 Little Rock can't seem to get enough of The Good Time Ramblers lately. I don't know what rock I was living under the last couple years. It's either I just missed them or this band has just completely exploded onto the LR local music scene. Solid songwriting, great vocals, and an array of impressive instrumentation, there are truly no weak links. They have been writing music since the summer of 2005 and just released an EP last year. In preparation for last weeks run of concerts I checked them out on their Myspace page and was blown away. I marked their White Water show that week on the LRLM concerts page. Originally scheduled to be the opener they unexpectedly headlined that night for American Aquarium and Nathan Singleton. After an incredible performance by the two opening bands from Raleigh and Austin, Little Rock's GTR went toe to toe and played late into the night.
Part traditional country, alternative country, and southern rock, GTR have a passion for music that is widely apparent from their live shows. The band is one of the most solid performing acts I have seen in recent years. Lead vocalist John Lefler and bass guitarist Rich Dwiggins harmonize perfectly, Alex Piazza is an amazingly talented lead guitar and pedal steel player, and Brooks Browning keeps the beat and the energy flowing.
I normally don't go to shows by myself but Thursday night was a big exception. Everybody else from LRLM was out of town so it was just me. I showed up at Sticky Fingerz at around 9:30 just as GTR were getting into their sound check. Sticky Fingerz was jammed packed. Now at first I thought maybe it was the $2 Coronas (beer of the month) or the free cover charge. I was proved wrong when the crowd stuck around for the entire 2 1/2 hour show and judging by their response, became obvious everybody was there for the band. I think the band was even slightly surprised by such a large turnout. Last week at White Water Lefler asked the very welcoming and energetic crowd where they had been for the past three years. Obviously a little taken back by their recent success, this band is definitely going somewhere. With an even larger audience at Sticky Fingerz Thursday night the band fed off of their quickly expanding fan base through the early morning hours.
The band played through their entire EP released last year and several new songs from the tentatively titled Bigelow Strange album due out in the fall. The band has almost completed the album and just needs to spend some more time, and money, in post production. Rich sang lead on several songs including a new one he wrote while hanging out at Tootsie's in Nashville. Another one "Coming Back Home Again" was introduced to the audience that sounds great live. Brooks kicked into the two-step and Alex played an awesome guitar riff that had people instantly hooked.
The band paid tribute to some of their early influences and played through songs by Johnny Cash, Gillian Welch, Jimi Hendrix, The Band, Willie Nelson and a host of others. The band really got the party started and the dance floor hopping when they ripped into their version of "Mississippi Queen". Sticky Fingerz lighting and sound guy, Maestro, worked the lighting controls to make GTR look like something right out of Guitar Hero. I think the most impressive moment of the night came when the band covered Springsteen's "Atlantic City" They covered the legendary song perfectly and transitioned in to my favorite song off their EP "Gotta Get Back". The most unexpected moment came when later in the second half Jeff Coleman from "Jeff Coleman and the Feeders fame" joined the band on stage to play a thunderous version of his awesome song "All The Whiskey In Texas" In case the audience was still not convinced, the band played the most impressive version of Dylan's "Maggie's Farm" I think I have ever heard. Another couple songs off their EP, "Roland Lilly" (written about Lefler's wife) and "Carolina County" had the band's friends the "Saline County Boys" and group from Buffalo Grill stomping to the beat.
If you haven't seen them live yet, you will undoubtedly have plenty of opportunity. The band has a quickly expanding group of fans and are gaining extraordinary momentum. I quite honestly don't know where we have "all been the past three years", but we are all here now, and the Good Time Ramblers freakin' rock.
http://www.myspace.com/goodtimeramblers
-T
 "I was born in the back of a Yellow Cab in a hospital loading zone and with the meter still running. I emerged needing a shave and shouted 'Times Square, and step on it!'" Thomas Alan Waits was born on December 7, 1949 just one day after the late great Leadbelly died in New York City. Later Tom mentioned in The Many Lives of Tom Waits by Patrick Humphries, "He died the day before I was born and I like to think I passed him in the hall and he banged into me and knocked me over." Tom was born in Pomona, CA and later moved with his family to San Diego. "I wanted to be an old man when I was a little kid. Wore my grand-daddy's hat, used his cane and lowered my voice. I was dying to be old." Shortly after high school he took his first jobs working various shifts at a Bible factory, delivering newspapers, as a short order chef, car-wash attendendant, salesman, toilet attendant, truck driver, jewellery salesman, bar tender and doorman. He also had a stint as an ice cream man. "The hardest thing about driving an ice cream truck is getting the little bell out of your head at night." Some of the characters that would later emerge in his songwriting undoubtedly came from some of his early work experiences. He took his first paid piano gig at a local San Diego nightclub.
Fast forward 40 years and Tom would go on to record 20 albums each odder than the first. I first heard Tom Waits when I was researching Neko Case music on the Internet. I had already owned all of Neko's stuff and was desperately looking for anything else I could get my hands on. The only track I was able to find was a Tom Waits song she covered called "Christmas Card From a Hooker In Minneapolis" off of a Waits inspired tribute album. Vocally, Neko Case has sung nothing better. The songwriting was nothing I had heard before. The song is equally as imaginative as anything Dylan has done, but darker. The first Waits album I went on to buy would later be my favorite. To say Mule Variations had an affect on me would be a bold understatement. Frankly, the album scared the hell out of me. The night I took it home I think I listened to it on loop 6-7 times till 3am. Every time the album went by I could literally visualize everything unfold like a play. Often labeled as "experimental blues" the artists on the album play the turntables, the bari-sax, alto-sax, guitars, dobro, trumpet, optigon, chumbus, dousengoni, organ, piano, drums, percussion, pump organ, chamberlin, bassoon, bass clarinet and the violin. Twenty five individual artists lent their talent to the album and the list reads like a who's who of the recording industry. Combine that with Tom's voice, often described "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car" and you can begin to see how the experimental got put into "experimental blues". After it's release in 1999 Mule Variations would later win a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. I own over 1500 albums and even counting Bob Dylan's entire cannon of music I rank Mule Variations a solid number one.
I promised myself I wouldn't listen to any Tom Waits music on the drive up to Tulsa on Wednesday for fear of having pre-show burnout. When I first drove in It was a no brainer to stop at Chipotle (the closest one to Little Rock) to eat. I used to go to Chipotle everyday after summer school my final year at San Diego State. Awesome food, awesome music, and a cool modern/retro vibe kept me coming back. I always knew Chipotle was notorious for playing awesome indie music. Much to my surprise and enjoyment a Waits song came smashing through the tiny speakers. I can't recall the name but it was something off of Rain Dogs (1985). Halfway through the song I looked around to see if anyone else was appreciating the irony. Aside from me there was a local suburbanite soccer-mom in typical gym-clothes-fashion and an old couple complaining that the food was too spicy. After Chipotle it was off to the Brady Theater.
I arrived at the theater 2 hours early and decided to stop by a local bar called Caz's pub in the historic Brady district. Turns out Waits has a very active online forum and about a week ago an extensive list of pre-show hangout spots was formulated from Phoenix to Edinburgh. The bar was packed with faithful Waits fans and a mix cd playing nothing but Waits tracks. I met a nice couple from Omaha that were also seeing Waits for the first time. License plates in the parking lot were from Arkansas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, Illinois, Michigan, Texas, Alabama and Nebraska. Tom Waits is only playing 13 US dates in two weeks. He typically tours every 5-6 years and only for about 1-2 weeks. People generally come far and wide to get the incredibly rare opportunity to hear him live. Humphries adds, "The increasingly rare live shows had fans flying from all over the world; his profile found him stalked by U2 and The Pogues."
The show was scheduled to start at 8:00pm but the "will call" only ticket sales created a line a mile long. The Brady theater is by far the most interesting place I have had the opportunity to see a concert. The building was built in 1914 as a public assembly facility. The building's interior was restored in 1930 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The interior design is described as "Western Classic Revival". The seats had not been replaced since 1930 and the way they were tightly arranged around the stage reminded me of the haunting back-alley concert hall in David Lynch's, Mulholland Drive. Tom's stage could only be classified as a magnificent colorful collision of musical instrument store meets pawn shop. A suspended twenty foot hat rack acted as the back drop and a massive chandelier mounted with antique bull horns and sirens was the set piece. A tiny circular circus stage would later be Tom's platform for much of the set.
When the lights finally dimmed at 8:40 a man in the back screamed at the top of his lungs "TOM WAITS IS GOD!". God? I would hardly want Tom Waits being in charge of my salvation. He would more likely soak it in whiskey, bottle it and try to pawn it off at a street fair. The applause was deafening and went on and on and on. The band took the stage and Tom jumped on to his 12' diameter circus platform. The concert started as all of the others have with a song called "Lucinda". As the first two songs of the night rang out, Tom stamped his foot into the platform with such vigor one would wonder how many they go through in a two week tour. The stagehands must have purposely layered his small platform with a dusty chalk-like substance. Every time his foot came down the chalk dust would kick up giving him the presence of a maniacal carnival barker. The lighting for the first couple songs was a faint rustic amber pitched directly on Tom's little stage casting a fifty foot tall shadow in the back of the stage. The rest of the band was not illuminated until a few songs later. He blew through several of his songs but the highlight for me did not come until the end.
During the middle part of his set the band seemed a little rusty and often took solos out of turn. A couple of songs were started off with poor timing and his son Casey Waits had to quickly vary his beat on the drums. In his blog, Andrew Gilstrap sums up Tom's stage demeanor well, "Waits himself was a wonder to behold, barking, crooning, and marionetting himself around the mic like one of his strings had been cut. He grabbed the mic stand, pressing its base into the floor like it would help him tap into an even more primal beat. Attired in his trademark porkpie hat, dark jeans, and jacket, he mugged for the fans, reaching out his hands like claws and adopting the old-man mannerism of clutching his jacket to his chest when he spoke."
My only real complaint of the night came with the crowd. Often yelling over each other, people just kept shouting out songs they wanted to hear. I had the impression that it turned into a "I'm a bigger fan than you are" contest as each request was more obscure than the last. During a couple songs Tom repeatedly tried to get the crowd clapping or singing along only to leave huge gaping moments of silence. Towards the middle Tom just simply stopped trying and had nothing near the passion of his first couple songs. You began to almost feel sorry for him after on top of everything else a couple of his jokes flopped. I can't put all the blame on the crowd though. I began to realize that if the Brady theater was last renovated in 1930, well then its ventilation and air conditioning are rigged to pre World War I standards. The outside temperature Wednesday afternoon in Tulsa was 99 degrees. It must have been 104 in the Brady Theater. It got so hot that at some point my back stuck to the antique wooden chair. It really was miserable and I think a lot of people just didn't have the energy to get into it.
Tom's best song of the night (one of my favorites) came right before the encore. I think Tom realised this was hit and summoned up his initial stage presence and screamed out the lyrics to "Come On Up To The House" for a showstopping ovation that brought the house down. The crowd was now pumped and Waits banged out three more "Make It Rain", "Eyeball Kid" and "Time" for the encore.
All in all it will probably not rank near the best in the two week tour. However, it was Tom Waits singing Tom Waits songs and what more could you really ask for. I challenge anyone to come out to his next tour in 4-5 years. Even if you are not a fan it is still a performance you will undoubtedly not forget.
-T
Quotes used without permission from:
"The Many Lives of Tom Waits" by Patrick Humphries.
"Innocent When You Dream" by Mac Montandon
and Various liner notes / Wikipedia...
 I had never been to Studio Joes, much less heard about it before last Wednesday night. I used to work at Barnes and Noble and do remember seeing it several times. During big store events all of the employees were required to park in the lot right next to the place off of Autumn and Chenal. I always thought that it was a hair salon. When Mike Dollins messaged me on Myspace a month ago he asked if our web page (at the time Street Scene Little Rock) had anything to do with San Diego's annual Street Scene Music Festival. Well yea, in fact it did. I used to live out in San Diego and got the name from it. But how would someone in Little Rock know about that?? It turns out Mike grew up out in San Diego and moved out to Arkansas after college. Sound familiar? In San Diego I worked at a popular music store for most of high school and all of college. Turns out Mike knows many of the same people and places I do. He started a local Blues Newsletter in the area and jammed with many of the bigger blues musicians of the area. Long story short our conversation was one of those "Wow what a small world" scenarios. He told me about a musician named Len Rainey that would be playing through town on June 18th.
Apparently Len Rainey has toured with all kinds of bands and lived in Chicago for a while. Mike has his own band that tours quite frequently around the Central Arkansas area. Mike shared the stage with another predominant local blues musician, Joe Pitts of the Joe Pitts Band fame. I had meant to see the Joe Pitts Band play at Cornerstone in NLR a month or two ago but didn't get a chance. I could write up a whole blog on just what these 3 people have contributed to the blues scene but I will let you do your own research.
G and I headed over to the show just after it got started. Len played bass and sang some of his own own stuff as well as some more popular blues standards. I really didn't know anything about Len other than he currently lives in San Diego, and plays bass. When he took the stage he completely blew me away. He had a an awesome voice and completely ripped it up on the bass. Between Mike Dollins and Joe Pitts trading licks there was never a dull moment. Most of the members of the Mike Dollins band took the stage in the second half and added a keyboard and harp player. Another phenomenal blues musician, Essie the Blues Lady, came up for one song with Mike, Len and Joe. Another guy from Austin came up and played some lead with Len and Joe backing him up. The surprise of the night came when Ginny Becton took the stage in the second half. I knew Ginny was in the Mike Dollins band but had never heard her sing. G and I were completely floored! Her singing was worth the trip out to the show alone. I saw Aretha Franklin in Memphis a couple months ago and Ginny's singing kept bringing me back. Unfortunately I forget the drummers name but he really held his own. He jammed several drum solos and kept a solid beat throughout the night. All in all the event was a great opportunity for me and G to get exposed to the local blues scene here in Arkansas. And folks, the scene here is alive and well.
It was odd that almost everyone in the audience either played at some point during the night or was married or friends with someone on stage. G and I kind of felt out of place at first but everyone was extremely welcoming. Studio Joe's is a real interesting place and we will definitely be back. Apparently they are open for open mics Tuesday and Thursday. They are also open Fridays and at other times when there is an event going on. Part recording studio, coffee shop and lounge, and right next to a doctor's office, it is obviously an interesting place. I really was blown away with the amount of talent in the room that night. I was even more blown away that G and I were hearing all this right off of Chenal. We drove all the way to Helena's blues festival last year and didn't see anything as good. I really wish more people could have made it. Apparently Studio Joe's has a maximum capacity of 65 people and I would say they were pretty close that night. I highly recommend going to the 24th Arkansas River Blues Society event at Juanitas this Tuesday night. Most of the same people will be there I am sure. Thanks to Mike Dollins for inviting us out, you rock.
http://www.myspace.com/lenraineyandthemidnightplayers
http://www.myspace.com/mikedollinsband
http://www.myspace.com/essietheblueslady
http://www.myspace.com/joepittsband
http://www.myspace.com/ginnybecton
-T
 Honestly, today I didn't feel like going through this weeks list of concerts and events. It's hard to justify spending several hours a weekend sifting through countless bands passing through Little Rock when your site is hardly getting any hits. That is... until I heard Travis Linville from Norman, OK and The Good Time Ramblers from right here in Little Rock.
Hearing their music on their Myspace pages completely reminded me why I started this in the first place.
For the music.....
That's right, not for the thousands of viewers, advertising revenue, or hits on the Myspace page. -G and I started this site in order to force ourselves to get out and listen to some unheard of artists that we never would have given the time of day before. Travis Linville is one of those artists. There is no way I would have stumbled upon him by reading Sync or the Arkansas Times. There is no excuse for The Good Time Ramblers. Unless I missed something they are a local band that also do not receive a bunch of much needed exposure.
Little Rock has a music scene that showcases most of its talent during the work week. Let's face it, when you are only getting 200 or so people for a weekend show, most respectable bands are going to drive straight on through. Over the past month or so I have begun to realize that Monday-Wednesday shows are typically the best. Claire Holley, Ryan Bingham and Band of Annuals are the three best acts I have seen since I moved here 2 years ago. All three shows were on either a Monday or a Wednesday. I realized unless you actually go out of your way and actually give some of these artists a listen there is no way you are going to show up for their gig.
Anyways, today I was slowly getting ready to throw in the towel. My thanks to Travis Linville and The Good Time Ramblers for their incredible music and reminding me why this site still matters. :)
-T
There's no place like The White Water Tavern. Little Rock is really fortunate to have it. Walking into it is like stepping back in time. It's a tavern in the truest sense of the word. Ancient wooden floors, neon signs that haven't worked in 20 years, blue ribbon beer for a buck fifty, and stage lighting so old it looks like it might have been used on the set of I Love Lucy. Matt White and company may have modernized the crowd but the setting has stood the test of time. And thank God for that.
Monday night was a great night even by White Water standards. Band of Annuals were in town from Salt Lake and they played a night's worth of fine music for no cover charge. What a deal. Describing themselves as a folk/country/rock band, their sound really is very hard to categorize. Lead vocalist Jay Henderson's voice has been likened to that of David Gray, a comparison I didn't agree with at first but on reflection is pretty accurate. The lap steel guitar is what lends the touch of country to their sound, but the keyboard takes it in a different direction. Henderson and keyboardist Jeremi Hanson (she's a girl) harmonize beautifully on vocals. The interplay between the band's mellow sound and Henderson and Hanson's harmony is really easy on the ears and, quite frankly, mesmerizing after a while. Particularly after the second blue ribbon.
After playing maybe half the set, the band members took a much-deserved break, hung out with the crowd, had a round of shots, and then it was back to the old grindstone for the second half. If you've never heard this band, I really recommend you check them out on their Myspace page and listen to a few of their songs. And if you missed this show, don't worry too much about it. They'll be coming back through sometime in late September, according to guitarist Jamie Timm.
The one complaint we always have about WWT is that the bands never seem to start anywhere near on time. That's not a problem on a Friday or Saturday night, but on Monday night...well, it makes for a helluva rough Tuesday morning. All in all, though, this band was well worth the wait. I'll be back to see them again in September.
-G
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
-“The Lake Isle of Innisfree”, W.B. Yeats, 1893
Lyrics to Claire Holley’s “Innisfree”, 2008
 I suppose I was bound to be won over by any performer who takes Yeats as her inspiration. The legendary poet’s work – timeless, symbolic and mystical – has resonated with me since I was first exposed to it in a college composition class. None of Yeats’ writing more clearly exemplifies his recurring theme of alienation in the modern world and ever-present longing for peace through solitude than “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” It clearly resonated with Claire Holley as well. “Innisfree”, the second track on her just-released album Hush, serves as a reminder that, sometimes, excellence in artistic expression is born of the simplest of ideas – like putting a beloved old poem to music. But there’s much more to admire about Claire Holley than her appreciation of, and homage to, the great Irish poet.
Calling Los Angeles home these days, Holley lives a long way from her native Mississippi. The South still clearly flows through her veins, though, and it comes through in her music. She has a beautiful, mesmerizing voice – one that soars and then quiets to a hush in the same measure. She sings with effortless emotion, bringing to mind the likes of Edie Brickell, Norah Jones and Neko Case, and there’s a clarity and a simplicity to her vocals that captures you and doesn’t let you go until she’s good and ready. She has an excellent sense of timing as well, subtly quickening or slowing the cadence in unexpected ways that make the experience all the more interesting.
Holley’s lyrics are sparer than Neko Case’s, without the latter’s involved story-telling. But this is definitely a case of less being more. Her lyrics are an impressionist painting. She gives you just enough and not a single syllable more than what you need to capture the emotional essence of a time, a place, a relationship. Then she lingers and lets it sink in – “one little picture I have saved, one little picture I have saved of my wedding day.” Love, peace, solitude, melancholy – she captures it all.
There were maybe ten in attendance Wednesday night as Holley made her Little Rock debut at Sticky Fingerz. This is getting to be a troubling trend in Little Rock as more and more great acts come through the city only to be greeted by a few fortunate souls. She didn’t seem to let it disappoint, though, as she smiled and sung her way through song after satisfying song, stopping occasionally to talk and tell stories to the appreciative audience. When it was all over, she hung around to autograph copies of her new CD. Then it was off to Russellville for a video shoot Thursday and a Fayetteville performance Thursday night.
I’m glad that I got to experience a Claire Holley performance. And I’m sorry – very sorry – that you didn’t. Peace.
-G
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
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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