Tag: Elvis Costello

Categories
Music Music Features

Stax Music Academy to “Pump It Up” with Elvis Costello to Keep Music Flowing

CREDIT: Courtesy Stax Music Academy

Of all the gems in the crown of the thriving Memphis music education scene, the Stax Music Academy (SMA) may shine the brightest, by virtue of its location right beside the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. Though it wasn’t yet in its current building, the music school opened 20 years ago at Stafford Elementary School and has gone from success to success ever since.

Despite the pandemic, the school is forging ahead with the new academic year, albeit with some new approaches in place. “We’re starting virtual,” says executive director Pat Mitchell-Worley. “We’re still going to keep the attention on the craft of being a musician, but instead of live performance, we’re focusing on recorded performance. And our students get to spend a lot more time in the studio this year, which is something we’ve always wanted to do, but preparing for all those live performances made it sort of impossible. So this is an opportunity. I want to focus on, what can we do that wasn’t possible last year?”

Courtesy Stax Music Academy

Booker T. Jones with Stax Music Academy students

One thing they’re doing is making up for the shortfall resulting from SMA’s suspension of all tuition charges when the pandemic hit. That’s the focus of a new fundraiser involving songwriter extraordinaire and longtime SMA supporter Elvis Costello, who is lending his voice to the cause. It’s not a recording or a performance, exactly, but a unique art object created by the London- and Austin-based Soundwaves company, which specializes in transforming audio recordings by musical artists, from Fleetwood Mac to Paul McCartney, into visual representations of the recordings’ waveforms.

Now, Soundwaves’ Tim Wakefield has created such a work based on Costello’s 1978 classic “Pump It Up,” and produced a limited-edition collection of prints, individually numbered and signed by Wakefield and Costello, as well as four originals. When first offered on July 15th, the originals sold out at $2,500 each, and roughly half of the prints sold for $450 each. Remaining prints are still available.

Courtesy Stax Music Academy

SMA students

As Costello observed in a statement, “I think this is the first time anyone has paid money to look at my voice. That said, I am really grateful to those who have made these contributions in support of the great work done by my friends at the Stax Music Academy.”

As Mitchell-Worley notes, Costello has often been involved with SMA. “He’s met with students,” she says, “and when he was in town last time, he did a testimonial video about the program.” The “Pump It Up” campaign is a perfect expression of that support. “It’s something I’m super excited about,” she says, “’Cause it’s just a cool thing. I’m like, is it wrong for me to buy one? ‘Cause I’m a fan!”

Costello isn’t the only musical genius to lend support to SMA. Direct financial assistance has come from a notable Stax alum. “Steve Cropper put up all the money for the cash prizes for kids, for the songwriting contests we’re doing,” says Mitchell-Worley. “The next one will be in August, and Cropper’s coming again with the prize money. He wants to encourage kids to write songs. He knows how important that was for him.”

The assistance of high-profile artists like Costello and Cropper is crucial now, according to Mitchell-Worley, as the SMA fills in where other avenues of music education have been curtailed due to the coronavirus. As she notes, simply taking a break from playing is not an option. “You’ve got to keep your skills up,” she says. “It’s just like math. If you go without math for a time, then that knowledge is lost. Continuing to practice, continuing to play is an important piece of growing as an instrumentalist and a vocalist.”

After virtual classes begin on August 17th, says Mitchell-Worley, “We’re playing it by ear. ‘Cause we know kids want to be back, and their families want them back, but safety, of course, is everybody’s first concern. For us, it’s still our 20th anniversary, COVID or not, and we’re still going to educate teenagers about music. We’re adapting to what the community needs are. It’s a really strange time, but we’re trying to figure out how we can help. These are the things I’m thinking about, the things that keep me up at night.”


Categories
Music Music Features

An All-Star Tribute to Mose Allison

There’s sweet irony in the fact that Mose Allison of Tippo, Mississippi, ascended the heights of jazz and blues acclaim with the humblest of voices. With Mose, there was no bluster, only his unaffected, conversational delivery of the piquant lyrics that were his trademark. Incredibly, he somehow evoked both Tippo and Manhattan in equal measure, remaining true to this unique alchemy through all his days.

Since his death in November 2016, just four days after his 89th birthday, there have been numerous live tributes to his work. But now, thanks to Fat Possum Records, a fully conceived tribute album has dropped that serves as a testament to Allison’s influence across so many genres. Of course, music history itself has already proven this. Like many, my first exposure to his work was through the Who (“Young Man Blues”) and the Clash (“Look Here”). Later, I took a lifelong dive into his many LPs, but the new If You’re Going to the City: A Tribute to Mose Allison has surprised even a nerd like me with its heretofore unknown deep cuts.

Case in point: “Monsters of the Id,” a duet by Elvis Costello and Mose’s daughter, Amy. With Amy Allison, the apple did not fall far from the tree, though her penchant for dark country songs makes the Long Island native more rural than her old man. In this cover of a 1970 Mose tune, which inexplicably features Mose himself on piano (no doubt through the miracle of recording technology), Amy and Elvis revel in the unique timbres of their voices, complementing lyrics too well-suited to our times: “Prehistoric ghouls are making their own rules, and resurrected Huns are passing out the guns …”

And this isn’t the only beautifully sung meditation on grim humanity. The subtly wrought fragility of “The Way of the World,” sung by Richard Julian with John Chin on piano, froze me in my tracks. This tune and “Monsters of the Id” are surely the clearest nods to Mose’s deep grasp of jazz. Yes, he was a bluesman, but one not cowed by the greater complexity of jazz composition — and he pulled off both with a natural touch.

A bit of those wild jazz changes are also heard on Fiona Apple’s version of “Your Molecular Structure,” a surprising delight. While I’m predisposed to dislike big-name celebrities staking their claim on a beloved slice of history, Apple’s somewhat rattled delivery is a perfect match with the song, especially as backed by “the Tippo All Stars,” including keyboard great Benmont Tench.

Others revel more directly in the blues and folk idioms that also color Allison’s work. Taj Mahal and band turn in a version of “Your Mind is On Vacation” that you might hear on Beale Street. A similar approach is taken by Jackson Browne, Peter Case, and Dave and Phil Alvin (of the Blasters) in their respective contributions — all garnished with laudable servings of grit and mud. The collaboration between Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite on “Nightclub” is arguably the standout in this crop.

A smoother sound is offered by Bonnie Raitt, with her live reprise of “Everybody’s Crying Mercy,” a Mose tune she first covered in 1973 (inexplicably titled here as “Everyone’s Crying Mercy”).

Then there are the truly gonzo covers, where artists as diverse as Robbie Fulks, Iggy Pop, and Frank Black let their imaginations run wild, setting Mose’s work in wholly unpredictable worlds. Fulks begins his track intoning the lyrics seemingly in an attic full of rattling, scratching stringed instruments, until it gradually takes shape as off-kilter bluegrass. Frank Black, of Pixies fame, presents a more conventional indie-rock setting for “Numbers on Paper,” but the weird chords and Black’s own voice, forever threatening a nervous breakdown, give it an intriguingly neurotic edge. And Iggy Pop offers the true outlier here, with a track sounding like both the Art of Noise and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The fact that the singer can’t seem to find the downbeat makes it especially disarming and idiosyncratic. Surely Mose wouldn’t want it any other way.

Proceeds from If You’re Going to the City: A Tribute to Mose Allison, released November 29th, will be donated to the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund.

Categories
Music Music Blog

Elvis Costello Rattles the Orpheum Theatre

Some 14 years ago, Elvis Costello endeared himself to many Memphians while in Mississippi to record The Delivery Man. Of course, his fans were already legion here, but this was when he had time to kill, and he killed it with many locals. I was a lucky hanger-on backstage at the old Hi-Tone, when the late, great B.B. Cunningham met with him and recalled their first encounter many years earlier. “Of course,” said Cunningham, “we were both a little skinnier back then…” 

“Oh that’s all right, though,” said Costello, beating his chest a little, “we’re just getting up to fighting weight now!” It struck me then that this icon of gangly nerds the world over was actually pretty tough; I could easily picture him holding his own in a scrap down ’round the pub.

I thought of those days as he took to the stage with the Imposters once again last Monday night. The band threw us off briefly, with a feint in the direction of canned rhythm tracks as they took the stage; but soon they launched into a ferocious “This Year’s Girl” and it was clear that the Imposters were fully engaged. And Elvis was clearly up to fighting weight, looking more nonchalant than in previous shows, but entirely committed once he approached the mic.

From the start, it was clear that the band (with Kitten Kuroi and Briana Lee on background vocals, Davey Faragher on bass, Steve Nieve on keys, and Pete Thomas on drums) would need every ounce of tenacity they had to overcome the audio mix. As many touring musicians know, live sound engineers are often fixated on the kick drum, and this night was a classic example. It was so loud and boomy that it muddied every other sound on stage, even to the point of obscuring the actual bass notes. This was a sticking point for many music-savvy Memphians, as I discovered in the days the followed. One man was escorted out of the hall for shouting at the sound engineer. Another claimed he was nearly moved to violence over it, noting the hundreds of dollars he and his wife had spent on a gala “date night” that, for them, was compromised.

But the band rose above the atrocious mix with road-seasoned professionalism, and Elvis’ vocals punched through the booming crud of low frequencies. Though the machine-gun lyrics of some of his earlier songs were a challenge to keep up with, Costello never phoned it in. Every word was loaded with nuanced meanings, even more so than in his brutal youth.

Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas, with Costello for some 40 years now, were also all-in. Nieve, surrounded with every conceivable keyboard, as if to compensate for his early years with only a Vox Continental organ, made his entire armory sparkle. “Clubland” shone with his brilliant piano work in a Cuban vein. All eras of music were up for grabs with this band.

This was especially clear when Costello stepped over to a vintage (looking) microphone for the quieter, slower ballads, somehow evoking his own father’s tenure with the Joe Loss Orchestra. As Elvis the Storyteller emerged, many of these tunes were set up with a preamble of sorts. “Imagine a woman sitting there, wrapped in the fur of another animal…” he said before launching into “Don’t Look Now,” one of many he’s penned with Burt Bacharach. “Sometimes you have to put people up on a pedestal, just to see them more clearly,” he said, adding, “until, like a Confederate General, they come tumbling down.” As an appreciative gasp of recognition went through the crowd, he quipped with faux coyness, “Aw, I didn’t mean anything by it!”

Bacharach loomed large over the night, partly because the ballads were so strong, unhampered by the kick drum. But also because old songs were transformed in his image. As the band vamped in a quieter mode, Elvis freestyled lyrics from “The Look of Love,” before launching into “Photographs Can Lie,” another collaboration between the two. This in turn colored “Temptation,” a number from Get Happy! that has aged well.

That was nothing compared to the next transformation. “I wrote this when I was 26,” Elvis explained with a smile. “The world wasn’t ready for it then, but I think I can safely say, you’ve all caught up. It’s written on every tortured line on your faces.” (Or something to that effect.) And then a somber reading of Imperial Bedroom‘s “Tears Before Bedtime” emerged, with a stately, quiet power.

The set, ranging from such moments to ravers from his back catalog, was a roller coaster. The background singers, Kuroi and Lee, were phenomenal, especially on the ballads. To these ears, they may have been too much of a good thing on old rockers like “Mystery Dance,” the essence of which lives in its stark raggedness. One longtime fan was more dismissive. “Elvis Costello and Dawn!” he quipped; but others were deeply moved by their powerful voices, which even graced the classic “Alison” with gospel-like melisma.

Such quibbles aside, Costello & company whipped the crowd into a frenzy by the night’s end, pulling everyone out of their seats with set-closer “Pump It Up,” and keeping them aloft through a generous 10-song encore that culminated in a rousing “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding.” “Thank you! We love you!” Elvis shouted. “Both individually and as a group!”

Set List:
This Year’s Girl
Honey, Are You Straight or Are You Blind?
Clubland
Don’t Look Now
Burnt Sugar is So Bitter
Green Shirt
The Look of Love/Photographs Can Lie
Temptation
Tears Before Bedtime
Moods for Moderns
Why Won’t Heaven Help Me?
Either Side of the Same Town
Watching the Detectives
Deep Dark Truthful Mirror
He’s Given Me Things
Mystery Dance
Waiting for the End of the World
Beyond Belief
Pump It Up

[Encore]
Alison
Every Day I Write the Book
The Judgement
I Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down
High Fidelity
Unwanted Number
Suspect My Tears
(I Don’t Want to Go To) Chelsea
Mr. and Mrs. Hush
(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, & Understanding

See the show via the eye of Jamie Harmon, in the slideshow below:
[slideshow-1]

Categories
Music Music Blog

Live from Elvis Costello’s Sold Out Minglewood Hall Show

CREDIT: Josh Miller

Josh Miller

Elvis Costello Live at Minglewood Hall in Memphis, TN.

Elvis Costello played a sold out show at Minglewood Hall this past Tuesday, and we sent our music photographer Josh Miller to shoot the show. Here are some of his favorite photos from the epic performance. 

Josh Miller

Josh Miller

Josh Miller

Live from Elvis Costello’s Sold Out Minglewood Hall Show

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Where Are the Strong?

Maybe the impasse between Mayor A C Wharton and the Memphis City Council will have begun to heal by the time this gets read, and maybe it won’t have. The issue of whether the city should buy AutoZone Park may have been resolved one way or the other, too, but — how to say it? — as crucial as that issue has seemed to become in recent weeks, that issue is not the issue.

Yes, there’s no disputing that whether or not Memphis will ultimately succeed in keeping its Triple-A Redbirds, its affiliation with the St. Louis Cardinals, or its use of that dandy little AutoZone Park are all significant matters. And playing chicken with the issue, as at times contending players in the drama seem to have done, is nerve-wracking at best, and reckless at worst.

Elvis Costello

But the divide that has opened up between mayor and council (and between factions on the council) speaks to something more than personal ambitions, undesirable negotiating tactics, willful attitudes, or even the matter of what we can or can’t afford. And, again, the ball park is not the issue. Memphis survived the horrific loss by fire of Russwood Park in 1960 — an event that took place only hours after an exciting major-league exhibition game between the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago White Sox that surely had whetted the appetite of local fans for more baseball. In the aftermath of that disaster, the city would try to hold on to but would ultimately lose — at least for a space of many years — its Double-A Memphis Chicks. But the city survived.

Memphis will survive the outcome of the ballpark issue, whichever way the ball eventually bounces, just as it will survive the eventual resolution of the now raging debates over pension reform or this or that TDZ or TIF or the question of whether the city can bootstrap itself into a new convention center.

What it won’t survive, at least in any kind of healthy condition, is the continuation of the current aversion to compromise, without which agreement on issues and the very sense of holding a community in common are impossible.

It was encouraging to hear so many of our key political figures concur on the need for “unity” and “civility” on the occasion of the annual New Year’s Day prayer breakfast, hosted by city councilman Myron Lowery. “I’m through with whose fault it is,” was the apt phrase used by Wharton to indicate a willingness to back away from recriminations and fault-finding. The task, though, is not merely to enunciate such sentiments or to employ them like nostrums but to commit to them as real and effective mantra for a unified and forward-looking community.

As Elvis Costello, the British musician whose stage name paid homage to our city’s favorite son, once asked in song: “What’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding?” But the follow-up questions posed by Costello in that song are still the real ones: “So where are the strong? And who are the trusted? And where is the harmony?”

Categories
Opinion

A Fond Farewell to the Hi-Tone

I didn’t have a college bar, as the home of Frances Willard (founder of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union), Evanston, Illinois, was infamously low on watering holes. And since I was Mormon during my college years anyway (long story), I didn’t have much need of one.

When I moved to Memphis a year out of school, my social options felt even more limited. I was working from home and didn’t know more than a few people in town. I knew Memphis was renowned for its music, but the idea of going to clubs was a little daunting, especially since my frame of reference was Chicago’s rather d-baggy Division Street (I may not have had a college bar, but that’s where my older sister’s was).

Eventually, however, being home alone all day was more than even the most introverted Midwesterner (remember me?) could stand. On a whim, I decided to go see some guy I’d read some pretty glowing things about in the Flyer. He was playing at the Hi-Tone Cafe which, from what I could tell, was an impressively booked venue that brought in a lot of great national musicians. I was prepared to be intimidated by the space and the crowd.

It was probably raining that night, based on the fact that it rained every single time Cory Branan played the Hi-Tone. He was in a misleadingly philanthropic mood, but it wasn’t the Gummi tongues and feet he handed out to the audience that made me feel welcome. The room was a little rough and grimy, but the atmosphere was homey. Well, if your home had a beat-down pool table and a bathroom unfit for company. Still, it was friendly, warm, and completely unlike what I’d been expecting. The team-like definition of club felt far more applicable.

Since that night, I’ve spent more evenings than I can remember at the Hi-Tone. When I was laid off from the corporate world, I started booking shows for some local musicians and actually made hanging out there a part-time job. I bought my first beer there (never mind that I was 29). I saw everyone from Viva L’American Death Ray to Michelle Shocked play. For the better part of a decade, it was the college bar I never had.

Of course, even delayed adolescents have to grow up sometime, and by the time my second child was born, I found it pretty tricky to get out for an evening, let alone stay awake until an 11 p.m. show. The bar’s late band starts were so notorious that just hearing “they’re playing at the Hi-Tone” made me sleepy. And so I set the place aside in the pre-PTA corner of my mind, along with my Mini Cooper and babydoll T-shirts.

When I heard the Hi-Tone was fixing to close (the Southernism particularly appropriate for the bar’s four-month wind-down), the sliding door of that memory storage unit was yanked open again. Although closing bars people love seems to be popular around here, I really never expected a place as venerable as the Hi-Tone to fall victim to the usual small club disasters. Sure, the air conditioning was always busted and there were only four people at the Tuesday shows, but Elvis Costello played there, for Pete’s sake! As a recovering small business owner, I know I can’t fault the guys for throwing in the towel. Still, I’ve spent the last few months hoping someone would be reckless and passionate enough to pick the towel back up and mop the bar down with it.

Since it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen, I guess I should say my good-byes. I went to the Hi-Tone this past Friday to see Shovels & Rope, a South Carolina twosome (both musically and matrimonially) making their third trip to Memphis. Last time here, they played to an echoing tip jar, but on this trip, the room was packed with joyful sing-alongers. The energy was incredible as the band played their hearts and lungs out, with singer/drummer/guitarist Cary Ann Hearst once exclaiming, “I can’t feel my legs!” Although they weren’t locals, it felt like every song they played was somehow about Memphis. And for that night, they were.

There are a couple more shows I hope to make before the Hi-Tone closes for good at the end of the month, and even while I look forward to them, I know there will be sadness in the mix. It was easier leaving my Hi-Tone nights behind when I knew I could still go visit them sometimes. And it was exciting to see new, strange names pop up on the marquee every week. So much of Memphis’ music is already part of history, it seems a damn shame to lose a venue that proudly celebrated what was coming next.

I’ve never attended any of my college reunions, but if in 10 years someone puts on a Hi-Tone reunion (a la last year’s Antenna Club gathering), that’s a ticket I would buy. The Hi-Tone isn’t a Rhodes bar or a U of M bar, or even an MCA bar (despite the parking overlap). It’s a bar for everyone who studies the musicology of Memphis. Although we may lose our college bar, may none of us ever graduate.