Tag: Lucero

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Weekend Roundup 14: Digital Leather, Sons of Mudboy, Memphis Dawls

Sons of Mudboy play the Beale Street Saturday Night release show on Sunday, April 19th at Shangri-La.

Outdoor shows are the place to be in the 14th edition of my weekend roundup. From block parties to shredding at the Cooper Young gazebo, here are ten shows worth checking out this weekend.

Friday, April 17th.
Digital Leather, Alicja Pop, Aquarian Blood, 9:00 p.m. at the Buccaneer, $5.00.

Weekend Roundup 14: Digital Leather, Sons of Mudboy, Memphis Dawls

Memphis Dawls, Belle Adair, Christian Lee Hutson, 9:00 p.m. at the Hi-Tone, $10.00.

Weekend Roundup 14: Digital Leather, Sons of Mudboy, Memphis Dawls (2)

The Rough Hearts, J.D. Reager and the CB3, Faith Evans Ruch, 9:00 p.m. at Murphy’s, $5.00.

Weekend Roundup 14: Digital Leather, Sons of Mudboy, Memphis Dawls (3)

Graham Winchester and the Ammunition, 10:00 p.m. at Bar DKDC, $5.00.

Saturday, April 18th (Record Store Day).
Lucero Family Picnic with North Mississippi Allstars, Clay Otis, Marcella & Her Lovers, Robby Grant, 2:00 p.m. at Minglewood Hall, $25-30.00.

Weekend Roundup 14: Digital Leather, Sons of Mudboy, Memphis Dawls (4)

Blackberries, Aquarian Blood, 1:00 p.m. at the Cooper Young Gazebo (for Record Store Day), free.

Zeke Johnson’s Jug Band, 8:00 p.m. at Otherlands, $7.00.

Lucero Family Picnic After Party, 9:00 p.m. at Murphy’s, Free.

Sunday, April 19th.
Sons of Mudboy, Luther Dickinson, 2:00 p.m. at Shangri-La Records, free.

Weekend Roundup 14: Digital Leather, Sons of Mudboy, Memphis Dawls (5)

Artistik Lounge featuring Dejanique, 8:00 p.m. at Minglewood Hall, $10.00.

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Music Music Features

New Records from Memphis’ Madjack

CREDIT: John Shaw

Memphis artists are showing up in all sorts of cool places. After a 23-year absence, the Replacements hosted their first hometown show last weekend in Minneapolis. The music press and the Twittersphere were all-ears. Memphis meta-alt favorites Lucero were the opening act. On another front, Memphian Cory Branan has his guns loaded with a new record attracting attention in everything from Rolling Stone to Noisey. Lucero and Branan have in common Madjack Records. While Lucero and Branan have moved to other labels, Madjack continues to foster the careers of several people from Memphis’ ponderous talent pool. This year, Madjack will release albums on the Memphis Dawls, Mark Edgar Stuart, and James and the Ultrasounds.

“It was just a coincidence that it all came together,” Madjack partner Ronny Russell says of the trio of new releases. “We did that a couple of years ago too with three records on Kait Lawson, Mark [Stuart], and John Kilzer. They all came at the same time. Usually, we let the creative side dictate the timing of it. It seems to come in phases. It happened back in the day with the Pawtuckets, Lucero, and Cory Branan. Those happened right in a row.”

Mark McKinney started the label to market his band the Pawtuckets, a regional success that released three albums in the early 2000s. At that time, Russell had been working with engineer Jeff Powell, who produced Memphis Dawls’ Rooted in the Bone, to be released this month.

“Jeff Powell and I hooked up on a band called the River Bluff Clan in the late 1990s. They came to me. I was a friend of theirs from high school. They came to me on the business side, for some advice on how to make a record. The Pawtuckets used to come see the River Bluff Clan when they were really young. I met them in the Poplar Lounge and other places. I got to know Mark McKinney. Mark was putting out the Pawtuckets records through Madjack.”

It didn’t take long for people to notice Lucero. Madjack released their self-titled debut in 2001.

“When it came time to put out Lucero, he wanted a business partner and some of that kind of help. He

came to me, and we wound up striking up a partnership in Madjack. We just heard music that was really good. And we were learning how to get records out in a good way. When we saw Cory at the Hi-Tone, he was in the same boat; didn’t know where to turn. So we all just jumped in it together and went forward. Then we had some luck. First of all, the people were very talented, as you know. Pawtuckets were very good and did well in town. Lucero might be the hardest working bunch of guys I’ve ever met in my life. Then Cory is a unique songwriter.”

Output slowed in the middle 2000s, but Madjack released albums by Rob Jungklas, Susan Marshall, Keith Sykes, and others. But it was Mark Stuart, the bassist for the Pawtuckets’ original act, who got things moving for this latest round.

“Even my partner Mark, who was in the Pawtuckets with him, you could have knocked us over with a feather when he started writing,” Russell says of Stuart. “We’ve known him for years. The quality of it was unbelievably good. Mark can tell you himself, he had some life experiences that made him more contemplative. He played with Cory on Letterman. He was the bass player on that. He’s a dear friend. And with material this good, it’s a no-brainer to put it out.”

That album, last year’s Blues for Lou, dealt movingly with Stuart’s 2011 battles with cancer and grief. Jeff Powell produced that record, and it touched a nerve in anyone who heard it. Stuart, having experimented with songs, began exploring the process of making records. His second solo record is due in early 2015. Stuart played bass for basically everybody and left a lot of folks without their low end when he started playing a guitar and singing. Enter Memphian James Godwin.

“At the time I didn’t really have a band and was picking up bass gigs,” Godwin says. “That’s when I really started tinkering around with my own songs, recording stuff on four-track, and playing it for friends. I just kept building on it over the years. When Mark started doing his solo thing, I started doing a lot more bass gigs with John Paul [Keith]. So there was a group of musicians helping each other out. It’s kinda nice.”

Godwin is another bassist-turned-songwriter who leads James and the Ultrasounds. Their debut full-length Bad To Be Here is due on Madjack in December. Bad To Be Here is Mark Stuart’s first record as a producer. The Ultrasounds come from a different place than the alt-country landscape of Madjack’s earlier catalog. The record veers through references to Abbey Road, punk rhythmic fervor, and some damn fine shouting. Jungklas’ 2013 The Spirit and the Spine also demonstrates an open-mindedness or perhaps adaptability in McKinney and Russell’s approach.

Memphis Dawls’ Rooted to the Bone comes out in Memphis on September 26th and nationally in November. The sound centers on the harmonies, both vocal and instrumental, among members Holly Cole, Jana Misener, and Krista Wroten Combest. The latter two work as string arrangers and performers on cello and violin. Engineer Powell lets Cole’s vocal lead the way and gives it just enough support from well-written parts. The sounds of each song are cherry picked from a range of country-inspired sounds, creating a rich entanglement of voices, strings, and other instruments, notably the Hammond organ.

Russell enjoys seeing the roster diversify and helping artists develop their careers.

“Jeff kept talking about how the blend of their voices is unique,” Russell says of the Dawls. “We got to listening to it, and it evolved over time. They felt like Madjack was a good fit. They knew that we could bring some resources to the table. We’re not Warner Brothers or anything. We can help with press promotions and radio promotions. To me, even though they are a completely different style of music, they are similar to Lucero in the sense that they work. It really helps us on the label side if someone is out traveling and touring.”

Asked if it was difficult watching his early talent shine at other labels, Russell remains passionate about watching his friends succeed.

“I’m actually going to dinner with Cory tonight. You talk about an incubator label. I’ve always described it as AA or AAA baseball. The major labels these days seldom sign someone off the street without any track record at all. If we just like it — and these people are so talented and creative — we try to help them and put it out. If they move on, more power to them. We’re their biggest cheerleaders. That’s what we do.

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

The Dozens: August Film and Music Calendar

Twelve things to look forward to this month:

Pink Flamingos: If you dare.

  • Pink Flamingos: If you dare.

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.

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Music Music Features

The Year in Local Music

The local music scene took a holiday hit with the recent announcement that the city’s most prolific club for touring bands and original local music, the Hi-Tone Café, would be closing in February. While it’s impossible to say how much this news will impact the immediate future of Memphis music, there are no such complications looking back. Here, three of our writers put the spotlight on their favorite local albums and artists of 2012.

Chris Herrington:

1. Women & Work — Lucero (ATO): After more than a decade on the road and with a discography eight full-length albums strong, Lucero hit a new stride this year, embracing and mastering their Southern-rock big-band sound like never before. Onstage and on record, I don’t think frontman Ben Nichols has ever led his band with this much assurance, and Women & Work hits all its diverse marks, from hip-shaking opening anthem (“On My Way Downtown”) to boogie-rock party-starter (the title song) to country-soul torch ballad (“It May Be Too Late”) to blues stomper (“Juniper”). And those are just the first four songs.

2. Ex-Cult — Ex-Cult (Goner): As with a couple of other recent faves — Ex-Cult labelmates Eddy Current Suppression Ring and California’s No Age — this is rhythmic art-punk that doesn’t let the former curdle into pretension or the latter curdle into regiment. Honestly, I would prefer the recording quality to be a little less lo-fi, but the band’s power and insistence still break through.

3. The Wandering Diaspora: At the dawn of the year, Luther Dickinson had the eureka-quality idea of bringing four talented regional roots musicians, all women, none who had collaborated in any serious way, into the studio together: guitarist Shannon McNally, bassist Amy LaVere, drummer Sharde Thomas, and guitarist/banjo player Valerie June. With Dickinson producing and filling in where needed, the Wandering was born. On their debut album, Go On Now, You Can’t Stay Here, this Mid-South Monsters of Folk cover everything from the Byrds (“Mr. Spaceman”) to Robert Johnson (“If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day”) to “You Are My Sunshine” with a spirited interplay and a beautiful blend of voices.

As good as they are together, they’ve been perhaps even busier apart. Dickinson was nominated for a Grammy for his instrumental album Hambone’s Meditations and reteamed with ornery partners Alvin Youngblood Hart and Jimbo Mathus for “Old Time’s There …,” a nervy second album from their South Memphis Jug Band. LaVere and McNally took their newfound chemistry on the road and into the studio with their recent EP Chasing the Ghost — Rehearsal Sessions. And June, whose wayward career earns the band’s moniker more than most, struck a deal with a French label and released the terrific single “Workin’ Woman Blues” with a Hungarian gypsy-folk backing band. Her looming debut album is likely the most promising Memphis-connected album on tap for next year.

4. Guerilla/Help Is on the Way — Don Trip: Trip has the surest flow, most grounded perspective, and most soulful sound of any hardcore Memphis rapper since 8Ball, and if an actual major-label-released debut album is proving predictably elusive, that hasn’t stopped him from dropping mixtapes well above the form’s norm. Released early this year, around the time Trip landed on the cover of national rap magazine XXL as part of its latest “Freshman Class” of up-and-comers, Guerilla is probably his most cohesive collection, with the more recent Help Is on the Way not far behind.

5. Mutt — Cory Branan (Bloodshot): The Memphis ex-pat, now Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s third album richly earned the over-deployed “long-awaited” descriptive. It has been six years since Branan’s 12 Songs, and Mutt shows his songwriting chops undiminished. The opening “The Corner” is a sardonic deconstruction of Branan’s own good press and gallows-humor appraisal of his stop-and-start career. “Survivor Blues” is an escape scenario in the Springsteenian tradition, but the romance is laced with a darker, more dangerous undercurrent.

Honorable Mention: Barbaras 2006-2008 — The Barbaras (Goner), Hi-Electric — Hi Electric (Evangeline), I Can’t Wait — Star & Micey (Ardent Music), Coast to Coast — River City Tanlines (Big Legal Mess), The Switchblade Kid — The Switchblade Kid (Miss Molly Music), Hex & Hell — Jason Freeman (BR2), Life’s Quest — 8Ball (eOne).

J.D. Reager:

1. Hex & Hell — Jason Freeman (BR2): This long-overdue debut from one of Memphis’ most distinctive voices contains just the right amount of Beale Street swagger without foraying into that cheeseball “Blues Hammer” territory that so many white blues bands can’t seem to avoid. This record is rough, raw, and fun and features cameos from several noteworthy local musicians, including Amy LaVere, Krista Wroten Combest and Jana Misener (both of the Memphis Dawls), Adam Woodard, and the vastly underappreciated Daniel Farris (Coach and Four), whose thunderous drumming helps keep things interesting in the jammier bits.

2. The Switchblade Kid — The Switchblade Kid (Miss Molly Music): Local musician/producer Harry Koniditsiotis distills his various projects — the Angel Sluts, Twin Pilot, the Turn-it-Offs, etc. — into one megaband. And it totally works.

3. Coast to Coast — River City Tanlines (Big Legal Mess): The venerable Memphis power trio stretches out a bit on this latest release, incorporating elements of indie-pop, metal, and noise-rock into the mix alongside pop-punk gems like “Pretty Please.”

4. Loud Cloud — Tanks: A ferocious 26-minute slab (all contained in one track) of heavy metal.

5. I Can’t Wait — Star & Micey: This EP sneaks in to the top five on the strength of the hauntingly gorgeous opening track, “No Pets Allowed.” At other times, it seems a tad overproduced but still showcases the band’s impeccable songwriting and vocal arrangements.

Honorable Mention: New Black Sea — Good Luck Dark Star; Hello Monday — Chad Nixon, Snorlokk — Hosoi Bros; Ex-Cult — Ex-Cult (Goner); I’m Just Dead I’m Not Gone — Jim Dickinson (Memphis International).

Chris McCoy:

1. Barbaras 2006-2008 — The Barbaras (Goner): The recordings for the debut album of this young Memphis band that splintered into the Magic Kids and the late Jay Reatard’s backing band were thought lost, but last year they turned up on a hard drive of Reatard’s and got a Goner release this year. The album is nonstop brilliant and four years after the last note was recorded still sounds ahead of its time.

2. The Memphis Dawls live: High school friends Holly Cole, Krista Wroten Combest, and Jana Misener took off in a big way this year, building on the success of an excellent 2011 EP by releasing a music video for their song “Hickory” and scoring an opening slot for Jack White. Their live shows got better and better as the year went on, culminating in a perfect afternoon set at the Cooper-Young Festival. If you get a chance to see these women do their folky thing live, go. It will be well worth your time.

3. Ex-Cult — Ex-Cult (Goner): The Midtown punk group’s debut record is an atomic blast of straight-ahead power. The album’s “Shade of Red” is my favorite song produced by a Memphis band in 2012, and their debut Gonerfest performance in September made fans out of the entire packed room.

4. The Modifiers return: This year saw the rebirth of a Memphis legend. For more than 20 years, Bob Holmes and Milford Thompson’s pioneering punkers the Modifiers have been spoken of in hushed, reverent tones by those who saw them destroy the Antenna club in the ’80s. Thompson passed away several years ago, and Holmes had retired, but Flyer contributor J.D. Reager, whose father had been in the original band, convinced Holmes to play his classic tunes with Reager and the crack River City Tanlines rhythm section of Terrence Bishop and John “Bubba” Bonds. Catch one of their rare appearances, and hear some lost Memphis gems.

5. Hex & Hell — Jason Freeman (BR2): Jason Freeman has played guitar for the Bluff City Backsliders and Amy LaVere, so we knew he was good. But his debut album is still a revelation, taking blues-based rock into the 21st century with explosive slide guitar and blistering vocals. Hex & Hell makes Stonesy rock loose and fun again.

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Music Music Features

Big Bright Star

The late ’90s was a period of awkward transition for the Memphis music scene. The Antenna club was gone. The crushing art-rock sound championed by indie darlings such as the Grifters and the Simple Ones imploded into a million little pieces. The Oblivians disbanded and new-wave revivalists the Clears broke apart at the height of their popularity while space-rockers Delorean disappeared altogether.

As Memphis’ old guard gave up the ghost, a new order began to emerge. Metal staged a comeback and math-rockers His Hero Has Gone became a momentary favorite. The Hi-Tone Café booked swing and honky-tonk, inspiring Memphis artists such as Lucy Nell Crater (Meagan Reilly), the Bluff City Backsliders, and Cory Branan. Posters featuring pentagrams and goat heads began to appear about town, advertising a satanic-sounding band called Lucero, and given the climate and the over-the-top iconography (not to mention the presence of former Joint Chiefs drummer Roy Berry), most people assumed Lucero was going to be another tongue-in-cheek metal band. Most people were wrong.

Lucero was a rare bird. The band didn’t spring fully formed from the suburban metal crowd, nor was it nurtured by the more eclectic Midtown music scene. The band came of age in the grimy bustle of Memphis’ downtown revival, when today’s high-dollar lofts were still bare-boned garrets occupied by artists looking for work and cheap rent. Lucero’s throaty frontman, Ben Nichols described Lucero’s urban plowboy sound as the result of an emo brat (Nichols) trying to write country songs with a hardcore kid (Brian Venable). And true enough, their earliest coffee-house sets were sloppy, high-lonesome extravaganzas that stretched from early evening to early morning, countless whiskey bottles passing from the band to the crowd and back again. And with each epic show, the band evolved into something just a little different.

“I’ll never forget the first time Lucero played Barristers,” says longtime Memphis music promoter James Manning. “I think they may have had eight songs and they may have made it through six of them, but you could tell even then that these guys were going to be big. The second band hadn’t even started yet when they came up and asked me if they could book another show. I said, ‘Hell yeah!'”

Hell yeah was the right answer. Several years, six albums, and two documentaries later, Lucero, who long ago traded in their country sound for straightforward Southern rock, is teetering on the brink of legitimate stardom, and their latest, best-sounding album, Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers, could be the thing that puts them over the top.

“We’ll have friends or people from Memphis who’ll show up [at out-of-town shows] and they’ll see ‘Sold Out.’ And all I can tell them is, we’re a national act now,” says Lucero guitarist Brian Venable. “You’ve got to get your tickets in advance.”

Venable is in transit, heading to what he suspects will be a sellout at San Francisco’s Slim’s. “We used to play the Bottom of the Hill,” he says, recounting packed shows at the storied club. “But then we got too big.” His words resonate with “What Else Would You Have Me Be,” the opening track of Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers. It’s an emotional travelogue where Nichols buries his heart at the “bottom of the hill” and shouts out to the girls he’s loved down on Beale, all the while announcing Lucero’s seamless transition from brilliant bar band to estimable recording artists.

Venable says the new record incorporates sounds and ideas the band has always wanted to use on other records but which never quite fit. At first listen, it plays out like a reworking of Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, with nods to Asia, Blue Oyster Cult, and Steve Earle’s not-quite-Celtic guitar jangle. Through it all, Nichols sings (as he has always sung) about the explosive mixture of sweet-faced girls and hard liquor.

“We’re a rock-and-roll band. We spend 200 nights a year in bars,” Venable says, explaining why subject matter may be a bit limited and offering no apologies for the band’s rowdy reputation.

“There are some places where people buy beers two at a time: one to drink, one to throw,” Venable says. He describes wild nights in Philadelphia and a freaky mob in Detroit where fans broke beer bottles against the stage then pounded on the broken glass. He compares it to the polite, attentive crowd in Portland, Oregon.

“Portland’s hard,” Venable says. “There were some people from Philly [who had been following the band on tour] at the show, and they started spilling beer and stuff and they got thrown out. We gave them T-shirts and said we were sorry and told them we’d get them up on stage next time.”

If their shows have gotten wilder, their sound has become more refined, and Venable gives a lot of the credit to producer (and former Camper Van Beethoven frontman) David Lowery.

“There was this whole time when we were recording, and I didn’t think he was paying attention. But then he started singing the song, and he really knew it,” Venable says, also crediting Rick Steff, whose shimmering keyboards take some of the pressure off Lucero’s hardworking rhythm section, brightening the sound and giving Nichols’ smoky vocals a bit of breathing room.

It was something of an open secret, in Lucero’s earliest days, that Venable — in no way a trained or experienced musician — played guitar the way a phonetic speaker imitates a language they don’t really understand. Although his skills are now enviable, he’s still self-deprecating.

“It helps that I’m able to build my solos in the studio, note for note,” he says. “Then I can learn them and actually be able to go out and play them right. Nobody knows I’m used to going out there just terrified.”

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Music Record Reviews

Lucero have produced their most confident, best-sounding album yet.

On this second studio album for major label EastWest Records, Lucero debuts a sound big enough to fill the arenas they don’t yet play. The drums boom. The guitar riffs reach for the rafters. And, in an unexpected twist for what has for years been a four-piece guitar-bass-drums band, rock-and-roll piano comes rising out of the mix.

That last is courtesy of local session/sideman ace Rick Steff, whose addition as a “fifth” Lucero member for this record is a stroke of inspiration. Steff plays piano, organ, farfisa, and accordion on the record and fits in beautifully. But his piano, in particular, shines. The instrument is a perfect fit for the rock-and-roll romanticism this band has always trafficked in.

The songs on Rebels, Rogues, & Sworn Brothers are mostly the same kinds of songs frontman Ben Nichols has been writing for years: lovelorn songs about girls met or missed on the road, spilling out from beer-soaked bars into the streets. Sometimes the simplicity of the songs has been touching. At other times the simplicity has been annoying. But this time the songs are matched with music that elevates that simplicity to something more epic. At its best, the album is like Born To Run stripped of verbosity, reduced to the music’s basic promise (“I Can Get Us Out of Here” is how Lucero ably shorthands it), which, as in Springsteen, is destined to go unfulfilled.

After recording their previous five albums in the Memphis area, the band traveled to Richmond to record with alt-rock notable David Lowry. The clarity and command of the record surpass everything in the band’s catalog. Old fans may think it’s too slick or commercial (and this old fan does prefer the artier rise-and-fall dynamics documented on the band’s first two albums, at least in theory). This is after all, a rock record where the most ear-catching riff is cribbed, without irony and probably accidentally, from Asia’s “The Heat of the Moment.” — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-

www.myspace.com/lucero

www.luceromusic.com

Look for more on Lucero’s new sound in next week’s Flyer.