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Roadtrippin’: It’s a Mississippi night…

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The NTSIB “offices” (i.e. my desk) are all abuzz at the moment. After a meeting with the taxman yesterday, it has been confirmed that the IRS has agreed to fund our proposed trip to Oxford, Mississippi, this summer (translation: I’m rockin’ out with my EITC out).

Why would this information be of any interest to NTSIB readers? While Oxford is most famous for being home to literary giant William Faulkner, Mississippi has produced more than its fair share of blues greats, and Ole Miss houses a blues archive that is purportedly the “world’s most extensive collection of blues recordings and related material”.

Nearby is the home of Fat Possum Records, a label that was started in order to give voice to great bluesmen of northern Mississippi – like R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough and T-Model Ford – who were going unrecorded and has since become the home of talent like the Black Keys, the Heartless Bastards, Andrew Bird and that A.A. Bondy guy we like so much. In the spring and autumn months, a visit to Oxford’s Square Books on a Thursday night will put you in the audience for a taping of the Thacker Mountain Radio Show, which has boasted authors such as Roy Blount, Jr., Rick Bragg and John Hodgman and musical guests like Lucero, Dent May and T-Model Ford.

Speaking of Dent May, he makes his home in nearby Taylor. Taylor is also home to Big Truck Theater, which promises “foot-stomping music”.

We’ve mentioned Oxford’s free, springtime Double Decker Arts Festival in previous posts (which we will be sad to miss as we’ll not be hitting town until late summer), and the annual Blues Today! Symposium will be taking place on March 26 this year. We also heartell that the Lyric and Proud Larry’s regularly host great live music.

So if my travel cohort and I don’t come back with a few posts worth of Oxford-centric music goodness, I will consider it my fault and not the fault of Oxford.

Today, we leave you with this article from 2003 on Fat Possum (it’s British press, so take it with an exaggerated grain of salt) and this little NPR piece on Fat Possum’s shift to embrace acts outside of the Mississippi blues milieu. (Obviously, we love us some Fat Possum here at NTSIB and encourage you to visit their site and purchase copious amounts of exceptional music.)

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Notable shows in the greater Cleveland area & some SXSW showcases

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Shows worth checking out this week in and around Cleveland:

The Beachland Ballroom & Tavern

  • Sat, Feb 20| 8:00 PM (7:30 PM door)
    Bluegrass Barn Dance
    Pete McDonald & The Wax Wings String Band / JP & The Chatfield Boys / Hiram Rapids Stumblers / Heelsplitter / Misery Jackals / Timber Wolves / One Dollar Hat
    $5.00 adv / $7.00 dos
    Ballroom | All Ages

  • Tue, Feb 23| 9 PM (8:30 PM door)
    Ha Ha Tonka
    Cowboy Angels / Robbie Jay Band
    $8.00
    Tavern | All Ages

  • Fri, Feb 26| 9 PM (8:30 PM door)
    Wussy
    The Fervor
    Good Morning Valentine
    $8.00
    Tavern | All Ages

Grog Shop

  • Mon, Feb 22| 9:00 PM
    Supersuckers
    Sun God
    The Unclean
    $10.00

The Kent Stage

  • Tues, Feb 23| 8:00 PM
    Ani DiFranco
    Erin McKeown
    $36.00 Individual
    $65.00 Patron

Oberlin College

  • Weds, Feb 24| ?
    Ani DiFranco
    Erin McKeown
    Finney Chapel @ 90 North Professor St
    Call 800-371-0178 for details

For those who might be venturing to Austin in March, here are a few links to SXSW showcases to check out:
No Depression
Muzzle of Bees
Schuba’s Tavern
Brooklyn Vegan
HearYa

Revisiting the line-up for The Double Decker Arts Festival in Oxford, Mississippi, A.A. Bondy has been confirmed, meaning you will likely see Bondy playing with the Felice Brothers and vice versa.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6gj8M4Fqu0]
A.A. Bondy with the Felice Brothers, performing the most rousing version of “American Hearts” ever at the Bottletree Cafe in Birmingham, Alabama, September 9, 2007

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Friday Fun: The “I don’t have the review I thought I would have” Edition

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Lesson learned: Always, always, always buy your concert tickets ahead of time. I’m very pleased that the Jason Boesel/Dawes/Cory Chisel & the Wandering Sons Cleveland show sold out, but I’m still randomly swearing because I wasn’t one of the people in that sold-out audience.

Instead of a review of an assuredly great show, please enjoy this post from MetaFilter with a large list of classic rock ‘n’ roll television moments. The list contains everything from Elvis Presley’s television debut, Tiny Tim’s wedding, the Clash being interviewed by Tom Snyder to the below clip of the great Howlin’ Wolf on Shindig!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIcIsVKmmRY]

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mr. Gnome: I Can See My Soul from Here

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This is a good example of why I try to avoid saying “Artist X sounds like Artist Z” – aside from the fact that I have found many of those sorts of comparisons can project the wrong idea into a reader’s mind depending upon their relationship with Artist Z’s work – I would have to use three or four different artists to describe the sound of Cleveland duo mr. Gnome. Just within one song. Moving from gauzy dreamscapes to razor-sharp nightmares, sometimes within seconds of each other, mr. Gnome is the sort of band whose willingness to experiment with sound and whose ability to pull it off with confidence makes me proud to be a fellow Clevelander.

A couple of things you should know before listening to mr. Gnome: Nicole Barille will crush your head with her guitar. And if she can’t finish the job, Sam Meister will be right in to beat the pulp to liquid. But then they’ll sing a pretty lullaby and smile down at you just before you pass out.

Yes, Barille’s voice can sound childlike and pixieish (something I have confessed to often disliking), but it also howls like an apocalyptic wind through an industrial warehouse. No, there isn’t a bass, but Meister will make you forget about that with his muscular, sometimes tribal beats. And, yes, you can catch them live. They will be playing Musica in Akron, Ohio, on February 27 (with If These Trees Could Talk and Simeon Soul Charger) and are getting ready for another leg of touring which will bring them back home sometime in May. Keep an eye on their Myspace page for future dates. Give them your money. They’re nice people.

mr. Gnome – Night of the Crickets
mr. Gnome – Sit Up & Hum

mrGnomeWeb

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Hell and Half of Georgia: You Could Fix Me Up with a Smile

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Okay, here’s what you do: Go download Hell and Half of Georgia’s self-titled album, play it through once, then set it aside and go do something else.

Now, come back and listen again.

The first thing you’ll notice is that you’ve gotten adjusted to the raggedness of Sean Fahlen’s voice and can now hear the sweet center of it. The second thing you’ll notice is that the band’s simple and friendly melodies have already lodged themselves in your brain. These are the best kind of country songs, made of heart and backed by solid musicianship. These songs feel like they belong inside a barn that has been cleared for a dance or at an old gas station during a rest stop on a long roadtrip through the dusty Southwest. When you listen to these songs, you feel like you’re listening to good friends play. And you can practically feel the sun of the band’s homestate of California shining down on your skin (which is very helpful as I sit next to a Cleveland window through which I can see several inches of Ohio snow – thanks, boys).

Hell and Half of Georgia – made up of Sean Fahlen, Kevin Burwick, Mike Troolines, Charlie Breneman and Captain Ed Brady – don’t have a label and, at the time of this writing, they are preparing to play their first show. But they are not new to the world of music-making, and, as Fahlen puts it, “we gots our fill of chasing any music dreams”. HaHoG began as a two-man (Fahlen and Burwick) project that they ended up liking so much that they decided to turn it into a full-fledged band, just for the love of the music and sharing the music. “[W]e just wanna play some songs,” says Fahlen, “tour round th southwest in a 88 chevy van with no radio, drink some whiskey nd make new friends along th way.” They back up this philosophy by offering their album for free to anyone who wants to download it. “[W]e are putting our music out for this moment here, you diggin it and sharing your feedback with us and anyone else that you want to share something you like with.”

“Sharing and connecting” could be a rally cry for HaHoG, putting them in good company with NTSIB favorites the Felice Brothers and A.A. Bondy. They will put in their time with websites and Facebook pages because they know these tools are a useful means to an end, but what they want most is to “connect person to person when we can”. In an unrelated conversation, Fahlen said, “[S]ometimes runnin round th country playin music pays off. [N]ot literally pays rent that is, but pays off one way er another…”

Hell and Half of Georgia – Bellingham
Hell and Half of Georgia – California

Hell and Half of Georgia Official Site (Scroll down for free download of their album)

Hell and Half of Georgia on Facebook

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Festival Round-Up: The Lesser-Knowns

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It’s festival line-up announcing season. NTSIB trusts that you can find your own way to the artist listings for Coachella, Bonnarroo, etc., because we’re going to focus on some lesser-known but just as worthy festivals and concert series.

Aside from Oxford, Mississippi’s annual Double Decker Arts Festival and Gulf Shores, Alabama’s first Hangout Music Festival, which we’ve mentioned previously, there is:

  • NoisePop, February 23-March 1 in San Francisco, California (taking place at various venues all over the city), will have the Magnetic Fields, Atlas Sound, the Mumlers, Thao Nguyen, Mark Eitzel, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Mark Kozelek and so many more

  • Pickathon, August 6-8 in Portland, Oregon, featuring Billy Joe Shaver, the Heartless Bastards, Bonnie Prince Billy & the Cairo Gang, Langhorne Slim, the Cave Singers, Megafaun and more

  • The Black Keys and Pavement will play New York’s SummerStage

  • The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, April 23-May 2, will feature so many huge acts that it would be an exercise in futility to try to list all the notable artists here

  • Jim Jarmusch, NTSIB’s favorite filmmaker, is guest-curating All Tomorrow’s Parties’ third annual ATP New York, September 3-5, and is bringing in a typically diverse range of acts from Raekwon to the Vivian Girls to Brian Jonestown Massacre and more

Bonus: Pitchfork has a video from last year’s ATP New York of Jarmusch covering Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer” in a hotel room with Bradford Cox and Randy Randall. Aside from it being awesome because IT’S JARMUSCH, it’s also a beautiful rendition.

http://assets.delvenetworks.com/player/loader.swf

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Fellow Travellers: One new blog & one triumphant return

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Duke Street Blog has the jump on NTSIB having launched their video-centric blog on January 2nd, and they are already loaded up with wonderful content. They have live clips, filmed up close and personal, of acts such as the Duke and the Dutchess, the Roadside Graves, NTSIB favorites the Bowerbirds and Dawes and, most recently, a couple of excellent videos from A.A. Bondy’s recent tour-closing show at Union Hall in Brooklyn.

Duke Street Blog

After becoming a bloody statistic in musicblogicide 2010, I Rock Cleveland has returned to the fold. It’s proving a little bit of a bumpy transition, so be gentle with him, folks.

I Rock Cleveland

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The Heartless Bastards: I’m Gonna See What Tomorrow Brings

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I am guilty of misogyny in my listening practices. I am not the most girly of girls, and hearing twee and breathy vocals can turn me off to a song faster than mentions of pina coladas and getting caught in the rain or riding through the desert on a horse with no name. I find a great many female singers either sound alike to me or give me nothing I can connect to. This is one reason I am grateful for Erika Wennerstrom and her band the Heartless Bastards.

[Author’s note: In recent years, this line of misguided chatter has haunted me, and I feel shame whenever I think about it. I’d like to offer my apology for it. Women in music, women in general, people in general, deserve better.]

To say Erika Wennerstrom has a powerful voice is a bit like saying meteor showers are pretty. True as it is, it doesn’t get the whole idea across. By all accounts a diminutive woman, Wennerstrom can belt out vocals like she’s eight feet tall. Though her power is not just in volume, but also in the emotions she can convey: weariness, toughness, heartache, hope. Backed up by the Bastards with buzzsaw guitars and stomping beats, one might be inclined to dub the Heartless Bastards listening experience “empowering”. I prefer to think of it as bringing out my inner badass, and Wennerstrom effortlessly takes her place alongside rock ‘n’ roll heroines like Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Kim Gordon and the Deal sisters. (One might be tempted to posit a theory that there’s a correlation between being from Ohio and being a wickedly cool lady.)

The Heartless Bastards will be playing two stateside dates at the end of this month (February 25 in Shreveport, Louisiana, and February 26 in Houston, Texas) before heading out on a Eurpoean tour. There has also been talk of a Heartless Bastards headlining tour with A.A. Bondy playing support for several shows, which seems like a perfect match.

On a sidenote, I would love to hear Erika Wennerstrom and A.A. Bondy duet. What stories those two voices could tell together!

The Heartless Bastards – The Mountain
The Heartless Bastards – Sway

The Heartless Bastards official site

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News Bits & Bobs: Southern Festivals, Waits Reads, New Lidell & Scott-Heron

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  • Gulf Shores, Alabama, will host the Hangout Music Festival May 14-16, 2010. The fest will feature A.A. Bondy… and some other people. A lot of really good acts, actually, like the Blind Boys of Alabama, John Legend, Matisyahu, Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears and Michael Franti & Spearhead, among others.
  • The Felice Brothers will be down in Bondy territory when they play the Double Decker Arts Festival in Oxford, Mississippi, on April 24, 2010. The free festival will be headlined by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and will also feature performances by Jimbo Mathus and Those Darlins, among others.
  • Tom Waits reads Charles Bukwoski. ‘Nough said.
  • Mercurial soul singer Jamie Lidell’s new album Compass comes out in May. This time around, he’s getting a hand from Beck, Feist, Pat Sansone of Wilco and a few members of Grizzly Bear. You can hear the title track at Stereogum and Pitchfork.
  • I don’t know how long ago this was posted, so it may no longer count as news to anyone else, but the Bowerbirds played a few songs for Pitchfork’s Cemetery Gates series.
  • Gil Scott-Heron’s first album in over a decade drops tomorrow, and you can take a listen below. I owe him a few bucks just for the number of times I listened to it yesterday. Gorgeous work.

http://gilscottheron.net/widget/gilscottheronalbum.swf

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The Preservation Hall Jazz Band: Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?

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I was about 13 years old when I visited New Orleans. I was with my parents, visiting family in Alabama and Louisiana, and I was in the throes of a Harry Connick, Jr., fixation, so it was a well-timed visit. I remember that Connick’s father, then the District Attorney of New Orleans, was on the T.V. news due to allegations of corruption. I remember the cute bellhop at the Marie Antoinette Hotel. I remember a riverboat to Chalmette. I remember walking through Jackson Square in a light rain while a group of young boys played jazz on a street corner. I remember walking a few paces behind my parents because I didn’t want them to see me crying. New Orleans was so true to my daydreams of it that it overwhelmed me.

But the best memory I have of New Orleans was visiting Preservation Hall. Even though it’s just off of Bourbon Street, the Hall seems like its own universe in the midst of the lights, tourists and infamous debauchery that punctuates (or blankets, depending on what time of the year you’re there) Bourbon Street. It’s boards are worn, and it is narrow. The benches inside are hard and uncomfortable. And in the summer, packed in so close with so many other bodies, it only takes a few minutes to become covered in a heavy sheen of sweat. But once the Preservation Hall Jazz Band starts to play, none of that matters. The world becomes music and joy.

Even though I haven’t been back to N’awlins, my memories of and love for the city have endured, and I was greatly relieved when Preservation Hall survived Hurricane Katrina intact. And you can bet I’ll be laying down some cash for Preservation, an album to benefit the Hall, being released on Mardi Gras, February 16th. If it wasn’t enough that the proceeds from the album will keep the Hall going, check out the roster of people who stopped by to help out the effort:

  • Andrew Bird

  • Paolo Nutini

  • Tom Waits

  • Yim Yames

  • Del McCoury

  • Ani DiFranco

  • Pete Seeger & Tao Rodriguez-Seeger

  • Jason Isbell

  • Brandi Carlile

  • Richie Havens

  • Merle Haggard

  • Blind Boys of Alabama

  • Dr. John

  • Amy LaVere

  • Steve Earle

  • Cory Chisel

  • Buddy Miller

  • Angelique Kidjo with Terence Blanchard

Even Louis Armstrong makes an appearance.

If you somehow remain unconvinced as to how great this album will be, check out the preview video.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXeGGDcnDnY]

They are even generously streaming the album at the official website: Preservation: A Benefit Album