All Together Now
In A Mini-Festival Of Sorts, The Georgia Theatre Brings Five Local Bands To Its Stage(s)
originally published January 16, 2008
A handful of local bands playing one venue? That's any given night at any given club. But five local acts, all with new recordings in the works or with new albums ready to go, at one of the largest venues in town and split over two stages? That's something a little out of the ordinary - which is exactly what show organizer Jimmy Hughes, who promotes touring bands under the Fat Man Touring banner, wanted.
"It’s weird how nicely it came together. The booking folks at the Georgia Theatre actually asked me to do it," says Hughes, whose band Folklore is one of the performing acts. "I had contacted them inquiring about opening gigs at the Theatre for some of the Fat Man Touring roster and they very enthusiastically suggested that we do a Fat Man showcase instead, offered a weekend date, making the whole thing all the more enticing, and a show was born.
"At first I had some reservations because that room is so big that it’s pretty intimidating," says Hughes, "but I told them that if I could do five to seven solid bands and a somewhat eclectic bill, then I would be into it. Then I started talking to the bands I wanted to play and everyone seemed into it for the most part."
Though the Georgia Theatre still primarily features higher-profile touring acts and local bands more geared towards the partying college crowd, the venue has opened its doors to bands generally associated with the West Washington Street scene more and more over the past year.
For tonight's buck-per-band show, Hughes & Co. are setting up a second stage inside the Theatre to reduce downtime between bands and keep the show moving, taking inspiration from Mercer West's recent free shows at the 40 Watt Club with a similar setup. "We will start on time and we will be trying to keep to a strict schedule," emphasizes Hughes.
Venice Is Sinking
Venice is Sinking
Main Stage (10 p.m.)
For a band whose music is as understated and mellow as that of Venice is Sinking, there was a period of time when the group was omnipresent on the scene, playing shows in town every week or two. That hasn't been the case since at least mid-2006, though the band still struggles publicly against the we'll-catch-'em-next-week apathy of local show-goers.
The time off from Athens stages has been well spent, with the group at work on its sophomore album, Azar. "We should be mixing by March and finished with the album in April," says vocalist-guitarist Daniel Lawson.
"We still haven't found a label for this one, though, so it may be a little while before it actually gets released." Venice is Sinking has been working new songs into its sets for a while, layering new sounds atop the band's signature viola sweep. Accordingly, a trumpet and sax player join in tonight. Jeremy Wheatley (The Low Lows, Je Suis France) pinch-hits on drums, as Lucas Jensen out of town.
Quiet Hooves
Quiet Hooves
Side Stage (10:30 p.m.)
Childlike in both enthusiasm and aesthetic, Quiet Hooves has been a mainstay at the Secret Squirrel DIY venue since the band's inception. The group, fronted by co-songwriting brothers Patrick and Julian Bozeman, features a number of compositions played on toy instruments, and tonight celebrates the release of its first full-length recording: No Mare o' Mine. The album's woozy pop gems are significantly less abrasive and meandering than the band's loose live shows; still, "what we have here is little regard to perfectionism of form or performance," says drummer Mercer West.
"A good bit of the songs were recorded while they were still supple little skeletons. I don't want to get too chatty about it, but we are very excited with the way the record has turned out."
The band is planning to head out on tour Texaswards in March, hitting up the South by Southwest festival and then later touring with Dark Meat.
Madeline Adams
Madeline
Main Stage (11 p.m.)
2007 was a great year for Athens' Madeline Adams. She released the quiet, intimate album The Slow Bang in the early months, and then pulled a near-180 by putting together a massive band for a show to celebrate its release.
Tonight, that same band, a hearty conglomeration of local talent that pulls from bands like Don Chambers + GOAT, Elf Power, Bellyache and Folklore takes the stage. These additional players lend Adams' songs a fuller sound and a gutsy swing.
Her plans for the next several months include holing up and finishing work on her next album, and she's also hitting the blacktop with local band Nana Grizol, with which she plays bass.
Folklore
Folklore
Side Stage (11:30 p.m.)
Show promoter Jimmy Hughes' band Folklore also has a new release that should be available tonight: the album Carpenter's Falls. Folklore, the pop music of which veers towards lo-fi storytelling and takes unexpected narrative turns, released an EP by the same name in early 2007, and followed that with the album The Ghost of H.W. Beaverman. For the new recording, Hughes says he revisited some of the older tunes, tweaking what needed work. "I was working on some other songs that seemed to work alongside those songs," says Hughes, "so I got the band to start cracking away at the recordings, and, in the end, we had 12 songs… so the EP was now an LP."
In late February, Folklore heads out on the road for a tour up to Ohio and then around the Midwest for a week or two before heading back to Athens in March. Shortly thereafter, Hughes hits the road again as guitarist for Elf Power, which is planning an early-summer tour in support of an upcoming album.
Dark Meat
Dark Meat
Main Stage (midnight)
Athenians into the local music scene know the drill: talk to anyone in another city about our town's musical output, and one of the first questions that'll inevitably surface is "So who's the next big band out of Athens?" Dark Meat makes a strong argument to answer that question, and though the band's over-the-top live performances (costumes, streamers, more than a dozen members and a whole lot of jazz-influenced noise rock) have turned off a number of show-goers, there are just as many beyond our borders picking up on what Dark Meat is doing.
Vice Records, for instance, the taste-making offshoot of Vice magazine (an equally loved/ loathed publication that eagerly celebrates hedonism, nihilism and sincere partying in an oddly detached way) has tuned into the band. This year, Dark Meat will release its new album on Vice and see its debut album, Universal Indians, re-released on vinyl. Pairing up with Vice should also get the band a lot of attention at South By Southwest in March - word is Dark Meat already has at least one show a day, if not more, scheduled during the festival.
WHO: Dark Meat, Folklore, Madeline, Quiet Hooves, Venice is Sinking
WHERE: Georgia Theatre
WHEN: Saturday, January 19
HOW MUCH: $5
Clap Hands, Stomp Feet, Repeat
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band Encompasses The Past, Present And Future Of New Orleans
originally published January 16, 2008
Preservation Hall Jazz Band
Hand-clapping, foot-stomping New Orleans jazz has had many goodwill ambassadors over the years. Few, though, have become as synonymous with spreading the Crescent City sound far and wide as has the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Named for longtime French Quarter community performance venue Preservation Hall, the membership of the group, founded in the early 1960s by Allan and Sandra Jaffe, has undergone many changes over the years.
However, its aim of expanding the cultural and creative boundaries of traditional, good-time Louisiana jazz remains intact.
Today's Preservation Hall Jazz Band is an amalgam of its past, present and future. The group is now led by band creative director/ tuba player Ben Jaffe, son of the band's and venue's founders, while trumpet player John Brunious, a 20-year Preservation Hall veteran, is the group's official bandleader.
"To me, Preservation Hall does represent the past, present and future of a culture that's steeped in tradition," says Jaffe. "My father also played tuba in the band for several years and began touring with them regularly during the early '70s. Our trombone player, Frank Demond, has been a member, gosh, since shortly after my father joined, so that's going on thirty-something years."
The membership of the group is rounded out by pianist Rickie Monie, bassist Walter Payton, trombonists Frederick Lonzo, Lucien Barbarin and Frank Demond, drummer Joseph Lastie Jr., banjo man Carl Le Blanc, sax players Darryl Adams and Clint Maedgen, percussionist Shannon Powell and clarinet player Ralph Johnson.
Though the native sounds of New Orleans are the ensemble's bread and butter, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more diverse and eclectic group of players in any city. Monie has accompanied Louisiana legends like Dave Bartholomew and Clarence "Frogman" Henry; Johnson has shared the stage with soul legends like Jerry Butler and The Impressions; Le Blanc's resume includes Sun Ra, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Bo Diddley, while Lastie has kept time for several area legends, including Professor Longhair and the eternally suave Antoine "Fats" Domino.
The impact felt by many New Orleans musicians in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina struck the Preservation Hall crew to its core. Several members of the band, including Lastie and Brunious, lost everything but the clothes on their backs and the shoes on their feet to the storm's rising waters.
However, none of them abandoned their wreckage-strewn stomping grounds, while friends and colleagues from around the city chipped in by providing new or loaned equipment. Brunious even got back his favorite horn, which predates his joining the group by many years, courtesy of Jaffe, who tracked down the trumpet and arranged for repairs after the floodwaters receded.
"I was the first member of the band back into the city after the hurricane," remembers Jaffe. "One of my missions after I came home was to go to John's house, because he was one of the guys who stayed during Katrina instead of evacuating. His house was overwhelmed with water and he did not have an opportunity to protect his instrument. So, the first thing I did after checking to make sure my house was still standing, was to find John's trumpet, which had been completely submerged in salt water. Since then, our trombone player has had it fixed and refurbished and John now has that trumpet back in his possession. It's one of the few items we were able to actually recover from his home."
Today, the Preservation Hall cottage industry that began with the Hall itself and the house band that's kept its spirit alive also includes a Preservation Hall record label. The latest entry into the label's catalog continues in the Preservation tradition of bridging the gap between past and present. Made In New Orleans: The Hurricane Sessions is a CD/DVD set spearheaded by Jaffe that features vintage seminal recordings from Preservation Hall Jazz Bands of decades past accompanied by several of the group's present members.
"The whole thing behind this project is that we all realized, after the hurricane, what a delicate ecosystem we have here," says Jaffe. "Within hours, a lot of our physical history was completely destroyed. I wanted to do a project that reflected the depth of Preservation Hall's history, as well as some of the little things that make up a life in New Orleans. Whether it's a souvenir gold doubloon from a Mardi Gras parade or a flier from a business that's no longer around, each of those little things played a part in the project coming together."
The DVD features a documentary of the band's history and rare footage of live performances. It also includes the video for the group's full-on rendition of The Kink's brass-augmented Muswell Hillbillies-era romp "Complicated Life," in which sax man Maedgen takes a lush scenic tour via bicycle through a pre-Katrina French Quarter.
"I'd already been a Kinks fan, but I'd never listened to that record with the intent of turning it into a Preservation Hall song," says Jaffe. "The more I listened to its lyrics, though, I started visualizing, pretty much, a lot of the visuals that turn up in the video. For me, it was a good way to come full circle. I look at the Kinks and Ray Davies as being musicians heavily influenced by New Orleans music and I know that's something that Ray listened to even as a young man growing up in England. Ray Davies actually lived in New Orleans for a time, and, when he heard us play, his comment to me was 'I haven't heard those songs since I was a little kid.' With that background and with him being such a fantastic melodic songwriter, the whole thing just made a lot of sense to us."
For this seated show in Athens, the Melting Point is limiting the amount of tickets to only 250 for the entire night. The band intends to play two full sets, with the first starting promptly at 8:30 p.m.
WHO: Preservation Hall Jazz Band
WHERE: Melting Point
WHEN: Friday, January 18; 8:30 p.m.
HOW MUCH: $32.50 (advance), $35 (doors)
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