Pop, rock, alternative, classical, indie, folk, lo-fi, any thing with a tempo and a beat and some rhythm
When it’s 102 degrees on the patio, and you’re waiting for a show to start, beer does not magically remain cold. We need the brightest minds of our generation working on this, pronto.
Kenny Upstain and his partner, David Matsler, started up 20 minutes late. Fashionably late, I suppose, given the casual set up and masochistic temperature. They play a sparse version of country, strumming hard mad adding percussion by thumping the guitar.
Today marks the first day the concert a day challenge feels like a grind. I didn’t expect the feeling this soon, but I’ll attribute the weariness to my introverted self wanting to turn off sensory input for a little while.
At Scat Jazz Lounge I found out what Bob Ross would look like if he were still alive and a jazz pianist. Christian Dozzler sat behind a piano, wearing a Hawaiian floral print shirt and a brown haired white man’s afro. Accompanied by a drummer, the duo played jazzy numbers smoothly and enjoyably. A couple, in their seventies, stood up from their table and began swing dancing in front of the stage, smiling as they twirled and hustled.
Sunday afternoons at Magnolia Motor Lounge are known as Sunday Fundays. A lineup of acts begin playing around 3pm and continue through the night. I showed up for the first act, Jake Robison, a folk-country singer who curls his lip delivering a song. He strummed his acoustic, sang songs of growing up and being a father with touching melodies. He threw out a countrified take of The Beatles’ Rocky Raccoon. “A little White Album, for ya.”
As an aside, I’m not sure I saw Jake Robison. The dude I took a picture does not look anything like the Jake Robison I found googling, but that’s who the waitress says it was… so…
What I found more interesting was the thing where people drank Miller High Life out of mason jars. I’m so not hip.
Downtown Fort Worth, on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night allows for a little serendipity with patios, restaurants and horse drawn carriages. After two botched attempts to find live music, this combination led me to the Mercury Chophouse patio.
My first attempt to check out live music in the evening resulted in a total fail: the stage for the venue, 1919 Hemphill, was upstairs. It would be too much to ask for an elevator in the midst furniture salvaged from curbsides and graffiti covered walls. I left not at all disappointed that I’d miss 45 minutes of metal.
On the fly, I made a stop home, checked various venue calendars to figure out where to go for the evening. Also, I sought to get a feel for the next few days. Early evening shows would be hard to come by, and I wanted to take advantage of them as much as possible. Eventually, I settled to head downtown to Queen City for Luke Wade, leaving The Grotto and Magnolia Motor Lounge as future options for the week ahead.
As I strolled by Queen City at 9:45pm, the line stretched down the street to Barnes and Noble. I didn’t feel like standing in a line and then having to wait an hour for a show to start. Luckily, I heard music playing down the street at the Mercury Chophouse.
The Chophouse’s patio is nondescript, and I didn’t realize I was even at the Chophouse until I left, rolling by a chalkboard sign, “CHOPHOUSE LIVE MUSIC on PATIO –>>”.
The band playing on the patio, consisted of three guys, calling themselves River Trip. For the most part, they spirited their way through 60s and 70s era covers with an acoustic rock bent. Prior to “Heart of Gold”, they asked if there were any harmonica players in the house. No, there were not any harmonica players, thus, Neil Young’s harmonica solo would be missing for the night. At one point, they pulled out a deep track from the Beatles catalog, “Norwegian Wood”. Not too shabby.
[Note: this is part of my “concert a day” challenge]
Knowing I’d be busy early Friday evening at a scotch tasting, I needed a local show I could get to quickly. Thank goodness for living five blocks from Live Oak. I showed up still a little buzzy from sipping on 18 year old scotch for the better part of the evening. Paid my cover, received my wrist band and entered halfway into Monahans‘ set to a fairly packed house.
The main draw for this show were two indie rock legends: David Bazan and Will Johnson. Bazan made his name in the mid to late 90s as Pedro the Lion, and Will Johnson still puts out music with his Centro-Matic bandmates. The two joined with two other indie veterans to form Overseas.
Overseas‘ sound is interesting, combining what Bazan does best, downtempo ballads that fit his limited baritone range, and Johnson’s low fi rock with frenetic hooks. One song, the bass would lead a pop-like dirge, and in the next, the distorted electric would crank to 10. Early in the set, a short, honey blonde woman made her way to the front. Her eyes, facial expressions and catcall of “welcome back, Dave,” made it clear she was a Bazan fan.
I wish I had arrived earlier to catch more of Monahans’ set. Their sound of rock uses atmosphere, reverb and harmonies over a driving tempo, made for some cool arrangements.
[Note: This is part of my “concert a day challenge“]
For my first show, I scanned the listings on fortlive.com searching for something free. In the West Fort Worth section, I spotted a gig at Chubby’s Burger Shack. A little Googling checked out that Terry Rasor is a veteran Texas singer song writer with a standing gig on Chubby’s patio, called “Raz and Friendz”.
Patio shows are typically free, but waitstaff get grumpy if you’re not buying food or drink. Seeing that Chubby’s was a contender in the 2013 DFW Burger Battle (they lost in the first round), and I’d never been there, it seemed like a good pick.
A buddy met up with me a little before 7pm and the patio remained empty. And the outside temperature held fast at 100 degrees. We opted to enjoy our burgers with air conditioning and then venture to the patio. We finished and ventured outside, and it appeared Terry “Raz” and his partner for the night, Michael Hearne, had yet to play a song. (Sidenote, a waitress stopped by our table, asked if we were going to order anything, and we said no. She ignored me for the remainder of my 45 minute stay.)
Within a few minutes, the duo took to the front of the patio and Terry began to play while Michael sat, leaned forward with his guitar and listened. Terry’s sound, with his voice and a guitar, reminded me of John Prine or late era Merle Haggard–an earnest guy who’s played hundreds of shows and enjoys strumming his guitar and delivering life truths with a grizzled voice. Michael Hearne complimented Terry, with Hearne’s songs more Americana and country. One song, (I found to be called Evergreen) reminded me of Nick Drake, a light melody that floats up with the chorus, made the entire patio stop talking as if this was a moment to truly take in.
Sometimes we need projects to challenge us. Make a thing a day. Learn a word a day. Appreciate an aspect of life a day. The point is to do something and be persistent. For the month of August, I’m going to see a concert a day.
That’s 31 live music experiences during summer’s hottest month. I’ll be doing more work than 535 congress people.
To clarify, for a show to count, it has to be a group or performer putting on a show. Thus, church choirs, curbside troubadors and collective drum circles won’t count. And I have to be there for at least 45 minutes or one set. This is to give an act time to play, especially if it’s an opening act, and also, gives me an out if the music does not move me. Lastly, I can only go to the same venue once a week. I live five blocks from Live Oak, and could hang out there four to five nights a week. This will force me to venture to other venues that I may not typically go to. If I can, I’ll try to meet the acts, and will post a writeup a day to keep track of where I go and who I see. Pictures will be included. If you’re on Twitter, I’ll probably post live commentary.
Already, there will be challenges. I work a day job with long days and I’ll need to plan shows around currently planned engagements. I won’t be jammin’ at 11:30pm on a Tuesday, and during the weekends I’ll be looking for day time gigs to attend. And my wallet will demand free shows, too.
For shows, I do intend to seek out an assortment of genres. Amongst the blends of country and rock, Fort Worth has a rap/hip hop scene, as well as a dedicated core of metal heads that rock out. DFW.com, fortlive.com, Fort Worth Weekly and Google will be my main planning tools.
Anyways, It’ll be fun.
[display-posts tag=”august concert a day”]
[wpaudio url=”http://www.pjhstudios.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/minisky.m4a” text=”Patrick J – Miniature Sky” dl=”0″]
Emily White, an NPR intern, kicked off the discussion early in the week, stating she never made the transition from physical to digital consumption of music.
I never went through the transition from physical to digital. I’m almost 21, and since I first began to love music I’ve been spoiled by the Internet.
I am an avid music listener, concertgoer, and college radio DJ. My world is music-centric. I’ve only bought 15 CDs in my lifetime. Yet, my entire iTunes library exceeds 11,000 songs.
Then, Camper  Van Beethoven and Cracker founder, David Lowery, responds with a nearly 3,000 word essay regarding the ethics and philosophy of creating music (or art) and being compensated.
Rather, fairness for musicians is a problem that requires each of us to individually look at our own actions, values and choices and try to anticipate the consequences of our choices. I would suggest to you that, like so many other policies in our society, it is up to us individually to put pressure on our governments and private corporations to act ethically and fairly when it comes to artists rights. Not the other way around. We cannot wait for these entities to act in the myriad little transactions that make up an ethical life. I’d suggest to you that, as a 21-year old adult who wants to work in the music business, it is especially important for you to come to grips with these very personal ethical issues.
But Jonathan Coulton takes the idea further in a different direction, using Legos to speculate what may happen with physical goods if 3D printers proliferated.
Your kid loves Legos. He’s got an X-wing fighter kit that he’s super excited about, and as he’s putting it together, one of the little pointy laser turret pieces on the tips of the wings slips out of his hands and falls down the central air conditioning vent. No problem. You fire up the old internet, and you find www.legowarez.to, the small crazy place where all of the Lego nuts go to obsessively upload and catalog 3D scans of every lego piece that has ever existed. This site is ad supported, and some douchebag in Nigeria is getting rich off it. But you find the file for the piece you need, you download it, and a few minutes later you’ve printed out a replacement piece.
Jay Frank gets curious and uses Google Trends to seek out data about potential piracy.
Google, as the worldwide leader in search results, is a strong indicator of actual file trade demand. In fact, industry watchdog Moses Avalon argued such this week at New Music Seminar. Yet, when I went to look on Google Insights to see the level of demand for free music by David Lowery’s group Camper Van Beethoven, the message I get is, “Not enough search volume to show graphs.â€This basically means, from what I can gather, that less than 50 people per monthin the entire world are even showing intent to steal his music. Statisticians basically refer to this as essentially zero.
In the broader sense, creators deserve to be paid for their work, regardless of the medium or method of distribution. The transition to legal, digital services to do this is only a recent development. Upon discovering Spotify, friends marveled, “How is this legal? There’s so much.” But if there’s no demand for an artist’s work, irrelevancy seems a much steeper price despite whatever medium the art is in.
“Bank this off the back booooooaarrrrd”
I love this. Being a Pearl Jam fan, any reference to the band in pop culture is amusing. Jimmy Fallon takes the tune of Jeremy, changes the lyrics to reference Knicks star Jeremy Lin, complete with Eddie Vedder’s Jeremy video look and spooky lighting and does a good job.