Local Cut

Q&A with Shoot The Player’s Amelia Tovey

Michael Mannheimer — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:37:05 +0000

Last Saturday, on my way from Superfest to a friends’ party, I stopped at the food carts on 12th and Hawthorne. Everything was pretty typical for a weekend night there—lots of bikes and dogs and people waiting in line for poutine—until James Mitchell from Nurses informed me that maybe I shouldn’t leave just yet. It turns out the band, through a weird series of luck, was able to film a video for Shoo the Player, the Australian branch of the Take Away show. I really couldn’t get away without putting on the journalist hat for a minute, and after meeting Shoot the Player’s Amelia Tovey and exchanging information I was able to conduct this quick interview with her a few days later via email. Look out for Shoot the Player vids from Nurses, Tender Forever, and Lovers in the next month.

WW: How did you wind up in Portland? It’s a long way from Australia!

Amelia Tovey: Portland has always sounded like my kind of town. I recently began collaborating with photographer Molly Landreth and together we’ve been touring around the USA compiling both video and photographic portraits for her work “Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America.” Portland was our the last city on our list, which was great because we really went out with a bang and were able to enjoy our time here. Portland definitely made it in our top 3 cities in the USA we could live in. (The others were Austin & San Fran.)

Did you have any bands in mind when you were here, or did you kind of seek them out after arriving.

I’m a big fan of the Portland music scene. Through YouTube and MySpace I’d heard of Tender Forever and Lovers and so made plans to film them before I arrived. I’m also a big fan of Laura Viers and Mirah and would love to film them (if they’re interested!) next time. But I’m sure there are many many artists I’ve never heard of—so far I’ve only skimmed the surface. Nurses were a band I heard of over coffee the day i arrived in Portland. Then they happened to be playing that
night and when we asked them to film a video they were really excited and 2 hours later we had cameras rolling. It all happened so quickly and spontaneously! When we filmed Ben Lee a few months ago he really got into the spontaneous spirit of things and said “You know, you see a door, you walk through it” - it’s kinda become our motto.

How did Shoot the Player start? I’ve been watching a bunch of the videos on the site and they’re all pretty cool. Is it really a part of the Take Away show empire?

Shoot The Player is a spin off / homage to Vincent Moon and Chryde’s Take Away Shows. I was a big fan of their work on La Blogotheque and at a chance meeting with Vincent in Paris I asked if there was room for the project to be extended to Australia. He was really encouraging and so my friend Jonathan and I teamed up and the two of us have been producing filmed for www.shoottheplayer.com ever since. We started making the films around our neighborhood in Sydney and this is the first time we’ve taken the project offshore. I love the musicality of cinema, and I love long shots of landscapes on screen. I also have a lot of friends who need music videos so it all came together really easily.

I loved the way you shot not just Nurses but the whole scene around the block—the fry cart, people sitting and eating, nearby bikes. What is your perfect shooting location?

When we shoot bands we’re also shooting the landscape as a character. The perfect landscape is a place with lots of people and lots of variation, a place the musicians can interact with and use in their performance. A quintessentially local place is also important, we’re really interested in showcasing ‘place’, cities, neighborhoods, or largely ‘unseen’ parts of the world that don’t usually end up on screen. I love that my friends at home who watch the Portland videos can get an intimate sense of what Portland is like as well as the music that’s from here.

Links:
Shoot the Player
Nurses

Photo courtesy of Shoot the Player

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Jared Mees: Either A or B (San Francisco, CA)

Jared Mees — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:02:18 +0000

You know its gonna be one of those nights when you approach the bar to find your bandmates trading in both of their drink tickets at once for a Long Island iced tea (which are generally much more long island than iced tea). Needless to say that by 8:30 pm last night at the Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco I knew it was going to be one of those nights.

Those nights that can really go either way. Up or down. You either:

A. perform really honestly and deliver a superior performance as you are loose and uninhibited from libations causing the exact “yes this band is gettin’ it on!”

B: perform really honestly and deliver a subpar drunken performance that causes people to smile and say aww how cute, they’re drunk. Boring.

Of course the real kicker of this type situation is the fact that no one on the performer side of the fence can really deliver an honest opinion of the outcome of the situation by virtue of the fact that they are involved to begin with.

However a nice satisfying caveat in this whole scenario is the fact we are traveling with the dear, sweet, talented and long suffering iPhone operator/tour manager Brianne Mees who—though she is most certainly in bed with the band so to speak—is a ruthless critic of Grown Children performances. She informed us shortly after the set (which was most definitely hot, sweaty and included a fair amount of jump kicking and hand motioning of specific lyrics, Megan spending most of several songs in the crowd, and one mic breaking) that it was indeed the former. Phew.

Also:

Great: mexican food on haight street
Cool: air, oh my goodness 40 degrees cooler than Sacramento that morning
Lots: of people in the unbeatable Photons
Ass: kicked by Geographer. This is easily one of the best bands in San Francisco
White: we wore it.
Brown: James—has so much love to give.

“Jared is being nicer now for the record” - everyone

So. Hot. Right. Now. Again.
180 miles to Los Angeles.

Links:
Jared Mees & the Grown ChildrenSpace

Photos courtesy of Jared Mees and crew

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Adam Gnade, “Summer Suite Part 1,” The Wild Homesick (Punch Drunk Records)

Casey Jarman — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:00:35 +0000

The great thing about writing about Adam Gnade is that he does most of the talking for you. Here he talks about Texas in the middle of summer—which sounds miserable, really—and the dreams that die there. He does so over some sparse, twangy guitar and that’s that. It’s not until about four minutes in until this starts sounding like a “song,” and even then it’s more scene-setting than driving. But scene setting is what Gnade is best at, and you can feel the heat and you know these people. Then a torn-up old tape recording starts chirping over the track. But before you know it, Gnade is delivering something of a chorus: “All that devours will be devoured/ All that binds will be bound,” he says. “And here’s the home you’ve been looking for all along.” So begins his four-part, 17-minute journey. There, see? That wasn’t so bad. Go see Adam if you want the rest of the story.

Download audio file (summersweetpart1.mp3)

Links:
Adam Gnade
Adam GnadeSpace

Photo courtesy of Mr. Gnade

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Jacklewis & Twigs, “Kids in Parking Lot (New Eltro),” (Self-Released)

Michael Mannheimer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:24:26 +0000

Jack Lewis has lived in Portland for a two and a half years now, and it’s obviously given him ample time to get to know the city. I first met Jack at a house show last summer, a place typically littered with kids—just the type he describes in his new song “Kids in Parking Lot (New Eltro),” which he was kind enough to share with us.

“Kids in Parking Lot” is part two of a three part “kid series,” and it’s also a pretty significant departure from Lewis’ normal work. While most of his past songs sounds like the Silver Jews, this is his first attempt at writing an electronic song. And though it’s a bit clumsy at the beginning, the song gradually grows on you. It’s got a nice, lumbering drum machine beat and groovy little keyboard part along with what I think is a twisted version of Lewis singing in between his almost spoken word-ish verses. It’s also a fun listen for anyone who likes hearing the name of a local band (one made up of kids, none the less) quoted in a song.

“They’re Rocking to White Fang/ Doing their own thing,” he sings. “Never heard the sound/ The sound of Pavement.” You tell ‘em, Jack.

Download audio file (KidsParking.mp3)

Jacklewis & Twigs (yes, the lack of a space is intentional) play tonight at The Sea Shanty, 2419 N Russet St. with Margy Pepper (Olympia), Lapuda, and Whales Wailing.

Links:
Jacklewis & TwigSpace

Photo courtesy of Jack Lewis

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Southerly Versus Morrissey (Bremen, Germany)

Southerly — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:24:34 +0000

PDX am, sleep-eyed on two hours sleep and unprepared for 16 hours without a nicotine fix even after the pack and a half smoked through the early morning; the taste of Widmer Hefeweizen still on my tongue. Dry mouth, dry ideas, dehydrated and hoping for no issues at the gate about our guitars.

US Airways is not in the least the most inviting nor comfortable airline at our globetrotter disposal. We have typically flown Delta who must have been founded by a group of concerned Midwestern mothers given the amount of in-flight-food they offer you; and thanks to the recent AFM lawsuit against the airline we haven’t had any issues with bringing gear as a carry-on item.

A short layover in Philadelphia to connect with our trans-Atlantic breath-circulating meat oven and after inhaling 50 other people’s gestating exhalations we land in Amsterdam with about seven hours to kill. We make our way to the city center via train to meet up with some friends who work at a café and spend some time before we take our final forty five minute puddle jump to Hamburg.

Emails answered, phone calls home, a snack of vegetarische sandwiches, cookies and coffee and we’re making our way back to the port of air. Security is fairly lax and there are no lines to speak of so we hit
the bar near our gate for a couple of beers/biers.

It was around this time that I finally came to the realization that Casey Montgomery is my hero. Not just my hero, but the single brilliant light that guides me through the long, dark and utterly
frightening corridors of this unforgiving world in which we live. He also is hung like a fruit bat.

Low and behold a group of four kind folks from Wisconsin, also heading to Hamburg, are at the bar as well as a Scottish man on his way to meet up with a wealthy oil tycoon from Texas. We joke with the Wisco folks about whether they know how to make a proper old-fashioned in Hamburg and I tell them the Lewis Black joke about the Wisconsin man at a bar in New York. The Scottish man fills us in about his adventures with the cowboy in Russia which is a country we’re trying to get to, quite curious.

There’s an old jazz musician from Los Angeles who can’t walk very well and has a saxophone case with him. As we’re boarding I carry it to the plane for him and put it in the overhead compartment near his
seat. He’s over to perform at a festival in Germany and regales me with performances of his past including numerous residencies in Portland selling out old jazz clubs years ago.

It’s a KLM flight and what’s this, sandwiches, snacks, beer, all complimentary? Oh yeah, KLM is partnered with Delta. We’ve already been given more food and beverages on a forty-five minute flight than we did on the rest of our stint with US Airways. Yes, they have food on their flights but you have to pay seven dollars for it. Fucking American airlines (not Airlines), fucking US Airways, douche bags.

Hamburg! It’s now 6:30 on Saturday, June the 12th in the year of our lord two thousand and nine auto dominae. Car rental, car rental, it’s all about the car rental now; and then to the club to count in merchandise with the label rep, sound check and play the first show. Shit, so jet-lagged right now, tired, can’t sleep in moving vehicles, oh well, car rental.

To be continued…

Links:
SoutherlySpace

Polish road photo by Casey Montgomery, Portland in Poland photo by Krist Krueger

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Primer: Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings

Michael Mannheimer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:07:57 +0000

LATEST RELEASE
2007’s 100 Days, 100 Nights is a smooth, rhythmic beast that takes the band’s incredible live show and raw energy and slows things down for a record that sounds like something Motown released in 1968.

WHY YOU CARE
Imagine digging through crates of old soul and funk 45s at Mississippi Records, picking out your five favorites, and throwing ’em all together in one greatest-hits package. Sharon Jones the Dap-Kings cover all the same bases as Amy Winehouse (the Dap-Kings are also her backing band), but Jones has a much more expansive voice and isn’t a tabloid-hogging coke fiend. Plus, the band’s cover of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” on Sharon Jones’ Naturally might be the best reimagining of the folk classic we’ve ever heard.

SOUNDS LIKE
The Roots band backing up vintage Etta James. The Dap-Kings totally rip live, all staccato guitar riffs and horns blasting, as Jones—one of pop’s most charismatic performers— steals the show.

FOR FANS OF
James Brown, Aretha Franklin, any classic Motown, the Roots’ live show.

SEE IT: Sharon Jones the Dap-Kings play Sunday, July 5, at the Waterfront Blues Festival. 7:50 pm. $10 suggested donation, plus two cans of nonperishable food. All ages.

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Top Five

Local Cut — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:05:55 +0000

Waterfront Blues Fest: Dirtiest Weekend Ever?

Troublemakers, 3 pm Thursday
You know things are going to get a little randy when you start off a festival with a roots-rock band of self-declared “full-grown men” named the Troublemakers.

Jim Suhler Monkey Beat, 12:45 pm Friday
“It starts out nasty and just gets meaner.” —Billboard Magazine

Candye Kane, 7:20 pm Saturday
While this seductive punk-rock blues queen isn’t as big as late-’80s-era Etta James (who cancelled her appearance due to health issues), she’s got some curves and she knows how to shake ‘em. Rawrr!

Harmonica Blow-Off, 9:30 pm Saturday
There’s just something sexy about a harmonica blow-off, you know what I’m sayin’?

Bonerama, 9 pm Saturday
From the press release: “And when those Bones start ripping into Hendrix and Led Zeppelin licks, all stylistic bets are off.” Delicious!

SEE IT: Waterfront Blues Fest runs Thursday through Sunday at Tom McCall Waterfront Park and other downtown venues. Daily admission is $10 plus two cans of food. Passes and V.I.P. badges available. See waterfrontbluesfest.com for complete list of locations, full schedule and ticket packages.

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Beyond Blue

JEFF ROSENBERG — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:03:58 +0000

Woodbrain’s Joe McMurrian lets go of his ego to open up his sound.

[PROGRESSIVE BLUES] Singer and guitarist Joe McMurrian made a name for himself around the Northwest with his quartet’s heady brew of blues, folk and rock. But now, he’s choosing to relegate that name to the background. The former Joe McMurrian Quartet is heretofore known as Woodbrain—a coinage plucked from McMurrian’s lyrics to “Broken Window.” That track appears on Swimming in Turpentine, the band’s debut release under the new moniker. It’s also the initial release under its new contract with Memphis-based Yellow Dog, a label that’s been a springboard to national recognition for Oregon blues artists such as Mary Flower and Terry Robb.

The name change seems to reflect a move from a leader-plus-backing-musicians hierarchy toward a band with four equal members, a direction those members say they’ve been moving in since first jamming together at the Eagle in October 2006.

“The change reflects the birth of this band, but we felt it coming a long time,” 41-year-old McMurrian says. “There was a completely organic growth period for about two years, and when we came to do the album, it felt like we’d gotten to what we were going for. ‘Somebody and the Somethings’ is kind of an egotistical play,” he continues, “and this entire band experience has been about a complete reworking of my ego.”

Another reworking is that, after some two decades of strictly acoustic playing, McMurrian’s taken up the electric guitar he once played as a youngster. It’s a revelation to hear him apply his acoustic dexterity to the electrified instrument—the kid-with-a-new-toy vibe is infectious. Even before the switch, the band’s more expansive moments were comparable to early Fairport Convention; now, McMurrian’s playing recalls Fairport’s Richard Thompson—another folk-rocker who approaches the electric ax with an acoustic sensibility. Meanwhile, rapidly growing into the mantle of “harmonica master,” David Lipkind—once resigned to a sideman role—struts to the fore as full-fledged band member. His interplay with McMurrian redefines the traditional roles of guitar and harp in a blues band, and Lipkind’s skill with the instrument and the various effects he tastefully employs seem to broaden the capabilities of the instrument itself.

Fans of the genre will eat this stuff up, but the music’s adventurous enough to also appeal to those who consume the blues proportionately with the other colors of the musical rainbow. There’s a possible pitfall in having such nontraditional material come out on such a blues-identified label as Yellow Dog, but hopefully potential listeners won’t write it off unheard—as Lipkind says, within the first five seconds of the disc, it’s clear this is a whole ’nother animal.

The band could appeal to the jam-band crowd, too, although its songs and arrangements are more concise and developed than many loose hippie jammers. But even on short, structured numbers, the members’ organic interplay somehow suggests improvisational space. Drummer Jimi Bott says the songs now include “jump-off and landing points,” so they can set off on instrumental excursions but return to the song’s structure without getting lost in the ether. Bassist Jason Honl agrees, “We’ve gotten really good at noticing if a jam is getting too noodly and not going anywhere. Any one of us can throw out a musical cue that the others will latch onto,” and return to the song’s structured elements.

Woodbrain’s rhythm section is elastic and adventurous, but still provides a steady underpinning. McMurrian’s use of low-tuned bass strings in his guitar playing frees Honl up for melodic excursions, and Bott audibly delights in being set free of the straight-ahead approach he became known for while playing with blues greats like Rod Piazza and the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Speaking of his childhood love of the Allman Brothers’ expansive jamming style, Bott says, “I’ve never, in any band, been able to express that. This has really let me be myself. It’s an amazing thing to be able to play what you feel.”

SEE IT: Woodbrain opens for Robin Trower at the Roseland Friday, July 3, and plays the Waterfront Blues Festival at 3:30 pm Sunday, July 5.

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At Dusk Thursday, July 2

Shane Danaher — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:01:34 +0000

Pulling a stylistic fast one before bidding farewell.

[EXPERIMENTAL POP] Though landing a berth on PDX Pop Now!’s annual compilation CD is an auspicious occasion for any Portland musician, the members of At Dusk had extra cause for celebration when they found out they were to be included on this year’s LP: At Dusk’s members—Cary Clarke, Greg Borenstein and Will Hattman—were instrumental in founding the popular annual festival for which the disc is named.

Thursday will mark the group’s final performance, and the trio could not have asked for a better send-off from the scene it helped build. “When we came to town [in 2002], I feel like it was hard to find a community,” says Borenstein. “So PDX Pop was how we met a lot of people in bands, how we kind of got to be part of the community.”

Since forming during middle school in its native Los Angeles, At Dusk has been largely inseparable, eventually gravitating toward Portland to continue making its compositionally ambitious pop punk.

“It’s obviously emotionally complicated to have the band coming to an end. It’s been the central part of my life for the past seven years,” Clark says. “My whole Portland adventure has been predicated on this band.”

At Dusk’s Portland tenure yielded three progressively tighter albums, but the true culmination of its talents has been stewing for

2 1/2 years in the form of Small Light, the group’s final disc. After deciding to disband last August to pursue other interests, At Dusk has gone the surprising route of throwing its stylistic considerations to the wind and reimagining itself as a folk band.

“I think we all felt like we’d fulfilled the trajectory that our original sound could follow,” Clarke says. “This new style is more of a natural fit, I think.”

Indeed, Small Light is At Dusk’s most cohesive work to date. The record chooses obscured, overdriven guitars over dense vocal harmonies and ambient percussion (“Jacaranda”), and the band’s inflated composition is replaced by singalong hooks (“For A Reason”).

The musical about-face may seem sudden, but it’s fitting with At Dusk’s try-anything ethos. And though the trio bids farewell this week, it does so at the center of a thriving community to which it can happily claim to have been essential.

SEE IT: At Dusk releases Small Light on Thursday, July 2, at the Artistery with Team Evil and Alan Singley. 7:30 pm. $6. All ages.

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Deelay Ceelay, “No Vex,” Thank You (Self-Released)

Michael Mannheimer — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:46:48 +0000

When you think of a summer jam, a skittering instrumental number is hardly the first thing that pops into your mind. Still, we’re pretty deep into the summer season (which starts, by my count, on memorial day) by now, and nothing has really come close to establishing itself as the song that blasts out of car windows and backyard BBQs. No “Umbrella,” no “Crazy in Love”—hell, at this point the best contenders might be Phoenix (awesome, but French) and the dude’s behind the “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” song.

On a local level, though, I have a hard time arguing against the inclusion of Deelay Ceelay’s “No Vex” on any summer playlist. Coming off like Ratatat with less guitar posturing and thudding beats, “No Vex” is an airy and infectious slice of electro pop, riding the dual drumming of Chris Lael Larson and Delaney Kelly and some of the brightest synths you’ve ever heard. Opening with a catchy guitar figure (one that stopped a WW staffer more than once to ask if the disc was skipping), the song gradually builds but never feels forced; when the loops and gurgles and keys come in, it’s still that ringing guitar that carries you through the whole thing, holding your hand and leading you to the end. So maybe nobody’s dropped the definitive, ubiquitous summer jam yet. In the meantime, you’ll probably see me listening to “No Vex” while I’m firing up the grill in my yard.

Download audio file (NoVex.mp3)

Links:
Deelay CeelaySpace

Photo courtesy of Deelay Ceelay

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