The Two Sides of Will Johnson
Centro-matic and South San Gabriel
originally published November 19, 2008
With the proper punctuation trailing it, his name instantly becomes a question, and that phenomenon is appropriately ironic considering the number of genuinely curious inquiries the career of Texas-based songwriting machine Will Johnson inspires. That irony is lost, and unfortunately the questions are left unanswered, if one were to consider the artist with the same casual regard the general (record-buying) public does. Yes, that is to say that Johnson, whether operating as a solo artist, peddling dusty lullabies in side project South San Gabriel or boldly navigating his flagship band Centro-matic into rockier waters - is criminally underappreciated. At half-past press time, Flagpole was able to connect with Johnson, and because thorough biographies aren’t found in 600-word spaces, he remains somewhat of a mystery.
We can be certain of a few things after following the footsteps and reviewing the substantiated facts. Johnson is bringing both South San Gabriel (which counts local pedal-steel player Matt Stoessel as a member) and Centro-matic to the familiar environs of the 40 Watt on a breakneck fall mini-tour (13 shows in 15 nights) to support their summer ’08 two-disc release Dual Hawks (Misra Records). The Centro-matic side of Hawks represents the most straightahead rock sound of the band’s decade-plus history. The snapshot offers a more cerebrally countrified and mature version of the band (see “Remind Us Alive” and “Twenty-Four”), begging the question: If you live in Texas long enough, does it become impossible to avoid writing country tunes? “I don’t necessarily subscribe to that belief,” says Johnson with a laugh, adding, “It happens to a lot of people... I’m trying to resist at this point.”
While the stripped-down, roots-rock approach represents somewhat of a departure, the band is holed up in the same laboratory - simply experimenting with different equations and chemicals. The album is decidedly less fuzzy, psychedelic and lyrically vague (or perhaps Johnson’s codes and images are becoming easier to decipher after all these years) than predecessors All the Falsest Hearts Can Try, a Flaming Lips-esque mythological freak-out, or Love You Just the Same, a fine collection of indie-rock ballads and weirdo anthems that should find itself on the decade-ending "Best of" lists that will undoubtedly crop up all over the place over the course of the next 365, or so, days. Does Johnson agree? Were bells and whistles dropped, or asked to play subtle roles in the mix, in favor of a more rock-and-roll-purist approach? “I think that’s a pretty fair assessment,” concurs Johnson. “We wrote the majority of the record during the recording process - sometimes I’d work in the morning and by nighttime we had a song that didn’t exist 12 hours earlier. It was raw and in the moment.”
To what can we attribute Centro-matic’s pleasingly prolific tendencies (nine full-lengths and a handful of EPs and other releases) and unusual longevity (together for more than a decade), considering the attention deficit that ravages the human condition and an art world plagued by egocentric tendencies? If forced to guess using the available empirical evidence, Flagpole would channel our inner Freud and suggest that Johnson and his critically important cohorts Scott Danbom (multi-instrumentalist), Mark Hedman (multi-instrumentalist) and Matt Pence (percussion) have never bothered with egos. As Johnson explains, “The longevity can be attributed to our inherent nature of keeping friendships at the forefront. We’ve become adults together. We truly enjoy being in each other’s company, and we look forward to seeing each other again, hopping in a van and playing music.”
If one, or in this case four (sometimes more) folks are able to consistently satiate the demands and needs of the Id, and the creative process continues to be a pleasurable one, there is no need to abandon the impulses that have guided you to fruition, time and again.
Unfortunately, within the more experimental end of the musical genre that has come to be known as Americana there seems to be room for only one Wilco on the tributary that spills into mainstream consciousness. That’s a shame, because we deserve steady doses of Will Johnson in whatever incarnation he chooses to manifest.
WHO: Centro-matic, South San Gabriel, Baptist Generals
WHERE: 40 Watt club
WHEN: Friday, Nov. 21
HOW MUCH: FREE!
Tuatara & Coleman Barks
The Here and the Gone
originally published November 19, 2008
This newest album by Tuatara is a real chore. Musically, it’s not particularly dense or overtly challenging, but neither is the music, really, the focus of the album. It is the readings by poet Coleman Barks, internationally known for his best-selling translations of 13th-century poet Jalal Al-Din Rumi, which make The Here and the Gone (Fasthorse Recordings) a solid task. While the band plays its brand of cinematic instrumentals, Barks voice doesn’t simply arrive in the mix. It descends upon the listener with both the familiarity of an uncle telling a story and the authority of a master speaking to students. Listening is a chore but not a drudgery. Neither, however, is it an immediate joy. That comes with getting into it.
Barks first collaborated with Tuatara spontaneously during a performance at the Georgia Theatre in 2001 when he performed a spoken-word tribute for late Athens writer John Seawright while the band composed on the spot. “That was my first and only collaboration with them before this CD," says Barks. "The full collaboration was Barrett Martin's idea, but I was pretty quick to go along with it.”
This is the seventh full-length release for Tuatara, and The Here and the Gone features founders Barrett Martin (Screaming Trees), Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Scott McCaughey (R.E.M.), Kai Riedl (Macha) and Rahim Alhaj. Presumably there are more players on the album, too, however no other information was provided. Ultimately, this is of no matter. For as much as this album is meant to display a collaboration between Tuatara and Barks, it is Barks who shines here. Barks’ own poetry on the album, which also features several Rumi pieces, speaks in a voice steeped in the quietly observant Deep South.
Coleman Barks
When asked about the difference in process between his original work and his Rumi translations, Barks says, “When I approach Rumi's words and images, and the spiritual information coming through, I try to disappear as much as possible… With my own personal poems, I intentionally get in the way. My poems are grounded in the events of my life and in my responses to those events, the death of my parents, the emerging of grandchildren, all that.” As one would expect, though, the rewards of each process are different. “In the Rumi poems, the work there is about getting back in touch, in a mystical sense, with those whom I have been apprenticed to for my soul-growth,” says Barks.
Barks’ voice blends into itself quite often when listening. He annunciates clearly, but listening to him speak, a process in which the listener is forced to pay attention, is the task spoken of earlier. Thus, the listener won’t “get” everything even in the first hundred times this record is played. Because the music moves the poetry along a specific rhythm, one must adjust his ears to receive what Barks is saying. “The act of reading a poem on a page is one of the wonderful ways we have of intensifying life, of revving consciousness into new regions... but there are other ways of taking in words, and I like to experiment with using music, all kinds of music, and with speaking the words along with the music," says Barks.
The Here and the Gone is a bit long at 16 tracks, and the longer one listens the less necessary Tuatara seems to be. I could have just as well, and honestly preferred, to have spent the entire experience listening to an unaccompanied Barks and let his words form their own music.
Neil Halstead
Chasing a Myth
originally published November 19, 2008
Chances are, astute shoppers have seen them: music fans canvassing the dusty used vinyl bins, being blinded by the cellophane sheen of new CD racks and bleary-eyed from staring at online catalogues like a post-modern messenger-bag-equipped Indiana Jones, looking for that mythical album or artist.
The search for that undiscovered aural gem may never be realized, but these musical adventurers know what they are looking for: the long-lost sides of a forgotten singer. Whether they are the tremolo-ridden strums of a long forgotten Deep South dwelling blues singer from the 1930s or the hushed genteel strums of a British singer-songwriter may be a question of taste for the seeker of these forgotten sounds, but one thing is certain: Neil Halstead looks and sounds a lot like this urban myth.
“I’ve been doing this a long time. I live in a small town and write songs. I get out to tour when I can, but I don’t think I’m the mythical guy,” laughs Halstead in a phone interview with Flagpole.
While Halstead’s music may feature the right combination of acoustic strums, soft melodies and mellow sounds that make the vinyl junkies and indie aficionados go ga-ga, he simply sees what he’s doing as a sonic experiment in being frugal.
“I’ve never done a record where we spent five hours on all of the songs and then that’s the record. That’s the approach I wanted to take, even though it took 10 days,” says Halstead.
Those 10 days spent recording Halstead’s latest offering, Oh! Mighty Engine (Brushfire Records), may pale in comparison to the marathon-like sessions of some artists (take Guns 'n' Roses’ 13-years-in-the-making Chinese Democracy as an extreme example), but the homemade nature of the songs suggests that they had time to spare. Rather than coming off like epic productions, the album’s 12 songs seem more attuned to a friend showing off his latest songwriting efforts over a few drinks, and that’s just what Halstead was aiming for - something a bit more hand-crafted, refined and deliberate than any modern-day Phil Spector could hope to create with hi-fi, digital-influenced Wagner-like production.
“The thing I really wanted to do was to make the album as much voice and guitar as possible. I thought the album would just be almost a live record - one voice, one guitar; it ended up having a lot of overdubs on it, but it still has that feel,” says Halstead.
The feel of the album - Halstead’s second effort and first since 2002’s Sleeping on Roads, is that of songs taken to their most basic elements. Ethereal melodies hanging overhead and harmonies just out of reach of the listener. It’s a sound that Halstead first created amid washes of psychedelic guitar feedback in his '90s shoegazer band Slowdive and then perfected in the more stripped down Mojave 3.
“Mojave 3 is just about writing songs. It’s not about a particular style or anything. The first Mojave record is quite stripped down; it does have a bit of reverb on it, but not much else. I think Mojave 3 started out sort of stripped down, and we’ve built it back up over five albums,” says Halstead.
Even though Mojave 3’s sound may be built up, the simple elegance of Oh! Mighty Engine proves that while Halstead may not be the second coming of Nick Drake, he deserves a place among the upper echelon of the purveyors of pensive bedroom pop. While listeners often found themselves seasick with the swirling guitars of Slowdive, fans of Mojave 3’s kinder and gentler version of psychedelia, Halstead’s flirtations with the sound aren’t apparent on the new album. Instead, the songs are all about the melody. It’s the sing-song and simple arrangements that fuel the disc’s core.
But somewhere between the feedback-drenched electric guitar swells of his past and the simple chord progressions of his present lies Neil Halstead today, and while he may not be the songwriter of myth for a legion of record collectors, he just might be the songwriter for the moment for music fans. That’s not a bad thing either.
Tonight's performance will be recorded as part of the Athens 441 radio show series. Plan to arrive early as recording beings promptly at 7 p.m.
WHO: Modern Skirts, The Old Ceremony, Neil Halstead
WHERE: The Melting Point
WHEN: Sunday, Nov. 23
HOW MUCH: $12
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