Rocky Votolato - True Devotion - live @ kexp

The following is a previously published post about Rocky Votolato's most recent release True Devotion. Accompanying the text are photographs I took Tuesday March 16, 2010 during Rocky's live in-studio session. Without sounding too godddamn corny I have to say meeting Rocky and April was an absolute thrill. It's so nice when an artist with whom you've related to for many years turns out to be kind, genuine and 100% grateful for the gifts this life has afforded him.

Sitting in the studio while he played his short 4-song set (Sparklers, What Waited For Me, Instrument, Sunlight) was no joke one of the happiest times of my life. When it was all over - I left KEXP feeling pretty fucking lucky.

If you're not familiar with Rocky's music go HERE, HERE or HERE

Rocky is playing:

this weekend @ SXSW.

3/26 in Pullman, WA.

(14) April dates throughout the midwest & east coast.

(15) May dates throughout Europe.

True Devotion marks the 6^th full-length record (out 2/23 on Barsuk) from Seattle resident and ex-WaxWing frontman Rocky Votolato. In the decade following the demise of his band Rocky has crafted some of the most beautiful and honest music to ever come out of the Emerald City. After what’s felt like a very long time away I’m happy to report that Mr. Votolato is indeed back.

In the years following the release of his last album – The Brag and Cuss (2007) Rocky went through a widely publicized dark time– characterized by the arrival our old friend’s self-doubt, depression and anxiety. Trapped within the four walls of his mind Votolato reportedly stopped writing and touring altogether opting instead to hole up in his apartment for months on end studying existential philosophy, physics and theology.

In much the same way that “Lilly White” opened The Brag and Cuss – True Devotion’s “Lucky Clover Coin” sets the tone for the album to come:

Your eyes are broken glass the shattered light

Shines on everything you see

There’s a world I want to leave behind

Where a sunset in a constant bloody winter

Gives the only light, and with it I hoped I would disappear

In just five lines Votolato paints a vivid picture of where he’s been for the last three years. Even more important than finding his way through the immediacy of these thoughts is the recognition of their lasting presence and a need to remain vigilant:

You’re keeping me alive

‘Till the sunlight shows spring roses in water

And for the rest of my life

I’ll put your broken pieces back together

Much thinner than the majority of his previous release (barring “Whiskey Straight” and“Silver Trees”) Rocky’s latest effort leans heavily on the minimalist instrumentation and vocal strength of his earlier work. Given the timing - this fresh take on Makers, A Brief History and Suicide Medicine makes perfect sense. Beneath somber strings and delicate strumming True Devotion’s redemptive arc becomes apparent:

I want to spend more time with you

Because you make me happy

It’s something I’d been so little of

But you showed me that I can be

It is the blood of this journey – through life’s loneliest, most desperate moments through discovery, reflection and change - that pumps within the hopeful chambers of True Devotion. One of the album’s highest points comes midway in the form of “Sparklers.” Flawlessly picked and reminiscent of “The Uppers Aren’t Necessary” (from Makers), “Sparklers” examines the finite nature of life’s peaks and valleys.

Everything is right, Everything is wrong

Letting go is the best way to hold on

So watch the light dance in the dark until it’s gone

Sparklers only burn for so long

Like “All Things Must Pass” before it Votolato reminds us that there can be no good without bad. No flowers without rain. No happy without sad.- the knowledge of which allows us to enjoy the individuality of life’s moments without fear or regret.

Through all of this clarity one gets the sense that Rocky is seeing the special people in his life through new eyes. “ Sun Devil” reintroduces us to the muse of “Before You Were Born” (from The Brag and Cuss). To his love of more than a decade Votolato shows his gratitude:

True Devotion and True Virtue will hold you at the center

As the waves crash over

Some things are forever

And your love is an Anchor

As the closing moments of True Devotion’s final track – “Where We Started” fade into same strings as its first we are once again reminded of the freedom attained from simply letting go.

Gandhi once said that the most important battle to fight was overcoming one’s own demons, fears, and insecurities. True dat Mahatma. I thought about starting this off by telling Rocky Votolato how important his work is. How his last two albums have been instrumental in my own discovery of love. How the tone of his voice has been a source of friendship over the last several years – high-fiving me through the light (Makers) and sitting up with me through the dark (The Brag and Cuss). My first inclination – after finally getting to hear Rocky’s latest masterpiece – is to just say thanks.

So here it is. Thanks Rocky.

Originally posted here on 2/22/2010.

Ce n’est pas un examen Califone: live at UW HUB Auditorium 12/3

Here's a follow-up to my previous blog about Califone. It was originally published on KEXP 12.09.2009

I’m the kind of person that gets stuck on repeat. I’m the kind of person that get’s stuck on repeat. I’ll discover a song that walls up around me in a way that shuts all other songs out. Sometimes it lasts for days sometimes weeks. I think I listened to a song once for a month straight without the slightest consideration for what else I might be missing. These songs keep me up at night. When I finally fall asleep they inhabit my dreams. Yes, I have problems (but have you ever skated a full-pipe with Morrissey while reading the Sunday Times?).

Along the way these songs, always bouncing around inside our heads, become the soundtrack to life. The things we see and do. Each time we smile, every failure and every success, every look in the mirror, every hi-five given and every hug taken. However bizarre or mundane, each grain of sand has a song beneath it. We make them into mix CDs and give them to loved ones in hopes that they might better understand the complexities of our individual films.

Lately my film has been stuck on “Funeral Singers,” from Califone’s most recent album and feature film of the same name, All My Friend’s Are Funeral Singers (Dead Oceans). As the centerpiece to Califone’s cinematic songwriting Tim Rutili has always used poetic imagery and tone to provoke feelings. Despite its roots in folk, Rutili’s music is never overtly focused on a strict narrative, making shadowy songs like “Funeral Singers” all the more applicable to one’s own life. Waking up last Thursday morning, I wondered how the evening’s live performance and film screening at the University of Washington’s HUB Auditorium might alter my thoughts on the song. Would the application of specific imagery and dialogue fade the track from my mind once and for all?

As per usual we arrived early and had to wait just outside the auditorium’s double doors for a good little while before the show/film was to begin. Having spoken to the band earlier in the day during their (phenomenal) in-studio performance at KEXP, I knew that the second leg of the tour had employed a new sound engineer — the UW show being the first of his dates. As the boys tinkered, my date and I shared a bit-o-honey (despite talking a load of shit I discovered an affinity for this dinosaur) and discussed the comedic merits of backwards jokes and whoopee cushions. It’s what we do.

Soon enough, we filed in and found our seats amongst a rapidly filling theatre of excited guests. How often is one given the opportunity to experience a film score performed live? As Rutili, Becker, Adamik and Massarella walked out on stage I gave a look around and realized just about everyone was smiling. For once it seemed as though not a single person in the audience had been dragged there; no one was tricked, bribed or duped into seeing this film. Lovely. After a brief introduction the players took their places in near total darkness — individually angled backward as to keep all eyes on the film — and began to play the opening sequence.

he film centers around a thirty-something clairvoyant woman named Zel (Angela Bettis of Girl Interrupted, May). While Zel takes in the occasional mortal for Tarot Card readings and the like her main source of companionship is a relatively large and varied cast of ghosts, several of which happen to play folky post-rock (Califone). While Zel considers these apparitions to be her only family, Rutili hints at Zel’s underlying desire to live a normal life, often surrounding herself in moats of salt over which the spirits can not pass. At first the ghosts are a real bunch of Caspers, helping Zel make money contacting dead relatives and picking winners at the track. And your own personal band of funeral singers to boot? Could be worse in this economy, right? Well, things go awry one evening when the ghosts discover a magnetic light in woods surrounding the house. As they attempt move into the light, the ghosts discover they are in fact trapped within the walls of Zel’s home. Ghosts no likey being trapped. Believing it is Zel that has trapped them in this purgatorial halfway house, the ghosts decide to torture their apparent captor. Suddenly, the music becomes a continual barrage of noise. The lucrative perks of knowing ghosts? Also gone. After a creepy customer almost cuts her, Zel realizes that despite her attachment to them any hope for normality (or just some god-damn peace and quiet) hinges on the freeing of her ghostly counterparts.

While all of this plays out under the auspices of a loose narrative structure, the meat and potatoes of Rutili’s film, much like his music, is largely free-form and surreal. Similar to Luis Bunuel’s partygoers in The Exterminating Angel, and even Ingmar Bergman’s Knight and Squire in The Seventh Seal, Zel’s trapped ghosts are a boundless vehicle for the dreamlike discussion of larger philosophical questions. Greed. Freedom. Morality. Death. Desperation and loneliness. Emotional Purgatory. The presence of God. Simple Survival.

Broken up into verse-like chapters, the major movements of the film correspond to various human superstitions (three of which are also tracks from the album) and remind the viewer that questions are being asked. What are your answers?

Throughout the film and brief follow-up set, it was easy to see that the band was truly enjoying themselves up there on stage. Tim Rutili and the rest of Califone should be commended for the success of such an ambitious project. To conceptualize and write a double-LP’s worth of songs and a screenplay is an undertaking in and of itself, but to then fund, direct, act, promote and play live to the film in 20 cities? Holy shit, there’s something to hang your hat on, bub. Oh yeah, and as of Thursday the film was officially accepted to the 2010 Sundance Film Festival — so if you happen to be in Park City please do check it out. Redford and company usually have a good eye for this sort of stuff.

As you may’ve already concluded nothing has changed for me with respect to “Funeral Singers.” I’ve listened to it today more times than I care to admit. It’s still mine for exactly what it means to me — but now it means more. I’ve taken the song and added it to my experience. To that I’ve added the film to get to where I am now. Where I am now is good. Different than where I was before.

And that, my friends, is the beauty of art.

Dead Man's Bones @ The Triple Door

Here's the follow-up to my previous blog on Dead Man's Bones. This was originally published on KEXP 10.23.09

I had a pretty killer Friday, October 23, 2009. This is probably news to you but I am once again unemployed! As a result I spent the greater part of my morning drinking coffee, listening to music, trolling ebay (anyone willing to donate an LCD monitor in support of the arts? How about a Hasselblad? Pushing my luck?) and Craigslist (this one for JOBS), all the while completely forgetting to eat solid food. So by the time I met my ridiculously lovely date for a drink or two — well, I sort of went tits–up on the alcohol. So without further ado, I give you:

NEVER LET A LACK OF TALENT GET YOU DOWN: DEAD MAN’S BONES PLAYS THE TRIPLE DOOR!

Or

It’s the t-r-i-p-l-e DIZOOR, t-r-i-p-l-e DIZOOR, t-r-i-p-l-e DIZOOR…

So after the wine we made our way down the hill to Seattle’s famed The Triple Door for a show I’d been looking forward to for quite some time. I was a touch worried as I’d gotten a call the previous night notifying me of Ryan Gosling’s contraction of Swine Flu and subsequent cancellation of the band’s morning in-studio performance. Just kidding about Swine Flu (back off, TMZ) but he was supposedly feeling pretty sick which could in theory put a damper on the kind of spirited monster-rock extravaganza myself and the staff of Forever 21 were hoping for.

In case you missed my review last month — the Seattle show marked stop #8 of Zach Shields and Ryan Gosling’s “monster-ghost-love-story” for the masses in which each performance would feature a local talent show opener and band support from each city’s hometown children’s choir. By the time we’d found our seats (front row — thanks, Triple Door) I’d completely spaced the whole talent show thing and was in turn a bit surprised by the emergence of guitar-playing ghost MC — taking the stage to announce the evening’s participants. Now I’m not trying to sound like a jerk but the guy had a seriously thick, vaguely Latino ghost accent that made the mental notation of names somewhat challenging. The ghost was clearly talented — but not unlike the first few episodes of The Wire — I had no idea what the hell was being said until damn near close to the end the talent show. The pre-show entertainment was certainly terrifying — and not in the Halloweeny, spookadelic manner intended. There were only 3 acts (not 5-8 as advertised, but by the end I was okay with that); 2 of which had me flashing back to a traumatic outing with the parent’s to see Blue Man Group. What can I say, audience participation is not really my deal. Check that, not at all my deal. Neither is human-skat-jazz-poem-Tourettes-theatre. COME ON, SEATTLE, we could’ve done better than this. We produced Sir-Mix-a-Lot and Brandon Roy. Hell, we produced Kenny G and Doug Christie! As a side note: the first act, a young woman from the choir (ghost accent), sang, played piano — and was amazing. Stevie Wonder’s “Masquerade” never sounded so soulful. I was wishing for her return about 90 seconds into the second act. Shoulda batted cleanup, kid.

As Gosling and Shields made their way out onto the stage the sold out crowd let loose an odd mixture of screechy screamies and exuberant claps not heard since Blake Schwarzenbach’s heyday. One young lady even let Gosling know that she’d be drinking at Tavern Law after the show. He looked confused. To be expected, I suppose.

I have to admit I’ve sort of been wondering, since the release of their somewhat subdued studio album, how this would all pan out: for me the most stirring moments put forth thus far by Dead Man’s Bones have been in live moments (recounted via YouTube) of spontaneity — the vocal cracks, mistuned instruments, timing (unpredictably tentative and hyper) all mash together in a way that outshines an album of even the most hastily recorded/mixed songs.

Shields and Gosling clearly understand dynamic at play here. Accompanied by members of The Seattle Children’s Chorus the King County incarnation of Dead Man’s Bones at once harnessed the dark power of the unknown. As the band/kids choir (in costume w/ white-faced zombie make-up) made its way through their first several songs, it became clear to me that Shields and Gosling were subtlety shaking off complacency, switching instruments erratically, speaking to the crowd, directing the children, adjusting tempo, at times even surprising each other. Shields and Gosling rarely seemed to break eye-contact with one another. Clearly, these two were playing a sort of musical cat and mouse that kept the crowd and children guessing — this uneasiness fans the flames and makes inherently dramatic songs like “In the Room Where you Sleep” and “Lose Your Soul” thicker, richer and creepier live than they could ever hope to be on wax (no wax available BTW. WTF, Anti-?). Another high point was the hugely catchy synth-pop-stand-out of the album, “Pa-Pa-Power,” which saw singing, clapping and dancing in every corner of The Triple Door. “Dead Man’s Bones,” which honestly never grabbed me until now (theme songs always feel like filler), featured some of the most convincing crying I’ve ever heard — even Gosling was moved to compliment the kids mid-song. It’s amazing what a little impromptu theater can bring to a song.

I’ve got to be honest with you: this kind of thing — do-wop infused rock n roll theater — is not generally something I’d envision myself latching onto (I’ve been muttering the words “I’m not usually susceptible to shooby-do-wops” for weeks now), but by the time Dead Man’s Bones played their first encore song, “Name in Stone,” I was hypnotized by the perfect storm of organized chaos on the stage in front of me. The thing that really gets me about Dead Man’s Bones is the attitude. Never once did ANYONE on that stage stop smiling. It’s amazing to think about the potential brimming beneath the positive impact of each kid’s experience with Dead Man’s Bones. In their way, Gosling and Shields are doing for these children (12 local kids choirs) what was not done for them. They’re showing these kids what’s important: have fun first. Make music second. While the symbiotic nature of this relationship is clear, the band’s rejection of the mundane (see: playing the album on stage) and emphasis on the moment (random talent and structure) radiates above all else a sincere appreciation of those inexplicably pure feelings wrapped inside of music — the joyous discovery of something intensely beautiful, unique and fleeting.

I’m glad I got to be there.