El Diablo y La Pistola

Friday, December 15 @ Flicker Theatre & Bar

originally published December 13, 2006

Jim Wilson

Jim Wilson is best known for his percussion work in local rock bands Mother Jackson and Don Chambers + GOAT, and Matt "Pistol" Stoessel is known for fronting the gritty Lake City and lending his pedal steel talents to acts like Summer Hymns, Centro-matic, Sleepy Horses and Dark Meat, among others. Tonight the two, who've played in bands together on and off for the past decade, perform stripped-down sets. "I don't play very many solo shows," says Stoessel, "so I'll be playing some older material, Grand Fury and Lake City stuff, and a few new songs I've been tinkering with but haven't worked out exactly. We'll just sit up there with a bottle of tequila. Have fun, do what we do." Says Wilson, making his solo performing debut tonight, "It'll be basically each of us with the guitar. We're either going to sit up there and pass the bottle back and forth, y'know, and switch off songs, or we might decide to do two separate sets. Still haven't figured it out yet."

So how'd this show come about? "We've been hanging out a lot and he mentioned it, and I thought about it," says Wilson. "At the moment he mentioned it I was excited, but then later I thought, 'Man, I've never done that shit before.' But now I'm excited again." Stoessel's take: "I was sitting at the Flicker Bar late one night and apparently talking to Jim about doing a solo show. So then I saw him later and he said, 'Hey, I booked that show we were talking about. We're going to play together down here.' And then I had to be told about the conversation, and I said, 'Sounds good to me!'"

As for Wilson, this'll be the public debut of the "heartfelt" songs he's been writing for years. "Maybe that's why I'm always taking my shirt off in the back, because I always secretly wanted to be up front," he jokes. "One step at a time." Tonight's show at Flicker gets underway roundabout 8:30 p.m.

Down With the Woo

with Roosevelt and The Shut-Ups

Friday, December 15 @ 40 Watt Club

originally published December 13, 2006

Ben Gerrard

Heros Severum

Though nostalgia may be the driving force for those who show up at the 40 Watt tonight eager to relive the early '90s with Roosevelt, let's raise a glass as well to the equally compelling force of curiosity for the new. Down With the Woo, the next evolution for Eric Friar and Mandy Branch, the core of post-punk act Heros Severum, makes its Athens club debut at this show.

"I think that half of the people who listened to Heros Severum will like what we're doing now," says Friar. "The sound of the new band grew out of the direction that Heros Severum was headed in before we split. I think the other half of the people who listened to Heros will hate our guts." Bassist-saxophonist Winston Parker joins Friar and Branch in creating a sound that taps into the rhythmic, playful undercurrents present on Heros Severum's final album Plague Dogs; the new work is slightly funky and soulful, sometimes woozy, and certainly much brighter and poppier than what came before.

Down With the Woo's MySpace page calls the band "a live production experiment," suggesting an exploration of the studio strategies of Downtown Athens Recording Company engineer Friar into a live setting. "Our show is powered by a Mac G4 running ProTools. A lot of the effects are automated," says Friar. "We have a few classic old drum machines combined with real percussion. We have submixes running out to different speakers in the audience with percussion and synths. Most important, we record every performance with the idea being to build an archive with every show the band has ever played. Eventually the best parts of the performances will be culled for release as an album. We're kicking around the idea of burning copies of the show for sale as you leave the venue, but we're still working out the logistics of that."

Vic Chesnutt & Elf Power

with Liz Durrett and Ham 1

Saturday, Dec. 16 @ 40 Watt Club

originally published December 13, 2006

Rich Merritt

Vic Chesnutt & Elf Power

The depth of the Athens music scene is staggering, but even the most ardent live-music showgoers can get a little burned out. Y'know: "Yeah, that band's great, but I've seen 'em, like, 50 times this year, and always on the same stage…" So hip hip hooray for the rare collaborative performances that increase the depth of possibilities in local music, allowing performing musicians chances to exercise new muscles and giving audiences a fresh reason to open their ears.

Audiences got a chance to see local songwriter Vic Chesnutt, that icon of wry and tender Southern sorrow, backed by the psych-rock powerhouse Elf Power at a taping of the Turner South show "Music Road" at the 40 Watt Club back in January. "Vic asked us to play with him on the TV show," says head Elf Andrew Rieger, "and as we're huge fans of his, of course we obliged."

The show ended up never airing, but the performance was such a success, the 40 Watt went so far as to schedule and promote a summer show pairing Chesnutt and the Elves, but the show had to come off the calendar due to prior obligations of Chesnutt's that took him to perform at festivals in Canada. Things have finally come together for an encore performance, though, timed just right to serve as the 40 Watt's annual holiday celebration (a party at which Chesnutt has become a regular performer). Expect to see Elf Power add some oomph to Chenutt's idiosyncratic songs: "We rock 'em out, snazz 'em up, add majestic flourishes and psychedelic makeovers," says Rieger. Also, Chesnutt has been known to roast a few reworked Christmas tunes over an open fire in years past. As for future collaborations? "We've talked about recording together again," says Rieger, who welcomed Chesnutt's backing vocals on the title track from the 2004 Elf Power album Walking With the Beggar Boys, "so hopefully we will do it at some point."