Las Rosas, Toxie, Clear Plastic Masks, Warm Girls Wednesday night over to the Hi-Tone.
Check out Las Rosas’ story of a dude and a cat, in song:
Tag: Hi Tone
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New Hi-Tone
After closing its doors at 1913 Poplar Avenue back in February, Midtown music institution the Hi-Tone had a soft opening in early May at a new location at 412-414 N. Cleveland in the resurgent Crosstown Arts District. It has been hosting occasional shows in a smaller, secondary performance space for the past few months while work has been ongoing to convert the previously empty space into a full-time music venue.
Last Saturday night, however, the main room at the new venue was christened with a headline performance from recent Hi-Tone regulars Dead Soldiers, an increasingly impressive six-piece Southern rock and alt-country band.
First-time visitors to the new space, owned and operated by Jonathan Kiersky, encountered a slightly bigger stage and slightly larger and leaner main concert hall, with a bar to the side and bathroom and entrance at the opposite end from the Cleveland storefront. Even in a mostly full room on an August Memphis night, it was comfortable inside — unthinkable in the old space and a testament to the improved air-conditioning system at the new Hi-Tone. Parking was also much easier, with a full back lot, adjacent to the entrance, and additional spaces out front. (Not to mention the mammoth Sears Building lot across Cleveland.)
Construction was still ongoing. A proposed smoking lounge beside the main room had a bar, television, and couch, but it was still unfinished and was doubling as the band’s green room. There’s no signage out front as of yet. But the interior was functional, already more spacious and more user-friendly than the previous location.
Now, as Kiersky moves toward putting the finishing touches on the space, the club’s bookings are again ramping up, starting this weekend with the band that bid the old building adieu: the Oblivians, with the living-legend Memphis garage-punk trio playing their first local show since the release of their 16-years-in-coming reunion album Desperation. The Oblivians will play the club on Friday, August 9th. Showtime is 9 p.m. Admission is $12.
After the Oblivians this weekend, Kiersky has about half a dozen shows booked for the rest of August, with bigger shows already lined up for September: Outlaw country icon Billy Joe Shaver (September 18th), roots fave Hayes Carll (September 19th), singer-songwriter James McMurtry (September 24th), and the return of the multi-day Gonerfest (starting September 25th). If the new location isn’t broken in by Gonerfest time, that should pretty well do it.
Lucero’s Little Rock Picnic
Memphis stalwarts Lucero take their annual “Family Picnic” big show to Little Rock’s First Security Amphitheatre this weekend, on Saturday, August 10th. For the show, the band will be performing their second (or third) album, 2002’s Tennessee, from front to back, along with a second set of “Lucero classics.” Five hundred copies of the out-of-print Tennessee will be sold at the show. The musical undercard includes rockabilly icon Wanda Jackson, Little Rock artist John Moreland, and Lucero guitarist Brian Venable’s local musician father, Guy Venable. Most interesting, perhaps, is a Q&A with Lucero frontman Ben Nichols’ filmmaker brother Jeff Nichols, who has emerged as one of the most significant new filmmakers in the medium via his three features, Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, and this year’s Mud. Celebrity tattoo artist Oliver Peck (of Spike TV’s Ink Master and owner of Dallas’ well-known Elm Street Tattoo) is hosting the event and will give some fans Lucero logo tattoos. The show starts at 7 p.m., and tickets range from $27 to $47. You can find more info at luceromusic.com.
The band — which embarks on a European tour next month — also has new a four-song EP out, titled Texas & Tennessee. Produced by Cody Dickinson and recorded at the Dickinson family’s Zebra Ranch Studio and self-released via the band’s own Liberty & Lament Records imprint, it’s a marking-time product in between last years’ Women & Work and an as-yet-unstarted next full-length album. But it’s a good one.
Sonically, it’s a little softer and more acoustic-based than the band’s recent norm, but it retains the soul touches Lucero has become increasingly adept at. The lead/title song references “Otis” and “Memphis soul,” and the song “Breathless Love” represents the band’s attempt to live up to that mantle, blending Stax-style R&B and swamp rock while highlighting, in succession, the band’s two-man horn section (Jim Spake and Scott Thompson), Rick Steff’s piano, and Ben Nichols’ vocals. After three new songs, the EP concludes with a rollicking leftover (“Other Side of Lonesome”) from the band’s 2009 album 1372 Overton Park, built on bluesy guitar and accordion interplay.
Sunflower Blues Festival
The annual Sunflower Blues Festival, in Delta blues capital Clarksdale, Mississippi, is back this weekend, running from Friday, August 9th, through Sunday, August 11th. The Friday night headliner is chitlin circuit legend Bobby Rush (9:30 p.m.). Saturday, the acoustic day stage will include Robert Belfour (9:45 a.m.) and Shardé Thomas & the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band (1:30 p.m.) before a nighttime main-stage lineup that will conclude with the North Mississippi Allstars at 10 p.m. Sunday, the festival takes a gospel turn for most of the day but will also include Stax Music Academy performers at 8:30 p.m. For a full schedule and more info, see sunflowerfest.org.
Valerie June Debuts
After more than a decade poking around the margins of the Memphis music scene, a “best kept secret” gets all the way out with the Tuesday, August 13th, U.S. release of idiosyncratic roots/folk singer Valerie June’s 11-track debut album, Pushin’ Against a Stone, on the venerable Concord label. The album was recorded primarily in Nashville and Los Angeles under the direction of heavyweight producers Kevin Augunas and Dan Auerbach. June has been conquering Europe since the album’s overseas release earlier in the year. With this release, she’s getting quite a homecoming. You can preview the album this week via a “First Listen” at npr.org, where the stream is accompanied by a rave review from critic Ann Powers. We’ll have a lot more on June’s breakout in next week’s Flyer.
Twelve things to look forward to this month:
1. The Big Lebowski at the Orpheum ( Friday, August 2nd): Filmmaker Craig Brewer will introduce and discuss Ethan and Joel Coen’s funniest, warmest, and perhaps most undeniable film. Brewer goes “Beyond the Screen” at 6:30 p.m. The film starts at 7 p.m.
2. The Hi-Tone Relaunches (Saturday, August 3rd): After a soft opening earlier in the summer, the main stage at the new Hi-Tone is christened in a double-bill of two newish, rootsy local bands, Dead Soldiers and Bottom of the Bottle. J.D. Reager has more here.
3. Pink Flamingos at the Brooks (Thursday, August 8th): John Waters’ 1972 midnight-movie outrage goes respectable with a local museum screening. If you want to watch a 300-pound transvestite eat dog shit at a fine-art museum, this is your chance. You can make your own pink flamingo lawn ornament at 6 p.m. and stay for the film at 7 p.m. for this “Art & a Movie” event.
4. The Oblivians at the Hi-Tone (Friday, August 9th): The living-legend Memphis garage-punk trio play their first local show since the late summer release of their 16-years-in-coming reunion album Desperation. Chris Davis profiled the band in this recent Flyer cover story. I reviewed the album here.
This weekend two hometown heavyweights, The Barbaras and the Oblivians, will reunite for the final concert at the iconic Hi-Tone music venue. But as with most heavily anticipated musical events in Memphis, a pre-party is in order.
Fortunately, the newest watering hole in Cooper-Young, Bar DKDC, has your pre-game rituals covered. Reigning Sound founder/ Oblivians member/one-time Memphian Greg Cartwright kicks off the weekend festivities tonight with a solo performance at DKDC (formerly DO sushi). Known for inserting his southern drawl amidst carefully crafted garage-pop songs, Cartwright’s solo performances are as captive as the full-band experience he produces with the Reigning Sound. Here’s a video of Greg performing solo at last years “Atlanta Mess Around,” an annual garage rock festival that takes place further down south.
Keeping with the tradition of homecomings and reunions, ex-Hi-Tone sound man/former Manatees member/Shangri-La Records guru Andrew McCalla returns to Memphis and joins forces tomorrow night with Eric Hermeyer to re-form Buck Wilders and the Hookup, the DJ duo that was responsible for many late-night dance parties around the Midtown area several years ago. McCalla moved to Austin last year to pursue a career in sound engineering. We caught up with him and asked him how he felt about returning to Memphis and to recall some of his favorite memories of the Hi-Tone.
Flyer: It seems like when you lived in Memphis, you lived and breathed music, working at a record store during the day and running sound at night. On top of that you recorded bands on the weekend. Do you miss that? How sustainable is that kind of lifestyle in Austin?
McCalla: Actually, it sounds like I might be getting a job at a record store here, so I might be getting right back into that. I’ve also been recording John Wesley Coleman (Goner Records) almost every week. I totally do miss Memphis for how laidback it was. In Austin, there’s just so many bands and so many people recording and playing in bands. It seems like I’m getting back into doing exactly what I was doing in Memphis. It’s just taking a little bit longer to get back into that routine.
How long have you and Eric been spinning records together, and how long has it been since you and him worked together? Anything special planned for tomorrow night that you wouldn’t normally do?
Nah, there’s nothing planned that we normally wouldn’t do. I honestly can’t think of what year he moved here, but I know I started DJ-ing with him shortly after he moved to Memphis, which means we’ve been working together for at least eight years. Last time we spun together was at my going away party last summer.
As a former employee of the Hi-Tone, you’ve probably seen some crazy stuff go down over the years. Are there any performances or events that stick out in your mind?
I’ll definitely never forget the Question Mark and the Mysterians show, and seeing Blue Cheer there was pretty awesome too. Everybody always talks about Elvis Costello as the most memorable show, but I didn’t care for that at all. Billy Bob Thornton played the Hi-Tone once and Jerry Lee Lewis came and watched and left in the middle of it. I was working security that night, and they had to have me walk Jerry Lee Lewis through the whole building so he could get out the back. I had to escort him, and it was pretty funny saying, “Coming through, it’s Jerry Lee Lewis, get out of the way!” One of the most ridiculous things I did was light my crash cymbal on fire while the Oh Sees played on the floor a couple summers ago.
What are you expecting Saturday to be like? I’m predicting lots of glitter and maybe a little blood during the Barbaras? Any predictions?
I think people are going to have a good time. There’s going to be some emotional folks in there for sure. People have already told me it’s going to get emotional. I don’t know how other people are taking it, but the people who are there all the time and the employees will probably get a little emotional. The Hi-Tone was a big part of those peoples’ everyday life. I mean, it sucks its closing but it was bound to happen, so if they’re going to go out, might as well go out with the Oblivians.
If Memphis is “most miserable,” we’d hate to see what “most desirable” looks like. At least that’s the attitude many locals seem to have regarding the Bluff City’s placement on the annual Forbes “Most Miserable Cities” list.
This weekend, the Hi-Tone is throwing a “Misery Loves Company” Ball, both as an excuse to celebrate the good things about Memphis and as a way to give the Forbes list the proverbial middle finger. The event goes down on Saturday, February 12th at 9 p.m. and features DJ Buck Wilders and the Hook-Up.
Memphis came in at number six in the 2011 list of the top 20 U.S. cities with the highest crime, taxes and unemployment rates, the worst weather, the longest commute times, and the least successful sports teams. According to Forbes, high sales tax plus a still-high crime rate are responsible for Memphis’ miserable status. The article fails to mention new crime statistics that show a 24 percent drop in violent crime in Memphis since 2006.
On a more positive note, Memphis also just ranked number six on CareerBliss.com’s list of the happiest cities to work in.
“We can’t take these rankings very seriously, especially given how we were ranked on the Most Miserable list and the Happiest Cities to Work list,” said Mary Cashiola, the city’s brand manager. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun with them. Or at least prove them partly wrong.”
For more on the “Misery Loves Company” Ball, check out the event’s Facebook page.
Memphis welcomes back a favorite son this week when jazz guitarist Calvin Newborn plays Café Soul Sunday, October 26th. A scion of one of the city’s great musical families, Calvin is the son of drummer Finas and the younger brother of pianist Phineas. An acrobatic force on the local music scene that predated the rise of Elvis Presley, Newborn settled into an elder statesman, teaching at LeMoyne-Owen and the Stax Music Academy and becoming a jazz and blues club regular.
Earlier this decade, Newborn relocated to Jacksonville, Florida, though his last album, 2005’s New Born, was recorded locally at Phillips Recording and released via the Memphis-connected Yellow Dog label. Newborn will return home to join local musicians Tony Thomas, Earl Thomas, and Tom Lonardo at Café Soul, located in the South Main Arts District, Sunday, October 26th, with a 3 to 7 p.m. show.
But there’s another reason Newborn is in town: In their prime, the Newborn family were regulars at the Plantation Inn in West Memphis, a club that was a legendary home to blues, jazz, and soul musicians in the ’40s, ’50s, and early ’60s. Gone but not forgotten, the Plantation Inn will be feted this week by The West Memphis Blues and Rhythm Society, which holds its annual gala at Southland Park Gaming and Racing Event Center Saturday, October 25th. Dinner will be served at 6 p.m., with Memphis Horn Wayne Jackson and the PI Blues Band performing at 8 p.m. At the event, the society will introduce the new Morris Awards, named after Plantation Inn founder Morris Berger, with inaugural recipients being Newborn, Willie Mitchell, Floyd Newman, the late Isaac Hayes, and the late Charles Turner. Tickets to the gala are $50 per person. For more information, call the Crittenden Arts Council office at (870) 732-6260.
Though a slightly less famous venue, Midtown’s Hi-Tone Café will celebrate its 10th year of existence with a weekend full of heavyweight shows. On Friday, October 24th, French punk band Jack of Heart joins locals Jack O & the Tearjerkers (cover: $5). On Saturday, Southern metal band Torche and Boston rockers Clouds play the venue (cover: $12). Concluding the “celebration weekend” on Sunday is cult-favorite Chicago indie band Magnolia Electric Co. with locals Hi Electric (cover: $10).
And that’s not all at the Hi-Tone this week. On Monday, local community station WEVL will hold a benefit concert at the club featuring Austin singer-songwriter Alejandro Escovedo. Tickets range from $18 to $28 depending on when you buy them (advance or at the door) and whether you want a reserved seat or want to stand.
Finally, local singer Lynn Cardona debuts a new jazz/rock band Tiger Rag at the club Thursday, October 23rd. Tiger Rag will be part of an all-local triple-bill that also will include the experimental A Funeral Walkaway Parade and bluesy rockers Mojo Possum. Cover is $5.
Midtown institution Shangri-La Records holds its annual fall record swap Sunday, October 26th, from 1 to 5 p.m. It costs $10 to set up a table to buy, sell, or trade records. Call Shangri-La at 274-1916 for more info. The record swap will also feature a performance by The Barbaras, one of the city’s most interesting new(ish) bands. On the band’s Goner Records debut single, they drench sunny ’60s pop (think: Phil Spector, Beach Boys, doo-wop) under a thin layer of psych-punk noise. Live, they can be enjoyably theatrical. The band has a debut album on deck for California label In the Red, which previously released terrific albums from locals such as the Reigning Sound, Lost Sounds, and Jay Reatard.
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Labor of Love
Organizers of “Rock for Love 2,” the Church Health Center’s annual benefit show, are anxious to get under way. Despite only going into its second year, the benefit — held Friday and Saturday, August 22nd and 23rd, at the Hi Tone Café — has the energy and potential to become an annual showcase of local music.
And with good reason. The lineup features a cross-section of some of the city’s best hip-hop, garage, and indie-rock acts, including Lord T & Eloise, Al Kapone, and Snowglobe. But the music is only one part of why the benefit’s organizers are so excited.
“It’s all about community,” says J.D. Reager (an occasional Flyer contributor) who, along with Jeff Hulett and Marv Stockwell, founded the benefit and now serve as its coordinators.
All three are local music veterans. Reager plays in Two Way Radio as well as leading his own band, J.D. Reager & the Cold Blooded Three. Hulett is the drummer for Snowglobe as well as the frontman for Jeffrey James & the Haul. Stockwell is a founding member of seminal local hardcore band Pezz.
Sitting down for an interview, the three interrupted each other the way old friends do — laughing and joking and displaying the energy of people who are working hard for something they love.
“I think a lot is coalescing all at once,” says Stockwell, who serves as public relations manager for the Church Health Center. “There’s some alliances forming that maybe haven’t formed until now. I think there’s a new atmosphere of cooperation.”
Reager and Hulett have worked together with Makeshift Music since its inception in the late 1990s, and their dedication to local music has lasted through years of intense work with little compensation along the way.
“We’ve never made a dollar on anything we’ve done, personally or as a company,” Reager says. “Our goal, our mission, is to give a voice to artists who wouldn’t have one otherwise; whatever role we can play, that’s what we try to do.”
Hulett says he and Stockwell were both drawn to the health center’s mission of responding to the need of working Memphians who don’t have health insurance. “I wanted a chance to live out my faith and have a job that inspires me,” Stockwell says.
Recent changes in TennCare are increasing the number of patients at the center. And given the slump in the economy, Stockwell says, “more people are in that unfortunate situation where they’re having to choose between putting food on the table or paying for their health care.”
According to Stockwell, the number of people attending the center’s orientation seminars has doubled and tripled in recent months.
“It’s as common as anything to be uninsured,” Stockwell says.
“The need is great with the Church Health Center,” Hulett says. “We’ve had donors on board since the beginning, but there’s also a need for younger donors and reaching out.”
Snowglobe
“Rock for Love” certainly has made its presence felt within Memphis music circles and the greater community, which Hulett considers one of the benefit’s greatest successes.
“We’ve had several calls from prominent local artists asking, ‘How do I get on the bill?’ We have to tell them sorry. We booked the bill five months ago.”
Sponsorship also is key to this year’s benefit, with SunTrust taking the title position and Ardent Studios, the Memphis Music Commission, and a host of other businesses throughout the community giving as well.
“We’ve raised twice as much money [as last year], and we haven’t even sold ticket one,” Stockwell says.
But perhaps the most noteworthy sign of support is the outpouring of volunteer energy.
“Al Kapone approached us about playing the show,” Reager says. “He heard about the event and called up and said he wanted to play for free.”
“Folks who would love to give money are getting involved in other ways,” Hulett adds.
Each evening will be emceed by local Fox Sports Radio personality (and local music fan) Chris Vernon and WEVL deejay Janet Wilson. Also of note is the artwork donated by Sasha Barr, a Seattle artist long affiliated with Makeshift Music, and a silent auction hosted by the Memphis Roller Derby.
“Seeing the number two on “Rock for Love 2″ is really exciting for me,” Hulett says. “This is going to become an annual event. That’s what we’re planning on.”
Friday night’s lineup features: Lord T & Eloise, Al Kapone, Two Way Radio, J.D. Reager & the Cold Blooded Three, and Vending Machine. Saturday night’s lineup features: Snowglobe, the Coach & Four, Antenna Shoes, Oh No! Oh My!, and Royal Bangs.
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Game On
On a recent Tuesday inside the Hi-Tone Café, the culmination of a three-hour Ping-Pong tournament results in a rematch 30 years in the making.
The stage is bare, and despite the black ceiling and dark walls, the lights shine brighter than usual. The tables and chairs have been moved aside, and spectators focus intently on two men in the center of the room and the tiny ball flying between them.
Donny Flowers and Jimmy Wise are the last men standing out of 16 competitors at the end of the night’s tournament. The two played together in a table tennis club in Memphis in the ’70s, and tonight, they go head-to-head once again.
Sweat drips from their foreheads in the final intense moments of the game. After hitting one through the net, Wise rubs his hand across his face in frustration. Both move swiftly, hoping to zip the ball past their competitor for a precious point. With clutched knuckles and determination, they swat the ball back and forth until Flowers delivers a lightning-fast serve for the win.
“There were a lot of great people here tonight, a lot of competitive players,” Flowers says afterward and laughs. “I tried to play a little dirty.”
Flowers is a tennis instructor and plays Ping-Pong about once a week. He says, “You don’t have to be great at table tennis to play in the tournament. It’s all about having fun.”
This is the Hi-Tone’s second ping-pong tournament, and the bar plans to host tournaments twice a month on Tuesdays. Matches are played simultaneously on three Stiga pro tables, two on the “dance” floor, and one in the side room where the billiards tables used to be.
Throughout the tournament, balls zoom across the floor, bounce, and ricochet off walls — and people. Balls land in trash cans, fly behind the bar, and roll into corners, never to be seen again. Some players keep spares in their pockets for a quick serve.
The competition follows standard Ping-Pong rules: Each game goes to 21 points; best two out of three games wins. The tournament is currently “singles” pong, but the organizers may do a doubles tournament in the future.
Clay Hardee, ping-ponger and Hi-Tone regular, says, “The Hi-Tone has had a face-lift. … It’s not just a dirty, late-night bar anymore.”
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To the Extreme
One reliable factor about shows of the “extreme metal” variety is that they come as a package. Unlike indie rock or Americana bands, extreme metal bands will plays gigs with at least three other groups on the ticket. That’s a lot of metal, and there exists no genre of music that harbors the number of sub- and micro-genres that metal does. To the untrained ear or to music fans who dislike the more intense corner of metal, Dying Fetus, Skeletonwitch, Demiricous, and the Absence — performing at the Hi-Tone Café Wednesday — might sound indistinguishable. This is not so. They each mine a particular style of unconventional metal.
Dying Fetus has stared at the glass ceiling since their formation in 1991. There’s only so far you can go with a name like that. Regardless, the band has grown a loyal following. Combining old-school American death metal with the noisier end of hardcore, they boast the arms-crossed, tough-as-nails promo photos and testosterone-heavy dynamics that mark a certain school of extreme metal.
The stars of the evening will undoubtedly be Skeletonwitch. Not only do they have one of the best names in metal, their unique amalgam of styles spans the past 30 years of above- and underground metal. While their output has been limited, what they have released so far — including Beyond the Permafrost (on eclectic extreme-metal safe house Prosthetic Records) — points to an interesting formula and future.
Let’s start with the melodic but breakneck duel guitar riffing and leads that bring to mind early Iron Maiden and, more specifically, Diamond Head’s classic Lightning to the Nations album from 1980. This sound begat the explosion of thrash metal that would start taking over the West Coast in the mid-’80s (Metallica, Slayer, Exodus, Death Angel, Megadeth), and one can hear a lot of that in Skeletonwitch’s attack. The quintet does its ’80s metal homework (which has nothing to do with big hair or the Sunset Strip) and keeps its grades up into the ’90s.
There are several attributes that put Skeletonwitch under the banner of extreme metal. Another umbrella term with a multitude of strains, extreme metal more often than not refers to the metal that resembles grindcore, death metal, black metal, or noisy experimental metal.
Skeletonwitch first made a major footprint on the underground in the late ’80s. Vocalist Chance Garnette can do the low-end troll grunt of death metal and immediately switch over to the high-pitched screech normally associated with Northern European black metal. He’s also the only member of Skeletonwitch without a nickname, the others being his brother Nate “N8 Feet Under” Garnette on guitars, Scott “Scunty D” Hedrick on guitars, Eric “Harry” Harris on bass, and Derrick “Mullet Chad” Nau on drums.
I don’t quite understand the meaning of “N8 Feet Under” or “Scunty D,” but I understand where their harmonious guitar relationship comes from. It comes from a love and combination of Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, Helloween, Slayer, and the groundbreaking early-’90s melodic and technical prowess of Carcass and At the Gates. It results in riffs and solos that are fast, loud, furious, and put together like an engine, but they’re also unbelievably catchy.
The challenging nature of Garnette’s vocals is in slight contrast to the tunefulness of Beyond the Permafrost. Regardless, if you are at all curious as to what constitutes real metal, this is the band to check out. With an old-school thrash-metal logo, cover artwork by up-and-coming artist John Baizley (who is also in Southern metal saviors Baroness), and song titles like “Soul Thrashing Black Sorcery,” “Baptized in Flames,” and “Remains of the Defeated,” the package and presentation live up to the sound. I just can’t argue with an album cover that features a human skull with deer antlers piled high with snow. Live, the band is a beast (I had the pleasure of seeing them jump on a bill at Murphy’s last year), moving all over the stage — something that metal bands have an unfortunate tendency to avoid.
Also on the bill at the Hi-Tone is another combo that bows to the history of metal. Demiricous execute nothing new, though if their latest album, Two (Poverty), is any indication, they worship at the altar of Def Jam-era Slayer (Reign in Blood, South of Heaven, and Seasons in the Abyss), which I’ll take any day over the dimwitted Hot Topic/Warped Tour “metal” of bands like Avenged Sevenfold and Atreyu. Rounding out the evening’s lineup is the similarly minded revivalist thrash metal of the Absence, a band that, along with Demiricous, calls the venerable Metal Blade Records home.
So, as readers may have ascertained, this will not be a night for the weak-hearted or hearing-sensitive. For the most part, it is a snapshot of the extreme-metal underground as it stands in 2007. Too bad it’s missing Halloween by two weeks. That would have been the perfect storm of heavy-metal experiences.
Categories
Hard-Working Harry
“I know what it’s like to be on both sides, so I try not to overstep my bounds,” says musician/producer Harry Koniditsiotis, who has engineered sessions for Al Kapone, Lover!, True Sons of Thunder, and, most recently, Midtown groups Bloody Foot of Rock and The Devil’s Handshake at his 5 and Dime recording studio.
This month, Koniditsiotis is stepping away from the control board for a pair of high-profile gigs with his shoegazer-style pop group Twin Pilot, who, along with The Lights, open for Swervedriver‘s Adam Franklin at the Hi-Tone Café on Thursday, October 11th, then return to the Hi-Tone for an acoustic set opening for Concrete Blonde‘s Johnette Napolitano on October 29th.
“It’s funny. I almost feel like it’s ’90s revival month at the Hi-Tone,” Koniditsiotis says. “I’m a big Swervedriver fan. For me, Johnette’s like the Patti Smith of the ’90s, so I’m stoked we’ve been asked to play with people of this stature.”
On Saturday, October 13th, Koniditsiotis’ rock outfit The Turn It Offs will play Murphy’s with Oxford, Mississippi-based garage rockers The Black and Whites and Japanese punk band Gito Gito Hustler. It’s the first gig in months for the Turn It Offs, who were forced to take a hiatus after guitarist Bryan Leonard accidentally severed a finger last April.
Then on October 26th, Koniditsiotis’ band The Angel Sluts and Leonard’s group The Six String Jets will host a pre-Halloween party at Murphy’s.
Between all the live shows, Koniditsiotis is scrambling to finish a number of recording projects. “The other day, we finished the layout for a full-length the Angel Sluts have coming out on Wrecked ‘Em Records,” he says. “Twin Pilot’s also working on an album right now, although we hit a stopping point last spring and haven’t been able to finish it up. All these catastrophes keep happening, but right now, it looks like everything’s going really well.”
Acoustic music fans, rejoice: On Wednesday, October 17th, Colorado-based alt-rootsy quintet the Boulder Acoustic Society is presenting old-time banjo and Celtic music workshops, followed by a 7:30 p.m. concert at the Center for Southern Folklore‘s Folklore Store at 123 S. Main. To learn more, call 525-3655 or go to SouthernFolklore.com.
On October 19th, the Folk Alliance and the Coffee House Concert Series present four homegrown singer-songwriters — Keith Sykes, Jimmy Davis, Cory Branan, and Blair Combest — at the Church of the Holy Communion. Tickets for this sure-to-sell-out event are on sale at Fiddler’s Green Music Shop, Cat’s Music, and High Point Coffee. For more information, call 336-6275 or go to CoffeeHouseConcerts.org.
And the Memphis Acoustic Music Association will be celebrating its 10th anniversary with contemporary guitar master Richard Gilewitz, who will perform at Otherlands on November 10th. For more details, visit MamaMusic.org.
Blues news: Wander into B.B. King’s Blues Club to see Beale Street mainstays Blind Mississippi Morris or Preston Shannon, and you’ll hear one of the world’s best sound systems, newly installed by local companies Ninth Wave Audio/Visual Design and EgglestonWorks. Twenty custom speakers were designed for the nightclub and its elegant restaurant upstairs, Itta Bena, and installed last month, just in time for King himself — who is slated to appear November 8th and 9th — to test ’em out.
Clarksdale, Mississippi-based record label Cat Head Presents just released septuagenarian harmonica slinger Big George Brock‘s live debut, Live at Seventy-Five. Captured at Clarksdale’s Ground Zero Blues Club this past May, Brock ably demonstrates why interest in his career — he’s just returned from his third European jaunt this year — is at an all-time high. To learn more about the album, go to CatHead.biz.
Tickets for the Blues Foundation‘s 24th International Blues Challenge — scheduled for January 31st through February 2nd, 2008 — are already on sale via Blues.org. Last year, more than 150 amateur acts from 34 states and eight foreign countries dueled for top honors in a talent-filled competition that, says foundation executive director Jay Sieleman, is the world’s largest annual gathering of blues acts.
Hats off to Jim Dickinson: On November 1st, Dickinson will be presented with the Americana Music Association‘s Lifetime Achievement Award at Nashville’s Americana Honors & Awards show. The musician/producer will be honored for his work with artists such as Ry Cooder, the Rolling Stones, Big Star, and the Replacements, as well as his solo oeuvre, which ranges from his seminal 1972 Atlantic release Dixie Fried to last month’s Killers From Space (on Memphis International Records), an 11-song collection of obscure cover tunes paired with one deliciously irreverent original, “Morning After the Night Before.”