Highlight of the music weekend: Dave Grohl’s new movie Sound City debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and he had a concert featuring Rick Springfield, John Fogerty, Stevie Nicks and more…but it sounds like Springfield stole the show… (VIDEO BELOW) from Movieline review: Rick Springfield’s set resonated even more with Sundancers judging from how violently their dancing and jumping shook the club’s floor. It was an extended moment of pure rock bliss in which all the labels that get applied to music in terms of what’s cool (Foo Fighters) and what’s not (Rick Springfield) fell away and infectious, enduring pop music was celebrated for its essence. Grohl introduced the former General Hospital actor as “the one, the only, fucking Rick Springfield,” and the band played together on a number of the former pop star’s 1980s radio hits, “I’ve Done Everything For You,” “Love Is Alright Tonite” and “Jessie’s Girl.” And watching the beatific look on punk pioneer-turned-Foo-Fighter Pat Smear’s face as he played along to these Top 40 hits was indisputable proof that a good song is a good song.
As Grohl said archly between songs: “You’ve cracked the code, Rick Springfield. You’ve figured out how to write the perfect song. Goddamn you.”
Meanwhile, Springfield rose to the occasion of playing with one of the most balls-out rock bands in show business. In Sound City, he reveals somewhat sheepishly that Pat Benatar’s husband Neil Giraldo was pulled into the recording studio to lay down the famous guitar riff to “Jessie’s Girl” because the song’s producer didn’t think Springfield’s playing was up to snuff.” But that humiliation was very much in the past at Friday’s concert. Onstage at Park City Live, Springfield behaved like a bona fide guitar god as he traded licks with Grohl.
FROM ROLLING STONE: The supergroup grew out of Grohl’s Sound City documentary, which goes inside the fabled Van Nuys recording studio where Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Metallica and Nirvana recorded some of their most acclaimed albums.
On a night that began with Bruce Springsteen jumping in during John Fogerty’s set to sing “Rockin’ All Over the World”, and ended with Paul McCartney on stage doing Beatles rave-ups, the show was killed a bit early for Springsteen, as someone with access to the on/off switch shut down his show at Hard Rock Calling Festival in Hyde Park in London.
Bruce had pushed well past the three-hour mark during his show with the E Street Band, headlining the Saturday night schedule in front of about 80,000. Curfew was 10:30pm and he was more than 10 minutes past the cutoff.
Up to that point, reports on the web say Fogerty had returned to duet on “Promised Land” and Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello had joined for a trio of songs, supplying incendiary guitar solos. But the big surprise was when McCartney ran on to do “I Saw Her Standing There’ and a raucous “Twist and Shout”.
And here’s where it gets ugly.
After “Twist and Shout,”, as McCartney was leaving the stage, Bruce motioned the band back to their positions after a bow. They wanted to play one of the signature songs of the tour, the Clarence-remembrance “10th Avenue Freeze Out”. According to witnesses, Bruce tried to count off the song, but the PA had been shut down. Backstreets.com reported that “Bruce’s monitor engineer had to come on stage to advise that the PA had been cut off, though the stage monitors were on. Unwilling to just walk off without doing something else, Bruce sang a few lines of the folk standard ‘Goodnight Irene,’ audible only to those near the stage, before leaving.”
Dubbed “The Wake,” the four-band bill at The Earth House in downtown Indianapolis on Friday night was a well-paced night of throwback Midwestern heartland rock, updated for the times. Held in an old church (with the gospel influence that brings) is most certainly a good thing in rock and roll.
All four bands were almost entirely Indy-based. The Weakenders, with only a guitar player not from Indy (he was the from-the-gut guitar-playing, long-haired Nashville cat) were the final band of the night, and brought home the two-guitar rock and roll turned-up-to-11 noise. The Dead Hearts showed the promise and original music that warrants following the Tom Petty/Bryan Adams/Springsteen vibe they throw off when they play. Attakula was a surprisingly diverse and mature roots rock version of Arcade Fire. And Henry French and The Shameless worked as a three-piece; French wrangled rock and roll grit and beauty out of his Telecaster guitar and was helped along by the cranked-up drums.
The show was a model of efficiency, moving from one band into the next in about 15 minutes each; it roared to a start with French, whose sound channeled a rocked-up version of Son Volt. They tore through just over 45 minutes of originals. French, who has said he is taking a break from the band and music for a while, was most effective when taking a song’s energy, and twisting it higher as the song roared. A neo-Bo Diddley beat, and Henry stomping his right foot while facing the drummer during the last song of the set, was goose bump-inducing.
Attakula, six-piece band of nuanced roots rock, revealed themselves as a contender for best local talent working in the Americana genre. They can come with twin guitar attack, or bring on a mandolin to replace the Gibson Les Paul. A full, intricate sound and Petty blues mixed with The Band country-rock moments were highlights.
With “Not What I Wanted to Say” coming early in their set, The Dead Hearts brought the most accessible songs of the evening. They, as all the bands did at some point in their set. worked moments of beauty mixed with barbed wire electricity, By the time they reached “Bad For You” at the end of the 50-minute set, singer Brandon Perry had found sweet spot of chunky rhythm guitar with Brian Gropp’s gospel-tinged Hammond B3-like keyboards. The band is only one year old, and they’re still growing in confidence. If they find a way to let loose a bit more during performances while continuing to write, I like their future,
The most polished, and also pleasingly Shooter Jennings-like rugged, of the groups was the Nashville-based The Weakenders. Three of the four members are from Indy, and have recently moved to Tennessee. Guitarist Eli Chastain led them through “Sink or Swim,” echoing a Neil Young rawness; the two hard-strummed guitars worked together with slamming drums to show off the band’s efforts to take their musical game up a step by moving to Music City. Their effective harmonies and a nicely rehearsed set closed the show, using high-energy rock and roll with country-via-“Exile on Main Street” touches to pull the crowd in.
Were there things to that could have been better? There were moments with each band when lyrics needed to be sold harder, as they stopped being words and blended into melody. I would have loved a cover tune from each band; sometimes I need one, even on a night of originals. And the crowd of a 100 or so felt large enough to make it seem like the night was appreciated, but they did hang back until The Weakenders took the stage.
In reality, these are minor qualms with a show that was meant to refute the notion that American rock and roll is scarce — or dying — in Indianapolis.
As Brian Gropp of the Dead Hearts told me between sets during the show “American rock is out there” — at house parties and in basements; it’s just harder to find.” For one night, it seemed lost no more, and instead found in an old church in downtown Indianapolis.
And it may be in the hands of these four – and the others who mine the same sound — to keep playing, elevating their on-stage energy, and continuing to honor their true voice. We know it is rarely a one night or one week or one month endeavor to get anywhere worthwhile in life, professionally or otherwise.
It’s up to one band to make themselves heard with American rock in Indy. If any one of these bands, or others who were not at this show, takes their musical game to the next level — in popularity and with creativity — then others could follow. This was a good step in the process. What’s next?
Can American rock and roll survive in Indianapolis? And if it is going to, where in Indianapolis can it be found? And what happens when four bands, all who embrace the retro-yet-authentic sound of American rock, struggle to get booked into an Indianapolis club?
On May 18, the stage on the Earth House in downtown Indianapolis will be shared by four Indianapolis American rock bands, doing their part to make Telecaster guitars ring loud in our city, just as Roadmaster, Henry Lee Summer, Mere Mortals and many others did in the 70’s and 80’s.
Dubbed “The Wake: A Showcase of American Rock ‘n Roll” (i.e. if rock is dead, let’s have a freakin’ party), The Dead Hearts, The Weakenders, Attakulla, and Henry French & the Shameless bring three-chord rock and roll noise to the old church.
Yet to hear The Dead Hearts keyboardist Brian Gropp explain it, there seemed to be little love for the Tom Petty-esque rock the band embrace.
“At the end of February, Eli (Chastain) from the Weakenders contacted me looking to get a show going in Indy,” he says. “A couple days later, I get an email from Greg Osborne from Attakulla. Our name happened to be dropped to him. I’m thinking the more the merrier. After listening to both bands, and knowing how good Henry French is, I thought this is one heck of a lineup,” Gropp says.
So they started looking for a venue.
“There was not a medium-sized club within I-465 that gave us the time of day. We went after a few of our favorite clubs from multiple angles and were repeatedly ignored,” Gropp admits. “We started to get a little frustrated. Nobody wanted this show.”
Eli emailed Gropp about renting a DIY venue or having a house party. At the end of his email he said, “Is rock and roll dead dudes? Say it aint so!’
“We finally got a bite at The Earth House. After we worked out the details, we realized that we have to show that independent local rock and roll is very much alive in Indianapolis.”
French had the idea for the show’s theme.
“Since we kind of got snubbed by everyone, I consider this a call to action to an extent,” he wrote in the original email to the bands. “Time to prove that rock and roll still has a crowd in Indy.”
It was his suggestion to build a title and theme for the show that’s on all the posters, website and handbills that proclaim “rock and roll ain’t dead.”
They found a media partner in the Back Roads Radio Show. They emailed, and it intrigued me; one show, four American rock bands in Indy, and the struggle to do it.
***
The Dead Hearts
What the hell is American rock and roll anyway?
Do the Black Keys fit the description? How about less-mainstream bands like the Bottle Rockets and Deer Tick? Or Kid Rock, with his penchant for emulating his idol, Bob Seger? Or is it the domain now of country performers like Miranda Lambert and Eric Church?
I’d wager it is somewhere in the influences of these artists, and standard bearers like Wilco, John Fogerty’s CCR, Tom Petty, and the sound of Seger and Mellencamp – who loves that sound more than Indy, right?
“Our opinion on it is kind of like this; our favorite bands wrote classic songs,” Chastain, the guitarist in The Weakenders, says. “To us, stuff like What’s the Story Morning Glory? or Damn the Torpedoes are always going be on iPods or in playlists or on radio for a reason; they’re full of absolutely undeniable jams. We are aiming for that kind of territory.”
Longtime Indiana guitar player John Byrne has been plying his trade for two decades as a go-to sideman in bands like Mere Mortals, Danny Flanigan and the Rain Chorus (who he is joining for their own show the same night at another Indy club / Locals Only – 9pm), with Jess Richmond, 8-Track All-Stars and many others, most variations on a sound that used to be called heartland rock.
“It’s a tricky business trying to define or quantify something as broad and subjective as American rock,” Byrne says. “Neil Young said it best, I think, when he said ‘once you talk about mystique, you have none,’ but I definitely think that it has some essential, defining characteristics.
“For me – who basically grew up trying to be the kid that Patrick Fugit plays in the seminal rock movie “Almost Famous”, – the best, most effective American rock and roll had to have at least some self-awareness of what it was trying to deconstruct. The Weakenders
Gropp echoes the sentiments of Byrne.
“(It’s) always a slippery slope when you start to define a genre. We have some obvious influences. All four Dead Hearts have a mutual enamoring of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. I am biased being the keyboard player, but I love a band with driving organ and keys (and) love the E Street band so much.”
“If pressed to pick a single band that has become the most succinct standard-bearer for American rock in our current era,” continues Byrne, “I’d have to say Wilco because they quite literally took up the mantle of “Americana”, that somewhat self-congratulatory sub-genre that did its best to keep burning the twangy troubadour flame of vintage Neil Young, Gram Parsons, (and) Townes Van Zandt, and infused it with the intensity of the Stooges and the weariness of Steve Earle while rocking like a hurricane.”
With regional and national rock acts playing shows at the Vogue (upcoming dates include the Bodeans, Otis Gibbs and Dawes), Birdy’s (Paul Thorn has a show on June 23) and Radio Radio (two shows this month from The Lumineers), it would seem there would be a market for bands with similar sounds, on the local level.
What is trickier for most local and regional bands, is working on establishing a consistent fanbase for shows. And to do that, it is more difficult if there is not a healthy American rock and roll scene. Is there one in Indy? I would argue a pair of shows from aforementioned The Lumineers, and consistent crowds for Old Crow Medicine Show, Lucinda Williams, Old 97’s and BoDeans, among others, gives the appearance of a plugged-in, web-savvy audience that knows the music and where to find the shows. Is that enough for local artists and bands of the genre?
“Rock and roll is still everywhere,” Gropp says. “In garages, basements, and house parties. I think there are a lot of frustrated rockers wondering how to get the music elsewhere. There are still a handful of places that will occasionally let a live rock band do their thing, but they better bring a crowd. If not, they don’t want you back.”
“Indy just doesn’t have the same amount or type of clubs that it did 20 and 30 years ago,” Byrne admits. ”Save the occasional aberration, local music has been banished from Broad Ripple. Plenty of cool shows happen in Fountain Square, but it seems to me that the gigs that get the most notice are for bands from out of town.”
As Byrne notes, there are clubs in the strip malls that book cover bands, And he plays in those bars because, “at the end of the day, I just love playing guitar.” Henry French
“If you want to find the essence of American rock and roll in Indianapolis any given week and you aren’t willing to settle for another heartfelt walk-through of ‘Mustang Sally,’ you have to dig pretty hard,” Byrne concludes “The good news is that there is music here, and plenty of it, but there’s just no getting around the simple law of economics that supply doesn’t create demand.”
***
For the four bands playing “The Wake”, the potential success of the event becomes a lesson in hard work, and networking an audience that they, WTTS and the terrific Back Road Radio Show cultivate. It also helps they believe deeply in the sound they are making.
The Weakenders are living in Nashville, Tenn, with three of their members are from Indianapolis. This will be their first show back in town. They have a new record Super Major, coming out this spring.
“We’ve noticed with the band, people seem to actually mean what they say to us when they talk about our songs, or the new record or the live set or whatever it is,” Chastain says. “People seem to really think we’re on to something. That is a really good feeling.
For The Dead Hearts’ Gropp, the effort to carve a niche, or be a part of something that means a lot to not just his band, but many like-sounding and –minded others, is one reason to go forward. Attakula
“So much of what we do is promotion and trying to find a balance between keeping people interested and not annoying them. It can be really taxing and frustrating, contacting countless clubs and not getting a response The bottom line is the music. We love making music. We would probably do it even if nobody was listening.”
Attakulla call their music a “revival of American garage rock wrapped in a crunchy, electrified folk sound.” Henry French likens himself to Tom Petty, the Foo Fighters and the Replacements. I even wrote that French was a “guy has the potential to make the next great Midwest rock and roll record.” And that The Dead Hearts were the Indianapolis’ Best New Band of 2011.
Is that enough? Can their passion, diligence and the sound of Indiana rock and roll get an audience to a beautiful old church in downtown Indy featuring these four?
According to Gropp, music fans know where to find good shows.
“I think people want something honest, something they can interact with. Something personal where they can say, “Oh yeah, I was there that night. I remember when that happened.’
For all their struggles in finding the right venue, they hope the show called “The Wake” will jump start something for them.
And Indianapolis will have a place for music that we call American rock, the trusted sound has never really gone away. For bands like The Dead Hearts and the Weakenders, they simply keep pushing forward, even if it is just three chords at a time. Because, for them, that’s the only thing they can do.
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New label, new album for Indianapolis favorite Todd Snider Todd Snider’s next album The Excitement Plan, comes out June 9 and you can stream it now listen here
I like Todd (and love-love-love the live show) but need a couple more listens to the album. Underwhelmed right now. But then, that has happened before to me some great albums (always on U2 records and R.E.M records, it seems).
Here’s Todd telling a great bar story about meeting Slash:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rijCrZOpj_Y] Former Wilco band member Jay Bennett died at age 45 over the weekend. The multi-instrumentalist died in his Illinois home May 23. Things were pretty messed up for Jeffy Tweedy and him at the end for their time together, and Jay seemed to be searching for something. He wasn’t getting what he needed in the group, and left/was fired. His recent $50,000 lawsuit against the band for unpaid royalties was odd. This is just sad.
You can hear Wilco’s untitled new record (set for a late June release) streaming on their website site at wilcoworld.net. John Fogerty has finished his next album, “John Fogerty: The Return of the Blue Ridge Rangers,” a sequel to his 1973 solo album. We don’t know when it’s coming out,” Fogerty tells Billboard.com. “We’re in talks. Stuff can change.”
OK. We can live with that, if that is your answer, Mr. Fogerty. T-Bone Burnett produced the record, which means it will be a bit of a departure in sound for Fogerty who has fully embraced his old CCR sound on the most recent records.
Here’s some Fogerty (with Kenny A. bangin’ on drums) from last year:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_wWxj4-5mM]
Alejando Escovedo will pick up a load of AMA hardware - his most recent album "Real Animal" is deserving of honors The Americana Music Association announced the nominees for its 8th Honors and Awards ceremony
The ceremony will be held September 17 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, during the Americana Festival and Conference. It’ll be hosted by Jim Lauderdale, featuring a band led by Buddy Miller. NOMINEES Album of the Year Real Animal, Alejandro Escovedo Written in Chalk, Buddy & Julie Miller Jason Isbell & The 40 Unit, Jason Isbell & The 40 Unit Midnight At The Movies, Justin Townes Earle Artist of the Year
Alejandro Escovedo
Buddy Miller
Justin Townes Earle
Raul Malo Instrumentalist of the Year
Buddy Miller
Gurf Morlix
Jerry Douglas
Sam Bush New & Emerging Artist
Band of Heathens
The Belleville Outfit
Justin Townes Earle
Sarah Borges Song of the Year
“Chalk”
Written by Julie Miller
Performed by Buddy Miller & Patty Griffin
“Country Love”
The Gourds
“Homeland Refugee”
Written by Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock
Performed by The Flatlanders
“Rattlin’ Bones”
Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson
“Sex And Gasoline”
Rodney Crowell
Duo/Group of the Year
Buddy & Julie Miller
The Flatlanders
Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson
Reckless Kelly
