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The Join:
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Purple Hank and Joe Swank:
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Schultz has been writing prose for a long time, but admittedly was never too serious about it. After writing a practice book, Schultz realized that he could write a real novel. For him, there's not too much of a difference between songwriting and prose.
"I strive to find characters," Schultz says. "I am a balladeer and tell stories using characters or elaborating on characters through a story. It sounds like the same thing, but the tone is a little different. A novel for me is more of a character study than a plot-driven event."
The Bicycle Club tells the story of Wyatt Scruggs, a Southern Illinois musician whose talent is only matched by his propensity for the sauce. With some friends, Scruggs does the two things he seems to be really good at-- making music and drinking. After living and performing in relative obscurity, an out-of-town music critic stumbles across the unnamed band at their usual weekend gig at a fictional Southern Illinois honkytonk. After some press, Scruggs and his friends deal with the stresses of trying to deal with a slice of real fame while trying to remain the drunken, talented, and unambitiously gifted musicians they are.
However fictional The Bicycle Club is, Schultz finds Southern Illinois and the music that comes from it to be big parts of his novel.
"I really love Southern Illinois," he says. "It's disconnected just enough to make everybody individuals, and I really drew on a lot of characters I've met and put together a lot of composite characters, different people and musicians I knew."
Schultz says he is treating the novel's release in the same way he releases music, independently. In the case of the novel, Schultz has self-published the work, and foregoing trying to place it in stores, he hopes the curious will find it online.
"It's gonna be, 'Catch the show, buy the book, order it online if you hear about it,'" Schultz says. "I think that's more fun. I think doing it that way will be more fun and more in tune with the characters in the book and how they'd approach it."
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"Dave has a sick way of taking dark things and putting them into a bouncy or happy-sounding beat," Swank says. "You are playing a fun sound, but singing about heroin and strippers and hookers and all kinds of messed-up situations, but to the casual observer not tuning in to the lyrics, you'd think it was just some 'My baby loves me' kind of stuff, but it's not."
Schultz has admitted to using composites of some real-life people as characters in The Bicycle Club. When asked about it, Swank was unsure if he's in there.
"I didn't see myself anywhere in there, but didn't think about it," Swank says. "May have to keep that in mind when I reread it. If I'm not in there, I can guarantee I'll surface in the next one, as I now have a goal! If Dave won't kill me in one of his songs, he can at least lay waste to me in the pages of his next tome!"
Swank's latest release with the Zen Pirates, Hank Williams Died for My Sins (for which Schultz cowrote the title track), was a labor of love for Swank. Comparing the ordeal to giving birth to a rhino, Swank flew to and from Chicago and North Carolina several times to finish it. He says he is happy with the end result.
"I'd like to work with this band again, but under much more convenient circumstances," Swank says. "That's what keeps me playing the lottery!"
Like Schultz, Swank is looking forward to playing with his old friend again.
"Dave and myself and the boys of Purple Hank fame always have a great time playing and being back home," says Swank. "I'd imagine that we'll be a lot looser than normal, if that is possible without being in a coma. PK's is both Dave's and my home stage, so we are jazzed about being back again."
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Beware the Bloody Corpse of the Bourbon Knightsby T.J. Jones When the Bourbon Knights performed their final show last winter (which served as a triple-threat finale: Saint Patrick's Day show, CD release party, and farewell) PK's was packed even more than it usually was on a Saturday night, and the atmosphere was bawdy, rowdy, and very much alive. Yet there was a tinge of sadness in the air, shared with the performers and the fans, about the prospect of the Knights of Bourbon never performing live again. After the final bow and all was said and done, fans were given the final gift-- Krampusnacht, a ten-track treat that gloriously celebrates the band's near-decade of public service to their fans. While the disc is perhaps the best recording the band has ever put out, containing as much debauchery as it does farewell melancholy, it seemed as though it was the final artifact in the long, strange trip of the Bourbon Knights, until recently. Jennifer Rollinson, wife of Bourbon Knight vocalist and cofounder Patrick Rollinson, had complications from back surgery. Seeing that he was stressed with medical bills, vocalist and cofounder Malcolm Robertson asked Rollinson about a reunion show that would help benefit the Rollinson family. "I really thought we'd buried the Bourbon Knights," admits Robertson. "I never thought we'd play again." Robertson and Rollinson, along with the other members, decided to resurrect the Bourbon Knights for one more show on Saturday, March 13. "Honestly, I think our insurance and stuff will cover most everything now, but during the period when [my wife] wasn't working, it was very tight," Rollinson said. "Everyone seemed to be on board, so I said 'Yes.' There is no impending need to be ready for more shows or develop new material, so this should be pretty easy and, I hope, fun." Like any venture where a large group of people are involved, the Bourbon Knights overcame instances of stress and disagreement to pull off some of the most exciting and theatrical musical performances in Carbondale in the last nine years. Robertson agrees. "I missed playing in the band, and was proud of what we accomplished, but not the fourteen-member headache." But like any family, the Bourbon Knights were able to come together to help one of their own. It is bittersweet for Rollinson, who saw the band's demise as something that was appropriate yet heartbreaking. "[I] loved [the Bourbon Knights], glad I did it, [and] glad it's gone," Rollinson said. "The stress level, for me, was reduced incredibly upon the devolution of the vaunted Knights of Bourbon. It was a labor of love, and our potential for creating new interesting music was never met, and it was quite frustrating. I remember the December before last playing our Krampus show, and thinking at one point, 'I'll probably not do this song again,' and it made me very sad. I felt the eyes well up and shouted out the lyrics with all the bravado I could muster. "The dismantling of the Bourbon Knights was a very emotional issue for me," Rollinson added. "I am really proud of Krampusnacht. It was an awesome coda for us to have. We went out well and before either dwindling or exploding. I gave a lot of time and effort to the entity and was proud of what we did, but wanted to do so much more than I think we could at the time. On the other hand, I very much have missed performing; I am a ham by nature and love to sing. I miss the interaction with bandmates and the audience." Since the final Bourbon Knights show, many members have been keeping themselves busy. Cofounder Mortimer Bustos spent last fall playing in the Family Stump with Hugh DeNeal and fellow Knight Greg Edwards. Alex Pape has continued with the Whistle Pigs, and Matt Dierker plays with Spricket. Rollinson and Robertson have been keeping themselves busy with the development Oi The Storm, along with Knight and Dammit Boy Tim Beatty, Jared Mileger (also playing with Zuul), and the Dammit Boys' Dave Marquis. As Hippie Repellent, Rollinson, Robertson, Marquis, and Beatty will tour the Midwest with Armitage Shanks in September. "I have a lot of projects going on and had no interest or thoughts in returning to the Bourbon Knights, but the way this was presented to me seemed like a good deal," admits Rollinson. When asked if a newer Bourbon Knights would ever reform, Rollinson remains unsure of the possibility. Even though most fans have had nearly a year without a BK-fix, it remains to be seen if anymore shows will be on the horizon. "I have no idea [about more shows]," says Rollinson. "The future is yet to unfold. I have had several requests for us to do shows with folks who I would have jumped at the chance a year ago, but I have no desire to have a leadership role in the band anymore. If they play and it fits into my schedule, I'll do it. I get this odd feeling that a Saint Patrick's Day and Krampus event might be something we could handle, but as I said, nothing is actually there. I think it will be a play-it-by-ear kind of thing based on availability of members and their will to do so." The glorious Krampusnacht can still be found at local record stores and online. More info can be found at <http://www.TheBourbonKnights.com>. |
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Laurie McClain and the Gordons:
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As a child of the late 1960s, McClain was heavily influenced by folk music of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell along with the country of Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash. The young McClain cut her teeth on the fabled Man in Black sound, religiously watching Cash's critically acclaimed musical variety show with her mother.
After moving with her family to Nebraska, McClain's desire and drive to find her own voice as a musician and songwriter took firm hold when she first heard Joan Baez covering the haunting Leonard Cohen masterpiece "Suzanne." McClain convinced her father to buy a guitar so that she could learn and perform the song herself, and by age fifteen, she was playing songs by Cohen and Hank Williams and John Prine, and writing her own music.
At eighteen, she wrote her first song, and as soon as age permitted, McClain began taking her growing collection of original tales, along with her repertoire of acoustic country and folk anthems, to bars around the Midwest, in addition to house concerts, coffeehouses, and outdoor festivals.
By 1997, McClain headed for Nashville, where her path crossed with legendary session bass player Charles Chadwick. Looking for a fresh act to produce, Chadwick took the singer/songwriter under his wing, and the two produced McClain's CD, The Child Behind My Eyes. During the recording process, McClain and Chadwick joined forces in life as well as in the studio, falling in love and marrying in 2000.
Since The Child Behind My Eyes, McClain has released four additional CDs, including her latest, 2009's Ascend, and The Trumpet and the Vine, a collection that McClain recorded to honor the memory of Kate Wolf, one of her folk-music influences, who died in 1986.
Gary and Roberta Gordon, along with son Noah, need little introduction to anyone who follows the local acoustic music scene. Gary and Noah's guitars, Roberta's Appalachian autoharp, and the close family harmonies will rekindle memories of family folk giants like the Carter Family. A family act in the best and truest sense of the word, their live set is a watercolor portrait where the differing styles of country, bluegrass, mountain folk, gospel, and blues blend to create one work of musical art. Their latest release, Our Time, was released on the Gordons' own Inside Out record label two years ago.
For more about McClain, visit <http://www.LaurieMcClain.com>. For more on the Gordons, go to <http://www.GordonsMusic.com>.
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A Tip of the Hat to the Rum Drum Ramblersby T.J. Jones The Rum Drum Ramblers weren't even trying to take their first release, Hey Lordy Lordy Mama Get up and Go, all that seriously. Recording in Bellville, Illinois at the Pub, the EP was only meant to be a demo. The band, which includes Mat Wilson, Ryan Koenig, and Joey Glynn, put the disc in a sleeve and put it in local stores for $5 to see what kind of response they'd get, if any. It ended up the number-fifteen top-selling CD of 2009 at Saint Louis's Vintage Vinyl record shop. The band's newest release, Trading Dollars for Dimes, was recorded in Chicago, and each instrument used was authentic and vintage, from the amps to the washboards. "It's a blast from the past to have these vintage instruments recreating the sound of period-correct instruments," says Wilson. "I'm pretty nerdy when it comes to that. Our music aside, as a purist it's really fun to play old stuff and especially record with it and represent the vintage tone." Together for nearly four years, the last two years have been extremely busy for the Rum Drum Ramblers. They've even toured with fellow Saint Louis riverboat jazzman Pokey LaFarge (incidentally, Koenig and Glynn play in LaFarge's band the South City Three). Like LaFarge, the Rum Drum Ramblers' music continues a sacred tradition of American music while forging a modernly hip style of doing it. "There are many archaic forms of Americana, and a lot that have been well-represented, and there's a lot of them that are still being dug up," says Wilson. "I think it's important to represent Saint Louis. It is a river town and a birthplace of ragtime and blues. [Our music] is a tip of the hat to that." While other Americana artists find ways of keeping the old standards alive and well, the Rum Drum Ramblers only record original music, a refreshing element that can only strengthen their skills. "I think that's our way of carrying on a pure, uncut line of American music," Wilson says. The Rum Drum Ramblers will release a new recording by April. Trading Dollars for Dimes can be found at live shows. Learn more at <http://www.myspace.com/RumDrumRamblers>. |