Tag: Memphis Music

The “True” Sons

Post author By Chris Shaw
Post date December 12, 2013

CREDIT: Don Perry

If you’ve ever stumbled into one of the dives on Madison on a Friday or Saturday night, chances are you’ve seen True Sons of Thunder. For the past eight years, the band has been providing the soundtrack to alcohol-fueled nights that usually end with some level of regret. After a strict regimen of playing almost every local punk show, the band finally released their first LP in 2011 through Jeth-Row Records, causing fans of negative noise of all kinds to rejoice. This year has been even more productive for the group, as they released a single on Goner Records and another full-length on Little Big Chief. We sat down with guitarist Joe Simpson to find out more about one of Memphis’ longest-running punk bands.

Flyer: How long has True Sons of Thunder been a band?

Joe Simpson: We started at the end of 2005. I can’t claim to be a founding member because I wasn’t at the first practice, but I was at the second one.

The lineup has stayed pretty constant, but you guys have had a few guest appearances over the years.

I was a guitar player in the band but then I left for six months to live in Ohio and play in the Feelers. In my absence, they got Jeff Gunn to play guitar, and when I came back to Memphis, he stayed in the band, so there were three guitarists. But after three or four months, we kicked Jeff out because he liked Ace Frehley too much.

I feel like there have been other members besides Jeff Gunn.

Tom Potter [of Bantam Rooster] played with us for a while. His wife was snow-birding in Memphis as a physical therapist or something, and he played with us for a few months. Eric Friedl was the one who recruited him to play with us, and I was like, “Really? Tom Potter is going to play with us?” We actually ended up playing a lot of shows with him that winter.

Where did the name come from? It’s a biblical reference isn’t it?

Originally, it was Sons of Thunder, which was [banjitar-playing front man] Richard Martin’s thing, because he’s Episcopalian. I don’t know the biblical reference very well, but I think two of the disciples of Jesus were referred to as the Sons of Thunder because they were rambunctious, righteous dudes. They’d go out and fuck shit up and be wacky and loud and annoying, but they were righteous people. That was how Richard viewed everyone in the band, so we were like, okay, cool.

Then we realized that the band from the movie Airheads was called Sons of Thunder, so we added True to it. There were also a lot of Christian bands that were called Sons of Thunder, so we wanted people to know who the “true” sons of thunder were.

Once we came up with the name and TSOT, we were supposed to make up other names around the acronym, but we never got that far. I think the only one we came up with was TSOTS, which stood for True Sons of the Sixties. We used that name for a show at the P&H, and we covered “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” “House of the Rising Sun,” and other hits. Basically, we didn’t play anything cool.

What aspects of Memphis life do you guys cover with your music?

Drunkenness, disappointment, rage, and confusion. Memphis is all of those things. I love this place; it has everything.

Do you think the city itself has an impact on the band?

We couldn’t do this anywhere else. We are a product of this city. At the same time, our music doesn’t make sense to the people who live here. The funny thing is, people who don’t live here understand what we are doing, but no one here understands it, only we do. That’s been the funniest thing: The people who buy our records don’t live here. But we don’t really care, and maybe that’s the most Memphis thing of all. We don’t give a shit about being liked.

After years without any recordings, you’ve had two LPs and a single come out in the past two years. Is the band going to keep working at this pace?

If people are dumb enough to put out records for us, then yes. It’s not like we weren’t trying to put out a record earlier. We recorded that first record five times before it was released. It took that long to get it sounding right. No one believed that we practiced, but we used to practice once a week. Whether it showed or not, we were really into what we were doing.

My favorite recording session was with Andrew McCalla, and he didn’t even like us as a band. But he knew what it was supposed to sound like, and it finally came out right.

How collaborative is the song writing? Being such a loud band, it seems like everyone gets to leave their mark on a song.

The writing process is completely collaborative. Nobody brings parts to practice. We either do it completely together or we don’t do it. We are like hippies in the fact that we jam. We show up at practice and jam for a while and then something will rise out of the tar, and maybe it’ll be a song and maybe it won’t. It’s kind of like the band Can. It’s all about making it up as you go.

Who comes up with the titles for the songs? Is that also collaborative?

Totally. But it’s usually just some stupid joke. Sam Leimer [bass] has the best ones, and Richard has some gems as well. Richard will spit this stuff out that doesn’t make sense at the time, but it hits you later. Richard is a fucking genius; he’s just encased in a man who acts like a buffoon. He’s been a huge influence on me. He’s the leader whether he wants to be or not.

What Memphis band from the past would you say you guys compare to?

We’re like the Panther Burns, except we’re really loud and ugly. We’re kind of like Los Angeles Smog Division or the Memphis Goons. Something that people think is funny, but it’s not supposed to be. We are like a whole band of Ross Johnsons.

Tags Goner, Memphis Music, True Sons of Thunder

Music Music Features

Shangri-La Turns 25

Post author By Joe Boone
Post date November 28, 2013

This weekend is full of stuff to do in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Shangri-La, a Memphis institution that has taken on many forms: a “flotation tank emporium,” a record store, a welcome center for the world’s music pilgrims, a record label, and a film production company.

Along the way, Shangri-La has become a sort-of Morgan Library of bonkers Memphis culture, serving as a touchstone in the days before the internet and the Stax Museum. In the 1990s, it was a place where everybody who wanted to make records went.

The store at 1916 Madison is hosting a weekend-long anniversary throwdown. From Friday through Sunday, November 29th to December 1st, there will be a sale at the shop with everything 25 percent off. There will be live music in the afternoon with Dead Soldiers. Also playing will be Shangri-La employee and Flyer contributor J.D. Reager, who is only one of many in the record-making community to work at the shop. The Grifters will play at Minglewood Hall’s 1884 Lounge on the night of Saturday the 30th.

In the late 1980s, during a semester in Pomona, California, Sherman Willmott met Eric Friedl, and the two began publishing a ‘zine, in the parlance of the day, called Kreature Comforts. They parted ways, with Friedl going to Boston to work with bands and Willmott famously introducing Memphis to flotation tanks in the shop on Madison. The tanks tanked, but Willmott had another business model in mind.

“As I learned more about Memphis music, it really pointed toward what Ruben Cherry did at Home of the Blues,” Willmott said. “Where the Elvis statue is on Beale Street, he had a record shop and a niche-oriented record label that was strictly R&B with people like Willie Mitchell and the 5 Royales. They didn’t have to be from Memphis, but most of them were. I’m sure it helped promote his record shop as well as making money as a record label. So I wasn’t doing anything new. But it hadn’t been done in a long time.”

“I was up in Boston and not really doing anything,” Friedl said. “So moving to Memphis and working in a record store seemed like a good idea for some reason. Sherman had his flotation-tank business, and even when it was busy, it was dead in there. So, he was into music and started selling records. Sub Pop was taking off, and we got a box of those in and brought some people in. It grew from there. We were selling a bunch of them. There was no other place to get it — maybe Cheapskates at the time. But there was definitely a lack of record stores.”

“In the late ’80s, there was a big explosion of independent labels, what they later called alternative rock,” Willmott said. “There was very little distribution for it in Memphis at the time. Coinciding with that was the local band scene. We wanted to provide a place where people could buy that kind of music, and things just kept growing and exploding in the ’90s with indie rock and the resurgence of independent labels here in Memphis.”

The store spawned not only its own label but was a hub of activity for one-offs and imprints such as Sugar Ditch Records, started by Andria Lisle and Gina Barker in the early 1990s. Scott Bomar, owner of Electraphonic Recording, also worked in the shop. Friedl left the store in 1995 to start his own label, Goner, which spawned its own store in 2004 and a yearly festival.

“We’re proud of Goner because they kind of came out of this,” says current Shangri-La owner Jared McStay, who bought the store in 1999 when Willmott became the curator of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. “We obviously compete with all of these places. But it’s friendly competition. I send people to them every day.”

Before the internet, the store served as a guidepost for musical travelers who today would go to the Stax Museum.

“That was a very exciting aspect of the store and still is to this day,” Willmott said. “I guess it was underground at the time. But there was a niche of music fans who weren’t just into Elvis. They were into Charlie Feathers. Or people who now come to the Stax Museum. Back then you couldn’t even find [Stax Records]. It was either boarded up or torn down.”

“People from all over the world were coming through there,” Scott Bomar said. “I’m trying to think of all the crazy people I met. Courtney Love would come in and ask about Alex Chilton. I learned a lot from the people who would come in from all over the world looking for Memphis music.”

The tourist market has only grown stronger.

“It’s a real big part,” McStay said of that market. “Our local customers are our bread and butter, but we’ve kind of become a tourist destination now. We do well when they come through, and we appreciate them. It’s significant.”

But the local aspect endures in what is a larger community and economy.

“It was a great time to be here,” Friedl said of the local alternative music scene in the ’90s. “When I moved down, I didn’t know anybody besides Sherman. Everybody came through the store. I ended up in the Oblivians. It was a great way to meet people. The Antenna was rocking.”

“Shangri-La was the epicenter,” Bomar said. “It was like going to the library before the internet. That was where you had to go to find out what was going on.”

Tags Grifters, Indie, Memphis Music, Minglewood Hall, Shangri-La, Vinyl

Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Lafayette’s Returning to Overton Square

Post author By Joe Boone
Post date November 27, 2013

CREDIT: Randy Haspel

Randy Haspel

Last week, we learned that Lafayette’s Music Hall will return to Overton Square. Loeb Properties has leased the site of the venerable showcase theater to Beale Street Blues Company. Lafayette’s was short lived but looms large in the mythology of Memphis music.

The club was something of an afterthought for Overton Square developers Ben Woodson, Charlie Hull, Buck Doggrell, Jimmy Robinson, and George Saig. The club was named for legendary bartender Lafayette Draper.

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“I knew them all,” Draper says. “They decided to name the club after me because I was familiar with everybody.”

Draper was not a partner in the bar. Having other jobs, he had to keep his association something of a secret.

“I was working at Sears and Roebuck at the same time. Of course, they were going through the liquor by the drink thing. My general manager [at Sears] wasn’t to happy about liquor by the drink. So I kind of kept a low profile.”

On a side note, Draper furthered his reputation as a pioneer with Lafayette’s Corner when Beale was first developed.

“That was in 1983,” Draper says. “Beale Street hadn’t taken off then. It stayed there until about ’85 or ’86.”

Lafayette’s is famous for booking acts that later went on to huge successes. Billy Joel has credited the club and Memphis for his breakout success. The club was part of a circuit, according to Jerry Swift, who booked local talent for Lafayette’s and opened his own club, the Ritz Music Hall, when Lafayette’s closed in 1975.

The bands that came through were part of a showcase circuit.

“They would start up at the Bottom Line in New York or the Cellar Door in DC,” Swift says. “And then come down the East Coast, the Great Southeast Music Hall in Atlanta, the Exit Inn in Nashville. They’d come in to Lafayette’s and when it closed to my place, the Ritz. Then they’d head to New Orleans and then to Armadillo World Headquarters (in Austin).”

It was another time altogether for music.

“Groups wanted to come here because of the power of FM100 at the time,” Swift says. “If they could get airplay and an add at FM100 — which is what made Billy Joel come back so many times. FM100 was a major powerhouse and AOR. If you got added at FM100, you got added at stations across the Southeast and all across the country.”

Lafayette’s only lasted from 1973 to 1975. But the square endured for a few years after that, leaving an impression on the minds of Memphians who appreciated a place to enjoy themselves.

“It was strange in the fact that it never set out to be a club,” Swift says. “The club never really had managers, etc. They didn’t have a kitchen. It was small, two story. They could max it out around 300 people. It was the ’70s and we had very cooperative state government officials, as well as local mayor Wyeth Chandler. People didn’t crack down on stuff like that. Lafayette’s was kind of an annex to Friday’s. They’d sent someone over there to manage the place, a few bartenders and somebody to book the place. Then it got to taking off.”

Jack Phillips of Beale Street Blues is excited to be moving into the Overton Square resurgence and sees the bar appealing to a wide range of musical patrons. People who have complained about late start times and band P.A. systems will find solace in the plans of the new proprietors.

“We’re still designing the logo,” Phillips says. “I hope to have Tab Beniot and Kermit Ruffin come up. We’re pretty open to what will be playing. Earlier in the evening, we’ll have an acoustical set or a trio, something a little quieter for the dinner crowd. Where people can hear each other talk, bring the kids, and have fun. Later in the evening, it gets a little louder, a little more involved.”

Lafayette Draper is proud to see his name returning to the Square:

“It made me feel good just to use the name. What made me want to do that was … I remember one of the tax collectors in town after I came out of the Navy — my dad was a bartender at the American Legion — he walked up and told me I wouldn’t be a better man than my daddy. I told him I might not be a better man, but I’d be a good man. And I’m going to make my daddy’s name known. That was one of the things that made me go on as strong as I could. I am just so proud of the name Lafayette. Sure am.”

Lafayette Draper has poured drinks for three presidents.

Lafayette Draper has poured drinks for three presidents.

Tags Lafayette's, Memphis Music, Overton Square

Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Memphians in Oxford American Tennessee Music Issue

Post author By Joe Boone
Post date November 21, 2013

The sometimes-existing Oxford American magazine released its Southern Music issue for Tennessee this week. There are some obvious Memphis names and some that make you think they really know our hearts. The track list kicks off with Sid Selvidge’s “That’s How I Got ti Memphis.” It looks like a great playlist. Local musicians include Motel Mirrors, Human Radio, The Bo-Keys, The Grifters, and Van Duren. Obviously, the old guard makes the list too. Have a look after you read the entire Flyer and patronize at least half of our advertisers.

Tags Bo-Keys, Grifters, Human Radio, Memphis Music, Motel Mirrors, Oxford American, Van Duren

Music Record Reviews

New Records

Post author By Joe Boone
Post date November 21, 2013

Leo Welch’s Sabougla Voices is the latest from Big Legal Mess records. It’s gospel blues, a virulent strain of Hill Country religious fervor. Welch is a pastor and the host of Black Gospel Express, a Sunday program in Bruce, Mississippi. He’s 81. There’s a spirit alive in this music all right: the spirit of R.L. and Junior drinking and fishing with the Apostles. Welch’s evangelizing has the two-four jump and growl of the best electric country blues.

After 30 years in the church and working on a logging crew, Welch called the label after learning that Junior Kimbrough had recorded for Big Legal Mess. An intern told him they no longer produced blues. A higher-up overheard the conversation and intervened. The result is an album of 10 tracks that could have come from any of the big names in Hill Country blues aside from the exhortations of praise and the ecclesiastical reflections in the lyrics. It’s some of the dancingest church music you’ll hear outside of a praise break. It would make a fine contribution to any heathen’s Sunday morning Bloody Mary and bacon grease situation.

Leo Welch

Sabougla Voices, available January 7th

(Big Legal Mess)

Another take on the blues and biblical influence comes from longtime Memphis songwriter Ron Jungklas. The Spirit and the Spine has a more twisted take on religiosity and redemption. The opening track, “Black Snake Moan,” paints a picture of a post-religious apocalypse, a tooth-and-claw consideration of human nature. Thundering drums and guitars that sound like dust storms get whipped up into “Automatic,” a Dust Bowl tinged lament for rain as a metaphor for meaningful faith.

Jungklas made a run at the big time in the radio days of the 1980s. He’s taught science at local schools since the 1990s. But he stayed close enough to the fires to heed the call of music. The Spirit and the Spine finds Jungklas mining despair, alienation, and suffering. “Spit” explores the nature of false prophecy and hypocrisy: “I just gathered up some dust, and I spit into my hand … I am the crowing cock, sweet honey in the rock/The poison in the bitter pill.” All of this happens over the unsettling whirring of a filtered drone menacingly throbbing beneath everything.

The sounds on this record signal thematic changes. Mud and smoke clear for “Say Damn,” a bent, electric homecoming: “The loyal opposition in the angel choir.” It’s a gritty, erotic Prodigal Son thing.

Maybe I’m lost in the twister of imagery and this album is not intended to be a pilgrim’s progress through the sex-soaked, anger-spewing, materialistic — yet somehow Christian — culture of the contemporary Bible Belt. But it sure works as one. The Spirit and the Spine is fascinating to listen to, even if it makes you want to put a parental advisory sticker on the Bible.

Rob Jungklas

The Spirit and the Spine

(Madjack Records)

It may be time to work the martini shaker and stare at the moon. If that’s the case, Jeremy Shrader and Ed Finney have got you covered. The Moon Is in Love is a collection of originals and jazz standards from the 1930s. Shrader sings and plays trumpet over Finney’s jazz guitar. The pairing is spare, but it gives them room to play. And do they ever.

The duo’s compositions stand up to some heavy comparisons too. They cover the Gershwins, Berlin, and Rodgers and Hart. The standards give the instruments an opportunity to interplay in a way that’s engaging. The original songs carry the load based on a couple of virtues:

Shrader’s voice bounces along fine on the standards and also keeps up with Finney’s compositional workout in “Lovers in Love.” “Daytime, Nighttime” is a Shrader original that divines the mood and harmonic textures of the age into a masterfully written song. It’s a case study of a golden age in American songcraft.

Shrader’s tune “True” veers off the program a bit with a nod to the 1960s. The song incorporates the virtues of ’30s songwriting but puts an R&B energy behind it. What Finney does on this great set of chord changes is phenomenal. His guitar tone is so full and powerful and his phrasing so precise and lyrical that it’s like watching a rodeo bull dance ballet. You almost can’t believe it.

There is a CD release party at the Cove on Thursday, November 21st.

Jeremy Shrader and Ed Finney

The Moon Is in Love

(Electric Room)

Tags Ed Finney, Jeremy Schrader, Leo Welch, Memphis Music, record reviews, Rob Jungklas

Music Music Features

Due Respect

Post author By Joe Boone
Post date November 14, 2013

Some people irrationally love Memphis. Others irrationally hate Memphis. The truth is that the whole thing is complicated. Memphis can make you cry tears of joy or sorrow with equal ease. It depends on where you’re looking. Stax is one of our holy places and a point of faith. It’s a source of pride, where we can point to people of different races working together. And they did. But the truth is complicated.

Robert Gordon’s new history of Stax Records, Respect Yourself, dives into that complicated story and revels in its complexity. Other books have outlined the story. Gordon fills in detail that brings Stax down from the mountain of ideas and into the human, Memphian realm. This is not idolatry. It’s history.

Inevitably cast in the light of race relations, the Stax story is also a tale of great women: Founder Estelle Axton’s story is moving.

“She just seemed to have a great attitude,” Gordon said in a recent interview. Axton was the Union Planters National Bank employee who, with her brother, not only opened a business in a poor, black neighborhood but also opened the doors of that business to the neighborhood. “Her welcoming spirit had so much to do with the whole label. Not to underplay Jim’s musicality or organizational abilities. Those are all essential. But she was the face out front and helped imbue that spirit into the label.”

Axton’s open-mindedness was essential to the label’s early success. But her fate at the label is one of the hardest parts of the book to read. It’s a great story about women in the workplace and about people living in Memphis. But it’s complicated.

Gordon and I recently drove south to New Park Cemetery in Horn Lake, where Rufus Thomas, Al Jackson Jr., and all but one of the Bar-Kays who died with Otis Redding are buried.

“The Bar-Kays: what a story,” Gordon said. “Their narrative very much shadows the Stax narrative. That was the second tragedy [after the loss of chart-topper Redding]. Their comeback has never stopped. It’s been ongoing. They’ve never stopped pushing to create. I try to give them their due in the book, because they have never stood still creatively.”

The loss of Redding and all but two of the Bar-Kays is well told. It’s primary-source history, but it never gets dry. The tale of an integrated label in the South finding huge success with an integrated talent roster is thrilling. The loss of Stax’s shining star and the kids he nurtured is still raw in the telling. And that’s where this book succeeds: in taking the names out of the museums and liner notes and giving them their full due.

“Have you ever seen that footage of them performing with Otis?” Gordon asked. “That is like 36 hours before the accident. You look at all of that energy onstage. You just think there’s no way it could ever be terminated. Can you imagine being at the label? Isaac Hayes, I remember him saying that he couldn’t create for a year. That he just shut down. I imagine that you would be stunned. The sense of promise. The sense of a new generation. And to have it ripped from your guts. So many of them were still teenagers. Matthew Kelly was 17. One of the preachers at the funeral said, ‘It’s a strange phenomenon. These guys are experiencing sunset at the morning of their lives.’ Oh my God. It’s so true.”

For Memphis history buffs, the business side of the story is essential reading. One central tenet of the Stax mythology is the financial mismanagement of the label. This is another place where complexity beggars the myth. There was arguably more mismanagement among the white bankers at Union Planters Bank who financed label operations than there was at Stax. The major labels were no help either. This part of the book really works and sets the book on your shelf beside Hampton Sides’ Hellhound on His Trail. The books complement one another. Gordon’s work on union leader T.O. Jones and the sanitation workers’ strike adds context to the Stax story. That context is missing from Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music, which was only partly about Stax.

Some of the grittier aspects of the Stax story gave Gordon pause. Johnny Baylor was Stax’s distribution man. His tactics were illegal on several fronts, but he broke open new markets one after the other whether it involved a handshake or a pistol. Baylor’s story makes for fascinating reading.

“I worried a little bit about that,” Gordon said. “The gangster thing is such an attractive idea now. But in the end, I had to think that’s what happened. I have to stick to what happened. At one point I remember thinking: Will the kids at Stax Academy want to be reading about Johnny Baylor? Maybe I should be writing a different book.

“But in this book, Johnny Baylor is part of what happened. A pretty brutal man. I think representative of a certain period of business. Especially in distribution … distribution of all things. Not just records. Who was Motown’s guy like that? I don’t know, but I know that there was one. So that part of the industry doesn’t get talked about so much.”

Respect Yourself succeeds by talking about the hard stuff. But that’s what makes the sweet stuff so meaningful.

Robert Gordon will read from and sign Respect Yourself at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music on Saturday, November 16th, beginning at 5 p.m.; at Burke’s Book Store on December 19th; and at the Booksellers at Laurelwood on December 20th.

Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion

By Robert Gordon

Bloomsbury, 384 pp., $30

Tags Memphis Music, Respect Yourself, Robert Gordon, Stax Museum of American Soul Music

Music Music Features

Justin Timberlake at FedExForum

Post author By Joe Boone
Post date November 14, 2013

Years ago, I wrote some unkind things about J.T. in this paper. When Justin Timberlake decided to base his record label operations in L.A., it seemed, well, un-Memphian. But, boy, has that changed.

In the decade since, Timberlake has capitalized the Mirimichi Golf Course in Millington and ponied up like a boss to represent Memphis in the roster of local Grizzlies ownership. He closed out his fifth stint hosting Saturday Night Live wearing a Griz T-shirt and a Tigers hat. Time for me to shut up.

Say what you will about him being a Mouseketeer, ‘N Sync member, or Britney’s thang, Timberlake was part of Mammon’s entertainment machine because of his undeniable talents. The guy is as funny as any cast member on SNL, and word is he hits his parts in one take when he’s in the studio. Elvis won three Grammys. Timberlake has six. Let that bounce around under your mouse ears.

His latest visionary move is The 20/20 Experience, an album in two parts. The first installment debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200. It sold nearly a million copies in its first week. The second installment arrived in late September. Critical reviews were mixed. But did those critics wear Tiger hats on SNL? No, they did not. So they can all go to hell.

Welcome home, J.T.

Justin Timberlake’s 20/20 Experience World Tour comes to FedExForum on Monday, November 18th. Tickets available at ticketmaster.com.

Tags FedExForum, Justin Timberlake, Memphis Music