Top 5 for Local Spins 2019

I've dived so deep into the rich and varied local scene that I can only think of a small handful of new national acts I bought this year.  Here's my shot at this.

1. Darcy Wilkin, Bristol:  If this got national distribution it would be Americana album of the year.  After 21 years cocooned in the Corn Fed Girls, Darcy steps out on her own and hits it out of the park with astute, sometimes harsh but always humane glimpses of lives led in quiet desperation.  Stellar production by Joe Newberry.  Wait till you hear Waiting For The Wildflowers, just, wow.

2.  Borr McFerrin, Bottle Makes Three:  years in the making, this duo album takes their country folk sound and blows it up widescreen, the sound of lives lived hard but kind.  Trains, booze, horses:  well worn Americana topics, but served up with heart, harmony, and go for broke brio.

3.  August, Bloom:  I bought this one at Sandra Effert's release show after they played a great opening set.  First spin:  oh, this is nice, inoffensive soulful pop.  Second spin:  oh wow, are those women sisters?  Those harmonies?  Third spin:  Bailey Budnick is the best undersung drummer in this town, check those jazzy fills and off beats.  Fourth and fifth and more spins:  oh damn this is album of the year isn't it.  Like a Vox Vidorra with less weighty subjects on its mind:  not a diss, we need this sort of music as soundtrack to a well rounded life.

4.  Earth Radio, Mother's Breath:  the most exciting sound in West Michigan heads for outer space, and it shows few signs of coming back till they retrieve all our lost soul singers and prog heads.

5.  Guided By Voices, Sweating The Plague:  Robert Pollard is a personal hero, parlaying a teaching career into perhaps the biggest cult following in music.  His band's third album of the year, 32nd overall, actually finds new sonic territory to explore, with perhaps the most skilled lineup of a 36 year odyssey. Rawk!

Best live show this year:  TIME OUT: An Evening of Songs and Stories with Katie & Sav of the Accidentals and Kate & Emilee of the Crane Wives, Mendel Center, Lake Michigan College, Benton Harbor:  In which all the tissues were required, on stage and off.  This special show, first of a three night run, was just what it says on the tin, four young women elaborating on what their songs mean to them.  It got really real, really fast, to the displeasure of some, to the bleary delight of others.  So much candor about anxiety, depression, disease and doubt.  And a lot of REALLY GOOD TUNES.  Em stuck to mostly unreleased material again, and Kate had a few new ones as well.  Katie had a great song, Geminids, about watching a meteor shower with her mom, cancer diagnosis looming over her like a celestial question mark.  Sav had one called Marrow, about a sick baby, that had us all bleary eyed.  Catharsis:  The Tour.  A lovely rare outing for Kate's Can't Go Back, a song that kicks my ass every time.  "It's time to be more forgiving of yourself, and your sins." Em's Destroy Everything is a gentle but insistent kick in the ass.  From my notes, can't remember context:  "Lucid nightmares speeding on M-45."  Oh lordy have I ever been there.  In my top ten shows ever.

Live Music Log, July 2019

Hi.  I'm a guy who goes to shows in West Michigan and then writes down what I remember about them. These are their stories.

7 4 19 Olivia & The Aquatic Troupe #28/VALERIE THE VULTURE Founders, Grand Rapids  The bogus holiday was celebrated with the Mainville/Schreibers in the increasingly problematic confines of the Founders Taproom.  Opening act Valerie the Vulture, like Alice Cooper both a band and a person, lit a firecracker under our asses with big fat garage rock chords from a trio of women who were not here to play nice.  Valerie, aka Willa Rae Adamo, previously led a Halloween themed band, so they were a more natural fit with Liv and Brandon than outwardly apparent.  Back then they had nothing out, now there are two singles to hear and a lot more to come.  The Troupe were nearly blown off their own stage, but the femme-Django strains soothed the savage beasts just fine.  The band taunts us by playing so many songs from the album that will never ever be released it seems:  languid talky anthems with Olivia's precision guitar stings, Adam's controlled chaos on drums, and Brandon's steady bass, so different from his own excitingly erratic guitar with Jack and the Bear.  I think Bleu was there.  This was a long time ago. To prevent this crap from happening, I am gonna start writing about shows immediately, and save the drafts.  This blog is supposed to be a memory aid, not a test.

7 6 19 Carrie McFerrin #28/COLE HANSEN Beaver Lodge, Comstock Park  This was a model of how a house show should be run, a model I intend to attempt copying at my house next year.  Stacy Noonan and Jonathan Beaver, who play music together under the name Beaver Xing, put on a few shows each summer at their house right alongside York Creek, with a big backyard on a beautiful piece of wooded land sandwiched between the behemoth York Creek Apartments and six lanes of Alpine Avenue.  I could bring Sheila!  Two canopies were pitched:  one for the performers, and one for the crowd in case of rain. A spread of snacks and beverages were available.  Cole Hansen played first;  late of the band Bello Spark, she's been stepping out on her own with her amiable, intelligent folk-pop.  Favorite lyrical image:  uncracked garage sale books.  I know that feeling and smell so well...  Undisputed highlight:  the utterly charming Tightrope Walker, extolling the virtues of doing whatever the hell you want to with your life. Carrie, resplendent in handkerchief-dress-thing, brought Mikey Powell up to GR with her for support and harmony, and she sounded super spiffy in the warm night air.  But then it started to sprinkle.  And then it started to pour.  And because the Beavers came prepared, the show moved under the big tent to continue unplugged.  Sheila, already not a fan of amplified music, retreated to an old couch inside the barn, and since she seemed disinclined to budge, I joined the writhing crowd under the tent, glasses steaming up, hollering and dancing as the show devolved into drunken singalongs.  This was the definition of how to spend a kickass summer evening.  The next weekend, I had to move all my belongings to my new Miracle Ghetto House, so I was glad of the respite.

7 23 19 ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA/DHANI HARRISON Van Andel Arena, Grand Rapids  Since my immersion in the local scene, I don't carve out a lot of time for national acts.  For Jeff Lynne's first US tour in 35 years, I made an exception.  This was my first time inside Van Andel in ten years, since seeing Foo Fighters with my ex wife. I had bought the tickets eight months earlier in hopes of bringing my mother, but she had oral surgery close to the date and begged off. I invited an acquaintance from Kzoo to come with, as a kind of test date, but no sparks seemed to fly in either direction.  (If she reads this: surprriiiiise)  Dhani looks and sounds so much like his dad it's spooky, but he's carving out his own path:  even in his thirties, he looked like a kid sneaking onto the stage with his scruffy mates amid the gargantuan ELO sets.  His band thenewno2 seems to be no more, these were more straightforward rock tunes, but I couldn't make out the lyrics at all:  the sound crew gave the opener short shrift compared to the booming fidelity of Jeff's set. The huge crowd roared when Jeff broke into "Standin' In The Rain" (odd opener) and barely let up for the next 100 minutes as the jukebox kept a crankin.  No other original members are left, but some of the randos on stage got a spotlight at times as Jeff rested his voice or his guitar hands. Do Ya was the only Move tune of course, and the hardest rocker of the evening;  Can't Get It Out Of My Head was impossibly lovely; the only surprising tune, 10538 Overture, was majestic as fuck; Shine A Little Love still sucks; and the Roll Over Beethoven encore connected it all back to Mom's old ELO II 8 track:  some nights, nostalgia rules.  Undisputed highlight was when Dhani came back out to join in on Handle With Care, to eulogize departed Wilburys. Would I have liked more deep cuts?  Absolutely.  But this massive production was about delivering Mr. Blue Sky to the masses, and that's ok.

7 27 19 The Crane Wives #71 The Robin Theatre, Lansing  I got to attend a Wives show with Dan in his own town for the first time.  (He was also at the Loft show, but I was with Renae and Julie at that one.) Five months out, the details are gone, but I guarantee I enjoyed myself in the intimate setting with an attentive audience.  Kate once asked me:  aren't you bored to death with these songs yet?  This is show 71!  Answer:  nope.  There is always new nuance, slight change in setlist, welcome spins around the block with old friends (both the songs and the band). This is loyalty, but not JUST loyalty:  these tunes are the soundtrack I choose, the way I want the flow of my emotional life to be directed.  From the depths of despair found in Nothing at All to the hesitant dawn of new hope in Daydreamer, these are the grooves my heart bumps along in.  Always looking for new converts to my cockeyed religion.

Patty bio attempt

Patty PerShayla is a force of nature, like a hurricane that sweeps through and leaves all the dishes standing.  She is a friendly feral cat, a rock n roll Tinkerbell, who plays the most vicious music your mom will ever love.  Rising from the fertile cornrows of Del Shannon country, she's coming to your town to help you party down. She's been around a few years now, in a few different acts, but it's all coming together into a sound that's guaranteed to stimulate the ants that reside in your pants.  Two main gears:  full on devil horns rawk with the Mayhaps, wherein she strides the stage armed with a bass as tall as she is, ably assisted by Lucas Powell on smokin' guitar (and cowriting) and Alec Klinefelter on the thunderous drums;  and then solo on acoustic guitar and ukulele, where the mayhem is still there, but internalized, like your favorite ulcer. Another new and exciting project:  The Ooze and Ozz, a supergroup with Brandino (of the eponymous Extravaganza) and Conrad Shock (of the eponymous Noise), an act that leans into Zeppelin and Black Keys comparisons with a hearty laugh. Ha!  Whatever form she chooses to take at any given moment, you want to be there when Patty PerShayla lets loose her songs about skeletons, Skyrim, and living as a HBIC in the 21st century.  Come on out and join the fun.