Preview: Ha Ha Tonka at White Rabbit Cabaret in Indianapolis



Ha Ha Tonka
Photo Credit: Jason Gonulsen

 

Next Saturday (June 3) the Ozarks, Missouri-based band Ha Ha Tonka will visit Indianapolis for the first time in a few years to perform at the White Rabbit Cabaret in Fountain Square. Touring right on the coattails of the release of the band’s new album, Heart-Shaped Mountain (released in March via Bloodshot Records), its fifth full-length, Ha Ha Tonka has dialed up the signature harmonies and expanded the instrumental palette with an emphasis on choruses tailor-made for singing along with lyrics that eye the horizon as time passes and lives adapt to the changes.

Throughout the run of Buckle in the Bible Belt, Novel Songs of the Nouveau South, Death of a Decade, Lessons and, now, Heart-Shaped Mountain, Ha Ha Tonka has focused on the strength of the song while tapping into an unwavering sense of Midwestern and Southern identity built into the DNA of each record. The studio recordings, all worthy introductions to listeners at whichever point they arrive, are secondary to the charismatic verve and worn-in tightness that anchor the soaring live sets. The ten tunes of Heart-Shaped Mountain, a streamlined, unapologetically melodic and hopeful collection, likely segue right into the Tonk’s already impressive catalog when played before an audience. Barnstorming opener “Race to the Bottom” and the rollicking and infectious anthem “Arkansas” will tower right alongside the dozen or guitar-driven nuggets that populate most live sets, while harmony-rich entries like “Everything,” “The Party” and “All With You” should serve up instrumental flourishes and more communal catharsis for a memorable weekend night in a year increasingly mired in unrelenting despair with each successive day. Having seen and loved three Ha Ha Tonka live shows to date over the years, I’ve been eagerly awaiting my next opportunity to catch them live. Right now feels like an especially ideal time for an hour or two of rock and roll buoyancy on a Saturday night, and the chance to hear how well several of these new songs fit in alongside all the ones I’ve been singing along with for years only sweetens the deal.

MOKB Presents Ha Ha Tonka w/ Trapper Schoepp at White Rabbit Cabaret in Indianapolis

Saturday, June 3

Tickets: $15

Robbie Fulks, Live in Indianapolis

Robbie Fulks performed in Indianapolis for the first time since his most recent excellent album, Upland Stories, earned a 2017 Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album along with the nod for “Alabama at Night” as Best American Roots Song. All the acclaim is warranted for the Chicago-based country-folk musician, who has been picking and playing professionally for thirty-odd years while also putting out consistently impressive records since 1996’s Country Love Songs. His set in Indy on Friday night ran the gamut of his richly stocked catalog, pulling out Country Love Song favorites like “Tears Only Run One Way,” “I Push Right Over” and “Let’s Kill Saturday Night” right alongside newer gems like Upland Stories’ “Katy Kay” and “A Miracle” and Gone Away Backwards’ “Sometimes the Grass Really Is Greener” and “That’s Where I’m From.” Fulks, acoustic guitar tucked in hand, served as the ringleader for his crackling quintet, a new touring lineup featuring longtime collaborator Shad Cobb (Osborne Brothers, Steve Earle) on fiddle, upright bassist Dennis Crouch, mandolinist Matt Flinner and Punch Brothers banjoist Noam Pikelny on just their fourth show together of bluegrass-tinted country jams, and the lively group played off each other with precision and enthusiasm so as to fool anyone into thinking they’d been doing it all together forever. 

 


Upland Stories promo photo
Credit: Andy Goodwin

 

The mostly seated audience of eighty or so looked on and jovially bantered back and forth with the always humorous Fulks between songs as he shuffled impressions and improvisational comedic exchanges throughout the evening. Fulks has breezy, conversational engagement with a crowd that showcases his deftness for being a lauded musician, first and foremost, and also a performer wholly at ease.

 

“I can’t count the number of times I’ve played in Indianapolis,” Fulks joked early. “Yeah, I can: three times. Three times in thirty years.”

 

Soon after, he chuckled at a four-letter quip from the crowd. “It’s gonna be a raunchy show tonight,” he teased.  “You’re a raunchy crowd. And this is from a raunchy 54-year-old white guy.”

 

In Chicago, his residency at the Hideout (he played his resident finale in March) is rather legendary in some circles, an eclectic live theater of original songs, nights covering albums and catalogs of unexpected artists, and a rogue’s gallery of cameos, performances and talents. Not having been privy to experiencing a Hideout set firsthand, a Friday night with Robbie on stage with his sharpshooting players provided a solid snapshot of what’s in store any time Fulks is before a crowd with instruments in tow: great songs and loads of off-the-cuff wit and silver-tongued one-liners that blend into a memorable evening of expertly played bluegrass-folk, open mic comedy indebted to Johnny Carson and little doses of improv theater. It’d be an absolute joy to witness in an even better, non-rundown venue with more character than Birdy’s, but for a Friday night a little off the beaten path in Indianapolis, Fulks provided the entertainment and soundtrack to a delightful couple hours.

Joshua James - My Spirit Sister

Joshua James has one of those rare, arresting voices that somehow sneaks up on you with its vulnerability and hushed prettiness while also consuming your attention with its earnestness. That is, of course, if you’re the sort who is predisposed to hang on every word of singer-songwriter and folk musician who pours himself and his worldview into his art. That James and his bandmates weave together ethereal and eerily serene musical backdrops for that voice and James’s simultaneously stark and sweet-natured lyrics only tightens his songs’ impressive hold on you the more you live with them.

His music has had that effect on me ever since the first time I pressed play on “Coal War” back in 2009, after taking a chance by purchasing Build Me This at my favorite local record store without hearing a note of his music or knowing anything about James other than being entranced by that austere gothic Americana album art. It’s a record I fell in love with and listened to front to back for years, providing the soundtrack for multiple solo road trips crossing multiple state lines, including several songs on nearly every mixtape I passed on to friends. It’s an album I still keep coming back to, sometimes after a year or so absence and inspired to hear it fresh after having it pulled to the forefront of my mind by some whim or song I come across, and it holds up beautifully. So does anything Joshua James has made in the interim years: From the Top of Willamette Mountain, the Beware EP and his exquisitely crafted album of Modest Mouse covers, Well, Then, I’ll Go to Hell.

 

That makes it all the more of a pleasure to report that his new album, My Spirit Sister, not only holds up alongside everything that has come before, but it may even transcend those quietly excellent releases. It is a streamlined collection of ten songs etched in utter intimacy while conjuring up grand expanses. James’s music always carries a mystical wind with a modest, Western spirit, fitting with his Utah roots and fondness for mountains, animals and nature imagery in his lyrics. Now, his songs, as evocative as ever in their poetry, are more dynamic and arranged and produced with such precision that they feel as fully alive as the landscapes he treks. They rustle and build to roars, and they crackle and smolder on their way to organic choruses that nestle in your head. Songs like “Broken Tongue,” “Golden Bird,” “Backbone Bend,” and “Losin’ Mi Mente” thrive on James’s guileless introspection and seem to inhabit some enchanting plane between prayer and ghost story. These are pensive songs of solitude, wayward wonder, tenuous romance, and lovelorn optimism, but the dances between valleys and peaks make the whole work a consistent joy to behold. From the gorgeous, emotionally complex ode to his newborn daughter, “Millie,” to the confessional two-punch masterwork of “Dark Cloud” and “Blackbird Sorrow” to close the album, Joshua James crafts songs of love and one’s relationship to self, lovers and surroundings in search of indelible truths and self-actualization measured against the passing of time.

Always with an understanding of mortality while finding poetry in what’s in front of him and beyond his reach, he keeps making pure, poignant songs full of buoyant, red-blooded spirit even if occasionally burdened with a heavy heart. For the uninitiated, maybe imagine some intersection of a huskier-voiced Elliott Smith’s fragile melancholy and melodies, starkly Western-gazing folk of Springsteen’s Nebraska, the lush, soaring harmonies and hooks of Fleet Foxes, and a comparable thematic core to Raymond Carver stories. It all amounts to a sterling album that feels so deceptively effortless it’s tempting to think Joshua James was born to make it, but rest assured he had to go through more than a little hell and had to find beauty in all the hardship to do so.

 

My Spirit Sister was self-released by Joshua James and is out now (released April 7, 2017).

Find it here.

Cory Branan - Adios

On his fifth full-length album, Adios, Cory Branan executes a dazzling collection of genre-crossing, silver-tongued songs with hearts of gold, whiskey breath, doses of regret and fury. Yet another wildly impressive entry into Branan’s already esteemed catalog, Adios is an addictive, sprawling 14-song output that whirls the listener into a musical gale of top-shelf songwriting, each tune as beguiling as the next for varying highs, that chugs along at expert paces and results in his finest record yet. At the very least, it’s a lock for the eventual top rungs of my picks for favorite albums of 2017.

Adios kicks off surprisingly and swiftly with the infectiously melodic Buddy Holly bounce of “I Only Know,” flanked by Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace and Dave Hause. “I was told this road goes straight to hell,” Branan sings on the album’s opening line before delivering the killer lyric “So what you gonna do with all that youth? Just because it’s brutal don’t make it truth” in the fashion Cory Branan does better and more consistently than any songwriter of his generation. Early single “Imogene” carries that torch even further, showcasing Branan’s drawled, seemingly inexhaustible vocabulary (“ne’er-do-well roustabout, detestable itinerate, execrable degenerate”) and wordplay (rhyming hemorrhaging and Imogene to subtle perfection). All of it would be great enough on paper, but Branan and his bandmates, Robbie Crowell (formerly of Deer Tick) on drums, keys, horns and percussion and James “Haggs” Haggerty on bass, propel “Imogene” and the thirteen other lyrically clever and striking constructions into indelible, catchy hooks and arrangements across the whole of Adios. With his idiosyncratic way with words as a songwriter’s songwriter and southerner, it’s never too much of a stretch to draw a line to Branan as at least some minor shade of modern day Mark Twain with a guitar.

 Twain is not the only great who comes to mind here, though: “Blacksburg” has more legitimate E Street shuffle and soul (check that glorious sax solo) than anything since The Rising, “You Got Through” channels a Tom Petty snarl with guitar-driven Heartbreakers kick, “Visiting Hours” rips into deliciously upbeat new wave a la Elvis Costello and the Attractions with helpings of Branan’s distinctive pathos and punk heart that surely Costello would’ve been happy to call his own in the glory days of Armed Forces. Shades of Springsteen pop up elsewhere as well, perhaps most noticeably in the River/Tunnel of Love vibe of the absolute knockout centerpiece “The Vow,” written in honor and praise of Branan’s deceased father. Even amongst all the other gems packed throughout Adios, “The Vow” and the late-album stunner of a duet “Don’t Go” (featuring Amanda Shires) each pack enough gut-punch power, pulsating life, and stop-you-in-your-tracks beauty to conjure feelings akin to reading some Great American Novel edited down to a five-minute song. What else can you possibly ask for from a rock and roll record these days? Well, if that’s a blistering, mad-as-hell, punk protest anthem to spit piss and ire at corruption and brutality rallying around a pogoing, poppy chorus befitting of the Ramones, Branan also has you covered on that front with “Another Nightmare in America.”

Adios is already a record I’ve eagerly lived with and obsessed over for weeks. It’s a towering achievement in an already strong year of rock records. Here’s to obsessing over it more in the months to come, with the speakers blasting, drinks in hand and lovers and friends close by to combat the dread of all the wretched shit clinging to the coattails of all those wolves just outside the door.

Adios is out April 7, 2017 via Bloodshot Records.

Hurray for the Riff Raff - The Navigator

The Navigator, the sixth album from Alynda Segarra under her moniker Hurray for the Riff Raff, is a rapturous statement of the personal and political at an exact moment when such considerations almost seem like the only things that really matter. It’s a rich, versatile and vital album brimming with a borderless sense of empathy and rhythm. At its core is a song cycle built around “The Navigator” – an alter ego named Navita Milagros Negrón – and her journey for a sense of home, love and meaning after hardships and wayward detours. Such was the journey for Segarra since gaining critical acclaim and touring in support of Hurray for the Riff Raff’s previous album, Small Town Heroes. Segarra departed from her residence and musical home in New Orleans back to the Bronx of where she grew up.

 

The album is a world of multicultural life and interconnectedness much like the look and feel of the people and neighborhoods Segarra grew up around. The song “Living in the City” fully immerses the listener in the album’s atmosphere with Segarra’s evocative chronicling of high-rise ruminations, rooftop views, dead gypsies and red-blooded life. Touches of Patti Smith, Rodriguez (both of which Segarra has referenced as inspirations), Buena Vista Social Club and folk-soul luminaries and street poets come to mind throughout The Navigator, but it’s not hard to hear how urgent every moment of this music is and how all of it is wholly inseparable from Segarra. Amongst mentions of the heart being a lonely hunter and concrete jungles, there is an honest, soulful filter of liberal empathy and proud heritage that anchors the journey. Compared to anything on the radio and most things released recently, The Navigator sounds like it is in its own passionate world, and it’s a world that should feel near and dear to many. Stocked with minor-key piano, guitar licks, samba and Puerto Rican rhythms, and doo wop flourishes, it is a Hurray for the Riff Raff concept album that plays out somewhat like a classic big-screen musical, especially if said musical bares its heart with sensibilities closer to Moonlight or Do the Right Thing rather than, say, the polished Technicolor Hollywood nostalgia of La La Land. Segarra’s showstopper here is undoubtedly “Pa’lante,” The Navigator’s alternately mournful and fiery six-minute climax that borrows its name from the radical group the Young Lords, pays structural homage to The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” and includes a recorded bridge of the poet Pedro Pietri’s “The Puerto Rican Obituary.” The song is a manifesto of empowerment and a call to arms for solidarity, and Segarra’s voice is utterly commanding. If there is one song to be taken away from The Navigator as a standalone totem it is “Pa’lante,” but its principles and genuine, human emotion are etched into every groove throughout the entire record. From the sturdy roots backbones of “Nothing’s Gonna Change That Girl” and “Life to Save” to the societal laments of “Rican Beach” and “Halfway There,” the striving American underdog spirit (unrestricted by ethnicity and gender) soars along between hard times and high times.

With The Navigator, Hurray for the Riff Raff has created a work of art to be celebrated: a personal triumph that is deeply relatable, a purely musical gem, and an impeccably performed, expertly arranged and sequenced song cycle that is unquestionably of the moment, is aware of what all that came before, and is still defiantly optimistic for what is ahead.

 

Hurray for the Riff Raff’s The Navigator (released March 10, 2017) is out now via ATO Records.

Denim on Wax's Favorite Albums of 2016

Every year at this time music lovers and fans of any branch of culture get inundated with the barrage of lists. Some people dread this sort of thing, while others crave it. I’m in the latter camp, and I always enjoy sifting through my mind, revisiting music I’ve listened to most of the year, listening even more closely to some music I may not have fully appreciated from the outset but have felt drawn to, etc.

I always hate assigning scores to reviews or pitting one thing I love against another, especially if genre, production, narrative themes or artistic intentions skew from each other or have little to no relativity whatsoever. I also try my hardest to refuse to chime in on what is the best or worst when it comes to these things. (This is why I always designate them as my “favorite” as opposed to “best of”.) My goal is usually to take a few extra moments to appreciate what has stuck out to me personally, what has intoxicated me musically or has engrossed my brain or emotions throughout the year and take note of why I enjoy it so much. Several albums I have enjoyed throughout the year have dominated nearly every poll from every publication, even if I have seemed to have found even more to love in albums that didn’t find much traction elsewhere. I try not to sweat too much about what isn’t on my list and what is on all the others, because we each bring so many unique considerations to any listening experience and we all have varying tastes and sweet spots when it comes down to slipping into the world of a record or stumbling upon an artist new to us.

Simply put, these are the records I’ve turned to time after time throughout this year and plan to revisit as new years keep coming. Many are artists I’ve loved for all of my adult life, some have been in rotation for me even longer than that, while several others were brand new to my ears and make me excited to hear more. Obviously, I can’t listen to any more than what equates to a blip in the sea of music released every year, but I do consciously try to hear as much as one person can as many times as he can to listen with any kind of justice. With that said, I tend to stream as little music as possible and buy as many records as I can with whatever spending money I have from month to month. The vast majority of the albums on this list are records I personally own and putting together a post like this always has an intention of showing even deeper support to the people who have created the music that has kept me company and filled me with varying shades of wonder throughout the year.

I hope you find something to enjoy. Thanks for visiting.

J

 

 

 Drive-By Truckers - American Band

 

 

 

 

 Lydia Loveless- Real

 

 

 

 

Angel Olsen - My Woman

 

 

 

  

Wilco -Schmilco

 

 

 

Courtney Marie Andrews - Honest Life

 

 

 

 

 Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam -

I Had a Dream That You Were Mine

 

 

 

 

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree

 

 

 

 

Whitney - Light Upon the Lake

 

 

 

 

Fort Frances - Alio

 

 

 

 

Nada Surf - You Know Who You Are

 

 

 

 

 Brian Fallon - Painkillers

 

 

 

 

Beach Slang - A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings

 

 

 

 

Jeff Rosenstock - worry.

 

 

 

 

The Hotelier - Goodness

 

 

 

 

Pinegrove - Cardinal

 

 

 

 

 Marissa Nadler - Strangers

 

 

 

 

Mitski - Puberty 2

 

 

 

 

Kevin Morby - Singing Saw

 

 

 

 

Andy Shauf - The Party

 

 

 

 

 Explosions in the Sky - The Wilderness

 

 

 

 

Sturgill Simpson - A Sailor's Guide to Earth

 

 

 

 

 

Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Denial

 

 

 

 

 

 Bon Iver - 22, A Million

 

 

 

 

David Bowie - ★

 

 

 

 

A Tribe Called Quest -

We got it from here... Thank You 4 Your Service 

 

 

 

 

 

Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker 

 

 

 

 

Band of Horses - Why Are You Ok 

 

 

 

 

Okkervil River - Away

 

 

 

 

 

Cymbals Eat Guitars - Pretty Years

 

 

 

 

 

Lucinda Williams - The Ghosts of Highway 20

 

 

 

 

 

Into It. Over It. - Standards

 

 

 

 

American Football - American Football (LP 2)

 

 

 

Robert Ellis - Robert Ellis 

 

 

 

 

Mount Moriah - How to Dance

 

 

 

 

Hiss Golden Messenger - Heart Like a Levee 

 

 

 

 

The Jayhawks - Paging Mr. Proust

 

 

 

 

Robbie Fulks - Upland Stories

 Mike Adams at His Honest Weight - Casino Drone

 

 

 

 

Hayes Carll - Lovers and Leavers

 

 

 

 

Damien Jurado - Visions of Us on the Land

 

 

 

 

Margo Price - Midwest Farmer's Daughter

 

 

 

 

 

Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool

 

 

 

 

Freakwater - Scheherazade 

 Twin Peaks - Down in Heaven

 

 

 

Fruit Bats - Absolute Loser

 

Psychic Ills - Inner Journey Out

 

 

 

 

Big Thief - Masterpiece

 

 

 

 

Blind Pilot - And Then Like Lions

 

 

 

 

The I Don't Cares - Wild Stab

 

 

 

 

Al Scorch - Circle Round the Signs

 

 

 

 

Dori Freeman - Dori Freeman

 

 

 

Hinds - Leave Me Alone  

 

 

 

 

Kishi Bashi - Sonderlust