Soooooo….I love the Old 97’s.  I have seen them, at the Old High Point, at the Old Cicero's, at the Duck Room, the Pageant, Mississippi Nights, Bonnaroo, Off Broadway, the Old Rock House and more...likely many more.  It is just kind of something you do when they are in town...you go see them.  I think they remind me of my early 30’s.  I thinked I peaked then and I didn't even know I had a peak.

They came on May 24th to “The Ready Room” with The Heartless Bastards and BJ Barham of American Aquarium.  The Ready Room is on Manchester in The Grove and I want to love it.  I want to love it so much but, after several attempts to love it with several bands I love… it is a shit show.  It is just horrible.  It has, no ambience.  It has horrible sound quality and the sight lines and “space” are questionable in both planning and execution.  The only redeeming thing about the place is that they schedule quality acts (good booking) and they have a very professional bartending staff that can really rip out the drinks and the beers in a timely manner and this is no small deal.

I come here not to praise The Ready Room but to bury it.  You really cannot believe how bad it is until you go and hear a band you love.  I saw Lucero there last year and had the exact same impression but I forget (I am old).  You get there and there is no street presence or marquee on the place.  It is like walking up to an AAMCO or some body shop. It is a cool neighborhood.  Sanctuaria is right across the street.  They could help create environment but...they don't.

I mean...cmon.  AT least try.  You walk in and they basically have a card table set up where they take your ticket and give you your 21 and up wristband.  Then you enter the bar and the venue and room with the stage in it are on your left.  The floors are cement.  The walls are cinder block.  Bar area has a 30 foot cinder block wall which separates from the music room.  They say it can accommodate 750 but they probably do 500 comfortably. The ceiling is… warehouse ceiling.  There is no baffling or material to keep anything from getting lost or just bouncing around sound wise.  Additionally there is no place to go but outside to get away from the sound.  It is just a horrible venue with no personality and no one should pay there and no one should go see a show there because it disappoints in every way.  

Even their website is boring.

http://www.thereadyroom.com/about/

They doubled down on stupid at the Old 97s show.  It was a Tuesday night.  Doors at 7, show at 8 but 3 acts.  3 acts on a school night is the type of stupidity I formerly had to deal with at Off Broadway.  New management has made that place a pleasure to go see a show.  But they always had three acts and always started late.  So on a Tuesday night Barham goes off on time and I only caught the end of his set but he was great.  Good voice and deeply, DEEPLY troubling lyrics.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vp8BH8eR_A

His lyrics are what I cheerfully refer to as “gun in his mouth” type lyrics but a great, mournful voice and good guitar.  I will need to check out his band… but that is not the point.

He got done and The Heartless Bastards went on.  I have nothing against this band.  Cool name.  Two girls in the band.  One of them is lead singer.  Good band, good guitarist, good singer.  I don't know any of their names and I never will because I don't care.  They came out and played their set.  No eye contact.  No stories.  No relationship building with crowd.  Nothing about the band stands out or should stand out.  They are really talented and I don't care and they played a set like they don't care.  Eminently missable.  But they kept playing and they kept playing.  Way more than 45 minutes.  You cannot play that type of music and Americana songs and be shoe gazers. They played for two full beers and I know because I left the floor and went and stood back by the bar because they bored and annoyed me.  They remind me of a less interesting and less talented Continental Drifters.  By the time they got off and did the equipment change it was 10:30 before the Old 97s went on!  I am too old to have the headliner start at 10:30 on a Tuesday.  This is stupid.

But Rhett Miller and the boys came on and did what they always do.  They rocked it, sweated it and chatted it up in a sing along for all to see and participate in.  Rhett whipped his hair and although they started without the typical, “Hi y’all, we are the Old 97s from Dallas Texas”... they still brought it.  I have seen these guys play so many times and Rhett Miller play so many solo shows that I should be bored.  Other than the shitty sound at The Ready Room, the band plays its straight ahead, rollicking music which provide a plate for you to eat up Millers 2 ½ minute poems.  Just to get a feeling of what they look like and sound like...watch this.  Another great song.  Kind of a long intro but it is worth listening to as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7-L7QmTo3A

Everyone in the band is great but Rhett Miller with the lyrics, the boyish charm and the good looks drives every show along with Ken Bethea’s relentless guitar.  It is not pretty guitar but it attacks and he has been throwing his ass into it for so long that it is a beautiful thing to behold. I really cannot say enough that you need to go see these guys the next time they come but hopefully they will not come to The Ready Room, because it ain’t ready and never will be.

Soooooo…. it would appear that I have been absent for some period of time.  I have many apologies… travel...work… what not.  They are lame but indeed, that is what we have come to expect from these halting pages.  But I have not been idle.  Half way through, despite all the issues and some mist steps it has been… quite year.  

I have seen a lot of music this year.  Much of it has been at Off Broadway and I am happy to report again, and again that this is becoming a treasured venue in town.  I have lived through the venue being the worst and stupidest of shit holes.  Back in the day… when i was a pup it competed rather unsuccessfully with Mississippi Nights and the old Cicero's.  But these venues eventually went on to not become a Jacques Cousteau museum or to become a lame incarnation of itself up the street from it’s former location.  But Off Broadway ambled on… trudged on...slowly… awkwardly and sometimes horribly.  Great bands but a really stupid room.  You would arrive at the front door and come in behind the stage into a “lobby”.  Then walk around and there was a cool long bar that extended down the side.  A “stage” was there, poorly lit.  The “room” had a beautiful wagon wheel chandelier which didn’t belong.  There was an upstairs which could have been funky but was instead awkward and vision was blocked by the over hang as well as… the chandelier.  Doors were at 8.  Bands started to play at 9 ish and there were often 3 of them.  On a school night you were always out till 1.  Too late for people with jobs and too random an experience for a “grown up”

But a few years ago new owners came on the scene.  Things started to happen.  Good things.  Happy things.  They started to experiment with:

Earlier shows

Afternoon shows

Shows that started on time

Tall boy beers

Professional employees

Redecorating

Losing the iconic chandelier

Peeling years of...shit of the walls

Painting

Shortening the bar

Bringing in seats for old people shows or partial old people shows.  What I am saying is that if you ever have an inclination to see some live music.  Hit their website and go out.  They bring in some of the most talented acts that are both breaking and established and when local bands play there it is because they are awesome.  Their website is:

http://www.offbroadwaystl.com/calendar/

So some of the shows I have seen recently.

Rhett Miller.  Rhett is lead singer and other than one song per album by their bassist sole lyricist for The Old 97s.  Rhett is… well… their is really no one else like Rhett.  I would assume he is about 40 (I am too bored to WIKI him).  He went to Sarah Lawrence (girls school) on a poetry scholarship.  Now remember he is from Texas.  He dropped out and moved back and started a band and they have turned out 8-10 CD’s and he has dated and married super models and he has long hair and my best friend’s wife loves to go to shows just to see him whip his hair.  And he does.  But when he comes to town for a show he normally just shows up with a guitar.  I think he has 5 solo albums out and he writes great songs.  He writes lines like:

“I was going through a hell of a time

When suddenly you showed up

You gave me hope but I lost mine

But hope is not enough

I loved you so hard

It broke my heart

And you weren’t like the rest

Until you left”

Seriously… that is “Dylanesque” which is the nicest thing I can say about a songwriter.

Frankly this show was the most fun.  Buy his newest album and buy the new Old 97’s album as well.  It is not poetry but is an album full of songs about getting drunk on bourbon and having sex.  What could possibly go wrong.

Steve Earle hit the Pageant and reminded us all what a grumpy, great, tuneful, deep, flawed, wonderful nightmare that he is.  He had a pretty set with a tight band featuring the husband and wife team “The Mastersons” who opened up the show with a tight swinging sound.  She has a sweet voice and he has good chops.  Together they ably backed Earle.  Steve Earle has had a checkered personal life but has always been a brilliant artist.  Sidelined by heroin and drugs it appeared he had straightened himself out after several marriages and had settled with the talented Allison Moorer in NYC.  This tour seemed to be about him working through that latest break up.  The bottom line with Steve Earle is that he is likely the most soul filled white man out there.  He bleeds through his songs and is constantly working out his thoughts in his songs whether it is personally or politically and… you should go see him.  The Pageant is not intimate enough for what he was doing on this tour but still… as I said...get off your dead ass and go see a show.

Twang Fest 38 returned this year with it’s normal panoply of touring and local acts.  I was only able to hit two nights of the four nights but each one was filled with great music.  KDHX does such a great job for my kind of tunes and the Fest gets better and more professional each year and the partnership with Off Broadway seems here to stay which… is good.

More  recently I hit Off Broadway to see the late great Robbie Fulks (not yet deceased).  Fulks, from Georgia via 20 years or so in Chicago does not come to town enough.  he was playing an early show opening for Chatham County Line who is the latest “thing” in Americana/Alt Country...whatever you want to call it.  But Fulks… I have seen 4-5 times.  I was able to reminisce with him briefly about his first show in the St. Louis at the old High Point...100 or so years ago.

Fulks has been keeping himself in Chicago at the Old Town Folk School up there and has helped them create a beautiful community that teaches a lot of people and promotes even more.  Fulks is a gem and no one knows about him who does not pay attention to great music.  He has a truly unique voice and I don't mean “unique” like Dylan or Niel Young.  I mean unique like...fucking beautiful.  There is something in the way he resonates that literally can make me tear up and there is both a joy and a mournfulness that he conjures which becomes stunning in a small venue like Off Broadway.

The voice coupled with 30 years of songwriting proved too much for the normal 45 minute opener and he played for over an hour and left everyone wanting for more.

Georgia Hard

She said she was leaving

So I went to follow

Blind love and I-55 got me here

Dirty old salt truck

in the smog before me

And dear old Dixie, back in the rearview mirror

Got a third-story walk-up

With a view of the alley

A mailroom job that isn't all glamour and fun

The woman I came for

Is gone to another

Now my feet are just too planted to run

Chorus:

But there's no Carolina Moon over Chicago

No bluegrass growin' out in my backyard

No fields of sugarcane, no soft Virginia rain

But damn, if this livin' ain't Georgia Hard

Down on Halsted

The women walk by me

Like they can tell

I haven't got a dollar to spare

So it's into a side street

For a beer and a sad song

I guess some things

Are the same most everywhere

So please, Mr. Conwell

Could you except the charges?

When I told you "A cold day in Maacon", I lied

And if your pecan trees still need a-shakin'

I'll be back a-beggin' fast as the grey dog flies”

Chatham County seemed like they were going to be awesome after some awful sound problems.  They do 4 musicians, no drummer, and one microphone.  It is almost too cute but these guys are clearly killing it and a braver man would have stayed for more but… I am old.

Robbie Fulks/Chatham County Line

Most recently I went to Off Broadway to see the Felice Brothers.  The Felice Brothers became like gods to me with the release of their eponymous CD from 2008.  Songs like “Whiskey In My Whiskey”, “Scarecrow” and more made a CD that was so solid song to song, so lyrical and so filled with sad energy that it was far and away my best CD released that year.  But so what?  They came to town to the Firebird once since then and I missed them (out of town) which was clearly my bad but mistakes get made.  But I did not miss them this time and they were everything I had hoped and more.  They were brilliant.  Sad.  Emotional.  Funny.  Talented and… shit… they were beautiful.   Ian and James Felice even without their brother Simone play the kind of music that can only be played from playing together for life and loving and hating each other as only brothers can do.  The concert ambled, rambled, soared and swooped.  It was meticulous and it was a train wreck and it was everything rock and roll is supposed to be.  It is clearly for me the best show of 2014!                    

Songs of addiction and madness that when you read the lyrics they just make you ache… and cringe.

Scarecrow

Would you love me

If I told you I was born upstream

If I told you I come from money

White money

Would you love me

Would you love me

Well, I was born down

By a bad little river in a poor town

Where an indian-giver put a board out

It said "Boarding House"

Call him Scarecrow

He kept whores around

And I'd go there

I'd wait my turn on the broke stairs

And get me the girl with the gold hair

Aw yeah, leave your clothes there

On the folding chair

In that cold room

Your breath would twist just like ghosts do

You said, "Call me Dorothy in red shoes"

And the bed moved

The bed moved

The bed moved

Tracy, don't you wake that scarecrow tonight

Well, the man would come in

It's hard living right giving head when

The sad days of winter have set in

And the medicine for an addict is heroin

I'd find you there in the bath

We'd cook up your shit in a tin can

And you started calling me Tin Man

And we started making plans to begin again

Begin again

You saved a C note

Told me you felt like a seagull

Told me to meet at the depot

With the needle, then maybe we'd go

To Reno

Where you'd be my desert dove

And we'd find a way to make better love

Said, "Baby, that's how the West was won"

And the blood-red sun

Yeah, the blood-red sun

And the blood-red sun

Tracy, don't you wake that scarecrow tonight

Well, the man cries,

"Who gives a damn when a tramp dies?"

But I loved you there in the lamp light

With your bare thighs

And the halo of your hair alive

And all my lifelong

I'll never shake off your siren song

And all of your talk about dying young

With an iron lung and that crazy way

Would you love me

If I told you I was born upstream

If I told you I come from money

White money

Would you love me

Would you love me

And all my lifelong

I'll never shake off your siren song

And all of your talk about dying young

With an iron lung and that crazy way

You said, "Simon,

I think I might stay here with Scarecrow tonight

Simon, I think I'm gonna stay here with Scarecrow tonight."

                                  s

“I put some whiskey into my whiskey

I put some heartbreak into my heart

I put my boots on that ole dance floor

I put three rounds Lord, in my 44”

The Felice Brothers.

Quite a year indeed.

Go see some music.

Save your soul.

The Old 97's: Blame It On Gravity and at The Pageant

I have had a long time affair with Rhett Miller of the Old 97’s. It has gone through a lot of ups and downs overcoming him dropping out of college, starting a band, getting semi famous, getting a model for a wife, trying and failing at a solo career, getting back together with the band and well, kind of mailing it in. I would estimate that I have seen them play live about 12 to 15 times. More then any other band. I think Los Lobos would be second and Wilco is in there somewhere.

So it is always with some trepidation that I see that they have a new album coming out. Additionally they are of course touring behind it and I need to see them live. Trepidation comes because they are a very unlikely band to break through to new ground. They have a nice rocking, twanging sound. Ken Bethea gets better on guitar but he is not a virtuoso but he is just what the band needed. Miller is good looking, Murray Hammond adds heart and earnestness. Not a bad combo but also not a group you can expect to evolve like say... a Wilco.

And they have not.

Lets make clear. I still love these guys and Rhett is still cute but... there is not much growth. Still, growth is not all it is cracked up to be and certainly not for everyone. The new CD “Blame It On Gravity” came out last month and it is an excellent tuneful yet unremarkable collection. It starts with “The Fool: which rollicks along like ANY Old 97’s song. It tells a story of a guy in love. A fool in love. Who would have thunk it? Dance with me is Rhett Miller, breathy, I am singing about the girl but want the girls to be thinking about me, song. Only a girl could like it and maybe not even them. The third song “No Baby I” is much better and gives you hope. It has the poetry of Millers best work with the tag line “blame it on gravity, blame it on being a girl”. It is soft, lilting and works.

”My Two Feet”... I don’t know. I like it but seems a lot like all their new songs since Satellite Rides. The rhymes, work, the songs cute, Bethea's guitar jangles but, do I really give a shit anymore? “Ride” brings it back with quality again but there is very little rawness and it is still kind of a “look at me” song though Bethea gives us some high points as Rhett takes us on a ride. “She Loves The Sunset” is at best, insipid. “I love a girl, she loves the sunset”. Seriously? it tries to do an island hawaii thing. Lets just call it a mistake. “This Beautiful Thing”, Murray contributes... sort of. Murray is big, funny looking and bespectacled. he is married to singer songwriter Grey De Lisle and... I have never know what to do with Murray and this song does nothing to clear up the riddle.

“I Will Remain” finds Miller heading back to surer footing and is a good listen for someone who loves his voice like I do. I could listen to him chant the phone book but this is just a pleasant little ditty and an ode to eternal, lost, and unrequited love. “Early Morning” tries to become another “Four Leaf Clover”. Perhaps time will make me love it. I am not counting on it. “The Easy Way” might be the best song on the CD. It finds Rhett singing about love, Texas, jukeboxes and things he knows best. No guitar heroics, just Bethea slashing away the way he does best, in perfect time. “Heres To The Halcyon” seems to be about a ship, it tries to be too poetic and does not work. “Color of a Lonely heart Is Blue” is Murray Hammond at his best, which is singing just about the same note. If you didn’t listen to the words you would think he was singing “West Texas Teardrop”. But do not listen to the words. Fittingly they close with the best song “The One”. Miller sings about the band and relationships and bank robbery. My recommendation would be to download three or four of these songs from iTunes and call it what you need. Strictly a CD for a fan and a completist.

So that leaves us with their live show. The bottom line is that if you love them it is great live show. Rhett is still cute, albeit pudgier. He still can sing. Bethea is finally comfortable as a lead guitar player and is no longer embarrassed of his chops. Murray Hammond is talented and air tight on Bass and rhythm if needed and always solid on backing vocals and his songs where he sings are always a nice break from Rhetts too pretty vocals. I know I wrote all this without mentioning their longtime drummer Philip Peeples. He is a non entity on album or stage but like Mike Heidorn from Uncle Tupelo, it is not the band without him and if they lost him they would probably be done. Drummers are funny.