Tuesday, November 21, 2017

JALOPY THEATRE AND SCHOOL OF MUSIC GO NON-PROFIT

Statement from Jalopy Theatre's Geoffrey & Lynnette Wiley:

Since we founded Jalopy in 2006, technically, we have been a for-profit business, but that model has never truly reflected our priorities (in fact, many people assume we already are a nonprofit organization because of our commitment to our community of artists and students). Our main concern has always been supporting artists and making folk music accessible to a wide audience, not focusing on the bottom line.

So we are thrilled to share the news that we are joining forces with Living Traditions, a nonprofit organization founded in 1994 with the mission of preserving, promoting and perpetuating traditional folk music. For thirty years, Living Traditions produced the wildly successful KlezKamp, a beloved annual Yiddish folk arts gathering in the Catskills. Living Traditions’ own programming ended in 2014, and we are proud to be taking up their mission as our own while holding on to our own location, staff, programs, and name.

Over Jalopy’s first decade, our music and educational programming has become increasingly rich, and the relationships we have developed with artists, audiences, and students have deepened. And we have seen an opportunity to build a broader community of support for our work, realizing our communal values even more fully.

We’ve always considered Jalopy a place that belongs to the people. Officially offering our activities and programs through a nonprofit (in more than just spirit!) will provide new ways to connect with our community, strengthen our organization, and continue to evolve as we begin our second decade.

Monday, November 13, 2017

Marie/Lepanto Tenkiller (Big Legal Mess, January 26, 2018)


In the sunken lands of Arkansas along I-55, there’s a road sign that directs you to a pair of tiny, hardscrabble towns in the Delta. It reads: Marie/Lepanto.
Situated roughly between Southeast Missouri and Western Arkansas -- the two points where singer-songwriters Will Johnson and Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster grew up -- that dual appellation seemed a perfect handle for their new collaboration. It’s especially fitting as their debut, Tenkiller, is an album permeated by a sense of place.   
“I’ve seen that sign forever, and always had those words, Marie/Lepanto, in the back of my mind,” says Kinkel-Schuster. “With it having the spatial/physical/psychological proximity to both of us, we figured there wouldn’t be a better time to bring it into play.”
For Johnson, the veteran singer-songwriter and longtime leader of Centro-matic, his union with Kinkel-Schuster, of Water Liars and Theodore, fits a pattern. In his work with South San Gabriel, Monsters of Folk, and Overseas, collaboration has long been the cornerstone of his creativity. Like his other endeavors, Marie/Lepanto was born out of a musical kinship and personal respect.
“I’ve been a huge fan of Will’s writing and singing playing, admired him from a far for a number of years,” says Kinkel-Schuster. That admiration grew closer and became mutual after Water Liars toured with Centro-matic during the band’s farewell run in 2014. “Water Liars kinda became a soundtrack for me during that time,” says Johnson.  
A couple years later Johnson and Kinkel-Schuster decided to do a joint living room tour of the U.S. They were on the road a week together sharing stories and swapping favorite records. Musically, the duo’s Venn diagram of influences included lost albums like Jim Sullivan’s 1969 curio U.F.O. to the revered catalog of Minneapolis alt-rock scrappers The Replacements.
It wasn’t long before the notion of a more serious collaboration was in the air. “I’d already secretly hatched this plan for us to make a record together,” admits Kinkel-Schuster with a laugh. “The trust and respect between us had reached a level where it was kind of a no-brainer,” notes Johnson.  
The flashpoint came when the pair stopped in Memphis to see producer Jeff Powell (Big Star, The Afghan Whigs) and tour the famed Sam Phillips Recording studio. Powell had previously worked with Centro-matic and mixed Kinkel-Schuster’s solo debut. After Powell casually suggested they all cut something at Phillips, “it became very obvious that this should be it,” says Johnson, “that we should meet in Memphis and make a record together.”
The Austin-based Johnson and the Arkansas-based Kinkel-Schuster did just that in the fall of 2016, traveling to the Bluff City to record with Powell, resulting in the 10-track Tenkiller. The intimate sessions found Johnson and Kinkel-Schuster sharing writing, playing and vocal duties, yielding an album that falls in the great tradition of indie rock team ups – from Nikki Sudden and Dave Kusworth to Vic Chesnutt and Lambchop, Peter Buck and Kevn Kinney to Kim Gordon and Lydia Lunch.     
Nearly every aspect of Tenkiller seemed to be affected by that notion of place, starting with the studio itself. Opened in September 1960, Sam Phillips Recording is like some strange, magnificent dream: a mélange of jet-age technology, pyramid facades and pastel-colored walls, all sprung from its creator’s fevered imagination.
“We were fascinated with the building, and when we walked into that room, it felt like we were projected back in 1960s,” says Kinkel-Schuster. “Not much has changed in there since then, and that was very appealing to us. Not to mention the idea of working with Powell again.”
The sessions began unencumbered by the weight expectation or agendas, but with a surfeit of material. “Usually, I’d try avoid coming into a situation like that armed with too much,” says Johnson, “but with the two of us, the songs we were bringing in, it felt like they fit in a good way. The puzzle made sense.”
Tenkiller evinces both the individual identity of its authors, as well as the alchemy of their union. The haunting harmonies of opener “Patient Man” ushers in an album of beautiful laments and finely-etched narratives. Offering a darker more austere vision of Americana, the record moves between the widescreen majesty of the waltzing “High Desert,” the discordant guitar crunch of “Inverness” and the meditative melancholy of “Rest Be Mine” with a seamless grace.
A kind of emotional geography figures heavily in the record for Johnson, who visited Memphis regularly as a child growing up in nearby Kennett, Missouri. “Memphis was the closest city of any importance,” he says. “Knowing I was coming back there, my old hometown started to creep into my psyche.” The album’s centerpiece, “Famished Raven,” is a semi-autobiographical tale about the scales falling from Johnson’s young eyes: “And as the night, it starts to chase you, always in silent ways you flee/Far from the cries all who need you, and who you need.”
“My mother and I were on our own for a long time, then she remarried and I had two new, older step brothers and it changed my life,” says Johnson. “Through them I learned about drugs and the challenges of adolescence, and even young adulthood. Some of the innocence of the time started to fade, and I tried to capture that with that song."  
For Kinkel-Schuster the album’s title track and closing number are also rooted in the real. “It comes from name of a lake in Oklahoma, not that far from where I grew up,” he says. Its lyrics were spurred by his reading of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown’s devastating account of the effects of westward advancement on native peoples: “Tenkiller, tenkiller…what else could they take?”
 “It’s about the way Native American culture was basically destroyed and appropriated by history and white people from the word go,” he says. “I was trying to imagine what it’s like to live with that as a reality.”
Marie/Lepanto will be out in support of Tenkiller, beginning in early 2018, with Johnson and Kinkel-Schuster touring in a two-man configuration. “We’ll start with just us and see who we pick up along the way,” jokes Johnson.
“The truth,” says Kinkel-Schuster, “is the sound we make is something unique, something that happens just between the two of us. That’s what feels special about it and these songs.”

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

“INDELIBLE” (ABC NEWS) KRIS DELMHORST ALBUM ‘THE WILD’ ARRIVES AS SECOND LEG OF TOUR WITH JEFFREY FOUCAULT KICKS OFF TOMORROW

Kris Delmhorst’s stunning new album ‘The Wild’ is capturing attention and reverence among critics. ‘The Wild’ debuted at #9 on the NACC folk chart. She’s also taped a session for NPR’s Folk Alley. She and Jeffrey Foucault (her husband and co-producer/multi-instrumentalist on ‘The Wild’) kick off the second leg of their tour together. It’s her first tour collaborating with her husband Foucault and both artists are on stage the entire time, first during his set with a full, then a series of duets as a duo, and finally her headlining set with the band again.
 
“All The Way Around” music video here
 
"Indelible[,] enveloping [, and] hypnotizing... While this is one of Delmhorst's most gently-executed albums, her gifts as a writer and singer are still on display. "
- Allan Raible, ABC News.com, September 25, 2017
 
“A constant search — for love, for inspiration and for one’s own identity.”
- Amy McCarthy, The Boot, August 24, 2017
 
“Literate, allusive [atop] a marvelous, tense groove that holds throughout, no matter the sonic particulars of individual songs.”
- Stuart Munro, The Boston Globe, October 19, 2017
 
“Affecting.”
- Chris Steffen, All Music, September 21, 2017
 
“Captivating.”
- Jonathan Frahm, Pop Matters, October 13, 2017
 
“Kris Delmhorst… has always had the ability to play emotional resonance like an instrument, with an unparalleled command of scale and perspective. She can create an emotional space in a song as small as a firefly, or as large and devastating as a hurricane… She demonstrates a mastery of that narrative tool, and the result is an album that smolders slow and hot… Blistering honesty [accompanied by] lushness in the music.”
- Victor Infante, Worcester Telegram, October 26, 2017, full review here
 
“Shivery poignancy… haunting atmospheres and emotional rivers.”
- Bliss Bowen, Pasadena Weekly, September 21, 2017
 
“The Wild casts a shadowy sense of reflection.”
- Paul Robicheau, Improper Bostonian, October 13, 2017
 
“Unique and unforgettable.”
- Next Women of Country, August 11, 2017
 
Kris Delmhorst/Jeffrey Foucault Tour
 
November 7 - Arcata Players Theater – Arcata, CA
November 8 - Palms Playhouse – Winters, CA
November 9 - Freight & Salvage – Berkeley, CA
November 10 - Don Quixotes – Felton, CA
November 11-  McCabe’s - Santa Monica, CA
November 12 – Soho - Santa Barbara, CA
December 1 – The Ark - Ann Arbor, MI
December 2 - Seven Steps Up - Spring Lake, MI
December 3 - City Winery - Chicago, IL
December 5 - CSPS - Cedar Rapids, IA
December 7 - Cedar Cultural Center - Minneapolis, MN
December 8 - Stoughton Opera House - Stoughton, WI (Madison area)
December 9 - Collectivo - Milwaukee, WI