The return of Buffalo’s legendary rockers The JackLords is our music feature this week but one key piece got left out: quotes from singer/guitarist Yod Crewsy.

In further lead up to the band’s awaited re-emergence tonight at Nietzsche’s here’s a Q&A where Yod talks about dark sunglasses, Roy Orbison, dancing at the Continental and :

You guys were all coming from different bands that were basically ending, what was the impetus for starting The JackLords?

The JackLords were formed by myself and Casino El Camino, who were both out of the SplatCats. I had left the SplatCats in 1986 to finish my graduate degree in History at UB, and Casino had been dumped by the band after his accident had severed the tendons in his hand, and they had replaced him with temporary bassist Jim Krawczyk…I knew Buck as a result of going to UB, because he was good friends with Joseph Reale, who was taking the graduate courses at UB with me. Joseph Reale (aka Cliff Hanger) played a little harmonica, and he and Buck had gotten an acoustic jug band going called “the Sky Cabin Boys” together….and they got me to play bass in that little group.

In early 1987, I had a band going called the Dark Marbles (the first version of that band) with another bunch of UB students, but I wasn’t thrilled at how that band was doing.

Well when Casino and I talked about getting a new band together, I mentioned Buck to him, because Buck could sing, could write songs, and had stage presence, etc.

A fellow Clarence dude (it should be noted that my high school and post high school years were spent living in Clarence) named Matthew Smith, a friend of my younger brother’s, mentioned that his brother played drums. We located Adam Smith (Kid Blue Aggie) and from the point we recruited him, we ended up rehearsing at the Smith home in the Harris Hill part of Clarence, NY.

Casino and I wanted a fun garage-rock band that took in the best elements of garage-rock and surf instrumentals.

What were the primary influences of the band?

Mine and Casino’s college years (and afterwards) had been spent listening to punk and while in the SplatCats we both checked out stuff like early Beatles, Rolling Stones, Stax/Volt Soul, American 60s garage/frat rock/party rock stuff like Paul Revere and the Raiders and the Kingsmen and the McCoys, surf instrumentals by Dick Dale and stuff by Link Wray, mod stuff by the Who and later derivatives by the Cramps and the Chesterfield Kings.

I was a huge fan at the time of mod stuff like The Jam, The Small Faces, The Who and I had just gotten a new Rickenbacker guitar as a nod to Pete Townshend… and to the Splatcats.

We had often watched Russ Meyer and early James Bond flicks, old music shows like Ready Steady Go!, the TAMI Show and “Where the Action Is”, as well as flicks like Dawn of the Dead, Quadrophenia, and low-budget B movies like Ilsa-She Wolf of the SS and The Gore-Gore Girls.

Buck came from a slightly different zone, and while he respected a lot of the stuff Casino and I liked, he also had secret longing to be a “country-western/roots-type” musician…and he often played Johhny Cash songs with the Sky Cabin Boys…

How did the deal with Skyclad come about and what went into recording Mother’s Rock?

Casino dealt with Skyclad records, who fronted us the money to record the LP. We recorded the LP in Olean, NY and a lot of Sky Cabin Boys joined us up there to add flourishing touches (washboard, congas, background vocals, etc.). It was all recorded on analog tape.

What can you tell me about some of the memorable gigs the band had?

The highlight of our musical career was, of course, opening for Roy Orbison at Kleinhans Music Hall. I believe it was the Spring of 1988. I was used to playing (up to this point) in small bars with a drunken, standing or dancing and always noisy audiences. I got a wicked case of stage fright in Kleinhans as I walked out in front of a sold-out, quiet, sober, seated audience.

I just couldn’t take all those staring eyes on me, so I put on sunglasses, and that way the audience literally disappeared from my view. I played to a completely dark “wall of blackness”. We also got our picture taken with Roy, after much negotiations (we had to pay some special Musician’s Union Fee or Press Fee or something like that: ridiculous!)

The JackLords with Roy Orbison

Our fans had come to Kleinhans wanting to dance, but the ushers then had forced our dancing fans to either sit down, or had moved the insistent dancers into the side areas against the walls.

Other notable shows included opening for the Washington Squares at UB’s outdoor Springfest and there was a show at the Jam Club – where the theme was “Hawaii/Tropical” – so several dancing girls showed up in grass skirts and had coconut-shell bras covering their breasts.

We did a Halloween show at Nietzsche’s where we all dressed up as pirates. We were one of Marshall Glover’s favorite new bands after he opened his club Marshall’s on Main Street and he really got a rise when go-go dancers started dancing on top of his bar to our songs. Some of our best shows were at Marshall’s: small venue, sweaty, hot!!!

Our first show (at the Continental) was notable because of how horrible it was! Blue our drummer had never played using monitors before, and he never voiced this fact to the sound mixer, and so he couldn’t hear the rest of the band and played horribly. I still cringe watching that video…

When we played the Three Coins Restaurant/Hotel on Niagara Falls Boulevard at the Buffalo Nightlife Awards. It was pretty cool to be recognized by the overall music scene and greater Buffalo community. We played a pretty good performance. I remember our pals the Goo Goo Dolls trying to get in to the 3 Coins, for they had also been nominated for an award, but several of them were underage (or had forgotten to bring their proof of age), and so the management barred them from going into the club! We then smuggled the Goo Goo Dolls up to our hotel room and drank and partied with them there. Pretty cool.

The band only existed two years but in terms of the Buffalo scene, it seems like there was a big impact and The Jacklords are one of those bands that everyone still talks about. What would you attribute that to?

I guess we had an impact because we got people dancing to rock and roll again. When I say “again,” I mean: the early days of the Continental was like that with people on the first floor dancing like crazy to local Buffalo punk/new wave bands like the Stains, Elements, Enemies, Pauline and the Perils, the Jumpers, and acts like Teenage Head, the Ventures, Billy Idol, the Damned, and the PoleCats.

By 1987, the Continental audience had become “clubby” and most people gravitated to the upstairs’ mirrored “dance room” and no one seemed to be dancing to the bands downstairs anymore…..and in fact, the bands that were playing were all taking themselves so seriously, that the “fun” aspect of dancing to the new-wave bands had disappeared.

Casino and I both agreed that the fun element needed to be injected back into rock and roll. The JackLords were voted, of course, as Buffalo’s best new party band in that NightLife poll of 1989 or 1990.

Where did everyone end up post-Jacklords and where are you all today?

Question 6: I am a lawyer (Paul Roalsvig is my real name) and I have an law office in Long Lake, NY in the middle of the Adirondacks. I graduated UB Law School in 1994, and I was thereafter in the greater NYC/Newark area for 14 years during which time I specialized in immigration law, got married, and raised 2 kids. Now in Long Lake I have a General Law practice. Blue Aggie does construction. Cliff Hanger works with medical records at a hospital in Buffalo.

What precipitated this reunion show?

Our friend named John Kennedy last fall suggested that we do a reunion show ….and so here we are….

As time passed, did you ever expect that more than twenty years on you’d all be back together playing again?

The chemistry was always there between us, so yes. I expected reunion shows to crop up here and there. Casino and Blue had their differences, but once these were “smoothed over” it was all good to go!

BoBo Reunion gig poster (courtesy of wnybookarts.org / P22 Type Foundry)

Whenever I get quizzed about the greatest local Buffalo bands I ever saw, a few instantly pop to mind.

Coming of age in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, I caught the young and insane Goo Goo Dolls tear apart a variety of venues circa their hungry Jed and Hold Me Up days.

There was Girlpope blasting through perfect shows ecompassing entire sets of Slade, Bowie or the Kinks, not to mention ones of their own fuzzy powerpop confections.

And one of my first ever really “punk” underground kinda shows was watching the late, great Mark Freeland wriggling and ranting around stage all Iggy-like with an incarnation of his Electroman outfit. That evening’s opener was The Moment – a great sorta post-new wave, Anglo-rock inflected trio – whose bassist and part-time singer was a guy known as Jimmer.

It was nearly ten years later that I first saw BoBo and stunningly found out that the clean-cut guy from The Moment was one and the same as this seemingly dangerous, demon-possessed guy fronting this addled crop of misfits!

BoBo will always go down as one of my absolute bests. What was it that made them special?

At their finest, BoBo showed a consistent knack for creating a beat up garage rock sound uncompromisingly dry-fucked by pop hooks. It was about refreshingly simple songs about the struggles of characters beat down by life, played by guys who obviously knew a thing or two all about it all. Jimmer Phillips and his guitar/backup vocalist/co-writer foil Frank Sterlace really embodied these songs.

As the Rolling Stones’ two-headed monsters Mick Jagger and Keith Richards dubbed themselves “The Glitter Twins”, then Phillips and Sterlace ought be known as Buffalo’s shambolic “Fritter Twins”: wasting away their own way, perhaps skipping out on their dead end 9 to 5 jobs to screw off the afternoon in a dive bar sucking down cheap beers, looking for trouble… and eventually get around to making music and stab at rock glory.

Sterlace’s concise but mean guitar playing at the backbone always added the muscle and necessary gravity to Phillips’ plotted daydreams and delusions.

Jimmer Phillips himself was always perfectly cast as the ultimate rock and roll dichotomy: he always did things the right way because he always did things the wrong way.

Jimmer On The Prowl

Ever the polarizing figure in local circles – depending on who you asked – either Jimmer was a musical genius or a talentless jerk. Those who chose the latter were likely those burned by the character he would become prowling through last call at local nightspots.

Listening to songs like the punk-pop luster of “Broken Promises” or the aching youth at the heart of “Remember The Times”, it’s tough to deny Phillips’ ragged wit, lucid perception and downright ability to sing a rock and roll song.

Live shows would often prove a grab bag. Some nights BoBo would kill with stunning, stumbling elegance. Others would be marked with incomplete songs, out of tune guitars and curse words strewn at everyone on stage and in the audience. Most of the time, it was somewhere in the middle. In the end, BoBo were always entertaining.

While a revolving door lineup of musicians in BoBo has included many of the Queen City’s rock luminaries, credit is due as well to long-serving bassist/producer Marc Hunt and drummer Pat Shaughnessy, who have rounded out the quartet’s “classic lineup” for longest stretch of BoBo’s existence. Hunt’s studio sense and solid playing and Shaughnessy’s steady beat at the stool were the glue that helped hold the caustic band together; the constant among the chaos.

In the end, the legend is always greater than the reality. The mythology is just that: myth. The reality is that BoBo is just another in a long line of Buffalo rock bands that slipped away.

Still, there’s proof that BoBo was one of Buffalo’s great bands. Go and check out BoBo’s recorded output for local label P22/Atom Smash Records and you will find that there is truth in the legend. Or catch BoBo putting all their trash back on stage tomorrow night at Mohawk Place, joined by fellow reunited friends psychedelic glammers Oui 73.

This Saturday’s reunion show – BoBo’s second in the last year and a half – isn’t so much a stab at redemption as it is a chance for a old friends to play together for a crowd of appreciative believers of the old myths.

And those of us in the audience won’t mind being called “cocksuckers” by Jimmer, as long as he plays “Planet Of My Own”…

BoBo and Oui 73 play this Saturday, August 7 at Mohawk Place

"I thought they smelled bad on the outside..." - The Camel's iPod warms up Hoth-style 30 years on

It’s the Star Wars movie that every hardcore, George Lucas-loving nerd will tell you the Force is the strongest with. It was 30 years ago today that it came to theaters in this galaxy.

The Empire Strikes Back (a/k/a Episode V) remains the high-water mark of the Star Wars series. With darkly-themed story, dazzling special effects, some of the most quotable lines in cinema history and – of course – Billy Dee Williams, it has a certain cool that put it ahead of the other “original 3″. (Let’s not even talk about the abysmal Episodes I-III)

My Empire story puts me at 6 years old. It was one of the first times I was cognizant enough to be palpably excited and awaiting the release of anything. Star Wars was for me – like so many kids of the generation – an obsession.

Since the original Star Wars in 1977 still a tender toddler, it was my world.
The accumulation of every action figure and toy was my young life’s work.

Any kid of the generation can tell you: having Star Wars figures and ships and playsets was like a currency. If you had the most, you had all the status. You were the richest guy on the block. (I never got the AT-AT but I did have the Death Star!)

Can't check it off the "got it" list

Star Wars was the biggest movie of the ’70s – seemingly the biggest of all time – and that made The Empire Strikes Back the mother of all sequels.

So on that fateful Friday, May 21, 1980, my mom dropped Dad and I off at a theater on Walden Avenue 45 minutes before the showing. She tore off in the old Lebaron to go shopping while Dad and I went to the box office window.

I was already tasting the popcorn in my head and imaging the epic lightsaber battles that laid ahead when tragedy struck.

“Sold out,” the box office girl said.

Mom was gone. Dad and I had almost 3 hours to kill. I remember walking up and down Stopping at the old King’s Store and bought me one of those water pump rockets, pushed on a swing at a playground and took me to McDonald’s for a caramel sundae.

Without sounding like Daniel Stern narrating an episode of the Wonder Years, it was one of those times where in the face of what was seemingly the worst thing that could happen in my young mind – Gasp! Missing The Empire first day! – that Dad came through and ultimately I remember the stuff from that night probably more than going to see any movie before or since.

Of course, I still had to see the it… and the tragedy continued. A week later and in a whole other county, we got shut out again at the Summit Park Mall Twin Cinema.

Different box office girl, same two words. “Sold out.”

Damn!

And another week or so went by.

By that point, I probably had all of the glasses from Burger King and at least another one of the new action figures and then I finally got to see it.

Ice planets. Asteroids. Yoda. Bounty hunters. Darth Vader shows up for brunch.

I’ll never forget the shit that ran through my mind for days and days afterward.

There was no way Darth Vader could be Luke’s father. It went against everything my young brain understood. He was too much of a bastard and who would do something like that to his kid? My dad – after all – took me for sundaes and bought me water rockets!

And I couldn’t accept that Luke actually had to get a robotic hand. I negotiated in my head that after Darth Vader lobbed it off, it had somehow been found by some Alliance-friendly operative in Bespin, then couriered back to Luke in space and reattached, albeit with robot circuitry.

Original hand found and reattached with robotic veins and muscle?

Then, what about poor Han Solo? In my head, he was doomed. He was fucked, for sure. He’d never get out that carbon-frozen slab.

Three years passed and I was thrilled with Return Of The Jedi and the outcome of for Luke, Han, Chewie, Leia and everyone.

Of course, 30 years on Empire is still the best. I make my kids watch it and yes, I am still occasionally buying Star Wars crap. (see above) And I won’t even let my kids play with any of it…

And: Happy 30th to another dear old friend who hits the milestone this weekend. I spent many great times with him over the years and still continue to enjoy him for hours on end. Spend some time to celebrate with him. Sorry for all the times I kicked you in the console, old pal.

Nostalgia is a powerful drug.

Read the headline. I said it. Mark it.

I’ve taken plenty of cabs in cites across North America. Too many checkered yellow fares to count in metropolises like NYC and Toronto along with ones from places like Quebec City and Cleveland; Austin and Los Angeles.

The only time I’ve EVER felt rooked, taken, possibly afraid for my life and certainly skeevy were on the rare cab rides I had to take in my own hometown. In Buffalo. My city. The City of Good Neighbors maybe, but avoid calling a taxi if you can.

There were times when I was ripped off, taken out of the way and when I had to argue with driver. Oddly, it’s never happened anywhere else.

Taxis are not a common place thing in the Queen City. It’s a commuting town, easy enough to get around and to park. Most of us drive.

I honestly think that these things have taken the accountability away from WNY cab drivers. I’ve worked at hotels and been at enough bars and venues where concerts happen to see some foul things go down with cabs in this city.

I’m sure there’s plenty of good cab drivers in Buffalo, I’ve just never had one.

When I heard the homegrown Chicago Blackhawks star and NHL rookie of the year Pat Kane was arrested after an altercation with a cab driver, I immediately thought: The cab driver probably tried to rip him off.

Pat Kane might not be an absolute angel in this situation, but I’ll bet an NHL season’s worth of beers that he was cheated, provoked and/or somehow wronged in this instance which drove him to react.

Again: I said it here and you can mark it down.

Also… Hey: Mike Grier!!! GREAT SIGNING, SABRES!

Boston, MA’s mighty Dear Leader – a quartet which proudly includes half native WNYer’s in Aaron Perrino and Jon Sulkow – are not only putting the final touches on a long-overdue new album but are also doing their bit to help pull the Big Three from financial ruin.

The band’s “Raging Red” (from their masterful 2004 full-length All I Ever Wanted Was Tonight) is featured in a new commercial for Cadillac’s Escalade that we are bound to be bombarded with for the next six months.

More on the new album at www.dear-leader.com and the slick Escalade commercial featuring “Raging Red” and the hot chick from some ABC show(s) I’ve never watched:

Yeah, I’ve been slacking on Camel’s iPod in recent months but it’s not like I haven’t been busy.

And if you will consider hanging out in the Queen City’s finest corner gin mills, off the beaten path saloons and heavenly dive bars as “busy” then we are on the same page.

Starting in this week’s ARTVOICE is a regular column called Three Guys Walk Into A Bar which derives its name from the start of a thousand old jokes. Like those innumerable jokes, it would seem there is an endless amount of old bars in Western New York. The aim is to visit as many off as possible with me and a couple other guys – and by “guys” we can be talking about dudes, gals or whatever – showing up and taking in everything these joints have to offer.

We start the journey of Three Guys at a place of old wood walls, strong drinks and Nightmares: the unsung Hertel Avenue treasure called Del Denby’s.

Read about it here.

Yesterday, the sad news came down that talented multi-instrumentalist/songwriter/producer Jay Bennett passed away in his sleep at the age of 45.

Bennett’s greatest legacy will be as key figure in Wilco from 1994 – 2001 as cowriter and creative foil to Jeff Tweedy as the band blazed a path from roots rock undercard fillers to groundbreakers at the forefront of American rock. A wizard behind the keys and perhaps even more adept, scorching guitar player Bennett’s gifted instrumental skills were matched by an onstage presence to light up the stage with an unasuming grace.

His tenure with the band ended abrubtly upon completion of YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT – arguably the band’s greatest album – when Tweedy forced him out of Wilco as documented in the film I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART.

Bennett carried on, initially with singer/songwriter Edward Burch and the exceptional record THE PALACE AT 4AM (Undertow) made up of songs left off of YANKEE and clutch of other late night, weary-eyed beauties. Bennett continued to record until the last year when he was sidelined with hip problems.Earlier this month, it was announced that Tweedy was being sued by Bennett for royalties due.

An autopsy is being performed to determined Bennett’s cause of death. With his documented battle with substance abuse, there’s been plenty of specualtion that drugs might have played a part. Whatever the case – and it’s still undetermined – this is a truly tragic loss or music fans.

I  was lucky enough to interview Jay – one of his first expansive post-Wilco pieces and prior to the film I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART – and stayed on the phone with him for an hour and a half. He was totally gracious, open and forth-coming.

When he and Ed came to town to play the next week he was equally cool and let me hang out backstage (when Mohawk Place actually had a “backstage”) where he entertained my annoying Wilco-related inquisition.

That original 2002 interview is included at the end of this post

My band Semi-Tough also got to play with Jay and Edward a couple times – which I am really grateful for – and they were memorable experiences.

That first time with Will Johnson and Scott Danbom from Centro-matic/South San Gabriel backing he and Ed up. It was my first time experiencing those guys (I was almost immediately a diehard fan of Centro-matic from then on…) and proved a truly a stellar show all around. The Who’s John Entwistle  had died and we all dedicated the show to him that night.

The next time it was just Jay and Ed solo again.

Jay was really a mess – crippled by his just fresh breakup and substance problems – but he played this one song where he was singing the lyircs from a sheet. I will never forget it. It was sprawling and Dylanesque. Absolutely heartbreaking stuff. As much as he was a letdown that night that, it was one of those times I remember thinking what a great artist he was and how he had channeled this pain into something powerful.

That first post-Wilco record with Edward Burch THE PALACE AT 4AM – to me – remains an incredible album and the Jay-centric “Engineer Demos” of YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT are in many ways as good as the final version as Tweedy and O’Rourke shaped it.

As much as I love where Jeff Tweedy has taken Wilco in the years after Jay Bennett, those three record run of BEING THERE – SUMMERTEETH – YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT was unmatched. He was also the central figure in cementing the band’s partnership with Brit singer/songwriter Billy Bragg to tackle the words of Woody Guthrie for the acclaimed, Grammy Award-nominated MERMAID AVENUE records.

There were probably 6 or 7 times I saw that era of Wilco and it could veer from sweet and serene folk ballads to unbridled, raucous rock brilliance. This was when they became my favorite band. This was when I loved them fiercest, travelled long distances to go see them and pored over every nuance in the music. With Jay, they seemed to shine brightest.

—–

January 2002 ARTVOICE article/interview with Jay Bennett:
JAY BENNETT- WON’T COMPLY, JAMMING WITH EDWARD

The Ex-Wilco wunderkind comes clean on leaving the greatest band in America,
YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT, his new project and the secret cult of tour bus drivers

By Donny Kutzbach
music features editor

Jay Bennett is a road warrior. He s spent his whole life traveling: treking
through the lower 48 states as a kid with his parents, crossing the country
again on tour with his massively under-appreciated band Titanic Love Affair
and then all over the world about five times with the renown Chicago group
Wilco.

Jets. Trains. Buses. Vans. He s spent plenty of time in all of them. None of
them really do it for him. When pulls into Buffalo to play the Mohawk Place on
Friday, he will doing it in his favorite manner.

“I love the idea of hopping into the Toyota Corolla and touring with Ed
(Burch). If I had to land on one extreme of touring, either the planes and
buses or just a couple of us in a car, I would pick the latter. Ideally it
would be a bit of both. It seems more human to do what Ed and I are doing.
Wilco started to feel like some big machine. When the crew outnumbers the
band, you start to question what s going on,” Bennett says.

Towards the end with Wilco, it was like the bigger and more comfortable it
got the less I enjoyed it. When Ed and I tour, it s going to be a road trip:
stopping at truck stops, buying stupid trinkets. It s gonna be a blast,

As we talk about his thirtysomething collection of vintage keyed organs,
including the best Hammonds, Lowrys, Wurlitzers, he is tinkering with an old
church pipe organ. It is a majestic relic that operates with electromagnets
pushing air through it and he just got it to work. The organ chimes in the
background as the man who brought it back to life beams about his latest
musical project with collaborator Burch, titled THE PALACE AT 4AM.

He further reveals his knack for taking broken things apart and making them
work again as something he learned as a kid through his father, continued
through his mentoring at an electronics repair shop and to this day is one of
his vast areas of his expertise.

It s hard not to lend the fix-it analogy over Bennett s seven years Wilco, a
band that made some of the greatest records in the last ten years and arguably
stand as the most important rock group in reshaping popular music in America.

Not that Wilco was a broken radio when Bennett joined the fold in 1996.

Jeff Tweedy started Wilco following the disintegration of the groundbreaking
Uncle Tupelo which he had formed in Belleville, IL in the late 80s with high
school chum Jay Farrar. After four records, the band broke up amidst inner
tensions and the divergent musical paths of Farrar and Tweedy. To this day,
Uncle Tupelo remains the holy grail of country meets punk. The No Depression
scene reveres them. Ryan Adams probably owes a career to them

Wilco released a wonderful collection of jangly, twang-rock with 1995 s AM. As
good as Wilco and the record was they were outshined critically and
commercially by Jay Farrar s Son Volt and their record TRACE. After finally
escaping it s cast over Uncle Tupelo, Tweedy was once again trapped in
Farrar s shadow.

The tide quickly shifted in 1996 and the release of Wilco s double LP
masterpiece BEING THERE. A poetic tale of emotional death and rebirth, hinged
largely in the grand scope of rock and roll s lore and told primarily from a
fan s point view. Critics championed the band and the record sold. It was a
record that could have only been realized with the addition of Jay Bennett.

It was Bennett s bold sense of arrangements, abilities as
multi-instrumentalist and his own gifts as a craftsman of chord structures and
melodies. He was able to take Tweedy s songs and stretch them on a bigger
canvas, take them from TV to widescreen. It was Bennett fix-it abilities that
took them from being a good indie band to a great rock band.

1999 s SUMMERTEETH radically shifted the band s sound to sweet pop melodies
arched by lyrics troubled and distraught.  Loaded with keyboards, it broke the
band away from being an alt.country act and managed to best BEING THERE in
critical kudos and in it s cohesive quality.  Wilco, along with Mercury Rev
and Radiohead, had become almost a brand name for pioneering, challenging
sounds in modern popular music. Gone were the good time bar rockers, here was
a band seemed to be taking on a deeper, darker persona.

Rock and roll rule #79: the myths will always be broken.

Bennett begins debunking:

“I don t think Wilco was a cynical band but it was led by person who had a
cynical bent. Jeff has a cynical switch, says Bennett When that switch was
flipped, I didn t always like it. It really influenced the public image of the
band. He s really only like that 10% of the time, but publicly he was like
that 70% of the time. He loves taking on character and that s what rock and
roll really. It s part of the game and we all do it. But it gave the band the
image like we thought about things more than we really did. So many stories
got projected on us. I was always trying to cut through the crap.”

And the pioneering sounds of SUMMERTEETH?

“Why did the SUMMERTEETH sound the way it did? I ll be honest with you, it was
because all the toys we bought that year. We came off of tour after a year and
every town we were in I bought a fucking keyboard. On a four day overdub
session where it was just Jeff and me in the studio, we set them all up and
went around playing them all over every track,” tells Bennett.

Wilco s sprawl of epic-like records would not end. Enter YANKEE HOTEL
FOXTROT.

2001 was off to a rocky start signaled by the dismissal of original drummer
Ken Coomer, the band tumultuously entered studio in January to begin the
sessions for the next record. With new drummer, Glenn Kotche the continued on,
experimenting more and boldly forging new sonic territory. Noted Chicago
post-rocker Jim O Rourke came in afterward to mix the affair  The forthcoming
film, I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART chronicles the struggle to bring the
album to life. (check out clips at www.wilcofilm.com)

As Jay tinkles the keys of his restored pipe organ, it calls to mind the eerie
beauty of a radio snippet that appears on Poor Places . It s a clip of a
mysterious female voice repeating the phrase Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and this
is where the record s title comes from. It was discovered on a 4-CD set, THE
CONET PROJECT, of cryptic shortwave radio broadcasts believed to be
clandestine spy stations from all over the world.

Though the shortwave transmissions became an obsession for Tweedy, it was
oddly Bennett who put it in the context of the record. In addition to
providing the title YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT, it s these recordings that serve as
almost a thematic basis for the record: the notion of strange, lonely coded
signals bouncing around the world meshes with the somber, questioning lyrics
and spacious, richly atmospheric music.

“I publicly mocked Jeff for buying that record. He played that four-CD set on
a car trip with me once and I started losing my mind. I wanted to throw it out
the window. Then, when we needed noises for the song Poor Places I was like
Where s the morse code CD? Inadvertently, I got it on there in the song and
ended up naming the album.”

Every song on YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT exudes a magic. Ashes of American Flags
laments a the fragility of human dreams, while Heavy Metal Drummer revels in
teen nostalgia with a mechanized Velvet Underground pulse. In a career of
groundbreaking records it is their best.

Now suppose Paul McCartney jumped ship following SGT. PEPPER. Better yet,
imagine Keith Richards splitting out on Jagger after EXILE ON MAIN STREET.
Still better, what if Johnny Greenwood quit Radiohead after OK COMPUTER?

In August 2001, Jay Bennett left Wilco. Bennett would likely shrug off the
above comparisons, as he is quick to point out. While he wrote half the music
between BEING THERE and YHF, as ASCAP/BMI publishing records prove, it was
never really his band.

“I left the band when Jeff said, ‘A circle can only have center’ and I
surmised from that it wasn t going to be me. My thinking was if the band is an
ellipsis and I can stay or it can be circle and I m out. So I left, Bennett
declares, making public for the first time what was said behind the scenes.”

“I still really like the record. I m passionate about it. My heart, soul,
fingers, toes are all over that record. It s the first Wilco record that I got
to engineer and that was fun. But now I don t have to worry about the identity
and how what I say might go against the storyline, he admits, as the weight
of the legend of Wilco is lifted from him.”

“We re being cool. I think that s what our relationship is right now. It s our
way of letting each other know we re cool with one another right now. We
haven t talked much, but I mean, we were really close and now we re giving
each other room. There s no bad vibes at all. That the smart thing to do in a
divorce . Don t saying anything stupid in the days immediately following.
Give each other room. I d like us to go down in history as the best rock and
roll divorce in history.”

Through the period preceding Bennett s departure, the band had the finished
mix for YHF rejected by their longstanding home at the Warner boutique
imprint Reprise. Shifting personnel at the label and what was deemed as a
record with no commercial potential . The refused to make changes and managed
to buy the record back for a relatively cheap sum of $50,000. The buzz created
started a bidding war of over 30 labels vying to release the record.

The band was missing a guitar player and were set to tour for a record that
wasn t goint to be out. Tweedy kept the tour on pace following Bennett s
recent departure and the even greater tragedy of the attacks on September 11.
He pointed out that the band, who enjoy a decidedly dedicated fanbase, and
their music have become a key in its listener s lives, or he said part of the
fabric.

I saw two of these shows. Wilco was still stunning. The YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT
songs were staggering in their stripped down beauty. Still, I d seen and heard
the band many times before and impressively as the four-piece s performance
was, there was a great gap in it all. The sound and chemistry was clearly
challenged by the lack of Bennett. It wasn t the same and clearly never could
be. A giant square of the Wilco fabric was sorely torn away and so was so
much of the power and warmth.

Bennett knows the band will soldier on for the best.

“They ll figure out a way to make it work and use the change to their
advantage, if they haven t already. Wilco has never kept the same lineup for
more than two years anyway. Let s face it (founding member, bassist) John
Stiratt quit tomorrow, as much as John is an immense talent, it would still be
Wilco. It s bigger than that.  As long as there s Jeff s unique voice, there
will be Wilco.”

There is a strange scenario that seems to be playing itself out.

Jeff Tweedy was stuck beneath the long shadow of his previous band and
collaborator and he wasn t able to escape until Jay Bennett added his skill
and vision to Wilco. Now Bennett himself has ended up in the exact position
that he helped Tweedy out of.  As Wilco promotes and tours in support of
YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT (due at the end of April on Nonesuch Records), a record
he was a central part of it, he is on his own and as if he has to prove
himself.

Don t worry about him, though.

“There s six songs I wrote all the music for on YHF, so we re working out a
fair trade. For Venus Stopped The Train I got the lyrics from a poem that
Jeff wrote. I wanted that to be on YHF. I have no problem singing Jeff s
lyrics, he s a great lyricist. Likewise, he doesn t seem to be embarrassed out
there playing the music I wrote. In the end I guess I m lucky this song didn t
make YHF. Now I can have it for my record!”

In addition to the aforementioned Venus Stopped The Train , which is haunting
and comparable to Wilco tracks like Misunderstood and Via Chicago ,  I ve
been listening to songs like the achingly pretty Puzzle Heart ,  and the
backwoods chuckler Junior . These are among the 17 tracks being called the
rough mixes of Bennett and Burch s THE PALACE AT FOUR AM, it sounds anything
but rough. Here is more than an album s worth of tracks which hall sound
fully-formed and ready to go. To these ears, this record could be released as
is.

“I m glad to hear you say that. People have been saying it and it feels good.
Bennett then laughs a bit to admit, These arrangements weren t that thought
out at all. They were just the throw shit at the wall approach.”

Another gem is, No Church Tonight which the newly revived pipe organ will
chime over. This was a track that came out of the much-lauded Billy
Bragg/Wilco MERMAID AVENUE sessions where new music was put to lyrics from the
archives of legendary American troubadour Woody Guthrie. It resulted in a pair
of ever-modern records stoked in the spark of classic American folk and
protest song. The two records garnered a pair of Grammy nominations. It was a
collaboration that Bennett now reveals only happened at his insistence.

“That only happened because my love of Billy. Tony (Wilco manager, Tony
Magherita) and Jeff didn t want to do that record. I broke down in tears when
Billy asked us to do it. I mean Woody, Billy. I had to convince them on it,”
Bennett insists.

He begins the strum and sing the achingly beautiful Bragg track The Saturday
Boy then he starts into a dead-on, I mean dead on, cockney Billy Bragg
impression.

Bennett s had some interesting projects and collaborators. Before Wilco, he
garnered indie adulation with Titanic Love Affair. He has also lent his skills
to back Roger McGuinn, Tommy Keene, Tim Easton and Allison Moorer.

His latest partner in music, Edward Burch is no slouch either. Having spent
time as half of the Kennett Brothers and as a part The Viper and His Famous
Orchestra, he s left a mark for his songwriting and versatile voice. He plays
and adds harmonies to most tracks on THE PALACE AT FOUR AM, sings lead on the
beautiful, Gram Parsons-reminiscent ballad The Wait and the redemptive
Forgiven .

The productive pair also plan to take THE PALACE tracks and record them
completely acoustic and make a disc available at shows and via the web. Their
eyes are already on the next record as well.

“We decided on the fifteen tracks for THE PALACE last night. What happened in
picking those fifteen, it kind of made me cringe to have to have to leave some
off, Bennett confesses. I wrote them down and thought the ones we re leaving
off kind of fit together, too. So the next record started to take took shape,
which is cool.”

The plan is to have THE PALACE out in April and then do a full tour.

“This time around it ll be and Edward with acoustic guitars and maybe a little
tiny Hammond for a few songs. By the summer, though, we ll hopefully have a
band together to tour. It s hard to get people to go out and tour for free,”
he says.

In speaking of the crazy extremes of touring, we stumble into the strange
world of tour bus drivers: among the strangest folks on the planet.

“Those guys are unpredictable motherfuckers,” he laughs. “They are their own
breed. There s a gene or something. The thing is, you learn this after your
fifth tour. They re all going to freak out by the end. You ll think you ve got
the cool guy, the polite guy, the nice guy or whatever but by the last week of
the tour he WILL go nuts.”

Jay continues, “They love to get into these stories like,  ‘I was tagteaming
this chick…’ Now the word: tagteaming. You or I might use that word once a
year. These guys use that word minimum three times a day! They are strange.”

“A lot of these drivers are talented musicians, too. We had Charlie Louvin s
son as our bus driver once. This guy we had, Big John, had been Johnny
Paycheck s guitar player. He had these fat, sausage fingers and rotted out
teeth from mixing blow with Skoal. One day he picks up my acoustic and was
blown away. I was like, Why don t you play guitar and I ll drive the bus.”

Jay and I agree that the Clash s LONDON CALLING is one of the best records
ever.

“It s amazing, it s peak, emotional. It makes you jump and down and rock, but
it s Lover s Rock , too. It pulls at your heartstrings. There is a sense of
joy underlining the political and emotional angst and it s a pure joy.
Strummer must ve just said You know, it would be cool to get some horns in
here, Bennett says, displaying his genuine love of rock and roll.”

I have to point to him the parallel between the Clash at this point and Wilco
for the last three records both having that kind of balance. Invoking the same
passion and intensity, both bands being, as the Clash were famously dubbed,
the only band that matters .

“I always wanted to make Wilco posters and t-shirts that said The Other Band
That Matters but nobody else in the band would go for it,” Bennett laughs.

Hmmm, musical differences?

Maybe your next band.

Who better than the kid from Little Italy – who became America’s premier cinematic auteur – to get behind the lens for the big screen epic on the Hoboken boy who became an American enertainment icon? It was announced yesterday that Universal Pictures and Mandalay Entertainment have tapped the mighty Martin Scorsese to direct a forth-coming Frank Sinatra biopic. We hope Scorsese can avoid the urge to cast Leonardo DiCaprio as Ol’ Blue Eyes.

Scorsese’s next picture is Shutter Island and due in October starring – surprise, surprise – Leo DiCaprio. He also continues his tradition of great music docs with a George Harrison film due in 2010.

Frank’s legacy continues to bloom with the catalog currently in reissues overhaul most recently with Seduction: Sinatra Sings of Love (Rhino) and the recently launched SINATRA.COM for all think Frank. They all need to get on the good foot and reissue and remaster this downbeat, overlooked masterpiece – said to be one of the singer’s personal faves among his own recordings.

It used to be that we’d count down the days on the calendar for a long-awaited release to come out.

Now we don’t put much into such notions as street dates. We just keep checking the web to see if it leaked.

Three very records high on my list of Spring 2009 releases did just that across the expanse of the internet in the past few days.

Search for yerself!

(Note: Artvoice does condone the illegal downloading of records prior to street date… but if you do make sure you buy them on vinyl when they do officially come out.)

The Left of the Dial column in this week’s ARTVOICE spotlights the most terrifically made-up retail holiday ever

RECORD STORE DAY!

I spoke to one of Buffalo’s great record gurus slash mod slash ace drummer Brandon Delmont and spotlighted Record Theater’s participation in Record Store Day.

All of this was good, however I goofed in excluding the great newcomer and vinyl haven Spiral Scratch Records at 2531 Delaware Avenue in North Buffalo.

Yeah, Spiral Scratch – named for after a legendary Buzzocks 45 -  is new to town but owner/proprietor Dave Paulmbo has been slogging it out here in the Queen City his whole life and is undoubtedly a familiar face to anyone who has hung out at punk shows, dug through crates of albums or participated in other related activites.

Spiral Scratch is mostly vinyl – with CDs, DVDs, books, t-shirts and other off the beaten path rock arcana – in the less than six months of business it has seen the stock on the shelves steadily increasing and become a hot spot for in store gigs.

Not only does Spiral Scratch get a glowing endorsement from Record Needles in the Camel’s iPod in general, it should ABSOLUTELY be a stop for anyone out perusing the bins for Record Store Day.
Though Spiral Scratch was not listed on Record Store Day’s official site, the store is participating and will be stocking many of the limited and special edition releases slated for shops.

Dave and Spiral Scratch were featured by our good friend and colleague Jeff Miers in today’s Gusto Sound Check.

Check it out here.

Follow me on Twitter for the blow by blow from the trenches and then where we go afterward to drink beers and make fun of each others purchases.

Have a happy Record Store Day.