Tag: HEELS

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019

Music Video Monday is counting down the hits!

The Memphis Flyer is proud to feature music videos from Memphis artists on Music Video Monday. Judging from the mind-bending difficulty of putting together this top ten list, 2019 was a good year. I scored the year’s videos on concept, song, look, and performance. Then, I shook my head at all the ties and did it all over again. It was so close, it was an honor just to be in the top ten, and I had to include three honorable mentions. Congratulations to all our winners!

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

A. Frog Squad’s live space jazz epic “Solar System in Peabody”, directed by Brett Hanover, earns an honorable mention as one of the most incredible pieces of music that came across our threshold this year.

B. Stephen Chopek’s cover of the Pogues “Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah” came with one of the DIY video auteur’s cleverest videos yet.

C. Louise Page’s “Future Runaway Bride,” directed by Joshua Cannon and Barrett Kutas, will get you to the church on time, but what happens then is on you.

TOP TEN:

10. PreauXX – “Steak and Shake ft. AWFM”

The Unapologetic crew gets behind the counter of a sandwich joint in this video from director 35 Miles. This is one of those videos where you can just tell that everybody had a great time making it, and the fun is infectious. 

Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019

9. Uriah Mitchell – “Might Be”

Everything is wound up tight in Waheed AlQawasami’s video of a surreal night at the club with Uriah and his friends.

Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (2)

8. Heels – “King Drunk”

Director Nathan Parten transforms Midtown into a D&D fantasia in this incredible animated video for Memphis’ hardest rocking duo.

Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (3)

7. Talibah Safiya – “Healing Creek”

Director Kevin Brooks brought out Talibah Safiya’s beauty and charisma in this spiritual video, which won the Hometowner Music Video award at Indie Memphis 2019.

Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (4)

6. Sweet Knives – “I Don’t Wanna Die”

Shannon Walton is outstanding as a stranded aviator in this video by director Laura Jean Hocking for the reunited veterans of the Lost Sounds, led by Alijca Trout.

Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (5)

5. The Poet Havi – “Shea Butter (Heart of Darkness)”

Director Joshua Cannon and cinematographer Nate Packard took inspiration from Raging Bull for this banger from The Poet Havi, who clearly has more and better dancers than Martin Scorsese ever did.

Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (6)

4. Impala – “Double Indemnity”

Director Edward Valibus and actress Rosalyn Ross created a heist movie in miniature for the kings of Memphis surf’s comeback record.

Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (7)

3. John Kilzer – Hello Heart

Memphis lost an elder statesman of music this year when John Kilzer tragically passed away in January. Director Laura Jean Hocking created this tone poem in blue for his final single.

Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (8)

2. Al Kapone – “Al Kapeezy Oh Boy”

Director Sean Winfrey knows how large Al Kapone looms in Memphis music, and he finally blew the rapper up to Godzilla size in this video for one of Kapone’s best jams since “Whoop That Trick”.

Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (9)

1. Louise Page – “Harpy”

When this one dropped in October, MVM called it “an instant classic.” Animator Nathan Parten transformed Louise Page into a mythological monster and sending her off to wreak havoc on Greek heroes. Don’t feel sorry for Odysseus. He got what he deserved. Memphis, look upon your best music video of 2019: 

Music Video Monday: Top Ten Music Videos of 2019 (10)

If you would like to see you music video on Music Video Monday, and maybe in the top ten of 2020, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com. Happy New Year! 

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Music Music Blog

Merry Christmas, Baby: HEELS Xmas Variety Show

CREDIT: Holly Jee

Holly Jee

Brennan Whalen (left) and Josh McLane of HEELS


“It’s got that ‘we’re putting on a show’ feel,” says Memphis comedian and drummer/vocalist for Memphis band HEELS, Josh McLane, of the Hi Tone’s small room. It’s the site for HEELS’ upcoming Christmas variety show on Saturday, December 21st. “That’s why I like this room so much. The Christmas show is a prime example of that.”

McLane says he owes his wife, Cara McLane, for the inspiration to transform the Hi Tone’s small room into a winter wonderland for a Christmas-themed extravaganza. Earlier this year, Cara threw him a birthday party in the music venue. “She made the entire room up with pink and streamers, and she got a 4-foot, blow-up unicorn,” McLane says.

“I’m a sentimental sucker,” McLane explains. “I’m a fan of old-school television, and with Brennan [Whalen] and I pushing, not so much a comedy gig, but having a lot of banter, I was like, ‘Why don’t we do something that nobody would do in Memphis? The variety show.’”

And a variety show seems an ideal task for the duo of McLane and HEELS guitarist/vocalist Brennan Whalen. The band, with its frequent lyrical nods to Memphis wrasslin’, comedic stage banter, and seemingly uncategorizable performances, is primed to take on such a challenge. But how did McLane and Whalen become, well, HEELS?

“When we started … I think a lot of people took from a lot of the Goner bands that nobody was talking. There was no banter anymore, it was just ‘Let’s get just up there and blow our rock down your face and kick ya in the teeth and be done with it,’ which is a great thing,” McLane says of HEELS’ transformation into a part-band, part-comedy-duo musical amalgamation. “I’ve been doing stand-up forever, and Brennan’s adorable and really funny, and nobody knows about it. So we made a rule that you’re not allowed to talk on stage unless it’s into the microphone. No matter what it is. ‘My string broke.’ ‘Sorry, I fucked that song up.’ anything,” McLane goes on to explain. “The whole rule of the band is we can be funny in between songs all we want; we’d never write funny songs.”

Ronnie Lewis

Okay, fair enough, but why Christmas, one might wonder. What about trucker hats, tattoos, love songs about a box of porn found in the woods, and a bombastic stage persona adds up to spell Christmas variety show?

“We’re both big suckers,” McLane says, explaining that the band’s veneer of sweat and sarcasm hides two tender teddy bear hearts. “So I wanted to bring in a bunch of people we like playing with. We don’t really play with bands a whole lot. When we book our own shows, we usually do stand-up [comedians] because it’s easier for me to pay stand-ups.”

“I love Christmas, so we brought our friends out. I’m using all the characters in our little world,” McLane says of the variety show. “Mitchell Manley shows up as Santa because we wanted to invite Santa to a Christmas party.” McLane excitedly continues, saying, “Ben Ricketts is doing a song. Kitty Dearing is doing a song. Brando from Wailing Banshees is doing a tune,” McLane continues, reeling off a list of names that includes Michaela Caitlin from Rosey, as well as Mitchell Manley and Josh Stevens from Glorious Abhor, a Memphis group for whom specially themed shows are old hat.

Glorious Abhor hosts the Memphis’ Last Waltz events every Thanksgiving — when the psychrock band recruits other Bluff City players to help recreate Martin Scorsese’s famous documentary about The Band’s farewell concert, The Last Waltz. HEELS has joined Glorious Abhor for past Memphis’ Last Waltz shows, and Whalen does a mean version of Neil Young’s “Helpless.”

McLane continues: “Jason Pulley from Tape Deck and a million other bands [including Glorious Abhor] is playing. I’ve been in bands with Jason since Mrs. Fletcher, so he’ll always be my piano player, even though I haven’t been in a band with him for 10 years.”

“You just want to be Johnny Carson who gets to play in the band,” McLane’s wife told him, and the comedian and musician assents that she’s right, asking, “Why just play regular shows if you can bend the rules?”


HEELS Xmas Variety Show at Hi Tone, Saturday, December 21st, 9 p.m.


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News The Fly-By

MEMernet: MLGW Called Me What? and Christmas AF

Not a robot, bitch

Gene Rossetti was trying to report a street light outage on the Memphis Light, Gas & Water site recently when he got this subtle “I’m not a robot” captcha code:

Tell your kids

Your social feeds were clogged with the “I’m going to tell my kids” meme last weekend. Memphis band HEELS (Brennan Whalen and Joshua McLane) got perfectly in on the action with a selfie.

Christmas AF

The Memphis As Fuck brand showed off a new way to sport your civic pride this holiday season.

Categories
Music Music Features

HEELS: Good People Doing Bad Things

Good People Even Do Bad Things is the title of the new HEELS album. “That is a Mr. Rogers reference,” says Joshua McLane, who is one half of HEELS. “And also an Insane Clown Posse reference.”

“It’s a Mr. Rogers sample that’s at the beginning of a song by the Insane Clown Posse,” says Brennan Whalen, the other half.

“Every time we come home from a tour, we listen to the same Insane Clown Posse song called ‘Southwest Song,'” McLane says.

The song means they’re off the road and headed home, he says. “To a certain degree, it means if ‘Southwest Song’ is playing, it’s time to wake up because you’re about to have to pull some gear into the house before you go home.”

To raise money to make the record, which was produced by Toby Vest and Pete Matthews, McLane sold “hundreds of comic books” and “dozens of wrestling toys.” They also held a raffle. Whoever won the raffle got to shock McLane and Whalen, who were wearing dog collars, with a remote control. “There was one dude that held it down for a little too long,” Whalen says. “This one random dude who put in like 100 bucks.”

Last March, HEELS signed with Altercation Records. “It’s a punk label out of Austin and New York City,” McLane says. Which means he and Whalen don’t have to “physically put those albums in those record stores.”

McLane and Whalen bonded in 2012 when they were in the metal band, Hombres. Whalen wrote a song, “Our Savage Lord,” which was about wrestler Randy Savage. McLane and Whalen began hanging out, watching wrestling together. Whalen wanted to continue playing his Americana-style solo songs, so he asked McLane if he’d play drums with him. HEELS, a wrestling term for “bad guy,” was formed.

Brennan writes most of the lyrics, and McLane “orchestrates” and also “brings songs to the table.”

“King Drunk,” the first single from the album, is “essentially like a breakup song with my on-again off-again partner — alcohol,” Whalen says.

One of the lines is, “If you see her, tell her I was wrong. If you see her, tell her I didn’t write this song.”

“That’s maybe one of my favorite lines Brennan’s ever, ever written,” McLane says.

Another favorite Whalen line is from “Antics”: “I don’t love you because we’re different. I don’t love you because we’re the same. I don’t love you.”

“‘Bright Red’ is kind of a love song from the point of view of somebody that’s going through dementia,” Whalen says. “So it’s like you’re basically singing to somebody you’re forgetting about.”

“Box of Porn in the Woods” is a “hyper-sexualized love song” to his wife, Whalen says. “It’s about thinking my wife is really hot and also how I want to build a Ted Kaczynski compound somewhere with her out in the middle of the woods.”

McLane wrote the music and lyrics to “Picking Fights Like a Coward,” which he says is “about starting shit with people on local news comment sections at three o’clock in the morning when you want to feel good about yourself. I like quoting Bible verses back to people who are being very racist or hateful.”

He and Whalen didn’t labor over each song for months like they did on their other four recordings. “We didn’t want to, for lack of a better term — ‘Leonard Cohen’ it — keep working on it till it’s just dead in the water. Not fun anymore.”

But each song still sounds like a HEELS song. “It’s still upbeat. It’s Brennan making you very sad with his lyrics while you still love him more, which is just something insanity does. And me getting bored with dynamics very quickly.”

HEELS is the perfect musical partnership, McLane says. “I’ve never been in a band where I could say whatever I want about whatever I want, whether that be with a riff or a lyric or anything. And that’s what this is.

“We’re brutally honest when it comes to ourselves and to each other. And that can’t help but come out in the songs. That, and we just want everybody to think we’re cool.”

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Heels

Today’s Music Video Monday is reaching for that golden chalice.

Heels, Memphis’ own two-man punk riot, will release their debut full-length album on Altercation Records, Good People Even Do Bad Things, on Friday, July 12th. Brennan Whalen and Josh McLane will celebrate with a record release party at the Hi Tone featuring an expanded line up of musical guests.

The video for the first song from the album, “King Drunk,” was created by animator Nathan Parten. It’s like if a creature from classic Dungeons and Dragons illustrations came to life, and then sawed its own head off. One of its heads, anyway. Get some!

Music Video Monday: Heels

If you would like to see your music video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com. 

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Heels

Music Video Monday is burning down the house!

When Brennan Whalen and Josh McLean’s band punk duo Heels were tapped to appear in Beale Street Caravan’s I Listen To Memphis video series, director Christian Walker knew where to shoot them.

The Buccaneer was the Midtown music scene’s watering hole and home base before ownership troubles and a fire spelled the end of an era. Walker wanted to throw one more show at The Bucc before it’s torn down, and the new owners agreed.

Watch Heels perform their stomper “Off With Their Heads” on the front porch of the burned out bar, the last of thousands of shows that happened their over the decades. Give ’em a good sendoff, boys!

Music Video Monday: Heels

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com. 

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: HEELS

Music Video Monday’s got your goat.

Midtown rockers HEELS—the guitar and drums combo of Brennan Whalen and Josh McLane—have a new album hitting the streets this week. McLane says the lead single “Fontanelles” is “a song about the soft spot God gave us so that Satan could get in. Seriously.”

To create a video for the smart, shouty blast of folk punk, HEELS turned to Memphis filmmakers Eric Huber and Stephen Hildreth. “Eric and his company Stanley Justice Productions have made all HEELS videos and has also won some Indie Memphis awards for his shorts,” says McLane.

Perhaps intimating that HEELS are the Greatest Of All Time, Huber and Hildreth trekked out to East Memphis’ Alexander Goat Farm, where McLane says the inhabitants were “happy to see the crew, as long as they had food.”

HEELS will celebrate the release of their Willing To Fail CD this Friday, December 16 at the Hi Tone with Mishka Shubaly, David Heti, Katrina Coleman, and Jared Herring. “Oh, and a Tim Burton-era Batmobile will be parked out front,” says McLean.

Music Video Monday: HEELS

If you would like to see your video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com

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Music Music Features

Q&A: Heels on the release of their debut

Heels are an all-acoustic duo comprised of longtime friends and collaborators, local comedian/drummer-about-town Josh McLane and guitarist/vocalist Brennan Whalen. The two had previously worked together in projects such as Hombres and the River Rats before forming Heels with the intent of stripping songs down to their core and presenting a simple, yet dynamic product. On their first E.P. — dubbed Even If It’s Nothing, It’s Something and set to be released by Fat Sandwich Records — Whalen and McLane achieve that goal in spades. Between Whalen’s highly emotive presence as a frontman and McLane’s driving, pounding rhythms, one hardly misses traditional rock conventions like bass, electric guitar, keyboards, and other flourishes. We caught up with both members of Heels this week to discuss forming the band, the new E.P., and more.

Flyer: So, how did you guys get together?

Brennan Whalen: I met Josh through being a regular at P&H at the time he worked there. We’ve been good friends ever since, and he eventually started playing drums for my band the River Rats. Josh McLane: I saw the River Rats play at the Hi-Tone one night and was blown away, because I’m not a big fan of that genre usually. I’m not usually a fan of male, acoustic singer-songwriters, but he was magnetic. Then he made his solo record, and I was blown away again. So I got him to sing for Hombres, but then I missed him doing his acoustic stuff, so Heels was born.

Brennan, what about Josh’s playing drew you toward working with him?

Whalen: I’ve been a fan of Josh’s drumming since before we ever met. I’ve watched him in many bands and have always really admired his work. The reason Josh is perfect in the setting we currently have is because he has a range that most people just don’t. He can absolutely destroy you or he can play as lightly as possible, all without giving away that he’s making an effort. He’s fantastic. He also has a really great voice and an ear for harmonies, which helps add to live performances.

Why did you choose the name “Heels?”

Whalen: A “heel” is a bad guy in professional wrestling. I guess it seemed fitting because one, we love wrestling; and two, we’re two people who aren’t very good at cutting ourselves any slack. If I’m being honest, I’d say Josh and I are two very nice people, but you wouldn’t know it if you asked us to describe ourselves.

How would you describe your approach to songwriting?

Whalen: Our goal with this project has been to be almost completely collaborative. While I came to this with a lot of songs already written — some of which Josh had played with me before — they were just base songs that took on a completely different tone when Josh put his stamp on them. At the moment, we’re working on new material together instead of writing songs separately and bringing them to each other at practice. It works because there’s really nothing that we will say no to. If it’s a good song, it doesn’t matter if it feels out of our wheelhouse. We’re going to give it a shot.

What was the recording process like for Even If It’s Nothing, It’s Something

McLane:We recorded at Ardent with Matt Qualls. It was the best recording experience of my life — seven songs in five hours. Matt is the epitome of what you want in a producer. He trusted us to know the music, then made it sound amazing. I can’t speak highly enough about him or Ardent.

How do you feel about the finished product?

Whalen: I’m very happy with the E.P. We knew when we set out to record it that making a record with just acoustic guitar and drums could have ended poorly. If we didn’t perform well and the mix was off or the sound wasn’t right, the whole thing would’ve sounded hollow and unpleasant. But I feel, especially thanks to Matt’s production, that we pulled off what we set out to do. I couldn’t ask for more.

So, while we’re on the subject — why only acoustic guitar and drums?

McLane: Why not just acoustic guitar and drums? Rules are for suckers. Whalen: Being a two-piece is really nice. Practice is easy to schedule, there’s less equipment, and we can really do whatever we want creatively. I definitely see utilizing electric instruments on future recordings and live shows, but I don’t see us adding another member. We’ve just really got something between the two of us that I wouldn’t want to risk.

What else do you guys have going on?

McLane: We’re planning on touring this spring, and doing another record next year, hopefully. Right now we’re also the house band for the monthly “Night Shift” show with [local comedian] Katrina Coleman at Theatreworks. Whalen: We just want to keep making music that we enjoy and have fun playing live and recording. We really hope people enjoy it, but I’d say the primary focus is entertaining ourselves.