Combining the best of an
free, outdoor, family-friendly street festival and evening club-crawl
showcases, AthFest is one of the finest examples of a community coming together
to support a good cause. In this case, all proceeds go towards AthFestEducates, a non-profit that “advances high-quality music and arts education
for local youth and the Athens community through direct support of school and
community-based programs,” including getting
musical instruments into the hands of school-age children. So you can feel good about yourself while
enjoying the many local and regional bands on the three outdoor stages during the
day and the ten or so indoor venues at night.
Although the outdoor festival is free,
the best way to truly experience the music is armed with a wristband so you can
get into the clubs on Friday and Saturday night. Be warned, the more popular
shows will be crowded and you may not get in, so plan your schedule
accordingly. But even if the show at the 40 Watt that you wanted to see is at
capacity and the line is stretched around the block, I can guarantee you can
walk a block or less and find another band that will excite you and keep you
entertained. In fact, I never come away from AthFest without unexpectedly
finding some new favorite band.
This year’s performers on the outdoor
stages include New Madrid, The Whigs, Sol Driven Train, Of Montreal, Ken Will
Morton, Lona, We Love Tractor, and The Baseball Project. Indoor shows feature
Cracker, The Whiskey Gentry, Contraband,
Roadkill Ghost Choir, Ralph Roddenberry Band (featuring Ike Stubblefield),
Barbara Cue, Five Eight, and Powerkompany. And if you’re into clever band
names, you might want to check out Percy Sledgehammer or the West VirginiaSlims.
AthFest is easily one of my favorite
summer festivals, so mark your calendars, grab the kids, sunscreen, earplugs,
an appetite and a good attitude, and meet me there. As Todd Snider says in Talkin' Seattle
Grunge Rock Blues, “Pack up the van, boys, we’re going back to Athens.”
The dates are misleading. The math may say four days, but
this Nashville extravaganza has spilled out on both sides, bleeding into
pre-festival shows, post-festival concerts and mid-festival lunches and
brunches and who knows what else. Nearly two hundred artists and nine venues
just don’t seem to be enough. This is not, on the whole, a bad thing.
Adam Klein at the Family Wash.
The awards show, held at the Ryman Auditorium, has stepped
it up each year but this time, instead of the red carpet, black tie and
bluegrass, I opted something a little more down home on the other side of the
Cumberland River at The Family Wash. While Jason Isbell was using a broom on
the hallowed planks of the Mother Church to sweep up the three major awards, I
was comfortably ensconced in East Nashville where Tommy Womack, Lisa Oliver-Gray, Adam Klein and several other acts played short sets to an
appreciative, friendly crowd. This is a reminder that there is wonderful
original music everywhere in this town and you don’t have to work hard or go
far to find it.
The nightly showcases are the real attraction during the
Americana Music Festival, of course. Forty-five minutes to do what you do, then
clear the stage. For me, the highlights were the very strong sets in the Mercy
Lounge from Billy Joe Shaver (born 1939) and Parker Millsap (born 1993,
fifty-four years later), Amy Ray, who played tunes from her excellent new
release Goodnight Tender, and the
always amazing Willie Sugarcapps at the Basement, where Grayson Capps surprised
the rest of the band by playing a song they’d never heard before. And speaking
of surprises, on Saturday, Cory Chisel’s Soul Obscura project did it for me. At
the City Winery, armed with a set of semi-obscure soul covers, Chisel’s stage
presence and command of the songs made this my favorite set of the day.
Cory Chisel's Soul Obscura.
As a visitor to Nashville, I really enjoy the daytime shows,
because I can pretend I live here and get to do this stuff all the time. On
Saturday afternoon at Grimey’s Americanarama, Kevin Gordon showed no signs of
slowing down after his previous night’s gig with the Hard Working Americans and
along with the gospel-blues of Mike Farris, they kept the day’s energy
crackling. Over in East Nashville, at the Groove, Cory Branan and Matt the
Electrician played acoustic sets while the Mas Tacos food truck kept folks fed
and, check this, the first tasting of Yazoo Americana Fest Ale, a beer brewed
especially for the fest.
The success of Americana, both as a festival and conference
and as a genre, has been a fascinating, upward-spiraling, wonderful thing to
watch and this year’s edition didn’t disappoint. As the festival continues to
expand each year, one has to wonder what’s next. There are high expectations
for 2015.
Turns out, I’ve been missing Nathan Bell for 15 years and
didn’t even know it. In the 90s, Bell stepped away from music and into a house,
a family, a regular job. Perhaps he needed that time to mature as a person
before he could write the songs on Blood
Like a River. Bell’s twelve tracks are just his vocals and acoustic guitar,
telling stories where he tackles some weighty emotional issues, including gay
marriage and adoption. Blood Like A
River runs somewhere between Springsteen’s stark Nebraska soundscape and
the haunted strains of Townes Van Zandt. Picks: Names, Really Truly.
This is one of those live records that make you want to
jump up and immediately go see the band play.
Blackberry Smoke unabashedly pump out what can only be called southern
rock, a swaggering mix of country, blues and good ol’ rock-n-roll. The band is
smart enough to weave Zep and Allman Brothers teases into their songs, and
talented enough to make music that takes the best of 70s southern rock and
filters it through the Bottle Rockets and Little Feat. Like Ronnie said in Sweet Home Alabama, “Turn it up.” Picks:
One Horse Town, Six Ways to Sunday.
Albert Camus said that “autumn is
a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” It’s also the second festival
season of the year. By now, you've been to the spring festivals, recovered, and
you've mostly taken it easy through the summer, but now you’re feeling like
it’s time to get out and see how much music you can cram into a short period of
time. Here’s a list of just a few of the festivals happening over the next
couple of months.
One of my favorite places to hear live music, this backyard venue
has boasted performances from the likes of Drive-By Truckers current and former
members Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell (on separate nights),
Junior Brown, the Alabama Shakes, Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, Larry
Keel, Hurray for the Riff Raff and Lydia Loveless. This year’s artists include Nikki
Lane, Water Liars and Great Peacock. Emitting a down-home, easy going vibe, the
Waverly Boogie is the place to kick back and enjoy yourself. Kick your shoes
off, sit a spell.
The Americana Music Festival and Conference’s popularity is exploding
exponentially. A ticket to the AMA awards show is becoming a tough commodity
and the nightly showcases are routinely SRO with lines out the door, especially
at more intimate venues like the Station Inn. There are also events at both
Grimey’s and East Nashville’s Groove, Music City Roots, Musician’s Corner in
Centennial Park and this year there’s a Riverside Park concert with the Avett
Brothers. There’s a reason for all the
talk: With 165 artists and nine venues, this is simply the largest, best amalgamation
of American music anywhere east of San Francisco.
Why not venture over to Tallahatchie County to the 4th
edition of this festival, featuring Paul Thorn, Jimbo Mathus and the Tri-State
Coalition, and Garry Burnside for some “food, music and healthy living,” as
their tagline suggests?
This remarkable festival has literally grown from the ground up. The Deadfields, The Bibb
City Ramblers, Wayne Minor Band, Sean Rox Trio, and Rick Edwards head up this kid-friendly, home-grown
rootsy festival, which is completely unique among Columbus events. This year’s
proceeds benefit Columbus Hospice. Come on out and celebrate Organic Southern
Life with folk art, music, local crafts, drum circle, food and more.
The 2nd edition of this festival looks intriguing, with
headliners Drive-By Truckers sharing top billing with Girl Talk, an electronic
music DJ who will be spinning amidst a mostly roots-oriented roster that
includes Lucero, Houndmouth, and Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires. With a wine and beer tasting and a chicken
wing cook-off, this is like a festival I could easily find myself attending.
This year is possibly this festival’s strongest lineup yet and
that’s saying something, given their penchant for bigger and bigger names over
the past few years. Lyle Lovett and his Acoustic Group, Dr. John, The Indigo
Girls, Bela Fleck and Jason Isbell headline a deep roster of artists. Heck, I’d
show up just for the folks in smaller type, like Willie Sugarcapps, The
Wailers, American Aquarium, Tim Reynolds and Honey Island Swamp Band. This will be the tenth anniversary of the
first trip I made to this festival and my campmates haven’t ran me off yet.
This could be the year, though.
Also on the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park property, the
sophomore offering of Hulaween features three nights of The String Cheese
Incident, and lots of late-night mind-expanding music and art. A recent blogger
listed the Spirit of the Suwannee as one of the six best outdoor places to see
music. I will have to say I haven’t
found many that can compare to the location, vibe or atmosphere at this park
and I expect that this weekend will be an amazing experience.
Hulaween 2013 recap
Well, that should satisfy your musical
cravings for a couple of months, and if you happen to see Camus up on the rail
during a late-night set, don’t treat him like a stranger.
This year’s AthFest compilation slims things down a bit,
with ten tracks clocking in at just under 40 minutes and in a new twist, it’s available
exclusively on vinyl. This is a very
fine collection of songs that doesn’t so much show the breadth of Athens music
as its depth, with tracks by Elf Power, Drive-By Truckers and New Madrid. The sale of this compilation supports AthFest Educates, a non-profit dedicated to local music
& arts education.
Favorites include Faster Circuits with their Beatlesque
pop on Relative Obscurity, and
Family and Friends, whose Rust and Bone
starts out like a delicate Donovan track and ends up as a rollicking
rock-n-roll song. The Drive-By Truckers continue their support of local music
and education with Rock Solid, a
track that was previously only available on their digital-only Dragon Pants EP. New Madrid contributes
Forest Gum, a track from their new
Normaltown Records release Sunswimmer. In 2014, just as it has been for years
and years, the fields of Athens, Georgia are ripe with musical fruit. This
compilation is just a taste.
“I hate Todd Snider and I’m going to tell you why.” No, not me, I kinda like the guy. I enjoy his
songs, his goofy stories, and his general outlook on life. That line came from a review Todd read about
himself and it made its way into his
first book, a collection of remembrances, lyrics and an unflinching look into
the life of a singer-songwriter. That he includes this piece of information in
a chapter in this book is very telling, because he doesn’t go on to talk about
why the reviewer didn’t like him or his music, because that part’s actually irrelevant.
Todd uses this as a teaching moment (yeah, I know…life lessons from this guy,
whose motto is “safety third?”) about fame and why artists sing their songs for
others. Todd says that if you’re doing
it so that people will like you, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.
Having seen Todd Snider perform several times and
listened to all his records and literally dozens and dozens of live recordings,
I thought I had heard all his stories and this book would be a rehash of things
I already knew. Part of that’s true, of course, there are times when he retells
his stories verbatim, or at least as verbatim as is allowed in his patented stoner-speak,
stumbling cadence, but in every case, he largely takes advantage of the medium
of print to dig deeper into his adventures, like meeting his buddy Moondawg of Moondawg’s Tavern fame. (They threw him out of so many bars/he
finally built one in his own backyard.) Songs and stories that you just
know are made up out of his own head turn out to be actual, factual things that
have happened to Snider. Todd credits Jerry Jeff Walker as his main inspiration
but it seems the chorus of Kristofferson’s The Pilgrim – Chapter 33 when he’s
stoned could easily be Todd’s bio. (He's a poet, he's a picker/He's a prophet, he's a pusher/He's
a pilgrim and a preacher, and a problem when he's stoned/He's a walkin'
contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction,takin' ev'ry wrong direction on
his lonely way back home.)
I Never Met A
Story I Didn’t Like is just shy of three hundred pages, but if you’re like
me and go back to re-read a paragraph or two, just to savor the words and roll them
around in your head, it will take you much longer to read. For someone who appears to be busy most of
the time just passing a bong around, he is surprisingly introspective about his
life, what he does and why. He’s like
the Buddha of East Nashville. He invariably has something nice to say about
everybody – the guy who yells Beer Run
all through the show, the guy who stole his song (but it’s okay, Todd stole one
of his back), groupies, drug dealers, police, you name it. Fans of Todd’s music
won’t need to read this review to know that they’ll want to pick up this book.
Music fans in general will appreciate this look into the life of an artist, but
I think this book will appeal to anyone who enjoys a good story, even if they
are mostly true.
Like many of us from the South, Grant Peeples is a
walking, talking contradiction. The man
loves lunatic poets and fast cars, and he’s an unabashed liberal, but he’s not
coming to take your guns away. He’s got plenty of his own. The one thing that
Grant does that sets him apart from his contemporaries is his honesty. Brutal, direct, rhyming honesty, or as he puts
it on this new release, “mixing trouble with metaphor.”
And he does this right off the bat on the first track, You’re aSlave To Your Imagination, a blues featuring the sassy vocals of
Sarah Mac that takes the classic country duet style from “he said/ she said” to
“left brain/right brain.” “You call it
art but you’re just jerking off,” says one side of his head, to which the other
side replies, “I got my songs and a sense of intervention…I know the score.”
The eleven songs are a poetic mix of styles: rock, folk,
spoken word, acoustic ballads and bluesy guitar tunes, produced once again by
Austin’s Gurf Morlix. Gurf has the knack
for putting just the right touches on the music he produces, although I have to
say that the echoes he placed on the brilliant spoken word piece High Octane Generation are, to me,
superfluous and distract from the performance. This is a small complaint,
though, given his body of work with Grant, Lucinda Williams and so many others.
After hearing the wealth of clever, intricate wordplay on these songs, it comes
as no surprise that Peeples is a Roger Miller fan. You can tell that he rubs
the lyrics of the songs on his sleeve until they gleam in just the right way. After working his way through social issues
like capital punishment, homosexuality, war, equality and revolution, he
finishes up the record with It’s Too Late
to Live in Austin, a “shoulda been here when” tale about the live music
capital of the world. Peeples, a recent transplant from Florida to Austin,
reminds us that songs are still being written and sung in Austin….and even more
than that, that songs happen everywhere.
Grant has been refining his sound over his past five
records and his work here is among his sharpest. At his best, Peeples recalls
Fred Eaglesmith, Butch Hancock and occasionally, every once in a while, Kris
Kristofferson. Because fast cars, big guns and fried chicken and okra are not
the sole province of conservative rednecks and because compassion and empathy
aren’t just for tie-died wearing hippies, we need someone like Grant Peeples.
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