Like few bands from the early '90s rock scene in St. Louis, the Boorays sounds timeless -- or as timeless as its obvious R.E.M. and dB's influence permit. You could say the quartet got lucky with sources, or you could just recognize the talent of principal singer and songwriter Mark Stephens, who has never sounded quite as comfortable, confident or free as when aided by the precise rhythm section of Andy Thomson and Bob Kaemmerlen, the garage guitar of Mike Hellebusch and the whole band's keen, airy harmonies.
The band goes on at 10 p.m. (The Helium Tapes are headlining, Tight Pants Syndrome is opening.) Three of its members kindly took the time to answer some queries about what they're up to and how to snag their remastered music. View these quotes -- and snag some tunes -- below!
Why are the Boorays doing a reunion show now?
Andrew Thomson, bassist/vocalist: Well.... we are kind of downplaying this aspect because it puts an exclamation point on how, um, experienced we are, but it does happen to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the first time we played out. Mike Hellebusch, guitarist/vocalist: After all these years, the band still loves its music and our friends and families continue to talk about the influence of the band on them and how much they enjoyed attending our concerts and listening to our music. Bob Kaemmerlen, drummer/vocalist: We really miss the music. As the years roll forward, we forget about sleeping on people's floors out of town and spending all day in a van together. The music is still pretty important to us.
From television to the radio to the internet, indie-folk newcomer A.A. Bondy has been popping up everywhere lately. In addition to touring with Bon Iver, the Felice Brothers and Conor Oberst, he's appeared at Bonnaroo, recorded a session for Daytrotter.com and performed for Conan O'Brien (to name a few). Furthermore, his music has been roundly praised by influential tastemakers such as Brooklynvegan, Pitchfork, Stereogum and-- ahem-- the Riverfront Times.
Yep, Bondy seems to be steadily climbing the ladder of success, but it's not for nothin'. His debut album, 2007's American Hearts, was so warm, so hauntingly beautiful, that audiences immediately took notice. His glowing arrangements carry just the right amount of magic to induce fuzzy, slow-motion Winnie-Cooper-standing-in-the-sunshine Wonder Years-type moments.
Critics frequently describe him as "the next Bob Dylan," but this weighty comparison doesn't seem to have gone to his head. For all of his musical intensity, Bondy comes off like a normal dude. We caught up with him on the road last week while he was en route to an Atlanta gig and he was both humble and humorous. (Bondy is currently on the road with Elvis Perkins in support of his sophomore release, When the Devil's Loose.)
In this week's paper, Bruce Hornsbychatted with Matt Wardlaw. Hornsby and his band the Noisemakers are at the Pageant tonight. He's no longer just the dude who soundtracked dentist offices in the '80s ("Mandolin Rain," "The Way It Is") -- and hasn't been for a long time now, as the interview reveals. Among other things, Hornsby is working on a Broadway musical and focusing on education at his alma mater. Below are some interview outtakes.
Hornsby on SCKBSTD, the Broadway musical that he's been working on for the past few years:
It's inspired by a local story - it's not a jukebox musical - there are no old Hornsby hits in there. It's an original story, not something where we're recycling some old formerly successful scenario. We'll sink or swim on our own merits, and it's a slow process. We're making a deal to have this musical produced in Virginia and Pasadena, California, by two different stage companies - starting out of town and getting the kinks out. We have a reading in January, I think. I still have one song to write. We have nineteen [written], and we're going to have twenty. It's a lot of work, but it's enjoyable - I like where it's led me songwriting wise. I'm writing most of the songs with my old childhood friend Chip DeMatteo. We had Zappo Productions in junior high and high school where we booked only the worst bands in our town!
In this week's paper, Christian Schaeffer interviewed Cobden, Illinois, resident Stace England. The singer-songwriter's latest project is an album called The Amazing Oscar Micheaux. As Schaeffer says, "Micheaux was an African American filmmaker whose work was, in part, a response to D.W. Griffith's infamous 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation. Micheaux's work was mostly forgotten until recent discoveries of long-lost prints made it possible for film scholars to reassess his contributions to American film." Couple this with Greetings from Cairo, Illinois -- an album about the state, released a few years ago -- and it's safe to say that England is emerging as one of the finest modern historians/songwriters.
View England's take on that, info about his performances this weekend and snag an MP3 -- all below.
Despite being clean-shaven for almost 20 years, Oates took some time to reflect on his old hirsute image as well as his band's contribution to the American musical landscape. Unfortunately the dead-tree version of the RFT couldn't contain all the history, wisdom and recollections of our conversation, so here are the remainders.
On his famed mustache and its rebirth on Internet shows:
Was your mustache such a big part of your visual identity that people couldn't conceive of John Oates without it?
I did it in Tokyo. We were invited by Yoko Ono to do a show for the 10-year anniversary of John Lennon's death. It was a big show there with Miles Davis and Lenny Kravitz and whole bunch of really cool people. The night after the show, I came back to my hotel room - we were gonna leave the following morning - and I looked at myself in the mirror and the mustache didn't look right. And I shaved it off right then and there. I arrived at the airport the next morning, and everyone looked at me kinda weird, and that was it. I never grew it back after that.
In this week's paper, Christian Schaeffer wrote a feature on Old Lights. (Photo above by Jennifer Silverberg.) The band's limited-edition vinyl LP, Every Night Begins the Same, is available today on St. Ives. (Order here.) Schaeffer describes the band's sound thusly:
Old Lights' ascent is first and foremost a product of the band's songs. Built around piano and guitar, a typical live set will touch on jangle-pop, ramped-up folk songs, Brill Building-era standards and a few moments of heart-on-sleeve clarity. As a singer, Beeman pushes his high, sweet tenor without straining it, knowing that the band's easy-to-swallow sweetness belies the emotional heft of his lyrics
At the moment, Beeman and bandmate/girlfriend Kristin Dennis are in Cottage Grove, Oregon, recording with Richard Swift. (In fact, they happen to be next-door neighbors.) He says he hopes to record two albums with Swift in the time they spend in the Pacific Northwest -- and stresses that Old Lights is not broken up. In fact, he had some kind things to say about the members of Old Lights' live configuration...
This week in the RFT, freelance writer Roy Kasten interviewed Tom Russell about his creative process, especially for the new album Blood and Candle Smoke, which prominently features the sounds of Calexico, and some of his strongest compositions after over 30 years of songwriting. He'll be in the St. Louis area this weekend, with a show at Off Broadway Friday night and at Turner Hall in Mount Olive, Illinois on Saturday. Outtakes from the interview below.
Roy Kasten: Tell me about the recording process for the album.
Tom Russell: With the combination of not only Calexico, but some of the other Tucson musicians, Nick Luca, and then Winston Watson, a brilliant drummer, who played with Dylan on the Unplugged record and Love and Theft, he brought a lot to the record, but also Barry Walsh, the pianist. The piano is very central to the record. Barry played with Roy Orbison and Waylon Jennings. He brought a classical sound; a lot of those intros were made up by Barry Walsh. And Gretchen Peters, his girlfriend sang some of the harmonies. Once the songs were done, we brought in Jacob Valenzuela from Calexico to play trumpet over the top of everything because everything he played was pretty brilliant, so we just let him go. That was kind of the mix. I would say experimental sonically but not in the writing of the songs. I sat down with these guys with my guitar and just played them, and we saw where it went.
Tonight at the Pageant, They Might Be Giants is making its near-annual trip to St. Louis for a show. This time around, the band will be playing the 1990 classic Flood in its entirety, among other songs new and old. HELL. YEAH.
As if to prove how much TMBG loves us, here's a snippet of the band's venue song for St. Louis, which is based around Mississippi Nights.
Lou Barlow has indie cred out the ass. As the bass player for Dinosaur Jr (which is playing at the Pageant on Wednesday, October 14), Barlow (alongside guitarist J Mascis and drummer Murph) has been at the forefront of the "alternative" scene since the early '80s.
And if playing with Dinosaur Jr. wasn't enough, this dude started college radio gods Sebadoh as a side gig. A side gig! He needed another outlet for his songwriting and -- whoops! -- he accidentally started freakin' Sebadoh. Jeez.
Still, it gets crazier. For a few years in the mid-'90s, Barlow fronted psych duo Folk Implosion. Yeah, you know 'em. That's the band that scored a surprise hit with the spooky "Natural One" off of the soundtrack from the film KIDS.
Oh yeah, and Mr. Midas puts out beautiful lo-fi solo albums, the latest of which, Goodnight Unknown, is released this week on Merge.
We "interviewed" Barlow via email a couple of weeks ago while he was touring with Dinosaur Jr. in Europe. He was gracious enough to write us back, despite the semi-ridiculous questions we sent his way. Thanks, Lou.
Tonight at the Firebird, St. Vincent -- a.k.a. Annie Clark -- is performing, a night after she played with Andrew Bird in Columbia. Elsinore opens. In this week's paper, Shae Moseley says Clark is "a one-woman wrecking crew -- especially when it comes to layering loops of guitar, pristine vocals and crunchy, pulsating drum-machine blasts. But Clark's latest album, Actor, takes things to another level, by incorporating flourishes of chamber-orchestra goodness -- flute, French horn and violin are featured prominently -- alongside heavy bursts of sawtooth synths, bombastic drums and imaginative, finger-picked guitars."
In this week's paper, D.X. Ferris interviewed Lemmy Kilmister. (Like we really need to put the last name of a metal god, but journalistic rules say we do.) Motörhead is going to set fire perform at the Pageant tonight with the Reverend Horton Heat and Nashville Pussy. Review and photos tomorrow. (Last year's review here.) In the meantime, please enjoy some interview outtakes, wherein Lemmy gives advice to young rockers and talks about his solo album.
D.X. Ferris: Do you write music besides Motörhead material? Lemmy: I wrote stuff for [German metal goddess] Doro. I've written stuff for Girlschool, I've written stuff for Ozzy Osbourne.
Rollins's career has been marked by near-constant change; his only steady sideman has been bassist Bob Cranshaw, who's played with the saxophonist for decades. But each phase has been part of a learning process, one that's only coming to its end because of time. "My whole plan, hopefully my destiny, is to absorb all these things that I've done all these years in music and be able to put them into a coherent style or form and play," he says. "That's what I'm aiming for. It will include everything I am. Because I'm not just avant-garde, I'm not just straight ahead, I'm not just sentimental, I'm all of these things. And I'm trying to get them together, because they're part of me."
In this week's RFT, freelancer Roy Kasten interviewed Patty Loveless about her career and forthcoming album, Mountain Soul II, the follow up to her first "mountain music" album, Mountain Soul. The finest singer of the new traditionalist movement, Loveless appears tonight at the Sheldon with a largely acoustic band (her first tour since the Down From the Mountain revues that won't feature drums). Get to know Loveless with the extended interview after the jump.
The Mars Volta is far too weird for its own popularity, but somehow Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and their virtual lazy susan of band members have turned virtuosic, psychedelic prog jams into gold records and a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. Nobody is more surprised by the Mars Volta's success than Rodriguez-Lopez, who spoke with A to Z in anticipation of his band's appearance tonight at the Pageant.
Ryan Wasoba: Octahedron is your newest record. I noticed that people have been referring to it as your acoustic album. Omar Rodriguez-Lopez: I referred to it as an acoustic-inspired album, but I never said it was an acoustic album. People take things way too literally and out of context. At the time I wrote it I was listening to a lot of Nick Drake and Syd Barrett and Leonard Cohen, but I don't consider inspiration to be a carbon copy. Just because I was listening to those albums doesn't mean it's just an acoustic guitar and a voice.
By the summer of 1979, hip-hop had moved out of Manhattan and into the adjacent suburbs. Sylvia Robinson, a pop star turned music mogul living in New Jersey, became convinced she could make a hit record using the new sound. Along with her husband Joe, she founded Sugar Hill Records, rounded up a trio of aspiring MCs and produced the song "Rapper's Delight."
Dirty Pond Songs, the debut album from English singer-songwriter Bobby Long, is a quiet album, a collection to put on when you're deep in thought or otherwise thinking about life's weightier matters. It's also an album indebted to many of Long's favorites, which he named in a recent RFT interview. (Read the rest here.)
"The Beatles, they're the best band in the world," he says, calling from Dallas. "Jeff Buckley and Neil Young and the Band. I really love Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly and people like that. I love old blues guys as well. Howlin' Wolf."
These influences and more will be on display on Sunday night, when Long plays at the Firebird. He's excited about St. Louis, in part because of one of our famous residents: "I really like Chuck Berry. One of the best live performers ever, I think. He's incredible." And Long sure knows his historical stuff, seeing as how he just earned his college diploma after completing a paper on the "social impact of folk music and the protest song in the '60s." (Dylan and Joan Baez are also faves.) Check out a few more outtakes after the jump.
In this week's paper, Christian Schaeffer chatted with Dave Wakeling of the English Beat. The band will be co-headlining the Pageant tonight with Reel Big Fish. We'll have photos tomorrow. In the meantime, read Schaeffer's feature and enjoy some interview outtakes -- along with some video I shot at last year's VooDoo Lounge show.
CS: How did the tour with Reel Big Fish come about? DW: It was actually a confluence of [booking] agents - we're both in the Agency Group, and they had this notion of some sort of generational cross-pollination of ska. It's working rather well. I didn't realize, but a lot of Reel Big Fish fans had only ever really heard our name but didn't know the music. They'll hear songs and say, "Oh wow, I didn't know that was you; I love that song." So we're picking up a lot of new friends and fans along the way.
Yes, tomorrow is finally the day when Sonic Youth opens this year's Live on the Levee series of shows! Just a heads up on time: Awesome Color goes on at 6 p.m., and SY is on at 7:30. (In other words, expect nearly two hours of SY goodness -- no setlist spoilers from this current tour from me, though I will say that new LP The Eternal is well represented.) In this week's paper, Jaime Lees chatted with Kim Gordon. She got to the bottom of Gordon's clothing line, Mirror/Dash, discovered that drummer Steve Shelley won't eat less than five hours before a show and debunked a Wikipedia myth. (Whew.) Interview outtakes are below; our review and photos will be up over the weekend.
Jaime Lees: When I was researching you the other day it said that your mom worked at a school in Ferguson, which is a suburb of St. Louis. Is that true? Kim Gordon: No, that's not actually true. Maybe my dad did? He went to Washington University. My mom was a librarian. My mom's family was originally from California and they moved to Kansas at some point. And she met my dad there. Eventually he was like a dean at UCLA in Education and Sociology but he basically taught every grade at some point, so he might have taught at Ferguson, but I don't know. And I think they did live in St. Louie, but I don't know.
Well, Wikipedia said your family moved out of the area in 1958 or something so you probably wouldn't remember that anyway- you would have been too little.
[Facetiously] Yeah-- I wasn't born actually. [Laughs]
In this week's paper, I interviewed Son Volt's Jay Farrar. SV's latest, American Central Dust, arrived in stores last week. He spoke about song inspirations (and a forthcoming project with Ben Gibbard) in print; below find more talk about side project Gob Iron, and the connection between Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt's new label, Rounder Records. For other tidbits about the band, Son Volt drummer Dave Bryson's blog is recommended (and hilarious) reading. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary to find photos such as this one (it'll be explained below):
Annie Zaleski:When I talked to you in late 2007, you said a Gob Iron record might be in the works. What's the latest on that? Jay Farrar: That is more in the long-term works, but yeah, it's been going on now for at least a year and a half, and I think it's gonna go on a little longer. We did just do some more recording in Brooklyn a couple months ago. Hopefully that will see the light of day soon.
You guys are on Rounder now. And I read that the first person you met with was instrumental in booking Uncle Tupelo years ago. Is that someone from St. Louis?
He was in California, his name's Troy. He's no longer at the company, but when I first was in contact with Rounder, he was there. I was amazed to find out that yeah, he was in fact the guy that first gave Uncle Tupelo their first shot at a major booking agent. He brought Uncle Tupelo to the attention of Frank Reilly, who still [books] Son Volt.
Paul Friswold: Who first thought of doing the album with the acoustic elements?Greg Anderson: It was actually something that myself, Stephen [O'Malley] and the engineer of the record, Randall Dunn, it's an idea that we came up with together. Stephen and I had kicked around different ideas of different things we wanted to do on upcoming recordings, and that was sort of the main things we wanted to tackle with this album, was to work with acoustic instrumentation.
Brothers Lazaroff will be holding a CD release party for American Artifact, the band's second album, at Off Broadway on Saturday. Guests include the Educated Guess and the Auset Music Project. Roy Kasten profiled the band in this week's RFT, focusing on brothers Jeff and Dave. But their band (Mo Egeston on keyboards, Teddy Brookins on bass and Grover Stewart on drums) is a big part of the band's story and sound; here are some outtakes from the interviews.
In this week's paper, Christian Schaeffer profiles Raglani, the local experimental musician that's experienced highs (releasing an album via Kranky Records, playing Brooklyn's No Fun Fest) and crashing lows (having his gear stolen while in NYC) in the last year. Read his feature here.
Steve Truesdell
Raglani at the RFT Music Showcase, Sunday, June 7
The following MP3 -- the last thing Raglani was working on before he went on tour -- is an A to Z exclusive. Raglani says the song is a "shorter, friendlier mix of the first section" of a twenty-minute track called "Various Demises" that was to appear on the Pegasus Farms-released Steve Hauschildt/Raglani May 2009 Tour CD-R. He also reports that he's putting together a limited-edition tape box set to sell -- containing donated tracks from other musicians -- that should appear this fall/winter, although who's set to appear on it isn't confirmed yet. See below for outtakes from the feature, including some of Raglani's surprising inspirations.
In this week's paper, Shae Moseley interviews Chad Matheny of Emperor X. Although Matheny has been hanging out in Edwardsville recently, he'll be heading to LA after this current tour, which sees him at the Firebird tonight with the Dead Science, I Need Sleep and Giants in the Sky.
Emily Yoshida
Go west, young man!
Read Moseley's interview with him here, check out some outtakes below -- which refers to Matheny's penchant for producing only one physical copy of each album he makes -- and snag an MP3 here. Oh, and check out Matheny's new video after the jump.
Shae Moseley: Do you think that affects the way you write and influences a different outcome? Chad Matheny: I definitely think that stuff affects the music. The album is a hybrid art form. It's like a movie. It's neither pictures or sound it's a combination of both. An album is a hybrid of sound and sculpture.
It seems like there is a resurgence in the popularity of vinyl. Do you see yourself continuing to release music that way?
There will always be a core of people who are going to buy records. I've just taken the stance that I don't want to produce it anymore. I'm 99 percent sure that I'm never going to produce another physical thing in my life other than the one copy that I'm going to bury. Because when you make these things, you make 500 records, their value is in their rarity. So, if you only make only one then that's the most rare thing and therefore the most valuable thing you could produce.
In my profile of Jason McEntire, I observed him and producer Steven Haigler working with Building Rome on its new album, Nightmare. The band's been around for many years, but has matured greatly beyond its early work, which was heavily indebted to Jimmy Eat World. I caught up with BR vocalist/songwriter Jon Heisserer to talk about the album, working with Haigler, what he likes about McEntire.
Deborah Best
When did you first start working with Jason McEntire -- and how did you hear about him originally?
I had originally asked him to mix our first album back in 2004. That fell through, but we ended up going to Sawhorse to do some demos throughout 2006 and 2007. I was a huge fan of his work with Ludo on Broken Bride, so that definitely influenced my decision to work with him. (Plus he bought us dinner!) During the summer of '07, my band sort of broke up and I was pretty bummed about it, so Jason hooked me up with his friend Ted Bruner, who had recently written with Katy Perry and Plain White T's. Ted and I hit it off and wrote two songs together for Nightmare. For one of the songs, "Streetlights," Jason, Ted and I sat down together and said to ourselves, "Let's write a song that you could hear in a strip club."
In my Jason McEntire/Sawhorse Studios profile, the studio engineer mentioned he was in an high school incarnation of the St. Louis band Colony, which recorded for a major label in the '90s. McEntire has kept in touch with the band in the ensuing years -- and in fact recently collaborated with Colony's Ted Bruner via video for the Building Rome album.
Bruner, however, has found life after the music-industry wringer, though: He's now a well-respected pop songwriter in Los Angeles who's collaborated with Katy Perry and co-written songs for Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and other popstars Here's part two of an email interview I conducted with him last week; part one can be found here. Come back tomorrow for an interview with Building Rome's Jon Heisserer, for his take on the writing process.
In my Jason McEntire/Sawhorse Studios profile, the studio engineer mentioned he was in an high school incarnation of the St. Louis band Colony, which recorded for a major label in the '90s. McEntire has kept in touch with the band in the ensuing years -- and in fact recently collaborated with Colony's Ted Bruner via video for the Building Rome album.
Bruner, however, has found life after the music-industry wringer, though: He's now a well-respected pop songwriter in Los Angeles who's collaborated with Katy Perry and co-written songs for Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and other popstars Here's part one of an email interview I conducted with him last week; part two will be up this afternoon.
courtesy of Ted Bruner
When did you move out to LA? Why did you move out there? What did you do when you first got out there?
After my band's second record deal fizzled, I moved from St. Louis to LA in 2002 to try my hand at songwriting/producing with other artists. When I first got here, my girlfriend and I lived in Hollywood (just to see what that was all about). Hollywood is like a college town without college - I loved the experimental, restless mindset there -- but it's also a desperate place, a great town to confront your demons in as you disassemble the processes behind the worshipped entertainment business. We now live in Venice by the beach and love it. Venice doesn't have much tolerance for exclusion or judgmental views -- especially if you're a liberal.
In this week's paper, I profiled Jason McEntire and Sawhorse Recording Studios, one of the many local studios helping musicians near and far make cool records. As of late, bands such as Building Rome, Ludo, Ha Ha Tonka and Magnolia Summer have stopped by the south-side digs. Oh, and speaking of stopping by -- stay tuned to this here blog tomorrow and Monday for interviews with Building Rome main man Jon Heisserer and pal of McEntire/one-time Colony member Ted Bruner, both of whom have interesting things going on at the moment.
Tonight at the Pageant, theatrical synthpop act Fischerspooner will be making its St. Louis debut. The band recently released its third album, Entertainment, which I described in this week's paper as "a welcome comeback full of goth-pop squelches (the Faint-like "Infidels of the World Unite") and primitive, minimalist synthpop." I caught up with Casey Spooner in Boston, as the band headed to the venue -- and just after they bought a juicer and scented candles to make the bus smell better. (Preferred scent: lavender.)
Annie Zaleski: Tell me what the name of the tour, "Between Worlds," means to you in context of your record. Casey Spooner: Originally, we started developing the idea of a stand-alone theatrical performance that we were going to do with the Wooster Group. We weren't even going to play music venues - the idea is that we were going to make a hybrid between a pop show and a play. That was really when the name started kicking around. In general, that sort of applies to what we do. We're always between art and entertainment, in terms of having to combine all these things creatively and bring all these things together. Also, it can have a negative effect, in that we're in between business models sometimes, where the business of art and the business of entertainment can be in conflict with each other. Sometimes that in-between-ness that we like can also be a downfall for us.
All MP3s are posted for sample purposes only, and always with permission from the artist or label. If you like what you hear, go out and support the band/musician by buying their record!
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