the new riddim

03/20/12: Chuck Prophet / The Grisly Hand @ Davey’s

Hometown pride is a necessary thing in music sometimes. The phenomenon can be found across a variety of genres, and blues rock is no stranger. Even those not from the places they refer will typically write of the streets of Austin, the pawn shops of Memphis, or any number of dives across the Mid- and Southwest. Chuck Prophet is elated to call San Francisco his home, so much so that nearly the entirety of his newest album Temple Beautiful is a Cupid’s arrow shot directly into the heart of the Bay Area.

Prophet has been a boomerang of musical force for over 25 years, his craft taking him across the world and back, and into the studio with musicians as varied as Warren Zevon and Cake. His roots have always been firmly planted in the world of blues, but his songwriting effortlessly jumps from a salute to the early days of lip-curling punk, a subtle nod to ’70s arena rockers, a nudge in the direction of ’60s pop, and a hat-tip to power chord ambassadors The Kinks. Throw on any of his albums and you’ll be greeted with a concoction of decade-spanning sounds blended together in hour-long assortments.

Local fledgling bluegrass sextet The Grisly Hand kicked off the night shortly before 9:00, and in a brief pause after their opening song, audience members could be heard frantically trying to remove their jaws from the floor. The band unquestionably gave Prophet a run for his money with an animated half-hour set that bounded back and forth among the band’s currently humble discography. Accompanying Lauren Krum’s extraordinarily immense voice was guitarist Jimmy Fitzner, whose vocal style both contrasted with Krum’s and provided a proper stylistic companion, and his banter between songs gave enough levity to keep the crowd attentive.

Bassist Johnny Nichols, guitarist Ben Summers, and fiddler Kian Byrne all contributed vocals throughout the set in varying amounts, and Matt Richey backed up the group on drums. In a blur of limbs and swinging guitar necks, the band reached some moments of unequivocal unity during the set, with all players on stage perfectly in sync in unintentional choreography. It was genuinely fascinating to the only two senses that mattered at the time.

By the time Chuck Prophet was joined on stage by his band The Mission Express at 9:45, there was already a vacuum-sealed crowd packed tightly in front, eagerly awaiting the 100-minute set. With only a foot-wide path leading to each of the bars, anyone expecting to stand in front of the stage was out of luck. Greeted by drunken cheers and the kind of heckling you would expect to hear only at a place like Davey’s, Prophet and company quickly jumped into an opening set filled with numbers from the last two decades.

“Storm Across the Sea” got things moving with one of many slide guitar songs that were played that evening, underscoring guitarist James DePrato’s ability to keep up with Prophet’s frequent veering off in a story or guitar solo. The set covered much of the newest release, with “Castro Halloween,” “The Left Hand and the Right Hand,” “Willy Mays Is Up at Bat,” “White Night, Big City” and the title track among those. Prophet’s dedication of “White Night” to late gay rights activist Harvey Milk was met with a room so quiet a pin could be heard landing on the concrete floor.

Keyboardist (and spouse to the leading man) Stephanie Finch provided two of the highlights of the set with her vocal contribution to Temple‘s “Little Girl, Little Boy” and a spiced-up version of “Tina Goodbye,” the opening track to Finch’s 2010 debut Cry Tomorrow. Additional highlights were the covers of Alex Chilton’s “Bangkok,” and an irony-free version of Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen.” The encore of “Always a Friend” (co-written by Alejandro Escovedo) was followed by the quirky “You Did,” the only song in history that poses the question of who did, exactly, put the boom in the boom-boom-shaka-laka?

This is the second time I have seen Prophet, and both times it has been at a reasonably filled Davey’s Uptown. After seeing a knock-out set twice in a row, I must pose a question I heard others in the venue asking that night — why the hell isn’t this guy more popular?

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Nerd talk: Grisly Hand’s Jimmy Fitzner honed his voice in the late ’90s working-class punk band Tanka Ray. Their 2002 album …And So I Abide will continue to be one of my all-time local favorites, and it comes highly recommended. After Tanka Ray broke up, Fitzner went on to play in the short-lived Dead Dora, then formed Grisly Hand with Lauren Krum, Johnny Nichols and Chas Snyder, who was also a member of Tanka Ray. Nichols played in the ska revival band The Uprights, who deserve their own post on this blog at some point, and will get it in due time. Nichols and Fitzner also play in the psyched-out “drum punk” supergroup Ad Astra Arkestra, with former GH member Mike Tuley. Kian Byrne, in addition to being a recently inducted member of his father’s band The Elders, plays in soul/ska/riddim band The New Riddim, and joining him is the Uprights’ Dan Loftus.

Matt Richey plays in minimalist country band The Blessed Broke, and lo-fi throwback pop band Dead Voices, whose frontman David Regnier also plays with Krum as Ruddy Swain. Ben Summers probably has the most complex music history of all members, having been in multiple punk bands that played basements across the city but never recorded anything. A few of his bands worth noting are U.S. Americans, Anne Emergency! (who went by An Emergency! early on), The Controlled, and Kill Brochtune, not to mention currently performing his own written material.

This review was written for Lost in Reviews. All photos taken by the talented Matt Cook.

02/10/12: Katy and Go-Go / John Velghe + More @ RecordBar

Entering the RecordBar around 10:00 last Friday, one could not walk through the narrows without rubbing shoulders amid those throughout. The venue was particularly crowded for an all-local lineup, though as the night raged on, the audience noticeably waned from a college-aged demographic to a weekend warrior vibe. As though it were filled with drunken Cinderellas, the place all but cleared by midnight, save for some table or booth clusters and a pack of patrons standing near the patio door.The night opened at 10:05, as The Sawyers launched into a 40 minute set of No Depression alt-country lifted from the altar of Tweedy and Farrar, with some elements of honky-tonk thrown in for good measure. The band is led by local songwriter John Greiner, and is backed by Chad Rex on guitar. Rex fronts The Victorstands and previously played in Colorado’s own No Depression purveyors Armchair Martian with St. Joseph, MO, natives Jon Snodgrass and Steven Garcia, the latter of whom now plays in KC powerpop trio Deco Auto. Betse Ellis of The Wilders played the fiddle at stage right, and Chris Wagner (most recently of punk trio Hipshot Killer) filled in for the group’s recently departed bassist. Jonathan Kraft, a sound engineer who has spent time with SSION, and in another life, played with Florida screamo band Kite Flying Society served as the drummer. That was a mouthful, but I thought it necessary to document how varied the backgrounds are of the five members that shared the stage.

Over the duration of the band’s time on stage there was very little audience interaction. I don’t require a story when watching a band play live — and there are many artists that don’t really know when to shut up and play — but at the close, I was left wondering if there exists a tangible album that could be purchased, and remained without answer as nothing of the kind was mentioned.

Author note: I’d like to apologize to those reading this as a casual music follower. What you are about to see in the next two paragraphs is nothing short of conspiratorial six degrees of Kevin Bacon nerding out. If you can’t keep up, feel free to skip through it. I won’t take offense.

John Velghe (née Evans, as the man took his matrilineal surname for the stage to stand apart from the other musically inclined Evans’ in the area, of which there are apparently many) was joined on stage by the full-band form of The Prodigal Sons. Tonight, this included Mike Alexander, who as of this writing plays punk with Hipshot Killer, country with Starhaven Rounders, and Irish rock with Blarney Stoned. Alexander has done everything short of playing the part of Neil Schon in a Journey tribute band. Wait, what’s that? Oh, he has totally done that as well, and will undoubtedly be forming a new band by the time you finish reading this sentence. Chris Wagner pulled a double shift on bass, and in addition to playing with Alexander in a band now mentioned twice (not to mention the Revolvers), provided the rhythm section for Velghe in The Mendoza Lie, a post-Famous FM/Saint Jude band that had a backbone provided by Dan Dumit, who is still billed as a drummer for the Sons, though he did not make an appearance on this night. “Go-Go Ray” Pollard sat behind the kit, and is a nationally recognized performer who has served as the touring drummer for a few major label bands which, if mentioned, would sully the anticipation that you as a reader have surely built about this lineup.

But wait, there’s more. On trombone was Mike Walker, who played in the well-received, though tragically defunct Olympic Size (with Wade Williamson and Kirsten Paludan, both of whom play in Alexander’s Starhaven Rounders) as well as The Maytags, a “neo-dub explosion” led by Zach Phillips of the Architects and The Gadjits, of which Alexander was also a part for some time. On saxophone was the illustrious Sam Hughes, also seen as part of the seven-piece horn ensemble in Afrobeat jazz sensation Hearts of Darkness. Additionally, Hughes was in good company with Walker as a five-piece horn section on the most recent release by The Hearers, a country-spanning membership whose horn section can also be seen in various pairings in the jumpin’ and swingin’ Grand Marquis, roots reggae group The New Riddim, soul revival band The Good Foot, and almost any other act in town requiring some brass. Last, but certainly not least was the talented Hermon Mehari on trumpet, who moonlights in the Diverse trio, playing compositions that pay homage to the 18th & Vine sound that put Kansas City on the proverbial jazz map long ago.

Whew. Now that I have that out of the way, let us continue with the live performance. The band played an hour-long set that alternated from the full lineup that I made a passing reference to above, to an electric four-piece with the addition of Betse Ellis lending her fiddle and vocals. I spoke with Velghe briefly before they began hauling their gear up on stage, at which point he acknowledged his twenty year musical crush on Ms. Ellis, so for her to contribute those talents to a few songs (“Assume the Ground”) from his upcoming full-length, Don’t Let Me Stay (to be released on Lakeshore Records, the label that brought us The Belles‘ Omertà), must be a thrill. The set meandered very little from a full-bodied country-tinged Americana rock with strong horn presence (“Blood Line”), but the instrument changes were plenty.

Acoustic guitars and mandolins replaced electric Telecasters and hollow-bodies for portions of the set (“Stage Inside the Main”), and near the end, the full band took the stage once again for what Velghe referred to as a part of the set in which they will be playing some songs in the key of Paul. Following this, he plucked the opening notes to The Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait,” which they played at the Sonic Spectrum tribute series for the ‘Mats at the same venue nearly a year ago. The lone song that saw Velghe without a guitar around his shoulder was a set closer of The Jam’s “Town Called Malice,” which brought a little less excitement from the crowd than one would think, but it was a fitting end to a very energetic, if instrumentally attention deficit set.

Whether by choice or by chance, the lineup thus far had built up to a swelling climax that could have potentially come crashing down if someone closed the night and was not prepared to hand the crowd their asses on a plate of rock (don’t let that imagery slip past you). Lucky for the audience, Katy Guillen (of The B’Dinas) took the stage and dished out a three-course meal of ass (already regretting that metaphor) and Go-Go Ray was there to serve as the second musician of the night to pull in some overtime. Taking a look at the two of them on stage, an obvious reaction would be to assume you are about to hear something of the White Stripes or Black Keys variety, both two-piece bands who built their reputation out of playing stripped-down blues rock in their own, weird ways. Well, you would have been wrong to assume that, and should be ashamed of yourself.

The reality is that the assumption is not a complete fallacy, but the sheer force with which Katy and Go-Go exerted sound as a two-piece, with Ray given the chance to show off on extended drum fills, and Guillen slinging out fast-paced blues riffs while the two kept in perfect stride with one another was something impressive. The two jammed a full 45 minutes until the house lights came up and the bar was ready to start kicking people out into the cold, and then they played one more song even after that. The two-piece is expected to release an album in late March, and a new one from Guillen’s full rock band is due out in the near future as well.