About halfway into his album Other Side, the debut effort from Indiana singer/songwriter and guitarist Pete Calacci, there’s a song called “Headed for the Stars.”
The cut is a big, fat, radio-friendly and familiar-sounding original piece of rock and roll – – effectively channeling a Tom Sholz-like guitar and the sound of late ’70s-era Boston. Who would have guessed this sonic homage to a nearly 40-year-old self-recorded iconic rock album would come out of Indiana?
Other Side‘s soundscape is both a product of how Calacci – – a carpenter who works at the BP Refinery in Whiting during the day – – recorded the album and played a lengthy musical stint in an Indianapolis cover band. This solo work was created in his apartment, and he played all the instruments – – other than a couple background vocals and a keyboard – – and mixed it himself.
Far from a lo-fi, sounds-like-he-used-a-boombox effort, the record is clean and loud and full of hooks and riffs that surface by surprise.
I hear Paul McCartney and Wings, some Beach Boys and Beatles harmonies. The pop of Matthew Sweet and Marshall Crenshaw. I hear The Band. I like what I hear. And this record sounds good loud.
Calacci spent his early twenties living on the Southside of Indy, playing in a band called Stage One at clubs like The Backstage, Bentley’s and The Vogue, so he came by his ’70s and ’80s influences honestly.
The Other Side is an album whose music hits harder than the lyrics, and Calacci uses his guitar to give the heart of the record a loud, electric, amped-up sound that never really goes away.
The opening “Cold Hearted Woman” rocks like The Cars and Matthew Sweet – – a power pop confection that enters into Tom Petty‘s neighborhood. But the record never strays far from its essence – – a full-on, “let’s-rock” guitar album.
Calacci’s voice sits just atop the guitar on most songs, aching and arching just enough to allow genuine and welcome cracks as he both reaches during the rockers and guides the ballads. An acoustic guitar and his own harmony (and double-tracked) vocals give the punchy electric guitar a pairing to nicely enable a marriage of power chords with ragged vocal sweetness.
“Secret” has an underlying gentleness swathed in a pair of pop/rock dueling guitars.
“Fear” echoes a soaring “Behind Blue Eyes” – era The Who.
Calacci’s acoustic duo bandmate Kelly Skaggs sings on “Carpe Diem” and “Want Me Too.”
This is an album that demands its loudness. Think about driving down the road in an old Buick Skylark with the cassette player turned up as loud as the damn Sparkomatic would go. That’s the sound of this album, guided by Calacci’s electric guitar playing, and his ability to create one of the fullest, play-it-loud rock albums of the new year – – by himself.
Hear “Headed for the Stars”
album reviews/previews
Album Review: Shelby County Sinners – "6"
On their new EP, 6, Indianapolis’ The Shelby County Sinners have thrown down their best recorded effort yet; a taste of Hoosier rock filtered through key 60’s and 70’s folk-rock influences. It is rock and roll hillbilly country music, with lyrics that raise the stakes for the band. Is this their peak, or is there more (and better) to come?
Eric Grimmett’s guitar jump out, song after song. Singer Shelby Kelley finds the pocket for his nimble, twangy voice, and has written a batch of songs that sound good with the band’s minimalist approach. Mo Foster powers the songs with a forceful-yet-economic stand-up bass groove.
No song is very long, trading length for impact, paying homage to influences without losing creative spark.
“21st Century Bail Out Blues” opens the EP with Kelley spitting out Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisted-style lyrics. A righteous electric guitar appears early, with barbed wire lines and a solo proves to be a harbinger of the sound and strength it will bring to the album. The small but cracking band delivers – think Johnny Cash and The Tennessee Three in 2012.
The EP, smartly recorded (live, according to Kelley) at Pop Machine with Eric Klee Johnson, is punchy and full. It plays without too many tricks (other than some megaphone vocal effects) and nicely straddles a line between backwoods party and studio gem.
The two standout cuts on the album show up near the back of the set. “Down the Road” splashes Springsteen-esque harmonica while a pretty and gutsy Kelley vocal pushes the tune into anthemic territory. Once of the most accessible cuts on the record, it’s instantly likable and lovingly played throughout, all the way to a sweetly abrupt ending.
“Hey Old Man” feels like a old Byrds tune, recreated by a country rock band from Indiana, and radio ready for a WTTS spin. A great surprise appears when the band rips into the opening lines of Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light”, near the end, perfectly placed and terrifically poignant.
“East Side” continues a rockabilly slant, with a hint of Todd Snider.
“Wuntz” (as in “wuntz I loved you) is classic corn country (written by Foster) with a smiling, tongue-sorta-in-cheek gang-sing about lost love set to a southern-drawling vocal. A line about getting out of prison appears at one point, proving that the circle remains unbroken when it comes to sturdy country music cliches.
“Say Baby” bookends the record with another Dylan-style blues number. The band works a dirty guitar to great effect, with shouts of “blows your mind baby” neatly wrapping up a cohesive little album of Hoosier rock and twang.
Kelley emailed me and said they were working on a full-length release for 2013. If they build on what is contained in 6, the rockabilly bar band may find themselves with a bunch more of critics as fans, and music fans as friends.
Album Review: Grace Potter and the Nocturnals – "The Lion The Beast The Beat"
Nearly two minutes into the title cut of their new The Lion The Beast The Beat album, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals break into Who-like power chords and drop in a disco-like backbeat (“can’t stop the beat”). It becomes a huge sound, with a reaching-for-an-anthem quality – like Heart or Pat Benatar might do in their prime.
The new album is less of the blues, and more a full body leap into radio-friendly, pop music, with disco-like thumps and sweeping choruses. Yet it is still a record that rocks and can move listeners within the big sounds and lyrical turns, especially effective when Potter bares her emotions, mixing her strong female worldview with little girl hurt.
The Lion The Beast The Beat will either be a breakthrough album, or a overreaching stumble along the career path.
There’s no doubting Potter’s majestic voice – whether a whisper or a shout, hers is one of the great sounds in rock.
While her 2010 self-titled album featured Grace and the band in a black and white cover photo, the new record’s art is more art, less grit. And that’s the sound of the music, especially compared to the pretty-and- loose outing the last record.
“Never Go Back” dives into programmed beats and loops, with Potter’s voice rescuing the piece with her cooing, razor-edged vocals.
“Stars” is a beautiful, acoustic–based tune of redemption, with gorgeous piano and soaring vocals. It appears twice, the second time as a bonus track duet with Kenny Chesney.
“One Heart Missing” is a winner, taking a U2 arena rock trajectory to hurt and love.
“Parachute Heart” echoes Fleetwood Mac, sounding much like Nicks and Buckingham, circa Rumors.
Is this latest release a grasp at finding a more wide-ranging fanbase, or will it alienate her current fans? Hard to say, because her voice is still something marvelous in rock and roll. In the end, music is always redeemed in the live performance, and Potter and her band are a great live band.
“Turntable” bites like the Potter of old, with an urgent guitar strapped to a disco beat.
The album is a pot of new sounds with a whiplash personality, breaking a blues and rock stereotype that may have existed with the band’s listeners.
Producer Jim Scott, best known as a go-to engineer and mixer for bands wanting an earthy, homegrown but polished sound (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Wilco, the Tedeschi Trucks Band), helms the majority of the record. The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach produced and co-wrote the track “Loneliest Soul”, “Never Go Back” (the first single) and “Runaway”, bring that band’s sound to Potter.
Looking universal truths, the lyrics are sometimes buried by more musical weight the songs can shoulder. Much of the record feels like it is trying to make a “grand statement”; simplicity lost in the chase for a bigger sound.
Still, it is a record that blossoms through repeated listens, softening the new layered sound we get from the guitar-drums-and-keys rockers.
Potter closes the album with a duet with Willie Nelson on her song “Ragged Company”, originally from her 2005 Nothing But Water album. The majesty of the song and the brilliance of Willie lend gravity to the music and the pairing serves as reminder that as Grace Potter and The Nocturnals are growing, they can do it without forgetting a simpler past.
Indiana Music: Bill Wilson – Album Reissue – "Ever Changing Minstrel"
One night in February, 1973, Indiana folk rock legend Bill Wilson was a 25 year-old musician looking for a break. So he drove to Nashville and knocked on the kitchen door of producer Bob Johnston, the guy who had produced Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde albums, and Johnny Cash’s at Folsom Prison and I Walk the Line records
What happened after that is murky, beautiful and puzzling.
According to the liner notes of Wilson’s debut album, Johnston answered the door to find Wilson standing there, saying “I’m Bill Wilson and I want to make a record.”
“Well, you came to the wrong house,” Johnson answered. “You can’t just show up and make a fucking record.”
“Will you listen to one song?” asked Wilson.
“One song,” said Johnston.
A Vietnam vet who hung around in the Austin scene, Wilson’s spark must have been evident to Johnston, because the producer let the singer in, allowed him to play, and as legend has it – there are no official notes that confirm it – rounded up many of the guys who played on Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde to record Ever Changing Minstrel in one night.
The remastered (from the original tapes) album is now reissued by Tompkins Square with rare photographs, notes by reissue producer and Tompkins Square label owner Josh Rosenthal. “I bought the original album for a quarter at a record store in Berkeley, California in January 2012,” Rosenthal says. “I had never seen it before. I worked at Sony for 15 years, and thought I knew the catalog pretty thoroughly. I loved it and worked out a license with Sony We’ve almost sold through our first press. We can probably sell a few thousand around the world,” Rosenthal says.
Originally released on Windfall Records (an major imprint of CBS/Columbia at the time) in 1973, the tracks laid down are a time capsule of the Nashville-Dylan hybrid of folk rock from the early 1970s Folk rock framed by piano, filled with airy drums, kept gritty with some surprisingly dirty guitar lines and, just because that’s what was happening at the time, includes Elvis-inspired gospel backup vocals. Lyric-driven ballads backed by session pros and swampy, Memphis-like singer/songwriter soul cuts; the sound of Dylan, Jerry Jeff Walker and Joe South.
As it happened, Columbia Records was changing management when the record came out and Wilson, the singer-songwriter from Indiana, suddenly wasn’t a priority. The record faded away. It doesn’t make the record any less thrilling. Instead, there a mystical quality to the music. How does this fall through the cracks? And how many other talented musicians suffered the same circumstances?
“Rainy Day Resolution” talks of “singing this song of freedom,”, and “Pay Day Giveway” is highlighted by Clapton-esque guitar lines and rolling blasts of words that give the verses a “Blinded By The Light” feel.
It’s a revealing glimpse of the early, fire-is-burning Wilson, who still holds a legendary place among the cult of Hoosier folk rock affecianados. A Central Indiana influence for 20 years of songwriters, he spent more time playing clubs, coffee houses and lounges than he did pursuing another record deal. He struck one more time as a songwriter, co-writing “Sultans of Swing” for Dire Straits. He later told an audience that he bought a truck with the money he made off the song after it became a hit.
“To Rebecca” is a beautiful slow build slice of acoustic guitars, while one of the best cuts is “Father Let Your Light Shine Down, straight out of the Saturday night gospel barns; inspirational church music cut from the musical cloth o”f south. “Following My Lord” carries forward the subtle theme of looking for faith that rides through the record.
The title cut sounds like it could have come the same hazy dawn that inspired Kristofferson to write “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down.” The set’s closer, “Monday Morning Strangers,” pulls out a “sleepy sidewalk pushes on” line that furthers that connection, with the loniliness of Sunday replaced by a “whenever Monday morning rolls around.” Added bonus: the track contains one of the juiciest Allman Brothers-like guitar solos unearthed in a long time.
After the debut, Wilson went on to record more independent albums, including Made in the USA (1982) and Talking to Stars (1977). His final album, Traction in the Rain, came out a year before his death. “Indianasong” from that album revealed how good Wilson was at what he did, all those years later. He had grown into a John Prine-like performer, and that genius is part of what makes this reissue sweet and beautiful and sad. He was really good.
A massive heart attack claimed Wilson’s life in November of 1993, while he was in Nashville visiting a friend.
Website: Bill Wilson tribute site
Website: Tompkins Square record label
Interview: Bob Johnston interviewed about Bill Wilson and the recording of the album – Nashville Scene – September , 2012
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Interview: Indiana guitarist (John Prine) and singer/songwriter Jason Wilber and WFHB radio’s (Bloomington) Program Director Jim Manion talk about Bill Wilson – from Wilber’s “In Search of a Song” interview series/sho
Indiana Album review – Owen Thomas – "Languages"
With his first solo album, Owen Thomas will not escape comparisons to his former group, The Elms, the Indiana rock and roll band that disbanded nearly two years ago on the heels of their best album, The Great American Midrange
Owen Thomas’ new album Languages {Or: Get Dark & Find Yourself.}, the rocker has written a damn good set of songs about rejection and fortitude. Thomas clearly hasn’t run from the band’s sound.
Instead, he has created a more lyrically introspective record and allows two of his former bandmates – guitarist Thom Daugherty and Thomas’ brother Chris on drums – to give the set a familiar, though updated, sound.
And he wraps his words in music that is hook-filled, heartland power pop. He has crafted a record that takes a strong lyrical step into the potentially slicker space of pop music without losing the crunch and earthiness of the Elms.
The heartland combination of music and lyrics makes for one of the very best albums – national or local – of the 2012. “Houdini” opens the set an understated vocal amidst churning guitars and gospel-pop chord changes, finally giving way to Thomas’ “Philadelphia Freedom” shouts of “Yes I do” by song’s end.
“I Don’t Miss Carin'” may be the best cut on the record; a great groove that belies a bittersweet message to a former love. Daugherty’s guitar slides in and out with hard-strummed chords, and he adds a sweet and dirty little solo to Thomas’ vocal “whoo-whoo’s”.
Soul-based pop from an Indiana guy? “I Might Be a Ghost!” lets Thomas use his supple voice to turn the tune into a midtempo hip shaker.
It’s a tightly produced record, though thumping drums and a healthy slice of guitar seep their way into the mix, dare we say, perfectly. Daugherty and Thomas are a potent combination of vision, feel and execution. Gloss and raunch. Shine and grease. Neither player solely one or the other. The two former bandmates still work well together, sharing bits of beauty and midwest rock grit.
“I Am High Above You” glides along and slowly, and subtly turns into a pulsating little rocker. “What You Say and What You Do” brings memories of The Cars with some 1950’s doo-wop-ish chord changes.
One addition to recording canon here is the use of loops to give the album a contemporary feel. Much like Springsteen crafted his recent Wrecking Ball album around pieces of music and beats, looped together and overlayed with the trademark Boss sounds, Thomas travels a similar-sounding road. He shows chops as a rock singer in the Jagger tradition of sass and smart, and lets his guitarist and drummer push the energy level higher. Smartly done.
“Who Knows” closes the album with a nod to the old sound of The Elms. The song’s line “Who knows where the road is going” is as good of a theme as any to describe the new album. The record – and life – is a search for truth and resiliency when both facts and emotion intrude. As the closer provides a neat reminder of how good The Elms were as a band, the song also gives power to the new sounds on this record; the words and music of the entire album. It helps prove just how good the music is that Thomas is now making on his own.
Album Review: Dane Clark – "Postcards from the Hard Road"
Dane Clark
Postcards From the Hard Road
Self-released
Make no mistake, there is a sound of Indiana. A Mellencamp-influenced sound, and any Hoosier musician around long enough to have played during 1980s heartland rock heydey must find the stuff thick in their veins.
For Dane Clark, who has worked as John Mellencamp‘s drummer for the past 16 years, his new album Postcards from the Hard Road brings together many branches from that Indiana heartland rock tree, through direct ties to Mellencamp (current bandmembers), or by way of Larry Crane, John’s guitar player throughout the 1980s. Twenty years ago, Clark played drums in Crane’s band when the guitar player first split with his former boss.
When Jennie DeVoe joins in on “I Wouldn’t Be Me Without U,” it is the magic of two seasoned Americana performers having fun. “Sweet Temptation ” cuts through with lyrics about opportunities to stray, matched to a blues-rock sound. “Waylon and Willie” is a Steve Earle/Joe Ely redux. The mid-tempo “Down in the Goldmine” – – with Clark working on the downbeat, beautifully dragging the snare just behind the vocals – recreates the Waylon vibe.