Colt Ford
Just Because He Ain't Singin,' Don't Mean It Ain't Country
originally published August 6, 2008
Colt Ford
"Write what you know," the old adage advises. "Keep it real," echoes the hip-hop community. It's a sentiment that born-and-bred Athenian Colt Ford has taken to heart over the years, but it took him some time to really figure it out.
Growing up in the South, Ford is just about as country as it gets. With his eyes shaded under a cowboy hat, he grew up relishing tunes by classic artists like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Charlie Daniels and Kenny Rogers. But when it came time to compose his own material, young Colt Ford opened his mouth and out came a barrage of wickedly witty rhymes. This country boy could rap, and the flow came naturally and easily for him despite living quite far from the "urban" scene. Old school hip-hop had just taken root around this time, but Ford's peers were dumbfounded by his white boy delivery.
"...This was before I even saw The Beastie Boys. Any of the kids I grew up with around Clarke Central will tell you they heard me rapping before they ever seen any other white kid doing it before," says Ford. "I was certainly looked upon pretty funny back in the day, growing up around here doing that; you know, being a white kid that also plays college golf, and later, pro golf."
Although his classmates in town were skeptical, it wasn't long until Ford met a budding producer by the name of Jermaine Dupri at a music conference. The two hit it off and soon began collaborating. In fact, Ford was right there when Dupri started working with one of his first big acts: hip-hop duo Kris Kross.
Dupri's dad took over as Ford's manager, and the country rapper went into the studio with Dupri to record his first album. Ford's debut was scheduled for release by Sony, but the label had a change of heart.
"It was just a bad time to be a white dude that rapped," says Ford. "The whole Vanilla Ice thing and all that... it just wasn't good timing, so they kind of shelved the record."
Looking back, Ford realizes that his real fault as a young rapper wasn't the color of his skin or being country, but rather the subject matter of his tunes.
"I don't think there's ever been a problem in the urban community with a white kid rapping," he says. "I think that it comes from a white kid rapping about something they don't know nothing about."
It seems obvious enough, but it never occurred to Ford to make a country record. He was a fan, but singing was never his strong suit and rap just came so naturally to him. He did find some temporary consolation in fellow local rapper Bubba Sparxxx. Ford encouraged Sparxxx to enter the studio, and the two collaborated for some time until Sparxxx decided to branch off and do his own thing. Frustrated by the experience, Ford took a break from music to focus on his career as a golfer.
It wasn't until recently that PBR reeled him back into the music business. No, not the beer, but rather Professional Bull Riders, Inc.
"My wife is a huge bull riding fan and a huge country fan, just like me... She kept telling me 'do some country!' I'd seen the whole Cowboy Troy thing, and I thought that was stupid. It didn't seem real to me. I was like, that looks like something that's made up or contrived a little bit... If it's going to be country then be country. So, I did this song for the PBR really just so she'd quit pestering me about it."
The PBR CEO loved it. It took some convincing for him to believe that this golf champ was actually the voice behind "Buck 'Em," but soon Ford's country-tinged rap became the bull riders' official theme song.
As Ford would later admit on the title song of his new record, Ride Through the Country: "Most country folks sing, but I couldn't, so I'm rapping."
It turns out, Ford could keep rapping and be country at the same time. Up in Nashville, country stars were falling over themselves trying to convince labels to let Ford guest on their next record. The hip-hop community has proven equally receptive.
That's really all it took. Before long a career was born, and Ford hasn't looked back since. With years of experience in the industry preceding this release, Ford teamed up with So So Def mega-producer Shannon Houchins to launch their own indie label, Average Joes Entertainment Group - a move that's still fairly uncommon in country music. Without the need for major label support, the two released Ford's recent debut: Ride Through the Country. Although Ford raps his way through each track, this is a country record through and through.
Ford speaks humbly and candidly of his country background through a series of fast-paced one-liners that flow like a hundred "you might be a redneck if..." punch lines. There's no hip-hop boasting or bling on this record. Just cold beers, cheatin' women and dirt roads. With true Southern flair and good humor, Ford raps about respecting the Bible and the need to raise hell in the same verse. This is a record soaked in Waffle House grease and washed back with sweet tea. Heck, he even mentions Waffle House by name in three of the tracks - one of which is aptly titled, "Waffle House." While the content isn't totally G-rated, the closest Ford gets to thug life these days is being a "Gangsta of Love."
"I try to do stuff that kids can listen to. I think there are a lot of parents that are in the 30 to 50 range that listened to some rap growing up, but it was different then. It was more fun and more party and everything. I've got kids. I really don't want them listening to a lot of stuff that's out there. So, my record is a good alternative for those kids who listen to rap but don't listen to country music any more. It gives them the best of both worlds; it talks about something they know, and makes them realize it's alright to be a country kid."
WHO: Colt Ford
WHERE: Georgia Theatre
WHEN: Friday, Aug. 8
HOW MUCH: $10
Bringing It All Back Home
The Return of Gnarls Barkley
originally published August 6, 2008
Jeremy & Claire Weiss
Gnarls Barkley
Danger Mouse, AKA Brian Burton, the musical mastermind behind the neo-soul/hip-hop outfit Gnarls Barkley, is one of this decade’s most sought-after producers. Most recently he teamed up with The Black Keys, Beck, and The Good, the Bad and the Queen. Danger Mouse was even selected as one of Esquire's 75 most influential people of the 21st century. During the late 20th century, however, Danger Mouse was renowned here in Athens for producing music under the moniker Pelican City, regularly hosting gigs at now defunct establishments, Mean Mike’s and Candy, and for being one of the most influential clerks at our own Wuxtry Records.
“He was the hip-hop buyer in the late '90s,” recounts former co-worker and musician John Fernandes (Olivia Tremor Control, Circulatory System, etc.). “People would hear the stuff he played during his sets, and he’d tell them what he was ordering. A whole crowd of people we had never even seen come into the store before would come in to look specifically for his stuff.”
The late '90s marked a pivotal point in Burton's development. While living here, Burton was exposed to a whole new genre of music, something he recently recounted with "Fresh Air"’s Terry Gross. “I grew up listening to Motown, '80s pop, and hip-hop, but… classic rock like The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix inspired me to make music. I didn’t grow up with that kind of music around me… it made other music make more sense. I saw how closed off I had been… it showed how I needed to break out of being like everyone else.”
“He had a curious mind about learning about other types of music,” Fernandes concurs. “I turned him onto a lot of '60s and '70s psychedelic music.”
Fernandes also introduced him to Athens' Elephant Six Collective. Burton regularly attended their shows and began his first forays into putting beats behind psychedelia, remixing songs by the Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel, a tactic that would take the world by storm in 2004, when he mashed up The Beatles' White Album with Jay-Z’s Black Album to produce the Grey Album. It was in Athens, during a 1998 show on the UGA campus, that Danger Mouse first met Cee-Lo, a founding member of Atlanta’s celebrated hip-hop/R&B/soul collective Dungeon Family.
At the time, Cee-Lo was performing with the Goodie Mob. The two didn’t join forces until after Cee-Lo embarked on a critically acclaimed solo career (appearing at Tasty World in 2001), when he guested on the Danger Mouse/ Jemini collaboration Ghetto Pop Life II in 2003. Soon after the combined influences of Dungeon Family and Elephant 6 coalesced, and Danger Mouse and Cee-lo created Gnarls Barkley. Their first single, "Crazy," became a top 10 hit on three continents and scored a 2007 Grammy Award for Best Urban/Alternative Performance.
Currently the duo is touring in support of its second album, The Odd Couple, a darker, more psychedelia-infused effort, with Danger Mouse sampling Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, Francoise Hardy, and '70s French funk ensemble T.N.T.H., Cee-Lo soulfully delving into loneliness and despair while simultaneously celebrating life’s brighter moments. Smatterings of xylophone, hand claps, and choruses accent various songs. Fast-paced tracks like "Run" and "Surprise" get your body shaking, slower numbers like "Who’s Gonna Save My Soul" get stuck in your head. The accompanying videos are worth a trip to the duo’s website.
For the past three months, Elephant Six alum Heather McIntosh (the Instruments, Elf Power, Of Montreal, etc.) has supported Gnarls Barkley on bass and keys. Flagpole reached McIntosh just a few hours after L.A. was rocked by an earthquake, but she was still riding high after the thrill of appearing on "The Tonight Show" the night before. “It's the third T.V. thing we've done, but was the first one where we were made-up and costumed-out all the way, which I thought was pretty fun. I have a strong affection for the zombie, undead, ghoulie style, so I was in heaven.”
“The band is really excited about playing at the 40 Watt Club,” she says. “I was really hoping a show back home would work out from pretty early on. The Elves and Gnarls Barkley at the 40 watt? Heck, yes, it's gonna be a blast. Hopefully, I'll get to jam on the tambourine for a song or two with the Elves like back in the olden days!”
WHO: Elf Power, Gnarls Barkley
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Tuesday, August 12
HOW MUCH: $25
The Hold Steady
Saving Rock and Roll, One Bar at a Time
originally published August 6, 2008
Judson Baker
The Hold Steady
The Hold Steady is a religion. Not the moralizing, proselytizing brand of hell-fire and brimstone that most people associate with religion, but rather something more passionate - more emotional and prone to dancing, a little less white and stodgy and a little more black and soulful. That’s The Hold Steady, the would-be savior of rock and roll future.
“I would like to think that we represent the great things that are still going on with rock and roll,” says Tad Kubler, guitarist for the Brooklyn-born, Minneapolis-bred band.
Those great things that The Hold Steady represents are apparent throughout the band’s albums, which include songs about faith, redemption, bar room brawls, late-night hook-ups and beautiful people getting way too high, all told through a sonic assault that owes equal amounts of thanks to Black Flag and The Rolling Stones. Mix those rather disparate influences in with the most Springsteen-like piano lines since tramps like us were born to run, and the makings of The Hold Steady are crystal clear. It's classic rock and roll with modern trappings; it's an existential quilt wrapped up in sing-along choruses; it’s the sound of Young America ringing through from dorm room stereos and MySpace pages. Kubler has a different word for what The Hold Steady do: tradition.
“What we do is traditional rock and roll. We don’t have stage outfits. We don’t have asymmetrical outfits. We’re a little more honest and have a little more humility than whatever band that's influenced by the current trends in rock. I think that makes our music honest because we aren’t steeped in irony, and there isn't anything satirical in what we do.”
Therein lies The Hold Steady’s appeal. In a world where scenes are described as “an arms race” by inferior bands, The Hold Steady is calling for those mythical scenes to come together on its latest album, Stay Positive (Vagrant Records). It’s the most classic rock sounding of all of The Hold Steady’s albums, and it’s also among one of the best.
“[Stay Positive is] certainly the most ambitious album we’ve ever tried to do. We wrote a good portion of it on the road, and it’s a great reflection of where we are right now,” says Kubler.
Right now The Hold Steady is also trying to live down its legacy as a group of hard-partying toastmasters. It’s a reputation that was earned through many alcohol soaked nights, and that is still haunting them today.
“We’ve curtailed [the partying] a little bit. We kind of perpetuated ourselves on our first records as good ol’ beer drinking boys who like to eat wings and watch baseball games, and that’s a hard bell to un-ring. All of us are exercising now. We’ve realized that this is not a sprint to the finish line; it’s a long distance race,” says Kubler.
But beyond the endless accolades, the Springsteen comparisons and the infamous stories about the band's alcohol-fueled exploits rests The Hold Steady, a band that causes fans to lose all inhibition and bespectacled would- be Lester Bangses to froth at the mouth. After all, here’s a band that makes listeners dance like Elvis and drink like Bukowski.
“One of the things that people see in our band is that they aren’t so much fans of our band as they are just really rooting for us. It's total Bad News Bears-style shit,” says Kubler.
But that crowd of people supporting the band seems to be growing rather quickly. No longer are the band’s shows populated by, as Kubler puts it, “dudes that look like us,” but also by an increasingly young fan base who are learning that in a sea of pretenders, The Hold Steady is among the few bands out there waving the flag for rock and roll - its past and future.
"We’ve always done what we’ve done, and we’ve been lucky in that people like what we do,” says Kubler.
And what The Hold Steady is hell-bent on accomplishing is to take back rock and roll from the pretenders, the people who sell irony like a drug on the corner to a generation of fans. But according to Kubler, they aren't in this fight alone, and in fact one of the bands leading the charge to reclaim the majesty of rock and roll alongside The Hold Steady is Athens’ own Drive-By Truckers.
“Some wiser fellows and a lady from Athens said 'rock and roll means well, but it can’t help telling young boys lies.' [Drive-By Truckers singer/guitarist] Mike Cooley gets me every time. He and Patterson [Hood] have songs on their records that get me every time. I hear those songs, and I think ‘that’s exactly how I felt and I didn’t know how to say it.' If I may be so bold that I would put my band on the same level as the Drive-By Truckers, I would say that we’re kindred spirits or of the same ilk.”
But those are lofty expectations. For the moment, The Hold Steady seems focused on being among the best bands around, swimming in a sea of hyperbole, rubbing shoulders with the giants of rock and roll and living down its reputation, all while touring the country playing its brand of rock and roll. It’s enough to bog down a lesser band, but for The Hold Steady, it’s all about perspective.
“I think [our age] really allows us to keep doing what we are doing. It allows us to really appreciate what’s going. There is a certain amount of wisdom that comes with age,” says Kubler.
Which is why when The Hold Steady takes the stage at the 40 Watt Club, don’t look for dour faces among the band members.
“Someone told me that we are the only band that they’ve seen that smiles onstage. How weird is that? We’re not [onstage] to work out our issues; do that shit in the privacy of your own home.”
WHO: The Loved Ones, The Hold Steady
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Saturday, August 9
HOW MUCH: $15
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