Boney Earnest's Suburban Hilltop Tent Revue

Tuesday, September 28, 2004 ... 5:55 PM

K.'s Austin City Limits Music Festival Review -- Part 2

My buddy K. and her husband went to the Austin City Limits Music Festival last weekend. Here is Part 2 of her review. (Read Part 1 here.)

* * *

Saturday we did the nomadic thing and wandered from stage to stage, like turning a radio dial until you come across something that holds your interest. We checked out Big Head Todd & The Monsters (a little bland), Bob Marley's old backing band The Wailers (great, but I can only take about ten minutes of reggae before I've had enough), The Holmes Brothers (excellent gospel blues) and then, the highlight of my whole festival experience -- My Morning Jacket. These guys ... well, they ain't twang, Boney, but they are southern boys who've been influenced by all kinds of good old stuff, country and rocknroll. But the thing they delivered, and thing I was craving above all else this weekend, was Something I Haven't Heard Before. That was why Neko floored me. Music that's rooted in the old-timey sound I like, but brings it to a whole new, unique, mysterious place -- that's what I really want lately. And MMJ did it for me. I had heard they were amazing live, but I had no idea how amazing. The interaction between these guys onstage is absolutely magical. They make a ton of noise, they wail like any self-respecting southern rock band, but it's as if their ultimate aim is to make something beautiful. The music is loud and raucous (Patrick Hallahan is the best rock drummer I've ever seen) yet utterly beautiful. Jim James' strange, passionate voice is a big part of it, and his strange, passionate lyrics ("The brain melts in the twilight with the boar and moving trees. Your skin looks good in moonlight and goddamn those shaky knees. The fact that my heart's beating is all the proof you need.") I was standing in the middle of a mass of writhing tattooed people sweating to death, but it felt like I was soaring up over the stage. Man. It was like a dream. I was already in love with their albums -- which they record in a grain silo on their farm in Kentucky using heavy reverb to get an old, mysterious sound -- but now I know they are really a band to see live. And I'm gonna see them every chance I get.

After MMJ, I had no interest in seeing anyone else right away. I just wanted to let the echoes rattle around in my head for a while, so we left the festival early to cool off and get ready for the Wilco show at Stubb's later that night. I assumed MMJ was going to be the high point of my festival and it would all be a long slow slide downhill from there, but Wilco actually raised things even higher. I've seen the band, in all its many incarnations, maybe two dozen times over the past five years, and this was the best Wilco show I've ever witnessed. This new line-up has finally come together and the guitar interplay between Jeff and Nels was heartstopping. I'm not in love with every single song on the new record "A ghost is born" but I am in love with them all when they're done live outside at Stubb's BBQ on the banks of the Red River under a red crescent moon with the balmy Texas air sweeping back and forth across the tops of the pecan trees. At one point the girl next to me grabbed my arm and said, "Are you happy? I'm just so fucking happy right now!" Yeah, I was happy. This band is better than they've ever been, even if they left twang by the side of the road a few records ago.

Sunday morning back at the park started with Kelly Willis, who was perfectly wonderful, but by then I was so spoiled by Neko and Wilco and My Morning Jacket that anything short of revelatory sounded like crap to my ears. So we wandered over to hear Rachael Yamagata, in search of something new. She's got a great throaty voice and reminds me of Fiona Apple, only a little less psychotic. Just a little less. After a few too many between-song stories about the asshole who dumped her for some other girl, it was time to move on to Shelby Lynne. She's great, she is such a badass country singer, but again, it was like I'd heard it all before. So we moved on to Ben Kweller, who you either love or hate and I happen to love. Bizarre but earnest schoolboy lyrics and great, quirky, melodic songwriting and a killer backing band. He reminds me of Elvis Costello if Elvis Costello sang about junior high school. Good stuff. And speaking of Elvis, he was up next ... and here I am, so excited ... he takes the stage in a fabulous purple velvet suit ... and ... no vocals! The sound was completely messed up. He sang an entire song with no vocals, then they temporarily fixed the vocals and then there was no guitar. We waited through five songs hearing nothing but drums and bass, his voice barely audible through his monitors, and finally we gave up. They should've just stopped everything and fixed it, and if he ran late, so what, he ran late. But they didn't do that, and I was pretty pissed. There were about 30,000 people there to see him, and we had to wade through that crowd to get out. Total bummer. But it was okay because this whole thing really doesn't hinge on just one performer, not for me anyway, and Jack Ingram was coming up next on the Texas Stage. He's a good, solid Texas songwriter with a good, solid voice and a good, solid band called the Beat-Up Fords. Like he said, "My name's Jack Ingram and we play country music!" That's all -- pure, basic, satisfying country music. Then after Jack, we tried to head to the main stage to see Wilco but there were five zillion people already there, packed in like sardines. We knew there was no way that experience would top the glorious set at Stubb's the night before, so we said goodbye to the festival and started heading out. But on our way past the Gospel & Blues tent, we heard this wonderful sound and saw lots of people stomping around in there like an old-time revival was going on, and we ducked inside and saw a bit of New Orleans' Dirty Dozen Brass Band getting down and dirty. And that was all she wrote for this year.

The ACL Festival reminds me of the French immersion course I took in college, where we spent ten hours everyday speaking French and only French. It's a three-day-long immersion in live music -- you eat, sleep, drink and dream live music. You get a dizzying array of tastes of different bands all day long, and then at night you go to a small Austin music venue and see one of those bands do an intimate, full set, and just when you think there's no more music to be had, you come home from the show and turn on your motel TV and see that the local Austin station is doing backstage interviews with all the artists every hour on the hour. I pretty much forgot that the capitol of Texas is there, and the second largest university in the country, and all kinds of other stuff, because to me it was all music. Music and tacos. Best. Time. Ever.

* * *

Great fucking review. Thanks again, K.

Brendan

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Friday, September 24, 2004 ... 1:18 PM

K.'s Austin City Limits Music Festival Review -- Part 1

My buddy K. and her husband went to the Austin City Limits Music Festival last weekend, and she was kind enough to write up this excellent rundown of her big old time just for the Tent Revue. Enjoy!

* * *

We kicked off this year's Austin City Limits Festival with a Neko Case show at a little club called The Parish Room on Thursday night, and as soon as she opened her mouth to sing, I knew this would be the best weekend of music in my life:

Oh, light
I thought you were golden
I thought you were white
I caught you returning to the house you caught fire
But I know that I was your favorite
And I said "Amen"...

Last night I dreamt that I hit a deer with my car
Blood from his heart spilled out onto my dress and was warm
He bade me to follow
But legions of sorrow
Defied me...

(Note from Boney: Neko lyric-hunters look here.)

She sounded like Patsy Cline singing a Handsome Family song, and that's it, I was hers forever. I love the Handsome Family but am not often in the mood for Brett's voice, and I love female country singers but am often bored by the safe, mediocre songwriting. So Neko was such a welcome discovery. She did chilling versions of "Wayfaring Stranger" and "I'll Be Around" and Dylan's "Buckets of Rain" and a very spooky murder ballad she wrote called "Furnace Room Lullaby" where the narrator kills her boyfriend, stuffs his body into the furnace and is then kept awake nights by the sound of his beating heart. Edgar Allen Poe meets Loretta Lynn meets Hope Sandoval meets reverb. Jesus, it was good. And Tom Ray on upright bass and Jon Rauhouse on banjo and pedal steel were the perfect accompaniment to her spectacular voice. After the show I immediately bought Neko's last two CDs and an EP she recorded in her kitchen in her underwear that contains that first song she played, "Favorite." I don't know, some of the songs don't feel quite worthy to sit next to the really stellar ones, but overall she is my new favorite artist. And I found her on Thursday night before the festival even officially began!

The next day at Zilker park, we decided to try for a balance of strategy and spontaneity. We picked the stage where most of our must-see acts were going to be, set up our chairs and then between sets we checked out what was happening at the other six stages. Twice we headed to the beautiful spring-fed creek that runs along the park to dunk ourselves, because damn, it was hot! In the mid-to-upper nineties every day with a sun so relentless people actually huddled up against the Porta-Potties and clung to the shade like a bunch of cows. The festival was overcrowded this year -- 75,000 people each day -- and even though everyone was super nice (when I lost my sunglasses, the guy who found them actually came looking for me to return them), it was pretty tiring fighting the heat and the throngs. But so worth it!

Asleep at the Wheel started things off for us, and they are just a fine, tight, Texas swing band. They did a bunch of Bob Wills covers like "Cherokee Maiden" and "San Antonio Rose" and "Milk Cow Blues" plus a bunch of standards like "Miles and Miles of Texas" and "Route 66." They won't change your life but Ray Benson's got a great voice and they are really enjoyable.

Next came Roseanne Cash, talking a lot about her dad and bringing me to tears with a sweet, acoustic "I Still Miss Someone." Her voice isn't exactly pretty, but it's powerful and true and so expressive. It was a nice set.

Then we saw Neko Case perform an abbreviated version of her set from the night before, somehow not as satisfyingly spooky while surrounded by ten thousand sweating fans under the blazing Texas sun. A vulture circling overhead helped a little though, which Neko pointed out. She also pointed to the little airplanes that were flying around pulling advertising banners, and she said she kept wishing one would fly by that said "I'll See You In Hell!" She's pretty funny and, like I think I said before, totally frigging brilliant.

By then we were just about baked to a crisp, so we headed to the river, catching a little of Patty Griffin's set on the way. She's not my favorite. I can see why some people like her, but for some reason, I'm just not one of them. I'd much rather sit in a cold creek with a straw hat on drinking a peach smoothie.

Ryan Adams next, and I was excited because I hadn't seen him since the festival last year and he had put on a really good show. He was a raving drunken idiot then, sure, but he sang beautifully and his band just tore it up. This year, eh, not so much. He hasn't been on the road in a while because of the wrist he broke falling off a stage in London, so maybe that accounts for the sloppiness. This new backing band The Cardinals just wasn't that great and by the awkward way Ryan gripped the neck of his guitar, it seemed like his wrist might still be bothering him. He did do a pretty "When Stars Go Blue" and "Oh My Sweet Carolina," but that only made me miss Emmylou's voice and wish he had some female accompaniment. Or something. Oh, well. I'll try him again next year.

We caught a little of Joe Ely's set walking to the veggie tamale booth, and I didn't realize he was such a rocker! I guess he holds back a lot with the Flatlanders, which is the only way I've ever heard him before. After Joe and tamales, we saw Sheryl Crow close things out. Even though I wouldn't pay to see her all on her own, I was curious enough to stay. She is a dynamic performer but such a chameleon, and not in a good way. One minute she's singing one of her commercial-radio pop hits and the next she's yodeling on a Hank Williams song and, I don't know, to me she just has no musical identity of her own. I do like that "If it makes you happy, then why the hell are you so sad?" song, which Ryan Adams came out to sing on.

Whew. And that's just the first day.

* * *

More coming up from K.'s ACL weekend, including an Elvis Costello let-down and a My Morning Jacket revelation. Stay tuned.

Brendan

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Monday, September 20, 2004 ... 5:21 PM

Chance encounter

Wind and rainy scraps of Ivan forced Friday's outdoor show under a canvas tent, to Gillian's dismay. The precipitation was light to hazy through most of the day as my daisy Betsy and I made our way up the Virginia hills from Carolina, but it started pouring between Old Crow Medicine Show's set and Gil & Dave's set. Onstage, Gil made repeated wearied references to the weather. Even when it wasn't raining, the night was muggy and hot and the skeeters were biting. Before I was even out of the car, I had bites on my left thumb and on my forehead.

Old Crow were cheerful, though, with Dave Rawlings (or Butch Hobson, if you insist) at stage left, frailing on a resonator banjo, fretting his signature archtop Epiphone, and picking a squareneck maple Dobro. I don't know where the guy went who filled this position at Newport, but he wasn't there. Critter Fuqua was, though.

Critter was a founding member of Old Crow, the banjo and National guitar picker whom Dave Rawlings and that guy at Newport are filling in for, indefinitely apparently, and without official explanation.

Toward the end of Old Crow's set I made my way to the toilet cabins, and sitting on a log in the shadows at a bend in the dirt path leading from the tent were Gillian and Critter themselves. Critter was wearing that cap he wears on the O.C.M.S. CD sleeve. Gillian was dressed up in her stage outfit: black dress and black velvet jacket, black tights and black cowgirl boots, her graying ruddy hair pulled back tight and her face made up a moony white. They sat chatting quietly -- two people apart trying to have a fucking conversation thank you very much. So I interrupted them. But only to make Gillian aware, urgently, that that I didn't have anything much to say to her.

I thanked her around 10 times for playing in Virginia again. She shook my hand in the dark. Her hand was long and soft and slightly limp, like a rolled up pita. I said I'd seen her last month at Wolf Trap. She said, "Oh, with Emmy?" I said yes. She said, "Yeah, that was a fun show." I stood there over her for a moment and nodded. She asked where I was from. I said Virginia, up the nothern part of the state. I said I used to live in Nashville, though, and I'd seen her at the Station Inn last year, and at the Belcourt a few times, and that I'd met her and Dave at Tower Records on West End in Nashville last year as well. "Oh, yeah," she said. She didn't know what to say to me. I didn't give her much to work with.

Critter sat watching quietly for a moment and then excused himself. I wish I'd said Hey to him as well, and then left them both alone, or at least thought to mention to Gillian, since I had already imposed, that she is a great hero of mine, the most often heard voice on my stereo speakers, that she sits in the highest seat of my suburban twang pantheon, or that her music has shone light that has led me through a couple of dim times, that her music has taught me things about the world, and about myself, or at the very least that her lyrics like no one else's have opened my eyes and my ears and my mind and my heart to the endless reaches and depths of American song and spurred me to go diving and nosing and groping around, however blindly, in our history. Instead I told her again that I appreciated it that she was playing in Virginia again, as if Virginia were a leper colony.

After around 90 seconds of watching me starstruck as a bobbysoxer stammer and sweat, Gillian Welch rose to her feet and peered over my shoulder at the tent where Old Crow were wrapping up. She said, "Well this is their last tune. I'd better go get ready to do my thing," and then slipped off into the trees.

Brendan

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Thursday, September 09, 2004 ... 3:14 PM

I'd had a turkey sandwich and some Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 about an hour before I went to bed, but does that explain it? Really?

A few nights ago I dreamed I was sitting in Doc Watson's audience. Not too far a fetch; I saw him a year ago here in Virginia, and last month in Newport, and if the wind blows right my beautiful Betsy and I will be seeing him again in a couple months in Charlotte. (He's unbelievable onstage -- he can still pick and yodel like no other motherfucker on the planet. See him if you ever get the chance.)

In the dream I was sitting stage right, about 15 rows back.

Doc was accompanied only by three backup singers, flanking him in a line on his right. They were stately black women in pressed black dresses. Gospel singers. I don't know if Doc has ever been backed by Gospel singers; he never has that I've heard, but it's no big leap across the subconscious void to get them on stage with him.

Here's where the leap:

The three gospel singers, at some point, they start singing something without Doc. They decide to sing something of their own. Maybe just fucking around at first, for their amusement while the old guy tunes up. Maybe away from the microphone, even, but it sounds good. And they pick up momentum, and they get in to it, and then they're doing it for the crowd. So when Doc speaks up, attempts to get things back under his thumb, these gospel singers just keep singing. He starts to say something, and they just sing right the fuck over him.

Doc Watson can't get a word in edgewise.

This is tense. It makes you nervous, uncomfortable. Sitting there watching this, you realize how easy it would be to fuck with Doc Watson. Who wants to think about this? But you're forced to now, so you think about it. It would be easy to fuck with Doc Watson. He's this very old blind guy. He can barely walk. He's a living legend the equal of which our world will never produce -- but how easy would it be to just brush him off like a crumb of pie crust?

Doc Fucking Watson. He is Grandpa on the Simpsons.

He is shouting now, frustrated. No -- pissed off. His bushy brow rolled down low. The women are still singing. Why doesn't somebody do something?

Then somebody does. Doc does. He leans forward over his guitar and swings his right arm and spanks the large stately black woman closest to him with his open hand. The three women scatter like kicked game pieces, their faces blank with shock.

In the dream I fall out of my chair onto the ground, laughing. You know all those inarticulate people on the internet who are always telling you "OMG ROFLMAO!!?!!" That was me.

Did he just fucking hit her? Did Doc Watson just spank a large black woman on the ass? Yes he did.

It doesn't tickle me as keenly conscious as it did in my sleep, and now I just wonder what the fuck it meant that I dreamt Doc Watson spanking a large black woman out of frustration.

Am I secretly misogynist? Racist? I mean, more than I already struggle with as a pretty politically correct fucking guy?

Do I perceive Doc as especially racist or misogynist? Does his music represent misogyny or racism to me? (Yes, some of it, though ironically Doc is very careful these days to censor the most offensive lyrics from his readings, as in Jimmie Rodgers's "T For Texas," from which Doc cuts the line where the speaker shoots his woman Thelma "just to see her jump and fall" -- my favorite fucking line of the song, incidentally (pertinently?))

Or do I have a genuine, however buried, feeling about an antagonistic relationship between black gospel music and white country folk music, though I've never thought about anything like that consciously?

Interpretations welcome.

Brendan

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Friday, September 03, 2004 ... 1:46 PM

Weekend Reading

I'm sleepy and trying to work on a novel, so here is some twang-related reading material that I've stumbled on over the last year or so, for your entertainment and edification.

Exhuming the Legend of Washington Phillips

The best Gillian Welch interview I've read, to celebrate that I'll be seeing her and Dave two weeks from today.

The Twang Heard 'Round the World

Ramblin Jack Elliott's somewhat fanciful website bio

Enjoy, good people.

Brendan

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Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas
(Novello Festival Press, April 2008)
includes my essay, "Link Wray"

SITES WHICH THE TENT REVUE RECOMMENDS

MUSIC
Flop Eared Mule
The Celestial Monochord
HickoryWind.org
Dig and Be Dug in Return
Modern Acoustic Magazine / Blog
The Old, Weird America
Honey, Where You Been So Long?

LITERATURE
The Greensboro Review
Mixed Animal
Night Train
Fried Chicken and Coffee
Mungo (This was the blog of my friend, the late Cami Park. Miss you, Cami.)
Staccato Fiction
Wigleaf
PANK Magazine

OTHER
Cat and Girl
Film Freak Central

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