Cake In 15

If you haven’t been keeping up with Perfect Porridge’s State of the Music Blog series, you’re missing out.  This is no shameless self promotion – although Cake In 15 founder Staciaann did contribute here.    It’s a great little overview of what people in various parts of the music world think about the music industry, & more specifically about music blogs & their role in that industry.

Greg is putting this series of interviews together in preparation for his panel at SXSW this year.  It’s an interesting read, & there are definitely more than a few takes on the music industry & where it’s headed.  Greg describes the subject of his panel as this: “Just how important are music blogs to the industry today, is that prominence growing or fading, and how will new technologies and strategies impact the marketing mix in the coming year? Join prominent music bloggers, record label and PR firm executives to discuss the state of the industry and what’s around the corner.”

To get your own fix of the discussion without actually attending the festival, go here to read the various interviews he did in preparation.  We look forward to hearing how everything went down in Austin.  Minneapolis represent!

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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This Saturday another show takes over both the Entry & Mainroom at First Avenue.  It’s a awesomely affordable way to see the hand-picked bands representing Minneapolis who are showcasing at SXSW in Austin, Texas.  Also, there are donuts for $1!

There are two parts to this insane $5 deal – the Mainroom boasts six heavy-hitters in the local music scene: Jeremy Messersmith, Lookbook, City on the Make, Peter Wolf Crier, The Pines, & Romantica.  The Entry hosts the semi-finalists of Vita.mn’s Best of Local Bands contest where you’ll get to see newbies Bight Club, Hunting Club & Joey Ryan & the Inks!  Whoever wins that faceoff in the Entry will play again in the Mainroom at 9:15pm.

The whole she-bang is hosted by two of our favorite people, The Current’s Mary Lucia & Vita.mn’s Christian-Philippe Quilici.  There’s an afterparty in the Entry following the whole thing with The Moongoons!  There is no better bang for your buck this weekend.  Hope to see you there!

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.

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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Unless you live in a cave or under a rock or maybe just don’t like music (huh?), then you’ve probably heard of Daytrotter.  I’d highly suggest creating an account on the site, as then you’re privy to the free downloads for bands like White Rabbits, Delta Spirit, Frightened Rabbit, & Bon Iver.  You can also check out local Minneapolitans like Jeremy Messermith, whose session just went up yesterday!  Do it, you’ll love it.  We promise.

Download Mp3 (more at Daytrotter!):
A Girl, A Boy & A Graveyard