The biggest disappointment (musically) of the year came last week when Scarlett Johannson released an album of Tom Waits covers. This sounded like a great concept on paper and even had several sources saying it was going to be better than most would think. Even Tom Waits signed off on the approval after hearing several of the preliminary cuts.
On the whole the album is awful. The production quality is completely awful and SJ sounds like a mesh between a bad 80s singer and Enya. I won't go into to much detail here because some of the Amazon reviews have already said it better than I ever could. Here are some of the highlights:
"Who is the drunken man warbling on this CD and why is he calling himself Scarlett Johansson? Enough said."
"The music over powered her singing and what I could hear of the singing it needed to be drowned out. It wasn't what I expected."
"Instead, Sitek (the Producer) sounds like he's scoring a slow-motion car chase shoehorned into a chick-flick while Johansson mumbles about heaven-knows-what. "
"I don't need to go into how it sounds like a technopop mess, or how her vocals are neither raspy nor over exaggerated like the original material. She's uninspired, flat, and the whole thing has an underlying sound that can only be described as a dog trying to fart into a tuba underwater. "
OUCH!
-T
Well I didn't really get to see anybody else besides REK today. I meant to get down there earlier but it was just too freakin hot. I missed the Boondogs, Salty Dogs, The Munks and The Damn Bullets.
All and all I was completely impressed by all the local bands that came out in force this weekend. If it weren't for that Arkansas Music Tent I think the weekend would have been pretty disappointing. With Merle Haggard out sick, I was really only looking forward to REK. Even though they left out my favorite song, Shades Of Grey, the band played a perfect set. All of the other favorites were there and the crowd sang along right on cue. The band even mixed in a few songs that I don't remember hearing last year at the Rev Room. The way the band feeds off each other always amazes me. REK is notorious for playing hundreds of dates a year and yet the band always plays like its some big reunion show. The members keep the same level of intensity night after night and always seem to be completely enjoying themselves. It always makes for a much more entertaining show if the band looks like they are having fun. The encore performance was a perfect end cap to the 3 day festival. Apparently it was Bob Dylan's birthday yesterday and they honored him by covering Tangled Up In Blue.
Well it was a great weekend and I hope a lot of you made it out. Can't wait to see what the lineup looks like for next year.
-T
Well Day 2 of Arkansas' Riverfest almost didn't start. A storm rolled in just as I was driving in to downtown Little Rock. I decided I was going to brave it anyways and got about 8 steps away from the car when all the rain stopped. I made it just in time to see Shannon Wurst take the Acxiom/Miller Lite stage. Last week I went through all the Myspace pages of all of the Riverfest performers and was completely blown away with her sound. Her voice is amazing and is up there with Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch. I had never seen her live and did not know what to expect from her on stage. She brought along two of her sidekicks to complete the trio that goes by the name of Three Penny Acre. The whole set went really well and slowly drew a faithful audience. Wurst is from the Fayetteville area and apparently plays several nights a week in Oklahoma and NW Arkansas. Unfortunately for the people of Little Rock it looks like she hardly plays down here at all. Her Riverfest outing was the only scheduled Central Arkansas performance for the whole summer. I stuck around a little bit afterwards to buy her cd but the band didn't return to the stage to sell me one. I highly recommend checking her out if you are into the whole Iris Dement, Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris sound. Quite honestly I think she may be the best local performer I have heard and I can only hope that someone discovers her quick.
http://www.shannonwurst.com
Our second stop was off to the Triple-S Alarm stage to listen to another Arkansas group, Sean Rock and the Toltecs. For a local band they were also relatively impressive. They played a lot of songs that closely resembled some of Steve Earle's earlier stuff. They weren't anything to write home about but were far better than your average bar band. We had to cut our trip to the Triple-S stage short after getting harassed by Johnny...
Johnny....
He quite honestly could have an entire blog entry devoted to himself. To sum things up, and to try to be polite (he really was a seemingly nice guy), this guy had about 5 teeth, bulging red eyes, and thin scraggly black hair. He opened up to us by sharing a story about how a week before he had been severely beaten up by a group of thugs that wanted his many bottles of some sort of doctor prescribed pain killers. He also shared that he had been in a motorcycle wreck, had 26 reconstructive surgeries on his arms and legs, been run over by a Hay Tractor and pushed off a 3 story building. He also invited one of his friends over to our conversation... His friend was a 7 foot tall older black guy dressed in what looked like a bright purple bath robe that covered him from head to toe. The guy was also carrying a bright pink leather bag stuffed with petitions he was trying to get signed for more college degrees in our education system. Johnny continued to share a story about how the previous day he lost another tooth that was bugging him and found $100 in a McDonalds parking lot all within 30 minutes of each other. Divine Intervention or the Tooth Fairy, I'll let you be the judge. Anyways, they both seemed like pretty pleasant people but we had already heard Johnny's stories twice and he was about to start into a third round. I decided to politely excuse myself from the conversation and left the Triple-S stage area.
We eventually made it back to the NLR side of the river and dropped in on the Ted Ludwig Trio playing the Arkansas Music Tent. I like jazz music and all but I have never quite been able to get into the trio sound, especially if no one is singing. Ted Ludwig played some phenomenal jazz stuff on an old hollow body electric guitar and was backed by a pretty solid upright bass player and drummer. The only problem was that after about 3 songs everything started to sound the same. There really just wasn't enough instrumentation to get a real solid sound. It was essentially just one super long guitar solo after another. Ted couldn't comp at all because no one else was there to take the lead. If they had just brought along a keyboardist, sax player, or trumpet player it would have taken there group from a B rating to an A.
My Dad and I decided that $11 for a Gyro and fries was pretty ridiculous and ate at the Salty Parrot in NLR. The food was sub-par but it was nice to sit down. The floating restaurant thing they have there is pretty cool but a little too colorful for my taste. It might be a cool place to check out on a night they have a band playing.
We eventually made it back over to the Triple-S stage to get ready for Jonny Lang. Voodoo Village was still playing and pretty much brought the 3 day festival to its lowest point. With two great bands playing Friday night and Robert Earl Keen playing Sunday Night it looks like this weekends music quality trend resembles an upside down bell curve. Voodoo Village didn't sound like anything you can't hear stuck on-hold from any customer service hot line. Several "this sounds like elevator music" jokes later the band took a turn for the worse. I dare anyone to find a more fitting rock bottom for the 3 day festival than what happened next. The lead singer/saxophone player had already been playing completely out of tune for the previous couple songs and was about to raise the hair of even the most seasoned concert goer. He picked up a tenor saxophone and his dreaded soprano saxophone and actually tried to play them both at the same time. Yes... one hand on each instrument and two mouthpieces in his mouth. What came out quite honestly made Jim Carrey's "You wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world" routine sound like angel's singing. That was enough for me and we decided to walk around a bit more until Jonny Lang was schedule to come on.
The night didn't get much better and Jonny Lang's road crew experienced enough technical difficulties to make his scheduled start about 40 minutes late. The crowd started to get pretty restless around 9:50 considering he was supposed to go on at 9:15. I have a feeling the crew rushed him on stage because when he ultimately did start, both guitars were not even audible. His voice sounded extremely weak and all you could hear were a ton of bass and drum feedback. After a few songs and several frantic looks to the crew on the side of the stage, they eventually got dialed in. All and all I just don't think I am particularly into the whole new-soul / glorified-R&B genre. I actually like John Mayer quite a bit but I think that's just because he is a phenomenal guitar player. Jonny Lang played a few good songs but nothing really floored me. The crowd was definitely responsive and the band fed off of the crowd's energy quite well.
Overall, it's interesting that two local Arkansas bands have been far better than any of the national, and highly overpaid acts. I'm beginning to think that Little Rock should have a mini Riverfest sometime during the year with just local bands.
I am however looking forward to Robert Earl Keen tomorrow night. After Merle Haggard canceled and was replaced by Sawyer Brown I am hoping that REK will save the weekend.
-T
 It seems like every year there's something new at Riverfest. Usually, it's something deep fried or chocolate covered. Sometimes, it's on a stick. This year, it was a new stage -- one devoted entirely to Arkansas acts. The Arkansas Music Tent (what marketing agency did they pay to come up with that name?) is a humble little venue. Whoever wrote in the festival brochure that it's a "club-like setting" clearly hasn't been to many clubs, unless a bingo hall counts as a club. Plastic chairs and turkey legs do not a club make. Nevertheless, the tent was jumpin' tonight when The Nobility and The Moving Front rounded out the first night of Riverfest.
The Nobility hail out of Nashville these days, but they're originally from White County. I've seen this band three times and I never get tired of them. They sound retro for a pop rock band, but refreshingly original. They started out in 2001 as Jetpack, and later Jetpack UK. They changed the name to The Nobility in 2007 following a legal dispute with a band of the same name. Sean Williams, the lead singer, evokes Buddy Holly with the vocals. For a four-piece act, these guys put out a very impressive and sophisticated sound. It's stripped down, but its very harmonic. I've heard few bands play keyboard and guitar off of each other to better effect.
The Nobility played pretty much their full set from the latest album, 2007's The Mezzanine, as well as a couple from their Jetpack days. As an added bonus for the modest but appreciative crowd, they debuted a new song from their upcoming album. But as is always the case with these guys, they finished up way too soon, leaving us wishing for more.
The Moving Front, on the other hand, put on a marathon performance. Over an hour, in fact. In case you didn't know, the band won an award at the film festival for their music video to "Like Zombies", a song I don't care for, mainly because the chorus got stuck in my head for the whole half-hour drive to work the other morning. But I don't want to sell them short - they're a good band. Lead singer Jeremy Brasher belted out the lyrics, occasionally walking off stage and into the crowd, even sitting with the audience and singing back to the rest of his band on stage at one point. All in all, though, I prefer The Nobility.
Well, Day 1's in the bag. Let's all get mentally prepared for Day 2. Remember, people, you have to wear the pin on the shirt in order to gain entry; no carrying your beer out of the park; and, for heaven's sake, no dropping quarters on passing boats from the pedestrian bridge. Is this a festival or a zoo? Don't answer that.
-G
 A tragedy occurred in Little Rock last night. De Novo Dahl played Juanita’s and nobody came. Well, almost nobody. What started out as an audience of six (seven if you count the bartender) grew to maybe 10 a few minutes into the set (maybe because it was Mother’s Day?). That in itself would not have been a tragedy had this been any other band. But this was De Novo Dahl, a slightly retro, very electronic, and fascinatingly inventive five-piece pop band out of Nashville on tour with their recently released sophomore album Move Every Muscle, Make Every Sound.
But if the cavernous emptiness of Juanita’s dampened their spirits, the band didn’t show it. No sir, they did not. And that’s where the silver lining of this tragedy appeared for those faithful audience members who made the effort. Performing like they were playing to a packed house on a Friday night, from the first note the band played, jumped, swayed and spun their way through a melodic and catchy repertoire. Their enthusiasm was infectious, and had the set lasted longer (and had there been more members of the opposite sex), there’s no doubt it would have turned into a mini- dance party.
De Novo Dahl debuted in 2005 with Cats & Kittens, a double album on which every song appeared twice in altered form. The new album is being touted favorably as a more focused and slightly more constrained offering, but one that keeps the best elements of Cats & Kittens. Lead vocalist and guitarist Joel J. Dahl croons his way up and over each melodic crest and trough as Matthew Hungate deftly trips his way up and down the keyboard, all the while ducking, dodging, spinning and sliding like a male Fly Girl on steroids. Serai Zaffiro on omnichord adds another layer of atmospheric sound and movement. She’s easy on the eyes as well, with a cool nonchalance interrupted occasionally by bursts of energy when the music calls for it. Each band member contributes to vocals at one point or another.
This is a band who are comfortable playing together. Their music is very detailed, with lots of rhythm changes and interesting flourishes, and their performance, both visually and musically, is very tight and impressive. They clearly enjoy themselves and don’t take things too seriously. At one point during last night’s show, Dahl broke a guitar string during a song. When the song was over, Hungate entertained us with the Broken String Song while Dahl tied another one on. It was great stuff.
The silver lining was only slightly diminished by the brevity of the performance. The band had played only about 45 minutes when they finished up. After some prompting from the “crowd”, they did two more, including one from the first album that apparently is rarely performed these days. Then it was all over as quickly and abruptly as it had begun. We were left wanting more.
Let’s hope another senseless tragedy is averted by booking De Novo Dahl on a better night of the week when they come back through town. Or maybe I should say if they come back through town.
In the meantime, you can check them out here.
-G
White Water Tavern came to Sticky Fingerz last night. Literally...I saw the management there. It was all beer, bourbon, smoke and sweat, as Hayes Carll, with a little help from Corb Lund and his band, brought the house down on a hometown crowd. Carll, technically a Texan, spent a few years at Hendrix in Conway back in the 90s and, judging from how many songs he claimed were inspired by that not-always-happy time, they were formative years for him musically.
There was plenty of great stuff from Trouble in Mind, his latest album and first with Lost Highway Records, but Little Rock and Flowers and Liquor were well represented as well in the satisfyingly long set-list. “Drunken Poets Dream” (the Ray Wylie Hubbard collaboration), “She Left Me for Jesus”, “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart”, and Tom Waits’ “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” were all stand-out performances from the new album. One beer-swilling fan shouted his appreciation more than once that the Waits tune was part of the mix.
Carll has developed a confident stage presence, and he used it to great effect, clearly bouyed by playing in his old stomping groungs. The numerous references to Arkansas and Little Rock in Carll's repertoire didn't hurt either. When he finally left the stage at a quarter 'til one, the crowd called him back for a couple more before things finally wrapped up.
Corb Lund did a decent job warming up the house. Arkansans never quite know what to make of his mix of Alberta accent -- he pronounces "about" as "aboot" -- and country twang, but they seemed to make him feel right at home. Carll even jumped on stage with him at one point, and he returned the favor during Carll's set.
All in all, it was a great night. Hayes Carll showed Little Rock why he's considered an up-and-coming sensation, and Little Rock showed that it couldn't be prouder.
-G
Day 1:
Well the weekend started in a pool of water. Little Rock got hit pretty hard with some storms earlier that day and I thought they would be out of Memphis by the time I got there. The first couple acts I saw (Amy Lavere and Joan Jett) stayed relatively dry. There were a few minor showers, but nothing to stop the show. Later in the day I couldn't have made a better decision that to see Charlie Musselwhite in the Tennessee Lottery Blues Tent. About 10 minutes before the show the entire festival took a beating. I looked outside the tent and the edges of it created an enormous waterfall. Obviously CM wasn't upset about it, he had the tent completely packed with people trying to escape the rain. After he rocked it on stage for over an hour things began to calm down outside. I had planned to go see The Roots on the Budweiser Stage but didn't get more than 200 yards before the rain started up again. This time there was nowhere to hide and our group slowly made it back to the car parked about a mile away.
Day 2:
Well if day 1 started in a pool of water, day 2 started in a pit of mud. And I don't mean like a few spots of mud here and there, I mean like huge foot deep, get your shoe stuck kind of mud. Not to mention I was wearing shorts (it was supposed to be sunny) and my soaking wet shoes from the night before. Tegan and Sara totally rocked the main stage. I hadn't heard much of anything by them but they were impressive. They seemed real at ease on stage and completely threw the crowd for a loop when they proclaimed that one of them was 20, the other 40 and Sara was married to their longtime guitar tech. I was told later that this was all completely made up. If anything could have been more disappointing than the rain, it would have been Cat Power's performance Saturday afternoon. Its hard to explain but the backup band played like they were told about the show about 10 minutes before getting on stage. No one was prepared, the sound was extrememly convoluted and Cat Power spent 75% of the time on stage complaining to the stage hands and hovering over the monitors. It also looked like she wasn't "all there". Her actions all around the stage were all pretty skittish and she made a few completely bizarre comments. John Butler Trio turned out to be the biggest surprise of the weekend. I had originally planned on seeing Lou Reed but made it back from dinner a little too late to make it to his stage. I settled on JBT when I heard their sound way off in the distance as I was heading back into the festival. They had a huge following and a lot of energy in the crowd. And needless to say Matisyahu was worth the trip out to Memphis alone. I had the chance to see him out in San Diego but moved about 1 week before the show.
Day 3:
I had several hours to kill and went out to a AAA Memphis Redbirds game. The game turned out to be a double-header because of all the rain on Friday night. I stayed for the first game and half of the second before heading back to see Michael Franti and Spearhead. About halfway through the MF set I went back to the Sam's Town stage just in time to hear Jerry Lee Lewis. Jerry Lee played pretty well for an old man but would not shut up about how lame is backup band was. I thought they sounded great and that it was Jerry Lee that brought the whole experience down. At first I thought he was joking around with them but later realized he wasn't kidding when he left the stage with one or two songs to go. The announcer tried as hard as he could to get him to come back but he just walked right off the stage. Finally Aretha Franklin came on and was a perfect bookend to the whole weekend. She was much better than I thought and even flew out one of the original Temptations to do "My Girl" It was cool to see so many different types of people stopping to listen. She had by far the biggest band on stage and audience.
Well that's it, I definitely got my $63 worth and can't wait for next year. Feel free to add comments, did I miss anyone I should have seen?
-T
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