The sexy siren of the blues

They come in many names. Blackie, Brownie, Number One, Polka Dot, Betty Jean, Bertha and even my beloved Donna, all have graced the ears of millions. They become friends and partners, personified by the bright, audibly seducing auras that surround them.

If you heard them you would write the same thing.

These sirens, curvy and passion-filled, pioneered the sounds of today’s guitar music.

In 1954, Leo Fender sat down to create the next great solid-body electric guitar.

A think-tank of George Fullerton and Freddie Tavares sat down with Fender in the Fullerton, Calif. office with the idea to create a guitar that would be light, easy to play and allow musicians to reach higher notes on the fingerboard.

They did not want to electrify a piece of wood like other electric guitars. They wanted style, gloss and, most of all, playability.

Fender had experimented with this idea before. In 1950, the company created the Broadcaster. Now known as the Telecaster, the guitar’s body was cut away on its right side, allowing access to the eardrum-piercing notes. The guitar’s single pickup created a bright twang similar to throwing stones at the side of a steel shed.

Bowerbirds coast to popularity with The Clearing

Pete Seeger furiously paced backstage at the Newport Folk Festival, enraged by electrified sounds coming from the stage. The folk legend threatened to take an axe to the wiring to stop the desecration of this pure music

Photocredit: Emptyskeleton.blogspot.com

Today’s fans of the genre should be thankful he restrained. Without electrification, the music world would be sans Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Neutral Milk Hotel, Fleet Foxes and many more.

Modern folk band, Bowerbirds, continue the folk genre.

Two schools of folk exist in today’s music. Much like the rap war between California and New York, east again battles west. In folk, the Pacific northwest, based out of Seattle, holds a majority of the genre.

Fleet Foxes, The Decemberists and The Head and the Heart reign as the champions of the Pacific wilderness, creating innovative and unique varieties of folk.

The east’s Mecca of folk lies in the south. Bowerbirds, from Raleigh, N.C., Iron and Wine, from South Carolina, and many others top the east coast list of folk musicians.

The latest release from any of these bands came on March 6, 2012. Bowerbirds, who just made the move to Dead Oceans Records, released their third LP, The Clearing.

The band started the album off with their best track, “Tuck the Darkness In.” A bass-heavy, warm sounding electric guitar combines with the deep twang of a dreadnought (deep-bodied acoustic guitar), creating an inspirational tone.

The Boss’s legend continues with Wrecking Ball

Against a white background, a scrawny man clad in a tight black leather jacket and tighter denim jeans leans against a hunched-over giant wielding a tenor saxophone.

Courtesy: The Improper

This iconic image has defined Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen and the E Street Band since 1975. Tracks like “Thunder Road” and
“Born to Run” make even today’s youth sing at the top of their lungs.

Justin Townes Earle, a nationally recognized independent folk singer-songwriter, once said, “If you don’t like Bruce Springsteen then you don’t like Woody Guthrie meaning you don’t like music,” as he prepared to cover the Boss’s Nebraska hit “Atlantic City.”

Springsteen took motifs and styles from the folk/rock legends of the ‘50s, crafted them from his perspective and added brilliant musicians such as Roy Bittan and Clarence Clemons. The result: 42 years of breathtaking albums, catchy hits and a rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-worthy career.

In 2006, Springsteen paid homage to his hero Pete Seeger and assembled a masterful group to record many of Seeger’s iconic songs. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions connected the gap to Bruce’s listeners where his inspirations came from.

Boss released Working on a Dream in 2009. This album, consisting of Golden Globe winning track “The Wrestler,” sparked a promotional tour that would lead to incredible things.

For the first time in history, The E Street Band would perform entire albums live for to-capacity arenas. Two months before the end of the tour, Bruce wrote the song ‘Wrecking Ball” to pay respect to Giant Stadium and its inevitable demolition to make room for a new stadium.

The E Street Band played five dates at its hometown stadium, selling out the near 80,000 person stadium every night. Bruce played the entirety of Born to Run, that same album with Bruce leaning against Clemons, all five nights.

The tour ended on November 22, 2009 in Buffalo, NY. This author had the chance to see this show, amazed throughout the three-and-a-half-hour-long show.

Unfortunately for The E Street Band, this would end up being the last show with Clarence Clemons who died of stroke complications on June 18, 2011. He was 69.

Many thought that the band couldn’t go on without “The Big Man” as Clemons became known.

On March 6, 2012, Bruce and the band defied all odds and released his latest album, Wrecking Ball.

String virtuoso uses adversity to create masterpiece

Broken hearts fuel passionate music. With his latest release, Break it Yourself, Andrew Bird proves that a break-up can inspire an incredible songwriter to work at an increased level.

Bird’s previous releases dealt in observations regarding our natural surroundings, science and human behavior. His 2003 release, Weather Systems, dealt in this theme throughout the album.

Photo Credit: dcist.com

“And every time you turn the soil, another cloud begins to boil,” from the title track of Weather Systems shows the power man has on the environment.

Sidenote: Righteous Babe Records, owned and operated by Ani DiFranco in Buffalo, NY, released Weather Systems.

With his previous five studio albums, Bird has defined a genre known as chamber pop. His music takes motifs from pop music and combines them with chamber instruments like the violin and mandolin. The instruments ring with the sounds of Mozart and Tchaikovsky, proving they have been handled by a classically trained expert.

Since his 2009 release Noble Beast, Bird has made many changes. He left Fat Possum records and signed with Mom+pop Records. He started writing film scores, releasing a soundtrack for the film Norman. He played a 165-date tour in 2009 all the while in heartache from a relationship change. He suffered a heel injury on tour and dug himself deep into his work.

“I think he just ran himself ragged,” said Bird’s bassist Mark Lewis in an interview with Rolling Stone. “Being out and busy can be a false escape,” added Lewis.

Bird left the tour, wounded both in body and spirit, and began to write.

In his reclusive attempt to recover, Bird wrote 14 songs that flow together masterfully.

Olean songwriter strikes music gold

By Levi Trimble

A man, aged by years of manual labor and a lifetime of stress, smiles while holding an acoustic guitar. He shuffles to the beat of his pinky and ring fingers on his right hand strumming against the lower strings. One look at this just-over-five-foot-tall man wouldn’t show you how deep he has been scarred.

Many musicians draw creativity from emotion. The human experience has inspired works by Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, John Lennon and even local musicians you hear at bars, restaurants and parks.

Vetted Album Art

Paul Psathas can never be told he lacks inspiration. Vetted shows this through passionate guitar work and poetry worthy of academia.

Inspired by a series of hard times and injustices, Vetted proves to be a social commentary of the struggles of both the many and the few.

“It’s just an album that had to be made,” said Psathas humbly. Death by cancer, failed relationships and even suicide fueled the flaming crusade of lyrics and harmonies.

Psathas attended St. Bonaventure University in 1969 with a music scholarship. His family owned a steak house on Route 417 where a funeral home now sits. This restaurant, formerly known as Paul’s Steak House, saw greats like The Glenn Miller Orchestra and Buddy Rich grace its stage.

Carney says what we all were thinking.

By Levi Trimble

Patrick Carney finally said what many music lovers and critics have been thinking for decades. Pop music sucks.

Image courtesy of americanrockscene.com

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, the drummer of the popular blues-rock duo, The Black Keys, gave his opinion on why rock n’ roll may be reaching its end.

“Rock ‘n’ roll is dying because people became OK with Nickelback being the biggest band in the world. They became OK with the idea that the biggest rock band in the world is always going to be shit (and) therefore you should never try to be the biggest rock band in the world,” said Carney.

The comments were sparked by many comparing the Keys to Nickelback and other popular rock bands.

“Rock ‘n’ roll is the music I feel the most passionately about, and I don’t like to see it fucking ruined and spoon-fed down our throats in this watered-down, post-grunge crap, horrendous shit. When people start lumping us into that kind of shit, it’s like, ‘Fuck you,’ honestly,” added Carney

Paul is dead! No, not really.

By Patrick Hosken

So, I was originally planning a post about how beards have replaced long hair as the telltale sign of a rock musician. I had examples lined up, citing the burly bearded Fleet Foxes and Titus Andronicus’ frighteningly furry frontman Patrick Stickles among others. I thought about what classic rock stars to mention to flesh out my argument, immediately drawing my deliberation toward Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton in his Cream days.

But, as the Internet is truly a horrendous pit of endless information given in bite-sized links, I came across a message board detailing how the real Eric Clapton, at some point in his career, had been replaced by — GASP — an imposter!

Eric Clapton

That’s right. One of the most talented guitarists of the past 50 years was somehow snatched up and had his place taken by some hack who looked similar enough to pass as him. Why? Who the hell knows! But I read it on the Internet, so it must be true!

This forum led me to an even larger site specifying exactly how Paul McCartney, one of the men responsible for popular music today, was also replaced by a phony sometime between 1966 and 1967, at the height of The Beatles’ success.

One question, loony and most likely lonely message board posters: Are you fucking crazy!?

Austin’s Blues Revivalist: Gary Clark Jr.

By Levi Trimble

“You gonna know my name.”

For Gary Clark Jr., these lyrics from his single “Bright Lights” resounds as fact. The Austin, TX born guitarist has been lighting up stages since his teen years. In 2001 – when Clark was only 17 – Austin’s mayor at the time, Kirk Watson, proclaimed May 3 as Gary Clark Jr. Day.

Why did he deserve such an honor? Well, Clark had won the Austin Music Award for best Blues and Electrical guitar performance – on three separate occasions.

Gary Clark Jr.

In his music you can hear the pumping bass, the scratching of wound strings and the hum of his guitar pickups. Each sound represents the majesty of a time where passion fueled music instead of money and fame. Clark slowly revives the sounds of the great Texas blues-men such as Albert Collins and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Clark combines his charismatic powers as a strong R&B vocalist with his almost-unmatchable technical skills on guitar. Pure emotion runs out of these tunes.

Considered a savior of the blues, Clark combines the licks of the great bluesmen with a modern feel, sounding similar to the early work of the Akron duo The Black Keys. But, Clark definitely makes his music as his own embodiment of what blues-rock/R&B should be.

A look back on Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night

By Patrick Vecchio
special contributor

One of my college roommates was a guy named Dave whom I had two things in common with: We were from small towns (“the sticks,” as the guys from New York City always reminded us), and we loved music.

Back then, my favorite artists were Zappa, Jefferson Airplane, Jethro Tull, the Doors, Mountain, and Cream. Arnie was into mellower stuff: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Moody Blues, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and—dig this—the Eagles. Arnie was the first person I knew who listened to the Eagles. This was 1972-73. He was way ahead of the fan curve for that particular band.

I had a copy of CSNY’s first album, Déja Vu, in my record collection, but Arnie had the different band members’ solo albums, too. Of the four, I liked Neil Young best. My teenage angst dovetailed nicely with songs like “Cinnamon Girl,” “Down by the River,” and “Heart of Gold.”

I lost touch with Arnie after two years of school, when I parachuted out of college to—in the parlance of the times—get my head together. That decision left me living at home and working a cul-de-sac job. The circumstances weren’t ideal, but they gave me lots of disposable income, much of which was spent on records.

Tonight's the Night's album art

By then I had lost touch with Young’s music and was listening instead to some of the time’s better-known acts (David Bowie, Lou Reed, Roxy Music) and some second-tier bands (Mott the Hoople among them). What I liked most, though, was discovering acts nobody had heard of. It helped that I developed a musical friendship with the guy who ran the local record store. Between the two of us, we found artists and bands like Brian Eno, Be-Bop Deluxe, City Boy, and Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel.

But early in 1975, I picked up a copy of Young’s new album, Tonight’s the Night, to see if his music still resonated with me.

The Black Keys and creative media.

By Sam Wilson

Just after 60’s and 70’s-style blues rock, goofy seems to be The Black Keys’ thing.

Who can forget the music video for the Keys’ super-catchy “Tighten Up” in 2010?

“But he smells like ranch dressing,” Dan Auerbach’s son whines to his father about drummer Patrick Carney’s boy before the grownups break into a fight over a woman. Even more silly, though less publicized, was video through which the band released their single featuring a dancing and singing toy dinosaur named Frank.

Frank The Dinosaur

They even followed up with a much grander production, spoofing action westerns with “Howlin’ For You,” a short film set to the song from Brothers starring Tricia Helfer, Corbin Bernsen and Todd Bridges of all actors and reminiscent of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino.