Tag: Memphis Folk

Categories
Music Music Blog

With Folk Unlocked, the Folk Alliance Goes Virtual in a Big Way

CREDIT: Erica Winchester

For some Memphis players and their fans, this week brings an event that is the highlight of the year, or even a major step up in their career: the annual conference hosted by Folk Alliance International (FAI). Based in Memphis for a time, the event is much-beloved by many local artists. And this year, the physical location of the conference is a moot point:  it’s all online, and it’s all this week. The Folk Unlocked event promises to “unlock the doors and windows of the house of folk to be as broad and inclusive as possible, inviting those who have been loyally attending Folk Alliance International conferences for years while aiming to reach folk musicians and professionals who have never benefited from or attended FAI before.”

As always, this will involve a meeting of minds and musicians on many levels, including panels, workshops, affinity and peer group meetings, exhibit spaces, networking, and mentorship for many, not to mention the showcases of almost performers (see the full lineup here). Once registered for a minimal donation, attendees can view performances and other videos as they are premiered, or browse through the archives later. And for those who can’t commit to dropping a bit of coin for the cause, keep in mind that the FAI is indeed fighting the good fight, having been recently recognized by Rolling Stone as one of the “organizations that have been doing some of the most crucial relief work during the pandemic.”

Indeed, the Folk Unlocked virtual festival marks the launch of the Village Fund, FAI’s grants program for struggling musicians and folk music workers during the COVID crisis. And, as a result of moving online due to the pandemic, the organization is providing unlimited public access to the music showcases for the first time in its history.

With over 800 hours of music (listen to a Spotify playlist of the artists here), from all fifty US states and over thirty additional countries, this is not an opportunity to be missed. And the schedule for the festival, which runs all this week through Friday, promises many highlights, including:

  • Los Lobos
  • Winner of NBC’s The Voice and singer-songwriter Sawyer Fredericks
  • Grammy-winner Keb Mo
  • Songwriting icon Jim Lauderdale
  • All-female mariachi band and Latin Grammy winners Flor de Toloache
  • Americana Music Award Emerging Artist winners, the Nashville soul duo The War and Treaty
  • North Carolina gospel family group Dedicated Men of Zion, fresh from their appearance on NPR Music x globalFEST.
  • Canadian First Nations artist William Prince, who plays music from his ancestors in the gospel tradition.
  • Brazilian artist Jacqueline Marissol Mwaba, who fuses a diversity of musical influences with the African cultural panorama, mainly with the music of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (original country of her parents).
  • Experimental and electronic music from Aguascalientes-born artist ANAN, Natalia Gómez (composer, vocalist, instrumentalist) and Rafael Durand Kick (producer, arranger).

Erica Winchester

The Tennessee Screamers

It’s clearly a global celebration, and could make for some new epiphanies concerning what folk music is and can be. But for Memphians, the festival’s also very local. These local artists will be representing the Bluff City at the festival:

  • Terrence and Marcella Simien feat. Making Movies
  • Cedric Burnside feat. Making Movies
  • Deborah Gleese Barnes and The Sensational Barnes Brothers
  • Victoria Dowdy
  • The Wealthy West
  • The Tennessee Screamers
  • Chris Hamlett
  • New Memphis Colorways
  • Jeremy Stanfill
  • Chinese Connection Dub Embassy
  • Doug MacLeod
  • Bill Stanek
  • Alice Hasen
  • Will Sexton
  • Elizabeth King
  • Jack Ward

See the schedule for their time slots, then head over to Folk Unlocked to donate and register, making all the videos as they become available throughout the week.
In the meantime, here’s a bit more about Folk Alliance International, made on the occasion of its 30th Anniversary in 2018.

With Folk Unlocked, the Folk Alliance Goes Virtual in a Big Way

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Aquarian Blood Digs Deeper With Decoys

Last fall, we reviewed a record that marked an abrupt change of pace for one-time psych-punks Aquarian Blood. A Love That Leads To War was a an acoustic masterpiece of sorts, full of gentle guitar ostinatos and sing-song melodies; yet, like a friend with a thousand-yard stare, the calmness was unnerving. The songs seemed to deal with surviving an unhinged life, not to mention the manipulative opportunists that always show up to unscrew the hinges a little more.

Yet through all the bleakness of the scenarios depicted therein, the voice of a reliable narrator peeked through. The commentary on traumatized lives was a thread with which to find one’s way through the cast of users, losers, and abusers; and it somehow helped the listener feel that yesterday’s trauma was contained. Lessons were learned, and the hard-won wisdom of the songs was the pay off.

This year, the band released a sequel of sorts on Bandcamp, Decoys. The seven song EP is cut from the same cloth as A Love That Leads To War, but there are important differences. Yes, the lilting folk guitar still dominates, matched with blunt lyrics and sing-song melodies as before. But many of the other flourishes that marked the album are absent this time around. Aside from a few tasty synthesizer parts, the already sparse production of War has been pared down even further. Whereas the full-length sparkled with beats, synths, and other overdubs in a deceptively well-crafted production, Decoys is full of space. Sometimes all you hear is the guitar and the voices of partners J.B. and Laurel Horrell.

The result is even bleaker than the previous album. Somehow, the reassuring voice of the narrator who has come to terms with the trauma, or observed it from afar, is not so reassuring anymore. It almost feels like a prequel to War, where relationships and dependencies are hinted at as they first emerge, with a sense of foreboding: Traumas evoked in the LP seem to be germinating in Decoys‘ simplest actions.

“Slipping on the tiles and they’re bleeding on the door/Leave them lying in their places laughing on the floor,” begins the song “Maybe If What,” and you sense that this won’t end well. But the song never reveals an end. “You did the things you said you had to do/Made us all uncomfortable and feel bad,” sings J.B. in “Cuz You Had To,” perfectly evoking that feeling of a time-bomb ticking that some people inspire. But what became of the time bomb? Perhaps it’s revealed in the songs on War.

In a way, the cover of Decoys captures that greater sense of isolation, that lack of resolution: J.B. sits alone in a room, with the picture of a child uncannily perched on the wall. There’s a feeling here of being on the edge of the precipice, just before someone innocently tumbles down onto the jagged rocks below. 

Aquarian Blood Digs Deeper With Decoys

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Twenty From The Teens: Top Albums Of The Decade, 2010-2019

Aquarian Blood

“One thing I’m doing more of during shelter-in-place is listening to great local records that I hadn’t had a chance to catch up on.” So said songwriter Mark Edgar Stuart in a recent interview for our 2020 music issue. It’s something we’re all doing more of, and, given that this year marks not only a new decade, but a new way of living (optimistically speaking), we’re seizing the moment of this special issue to reflect on what’s come before. Here are the Memphis Flyer’s top 20 albums of the past decade.

Granted, such lists will always be subjective, and this one’s no exception. But I can personally attest to the fact that these albums, once played through my stereo, were then played again and again. And they continue to be played, as we look to an uncertain future, doing double takes at the recent past and muttering, “What just happened?”

But I’m not alone in my feeling that each of these is a masterpiece of innovation and expression. This is the cream of a very impressive crop, each album like the tip of an iceberg suggesting greater depths below. Look under the hood of Aquarian Blood’s 2019 release, and you’ll find an entire gritty noise-rock backstory; follow the sounds of The Barbaras and you’ll find yourself picnicking with the Magic Kids; and prepare to be astounded once you hear the individual releases by the artists of the Unapologetic collective who delivered the one-two punch of Stuntarious IV.

Part of this depth can be excavated by following each title’s link, which will take you to the original articles by me, Jesse Davis, J.D. Reager, Andria Lisle, Chris McCoy, Chris Herrington, and Chris Shaw, quoted sporadically below. And of course, part of the depth comes from the list’s breadth. For Memphis not only produced some of the past decade’s finest music, it spanned nearly every genre and generation while doing so, from acoustic punk to surreal hip hop to seasoned works by sorely-missed lifers like Sid Selvidge and John Kilzer. For your listening pleasure, we present music of the ages, in alphabetical order.

The Top 20 Albums of the Decade, 2010-2019
Aquarian Blood – A Love That Leads to War (Goner, 2019)
“Dark observations and wry commentary are surrounded with unassuming acoustic ostinatos, (mostly) subtle keyboard textures, and inventive bass counterpoints.”

Julien Baker – Turn Out the Lights (Matador, 2017)
“Meditations on love, rejection, God, rage, and redemption … piano- and cello-tinged ensemble pieces captured on tape at Ardent.”

The Barbaras

The Barbaras – 2006-2008 (Goner, 2012)
“Able to turn on a dime, unafraid to be goofy, and gifted with a breezy sense of irony that simultaneously celebrates and mocks the Nuggets psychedelia that infuses their sound.”

The Sensational Barnes Brothers – Nobody’s Fault But My Own (Bible & Tire, 2019) 
“All the songs on the new Barnes Brothers record were songs that artists on the Designer Records catalog had done. Basically, they came in, I used my studio musicians, and we made that record.” And Lord, do those studio musicians rock.

Harlan T. Bobo – A History of Violence (Goner, 2018)
“The band [is] now rocking harder, with a more sinister edge … his singing now addressing a world swirling around him more than the romantic entanglements of his earlier work.”

Don Bryant

Don Bryant – Don’t Give Up On Love (Fat Possum, 2017)
A return to form by one of the city’s great songwriters from the golden age of soul, backed unerringly by those specialists in vintage vibes, the Bo-Keys.

The City Champs – The Set-Up (Electraphonic, 2010)
“The instrumental soul-jazz trio absolutely floored me … The Set-Up is one of those records that just keeps getting better with repeated listening, so now I can’t put it down.”

DJ Paul – Power, Pleasure, & Painful Things (Scale-A-Ton, 2019)
“Interspersed with spoken segments in which the artist recalls pivotal moments in his Memphis youth, the tracks make use of a wide-ranging musicality and inventive, turn-on-a-dime production to create what may be Paul’s best work yet.”

Hash Redactor – Drecksound (Goner, 2019)
“The songs come in fast and hard, propelled by booming bass and tight drums. Watson and Lones share an easy comfort playing together … McIntyre sneers the vocals, an antihero decrying humanity’s self-destructive tendencies … The guitars alone are worth the price of admission.”

John Kilzer – Scars (Archer, 2019)
“I wrote on different instruments. I wrote a couple on a mandolin, a couple on ukulele, and several on the piano. I would have never, ever considered doing that earlier in my career. So that kind of creative tension manifests in the songs.”

Lucero – Women & Work (ATO, 2012)
“I think Women & Work is the band’s best album yet … it captures the live sound of a band that has always excelled on stage and how fully they commit to a soulful, opulent Southern rock style.” 

Magic Kids – Memphis (True Panther Sounds, 2010)
“[A] genial, ramshackle deployment of myriad traditional, pre-punk influences. The album’s earnest romances play out against a Memphis presented as a relaxed, sunny playpen.”

Mellotron Variations – Mellotron Variations (Spaceflight, 2019)
“Local players Robby Grant and Jonathan Kirkscey were joined by Pat Sansone (Wilco) and John Medeski (Medeski Martin & Wood), presenting semi-improvised original pieces that showed off the evocative range of multiple Mellotrons being played at once.”

New Memphis Colorways – Old Forest Loop (Owl Jackson Jr., 2018)
“‘This is music I deliberately made for people to take summertime drives to — they can grill to it or swim to it.’ … Old Forest Loop has the citrus punch of an orange sherbet popsicle.”

Jack Oblivian & the Sheiks – Lone Ranger of Love (Mony, 2016)
“Well done, boys. I find it very hard to believe a local artist tops this record in 2016. Might as well flip this sucker over and start again.”

The Oblivians – Desperation (In the Red, 2013)
“The band doesn’t pretend that the past 15 years never happened, and most tracks are sonically closer to the musicians’ individual recording projects but goosed-up Oblivians-style.”

Marco Pavé – Welcome to Grc Lnd (Radio Rahim Music, 2017)
“Pavé is a charismatic frontman, equally at home flowing about the school-to-prison pipeline or barking his shins while getting out of bed…Overall, this is one of the most meticulously constructed, finely paced albums to come out of Memphis in recent memory.”

Sid Selvidge – I Should Be Blue (Archer, 2010)
“I Should Be Blue retains Selvidge’s usual folk setting but with a new musical texture that can stand up to his strikingly beautiful vocals.”

Various Artists – Take Me To the River – Soundtrack (Stax, 2014)
Soul and blues legends pair off with current rappers at Royal Studios. “It’s fun to be a fly on the wall in these recording sessions held in historic spaces, and the camaraderie and respect between the players is evident. The talent, discipline, and instincts on display are amazing.”

Various Artists – Stuntarious IV (Unapologetic, 2019)
“The Stuntarious series explode[s] with sonic and verbal ideas, and Stuntarious IV is no exception. This time around, the album has a cinematic feel … It sets the stage for the wide-ranging palette of sound design elements that percolate throughout the tracks that follow.”

They Also Served: A Baker’s Dozen More From a Decade Packed with Dynamite
Once you get started, it will be hard to stop listening to releases from one of the city’s most extraordinary musical decades. That’s saying a lot, of course, but the depth and breadth of these albums attest to what a simmering hotbed of creativity we have in Memphis. That’s not even mentioning some striking singles from the period (“Uptown Funk,” anyone?).

So for those with ravenous ears, here are 12 more to groove to, from the underappreciated Stereolab-meets-dank-Southern-humidity of Cloudland Canyon to a Memphis-centric offering from the young Young Dolph, before he grew to dominate the airwaves so thoroughly.

Cloudland Canyon – An Arabesque (Medical, 2016)
Dead Soldiers – The Great Emptiness (American Grapefruit Tapes, 2017)
Detective – No. 1 (2019)
Don Lifted – Contour (2018)
John Paul Keith – Memphis Circa 3 AM (Big Legal Mess, 2013)
Jonathan Kirkscey – Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (Mondo, 2018)
Amy LaVere – Painting Blue (Nine Mile, 2019)
Memphis Dawls – Rooted in the Bone (Madjack, 2014)
Motel Mirrors – In the Meantime (Last Chance, 2018)
Joe Restivo – Where’s Joe? (Blue Barrel, 2019)
Spaceface – Sun Kids (Jet Pilot, 2017)
Mark Edgar Stuart – Blues for Lou (Madjack, 2013)
Young Dolph – King of Memphis (Paper Route Empire, 2016)

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Play Something Quiet, My Head’s Exploding: Aquarian Blood’s New Masterpiece

When one recovers after any trauma, from a bad trip to having your heart carelessly ripped to shreds, there comes a moment when a quiet recognition of your own survival sets in. You may walk on eggshells, you may have a nervous tic, but the birds are singing, the breeze blows, the clouds roll by. It’s a time when hard truths set in.

Believe it or not, this is the feeling of the new album on Goner Records by local punk ravers Aquarian Blood. In more mundane terms, one might call it the perfect hangover record, but it aims deeper and wider than that, and it delivers. Say you’ve just been dealt a cold hand by a thoughtless lover, or by death itself. You sit on the couch after a hard night of pounding your head against the wall. A friend, trying to help, puts on this record. And from the first quiet guitar notes, you breathe a sigh of relief:  Is this vintage Segovia? Or wait, early Donovan? Then the voices enter, and you know it’s neither. Oh, sweet surcease of sorrow! This is sung by someone who’s been where you are.

Aquarian Blood in thrashier times

Written and sung by the roving rock couple J.B. and Laurel Horrell, this is a daring downshift from the revved up, pounding squall that Aquarian Blood fans have come to love. But their voices carry a common thread with their debut record: a seriousness of purpose that never veers into pretentiousness. A lot of it comes down to their evocative lyrics, which never descend into mere wordplay. They’re coming to terms with the real issues and people in their lives, and it shows. “Jesus lied to everyone, all the things he said. You would still believe him ’til you’re dead,” J.B. sings on the title track, “A Love That Leads to War.” Around him flutter tender notes of resignation.

As with every track here, the dark observations and wry commentary are surrounded with  unassuming acoustic ostinatos, (mostly) subtle keyboard textures, and inventive bass counterpoints. Drums only appear here and there, in sparse touches, as in “No Place I Know,” with hypnotic folk patterns belying lyrics of desperation, all glued together with distant marching rhythms.

Even as the kitchen-sink approach embraces drum machines or a touch of a rocking guitar solo, they’re all in small measure. An anything-goes spirit prevails; the proceedings have the sound of the most quietly atmospheric home demos ever made. And indeed, that’s essentially what these recordings are, having arisen when full-band drummer Bill Curry was temporarily out of commission due to a broken arm, A scaled down version of the band began playing out in February 2018, and this collection was the result.

While the imagery and settings of these songs are too subtle to reduce to simple doom-mongering, there is a dark undercurrent throughout that’s undeniable. Touches of synthesizer or even (apparently) firecrackers never let your ears grow too complacent. But even in the darkest moments, that sense of hard-won epiphanies, in quiet post-recovery moments, is never absent.

“Everything he ever told you was a lie to lead you on..til the day that he was caught,” they sing in “Their Dream.” But, since this is neither Kansas nor Oz, and we’re not Dorothy, awaking from such a nightmare can’t mean it never happened. “It was more than a dream that you could just wish away,” goes the chorus. It’s the sound of grim – yet liberating – realizations.