like a small step, but to me, I am overjoyed. I feel you have to celebrate each and every victory, and equality is like rainbows — beautiful and free, hunty!

LEO: What do rainbows and unicorns add to your life?
JJ: Everything! Seriously, though, who doesn’t love a damn unicorn and rainbow? They make me smile and definitely add some more pizzazz in my life. I love to tell people, “Don’t think it’s only rainbows, because if you mess with the unicorn, sometimes you get the horn!”

Jade Jolie with Dee Ranged & DJ Syimone
Thursday, July 18
Hard Candy at Prime Lounge
104 W. Main St.
facebook.com/HardCandyKY
$6; 11 p.m.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Lebowski Fest 2013: The Coen Brothers — you know, for kids!

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Cult hits, Oscar winners and an accidental festival

On June 29, in the midst of a road trip, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Joel Coen and his wife, actress Frances McDormand, came through Louisville. The power couple stopped at a Carmichael’s Bookstore, where staffers recognized the Academy Award-winning star of “Fargo.” Though they didn’t initially identify Coen as they shared their Hollywood sighting with their Facebook followers, WHY Louisville’s page lit up the next day with the news that their spirit animal had made it to the store owned by Lebowski Fest organizer Will Russell.

Coen, who has remained mostly silent about the independently run festival, even signed a poster advertising this weekend’s 12th Louisville edition: “Hi Will, a dozen years is too long … —Joel Coen”

In his career to date, Joel Coen and his brother, Ethan, have written, edited, produced and directed 16 feature films together, including “Blood Simple,” “Raising Arizona,” “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” “No Country for Old Men,” “A Serious Man,” “True Grit” and this fall’s “Inside Llewyn Davis,” which received much praise at this spring’s Cannes Film Festival. The brothers, who do everything together but have often split credits due to union rules, have long since established theirs as one of the most consistently inventive, smart, weird, usually funny, idiosyncratic filmmaking voices of our times, a veritable genre of one.

They are known for their visual work as much as for their dialogue, for never repeating themselves even when working with a company of returning actors, and for being able to do whatever they feel like without seeming concerned about how much money it will cost or earn them.

Their films sometimes work in the noir genre, sometimes as slapstick comedy and sometimes both. Throughout their work, a philosophical subtext missing from most movies can be traced (Ethan holds a philosophy degree from Princeton, while Joel studied film at NYU; their parents were an economist and an art historian, though their intellectualism rarely interferes with their work’s jokes or eruptions of violence).

“The Big Lebowski,” their seventh film, combines great doses of stoner humor with acid-drenched, whimsical philosophy and surprising violence, while reconnecting them with favored actors John Goodman and John Turturro (whose off-kilter relationship in the Coens’ fourth film, “Barton Fink” — written around the same time as “Lebowski” — can be seen as an antecedent to the “Lebowski” relationship between Goodman and Jeff Bridges).

Upon its release on March 6, 1998, reviews were mixed, and the movie struggled to find an audience. Moviegoers expecting a sequel to the Coens’ previous film, the award-winning and popular “Fargo,” found themselves confused by the complex yet almost random-seeming plot of “Lebowski,” and confused by a fatter, hairier Jeff Bridges than they were used to seeing. In a 2010 review, Roger Ebert wrote, “‘The Big Lebowski’ is about an attitude, not a story.” While moviegoers often prefer stories to attitudes, attitude was a great jumping-off point for a party.

As co-founder Will Russell details in his recount in this issue, Lebowski Fest was started by a pair of fans of the movie — a couple of odd ducks, sure, but otherwise decent young men — who found it endlessly quotable, and who decided to get some friends together to celebrate it in a bowling alley. Add alcohol and then costumes to the party, have a few bands play outside, and suddenly, a festival is born.

Part of the credit for the festival’s ongoing success goes to the prescient vision of Russell and co-founder Scott Shuffitt, who anticipated the rise of “nerd culture” 12 long years ago as a viable business model. (San Diego’s Comic-Con is probably the only new place left for the fest to visit, unless you think the Vatican might let them drink a few White Russians in the parking lot.)

Some of the credit must go to the Coen Brothers and the film’s owner, Universal Pictures, who not only didn’t sue the Louisvillians a dozen years ago but even enlisted the fest to help promote the 10th anniversary DVD box set release.

Credit must also go to the weird people of Louisville, who helped get this institution off the ground and kept it going — perhaps, Mr. Coen, longer than it ever should have, to a rational person, but that is not this audience. In the early years, locals could be heard becoming increasingly skeptical of yet another Lebowski Fest, but as the years went on, it’s become harder to remember that an annual Lebowski Fest really is a weird thing to have. So congrats to us, Louisville, and to Achievers everywhere. LEO is proud — we are — of all of them.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

The Jolly Green Art Giant

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Lebowski Fest revelers take home souvenirs of all kinds — happy memories, bowling injuries, White Russian hangovers — but the most popular might be each fest’s posters, all designed by Louisville native Bill Green. Since 2002, Green has created dozens of unique posters and art prints for the fest. Add up the rest of the merchandise he’s worked on — shirts, rugs, iPhone cases and what-have-you — and we’re talking about 100 pieces of Lebowski Fest “swag,” in his parlance.

He’s seen the movie “well over” 100 times, and literally co-wrote the book on it (2007’s “I’m a Lebowski, You’re a Lebowski: Life, The Big Lebowski, and What Have You”). But how does he come up with so many fresh concepts?

“Every time I start a new one, I’m petrified that the well’s run dry,” Green says. “But I think what is driving me to try to keep it fresh is the community reaction.”

He’s not just a guy pumping out product. He walks among them. “The day when it’s, like, ‘Oh yeah, another Lebowski Fest poster from Bill …’ Maybe that’s already happened and nobody’s told me,” Green laughs.

For him, Maude’s the most versatile to draw; Donnie’s the toughest. There are many great ideas for posters, he says, but “of those, there are only a few I could execute well. That helps me a lot, knowing my limits.”

Green likens his process to going down a rabbit hole, searching for ideas. “I just like to find an eye-catching graphic and build around that … I start doodling and see what happens. And it’s really nerve-racking every time. Until I sit back in my chair and take a look at it: ‘Ok, this is going somewhere.’ (Then) I have a lot of weight off my shoulders. But until then, it’s not enjoyable,” he laughs, “what I do for a living.”

In 2007, Green and his then-wife moved to Houston when her job transferred her. “That didn’t work out,” he says now with a bit of an understatement. He thought about moving back to Louisville, but having already been uprooted, he realized that if he ever wanted to live anywhere else, this was his chance.

“I wanted to say I’d lived somewhere other than Louisville in my life,” he recalls. “Even if it means I don’t like it and I move back to Louisville. I felt like if I moved back to Louisville, I’d be looking for the house I would die in, and that kind of depressed me (laughs), so …”

He moved to Los Angeles in 2008. He knew some people there already, and “I work from home and on the Internet, so I don’t really have to be in a certain city.”

He credits his success with Lebowski Fest with giving him the ability to leave the more stable workforce behind and start his own Bill Green Studios. Today, the fest provides him with 10 percent of his clientele, a lesser percentage now than five years ago. The majority of his clients are still based in Derby City.

Green comes home every July for Lebowski Fest. “Coming back to Louisville and being able to see 90 percent of my friends at once — instead of running around town, scheduling lunches — is nice. And, yeah, the fest is always fun.”

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Kyle Gass does work, sir

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The other guy in Tenacious D, Kyle Gass led his other band, The Kyle Gass Band (aka The KGB), at Lebowski Fest Los Angeles this spring. The Kage returns for this weekend’s mothership edition. (KGB plays Friday at Executive Strike & Spare at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20-$25. Check out lebowskifest.com for details.)

LEO: How was your first experience?
Kyle Gass: Oh God, it was great! We had so much fun. Like everybody, we’re all pretty big fans, so we designed the set specifically for the fans. We did songs from the movie, and then we all dressed up as characters from the movie. It was really fun. Jack (Black) made a cameo. He wasn’t really a character from the movie, but he enjoyed it anyway.

LEO: Who’s your favorite character?
KG: It’s hard not to love Jesus. He’s only on screen for, like, two minutes, and yet, it’s one of the most memorable ... the costume — our guitarist (dressed as) Jesus. He has the same body type, and he found the tightest, greatest costume. But, you know, it’s hard not to love The Dude and Walter. They’re all great.

LEO: Who is the most like you?
KG: Probably The Dude. I feel a kinship to his relaxed attitude and style. I mean, I’m a California guy. So I relate.

LEO: And there’s a lot of pot references in the movie, as well as in your own oeuvre.
KG: I’ve heard that, yeah! (laughs) Come on, it’s California. We can handle it.

LEO: When you played the L.A. Fest, did a lot of people want to smoke out with you?
KG: No, we were backstage. We’re having fun, but we’re working. We’re more likely to maybe down some White Russians than do that.

LEO: Those are pretty potent.
KG: They’re a little rich. They’re not really on my diet. We actually had a little bar set up on stage, and the guy that, I guess, Lebowski was based on, the real Dude (Jeff Dowd) pretty much absconded with our bar. It seems kind of funny, but it wasn’t. Like, “Hey, you know what? Don’t. That’s for us.” Taking it off the stage, like, “Oh, somebody left this here!” ... Like he had some sort of hall pass or something. You’re stealing, that’s what’s happening there.

LEO: How many times have you seen the movie?
KG: It’s one of those I’ll bump into and check out some favorite scenes. All the way through — probably a solid three or four times.

LEO: You’re not obsessive about it.
KG: No, I’m not of that mentality. I’m always glad there are fans like that, because it’s better for a performer, but I don’t need to be crazy obsessive.

LEO: You have your own crazy obsessive fans.
KG: Oh God, yeah!

LEO: How do they compare to the “Lebowski” fans you’ve seen?
KG: There’s more similarities between superfans — whatever they’ve chosen to focus on, whatever floats their boat … But I don’t think you have to be a superfan to celebrate a movie like “Lebowski,” or Tenacious D. Or even the KGB, the band that’s playing.

LEO: You’ll be playing some of the covers here, as well?
KG: We will. I wish I could reveal them. But if you’ve seen the movie, you know what we’re gonna play. We’re probably gonna play “Condition,” and there’s probably going to be some Creedence and the like.

LEO: You’ve also starred in a cult film. Do you think there will be a “Pick of Destiny” festival in the future?
KG: I don’t see it now. But we’re still — let’s see, we’re seven years out ... 10 years, you’ll probably see something. And it’ll be a get-together at a Holiday Inn. Or a Red Roof Inn, if we’re lucky. The Burbank Hyatt — that’s at 25 years.

LEO: (laughs) It’s a movie that some people are very passionate about.
KG: Are they? Well, they weren’t on the opening weekend!

LEO: While I have you, I also wanted to ask about your work in “Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3: Viva La Fiesta!”
KG: Yes, yes.

LEO: How did that experience compare to, say, making a Tenacious D record?
KG: It didn’t take nearly as long. I think I was in and out of there in two days. But I had a great time on the “Chihuahua.” I liked my character. He was kind of a lazy gardener. But he had a spirit about him.

LEO: It’s great when you can bring all your years of training in the theater to some of these parts.
KG: If someone casts me in a movie without me having to audition, there’s a real good chance I’m gonna do it. I hate auditioning, but it’s fun to work. It’s fun to act once in a while. That’s how I was for years and years, and the music was on the side — so, whatever’s working.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Forecastle feast

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Ahoy, maties, it’s Forecastle Festival time once again on the good ship Waterfront Park and … man, it’s hard to talk like a pirate for too long. How did Johnny Depp do it? Something else that’s hard to do: keep up with all the music being presented over three relatively quick days.

With a couple handfuls of major headliners, it’s easy to know what to do at night — but what’s the best way to plan your days if you don’t know all about each of the 55 acts? If this was a final exam, could you pull off an A or a B? Or would you fail and miss what could have been your favorite moments?

Though we at LEO were, overall, surprisingly non-awesome students in a structured environment, we’re here now to help you make the grade. These are just a few suggestions; if you’ve never heard of the Flaming Lips before, you might want to check them out, too.

FRIDAY

On the first day, what some might even call a “work day,” the gods of music are only offering 15 acts (with 20 to come on each weekend day).

The Pimps of Joytime (5:15-6 p.m.): Get off the clock and on the good foot with these New Orleans-via-Brooklyn high steppin’ funk fanatics. Whether you’re old school or just like dancing, this is guaranteed fun.

inc. (6:15-7 p.m.): Part of the recent wave of alternative soul that’s more subtle and textured than the “New Jack” era, this duo of actual brothers will have to prove they can recreate their sounds in a busy outdoor environment.

Night Beds (7-7:45 p.m.): Singer-songwriter Winston Yellen leads an evocative group who channel songs he’s written over the past half-decade (starting at 18). Now signed by the folks who brought Bon Iver and The Tallest Man on Earth to wider audiences, catch Night Beds tonight and brag later.

SATURDAY

Alasdair Roberts & Friends (2:15-2:45 p.m.): This Scottish folk singer is the real deal as far as roots music goes. In fact, his appearance at this festival is downright punk rock, as he stands alone in genre here. Roberts and Will Oldham collaborated on a CSN-type project with the late Jason Molina once, when we were all younger.

Foxygen (3:45-4:45 p.m.): This indie-glam rock band has been playing buzzed-about shows all year, though they’ve canceled some recent dates, having pushed themselves too hard. Stop by and show your support.

Nosaj Thing (7-8 p.m.): Electro soundscaper Jason Chung came up in the L.A. hip-hop underground but has expanded his sound, and a crossover appearance by Toro y Moi is likely at his set.

SUNDAY

Bombino (2-3 p.m.): Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach produced the second album by this North African blues-trance guitarist. Rock and world music fans alike will be air guitaring together — we are the world!

Tennis (2:45-3:45 p.m.): Breezy pop that sounds about right for an exhausted Sunday afternoon.

El-P & Killer Mike (4:30-5:30 p.m.): The “Run the Jewels” pair is made up of two of the fiercest rappers around and has been on a roll over the past couple of years together.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

TMI (Tour Manager Information)

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You’ve met the four musicians who perform as Houndmouth. Now, meet their tour manager. “You would think being in a band is as simple as showing up to a venue, setting up your instruments and playing a gig,” says Jason Gwin, “but that is only scratching the surface of what goes into these huge productions.”

He says the band’s daily schedule roughly follows this routine:
9 a.m.: Lobby call
10 a.m.: Breakfast
11 a.m.: Hit the road
4:30 p.m.: Load-in
5 p.m.: Soundcheck

LEO: What do you do?

Jason Gwin: My daily duties are very detailed-oriented, mainly because each day on tour you have to follow a strict schedule. I get all of the contacts from each venue and the other bands we are touring with. I contact them to give a heads-up on advance details of the show: load-in, soundcheck, the time of the show and tons of other information important for making a show happen. I will take all of this information and compile it into the tour book that helps plan out our entire tour.

LEO: What’s the most fun for you?

JG: Routing the tour is always the most fun part. I map out our trip from show to show … if you are in New York City and your next show is in Toronto, the next day, that is a nine-hour drive. I will have to make the call to drive a couple hours after the show that night, get a hotel, and then drive the rest of the way the next day in order to make load-in.

Another job as a TM is getting in touch with the immigration folks in other countries to get work permits. That makes crossing the border a lot smoother. The first time we went to Canada, I had no idea you needed all this information. We got stopped for over an hour … now, when I see we have a stop in Canada, I will get that paperwork lined up immediately to avoid the fiasco we encountered our first time.

LEO: What’s the worst part of the job?

JG: When you get down to it, the job of being a TM is to take all the stressful elements of touring off of the band, letting them only worry about playing their show each night. I would be lying if I said being a TM is not stressful; drive a van and trailer around New York City for an hour looking for parking and let me know what you think. This job is not for everyone. It is a seven-days-a-week job, and you can be gone from home for weeks, maybe even months.

In the past year, I have been more places than some people will go in their entire life. I am very grateful for that, and also very grateful to have the opportunity to work with Houndmouth. At the end of the day, I am not only their tour manager but also a huge fan of them as musicians and as people, which makes me feel good to be involved in any way I can with their continued success.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Old and new again

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A new club emerges in a familiar location

Hunter Embry and Dave Chale aren’t quite veterans of the music scene yet. In fact, Embry, a 25-year-old booker and promoter, is surely one of the youngest club owners around, now that his New Vintage partnership with soundman/engineer Chale has gone from a regular showcase at other clubs to a fixed-address business with monthly bills to pay.

The pair started booking bands at the St. Matthews bar ZaZoo’s two years ago. They did well enough to expand to a new club in New Albany, Dillinger’s, and realized they could do it on their own. In fact, Embry was so confident that, in the time between receiving the keys to their new venue on May 1 and opening night — May 29 — he got married and went on his honeymoon.

Embry returned to a pretty much revitalized club just in time for an opening “12 Days of Music” celebration, putting their vision on display. Though the New Vintage is located just down the street from Zanzabar, at the former Uncle Pleasant’s location on Preston Street, Embry’s taste runs more to the traditional — vintage, one might say — sounds of blues and classic rock.

Zanzabar’s owners encouraged him to join them to make the block even more of a destination. Crossover nights are being planned, though nothing is official yet. It’s a good balance for the neighborhood; while Zanzabar books underground bands and up-to-the-minute DJs, the New Vintage is now featuring ragtime piano during happy hour on Wednesdays. At the same time, the Vintage is already the place to see hip-hop acts like Nappy Roots, and nights of cutting-edge bands also appear on their calendar.

They were alone in the St. Matthews bar scene, booking younger and hipper bands than their neighbors. “Some of our friends were, like, ‘Man, I can’t afford to get a DUI,’” Embry laughs about the longer drive some faced after nights of rock ’n’ roll. Chale and Embry considered NuLu for a new location early on, but both live in Germantown and are happier closer to home.

The building was already set up to be a venue, with an interesting history going back a few decades. It holds 333 — larger than ZaZoo’s and Zanzabar, but less than half of Headliners. The new owners have displayed old Uncle P’s signs inside as a tribute, and traces also remain on the façade as licenses get straightened out. A new patio is being added to the back; food service will be added later. “We ran through the budget too fast,” Embry admits.

It’s all part of the learning curve. Embry estimates he works at least 60 hours a week. His wife is used to his schedule, and now he can see her more often for dinner. They’ve been together since they were high school freshmen, he says, making the timing of their wedding even more notable. “When it rains, it pours.”

Photo by Ron Jasin.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Cheyenne Mize: Time is on her side

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To become a professional musician, Cheyenne Mize had to give up the idea that time still moves at the same speed it does for other people. In this version of reality, a drive from Alaska to Michigan between shows is a day at the office. An album primarily recorded in December 2011 can become a new release in June 2013.

So it goes for Ms. Mize, whose second full-length album, Among the Grey, was released last week, with a hometown release show scheduled for Saturday. Having waited this long, her band (including Mize on vocals and guitar, keyboards, percussion and/or violin, plus guitarist Drew English, bassist/percussionist Emily Hagihara, and drummer JC Denison) has prepared a special evening of music, dance and food.

One day last week included a LEO interview, rehearsing for an upcoming tour with another band she plays with (Bonnie “Prince” Billy), working as a music therapist and DJing in an online chat room to promote her album. It’s a very modern approach to making it in the business. “I do like the change of pace that keeps me from getting burnt out on any one thing,” she says.

Mize is glad to be able to share these songs — songs her band has been playing for almost two years — in recorded form, in part because the long release process has tied up her ability to write new songs.

Her first exposure to fans outside of Louisville came with 2009’s Among the Gold, an EP of duets between her and BPB boss Will Oldham. Mize has played in his band on and off for several years, and says she’s excited to go back out on tour with his band now — especially as her own album is becoming available.

“It’s a lot less stress — traveling with him rather than playing my own tour. It’s awesome just to get in the van and go where people tell me to,” she laughs. “Not having to worry if people show up … His shows are always very fun and successful.”

She has a good attitude about the fact that her offers to open his shows with her band have not yet been greenlit. “I have been given a lot of opportunities through Will, even being able to get my music out to a wider audience because they associate my name with him. I certainly would never want to take advantage of that relationship.”

Fans attending his shows will be able to buy her album at the merch table. They will play in Louisville on Aug. 4 at the Kentucky Center’s Bomhard Theater.

Mize has led a stable band of her own for a few years now and looks forward to their summer shows, especially as Denison and Hagihara live in other cities. “If something great happens, if we get some great support tour or something like that, I definitely will be excited to just be playing with those folks. They’re a huge part of what this record sounds like,” she says. “If we were able to get together once or twice a week, there’s not a limit to what we would be able to do.”

The album was recorded by Kevin Ratterman in an old church building. There, the other three added details to their respective parts, while guests, such as the other members of another Mize group, Maiden Radio, and erstwhile tourmate Ben Sollee joined in.

The album was originally scheduled for late summer 2012, but most of the post-recording technical aspects — mixing, mastering, pressing — would have been rushed. “Also, there were some things we didn’t get to finish, and even though I was happy at the time with where the record was, I thought there were a couple things we could do to make it better,” Mize says.

Among the songs added: the first single, “Among the Grey,” re-recorded in Lexington with Duane Lundy, a song that otherwise would not have made the album with that name. “Obviously, that has colored the experience greatly,” she says.

Her first album, 2010’s Before Lately, consisted of songs recorded to see what the experience would be like. She liked it. Now, “This is the first time I’ve really been able to think of a whole project as an album, one cohesive thing.”

Cheyenne Mize with Scott Carney and Another7Astronauts
Saturday, July 6
Clifton Center
2117 Payne St.
cliftoncenter.org
$10-$12; 7 p.m.

Photo by Bill Brown

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

album review: Cheyenne Mize

Cheyenne Mize
Among the Grey
YEP ROC

For locally based Cheyenne Mize, her travels with music over the past decade are starting to pay off. The multi-instrumentalist’s second solo full-length (with a solid backing band secured) brings her many skills, styles and influences together into a cohesive, absorbing piece that demands attention be paid to the numerous and varied textural details that elevate and gently nudge her moody songs along. Extra percussion, horns and vocal effects weave in and out, wisely adding layers without overpowering the songs. It’s more of a fall or winter mood, as the title might indicate, so perhaps a summer release was wise, as word-of-mouth should earn this album a larger audience as the year goes on. Having played bluegrass, classical, folk and rock with others, in addition to recurring in Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s band, Mize has found her voice.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Kacey Musgraves: Her aim is true

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Kacey Musgraves will take the “Hot Country Nights” stage at Fourth Street Live Friday as a rising star, one who has taken not only Nashville but the entire music world by storm. By doing so, it will update her memories of Louisville.

The first time she visited, she went somewhere — probably Fourth Street Live — while on a spontaneous road trip with four other women, some of the first friends the Texas native had made in Nashville. Musgraves remembers “… lots of inside jokes, bar hopping — (it was) right when we turned 21, so it was really exciting. Just meeting random people, ending up at a random Waffle House real late at night … So that’s pretty much my memory of Louisville.”

The past year has been full of even more exciting memories for the singer/guitarist and songwriter, whose fourth album, Same Trailer Different Park, has been one of the most well-received albums of 2013. The momentum began last fall, when her single “Merry Go ‘Round” shocked some and thrilled some in Music City, U.S.A., with its memorable lines like Mama’s hooked on Mary Kay / Brother’s hooked on Mary Jane / and Daddy’s hooked on Mary two doors down / Mary Mary quite contrary / We get bored so we get married And just like dust we settle in this town / On this broken merry go ’round.

Trailer is her first major-label release after three self-released efforts and a stint on “Nashville Star” failed to push her into the spotlight (like “American Idol”’s Jennifer Hudson, she placed seventh in the TV competition). In classic Grammy tradition, she is a likely nominee for their Best New Artist category, despite her decade-plus of experience.

“That would be insane,” she says slowly, sounding overwhelmed by the possibility. “I would freak out, if that was the case. I wouldn’t even know how to handle it … But hey, I’ll take it!”

The 24-year-old from Golden, Texas, began singing at age 8, studied guitar with the small-town teacher who also taught Miranda Lambert and Michelle Shocked, and released her first album, Movin’ On, through CD Baby in 2002. Now she’s winning ACM Awards and selling hundreds of thousands of records.

The former songwriter-for-hire is now the boss. “Yeah, it’s different. I really enjoy the writing part. When I was just writing as much as possible, and meeting new writers almost every day, I learned a lot about myself — personally, but also musically. I enjoy both, but writing definitely has my heart.”

Her perspective on hearts and personal relationships is on full display in “Follow Your Arrow,” her well-timed yet still controversial song about who and how to be.

Make lots of noise
Kiss lots of boys
Or kiss lots of girls
If that’s something you’re into
When the straight and narrow
Gets a little too straight
Roll up a joint, or don’t
Just follow your arrow
Wherever it points

“Is there anything you are afraid to say?” LEO asks.

“No. Not really,” Musgraves replies with a healthy amount of sassy self-confidence, followed by a satisfied laugh.

“It’s my favorite to play,” she says about “Arrow.” “It was one of the most fun to record, too, because sonically I was really going for an old-school, Glen Campbell, Marty Robbins country vibe. I feel like we nailed that part of it.”

Are you more Countrypolitan, like those guys, or more of an Outlaw, like Willie and Waylon?

“I don’t feel like an outlaw,” she says. “But I’m a huge fan of Willie and what he does. I also do love the more ’70s California country sound.”

Musgraves can also be heard on Dierks Bentley’s latest single, “Bourbon in Kentucky.” “Yeah! Yeah, that’s super cool,” she exclaims at the mention of the song, drawing out her first “yeah” for multiple syllables. “That was really fun to be a part of, and I really like the song a lot.”

Musgraves feels happy and supported in Nashville. “You’re surrounded by people who are so much more talented than you,” she laughs, “so you can really hone your craft and know what you’re talking about. It’s fun to jump into the scene there, get better and get inspired by people around you.”

Kacey Musgraves
with Brothers Osborne
Friday, June 21
Fourth Street Live
4thstlive.com
Free; 7 p.m.

Photo by Kelly Christine Musgraves

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Shoot me out the sky

Here

Rodan reissues old recordings in a new world



a fire in its heart
will not let it die
it roars and fumes and cries all day
shoot me out the sky

—From “Shiner”

Fifteen Quiet Years ended up taking 19 years. The album, a reissue of early material by Rodan, one of the defining bands of the Louisville scene, made it out despite roadblocks created by bankruptcy, death and relative indifference.

Fifteen Quiet Years isn’t the definitive collection of Rodan’s music, and this story isn’t the definitive story of Rodan; it’s likely that neither can ever happen now.

A band with the conventional rock line-up of two guitars, a bassist and a drummer, Rodan evolved from a late-teens attempt at hip-hop by Jeff Mueller and Jason Noble, the duo who would become Rodan’s guitarists. The band would break up after three years. Officially, the members wouldn’t work on Rodan again for 15 years — hence, the title of the new collection released June 11 — though the truth is, as usual, more complicated.

You are what you eat

Jeff Mueller and Jason Noble’s previous group, with friend Greg King, was King G & the J Krew (“G” being Greg, “J Krew” being Jeff and Jason — brilliant, stupid, or both?). As the Krew struggled to play their sample and electronically based rap/rock compositions (as heard on their CD Indestructible Songs of the Humpback Whale), King left the band.

“(The group) was just too crazy, and we just didn’t know how to make live music. It had been entirely a craft project to that point, just a studio project,” Mueller recalls. “We tried a couple of times to play live shows and it worked, sort of — it was very loose.”

King G had songs like “Bass: The Final Frontier,” “Kung Fu Kick to Ya Mind” and “Biscuits N Gravy (Bowel Death N Raven Mix),” demonstrating the goofy humor known to all who have encountered them, and a quality less obvious in Rodan. Musically, they were inspired by some of the first wave of hip-hoppers who had appealed to white, middle-class teen boys like them — Public Enemy, Run-D.M.C. and LL Cool J. But in trying to translate their hip-hop to the stage, the guys realized they lacked the know-how to make it work. Also, Mueller says, “We thought it was just too fun to be loud and dirty and punk.”

As they returned their focus to their guitars, Mueller and Noble had become even more inspired by the local bands they were going to see.

Though their national audience would assume Rodan had been primarily inspired by the Chicago post-punk underground, in part due to their eventual deal with Touch and Go Records, their local social circle had a larger effect on Rodan than Second City bands like the Jesus Lizard or Big Black.

“I had freshly graduated from high school and actually dropped out of Indiana after two years of college,” Mueller says. “And going to see Kinghorse, Crain and Slint and those sorts of things, that was our access; that was our conduit into that kind of music, those bands.”

Their allegiance to their hometown came with a price.

“We would get harshed for sounding like some of the bands that we grew up with.”

“I always think it is an interesting criticism, when it’s so apparent that Rodan was clearly a band from Louisville. From the start, it was ‘Rodan, Louisville band.’ To me, that’s what it felt like. It felt like the Kentucky Derby, you know? It’s what Louisville felt like,” Mueller says.

But you are what you eat, he adds. “I think it is impossible not to draw comparisons between certain things and to source our inspirations … but we always tried to plant our own vantage point on things.”

A little family

Rodan became a combination of the band members’ influences, their city, the times in which they lived, and the chemistry between them. “As far as the impetus or the inspiration for Rodan, it was very broad,” Mueller recalls. “I think we were just trying to grab onto whatever made sense once we were in the room together for practice.”

In late 1991, Mueller and Noble moved into a Victorian in Old Louisville known as “The Rocket House.” Its owner was friend and fellow musician Jon Cook.

“Jon had agreed to help us make some of our song ideas into actual songs, and that was one of the most cathartic moments for me — figuring out which way to go with music,” Mueller says. “Playing with Jon (on drums) was one of the most invigorating experiences because he was so fast and easy in some ways — in some ways he was really, really horrible to play with,” he says with a laugh, “but he was amazing to be in a room with.”

Now the band had a drummer, and the last slot left to fill was bass. Tara Jane O’Neil played in a band called Drinking Woman, and had sung and played bass live for King G. She was a walking contradiction — someone who would go to hardcore shows wearing a hippie tapestry dress.

“I literally was a teenager,” says O’Neil, who is now working on her seventh solo album. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, this is going to be a career.’”

They were all just friends hanging out. “There was a time when we all lived in the Rocket House,” she says. “We were a little family.”

But Cook didn’t last long, nor did replacement John Weiss. Finally, Kevin Coultas, who had added drums to King G’s album, entered as the final permanent member. He might have been the original drummer, but his parents insisted he finish college, while the other three were impatient to hit the road.

Finally, he earned a degree in psychology, “so naturally I joined a rock band.”

“It was almost full-circle,” Coultas says about his circuitous return to the band when they needed him most, “like it was in a script or something.”

They went through a few attempts at naming the band before stopping at Rodan, a 1950s Japanese movie character — a flying monster who was frenemies with Godzilla.

Meaty beaty big and bouncy

Rodan recorded a demo, called Aviary, in Baltimore in 1993. That demo appears cleaned up and in its entirety on Fifteen Quiet Years. Some of its songs were also re-recorded for their national debut, Rusty, a year later, with engineer Bob Weston. “We were just kids trying to figure out how to make it work,” Mueller says.

He continues, “There are some from the Aviary session versus the Rusty session (where) the (demo) versions of those songs to me sound more ferocious.”

Which is not, he stresses, to discredit the more professional job Weston did with their material. In Baltimore, it was all so new and exciting to be in an actual recording studio. “We didn’t really know how to play our instruments, and (so our attitude was), ‘Let’s just kind of go at it and make it as brassy as we possibly can,’” Mueller says.

At that point, they were more fond of abrasiveness, and keeping mistakes in — or making sounds that sounded like mistakes but really weren’t, that were planned, as long as it sounded right to them. But as they toured, Rodan learned to refine their rougher edges without losing the original spirit.

Mueller points to a song called “Shiner,” which they recorded twice. The first version appears on Fifteen Quiet Years as “Shiner 92” to differentiate it from the 1994 Rusty version. He likes the original better — “I just think it sounds more meaty and raunchy.”

That’s one reason why Fifteen Quiet Years was put together — to try to rewrite what little of their story they can, to clarify what they were trying to do, and to show people how much more they could do.

Another song, “Darjeeling,” was recorded for a 7” single for Simple Machines, an indie label in Arlington, Va. During the re-mastering process in 2009, Weston beefed the song up even more, says Mueller. “He made it more grisly ... and that version of the song sounds — maybe to someone else it might not sound that different, but to me it sounds significantly different.”

Moving on

Rodan broke up less than a year after Rusty’s April 1994 release. Though they could bicker like siblings at times, there was no big blow-up. Noble and O’Neil had other ideas they were eager to explore, and Mueller alludes to troubles within the band’s social group in Louisville at the time. Mueller started a new band, June of 44. Noble resurrected his modern classical group Rachel’s (in which he was reunited with King G, Greg King). O’Neil started two of her own projects, The Sonora Pine and Retsin. Coultas continued working with O’Neil for a period. Soon, Mueller and Noble reunited with a new band, Shipping News. Though Mueller hasn’t lived in Louisville since 1995, and Noble stayed, they continued to work together on Shipping News for the next 15 years, until Noble’s death from a rare form of cancer last year.

A bad connection

On their one tour of England, Rodan played on legendary BBC radio DJ John Peel’s show. His “Peel Sessions,” recorded between 1967 and 2004, became a touchstone for bands. Rodan’s biggest goal, and problem, in compiling Fifteen Quiet Years became getting the BBC to license them their own recordings, three songs performed on June 3, 1994.

“They were just really slow,” Mueller says. “An email exchange that required a yes or no response — that could take them six months. Often times, it would come back convoluted.”

As the years passed, the price came down as interest in the band waned and the music business changed. During those quiet years, a few offers came in to reunite, but nothing like the sold-out tours Slint came back to when they reunited in 2005. “We were a success in our own eyes, and I think we had some pretty intense and amazing fans,” Mueller says. “But I don’t think we were one of those status bands.”

Playing together again “could have been fun,” O’Neil says. “Who knows? I’m glad this record came together. That’s just going to have to be good enough.”

Jimmy Fallon’s music booker, Jonathan Cohen, is a big fan of the band. He tells LEO, “I would have killed to have had them reunite on the show. The thought never occurred to me when Jason was alive simply because there was no activity in their camp, and they had always consistently said (in the press) they weren’t interested.”

Back in the spotlight

In 2009, as the band worked on the project, Touch and Go Records, the Chicago-based label who had signed them and several of the members’ subsequent bands, announced they could no longer afford to release new albums. Victims of the downloading era, the company laid off most of its staff and focused on keeping their catalog in print. Their subsidiary, Quarterstick Records, has now briefly awakened from its coma to release Fifteen Quiet Years.

Label head Corey Rusk is “really excited to finally be releasing Fifteen Quiet Years.” Rodan has remained close to his heart throughout the years, both for the music and for the personal relationships it led to.

“They are all such special, sweet people. In regards to Rusty, I don’t think any of us felt like it really needs re-mastering,” he says, though Coultas disagrees. “But the tracks on Fifteen Quiet Years have been MIA for far too long … this album really needs to exist.”

Mueller and Noble often discussed how best to put the collection together affordably. Another question became, “What do we do if the record does come out? How do we promote it? If you’re not touring, you won’t sell any records these days.”

“I don’t know how it will land, or if it will register,” O’Neil muses about the scattered media landscape. “People could be super-excited about it, and I wouldn’t necessarily even know.”

Last month, Cohen posted “Shiner 92” on the Jimmy Fallon show’s Tumblr, calling Rodan “one of my all-time favorite bands.”

“It was the first time we’ve ever done something like that here, and I really went to bat for it because I am passionate about exposing new listeners to Rodan’s music,” Cohen says. “It isn’t often that a band who was barely around for three years and only released one album is finding new fans nearly 20 years later. And the reason why that still happens is because the music remains so vital and unique.”

The children

These days, Mueller is a family man who runs a letterpress business with his wife in New Haven, Conn. O’Neil remains a traveling musician. Coultas is a fifth-grade teacher in Louisville. Noble and Cook died within six months of each other, in August 2012 and February 2013, respectively; Cook died of complications from pancreatitis, exacerbated by alcohol use.

According to Mueller, “(Rodan) was mostly a creative project for all of us to exercise our musical demons, to try and make something for ourselves that was worth something and hopefully make it viable for someone else as well.”

Mueller hopes this release is received as sounding as fresh as the band felt about their music back then, rather than being perceived as a nostalgia record. “I hope people like it. I hope it is not seen as a vanity release or something like that — and it kind of is, to be perfectly honest,” he laughs.

Ben Sears, 24, drums in several Louisville bands. He says, “Rodan will always be relevant. Sure, they came out in the ’90s and they are from Louisville, so that might make them ‘period pieces’ to some people, but the songs are so intricate and aggressive and well-played that they can’t not be relevant … (Rodan) definitely changed how I observe and play music.”

Coultas recently taught a guitar class at his school. One day, a fifth–grade student — the son of another musician — said to him, “Hey, Mr. Coultas! I like Rodan a lot. Can you play some Rodan?”

Coultas, bemused, told him the music wasn’t playable on acoustic guitars, but the child persisted.

“Don’t tell my dad, but I like Rodan a lot better than any of his bands.”

Photo by Ewolf. c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Highs and lows

Here



Last week, the five young ladies who have performed together over the last nine years as The Hi-Tops came to the LEO office. It’s not every day a quintet of girls, all wearing coordinated Chucks, shows up here, and they’re certainly the only quintet this music department has watched actually grow up.

The legend’s not all true, though. They switched from hi-tops to lo-tops a while back, but still uniformly wear the latter together for band events (even in an interview only being witnessed by a handful of LEO staffers). Also, bassist Bayley Whitlow just turned 15, so she’s not going anywhere yet.

It all started in third grade. Ally Whitlow (keyboards) and Remi Maxwell (vocals/guitar) watched the movie “Freaky Friday” — the Lohan version, which featured her character playing in a band called Pink Slip. The duo wanted their own Pink Slip, so they recruited Madi Cunningham to play drums. Jessie Madill was the new girl in school, and the group was excited to learn she played guitar. Needing a bassist, they finally came to young Bayley.

Maxwell’s father Mark is a musician and the owner of Mom’s Music. He has coached the band, pushing them to improve even if it meant making the young girls mad at times. Today, they all appreciate his efforts, as well as their other parents, manager Kim Elliot (a Whitlow aunt) and producer Michael Sanders.

Their advice for young bands: Keep trying, even if at first you suck. They thank their fans for supporting them through the years. Now the original quartet is all off to college around this region, except for the California-bound Maxwell, who hopes to stay in music and succeed as a performer.

Nine years can be a long life for any band. The Hi-Tops said at the beginning that they would stick together until college, whether they made it big or not. They achieved that goal, and the friendships and unique experiences they’ve shared is definitely a success story.

Their final gig, a free show, is Sunday at the Jeffersonville RiverStage at 6 p.m.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Jason Isbell’s new interests

Here



Jason Isbell is well on his way to becoming recognized as one of the best songwriters today, but for a while, the writer couldn’t find his way past the biggest cliché. Drinking to excess is such an easy trap to fall into when one spends enough time on the road, driving countless hours to play an hour or two a night in a bar. Having sopped up inspiration from decades of rock, country and soul music, Isbell found himself becoming a little too inspired by the antics of his heroes.

“Well, you know, it was all good for me, in some ways,” he argues — or justifies it — now. “You need to live life like that for a while if you’re gonna write songs about people who are dealing with their own kind of loss and their own screw-ups.

“I think it all worked out for the best,” he continues. “It certainly wasn’t anything I could have maintained for any longer than I did; it probably ran its course a few years before I actually settled myself down. But it is nice to have that reservoir to draw from when it comes time to write a rock ’n’ roll song. Nobody wants their rock ’n’ roll to sound like Christian rock,” he concludes with a laugh.

Now 34, Isbell has begun his third life in music. Having first made his name as a singer/songwriter and guitarist with the Drive-By Truckers, Isbell left that band in 2007. His exit was inspired in part by his desire to lead his own band — but also because of his divorce from Truckers bassist Shonna Tucker.

In February, he married singer/violinist Amanda Shires, and the Alabama native now lives a new life in Nashville, where the couple spends days writing and nights having sober fun with friends.

“It’s nice to be a … citizen,” he laughs. “Yeah, it’s all great.”

Isbell’s newest album, Southeastern, is due on June 11. It’s the second billed solely under his name since his 2007 solo debut, Sirens of the Ditch, though in the time in-between he’s led Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit. Southeastern didn’t come out as solo as Isbell and his producer had originally intended.

“We were initially going to do a solo acoustic thing,” he says, “but we both got pretty bored with that.” They decided to bring in members of the 400 Unit who were available, as well as some Nashville cats.

The collection was written in the spring and summer of 2012, shortly after Isbell sobered up, and the lyrics don’t shy away from what was on his mind at the time.

Girl, leave your boots by the bed / We ain’t leaving this room / Till someone needs medical help / Or the magnolias bloom.

Shires has a new record coming in August, and Isbell contributed guitar to that, as well. The releases were purposely timed so that each could be a focus of attention at a time. Isbell says he enjoyed working for her because he didn’t have to deal with the usual pressures involved with being the boss.

Additionally, he gets to enjoy more time looking at the woman the Wall Street Journal recently called “The sexiest violinist since Jefferson.”

“Yeah, I saw that,” Isbell says in his soft Southern lilt. “There’s been a lot of violinists since (Thomas) Jefferson … He was oversexed — I don’t know if he was sexy. I know he couldn’t leave his slaves alone, I heard that.”

Shires sings and plays violin on the Southeastern song “Traveling Alone.” On the road now, away from the temptations of women and drink, Isbell has found a few ways to keep his mind occupied and inspired on the long drives. When’s he not reading books, he’s happy to look out the window and watch the highway. “I’m all right sitting still and being quiet for a long time. I don’t mind that.”

There’s also his love of movies. “I love Netflix. Netflix has been a savior for me, that’s been a really good thing.” He’s tried writing some screenplays, as much for writing practice as any real opportunity, and doesn’t rule out trying to do more in the future.

“I don’t really get bored. I think I’m too lazy to get bored.”

Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit
with The Paul Thorn Band and Brigid Kaelin
Friday, June 7
Iroquois Amphitheater
1080 Amphitheater Road
iroquoisamphitheater.com
$20-$22; 7:30 p.m.

Photo by Michael Wilson

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

album review: Stonecutters

Here



Good news, guys, we found Riki Rachtman! Turns out he was hiding inside the new Stonecutters album, Creatio Ex Nihil (Latin for “Creation from Nothingness,” apparently). Fans of the old, real “Headbangers Ball” will be thrilled by the new collection, and any thrashers who just woke up from a 1988 coma will not be surprised by Stonecutters’ traditional approach to the style popularized by Anthrax, Megadeth, Testament and other skateboarding-friendly dark lords. Some of the genre’s favorite tricks are employed, like the standard slow classical guitar intro merging into fast and heavy guitar riffage. While some mad-at-everything lyrics might be too typical and expected, the musicianship is top-notch and tight. Also, bonus points go to the band for choosing Dave Pollard’s typically dark but beautiful artwork, for those who buy the physical version.

c. 2013 LEO Weekly

Sweet meat

Here

Adam Colvin juggles two different approaches to local cuisine



It might look simple enough: a guy standing at a cart three or four days a week, when the weather’s nice enough, selling sausages on the side of the road. But for Busta Grill proprietor Adam Colvin, it’s just one part of a unique business model. His food reaches many more people around Louisville on a daily basis, and not just via sausages.

In 2004, Colvin’s sister, Rachel Torres, started Dolce, a wholesale bakery, in what is now known as the NuLu district. She bought the space in what had been a pre-Civil War firehouse to make pastries for high-end restaurants like Lilly’s, Azalea and Artemisia. By 2011, burnt out on the long hours away from her family, Torres was ready to step down.

But Dolce stayed in the family, as her brother — who had worked there part time, washing dishes and making deliveries — took over. Under his direction, Dolce has become more focused on making bread, and today provides such for Proof, Game, Feast BBQ, Please & Thank You, Eiderdown and a dozen other operations. “Some we do a lot for, some just one thing,” Colvin says.

“I thought it was the best-tasting stuff, so I wanted to push the bread,” Colvin continues. “We can’t make a ton of it, because everything is made by hand. So we can only make a certain number per day before we start going crazy.” An average day turns out 800 buns.

In 2011, he also started his sausage cart, originally at a “tough” location at Sixth and Chestnut. Because the Metro government regulates locations, ensuring enough distance from other carts, trucks or restaurants, vendors must submit a wish list of five locations. Colvin didn’t get any from his initial list. When First and Washington became available, he jumped on it.

Back at Dolce, his employees work from 6 a.m. until 3 p.m. The boss typically comes in at 7, preps the cart if it’s a Busta Grill day, helps out in the kitchen, and takes care of all the less glamorous details: purchasing, payroll, accounting, deliveries. The idea of opening a retail space has been dismissed, as it would increase labor and compete against accounts that already buy Dolce’s goods. Plus, that space is needed now for Busta Grill’s carts.

It’s a job filled with long hours, but Dolce is an otherwise relaxed place to work. On a recent morning, head baker Aaron Sortman rolled dough while Colvin experimented with a new recipe as Hall & Oates blasted from a speaker. His father, retired from jobs making bourbon and PBR, comes in daily to “steal some coffee,” as the son jokes.

Busta Grill can be a more intense job. It takes someone with experience feeding hundreds of people in a few hours to be able to handle big crowds. Colvin has that experience — his career in the food industry began with janitorial work at an Old Spaghetti Factory, followed by serving and dishwashing at the Limestone Bay Yacht Club, pantry work at the Louisville Country Club and De La Torre’s, and, at 19, a detour to Key West. There, he worked the grill at the Half Shell Raw Bar in between drinking and carrying on, “living like a pirate,” and learning how to work those big crowds.

After returning home, Colvin, also a musician who has drummed for numerous bands, worked as a pipe organ technician for four years before getting back into the food business, working for Creation Gardens and the Come Back Inn. He went back to school, studying at ITT Tech and then U of L, where he graduated with a philosophy degree. He considered becoming a lawyer, even taking the LSAT, before making the philosophical decision to buy a food cart.

He was inspired by his travels: Panama, Ecuador and Portland, Ore., among others, where carts and trucks inspired a nation and offered “a cheap way to get a gig” without having to answer to anyone else. His plan to sell Indian food was halted by the local government — “no raw meat on the street,” as Colvin summarizes the law. “I didn’t know that, so I had to sell sausages.”

In Ecuador, where Torres’ husband is from, Colvin saw the “outrageous hot dogs” covered with mayonnaise, chimichurri and potato sticks. “I took little bits of that and came up with this goofy idea.” Another goofy, and very American, idea was “Joe Pesci Fridays,” where Busta Grill customers can offer their Pesci impression in exchange for a discount.

Soon, Busta Grill will have a second cart at Fourth and Jefferson, which will mean adjustments to the current operation. Also, Colvin and his wife are expecting their first child. It’s the next chapter in a journey where, as Busta Grill’s sign promises, “Awesome is guaranteed!”

Photo by Ron Jasin

c. 2013 LEO Weekly