Monthly Archives: April 2012

RA RA RIOT: There’s a Riot going on

New York sextet Ra Ra Riot has accomplished quite a lot since its inception five years ago. The chamber pop-infused indie rock band, which includes a full-time cellist and violinist, has released two full-length albums and four EPs, and has toured the country and globe extensively.

After meeting at Syracuse University, the members formed the band and began playing shows on a whim, without any kind of master plan. In less than a year, the band had earned a spot performing at New York’s annual CMJ Music Marathon and opened shows for national headliners such as the Horrors and Bow Wow Wow.

In 2007, tragedy struck the young band when drummer John Pike drowned in Buzzards Bay off the coast of Massachusetts. The decision was made by the remaining members to carry on, and they’ve been doing just that ever since.

Fresh off a successful Canadian tour, Ra Ra Riot’s national coast-to-coast swing finds the band performing Wednesday night at the Belly Up. But with six schedules to reconcile, and live dates running through Thanksgiving, it’s unknown when fans can expect a follow-up to “The Orchard,” the band’s 2010, critically acclaimed sophomore release.

“We’ve done a lot of touring in the last four years,” said guitarist Milo Bonacci from a recent tour stop in North Carolina. “And we’ve really been in cramped quarters. It’s been a pretty difficult thing to try and write on the road. I mean, we’ll work on ideas during sound check and in minor ways. But the songs have never been conceived or fleshed out while we’re traveling around. The logistics just haven’t been incredibly conducive to having productive time while we’re out doing shows.”

The group’s members had to force themselves to hole up in an upstate New York peach orchard for a couple of weeks to write and record demos for the previous album.

Nothing that extensive has been planned for the new record, but Bonacci said that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been on their minds.

“It’s been a topic of conversation since we finished the last record,” he said. “We’ve made plans to record and have decided on whom to work with as a producer. We have a bunch of demos and a lot of ideas for what perspectives we want to approach on this new album. But we haven’t recorded anything just yet. That’s coming soon.”

Although they don’t have anything set in stone, it’s likely Bonacci’s promise will come to fruition. Even with its rigorous touring schedule, the band has still been able to produce six releases in five years together.

That’s just the way things happen with this longtime group of friends.

Even hitting that half-decade mark wasn’t something the members initially expected. And it’s a milestone they’ve raced past without time to give it much thought.

“It’s actually a strange thing to think about,” Bonacci said. “It really depends on the day. Sometimes it seems like it’s been no time at all. On those days, it’s completely fresh and exciting. But sometimes, I’m surprised when I look back and think of all the things we’ve done, and all the places we’ve gone since we started. Overall, it’s a bit shocking to me that it’s already been five years. This is something that really started as a temporary project.”

While things haven’t exactly gone according to plan, no one is complaining. And at this point, it’s not even an option. They just have too much more to do.

“It’s true that no one expected we’d still be doing this now when we started,” Bonacci said. “But it’s never been a situation where we suddenly found ourselves doing something like touring the country, or even the world, either. The whole thing has been very progressive and steady. And we’re certainly still having fun with it, so we hope it keeps moving in the same direction. It’s all very exciting and satisfying.”

Originally published in The North County Times on November 03, 2011

DJ Shadow Facts

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I’ve always been a fan of Josh Davis, aka DJ Shadow, and his ever-changing collage of auditory sketches. I was lucky to be part of the team that brought his Private Press Tour to the Belly Up in 2002, was absolutely blown away by the multi-screened, artistic envelopment of that show and have wanted to see him again ever since. So when I found out he would be spending one of only a precious few dates on his current North American Tour at 4th and B on Saturday, I was elated.

Oddly, the conversations lately about the one-time untouchable, enigmatic producer have been more about a supposed move away from his core sound on 2006’s The Outsider (which I actually don’t understand — I mean, it’s not his best, but the three-song punch of “Seein’ Thangs” into “Broken Levee Blues” into “Artifact” stands up against any three-song set in his catalog) and his recent decision to talk about the ills of music sharing, it’s effect on artistry, and technology’s overall detriment to music’s current downtrodden situation. Hopefully, his just-released The Less You Know, the Better will get people refocused on the art. But for now, here is our recent conversation in which Davis thoughtfully and carefully discussed the current state of music and his place in it.

Scott McDonald: Glad to be able to catch you before you leave for Mexico and the UK.

Josh Davis: It’s an honor and a blessing to be able to do it, but the travel aspect of it all gets really old. After you’ve been on a certain number of international flights, there’s absolutely no glamour to it. You’re packed in, uncomfortable and tired. Any touring musician will tell you that it gets old pretty quickly, but it ends up being worth it, because the shows are always great.

SM: There was a massive visual component the first time I saw you. Keeping with that tradition this time around?
JD: The first time I toured on a broad scale was 1999. That’s when I started playing in front of European festival audiences that are quite large. On that run, it was novelty enough to see a DJ onstage next to rock groups. Visuals weren’t really needed. It was just me and two turntables and a mixer. But I quickly realized that if I was going to do it again, I would want some kind of visual component to the show, just so people had something to look at other than me. I came up in an era where I wasn’t trying to be a celebrity DJ or famous in that way. I didn’t grow up wanting to be an entertainer or bigger than life. So I came up with visuals for the 2002 tour, and we did a bigger and better version of that in 2006. We had nine screens, and I was on top of a one-story platform. It was quite a spectacle. But when we were planning this tour, I sat down with my same visual collaborator and told him that we didn’t want to go bigger, but more conceptual. What we came up with is something I’m pretty proud of and something that seems to work well when I’m playing before and after all kinds of different groups. It holds people’s attention.

SM: This new record sounds like an old-school mix tape.
JD: Honestly, I feel like that’s what I’ve always gone for — and that’s all the way back to my very first record. I’ve always tried to follow up any single with one that sounds nothing like the one before it. To me, Entroducing’s “The Number Song” sounds nothing like “Midnight,” which sounds nothing like “Stem.” And that’s the same with every record I’ve ever done. I think The Outsider got knocked for having that quality, among other reasons, but I’ve always been curious as to why having different styles on one record is OK for certain artists but not for others. I think rock critics, particularly, don’t care for when people like myself claim to come from hip-hop or another area. It’s almost like they’re saying, “You’ve got to stay in your lane. Don’t be trying to do rock stuff and don’t be trying to do this over here.” I’ve never identified with that sentiment. To me, at this point, I can’t close my ears off to any style of music — even country/western. Now, I don’t particularly care for the current breed of country pop, but there is some ’50s and ’60s stuff I think is amazing, both on a songwriting and performance level. Now that’s something I wouldn’t have been able to say 10 years ago, but you mature and learn from music, and let your prejudices go. Everything is there to be taken in, admired and learned from. I feel like sometimes people want me to apologize for having that attitude, but I can’t. I like music a lot, I feed off of it and have a healthy diet of it. To keep things interesting, I like to switch up both what I listen to and what I make. And that’s the way it’s always been for me.

SM: For me, by putting “Border Crossing” [a song comprised entirely of metal guitar samples] second on the record, it said, “I’m not catering to people who didn’t like The Outsider.” Is it a statement song?
JD: I think it is, just because of where it ended up on the disc. It’s funny, because the guy that used to run A&M Records — the label Mo’ Wax used to go through — would call that my “here comes trouble theme.” On The Private Press, it’s that “bom bom, bom-bom, bom bom.” I never really identified it like that, but on records I like, there’s always a point near the beginning that says, “This is gonna be some crazy s—. Watch out.” I like that about music. I want to give people that, “Uh-oh, oh, s—, what’s gonna happen?” feeling. I know that probably sounds pretentious, but it’s something I admire in other music. In the process of trying to make this record make sense for myself, in terms of the sequence of songs, I always thought “Border Crossing” was going to be somewhere on the first one-third of the record. It felt good to have it where I have it. I like that in real time, people are redefining what they think I am and what they think my music can be.

SM: I personally prefer an artist to reach instead of play it safe.
JD: Me, too. But I don’t think we’re in the majority on that. I think we’re living in an era where people feel like they have an ownership over people who make art in the sense that fans are there to dictate to the artist what to do. I’m still of the mindset that I have no other choice than to do what I want to do first and hope that it coalesces with peoples expectations. However, if it doesn’t, I can’t modify my own taste to try and fit it to the majority. I have to be true to who I am and make music that I can stand behind first. And while that might make sense to some people, you’d be surprised how many people think that translates as: My fans don’t matter. And, obviously, that is not my sentiment or intention at all. I just have to please myself first, the same way that when an artist sits down at a canvas, hopefully they make something that they have artistic ownership of, and not some kind of advertisement that will please as many eyes as possible.

SM: You’ve been incredibly vocal about the negative aspects of technology lately. At what point do you commit to talking publicly about it?
JD: I think sometime in the last two years, the number of conversations I was having with my peers — and a lot of times they’d be household-name type of artists — where they were saying they couldn’t do it anymore, was what got me started. And I’d say that we needed to go on record and talk about it, and I’d always get “No, I can’t. Nobody wants to hear about that.” These are people I respect and need to keeping making music because they inspire me and keep me going. It reached a tipping point, where to me, it became this great, unspoken truth. You can now be in the Top 100 in America by selling 3,500 units – and that’s including downloads. Thirty-five hundred units is what we used to sell of a 12-inch in one shop in L.A. in a week, and that wasn’t that long ago. When people hear this, they always say the same thing: “This is just pampered, spoiled artists going wah, wah, wah.” But for me, this is about trying to move beyond that and letting people know that no one is trying to take your candy away. This is about finding a way that music can continue to thrive and artists can be rewarded for putting time and energy into their art. Otherwise, the art, on certain levels, will cease. And I think, in a lot of ways, it already has. Music is not moving forward at the clip that it used to. Sure there are people making music in their dorm room on a laptop, but it’s becoming almost untenable to be a band that goes to a studio, rents a tour bus and does all of the things you need to do. I just want to have a rational dialogue about it instead of this irrational, binary true/false, love/hate communication that seems to define the Internet.

SM: Can this conversation really change things?
JD: There are times when you look at a topic and say it had its heyday between this period and that one. I’ve felt for a long time that there’s really no job — other than maybe a barber — where you can say that people will always need this, that it’s safe. But if you would have said to me 15 years ago that this gigantic music industry and everything else will someday cease to matter, I would have laughed. I think anyone would have. I would’ve said that people will always need music in their lives and will continue to define their lives through music in some way. And to see the way it’s gone down … I love music. I don’t care about what people have decided is more worthwhile. Music is my life, so I have an opinion on the subject. But it doesn’t really matter what I say. People will read into it as they want to. And if they want to write it off as a bitter rant, that’s cool. I jut hope it isn’t a Lars Ulrich vs. Chuck D. kind of mindset. I’d like to find a middle ground. At the core, I’m trying to get to somewhere that we can all figure it out collectively. The current situation doesn’t work for anyone.

Originally published by NBC San Diego on October 21, 2011

AND CHECK OUT MY PICTURES OF THE INCREDIBLE 4TH & B SHOW HERE

Joanna Bolme: Jick Chick

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“When you’re a Jick, you’re a Jick all the way, from your first cigarette, to your last dying day.” Wait a second. That’s jet. No matter. When it comes to bassist Joanna Bolme, she is a Jick all the way. Ever since indie elder statesmen Pavement went on “hiatus,” Bolme has been playing with frontman Stephen Malkmus in his band the Jicks. Bolme is also a recording engineer who handled the mixing on Elliott Smith’s seminal Either/Or and, until recently, played with ex-Jick Janet Weiss, and her ex-husband/ex-Elliott Smith cohort, Sam Coombs, in indie-rockers Quasi.
I recently spoke with Bolme from her home in Portland. She was about to wrap up the last few tour dates supporting the Jicks’ August-released/Beck-produced Mirror Traffic – including a tour-closing stop at the Belly Up tonight.

Scott McDonald: You’ve been a Jick for more than a decade now.

Joanna Bolme: It’s strange. That’s longer than some of those Pavement guys. It’s a quarter of my life or something. But I usually don’t give it that much thought. I tend to focus on whatever it is that we’re doing next, but I have been there the whole time. John Moen was the first Jick, and I was the second. I’m on every record, for sure. It’s been great.

SM: How was working with Beck on this record?

JB: It was pretty awesome. First and foremost, he’s a musician, so there wasn’t any barrier between roles for him. It was just a group of musicians hanging out, and he was the one who was behind the glass a lot of the time. He came up with a lot of great ideas for things, and we trusted him when he said things like, “That was great.” It’s great to have someone that you respect and trust calling the shots in that department. A producer’s producer is probably going to make you do it over and over again until there’s no life left in it, whereas a musician recognizes the life of a song and doesn’t want to ruin that. His style was free-flowing and loose, and it was the thing that kept us all interested.

SM: That sounds ideal.

JB: Beck really likes those impromptu, weird things about Steve’s songs, and he really got Steve to keep a lot of lyrics that were stream-of-consciousness. There were songs that didn’t have any lyrics yet, and Steve was just making things up off the top of his head, and some of it was really good. But Steve, of course, was like, “No, no, I’ll come up with something for it later,” but Beck was like, “No way — those were great!” So we kept a lot of them. It was a good match for us.

SM: Has Steve moved to Europe?

JB: He and his family moved to Berlin for a change of pace. But so far, it hasn’t really affected anything that we do at all. It’s not like we see each other all that much anyway. Since he’s become a dad, he really has his hands full. It worked out thus far that when he does the band, he’s full-time band, and when he’s off, he’s a full-time dad. It’s just a more expensive plane ticket.

SM: Is Quasi still playing?

JB: I don’t play with them anymore, but Quasi is still a band, for sure. Janet’s just pretty busy with Wild Flag. That’s one of the reason’s she’s not playing with us and things have just gotten busy all the way around. But I’m pretty sure they’ll continue as a two-piece and be more of a recording thing than a touring project. I’m not exactly sure what they have planned, but I know everyone is really busy right now.

SM: Will you ever go back to guitar?

JB: I still play it in the Shadow Mortons, and I played it in the first band I was in, Calamity Jane. Then my friends wanted a bass player for their band, so I picked it up and actually liked it better. I realized at some point that I didn’t have an interest in becoming a total shredder. I taught myself how to play guitar by playing along with Keith Richards, so rhythm was always what I liked more and really felt. Bass is just more along those lines, and it’s still melodic. It’s more my style than ripping leads, for sure.

SM: So, it’s cool we get the last night of the tour.

JB: You are the last day of the tour. Watch out. It might get weird. We’ve already started going off-script. It could really go off the rails. But maybe we’ll be back on track. I’m not sure.

SM: What’s next?

JB: We have about 15 or 16 new songs already, and we’re working on them all the time. We actually play about two or three of them at these shows, and some of them are getting really good. We definitely have more up our sleeves.

Source: Originally published by NBC San Diego on October 20, 2011

Shabazz Palaces: Getting Down with ‘Black Up’

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For awhile, Shabazz Palaces was a band shrouded in mystery. And while that has changed to some extent, even now, their Sub Pop bio page still describes them as: “Like rich velvet hijabs or gold threaded abayas. Luxury as understood by the modest. Shabazz Palaces. If Bedouins herded beats instead of goats and settled in Seattle instead of the Atlas Mountains, this would be their album.”

Um, what?

Initially using the name Palaceer Lazaro, it wasn’t revealed until recently that the man at the center of it all, was in fact, Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler of the New York City jazz/hip-hop fusion trio Digable Planets. But all of that secrecy has changed of late, as their full-length dropped and the group started touring. When you listen to their debut, Black Up, all of it seems to make a bit more sense. Coined by some as avant-rap, Shabazz Palaces isn’t much like Digable Planets at all, and it certainly isn’t a typical Sub Pop release, either. This is something else entirely. Shabazz Palaces will be at the Casbah on Monday as part of a short West Coast run. I caught up with Butler recently from his home in Seattle, and we talked about this latest chapter in his musical life.

Scott McDonald: How is Seattle?
Ishmael Butler: It’s good. I left New York about five years ago. Moved out here. It’s nice.

SM: Have you been touring Black Up?
IB: Yeah, but mostly in Europe. We haven’t done a lot of domestic yet.

SM: I read that for awhile, you weren’t doing any press. Was it just too soon?
IB: At the time, when we first started coming out, I wanted to let the music take hold and was cool with whatever the music got us to. We were fine with being at that place. After the partnership with Sub Pop, you just have a little more responsibility in doing stuff like that. And we just have a different outlook now after doing a couple of years on the project.

SM: This seems like an interesting release for Sub Pop.
IB: The opportunity arose, and it was something that we couldn’t refuse. And after we met everyone there, we felt incredibly lucky to have that opportunity. It was a no-brainer.

SM: Black Up seems to keep changing the more I listen to it.
IB: Well, it wasn’t constructed with any kind of intent. We don’t believe that we can forecast what the possible listeners are going to react to, or how it’s going to be taken. But I like what you said, and that’s how it’s happening for you. That makes me feel good about the content — that it has that breadth and depth. That’s cool.

SM: Are you consciously making music that’s in contrast to what’s out there?
IB: Only to the extent that I feel like when you make new music, you have to rely on your instinct. Through your instinct, you can be original, because your instinct is only beholden to yourself and the people you’re working with. If you understand that what you make — even though it may not always be what you hear, or what you’re influenced by — it will be uniquely you. And you have to have courage to live with whatever happens when you stick with your instinct. We just go with what we innately know, and once it’s down, we stick with it.

SM: Whatever it is, people seem to be feeling it.
IB: It’s beautiful. I feel lucky and it’s magical. Happy is an understatement as far as how things have turned out.

SM: Have the industry changes in the time between Digable and Shabazz hurt or helped things?
IB: I think it depends on your expectations, and whether they’re being met or not, how you deal with it. I only expect the music to take me wherever it takes me, therefore, if things go one way or the other, it’s not that I have expected anything, so I can’t be disappointed. People say they do what they want, but behind the scenes, they do what other people want. Some people only want certain aspects of it. Whether it’s fame or notoriety or money, even though some things go against their instinct or better judgment, they’re doing it because they want these other things. That’s a choice they make. It’s not one I make, but I understand it. But me and the cats I roll with, and make music with, have come to a place where we approach it differently. It works for us, and everything comes up roses when you look at it like that.

Originally published by NBC San Diego on October 17,2011