Moon Taxi shot their whole dang video on iPhones. They’re from Nashville, but you wouldn’t know it.
Agori Tribe: funk with a touch of Pink Floyd.
Tag: Memphis Music
Midtown Music is open at 2272 Central, across from Central BBQ, at Philadelphia Street. Housed in the old WRVR (aka the QUAD) studios — where Isaac Hayes did his voice work for South Park — the space doubles as a recording studio called Sadhana Sound Studios. They have 8 tracks of analog tape and a cool collection of old instruments. The venture is the work of Jeremy Barzizza, a longtime repairman at Amro Music and the bassist for the Side Street Steppers. The store has a fun, laid-back feel and will be a boon to horn players. They also stock ukeleles, the best learning instrument your kid could ever get for Christmas. Have a look at bass phenom Daniel McKee’s uke chops on this wild bass ukelele thing:
Grammy GPS as Stax Academy
The Recording Academy Memphis Chapter is hosting another GRAMMY GPS seminar on Saturday on October 26th at Stax Music Academy. The Memphis Chapter is celebrating its 40th anniversary. The series brings top-level music industry folks to Memphis for informative sessions on succeeding in music. For more information, go to grammygps.com
This go-round features the CEO and co-founder of Sub Pop, Jonathan Poneman. Sub Pop is closely associated with the Seattle sound as the label for Nirvana. Sub Pop maintains an active roster of bands including the Shins, Mudhoney, and others.
Also on the bill for Grammy GPS is Ben Swank, co-founder of Third Man Records along with Jack White. Third Man settled in Nashville in 2009. The label is home to White’s output with the White Stripes, the Raconteurs, and the Dead Weather, in addition to an impressive roster of new and established artists.
We spoke with Swank about making it in music and loving the music more than the money.
[jump]
Flyer: What advice do you have for aspiring artists and producers?
Swank: I advocate the DIY approach for a record label. I tell people who want to give us a demo, “Why don’t you have a look at pressing your own records and see how you do putting your own record out there. The music industry is like the Wild West. You can make up your own script and your own rules. There are obviously limitations to that, but if you have an interesting sound or approach and you know who you want to sell to, there’s no reason why you can’t be successful with it. You have to temper what your ideas of success are and set reasonable goals. You’ve got to be into it for the love and the pursuit of it.
Flyer: Some have said that White makes music that’s too expensive, given his limited-edition vinyl releases. Is that true?
I really take issue with that. We have a limited-edition component to just about everything that we do. That’s because we know our fan base, and a lot of them are collectors. But every release has a standard black vinyl release. If you just ewant the music, it’s a standard-priced LP or 45. Everything we release we release in a way that anyone that wants it can get it. Digitally or on vinyl. We have a bespoke quality to what we do. For instance, the Great Gatsby limited edition series. But we didn’t make a very high margin off of that: those were hand-fabricated items. We did them in such a limited number, that we didn’t reap a large profit. But it can be a great way to draw attention to what you are doing.
GRAMMY GPS:
A Road Map For Today’s Music Biz
Saturday, October 26, 2013, at 11 a.m.
Stax Music Academy
926 East McLemore Ave
Categories
The .01 Percent
Lord T & Eloise, the world’s first aristocrunk rappers, are back in Memphis with a show at the Young Avenue Deli on Saturday, October 12th. The duo is known for combining rap culture’s monetary braggadocio with crunk — Memphis’ distinct contribution to the hip-hop soundscape — into a meta consideration of wealth, celebrity, and partying your fool head off.
Lord T, the 18th-century aristocrat with the dirty-south drawl, is the alter ego of Elliott Ives. The harder-barking Eloise, allegedly covered in 24-karat gold skin, is the second self of Robert Anthony, the writer and editor responsible for this perhaps insane concept. Crazy as it may sound, Lord T & Eloise have been a success.
Ives, currently touring and recording as guitarist for Justin Timberlake, recalls the whole concept catching on faster than they ever planned.
“Robert came up with this crazy idea from the perspective of these two characters,” Ives says. “I never thought it would come out. I was like, ‘Man, don’t. Let’s not put that out. These [songs] are stupid.’ But we had 20 something songs.
“Next thing I know: ‘Man, let’s not do a show. We can’t do a show.’ We did a show, and all of a sudden we had a booking agent and were doing national tours. We were wondering what the hell happened. It was my side project at the time.”
The original lineup included DJ Witnesse — who is still part of the team — and Cameron Mann, recent head of the Music Resource Center for the Memphis Music Foundation and now the manager of development and communications at Shelby Farms Park. Mann’s father, Don, started Young Avenue Sound in 2001. (Cameron left the group in 2008.)
Ives was an upstart engineer at Young Avenue Sound in 2006 and orchestrated the purchase of an Akai MPC, the essential sampling tool that was the technological basis of hip-hop as digital technology replaced the hard-to-learn handwork and expense of turntables. The studio became a haven for local hip-hop.
“I convinced Don to buy an MPC, because the studio’s clients were rappers and producers. So I was just grinding out beats and learning that machine,” Ives says.
Aristocrunk, Lord T & Eloise’s 2006 debut album and manifesto, combined the sensibility of the .01 percent with a very heavy dose of Prince Mongo. The Flyer gave the album an A. The sound was essentially Memphian.
Ives had marinated in the horrorcore hip-hip of Orange Mound, with clients working in the shadows of Three 6 Mafia. Where Craig Brewer’s character Shelby from his hip-hop film Hustle & Flow — allegedly based on real-life math teacher and synth whiz Shelby Bryant — ventured alone into rap collaboration, Ives enjoyed a steady stream of hip-hop work through the mid-1990s, honing his sensibility and technical efficiency. Later, this work would inform his musical output in FreeSol, a rap-driven funk-pop outfit that backed Timberlake and which led to his current gig with the pop superstar.
Ives just returned home from touring with Timberlake.
“I have a couple days off,” he says. “We just finished a promo tour and we had a summer tour. It’s been crazy. We did Rio with 95,000 people. You couldn’t see the back. You couldn’t see the sides. It was absolutely insane. The people are so far away from you. It’s not like the Hi-Tone where you have 200 people right in your face. That’s hard to play.”
Lord T & Eloise return to the intimacy of Memphis this Saturday. Despite the recent highs of playing to tens of thousands, Ives is excited about this homecoming:
“It’s going to be really cool. We haven’t played for a while, but we were getting to a really cool place. We have a rotating cast of characters. We have Paul the Tailor playing drums. That’s going to be awesome. Biggs Strings is on bass. And DJ Witnesse.”
As time allows, the band will continue working on the next mixtape, which will be their fourth album, following 2008’s Chairmen of the Bored and Rapocalyse from 2010.
“We have a bunch of unfinished material for Blackout Crunk Vol. 1, which is not finished,” Ives says. “We have it all mapped out. The songs are there.”
Sadly, Ives reports that Anthony has become stuck in character and is receiving medical attention. Our request for an interview with Anthony was answered with a carrier-pigeon-delivered scroll offering financial-advisory services. But the show will go on.
Lord T & Eloise with Spaceface Young Avenue Deli Saturday, October 12th, 9 p.m.-2 a.m.
Beale Street mainstay and contender for TV’s The Voice Patrick Dodd is back in Memphis and recording tracks for a new EP of thematic songs at Ardent Studios. The dreadlocked blues guitar phenom is looking to explore a smaller form than the traditional album as an outlet for his trio and his meal ticket: his voice.
With his new burst of TV-derived notoriety, Dodd could easily have upped the ante with a full album and a larger-format band. But he seems confident and content to move in the opposite direction. Asked why he isn’t going for bigger things, Dodd looks at his career with a sense of humor born of relentless gigging on Beale and throughout the region.
“Everybody wants to get paid,” he joked, going on to mimic the lines he must have heard a million times. “It’ll be good exposure. I know you’re only 40.”
- Joe Boone
- Patrick Dodd relaxes after nailing his overdubs.
But in all seriousness, his band is in a better place than before his run on the popular NBC primetime singing contest in which he sang a convincing “Walking in Memphis” before his elimination.
“It absolutely helped,” said Landon Moore, Dodd’s bassist who with drummer Harry Peel rounds out the trio. “But I’m glad to be doing what we were doing before he left.”
What the trio does is provide a solid blues-rock foundation for Dodd’s gutsy, powerful voice. Dodd was recording a few overdubs and made quick work of them; his Paul Rogers-like voice needing very little fuss from engineer Jeff Powell.
Powell, longtime Ardent veteran, is a major proponent of the shorter-form approach and sees more clients opting to focus on fewer songs with more preparation beforehand. The trio was in the studio for one long day cutting two Dodd originals: “End of the Line” and “I’m Gone.”
“The one-day thing works if the band is ready to go. We’ll mix this tonight,” Powell said.
The songs mark a major development in Dodd’s songwriting and arranging since his last full-length recording, Future Blues. The new material has a wider breadth due to rolling chord changes that add harmonic richness to the recordings. Dodd hopes to a series of five-song concept recordings that are thematically woven together with lyrics and artwork. “I’m Gone” will serve as a single for the first new collection, which, at this pace, could be ready to go in as little as six weeks.
www.patrickdoddtrio.bandcamp.com
Memphis got a double dose of funk on Wednesday, when the Memphis Drum shop hosted drumming legends Clyde Stubblefield and John “Jabo” Starks. Both men played on James Brown’s essential funk hits of the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Both were in town for the Memphis Drum Shop’s “In-Store Clinic” series. I arrived as both were enjoying lunch from Soul Fish with shop owner Jim Pettit and store staff. Stubblefield was reticent in contrast to the loquacious Starks.
“This place is a museum,” Starks said of Memphis Drum Shop. “If you say ‘drum’ it’s in here. It’s the best-organized store I’ve ever been in, bar none. And I’m not greasing my friend Jim because he’s standing here.” I mentioned that I come to the store even though I’m a bassist. “You got no business at this store,” joked Starks, who kept the lunch lively throughout.
- Joe Boone
- Memphis Drum Shop owner Jim Pettit with Jabo Starks and Clyde Stubblefield
While the two frequently worked together with Brown, Stubblefield’s biggest hits are from the late ’60s (“Cold Sweat”, “There Was A Time”, “I Got The Feelin'”, “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud”, “Ain’t It Funky Now”, and “Mother Popcorn”) and Starks’ from the early ’70s (“The Payback”, “Sex Machine”, “Super Bad”, and “Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothing”). Brown was a legendary taskmaster to his players and had many bands before working with Stubblefield and Starks. Starks recalled the turmoil around the addition of Phelps brothers Bootsy and Phelps, who were much younger and often oblivious to the expectations of the demanding Godfather.
“The rhythm changed when Bootsy got there. I said, ‘Boy, you got to gel. Once you lock in, I don’t care what you do.’ He played different. It was a 360-degree turn. You see, James was declining. But with [Sex Machine], he shot right back up to the top.”
Stubblefield is of particular musicological interest as the most-sampled drummer in the history of hip-hop. He did not enjoy royalty income from his ubiquitous influence over hip-hip in the 80s and 90s, when his beat for “The Funky Drummer” proved irresistible to emcees and rappers who sampled that beat with its magical combination of rock-solidity and compelling liveliness. Users of the beat include Run DMC, Public Enemy, NWA, LL Cool J, and the Beastie Boys. It is a masterpiece for the ages, but it provided no remuneration to Stubblefield, who was profiled in a PBS documentary, Copyright Criminals.
Categories
SXSW: Day One
Music editor Chris Herrington and photographer Justin Burks are in Austin this week for the big SXSW festival. Here’s Chris’ first report.
I’ve always liked Holly Cole’s blend of girl pop, classic rock and hard corn honky tonk but her first EP Fearless and Free left me a little cold. With the exception of “Turtle Dove,” a sweetly crafted study in old school twang, the songs all sounded a little murky and too much alike. Even Cole’s full bodied voice couldn’t make me fall in love with the disc the way I wanted to. And there was so much potential on display on Fearless and Free that I really wanted to.
Cole’s second release, the eponymous Holly & the Heathens, represents at least the partial fulfillment of that initial promise. It’s an alluring hodge-podge of sounds and styles that show off Cole’s considerable talents while suggesting that this is an artist who’s still slugging it out with her influences, trying to figure out where she fits. Standout tracks include “Make Up Your Mind,” a folk-psyche ballad that calls to mind Burning World-era Swans. “All That Was Lost” begins with the freight train rhythm of an old Johnny Cash song but plays out as an answer to “As Long,” from , The Reigning Sound’s first CD Break Up Break Down. “All in One Day” is a hip shaking exercise in classic rock while the beautifully arranged “Holy,” is a spare waltz for guitar and violin that closes this completely satisfying disc with a classic country music koan: “How do you sleep at night when your baby’s aching?” Well, how do you?
Holly & the Heathens is a thoughtfully arranged, beautifully sung tangle of yearning and heartbreak. Cole and company celebrate its release on Saturday, July 24th at the Hi-Tone with Jeffrey James & the Haul.
Categories
Modern “Memphis” Songs
Earlier this year, the Smithsonian Rock N Soul Museum posted a list on its website of 899 recorded songs that mention the city of Memphis, citing it as the most mentioned city in pop songs. Whether that’s true or not, the idea of “Memphis” songs typically means stuff like Chuck Berry’s “Memphis” or Marc Cohn’s “Walking in Memphis,” records by nationally known outsiders that put the city right there in the title.
But what about songs from and about the city? Few of the following would ever be used in a city-boosting campaign — there’s a streak of negativity unlikely to surprise those who think Memphis has a self-esteem problem — but here’s a list of some of the better recent songs by local artists that take the city itself, at least in part, as subject:
“Breathe Easy” — Tunnel Clones: In a time of celebration for Stax Records’ 50th anniversary, this local hip-hop crew evokes the past in the service of a defiant lament for what’s been lost: “We put soul on the map/Down the street a couple blocks at a place called Stax/Artists used to make hits now some working for scraps.”
“Drowning” — Reigning Sound: Set “down by the river, under the bridge to Arkansas,” this Greg Cartwright gem is like Bruce Springsteen transferred from the Jersey shore to the banks of the Mississippi.
“Green Street Lullaby (Dark Sad Song)” — Cory Branan: At least half of the local-release version of Branan’s debut album, The Hell You Say, could be on this list. No Memphis songwriter has written about the city better than Branan, and this eloquently depressive examination of local stasis is the hardest medicine: “Copperheads fill all the ditches/The kudzu chokes the trees/Mosquitoes hum like window-units/But you gotta move if you want a breeze.”
“Memphis” — Charlie Wood: Maybe the funniest and most knowing song ever written about the city, by a guy who used to spend seven nights a week banging out blues and jazz on Beale Street and seems like he’s been waiting for years to tell the truth on wax: “What is it about people from out of town?/You feel like you’re on TV when they come around/They say they love it here, they love the atmosphere … They take their lives so literally, they got no sense of irony.”
Charlie Wood
“Memphis City Blues”/”Memphis” — 8Ball & MJG: The stirring “Memphis City Blues” has MJG delivering a variation on the city’s slogan, proclaiming, “I come from a city where the R&B run deep and the blues was the music that paved the whole streets.” The more conventionally hood-repping “Memphis,” which pairs the duo with fellow local rap pioneer Al Kapone, is also more detailed, with 8Ball coming in last to take things to a deeper level: “Orange Mound-born, I was torn out my momma’s womb/Shotgun house, me and momma had the same room.”
“Mouth Shut” — Subteens: Mark Akin has written lots of songs about hanging out in Midtown dives, but this fly-on-the-wall glimpse of tending bar at the Hi-Tone during a Lucero show (“Punk rock girls and Lone Star beer means everyone will run their mouths in here”) is about as Memphis as it gets.
“901 Area Code” — Iron Mic Coalition: This turf-repping posse anthem weighs the good and bad, painting a bleak picture of “Gangland feuds and thrown-away .22s/Three-o’clock roadblock, time for curfew/The children are growing up gone berserk too” before letting the sunshine in with “But that’s one aspect/Here’s another/Those fly girls raised on cornbread and butter.”
“1989”/”East Memphis Girls” — Halfacre Gunroom: This tandem of songs from the lone full-length album by a since-disbanded alt-country band situates a series of love-lost songs in a specific time and place. “1989” looks back at a high-school-era relationship that didn’t last: “He bought you a house right off Poplar/He’s alright, but he ain’t no doctor/I’m sure he makes a mighty fine check/I’m sure he’s everything your momma expected.” And the mocking “East Memphis girls” underscores the geography of class animus, Memphis-style: “East Memphis Girls only want to get married/You better have some money, she don’t care about cool.”
“1620 Echles St.”/”Reasons To Kill” — Lost Sounds: A double shot of bad stuff from a confrontational band’s opus, Black-Wave. Jay Reatard’s outraged “1620 Echles St.” is about watching a neighborhood crumble from the front porch. “Reasons To Kill” is Alicja Trout’s suffer-no-fools civic anti-anthem: “This town is filled with reasons to kill/But everybody wants to play the blues.”
“Thirteens” — Kontrast: A righteous, comic response to the trend of hip-hop songs about expensive, gaudy car rims (T.I.’s “24’s,” Three Six Mafia’s “Ridin’ on Spinners”), Kontrast makes clear their critique is no hometown renunciation with Jason Harris’ opening lines: “Rollin’ down Park Avenue bumping bass/Got that Eightball & MJG Comin’ Out Hard in my system gettin’ played.”
“Tiger High ’85” — The Coach & Four: Singer-guitarist Luke White delivers a charming kid’s-eye remembrance of the University of Memphis’ failed Final Four run in the Keith Lee/Dana Kirk era. White retired the song this season as the team made another bid for history. The fallout would seem to provide fodder for a follow-up lament. No word on whether White has “Tiger High ’08” in the works.
Categories
Back in a Flash
“Music is all I’ve done since I was 15, which is for the last 46 years.”
So says Memphis native David “Flash” Fleishman, who, in the 1960s, fronted rock-and-roll bands Flash & the Memphis Casuals and Flash & the Board of Directors. A decade later, he was hired as a local promotions director for Atlantic Records, when Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones were that label’s top draws. After working his way up the corporate ladder — and into a job at Atlantic’s New York home office — Fleishman relocated to Los Angeles, where he served as vice president of rock promotion for MCA before going independent.
He’s worked with legendary bands ranging from AC/DC to Yes, yet, at age 61, Fleishman’s knee-deep into what he claims as possibly his most exciting project yet: AllMemphisMusic.com, an online radio station he started with former Memphian Jon Scott last year.
Sitting behind his computer in his home office (he and his wife, Jaye, moved back to town in 2004), Fleishman leans back in his chair and smiles. “Here’s our studio,” he says, gesturing to the gold and platinum records lining the walls and a daunting pile of CDs stacked on his butcher-block-style desk.
“Jon called me up one afternoon with the idea, and I thought about it all night. I tried to find the negative, but I couldn’t. The artists get paid via BMI, and it’s positive publicity for Memphis music. It’s an absolute win for everybody involved,” he says of the Internet station, which, via Web server Live365, plays everything from B.B. King and Little Milton to Jimmy Davis and Giant Bear, broadcasts the syndicated Beale Street Caravan radio program, and, through a partnership with the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, promotes events such as Memphis in May, Gonerfest, and this summer’s Stax-centric 50 Years of Soul campaign.
The station’s criteria are simple: music made in Memphis or the Mid-South, music made by Mid-Southerners, or music with a Memphis theme.
“Memphis music is global. The list of countries I see listening is astonishing,” says Scott, who worked as a disc jockey at FM-100 during that station’s progressive-rock heyday, introducing local audiences to David Bowie and ZZ Top before embarking on a career at MCA and ABC Records in L.A.
“We have a lot of transplanted Memphians who listen to us, plus a legion of fans who love the Memphis sound,” he adds. “I don’t think there’s another station in the world like us.”
While Scott says that technological advances and corporate dictums have taken the fun out of terrestrial radio, he says Internet radio “is like the Wild West.”
Fleishman agrees. “It’s interesting times. The Internet has definitely leveled the playing field,” he says. “[Major labels] are in a horrible predicament right now, because their business is dependent on selling albums. Now anybody can make and promote a record. A guy from Missouri, Robert A. Johnson, sent us a letter thanking us for playing his music. He’d been contacted from people in Europe and on the East Coast about playing some shows there.
“We’re promoting heritage, but we also want to expose new artists,” Fleishman continues, explaining that after a year, All Memphis Music is now soliciting advertising, both on-air and via banner ads on its homepage. This Friday, October 5th, the station is also launching a new music show, which will showcase contemporary bands from 11 p.m. to midnight.
Incorporating current genres such as rap and indie rock is imperative to the station’s mission, Fleishman says.
“We can’t play every piece of music we’re sent, but rap is the genre of the day, and it’s Memphis music,” he says. “Sure, we play Otis [Redding] and Elvis [Presley], but there’s so much more than that. We love Nick Pagliari‘s new MADJACK record. Rice Drury, who is, I believe, a dentist, just made a very cool record.”
There is still a Memphis sound, Scott says, listing Keith Sykes, Todd Snider, Paul Thorn, and the North Mississippi Allstars as four purveyors of the style.
“The niche-marketing aspect of it is in my heart,” Scott says. “When I listen to our station online, I’m like, good God, there’s so much talent in Memphis that it boggles my mind. I know I’m prejudiced, but I really love it!”
AllMemphisMusic.com is currently seeking new Memphis music. To get your songs played, send CDs to David Fleishman (9169 Tryon Cove, Memphis, TN 38108) or Jon Scott (5352 Norwich Ave., Sherman Oaks, CA 91411) or e-mail MP3s to AllMemphisMusic@aol.com.