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Wiser
Than His Years With five albums under his belt plus a decade of performing live and participating and teaching in guitar workshops, you'd think finger-picking guitarist David Jacobs-Strain would be approaching middle age. But this Stanford sophomore is barely 21. Speaking by phone from a tour date in Little Rock, Ark., he told me about his new album, Ocean Or A Teardrop, where he's been and where he's going.
When I asked him why the blues chose him, he said, "I don't know if anybody can say why a certain form of music grabs them. I met [local blues legend] Walker T. Ryan at Saturday Market when I was 10 years old. I think it happens that I heard a really inspiring player, Walker ... and I just got hooked. There's something kind of raw and earthy about the music. It's possible for anyone to be moved by it and I was really moved by it and wanted to play it and channel that emotion." Jacobs-Strain also credits inspiring parents who dabbled in music themselves and encouraged him to play. It was his mother who bought him his first guitar at a garage sale for $10. "I made a lot of noise on it for a while and eventually she said 'Why don't you take lessons?'" His teacher, Emily Fox, turned him on to old blues players and set him on the path. At first he wanted to play '50s and '60s rock until he realized it takes more then one acoustic guitar to pull that off. "Another thing about blues and finger-picking guitar is that one person can make a lot of sound and it's kind of a complete sound." Jacobs-Strain's voice exudes maturity beyond his years. A full and rich authentic sound blends perfectly with his energy, technical skill and speed. "The biggest thing I think I learned at a young age, and I got this from Fox and Walker, is how to emote, no matter what note you're playing. I learned how to play and sing with feeling and how to connect my own feelings into the emotion of the music," he said. Jacobs-Strain invited musicians he met on the festival circuit to join him in recording Ocean Or A Teardrop. Kenny Passarelli appears as producer and bassist, Kendrick Freeman and Mark Clark share drumming duties, Joe Filisko plays harmonica and Danny Click provides electric guitar. Mandolinist Joe Craven and vocalist Anne Weiss also help out. The process was designed to result in a loose, free-flowing vibe. "I invited all these people to come into the studio and we really didn't rehearse. It was really fun to be able to say everything that everyone played was like a little jam. I love the fact that the record is full of surprises," he says. He incorporates a wide variety of percussive instruments including Turkish oud, African kora, congas and djembe for an exotic sound that blends with the American roots of fiddle harmonica and washtub. "I didn't try to hold this to be a blues record. I didn't force the songs into a form. I just wrote the songs that came into my head." His songs have a political tone to them, particularly the title track, which is "a rumination on the human cost of armed conflict." "Shoot the Devil" challenges the War on Terror and "Earthquake" "heralds an impending social revolution." He said he's enjoying school and preparing to select a major. "I'm not interested in studying music academically but I am interested in studying music socially. How music is culture or is created by culture or creates culture." On Sept. 12 he'll once again create his own musical culture at Sam Bond's.
In
The Eye of the Storm A Brooklyn, New York native, Kris Delmhorst fell in love with radio at a young age. She kept notebooks full of poetry, studied multiple instruments and was interested in The Beatles, Dvorak, Led Zeppelin and Coltrane equally. In short, she was a songwriter waiting to happen.
Though she earned a studio art degree she never strayed far from music and in her 20s she began writing songs in earnest. Her third CD, Songs For a Hurricane, was released in August of 2003, buoyed by non-stop cross-country touring. She sold 25,000 copies of her first two releases on the strength of her performances and word of mouth alone. Most independent labels consider any CD that sells more than 5,000 copies successful. She brings her fantastic show back to Café Paradiso on Sept. 9th. Now based in Cambridge, Mass., Delmhorst and producer, Morphine's Billy Conway, used a narrower range of instruments than on her last recording, 2001's Five Stories. The result is a sparser sound that allows the songs more breathing room. The record, as the title suggests, recounts a turbulent time. Her chosen song sequence traces a hurricane's path of emotions from the preceding calm, the buildup of momentum and energy, the eye of the storm's brief respite, more tension, a settling in and acceptance, and finally the devastation that follows as the storm recedes. She has created an engaging swirl of emotional tension and release that's a little bit Sarah McLachlan (on the tracks "Waiting for the Waves" and "Hurricane"), a little bit rock ("East of the Mountains" and "Short Work"), and a little bit country ("Wasted Word"). This talented multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, fiddle, cello, organ and mandolin also has a powerhouse voice that matches beautifully with the lay of the emotional landscape she has created. Her musical crew on Hurricane includes Conway on drums, bassist Andrew Mazzone, keyboardist Julie Wolf and Mark Erelli, Jabe Beyer, Kevin Barry and Steve Mayone all playing guitar on various tracks. – Vanessa Salvia
Kinski, Don't Climb On and Take the Holy Water, 2004 STRANGE ATTRACTORS RECORDS By Sean Campanella Kinski is an avant-rock trio from Seattle (they also go by "Herzog"), and they have crafted an ambient experience to rival Tangerine Dream's classic, Phaedra.
Forget the cumbersome song titles such as "Bulky Knit Cheerleader Sweater," and "Misprint in the Gutenberg Print Shop"; Kinski's experimental music blends and flows like a fine watercolor — it's graceful and expansive, rich and ephemeral. Most of all, it's restrained when it needs to be. "Misprint …" is the one track which really pays – cautiously, skillfully realized over the course of 30 minutes. Amazingly, it was recorded live, an improvised performance at Seattle's I-Spy in Sept., 2002. The epic "Misprint …" begins with a foundation of sounds derived from electric guitar — light picking, fretting, bending, string-scratching and wave upon wave of carefully controlled feedback. Digital mixing adds texture, as does a meditative flute. Alive with contours and entirely unbounded by percussive time, these sounds are slowly, steadily amplified into a swell of beautiful noise. The commotion rises and falls, comes and goes; its unfolding expresses passage through chaos to resolution, perhaps the elusiveness of inner peace. Always the movement is gradual, reined in by Kinski's almost stoic patience. Images abound and the patterns seem eternal. In the end, you are left with tranquility, the delicate resounding of a solitary bell.
House of Large Sizes, One Big Cake, 1989, TOXIC SHOCK RECORDS By Dan Jones House of Large Sizes (HOLS) retired from touring last year after putting out seven LP records on indie and major labels. Released in '89, One Big Cake rocked with the cut-and-paste brevity of The Minutemen or Wire, while delivering the low-end wallup of The Melvins or Killdozer. '70s rock influences also made their records and shows fun — AC/DC through the postpunk lens and flying flannel from here to Cedar Falls. Like Frank Black, singer/guitarist Dave Deibler has a knack for hollering fragments of the English language as abstract anthems. "They call me Little Johnny/My name is Little Eisenhower!" is a classic HOLS Chuck Berry-ism, amped up like absurdist arena rock for punks. The psychedelic one liners are funny rather than pretentious ("Forty Orange Cookies") and the angst is out there on the sleeve in songs like "Man Overboard" and "What If There's A Fire?" Their records are still in print and you can check them out at: houseoflargesizes.com.
Brian Wilson, Gettin' in Over My Head, 2004 BRIMEL/RHINO RECORDS By Kris Bluth This is the first album in 27 years to bear the label "Produced by Brian Wilson," and it happily sounds like it. While Wilson's previous solo albums were filled with cheesy synths and guest stars like Jimmy Buffett, Gettin' In Over My Head features many of the hallmarks that separate Wilson fanatics from people who just listen to "Fun, Fun, Fun" on the radio.
Packed with unexpected chords, eccentric arrangements and trademark harmonies, these songs do a nice job of touching on Wilson's legacy without sounding slavishly derivative. Backed by his wonderful touring band, Wilson's singing is also superb; it's witty, yet poignant, and full of life. Which is fortunate, since Head leaves a thing or ten to be desired lyrically. Granted, Wilson's never been a master wordsmith, but hearing him sing "A friend like you/ You're the one/ Who helps me make it through" is like Clay Aiken's voice coming out of Marvin Gaye's mouth. Brian Wilson is a legend with plenty of juice left in him, but maybe someone ought to lock him in a room with Andy Partridge or Jeff Tweedy next time.
Ryan Adams, Love is Hell, 2003 LOST HIGHWAY By Dane Sundseth Ryan Adams is considered a country artist. No, not a Toby Keith-ish, pro-flag wavin', pro-gun totin', country gone pop gone awful type of country, but an artist who shares Hank Williams' and Johnny Cash's themes of heartbreak and self destruction delivered in a voice of Neil Young comparison.
Last year saw Adams stray from his country way with the appropriately titled Rock 'n' Roll and the paired Love is Hell EP's (now available as one release). Love is Hell is less rock and less country. Although traces of both are found throughout the album it remains mostly a folk record riddled with somber, lovelorn pieces. The constant theme seems to be the loss of love, whether it's love that's taken its course, "I watch the window and listen for the sound of cars/I can't remember the last time that it was yours" ("Avalanche"), or love ended by death, "I'm getting really cold and I'm looking at you/You're not moving" ("Afraid not Scared"). Adams even turns Oasis' pop-friendly "Wonderwall" into a melancholic ballad that leaves you spent reaching for a bottle of Jack, and by the end of Love is Hell that's how you envision Adams, alone on a rainy day with nothing but a bottle of whiskey and a guitar to weather the storm.
BEANERY BLACK FOREST
CAFE PARADISO CLUB TSUNAMI COUNTRY SIDE RESTAURANT COZMIC PIZZA@THE STRAND All
Ages DUCK INN EMBERS SUPPER CLUB EMPIRE BUFFET & LOUNGE GOOD TIMES THE HIDEAWAY JO FEDERIGO'S
JOHN HENRY'S THE JUNGLE
LONE STAR BAR AND GRILL LUCKEY'S CLUB CIGAR LUNA MAC'S AT THE VET'S OUR PLACE TAVERN PEABODY'S PERUGINO QUACKER'S RAMADA INN SAM BOND'S GARAGE SAMURAI DUCK STACY'S COVERED BRIDGE SWEETWATER'S TAP 'N' KEG TAYLOR'S BAR AND GRILL TINY TAVERN WETLANDS THE WOODSMAN
WOW HALL All Ages YUKON JACK'S
CORVALLIS BEANERY FOX 'N' FIRKIN MURPHY'S PLATINUM NIGHT CLUB
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