The Austin Reggae Festival 4-15 to 4-17-11

by Sophie Block

The Austin Reggae Festival (known as Marley Fest in years past) took place this past weekend. It was three smokin’ hot days and chill nights at Auditorium Shores on the banks of Town Lake. There were concerts on the main stage, a Dub corner, vendors of Bob Marley memorabilia and such, and fields of tents that concert goers made their homes for a few days. Walking the grounds also meant walking through a cloud of smoke the entire length of the festival. A very diverse gathering of people--hippies to club hoppers, young and old, seemed to gravitate to the festival not just for its music, but to smoke grass out in the open. There were a lot of distractions that made the festival what it was--hula-hooping, dancing, people watching... and did I mention Bob Marley t-shirts? So many Bob Marley t-shirts.

But all marijuana prevalence and scattered trash and turkey legs aside, I’m here to talk about music. Due to other responsibilities I only got to participate in the festivities on Saturday and Sunday night, but one day was eventful enough in itself! The first band I caught was Don Chani, an Austin Latin/dub/reggae band. Lead singer Mark Shaddock was deeply influenced by reggae music when he spent time in Jamaica as a teenager. Other members of the band come from a Latin music background. This blend of musical influences makes for a unique sound. Both genres are apparent in their songs. Shaddock’s voice is reminiscent of Nick Hexum from 311. The show was in the afternoon, and the number of people walking the grounds and watching the show was about equal. Many concert goers ambled around the booths and a good number more were hanging out in tent villages.

Next, I saw Az One. The band, fronted by Elisha Israel, is based out of Kansas City. Israel fine tuned his reggae skills working with musicians when they passed through his home town. Az One is more roots-based than Don Chani, which is the kind of reggae I tend to like more. Az One rocked. The songs have a more classic reggae beat, thicker bass lines and altogether beachier feel than Don Chani. More people began to focus more on the stage as the night progressed.

The last band I caught that night was Taj Weekes, who drew the Saturday night to a close. His thoughtful lyrics, along with the chill atmosphere of the evening allowed me to return home at 11:30pm feeling full of good music and ready for sleep. Visit Taj Weeke’s website for a free download of “Drill” through next week to mark the one year anniversary of the BP oil spill.

Israel Vibration closed out the festival Sunday night with a full band whose singers harmonize in many of their songs. Cecil Spence (Skelly) and Lascelle Bulgin (Wiss) met when they were in a rehabilitation center for polio as children in Jamaica. They formed a roots group in the 70s and continue to produce new music today. They killed it. Not only is their music strong, but the band is inspiring for overcoming their physical challenges. They were the highlight of the festival and the perfect note to end on.

Atomic Duo, Eric Hisaw, and The Down Here Band 4-15-11

by Sophie Block

Man, oh man, there was a lot going on this weekend! In addition to Reggae Fest (more on that in another post) and the Old Settler’s Music Fest, Austin venues filled their stages with countless musical acts as usual. At the end of a long work week I caught three perfect bands that helped me to unwind outside of the festivals that were going on that Friday night. Atomic Duo, Eric Hisaw and The Down Here Band gave me the every bit of twang, country and wholesome Americana I needed to start my weekend on the right foot.

The sad thing is that with so much to do and see in Austin, sometimes great bands go without the big audiences they deserve. I think that if the show was in any other city the bar would have been packed. With all that our city has to offer sometimes there aren’t enough bodies to fill every venue--unless it’s SXSW.  Although the audience was on the leaner side, it was attentive and the bands played as if they were performing in front of 1,000 fans.

The night started off with The Down Here Band, an Americana outfit that is based in Austin but has roots in the Midwest. As a native Minnesotan I greatly appreciated their song “I love Wisconsin,” although it’s not “my” state. The down-home feel of harmonica with lyrics such as “I love my homeland/ brings a tear to my eye/ and Iove my home here in Austin” is something I think resonates with a lot of us Austinites. Many of us hail from elsewhere and have just as much love and nostalgia for our hometowns as our claimed homestead.  

Eric Hisaw took to the stage next with his band. Hisaw is an excellent songwriter and even better guitarist. He plays hooks and rifts with ease while singing about broken hearts and carnies. His style reminds me a lot of Ryan Adams on his country-rock album Cold Roses. Playing backup guitar for Hisaw was Chrissy Flatt, another Austin musician, who played her song “Dangerous Lines.” The sentiment of the set was very American and down-to-earth, and was carried on the wings of Hisaw’s guitar expertise.

Atomic Duo certainly are a force to be reckoned with, I reckon! This band has everything I want in a bluegrass band. They’ve got the harmonies, instruments and gravely high voices that get you dancin’ whether you’re in cowboy boots or bare feet on gravel. Between members Silas Lowe and Mark Rubin (who also serves as producer for the band), the two southern gents play national resonator guitar and mandolin, banjo, fiddle, guitar and melody banjo. They are perfectly charming standing next to each other with their tiny instruments in hand--one man big and round and the other small and lean, suited up in matching Tejano shirts. Their sound is down-right-good country blues. Scope out Atomic Duo, as well as the other bands if you have a hankering for substantial tunes.

Strawberry Jam 4-9-11

by Sophie Block

Hungry for some rock n’ roll? Have some Strawberry Jam! I did, Saturday night at Antone’s, the renowned club that’s boasted legends such as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Muddy Waters—Antone’s hosted Austin rock band strawberryJAM’s CD release party. Along with bluesy opening act iMBiBE, they gave a kick-ass show filled with danceable jams, catchy lyrics and covers just as solid as their original songs.

At first glance the guys of iMBiBE may look like your college buddies, but they are anything but ordinary! Their funky blues songs, played by the trio behind burning incense, had all the elements of the music I like to listen to. Lowell Carrico’s vocals were those of a practiced, mature voice, along with flawless and impressive electric guitar. But his expertise was matched by both the bass player and drummer, who had an equally complex but not overbearing technique. Listen to their song “Ashes to Dust” and you’ll know what I’m talking about—the jam is married perfectly with the blues for some darn good listenin’.

strawberryJAM’s Zack Morgan joined iMBiBE onstage to play keys for a couple of songs before his band hit the stage. sJAM brought on the heat. The band is comprised of six musicians covering guitar, bass, keys, sax, violin, drums and mandolin. They opened with “Stone Angel,” a song filled with organ-style keys, singer Andrew Bennet’s falsetto and a soulful style-- “She looks so innocent but looks so threatening.”

Although their name makes them sound like they are a jam band, strawberryJAM is more structured rock with psychedelic and even pop elements. The band began as a jam band with a free-form format in which any one could play before they evolved into the group they are today. Their song “Wasting time” sounds like Phoenix.  The original songs the band played Saturday were diverse and well-written. One of my favorites was their reggae jam “Without a Warrant.” The highlight of the set for me, however, was the remarkable cover of The Allman Brother’s “Jessica”-- a crazy complicated composition that they rocked! Carrico joined them onstage for that one to play acoustic guitar. Local rapper/songwriter Kydd joined them onstage for another song. sJAM also did a cover of the Grateful Dead boogie “Shakedown Street”, much to my enjoyment. Slide on over to their website for music and upcoming shows.

Highlight's of Not-SXSW at Amelia's 2011

by Kimberly Caterino

If you didn’t at least peek into Amelia’s Retrovogue during 3^rd Coast Music’s not-SXSW events-- well, you missed out.  The South Austin backyard venue was a treat in itself—with potted ferns, metal sculptures, mosaic remnants, and a perfectly fitted stage (read: cozy, but not too small).  Some musical highlights, as a former and once-again 3CM FAR (Freeform American Roots) reporter (if you don't know what I mean by FAR reporter, check out an issue of 3rd Coast Music):  

Since I first spun the CD Bar of Gold in 2007, I’ve been waiting for the chance to catch Baltimore’s Arty Hill in person-- where Hank meets honky tonk meets Arty’s delivery and lyrical wit.  With stand-up bass for backup, and despite overcoming a recent cold, Arty delivered.  We heard some gems, like “Nashville Moon” and “Church on a Saturday Night”..    Arty was later in the audience for Austinite Brennen Leigh, who has the perfect vocal intonation and slight drawl for her brand of bluegrass-inflected country.  She sang of drinking, crying, and “sleeping with the devil”, backed by acoustic guitar and electric bass, and closed with the Jimmie Rodgers cover “Mule Skinner”.   A satisfying early-morning discovery one day was Houstonite Matt Harlan, whose lyrics and weathered voice completely exceed his age.  Matt is more of a folkie, with tones of country—his interesting picking pattern shaped unique and pretty melodies, with dusty and wise vocals reflecting on life—bringing me to the weep zone-- check "You're Just Drunk".   ..And radio people aren’t supposed to have favorites, but clearly Nashville’s Amanda Shires is my not-SX pick.  The fiddle is her instrument, which she alternated between picking like a ukulele and bolding stroking with the bow for stormy accents between verses— verses, might I add, that were delivered in flawlessly feminine vocals, with a slight wavering edge, and earthy poetic punch.  She basically stopped time in the growing heat of a sunny afternoon, with the power of raw, demanding emotion in her sweet voice.  Hopefully this gal will soon move back to her native Texas!  

Text of Light, SXSW Interactive 3-14-11

By Kimberly Caterino

The Interactive portion of South by Southwest (SXSW) has gained tremendous popularity, but this being Austin, even Interactive events include live music.  Plutopia Productions, an experiential events and entertainment production company here in Austin, hosted its 4^th annual signature SXSW Interactive event: The Future of Play.  Plutopia’s mission is to bring arts, entertainment, and technology together, to discover what can work in the future, to be playful, to appeal to all ages.

The Mexican American Cultural Center was a great venue for the evening’s festivities, with several themed buildings, rooms, and hallways of all sizes, and an outdoor area for extended romping.  Experiments, demonstrations, interactive games, and artistic displays lined the walkways— and plenty of chances to create art as an active participant—with paint, objects, computers, light, sound-- oftentimes with more than one of those combined. 

Attended by all ages of folks, from the casual to the costumed, there was in fact an invitation to play—usually with something colorful, tactile, and futuristic-looking-- at the turn of every corner.  And those men in black, the secret service guys with the attaché-cases?  Until the rotary telephone popped out, they had me fooled.   But the mad scientists in the white lab coats—they might have been for real.

The headlining event was a performance by Text of Light, an improvisational group from New York City (also the name of a 1974 Stan Brakhage film).  Text of Light features Sonic Youth’s guitarist Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht (guitars and devices), Tim Barnes (percussion), and Ulrich Krieger (saxophone and electronics)..  there are also turntable-spinning members who were not present this evening.  Together the group creates improvised compositions alongside avant-garde films, primarily those of Stan Brakhage (although they include other filmmakers at times).  Important note: the players do not watch the film while they compose—they admittedly do not play “at” the film.  Knowing this in advance (from the press conference) made for an eerily synchronistic experience for this one audience member.

Renaldo stated the group has developed a language together, clearly not a standard band-like formulaic one, and they use different films for each performance—unscreened in advance.  Part of the goal is to create juxtaposition, to induce different synaptic interactions (for players, for listeners) during the experience.  I had the opportunity to ask if the group members approach their events with a particular artistic mission in mind, what is their conversation like as a group after performing, and what kinds of reflections do they have prior to or after their performances?  When does it fail; when does it rock?

All 4 members took turns answering my layered question, completing and complementing each other’s thoughts:   One primary goal is to turn art aficionados on to Stan Brakhage’s work.  Text of Light aims to create synergy, to generate the unplanned, to be in the moment as possible.  The overall encounter is more than the sum of the parts, and the only times they vaguely deem a performance a failure is when there’s a basic failure in technology.

While playing, they stop to hear the sound that is still going, and enter a group mind.  “Making music is playing,” Ranaldo emphasized, and it is simultaneously “serious and playful”.  Wrapping up the group-mind answer, Tim Barnes added: “And it does rock.”

I hesitate to use the word “performance”—perhaps “experiment” fits.  What was the experiment like?  Dark, with most spectators sitting Indian-style on the floor.  The screen was up front, with the 4 musicians on a stage, their backs to the screen.  There was no formal opening announcement—just an entering...  of an altered mind state.  If you can imagine a hallucinogenic experience induced by only sound and images..   The “group mind” was not limited to the people on the stage, I soon realized.  It only got deeper as time went on.  

Brakhage’s work is a blur of moving colors and images, unfocused objects, with close-ups, movement, flickering hues (in the beginning, red, and orange) and plays on perspective.  You never quite know what you are looking at, and you forget you are watching a film—especially with the sound wrapping around.  The instruments that I could detect being used were a saxophone, drums, guitar, but not all at once..  

Speaking of synaptic interactions:  Cello bow on a guitar.  Cacophony, silence.  Distorted feedback, silence.  Alarms, felt in the floor, grabbed my (musician) earplugs.. Synthesized loops.  Crescendos, lulls. screeches, and wandering.  Kinetic fear, threat, chaos.  Frenetic drums, circular squeaking, a cell phone on a guitar.  Jazz, and here is Miles Davis: peace.  Mourning, and a military march.  “Panels for the Walls of Heaven”—blue, choppy, ambient saxophone, bellows and howls from guitars.  Speed, movement—discovery!  

Undoubtedly—play leads to discovery.  Perhaps the group’s mission, perhaps Plutopia’s mission.

No segment of the Text of Light’s experiment is a repeat of the moment before, and clearly listeners are out of a certain comfort zone.  Because the group members are centralized on a stage in front of a screen, the sound and images serve as a vacillating invitation and dare, to draw near.  The closer you get, the less the individual parts make sense..   the more you are forced to let go, to accept the moment, and the less it matters —like an impressionistic painting.  

I can always go back to my comfort zone, but Text of Light sure reminded me of how important it is to leave!