Notes from Mt. Pleasant

Howe Gelb plays the Village Underground, London this Thursday 31st May, and we have two free tickets to give away to one lucky winner.

The first person to reply to the following question by emailing us wins the tickets. Ready…go!:

• What was the name of Giant Sand’s 1985 debut album?

From VU website: Legendary Giant Sand founder Howe Gelb – whose newest band incarnation has got so large that he’s named it Giant Giant Sand – is coming to Village Underground.

In our intimate confines he’ll be delivering a stripped down solo performance of his new album, Tuscon. Howe assembled a ten strong group of collaborators (or cast if you will) for the album which is due to be released on June 11th, 2012 on Fire Records.

The idea was to make a country rock opera, a vision that has followed Howe for decades. Taking place in the town of Tucson, the story revolves around a “semi grizzled man with overt boyish naïveté” who sets off to escape the trappings of hometown life and embarks on a life-changing road trip; eschewing all his worldly goods and leaving behind his girlfriend, encountering jail at the Mexican border, finding new love at a train station saloon, all while ‘the end of the world’ provides the landscape game changer.

The album is a dusty work of art, conjuring images of the all knowing desert and a confused river inside the cacti-strewn sound scape.

And Gelb is coming to London to tell his Tuscon tale man-to-man.

 

*Competition is now closed* 3pm (GMT) 30th May 2012

Thanks for all your entries!

The lucky winner is: Julia Grant

_______________________________________________________________________________

With thanks to another reader who wrote in we’ll make it a bit fairer for future competitions and put a time deadline on it rather than ‘first to reply’ for people who are not at their computers all day and we’ll draw the winner out of a hat.

Share:

• More

Like this:

Like

Be the first to like this post.

Hans Chew really knows how to show a piano a good time. At a young age his mother dragged him, kicking and screaming, to lessons which – unsurprisingly – didn’t take. And although he forgave, he didn’t forget – making a deliberate decision to ‘become a piano player’ some twenty years later, having apparently seen it in his destiny. And music fans (and presumably the piano) have been thanking him for it ever since.

His musical style comes from a very definite range of influences, and place. Although now based in New York, he was born “in the land of The Empress of the Blues herself, Bessie Smith, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and I grew up with her name ringing in my ears”.
Chew recalls: “There’s an annual music, food and arts festival honouring her that’s been going on since before my time that takes place on Martin Luther King Boulevard in downtown Chattanooga, which everyone in the city attends. As a child I was there every year and became familiar with the sounds of the blues, and the smells of barbequed meats, and the activities of adults drinking from plastic cups, aluminium cans, and glass bottles. Also, not far down the road from Chattanooga towards Nashville, Tennessee, lived my mother’s parents and family, who were rural tobacco farming folk and amateur country and bluegrass musicians. So I was exposed to city blues and rural blues (it’s all the blues, right?!) very early on.”

He tried the drums and taught himself guitar, spent some time in New Orleans (and was exposed to a whole new level of musical influences) but accomplished very little apart from “extreme success at taking drugs from around 18 to 28, upon which age I sobered up and wrote my first song, on guitar, and then acquired a hand-me-down piano from my grandmother, bought some New Orleans records and sheet music, and sat out to learn to play boogie woogie.”

The result some six or seven years later was Tennessee and Other Stories, which made Uncut’s Top 50 albums of 2010, and #3 in their 20 best Americana albums: “extraordinary…terrific, full-blooded singer songwriter”, and 4-stars from Rolling Stone: “fabulous…timeless”. The music that he plays lands somewhere between blues, 70s rock, country honky tonk and southern boogie. If you’re no clearer, perhaps try this: who does Hans Chew consider timeless and extraordinary? Who would he rate as his favourite piano players, who influenced his style and inspire his music?

A fistful of inspiration: Hans Chew’s Top Five piano players:

James Booker
Album: New Orleans Piano Wizard: Live!
Track: “Come In My House”
My ultimate favourite pianist by far and away is New Orleans’ own James Booker. He embodies everything I would want to be: an unpredictable and legendary performer, a genius and virtuoso, a heart-wrenching and maniacal vocalist, and an exhibitor of a style purely his own, yet steeped in tradition. Just listen to his vocal performance and his last solo at then end of the above track. The best. Not to mention that he is one of these kind of characters that books could be written on and movies based upon: a genius who displayed virtuoso abilities at a young age, spoke several languages, could play anything from Chopin to Joplin, Beethoven to Leadbelly, was openly homosexual, the son of a southern Baptist preacher, played with countless stars and on records from Aretha Franklin to Fats Domino, struggled with schizophrenia and drug addiction, taught Harry Connick, Jr. to play piano in return for a parole from Orleans Parish prison…and on and on…for a little flavour on James Booker, check out Dr. John’s excellent autobiography, ‘Under the Hoodoo Moon’.

Professor Longhair
Documentary: Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together
Henry Roeland Byrd, aka Professor Longhair, is another product of New Orleans who is a true original. His combination, like the city itself, of Spanish, French, Creole, African/Afro-Caribbean, and American Indian culture, is a rich gumbo unlike anything exactly that came before it. I cop Professor Longhair’s licks in almost every solo I play, to the point of embarrassment! Many say he influenced a young Elvis Presley, but regardless, he certainly influenced countless New Orleans pianists, down to anyone playing on Bourbon Street tonight I can guarantee it. “Fess” was also a huge influence on one of my favourite pianists (more on him below), Allen Toussaint.

Allen Toussaint
Album: What Is Success: The Scepter and Bell Recordings
Track: “Sweet Touch Of Love”
I would strongly argue that it can be proved Allen Toussaint is as influential on 1960’s and beyond popular music as anyone you can name. Though he’s not a household name, if you dig deep into any of your favorite pop songs, I bet that within one or two degrees of separation, Allen Toussaint either wrote, arranged, performed, engineered, or was involved in its release. From Glen Campbell to The Meters, the Pointer Sisters to Lee Dorsey, from Little Feat to The Band, from Nas to the Beastie Boys, every serious musician knows and holds Mr. Toussaint in the highest regard. If you listen to the above track, “Sweet Touch Of Love”, you can hear Toussaint’s own spin on Professor Longhair’s famous lick in the first opening few seconds, the same lick I use ad nauseum…!

Leon Russell
Album: Leon Live
Track: “Out In the Woods”
Claude Russell Bridges, aka Leon Russell, is another favourite of mine. I was actually surprised after Tennessee & Other Stories… was released and received some attention that no one came straight out and said that I was “just a Leon Russell rip-off”!!! Though I came to know Leon’s music only recently, maybe 2007, he and I are (or were) very closely mining the same territory and getting across the same styles and feelings, I think. If you listen to my song “Life Insurance” from the Live at the Earl EP, it’s straight “Stranger In a Strange Land” territory. Likewise, the new demo we released from our upcoming second record, “Mercy”, is straight up “Out In the Woods”. Not *totally*, I actually think that the best parts of my songs are my purely original riffs on these styles, but the style is very recognizable. I especially love Leon’s phrasing when he plays piano solos: he has a bizarre, staccato, spastic way of enunciating his piano riffs…just listen to him jamming on the intro to “Out In the Woods” and also in the outro section…

Jerry Lee Lewis
Album: The Session
Track: “No Headstone On My Grave”
What can I possibly say about the man that Nick Tosches hasn’t already said in his masterpiece biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, ‘Hellfire’? It’s not even really his playing so much, as I find his playing almost corny, for example check his solos on the above track “No Headstone On My Grave” to see what I mean. But my goodness, what he may lack in taste, he more than makes up for in swagger, bravado, confidence, sweat, blood, rage, and sheer terror. Listen to his voice in the above track: it’s weathered, weary, seasoned with salt and pepper and smoke, and all the lasciviousness you could ever hope existed in the heart of Old Scratch himself. Mr. Rock and Roll. He gets my blood pumping and my excitement level through the roof every time.

Hans Chew clearly plays out his musical influences on stage and keeps strong ties to the South through his love of artists like Booker and Toussaint. One wonders what it was like for him moving from a small southern town to settle in New York City.

“Don’t misunderstand: I had lived in the fairly large city of Atlanta, Georgia for a while, so it wasn’t like I was coming out of the sticks with hobo sack and a corn-cob pipe or anything, but there were definitely some adjustments. One of the first jobs I got in the city was across the Hudson River in New Jersey, and I remember being very stressed out and nervous that if my old clunker of a car broke down in the Holland Tunnel at rush hour and caused a traffic jam that I would effectively be responsible for shutting down the American economy and perhaps causing a market crash! Seriously. I also had the very real fear that the subway tunnels going under the rivers could possibly spring a leak and flood and that I would drown. Walking the streets of Manhattan I remember feeling like a nervous cat, there was so much stimulus, I felt like death or injury was always impending. These feelings passed. I learned quickly that when walking in Manhattan, if you even for a moment lose your sense of purpose and direction, pedestrians began to fall all over you, perhaps cursing you, and you had better quickly find a doorway or a curb to step aside. One has to be considerate in the dense populations. (if only someone would tell London! – ed.) And most importantly when out in the city, one needs to know where the bathrooms are! I think there are about three public toilets in Manhattan, so you have to be somewhat creative, especially if you have no money to buy anything from a shop in order to use their facilities… Mainly I would have loved my grandmother and grandfather (who didn’t have a telephone in their house until the 1990’s) to have lived long enough to visit me in Manhattan: that would have really been something!”

The Hans Chew tour kicks off this week in Sheffield. He’ll be joined on tour by guitarist Dave Cavallo. For a taste of them as a duo check out “Only Son” below.

Wednesday, May 2nd- The Greystones, Sheffield
Thursday, May 3rd- Chapel Arts Centre, Bath
Friday, May 4th- Eden Project Café, St. Austell
Saturday, May 5th- Miss Peapod’s, Penryn
Sunday, May 6th- Crane Lane Theatre, Cork, IRL
Tuesday, May 8th- The Windmill, Brixton
Wednesday, May 9th- The Palmeira, Brighton
Thursday, May 10th- The Bicycle Shop, Norwich
Friday, May 11th- Korks, Otley
Saturday, May 12th – Great Escape Festival, Brighton
Sunday, May 13th- King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow

Within hours of the announcement this week that Levon Helm is in the final stages of his battle with cancer, fans had flooded his Facebook page with messages of love and support for him and his family. His manager Barbara added that “this is about honoring this great man’s dignity and privacy… Keep sending the great posts. I’m going to read them all to him.”

Twelve and half thousand posts later (and counting) – Barbara  gave herself quite a task. But one that only shows how much the man has meant to music fans worldwide, the past five decades.

If you’re in London tomorrow (Friday 20th) come join us at The Betsey Trotwood for a night celebrating the music of The Band, featuring The Dreaming Spires, Harry Oakwood (Millionaire) and DJ Johnny Clash MBE, and raise a glass to the greatest roots rock drummer-vocalist of all time, Levon Helm.

Post script: Levon Helm passed away this afternoon, Thursday April 19th, aged 71.
Rest in peace, good sir. 

The Whispering Pines (Stovepony Records)

For fans of: The Low Anthem, Gene Clark, Luke Doucet, Joni Mitchell, Handsome Family, Golden Smog and Chris Hillman.

When you hear an album that reminds you of your childhood and your dreams, the best film you’ve seen all year, your favourite record of all time, and your first love – that has to be a good day.

The Whispering Pines CD captures so many things I never expected; coming, as it does, from The Lucky Strikes’ Matthew Boulter I imagined something slightly cockier, smarter-cleverer, cheekier. But it’s none of these things … in a good way. The Lucky Strikes, from Southend-on-Sea, are a wildly rocking black-clad 5-piece band doing country/folk imbued with the spirit of The Stones, The Black Keys and Tom Waits. This, albeit a ‘brother from another mother’, is something quite different.

The cover is a clue: it may be the loveliest CD cover I’ve seen in years. Be honest – does anyone look at new release CDs these days and think ‘that’s a beautiful cover’? (Except maybe the Fleet Foxes’). But this one drew me in. I think it’s a woodcut, of a small, solitary farm house on a snow covered hill, the moon exhaling clouds into the pitch black sky above. Don’t you want it already?

From the Western tinged starter ‘Come the Morning’ to the slightly scratchy vinyl-outtake-style finale ‘Gold Ring’, the thirteen tracks seem to roll past very quickly. I don’t know if they were conceived as a unit, but they sure seem to fit together.  Track nine ‘Waiting on You’ is the most beautiful and romantic on the album. The luscious vocal, light banjo and touch of tinkling percussion is a delicate treatment of what could be arranged as a massive orchestral climax to a concert hall performance. Matthew sings beautifully in his lower register, soft and careful – something he presumably reserves for non-Lucky Strikes days. ‘Two Bullets’ retains the drama of his trademark storytelling – with murder, whisky and a sheriff – albeit atop another perfect, sweet and light vocal. Many of the tracks evoke a mood and indefinite place, ready-made for cinema – ‘The Poetry Society’ begs for placement into the next Miranda July or Coen Brothers film. Its surprise ending would be a stand-out moment – if the whole album wasn’t so surprising already.

The Whispering Pines is one of those CDs you have to own. I realised recently that I don’t own a single album of one of my favourite bands, but that’s because there are some acts that you have to see live – it’s an incomparable experience. The Whispering Pines is great live (after seeing Matthew play in London a few weeks ago, I can attest) but even better on CD, where you can experience the full range of instruments (including fiddle, Hammond organ, banjo, pedal steel and dulcimer) and lush vocal arrangements. Get one for yourself, and one for your best friend – they’ll thank you.

The Whispering Pines CD is officially released in May 2012 through Stovepony Records but you can buy it now from Matthew at gigs. The Lucky Strikes play at The Apple Tree in Clerkenwell, London, this Sunday 11 May – with a short Whispering Pines set also expected.  Kick off round 5pm. Be early.

Photo: Kathy Magee

Hurray for the Riff Raff signed to Loose records last March 2011 and toured in the UK last May, you may have caught one of their shows, or heard their live session on Huey Morgan’s radio show on BBC 6 music (he’s a big fan).  If you did, you will not have forgotten Alynda Lee’s rich, emotive, wise-beyond-her-years voice.

Alynda ran away from home in the Bronx aged 17 and hopped freight trains from New York, winding her way down to Louisiana.  Settled in New Orleans, she works with a changing group of musicians.  When she visited the UK last year she was accompanied by Yosi Pearlstein on fiddle. We saw them upstairs at the Queens Head, Islington for the first night of their tour, at the end of the night when Alynda sang about the murder of her friend Sali down in Mexico, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Hurray for the Riff Raff are in the process of recording and releasing their next album ‘Look out Moma’ and have been running a Kickstarter campaign to fund the release in the States.  The album will be released later here in the UK on Loose records. The campaign only runs for 4 more days and to date they have already hit 135% of their target.

Why are we alerting you to this when they’ve already exceeded their target?  Well, as part of their campaign they are offering an exclusive covers album that we would highly recommend you sign up for, you just need to pledge $23.  Go and pledge before you miss your chance, it will not be available anywhere else.

The track listing for the covers album is

1. Delta Momma Blues (Townes Van Zandt)

2. Fine and Mellow (Billie Holiday/Big Bill Broonzy melody)

3. My Morphine (Gillian Welch)

4. Black Jack Davey (Carter Family)

5. Western Cowboy (LeadBelly arranged by Alynda lee Segarra)

6. Jealous Guy (John Lennon)

7. Just A Heart (James Hand)

8. Angel Ballad (Alynda lee Segarra adapted from Gillian Welch Melody)

9. Cuckoo (Alynda lee Segarra)

10. People Talkin’ (Lucinda Williams)

11. River (Joni Mitchell)

12. I’m Goin’ Away (Elizabeth Cotten)

13. Lonesome I Could Cry (Hank Williams Sr.)

14. Needin’ Time (Spiritual Traditional)

We filmed a beautiful session with Alynda Lee and Yosi Pearlstein in a North London kitchen on a particularly rainy May morning.  Here they cover Lucinda William’s ‘People Talkin’ which will be released on the covers album.  You can also see our other films from the same session, performing the title track from their new album Look Out Moma and Slow Walk off their last album.

We’ll alert you when they’re back on tour in the UK, there’s a plan for them to come back this autumn.  In the meantime, enjoy this, and sign up for their covers album.

Juno-nominated, Canadian folk rockers Deep Dark Woods are currently in the UK as part of their first European tour, with two London dates which we would reoommend you to attend, one tonight 21st February at the Lexington, Islington and another tomorrow, south of the river at the Windmill, Brixton with good friends and fans of theirs, The Arlenes in support.

We caught up with them last October in Nashville at the Americana Music Conference and Festival on the night of their album  worldwide release date at 3rd & Lindsley and briefly interviewed lead singer Ryan Boldt, drummer Lucas Goetz and organist Geoff Hilhorst backstage before the show. As with New Country Rehab we had seen them play to a packed crowd at the Basement and been in their thrall along with the rest of the crowd.  Since we last saw them they have continued to gain more accolades, having been nominated for a Juno for Roots and Traditional Album of the Year 2012.

NfMP: How has your experience in Nashville been, have you enjoyed it? Is it your first time at the conference?

Ryan Boldt: Yes, it’s always great, from the BBQs to the live music.  We’ve been here about, say twice before? Something like that. We’ve always had fun, but this is the funnest of all the times, like right now.  We’re having a blast.

You’re here promoting your new album?

Ryan Boldt: Yes, it’s called ‘The Place I Left Behind’, it’s out on the Sugar Hill label, comes out tomorrow 18th October (2011) on worldwide release, it released in Canada about a month and a half ago.

What can you tell us about the album?

Lucas Goetz: It’s our fourth album, we recorded it in Halifax Nova Scotia on the East coast of Canada.  The album was self-produced and was the first time we’ve worked with Geoffrey here, who plays keyboards; the organ and the piano and Mellotron, electric pianos…

Geoff Hilhorst: And grand piano, on that record. It was such a great experience to produce it ourselves.  Yeah, we had a lot of fun.

Ryan Boldt:  It was the start of the hockey season

Geoff Hillhorst: The Leafs were doing good.

Ryan Boldt: And the Oilers won their first game.  It was really great! They lost pretty much every one after that though.

Geoff Hillhorst: So did the Leafs.  It was great, our teams were winning when we were recording the record which plays a role in the fantastic memories we have of that time.

Ryan Boldt: We stayed in a bed & breakfast, the people in the B&B were really nice to us, if a little crazy.

Geoff Hillhorst: In a fun way, not like ‘oh my god I’m afraid to go to sleep’

Lucas Goetz: We were there for about 2 weeks, and recorded the album, and that was that, we all flew back home.

So you self-produced your album?

Geoff Hillhorst:  Yeah all five of us.  We had a great recording engineer Darren Van Niekerk, the studio was called The Sonic Temple.  We happened upon the studio cause we were on the road and we had to record this song for the CBC Song Quest, and had to record it while we were on the road, so our bass player Chris Mason found this studio so we went in, it was such a fantastic room and Darren was just an awesome engineer, willing to go the extra mile in just about every aspect of the process.  So we went back there to record the full length record there because of that. He gave us some great input.

Lucas Goetz: He’s also good at interpreting our ways of describing our ideas, cause we don’t really know how to speak the engineers’ speak.

Geoff Hillhorst: Yeah, we’d just make motions and sounds, like: Woooongh wooongh, you know? Woooongh (laughs) and Darren would say ‘yeah I TOTALLY know what you mean, we’ll do that’.  And then he does it.

Ryan Boldt: It’s kind of like James Brown in the studio, he would do all sorts of things.

Geoff Hillhorst: Hand signals? Yeah, or like Bob Dylan.  He’d rehearse his band super hard and then the band’s all ready to go and then Bob Dylan will throw out a song they never ever played before.  It keeps them on their toes.  I don’t know where I’m going with that…

So who’s the primary song writer?

Lucas Goetz points to Ryan: This guy (Ryan shrugs), and Chris Mason writes some songs too, and our road manager and friend Evan Dunlop wrote a song as well that’s on the album.

How long had you been playing the songs live before you recorded them?

Ryan Boldt: We’d been playing three of them for about 2 years, then learnt three of them just before we went in, maybe played them once or twice on the road.

Geoff Hillhorst: I’m surprised we didn’t do more.  I like it that way though, it’s nice to learn them and then record them. It’s neat how certain songs will change and develop over time as well.  You learn a song in the rehearsal room and you record it and you think it’s good, we recorded a coupla the rehearsals when the songs were brand new from this record and the difference between them then and now is from playing live, rather than going over and over them in a rehearsal situation.  They kind of happen live and it’s pretty cool that way for sure…and then they change up even more in the studio.

Ryan Boldt: And now they’re changing even more on the road.  You always want to kinda change them a little, otherwise it gets too boring.

Your performances are particularly engaging, do you think that crosses over into your recordings?

Ryan Boldt: Recording and playing live, yeah, they’re completely different.  I love recording, cause sometimes, at certain live shows, you can’t sing with emotion cause there’s one person in the audience that just doesn’t care or something, whereas in the studio you can really, you know, sing it really hard if you get the mood right in the room.  It just depends on the live show, when there’s loads of people it’s wicked, awesome.  Like at the Basement the other night!

Geoff Hillhorst: When you have everyone’s attention in the room, when something like that happens, from the musical and the lyrical perspective, the lyrics that Ryan writes you really need to pay attention to the whole dynamic, and if we know that people are doing that and listening to what Ryan is singing about that becomes just as powerful for us as it would for anyone in the audience as well.

Check out our website to find out more about us.  There’s a free single on there from our record, it’s called West Side Street and we’ll be over in the UK in the Spring of 2012, so come see us.

Don’t miss Deep Dark Woods: there are two London dates to choose from so there should be no excuse.

After the 3rd & Lindsley show Ryan came outside, across the street and performed a solo version of Virgina for us from the album.

You can also watch this beautifully filmed version of Two Time Loser, recorded by The Neighbor’s Dog, a channel that lovingly records house gigs in Canada with beautiful production values.  Well worth checking out their channel.

Stay tuned as we’ve also got The Deep Dark Woods in for a special recorded studio session in Reservoir Studios which we’ll be putting up soon.

Photo credit: Crackerfarm

23^rd January 2012

Since the sad departure of Amy Winehouse, Camden Town has been lacking in award winners. But tonight that’s all changed as Cecil Sharp House strikes a folk-coup, attracting last year’s Grammy winners for Best Traditional Folk Act, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, to its historic stage.

With a refreshed line-up following Justin Robinson’s departure, the ‘Drops’ are now a four strong tour de force. And with a repertoire of American tunes that draws from the 30s – the 1830s – through to modern pop, they have a seriously varied archive from which to select the best musical tricks and turns to captivate an audience.

Rhiannon Giddens, founding member and co-host is perhaps their biggest star. A classically trained singer, she turns her chops to blues, cabaret and modern R&B styles. While the funky chart hit, Hit ‘Em Up Style has long been a crowd favourite, a welcome surprise is a Gaelic language lament backed just by calm strokes of cello and a solitary drum, putting any Transatlantic Session to shame.

Her co-host Dom Flemons has a penchant for minstrel style banjo and quirky ragtime songs and blues. Tracks such as Ben Curry’s Boodle De Bum Bum and Charlie Jackson’s You’re Baby Ain’t Sweet Like Mine are veritable rarities. And when he flips his guitar, improvises scat vocals, and frenetically clacks his pair of ‘bones’ (wooden blocks played like the spoons), he can be a one-man spectacle to boot.

But Rhainnon and Dom are at their most fabulous when alongside their new band members, Hubby and Layla. Whether they raise a ruckus through sets of old-time dance tunes like Old Cat Died / Brown’s Dream or Was You Ever in Quebec / Candy Girl, or share more contemplative, mellow numbers like Leaving Eden, the title track of their forthcoming CD, the Chocolate Drops put on an outstanding show. Award-winning in fact. They sure don’t hand out those Grammy’s for nothing.

Katzenjammer were in town last summer to play their first London gig at the Water Rats. We arranged to interview them and in the course of researching for it discovered that some friends from one of our own favourite bands, ahab had toured with them and were also on their way over to the gig. After a few calls to arrange it, we decided to surprise Katzenjammer with our guest interviewer, Cal Adamson, singer, songwriter, 12 string guitarist and bass player with ahab. So we set up for filming and kept Cal hidden away until the right moment.

Norwegian all-girl folk pop band Katzenjammer first started drawing attention in the UK with festival gigs, playing both Glastonbury and Bestival and wooing crowds with their theatrical, energetic and cabaret-like performances. Band members Anne Marit Bergheim, Marianne Sveen, Solveig Heilo and Turid Jørgensen regularly swap instruments on stage and, dressed up in wigs and costumes, look almost cartoon-like. Their music is a mix of pop, folk, Balkan, with some country thrown in. They cite influences ranging from PJ Harvey, Marvin Gaye, Hank WIlliams, Nick Drake, Gillian Welch. Their appeal seems to span musical tastes. even garnering a following from people you would never expect to like them, such are their charms. They’re like next generation Spice Girls who can play their own instruments (25 between them) and have adoring fans young and old (nearly 60,000 on facebook alone) which they foster close connections with, earning them a loyal following.

Make up your own mind what you think of them. Katzenjammer are back in London, playing the Borderline on Monday 6th February, though if the Water Rats gig last summer was anything to go by it will sell out and guarantees to be packed. After this interview the girls went straight on stage minutes later to a room so packed we couldn’t even get in to see the gig. If you can’t make this gig, they’ll be back in March, playing at the Scala.

Watch our full interview or skip to the 13:13 to see them singing acapella. The interview was filmed backstage with a short interruption as the support act came off stage. We’d also recommend watching some of their live performances on YouTube.

If you’d like to see more of Cal Adamson and ahab, they are also now currently on tour (see website) after completing a very successful recent tour supporting Bellowhead. You can also read our full article on them or watch the film we made backstage at the Lexington last year, with Cal causing a ruckus in the green room.

Share:

• More

Like this:

Like

Be the first to like this post.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Hailing from Canada, each of them accomplished session musicians, New Country Rehab are ‘the guys everyone wants in their band, in a band’ (Tom Power | CBC).  They released their debut album last January 2011, carrying a mix of original material and imaginatively reworked covers of Hank Williams (Sr) and Bruce Springsteen.

I came across them in Nashville at the Americana Music Festival in October 2011.  I had missed their first show at the Basement, but the buzz they created on the back of that show meant I wasn’t going to miss the chance to see them play a few days later at the Rutledge.

Filming and interviewing a band on the hoof just before a show can often be a tense experience, finding a location, filming and conducting an interview with a very limited window.  Not with these guys.  Their dynamism and co-operativeness helped produce these films.  Set up outside the Rutledge on the street (with passing traffic thrown in the mix) the first film is a performance especially for us, along with an exclusive interview in the back of their tour bus and a film of their fantastic show-opener, a cover of Springsteen’s State Trooper.

They’re in the UK this week, in Glasgow for Celtic Connections opening for CW Stoneking today, 26th January 2012.  Then playing their first London gig at The Wilmington on Monday 3oth January, free entry.  Make sure you catch them while they’re here.

www.newcountryrehab.com
www.dollartone.com

Chris Peck & The Family Tree, an unsigned ensemble with a rotating cast of musicians, have been building up a loyal following in late 2011, mixing headline gigs with support slots for the likes of Vetiver and Chatham County Line. Tim Cooper (words) and Kathy Magee (film) caught up with them in the sumptuous dressing room at the Lexington, where they invited our friend Angela Gannon to help out on an acoustic rendition of ‘I Walk Alone’. Chris told us about himself and his band and told some  anecdotes about his previous experiences of the music biz.

• When did Chris Peck & The Family Tree get together?

I guess it’s been about a year, though we’ve only been gigging since the spring. The band is mainly built up of mates from school in Essex. When we were 16 we were all in friendly rival bands, competing for the same girls at gigs we’d arrange ourselves..Anyway, we all grew up and everyone has had their own individual experiences in music. The drummer (Chris Higginbottom) was a big player in the NYC jazz scene, the keyboardist (Joe Walters) travelled the world in Stereolab for years and I had my own experience travelling the world in my last band Boy Kill Boy. Half the band I have now was trained in The Royal Academy of Music so I feel pretty honoured to be sharing the stage with them. Most importantly we have all found ourselves together again after all these years, which is why we call it ‘The Family Tree’.The band takes different shapes depending on the night, with a further extended family of musicians who occasionally join in, so every night is different if you’re in the audience… or the band!

• What’s the background to the band?

I got my big break with my last band Boy Kill Boy. It’s all I have focused on since those school bands so when I got my first deal I felt like I had earned it. We were whisked into the most famous studios around the world and basically spent about four years away from home. We sold a bunch of records {debut album Civilian reached no.16 in 2006}, saw a bunch of cities (well, as much as you can between sound check and bus call at 2am) and met a load of amazing people along the way. Driving up to Hollywood parties with Patrick Swayze and his brother; drinking way too much weed tea at Scarlett Johansson’s; and going flying (literally and er, ’literally’) with one of Hawkwind. But when all’s said and done it is just you and your songs. That is the only thing that really matters.

• What happened when Boy Kill Boy split up in 2008?

The rollercoaster ride left me feeling pretty dazed and confused. Suddenly the momentum of the machine around me stopped but my heartbeat was still going like a racehorse. That is a dangerous combination and is usually when people end up in graves. I found myself caught in a manic depressive whirl of booze and other such things that you embrace when you are constantly trying to keep the dream alive. After a while I hit the wall and needed some major support, which I received. Eventually, encouraged by friends, I started writing again and, bit by bit, started to fall in love with music again. And some of these friends joined me to form The Family Tree.

• People must often ask you why you’ve made such a radical switch in style from electric indie to acoustic folk?

I look around me and see how bands shift shape to fit trends around them. Whether it’s the nouveau rockabilly quiff or the electric day-glo colours of the early Acid House scene, all I see around me is bands hanging on to trends by their fingernails, desperate to stay in the game. I ain’t saying that you shouldn’t move with the times, but for me it’s been a more organic journey. I have been enjoying working with tools that sound the same in any room, forest, park or stage. Using instruments that don’t need to be plugged in has been a great way for me to engage purely in the demands of the song, rather than the style that surrounds it. But of course, as soon as I describe the instruments we use, I hear: “Oh, so you’re a folk band?” – so I guess there’s no fucking escape from labels! But the buzz for me is that every gig has a different line-up around a core group of band members, and each set of musicians brings out different qualities in the songs. And that is what it’s all about – the songs.

• Has the subject matter of your songs changed since you switched styles?

When I stand back and look at the songs I’ve written so far, I seem to be in the midst of writing a pretty dark album. ‘I Walk Alone’ is a love song, but it’s also a murder ballad. A conversation between two lovers, one voice from the grave and the other from the conscience of the murderer, who lost control and squeezed the life out of his lover, and in panic buried her in the woods. ‘Run Baby Run’ is a tale of a girl lost in the city, inspired by a friend of mine’s own life story. ‘Riversong’ is an ode to an old friend and an epitaph for a special person who was taken by the river that he and I lived on at the time, while ‘Way to Silence’ is a song of hope… surrounding the theme of suicide. I have written my fair share of songs about relationships, love and loss, and that will always be important stuff to me too. But the main thing for me now is to steer my thoughts away from superficial subject matter and directly address situations that have had a powerful impact on me.

• What does the future hold for Chris Peck & The Family Tree?

We plan to release a single or EP around February or March. I’ve had talks with some very exciting producers regarding an album and I’ll be talking to labels once a decision has been made. For the moment I’m just enjoying the best bit of being in a band – writing, gigging, and getting amongst a thriving music scene in the UK.

 

The line-up filmed here was: Chris Peck (guitar, vocals), Tony Land (mandolin, vocals), Josh Warren (violin), Jonny Hoyle (accordion), Angela Gannon (vocals) and – sitting it out for the acoustic number – Tom Gillet (bass). On other nights, you might expect them to be joined by Chris Higginbottom (drums), Ellen Blythe (viola) and Joe Walters (piano).