It’s Friday. Put on your soul cape and show the world what it’s been missing!
The Bar-Kays at Minglewood Hall:
Sound Advice: Friday, April 4th (2)
Carrie Nation & the Speakeasy at Newby’s:
Carrie Nation & the Speakeasy – 13 Riders from KMUW FM89 on Vimeo.
Sound Advice: Friday, April 4th
Spirit Carvan at the Hi-Tone
Sound Advice: Friday, April 4th (3)
Three Days Grace is coming to Minglewood Hall on Thursday, April 17th. These Canadians are certified-platinum. Get your tickets starting Friday, February 21st, at minglewoodhall.com or see below.
Three Days Grace at Minglewood: On Sale Friday
My band is playing. You should go.
When I met my bosses at the Flyer, I mentioned that I play music and that eventually there might be a conflict of interest. Well, the mother of all conflicts of interest is here. I play bass in three groups right now. Two of them, Big Ass Truck and Alicja Trout, are playing with Sons of Mudboy on Thursday night at Minglewood Hall to commemorate the local run of Meanwhile in Memphis, a documentary film about the local music scene. You should go.
Big Ass Truck began in the winter of 1992. I left in 1995. But most of the others didn’t. They soldiered on through the rest of the decade. In doing so, Big Ass Truck released five records and developed a fan base that spanned the country. The quality of the recordings and the high level of musicianship spoke to a lot of people over the years. Younger people revere the band in ways that still amaze me. Andrew VanWyngarden of MGMT has cited Big Ass Truck and Steve Selvidge as influences. Half of the members of my other extremely cool band, the Knights Arnold, were fans of Big Ass Truck and would probably not play with me if I had not been a member.
Steve started it. Selvidge had a gig at the Antenna and no band to back him. He was a kid. And, as guitar shaman Rod Norwood will tell you, exactly the type of punk to hoodwink Antenna boss Mark McGehee into giving him a spot even though he was a bandless child.
Steve had the good sense to call Alex Greene, who had played keyboards with smart, important people like Tav Falco and Alex Chilton. Robert Barnett had played drums with eventual Grammy nominee Stephan Crump and founding member of Galactic Rob Gowen. Steve also demonstrated the family brains in getting his friend and creative supervolcano Robby Grant to come on board.
I met Steve a year earlier in a since-destroyed building across from Midtown Huey’s. Winston Eggleston invited me to jam with Steve and Senegal-based math whiz/synthesizer maniac Shelby Bryant. Was it instant magic? I can’t remember. But I’m glad Steve called me a few months later.
Steve’s next move was his Black Swan. Colin Butler is a DJ. But he’s a special sort of DJ: He has a sense of Memphis and a sense of humor that set us apart. He and Greene added dimension that defined our sound and was essential to our success. Any critical references to soul or hip-hop stem from the turntables and the keyboards. They gave us the bigger sound and wider palette we heard from Al Green at Royal Studios and the Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal records.
That first night at the Antenna was terrifying. We played some covers and jammed. I can’t recall any reaction from the audience. But we were fun people with lots of friends, so we were a draw. That got us more gigs and kept us practicing.
Those Antenna shows and the early days in our second home at Proud Larry’s in Oxford are fond memories of really fun times. While bands like the Grifters were being aesthetically brilliant, we were having unmitigated, shirtless (sometimes pantless) fun on stage and around the country. That bothered some serious-minded people. But plenty of people were into the party. Big Ass Truck was a hardworking good-times A-team.
Andria Lisle and Gina Barker (now married to Bryant) ran a record label called Sugar Ditch out of Shangri-La Records. They agreed to put out an EP. Steve led us over to Sam Phillips Recording, where we had the privilege of working with Roland Janes. I’m still proud of those recordings. We liked recording and started experimenting in production with help from Paul Ringger, Posey Hedges, and Ross Rice.
Greene introduced us to the writer Robert Gordon, who had the sense, initiative, and connections to get us a record deal. I remember sitting on the porch of Harry’s across from Ardent with Jake Guralnick saying we could make a real album. That was a special night.
In 1994, I was working at Ardent Studios as a cat dung removal specialist. The studio gave us a deal, and we settled in for a week with Rice, Erik Flettrich, and Pete Matthews. The result was Kent, our first full-length album. We named it Kent after a friend. His name is Kent.
That album represents something of a lost art. We didn’t use computers. Tape is a taskmaster. I remember one grueling dawn when Ross was cajoling me to stay awake during the overdubs of Chris Parker’s “Thermopolis.” We put everything we had into that record.
When Kent came out, we went on the road. I hated touring; so I quit. Within a month, I got fired from Ardent and went back to school. For the next few years it was hard to watch as the band started touring in glamorous places: They played Red Rocks in Colorado and appeared on MTV, which is a thing that used to put music programs on the television set.
The Big Ass Truck bassist job became the Spinal Tap-drummer thing: Subsequent bassists included Lucero’s John Stubblefield, Paul Taylor, Jon Griffin, Dros Liposcak, and Robby’s brother, Grayson Grant.
Big Ass Truck made three more records and amassed a network of fans and friends from coast to coast. Our bandmate and road manager Mike Smith got so good at touring that he went on to manage tour logistics for Widespread Panic. We never would have made it out of the Antenna with out Mike.
But, really, we’re all old and gross now. So we’re grateful that Meanwhile directors Robert Allen Parker and Nan Hackman asked us to play. I’m appreciative of the work the others did and thankful the band called me. It’s not as easy as it was 20 years ago: I can’t remember the songs, my hands are numb, and I can’t wear cool shoes for any extended period.
It’s been fun connecting with old friends and hearing from people who shared our good times. I’m sure the other members have things to say, but they are not the music editor of this paper. Plus, I need to use the remaining space to brag about the Knights Arnold. We are the next big deal. Trust me.
The Ingram Hill guy can sing. Have a look at this playlist full of the band playing massive radio hits in somebody’s living room. They have the voice and the sense to play songs that will make fools dance with their ladies. That’s all we can ask. Good job, Ingram Hill. You have our support.
Those Allstars stay busy. The Brothers Dickinson recently returned from a European tour promoting their latest record, World Boogie Is Coming. They will play their Thanksgiving homecoming show on Friday, November 29th, at Minglewood Hall. But that’s not the half of it. The North Mississippi Allstars have partnered with the Mid-South Food Bank to gather the goods. You can bring canned food (check the date) and take a selfie at the donation desk to be part of the Food Bank’s online photo album of helpful blues fans. Don’t go missing from that. We’ll be looking for you.
Think the Allstars are through packing this night with excitement? WRONG. The band announced that the concert will be filmed for release on DVD, and the crew will be 100 percent local, according to Cody Dickinson’s Facebook page. As far as the concert is concerned, there will be plenty of surprises as special guests are lined up to join the Allstars onstage. Even if the guests were 100 percent local, this would be something to see, given the brothers’ recent two-month stint at Minglewood under the Sons of Mudboy aegis. That band, a second-generation continuation of father Jim Dickinson’s legendary outfit with Sid Selvidge, Lee Baker, and national treasure Jimmy Crosthwait, rounded up a who’s who of contemporary Memphis players: Harry Peel, Al Gamble, George Sluppick, Paul Taylor, and others. Who needs out-of-towners?
Another point of interest: Pay attention to Luther’s guitar. The elder Dickinson brother was paid a tremendous honor last year when Gibson introduced the Luther Dickinson ES-335. The 335 is an essential blues tool: B.B. King’s Lucille is a 335. Chuck Berry? Yep. Orbison and John Lee Hooker too. Gibson let Luther add details to the design, including a block inside the frame to cut down on feedback, a Bigsby tremolo, and the paint. That paint job was copied from Father Jim’s 335 and enters the official Gibson palette of colors as “Dickinson Burst.” Wow.
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.”
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.
Fuzzy, psychedelic folk is all the rage these days. Nobody’s complaining. Who wouldn’t like pensive lyrics, fuzzed-out guitars, and galaxy-size reverb halls? At some point, young bands stopped gently hitting xylophones and baby-whispering (think every commercial c. 2010-12) and just got plain-old freaky. This is a good development.
It would be easy to link them all back to Syd Barrett and Marc Bolan. And, sure, the bearded vanguard would cite them as influences. But there were steps along the way. One of those touchstones is Neutral Milk Hotel. Before Tame Impala and Unknown Mortal Orchestra, there was Neutral Milk Hotel.
Members of the scene associated with the Elephant 6 Recording Company, the band formed in the 1990s around the peripatetic lifestyle and cassette aesthetic of Jeff Mangum. Mangum’s experimental mixtapes gained notoriety and led to the band’s first LP, On Avery Island in 1996. 1998’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea was based on the life of Anne Frank.
The band went on hiatus in 1998 and returned to live performance in April of this year. Over the decade-and-a-half of inactivity, their music was covered by Bon Iver and Mountain Goats. — Joe Boone
Neutral Milk Hotel with Elf Power at Minglewood Hall on Friday, October 18th, at 9 p.m.
Tomorrow night (Thursday, September 19) British singer-songwriter Glenn Tilbrook makes a rare Memphis-area appearance at the 1884 Lounge at Minglewood Hall.
Tilbrook is undoubtedly best known for his work fronting the alternative/power-pop outfit Squeeze, who scored several big hits in the 80s, including “Take Me I’m Yours,” “Up The Junction,” and “Tempted.” But throughout his long career, Tilbrook has made several fine recordings outside of the Squeeze moniker, both as a solo artist and part of the duo Difford & Tilbrook.
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Here’s Tilbrook with his new band performing another of Squeeze’s more well-known songs, “Goodbye Girl,” just two weeks ago in Philadelphia:
Also on the bill is Joe Michelini of the band River City Extension. Here’s a clip from last year of Michelini and Tilbrook performing a River City Extension song together:
Glenn Tilbrook w/ Joe Michelini
Thursday, September 19, 8 p.m.
1884 Lounge (at Minglewood Hall)
$18