I know! I know!! I’m about a month and a half late on this one!! How did it happen? I don’t know! But this morning, I was cleaning out my digital camera and noticed a bunch of photos from the show!
Anyway, as many of you already know, I LOVE the Meat Purveyors!! They are an intense speed-bluegrass foursome from Texas. They play FAST!! How fast? Faster than Jesse Jackson running to a press conference. FAST. Faster than George Bush running away from the truth. FAST. Faster than Brittney Spears driving with a baby in her lap. FAST.
The band consists of:
Jo Stanli Walston - Salty, saucy lead singer
Cherilyn diMond - Tiny, Upright bass player, backup vocals
Peter Stiles - Thrash metal mandolin player
Bill Anderson - Tattooed Punk rocker turned emo guy who plays speed metal acoustic guitar; He also writes the songs.
Stiles basically is the gasoline for all the songs, pounding out solo after solo on his mandolin. I’ve never seen anything like this guy. Then there is Anderson, who plays down-picking rhythm guitar at a rate that Superman would be proud of. diMond is this cute, little girl who plays upright bass in a fashion that says, “I will kill you if you even think about touching my tuner.” And finally, lead singer, Walston kind of just sits in the background like grandpa on a porch with a 40-ounce bottle of Colt 45, belting out stories of chasing men all over Texas. Oh, and according to the Meat Purveyors’ catalogue, she’s also pretty pissed about the 500 times that guys dumped her.
The band blasted through many of their classics as well as some of the tracks off their new album, Someday soon things will be much worse!. Despite taking the stage late in the evening, close to midnight, they totally brought the rock. Keeping the crowd whipped into a frenzy, the band took short breaks to drink shots of tequila and Walston even chugged a beer at around 1 a.m.!
I don’t know how this band keeps on plugging at the rate they are going, but if they aren’t careful, I’m afraid they might all die of workout-induced heart attacks, that is, if their broken hearts don’t kill them first.
As any fan of these guys will tell you, their albums are all amusingly about heartbreak. Stories told from a woman’s perspective about getting dumped on by guy after guy and then getting drunk and looking for the guy. This is probably normal fare in Texas, but up in these parts, it plays like gold! I’m so used to bands singing about how great their girlfriends are…if they could only get them back…Or bands that sing about the good old days of waking up next to their fine lady. So, it’s nice to hear a band fronted by a woman sing about guys from the lady’s perspective, that is - Pancakes ain’t gonna make up for the fact that you couldn’t get it up last night. And getting drunk and tearing up Mr. Cortez’s felt pool table with your high heels.
And here are a couple of videos I shot during the show:
With saucy rock songs titled “Sugar”, “Ice Cream”, and “Frenchie”, the Jolenes’ second release, Get It To Go, provides this listener with enough sweetener-induced high to last clear through Thanksgiving!
Get It To Go is a rock album for people who like tasty, grunge-induced pop rock. The guitars are dripping with caramel distortion, the vocals are layered in frosting, and the drums are (insert candy here)-licious!
The album satisfies my desire for rock while not making me think too hard. After all, “Ice Cream” is about…well…ice cream. “Frenchie” is about a girl named Frenchie. And you can guess what “Sugar” is about.
It is the simpleness of this record that makes it appealing. It’s nice to relax and listen to an album that whose message is something along the lines of, “Watch out or else I’ll spill my milkshake on you.” Every now and then I need an album like this to calm my nerves before the next Radiohead album is released.
Cosmopolitans were probably not the perfect choice to compliment an evening out to see Jolie Holland. Which is not to say that they weren’t the best five cosmopolitans I had ever had. I earnestly believe that blessed is the person who has a friend who can make a mean cosmopolitan and is willing to do it multiple times over (although I admit that I did supply the very festive green cherries). Also that person is very drunk. And the timeline to make it to a show becomes a little more lacks. Our tickets stated that the show started at 8 p.m., but seriously, what show on a Saturday really starts at 8 p.m.? “If we make it there by 9:30ish, we’ll be fiiiine,” I assured. Regular music-goers know this. It is like an unspoken and secret-to-the-masses rule: “the headlining band shalt not begin playing until at least an hour past their scheduled time…and not until midnight if they have at least two opening bands.” Well, 9:30 slurred into 10:20 and we were just piling into the car (no, I was not the DD for the evening, thanks for the concern).
We made it in at 10:40, missing about 20 minutes of Holland’s performance, much to the deserved tut-tutting of the woman who carded us, took our tickets, and stamped our hands. I’m always bummed when I miss 20 minutes of a such a music opportunity, especially at the Varsity, my favorite venue, but after only one and a half songs in, I was compelled to whisper confidentially to my friend, “I think we’ve already got our $12 worth.” He nodded. It was true, and we were in for over an additional hour.
It was about then that she launched into a story about a very naive interviewer who thought that moonshine was just some kind of legend and not an actual thing. She laughed about this, adding some comment about all the moonshiners she has known. Having received weak (and unconvincing — do you really think a lot of Twin Cities hipsters know bunches of moonshiners?) sympathetic laughter, she finished with something to the effect of how maybe she was an anomaly that just happened to have a lot of moonshiner friends.
That may be the case, and it would be appropriate. “Moonshine” — it sounds like a chapter in a fairytale, but it has an edge, much like Jolie Holland’s music. If she were an animal, she’d be the songbird in Bambi — Jolie doesn’t just sing, nor does she croon, she lilts in an almost-yodeling songbird voice, the melody folding randomly every which way in some bizarre and wonderful jazz-like folk — and she’d be forewarning of the dark tragedies and hazardous lust ahead. Or maybe she’d be the fairy in Peter Pan, the one whose fairy dandruff makes you fly,and then she drinks the poison to save your life…but maybe, just maybe, if all the audience concentrates really really really carefully and they believe in fairies, REALLY BELIEVE, she may just be saved.
The audience certainly seemed to think her life depended on it, or at least that’s what they wanted to think. To say that the whole crowd appeared to hang on her every word would be an egregious understatement. Where there was carpet on the floor, people sat cross-legged in jagged rows, slack-jawed and heads cocked, as if we were all in kindergarten and Teacher was dispensing storytime. On the sides of the room, people perched on tables, rails, and seats with the same expression of wonder and unfazed attention; there was no fidgeting in this classroom, only entirely voluntary rapt attention.
Her band, consisting of drummer Dave Mihaly — a drummer that creates the decidedly jazz-style down for Holland’s songbird melodies — and Brian Miller, with his impressive, but never invasive, guitar solos — the wind over Holland’s semiplume of guitar rhythm and sometimes fiddle — seemed as enraptured as the audience.
When she pulled out the ash-colored box fiddle that she said her friend made for her out of scrap wood, we started to believe that she really did come from some parallel fairy tale life, somewhere in the deep south woods where everyone whispers in harmony with the trees and the foxes stop by to have their regular chat with you and the resident squirrels.
It’s no surprise I’ve seen her compared in her character and folk legend-potential by other reviewers to Bob Dylan, Tom Waits (she and Waits share the same label and he has nominated her for the Shortlist of Music Prize), and even Nina Simone.
There was no last-song-that-is-really-not-our-last-song. The last song really was the last song. The credits to her band rolled off her tongue for the third time, she lifted her guitar strap over her shoulder to gently set it down, and she left the stage. Storytime was over, and we all respected that, politely clapping and whooping, asking no more of her after she left the stage, as if we knew she had already given us enough of what we came for and to ask for more would be like asking Tinkerbell to drink poison for Wendy too.
Summary: 5 stars and a pinch of fairy dust
Free Samples: Get a taste of her style by listening to “Springtime Can Kill You” on her MySpace page. It’s a good example of Mihaly’s jazz-style drumming layered under Holland’s fluttering melodies and whimsical-but-dark lyrics.
Her Web site has additional sample from an earlier album, or try typing her name into Pandora and enjoy several tracks along with artists from similar genres.
Other Facts:
You might also know her from The Be Good Tanyas (you’ll recognize that voice in “The Littlest Birds”).
From her Web site: “Jolie picked up guitar at the age of 14 and was performing originals (and some Guthrie tunes) on stage by the age of 16. She figured out how to play some Syd Barrett songs, abandoned the concept of going to college to hit the road in 1994, and bummed around between Austin, Texas and New Orleans among visual artists, musicians, circus performers, puppeteers, etc.”
She likes to point out that she doesn’t like Robert Johnson (you’ll find her say this several places on the Web) — a rebellion from her blues roots, a political statement against misogynistic overtones, or other personal reasons…your guess for why is as good as mine.
I had the chance to catch a great show a week ago, though it was a bit different from the standard Lunch of Champions fare. I saw the musical, “Wicked”, at the Orpheum and it was excellent. This show got no love from theatrical critics, but the viewing audience loves it. The show was only in the Twin Cities for about a week, and tix sold out in 20 minutes. Now, I’m certainly not a high brow character (in fact, I’m black-listed at almost every event in the cities for cultured individuals), but I enjoyed the book and heard great things about the show. So I forked over the ridiculus fee for scalping site tickets and headed downtown.
The concept for “Wicked” was essentially to fill in the backstory to an existing tale, but from a totally different point of view. This show tells the backstory for “The Wizard of Oz” from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West. Pretty interesting concept, and thoroughly enjoyable to watch. Since everyone has seen “Oz” about a million times (and at least once on mute with Pink Floyd providing the dialogue), the stage is already set. This show dispells everything you ever imagined about the Wicked Witch and makes her the hero of the story.
The story details her formative college years when she befriended Glinda (later to become the Good witch of the North) and became jaded with the ruling Wizard. It explores the sometimes rocky relationship with her sister who goes on to become the Wicked Witch of the East, and whose magic ruby slippers were made so famous by that chick from Kansas. (I never did figure out was whether or not there was a Witch of the South, either good or wicked.)
In the end she finds a guy, falls in love, fakes her death, and cruises off into the sunset. Really just your classic “girl is born with green skin and magic powers, meets boy, falls in love, fakes her own death by melting, and lives happily ever after” kind of story.
One of the best things about this show was how much the crowd really got into it. I’ve seen quite a few shows at the Orpheum, but this was more like a concert crowd. After each number there was not only clapping, but whistling, football-style “wuuuuuuuuuu”s, and a ton of energy. The show was different from the book and was well adapted to keep the crowd having fun. The book takes a somewhat political bent for much of the story, but the stage adaptation keeps things lighter. There were lots of jokes thrown in that poked fun at everything from the original “Oz” to sorority-type blondes (Glinda is the other main character).
Excellent show overall, and one I’d definitely recommend. It’s showing in tons of cities around the US, with long runs in NYC, Boston and Chicago among others. You can check out show details at www.wickedtickets.com.
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I had the chance to catch a great show a week ago, though it was a bit different from the standard Lunch of Champions fare. I saw the musical, “Wicked”, at the Orpheum and it was excellent. This show got no love from theatrical critics, but the viewing audience loves it. The show was only in the Twin Cities for about a week, and tix sold out in 20 minutes. Now, I’m certainly not a high brow character (in fact, I’m black-listed at almost every event in the cities for cultured individuals), but I enjoyed the book and heard great things about the show. So I forked over the ridiculus fee for scalping site tickets and headed downtown.
