Tag Archives: Jolie Holland

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival – Friday 9/30 Recommendations

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Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival is trying something new for #11.  Friday is a full-day and not half-day event, and the additional acts are not just filler.

Bill Kirchen & The Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods – Bill Kirchen – Ann Arbor native and “The Titan of The Telecaster” Kirchen was a guitarist with the original Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen from 1967 to the mid 1970s. Come see Kirchen bring the twang and show why he’s toured or recorded with Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Doug Sahm and Emmylou Harris. (Banjo Stage – 11:00am)

Blame Sally – Bay Area Americana is represented on Friday is the all female quartet Blame Sally. Known for their rollicking show and instrumental expertise the genre is great hands. (12:55 – Arrow Stage)

South Memphis String Band -  ON EDIT-  After I posted my Friday picks I was contacted about the South Memphis String Band and asked to reconsider. I did and I have. Go see ’em, they’re great! (Star Stage – 1:20)

The Mekons – This veteran punk band is headed by sometime Chicago-based Brit-expat cowpunk Jon Langford (The Waco Brothers.) They are currently supporting their new release Ancient and Modern. (2:10 pm – Arrow Stage)

Jolie Holland – Like Gillan Welch Texan Jolie Holland has a vocal quality, and reflects subject matter,  from another time. A distant, dusty and dark past. Her soulful roots and dreamy Ragtime sound is the reason she can count Tom Waits as a fan. (Star Stage –  2:50)

Del McCoury & The Preservation Hall Jazz Band –  Legendary New Orleans Jazz and Bluegrass together? Like jambalaya and moonshine baby. (2:35 – Banjo Stage)

Southern Culture on the Skids – Formed in 1983 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina SCOTS shows what happens when you mix top-notch musical chops and white trash aesthetic. Namely a hootin’ hollerin’ time. ( Arrow Stage – 3:30)

The Felice Brothers – I have likened them to being the anti- Avett Brothers. From the Catskill Mountains to the New York City subways The Felice Brothers offer a brand of gritty junkyard Americana that is as engaging and sinister as a classic Scorsese movie. Their new release Celebration, Florida might be the first (or at least the best) example of techo-Americana.  (Rooster Stage – 3:30 pm)

John Prine – A veteran on the country/folk scene since the early 70s when he was burdened with the “the next Dylan.” Dylan once even appeared at one of Prine’s first New York City club appearances unannounced and backed him on harmonica. Kris Kristofferson once remarked that Prine wrote songs so good that “we’ll have to break his thumbs” (Banjo Stage – 4:05pm)

Robert Plant & The Band of Joy –  Years ago when I got wind that Plant was sniffing around Nashvile I expectedthe worse. Rock singers in Music City typically results in mediocrity. Then I heard he was in the studio with T. Bone Burnett and Alison Krauss and was intrigued that at least he was keeping good company. A zillion sales and awards with the resulting Raising Sand led Plant back to the promised land with band conductor and guitarist Buddy Miller and came back with more premium Americana performers Patty Griffin and Darrell Scott. (Banjo Stage – 5:45pm)

If you have kids or just want to set up a stationary spot your best best bang for your buck (for FREE!) would be the Banjo Stage. The recommendations for Saturday and Sunday are larger so there will be only a list and no description. You’ll just have to trust me, I’m a (semi) professional.

Review – William Elliott Whitmore – Animals In The Dark (Anti Records)

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“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.” – H. L. Mencken

Despite the atmosphere of hope in the wake of a new President these are troubled time in America. War, torture, unemployment, jihad (foreign and domestic,) global warming and/or cooling, a society obsessed with bullshit and celebrates mediocrity….the only thing missing seems to be is locusts and floods, but hey the year is still young.

Throughout history hard and turbulent times have beget great music. The 1920s and 30s widespread poverty due to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl resulted in Aunt Molly Jackson’s Hungry Ragged Blues to Woody Guthrie’s  This Land Is Your Landl. The 60’s gave us Crosby, Stills Nash & Young’s (well, mostly Young’s) “Ohio”, Bob Dylan singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” and John Fogerty wailed Fortunate Son. Sure the pop factories still pumped out confections of distraction, but the real stuff, the stuff that sticks and level-sets a society led astray by self-obsessed cynicism and thrusts us toward a greater sense of responsibility, civility and justice. That’s the stuff we remember.

William Elliott Whitmore has found a new home of kindred spirits with L.A.’s Anti- records, the more diverse sister label of the punk focused Epitaph records, and home for Bob Mould, Jolie Holland, Merle Haggard, Neko Case, the artist Whitmore is often (Erroneously IMHO) compared to Tom Waits, and the label where Marty Stuart had to shop the late, great Porter Wagoner’s last album (Wagonmaster) when Nashville refused to support the legend. He’s done his time on the road with bands like The Pogues, Murder By Death, Clutch and Lucero and cuts a lanky, tattooed profile of a punk front man or carnival barker. With punk cred and a hard core troubadour’s (sorry Steve Earle) ethic, Williams is the the most interesting kind of artist, a walking cultural mash-up with music and a voice that transcends fashion and speaks from the ages.

Some have referred to Animals in the Dark as a political work. I don’t see at as much as political but as a work. like his earlier Southern Records stuff, about perseverance of the human spirit against natural and man made woe and worry. The troubles here are just given a different face.

The trouble, and record, starts with Mutany, a military drumbeat driven call and response tale of a ship headed into bad weather and a crew taking responsibility for their ship and dispatching the drunken, incompetent captain.Whitmore shows his wry humor in this song by inserting the oft-heard (and sampled, right Nelly?) old school call and reponse from rapper Rock Master Scott & the Dynamic Three “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. We don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn.” Love it.

Who Stole the Soul is a ragged lament of lost beauty and justice with a cello accompaniment brings a sense of loneliness and adds depth to Whitmore’s usual solo acoustic guitar. Johnny Law is Whitmore’s version of I fought the Law…with just as simple a structure and refrain, but he pulls short of claiming that the law won since he has the last word for the corrupt law man.

Old devils is where the album gets it’s name and it’s a song where Whitmore really starts to name names and harken back to a time when folk music was the Rage Against the Machine of its day. Corrupt politicians, draconian laws and unjust wars are all called out and the universal shit that comes down on the heads of those at the bottom is named. Hell or High Water is a wonderful barroom ballad of hope and faith in camaraderie in spite of all that came before of that will follow and faith again is the theme within There’s Hope For You with it’s Band-style organ and bashing swell of an ending.

Hard times traces an immigrant’s travels from Germany to the New World all the while struggling and bravely facing the adversity that chiseled and galvanized past generations and puts a spotlight on our own condition – what Clint Eastwood calls the “Pussy Generation.” There’s no appeal to higher authority of the deistic or terrestrial variety. It’s all bootstraps and grit.

Lifetime Underground brings Whitemore’s usual weapon of choice into the picture – the clawhammer-style banjo. Another tale of facing adversity, this time his own, as an ever traveling minstrel working the beer halls and Elk’s lodges of America in relative obscurity. Let the Rain Come In is a woozy pedal steel blues number that furthers the theme and facing off on the world and all comers. A Good Day to Die is a sentiment that nicely wraps up this fine release. Beauty and adversity are all faced in equal (existential? theological?) regard.

William Elliott Whitmore takes his music and themes into more primitive and universal territory than his more precious contemporaries like Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Iron & Wine that come off as dorm room folkies in comparisons. Whitmore’s work comes from a harder, darker place…wherever people are struggling and gives them unity in commiseration, hope and, yes, beauty.

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William Elliott Whitmore – Old Devils – Raleigh, NC 11-5-08

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYV53eeRYPo[/youtube]