Author: Jesse Davis

Jack O’Neill and Cary Pierce of Jackopierce

Jackopierce, the duo made up of equal parts Jack O’Neill and Cary Pierce, the two songwriters behind the hits “Vineyard” and “Three of Us in a Boat,” quietly celebrated their 30th anniversary in 2018. They made a big to-do over their 25th anniversary, a landmark date few bands ever hit, with a sold-out run of concerts and the release of a live album, Live 25. The 30th-anniversary celebrations were put on the back burner, though, because Jackopierce was too busy moving forward to keep an eye on the rear-view, still touring and preparing a new album, Feel This Good, released in May of last year on Foreverything Music. The duo are now on the road in support of that album, with a stop in Memphis at Lafayette’s Music Room this Thursday at 8 p.m.

Though ostensibly not an anniversary album, Feel This Good celebrates the long history of Jackopierce with tried and true elements: pristine mixes, clear harmonies, a few inside jokes, and cleanly intertwining acoustic guitars that have become the duo’s trademark. Even the album’s title track began as an inside joke between Pierce, O’Neill, and some of the staff at a venue Jackopierce performs at. “‘Every day should feel this good’ is a thing they say,” Pierce explains. “It’s a fun slogan.”

Pierce and O’Neill began tracking the album in Nashville, and Pierce did much of the preliminary mixing at his home studio in Texas. “I produced the last few studio records,” Pierce says. “In the five years we weren’t together, I produced a lot of records.” Jackopierce split, briefly, from 1997 to 2002, though both Pierce and O’Neill stayed involved in the music scene. Feel This Good includes reworkings of original tunes by both Pierce and O’Neill. Pierce reminisces about O’Neill’s contributions without a hint of ego, displaying an easy working relationship that’s been tended and grown over 30 years of
playing together. “Jack and I are like brothers,” Pierce says. “We love writing songs and telling and sharing stories.”

Jackopierce re-recorded one of Pierce’s old solo compositions, “Speed,” for the new album. A demo version of the song was a huge hit on streaming services, prompting Pierce to wonder what they could do with a fully produced version of the song. “It was a minor hit, but a hit for me, my God,” Pierce says of the demo, explaining “Speed” is a “pretty intense break-up song.” It’s about trying to find the energy and willpower to achieve escape velocity, Pierce explains, before adding that he’s not looking to wreck any healthy relationships. “I’m not saying, ‘hey, jump out,’ but I hope it’s a wake-up call.” If, he
explains, a wake-up call is what’s needed.

Also revived for the new album was “Still House Hollow,” a song from O’Neill’s 2002 release, Halfway Round the World. “I wanted to sing on it,” Pierce says, before marveling at the vocal takes co-producer John Fields got out of O’Neill — mostly by stepping back and letting O’Neill do his thing, pushing himself to reach for a higher range. “Jack is a huge Bob Dylan fan, a huge [Tom] Petty fan,” Pierce says, before taking the next logical step and mentioning the Traveling Wilburys, the supergroup made up of Dylan, Petty, Roy Orbison, George Harrison, and Jeff Lynne. Pierce says he saw Jeff Lynne perform recently and that the Wilburys, Lynne, and Electric Light Orchestra were all influences on Feel This Good.

Jack O’Neill and Cary Pierce of Jackopierce

Producer John Fields came on board when Pierce sent some of the mixes for what was to become Feel This Good to him for an opinion. “He’s a monster player and a monster L.A. producer,” Pierce says. The timing couldn’t have been better — Fields had just moved back to Minneapolis from L.A. and was happy to work on a new project with an old friend. Pierce and O’Neill decamped to Minneapolis to finish the record they had begun tracking in Nashville. “It was a treat to get away from our daily lives.”

Speaking of getting away, Jackopierce name-checks Memphis in the title track of the new album. The band has played the Bluff City before, both at the Levitt Shell in Overton Park and at Beale Street Music Festival. “One of my favorite shows of all time was Memphis in May,” Pierce says. “We were the second-to-last band, before Dave Matthews.” 

Chris Neely

Tora Tora

Two of Memphis’ heaviest blues-inspired rock bands are set to perform at Minglewood Hall this Saturday, December 29th. The Dirty Streets will open for Tora Tora, and there is sure to be wah pedal aplenty at this last Saturday-night concert of the year.

Both bands recently recorded at Sam Phillips Recording Service on Madison, and Tora Tora are gearing up to release a new album, Bastards of Beale (Frontiers Records), their first new recording in years. “The last studio album we did for a label was in ’94, when we were on A&M Records,” guitarist Keith Douglas says. “We felt like we picked up right where we left off.” That was the band’s third record, their last on A&M, Revolution Day, which the label shelved for years. Tora Tora eventually released the album themselves on FnA Records, “a small label out of Nashville,” in 2011. “Right around that time, in the early ’90s, when grunge hit, record companies shed a lot of their rock bands,” Douglas says. “We got shown the door with everybody else.” It’s not as though that was the end of the story for Tora Tora, though, and Douglas doesn’t sound bitter or critical as he references the end of that chapter for the band. 
Chris Neely

Tora Tora

The new album’s title refers to the band themselves. As a hard rock band that often performed in the blues-centric venues of Beale Street, they were something of an anomaly. But the members of Tora Tora have a long history with the blues — it clearly informs their sound, even if they don’t play the straight-up 12-bar variety  — and they have a long history with Beale. “We were hanging out down there before we were old enough to be in bars,” Douglas says, explaining that, even as friends before the formation of Tora Tora, he, Anthony Corder, Patrick Francis, and John Patterson would hang around Beale, soaking up the music. It’s a time-honored Memphis tradition — loaf around Beale taking in the music and the raucous energy. “That was in our blood from when we were kids,” Douglas says, but he also admits to other influences, name-checking Tom Petty and Styx. But the lessons learned on Beale never seem far from Douglas’ mind. “Lights up the River,” from Bastards of Beale, is a blues performer’s perspective on Memphis, a rural musician determined to play his way to the bright lights of Beale. “A lot of it is about Memphis,” Douglas says of the new record.

Though Douglas points out that much of returning to write and record with Tora Tora has felt comfortably familiar, the recording process was something of a break from tradition. The band, as was standard operating procedure for bands signed to major labels at the time, spent long hours, even weeks, in the studio, and usually did most of their tracking at Memphis’ Ardent Studios. Bastards of Beale, though, was recorded in a much shorter period of “six or seven days” at Sam Phillips. There was some continuity to the sessions, though; Tora Tora brought on Jeff Powell, who has been producing and mixing records for 30 years, and whom they worked with before at Ardent.

“We’ve got a lot of history with Ardent,” Douglas says. For a performer who has played on major label tours, Douglas shows a fondness and familiarity with the city that’s been his band’s home base, and talking about Ardent sparks some memories — like when Tora Tora performed at the Levitt Shell in 2015 as part of “Press Play: A Tribute Concert to John Fry and John Hampton.”

“We miss John Hampton and John Fry both,” Douglas says. “[Hampton] was so great for us. He helped us develop.” Douglas remembers Hampton sometimes turning up at the band’s rehearsals, making suggestions. Douglas goes on, mentioning a long list of Memphis musicians, vocalists, producers, and engineers he’s worked with over the years.
But for all the history in the rear-view mirror, Tora Tora have big plans for the new year. The group already has some concerts lined up in Texas, and Bastards of Beale will be released on February 22, 2019. Douglas says the band plans to mix in some new songs at Saturday night’s concert, but fans should expect to hear a lot of Tora Tora’s classic material.

Bob Bayne

The Dirty Streets

The Dirty Streets will open the concert at Minglewood for Tora Tora. It’s a tasteful pairing: two bands on the rougher, rawer side of rock, with a heaping dose of blues in their backgrounds but with a willingness to experiment and embrace other genres. Both bands have a flair for energetic performance, and the Dirty Streets also recently recorded an album at Sam Phillips.

While Tora Tora’s new album is as yet unreleased, the Dirty Streets self-released their fifth album, Distractions, in September of this year. It’s a strong showing from a band that has steadily grown and evolved since their first outing, Portrait of a Man.

Their first record was released in 2009, shortly before I first saw the Streets perform, their rumbling Fender amps crammed between shelves of vinyl in Shangri-la Records. Portrait of a Man was recorded at the Hi-Tone over a holiday weekend, when the bar was closed. Andrew “Buck” McCalla engineered the album. The sessions went well, but the recorder ate the files, forcing the band to wait for another holiday before re-recording the entire album in another marathon two-day session, with McCalla again behind the soundboard.
“We’ve never recorded an album without at least one major malfunction,” frontman and guitarist Justin Toland says. “We’re five albums in, and now I just expect things to go wrong.” 

Toland reels off a list of irrecoverable files, blown amps, and guitar solos lost to studio gremlins, chuckling as he does so. The singer and guitarist has the air of someone who’s learned not to try to force a sound or idea. Rather, Toland has a performer’s grace, ready to roll with whatever the gremlins throw at him. “It’s all about funneling that tension,” Toland elaborates, saying he and bandmates Thomas Storz and Andrew Denham have learned to channel frustration back into the performance. Those time-honed skills are evident on the self-released new album, which is brimming with ready-to-cut-loose energy.
“We’ve always had crazy strict deadlines,” Toland says, continuing on the theme of past recordings, but, he says, the Streets decided not to rush Distractions. “We took our time on this one,” Toland says, describing a relationship the band has built with producer Matt Qualls over the course of a (so far) three-album collaboration.

Toland says Qualls came on board on their third album, Blades of Grass, which was when the band began to focus more on production, adding layers of instrumental tracks. That process of layering helped build the Dirty Streets sound — beefy guitar riffs that vibrate the listener’s skull like buzzsaws. The collaboration continued through the Streets’ stellar fourth release, Whitehorse, and into 2018’s Distractions. The result is a full-bodied sound that bolsters the Streets’ natural talent for raw energy without detracting from the immediacy of the songs; the tracks on Distractions sound no less live for the extra production. Rather, the tasteful work by engineer Wesley Graham, Qualls, and the boys in the band only serves to help capture the ear-ringing, bone-shaking roar that is a live performance by these psychedelic blues-rockers.

And there will be more Dirty Streets concerts to come in 2019. Toland says the band plans to tour in the spring to support the record. In the meantime, the next time Memphians can catch the band is at Minglewood Hall, this Saturday.

Noam Stolerman

The Field People

Israeli band the Field People, a rock-and-roll three-piece made up of Aviv Lavi, Yogev Hiller and Evyatar Baumer, never got a break back home, so they moved to London to pursue a dream. It was as much about freedom as about music. Their name even pokes a bit of fun at their humble origins: “The Field People,” as in farm boys straight outta the kibbutz. The Field People found, if not fame, then at least a more welcoming reception in London, and a month after they landed, fellow Israeli artist and former classmate and then-film student Noam Stolerman joined the trio to record their progress. Whether they made it big or collapsed under the weight of their hopes and expectations, Stolerman would be there to get it all on tape. Stolerman’s chronicle of his friends’ shot at stardom became The Dreamers’ Field, screening Sunday, November 4th, and Thursday, November 8th at Indie Memphis Film Festival.

“In Israel, you get the feeling that everyone who doesn’t come from Tel Aviv comes from
a really small town,” Stolerman says. “The main reason I wanted to make this film is that these guys feel like they don’t belong. And everybody gets that feeling sometimes.” Stolerman says he felt simpatico with the Field People. He understood the desire to be bigger than one’s origins, to dream a way out of their current circumstances. But, unlike his musically inclined friends, Stolerman says he lacked the courage to pack it all up and just go. That is, until the Field People gave him a reason to throw caution to the wind. “I’m going to go with these guys and live their dream,” Stolerman says. If they succeeded, well, maybe that meant he could as well. If not, then at least he would be there to capture the experience.

“I know one of them from high school. He’s a really good friend,” Stolerman says of his
longtime friend and Field People drummer Aviv Lavi. Stolerman says he remembers Lavi talking rapturously about his band, almost the way a soon-to-be-betrothed man might talk about the woman of his dreams. Stolerman remembers Lavi saying, “This is it. This is the one. This could be my big break and my ticket out of the kibbutz and out of Israel.” And that sentiment may be the key to understanding both the Field People and The Dreamers’ Field. Both the band and the film about them are products of a desire for something more, a hope for escape from the everyday.

“This is not a film about music; this is a film about people,” Stolerman says, laughing as
he admits that even he falls into the trap of calling his character-driven documentary a
rockumentary. “They used music as a form of escape. [They’re like] lost souls. Sure, the music brought them together, but if it wasn’t music, it would have been something else.” Stolerman remembers feeling alienated, even while attending the Minshar Film School in Tel Aviv. The longing for something more, perhaps the most universal of feelings, propelled first the Field People and then Stolerman almost 5,000 miles from home. With challenges and uncertainty as their only guarantees, they took the leap. And there were certainly challenges.

“I had an incident with the police in London,” Stolerman says, laughing. The director was
filming without a permit in the London Underground when he was detained by the police. He describes being held for an uncomfortable amount of time, being questioned, and finally being released on the condition that he would never film in the Tube again. The director returned later that day to finish filming the scene. Stolerman shot almost the entire film himself, and did most of the editing. With almost no funding and only himself to rely on, every hour of footage was valuable. “It’s the most indie, guerrilla film making you can imagine,” Stolerman says, describing a ’70s punk ethos, where attitude and heart are valued over technical proficiency. That attitude is equally descriptive of both the film itself and the band. “I saw people say, ‘This is not that good. They’re not great musicians, but they have heart.’”

And speaking of heart: “The heart of the film lies in the second half,” Stolerman says.
“They’re starting to lose their way, and they’re having a really hard time living with it.”
Stolerman, who faced financial and legal challenges as well as the challenges inherent in being separated from his family for so long, remembers asking himself, “Why am I holding this camera? Who’s going to watch this?” But Stolerman’s fears were for naught. In addition to two showings at Indie Memphis 2018, The Dreamers’ Field was selected for a screening earlier this year at Solo Positivo Film Festival in Šibenik, Croatia. Stolerman, whose short film “Yehoshua” has also been shown in international film festivals, is building his own field of dreams — a little bit at a time and through sheer force of will.

The Dreamers’ Field screens as part of Indie Memphis Film Festival, with its U.S. premiere, with director Noam Stolerman in attendance, at Studio on the Square, Sunday, November 4th, with an encore presentation at Ridgeway Cinema Grill, Thursday, November 8th, at 6:30 p.m.

Juanita Stein

Sometimes music lovers are afforded a chance to catch something special, to see a star on the rise before fame forces us to share them with everyone who has a pair of ears and a Spotify account. And this Sunday at Railgarten, discerning Bluff City music fans have a chance to see Juanita Stein before the singer/songwriter gets too big to justify a Sunday show at a Midtown venue.

The former front woman and lead singer/rhythm guitarist of Howling Bells, Stein is
carving out a name for herself as a solo artist with those rare qualities, subtlety and taste.
Hot on the heels of her solo debut record, America, Stein recently released her sophomore album, Until the Lights Fade, on Handwritten Records/Nude Records.

Juanita Stein

Stein’s music embraces simple arrangements and twangy guitars, with the bass and drums hot in the mix. The result feels authentic and emotional. “Forgiver,” the first single from her new album, stands as an example of the immediacy the songwriter harnesses by eschewing a big production. And it’s fitting that Stein has, upon embarking on her solo career, adopted a direct approach. A mother of two young girls, Stein has spoken about the influence the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have had on her songwriting of late. Though Stein hails originally from Australia (she has since relocated to the U.K.), the issues coming to light in America right now are, to some extent, universal. On Until the Lights Fade, she tackles such issues with grace, singing about the point when forgiveness becomes foolish, about agency and self-reliance and compromise — and the tension between those ideas.

Later in her tour, after a three-night run in Brooklyn, Stein is set to play a handful of
European festivals, and she opens for the Killers in Finland and Luxembourg. It’s safe to say that the indie-rocker is blowing up. The Sunday afternoon concert at Railgarten provides a chance for an intimate show with a star on the rise. Don’t miss out.