With a lineage of such distinction, the pressure to produce was intimidating, but songs like “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole,” introduce a songwriter who’s ready to soar. And when you grow up in a family who communicates openly and intimately about their lives through song, it becomes the most natural form of expression.
“I guess I’m just not a very embarrassed person,” says Wainwright about her vulnerable songwriting. “I probably should be more (laughs). I probably paid the price in many ways. But there was something that was explained to me early on by my aunt who’s a songwriter…She said ‘as long as it’s connected to a truth inside of you.’ I guess I just went with that. What interested me, especially at the beginning of writing songs, was my life—the people in it, including my family members, and love and how I truly felt about things—so I always sought out that kind of open thing…Being a little child of divorce it was really nice for me to know that my parents had a relationship by listening to their music. It made me feel better about everything I think. It allowed me to experience the time that they were together. Some of its pretty harsh, but some of it is not harsh at all and I think that explained a lot to me about what happened…I appreciated these details. I’m really into these kinds of details now, at least emotional ones…I think it’s also made me probably think too much about myself (laughs). The record is sort of navel-gazing and self-absorbed for that reason. But I think that’s also really common for people in their twenties. These songs that I wrote were a real reflection of a girl in her twenties and that’s my excuse!”
With parents who were respected wordsmiths, the bar was set pretty high for Wainwright.
“I think Rufus and I have always been aware of that fact,” says Wainwright. “I’ve heard him say this, and I think that it totally makes sense, ‘Every kid has the belief that they can usurp their parents in some way.’ Whether you do it or not it doesn’t really matter. The point is to feel that you’re not totally crushed by their success or whatever, which I think is one of the reasons I think Rufus and I have been able to make music. Our parents were not overly famous. We didn’t have to live completely in this huge shadow and we could strive for bigger, better things if we wanted to…I knew that I was going to be majorly judged. The whole thing’s been intimidating, but it’s great to have finally made a record.”
One of Wainwright’s favorite songs to perform live is “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole.”
“I think it’s really fun to sing because it’s no longer about me,” says Wainwright. I think it’s really become anthemic for people…It’s my sing-a-long song. It makes me feel like a twisted version of Pete Seeger.”
Martha Wainwright performs at Webster Hall on April 6 and 7.
Beginner’s luck? A slew of award nominations and a prime opening slot for U2 later, two sets of brothers and sisters totaling The Magic Numbers enjoy their charmed debut as they embark on a spring tour and ready to follow up their successful self-titled album.
The Magic Numbers enjoys platinum status in the UK where the band, Romeo (vocals/guitar) and Michele Stodart (vocals/bass/keyboards) and Angela (vocals/Melodica) and Sean Gannon (drums), first formed in 2004. Nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, Mojo (winner of best new band 2005), NME Awards and the Brits, it’s safe to bet this sibling reverie will continue to add up to more than chance.
Romeo and Michele moved to New York from native Trinidad during their teens and later made England their home. Destiny introduced the Gannons.
“The first time we started making music together we never really pictured ourselves as a band,” says Michele Stodart. “It kind of fell together accidentally. Eventually we couldn’t stop fighting anymore and we realized we had to be in a band with our brothers and that was it (laughs)…It works out well. Being on the road is hard at times so traveling with family and friends you’ve known all your lives relieves that.”
The band’s formula sparks with chemistry, but at the end of the day, it’s the music’s spell that lingers. Even members can’t help but become fans.
“His writing just makes me cry sometimes, to be honest,” says Michele about Romeo’s songwriting. “It really moves me and sends me somewhere that I like to feel. It can make me happy and it can bring me down. There are songs I can’t listen to. ‘This Love,’ on the record, is particularly a hard one for me to hear because of the words. It’s one of my favorite songs of his and one of the best written songs, I wouldn’t say ever, but definitely close to. To be related to someone like that and to be in a band with someone like that, it’s pretty special and it’s an amazing feeling to do this thing together.”
There’s brilliance in songwriting that kicks around life’s darker emotions whilst leaving you uplifted, a sense many absorb from The Magic Numbers’ harmonies. Michele feels it too. “I think when the four of us come together, we bring a new element to the songs, and to the band in general,” says Michele. “There is a sense of hope and a sense of happiness and the music adds to it. When you put the two saddest emotions in the world, ‘sadness’ and ‘happiness’ together, you’re left not really knowing how to feel or what to draw from. But it’s something that everyone goes through and I think that’s why the record is so honest. I think that’s why it’s very personal to us.”
The road’s been faithful to The Magic Numbers and they reciprocate. The members “spend most of their days in the nighttime” lately, according to Michele, and even when they’re on their last legs, they’ll take another gig.
“I think we’ve been through a pretty mad ride so far,” says Michele. “We forget somehow all the craziness that’s happened to us over the years and we’ve made certain dreams come true that we weren’t cheeky enough to even imagine.”
The Magic Numbers perform March 28 at Webster Hall.
It’s been one year since Kathleen Edwards released Back To Me following Failer, the debut album that launched her to critical darling-dom in 2003. Since then she's performed with The Rolling Stones, AC/DC and Bob Dylan, seen rock royalty like Roger Daltrey attend her shows, and had another hero, keyboardist Benmont Tench (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), lend his hands to her songs. No wonder Edwards is more confident than ever as she wraps tour support for Back To Me and begins her next record.
The Ontario-born singer/songwriter has discovered a circular path in music-making that starts with people and ends with people, no matter what happens in between.
“It’s funny because I think I’ve always known it’s the people you meet in the end, but I think it can take a back seat sometimes,” says Kathleen Edwards. “You realize that so much of playing music is being part of a community and not necessarily like a community in one place, but just having friends who share the same kind of experiences that you’re having as well. I found with my first record it was hard to digest a lot of stuff…I didn’t have time to really connect with anyone and have relationships with anyone other than my band. And this time I met people like John Joe and Jim James from My Morning Jacket and the rest of those guys. I realized that it’s really nice to connect with people and have these personal relationships to carry you through what can be a roller coaster-type of experience in the music business.”
Industry unpredictability makes Edwards particularly appreciative of the “here and now” and mental re-tooling keeps her head level.
“You keep your expectations very low and then everything else will be fantastic,” says Edwards with a laugh.
Edwards tries to free herself from routine practices during the creative process. It's downtime that consistently drives her to her guitar.
“A dry spell really helps,” says Edwards about inspiration. “I’m certainly no Ryan Adams. I don’t sit around and write ten songs…I can’t write on the road so I have to be home and I definitely need a few days or at least a week to decompress from the rhythm of moving constantly…It’s hard for me to talk about my process because I don’t really feel like I have one…I feel like I’m just starting out, so I’m trying not to look at how I’ve written a song every time or think, ‘How do I recreate that experience?’ I don’t want to put pressure on myself to think that it has to be the same kind of experience every time…I find on Back To Me, the one song that I’m really proud of, because I took that mentality and thought, ‘I don’t want to write ten more fucking relationship songs’…is ‘Pink Emerson Radio,’ which is a song about objects and memories associated with personal possessions and the potential loss of all those memories. I was really happy that I was able to write a song that I love as much as a song like, ‘Copied Keys,’ which is a song, for me, that’s really a relationship song about geography and moving ahead in your life and reminiscing. I found it really rewarding to know that I could write a song that wasn’t always about boy, girl, sex, stars, drink, country, road, highway, driving, all that.”
Kathleen Edwards performs at Joe’s Pub on March 23 & 24.
The son of a preacher man, The Ark’s flamboyant frontman, Ola Salo, was raised in an environment where things like ascensions, apocalypses and magic legends were as natural a part of everyday Rottne Sweden life as the music of outrageous performers like David Bowie, Queen, Kiss, Roxy Music and Sly and the Family Stone. Salo’s epiphany came when he realized that his father’s Sunday pulpit was a stage and he formed the belief that every great performer needs to serve his audience to deserve his time in the limelight. Together with bandmates Sylvester Schlegel (drums), Martin Axèn (guitar), Jepson (guitar) and Leari (bass), Salo found his calling with The Ark, reaching for nothing less than a miracle each night through charismatic performances. As the band finishes up a tour with The Darkness to support its third album, State Of The Ark, its glam rock is beckoning new legions of listeners with messages of love and lust trussed up with a sarcastic sense of realism and showmanship.
“I think I partially got it from my father who’s a preacher man,” says Ola Salo about his performance instincts. “Being a preacher man is very much about having a sense of theatricality. It’s very important to really reach out to people…If people invest their time in looking at you, they deserve to get something back in the form of some ecstasy or euphoria…You’ve got to give them some kind of magic…Otherwise they have wasted their time on you and that’s the only sin of a performer.”
The artists who always appealed to Salo were those who pushed borders. He never really understood “down-to-earth performers.”
“The pulpit or stage is not a normal place,” says Salo. “It’s not a place for being down-to-earth because it is a pedestal. The thing that happens on that pedestal should be something apart from everyday life. I always thought there was something very phony about performers who try to act out an image that they are on stage the same way as they are in everyday life because of course they are not. In everyday life they don’t stand with a spotlight on them and have all the focus in the room on them.”
Salo’s religious upbringing also directed his mindset that he was destined to do special things.
“When you call your band ‘The Ark,’ your ambition can be no less than changing the world or saving it in some way,” says Salo. “But I think there’s another aspect of the symbol of The Ark, that it’s a vessel…Growing up in a dull, small, industrial town in rural Sweden I think that as much as we wanted to save the world, we wanted to just get away from that place…It was the idea of going around the world with your friends in a vessel which could take aboard all of the other people you wanted to hang out with…If we create this kind of collective where we’re more open-minded and tolerant and loving then the rest of society then perhaps we already have sort of made the world better in a partial way. Maybe that’s enough?”
While The Ark has mistakenly been simplified by some as an “Oh why can’t everyone just be friends and hug one another” kind of band, according to Salo, that’s only a partial picture. “I have, shall we say, a belligerent side, sort of a side that not at all wants to be friends with everyone,” says Salo. “[The album’s] also about realizing that to find real love and friendship you have to sacrifice fake and phony love and friendship.”
Brandi Carlile invokes the wisdom of the mountains on her self-titled debut album. Alone in her cabin outside of Seattle with her dog, cat, horse and acoustic guitar, Carlile found isolation and natural beauty a breeding ground for inspiration and let nature run its course. Her honeyed vocals warble with heartache and yearning throughout the introspective collection of folk-rock arrangements.
While Carlile’s roots are firmly country, it’s actually pop that incited her early as a lyricist.
“I ‘loved’ Elton John and Bernie Taupin,” says Carlile. “I thought that they were just the two most talented people on the face of the Earth. Bernie Taupin’s the reason I started writing lyrics. See, the Northwest Grand Ol’ Opry where I was singing [as a child through her teenage years] was really my only exposure to music cause I lived out in the woods. So it was always country music. One day they let this guy come on and sing Elton John songs. He sang ‘Skyline Pigeon’ and ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.’ That just freaked me out. It was my first exposure to pop music. I went and I got Yellow Brick Road, the first album I ever owned. I just fell in love with the stories and the music and the harmonies and the singing…I cut the pictures out of the record sleeves and hung them all over my wall. So yeah, I had Bernie Taupin on my wall from the time I was about twelve years old.”
Like her heroes, Carlile enjoys collaboration, and often shared songwriting on Brandi Carlile with her band “the Twins” (Tim and Phil Hanseroth) as she calls them. Though she says you can always tell which tracks she initiated.
“It’s kind of funny,” says Carlile. “You can tell the songs on the record that are my songs lyrically because I tend to write from a place of discontentment. I write about things I’m puzzled about or I’m worried about or the things that upset me because that’s how I communicate with myself. That’s how I get those feelings out. I don’t tend to write really happy songs or love songs... ‘In My Own Eyes’ is a song about being self-conscious and wondering how other people see me. ‘Happy’ is about a childhood friendship that I moved on past, which I never thought that I would. It’s your best friend when you’re a kid and you think you’re always going to be best friends and you’d be maid of honor at each others’ weddings, you know what I mean? But then you go your separate ways…‘Closer To You’ is about our first tour. I had been playing music for a long time and working hard, but one thing I didn’t get to see very much of was the rest of the country. I kind of wrote that song looking out the windows of the van—the rows of hay that last for 800 yards…‘Tragedy’ is my song. (laughs) All my songs are, I don’t know? I suppose they’re not super positive are they?”
Sigur Rós’ latest album, Takk, (EMI) sounds like the Reykjavik, Iceland quartet wrote it while watching the Northern Lights streak across the night sky. The 11 linked arrangements seemingly break the snowy hush with flaring crescendos and bursting luminosity, for a meticulous mix of music, magic and atmosphere.
Written, performed and produced by band members Jonsi Birgisson (singer/guitar), Kjartan Sveinsson (keyboards), Georg Holm (bass) and Orri Pall Dyrason (drums), along with co-producer Ken Thomas, this fourth album offers fans who will see the band’s upcoming US tour something different from their previous record, ''( )” released in 2002. For one, Birgisson sings lyrics in Icelandic rather than Sigur Rós’ invented language "Hopelandic." Songs also seem closer to “proper songs” than anything the band has done previously, which Kjartan Sveinsson addresses with good humor. He speculates that perhaps what people are hearing is that the band has just become better at writing songs since it is what they do for a living.
Sigur Rós first captured the imagination of the masses in 1999 when their second album, Ágcetis Byrjun broke outside Iceland to become a word-of-mouth hit. The Aquarian Weekly talks with Kjartan Sveinsson.
AW: ''Takk'' means ''thank you.” What made that title perfect for your fourth album and did you discover a new meaning in “thank you” once the album was finished?
Kjartan Sveinsson: We were very grateful actually with finishing it (laughs). Takk was something that had been around us for quite a while and usually our titles come about out of that. We’re very grateful for where we are at the moment with our lives. We thought it was a perfect title.
AW: How does Sigur Rós collaborate on writing? Georg Holm has been quoted saying that you all “sort of just muck around.” You plug in your instruments and start playing and songs come quite easily. Do you agree?
Sveinsson: That’s how the basis of the songs are written, just jamming really. Yeah, “muck about,” that’s a good way to say it. Then of course we start recording, then we go into the production and the songs might change then. Of course the most important part is the basis of the songs.
AW: You were in the studio quite a long time on this last album?
Sveinsson: Eighteen months I think it was. Perhaps that’s the time we need. I don’t think it’s that much actually.
AW: Arranging that material must then become a daunting task?
Sveinsson: Not just arranging for instruments, but arranging the whole thing. For instance, we add a lot of different things, loads of keyboards and percussion and that’s what takes time really. Recording the pages of songs is not hard actually. But when we start working on them, to make a good song, there’s loads of structures that you need to think about and that’s what takes the most time for us and then producing it.
AW: Many reports have said that tracks on Takk are as close as Sigur Rós has ever gotten to ‘proper’ songs—meaning the music’s more accessible to more kinds of listeners? Do you think that?
Sveinsson: I can see why people would say that, yeah. Basically I think we’ve become better at writing songs, you know? Just with time and practice. Which is natural isn’t it? When you do it for a living (laughs). I think the songs are more to the point, not like in the old days where it always took time to get to a certain place.
AW: As keyboardist, how do you personally approach this music?
Sveinsson: It’s hard to explain how…It’s more like intuition. Things happen the way they’re supposed to in a certain way. Sometimes it’s hard to find the right mood. For me when I record and then I create, I have to be there totally. I can’t be thinking about anything else. There has to be some blood in it.
AW: Can you talk about one of the songs from Takk?
Sveinsson: The song “Hoppipolla” was kind of fun because I didn’t play anything on it until the last minute. We started working differently maybe than we used to. We’re more in the control room and arranging and doing rock, instead of just being a band and playing all the time…I think I play more guitar on this record than Jonsi does. Everything’s mixed up.
AW: What do you miss about Iceland when you tour?
Sveinsson: The thing that I really miss is “home,” the root. When you’re touring you never stay more than two days in one place and there are no roots and that’s really hard actually. You’re always a visitor and always an observer. You can’t get to know a place or feel at home there. It doesn’t happen. That’s what I miss the most definitely.
AW: How about something native to Iceland that you miss when you’re on tour?
Sveinsson: I think it’s the space we have here in Iceland. Not just nature, but space in general with people and what we do here. It’s very good.
AW: What was one of your earliest experiences with music?
Sveinsson: There was always loads of music in my house that my older brothers and sisters played. So it was very natural for me to do rock. Experiences? I think when my sister played me David Bowie when I was five-years-old.
AW: Do you remember it being a specific Bowie song or album?
Sveinsson: No. It was just more that the mood of it was so nice. I remember also playing Beethoven’s 9th on the piano. I was so clever, I thought. It was kind of a mission when I was seven or something. I don’t remember. It was a long time ago (laughs).
AW: Do you want to talk about what any of the songs mean lyrically?
Sveinsson: I think it’s very important not to have a definite feeling about the songs or just songs in general. I think it’s important to let them airy and give the song a break. You know how people always connect songs with a certain era of their lives or romance or heartbreak or something. I think it’s just so important to let the songs live on their own and they can make you feel a certain way at a certain time, but not pin it down. I always kind of want the songs to be independent and not have a certain story or meaning.
Sigur Rós perform at the Theater at Madison Square Garden on February 9.
The beauty of Montreal-based Broken Social Scene is how easily its many conspicuous personalities lose themselves in one another to feed the whole of what they’re creating.
While Broken Social Scene as a collective has been garnering critical and fan attention since the band’s 2003 American debut You Forgot It In People through to the current self-titled album, the individual projects of group members have simultaneously taken off.
Possibly the biggest achievement is Feist (Leslie Feist) whose solo release Let It Die was awarded 2005 Juno Awards for both Best New Artist and Best Alternative Album. (In 2003 Broken Social Scene also was awarded the Juno for Best Alternative Album). Social Scene members Amy Millan, Evan Cranley and Torquil Campbell have had success with their outfit Stars as has Emily Haines and James Shaw in Metric, Andrew Whiteman with Apostle of Hustle and member Jason Collett. But each artist returns to feed the larger community, a beautiful mess of order or confusion called Broken Social Scene.
At the heart of Broken Social Scene is the label Arts & Crafts, created by Broken Social Scenes’ Kevin Drew with music business veterans Jeffrey Remedios and Daniel Culter. The goal has always been to produce art and within that members constantly inspire and challenge one another. Broken Social Scene’s usual round of suspects on any day currently includes Justin Peroff, Brendan Canning, Kevin Drew, Charles Spearin, Andrew Whiteman, Feist, Jason Collett, Evan Cranley, Emily Haines, James Shaw, Amy Millan, Dave Newfeld, John Crossingham, Ohad Benchitrit, Julie Penner, and Lisa Lobsinger. The Aquarian Weekly talks to BSS’s Brendan Canning.
AW: How do you feel about the recent success of Broken Social Scene and the rise of many of its individual members, like Feist and Metric?
Brendan Canning: Well it’s pretty exciting times, especially right now. The next couple months are sort of fast action. We have our homecoming shows, two shows in Toronto Friday and Saturday, playing a 2,300 seat venue for two nights and the next day we go to Sundance because we have a film at the Sundance Film Festival called Half Nelson, an independent film made by this Brooklyn director and producer. The most famous guy in it is Ryan Gosling. It’s a really good film. They had sort of used the music from Feel Good Lost and You Forgot It In People and Beehives [all Arts & Crafts albums] as well to score their film. We have New York after that and then an appearance on Conan O’Brien and then off to the U.K. for a whack of sold-out dates, and then an Australian tour to follow. Meanwhile, we have Leslie Feist in Montreal playing a sold-out show for 2000 people. We have Metric opening up for The Rolling Stones. We have Jason Collett in Europe. Andrew Whiteman’s working on a solo record. Charles Spearin just had a baby, which is probably the biggest news of all, second child as a matter of fact. And John Crossingham’s band, Raising the Fawn, is releasing a record. Julie Penner continues to produce the show Vinyl Café on radio up here, so the list goes on.
AW: It’s sort of a revolving door membership?
Canning: Yeah, we’ll have different members for New York than we will for Toronto, like Emily and James from Metric won’t be in Toronto, but they will be in New York. Leslie Feist, Amy Milan and Evan won’t be with us in New York, but they will be in Toronto. Charles won’t be with us for Sundance, but he will be in Toronto and New York.
AW: So it takes real organization to lock up your live set list I’d imagine.
Canning: The whole thing with everyone’s careers coming to such great fruition has made it more difficult to orchestrate Broken Social Scene as a touring entity and a traveling sideshow.
AW: Despite individual careers, everyone seems to be returning. It’s a statement about the music and the genuine importance of collaborating with people you enjoy.
Canning: The fact is it was all based upon friendship. There were no ads and papers. The only person we’ve reached outside the circle was our latest singer Lisa Lobsinger, mainly due to the fact that between Amy, Emily and Leslie Feist, we had no one to maintain the vocal duties and Lisa was a singer from a group I heard in Calgary. She was very close in range to Amy and Emily so that is why she got the call. Other than that everything has been within the family so to speak.
AW: What’s the process of writing a Broken Social Scene album like?
Canning: It’s very similar to the touring aspect. Some days you have certain members. Other days you have certain other members and a lot of it comes down to timing and how inspired an individual is towards a certain tune. There’s a core of us like myself, Justin Peroff, and Kevin Drew. We don’t have other bands. Obviously something needs to steer Broken Social Scene on a consistent basis because it is arguably the hardest beast to contain. And Andrew Whiteman, beyond Apostle of Hustle, he’s very much part of the Broken Social Scene sound as is Charles Spearin, as is everyone. But I mean at the core, that’s a good five that need to be involved on a fairly regular basis. As far as horn sections, they come when they come. As far as Feist or Emily or Amy, they are there when they’re there and we gladly welcome them when they show cause we need them.
AW: Do you write with a particular member in mind as far as singing or playing or just figure it out later?
Canning: I don’t think there’s any great pre-meditation. At least myself, I don’t really think that way. The opening track on this record, I actually did a vocal for and it got scrapped and then Amy was maybe going to do a vocal and she wasn’t quite inspired for it and Feist came in and nailed it.
AW: Everyone brings things to life a different way then?
Canning: Yeah, like “Stars and Sons” on You Forgot It In People, Kevin originally want in to try a couple vocal passes and there was me sort of saying, ‘Let me try something.’ Some days it can be very easy. Some days it can be very difficult.
AW: What’s next?
Canning: We have a whack of material recorded…I think we will release something before the end of the year—because we should…It’s interesting to see how the band mutates and develops.
Broken Social Scene performs at Webster Hall January 26, 27, 28.
When Cyndi Lauper hit early MTV rotation in 1984 she knocked music charts into next week becoming the first artist of the rock era to have four Top 10 singles off a debut album, beginning with her female empowerment anthem “Girls Just Wanna Fun.” As the aptly named record, She’s So Unusual released subsequent hits “Time After Time,” “She Bop,” and “All Through The Night,” it shouted a message to celebrate the unconventional and stand tall in who you are.
From rainbow-colored thrift store clothes to cocktail dresses, Lauper has continued to re-invent her image to match her maturing music. And with a career now spanning 25 years, Lauper transforms again with The Body Acoustic (Daylight/Epic) where she strips her classics to their bare souls and invites guest artists to join her for footstompin’ “back porch” renditions of those as well as new songs.
Lauper is joined by Adam Lazzara of Taking Back Sunday for a twangy, earthy version of “Money Changes Everything,” while "Time After Time" features the angelic voice of Sarah McLachlan and "All Through The Night" is given funky treatment by reggae/pop superstar Shaggy. Japanese pop duo Puffy AmiYumi joins on "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," and Ani DiFranco and Vivian Green revel with Lauper on "Sisters of Avalon.”
Lauper applies her own interpretative prowess to re-workings of "Shine," "Fearless," "She Bop,” and "True Colors," while introducing two brand new songs, "Above The Clouds" featuring guitar legend Jeff Beck and "I'll Be Your River" with Green. Longtime pals Rick Chertoff (She's So Unusual) and William Wittman (At Last) joined Lauper to produce.
STARPOLISH: Why did you decide to go acoustic on this album?
LAUPER: I had been playing little outings with acoustic instruments and before I knew it I had an acoustic set of the songs that people would want to hear at benefits and songs that they might not know, but that lived well in this “dulcimer world.” After a while some guys at the record company said, “Gee, why don’t you go with that?” …I get to play dulcimer on every single song, so I was very thrilled. I felt kind of like, “William Shatner sings. Cyndi plays dulcimer.” (laughs).
STARPOLISH: You wanted to evoke a “back porch” vibe on this album, a feeling of people coming together, like after a big dinner, to sing and play?
I basically started out as a folk singer so it was very interesting to bring this back into folk. Well, I wouldn’t exactly call my approach folk, because they don’t exactly play the dulcimer the way I think you’re supposed to play it. But I don’t really care. Well, I don’t care and I do care. It’s more important to take that sound and bring it to a new place.
STARPOLISH: What was it like hearing so many different impressions of your songs?
LAUPER: It was interesting having other peoples’ takes. Sometimes you don’t say anything and you let them go and then you kind of tell them, “Well what about this rhythm?” You direct a little bit without directing too much…I had a fantastic time with Vivian [Green]. It was so fantastic in the studio on “I’ll Be Your River.” Shaggy was an over the phone kind of thing. He’s fantastic and I spoke to him about this folky, funky, rock kind of thing for “All Through The Night” and he got it. I mean he did call me up very cute and he says, “Cyn, this is a love song, right?” And Ani was fantastic on “Sisters of Avalon.” She’s so funny because I said, “You know, you gotta just conjure up this spirit.” She wrote back and said, “I had the spirit of The Supremes come to me—in the glitter dresses.” (laughs). Me, I’m singing “Sisters of Avalon” and I think I was just standing in front of a cauldron—I don’t know what I was conjuring up. Vivian sang on that too. It was great to have all of us from different kinds of music all meet together on a song about women and women’s sense of loss of history, reclaiming history or “herstory” as I had once put it.
STARPOLISH: Ani’s great. I recently featured her on my site WomanRock.com.
LAUPER: She’s a great artist and a hero. You can have people who have been at it longer than you inspire you or people who just come in inspire you. She’s just very inspiring. I find most artists inspiring.
STARPOLISH: In selecting tracks for this album you picked songs that you loved but do any mean more to you than the others?
LAUPER: “Waters Edge” surprised me because I didn’t actually think I would play dulcimer on it but I kept hearing it and I wanted to…Sometimes you go with a song one way and you bring it back the other way because it’s not right. You keep trying to find its soul, where it lives in that world. All of a sudden you find it. I was wrestling with that when I played it for Sarah. When she sang it was very Celtic and very kind of siren-like, but almost a call to the wild side of yourself. I think the whole song is about the underworld of a woman…When she started singing like that I played the dulcimer and the sound of that connected me to it. “Waters Edge” wasn’t just a song. I think most songs, if they’re part of your bone structure, they become a magical place that you walk through for three minutes, and that to me is the most enveloping, engaging kind of ballad or story or song you can sing. Another one is “Shine” because when it came time to do the solo I’d remembered that when Declyan was a little baby I used to play recorded tin whistles for him and I played “Sally’s Garden” all the time. We took a piece of that and put it in the solo and had the violin player play it. It was great because of what the song said: “Gonna pull you up by your love.” You’re making somebody stand and telling them they can shine and its okay, but you’ve got to pull them up through love, through their love for you and your love for them. That to me was the most powerful thing…I still believe that love does heal and you can use that to pull someone up.
STARPOLISH: I’ve interviewed some artists who have opened shows for you in the last few years, namely Jennifer Marks and Nellie McKay, and it was interesting to me how they both pointed out how supportive you were of their careers. You even went as far as to fix Mark’s makeup for her. Why is it so important to you to encourage emerging artists?
LAUPER: Ahh. I love them! For Jenn I thought her songs were good and the stage is just larger than life. When the Native Americans went to war, they put their war paint on. When a diva or somebody gets up there, you’ve got to make a bonfire right there. Baby, you’ve gotta dress for the occasion…So we’d pull stuff out and see what she was comfortable with and it was fun. With Nellie I had a riot. I wrote with her and she talked me into playing trombone on her record. That wasn’t hard to talk me into because you know, I love that trombone (laughs)…See, I came from touring with Cher. She used to say to me, “Cyn, I don’t like when you wear your makeup like that cause we can’t see into your eyes” and “I’m going to have them put more light on you.” Basically she was directing the lights and the cameras on me. She told them what she wanted. She had an amazing sense of professionalism and she taught me how to get my butt on stage on time. I have an enormous respect for her and she was really supportive.
STARPOLISH: So you pass that along…
LAUPER: Well you have to so that next time they’ll be good to somebody else and you just hand that tradition down. You embrace female musicians because you want more of us.
Originally posted on Starpolish.com 1/19/06.
Cyndi Lauper performing "Money Changes Everything" with Adam Lazzara of Taking Back Sunday.
Tegan's childhood dreams included being a clown, working as a veterinarian with polar bears in the Arctic and being a rock star, of course. Sara wanted to be a lawyer and live in Boston. Thankfully the combat boots (for kicking around at punk gigs) the twins received from their mom back in Junior High put them closer in step with Tegan’s musical aspirations.
Since then the Calgary, Alberta, Canada-born duo have toured with many bands and performers, including The Killers, Hot Hot Heat, Ryan Adams, Rufus Wainwright, Neil Young, and Ben Folds. Tegan and Sara are currently touring with Cake supporting So Jealous (Vapor/Sanctuary). But none of this would be possible without mom.
“My mom was way cooler than Tegan and I,” says Sara. “She went back to University when we were in elementary school, so when we were going to Junior High and we’d be going back-to-school shopping she’d be like, ‘Do you want to get you noses pierced?’ We’d go to all these crazy stores where all her friends who were in their twenties would shop. She tried to get us combat boots and tried to get us to dress cool, but we didn’t want to. We dressed the way we wanted the first six months and then we ended up being geeky. That’s when we started letting her pick things. It’s normal now. We’re cooler than our mom, I think?”
Sara’s parents also decorated their house with sounds of the 70’s, leaving a lasting impression on the girls until they made their own discoveries, like the Smashing Pumpkins.
“There was so much music in our lives,” says Sara. “There was a transition period where what my parents were listening to became what I wanted to listen to…David Bowie and Led Zeppelin and The Police and that sort of stuff…I remember being thirteen and going to school and hearing The Smashing Pumpkins. I remember hearing “Siamese Dream.” Much Music in Canada was really playing that video with the ice cream truck…I had never heard music like that before and I remember that moment, for sure. That’s when it transitioned for me. I started seeking out what was in the city, what was local. We would go to punk gigs and indie rock gigs. Because of the Internet, I think it’s really genre-fied everything now, but at the time I knew there was music that your parents listened to on the radio and then there was the music that didn’t get played on the radio.”
Growing up as a fan, Sara still treats music with religious respect and acknowledges that Tegan and she are fortunate to be performers.
“We grew up very average, normal kids,” says Sara. “It wasn’t like we were piano virtuosos or something when we were six-years-old…We really literally were obsessed with music all the time. When I figured out that we could do it when we were fifteen or so, we just started writing songs. I guess we’re accidental artists…It’s an incredible job because there are so many jobs where you don’t get that kind of validation on a daily basis.”
Tegan and Sara perform at Hammerstein Ballroom on January 20.
Dr. Dog’s been running stray under the radar for nearly four years now, but with bands like My Morning Jacket and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah choosing them to open tours in the last year, it’s only a matter of time before fans outside their Philadelphia hometown start wagging their tails to the sounds of Easy Beat, the band’s first proper release on National Parking Records.
Captured with eight-track honesty, Toby Leaman (bass/vocals), Scott McMicken (woof+mud distortion solo guitar/vocals), Andrew Jones (guitar), Juston Stens (trapset/ harmonies), and Zach Miller (keyboards) deliver kicking rhythms, grinning lyrics and mesmerizing harmonies all tinted with dreamy, dark undertones.
“Dr. Dog tries to operate with as little thought as possible,” says McMicken laughing. “We have been fortunate, Toby and me, to have known each other for so long that we can work from each other without thinking too hard or with very little pretense. That’s one of the things that I’m most consistently thankful for in this band, just the ease with which things work. We have a lot of catch phrases in Dr. Dog and they all pertain to just working with immediacy, like ‘just nail it,’ which means just go at it, hit it in once and it’s done…In Dr. Dog if it’s not working immediately then it’s just abandoned.”
Live, Dr. Dog’s pack demonstrates its musical instinct best, tuning in for those convincing bits of time where everyone is having fun. Wearing oversized sunglasses, perhaps to shade the band’s warm tones hallucinating around him, McMicken ultimately is so stricken with song he lands on the floor scratching around his guitar. In “Wake Up,” Dr. Dog sing, “We are only part of a dream” and it’s a delightful trance they create.
“It’s been a couple of years for us and the fun just keeps compounding,” says McMicken. “We really hadn’t done any touring prior to a couple years ago and while we would have wanted to, the opportunity just didn’t present itself and we’re not the type of dudes to have that kind of labored discipline. If My Morning Jacket wouldn’t have asked us to go on tour, chances are we’d probably still be in a basement. Getting in front of people really helped us get better live and helped us appreciate how much you can do with a live show.”
Lyrically imaginative lines like, “I was born at the scene of a crime/every witness, he was deaf and dumb and blind” (from “Wake Up”) fuel the delirium the band patches together.
“Toby’s one of my favorite lyricists on the planet and I have really no idea where he’s coming from a lot of times,” says McMicken. “…He admires my ability to be so direct… but I’ve always wished I could write more from the imagination like he does…That kid can come up with a song on a dime. He must write like ten songs a day off the top of his head…A permeating theme in Dr. Dog the last two years has been ideas about dreaming. For the next album there’s a lot of that…So many of the songs are about the difference between dreaming and being awake and those lingering emotions you have while you’re asleep that when you wake up you can’t quite pinpoint, how it affects your day. This comes back to Toby’s lyric-writing…One aspect of Toby that I’ve always noticed is that he’s severely dark and twisted is his dreaming world. That’s got to have a lot to do with his aesthetic sensibility as a lyricist.”
Dr. Dog is nearly finished with its follow up album, but the main challenge has been that things just sound “too good.”
“We’re working with a lot better equipment now,” says McMicken. “Easy Beat was made with eight tracks only and we have 24 tracks now, so a lot more is possible… A lot of people think it [Easy Beat] doesn’t sound that good or they call it lo-fi or something like that, but to me that’s what I wish all music sounded like. It has a bit of a smoke screen in front of it. It does kind of put it in this context. I think that’s why some people who like it appreciate that it appeals to your being sort of removed.”
Metric made the map with their 2003 debut, , Old World Underground Where Are You Now and over the course of 2004-05 they traveled it. Emily Haines (vocals/synths), Jimmy Shaw (guitar), Josh Winstead (bass) and Joules Scott-Key (drums) were everywhere, from MTV and commercial rock radio to French art-house cinemas (the band made a show-stopping cameo in Oliver Assayas’ 2004 junkie drama Clean); depending on the night, you could find Emily playing sombre solo piano shows in churches, or diving off the stage at Toronto’s Mod Club Theatre, where Metric played an unprecedented four sold-out nights in a row in January ’05. And the band’s about to mark another milestone this month performing music from their latest album, Live It Out, (Last Gang Records) as they open for The Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden January 18 and 20.
“I think it’s going to be amazing,” says Haines. “The way we found out was the best too. We were in France. We just finished a three month tour, and we were so tired. It was our last night and there were a lot of filmmakers there and they threw this party for us on a boat on a set, which was already really cool. It was like an apartment on water. While we were there we got the call that we had gotten the Stones show and we’re like, ‘Well, where? Madison Square Garden! Great!’”
Described as a “band comfortable making music for both the misfits and the masses,” the Toronto four-piece with hometowns scattered throughout the world (Montreal, London, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles), demonstrate that as concerned citizens, the personal and political are interchangeable.
“I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence that each of us realize that whatever’s happening in the larger context of the world always seems to have a big impact where we’re each at personally,” says Haines. “Decisions relating to where to live, what move to make next, who to work with and what not to do is pretty affected by the larger state of things…We went back to Canada the day Bush got re-elected. It sounds like a most poetic act of civil disobedience, but it was in fact the biggest coincidence…I was like, ‘Wow, my life is on this storyline and I don’t know who is writing it.’”
Why not shut the world out? Why is responsibility important?
“I think about that.” said Haines. “I’m kind of envious of people who don’t feel that responsibility. Is it just the way I was raised? And it just happens that the three other people I’m most excited to work on music with were raised the same way? I don’t know. I’m sure if I sat down with a therapist they could help me figure it out (laughs)…By going to Canada and surrounding myself with friends, it’s the closest thing I could do to just shutting the world out and hibernating with my friends and making a record, but it’s still completely present (laughs). While in Toronto, surrounded by childhood pals from Broken Social Scene and Stars, Metric found additional inspiration, particularly for Haines’ favorite track, “Empty.”
“So much changed with all my friends,” says Haines. “It was just a crazy bunch of years between what happened in the New York scene and the loft that we lived in and obviously Nick Zinger and Karen O [both of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs] got so huge. Then with Broken Social Scene and Stars and all those inter-relationships, everybody’s lives just sort of fell apart. Nobody really knew how it was going to keep going. That summer James and I got together over at Kevin Drew’s place [from Broken Social Scene] and that song was the first sign to me that we were going to be able to make another record. I really like the song because we definitely exhausted a certain approach to trying to make improvements in our lives and what we perceive the world to be and we definitely had to take another tact.”
Haines leaves her songs open to interpretation, however, and often finds other peoples’ takes quite amusing.
“It’s funny,” says Haines. “I don’t really read press, but I read a couple of things and they were the most hilarious interpretations of the songs—written as though they had gotten first-hand, sworn testimony from me that that was what the song was about. It makes me happy in a way that it’s so open to interpretation, but in this case they found war imagery everywhere. Like ‘Glass Ceiling’ was like the tale of a soldier who’s general won’t let him speak out, I mean wow! Obviously anyone can get whatever they want.”
Magnificent storytelling and soul-staining southern rock will reel you through The Dirty South (New West), Drive-By Truckers’ intelligent, rebel roused ode to the mythological South. On tracks like “The Day John Henry Died,” “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac” and “The Buford Stick (The Legend of Sheriff Buford Pusser),” Drive-By Truckers scrape grit off prized local legends, exposing a southernly code of conduct that is possibly outdated…possibly not?
“I love modern day mythology,” says Drive-By Trucker's, Patterson Hood. “The old days brought tales of John Henry and Staggalee, folks no doubt loosely inspired by real life folks, but told through the years with all of the baggage and exaggeration that people add to tales as they pass them down the line from generation to generation. Now-a-days it is all sped up by movies, TV, tabloids and now the Internet. John Wayne, Patty Hurst, John Wayne Gacy, and the like, all compete for our collective consciousness. In the South there has been Bear Bryant, Wallace, Buford Pusser, and Jimmy Carter, who have all become larger than life figures in southern culture, or perhaps represent the South in American culture. As an artist, I have long been drawn to the various sociological aspects of icons and in recent years have made a couple of albums talking about the ones associated with the South and how they have shaped peoples views of this region. I'm also interested in how they have shaped southerners views of themselves.”
Drive-By Truckers looked to folklore surrounding their own Muscle Shoals, Alabama hometown for inspiration. So The Dirty South transports you, Greyhound bus-style, to a county the band describes in it's liner notes like this: “It’s a tough place to make a living. But we ain’t complainin,’ just doing what we got to do. Trying to raise our kids and love our women. Do right by the ones we love. But don’t fuck with us or we’ll cut off your head and throw your body over a spillway at the Wilson Dam.”
But Muscle Shoals’ criminal survival instinct isn't unique. A fact Hood nods to with “Puttin’ People On The Moon.”
“‘Puttin’ People On The Moon’ was written about the economic woes of my home region,” says Hood, “But it could easily have been set in any number of downsized and out-sourced industrial towns in our country. Likewise, this story is largely set in the past, but it hasn't gotten any better in many towns.”
Addressing universal doldrums with beneath-the-Mason-Dixon-line-reasoning is a Drive-By Truckers specialty. The band blares seedy rock about homeland characters, like the guy running numbers because he’s out of work. Mary Alice dying of cancer with no medical insurance. And Daddy gambling on a stump in the woods hoping to change fates’ fortune. Great anthems include “Never Gonna Change,” where the Truckers hail, “We ain’t never gonna change/So shut your mouth and play along,” and “Boys From Alabama.” Other standout tunes include, “Danko/Manuel,” with its heartbreaking refrain, “I ain’t living like I should,” and “Goddamn Lonely Love,” where Hood sings, “So I’ll take two of what you’re having and I’ll take all of what you got/To kill this goddamn lonely, goddamn lonely love.”
Hood is particularly proud of “The Sands Of Iwo Jima,” written about his 84-year-old Great-Uncle who saw terrible things fighting at Iwo Jima, yet somehow came home this amazing person.
“I have spent thousands of hours writing about all of these folks who have screwed up and done some terrible things and I wanted to write about somebody wonderful,” says Hood.
Celebrate the New Year with The Drive-By Truckers at Bowery Ballroom on Dec 31 and Jan 1.
Left in the wrong hands, lingering lyrical phrases risk sounding like an 18-wheeler without any brakes, but Conor Oberst, the creative force that is Bright Eyes, proves to be a storyteller who can handle them.
The growing phenomena surrounding the 25-year-old indie kid who shields his heart only with the guitar pressed against his chest, is testament to the effects of his profound word-craft. Oberst released two albums simultaneously this year on his own Saddle Creek label, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash In A Digital Urn, which resulted in tracks from each, “Lua” and “Take it Easy (Love Nothing) to debut at #1 and #2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles Sales Chart.
No doubt the “Vote for Change Tour” last year which thrust the Omaha troubadour’s wiry presence before the masses alongside Bruce Springsteen and REM helped to build career momentum. But what’s earned Oberst comparisons to Bob Dylan and secured his credibility is a body of prolific work, now six albums strong, bursting with evocative poetry.
On I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, Oberst holds close to his acoustic roots, but on the electrified Digital Ash In A Digital Urn he alters his dreamy quality to uncover a different shade of sensitivity. Lyrical prowess remains stronger than ever on both efforts.
In “Ship In a Bottle” from Digital Ash Oberst sings of jamming impossibility into probability: “Don’t you love what is intangible/I have built this ship in a wine bottle.” On I’m Wide Awake, “Lua” is a highlight with its simple moonlight strumming and vulnerable seconds: “I can tell you have a heavy heart/I can feel it when we kiss/So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out/ Trying to lift it,” or “If you promise to stay conscious/I will try to do the same/We might die from medication/But we sure killed all the pain/What was normal in the evening/By the morning seems insane.” “Road To Joy” offers a driving twist on Beethoven’s hymn celebrating the brotherhood of man “Ode to Joy,” climaxing in the cry: “No one ever plans to sleep out in the gutter/Sometime’s that’s just the most comfortable place.” And “First Day Of My Life” is quintessential Bright Eyes because while Oberst’s brooding browns may at first glance stamp him with a cheerless aura, he remains a hopeful and earnest interpreter of moments, which lifts his music away from sullen to someplace, well “bright.”
The Aquarian Weekly talks to Conor Oberst.
AW: You’ve turned out so much material in a relatively short time, two albums just this year. Do songs come easily to you, in that you need to write because it's more like your lifeline. Or do you work at it?
Conor Oberst: I’ve never found a good routine way to write. A lot of people will say, “I like to play with my guitar for a certain amount of hours a day” and “I spend this amount of time at a keyboard or with a notebook,” but to me it easily starts just with the vocal melody and maybe a couple lines or lyrics and then it’s more a matter of singing it to myself in my head and living with it. It’s easier to write on the go in different places. Eventually I’ll sit down and play guitar and figure out what key I’m singing it in or come up with the chord progressions to go underneath it, but for the most part it’s just a melody. Once I have the melody and can remember it, then I can work on the lyrics over the course of weeks or months or however long I’m daydreaming about the song.
AW: Why release two albums simultaneously?
Oberst: We made the two records more or less back to back. We did the folk record first and it was a really short process by our standards, just a couple of weeks recording a lot of it live. Those were the songs that I had sitting around for a while that had been written over the course of a couple years. Then there were a bunch of these other ideas and these half-finished things that I was working on and Mike Mogis, who’s sort of the other guy in the band, had musical ideas so I guess we were really excited and wanted to work on the Digital Ash record…By the time Digital Ash was almost done it was really apparent they were two different records and in my mind it made a lot of sense just to put them out at the same time.
AW: How do you view the differences between the two?
Oberst: Obviously there are parts of them that overlap as far as what I’m singing about because some of them were conceived roughly around the same time of my life. I think to me, Wide Awake is not necessarily a hopeful record, but more of a rallying, take responsibility for the world around you kind of thing. Be aware and be as present when things happen as you can. It’s just the idea of really stepping forward and embracing everything around you. Digital Ash is a little more dark, more just fearing death and how that pollutes everything.
AW: When did you first discover you had a way with words?
Oberst: I guess I was always drawn to it. I didn’t know how good I was at it. Even before writing songs, I can remember being real young, like eight or nine-years-old and writing little poems or stories or whatever. It’s just something I gravitated to. So once I started playing guitar it was almost an immediate thing. A lot of people concentrate on the music aspect of it, which I will say now I wish I would have been more the type of kid that was sitting in the basement practicing guitar scales. That would be kind of helpful at this point (laughs). At the time it wasn’t what I was in to. It was more like, “Okay I have two chords, so I’m going to make a song with these two chords with all these things I wanted to say.” The early songs that I was writing are similar to now in the sense of just writing about what was on my mind and my life. Granted when I first started doing it I was like twelve years old…
AW: What was one of your earliest songs?
Oberst: There was a song called “Space Invaders” kind of about the video game. It was some comparison between trying to keep the spaceships from blowing up your little satellites and it was about keeping whatever adversity I felt in my life away from me. Your frame of reference is definitely a little different at that point (laughs).
AW: How have you developed artistically from your last album?
Oberst: I guess more from a writing standpoint I value subtlety a lot more these days. I think there’s something nice when you can capture the in-between feelings. It’s easy to articulate those moments of crisis or those moments of pure overwhelming joy or love. Those are sometimes easier to write about and sing about. I think there are so many gray areas and so many endless combinations of human emotion and thought, being a person that’s alive and willing to reflect on life. I think that’s what’s intriguing to me still, to find those in-between moments and try to articulate those.
AW: As your career grows, what is one of the personal benefits?
Oberst: Definitely I’d say the main one is freedom to create. Before, there were always boundaries. Say there might be some piece of equipment we want to get. Before it was like, “Oh, that’s way too much money.” Now if we want to try something we’ll do it and that can come down to money or time or somewhere we want to travel. That’s just great to be able to let the music or the inspiration dictate what you do and where you go and not all the logistical things. Same with live performance. We’re traveling on this tour with a seven-piece band and a concert harp and a pretty elaborate set up as far as instruments. It’s just great to be able to do that and not have to think about cutting corners or how are we going to pull this or that off. Definitely also the chance to meet people. Just to be able to meet people who have helped shape my musical experience throughout my life and get brief insight from someone like Neil Young or Bruce Springsteen or these types of people. It’s like wow, such a privilege and you feel so fortunate.
AW: How much of yourself do you think you’re overtly revealing in your music and how much is gathered from your views of the world at large?
Oberst: I think that’s definitely changed over the years. At first I wasn’t really crafty enough to disguise my life, so I think some of the earlier recordings are really definitely overtly me. But I always felt the idea of writing a song was to convey some feeling or meaning that’s the point of the song or its essence. In order to get to that I think it’s fair enough to use any means necessary, whether it’s a friend’s story or something you read in a book or saw in a movie or a conversation you had or an observation you felt relating to something outside. I think the whole process of creating it is absorbing everything that you take in throughout the day or throughout your life. It all kind of mixes up inside you and comes out in this way that you don’t even, I mean I don’t have control over. At points I don’t even know what aspects of it are about me or about something else. Sometimes there will be a specific line that if you did know me or were privy to a certain situation you’d know what I’m talking about, but another thing I tend to value these days is to be able to write things that are universal that everyone can make their own. I think it’s a higher form of art when you can do that. I’ve been working on that. I still don’t think I’ve got where I would like to be as far as that goes.
AW: Is there a song that’s a favorite to play live right now?
Oberst: Yeah. On this tour we’re playing some old songs and it’s been fun to go back and remember some things from when I was writing them, but I always seem to enjoy playing the new songs the most on any given tour. We have new song called “Napoleon’s Hat” that I really like to play on this tour. It just has a tone to it where it seems a little dark and minor for a while, but then it kind of blossoms. The sun comes out from around the cloud and it twists into a nicer sound by the end. I always like that evolution from the start of a song, where people are like, “Wow this is a true downer” and then by the end it’s not.
Bright Eyes performs at Loews Theatre, Jersey City, NJ on 11/25 & 26.
If a pack of gypsies known as Gogol Bordello pass through your town beware. It means Cultural Revolution is in the air; at least that’s what the band hopes its music, inspired by Ukrainian Gypsy culture, will provoke. And if you find upon listening to the band’s new album, GYPSY PUNKS: Underdog World Strike, (SideOneDummy), you have to forcibly restrain yourself from building a huge fire and leaping over it with a bottle of whatever gypsies drink on a night out, then they’ve succeeded.
Singer/lyricist visionary Eugene Hutz explains that gypsy’s have a savage way of making music, coming from a culture where song is the only means of survival and that like reggae, it was created by poor people who have nothing but music. Experiencing sounds on those terms, Hutz and his collective of Gogol musicians that includes Sergey Rjabtzev (violin, vocals), Oren Kaplan (guitar, vocals), Eliot Ferguson (drums), Yuri Lemeshev (accordion), and Rea Mochiach (bass) continue their crusade to build a bridge between Gypsy music, rock’n’roll and other brands of rebel music from Flamenco to the perestroika punk that blossomed in Eastern Europe during the mid-‘80s.
“I’m naturally attracted to these forms of music because of their authenticity,” says Hutz. “In the West, music became more like a luxury thing. The reasons for making music became more hobby-like. That’s why it’s so un-effective and generally shallow. Gypsy music and reggae and punk come from very particular social settings and that is why their sound and their ideological backbone is so strong and in our own way, our music is authentic not because it is so gypsy or so punk or because I’m from Ukraine or anything like that or Oren is from Israel. It’s authentic because we present our own vision of global culture. We are qualified for that. We lived in many different parts of the world and we do have the comparative characteristic of all of that and we deliver what we feel. We’re not presenting words that have no life experience behind it. It’s really a product of the lifestyle.”
That existence included Kiev-born Hutz’s seven-year trek through Eastern Europe refugee camps to escape the Chernobyl meltdown of 1986, an experience that directly impacted the detailed life imagery and music on the new record, which Gogol Bordello delivers in it’s traditional bedlam atmosphere live.
Stand-out songs on the new album include the humorous “Start Wearing Purple,” an emphatic plea to a woman to lose her charms, wit and beauty, presumably playing on the Russian gypsy adage of ‘if you wear purple you lose your charm,’ “Think locally, Fuck Globally,” with a drum solo played by Hutz on an overturned fire bucket, “Undestructable,” with its hope-hearted rally cry from the masses, “Sally,” the band’s calling card, and “Dogs Were Barking,” with references to the corner of Broadway and Canal streets in New York where Hutz DJs at Bulgarian Bar.
“That’s where basically the center for the whole gypsy punk scene,” says Hutz of Bulgarian Bar. “I’ve been deejaying the party for five years. Now there’s new DJs as well that have developed this tradition in their own way.”
And the scene is picking up momentum.
“The gypsy punk is our own biographical vision of the music, but its amazing there are so many kids that are coming out of the woodwork and getting with this movement,” says Hutz. “There are several others of these bands. Hungry March Band is great and Kultur Shock. Even though they may be simply infatuated with the gypsy culture, the fact that they identify with the spirit is already more of an affirmation of a new rebel voice. It’s already a sign that they’re not buying into manufactured pre-made, so-called rebel bands playing Warped Tour and shit like that. We’re definitely not part of the army of boy bands. [Being on Warped Tour] was more like overthrowing their status quo and seizing thousands of new fans. I think it’s great that so many kids in this country who come for shows are getting into music that we’re propagandizing. It’s essentially a foreign spirit, a foreign cloud that travels on the territory and it obviously reflects their starvation for authenticity.”
Part of Gogol Bordello’s new audience includes Hollywood, with tracks featured prominently in the recent Liev Schreiber movie "Everything Is Illuminated," where Hutz also appeared alongside Elijah Wood.
“I have been offered roles for films before,” says Hutz. “It’s just that I was pursuing always music because that’s my most instinctual passion and I guess I knew it was going to come to acting at one point or another I just was waiting for a good role where I felt like I could put my heart and soul into it… There was much room for creativity and much room for trying out different thing and also learning things I can bring back to Gogol Bordello…I came out of this movie with great friends. When you’ve been working on something so hard, with so much dedication and going through certain struggles and come out with a bond after it—that’s the magic. I think it also speaks in the movie. I think you can see a lot of love and innovative creativity went into that movie. Liev let me do my own thing in a lot of ways and sometimes he would of course try to manipulate me (laughs), but that’s only what directors are supposed to do. Out of all of that the whole process was done in such a good will, it was only about, ‘Let me try it this way because I think this is going to be much better kind of style.’”
Currently Hutz is most excited about Gogol Bordellos’ upcoming appearance at New York Gypsyfest on November 6 at The Roxy where the band will be joined by two of Hutz’s heroes, world-famous clarinetist Ivo Papasov and saxophonist Yuri Yunakov.
“Seeing Yuri play is like solar energy. I could literally go for six months alone on that. Absolutely those guys are heroes for me and I was lucky enough to become friends and collaborators with them, which is something that happened with several other of my favorite gypsy musicians who are worldwide known legends. It is something that is so refreshing from dealing with rock n’ roll musicians where the germ of narcissism and rock stardom no matter what you do still gets in the way…Those guys are essentially heroes to me because they remain so humane. Gypsy culture is distinguished for its love of freedom and void of status quo.”
“Back in the 70’s in Bulgaria, there was this government policy of eliminating foreign elements from the culture,” continues Hutz. “What Yuri and Ivo used to do was mix up Arabic and Turkish and gypsy with Slovac and that was considered to be basically anti-government activity. So Yuri went to jail and was working during the day digging fucking pavements with a sledgehammer in downtown--enforced manual labor work. People would walk around, ‘What the fuck. Is this Yuri?’”…They did incredibly unorthodox things in their day and they also see that what we do with gypsy music is unorthodox as well. It’s a reincarnation of the rebel spirit. Every generation has to basically invent a voice for itself…Gogol Bordello is not just a band, it’s more of a culture. You can see the way it grows. It goes beyond definition of the band. It goes much farther. There are so many creative collaborators of people that are not necessarily professional artists or anything like that, that satellite with us. It’s getting hard to count who’s in the band and who’s not (laughs).”
Maybe the Brian Jonestown Massacre's lunacy onstage Sunday at the Bowery Ballroom can be blamed on the night's full moon? Or perhaps band founder Antone Newcombe's hostility toward band, crew and audience alike was the result of having his beloved guitar stolen the eve before? More likely, there was no reason for the chaotic sold-out spectacle other than it was just an ordinary day in the life of the band's madcap musical visionary.
During lengthy lulls blamed on tuning problems, Newcombe took the opportunity to challenge the sincerity of those in attendance. Without provocation, Newcombe called out, "I will fight all of you." He yelled, "Your love sucks" at one well-wisher and called another fan "a dark little demon," saying, "My God will fucking kill you." He also threatened to wait another 20 minutes if anyone threw anything at the stage.
Then the band's lashing came, which explains why the group has had about 60 players course through its lineup over the years. This incarnation of the band, which included returning original member Ricky Maymi (guitar), Frankie Teardrop (guitar), Collin Hegna (bass) and Dan Allaire (drums), appeared unusually tolerant -- particularly Teardrop, who was asked to leave the stage and then ordered to return.
"I don't understand why you give me the worst amp," Newcombe said to Teardrop. "Is your guitar in tune? Give me your guitar. Why don't you ask your girlfriend's dad to fly you home?"
Dysfunction finally subsided long enough for the full band to strike a song, an extended jam of "Hide and Seek," where Newcombe's disturbingly peaceful guitar style and hazy vocals reminded everyone why they were still there. Next was "Nevertheless," where the band hit its stride, with all three guitarists playing essentially the same parts cooperatively through the same amps, with reverb on 10.
The rest of the set teetered between wonderfully impulsive, twangy guitars with a futuristic spin and temperamental sanity from bare-chested circus-master Newcombe. By the third song, "Swallow Tail," Newcombe had cautioned the audience, "I had a bad day, and I don't want your bullshit." By the fourth, "Nailing Honey to the Bee," Newcombe reminded the audience that he had a hard day but declared he was ready to play again.
And by the fifth tune, "Wherever You Are," finally the first sensible words were uttered by Maymi, who leaned to tune his guitar and said to the front row, "It's like a rock concert in the Twilight Zone."
When a band that traditionally carries headlining festival slots back home in Ireland is bottled inside a more intimate setting, such as New York's Irving Plaza, the overflowing energy is bound to spill everywhere. And it did Sunday when The Frames, soaked with gentle sorrow and gut-growling dynamics, performed for a sold-out audience.
As adept at creating ale-house chumminess as they were navigating the stage, journeymen Glen Hansard (lead vocals/guitar), Colm MacConlomaire (fiddle), Joseph Doyle (bass/backing vocals), Robert Bochnik (guitar) and Johnny Boyle (drums) opened with "Keepsake" from the new album, "Burn the Maps." During the song, MacConlomaire's electric violin sensitively colored the quiet between Hansard's stirrings, and an odd-metered musical intensity built before the band dropped back into a mellow lull, an ebb and flow of feeling that was standard for the night. The Frames kicked up the show with a one-two punch of "Dream Awake" leading into "Finally," Hansard's Irish brogue coddling his pleas of "I want this so much.
Hansard's belief that people come to gigs to experience a moment pushed him to share transcendent ones. Inviting a sing-along in "Lay Me Down," he silenced all instruments to make room for fans to take over vocals as he grinned with satisfaction. Storytelling also personalized the performance. Hansard prefaced "What Happens When the Heart Just Stops" with a monologue about heartbreak that was so long it became humorous.
During "Fake," he pulled up his collar and swiveled his hips in a classic Elvis move as he pouted the line "You were always on my mind" with a snicker midsong.
Most effective, however, was the band's instinct for what the collective room needed at any moment, and they weren't too precious about their songs to miss the cues. When the line "I want my life to make more sense" came along in "Pavement Tune," Hansard and band followed the crowd's inclination to echo chants between chilly violin wallows.
"We can't tell you what it means to us to sell out a New York gig," Hansard said. "It's really important. The idea of playing Irving Plaza a couple of years ago was just a stupid idea, but now it makes sense."
Tina is a contributing editor and columnist for The Aquarian Weekly. She has also written for The Hollywood Reporter, Modern Drummer, Music Connection, Starpolish.com, and WomanRock.com.
Martha Wainwright’s family trade is music and with the release of her self-titled debut album, the singer-songwriter follows father Loudon Wainwright III, brother Rufus, and her mother and aunt, Kate & Anna McGarrigle to make it hers.
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