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?
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.
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.
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.
Last year about this time, in the midst of a remorseless snap of bitter cold intent on sapping all color and joy from life, I rolled into the 7th Street Entry in a towering foul mood. I was late, I was miserable, everyone around me was blistering incompetent and you know what, I don’t want to hear about your shitty day either. I was bound and determined to be pissed off when some laid-back good-looking guys from California stepped up on stage and started singing their songs. Not brilliant, revolutionary tunes that shake the fundament, but honest, straightforward, sharply-written tunes that re-assure you that the fundament is there. Earthy tunes, resigned but defiant; whatever happens is going to happen, you’ll see it through. Country tunes and folk tunes that might have been written in decades past by some dude belly up at a bar trying to find something universal in his own shit. No way was I going to stay pissed after that.
Those good-looking laid-back guys from California were the quartet Dawes, whose frontman Taylor Goldsmith I had the pleasure of interviewing for the A.V. Club before their sold-out show with Corey Chisel & the Wandering Sons at the Triple Rock Social Club tonight. There were two parts of our conversation that I particularly liked didn’t make it into the final cut of that interview (brevity being both my enemy and friend) and so I wanted to include those here. The first came after the question of influences, where Goldsmith brought up Leonard Cohen and Will Oldham as writers he looked to, which I then followed up with a question of how Goldsmith works now, especially with the pressures of touring. Goldsmith elaborated that it was difficult, saying;
It takes me a long time to make sure I’m getting across exactly what I want to get across. I realize the songs, the bad ideas, before they even come to fruition, so by my own standards I wind up writing all the songs that I want to write. It’s not like I write five and pick one, I start five and finish one. I’ll finish a verse and a chorus and I’ll wait for up to a month even before it becomes clear where the song should go and what the other lyrics are going to be. Sometimes Ill get a line a day and feel very productive. I don’t like to use those filler lines, like “Oh, this will do for now and then I’ll come back to it,” I kind of wait for it.
Patience in writing, that the process takes time to coalesce, is one of those constant struggles and the combination of winter and deadlines can be a killer mix. Learning how to do something else for a while is one of those invaluable and incredibly difficult things to learn in any artistic process, but one that can pay enormous dividends. Leave it to the Californians to tell us to let go for awhile. The other was a question about the two big pushes that Dawes have had for their debut disc, North Hills. They have been featured twice in Rolling Stone, getting the old-media stamp of approval, and also a bunch of exposure through Daytrotter.com, the free music and review website that records intimate sessions with bands and could only exist in the Internet age. So the question is, How did those relationships come about? Goldsmith’s response is perhaps unsurprising, but also telling;
With Rolling Stone, that was a mind-blowing surprise, we couldn’t really believe that. Our publicist is an awesome guy and he has a relationship over there so he brought us and Rolling Stone together. Obviously they had to like it, so we’re grateful they like our music but he was great at making sure they gave us a listen. As for Daytrotter, we knew Daytrotter from our old days as Simon Dawes [Goldsmith's previous band]. Sean [Moeller] from Daytrotter is probably one of the most friendly guys in the world. He deals with so much music coming through his doors and he just doesn’t forget anything. He knows every session that he did, he knows every writeup that he did for each session and he just remembers everybody. So when I e-mailed him 4 years after we did the Simon Dawes Daytrotter session, he totally remembered me, remembered my name and then we went in and did the session and he was super cool and super friendly and we just became buddies. I was just in Nashville for a month and he flew down to hang out for three days. He took me to Kris Kristofferson’s show because he had just done a Kristofferson session. He’s just the nicest guy in the world and I just love him as a dude so were lucky enough that our relationship professionally can benefit from that as well.
It’s unsurprising that Rolling Stone came through their press agent because that’s what you hire a good PR person for, to act as a broker between slower-moving and more impersonal institutions. It’s unsurprising that Daytrotter.com’s support came from a personal relationship, because the best promise of the Internet Age is quick, direct communication between individuals that circumvents those old brokers and systems. It should be also unsurprising that both those practices are still alive and well, despite reports of diminished influence and imminent demise, because they are ostensibly the same thing- people knowing people, just at increased degrees of remove. It is telling because, like Dawes’ music, this is not a revelation but a reassurance. Regardless of which side of the “death of a medium” old-/new-media scheme you may fall on (or if you dismiss it as mostly lede-grabbing, fear-mongering hyperbole) to know that if you are doing what you want to do, do it well, and talk to the right people you can fight off the sting of winter death and share with others, and that should count for something in business, life and art.
***UPDATE 12/13/2010***
Didn’t disappoint, not in the slightest, no siree. They opened up the night backing solo act Jason Boesel (and may have been the most redeeming factor of that set) and then tore into their own material. They played a lot of North Hills, but then also some brand new material, including “Time Spent in Los Angeles”, whose chorus shows that even on the road their thinking of home: “You’ve got that special kind of sadness/You’ve got a tragic set of charms/That only comes from time spent in Los Angeles/Makes me want to wrap you in my arms”. Here are some videos for your edification, and if you missed them this time, they promised to be back soon and they will be at South By Southwest in Austin in March, if you are lucky enough to be there.
If you already love RENT, you don’t need convincing. If you have ever doubted that the Twin Cities has fabulously talented actors working today, this show will lay those to rest. If you worry that $49 is a lot of rent-money to pay for a show, RENT makes it worth it. If your idea of a Broadway show is big and slick and shallow, the local cast of RENT packs so much heart into the show it can bring tears to your eyes- it brings tears to theirs. As the sold out crowd rose for a standing ovation last night, more than one cast member was crying, the tears of gratitude, it seems, from being able to follow a dream.
The show is strong from the opening, the sense of immediate energy is palpable in the cavernous Lab Theatre. Director Andrew Rasmussen (who also produced the show) fills the space with dynamic choreography across the simple set of scaffolding and platforms, sending his cast catapulting from the beams, seeming heedless of their safety- AJ Eskridge, who fills multiple roles in the ensemble has enough energy to tear the house down. Rasmussen previously directed RENT at the G.R.E.A.T. Theatre in Saint Cloud, and his experience with the show makes for confident direction, unafraid of using the full length of the stage to his advantage and set up multiple tableaux to keep the actors bouncing off eachother. Although the band feels a little too loud throughout the show and the acoustics of the Lab Theatre tend to muddy the clarity of multiple sung lines at points, the cast work together to bring out the soul in the songs and intensify the intimacy of the show.
Harley Wood as Roger
The divergent cast are the reason the show works so well. As Rasmussen said in an earlier conversation about the show, “It’s about artists coming together to do their work…They’re not necessarily theatre people or some of them are theatre pros, I think that’s a great convergence of talent. Sometimes you just set them in the room and say “Go!” And they make their own magic.” A number of the cast were also involved in the production in Saint Cloud, commuting up every night to do the show. Most of the principals are returnees, and their joy to be back in these roles is evident and extends to the glowing cast. It is no wonder that Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp, who originated the roles of Roger and Mark on Broadway in 1996 remain on tour with the show.
Minneapolis’ Mark, the film-maker and narrator of the show is played by Reid Harmsen, reprising the role from St. Cloud. Harmsen has the singing chops to carry the role, as a vet of the Children’s Theatre Company productions of Disney’s High School Musical, and his boyish, nerdy charm complements the character’s attempts at artistic integrity and fun-loving lead in RENT’s anthemic song, “La Vie Bohème”. Harley Wood (who fronts Minneapolis band Far From Falling) nails the angst-ridden rocker Roger (who lost his last girlfriend to suicide) with sidelong glances and furrowed brow, but also imbues the sorrow with a manic charm, fully rounding out the character. With a strong tenor he owns not only his solo moments but also his duets. Rising hip-hop starlet Maria Isa (who I interviewed for The A.V. Club prior to the show) plays Roger’s new love interest Mimi and vamps her way through most of the role, detracting somewhat from the pathos of the “stripper-with-a-heart-of-gold” archetype, but when she finds the stillness to sing, as in “Without You” her raw talent shines.
Jemecia Bennett as Joanne
As lesbian lovers Maureen and Joanne, Colleen Sommerville and Jemecia Bennett are a blaze of anti-establishment anger, joyous sexuality and catty glory. Bennett, known for her work at the Guthrie is especially breathtaking both as a singer and powerful stage presence. She commands attention and her duet with Harmsen, the lover/ex-lover banter “Tango: Maureen” is a cross-stage tour-de-force. Sommerville’s soulful licentiousness is a thrill to watch, tender and prickly, and Maureen’s performance art protest against the gentrification of the squat is both hilariously absurd and a resonant call to humanity in the desert of Facebook and Twitter. Also amongst the luminaries is Kinaundrae Lee (also of the ska band 2 Tone Runts) as the drag queen Angel, the vibrating spirit of the show. Angel gets some of the most energetic numbers (“Today 4 U”) as well as some of the most passionate (“I’ll Cover You”) with lover Tom Collins (the eminently likeable Lorin Yenor) which Lee works with creative depth and fire. The backing ensemble provides texture, warmth and humor, not to mention stellar singing. Maisie Twesme puts the perfect inflection on “Mo-om!” in the “Voice Mail” numbers and Margeaux Davis’ solo in “Seasons of Love” will break your heart and put it back together again.
Despite being created and set in the AIDS community of the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1990s, RENT continues to feel prescient. Sitting with Harry Perez, Maria Isa’s father, before the show, conversation turned to the arts school where Isa started in music and theater, and how it was the support of the community that keep it going. “Because,” he said with his low growl, “the Bush years were hard years.” After eight years of the aggressively heterosexual Bush administration, the increasingly bitter state fight over marriage equality and the neutering effect of an economic recession, a work of love is necessary and transcendent.
This is especially true in the case of RENT, which celebrates homosexuality, drag queens, strippers, the will to live of those with AIDS and marginal power as a legitimate choice not because it is merely transgressive, but because re-affirms a heterodoxy of love. At this point, it would seem to be impossible for the institutionalized RENT to be politically transgressive, but as is sung in “La Vie Bohème” that “The opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation,” and in the turmoil of the world of RENT and in America of the 21st century, the spirit of generous creation is still a passionate argument for freedom in the face of oppression. It is honest that all love is powerful and valid, love between one human and another, love of community, love of self, love of performance. RENT, and especially one with a cast so obviously close-knit as this Minneapolis performance, affirms that utopia is where and how you make it yourself and who you make it with. A show that can do that is worth, beyond your time and money, your love.
RENT runs at the Lab Theatre in the North Loop through February 21. Tickets are $46.50 (plus an online fee) and are selling out, so get them here.
Conceptual art prank? Pious religious practice? Whatever the Moonstone Continuum are up to, they are going at it whole heartedly. The band is made up of practicing Lunerians, a supposedly ancient religion that has a cosmic mythology and because of whose practice of individualism and eroticism, his been persecuted throughout the centuries. Although they do not claim to be from another race or planet like Sun Ra did, they are aiming about as high, and as weird. The live show is an enthralling mix of fiery prophesying, roaring guitars and space-age keys that vibrate the insides and can result in maniacal dancing and revelry. We got down with the Reverend Micah Mackert, frontman and mouthpiece of the organization in this A/V Club interview, where he denied any religious drug use but did talk inspiration. Moonstone are going to be a blast on stage this Friday at the “Best New Bands” showcase in the First Avenue Mainroom and also on that bill are Leisure Birds, The Twilight Hours, Slapping Purses, Red Pens and CakeIn15 pals No Bird Sing and Peter Wolf Crier. So if you’ve felt out of the loop or just want a brush-up on the last year of music in the Twin Cities, you know where to be.
You’ll notice on Staciaann’s 2009 show list that the first show there, and one of the highlighted favorite shows, is Spirits of the Red City at the Bryant-Lake Bowl. That was a special show, an intimate venue with crowded stage that the octet of musicians managed to make feel as though it contained their own expansive universe. The crew is hard to pin down, both in terms of location- they live all across the country, tour all the time and call Minneapolis their home despite playing only two shows here last year- and style- too orchestral for straight pop, too experimental for straight folk, not easily pigeonholed but still warm and inviting. They are back to do it again this year and have expanded their repertoire, bringing in girlfriends as collaborators to make an experimental theatre piece to precede their set. The theatre piece is titled “The Silent Bell” and is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Jason Overby, Telsche Thiessen (a veteran of Bedlam Theatre and Open Eye Figure Theatre) and visual artist Lauren Treece and will include puppetry, live action and music. In this interview for The A.V. Club, Overby, Thiessen and bandleader Will Garrison dished about the BLB show on the 2nd of January.
Although the group plays it close to the chest, like the tight family they are, some things that did let out some bits that didn’t make the edit that were also intriguing. As well as planning more shows in Minneapolis this year, they are busy at work recording a new album, as well as a 7″ and they have everybody in town recording in a single session. This is quite a feat, and given that their debut disc, Hunter Moon, sounded that way despite being pieced together as able, we here at CakeIn15 are anxiously awaiting the results.
There is something noble amongst actors, that the hoary old chestnut about the show going on is not just for the sake of the audience, but also to the fellow company-members. Such was the situation that Judy Heneghan found herself in at Thanksgiving, when Grant Richey, her long-time partner in the holiday-70s-disco-kitsch extravaganza Martini & Olive and Twin Cities theatre mainstay succumbed to a long battle with cancer. Richey may have moved up to the big stage in the sky, but his Tony Martini character is getting one last whirl at the Bryant-Lake Bowl this New Year’s Eve. Heneghan (as Olive) has put together a best-of tribute show, Martini & Olive Unzipped: A Tribute To Tony Martini along with her husband Peter Staloch, local author Lorna Landvik and the Swizzle Stick Dancers, all of whom will be familiar to the audience who will be laughing through tears. In an interview for the A.V. Club, Heneghan and Staloch expanded upon the history and the future of the characters, and struggle with how to truly go on.
