Tag: Jack Yarber

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Greg Cartwright Plays Goner Records Saturday

CREDIT: kyle dean reinford

“Time changes everything.” That was the best reason Greg Cartwright could offer for getting his ’90s-era band the Oblivians back together for a new record and tour in 2013. It was really the only answer he or his bandmates Eric Friedl or Jack Yarber could provide when confronted with the question “why now?” Still, it seemed unlikely that there would ever be a new record, let alone one as deeply satisfying as Desperation, with its classic Oblivians’ mix of originals and perfectly chosen covers that are raw in spirit but as stylistically diverse and mature as the garage punk genre will allow.

Now even more time has passed, and the evermore prolific and peripatetic Cartwright has inked a new deal with Merge Records and is on tour and gearing up to release a new collection of songs with his other band the Reigning Sound, the ever-evolving all-purpose rock-and-roots band he formed in Memphis at the turn of the century, before moving to Asheville, North Carolina, with his wife and family.

Shattered, due to be released July 15th, is the Reigning Sound’s sixth studio LP, and its first since 2009’s fantastic In the Red release, Love and Curses.

The Reigning Sound’s recorded output has ranged from the introspective Byrds- and Everly Brothers-inspired folk rock of Break Up Break Down to the noisy electric shock of Too Much Guitar, with a romantic core and a 1960s rock-and-pop sensibility that reached an apogee with Love and Curses. Shattered picks up where Love and Curses left off with a slight return to the folksier sounds of Break Up Break Down. The arrangements are more lush, though, and the clean production puts Cartwright’s expressive voice front and center.

Fans who want to hear Cartwright play material from Shattered can do so Saturday, when he visits Goner, the record store/label founded by his Oblivians bandmate Eric Friedl.

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A fine new installment in Jack Yarber’s roots-rock underdog story.

In the mid- to late-’90s, Jack Yarber was one-third of the Oblivians. In its own time, that band may have been strictly a subterranean sensation, but the messily soulful garage-punk trio set the foundation for later eruptions in the form of such Oblivians-influenced bands as the White Stripes and the Hives.

But for Yarber and his bandmates, status as key influence, beloved cult band, and colorful rock history footnote has so-far taken the place of the more tangible riches that sometimes come to successful rock musicians. Perhaps some are born for Rolling Stone covers and others to inspire those who find the spotlight. As Yarber sings on the title song of his new album, Flip Side Kid, a reference to the song on the other side of a single: “Running all my life/Trying to find a hit/Everybody knows I’m a flip-side kid.”

In the years since the Oblivians’ demise, Yarber has been prolific, releasing solo albums and appearing with a variety of garage-rock combos, including the Natural Kicks, Knaughty Knights, and South Filthy. But Yarber’s primary outlet has been his band the Tearjerkers, with whom, over the course of three albums (2001’s Bad Mood Rising, 2005’s Don’t Throw Your Love Away, and now Flip Side Kid), Yarber has expanded the garage-rock template of the Oblivians.

With the Tearjerkers, Yarber has evolved into more of a roots-rocker, bringing those country and R&B influences closer to the surface while at times evoking more mainstream roots performers such as Steve Earle, Tom Waits, and even Bob Dylan. The new Flip Side Kid, recorded piecemeal over the past couple of years with a rotating cast of backup players (Yarber goes the one-man-band route on some tracks), captures this versatility, albeit with a surface layer of grit and grime that may turn off less adventurous listeners.

There’s nothing on Flip Side Kid that leaps out of the speakers with the emotional eloquence of Don’t Throw Your Love Away‘s lovelorn “Still Got It Bad,” a great song that sounded like nothing if not a low-rent outtake from Dylan’s Love & Theft. But it’s a strong record, with noirish songwriting steeped in Yarber’s affection for pulp-fiction settings and a sound that’s surprisingly coherent song-to-song considering the circumstances of its creation.

“Dirty Nails” is a blast of gutbucket R&B that approaches the pre-Elvis Sun blues sound with the same kind of simultaneously playful and respectful spirit as the early Rolling Stones. “Black Boots” is catchy straight-ahead rock. Yarber flexes his guitar chops on a lovely instrumental reading of Memphis-scene cohort Jeffrey Evans’ “The Man Who Loved Couch Dancing.” And a cover of garage-rock obscurity “Chills & Fever” is a gently psychedelic organ-driven romp that, appropriately, sounds like a lost flip-side answer to so many mid-Sixties hits. — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

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Hit the Road, Jack

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Since 1999, when Jack Yarber formed the Tennessee Tearjerkers, the group has morphed from a lean, coulda-shoulda-rocked-CBGB’s unit into a sprawling, Stones-influenced bar band. However, as evidenced on the Tearjerkers’ latest record, Jack O. Is the Flipside Kid, Yarber himself — veteran of legendary local groups including the Compulsive Gamblers and the Oblivians, — has hardly changed a bit.

“I feel like the same person,” Yarber says of the evolution, which has also found him playing in countless small garage combos, such as Loose Diamonds and the Knaughty Knights.

Just before Thanksgiving, Yarber returned from a six-week European tour with Harlan T. Bobo, which took the Memphians from Paris to Linkoping, Sweden. For the trip, which also included keyboard player Adam Woodard, Yarber temporarily replaced the Tearjerkers’ precision rhythm section of Terrence Bishop and John Bonds with Bobo and drummer Paul Buchignani; during Bobo’s sets, Yarber traded his guitar and lead mic for the bass.

Bobo and Yarber replicated those overseas performances during Memphis Roller Derby’s Ho Ho Ho Burlesque Show at the Hi-Tone Café last Saturday night. True to form, Yarber alternately snarled like Iggy Pop, crooned like Nat King Cole, and drawled his lyrics like a down-on-his-luck Hank Williams. One song in, he even relinquished his lead position to Preacher’s Kids frontman Tyler Keith, who leapt from the audience to deliver a frenzied version of “Honky Tonk Women” before smashing the microphone to the stage. Unfazed and perfectly willing to be upstaged, Yarber just shrugged, picked up the mic, and soldiered on.

Because he makes it look so simple, it’s easy to overlook the sheer talent that Yarber possesses, especially in a live environment, when the beer is flowing and the dance floor is shaking under the stomping of a hundred pairs of feet.

Put on any of his albums, which include 2001’s Bad Mood Rising and 2005’s Don’t Throw Your Love Away, and you’ll be blown away by the diversity of material, which runs the gamut from well-worn R&B covers to a version of Van Halen’s “D.O.A. Blues.”

Yet it’s Yarber’s originals that really shine: Listen to the dirgy “Flipside Kid,” the taut, western-influenced “Til the Money Runs Out,” or the fuzzy feedback that drives “Hong Kong Girl,” and you’ll hear the sound of a man who’s comfortable in his own skin. Replay “Golden Age,” which divulges just a few seconds in that “she’s a tragedy,” or the next song, which opens with the line, “Well, let me tell ya about Knick the Knife,” and you’ll get sucked into his pulp-fiction world, which is populated with human Frankensteins, cemetery freaks, and bad girls galore.

Yarber’s songwriting skills make the album, recorded in various locations in Detroit and Memphis, sound cohesive, whether tracks feature a full band, drummer Mark Sultan, or just Yarber himself.

“Do you think that if I didn’t list the information [in the liner notes], people would notice?” Yarber wonders. “I recorded it over a long period of time. I found out that it’s hard to create an album over a single weekend. ‘Knick the Knife’ came from a Johnny Vomit [and the Dry Heaves, one of Yarber’s longest-running side projects, which dates back to his high school days in Corinth, Mississippi] jam session. Some songs, like ‘Golden Age,’ were instrumentals that I found lyrics for, and a few were cut after I got my four-track machine repaired and I was just trying to see if it was working. The real challenge is doing it live, going from one style to another. The band usually figures it out, knowing when to rock out and when to lay back and swing.”

It’s a pretty nonchalant attitude for someone who’s toiled in the music business for two decades while watching friends rocket to success around him. Yet Yarber’s hardly the bitter type. It takes plenty of prodding to get him to talk about the time he persuaded Jack and Meg White to come to Memphis, where they would ultimately record their breakthrough album, White Blood Cells, or admit that MTV faves the Hives have been covering his originals onstage.

When asked why he prefers to remain in town, where he’s often forced to pick up a day job to pay his bills, Yarber shrugs.

“I’ve made a lot of trips to Detroit, and I thought about living there,” he notes. “But after being up there for a week, I couldn’t really see the difference between Detroit and Memphis. And besides, I did move away. I came from Corinth to Memphis. Here I am.”