Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2009 > April > 16
Thursday, April 16, 2009
CD reviews: Nakia and Black Joe Lewis
Bret Gerbe FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Nakia
Water to Wine
(Self)
Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears
Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is!
(Lost Highway)
As any good bartender will attest, the secret to a good cocktail is the perfect mix of sweet and strong, smooth and harsh. Good soul music is no different — the most memorable soul artists blend the sweetly positive humanity of gospel with the harsh kick of furious rhythm and blues.
To judge by that rubric, Austin’s woefully underappreciated soul scene is in good shape. The last month has seen debut full-lengths by two of the city’s most highly regarded up-and-comers: Nakia, the Alabama-raised crooner with the full-throated voice, and Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, the garage soul octet that delivers gritty garage soul with machine gun urgency. And though Black Joe Lewis offers up the more compelling debut, both albums herald the emergence of two major talents.
Thousands of Austinites might best recognize Nakia as the unassuming fellow pulled on-stage for a dance with soul diva Sharon Jones at the Austin City Limits Music Festival 2008. She’s not the first genre devotee to see something special in Nakia. His clean, authentic stylings also attracted the attention of veteran local singer-songwriter Michael Fracasso, who co-wrote “Water to Wine.” Seasoned pro and shining newcomer complement each other nicely — Fracasso’s keys and roots rock sensibility are a perfect fit for Nakia’s sugary Southern soul.
Punchy opener “Choose Your Poison” establishes the album’s modus operandi: catchy but not overpowering guitar riffs, Nakia’s rich voice and lyrics that lay bare the record’s themes of discrimination, love, loss and spirituality. “On the Bus” features an Otis Redding whistle, while “There Goes the Neighborhood” is a dizzyingly brilliant array of instrumentation and insightful lyricism. The slightly bitter “Elizabeth Lee” and “Outta My Head,” meanwhile, are frustrated odes to a lost love in the best tradition of Southern blues.
But the album’s glossy, clean production occasionally overpowers its passion, as on the antiseptic, Biblical title track. Nakia’s assembled a talented band and might be Austin’s most soulful singer this side of Malford Milligan, but a handful of the tracks are oddly limp on the recording.
Black Joe Lewis’ “Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is” provides an interesting contrast, visceral and gritty as it is. If Nakia’s album is a glass of wine, Black Joe Lewis’ debut is a shot of cheap whiskey — harsh, short-lived, edgy and entirely intoxicating.
The album kicks off with the aptly titled “Gunpowder,” an explosive homage to the best of ’70s Stax. Lewis follows with the call-and-response blues rocker “Sugarfoot.” The lyrics deal with familiar themes for soul: love, poverty and debauchery. Lewis’ cleverest song, “Get Yo (Expletive),” is an unbelievable-sounding tale that begins with him forgetting his girlfriend’s name and closes with him evading the Austin Police Department. It’s probably true.
But it’s the cutting vocals, delivered with razor-sharp intensity and augmented by the Honeybears’ tight, riotous horns and guitar that make “Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is!” truly special. Despite its release on Lost Highway — reliable purveyors of American roots — and production from Spoon’s Jim Eno, it’s an infinitely rougher-sounding album than Nakia’s “Water to Wine.” Listen to it on vinyl, with pops and hisses intact, and the album could easily be mistaken for a time-lost refugee from soul’s ’70s heyday, a contemporary of James Brown or Baby Huey. It’s not a deep or terribly adventurous album, but it is reliably fun.
Nakia plays a CD release show at 8 p.m. Saturday at Jovita’s, 1619 S. First St. $8. 447-7825; nakia.net.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Reviews
Grudge match!: Vega vs. Crystal Castles (vs. the world)
A misplaced guitar pedal and some questionable decision making by Toronto noise freaks Crystal Castles has sparked one mighty brouhaha with them, Austin band Vega and concert powerhouse C3.
Here’s what we know: Just prior to a Wednesday show at the Granada Theater in Dallas, Vega got the boot from their spot opening for the Crystal Castles for, allegedly, stealing one of the headliner’s guitar effects pedals.
The theft supposedly happened after Monday night’s show at Emo’s, which was over before 11 p.m. and saw Crystal Castles play for only 40 minutes. Adding to the drama, CCs canceled the Dallas show after a three hour delay and blamed poor sound production at the venue for their decision, sparking a war of words between the band, its fans, promoters and, obviously, Vega.
Fans turned away at the Dallas show took to the Internet in anger, and it seems not too many people are lining up to high-five Crystal Castles right now. Vega’s Alan Palomo explains the guitar pedal in question was mistakenly packed in his band’s gear Monday night and returned before the Dallas show was scuttled. Promoters with the Granada and C3 manage to diplomatically thumb their nose at Crystal Castles, who are staying mostly mum for now and say any comments floating around about the incident from them are fraudulent.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment
Weekend picks: Dinosaur rulers, mopey Scots and reggae riddims
FRIDAY
Benefit for When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth at Beerland.Yet another band has its equipment stolen, this time during SXSW. Smashingly good lineup of Austin underground heavyweights, including the Strange Boys, Ralph White, Dikes of Holland, Woodgrain and more. 10 p.m. $7. —- Joe Gross
Also recommended
- The Skatalites at Flamingo Cantina
- Dan Deacon, Teeth Mountain, Future Islands at Emo’s
- Trailer Space re-opening party with Golden Boys, Tia Carrera, Elvis and more
- Coma in Algiers (CD release), the Gospel Truth at the Scoot Inn
SATURDAY
Reggae Fest at Auditorium Shores.This jam has grown into one of Austin’s most popular two-day music shindigs. Saturday is headlined by ska heroes the Skatalites with Grimy Styles, Mau Mau Chaplains, Subrosa Union, Bandulus and the Reddies. Wailing Souls headline Sunday with Los Skarnales, Jah Roots, Don Chani and Radio La Chusma. Music starts at noon. $10 a day advance, $15 at the door. — J.G.
Also recommended
- Mavis Staples at St. James’ Episcopal Church
- Gary Louris and Mark Olson at Antone’s
- Del the Funky Homosapien at Emo’s
- Dexter Freebish at Momo’s
SUNDAY
The Twilight Sad at Mohawk. Another excellent Scottish band in the proud tradition of Austin favorites Mogwai and the brilliantly mopey Arab Strap. The giant fuzzy guitars aren’t a bad warm-up for the My Bloody Valentine show later in the week. With the Calm Blue Sea and My Education. 9 p.m. $8. — J.G.
Also recommended
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
17-year-old troubadour graduates to the big time
The two producers had been hunkered down in a Nashville studio all weekend, tweaking an album that mixes bluegrass virtuosity with airy country pop vocals. “Let’s call it a day,” producer Gary Paczosa said one Sunday evening. “We’ll pick it up tomorrow.”
But producing partner Sarah Jarosz, whose debut album they were recording, reminded him that she had to fly back to Austin that night. “I’ve got classes tomorrow,” she said.
Paczosa, whose credits include seven albums with Alison Krauss, laughed when he thought about the year he spent on Jarosz’s “Song Up In Her Head” LP, which comes out June 16 on Sugar Hill Records. “That’s the first time I’ve made a record working around my co-producer’s school schedule,” he said. But Jarosz, a 17-year-old senior at Wimberley High School, has long juggled academics and a music career, with success in both fields. The mandolin picker with the angelic voice, who wrote 11 of the 13 songs on her album, is also a member of the National Honor Society.
“My parents are both schoolteachers, and they instilled a love of education in me at an early age,” said Jarosz, whose father, Gary, is her government teacher at Wimberley High. Teachers get summers off, which has given her parents time to take their only child to bluegrass camps and festivals across the country during the past few years.
“One of the most impressive things about Sarah and her parents is the effort they’ve made to keep the balance in her life, with her schoolwork such a priority,” Wimberley High principal Greg Bonewald said.
Jarosz is a finalist in the “Miss WHS” pageant, with the winner to be announced at Saturday’s senior prom, but she has to miss it. Her trio has a gig at the Old Settler’s Music Festival on Saturday afternoon, with a lot of visiting and jamming after that. Jarosz has played the bluegrass-flavored fest, which runs today through Sunday at the Salt Lick Pavilion in Driftwood, the past eight years. It’s where she got her taste for bluegrass and fell under the wings of masters such as David Grisman, Abigail Washburn and Tim O’Brien.
But first she was a fan. As a fourth-grader making her first visit to Old Settler’s in 2001, Jarosz told Chris Thile, then of Nickel Creek, that she hoped to one day be good enough to play with him. “Let’s jam sometime,” Thile wrote in her program.
“And now Chris is all over my first album!” said Jarosz, who also plays banjo, guitar and piano. “How unbelievable is that?”
Jarosz was signed to a record deal by Paczosa, a vice president at Sugar Hill Records, after her performance at Colorado’s prestigious Telluride Festival in 2007. Recording sessions for the debut began during spring break 2008. Paczosa decided to give Jarosz a co-producer credit, rare for a 17-year-old singer, when it became clear she wanted to be involved in every aspect of the project. As multi-instrumentalist O’Brien wrote in the liner notes to the upcoming album by his protégé, ” Sarah is that rare, self-possessed teenager … She knows what she’s about and is ready to get out there and make her mark.”
Jarosz said it was a goal to record her first album before graduating high school, to sum up this early chapter of her life. Some tracks on “Song Up In Her Head” - the meditative “Edge of a Dream” and a cover of the Decemberists’ “Shankill Butchers” - give a glimpse of the new singer-songwriter direction in which she is heading. But bluegrass is deep in her heart.
Mary Jarosz, who teaches pre-kindergarten at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Wimberley, said all the good things that have come to her daughter have come naturally, without any parental pushing. Even the career-changing set at Telluride smacked of kismet, as the promoter had one last slot to fill and remembered Sarah Jarosz belting out “Blue Moon of Kentucky” at a bluegrass camp a couple years earlier. “When she was 2 years old, she was singing ‘Grand Ole Flag’ (at her preschool) and drew the attention of a truly marvelous music teacher named Diana Riepe,” Mary Jarosz said. When Sarah Jarosz was a baby, Riepe raised her on the Kodaly Method, which stresses that instrumental training shouldn’t begin until a musical ear has been developed through singing.
Sarah Jarosz picked up the mandolin at age 10, when a fellow parishioner at St. Mary’s Catholic Church lent her one. “We ended up buying it and giving it to Sarah at Christmas,” Gary Jarosz said. But that meant the mandolin had to be returned, so it could be wrapped and put under the tree as a surprise. “It was so hard to do that,” Mary Jarosz said. ” Sarah had really become attached to that mandolin.”
Paczosa credits Jarosz’s parents, who moved to Wimberley from Austin 15 years ago, with keeping their daughter grounded. “They’re not stage parents at all,” Paczosa said. “They’re there to support Sarah in whatever interests she has, and it just so happens that she’s really into music.”
The parents were faced with “probably the toughest decision we’ve ever had to make” when they allowed their daughter to travel to New York City by herself at age 15 to attend a Thile concert at Carnegie Hall. “It was my first trip anywhere by myself, and I could really feel a sense of independence, inspiration and growth,” said Sarah Jarosz, who instantly fell in love with the Big Apple.
“That trip to New York changed our lives, too,” Mary Jarosz said, “because we realized ‘she can do this on her own.’”
In September, she’ll move to Boston to attend either the Berklee College of Music or the New England Conservatory; she’s been accepted to both but has not picked one.
Jarosz said she’ll miss her parents as much as they’ll miss her. “Whenever I write a new song, they’re the first ones I play it for,” she said. “They’re always honest with me.”
One day she emerged from her bedroom with a tune-in-progress she wasn’t so sure of. She sat at the piano and sang “I have just begun/ A long journey that will run/ The length and width of summertime/ And the cool fall air will blow me home,” and her parents applauded. “The Long Journey” is a highlight of “Song Up In Her Head.”
The long journey just begun gets really interesting in the next few weeks as Jarosz graduates from high school, turns 18 and releases her first album. She might even trade her learner’s permit for a driver’s license.
