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Saturday, September 26, 2009
ACL 2009 preview: Flogging Molly
Dennis Casey is still the new guy in Flogging Molly and he has been there 10 years.
Started by former Fastway singer Dave King, the band — which plays at 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, on the AMD stage at the Austin City Limit Music Festival — cranked to life in 1993, a Celtic rock outfit based in Los Angeles in the tradition of traditional Irish music on the Celtic end, the Clash and Stiff Little Fingers on the rock end and the Pogues smack dab in the middle. The crew took its name from Molly Malone’s, the bar the band played in every Monday night. They cranked out a live CD in ‘97 and their first of four studio albums in 2000.
Casey joined in 1999, right before a West Coast tour. “First and foremost, I am electric guitarist,” Casey says. He’s calling from Rochester, N.Y., where he’s visiting family. It’s been years since the band was all based in Los Angeles. King and his wife, Flogging Molly fiddle player Bridget Regan, live in Ireland. “We’re all over the world now,” Casey says.
Casey headed to Los Angeles from New York in ‘91 and kicked around in various outfits before hooking up with King and the Molly crew. He wasn’t all that versed in Irish music.
“I think I was asked to join the band for my energy and passion and ability to make a lot of noise,” Casey says. “The bass, drums and guitar are the noisemakers in this band, it’s not really the polka element.”
It was only after he started playing the stuff that Molly accordion and concertina player Matt Hensley started turning Casey on to the traditional stuff. “I’ve definitely come to like it and appreciate it,” he says.
Even with four excellent records under their belt, Flogging Molly is first and foremost a touring act, often an explosive one, brimming with Celtic fire. (Casey is the one who jumps and kicks a lot.) They usually playing a minimum of 100 dates a year with more than 20 shows in February alone for their annual “Green 17” tour.
“I don’t think much is missed not living in the same city anymore,” Casey says. “We tour excessively; we see each other more than we see our families, When we take time off it’s time off.”
Their most recent album, “Float” (Side One Dummy, 2008), hit No. 4 on the Billboard Top 200 Chart, easily the band’s highest charting album. Their 2002 album “Drunken Lullabies” went gold this summer.
Plenty of reviews characterized “Float” as a darker record leaning more on folk than rock. Casey seems to audibly shake his head over the phone.
“I find this fascinating. On every record we make I hear the complete opposite of what other people hear,” Casey says. “I can’t hear dark at all here. No idea why. We wrote it and recorded it in Ireland, but when we get in the garage at Dave’s house in Ireland and close the door it could be anywhere.”
That being said, Casey says the anti-war “Requiem for a Dying Song” and “Float” are among the most played on this round of touring. “A good song is a good song,” he says. “It connects with people. ‘Float’ is about keeping your head above water. It is very poignant and telling and lyrically it’s definitely a different direction for us.”
Well, Lord knows plenty of people are trying to keep their heads above water right now. In the best traditions of Irish culture, Flogging Molly’s music allows for catharsis and reflection in the same moment and we look forward to exploding along with them.
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ACL 2009 preview: And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead
Larry Kolvoord AMERICAN-STATESMAN
True fact: And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead frontman/guitarist/drummer/piano player Conrad Keely used to work at the Austin American-Statesman.
No, I didn’t know either.
“I worked at the Statesman for one day,” Keely says. The one-time Austinite is calling from his home in Brooklyn, where he’s lived since 2006. “I was there as a temp, but I was temping for the assistant to the editor. I was in way over my head. I had to learn this whole system of shorthand and I had to take dictation and I was just terrible.”
Fortunately, he was good at other stuff, such as being in one of the most weirdly indestructible (well, more or less) rock bands of the past 15 years. These days, the core of Keely, singer/drummer/guitarist Jason Reece and guitarist Kevin Allen works with a cast of sidemen that shifts every few years. Right now, pianist/drummer Aaron Ford, bassist Jay Phillips and keyboard player Clay Morris are rounding out Trail of Dead, which released “The Century of Self” in February on Justice Records, their first album on an indie label in a decade. The band plays its first Austin City Limits Music Festival when it takes the Xbox 360 stage Saturday, Oct. 3.
It’s an odd time for the band in some ways. In 2002, they seemed poised to take over… well, if not the world, then something. The album “Source Tags and Codes” (Interscope) was the sort of major label debut that most bands would kill for — close to their indie sound, but seemingly ready for prime time.
But there always seemed something a little off about the fit — as one friend commented back in ‘02, “This seems like a bad deal for both parties.” And it kind of was: 2005’s “Worlds Apart” and 2006’s “So Divided” traded the guitar squall that made them (a little) famous for an increasingly progressive-rock sound (read: lots and lots AND LOTS of pianos). This sat poorly with both the record buying public (“So Divided” sold fewer than 30,000 copies as of last year) and critics (Indie bellweather Pitchfork gave “Source Tags” a 10.0 and “Worlds Apart” a 4.0, which was probably a little extreme on both ends — for my money, 1999’s “Madonna” has aged the best). Keely seems completely uninterested in discussing label drama.
“ I never know what to say when people ask me questions about label stuff,” Keely says. “For a lot of bands, their label for them is like their identity. I’ve never felt like that. I’m more concerned about how I’m going to make the logo look on the album cover. I mean, we have a good relationship with them, but the creative side of the band is just totally different.”
So is there a concept for this one? Trail of Dead seem big on concepts for their albums.
“There’s always a concept,” Keely says. “Usually it’s pretty loose. The record before this was called ‘So Divided,’ and that was the concept. Our concept for this one was that we weren’t going to have one. Then it turned out to be more about metaphysics.”
OK, then.
These days, Keely is as likely to concentrate on visual art as rock music. The amazing image on the sleeve for “Century of Self” is his doing, part of his ballpoint pen series. He’s one of the few rocker/visual artists who — no kidding — could fall back on visual art as a profession should Trail permanently bite the dust one day. But don’t look for a comic book any time soon.
“I’ve gotten asked about that but I don’t know if my ideas go well in frames,” Keely says. “I would almost rather illustrate a story like a children’s book but to do it frame by frame, that seems like drudgery.”
And he’s done with ballpoint for the moment.
“I’m starting a new series, all color, lots of monochromatic images,” he says. “I wasn’t very good with color and one day I was like, ‘Why am I telling myself I’m not good at something? Just do it and overcome it.’ I think that extends to the way I write music also. The two are always going to reflect each other.”
Trail of Dead always seems a little leaderless, Keely’s complicated songs offset by Reece’s punkier blowout. But Keely also always writes the majority of the songs, and his stuff comes in finished.
“I tend to come in with my songs very fully fleshed out,” Keely says. “Sometimes they’re done before I even touch an instrument. But we’re also good at collaborating together. When Jason comes in with stuff that isn’t completely done, I get to do some arranging and finalizing ideas.”
OK, maybe they aren’t that leaderless.
But Keely is a weird mix of stuff — part thrasher, part progressive, part primitive, part aesthete. “I was really into music theory when I was young, but I was also into punk rock. I would go see these bands that would have abhorred that kind of formalism and try to pick them apart. I’d be at a Bikini Kill show trying to figure out these dissonances they were into. I finally decided that it would have to be intuitive. You had to not know what you were doing.”
Which explains a lot: Trail of Dead’s music is what happens when you figure out how to not know what you are doing.
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Live Review: George Strait at Cedar Park Center
There is something massively streamlined about George Strait, yet he remains untouched by over-slickness, by the Top 40ization of modern country.
His songs have the almost ruthless efficiency of classic pop - here is the story, told in two verses and a few rounds of the chorus.
Yet every tune plays out like hardcore honky-tonk, sawdust and spilled Lone Star on the floor.
The dude locked in a winning formula years ago and never deviated from it: Find the best songs you can and sing the heck out of them. Wear a Western shirt, tight jeans and dark cowboy hat onstage. Flash them pearly whites and keep a crack band who have played with you for three decades.
He’s sold out 15,000 seaters in Texas (and elsewhere) for years. No wonder folks were willing to pay a couple hundred bucks for tickets to see him in the brand new Cedar Park Center, an 8,000 seat hockey area/concert venue/event center. (How could you tell hockey was played there? The U.S., Texas and Canadian flags were all hanging at the same height.)
Getting into the Cedar Park Center, then parking, was a bit of a challenge. Traffic was reportedly brutal as late as 8:30 p.m.
But that was to be expected from a venue of this size on its maiden voyage. The lots near the venue filled up before Strait hit the stage and patrons were forced to park in the 1890 Ranch mall lot and take a shuttle bus over.
However, $15 for parking, however close in, is pretty steep, especially considering that’s the price of a more expensive show any given weekend on Red River. With parking prices like that, Cedar Park seems designed as a destination venue, a place for folks who don’t go to see all that much live music to see a concert, perhaps the only concert they will see that year.
Opener LeeAnn Womack delivered a brisk set of hits turning the three-quarters-filled room in to a honky-tonk on songs such as “Never Again, Again.” There were unexpected touches: “A Little Past Little Rock” sported a piano solo, a weird cross between prog-rock dissonance and barrelhouse; the keyboard player even looked a little like Rick Wakeman from Yes. “You Don’t Know Me” turned the arena into a supper club with some jazzy slide guitar. Of course there were the smashes: the prom-themey “I Hope You Dance” and the show-closer “Ashes By Now.”
Strait - who, as my wife once put it, was a hot-looking country singer when there were not hot-looking country singers - hit the stage at aroud 9:30, opening with the title track from “Twang.” The sound was a little rough, but that was to be expected from the first night of a hockey arena.
His themes include women he likes (“Wrapped,” “The Chair”) and women who have stopped liking him (“Ocean Front Property,” “I Hate Everything”). A Texan to the core, he’s sung a lot about lots-of-driving aspect of Texas life (“Amarillo By Morning,” “I Can Still Make Cheyenne”). After all, it does give you time to brood. Then there are the songs about Texas itself (“Texas,” “Heartland”), the ladies you’ll find there (“How ‘Bout them Cowgirls?”) and what they will do to you (“I Ain’t Her Cowboy Anymore.”)
The guy delivers like Domino’s - what’s not to like? And again, this might be the smallest place most of these folks have seen Strait in years.
But will they come back for Wilco?
