Sunday, March 20, 2016

Things we like: James Hinkle, Decadent Dub Team, Sarah Ruth

1) At Fred's Texas Cafe the other day for the musical celebration of life for Jim Yanaway -- Fort Worth and Austin's own music promoter and raconteur extraordinaire, who passed last weekend -- I was reminded of the first time I ever set foot in the New Blue Bird Nite Club, in 1978, and saw the Juke Jumpers backing Robert Ealey. The head Jumper, Jim Colegrove, was onstage when I arrived, and leading the band from the other side of the stage was James Hinkle, who's sort of a Renaissance man himself: an accomplished visual artist as well as being a multi-faceted musician.

On this day, Hinkle was playing a gold top Les Paul he'd only had for a short while, but when he switched his pickup selector to the neck position to solo -- not a choice a lot of players would make -- he could make that plank honk like a horn, appropriate for the jazz-inflected lines he was spinning. It reminded me of the way you can hear B.B. King changing his pickup settings throughout Live at the Regal. The best electric guitarists use all the tools at their disposal to make their art expressive.

The last time I spoke with Hinkle at length, he and drummer Lucas White had just spent a few weeks in Europe, touring with a couple of Belgian musos -- guitarist Ed De Smul and bassist Stefan Boret -- and recording an album, First Crossing, under the rubric James Hinkle and the Transatlantics. In May, De Smul and Boret will return the favor, traveling to Texas for a run of shows in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Houston, and Mansfield.

So far, their itinerary includes stands at Sons of Herrmann Hall in Dallas on May 5, the original Fred's Texas Cafe on Currie St on May 7, Fred's North off Western Center Blvd on May 11, Austin's Beer Post on May 12, legendary Austin blues venue Antone's on May 13 (with Hinkle's old podnah, harpman Ted Roddy, on board as special guest), Shakespeare Pub in Houston on May 14, and The Music Place in Mansfield on May 21. Other dates may be added; watch the Transatlantics' Facebook page for updates.

2) March 18 was my 11th wedding anniversary, but my wife and I had been celebrating all week, and she reckoned I should take the night off and head over to Oak Cliff for the sixth anniversary of The Kessler, the Metromess' finest listening room, which artistic director Jeff Liles and former technical director Paul Quigg would be marking with a reunion of their '80s collaboration Decadent Dub Team.

"Boys making noise in a monochromatic chop shop," is the way the always eloquent Liles describes their music. "Sonic butchers carving beats into sawdust." When I arrived, DJ EZ Eddie D was holding the stage, filling the air with a thunderous mix of hip-hop, deep funk, roots reggae, and rock, to back projected visual accompaniment that complimented the sounds he was spinning beautifully. (A disorienting high-speed drive through downtown Dallas was particularly effective.)

After timely pause, Decadent Dub Team took the stage, with Quigg and Liles stationed at equipment-laden tables on opposite sides of the stage. The noise they produced was magnificent, working on the fly to seamlessly blend beats, audio samples (including bits of Liles' Cottonmouth, Texas, spoken word project), and snippets of melody (with Quigg occasionally picking up a guitar). Earlier, I'd stopped to see a good old friend in the neighborhood, and our discussion had touched briefly on the realms of psychedelic experience. As I allowed myself to be engulfed by Decadent Dub Team's total sensory overload, I reflected on the way that sounds, words, and images can create chains of association and memory. It was a gas to see them working out in the house that they built. It also occurred to me how cool it would be to see Sub Oslo in that space.

After a short break, they returned with an old school hip-hop set, with rappers MC XL7, Doc Strange, and Tahiti joining in to flow verse on their single, "Don't Get It Twisted." XL7's the alter ego of Ty Macklin, who runs a recording studio in Fort Worth, and Tahiti's a friend who's performed in the groups PPT and AwkQuarius. Tahiti shared that he's been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and that the night's performance would probably be his last. We'll be keeping him in our thoughts.

3) Saturday was Gallery Night, an event I always forget in the same way as I forget the Japanese Gardens festival. A chance encounter with Matt Sacks, who runs the Grackle Gallery up the street from me, made me aware that Sarah Ruth and Danielle De France would be performing for the opening of WoCa Projects' "prox.y," a show curated by Lauren Cross that'll be on exhibit at the Grackle through April 9.

I've had a CD-R of Sarah Ruth's album Words On the Wind for a few months now, and I've been quite taken with its haunting sound and deeply personal subject matter, a remembrance of the west Texas farm where the artist grew up, replete with images of drought and desolation. In performance, her elegant presence complements her ethereal soprano and the minimal accompaniment she plays on piano or harmonium. There were sections where she read from a text, and intervals where her collaborator in the duo They Said the Wind Made Them Crazy, guitarist Gregg Prickett, provided contrasting vignettes on effects-laden lap steel. At one point she played a recorded track and rose to whisper to different audience members.

They Said the Wind Made Them Crazy recently approved masters for their double LP Far From the Silvery Light, due out on Tofu Carnage (with artwork by Ginger Berry) in late spring or early summer. We're hoping they'll follow up the release with more shows in Fort Worth. (Thinking that the Live Oak might be an appropriate venue.)

Also at the Grackle, I finally got to hear Danielle De France, a singer-guitarist who played a short set of mostly original material in the back room after Sarah Ruth had finished in the front. Her untrained voice has some of the same qualities as Sandy Denny's, and her simple guitar accompaniments worked well for the songs she had. A performer with great potential that I'm looking forward to hearing again.

Monday, March 14, 2016

R.I.P. Jim Yanaway

When I first moved to Fort Worth, to open a record store on Camp Bowie Blvd, one of the first people I met was Jim Yanaway.

Back then, Jim was working at Slim Richey's record distro on Vickery Blvd, and although my company wouldn't let me buy from them, we could trade merchandise, and so he got Japanese import Riverside jazz LPs and my store got Ace and Flyright blues reissues from England, as well as albums on the indie folk and bluegrass labels Slim handled.

Jim seemed larger than life to me -- like Pecos Bill or Big Tex, but with a '50s hipster sensibility. He was Texan to the bone, full of enthusiasm for R&B (he'd had a radio show called "Finger Poppin' Time" after a Hank Ballard tune), country music (he'd booked George Jones at Panther Hall in the '70s), and the weird mythos of Fort Worth (in later years, he said he was researching a book about Jacksboro Highway). Before I moved to Austin in '79, he played me a tape he'd made of Stevie Ray Vaughan at the Bluebird that impressed me mightily and prepared me for the time I stumbled into SRV playing some 6th St. dive a couple of months later.

Meeting Jim gave me the first inkling that I might actually belong here in Fort Worth, Texas, Where the West Begins. While I've been other places (Austin, Colorado, Memphis, various places in the USAF), I'm still here, 38 years later.

In the '80s, Jim relocated to Austin, started Amazing Records ("If it's a hit, it's Amazing"), and managed the Legendary Stardust Cowboy for awhile. We renewed our friendship while I was writing for the FW Weekly and did a story about the Lege, which was really an excuse for me to write about Jim.

Yanaway was a natural storyteller, with a gift for bemused observation; there was no such thing as a short conversation with the man. The last time I saw him, we spent an hour and a half on my porch yakking as he was "getting ready to leave."

The other day I ran into a mutual friend and told him to tell Jim hey, which I'm glad he did before Friday night, when Jim suffered a massive stroke at his  mother's house here in town, as a result of which he passed early this morning. I'm going to miss that man and all his stories, and his love for a lot of things that I now love because of him. Adios.

Won't you please stay, friend,
and tell us one more story?
Never enough time.

ADDENDUM: Jim's obituary is here. I'd never have guessed he was an Eagle Scout, or a walk-on punter for the UT Longhorns. Goodbye, friend.

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Brokegrove Lads' "Blood/Brain Barrier Bingo"

Some noises in D. Lovingly recorded to tape by Britt Robisheaux at Cloudland, with post-production wonderment by Matt Hickey in the barn.

Sunday, March 06, 2016

For Bob Seger, Bernie Sanders, and me

Over the years, I've written so much boo-shee about '60s and '70s Detroit rockarollas that some folks mistake me for a Mitten State expat, but it's not so. I spent my first couple of decades in the weedgrown wilds of Long Island, but around the time I hit puberty and was starting to work my way back from early Brit R&B to the black American models those bands drew on, I was also getting wise -- mainly via Creem magazine and the work of scribes like Dave Marsh and John Sinclair -- to the high energy ramalama emanating from the Motor City. Not just then-reviled, now-revered punk precursors like the Stooges and MC5, but also outfits like the Rationals, SRC, Frost, and the Bob Seger System. The way these bands combined (mostly) R&B roots with a no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners performance aesthetic resonated for me in a way nothing else really did, and I made it my mission to seek out as much of this noise as possible. Back in those days, it could take years to hunt down a record, but I was aided in my quest by the opening in my town of a hipi record store, run by a guy who had actually seen Seger perform with the Last Heard in some NYU lounge back around the time he also saw the Mothers of Invention at the Garrick and the Who and Cream at Murray the K's Easter show. Once Mother's (for that was the name of the store) opened, I could order any record I wanted. When I turned 16, I even started working there.

I got intrigued by the idea of Seger via a Marsh piece in Creem, ca. '71, that chronicled his early run of local hit singles which meant little to nothing elsewhere (although "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" charted nationally, contrary to the claims of the local oldies station DJ that he couldn't play it because it "wasn't a hit," when I called requesting it every single night for an entahr summer, 1972). My first Seger acquisition was the Capitol Starline 45 of "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" b/w "2+2=?" -- basically the two best songs off his debut Capitol LP, originally to be titled Tales of Lucy Blue but changed when "RGM" took off. The first song's a bit of testosterone-fueled braggadocio worthy of James Brown or the early Who, propelled by the most moronic beat imaginable and sung by Seger with tonsil-tearing aplomb that's less imposing than JB's or Wilson Pickett's, but a lot more organic than, say, Steve Marriott's (whom I love, but yeah).

Of the three great white rockaroll voices to come out of the hothouse of '60s Detroit -- Mitch Ryder and Scott Morgan being the other two; we could argue about Rob Tyner, but not here -- Seger was the one who wrote great material that it was easy for folks to relate to. Thus, "2+2=?," a '68 hit in Detroit and nowhere else, was a protest against the war in Vietnam couched in the language of the kind of young working class kid most vulnerable to the draft. The song represents an evolution in thinking from the Beach Bums' "The Ballad of the Yellow Beret," a taunt aimed at draft dodgers that was one of Seger's "starter records," recorded under the auspices of Doug (aka Fontaine) Brown -- himself a protege of Detroit's first great rockarolla, Del Shannon -- in whose band Seger played organ before going out on his own. Seger's own thought process is reflected by the protagonist in "Leaning On My Dream," a song on his 1970 Mongrel LP, who starts out wary of an antiwar protester who accosts him in the street but winds up on the picket line himself after receiving his draft notice. Probably an evolution more than a few of his listeners went through as well. (Mitch Ryder's great antiwar song wouldn't be released until 1980. Scott Morgan's Powertrane covered "2+2=?" in 2009.)

Besides the scabrous "Ballad," Seger's early singles were all over the map, and included "East Side Story," which starts out like a Them "I Can Only Give You Everything" rip before unfolding into a teen crime melodrama to rival the Everly Brothers' earlier "Man With Money" as well as Scott Morgan's later "16 With a Bullet;" "Persecution Smith," an evocation of Bringing It All Back Home Dylan that reminds these feedback-scorched ears just how close prime electric Bob's cadence was to Muhammad Ali's; "Heavy Music," which wasn't a proto-Zep like you might have thought reading Marsh's scrawl, but rather, a full-blown Motown number, the second take of which ("Part 2") contained the immortal line, "NSU, SRC / Stevie Winwood got nothin' on me!," and the unbeatable Christmas novelty "Sock It To Me Santa." All of the above are included in a bootleg double LP, Michigan Brand Nuggets, that I originally got wind of via Clinton Heylin's From the Velvets to the Voidoids discography back in '93, when it was still the only place you could find all the pre-Elektra MC5 singles, and recently found in reissue form thanks to a Michigan-based bud. (The rara avis of early Seger remains "Vagrant Winter," a galloping slice of garage punk psychedelia in the manner of Love's "7 and 7 Is.")

The ringer on Michigan Brand Nuggets is "Looking Back," another political song but in Seger's mature style, released on Capitol in '71 (although never included on any official album). The lyrics -- sort of a Michigan Everykid's version of "If 6 Was 9" -- include lines that remain topical today, unfortunately ("When they could vote, and end the war / They're much too busy fittin' locks upon the back door"). Those sentiments are a continuation of the themes on Mongrel, every bit the equal of MC5's High Time and Steppenwolf's Monster as a socially conscious hard rock LP (how many more of those are there?) and my pick for Seger's best album. But where the 'wolf's music was informed by folk and blues forms, and the Five's introduced Chuck Berry chug -- in '71, still the trope that signified the regressive tendency in rockaroll -- to their formerly adventurous music (listen to "Sister Anne" and "The Human Being Lawnmower" back to back and you'll hear what I mean), Seger's tunes on Mongrel are hard-edged, riff-driven, and as archetypally early '70s as, say, Cactus. Just listen to the percolating boogie that propels "Highway Child," with more still-relevant lyrics ("Think it's time we got together and declared / But when you see 'em comin', man, you get so scared"), or the modified John Lee Hooker that underpins "Teachin' Blues" and its more hedonistic message.

Elsewhere on Mongrel, "Evil Edna" is a character-based song that predicts early Springsteen, "Lucifer" is a worthy followup to "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man," and "Big River" is a prototype for Seger's '76 breakout song "Night Moves." Just 86 the homespun philosophy, and replace it with a little sexual nostalgia. The live version of "River Deep, Mountain High" that closes the album, while not as great as Deep Purple's Vanilla Fudge-ization of Tina Turner's Spectorsound apotheosis, isn't as embarrassing as Eric Burdon's fawning, masturbatory tribute to thatun, either.

After Mongrel and "Looking Back" failed to hit nationally, Seger broke up his System, cut a contract-fulfilling acoustic album, Brand New Morning, and hooked up with the organ-drums duo Teegarden and Van Winkle and ex-Bobby Bland guitarist Mike Bruce (not the Alice Cooper guy) to cut an album of mostly covers, Smokin' O.P.'s, that included the single version of "Heavy Music," making the song available to the LP buying public outside Michigan for the first time. (This was the unit that famously performed at the John Sinclair benefit where John Lennon and Yoko Ono also appeared.) The follow-up, Back In '72, featured backing by the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and cast Seger in the mold of Van Morrison (whose "I've Been Working" he covered here) or Joe Cocker in his Mad Dogs and Englishmen phase. Besides good covers of Gregg Allman's "Midnight Rider" and Free's "The Stealer," Back In '72 is also noteworthy for the presence of good new Seger songs: the title track; "Rosalie," a paean to Canadian radio station CKLW's music director Rosalie Trombley (later covered by Thin Lizzy, speaking of Van Morrison-alikes); and the journeyman rocker's odyssey "Turn the Page," which became a staple of Seger's live shows during his money-making period. Curiously, Seger hates the album and has kept it from being released on CD. I've long maintained that with this album and his early singles out of catalog, he and his manager Punch Andrews are leaving money on the table. Their loss is used record dealers' and bootleggers' gain.

With 1974's Seven, Seger found a backing unit (the Silver Bullet Band) and a formula (ballads mixed with Berryesque rockers) that worked, leading inexorably to the mainstream success of Night Moves, Stranger In Town, and Against the Wind. I got off the bus there, but have always seen his success as a result of his innate ability to reflect in song the struggles and dreams of the often inarticulate working folk who've been taking it in the shorts through the Age of Inequality here in America the last 30 years or so. I'll be thinking of Seger as I watch the results of the presidential primary in his state this Tuesday. Will his fellow Michiganders be looking back, or will it be a brand new morning?