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Interview photos by Kyle Green, BakedFreshDaily.com

Bluegrass heavyweight Split Lip Rayfield has been touring since the 1990s. The band stopped through SGF on Nov. 26 with Mountain Sprout on their recent tour. Before their show at the Outland Ballroom, Wayne, Eric and Jeff took the time to talk about experiences on the road, what motivates them to keep touring, the Stitchgiver and more. The road is less crazy for them (unless you consider traveling games of chess to be “crazy”). Listen to the conversation with Brett Johnston and Chris DeRosier, plugged with live performances from their SGF show.

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Concert photos by Kyle Green, Brett Johnston

The last three years have been something of a new era for touring concerts in SGF. New arena-size venues such as JQH Arena and O’Reilly Family Event Center, together with special events such as the Show-Me Music Festival, are raising the expectations for what some of the city’s biggest concerts of the year can be. The realm of big-ticket concerts such as Lady Antebellum on December 10, however, is a different game with higher stakes and rewards, especially when it all happens in the same room that hosts one of the city’s busiest and most popular sports schedules. So what does it take to make the high-wire act that is The Big Show a smooth-running success? What’s Elton John really like? Is the city ready to branch out into more genres for major concerts? And is SGF moving up in the world of tour destinations? I sought out the man behind the city’s highest-capacity venue, Keith Boaz of JQH Arena, for the answers.

Chris DeRosier: You’ve been with the university since the late ’90s and in this position since ’03, but that was all at Hammons Student Center. How did you react to hearing that you might have a facility of this size to run the day-to-day operations of?

Keith Boaz: We were very, very excited, and the biggest thing was how exactly is the university going to want this arena run? Are they going to want to continue with university staff running it? Do they want to look at private management companies? A whole slew of things in the decision. It came down to [the fact that] this building was built for our men’s and women’s basketball programs. For the athletic department being the number one clientele of the facility, it was decided that in-house management, as opposed to subcontracted or private management, was the way we wanted to go. That is a primary goal of that facility. The shows and all of that were kind of a bonus type of thing. Obviously, there was an expectation that you’ve gotta do this amount of revenue and this number of shows and this and that, but that was always really the secondary point of that facility, with the first being athletics. Shows have obviously picked up dramatically the last twenty-four months, especially with the financial times the community and the university is in. Shows are an even more important piece of the puzzle than what was first thought, just from the financial aspect of it.

CD: So between the special events and the needs of athletics scheduling, to put it bluntly, when basketball season arrives are you excited or do you dread it?

KB: It’s a, uh, scheduling challenge…

CD: Well put.

KB: We have a great relationship with the athletic department in working with both their need to provide the facility from both a practice and competition standpoint and they have a complete understanding of our need to bring in the revenue and do the shows, so myself and [Missouri State Director of Athletics] Kyle [Moats] have a great, great relationship. When I get a show opportunity, if it’s a no-brainer, where it doesn’t affect the team physically we just move forward with it. But if there’s any kind of potential conflict with our team Kyle and I get together, look over the entire week surrounding it [and say], “hey, if we do this it’s going to displace both teams for this long. We’ve got a home game here. Is it just practice…” All sorts of things. Like I said, ever since Kyle has come on board our relationship has grown and we’ve got a good track record with each other, me understanding his needs for his coaches—also our coaches—and him understanding the needs of me to do shows and bring in the revenue, not just for the venue but for the university as a whole.

CD: So given your needs as well as his, how far ahead do you guys have to coordinate schedules and book?

KB: Well, I’ve got fifteen years worth of calendars right here that I work off of. Obviously, the further I’m working out the easier it is. I’ve got shows I’m working on for late ’12, early ’13. I’ve even got a couple for ’14. Another component of this puzzle that has drastically improved in the last couple of years is working with the Missouri Valley Conference directly. I’ve sort of developed a good relationship with [MVC Commissioner] Doug Elgin and [Associate Commissioner] Joe Mitch up there. They understand specifically Missouri State University and JQH Arena, they understand both the athletic and they’re starting to see my side of it as well, so we’re having direct dialogue if I have something that comes up at a key time in the season. For example, next basketball season, as part of one of the conference series challenges, the Mountain West vs. MVC Challenge, we were working on a show for the weekend that they need to try to have that game. They reached out directly with us and we were able to get all of that worked out with the league office and the show we were working on.

CD: So is it fair to say then that the cooperation on the conference’s level is a new phenomenon since the new arena arrived?

KB: I think so. The last several years of Hammons Student Center, while it wasn’t doing the same number of shows it did back in the mid- late ’80s and early ’90s, it was still doing a handful of shows a year. But we pretty much knew from November 1 to March 31 knew we were pretty much just doing basketball; we didn’t even really entertain options of doing shows. It’s so funny, I was looking back through some old files a few days ago and found a memo that I wrote to [former MSU Director of Athletics] Bill Rowe back in 2006 for a possible Keith Urban concert at Hammons Student Center because it was going to be in February—right in the heart of basketball season—and in my memo it said, “Hey, coach, I know I usually don’t try to do shows during basketball season, but this is Keith Urban.” This was right as he was starting to blow up and get big. Back in the day we tried to avoid basketball season. Now there’s no way we can try to avoid basketball season.

At that time of year, shows obviously want to be inside because of weather. Once you get into May, June, July, August, they want to be outdoors at the amphitheaters, so our potential to do shows in the warm-weather months goes way, way down. Kyle and the league office completely understand that the inclement weather months are when [concerts] needs buildings with roofs. Everybody’s on board with accommodating everybody. They all understand that I’m looking out for everybody. If we’ve got something where we’ve got to take care of our basketball team and a show comes up, we’re just gonna pass on that one. But they understand that they’re going to have to [compromise] a little bit as well to make these shows happen.

CD: So what’s the best show you’ve had to walk away from?

KB: Honestly, there hasn’t been one that upset me losing over athletics. There have been some smaller ones, and I can’t come up with it. That’s how insignificant it was, is I can’t come up with a name for one. It’s not like it was Elton John on the phone and I had to say, “Aw, sorry, we’ve gotta do this.” Fortunately, there has not been so great of a conflict that we were gritting our teeth and saying, “oh, man, if only we didn’t have this or that.” The promoters I work with also understand. Someday it’ll eventualy happen, but we haven’t had to yet.

CD: I imagine a lot of the promoters you work with are also booking hockey arenas and such at that time of year, too, so they know the conflicts well. To look at things from the more positive end, what show has been the most challenging for you to put on in the arena, for scheduling reasons or otherwise?

KB: Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

CD: I figured that was going to be the answer.

KB: We are the smallest building they play[ed] on this tour, and, um, there is a reason for that. It’s an eighteen-truck show. It is just huge. We have to get very, very creative with this tour to make that fit in this building, because that’s the kind of show that you can’t take away any of the elements or you’ll lose the effect. You need all of the pieces of that to put on all of that pyro and all of those lighting effects and the things that they spend hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars putting together. You need everything to make it work. We brought it in for the first time last year and experienced a lot of challenges, and we successfully worked through every single one of those challenges.

CD: Take me for a moment to show night. Where are you and what are you doing over the course of those hours?

KB: My main responsibilities are with both the tour manager, the promoter rep and then I’m also heavily involved with the production manager. Those will be my main three people. As we get further into show day I get less involved with the production side of things and hand that off to other individuals, and then once we get to, you know, an hour or two before doors my main focus is then with the tour manager and the promoter rep as we start going through the financials. I’ve got other staff who handle the ushers and the ticket takers and the general-public needs so that I can focus on the show side of things while they’re dealing with the other departments.

CD: The old saying goes that the people throwing the party are the ones who get to party the least. Do you ever get to see any part of the shows you put on?

KB: I really don’t see hardly any of the shows. Typically the one thing that I do try to do is when our headliner takes the stage I do try to make sure that I can pop my head out into the bowl as the headliner takes the stage for the first time to get that initial crowd reaction when it’s Miranda Lambert or Elton John or whomever. When they come on the stage in that very first moment I do try to pop out there for that sixty seconds when they first walk onstage and get to see all of the hard work we’ve put in for the last several months. It’s all about that moment. But other than that sixty seconds I will probably see no other of the show the rest of the night.

CD: What goes through your mind in those sixty seconds when you see ten-thousand-plus people going crazy over something you’ve done?

KB: Oh, it’s fantastic. It’s very, very rewarding to know that all of the work that you did for the past—minimum—six months, if not closer to a year, leading up to show day, you finally have that payoff moment where all that hard work was for a good thing and we’re pleasing another sold-out crowd.

CD: Looking ahead to the Lady Antebellum show, do artists of that nature—coming in at the top of their popularity—present a different kind of challenge?

KB: Every show has its own unique challenges that go along with it. You would certainly think that the individuals of that caliber—Elton John, for example—would be the hardest individuals to work with. Couldn’t have been any further from the truth. They were some of the most easy, laid back individuals to work with. Now, obviously, when you’re dealing with a client of that nature there are a lot of hoops you have to jump through. We do not fancy dressing rooms in JQH Arena, so we had to turn a rubber-floor, block-walled visiting team locker room into as nice as it could look for Elton John with carpeting and fabric and drapes and things like that. It’s not necessarily true that the higher caliber clientele you’re dealing with the more difficult it is. In the scope of ticket sales and charts and all of that, some individuals who were low on the spectrum [turned out to] be some of the most difficult. It always comes down to that individual’s personality and how they want to run the day.

CD: We’re now a little more than a year past the announcement of the internal audit that found JQH Arena operating at a loss. What is the state of the financial turnaround?

KB: From the shows standpoint there’s not any challenges. If you just go back and look at the track record at year one of the shows done at JQH Arena compared to year two compared to year three, and then if you really compare year one to year three, that side of the business has grown so much in the three years that the facility has been open. All of that did not really have a whole lot to do with the shows standpoint. The attendance figures tell on how it has grown from year one to year three. I think in the general public and community we did take a lot of flak that first year. If you look at it, though, we met our budget. We had a decent amount of shows; it just wasn’t the shows that people were necessarily looking for. But then as we got into year two and year three we’ve blown up with about every kind of show that’s out there on the market and have done just about everything that’s out there.

CD: Was there a conscious effort or decision to adjust the kind of shows you guys went after following that first year?

KB: What we really had to do was just time it. When JQH Arena came online in October of ’08 Springfield had not had an arena for three years. Once construction at JQH Arena started, that took Hammons Student Center offline from being able to do shows because the two buildings are merged in the loading dock area. It’s one shared loading dock. So Springfield went three years without having a big room to do these shows. So I think Springfield just kind of [was] forgot about. Then it took a good year after its opening for us to get the word spread to all of our former agent and promoter contacts that, hey, we’re back open and running now, and it just took some time to let everybody across the country know that Springfield is now open again.

CD: In coming back to those promoters, do you find a greater awareness from them regarding Springfield as a concert market? In other words, Springfield has long been described to me by promoters as a “third-tier” market; are we moving up?

KB: I would still probably consider us a third-tier [market], but I think they’re more open to playing third-tiers than maybe what they were, especially with the recession. The first tier, that’s just a few select cities: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. There’s not a whole lot of cities that fit into category one. You don’t even consider… in most people’s minds, St. Louis and Kansas City would be a tier two, because they don’t compete with New York or L.A. So being a third tier is not really a bad thing.

I think they’re more and more open to playing Springfield, because we’re a natural fit to get from St. Louis to Tulsa or Kansas City to Little Rock, I mean, we’re a nice stop in between some of those destinations that they have been used to hitting.

CD: To project out into the future, to when the economy does, one day, turn around, do you think the caliber of shows we’re getting now will still be coming to the city?

KB: I think the relationship we’ve been able to build the last two years will definitely keep up with that kind of stuff. We’re a natural fit with routing from City A to City B. I think we have shown that Springfield is a healthy market and they’ll keep coming back to Springfield.

CD: What’s one show, whether it be for personal reasons or just the size of it, that you would love to get in The Q and haven’t yet?

KB: Metallica. [It's] both personal—I’m a former metal head and all that fun stuff, so I’ve seen Metallica seven times myself—plus we have not done a good hard rock show in the arena yet. Metallica I don’t think we’ll grace Springfield anytime soon; that would be an extreme challenge for this size of a building, to pull Metallica off. I mean, they typically play 25,000-seat venues or bigger, and they are very out of control. You know, if they were to call we’d be able to pull it off. But that’s one I’d like to see is Metallica in here or a good hard rock show like that, because that’s the genre we haven’t done yet.

CD: Is there a plan in place to get such a hard rock show in the arena in the future?

KB: We’ve had some calls from that genre. They just, whether it be scheduling or routing or availability, they just haven’t worked out yet. So we’ll get one here… I’d love to say we’ll have one in the next twelve months or so.

Big Smith at the Show-Me Music Festival earlier this year. Photo by Alex Stocksdale.

By now the news isn’t “news,” really: Big Smith announced late last night via its Facebook page that it will cease to exist as a band early next year, presumably after its already-booked obligations are concluded. You can bet there will be some sort of last-hurrah show in Springfield, too, a fitting finish for a band that has come to represent a renaissance for roots music in the city as well as the latest in the city’s lineage of contemporary acts that maintain strong ties to local musical heritage. There is obviously a lot of sadness and shock among the public at large regarding the news, but the truth is, unpopular though the choice may be, it comes at a good time and could hold a great many positives to it.

I’ll explain that more in a moment. Let’s start with the band’s official statement via Facebook, in case you haven’t already read or heard it elsewhere. The bolding is my own:

“With heavy hearts we deliver the news that after 15 years of touring and recording, Big Smith will soon be calling it a day. We will continue playing through the early months of 2012, making sure to hit our favorite towns and venues, but will then cease performing and recording for the foreseeable future. We band members will be moving on to new chapters in our lives; new professions and new creative avenues, most of which will keep us closer to home for a while. We thank you, our listeners, for supporting us all these years and allowing us to take part in this great adventure. We encourage you to stay in touch and stay tuned for our schedule of final shows, and beyond that, for possible CD releases from our archive of live recordings, and for news of future projects that will inevitably emerge from the members of Big Smith.”

So what does “new professions and new creative avenues, most of which will keep us closer to home for a while” mean? It likely means a few things, really:

1. There are members of the band leaving music behind. Given the realities of the economy and the fact that I’ve never met a committed musician who wouldn’t rather make his or her living playing music, it seems fair to suggest that such a move is born out of a desire for some or more financial stability. “Stupid life getting in the way” to you; “I can provide for myself and the people counting on me” to them.

2. The members continuing to make music want to do something else. This should come as no surprise given that solo projects and other ventures have already existed within the band’s dynamic in the past. Add in the fact that 15 years is an extraordinarily long time to expect artists to keep creating in the same style and you appear to have a circumstance where it was time to acknowledge the need for change within the group before it became obvious outside the group.

Where do things go from here? The individuals will determine that in the weeks and months to come. Local roots music will inevitably find new leading lights if it hasn’t already. For Big Smith’s part, the band celebrated an important milestone—the 15th anniversary—together with another local act it draws certain parallels to, The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, and the members collectively chose that cemented legacy as the time to bow out rather than let the idea of Big Smith become an albatross. Now, for band and audience alike, the few remaining concerts in Big Smith’s history can be relished in a different light—not as another date on the calendar, but as one of a dwindling number of chances to say “thank you” to one another. Precious few bands get to leave on those terms, and this is one that should.

American trumpet player Walter White (photo by Jon Reis - www.jonreis.com)

Catch White live with vocalist Ronnie Leigh (Syracuse, NY), SGF sax-master Randy Hamm and director Ron Spiegelman with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra at Juanita K Hammons Hall tomorrow night. Tickets are still available.

Walter White — “Teonova”, a Maynard Ferguson Tribute 2008

Lady Gaga, The Foo Fighters and more have made headlines lately regarding concert photography. The problem could be in SGF soon enough.

We’re in quite a boom period for concerts in SGF, with more venues than ever before bringing in big-ticket concerts this city would have thought impossible just four or five years ago. With big-time concerts come issues associated with big-time concerts, though, and I’m afraid it won’t be long before SGF comes face to face with one of the most prominent big-concert problems of today: Artists and their representatives snatching rights to concert photos away from photographers.

Who cares, DeRosh? Artists, photographers… as long as fans can go somewhere and see concert pictures it doesn’t matter who owns them. It’s not that simple. Concert photographers fall into one of two categories: staff photographers for publications or independent shooters working on a per-event basis, either for a company or for themselves. Shooting at major shows has always been understood among photographers as a give-and-take business–”first three songs, no flash photography” is a ground rule seemingly as old as concerts themselves–but when the pendulum swings to the “take” side the system breaks down. Faced with a waiver to sign when they arrive at a venue saying the photos belong to (insert artist here) now and forever such as the one Lady Gaga produced at a show earlier this year, more and more photographers are refusing to sign; either the publications they work for pull the plug (media people are notorious control freaks) or the photogs themselves back out, seeing not only their intellectual property but any chance to make a few extra bucks re-selling them for posters et cetera being handed over to someone who didn’t create it. A few go ahead and sign, not caring about the consequences; most concert photographers do it out of passion, not profit, and some choose to preserve the chance to do what they enjoy. As organizations such as The Music Photographers Network get their ideological dander up about it, though, such goodwill will fade away. Some of the artists behind the contracts suggest the move is meant to prevent them from being exploited when it’s time to put together photo books for box sets, for example, but countering exploitation with exploitation isn’t a cure. It’s only transferring the sheist.

As I said before, this problem is likely to come to SGF in time, which will likely mean fewer opportunities for you to experience the concerts you went to and want to relive or the ones you didn’t get to experience in the first place. It will also hurt photographers when bidding for other work; good shots can help build a strong portfolio to get work, say, shooting weddings, senior-class pics and other bread-and-butter events that keep food on a photographer’s plate. If the copyright to those amazing concert shots belong to the artist after the waiver is signed, how can the photog even lay claim to having taken them? I can tell you TAG won’t stand for such treatment of the work of its photographers, whether that of Photo Assassin Alex Stocksdale or others, and while I can’t speak on the Springfield News-Leader‘s behalf I expect the answer to be the same for it, too. Luckily, such a problem isn’t known to have arisen with big-ticket concerts at this tour stop… yet.

The irony in all of this is that the audience at the show–those who aren’t given access in the photo pit–end up being the ones with the fewest restrictions on what they shoot and what they can do with it. While working photographers with four-figure pieces of equipment leave the next Foo Fighters show in a huff, the guy in Section AA, Row 14, Seat 7 could have a field day with his Canon Powershot and dominate Flickr the next day. In other words, don’t be surprised if crowd-sourced photo galleries become a solution for publications and venues in the short term until the give-and-take pendulum swings back to normal with the help of the (seemingly inevitable) copyright lawsuit or two. You or someone you know could become the next great SGF concert photographer, then, without even meaning to. Just remember not to sign anything.

I started out at 14 playing electric guitar because I wanted to be in a rock ‘n’ roll band. I wanted to get as far away from that hick bulls*** as I could.

I got a gig at Silver Dollar City playing bluegrass in 1975. And being Silver Dollar City, of course, we’re encouraged to be, you know, characters. It was me and John Kendrick and Dale Hopkins. It got to the point where we were touring the state and the Midwest and we’d be jamming and communicating all night. That was when [John and I] decided to start [The Undergrass Boys].

Nineteen seventy-seven was the last clock punch I ever did.

[The band I'm most associated with] depends on the person’s age. If it’s a young person it’s The Lowdown Fancy. If it’s a forty-something it’s Hogmolly. If it’s a fifty-something it’s The Undergrass Boys.

The original mandolin player for Hogmolly, which I played in a band with him when he was 15, Matt Maydew, played in a band with Steve [Ames] called Smokin’ Herb Green & The Rollers, so I knew both those guys. I knew Matt from being 15 years old and playing gigs with him when he was starting out playing. Anyway, I had these New Year’s picking parties. Every New Year’s Eve I’d have a big picking deal at my cabin. So one year, just out of the blue, Steve and Matt showed up at that. And we were picking and everything. The Lowdown Fancy already was those two but they hadn’t really done anything other than playing the Tipsy Turtle a few times and I think they’d had one other gig other than the Tipsy Turtle. So I just sat down–everybody else was taking a break–and Matt and Steve sat down and were doing some of the stuff they had worked up together–you know, the original Lowdown Fancy. I just picked up a bass and started playing bass behind them and throwing some harmonies in and went, “holy cow, that’s fun.” So at first the band was just the three of us, then pretty quickly they decided we needed a percussionist. So they said, well, Aaron, who was the hand drum play in Smokin’ Herb Green… I had quite a few bookings when Hogmolly broke up that were still out there and I didn’t want to tell them I wouldn’t do it. I had time booked out a year ahead of time. So I had all these gigs I had to tell, “Well, it’s a different band now.” I had about 20 or so gigs on the books with Matt Maydew, and he was with some woman who put her foot down and said, no, you’ve got to quit the band. So he quit. (…) When he quit that’s when we brought in Mike Henderson, and that kind of jumped us up into being a rock band.

Shane Abney was the one that had the idea for [Dobrogo], and I have no idea where it came from. Well, I guess he loves Gogol Bordello. And we didn’t want to actually rip them off; it would be very easy to become a Gogol Bordello cover band doing what we’re doing. We learned a couple of their tunes and I had some real gypsy stuff I’ve been playing for a long time, some instrumentals that I brought into it. And Donnie Cockrum, he’s a good songwriter. I don’t know how those guys came to be friends. And then Jeff Sowards. Really, I don’t know how the four of us came together but it was all Shane’s doing. And so we got together and every time we’d get together we’d start farting around and write a song, sometimes a couple of them. And we’re trying to do this Soviet-era Russia thing where everything’s really dark and really grim. Comically dark. (…) Every time we’d start out on a song it would start out kind of normal and then it’s just going way off the deep end into this deep, dark stuff. (…) We’ve just about got enough for a set to be able to open for somebody. The whole thing is that other than Gogol Bordello and traditional klesmer songs we don’t know where to go for material, so we were pretty much down to having to write stuff. So that’s why it has taken so long is that we’re having to write new material for the whole damn thing.

Remember the old Dolly Parton song, “9 to 5?” We turned it into a minor-key [song], working 9 to 9 in the Soviet Union. And there’s a Branson reference in there, too, about the Russian guy in Branson.

Whenever I posted that [Blackberry Winter was playing The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco] I started getting emails from friends all over the United States that were saying, ‘The Great American Music Hall? The home of the sacred Dead shows?!’ The [Grateful] Dead were the house band for a lot of years. A couple of their live albums were recorded there. Countless bootlegs from there. In their heyday, when they first started taking off and getting just nuts popular, that’s where a lot of that happened. It’s the first building constructed in San Francisco after the ’06 earthquake. It was built in 1907. It’s got these enormous, just redwood marble columns to keep the building from falling down if there was another earthquake. When we shoed up there the band had a staff. It’s like we showed up and, “here’s your two guys. They’ll take care of you.” And it was like the guys who were just ulta-hip… I mean, he’d been around the block. Those two guys, their specific job was to hang around and get us anything we wanted, and then they had a runner that would kind of go and get stuff. I told everybody, “I have a feeling that if I told that guy I wanted cocaine and hookers there would be cocaine and hookers. But it was one of those things that if you’d told that to those guys, yeah… It was very cool. And our own Wes Wilson–you know who he is–I go down into the basement and on the way to the green room and the very first damn thing I see is a Wes Wilson poster.

Another thing: Right as we were leaving the guy said–we were talking about the building itself–and he said, “You know Duke Ellington had a residency here. His office is still here; they’ve converted it into a storage room. If you wanna go see it I’ll show it to you.” And there’s a little sticker–in fact, I got a little picture of it–that says ‘Duke Ellington.’ It looked like somebody had tried to steal it at some point. He said when he had his residency here he had his own personal sink installed in the back of the room back there and nobody else was to touch it. It was back in the day whenever black people couldn’t use white people’s sinks, so, by God, he had his own that nobody else could use. It was such a treat to play in. What a historic place.

There [were] so many just crazy things [on tour]… We played the Aladdin in Portland, the Aladdin Theater. It’s an old historic movie house, and its claim to fame was that it fell on hard times at some point and became a porn theater, but it had the world record of having the longest run of the movie Deep Throat. And after I found that out I really just didn’t want to touch anything.

The worst show that we did, I’d say, was that much worse than the best show that we did. I was totally amazed at how every single time that whole outfit, no matter how tired or how bitchy and pissed off they were–you know, because just like you have your little things where people get pissed of and they last for a day and then they’re hugging on each other. Everybody got to be really super tight through the whole thing. But these are people who are super independent, they’re old–definitely old–and living by themselves, very set, and having to all of a sudden adapt to something they never even dreamed of doing in their lives. Tedi May and I are the only ones that have traveled extensively with musicians or done anything like that. Van [Colbert] has hardly stood out of his back yard, you know; he’s traveled very little. A couple of them got to see oceans for the first time. But it still amazed me that every time we did a show it was that show.

That was one of the biggest treats was just to get to spend that much time with [Marideth Sisco of Blackberry Winter]. I’ve known her for 30 years and I’ve played in a band with her… in fact, we did several gigs at [Nathan P.] Murphy’s when it first opened. I haven’t gotten to spend much time with her since then. In fact, when I left my first bird job in California, when she found out I was going out there she said, ‘You are gonna take pictures, right?’ because she was a photojournalist. I said, ‘I don’t have a damn camera.’ The next time I saw her she handed me an old Pentax Spotmatic and about a dozen rolls of film. She said, ‘You shoot. Shoot away. Shoot it all up. Send it all back if you can’t afford the development. I’ll take care of the development.’ But she made sure that I had the camera to shoot that experience, which kind of started me off.”

I’ve got probably five thousand or so slides of all the bird studies I’ve done all over the world. A whole bunch of them are bird-in-hand shots. I did a lot of banding and I’ve kept a photographic record of every bird species that I handled. A lot of times I’m working by myself so I set the camera to closest focus and get it right for distance so that there’s a picture of the bird in full frame with my hand coming up out of the corner.

The whole thing about city living as opposed to wilderness living is that in the city you’re bombarded by stimuli constantly to the point that you have to shut down. You have to be able to ignore stuff. You have to shut all that crap and noise that… you don’t even notice it now, because it’s part of your world. But if you were as tuned and as open as you were after spending a couple of months in the wilderness, to where you are totally in tune with that world, and you come into this you can’t hardly stand it for a few days. That’s been my experience.

I actually did a couple of days of consulting work with the international bird watching center of Ehlat, Israel. They were setting up a bird banding program and wanted an American bander to come and review their data collection stuff. So I went and banded with them for a couple of days. They paid my ticket. And I thought, ‘While I’m here…’ So I stayed a month.

Anywhere you go, people figure out how to exploit the resources there. There are people who are living in the most inhospitable of places and still fishing and doing things. It’s not just a hardiness but an ingeniousness to apply themselves to exploit what little resources are there. You see that in all the cultures that live in extreme environments. I mean, the Inuit, some of the things they did with what they had to work with… it’s amazing. The fact that you could take a seal and make a coat out of it that was better than any Gore-Tex parka you could make today, you know? All of the extreme environments get inventive, because if there’s anything that’s living or growing whatsoever there’s a resource there that you can exploit and make yourself stay alive.

Don’t use Bear Grylls. I don’t know if you know about him, but my standard line is, if you go out into the wilderness and you follow Bear Grylls’s example you will die. He’s not about knowledge; he’s a testosterone fest. (…) Trying to see him do a fire it was evident that he had never done them.

Now, Survivor Man is one that he actually shows you stuff. It’s not exciting, but it’s him filming all of it by himself. And he wastes a lot of time. He could spend more time on the actual techniques for my money. But at least he does that. He studied under the guy that helped me start my skills, John McPherson. He was the guy.

They approached me for [Dual Survival on Discovery Channel]. What they do is when the put something together like that they comb the Internet and they find anybody that’s got a school or anything where you can do a Google search and find it. This is the third [show] I’ve gotten contacted about. The first one was in the UK, and she actually called me. Actually, two of them called me. The one in the UK I ended up not doing it because it was another reality thing. The History Channel, not long after Dual Survival got started, one of their people called me up and she was telling me about, “We’re looking for people with different backgrounds, very different backgrounds, but they’re going to have to work together in survival scenarios. And I was like, Well, that’s kind of already been done!”

People all the time keep telling me, ‘You need to write a book’ and this and… The one thing that I’ve thought about doing is a plant book of this region, of everything I know about the local plants. Not just the uses and all that stuff, but the historical context and how they got here. Pick a handful of plants and put all of the stuff in there about them.

So much of the stuff we consider edible is only here because the Europeans brought them here–because they’re edible.

SGF’s inaugural big-ticket summer music festival, the Show-Me Music & Arts Festival at Springfield Underground, concluded Sunday night after three days of live bands, comedy, live cooking demonstrations and more. From the moment it was announced the festival was abnormally ambitious for a first-year event, combining top-shelf national touring acts with some of Springfield’s best-know local performers in a variety of genres for two stages of continuous music. Scheduling conflicts prevented us from attending the first day or night of the event, but TAG photographer Alex Stocksdale and I were in attendance for days two and three and kept mental and written notes of the performances, behind-the-scenes details and general observations about the festival as a whole. Here’s what we saw and how we saw it:

- By all accounts, crowds were sparse Friday and, from what we saw Saturday, were better but still felt a little underwhelming. Sunday picked up significantly during the day, approaching Saturday night’s size by late afternoon. According to members of the festival security staff, the organizers hoped for approximately 8,000 people on average each day. It was hard to get a reliable count with how spread out the crowd was, particularly during the day, but if they got there it was with an assist from OneRepublic and Tim McGraw as Sunday evening and night fell. Here’s hoping they did. A first year of of losing money puts a tough burden on an event and tests even resilient promoters. UPDATE: According to an email from Brittni Talley with Webster & Associates PR, the three-day aggregate attendance for the festival was more than 34,000 people. Very good news.

- Speaking of the promoters and organizers, a moment of props. As the performer names gradually trickled in throughout the spring it became clear this would be a big event, though I’m not sure anyone grasped its real magnitude until they arrived on site. I certainly didn’t. For a first-year event of this size, with all the infrastructure and agonizing amounts of planning required to pull it off, to go down without noticeable hitches from the fans’ perspective is commendable.

- Taken in greater context, this festival, more than any individual big-ticket concert I can think of, if proof positive that promoters are building faith that Springfield and surrounding communities can support bigger shows than its third-tier status within the industry initially suggests. Yes, the lineup played it safe in some ways, but booking so many expensive acts in the middle of summer, when any entertainment in the city competes directly with nearby lakes for people’s weekend attention, was a roll of the dice smart businesspeople don’t make without favorable projections, at least. It bodes very well for what SGF might be able to attract talent-wise in the future, though it will continue to be a gradual climb up the ladder in this economy.

- I mentioned it during the performer announcement process, and I still feel the same way after the festival is over: I hope next year the lineup can begin to branch out into more genres. I know country music carries a lot of radio backing and has had good financial success locally in the last year-plus, but it didn’t have to make up 17 of the 20 Main Stage acts during the weekend. (That’s counting the Xtreme Musik Tour performers together rather than separately, by the way.)

- I feel bad for anyone who had to man a sponsor tent for the weekend. Traffic on that side of the festival grounds was thin to nonexistent, meaning those people sat in the heat with little to no crowd interaction to get them through. At least the carvinal-food trucks were a shorter walk for them.

- The Show-Me Saloon Stage (aka the second stage) was consistently excellent throughout the two days we were there. The local act who stood out the most to me, though, was Candy Coburn. Really put a lot of personality into her performance, more than I recall seeing in shows of hers I’ve been to in the past. That band is tight, too.

- Country singer Joe Nichols is a dead ringer for actor Matt Dillon, according to Alex. I have a hard time disagreeing. Decide for yourself.

- Gretchen Wilson is going to be disappointed when she reads this. “I used to shoot pool at that place down on South Street. Is it still there?” she called out to the crowd late in her set Saturday night. Gretchen, I’m pretty sure you’re referring to the two pool tables in the north end of The Junk Joint, and no, it isn’t there anymore. It’s a library now.

- After the relatively extravagant set put together by the Xtreme Musik Tour of Wilson, Big & Rich, Cowboy Troy and 2 ft. Fred, with lighting built into risers, a bar counter onstage and more, the spare stage setup by Train for Saturday night’s final show was almost jarring. Additionally, there was a fair portion of the crowd that headed home after the former show wrapped up. In hindsight it might have been better to flip the two sets around and let Xtreme Musik headline to end things with more of a bang.

- Big & Rich put on a better live show than I would have previously given them credit for. They harmonize as well together live as they do on record. However, what I hadn’t noticed in hearing songs, but picked up on during the stage show, was how effectively each one covers for the other’s limitations as a singer. Big Kenny‘s relatively narrow range and John Rich‘s lack of low register are each beautifully masked when singing in unison, which explains why they do it so much. Here’s hoping neither decides pursue a solo career.

- I’m going to squash this right now before SGF goes on any longer thinking it had a below-the-radar celebrity moment: Jessie James was kidding with you when she said Chris Daughtry was playing bass for her Saturday. This was not the former American Idol contestant and current Top-40 power-rock singer playing said bass during the show. I checked into it and the tattoos on his arms don’t match. Then there are the subtle differences in head and ear shape. I have officially stared at Daughtry pictures for much, much too long trying to figure this out for you, SGF. Just take my word for it.

- Is there some unwritten rule I’m not aware of that says you have to do at least one cover in your live set? I don’t think 90 minutes of original music is a lot to ask of any musician who has at least three records to his or her credit, and all of the musicians present at the fest did. But every last one of them did not one but multiple covers at some point. Some did entire medleys. You have your own songs. They’re the reason you’re here. Stop. it.

- Silver lining of the covers beef, and winner of Best Cover of the Festival: Little Big Town doing a bluegrass-ized version of Lady Gaga‘s “Born This Way.” Better than the real thing, actually.

- Dear Little Big Town singer Karen Fairchild, thanks for playing to the photographers and making “great eye contact.” XOXO, Alex Stocksdale.

- Another surprisingly good performance, this time from Sunday night: OneRepublic. Singer Ryan Tedder‘s energy is formidable, and he sings with more vigor than 80% of the frontmen you’ll see out there. Good sense of theatre, both in music and in performance. They won some admirers from among the decidedly pro-country crowd, and deservedly so, even if their set seemed to wrap up about 15 minutes earlier than it had to.

- It hurt me a little to type that last paragraph.

- Memo to Tim McGraw’s tour handlers: Learn some class. If my calculations are right, working media shared a tent with VIP meet-and-greet crowds and musicians for 2.84 days without problems or intrusions. No photos of the acts except by the approved meet-and-greet photographer? Okay. No interviews? Got it. When it came time for Mr. McGraw to emerge from his bus and meet the line of contest winners and high-roller attendees, though, the media was escorted not only out of the VIP/Media tent but out of the entire restricted-access area, exiting through the Media Entrance in mid-job to wait until McGraw was done commiserating. Unnecessary and disrespectful. One photographer wound up sitting on the grass next to the gate, editing pictures on his laptop. There was no choice; there were deadlines to meet. The rest stood around and wondered what just happened. I thought of asking if I could have my red stapler back but decided to hold my tongue… Oh. Oops.

- Thank you, camera gods, for smiling on our troubled Canon EOS 400 long enough to get concert shots of Tim McGraw. Enduring the heat for so many hours Sunday and coming home without the biggest-name act captured for posterity would have turned Sunday night’s victory beer into several @&*!^%#$ beers.

- Thank you also to the camera’s owner, Alex, for giving it one more try when there was no evidence one more try would matter.

- That victory beer felt good. So did not sweating in the sun anymore.

From reggae guitarist to rapper, it’s hard to picture a less likely transition than the one Jason Nunn has made in the three-plus years since SGF’s music world first got to know him. Those early days performing in the local reggae act Roots of Mankind are long gone, but Nunn is more active and visible than ever before. At just 19, Nunn has taken on the roles of show promoter, rapper and DJ, effectively learning all three as he did them while simultaneously bringing underground hip hop acts such as Mac Lethal and Steddy P into the city and redefining himself as an onstage artist. It’s that mixture of brains and fearlessness–partially youthful, partially innate in his personality–that could make him influential in local music for a long time to come. I sat down with him at Big Momma’s Coffee & Espresso Bar–coincidentally, the same night he made this–to talk about his new rap album, having nothing to hide behind onstage and what SGF’s hip hop scene both has and lacks.

Chris DeRosier: The album name, Adhittana, means “The foundation of determination.” What are you determined about?

Jason Nunn: Making music the way I want. It came down to the point where I got tired of waiting on other people for everything, you know, in the band. I always felt like I was the one that was gung ho about it. You know, not to talk bad about the other guys, but I was always real determined and then that fell apart and then e$Money and I started a thing and then the both of us got busy and it just got down to the point where I was just ready. I was tired of waiting on other people and I was determined to find the right connections and make it happen. So that’s really where that stems from.

CD: You and I spoke a year ago, almost, at the Graduation Day show about the state of Roots of Mankind. At the time you said it was kind of on hold but still kind of there. What is the state of that now?

JN: It’s done. It’s over. We officially dissolved it this summer, I’d say in June. We were billed to play the Mac Lethal show at the Ballroom, and the band kind of fell apart the week of that show. We had a band member leave for personal issues prior to it and another band member just couldn’t handle the stress. I haven’t done a show, I guess, since [February 2010]. It’s officially dissolved.

CD: Is that something you’re at peace with?

JN: Yeah, I am. It was a great experience. I met so many people and made so many friends through that band. We had a lot of good times, we had fun. But I’m ready for new things. Currently what I’m doing is satisfying that.

CD: Did the stuff with Erwin [Matthews, aka e$Money] start before the band stopped? I’m trying to remember my timeline here.

JN: Erwin and I… [Roots of Mankind] hadn’t been playing shows much. We were still, you know, practicing and trying to write and things of that nature. I started writing songs and putting stuff together last May or June, so early summer. We probably did eight or nine songs, maybe even ten. We started recording and both of us got busy and got to put it on hold, so I just decided I was gonna do a solo record, finally.

CD: So are you producing yourself on this one?

JN: Beats? Trak Masta Tom. Trak Masta Tom produced the whole record. I mean, I helped. And by “help” I mean we added a tons live instruments on each track. Live drums on a bunch, guitars, a lot of extra keys and synths. Paul Crosby, Thomas’s hype man, played bass on a song. A lot of live instruments and things of that nature. To me it’s more than just a guy rapping over a track he downloaded off the Internet. We really spent some time and made it into… they are songs.

CD: Well, that lengthens the gestation period, too, then. How long have you been working on this now?

JN: Well, actually… [since] last summer. I had always been talking about the idea of doing a solo record, even while Erwin and I were still writing for None-Money stuff. I became better friends with Tom. We went in the studio and did Head in the Clouds, his album, did a track on that with him and did all the cuts and some vocals and stuff. I didn’t know he made beats at all. Then we get in the studio and I said, “Who made all these beats?” And he’s like, “Well, I did.” “You never told me you made beats!” So I was like, “I want you to produce my first record, whenever I do that.” And so at that point he sent me a ton of beats, a bunch of little clips. And it has evolved so much. That must have been August of 2010. I wrote here and there, maybe finished two songs, and then I’d say in November is when I got really serious about it and started really writing a lot. Then Thomas moved back to Springfield in January, and that was when we started recording. So really we haven’t been recording for too long, but considering all the things we’ve done we put in probably twice the amount of work.

CD: How did you get into the promotion aspect of shows? What made you want to get your hands dirty as far as booking acts?

JN: Well, because nobody ever booked us, as far as Roots of Mankind goes. I mean, we were piggybacking off of whatever friends we had in the music scene and it got to a point where we were wanting to do more shows than people were asking us to. You know, I honestly couldn’t tell you how I met the people as far as the [Outland] Ballroom and [Nathan P.] Murphy’s, but we did and I started sending out emails and booking shows and it just really exploded from there. It’s more fun when you can plan them yourself and have a hand in that, and you can also make the details. You can play whenever you want, instead of waiting for somebody to ask you.

CD: I guess there’s the control issue there. It’s also more stress, though.

JN: That as well, but in the end it’s worth it, most of the time, to me.

CD: How did the tie-up begin with Balls Deep Productions?

JN: Well, Tyler [Amman], the lead guy at Balls Deep–one of them–is dating my sister, so that was how I got involved with those guys. They’re great guys. They’re my brothers. I don’t really book much with them anymore, but I’ll still go hang out and help them out whenever they need help.

CD: It seems to me when I first started seeing the merger of the stuff you were bringing in with them, but up until then I had always known them as an entity that brought in a lot of hardcore shows, which is great. We need those. But they never really brought in hip hop acts. I was like, how does that mesh?

JN: When Tyler asked me to come on and start helping he wanted to expand beyond hardcore booking, so I handled mainly hip hop stuff. But that was where that connection came from, was he wanted to do more than just hardcore stuff.

CD: So the things you’d be doing going forward would be separate. Is there a reason for that?

JN: No, just busy-ness. I don’t have as much time to help with things like that. I’m a full-time student, part-time job plus trying to do all these musical things and trying to DJ all over the place. But yeah, that’s really it. Just been busy. But they’re all still my friends. No hard feelings or anything like that.

CD: Since you mention DJ-ing, how did that get rolling? Has that always been a byproduct of the work you do in hip hop?

JN: Well that started obviously by hanging out with George [Rosenbury, aka DJ Geeg] of The Spacetones. It always kind of blew me away. It just got to a point where the band wasn’t playing shows and I wasn’t doing anything musically and I got pretty sick of it and I just decided to buy some turntables, mainly because I was just bored. And it’s tons of fun. I love doing it. So, yeah, the whole hip hop thing obviously had a thing to do with it, hanging out with all the Spacetones guys all the time. George really helped me out, telling me what to do. It just went from there.

CD: Tell me this: As a guy who is involved in almost every side of it, from performing onstage as a rapper to working onstage as a DJ to putting on shows, and having been at this for a few years now, what would you say is the state of hip hop in Springfield today?

JN: It’s growing… it’s growing. It’s not a huge thing, obviously. It’s a struggle sometimes. But we’re fighting the good fight and really trying to build something. There’s not much of a scene around here, and we’re trying our best to keep what little there is alive and help it grow by bringing Steddy P and guys from Kansas City and Columbia and St. Louis here and try and unify Missouri and get whatever stuff we can to come through here. It’s really in a growing process.

CD: So, can I be so bold as to ask you project where it will be, say, five years from now?

JN: Man, that’s hard to answer. I would hope that there will be an established scene and a crowd for it here. That’s what I would be optimistic for. Who knows, you know? I don’t even know where I’ll be in five years. I don’t know where I’ll be in six months. So I hope that there will be a crowd for it, that the work we’re putting in will pay off in five years.

CD: Is there any key element you still see missing to make that happen?

JN: In my opinion, people in this town sometimes have issues supporting new things. I think showgoers need to become more open-minded and realize that what we have going on here is a great thing, and that sometimes spending five dollars to hear someone you’ve never heard before is a great thing and you’ll really enjoy yourself. We’re planting a seed right now; I’m hoping and praying that it will take and grow and that people will open up to it and accept it and start coming to shows. I haven’t had a ton of experience booking shows outside of Roots of Mankind stuff, and that was just me being in high school and all my buddies going, “Oh, you’re in a band!” And we had a pretty good pull strictly off of that. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if it will work out, [or] if we’ll keep doing shows and forty people will come. I don’t know. I hope that it grows and continues to get bigger.

CD: I’ve definitely seen an upswing in hip hop shows, I’d say, especially in the last year and a half.

JN: We’ve been working it and trying our best. I hope that it continues to grow and becomes what it should be. There’s so much talent. So many talented people in Springfield. I’ve never heard somebody–ever–sound like The Spacetones. Ever. In my whole life. And e$Money, that guy is ridiculous. His beats are so far ahead of anybody else that I’ve ever heard. And SincerelyYours… if the right person heard him right now he could get signed. He could get a legitimate record deal if someone heard the things he’s doing right now. And they’re all amazing guys, too. [Trak Masta] Tom… Tom loves music more than anybody I’ve ever met in my whole life. And he’s damn good at it. And I really hope that people open up and start to realize that, because I’ve realized that. You know, I was the little long-haired reggae kid going to watch the Jah Roots band, you know? That’s what I used to do every weekend. Then I heard The Spacetones and I was just like, what the hell is this? Why have I never of these guys? It changed me, and it has changed the direction that I’ve headed in musically. I hope that the people in Springfield realize what’s going on and realize what they have because it’s fucking amazing. That’s pretty much how I feel. I’m pretty passionate about it.

CD: Take me back in time a little bit. How long have you been rapping yourself? The first time I met you you already had Roots of Mankind going and it was in that. Just how far back does it actually go?

JN: That’s really where it got started, I guess. I had no experience writing songs before the band. When I sat down and tried to write some lyrics I realized that writing rap lyrics was way easier for me. It was way easier to write raps than it was to try to write rhythm and, you know, sing-song type things. I grew up a punk kid, skateboarding and listening to Rancid and ska bands and things like that, and then I found a Common album on a school bus and it changed my life.

CD: Nice! Which one? Like Water for Chocolate? Electric Circus?

JN: Like Water for Chocolate. Then I heard [Kanye West's] The College Dropout on MTV and I heard The Black Album by Jay-Z and my life just was completely changed. From that point on I became a hip hop fan, and then when we started the band it was just much easier for me for some reason to write raps than to write anything else. It became more of a reality as my love for hip hop grew, because my abilities as a songwriter grew.

CD: How much, and in what ways, do you feel you’ve grown as a writer and a performer from that time to now?

JN: Well, as a writer I’ve grown a lot. Writing was always hard for me in Roots, mainly because it’s not easy to write with five people sometimes. It’s really hard. Myself and Lee [Goolsby], the bass player–love him to death–we always butted heads. We’d always come on real strong. Blake [Mixon]‘s over there on the drums, like, “I don’t care what we do.” It’s hard to agree on things, and you’re pissed at each other because somebody wants to do a different bridge. It was always hard. And lyrics were always hard for me, too, because I had no experience in it. It’s true with anything, it’s just the more you practice the better you get. So when I started writing for None-Money it was my first experience to beats and really putting myself out there and exposing myself. When you’re an MC and you don’t have a band to hide behind it’s a lot more personal. I never realized that.

In Roots I always had Brian [Podzielinski] doing amazing stuff on guitar, Lee doing great stuff on bass, Blake killing it on drums, and if need be I could just hide behind that. When you’re an MC you have nothing. You have you, and people are listening to what you’re saying. And it’s much more personal when you’re writing, because it’s just you. You’re not writing for the people; you’re writing solely what you want to say. So it has been a learning experience. The more you write the better you get and the more you see inspiration in everyday life. It’s just a maturing and growing-up process with music. That’s what it was for me; that’s what it still is for me, learning how to do it, learning how to write, how to fit certain words where… it’s just a practice thing, really.

CD: How different is the experience and, for lack of a better word, the satisfaction you get as a performer now when it is, like you said, just you on the stage?

JN: I may not be able to answer this question real well, as I’ve only done two rapping gigs aside from just jumping on for one song. It’s fun, but I’m still at the point where I’m nervous, because that’s the new thing, you know? It got to the point with Roots where we didn’t even have to practice; we could just go and do it, have fun and not be nervous. But I’ve only done two gigs now, so I’m at the point where I’m nervous again. It’s fun, it’s a different monster, and I’m looking forward to doing it more and continuing to write.

CD: Do you want to keep working in the model of writing to put out an album or do you want to have a constant flow of new stuff coming a little at a time?

JN: I’d say constant flow, but not too constant. I don’t want to be that rapper who has ninety seven mixtapes that are mediocre, you know, versus a guy like Kanye [West] who’s got, like, five albums in the span of twelve years and they’re all genius.

CD: Has it been twelve years?!

JN: Maybe. No, no, it has been eight, maybe.

CD: Still a pretty good track record if you can manage it.

JN: I’ve already started writing for my next project. I’ve already written four new songs for my next project. So the plan is to continue writing but not just bombard the people with too much stuff. Finding a happy medium is the goal.

CD: So is the new stuff just you again?

JN: Yeah. The plan is, at this point, I’m gonna put out this first solo album; put out the mixtape following the record, which I’d say will probably be thirteen tracks–eleven original beats, two unoriginal at this point, maybe subject to change; and then to put out the None-Money EP, which will be a lot of the earlier stuff that Erwin and I did last summer. Maybe a full-length, maybe another J-None thing after that, I have no idea. Right now we’re trying to focus on finishing up Adhittana and then putting out my next project.

CD: Having now done the solo thing, would you ever want to get back into group or band contexts again?

JN: Potentially. It wouldn’t be a Roots of Mankind-type thing. If I were to do a band it would be something crazy, something that no one has really done before, which is a thought I’ve been tossing around lately, what I’m going to do after J-None and None Money stuff. I’ll try to come up with a new sound, start a band or some sort of hybrid project.

I have no doubt you’re already aware that Springfield voters passed laws yesterday banning smoking in public places and the sale of beer and wine at movie theaters with lots of minors in them. Another blow against fun, some say. A violation of rights, others say. But this isn’t The Civil Liberties Blog, so I’ll leave such discussions for elsewhere. This is The Music Blog, so what do these laws–particularly the not-so-affectionately nicknamed “Smoking Ban”–mean for live music in SGF?

A whole lot of good.

As Grad School and J.O.B. Public House owner Daniel Schlink once pointed out in an interview, bars in Springfield are almost never simply places to walk into and have a drink; they have something else to help bring people in, some kind of hook. Therefore, you have sports bars, karaoke bars, Irish bars, piano bars, dance clubs and music venues. Music venues offer what is probably the most reliable hook, namely seeing a live concert. The people going to music venues do so either to see a specific band or bands or to be around music and fellow music lovers. Will they stop doing so because they can’t smoke a cigarette or pipe in those rooms? In a word, no, partially because drinking and smoking are secondary reasons to be in the venue and partly because there isn’t an alternative bar in which to smoke. What will happen instead is a quiet, gradual return of people who stopped going to shows because the physical effects they felt from attending–I have been told of burning eyes, coughing and wheezing and even nausea–became what they felt was too much con for the pro of the music. More people at the shows means more revenue for bar and bands alike, both of which are pluses.

Wait a minute, DeRosh. You’re saying the dedication of the smokers to going to shows won’t waver as a result of the ban while admitting the dedication of the nonsmokers did waver, since they’re “coming back.” So the more dedicated should suffer?

You can frame the decision that way if you so choose. Again, I’m not discussing fairness here. Each side works hard at protecting its own point of view on the matter. I’m merely saying the music-going experience will benefit. Case in point: The Rhythm & Boom concert series held each Friday evening at Lindberg’s, which is a smoke-free event in a venue that normally allows smoking. The series regularly enjoys excellent turnouts, and while you could argue that other factors such as earlier start time and lowered volume contribute to the numbers there can be little doubt the smoke-free environment plays its part. Other events such as the Queen City Shout month of showcases at Borders were created for the same reasons. There is demand for such shows.

If there’s so much demand for smoke-free shows the venues would have become smoke-free a long time ago.

Not true, and for one simple reason: Businesses are really bad at telling customers “no.” Saying “no” means losing business. As you can tell by the numbers in the polls, almost as many smokers voted against the ban as voted for it. In a world where smoking remained legal and the venues made the call themselves, they would have been sending away a lot of business to other bars that still let people light up. Now the businesses don’t have to say “no;” they just have to say, “The law says no.” The City of Springfield takes on the role of bad guy and the music venues–all bars, really–reap the benefits.

Let’s not forget another important benefit we can’t even quantify yet: better show quality, at least among bands with singers. The effect of the smoke on lung capacity, throat tissue and vocal cords certainly isn’t doing our frontmen and women any favors, so it’s more than possible you could hear some notes carried longer, a vocal range or two increase slightly and less late-show fatigue. This may not be a huge difference among bands playing 45- to 60-minute sets, but for a group holding down three or four hours around SGF it could be huge.

There are certainly parts of the new smoking law that range from confusing and seemingly unnecessary (the inclusion of open-air restrictions) to downright unlikeable (the potentially devastating effects on places such as The Albatross, a hookah lounge and upscale tobacco retail shop downtown that derives a significant amount of revenue from hookah smoking). But the local music community, while it will hem and haw in the short term, will experience a net gain from The Smoking Ban. Now if only we could get the City of Springfield to revisit another ban just one more time…

Logistics, you b****. News came down late yesterday on the Springfield News-Leader‘s website that this year’s I Love America festival, the annual fireworks display and daylong concert put on by James River Assembly near Springfield Underground every July 4, has been canceled for 2011. According to the article, the reason for the cancellation is none other than another Springfield Underground event: The Show-Me Music & Arts Festival–or, more specifically, the post-event cleanup time set aside for it. The two events were theoretically scheduled two weeks apart: SMMAF for June 17–19, I Love America for July 4. Between cleaning up after a three-day music, comedy and chef festival and setting up a one-day music and fireworks extravaganza there just isn’t enough time for the volunteer crews to do everything. With too much money and scheduling time already invested into SMMAF, I Love America lost the staring contest, so to speak.

That’s a pretty big scheduling oversight, to be honest, particularly when you consider there is only one day I Love America can happen each year so it has effectively been on the books since the end of last year’s event. However, it’s important to note the article doesn’t say the event is permanently dead, only that it’s canceled for this year. If I Love America returns next year, though, someone–James River Assembly, the Springfield Underground land donors, the SMMAF organizers–will have to make accommodations to avoid another events clash. That, or it may spell the end of using the Springfield Underground land for free, as it’s possible that if SMMAF’s organizers paid for the right to use the property for their festival it added to their leverage in the “which event stays” discussion. Maybe logistics isn’t the real b**** here, but just business.

Turning 30 is a birthday many people face with dread. For starters, the “I was young and stupid” excuse becomes only half valid, meaning it’s time to leave certain parts of one’s life behind and, hopefully, enter a new phase, a transition that can be either graceful or horrid. In its 30th year of existence Springfield Regional Opera is undergoing a reinvention, one led by a new regime (led by Conductor Amy Muchnick, Managing Director Derek Munson and a board of directors led by Les Brown, Jr.) and a new approach, one aimed at reaching out to a broader SGF audience. For the last few months SRO has been taking baby steps in its new era, putting on smaller events such as holiday concerts and jazz arias to satiate its audience while it prepares for The Big Show, the attention-grabbing event that will put SRO 2.0 on full display. The Big Show, aka Giacomo Puccini‘s classic opera La Bohéme as directed by Jeff Carney and conducted by Amy Muchnick, is finally here, with opening night coming this Friday night at 7:30 at Gillioz Theatre and again Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. So just how different will SRO 2.0 be from the opera you think you know? Let’s take a look at some commonly held myths and what they’re doing to bust them:

MYTH: Opera is just people standing around and singing. Not very interesting.

How they busted it: The new approach is called lyric theatre, and the opera is taking it very seriously–so seriously, in fact, that its new website address is SROLyricTheatre.org. As the phrase suggests, lyric theatre is about both singing and acting, so how is it different from your typical musical? It’s a fine line, but think of it this way: If you’re sitting on the fence between lyric theatre and musical, with one leg over each side, it comes down to which side you lean toward: singing or acting. Musicals lean toward acting, lyric theatre leans toward singing. Carney, La Bohéme‘s director and himself a trained opera singer, says this is a common trend in modern opera. He says there are between 25 and 30 opera companies operating in America today, whereas he estimates there are more than 100 lyric theatre companies currently in operation.

MYTH: Opera can’t be truly appreciated unless you speak Italian.

How they busted it: This myth is even less true than you might think. Though many famous operas were written in Italian, there are, in fact, contemporary operas written in English as well. When it works on the classics, though, Carney says SRO Lyric Theatre will have translations on projection screens behind the performers so you can follow along with what the characters are saying without taking your eyes away from the stage.

MYTH: Arts organizations in Springfield don’t believe in working closely together.

How they busted it: This production of La Bohéme is something of a breakthrough in that regard, as SRO Lyric Theatre is teaming up with Springfield Symphony, Springfield Ballet and The Boys’ Choir of Springfield for the show. While the hands-off approach among SGF arts groups toward one another has been the norm for a long time, Carney says you can expect that to continue to change for two reasons. First, it’s wise from a cost-sharing standpoint. Second, he says donors and city-run organizations like to see the cooperative atmosphere. And if there are two things classical arts need today it’s lower bills and some city and donor love.

MYTH: SGF isn’t a city with opera talent.

How they busted it: If the cast of La Bohéme doesn’t convince you with four of its central characters embodied by SGFers (Carol Chaplin, Chris Thompson and international performers Michael Spyres and Tara Stafford as the lovers Rodolfo and Mimi), you might keep an eye on the local pipeline for more in the future. Every year the organization sponsors four singers (and, beginning this year, one accompanying pianist) and takes them under its wing for a year of training before presenting them in the annual Café des Artistes showcase at Creamery Arts Center. This year’s coming-out party for new local opera up-and-comers happens April 22.

MYTH: No one makes new top-level operas anymore.

How they busted it: Winter’s Bone: The Opera, anyone? It could happen. There are lots of present-day composers looking for an outlet to make new works, Carney says, and SRO Lyric Theatre is looking into commissioning a new opera for its use later this year. If an SGF organization is going to have an opera made for it, why not go the extra step and have that opera surround a story with a local theme or a story with a local author? How about both? Opera writing didn’t die with Puccini, after all; it just had a rough transition into the next phase of its life. It’s about time to change that.

You’d think with a name like Cold War Kids you could expect angst-filled punk songs about climbing under desks and protest tunes against a nuclear arms race. But, such is not the case with this alternative rock band out of Long Beach, CA, which released their third full-length album Mine Is Yours on Jan. 25.

Back in 2009 I had the chance to see Cold War Kids at Lollapalooza, the annual Chicago festival that boasts a lineup of around 130 artists in August. At the time, “Hang Me Up To Dry” was the only Cold War Kids song that I had heard. It had been played on the radio quite a bit and had piqued my interest. So, I decided to give the band my time and check out its set. I was impressed with the atmosphere the band created and the professionalism with which they performed. I could tell, seeing Cold War Kids in Chicago in 2009, that it was a band worth remembering.

Well, here we are in 2011 and Cold War Kids is back on the radar with its most complete album to date. Mine Is Yours begins with the title track, a vocally driven song which introduces the album and builds anticipation through vocalist Nathan Willett’s repetitive, soaring lyrics, “What is mine is yours.” It’s as if the band set out to create something memorable right out of the gate with its opening song. The second song, “Louder Than Ever,” is the first single from Mine Is Yours and includes a noteworthy drum and bass combination leading into a positive pop chorus. The fourth track, “Finally Begin,” is easily one of the most polished Cold War Kids songs the band has recorded. This is one those songs that makes your day a little better no matter the mood. It would not surprise me if “Finally Begin” gets the nod for the next Cold War Kids single at some point down the road.

The album keeps pace throughout its second half with “Bulldozer” sticking out as one to remember. Mine Is Yours ends with a pair of songs reminiscent of the band’s earlier, more traditional Southern rock sound.

Overall, Willett’s refined vocal range mixed with a solid batch of songs creates a soulful pop rock album that will amplify already optimistic feelings induced by spring weather.

If You Like This Album, Check Out:

In Between Now and Then, by O.A.R. – In 2003, Of A Revolution (O.A.R.) released an album at a similar point in its life in comparison to Cold War Kids’ latest. O.A.R. had just finished an extensive series of tour dates and was gaining notoriety across the country. With In Between Now and Then, O.A.R. began shedding some of its jam-band roots and started recording songs with more traditional song structures. The band was adjusting its style and in the process created a solid album filled with notable songs. Transition albums are hit and miss, but when created to showcase a band’s talent in many different ways they can end up as classics. This is one of those albums I consider an example of a band coming into its own and playing to its strengths.

An SGF Band You Might Also Like:

Howdy, by The Cropdusters – In 2009 this SGF band released a six-song record which is good-time Southern drinking music. Although a little grittier and with less optimism than Cold War Kids, Howdy has a similar Southern blues sound which Cold War Kids played with on their earlier releases. The Cropdusters play unpolished, attitude-filled rock ‘n’ roll live, and some of its members perform every Wednesday night as The Nighthawks for The Outland’s “Wild Turkey Wednesday.” Check out The Cropdusters’ Howdy or make it out sometime to see them live to help support local talent.

So what can the closing of a bookstore mean for local music? In the case of the closing of Borders (3300 S. Glenstone Ave.), one of the 30% of locations the Wall Street Journal reports will be shuttered, the impact is two-pronged. On one hand you have the store’s local CD section, one of the larger and more diverse I’ve seen in the city. On the other hand is Queen City Shout, now in its sixth year of showcasing local acts in an earlier, family-friendly (i.e. no smoking or drinking) and often acoustic environment every weekend in February. Who better to explain where both of those things are headed, then, than Eddie Gumucio, a longtime SGF musician and the man who both ran Borders’s music department and created Queen City Shout.

Gumucio no longer works for Borders, having left the store in the latter part of last year to pursue a teaching career and to finish his master’s degree in teaching. He keeps in close contact with many of his former coworkers, though, and while there has been no announced day on which the store will close for good he says the speculation among the staff is that the closing will come sometime in March. Queen City Shout VI is already on to a new location, though, as the coffee shop area that housed the Friday- and Saturday-evening concerts closed last week. The last remaining performances for this year will take place at Big Momma’s Coffee & Espresso Bar (217 E. Commercial St.). As for the future of the series, it’s a safe bet Gumucio won’t let it just slip away now that it needs a new home. “It’s always been my baby,” he says, and because of that he has been out ahead of the news somewhat, talking to SGF music venues and coffee shops alike to expand and diversify the concert series in time for 2012. The room(s) will be different next year, but Gumucio says you can expect the early start times, family-friendly environment and nonprofit ties to local organizations such as The Kitchen to carry over unchanged.

What can’t currently be replaced with Borders’s closing is its local CD section, which, as I mentioned earlier in this column, was possibly the largest in the city. To quantify it a bit, Gumucio says the local CD rack at Borders held works from as many as 60 local artists at its peak, with between four and 10 albums from each, depending on the consignment agreement. Given that the average consignment was for about six albums, that makes for 300+ albums, all from or around SGF and from different times in the scene’s life, available for one to peruse and purchase during the store’s eight years in the city. Did they sell a lot? Not usually; according to Gumucio, better-known local acts such as The Ozark Mountain Daredevils and Big Smith moved a few CDs per week, while most others did a few per month or per year and some bands only sold a handful of albums during the entire consignment. Most bands sold more albums at their shows than they ever would in a store. But in spite of their sometimes-slow sales Borders kept them on the shelf, committing space that could easily have gone to something else had the store given in to bean counting. Gumucio says none of the local albums brought to the store were pre-screened and he never turned an album away in his time there. That openness, in his opinion, is the greatest loss to local music. “I think it’s going to hurt a majority of artists as far as feeling empowered,” he says. “It’s just kind of a limb for the scene that’s not there.”

It’s only natural that Gumucio feel a little biased toward the store he worked at and the department he ran, but even taking that into account I think he has a point. There are still a handful of stores in SGF where you can buy local albums, but SGF has few friends in the big-box corporate world where Average Joe America goes to buy things. The loss of one is a blow, and while the severity of that blow is open for debate the idea of an avenue closing–particularly for the no-budget homemade musicians without the affiliations or leverage to get distributed on other store shelves–doesn’t sit well with the idealist in me. Seeing the real impact will have to wait until musicians get all their CDs back from consignment. You may notice some taller stacks of albums artists have for sale at Queen City Shout VII next year.

Wanna know where you can still buy local-music albums in SGF? Here’s the list we’ve compiled.

While we do our best to work in local album reviews, we often receive requests for reviews of non-local work, too. Since we love discovering new music, but want to keep a non-local piece helpful for SGFers, we had an idea: What if we review one non-local album per week, whether brand new or just something we’re just learning about, and tie in recommendations of similar-sounding albums both local and otherwise? With that in mind, here’s another installment of our New (to us) Music Monday. Hopefully you find these useful and build some new favorites into your CD shelf or iTunes playlist. Watch for a new one every Monday, or as close to it as crazy schedules allow. Happy discovery.

Why now, you ask? Did it take this album winning Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards to spark my interest enough to give it a try? Strangely enough, yes. Let me explain: After listening to, enjoying and eventually owning Funeral and Neon Bible I was pretty excited for The Suburbs to come out. Then the first single, “Ready to Start,” came out and after hearing it I felt a little… flat. But last night’s Grammys provided a reason to finally pick the album up: the band’s live performance, which reminded me of everything I enjoy about The Arcade Fire in the first place, namely their sprawling, diverse instrumentation and infectious energy. The only downside with getting The Suburbs now is that listening to it comes with an almost unavoidable frame of reference to hear it in: Is it the album of the year?

No, not really. Not in my opinion, anyway. It’s a record more pensive than evocative, especially through its first half, making it hard to invest in emotionally until it’s almost too late. Better put, maybe it’s the best second half to an album of the year. The appreciation of it grows with repeated listening, though, such that I could at least say it at least belongs in the AOTY discussion. What’s most interesting is that The Arcade Fire, a band easily capable of a grandiose sound thanks to its eight members, made an album capable of sounding so confined. It’s done intentionally, of course. The Suburbs is a theme album, one about people trapped and decaying within their own lives. The title track sets the table nicely: “So can you understand/why I want a daughter while I’m still young?/I want to hold her hand/and show her some beauty/before all this damage is done./But if it’s too much to ask/if it’s too much to ask/then send me a son.” This tone, equal parts frustration and resignation, colors the entire record, and to reflect it musically the band sounds at times remarkably reigned-in. It’s especially true with the album’s first four songs (including the aforementioned “Ready to Start”), which is a dangerously long time to leave a listener waiting to be compelled.

The band finally lets loose on “Empty Room,” though, and from there it expresses its vignettes of compromised living with rich texture and building emotional force. By the time Regine Chassagne (wife of the band’s lead singer, Win Butler) sings “dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains/and there’s no end in sight” in “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” they’re back to their all-out theatrical selves, even if they remind one at times of Thompson Twins with their heavy use of synth organ. Their message is apparent by then anyway: Manufacturing and marketing an “ideal” lifestyle for a wide audience has taken away the idealism of the individual, giving the same thing to different people who want different things–the vibrance of the city, for one example–and draining that same thing of humanity by building privacy fences, manicured lawns and, yes, shopping malls. The “anything is possible” feeling of youth becomes shoehorned into a prefab, pleasantly colored box alongside others just like it, quietly drowning someone else’s similar feelings. Taken as a metaphor for life, the theme fits in lockstep with some of The Arcade Fire’s earlier work: we compromise our lives as we get older, creating ceilings and boundaries that define our lives where we had none before, and while we dare not advance past those boundaries we spend the rest of our lives looking out that window and wondering. While such deep rumination on modern life doesn’t make an Album of the Year, any work of art that brings perspective on the human condition to the masses can at least be put in the discussion.

If You Like This Album, Check Out:

In Rainbows, by Radiohead – Sonically this album has nothing in common with The Suburbs, but no band creates a confined, almost claustrophobic sound while still using lush instrumentation better than Radiohead. While the band’s bigger fans will probably not side with this one as the group’s best album, it’s almost inarguably its most accessible.

Up From Below, by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Speaking of bands with a lot of members, this 10-piece group quietly built an impressive following, as well as spots on movie soundtracks and television shows, with this 2009 release. You’ll probably know the single “Home,” but the rest of the album is actually quite different and, while sort of hipster-meets-flower-child in tone at times, is an enjoyable listen if you’re looking for an ensemble piece with a lot of varied instrumentation, including horns. Be aware, though: The album’s second half is slower and a little more melancholic than the first.

An SGF Band You Might Also Like:

The Nova Heat, by The Nova Heat – Though there is no such thing as a localized Arcade Fire, Jason Loftin and his oft-changing cast of collaborators and backing musicians makes thinking-man’s prog-pop that is both expertly played and catchy. This 2009 debut record remains the only finished album to date, but talk is there could be another on the way soon. Until then, you can listen to them on their MySpace page.

While we do our best to work in local album reviews, we often receive requests for reviews of non-local work, too. Since we love discovering new music, but want to keep a non-local piece helpful for SGFers, we had an idea: What if we review one non-local album per week, whether brand new or just something we’re just learning about, and tie in recommendations of similar-sounding albums both local and otherwise? With that in mind, here’s the latest installment of our New (to us) Music Monday. Hopefully you find these useful and build some new favorites into your CD shelf or iTunes playlist. Watch for a new one every Monday (or so). Happy discovery.

When it comes to hip hop music, it’s easy to get disenfranchised. There are hundreds of rappers, most of who we all know for the wrong reasons. And every so often an artist comes along that causes people to get flabbergasted, claiming that they are the next greatest thing.

J. Cole does that to people.

The North Carolina/New York emcee has added more fuel to the fire with his third, and most recent mixtape, Friday Night Lights. Do I like the title? Absolutely not. Do I enjoy the mixtape? Hell. Yeah. (Did I mention it’s free?)

To me, lyricists are to be judged on three levels. Cadence, content and voice. Cole hits on all three levels on FNL, and does it in a way that even endears himself to the old school crowd.

His cadence is not monotonous, flowing like it should be – smoothly, with moments of aggression and sense of the moment sprinkled in. His content ranges from pensive (“Too Deep for the Intro,” “Home for the Holidays”), flaunting (“Back to the Topic”) and females (“Best Friend,” “In The Morning”). And to provide that mixtape feel, he reaches out with lyrical flattery. On Enchanted, he channels 2Pac with the majority of the “Hail Mary” hook.

Come with me — Run quick see — Would you rather ride or die, la da da da, da da da da.

But he doesn’t do it in a disrespectful way, not biting the entire lot. It’s more to reminisce, rather than for personal gain. It’s refreshing. Why? Because he doesn’t need to do that type of biting to get people’s attention. Other tracks like “You Got It” and “Best Friend” have throwback lyrics, hooks, etc. and are a nice touch when you have a mixtape. All of it is a lead up to his debut Cole World, which is doesn’t have a release date in 2011, but is slated to come out on Jay-Z’s Roc Nation imprint.

And that voice. It’s the intangible. It’s not annoying, yet strong enough to carry an entire album. Most emcees can’t, spawning rap groups. Cole can carry an entire record, or mixtape — no problem.

It’s easy to see why Cole has the next greatest label. He has presence, and even in his lyrics talks about why it’s going to feel so good to blow up. And not from a, “I’m rich and it feels good because I was so broke.” Nope. It’s calculated. He discusses how he could have taken money, but waited for the right opportunity, honing his craft and his business model, while understanding the market.

Mix that headiness with the Cadence, the Content and the Voice, Friday Night Lights, here we all come.

Oh, and did we mention FNL is a free mixtape? You can download it here.

(THIS ALBUM CONTAINS WORDS YOU SHOULDN’T SAY IN FRONT OF YOUR MOTHER, FYI)

If You Like This, Also Check Out:

* The Ecstatic, by Mos Def – If you’re looking for iconic one-emcees acts, look no better than Ecstatic. It was TAGsgf.com’s No. 2 album of 2009 and still stands up.

* Food and Liquor, by Lupe Fiasco – If this is your first exposure to J. Cole, try out the mainstream’s introduction to Lupe Fiasco. Food and Liquor either created or popularized a whole new vein of music. It was quality, cool rap with a respectful edge. Released in 2006, it’s still relevant.

A Good Bet In SGF:

Any local show by Sincerely Yours – We are still waiting for a collection of work from SGF’s smoothest talent. You see him on a bill, you go. It’s that simple.

While we do our best to work in local album reviews, we often receive requests for reviews of non-local work, too. Since we love discovering new music, but want to keep a non-local piece helpful for SGFers, we had an idea: What if we review one non-local album per week, whether brand new or just something we’re just learning about, and tie in recommendations of similar-sounding albums both local and otherwise? With that in mind, here’s another installment of our New (to us) Music Monday. Hopefully you find these useful and build some new favorites into your CD shelf or iTunes playlist. Watch for a new one every Monday, or as close to it as crazy schedules allow. Happy discovery.

It’s time for Chris’s Slightly Alienating Confession of the Week: The ’59 Sound, the second album by New Jersey rock group The Gaslight Anthem, didn’t make nearly the mark on me that its predecessor, Sink Or Swim, did. The ’59 Sound took the band into the critical-buzz stratosphere, to say nothing of major festival dates and the chance to play with their musical hero and fellow Jersey guy Bruce Springsteen. Most people who know The Gaslight Anthem know it for this record. But while the band honed its songwriting craft it also lost some of its earlier intensity, backing off from the full-throttle, punk-inspired material it made on Sink Or Swim. It also seemed to get into a bit of a thematic rut; far too many songs followed the formula from “1930″ off the first record and centered around outpourings of emotion over a fictional young lover’s untimely death. I’m all for fatalism in music, but keep it to a song or two and make it count. Throw in the too-safe production on the album and its fate was sealed. Sink Or Swim is still in my regular listening rotation; The ’59 Sound isn’t even on my iTunes. And it’s not like that takes effort to do.

As a result, I hesitated in picking up the next record when it came out in June. I shouldn’t have. American Slang, the third album by The Gaslight Anthem, is not the middle ground between the two, but rather takes the best qualities of Sink Or Swim and The ’59 Sound while making something different. Two albums after the raw, pounding pace of that first record it’s clear the band isn’t all that interested in writing punk songs anymore, but the roaring guitars are back (at least in parts), the canned production is gone and Brian Fallon has more bark in his gravelly vocals. As with the aforementioned Boss, GA’s music succeeds most when it prioritizes playing with conviction over hitting every note just so. On American Slang the band seems less careful and more self-assured, and it makes a big difference.

That self-assurance also lets the group move into different territory with its songwriting rather than distill and reproduce what worked for it before. The band started to tinker more with loud and quiet in their song structure on The ’59 Sound, learning how to back off the all-out pace of the first record and building drama into the songs in ways other than just punk-rock earnestness. Here it’s moving those slow-downs and quiet moments around to other spots within the song, making the music less linear and repetitive. They’ve even taken entire songs at a slow- to mid-tempo pace, whereas on Sink Or Swim the only slowed-down song came from singer Brian Fallon playing solo on acoustic guitar for “The Navesink Banks.” Now the whole band is involved on songs such as “The Queen of Lower Chelsea” and the album-closing “We Did It When We Were Young.” There’s a tangible maturity and growth in seeing a band leave its comfort zone and succeed in new waters, and that’s precisely what’s happening here.

What might not be as immediately noticeable is that the band is cribbing from its mentor, perhaps more than it would care to admit. The hallmark of Springsteen’s music in the years before Darkness on the Edge of Town was that he was reviving the sound, vibe and lingo of the doo-wop and R&B music of the late ’50s through mid-’60s without just writing new takes on those old songs. It was a reminiscence, not a return. The Gaslight Anthem does much the same on American Slang with songs such as the excellent “Bring It On,” which is a Motown song played on rock guitar if there ever was one, complete with call-and-answer singing (“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” (“Was he not into you…”)) and on “The Diamond Church Street Choir,” which could easily have found a home on The Wild, The Innocent and The E-Street Shuffle–you know, if it had been written 35-plus years ago. And good to them for it. The Gaslight Anthem has always been sort of a throwback musically, evoking thoughts and feelings that seem to belong to another time. At least now they seem to know better who, what and where they’re throwing back to.

If You Like This Album, Check Out:

Sink Or Swim, by The Gaslight Anthem – I had to do it. Though it doesn’t have as broad a musical range as the latest record, the heart-on-its-sleeve immediacy of the music keeps it just as powerful, and Fallon’s lyrics are just as vivid and brilliant early on in his career as they are today. If you’re more punk-rocker at heart, this is probably your album.

Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell, by Social Distortion – Hmm… punksters borrowing from America’s musical past to breathe new life into their sound… I think that’s been done before. Yup, and few have ever done it better than Social D, taking rockabilly and, yes, a little of ’50s and ’60s rock ‘n’ roll and R&B to give Mike Ness‘s super-gruff vocals a timeless (and lound) sonic bed to lay on. They never did it better than they did on this one.

An SGF Band You Might Also Like:

Chorus of the Commoners, by The Queen City Saints – No punk band in Springfield puts more non-punk influences into its music than this one, working in Dust Bowl-era folk, bluegrass, Americana and more while keeping its wild heart and message of “stand up, don’t accept complacency, fight and achieve” intact. We nominated this one of our Albums of 2009 and it feels as equally deserved now as it did then. You can find it at your local-friendly stores such as CD Warehouse, Stick It In Your Ear and more. Growing families and other obligations have meant significantly fewer shows for this band than in past years, but if you want to see QCS live you’re in luck: The band’s first show in more than six months is at The Outland Ballroom this Saturday (11/30). Check them out.

This feels like it should have all been easier. The man sitting on the other end of the table should be on the road somewhere, touring behind his latest album released on Bloodshot Records, catching accolades from the likes of National Public Radio like butterflies in a net on a spring Saturday. This has all been in his lap to a degree before, there for the taking, the inevitable waiting to happen. But Jessel Harry spurned it all, moved back to Springfield earlier this year and waits tables at Flame Steakhouse downtown while he reloads his band, The Western Paradise, and starts again.

While it doesn’t seem like it yet, this is a story of triumph.

***************************************************

I always imagined the man who wrote a song as dark and unsettlingly tense as “Oh Mabel” would be a standoffish sort with a loner’s stare and terse responses. It fit the song, anyway. Anyone who wrote from the perspective of the American male-domination stereotype run amok to the point of spousal abuse had to be at least a little pissed off at the world, right? Having first heard the song in 2007 on The Western Paradise’s EP Industry, I carried that notion with me ever since. Instead I’m greeted three years later by a soft-spoken man, gentle in nature and unusually candid for a first meeting. He fingers a worn copy of Carl Jung‘s Man and His Symbols–his recreational reading at the moment–as he speaks, often looking down.

“I’ve come so close in my mind at times to thinking that this is all absurd,” Jessel says. There is no irony or woe-is-me attitude in his voice when he says it; it’s a statement of fact. You could hear a comment such as that from any number of musicians, often young men and women who dreamed of stardom and couldn’t handle playing to the bar staff at the tour stop in Peoria. Jessel is 45. He has played in bands in Springfield off and on for 18 years. He hit his stride in SGF’s music world with Monkey Engine, an alternative rock group he sang for in the mid-’90s. Back then it all came relatively easy: Jessel’s only duty in the group was to sing, so he says it didn’t interest him much musically, but the band routinely pulled 300-plus people for local shows. Little work, lots of attention:

It wasn’t enough. Monkey Engine split in 1995 after a three-year run and a restless Jessel hit the road, traveling to wherever felt good: Florida, Colorado, Georgia. Along the way he started thinking about doing music again, only this time writing all of his own material, words and music. He eventually came to New York City, a Mecca for songwriters and wannabes, writing new material and playing it every day on the subway, as well as at gigs at clubs in the city. In six months he had 17 new songs, all his own. There was almost enough money to make a living playing music–almost. For a year and a half Jessel plied his trade, recording along the way. He even landed recording sessions with producer Eric Ambel, who has worked with The Cropdusters locally and is best known for working with acts such as Steve Earle and The Bottle Rockets. Four of those songs were released among the six on Industry; the other four remain unreleased to this day.

Even with the buzz building around Jessel, he decided to leave New York and move back to Springfield. “Almost” making a living at music couldn’t last, and the enormous expense of recording with Ambel only made things harder. He also wanted a band to play his songs in, but it would be a while yet before he could muster the courage to put his music in others’ hands. Would the songs be good enough? Would someone else get them?

***************************************************

Jessel didn’t have a lot of experience with people “getting” him. He was born to a biracial family on the island of St. Vincent in the Caribbean. His father, a singer himself, gave Jessel the music bug at a young age, and he claims it was the only thing that kept him sane through his school years. He didn’t interact much with other kids socially, and as one of maybe 20 black kids in his high school the sense of belonging so many teenagers hope for just never came. “Very little made sense to me but music,” he says. What’s worse, Jessel lacked the tools to bridge those social gaps around him. It took him years to understand why. Jessel had clinical depression. But when your family’s motto is “any problem can be solved by working harder,” where do you go to seek help? Simple: you don’t. Jessel spent his formative years wrestling with the depression, a fight he often lost. He says he went long stretches of time–weeks, even months–without any kind of social contact. After high school Jessel enrolled at a conservatory in Shenandoah, West Virginia, seeking to learn more about music, to take the one thing he felt he understood and make it his craft. But the pleasure he got from making music was at odds with what he found coming from behind the podium. “I had some teachers who, after work, couldn’t wait to get away from music,” Jessel says. He couldn’t relate. Disillusioned, Jessel flunked out of conservatory after just one year.

At 19 he joined the Army, hoping the mental discipline it instilled would help him beat his illness. For a while it worked; he made it work. A quiet, artistic man in the most rigorous and un-artistic of circumstances, Jessel suppressed his very nature to adjust to military life. It also meant he completely stopped playing music. But for once Jessel found peace within his mind; for all its trials, military life was liberatingly repetitive. He was put to work as a cook in a field artillery battalion, getting two days off for every twelve on. From 1986 to ’89 he was stationed in Germany, finally getting his discharge just as the Berlin Wall fell.

Life as a veteran was a strange experience at a strange time for Jessel. Serving in a divided nation during the last gasps of the Cold War had changed his outlook forever. When Jessel returned to the States he says he picked up works by historian and anti-war advocate Howard Zinn and started reading. At the moment the rest of America believed in freedom–or Freedom, as it were–the most, Jessel believed in it the least. “Freedom was just a tagline,” he says. He saw it all as a power struggle for land ownership; acquisition was king, both in global politics and in the day-to-day lives of individuals. Veteran life also gave Jessel back something he had lost: his depression. Without the structure and discipline of military life Jessel returned to the quiet, solitary existence he had known before, which only fed fuel to his changing worldview. Jessel found the need to express again. He went back to music. “I can’t imagine writing music without depression,” Jessel says. “It makes you look at the world around you harder.”

***************************************************

The time after the Army marked Jessel’s first move to Springfield. Back then he came here to attend Baptist Bible College in the early ’90s, again lasting about a year. It would be the first of three moves to Springfield, and while it didn’t give him a college degree his time here gave him Monkey Engine and his emergence as a performer. “When I hear people say negative things about the (music) scene here it bugs me,” Jessel says. “You’ve gotta go to someplace where the scene is gargantuan.”

Scenes don’t get more gargantuan than New York, but Jessel moved back to Springfield in 2003 and formed a band around the new material he had been writing. He recruited bassist George Perkins and drummer Ritchie Allen to form The Western Paradise, a group that encapsulated not only his political visions but his belief that what America held up as its own social and societal ideals were in decay. The music was a portrait of a country at a dangerous intersection, written from the perspective of the car with no brakes. “I feel like there’s an old model in America that doesn’t work,” Jessel says. “We’re at a crossroads, and we can’t continue with the existing model.”

In 2006, The Western Paradise was featured on National Public Radio, XM Radio‘s “The Radar Report” and was the subject of articles various magazines, including one I wrote in the now-defunct Springfield rag GO Magazine. All of these hailed the band at the time as one to expect big things from in the near future. Then Jessel’s connections at Bloodshot Records in Chicago, a label home to the likes of Ryan Adams, The Old 97s and, more recently, Ha Ha Tonka, came calling. The label was talking about a deal, but wanted to see how the band did with shows outside of Springfield. Moving to Chicago, Jessel thought, would help the band’s development while strengthening the ties with Bloodshot since they would be in the record company’s home town. When the woman Jessel was seeing at the time told him she was moving up there as well, it made the choice easy. Why not?, he thought to himself. It would still be in the Midwest, where he felt most comfortable, and, as he put it, “it was almost affordable.” But when he brought the idea to Perkins and Allen they chose to stay in Springfield rather than uproot their families. Jessel rolled the dice anyway, packed up and moved north. “I was always so linear about it that I couldn’t apply that I had players who had children,” he says. He took a job at a restaurant at the Art Institute of Chicago and playing solo gigs while looking for new musicians for the band. For a while Jessel was able to fill the openings, but eventually he started flying Perkins and Allen up to Chicago to play shows with him. In 2007 Jessel planned to release the remaining long-shelved material from the Eric Ambel sessions side-by-side with new material recorded with the band in a double album. Everything was lining up to lead to the band’s big breakthrough. A big CD release party was even scheduled at The Outland later that year. Only it wasn’t ready. At least Jessel wasn’t.

Teetering on the brink of realizing one’s dream is a strange time to have an epiphany, but it was Jessel’s time nonetheless. His frustration had been building for a while. The financial strain of keeping the band afloat–flying his bandmates up, rehearsal space, finding shows to play–was too much to sustain, even with the traction and following the group was gaining. He could continue in Chicago as a solo performer, but there he found himself painted into a corner. Jessel says he found himself playing to rooms of people who sat and contemplated his music rather than feel it. The joy and affirmation he felt making music seemed lost on his audience. It was his conservatory experience all over again, only the professors were now his concert crowds. Working harder and pushing through wouldn’t solve either problem. He was at an impasse, and he had to make a change. With his dreams within reach, Jessel tore it all down.

“I felt like I had the material to put out a two-record thing, but I just decided I couldn’t go on with [Perkins and Allen],” Jessel says. “We’d been gigging together for eight or nine years, but finally I talked to them and just said, ‘I think I’ve just gotta start all over.’”

***************************************************

Jessel Harry sat at the other end of the table from me for almost four hours; Tyler Gray, perhaps, for one of those. But Gray is as relevant to this story as anyone other than Jessel could be.

Starting over for Jessel meant just that: square one. He had shelved a double album of material, partly produced by a man people sit up and pay attention to. He had let go of the musicians he had collaborated with for almost a decade, struggling again to find replacements who fit. The Bloodshot offer was left hanging. The show schedule ground nearly to a halt, taken up by an occasional solo gig. Life away from music took over in Chicago, and even that was a strain on Jessel’s money and energy. “In Chicago I might travel 45 minutes to see an indie film or an hour to my favorite bar,” he says. Musically and socially, it was unsustainable. Jessel moved back to Springfield this past February, to pick up the pieces and, hopefully, try again.

He took the serving job with Flame Steakhouse, moving into an apartment right above the restaurant. Suddenly everything was back at his fingertips: work, home, nightlife, hobbies. No long commutes or other fuss. Jessel doesn’t even own a car now. Soon after moving back an old friend, Ryan Flores, suggested Jessel check out a young man Flores was teaching guitar to–Tyler Gray. Flores thought Gray might be a good fit for the new band. Gray used to play and sing for the skate punk group No Control, but after leaving that band he took up folk music and dove into learning guitar better. Jessel teamed up with Gray to play acoustic sets at Art Walks and it immediately clicked. He had his first collaborator. After that the duo would scout and audition players using their acoustic setup as a base. “I knew what the songs were really about because I learned them acoustically,” Gray says, and by auditioning people in the same environment he and Jessel see who got Jessel’s songs and who didn’t. In three months Jessel had his new lineup, adding William Fortney of jazz group The Euphio Question on guitar, Nick Zeller on bass and Tommy Oerding of Highland Fall and Liz Moriondo‘s backing band on drums. All of them are around half Jessel’s age, and while the members seem to defer to Jessel with regard to playing his songs (Gray: “I know Jessel doesn’t want too many cooks in the kitchen.”), it seems to be more out of respect for the material than from any inadvertent father-figure vibe that could arise. For his part, Jessel seems to quell any such possibility anyway, opening himself up not only to having others play his songs but to collaborate and influence the material, too. “I know Will and Tyler will be writing some good stuff,” Jessel says.

The band’s comeback show in September at The High Life Live Martini Lounge was all about learning the songs already there, the Industry-era material and a few others, and about finding the meeting point among the players’ diverse styles. Now the next step is writing and releasing an album of new songs, written with the help of the new members, as soon as possible. Jessel says the group has plans to work with Danny Maple at Wired Woods Studio and even has a working title for the next album, a line from the Sonic Youth song “Small Flowers Crack Concrete” and the title of one of Jessel’s solo records, though it will be a while before you see Death Poems to the Living Gods of America on store shelves.

There’s no telling if Jessel can or will regain the momentum of the past. He could have stayed the course and been a major-label artist by now, fulfilling his goal of making a living from his music, the only real goal he has ever set for his passion. But he knows staying the course might not have worked out according to plan, either. “Less than ten percent of groups that get signed put out a second album” Jessel says. “I put out four on my own.” His hunger to find success on the road is still there, now matched by the guys playing beside and behind him. He has learned through therapy to corral an illness that hid him from the world, found a day-to-day life that suits him and found a new avenue to make music he believes in. At this point, he says he’s not concerned with posterity, though posterity manages to find him anyway. Jessel received a letter a while back from a fan, someone who bought one of his solo records back in the New York subway days and who tracked Jessel down and wrote him, years later, to tell him he still listened to and enjoyed it. This is the sort of thing Jessel says matters most to him now, that sustains him even when it all seems absurd. Enjoyment. “I’d like to make people move and dance more,” he says. “Rock ‘n’ roll is a mating ritual. But it’s not about getting laid; it’s about not fearing sexuality.” He looks down for a moment, hands clasped and away from his book of Jung, and chuckles to himself. “It’s a really expensive way to meet women.”

State of the World (2003)

After an instrumental track filled with timely cuts, Vast Aire jumps on with his standard off kilter flow, before Vordul Mega and Rob Swift appear in Cosmos. A chorus of “And the DJ can cut right there …” leads to a lot of shine for the DJ. Emcee Invisible begins a run of tracks with lesser knowns including Chocolate, Mondee and Roli Rho, but they early third of the album doesn’t suffer at all. They all affirm their presence before the likes of J Live and Slug jump into the fray.

J Live drops a classic basketball track, a move that can go sour quick with poor hoops metaphors, but that’s not the case here. The repeat track is when Keep SteppinMondee appears with Slug who steals the show with a track I found myself repeating when the album was new to me. Keep Steppin has stood the test of time.

The beauty part of where I found the album was (and still is) conflicting. It was released in 2003, and packaged to where it looked like a soundtrack. I spotted it “new” in the “used” section for $4.99. It was a bad sign, but the names on the back were worth the chance, considering the bulk of the investment is that a lot of times compilations suck. It’s conflicting because this album is cemented the permanent life rotation – which is a hard spot to claim, and it missed everybody. I implore you to do the same. You can pick up this musical gold for $2.79 on Amazon.

If you like this, check out:

* Lyricist Lounge Vol. 1 – This 1998 release featured an amazing set of poets: De La Soul, Mos Def, Q-Tip, Word A’ Mouth, Common, Pharoah Monch, Black Thought, Saul Williams, Kool Keith, Talib Kweli, Jurassic 5, KRS-ONE … and that’s just getting started. Do I really need to say more? Pure. Hip. Hop.

* Love Movement by A Tribe Called Quest – I know, I know … Love Movement is Tribe’s third best album, maybe. But, that’s still saying a lot. Jam after jam of smooth, jazzy hip hop. It just feels good to listen to. Actually, let’s clean that up … My preferential order of ATCQ albums (all great listens): 1) Midnight Marauders, 2) Beats, Rhymes and Life, 3) The Low End Theory, 4) Love Movement, 5) … Paths of Rhythm. So, Love Movement is their fourth best album and that was pretty official, so stamp it. If A Tribe Called Quest has somehow missed you (I’m looking at you 1990s birthdays and your autotune), don’t let it happen any longer. Start from the top and go chronologically (5, 3, 1, 2, 4). Enjoy!

In SGF it sounds like this:

* Jah Roots Band, Nov. 11 at Remmingtons Downtown – OK OK OK – It doesn’t really sound quite like Jah Roots Band, but I wanted to take an extra opportunity to remind you to go to Remmingtons Downtown on Thursday for the Mike Hulsey benefit show. Besides Sincerely Yours is real nice on the mic, and performing with JRB so the emcee element will be there. Other bands confirmed are: 77 Jefferson, The Spacetones, Members Only, The Hundred Hand String Band, and The Bootheel. Only $10???

While we do our best to work in local album reviews, we often receive requests for reviews of non-local work, too. Since we love discovering new music, but want to keep a non-local piece helpful for SGFers, we had an idea: What if we review one non-local album per week, whether brand new or just something we’re just learning about, and tie in recommendations of similar-sounding albums both local and otherwise? With that in mind, here’s the latest installment of our New (to us) Music Monday. Hopefully you find these useful and build some new favorites into your CD shelf or iTunes playlist. Watch for a new one every Monday (or so). Happy discovery.

There are few emcees in the world more polarizing than Asher Roth. I understand there are many of you who are going to click Back, or jump to another website right about, um, now. And then there are the people who would click on or listen to anything with his name on it. And maybe everyone assumed he went mainstream as soon as you saw the “I Love College” video.

And while I have a weak spot with emcees with charisma, there were few records as disappointing as Roth’s solo debut, Asleep in the Bread Aisle, especially after loving Roth’s mixtape with DJ Cannon in 2008, the first time we saw Roth emerge. The difference? On Asleep in the Bread Aisle, he tried to write songs. And to be honest, some emcees can’t write songs, but they can rap their asses off.

Roth clearly belongs in the latter. And that’s totally OK.

See, in Seared Foie Gras served with Quince and Cranberry, a mixtape effort with DJ Wreckineyez, Roth clearly focuses on the craft of lacing well-known beats with on-point lines. To be honest, it’s tougher than you’d think.While everyone loves beats dreamt up by Kanye West, Pharrell, 9th Wonder, J Dilla, Just Blaze, etc., not everyone can sound as good as the original artist. And don’t think people pay attention to those to fraudulently bless those tracks, either. Roth has the rare skill to make the beat his own, without sounding lazy or disrespectful to the originals.

And that’s all I ask from him. I don’t need thought-provoking songs and insightful lyrics. Nope, I need stuff like this:

Hey, yo, quick life lesson. Never tough a man’s (god damn)
While he’s resting, or while he’s bench pressing

or

Please don’t be so aggressive
You wastin’ T cells when you hating on my flesh and blood
Don’t be mad that this rap’s my profession
And I go to class in the same clothes I slept in
And watch hoes arm wrestle when I’m reffin’
Over the top? Psyche, no mic checkin’

Deep? Pensive? Not even close. But in a world of rap with people trying to act hard, or at least important, Roth reminds me of music that’s having a great time, without thousand-dollar bottles of liquor in some type of contrived club setting.To be honest, it’s refreshing. And funny. And he drops sports references like Jeremy Maclin, Mark Madson, Rik Smits, Mark Lemke, etc. Plus, he doesn’t line up a ton of other guest spots. B.o.B. makes an appearance, but that’s really about it.

He’s allegedly releasing a 2010 full-length record called The Spaghetti Tree. I’ll listen, because he makes me laugh, but I’ll likely be waiting for his next mixtape.

Meanwhile, click here to download his two FREE mixtapes. What do you have to lose? Fresh, recognizable beats and rhymes with levity. Sometimes, that’s all you need.

If You Like This, Also Check Out:

* Eastern Philosophy, by Apathy – Another emcee who struggles with songs, but kills freestyles and random verses, the Connecticut rapper does some good work on this record, a collection of songs he wrote while his major label deal was (indefinitely) shelved. One of the best rappers ever, just not a great songwriter.

* Cruise Control Vol. I, by Copywrite – An emcee who took a run at Asher Roth in 2009 for sounding like Eminem, hasn’t really put out a quality “album” since 2001. He went the mixtape route, with CC Vol. I in 2005. It’s solid, with some

A Good Bet In SGF:

Oy. There’s not much similar, so just go with something cool, like the new Kids and Chemicals stuff. They have nothing to do with Asher Roth, but it’s a whole bunch of fun.

While we do our best to work in local album reviews, we often receive requests for reviews of non-local work, too. Since we love discovering new music, but want to keep a non-local piece helpful for SGFers, we had an idea: What if we review one non-local album per week, whether brand new or just something we’re just learning about, and tie in recommendations of similar-sounding albums both local and otherwise? With that in mind, here’s the latest installment of our New (to us) Music Monday. Hopefully you find these useful and build some new favorites into your CD shelf or iTunes playlist. Watch for a new one every Monday (or so). Happy discovery.

PBS’s program Austin City Limits has a way of sucking me in to watch every time I come across it, and the most recent example I saw included Emmylou Harris and Shawn Colvin singing backing vocals for a redheaded lady I had never seen before. Anything Emmylou is singing on must be at least decent, I thought, so I stuck with it, but it ended up being the unnamed woman who really blew me away. It turned out that lady was Patty Griffin, someone I knew by name but not by music, and the episode was for her latest album, Downtown Church, a collection of gospel songs. As I delved further, though, it seemed every review or article about Downtown Church wanted to measure it up against Griffin’s first two albums, the folksy acoustic Living With Ghosts and its all-over-the-place follow-up, Flaming Red. Okay, now I was intrigued. Folksy acoustic sounds kind of predictable, so let’s look at all-over-the-place, shall we?

Flaming Red was released in 1998, in the middle of arguably the best time ever to be a female singer-songwriter in America, and the album really is all over the place stylistically. No two songs sound alike, or even similar. Griffin still goes with her acoustic folk at times, but she pushes herself into blues, country and, most surprisingly, feedback-laden and bombastic rock–the opposite end of the spectrum. Don’t worry, though; her voice can handle this broad range. And what a gem of a voice it is, at once sweet and adolescent, at times reminiscent of a cross between Bonnie Raitt and Liz Phair, but with deeper wells of power to draw from than either, a rapid, almost imperceptible vibrato and surprising, soaring range. At first listen one could be duped into thinking Griffin’s voice might be something of a one-trick pony, a tonally limited instrument confined to coffee-shop shows and other events prefaced with phrases such as “an intimate evening of music.” It’s anything but.

The other thing that stands out is Griffin’s songwriting, particularly lyrically. “Tony” is a story of oppression, suicide and the carelessness of youth. “Mary” has been covered by numerous people in the years since its release, and deservedly so; it’s as stirring as any song to come out in the decade. “Goodbye” is a plaintive country tune looking at dealing with the loss of a loved one, showcasing just how evocative Griffin’s vocal range (particularly her high register) can be. Don’t go thinking Flaming Red is a mopefest, though; the title track starts the album with wide-open mayhem and the opening of “Wiggley Fingers” sounds so much like Jimi Hendrix‘s “Foxy Lady” uncanny. Then there’s “Blue Sky,” re-purposing the squeak-and-whistle guitar strums and light-toms-and-tambourines drumming of ’90s U2 to give them a more contemporary-Americana space to breathe in. Some parts of the album will make more musical sense initially than others, but it seems more coherent and sensible with each repeated listen. Flaming Red is worth checking out for its myriad uses of Griffin’s incredible voice alone, but it will creep its way into your rotation for other reasons with time. Thanks, Austin City Limits.

If You Like This, Also Check Out:

* Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, by Lucinda Williams – This a decidedly more country album than Flaming Red, but range of song styles is also broad and Williams’ voice is another that will surprise with what it can do. She’s also a similarly impressive songwriter; “Lake Charles” alone would make this album worth a listen.

* birds of my neighborhood, by the innocence mission – Taking things in the opposite direction, this album is pretty much country-less, but is an acoustic folk classic of the same era. Karen Peris‘s voice won’t exude the soul of Griffin’s, but it’s no an enjoyable listen and, at its best, no less impactful. “The Lakes of Canada” even gained new life as a Sufjan Stevens cover.

A Good Bet In SGF:

* Before Daylight, by Cindy Woolf – Woolf’s debut was an immediate favorite among SGF country and folk lovers, but it’s her sophomore effort that, similar to Flaming Red, challenged the singer’s voice by putting it in bold new surroundings (i.e. a full, plugged-in band). She passed with flying colors.

E&A by Eyedea and Abilities

Michael Larsen, known to fans as Eyedea, is most broadly known for his battle raps. Before he gained national notoriety winning the 2000 Blaze Battle in Chicago aired on HBO (when he basically got a free pass against a terrible Shells in the final) after he captured crowns at Rock Steady and Scribble Jam. The Minnesota native was reported dead over the weekend, after his mother found his body. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the cause of death is unknown. He was 28. He had a handful of side projects including Face Candy (jazz meets freestyle rap), and alt-rock band Carbon Carousel, but his work with DJ Abilities created that under the radar hip hop that puts your neck to work. E&A was the group’s second release together (2004), put out by Rhymesayers and Epitaph.

Throughout E&A Abilities sets the stage with instrumentals showing off his turntablisms which are quantified by multiple awards on the ones and twos. On the ground level, the sound is simple but elaborate cuts and drops give the music incredible depth. But, as Eyedea explains on the opening track, E&A is in the business of :

Bringin’ you that DJ … MC … just some good hip hop music

After the reintroduction, they quickly point a musical flamethrower at your ear drums with Now. This is one of those songs that no matter the mix tape you can make an excuse to include it. Eyedea’s tongue twisting makes you shake your head and outwardly giggle at how ridiculous he is. Meanwhile, Abilities shows off his flare for the dramatic building powerful crescendos to hard-hitting drums. After a refrain, he rocks a turntable solo. It can’t be described as cuts, because he is making melody where there appears to be just a single tone, changing speeds and bending notes (if you see DJ Imperial or another turntablist – read: real DJ, make him play this song – it probably won’t take too much arm twisting and ask what is actually happening). The lyrical premise of Now is the opposite of Nas saying hip hop is dead. E&A was waving the banner of “hip hop is alive, it’s just not in the mainstream”:

We’re here to bring the people and the music and the movement all together now
We see through repetitive etiquette and the highly unoriginal
Were here to bring the people and the music and the movement all together now
They will lose

The album redirects back into the classic battle rap feel with Kept before the down-tempo Exhausted Love explores the frustration of a generation hitting the factories for work. The album continues the ebb and flow back-and-forth of battle then slow it down. A couple tracks later, E&A bangs you with the crazy fast MC-DJ track One Twenty.

Abilities flexes a bit of muscle on Two Men and a Lady which is loaded with classic cinematic drops and cuts before E&A Day reestablishes exactly the duo’s stranglehold on underground fandom:

The truth is I can do what you can’t
Sellin’ twenty thousand units hand to hand to the true fans

They leave our shows thinkin’ what these kids do is unachieveable, and they right
You never in your life could do as much as we do with just two techs and a mic

After Act Right, the album closes with Glass, a song you’ll repeat a few times before letting your ears rest. Emotion pours out and builds as it closes the album intensely. Eyedea talks about how he’s perceived and how he perceives himself, and ultimately how he would be thought of in death. It was powerful in 2004, but just days after he passed, it’s bone chilling.

If you like this album, check out:

* This Is Where We Were by Face Candy: Eyedea’s side project of freestyles over improvisational jazz instrumentals. The band consists of bass, drums, human percussion (Carnage) and other vocalists, led by Eyedea. It’s very clearly free form, purposely losing traditional song structure, making it a fun and ever-changing listen.

* Float by Aesop Rock: The second full-length release from Aesop Rock feels as abstract as anything else he’s done. Float is packed with bangers featuring production by Blockhead and Omega One and guest emcee appearances from Slug (of Atmosphere), Vast Aire, and Dose One.

I’m not sure which I like more  Das Racist’s music or the idea of Das Racist. See, when rappers are funny, sometimes it’s just as easy to dismiss their credibility as their perceived gimmick. And to be honest, Das Racist cracks me up. I’m just not sure how serious I take their music, and at the same time, I’m not sure how serious the New York City hip hop trio wants me to take it.

Seriously, one look at their name makes me giggle. (It’s pronounced Dass Racist.) They have nosed in the music scene’s periphery with a sound that bounces back and forth from 1980s party rap to subtle rap with lines dipped on so much sarcasm, you can’t help but laugh at the hyperbole.

And, if you’re keeping score, DR’s latest free mixtape effort, Sit Down, Man is funnier, more sarcastic and lyrically better than ever. Think of it as the Sham Wow of comedy rap.

For a taste of what the sometimes slow and lazy cadences of emcees Kool A.D. and Heems read like:

From Free Jazzmatazz: This is the best song ever. Better than ‘Juicy,’ better than ‘Für Elise,’ better than any song by Jay-Z. Better than Two Weeks by Grizzly Bear. That’s a pretty good song, right?

Later, a hook to one of their songs sounds like:

We’re not joking, just joking, we are joking, just joking, we’re not joking.

Sit Down, Man shows they have some traction in the music community. Featured are producers Diplo, Boi-1da, Scoop Deville, Devo Springsteen and Dame Grease as well as collaborations with El-P, Despot, Roc Marciano, Keepaway, Teen Girl Fantasy, Chairlift and Vijay Iyer.

Still, to me, Das Racist is epitomized by the following passage:

Yeah see, quit smiling and shut your silly traps, these doodoo brown weirdos is wilin’, but they can really rap
They saw the cover of the tape figured it’s really wack, later on eventually admitted it was pretty crack

Sit Down, Man promo video

Hahaha JK

If you like this album, check out:

(Since Das Racist sounds like no one else, here are two recommended albums from some collaborators.)

* Fantastic Damage, by El-P – It’s hard to imagine that this record came out in 2002, but it’s still as relevant and modern-sounding as ever. Not to say it was futuristic, because the topics are gripping. Politics. Girls. Shit talk. And for one of the most harrowing tales in music history, Stepfather Factory is as on point as ever.

* Florida, by Diplo – Revered for his party DJing around the world, Diplo entered the DJ Shadow and RJD2 pantheon with this 2004 release. Oh, it will make you move alright, but it’s a subtle head nod rather than Club Icon.

Also check out locally:

Das Racist sounds nothing like MC Smitty, a local emcee who is about to drop an album, but he’s worth a listen. He’s not known for rocking shows in the normal SGF music scene, but he’s assembled a following and hoping to cash in on Internet sales from an upcoming release. That’s a grind on its own. Facebook. Myspace.

To be honest, Nick Cave used to intimidate me a little bit. My first experience with his music came with his solo-project-turned-band Grinderman, a band with all the grit and bluster I loved in my punk-loving years and that once hilariously insisted that “I must, above all things, love myself.” Though I enjoyed that album’s humor–it magnifies its own underlying silliness by acting way too serious–I was left feeling a little cold toward Cave the musician and songwriter. In a way, he represented to me the epitome of the too-cool-for-school facet of art rock’s persona. Maybe I had just been introduced to the man’s music at the wrong (if fun) point in the timeline. I quietly hoped Cave’s work with The Bad Seeds would show me a different side and rolled the dice on its most recent work.

On Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, the fourteenth album by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (they’ve been making records since 1984), Cave shows himself more to be standing at the intersection of The Velvet Underground and The Talking Heads. It’s equal parts swagger and quirk, with Cave alternately singing and speaking over rock that at times weaves in odd syncopation, bits of organ and a prodigious amount of tambourine as Cave spits out poetic takes on sex, love, death and other musings. The band even gets a ’70s R&B groove (with an excellent combination of percussion instruments in the mix) to accompany Cave’s spoken-word vocals on “Moonland:”

When the band unleashes its rock jones, though, is when it’s running on all cylinders, such as the infectious fuzzy guitars and libido-driven, sinewy bass line of “Albert Goes West,” a song The Dandy Warhols might secretly with they had written, one that begs for a Cadillac convertible ride through the desert with Ray-Bans in full effect. Even the “sha la la la” section at the end is more indulgence than cheese:

The band’s heartbreak songs don’t connect quite as well–Cave’s voice doesn’t really do wounded–but the band more than makes up for it on the sexy, Doors-esque “Hold On To Yourself,” while “Jesus of the Moon” sounds like something Murder By Death might have attempted on its more recent records. The band does take a couple of over-the-head art-rock shots, such as the eerie, upright bass-driven “Night of the Lotus Eaters” and “We Call Upon the Author,” which takes Cave’s spoken-word singing just to the wrong side of obnoxious. There’s a lot to like on Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, though, and while I can’t call Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds devoid of art-rock opaqueness it’s enjoyable–and accessible–enough to change my initial impressions. If you find yourself in the mood for Ray-Bans and a ride in a Caddy convertible, pick this album up along the way.

If you like this album, check out:

* Grinderman, by Grinderman – Think of this as the cut-the-crap-let’s-rock alter ego of The Bad Seeds, noisier, harsher…  but also more tongue-in-cheek. It’s much more of an acquired taste, but if you acquire it you may love it.

* Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia, by The Dandy Warhols – Self-indulgently grandiose at times, this record drops Cave’s quirkiness and spoken-word delivery and just goes straight for the hipster-rock mojo… and delivers.

Also check out locally:

You’ll hear similar elements, though in a more Americana style, in the music of reborn local rock act The Western Paradise, including singing/speaking mixes and use of unusual percussion tempos (the Southwestern shuffle-drumming on “Valentine’s Day” is a prime example). The band has one EP out, the 2006 release Industry, though you’ll likely have a hard time finding it. On the other hand, you can hear the band’s work on its MySpace page and in concert at Art Factory 417 on November 5.

The new flex-floor court at Drury's O'Reilly Family Event Center.

October is here, and with it arrives Drury University’s much-anticipated O’Reilly Family Event Center, a dual-purpose facility for sports (basketball and volleyball) and entertainment (concerts, etc.) set to raise the university’s profile considerably. DU gets things started with a month full of all kinds of events to celebrate the grand opening, and it began last weekend with a concert by M-Dock Band and Liz Moriondo. What can you expect to see, hear and experience when you come in for The Big Game or The Big Concert? And what does it mean for the bigger picture of sports and music in the city? See for yourself:

MUSIC

Drury’s new O’Reilly Family Event Center has the capacity, physical and otherwise, to be a game-changer for local concert hosting and promotion in the city. Taken as a music venue, the building’s seating balloons from 3,100 for sporting events to approximately 3,600 thanks to floor-level and general admission seats. That makes it a mid-level concert spot by size, something SGFers have been crowing for more of for years. It’s venues of this size that prove to be the most versatile in a market such as Springfield’s, as a facility the size of JQH Arena has to stick to booking acts it knows can fill its 11,000-seat space. The work it takes to route those acts’ tours through SGF–tours that often visit larger cities and places that coincide between two larger-city stops–might be a good indication why it happens only occasionally. Mid-levels such as OFEC can more easily route artists through that are up and coming (dare I say it… I’m gonna say it… college radio-friendly?!), slightly past their peak or otherwise well-known but out of the norm.

In that regard OFEC is already capitalizing by making an aggressive push for unexpected acts with the help of an in-house promoter, Howard Cotner. Lifehouse (Oct. 29) won’t seem out of the ordinary for SGF given its steady presence on rock and Top-40 radio, but Aretha Franklin (Oct. 30) and, perhaps, Blue Collar Comedy Tour vet Bill Engvall (Nov. 18) will. And don’t dismiss former Hootie & The Blowfish lead singer Darius Rucker (Nov. 5) as has-been fodder for reminiscing; his contemporary country career has taken off like a shot in a very short amount of time and figures to build even more. All of the above are coming through this month and next, but if OFEC can keep that momentum going and book even one such show per month–two ideally, which seems to be the actual plan–it can become a major player for the attention and dollars of SGF concertgoers in no time. The staff in charge even made an important call in the planning phase to keep up with most other music venues, allowing alcohol sales during concerts–something not allowed for sporting events. They seem to be taking this idea of a dual-purpose facility seriously.

The OFEC's video board and student bleacher seating, which retracts to allow space for the stage during concerts.

How seriously? The arena was designed from the outset to be optimized for balanced, quality sound, from its layout to the deadening material on the ceiling. Think about it: Most basketball and volleyball arenas become music venues out of necessity, because their size favors it. Here SGF gains a sports venue purpose-built and customized for hosting live music, which is a first for the city. Will it rival, say, a Hammons Hall for sound quality? Perhaps, but realistically it’s doubtful; Juanita K. is a fully tailored building, singular in purpose and execution. But, then, Hammons Hall won’t have to host a home game against Rockhurst the next night, either. Away from the fans, the private rooms well-appointed and will make for the best V.I.P. and artist green rooms this side of JQH, which is an important touch to add when dealing with the often complex contract stipulations (known as “riders“) associated with bigger-name artists.

For showgoers this all adds up to one thing: diversity. The OFEC seems intent on carving out its own identity as a music venue, so expect different names on the marquee, a different look and, particularly, a different sound that you’ll hear in other rooms of comparable size in SGF. For other venues and the music community as a whole, this will be a location watched closely in its first year. Can it challenge the local conventional wisdom that showgoers won’t turn out for shows of OFEC’s size unless the act gets considerable radio play? Will it go more after an adult audience, the student body at its backdoor or some combination of the two? The facility and staff have already made bold statements of intent in the early going, and all the elements appear to be in place to follow through on them, but the real tests to see if the O’Reilly Family Events Center can become a standard bearer among local concert venues will come in the months ahead.

SPORTS

As a sports fan, the O’Reilly Family Event Center flashes Division I beauty in a Division II package.

The 3,100-seat arena will have much more of an open feel than Weiser Gym, the Panthers’ basketball and volleyball home since the late 1940s. Gone is the steamy, sauna-like heat and the on-top-of-each-other seats. And while some might argue that stacking fans on top of each other can make for an intimidating atmosphere, the same can be said of a facility with thousands of chairbacks, luxury suites and a video highlight board. As far as Division II facilities go, even in the Great Lakes Valley Conference where basketball is king, the OFEC looks straight out of Dubai.

The men's lockers, custom-made using burl walnut.

Obviously winning has a lot to do with recruiting, but the OFEC is a recruiting attraction in itself. Gone is the old parquet court, too. In its place is a “flex floor,” a complex system that is designed with the athletes’ knees in mind. How complex? It has four layers, topped with hard maple wood. Each sport has its own locker room with a lounge. No more sharing of space. The lockers in the locker rooms are made with quality wood, an idea borrowed from the Kansas Jayhawks‘ playbook.

Something the public will never see, yet ultimately enjoy, CoxHealth donated $1.5 million to have a state-of-the-art training facility, one that is possibly 40 times as large as the current training space. CoxHealth also donated $1.5 million and secured a 20-year agreement with Drury athletics to provide sports medicine services by fellowship-trained orthopedic surgeons.

As mentioned above in the music section, the OFEC has been designed with acoustics in mind. If the students truly do take advantage of a more robust student section on the floor behind the goal, it could not only replicate that old Weiser Gym feel, but it could be more intimidating with its modern look. Plus, how intimidating would it be to be down 20 points and see people in a luxury box? And to take it even further, with the open concourse, wouldn’t it be gut-punching to opponents if you saw the crowd milling around the two concession stands because you’re getting dominated?

Overall, what’s most impressive is the attitude. Instead of taking a passive approach and settling for what many would expect for “just Division II programs,” Drury built something that a low-level Division I program would die for. Plus there is angst about public money. Only about 2 percent of the building came from public money, and that’s for a FEMA grant that would allow the OFEC to serve as a storm shelter in case of emergency. Otherwise, the rest of the $13.5 million came from donations, whether from the business community or the alumni base. Not bad for a school with a current enrollment of 1,600 students.

Most importantly, it’s an opportunity to re-brand Division II basketball in the Ozarks. Drury recruits many local players, from the entire Ozarks region, and both men’s and women’s programs have had success. Will more casual fans come to the OFEC for the novelty aspect? There’s no doubt. It’s the quality of the basketball that might get the return business, and expand the fan base.

Click here for a complete rundown of all the events happening during the opening month at O’Reilly Family Event Center.

* All photos courtesy Drury University.

While we do our best to work in local album reviews, we often receive requests for reviews of non-local work, too. Since we love discovering new music, but want to keep a non-local piece helpful for SGFers, we had an idea: What if we review one non-local album per week, whether brand new or just something we’re just learning about, and tie in recommendations of similar-sounding albums both local and otherwise? With that in mind, here’s the latest installment of our New (to us) Music Monday. Hopefully you find these useful and build some new favorites into your CD shelf or iTunes playlist. Watch for a new one every Monday, err so. Happy discovery.

Kid 'n Play, 2 Hype

I know, I know. Kid ‘n Play are the punchline. The non-threatening lyrics can be cheesy. They were a Saturday morning cartoon. Dude had the biggest hightop fade anybody has ever scene. Hell, LeBron James clowned them on a State Farm commercial, and he was barely out of the womb when they were doing the thing. So why in the world would somebody review Kid ‘n Play in 2010? Because LeBron James doesn’t know Kid ‘n Play and I’m worried that their music might be completely lost on this generation.

When it comes down to it, 2 Hype is get off your ass and dance music – 11 tracks of upbeat party hip hop. Chris “Kid” Reid and Chris “Play” Martin were ultimately performers. With an endless arsenal of Running Man variations and the Kid ‘n Play kickstep, the duo was constantly moving while performing. Their rhyme schemes were never complex or lyrics very deep, but it was all about getting the party moving, which ultimately came down to them moving themselves.

2 Hype – their debut album – went platinum in 1988 behind the smash hit Rollin’ with 2 Hype. The song hit No. 2 on the charts and was recently listed at No. 63 of VH1′s Greatest Hip Hop Songs. You would recognize its horns, back-and-forth party raps and call-and-response chorus from just about any 1990s movie (you know – oh la oh la heyyy, oh la oh la heyy – did that help at all? If not, check out the video below.)

The title track 2 Hype and Gittin’ Funky soared on popular radio charts, but the album was bolstered by some classic, 1988 boombap head-noddin’ hip hop. My favorite track on the album, Damn That DJ (Wizard M.E.) exemplifies that most.

Of course, 2 Hype came with the standard party album love song, Last Night which will probably get some eyes rolling, but it’s by no means a track to skip. If you’re looking for something to get you movin’ (read: working quicker and partying) or something just a little bit different, find a copy and pop in 2 Hype. Make sure you’re not alone, because the kickstep won’t be long to follow.

Rollin with 2 Hype

At Fresh Fest, 2010

If you like this, check out:

* The Nine Yards by Paperboy (1992): While not directly in the same vein as 2 Hype, Paperboy brought it on the party song rap music. The Nine Yards is led, of course, by Ditty the top-ten hit. It had a bit of that G-Funk feeling to it and is a cover-to-cover (sort of under the radar) good listen.

Locally you might like

* MC Smitty: True, MC Smitty doesn’t sound much like Kid ‘n Play, but he’s a comical lyricist who tracks down some funky instrumentals. I say you might like him, because I enjoy both Kid ‘n Play and MC Smitty. The word on the street is that he’s got some recordings on the way. Check him out on Facebook.

“There’s absolutely nowhere to hide with a situation like this,” former Ozark Mountain Daredevil Larry Lee says of playing with his new band, and he’s right. The new group, Beyond Reach, may consist of four musicians from some of the most respected bands to come from SGF, counting the Daredevils, bluegrass groups The Undergrass Boys and Radio Flyer, stage-musical composition and more on its family tree, but playing all-acoustic (read: no percussion) folk-pop with four lead vocals means you will either be on your “A” game during a performance or not, and the audience will know the difference right away.

“We’re basically naked together,” Randle Chowning chimes in. “We’re skinny dipping musically.”

It’s a heady metaphor, but it aptly describes what Chowning and Lee have been doing as bandmates for 40-plus years: trusting each other completely, both onstage and in the writing room. Since their days together in The Ozark Mountain Daredevils the two have written and performed one another’s songs, and when they each independently moved to Nashville they did so again, releasing a self-titled record under the name Beyond Reach in 2005. After each eventually moving to SGF again, Lee and Chowning worked on new projects but wanted to write together as Beyond Reach again. Lee brought a new idea to the table the second time around: How about incorporating a couple of the musicians he had worked with on his solo work, David Wilson of The Undergrass Boys and Radio Flyer and Ned “The Band” Wilkinson, the music savant best known to casual fans as part of the local trio Nick, Ruell and Ned the Band, not just as players but as full contributors. The approach came as a surprise to Wilson. “I thought Larry and Randle wanted side guys at first, but they want a band.” The group retains some songs in its repertoire from the 2005 record but is working on material written as a four-piece and plans to release the resulting album early next year. Meanwhile, Beyond Reach debuted its re-launched lineup last March in a concert at Drury University’s Clara Thompson Hall.

The group’s second-ever concert is one the members consider of tremendous importance, and the reason has nothing to do with the band. Beyond Reach is playing tonight’s Concert for The Ozarks Celebration Festival, a fundraising show for what will be the festival’s 14th edition next fall, with the idea of increasing awareness of the event to help the university make it a regional happening. Wilson has even helped reunite The Undergrass Boys for the event, meaning he will spend the entire evening onstage–which is fitting, given Wilson’s especially strong connections to the city’s roots-music heritage through his aforementioned bands and the longrunning Ozarks House Concert series. For Wilson, good local music, regardless of its genre, has always shared one common thread. “The bands that stick out, that leave something behind, are those that take risks and share of themselves and their family’s culture,” he says. 

“If there’s songs–good songs–they live,” Chowning says. That’s the idea paramount to Beyond Reach’s existence, that these four men, through decades of experience, shared history and an unwavering trust in one another as musicians and writers, can create songs that last beyond the shelf life provided by a radio-play chart or other such trackers of public attention span. In other words, “skinny dipping musically” isn’t about a cheap thrill; it’s about making a connection, and the audience will know the difference right away.

John Legend with the Roots

While we do our best to work in local album reviews, we often receive requests for reviews of non-local work, too. Since we love discovering new music, but want to keep a non-local piece helpful for SGFers, we had an idea: What if we review one non-local album per week, whether brand new or just something we’re just learning about, and tie in recommendations of similar-sounding albums both local and otherwise? With that in mind, here’s the latest installment of our New (to us) Music Monday. Hopefully you find these useful and build some new favorites into your CD shelf or iTunes playlist. Watch for a new one every Monday. Happy discovery.

Let me be completely honest. I’m not sure I could pick out a John Legend song if I heard it on the radio. And I’ve taken a ton of grief from my friends over the years, especially the hip hop purists out there, for not frothing over The Roots and their discography. So when I heard the two entities teamed up for a record — Wake Up! — I tilted my head to the side and imagined it together. “I’ll check it out,” I thought.

What happened was a seminal moment for my best music of 2010. This is not an overstatement. The reasoning comes in three parts.

1. I discovered what I didn’t overly enjoy about The Roots was their vocalist, emcee Black Thought. Replaceable, I always thought. My favorite Roots song? “You Got Me,” featuring Erykah Badu? Why? Black Thought wasn’t as involved. So when you replace BT with a crooner, who was clearly trying to tap into some 1970s (or earlier) soul music, and mix it with hip hop’s premier live instrumentation group, why wouldn’t audio bliss coagulate?

2. The idea of covering idealistic songs tied to a certain generation is always intriguing. On the same measure of intrigue, those ideas rarely delivers. And in general, covers can bomb, because if you don’t find a unique way to cover a classic…well. Um. Oh, boy.

From NPR.org:

During the past 18 months, Legend spent his spare time collaborating with ?uestlove and The Roots on covers of politically motivated soul music from the 1960s and ’70s. What started as a potential single turned into Wake Up!, 11 vintage songs which are at turns optimistic and frustrated about the times that birthed them.

Dope.

3. The rapping that appears on the album doesn’t seem forced, and merges in with The Roots, because that’s what we expect. Yes, the parties involved added some rapping, putting their fingerprints on the original works. Naturally, Black Thought appears on the record, but Common makes an appearance (on the same track as songstress Melanie Fiona). It worked. Big time.

The finished product is a double-dutch jumpfest in and out of energetic head nodding and pensive inhales/exhales. I found myself gripped to the album either way. The project is only 11 tracks, but the album last more than an hour and doesn’t feel like a rushed group project. Instead, it’s long on groove, funk and soul.

Even if this isn’t your cup of tea, listen to the album’s opening song, “Hard Times” and tell me you don’t like it. The song which was originally recorded by Baby Huey, a 400-pound man who died after one album at age 26, hits hard, but still makes you feel good. Then listen to it dial down a big with song No. 2, “Compared to What,” a song recorded by Roberta Flack in 1969 and appropriated in 2003 by Coca-Cola for a commercial starring Common, according to NPR.org.

The record is available for sale on Tuesday (Sept. 21), but can be streamed for free at NPR.org until Sept. 28. That’s how I found it. And they have an IPhone app to stream it in the car — that is until I buy it.

If you like this album, check out:

* These Songs for You, Live!, by Donny Hathaway – Donny Hathaway was as talented as any singer in the 1970s, but was troubled and committed suicide at the age of just 33. Still, his music — even his covers — live on.

* Brothers, by The Black Keys – The Black Keys are as close to having a throwback ’70s funk to their music. The edge here on Brothers is harder than you’ll find on Wake Up!, but the sound is a virtual time machine.

Also check out locally:

Jah Roots band comes to mind, if nothing else, for their ability to appear in different pieces, yet still make versatile music. Reggae. Hip hop. Rock. Imagine if your favorite singer wanted to do a record like this. Of course, they’d choose Jah Roots.

And don’t forget J.M. Buttermilk’s Hot Buttered Soul ‘n’ R&B Revue doing something a little more edgy. More parts Marvin Gaye and less parts James Brown. Bring your own shaken moneymaker.

Through four full-length albums, four EPs and one book soundtrack–yes, you read that correctly–for Jeff VanderMeer‘s 2009 novel Finch, Bloomington, Indiana’s Murder By Death has undergone a fascinating sonic evolution. The band’s debut, Like the Exorcist but More Breakdancing, set the tone early with its blend of melodic indie rock, piano and groaning, morose cello, but subsequent work touched on something… darker. Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left Of Them was a story set to music of the Devil waging war on a small town in Mexico, and it introduces the noirish qualities and Western-style tunings and tempos that would later come to define the band’s sound. In Bocca Al Lupo was another concept album, this time centering around themes from Dante‘s works as well as sin and consequence (If you can’t tell, MBD doesn’t do light and perky) while singer Adam Turla dropped his voice down to a baritone loaded with gravitas and hints of Johnny Cash, if a little more agile. Red of Tooth and Claw further loosened the band’s musical coil as it became more comfortable with its dramatic, often sinister take on storytelling in song.

There isn’t a band in music that sounds like Murder By Death. Think about that for a minute. Given the state of music in the 21st Century, where entire genres have been smashed into subgroup bits like ideological walnuts, terrifically few bands exist that sound like no one else and have no one else try to sound like them. Any band that might even have such aspirations will likely give up and move on after hearing Good Morning, Magpie, MBD’s latest record. While the group has let go of making concept albums, it has also made a record as musically powerful as any you’re likely to hear this year. In spots the band breaks form and sees the sun break through the dark clouds, such as on the rollicking drinking song “As Long As There Is Whiskey In the World,” the improbably upbeat look at death “Yes” and the love song (?!) “Foxglove.” “King of the Gutters, Prince of the Dogs” is the masterwork, though, a slow builder with a second half that can be described as nothing less than quietly triumphant, capped by Turla’s singing “Nothing can touch me, nothing can touch me. No force. No sound.”

This is still a Murder By Death record, though, so you had better believe the darkness is coming, and when it comes it hits harder than even the meanest works from the band’s catalog. “White Noise” is an ominous plodder propelled by low, booming drums and Sarah Balliet‘s elegant, foreboding cello. “Piece By Piece” is the tear-blurred raging lament of a grand man now broken and probably the album’s most intense track. The title track, meanwhile, is the ultimate synergy of everything the band does well, blending elements of Morricone guitar strums and high-pitched theremin with cello and a story of love through struggle told through a vivid, literary bird metaphor. It could become the standard by which future MBD songs are judged, and the same could be said of Good Morning, Magpie for the band’s albums. In writing and playing, this band has never been stronger or more compelling, always original and, in this case, truly raising its own bar. They don’t need a unifying concept or motif to guide their work anymore, and without it they’ve progressed to creating real art.

If you like this album, check out:

* Animals In the Dark, by William Elliott Whitmore – Whitmore provided guest vocals on MBD’s first album, and on this 2009 release he’s at his full-band earthy best. Nothing close in style (remember what I said earlier about no one sounding like MBD), but fans of what they do will see where Whitmore is coming from.

* Il Buono, Il Bruto, Il Cattivo, music by Ennio Morricone – The legendary Italian movie scorer is a huge influence on the group (they even named a song for him), and this score for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly stands in the eyes of most fans as his best. Pick up this Italian version of it if you can (and you can, on iTunes), though, for longer versions of some songs than on the American release.

Also check out locally:

There isn’t a band in SGF that serves even as a reasonable facsimile of Murder By Death, so I’m going in the most logical direction and pointing you toward their local opener for MBD’s show tonight, Golden Giant. The four-piece instrumental (for now) power-post-grunge group (which, full disclosure, employs TAGsgf’s Scott Perket as its drummer) is putting the finishing touches on its first album right now, but until that arrives you can hear examples of the band’s music on its Facebook page.

While we do our best to work in local album reviews, we often receive requests for reviews of non-local work, too. Since we love discovering new music, but want to keep a non-local piece helpful for SGFers, we had an idea: What if we review one non-local album per week, whether brand new or just something we’re just learning about, and tie in recommendations of similar-sounding albums both local and otherwise? With that in mind, here’s the latest installment of our New (to us) Music Monday. Hopefully you find these useful and build some new favorites into your CD shelf or iTunes playlist. Watch for a new one every Monday … err so. Happy discovery.

Something to Write Home About doesn’t feel 11 years old. Kansas City grown, The Get Up Kids created singable hooks driven by grunge-driven powerchords under synth melodies at upbeat tempos. The album was the group’s second full length and is still timely today. The danceable songs are balanced by the down trodden, especially on the third track, Valentine. The occasional broken heart lyrics shoved Something to Write Home About into the dreaded emo genre, though I’m not sure anybody knows exactly what emo means. The album’s promotional tour was with Weezer during the ultra-pop Green Album days, which didn’t help the perception.

Catchy is the one word definition of the project. It opens with an immediate bolt of energy on Holiday – a breakup song that you can’t easily shake from your head. Red Letter Day and ballad Out of Reach drop directly in the middle of “can’t get out of our head.” Maybe none as much, however, as the fast paced 10 Minutes. It dances from riff to riff and the lyrics are memorable, again recalling the process of a breakup