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Music Music Features

Local Record Roundup

From Frayser-born rapper Kia Shine to world-renowned opera star Kallen Esperian, there are plenty of new Memphis-centric albums in the bins this summer.

Shine’s major-label debut, Due Season, cut with the assistance of Shine’s Rap Hustlaz partner, Jack Frost, was released last week on Universal Records. You’ll hear a reprise of “Stunna Frames” and “Respect My Fresh,” but newer songs such as “Krispy” and “Bluff City Classic” should keep Due Season spinning on your CD player for months to come.

Lover Come Back, Esperian’s most recent pop foray, features a dozen torch songs, ranging from a cover of Edith Piaf‘s “La Vie en Rose” to a riveting take on “Stormy Weather,” backed by cellist Jonathan Kirkscey, pianist Tony Thomas, and bassist Jonathan Wires. The masterful Lover Come Back, cut with a 24-piece orchestra conducted by local arranger Sam Shoup, was actually released on the Goose Hollow label in 2005; last month, Esperian relaunched the critically acclaimed album via online retailers CD Baby, iTunes, and Amazon.

Organist Charlie Wood, one of the many underrated performers around town, released Charlie Wood and the New Memphis Underground, an album that taps into this city’s dual legacy of blues and soul, on local label Daddy-O Records in mid-June. Accompanied by guitarist Joe Restivo, saxman Kirk Smothers, trumpeter Marc Franklin, harp player Billy Gibson, and vocalist Tamara Jones, Wood serves up 10 scorching originals and four well-chosen covers, including a propulsive take on Booker T. & the MGs‘ “Boot-Leg.” Covering a tune made famous by the Memphis-born king of the Hammond B-3, Booker T. Jones, is a ballsy move, but Wood pulls it off with panache.

He’s not technically a local boy, but country-music mainstay Billy Burnette — son of Memphis guitarist Dorsey Burnette, one-third of the legendary Rock ‘n’ Roll Trio — returns to his roots with his latest project, The Bluegrass Elvises Vol. 1, which is slated for release on the American Roots label on August 16th, the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death. On the CD, a laid-back, yet brilliantly played collaboration with Shawn Camp, Burnette romps through a baker’s dozen of Elvis hits, reinterpreting them in traditional bluegrass style. As a concept album, it works, and since Dorsey Burnette and his brother Johnny schooled Presley in his licks when they were all living in the Lauderdale Courts housing project, Billy Burnette’s family history comes full circle.

With assistance from the Makeshift Music collective, Shabbadoo (the brainchild of Joey Pegram of Two Way Radio and Joint Chiefs fame) released a sixth album, Pajama, earlier this summer. A mix of psychedelic jams, electronica tidal waves, and soul-searching riffs, Pajama — released on Pegram’s Minivan label — is available at Midtown indie stores Shangri-la and Goner, or via Shabbadoo’s MySpace page, MySpace.com/ShabbadooBand.

Former Memphian Greg Cartwright regrouped with The Detroit Cobras for Tied & True, released on Bloodshot Records this spring. While garage fans have developed a love ’em or hate ’em attitude (bred, most likely, by the apathy of lead vocalist Rachel Nagy), the Detroit Cobras rock on Tied & True, their fourth collection of obscure R&B covers. Versions of Irma Thomas’ “The Hurt’s All Gone” and Garnet Mimm’s “As Long As I Have You” will tide you over until the next Reigning Sound album drops, hopefully before the end of the year.

With Party Dudes, released on the Arizona-based New Art School label last month, Jackson, Mississippi, garage rockers Tuff Luvs serve up a helluva fun album. Now the quartet — co-vocalists and guitarists Mike Rushing and Carey Miller, bassist Brad Walker, and drummer Murph Caicedo — is in the midst of its first West Coast tour, which will bring the group back to Memphis in mid-September. And Oxford’s irrepressible Tyler Keith & the Preacher’s Kids finally have a new one out: The Devil’s Hitlist, recorded at Easley-McCain Recording Studio and at Tweed Recording Studio in Oxford. The best unsigned band in this neck of the woods, the Preacher’s Kids opted to release The Devil’s Hitlist, which features crowd pleasers such as the Who-inspired “Ghost Rider,” the punk anthem “I Wanna Be a Lost Cause,” and the fiery “Blow You a Kiss,” on their own. Be sure to pick up a copy when the Preacher’s Kids play Gonerfest next month.

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We Recommend We Recommend

The Real Thing

The Mississippi Delta tends to be still and quiet. But when the Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival comes to Clarksdale, no one can keep from tapping their feet.

Mississippi’s largest blues and gospel festival celebrates its 20th anniversary this year with artists including Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle (pictured), Billy Rivers, and the Angelic Voices of Faith.

“Last year, I think we had 17 countries and 35 states come,” publicist Panny Mayfield says.

This year’s performers include the Norwegian band Spoonful of Blues, which features 2007 Norwegian Grammy Award winner Rita Engedalen.

“They have a kindred feeling with the musicians of the Mississippi Delta blues,” Mayfield says of Spoonful of Blues. “They consider Clarksdale the cradle of the blues. They revere Mississippi and the Delta.”

Mayfield adds that the festival is free to attend and run solely by volunteers: “We spend the whole year writing grants and seeking donations. The reason we don’t charge is that the music started here. There are people who could not afford to come otherwise.”

Sunflower River Blues differs from other blues festivals because it showcases pure blues, according to Mayfield. “It’s the real thing. It’s the purest blues festival in America,” she says. “You’ll hear lots of musicians you’re not going to hear anywhere else. They’re all somehow connected to the state of Mississippi.”

As for the volunteer coordinators, Mayfield says, “We’re a bunch of people who love the blues. We range from lawyers to prison guards to librarians. The blues holds it together.”

Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival, Clarksdale, Mississippi, Friday-Sunday, August 10th-12th. Free.

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Art Art Feature

From Darkness and Light

For his exhibition of recent work at Perry Nicole Fine Art, John McIntire transforms smooth, cool stone into sexual icons, fertility fetishes, and sacrificial gods. Many of McIntire’s marble sculptures are complex syntheses of primal power and grace.

Voodoo Something to Me turns Belgian black marble into a two-foot-tall Venus of Willendorf with fertile bellies carved on her truncated body. Aztec Dreamer is a haunting composite of desert mystic, abstract masterwork, and sacrificial god. This large, supine figure with curved spine could be a yoga devotee practicing an advanced pose, a Buddha kicking back for a good belly laugh, or one of Henry Moore’s reclining figures. The title and posture of the piece also evoke Chac Mull, the Toltec god on whose belly humans were sacrificed.

In one of the most poignant and powerful works of his career, McIntire embodies Marilyn Monroe in white Georgia marble. Beneath a luminous floor-length sheath, we can just make out the sleek contrapposto figure with arched right foot on the verge of spinning across the gallery floor. Marilyn wraps her arms around her upper torso and forehead — an attempt, perhaps, to comfort herself or to better integrate mind/body/heart. With five feet of curvaceous white marble, McIntire brings to life the complex blond bombshell who counted playwrights and presidents as confidants, the comedienne who starred in some of the classics of American cinema, the aging ingénue who overdosed on drugs, and the Hollywood sex symbol who needed more.

At Perry Nicole Fine Art through August 15th

Anthony Lee’s American Out-Caste

Another visionary artist, Kurt Meer, immerses himself in alchemical and esoteric texts. Instead of turning dross into gold, in the exhibition “Voyage” at L Ross Gallery, Meer accomplishes something more personal and profound. He takes us downriver toward sunset in a body of work that attunes us to the subtlest of stimuli, baptizes us with light, and at the end the journey, eases us into night.

In Voyage I, river mist acts as a prism turning sunset into rainbow. Melon bleeds into teal into indigo into violet. White-hot yellow radiates from the center of the painting, creating a bowl of light that washes over and through the viewer.

In Voyage II, we move closer to the winding river, whose surface mirrors the sunset. No neons, no street lights, no strobes — above and below we are immersed in soft halos of light. The painting Solace brings us to the final bend in the river where Meer’s shadows are as nuanced as his colors. Earth’s edges dissolve into mist and darkening sky, palest peach streaks across the middle of the painting, and our own edges begin to blur. Still moving downriver, the last trace of color fades, as Meer enfolds us into the soft blanket of night.

At L Ross Gallery through August 31st

Anthony Lee’s vibrant colors, splashes of paint, and glossy surfaces bring to mind carnivals and the sunny beaches of Hawaii and St. Croix, islands where the artist has lived. In his exhibition “Under the Sun” at the Memphis Brooks Museum, Lee’s strongest paintings don’t depict tropical playgrounds but are, instead, scenes of hard labor, broiling suns, and the endless cycles of poverty.

In American Out-Caste, three large men lumber toward a livery stable that stood on Main Street in Memphis in the early 1900s. A fiery glow illuminates horses, wagons, and the stable, which are back-dropped by splatters of red paint and a silhouette of Memphis’ current skyline. A white-hot sun shines above the stooped right shoulder of one of the men. We can’t see his face. He could be looking for work, any kind of work, or this could be a showdown at high noon by men armed only with rakes and hoes.

Another punishing sun hovers above the heads of sharecroppers, circa 1930s, toiling with crude tools beneath skyscrapers in Work Ethic. The only thing unrestricted in Unrestricted are broiling temperatures. In this Dante-esque painting, faces floating in saturate red look stupefied by the heat.

In Mary and Son, 19th-century cotton pickers are also backdropped by heat and 21st-century architecture. Acrid greens glow around the heads of a mother and her son, who is strapped down with a large sack of cotton. The fetid halos suggest both polluted environment and tainted sacrifice. As more Americans fall below the poverty line, as generation after generation of the urban poor, undocumented migrant workers, and subsistence farmers are consigned to lives of quiet desperation, Lee’s 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century field hands become powerful portraits of poverty repeating itself.

At Memphis Brooks Museum of Art through August 12th

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Music Music Features

Black and Wyte

With their much anticipated post-Oscar follow-up album Last 2 Walk delayed until December, Three 6 Mafia masterminds DJ Paul and Juicy J are keeping their Hypnotize Minds empire afloat with a couple of recent satellite releases: Lil Wyte’s The One and Only and Crunchy Black’s From Me to You, both produced by the Three 6 duo.

The One and Only is the third studio album from Wyte, the group’s pale-skinned, Frayser-bred protégé, and the first since 2004’s Phinally Phamous.

Wyte is actually Hypnotize Minds’ most polished MC, if not its most thoughtful lyricist. (That title would go to fellow “Bay Area” product Frayser Boy.) Lil Wyte spits with a sure, rapid flow, best heard here on “That’s What’s Up,” where he explodes at the outset: “I was born a good ole Southern boy with money up on my mind/Took a thought turned it into a rhyme/And now I do this shit all the time/Purple lean in my cup, I go with a blunt and dro up in my mouth/And I feel Pimp C. and Bun B. when say y’all need to quit hatin’ on the South.”

The regionalism on that verse locates Wyte’s anger and defiance in something specific and identifiable, but the rest of The One and Only doesn’t fare as well. It showcases an MC almost completely devoid of humor. Wyte’s celebrated patrons have been lightening up of late, but their charge seems to be overcompensating for his skin color by constantly proving how hard he is. By contrast, Houston rap honky Paul Wall gets to crack jokes, and a sense of humor was always one of Eminem’s greatest gifts.

The single “I Got Dat Candy” is a transparent attempt at piggy-backing on Wall-style auto anthems like “Drive Slow” and “Sittin’ Sideways.” Where Wall delights in his candy-coated conspicuous consumption, however, Wyte is compelled to turn even a boast about a Life Saver-colored car into a growling act of menace.

This relentless aggression wears you down when it never seems to be about anything except the artist’s (perceived) personal aggrievement. The production is solid but doesn’t exhibit the growth Three 6 has shown on their own recent releases. Paul and J are presumably saving any new “Stay Fly”s for their own forthcoming album. And though the vocal flow is more than solid, the sameness — in tone and content — gets tiresome.

If Lil Wyte is seemingly a valued member of the Hypnotize Minds camp — one whom Paul and J are grooming for a breakthrough — the same can’t be said for Crunchy Black. Long a sinister, mysterious sidekick in Three 6 proper, Crunchy Black was the first casualty of the group’s post-Oscar success, parting ways with the group due to a disagreement over finances and the direction of Crunchy’s solo career.

As such, Crunchy Black had little say over the release of From Me to You, which was apparently pulled together by Paul and J from recordings Crunchy made while still in the duo’s good graces. Crunchy’s own self-directed solo effort is expected in the coming year.

From Me to You is, like all Hypnotize Minds product, produced by Paul and J, its 11 new tracks filled out with five “screwed” remixes, which slow down tracks already on the album.

As an MC, Crunchy is either incompetent or an acquired-taste original, depending on your perspective, and I find myself coming around to the latter. Though long a Three 6 bit player, he’s responsible for the most artfully frightening moment in the Three 6 catalog with his unnervingly amoral sing-songy essay on “the money and power” to close out Project Pat’s single “Don’t Save Her.” If nothing else, Crunchy’s flow is, like Lil Wyte’s quick-lipped aggression, a worthy aural change of pace from the typical Three 6-style chanted vocals.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing on From Me to You that matches the gravity of Crunchy’s “Don’t Save Her” verse or even the colorfulness of his persona.

The opening “Do Da Crunchy Black” is, sadly, not really the gangsta-walk instructional the title suggests. I had visions of a local counterpart to “The Humpty Dance” until the song opened with a humorless call-and-response where groups of men and women hector each other. (“You can have that bitch/I don’t love that bitch,” etc. Not exactly as fun as getting busy in a Burger King bathroom.)

On the other hand, Crunchy Black does use the song as a vehicle to promise to “act a fool” on behalf of his hometown. Unfortunately, most of the city’s political class has beat him to it. Quit slipping in the game, Crunchy!

Nor is “Black on Black” the daring, envelope-pushing, critical self-examination the title suggests. It’s just a description — I think — of his ride. No candy colors for Crunchy, unless black licorice counts. At least he’s more original than Lil Wyte in this regard.

Elsewhere, From Me to You amounts to a depressingly limited vision of the boundaries of the artist’s self-described lifestyle, detailing his drug habits (“Three Different Kinds of Weed”), sexual proclivities (“Suck on the Straw”), relationships with women (“I play bitches for these riches/I’m tryin’ get whatever I can out these bitches,” from “I Play Bitches,” which seems to be a heartwarming tale of turning an abused woman into a prostitute), and other extracurricular activities (lashing out at “Snitchin’ Azz Bitches,” potentially with his “Twin 45s”).

Judging by these releases, maybe Three 6 really does need some new artists, as they themselves suggest on the “Outro” to The One and Only, or at least to hurry up with Last 2 Walk.

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Music Music Features

Return of the Klitz

Los Angeles had the Go-Go’s and the Runaways. New York had the Angels and the Shangri-Las. In Memphis, during a certain era, the most talked about girl group was The Klitz. The band — with Lesa Aldridge, Gail Clifton, Marcia Clifton, and Amy Gassner (billed as Kerry, Darla, Candy, and Envy Klitz, respectively) — sprang onto the Midtown scene in 1978 and quickly worked its way into local rock-and-roll lore. Alex Chilton, Aldridge’s boyfriend and creative partner, served as their impresario and helped the band land early gigs at clubs such as Trader Dick’s, the Hot Air Balloon, and Lafayette’s Music Hall.

Although the Klitz (the name, Aldridge insists, is German slang for “pistol”) are often remembered as Memphis’ first punk group, that honor actually belongs to The Malverns, an earlier band that Gail Clifton formed with Ross Johnson, Matt Diana, and Eric Hill. Aldridge, however, holds the key to the city’s punk legacy. The daughter of a Presbyterian minister, she was reared in Mississippi, on the East Coast, and in Europe. At 18, she was immortalized in a William Eggleston photograph (they’re cousins), shot the night before she left for her freshman year at Sarah Lawrence. In her early 20s, Aldridge returned to Memphis and rented an apartment across the street from Ardent Studios. (The Cramps crashed there while they recorded Songs the Lord Taught Us.) She was also, along with sister Holliday, an inspiration for Big Star‘s Third album, also called Sister Lovers.

“It was a racy time [in Memphis], but I think the Klitz fit right in,” Aldridge says today. “I don’t think we thought about it in those days, outside of the sheer joy of expressing ourselves. I’d played piano since I was 8 and guitar since I was 13. I’d also traveled a lot, and although I think I knew Memphis was provincial, I felt like we were the hub, because all these bands like the Cramps were coming here to be with us.”

“I’d broken up with my boyfriend and was crying on Lesa’s and Alex’s shoulders,” Gail Clifton says of the Klitz’ beginnings. “We started practicing at a boathouse, and our first gig was at the Midtown Saloon in 1978. We were hanging out with the in crowd. The Scruffs influenced me a whole lot, and I think we knew that Alex was something special.”

By ’79, the Klitz had traveled to New York for gigs at Irving Plaza and CBGBs, garnered a write-up in Rolling Stone, and entered Sam Phillips Recording Studio to cut an album with Chilton and Jim Dickinson at the helm. An extremely limited-release single on Jim Blake‘s Barbarian label surfaced, but by the start of the next decade, the Klitz were history.

Aldridge moved to New Jersey and formed a band called Missy & the Men before relocating to Nashville, having three kids, and ultimately teaching English in the public school system. Gail Clifton majored in art history and print-making at the University of Memphis, raised two children of her own, and embarked on a career as a sales consultant.

In 2005, the two staged a mini-reunion of the Klitz with Marcia Clifton. Now, they’ve reformed the group with bassist Stephanie Swindle (Chess Club) and drummer Angela Horton (The Satyrs, Dan Montgomery).

“Before now, I’d come to town and we’d record things. Now we try to get together on weekends and school breaks. I will say that I have not considered moving back here, but [Memphis] is a wonderful town to visit,” Aldridge says.

Local musician Greg Roberson (formerly of The Reigning Sound) has plans to escort the group into Rocket Science Audio later this summer, where they’ll record a new album with studio engineer Kyle Johnson.

After a show in Oxford, Mississippi, last weekend, the Klitz are ready to take the stage at the Hi-Tone Café Friday, July 27th, with Jack Oblivian and Kid Twist. Showtime is 9 p.m. Admission is $7.

“We’ve got some happening songs,” Aldridge says, “and we’re tight and fun to look at.”

When asked if they’d like to see any familiar faces in the audience, Gail Clifton says, “Alex, of course, but I know it’s different for Lesa.”

Aldridge rolls her eyes and says, “Don’t do a ‘we’ on that one!”

For more on the Klitz’ back-story, pick up a copy of Rob Jovanovic‘s Big Star: The Story of Rock’s Forgotten Band or Robert Gordon‘s seminal It Came From Memphis. Also be sure to tune into WKNO Channel 10 on Wednesday, August 1st, when Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story, which was co-produced by Gordon, airs on Great Performances.

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Music Music Features

Hooked

As curator of the first Memphis Pops Festival, happening Saturday, July 28th, at the Hi-Tone Café, Shangri-La Projects owner Sherman Willmott has assembled a lineup of past, present, and future talent that showcases a genre sometimes overlooked when Memphis music is discussed. With the legacy of blues, soul, and rock-and-roll looming over the city’s music history, Memphis’ contribution to the pop genre tends to be neglected. And by “pop,” I mean pop rock, power-pop, and the garage or punk variations of pop. I do not mean Survivor.

A cursory survey of Memphis pop would probably begin with the Box Tops, where a teenaged Alex Chilton led his band through such ’60s hits as “The Letter” and “Cry Like a Baby.” That band helped launch a scene in the ’70s that included Chilton’s classic cult band Big Star, the Hot Dogs, Cargoe, the Scruffs, Tommy Hoehn, Van Duren, Chilton’s solo career, and Calculated X. It might also include the late ’80s/early ’90s when nascent incarnations of the Simpletones and the Grifters were putting their own twisted spin on pop. But another key band in the history of Memphis pop was the Crime.

The Crime’s heyday was ’80 through ’84, when they released the “Do the Pop” single and the 12-inch EP Crash City USA. Headlining the Memphis Pops Festival are Crime founders Jeff Golightly and Rick Camp, reunited in the form of the new band Everyday Parade, which recently wowed a small crowd at the Buccaneer and should certainly prove to be a highlight of the evening. A brand-new set of Everyday Parade material will be released on CD later this year.

Another surprise on the comeback trail is the Tim Lee 3, featuring the founding member of ’80s jangle-pop stalwarts the Windbreakers. The advance tracks from the band’s upcoming album sound like outtakes from the Dream Syndicate’s classic ’80s album The Days of Wine and Roses.

Yesterday and today: the Crime and Everyday Parade

Representing a younger generation at the Memphis Pops Festival is a who’s who from the hooky end of the local indie scene.

Though currently based in Brooklyn, Viva L’American Death Ray Music for years used various Memphis bars to craft and tighten an evolving, catchy post-punk sound that puts most of their new neighbors to shame. Death Ray is another band on the bill that will be gracing the world with a new album sometime soon.

Antenna Shoes is the rare case of a “supergroup” equaling the sum of its parts, with Steve Selvidge, Paul Taylor, and members of Snowglobe knocking out widescreen power-pop like it’s a walk to the drugstore. The band is currently shopping around a debut album.

Vending Machine’s King Cobras Do, released back in February, is hands-down this writer’s favorite local record in recent memory. Backing Robby Grant for Saturday’s Vending Machine slot will be brother Grayson, Quinn Powers, and longtime drummer Robert Barnett.

The most ubiquitous version of pop-punk can be found blasting from the speakers at your nearest Hot Topic. A better version can be found on a Carbonas record. Channeling what made the Buzzcocks and late-’70s DIY punk great, the Carbonas may be from Atlanta, but they’re honorary Memphians due to regular live visits and a single on Goner Records. The third Carbonas full-length album will be released on Goner in time for Christmas.

Emcee Zac Ives (co-owner of Goner) and DJ Buck Wilders will be filling the spaces in between the bands. Revelers are encouraged to get the festivities started early with an afternoon pre-show at Shangri-La Records. Starting at 3 p.m. on Saturday and concluding just in time to grab a quick nap before heading over to the Hi-Tone, the lineup is as follows: Nice Digs, Arch Rivals, Wallendas, and the Perfect Fits. A seven-inch compilation featuring Viva L’American Death Ray Music, Vending Machine, Antenna Shoes, and the Carbonas will be given away at the show. The EP is a co-release by Shangri-La Projects, Shangri-La Records, and Goner Records. With burgers and hot dogs served throughout the evening (somehow, the perfect power-pop food!), it will be interesting to see how many copies emerge covered in drunken food smudges. As an added bonus, Ardent Records: 40 Years Story, former Commercial Appeal music writer Larry Nager’s documentary on the studio/label that birthed many of the best ’70s pop records, will kick off the evening.

There’s no such thing as overdosing on great pop, as a successfully catchy song happens to be the hardest piece of music to write. Regardless, it’s a safe wager that the Memphis Pops Festival will succeed in filling the fans’ ravenous need for timeless hooks.

Memphis Pops Festival

With Everyday Parade, Vending Machine, Antenna Shoes, Viva L’American Death Ray Music,

The Tim Lee 3, and The Carbonas

The Hi-Tone Café

Saturday, July 28th

Door opens at 6 p.m.; admission is $10

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Music Music Features

Outlaw Spirit

For Joey Killingsworth, “Quittin’ Time” was just the beginning. The Memphian wrote the song and got radio airplay before forming his namesake band, Joecephus and the George Jonestown Massacre.

“I was doing some stuff with John Pickle for his movie The Importance of Being Russell, and I came up with a wacky song called ‘Quittin’ Time,’ which got played on Rock 103, so I thought I ought to put a band together,” Killingsworth explains of the X-rated update of Johnny Paycheck‘s “Take This Job and Shove It.”

(Country music runs in the family. Joey’s father, Bobby Killingsworth, has played guitar with Eddie Bond for more than four decades.)

“Originally, I had two separate groups in mind,” admits Killingsworth, who launched the stripped-down Joecephus and the White Lightnin’ Band around the same time. “Then Hank III became my inspiration: He combines country music and heavier stuff, so I decided I could combine country and hardcore. I love Black Flag and Waylon [Jennings]-era country, so I tried to blend it. We did some acoustic shows, then our first electric show was with Shooter Jennings, Waylon’s son.”

In a recent snapshot, Killingsworth poses shirtless in the middle of Sun Studio, showing off the tattoos that further testify to his affinity for both country and punk rock. A heavily inked symbol for the experimental noise group Einsturzende Neubauten sits high on one shoulder blade, dwarfed by a brilliant caricature of Jim Marshall‘s iconic Johnny Cash portrait.

The song “Jerk U Off My Mind” has garnered more than 7,000 plays on Joecephus and the George Jonestown Massacre’s MySpace page (MySpace.com/JoeyKillingsworth). That song and tunes such as the speed-metal-inspired cow-punk anthem “Going Back to Memphis” and the country boogie “Honky Tonk Night Time” have brought Joecephus and the George Jonestown Massacre national exposure. In April, the group contributed a cover of “Death Comes Ripping” to a Misfits tribute CD. And next month, they’ll hit the road to open shows for Reckless Kelly and Unknown Hinson.

“[As of] this month, we’ll have been at it two years,” Killingsworth, a veteran of ’90s-era indie band Grendel Crane, notes of Joecephus and the George Jonestown Massacre. “When we started, we’d have gigs every weekend or every other weekend, and we’d make $20 apiece. Somehow we started networking, and we’ve been opening for everybody from Southern Culture on the Skids in New Orleans to David Allan Coe in Knoxville.

“I had to turn down a gig playing with The Bottle Rockets last weekend, because the band couldn’t do it,” Killingsworth says, explaining that he’s resorted to running a classified ad with the hopes of finding a permanent rhythm section.

“Right now, it’s me on guitar, Richard Wagor on bass, and either Don Mayall or Brett Broadway on drums, but I’m trying to find a core group, a permanent lineup that can get on the road and tour,” he says.

Last month, Killingsworth was tapped to perform with the late Waylon Jennings’ band at the prestigious Spirit of the Outlaws monthly concert series, held at Douglas Corner in Nashville. He also found time to put the finishing touches on his band’s second full-length CD, Smothered and Covered.

Joecephus and the George Jonestown Massacre will celebrate the release of Smothered and Covered with local reggae group Soul Enforcers at The Buccaneer this Saturday night.

“We’d go into the studio whenever we had a song ready,” Killingsworth says of the album’s marathon-long recording sessions. “We’d have some drinks, knock it out, and really have fun with it.”

It sounds like ol’ Hank might’ve done it that way too, but even so, Killingsworth is cautious about the group’s potential with stereotypical country-music fans.

“With whatever [the mainstream country-music industry] hypes as the new outlaw thing, they might wear big hats, but they’re not really doing anything different,” he says. “Luckily, there’s an undercurrent with these Spirit of the Outlaws shows and with people like Hank III and Dale Watson, who are just too rowdy for the establishment.”

Joecephus and the George Jonestown Massacre play the Buccaneer on Saturday, July 21st. Showtime is 10 p.m. $5 cover.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Gee, Wiz

One of the biggest events this summer is at bookstores Saturday, July 21st. Weighing 1.8 pounds and coming in at 784 pages, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released. But the party really starts the night before. All across Memphis on July 20th, Potter enthusiasts of all ages will be coming together to celebrate the seventh and last tome in the J.K. Rowling series.

Davis-Kidd Booksellers is throwing a “Marauding at Midnight Party” beginning at 10 p.m. There’ll be a snowy tribute to Dumbledore, photo ops with Hogwarts professors, and confetti cannons at midnight.

Barnes & Noble Wolfchase is having a “Midnight Magic Party” beginning at 7:30 p.m., with a costume contest, fortune telling, and other activities. The Barnes & Noble Carriage Crossing event starts at 8 p.m. and includes a Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Bean jelly-bean-tasting contest, giveaways, and games. You can also get your picture taken in front of a painting of Hogwarts with a cutout of Harry.

Bookstar in Poplar Plaza kicks off its event at 8 p.m., with trivia, crafts, a costume contest, and FOX 13’s Joey Sulipeck, who will read from the penultimate wizarding tale, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Burke’s Book Store is having its Harry Potter event on Saturday, starting at 9 a.m. An English breakfast will be served, and part of the proceeds from the book’s sales will go to the Memphis Literacy Council.

Who is the mysterious “R.A.B.” mentioned in the last book? Will Snape finally be vindicated as one of the good guys? Will Harry get killed off? Will there be life after Harry Potter ends?

We’ll all know the answers on the 21st.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” Events, Friday, July 20th, and Saturday, July 21st: Barnes & Noble Wolfchase, 2774 N. Germantown Pkwy., 386-2468; Barnes & Noble Carriage Crossing, 4610 Merchants Park Circle (Collierville), 853-3264; Bookstar, 3402 Poplar, 323-9332; Burke’s Book Store, 936 S. Cooper, 278-7484; Davis-Kidd Booksellers, 387 Perkins Ext., 683-9801.

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Cover Feature News

Trouble in Paradise

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Singer-songwriter Harlan T. Bobo is the personification of amused self-doubt. “Bobo,” he grumbles, meditating on his own nom de plume. “It’s such a perfect name for me. It translates directly from Spanish as ‘stupid,’ and, if you put my name into a translator, it comes out Harlan T. Stupid.

“My family thinks I’m ashamed of them because I don’t use my real name,” he adds, coughing up a chuckle.

Bobo is currently in a tight spot. This week, the lean, bearded troubadour launches I’m Your Man, his long-awaited sophomore recording as a solo artist, released on the local Goner Records label. But in spite of any brilliance it may contain, the disc is bound to disappoint Bobo’s fans. And worse: Bobo knows it. He’s not sure if he knows how to feel about it.

“It’s like when I come off stage after a show and people want to talk to me,” Bobo mumbles. “Prepare to be let down, I always say.”

It’s not that I’m Your Man isn’t an extraordinary effort, filled with aching, insightful songs about misfit affections, sex, and longing. It is, and in that regard it’s every bit the equal of Bobo’s self-released debut, 2005’s Too Much Love (later reissued on Goner), an unexpected cause célèbre within the local music scene. Too Much Love took listeners by surprise, charming them with the quirky sweetness, eclectic musicianship, and the clownish, hangdog persona of the singer in question.

Too Much Love was built like a high school term paper, with its thesis written boldly in the first lyric. The opening track, “It’s Only Love,” channels the barroom melancholy of Tom Waits, as Bobo croons — over gently strummed guitar chords — that our most celebrated emotion is as harmlessly mysterious as a clear, blue sky. Every other song on Too Much Love tears that theory apart with personal stories chronicling the high and low points of one man’s magnificent obsession, as well as the laugh-till-you-cry quandaries of a modern-day Don Quixote looking for one pure thing to hold onto.

Before Too Much Love, Bobo was a perennial sideman, playing bass with Midtown musician Nick Ray (aka Nick Diablo) in the hard-rocking band Viva L’American Death Ray Music. Not even the best-connected fan of Memphis music could have ever seen Too Much Love coming. And certainly, nobody could have expected that the quietly ubiquitous bassman’s humble, homemade CD would become an instant local classic. The song “Left Your Door Unlocked” was voted song of the week on National Public Radio’s Open Mic. Critics across the country raved.

“Nothing anybody says about my songs changes the way I feel about them,” Bobo says, mildly complaining about the popularity of Too Much Love and “Left Your Door Unlocked” in particular.

“When I listen to those songs [on Too Much Love] it doesn’t sound like me,” he says. “My voice sounds all affected and weird. On I’m Your Man, I wanted to make sure that I was using my natural voice.

“I remember walking into a place and hearing a song playing and thinking, man, the Reigning Sound have really lost their touch,” he says. “And then I realized I was listening to myself.” With this revelation, Bobo crashes his head helplessly into the palm of his hand.

I’m Your Man might be the most anticipated album release on the local music scene in years, and as Bobo has already explained, too much love can be a dangerous and confusing thing.

Hopefully, Bobo’s fans will give I’m Your Man more than one spin, because second and third listens reveal treasures easily lost by an immediate comparison to Bobo’s breakthrough debut. Borrowing a number of tricks from Leonard Cohen’s song bag, Bobo has given himself the impossible task of exploring complex themes in simple, emotionally charged terms. With subtle nods to artists as dissimilar as Nick Cave, Dan Penn, and Hank Williams, I’m Your Man catalogues the comforting self-deceptions of the defeated, even as it toys with larger themes.

If the entire collection could be compared to a single recording, it would be George Jones’ “The Grand Tour.” Even in moments of whimsy, it can be that devastating.

“Pragmatic Woman,” the disc’s most thoughtful and beautifully realized song, toys with the idealization of a love interest while essaying the personal failures that necessitate such idealized visions. In Bobo’s world, one hand on the clock is always waving hello while the other waves goodbye, and clarity only comes in the space between the ticks. Even a bouncy tune about whether or not to have children turns into something murkier.

“Once we learn we are crafty enough to avoid the responsibilities that come with our pleasures — birth control — we create a destructive mind set,” he says. “It’s the same kind of thinking that allows us to deplete our natural resources and blow people up for theirs.”

Justin Fox Burks

Sitting at Otherlands in Midtown and sipping an espresso, Bobo appears to be impossibly tired. His voice is phlegmy and shattered, and his usually bright eyes are dull. His limited success has brought opportunities that weigh on him like a curse. He’s been working what he describes as 40-hour days scoring music for adult reality shows such as Showtime’s Sexual Healing. Listening to him explore conflicted emotions about the TV gig and the roots of his fatigue, it’s hard to imagine that this is the man known for producing energetic, theatrical performances.

“If you come to hear Death Ray, you can be pretty sure that Nick is going to shake your ass,” Bobo says, trying to explain why he’s inclined to wear angel wings on stage and turn every performance into a one-act play. “My songs don’t really get asses shaking, so I want to give people some other reason to get excited.”

Bobo’s theatrics predate his solo career. If the reluctant raconteur can be believed, he once spent time in a California halfway house, where he was occasionally allowed out at night to play pedal steel in a band called Minnie Pearl Necklace, an alt-country extravaganza fronted by a drag queen.

Before coming to Memphis, Bobo also spent time playing with honky-tonk torchbearer Johnny Dilks. In the mid-’90s, Bobo emceed shows for a traditional burlesque troupe called Memphis Confidential, with nothing but a concertina and a world-weary take on some old dirty jokes.

“One time somebody told me that one of my songs saved their marriage,” Bobo says with a shrug, unable to fully understand how his music might accomplish that task. “That made me feel pretty good.”

Bobo recalls a time when a big, black car suddenly cut him off while he was walking, and the driver threw a half-eaten apple at him.

“I was already running away when I heard somebody call, ‘Harlan T. Bobo, I’m a big fan.’ Every time I see that guy now he throws a half-eaten apple at me,” Bobo says. “It makes my day every time.”

Half-eaten apples? Love? Stupidity? Perfection? Perversion? The self-betrayal of a man who throws away his cash and his love on pretty foolish things? Is it any wonder that Bobo is planning to turn the Hi-Tone Café’s stage into a plastic representation of the Garden of Eden for his CD-release party?

“I’ve been going to thrift stores for months buying fake flowers, and now I know why grandmothers’ houses smell that way,” he says, reflecting on the artificial blossoms currently infecting his environment. “It’s really awful.”

Harlan T. Bobo will celebrate the release of I’m Your Man with a performance at the Hi-Tone Café on Saturday, July 21st. The club opens at 9 p.m. Admission is $5.

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CREDIT: Silberschuh9875 | dreamstime.com

For a lot of people, art is a mysterious, half-smiling woman without eyebrows. For Catherine Blackwell, art also includes a tea party at a compost pile.

On Saturday, July 14th, Blackwell, a Memphis College of Art graduate student, will unveil her latest work at the Memphis Botanic Garden. But “Fallen From View” does not incorporate traditional pieces of art. Instead, Blackwell will lead a series of environmental tours on Saturday mornings and Tuesday evenings. As she explains, “The tour itself will be the artwork.”

Consisting of several stops, each tour will last approximately 45 minutes. Blackwell will talk about the environment, touching on topics such as invasive plant species and tree diseases caused by global warming.

The tour ends with a tea party near a compost pile, something Blackwell calls “totally ironic.”

Blackwell realizes that her idea of art might raise a few eyebrows.

“It’s very nontraditional, and I welcome debate on whether it’s art at all,” she says. “I’m all for discourse. I’m trying to offer lots of vantage points to let people make up their own minds on environmental issues.”

Blackwell will lead day and night tours, with the latter showing something people rarely see: the Botanic Garden after hours.

Blackwell says, “I hope my tour will allow people to understand the environment a little more. Information is half the battle.”

“Fallen from View,” Memphis Botanic Garden, Saturday tours at 10 a.m. Tuesday tours at 9 p.m. July 14th-August 28th (no tour on August 18th). $2. For more information, call 576-4100.