Adam Faucett will play The Outland in downtown SGF on Saturday (April 28). TAG caught up with the Arkansas song-writer the morning after a basement party in Omaha (while he was still in said basement). Learn of beard maintenance, constant song-writing, and tour vans (in one word).

SGF probably best remembers Les Izmore as the Real Rhymers Camp official Granny Smith apple advocate. He left for Kansas City five years ago where he emcees for the 15-piece rock/funk/tribal/hip hop band Hearts of Darkness. HOD is making waves across the midwest, with billing on some of the region’s biggest festivals and stages. It will play Kauffman Stadium at a Kansas City Royals game for the second year in-a-row in 2012. Hearts of Darkness will play in SGF this Friday (April 27) at Highlife Martini Lounge. There’s not a mathematician in the world who can get them all on that stage, do NOT miss this one.

Izmore also released a solo album near the end of last year, aptly titled Granny Smith Theorem. He plans to have another project out this year. TAG caught up with Izmore to talk about his band, Real Rhymers Camp and the green labeled apple.

Kansas City rapper Steddy P returns to SGF Friday, April 13 at Outland Ballroom supporting upcoming album BetterMakeRoom (IndyGround) which will be released Tuesday. The bill has local support from J-None and Trak Masta Tom. TAG caught up with Steddy, listen to the conversation below.

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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.

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

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.

“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.

Photo by Kara Remington

- “Have I ever told you the story of how The BoogeyMen came together? So you’ve got this band called The Filthy Thirds, right? So Toad [Wyrick, the Thirds' guitarist] has left for the Army and this is when I brought Nate [Clarkson] in… well, we were playing all these shows and changing our sound from party rock to the harder stuff we became. There were very few people… you know, it was a transition and there was not… it was right at the point where the old crowd was fading and the new crowd wasn’t there yet. Well, we had four surf songs we had been playing in The Filthy Thirds off and on for however many years: “Vampiros,” “Fantasmo,” “Sangria” and one more that we don’t even play anymore. I couldn’t tell you the name of it or how to play it. I kept sitting at home and coming up with these riffs and basically I would have had to have an outright band for them. I wouldn’t think a band playing Iron Maiden-type songs would want to play that. But I was like, “God, I can’t waste this riff. I can’t do that.” So then I just turned it into a surf song. So eventually I come up with about ten of these surf songs. I was sitting around, watching movies like I always do–I’m a horror movie junkie; I have more horror movies in this town than anybody. Just out of the blue one day it was like, “you know, it would be incredible if you had a band that played instrumental music in monster costumes.”

- “The thing about instrumental bands is you have to realize nobody cares. Nobody cares about instrumental music except other musicians. How many of our shows have you been to where you’ve seen an audience just completely entranced? You know why? It’s the costumes. It’s a show.”

- “It just came natrually to me to have that mask on and to just get up there and just… be an a**hole. It’s the old Shakespearean trope, you know? ‘The jester can get away with anything.’ That was totally the idea.”

- “Honestly, I look at things while I’m playing. That guys’s a different stereotype. I’m calling him out. That girl’s a different stereotype. I’m calling her out on it. That’s kind of my thing. If you don’t want to be called out, don’t make me call you out. That’s kind of how I look at it. And at the same time they love it. The love the abuse.”

- “The best nights, I feel, are the nights whenever we’re playing to a new audience and, to put some numbers to it, you’ve got sixty people in the room you get two people that get it and they start firing back at you. Then two songs in you get four people that get it. That’s really fun as far as a performance part of it.”

- “It’s a show, which I think is a big thing a lot of these bands around here are missing. They don’t want to do a show. They want to be up there and just stand there and play their s***, and… you know what? You’re not giving anyone a reason to watch you.”

- “I think that’s something that kids are missing. I’m not that old… I may be 29, but I’m not that old… but these f***ing kids around here, all they do is put themselves in a box. ‘We’re this.’ We don’t have a town big enough to be clique-y. I’m sorry, we don’t. There’s good death metal, there’s good black metal, there’s good jazz, there’s good soft rock. There’s good of everything. Recognize that and appreciate it. It blows my mind that people can’t recognize something good and bad, regardless of genre.”

- “I think I’ve got the only iPod in the world that goes from Cradle of Filth to T.I. to f***ing ABBA. It goes all over the place. Lady Gaga… I love Lady Gaga.”

- “If you ever get the chance to go on the road with us you should, because it’s like the weirdest bunch of people you’re ever gonna be in a van with. Toad lets us borrow his van, but the only condition is I’m the only guy who can drive, so you’ve gotta deal with twenty-four hours of me being sober and cranky and [BoogeyMen drummer] Mike Rumsey in the back going, ‘My CDs are in here.’ I don’t know if you’re gonna find a band with seven more different people in it.”

- “There’s a guy, Adam Stewart. He’s in Los Angeles right now. He actually followed us around one day when we were buying our costumes with a film crew. So there’s footage of this, of this actually all coming together, it’s been documented. I can’t get the guy to return my phone calls, my emails… nothing. But all of this, the demise of the Thirds and the coming together of The BoogeyMen, has been documented.”

- “The weird thing is, everybody asked me, ‘So, you’re really into surf, like Big Ray [& The Futuras] and all that?’ I’d never heard of Big Ray. The only surf exposure I’d ever had was Dick Dale and The Ventures. My grandpa was a big Ventures fan. He had eight-tracks. I remember that… that vibe.”

- “[The new BoogeyMen record] is gonna be the best record I’ve ever been a part of. This is a ‘go big or go home’ record.”

- “I get asked probably twice a week, ‘When are you gonna do a Filthy Thirds reunion?’ No. There will never be a Filthy Thirds reunion. Ever. Ever. Unless somebody has a few million dollars. Literally. I will not do it. I felt like that last show here, we played every song we ever recorded, you know, went through the whole catalog, and only fifty people showed up? Don’t harass me about playing again, you know? You don’t care about it.”

- “There comes a point when the romanticism of rock ‘n’ roll becomes obsolete. There comes a point when you’ve got to wake up and just absolutely realize that, you know what? Maybe it’s okay to just play out of town on the weekends. Maybe it’s okay to have two shows in town. To have this ideal notion of just being out on the road just to be out on the road for no reason, that’s just never appealed to me. I don’t understand that.”

- “I think that comes from a lot of people that grew up in families that had money, quite honestly. So they had the equipment when they were eighteen years old and instead of going to college they went out on the road. Well, sure, if you’re eighteen years old and you’re single you go out there and you f*** everything that moves and you’re gone for two months and you come home and you’re completely broke. Your credit card bill’s completely racked up. “Oh well, dad will pay for it.” Just totally detached, you know? And that’s not how it works. Kudos to anyone that has done that and made it. Not for me. I have no interest in that rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. I like playing music. I don’t like the business that comes with playing music.”

- “I don’t like dealing with the money. In an ideal world you’d get done playing and there’d be a cannon that just shoots out money and that would be your payout. Okay, here’s what it is. BOOM.”

- “Stone Dead was actually [The Filthy Thirds'] fourth record. Our second one never got released. Our close friends are the only people that have it. Mike [Rumsey] hated the drums on it. We recorded it over at Yankton [Sothern]‘s house, and by the time it was complete I was just done with it. It was just one of those things where it was like, we’re a different band now. So few people have heard that. We’ve got a live record in the can that nobody has ever heard, that probably nobody ever will hear. It didn’t turn out like I wanted it to. And then we decided we wanted to do a proper record, with stacked tracks and everything. You know, a proper ****ing metal record.”

- “With the correct people I would absolutely go back to playing metal. The thing about metal is that you can’t half-ass it.”

- “I blew my voice out. I can’t hardly sing anything anymore. I need a singer. I need a Rob Halford.”

- “I surround myself with a band of guys that can play. My thing is, when I get onstage I worry about what I do. I’m trying to get up there and put on a show with what I can do. When you start making me worry about what you’re gonna do, that’s when we’re gonna have a problem… That’s one thing when I go onstage, I’m like, ‘These guys know what they’re doing.’ It’s all come together so well. The only thing that’s missing is that I want horns. I want horns in this band.”

- “I don’t necessarily hang with the guys I play with, but on the nights I do play I don’t wanna be miserable the entire time I’m playing.”

- “I don’t want a guy in the band who’s a diva. I’m enough of a diva!”

Brother Wiley. Clockwise from left: Todd Mincks, Brett Miller, Dallas Jones, Kenny Wirt and Jessica Gray (seated).

It’s reasonable to expect to have some kinks to work out in your first concert as a group, but to play a set two-and-a-half times as long as you’re scheduled for at the most nerve-wracking local show of the year is another matter altogether. But that’s how local earthy-pop group Brother Wiley got its start at the Spokane Songwriters Festival in 2001, an invitation-only event with some of the region’s best songwriters playing to a field full of their peers under the sun. ”It was horrible!” singer and guitarist Brett Miller says. “We played ten songs, first of all, which is insane–everybody plays four, or maybe five–and told stories. We listened to the recording of our set and we were like, dear God!”

Back then the group consisted of longtime friends Miller and guitarist Todd Mincks and it performed as an acoustic duo, as it would continue to do (with its name changed to Mincks & Miller) until 2007. Since then the group added Jessica Gray on bass, Kenny Wirt on drums and Dallas Jones on banjo, reverted back to the name Brother Wiley, released a brand-new album called Up the Ghost and returned to Spokane for its just-the-right-length set last weekend. A lot happened to bring them back there.

First, the lineup. Mincks and Miller recorded their first album, Life After All, on MayApple Records with Wirt on drums and Jones on bass, but Jones’s other obligations wouldn’t allow him to commit to the expanded band full-time. Gray was brought into the group in February 2007 on Wirt’s suggestion. “What Jess may not know is that we had a gentlemen’s agreement that if she sucked she would only last one practice, ” Mincks says. Gray didn’t suck, and before long she was playing her first gig with the band at Harlow’s–for more than four hours. Both men agree that Gray’s presence brought a new energy to the band’s sound, and the expanded lineup brought a more collaborative approach to songwriting as opposed to Mincks and Miller working on their songs separately.

The band’s songs may have been tighter than ever, but it still didn’t prepare the members for the experience of recording with Jonathan James of Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin for the new album. Miller describes James as someone interested more in making bands sound better than in just doing the job and collecting a check. Gray says she feels as though all of the band members have become better musicians after working with James. He’s also not one to dole out praise quickly, Miller says. “For about two-thirds of the album Jonathan was very supportive, but I was conscious of the face that he never said, ‘I really like this song,’” Miller says. That sort of talk came when recording was closer to completion… after nine months, 16 days and three recording studios. This is not a band that likes to hurry through anything.

If the glowing faces of Miller, Mincks and Gray are any indication, it was worth the wait. Up the Ghost, named that way because of the album’s multiple references to ghosts in its songs, is 14 tracks long and is already getting attention outside of SGF; the first track, “Drive,” was listed last week as the lead featured track on the NoDepression website, a leading authority in Americana and roots-rock music. After its official CD release party at Lindberg’s this Saturday, Brother Wiley intends to book and play shows extensively through the summer, as Mincks and Miller’s schedules (both work in the education field) are favorable for short road trips at that time of year. You can expect their sets to be of a reasonable time, though; they’ve learned a lot in nine years.

Chris and Scott from TAGsgf.com sat down with Shawn Eckels of Speakeasy, Jah Roots, Greasy Chair, Han Trio, etc etc…seriously, we can keep going (the man is in a gagillion bands). Shawn Eckels talks music, upcoming Speakeasy and Jah Roots shows, recording and more. Watch the whole interview or just listen to the podcast.

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