Last night I attended another house concert at the home of my friends Dave and Jacqui. (You can read about the first gig in a previous post.) They’ve always been huge music fans. Now that they’re semi-empty-nesters, they took the plunge and started booking gigs into their home – nearly one a month throughout the year, in what they call their Parlor & Patio series.
Wicked Peace was band performing last night (sans their drummer – it’s a house concert after all). They’re just a bunch of kids from this hills and hollers… Kentucky for most of them, and West Virginia for one.
The lead singer Tanner and guitarist Patrick met in 2013 when they lived next door to each other in the dorms at Morehead State. Started jamming, started writing. Lead singer conscripted his older sister Amanda as a second vocalist and additional songwriter. They nabbed their bass player Jared from the music program at Morehead, and found their drummer Matthew in their new home base of Lexington.
It’s a family affair – in addition to the brother-sister lead singers, Amanda’s husband Adam is the band manager/booker, does album and poster artwork, sells merch, helps direct their videos… heck, he probably changes the oil on the van too!
Wicked Peace did a very nice set of tunes… some songs sounded a bit like Houndmouth, and Amanda’s voice is like a Southern Sandy Denny.
The show included a tasty “pie break” intermission, where Dave and Jacqui served up free slices from a great local bakery called Piebird.
Great music, gracious hosts, an attentive (no cell phones allowed) and appreciative audience… and pie. What could be better on a beautiful Friday night in the spring? Nothing!
“Ranking Roger” of the bands The Beat (a.k.a. The English Beat for U.S. audiences) and General Public passed away a week ago at the age of 56, after a stroke and a battle with brain tumors and lung cancer.
Ranking Roger (real name Roger Charlery) started out as a London punk rocker before teaming up with Dave Wakeling in The Beat, part of the Two Tone “second wave” of bands that fused ska with punk rock, new wave, reggae and pop music. After The Beat broke up, Roger and Dave formed General Public, while two other Beat members teamed up with Roland Gift to form Fine Young Cannibals. Roger later formed The New Beat and performed with his son, and later still The Beat featuring Ranking Roger.
It’s worth noting that Ranking Roger was black and Dave Wakeling was white. Well before Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney were teaming up for that schmaltzy “Ebony and Ivory” tune, the Beat were uniting fans of all colors.
“When the Beat were originally going ’round,” he said, “our audiences were so mixed — black, white and Indian, young people and older heads. It was brilliant, and I think we have kind of achieved that today. It is a bit different, obviously, but it is a very friendly crowd and everyone walks out sweating and happy, and I tell myself that’s the most I could ask for.”
They also tackled political topics in their songs, most famously in “Stand Down Margaret”… a comeuppance to Margaret Thatcher with the last lines of “love and unity, the only way.”
From the NYT obit: The Beat was born in part out of frustration with the conservative turn in England’s politics.
“To the English Beat,” Robert Palmer wrote in reviewing the group’s second album, “Wha’ppen?,” in The Times, “unemployment, ecology and the antinuclear movement are not separate issues; they are interrelated.”
“Anyone who would like to understand more about the attitudes underlying Britain’s inner-city rioting,” he added, “would do well to start here.”
This nine-minute interview is a great glimpse into Roger’s humble demeanor and his dedicated approach to performing.
Even in his 50s, he was still giving it his all.
That sort of free-spirited yet socially conscious attitude toward life ranks high in my book.
An early contender for album of the year is eponymous debut from Better Oblivion Community Center. The band is a collaboration between Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst. Phoebe is on a roll: in 2017, she released her debut album, Stranger in the Alps, , to well-deserved critical acclaim, and last year she worked with two other rising stars, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, to release a fantastic EP under the name boygenius. Both releases are well worth multiple spins. Listen now and thank me later.
Now Phoebe has teamed up with Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes, Monsters of Folk) to put out an album that’s stellar from start to finish. The tune “Dylan Thomas” is the song of the year, sez me. Love the lyrics.
And here’s another stellar track, “Didn’t Know What I Was In For.” It’s much mellower but again so strong lyrically and musically.
We may as well complete the CBS This Morning trifecta with “My City.”
And for bonus indie cred, the video for “Dylan Thomas” was directed by Michelle Zauner… a.k.a. Japanese Breakfast, another dubbatrubba favorite band.
Looks like I’m not the only card-carrying member of the Better Oblivion Community Center fan club, though. If you want to catch them in concert, you’ll have to visit a scalper or Scandanavia.
Here’s a photo of two blues legends… and two future legends.
L to R: Bob Margolin, Phil Wiggins, Joe Tellmann and Ben Levin
The dude at far left is “Steady Rollin'” Bob Margolin, who played with Muddy Waters from 1973 to 1980, and has been performing under his own name since, garnering Blues Music Awards along the way. The gentleman on harmonica is Phil Wiggins, a master of the”Piedmont Blues” style, most notably in the duo Cephas & Wiggins, which performed for 32 years until guitarist John Cephas passed away in 2009. Phil is still actively performing, and was awarded an NEA National Heritage Fellowship in 2017.
The kid on guitar is Joe Tellmann. I worked with his dad Dave in the early 90s, at a tiny indie rock station called 97X. (Shameless plug: Dave & I do a podcast about our days at the station.) Dave and I have been friends ever since. The kid on piano is Ben Levin, a neighbor of ours. He and our oldest son Gabriel went to school together in junior high. Now Joe, Ben and Gabriel are all freshmen at the University of Cincinnati.
Joe and Ben are blues wunderkinds – musical prodigies with more chops than a Bruce Lee movie. The photo above is from a Pinetop Perkins Foundation MasterClass performance last summer in Clarksdale, Mississippi (“crossroads of the blues”). The Pinetop Perkins Foundation supports young artists who are interested in the blues, and provides opportunities for them to learn from seasoned pros.
But let’s set aside the musical talent for a moment. Both Joe and Ben are great kids. Even if they couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, their parents would have ample right to be proud of the young men they’ve become. Their musical talents are just icing on the cake… or maybe the discipline required to learn and master an instrument also comes in handy off stage. When schools face budget cuts, the music program is one of the first ones to walk the plank. That’s a shame, because music has myriad benefits.
Some folks claim the blues are a dying art form, but I disagree. Check out this clip and you’ll agree that with Joe and Ben involved, the blues are in extremely capable hands.
Tanya Donelly rocks. Period. End of discussion. You’d be hard pressed to find someone with more indie music cred. She was a founding member of not one, not two, but three seminal bands: Throwing Muses (with her stepsister Kristin Hersh), The Breeders (with Kim Deal from The Pixies) and Belly. Quick, name another artist who can claim that feat…
All those bands had their heyday back in the 80s or early 90s. It would be easy to traffic in nostalgia. But Tanya is looking forward instead of backward, and encouraging all of us to do the same. In 2018, her band Belly released Dove, their first album in 23 years. They haven’t missed a beat – it’s fantastic.
The song “Human Child” is on the new release, and it’s all about looking forward:
We let ourselves be owned by things long gone Old photographs, old songs Wrap us in ghosts
Oh human child Your face to the wind, your back to the sun Oh human child You’re digging up bones and miss all the fun
I’m not here to save you I’m just trying to get you outside Get yourself out of your way and pull your head out of the shade
Belly’s bassist Gail Greenwood created a video for the song, using mostly footage from a 1993 tour.
And here’s their live performance from KEXP, with a career-spanning set list.
I had lunch with a world-famous artist yesterday. OK, he’s not world-famous yet, but he’s certainly nationally-famous. More importantly, he’s one of the nicest folks you’ll ever meet.
photo credit: Corrie Schaffeld, Cincinnati Business Courier
Keith Neltner and I worked together at a Cincinnati ad agency (ahem, “design studio”) for about five years, more than a decade ago. He was a brilliant graphic designer and I was a hack copywriter… your classic Odd Couple storyline. Keith’s skill level, his talent, his “eye”… is off the charts. Yet it’s matched by his work ethic, which came from spending his entire childhood (and beyond) working on his family’s small farm in Northern Kentucky.
Keith hung his own shingle several years ago – Neltner Small Batch is the name of his company. He’s still working his magic, but instead of doing it for the P&Gs of the world, he’s doing it for smaller, more craft-oriented companies like LIC.
Keith also does artwork for musicians, including the album layout for Shooter Jennings’ most recent release.
Which is great, but I still think his art is underappreciated because it’s typically intertwined with commerce. However, a recent project that Keith and his Neltner Small Batch collective worked on is pure heart and pure art. They (Keith, Tom Post, Chris Dye, Andi Bussard and Andy Sohoza) created a 63-foot wall mural in graphic novel style to share stories from holocaust survivors at Cincinnati’s Holocaust & Humanity Center.
Kevin Sullivan on Warren piece: “Praise Warren. He also said, “You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long…” Jan 15, 08:48
Damian on Eternally Grateful… still: “Thanks for reading, and thanks for sharing that song, Chuck! You’re absolutely right that the Deadhead community is amazing.” Jan 15, 08:17
Chuck Wiggins on Eternally Grateful… still: “I’m ambivalent at best about the Grateful Dead’s music, but there’s no discounting the incredible community built around it. And…” Jan 14, 09:05
Kevin Sullivan on Spoken and Unspoken: “You lived the brotherhood Damian, and that is a full plate. Peace to you and peace to John.” Nov 18, 16:54
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