Outrunning Demons
No Rest for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
originally published April 23, 2008
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
"It kind of felt like we were done with the record, but the record wasn't done with us," Black Rebel Motorcycle Club bassist and singer Robert Levon Been reflects with a laugh. It's been a year since the release of B.R.M.C.'s fourth record Baby 81, and 2008 was supposed to be a time to rest. No such luck for these infamous road warriors. As soon as the band settled down from an international tour, the offers started coming back in for more.
"It's a good thing," says Been of the new round of tour dates, "because I guess people still want to hear [the new material]. So, rather than being crabby or something, it seems that if people want to hear us, we'll play, and when they don't, then we won't."
While that eagerness to hit the road may be strong as ever, few things in B.R.M.C.'s career are as simple as the day the band started eight years ago. Having gone through two major labels already, this trio has an intimate knowledge of the challenges artists face trying to keep up with the ever-changing music industry.
"When we first started, the cool thing to do was to sign to an indie label and try to get respect that way," says Been. "We thought it was more brave to jump into a major label and try to fight your way from the inside out rather than the outside in. Back in the day you would sign to an indie label, and then you get a hit, and then immediately sign to a major. And then eventually... you are what you said you were against. It was important to us to jump into the belly of the beast and fight our way out."
It was more of a struggle than the band anticipated. After a messy break from Virgin, the fight turned inward as drummer Nick Jago parted from the group, followed by guitarist Peter Hayes. This was the lowest low point for B.R.M.C. - a fractured lineup and no label to support their future efforts. Luckily, not too long after the recording sessions for Howl were complete, RCA stepped in to distribute the album. A marked departure from the band's earlier heavy rock sound, Howl is steeped in rich Americana and eloquent sorrow.
When fans saw B.R.M.C. next, the boys had slicked back their disheveled hair into neat pompadours and traded in their ragged t-shirts and leather jackets for Johnny Cash's sharp wardrobe. Their once haggard and worn demeanor transformed slowly into a focused optimism. You can even hear the change in Been's amiable tone. Early B.R.M.C. interviews were notoriously difficult. Speaking with Flagpole today, Been laughs easily, eager to share fond memories playing with heroes The Rolling Stones, Joe Strummer, Neil Young and others.
Always looking forward, Been's next goal is to bring this sense of lightness to the records. Although Baby 81 marked a return to the band's hard rocking sound, it didn't quite capture this sense of "light" that Been felt with the band's debut record.
"I think it's a state of mind," says Been. "Don’t be distracted by the smoke and mirrors of production; it's underneath that. It comes from a place where I feel like I have less to prove, and I like that."
B.R.M.C. has now parted with RCA as well, and Been and the band are still deciding how to move forward. He's still ready to fight the music industry beast, but it's not as clear where to strike.
"Now the enemy has changed," he laughs. "I don't know, the enemy is more - noise, useless information, static. You are just trying to break through something that is more ambiguous and harder to attack. Everyone's just standing in the dark and asking how can you release records now that are going to reach people and impact them and not just be more noise?"
Been says the band is considering releasing the next record independently, possibly launching its own label inside a larger label. There are infinitely more choices for bands now, but sometimes too much of a good thing can be just as challenging.
"It's a lot harder to be a band now. You have to fight to keep it alive and to find a way to get your music heard - be a bit more hands on with what you create. There isn't a formula any more. You have to be more inventive - which is a good thing - but you gotta be a little smarter to survive this game right now."
For Been, it's all about moving, moving, moving. "When we're off the road, recording, it feels kind of like pretending... I get worried because the demons seem to always come out when we're at home - the vicious thoughts that run in your head - and music always kind of quiets those down. We tend to just keep moving, keep running before they catch up with you."
It sounds like a cycle of anxiety, but it's a pressure off of which Been feeds.
"Comfort and satisfaction is kind of the death of music. As soon as you've gone everywhere you want to go... it's kind of a scary place to be. I have a healthy perfectionist in me that'll never be satisfied. So, I have faith in him that he'll constantly keep me searching, even if I know I can never get there."
WHO: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Duke Spirit
WHEN: Wednesday, April 23
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
HOW MUCH: $15
An Instrument of Outreach
First Annual UGA/Athens Twilight Jazz Festival
originally published April 23, 2008
Joshua Redman
After over a year of planning, the First Annual UGA/Athens Twilight Jazz Festival, to be held Apr. 24–26, will unite UGA’s growing jazz program with local community musicians, a host of jazz educators and respected instrumental and vocal clinicians, and a culminating event featuring major recording artists Joshua Redman and Ilona Knopfler. In addition to being a weekend of entertainment fueled by education, event organizers are anticipating the festival to extend its musical boundaries to become “an instrument of outreach and service to the community and region.” Music on the Twilight Outdoor Stage will be available at no cost to the public, and will be centrally located on the 200 block of College Avenue.
The decision to hold the event in conjunction with the annual Twilight Criterium was a decisive maneuver made by event organizers to draw from one of Athens’ largest events - Twilight has brought in over one million spectators and athletes in its 29-year history of bicycle race competition. Yet, the idea to have a jazz festival during Twilight is not completely new, as this year’s event will see the revival of two of the city’s jazz festival traditions - combining the UGA Jazz Festival of Champions and the Athens Jazz Festival, the latter of which had been held in conjunction with the Twilight Criterium in previous years.
Music on the Twilight Stage will kick off this Friday at noon with the UGA Jazz Band under the direction of Steve Dancz, which was recently invited to perform in Beijing, China as part of a formal event to honor the country’s prosperous economic relations with the state of Georgia. After additional performances from a series of local and regional high school jazz ensembles, the evening will conclude with the All-Star Festival Band, featuring several of the weekend’s top clinicians from around the country, each well known in his/her area of musical expertise. Other performers in attendance will include UGA’s vocal and instrumental jazz combo, Classic City Jazz and Athens’ own hip and up-and-coming Jazzenigma, fronted by Melvin Mathurin. As part of the greater educational experience of the festival, all registered participants will receive a videotape of their performance, an audiotape with constructive comments, as well as an interactive feedback session with festival clinicians.
Along with opening act, French chanteuse Ilona Knopfler, The Joshua Redman Trio will headline the festival on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. (unfortunately overlapping with the Men's race) in Hodgson Hall of the UGA Performing Arts Center. After nearly 10 years with Warner Bros. Records, bebop-inspired saxophonist Joshua Redman released his most recent two albums on Nonesuch Records, the latter of which, Back East (2007), was Grammy-nominated for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, and is arguably his most assured release to date. Redman’s career was launched after having received First Place in the 1991 Thelonius Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, from which point he began forming collaborations with eminent performers along the way, ranging from Pat Metheny to Brad Mehldau.
Following the headlining event, festival participants and local musicians alike are welcome to bring their instruments to the Melting Point for a night of open improvisation with local Athens jazz veterans, Prime Time Jazz. Earlier the same day, festival participants will be encouraged to attend Redman and Knopfler’s instructive master classes, which will concentrate on instrumental and vocal techniques respectively. “Currently,” says festival co-director Mitos Andaya, “there is no other comparable jazz festival in the state of Georgia that combines the educational and community elements and is open to both vocal and instrumental groups.” It is this unifying element that organizers hope will resonate with local musicians, and in effect, strengthen the community at large in Athens.
This year’s festival is sponsored by the UGA Hugh Hodgson School of Music in conjunction with the Athens Twilight Criterium and the Melting Point/Foundry Park Inn & Spa, and was organized by UGA Associate Director of Choral Activities, Dr. Mitos Andaya, and UGA Percussion Coordinator, Dr. Thomas McCutchen. For more information about the UGA/Athens Twilight Jazz Festival as well as a detailed schedule of events, please visit: www.uga.edu/music/jazzfestival.
Jazz Festival Schedule
- Thursday, April 24
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The Melting Point, $10
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- 8:00 p.m. Kick-off performance with Squat
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- Friday, April 25
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School of Music/UGA Performing Arts Center
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for registered participants
- 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Clinics
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Twilight Outdoor Stage, FREE!
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200 block of College Avenue
- 12 p.m. UGA Jazz Band
- 1 p.m. Peachtree Ridge HS, Big Band
- 4 p.m. Chattahoochee HS Big Band
- 5 p.m. Blair Trio (Vanderbilt University)
- 6 p.m. Jackson County HS Jazz Cats
- 7 p.m. International Groove Conspiracy
- 8 p.m. All-Star Festival Clinician Band
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The Melting Point, $10
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- 9 p.m. Festival Jam Session with Prime Time Jazz as house band, open to all (bring instruments)
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- Saturday, April 26
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Twilight Outdoor Stage, FREE!
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200 block of College Avenue
- 10 a.m. Ware County HS Big Band
- 11 a.m. Jazzenigma
- 12 p.m. Chris Cassini Trio
- 1 p.m. Trey Wright Trio
- 2 p.m. Chris Enghauser's Super Combo
- 3 p.m. College of Charleston Combo
- 4 p.m. Mark Maxwell Quintet
- 5 p.m. Athens A-Train
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The Melting Point, $10
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- 9 p.m. Festival Jam Session with Prime Time Jazz as house band, open to all (bring instruments)
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Hugh Hodgson School of Music
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for registered participants
- 1:00 p.m. Joshua Redman, saxophone, master class
- 2:00 p.m. Ilona Knopfler, vocalist, master class
- 4:30 p.m. Awards Ceremony
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UGA Performing Arts Center, $35
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- 7:30 p.m. Ilona Knopfler, Joshua Redman Trio
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Schedule subject to change.
A Decade of Delirium
The Irreverent Madness of Je Suis France Continues
originally published April 23, 2008
Kevin Griggs
Je Suis France
As much as we enjoy watching cyclists navigate rain-slick downtown Athens streets and occasionally exploding into protective haybales while craning our necks past the pay phone next to Horton Drugstore’s Lumpkin Street flank, it can be argued that the patent appeal of the Twilight Criterium lies in the fact it serves as a vague sporting event backdrop to the semi-oblivious masses in the parking spaces-turned-beer garden. Legal drinking in the streets rules!
Intoxicating and treacherous qualities aside, the Criterium’s legacy is secured by the fact that it serves as a semi-important athletic event precursor to the most righteous musical extravaganza going on nine years now, The Twilight Delirium, as always, hosted by Je Suis France. The Delirium is undoubtedly the quintessential rock and jock experience. Yes, even better than a Kinchafoonee Cowboys performance at the Georgia Theatre in the fall after a victorious home game, on ketamine and cotton candy.
This year the light-hearted, totally psychedelic self-referential indie rockers with sometimes novice garage rock, sometimes outer space leanings, celebrate a 10th anniversary of existence. A decade is serious time, yet the band has never suffered from anything resembling stagnant artistic vision or been victimized by attrition. In fact, the most recent band census counts nine members, this despite tremendous geographical challenges, the politics of relationships and the management of important, mostly top-secret day jobs. Kids, you think he’s just a physical education instructor, but he’s also 11.1 percent of the band you should purchase a t-shirt from.
Je Suis France is so good this entire story should read like a paid advertisement written by the marketing world’s best-trained hypnotists.
The 10 years have been less than casual. There is no such thing as a casual relationship between people who allow real feelings to be involved. Transparency and vulnerability in deeds and conversation between grown men at these depths will yield serious business, good songs and lifelong camaraderie. Of course, when you get that many dudes together, you’re also bound to get copious doses of chicanery, foolishness and inebriated (yet educated) philosophies. Thank God. There’s something to be said for being able to retain high levels of adolescence while effectively pulling off adulthood, no? Forgive (and reinterpret) the preceding message if you detected homoerotic undertones. It was a sincere attempt at packaging the deep and spiritual stuff as reverently as possible. We’ll leave irreverent to Je Suis France and enjoy (most) every minute of it.
The original France quartet comprised of D.J. Hammond, Ryan Martin (AKA Darkness), Ryan Bergeron (AKA Ice) and Chris Rogers (AKA Crog) ultimately relented and allowed Jeff Griggs to serve as drummer prior to recording its self-titled debut for Pitch-a-Tent Records. With a blatant disregard for specific chronological development, Sean Rawls, Jon Croxton, Jeremy Wheatley and Ken Hensley ultimately joined the band and some combination of the aforementioned musicians became responsible for 19 EPs, three proper albums, a 12-inch split with Acid Mothers Temple and numerous public displays of ridiculous brilliance. Through it all, they’ve become their biggest fans, which is not to say the band exists as a vehicle for self-aggrandizement, but rather it has become an opportunity to carry out personal visions with a posse. Gaining a following would be a positive, yet not essential side effect of the Je Suis France experience. As Hammond explains, “What other people think about it is kind of secondary to me - we care about the other guys first and like, just writing something these guys will enjoy, or think is funny - and if it passes that test, then you know - done!”
And the casual nature of the beast hasn’t encumbered their progress or prolific nature. As Hensley noted, “There isn’t one dude in the band that’s thinking c’mon guys, get it together!” as Croxton adds with a sarcastic chuckle, “We gotta start writing hits!”
“Friendship has always been a huge part of the France,” says Hammond, with Bergeron piggy backing on the thought, “It’s pretty much the only part - or at least, the best part.”
It’s this puissant friendship that inspired the band's most recent EP, Death Wish, an ambitiously intense endeavor that finds each member of the group composing a song to another member with specific instruction for desired action upon his passing. Yes, literally, their death wishes. While previous EPs, like Tittania, a collection of kick-ass cover songs, and Sub Base, the 2007 summer tour offering, provided listeners and fans (at least nine of them) with some of the most palpable Je Suis France jams ever, Death Wish raises the bar. Spoiler alert: When Ice asks Jeff to throw a graveyard party for him, it’s encouraged you have tissue in hand to dab at the tears that will well in your eyes. This is high gravity France. Flagpole experienced a partial preview with several of the band members hearing each other’s contributions for the very first time. While it’s definitely a bit of a departure from the ham-jamming they’re notorious for, it can’t be all fun and games all the time, right? Of course, they all loved every minute of it. Perhaps Griggs surmised it best when he said, “I think most every band will sit around at some point and fellate themselves about the shit that they just recorded, but no one can fellate themselves like the France can.”
WHO: Royal Bangs, The Buddy System, Je Suis France
WHEN: Saturday, Apr. 26
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
HOW MUCH: $5 (21+), $7 (18+)
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