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Q&A: KEITH URBAN
Australian for "Country"

by Jim Allen

Keith Urban is the quintessential modern Nashville star: He's got a badass image, a sizable debt to '80s rock, and a knack for writing pure pop hooks with a down-home twang. His career was kicked into hyperdrive in 2004 when his third album Be Here hit #1 on the Billboard Country Album charts and scraped the upper reaches of the Hot 200, making him the only Australian artist besides Olivia Newton-John three decades ago to achieve such lofty heights. And when in mid-2006 Urban married Oscar-wining actress (and fellow Aussie) Nicole Kidman, the photogenic singer/songwriter/guitarist completed his transformation into an American household name.
But it's not easy being a superstar in the modern world. Four months after the wedding kicked off a media feeding frenzy and just two weeks before the hotly anticipated November '06 release of Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing, Urban checked himself into a rehab program, where he cleaned up whatever habits drove him there. The new, improved Keith has come back stronger than ever, launching a successful tour in support of an album that's shone even brighter than its predecessors, and stepping onto the world stage as part of the international Live Earth event, where he broke even more musical boundaries by lending his voice and guitar to a duet version of The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" with Alicia Keys. In the midst of his triumphant return to the spotlight, Urban gave URGE the lowdown on what makes him tick and how he handles the demands of stardom.

URGE: How is the music you're making now different from what you've done in the past?

Keith Urban: The songs are just an evolution from the previous record. I think the two albums before this had a lot more in common with each other, a certain sound, a spirit about them that, to me, made them sound fairly bookend-ish. If there is one thing that we did with this record, it was take into account how some of these songs might be extended live, and consequently, we put those on the record just like they are. So there are a couple of seven-minute songs on the record which normally would be little three-and-a-half-minute songs on the album and we'd extend them live. In that respect, we're trying to blur the boundaries a little more between what you would see live and what you're hearing on record.

URGE: The kind of extension you're talking about has a lot do with your guitar solos. As a guitarist, who are some of the players that lit your fire when you were getting your chops together?

Urban: Early on, it was probably just the session players, the Reggie Youngs and the Brent Masons. I was copying their licks without really knowing who they were. But when I turned 15n, a friend turned me onto Dire Straits. It was really Mark Knopfler and his tone and his melodic sensibility that I just absolutely loved. From there, [Fleetwood Mac's] Lindsey Buckingham. I loved the rhythm pocket of [AC/DC's] Malcolm Young; I think he's one of the greatest rhythm guitarists ever.

URGE: How does an Australian kid wind up getting interested in American country music?

Urban: That was through my parents' record collection. My dad had all these American country records like Charley Pride, and Merle Haggard and lots of Don Williams. When I started playing guitar, those were the songs that I gravitated towards.

URGE: How did your passions for rock and country develop alongside each other?

Urban: In the pubs in Australia. I started touring when I was about 13, and playing in the pubs, man, you've just got to play what they want to hear. I did my fair share of "Free Bird" and those sorts of songs. When I went to see John Mellencamp in 1988 on the Lonesome Jubilee tour, it was a real defining moment for me. I'd grown up playing all this country up until I was in my late teens, and then all of a sudden I'm playing in these bands that are doing a lot of rock. I spent about two months playing in this heavy-metal band before I got fired, doing Whitesnake, Scorpions and Judas Priest [songs]. But at the time I was into Ricky Skaggs, so I was doing all these chicken-pickin' guitar licks in heavy-metal songs. I just couldn't figure out where the hell I was supposed to go. And I went and saw Mellencamp, and it had a profound effect on me because I saw this guy with this badass rock band, and there was a fiddle in it, there was an accordion. It was just the best mix of everything I loved. I didn't so much set out to emulate what John was doing, but he really inspired me to find my own thing and meld all the styles that I loved into my own thing. In that way John was a big influence.

URGE: Some people have said that 20 years ago someone doing what you do might have been considered a rock artist rather than a country artist. How do you feel about that?

Urban: I think it works the opposite way too ó if Bob Seger would have put out songs like "Against the Wind" right now, they'd probably be [considered] country songs. It just evolves. It's natural that country artists have grown up listening to just as much rock ó particularly Southern rock ó and that's going to come through in the music. At the same time, country has always crossed boundaries too. I look to the country artists I grew up listening to ó say, Glen Campbell or Johnny Cash ó and you're talking about pop-mainstream artists as well, [and about] songs that defied genre. So, I don't really see much difference today than there was back then. It's just relative to the time.

URGE: How did it feel to play at Live Earth, and to sing with Alicia Keys?

Urban: We certainly had a great time. Playing with Alicia, especially, was a blast. I couldn't imagine doing that song without that voice. My manager suggested doing "Gimme Shelter," which I thought lyrically was just fantastic. And then we were looking for who could sing the part, and Alicia's name came up. So we just contacted her and she was totally up for it; she was performing on the show anyway. We got to soundcheck [the song] in the morning, and just go for it.

URGE: Is the message of Live Earth something that's close to your heart?

Urban: We've got 12 trucks on this tour and they're all biodiesel. We weren't able to get the buses fitted out in time. I was happy with at least getting that done in time for the tours. It's certainly something that's becoming more and more the way that I look at my life, for sure. I'm not the perfect green guy by any means, but I think what I'm becoming aware of is places in my life that I can start to change some of the things I'm doing.

URGE: Did the huge scale of the Live Earth show affect your perspective on live performance?

Urban: No, not really. I've been fortunate to play a few of those stadium shows with Kenny Chesney. We did Live 8 in Philadelphia, as well. They're their own sort of thing, when you get to play to massive numbers like that. You can only play to so many and then it's just a bit of a CGI blur anyway. The day was more powerful for me for the significance [rather] than the amount of people involved.

URGE: The last year or so has been a whirlwind for you: getting married, following up a hugely successful record ... did you feel like a wrench was thrown into the works when you went into rehab in the midst of it all?

Urban: I took time away from my career to go and work on myself. And it was really, you know, it was a needed opportunity for me.

URGE: Now it seems like you've come through that time to even more success: a big new single and video, and a major tour. Do you feel like you've turned a corner?

Urban:Oh, no doubt. It's definitely a new life. It's just a much healthier, more balanced life than I've had previously.

URGE: How has your marriage changed things for you?


Urban: It gives more balance in my life. It makes me not so obsessed with the touring, like I used to be. I guess touring used to fill more of a hole in me than it does now, which is just part of finding balance. That's just evolving based on all kinds of things; marriage would be one of them. Obviously marriage will have some effect on [my music]. That answer is probably more about when I make the next record.

HARP MAGAZINE

Waco Brothers:
Cowpunk & Disorderly
By Jim Allen
Since 1994, Anglo-American roots rockers the Waco Brothers have been charter members of Bloodshot Records’ “insurgent country” army. The Mekons offshoot’s alcohol-fueled, sometimes-shambolic onstage antics have become the stuff of legend, and their new live album Waco Express: Live and Kicking at Schuba’s Tavern captures them in all their cowpunk glory. For the occasion, frontmen Jon Langford and Dean Schlabowske and drummer Steve Goulding offer reminiscences from 14 years of musical mayhem.

Bloody New Year
Lounge Ax, Chicago, Ill.
Casualties: Alan Doughty’s head and bass guitar

On New Year’s Eve at the late, lamented hotspot, bassist Alan Doughty engages in one of his “highly choreographed and usually brilliantly executed bass moves” after a little too much imbibing, whereupon he smashes himself squarely in the forehead with his instrument. He earns himself an injury of emergency-room proportions, but carries on regardless. Langford: “Blood ran all over his face. By the end of the song he looked like a great grinning beetroot.”

Punching out Uncle Sam
Bloodshot Records’ SXSW showcase, Austin, Texas
Casualties: Deano, Jon, and Tracy’s knuckles and patriotic standing

The band is “fairly well-lubricated on Guero’s margaritas” and pulling off a blistering set despite inebriation. Without warning, a mysterious marauder in an Uncle Sam costume complete with giant head leaps onstage. Langford, Schlabowske, and mandolinist Tracy Dear engage in pugilistics with the patriotic icon before he disappears into the night. Schlabowske: “It was only a year or two ago that I found out it was [labelmate] Jon Rauhouse!”

Kind of a Drag
Park West, Chicago, Ill.
Casualties: hometown rep and macho image

The Wacos dress in drag as backing band for Brigid Murphy’s Millie’s Orchid Show. Several cocktails into the evening, most of the band decides to wander provocatively about town in their finery. Returning hours later, they find Goulding, still in wig and dress, trying desperately to accompany Murphy alone in an ad hoc vocals-and-drums duet. Goulding: “Even after a futile attempt to sneak onstage and pretend they’d been there the whole time, the group were not asked back.”

PREFIX MAGAZINE

Mark Eitzel
Interview by Jim Allen

The original kings of sadcore, American Music Club started bringing their blend of beauty and tears to enraptured indie-rockers in the mid-'80s. The band disintegrated in 1994, reuniting a decade later to release Love Songs for Patriots (Devil in the Woods). And now American Music Club singer Mark Eitzel and guitarist Vudi have assembled a revamped lineup for another new one, The Golden Age, released in February on Merge. Here, Eitzel talks about the band's current tour, the departure of longtime rhythm section Dan Pearson and Tim Mooney, and his spiritual debts to '70s soft rock and Jerry Lewis.

You and Vudi have been recording and touring with a new bassist and drummer. What happened to Dan Pearson and Tim Mooney?
It's a long story. We did that [previous] American Music Club record, and it was basically me, Tim, and Danny working in San Francisco and flying Vudi and the keyboard player up on the weekends. We'd fly Vudi up and he'd do fifty takes and I'd edit them into a part, and I really didn't want to do that again on this record. Vudi is a slow burn: He comes up with ideas after a while, and you really want those ideas, because he's a genius. On the next record, I basically said, "Well, I don't want to make a record like we did last time. I want to make a record with Vudi in L.A.”

Why couldn't Vudi come to San Francisco?
Because Vudi drives a city bus, and he couldn't move. And those guys [Mooney and Pearson] were like, "Yeah, sure, great," and then I couldn't get them on the phone for about eight months for various reasons. I finally called Vudi and said, "Look dude, I'm coming to L.A. I've got these songs and I want you to hear them." The thing with Vudi is that he just gives me so much hope when I play him my songs, he's like, "Oh! Oh, we can do this . . . ." Even my shittiest songs -- like a song I had called "You're So Eva," "So very Eva Braun....” It was a horrible song, but even that one, he was like, "Oh, this works!" As long as Vudi is in the room it kinda works. It had to be Vudi. He got these two guys [bassist Sean Hoffman and drummer Steve Didelot]. As soon as I played with them it felt more like a band than American Music Club had felt in years.”

So did you give up on Danny and Tim at that point?
Another six months passed, and these guys won't answer my phone calls. Finally I just thought, "I've gotta do this record. I've gotta make it the best record I can. I'm gonna go with these other people. Sorry." We were gonna call it MacArthur Park Music Club, because Vudi lives in MacArthur Park, and because I love that song [Jimmy Webb's “MacArthur Park”]. And my manager in England said, "You know, Mark, you can get paid this level if you call yourself Mark Eitzel. You can get paid a much lower level if you call yourself MacArthur Park Music Club. And if you call yourself American Music Club, you can get paid this level!" I was like, "Oh shit, right. It's a brand thing, isn't it?" And because I had various American Music Clubs before I ever worked with Tim and Danny, I thought, "Fuck it, I'll just call it American Music Club."

Is it a different feeling having two new musicians onstage instead of the guys you've played with for years?
It's very different. It's funny, you always live sort of obedient to the fans. They seem to record every single show and download it and talk about it. I think most people like the new band. Everyone sings, and they remember how to play the songs, more than me and Vudi even, and it's a more positive thing.”

Do Sean and Steve replicate any of Tim and Danny's old parts?
They won't let me change them. "Blue and Grey Shirt," [Sean and Steve] listened to the record and said, "No, Mark. You have to play it like this, you have to play it just like the record." The bass player is really a guitar player, he does commercial music, he does all the shredding guitars on the Fox Sports Channel, and he won't ever admit it to himself but he's a real genius on bass. And the drummer, he's a great songwriter himself, so he knows how to play drums with songs. He's another one of those people who doesn't know how good he is, but don't tell him.

How is the music you're making now different from what you did with the old version of the band? There's less of that heavy, intense feeling on the new album.
What you say is heavy and intense some people say is self-pitying and annoying. I had an epiphany. I was in Basel and I went to the art gallery there. There was this one painting and [when I saw it] I thought, "Those are all the mistakes I ever made, where I'm too much in the middle of the music, where my pain is all amplified and all present." And I don't want to do that anymore. If I make that kind of super-dark music, I need to be really healthy and there has to be some other goodness happening in my life. But at this point if I make that kind of dark music it's like I'm locking myself in a dark room with a lion, and I don't want to do that.


So this is the kinder, gentler American Music Club.
Kind of a Bread album, yeah. I don't want to make hard music, I want to make easy music. The next album I'm writing, people are gonna hate it -- [it's] even more corny and simple. When I go see music now, if I have to see some indie rock fucker stare at his fucking shoes and whisper into the microphone something that is not about my life -- I hate that shit now. I like pop music. As much as I love indie music, there's very few. Bon Iver, that stuff's beautiful, I love it. It's about my life. But I can't really point to a lot of other people that play the same kind of music. Am I being a bitch now? Yes. I'm just sick of it, so I don't want to do that music. I want to do balls-out embarrassing, corny stuff.

In the old AMC days, the audiences sometimes seemed like they were waiting to see you self-destruct in an explosion of angst onstage.
One of my pleasures in life is Cat Power. I think she's a fucking genius. I went to one of her shows in San Francisco, and it was just this strangely quiet room of people who were waiting to see her die, and I thought, "No, that's not her at all. She's a very cheerful, nice person. That's bullshit. And I kind of felt like I don't like that kind of audience.

So what effect do you want to have now on an audience?
You know what I want? I want applause, that's all I want! [laughs] I want applause, I want people to buy the merch. To be honest, I don't care. You can't cherry-pick what kind of reaction you get; all you can do is do your best and hope that you entertain people. I sound like Jerry Lewis when I say this, but I actually am very much like Jerry Lewis.

Will you continue to work under the American Music Club name in the future?
I don't know. I hope so, if the band stays together. Everyone has to have a life and earn a living, so I don't if Vudi can afford to do this, or Sean or Steve can afford to do this. It's not like we're making tons of money. It's really economics.

Well, say if you had your druthers.
If I had my druthers, I would have a beautiful swimming pool, and I'd be in it right now.

CMJ NEW MUSIC MONTHLY

JAPANCAKES: The Sleepy Strange
By Jim Allen
Unlike many bands that fall under the post-rock banner, Athens, Georgia's Japancakes generate considerable warmth and an undeniable organic quality. While there are no vocals on their second full-length album, and the purposefully minimalist approach to composition generates little in the way of conventional forward motion, The Sleepy Strange draws the listener in with its sunny tones and earthy touches (note the swaths of gorgeous pedal steel that coat the album-opening "The Waiting"). Cellist Heather McIntosh - who also works with Elf Power and Of Montreal - is a key presence throughout, providing thick drones in more austere moments and semi-classical counterpoint to the keyboards in the airier sections, and she's the perfect mate for the naturalistic pedal-steel flurries. Guitarist Eric Berg is the leader of Japancakes, which is actually something of a side project for many of its members, but he remains a Zen-like presence in the background, providing a chordal framework for the band's post-rock adventurism and earthbound Americana.

AMPLIFIER MAGAZINE

JOHN ZORN
ABRONS ART CENTER - NEW YORK CITY - 2/22/08
FEATURING LOU REED AND LAURIE ANDERSON

Legendary avant-jazzman John Zorn's two-evening stint at the Abrons Arts Center at the Henry Street Settlement was a quintessential New York event.

For many years, saxophonist/composer/bandleader Zorn, stalwart downtown/underground jazz experimentalist, has been known for pieces with Jewish-oriented themes, and for this appearance on the Lower East Side (itself once a haven for Jewish immigrants), he decided to go for the gusto with an adaptation of the biblical Shir Ha-Shirim, or Song of Songs. Also known as the Song of Solomon, it's a section of the Old Testament that depicts--in colorful, romantic prose--an exchange between two lovers. Who better to call upon for the lovers' recitatives than Lou Reed and his longtime paramour Laurie Anderson? The two sexagenarians (no pun intended--Reed is 65 and Anderson 60) are both New York institutions, and both are known for their sprechgesang vocal delivery, not to mention the fact that Reed is of course one of NYC's most seminal Jewish rockers.

On the first night, for the piece's debut, Reed sported a loose-fitting white shirt sans jacket, giving his presence a classic romantic flair. The erstwhile Velvet Underground front man being one of rock's most notoriously unromantic artists, the image (not to mention his very participation) created an interesting dichotomy, as did that of the artfully affectless Anderson. Nevertheless, when the pair, facing each other from opposite ends of the stage, brought their renowned deadpan delivery to bear in giving voice to the sensuous text, the sonic impact proved a fruitful one. Anderson and Reed batted their lines back and forth like a postmodern version of a biblical Tracy and Hepburn; midway through, at the piece's most playful point, they engaged in repetition of urgent whispers in tandem, creating a crucial element of tension.

Instead of backing his leading man and lady with a pack of skronky instrumentalists, Zorn made the inspired decision to accompany those very distinctive voices with five more voices. Standing in a row towards the rear of the stage were five elegantly attired young ladies who supplied the piece's sole melodic content via clusters of wordless vocal harmonies. Zorn achieved an artistic triumph in crafting a complex-yet-organic latticework of melodies for the singers, constructions alternately sonorous and discordant that sometimes darted in and out of each other and sometimes combined for clear, sharp bursts of sound. The women's pure, vibratoless voices betrayed no more overt emotion than those of Anderson and Reed, but their tonal colors and appealingly melodic (even at their most avant-garde) effect created the contrast upon which the entire piece hinged.

Between the pointillist sonic tableaux of the singers and the expertly unsentimental approach of the readers, Zorn (who stood beneath the performers, conducting from the foot of the stage) succeeded handsomely at bringing an ancient Hebrew text into the present day, redefining its eroticism for the modern age and illuminating the inner music of its stanzas with an inveterate iconoclast's ear.

--Jim Allen

BARNESANDNOBLE.COM

Machito:
Kenya: Afro-Cuban Jazz

Machito's big band was one of the first and best exponents of Afro-Cuban jazz as we know it today. This 1957 effort focuses more on the African side of the Afro-Cuban equation; the album title/concept was chosen because Kenya represented the "New Africa" at the time, which dovetailed nicely with the new sounds Machito and company were laying down. The set opens with the heady rush of "Wild Jungle," a frenetic rumba with staccato horn punctuation cutting up the time atop a bed of fierce polyrhythmic percussion. The substantially more sedate title cut pursues a more conventional jazz melodic line until the coda, where a frantic rumba is again introduced to crank the tension level back up. "Oyeme" is a lesson in the possibilities of Afro-Cuban modality, as the rhythm and melodic variations are all wrung over a static, one-chord harmonic framework. The appropriately titled "Frenzy" makes good use of Machito's percussion section, pitting brass interjections over some unfettered percussive fury. Kenya's contrast between Machito's Afro-Cuban soundscapes and the solos of legendary U.S. jazzmen Cannonball Adderly and Doc Cheatham makes for a swirling stew of jazz con clave that no aficionado should be without. Jim Allen

MUSICTODAY.COM

Nick Lowe
Bowery Ballroom
New York, New York

Review by Jim Allen

Whither the power-poppers of yore? Those skinny-tied, smart-suited gents whose Beatlesque hooks and snappy beats put them at the vanguard of pop culture for one brief shining moment circa 1979/80. By and large, they've gone the way of the "where's the beef?" lady (anyone heard from the Shoes, Rubinoos, or Records in the last couple of decades?). It's all the more astonishing, then, for a rocker of that vintage to grow into a musically mature artist whose work not only endures but keeps getting better, a la Nick Lowe. For the last ten years, the man formerly known as the Jesus of Cool has been turning out introspective, heart-on-sleeve albums heavy on soulful ballads displaying both expert craftsmanship and true passion.

For his first visit to the States in many moons, Lowe decided to keep things low-key, mostly performing in acoustic troubadour mode. This kind of scenario isn't always complementary to former rock 'n' rollers, but it fits like a glove in Lowe's case. His mellifluous voice, grown huskier with age, is the ideal vehicle for delicately rendered tales of heartbreak; Lowe comes off more like a British Sam Cooke than a guy who once produced an album for the Damned. And with his natty look and witty repartee, he's a natural-born crowd-charmer, perfectly suited for one-on-one communication with audiences like the rapt, reverent crowd at the Bowery Ballroom, where a pin drop would have sounded like a gunshot during Lowe's exquisite set.

Singer/pianist Geraint Watkins, who has played in Lowe's band for years and would accompany him on a few songs at the end of the latter's set, opened the show with a mix of soul and jazzy blues, channeling Mose Allison and Ray Charles via Georgie Fame. Watkins' compelling voice and trenchant ivory pounding bespoke a lifetime spent absorbing American roots music, and he even went to so far as to add a surprisingly effective R&B tinge to the Beach Boys chestnut "Heroes & Villains." With little ado, Lowe soon took the stage to rapturous applause, launching into a set that leaned heavily on his last three albums. From his whispered vocal on the jazzy "You Inspire Me" to his forlorn croon on "What's Shakin' On The Hill" and his ominous growl on "The Beast In Me" (best known from a rendition done by Lowe's ex-father-in-law, Johnny Cash), Lowe expertly deployed the soft end of live-performance dynamics. Even when whipping out a favorite from the power-pop glory days, like "Heart Of The City," he refined the feel from breathless rock 'n' roll to mid-tempo bounce, successfully transmuting the energy of youth to the wisdom of age with aplomb.

Some striking new songs were unveiled as well, including one with a relatively subtle political bent and a good-natured, decidedly non-PC romp about a serial heartbreaker. One hopes these will soon see the light of day as part of a new album. For as much of a master tunesmith as Lowe is — churning out a seemingly endless string of soul-stirring songs with startling ease — he's self-effacing enough to tip his hat to some of his own favorite songwriters. To that end, Lowe turned out an invigorating take on former Little Village bandmate John Hiatt's "She Don't Love Nobody," which also turns up on his 1985 album Rose Of England, and an encore found him covering the late American R&B legend Arthur Alexander's "Lonely Just Like Me."

Ultimately, one can't help but be struck by the overwhelmingly sad lyrical content of Lowe's latter-day material. For a man who's rhymed "ghastly" with "Rick Astley" and gloried in good-time nonsense songs like "Shting-Shtang," there's an almost unremitting catalogue of loneliness and heartache in the contemporary Nick Lowe's work. The sterling songcraft he employs in these tragic tales of love and loss, not to mention his consistent onstage effervescence, would ostensibly seem to put the lie to his woeful utterances, but in fact the reverse is true. One walks away with a sense that Lowe has found a way to play musical alchemist, turning heartbreak into bewitching beauty for all to hear. Can there be a higher aspiration for a singer/songwriter of any style or vintage?

VH1.COM

ROSANNE CASH: SUBVERSIVE & SEXY SONGS

She may be country royalty, but she still gets down and dirty. Check her list of fave tunes both political and pretty.

by Jim Allen

Starting with 1979's Right or Wrong, Rosanne Cash helped forge a new kind of country music. Singer/songwriter introspection and a contemporary pop/rock sensibility combined with her natural country roots to produce indelible hits like "Seven Year Ache." The fact that she was Johnny Cash's daughter may have opened some doors, but she's always been her own woman. Critics are saying her new Black Cadillac, a meditation on the passing of her parents, is her most eloquent work to date. Cash chatted with us about some of her favorite songs and two themes cropped up: here are tunes either subversive or sexy.

Steve Earle "Condi, Condi" The Revolution Starts...Now

"I like the ska kind of feeling, and how completely tongue-in-cheek it is...a sexy song about a woman who's like Donald Rumsfeld, I just love that. She's the ultimate ice queen."

Mike Doughty "Busting Up A Starbucks"
Haughty Melodic

"It's awesome; it's my favorite song right now. Number one, his voice is so sexy...and this song grooves so deep, and it's so subversive, what could be more American than a Starbucks?"

Lucinda Williams "Hot Blood"
Sweet Old World

"Lucinda and I did a tour of Australia once and she did that song every night...I always came to the wings to listen to that song...it just dripped with sex. And the subversive part...it's her, she's naturally subversive."

Tori Amos "Taxi Ride"
Scarlet's Walk

"I love that song, it's about a gay man who died and there's just a lot of fury in it, and there's a lot of fury in love. When she goes to those high notes it gives me goose bumps."

Damien Rice "The Blower's Daughter"
0

"It's just so pretty. I guess it's not terribly subversive, but it's sexy to me."

Joni Mitchell "Night Ride Home"
The Complete Geffen Recordings

"When I was listening to it, I had just fallen in love with my husband and I was thinking about him all the time, and I played this song obsessively. Second, because it was the first time I heard her voice change, and I thought, 'how cool is that?' Her voice dropped three octaves and she still sounds amazing. And also, it was so intimate, that song is very cinematic to me. You see them in the car, you see the night sky. Subversive because she is, and sexy because of what I was thinking about when I was listening to it."

Beck "Jack-Ass"
Odelay

"He's got attitude in spades, and yet that song was so sensual. A really great combination of attitude and sensuality."

Bright Eyes "When the President Talks to God"
Motion Sickness: Live Recordings

"Subversive for obvious reasons, and sexy because he had the balls to play it on Leno."

Jane Siberry "Calling All Angels"
When I Was a Boy

"Jane, more than anyone I know, can make spirituality and sex come together in this incredibly beautiful way that makes sense. Gorgeous song."

U2 "Love and Peace Or Else"
How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

"U2 defines subversive and sexy, and I just chose that song out of many I could have chosen."

Creedence Clearwater Revival "Who'll Stop the Rain"
Cosmo's Factory

"That song kind of harkens back to the old protest songs to me. Like a direct child of Woody Guthrie. I love that kind of subversion with authority, and you know, John Fogerty's got an incredibly sexy voice and delivery."

Patty Griffin "Peter Pan"
Flaming Red

"Patty has a fire in her that just always inspires me, and this song was just so sexy...she also has the voice of authority, she really just embodies who she is. To me that's the ultimate sexiness."

Rosanne Cash "Like Fugitives"
Black Cadillac

"Subversive because it kind of indicts the church and lawyers, and sexy because...(coquettishly) I can be sexy..."

CMT.COM

Rodeo Bar Is New York City's Honky-Tonk
Traditional Country, Western Swing Find a Home in Manhattan
By: Jim Allen

NEW YORK -- It's not easy to duplicate the longest-running honky-tonk in New York City. Just ask Mitch Pollack, whose East Side institution, the Rodeo Bar, is the unchallenged holder of that title. Tucked away on a busy but unremarkable stretch of

Third Avenue off of 27th Street, the best little roadhouse in the Big Apple has been serving up hard-core country music since 1985.

"I've been asked to open other Rodeos in other cities, but I never wanted to," says Pollack. "It's just about keeping the scene alive, supporting the whole roots vibe that's more prevalent outside of New York and being authentic about everything -- the music, the food, everything."

There's no question that the Rodeo remains faithful to its theme, with a Tex-Mex menu, a bar housed in a former horse trailer and walls lined with cattle heads, beat-up guitars and Texas flags. It's no Lone Star theme park, though.

"The thing is that we're a honky-tonk in New York City," says talent booker Jack Grace, "and it's not a make-believe honky-tonk. It's an actual honky-tonk. To me, it's where people can get away, drink, dance, listen to the music. That's what I think a honky-tonk should be, and it should lack pretension."

It's no small feat maintaining a honky-tonk haven in a city known more for P. Diddy, but Grace, whose own citybilly outfit, the Jack Grace Band, is a local fave and Rodeo regular, asserts that there's a strong audience for country music in New York.

"People love it here," he says. "They're particularly passionate about classic country. The interesting thing is they're all very untainted because they didn't go through [the period] when country music got commercial, so a lot of New Yorkers still have a very classic vision of country."

Pollack bought the club in 1996, but he says there were bands from the beginning. "Joan Osborne used to play here every Monday," he recalls. "Mark [Campbell, the original booker] pretty much started the country swing revival in New York [and] the rockabilly revival. Nobody else was doing that stuff in New York back then, so he kind of built different scenes."

Once things started happening on the home front, the club began attracting touring acts, too. "Word got out that we were musician-friendly, not like the places down in the East Village," Pollack says. "There wasn't really a circuit of places like this. We've had Asleep at the Wheel, Hank III. ...We did the first NY show for the Gourds. ... A lot of guys from Austin have heard about us and like to play here, like Dale Watson. If you go see them in Austin, they play places that look just like this: no stage, no lights, they're just standing on the bar floor and plugging in."

"The Rodeo single-handedly brought Charlie Louvin to New York for the first time in 20 years," adds Grace. "I had the honor of putting a band together for him of local country musicians. When he got here, he was so impressed when he saw what passion the local New York community had for his music. He said it was the best band he'd played with in years."

Pollack says local celebs are enamored of the Rodeo as well, like Norah Jones, who has performed stealth gigs there with one of her country side projects, the Sloppy Joannes. "Norah said this is her favorite venue to sneak in and play in New York City," he affirms. "She loves it here."

New York's country cult heroes are a big part of what makes Rodeo run, too, like Western swing mainstays, Western Caravan. "They really embody what we're all about," Pollack says. "It's magic when they play here, the sound is so clear and so good. They've played here so long, they just know that you actually have to turn it down to sound better. They were one of the first, and they've been loyal to us. I love those guys."

John Vacante, who runs Brooklyn-based country label Kill Buffalo, confirms, "I personally have a long history of late nights at Rodeo Bar. It's where I became a fan of Earl Pickens, who later became Kill Buffalo's first signing."

Unsurprisingly, folks from out West comprise a hefty portion of the club's supporters. "Anyone who's from Texas ... a lot of Hollywood people," confirms Pollack. "We've done parties for Ann Richards, the ex-governor [of Texas], Bob Altman used to come in here, Sam Shepard, a lot of USC alumni. It's kind of a home away from home for those people. It's all word of mouth."

As the club's popularity grows, Pollack and Grace find it crucial to stay focused on what makes Rodeo special. "I think the Rodeo has two different modes," Grace observes. "It has full s--t-kicking kind of mode where everybody goes nuts and the place is mobbed. And then because of the way it's shaped, it can also have 25 people in it and you can have a really great listening experience where a real intimate thing happens. There's a special kind of Rodeo night -- when there's sort of an electricity in this place and it lights up and it feels like anyone could do anything. We all wait for those moments to happen here. The bartenders have a tradition of pounding on [the horse-trailer bar]. It sounds like pounding on a big piece of metal. When things start heating up and they go 'boom, boom, boom,' it's like the battle cry has been made, and the place just fires up. That's the moment in this place I just love."

"Sometimes I'll just sit and watch a band," adds Pollack, "and I'll say to myself, 'I can't believe I own this place, and I'm getting this unbelievable music here.' I consider this like a public [service], sort of like the Statue of Liberty or the Met or something. This is not about me. This is bigger than me. This is like an institution, so I feel more like a caretaker."

PRESS BIO: DAVE'S TRUE STORY

DAVE'S TRUE STORY BIOGRAPHY
by Jim Allen

Dave's True Story's smart, sexy sound blows a cool breeze through the world in which we live with its fourth release, NATURE.

Like all great art, Dave's True Story stands outside of its era, with a sensibility that encompasses the past, lives in the present, and hints at the future. The New York City group utilizes a stylish, elegant jazz/pop sound that contrasts the thorny thickets of songwriter/guitarist Dave Cantor's deliciously devilish lyrics. DTS's resident siren, Kelly Flint, coos former playwright Cantor's crafty, acerbic missives as if they were tender messages of love, but songs about psychic readings, beatnik posers, and prescription medication are seldom the stuff of late-night saloon songs.

Over the course of three albums, enough people have noticed Dave's True Story for the band to sell over 50,000 records without the benefit of a major label or big press machine. Instead they've been winning hearts and minds in a more subversive, covert manner, flying under the big boys' radar even as they've been lauded everywhere from the NY Times to CNN and had their songs included in the feature film KISSING JESSICA STEIN. With the help of DTS bassist and producer Jeff Eyrich, however, the group's hush-hush hipster renown seems likely to expand to a bigger slice of the pie, via the latest Dave's True Story disc, NATURE.
In a world primed for sophisticated, jazzy pop by the likes of Norah Jones and Diana Krall, Dave's True Story injects the crucial element of sharply observed irony with NATURE's batch of mordant, masterfully crafted tunes, from "World in Which We Live," where global ennui is wedded to a sinuous bossa nova beat, to "I Lost my Nature," in which the lovelorn protagonist searches for missing mojo against bongo-driven Beat-era jazz grooves. While previous albums featured more upbeat, swinging arrangements, NATURE finds Dave's True Story playing it cool, letting Cantor's songs, Flint's voice, and Eyrich's sterling sonic framework tell the story of a sensibility too sharp for mere "lounge" chic but too top-shelf to be crammed into a rock & roll pigeonhole.

So when the Wall Street Journal observes that "Harry Connick Jr. and John Pizzarelli should have new material that's as witty as what Mr. Cantor creates," they're not consigning Dave's True Story to an Adult Contemporary niche market, they're simply wracking their brains for artists with enough old-school spit and polish to do justice to the sparkle of a sound that's at once postmodern and timeless. With the release of NATURE, though, it's likely that admirers will stop vainly searching for comparisons and simply mark Dave's True Story as sui generis, a musical island unto themselves, offering a shrewd, sometimes salacious, but strangely luxurious escape from the banal world of mainstream pop music.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR MUSIC

Artful Dodger (Rock)

Artful Dodger was a hard rock/power pop band from Virginia that doggedly recorded and toured without ever making a real mark in America. The band continue to be held in high esteem by the power pop cognoscenti, who regard their albums, a mix of no-frills 70s guitar rock and tough-but-tasty pop à la the Raspberries, as unheralded classics. The first seeds of the band were sown when Gary Cox (b. 17 January 1953; guitar/vocals), Steve Brigida (b. September 1952; drums) and Gary Herrewig (b. 22 December 1951, Heidelberg, Germany; guitar) met in high school in Fairfax, Virginia. Steve Cooper (b. September 1952; bass) and Billy Paliselli (vocals) were cousins who lived nearby. Around 1970, Cox, Herrewig, and Cooper started playing together in a band called Homestead. Brigida and Paliselli were in another local band, Badge. After both groups broke up, Herrewig, Paliselli, and Brigida began playing together in a band that by 1973 was called Brat, and included Cooper and Cox. Soon Brat were en route to New York City, presenting a self-pressed single ("Not Quite Right"/"Long Time Away') to New York Dolls managers David Krebs and Steve Leber, who were impressed enough to sign them on the spot. By 1975, Brat had a deal with CBS Records, but they had to change their name to Artful Dodger owing to a conflict with another band. Bob Ezrin protégé Jack Douglas produced Artful Dodger, which was recorded in a monastery in Pennsylvania. The album sold poorly, despite critical plaudits. Though most of the band's songs were written by lead vocalist Paliselli with Herrewig, a CBS executive wanted a soft ballad written and sung by Cox to be the album's first single. This was the beginning of a rift between Cox, a self-contained singer-songwriter whose Beatles-influenced ballads stood out amid the straight-up Cheap Trick-like rockers, and the rest of the band, that eventually led to his departure. As a compromise, the song was re-recorded with a Paliselli lead vocal and female backing vocals. Both CBS and the band were unhappy with the results, and the single predictably flopped. Honor Among Thieves was released in 1976, but the band was disappointed with the album's production. Once again, Artful Dodger received good reviews but suffered poor sales. They toured throughout that summer with Kiss, who were at their peak of popularity. Edward Leonetti produced 1977's Babes On Broadway, but the band felt uncomfortable without the involvement of Douglas, and the sessions suffered. It was at this time that Cox's conflict with the rest of the band came to a head, and he left after the Babes On Broadway tour. The band decided to start afresh with new manager Hank LoConti, who signed them to Ariola/Arista Records. Keyboardist Peter Bonta joined the band for 1980"s Rave On, which came closest to achieving their pure power pop vision. Touring with Bonta, the band sounded better than ever on stage, but the lack of commercial success began to take its toll, and Paliselli left to spend more time with his family. Artful Dodger soldiered on for a while, but by 1982 had fallen apart. Bonta went on to play with Mary-Chapin Carpenter and with country-rockers the Rosslyn Mountain Boys. Cox recorded some material intended for a solo album with Billy Joel's band, but nothing ever materialized. Paliselli's plans for a solo career met a similar fate. Brigida remained a working musician, but Cox and Herrewig retired from the music business altogether. All of the original band members (plus Bonta) got together again for two early-90s reunion shows at Hank LoConti's Agora club in Cleveland, Ohio. They played some new material and made a strong impression on audiences, but Paliselli's unwillingness to pursue the rock 'n' roll lifestyle again made any further plans unworkable.

DISCOGRAPHY: Artful Dodger (Columbia 1975)****, Honor Among Thieves (Columbia 1976)***, Babes On Broadway (Columbia 1977)***, Rave On (Ariola 1980)****.

UNCUT MAGAZINE

ZAL YANOVSKY
Lovin' Spoonful guitarist (1944-2002)

The party line is that if the Lovin' Spoonful were the American Beatles, Toronto-born guitarist Zal Yanovsky, who died in Kingston, Ontario on December 13, 2002, was their Ringo, with his zany antics, comedic mugging, and pronounced proboscis. But his chiming guitar work was also the backbone of the sound based around Spoonful leader John Sebastian's sunny folk-rock songwriting.

Zalman Yanovsky was born December 19, 1944 to a Russian Jewish family in Toronto, Ontario. His first break came with folksters the Halifax Three, which included future Mamas & Papas member Denny Doherty. In 1964, Zal and Doherty hooked up with James Hendricks and Cass Elliot, who'd been in the Big Three with Tim Rose, for a stab at rock as the Mugwumps, which splintered later that year. Through Elliot, Yanovsky met Village folkie John Sebastian. Egged on by the "British Invasion," Sebastian and Yanovsky formed a group that mixed their folk/jug-band background with the new rock sound. In 1965 the Spoonful paid its dues at Village club The Night Owl, creating a buzz with their pioneering folk-rock style. Their joyful 1965 single "Do You Believe in Magic?" and debut LP of the same name brought instant stardom. More hits came in '66, including "Summer in the City" and "Daydream," the title track to their second album. Somehow, they also managed to release third LP Hums and a soundtrack to Woody Allen's first film, What's Up, Tiger Lily?, before the year was out.

In 1967, Spoonful drummer Steve Boone and Yanovsky were arrested in San Francisco for marijuana possession. Zal was given the choice of deportation or fingering the seller, and chose the latter. The dealer went to jail and Yanovsky was made a pariah by the self-righteous hippie culture and rock press. Relations between Yanovsky and the rest of the band deteriorated, and by the end of the year he was replaced by Jerry Yester. Yanovsky's only solo album, 1968's willfully bizarre Alive & Well in Argentina, interspresed R&B cover tunes with strange sonic collages--a commercial failure, a cult favorite, and 100 percent Zally. In '69, he co-produced Tim Buckley's Happy Sad, and the Judy Henske/Jerry Yester psych-folk cult classic Farewell Aldebaran. By the '70s Yanovsky had largely hung his guitar up for good. In 1979, he and wife Rose Richardson started Chez Piggy, a successful restaurant in Kingston. Zally the restaurateur displayed the same joie de vivre as in his earlier career, described as "cook, boss, and floor show, all in one hairy bundle." The Spoonful had a brief 1980 reunion, and a last hurrah in 2000, performing at their induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.
JIM ALLEN

STYLUS MAGAZINE

INTERVIEW: BETTYE LAVETTE

By: Jim Allen

Bettye Lavette, who began recording as a teenager in the early '60s, was the great lost Detroit soul queen until the winds of fortune finally blew her way at the turn of the millennium. She scored a couple of big singles at the beginning of her career, but the subsequent years were a torturous slog through one label after another, and periods where she abandoned recording altogether, sometimes for stage work, like the musical Bubbling Brown Sugar. Ironically, one of the greatest indignities she suffered would lead to Lavette's renaissance. Her 1972 sessions at Muscle Shoals, Alabama's Muscle Shoals Sound studio, unjustly shelved by Atlantic Records, were reissued on a European label in 2000.

A new generation became acquainted with the textured, throaty charm of Lavette's voice and the commanding power of her delivery, and her 2005 album I've Got My Own Hell to Raise, on hip iconoclastic label Anti Records, generated a full-fledged comeback. For the follow-up, appropriately entitled Scene of the Crime, the soul survivor recorded in Muscle Shoals once more (this time at the legendary Fame Studios), backed not only by old-school session men Spooner Oldham and David Hood, but by Southern indie rockers the Drive-By Truckers (led by Hood's son Patterson). The album is an emotional rollercoaster that moves through everything from Willie Nelson's “Somebody Pick Up My Pieces” to Elton John's “Talking Old Soldiers,” with Lavette's fiery-but-controlled voice narrating the trip. Stylus sat down with the sassy soul veteran to find out about the long road that led to her recent successes.

You began performing when you were still a teenager, how did you develop your sound?

The sound has always been there, I didn't like it for a long time because it's not very girlish sounding, and when you're young you want to be like all the rest of the girls. And then my records were not selling so well. My manager Jim Lewis told me "You can't sing, but I know that you're pretty good, so you can learn how" (laughs). I wanted to slap him! But he made me work on that. It was only because of the lack of success in my career that I was able to develop a style.

Where there artists you tried to emulate at the time?

If anything I tried to practice sounding like someone else because I wanted to sound like a girl, but my voice always came out like Louis Armstrong, so I had to learn how to make Louis Armstrong sound better [laughs]. I was like 18, 19, 20 years old, I wanted to sing whatever was popular, but [Jim] made me listen to Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. I said “Jim, nobody sings like that.” He said “You're right, but you need to learn how to.”

Would you agree that the style you ultimately developed employs a sense of drama and theatricality?

I think of it exactly that way, because I think like an entertainer, and I think of how it will look on the stage; because I only choose songs that will be absolutely believable. I try to draw my audience to me, and after going to the trouble of doing that I need to have something to say, and something for them to watch. It would really be impossible for me to sing a song that says “Though he treats me like a dog and beats me every day I cannot leave him,” I can't say that; I can't encourage young women to feel that way, I can't join them if they feel that way, I can't sing that. I can sing about “You hit me and I left you” [laughs].

There's a lot of pain and sadness evident in the new album, and in the last one, wouldn't you say?

They wouldn't let me work at this for a whole 40 years; they just made me suffer in it. There's a lot of pain in me. No man could have treated me worse, no love affair could have been worse than the 40 years that I struggled at this business. Because you're selling yourself; you're asking people to like you. And if you aren't selling...then they're theoretically saying “no.” So it's not like you're trying to sell brushes or something. I'm saying “I love you, I love you, I love you,” and they're saying “No, no, no!” [laughs]

How were you able to persevere and maintain your artistic spark through those tribulations?

I don't know how to do anything else. That's why I became so protective of my performance; if I break it then I won't have anything. This evening I'm going to a place [in Detroit] called The Locker Room, which is what the “Old Soldiers” song is really about [to me]. I was in there at least two nights a week, whenever I could get a ride. The Spinners hung out in there and sat at the big shot end of the bar, and I sat at the dirty end as they called it. But I would send all of my tabs up to the big shot end [laughs]. I hung there for 10 or 15 years...so often people would come in and say things like “Didn't you used to be Bettye Lavette?” or “Do you still sing” A lot of love happened there, a lot of drunk happened there, a lot of crying...but I know that I can always go there.

What are your memories of your 1972 session in Muscle Shoals?

The most memorable thing about it is that Atlantic never released it. Which is why we came up with the name Scene of the Crime [for the new album]. I think I'm probably angrier than anything that I never got a chance to confront [Atlantic head] Ahmet Ertegun and ask him why, other than that it just didn't pass quality control standards, of which he had the final say. It was Jerry Wexler who was my champion there, and he did not have as much power as Ahmet Ertegun, and that's the only thing I can imagine. All I was told is that "we decided not to go forward with the project." My only thought was to slit my wrists.

So how did you wind up returning to Muscle Shoals for the new album?

It was [Anti Records President] Andrew Kaulkin's idea to do the pairing of myself and the Drive-By Truckers. The studio that I recorded at [originally], Muscle Shoals Sound, was owned by Patterson Hood's father David, and that one is no longer open. But Fame is open and running, and a beautiful studio. It was very exciting, seeing Spooner, all the guys came back there. But just going back, and still fitting into a size six with a strong voice is very revengeful! [laughs]


Patterson subsequently wrote something about the sessions that implied there was some friction in the studio.

Patterson claims he sent me 50 tunes and I threw them at him, but he did not; it was only about 40 tunes [laughs]. It wasn't that I didn't like them, it was just that I didn't want to sing them. You just don't want to go to bed with everybody you meet; you may like them, but...[laughs] singing is a very personal and intimate thing for me; and I don't just sing it because it's good, I sing it because I feel I can sing it good. There is no friction, any problem I had with him is the same problem I have with my grandkids; I was the oldest one there, and it's just like being in any other older-and-younger situation. I don't act like a young person and they don't act like old people. So any friction that may have been there—and I don't cause friction, I cause shit—anything that happened, I started it and I finished it [laughs].

How was the experience of recording with the Drive-By Truckers?

We do completely different kinds of things, but I wasn't gonna do what they do, period. So they did more adjusting than I did. It took me 46 years to sound like I sound now, I wasn't gonna sound any other way. They figured it out on their own...and they are good musicians, so they just had to figure out where I was coming from, and when they did, they played it. I really didn't know that much about them, but I've had to do so many things over this 46-year period...so I learned how to do a lot of things with a lot of different kind of people. You know, I know how to tap dance; most rhythm and blues singers don't. But I had a chance to do a starring role in a Tony Award-winning Broadway play, so that taught me how to tap dance. Everything that I've learned now, this is character. But if I had been in the same band all the time, and our records had been back to back, and I had developed a following, I wouldn't know half of what I know, because I would be in that same vein all the time. After you do so many different kinds of things you become a broader person, and I frankly think that if my records had been successful over the years I wouldn't have had the opportunity to learn all of the things that I know now, and I don't think I'd be as talented. I might be richer, but I don't think I'd be as talented [laughs].

Was there a déjà vu feeling in having old-school Muscle Shoals musicians like Spooner Oldham and David Hood on the album?

I hadn't worked with Spooner [in '72] but I had worked with David. They've heard so much, they could identify more immediately with most anything I did, because even if they hadn't played it, they've been around so long they've heard it in something else. This becomes much more easy as you go along, and as you do so many different strains of it. The whole thing is just completely different with people who record behind people all the time and people who are in a band together. When Patterson and Spooner and I did “Old Soldiers,” everybody did their own part. Patterson and [his band] are used to having one single idea together. They found a part within my arrangement to play.

Patterson's approach is very different from his father's, but in general, do you feel like younger musicians have picked up on what your generation has done?

A lot of young music, unless it's really deliberate, like these Dap-King people [NY retro-R&B band the Dap-Kings], they deliberately try to sound like James Brown's band, I think that's a good band to replicate if you're gonna replicate one. Everybody hasn't heard it. I feel like they're going in the right direction. We have a little difficulty too now with finding just musicians. Everybody wants to be a star, nobody wants to be a sideman, which is a much more difficult thing to be.

As a veteran soul singer, how do you feel about the current state of R&B?

What they're calling R&B today is not R&B. It's like they're taking anyone who's black and does not rap and calling them an R&B singer. Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, those are real rhythm and blues singers, as I am. And I don't understand why they don't want these [younger] girls to be called pop singers, that's what they are. And the rap situation, I'm very glad that now they are trying to put actual chords together to go with the awful lyrics. And they lyrics are getting better. They're [the rappers] getting older; I was telling my grandson, he was listening to some [hip-hop] song, with just terrible lyrics, and I said “Do you really think you're gonna turn over in the bed when you're 45 and say any of those words to whoever's lying next to you?'” [laughs]

How has the audience for your music changed over the years?

The music that I've done in the past, those people have remained faithful to me, and now these last two CD's, they will bring yet another kind of people. If I can get them all together, I'll have the perfect audience! [laughs]

PERFECT SOUND FOREVER

Twisting Ears for Twenty Years:
Cuneiform Records
by Jim Allen

Since 1984, Maryland-based Cuneiform Records has been releasing what their website calls "progressive rock, experimental rock, new jazz, off-beat, contemporary and other indefinable musics from across the globe," to which label founder Steve Feigenbaum jokingly refers in conversation simply as "funny music."

Over the years, that definition has encompassed both new and archival releases, by the likes of Belgian avant-rockers Univers Zero, downtown NYC experimentalists Curlew, UK free jazzers Brotherhood of Breath, avant-garde guitarists Fred Frith & Henry Kaiser, lo-fi cult hero R. Stevie Moore, Philadelphia punk-funkers the Stickmen, and British jazz-rock legends Soft Machine. June of 2004 marked Cuneiform's 20th anniversary, with some 200 releases under its belt. Somehow, Cuneiform has managed to take challenging, resolutely noncommercial music, and make it a going concern, flying under the radar of big-business music industry monoliths while nurturing a small but ever-increasing audience.

The man behind most of this is Steve Feigenbaum. He ran Cuneiform as a one-man operation for its first eight years, with the small-but-valuable head-start of his Wayside independent music dealership already in place. Feigenbaum began his trip down the road less traveled early in life. "Around ninth grade, I think, I heard Uncle Meat by the Mothers of Invention and I remember a little door in my brain opening up." He discovered jazz at the same time via the Wheaton, MD library. "I took out John Coltrane's Ascension, (Charles Mingus') The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz...that was where it began for me."

Shortly thereafter, Feigenbaum – who was also a guitarist at the time – met the Muffins, a local avant-garde/progressive jazz-rock band, around 1973. After high school, he started Random Radar records in partnership with the Muffins, "because we all perceived there was no way anyone was going to sign the Muffins, or sign us, and so we'd have to do it ourselves; from about '77 to about '81, we put out eleven albums and one single. "I had a record out, there were a couple of Muffins records out, we licensed the first Art Bears record in America, we put out a Lol Coxhill record – that's where I got my feet wet."

Armed with the Muffins' mailing list, Feigenbaum started the Wayside music catalog in January 1980. "I was working in a record store. I had some contacts, [I knew] how to buy records and [thought] maybe I should try this myself...January of 1980 was a long time ago, there wasn't the Internet of course, and there wasn't any way to find out about stuff, there wasn't really very much in the way of oddball music, other than maybe punk oddball music...so it just seemed like a good idea."

Feigenbaum eventually built up enough of a grass-roots groundswell to start releasing records on his own. While there was no shortage of interesting, unconventional music to be found, US channels of distribution were almost non-existent. Though Cuneiform would eventually become home to many intense, cerebral European artists, its flagship release was by Nashville (now New Jersey) DIY weirdo/genius cult figure R. Stevie Moore, whose 1984 album What's the Point? was the first LP for both Moore and Cuneiform.

"[WFMU DJ] Irwin Chusid was, at that point, R. Stevie Moore's manager, and he was selling a couple of compilation tapes, back in early cassette culture, and I carried them. I liked Stevie's work, and that's how R. Stevie Moore became my first release." Over the next couple of years, Feigenbaum expanded on the groundwork laid with Moore, putting out LPs by Belgian art-rockers Present (a Univers Zero offshoot), pioneering U.S. synthesizer ensemble Mother Mallard, and of course, the Muffins, among others, all with a forward-looking, experimental edge. "It all came together in a rather organic fashion. I figured out pretty quickly the type of stuff I was gonna do. I think the R. Stevie Moore record is a really great record, but it's a little out of character if you look at what Cuneiform is. By about the third record, with Present, I sort of had an idea, I had a direction."

Many of the bands on Cuneiform fall loosely into avant-rock subgenres beloved by the hardcore but arcane to the masses. The most prevalent of these are RIO and Zeuhl. The former stands for Rock in Opposition, and started out as a politically motivated European movement in the early '70s spearheaded by iconoclastic groups like Henry Cow, and the aforementioned Art Bears. It's typified by a technically demanding combination of jazz, rock, and contemporary classical music. Feigenbaum has a hearty predilection for the style. "It's generally rhythmically interesting. Some of that stuff uses a certain amount of almost like animal-brain-level building blocks, using folk-music forms, which I like no matter how much it's sort of perverted or twisted. Somebody once asked me to try to sum up what I'm interested in: I like bands that play rehearsal-intensive music, generally."

Zeuhl is the avant/prog wing directly inspired by the legendary French band Magma, who invented their own language to sing in and, under the leadership of drummer/composer Christian Vander, forged a strident, aggressive style melding jazz-rock with near-operatic, Carl Orff-influenced structures. "It is a niche sub-genre, but people are interested, there is a fanbase. And actually, that's an aspect of 'prog' that seems to be picked up on in terms of hip factor from places that may not normally be so interested in prog. The Guapo record we did is definitely a Zeuhl record with a lot of other elements, and it's getting a lot of attention. Magma is on the rise. All these magazines drop the name Magma, and so I'm thinking to myself, 'These people haven't even heard it, they just know that they're supposed to have heard of it.' They know that it's, you know, like Klingon space opera sung in their own language, but I'll bet they've never heard it."

Inured to constant shifts in the paradigm of hipster-approved coolness, Feigenbaum has a philosophical outlook. "I spent the early '80s buying a billion German records in a used record store, a bunch of Krautrock records for two dollars each, and then five years later they were all worth a hundred dollars, I don't know why. The same people who went "Eew, German stoned hippies," suddenly five years later were talking about "Wow, cool, stoned German hippies." The only thing that changed was the perception. Nothing changed about Amon Duul II. Phallus Dei (the band's seminal '69 album) did not change in any way: the only thing that changed was the perception of it. It was loved, then utterly reviled, then loved again, and now it's sort of like passé, I guess...it's on it's way to being utterly reviled again, but we're not quite there yet. I remember buying 250 copies of (Krautrock classic) Faust IV from a cutout wholesaler for 50 cents each. I sold them for two dollars. It comes around, it goes away. The fact that I'm hip now and I wasn't hip before and I won't be hip again...I was around then, I'm around now, I'll be around later. I can go back to hip magazine X not liking me, it's not gonna break my heart."

Another, older style of progressive music that remains close to Feigenbaum's heart is the fusion-tinged "Canterbury" sound, so named for the hometown of its progenitor, Soft Machine. Cuneiform has handily documented the scene via archival releases from Gilgamesh, Delivery, various projects by Softs founder Robert Wyatt, and of course numerous live recordings of Soft Machine themselves. "There's a little bit of interest again in the Canterbury thing. Soft Machine are kind of hip and respected again, and I'd like to hope that my records were part of that. I was a big Soft Machine fan. My being able to release Soft Machine records – if you told me that when I was in high school, I would have laughed at you. I've been a Robert Wyatt fan forever, so Robert approaching me – that was quite thrilling; he's an incredibly nice man, and just was very pleasant and fun to deal with."

Apparently, the good vibes are reciprocal. Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper calls Feigenbaum "a careful, conscientious person" and observes, "in the '80s and '90s most people had moved on from interest in that music, and it was only Cuneiform, and Voiceprint in the UK who considered releasing it. Thanks to them there has been a resurgence of interest."

Feigenbaum started out as a lone wolf, but in 1993, his wife Joyce (married to Steve since 1985), made Cuneiform a family affair by coming on board as publicist, becoming her husband's first official employee. More recently, a handful of assistants and interns have been added to the mix. Cuneiform's eclecticism puts Joyce in an unusual position when promoting new releases. "One of our challenges is often not being able to reveal the eclecticism of our catalogue. Some jazz magazines have no idea that we also release classical minimalism, while some progressive rock magazines know nothing about our jazz improv releases, and so on. The old-school misconception is that a label can only release one type of music. Obviously, this is no longer the case."

After two decades of hard work, Cuneiform has plenty to be proud of, like helping to revitalize the career of Univers Zero, and making '70s French electro-prog legend Heldon's work available. Steve's also justifiably proud of his refreshingly straight-up business practices. "Every six months I sit down, I pull all of the sales figures, and I prepare 200 royalty forms, and I write checks and everybody gets paid." Needless to say, in such a notoriously crooked business, the Cuneiform method is much appreciated by its artists. Avant-rock guitar hero Fred Frith calls the label boss, "extremely honest, hard-working, passionate, and punctiliously correct in all business matters, which already sets him apart from most of the rest of the industry!" His fellow axe-man and cohort Henry Kaiser concurs, noting that, "they (Cuneiform) feel like an ally, where most labels feel like an adversary."

Cuneiform entered the fray 20 years ago with more heart than business acumen, but perseverance, passion, and a touch of serendipity have conspired to foster its longevity. In the hummingbird-paced music world, where cash and cachet are recklessly tossed about, Steve cites patience and fiscal prudence as key contributors to Cuneiform's growth. In the business's great tortoise-and-hare race, he confirms "I am absolutely the tortoise."

Whatever you do, don't call his labor of love a "prog-rock" label. "I don't think of Cuneiform as strictly a prog-rock label. You know, certainly people do think of it that way, and it's not like a complete falsehood, it's just I think it's only part of the story. In 1985 prog was a really, really dirty word, so there was nobody else doing this sort of thing. Except now, everybody's discovering it again. I figure I'm gonna do this long enough to watch myself get un-cool and cool one more time. I'm gonna retire when I'm cool the next time."