At a special sneak peak of Crazy Heart (opening at the Uptown Theater January 15) presented by Vita.mn, writer/director/producer Scott Cooper spoke about a conversation early in the production process with actor Robert Duvall. Duvall, a family friend and executive producer on the film had asked Cooper about what he needed for the project. “What we need,” Cooper said, “besides you and money, is T Bone Burnett and Jeff Bridges.” He got them both and the strength of Bridges’ performance and the deft musical helming of Burnett turn Cooper’s directorial debut into an affecting and tight story that should be getting a lot of attention during the awards season.
The tale is an old one, the story of a lost man finding redemption through new love, following Bridges’ hard-bit country singer “Bad” Blake as he stumbles through a lifetime of broken relationships, bar tunes and booze. Bridges gives Blake some of the air of The Dude, with his goatee and greasy hair he’s loosely making it work, aggrieved by his fast talking manager (James Keane), watching his protegé Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell, in full long hair and beard) get ahead faster as he gets left watching the the dust, all with a drawling aplomb. When Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal) a sweet reporter with some bad relationship history and a cute 4-year-old named Buddy (Jack Nation) comes into his life, he slowly gets a new and changed perspective and reconnects with his talent. If it sounds cheesy, it should be, but like Blake says about the good songs, “It’s like you’ve already heard them before.”
Most of the tunes for Crazy Heart were written by Burnett with actual vocal performances for the film delivered by Bridges and Farrell, grounding the film with an authenticity that buoys the love story drama. Musician Ryan Bingham penned “The Weary Kind”, the song that Bad spends the movie trying to write and ought to be a contender for a Best Song Oscar, one of a number of tunes on the soundtrack that could be up for contention, but as Cooper put it, they didn’t want to split the vote so a song about a pimp could win.
In the end, it shouldn’t be such a surprise that this movie is a contender. Cooper originally wanted to tell the story of Merle Haggard, following Haggard around and working closely with him before realizing that Merle’s ex-wives would make the rights to that story impossible. But Crazy Heart had the backing of actors and a production that believed in it, stars forgoing salaries to work on a passion project (the entire film cost $7 million, a Hollywood pittance) and retains that hard-won plausibility of a life story- during the Q&A afterwards, there were several people who piped up about seeing themselves or their fathers in Bad Blake. You already know the story line of a lot of the best songs- it’s a running joke that country singers only really have one song- and films about heartache and redemption are often the same. It’s all in the delivery, and Crazy Heart hits all the right notes.
Staciaann was on site documenting the event for Vita.mn, when that goes up, we will update the link here.
There is something perverse about this: I feel better about living in a place that turns viciously cold because artists like Andrew Bird decide to put on special, intimate concerts here, despite the fact that it was me and not he who stood outside in 10 degree weather waiting for the cathedral doors to open. I suppose it is a larger-vision re-affirmation, that this is a place where artists feel safe and welcome and able to put together what they desire (as opposed to the more base survival drive of other, larger markets.) Any way you slice it, Bird sold out three shows at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, and it was a breathtaking affair, and one for which a single word in English does not work, so we’ll stick with “Gezelligheid.” You can see Staciaann’s full photo slide show for City Pages here and the review here.
“Hello Capitalist Tools!”orWaiter, There’s a Song in My Soup
I am not an unbiased supporter of Bedlam Theatre (although I can still be a clear-headedly critical one). I laugh too loud there, have spent a bunch at their bar in the past and might be featured in an online fundraising video, but that’s only because I happened to be in the audience last night. Instead of reviewing or recapping the show, let’s just get down to the fur and teeth of the beast with five reasons to go see Foxy Tann’s Beaverdance! before it closes next Saturday (plus one video.)
1. Braised Kale This is also a general, raving endorsement of the Bedlam Kitchen, but when you go, spring for the dinner menu. The braised kale is tangy and fresh with a big salt bite and although it has been featured as a side at Bedlam in the past, I could just eat a plate of it. The exceptional four course menu, put together by Lucas Koski and Rosa Oesterreich features a wild rice stew and entree offerings like Maple Cajun Seared Trout and Sweet Potato and Cheese Pierogies, and everything is sweetness and light with food like that in your belly.
2. Brown Velour Beavers are super cute, even in the opening gag- which I won’t reveal but I am glad I wasn’t drinking anything as it would have come out my nose. The whole Beaver family, where everyone is Beaver, is the perfect proto-Socialist community, kind of like the Seven Dwarves with a penchant for double entendres. Led by their Snow White (Laura Leffler-McCabe as Princess Bemidji, who pulls out the operatic singing stops) the beaver turn out alright, whether they be hot, wet or shaved.
3.Outrageous Accents Seriously, how else would you know he’s French? How else could you tell he’s a German economic philosopher? Wizz zat Ooutraageus Accent, as John Cleese would say. John Francis Beuche as Jacques Brainerd and Corrie Zoll as Santa Marx whip out their big ones, which is great for making statements “My happiness is growing!” and keeps everything buzzing along at the right level of ludicrous.
4. Audience Participation Look, any show that starts off with the audience clapping and hollering “BEA-VER! BEA-VER!” is a show you want to be a part of. When you are exhorted into singing the Beaver version of the Internationale which happens to be a disco-ish number telling you to put your hand in the wet beaver, there is a great sense of solidarity. Even if you don’t decide to overthrow your capitalist oppressors, you can definitely overthrow another Summit and get into the Marxist holiday spirit.
5. Gay Stuff It’s right there in Ben Egerman’s cast bio, and it wouldn’t be musical without some sparkly production numbers, glittering costumes, light bondage and hot-footed dance. Scotty Reynolds as tailor-turned-voyageur-turned-wildlife costumer Loring Park and Tom Lloyd as the devious Mr. Blaine fill the roles nicely, and I’ve decided that after this show and his turn as Summertime Awesomeface in The Million Dollar Museum, Lloyd really needs to host a cabaret/talk-show/cooking special in his Divine persona. Seriously Bedlam, there’s a holiday show in it. For now though, Beaverdance! is going to fill that void.
It was a music menagerie at the Turf Club Friday night, with animals in every band name and a happy hungry crowd of interesting creatures milling about to make a night of it. Bethany Larson & The Bee’s Knees released their Sticks And Stones debut record (which we reviewed here) with the support of the crowd and Larson’s resonant folk-country vocals are a welcome addition to the Twin Cities scene. Peter Wolf Crier (Peter Pisano and Brian Moen) came straight from an early show with Halloween, Alaska, but showed no exhaustion, throwing themselves into the explosive, propulsive tracks from their debut album Inter-Be and proving that two guys sitting down can be a hugely dynamic experience. Aby Wolf took the stage following and started her set with some new slinky, Astrud Gilberto-esque jazz numbers that were sensuously downbeat and made great use of her articulated range , before shifting back to her guitar and lilting folkish tunes. To round out the night, the final beast was No Bird Sing, and they came out swinging, a blast of hip-hop rock fronted by Eric Blair’s bellowing baritone, backed by Graham O’Brien’s banging drums and held together by Robert Mulrennan’s hot guitars. They had some friends come out during their set- MC Kristoff Krane came out to duet on “Sparrows” and the finale was a raucous freestyle, ending the night for all with happy smiles, warm bellies and songs ringing from the aviary.
Alright Minneapolis, you had your ‘Mats fix last weekend and it’s time to move up in the decades and get to Lifter Puller. Available now at Treehouse Records, and Treehouse is the only store in the world to have it, is Lifter Puller Vs. The End Of, a slim, square book that mixes oral history of the young Craig Finn and photos from shoeboxes with the complete lyrics of all of Lifter Puller’s releases. All that is pretty sweet and it is a well put together glossy book, perfect for collecting or flicking through for inspiration, but it also comes with a download card. That card gets you the entire LFTR PLLR catalog, from the all the singles from 1994-2000 and all four studio records, 3 LPs and an EP. Whoever designed the download system had shit for brains (you have to download each track individually, all 57 of them) but it’s worth having if you want to hear the pre-Hold Steady Finn and Tad Kubler busting out some edgier, dirtier, mid-90s chops. With the cold coming on, it’s a limited run of 1000 and for only $25 clams, it’s worth the warmth and the party.
Harper Simon may be the progeny of Paul Simon, but, well, you probably couldn’t tell at the Cedar Cultural Center Tuesday night. The Cedar was not allowed to use the familial connection in any marketing or promotion (partially explaining why tickets were slow-selling) and halfway through Simon’s set, it was clear that here was a decent guitar player leading a talented bar band around the country playing some jamming tunes and having a good time; all perfectly fine and nothing exceptional about the whole affair. Openers Peter Wolf Crier, on the other hand, have been building something transcendent with their debut record Inter-Be and live show This Is Not For You and any chance you get to catch them casting their intimate, gasping song live, you should jump at it. In fact, you should do it at the Turf Club on Friday, December 11th, because Peter Wolf Crier + No Bird Sing + Aby Wolf + Bethany Larson (reviewed by CakeIn15 here)= Night of Local Awesome, so don’t miss it.
For Staciaann’s full photoset from the Harper Simon show, click through to the City Pages site here.
The Street Preacher came back to his home corner Friday and Saturday, as Brother Ali wrapped up the Fresh Air tour with two bouncing shows in the First Avenue Mainroom. With a full complement of Rhymesayers Entertainment talent backing him up, Ali threw a spiritual dance party, a deep-rolling, baddest-motherfucker communal shoutfest, fists and fingers up, screaming peace and love, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing. It was Star Time, straight up. You can check out the write up for The A.V. Club here, and more video from the evening here, but do yourself a favor- invite some friends over, throw on the new Brother Ali disc Us, know your history and get down to the good times.
Minneapolis-based choreographer Morgan Thorson gets a positive review for her new work “Heaven” from the Village Voice, and it is always nice to see CakeIn15 pals get praised in print. “Heaven” is currently in it’s run at P.S.122 in New York City and features a Minnesota based ensemble, with Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of Low as members of the cast and on stage musicians. Performer Elliott Durko Lynch gets a particularly nice shout-out, and the vocal work is noted as one of the best parts of the performance. Overall, the VV writes that;
“Thorson and her colleagues have created a powerful piece of dance theater…it reveals failed strategies, fits, and penitence in interlocking modules (without any personal relationships developing). What does accumulate, movingly, is the dancers’ fatigue, their sweat, the sound of their breath. When their voices finally soar together, they seem to glisten. Perfection? Who cares? Heaven is the journey.”
“Heaven”, which premiered in Houston, will play at the Walker Art Center, one of the co-commissioners of the work, in March 2010, after criss-crossing the country through the winter. If heaven is in the journey, it must also be in the anticipation.
While down the street, the Dirty Projectors were either blowing you away with their complexity or turning you off with the same, at the Triple Rock Social Club, young London-based orch-poppers Fanfarlo were making the room all warm and cozy with their promising arrangements and homespun rock. The sextet just kicked off their first headlining U.S. tour the night before in Chicago and they played the same set it seems as if they have been playing for the latter part of 2009, mostly tracks from their 2009 release Reservoir and a couple of new tunes. The set began quietly, with frontman Simon Balthazar accompanied by mandolin/violin/keys player Cathy Lucas and drummer Amos Memon on stage for “Drowning Men”, but then the pace and volume picked up once the rest of the band filled out the stage. Their stage set, with backing lights and home-made flag strings, set the mood for their folkish arrangements and like an itinerant band of carnival-esque performers or a younger accompaniment to Arcade Fire, or Zach Condon and Beirut, especially with the prominence of Leon Beckham’s trumpet. Their youth was on display (Balthazar complimented a man in the audience on his admittedly impressive biker ‘tache, counter-pointing his own smooth skin) in that things seemed a little shambolic and chaotic as there were multiple instrument switches throughout the set, but they were unafraid to layer on the harmonies, instrumentation and let one song move into the next, as evidenced in the choral transition from “Finish Line” in to “Harold T. Wilkins, Or How To Wait For A Very Long Time”.
Openers Freelance Whales had a similar, if more indie-rockish vibe, and coming in late to their set they were engaged in a four part harmonic chant that transitioned into a tune led by a banjo but powered by snappy percussion off the body of the tom and a tin watering can hanging in front of the drummer. The Whales were effusive and seemed to really enjoy themselves on stage- guitar player Chuck Criss told me they enjoyed Minneapolis more than Chicago- and the blend of acoustic and amplified played really well. They just self-released their debut record, Weathervanes, and that promises to be a good listen in the coming months.
Fanfarlo’s set ended sooner than it could have- they notably missed earlier single “Fire Escape” and the cover of Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” that has been floating around the web did not make an appearance. (Although, in all fairness, once you have heard Roma di Luna’s cover of that tune from their Find Your Way Home disc, you can pretty much let that rest.) Balthazar seemed well pleased with the turnout and the crowd, especially as one girl was carrying a stack of books bound with twine (Antoine de Saint-Expeury’s The Little Prince on top) in response to an internet plea for fresh reading material. With some more road weathering and rehearsal, the sweetness and talent that was shown off Wednesday night could become a well-grounded and lasting thing.
Fanfarlo Setlist
Drowning Men
I’m A Pilot
Finish Line
Harold T. Wilkins, Or How To Wait For A Very Long Time
Atlas
The Walls Are Coming Down
Waiting In The Wings
Comets
Luna
Encore
Ghosts
See more photos of the night in photos by Staciaann here.
“Any Fantasies You May Have After This You May Disregard as Fallacious”or“Their Perfection is Absolute and Everlasting”
For Staciaann’s photos for Vita.mn on Facebook, clik here.
Close to the end of The Mountain Goats set at the Cedar Cultural Center on Saturday night, John Darnielle squinted out to the audience and smiled, pulling his upper lip back to laugh. He had been laughing all night, a high nasal laugh connected to his singing voice and filled with energy and tightly wound intelligence. “I never thought I would be here. This place is mythic to me,” he told the sold out house. “I remember reading this John Berryman poem ‘Dog-tired, suisired, will now my body down near Cedar Avenue in Minneap’ and for a boy living out in southern California, he may as well have been talking about the shores of Tasmania. Cedar Avenue? I would never go there!”
But Darnielle was fully present all night long, throwing himself into songs, starting with the opening number “1 Samuel 15:23″. The Mountain Goats played a number of tracks from this year’s The Life of the World To Come, with Darnielle bouncing between the keyboard and his black op-art, shark-shape mother-of-pearl inlaid acoustic guitar as bassist Peter Hughes swung his beast of Fender Jazz bass around the stage, resplendent in his striped earth toned suit. From the get-go, there was volubility to Darnielle, an excited friendliness that made him joyfully compelling to watch, as words and interstitial embarrassment flowed out of him. Before introducing “How To Embrace a Swamp Creature”, he went on an impressive rant about the emotional depth of the song; “I try to introduce this song in a way that doesn’t make it seem tawdry but…it’s tawdry. When you wake up in the morning and think that the only way to fulfill yourself spiritually is to sleep with your ex, there is only a certain epistemological depth you can get from it. People talk like it is happening to a cartoon character, its not…its happening to two cartoon characters.” It is good to know that your life is not the only one that sometimes feels like it comes from the Sunday funnies.
With that sort of ecumenical intelligence peppering the performance, the impassioned hurt and intelligence of the songs shone through all the clearer. Darnielle addressed some of his own personal pain that pushes the music laughingly, directly, saying “Whenever I try to talk about songs off The Sunset Tree there’s something…if I tell you a story about my stepfather throwing a vacuum cleaner at me, you’d think that is horrific, but yeah, its kind of funny…” before breaking into a rocking, thick version of “Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod”. The band shifted dynamic excellently throughout the night, opening mid-tempo before dropping off to allow some seriously touching solo moments.
After dismissing the band for the middle of the set, Darnielle called up opener Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy, who had held his own for a magnificent opening set and played through a hauntingly sweet and restrained version of “Genesis 30:3″. Before the song Darnielle joked about the source material for this year’s disc, laughing about the the questions he had been getting from journalists. “What’s the appeal of the Bible? It’s like, what’s the appeal of the alphabet?” he grinned incredulously, but then grounded the comment in an earnest exhortation of the simplicity of God as present in love, regardless of the situation. The Old Testament tune deals with the barrenness of Jacob’s wife Rachel and Rachel offering her servant Bilhah as a surrogate for Jacob. Bilhah bears a son, Dan, and thus continues the line of Jacob. (It is funny to note that all those names except Bilhah, the one who actually bore the child but was not of sufficient standing to be a wife or regarded highly, are now common names. If there were more honest memories in the Bible, we would all be named for servants and slaves.) But that refrain, “I will do what you ask me to do/Because of how I feel about you,” hung out over the crowd and was as poignant as any bittersweet memory.
When Darnielle brought the band back out, they proceeded to get down to brass tacks, doing some fierce rocking. Hughes provided thick, pulsing basslines and regular drummer Jon Wurster pulled from his bag of tricks to keep the pace cracking along as played in a haze of incense smoke. Darnielle brought along a second guitar player from Raleigh-Durham, where the band is now based, who was able to add heavy layering of licks and feeback to bring the sweat in the final part of the show, all the way through to the shouting encore finale of “This Year”, where the chorus of “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me” may be one of the most uplifting oxymorons in all of modern music.
Throughout the night, various comparisons to The Hold Steady, a band who I have seen and loved more live than any other band I can name flitted through my head, Darnielle’s agnostic Episcopalianism versus Finn’s Catholicism, the similarity of the open floodgates of performer’s joy, the sartorial inclinations of Hughes and Franz Nicolay, the quoting Berryman, and all throughout, I was pretty sure Darnielle would not take offense to any such comparisons. That was confirmed when Darnielle came out solo for a second encore, what he called a “bonus track”. “and as you know,” he announced, “bonus tracks don’t have to be perfect. I don’t even know if I remember the second chord.” But in tuning up, the crowd in front had figured out the tune and shouted that they would help, so Darnielle covered The Hold Steady’s “Positive Jam” to end the night, haltingly, passionately, having fun and having help, a perfect cap to an exuberant performance.
Before all that was set in motion, there was of course, Owen Pallett. The Canadian violin virtuoso is an immaculate artist, one whose pitch and timing make his complicated looping compositions both accessible and moving. With his violin, little Nord keyboard and sampler, he performed flights of fancy involving pizzicato and reverb that mere mortals should not attempt without safety nets and circus training. After seeing him a little bit as a fish out of water at the Pitchfork Music Festival this summer (for my money though, he still owned it) the attentive crowd at the Cedar was the perfect accompaniment and ate up the set. One particular highlight was a cover of the Simon Bookish track “Interview”, in which the musician imagines themselves being interviewed about British monarchy by a former Prime Minister, a work that Pallett rendered both complex and droll. With a new record Heartland out in January, contributions to the soundtrack for the film The Box and possible work on the upcoming Arcade Fire record, 2010 looks to be a good year for fine gentleman from the North.
Photo by Cameron Wittig via Walker Art Center
While down the street, the 
