Month: September 2013

The Cooper-Young neighborhood was the canary in the coal mine of a Midtown cultural revival now raging at the other end of Cooper, on Overton Square, and Cooper-Young’s annual neighborhood street festival — taking place on Saturday, September 14th — might be the city’s biggest and best.

In addition to all of the vendors and activities, the festival will feature local music on three stages from late morning to early evening. The main-stage headliner will be the Motel Mirrors, a new country duet project that pairs two of the city’s most popular established roots performers — classic songcraft savant John Paul Keith and versatile upright-bass-thumping singer Amy LaVere. The Motel Mirrors released a fine, eponymous, seven-song debut EP in late August.

Among the artists joining the Motel Mirrors on the Cooper-Young main stage are the Dead Soldiers, an increasingly polished folk/country-rock band that’s building a considerable live reputation around town, the reggae band Chinese Connection Dub Embassy, and Merry Mobile, the latest project from talented multi-instrumentalist Paul Taylor. The Cooper-Young Festival will also feature a “School of Rock” stage showcasing young students from the local music school and a secondary stage jointly sponsored by the Memphis Grizzlies and the Cooper-Young-based Goner Records label and shop. Memphis’ Ex-Cult and garage-rock heavyweight Jack Oblivian will be on the Griz/Goner stage. For a full schedule and info, see cooperyoungfestival.com.

Local singer-songwriter Myla Smith has released a handful of albums and EPs over the past half-decade but takes a step forward this week with Hiding Places, which has already been featured in Billboard magazine’s “Bubbling Under” column.

“I definitely think it’s the best thing I’ve put out, which is what you hope for,” Smith says. “I thought the songs really came together on this record, and I had a lot of help from the producer, who I’d never worked with before.”

Encouraged by her musician husband to “go big” on her next album, Smith had cold-called — or emailed, to be specific — Nashville-based producer Brad Jones, best known for his work with artists such as Josh Rouse, Over the Rhine, and Hayes Carll.

“It was a complete shot in the dark,” says Smith, who was hopeful Jones would be interested but wasn’t expecting a response. Instead, Jones requested demos of songs for the new project. Energized by the response, Smith went into overdrive writing more new material.

“He had a knack for bringing a lot out of me,” Smith says of working with Jones. “I tend to be a perfectionist, but that’s not always what connects the best with people.”

Aiding this more personal songwriting and more rough-around-the-edges sound was a studio band featuring a couple of former Memphians in Ross Rice and Will Kimbrough, the former brought in at Smith’s request. The album was recorded in May at Jones’ Nashville studio.

Smith, who was raised in Shake Rag, a small community north of Millington, and graduated from the University of Memphis a few years back, got her start singing in the church choir but became serious about pursuing her music when she started writing songs in high school.

“I wanted to see if I could do it,” she says.

A strong singer with a light touch, Smith’s music moves comfortably between pop, folk, and country.

“All those lines are blurring. I’m fine with being in whatever genre people want to put me in,” says Smith, who thinks of herself as “folk-pop” and says the folk side is probably what she loves most.

“People in Nashville say I’m more Americana or folk than country,” Smith says. “I think that’s about lyrical distinctions. Country music is more direct. There’s not as much metaphor. And I like folk music mostly because I love those melodies. But I also love variety, so I can’t help but write different kinds of songs.”

On Hiding Places, the rootsier material — such as “Love in Black and White” or the more country-ish title song — stand out, but so does the pure pop of the lead single, “Can’t Say No,” which comes with an ebullient video shot by the local New School Media crew at a local Jack Pirtle’s restaurant.

Smith will celebrate the release of Hiding Places with a show at Minglewood Hall’s 1884 Lounge on Friday, September 13th, with Misti Rae opening. Showtime is 8 p.m. Admission is $5, or $10 with a copy of the album.

Memphis Music Hall’s New Inductees

The Memphis Music Hall of Fame has announced its second class of inductees. The 13 inductees this year are: Johnny Cash, Stax soul artists The Bar-Kays and Carla Thomas and songwriter David Porter, gospel pioneers The Blackwood Brothers and Rev. W. Herbert Brewster, Sun Records descendants Knox Phillips and Roland Janes, seminal early blues act The Memphis Jug Band, electric blues legend Albert King, jazz pianist Phineas Newborn Jr., folk singer and radio producer Sid Selvidge, and pop/jazz singer Kay Starr.

This second group of inductees was selected by a committee of music journalists and industry professionals under the direction of Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum executive director John Doyle. “If we lived in another city, we’d be done already,” Doyle said of the controversial selection process. “But here we’ll still be inducting Grammy winners a decade from now.”

This class of inductees will be celebrated at the Gibson Showcase Lounge on November 7th. For more on the new inductees, see memphisflyer.com/blogs/singallkinds.

“Hell, I warned you/I said, boy, leave me alone and now I’m asking/Where do you want it?”

— “Where Do You Want It” by Dale Watson

“I’m a wacko from Waco, ain’t no doubt about it/Shot a man there in the head but can’t talk too much about it.”

— “Wacko from Waco” by Billy Joe Shaver

Writing songs has always come naturally for outlaw-country poet and singer Billy Joe Shaver. The hell-raising author of honky-tonk standards such as “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal” and “Georgia on a Fast Train” says that he’s never once experienced the phenomenon known as writer’s block.

“I just write about myself and the things I’ve done,” Shaver says. “So there’s no end to the stuff I can write about.”

That’s no overstatement. Shaver’s biography is a story that covers everything from losing fingers to cotton picking to gunfights, addiction, suicide attempts, and, ultimately, divine intervention. It reads like a tall tale or the kind of screenplay the Coen brothers might write should they ever turn their attention to the rich musical culture of the Lone Star state. Shaver is a writer’s writer whose songs have been recorded by such notable songsmiths as Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings, to name but a few of Shaver’s famous admirers. He’s also been written about a time or two, showing up as a character in songs by Bob Dylan and by Shaver’s fellow Texan, Dale Watson.

Watson, who is currently busy trying to rebrand traditional honky-tonk music as “Ameripolitan” in order to distinguish it from Nashville country, says he’s especially moved by Shaver’s phrasing and the attention his old friend devotes to the little details that make a song come alive.

“I believe Billy really is the hillbilly Shakespeare — or the cowboy Shakespeare — and I believe he probably writes songs in his sleep,” says Watson, whose own songs often have a Shaver-esque quality. “And I’ll tell you what else,” he adds, demonstrating a natural proclivity for legend making. “If a woman ever wanted to make some real money, she’d sleep with Billy Joe Shaver and write down everything he says in his sleep.”

Shaver and Watson are both coming to Memphis this month, playing back-to-back shows at the Hi-Tone and Blues City Café on September 18th and 19th, respectively. This convergence seemed as good an excuse as any to get two old friends talking about a pair of songs that they wrote about the same 2007 shooting that occurred at a joint called Papa Joe’s.

Watson’s song “Where Do You Want It” is a lighthearted interpretation of the event as described by the Texas media. Shaver’s “Wacko from Waco” is a slightly unhinged, boots-on-the-ground accounting from the triggerman himself. Both songs are written in the hard-corn dance-floor style popularized by Waylon Jennings in the ’70s, back when Jennings was recording whole albums of Shaver material.

The story as we know it: On April 2, 2007, the police in Lorena, Texas, issued an arrest warrant for Shaver, who had gotten into an altercation with bar patron Billy Bryant Coker. Shaver subsequently shot Coker in the face with a handgun.

“This was big news in Texas,” Watson says. “It was in the newspapers and on TV for two or three days.”

Watson got the idea for “Where Do You Want It” while he was playing a regular happy-hour gig at a place called Ginny’s Longhorn Saloon, where, in addition to all the picking and grinning, he serves as the master of ceremonies for Chicken Shit Bingo, a game that involves a live chicken, some feed, and an enormous poop-stained bingo card.

“This DJ friend of mine said, ‘You know, you should write a song about Billy,'” Watson explains. The title came immediately, inspired by a quote ascribed to Shaver by witnesses who claimed to have heard Shaver giving Coker an option to choose where he wanted to take the bullet.

“I started writing it onstage right there, and I thought, hey, this sounds pretty good,” Watson says. But before proceeding any further with the song, he decided to call and ask for his friend’s permission to continue.

“I told him I didn’t say that,” Shaver insists, laughing over Watson’s timing. “You call me up before I’ve even turned myself in, and you’ve already written a song?”

“The prosecution used that line against me all the way,” says Shaver, who claimed self-defense and was eventually acquitted. “I wrote ‘Wacko from Waco’ to set the record straight.”

Even though Shaver knew the line attributed to him was going to make his case more difficult, he also knows that a writer has to sing his song. He gave Watson permission to perform the song but with one condition. “Tell them I never said that,” Shaver requested. And to this day, in spite of the acquittal, Watson honors his friend’s wish in the form of a comic monologue that never seems to come out exactly the same way twice.

In addition to nonstop touring, Watson is hard at work planning the first Ameripolitan awards showcase, which is scheduled for February 2014, with performances by acts like the Derailers and Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys. Shaver is finishing an album and on the verge of releasing a new single titled “It’s Hard To Be an Outlaw That Isn’t Wanted Anymore.”

Billy Joe Shaver

The Hi-Tone

Wednesday, September 18th

Dale Watson

Blues City Café

Thursday, September 19th