Cake In 15

Less than 24 hours before we get on a plane and get ourselves down to Austin; believe me, we’ve been counting down the hours. But, ’til then, here are the rest of the Spinner.com interviews. You can tell they were getting to the end of assignments with the run of WXY here (I almost got to interview Xzibit, wherein I would have asked him solely about Extreme Home Makeover, but Spinner has a special hip hop site that took care of that) but it was still a good run. These interviews make 17 in total over the last 3 weeks or so which ain’t too shabby- editors, take note.

Woolfy
“But yeah, one of these days, I’m going to write a song, she’s going to love it and leave Spike Jonze, and it’s going to be Woolfy and fucking Karen [O].”

Woodgrain
“Memphis was one of the most insane nights we experienced on that trip. We saw a lot of people get thrown out like battering rams, two car wrecks, it was just amazing. It was super wild.”

XYX
“Suddenly, in Monterrey there were a lot of interesting bands, this was, like, four years ago, five, that suddenly a lot of good bands were emerging from nowhere here in Monterrey but they didn’t have recordings or money to go into a studio, so we got cheap recording equipment and started recording those bands we thought were interesting.”

Yakuza
“Just go down and have a good show and have a good time, meet people, mingle, go out, do stuff. Don’t just hide in your fucking van or hotel room, if you’re fancy enough to have one of those.”

YACHT
“I think that they can expect their personal space to be invaded, direct communication. It is not a one-way show, the audience is very much a part of the show and we expect a lot of them.”

Yelawolf
“It’s not a fallback career at all, it’s all I have. I dropped out of school in 9th or 10th grade, man, the only other jobs I had were throwing bricks, throwing fish, ditch digging, all that shit. Just blue collar. I don’t want to make just ten dollars an hour for the rest of my life.”

Yes Giantess
“We’ve done a lot of official remixes for labels and bands but I would say that our favorite was one night, we were goofing around and we did a remix of ‘Party in the USA’ by Miley Cyrus.”

I have admired the Four Humors Theater company since they blew me away with their Fringe show Bards at the Southern in 2007. Seriously, a noir gutterpunk Shakespearean spy thriller with the music of Wu Tang sung in English madrigal harmony? Ridiculous, and awesome. Their work doesn’t disappoint and Lamb Lays with Lion shared the bill with them earlier this year at the Guthrie’s Singled Out Festival, so we’re all good there. I have also long admired director Sam Johns, from her work on Maria Irene Fornes’ dark tale of Southern squalor Mud to this winter’s The Thing with a detour in between for the M A R S P RO J E C T, which I was lucky enough to be a part of.

So take these best-of Twin Cities things, mix in the Bedlam Theatre, add a dose of Orwell, hysterical humor, paranoia and love and what do you get? Welcome To Dystopia, opening tonight. I can’t review it, because they asked me to do the video design and I am very proud of that work, especially how it plays in the space, so all I can say is, if you are looking for love in all the future places, get thee to the Bedlam. Get your tickets here, and come this weekend, because Jon Davis of Ghostband (who is part of the sound design team) has planned a whole mad Dystopia Days party. Do it, thank the Person In Charge.

Welcome to Dystopia Trailer from Carl Atiya Swanson on Vimeo.

As I posted up before here and here, I have been doing a number of interviews for South By Southwest sponsor Spinner.com (they are the people bringing you the Smokey Robinson Soul Revue) which have been taking up a lot of planning time over the last weeks. The bands have run the gamut, they are are trying to get every official showcasing band interviewed, so this has been a drop in the bucket, but I have Skyped Ireland for the Minutes, caught up with a 60-year-old alien named Ygarr Ygarrist to talk about his band Zolar X and called across town to chat with Ben Weaver, along with a whole bunch of others. Here is the latest batch, as I scramble on deadline to get that last ones in before heading down to Austin next week. Browse through, for all the variety, some truths remain; we do this because we love it, no one hands it to us and the more fun you can have, the better it sounds.

Christopher & the Souls
“We gave it all we had in terms of pure volume and primitive teenage energy, and I think it has held up pretty well.”

Year Long Disaster
“All the time you spend trying to get drugs you can spend in a much more positive way. Those are lost hours. It’s amazing how much you can get done in a day.”

Amplified Heat
“I have always loved vinyl. On the last tour, some of the cities we went to people didn’t want CDs, they were going to wait til we had it on vinyl.”

Zolar X
“Then I read a book, a rock and roll book from years ago and somewhere in it, it said, “Don’t ever look like your audience.” That and we loved Star Trek.”

Ben Weaver
“I just like to write songs about animals and grocery carts and things. I don’t really know, because I don’t try to describe my music. That’s why I make music.”

The Minutes
“If you’re playing lots of shows, don’t get fucked on the first night. That’s the end. It’s downhill from there. That’s probably the only plan if you’re in a band. If you’re not in a band, go everywhere, drink everything, meet everybody.”

Little Brazil
“Extra cell phone batteries. That was the biggest problem for me in the past couple years. Cell phone batteries and secret stashes of cash that you can keep on your body that maybe the drunk version of you won’t find”

Zlam Dunk
“The U2 comparison came because I use a lot of delay in my guitar riffs. Lostprophets, I don’t know, I don’t know if that person was trying to piss us off or what, but I don’t know where that came from.”

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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