the theater fire, white ghost shivers, dylan sneed
hadn't been to a theater fire show in forever, so when they were playing in our living-room-three-miles-from-la-casa (that'd be the li'l wreck room to y'all), hadda go check 'em out. in the coupla yrs since i last beheld 'em, they've released a new alb, everybody has a darkside, that won an award from the fw weekly, and gigged fairly relentlessly (if usually outta our west 7th st.-centric orbit).
aprell feagin no longer performs with the band, her place onstage taken by babyfaced multi-instrumentalist james talambas, who did some groovy choreography in tandem with fellow trumpeter jesse brakefield (the theater fire mak show?!?!? ooh, yeah...) as well as throwing down on keys 'n' washboard, and on one song, jumping into the crowd to wail on the stage, speakers, and giant electric fan with drumsticks.
in fact, multi-instrumentalismo remains a theater fire calling card. between 'em, these seven, count 'em, seven cats play so many instruments that you'd think they were the band or somethin' (or maybe, uh, bright eyes, to use a more _contemporary_ comparison). with the exception of riddim boyzzz mark castaneda (bass) and nick prendergast (traps), _somebody's_ switchin' instruments after nearly every song. at diff points in the evening, leader don feagin performed on both electric 'n' acoustic gtrs as well as fiddle; other main guy curtis heath played accordian, banjo, mandolin, and gtr; brakefield put down his trumpet to blow harp on one number; and sean french covered pedal steel, xylophone, banjo, mandolin, and electric 12-string. long time ago, when i expressed puzzlement at why his band was classified as "experimental / avant-garde" by the paper i was writing for at the time, don replied, "the only thing 'experimental' about us is deciding what instruments to play when we have a new song."
theater fire music feels _timeless_ and essentially american, inhabiting a time-space somewhere between the civil war, the dustbowl '30s, the deep south as flannery o'connor 'n' the rolling stones imagined it, and fonky fairmount last week, playing musical cards like country-blues, zydeco, mariachi, appalachian murder ballads 'n' velvet undergrond hypno-drone (as in the extended intro to their opening number). they evoke the "old, weird america" that hank williams _the elder_ 'n' skip james lived in, and they have the balls to sing a song about testicles (as curtis heath did for their _second encore_).
before them, austin-based white ghost shivers played an entertaining mix of '30s-styled sounds that had me flashing on ray liberio as a giant cat in a max fleischer cartoon, walking down the street to the sounds of a bass saxophone (which gives you a clue to my state of mind at the time), and opener dylan sneed had extremely good posture, evoked the spirit of townes van zandt, and made me conscious of being very uncomfortable hearing a guy wearing an acoustic gtr and harmonica holder saying "i'm _dylan_!"
aprell feagin no longer performs with the band, her place onstage taken by babyfaced multi-instrumentalist james talambas, who did some groovy choreography in tandem with fellow trumpeter jesse brakefield (the theater fire mak show?!?!? ooh, yeah...) as well as throwing down on keys 'n' washboard, and on one song, jumping into the crowd to wail on the stage, speakers, and giant electric fan with drumsticks.
in fact, multi-instrumentalismo remains a theater fire calling card. between 'em, these seven, count 'em, seven cats play so many instruments that you'd think they were the band or somethin' (or maybe, uh, bright eyes, to use a more _contemporary_ comparison). with the exception of riddim boyzzz mark castaneda (bass) and nick prendergast (traps), _somebody's_ switchin' instruments after nearly every song. at diff points in the evening, leader don feagin performed on both electric 'n' acoustic gtrs as well as fiddle; other main guy curtis heath played accordian, banjo, mandolin, and gtr; brakefield put down his trumpet to blow harp on one number; and sean french covered pedal steel, xylophone, banjo, mandolin, and electric 12-string. long time ago, when i expressed puzzlement at why his band was classified as "experimental / avant-garde" by the paper i was writing for at the time, don replied, "the only thing 'experimental' about us is deciding what instruments to play when we have a new song."
theater fire music feels _timeless_ and essentially american, inhabiting a time-space somewhere between the civil war, the dustbowl '30s, the deep south as flannery o'connor 'n' the rolling stones imagined it, and fonky fairmount last week, playing musical cards like country-blues, zydeco, mariachi, appalachian murder ballads 'n' velvet undergrond hypno-drone (as in the extended intro to their opening number). they evoke the "old, weird america" that hank williams _the elder_ 'n' skip james lived in, and they have the balls to sing a song about testicles (as curtis heath did for their _second encore_).
before them, austin-based white ghost shivers played an entertaining mix of '30s-styled sounds that had me flashing on ray liberio as a giant cat in a max fleischer cartoon, walking down the street to the sounds of a bass saxophone (which gives you a clue to my state of mind at the time), and opener dylan sneed had extremely good posture, evoked the spirit of townes van zandt, and made me conscious of being very uncomfortable hearing a guy wearing an acoustic gtr and harmonica holder saying "i'm _dylan_!"
posted by stashdauber at 10:06 AM
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