Author: J.D. Reager

Located in an unassuming space near the Sears building on Cleveland, High/Low Recordings — home base of two of Memphis’ most consistently enjoyable bands, The Bulletproof Vests and The Third Man — is emerging as one of the area’s most vital music-production resources. Toby Vest, co-leader and frontman of both the Bulletproof Vests and the Third Man alongside his brother Jake, is the studio’s primary engineer, and his interest in recording was an impetus for High/Low’s founding two years ago.

“After mixing the last Third Man record, I got the idea that maybe we could do this ourselves,” Vest says. “Originally, we thought we’d just record our own stuff, but then I did Jeffrey James & the Haul’s second record, and it took off from there.”

The space is shared with three other local music businesses, including Rocket Science Audio studio, which presents some obvious difficulties with scheduling. However, there’s no competition, Vest asserts. And he’s quick to point out that the communal environment has its advantages.

“It’s great to have other people around who know about music and equipment when something goes wrong, or we need to borrow an extra mic, or a shaker, or whatever we might need. We help each other out as much as we can.”

In a very short time, High/Low has emerged as a popular recording destination for musicians “in the know” (the studio advertises solely via word of mouth and has no website, business phone, etc.), working with high-profile local acts including the New Mary Jane, Richard James & the Special Riders, Holly Cole, Oracle & the Mountain, 10 High & the Trashed Romeos, and the Burning Sands. But the focus remains churning out new Bulletproof Vests and Third Man material.

To that end, the Bulletproof Vests will unveil a 7″ vinyl single this week, the follow-up to last year’s critically acclaimed full-length debut, Attack! The single pairs Jake Vest’s infectious A-side rocker “(Don’t) Throw My Love Away” with his brother Toby’s equally strong “Shadow Child,” a Bulletproof Vests live-set favorite. Both cuts were co-produced with friend and sometime Ardent producer/engineer Adam Hill.

“Adam has become vital to the way we sound,” Jake Vest says. “He helped us realize what we wanted to do in the studio. The finished product sounds exactly the way we wanted it to.” “He’s practically the sixth member of the band,” Toby adds.

In fact, Hill will join the band onstage at the record-release show this Saturday at the Hi-Tone.

“I feel very lucky that they seem to be into what I do and trust me enough to listen to my input,” Hill says. “These guys are so talented that they practically need three bands to get all their material out.”

Indeed, the Vests’ other band, the Third Man, has been in the studio since January.

“The Third Man is just a recording project at this point,” Toby says. “There’s no intent to take it further. We were always better in the studio than live anyway.”

So how does one differentiate between the two projects? Both bands share members, as well as certain melodic sensibilities. But while the Bulletproof Vests tend toward visceral, straight-ahead rock and pop hooks, the Third Man veers in the direction of atmospherics and more complicated musical arrangements.

“Basically, if you can dance to it or play it at a party, it’s a Bulletproof Vests song,” jokes keyboardist Dirk Kitterlin, a member of both groups. “If it has minor chords and is moody, it’s the Third Man. Do not play the Third Man at a party.”

Despite being so prolific, the Vests and their cohorts show no signs of slowing down. Sessions for the new Bulletproof Vests single (also available as a free download) yielded 15 new songs, which the band plans to release down the road. And they will continue to produce for other artists and tour regionally. The key to their continued success, according to Kitterlin, is staying proactive: “Some bands, it seems like they are waiting to get handed a basket of golden eggs. There are opportunities out there. You just have to take them. Nobody is going to swoop in and do it for you.”

thebulletproofvests.blogspot.com

thethirdman.com

The Bulletproof Vests

With John Paul Keith &

the One Four Fives

Hi-Tone Café, Saturday, May 15th

10 p.m., $7 cover

At first glance, the journey of Black Rock Revival frontman Sebastian Banks into the rock-and-roll profession seems an unlikely one.

After all, just over four years ago he was preparing for a career in law enforcement as a new recruit in the Memphis Police Academy and dabbling in hip-hop music (“mostly freestyle, street-corner rap battles, nothing serious,” Banks says) on the side. But then his father introduced him to rock.

“He introduced me to stuff like Pink Floyd, Three Dog Night, Hendrix, and Love, and I really got into it,” Banks says. “Rock-and-roll has so much freedom, musically and lyrically. It’s not as controlled as hip-hop. There are no limits. Rock music is the ultimate freakout.”

Banks’ first foray into playing rock was lead-singing with a heavy-metal cover band. But he eventually felt the need to write and perform his own material and also grew weary of depending on others to provide the musical component of the band. So he picked up the guitar and started brainstorming a bold musical concept that would eventually become Black Rock Revival.

“Basically, I want to revive rock-and-roll music and give it back to black people,” Banks says. “When I was younger, I didn’t even know black people ever did play rock music, even though they were the original ones to do it. I want to breathe life back into the idea of a black rock band.”

Initially, however, Banks struggled to find the right musicians to carry out his concept, and early incarnations of the band failed to pick up steam or find an audience.

“I wanted to find guys with more of a rock background, but most of the people I knew were gospel musicians, so it was a struggle at first,” Banks says. “Don’t get me wrong. They were good musicians, but it wasn’t the feel I wanted. These were guys who had only played church music, which has different rhythm and timing. It just wasn’t right.”

He then adds, wearily, “In those early days, we couldn’t even get a free show.”

There is no avoiding some discussion of race with Black Rock Revival. The unfortunate reality is that pop/rock music has produced very few recent examples of successful black rock bands that weren’t thought of on some level as a “novelty” act. (King’s X or Living Color, anyone?) Even the underground rock scene in a city with a large black population like Memphis is, let’s face it, mostly white. Neither of these points is lost on Banks.

“It’s not a black-vs.-white issue to me, necessarily. It’s just about music. But it was definitely hard, at first, to find an audience, get gigs, make connections. People didn’t know how to respond. I hope eventually the music will take over, because that’s all that really matters to me. If anything, I think we’ve found a way to take advantage of the situation.”

After two years of playing with various musicians and refining his sound, Banks finally found the right rhythm section for Black Rock Revival, thus solidifying the direction of the project. Enter bassist Percy Blue and drummer Hype.

Blue is a 20-year veteran of the music industry. Most notably, his band Barefoot Son provided the theme music for NBC’s Fear Factor. The dynamic Hype, meanwhile, is a former member of the local punk band 1057 Walker.

According to Banks, things have started to come easier for the band since the pair’s arrival.

“I finally found some musicians with the right background, the right sensibilities. Black Rock Revival wasn’t truly a band until Percy and Hype joined up. It was more of a solo project with hired guns. They just add so much.”

With a suitable rhythm section in place, Black Rock Revival began to think about making a record. About six months ago, the band started tracking in Banks’ home studio. The result of those sessions is Keep It Together, the debut CD that the band will release this week.

The record is a challenging listen at times due to its lo-fi, digital recording methods and the use of synthesized, rather than acoustic, drum sounds (a necessity of having to keep the noise down due to neighbors’ complaints). But undeniably, Keep It Together shows promise that Banks & Co. have the ability to do something special.

“We looked at professional studios at first but had a hard time getting engineers to take us seriously, so we decided to save our money,” Banks says. “Now, I wouldn’t want to do it any other way, even if the band really takes off. I got to do things you can’t do in a studio and keep my own hours, which was liberating.”

Moving forward, Banks says the main goal of the band will be to expand the fan base beyond its hometown, with the ultimate goal of taking the project overseas.

“I think the European audience will appreciate what we do a lot more,” Banks says. “Frankly, I’m surprised that people in Memphis seem to like it at all.”

blackrockrevival.com

Black Rock Revival CD-release show With the Sheriffs of Nottingham, Grace Askew, Christopher (of Electric Nobody), and Devoted New Daisy Theatre, Friday, May 7th, 9 p.m. $11 cover, all-ages

Todd Rundgren has achieved just about all that anyone could imagine in more than 40 years in the music industry. As a musician and songwriter, he’s regarded as a pioneer of the power-pop and progressive rock genres and has achieved chart success with numerous singles, including “Hello It’s Me,” “I Saw the Light,” and “Bang the Drum All Day.” As a producer/engineer, he’s helmed classic albums by the Band, Meat Loaf, XTC, and the New York Dolls, just to name a few. And he’s also lauded as a technological innovator in the fields of digital audio recording, videography, and computer-based animation.

Yet, in 2008, when Rundgren was set to unveil his newest collection of songs, the riff-heavy and (eventually) critically acclaimed Arena, the musician found it difficult to secure distribution. And in what became a strange twist of music-business fate, it was this unfortunate, if somewhat unfathomable, situation that ultimately became the impetus behind Rundgren’s newest project, an album and live show based around the work of blues singer Robert Johnson cheekily titled Todd Rundgren’s Johnson.

“I’m not sure inspiration is quite the word,” Rundgren says. “I had some knowledge of Robert Johnson, of course, but he was never a big influence for me directly. Basically, I needed distribution for Arena, and the company I found to do it also administers the publishing for Robert Johnson’s catalog but didn’t own any of the actual recordings. So they made it a condition of the deal for Arena that I record a collection of Robert Johnson’s songs, and that’s how it started.”

After the success of Arena (Rolling Stone‘s David Fricke called it “a bright, bullish return to Rundgren’s specialties — paisley-mod punch, Who-ish guitar fireworks, and white-soul-boy woe”), Rundgren double-checked with the label to make sure a Robert Johnson covers album was still what it wanted. It was. But Rundgren still wasn’t quite convinced:

“I was a bit apprehensive of any comparisons to Eric Clapton, who’s made a second career of reworking blues songs and is known for Johnson’s material in particular.”

Even so, Rundgren eventually set about the task of researching Johnson’s career and catalog, in an attempt to find a suitable approach for the project. This search eventually led him back to English blues revivalists, such as Clapton, the Rolling Stones, and Jeff Beck, contemporaries of Rundgren’s in the late ’60s who had served as personal inspiration for him at the time, and more modern blues artists, such as Buddy Guy, Albert King, and Paul Butterfield.

“I just felt that instead of emulating Robert Johnson directly, it would be better for me to focus on more second-hand, indirect influences that were more meaningful to me,” Rundgren says. “Which essentially means more recently living, latter-day artists.”

The album version of Todd Rundgren’s Johnson is slated for release next month, but a three-song preview, Short Johnson, is already available for download on iTunes, Amazon.com, etc.

For the live show, Rundgren also combed through his own vast catalog, selecting old and new songs with a strong blues influence to go with the Johnson material.

“It actually turned out to not be so bizarre,” Rundgren says. “If I’d been a strict stylist in my career, it might have been more difficult, but there’s a strange plausibility to me doing a blues-themed show. My first real working gig in music was in a blues band [Woody’s Truck Stop], so it makes sense.”

After the touring and promotion for Todd Rundgren’s Johnson is completed, Rundgren will turn his attention back to performing classic material of his own, a project he began late last year with a series of ambitious live re-creations of the influential 1973 psychedelic album A Wizard, A True Star in Europe and the U.S. As decided by a fan vote, Rundgren will stage full live versions of the albums Todd (1974) and Healing (1981) this fall.

“These shows are proposed and promoted by the fans,” Rundgren says. “I’m lucky to have a very loyal audience. It seems like some of them will come out for just about anything. But because the album re-creation shows are a much bigger production with a bigger band and more expenses, I can’t afford to do them all the time.”

That said, don’t expect a dull or drab set from Rundgren, a consummate performer who, at age 61, shows no signs of slowing down. He returns to Memphis this week.

“If I didn’t feel like the show or my playing was up to a certain level, I wouldn’t do it,” Rundgren says. “I don’t really focus on my level of popularity or success anymore. I’m more focused on maintaining a level of quality, for myself and the fans.”

Todd Rundgren plays the New Daisy Wednesday, April 21st.