Author: Joe Boone

Grace Askew’s New Album

Post author By Joe Boone
Post date July 24, 2014

CREDIT: Nick Loss-Eaton

Sixth-generation Memphian Grace Askew kicks up the dust like few other Bluff City musicians. Whether she’s rising to the heights of national television on The Voice or putting mile after mile on her touring truck, wherever she goes, there is a swirling cloud of creativity that twirls all the way back to Memphis. Askew is relentlessly creative. You may find her recording at Sun Studio, where she recorded her new album, Scaredy Cat. Or you may find her latest self-produced tour documentary about the Tennessee Tumbleweed on a variety of social media. She has been creative since birth and sees no end to the road.

Flyer: When did you start making music?

Grace Askew: [My parents] were very encouraging about anything artistic. My sister was an opera major. That’s how I got into singing. I wanted to be like my cool older sister growing up. We all picked up the guitar, but I’m the one who really started loving the guitar at 13.

Were you a Howard Vance kid?

Yes, I was.

What about writing?

That was my first passion. My mom would let me stay way up past my bed time when I was little. I was writing little stories under my sheets, you know. And reading. Obviously, reading would lead into writing. So reading was the first thing that got me into writing. I think poems and little short stories came first. Animal adventures. Unrequited love? I’d never experienced it before.

When did you start performing?

I waited a couple of years before I made a complete ass of myself. I was about 17. My first little gig was at a health food café out in the Lakeland area. It was mostly covers. But I would throw in originals that I was working on. Then I became really obsessed with locking myself in the closet and recording on this little computer mic, this cheap little recording mic. I was writing the words and putting it to music. I was obsessed with overdubbing vocals and sounds from my guitar. But I think that’s one of the best things I could have done for myself: to have backed myself for a couple of years. That’s how you evolve.

Did you play in bands?

I played in a couple of different bands. But it’s really hard to make money as a five-piece. These guys! [Mark Stuart on bass, Logan Hanna on guitar, and Jesse Dakota on drums] I hate to bring them out on the road and not pay them as much as they deserve. So I’ve been on the road by myself for the most of the past five years. Living out of my truck, basically.

How was recording Scaredy Cat at Sun Studio?

We did all 11 songs in one day, in four hours. That’s what I wanted. I’m really not a perfectionist. I love the magic of the first take. I just love that. And I’ve been playing these songs for three years. It’s been three years since I cut an album. So I know these songs intimately now, and I know how I want them to be conveyed. But recording in first takes also leaves it really raw. You can still feel the scars in the songs, so to speak. And that’s what I wanted.

How did the band keep up with that?

Logan just played that day. So we overdubbed bass with Mark driving the caboose. He did a really great job. He was really patient. When there is no rhythm section, it pushes and it pulls. It has a jankyness to it, which I love.

You are awesome at social media. How does that work?

Being an ADD person myself, I understand that people’s attention spans are short. So I want to come out with some thing that’s visual and really quick. I love making flyers and all that. And making little video documentary series on my travels. I just love it. The whole gamut of the industry is appealing to me.

You have an artistic persona in the Tennessee Tumbleweed. Is there a Robert Zimmerman/Bob Dylan thing going on there?

My heroes when I first started doing this were those kinds of guys. The ramblers and storytellers. The guys — it was all guys living on the road. Those were my heroes and they still are. I wanted to emulate their lives when I was 22 and started being a rough and tumbling gal. It’s not the safest thing to do. My parents learned how to text real fast and check up on me. They’ve been very cool about it. It’s nice to have parents like that.

What was it like to be on The Voice as someone with her own set of creative ideas?

They were actually very open-minded. They were very cool about it. They basically let me pick out every detail about my look. What song I wanted to pick? Maybe not so much. But that’s understandable. I was like a watered-down version of who I am. But to have that exposure? I’m really glad I did it, honestly. I had the time of my life and I learned a lot about what it takes to get to that level of national exposure. It makes me excited about what’s to come in my own career besides The Voice.

There are some scary contracts for those shows. Are you free to go?

I got out just in time. Once you get to the final 16, you’re kind of contractually bound. You have to be realistic about it and realize that a year from now nobody’s going to care about it. Nobody’s going to know who I am, like, “Oh, you’re the girl from The Voice.” That’s the reality, and I’m totally fine with that, because I’ve been doing this since way before that happened.

What’s next with your writing?

I’m excited to play this [record] for a while. I’ve been getting more into the gospel realm of things. There’s a gospel song on the new album. I’ve been getting into that traditional gospel sound. Mahalia Jackson is one of my heroes: that sparse, spooky sound of gospel.

Sing All Kinds We Recommend

James Govan: 1949-2014

Post author By Joe Boone
Post date July 21, 2014

James Govan

James Govan, who was known to many for his work on Beale Street with organist Charlie Wood and recorded in Muscle Shoals at the height of Fame Records, passed away last week.

Govan was a Beale Street highlight for three decades, including two decades with Rum Boogie Café’s Rum Boogie Blues Band. A multi-instrumentalist who sang Otis Redding’s songs as well as anyone except Otis, Govan played the Poretta Soul Festival in Italy for five years in a row. But he should be best known for the tracks he cut in Muscle Shoals.

“I knew him when he recorded the tracks at Fame,” says friend and collaborator Travis Wammack, who produced one of Govan’s albums and may have played on the long-lost recordings at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals. Those recordings were found and released in 2013 by Ace Records, a company that has released several albums from the vaults at Fame. The tracks on Wanted: The Fame Recordings place Govan alongside Clarence Carter and Wilson Pickett in quality and vitality.

“He was like Otis Redding,” Wammack says. “His voice was so good. He was an awesome talent. He was a great guy and a great singer and a great musician. We did an album on him in the 1980s down at Broadway Sound. I produced Help Me, I’m in Need, which was released by Charlie Records over in England.”

Brad Webb knew Govan for some 30 years. Webb organizes the jams for the Memphis Blues Society and knew Govan as a versatile musician and member of a supportive community of musicians.

“James played drums and sang his ass off,” Webb says. “If one of us didn’t know how to do something, he would say, ‘Watch me do it.’”

CORRECTION: The year of Govan’s birth was originally written as 1951. Govan was born in 1949.

Music Music Features

On Beale

Post author By Joe Boone
Post date July 17, 2014

CREDIT: H. Michael Miley

H. Michael Miley

Beale Street

You can put my name on the list of locals who have casually maligned Beale Street. But I’m here to eat words. Here goes: I love Beale Street.

The stereotype is familiar: Either rock blues played by heavy-set white guys in bowling shirts or throngs of black kids who don’t care to hear any blues. It’s true that there are sub-ideal bands and some nights when not everybody belongs. But this dismissive view of Beale is cheap shorthand and a sad way to miss out on an important part of Memphis’ economy, culture, and good times.

I recently went to Beale four times in 10 days and had a blast every time. Milling through the crowds at B.B. King’s Blues Club on a Friday at lunchtime, you hear accents from all over the world. It’s true that the British, Japanese, and continentals were not hearing Sleepy John Estes or Mr. King in his prime. People get hung up on “authenticity” and miss things like the Stax Academy Alumni Band’s residency at B.B. King’s. I went back to B.B.’s and heard Preston Shannon play his regular Wednesday night gig.

Shannon reminded me of the whole spectrum of a blues performance. I had been guilty of using the cheap shorthand, of using a bad example (Stevie Ray Vaugnabees) to define contemporary blues. Shannon is a moving guitarist and vocalist who’s been active since the 1970s and on Beale for almost a quarter century. He works within a tradition of showmanship that makes each note meaningful: a mix of human spiritualism and worldly desire. At his best, he works himself and the audience into something like a funky, social, religious experience. People come from Japan. Why don’t we come from Collierville or Central Gardens?

I walked down Beale several times over those days and saw throngs of people having good times. I heard music I liked: C-3 Blues Band at Rum Boogie and the McDaniel Band at the Blues Hall.

But there is one thing we should fix: The bars are in an outdoor volume war. Loudspeakers are set up, one after the other, down the street, each playing its own music. There was a moment when I saw a man who had clearly traveled here to listen to music. He was aghast at the cacophony of competing sound systems. You couldn’t hear anything. He was furious. So was I. The music that draws people to Beale did not have giant, solid-state amplifiers. Huge amplifiers are used as weapons by the military and are the worst thing about live music.

Beale, like Overton Square, is on the good foot. Beale Street Landing, the new Orpheum development, the new Hard Rock Café, and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame herald an even better experience for Memphis’ beloved musical pilgrims. We should not treat them like Central American dictators and blast them with unhealthy levels of noise. Put musicians out front, singing and playing unamplified instruments.

The city or merchants association should enforce the noise ordinance’s prohibition against loudspeakers for promotion. We should also amend the current ordinance to allow for drums, singing, and acoustic instruments in the entertainment districts like Beale, Broad Avenue, and Overton Square.

One solution was heard at A. Schwab for the Beale Street Caravan fund raiser, where the Bluff City Backsliders played a mostly unplugged set behind Jason Freeman’s powerful voice. The sound perfectly filled the room. You could hear it if you wanted to listen to every note, but you could also think or say hello to someone. Sleepy John never had a 300-watt amp.

Last weekend, I was in Nashville on Broadway. When you pass a bar like Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge or Robert’s Western World, the band is in the window, and you can hear what they are doing inside. It makes you want to go in, or it allows you to go hear something else. But you are not subjected to noise pollution the whole time you’re on the street.

Beale’s energy is so much more fun than Broadway. Beale is rowdy and wrong in just the right way. You can go to Nashville and walk your granny down the street for a cotton candy. That’s sorta fun, but Beale is the place for cutting loose and showing off your soul. Even standing in the deafening and absurd contrast of what is and what it was, I love Beale Street. We should all go more often.

Tags bb-kings, bb-kings-blues-club, Beale Street, blues, Memphis, Preston Shannon, Rum Boogie, STAX Academy

Music Music Features

Select-O-Hits: From Rockabilly to Rap

Post author By Joe Boone
Post date July 10, 2014

Two new releases hit the racks this month. Mark “Muleman” Massey and Dual Drive — two contemporary blues acts — are on Icehouse Records, a company with roots that reach back to the beginning of the music business in Memphis. Icehouse is the label run by Select-O-Hits, a music distribution company started by relatives of Sam Phillips. If I tell you that Three 6 Mafia plays a role in this story, well, welcome to Memphis.

“Uncle Sam made a living by putting [records] into the back of his car, and he’d sell 45s and 78s to anybody that would buy them,” says Johnny Phillips, co-owner of Select-O-Hits.

Phillips is discussing his uncle Sam Phillips, brother to Johnny’s father, Tommy, and founder of Sun Records. Tommy Phillips was riding high as Jerry Lee Lewis’ road manager when the Killer and his new bride/underage cousin, Myra Gale, had a career-ending chat with the British press in 1958.

“They got thrown out of England,” Phillips says. “So dad just could not go back to work. So Uncle Sam basically said you can live with me and you can manage my return warehouse.”

The warehouse evolved into Select-O-Hits, an independent record distribution company. That may sound like an anachronism in the days of streaming media. But few have kept up with the changes in this business better than Phillips. Select-O-Hits’ ability to adapt comes from decades of building relationships with artists and labels.

“It was still major labels until the late ’50s and early ’60s. Back then, you bought your music from the same place you bought your TV.”

Sun Records and Phillips International (Uncle Sam’s second label) would have unsold product returned to a warehouse. Tommy Phillips set up a shop in the return warehouse at 605 Chelsea to move the unsold stock. Eventually, it became Select-O-Hits, which still handles distribution for labels and artists and runs Icehouse Records, a blues and rock label. Given the company’s Sun heritage, the blues and rock angle makes sense. What may make less sense to non-Memphians is how Select-O-Hits and Phillips played a role in establishing Memphis as a Dirty-South hotspot throughout the 1990s.

The Phillips family is a master example of what business types call horizontal integration, by which a company moves from its core business (recording hillbillies and prison inmates) into related side businesses (distribution, a label, and publishing). Which brings us to the “Electric Slide.” Only in Memphis.

“‘The Electric Slide (Shall We Dance)’ was a dance record by Grandmaster Slice [in 1991]. Then we had a song called ‘Boom I Got Your Boyfriend’ by MC Luscious. We had the first World Class Wreckin’ Cru, which was Dr. Dre’s first group.”

Enter Three 6 Mafia: “Jimmy Burge, the buyer over at Pop Tunes called me and asked, ‘Do you know who Three 6 Mafia is?’ They were doing these cassettes and mixtapes and selling them on the street. Pop Tunes would pay them cash. Not even any case. Just an old white cassette. And there would be written ‘Three 6 Mafia, tape number whatever.’ Jimmy said these guys can sell. I got together with Jordan and Paul, and we started talking about it. Next thing you know, it was the first commercial album they recorded, called Mystic Stylez. They did an album after that called The End, Part 1, which was a big album. That’s when Sony signed them. We still have those in our catalog and 25 or 30 other titles from them and their artists.”

Phillips has seen an industry in turmoil over the past decade, but he sees rays of hope in the form of monetization of digital music. Today, Select-O-Hits manages a range of revenue sources for artists.

“We got into iTunes very quickly,” Phillips says. “Now all of our agreements include digital. YouTube is now equal [to iTunes] as an income stream for music. It’s phenomenal.”

Mark “Muleman” Massey’s latest, One Step Ahead Of The Blues, was released by Icehouse on July 3rd, and Dual Drive, Gary Goin and Pat Register, released The Memphis Project on the 8th.

Tags History, Memphis Music, Record Labels, Vinyl