Brent's Notebook

Enter Ireland with Enter the Haggis

2009-11-19T10:57:00.002-05:00

If you haven't yet seen my interview that ran in today's Free Press with Brian Buchanan of Canadian Celtic-rockers Enter the Haggis, here it is. Something Brian and I talked about that didn't make the article is an offer ETH has on its Web site to travel to Ireland with the band in May to celebrate Brian's 28th birthday. I'm not usually in the business of hawking tours, but this one's pretty interesting if, like me, two of your favorite things are music and travel.

Mike Doughty answers the questions

2009-11-18T10:30:00.003-05:00

I think last night was the fifth time I've seen former Soul Coughing leader Mike Doughty perform in and around Burlington in the past five years, and the second time I've seen him on one of his "Question Jar" tours, in which he has audience members write out questions, put 'em in a jar, and then he or his musical and banter accompanist, cellist/guitarist Andrew "Scrap" Livingston, pulls 'em out and answers them, creating a night of cool music and fun interaction. I always dig Mr. Doughty's shows for a variety of reasons: He's a fun but not gratuitous front man who jokes with the crowd but also (as he did last night at Higher Ground and has been known to do elsewhere) chastises folks for talking too loudly at the bar in the back of the room while he's playing. He's also just a great songwriter; his imagery is one of a kind, and as an English-major geek I love that he pays attention to hidden poetic writing tools like consonance, or using the same consonant sounds within a series of words ("I assess the essence of the mess," he sings in "I Want the Girl in the Blue Dress"). And the songs from his new album, "Sad Man Happy Man," sounded great in a spare live setting; new tracks like "Pleasure on Credit" and "Whole World" almost create a new genre, acoustic folk-rock hip-hop, with Doughty's pitter-pattered staccato lyrics over chunky guitar. Cool stuff.

And then there's his Question Jar shows, which are a blast. He said his favorite question from last night, and I'm paraphrasing here, was "How many times do you say 'What?' before you pretend to understand what someone's saying?" "Seven," was his response (I'd say two, but seven was funnier). I tried to think of a question that would be a little more bizarre than the standard "Who are your influences?" query but not too bizarre. I had seen his Twitter tweet earlier in the day about trying to scare up some "hippie food" in Vermont, so I played off of his use of social media and asked "Do your imaginary friends follow you on Twitter?" Doughty was busy tuning his guitar at one point and had his buddy Scrap answer some questions, so he pulled mine out of the jar. My question drew a chortle from Doughty and a good answer from Scrap - "My imaginary friends are the only ones who follow me on Twitter."

The latest from Grace Potter, Amanda Palmer

2009-11-17T11:56:00.003-05:00

You may recall that, once upon a time, the latest album from Vermont faves Grace Potter and the Nocturnals was supposed to come out on Hollywood Records this fall. That didn't happen; now it's vaguely worded as "spring 2010." The album was produced by T Bone Burnett, but he's not the only industry vet the band has connected with. Grace joined up to write songs with songwriter/producer Mark Batson, who's worked with Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, Dave Matthews Band and the like. "We ended up writing one song after another - it was like we could read each other's minds," Grace told a Hollywood publicist. "It was magical." The band is on tour now with Brett Dennen, but they won't be bringing Brett back to their home state; they will, however, be headlining four nights at the end of the year at Higher Ground.

While we're speaking of New England female singers whose last names are six letters long and begin with P, I have been remiss in not mentioning the show I saw at Higher Ground last Wednesday with Boston-based Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls. I wasn't sure what to expect, as I alternately find Palmer (seen here taking a bath and washing her clothes simultaneously) and her work with The Dresden Dolls interesting and provocative or self-indulgent and annoying. The self-indulgence actually works well in concert - Palmer is a gregarious and compelling front woman - so I thought the show was excellent. She was playing for the first time with the Nervous Cabaret, a cool band that opened the show and served as her backing band, and the show had that fresh first-time energy and the band was very tight for not having played publicly with Palmer before. She opened with one of the best Dresden Dolls songs, "Missed Me," and moved on to her solo tune "Astronaut," setting the stage for a night that bounced between both aspects of her career. She also exhibited great taste in her cover songs, from the bouncy "That's Not My Name" by The Ting Tings to Radiohead's "Creep," performed sans microphone on ukelele on top of the bar off to the side of the stage.

Me and Grant-Lee (and not many others)

2009-11-16T13:22:00.007-05:00

So I'm pretty much used to liking music a lot of other people don't. It's been that way since high school. If you dig music as much as I do, you listen to what moves you and not what moves the masses. That can make you feel a little isolated at times, but it's the price you pay for grooving to music you love for its own sake. I once cleared out a frat party in college by cranking one of my favorites at the time, The Sisters of Mercy's heavy, morose "Reptile House" EP. That was the desired effect, though, so I was pretty happy about that.

Last night, though, I was crestfallen when my wife and I walked into the Higher Ground Showcase Lounge and saw, like, 20 people there for the show by Grant-Lee Phillips and Winterpills. When I saw that show pop on Higher Ground's Web site a couple of months ago I was immediately like, "Oh, I'm definitely going to that one." Grant-Lee Phillips (here's a link to my recent interview with him) was only one of the best songwriters to come out of the '90s with his work in his old band Grant Lee Buffalo, and Winterpills, out of Northampton, Mass., is one of my favorite bands of the oughts with their similarly downcast but hook-filled folk-flavored pop. I knew it wouldn't be a huge draw, but only 40 people (as the crowd grew to by the end of the night) out of something like 150,000 people in the greater Burlington metroplex? That was disappointing. Both deserve a bigger crowd than that.

Grant-Lee handled it with good humor. He noted that people aren't supposed to go out in big crowds with the flu scare that's going around, so he said we were smart to come to his show instead of, say, a Dave Matthews Band concert. That's an indication of his fun on-stage demeanor, but his music was great, too. He did some of the best stuff from his new solo album, "Little Moon," such as "Buried Treasure" and "Strangest Thing" and a bunch of great old Grant Lee Buffalo stuff, too, like "Bethlehem Steel" and my favorite of theirs, "Honey Don't Think." His voice is as rich as ever, and he sounded terrific both with him on guitar and when three-fifths of Winterpills joined him as his backing band.

Winterpills was excellent, too, on the energetic "Broken Arm" and some of their softer, prettier stuff as well, especially "Burning Hearts." I couldn't help but wonder, though, as I listened to two acts whose music is at its most beautiful when it's melancholy if, with the flu scare and war and economic crisis and all, people just don't want music with a touch of sadness to it. They want Lady Gaga, not people turning their thoughts inside-out for you to hear and feel. So it goes. That just means there were no loud frat boys there to keep me from hearing the music I wanted to hear.

Live Wire with guest Justin Levinson

2009-11-12T07:59:00.003-05:00

• Justin Levinson web site

Monday night with Rupa and the April Fishes

2009-11-10T11:58:00.003-05:00

Terrific, energetic show last night at Parima in Burlington with Rupa and the April Fishes, the San Fran band on the Charlotte-based world-music label Cumbancha. At least as intense and fun as last year's show at Higher Ground, if not more so, and a sell-out crowd of 200 or so folks. Parima has become quite the nice music venue between the cozy Acoustic Lounge and the main room where Rupa and her band played last night (sound problems that left her voice buried too far down in the mix notwithstanding). I love standing on the balcony dining room overlooking the entire band and the crowd below. The crowd, ranging from 10-year-olds to gray-hairs, was dancing all night, and a guy standing on the stairs in front of me exclaimed "Holy #$&! at how much fun the band was. If ever a world-music band, and especially a band on Cumbancha, can ever make it semi-big in the U.S., I feel like it's Rupa and the April Fishes. They've got a couple of key things going for them. Even though Rupa has lived in several different countries and sings in French, Spanish and occasional English, her American influence gives the band's music much more of a mainstream pop flair than the average world-music group. Also, that melange of international sounds keeps Rupa's music from feeling monochromatic, unlike a band from XYZ Land that sings in one language and draws its rhythms primarily from one culture. Not sure if they can make it on a bigger level, but it'd be great to see. If you want to learn more, here's a link to the article I wrote about them last week and another link I stumbled on today in which Rupa, a physician as well as a musician, writes about health care.

Anders Parker on the road

2009-11-09T14:58:00.003-05:00

Here's an update from Burlington's best musical import of late, indie-rocker and songwriter nonpareil Anders Parker. He's finally going on tour to support his fine new double album, "Skyscraper Crow," which came out a couple of months ago. I've been playing that album to death, especially the acoustic "Crow" disc; I just can't get enough of the song "Canadian Heart." Sad and beautiful stuff. He sent me the tour deets over the weekend, so here they are for your perusal, in case you happen to live in New York City or Memphis:

11/10 New York NY @ The Cake Shop
11/12 Philadelphia PA @ M Room
11/13 Arlington VA @ IOTA (early show)
11/14 Ashville NC @ Grey Eagle (with Lambchop)
11/15 Chapel Hill NC @ Local 506
11/16 Knoxville TN @ The Pilot Light
11/18 Nashville TN @ The Muse
11/19 Memphis TN @ Hi-Tone
11/20 St Louis MO @ The Firebird
11/21 Madison WI @ KiKi's House
11/23 Chicago IL @ The Darkroom

Live Wire with guest Jeh Kulu

2009-11-06T11:44:00.006-05:00

Show Links
• Jeh Kulu festival site

Dan Deacon and Phish tales

2009-11-03T10:57:00.003-05:00

The good news for all you fans of indie-rock weirdo Dan Deacon is that he'll be in Middlebury on Saturday. The bad news is that you'll have to be a Midd kid to see him. He's playing for students only at 11 p.m. in The Bunker at Middlebury College. You've got four days to enroll.

Figgered I should follow up on this little nugget I wrote about awhile back - Phish's plans to cover an entire album at its Halloween concert in California. They had that cool slasher-flick contest on their Web site where they posted something like 99 albums and killed them off day by day until the last one left alive would be the one they'd play at their show. We had all sorts of favorites around the office here at the Free Press, from David Bowie to MGMT to Television (the one my heart hoped would win) to Michael Jackson (the one my head said would win). In the end Phish went with a fairly safe but hard-to-argue-with choice - the Rolling Stones' "Exile on Main Street," which sounds like a description of Phish's early days playing at Nectar's on Main Street in Burlington. You can read more about the cover of the Rolling Stones with this link to, naturally, Rolling Stone.

The ideas of Andrew Bird

2009-10-27T10:58:00.005-04:00

Great to see a sold-out show on a Monday night, as was the case last night with adventurous indie-rocker Andrew Bird at Higher Ground. I had seen him there in the Ballroom two years ago and thought he was OK but didn't quite get why people were so enthusiastic about him. But I dig his latest album, "Noble Beast," and had a great interview with him leading up to the show (you can see it here if you haven't seen it already), so I thought I'd give him another chance.

Glad I did. He's got a David Byrne-styled combination of quirky discomfort and unstoppable creativity that brings an unpredictable energy to the show. Some of the tunes from "Noble Beast" were especially intense, such as "Anonanimal" and the quietly subversive "Effigy." His violin playing is stellar, but the crowd reacts most strongly to his whistling; he is, without a doubt, a butt-kicking whistler.

I also got into the opener, St. Vincent, a band led by a great vocalist-guitarist named Annie Clark. She's a tiny woman who crafts fragile pop songs that evolve into pounding, eardrum-rupturing explosions of guitar noise. The dichotomy is what's so alluring; loveliness becomes harshness without losing that thread of beauty that caught your attention in the first place.

Andrew Bird and St. Vincent (who combined for a couple of songs at the end of the show) have a lot in common. On the good side they're both musically curious and unwilling to be tied down by the traditional concept of a verse-chorus-verse rock song. The issue I have with both, and it's a minor one, is that sometimes they have too many ideas packed into one song. St. Vincent and Bird's band both employ a panoply of sounds from saxophones to flutes to myriad loops, and while it's refreshing to hear an exploration of all those sounds and ideas, occasionally things get bogged down a little by too much going on at once. Like I said, though, it's a small quibble: It's hard to argue with musicians willing to go places no one else has.

Gregory Douglass and Myra Flynn

2009-10-26T12:21:00.004-04:00

It felt like it had been 389 years since I'd been to Higher Ground, but I got to the Showcase Lounge on Saturday night to catch a couple of Burlington's best singer-songwriters, Gregory Douglass and Myra Flynn. I'm not sure I've heard Gregory sound better. His voice was especially powerful - anyone who can cover Brandi Carlile's challenging tune "The Story" and come out not only alive but well is doing something right - and the banter between Gregory and his fine cellist, Monique Citro, was hysterical (he calls her "Yo-Yo Mo"). His own songs are heavy and deep, but the night had an overall fun, carefree feel. Myra, my former co-worker here at the Free Press, also sounded great, and the violist who joined her helped flesh out her keyboard-driven tunes that share a similar intensely personal vibe to Gregory Douglass' material. The viola had a curious way of making the low notes on the keyboards sound brighter and the upper notes sound fuller, bringing additional color to the songs. It was a packed crowd, too, always great to see for our local folks. My Higher Ground drought now over, I'll be back tonight for the show by Andrew Bird.

Addendum at 3:10 p.m. - The Andrew Bird show is now officially sold out. Hope ya got yer tix!

The Flynn/Flinn Center

2009-10-21T10:41:00.003-04:00

This blog update covers every Burlington-area musician whose name is either Flinn or Flynn who just signed a licensing deal for their music. Let's start with Aaron Flinn of Charlotte, who informs me that he sold his ukulele/vocal version of "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands" to CNN for commercials for their new iPhone application. He says they were looking for some "unique, stylized versions" of that tune, and it sounds like they found one, what with Flinn's impressive ukulele skills and all.

Now we turn our attention to my former co-worker and current freelance correspondent here at the Free Press, singer-songwriter Myra Flynn of Burlington (taking the stage in the photo here). She just filled me in on the details of her deal that allows CBS to use her songs for the next six months in pretty much any of its TV shows. Myra's especially excited that Horatio could say something dramatic on "CSI: Miami" (isn't everything he says (melo)dramatic?)and then the next thing we'd hear would be one of Myra's tunes. That would be pretty cool. You can catch both Flinn and Flynn this weekend - Flinn will be joining Patrick Fitzsimmons at his show Friday at the Town Hall Theater in Middlebury and Flynn will perform along with Gregory Douglass at Higher Ground in South Burlington on Saturday.

R.E.M. at UVM (well, kinda)

2009-10-14T11:26:00.002-04:00

It's actually the new R.E.M. concert documentary - actually it's billed as an "un-concert" documentary, whatever that means - with the similarly contradictory title "This Is Not A Theatrical Release." It's being presented in 20 or so cities across the country this fall, and Burlington is one of them. It'll be shown at 8 p.m. Oct. 27 in Brennan's Pub and Bistro in UVM's Davis Student Center. The link to the event info here says a UVM ID is required, so if like me your days of passing as a college student are long gone it might be a little tricky to get in. Truth be told, their last few albums haven't been stellar, the concert videos I've seen of R.E.M. aren't all that compelling (and I've been an R.E.M. fan since they started way back when), and of the three times I've seen them in concert only the first time in a hot, stuffy club in Albany, N.Y. in the mid-'80s ranks as a memorable show. But if this is an un-concert, it might be worth your while.

More from Phish and (the erstwhile) Rumble Doll

2009-10-12T13:31:00.005-04:00

Seems like whenever I take a day off in October, Phish announces something. Last year it was a minor announcement that, oh, the biggest band in Vermont history was reuniting. I took last Friday off, and the band announced its fall tour schedule, in support of the new album you see here, "Joy." Not as earth-shattering as the "we're getting back together" announcement, but still a pretty big deal. You can see the details here, but they'll be getting as close to their home state as Albany, N.Y., where they'll be playing Nov. 27-28 at the Times Union Center (formerly known as the Knick and the Pepsi Arena). They'll also be in Syracuse, NY on Nov. 22 and Portland, ME on Nov. 29. They also have a trio of shows at Madison Square Garden from Dec. 2-4 - a little earlier than their usual run of New Year's Eve shows at MSG.

Last time I blogged about Phish (and their clever promo for their Halloween shows in California) I also blogged about local country-rockers Rumble Doll and their planned name change. They revelead the name at their show at Higher Ground in yet another announcement I missed while goofing off Friday. Heretofore, Rumble Doll will be known as... Breaker Bend. It's kind of a play on words; could be a geographical location, but Breaker Bend (Break or Bend?) sounds more like a description of that band's, or any band's, fragility as they try to break into the world of major-label music makers. We'll see how far Rumb..., er, Breaker Bend, goes now that their big-label showcase CD, "Living Like You'll Never Lose," has been released.

Live Wire with guests Rumble Doll

2009-10-08T17:44:00.004-04:00

Rumble Doll MySpace page

More news from Death

2009-10-01T16:14:00.002-04:00

The story of the long-forgotten but incredibly revived pre-punk band Death (featuring Vermonters Bobby Sr. and Dannis Hackney) keeps spreading. We knew rapper Mos Def (shown here) was into the band, but now it looks like he'll be making a documentary about Death to join a field of Death-doc makers that includes Burlington's Jeff Howlett. Here's more about Mos Def's plan....

News about Phish, Avi & Celia, Rumble Doll

2009-09-30T18:03:00.003-04:00

This entry of Brent's Notebook is all about new identities, alter egos, that sort of thing:

- It's not really news about Phish per se, but it's getting quite a bit of buzz: The Burlington-born band has come up with a cool marketing tool for its Halloween-weekend concerts in California. Phish (in those long-ago years when they were together in the first go-round, anyway) has often covered another band's entire album on Halloween, so for this gig they're putting all the candidates on their Web site and knocking them off "Halloween" slasher style day by day. The last one standing will be the one they play in concert Halloween weekend. It's fun to watch. You can check it out here.

- Like Phish, the rootsy duo Avi & Celia got going at the University of Vermont. That moniker, though, has maybe been a little too folksy as their career has developed, so they've moved to an expanded group (as you can see in the photo here), and as I just learned courtesy of the wonders of Facebook they've come up with a new tag - Hey Mama.

- I'll have a feature in the Free Press (print and online, natch) next week about Rumble Doll, the local country-rock group that's releasing a new CD this month. They tell me that they'll be undergoing a name change, too, but unlike Avi & Celia/Hey Mama they're tight-lipped about it right now. You'll have to go to their show Oct. 9 at Higher Ground to find out their new identity.

Greg Brown and musical tourism

2009-09-29T13:56:00.002-04:00

I just got back a couple of days ago from a fabulous vacation my wife and I took out west, visiting various national parks (Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton) filled with gorgeous scenery and all sorts of wildlife. You haven't lived until you've almost literally butted heads with a gang of bighorn sheep on a narrow ridgeline trail - but that's another story for another blog on another day. This is a music blog, so I'll tell you about my musical adventure instead. On our way from Glacier to Yellowstone we stopped in the very cool, outdoorsy college town of Bozeman, Mont., and caught the show in town that night by folk-bluesman Greg Brown. He plays around here a lot and will be on Montpelier folk star Anais Mitchell's forthcoming album yet I had never seen him in concert, so I thought this was a good opportunity.

His show was very entertaining - as you may know, he's not only a perceptive songwriter, he's a funny one - but what struck me all night was what a great entree into a community it is to go to a concert in a place you've never been before. I've been to shows while traveling lots of times before, but this time we really managed to get a good flavor of Bozeman and the surrounding area.

Greg Brown talked a little bit about how much he loves to fish up near Missoula, another cool, outdoorsy Montana college town my wife and I spent a couple of days in on our way to Glacier National Park. He mentioned that Missoula, unlike most places, actually removed rather than built a dam, which gave me some insight into the environmental mindset of the community we had just visited. His opening act was a local doctor named Ben Bullington who's quite the singer-songwriter in his own right. He played the title track of his latest album, "White Sulphur Springs," named for his hometown, and talked about the wonders of driving a remote Montana road late at night.

Maybe the best part of the night was a conversation we had with an usher at the show named Cathy who used to work in southern Vermont and often drove up to Middlebury to catch concerts presented by the After Dark Music Series (she told us she has an After Dark Music Series mug on her desk; Greg Brown, by the way, is playing an After Dark show Jan. 10). Between our mutual fondness for Vermont and music we hit it off, and Cathy invited us the next day to visit her during her show at the local community radio station, KGLT, on the campus of Montana State University. It's a pretty amazing 40-year-old station that's kind of a combo between our local stalwart Vermont Public Radio and Burlington upstart WOMM, aka "The Radiator." We watched Cathy finish her bluegrass show (as an erstwhile college-radio guy it's always fun for me to visit another station) and chatted with her and the DJ doing the show after her about the community, the station and the immense volunteer and fundraising efforts that have gone into keeping the station alive all these years.

So by going to one little concert on our one night in Bozeman we got to hear snippets of life in Montana, meet a couple of interesting people and gain insight into a part of a community that we otherwise would have just eaten and slept in before moving on. It really hammered home to me the value of music as an element of travel. I'm not even talking about travel being the point of music - I'll leave that to Cumbancha honcho (Cumboncho?) Jacob Edgar of Charlotte, who's filming a world-music travel series for National Geographic - just making a point of checking out the music scene whenever you visit some place new. It's a great way to learn a few things while having a fun night out at the same time.

Live Wire with guest Jer Coons

2009-09-25T11:00:00.002-04:00

• Jer Coons web site

Live Wire: Jer Coons

2009-09-24T15:23:00.001-04:00

Live Wire with guest Karen Krajacic

2009-09-18T12:59:00.002-04:00

• Folk By Association MySpace page

Live Wire with guest Anders Parker

2009-09-10T13:37:00.001-04:00

Show Links:
• Anders Parker web site
• Richard Buckner web site
• Lowell Thompson web site

More from Anders Parker

2009-09-10T11:10:00.004-04:00

Yep, it's Anders Parker Day here at Brent's Notebook. The article I wrote for the Free Press print and Web versions ran today (here it is) and the "Live Wire" Web cast I did with him is also up at the Web site. I posted part of the interview leftovers in my blog yesterday, and here's more of what we chatted about:

BFP: How have you found the music scene in Burlington to be? Obviously you knew Creston (Lea) and a couple of other people before you moved here, but when you’re moving you must be thinking, “Is there a music scene that I can feed off of?”

AP: A little bit. Honestly I’m probably guilty of not being concerned about that. I left New York City; you can find any musician you want in that town. But I knew there’s good folks here and the folks that I’ve met and seen I’ve really liked a lot and there’s definitely some great musicians here and good writers. I don’t go out and hang out as much as I used to; I used to go to every show I can. I can’t say it was not a concern but it wasn’t a big concern of mine. At this point I’m pretty self-contained. As far as touring I have people that I play with if I need a band on the road, but it’s hard to maintain a band just financially. I kind of look forward to playing with more people around here. That night (at Nectar’s) I sat in with Lowell and those guys in the second set, and then I sat in with Burette (Douglas) and those guys in The Lonestar Chain when (guitarist) Bill (Mullins) couldn’t make it. I like playing with people that I like.

BFP: It seems like within the “indie circle” in town that your music is a good fit with people like Burette or Creston or Bill Mullins who have that same kind of versatility, can do dusty Texas stuff but also kind of spacier stuff.

AP: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I’m not a play-around-town-every-week kind of guy, either. I like to pick and choose my stuff, but I like that whole group of people. I like Ryan Power, I like his stuff a lot. Creston gave me one of his records before I moved here and I really thought that was really great. But it seems good. It has a bad rap for all the kind of hippie, noodly stuff but it seems like there’s a whole world outside of that.

BFP: Are you concerned at all about the isolation up here as far as the business part of it goes?

AP: Not really. On balance, as much as I love New York and North Carolina or even Oregon, specifically with New York I loved it but it’s kind of hard living, you know? I kind of got a little burned out on it. After awhile it’s like, “Does it really make a difference?” I don’t know.

BFP: What do you see yourself doing next? “Skyscraper Crow” obviously is a little bit of “laptop pop” and then the very sparse “Crow” part. You’ve got an instrumental and a more rock thing you’re working on, too. What are you writing now? What is that heading toward stylistically?

AP: These last few things I’m working on are kind of like long-form acoustic tunes. Most songs, folk or pop or rock or whatever work in kind of the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-or-solo-verse-chorus type of thing. A few of the songs I’m writing, they kind of all have different movements, so I’m kind of interested in doing something like that. I’ve got a bunch of kids songs that I’ve been kicking around that I want to finish. I don’t know if that’s going to turn into anything but I just want to finish them to have them. There’s also a bunch of other rock songs that I wrote earlier this summer and the spring that I want to finish and see what happens, how it fits with the other material. That record’s done but I’m not sure how I feel about some of the songs. And then who knows, you know? I made these four distinct records and I kind of almost wanted them each to be monochromatic, to work within the limitations of the thing, so part of me is just like, “Maybe I’ll just make a record of a bunch of songs that are all over the map,” you know, and see how they fit together.

BFP: You were saying that the acoustic album material you’re writing has a lot of movements to it. A lot of your songs have that anyway, like the songs on “Tell It to the Dust” go in a certain direction and then there’s a bridge that takes it in a different direction and then it goes back to the original.

AP: Something like what I did on the song “Tell It to the Dust” or “Doornail” or that tune “Dear Sara,” similar to those in the fact that they don’t end up in the verse-chorus type of structure but maybe take it even a little further — still hopefully that they’re catchy or poppy within the movements, but just kind of getting out of those forms, you know. But also not making it into (obscenity deleted) prog rock. It’s not for the sake of the complexity or to prove what a guitar player I am or anything like that.

BFP: You were talking about longer acoustic songs but on “Crow” the songs are pretty short. Was that conscious?

AP: It was totally conscious. Again I wanted it to be very small, you know. I was thinking consciously of doing that. Because some of the songs the past few records were more intense and longer I wanted to make it very shrunken. It’ll be interesting to see because they are so quiet. Some of the tunes I’ve been playing and I can pull off in different ways but I don’t know exactly how it’s going to happen (live).

BFP: And then the songs on “Skyscraper” are not long-form but they are a longer form. That was conscious, too, I presume, to give them a little more room to breathe?

AP: I think it was just more the fact that the way that I was writing them I orchestrated them more. Those I was really conscious that I wanted them to be as hooky as I could; there’s a lot of chorus and vocal harmonies and stuff like that, but I also kind of like the way that kind of music sometimes you get in that groove, and I kind of liked just a little bit of room there to do some musical stuff and establish tempo and some kind of deep groove type of thing, hopefully. In a different way I’m doing the same thing with the acoustic record.

Talking with Anders Parker

2009-09-09T15:44:00.003-04:00

I had a great interview last month with Anders Parker, the fine indie-rock songwriter who moved to Burlington last year and has a new double album, "Skyscraper Crow," that came out yesterday ("Skyscraper" is the more urban, computer-generated disc while "Crow" is the Vermont-y, organic-sounding half). He's playing a CD-release show Saturday at The Monkey House in Winooski and I'll have a feature about him in Thursday's Free Press. It was such a good chat I have some leftovers that I wanted to show y'all here. "BFP" stands for "Burlington Free Press," which in this case would be me, and "AP" stands not for "Associated Press" but for "Anders Parker," the subject of today's story....

BFP: It sounds like “Skyscraper” could not have been done anywhere but New York and “Crow” could have been done elsewhere but was definitely influenced by being in a more austere, simple surrounding.

AP: Definitely. It’s pretty obvious to me that one is the city and one is, not that this is the country necessarily but the town. It’s not about Burlington per se. It’s more of the influence of the area.

BFP: It’s called “Crow,” and in your press material it says that you were hearing crows....

AP: Oh, yeah, yeah, especially when the leaves come off in the fall or the winter, they hang out on (South) Winooski there. They would sit on these fences and the trees above my house, and I’d look out the window and see them and walk down the street and into town and they’re just cackling and talking at you.

BFP: It sounds like moving around (he's lived in a lot of places) is good for your creativity.

AP: Well, as I was saying that I was thinking that the writing, you know, I never move to write, you know what I’m saying? It’s just kind of a byproduct. It probably has more to do with the fact that when you’re moving you don’t have much time to play or write or whatever so it’s kind of bottled up. I’ve just been writing a lot this past week or two. It just comes out. I don’t really know how to explain it so much. It’s just like having fun, you know? It’s entertaining. The feeling of writing something kind of fascinates me. I think any creative endeavor, whatever that spark is, is at least to me unknown and mysterious. I just write for that in some ways just to be in that space. It’s not a very conscious state, you know? It’s almost like not thinking about it, you’re just letting other things take over as opposed to thinking “I’m going to write a song and it’s going to have this part or that part of whatever.”

BFP: You’ve been very prolific and you’re writing more material. Is that always the way with you?

AP: Yeah, I just write, you know? I remember reading about Paul Simon, when he used to write a record he goes into his office and writes, which is really interesting. I love him as a writer. Same thing with Steve Earle — I remember talking to him and he was like, “Yeah, I’ve got to write two more songs for the record.” It was kind of fascinating to me because he did that, he’s like, “I need 10 songs or whatever I need.” I tend to write constantly. I play guitar to play guitar but oftentimes I’m writing and doing different things. I’m not sitting and playing covers for the most part.

BFP: At your Nectar’s show recently (opening for Lowell Thompson and Crown Pilot) you showed how versatile you are as a guitarist, the power you create as one guy on stage as a guitar....

AP: It’s just offense is defense (laughs). Playing solo sometimes is a losing battle. I love guitar and it’s also endlessly fascinating to me what you can do with it. Part of my life thing is you do enough acoustic shows or whatever. That show was like, it’s a really loud house, so part of my thing was like, “Well, you’ve got to match ‘em in some way,” either that or you get run over.

BFP: There is a line in “Canadian Heart” (on "Crow") about using your guitar as a weapon. Is that the same idea?

AP: That was actually kind of a true story. I played in this band called Space Needle and we were much more of a noise — we called it “free rock” — but sometimes we’d devolve into things being thrown and things being kicked around and lots of noise. I think that night I had actually thrown my guitar, so it was more spefically about a show that I played in Halifax.

Live Wire with guest Mia Adams

2009-09-04T11:33:00.001-04:00

Show links
• Mia Adams MySpace page
• Toni Catlin MySpace page
• Kelly Clarkson web site
• Kid Rock web site