Author: Stephen Deusner

Sporting a mustache copied from Little Richard and a tooth-and-bone necklace no doubt stolen from Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, King Khan may be an unlikely spiritual leader, but he believes in the soul-saving power of rock-and-roll.

“Everybody needs an outlet to let their frustrations out and turn hate into love,” says the Indian-Canadian-by-way-of-Germany singer, born Arish Khan. “The best way to help people is through music, by giving them a chance to get their freak on.”

With his enormous backing band the Shrines, Khan is notorious for his stomping update on old rock sounds as well as for the full-on, freak-out spectacle of his live shows, which are part otherworldly exorcism, part sweaty revival. The band plays in full costume (or in some state of undress), with Khan himself the most outlandish of all. Opting for flowing cape, headdress, and not much else, he often ends up in nothing but a bikini bottom.

“When I was starting this whole thing,” he explains, “I wanted it to be not only an eargasm, but an eyegasm, too. I think that’s missing in rock-and-roll these days. My heroes are people like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, who had such character and personality — almost like cartoons.”

As bizarre as he may be, Khan is no novelty act. He and the Shrines find inspiration in some of the same ’60s psych influences as the Black Lips and Jay Reatard, with all the throwback abandon those two comparisons entail. Khan, however, draws as much from r&b, soul, gospel, and free-jazz influences as he does from psych rock. He’s more Sam the Sham than he is the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, more Sun Ra than the Kinks. The music is funny, but it’s not joke rock. It’s vintage, but not retro. His go-go boots walk a fine line.

The gospel of King Khan begins before his birth to Indian immigrants in Montreal: “When I was in the womb, my dad used to put headphones on my mom’s belly and play Indian music.” He grew up listening to oldies stations and discovered classic rock and heavy metal in high school. “Then,” he says, “I found rock-and-roll again.”

At 17, Khan rechristened himself Blacksnake and joined the retro-punk outfit Spaceshits, fronted by the infamous Mark Sultan, aka BBQ, aka BBQ Show. “At that young age, I started to realize how wonderful touring was,” Khan recalls. “If you play this kind of rock-and-roll music in a pure form, it’s like a universal language that you can literally travel all over the world with. That was very inspiring to me.”

When the ‘shits toured Europe in late 1999, Khan fell in love with Berlin (the city, not the band), and his decision to stay in Germany effectively disbanded the group, although he and Sultan would continue to collaborate throughout the 2000s. Khan eventually formed the Shrines, a loose collective of dancers, drummers, horn players, keyboardists, and guitar slingers — all refugees from polite society. They spread the gospel throughout Europe for most of the decade but had to avoid America for practical purposes.

“I never thought about bringing the whole band to America during that time,” Khan says. “It’s pretty crazy to bring 10 people over to tour.” But with the release of their third album, 2007’s What Is?!, American blogs and Internet publications began to take notice of the Shrines. “The reviews were great, and we got offers from all these places,” Khan explains, “so it became realistic to come to America. It’s basically been all word-of-mouth. I think that’s the classic rock-and-roll way of promoting yourself.”

Eventually the group signed with Vice Records, home to the Black Lips, the Streets, and Bloc Party. Their first release for the label was 2008’s The Supreme Genius of King Khan and the Shrines, a compendium of tracks from their earlier, import-only releases. Supreme Genius is a starter kit, emphasizing Khan’s pop sensibility to introduce the band to newcomers. Songs like the JB’s-style rave-up “Land of the Freak” and the comic “Took My Lady to Dinner” (chorus: “She’s fat and she’s ugly, but I love her, I really, really love her”) are rowdy and rambunctious, horny and hilarious — a perfect introduction. What Is?!, which will get a proper U.S. release in April, is better but farther out, the barnstormers on the first half degenerating into sex ragas and psych trances that are trippy and inspired. “Come all ye faithful, remove all thy clothes,” Khan intones on the droning “The Ballad of Lady Godiva.” “Rub KY all over, tied up with rubber hose.”

Behind all the deviant seductions, onstage antics, exaggerated personae, and gold lamé, however, is a friendly, approachable fellow who dotes on his children and whose love of rock-and-roll has granted him some sense of enlightenment. He beams proudly describing how his daughter could load the turntable before she was a year old: “She would get up in the morning, waddle around to the record player in her diaper, and always pull out the Buddy Holly record. We would listen to the same Buddy Holly record 40 times a day!”

He’s also excited by the idea that his children might one day make their own music: “Right now their papa’s music is still their favorite, but give it another four years and I’m going to be teary-eyed watching them DJ. I’m really lucky. Not a day goes by that I don’t thank the Lord or Satan or whoever’s responsible for this.”

King Khan & the Shrines, with Golden Triangle and Lover!

Hi-Tone Café

Saturday, March 14th

Doors open at 9 p.m.; tickets $10

She Ain’t Me may be Carrie Rodriguez’ second solo album, but to the Texas-born, Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter-fiddler, it’s less a follow-up than a new beginning. “It feels like a debut to me because I did way more songwriting than ever before,” she says, in her sing-song twang, “and the sound is more my own than anything I’ve done so far.”

Compared to the traditional, acoustic Seven Angels on a Bicycle, which she released in 2006, She Ain’t Me rocks harder in its rootsiness, sounding more textured, adventurous, and confident. It’s a different sensibility from what sounds like a very different artist.

Even the title implies a change — a self-definition by negation. Rodriguez ain’t the girl who as a teenager played violin on stage with her father, Texas singer-songwriter David Rodriguez, and she ain’t the woman who studied music at Oberlin and Berklee. She ain’t the college student who sat in with family friend Lyle Lovett for a soundcheck, and she ain’t the woman who backed singer-songwriter Chip Taylor for three years and countless concerts.

“That’s why I picked that as the title for the record,” Rodriguez says. “I wanted to prepare people who were thinking that they might get another sweet folk album. There are elements of that in there but certainly a lot of other feelings and moods.”

Of course, all the women she now ain’t still inform the musician Rodriguez has become. While she was studying violin in college, the bluegrass musician Casey Driessen taught her the basics of the fiddle. Upon graduating, she got a gig backing Taylor, who is best known for writing “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning.” Touring and recording with the music veteran, she says, was an education in itself. After coming from a classical background, which emphasized precision above all else, Rodriguez learned to loosen up a bit. “He would help me take what I had naturally and make it as honest as possible,” she recalls. “That’s the biggest thing I learned from him — not to worry about being perfect but to just be real and feel the song.”

She Ain’t Me is Rodriguez’ first album without Taylor’s input, which she admits was both intimidating and innervating. Where he wrote or co-wrote all the songs on Seven Angels, for the new record Rodriguez worked with Louisiana musician Mary Gauthier, Dan Wilson of Semisonic, and Gary Louris of the Jayhawks — musicians she had long admired and dreamed of working with.

“I’d been out on the road with Mary before,” Rodriguez says, “but I didn’t know Gary and Dan from Adam. My label hooked me up with them, and I just showed up at their houses in Minneapolis with my guitar and fiddle. That was scary, but as soon as I met them, I felt completely comfortable and at home.

“I think because I was a sideman first, I got used to playing with others and feeding off people in a band situation,” she continues. “I am most comfortable and most inspired when I am trading off with someone, whether it’s jamming or writing a song.”

Her newfound confidence hasn’t come easy, especially as a singer. When she began working with Taylor, “I had never sung harmony with anyone in a band situation,” she says. “Even when we became a duet act and made records, I still couldn’t believe I was singing in front of people. I studied the violin for so many years, slaving away and practicing five or six hours a day. Because I didn’t do that with singing, it doesn’t feel right to say I’m a singer.”

Nevertheless, She Ain’t Me portrays Rodriguez as a capable and self-assured vocalist whose voice conveys a wider range of feeling and a more identifiable personality than even her co-written lyrics do. The title track, about decoding a cheating lover’s behavior, doesn’t sound angry or even heartbroken but something slightly more complex and unexpected. Rodriguez sings like she feels sorry for her cheating man, spiking the chorus with not-so-subtle condescension: “Whoever Miss Whoever is… she ain’t me.” On the next song, however, she’s singing in a bruised falsetto, her words on “Rag Doll” tumbling out in an affecting whisper. Against the programmed beat and the hounding backing vocals of “The Big Mistake,” she determinedly keeps her composure even as she worries over a damning regret.

If Rodriguez is more confident as a fiddler than as a singer or as a songwriter, She Ain’t Me, ironically, features her violin on only two tracks. “I didn’t feel like it fit the songs,” she explains, noting that throughout the album she plays mostly electric tenor guitar and electric mandolin, which have two fewer strings than a guitar. “I tune them up like a fiddle and viola! I know where the chords are. I’m a four-string kind of girl.”

By playing away from Rodriguez’ strengths, She Ain’t Me manages to find different strengths: straightforward collaborative songwriting, intricate but intuitive arrangements, and a surprisingly expressive voice at the center. She ain’t playing second fiddle anymore.

Carrie Rodriguez

The Hi-Tone Café

Saturday, November 15th

Doors open at 8 p.m.; admission $10

Tony Joe White is a one-man genre, the first and perhaps only progenitor of a particular, potent strain of swamp rock, which he alone seems to have the musical gifts to play: a deep voice that has gained grit over the years, a guitar filtered through an arsenal of old fuzz boxes, a scowling harmonica, and an eye for backwoods characters.

“Swamp rock is kind of bluesy, but you can dance to it,” White says, in his signature baritone with a laid-back Louisiana accent. “This blues has a beat. The guitar is bluesy, and some of the words are. But it’s going to make somebody move some part of their body.”

Born in Goodwill, Louisiana, in 1943, White has been playing swamp rock for decades, ever since he began idolizing blues guitarists like Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker in his teens and taught himself to copy their licks.

From that youth obsession grew a solid career as a performer and songwriter. His Southern tales — “Polk Salad Annie,” “Roosevelt and Ira Lee,” “Willie & Laura Mae Jones,” and his most well-known composition, “Rainy Night in Georgia” — have been recorded by a wide array of singers: Elvis, Dusty Springfield, Mel Tormé, Waylon Jennings, Tina Turner, Hank Williams Jr., Joe Cocker, Conway Twitty, Shelby Lynne, Hem, and Tom Jones, among many others.

As a solo artist, White has only been moderately successful in America, although like many roots musicians of his generation, he is revered in Europe. In fact, France gave him his first number-one hit (“Soul Francisco”) in 1969. In Europe and Australia, he says, they play him about every hour on some radio station somewhere: “In America, the radios play flavors of the week and that type of thing. When people don’t hear you over here for a while, they think you must have been eaten by a shark.”

White resurrects many of his old tunes on his latest album, Deep Cuts, but adds a new twist: ProTools. He recorded the vocals, guitar, and harmonica parts on reel-to-reel in his own studio, then gave the recordings to his manager/collaborator/son Jody White. “He takes it over to his studio and loads the analog onto his ProTools, then he has his way with the songs,” White says.

White calls the result a “techno-swamp album,” which isn’t as incongruous as the concept might sound. The added elements are most noticeable on new instrumental tracks like “Set the Hook,” which opens the album with a computerized growl and percolates while White dispenses some roughed-up Stratocaster licks. On other tracks — like the new version of “Soul Francisco” — the live and programmed elements blend organically, like algae and moss in swamp water.

“I think it came out really cool,” White says, although he admits, “I don’t want anyone to mess with my songs except blood. Jody’s my own blood, so he knew what he could make sound better and what he could leave alone. He really did a cool job of preserving the old style and adding the ‘now’ to it.”

Most of the songs on Deep Cuts date back several decades to White’s earliest releases, but as the album title implies, these aren’t the obvious hits rehashed and repackaged. Instead, Jody culled from 40 years of his father’s albums, many of which remain out of print.

“He took it all the way back to ‘As the Crow Flies,'” White says, referring to his 1972 hit. “It was pretty cool that he was into the old songs, because people of his generation would have never gotten to hear any of these types of songs unless there was some sort of rhythm behind it.”

The songs aren’t dusty chestnuts, however.

“Those tunes are still in the mix on stage, especially in Europe and Australia,” White says. “Those are the songs the audience screams for a lot. I don’t have a set list when I play. I just go out and let the crowd move me along.” According to White, response to the new interpretations has been largely positive. “I know they like to hear those songs a certain way, but all of a sudden they’re up there rockin’ and dancin’ and hollerin’, so it must be working.”

Rather than replicate the computerized beats on stage, White will continue touring with longtime drummer Jeff Hale and the Moogie Man on keyboards. “His name is Tyson Rogers, but I call him the Moogie Man,” White says. “He’s got a little electronic Moog thing that he does on stage, like an electronic keyboard with a B3 on top. It sounds down in the swamps a little more, like the boogie man.”

White says he always looks forward to playing in Memphis, where he lived for 14 years beginning in the 1970s: “It’s like going back home in Louisiana. It’s going to be fun. Every time I play in Memphis, the crowd really gets wild.”

Tony Joe White, with Tyler Keith & the Apostles

The Hi-Tone Café

Friday, July 11th

Doors open at 9 p.m.; tickets $15