GOGOL BORDELLO CELEBRATE THE NEW REVOLUTION

Interviews,

Being able to dull the thin line separating elementary Anglo rock mannerisms from plausible ethnocentric eccentricities is a tricky proposition deviously aggrieved by cries of cynical corporate sellout or wretchedly foul thoughts regarding homogenized fraudulence. Obsessively accepting multi-cultural plurality while keeping solid footing in established rock tenets could be destructive or detrimental for anyone deigning fame with less-than-visionary intentions. Only indisputable revolutionaries need apply to formulate such an alien admixture since any ostensibly illegitimate act on their part will be seen as treason and those involved shall be torturously libeled.

Nevertheless, remarkably zany handlebar-moustached warrior, Eugene Hutz, daringly combines caliginous Eastern European tango and perky Bertolt Brechtian cabaret swing with pre-punk demigod Iggy Pop’s nihilistic gallivanting rumble and the thuggish ruffian subversion scruffy Irish rogue Shane MacGowan lent the Pogues. Hutz’s rough-and-tumble outfit, Gogol Bordello, adventurously ubiquitous globetrotters whose completely shambolic and imminently maniacal live shows have broadened their appreciative audience, help the salty busker ‘chaotically clash’ abrasive streetwise punk, lurid Vaudevillian trash, inebriated polka, and slunk salsa into frenetic pan-ethnic exuberance.

Ringleader Hutz provides pixilated Balto-Slavik-derived Indo-Euro linguistics and mischievously opulent debauchery to strike up his band of gypsies’ spontaneously ratcheted-up crackle with marvelously distinctive, wholly fantastical authenticity.

Born outside Kiev near the Ukraine’s Carpathian Mountain region during 1972, Hutz became a political refugee after the ’86 Chernobyl nuclear disaster and tyrannical Soviet turmoil forced his family to seek asylum in Poland, Hungary, Austria, Italy, then America. Hutz’s father played in one of the country’s first late ‘60s rock groups, Meridian, while his mother was a gypsy tap dancer-singer. Thereafter, their talented teenaged son began collecting black market tapes featuring experimental post-rock harbingers Einsterzende Neubauten, Birthday Party, Suicide, and the Contortions, bouncing around in formative psychobilly, industrial, and metal troupes before finding his true muse.

By ’98, Hutz was performing Russian weddings in bucolic New England haven, Vermont (where he landed stateside in ’92). Moving to New York City within a year, he embraced the world’s cultural capital with not only skillfully claustrophobic compositional pandemonium, but also an expansive gypsy punk revolt and colloquial Dadaist mentality designed to discourage rhetorically generic faux-punk posers crowding the currently compromised local underground scene.

Taking its primary moniker from grotesquely melancholy, profoundly visionary 19th century Ukrainian anarchist, Nikolai Gogol, Hutz’s wily assemblage espoused a colossal cast of immensely diversified instrumentalists. Madcap violinist Sergey Rjabtzev and picaroon accordionist Yuri Lemeshev, both ex-pat Russians, enjoined D.C.-based Ethiopian bassist Tommy Gobena, Israeli spaghetti Western-informed guitarist Oren Kaplan, and female dancing percussionists, Pam Racine and Elizabeth Sun. Furthermore, febrile drummer, Eliot Ferguson, was brought onboard to add a mandatory rock frenzy.

An enduring cathartic barrage of consistently engaging material compactly transporting and transposing Hutz’s hyper-sardonic wit bolsters ‘99s Voi-La Intruder and ‘02s Multi Kontra Culti Vs. Irony, early Gogol Bordello albums scouring a sacred, if nefarious, heritage soon-to-be reverberating halfway ‘round the universe. By trusting steadfast instincts, this cosmic harlequin toppled any tangibly bona fide ‘Sirva Roma’ tribal lineage with a liberating punk ethic, propelling a never-ending international block party. Acutely aware of the common principle uniting borrowed traditions they convolutedly revere the glorious past while rebelliously jettisoning Old World methodology. Standing on the precipice of achieving top echelon touring status, Hutz’s hedonistic crew is on a mission to convert puritan squares and indie snobs alike.

On ‘05s frightfully clever Gypsy Punks, Hutz’s emphatic baritone rasp leads the assault. There’s no denying the penetrable impunity of his ruggedly coarse voice, a grainy instrument employed for garrulously celebratory toasting and perfectly suited to shakedown musty broken-down post-Depression gin mills. Campy opening jig, “Sally,” may sound ‘Balkanized,’ but hits closer to home with its nominal Nebraska lass unwittingly spreading Hutz’s uplifting mutiny all over the state’s heartland. A siren awakens incriminating Balkan reel, “Not A Crime,” a damning mandate condemning fascist modern day oppression. Another veritable shotgun blast, “60 Revolutions (Per Minute),” pile-drives Kaplan’s metal guitar shrapnel through Hutz’s crassly emblazoned righteous screed dismissing faddish pop scum: ‘I make a better rock revolution alone with my dick.’

Following the dressed-up Lower East Side flamenco flange, “Avenue B,” snazzy beat-driven wedding day jolt, “Dogs Were Barking,” rips it up cryptic tango fashion. And provincial party anthem, “Think Locally, Fuck Globally,” comes off like a growling homeland shrug-off counter-intuitively lauding the Big Apple’s still-thriving bohemian temperament. Elsewhere, dub-styled breakdowns, alien reggae transmissions, and minimalist no wave schemes detonate inside multifarious numbers.

Undoubtedly though, the best way to experience these frantic neo-pirates is in concert, where they knock ‘em dead every time. A dangerous elixir of Klezmer, Indian rai, and Middle Eastern elements, increasingly noticeable on record, send shock-waves traipsing a headily combustible din of ecstasy and find sanctuary inside Gogol Bordello’s freakishly bizarre symphonic wizardry.

But while Gypsy Punks petered out a little towards the last few nebulous tracks, ‘07s mighty Super Taranta! (SideOneDummy), recorded live in the studio with minimal overdubs, continually cuts like a jagged knife. Sharper violin snipes, starker accordion swipes, and bolder cymbal-skin strikes create a terrifically riotous volcanic eruption upon impact, refusing to relent from beginning to end.

“When we make a record, we’re not baking a cake with recipe in hand. A lot of what goes on is unconscious and maybe a stop at some gas station in Morocco a year ago had more to do with the sound than all the contemplative work,” Hutz says.

Overall, there’s a primary redemption theme that transverses the boastful secondary motif of conquering badly contrived popular minstrels with finer tuneful cuisine. For instance, “Harem In Tuscany” and the spherical title track are direct descendants of Italy’s bastardized musical exorcism, tarentella, a curative mystical ritual transforming negative energy into positive sought here as a therapeutic phenomenon aiding rapscallions nauseous with modern media-manipulated hysteria.

Concerning “Harem In Tuscany,” Hutz says, “If we read into the lyrics, it seems like the turmoil of some nonsensical journey, where a rebel forgets his cause and everything else, loses his perspective, and returns to the bottom of the bottom to regain it. Profound or not, it’s a simple reminder of the inability to accomplish something and hold on to it. It’s impossible. It requires constant reinvention. That’s the life.” He then concedes, “It also reminds me of other good things like the fact politicians could only be wrong!”

More conventional listeners will initially be smitten by well-received upheaval, “Ultimate,” a pungent flamenco-throbbed treatise spitefully alleging ‘there was never any good old days/ they are today/ they are tomorrow.’ Its easy-to-grasp revelry begs for contemporary airplay.

“It wasn’t written for the mainstream audience,” he admits. “But, if it reaches them, perhaps that’s reason for optimism. If more people are ready to re-tune into a pro-positive attitude and the high frequencies proposed in that song, the better for all of us. As far as commercialism goes, I have no idea how it reflects on us. We’ve come a long way on our own terms. Nobody tells us what to do and we’re going strong. Go figure. It’s fucked up. On one hand, we’ve always been going against the grain. On the other, we’re living proof of the American Dream.”

While “Ultimate” discontentedly abjures the arduous past and “Zina-Marina” prophesizes a downcast future, the question becomes where’ve all the good times gone?

Hutz claims, “Though the song “Ultimate” is about hidden positive meanings of life, “Zina-Marina” is a topical song – a guerrilla journalism story about Eastern Europe’s dark side, which is spreading rapidly west-wise. Obviously, there’s awareness about both sides of life. But as an engine, I choose to be optimistic. Not because I’m a fool. No. I’ve been jaded before. That’s exactly where I learned cynicism and pessimism are actually dead ends for the spirit. I respect spirit too much to suffocate it with pessimism.”

Let’s not overlook how Hutz and his fellow Ukrainians deal with serious sociopolitical problems in charmingly satirical fashion. Sarcastic humor has certainly gotten ex-Soviet proletariats through various uncompromising Third World predicaments (lack of funds, household goods, and raw material).

“That’s our survivalist way,” he declares. “Perhaps the words ‘Wild East’ already properly replace ‘ex-Iron Curtain region’ at this point. That, itself, reflects the situation a lot. Of course, as a native I have romantic sides I’m endlessly drawn to. But there’s just no way to get anything done there. I mean ‘anything,’ and I mean ‘done.’

Analogously, “Tribal Connection” gripes about a conservative village infringing on people’s rights, possibly a microcosm of America’s post-911 raid on individual freedoms and liberty.

Hutz adds, “The funny part about it all is that whatever political criticism occurs in our songs people automatically think it’s about the United States. But have you ever been to Sweden? As far as regulations go it is America times 100! This crudity is a worldwide tendency. It needs challenges from people with positive power from artists and generators of good energy. The good news is we’re everywhere, too!”

Getting further into the midst of Super Taranta, “Suddenly (I Miss Carpathy)” mutates into some kind of weirdly swinging Yiddish hat dance. The dazzling fast-fiddled dub-plated jubilation, “Forces Of Victory,” heaps speed metal axing atop slapdash drumming. And the festive “American Wedding,” augmented by the horn-drenched Slavic Soul Party and descending violin stabs, snubs quick-fix 24-hour North American connubiality, fancying instead, the three-day matrimonial galas his distant birthplace afforded.

Despite its dagger-like reggae-tinged seafaring ‘ho-ho-ho’ drunken chant, the conciliatory “Supertheory Of Supereverything” kicks dust in the face of misguided autocracy and pledges a ‘super-conducting’ alliance. Distrusting biblical disciples and agitated despots while relishing a heterogeneous united front, this purported coalition of party people rants, ‘Yes! Give me Everything Theory without Nazi uniformity/ my brothers are protons/ my sisters are neurons/ stir it twice it’s instant family.’ In summary, Gogol Bordello are allied phantoms conceiving a dungy all-inclusive circus atmosphere (usually not out of step for fandango dancing), with Hutz playing the leading role as askew carnival barker.

On another adjacent tip, Hutz has appeared onscreen in a commendable supportive role, landing the part of Alex for filmmaker Liev Schreiber’s Everything Is Illuminated, alongside award-winning actor Elijah Wood. The story line involves a post-adolescent Jewish American traveling from Odessa to Ukraine questing for a woman who had saved the grandfather of Wood’s character, Jonathan, from Nazi invasion.

The jaunty Hutz exclaims, “Liev must’ve been temporarily insane! But it all seemed to work out at the end. It was my music that brought me into it. He was interested in Gogol Bordello as soundtrack writers. But I just said, ‘yo man, give me the lead and I’ll fix it up for you real nice.’ He made a few phone calls and I was on my way to Hollywood. So in retrospect, we have a lot of laughs and stayed good friends…with more or less regular drinking assaults on the neighborhood”

Though Super Taranta!’s liquored-up dirge, “Alcohol,” could have served as an incisive drunkard’s tribute or hangover medication for the two sauced buddies, Hutz denies these assertions.

“I just wanted to write an ode to alcohol – something that shows real beauty of this substance and how important its presence is in our culture. But to write about that, you must really qualify. Otherwise, it’s just a banal topic. So I couldn’t go near it in my twenties, despite massive consumption. I felt like I still didn’t have the mileage required. But now, in my thirties, I felt qualified. It just rolled off the tongue and the music came in a second.”

During, albeit, limited downtime, Hutz archived a homespun tale of real life terror. The recent documentary entitled Pied Piper of Hutzovina dealt with fleeing Ukraine after the unfortunate Chernobyl mishap. Hutz promises it’s a strange film too personal for some and too devastating for others. But those who fetishize gypsy culture will find a natural Romany habitat sans typical soused stereotypes. Instructively, director Pavla Fleischer shared many heroic moments with Hutz in Ukraine, Hungary, Russia, and Syberia.

So the prospective artistic endeavors for Hutz seem almost infinite. Let’s hope he doesn’t sacrifice Gogol Bordello’s unrivaled musicality for cinematic celebrity.

“I’m thinking of inventing a new style of musical activity that can uncork the masses and become a form of not only physical expression, but also mental and spirit-wise. Like the Ukrainian mountain folklore of Kolomijkas – which is based on poking fun at one another with rhymes over infectious beats and manic tempos,” he insists. “That’s the premise of Mititika, a new electronic project I’m making with a Romanian singer and dancer. If I could transcend that feeling into a worldwide context with my fucked up synthesizers, it’ll be massively successful.”

GLENN MERCER GETS ‘WHEELS IN MOTION’

Interviews,

The Garden State has its fair share of admirable bands that’ve passed into history without proper recognition, left behind by conservative mainstream forces whilst arbitrarily getting lumped into college radio’s vast expanse. Enigmatic cult legends, The Feelies, like neighboring Manhattan antecedents, the Velvet Underground, influenced dozens of promising independent bands. Having an impact way beyond the few thousand copies winsome 1980 entrée Crazy Rhythms sold, these unsuspecting harbingers presaged ‘90s DIY bedroom pop a la Sebadoh, Liz Phair, and Jack Logan. Initially, singer-guitarists Glenn Mercer and Bill Million fronted the trailblazing combo with bassist Keith Clayton and iconic Cleveland native, drummer Anton Fier (Golden Paliminos) in tow.

“Prior to the Feelies, Dave (Weckerman: percussion) and I were in (developmental precursors) Outkids. Bill joined on bass, the band broke up, then we auditioned singers,” Mercer recollects. “One was an Iggy clone obligated to demonstrate his stage persona, rolling around the floor while we jammed in audition. So I became singer by default.”

Though signed to archetypal punk label, Stiff Records, during its halcyon daze, the Feelies had a soothing beauty lost on rebellious punks. Too unhip, well adjusted, and low key for voguish punk acceptance, the Feelies weren’t as exciting live or inventively eccentric as friendly CBGB rivals Television and Talking Heads. They may’ve had a naïve, understated tone, but always provided stimulating six-string lattice and temperately variegated percussive elements (tom toms/ timpani/ claves/ snares/ cowbells) to push forward prudently rudimentary compositions.

Long-time Haledon resident Mercer affirms, “I was never a fan of large scale production. Lo-fi superceded the polished material. I never got into arty bands. They lost the essence of what rock and roll was.”

Inadvertently, the Feelies prefigured many ‘80s indie rock ideas on the timeless Crazy Rhythms. The huskily half-sung baritone timbre draping carefree “Original Love” foreshadowed Morrissey and spurred Violent Femmes’ nervously conversational assimilation “Blister In The Sun” while lengthy lexical epithet “The Boy With Perpetual Nervousness” imbued Belle & Sebastian’s similar tonicity and drawn-out titular descriptiveness. The cautiously sustained tension of “Forces At Work” unwittingly informed slo-core progenitors Slint and still-vital Hoboken magnates Yo La Tengo.

Of the latter, Mercer says, “We became friends. (Leader) Ira (Kaplan) did an early Feelies interview. I played with them a few times, did the Maxwells’ Hanukkah shows, and may’ve done a Psychedelic Furs song with them. Ira got us into (paisley pop purveyors) Dream Syndicate, (de-constructive subversives) the Minutemen, and (post-punk mavericks) Husker Du. Apparently, Steve Wynn started the Dream Syndicate after seeing us at Whiskey Au Go-Go. They, in turn, influenced us.”

Perhaps even more profound, the garbled verbal mumble of “The High Road” found its way into college rock lynchpins R.E.M.’s precociously analogous utterances.

“Peter Buck (who’d co-produce The Good Earth) acknowledged our influence. In turn, they took us on a large-scale tour,” Mercer says. “We got good responses in places we’d played before: Boston, New York, Philadelphia. Bands like the Meat Puppets and Rain Parade claim Crazy Rhythms was influential.”

Inversely, Mercer’s subtle, effective, fey eloquence and easygoing manner knowingly beckon folk-bent nerd Jonathan Richman’s anthemic “Roadrunner” on Good Earth’s distended title track. And the quickly jangled beat-driven skitter of Beatles re-make “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide” reinforces Mercer’s Beatles fascination.

“My mom played some keyboards and always had the radio on,” he recalls. “She brought me the first Beatles record. My favorite early Beatles songs were inspired by Chuck Berry. I wasn’t aware of him, Bo Diddley or Buddy Holly prior to that. Right now, we do “You Can’t Do That” live ‘cause it has a cowbell part. People love that.”

Following a six year pause (when he drummed for subdued Eno-induced tranquilizers, the Trypes, ‘til his sister returned from college and took back her kit), belated ’86 sophomore set, The Good Earth, found Mercer and Million no longer one step ahead of the curve. The Feelies break no new ground and at this juncture look to proteges REM for inspiration, but the new-sprung songs are more uniformly lustrous, eloquently formal, and personal, even if they can’t invent mod vistas for green basement bands anymore. It’s as if they woke up and it was suddenly “Tomorrow, Today.” Yet the band’s completely focused, mature, and confident, as fresh acquisitions, bassist Brenda Sauter and drummer Stan Demeski (Luna), assist.

The difference might seem negligible, but they lean towards folk-pop instead of soft rock when drifting into the ozone. South of the Border rhythms and then-fashionable cow-punk riffs lend tertiary supplements. An increasingly noticeable plainspoken balm, comparable to Velvet Underground’s narcotic impulse, permeates pitter-pattered spangle “Last Roundup” and hastened jam “Slipping (Into Something).” Peculiarly, a recessive dramatic stillness first introduced on the debut’s angular “Moscow Nights” eerily inaugurates the wistful “Slipping.”

“It’s not silence. “Moscow Nights” (utilized) a foghorn, a boat in the distance, and wind,” Mercer instructs. “It’s like modern avant-garde composer, John Cage, who’d set the mood with buried sound affects to make you aware.  There was talk about remixing The Good Earth, to bring up the vocals, but that’d ruin the record’s charm.”

Lean acoustic strumming guides ‘88s It’s Only Life, where a reacquired innocence emerges. Now signed to major label, A & M, a more capricious, less serious tone conveys brightened whimsicality to resplendent contemplation “Too Much,” endlessly looped guitar-grooved “For Awhile,” and a sentimental cover of Velvet Underground’s “What Goes On.”

“It was easy mastering Velvets songs when I learned guitar. Their stuff was easy to play. I gravitated towards that, the Stooges, and Rolling Stones. I was big on jamming, like the Velvets and Stooges let loose improvising, but not as far as the Grateful Dead went.” He adds, “We got to do a Lou Reed tour of smaller theatres. He came up to play with us at a Philly radio station and then onstage. He didn’t want to sing. We did a medley with him just playing guitar. He reluctantly inched forward and took over the mike and convinced us to go back and do “Sweet Jane” very impromptu.”

Moreover, It’s Only Life’s inarguable standout, the contagiously labyrinthine resonator “Away,” proved to be a high water mark, soothingly advancing to a glistening radiance as Mercer’s nonchalant inflexions airily float inside its recurrently somniferous intoxication.

Mercer reminisces, “Jonathan Demme directed “Away’s” video. I had worked with him on the movie, Something Wild. We felt comfortable he’d do a good job. He contacted us with an idea about filming a concept. We were gonna call it “Night Of The Living Feelies,” where zombies file into our show and by the end, they’re all rejuvenated. But it never came about. Instead, we did it at Maxwell’s.”

The Feelies second A & M album, Time For A Witness, came out at a bad time, when the label got purchased by Universal. Made at New York’s huge Power Station in ’88, its glossy polish and sophisticated expressiveness caught critics’ ears, not fans.

Mercer reflects, “A & M didn’t drop us, but wouldn’t offer tour support. It’s hard to get to the next level. We had more people in the road crew than the band. We toured with Mike Watt’s Firehose. He had a word, jam-econo, doing tours on a budget.”

Million quit, moved to Florida, became a Disney World locksmith, and temporarily lost touch with Mercer, who’d go on to record with Weckerman in Wake Ooloo, a loud, aggressive duo predating the White Stripes that criss-crossed Weckerman’s side band, Yung Fu. Then came a ten-year break.

But time marches on and Mercer’s first solo effort, Wheels In Motion, brings forth a batch of guilelessly prospective tunes.

“I went through its lyrics and noticed I’d said the word ‘time’ an awful lot. You tend to look back when you have kids,” Mercer concedes. “Like The Good Earth, it’s acoustic, low key. Maybe that’s because I have bad tinnitus, ringing in the ears, from playing on stage, checking amps, and cranking volume in-studio to simulate live sound.”

Captured in his home studio, Wheels In Motion perpetually relies upon articulate guitar prowess and an underlying emotional shrewdness to guardrail its peppier moments. Faithful Feelies comrades’ Weckerman, Demeski, Fier, Sauter, and Vinny DeNunzio dress up a few cuts each. Buoyant wonderment “Whatever Happened” closely resembles the early Feelies precipitated hasten with its masqueraded passive-aggressive urgency. An unwaveringly upbeat swagger belies resigned tambourine-shaking jingle “Get It Back.”

But pensive lullabys, “Days To Come” and “Morning Lights,” possess a defiantly chimed circumspection matching the discreetly foreboding Casio organ undertone swamping “Here And Gone” and “Another Last Time.” Experiencing life within rock’s narrow margins, the resurgent Mercer needn’t manufacture the wintry discontent and disillusionment steadfastly pervading Wheels In Motion’s darker side, even if the 50-year-old seems entirely secure transmitting George Harrison’s pacifying psychedelic Indian mantra, “Within You, Without You.”

On a grander level, will Mercer ever receive deserved aboveground plaudits? Or will he carve out a factional niche the same way fellow Northern Jersey band the Wrens have done releasing similarly sporadic material. Either way, he’ll retain the dignity and respect much bigger artists sometimes begrudgingly get.

HOWE GELB PULLS DOUBLE DUTY

Interviews,

FOREWORD: Spontaneous lo-fi bohemian, Howe Gelb, is happy living in partial obscurity as a virtuous cult artist. But unlike prolific Texas folk-blues renegade, Jandek, a weirdly anti-social commoner, he’s available for comments and glad to see you. But just when you think you’ve caught up to his catalogue, the damn guy releases something else. There’s about a dozen recordings as loose collective, Giant Sand, a few as Band Of Black Ranchette, and a growing number as a solo artist. ‘06s ‘Sno Angel Like You may be his finest solo work. This interview was conducted to coincide with Gelb’s concurrent solo LP, The Listener, and Band Of Black Ranchette’s Still Lookin’ Good To Me. Gelb had me sent my 4,000 beer and ale reviews online a few weeks after we spoke in ’03. But he admitted he’d rather hear about my exciting cross-country travels than read the reviews – a problem I’ve struggled with to this day. This article originally appeared in Aquarian Weekly.

 

“Denmark is a lot like ‘50s America. Its slow pace, lack of traffic, excellent daily baked bread, fresh beer, a quality and quantity of musicians that are great to hang with, and about the best rain I’ve ever been soaked in,” full-blooded American underground rock icon, Howe Gelb, offers. He has called me from the European home he shares with wife, Sofie, and one-year-old daughter.

Pennsylvania-bred Gelb began recording rough-hewn guitar-strewn sketches independently as Giant Sandworm way back in ’79 – over a decade before Liz Phair and Lou Barlow made lo-fi indie rock acceptable. Along with founding guitarist Rainer Ptacek and a revolving lineup, Gelb recast Giant Sand in the Tucson, Arizona, desert during the ‘80s, delivering minor classics such as ‘88s contagious Storm and ‘89s spontaneous Long Stem Rant.

Not far removed from the spiritual revelation of Nick Cave’s prodigious ’01 recording, No More Shall We Part, Gelb’s poignant ’03 solo disc, The Listener, addresses his own mortality and profound musical re-awakening with sophisticated grandeur. Perhaps spawn from the solemn dirge, “(well) Dusted (for the millennium),” from ‘00s Giant Sand release, Chore Of Enchantment, where Gelb coyly suggested ‘Jesus might return, if only a slight return,’ this wayward beatnik drifter canonizes lost comrades (ex-Giant Sand partner Rainer, aged-in-wool country pal Pappy Allen, and a stepsister). He also seeks eternal wisdom on the disjointed medley, “B4U (Do Do Do),” which appropriately slips into Bill Withers’ comforting Gospel-inspired redemption, “Lean On Me.”

Inspired by be-bop pioneers and re-invigorated by eloquent Jazz-skewed Denmark band Under Byen (Howe’s newest cohorts since Giant Sand partners John Convertino and Joey Burns remain busy with fine collective, Calexico), Gelb allows guest vocalists more space to maneuver on The Listener. Popular Danish singer Marie Frank coos like Cat Power on the creamily-oozed “Blood Orange”; Brett and Rennie from neo-trad Country duo Handsome Family caress the tender piano trinket “Moons Of Impulse”; and Under Byen’s Henriette Sennenvaldt intimates Bjork’s desperate fragility on the witchy salsa “Torque.”

On the deviously apologetic blues retreat, “Felonious,” Gelb’s piano steals ‘Lou Reed licks, licks he probably stole,’ as he speak-sings in a monotone voice wholly reminiscent of the ex-Velvet Underground legend who’s then revisited on the relaxed acoustic respite, “Lying There.”

Concurrently, Gelb’s loose-knit side project, Band Of Blacky Ranchette, has spit out the threadbare Country-smitten backwoods charmer, Still Looking Good To Me. Its dusty rural serenades and half-baked train songs provide random escapism.

On top of that, Gelb’s growing list of solo projects include ’91s Dreaded Brown Recluse, ‘98s Hisser, ‘00s Down Home, and ‘01s Confluence.

Since Chore of Enchantment, you’ve constructed full-blown arrangements more often.

HOWE GELB: That’s an accident of age. Rainer was my best buddy, but he died of brain cancer a few years back. We started Giant Sand(worm) around ’79. I’d also done Band Of Blacky Ranchette. Anyway, when he got sick, he started doing things that were leaner. Instead of being Neanderthals, everything meant more because he saw the mortality factor kick in and it only allowed him to do certain things. So my music got tighter just from spending that time with him. So maybe that gave the illusion of arrangements. Chore came out after his death, as did the new Blacky Ranchette.

The new Blacky Ranchette songs seem off-the-cuff compared to the orderly The Listener.

I like music minimal. That’s just its nature.

How do you know which songs fit solo endeavors as opposed to group projects?

The songs let me know. I have piles of songs. My best investment was to buy a Sears Craftsman box on wheels that locks. I throw all my recordings in there on DAT tape or CD that I make throughout the year. I’ll go through the stuff and do some house cleaning. Then, I compile these different records. Blacky is more influenced by old Country. It’s my take.

How does earlier Blacky Ranchette material compare to the new set?

The first one was more rambunctious and vocals more energetic but worse. You can hear fun guitar interplay between Rainer and me. There were endless jams we used to do. The next one maintained a more upbeat barroom tone. The third was mellower and this one is more so except two songs with Neko Case that she rode shotgun on and ended up mixing herself. Then, there’s the one I did with Grandaddy that’s “Working on the Railroad.” The rest is more Texas troubadour stuff where there’s a long meandering story with wacky small weird bits. I stay away from the dismal, dark, dank weight of Chore. It’s too depressing to listen to that.

Chore’s lyrics seemed more detailed than past recordings.

That record took over a year to finish. I started recording seven weeks after Rainer’s death and couldn’t hear straight. When we started working with Jon Parish (PJ Harvey) on that, I was unintentionally giving him a hard time. I thought the material was too old and I sucked on some. My voice was too weird. We divided the material into two camps. The Rock Opera Years was a tour-website only CD of unreleased Chore material. Many people prefer that one. It was tumultuous in the sense that Rainer had spent an extra 20 months here after being diagnosed with cancer. He was doing well until the final seizure when I was wrapped up with his family. So maybe more heart and soul was put into Chore because I was able to re-think ideas.

‘94s Glum was another disconcerting album since C & W pal Pappy Allen died in its wake.

Yeah, but my stepsister had died. When I wrote “Left,” it sounds like Pappy, but I wrote it for her. Before the record came out, Pappy passed away. I remember I was singing like crap but loved the songs and the way the sessions came out. “Yer Ropes” I spent days on honing. I’m lazy by nature despite the ton of stuff I put out. I’d rather stuff just pop up, but I forced myself to play with discipline for “Yer Ropes.” I sometimes forget to put choruses in songs, which is generally rude. I was set up in an old New Orleans studio. It’s like a mansion with four huge upstairs bedrooms. There’s no glass separation in the living room where gear is set up.

‘91s Ramp and ‘92s Center of the Universe have stretched out solos and lack traditional arrangements, but the playing is amazing.

I love that Neil Young Harvest feel of catching a song the first time in the studio. Early on, we tried to train people to get used to that and not assume we’d rehearse. You don’t know where a song’s gonna go. It’s like surfing a wave and seeing how far you could ride it without falling off. After that, you’ll be thinking about how the song goes instead of feeling how it goes. I like Center a lot. It’s my favorite. I was living in a one-room Joshua Tree cabin in the middle of the dessert. It was the perfect element for writing – no t.v. I had my three-year old daughter on occasion. I’d drive to Venice Beach and record at Lincoln Boulevard. I was lucky to have singers Vicki Peterson and Susan Cowsill (of Continental Drifters) work fast to get the records done dirt-cheap. They nailed their five songs in 40 minutes. I let them find the melody since I didn’t have the resource to hit it with my vocals. At the last minute, we added violin to some songs.

You’ve moved away from guitar playing, choosing piano as main instrument.

I was wood shedding the last few years. In Tucson during the summer, everyone clears out. I’d find a little bar and grill where they’d have a real piano and people would show up and it became a jam. I did that a few summers.

Who are some formative influences?

I was 14 in ’72. That’s’ the year I began buying records. I didn’t have older siblings so I was left to my own devices. The cover art would impress me or I’d pick up something heard on different progressive rock stations. My favorite produced album is Sticky Fingers. Every tone, arrangement, and tape cut was perfect, especially “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’.” There’s the most precise jam on its ending. Neil Young’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Led Zeppelin IV, and Humble Pie’s Smokin’ were faves. I saw Mott The Hoople twice. I found two Todd Rundgren records from the cheap bin.

I stumbled into piano Jazz by Memphis Slim, Mc Coy Tyner, Tommy Flanagan. At 19, I stumbled into Country by David Bromberg and through an old Texas roommate, I found old Country. On piano, once I hit Thelonius Monk I knew I didn’t have to go further. With Country, it’s Jimmie Rodgers. What influenced Giant Sand most was the nature of an improvised mind, but without the talent. The attitude was there, but ability wasn’t. Giant Sand harbored the attitude of changing songs around, fucking with them to entertain ourselves; see if we could do a song as a waltz when last night it was in 4/4. But that’s not a great marketing tool.

GUIDED BY VOICES LEARN ‘ISOLATION DRILLS’

Interviews,

FOREWORD: Simply put, Bob Pollard, leading light for Guided By Voices, is the most interesting and funny interviewee you’ll ever meet. The stories he’s got are outrageously entertaining. And he exemplifies rock’s DIY lo-fi aesthetic better than anyone, releasing shitloads of albums under the GBV banner and, more recently, as a solo artist. I had dinner with Bob and his band in Little Italy during ‘01, when they were playing Bowery Ballroom in support of Isolation Drills. I’ve spoken with Pollard on several occasions. Look for ‘02s Universal Truths And Cycles and ‘03s Earthquake Glue, two worthwhile late-period GBV works, in addition to the recommendations made below. This article originally appeared in Aquarian Weekly.

Besides being a major league beer drinker, here’s a few jock-related facts you might not know about Guided By Voices mainstay Bob Pollard. First, he pitched at least one no-hitter at Wright State. Second, he was a damn fine high school basketball player. These are things you only find out hanging around his brew-guzzling crew while eating clam pizza.

A serious vinyl junkie and avid Who fan, Pollard got his big break after grunge hit big in ‘91 and lo-fi enthusiasts Lou Barlow and Liz Phair reached unprecedented underground rock heights. Currently hooked up with former Gem bandmates Doug Gillard (ex-Death Of Samantha), rhythm guitarist Nate Farley, and bassist Tim Tobias (along with newest drummer, Toronto-based Jon Mc Cann), the latest edition of GBV recently unleashed the dynamic Isolation Drills. Produced by like-minded, free spirit Rob Schnapf, Isolation Drills brings back the loose studio feel of ‘97s Mag Earwhig.

“We enjoyed working with Ric Ocasek (ex-Cars) on the last album (Do The Collapse). But he had a no drinking policy in the studio.”

Yet despite Pollard’s continual debauchery, he finally felt secure enough to share a broad spectrum of hitherto unrealized heartfelt emotions. Isolation Drills faces inner turmoil, insecurities, and joyousness head on with a deep-rooted lyrical expressiveness usually reserved for acoustic folk artists. The bright, jangly “Fair Touching,” the reflective “Twilight Campfighter,” and the schoolyard crush of “Chasing Heather Crazy” offer wonderful insight. But Pollard’s still not afraid to flaunt his playful side on “Want One?” and the punchy, Big Star-like “Glad Girls.”

The night after a packed-like-sardines Bowery Ballroom show featuring the whole new album in its entirety (plus varied faves from the recent past), I met up with Pollard and company at TVT headquarters to down some Buds and share some stories.

AW: So whatever happened with the Rolling Rock venture we spoke of a few years back?

BOB POLLARD: We were going for the endorsement. Every night drinking Rolling Rock, just living it. Which can kill you very quickly. Just to get free beer we thought Rolling Rock was an easy target. But then we played a show in Athens, Ohio, when the Rolling Rock official came. He checked us out to see if we were worthy, but we didn’t get the endorsement and I’m glad ‘cause that shit gives you the nastiest farts the next day.

How has life on the road changed since the early ‘90s?

At first I didn’t like it. It was brutal. But I grew to like all aspects of being on the road. I didn’t like going eight hours from town to town, but now I use that as a period to relax and get over hangovers and read. It makes the tour go a lot quicker.

How do you deal with multiple hangovers? Don’t you drink water before going to bed so you don’t dehydrate?

You just tough it out. If we did a show without getting drunk and wild what would the people think. It would suck. Nathan said he’d boo me! In ‘87, Mitch Mitchell (former bandmate), my brother, and me would wear our Northridge varsity jackets because it stood for our band, the Needmores. We had to drink Colt 45 and smoke Camel non-filters. I got them both hooked on smoking cigarettes and I feel bad about it. (laughter) Now, their lungs are all clogged and they gasp for breath and go, “you fucker.”

Do you ever write songs while inebriated?

I don’t write the songs drunk. I write them in the morning when I’m drinking coffee. I just want to get drunk and talk to people at night. I feel more motivated in the morning. This past year, we were gone forever and were away from the people we love. At the end of the tour, I drove from San Diego to Athens, Georgia. I got pretty introspective and started writing reflective lyrics about what was going on with us. When I wrote the songs in ‘94/ ‘95, they’d be about werewolves and witches…

And that damn “Kicker Of Elves.”

Right. I was happy and silly and hanging around kids. (editors note: Pollard was an elementary school teacher) I like to write lyrics first because it’s much easier to match the music up to the lyrics. Then the lyrics are gonna be good. If you write the melody and the music first, you have to fit lyrics to that and it’s not as good. So this became a dark record. It’s uplifting, too. I mean, it’s not Joy Division or Lou Reed. It’s still us.

So how does Isolation Drills differ from the previous album?

Ric Ocasek doesn’t drink, so we had to play sober (on Do The Collapse). But Rob is more like us so we drank and smoked. The atmosphere was more laid-back and we got better performances. I wrote about 35 or 40 songs for Do The Collapse, but there were a few good ones left off the record that we used now. These songs are stronger than the ones on Do The Collapse.What have you been listening to lately?

It took about three weeks to make 75 ninety minute cassettes – close to 150 albums – of the best albums from ‘67 to ‘70. (note: Moby Grape’s debut and early Little Feat didn’t make it)

When did you get hooked on collecting records?

My dad let me choose the twelve for a penny Columbia House albums. Then, I’d get money by any means I could. In high school, I’d skip lunch and keep the money for records. Afterwards, I’d have basketball practice and I had to survive on a pile of sliced pickles from the cafeteria. That’s how I saved up for Quadrophenia. My dad finally said, “I don’t want another god damn record coming in my house. (laughter)

Radio was cool back then. Even pussy pop songs had hooks and were only two and a half minutes. You should know about two and a half minutes, Bob!

(cracking up at that insightful wisdom) I’m gonna have to remember that one! I am the king of two-minute pop.

Now Bob’s gonna get all stuck up. (jokingly) So when are you gonna dump the current band?

Never. I love ‘em.

Now you know he’s full of shit!

I can’t imagine them doing anything to get kicked out unless they fuck up the schedule of events. Should I tell him the ‘Calvin’ story.

(10 minute tape gap before picking up a different story ‘bout Bob’s donkey-dicked high school baseball coach)

My team would tell me about it. They’d say, “you’ll see it.” He’d wait for you as you’re coming out of the shower with your little dick. He walks up to you and it just sways. (hysterical laughter)

Is that around the time you started your first band?

In ‘76, I had a heavy metal band called Anacrucis (fuck the spelling). I didn’t even know how to play guitar then. We kicked up Sabbath’s “Paranoid.” We did The Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes.” We did a bunch of Cheap Trick songs from the first album before they made it big. People thought they were our songs. We’d be driving down the street with Cheap Trick playing and the guy who owned the bar we played at would hear it and go, ‘Those guys are ripping you off!’ We did “He’s A Whore,” “Hello There,” and “Down.” As it turns out, it was important for me to get up on stage to develop confidence.

So what’s next for Guided By Voices?

More touring and more recording. I still have a lot of good leftover material. It’s all about the songs. If you don’t have good songs, it doesn’t matter how well you produce them.

HIT IN THE HEAD BY THE FUTUREHEADS

Interviews,

FOREWORD: I was sucking down some Amstel Light’s at Manhattan’s Canal Room on a weekday night when I got to meet the Futureheads, one of my favorite new bands of 2004. Leader Ross Millard was very forthright  as we chatted prior to the bands’ winning set. Afterwards, ‘06s News And Tributes could never match the energy level of the Futureheads impressive self-titled debut, but ‘08s This Is Not The World nearly did. This article originally appeared in Aquarian Weekly.

Meeting at Newcastle University as teens, Britain’s quirky Futureheads have made heady waves with their vibrantly infectious punk-carved art-pop. Trouncing irresistibly subversive chants with romping dual guitar razzle dazzle, jumbled herky-jerky rhythms, and atomic abstract dissonance, the fearlessly frolicking foursome chuck hiccuped barks, snickered barbs, and clipped utterances against a mightily saturated rumpus.

Happily mastering the thumping pogo bounce cadence ‘80s new wave funksters Devo and XTC once employed, these keen embryonic interlopers dexterously construct precision-guided high-strung aberrations while displaying a fascinating knack for sharp hooks.

Fidgety automaton opener “Le Garage” and its jittery supplement “Robot” introduce the Futureheads vital eponymous debut by brandishing hilarious deadpan merriment without getting bogged in the misanthropic silliness Devo required. Searing axe work propels the riveting, “Carnival Kids,” a blared slam jam intensified by blurted choral shouts. Inversely, radiant a cappella multi-harmonies reminiscent of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds adjoin a one-note keyboard line on the startlingly deviating exhortation “Danger Of The Water.” The fidgety “He Knows” proves contagious, borrowing XTC’s choppy palpitating vocal schematic to energize a spastic groove. Saving the best for last, ticking time bomb “Man Ray” spins mindlessly out of control as deliriously boggled voices charge forwardly askew.

At Manhattan’s quaint Canal Room, the Futureheads invade the strong sound system with frantic 6-string friction and stampeding rhythms. Stabilizing force, dark-haired guitarist-singer Ross Millard, the huskiest of the tall frontline assemblage, fills stage right with stammering riffs and ample wattage. To the left, nimble bassist Jaff flaunts dizzyingly freakish mannerisms. Standing center, blonde singer-guitarist Barry Hyde’s spurted squawks and charismatic eloquence dominate, as he thrusts gas-faced expressions at the appreciative audience while swiveling his elastic hips in time. Behind them, Barry’s flop-topped brother, drummer Dave Hyde, drips sweat on to his bashed skins. Television Personality’s “Dorian Gray” received a smacked-up rendering but the crowd was clearly most ecstatic over obvious highlight, the peppy “Decent Days And Nights.” For their rumbling encore, non-conformist ‘eat shit’ percolator “Stupid & Shallow,” cynically dedicated to George W. Bush, sufficed as a post-election day blues ruse.

Take me back to the Futureheads first release, “Nul Book Standard.”

ROSS MILLARD: That was a 4-song EP. Two tracks, “Robot” and “First Day” were re-recorded for the album. The other two tracks were kicking around from the earlier days but we don’t do them live anymore. It was recorded in our rehearsal space. It didn’t cost anything to make. We just botched it up, but a guy from Rough Trade Records in London asked if we wanted to be the first release on his self-made bedroom label. So he pressed up a bunch of singles that collided quite nicely with our first tour of Hamburg squat clubs a couple summer’s back. For our first tour we had the double whammy of being on the road for the first time and having this seven-inch record to sell. That was our first experience getting press.

What was it like growing up in Sunderland?

It’s a quiet place. England’s the sort of country where London’s a busy place and the media industry and record labels are all over. That’s where bands go to play their big showcase gigs. The further North you get, the more it becomes raw industry. Where we’re from it used to be shit buildings and coal mines, all those traditional British manufacturing based jobs. As those industries collapsed in the ‘80s, it left a lot of unemployed people. In certain areas, people are still feeling the effect. It’s more car manufacturing now. It’s not a happening place. It’s bleak, not that our area was particularly bad. That’s the way it is all up there – barren. When I was growing up, there wasn’t much to get into except music. I discovered some cool bands when I was real young. I chose to learn to play guitar. Where I went to high school, I couldn’t meet any people interested in forming a band. So I picked up the guitar as something to do with my time after a day at school. By the time I went to college, I met people in a similar position. We gravitated towards a youth project in the center of town aimed at putting kids in different areas together to encourage collaboration. It was a great thing, like a government initiative project. If it hadn’t been for that, we wouldn’t have met and there’d be no Futureheads.

I was studying while the three others were working jobs. We slowly put together some songs but didn’t even consider ourselves a proper functioning band until we came back from the German tour. Before that, we played only in our hometown. It was quite a dramatic change. But at that time we decided to ditch the day jobs and give music our full attention, even if we were gonna be on a DIY scale booking our own tours to raise money to make our own records.

What bands influenced you while growing up?

The first band I got into that I really loved was REM, just before Out Of Time came out, when “The One I Love” was on the radio so much when I was eight. That band got me into indie music. As I got older, it’s all the Brit-pop like Blur. That inspired a lot of people to play guitar and give it a go. It seemed so easy. You hear the same four chords in every Oasis song so everyone thinks they can write songs. Looking back, I don’t appreciate Oasis as much, but that was still an important time to get into rock.

Oasis proved emotionally compelling harmonies and great melodies still had a place on Top 40 radio amongst kiddie MOR crap and hip-hop.

The first song we did, for six months in the band, we practiced it, shouting over guitars. It wasn’t that developed in the beginning. But the more you play, you just slip into feeling it a bit more and you can all of a sudden sing in tune and it becomes more natural. Sometimes someone will come in and shout something we could use or someone else will ad lib lines. That’s the most fun of it. Live, we want it to be like watching tennis, where your eyes are all over the place. You won’t focus on one particular person. For a long time, the only thing we had was the live show. We wanted to get better at getting songs down.

I remember seeing Mercury Rev on the Deserter’s Song tour when I was 17. I was excited. I’d never seen them before. You go, and the songs are amazing and the album’s fantastic, but they played slightly too long. You start looking at your watch, thinking ‘that’s not what we want happening at our shows.’ There’s a huge sense of disappointment. It’s much better having people wanting more. Then again, most of our songs last only a minute and a half. (guarded laughter)

How are the new songs your working on coming along?

Maybe we’ll make them a little less cluttered. We want to strike a good balance.

LANGHORNE SLIM’S ON THE BRIM

Interviews

Image result for langhorne slim

FOREWORD: For a couple weeks there in the summer of ’05, I became friendly with mod folk rascal, Langhorne Slim. I caught a few shows (one with my college bud, Jeff), quaffed a few brews, and took some quotes on the run. His self-titled ’08 album is nearly as good as ’05 long-play debut, When the Sun’s Come Down. This article originally appeared in Aquarian Weekly.

Tackling interpretive folk and talkin’ blues in a dignified roots-y rock manner, young buck Langhorne Slim proves a simple song goes a long way. Taking his adopted first name from the rural Pennsylvania town he departed following high school, the sprightly Slim (a.k.a. Sean Scolnick) feels perfectly at home composing scanty hobo lullaby’s, convivial old timey treatises, and assiduously finger picked hillbilly hoe-downs.

Drawing a passing resemblance to soulful Philly peer Amos Lee, the adroit Slim delivers post-adolescent confessionals in a slightly nasal tone prudently located to the right of strangely scraggly baritone grumbler Tom Waits and wild West Virginian warbling weirdo Hasil Adkins.Leaving the agrarian farmlands of Bucks County to attend SUNY-Purchase in Westchester, Slim then moved to Jersey City and Brooklyn before settling in New York’s Chinatown district with his girlfriend.

Brought up by his mother and grandparents, he discovered theatrical soundtracks, Jazz, and Barbra Striesand as a child. On Sundays, his divorced father would visit, exposing him to Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones.

“I’ve seen Richie Havens live more than any other performer. Last time I saw him, he played a haunted Pennsylvania hotel. His hands are enormous. Because he didn’t break any strings banging away I asked what kind he used. He said, ‘D’Addario,’ so I’ve used them ever since. But I break them all the time. In fact, when Havens was at Woodstock, he broke a bunch during “Freedom.” He plays in such a rhythmic way,” Slim instructs. “As for Doc Watson, he’s maybe my favorite guitarist. I find comparisons to him to be huge compliments. Tonight, someone said early Dylan. However, that’s probably only because he played acoustic guitar and took inspiration from the same American folk roots music.”

“My grandfather taught me about Lionel Hampton and I was doing community theatre – Guys & Dolls and famous ancient plays – but I was never any good at being directed, so I decided to make my own kind of show,” Slim shares. “At thirteen, I picked up a guitar and began writing.”

After college, Slim made minimalist self-released home recording, Slim Picken’s, with friend Charles Butler on banjo. Soon, indie label Narnack signed him for the introductory Electric Love Letter EP, a less laid-back, more festive, yet hastily assembled project that gained the attention of neo-traditionalists and anti-folk contemporaries alike. Slim’s eyes light up when compared to interpretive post-Dylan strummer Richie Havens and bluegrass icon Doc Watson.

Onstage at quaint NoHo Manhattan club, Joe’s Pub, his unwavering confidence, facetious wit, and quickly quipped asides kept the seated audience captive. Allowing for some minor eccentricities, pork pie-hatted Slim donned an ash-colored velour shirt while quivering through melodramatic sad songs, keeping tongue firmly in cheek during several impish curiosities.

Slim’s cracked bari-tenor, expressive if not rangy, brought a delicate chill to poignant allusions and a relaxed playful demeanor to milder sentiments. Prancing across the stage strumming fast jangled chords, he had the sanguine saunter of a salty troubadour, spitting exasperated verbiage and relating silly anecdotes when not busy fronting the bare-bone rhythm section (bassist Paul De Figlio and drummer Malachi De Lorenzo). He put on the gas face or wore a goofy smirk to squeeze more passion out of each whimsical piece.

A week later at Maxwells in Hoboken opening for Crooked Fingers (ex-Archers Of Loaf guitarist Eric Bachmann’s pensive solo venture), the skinny Semite, dressed down in guinea-t and casual gray slacks sans band, attempted fewer new songs, unleashing a short itinerary of older material. Adding rambling interjections and funny narratives to keep his repertoire fresh, Slim tries to never play originals the same way twice, much like mighty icon Bob Dylan. Yet Slim admits he could listen to AOR standards such as The Who’s Baba O’Riley (“teenage wasteland”) every day without hesitation. Plus, he gives respect to another well-known ‘60s Brit-rock crew, the Kinks, whose “Waterloo Sunset,” he adores.

“I think the Kinks deserve more credit. Ray Davies is the man, but I think he pissed off a lot of people.” Slim grins then remarks, “I was humming “Happy Jack” after hearing it on a television commercial and actually met someone claiming he didn’t like The Who. Who the fuck wouldn’t enjoy The Who?!!”

But despite his admiration for revolutionary post-Beatles archetypes, truth is, Slim’s Narnack Records long-play debut, When The Sun’s Gone Down, is indubitably informed by traditional Country blues, rustic bluegrass, and Dust Bowl era ballads instead of any weightier classic rock impetus.

Spindly acoustic and expeditious banjo linger above bustling percussive beats on urgent love-struck opener “In The Midnight,” breezy affectionate gush “The Electric Love Letter,” and hokum organ-splashed hootenanny “Set Em Up.” Chiming pedal steel-aided adoration “Mary” and shuffling fiddle-ensconced “Loretta Lee Jones” maintain mint-y freshness. The latter recalls Buddy Holly’s zippier rocking snapshots while retaining a concise folk-y resonation.

Though oft-times lyrically obsessed with solitude, as per abrupt harmonica-fuzzed chant “And If It’s True” (‘I was alone but not lonely’), brusque lo-fi scruff “Drowning” (‘I’d kill to be alone’), and the scratchy tear-stained drifter’s lament “I Ain’t Proud,” he downplays any significant underlying defeatist attitude with restrained jocularity.

“I’ve been in a few relationships so I sing about the painful aspects, which is easier than sharing the happy parts,” he advises.

Akin to its humble back porch serenity, the sumptuously bucolic When The Sun’s Gone Down artwork appropriates suitably modest black and white dusky photographs.

Slim asserts, “The front cover features my friend Mike’s Jersey house. The back shot is from the house I grew up in. Inside, there’s a puzzle of the world’s strongest man, Louis Cyr, which my father, an amateur body builder, left in the basement when my parents split, along with the sailfish on the paneled wall.”

Nevertheless, when all is said and done, it is Slim’s pliable perspicacity of every man’s joyous wonders and, conversely, isolationistic defeats that seep deeply into the mind. And when an existing arrangement needs color splashed on for a cheerier mood swing, Slim goes and fetches accordionist Brendan Ryan to perk up verbose assurance, “Hope And Fulfillment.” In summary, he brings a greatened noble sense of integrity to a bygone generation’s most fertile ideals, whether ceding down and out allegories or rendering snugly devotional keepsakes.

DUNGEN VAUNTS TWO NORDIC PSYCH-GARAGE FREAKS

Interviews
FOREWORD: Dungen have to be one of the most inventive bands to come down the pike in recent years. I interviewed dexterous guitarist Reine Fiske just before ’05s Ta Det Lugnt took hold underground. I’ve also included a High Times review I did for ’07s incredibly awesome Tio Bitar – which received a four hemp leaf rating, as you’ll see below.  This article originally appeared in Aquarian Weekly. The brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Gustav Ejstes, Nordic combo Dungen (pronounced doon-yen) came into existence in its earliest version as a one-man band aided by several eager school pals. A farm-raised southern Sweden villager, Ejstes studied with accomplished local fiddler Jonny Soling, a significant mentor and role model.

After meeting ambitious lead guitarist, Reine Fiske, at folk school, the stage was set for Dungen to develop into one of the most meaningful experimental bands’ now cavorting through the universal nightclub scene. Originally, Dungen fooled around with different chord structures, exploring the catalog of Jimi Hendrix Experience at intervals, deftly attempting to figure out the dexterous psychedelicized fretwork as well as Mitch Mitchell’s thunderous drumming in a dank, dusky basement.

“I was forced to play guitar in music school,” the fleet fingered Fiske recalls. “Sweden used to have a scheme where if you’d pick up an instrument and join a band the government would pay.” But he promptly confesses, “Ultimately, it’s all in your system. I’ve been programmed with so many things. I don’t consider myself a very blues-y guitar player. I’m more into melodies. You always indirectly borrow ideas from people, but in the end, they’re your own.”

Dungen’s limited edition fuzzed-out ’01 self-titled vinyl debut sold out its initial 500 copies, and along with their more cohesive second album, Stadsvandringar (described as ‘a promenade with observations on city summer life’), has been re-released on CD with unreleased material added, creating quite a stir amongst well-informed subterraneous residents. Could fame on par with fellow Scandinavians the Hives, or at least Sahara Hotnights, be far off?

Fiske may laugh at the thought, but he offers, “I’ve been into Swedish underground music forever. The first incarnation of International Harvester (whose feral fusion of raga, folk, jazz, and nature sounds coalesced best on ‘68s dependable Sov Gott Rose-Marie) played complex, haunting drone-rock with tribal beats. They were a very big cult band in a more free form improvised genre.”

Though denying any first-hand prog-rock influences, Fiske admits to having early Yes albums in his collection, albeit not the late-‘70s symphonic investigations of Tales of Topographic Oceans. He finds beauty in some of it, but has otherwise “grown tired of it.”

Yet the self-assured young maverick does touch upon some enthrallingly proggish inclinations, as he noodles around abstrusely, moving through wacky offbeat dementia and outrageously fanciful excursions in increasingly intriguing ways. Gratefully, notwithstanding the fascinating tripped out hi-jinx daubing a few clever suites, ‘05 breakout, Ta Det Lugnt, finds Dungen remaining surprisingly affective constructing euphonious hook lines and subordinate symphonic orchestral grandeur; mutating cosmic styles while astonishingly singing in their native tongue instead of commonplace English. Piercing trebly guitars reach punk-metal pandemonium during unexpected intervals, subverting several protracted decorous extravaganzas with spacey electronic manipulation any old school King Crimson fan would recognize. However, at the core of these galactic expansions lie the hearts and minds of true garage-rock freak’s resourcefully handling primal studio gadgetry and primary tools (guitar-drum-bass).

“It was cut together as a montage. We worked real hard on it. Certain movements are spontaneous. The jams blend together,” declares Fiske. “The last song, “Sluta Folja Eiter,” has Gustav on all the drums during a heavy night. We were just drunk, had a good time, and were loose. I put the guitar notes down and it was crazy. Nothing but the basic track was planned.”

Even if, as Ejstes claims, Ta Det Lugnt was made in the midst of an angry drunken stoner hangover, its nervous tension allows room for multitudinous spiffy pop embellishments. Unconventionally beginning with a nifty swing-styled drum solo, the upwardly mobile sorcery of “Panda” imbues a similar celebratory European harmoniousness ‘60s legends, the Monks, once exposed. Perhaps another hazy reminder of a long-lost psychedelic-crazed Sixties relic, the echoed vocals and six-string sustenance fortifying the congenial “Gjort Bort Sig” reference The Creation, aiming at the frazzled skull before heading straight to the stratosphere. Folk-acoustic spiral “Festival” then settles into the semi-aquatic neo-orchestral glaze of emotional ballad “Du E For Fin For Mig” (where Fiske’s fiery guitar coda seemingly mingles Hendrix distortion techniques with dazzling Frank Zappa-sponsored fluidity). And the soothing “Lipsill” slips into voyaging lounge-y ambiance better than the velvety piano-strolled morsel “Det Du Tanker Ideg Ar Du I Morgon.”

“There’s always a kernel of hook-y melodies – something to grab onto,” Fiske shares. “When I listen to the record, I get very connected to the way the record turned out. The mixture of songs is interesting. There are all kinds of moods that go lots of places you couldn’t imagine. New things are happening all the time.”

Even while rejecting the notion that the mid-section of barreling sashay “Bortglomd” touches upon some swiftly stroked riffs drawn from The Who’s Quadrophenia, Fiske does unequivocally acknowledge their windmill-armed axe master.

“Pete Townshend was important for me as an angry teen not knowing what to do. But I wasn’t thinking about them. Instead, the inspiration comes from certain (established) Swedish bands. The drum patterns were from a jam.” He continues, “We function well together in a recording situation. I’m handy in the studio. Live, to some extent, we’ll break into jams. There are times we head off in any direction.”

Dungen have been recording some new ideas, but no particular songs have been finished yet. Will Fiske risk the venture into solo artist territory in the near future?

“I’m not a song man. But it’d be nice to get together with people I love and have he same attitude towards playing. I’d definitely want good people,” he avows.

Best of all, Dungen has already caught on here in the States thanks to a recent spate of nationwide club dates. At Maxwells in Hoboken this September, Fiske, whose frizzy shoulder length blonde locks covered his bespectacled face, displayed technical proficiency way beyond his twentysomething years. Curly-haired Ejstes, meanwhile, did yeoman’s work adding rhythm guitar segments, manipulating keys, shakin’ tambourine, providing decorative tidbits, and taking on lead vocal chores. Bassist Mattias Gustavsson held the fort as athletic drummer Fredrik Bjorling proved to be mightily sufficient banging out engrossing rhythms and perplexingly distended fragments. Mars Volta’s fabulous protracted jaunts came to mind as well as Soft Machine’s strenuous Jazz-informed free form meanderings (especially on spectral flute-interspersed epic “Om Du Vore En Vakthund”). Only a little blurry over-modulated distortion during the dramatic harmonic refrain of “Panda” marred the otherwise magnanimous set.

Fiske concludes, “We did two weeks in America in July. We basically sold out the smaller venues. We got good press, too. It’s almost odd how we got that kind of exposure.”

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DUNGENTio Bitar(Kemado Records)

4 hemp leafs

Reclusive studio rat Gustav Ejstes may shun interviews and appear shy onstage (despite the beautiful noisy racket he creates), but the industrious multi-instrumentalist cannot be denied his place amongst the top modern rock surrealists. Masterminding Swedish combo Dungen (pronounced doon-yen) with a little help from fellow Nordic hotshot guitarist Reine Fiske (and an equally compelling touring unit), they blend myriad textural elements into a heady brew of kaleidoscopic psychedelia.

Coming off dazzlingly cosmic ’05 U.S. debut, Ta Det Lugnt (recorded in the wintry daze of what Fiske described as “an angry drunken stoner hangover”), Dungen’s latest resplendent offering, Tio Bitar, reaches a tantalizingly melodic pinnacle without sacrificing abrasive metal-edged angularity. Conveniently holding heavy-handed proggish tendencies in check, Dungen allow piercing sonic feedback, Goth keyboard drones, jazz-fusion percussive milieu, illustrious acoustic-violin tranquility, and fluttery flute nuances to paint a rich canvas of contrasting dark and bright hues.

Indirectly informed by Classical Swedish folk and singing in his native tongue, Ejstes may make music mag headlines for devising astoundingly complex arrangements, but it’s ultimately his majestic emotional linguistics that seal the deal. On autumnal piano-plinked climax, “Svart Ar Himlen,” Ejstes’ warmly mesmerized lyricism rings out clearly, conveying a universal message way beyond restrictive cultural boundaries. Moreover, during the siren “Intro” and then elsewhere in Tio Bitar’s blissful narcotic midst, Fiske lets his freak flag fly, showing off a full-on Jimi Hendrix compulsion by scattering a blurry cavalcade of sustained riffs, gruff turbulence, and jagged distortion into the most far-out abstractions. In summary, it’s a hip opiate-encrypted trip picked to grip the underground nation.

-John Fortunato

CINCY’S GREENHORNES CONQUER & DIVIDE

Interviews,

FOREWORD: I did this ’05 interview just before Greenhornes bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler provided rhythm for Loretta Lynn’s Van Leer Rose comeback. Her producer, White Stripes guitarist Jack White, had recommended them. Afterwards, White, Lawrence, Keeler, and indie pop sensation Brendan Benson formed the Raconteurs and gained further endorsements. Following a decent ’05 album, Sewed Soles, the Greenhornes parted ways with guitarist Craig Fox and may be in limbo (possibly due to Lawrence-Keeler’s busy session work schedule)

Liberated by the idea to create original music while shrewdly cognizant of the predetermined mandate forcing exceptional artists to reckon with scanty left of the dial airplay as compliant pabulum-puking mainstream vipers saturate commercial radio, many disparate independent-minded neophytes still continually seek such limited, yet reassuringly meritorious, exposure. One of the best purveyors of energetic ‘60s-related garage rock, alongside Mooney Suzuki, Reigning Sound, Von Bondies, and the Dirtbombs, Cincinnati-based combo, the Greenhornes, got together some time in ’96 under similarly confounding circumstances. But thankfully, as lissome bands such as the Hives and Franz Ferdinand break beyond the constrictive boundaries of leveraged college stations and make waves on satellite radio and MTV2, numerous lesser-known talents may have larger access to broad-based audiences.

In ’99, the Greenhornes debut, Gun For You, gave the gritty combo early exposure with its raw, stripped down barroom stomps. Soon, Telstar Records, a terrific Hoboken boutique label with a solid reputation (run by Maxwells’ booking agent/ supervisor Todd Abramson), signed the youthful lads. But it wasn’t the Seeds, Vagrants, Castaways, Count Five, or any specific Nuggets–related ‘60s artist that got drummer Patrick Keeler into rock’s archaic cellar-bound minimalism, but instead, heavy metal thunder.

“The first concert I saw was Deep Purple,” the reticent timekeeper from St. Leon, Indiana, “twenty minutes outside of Cincinnati,” recalls. “That made me want to get into music. My parents had lots of records and my dad’s brother was a drummer. That started it. I took music lessons early on.”

Guitarist Craig Fox’s scrappy blue collar testifying, soulful moans, and dungy riffs linger above a tousled clump of viscous beat-driven tension that’d define sundry singles and future full-length endeavors. Keeler and bassist Jack Lawrence got so much respect from fellow musical buddies they were able to make the rounds accompanying some major players, including White Stripes front man Jack White, who then introduced them to Country icon, Loretta Lynn.

Comparisons to post-Beatles touchstones the Sonics and Thirteenth Floor Elevators notwithstanding, the Greenhornes initial self-titled ’00 Telstar entrée caught on nationally in club land, led by the brilliant primal rock authenticity of exhilarating opener “Can’t Stand It.” Evoking the Animals R & B groove on “Shadow Of Grief,” and the Doors cryptic dirges as well on “Stay Away Girl,” the formative coterie, then a quintet, also delivered a blistering rendition of Spencer Davis Group’s “High Time Baby,” arguably the set’s rousing highlight. Yet despite its crude exuberance, the balance of the album doesn’t maintain the same anxiety level or retain the sweaty excitement their thrilling live shows do.

On the other hand, ‘02s magnificent Dual Mono never lets up. Lawrence’s greatest compositional contribution yet, the stimulating honky tonk anthem “Satisfy My Mind,” chugs along with a definite sense of purpose. The Greenhornes show unwavering conviction herein, successfully experimenting with increased electronic manipulation and lots of vocal reverb. Interestingly, the jet-propulsive lock-grooved instrumental “Pigtails And Kneesocks” rejoices in its Yardbirds-circa-’66 twin guitar rancor.

Providing unexpectedly poignant contrast, Brit vamp Holly Golightly croons like Peggy Lee atop the haunting Rickenbacker-like slither of “There Is An End,” a nifty Lee Hazelwood inspired spaghetti Western knockoff. Though organist Jared Mc Kinney is gone and rhythm guitarist Eric Stein replaced Brian Olive, the Greenhornes preserve the archetypal rudimentary retro-rock resonance that incipiently made them semi-famous. Once more, former Afghan Whigs bassist John Curley handled production chores. Before long, Olive left and the Greenhornes carried on as a basic trio.

“We’re now working as a three-piece, so the sound itself has changed because of that amongst all the production,” Keeler insists. “There was different space in between the instruments. Everything breathes a little more and you play differently to accommodate that space and lack of rhythm guitar or organ not being there full time.”

For eclectic ’05 5-song EP, East Grand Blues, the Greenhornes recruited Detroit chum, solo artist Brendan Benson, to supervise production on a few admirable deviancies. Some of Fox’s darkest, most vulnerable lyrics secure “Shelter Of Your Arms,” a contemplative Spaghetti Western brood reminiscent of Lee Hazelwood. Whereas a spooky understated vibe imbibes “At Night” and a voodoo gypsy spell mystifies the flute-embellished “Shine Like The Sun,” the all-out psych-garage slammer “Pattern Skies” will please previously entrenched fans. A laid-back Byrds-like Country-rock reticence conquers “I’m Going Away.”

“I think the songs flow together well. It started as a full length but Brendan got busy when it was ready to come out,” Keeler explains.” We didn’t know what we were gonna do with the songs, but then we were asked to do this White Stripes tour. So we put it out to get some exposure. We liked the way it sounded so it felt right.”

Furthermore, on her Jack White-produced comeback, Van Lear Rose, Keeler and Lawrence became the rhythm section for Loretta Lynn, a dormant former C & W idol unjustly ignored in recent years. Though showing true restraint on Lynn’s delicate balladic weepers and the traditional sunny Appalachian chant, “High On A Mountain Top,” the pair also got to rock out a tad on Lynn/ White’s demure roadhouse duet, “Portland, Oregon” and the stop-start slide guitar-saddled “Have Mercy.”

Keeler shares, “It was amazing working with her. The call came from Jack White for us to come down to Nashville. It was a surprise – a good one at that. She was so nice and writes great songs. She had worked with some real experienced people. It was an honor and kind of nerve wracking. But she made us feel comfortable. She’s just amazing to watch.”

Now comes word that Keeler and Lawrence will support Jack White and Brendan Benson on a forthcoming collaborative album being credited to the Raconteurs. Keeler agrees the new tunes will mix the White Stripes blues-y scrum, Benson’s pop smarts, and the Greenhornes own scruffy garage influences.

“It’s coming along good. Our touring schedules are busy, so we’re just trying to find time to get together. Brendan and Jack are co-writing the songs, Keeler quips.

On top of all these current activities, the puissant twosome may record with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs trash-fashioned punk-chic singer Karen O.

“We talked about some stuff. We’re not sure exactly what we’re gonna do,” Keeler laughs. “It’s speculation and rumor right now. But I hope it works out.”

Fox, meanwhile, has been occupied composing new Greenhornes tunes while the rhythm section toils in divergent outside projects. Hopefully, they’ll work with Benson again, perhaps with confidante John Curly engineering, in the more familiar surroundings of Ultrasuede Studio. In the meantime, they’re trying out new songs on the road.

“We’ve done ten shows so far with the White Stripes. They’ve been great. We just did Denver’s Red Rocks. We got our first warm up standing ovation,” Keeler proudly declares. “Watching Jack and Meg out there is like experiencing organized chaos. Brendan came out one night to back them in L.A. But they’ve really got it down as a duo.”

In conclusion, he says, “Our goal is to make a record we want to listen to again and again. Songs come different ways. Craig plays with his 4-track and jams around during down time. At practice, songs could come in any direction. We might even play Ren & Stempy-like Jazz.”

DIALS GYRATE THROUGH ‘FLEX TIME’ DESPITE TRAGIC EPISODE

Interviews,

FOREWORD: It happens all too much. A band on the rise loses a member or more due to an automobile (or plane) accident. Chi-town’s Dials suffered that sad fate just as they were making musical progress. Nevertheless, they soldiered on, releasing ‘05s sturdy Flex Time and, after this interview, capricious ’09 follow-up, Amoeba Amore. This article originally appeared in Aquarian Weekly.

In the late ‘90s, up and coming Florida band, For Squirrels, were about to shake up the underground when a horrifying overturned van accident killed singer Jack Vigliatori and bassist Bill White. Suffering through similarly grim circumstances, The Dials lost their energetic drummer, Doug Meis (as well as singer-bassist-guitarist Rebecca Crawford’s husband, John Glick, and Silkworm percussionist Michael Dahlquist), in a grievous crash caused by a suicidal motorist. Despite that terrible episode, The Dials chose to carry on with several local friends picking up drum chores part-time.

“We’re gonna continue to play shows because that’s what Doug would’ve wanted us to do,” the prematurely widowed Crawford avows.

Obsessed with music while growing up in rural Illinois, Crawford was a vinyl junkie who’d lock her bedroom door and go wild listening to new wave and kitsch-y ‘60s girl groups, two stylistic influences now informing her femme-fronted band.

“I like catchy music ranging from the Go-Go’s to Joy Division. I was a teenager in the ‘80s and worked at a record store during college, when all that post-punk and power pop was around,” she declares.

Now residing in the Logan Square section of Chicago, west of the Wicker Park scene that produced ‘90s lynchpins Liz Phair, Smashing Pumpkins, and Urge Overkill, where “there’s cheaper rent,” Crawford met Miami-bred guitarist Patti Gran through a Chicago Reader ad. The duo settled on a lineup rounded out by Meis and Emily Dennison following the departure of several previous drummers and keyboardists.

But just as the foursome began to really click, tragedy struck on July 14th after the recording of breakthrough ’05 full-length showcase, Flex Time (Latest Flame Records), was finished. An earlier EP, Sick Times, done with a former drummer, featured six songs that grew into fruition and got redone for their sterling debut.

Crawford explains, “We wanted a chance to re-record those demo-like tracks and rescue them as we came into our own. They sport a few different lyrics and had minor structural changes. Greg Norman worked at (famed grunge producer) Steve Albini’s studio and now has his own basement studio that had a handy laid-back atmosphere and was less expensive. He’s a friend of Patti’s as well. It was just good timing.”

Capturing the attention of fresh fans with exciting gigs cross-country, The Dials feed off each other’s charismatic energy, building to a frothy head of steam by keeping the bustling rhythm strong and the zesty melodies intense. But the impulse to rock out in front of an eager audience has been there for Crawford since she was in an unheralded, but respectable, Wisconsin band. Starting her career with Meis in unheralded Madison, Wisconsin band, the puta-pons, “a more eclectic unit with lots of punk-ish Slits staccatos and artsy Devo mannerisms,” Crawford soon became very confident in the role of front person.

On Flex Time, The Dials create fast, efficient, multi-harmonized adolescent punk that vivaciously veers towards enthusiastically sleazy teenybopper pop. Rubbery bass threads through bouncy organ shuffles undercoating the fidgety “Stuck Inside,” meshing alarming Sleater-Kinney-like high-pitched vocal yelps with the same teen dream alacrity new wave drama queens Josie Cotton, Missing Persons, and the Waitresses once brought forth. Dennison’s frolicsome Farfisa drives the electronic space age whirl “Do You Want Me” as well as the snazzy Ramones-fashioned ditty “Bye Bye Bye Bye Baby.” Jittery jingle, “Phone Line,” may be the best phone-related tune since Blondie’s urgent “Hangin’ On The Telephone.” Lamentably ironic, the hyperactive organ-shuttered opener bears the title, “Dead Beat.” Though wholly insouciant, its lyrics eerily ponder ‘where do we go from here?’ In defiance, the only thing the remaining Dials knew how to do was to keep on keepin’ on in the best tradition of fatality-stung rockers.

“We’ve got a few songs ready for the next album. One’s a herky-jerky thing. Another’s more melodic yet steeped in the ‘80s groove – our own brand of that.” Crawford continues, “Patti’s more metal influenced, but brings a surf-y guitar sound forward since one of her favorite bands is the Beach Boys. Emily is a Clasically-trained pianist whose interests are all over the board. She likes (Chi-town pop eccentric) Bobby Conn. We’ve discovered our sound, but some of it may depend on who our next drummer becomes. The songwriting remains collaborative. We wanna continue to make catchy, fun rock and roll songs. I love the Valley Girl soundtrack.”

“AMERICAN BEER” – JERSEY BOYS MAKE GOOD SUCKING DOWN SUDS

Interviews, , ,

Image result for PAUL KERMIZIAN

AMERICAN BEER TRAVELOGUE

Taking a 12,000-mile expedition cross-country to sample some of the USA’s best brewers, director Paul Kermizian and crew assembled the interestingly educational low-budget travelogue, American Beer. Since then, I’ve befriended Kermizian and his trekking buddy Jeremy Goldberg, telling them how I’ve got an upcoming website reviewing thousands of bottled-canned beers and dozens of brewpubs. The brew-some twosome later attended a High Times softball game to drink some Canadian beers I found on a Niagara Falls family trip. Pre-Thanksgiving ’07, I visited Kermizian at his arcade-fueled Brooklyn-based watering hole, Barcade, with renowned Ipswich brewer, James Dorau. Meanwhile, Goldberg’s busy making fine beers under the name Cape Ann Brewery up in Massachusetts. The rest is history.

AMERICAN BEER

Leaving behind his production management day job for an informative 40-day excursion across the United States sampling sundry beers and ales, New Jersey native Paul Kermizian sought to enlighten and entertain the ever-growing population of cultivated brew-hounds with his own ‘bockumentary,’ American Beer. Traveling to 38 intercontinental microbreweries and brewpubs over 40 days, Kermizian, Somerset-based Rutgers Prep buddy, Jeremy Goldberg, and three other brave souls, headed for the road in June 2002. Released on DVD by respected small label, Narnack Records, in 2005, Kermizian edited the 100-minute film piecemeal over 18 months from approximately 200 hours of footage, spending $25,000 plus post-production cost.

“We were running on $600 a day, did a year of film festivals, got a great response, and even made a collector’s edition for real beer geeks with one-and-a-half hours of additional scenes and brewery interviews,” Kermizian offers.

A huge beer drinker with a skinny frame, the recently married Brooklynite first directed 2000’s wild narrative adventure, Calling Bobcat, hooking up with Goldberg, Syracuse University film school chum Jon Miller (photographer), Robert Purvis (Miller’s soundman), and Richard Sterling (Kermizian’s former History Channel associate) for American Beer thereafter. Nowadays, he runs Barcade, a Williamsburg pub featuring only handcrafted American beers on 24 taps (plus one revolving cask conditioned brew).

“The ultimate goal was to take a snapshot of the craft beer industry,” Kermizian avows. “At the same time, we wanted to turn people on to craft beers. We didn’t want to be too technical, but we had to find common ground (between connoisseurs and amateurs). Experienced drinkers wanted more about brewing processes while casual observers thought there wasn’t enough road trip scenes.”

Seeming like a great way to convey the state of independent-minded brewing, the quaffing quintet’s drunken journey began at hometown fave, Brooklyn Brewery, going north to Harpoon Brewery (Massachusetts), Mc Neill’s and Magic Hat (Vermont), and eventually heading through mid-America’s heartland to the West Coast, and finally, New Orleans. Though the guys got along well, living in close quarters at mostly cheap hotels caused “waves of hatred.”

“Doing laundry and figuring out where to eat were sometimes problems. But we’d just turn the camera on and get as drunk as we wanted,” Kermizian suffices. “We got pulled over in Massachusetts early on, but tried to be careful. Luckily, we didn’t get into trouble. A car sponsorship was sought, but drinking cross-country didn’t sit well with the auto business.”

One eye-opening scene at California’s North Coast Brewery revealed former ‘70s president Jimmy Carter as the man behind legalizing home brewing, leading to the microbrew revolution headed by Samuel Adams Brewery.

“Carter’s brother, Billy, probably had a great influence on that decision. I’ve seen unopened cans of his Billy Beer for sale. But they’d taste rather skunk-y at this point,” Kermizian chuckles.

Though they could only sojourn to select breweries in such a limited timeframe, some of Kermizian’s preferred beers came from Mc Neill’s (Imperial Stout), Dogfish Head, Hale’s, Hair Of The Dog, and, my premier selection, Rogue.

“We sat down with (Rogue head brewer) John Maier and had a lengthy tasting go on forever. He was a good sport. We drank all night and they put us up at a suite above the bar. The seals in the bay woke us up in the morning,” he says. “The most inspiring breweries to visit were small operations, where it’s like a guy in a garage set up, such as Jersey’s own Climax Brewery. Those guys are basically home brewers.”

Being from the New York vicinity, Kermizian’s annoyed that the anti-corporate attitude amongst civilians hasn’t carried over to the beer market, where better, more interesting beers get shunned for macrobrewed drivel. Instead of supporting local brewers with a regional flavor, the misguided proletariat continues consuming substandard piss water.

“There are beer styles people don’t realize exist (lambic/weiss/porter/stout). They’re drinking shit. There are more possibilities (whiskey, oak, or cedar-barreled) with beer brewing than wine making. There are fruity Belgian beers to suit wine lovers. We tried to educate as many people as possible to show options beyond Coors, Bud, and Miller.” He adds, “Many brewers expressed the ideal situation being working at a brewpub without worrying about bottling. They’d serve satisfied customers with fresh liquid daily.”

THE GOLDBERG AFFECT

During my High Times softball game mid-August, Goldberg met Kermizain and I at Central Park to imbibe a few Wellington beers I’d just brought in Niagara Falls after touring Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Finger Lakes brewpubs along the way. Goldberg, a University of Miami economics major and former Wall Street bond trader, left the financial world to do American Beer, opening Cape Ann Brewing Company in northern Massachusetts recently. He was possibly the heartiest partygoer of American Beer’s unkempt bunch.

“In the movie, the guys bust my balls for wanting to start a distribution company. Then, my brother-in-law had a warehouse I looked at and I saw some brewing equipment on EBay. I wanted to brew in a viable community. So along with my fathers’ financial help, I opened a place in Gloucester,” Goldberg submits.

Along the Atlantic coastline, Cape Ann now bottles the “nicely caramel, hoppy finishing” Fisherman’s Brew, an American amber lager. By the end of October, “a nutmeg-cinnamon-molasses” flavored Winter Double Bock will be available. An admitted gin lover (“Tanqueray 10″), he was happy to find San Francisco’s Anchor Steam Brewery now dabbling in the juniper berry-spiced liquor. His favorite breweries attended included Hale’s, Anderson Valley, Dogfish Head, and one fabulous Michigan mainstay, Kalamazoo Brewery.

“Larry Bell (proprietor of Kalamazoo) got us intoxicated. He said he’d go out for one beer. But one beer turned into a few. Everyone wore funky hats in Bell’s brewpub.” He forewarns, “Afterwards, we went to a nearby bar. We were so hammered we walked back to the hotel room. Then you find me sleeping in the van with a blanket over my head the next day.”

Goldberg, who put on ten pounds during the first twelve days of travel, was a super trooper, never turning down a beer.

“My goal was to try all the good beers on the trip. I had one bad night laying on top of the toilet bowl. That was in Kalamazoo,” he reiterates before soberly stating, “Strangely, halfway through the trip you forget places you’ve been.”

In conclusion, Kermizian says, “We were pretty beat by Abita Brewery in New Orleans. The idea was to make the film look like we jumped in a car visiting all these breweries. But it was heavily scheduled and getting places to meet people on time was hard. I don’t know if my liver could handle another trip.”

WARLOCKS RISE LIKE A PHOENIX

Interviews,

FOREWORD: When I interviewed the Warlocks inside their tour van parked outside Mercury Lounge in 2002, reticent mastermind Bobby Hecksher was nowhere to be found. I caught up with the reclusive Californian thereafter on the sidewalk and got some quotes I tossed into a piece supporting their Phoenix album. Since then, I saw them at the Merc again when ‘05s psych-skulking dirge, Surgery, came out (its review is at bottom). Two years later, the equally analgesic Heavy Deavy Skull Lover appeared. ‘09s The Mirror Explodes was right in line with past endeavors. This article originally appeared in Aquarian Weekly.

Verging on the edge of garage, goth, and slowcore without specificity, the Los Angeles-based Warlocks take Spiritualized post-psychedelic rock on a Codeine-induced acid trip through the mind’s deepest recesses. As bewitching as their sorcerer-inspired pre-Velvet Underground moniker implies, this large conglomerate cast a magic spell with mind-numbing mantras like the 14-minute meditational epilogue “Jam Of The Witches” from ‘01s invigorating Rise And Fall. In the same dark, dense, narcotic mode as fellow West Coast denizens Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, but never as calamitous as ‘70s post-punk schizoids Suicide, the Warlocks hauntingly eerie oeuvre usually evoke thoughts of fear, desperation, and desolation.

On ‘02 follow-up, Phoenix, the echo-drenched “Cosmic Letdown” simulates a heroin binge gone awry while the hazy ordeal, “Hurricane Heart Attack,” gets lost in whirlwind psychodrama. Singer Bobby Hecksher’s creamy utterance of “it’s nothing at all” on the open-hearted, harmonica-doused “Stone Hearts” seems plucked directly from the Velvets’ “Sunday Morning.” Yet there’s also life-affirming positivity to be found on two nearly upbeat opiates entitled “Shake The Dope Out” (a vibrant organ-grooved track hedging close to ? & the Mysterians) and “The Dope Feels Good” (a climactic fuzz-toned phantasm). But nothing beats the insular beauty of “Baby Blue,” a glistening shimmy hanging on a narcotic T. Rex groove.

The Warlocks continue to gain exposure from ceaseless stimulating live performances. The present touring crew includes Hecksher (guitar-bass-keys), Jeff Levitz (guitar-lap steel-sitar), J.C. Rees (guitar), Corey Lee Granet (guitar), Bobby Martine (bass), Danny Hole (drums), and Jason Anchondo (percussion). Guitarist Sonic Boom, organist Laura Grisby, and drummer Mike Mc Hugh provided extra studio support for Phoenix.

Here’s our question and answer session.

Some people have compared the Warlocks to the Rain Parade minus the pesky Paisley Generation tag.

JEFF: I was friends with people in that band and enjoyed them as people, but I wouldn’t say we were influenced by their music. I’d say we’re influenced by the same music they were influenced by. But this isn’t the third coming of the Paisley Underground.

How do your lengthy, drawn out compositions usually get initiated?

JASON: Bobby comes out with an idea, sometimes very simple ones, and brings it to the studio and we work on it.

JEFF: The cool thing is everybody in the band is so creative on their own, they write their own parts.

JASON: It’s like being married to six other people.

J.C.: There are far reaching, wide ranging influences that affect our music.

BOBBY HECKSHER: I bring a basic idea to the table and these guys either like it or they don’t. If they like it, they put their magic into it and it sounds as bitchin’ as it does because of them. I just bring the basic starting platform and they tell me if it sucks or not. I don’t have any ego or feelings about ditching an idea for something else. We try some new stuff instead.

What are some of the lyrical inspirations?

B.H.: It comes from people I meet. They’re very simple, straightforward, honest lyrics.

Phoenix doesn’t seem as downcast as last years’ Rise And Fall.

B.H.: It’s a little more upbeat, I guess.

BOBBY MARTINE: We’re a very spirited, happy group right now.

Did you need to be stoned to compose the uplifting “The Dope Feels Good”?

B.H.: (laughter) No. Again, that’s about a person. It’s not about drugs. I’m not being ironic. I didn’t need many words for the person that song is about.

Does your band draw influences from slowcore bands like Low and Codeine.

J.C.: Sure. We do like them. We like that kind of repetitive groove to take you someplace else.

“Baby Blue” has the most accessible feel, but happily never drifts into formulaic pop pabulum.

B.H.: That’s the way it came out. It started with some chords. All my songs are written about people, or groups of people. It could be about a girl and a boy or just girls.

(The interview moves from in front of Mercury Lounge to nearby Katz’s delicatessen to the bands’ tour van.)

What’s the difference between Greg Shaw’s Bomp recording sessions for Rise And Fall and Birdman’s sessions for Phoenix?

J.C.: Phoenix was recorded at four different places and mixed by three guys while Rise And Fall was done in just one place.

DANNY: You don’t always get the perfect mix and you still may not be satisfied after.

J.C.: That’s why on this record we shopped around to get a different style and sound. It may all sound the same after awhile, but the songs stand out.

Were you guys into King Crimson, Soft Machine, and ‘70s prog-rock?

JASON: It’s not like any of us sit around and listen to a whole King Crimson record. But when you hear those good cuts, you’re feeling them. But I don’t think they’re a conscious influence. Even with the same instrumentation going on, there’s so much difference between each song we do because we all try to get a different feel, texture, or sound.

Following “Minneapolis Madman” on the Phoenix EP is an intoxicating 25-minute mantra that put my kids to sleep before I could say good night.

J.C.: That’s our aural asphyxiation. Pure studio shenanigans. (fits of laughter)

JASON: Someone called it VU (i.e.: Velvet Underground) malarkey.

WARLOCKS MIND EXPANDING EXPERIMENTATION

For a stormy summer afternoon at the beach, L.A.’s Warlocks sure do make the perfect haunting moodscape. Led by neurotic front man Bobby Hecksher and a revolving cast of psych folk, their latest, Surgery (Mute), aims to create “some new rock ‘n roll hybrid: sonic space age doo wop.” If ‘03s stultifying Phoenix grabbed at the gut, then the irrepressible Surgery will melt your insides out, as sheets of distorted guitar noise crash down upon stony heads, reverberating straight down to their toes. Several narcotic jams re-create the post-midnight gloom pervading ’01 debut Rise & Fall.

FRUIT BATS REACH DEWIER PASTURES BEYOND INDIE PULP

Interviews

Though born in Lake Michigan port town, Kenosha, Wisconsin, home of genius movie director Orson Welles, multi-instrumentalist Eric Johnson grew up in expansive Chicago suburb, Naperville, where he listened to my alma maters’ college station, WONC-FM. So it’s intriguingly heartening to find the Fruit Bats leader claiming to be very enlightened by North Central College’s somewhat esoteric evening radio programming, especially since I once toiled there as music director way back in ‘78 when Captain Blotter, Doctor Quaalude, and Professor Amphetamine ruled the airwaves.

“I definitely found out about alternative music from WONC. They’d play b-sides and I learned to enjoy offbeat stuff like Captain Beefheart. They played weird cool tracks and had a late night psychedelic hour,” Johnson concedes. “My friend Steve and I would call straight through to the d.j.’s to make requests. We’d disguise our voices and use different names, not to make crank calls, but simply to get songs played on the air.”

As a pre-teen, Johnson’s favorite artists included Queen, Steve Miller Band, and subsequently, fleeting Aussie posse Men At Work. After glam-metal icons Motley Crue caught his attention in junior high, he discovered classic rock legends Bob Dylan and Neil Young, two important cultural figures still affecting the Fruit Bats oeuvre.

“Of course, discovering Velvet Underground was a landmark moment. My friends’ older brother had Loaded,” he admits.

Working with abstruse Red Red Meat mastermind Tim Rutili in more pop-minded Chi-town combo, Califone, whose label Perishable Records released the first Fruit Bats album, Echolocation, Johnson learned the ropes quickly during the ‘90s. He even concurrently fronted I Rowboat, a humble 4-track band started with fellow Fruit Bats guitarist Dan Strack and friend Brian Belval in tow.

“Califone made artier pop with drowsier droning,” Johnson smirks. “I’d started the Fruit Bats beforehand (as a sidebar to I Rowboat), but toured with Califone and guested on an album. But I never wrote a single note for them. I was never really a force or full time member. Tim and I are different musically. He takes pretty ideas and fucks them up and I do the opposite. I take twisted ideas and pretty them up. The songs come from exactly the same place with a totally antithetical means to an end.”

Though a vocal resemblance to Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson seemingly haunts Johnson’s muse, he downplays the connection. Yet the beautifully lush harmonious backdrop informing “A Bit Of Wind” (from ‘03s Mouthfuls) truly does simulate the Californian surf-rockers sensibility.

He yields, “I’ve got compared to Brian just like my friend James Mercer of the Shins has, but I’m not much into the Beach Boys. However, if you sing in the high tenor range like we do and write melodious songs, the analogy gets made.”

Instead, Johnson confirms having an affinity for similarly surreal moody contemporary combos the Flaming Lips, Eels, and Grandaddy.

“Yeah,” he corroborates. “Mercury Rev, too. They all do this grandiose Classical-informed pop usually with high vocals. I don’t mind being compared to them. I love the Flaming Lips, one of my favorite modern era bands. My very last show with Califone we opened for them. I got to meet leader Wayne Coyne. I was actually star-struck by him.”

On the Fruit Bats gorgeous second album, Mouthfuls, a majestic pulchritude and celestial ebullience detail the comely lullaby-like folk-pop pulp. Reflective acoustic-piano contemplation “Rainbow Sign” sets the stage with its creamy narcotic flow. But the sentiments put forth often deal with love-struck pain and anguish in the wake of relationship turmoil as per the spindly 6-string banjo-aided wisp, “Seaweed,” which tenders the serrated line, ‘If I broke my jaw for you I’d find a bloody tooth and rip it out.’ Quite strikingly, the questioningly confessional closing “When U Love Somebody,” a duet with then-partner Gillian Lisee (bass-keys-mandolin), proved to be the Fruit Bats most accessible memento.

Picked up by prestigious indie enterprise, Sub Pop Records, Johnson then moved his revolving troupe out to Seattle’s rainy grunge haven March ‘05, determined to attract a wider audience. While Echolocation only managed to sell 2,800 copies and its follow-up, a mere 10,000 units, the Fruit Bats nevertheless got to be known as ‘that Chicago band that seems more successful than they are.’ Hip college discjockeys, underground press, and boutique record stores hailed the band, but fame and fortune were out of reach.

“We’re still poor with day jobs,” he maintains. “I do craft services. I’m an all day on-set caterer for film sets, television commercials, and shows. They have lots of money to throw around to make snacks. In Chicago, they have a couple studios. The new Batman movie came through town recently. But it’s mostly commercials that are cushy because they have large ad agencies for Nike and Mc Donald’s, big old juggernauts.”

Perhaps the Fruit Bats third full length, Spelled In Bones, completed with ample care down in Strack’s studio basement, will finally put some money in Johnson’s pocket. The ambitiously arranged, harmonically sumptuous “The Wind That Blew My Heart Away” hacks into Pet Sounds’ debonair eloquence. On poignant piano ballads such as melancholic neo-orchestral dirge “TV Waves” and fragile adoring elegiac pledge “The Earthquake Of ’73,” the dusky ivory tingling bring back memories of John Lennon’s early ‘70s recordings.

“Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band is a huge record for me. But on “TV Waves,” I ripped off prog-rockers Genesis. I stole the feel from “Carpet Crawler” from The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway,” he divulges, absent-mindedly failing to convey that Mouthfuls’ “Magic Hour” likewise mentions a ‘carpet crawler.’

Sometimes Johnson’s literary seafaring abstractions and metaphoric man versus nature themes recall the compositional propensity of Modest Mouse comrade Isaac Brock, whom he toured with in one-off side project Ugly Casanova.

He offers, “I’d become acquainted with Isaac through Califone. He’s a great contemporary songwriter. Just because he’s not holding an acoustic guitar sitting down, people don’t think of him as a songwriter. But as a rock musician, he makes the best lyrics for a platinum selling artist.”

Assuredly, Johnson’s warm meteorological proclivities shine brightly in spite of some disparaging lyrical vignettes. Though shooting for a darker tone than Spelled In Bones ultimately consumed, he wasn’t necessarily looking to make a defiantly bolder statement.

“I’d like to do another 4-track record. I have some songs on tape in a shoebox and some were on Tragedy Plus Time, a limited edition ’04 EP. I want to do simple rock – two guitars, bass, and drums. We’ve been such an eclectic band putting every instrument possible on every song. There’s nowhere to go but backwards unless we play with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.”