Daily Music - The Austin Chronicle (2024)

For the Benefit of Mr. Kite

“I’ve never heard of anything like this,” was my mom’s reaction to the news that this week I was writing a recommended for the Candye Kane fundraiser at Antone’s next Thursday, May 29, and planning to attend the one for Van Wilks on June 8.Not that she hadn’t heard of benefits – we’d just completed one at Antone's for my brother Stephen – but rather that she was amazed at their proliferation. It feels true that Austin’s favorite pastime in the music community is supporting itself through benefits. In a town where most bands and musicians are struggling with outside jobs and their art to make a living, when someone needs help you can’t keep the players away with a stick. Or a bow.That’s how a 13-year-old fiddle whiz named Ruby Jane got my attention. Actually, her mother got my attention first by sending me an email about Ruby Jane. With that name filed away, I perked up at Stephen’s benefit when Ray Benson strolled in with a sassy young brunette brandishing a fiddle.“My problem is I can’t find enough places to play,” she’d complained to Ray earlier. Ray bade her to join him at the benefit, just for fun, much like she’s been at Asleep at the Wheel's gigs. Next thing you know, Ruby Jane’s onstage, accompanying Ray before an atypical Antone’s audience of benefit angels, playing and singing her teenage heart out on classic tunes such as “Mind Your Own Business.”

Wasted Years

Five bone-rattling hours worth of the new Live After Death DVD encores with a 15-minute salutation titled “’ello Texas.” Shot at the Alamo, July 1983, during Iron Maiden’s Piece of Mind tour, the featurette cuts between band member interviews and a throttling performance at San Antonio’s hallowed HemisFair Arena, demolished in 1995. “The Trooper,” “Flight of Icarus, “22 Acacia Avenue,” and “Iron Maiden” all execute trademark tales of historical disembowelment with galloping gusto, but it was frontman Bruce Dickinson that caught my ear, saying that the then UK quintet survived outside traditional radio airplay and MTV. Not true. MTV’s skeleton in the closet belongs to Iron Maiden.Little more than six months separates the debut of MTV, summer 1981, and Maiden’s commercial breakthrough the following March, third LP Number of the Beast. Not only did the fledgling cable channel broadcast the group’s great Indian massacre “Run to the Hills” in regular rotation. I can personally attest that MTV’s summer nights 1982 dripped the sweat and blood of Iron Maiden. Once in bed, 9pm or so, my girlfriend’s parents never descended the stairs until morning. Late night, with a bad case of the munchies, me and my gal zoned out to the station’s overnight programming, which more often than not consisted of entire concerts whiling away the hours. Iron Maiden rammed it home round the clock.

In Rainbows

Hot Fun in the Summertime

Last Friday, just before four in the afternoon, I was driving my roommate to the airport. We’re cruising over the Enfield Road Bridge with the flaps down and the speakers at ear-busting levels when he turns to me and drops the inevitable: “Hey man, can we roll the windows up and use the AC?”See, I’m from Maryland, where the beginning of May is when the cold fronts finally leave for good. We all brace for the heat to hit in June. But Austin’s in a whole other air duct. So while the summer solstice doesn’t drop for another month, I can’t help but begin pulling out the albums that get me through these dog days.It’s best when the music feels the heat. Outkast’s 1996 LP ATLiens gets the most burn. It drips with sweat, Andre and Big Boi taking you on a tour of primetime Atlanta, top down. “Elevators (Me and You)” snares slow and hollow as “Babylon” follows Andrea Martin’s down-but-not-out push, “Hoping, wishing, praying to keep my faith in you.” ATLiens drapes like a blanket.

House of Cards

Hi Def Soft Core

Last year, Low Line Caller added vocalist Marc Farina (of Black Before Red) to its lineup, accenting the group’s previous sweeping, Explosions in the Sky styled-instrumentals with a lyrical depth that pitched comfortably into its sound. The group still swells in epic and anthemic proportions, but tightly wound and subdued with a mellow drive. LLC recently wrapped work on its first EP with the new vocals, Hi Def Soft Core, which is available for download here. They're hoping to find a label to release it officially by the end of summer.Low Line Caller has often added a visual element to live shows, with video projections accompanying the group’s performance. Along with the new EP, they've released three videos, all clips from black and white films that cast the songs in uncanny contexts. Watch the videos for "Heartstrings Playing Notes," "Built Over Gasoline,” and “Killing the Cool” after the break.

Just the Two of Us

Saturday night at the Mohawk was supposed to be a triple-header, but for reasons unknown local Brit popster Nic Armstrong was a no show. That meant Memphis upright bassist Amy LaVere started a little late. Her performance at last year’s Austin City Limits Music Festival was an entrancing bit that made this set underwhelming, mainly because LaVere’s music is full of nuances, but they were swallowed up by Mohawk's inside room.Relying heavily on tunes from her latest, Anchors & Anvils (Archer), LaVere caught an off-center Tom Waits vibe, which veered from a set-opening waltz to a sultry re-imagining of Michelle Shocked’s “If Love Was a Train.” Backed by just Paul Taylor on drums and Steve Selvidge on guitar, the dark-haired singer-songwriter kept things perky and ardent, although audience interest flagged by set’s end. Let’s hope next time she hits Austin, it's in a room more attuned to her jazzy folk style.

Wedding Banned

“Weddings, simply, are the place where good music goes to die,” eulogizes Daniel Shiman, better known as DJ Little Danny of the Waxploitation DJs. More evidence was heaped onto that verdict when I attended a friend’s wedding in Kansas this weekend. The couple shared their first dance to Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love” and the bride and father waltzed to Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely,” both solid tunes. Yet most couples inexplicably pay lots of money for a stranger (this one called himself Dr. Tunes) to play atrocious music at what should be the best party they ever throw. From “Hokey Pokey” to “Ice Ice Baby,” Dr. Tunes was a disaster. It begs the question: Does wedding music have to suck?A friend who's getting married this summer is ditching the DJ entirely, letting a carefully crafted iTunes playlist control the dancefloor. Not a bad option, though it leaves you on your own for the PA system and other tech chores. Other lovebirds wary of Dr. Tunes and his ilk seek out hipper options, local DJs with crates of soul and funk rarities. Little Danny, who hosted KOOP’s Soul Sauce and the excellent Office Naps blog before diving into grad school, has been roped into presiding over a few of these functions.

A Shot in the Arm

Rushing into Stubb’s early Sunday evening to find Alan Sparhawk already writhing through “Destroyer” on his antique, Mahogany-hued Les Paul had the appearance of arriving at your own exorcism late. Duluth, Minnesota’s Retribution Gospel Choir has already born one of 2008’s devilishly best platters in its eponymous spring debut, so catching Wilco’s opener was paramount. Low-fi pioneer and professional six-string stranglehold specialist, Sparhawk tore into his very own My Aim is True-era Elvis Costello epithet, “Kids,” followed shortly by True Believers evocation “Easy Prey.” 100-pounds thin in a snug black shirt, with shoulder-length blond curls, the guitarist looked for all the world like Angus Young as he beat his instrument into plowshares. Hüsker Dü never went so missed.Jeff Tweedy, on the other hand, never wore such a dour, joyless expression as he stepped onstage at the stroke of 8:15pm. As Wilco’s lovably hangdog air traffic controller steadily scales Dylanesque heights of musical worship, the mantle continues to bow his shoulders even when cloaked in a green pinstriped sports jacket. Fortunately, he’s been saved by rock & roll, literally – by his own sung admission – so once he launched into opener “Sunken Treasure,” his clenched face loosened and finally broke into a sheepish grin just prior to “Handshake Drugs,” which tore the first of two sold-out shows a new blowhole. “Happy Mother’s Day,” he offered, “you guys rule. It’s the best day of the year – just look at this.” Austin never weathered such perfect May temperatures Sunday night, so Tweedy and company obliged with 26 songs in 135 minutes that even engaged the high school girl in front of me, texting her boyfriend, “I’m at some concert with my mom.”