Austin’s South By Southwest Music Conference, set for Wednesday, March 12th,
through Sunday, March 16th, may be the largest annual gathering of up-and-coming
bands and music-industry tastemakers in the country. And while, on one level,
it may be sad to see this event happening in Austin rather than Memphis, our
relative proximity to that Texas music capital does have its rewards: So many
bands stop off in Memphis (and nearby Oxford) on their way to and from SXSW,
local clubs become host to a sort of unofficial music festival for a few weeks
each March. (And the exchange works both ways: Check out Local Beat on page
33 for a rundown of the Memphis and Mid-South acts heading to Austin.)
This year may boast the biggest and best crop of SXSW-related local shows
ever. Snax Booking’s Chris Walker, who had a hand in setting up many of these
shows, says he can’t remember there ever being so many notable shows hitting
Memphis due to SXSW. We count 19 shows over the next 18 days featuring more
than 30 bands as a direct result of SXSW, and that doesn’t even include a few
shows that have already happened (Florida emo band Further Seems Forever) or
that finally stroll into town at the end of the month (garage-rockers the Detroit
Cobras). What follows is a critical guide to all the action:
Thursday, March 6th
Willie Nelson & Family
The Library (Oxford)
This living legend needs no introduction, of course, but of late there are
at least two Willie Nelsons: There’s the aging icon who makes gimmicky, star-laden
albums such as The Great Divide and Milkcow Blues for major labels,
the former a Grammy nominee despite being one of the worst albums he’s ever
made. And then there’s the living, breathing musician, who makes modest, spontaneous
little records with his family and touring band, like the jazzy instrumental
record Night & Day, the stripped-down Me and the Drummer,
and, best of all, the life-affirming, family-holiday singalong Rainbow Connection.
Chances are the latter is what you’re going to get for this show, and that’s
good news indeed.
Friday, March 7th
Ol’ Yeller
Two Stick (Oxford)
This three-piece bar band from Minneapolis fits comfortably within the Twin
Cities tradition of rootsy white-guy guitar bands, which runs the gamut from
post-punk touchstones the Replacements and Soul Asylum to more recent alt-country
elder statesmen like the Jayhawks, the Gear Daddies, and Golden Smog. This modest
but reliable outfit, led by Rich Mattson, whom the Minneapolis alt-weekly City
Pages has called the Cities’ best songwriter, will be making their second
area appearance, after playing Murphy’s a year or so ago.
Saturday, March 8th
The Oxes and Cass McCombs with Automusik
The Hi-Tone Café
The Oxes are a three-piece (guitar-guitar-drums) instrumental metal/hard-rock
band from Baltimore whose taste for over-the-top live antics and publicity stunts
precedes them. Frequently compared to instrumental outfits such as Don Caballero
and the Fucking Champs, the Oxes reportedly use cordless guitars to assault
the crowd and even outdoor passersby in a more direct manner than is conventional.
But trickery aside, the band’s purported solo-less mix of power-chord blasts,
riffs, and martial drums sounds like a good recipe.
Label-mate Cass McCombs couldn’t be more different. A solo singer-songwriter
who’s an emerging star on the “anti-folk” scene, McCombs has played
with Will “Palace” Oldham, and his richly melodic new EP, Not the
Way, sounds sort of like current-model Beck without the single-minded mopery.
With local musical performance artists Automusik rounding out the bill, this
could be the sleeper show of the month.
Jucifer with Go Fast
Young Avenue Deli
A two-piece band made up of a fetching rock-geek girl and a scrawny, dark-haired
rock-geek boy, frequent visitors Jucifer are sort of a Southern grunge version
of the White Stripes, only, in this case, the girl (Amber Valentine) sings and
plays guitar, while the boy (Ed Livengood) pounds the skins. The band’s Athens,
Georgia, buddy Michael Stipe calls them a Southern gothic version of PJ Harvey,
which is being a bit too kind to Ms. Valentine despite her considerable talents.
Musically, Jucifer is closer to the metal side of Nirvana, a two-person racket
where dreaminess and horrible noise are in constant conflict for musical supremacy.
Little Rock’s good-rockin’ Go Fast, who frequently share a stage with Memphis’
own Subteens, open.
Edwin McCain
The Lounge
South Carolina singer-songwriter Edwin McCain isn’t a typical SXSW performer.
Amid a landscape of cutting-edge post-punk bands, boozy garage-rockers, and
hard-edged roots performers, McCain’s fraternity-friendly roots-lite is a decidedly
mainstream sound. He’s also different from most SXSW performers in that he’s
sold platinum before. But McCain’s latest is The Austin Sessions, recorded
partly in that SXSW home and in Nashville. McCain also has his hand in our own
music mecca between those two country-music capitals, serving as the host for
the pilot version of the local song-swap The Acoustic Highway.
Sunday, March 9th
King Missle III
The Hi-Tone Café
The pranksters behind such early ’90s novelty hits as “Detachable Penis”
and “Jesus Was Way Cool” return with their first new album in five
years, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, which comes with this helpful
and appropriate warning sticker: “Parental Advisory: Contains lots of curses.
Do not buy!”
This latest edition of the group is still led by John S. Hall, whose stand-up-comic
monologues — less out-there than Steven Wright, less politicized than the late
Bill Hicks, but with elements of both — are backed by a spare musical bed of
piano, fiddle, percussion, and samples. He attacks Dubya with crude glee on
“The President,” congratulates Jennifer Love Hewitt for her post-9/11
“restraint” (“I didn’t see her on TV at all”) on “JLH,”
and ponders the taboo on “Eating People.” In other words, things are
back to normal for these guys.
Monday, March 10th
The Dirtbombs, The Forty-Fives, Whirlwind Heat
The Hi-Tone Café
For my money, the best bands playing Memphis as part of this month’s spate
of SXSW-related shows are Clem Snide and the Drive-By Truckers. But I imagine
that a good many knowledgeable local music fans would choose the Dirtbombs,
and as far as what the best show is likely to be, it’d be hard to argue.
Fronted by Mick Collins, whose early band the Gories gives him deep ties to
the Memphis scene (the Reigning Sound’s Greg Cartwright is the first person
thanked on the liner notes to the Dirtbombs’ most recent album, Ultraglide
in Black), the Dirtbombs are a dual-drum, dual-bass garage-rock assault,
perhaps the most overtly soulful of the current crop of garage bands. Ultraglide
in Black is Collins’ tribute to the black rock and soul he was raised on,
mixing originals with hard-edged covers of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Curtis
Mayfield, George Clinton, and Gamble and Huff, among others. I was out of town
during the Dirtbombs’ last local appearance, over Memorial Day, but I’ve heard
so many raves over it that I won’t dare miss them this time around.
Filling out a raucous triple bill is Atlanta garage-rockers the Forty-Fives
and Michigan’s Whirlwind Heat, the first band the White Stripes’ Jack White
has signed to his new label.
Burnt By The Sun, Dysrhythmia
Precious Cargo
New Jersey’s Burnt By The Sun debuted their take on post-hardcore extreme metal
with last year’s Soundtrack to the Personal Revolution, released on key
heavy-music label Relapse Records. They’ll be joined by Philadelphia’s Dysrhythmia,
whose own take on progressive metal is said to lean toward avant-jazz and indie
rock.
Tuesday, March 11th
Clem Snide and Cub Country
The Hi-Tone Café
“Your favorite music/Well, it just makes you sad/But you like it/Because
you feel special that way,” Clem Snide’s Eef Barzelay sings on the title
track to his band’s 2000 album, Your Favorite Music, and the attentive
listener may be unsure whether Barzelay is commiserating with them or mocking
them, because the answer is probably both –this is, after all, a band equally
capable of a devastatingly sincere cover of Ritchie Valens’ “Donna,”
which they include on Your Favorite Music, and a delirious, tongue-in-cheek
cover of P.Diddy’s “Bad Boy for Life,” which they busted out during
their last Memphis gig.
Barzelay has emerged over the last few years as one of the shrewdest and most
gifted songwriters on the planet, equally capable of breaking your heart with
an unexpected insight or twisting the knife with his cruel, cynical wit. And
the great part is that his band’s music actually matches his lyrical flights
at every turn — the band’s 2001 near-masterpiece, The Ghost of Fashion,
an acoustic-based gem that lightly references country, classic pop, and the
string-laden gorgeousness of vintage New York soul with a musical depth largely
unheard in indie rock. Stated plainly, this is one of the best bands around
right now, and you should take the time to see them before these super-smart
guys figure out a better way to earn a living than by swimming upstream in a
music industry they’re probably too good for. The band’s next album, as yet
untitled, is due in late spring.
Opening is Cub Country, an alt-country band fronted by Jeremy Chatelain, the
erstwhile bass player for emo godfathers Jets To Brazil.
90 Day Men with The Glass
Young Avenue Deli
This Chicago band doesn’t produce the most straightforwardly accessible sound
around, but their mix of syncopated percussion, pastoral piano, and breathy,
slurred vocals has a beauty to it. Tune in to the lyrics and you’ll hear poetic
non sequiturs, extended metaphors (life as turntable bound to wear out on “Last
Night, a DJ Saved My Life”), and conflicted homages to Morrissey. Ah, indie
rock. Locals The Glass open.
Wednesday, March 12th
Dead Meadow and The Witnesses
Young Avenue Deli
Among other things, SXSW is about catching a glimpse of “next big things”
while they’re still largely unknown, and, along those lines, this pairing may
well be the most intriguing of the SXSW-related shows to hit town this month.
Washington, D.C.’s Dead Meadow will get a boost this summer when their third
album, Shivering King and Others, is released by venerable indie-rock
label Matador (once or current home to Pavement, Liz Phair, Jon Spencer Blues
Explosion, and Yo La Tengo) in June. Meadow is a “power trio” who
proffer a post-punk take on such epic classic-rock bands as Black Sabbath, Pink
Floyd, and Led Zeppelin. Their music is heavy and psychedelic, driven by dreamy,
fuzzed-out riffs, sometimes hyperactive drums, and yearning, nasal vocals. I
can’t remember the last time I heard rock music this slow that held my
attention so completely.
Joining them are the Witnesses, a bunch of Brooklyn kids who have been compared
to the New York Dolls, Television, and um the Strokes.
Thursday, March 13th
Cherry Valence, Modey Lemon, and The Mistreaters
The Hi-Tone Café
Hailing from Raleigh, North Carolina, the Cherry Valence are a rock-and-roll
band, straight, no chaser, splitting the musical difference between ’60s garage-rock
and ’80s metal. The band’s latest album, Riffin’, couldn’t have been
more appropriately titled.
Perhaps more compelling is Pittsburgh’s Modey Lemon, a raw drums-plus-guitar
duo whose proto-punk blues with Bo Diddley beats seems to owe as much to the
Animals as to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Chances are you won’t be able
to make out many of their B-movie lyrics, and chances are it won’t matter much.
Rounding out the bill is Milwaukee’s garage-rockers the Mistreaters, one-time
labelmates of Memphis’ Lost Sounds, who will join Cherry Valence on Estrus Records
when their new album drops this summer.
Sunday, March 16th
Minus the Bear
The Hi-Tone Café
Seattle’s Minus the Bear are a math-rock band whose musically complex post-punk
sound owes more to that other Washington (D.C.) than to the grunge and indie-rock
heritage of the Pacific Northwest. Imagine Fugazi with a sense of humor and
you’ll have some idea of what to expect.
Monday, March 17th
Avail, Ensign, and The Natural History
The Hi-Tone Café
Richmond, Virginia’s Avail have been around for a decade, plying their brand
of Southern-fried hardcore for standout punk labels such as Lookout! and Fat
Wreck. New Jersey’s Ensign are a more traditional brand of hardcore. The Natural
History aren’t hardcore at all: Led by former Memphian Max Tepper, these indie
rockers are one of New York City’s up-and-coming bands.
Om Trio
Proud Larry’s (Oxford)
San Francisco’s Om Trio are an organ-based, groove-oriented jazz band in the
spirit of Medeski, Martin & Wood whose sole album at this point is a live
two-disc set, so expect plenty of exploratory, improvisational jamming.
Tuesday, March 18th
Phaser and The Baseball Furies with
The Final Solutions
Young Avenue Deli
With soaring guitar anthems emerging from lengthy passages of ambient noise,
Washington D.C.’s Phaser owe more to atmospheric bands from across the Atlantic,
such as Radiohead, Sigur Ros, and Spiritualized, than to the punk and indie
rock bands in their hometown. They’ll be playing with Buffalo’s Baseball Furies
and locals the Final Solutions.
Wednesday, March 19th
Pleasure Club and Val Emmich
The Hi-Tone Café
New Orleans’ Pleasure Club is a swaggering post-punk band that’s been compared
to Gun Club and the Cult and was recently named one of the “100 Bands You
Need to Know” by Alternative Press. New Jersey’s Val Emmich is a
heart-on-his-sleeve post-emo solo guy, part of a growing new breed led by performers
such as Dashboard Confessional and Conor Oberst (the Bright Eyes frontman who,
perhaps to his credit, hasn’t gone “solo” quite yet).
Saturday, March 22nd
The Drive-By Truckers
Young Avenue Deli
It’s been a rocky road for the Alabama-based, Memphis-connected Drive-By Truckers,
whose name suggests novelty band (think Dead Milkmen) but whose records and
live sets suggest “World’s Greatest Rock-and-Roll Band.” Okay, so
maybe that’s a bit much, but the band’s impassioned three-guitar attack and
frontman Patterson Hood’s intense, witty treatises on “the Southern Thing”
are something special indeed.
Sunday, March 23rd
Kathleen Edwards and John Eddie
The Hi-Tone Café
With a singing style that sounds eerily like Lucinda Williams but with a songwriting
voice all her own, Canadian singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards gets my vote
for Best New Artist so far this year.
Joining Edwards is John Eddie. Who the hell is John Eddie? Eddie was a fixture
of New Jersey’s Asbury Park scene in the early ’80s, his shows at the famous
Stone Pony drawing the attention of favorite son Bruce Springsteen, who would
occasionally join Eddie on stage. This helped Eddie get a major label deal that
didn’t amount to much. Now he’s back.
