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Beale Street Music Festival 2018: Sunday

CREDIT: Courtesy Beale Street Music Festival

Courtesy Beale Street Music Festival

The Flaming Lips

The Beale Street Music Festival ended on a high note, selling out all tickets by 5 p.m. Final attendance numbers won’t be released until the Annual Report in August; however, organizers say the weekend’s attendees came from all fifty states and twenty foreign countries.

For me, it all started with Valerie June. You could hear her distinctive, keening alto cut through the hubbub of the crowd far upriver of the stage. By virtue of her voice, and her very eclectic material, she was a unique presence on the last day of 2018’s festival. On the whole, she conjured up visions of people of the mountains, and the plain-spoken sounds of the Carter Family, even when using her banjo to lead the band through blues grooves that could have sprung out of North Mississippi or West Africa. Once you got close enough to the stage, you could see June herself, a “great speckled bird” in her sequined hot pants, glittering top, and horn-rimmed glasses, as if Minnie Pearl had moved to Paisley Park. It was an inspired set, and a welcome homecoming for June, who began her career in local coffee shops and clubs. 

Valerie June

She was clearly delighted to be back. “This song is for Tennessee,” she said before launching into “Tennessee Time,” then dedicated another to “anyone who’s ever touched that river, or crossed that river, or been a part of that river.” Local bandleader Hope Clayburn joined in on saxophone, and June’s brothers added background harmonies to many songs. The band could certainly groove, which made the set closer, Woody Guthrie’s “I Ain’t Got No Home in this World Anymore,” all the more powerful by way of contrast.

Unlike Saturday, which briefly endured a downpour and hailstorm, Sunday was idyllic, a smattering of clouds bringing relief to the sunshine and mild heat. It was also agreeably less crowded, making for easy wandering between stages, at least before the headliners got cranked up. I wandered over to another local woman who’s making waves, Porcelan. A protege of David Porter’s The Consortium MMT organization, Porcelan led a guitarless band through tightly crafted contemporary R&B. The crowd was a tad smaller, but enthusiastic, especially when things heated up with her “I Am the One.” She then noted, “I am a Memphis artist. Memphis may be known for its barbecue, but it’s also known for talent. This is for all the Memphis artists who are out there cuttin’ it up.” Porcelan was well-prepared to win new fans, instructing the audience to “take those phones out and follow me! I just started my Snapchat!” And while there were some odes to material success (“I need that bacon!” she sang), Porcelan played against the idea with her clever “Goal Digger,” exhorting her man to get with the program, any program.

Alex Greene

Jimmy ‘Duck’ Holmes

Wandering deeper into the festival, I came across an odd juxtaposition as I neared the Blues Shack. Jimmy “Duck” Holmes held court there with timeless blues grooves and soulful singing, but the heavily amplified kick drum from the nearby Luke Combs show pounded the air like cannon fire. It was Holmes vs. Combs. Holmes soldiered on, unfazed, and the rapt Blues Shack crowd seemed to collectively erase the competing sounds, and the tips rolled in. From the Bud Light Stage, Combs yelled, “100,000 people on Beale Street is a pretty good time!” and just then, as if in answer, Holmes moaned his verse, “yes, I’m broke,” and drove the riff home.

Eventually, country megastar Combs gave a shout out to Tennessee to tremendous applause, before launching into a country/soul version of “Tennessee Whiskey.” But when he later dove into his hit, “When it Rains it Pours,” the white noise of the cheering crowd was downright deafening. As I wandered back north to catch some of Young Doph’s set, I heard one passerby exclaim to a friend, “Wait, you’re not drunk yet??”

Memphis’ own Love Light Orchestra was rocking the Coca-Cola Blues Tent with some genuine Beale Street sounds: a stomping band with a full horn section recapturing the glory days of big band blues. Singer John Nemeth was ready for anything in his brilliant red jumpsuit. Then I caught some powerful, earthy beats from D.R.A.M. Meanwhile, a man in a “Memphis As Fuck” shirt came gliding by, his bushy beard painted with gold glitter. Perhaps it was a portent of the Flaming Lips.

Ah yes, the Flaming Lips. They did not fail to dazzle. To the art on the sides of the FedEx Stage, they added giant mushrooms. State of the art video visuals flashed behind the band, who, aside from the green wigs sported by the drumming duo of Nick Ley and Matt Duckworth, or a splash of mylar sported by Steven Drozd, were relatively subdued, sartorially-speaking. But lead singer Wayne Coyne was dressed smartly, with blinking bling and an eyepatch, like an ambassador from a Star Trek episode. Coyne and his six companions brought a sound palette as rich as their records, from folk strumming to prog beats, techno zaps and bleeps, and lush, Mellotron-like symphonic harmonies. (Indeed, the progressions and textures realized by Drozd continue to mark the Lips as pioneers of both electronic experimentation and traditional orchestration). Memphian Jake Ingalls played either guitar or sat cross-legged before an array of synths at his feet. Giant pink robots, a mega-rainbow, and Coyne sitting astride a huge neon unicorn were but some of the delights, as beach balls floated and confetti rained down. Early in the set, the phrase “Fuck Yeah Memphis” in larger-than-life inflatable letters was raised onstage. They clearly
have some love for the Bluff City.

Beale Street Music Festival 2018: Sunday

As dark settled in, Venus glowing like a beacon above the river, the band launched into David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Coyne climbed into his “space bubble” and was propelled by dozens of uplifted hands out over the crowd. Ingalls contributed a spot-on lead during the swelling bridge, and the band did Bowie’s legacy proud.   Bianca Mayfield Burks

Graham Burks and son Graham III after close encounter

After landing back on stage, Coyne spotlighted a youngster in the crowd who’d been sitting atop his parent’s shoulders.

He apologized for any anxiety or head-butting that might have occurred during his space bubble foray, but the young lad beamed and signaled that he was okay, to much applause. Indeed, the youngster is the son of Memphis’ own Bianca and Graham Burks, the latter being a key player in the city’s alternative music scene. Graham Burks

Burks’ Close Encounter of the Bubble Kind

Coyne congratulated them on their parenting skills from the stage. 

Beale Street Music Festival 2018: Sunday (2)

Generously enough, Coyne mentioned how excited the band was to see Post Malone after their set. And the crowd did seem to swarm en masse over to see the blockbuster singer’s show. With an intriguing mix of hip hop, R&B, and echoes of dance hall, Malone had a huge crowd gyrating along. It was stunning, then, to hear him sing a ballad with only acoustic guitar. Despite his down to earth persona, he carried the night like royalty.

But the real royalty was yet to come: the Queen of Neo-Soul, Erykah Badu. Though the crowd grew restless waiting for her to start, even booing an MC who came out to assure us that the queen would appear “in five minutes,” all was forgiven once she hit the stage. Her stage show was not as over-the-top as the Lips’, though featuring intriguing images of pyramids and scientific schematics, but her sheer presence, her remarkable voice, and a world class band of jazz/soul players made for a stunning festival capstone.
Courtesy Beale Street Music Festival

Erykah Badu

As she announced, this year marks the 21st anniversary of her album Baduism. “I wrote Baduism for the ’90s babies,” she said, referring especially to her son who was born at the time. “Words are not necessary. All the ’90s babies know: it’s all frequencies and vibrations.” Exhorting the massive audience to raise their hands, she proclaimed, “We’ve just transcended race.” Then, she explained some of her iconography. “The circle represents the womb. Put your hands on your womb, if you have one. The extended arms represent Fallopian tubes. And the straight line pointing down represents the male principle. Brothers, put your hand on your male principle! Unless a sister already has her hand on your male principle.” As she sang many songs from her breakthrough album of the ’90s, half the crowd sang along, word for word. Clearly Badu reigns in the hearts and principles of many a Memphian.

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Three for Beale!

The Flaming Lips

Working for 35 years with a family vibe and a DIY attitude.

by Alex Greene

“We A Family.” So proclaim the Flaming Lips in last year’s single and closing track on the Oczy Mlody album. And though it’s a cliche that many a rock band pays lip service to, it’s another matter to see one that puts the idea into practice with such creative dividends. The Lips, as they are affectionately known, have made the family vibe work for them, having performed and recorded for 35 years. And while some associate family bonds with complacency, the Lips have benefited from an opposite effect: a free-ranging creativity fostered by enthusiastic collaboration.

To singer and songwriter Wayne Coyne, playing well with others is key. “Music especially is really made from collaboration,” he muses. “I can imagine the very first music that was ever made was someone hitting this rock over here, and someone hitting some tree stump over there, and they’re like, ‘Hey, if we work together, we could get something good going.'”

The Lips have taken collaboration to greater creative heights than most. Who would have guessed, for example, that this tight-knit family, these kings of alt-rock, would team up with megastar Miley Cyrus as the Dead Petz? Or, having done that, that they’d invite her into their world for the aforementioned single? Who, for that matter, could have guessed that after a good decade of rising on the college radio charts, they would sweep away their established rock sound in favor of the haunting orchestral atmospheres of 1999’s The Soft Bulletin? Given their ongoing quest for new musical territories, it’s clear that this is more the Swiss Family Robinson than Archie Bunker.

Memphian Jake Ingalls knows this as well as anyone. “It’s a big family vibe,” he notes. As a musician attending the University of Memphis, he had little inkling that an afternoon volunteering on the Lips’ stage crew in 2009 would lead to a position as a roadie and guitar tech. Or that, three years later, the unthinkable would happen: “I got a call from Wayne and he said, ‘Can you keep a beat?’ I said, ‘I like to think so. I’m in my own band.’ He said, ‘All right, well, we’re about to play all of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots at South by Southwest. We wanna make it special, with extra musicians and no backing tracks. So let’s just say, you need to be in Oklahoma tomorrow for rehearsal.'”

Ingalls notes that the band thrives on a “Hey, gang, let’s put on a show!” esprit de corps. Referring to their visually outlandish stage shows, he says, “A lot of people in Memphis, and a lot of people like me, identify with the band as a bunch of regular people who are trying to put together a truly fantastic production. So in a way it tricks people into thinking they’re bigger than they are. When you get up close to the stuff, you see that when Wayne pulls out these giant foam hands that shoot lasers out of them, it’s not something that he ordered in New York. They made the giant foam hands, you know? And put the lasers in there themselves. If a giant inflatable butterfly rips, you freaking repair it with duct tape.”

This DIY attitude is likely due to the Flaming Lips’ roots in Norman, Oklahoma, where they were blissfully ignorant of musical trends, and being resourceful was key. Coyne and his brother founded the group as an extension of like-minded friends hungry for extreme thrills, “the Fearless Freaks.” While Coyne’s brother soon left the band, original bassist Michael Ivins is still with them. Steven Drozd joined in the early ’90s when an earlier drummer quit, and the three of them have been the steadfast core of the band ever since.

All the while, they’ve doggedly avoided current trends. In Oklahoma, Coyne recalls, “We didn’t really know what was cool, what was old, and what should be embarrassing. Early on, in San Francisco, we opened up for the Jesus and Mary Chain. And we played ‘Wish You Were Here’ by Pink Floyd!” Some may have considered it a betrayal of the post-punk aesthetic, but “if we like it, we really don’t care. Sometimes there’s just no way of knowing what’s cool and what isn’t. And to follow your heart and do what you love is probably gonna serve you better. ‘Cause what’s cool is changing all the time.”

Such an attitude, borne of life in the hinterlands, was clear early in the band’s life. In the 1987 track, “Everything’s Explodin’,” Coyne sings “If you don’t like it, write your own song,” and in a sense, it’s the band’s manifesto. Perhaps that maverick spirit has been nurtured by remaining in their hometown. Coyne still lives in the neighborhood where he grew up, and from that secure base, the band has kept evolving, as is apparent in their soon-to-be-released Greatest Hits, Vol. 1. When the sea change of The Soft Bulletin heralded a new cinematic sweep in their sound, they morphed as a live band by using pre-recorded backing tracks. But in recent years they’ve pivoted yet again, back to a bigger band of live musicians. Now, the whole “family” fuels the band’s creativity.

As Ingalls says, “With the Lips, you can be as involved or as not-involved as you want. But it’s rare that anything that you come up with is going to come out exactly the way you put it in. Wayne might say ‘What would you sing here?’ and I’ll sing something. Then I’ll go off for a month with [Ingalls’ band] Spaceface and come back, and that vocal melody has suddenly turned into a keyboard part. Or vice versa.”

For Coyne, it’s the surprises, and even the mistakes, that make it worth doing. “Boredom, for an artist, is the worst thing that can happen. So that energy you get from being excited about this thing that you’re about to do, that enthusiasm, for us, that’s very contagious. To be creating something together when that breakthrough happens, that’s the thing. Our manager has always been on the side of ‘Do your thing, and let’s make that work,’ as opposed to ‘Let’s figure out what works, and the Flaming Lips can go along with it.’ No, do your thing. I guess we’ve just been lucky that we’ve attracted these people, like Jake, that are like-minded and wanna work the same way. We’ve just been lucky to keep evolving, to keep trying again, and keep discovering new things.”

The Flaming Lips play the Beale Street Music Festival’s FedEx Stage on May 6th, at 7:40 p.m. Ingalls’ band, Spaceface, will play Railgarten on May 19th.

…

Valerie June

Valerie June

Around the world and back home again.

by Chris McCoy

Memphis is a city of musicians, each with their own stories of tragedy, triumph, or something in between. But has there been a Memphis music story in the last decade more satisfying than Valerie June’s rise to stardom?

Growing up in Humbolt, Tennessee, Valerie June learned to sing in church. Her father Emerson Hockett was a music promoter, and her brother Patrick Emory is also a musician. She moved to Memphis around 2000 with her then-husband and played in a folk duo called Bella Sun. After her marriage ended, she became a fixture in the Midtown music scene as a solo artist.

For years, she worked all day cleaning houses or at Overton Square’s landmark hippie shop Maggie’s Pharm, then put in long nights playing guitar and singing at places like Java Cabana. She fostered a knack for collaboration with local folkies such as the Broken String Collective, which served her well when she recorded her debut solo album, and she was one of the musicians featured on Craig Brewer’s pioneering streaming series, $5 Cover.

Then, in 2011, after raising money for her a new album on Kickstarter, she moved to Brooklyn. There, she met Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, who produced her breakthrough album Pushin’ Against A Stone.

They say fortune favors the prepared, and Valerie June was ready to take her shot when opportunity struck. From the opening “Working Woman Blues,” which combined autobiographical lyrics about struggling to make it on her own with a haunting groove, to the smooth girl-group pop of “The Hours,” the record cast a powerful spell. After a stint touring with Sharon Jones, her next album, 2017’s The Order of Time, saw June emerge as more assured band leader. The explosive mix of funk and hill-country drone in “Shakedown” propelled her to international recognition and a world tour that shows little sign of slowing down.

“I went everywhere, so many places I had never been before, like Quebec City, Japan, Australia. This world is huge!” she says. “The highlight was Hawaii. I’ve never seen so much beauty in my whole life. We had a lot of time off there after playing, just to enjoy it.”

Life on the road can be grueling, she says. “I try to dance everyday. But after you’ve been on the road for two years, you just have to find one moment out of your day to do something healthy. … Some days I’m like ‘I miss my plants!’ Other days, I go to the Botanic Gardens in Hawaii.”

Talking to Valerie June for even a few minutes reveals a woman of intense spirituality who values deep introspection. She’s at home on stage, telling stories and singing in a ragged mezzo soprano with her signature trancelike cadence. Her towering dreadlocks and penchant for glamorous bearing make for a magnetic stage presence. But offstage, she’s an introvert who would probably rather be reading.

“You have to get in a rhythm to find out how to flow with the day, and how to preserve your energy,” she says. “My guys that I’m around all the time, they know that about me, and they’re really, really sweet and sensitive to my quiet zone. One of my girlfriends is like, ‘How do you survive out there on the road without any women around you?’ The guys just go and do their thing, going to bars, going shopping, meeting all their friends in different cities. I’m just in my little quiet space, like ‘Shhh’. And I’m all right.”

Her quiet time, where she strives to be present, is vital to her creative process. “Normally, I just write by hanging out and being around,” she told me shortly after the release of The Order of Time. “As I’m living my life, I hear voices. The voices come and they sing me the songs, and I sing you the songs. I sing what I hear.”

When I caught up with her more than a year later, she was working alone in her Brooklyn studio. “That’s the funny thing; I’m always behind on releasing songs, because I’m writing new things all the time. I have stacks of stuff, but I don’t put it out because it takes time to record it, package it, and promote it. Lately, so many poems have been coming to me. I wake up in the morning, and it’s just words, words, words. Beautiful words. I go through the day, riding the subway and writing it down. It’s like, when you see spring and the flowers are growing, that’s what it’s like with inspiration for words with me right now. That’s where I’m at. I’m constantly creating. But that doesn’t mean the world’s going to get it instantly!”

Valerie June is eager to return to Memphis for the Beale Street Music Festival. “My music was born in Memphis! It was always a dream for me to be able to play Beale Street Music Festival.”

She says her last two Memphis performances, one opening for Sharon Jones and the other at the sold-out Hi-Tone with Hope Claiborne and members of her musical family, have been highlights of her career. “They grounded us so good, with so much Memphis love,” she says.

Her rare visits to the Bluff City throw her out of her normal quiet road routine and into a whirlwind of activity. “Coffee here, lunch here, dinner there, I’ll pop in and have one glass of wine with so and so, then go across town to say hey to somebody. There’s so much love there. I don’t do friends any more. It’s fam, you know? People who I cleaned for or who came to Maggie’s Pharm or who worked in the coffee shops or came in to get coffee, all of these people come. It’s just really beautiful. One of the best emails I got in the last month is from a family I worked for over on Park Avenue. They live in Dubai now, and we haven’t talked for years. But they wanted to let me know that they still listened to my music, and thanked me for working for them. This is what I came from and who I am.”

Valerie June plays the Beale Street Music Festival’s River Stage on May 6th, at 3:50 p.m.

…

Tyler, the Creator

Tyler, the Creator

Provocateur and inspiration for a new generation of hip hop artists.

by Andria Lisle

“It is easier to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends,” Joan Didion wrote in 1967. So it is with Tyler, the Creator, who exploded on the national music scene as a member of the Los Angeles-based indie rap collective Odd Future in 2010.

When it comes to Tyler, running down a list of all the things that have brought him notoriety as an enfant terrible — internalized phobias that manifested as misogyny, racism, and homophobia — is easy. It’s infinitely harder to pinpoint exactly what makes him stand out — particularly amidst the marquee-worthy creatives he worked with in Odd Future, a roster including Earl Sweatshirt and Frank Ocean.

Even among those extraordinary artists, Tyler claims a celebrity status that’s all his own. Consider his activities of the past two weeks: On April 14th, he headlined Coachella, kicking off a 27-date summer festival run that includes stops at Beale Street Music Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, Afropunk Brooklyn, and Life is Beautiful. Four days later, he dropped a new song, “Rose Tinted Cheeks,” an unreleased demo from his dazzling 2017 album Flower Boy. The following week, he announced Mono, a collaboration between his clothing line GOLF le FLEUR and Converse.

Not bad for a brilliant, yet filter-less provocateur who was expected to flame out soon after staking his reputation on a controversial music video for the song “Yonkers,” which depicted him eating a cockroach, vomiting, and ultimately hanging himself.

When I poll the new wave of Memphis’ hip-hop community — younger artists who, like Tyler, are staking their careers on their own left-of-center artistic merits — it’s “Yonkers,” recorded and released in 2011, when Tyler was just 19 years old, that made them pay attention.

“I saw the ‘Yonkers’ video before I saw Tyler directly, and the world changed after that,” says producer and Unapologetic label owner IMAKEMADBEATS, who founded his label on an ethos that celebrates vulnerability and weirdness. “Tyler challenged every way you’re supposed to act to be a successful artist. His level of offensiveness is okay, because he’s sincere. We’re living in a different era where a young, skinny black kid can say crazy shit!”

“When I saw ‘Yonkers,’ I was like ‘Man, who is this dude saying all this wild stuff?’ He was true to himself. He wasn’t adhering to the capitalistic rules set forth by the music industry,” says digital artist and producer Kenneth Wayne Alexander II, an “anime surrealist” who, most recently, contributed to the musical score for Marco Pavé’s rap opera Welcome to Grc Lnd: 2030.

In 2011, Tyler provided an inordinately unique voice in an era of rap music that was dominated by mainstream acts like Eminem, Lil Wayne, and Wiz Khalifa. He came, seemingly, from nowhere, drastically shifting the popular music paradigm. Just as Nirvana had done exactly a decade earlier, Tyler instantly made most other artists sound outdated and irrelevant.

“It was representation during a time when all rappers were either drug dealers or drug addicts, or they were super fucking corny,” recalls contemporary visual artist Lawrence Matthews III, who performs and records under the name Don Lifted.

“Tyler is a regular dude who draws in notebooks and has crazy ideas and wants to do other stuff outside of rapping,” Matthews continues. “We both grew up skateboarding. We both grew up in a suburban sprawl. What comes with that is this outcast kind of thing — because you’re black, you can’t really deal with white people, but you can’t fit in with black people either, because you do white shit. I found a direct connection to him as a person, and the music followed. I didn’t always agree with his subject matter, but I understood it as this post-high school angst. It was very relatable. In the same way that I’m a child of Kanye West and Pharrell Williams and N.E.R.D. and skate culture, he’s a brother in that.”

A Weirdo From Memphis agrees. The Unapologetic rapper, who cites the dystopian art film Gummo as an influence with equal footing as, say, British MC and producer MF Doom, says, “Tyler, the Creator was extremely necessary in that environment. At the time, there was a general Lex Luger, 808 Mafia vibe going on, and Juicy J had just made his return. Then Tyler came along, and what he was doing felt so organic, so based on his individuality and personality that it just gave me the feeling that I could be myself, too. It was the first time I really felt that.”

Alexander, Matthews, AWFM, and IMAKEMADBEATS are all fans of Kurt Cobain — footage of the late Nirvana frontman even figures into Don Lifted’s performances — but in their world, Tyler easily overshadows the grunge pioneer. He is their Kurt Cobain. He’s someone who looks like them, someone with the same cultural touchpoints as theirs, someone who the outside world identifies as black, but, as Matthews said, someone who is also alienated because he doesn’t necessarily fit into his own community.

Like Cobain, Tyler’s relationship with fame, and his stability in general, has seemed precarious. But Tyler’s estrangement goes further; it’s become exceedingly clear, as he’s made his way through four studio albums, from 2011’s Goblin to the is-he-out-of-the-closet-or-isn’t-he cryptic beauty of Flower Boy, that Tyler has used his phobias to exorcise personal demons.

More than anything, Flower Boy forces listeners to reframe Tyler’s earlier releases. Rife with sexual clues that permeate a hothouse garden motif, the 46-minute album reveals a vulnerability that has unexpectedly bloomed amid all the aggressiveness. The end, it seems, is all about the journey — the arduous process is what makes Tyler fully complete. That vulnerability and process — and the unanswered questions both raise — have further endeared him to critics and audiences.

“It’s like seeing a child star growing up; they’re not on drugs, and now they’re doing really well for themselves,” says C.J. “C MaJor” Henry, a producer and engineer at Unapologetic. “Tyler’s influence right now is ridiculous. He’s legitimately being himself and it comes off as so cool that other people want it.”
Tyler, the Creator plays the Beale Street Music Festival’s FedEx Stage on May 4th, at 10:50 p.m.

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Memphis Musicians’ Worst Gigs Ever II

On any given day, dozens of Memphis musicians are crisscrossing the country, bringing the diverse sounds of our city to audiences large and small. It’s a fun life, but things don’t always go as planned. It’s a tradition for musicians to swap stories of disaster, humiliation, and stiffed payments. Here are some prime cuts from Memphis musicians who were willing to go on the record about their worst gig experiences.

Dead Soldiers

Krista Wroten Combest — Dead Soldiers

We were on our way from Asbury Park to Brooklyn, and then to Staten Island. The guy at the toll booth told us the wheel on our trailer was smoking. This wasn’t surprising to us, because on our last tour, the wheel had fallen off as we were attempting to leave Sister Bay, Wisconsin.

That’s why we weren’t surprised when it happened again in New York. We pulled over and called a bunch of auto places, but no one was open, so we decided to take it easy and just get to the show. We limped into New York and somehow made it through the Staten Island tunnel, which is more than a little terrifying when you’re hauling a broken trailer behind a conversion van.

We finally made it to the venue and had a great time and got to party with a bunch of our Memphis transplant friends. Loading out after the show, Clay [Qualls] accidentally broke the key off in the lock on our trailer. It ended up being easier to just tear the trailer door off rather than deal with the locks and load all our stuff into the U-Haul we rented for the rest of the tour. All the while we were being harassed by a junkie who looked like an extra from The Nightmare Before Christmas. We had to make the tough choice to abandon our trailer there in the Big Apple. Another victim of the road. R.I.P. trailer, I hope you’ve finally found peace in some scenic New York junkyard — or as a Brooklyn hipster’s apartment.  

Joey Killingsworth — Joecephus and the George Jonestown Massacre

I got so many bad stories…

We drive to the middle of Georgia to play a car show. And to get there, you had to get walkie-talkied in. One car at a time on this little gravel road in the middle of nowhere. Once you got down to it, there was a field with all of these cars and stage in front of a dirt track. We start talking to people, and these rednecks are scary even for white folks. Dave said, “You took me to a Klan rally where they don’t bother to wear hoods.” These motherfuckers were crazy. These guys were showing us their gun wounds, their knife wounds. I was like, this is a little too much for us.

There was a guy in a blue gorilla suit playing upright bass, doing ‘White Wedding”, and some ‘80s songs. He was cool. But then we got on stage, and the wind started blowing towards the stage. Whenever the cars would drive behind us, the dirt would blow up on us. It was covering my pedals, my guitar, everything.

As soon as we got done, we were like, we gotta get paid and get the hell outta here. But they were like, hang on, we have an emergency. Somebody broke their foot. We’re waiting on a helicopter. We were like, why don’t you just get the ambulance? No, he was some drunk redneck on a quad runner, and his foot actually broke off, like, it came off. So they had to airlift him out. And that was Dave Wade’s first show with us. He said, ‘That was the day I said, ‘I’m never going to do this again.’ That was six years ago.

My personal worst was the Hogrock festival in Illinois. It’s in the middle of a field that they used to use for the Gathering of the Juggalos. There are three big stages. You gotta follow trails in the middle of nowhere to get to them.

At first it was awesome, but it turned out that was the night the cicadas came out. Like, they were literally emerging from the ground. We were in an open area in the middle of the woods. Me and Brian [Costner] were not wearing shirts, and Daryl [Stephens] from Another Society was playing drums. The cicadas were swarming all over us. They stayed on us the whole time. They were swinging on the bill of my cap, hanging off of my guitar. It was like somebody throwing softballs at you. I would kick a bunch of ’em out of the way to get to a pedal. Daryl said he was just playing and cringing, watching these cicadas climb on our backs. We did an hour and a half set. It was like that the whole time.

Marco Pavé

Marco Pavé

I was 15 years old and auditioning for a talent show in the Frayser High Gymnasium. I had downloaded the beats from a site called Soundclick, and at the beginning of the beat, there was an audio tag that said I didn’t purchase the beat. I downloaded it from the internet so I could perform! I was 15 years old! I didn’t know!

So I came, I had my songs ready, I performed them, I rocked the songs. Then the guy was like, “Yeah, man, you had the tag on your beat. That means you’re not serious. We would have picked you if you had used a professional beat or a beat that you owned.” Basically, they took my $50 submission fee as a 15-year-old and told me to go home.

Booker T. Jones

Booker T. Jones

I drove from Memphis to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, not long after we had recorded “Green Onions.” I think they told the people that I needed an organ, so they went to the church and got a pipe organ. They didn’t tell them it needed to be a Hammond B3 Organ. It was a simulated pipe organ with stops — a spinet. It was like a church organ — the notes didn’t make a sound right away. It wouldn’t work. I ended up trying to play “Green Onions” on a pipe organ in this club in Baton Rouge. That’s got to be the weirdest sound I’ve ever heard.

Richard Dumas

Lorette Velvette

Lorette Velvette — Tav Falco’s Panther Burns

It was 1986. We’d been up in NYC. “The Starvation Tour.” Bob [Fordyce] would just write “FOOOOOD” in his sketch book. So we were crowded in the car, and we had no money. George [Reinecke] was sent into a country store somewhere along the way, and he bought white bread and some head cheese nobody else would touch. So all I was eating was white bread.

We went down to the Metroplex in Atlanta. We started our show, and I was on stage playing tambourine. During “Tina the Go Go Queen,” two policemen came up and told me to come off stage. And I said, “No! Wait till the end of the song!”

Then I went off stage into this other room with them. The Panther Burns kept playing. And so the policeman wrote me up and said, “I’m giving you this ticket for playing tambourine without a permit.”

I was so mad I snatched the ticket from his hand, but he didn’t let go. He held onto the ticket. I just turned away from him, just looking at the heavens, going, “God, this is bullshit!” Then he grabbed me from behind in a big bear hug and ran me out the door, several yards, onto the sidewalk.

By then, the Panther Burns had gotten out there. Tav was begging him to not arrest me, but they said I had “resisted arrest.” This was the police officer who had bear-hugged me and his senior sergeant. The two of them conferred: “Well, should I take her in?” And the sergeant said, “Well, you’ve already laid your hands on her.”

Immediately, the paddy wagon was there. Back doors open, I get shoved in. And Tav was begging him, he was like, “Please, please, don’t arrest her!” And before the doors shut he said, “She’s been eating white bread for a week!”

They took me to the downtown jail, and I had to stand in line. I was dressed in my pink vinyl miniskirt, with a black half top and go-go boots. They all thought I was a prostitute, so they put me in the cell with a bunch of other ladies. When I walked in, they all wanted my cigarettes, so I gave out my cigarettes to make friends. There was a telephone in the room, and they’d get on the telephone and call their husbands and tell them not to press charges. Like, these women had beaten up their husbands. Several of them.

My bail was $1,500. Around daybreak, the Panther Burns came and I was like, “How did you make bail?” It turned out, the people in the club had chipped in, the club had chipped in, and the pizza place at Little Five Points had chipped in a bunch, and they got the money together and got me out. I had to go to court literally the next day. A lot of people came from the club, saying, “They’ve been trying to shut us down for a long time.”

There was a lawyer assigned to me who said, “Let’s try to settle this out of court.” He made a deal, that they would drop the charge of resisting arrest — and I probably weighed 105 pounds — if I agreed not to sue them. Of course, I couldn’t, because we didn’t have any money. And I didn’t want to ever go back to Atlanta again.

Marcia Clifton — The Klitz

The worst one, probably, was the one that should have been the best, when we went to New York to open for the Mondo Video film. Remember Mr. Bill? And Michael O’Donoghue. He was a writer for Saturday Night Live. We opened for his movie, Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video. Sept. 23, 1979 at the Times Square Tango Palace. Elizabeth Johnson was a girl from Memphis who went to Harvard, and she got in, like, a cool crowd and suggested us to play for this. And of course they heard the name and they were like, “Oh yeah, the Klitz!” It was perfect.

And so we were just kinda like…we weren’t really tight, because we were nervous, and I think we had had too much to drink. Rolling Stone was there, and we got a review in Rolling Stone and it said, “The only thing worse than the Mondo Punch was the entertainment.” That was a quote from the actress Sylvia Miles, who appeared in Andy Warhol’s Heat. They flew us up there, put us in a hotel, we went to all the parties, and then, when it was time for the gig, we just kinda fell apart. It was kinda sad.

Stephen Sweet

The Grifters

Tripp Lamkins — The Grifters

I think it was 1992. We were on a month-long tour with Flaming Lips and Codeine. We were in Atlanta at a club called The Masquerade, which was split into three levels. You entered mid-level into Purgatory. The bands played upstairs in Heaven. The sub-level was a red-lit, S&M-themed bar called Hell. Of course, we went down to Hell.

The bar was just opening, and the only other person in there besides the bartender is a guy playing pinball. Shirtless, muscular, black leather pants, black boots, black policeman’s hat, handcuffs. We ask if he’s a regular. Bartender says, “No, that’s Frank, the bouncer.”

Later, we play our set. Good show — hard not to have a good show on that tour. It was the biggest crowds we’d played to up till then. We’re sitting backstage having after-show beers. There’s a knock on the door.

This guy peeks his head in and asks, “Grifters?” We’re like, “Yeah.”

He creeps in with two friends in tow. He tells us how glad they are we came back to Atlanta and that we killed it out there. Of course, we’re grateful and invite them to hang.

They sit down, and dude continues to blow smoke up our asses. “You guys are blowing up! Every song was killer! I bet you’re blowing Flaming Lips off the stage every night! Mind if we grab a beer?”

Dude grabs three beers, hands two off to his friends, and continues to ramble. “This new record man. It’s friggin killer!” Kills his beer. Grabs another one. “Man, you guys are gonna be fighting off the majors!” Kills that beer, grabs another.

Then I see him give a sideways glance to his friends and he asks, “Man, what’s the third song off of side two on the new record?” I say, “Encrusted?” He says “YEAH MAN! ‘ENCRUSTED’! The guitar solo on that song is friggin’ DOPE!”

I say, “Okay, this has been fun. Time for you guys to go,” and they leave. I turn around and Scott and Stan are like, “What’d you do that for?” and I’m like “There isn’t a guitar solo on ‘Encrusted’! We don’t have guitar solos on any of our songs!” And it sinks in. We’d been grifted for backstage beer.

Stan says, “We’re not gonna let him get away with this are we?” I say, “Hell no!”

The club was packed, and the Lips were raging loud. We didn’t know what we would do. After casing the place, we decided to wait by the men’s room. It worked. Almost immediately, dude walked right by us, swigging beer and laughing and — I’m not kidding — he actually says, “I stole this beer from the Grifters! Haw Haw Haw!”

So we’re thinking, “This guy’s going down!” But we only have moments to formulate a plan. We decide we would appear to be fighting each other when dude comes out of the bathroom, and then Stan would hurl me at him and I would either knock him down or knock the beer out of his hand.

Stan and I start shoving each other around and cussing at each other for what seemed like five minutes when finally the guy comes out of the men’s room. Stan grabs me by the lapels and throws me at the guy—who casually sidesteps me! As I’m falling backwards, I reach out and just knock his beer to the ground. It shatters on the floor, and he flies into a rage.

He screams, “That was MY beer!” Stan jumps to my side and points in his face and says, “A beer you STOLE from the Grifters!” He looks all kinds of confused and then goes into a Three Stooges, Curly kind of wind-up. Stan and I plant ourselves, then suddenly Frank the S&M bouncer comes from behind us and hurls the guy into the wall and says, “GOD-DAMN-IT, BILLY! HOW MANY TIMES WE GOTTA DO THIS?”

Frank shoves the guy’s arm into his back and gets him in a headlock and then drags him backwards down the stairs literally kicking and screaming. We looked down over the banister and Stan yells, “This is what happens when you fuck with the Grifters!”

Herman Green — B.B. King

I played with B.B. King a couple years. He saved my life, man, ’cause he didn’t have a car, and I had a car. And so we’re coming back from Blytheville. They had those narrow bridges in Arkansas, and we was following this truck with a trailer. And he signaled, another one coming toward us, some kinda way they had a signal, and told them to come on, don’t stop. And it had been raining. I wasn’t driving, the piano player was. And he hit the brakes … no brakes. We hit that bridge and knocked up three concrete posts, and as fast as we were going, we couldn’t stop.

I felt something go across my chest, like someone was fighting me. It was B.B. and the way he did it, he took his left arm and went that way, and he balanced himself on the bench. So he wasn’t going no where. ‘Cause they didn’t have seat belts back then. That was back in the late ’40s, early ’50s. And he saved my life, because I’d a went through the windshield.

And then, you’ve heard of Ford Nelson at WDIA, haven’t you? He’s a disc jockey. He was with us. He weighed about 240 pounds, and after we hit those concrete posts, the car was laying right on the edge of the bank, teetering. Ford got out one way and the car went the other way. And we slid down and the hood got right in the mud down there. And I told Ford, I said, “Man, don’t you ever move! I don’t care where we at, just sit still!”

Kelley Anderson — Those Darlins

Those Darlins played the 2009 Americana Music Festival in Nashville and were scheduled to play before John Fogerty. Creedence Clearwater Revival was one of Jessi [Zazu]’s favorite bands, and she was excited to get to see him.

At the last minute, Fogerty decided he wanted to play earlier. The festival organizers accommodated his request (because he’s John freakin’ Fogerty) and shifted our scheduled time to be after his. All performers were supposed to play around 45 minutes, and he rocked for almost two hours. At one point, there were three guitars on stage — there were so many guitars.

After he completely rocked everyone’s faces off, we set up our ragtag equipment in front of theirs on the stage they just destroyed and basically played outro music for the waves of people filing out of the Mercy Lounge.

Their drums were still set up on a giant riser, so Linwood [Regensburg] set up his kit in front of theirs, and the rest of us kind of filled out to the side, with me playing behind a large column. With no soundcheck and a “Here goes nothing!” sigh, we took it in stride and played a good show for the 20 or 30 diehard Darlins fans who remained up front. So maybe it wasn’t the worst gig ever, but it was a little embarrassing to be playing to such a large room of people leaving. But hey, not everyone can say that John Fogerty opened up for their band!

The Reigning Sound

Jeremy Scott — Reigning Sound

The day after opening for the White Stripes at the White Blood Cells album release in Detroit, the Reigning Sound rolled into Columbus, Ohio, for a gig that night.  It was at Bernie’s Distillery, a long-running local institution. We were under the impression, probably from the guy who booked the tour, that Bernie’s had a kitchen. The key word here is “had.” In fact, the whole place looked like it had been closed for at least three years. (Bernie’s soldiered on until the end of 2015, incredibly.) When we asked to see a menu, the dude behind the bar said, “Um, our kitchen closed a few weeks ago, but hang on a sec,” and headed where we couldn’t see him.  When he returned, he informed us, “Well, there’s a whole ham back there. The top part is green, but I could shave off the bottom for you and make sandwiches.” We all looked at each other and said “Nah, we’re good.” Add in the thoroughly disgusting bathroom which gave ’70s-era CBGB a run for its money, and a bunch of out-of-place Ohio State grads, and you have a fairly disorienting experience. That’s life, though. One day you’re playing with the White Stripes, the next day a random bartender is trying to kill you.

The Masqueraders

Harold Thomas — The Masqueraders

[In 1968, the Masqueraders hit the road to support their hit “I Ain’t Gotta Love Nobody Else.”]

Our first engagement on that tour was at the Apollo Theater. This was the craziest experience we ever had in our life. We got up there, we were just ol’ country boys. We didn’t know. We really came from a capella, to the studio, and now we gotta have music. We didn’t know we needed charts!

We get to the Apollo Theater, and the bandleader goes, “All right, Masqueraders, let me have your charts.”

We go, “Charts? You know, we always just go, ‘Well, the music goes like this, dowmp dowmp dowmp!'”

They go, “Oh no, man … we need some charts.” Okay.

So one of those guys says, “Hey, I tell you what, I know the song. You all give me $50, and I’ll write the charts for ya. Tonight, when y’all come back, I’ll have ’em ready.”

That night, they call us, “Masqueraders, Masqueraders, you’re up next!”

We run out on the stage, waiting for them to play our song. They didn’t play nothing like it. It wasn’t nothing like it! We was looking at each other going, “What the … hell?”

And the people in the audience, they were starting to mumble, getting ready to throw tomatoes and eggs. You know how they did back in the day.

So one of our guys said, “Hold it, hold it, man, we don’t need no music! We don’t need no MUSIC. Stop right now!”

And then he headed out on that melody [a capella], “Up in the morning …” and we were like “Wooo-ooh.” “Out on the job … ”

When we got through singing that song, they were standing up, you hear me?

Categories
Music Music Features

Spaceface release one of spring’s essential albums

Jake Ingalls couldn’t help being a little late calling me for our interview — he got hung up trying to survive sound check with the Flaming Lips at the Major Rager festival in Augusta, Georgia, where strong winds threatened to topple the stage. (I’m sure all those amplifiers, pounds of confetti, facsimile UFOs, and other Lips paraphernalia didn’t help either.)

Ingalls, along with band mate Daniel Quinlan, called me not just to discuss the perilous nature of festival stages, but also to dish the dirt on Memphis-based Spaceface’s new full-length record, Sun Kids (self-released). The sunny psych-rock band formed in 2011 or so with just Matt Strong, Jake Ingalls, and Eric Martin. Later, in 2012, Peter Armstrong, Victor Quinn Hill, and Daniel Quinlan joined the psychedelic trio. In time-honored Memphis tradition, the band shares most of its members with another local act, Strong Martian, and Ingalls, as previously mentioned, is a full-fledged member of the Oklahoma-based, Grammy-winning group the Flaming Lips.

Ingalls was inducted into the Lips in 2013 as a keyboardist and guitarist. By then, the Flaming Lips had already ridden a series of quirky hits like “She Don’t Use Jelly” and the synth-heavy, psych-pop of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, pt. 1” to stardom. The band released their 14th studio album this January, and, of course, Ingalls was credited on it (as were guest vocalists Miley Cyrus and Reggie Watts of Comedy Bang! Bang! fame). Membership in such a band opens doors — doubtless, Ingalls never expected to one day collaborate with Miley Cyrus — but it also creates interesting wrinkles in other plans. Scheduling, particularly, has been difficult for the sun kids in Memphis.

Spaceface

Spaceface recorded Sun Kids over a period of almost two years in three different studios. “That’s how Spaceface tends to have to work anyway,” Ingalls says, “with my being out of town all the time.” The band worked when Ingalls wasn’t globetrotting with the Lips and when they could make time between work, life, and Spaceface concerts.

The band recorded at Ardent, in their rehearsal space under Minglewood Hall, and at the Grove in Cordova. The circumstances in which the Memphis rockers tracked their debut album stood in stark contrast to the bright sounds that define it. “A bulk of the record was recorded all between the hours of midnight and four or five in the morning, in the dead of winter,” Ingalls says. “Which is pretty funny because it’s a pretty feel-good, springtime record.”

Sun Kids is definitely a feel-good record, psychedelic in its spirit of sonic exploration, but firmly grounded by a tight rhythm section and occasional acoustic guitar hooks. “We all wanted to have a sort of earthy quality,” Ingalls says. “I know our name’s Spaceface, but we talked extensively about wanting to make something that sounded like it was from this plane of existence.” With shimmering, clean guitar lines and high-and-lonesome vocals dancing over the aforementioned rhythm-section groove, Sun Kids has more in common with MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular or Dr. Dog’s Be the Void than with any of the sprawling jam bands who currently wave the tie-dyed flag of psychedelia. Most of the songs on Sun Kids clock in at around four-and-a-half minutes and have been tooled to pop precision.

Sun Kids feels fated to become the soundtrack to many Frisbee-themed trips to Shelby Farms. It’s an album that implies a narrative, hints at a story, and the story is a little wild, a little weird, and quintessentially Memphis.

The band has previously released a handful of live and studio EPs, and their cover of King Crimson’s progressive-rock classic “Moonchild” is not to be missed. Sun Kids is Spaceface’s longest release to date — and their most lush and cohesive. Essential tracks include album-opener “Parachute,” “Cowboy Lightning,” the dark groove of “Spread Your Head,” and “Time Shares,” which features Julien Baker as a guest vocalist. “We knew she would kill it,” Quinlan says.

Spaceface is packing up their phaser pedals, confetti cannons, and their giant parachute for a West Coast tour beginning this May, with dates in Los Angeles, Denver, Vancouver, and points in between. Sun Kids is available at local record stores and on iTunes and Spotify.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Swamp Rock, Shape Shifters, and Southern Blues

Rollin’ on the River …

The amazing career of John Fogerty

Do you remember the first time you heard a song that changed your perception of popular music? For me, it was “Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Growing up, my parents frequently listened to oldies stations as we drove to school or soccer practice (I remember wondering as a child how my mom knew every song on the radio), and I can still recall the first time I heard Fogerty’s voice come over the airwaves. This was a very significant moment in my life for two reasons. Number one, the song is absolutely flawless. And number two, I had never heard an anti-war song on FM radio before. What was this guy who was singing about silver spoons and senators’ sons even talking about? Was this even legal? Hell, yes, it was legal, and I wanted more of it.

As a pre-teen, I dug deeper into Creedence Clearwater Revival, downloading their albums on file-sharing sites like Limewire and Napster and buying their greatest-hits compilations at Best Buy. Around the age of 15, I discovered vinyl and sold my collection of CDs to places like Cat‘s Music and Spin Street (Turtle’s Records + Tapes at the time), but my Creedence CDs stayed put.

Creedence Clearwater Revival only existed from 1967 to 1972 (even though the trio of John Fogerty, Stu Cook, and Doug Clifford had been playing together since 1959). Think about that for a minute. Think about churning out that many gold records and huge hits in such a small amount of time. Think about writing one good song that would become synonymous with the late 1960s, let alone a handful. In five short years, Fogerty went from being discharged from the Army to being a rock-and-roll star with one of the most recognizable voices in modern music.

All this success came at a price, and Creedence Clearwater Revival went through their fair share of turmoil, even at the peak of their popularity. Their headlining performance at Woodstock was not included in the original Woodstock film because Fogerty claimed the performance was subpar (Cook disagreed – one of many disagreements between Cook and Fogerty). Ultimately, it was the rough relations between Fogerty and the rest of Creedence Clearwater Revival that led to their break-up in 1972. Fogerty addressed his hard-nosed ways in an interview with The Guardian in 2013.

“Yes, I was very disciplined,” Fogerty said. “Were there any drugs involved? Yeah, I smoked a little pot. I think my bandmates smoked quite a bit more pot. I had rules: Never do that when we‘re recording; never do that when we‘re playing. To me it was a competition. You‘d have the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane talking like: ‘We don‘t want to be successful, maaaaan.‘ For one thing I wasn‘t sure I believed them and for another, why would I go to all this trouble and only sell one record to my mom? I wasn‘t embarrassed that I was ambitious. We wanted to be the best we could be.”

Fogerty kept his discipline as a solo artist and started cranking out more hits, first under the name the Blue Ridge Rangers and later as John Fogerty. When Creedence Clearwater Revival was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, Fogerty refused to perform next to Cook and Clifford and was instead joined by Bruce Springsteen and Robbie Patterson to perform three classic Creedence songs. In 2011, Fogerty told Rolling Stone that his anger toward his former bandmates had diminished and even went as far to say that a full-scale reunion was possible. Pretty impressive for an artist who wouldn’t even play the songs he wrote for Creedence Clearwater Revival live for 25 years after their 1972 split.

Sure, Neil Young is great, but he didn’t write “Someday Never Comes,” “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” “Long As I Can See the Light,” or even “Run Through the Jungle,” and for that reason I can comfortably say that Fogerty is one of the best, if not the best, American rock-and-roll singers of all time. Don’t miss his first performance in Memphis in 20 years when he plays Beale Street Music Fest on Saturday night, because someday never comes. – Chris Shaw

John Fogerty plays the Rockstar Energy Drink Stage Saturday, May 2nd, at 10:15 p.m.

St. Vincent …

The evolution of Annie Clark

I first fell in love with Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, when I saw her do a searing cover of the Pop Group’s “She Is Beyond Good and Evil” on a summer music festival webcast. Before that, I had been aware of her mostly as the former guitarist for folk rocker Sufjan Stevens. But there she was, absolutely killing it in front of a huge crowd, not with some big party anthem, but with a fairly obscure English post-punk song. If anything, her interpretation was even weirder and harder than the original. Every time she stepped back from breathily reciting the lyrics, she strangled out squalls of No Wave noise from her guitar. Then she leapt into the crowd and proceeded to sing her song “Krokodil” while her tiny frame was being thrown around by a few thousand sweaty festivalgoers. Then, after barely escaping with her life, she did an encore.

Clark was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Dallas. She took to guitar at the age of 12 and showed immediate talent. Her first taste of a musician’s life was touring with her aunt and uncle, the jazz duo Tuck & Patti. Clark played in punk bands in high school and then attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. She dropped out due to frustration after three years and landed a job playing guitar with the psychedelic folk group Polyphonic Spree, before hooking up with Stevens. She struck out on her own in 2006 with Marry Me, an album of meticulously arranged songs that showed the influence of the baroque popsters for whom she had been serving as side-woman. By the time of 2011’s Strange Mercy — recorded over a month in self-imposed isolation in Seattle — she had found a voice and a sound that were entirely her own. It was Bowie-descended art rock with teeth, and like the Thin White Duke, she had an ear for taking the best quirks of any genre that caught her fancy and recombining them into something new, yet still tantalizingly familiar.

Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent

As more people turned up at her shows, the introverted musician gained the confidence to charge headlong into crowds, Iggy Pop­style. But it was her absolute mastery of the guitar that transfixed audiences. On such songs as “Cheerleader,” she proved she could switch from an Athens jangle to a noise meltdown and back, effortlessly, unafraid of either crunchy power chords or twisted jazz phrasings.

Then, in 2012, she completely switched gears, collaborating with the legendary David Byrne on Love This Giant. The album was noticeably short on guitar but heavy on horns, with many songs constructed more like marching band arrangements than traditional rock or pop songs.

Like Byrne and Bowie, her collaborations are not just pickup bands, they’re learning experiences. With a new record contract and a fresh set of ideas, 2014’s self­-titled St. Vincent was her best work yet. Always sonically restless, Clark delved heavily into guitar-­triggered synths, creating tones that managed to recall both pre-­King Crimson Adrian Belew and 1980s electro-pop. The ingenious arrangements and song structures were still intact, as on album standout “Huey Newton,” which starts out as an airy synth pop number before turning on a dime into a square wave, Black Sabbath cruncher. The single “Digital Witness” sounded like nothing else in pop music, but still captured the selfie­-obsessed zeitgeist. You never know what’s going to happen next in a St. Vincent song, but the weirdness is always in service of real emotion.

If St. Vincent marked a musical turning point, her stage show had also undergone its own radical change. Instead of the blood and guts, punk girl with an axe and amp, she and her band carefully choreographed everything that happened on stage. Like Bowie, the stretches of strict control had the effect of amplifying the moments when the mask falls and the audience catches a glimpse of the turmoil going on inside her head.

Clark has a reputation for being tight-lipped about her personal life, preferring to focus on the music, which she says reveals all that needs to be revealed. The reticent performer is always intriguing, which makes her first single of 2015, the frank memory “Teenage Talk,” a tantalizing sample of a more intimate musical direction. St. Vincent’s set on Sunday is not to be missed. — Chris McCoy

St. Vincent plays the FedEx Stage Sunday, May 3rd, at 7:30 p.m.

Ghost Town Boys …

A closer look at Ghost Town Blues Band

Ghost Town Blues Band is one of the few Memphis-based groups (along with Star and Micey and Prosevere) who have been asked to play Beale Street Music Fest (BSMF) for the past few years. Formed in 2009, Ghost Town Blues Band is led by Matt Isbell, a multi-instrumentalist and tour-tested musician who also fashions instruments out of everything from cigar boxes to broomsticks in his spare time. When asked at what moment Isbell knew he wanted to play Beale Street Music Fest, he recalled seeing one of his favorite guitarists play the festival as a teenager.

“I remember being around 14 years old and seeing Todd Snider playing at Beale Street Music Fest and just being blown away,” Isbell said. “I had talked to him a little bit before and seen him play around town, so it didn’t just seem like some huge rock star playing on stage; it actually seemed like a touchable dream.”

Ghost Town Blues Band

Snider would later invite Isbell to hang out at Ardent Studios and sit in on a recording session – his first opportunity to see the legendary music studio in all its glory. Fast forward to 2013, and Isbell’s dream became a reality.

“The first time we played Beale Street Music Fest was in 2013 at the Southern Comfort Blues Shack,” Isbell said.

“When we started, there were about 30 or 40 people watching us play, and by the end I’d say there were close to 400 people standing there — and not just because we were playing next to the port-a-potties. I guess that’s when I felt like we belonged at a festival like Memphis In May. After that performance, I felt like we deserved to be there.”

A mentor like Snider helps, but that’s not what has landed Ghost Town Blues Band a spot on three consecutive BSMF lineups. Since forming six years ago, Ghost Town Blues Band has grown ever more popular with their infectious blend of modern blues and Southern rock. The band has toured the States numerous times and been championed in publications like Living Blues Magazine.

Their list of awards is impressive: 2014 International Blues Challenge, Second Place; 2013 Memphis Blues Society International Blues Challenge Winner; 2012 Rosedale Blues Society Winner; and a 2010 Independent Label Music Award in Germany. Their latest album, Hard Road To Hoe, is more introspective than anything the group has created before, with songs referencing the death of Isbell’s mother and other hard life lessons. Released in March, the album has received rave reviews and debuted on the Living Blues Chart at number 18.

Isbell said the first opportunity to play Beale Street Music Fest came before the band had finished playing all their sets at the 2013 International Blues Challenge.

“Mike Glenn [former owner of the New Daisy] is the artist relations guy for Joe Whitmer from the Blues Foundation, and they pretty much run all the blues tents at Beale Street Music Fest,” Isbell said.

“I don’t know how he got my number, but Mike gave me a call before we had even finished playing the 2013 Blues Challenge and asked me, ‘How do you feel about playing Beale Street Music Fest?’ Since then, they’ve always taken real good care of us; they put us up in a trailer and make sure we always have cold beer.”

Isbell said playing multiple Beale Street Music Fests has brought the band notice in some of the strangest places. “We could be playing a show in Canada and someone will come up to us and say they saw us play Memphis In May,” Isbell said.

“That’s when it kind of hits you just how big the festival is. Being from Memphis, I think people kind of take for granted how special the event really is. People from all over the country come to Beale Street that weekend and we don’t try to use it as a booking tool or anything, but we definitely feel the result of playing the festival when we are away from home.”

As for what to expect from Ghost Town Blues Band at this year‘s Beale Street Music Fest, Isbell said they plan to show the crowd what Memphis is all about.

“We are extremely grateful for the opportunity to play a third year and to show people from out of town how Memphis does it,” Isbell said.

“We were grateful to play the Southern Comfort Blues Shack that first year, so moving up to the Blues Tent is really cool. I mean, we would play in the bathrooms of that place if it meant getting a chance to perform. I guess our biggest hope for this year‘s music fest would be for Robert Randolph to come and sit in with us.” — CS

Ghost Town Blues Band plays the Pearl River Resort Blues Tent on Saturday, May 2nd, at 2:10 p.m.

Q&A … with Memphis In May President and CEO Jim Holt

Jim Holt has been with Memphis In May since the beginning. He’s watched the festival go from a two-night event on Beale Street to a three-day and three-night experience at Tom Lee Park for 100,000 people. Deep in the throes of last-minute planning and preparations, Holt was kind enough to let me ask him some questions about the origins of the festival and what makes Memphis In May one of the most attended music festivals in the South. — CS

Flyer: Can you tell me what the transition was like when the festival moved from Beale Street to Tom Lee Park?

Jim Holt: We had been operating a smaller music festival with the Merchants Association, where we would put a stage in Handy Park and program the nightclubs with bands, but it wasn’t financially successful. There was talk in 1989 about doing away with the music festival, but we didn’t want to see it go away.

We came up with the idea of doing it at Tom Lee Park because the barbecue festival and the Sunset Symphony were successful there. I was working for a company called Mid-South Concerts at the time, and we ended up doing a sponsorship with the festival in the fall of 1989. I think the first festival [at Tom Lee Park] was held on April 27th and 28th of 1990. Mid-South Concerts sponsored the event, along with AutoZone and Budweiser.

What were those early Beale Street Music Festivals at Tom Lee Park like?

It started off with two outdoor stages and was two days long. There were way fewer artists because there were way fewer performance stages at that time, and Tom Lee Park was only six to eight acres. In the mid-1990s, the city of Memphis added 15-plus acres to the park, which allowed growth for both the barbecue festival and Beale Street Music Fest.

How many months of planning does it take to pull off a festival of this size?

We have a staff of 14 people who work year-round. There is a lot of cleanup that goes on in June and July and then August 1st is when we start our fiscal year and do our annual review. It’s a long process. We sent out our first talent offer for this year on August 26th, and that same week we issued seven offers to artists. We’ve got 67 artists this year, maybe 66, and we place offers on probably 124 different acts.

At what point did you have to embrace the typically poor weather as just a part of Beale Street Music Fest?

I like to look at the blue skies and sunshine in life, that’s my philosophy. We track the weather, and if you look at the last three years, there’s only been rain on one of the weekends. In 2013, it was just freakishly cold, but I don’t remember that much rain. Some weekends in the past we have had fabulous weather, and when that happens there’s really just no better place to be.

I read an article where someone was joking about Tom Lee Park becoming the fourth largest city in Tennessee during Memphis In May. How does the festival function like a miniature city during Beale Street Music Fest?

We lay down a plumbing grid and an electrical grid, and we build an infrastructure in Tom Lee Park that costs nearly $1 million. Over the course of the month we flip the park three times, so there is a lot of detail and hard work that goes into making everything function properly.

If you had to pick some of your favorite artists who have played Beale Street Music Fest in the past, who would they be?

I tend to bounce around from stage to stage and check on problems, but I thought that Stevie Ray Vaughan playing on April 28, 1990, was just incredible. The park was about a third of the size it is now and there were 17,000 or 18,000 people in attendance. He died four months later in that helicopter crash, so that was a very special performance.

James Brown’s first performance in 1993 was also unbelievable. Stevie Ray Vaughan stands out, but there’s been so many memorable performances over the years, from B.B. King to Etta James and Little Richard. ZZ Top were amazing when they played.

We also have an incredible lineup for this year’s festival. Lenny Kravitz hasn’t played in the market since 1996, Ed Sheeran couldn’t be any hotter, and everyone is excited for Hozier. It’s tough when you look at this year’s schedule. People are going to have to make decisions.

How do you go about picking the local bands? Any tips for local bands interested in playing?

We have a committee that is really knowledgeable about what is going on musically in the city, and we solicit input from them. We look at who is really at the cusp of breaking nationally and we try to pick the artists who are getting ready to pop. There are so many great artists in this town that you could book a whole weekend of local talent if you wanted to. We’ve had locals like the Memphis Dawls and Amy LaVere, and they both did a great job. We are always excited to have artists like Al Kapone and Three Six Mafia and Yo Gotti. We always try to get the best of the best in Memphis.

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Jake Ingalls: Letterman, Lennons, and the Lips

Memphian Jake Ingalls is a touring member of the Flaming Lips. Last night, the Houston High graduate and the Lips played “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” on the David Letterman Show. The band was accompanied by Sean Lennon. For Ingalls, 22, it didn’t seem like a big deal after a few years playing music at the highest level. His band Spaceface has a Valentine’s Night show/food drive with Athens’ New Madrid at the Sanctuary that reveals strong roots in Memphis. See our Q&A below.

Memphian Does LSD on Letterman with Lennon

[jump]

Flyer: You had a big day yesterday.

Jake Ingalls: Yes sir. It’s been a big couple of days. We did Amnesty International before [Letterman]. We’ve done our load out three times in the last 48 hours. We pretty much didn’t sleep for three days. Amnesty International was with Yoko Ono, we played a song with her and her son. We loaded out from that and went straight to the David Letterman load in, and then into the Vance Warehouse in Brooklyn for a modern super-jam advertisement with Ben Folds. It was pretty cool.

What about the show here?

Valentines Day. We are doing a canned goods drive for the MidSouth Food Bank. We’re playing with New Madrid. We had this idea we should celebrate the relationship between these two bands on Valentine’s Day in Memphis. It’s at Cooper Walker Place. There’s a big sanctuary above the Abbey. 

You’re on the road with a fun band. Talk about having to pack out.

Well Spaceface does a big production too. The Lips have been my favorite band since before puberty. It went ‘I want to be Bat Man’ to Willie Wonka straight into the Flaming Lips are the best band ever. It’s a dream come true. But growing up and watching them do crazy stuff all the time, it had a huge impression on me. I always knew when I started a band that I wanted to be more than a bunch of dudes standing there playing instruments. We have a pretty large rig. We have roller disco lights. Our guitarist’s dad had a friend who was a DJ in the ’70s and had this roller disco light that he gave us. Our friend Big Red sits behind the amps and keys it up when we are playing. I wouldn’t want to book a giant sanctuary unless we were going to do it up, and we’re going to do it up. 

What’s it like playing with Sean Lennon?

We’ve played and hung out with him before. On my first tour with the Lips, his band was opening for a solid month. He was just hanging around. At first it was like ‘Oh my god, what am I supposed to say to that guy.’ Now it’s like he’s just a nice dude. He’s a good-spirited person.

You played with Tame Impala!

We were just in New York a month ago with them. That was a dream lineup. Then we did a tour with White Denim, Tame Impala, and the Flaming Lips. I kept telling those guys I had a dream when I was 17 that this show happened. But Ghost of a Sabertooth Tiger opened up those shows with the Lips and Tame Impala. Everybody was digging it.

[Tame Impala] are this really well-oiled machine. They’re all really tight, and there’s this clear focus on how the sound of every instrument is onstage and through the PA. Which is a crazy thing for me to see. It gives them their sound. The juxtaposition to me was hilarious. With the Lips, you plug something in and instantly Wayne says ‘Crank that shit up.’ Everything is at 11 all the time. It works for us. But it was insane watching Tame Impala. I was jealous of them. Not only are the one of the best bands that I’ve been getting into in the past couple of years, they’re also the humblest and coolest dudes I’ve ever met. It was insane to me how rad they were.