tommy ware, root420, sunday night midnight

an embarrassment of riches has recently come my way through the largesse of friends (and their cd burners). the truth: while i've probably bought more cd's this year than in the previous five, most of the music i listen to at home these days is burned onto cd-r. i've been making a few mixes, but basically, that's just the form most of the stuff i like best comes in lately. a few examples:

tommy ware is a hell of a nice guy who usedta play gtr for jasper stone a few years ago (after nate fowler, before ron geida). he's got a bunch of songs that he wrote and sang down at first street audio with jordan richardson twiddling the knobs. he plans to release the as-yet-untitled disc himself, then put together a rock'n'roll band. tommy digs the good stuff: pre-electric dylan, the n.y. dolls, and the replacements as well as whiskeytown and wilco, and it all shows up in his toonage. having darrin kobetich along for the ride on dobro doesn't hurt, either. tommy's unpretentious lyrics are often (intentionally) silly but can be evocative, too. my faves: "another wheelie" and "devil suit."

root420 was the band that preceded pablo and the hemphill 7: joe vano on voxxx, marcus lawyer on _gtr_ (playing a left-handed instrument upside down, or so the story goes), shane flores on bass, and damien stewart on drums. at different times, they were augmented by legendary and shadowy fort worth muso ra byn taylor on keys and wreck room jam-meister lee allen on keys, second bass, and trombone. says damien, "we experimented with electric drum kits with delay, space echoes...all kinds of stuff." some of their ideas carried over into ph7's repertoire, but root420 music has the heavy vibe and deep mystery of classic lee perry dub, all driven by flores' earth-shaking pulse.

sunday after midnight is a jam that cadillac fraf usedta host in amarillo, and the recording i've heard is a fascinating and bizarre document. the highly ambient recording sounds like it was made from a location out in the audience, and the crowd functions as another instrument at times. the basic band sounds like acoustic gtr, bass, and drums, with somebody blatting on a harmonica occasionally and some sort of brass instrument (a trombone?) audible at points. the proximate model for their droney sound is the velvets meet the dead, or urban hillbillies on acid ("cleetus -- ah see squirrels!"). intermittently throughout the proceedings, a couple of voices sing or declaim in unison but out of time with the music. toward the end, the bassplayer picks up the tempo a bit and you can almost imagine people doing the patented hands-in-the-air deadhead ecstasy dance. then what sounds like a steel drum (probably a keyboard patch) comes in. more than passing strange, but also hypnotic in its way. we've all been in jams like that -- haven't we?