Provo band releases Sunken Houses
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
King Niko
King of Everything: SLC’s King Niko don’t sweat the semantics.
Vocalist Ransom Wydner (yes, that’s his real name) at first offers a history lesson: “King Niko, formally King Nicholas the first, was the only king of Montenegro. Described by contemporaries and historians alike as a warrior poet, King Niko had the strength of a bear and the voice of an angelic bird of some kind.” Guitarist Ben Moffat, on the other hand, goes the pop culture route, singing “Robert Goulet!”
Later, perhaps hungrier, Wydner might tell a more gustatory tale: “Niko is also the name of a local taco vendor who produces what can safely be called the king of tacos in the greater Salt Lake City metropolitan area.” Still later in the evening, Moffat’s appetites turn from carnitas to the carnal: “Coincidentally, King Niko was the title of a ‘skin flick’ that made a very lasting impression on my young adult life. King Niko of Salt Lake City is a different kind of king entirely. We’d like to think of ourselves as king of all media but Howard Stern copyrighted that, so we’ll settle for king of making out with ridiculously hot chicks!”
But if they can’t get their stories straight about their origins, musically they are completely in sync. Their hookladen rock with indie and emo (in the sense of “emotionally moving”) vocal and guitar touches have a common thread—as their MySpace page proclaims: they’re “committed to making young girls dance.” The beat is infectious, placing them on the map somewhere between a peppier version of the Shins and The Hold Steady or maybe mid-period Spoon.
But they’ve made a study of local sounds since childhood. Wydner remembers, “The first local band that really blew me away was Form of Rocket, but I was also really into The Brobecks growing up. Bands like Broke City and Neon Trees are not only influential musically, but for what they are doing for the Salt Lake scene, bringing more attention to it. Monarch was one of the first bands I ever played a show with and really shaped the way I perform.” As far as national bands go, he says Cold War Kids, Kings of Leon and TV on the Radio have had the biggest influence on his songwriting.
Moffat recalls, “The first local band that I identified with was called Better Way. One of their guitarists, Gentry Densley, basically made me want to start playing the guitar and start a band. I can still remember them playing a show at Classic Skating, and absolutely killing it. I must have been 14 at the time.”
Flash forward, and King Niko played the biggest show of their six-month career, opening for actor Jared Leto’s band 30 Seconds to Mars Nov. 30 at the X96 Nightmare Before Xmas concert. The national band made a big impact on them in person. Wydner notes, “We were backstage when someone told us that Jared Leto was talking about my boots on the radio and then, as if by magic, he was in our green room giving us high fives and those fist bones and saying ‘bones’ as he did it, all in his sleeping clothes. Definitely a true rock star.”
King Niko just released their first EP produced by local studio whiz Mike Sasich, titled Gorgeous and Gory, after a line from their song “Katrina Sleepover.”
“The EP is made up of six songs that we feel make up a good King Niko microcosm,” explains Moffat. It’s a fine opening album of songwriting salvos.
As for future plans, they‘ll consider about anything. Wydner leaks: “A theme park hasn’t been ruled out. An elite group of female assassins who are also world-class models and can turn into wolves is patent-pending.”
Chatham County Line's Dave Wilson Talks About Songwriting
Thursday Aug 12 at the State Room.
Wilson’s voice is one envied by other musicians; it’s the perfect blend of gravel and sugar, and his songwriting complements it well. He can be tough and troubled like Johnny Cash, or sweet and tender without sounding like a pansy. Wilson lulls his listeners through stories of wars, old country towns, trains, blue-collar workers, and being on road with all the loves, losses and simple pleasures encountered there.
“They tell you to write what you know,” Wilson explains. “That’s really all I’ve ever done.” Damn, I think, recalling his songs about heartbreak and death, this guy’s had a tough life. “The world of words can take you to a lot of places just on its own,” he explains.
But songwriting isn’t something Wilson can manufacture. Like most art, you can’t force it.
“Sometimes I pick up my guitar and something will happen,” he explains. But his good songs don’t always come that way. “I don’t pick a time for it,” he says, using “it” to refer to those inspirational moments that will result in new songs. “It tells me when it’s going to happen.”
And “it” has happened a lot. In the 10 years that CCL has been together, they’ve produced five well-received albums and have toured extensively around the world. Wilson does, however, show some anxiety that the song well might not always fill his bucket. “It’s a big bucket there. Hopefully we can come up with a bunch more songs for Record 6 and impress people as much as this one seems to.”
Their most recent album, Wildwood, released July 13, has remained on the Top 10 on the Billboard bluegrass charts since its release. When I remind Wilson of this, his low, guttural laugh reverberates through my phone receiver.
“That record sold more copies the first week than all our records combined,” he says. But he is laughing because they are on the “bluegrass” charts. Like most modern bluegrass bands, CCL claims they aren’t actually bluegrass.
“We’re not your standard bluegrass band,” he continues, “We incorporate as much classic and Southern rock as we do bluegrass.”
Yet, they’ve toured almost exclusively to bluegrass festivals and dimly lit bars for their 10-year existence, and they have no plans to stop soon.
Yo Mama's Big Fat Booty Band
Junk in the Trunk: North Carolina's Booty Band brings a more grown-up funk.
“A huge part of our act was us raging to the fullest extent, drinking heavily with fans onstage ... Hell, we traveled with a dancing pole to put on the stage,” says guitarist John-Paul Miller by phone from the road. Back in the day, the Booty Band—whose name was delivered from a Las Vegas casino fortune-telling machine—was known strictly as a party band. But now, they’ve decided to put their big boy britches on and, as a result, are crankin’ out an impressive repertoire, one not possible before they got serious about their music.
“That was definitely an amazing part of our career, but at this point we’ve been touring for eight years. We want to be respected musically; we’re more serious as musicians,” says Miller, who refuses to be pigeonholed as a “costume band” with naked people dancing everywhere—a regular occurrence in the old days when the band played their tune “Naked.”
Since shifting focus, Miller says the band’s touring circuit has expanded, and there’s been positive encouragement from old fans. While less gimmicky, they still bring that old-school party vibe—just not the ridiculous, howlin’ at the moon drunkfest it used to be. Fans can do as they please, though; the Booty Band will always put the “fun” in funk.
The new musical focus came, in part, by adding Asheville duo Eymarel—Mary Frances (keys, synth, vocals) and Lee Allen (drums)—to the band’s lineup in 2009. The duo’s house-beat driven technical drumming and funky female vocals add greater depth to the Booty’s Bands sound. And, over time, the original band has become tighter, more intuitive and interested in a broader range of musical genres; think something similar to Freekbass, with a twist of Galactic-gone-jammy and overt, heavy-hitting P-Funk inclinations. In fact, they’re friends with George Clinton and company. And while they’re predominantly funk, there are also flares of hip-hop, reggae, jazz and ska in the mix.
To capture the band’s essence live, a recording engineer toured with them last year and the result, Greatest Hips Vol. II, was released earlier this spring, including Booty favorites like “Badonkadonk” and “@$$.” Miller says they especially shine at small clubs with a tightly packed group of dance-ready funk-lovers. Their current tour has taken them from playing to 4,000 people at Asheville’s arts festival to as far northwest as Alaska and down the California coast, playing to 100 people in towns they’ve never been to before. This will be the Booty Band’s first bounce in SLC, so bring your dancin’ shoes.?
Dwellers
SLC 'gut-rock' band bound for SXSW
Within the past year, local three-piece Dwellers have made a rapid ascent—not because their music touches listeners’ hearts, but because it hits their guts, with the band’s self-branded bunch of “gut rock”—decisive—tunes.
After three years of paying dues, Dwellers have gone from being virtually unknown to recording an anticipated album and acquiring an invitation from Small Stone Records to play a gig in Austin, Texas, at South By Southwest, the annual music, film and interactive festival and conference.
The band started in late 2009, when lead singer/guitarist Joey Toscano (Iota, Mudfly) and drummer Zach Hatsis (Laughter, Pretty Worms) started jamming together and recording in their spare time between other projects. Early on during their sessions, Hatsis and Toscano jokingly called the music “gut rock,” a term that’s stuck with them throughout the group’s time together.
“[The term is] a way for us to remind ourselves that creativity should never be impeded by indecision, or by some desire to write music that will fit in with some type of genre,” Toscano says. “We write what we feel, and we try to stick with our gut instinct on what sounds right.”
These jamming sessions eventually became the basis for Dwellers’ debut EP, Peace, and Other Horrors. The album consists of four tracks of instrumental music recorded between 2009 and 2010, which include odd varietals like noises from a cardboard box and a leaky faucet, along with randomly placed quotes from films.
“We just came up with various ideas on a single theme and went for it,” Toscano says. “I was reading a nonfiction work at the time called Empire of the Summer Moon [an account of the 40-year battle between the Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West]. That subject matter is what inspired the songs to be performed in the style they were.” The album was released on Bandcamp in June 2011 as a free download.
While finishing up the first EP, both men realized their small side project was slowly starting to become serious, prompting them to find a bass player to complete the ensemble. The two picked up Dave Jones (Oldtimer, ABK Band), whom Hatsis had played with in SubRosa for three years, helping lock up the rhythm section before almost immediately diving into writing and recording the next album.
Prior to hitting the studio, Dwellers tracked several DIY pre-recordings in their private studio, planning their songs in advance before plugging money into professional studio time. The group went with Andy Patterson and his South Salt Lake studio for the official recording, and he helped them hammer out most of the instrumentation over a weekend, allowing for another few weeks to be spent on the vocals and various fine-tuning.
Hatsis recalls these sessions as being “definitely one of the most fun I’ve been a part of. As far as the performance of the record, we tracked the majority of it live, rather than piecemeal. So what you hear is what you get.”
Salt Lake City visual artist Sri Whipple, who has created covers for Laserfang, INVDRS and The No-Nation Orchestra, did the artwork. The three members are draped in worm-like creatures that are coming out of their stomachs—fitting artwork for an album named Good Morning Harakiri.
And this album is not filled with the ambient Southwestern rock from the first EP; Dwellers instead crank up the guitars and kick into loud, bluesy rock. At times, the six-track album borders on old-school grunge, slow and dredging with tense vocals and an overpowering presence. Everything seems to be catered toward deafening the crowd of whatever small venue the band might happen to play, and keep fans coming back for more. The album is loud, pissed-off and unsatisfied with everything around it, and that is absolutely refreshing in a land of by-the-numbers rock.
The group kicked off a small Western U.S. tour, which will see them hitting up major cities in six states before arriving in Austin for their March 16 SXSW performance. Dwellers will open up the Small Stone Records Showcase at Headhunters (720 Red River St.), along with Backwoods Payback, Gozu, Lo-Pan, Suplecs, Dixie Witch and Tia Carrera. “We’re excited to play [SXSW] … and nervous,” Toscano says. “Austin rules in the springtime, and we’ll get to see a lot of great bands.”
Living Traditions Festival
Strong links connect diverse ethnic cultures
Ana Tijoux, Mexican Institute of Sound
Posted // May 17,2012 -When you stroll through the Living Traditions Festival grounds and hear the array of sounds and smell the culinary crafts ranging from traditional African fare to Turkish grub to South American specialties, you quickly realize Utah is not as homogenous and lily-white as our reputation would have you believe. As multicultural as Salt Lake City actually is, when it comes to musical offerings at Living Traditions, it is, indeed, a small world after all.In 2012, even the featured guest musical artists booked by the Salt Lake Arts Council are indicative of just how small the world is. On the surface, it looks like festival organizers split the headliners evenly between two American blues acts and two Latin dance/hip-hop artists. But look deeper and you start to see stronger links between the acts despite their obvious differences in ages, home countries and musical styles.
CWMAs: Spell Talk
Smooth Sailin’: 2010 CWMA winners Spell Talk talk about their year in the spotlight.
The psych-rock band formed in Ogden in 2007 with Jared Phelps on vocals and bass, Andrew Milne on vocals and guitar and Sammy Harper on drums. They added guitarist Dylan Roe in September 2009 after relocating to Salt Lake City to join the more-happening music scene.
That year, at the 2009 CWMAs, Phelps had a Wayne’s World moment: “[This] will be mine. Oh yes, [this] will be mine.” The rockers were later nominated for the 2010 CWMA showcase and tied for third. Squeaking into the finals, their practice and goals paid off.
“It was a pretty magical night. We fucking killed it,” Phelps says, looking back on the wildly productive year since. “It really gave us a lot of exposure; people wouldn’t have known us otherwise.” The $2,000 winners’ purse probably wasn’t so bad, either.
The exposure, along with booking more gigs, necessitated higher-quality recordings. During the past year, Spell Talk produced two albums. The first, Ghost Rider, recorded at KRCL studios, offered a stripped-down look at the band showing off their bluesy side. “There’s something spiritual that happens live, and we like to record live to encapsulate that,” Phelps says.
Then, in late September, the band recorded Electric Cloud at Back Bone Studios in Colorado. From playing the Desert Rocks Music Festival in May 2010, they earned enough studio time to quickly and efficiently record six songs one day, then mix and master the tunes the next. The result is less muddied than Ghost Rider and a more spot-on sampling of the band’s psychedelic sound, which is slightly reminiscent of The Black Angels or Dead Meadow.
The first production run of Electric Cloud came out while they were on tour. Without CD liners handy, the crafty fellows made collages out of found magazines for each copy of the album they sold—truly DIY.
Those two albums have helped the band land gigs at most venues in the Salt Lake Valley, including opening slots for national acts such as Imaad Wasif. But exposure can only get a band so far; they have to perform. Wasif was so impressed with their Urban Lounge set that when his opening band bailed in the Southeast, he called Spell Talk to fill in.
“We had money from CWMA, so we went to Tennessee,” Phelps says. “I said yes without asking anyone.”
Their old Econoline, which Phelps says was a cop-magnet on the highway, sucked up most of the $2,000 prize on tires and gas. A month after coming home, they hit the road again in early winter 2010 and finished a western tour through Nevada, California, Oregon and Idaho. This year full of opportunities has made the band tighter, musically and as a community, Phelps says. Roe, a late add-on, has become keen on the “secret language [they] share onstage.”
The success stems from goals, ambition and a generally humble attitude, like the story of the sheepherder in Paulo Coelho’s epic tale, Phelps insists. “The Alchemist changed my life. My goals are the most important thing to me; if I’m not trying to achieve them, life is just empty. And now, all these things keep popping up. We’re really fortunate, I guess.”?
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