Cake In 15

Last year, The Avett Brothers gave CakeIn15 one of their favorite shows of the summer- at the MN Zoo Amphitheater, outdoors, packed in close with a slight drizzle breaking into golden dusk and the perfect cool night, transcendentally American and energetic. Thoreau would be proud. You get the feeling, too, that Thoreau would take a shine to the Avett’s current tourmates, Providence, RI’s The Low Anthem. Starting with their 2007 debut What The Crow Brings and followed up with Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, which was self-released in 2008 and then picked up by Nonesuch Records in 2009, multi-instrumentalists Ben Knox Miller, Jeff Prystowsky and Jocie Adams have worked together to create an intense, shambolic vision deeply rooted in American traditions and nature. Oh My God, Charlie Darwin was recorded on a near-deserted island off the coast of Rhode Island and in late 2009, the band retreated to an empty pasta sauce factory to record, again reveling in the silence and isolation to draw out the melodies. But before any of that hits wax, there is touring to be done, America to see and songs to be sung. The Low Anthem open for The Avett Brothers in the First Avenue Mainroom this Friday, and CakeIn15 shot some e-mails back and forth with Miller to get his take on the importance of naming, solitude and who he likes for the baseball season.

You and Jeff met hosting a graveyard jazz radio show- What were some of the records you bonded over?

Jeff made most of the picks, because I don’t know much about jazz. He’s obsessed with jazz bass, so there was a lot of that on the show. Mingus, Christian McBride, and the best of them all Ray Brown.

You and Jeff went through several different bandmates before Jocie joined- how did she come in to the picture and how did you know it would work?

Yea, when we got serious about the band, we started as a trio with a blues song writer named Dan Lefkowitz from Virginia. He split after a year leaving us as only a duo. That’s when we started learning lot’s of different instruments so we wouldn’t be a bass and guitar songwriter duo. We wanted to have beautiful and deliberate textures for all the songs. Jocie first came along because we asked her to play clarinet on a track of our first record. But she started showing up to shows with her clarinet and we’d invite her to sit in. Before we knew it, she was picking up all sorts of instruments that were on the stage and playing fluently. She’s so very talented.

Unlike many band names “The Low Anthem” feels like a deliberate statement. How did you choose that name?

Not deliberate at all. In fact it was given to us by a childhood friend of mine who played ever so briefly with us in the early days of the band. It wasn’t until years later that we learned the name came from an Ayn Rand book called Anthem. It’s an awful book. Really boring. But what’s in a name anyhow?

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In some exciting news, ascendant CakeIn15 pals Peter Wolf Crier signed to record label Jagjaguwar today, home of acts like Bon Iver, The Besnard Lakes and Dinosaur Jr. It is an exciting move for the duo of Peter Pisano and Brian Moen, who just released their record Inter-Be this last fall with the Jeremey Catterton-directed house show This Is Not For You and graced the First Avenue Mainroom stage as part of the “Best New Bands” showcase in January. Even more exciting for CakeIn15 is that Staciaann’s photos of the band, which have been widely used online and in their promotion, will grace the cover of the record when it comes out on CD and vinyl! It has been an exciting couple of months for the talented two, their record bears out that talent and we couldn’t be more proud of them.

Also, Jagjaguwar will be releasing the much-hyped Eau Claire/MSP yacht-rocking supergroup GAYNGS record Relayted this spring, so look for that for your prom flashbacks and summertime deck shoe wearing.

From the SXSW Spinner Files, here is an interview with hard-rocking Texan rockabilly broad Rosie Flores. About to turn 60 this year, Flores started making music as a teenager and came up in the 80s with the likes of Dwight Yoakam, Lyle Lovett and Lucinda Williams. When I caught up with Flores early one morning, she had just came back from touring New Zealand in support of her most recent record, Girl of the Century. Our conversation lasted well over a half hour, much longer than the interview edited for Spinner, in which she talked about how the Beatles changed everything and how if only Taylor Swift wasn’t under pressure to sell millions of records, she might make something that isn’t just sugar. So she’s sweet, opinionated and plays a wicked guitar which makes her totally Texan and totally rock and roll. Check it all out here.

The Electric Fetus will host a benefit to help offset the cost of the damage caused by the tornado that ripped through the store on August 19, 2009. Peter Wolf Crier will play an early set at 7:30pm sharp, so make sure you’re there early.

The benefit show will also feature a raffle and silent auction. Items for both are being added daily, and currently include signed guitars from Mason Jennings and Queens of the Stone Age and soooo much more. The painters from Cloud Cult, Connie Minowa & Scott West will be holding an amazing show of their “off-stage” art in the VIP room during the event.

When/Where: Friday, Feb 26 at First Avenue and 7th Street Entry
Tickets: $16 in advance and $20 at the door
Doors: 7pm
Music: 7:30pm

A portion of the ticket sales will benefit The American Red Cross for relief in Haiti.

This concert, a rebirth of sorts, is a fundraiser for the Electric Fetus which was badly damaged in the August 2009 tornado. The store had extensive structural damage and not only went into debt to pay for the repairs but also lost 40 percent of its floor space for more than three months.

The Electric Fetus is Reborn!

Visit www.electricfetus.com for updated information and to check on ticket availability.

Photo by Eric Melzer

Opening tonight, step right up, step right up! At the fabulous Southern Theatre, The Minneapolis New Breed, wonder of all wonders, three young companies, three provocative and sexy groups all on one joint bill for the first time ever! Not to be missed! SuperGroup will live up to their name! Mad King Thomas will issue dance edicts from fringes of taste! And Lamb Lays with Lion? Well, leave it to Lightsey Darst at mnartists.org to give an outsiders view of that: “I can’t tell whether Lamb Lays with Lion vs. Katie Mitchell’s The Seagull is a train wreck or a stroke of genius; I can’t even tell where the performances stop or start.” Which, ladies and gentlemen, is your life in motion! Opens tonight and runs through Sunday, $18 cheap!

***UPDATE 2/26***
Jay Gabler over at TC Daily Planet takes a look at all the action and proclaims himself right, and Staciaann shoots it all for Vita.mn. Three more shows, so take it all in with a tank full of gas and a head full of weird.

Leah Redding and Meredith Cain-Nielsen, photo by Ty Sassaman

Some nights just line up really nicely to stay pretty much in a two-block radius and tonight has that on the West Bank. El Perro Del Mar at the Cedar Cultural Center is a great place to be, chased down with Alec Ounsworth at the 400 Bar to slake your musical thirst. But before any of that goes down, get over to the Bedlam Theatre at 6:30 to catch Tonya and Nancy: The Opera. You read it right, and if you think that the ice dancing costumes on NBC are are good as it ridiculously gets, then you ain’t seen nothing yet. This 2006 chamber opera has been getting some under-the-radar traction in art galleries and now Scotty Reynolds of of the Mixed Precipitation company is giving it a twirl, or a triple salchow or a lead pipe special, or what have you. Any which way, it promises to be a well sung spectacle full of intrigue and drama and is a great way to follow up on Mixed Precitpitation’s summer project, Orpheus & Euridyce: A Picnic Operetta. You can read a great interview about that project via the Heavy Table blog here, and unlike Orpheus’s multi-show run, Tonya and Nancy is only being performed tonight at Bedlam and Thursday at Camp Bar in St. Paul, so skate hard. and get down get a front-row seat of the action.

Also going on tonight, at the 501 Club not too far down from the road from the West Bank is the l’etoile-sponsored celebration New Kidney On The Block, the re-emergence party for Chris Strouth and his new kidney, “William the Conqueror”, selflessly donated by theatre-staple and good-guy-par-excellence Scott Pakudaitis. It’s a feel-good story for the ages, at least for our age, with the two men connecting over Twitter when Strouth posted that he needed a new kidney and it is good to see humanity winning out over mass distraction and apathy. We’re just waiting for the movie with Billy Bob Thornton as Strouth and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Pakudaitis. With a raft of great DJs at the event, a good time for a good reason should be had by all.

Alec Ounsworth, high pitched wailer of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah whose blog-anointed, self-titled 2005 release launched a thousand Brooklyn bands, has struck out for himself. 2009 had him put out two far different-sounding records; the addled, Velvet Underground-dark Skin And Bones put out under the name “Flashy Python” and the rich, deeply funky and soulful Mo Beauty, recorded in New Orleans and put out on the Anti- label. But the records seem far afield only on the surface- both were the results of intense collaborative processes pulling from different pools of musicians. Matt Barrick of The Walkmen drummed on Skin And Bones with members of Dr. Dog and Man Man as well as Ounsworth’s wife rounding out the cast of friends that Ounsworth patched together for the record. Mo Beauty came about differently, helmed by Los Lobos‘ Steve Berlin and backed in the studio by heavy hitters like George Porter Jr. of The Meters and Stanton Moore of Galactic. In the end though, Ounsworth’s own voice is a both a changing force and a constant. The songs are his own (and one, “Obscene Queen Bee #2″, makes vastly different appearances on both discs) and his singing, which might have been pigeonholed from his CYHSY days, finds the adaptability of a man looking for new things in life that excite him. Ounsworth appears at the 400 Bar tonight with Ezra Furman and the Harpoons, a fine folky-rock outfit that whould bring an upbeat energy to open the show. You can read the edited version of the interview we conducted over at the AV Club, or the full transcript, for your edification, is below, in which Ounsworth reveals more about recording in ten days, not sounding like himself and who he really wants to collaborate with.

The first question, the question that leads to why New Orleans and why these songs has to be why Steve Berlin?

It was just a mater of chance really. I ran into Steve when I was in New Orleans and he suggested that we do a record and so it was as simple as that. I say yes to any producer that comes my way and asks to make a record.

You don’t have any criteria for it?

No no, it’s just that if they want to do it I’m up for it you know, let’s go [laughs]. Obviously I knew Steve was in Los Lobos and I had an idea of his credits as a producer and from everyone who I spoke to he seemed like a pretty trustworthy fellow.

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Thanks again to everyone who came down last night to see The Pines play the Cake Shop, the fourth house show in this intimate series. Thanks to Empty’s Tapes for coming out again to record the whole event (you can grab a couple tunes from the Jeremy Messersmith Cake Shop show here) and of course, thanks to The Pines. Benson and David came down with James Buckley backing them up on upright bass and just killed an hour and twenty minute set, filled with their own tunes and some great covers. If you weren’t in the house or watching online, here are a couple dark videos for your edification, which, as David pointed out, you can watch while sitting on your couch in your pajamas eating nachos. The Cake Shop is taking a hiatus in March to head down to Austin for the South By Southwest music festival, but we’ll be back on April 11th with a killer line-up of Chastity Brown with Nikki Schultz and Adam Wozniak. Keep posted to CakeIn15 for information, or follow us on Twitter @CakeIn15 and as always, keep supporting local arts and music.

The Pines “Pray Tell” from CakeIn15 on Vimeo.

The Pines cover “I Looked Down The Road And I Wondered” by Mance Lipscomb from CakeIn15 on Vimeo.

The Pines cover “Railroad Man” by The Eels from CakeIn15 on Vimeo.

Memo from 1996, AOL still exists. It’s true, and whatever else the once-mighty internet monolith may be doing (trying to figure out how to get me to pay for internet hours again?) one of the cool things they do is run a music website called Spinner. It’s a pretty sweet way to stay abreast of what’s happening in the more mainstream music world, with exclusive videos, downloads and behind-the scenes looks at bands, as well as full album streaming. Spinner is also one of the sponsors of the South By Southwest Music Festival, and have embarked on an ambitious project to interview all of the bands that are officially headed to SXSW. As such, they’ve hired a bunch of freelancers to help them cover this gargantuan task, which means I get to work and talk to some artists that I wouldn’t otherwise.

Case in point, Julian Berntzen of Norway, a talented multi-instrumentalist with a penchant for concept albums and theatrical presentations who used to lie about his age to play in jazz clubs as a teenager. I interviewed him as part of the SXSW preview series here, and wouldn’t really have thought to call Norway on a snowy morning if I didn’t know someone was paying me for it, but I’m glad I did and that their education systems are better financed and developed than ours, because there is no way I could have managed in Norwegian. You can check out the full list of interviews as they go up here, and I have a couple more coming down the pipeline, so I will post them up when they are published. Until then, enjoy this awesomely lo-fi special effects video for Berntzen’s track “Rocket Ship Love” and dream of other countries and climates rocking out together.

MTV might be getting a head back on it’s shoulders (but don’t count on it, you know?) A couple days ago, the erstwhile “music” network took a break from the trainwrecks of American culture to couple days days ago, to put up the video for “Digging Deep” from glammy local punks The Melismatics. The Melismatics have been plugging away at this for years and have always put on a riotous live show, so it’s nice to see them get a high-profile nod. The video for the admittedly emo-ish tune has a really simple but well executed concept to it, courtesy of Justin Staggs, who also directed one of our favorite videos from last year, “Dead And Gone” for rockabilly outfit Reckless Ones. That guy, along with people like Bo Hakala (Lookbook’s “Over and Over“, among many others) and Gregory Hubacek (Mike Mictlan’s “Prizefight“), are doing a lot to push the art of the music video in the Twin Cities.