Author: April

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Secret Colours: Follow the Drone

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If black leather rebel rock crashed its bike into the front of psych rock’s Haight Street squat, the impact might sound a lot like Secret Colours. While the vocals of the Chicago band are a lighter-than-air haze, they are countered by a swampy, low-end rhythm that drives and sneers, and it’s all covered in a fallout dust of guitar noise.

Secret Colours – Follow the Drone

Find the “Follow the Drone” single-EP along with two more single-EPs, as well as their well-worth-a-listen full-length album (“Chemical Swirl” is a sexy number).

Secret Colours Bandcamp

Secret Colours Official Website

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Notable Shows in the Greater Cleveland Area + The Due Diligence

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*The good dudes at Citizen Dick will be hosting a listening party for the new Akron/Family album at Loop Coffee & Records in Tremont tomorrow evening. Check ‘er out.

Shows worth checking out this week in and around Cleveland:

The Beachland Ballroom & Tavern

  • Fri, Jan 7| 9 PM (8 PM door)
    15th Annual Rockabilly Holiday
    Krank Daddies
    Scarlet Fever
    Wolfboy Slim & His Dirty Feets
    Steve Brown: Yo Yo Artist Extraordinaire
    $10 / $8 w/can of dog or cat food

  • Sat, Jan 8| 9 PM (8 PM door)
    Ante up Showcase
    Gentlemen Hall
    Hazard Adams
    Nicholas Megalis
    Leah Lou
    Ceterum
    Champion Bubblers
    The Vig
    $8
    Ballroom & Tavern | All Ages

  • Tue, Jan 11| 8:30 PM (7:30 PM door)
    The Dirt Daubers
    The Misery Jackals
    Nicholas Deveney
    $7
    Tavern | All Ages

Grog Shop

  • Fri, Jan 7| 8 PM
    Sun God
    Founding Fathers
    Wooly Bullies
    Spacer Ace
    FREE

  • Sat, Jan 8| 8 PM
    Afternoon Naps
    The Modern Electric
    Mike Uva & The Bad Eyes
    Brian Straw
    FREE

  • Thu, Jan 13| 8 PM
    Apache Beat
    Madame & The Moist Towelettes
    Fangs Out
    Attack Cat
    $6

Now That’s Class

  • Mon, Jan 10| 9 PM
    Herculaneum
    Tonguing
    Guerilla Toss
    $5

  • Thu, Jan 13| 9 PM
    The Due Diligence
    Crazy & the Brains
    Shivering Timbers
    $5 donation

Happy Dog

  • Fri, Jan 7| 9 PM
    Benefit for Dave P.
    HotChaCha
    Filmstrip
    CLOVERS
    (a band called) Me

  • Sun, Jan 9| 9 PM
    Whitey Morgan & the 78s

NTSIB is very happy to be a part of bringing the Due Diligence to Cleveland. Here’s a hint of what to expect…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFBlCansslk?fs=1]

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Cowboy Junkies Cover Vic Chesnutt

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This past Christmas marked the one-year anniversary of the death of singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt, a legendary and singular figure on the Athens, Georgia, music scene. In the second installment of “The Nomad Series”, called Demons, the Cowboy Junkies pay tribute to Chesnutt with an album’s worth of covers of his songs.

“We tried to approach Demons with the same sense of adventure that Vic undertook in all of his projects (or at least that is the way his recordings sound). We let happy accidents happen; we tried to invest his songs with the same spirit and the adventure with which they were written, at the same time investing them with our own Northern spin. Exploring his songs and delving deeper and deeper into them has been an intense, moving and joyous experience. I don’t think Vic would have wanted it any other way.“

-Michael Timmins, July 2010, from the liner notes for Demons

You can download “Wrong Piano”, Chesnutt’s lament of self-doubt that turns into something like a hymn in the hands of the Cowboy Junkies.

Cowboy Junkies – Wrong Piano

Demons, which will be released on February 15, can be pre-ordered on the Cowboy Junkies website.

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(Guest) Rock ‘n’ Roll Photog: Nate Burrell’s Best of 2010

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Regular Rock ‘n’ Roll Photog Jennifer is taking a well-deserved vacation, and NTSIB friend Nate Burrell was kind enough to contribute his favorite photos of 2010 from his own collection. In addition to being a hell of a nice guy, Nate is a great photographer, and we’re very pleased to feature him again.

The Black Keys:
To Summarize: this band kicks ass. They have since 2002, and they are finally getting their due respect on a wider scale in 2010. Their most recent release, Brothers, opened them up to popular outlets, due to its groove-thick gnarly sound and the hit single Tighten Up; but don’t be fooled- their catalogue prior to this year’s album is disgustingly good. Get learned if you haven’t already.
www.theblackkeys.com


Dan Auerbach stepping to the edge of the stage for the sold out crowd at the Pageant – St. Louis, MO.

Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three:
After successfully touring the US and the UK, as well as having been named Best New Discovery at 2010’s Newport Folk Festival, this St. Louis-based American Roots Music band is definitely a band to look for. Absolutely awesome to see live- energetic, tight on stage, and good musicians to the core… and just as good to put on your turntable or in your headphones. Check “La La Blues” from their album Riverboat Soul if you want to sing and clap along as you get on down! And keep your eyes peeled for their upcoming releases in 2011 – ya heard me??!!
www.pokeylafarge.net


Pokey LaFarge singing and sweatin’ at Off Broadway in South City St. Louis.

JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound:
This Chicago Rhythm and Soul group is another hot ticket to see. Funky as you ever wanted to see on stage, a sound that’s vaguely familiar, but also fresh and its own. You’ll be swayin’ and head bobbin until it’s an all out get down in your own right! Good stuff for sure. Their album is dope! And they are playin’ out in cities right now.
www.facebook.com/pages/JC-Brooks-the-Uptown-Sound/262902497556


JC Brooks reaching out to the crowd at the Beat ‘N’ Soul Festival – St. Louis, MO.

Patrick Sweany:
A soulful Nashville bluesman, Sweany is a name that you should look up. Having as much comfort on the 6 string as anyone out there today, and a comfortable banter with his audience – you are sure to see a good set when he takes the stage. His new album Southern Drag officially drops in Feb. 2011, but he’s currently out on the road touring and could be headed your way. Look him up.
www.patricksweany.com


Banging the stomp box at the Old Rock House – St. Louis, MO.

Those Darlins:
If you saw these three gals and one fella in 2010, you most likely saw them in a smaller to mid-sized venue… and I’ll bet it was packed… and I guarantee it was rowdy! They wail live – no doubt, and will hit you with an assault of songs that’ll soak you with country punk and soul… right after they spray their beer on ya from the stage. After basically going on a world wide tour in 2010, they just released a 7”, and I hear that there’s also a full length to follow.
www.thosedarlins.com


Jessi Darlin rockin out and lightin’ up at the Off Broadway.

Jessica Lea Mayfield:
After a critically acclaimed debut album, Mayfield toured the world far and wide, played with various big namers of many genres and stole many hearts along the way. Her dark folk sound has a familiarity that we all can relate to and a melody that we will all want to hum or sing along with. With a major label release coming early in 2011, she will certainly be doing some amazing things this next turn of the calendar.
www.jessicaleamayfield.com


Jessica Lea Mayfirld looks over a theatre filled with her hometown crowd while headlining the Kent State Folk Festival.

Cassie Morgan:
Indie-folk songstress Cassie Morgan had quite a successful 2010. Her band, Cassie Morgan and the Lonely Pine, spent the majority of the year backing the release of her full length album debut Weathered Hands, Weary Eyes. Morgan (along with band mate Beth Bombara) played with a variety of well known national acts in her home city of St. Louis and embarked on a tour through the great Midwest. While ending up (deservingly) on many–o-critic’s year end best of lists, look for more great things from her in 2011.
www.cassiemorgan.com


Cassie Morgan silencing the crowd at the Gramophone with her beautiful dance of guitar and vocals.

mr. Gnome:
Cleveland, Ohio, rockers (and April’s new favorite!) mr. Gnome will melt your heart and melt your face. Creating walls of growling sonic beauty, this duo is one of the best stage bands you’ll find night in and night out. That good, no question. Screaming guitar and howling female vocals, with a pulsating complex drumming style –you’ll be standing second row before you know it… head bobbing and all!
www.mrgnome.com


Nicole Barille captivating the room at the Firebird.

The Sights:
Detroit is known for its soul and rock-n-roll. The Sights give you just that. I wasn’t familiar with this band until seeing them rip up the stage as part of the Beat ‘N’ Soul event at St. Louis’ premier venue Off Broadway, but when they stepped off stage, I was floored. They stomped, they pounded, they hollered and they won the crowd – all in the matter of 35 or 40 minutes. I will definitely make it a point to see them this year, and you may want to consider the same.
www.sightsarmy.com


Eddy Baranek lets loose for the fans crowding the center stage.

photo copyright Nate Burrell – taken for KDHX Media, St. Louis, MO

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Bits: Cadillac Sky, The Due Diligence, Bill Monroe, Justin Townes Earle, The Black Keys

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  • We are very sad to announce that Cadillac Sky are going on “indefinite hiatus”, i.e. they broke up. But I guess if you’re going to go, it’s good to go out on the best album of your career. And we still have The David Mayfield Parade to enjoy, along with projects the other guys will surely be involved with.
  • The Due Diligence is touring! Along with Crazy Brains and a number of local openers, they are hitting a number of joints down the eastern U.S., including a January 13 stop at Now That’s Class with Shivering Timbers.
  • The International Bluegrass Music Museum will be hosting the Bill Monroe Centennial Celebration in honor of what would have been the 100th birthday of the late bluegrass great September 12-14 in Owensboro, Kentucky. The amazing line-up will include Earl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, Doc Watson, Jesse McReynolds, Mac Wiseman, J.D. Crowe, Bobby Osborne, Eddie Adcock, Tom Gray, Kenny Baker, Curly Seckler, Everett Lilly, The Lewis Family, Bill Clifton, Rodney Dillard, Melvin Goins and Paul Williams.
  • Justin Townes Earle will be hitting the Late Show with David Letterman tomorrow night, January 5, while the Black Keys will be making their Saturday Night Live debut on January 8.

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Bit: Bobby Bare, Jr.

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An update from The Untitled Bobby Bare Jr. Documentary camp:

1/11/11 – WHEN NASHVILLE ROCKER BOBBY BARE JR. MAKES HIS DUMBO DEBUT – TAKING OVER SUPERFINE BAR RESTAURANT – THE PARTY REALLY GETS STARTED!

THE UNTITLED BOBBY BARE JR. DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKERS COLLABORATE WITH SUPERFINE TO PRESENT: AN EVENING SHOWCASING INDEPENDENT MUSIC & INDEPENDENT FILM

JOIN US IN DUMBO – THE CENTER FOR ALL THINGS ART AND ALL THINGS THAT ROCK

Visit The Untitled Bobby Bare Jr. Documentary website for more information.

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A Foreign Country: The Godfathers

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A Foreign Country is a non-regular series in which I’ll write about music I dug in my youth that I still enjoy now. The name comes from the L.P. Hartley quote “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”, because, while I do continue to enjoy some of the music I listened to in my early days, my tastes have changed since then (thank fuck for that) and even the songs I still like are heard through different ears.

The Godfathers - Birth School Work Death

While it is a problem that occurs with frustrating regularity that I will find a band with one great song that is followed by a string of disappointments, some of my best album purchases have resulted from taking a chance on one great song. It happened for me with the Jayhawks (“Waiting for the Sun” from Hollywood Town Hall) and Jeff Buckley (“Grace” from the album of the same name), and in 1988, it happened with the Godfathers.

In the farm community where I grew up, about twenty minutes outside of Akron, Ohio, it took some determination to hear new music that was outside of Casey Kasem’s Top 40 or the classic/stoner rock played on WMMS. But if it was a weekday afternoon and the reception was good that day, I could hear a couple of hours of alternative music from the Akron City Schools’ public radio station. Alternative music had a different, decidedly more amorphous definition then, and in a sitting, I would hear the likes of Joy Division, the Smiths, Faith No More (the Chuck Mosley incarnation), the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Lime Spiders, Lords of the New Church, the Bolshoi and To Damascus. And I also heard a song called “Birth, School, Work, Death” by the Godfathers.

 


 

On one of the occasions when I successfully whined my mother into taking me to the Westwood Connection, an alternative music shop on the College of Wooster campus, I also successfully pled my case for her to buy me the Godfathers album, also titled Birth, School, Work, Death. I didn’t know anymore about the band then that they were from England, and they seemed a little pissed off. At heart, my circumstances in the late 1980s were worlds away from those of the working class in Thatcher’s Britain, but growing up outside of Akron and Cleveland in the Reagan Era, with a mother who worked in a factory and a father who worked construction, I was close enough to get it. And, being a teenager, I had all sorts of anger and frustration… as manufactured, misplaced and melodramatic as it might have been. It was still enough to feel like the metallic, grinding guitar work, stomping force and spittle-inflected ranting of the Godfathers’ music spoke for me as clearly as it spoke for anyone in industrial Britain. Not that I was considering any of this at the time. I just knew it was loud and angry and good for dancing to up in my bedroom.

I never became a big enough fan to pursue any of the Godfathers’ other albums, but I still occasionally pop in my cassette of BSWD – which is beginning to sound a little woozy after all these years – and I still enjoy the hell out of it and am infected by its energy.

As it usually turns out when I start researching my nostalgia, I’ve learned that the Godfathers reunited in 2008, have been touring, released a live CD/DVD in 2010 and plan to release an album of new material this year.

The Godfathers Official Website

The Godfathers Facebook

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Notable Shows in the Greater Cleveland Area

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Shows worth checking out this week in and around Cleveland:

The Beachland Ballroom & Tavern

  • Thu, Jan 6| 8:30 PM (7:30 PM door)
    Mountain Heart
    J.P. & The Chatfield Boys
    $12
    Ballroom | All Ages

Grog Shop

  • Sat, Jan 1| 9 PM
    The Big Show
    feat. Smoke Screen
    Izzrael
    100 Proof
    Kick Flip B
    Ebony James
    Mz. Crazy Tee
    Tezo
    Doxx
    Bravo
    The Funny Sound
    $10 adv / $12 dos

Now That’s Class

  • Fri, Dec 31| 9 PM
    4TH ANNUAL NEW YEARS EVE PARTY
    Midnight
    Megachurch
    Burger Boys
    surprise band
    all inclusive $30 includes open bar/bands/mexcican food/shots

  • Sat, Jan 1| 9 PM
    Screaming Smoldering Butt Bitches
    Kill the Hippies
    Sosumi
    $3

Kent Stage

  • Fri, Dec 31| 8 PM
    The Numbers Band
    Rachel Wearsch & the Beatnik Playboys
    $15

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No More Words: Rock Instrumentals

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Once upon a time, in the relative infancy of rock ‘n’ roll, rock instrumentals were such a popular form that some artists were dedicated entirely to instrumentals and some who, while having a few songs with vocals, built their reputation on instrumentals – artists like the Ventures, the Fireballs, Duane Eddy, The Surfaris and Dick Dale. In time, the popularity of rock instrumentals faded until today when it seems like rock instrumentals are mainly the domain of dinosaurs and noodlers.

Here are a few of my favorite rock instrumentals, ending with what I hope is a glimmer of hope for the future of good rock instrumentals.

Link Wray was a man ahead of his time. A stone cold and cool greaser with a dangerous sound, you can still hear his influence today on some of today’s music. If cool has a soundtrack, Wray’s 1958 hit “Rumble” is definitely a featured number.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NAq4HyoNe4?fs=1]

Released a year later, it’s difficult to believe that “Sleep Walk” by brother duo Santo & Johnny could even exist in the same universe as “Rumble”. It’s a dreamy piece with some of the most evocative guitar ever recorded.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogxTQXAgY3Q?fs=1]

In the late ’50s and early ’60s, studios had house bands who played support to a label’s roster of solo and vocal artists. One of these bands, Booker T. and the MGs, had such a distinctive and compelling sound that they went on to become a major contender on their own as well as making huge contributions to the sounds of artists like Otis Redding and Bill Withers. Their most popular song, and still one of my all-time favorites, is 1962’s “Green Onions”.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-7QSMyz5rg?fs=1]

(Keys man Booker T. Jones is still going strong, releasing Potato Hole last year, which he recorded and subsequently toured with the Drive-By Truckers. Incidentally, the father of Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood, David Hood, was the bass player for the house band at Muscle Shoals Sound around the same time Jones was playing for Stax Records.)

In 1993, the Afghan Whigs ended their benchmark album Gentleman with a string-heavy and slightly ominous instrumental called “Closing Prayer”. I probably don’t have to go into any further detail about my feelings for the Afghan Whigs.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5f8n42RGJE?fs=1]

Which brings us up to now. The Black Keys are not new to recording instrumentals, having closed out their 2002 debut The Big Come Up with the hip hop rhythm of “240 Years Before Your Time” (and then closing it again some 20 minutes later with a hidden instrumental track that kicks off with a recording of Dan Auerbach’s grandmother) and recording “Junior’s Instrumental” during their Chulahoma sessions. But “Black Mud”, their tasty chaser to “She’s Long Gone” on this year’s Brothers, may be the song to bring the band their first Grammy as it is nominated for Best Rock Instrumental.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B6OnKRiXr8?fs=1]