Tag: Scott Bomar

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Music Music Features

Crescent City Kinship

This weekend, music aficionados not overly damaged by Gonerfest will be making that breezy drive down to New Orleans, our sister city of soul. They’ll be chasing the sounds of old vinyl brought to life, marveling that one can still see pioneers of soul, R&B, swamp pop, rockabilly, and garage rock who the mass media spotlight has long since neglected. It’s Ponderosa Stomp time, and the threads linking Memphis with the festival, now an institution in the Big Easy, go back to its earliest days.

I still recall Andria Lisle telling me, back in the ’90s, about a wedding she’d attended in New Orleans that featured, instead of the usual party band, a performance by Eric Burdon of the Animals. That was the first I heard of Ponderosa Stomp founder Ira Padnos, the anesthesiologist known as “Dr. Ike”: a man who takes his music very, very seriously.

“The Ponderosa Stomp is like Ira’s record collection coming to life,” says local producer and bandleader Scott Bomar, who’s seen many Stomps over the years. “He’ll have all these obscure records, and he’ll start to wonder, ‘Well, where is so and so? Where’s this obscure swamp-pop artist? Why haven’t they played?’ He’ll go on expeditions to try to find folks. It’s pretty amazing, the research he does. He just gets obsessed with certain artists. And sometimes he can track ’em down and sometimes he can’t, but he’s sorta the master of finding these artists who maybe only cut one record in their entire lives, that maybe 500 copies were ever pressed of. So it’s interesting; he likes to celebrate great unheralded talent.”

Padnos’ wedding party was just the beginning. “He used to do shows at the Circle Bar,” recalls Bomar. “And, kind of like the Ponderosa Stomp is named after a song on Excello Records, he would name these parties after songs. I know he had one called ‘I Got Loaded.’ Those Circle Bar shows were amazing. He would hire me to play bass behind people down there. I remember playing with D.J. Fontana on drums, Paul Burlison on guitar, Alex Chilton on guitar, and we backed up a couple of rockabilly guys.”

The search for obscure genius has often led Padnos to Memphis. As he told OffBeat Magazine in 2011, “I always loved the song ‘Bar-B-Q,’ so we were trying to track down Wendy Rene, but that was hard because nobody knew her real name.” Naturally, he found her, and before long, she was once again singing her ode to pulled pork.

But the Stomp is not just about obscurity. One headliner of this year’s show is Roky Erickson, the famously off-kilter singer for the 13th Floor Elevators who has staged somewhat of a comeback in the past decade. Closer to home, Carla Thomas and her sister Vaneese, daughters of Rufus Thomas, are hardly obscure. With her “B-A-B-Y” featured in the film Baby Driver, Carla is back in the spotlight again. And sister Vaneese, whose “Let’s Talk It Over” single on Geffen was a top 10 hit in the ’80s, has begun turning heads in the blues world recently with a new record this year, The Long Journey Home. “When I put out Blues for My Father in 2014, that was my first foray into the blues. I did that really in honor of daddy, obviously. Because people don’t know that he sang blues all through his career, from the beginning to the end,” Vaneese says. “So, I wanted to dab my toe in that, and I’ve grown to love it. I want to sing more earthy stuff.”

Bomar and his band the Bo-Keys will be backing the Thomas sisters, who only began performing together in 2002. The Bo-Keys will also back Memphis soul singer Don Bryant, who had some now-rare releases in the ’60s before focusing on writing hits for Hi Records into the ’70s. Bryant is hardly obscure either these days, having just played packed houses in New York and Europe this summer. Other Memphis artists on the bill this year include Linda Gail Lewis, Jerry Lee’s talented sister, and legendary session guitarist Reggie Young, who will be featured in a panel discussion at the festival’s Music History Conference.

Ponderosa Stomp performances will be at the Orpheum Theater, New Orleans, October 6th-7th, with a gospel brunch show on Sunday, October 7th. Music History Conference events are hosted at the Ace Hotel, October 5th-6th, as is the Record Show, October 5th-7th. For details, go to www.ponderosastomp.com.

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Music Music Features

Black Magic

CREDIT: Stacie Huckeba

The Hi Rhythm Section conjures up 50 years of Memphis history with every groove they lay down. Perhaps it’s the drive — elemental, relentless — at times honing in on a single note, bearing down like box cars slow-rolling through the city. Or it could come down to a telepathic connection between players like Howard Grimes, Charles Hodges, and Leroy Hodges, as nuances of dynamics and polyrhythms gel into a fluid, soulful whole. Whatever makes the magic, these players have gained international fame, and in recent years, artists like Chan Marshall (Cat Power) and Frazey Ford have come to Memphis just to work with them. Now we can add Amy Black to that list, who’s penned a new album of songs, Memphis, scheduled for a June 2nd release.

Recorded at Scott Bomar’s Electra-phonic Recording, the album earns its title with compositions perfectly suited to the Hi Rhythm Section sound. Black, who spent her childhood years in Alabama, and recently relocated to Nashville, started out mining the Americana vein when she began singing professionally 10 years ago in Boston. In 2015, she made a marked turn to soul with The Muscle Shoals Sessions, which featured legendary keyboardist Spooner Oldham. The sessions introduced her to embellishing songs with horns, to which, as she confesses, “I’m addicted.”

The horns on Memphis are pitch-perfect. Arranged by trumpeter Marc Franklin, they evoke the classic blasts you know from old records, even while remaining focused on the needs of the song at hand. Franklin is joined by Kirk Smothers and Art Edmaiston on reeds; the trio is well-versed in the horn fills that define the Stax and Hi sounds. Locally, they can be heard with the new Love Light Orchestra, or in Bomar’s group The Bo-Keys. Franklin also arranged the strings for Black’s album, adding a dark resonance to “Nineteen” and lyrical swells to Black’s cover of Otis Clay’s “If I Could Reach Out (and Help Somebody).”

Of course, taking center stage are the Hodges brothers — Charles on organ and piano, Leroy on bass — and drummer Howard Grimes. Beyond the deep pocket, flashes of virtuosity are tempered with the restraint of seasoned players who know how to let a song breathe. Brother Mabon Lewis “Teenie” Hodges passed away three years ago — hard shoes to fill for a guitarist. But local journeyman Joe Restivo has come to master such soul stylings. On a few tracks, he is joined by fellow City Champs members Al Gamble (organ) and George Sluppick (drums). The Champs have a long history of emulating the Hi sound in their instrumental forays, and it shows here. Finally, where Restivo is absent, we hear former Stax guitarist Bobby Manuel on the axe. The result is a classic Memphis soul stew.

Surprisingly, these legends were a new discovery for Black. “The Hi Rhythm Section and the folks who recorded with Willie Mitchell are now favorites of mine, but a year ago, I didn’t know about them.” Working with them brought out new qualities in her music. “It’s definitely a little bit dirtier, more from your gut. I am so drawn to that feel and sound. I didn’t know that I could sing this music, and now it’s what I do.”

Having written or co-written most of the album’s material, Black has clearly internalized the soul sounds she’s only recently discovered. “What Makes a Man?,” arguably the heaviest groove of the set, would stand alongside many a classic single of the 1970s, equal parts desire and dark, brooding reflection. Other numbers confidently break out a gritty blues shuffle or the upbeat soul of Wendy Rene. And there is a healthy dose of soul’s most direct influence, gospel music. Both the cover of Otis Clay’s song and Black’s original “Let the Light In” stand as spiritual exhortations to aspire to our better angels.

As Black notes of the latter tune, “I had no idea how much we, as a country, would need this song. I wrote it for myself, to make sure that I’m letting light into my own darkness. But with events being what they are, it’s a good time to sing it. I always dedicate it to Mavis [Staples]. Her spirit and music inspire and educate me. They represent the fight against darker forces and the need to persevere.”

Amy Black will play at Lafayette’s Music Room on July 6th.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Prichard’s Double Barreled Bourbon: Sold Out

Phil Prichard, the Memphis-born master distiller at Prichard’s Distillery, Inc., the rum and whiskey manufacturer located some 280 miles due east of us, has a supply-and-demand issue many distillers only dream about: His hand-crafted Double Barreled Bourbon, which typically retails for $50-60 on liquor store shelves, has been unavailable for over a year.

In 2015, supplier sales of Tennessee whiskey rose by 7.4 percent, significantly higher than the already robust 5.2 percent growth in American whiskies overall.

Yet even within the Tennessee whiskey category, Prichard’s product is unique: In a part of the state known for whiskies, ranging from Nashville-based micro-distiller Corsair to the behemoth Jack Daniel’s, which is located 17 miles north of Kelso in Lynchburg, Prichard’s facility is the only one not required by Tennessee law to filter its bourbon through maple charcoal. It’s also the only distillery to use Prichard’s exclusive Double Barreled process, which spurns over-dilution during the proof-cutting process.

The term Double Barreled, registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, is currently under legal challenge from Louisiana-based liquor giant the Sazerac Company, which owns a multitude of distilleries including Southern Comfort and Buffalo Trace, the parent company of Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve.

“The biggest problem we have now is this little company wants to infringe on our trade name,” Prichard says. “It’s a silly lawsuit. A trademark is a trademark. Their modus operandi is to outspend us, but fortunately we’ve got good lawyers.”

While he’s currently bottling his award-winning rums and gearing up for brandy production at a distillery in Nashville, it can take Prichard up to a decade to create a bottle-ready batch of Double Barreled Bourbon.

“Somewhere between eight and 10 years, the two elements in those barrels — the caramelized sugars created when the barrel is burned, which make it sweet, and the oak tannins, which make it bitter — will give it that optimal balance between bitterness and sweetness,” Prichard explains.

“We are temporarily out of stock. The whiskey demand has stripped all of our aged product. We’ve laid down more barrels and we’ll have some available in a year or so,” he says.

Last winter, long after his warehouse was empty, Prichard was surprised to discover several bottles of his coveted bourbon at a shop in Winder, Georgia. “I was down there visiting with my distributor, and I decided to drop into Turtle Creek Wine and Spirits and say hello, and lo and behold, I’d be dipped if they didn’t have a whole shelf of it.”

“I bought a bottle or two,” he continues, “and a day or two after that, some guy called me, and he went up and bought everything they had. He thoroughly wiped us out of any residual stock. I’ve got 20 barrels we’ll probably release this time next year.”

That’s good news for music producer and Bo-Keys bandleader Scott Bomar, who describes Prichard’s Double Barreled Bourbon as “the best I’ve ever had in my life.”

The musician whose newest album, “Heartache By the Numbers,” was inspired by Memphis’ onetime late night bar scene — “places like Hernando’s Hideaway, beer joints and juke joints that don’t exist anymore” — discovered the bourbon when Prichard signed on as a sponsor of Staxtacular, the annual benefit the Memphis Grizzlies stage for the Stax Music Academy.

Bomar says that he drinks the bourbon “neat, or with an ice cube or two, in extreme moderation.”

For now, Bomar has switched to craft beer made by Cooper-Young’s Memphis Made Brewing Co. “There’s one I love in particular — the Soulful Ginger,” he says. “It’s a great summer beer. Sometimes flavors just overpower the taste of a craft beer, but this has such a subtle ginger flavor, which makes the beer really crisp.”

Most Memphis Made beers and other fine local craft beers are available at Madison Growler, Hammer & Ale, and on tap at bars and restaurants around town.

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Music Record Reviews

Black Snake Moan soundtrack is Memphis producer Scott Bomar’s coming-out party.

The soundtrack album for local filmmaker Craig Brewer’s upcoming Black Snake Moan (opening February 23rd) is, more than anything, an overdue coming-out party for Memphis producer/engineer/composer/bandleader Scott Bomar.

Bomar crafted a terrific, Stax-like score for Brewer’s previous film, Hustle & Flow, but the only soundtrack CD to emerge didn’t feature any of it. It was a collection of rap tracks, some featured prominently in the movie, some not.

Black Snake Moan is less focused on music than was Hustle & Flow. Though star Samuel L. Jackson performs blues songs in the film, his music isn’t as important or as prevalent as that of Terrence Howard’s D’Jay character in Hustle & Flow. And yet this is a soundtrack that’s more representative of the movie than Hustle & Flow‘s was, and that starts with Bomar.

Bomar served as soundtrack producer, and the result includes three selections (totaling four-and-a-half minutes) of Bomar’s bluesy, atmospheric score (Ennio Morricone gone hill country is how the liner notes aptly describe it), which he recorded locally at Ardent Studios with help from the Dickinson family (soundtrack-vet pop Jim and North Mississippi Allstar sons Luther and Cody) and harmonica ace Charlie Musselwhite. It also includes all four blues performances Jackson gives in the movie, which were also produced by Bomar at Ardent, with a rotating cast of locals helping Jackson (Kenny Brown, Jason Freeman, Cedric Burnside, Luther Dickinson).

The transformation of Jackson into an R.L. Burnside-like hill-country blues singer is at least as convincing as Howard’s transformation into a Memphis-style rapper, though a bit of the charisma that sells the transformation is lost without visual accompaniment.

As in the movie, stomping live versions of Burnside’s “Alice Mae” and the standard “Stackolee” trump the slow-burn blues of Burnside’s “Just Like a Bird Without a Feather” and the Blind Lemon Jefferson classic that provides the film’s title. On the “juke-joint” cuts, Jackson not only has Brown and Burnside house-rocking behind him, he gets to really perform the songs. On the quieter, ostensibly solo, numbers, his lack of authenticity is a little more apparent.

The Bomar and Jackson cuts are the heart of this soundtrack (along with a couple of Son House sound bites), but the “filler” is pretty choice too. The record ends the way the movie does, with the North Mississippi Allstars’ evocative blues-scene reverie “Mean Ol’ Wind Died Down.” Cuts from Burnside himself (“Old Black Mattie”) and hill-country matriarch Jessie Mae Hemphill (“Standing in My Doorway Crying”) feel essential. Contributions from blues stalwarts Bobby Rush and Precious Bryant and rock bands the Black Keys and Outrageous Cherry fit. The only track a little out of place is “The Losing Kind,” a bluesy cut from post-punk veteran John Doe. — Chris Herrington

Grade: A-