True Story, Swear To God

Jefferson's Brantley Gilbert Gains Country Cred, Keeps Ego In Check

originally published June 6, 2007

Brantley Gilbert

If you had to pick a single word to describe the music and personal outlook of Jefferson-based troubadour Brantley Gilbert, look no further than r-e-a-l. Gilbert, at barely more than 20 years old, has recently been getting some pretty impressive attention from Nashville labels and talent scouts, while a version of his song "G.R.I.T.S." - girls raised in the South, natch - is scheduled to appear on the next album by slick country performer Chris Cagle. No matter how many subsequent offers might come knocking, though, Gilbert says he's bound and determined to keep a level head.

"Everything that's happened to me in music so far has just been luck of the draw," insists Gilbert. "I'm by no means the greatest singer or anything like that out there. The people that come to my shows, most of them are just like me. When I started out playing music, I wanted to write songs that people in my town could relate to, songs that would make both them and me feel better about things.

"Now, it is what it is, and I'm extremely thankful for any success I've had or ever will have. I do consider myself a musician, because it is my job, but other than that, I'm about as normal as it gets. I work my ass off every day putting in cabinets or loading hay during the week. My fallback plan isn't supported by a degree or anything else. Anything I've ever done, I've worked my tail off till I've got it."

Gilbert originally began playing music around Jefferson-area hangouts in his teens and under the tutelage of fellow Jeffersonian Corey Smith. Gilbert still calls Smith his biggest influence to date and credits the down-to-earth singer-songwriter for Gilbert's entrance into the music biz.

"I walked into a place called Mike's Grill when I was about 15 years old and Corey Smith was there playing," remembers Gilbert. "He recognized me and invited me up to play a couple songs and, really, we've been close ever since. I think pretty much all I've learned about the music industry and any good advice I ever got about music as a career came from Corey. We spent three years of touring together, five guys riding around in a Ford Explorer from gig to gig - me, Corey, Jason Chastain, Jason Kinney and a merchandise guy. Pretty much what Corey did is something people don't often do for one another: he gave me my introduction and, later, when he began drawing bigger crowds and blowing up, he took me along with him."

Much of the recent attention focused on Gilbert has sprung from his debut release, last year's autobiographical Modern Day Prodigal Son. With the exception of the anthemic "G.R.I.T.S.," the album traces Gilbert's life from a green, small-town teen growing up in the city about 15 miles northwest of Athens, all the way to the present. Gilbert says that most of his songs - "Live It Up," for instance, and the album's therapeutic title track - have sprung from personal or life-altering situations and that, Nashville-bound or not, he plans on keeping it that way.

"The songs on [Modern Day Prodigal Son] go all the way back to stuff I started writing when I was 15 that got polished up along the way," says Gilbert. "From a songwriter's standpoint, I think your first album is always going to be your best, just because that's a document of your life, what you do, what you think about and what you develop - it all stems from those songs. 'G.R.I.T.S.' actually is an exception because it's just a fun song, pure and simple, and one that gets the room moving when we play it live. What sucks about a second album, though, is feeling like you have to live a whole other life to have anything that compares to what you did before. I currently have a publishing deal with Warner-Chapel and everything that anybody writes with me will be strictly for publishing purposes.

"When I get ready to do a second album, it may take two years, but it will be personally written just like the first one. If I ever put out a nationally distributed album, there will still always be something coming out locally that I will sell off my personal website. There will always be an album coming out locally for the people around here that have supported me, have been my longtime friends and have come to the shows through the years. Their support means a lot to me and I try to never burn a bridge."

Throughout Modern Day Prodigal Son, Gilbert draws on such memorable events as a bad car crash that he was lucky enough to survive, along with other vivid remembrances - some happy, others not so much. His gritty Southern twang and personable approach to the material have translated well, both around and outside of the Southeast, so much so that Gilbert's MySpace page was recently ranked in the top 10 nationally for unsigned country/ Southern rock acts. Pretty impressive, considering just about anyone with a kazoo, tape deck and basic knowledge of web design now has a MySpace page.

At press-time, Gilbert was scheduled to join Nashville songwriters Gene Cook and Vince Trocchia on the hallowed Bluebird Café stage for an early songwriters-in-the-round showcase. If a Nashville recording contract looms in his future, it's such craftsmanlike songwriters as Cook and former Garth Brooks bassist-songwriter Jimmy Lee Sloas that Gilbert would rather pattern his work ethic after, he says, rather than the beaming, blemish-free mugs that routinely populate the CMT universe.

"To hear those guys like Gene Cook or Wendell Mobley play right there in front of me is so much of an honor, I can hardly think straight," says Gilbert. "There's so many different kinds of personalities in Nashville. There are people who, if they feel compelled to write a song, they do so and it most always turns out a killer song. Other people, like Wendell Mobley, can ask an artist what they want in a song and manipulate the words and melodies into a masterpiece. Then, there are others who are more egotistical and rely on who they are, more than what they write, to carry them through.

"Pretty much, I'm the people that come to the shows, except I'm playing guitar and singin'. I'm a North Georgia boy who loves his mama and loves his friends. I play music because it makes me happy, not for a dollar and not for big publicity. If a label contract is necessary for me to support myself and keep doing this, then I guess that's what it'll take. Other than that, I'm no different than anybody else."

Michael Andrews

WHO: Brantley Gilbert, Brandon Scott Sellner
WHERE: Georgia Theatre
WHEN: Friday, June 8
HOW MUCH: $10

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Weathering The Storm

Texas Native Carrie Rodriguez Finds Inspiration On Her Solo Debut

originally published June 6, 2007

Carrie Rodriguez

At first glance, it's easy to wonder just how much different Seven Angels on a Bicycle, the solo debut album from Carrie Rodriguez, is from the three duo albums she made with Chip Taylor. Taylor's fingerprints, after all, are all over Seven Angels on a Bicycle. He wrote seven of the CD's 12 tracks and cowrote four others with Rodriguez. Taylor also co-produced the album with Rodriguez.

But when listening to Seven Angels on a Bicycle, it's clear this disc is notably different from her albums with Taylor - Let's Leave This Town (2002), The Trouble With Humans (2003) and Red Dog Tracks (2004). To be sure, the country/ Americana roots of those duo albums are still present on the solo release. Not only are Taylor's vocals absent, there is a palatable atmosphere - a smoky, almost eerie mood - that hasn't inhabited the duo albums.

On songs such as "Dirty Leather," "He Ain't Jesus" and "Big Kiss," Rodriguez's vocals are placed in a spare setting, as gentle drums, chimes of guitar and occasional fills from slide guitar offer restrained support and help create the atmospheric mix. In fact, the CD's primary upbeat moments come from songs that stay closest to country, including the rousing "Never Gonna Be Your Bride" and the chunkier "I Don't Want To Play House Anymore."

It's not just the sound of the songs, though, that separates Seven Angels on a Bicycle from the duo albums. The contrasts began with the songs - including those Taylor wrote on his own. "It was different," says Rodriguez. "Before, we would sort of let the songs evolve together. Like we would take a song in its raw form and play through it together for a month. We were working on arrangements and things like that. On my record, a lot of times he would show me songs and I would take the ones that I thought might fit me and take them home and develop them myself, rather than with him.

"They did kind of take on a different feel," she continues. "Another reason is I don't play the guitar. So he would give me a tune, and I'd take it home and I'd have to figure out a way to work on it without a guitar, which meant my fiddle. I would just strum my fiddle or do different kinds of picking patterns. That ended up being the core of a lot of these songs."

The other factor that was starkly different about the recording sessions was Rodriguez's state of mind. Shortly before work on the album began, one of her best friends was killed while riding his bicycle in New York City, where Rodriguez (an Austin, TX, native) now makes her home with husband, saxophone player Javier Vercher.

Rodriguez said the loss filtered into the mood of Seven Angels on a Bicycle, and the title song refers to the accident. "There were a lot of emotions surrounding the whole process of writing songs and recording," Rodriguez said. "I feel like that dictated the direction and the sound. It really was kind of a mourning sort of process when we were working on it."

This tragedy has been one of the few reasons for sadness in Rodriguez's life in recent years. In fact, her arrival on the national music scene has a bit of fairy-tale good fortune to it.

In 2001, she played a gig with the band Hayseed at an Austin record store, Cheap-o Discs, during the South By Southwest music conference. Taylor saw that performance and approached Rodriguez about joining his band to play fiddle.

Gradually, Rodriguez moved from bandmember into the role of musical partner, after Taylor asked her to sing with him - something Rodriguez had never done in performance. "I don't know what it was that made him think I would be any good at singing," she says with a laugh. "But for whatever reason, he asked me to try and immediately thought he heard something that he wanted to hear more of."

These days, Rodriguez's voice has become a compelling and expressive instrument - and one that takes center stage in her live show.

Her current tour finds her joined by guitarist Hans Holzen and bassist Kyle Kegerreis, and in this format, Rodriguez, who's been playing a good deal of electric mandolin live, says the songs from Seven Angels on a Bicycle are evolving.

"The guys [who played] on my record are some of my heroes: Bill Frisell [guitar] and Greg Leisz [pedal steel, lap steel, dobro] and Viktor Krauss [bass]. All of them are people I've been listening to for years," Rodriguez says. "My band feels the same way. They look up to these guys. So it's been fun to be inspired by what they did on the record and then try to make it our own."

Alan Sculley

WHO: Carrie Rodriguez, Tim Easton, Marty Winkler & Michael Steele
WHERE: Melting Point
WHEN: Wednesday, June 13
HOW MUCH: $11.50 (advance), $12 (door)

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No Deposit, No Return

Part II: The Local Dirt-Punk Stalwarts Of Music Hates You Talk Songcraft, Perseverance And Passion

originally published June 6, 2007

Mike White

Last week, Part I of this conversation with members of local heavyweight act Music Hates You - vocalist-guitarist Noah Ray, guitarist Zaxx Hembree, bassist Forest Hetland and drummer Patrick Ferguson - covered questions of the Athens scene, where heavy bands fit into our town's musical pantheon and the relationship between performers and their audience. Missed out? No worries: it's available here.

Flagpole
What makes a great heavy band?
Zaxx Hembree
What I look for in a band, is if I go to a show and after the first 10 minutes I feel like I'm gonna throw up, that makes me feel great. If I can look into someone's eyes when they're playing and know that that's a vicious motherfucker, I am totally in tune with them and that's the right fucking band. Does that make sense?
Flagpole
It doesn't have a lot to do with what they sound like, but what you're saying is at that point they're probably going to be sounding good.
Zaxx Hembree
That doesn't really matter to me.
Noah Ray
I don't think it's relevant, what a heavy band sounds like; not as much as the way they present it. It's more important to me to see people who mean it.
Zaxx Hembree
There's no type of metal that I hate.
Forest Hetland
I believe in a 95-4-1 perspective. Ninety-five percent of any genre, any couch, any window is crap. Four percent is something you'll listen to again.
Zaxx Hembree
Couch?
Forest Hetland
Any brand of couch, or a brand of food, or a restaurant, or anything. Ninety-five percent of restaurants suck. Four percent you'll go back and eat at again. One percent you'll try your best to eat at every day. Music is like that, and those are the bands you really care about. Maybe they did nothing original, but they did it with all their heart, and everyone believed them, and everyone was on the same page.
Flagpole
What's to be said of songcraft, though? There's a degree to which songcraft has been diluted in the past, maybe, 15 years or so, as amps have gotten louder and tones have gotten heavier. I've noticed, especially in this decade, that a lot of times I see a band and all the members seem concerned with is how loud and heavy they sound, and they're not actually interested in whether their songs are anything memorable.
Forest Hetland
But there are still exceptions.
Flagpole
Well, right. Converge is a great example of the one-percent band. It still has awesome riffs while being heavy as hell. I can remember things that these guys do. I saw them a few months ago at the 40 Watt with Mastodon, and I loved Mastodon that night, but Converge knocked Mastodon off the stage because every note seemed memorable. It seems to me in hindsight, 15 or 20 years ago, that there was a reverence for riffs and songs where every note counted that doesn't seem to be as strong these days.
Patrick Ferguson
I consider the first wave of metal to be like the MC5, Cream, later the beginnings of AC/DC and all that, and those guys were coming out of the '50s and '60s songwriting paradigm that was basically verse/ chorus/ verse/ chorus/ bridge/ verse/ chorus. Then, there was this sort of second wave of metal where there was a real possibility that just about no matter how off the charts you were, with the exception of Venom, that you were gonna actually break through and be a commercial success. So they hung on to that sort of pop idea of the verse and the chorus and hooks and all that.
Then there was a ton of super-successful metal in the late '80s like Poison and Ratt, but you always had this bubbling underground of bands like Motörhead, King Diamond, Slayer, S.O.D. Those guys still wrote songs. You can still remember the chorus of "Angel of Death."
There's a lot of doom and black metal right now that is intentionally atonal or anti-pop structure. I'm not really qualified to comment on that because Music Hates You - and I know I'll probably get strangled for this as soon as you turn off that tape deck - we write pop songs in the sense of having verses and choruses and bridges. But there's a kind of no-wave, anti-music thing that happens with bands like Sunn O))) and Boris, and they're deconstructing loud music to the point where it's just tones and the songs, more like weird symphonies.
Forest Hetland
And that can be valuable at times.
It's art. It's still art, it's just not pop or rock and roll. I don't think that's bad or good, it just is.
Flagpole
Bands that are on "Headbanger's Ball" on MTV2 these days, bands like Lamb of God or Chimaera, it's almost like they're just producing tones, too, or might as well be. I can't remember a single riff I've ever heard from a Lamb of God song, even though I've listened to a whole album, because all I hear is guitar heaviness.
Patrick Ferguson
Part of that is mastering. Everything's mastered super loud right now. You go into this room and some guy says, "How do you want to master this?" And most bands are saying the same thing: "Everything louder than everything else." You get this really hot mix that doesn't much convey any melody, and I think there's an innate desire for melody in people who love music.
There are also people, though, who just love to tap into that brain frequency of rage, and for them, the harder it is and the more atonal it is, the better. Again, I'm not making a value judgment here. The kids are going to see Lamb of God and a lot of people love them, but are Lamb of God good? One of the things I learned from Pavement, who I fucking hate, is that just because I think something sucks doesn't mean it's bad. There were people around the band I was in the time that Pavement was popular who loved Pavement, who seemed to live and die to drink piss out of Stephen Malkmus' boot, and I actually thought the guy was a fraud.
But I learned at some point that I was missing something. There was something about Pavement that was good, that moved a nation of picky eaters and bed-wetters. There's something about Lamb of God that people connect with, and I fully support them as a band.

Mike White

Forest Hetland
That connection is so vital, too, because if you have a high-school kid who's not familiar with, say, Led Zeppelin, and they hear Lamb of God and they connect to it, then that's where they are in their life, right now. That's valuable. For me, a lot of droney bands, I don't like. But the first time I saw Harvey Milk, I had no idea what was going on, but I knew that they knew what they were doing, and they weren't just doing a loud droney show for the sake of it. There was something else behind it, something I didn't see until I listened to some of their albums.
Patrick Ferguson
There's a band [Harvey Milk] that writes from an exceptionally honest place.
Forest Hetland
And they're true songwriters. They write songs that may not have a specific pattern, but they're a complete song.
Flagpole
We could easily have a whole conversation about Harvey Milk. That band comes from nowhere and exists everywhere all at once.
Noah Ray
And it's a totally different take on writing songs in general. They don't seem to feel responsible for making every note 10 million times louder than the last one. As far as songcraft goes, game over. Fucking give it up if you want to try to outdo those guys.
Flagpole
I've wondered how much of their otherworldliness is due to their location. Being from kind of a remote place and time where there wasn't a huge scene, they didn't have a lot of buddy bands, they didn't really have any prospects of getting bigger, they didn't tour, perhaps all that made them feel kind of free to make music as they saw and see fit.
Patrick Ferguson
There were a bunch of guys just like there are now who worked at the Gyro Wrap and Five Star, and worked in bars, and they would go see every Harvey Milk show, but it's true that they never enjoyed the kind of following that some other bands who were playing at the time did. I guess they were free to develop in their own hermetically sealed world.
I would've liked to see Harvey Milk break through maybe at least like someone like Jucifer who tour all the time and have a Relapse [Records] deal, but at the same time, there's something to be said for the obscurity of true greatness. Harvey Milk was never going to be booming out of the frat house like Nirvana because they were working their own genre.
Noah Ray
They've got plenty of songs where you never hear a distorted note or any growling or whatever. I honestly think Harvey Milk are what they are because those guys are just fucking crazy, and that music's maybe the way they deal with it. You could've put them anywhere with any instruments and they would've written songs that way because it's who they are.
Patrick Ferguson
If they had lived in Paris in 1930, they'd be brooding painters. If they'd lived in London in the '20s, they'd have been Dadaists. Those guys live far outside of the mainstream, artistically.
Noah Ray
All that said, personally, I cannot stand that type of songwriting. I love hooks.
Flagpole
They know how to do that, too, though, is the thing.
Noah Ray
They do that, but it's hell to get to it. You could go through a whole album and every minute is different than the last. The thing that draws me into Harvey Milk, though, is that I believe it. Every time Creston [Spiers] opens his mouth, every time they change movements, I don't believe it's something that they sat there deliberating about how to make it "fucked up" or whatever. I just believe them.
I can almost see what you're getting at about Converge and Mastodon, and I have no allegiance to either band whatsoever, but Converge got up onstage and it seemed like that guy could come off that stage and beat your ass at any time. You were transfixed by the atmosphere they created. Mastodon was kinda just playing their songs, which is fine. I have a lot of respect for that, too. Hats off and respect to them. I couldn't play any measure of any of their songs if I practiced it for the rest of my life, but at no point in their performance did I feel endangered.
Heavy music, at its best, makes me feel totally endangered. Black Flag is another example. Songcraft? Where? In a way, no note counted, none of 'em. But Black Flag counted. Part of that was that band, part of it was that scene, part of it was that time period. A heavy band is brilliant when the people up there have taken it so seriously simply because that's just who the fuck they are.
Flagpole
Any band in Athens, or anywhere else I've ever lived where people seem to care about it on any level - even if it's just 12 people who care about it - the reason that that happens is that people see something honest in what the band is doing.
Zaxx Hembree
It's like that every time I see The Dumps. Every time I see Jason [Richardson], the drummer, kick his hi-hat and roll his eyes back in his head, I feel that.
Patrick Ferguson
Now that you've said that, he's never going to do it again.
Noah Ray
There are a lot of bands who nobody gives a shit about in this town who can do that. Like I said, I've got a kid so I don't get out to every show that I want to, but that band Hot New Mexicans? I saw them six months or so ago, and dude, the guy's drum set was such a piece of fucking shit that he spent the whole set literally chasing it around. It was fucking incredible. Sold, man. Every chance I can feel like I'm not neglecting my duties as a father, I will go see that band, I will buy whatever they've got.
Why? Because they were totally themselves and did not give a fuck about what anybody thought about it.
Forest Hetland
Sometimes I feel that way about John Denver.
Flagpole
One of the first times that I saw American Cheeseburger, it was some house show and I got knocked down right in front of James, the vocalist. He was in his berserker rage, and where most people might lend a hand to help hoist me up, he literally kicked me. I thought that was awesome.
Forest Hetland
Certainly no pretense.
Noah Ray
In that regard, David Yow [of Scratch Acid and The Jesus Lizard] was the king. He wasn't going to be nice, because that wasn't his job.
Zaxx Hembree
I can remember shows we've played where fights have broken out between us in the band, or with members of the audience.
Noah Ray
Zaxx and I, New Year's Eve two years ago, somebody mistakenly gave us a bottle of tequila about an hour before we were supposed to go on and…
Patrick Ferguson
They got into it like three dogs in a bag of garbage.
Noah Ray
…yeah, and these two guys never stopped playing.
Zaxx Hembree
I hit him with a guitar.
Noah Ray
But that's part of it, y'know?

Two things happen simultaneously at this point: Forest chimes in, saying we have to end the interview because the establishment we've burrowed ourselves into is closing up, and my tape runs out. We continue talking about various things for a bit longer, and I walk out feeling certain of one thing - not just about so-called "heavy" music, but rock and roll in general in a relatively remote, but not artistically dry, town like Athens: as long as there are suffocating summers and a service industry, it will always exist, whether anyone cares or not.

Jace Bartet

Didn't see Music Hates You last weekend at Repent? Don't sweat it too much; Music Hates You's next local show is during AthFest, when the non-stop band takes the Caledonia Lounge stage at midnight on Saturday, June 23.

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