MICHAEL FRANTI'S STYLE has morphed from rap to hip hop to reggae since he appeared on the music scene as part of the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy in 1992. But the substance of his music hasn't varied all that much: he's always sought to bring a politically-charged message to the masses.
His dedication to social causes is evidenced by his film about Middle East politics, "I Know I'm Not Alone," and anti-poverty protests. He was recognized in 2002 by the human rights organization Global Exchange, which gave him the Humanitarian of the Year Award
Major radio play might have eluded him, but that's starting to change with the release of his new album "All Rebel Rockers." Its lead single, "Say Hey (I Love You)," has been all over college radio thanks to an infectious chorus and knowing lyric that references classic oldies like Harry Belafonte's "Jamaica Farewell" and the Dixie Cups' "Iko Iko."
On his previous release "Yell Fire!" from 2006, the reggae rhythms of his band Spearhead became more pronounced. But on "All Rebel Rockers," Franti and company make the transition to reggae complete. The album was recorded in Jamaica with the legendary reggae rhythm section of drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare producing and playing.
"Sly and Robbie are incredible," Franti says. "The two of them together have this experience of working with hundreds of artists and making thousands of songs, and they're so willing to impart it onto whoever they're working with. They'll tell you exactly why something might work or why in their experience it hasn't worked for them. If you just listen you just learn so much."
Franti talked to Express about the ideas behind the tracks on his newest work.
Continue Reading "Liner Notes: Michael Franti on 'All Rebel Rockers'" »
MURRY HAMMOND'S SOLO DEBUT isn't a concept album.
It's a metaphor record about trains as spiritual vehicles, traveling a dangerous route to a heavenly destination.
The collection reflects his lifelong fascination with not only with Texas railroads but with old-time music in general. Fittingly, "I Don't Know Where I'm Going but I'm on My Way" sounds worlds removed form the music Hammond makes with his day-job band, the Old 97's. Instead of power pop with a country edge, he puts the "western" back in country & western, creating sepia-toned songs about trains, travels and tribulations. Hammond yodels, croons, yearns and prays throughout his own originals as well as Carter Family covers and compositions by Mormon poet Eliza R. Snow.
It's an album as a long journey, relating disappointment and grief but ultimately arriving at a hard-won redemption.
Hammond retraced his footprints for Express track by track, and you can follow along by listening to the album at Last.fm. (And if that doesn't work, several songs can be heard at his MySpace page or at CD Baby.)
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THE MUSIC OF Australian singer/songwriter Xavier Rudd has always been a battle between light and dark.
Just listen to "G.B.A." from 2004's "Solace." Rudd sings over a slightly distorted lap-slide guitar and a barrage of didgeridoo: "I know, I see, I feel and yes, I fear it everyday / These egos, their minds and games / With all their power could end our days / Still the sun it shines and the moon it sinks with grace."
While Rudd's message is generally one of peace, there's always been a deep-seeded anger in his words, his fears for what the Earth he loves so much could become.
And the new "Dark Shades of Blue" (Anti-) is Rudd's most harrowing album yet, with crunchier guitars and a much fuller sound.
"This time we were able to achieve a darker tone which I've been trying to do for a long time," Rudd said. "I'm really happy with the sound on this album; I think we captured the thickness. The music comes from the last couple of years of traveling, which has been amazing: a lot of high highs and low lows. So, I think there's all sorts of emotion on this album, high and low."
For many years, Rudd championed a one-man-band approach playing live; then Dave Tolley joined Rudd on tour as a part-time drummer, though he only sits in to add percussion when needed.
For concerts, the 30-year-old Rudd sits in the middle of the stage flanked by an army of different guitars (Weissenborn slide guitars, resonator slide guitars, acoustic guitars, slide banjo, basses, electric guitar and more), percussion instruments (including a stomp box at his feet) and a barrage of didgeridoos to his front.
Actually, Rudd prefers to call the didgeridoo by its Aboriginal name, yidaki. The instrument produces deep, almost moaning tones that, when done correctly, can be manipulated to yelp and produce other strange sounds.
Rudd, already a household name in his native land, guided us through his "Dark Shades of Blue" album track by track. [You can preview parts of each track on Amazon.]
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CALEXICO DRUMMER JOHN COVERTINO has a pretty good philosophy when it comes to structuring records:
"[It's] always about contrast — try to keep the listener interested," he said.
Contrast abounds on the group's sixth studio album, "Carried to Dust" (Quarterstick), which just may be Calexico's finest yet.
The album is a return to form of sorts for the band, which is helmed by singer/guitarist Joey Burns and Covertino. Calexico operates as Burns and Covertino's baby, with touring band members filling in studio parts where necessary. For the most part, the pair constructs the songs before the rest of the band comes in to record.
In 2006, however, Calexico recorded as a full collective — all at once — for "Garden Ruin," an album featuring poppier, more rock-oriented songs. The Tucson, Ariz.-based group even eliminated the instrumental numbers prevalent on past releases.
"We were trying to cut through the quick, making songs as streamlined as possible," Covertino said.
For "Carried to Dust," Burns and Covertino handled most of the basic tracks together, with only pedal-steel guitarist Paul Niehaus joining them on two cuts. The rest of the musicians then came in, one-by-one, to record their parts.
"It was a lot more fun," he said. "It was a lot less pressure that way."
And, yes, the instrumentals are back.
Covertino took Express through nine of the album's 15 tracks, which range from sun-soaked pop rock to a Latin-style song sung completely in Spanish, and feature friends Sam Beam (of Iron & Wine) and Pieta Brown.
Click here to stream the whole album and follow along.
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CHAN KINCHLA AND the rest of the guys in Blues Traveler have a new hobby this summer: golf.
But they're not just playing for fun. No, moments after Express' interview with the guitarist, Kinchla stepped onto the links with the No. 24 golfer in the country, Adam Alfieri.
The No. 24 10-year-old golfer, that is.
Alfieri is first cousin with bassist Tad Kinchla's fiancee, and Chan is using his brother's future relative to improve his swing.
"We're doing some in-law bonding out here on the golf course, but we kind of suck so we're already looking for tips," he said from a course in Raleigh, N.C., where Blues Traveler was on a tour stop.
The group went out on tour this summer with Live and Collective Soul, Blues Traveler's first large-scale, multi-band tour since 1998, when it last played H.O.R.D.E., the touring festival band leader John Popper helped create.
But when Blues Traveler returns to the road this fall, the spotlight will be set firmly on the 21-year-old group and its new CD, "North Hollywood Shootout" (Verve Forecast).
In order to open itself up, Kinchla said the band tried some new methods — and a jam session with Bruce Willis — while recording its ninth album and first collection of new material since 2005's "¡Bastardos!"
"We realized, in the past, we had been preconceiving songs in the rehearsal studio and really arranging them and getting really into song arrangements," Kinchla said. "So, we'd get in the studio and play it kind of stiff, especially the last few records. It was good for us, in learning and experimenting with song arrangements, but we were kind of losing what we thought we do well, which is: When we play live we find all these happy mistakes and grooves while we're improvising and we weren't really capturing that in the studio.
"So, in the studio this time we did a lot of long jams and then we'd go back and listen to them and with our producer David Bianco would find cool little parts, save those, go back and start building songs around those kind of cool grooves."
With that info in mind, Express asked Kinchla to take us track by track through "North Hollywood Shootout."
You can stream the new CD's "You, Me and Everything," Forever Owned" and "Love Does" on the band's MySpace page.
Continue Reading "Liner Notes: Blues Traveler, 'North Hollywood Shootout'" »
IT'S RARE THAT someone — with the help of three friends — could cause thousands of twenty- and thirty-somethings to drop what they're doing, hop in a van and follow you around the country.
Then again, not everyone plays bass in Phish.
Mike Gordon has kept busy since the seminal jam band's dissolution in 2004, touring as a duo with Leo Kottke as a trio with the Benevento/Russo Duo and in familiar quartet form with ex-partner in crime Trey Anastasio. He also started a bluegrass band, Ramble Dove, and appeared on solo efforts from former Phish members Anatasio and keyboardist Page McConnell. Both former Phish-ers make appearances on "The Green Sparrow," Gordon's latest solo album.
Gordon managed to assemble a venerable who's who of the jam band scene for the album, with drummer Joe Russo, Max Creek guitarist Scott Murkowski and Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann all showing up. He's also got Chuck Leavell from The Rolling Stones and The Meters' Ivan Neville on keys for various tracks. John Siket and Jared Slomoff co-produced the album with Gordon.
Anyone familiar with Phish's studio work won't be surprised by "The Green Sparrow's" eccentricities — Gordon's tunes were always among the quartet's quirkiest — and we asked Gordon to take Express track-by-track through the new album.
You can follow along by going to Gordon's Web site and clicking on the "Player" link in the upper right corner of the screen.
Continue Reading "Liner Notes: Mike Gordon on 'The Green Sparrow'" »
YOU KNOW A KENYAN is your good friend if you get a shout-out in a song.
D.C. resident, Weird War member and guitarist/singer Alex Minoff gets many, many shout-outs in Extra Golden, the band he formed with fellow guitarist/singer Ian Eagleson and several musicians from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya and the place where benga music was born.
Extra Golden combines the punch of rock 'n' roll and the dancing, syncopated melodies and rhythms of benga, which grew out of Kenyan folk music and southern African pop. The group's first album, 2006's "Ok-Oyot System" (Thrill Jockey), was built on the talents of singer/guitarist Otieno Jagwasi, but he died of liver complications.
For the 2007's "Hera Ma Nono" (Thrill Jockey), Eagleson and Minoff recruited veteran benga singer/guitarist Opiyo Bilongo to accompany drummer Onyango Wuod Omari, but the transition is seamless: The eight songs on "Hera Ma Nono" still bubble with the soulful grooves that made "Ok-Oyot System" such a joy.
While benga underscores everything in Extra Golden, Eagleson and Minoff incorporate their love of American R&B into songs such as "Night Runners" and "Street Parade," while "I Miss You" adds slide guitar to make an East African country-rock ballad.
As for the shout-outs, the soul-steeped "Jakolando" is a tribute to Jagwasi, sung by his brother, Oniego Jagwasi, while "Obama" gives praise to the Illinois senator and presidential hopeful whose office helped Extra Golden's Kenyan members get visas so the band could reconvene in the U.S. and make "Hera Ma Nono." Obama's mom and wife get their names called in the song — and so does Minoff, natch.
Express spoke with Minoff for a new feature called Liner Notes, where artists comment, track-by-track, on their recordings. (Click here for an earlier profile this writer did on Extra Golden that goes in-depth about how the band came together.)
You can listen to the tracks on Extra Golden's Web Site while reading Minoff's commentary on them.
IT'S EXTREMELY GRATIFYING when an album defies your expectations.
After 2004's disappointingly clunky "Love and Distance" (Sub Pop), I didn't expect to follow The Helio Sequence's future output all that closely. Yet the new "Keep Your Eyes Ahead" (Sub Pop) finds the duo pulling a complete 180, and regenerating my interest in the process.
Trading its former album's dense keyboard compositions for a more expansive and organic sound, "Keep Your Eyes Ahead" is the work of a band commanding its audience's attention. Stand out tracks like "Hallelujah" and "Can't Say No" show the band flexing its melodic muscles, branching out into grandiose guitar rock territory without sacrificing the nuance and keyboard flourishes of its early work.
The Helio Sequence plays the Black Cat on May 20, and Express spoke with drummer-keyboardist Benjamin Weikel, to analyze "Keep Your Eyes Ahead" track by track. What did we learn? People in Portland start choirs for fun, closet space can alter the sonic direction of an album and touring as the drummer of Modest Mouse for a few years can teach you something about your own band.
(You can listen to many songs from "Keep Your Eyes Ahead" on The Helio Sequence's MySpace page.)
IT'S 12:45 A.M. ON a rainy Saturday night in Silver Spring and S.T.O.R.M. Reggae Band is standing around the Hollywood Ballroom's lobby. The group is supposed to perform at some point — first, a set of its own and then as backing group for veteran reggae singer Tinga Stewart — but there's virtually no audience.
The good-natured band chalks up the situation to the bad weather, and when it finally does hit the floor — for there is no stage — the group rips through a quick set of songs as if the empty hall was filled to the brim.
S.T.O.R.M. is nothing if not professional, but its high-energy music is also a top-notch blast of butt-busting rhythms and harmonious voices.
"To me, the best reggae band in the Washington, D.C., area.," says Tony Carr, a longtime DJ with WPFW-FM. "There are a lot of good reggae bands around, but a lot of them play in the old style reggae — roots style, which is OK. But these guys can do everything: roots, dancehall, everything. ... And very lively on stage; you will not be bored."
Addison Road