Eugene Weekly : Music : 01.26.06

Is It Better To Have Loved and Sauced?

Hip hop blues pioneer G. Love raps and rocks at the McDonald.

BY TIM O'ROURKE

It's 1999. The waves off the Southern California coast are breaking, creating a sound of thunder before smoothing themselves out into a phosphorescent blanket of blue that reaches like a handshake onto the golden sands of Topanga, a city just south of Malibu, Calif. Garrett Dutton and Jack Johnson are paddling out, soon to transition from stomach to standing in the burgeoning whitewater. After a day challenging walls of water and soaking in sunshine, Dutton and Johnson grab their guitars and start swapping sounds and songs as the breeze of a cool, California night creeps onto the beach.

G. Love & Special Sauce. 9 pm • Fri. 1/27. McDonald Theatre. $17.50 adv/$20dos

It must be tough being popular young rock stars.

Jack Johnson is … Jack Johnson, the bane of guitar-strumming surfers everywhere and the singer/songwriter behind albums like Brushfire Fairytales and In Between Dreams. Garrett Dutton is G. Love, the vocalist/guitarist who travels town to town with his band Special Sauce spreading his hip hop blues sound and playing a mean harmonica.

G. Love & Special Sauce released their most recent album, The Hustle, on Johnson's Brushfire Records in 2004, solidifying a business relationship that began on the coast of California, amongst waves and whitewater, almost seven years ago. This was G. Love & Special Sauce's sixth release of what G. Love calls "hip hop blues," a combination of laid-back, sometimes funny rap lyrics over James "Jimi Jazz" Prescott's stand-up baselines and Jeffrey "Houseman" Clemens' drumming.

The Hustle features guest performances from Money Mark, Jason Yates of Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals and G. Love's sun-drenched surfing buddy Johnson. This album has been called G. Love's most diverse, moving from classic G. Love funk-tinged beats like "Astronaut" to more mellowed compositions like "Two Birds."

The band credits some familiar names as their inspiration, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles and the Ramones. But it's obvious that G. Love was also swayed by the skills of hip hop and blues artists, and he does consider KRS One, John Lee Hooker and De La Soul influences. The influence of 1940s to 1960s jazz sounds from classic ensembles behind the likes of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker are noticeable as well, especially in Jimi Jazz's baselines.

But, more than anything, this is laid-back music. It's music you could play, say, on a California beach after plunging down the faces of giant waves with your rock star buddies.    

Drumming the Sounds of Silence

Somei Yoshino Taiko Ensemble at EMU

BY JOHN GINN

The art of Taiko drumming has come a long way since its martial days on the Japanese battlefield. Originally used to rally the troops, unnerve enemies and pass along battle orders, today's Taiko scene is complex and varied. Modern groups can range from traditional outfits, with drummers going wild in loincloths and headbands, to more elegant theatrically minded groups interested in pushing the art form into new areas.

Somei Yoshino Taiko Ensemble. 8 pm • Thur. 1/26. EMU, $12./$6.50 stu.. 346-4373.

Taking its name from a Japanese cherry blossom, the Somei Yoshino Taiko Ensemble (SYTE), falls into the latter camp. Based in San Francisco, SYTE mellows their drumming with lushly orchestrated melodies played on woodwinds and strings and completes the performance with costumes, theatrical lighting and set pieces. Drumming, already a physically demanding activity, is then upped a notch with choreography derived from modern dance moves.

Founded in 1999, SYTE members individually bring decades of experience to the group. Each of them — Naoko Amemiya, Ellen Reiko Bepp, Hiroyuki Jimi Nakagawa, and Kallan Yoichi Nishimoto — are former members and students of Grand Master Seiichi Tanaka of San Francisco Taiko Dojo.

For some practitioners, Taiko is almost a religious act. The drum itself is thought to be imbued with a spirit, and the part of the drummer is to become one with the drum and express and free its spirit. In that vein, what the drum doesn't say, the silent space between drumbeats, is just as important as the concussive shock. The drum speaks, and the anticipation of the next beat can hold the attention as much as a pounding rhythm.

Based on their CD Out of the Box, SYTE's approach seems to pay as much attention to that silence as they do to show stopping rhythms. On several album cuts, the drums serve as gentle augmentation to hypnotic melodies, but other songs see the drums cut loose and unfettered, speaking loudly and joyously, driving bad spirits from the village as in days of old.

A Legend in Delta Blues

Honeyboy Edwards

It's safe to say that Eugene's, no, the nation's entire rock and roll scene would not exist in its present state if it weren't for the blues. From its origins deep in the South, it led to the development of rhythm and blues and collaborated with country to produce rock and roll. And though this was over half a century ago, for David "Honeyboy" Edwards, one of the originators in the Delta Mississippi blues scene, it seems like no time has passed at all. Honeyboy is a living legend today at 90 years old, and he continues touring as if he was still walking the streets of Chicago for the very first time in the early '50s, looking for that lucky studio to cut his debut album.

So, 55 years after he unleashed Who May Your Regular Be on the unsuspecting U.S., how does Honeyboy keep things fresh for his audiences today? "Well, you can play a slowdown, dirty blues style," he says, chuckling in amusement, "or you can make a shuffle out of it, like rock. And regardless you can get up and dance to it. You think about somebody you love or something like that. That's what I do."

Regardless of the type of blues Honeyboy chooses to play, it's safe to say he's captured the hearts of music fans across the globe and inspired generations. So drop by the Eugene Hilton and pay your respects to a living legend, because they don't make them like Honeyboy anymore.

David "Honeyboy" Edwards with Michael Frank, Mary Flower, Jerry Zybach and Blues Owens, Inkwell Rhythm Makers, Eagle Park Slim. $15 + 2 cans of food, children 10/under free, Eugene Hilton Ballroom. — Dan Hoyt

High School Party

Only embarrassing things would come of me writing this poem for someone: "Wherever you go I will be waiting/ Whenever you call I will be there/ Whatever it takes, I'll make your darkest days so bright/ I'm in your heart tonight."

Amber Pacific

But when Amber Pacific, an up-and-coming alterna-band from Seattle, writes this chorus to "Gone So Young" they land on the Warped Tour and get all huge. I mean, they signed with Hopeless Records and re-recorded their high school band demos to release The Possibility and the Promise (whatever that's supposed to mean) in 2004. But still.

The band sounds like a watered down, outdated version of Pennywise and Thrice. There's so little content and so much jargon, rhetoric and simplicity that it might as well be a cover band.

I watched the video for this incredibly dull song on the internet. Yeah, it was pretty much terrible. The singer's youthful blond hair bounced approvingly to the lovey chorus while the guitar players did their best impressions of emo-rock jump kicks. The set was a modest apartment representing the down-to-earth-ness of the band and the power of a bad chorus to lift us from such triviality as rental life without love.

Luckily, The Lashes will be opening the show with a catchy brand of keyboard-laced alterna-rock. This six-piece rolls in on the back of Sony music and caters to the hip crowd rather than the high schoolers that the headliners will draw. Like The Shins, The Strokes and Weezer, the '80s clad Seattleites offer a poppy, lighthearted sound with catchy choruses and quick guitar leads.

The Lashes will open for Amber Pacific at 8 pm Thursday, Feb. 2 at the WOW Hall. $8 adv/ $10 dos. —Danny Cross

Creepy, Kooky, Yet Undeniably Stylish

With their slick greaser hairstyles, black leather gear and the old rockabilly flavor of the '50s in their music one might think at first glance that the Sawyer Family entered a time warp long ago and still haven't figured out quite what year they're in.

Sawyer Family

Not that it matters to them. They brought along a cheesy drive-in horror movie influence along with them and warped it into a presence and sound that, according to the band's myspace.com profile, sounds like, "Hell opening up to release the dead in the middle of an alien invasion in the year 2025 when drunks and perverts have taken over the earth and girls with gigantic bosoms have become the genetic norm."

OK, so maybe they really don't know what year it is. But regardless, they've built up quite the strong local following with the 2003 release of their CD Sawyer Family Album and their self-proclaimed "psychobilly" sound. They mix everything from punk, surf and garage rock, blues, country and of course the dominant rockabilly flavor with the Creature From the Black Lagoon as icing on the cake. And the lyrics? Well, let's just say they're not for the faint of heart. Murder? Decapitations? Drugs? It's all there, but just for kicks they slide in some love stories as well.

Local punk favorites Cap Gun Suicide will also be playing the show, with Station Wag and Corvallis-based The Richard Hedders opening. Grab your best leather jacket and Wolfman mask and get ready to dance the night away under a creepy full moon.

Sawyer Family, Cap Gun Suicide, Station Wag and The Richard Hedders play 9 pm, Friday, Jan. 27 at John Henry's. $3-$5. — Dan Hoyt