The Bands @ Return of the Byrne: Leadville

Return of the Byrne: A St. Louis Fundraiser for Burn Your Bookes at the Schalfly Tap Room is only a few days away. (Thursday, March 11 at 7 p.m.)

In the lead up to the gig, we'll have a look at the bands who'll be playing. Today it's Leadville.

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"Don't try too hard, son/ You look dumb." (Leadville, "Shittown")

Leadville plays that good 'ol fashioned alt-country with intensity and panache. That's to be expected when you're essentially a Lou alt-country supergroup: Tom Buescher (Free Dirt/Fran) -- vocals/guitar; Larry Bulawsky (Magic City) -- guitar; Will Horton (Phonocaptors) vocals/bass; Michael Rose (Stillwater) drums.

The band released their first and only record, Time Kills, last year and garnered terrific reviews from local media and a nomination as "Best Americana Band" in The Riverfront Times' annual music poll.

The raves and nomination are well-deserved. I'm spending a lot of time with Time Kills in the run-up to Return of the Byrne: The weepy wonder of "On Your Own," the raggedy fizzy handclap country of the opening track, "Wheels," the smash and grab "Shittown" (quoted above) and a powerful holdover from Free Dirt "Pretty Songs."

The cool thing about Tom Buescher's songwriting here and in Free Dirt is its emotional honesty. Fran? Well, as one could tell from that band's essaying my own drunken behavior at state fairs in a song, the Fran always had its own thing going on that put a premium on absurdist humor.

But I digress. What I mean by "emotional honesty" is simple: There are few songwriters who tackle what used to be called the "honkytonk" lifestyle the way that Buescher does, with self-awareness, humor and absolute candor. These days, honkytonk tends to mean a bunch of clean and comped-out (and compromised) bullshit that are fucking line dance fodder. Buescher takes the honkytonk back to its true roots.

You can hear a couple tracks, including "On Your Own," "Wheels" and "Got Your Number" on Leadville's MySpace page. I'm very excited to hear them played out live!

I e-mailed a couple of questions to Buescher and Rose about the band a few days ago. Here's what they say:

Q: How did Leadville form? How is it a continuation/disconnect from what you've done before with Free Dirt, Fran and Stillwater?

Buescher: I spent a year in England from 2000 to 2001. This kind of took the air out of the Fran band. So I was bandless and bored in 2002. I ran into Will Horton, ex-Phonocaptor bassist, and we hatched a plan for a band. Mike Rose was available and interested, so we put the three of us into a band. Larry joined up in a few years ago, and expanded the sonic landscape of the band in a huge way. To me, Larry really helped Leadville turn the corner. I think we are a much better band with him. We do some versions of Free Dirt and Fran songs that I wrote, but these have been re-tooled in tempo, feel, and sometimes structure. They are now Leadville versions.

Leadville is an evolution of styles for me. Fran and Free Dirt were a sum of the members, as both were filled with songwriters and the set list was a near even split of songwriting styles. Leadville is a Buescher songwriting setlist.

Every band change has been a transformation for me. Free Dirt, Fran, and Leadville were complete line up changes. Playing with different people was critical to my growth as a song writer and player. Fran was a dramatic departure from Free Dirt, and Leadville is a similar departure from Fran. I loved playing in all of them, and I share a special relationship with all the people I've played with over the years. There are bits and pieces of all of these people in the songs I write today.

Rose: I was getting itchy and called Tom about forming a group, and Will Horton (of the original Phonocaptors) asked Tom about forming a group around the same time. It was weird because I moved shortly after calling Tom, and my phone number only forwarded for a couple weeks. Tom called back to say he was interested on one of the last days that my phone number was forwarded (and my new number was unlisted).

Q: What's it like playing music in the Midwest at this particular moment? The whole music industry seems to have undergone a sea change since I was writing music criticism: Much of that traditional infrastructure of the music industry has disappeared. Bands get signed off a blog or an mp3 or two. And yet there still seems to be some demand for live music and entertainment. Rock clubs haven't disappeared. What's in it for bands these days -- aside from simply wanting to make music? (Which for alot of people, is quite enough thanks...)

Buescher: We play for the sake of playing now. We've all got kids now, and priorities have shifted. In the past, we would have been pleased with a 6 week stint in an old van, but not so much anymore. I have become existential about music as a business these days. The excitement of a new song or a well done show is my reward.

Rose: While we're serious about the music, Leadville is pursued at a slower pace than Stillwater (and probably Free Dirt). So if we miss practice once in a while and meet at a bar instead, its cool. There is less of a rock n' roll agenda. It's about writing good songs and playing well, but it isn't as consuming as my earlier band.

The barriers to entry into the music business have lowered from their already low status. Recordings have gotten better, and the amount of people who will pay for an original work has decreased. One thing that hasn't changed is that people who are in music to make money are in music for the wrong reasons. I think for bands the 'joy' is being able to express yourself, and express what you love.


(Leadville from left to right: Mike Rose, Larry Bulawsky, Will Horton and Tom Buescher.)

The Bands @ Return of the Byrne: Three Fried Chamber Players

Return of the Byrne: A St. Louis Fundraiser for Burn Your Bookes at the Schalfly Tap Room is only a few days away. (Thursday, March 11 at 7 p.m.)

In the lead up to the gig, we'll have a look at the bands who'll be playing. Today it's Three Fried Chamber Players. (And see update below for rectification of vital omission of Roy Kasten...)

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At the risk of being immodest, I'm going to say that Washington University in St. Louis did a really good thing for the local music scene in the late 1980s when it plucked out a couple of applications to its English department and Writing program.

Yes, I was in that group of Wash. U students. Lured by the chance to study with Howard Nemerov, Don Finkel and (the criminally underrated) John Morris. Ended up running away to join the circus that was the Performing Arts Department and winning the first A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival with my first play, Untangling Ava. And moonlighting with The Riverfront Times as a music writer. (And now Don Finkel's son Tom Finkel edits RFT...)

Like I say, immodesty reigns here. I think I had a positive impact overall -- at least in St. Louis' music scene. In a John the Baptist way. Preaching hellfire and brimstone and alt country. Splashing water 'pon the believers. The Jagermeister and beer-sticky sneakers era.

But a couple other Wash U Englishers of my era have also cast big shadows. For instance, Theresa Everline was in Duncker Hall in that era, and eventually became one of the sharpest writers and editors at the RFT before embarking on a wide-ranging freelance career.

Two others have left even bigger footprints in the Lou itself. Dan Durcholz is one of the city's most successful rock writers. After cutting his teeth at The Riverfront Times, Dan's gone on to freelance at pretty much any rock publication and major newspaper that's worth taking seriously (Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Billboard, St. Louis Post-Dispatch) and has a radio gig on KMOX-AM. He's also co-written a book on Neil Young -- Neil Young: Long May You Run: The Illustrated History -- which will hit stores in mid-May and which you can pre-order from Amazon here. (Dan was also kind enough to interview me about Return of the Byrne the other day in STL.Today.)

Which brings us to the Wash U English student who's left the biggest footprint on the Lou: Chris King. He's done so musically, yes, with bands including Enormous Richard, Eleanor Roosevelt, Three Fried Men -- and the amazing Poetry Scores project. (Next score: New Missouri Poet Laureate David Clewell.)

But Chris' influence ranges wider and deeper than even the deep waters of St. Louis music. He is of course the editor of The St. Louis American -- which afflicts the politically comfortable and powerful leaders of the city and also garners awards by the armful. And his blog, Confluence City, is a good a guide to the artistic pulse of the city as you'll get from a single blog.

More important, Chris has made a home in St. Louis and been an incredibly positive force in the city's cultural and political life. If anyone comes to mind when I think of Chris, it's the legendary late 19th and early 20th Century St. Louis editor William Marion Reedy. As a journalist and talent scout in his magazine, The Mirror, Reedy kept Mound City at the forefront of the nation's cultural scene -- writing sharp political analysis as he was discovering and/or nurturing literary talent including Theodore Dreiser, Ezra Pound, Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, Edgar Lee Masters, Zoe Akins and Sara Teasdale.

Chris straddles the same worlds of politics and culture with Reedyesque vigor, wit and brilliance. So I was incredible honored that he agreed to organize a set for Return of the Byrne under the name "Three Fried Chamber Players" -- recruiting the amazing Heidi Dean (vocals/guitar); Tim McAvin (percussion) drum ; Josh Weinstein (double bass); Adam Long, (cello); and Dave Melson, (mandolin) to open the benefit at 7 p.m. sharp.

Chris sent along an e-mail (below) that links up this ad hoc combo with his past endeavors and gives you a bit of a preview. He's right that we've gotten pretty tight via social media the past year or so. It's going to be wonderful to see (and hear) this latest sonic experiment!

Chris writes:

I have been back in touch with Richard Byrne over the past year, thanks to social media.

We knew each other through multiple connections when he lived in St Louis - we were both Wash U grad students who became RFT reporters when Ray Hartmann owned the paper - but I've actually come to feel closer to Richard by following his much more recent work as a writer and reader.

I really loved the production Taffety Punk Theatre did of one act of his new play, Burn Your Bookes, when he posted it on social media; and when he said he was coming to St Louis to stage a benefit band show for the production, I really wanted to contribute.

Richard knew my music from my first band, Enormous Richard, which was getting its start when he was migrating from the RFT music critic to its media critic. I have done a few things with music since those days, but had nothing going when this opportunity arose, so I decided to put something together.

My most recent working band was Three Fried Men, so I tried to revive that, but when our most recent electric guitar wasn't available and we ended up with an all-acoustic lineup, I decided to change the name to Three Fried Chamber Players, which I thought might make people expect something more sedate.

Actually, I first floated the name as an excuse to sit down while I played guitar, but in rehearsal I have enjoyed standing up while I play, and the other songleader Heidi Dean stands as she plays, so maybe the name is moot, but it's our name (at least for this gig) and we are sticking to it.

The band: Tim McAvin, a guitar and keyboard player playing a primitive drum set for us; Josh Weinstein, on double bass; Adam Long, on cello; Dave Melson, a bassist playing mandolin for us; and Heidi Dean and myself, both playing acoustic guitar and singing their own songs, though not at the same time. Our 10-song set for the benefit is split equally between Heidi songs and my songs.

A disinterested observer, the artist Jeff Miller, who came to our most recent practice on Monday walked around the circle of the band as he left, thanking people for the music and issuing very classy, brief notes of praise to each of us. Here is what he said:

To Tim (primitive drums): raw
To Josh (double bass): rock solid
To Dave (mandolin): crisp
To Adam (cello): ebullient
To Heidi (vocals, guitar): a dozen birds just let out of a cage
To me (vocals, guitar): Daniel Johnston who is not going over the cliff.

That sounds about right at this point.

Update: Chris King reminds me: "Don't forget, Tony Margherita passed through WU English just before we did, and another peer of ours left arguably the biggest impression on the STL music scene if only because he keeps making it: producer Roy Kasten."

Ugh. I hate failing memory. Roy's been huge. One word: Twangfest. And, yes, he was a Dunckerite, though we did not hang out much in that era... I think I was well into theatreland (aka Escape from the Writing Program) by the time I got to know him. I had thrown over Duncker for the Drama Studio.

And I didn't even delve into Single Point of Light. Oy vey.

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(Image is cover of Enormous Richard's first record, Enormous Richard Answers All Your Questions.)

The Bands @ Return of the Byrne: Magic City

Return of the Byrne: A St. Louis Fundraiser for Burn Your Bookes at the Schalfly Tap Room is only a few days away. (Thursday, March 11 at 7 p.m.)

In the lead up to the gig, we'll have a look at the bands who'll be playing. Today it's Magic City.

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Nostalgia is cool and all that. (And we'll dive into it a bit more in the next few days...)

But one of the best things about going back to St. Louis for Return of the Byrne is the chance to check out a very cool new band like Magic City: Larry Bulawsky (vocals and electric guitar); Adam Hesed (Farfisa organ, electric piano, vocals); Anne Tkach (bass, vocals); Jonas Hamon (lap steel, trombone, mouth harp, guitar, magic); Sam Meyer: (drums)

I have to thank Return of the Byrne guardian angel Brett Underwood for turning me on to Magic City and asking them to play the benefit. The songs that you can check out on their MySpace page are slinky and muscular by turns, smart and arty but in a exquisitely seedy and noirish way. On first listen, you can hear the Jonathan Fire*Eater in the band's DNA (see below), but there's something more overtly vulgar and theatrical going on too. I think they're going to be a band to watch over the next few years because of their talent, panache and unpredictability. There are surprises galore in this music. If we can get them to DC in the next couple months, that'll be perfect... And if they do get over to Europe as they plan to do after their album drops in summer, Europe is gonna eat them up.

But let me allow two Magic Citizens -- Anne Tkach and Adam Hesed -- introduce themselves. I emailed them a couple questions and they were kind enough to shoot back replies with alacrity and wit. And did I mention I can't wait to see this band live? I can't!

Q: How did Magic City form? What's going on with the name?

Anne: "Magic City"! The name first appeared to us in a Man Ray silent short film that some of us were involved in scoring for performance with our friend Sherman S. Sherman. There is a shot in that film of the scrolling marquis on the top of the notorious Parisian club called "Magic City"-- a haven for queers, misfits and miscreants, folks like us. We have since discovered that it is the name of a huge, famous strip club in Atlanta, GA, among other things.

Adam and I were in a band -- Bad Folk -- that broke up in the fall of 2008. We lived above Hairy Larry Bulawsky (Leadville, Couch Bucket), with whom I had played several years ago in the Good Griefs. That part was a no-brainer, the rest has fallen into place over time, including our friend J.J. Hamon (Theodore) who wanted to play in a rock band and current drummer Sam Meyer (Wormwood Scrubs): Your standard incestuous South Side rock band...?

Pat Boland (aka Patty Bobo) was our first drummer, which made us a truly multi-generational band as he is the same age as Larry's son Beau (Exercise). He left us for The Conformists. He's young... awesome drummer. Sam Meyer was/is my dream drummer and we decided that we had nothing to lose asking him to join us. I am glad we did, as he rocks. One thing that is happening in this band is that Larry (guitar savant?) is focusing more on singing. Very exciting. His song "Animal Hair" is older than Patty Bobo.

Q: There's so much cool stuff going on in your music -- the organ gives it a real noirish, even Jonathan Fire*Eater sort of feel that's tremendously appealing, smart lyrics, and an artier (though exquisitely seedy) vibe going on that I haven't ever heard much of in St. Louis rock. Are there particular bands that you feel close to as influences?

Anne: Hahaha! Adam is going to be so thrilled when he sees question #2, he should definitely field that one. I had never heard of Jonathan Fire*Eater till I met him. He is a huge fan, lived in D.C. for a bit back then. I'd say JF*E, and especially Nick Cave are our more direct influences, though we all love a lot of music. Larry has been writing songs for quite a long time.

Adam: Anne was right, I am thrilled. I discovered JF*E (along with the Make Up and Delta 72) at a very formative time in my life and still they are one of my favorite bands.

I don't think that I disagree with Anne at all, but there are a couple of things I would like to add. Primarily, that as Anne and Larry and I were sitting around the kitchen table discussing what we wanted our new band to be, we all agreed that we wanted a real rock 'n' roll band without all that twangy stuff that is so prevalent in St. Louis, and at the same time Larry wanted to get away from the big guitar rock that he has often played in order to focus on his singing.

The idea was to have a heavy backbone of drums, bass and organ and to let the lap steel take the traditional place of lead guitar while completely stripping it of its twangy tendencies. These were the criteria that informed the forming of the band, which lead us to many nights of listening to JF*E (as you noticed), Nick Cave, and especially, I'd say, Johnny Dowd, with whom we hope to do a split 7".

We are in the mixing stage of our first LP and hope to have it out by summer when we will start doing some touring, and we hope to be in Europe next year.

(Photo: Magic City live at Off Broadway in St. Louis.)

The Bands @ Return of the Byrne: Free Dirt

Return of the Byrne: A St. Louis Fundraiser for Burn Your Bookes at the Schalfly Tap Room is only a few days away. (Thursday, March 11 at 7 p.m.)

In the lead up to the gig, we'll have a look at the bands who'll be playing. Today it's Free Dirt.

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By the mid-1990s, I was sort of burned out on what had come to be known as "alternative country."

I know, I know. It's a contested term. You could argue that everything from George Jones to Gram Parsons to the Blasters was "alternative country." Hell, I saw Mary-Louise Parker interview Elvis Costello the other night and she argued that Almost Blue was the beginning of alt-country. I almost fell out of my chair.

What I mean here is the particular wave that started with Uncle Tupelo and blossomed into the No Depression movement, named after the Tupes' first record. My burnout on it shouldn't really shouldn't come as a surprise. As one of the critics who helped boost the first wave of No Depression bands, I had done a lot of heavy lifting. And I was getting less and less enamored with the bands that followed that first wave. The edge was being lost. Plus, I felt like I was getting pigeonholed. I wanted to write about the other stuff I loved: trip hop, French pop, art rock, the Mekons.

The successes of Uncle Tupelo and the Bottle Rockets (who both signed with major labels) did prompt a lot of Midwestern bands to try and duplicate what they had done. The ones I gravitated towards -- despite my burnout -- were the ones that attacked the music with ferocity. Omaha's Frontier Trust are just the sort of band I loved at that point: furious tractor punk. The Waco Brothers, too.

In St. Louis, the bands who cut through the droning alt-noise for me in that era were Stillwater (more on them in a future post) and Free Dirt (Dan Niewoehner, guitar; Tom Buescher, guitar; Greg Vernon, drums; Dave Harris, bass). Their recorded output is a couple songs on justly-celebrated compilation, The Way Out Club, (which also feature the Highway Matrons, Johnny Magnet and the Trip Daddys among others) and an eponymous record -- both on the Rooster Lollipop label.

I had gotten a demo tape from an earlier incarnation of Free Dirt called The Maurys, but it didn't really penetrate my consciousness. The first time that Free Dirt really made me sit up and pay attention was a night at the old Way Out Club in St. Louis in the mid-90s. (I think it was Halloween, but I won't swear to it.)

They were pretty wonderful that night -- the band's songwriting chops survived and even shone through a sloppy but incredibly powerful set. And they sealed the deal with a simply devastating cover of Devo's "Uncontrollable Urge." I still prefer Free Dirt's version of this song to the original, and it was their version that stripped the uptight neurosis from the Devo version and revealed the spinal column of Led Zeppelin's "Misty Mountain Hop" at the core of the song.

That night turned me into a believer. The songs were edgy scenester odes -- slightly seedy, slightly sozzled and yet knowing and reaching for something higher. (That pretty much summed up my existence at that particular late 1990s moment.)

And as I dug deeper into their songs, I discovered a lot of gems that are still on my iPod to this day. Niewoehner's "Rude Pets" is a jaunty ode to his past bands that had ill-fated dreams of getting past the classic rock that dominated the radio of that era. Buescher's "Slippin'" starts with chiming chords that his voice grinds down as the lyrics pursue their dismal and fatalistic race to the bottom. And when Buescher and Niewohner's sensibilities collide on "Settin' Myself Up/Medicine," it's one-two punch of undeniable power: Buescher's world-weary ode to decline is carried on waves of chords and then surges into Niewoehner's deftly-painted journey through a drugged -out landscape and its insufficiency to cope with life's enduring pain. It's just terrific.

I've always regretted that I wasn't able to single-handledly drag Free Dirt into a bigger spotlight. They really had that mojo that gets you signed... especially in that era. Check out "Untie My Head," which is up on their MySpace page. This song came late in the band's heyday and while this studio version is terrific, it doesn't quite capture the transcendent version that they'd crank up live. I remember seeing them do it live in Belleville one night and it nearly took my head off.

No Depression magazine eventually took notice of them but my recollection is that Free Dirt sort of imploded eventually and everyone went on the pastures and projects new. So I am delighted that they are getting back together for Return of the Byrne. I saw them play tight, blistering sets and I saw them veer toward shambles on occasion, but I never saw them play without passion.

Can't wait to see that again on March 11.

Free Dirt (from left): Dan Niewoehner, Tom Buescher, Dave Harris, Greg Vernon

Uncle Tupelo: An Early Glimpse

If I was identified with any particular band as a music critic back in the Midwest in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was Uncle Tupelo. It's been fascinating to watch as the story of their improbable rise and untimely demise thickens into myth, and how Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy have forged incredible careers for themselves out of that wreckage.

I still get a lot of questions about those times from the most unlikely sources, but it's only rarely that I feel compelled to write about those long-departed days. (I wrote enough as it is, much of it hungover, and it's only fair to let the Greg Kots of the world have their turn.)

This is one of those times, however. A couple weeks back, I caught wind that a bunch of very early video of Uncle Tupelo had gotten onto YouTube courtesy of a gentleman who goes by the moniker PantsElderly. Tupelo fans will want to check it out. (It'll kill the better part of the afternoon, especially if you also like Son Volt.)

Among the videos posted were two that were of particular interest to me. They were recorded back in May 1989 at a benefit concert at the Soulard Preservation Hall in St. Louis, MO. It was the very first time I saw Uncle Tupelo, and it has an odd back story that also involves Chicken Truck (who later became the Bottle Rockets).

The situation was as follows: After a long flirtation, I had just become the music critic for the Riverfront Times in November 1988. I was writing a lot about local bands, feeling my way through the scene in my most hectic semester of grad school at Washington University. (In addition to the column, I was teaching two English composition classes, finishing my poetry thesis, dramaturging Wash U's production of A Midsummer's Night's Dream and then wrestling my own first play -- Untangling Ava -- through its production at the university's Drama Studio.)

The first great band I saw in St. Louis was Chicken Truck, who played the 1989 New Year's Show at the in/famous Cicero's Basement Bar along with Rugburn. They tore the place up with blazing metallic versions of the songs on their legendary Rosetta Stone (the so-called "90 Minute Tape"), and they were the first band about whom I wrote a long feature in the RFT.

Chicken Truck had really just started gigging in St. Louis, and I think they were a little stunned by the attention. But I knew already that they were an amazingly original band. They played their own songs. (Believe me, it was rare in that era of STL rock. ) They had a vision, too, however warped. Songs on that original 90 minute tape became staples of the Bottle Rockets' subsequent discography: "Dead Dog Memories," " Get Down River," "Coffee Monkey," "Financing His Romance," "Perfect Far Away," "Waitin' on a Train" and a hefty amount of the first two records.

But little did I know, however, that by writing about Chicken Truck, I had stepped into a local rivalry of sorts. Uncle Tupelo had also just started busting out of their little cubbyhole in Belleville IL, and they were already gaining fierce partisans. Which sets up the Mississippi River Center benefit show.

Because I was still relatively new to the St. Louis music scene, I relied on people at the RFT to help me sort through it all. And the impression that they left me with was that Uncle Tupelo was a Grateful Dead cover band. (!) Which was, precisely, the last thing I wanted to be writing about.

So the benefit arrives and I head down to South St. Louis. Chicken Truck was third on the bill. Uncle Tupelo was last. I watched the Truck rip it up and headed to the bar. That's where I was accosted by Steve Scariano -- a St. Louis musician of some renown himself in subsequent years with the Love Experts and Prisonshake -- who was one of the band's early believers. (Did he work with Jeff Tweedy at Euclid Records yet? Not sure. Whatever.)

Anyway, Scariano tore into me. It was one of those finger in chest diatribes. In sum, the message was pretty simple: I was a total dumb ass for writing about Chicken Truck and ignoring Uncle Tupelo. I remember feebly protesting. Why should I write about a Dead cover band? (And let me say here that I think Steve did very much the right thing. So much so that I started engaging in similar theatrics almost immediately. Though I have to give myself a bit of a mulligan. In St. Louis circa 1989, it would have made perfect sense for a Dead tribute band to have headlined a benefit like this.)

So anyway, I stayed. And you can see some of what I saw in this video, and another one here.

It's really rare, I think, that you can relive such a seminal moment in one's own career. I've told this story like, 300 times (including to Kot in his Wilco book) and to be able to actually watch what set me off into evangelizing for this band to the point of ridicule is pretty amazing.

All the legendary things are here: Shambling, earnest and yet incredibly intense stage presence. A brilliant, full-formed original song ("Graveyard Shift") and a blistering rethink of an already savage Creedence song. Jay's skull and crossbones guitar strap. Jeff's mama with a bowl-style haircut. And check out the 1:27 mark in the "Fortunate Son" video, where Mike Heidorn tosses up one drum stick, then another. Yikes.

It was all there already pretty much. I'm really happy that I saw it. And eventually Tupelo and the Truck became fast friends, to the extent that lead Trucker Brian Henneman ended up as Tupelo's guitar tech/de facto encore guitarist. But those are tales for another day.