We're pleased as punch to announce that we're currently promoting the new album from Portland bluegrass kings Jackstraw. These guys developed the Northwest old-time roots sound and their new album is a magnificent return to form. Check 'em out:



The muddy Willamette River that runs through Portland, Oregon, may not be as famous as the mighty Mississippi, but it forms the border of a new form of American roots music, informed both by the traditions of the American South and the rainy woods of the Northwest. Portland bluegrass band Jackstraw has been the flagship of this movement since they formed in 1997. They know their bluegrass history and don’t hesitate to pay homage to their heroes, like the Stanley Brothers, but this ain’t your standard bluegrass band. These boys have a cutting edge take on bluegrass picking that they’ve developed over years of touring the United States, and their original songs can sound as much country as old-time.

Jackstraw are currently celebrating the release of their brand-new sixth album, Sunday Never Comes. The album features brand-new member Cory Goldman (Water Tower Bucket Boys) on banjo, and all original material. Principal songwriters Darrin Craig and David Pugh have built new songs drenched in history and dusty nostalgia, and honed from fifteen years of making music together. Jackstraw formed in 1997 when rhythm guitarist Darrin Craig and lead player Jon Neufeld (who also plays in the Decemberists’ side project Black Prairie), met mandolin picker David Pugh and bassist Jesse Withers at Artichoke Music, a Portland guitar store. Six records and 15 years later, the band has toured throughout the United States, playing roadhouses, clubs, listening rooms and festivals. They’ve picked up a reputation over the years for their impeccable musicianship and hard-driving original songs. This is bluegrass that belongs in a dusty honky-tonk, country twang as rooted in Bill Monroe as George Jones, an old sound for a new age.

Jackstraw: Come On Back To Me

Jackstraw: Poor Man

 

The folk music world has always been known for its collection of eccentric personalities, but few folk musicians are more deranged than Peter Stampfel and Baby Gramps. Stampfel's known, of course, as one of the Holy Modal Rounders, a seminal psychedelic folk duo that somehow managed to turn the most mundane of American folk songs into otherworldly trips of the mind. Baby Gramps is a beloved folk music figure in the Northwest and beyond, renowned not only for his huge knowledge of old vaudeville and hokum blues songs, but also for his long, rambling versions of these same songs and his ability to naturally work throat singing into the idiom. Plus his scrotum song has to be heard (and seen) to be believed. Individually, both Stampfel and Gramps have spotty outputs. They're truly best live, and this doesn't always translate to great albums for listening. They're always creative and fascinating, of course, but some of their albums seem a bit too helter-skelter. But somehow bringing these two scatter-brain geniuses together has enabled them to balance each other out, and their 2010 duet album, Outertainment, is a wonderfully insane romp through the trash-strewn back alleys of Americana. It works great, with Gramps gravelly voice switching off with Stampfel's nearly indescribable vocals, and their always-on-the-edge picking somehow teeters along the edge of total collapse without ever falling, kinda like a drunken kung fu master.

Together, Gramps & Stampfel revel in a dumpster-diving collection of the gross and bizarre. "Bar Bar" is a merry little ditty about getting drunk at bars and starting fights, then barfing everywhere, and "The Puppy Song" is a great folk number about the rather disgusting things puppies get up to, and how cute it is. These are the songs they've written, but they've also sourced songs from pretty interesting places. The truly wonderful vaudeville delight "Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga" came to Stampfel from "Leave it to Beaver," evidently. Other songs come to them from Grandpa Jones, a killer sea chanty comes from Laurence Welk, surprisingly, and they've even got an evil cover of "Heigh Ho" from Disney's Snow White. Yow! There's even a crazy version of the all-time classic "Surfin' Bird."

Stampfel and Gramps' duet album is a like a cabinet of curiosities. It's just chock full of strange discoveries and bizarre little oddities. But with characters this interesting, you just can't look away (or stop listening in this case). It's a helluva lot of fun to poke around the dusty cupboards of these guys' brains. This is definitely fractured folk music of the highest order!

Peter Stampfel & Baby Gramps: The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga


Peter Stampfel & Baby Gramps: Buzzard on the Gut Wagon

 

2011 was an intense year in music. There were so many great albums released and so many critics, reviewers and journalists working their asses off to keep up with everything. I tried to be part of this, writing as many reviews and articles as I could squeeze into my schedule, but I fell behind and I feel bad that I wasn't able to write about all the artists that I felt deserved to be covered. So here's my last-ditch effort to make amends by writing about 10 Albums I Totally Should Have Blogged About in 2011 (in no particular order):

Joy Kills Sorrow: This Unknown Science.
2011. Signature Sounds.

I feel extra bad about this one, since Joy Kills Sorrow's new album, This Unknown Science, is their most advanced release yet. They're still a stringband at heart, but the arrangements are channeling a new pop sensibility with remarkable acumen. All of the musicians in the band are virtuosos, and as a whole their arrangements are stunningly intricate and creative. There's been a big push in the chamber-folk world this year, with releases from Noam Pikelny, Yo-Yo Ma and Chris Thile, and Joy Kills Sorrow deserve to be right at the top of this heap. Their last album, Darkness Becomes the City, sounds like a great album from a bunch of precocious youngsters coming out of Boston's crazy-talented roots music scene. With This Unknown Science, the gang have grown up and have grown into a sound that embraces the handmade intricacy of indie bands like Fleet Foxes, without losing sight of their roots in folk traditions.

I've said before and will say again that Emma Beaton's powerhouse vocals are still the heart and soul of the band, but listening to the new album, I'm also struck by the songwriting of Bridget Kearny, who writes or co-writes all but one of the songs on the album. Her lyrics are somehow overly confident and endearingly insecure. It's a charming combination that makes for some sexy, and sassy, and sometimes sensitive songs. Instrumentally, the band is top-notch, and the interplay between Wes Corbett's complex banjo lines and Jacob Jolliff's frenetic mandolin is also a major highlight. Throughout the whole album, Emma Beaton's voice carries and defines the band. At turns soaring and powerful, or soft and deeply sensitive, her vocal range (not just in terms of octaves, but in terms of artistic sensibility) is astounding. This is a masterful album from a masterful band, and if you've been sleeping on Joy Kills Sorrow, now it's time to wake up!

Joy Kills Sorrow: Reservations

Charlie Parr: When the Devil Goes Blind.
2010/2011. Nero's Neptune Records.

Recently, I've had to suffer through some pretty whitey-white renditions of country blues, plus books that talk endlessly about the crossroads, and how you have to have the blues to play the blues. Yech. Thing is, the blues is about more than just feeling bad and putting on your walking shoes. It's also about kicking ass. The mellower side of country blues always comes to mind when I think about Mississippi John Hurt, but most of the country blues was rough-and-tumble juke joint music from experienced traveling musicians. It was drinking and dancing music, something that belonged to the unwashed masses. The blues singers who focus on the blues stereotypes cultivated by detached white scholars miss out on the real heart of the blues. Charlie Parr isn't one of them. His blues is eerie, hair-raising, other-worldly. The kind of sound that made those old scratchy 78s so compelling. Parr's driven by something so deep inside and so universal that his blues makes us stand up and listen immediately. It helps too that he knows the traditions so well. It means that the songs he writes are almost totally indistinguishable from the traditional songs on his album. I figured all the songs on his new album, When the Devil Goes Blind, were traditional on first listening, but turns out only two of the eleven tracks are trad. And there are some real new classics here that I hope will start passing into the folk tradition, like the beautiful gospel blues "Where You Gonna Be (When the Good Lord Calls You Home)," or the train-hopping ditty "I Dreamed I Saw Jesse James Last Night." But honestly this entire album is worth it for the utterly shocking cover of "Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down." Starting off a cappella, this is the kind of song that sounds like an echo from the grave. It will send a chill down your spine. Turns out Parr has covered this song a couple times on various albums, but this is unquestionably the best version. Wow. I mean really WOW.

Parr's been incredibly prolific recently. I can't even keep track of which of his albums came out when, and I think this album is actually from 2010. He's been collaborating with alt-stringband The Black Twig Pickers, and previews of his upcoming 2012 album are quite promising. But I'd wager that When the Devil Goes Blind is the perfect album to get to know his music. So start here!

 
Charlie Parr: Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down

Charlie Sizemore: Heartache Looking for a Home.
2011. Rounder Records.

There seems to be a divide in modern bluegrass between the deeper country side that harkens to the Monroe/Stanley/Flatt/Scruggs foundation with a strong tendency towards Nashville country, and the chamber-grass virtuosity of Thile/Punch Bros etc. Sometimes I think of this as a red state/blue state divide, or a North/South divide, but that's quite the oversimplification. Whatever the case, bluegrass veteran Charlie Sizemore's new album is a delicious slice of country bluegrass (maybe "countrygrass"?), delightful in the way he takes a Nashville sound and blends it with the pure drop tradition he learned growing up as one of Ralph Stanley's Clinch Mountain Boys (Sizemore replaced Keith Whitely in 1977 at the tender age of 17!). Heartache Looking for a Home is polished, and though I usually shy away from this kind of polish, Sizemore's got such a great gift for choosing cool songs, and his band is so hot, that you won't be able to resist humming along and having a great time. Standout tracks include a gorgeous duet with Ralph Stanley on the forbidding "Red Wicked Wine", a pretty hilarious send-up "No Lawyers in Heaven" (funnier when you know that he's actually a lawyer himself), and the title track "Heartache Looking for a Home," which is the best country song I've heard since Zoe Muth's "If I Can't Trust You with a Quarter." What's extra nice is that Sizemore's got the skill and taste to be able to nail traditional bluegrass as well. "Red Wicked Wine" works both as a hard-drinking country ballad and as a bluegrass song that Ralph woulda sung in his prime. Traditional songs like "Poor Rambler" and "Gone to Georgia" even have an old-timey feel to them, with a bit of clawhammer banjo thrown in.

If you've been despairing about the modern state of bluegrass today, this album will remind you just how far you can go with great taste and amazing chops. It's a helluva lot of fun to listen to and I can imagine Charlie Sizemore must have had a blast making it. Well done!
 
Charlie Sizemore feat. Ralph Stanley: Red Wicked Wine

 

Ben Fisher: Heavy Boots & Underwood.
2011. self-released.

Ok, I feel really bad about this one. Not only did Ben Fisher manage to take his work as a pro busker (super powerful voice, engaging stage presence, and kickass street cred) and spin that into a love affair with Seattle's indie press, but he's also the genuinely nicest guy around. Plus all my blogging buddies were writing about him, so the least I could'a done was send some good words his way. Sorry, Ben!

On his new album, Heavy Boots & Underwoods, Seattle busker king Ben Fisher puts all his cards on the table. He's refreshingly honest, and not afraid to stand simply behind his voice and his guitar, an admirable trait. As he sings on the opening song, "Thunderbird," "I'm giving away everything/I'm starting anew/Look out for my rings and strings/I'll come back for them soon." You get the impression that he really is so dedicated to his music that he'd give up pretty much anything for it. But more than an honest bard, Fisher is a great storyteller, not only able to weave narrative into his music, but also able to weave a sense of place into his songs. His music practically drips with Northwest rain, and his ode to the humble Ballard locks ("Hiram M. Chittenden") brings back some of my best memories of living in Seattle. Maybe that's his talent as a busker shining through; his ability to grab your attention with a great story, familiar memories and a twist of words. Whatever the case, we're not the only ones appreciating Ben's music these days. Though he's confessed that he's used to playing for a handful of strangers on the street, he's now playing in-studios for the likes of KEXP and Daytrotter, and getting coverage on great blogs like our friends Sound on the Sound, SSG Music, and Common Folk Music. He's definitely a talent to watch in 2012 and I predict his next album will be big!

Ben Fisher: Thunderbird


BUY Ben's album Heavy Boots & Underwoods on BANDCAMP



T-Model Ford and GravelRoad. Taledragger.
2011. Alive Records.

I've been a fan of T-Model Ford's down-and-dirty Mississippi hill country blues for a while now, but his new album, Taledrigger, with his Seattle-based backing band GravelRoad is easily the best one yet. GravelRoad not only round out Ford's rough edges, they also add a layer of psychedelic blues to his music that makes it all incredibly compelling. Ford and GravelRoad've played together before, and on record, but this is the first time they've really gelled perfectly. The tracks buzz with Mississippi heat, and growl along like a runaway train. This is the kind of blues I can listen to all day long. Somehow they've even found a killer horn section, and when the brass kicks in on the second track "I'm Coming Home," well look out!

T-Model Ford's quite popular these days, which is great. Sure, he traffics in a pretty old image of the violent, drunken bluesman, but I like to think there's an element of irony there. And beyond that, he's got such a great raw style with Mississippi blues that he's always a lot of fun to listen to. If you've given up on the blues recently, or if you tend to listen to the Black Keys more than Son House, give this record a listen. It will renew your love of the grittier side of the blues.

T-Model Ford: I'm Coming Home

Noam Pikelny. Beat the Devil and Carry A Rail.
2011. Compass Records.

So I know everyone and their dog have written about Noam Pikelny's new album, Beat the Devil and Carry a Rail, and with good reason. Not only does he have the chops of one of the best modern banjo players, coming out of Chris Thile's Punch Brothers, but he also nailed the coolest viral marketing campaign I've yet to see in bluegrass. His Funny or Die video with Steve Martin is a must watch, and I'll live in constant jealousy of Compass Records' PR coup: a New Yorker cartoon of the album. And yeah, the album's a fun romp through today's chambergrass sounds, maybe not as classically oriented as the much-buzzed about Goat Rodeo album from Thile/Yo-Yo Ma/Stuart Duncan/Edgar Meyer, and that's kind of the nice point about the album. A good number of the tunes on the album are original, but Pikelny's also got some great old-time numbers here. Not "Cluck Old Hen," which is a rather tired old chestnut (though Pikelny's brass-balls cover goes a long way to redeeming the tune), but I'm thinking speifically of the excellent old-time song "Bob McKinney" (with Tim O'Brien on vocals!) and a great version of Art Stamper's "Piney Woods" featuring Stuart Duncan on bluegrass fiddle. Part of the reason the album's so listenable is thanks to Pikelny's insanely hot backing band, including Jerry Douglas, David Grier, Mike Compton, Tim O'Brien, Stuart Duncan and lots more! Ultimately, it's this same listenability that's the album's only downside. It's a bit "composed" at times, meaning that tunes don't really stick in your head or carry you along all the way. So while it's not necessarily a great album for intense listening and copping banjo licks, it's a great album for listening on a warm summer day while working in the garden. Oh how I miss those warm summer days...

Noam Pikelny feat. Tim O'Brien: Bob McKinney

 

Gregory Paul. Two Albums! The Fremont Abbey Session and Lonesome Valley.
2011. self-released.

Seattle busker Gregory Paul has had quite the prolific year, releasing three albums in the last six months of 2011. Two of these albums (the third is straight old-time banjo) are beautiful renditions of original and traditional music, drawing from old-time and early country traditions, but also spinning out into intriguing directions in indie roots music.

The Fremont Abbey is a beautiful venue in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood. It's a refurbished old church, and the natural resonance of the venue is one of the hallmarks of its sound. Greg plays to this resonance in the echoey, sparse album The Fremont Abbey Session. Made up mostly of original material, the songs are quite beautiful, and channel some of the darker corners of the old-time Appalachian music that's long been an inspiration to Greg. He plays guitar, banjo and bowed banjo on the songs, and is joined by Holly Merrill on vocals and piano. I don't think I really get all of Greg's songs, but they're so intriguing that I want to. I want to understand more about his songwriting and his artistry and why his music is so deeply haunting to me on this album, and so I listen harder each time and get drawn deeper and deeper in. PS: The closing track on this album is a fascinating cover of Erik Satie's "First Gnossienne" with piano and bowed banjo!

Greg's second album, Lonesome Valley, is a duet with another well-known Seattle busker, Annie Ford. Annie used to play with Slimpickins, a great street folk band that also included Gill Landry's brother Jake Landry. Together, Annie and Greg cover some of the chesnuts of the old-time tradition, but bring a stunning new sound to them. Their harmonies on "Rain and Snow" totally redefined the song for me, and..   Usually I like my old-time fiddlers to be closely tied to the tradition, but I like that Annie Ford has such disparate ideas in her fiddling. Sometimes she sounds like an eerie Swedish fiddler, other times a dusty jug band fiddler, and sometimes a Blue Ridge Mountain fiddler. It gives the album a diverse feeling and really draws the listener in. This album is rough as hell, which is half the fun. I love that there's so many great ideas in this album, hidden under a layer of rough-hewn handcrafted music.

Gregory Paul: The Day We Met (from The Fremont Abbey Session)


Gregory Paul & Annie Ford: Rain & Snow (from Lonesome Valley)

 
BUY The Fremont Abbey Session on BANDCAMP

BUY Lonesome Valley on BANDCAMP

Leroy Lytel: Swarm of Doves.
2011. self-released.

It took me forever to figure out who Leroy Lytel is and in fact I'm still not too sure. My original blog post on his album was going to be titled "Who the Hell is Leroy Lytel," but just before publishing the blog he managed to get up a website and some basic info (like the fact he lives in New York). Prior to that, all I'd had to go on was a one-sleeve CD album sent to me from an address that I promptly lost. Heck, even now that he has a website up, there still isn't a photo of him available anywhere. Whoever Leroy Lytel is, though, he managed to secretly put out one of the best indie-folk albums of 2011.

Based around Leroy's soft guitar picking and slightly ethereal vocals, the album unfolds like a gently waving field of grass, which curiously is the only picture he has up on his Facebook profile. It's clearly part of a larger indie roots music scene, but he veers away from the softly rambling themes of Iron & Wine, or the dense arrangements of The Head and the Heart, instead making a simple batch of beautifully written songs with easy to understand structures. It's totally accessible, and surprisingly masterful for someone so new to the scene. The title song, which opens the album, is a great little earworm that feels gently hopeful, like the first moments of an infatuation. Songs like "Flat World Blues" or "Lord of the Flies" sound almost like a redux of Mississippi John Hurt, channeling his gentle care in songwriting and guitar playing. What I love most about the album, though, are Leroy's gentle turns of phrases in his lyrics. Like the opening line for Her Eyes: "Walking around with my head to the ground/looking for answers we've already found./My hands in my pockets are the only thing holding me down./I don't talk much/sure could use the sound." Throughout Swarm of Doves, Leroy's deftly sincere songwriting and sweet melodies helps this album rise above the stacks of other worthy CDs on my desk.

Leroy Lytel: Swarm of Doves

 
Danbert Nobacon & The Bad Things. Woebegone.
2010. Verbal Burlesque Records.

Ok this one is technically from late 2010, but I've just gotta include it. Danbert Nobacon is one of the crazy British anarchists that formed folk-pop icons Chumbawamba back in the 90s. You'll remember them from their insanely catchy "Tubthumping": (I get knocked down/but I get up again... You're never gonna keep me down). I always thought of this as a pop song, since I first saw it on MTV as a teenager. But Nobacon and the Chumbawamba crew came out of Britain's anarcho-punk underground and were serious counter-culture heads. Nobacon is famous for pouring a jug of ice water on the British prime minister's head during a state dinner. My kinda guy! Anyways, after leaving Chumbawamba he eventually moved to the picturesque and isolated little town of Twist in Eastern Washington. He was signed to Bloodshot Records for a while, but his most recent album is a self-released little wonder with Northwest cabaret-punks The Bad Things. Titled Woebegone, it's a romping mashup of Tom-Waits-style cabaret riffs with the edge and snarl of an aging punk rocker. You'll like it for sure if you like Tom Waits, but it's a lot of fun even if you're unfamiliar with that kind of music. It's rough and raw and angry and funny all at the same time. There's something compelling about Nobacon's gravelly voice and working-class British accent, and he delivers a host of interesting vignettes with this album. Kudos to The Bad Things, who bring a foundational structure to the album that lets Nobacon do his thing with great support.
 
Danbert Nobacon & The Bad Things: Other Country Blues

Northwest songwriter and folk musician Laura Love has been at the frontlines of political movements since she was a little kid in Omaha, Nebraska, watching Civil Right race riots with her mom. She continued this work over the years, marching for anti-apartheid boycotts of South Africa in the 80s, marching in the raging streets of Seattle against the WTO in the 90s, and more recently, working in Ohio to turn the votes towards Obama in the 2008 Election. Time hasn't softened her beliefs or her desire to be out on the streets helping people, and with the Occupy movements spreading across the country, she knew she wanted to be on the front lines helping out again. Over the past six weeks, she's been down at the Occupy Oakland protests, right in the thick of all the police brutality and unlawful raids. It's rough and not without risk. She was brutally arrested following the November 2 General Strike at Occupy Oakland, and is now under constant threat of jail time by continuing to participate in any Occupy protest. This hasn't stopped her, and when I called for an interview, you could hear the assembly shouting in the background. On the phone, she told me she was 15 minutes away from marching again, this time with Occupy San Francisco.

On my end, I'm producing the Seattle Folk Festival this weekend, December 9-11, and Laura Love is one of our headliners! So I'm hoping that she'll be able to make it back for the festival without getting arrested again. But I knew this was the perfect opportunity to talk to a musician whose art I really respect and who has the courage to stand up for her people as well. There's such a long history of folk music as a tool for political activism, that I just had to know how this has changed or evolved in the radical new world of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Why Oakland?
Laura lives in the isolated Methow Valley in Eastern Washington, so Occupy Seattle would be a better choice, you'd think. "I was particularly drawn to Oakland because of its racial diversity," she said over the phone. "There are so many different influences here. It's a very diverse group of people. If they can get something done in Oakland, they can get something done anywhere." Laura's past few albums have been powerful and thought-provoking examinations of her own African-American heritage. Though she's known as a singer-songwriter, she's always had an affinity with American roots music, especially folk, Appalachian old-time, and bluegrass music. On 2007's NeGrass, she brought old Black spirituals together with bluegrass courtesy of producer Tim O'Brien. It was a surprising marriage, but not if you look at the historical record. African American musical traditions are the foundation of most American music, and spirituals have always been intertwined with bluegrass. With her new album, The Sweeter the Juice, Laura joins her music with NW dobro master Orville Johnson to look at the African-American music at the heart of many of our Civil Rights song repertoire. One of the most powerful tracks on the album is the old song "Eyes on the Prize", which Laura told me is actually based on an old slavery song "Keep Your Hands on the Plow". The song was cleverly adapted to the Civil Rights movement, keeping the original coded Biblical lyrics for freedom, and pointing the song's message to the movement. These new-old lyrics eerily reflect Laura's current position now, following her arrest in Oakland.

Laura Love & Orville Johnson: Load Up (L. Love)/Eyes on the Prize (trad.)

Eyes On the Prize (traditional lyrics)

Paul and Silas bound in jail
Got no body for to call their bail
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold on

Paul and Silas thought
They was lost
Dungeon shook and
The chains come off
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold on

Freedom's name is mighty sweet
And soon we're gonna meet
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold on

Arrested in Oakland
Though Oakland's interim police chief Howard Jordan dismissed the November 2 Oakland General Strike as around 4,500 people, other news outlets have commented that the number could have been as high as 100,000.
Laura was involved with the march on November 2, and was actually joined by fellow bluegrass artist Laurie Lewis! Following the strike, which successfully shut down the Port of Oakland, some of the marchers, including Laura, returned to their camp in Oscar Grant plaza in downtown Oakland. According to Laura, there were about 5-600 people in the plaza when riot police moved in, also numbering in the hundreds. In the early morning, waiting for escalation, the conflict turned violent when a  handful of anarchists started a small fire. The anarchists fled the scene, leaving the rest of the peaceful occupiers at the mercy of the cops. The police filled the square with tear gas and moved in on the occupiers, most of whom were sitting peacefully. Laura told me the rest of the story: "They were extremely violent. Everyone I was with, most of us were sitting down with our peace signs. They were giving the order to disperse because this was 'an unlawful assembly.' We were staying there and exercising our rights to peaceful assembly. They grabbed me and pulled me behind their line, making a visual curtain between the crowd and me. They threw me to the ground, smacked my head on the pavement. Cuffed me extremely tightly, pulled me around by the cuffs and left the cuffs on for about three hours. I was in jail for fifteen hours and was charged with unlawful assembly and failure to leave the scene of a riot." In an example of profiling against OWS, Laura said that while she was in jail, she was told by the police that if they caught her again with Occupy Oakland, she could expect to spend a lot more than 15 hours in jail.


Laura was arrested while she was actually pleading with police to halt the mass arrests. There's amazing footage of her standing alone in front of a full line of riot cops. Curiously this footage can only be found on right-wing video outlets, since so many of these outlets jumped on the chance to report that protesters were violently clashing with police.

Screencap of Laura and the Riot Police just before she was arrested


Aftermath
Laura returned to Oakland this week for her arraignment, and learned that Oakland police were thinking of dropping charges. But now she has to call in once a week for a full year to check and see if they've decided to drop charges or not, and any further civil disobedience will affect this decision. It's a kind of forced probation, and it's not stopping her from getting out on the streets again. Since her arrest, she's been back in Oakland and Occupy San Francisco, working to stop home foreclosure auctions, to pressure banks to return foreclosed homes to their impoverished owners, and documenting her recent efforts in the Occupy San Francisco camp. The day we spoke, the camp had been raided in the early hours, when resistance was light, and the occupiers were now homeless.

Laura, and a lot of people, are all looking forward now to the next big Occupy movement: the December 12 West Coast Port Shutdown that will bring together people in most major West Coast cities in a call to stop port traffic for the day and cost the establishment huge amounts of money.

I wanted to talk to Laura about music and the Occupy movement, and she'd certainly been working on this. On November 2, she'd been stage managing and performing during the Strike, and over the past six weeks has seen a good number of other musicians joining in, like Laurie Lewis, Boots Riley, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine (who's been out filming), indie songwriter David Rovics, and more. But with all the violent action against Occupy Oakland and San Francisco, she makes an excellent point that "it’s really hard to plan an event when at any moment you can be raided or your sound system confiscated."

So for now the good work being done is just standing in the front lines, documenting what's going one and standing up for all of today's disenfranchised. "We’ve come to a saturation point, with corporation and banks controlling every aspect of our lives," Laura explained. "They control our government, they’re stronger at this point than the office of the president. There are a lot of unemployed people out here; a lot of disenfranchised people. Virtually everyone has been touched by the foreclosure crisis in some way." Continuing a long personal history of protest and solidarity for the disenfranchised, Laura's back on the front lines today, and will be helping out Occupy Oakland and Occupy San Francisco for some time to come.

Laura Love & Orville Johnson: We Shall Not Be Moved / Stayed On Freedom

Come out and be a part of the movement! Join the West Coast Port Shutdown December 12!

OCCUPY SEATTLE

Support Laura Love and her Legal Efforts! BUY HER ALBUMS!

Laura Love & Orville Johnson: The Sweeter the Juice

Laura Love: NeGrass

And come to the Seattle Folk Festival on Sunday, December 10 to hear more of Laura's stories about Occupy Oakland. She'll be performing as Laura Love & Orville Johnson at Town Hall Seattle for the Sunday Family Jam. She's on at 3pm. She'll be joined that day by Pharis & Jason Romero, Jackstraw, Northern Departure, Riley Baugus & Kirk Sutphin, The Canote Brothers and more!

SEATTLE FOLK FESTIVAL

SUNDAY FAMILY JAM: Sunday, December 10, Town Hall Seattle

Levi Fuller's a musical explorer. Sounds cliche, I know, but I do tend to think of him with a pith helmet and machete, wacking his way through an underbrush of lame MySpace pages and Web 1.0 sites to pull forth little gems of cultural brilliance. He's a songwriter and performer himself, but through his series of regularly released compilation albums, Ball of Wax Audio Quarterly, he's been promoting many other artists from the Pacific Northwest. The Ball of Wax Audio Quarterly has been going strong for quite a while now (the newest one is volume 26), and it's been a work of passion for Levi that's let him bring forth some fascinating bands that most people likely hadn't heard of. I pride myself in being relatively familiar with many NW bands, especially folk and roots bands, but I'd only heard of 5 of the 19 artists on the current compilation. And that's more than on previous compilations!

For the newest Ball of Wax compilation, Levi put the word out that he was looking for covers of songs from the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music. The idea with most Ball of Wax releases is to compile songs/music submitted or recruited by artists, print and press the album, then put together a live concert with some of the artists where the album is given away for the show's ticket price. It's a great way to build community and to bring a bunch of artists and musicians together. And that's exactly what's happening with the new Ball of Wax. Working with us here at Hearth Music and Greg Vandy at American Standard Time (and KEXP's The Roadhouse), there's gonna be a whole evening Tribute to Harry Smith at Columbia City Theater (TONIGHT: Friday November 25).

The artists on the new Ball of Wax run a wide gamut of styles, though most hew to a rough-edged indie-folk sound. And like the original generation that picked up on Harry Smith's quasi-mystic, borderline-insane Anthology, these artists are here to celebrate the twisted sounds and thoughts at the heart of the "Old, Weird America." Seattle busking sensation Ben Fisher nails the matter-of-fact broadside sensationalism of "Frankie and Albert," and sounds like an 19th century sheet music folio seller hawking the latest sensationalist ballad of sex and murder in a young America. Seattle alt-country oufit Amateur Radio Operator go after "Oh Death, Where is Thy Sting" and bring a creepy 16 Horsepower vibe with the song. Montana artists Nate Biehl and Caroline Keys (Caroline's with indie-folk outfit Stellarondo) do a nicely downtrodden cover of the classic "John Johanna." I've been a fan of all these artists, but the best part of the album are the new discoveries. Chicago based indie band The Way It Is have a great version of the Carter Family classic "Engine 143," and I'm totally in love with the world-weary, cracked vision that Seattle songwriter Jeremy Burk brings to one of my favorite old gospel blues "Shine on Me." There's lots more on this compilation, so I'll let you discover the rest for yourself. Head on over to Bandcamp and have a listen, and be sure to keep in touch with Levi Fuller's Ball of Wax! After all, he's done all the hard work of finding these bands, now it's up to you to check 'em out!
 

Ben Fisher: Frankie and Albert


Jeremy Burk: Shine On Me


Amateur Radio Operator: Oh Death Where Is Thy Sting

The 'nets have been buzzing about Seattle's own Bryan John Appleby ever since his newest album, Fire on the Vine, dropped this year. After finally sitting down to explore this album, I was floored to hear one of the best voices in indie roots music today. And it's not just the singing and the beautiful, complex instrumental arrangements on the albums; really the meat of what makes Bryan's music so appetizing is the lyrics. At turns heart-wrenching and transcendent, the album moves between our fragile lives and our endless capacity for faith. It's not religious per se, but it does tap into old epics and Biblical characters.

Driven by my own curiosity, I asked Bryan John Appleby for more information about how faith works into the lyrics. "To be specific, the album relates to the faith that I knew in my formative years, up until the last few years, and the irreconcilable aspects of that former faith and my current position," he said. "It should be clear through the lyrics that I've made a departure. It is more ambiguous than it may seem though."



You can hear this ambiguity in a song like The Words of the Revelator. Bryan said he wasn't specifically referencing John the Revelator, but it's hard not to hear the connection in the lyrics. "You turn away/I am left alone/Then came the sign/Then came the revelation," is a great lyric that touches on the ambiguity of signs, while "You will find what you did not seek/A road less narrow/A way not steep," sure sounds to me like the sigh of relief that comes from moving out from under the weight of religion. Talking further with my friend April at the blog Common Folk Music, Bryan said "In the song 'Words of the Revelator,' I created a conversation between an old craggy hermit scholar type and a young man. This relationship is analogous to the inner struggle that a thinking, reasoning person encounters when she or he is confronted by irreconcilable ways of thinking." [read that Q&A here]

Bryan John Appleby: The Words of the Revelator

"Glory" is another powerful song from Bryan's new album. At turns it's a soaring ode to the human emotions of glory and accomplishment, an uplifting song, but there's a biting edge underneath, a feeling of something lost. As if the glory he's singing about, the kind of glory you'd get from growing up with epic Biblical stories, has slipped away as he's passed into a later phase of his life. I asked Bryan about this song in particular: "Glory is the one song that sounds like its about God but really it means something different than that. No, not sex. It's a salve for me. The album is sad most of the time so the song Glory is a nod to the beauty in our existence. It is subtle and wonderful." I love the thought of this song as a salve, a healing intended to move us along on a new path.

Bryan John Appleby: Glory

 

Moving on from religion, I really wanted to ask Bryan more about how his music fits into the Pacific Northwest. It certainly seems so connected to our dark, rainy environment; it's the kind of album that can only come out of an endless Seattle winter. I asked him what places in the Northwest inspired him. "My bedroom in the Beacon Hill house [note: check out this great video of Appleby composing at home]. My underground apartment after that," he said. "It was all pretty spectacular when I first got up here. The Puget Sound and the islands. I've only been out there a few times but it's a pretty overwhelming place. Georgetown has always felt good to be down in. Specific spaces, Acme Rubber Stamp Co, used to be in Ballard. The hand painted signage in the I.D..." Bryan's been putting together some amazing videos recently, featuring different landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. And the venerable Doe Bay Fest just release an exceptional video of him out on the Puget Sound's Orcas Island, so you can see him performing in the environment that first inspired his music out in the NW.

Bryan John Appleby: The Doe Bay Sessions

The 2011 Doe Bay Sessions - Bryan John Appleby from Sound on the Sound on Vimeo.

Bryan John Appleby w/Mychal of Campfire OK 

Cliffs Along The Sea from Christian Sorensen Hansen on Vimeo.

BUY THE ALBUM (it's only out on Bandcamp)

Bryan John Appleby is performing at the 2011 Seattle Folk Festival. You can check out the full lineup at www.seattlefolkfestival.com. Bryan's performing as part of the Columbia City Celebration, all-day Saturday, December 10, along with Sons of Warren Oates, Youth Rescue Mission, Brother Bear, Kevin Murphy of the Moondoggies, Pharis & Jason Romero, and more!

Seattle Folk Festival Website
Seattle Folk Fest on Facebook

Saturday Columbia City Celebration