KDHX photography highlights: October 23-29

The Pageant’s Monday night dance party that kicked off the last week of October meant one of two things, One: Chromeo was in town with Mayer Hawthorne or Two: Monday is the new Friday. The Smokers Club Tour featuring Curren$y and Method Man kept the early-week party trend rolling and by time the Pageant cleared the haze it was Friday and time for the weekend to really begin with a post-World Series win Southern rock party courtesy of the Drive-By Truckers.

Austin based-trio Ume gave St. Louis a friendly reminder that Texas has exported more than a 2nd place baseball team and rocked the Firebird into a thrash trance. Peter Wolf Crier and Union Tree Review did their Indie thing at Off Broadway and Zion and the Lion Roots Band released their fourth album “Crying for Freedom” at Club Viva. The past week in photos was a busy one and proof that the KDHX photographers taste in music is as eclectic as their style.

To see the full articles and complete photo galleries check out Music News and for the KDHX in-studio experience head to Live Performances. Get it on at KDHX.org

Chromeo

Chromeo at the Pageant. Louis Kwok

Method Man

Method Man at the Pageant. Louis Kwok

Drive-By Truckers

Drive-By Truckers at the Pageant. Nate Burrell

Ume

Ume at the Firebird. Nate Burrell

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Posted by | November 1, 2011 | Music | Comment 

Concert review: Drive-By Truckers and Those Darlins go deep at the Pageant, Friday, October 28

Drive-By Truckers at the Pageant, October 28, 2011

Nate Burrell

Imagine being in a traveling band and staring down the prospect of trying to play a rock show in a town on the night said burg’s baseball team is playing in Game 7 of the World’s Series, at home, no less.

A nightmare scenario to be sure, and it’s what Drive-By Truckers and support act Those Darlins faced last night at the Pageant.

Lesser bands would’ve gotten their manager to reschedule, or just resigned themselves to a shit show and gone through the paces so they could get back on the bus and put that town behind them but quick. But Drive By Truckers hunkered down, got a lay of the land, adjusted their sights a bit and then opened up with both barrels.

The band pushed back its set to 10:30 p.m., a likely time for Game 7 to end, giving a full hour after Those Darlins’ set for fans to watch the game on several TVs and a giant movie screen hanging over the stage before DBTs took the stage. Luckily for them, there wasn’t a repeat of Game 6 extra-innings shenanigans, the Cards won right on time and the rock commenced in a timely fashion.

The DBTs’ setlist was a bit of a puzzle. The band was a full seven songs in before they played a track from their latest record, “Go-Go Boots” — the desperate, atmospheric “Used To Be A Cop.” Earlier this week it was announced that singer/guitarist Patterson Hood’s great uncle, George A. Johnson, who figured prominently in several DBTs songs, like “Sands of Iwo Jima,” passed away, yet there was nary a mention of this from onstage, and none of those songs were played. (Though Patterson did perform “Sands,” live in the KDHX studios, earlier on Friday.)

But everyone grieves differently. Maybe it was too soon to play those tunes live again, and when you have a back catalog of work that rivals Ryan Adams for sheer heft, you have to make some cuts. And while I might question their song choices, I can’t fault the execution.

The band got progressively louder and looser as the night progressed, and they focused more on their heavier songs, stomping rockers like “Lookout Mountain,” “Where the Devil Don’t Stay,” “Uncle Frank” and “Sinkhole,” than on some of the rambling, Southern gothic story-songs they do oh so well. Hood’s partner in crime, singer/guitarist Mike Cooley, was on fire both vocally and instrumentally. His careening version of “Shut Up and Get on the Plane” from the “Southern Rock Opera” album during the encore was a real highlight.

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Posted by | October 29, 2011 | Concerts | Comment 

The top 10 Drive-By Truckers songs (so far)

facebook.com/drivebytruckers

If you’ve listened to my show, Bittersweet Melody, you know that Drive-by Truckers are one of my favorite bands. No one band represents the South in today’s rock world more than Drive-by Truckers.

The band, most of whom were raised in Alabama, have released nine studio albums over their 15 year history (not including a collection of B-sides). They’ll be in town at the Pageant this Friday, October 28. Here I rank my 10 favorite Drive-by Trucker songs. Hope you enjoy it, y’all.

10. “Lookout Mountain” – “The Dirty South” (2004)

A staple of the Truckers live show for years, this song finally made it to vinyl on the third album of the Truckers’ Southern trilogy. An incendiary live song. Let this song wash over you at the show this Friday.

9. “Decoration Day” – “Decoration Day” (2003)

Jason Isbell was in the Drive-by Truckers for only three albums. Despite the fact he was limited to no more than three songs on each album, he made them count. “Decoration Day” is a tour de force of family pride and Southern feuds. Think the legend of the Hatfields & McCoys in a song.

8. “Where the Devil Don’t Stay” – “The Dirty South” (2004)

The songwriting tandem of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley make up the majority of the Trucker’s songs over their run. And I make no apologies for my love of Mike Cooley, a born story teller with a knack for brilliant wordplay. From the opening bass drum this powerful song about a son gleaning knowledge from his moonshining Dad in the Prohibition-era South melts faces. With lyrics like “Daddy tell me another story … tell me why the ones who have so much make the ones who don’t go mad,” one can’t help but hope to hear an answer.

7. “The Righteous Path” – “Brighter Than Creation’s Dark” (2008)

A Patterson Hood original. Released in January 2008, eight months before the hard fall of the financial system and the beginning of the recession, lines like “More bills than money, I can do the math / I’m trying to keep focused on the righteous path” and “We’re trying the best we can to keep keeping on / We got messed up minds for these messed up times / And it’s a thin thin line separating his from mine,” one can’t help but wonder if Patterson knew something the rest of us didn’t.

6. “Women Without Whiskey” – “Southern Rock Opera” (2001)

From their third album, a double-album that opened the door to the Trucker’s success and quite possibly my favorite album of the ’00s, comes this Mike Cooley song. Describing an alcoholic who knows it and doesn’t plan to stop drinking any time soon, a great rock song emerges.

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Posted by | October 27, 2011 | Music | 3 Comments 

‘Always in pursuit of that elusive great song’ An interview with Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers

Patterson Hood

facebook.com/pattersonhood

For the past 15 years Drive-By Truckers have stayed extremely busy. The Athens, Ga. based group has released nearly an album a year, toured to support their output and served as the backing band for other luminary musicians like Booker T. Jones and Bettye LaVette. All the while Patterson Hood, guitarist and main songwriter, has been at the center of it all.

Recently, I got the chance to ask Hood some questions via e-mail, in advance of the Drive-By Truckers appearance at the Pageant on October 28. Hood and I discussed his recent hand injury, the plusses and minuses of live shows and getting a chance to slow down a bit over the next year. Here’s what the prolific writer had to say.

Scott Allen: First, an update on your breaking news in late August: You wrote on the Truckers’ website that you had fallen at your daughter’s school with a glass water bottle in your hand. The bottle shattered upon impact, shards of glass embedded into your left hand, which is a guitarist’s bread and butter. How is your hand healing?

Patterson Hood: Thanks for asking. It’s healing up, slowly but surely. I’m going to physical therapy twice a week when I’m home and working on it on the road. They actually said all the guitar playing helps. I didn’t cut any of the tendons but got really lucky as I cut all around them and had some deep muscle and nerve damage. Then I got some kind of staph infection which really sucked ass, but I’m on the backside of that now. The September tour was miserable but it doesn’t really hurt to play anymore, and my playing is getting back to normal slowly but surely. My goal is to play better than before when it’s over.
 
The band has been on the road a lot this year and just started a fall tour on October 20 in Cincinnati. While the road can be rewarding it must be a grueling life at times. Do you find it hard to leave your family?

Being a way from my family is by far the hardest thing about my job (except for playing when sick or injured, which sucks, but thankfully doesn’t happen too often). I miss my family, but I try my best to make it up when I’m home by being really active in their lives. I’m a pretty sweet Daddy. 

Where’s the worst food? Are there venues that you play where you say to yourself “Oh no, not this place again?”

We try to eat pretty well on the road, but sometimes you hit those towns where there just isn’t anywhere that doesn’t suck. We usually eat pretty well in STL. Likewise, we don’t play many bad venues anymore. Lord knows we have in the past, but if it sucks we usually don’t go back. We always enjoy playing the Pageant.
 
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Posted by | October 25, 2011 | Interviews, Music | Comment 

Concert review: Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit blow through the Old Rock House like a hurricane, Tuesday, May 31

Jason Isbell at the Old Rock House

Kate McDaniel

On the opening track “Alabama Pines” from his new album Jason Isbell laments, “No one gives a damn about the things I give a damn about.” The faithful that came out to see the impressive 32-year-old Alabama songwriter certainly did give a damn.

Opener Maria Taylor, one half of the duo Azure Ray, also brought her seemingly made for television sound to the Old Rock House stage. The Birmingham native presented a nine-song set lasting 45 minutes that elicited approval from the Isbell fan base. Bringing along her sister on drums/backing vocals and brother on bass guitar, Taylor’s sound was rounded out with great leads from 400 Unit guitarist Browan Lollar. The 35-year-old songwriter with three solo records and multiple appearances on Bright Eyes’ albums mentioned before playing a new song that it was “written about someone being 35 and acting like you’re 20.” Coincidentally, her diary-like songwriting and mousy stage presence mirrored the remark which seemed a bit young for her.

With flashes of brilliance and a strong acumen for classic rock, Muscle Shoals-based Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit delivered a solid performance to the sweaty St. Louis audience of 25-45 year-olds. Mixing in new songs from his recent album Here We Rest with songs written while still a member of the Drive-By Truckers and sprinkling in classic and obscure cover songs, Isbell played an hour and a half set of soulful Southern rock to a crowd that only filled about a third of the venue.

Starting with a couple of songs from the new album, Isbell warmed up with his Gibson hollow body guitar playing “Go It Alone” and “Tour of Duty,” then took swigs from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s before pulling out the dirty, gritty full-on rock sound of “Try.” Having performed the song live for a few years now, the quintet locked in as Isbell and guitarist Browan Lollar traded shredding rock solos and drummer Chad Gamble thoroughly abused his drum set bringing greater power to the live sound. Taking it back down a notch, the band moved to one of the strongest tracks from the new record, the album opener, “Alabama Pines,” before transitioning into the first covers portion of the set.

Two tracks written during Isbell’s tenure in the Drive-By Truckers (“Goddamn Lonely Love” and “Outfit”) book-ended the middle of the set highlighted by two choice cover songs. First up, the lead single from the new album, a cover of Candi Staton’s 1970 R&B dance floor-filler, “Heart on a String.” Isbell said from the microphone that while he didn’t feel that their version stood up to the original that he was paying homage to a track recorded at the now famous Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals. Let’s just say if a horn section was in the tour budget it would have killed. Isbell then introduced drummer Chad Gamble and the band tore into a cover of The Meters’ 1974 single, “Hey Pocky Way.” Gamble laid down a loose, funky rhythm and Isbell further highlighted the song adding a superb slide guitar solo.

Using the Drive-By Truckers song to segue back into his solo material, Isbell played the Here We Rest standout track “Codeine” followed by “Cigarettes and Wine.” Handing over the microphone to guitarist Lollar, the band paid homage to ’70s New York icons the Talking Heads with a cover of “Psycho Killer,” a song that’s worked its way into many live sets. Appropriately timed for the recent Memorial Day holiday, a moving version of the slow burning title track from the now classic Drive-By Truckers album Decoration Day had the crowd singing along ending the set on a one-two punch.

After the main set the band made the awkward stroll through the audience to an off-stage area. Clapping and chanting, the audience called for an encore, but sustaining their desire for more music seemed difficult. Isbell and his band finally emerged during a lull in the shouting. Arriving to his cache of guitars, Isbell chose his gold-top Duesenberg that he hadn’t played all evening and cranked up the volume on his Sommatone combo amp ripping into the opening chords of the Neil Young song, “Like A Hurricane.” With a closer that any classic rock radio fan would have appreciated, Isbell demonstrated his musical roots and songwriter reverence all in one choice.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit set list

Go It Alone
Tour of Duty
Try
Alabama Pines
Goddamn Lonely Love (Drive-By Truckers)
Heart on a String (Candi Staton cover)
Hey Pocky Way (The Meters cover) (Chad Gamble lead vocal)
Outfit (Drive-By Truckers)
The Magician
Codeine
Cigarettes & Wine
Stopping By
Psycho Killer (Talking Heads cover) (guitar player sings)
Decoration Day (Drive By Truckers)

Encore
Like A Hurricane (Neil Young cover)

Posted by | June 1, 2011 | Concerts | Comment 

“So many degrees between success and failure”: An interview with Jason Isbell on recording, touring and life after Drive-By Truckers

Jason Isbell by Kate McDaniel

Kate McDaniel

I haven’t spent time in Northern Alabama, but I feel like I know the place like the back of my hand. I could probably guide someone from Huntsville due west to Muscle Shoals, to Sheffield, then up north to Florence. These towns and highways are familiar because Jason Isbell has been painting pictures of the area over the last ten years with Drive-By Truckers and his current project, Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit. I recently caught up with Isbell while he was home in Sheffield, in between tours.

Michael Dauphin: On [the new album] Here We Rest, it seems like there’s a certain sense of ease, musically, in the songs; even the ones that are about heavy subjects.

Jason Isbell: I think a lot of that has to do with this band — us being a solid group for a couple years prior to recording this. The last record we did we had a drummer named Matt Pence (Centro-Matic), who didn’t tour with us, but he played on the record and mixed the record. And he’s great. It was an honor to play with him and he’s one of my favorite drummers. But after that record was finished, we hired Chad [Gamble] who’s our drummer now. This is the first record we made with him on it. I feel like that added a real consistency to the band, and it made things a lot more comfortable for us playing-wise.

You recorded this one at the legendary FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala. and the NuttHouse over in Sheffield. Were you able to capture certain vibes and sounds in one studio that you couldn’t necessarily find in the other?

Yeah, they were a little bit different. The NuttHouse is run by a guy named Jimmy Nutt, who used to work at FAME, and he worked on some Truckers stuff, and my first solo album. He’s very easy to get along with and he has a really nice studio… And I can tell you right now it’s right across the street from my apartment. [Laughing].

And FAME had recently hired an engineer named Tom Swift, who has won a few Grammys and used to work at the Record Plant in New York. So we decided to do half the record at each studio and got both engineers to work on almost the whole project. It was a little bit more expensive to have two top quality engineers, but we did the producing ourselves so we saved a little bit there.

It gave us an opportunity figure out which things worked better at each place. FAME has this big, old console that sounds really great. And the NuttHouse has a really good layout. It has this old bank vault you can use for isolation so the sound doesn’t bleed out. The building was originally a bank.

Well, I guess, if you can’t feel comfortable at a space right across the street, you may have other issues.

You’re right. You’d have neighbor issues.

Even though you’re three albums into your solo career, do you feel like you and the band are still finding your way around a bit?

I think you are always learning. I’m hoping I won’t hit a peak anytime soon though. I know it happens to a lot of folks. Sometimes they quit drinking, sometimes they get successful, or maybe they start a family. It can happen to a lot of my favorite songwriters. They just don’t have the time to write or that attention to detail they once had. I’d hate to know that this is as good it gets in terms of success for the band or my songwriting.

What do you find more intimidating: success or failure?

That’s a good question. There are so many degrees between success and failure. I really don’t know how to define either one. I think the only time you really fail is if you completely immerse yourself into the workforce and quit making music. And the only way to really succeed is to be happy. I’m pretty happy right now. I’ve gone almost 10 years now without having to have a regular job. I’m really pleased with that.

People will walk up to me drunk on the street and be like, “You know, one day it’s all gonna happen for you.” I usually thank them most of the time, but in the back of my mind, I’m just happy about making a living out of music for the last 10 years.

Over the last 10 or so years, are there certain contemporaries around the scene that you tend to align yourself with in terms of how to approach this business? Not so much musical influences, but guideposts?

Yeah, I think so. When I started playing here in Muscle Shoals I got a lot from the session players and the older guys. Some were just playing cover bands and some were famous, at least in music circles, from the work they done in the ’60s and the ’70s. That was a great thing. It really opened my mind to a lot of things. But once I started touring, I started to meet some really amazing people.

But most of my close friends actually live somewhere else. Justin [Townes] Earle. I’m really close with all the Centro-Matic guys — known for almost ten years now. Slobberbone and the Drams, we’ve been close for years. And Will Hoge… It just happens with folks that you tour with. You take certain stories away and you see how people live. And you see what works and what doesn’t.

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Posted by | April 13, 2011 | Interviews, Music | Comment 

Concert photos: Paste Tour, Part 2: Langhorne Slim and Jason Isbell at Off Broadway, Friday, October 15

All photos by Kate McDaniel. See more at my Flickr stream.

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Posted by | October 16, 2010 | Concerts, Photos | Comment 

Concert review: Paste Tour plasters Off Broadway with Langhorne Slim and Jason Isbell, Friday, October 15

Jason Isbell at Off Broadway

Photo by Kate McDaniel

When Paste shuttered its print division back in September, the first question on everyone’s mind was: What’s Paste?

OK, not everyone. At the very least the 250 plus folks in attendance at Off Broadway last night knew that Paste was a magazine that covered – and often covered well – the music they listened to when they didn’t feel like torturing their parents, or their kids, as the demographic waned into the responsible years. The magazine was indiecentric enough to emblazon a cover with the question, “Is indie rock dead?” and savvy enough to tap into a white, urban, educated demographic that should have sustained its advertisers over a longer haul.

It didn’t. The question should have been: “What’s the post-dead tree plan?”

The Paste Tour — featuring openers Mimicking Birds and Jesse Sykes and Phil Wandscher, and dual headliners Langhorne Slim and Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit – survived the print publication’s collapse, and rolled on, with hardly any nostalgia for the good old days of indie culture. At Off Broadway, I missed Mimicking Birds and caught only the last 4 songs of Syke’s set. She was in fine, sweetly rasped voice and Wandscher’s guitar work was lovely and atmospheric. Still, I would have counseled against playing sitting down to a room full of PBR tall boys and girls who had come for the rock. The chatter was deafening.

Slim and his 3-piece band, including stand-up bass, drums and a piano player who filled out the sound wonderfully, jumped and bumped and twirled through Slim’s catalogue, with what’s becoming his signature blend of rockabilly, Dylanesque electric blues, and barrio troubadour lyricism. He jumped to the floor at the second song and played not to the hardcore fans at the stage apron, but gestured to the back and the balcony to join in the clap-alongs. When his songs are good – “Rebel Side of Heaven” and “Colette” — the performance was great. When the material sags into unrevised internal romantic monologues, things got a bit repetitious.

But all in all, a strong, well-paced, 45-minute set.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit — now a 4 piece with just keyboards, bass, drums and Isbell’s accomplished electric guitar work – chose “Never Gonna Change” as an opener, hurling themselves into it like they’d never played it before, even though it’s one of Isbell’s best known Drive-By Trucker-era composition. That song set the tone, even as the crowd thinned out just enough for comfort’s sake.

I’ve seen Isbell solo some half dozen times now, and this, along with the band’s performance at Twangfest 13, was one of the best, loud but not deafening, building and building, great song upon great song, with a good cover (false start and all) of “Dock of the Bay,” a devastating “Dress Blues” and a gale-force “Decoration Day.” These are goddamn serious songs, matters of life and death, and there’s something strange about a room full of hammered people raising their beers and singing along to every syllable. Something strange but also moving. No one in the room has walked the scorched earth Isbell knows and renders so well, but everyone in the room can feel it and revel in the power of his images and lean, mean Southern rock.

Isbell gave us 2 new songs; both hinted at how good the next record may be (due out early next year he said), and closed with a meticulous and joyous cover of Tom Petty’s “American Girl” and 2 encores: “Chicago Promenade” and “Danko/Manuel.” It was a long, strong, satisfying set. The band’s bottle of Jack Daniels was appropriately drained.

Posted by | October 16, 2010 | Concerts | Comment 

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