BY THOMAS CONNER
© Tulsa World Scene One: Bailey's Bar and Grill, Round three of the Musician's Cup It's good to be out of the Oklahoma wind, though the club isn't exactly warm. A smattering of people — mostly band members who will play later — mill around the long room, Korn blaring from the sound system. The bright flash of the video trivia game is distracting. The refrigerator behind the bar has about seven Shiner Bocks in it. Long night ahead. First band up: Ester Drang. They're kids, or they look it. Greasy hair, ratty T-shirts, lots of grey and black. They set up — a xylophone? — take their places and begin playing without so much as a glance at the crowd. Great, more sad, shoe-gazing geeks. The set starts with a sample, someone talking, spitting out something and getting excited, though the sound is distorted, muffled. The sheepish red-head starts playing a light, dreamy melody on a Fender Rhodes piano. Drums burst in with a whack and a skitter. The shyest-looking kid in the world — black hair too short to hide his eyes, but still he tries — starts moaning into the microphone. A song has begun. Hasn't it? The drummer plays complex structure, the bass player, too, though the guitars, keyboards, eerie sounds flood the room, filling it instead of demanding their own space. It rocks, carefully. When the song seems to end, tinkling piano and more subtle samples keep the sound alive. A few people clap, then feel embarrassed. It's not that people don't want to applaud, it's just difficult to tell where one song ends and the next begins. It's thrilling confusion, and no one in the typically hard-rock bar knows what to make of it. Even the ones in back who started out giggling are now mesmerized. Several bands follow, great ones — grinding guitars, roaring vocals, good ol' modern rock. But when the last band folds and the four judges lean into the default contest director, the verdicts are swift. "No brainer. Ester Drang." "Ester Drang." "Yeah, me, too." "Who was the first band?" Scene Two: Bryce's room, one week later All five of Ester Drang are hanging out at the rehearsal pad, the bedroom of Bryce Chambers — the shy singer. It's an add-on to the front of a cookie-cutter shack in Broken Arrow, and it looks like an aging, decrepit set from a "VH-1 Storytellers" episode: orange carpet underneath the traditional, crumb-laden Oriental rug; gear stacked and piled everywhere, with cords underfoot; dusty toys on shelves; a couch standing on its end and leaning against a wall; a Teletubby doll, Po, perched on top of it; a box of Vivarin; the sole source of light a honey-pot lamp with no shade; and on the walls, other than peeling wallpaper — a bull-fighter on black velvet, a poster for "The Princess Bride" and a painting of Jesus with his arm around a young man, his head hung sad and low. The band, slumped in various seats, is talking about the reasons behind the mesmerized crowds at local bars. It's nothing, they say. "Around here, nobody's doing what we're doing. It's been done other places. We're just not copying what's going on around here," says David Motter. He says he plays keyboards, but he's the one who kept ducking under the decks at the Bailey's show, changing cords, twiddling knobs and plugging in new samples. "It's not that we're that good, we're just different here," says piano player James McAlister. They begin the requisite citing of influences, which is actually pertinent, for a change. They list a lot of bands from a wide variety of styles, the common threads being moody and ambient: Massive Attack, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and "emo" bands like Sunny Day Real Estate ("Although, it's getting cliche to say you're influenced by them," Motter says). McAlister even admits an admiration for the Beach Boys. (In the past, when he still went by J.J., he confessed to liking Toto.) Somehow, all these influences gel into Ester Drang's melancholy, down-tempo dreamscapes. "I don't think anything we've done to date is all that innovative," says McAlister, shamelessly modest. "We still have a lot more maturity to go through before we've created something truly unique. I'm just a product of what I think is cool. Any band is. Nothing you create is solely of yourself." Then bassist Kyle Winner nails it: "But it's not as much about creating a sound, it's more of a feel." Ester Drang is all about feeling. McAlister's right -- they're young and have a lot of growth ahead, and the band's current phase is very child-like. The music is purely emotional, concerned with sensory communication more than intellectual declaration. The band, in fact, is still learning how to control this subconscious exploration. The band's first gigs were on the local Christian rock circuit. With averted eyes, mumbled lyrics and no W.W.J.D. lanyards, Ester Drang was the Christian fish out of water. The members still consider Ester Drang a Christian band, but they try not to limit their expression. And they'll play absolutely anywhere, not just churches and sanctioned events. "Anywhere where the door's open and the electricity works," Williams says. Scene Three: Bryce's room, a knock at the door Bryce Chambers hops up, steps outside. Moments later he trudges back into the room. "That was a cop," he says. "Somebody complained about the noise." Everyone chuckles. "Man, we stopped playing an hour ago," Winner says. "Yeah, but you guys were playing metal. I could hear it. It was ungodly loud," Motter says, laughing. McAlister, typically stoic, seems vaguely perplexed. "We've been practicing here for five years, and that's our first noise complaint. Then someone adds, "People are taking notice." BY THOMAS CONNER
© Tulsa World Woody Guthrie "The Asch Recordings, Vols. 1-4" (Smithsonian Folkways) Like Little Richard was to rock 'n' roll, or Louis Armstrong was to jazz, Woody Guthrie is to American folk music — the clearest, deepest source. Humble, frank and amazingly prolific, Guthrie churned out more music in a 17-year period than some whole subgenres of pop, and the imprint of these tunes and these lyrics is still being felt. Smithsonian Folkways continues to enshrine America's roots music in valuable boxed sets and CD releases, and the label reaches its apex with this four-CD collection that, as a whole, sums up Guthrie's entire vibrant statement to humanity. Such a summation is no easy task, but Moses Asch was destined for it. The idealistic, workaholic record company owner could usually be found in his small office/studio at all hours of the day or night, and he had enormous respect for truly creative artists — whether or not they were commercially viable. In his lifetime, Asch was responsible for recording and releasing the songs of more than 2,000 artists, including Guthrie cohorts Leadbelly and Pete Seeger, as well as singers like Josh White and Burl Ives. In the spring of 1944, Asch met Guthrie — an Okie who'd been wandering the country much of his young adulthood — and was taken by his political convictions and creative spirit. For the next six years, Asch recorded Woody singing his songs and those of other songwriters. The sessions that survive comprise the bulk of Woody's recorded legacy, and this digitally remastered set may be the definitive Woody collection. "Oh yes, it's definitely definitive," said Guy Logsdon, a Tulsa resident and probably the pre-eminent Guthrie scholar. With sound archivist Jeff Place, Logsdon compiled and annotated these four discs, which were released separately in the last few years and are just now collected in one boxed set. "I read in a music catalog a while back, someone wrote about this that 'anyone interested in American music must have this collection,'" Logsdon said. "That's because Woody was such an influence — not just on folk but on rock 'n' roll, pop music, all the way down the line. He gave us children's songs that people sing and don't even know Woody wrote them. This is the collection." Asch became the source of Guthrie recordings because of his lengthy relationship with him. Guthrie's Library of Congress recordings were made during a two week period in 1940. After that, he put down the "Dust Bowl Ballads" for RCA, plus a few records for small labels. He took a hiatus from recording while he was in the Merchant Marines, and then began his most productive period with Asch. Those six years are expertly compiled on this set, each disc with its own theme. Volume 1, "This Land Is Your Land," presents many of Guthrie's best-known and best-loved songs, from the child-like fun of "Car Song" and "Talking Fishing Blues" to serious issues tackled in "Do-Re-Mi" and "Jesus Christ." Volume 2, "Muleskinner Blues," is a selection of the more traditional folk repertory Guthrie had learned and adopted as his own throughout his life, from "Stackolee" to the "Worried Man Blues." Volume 3, "Hard Travelin'," culls together the best of Guthrie's current-events songs, swinging between the World War II version of "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You" and amusing cultural trendspotting like "Howdjadoo." Volume 4, "Buffalo Skinners," looks at a side of Guthrie many might not have seen before. While compiling a complete discography of Guthrie's songs during a 1990 post-doctoral fellowship, Logsdon explored Woody's unheralded cowboy songs. In Logsdon's extensive liner notes for this set, he traces the development of Guthrie as a cowboy songwriter, starting with "Oklahoma Hills." The eventual recording of that song became a country-and-western hit in 1945, sung by Woody's cousin, Jack Guthrie. The success of that song inspired him to write more, and he enjoyed another hit in 1949 when the Maddox Brothers recorded "Philadelphia Lawyer." "Most people don't associate Woody with cowboy songs," Logsdon said. "Woody's father came to the Creek Nation as a cowboy, though. He worked on a ranch east of Okmulgee. He and his granddad were ranchers in Texas. In Michael Wallis' book about the 101 Ranch, he refers to Gid Guthrie, Woody's great uncle. So this fourth volume may come as a bit of a surprise to some folks." Guthrie's body of work is full of surprises. Those of us who grew up singing "This Land Is Your Land" in grade school and hearing about Woody the serious, hard travelin' folk singer are always taken aback by the depths to which his convictions plumbed, as well as his underappreciated playful side. Both are on parade throughout "The Asch Recordings." Guthrie even wrote songs to accompany Omar Khayyam's ancient "Rubaiyat" poem. Only a few copies of the recordings exist, and Logsdon said no one's sure yet how to sequence them. One of these tracks is featured on Volume 3, and it's a textbook example of Guthrie taking time-worn philosophies and trying to apply them to the events of his day. This set is, indeed, a must-have for anyone with even a passing interest in American music or American history. No other artist in the mid-20th century put down the issues, the angst and the joy more accurately and frankly than Woody. BY THOMAS CONNER
© Tulsa World Brad Mitcho's a tad edgy. Not that Mitcho isn't always edgy, but today he's unusually tense. His eyes are darting back and forth with that kind of caged-animal, cramming-for-a-life-altering-test panic. He only makes eye contact when it surprises you. The waitress at the Brook is wary of him. He's tripped her fidgeting alarm, and it's clear he hasn't seen the sun in a few days. "I'm freaking out," he mutters during our conversation last week. "I'm trying to get it all done. I come from a theater background, so I tend to go overboard when getting ready for a show." This show, especially. The pressure's on this weekend as Molly's Yes unveils itself as a major-label pop band. The Tulsa quartet actually will play two shows — Oklahoma City on Friday, here at home Saturday — to celebrate the international release of "Wonderworld," the band's first shot on Universal's Republic Records. The CD was due on shelves across the country this week. "Wonderworld" is a spiffed-up version of the band's debut CD, "Paper Judas," which was released locally early this year. In the hands of Republic, the album's sound got a shot of steroids and added an extra track. But the umpteen thousands of copies still read, "Produced by Brad Mitcho." Molly's Yes — the name comes from Molly Bloom's life-affirming monologue at the end of James Joyce's "Ulysses" — consists of Mitcho, bassist and what critics like to call "sonic architect"; Ed Goggin, a powerful singer with an unruffled eye on Bono's white flag; Mac Ross, a gifted guitarist with an ear for tone and texture; and Scott Taylor, drummer and, like Mitcho, a former resident of another Tulsa musical mainstay, Glass House. In three short years, these four have blazed a trail of glory that defines the phrase "meteoric rise." How high they will go remains to be seen. One thing is clear to Molly's Yes, though. The next phase of their promising recording career starts this weekend. Back home. Making connections Mitcho's been up nights working on "incidental music." That's a phrase that usually sends serious rock fans scurrying for the beer tent, but it sheds light on the way Molly's Yes makes music. They don't just make music. They make an experience. "The whole vibe of this band has been to take slick songwriting and apply the electronic element," Mitcho says. "The artists who have inspired us are people like U2, Kate Bush — people who are aware of the audio, video and theatrical element of a show." Indeed, when Mitcho refers to the "electronic element," he's talking about sight and sound. Saturday's hometown show will be a festival of carefully orchestrated music and video, thanks to the work and talent of multimedia designers like Chris White at Tulsa's Winner Communications. It'll be cool, Mitcho assures, but it's made a lot of extra work for him. "Computers can't jam," he says. "I have to create a lot of music to bridge the songs, and I have to represent the songs as finished products." Molly's Yes is not an electronic band, though they are certainly electronically enhanced. Goggin's emotional songs and plaintive wails are melodic, accessible and moving, and he says he writes on an acoustic guitar like any other rock musician. Once the song gets its legs, Goggin hands it over to Mitcho, who slinks into his electronic lair. "The most exciting part is when I write a song and give it to Brad, and then he goes and does his ... thing," Goggin says. "I can't wait to come back and see where it's gone and get to see this Frankenstein thing come out." "The first time Ed and I were working together," Mitcho says, "we were talking about all these things we wanted to do with our music, and we had the same ideas for loops and stuff. He kept asking, `Do we have the technology to do that?' Well, yeah, we do!" So began a year-long journey for Molly's Yes: the creation of "Paper Judas." Mitcho maintained his intense focus on the album every step of the way — sometimes to the point of obsession. Goggin is quoted in the band's new Republic bio as saying, "He would not settle for anything less than the best to the point where he almost needed psychiatric help." The result of the labors, though, helped the band score three nominations at next month's Spot Music Awards, considerable radio exposure throughout the state (no small feat) and a contract with one of the music industry's most enterprising record labels. 'Sugar' coated Effects and cool sounds don't make a successful record, though, and they (usually) don't land your band a record contract. The Molly's Yes song "Sugar" — which was the single released locally and nationally — is impossible to eject from your head because, at the barest level, it's a solid song. " 'Sugar' was never meant to be 'Brain Salad Surgery' (Emerson, Lake and Palmer)," Mitcho says. "It's not hollow. It's basically three chords and the truth." "The title of it makes it sound like a confectionery thing, but the irony is that it's about drug abuse," Goggin says. "It's a beautiful tune wrapped up in a serious issue. 'Tell Me the Truth' gets into the complexity of a relationship. I mean, for the most part, this is pretty grown-up stuff. To me, that's more subversive than coming out with the angry thing right off. It's like, 'Yeah, we get it already. You're pissed off.' "Of course, people like to corner you into being this or that. We've already taken flack for different things. People who know me know I'm not this bookish guy thinking heavy things all the time. But, see, Molly's Yes is a great name because that last chapter (of Ulysses) is not just a daydream about flowers, it's about everything, a whole lifetime of experience, of sex, of love, everything. It's about all that we deal with as human beings. We, as a band, can be all those things. Starting slowly After this weekend's hometown kick-off, the band's plan -- surprisingly — is supposed to lie low. They recently hired a manager, Scott McCracken (Lauryn Hill, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Spacehog), but there are no plans for Molly's Yes to tour extensively until after the band's New Year's Eve gig with Caroline's Spine at the Brady Theater. "Once the record hits, we're going to party here but keep it pretty low-key until after the holidays," Goggin says. "Every artist and their dog is coming out with their Last Record of the Century this fall. We're not going to try and compete with that, with people like Beck. It would be too difficult for a new band to squeeze in." So for now, there's just the party. Not only has Mitcho been locked up in his home studio creating cartilage for the show's transitions, but the band has been working and rehearsing at a fever pitch. This is the hometown crowd, after all. It's homecoming weekend. "People in Tulsa are looking to see if we've moved to that next level," Goggin says, "and we have a certain amount of gratitude to all the people who helped us achieve this, from all the media to the people at Christopher Sound and Vision to basically all the people who came out to the Brink every weekend to see us. We owe them something big." Molly's Yes performs Saturday at the Cain's Ballroom, 423 N. Main St., with Shaking Tree. Doors open at 8 p.m., show starts at 9 p.m. Tickets are $7, at the Ticket Office at Expo Square, Mohawk Music, Starship Records and Tapes and the Mark-It Shirt Shop. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Bob Newhart's inimitable bone-dry wit has tickled the funny bone of nearly every generation since his meteoric rise in the late 1950s. First came the hugely successful comedy records, including the Grammy-winning "Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart." He moved to TV in the '60s with "The Bob Newhart Variety Show" and "The Entertainers," the latter also featuring Carol Burnett. In 1972, he launched his television calling card, "The Bob Newhart Show," in which Bob played the ever-patient psychiatrist with an office and apartment full of oddballs. "Newhart" followed in 1982, moving Bob's deadpan delivery from urban Chicago to rural Vermont. Again, the kooks abounded, and Newhart's second series proved as successful as the first. TV Guide listed 1990's final episode of "Newhart" — in which Bob wakes up to find himself in bed with "Bob Newhart Show" wife Suzanne Pleschette, proving the whole second series to be a dream — in the top five most-memorable moments in television. The '90s saw a few more stabs at TV — the schedule-plagued "Bob" and the anticipated but short-lived "George and Leo" with Judd Hirsch — but Newhart's legacy manifested itself most brilliantly in a drinking game called "hi Bob" popular on college campuses. Every time someone on "The Bob Newhart Show" says, "Hi, Bob," you take a swig. He is, in other words, ground-breaking, pioneering, historic and responsible for numerous watermarks in American comedy. In recent years, Newhart has returned to his stand-up roots, taking his deadpan shtick to venues across the country. In conjunction with the homecoming celebration at the University of Tulsa this week, Newhart will be performing his old and new routines for a special show on campus. We caught up with Bob on the phone this week. Of course, conducting a phone interview with the comedian who made one-sided phone conversations high comedy raises interesting possibilities on its own. If you'd like, you can read only Bob's half. Thomas: You're at your office today? What kind of business do you have to tend to in an office? Bob: Oh, you know, signing autographs and returning phone calls and such. Thomas: Do you write material there? Bob: No, I've found that the best place to write is the bathroom. It's the least distracting place in the house. I imagine most of the world's greatest inventions came to people between the shower and the john. Orville probably sat right there and thought, "I wonder what would happen if we directed the air over the top ..." Thomas: So stand-up starts sitting down, eh? Are you enjoying taking your stand-up show on the road again? Bob: Oh, yes. I've always kept the stand-up side of things going. I can't imagine not ever doing stand-up again. Thomas: What can we expect to see in the show? Bob: Maybe one or two routines from the old albums, and generally my kind of observations on this crazy place we inhabit called the planet Earth. Thomas: You were a stand-up comic who landed a TV gig long before that was the established career path. What differences do you see in the way comedy finds its way from stage to screen today? Bob: Well, as this season has proven already, just being a stand-up comic isn't enough to guarantee the success of a TV show. Some comics have had great success with it — Ray Romano, Seinfeld, before them Roseanne — but simply putting a stage comic on TV isn't automatically the answer. You'd better be able to act also. The advantages to it, though, are that you already know how to time a joke. Secondly, you come with a persona that's already established; you don't have to spend five or six episodes explaining why this person is the way he or she is. Most importantly, though, you need to know the persona yourself. You have to be able to act as your own watchdog when writers try to make you say things you know your persona wouldn't say. Thomas: Do the old routines still knock 'em dead, or do '90s audiences have different expectations of a stand-up comic? Bob: Yeah, they still work. That's the weird thing. I've re-recorded some of the stuff from the first and second albums because I didn't have a hand in the editing of them, and they removed a lot of the silences in order to save time. In comedy, the silences are as important or more important than the words. I got to record them again the way I originally heard them as opposed to the way they were edited, and we recorded them in front of an audience whose average age was about 35. And they still worked the same way. The laughs were just as strong. Funny is funny. Thomas: Despite where you said you come up with your material, you've never had a potty mouth. Does that somehow date you among new comedians? Bob: When I started, there was a language barrier. That's been broken down. Some of the younger comics think that they'll be funnier if they use the strong language. I think they're confusing shock with funny. Seinfeld worked clean. Stephen Wright works clean. Jay (Leno) works clean when he does stand-up. I don't have a problem with the language, I just always have to look underneath it and ask, "Is it still funny?" Thomas: Much of your early routines are recognizable because of the phone conversations you act out on stage. That started between you and a friend, right? Bob: His name was Ed Gallagher, and he recently died, just two weeks ago. He was a smoker. We were both in a suburban stock theater company, and I was an accountant at the time. Just as I was about to flip out at the end of the day, I'd give him a call and we'd improvise over the phone. I'd tell him I was someone famous, and he'd interview me. He suggested we record them. It was kind of a poor man's Bob and Ray, and it wasn't very successful. Ed was eventually offered a job in New York, and I decided to go it on my own. Out of that, the phone bits evolved. Thomas: Are there any comedians out there now you think resemble your dry wit? Bob: Stephen Wright and I are similar in our delivery. I was talking to someone the other day about him. They said he's like today's Henny Youngman. I said, "Yeah, Henny Youngman on acid." He's so surreal. When I did "Bob" — "the ill-fated `Bob' " as it's now known — he was on. He's very dedicated. At some point during "Newhart," I was asked who I thought the next Newhart would be, and I said Seinfeld. It's that same kind of easy-to-live-with, non-pressured, laid-back style, and all those terms people use to describe us. Thomas: "The Bob Newhart Show" has been running regularly on Nick at Nite, which advertises its line-up as "America's TV heritage." What do you think of the idea of us having a TV heritage, and how do you feel to be a part of it? Bob: I'm proud of TV and what it's accomplished, and I'm proud to have been a part of it. I've done a couple of movies, but I prefer TV because of its immediacy and especially because you can do it in front of a live audience. Not enough shows today are done in front of live audiences. Laugh tracks are so transparent. Thomas: Specifically, how does the live audience enrich the experience? Bob: The audience teaches you about your comedy. We were rehearsing one week on "The Bob Newhart Show," and there was one line that (made me say), "Guys, this is not going to work. It's not funny." (The writers) said, "Trust us. Just do it." So I did it, and sure enough, it didn't work. Nobody laughed. I looked over at them, and they kind of nodded. The next week, they knew their material would be tested against that audience, so they wrote harder and looked better. An audience tells you a lot of things you can't find out with a laugh track. One was Larry, Darryl and Darryl (from "Newhart"). Once they showed up, the audience went wild, and they were only planned for one show. So right away we put a couple of more scripts together working with them, and they were a huge success. Every time they would enter, we'd all have to pause for the roaring applause, and the same thing happened every time they left. We couldn't have found that out with a laugh track. Thomas: Your shows always seemed to pit you, the stable individual, against this sea of nutballs. Was that a conscious formula? Bob: I used to tell Mary Frann (who played Bob's wife in "Newhart"), "If we appear to be crazy, then the show isn't going to work. We have to be the glue that holds this together because everyone else is nuts." For a while, they talked about spinning off Stephanie and Michael, and I said, "It isn't going to work. They're cartoon characters. They only work within the framework of this sanity." Thomas: Any new series in the works for you? Bob: No. "Bob" and "George and Leo" were such disappointments for me. When something doesn't work, there comes a time when you have to admit that it's someone else's time. I'm happy with the huge success I had. Thomas: Finally, I have to tell you: they're planning a big game of "Hi Bob" on campus before your show here. Bob: (laughing) With all the success I've enjoyed, I'm going to go down in history for "Hi Bob." For some reason, I was told that game started at SMU, which I kind of hope is true because it seems like such a staid campus. It's a real compliment to the show that people have picked up on that. We weren't even aware when we were doing "The Bob Newhart Show" how many "Hi Bobs" there were. The only thing I hope is that the players stay on campus and don't drive anywhere afterward. Newhart by the numbers Bob Newhart's first career wasn't comedy. For many years, he was an accountant — which, as he said, drove him to comedy. In order to calculate his indelible success as a comedian, though, here's Newhart by the numbers, courtesy of bob-newhart.com: Number of TV shows in which Bob has starred: 6 Number of those shows which incorporate some element of his full name, George Robert Newhart: 5 Number of episodes in his four most recent series: 378 Number of U.S. viewers who tuned in for the final episode of "Newhart" on May 21, 1990: 29.5 million Number of U.S. viewers who tuned into the cameo episode on "George and Leo": 15.7 million Number of Newhart's former co-stars who appeared in that episode: 13 Number of "Hi Bob" greetings in all 142 episodes of "The Bob Newhart Show": 256 Most in a single episode: 7 Number of personal Emmy nominations for Newhart: 4 Number of Emmy wins: 1 Number of Grammy awards he's received: 2 Number of weeks "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart" stayed on the Billboard magazine Top 100 albums chart: 108 (with 14 weeks at No. 1) Bob Newhart When: 8 p.m. Friday Where: Reynolds Center, University of Tulsa, Eighth Street and Harvard Avenue Tickets: $10 at the Reynolds Center box office or all Carson Attractions outlets; 584-2000 By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The star-studded Spot Music Awards show just added another stud. Dwight Twilley — premier pop-rocker behind such early hits as "I'm on Fire" and "Girls," — has been added to the bill of the Nov. 12 concert at the Cain's Ballroom. Twilley will headline the Tulsa-talent show along with the Tractors and Admiral Twin. The free concert that night follows a first-ever VIP awards ceremony honoring Tulsa musicians, presented by the Tulsa World and its Spot entertainment magazine. Twilley's performance at the Spotniks will reunite him with original Dwight Twilley Band guitarist Bill Pitcock IV, who hasn't played on stage with Twilley in nearly 15 years. Pitcock contributed some of his unique guitar work to Twilley's latest album — Twilley's first new material since 1986 — entitled "Tulsa." And "Tulsa" is beginning to get around. Recorded entirely in Twilley's converted garage studio in midtown and released this summer on the American indie label Copper Records, "Tulsa" was picked up just this week by Castle Music, one of the largest independent record companies in Europe. The company also has agreed to distribute "Between the Cracks," a CD collection of rarities and outtakes from Twilley's entire three-decade career, released in the United States last month on Not Lame Records. "We got the deal!" exclaimed Jan Allison, Twilley's wife, from the canned veggies aisle at the neighborhood supermarket. She and Twilley were huddled in conference. Big dinner plans were afoot to celebrate a record deal that could be the beginning not only of Twilley's long-overdue comeback but of the much-ballyhooed return of power pop in general. "Everyone's been talking about how power pop was going to make this big return, but it hasn't happened. These people at Castle are telling me they want my record to lead the charge," Twilley said. "They've picked up six other bands from these labels, too, with the intention of starting this pop revolution in Europe, where they're craving it. I mean, people are going crazy to get these records over there ... And if it happens in Europe, then it could more easily happen here. We tend to take our cues from Europe on what's cool." Twilley's been releasing occasional vinyl singles in Europe for about a year through a French label called Pop the Balloon Records. The label reports that Twilley's singles have been the most successful sellers in its history. Why is the Old World so mad about the boy? It may be the Elvis Factor: Twilley never toured in Europe. Like Elvis, Europeans have only heard the buzz about him and been able to buy records, but they've never gotten to actually see him. Thus, they clamor after the records with greater appetites. "From their standpoint, I'm just something they've heard about," Twilley said. "When I had big records here, the first thing the labels wanted to spend money on was a tour of the states. We just never got to tour over there. If someone had said, 'Go play over there,' I would have. It was only when we set up my web site that I realized how big my audience is over there ... The worldwide reaction to this record has made me go, 'Gah!' I guess I'd better get off my butt and make another one." Are there songs in the works for another record? He simply chuckled. "I always have songs," he said. "I could make probably two or three records without writing a single new song. 'Baby's Got the Blues Again' (a song on 'Tulsa') is an old one that was on the original demo Phil (Seymour) and I took to Shelter Records. I thought that was a quirky and bold thing to do, putting it on the new record. Funny thing is, that's the song that's been spotlighted in most of the press we've been getting. I look back and think, 'Well, hell, there's 13 or 14 boxes with more of those.' That's what I raided to fill up 'Between the Cracks' — which is titled `Volume One,' by the way. And, I mean, these songs seem to stand the test of time. I don't think anyone listens to 'Baby's Got the Blues Again' and says, 'Wow, that's a 20-year-old song.'" Twilley hopes to mount a European tour soon to capitalize on his new continental success, but it will take some work to put it together. He hadn't even planned on playing locally until the Spot Music Awards came along. "It was only because of this thing you guys did — paying some attention to Tulsa musicians — that I decided to play," he said. In addition to suiting up with Pitcock for the first time in a long time, Twilley said he's planning some other surprises for the Spotniks show. Namely, he said he'll probably sit down at a piano again, "which I haven't done in years on stage but actually did on this record." Mostly, Twilley said, he just wants to have a blast. "This thing is like a special occasion. It's almost a partyish atmosphere, I think. The key to the whole deal is just to have a gas so the audience is aware they can have a good time and see what these wacky Tulsa musicians are all about." Also on the bill for the Nov. 12 concert are the Red Dirt Rangers, Freak Show, the Full Flavor Kings, Brian Parton and the Nashville Rebels, and Republic Records recording artist Molly's Yes. Twilley's "Tulsa" album has been nominated for the Best National Album award, and Twilley himself is up for Artist of the Year. Ballots for the awards run each Friday inside the Spot magazine. The last chance to vote will be the Oct. 22 ballot. BY THOMAS CONNER
© Tulsa World The Norman club was a closet, anyway. The throng of collegiates, practically perspiring beer, willingly wriggled inch-by-inch through the door, compressing into the raunchy space and straining to see, to be seen, to hear what was going on. The typically laid-back Norman music fans were desperate, wild-eyed, clawing over each other's backs to see a band. A local band, no less. It was 1992, and the hometown Flaming Lips had recently signed to a major label, Warner Bros., and, to everyone's great relief, they hadn't sold out or lost their edge. In fact, they'd gotten tighter. Their Warner Bros. debut, "Hit to Death in the Future Head," focused and even magnified the band's off-kilter squeak-rock, its purposeful and orchestrated distortion, its kaleidoscopic lyrical visions. A bonus track even featured 29 minutes of stereo static. It was a Lips experience: enthralling, frightening, daring in its wizardry and sheer mass. When Steven Drozd's drums rolled and crashed on "Hold Your Head," it seemed that the world would end in that crummy little dive. The softest bullet ever shot Wayne Coyne, the Flaming Lips' de facto leader and chief sonic architect, finally got through on his cell phone last week. His voice was strained through the pixelized stops and starts of cross-continental cellular transmission. Somehow, it was an appropriate way to hear him. "We drove from Minneapolis to Seattle yesterday," he said. "I had some other interviews to do, and the cell phones wouldn't even work all the way across the Dakotas and Montana. I thought technology had invaded everywhere." The Lips are touring in support of their latest album, "The Soft Bulletin." It's their ninth full-length album, and it's the most fully realized, all-encompassing, masterful composition of the Oklahoma City-based band's 15-year career. The fumbling experiments in sound the Lips have conducted in the past three years pay off in breathtaking, sweeping rushes of sound — non-musical noises made not only musical but harmonious, delicate, emotional and enormous. Instead of the static guitars and loose-limbed rumble that supported the grade-A whimsy of the Lips' fluke 1993 hit, "She Don't Use Jelly," the songs on "The Soft Bulletin" strive for other sounds — plunky pianos, perky piccolos, nebulous noises. It's as if Coyne & Co. have mastered in music what poets have been striving for in print for centuries: the communication of the idea by invoking as many of the senses as possible. In modern music, though, Coyne said the range for that expression is quite narrow. "The music wants to limit itself," he said, crackling through the cellular relay towers. "Rock bands even limit themselves, saying, 'We'll play guitars and drums and that's all.' I've fallen into that myself in the past, and I kick myself. I use the analogy of painting. It's like a painter saying, 'I only use red and gray.' That's kind of limiting. Don't you want to use anything available to express your idea?" Gentlemen . . . press play Car Radio Orchestra was a Coyne experiment conducted in a parking garage during the 1997 South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas. Up to 30 volunteered cars, including Coyne's, were led up to the fifth floor of the garage and arranged in a certain pattern. The drivers were instructed to open all doors and windows and crank their stereos up as loud as possible without distorting. They were each given a numbered cassette, and when Coyne shouted "Go!" through his megaphone, they all pressed play. The first piece was titled "That's the Crotch Calling the Devil Black," a swirl of white noise and high-pitched sounds — different parts coming from different cars — culminating in the breathy gasps and shouts of a lengthy female orgasm. A second composition followed, full of pounding drums that reverberated endlessly off the concrete ceilings and floors like the bouncing ball on a screen saver. Swelling synthesized music and crashing cymbals crescendoed into manic madness, and three cars blew fuses. Setting his sights on sound Later that year, the Flaming Lips released "Zaireeka," a set of four CDs designed to be played simultaneously — the fruits of the Car Radio Orchestra trials. Fans around the country set up four CD players around their living rooms to indulge in this new experience in sound. These projects were not simply the ravings of a madman with a big budget. (Major record labels — which are giant, profit-driven corporations — rarely release the whims of a mischievous employee.) Coyne said he was trying to funnel his boundless ideas into the medium in which he and he band work. "To be merely imaginative isn't the cure we're looking for," Coyne said last week, his voice distorting now like the aural equivalent of a television screen moire. "I think of a million ideas, but I have to have a reason as to why this idea applies now instead of later. The space we occupied with other bands eight or nine years ago — the distortion, effects, no boundaries — that's been absorbed in the mainstream culture." "The Soft Bulletin" features numerous environmental sounds that have been squeezed, pitched and distorted into musical elements. Coyne was personally taken with the sound his freezer door made when opening and closing — "this great thud and sucking sound, familiar to anyone who's spent a lifetime grabbing popsicles." So he recorded it and used it as a rhythmic element. "You can make music out of these!" he said, gleefully. "We're building sounds out of insects and refrigerators and using them in a sophisticated musical way. Brian Wilson said, `I just wasn't made for these times.' I say the opposite: these times were made for me." Is it live? This meticulous crafting of sounds in a recording studio is surely innovative; this, after all, is a rock band. Rock bands tour, play concerts. How will we hear these fantastic noises when the Flaming Lips are onstage? Enter the backup tape. For the current series of concerts, the Lips are playing to a pre-recorded tape of backing tracks and some rhythms. This is not karaoke, though; unlike the 'N Syncs and Britney Spearses, the Lips use the backing tracks for our benefit, not their own. In fact, the current live show is another experiment of Coyne's: the headphone concert. Upon entering the hall, most concertgoers will be given a portable radio and a pair of in-the-ear headphones. Using an FM transmitter, the band broadcasts the backing track inside the hall, so listeners can hear what's going in the room as well as enjoying the more detailed mix and stereo spread through the headphones. "Last Thanksgiving, (our manager) Scott Booker and I were sitting around thinking about what we were going to do to present this live," Coyne said. "We don't have Ronald Jones (a former Lips member) who was a master at rebuilding things, but even for him this would have been too much. So I finally sat down and said, 'I know what we're going to do. We'll play to a backup tape.' " Some practice runs were scheduled at the Boar's Head club in Oklahoma City, but Coyne said he didn't like the way the live music sounded with the tape. He started trying to think out of the box — how could the band present live sound in some other way than sending their amplifier signals through a bunch of speakers? The idea for headphones came to him at breakfast the next day. "It's worked, and it's something people really do like," he said. "The sort of thing we present, it just gives the songs more impact. There are so many things missing when you're standing a few feet from the stage hearing 120 decibels. We're one band you have to hear clearly to get the full range of the experience." Music Against Brain Degeneration Tour Featuring the Flaming Lips with Robyn Hitchcock, Sebadoh and Sonic Boom's E.A.R. When 7 p.m. Friday Where Will Rogers Theater, near 44th Street and Western Avenue in Oklahoma City Tickets $16; in Tulsa from Mohawk Music, 664-2951 By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World 07/13/1999 Arlo Guthrie just loves the idea of this week's annual Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival. He's got only one complaint. July? In Oklahoma? "I know it's a real grand notion to schedule this event around my dad's birthday and all, but I kind of thought September would be nice," Arlo said, chuckling in an interview this week. Arlo Guthrie performs Wednesday night -- what would have been Woody's 87th birthday -- to kick off the second annual festival celebrating the life and music of the late Woody Guthrie. He'll be playing indoors and out of the heat at Okemah's beautiful Crystal Theater, at the festival's fund-raising starter show. Wednesday's bill also includes the Kingston Trio and Country Joe McDonald. It's certainly not the first time Arlo has paid tribute to his legendary folksinger father in performance or even on record, but he's been careful not to make his entire 30-year career one long torch-bearing ceremony for his father's music. "I sort of became a poster boy at a young age," Arlo said. "Luckily for me, though, my own success has made it possible for me to do both -- to sing my own songs and help keep my dad's alive. "If I was nothing but Woody's kid, that would be fine, but you know, there are probably more people today who know Woody Guthrie as my dad than know Arlo as his son. I think I just lasted longer in the public eye. My dad really only had 15 really good years being a public entertainer. I've had 30, almost twice as much. I've also had the advantage of living in a media-driven age, and because of that my record, 'Alice's Restaurant,' outsold all of my dad's records combined. I'm not saying this to have a popularity contest but to point out that the way things work now made it possible for me to support all the things of my dad's life without compromising anything for myself." Still, Arlo and the rest of the Guthrie clan don't jump onto every we-love-Woody bandwagon. This festival, though, organized by the Oklahoma-based Woody Guthrie Coalition, passed muster with the entire family. Arlo's sister Nora, who runs the Woody Guthrie Archives in New York City, has contributed materials and supported the festival. Woody's sister, Mary Jo Edgmon, has a hand in this year's symposium on Huntington's Disease, the ailment that killed Woody. "There are moments when events have a larger scope than just publicizing or promoting Woody Guthrie's name," Arlo said. "We've tried to stand behind things that are most valuable and meaningful and contribute to the things he enjoyed ... Not everyone who hangs a 'We Like Woody' sign in their window should have instant support from everyone else." Arlo said he was impressed with the way the Okemah festival tries to present the whole picture of Woody -- more than just the greatest hits of his music. In the same way, he said he enjoyed the "Mermaid Avenue" album -- last year's historic CD of Woody Guthrie lyrics put to music by British folksinger Billy Bragg and American alt-country band Wilco -- because it put into perspective other sides of Woody's life. "There was a time when folk songs were synonymous with protest songs. That's changing, in part because the way the world is now but also because we're beginning to understand that the songs of Woody and others were not just complaints about the world. They wrote about everything, a lot of which was pretty funny," Arlo said. "The whole focus of Woody's writings was that everyone is a regular guy, that people are regular people. The underlying philosophy behind all his work is that those regular people are just as valuable as all the kings and queens, that there's nobility in being a regular person." That outlook on humanity led Woody adamantly to support -- and sing about -- workers unions and some socialist causes. As Woody became a public figure in the '40s and '50s, these notions got him branded as a communist, a stigma that hung on his name long after his death in 1967. His home state was particularly slow in letting go of the old myths, a stubbornness Arlo sees as an amusing irony. "My dad was a free thinker. He was convinced that if people were left alone, they'd do right by each other. I find it difficult to understand that people who also find too much big government around them also are afraid of too much free thinking," he said. "I mean, that kind of irony gives rise to a sense of humor which is unique to that part of the country. There are places where the wind blows a certain way or the preacher speaks a certain way or the water tastes a certain way that gives rise to a certain way of thinking about things. If they don't add up quite right, you either hang your sign in the window or go on and smile about it. There's some of both going on there." After last year's lavish welcoming home of Woody's spirit -- involving the unveiling of a Woody Guthrie statue in downtown Okemah -- Arlo said he looks forward to coming back. He'll be performing Wednesday night with his son, Abe, who's traveled with Arlo for several years now, and his daughter, Sarah Lee, who started singing with Arlo and Abe last year. The travelling troupe has been so busy on the road lately that they haven't found time to mix the latest record, the follow-up to Arlo's 1996 album "Mystic Journey." Last year, Arlo and Abe went into a studio in Branson, Mo., and recorded an album called "32 Cents," a record of Woody Guthrie songs celebrating Woody's appearance on a postage stamp. The album was recorded with the Dillards, icons of bluegrass music (though you may remember them as the demented hayseeds the Darling Family on "The Andy Griffith Show"). Fans can hunt down more information on Arlo events at http://arlo.net. The Woody Guthrie Birthday Hootenanny featuring Arlo Guthrie, the Kingston Trio and Country Joe McDonald When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday Where: The Crystal Theater, on Main Street in Okemah (about an hour south of Tulsa on Interstate 40) Tickets: $27, available at all Carson Attractions outlets, (918) 584-2000 This post contains preview and review coverage of this annual festival ...
Free Woody Guthrie: a folkfest By Thomas Conner © Tulsa World 07/11/1999 After his historic performance on the inaugural night of last year's Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival, British folk singer Billy Bragg loaded up and headed south. His next gig was an appearance on public television's "Austin City Limits." As he took that famous stage, the first words out of his mouth were, "I just got back from Okemah. They're putting on a festival there for Woody Guthrie, and it's the coolest thing ever." The morning after that aired, David Gustafson's phone about came out of the wall. Gustafson already had attracted a good deal of attention by organizing the weeklong homage to Guthrie, America's greatest folk singer ("This Land Is Your Land," "Pretty Boy Floyd," "Deportee") and an Okemah native, but Bragg's public endorsement rolled out a bandwagon ripe for jumping on. "The word got out in all kinds of crazy ways, and after Billy's announcement people called from all over," Gustafson said in a conversation this week. "Artists were clamoring to be involved with this — and none of them get paid. That's not an issue, they don't care. They want to pay tribute to Woody in any way they can. We had to turn away a lot of people — big names, too. The future of the festival is bright." The clamor has boosted this year's festival to more than 40 scheduled performers, up from last year's dozen. An extra charity night has been added to this week's entertainment, and the Wednesday night kick-off concert features three of folk's largest legends: Country Joe McDonald, the Kingston Trio and Woody's son Arlo Guthrie. Last year's festivities — complete with the unveiling of a Guthrie statue in downtown Okemah — were inspiring on two fronts. First, the undying devotion of so many musicians to Woody's songs and legacy made clear how deeply the late singer's music touched the country's psyche. Plus, for the first time in decades, Oklahomans — and, more significantly, Okemahns — rallied around the Guthrie legacy. Guthrie's socialist leanings caused many people erroneously to brand him as anti-American and anti-religious. That turnaround in public sentiment helped to convince the Guthrie family that this festival was worth supporting. Since Woody's death in 1967, the Guthries — daughter Nora, son Arlo, sister Mary Jo — have been hesitant to stamp their name on just every Woody Guthrie tribute event. And there have been hundreds. "One thing Arlo's always said is that he's proud to be Woody's son but that he didn't ever feel like it was his job to carry the torch for Woody. He wanted to be his own artist. Now the entire family is saying that this is the event they want to sponsor and encourage," Gustafson said. "That kind of makes it official, and we feel great about that." Gustafson said he sees the festival growing significantly every year. Big names in music already have been in touch with the festival organizers to talk about playing in future years. Some may attend sooner than that. In January, the official Jackson Browne web page began listing the Guthrie festival on Browne's tour itinerary. Gustafson called Browne's organization to see what was up. "It wound up not working out, but it was left really kind of vague. Maybe he'll show up anyway," Gustafson said. "John Mellencamp is ending his world tour in Dallas on Thursday, too, and he's been made aware of the festival. Who knows what could happen?" An all-star start The second annual Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival begins Wednesday night in Okemah's Crystal Theater with an all-star concert that's not — as the festival's name implies — free. "Arlo said he'd be here this year, but he could only be here for the Wednesday show," Gustafson said. "We ran the numbers and decided it would be best to charge for this show and raise some money to keep the rest of it alive." Wednesday's show occurs on what would have been Woody's 87th birthday. Plus, while the MTV crowd focuses on the 30th anniversary Woodstock concert this summer in New York, this Wednesday night show reunites two acts that played the original Woodstock: Arlo and Country Joe McDonald. Arlo did manage to make a name for himself as a folk singer, scoring hits from "The Motorcycle Song" to his magnum opus, the raucous and rambling "Alice's Restaurant." This will be Arlo's first Okemah performance in a decade. Country Joe and the Fish rose out of Berkley, Calif., in the mid- '60s to lead the psychedelic movement in rock. By the time he played Woodstock, his "I-Feel- Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag" and his notorious f-word chant had become the rallying call for resistance to the Vietnam War. McDonald himself has had intermittent success as a solo artist since. The Kingston Trio could be credited with the success — or at least the polarization — of mainstream folk music. Once one of the biggest acts in popular music (in 1961, 20 percent of Capitol Records' profits was all from the Kingston Trio), the Trio's staid, party songs struck a chord with cheeky, collegiate America and led to a string of No. 1 hits, starting with 1958's "Tom Dooley." The enormous success of this group gave other record companies the courage to sign acts like Bob Dylan. The Kingston Trio disbanded in 1967, but charter member Bob Shane revived it in 1971 and has nurtured a loyal following ever since. Health-care hootenanny Thursday's festivities are an added feature at this year's Guthrie festival. It's also the day Gustafson is most excited about. "I don't know how to explain how cool this is going to be," he said. Thursday night's free show at the Crystal Theater will focus on Huntington's Disease, the nervous disorder that killed Woody. Shortly after Guthrie died in '67, several of his musician friends, from Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to Judy Collins and Arlo, organized four tribute concerts — two at Carnegie Hall, two at the Hollywood Bowl — which featured a scripted performance mixing Guthrie songs with readings from his writings and journals. Actors Will Geer and Peter Fonda narrated the shows. Thursday's show will be a re-creation of those performances using the original script from the Woody Guthrie Archives. "We've taken that script, modified it, added some of Billy's songs and will present it with about 40 musicians," Gustafson said. "(Boston folksinger) Ellis Paul got hold of some lyrics Woody wrote about Huntington's itself, while he was suffering from the disease. The song is called 'No Help Known,' and he's put music to them." This show caps off a day-long symposium on Huntington's Disease for health-care workers from around the region. "See, it's not just a music thing anymore. It's starting to stretch into an event of what the man was about and what his experience was rather than only the music," Gustafson said. Wonderful weekend The weekend, though, is all about music. Nearly 30 folk performers will be playing on the festival grounds from Friday to Sunday. National acts include John Wesley Harding, a British alt-rocker gone traditional and self-styled "gangsta folk" player; Jimmy Lafave, an Okie expatriate from Austin and one of the leading voices in red-dirt folk music; and the Joel Rafael Band, an acoustic quartet from San Diego led by exalted Native American songwriter Rafael. Numerous regional red-dirt players will be on hand, too, namely Tulsa's Brandon Jenkins, the Farm Couple, DoubleNotSpyz and the Red Dirt Rangers. More music will sound from a stage in the campground area, as well as several after-hours late- night jams in clubs throughout Okemah. "Some people will go all night," Gustafson said. "The celebration will be intense." Essential Info WEDNESDAY The Birthday Hootenanny Featuring Arlo Guthrie, the Kingston Trio and Country Joe McDonald 7:30 p.m. Crystal Theater, on Main Street in Okemah Tickets are $27, available at all Tulsa-area Carson Attractions outlets. Call (918) 584-2000. THURSDAY "Huntington's Disease: Caring for People in Mid and Advanced Stages" -- a half-day conference for health-care professionals Featuring Jim Pollard, HD expert 9 a.m. Crystal Theater, on Main Street in Okemah Tickets are $15, payable to the Huntington Disease Society of Oklahoma. For information, call Dorothy Hearn, (405) 236-4372. "HD: Woody's Greatest Struggle in Story and Song" -- a panel discussion of Guthrie's battle with Huntington's Disease and how it affected his life and work Featuring Woody's sister, Mary Jo Edgmon, plus Guthrie historian Guy Logsdon and singer Jimmy Lafave, Bob Childers, Ellis Paul and Peter Keane 1:30 p.m. Crystal Theater, on Main Street in Okemah This event is free. Hoot for Huntington's Featuring the Kingston Trio, Country Joe McDonald, Ellis Paul, John Wesley Harding, Slaid Cleaves, Joel Rafael, Peter Keane, the Red Dirt Rangers, Jimmy Lafave, Larry Long, Tom Skinner, Bob Childers, and Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer 7:30 p.m. Crystal Theater, on Main Street in Okemah This event is free, but donation opportunities will be available for the Huntington's Disease Society of Oklahoma. FRIDAY Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival 6 p.m.: M.L. Liebler and the Magic Poetry Band 6:30 p.m.: Brandon Jenkins 7:40 p.m.: Chuck Pyle 8:30 p.m.: Slaid Cleaves 9:20 p.m.: John Wesley Harding 10:10 p.m.: Jimmy Lafave Pastures of Plenty Amphitheater, in the Okemah Industrial Park off of Interstate 40 This event is free. SATURDAY Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival 4 p.m.: DoubleNotSpyz with the Farm Couple 4:40 p.m.: Okie Songwriters in the Round featuring Tom Skinner, Bob Childers and Bill Erickson 5:30 p.m.: Women Singer-Songwriters in the Round featuring Emily Kaitz, Anne Armstrong, Linda Lowe and Darcie Deaville 6:20 p.m.: Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer 7:10 p.m.: Larry Long 8 p.m.: Red Dirt Rangers 8:50 p.m.: Peter Keane 9:40 p.m.: Bill Hearne 10:30 p.m.: Joel Rafael Band Pastures of Plenty Amphitheater, in the Okemah Industrial Park off of Interstate 40 This event is free. SUNDAY Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival 1 p.m.: Songwriting contest winners 1:40 p.m.: Susan Shore 2:30 p.m.: Still on the Hill 3:20 p.m.: Don Conoscenti 4 p.m.: Country Joe McDonald Pastures of Plenty Amphitheater, in the Okemah Industrial Park off of Interstate 40 This event is free. For more information -- including directions to the site, a printable map and details on camping and available hotels -- look on the Internet at http://www.woodyguthrie.com, e-mail woody@galstar.com or call (918) 825-6342. Ellis Paul hangs onto the essence of Woody Guthrie's music and ideals By Thomas Conner © Tulsa World 07/14/1999 Woody Guthrie was a restless soul. He couldn't stay in one place for very long, and he wound up traveling all over this country -- from the redwood forests to the Gulf stream waters. He saw different lands and different people, the scope of which informed the compassionate songs he sang with a reedy voice and a beat-up six-string. Ellis Paul knows about that wanderlust, and he's thankful for what it brings to his own folk songs. "It limits your experience to stay in one place," Paul said in a conversation last week. "Woody kept darting all over the country. He traveled without any route. He went out to California and got the migrant workers imbedded in his perspective. He wouldn't have had that if he'd stayed in Oklahoma. He was pretty worldly, he hung out with a diverse group of people -- poets and writers and artists and dancers and workers and politicians and union leaders. That's the great thing about the creative lifestyle: you hook up with the whole, romantic rainbow of humanity. "I'm on the road a lot because that's the way my music gets out there. It's exactly what Woody was doing when he was around. It's essential because the majority of the airplay you get is in nightclubs in front of a focused group of people. I get some airplay on the radio, but the main drive for this music is the engine of my car." Paul, who grew up on a Maine potato farm and is now a Boston- based singer, is a compelling songwriter in his own right and a workhorse on the neck of his open-tuned acoustic guitar. His latest album, "Translucent Soul," was released last year on Philo Records, part of the Rounder Records group. He will be one of several featured performers in Thursday night's Hoot for Huntington's concert, a preliminary event at the Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival in Okemah. The show will re-create a Woody Guthrie tribute concert from the late '60s as a fundraiser for the Huntington's Disease Society of Oklahoma. Paul has won numerous awards -- seven Boston Music Awards, even the prestigious Best New Artist award at the Kerrville Folk Festival -- and the Boston Globe once hailed him as "a national folk star and ... the quintessential Boston songwriter: literate, provocative, urbanely romantic." "I don't know if that quote sums up me, but it sums up the Boston scene. It's a literate scene because it comes out of listening rooms rather than bars," Paul said. "Boston has always had a great folk scene, and it's one of the only ones in the country that's thriving. It's a real industry here. It may be because of the collection of colleges here, all with radio stations catering to this kind of music. Folk is a somewhat intellectual art form, a little more heady than pop music. You don't have to know how to beat the bars here. If you emerge from playing bars, you have to do tricks to shut people up, like using more hooks. If you're in one of these listening rooms, all you've got is you and your words. The hook and the volume are secondary. That's why Boston songwriters tend to me more thoughtful and soft." Woody wasn't exactly loud, either. In fact, his quiet voice is usually what made the biggest impact. Paul has the same thing going for him. His small tenor has power whether cooing or squeaking, and he said he tries to adhere to Woody's same songwriting principles. Asked what in his own music is inspired by Woody, Paul said it would be "a complete awareness of the truth and trying to get to the bottom of it every single time, regardless of commercial viability." "Woody was a painter more than a singer -- or a journalist, really," Paul said. "He was trying to paint a picture of where he was in the time he was living. I feel like that's what I'm doing. I'm trying to be honest and real and talk about what's important." Like most of today's folk musicians, Paul came to Guthrie's music by way of Bob Dylan. However, where others peered into Woody's music from Dylan's stateroom, Paul wound up leaving Dylan behind and embracing Guthrie completely. "For me, what happened is that Woody became more important than Dylan or anybody," Paul said. "It was someone giving me the Joe Klein book (a Guthrie biography) -- that changed my life. Philosophically, he was doing something very risky, and his life story is so tied into 20th century history. He came out of the Depression, went with the migrant workers, served in a world war, fought fascism and he had so much to do with what happened in the '60s. "Here I am in the '90s doing my music and being hit by the tragedy of his story -- the fires, the marriages, the disease -- and the fact that he wrote 5,000 songs. It was a ridiculous amount of creativity. Plus, he had that overall philosophy that songs are supposed to be something more than just entertainment. They're supposed to be informational and change the people who hear them. I was overwhelmed by him, and changed, and I'm still in awe." Country Joe asks, Where's the social reflection? By Thomas Conner © Tulsa World 07/16/1999 The music of Country Joe and the Fish is inextricable from the public protests of the Vietnam War. Thirty years after Joe McDonald and his psychedelic San Francisco band set the tone for the Woodstock festival, that war is still very much on McDonald's mind. We had the opportunity to pick Country Joe's brain this week, prior to his solo appearances at this week's Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival in Okemah -- including his headlining show on Sunday -- and here are some of his notorious notions: On the new, "improved" 30th anniversary Woodstock concert: "It's kind of a shame that they're choosing not to address the Vietnam War. That war was connected to Woodstock. It's probably the reason for it ... There's no effort at all toward social reflection. They're just still trying to make money off it." On how radical the original Woodstock really was: "The right wing and the left wing hated us. Our lifestyles themselves were a threat to the status quo. Just the fact that we were trying to have fun was a threat to both sides. Young people today don't realize that ... We were politicized as much as anybody, but we tried to have fun at the same time. That itself was very political, and it scared the hell out of people." On the legacy of the Vietnam War: "The war is what did it. We were raised to blindly believe that America and our leaders were always right, then they sent us off to a war that shouldn't have been fought and we were just slaughtered. We did what they asked us to do, and we were disrespected and spit on. We were hated 'cause we fought and hated 'cause we didn't fight. We're still hated. The whole Monica (Lewinsky) thing -- that was the last go-round for the conservative '50s generation that absolutely hated the changes of the '60s." On what his Oklahoma roots taught him about life: "My father was born in Sallisaw. His dad had a ministry and three farms in Sallisaw. So I'm having a little family reunion on this visit ... Dad grew up on that farm, and my grandfather was a Presbyterian minister of the reformed school that believed children were not born into sin. He was an agrarian reformer, too, who built dams and worked to reclaim the soil. Dad then taught me how to farm in California. We broke horses together when I was a kid. He had a lot of Oklahoma sensibility about him, and taught me a lot. I live in the city now. City folks don't know how to dig a hole or anything. They hire someone to do a research study on hole digging, then get a big-time university project to walk the dog. They're totally mystified by dirt and critters. I mean, they buy these big plastic compost bins. My dad taught me to dig a hole in the ground, put in the compost, cover it with dirt. That's a compost pile." On how he wound up at a Woody Guthrie festival: "I grew up with his music, on 78s, along with rhythm and blues and lots of leftist union music in the house. My parents were leftist and admired working people, and my music tries to reflect the value of working people and respect their struggle for wages and justice -- which is still an enormous problem, now on a global perspective. Woody did the same thing -- and how." On an old album: "I recorded a record called `Thinking of Woody Guthrie' for the Vanguard label, did it in Nashville with Nashville musicians back in 1970. It's all Woody songs. It's on CD now, and I'll have some with me at the show." On a new album: "I bumped into a guy with an English rock band called the Bevis Frond. We made a live record of Country Joe and the Fish music called `Eat Flowers and Kiss Babies.' It's an electric tribute to some of the old music, 10 classic songs. It's on vinyl and CD, and you can get it on my website, countryjoe.com." John Wesley Harding: Folks are beginning to talk BY THOMAS CONNER © Tulsa World 07/16/1999 John Wesley Harding doesn't confine his wordplay to his witty and acerbic lyrics. He's a right clever self-promoter, too. Early in his career -- back when he suffered barbs for sounding too much like Elvis Costello, as if that's a bad thing -- Harding called his particular brand of folk-rock "power folk." It didn't catch on. Then he called it "folk noir." No bumper stickers followed. Nowadays, he calls his music "gangsta folk," and this label may stick. "The term 'gangsta folk' got a little foothold in American culture," said Harding, a native Brit now living in Seattle, during a conversation last week. "For a phrase I entirely made up, there's a sticker on the Smithsonian Folkways box set that says, `This is real gangsta folk,' implying that there's something else out there, which must be me. It's like Burroughs made up the phrase `heavy metal.' So I thought, well, I'll be in the dictionary now. " 'Gangsta folk' simply reflects what I do as opposed to what other singer-songwriters do. I'm not a sensitive singer-songwriter. Ellis Paul (Boston singer, who appeared at the Guthrie festival earlier this week) and I decided I was an insensitive singer-songwriter. Any way you can position yourself, you know?" Harding, a featured act on Friday's bill at the Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival in Okemah, has made a career of being dodgy -- dodging critical whines, dodging record label failures, dodging the lassos that would rope him into various consuming classifications. Always, he has dodged what was expected of him. For instance, he followed up the acoustic concerts that gave him his start with a cover of Madonna's "Like a Prayer" and then two slickly produced albums that had more to do with power pop than power folk. Just as everyone had written him off as a Costello clone, he turned in the 1992 album "Why We Fight," a preview of the more deeply rooted folk pioneering to come and including a pre-O.J. indictment of American justice, "Where the Bodies Are." When we expected a real folk record, he gave us the '70s orchestrations of "John Wesley Harding's New Deal," and when we expected an innovative new musical direction, he gave us his latest record, this year's "Trad Arr Jones," an entire record of Nic Jones songs. Jones is a folk music legend in Britain and has not performed in public since a car accident in 1982. The origins of gangsta folk? You guessed it. Harding said it's Woody Guthrie, pure and simple. "Without a doubt, he started gangsta folk," Harding said. "The lineage of gangsta folk runs from Woody through Dylan to Springsteen's 'Nebraska' album. Those are the high-water marks. Its real origins are the old murder ballads. It's music with a lot of dead bodies, no flinching in talking about sex and reality, with freedom to write from your imagination. That's especially important. People don't make things up anymore. Everyone writes about themselves and their own lives. That started with the '70s singer-songwritery stuff. I guess, people were doing enough drugs that they thought their private lives were incredibly interesting. It's not easy to make that stand up, though. Someone like Loudon Wainwright does it and it's Guthrie-esque in its honesty, humor and brilliance. Now it's all mixed in with a kind of therapy-speak that's really annoying." Harding found Woody Guthrie the same way nearly every folk songwriter has: through Bob Dylan. Dylan's emphasis on Guthrie's importance led legions of aspiring troubadours to check out Joe Klein's Guthrie biography from their local libraries. Harding watched the film biopic "Bound for Glory," which he said he "didn't much like," but something in the life story of Guthrie kept pulling Harding in until a larger sense of the singer's struggle emerged. Other artists showed Harding the way to Guthrie's experience. He first heard "Do Re Mi" played by Ry Cooder, and numerous Guthrie songs Harding first heard performed by other singers. "I'm a huge Woody Guthrie fan, but I don't put on Woody Guthrie albums. I have the Woody Guthrie greatest hits, and I don't think he's even on that record," Harding laughed. "Woody's very important. He and Hank Williams are very similar in their influence in that you don't need to own a record by them to know that you love them. Their influence is that pervasive in everyone's music. You can't even say that about Bob Dylan. Many people don't know any Jimmie Rodgers or Hank Williams or Woody Guthrie albums, but they already love their music. That makes them more like Mozart than pop songers -- someone whose music is everywhere and in the minds of everyone, regardless of who's playing it." With "Trad Arr Jones," Harding tried to do for Nic Jones what Dylan did for Guthrie. Jones -- who Harding said "certainly would have been influenced by Woody" -- inspired Harding's own work, and he said he wanted to share the discovery with his fans. "It's music that really moved me that's not available now, and I thought it deserved to be done. It's my covers album, it's just that I decided to do covers by all the same guy. His influence on my music is massive, namely in the narrative tradition," Harding said. The label that issued "Trad Arr Jones," Zero Hour Records, has folded, but the CD is still widely available. Harding said he'll also have some for sale with him at the festival this weekend. Review: This folk festival is bound for glory BY THOMAS CONNER ©Tulsa World 07/17/1999 Arlo Guthrie paused during his encore of "Goodnight Irene" to tell us what a wonderful festival this was. Four hours into the evening, we already knew that. Then he reminded us of something else, something we needed reminding of. "You know, it's only in the last 50 to 100 years that we've let other people do our singing for us," Guthrie said, strumming his guitar. "We used to sit around the fire, whatever kind of fire, and sing these old songs together. These are our songs. It feels good to sing them. It makes us feel more like human beings." So we sang, helped ol' Arlo and his kids -- Abe on piano, Sarah Lee on second guitar -- finish out the song and end another goosebumpy kick-off to the Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival. He was right, it did feel good to sing aloud. Grandparents harmonized. College kids clapped. Mothers with sleepy babies on their shoulders swayed back and forth. For a minute or two, the faceless caution of the Internet and the pigeonholes of cultural classification all melted away, and we indeed felt like human beings again. Arlo, son of the festival's late honoree, wrapped up Wednesday night's Birthday Hootenanny concert at Okemah's Crystal Theater with trademark grace and aplomb. Tossing out songs -- a few of his own, a few of his dad's -- and stories, the trio rambled through an engaging set of humor and humanism. He played "City of New Orleans" (with a story about forgetting the words during a performance at, of all things, a Steve Goodman tribute show), "The Motorcycle Song" ("I can't believe I wrote this stupid song and made a living singing it -- for decades! I love America!") and "This Land Is Your Land." The next generation of Guthries heightened the evening's musicianship and all-important sense of tradition. Abe received a well-deserved whoop of applause for a gritty solo during "Walking Blues" and his crucial support during Arlo's fresh take on "House of the Rising Sun." Sarah Lee had one song in the spotlight, singing Gillian Welch's "Orphan Girl" with a chiming, crystal-clear voice. Arlo and Abe backed her up with soothing harmonies; they came in one-by-one, singing the chorus of "No mother, no father, no sister, no brother," creating a great irony -- a wrenching song about a girl who knows no family sung here by a girl whose family legacy will live on for generations. Wednesday's concert also featured the commercially legendary Kingston Trio. Still able to sell huge volumes of tickets, the Kingston Trio -- consisting of one original member, Bob Shane -- is an anachronism of the highest order. In their prime, they were a nostalgia act, white-washing traditional folk songs for a homogenous late-'50s audiences, and now they're nostalgic about their own nostalgia. Granted, there is a generation or two between this group's mystique and my understanding, but their bar jokes and impassable distance between their own experience and the songs they were singing made a great bathroom break. Really, these three soft, old white guys in crisp Hawaiian shirts -- like a cast of a gay "Bonanza" -- have never done any "Hard Travelin' " or they wouldn't be so lively and jovial when singing about it. George Grove, while a studiously talented player, looks positively goofy singing a song in the persona of a lovelorn Mexican servant. Shane's solo reading of "Scotch and Soda" was the one sublime moment in the trio's set -- a smooth, lush song anyway, and one in which Shane clearly had an emotional investment. The rest of the bright, cheery songs about subway fares and serial killers are better left to Branson stages with the stench of breakfast buffets wafting through the aisles. Country Joe McDonald started the show with a cantankerous kick. Still as feisty as he was when he played Woodstock 30 years ago next month, McDonald exhibited what 30 years of playing the guitar can teach a man. Not only were his lyrics riotously funny and biting (especially his "no-nukes `Yankee Doodle' "), the music he pulled out of a weathered acoustic guitar was rich and full -- sloppy here and there, but only sloppy in the sense of an intrepid player refusing to keep to the well-traveled path. "Janis," written years ago for Janis Joplin, rings with gorgeous chords and tender sentiment, and a slide instrumental, "Thinking About John Fahey," helped the concert live up to its title as a hootenanny. McDonald is scheduled to headline the festival's outdoor show on Sunday evening. Wednesday's show was emceed by Boston singer-songwriter -- and honorary citizen of Okemah -- Ellis Paul. He introduced the acts, shared stories about his and others' pilgrimages to Woody's birthplace and sang a few of his own immensely pretty songs. While the three headlining acts were well-established, Paul impressed the standing-room- only crowd, earning the most comments like, "Hey, he's good. I gotta get that CD." It's highly deserved recognition for an artist of broad beauty and depth. Another link in this chain Of the many lessons to be learned during the Thursday night concert at the Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival, there are two important ones. First, Woody Guthrie's music, life and philosophies are loaded with timeless moral lessons for everyone. Secondly, out of organizational chaos can come performances of soul-shaking excitement. Thursday night's free show in Okemah's Crystal Theater followed a day of events related to Huntington's Disease, the nervous disorder to which Guthrie succumbed in 1967. The concert re-created and amended a series of all-star tribute shows performed in New York and California after his death. What began as a confusing, impersonal concert eventually warmed into a right cozy hoe-down. By the show's end, it was a hot time in the ol' hometown. About 30 musicians, ranging in origin from just south of London to just east of Tulsa, took turns on stage -- frequently backing each other -- singing unique arrangements of Woody Guthrie songs. In between performances, Pryor school teacher Bill McCloud read from Guthrie's writings -- observations on life, death and all the uplifting fuss in-between. It was an odd and thrilling evening. The artists had received their song assignments sometimes hours before showtime. Austin songwriter Slaid Cleaves managed to learn all 10 verses of "1913 Massacre," and performed it with the necessary chill. Local songwriter Bob Childers had no idea what the words were to "Biggest Thing a Man Has Ever Done" and didn't have his glasses to see the music stand. In a flurry of high comedy, Red Dirt Rangers singer Brad Piccolo tried to feed him the lines, a tactic which produced lots of laughter but little music until festival organizer David Gustafson brought out Childers' glasses. When good musicians aren't quite sure what's going on but find themselves onstage anyway, marvelous things can happen. Such inspired moments came frequently from Jimmy Lafave's band, which backed numerous singers, and the Rangers, who were responsible for breaking the ice with their unaffected stage presence. Incredibly solid performances came from John Wesley Harding (a rocking "Dear Mrs. Roosevelt"), Tom Skinner (a heartfelt "Jesus Christ") and Joel Rafael ("Deportee" with more conviction than I've ever seen it performed). Twenty songs later, the entire group of performers crowded onstage and led the crowd in a religious, 15-minute "This land Is Your Land." Everyone was on their feet, clapping and singing, and the singers took turns on the verses, shouting and laughing and yipee-yi-yo-ing. Suddenly, another lesson from the festival was clear: Woody is alive and well, and as long as these songs survive, humanity's hope will never die. BY THOMAS CONNER
© Tulsa World Loni Anderson has discovered the fountain of youth. It's a delicate mixture of equal parts reruns and fan mail. " 'WKRP' has been running somewhere in the world since it went off the air in 1982, and I still get fan mail from all over the world. I'm getting tons from Germany right now, so it must be on over there. Some people don't realize how old the show is, how long ago it went off the air. Little kids write to me saying, 'I know you're older — you must be 20 -- but will you wait for me?,' " Anderson said in an interview this week. "I love that kind of fan mail." The TV show that made Anderson a star, "WKRP in Cincinnati," begins its run on Nick at Nite this week. The network launches the reruns with a five-day, 40-episode marathon beginning Monday night, unofficially enshrining the show as a classic in Nick at Nite's virtual on-air television hall of fame. The marathon will run each night this week from 8 p.m. to midnight on Tulsa cable channel 33 and will be hosted by Anderson, who played clever receptionist Jennifer Marlowe, and her "WKRP" co-star, Howard Hesseman, who played the incorrigible DJ Dr. Johnny Fever. Anderson said she's enjoyed seeing the show brought back into the limelight, though the series is no stranger to rerun ratings routs. The show ran for four seasons, '78-'82, and actually became more popular in syndication. Executives at CBS realized the mistake of canceling the show when reruns of "WKRP" topped Monday Night Football a year later. "I'd forgotten a lot of it — and how funny it was," Anderson said. "I laughed out loud, which to me is the true test of a comedy." "WKRP" was a smart sitcom set in a struggling Cincinnati radio station, which makes the abrupt format shift from elevator music to Top 40 rock 'n' roll. Though the music the on-air DJs are spinning is now called "classic" rock, Anderson said there's plenty for new viewers — like the young'uns writing her fan mail — to enjoy. "It's not dated at all," she said. "That's the interesting thing about the show. Hugh (Wilson, the show's creator) was so into comedy coming out of character and story rather than a referral joke to what's going on in the world at the time. The comedy comes out of the story and never gets old." Anderson almost turned down the role of Jennifer. She had come to Hollywood from her native Minnesota at the urging of actor Pat O'Brien (who later played one of Jennifer's elderly beaus in the episode "Jennifer and the Will," airing Friday night). At the time, she was married to Ross Bickell, who was called back several times for the role of WKRP programming director Andy Travis. "He had the script with him, and I kept getting calls to go in for the part of Jennifer. But I didn't want it. I thought the part was window dressing," Anderson said. "It was not the way I wanted to go, especially since I had just decided to go blonde. Finally, my agent said, 'There's only so many times you can tell MTM (Mary Tyler Moore's production company) you're not interested, so I went in to try it. "I was doing an episode of 'Three's Company' at the time ('Coffee, Tea or Jack?'), so they told me to come in on Saturday. I got out my soapbox to tell them how much I didn't like this character. I did my speech, and Grant Tinker asked me, 'How would you do it then?' I said I think she should be sarcastic and atypical. He said, 'So do it that way.' But it wasn't written that way, and I cried all the way home thinking I was terrible. "On Monday they offered me the part. Hugh said, 'I promise, if this pilot sells, you'll change.' And he kept his word. You can see the change from 'Pilot Part I' to 'Pilot Part II.' In the first part, I'm sticking my chest in Andy's face and calling Carlson (station manager, played by Gordon Jump) a jerk. Later, Carlson became my baby, and Jennifer became a real person." That was one of many battles Anderson would have to fight in Hollywood over the stereotype of the dumb blonde -- ironic since Anderson was a natural brunette until moving to California. "Before you even open your mouth, there's a look that happens. I didn't have to deal with that as a brunette, and it was very new. I made sure to do talk shows so people would see more than just the outside of me," Anderson said. Not that Anderson couldn't play a dumb blonde quite well. In the episode "The Consultant" (airing Friday night), the staff of WKRP reverses roles to foil a radio consultant with ulterior motives. Jennifer pretends she's the classic ditzy blonde. "I was so intent on not letting anyone know I could do a dumb blonde voice. I used it a lot when I was a brunette, but it was never a problem. After I went blonde, I didn't do it anymore. But I was sitting on the set one day, and someone made a comment, and I did the voice. Hugh said, 'Did that come from you?' I said yes, and he said, 'We have to do a show where you can use that,' " Anderson said. Anderson has played a variety of characters since "WKRP" went to static, most recently being the mother to the brothers in "Night at the Roxbury" and mother to Pamela Anderson in UPN's "V.I.P." Still, she remembers that first TV role most fondly. "We were such a family," she said of her "WKRP" co-stars. "We had all worked, but none of us had had much celebrity status before that, so it was a beginning, and beginnings are always spectacular. You always remember your first kiss, to have this be such a wonderful experience — well, we were very lucky." After this week's introductory marathon, all 90 episodes of "WKRP in Cincinnati" will air in sequence at 11 p.m. on Nick at Nite. Come together: Reggaefest more about togetherness than music
BY THOMAS CONNER 06/28/1999 © Tulsa World Whenever Tim Barraza speaks to me of Reggaefest — the annual summer festival he has organized in Tulsa for 14 years — the music is one of the last things he mentions. First instead are the crafts, the games, the people-watching, the food and the general good feeling generated by hordes of people coming together for peaceful reasons. Barraza loves and promotes reggae music because it doesn't so much merit its own strict attention as it provides a soundtrack for such congregating. The idea is simple: The more people that get out of their houses, mingle with their fellow humans and have a great time, the happier they will be, and a small but vital blow will have been struck for world peace. That seems to be the core reason why Barraza started Reggaefest back in 1985 — as a small street festival outside the nightclub he owned then at 18th and Boston. It's probably the reason the festival has grown so substantially over the years and why it has replicated itself in other cities throughout the southwest. Last year, the Reggaefest idea had begun to show some wear. By then, it had grown to fill the River West Festival Park and had become less of a people's event and more of a Lollapalooza-influenced cluster-concert — three stages, vendors shoved out of reach and one clotted mass of people who could barely move and interact. The ever-impressive series of performers were singing about peace, love and understanding to an audience that pretty much stayed put and kept its eyes on the stage. This year, there was new life in the Reggaefest ideal. This year, the two-day festival was back to its roots — in the street. The real estate brokers are right: location is everything. Reggaefest '99 took place for the first time in the downtown Brady Arts District, and the new digs serve the festival's original purpose much better. It was a funky village full of people to see and things to do. Booths selling sandals, shawls and shades lined Main Street. A full-fledged carnival — complete with games, rides, even a giant Ferris wheel — filled Main and Cameron streets. Vendors cooking everything from corn dogs to jerk chicken filled Brady Street with sumptuous smells; the restaurants and clubs along that street also were open, offering a cool (literally and figuratively) respite from the asphalt. In one intersection, the Lacy Park African Dance Ensemble along with the Living Arts drumming circle pounded the pavement with traditional dances and fierce riddims. Everywhere, men and women, black and white, young and old tapped their feet or nodded their heads to the music. There was movement, mingling and mirth. Oh yes, and music. Saturday's line-up onstage was as diverse and internationally renowned as ever. The Mighty Diamonds sang three-part harmonies as breezy as the evening, namely their hit "Pass the Koutchie" (Musical Youth put it on the radio in 1982 as "Pass the Dutchie") and a song that fit the festival, singing, "We got to live some life before we go." Mighty Sparrow brought his droning calypso to the stage, pounding out incessant, indistinguishable rhythms and slowing down only for an hysterical soca ballad called "Don't Touch My President" — likely the most intelligent and hilarious lyric inspired by the Lewinsky fiasco ("We have real issues to address ... let's talk about police brutality / don't tell me about no Monica mess"). Sparrow covered all the bases, singing songs about swordfish and even quoting modern rock's Bloodhound Gang in his finale ("The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire"). Pato Banton closed the show with a lively set of traditional and earnest reggae, pausing a couple of times in his set to encourage people in the crowd to greet strangers around them. See, Barraza is right. Even Banton admitted that love and peace and getting along is more important than the music. "That's why we have come here tonight in Tulsa," Banton said. The music is a bonus — Reggaefest is really about coming together and all the rest of that hokey stuff. Reggaefest in the Brady District makes that goal easier to fulfill than ever before. The crowd was significantly smaller this year, but Tulsa someday soon will get over its irrational fear of its own downtown and come together for street festivals like this. It truly is about more than good reggae music. A Reggaefest on Brady? You better believe it. BY THOMAS CONNER 06/25/1999 Reggaefest '99 hasn't changed much, really. The bill is still packed with international world music stars, and the peaceful vibe of easygoing summertime music is still as strong. Barraza's just moving the party outside his club again. "Reggaefest started as a street party, and this is a chance to bring it back to to that feeling," Barraza said recently. Since launching Reggaefest in 1985 outside SRO's, the festival has outgrown its original 18th Street and Boston Avenue location. Reggaefest has carried on in Mohawk Park and the River Parks Amphitheater. It's even replicated itself into similar festivals in Pasadena, Calif., and Phoenix. Barraza, though, has returned to the nightclub business. Just last week, he opened The Bowery at Main and Brady streets in the Brady District — and that's where Reggaefest will be this weekend. Downtown, in the street. "Reggaefest is more about seeing people and walking around looking at cool stuff and listening to great music. It's always been a street party at heart, even when it was in the wilderness," Barraza said. Barraza describes this year's event as a "teeming marketplace" featuring arts and crafts, exotic food and a full-fledged carnival including a petting zoo for kids. The one-stage line-up for the festival follows. Tickets for Reggaefest '99 are $15 per day or $22.50 for a weekend pass, available at the gate or at any Tulsa-area Git-N-Go store. Children under 10 are admitted free. Reggaefest International, 749-4709. FRIDAY Gates open at 5 p.m. Local Hero plays at 6:30 p.m. This group of Tulsa musicians has played every Tulsa Reggaefest in every location. One of the most viable reggae acts in the nation, Local Hero — led by Doc James, a Rastafarian Gentle Ben — continues to stick close to home and keep the reggae rooted in a city that really needs it. Local Hero's latest CD is titled "Rebirth," from Third Street Records. The Mystic Revealers play at 8:30 p.m. This Jamaica-based band is one of roots reggae's latest torch-bearers, producing a subtly updated take on the music that groups like Burning Spear have been churning out for a quarter of a century. They understand better than most the complex whole of reggae, and they don't concentrate on one form of it, like dancehall. They're supporting their latest album "Crossing the Atlantic." Lee "Scratch" Perry with the Mad Professor and the Robotics play at 10:30 p.m. Some say he's a genius, others say he's crazy. Everyone's correct. Perry is a towering figure in the world of reggae music, a monolithic madman who has more than any other artist helped shape the sound of dub and take reggae to parts of the world it never would have reached. He's one of the few reggae artists who sounds truly unique, and he's got the individualist personality to match the singular talent. "I am the first scientist to mix the reggae and find out what the reggae really is," he once said. He visits Tulsa's Reggaefest as part of his Cities Too Hot Tour, which beckons concertgoers with the slogan, "Burn down your offices, sell your assets and come with me." If Perry weren't enough, he's backed now by the Mad Professor and his band, the Robotics. The Mad Professor is a similarly unique reggae talent behind the boards; he's leant his production skills to the likes of the Beastie Boys, the Clash, Massive Attack and the Orb, to name a few. The combination should be explosive. SATURDAY Gates open at 2 p.m. Hyacinth House plays at 2:30 p.m. This on-again/off-again Tulsa collective take it easy on stage and mix up every conceivable form of music into their own heady brew — reggae, funk, rock and lots of Dead-ish jamming. Native Roots plays at 4:30 p.m. Albuquerque is not the climate you think of when you think reggae, but Native Roots hold their own in the desert quite well. Mixing reggae with a dollop of blues, this Native American band marries the universal love of reggae with a Native American respect for the earth. The Mighty Diamonds play at 6:30 p.m. The most consistent and long-running vocal trio in Jamaican musical history, the Mighty Diamonds deliver an achingly pure collective voice. Best known for reggae classics like "Pass the Koutchie," "Country Living" and "The Right Time," their arsenal is full of sharp songs and languid harmonies. The Mighty Sparrow plays at 8:30 p.m. Francisco, aka the Mighty Sparrow, has been the ruling king of calypso for more than 40 years. His first hit, "Jean and Dinah," was covered by Harry Belafonte, but his jovial singing style has been applied to more topical fare about regional politics than those trademark calypso romantic comedies. In the '90s, Eddy Grant's record label has been reissuing many of his vintage records. Pato Banton plays at 10:30 p.m. Patrick Murray, aka Pato Banton, got his start in his father's travelling DJ show. He captured his devloping toasting skills on a single, "Hello Tosh, Go a Toshiba," which caught the ear of fellow Birmingham, England native Ranking Roger, then building the successful group English Beat. A duet with Roger followed, as did an appearance on UB40's "Hip Hop Robot." Soon he was on his own, debuting with a solo album that featured Birmingham's Studio Two house band and an appearance by the "Late Show's" Paul Schaffer. His comic vocal characterizations won him his first notice, but soon he devloped into a more streamlined pop-soul reggae artist. His first American hit was a cover of the Police's "Spirits in the Material World." His lively performances have won him most of his sizeable following. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Dwight Twilley doesn't sit still. Even in his own home. He's sitting cross-legged on his living room floor, rocking back and forth, sucking Parliament cigarettes to the filters. Sometimes he gets up and paces behind the couch. He bites his nails like a new father outside the maternity ward. He is a new father, really. His latest baby is being born right here in this living room, on the stereo. It's Twilley's new album — his first record of new songs since 1986. We're in Twilley's living room in a nondescript house in a midtown Tulsa neighborhood like any other. The dogs frolic in a fenced yard out back. The neighborhood kids loiter in the front yard, hoping to find one of the box turtles that live underneath the property's massive, signature oak tree. There are no fancy cars in the driveway. Only the converted garage with no windows -- Twilley's recording studio — gives away anything unusual about the house. No one would drive by and think this was the home of a Top 40 pop star. "It's only when I'm out mowing the lawn and looking dirty and awful that somebody drives by and stops. 'Are you Dwight Twilley? Can I get your autograph?' " he says. That odd, windowless garage is where the entire new album was recorded. It doesn't sound like a homemade record, though. It sounds bigger and brighter than any album released in his three-decade career. It sounds as if he had a huge, major-label recording budget — or, as Twilley is fond of putting it, "We tried to make this record sound like we had a deli tray." But there was no caterer, no staff of engineers, no heady Los Angeles vibe intoxicating everyone in the process. Just snacks in the kitchen across the breezeway, Twilley's wife Jan Allison running the control board and the laid-back comfort of Tulsa keeping the couple sane for a change. In fact, the heady Tulsa vibe informed and inspired practically every note, word and sound that went into this new record — from the use of a recorded thunderstorm and cicada chorus to lyrics such as, "I gave a lot up for rock 'n' roll / I had a lover but I let her go in Tulsa." A quick scan around the living room reveals prints of Twilley's paintings on the wall, a Bee Gees boxed set on the stereo cabinet, Twilley himself jittering through his nervous energy on the floor. At least he's still got the energy, and at least he's home. The new album will be on shelves Tuesday. It's called "Tulsa." All roads lead to Tulsa It's 1970. Twilley and Phil Seymour have finally gotten out of town. The two had met three years earlier at a screening of "A Hard Day's Night" and discovered their musical chemistry, as well as their desire to practice that science far and away from Tulsa. In a '58 Chevy, they head east to Memphis. Driving down Union Avenue, they pass a storefront painted with the moniker of Sun Records. "Hey, look, it's a record company," Twilley says. He and Seymour walk into Sun Records and talk to "some guy named Phillips." They have no idea where they are — Sun Records, the studio where Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and countless others were molded, talking to Sam Phillips, the man responsible for their molding. Phillips listens to the tape of songs by Twilley and Seymour. He doesn't send them away. Instead, he sends them to Tupelo, Miss., to see Ray Harris, who says, "Y'all sing like (weenies)!" "We had no idea where we were, really. We thought Elvis was a movie star and that the Beatles invented rock 'n' roll. We heard this Elvis stuff and were saying, 'Hey, that sounds like Ringo,' " Twilley says of the trip. "It made an impression. That's what wound up setting us apart. Everybody else thought the Beatles invented rock 'n' roll, and we fused the two. "Plus, when we came back, we didn't sing like (weenies)." A few years later, after learning to blend the catchy pop of the Beatles with the backbeats of classic rock 'n' roll, Twilley and Seymour escape Tulsa again. This time they go west, to Los Angeles. Once again, they start shopping their tapes to record companies. "Leon (Russell) had started Shelter by then, and that was the last thing we wanted," Twilley says now. "We thought that was the stupidest thing in the world. Every club in (Tulsa) had someone singing like this — " and he launches into a wheezy, whiny Leon Russell impression. "We drove 1,500 miles to get away from that." Still, during the pair's first week in L.A., someone takes their tape to the Hollywood office of Russell's Shelter Records. Within days, Twilley gets a call from Russell's manager and label head Denny Cordell. "I show up at the Shelter office and sit in the little waiting room. The Shelter people are in listening to the tape and apparently freaking out. Somebody said, 'They came out here with a tape of 30 of these (songs)!' Denny walks out and says, 'I've heard your tape. Here's how I feel about it,' and drops a record contract in my lap. Then he walks out, saying over his shoulder, 'You'd better get an attorney.' That was it," Twilley said. "Then they sent us back to Tulsa." Inspired insubordination It's a chilly night early in 1975. Actually, it's early in the morning, maybe 3 a.m. Twilley and Seymour are toying around in the Church Studio (then owned by Russell) under strict orders from Shelter Records to get to know the studio and not — under any circumstances — record any songs. Maybe it's the hour, maybe there are stimulants -- regardless, Twilley and Seymour buck the orders. Seymour takes Twilley into the hallways and says, "Let's do it. Let's record a hit. Right now." Building on a groove Seymour had been tinkering with, and handing guitarist Bill Pitcock IV the riffing opportunity of his life, the Dwight Twilley Band records "I'm on Fire." The Shelter people will be annoyed — until they hear it. The single will be rushed out. By June it will hit No. 16 on the charts and stick in the Top 40 for eight weeks. For the next 10 years, Twilley's career will ride a roller-coaster of fame and frustration, scoring another Top 10 hit in 1984 with "Girls" and settling him into life in L.A. The prodigal star Fast-forward to November 1996. I'm at Caz's in the Brady District, checking out the latest band to be graced by Bill Padgett's thundering drums, a now-defunct act called Buick MacKane. The singer, Brandon McGovern, moved from Memphis to Tulsa just to be near Phil Seymour, who had died from cancer a few years earlier. The influence rings in every sweetened, Beatlesque chord. Buick MacKane is the opener tonight. The main act is Dwight Twilley. Most in the audience remember Dwight, after all, he had some hits. Those still new to the Tulsa scene probably don't realize he was a Tulsan, much less that he's back in town. But the crowd is willing to give his set a listen. When Twilley walkes into the bar — feathered hair, sloganeering buttons on his lapel — he turns heads not with the ghosts of his good looks but with an intangible aura of a superstar. His set on the floor of this tiny shotgun bar was bigger and stronger than any other local show in recent memory, and the songs were gorgeous, crystalline, catchy as hell. What on earth was he doing back here? "After the earthquake ('94, in California), the insurance people said we'd have to move out of the house to fix it and then move back in," said Twilley's wife, Jan Allison. "Dwight looked at me and started singing, 'Take me back to Tulsa . . .'" Weary of the literal and figurative shake, rattle and roll of the L.A. lifestyle, Twilley and Allison moved back in '94. Twilley wasn't retiring. In fact, quite the contrary — he planned to finally record a new album right away. "But with fax machines and Fed-Ex, you don't need to live in the big business centers anymore," Twilley said. "I wanted to come home." 'I'm Back Again' Before Twilley and Allison premiere the new record, Twilley shows off his home studio. It's a masterfully rehabilitated garage, an immaculate studio and a small drum room; set into the door between them is a porthole from the Church Studio. He points out a few pieces of equipment used in the recording, and talks about how many favors he cashed in to lure old Dwight Twilley cronies out to play on yet another record — original guitarist Bill Pitcock, noted local axmen Pat Savage and Tom Hanford, original Dwight Twilley Band drummer Jerry Naifeh, Nashville Rebels bassist Dave White and drummer Bill Padgett, among others. "I used up every favor, burned every bridge. There's guys who won't return my calls anymore," Twilley says. But he doesn't seem to regret the effort. He's very proud of the results and is quite sure that his moving back to Tulsa was a great career move. "This record wouldn't have been possible without the incredible musicianship in this town," he says. "I've always said that Tulsa musicians are the best in the world because they have to work so damn hard, harder than anywhere else. That was part of why I moved back. I wanted a band of Tulsa musicians again . . . and I feel a real sense of accomplishment that I've made a new Dwight Twilley record here in Tulsa." "Tulsa" will be released Tuesday by a Texas-based independent label, Copper Records. It's the first new Twilley record to hit shelves in 13 years, the first recorded in Tulsa in two decades. A CD collection of rarities and outtakes will follow later in the summer from a different label. A new Twilley single — 7-inch vinyl, no less — is the current best-seller for a French indie. Twilley classics have popped up on every "power pop" collection worth its salt in the last three years. Twilley just doesn't sit still — especially when he's home. Between the cracks By Thomas Conner © Tulsa World Twilley's latest salvo includes not one but two new CDs. In addition to the album of new songs, "Tulsa," Twilley soon will release a CD called "Between the Cracks, Vol. 1." It's a collection of rarities, demos and outtakes from the early '70s to the present. Twilley is an extensive archivist of his personal exploits, and he's saved nearly everything he's recorded on his own and with the Dwight Twilley Band. "Between the Cracks" features several gems from this collection, including several tracks from "The Luck" album, which was never released. There's also a demo of a song from about 1973 featuring just Twilley and a piano. "Between the Cracks" will be released by Not Lame Records in Colorado. For more information on Twilley recordings, look to his website at http://members.aol.com/Twillex. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey "Welcome Home" (Accurate) I started my musical explorations thinking Al Jarreau was a great jazz singer, and there was a time in my life, I confess, when I assumed Thelonious Monk must have been a religious philosopher. Two things turned me around to the Way of Things: I heard my first Charles Mingus record, and I saw the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey live at Eclipse. Then, I understood jazz. Mingus is long gone, but the Jacob Fred boys are very much alive. In fact, never have I seen a band that is more alive — growing, breathing, reacting, adapting, affecting the world around it. No longer establishing themselves as well-trained hot-shots (the first album, "Live at the Lincoln Continental") or attempting to obliterate the restraints of that training (the second album, "Live in Tokyo"), this third recording — the band's national debut -- finally lives up to the band's name. This is a musical experience that's not just a little escapist vacation, it's an odyssey — an intrepid voyage through unfamiliar territory, a hike through strange and exciting sounds, chords and free-thinking. It's another live album, too, as all Jacob Fred CDs have been. The band tried to record a studio record, but it couldn't be done. Local knob-twiddler and punk veteran Martin Halstead was certainly up to the task, but the mojo wasn't working. The unpredictable nature of Jacob Fred's collective improvisations is something that can't be easily pinned down in a studio, and Halstead has called the studio work, with no malice, the "sessions from hell." Two tracks on "Welcome Home" survive from those hellish hours: "Stomp," a quaint homage to the garbage can-weilding stage dancers, sung by drummer Sean Layton in his best Leon Redbone drawl, and "Road to Emmaus," a moving ballad written and led by trumpeter Kyle Wright. Closing this album with a reference to Christ's rising from the dead and chatting with two guys who didn't recognize his glory is somehow ironic coming from a band of immensely talented musicians who've been killing themselves for five years in Tulsa's tough local scene in hopes of ascending to their rightful place in the musical pantheon. (Wright has also written a 20-page piece based on the Creation. Hadyn, shmadyn.) The seven sermons leading up to the righteous postlude are soulful, indeed. All but the two studio tracks were captured in two performances at Tulsa's Club One, and they show a band that has grown into its own not by emulating anyone but by focusing intently on each player's gifts. The normal pattern for a jazz song is to lay down the riff, then let each player take turns soloing. In songs like "Seven Inch Six" and "MMW," Jacob Fred lays down the riff with horns, but instead of jumping right into the ego-feeding solos, they slowly and carefully build a song, wrapping some of Brian Haas' unusually tempered and dreamy keyboards and Reed Mathis' loping bass around before opening the floor to hot-shots. And guitarist Dove McHargue is definitely a hot-shot, bending the strings during "MMW" with such strength and control he almost makes the thing talk. For evidence of the band's peaking compositional brilliance, look to both "Mountain Scream," a carefully constructed atmospheric joyride that winds up a breezy Latin dance, and the title track, an on-the-spot completely improvised song that sounds like a carefully written and labored-over gem. Controlled chaos is this band's specialty, and that, I know now, is jazz. Real jazz. Amen. BY THOMAS CONNER
© Tulsa World A couple of weekends ago, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey played a handful of Tulsa gigs in which they barely included any of the songs on their new album, "Welcome Home," released this week. "We did three sets of all new material except two from 'Welcome Home,' " said keyboardist Brian Haas. "We've just got that much new stuff. It just keeps coming." That kind of spirit and production rate after five hard years together as Tulsa's most unique jazz-funk fusion band is what impressed Russ Gershon to sign the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey to his independent record label. "It boggles my mind that this group has held together, playing mainly with each other and evolving as a group as opposed to going off to the big city and playing with hot shots," said Gershon, head of Massachusetts-based Accurate Records. "These guys stuck together and pulled it up to a really high level without losing a sense of fun." The seven members of Jacob Fred started sending tapes of their music to Accurate about four years ago. The first Medeski, Martin and Wood album — a band to whom Jacob Fred is frequently compared — was released on Accurate, so that seemed like a logical place to start. Gershon has his own innovative band called the Either Orchestra, and he picked up on the band's outstanding sound. "It was just odd enough," Gershon said of hearing Jacob Fred's first self-produced CD, "Live at the Lincoln Continental." "Of all the tapes that are sent to me, I listened to this one. I liked it. It had great energy. I called them back — or maybe Brian called me — and they sent me another one. It was even better. We talked about what was next for them, and I said I'd put the next one out." As a musician himself, Gershon said he appreciates the band's efforts to keep jazz interesting and dangerous. "They have such a sense of abandon, which is very important these days," Gershon said. "You hear a lot of jazz-funk that's trying to sound tight and just sounds dry. These guys are loose as free improvisors. They have fun when they're playing. There's a lot of music where people are too damn serious — not about their efforts but their message. These guys' message is that you can be a serious player and still have fun. In fact, it's better to have fun because that's the only way a musician can survive. Having fun doesn't mean you have to be sloppy musician. Jacob Fred has a looseness I associate with my early Miles Davis records." "Welcome Home" hit shelves across the country on Tuesday. Accurate's other credits include the first Morphine album, as well as six CDs for the Either Orchestra. Jacob Fred plays a show Thursday at Club One to celebrate the CD release. Earlier reports noted a cover charge for the show, but admission will be free. Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey When: 9 p.m. Thursday Where: Club One, 3200 Riverside Drive in the Place One apartment complex Tickets: No cover charge BY THOMAS CONNER
© Tulsa World There's an element of jazz — real jazz — that's rarely discussed at charity benefit galas and music company board meetings. You won't hear it in much of the music masquerading as jazz — not lounge, not swing, certainly not "smooth jazz." It's psychedelia. You might only have heard the term applied to rock 'n' roll — the droning, sitar-drenched stuff from the late '60s. But while psychedelic rock 'n' roll tried to blast open the doors of perception, inventive and free jazz tries to create its own keys. Creative bandleaders such as Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk, as well as sonic pioneers from Ornette Coleman to Cecil Taylor, pushed the boundaries of music back to expose new ways of producing and perceiving the music, new vistas of expression, undiscovered countries. More dopey-eyed people said, "Wow, man," at a righteous Mingus performance than any Captain Beefheart show. The music of Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey is an excellent reminder of this. Built on firm foundations of traditional jazz, funk and even rock, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey often bounds off on enthralling collective improvisations, and the result is often very "Wow, man." "Jazz has always been psychedelic," said Brian Haas, the band's own Master of Space of Time behind the Fender Rhodes keyboard. "Psychedelic — that is, activating the psyche, dealing with the intangible instead of the tangible," added Reed Mathis, Jacob Fred's bass player. Besides being a seven-piece group of well-trained musicians, mostly from the esteemed jazz program at the University of Tulsa, Jacob Fred's music often receives more comparisons to fringe rockers than the jazz artists in which the band's innovative creations are so rooted. "Even more than Medeski, Martin and Wood, the comparison we hear most is Frank Zappa," said trombone player Matt Leland, son of local keyboard wiz Mike Leland. "Mostly that means they're saying, 'Whoa, that's really out there.' Zappa's probably the only really crazy music they've ever heard." More exploratory listeners will have the chance this week to hear Jacob Fred's brand of crazy music. The Tulsa-based tribe releases its third CD, "Welcome Home," via a Massachusetts-based independent record label, Accurate Records. The label distributes its records nationally through the Warner Bros. Records network, meaning "Welcome Home" should be available at any record outlet coast-to-coast. Take Three "Welcome Home" is the band's third full-length disc. The first two, with the cheeky titles "Live at the Lincoln Continental" and "Live in Tokyo," were recorded live at the Eclipse and Club One in Tulsa. For the third outing, the members of Jacob Fred set out to record their first-ever studio record. That's not what they ended up with. The reason is simply stated. "It sounded like poopy," said guitarist Dove McHargue. The band spent several months in a studio with local producer and punk rocker Martin Halstead (N.O.T.A.), slaving over a hot mixer and trying to pin down the explosive — and often psychedelic — Jacob Fred chemistry. Only rarely did the results live up to the band's standards and expectations, so the bulk of the recordings were scrapped. "Welcome Home" features two studio tracks, a righteous ballad called "Road to Emmaus" and a talkie courtesy of drummer Sean Layton's affected drawl, "Stomp"; the other six instrumentals were captured once again at Tulsa's Club One. "It was necessary that we do this," Mathis said of the studio experience. "We learned many of our strengths and weaknesses. The things we are familiar with as mainly a live band simply weren't there in the studio ... It was getting ridiculous doing 11 takes of one tune. We set up for two nights in the club and had a finished album." "It's much easier to present this music when you're thinking about the audience and not about your own critical ears," said trumpeter Kyle Wright. "It's just not time for us in the studio yet," Mathis said. When will it be time for a Jacob Fred studio record? "When we can find a studio that can hold 500 patient people," McHargue said. So, for now, the third Jacob Fred CD is another snapshot of the band's carefully reckless evolution. JFJO, Not MMW, OK? After this week's two Tulsa CD release parties, Jacob Fred again will take to the road for a tour stretching from Boston to Los Angeles. The word is out ahead of them, too. This month's Down Beat magazine — the cornerstone news source for jazz — sports a feature article on the band. That article's chief comparison of the band is not, of course, Zappa. It's Medeski, Martin and Wood, a more revisionist acid-jazz organ trio that also debuted itself to the nation via Accurate Records. Jacob Fred members maintain that the only thing they have in common with MMW is a spirit of innovation. "It's the things MMW and us avoid that groups us together," Mathis said. "It's not what we have in common, really. The thing we really have in common is that we're both unclassifiable bands." "MMW," a song on "Welcome Home," makes light of the perceived link. In this case, the MMW marks the order of solos in the song: McHargue, Mathis and Wright. On tour, the band proudly carries the banner for Tulsa music. Or is that Texas? There's a goofy story behind the new album's name. Mathis explained: "We went to Chicago, and the paper mentioned us, saying, 'avant-garde sounds from Texas.' The next week in Austin, they'd somehow picked up on that, and a flier for our show said they were welcoming us home." Haas continued, "So in the show we said, 'It's great to back. This next song is called "Welcome Home."' And Kyle went into an improv thing." "So now anytime we make up a song on stage — total improvisation — we call it 'Welcome Home,'" Mathis said. Celebrating its new and nationally released CD, "Welcome Home" on Accurate Records, Tulsa's own Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey has scheduled two shows this week for its hometown friends. Fans of all ages can catch the band's unique funk-jazz at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Living Arts of Tulsa, 19 E. Brady. Admission is $5 ($3 for Living Arts members) at the door. The second show — 21 and over — kicks off at 9 p.m. Thursday where most of the new CD was recorded: Club One, 3200 Riverside Drive It's $5 at the door, too. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Mummy Weenie "Mummy Weenie" (Plum-E Records) Last time I saw him, Brian Haas didn't really have any hair. So when I say that Mummy Weenie provides the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey keyboard player a chance to let his hair down, you'll have to understand that we're dealing strictly in metaphor here. In fact, the now dormant Mummy Weenie is all about right-brain, amorphous, free-form thinking. Haas and drummer Sean Layton take a break from the frenetic pace of Jacob Fred shows for this humble side project, a trio rounded out by nimble Tribe of Souls bassist Al Ray. This live concert, recorded at Tulsa's Club One, is a dreamy, improvisational affair, a lulling and sometimes patience-trying set of roomy instrumentals that sound like Bob James confused and struggling through a show after someone spiked his drink with a Quaalude and a twist of Ecstasy. Haas occasionally meanders through his melodic spelunking via melodica, though most of these untitled tracks are worthy, rare moments of his caressing the Fender Rhodes electric piano. Layton's drums and percussion inject heart as well as beat, and Ray's emotional bass playing throws in some refreshing curveballs, particularly in the beginning of the contemplative fourth track. Watch out for the psychedelic studio trickery late in the set, but by then you'll be loose enough you might not even notice the weirdness. Mission accomplished. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The members of Epperley on Sunday are returning from the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas. They've been there before — once playing a packed official showcase, once playing to the sound man at a "pirate" gig -- but this year's self-promotion rings of self-confidence and assurance. No longer does this Tulsa rock band fit the mold of green, mildly desperate newcomers. An acclaimed new album, some miles on the odometer and a sense of professionalism instilled by four years in the running have fermented the Epperley sound into something finer, full-bodied and formidable. "Like wine, right?" smirked Epperley guitarist Matt Nader during a recent conversation. "Jeez, I hope we've grown by now. We're playing some great shows, and I think we're all excited about the record and what people will think of it." He should be. Epperley's new album, "Sophomore Slump," is likely to raise most of the brows furrowed by the self-titled debut. Recorded and mixed in a whirlwind few days in New York City, the disc is a wallop of fat guitars, roaring production and some solid songs. That it's finally on record store shelves is a bit of a relief, too — the release was delayed for a year — but Nader said he thinks the timing will be just right. "Somehow we haven't let people forget our name, and I think some people are actually waiting for this," he said. The waiting has been the hardest part. Better late than never Exactly one year ago I caught up with Epperley to talk about the new album, finished early in '97. When I asked when the record would be released, all four guys — Nader, singer David Terry, bassist David Bynum and drummer John Truskett — laughed. The responses, though, showed they weren't amused: "Maybe late May?" "This century?" "Hell's frozen now, right?" The band's record label, Los Angeles-based Triple X Records, held onto the disc while working out a deal to distribute it properly. Nader said the delay, while frustrating, will be worth the wait. "The last record (also on Triple X) was hard to find even here in Tulsa, but a friend of mine saw copies in a Tower Records in Germany and Indonesia, and I found it in Paris," Nader said. The new deal should make "Sophomore Slump" readily available in most music shops on this continent. Last year's meeting took place during a rehearsal at Nader's posh south Tulsa house. An upstairs bedroom was the band's studio, littered with chunky sound equipment and videodiscs of cult films. Truskett, the band's manic Neal Cassidy, was sniffling and wheezing behind his kit; the night before, his symptoms had landed him in the emergency room. Before launching into the first song of the afternoon, he beat on his chest, chanting to himself, "Who's not sick? Who's not sick?" "Hey, the drummer for Def Leppard only had one arm," Nader said, attempting consolation. No dice. "Yeah," Truskett said, "but he didn't have bronchitis." As the sun faded, they plowed through several of the songs they're still playing today — the martial beats of "Static," the reinvented boredom lament "Jenks, America," a great song that didn't make the new album, "Casio Man" -- randomly selecting them from a lengthy three-column list on a bulletin board. "Triple X wanted to put out an EP, but we thought that would be a bad idea," Bynum said. "We've got so many songs, though, and we haven't put out a record in so long." Said Nader: "We're the most prolific band in the Midwest." Indeed, since the appearance of "Epperley" in 1996, Nader and his mates have churned out scores of songs. Every few months, I'd see them brandishing another 90-minute cassette of new songs. In addition to producing their own Christmas CD twice, Nader even formed a band on the side, Secret Agent Teenager, to ease some of the songwriting pressure. In the interim, the band also landed a publishing contract with Windswept Pacific. "The publishing deal is actually the best part," Bynum said. "That gets our material in front of a lot of people who otherwise probably wouldn't play one of our records on sight. That has helped us to slowly, very slowly, get bigger." Teen-age imperialism Epperley spent the beginning of 1999 plying the West Coast with this sweeter sound. After four years together, this is the first serious touring the band has done. Nader said the advantages of honing a live show far outweighed the soul-deadening experience of driving for hours on end. "We got to play a lot — a lot more than if we had stayed here in Tulsa," he said. "It was a drag sometimes, pulling eight- to 12-hour drives every day and knowing exactly what records each person would listen to when it was his turn to drive. But we had some really good shows, especially toward the end of the tour." Not only did a San Diego club, the Casbah ("I finally got to rock the Casbah," Nader said), bring Epperley back for a second show, but the band's final gig was an opening slot for Imperial Teen, the latest band featuring Roddy Bottom (Faith No More), at L.A.'s noted Troubadour club. They plan to hit the road again next month, if for no other reason than to see Tina Yothers again. "Remember Tina Yothers, from 'Family Ties'? She's in a band called The Jaded," Terry said. "It's awful. It's like Cinemax after-dark kind of stuff. Really bad." It's gonna happen Meanwhile, Epperley now is concentrating on promoting the new album through all the right channels. The reviews are starting to come in, and most are positive. The band is now listed in the online version of the All-Music Guide, and both albums score three out of five stars. "The first album got reviewed in all these punk magazines," Bynum said. "That's bad." "We got a bad review in one of those that said we sucked because we didn't use distortion in every song," Nader said. "Guitar World said, `This band makes Blind Melon look like Pantera,' " Bynum recalled. "What else was there?" "Remember the shortest one?" Terry asked his mates. "It was just one sentence: 'Isn't Kurt Cobain dead?' " Everyone laughs, and it's a healthy laughter. The Epperley guys usually join detractors of their first record. Most of it was recorded when Epperley still operated under the names Bug and, briefly, Superfuzz, with some extra tracks added from initial, hasty L.A. sessions. "We don't even really like the first record," Nader said. "We can't blame Triple X for not promoting it. It was recorded without any idea that someone would say, `Hey, we want to put this out.' " But that, Epperley likes to remind itself, was a long time ago. "One day," Terry said, "whether it's on Triple X and takes forever or whether we're shoved into the limelight, it's going to happen for us." BY THOMAS CONNER
© Tulsa World Back-to-back Grammy award-winner Roberta Flack was on the phone with us a few hours before the annual Grammys ceremony last month. She wasn't attending — the call came from her home in Barbados — and she wasn't even sure she would watch the show. "I'm not sure I can get it down here," Flack said, "and I couldn't sit down that long even when I was going to those shows." Grammys may be old hat for Flack; however, even when she doesn't attend, her presence often still permeates the glittering music halls. This year, for instance, the golden child of the evening was hip-hop artist Lauryn Hill -- once leader of the Fugees, a band that just two years ago launched its formidable career by covering one of Flack's signature early '70s hits, "Killing Me Softly With His Song." Flack herself has a unique place in Grammy history. In 1972, she took home trophies for Record of the Year and Song of the Year for her recording of Ewan MacColl's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." She also shared a trophy for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Group that year with Donny Hathaway for the duet "Where Is the Love." That alone was a nice haul, but the very next year Flack returned to collect three more statuettes for "Killing Me Softly" — an unheard-of one-two punch. Then what happened? Well, therein lies the rub, as well as what makes a musical artist distinct. The pop scene changed — the fans' love of story songs in the early '70s gave way to mindless disco beats — and Flack refused to blow with the prevailing winds. She remains an unmistakable talent at this point in her three-decade career precisely because she didn't try to become a disco queen (a la Patti Labelle) or a private dancer (a la Tina Turner). Flack was, is and forever will be a balladeer. That's not to say she hasn't dabbled. Her last album, 1995's "Roberta," opened with a kind of rap, and she's tinkered with jazz singing, but Flack endures as a vocalist who lures the simple, shining joy out of a ballad, from those first two smash hits to her chart-topping duet with Peabo Bryson, "Tonight I Celebrate My Love." She sings songs that tell tales — timeless ones. "I got started at the time people were really into songs that told stories," Flack said in our conversation. "That was a really good time, the early '70s. Even rock 'n' roll artists, country and R&B artists — and this is when those divisions were really clear — they were all trying to do music that told stories. It wasn't necessarily a once-upon-a-time story, but something people could connect to, some personal experience they'd been through. The exciting part about being a musician is recognizing that when you're on stage, when someone connects with what you're singing about, and you just watch them change. "But everything has its season, and things changed. Except me. The disco thing was next, and I'm not stupid enough to hang in with that. I'm perfectly satisfied to sing a beautiful ballad." The process of choosing ballads sometimes is subject to whim or instinct. Flack said she looks for ineffable concepts like "gorgeousness, effect, meaning" in a song before she tackles it, with an emphasis on that last one: meaning. "I have to think that somebody other than me is going to understand it," she said. "I don't want to sing and entertain myself, or provide just therapy for myself. I want to be sharing my feelings. I make sure I'm picking a song that speaks to experiences and attitudes and moments in all of our lives." Still, the meaning Flack may find in a song can be, well, unique. "Killing Me Softly" is a lyric written about the songs of Don McLean (telescope that notion through the Fugees' version and see what you get!), but Flack said she sung it because it reminded her of someone close. Plus, the face she had in mind when recording "The First Time" in 1969 was small and, well, furry. "At the moment I recorded that, I was singing to a little cat," Flack said. "It sounds cornball, but it's true. I'd never had a cat before, and my manager had just given me one. I named it Sancho. About the time I got him was when I got the chance to go to New York and record demos for that first album ... In those two days, I recorded between 35 and 40 songs live. (Not long after) I got back, Sancho died. Then, three or four weeks later, when I recorded the album, I was thinking about little Sancho, that cute little funny-looking, scrawny cat." In concert, Flack said she tries to gauge the temperament of her audience and chooses songs to fit that perceived mood. Set lists vary from night to night when she's on the road (the Tulsa shows are special engagements). She's been known to nix "The First Time" in favor of, say, John Lennon's "Imagine," because "the young kids today" might identify with Lennon more readily than her own signature work. Those same young kids are still driving record sales, and Flack's perceived distance from them is why she thinks she's without a record deal at the moment. Not that it troubles her greatly — she's looking, but she's got time and options, she said — but she recognizes that she's not alone. "A lot of us don't have deals now — those of us who sing those story songs well. There's just not a place for us in the scheme of things. "We're not doing hip-hop, and if you're not doing what sells," Flack said, "you're not going to be doing." ROBERTA FLACK With the Tulsa Philharmonic When 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday Where Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Third Street and Cincinnati Ave. Tickets $14-$58; PAC, 596-7111 and Carson Attractions, 584-2000 BY THOMAS CONNER
© Tulsa World Larry Graham is sometimes referred to as The Man Who Invented Funk. "Well, I don't know about that, but I did invent my style of playing the bass," Graham said in an interview this week. Indeed, a great number of influential musicians formed the foundations of funk, but the music never would have been the same without Graham's particular style of playing the bass. That contribution gave the music its signature sound: the slap bass. Slap bass is just what it sounds like: the bass player slaps the low strings with his or her thumb, keeping rhythm while plucking the other strings with the fingers. Graham "invented" this method of playing before he had his own funk band, Graham Central Station, and before he joined the legendary '60s soul-funk collective Sly and the Family Stone. And that sound? Well, it was all a mistake, really. "Bass players usually play overhand, with their fingers. That's a carry-over from upright bass playing. My style is different because I came to the bass from the guitar," Graham explained. "My mom and I were working together, and this one club had an organ with bass pedals that went half way across. I learned how to play those pedals while playing my guitar, and I got used to that. "But one day the organ broke down. We sounded empty without that bottom sound. I rented a bass to hold down that bottom until the organ could be repaired. I wasn't trying to learn the correct overhand style, because I wasn't planning to play bass any longer than I had to. I was playing it like a guitar. But the organ couldn't be repaired, so I got stuck on the bass. That rental turned into a purchase." After a while, the jazzy combo with Graham and his mother became just a duo of the two. Again, Graham improvised to fill in their sound. Lacking a drummer, Graham began thumping his bass strings to make up for not having the backbeat of a snare drum. The innovation paid off in a big way. Sometimes it only takes one person to be impressed. "There was one lady in a club we played regularly who was also a fan of Sly Stone on the radio at the time," Graham said. "She used to call him up on the phone and say, `You gotta go hear this bass player.' Eventually, she was persistent to the point that he came down to hear me. That's how I got the gig with Sly, and that's how this style of playing got popular — through the records we made. If you were a musician playing our tunes, you had to play the bass like me for the song to sound right. Then, when these people started writing their own music, the bass players kept using that style. I never thought it would be anything new. "And, you know, I never did see that lady again to thank her." But with Sly and the Family Stone, he did help write sweat-dripping classics like "Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf)." A lyric from the band's classic "Everyday People" (now used to hawk Toyotas) sums up the group's musical philosophy as well as its timeless appeal: "Different strokes for different folks." At least, that's what Graham said made the group so popular in the early '70s — much more so than his unique bass playing. "We were different. We were a rainbow," he said. "The music was a combination of all types of music. You could hear R&B, jazz, rock, even country. Plus, it was a self-contained band. We played the instruments as well as singing all the parts. There was male and female, black and white, mixed up every kind of way you could think of." That was 30 years ago. After the Family Stone split up in '74, Graham immediately formed his own funky collective, Graham Central Station, which thwacked its way through the '70s before Graham went solo in 1980. In all that time, Graham has watched funk music grow into its own, fade slightly, then come back indirectly through samples in hip-hop songs. "A lot of the old-school stuff is hot again because it's been sampled so much. Us, Parliament-Funkadelic, Rick James — they're all back on the scene because the kids, after they hear whoever's rapping on top of that song, are smart enough to know that's M.C. Hammer rapping but Rick James making the music. So they go dig up his old records or my old records," Graham said. One such second-generation fan has turned out to be Graham's latest R&B benefactor. Last year, Graham was in Nashville to play a show, and he got a call during soundcheck from another artist in town at the same time: Prince (The Artist, or whatever you call him). "He heard I was in town, and he called me and told me he'd be jamming after his concert at an after-party, would I like to come down and jam? That was the first time we played together, and we had an instant lock," Graham said. "Growing up he listened to a lot of my music, and he said I was one band who influenced him the most. I hadn't played with anybody who knew my music so well. I started doing tour dates with him, then a few more and a few more, pretty soon a year had passed. We knew we had something going together, so I moved to Minneapolis to be closer to him." The relationship has resulted in millennium-marking projects for both artists. Graham worked with Prince on the new single versions of Prince's 1982 hit "1999," and Prince collaborated with Graham on a new Graham Central Station record, "GCS 2000." Both discs were released on the same day early this month on Prince's NPG Records. Graham is still adjusting to life in Minneapolis after seven years living in Jamaica. When we caught him on the phone this week, it was snowing in Minnesota. "Been a while since I've seen snow, let me tell you," Graham said. "It has a pretty thing about it. Of course, I'm saying that from inside the house." But the climate shock is worth the artistic freedom he enjoys working outside the traditional record label system with Prince at his Paisley Park Studios. "It's great working up here. You have total freedom to record whatever you want to record. Nobody's standing around saying, `You can't do that.' There's no time crunch, no budget to worry about. As long as the bill gets paid for the electricity, the tape will be rolling. When you're finished with a song is when you're actually finished with it, not because you ran out of time or money to pay the label or the studio. And to have the greatest producer in the world working with you — well, it all went into creating what I think is a great album for me," Graham said. "And it's good to have a new lease on life. Funk is back, so this is where I belong." By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The band's debut, 1996's "Great Divide," slipped under the radar of most music fans despite its shimmering beauty and sparkling guitars. But when Semisonic tweaked their recording approach and turned in a song that resonated with a wide audience of nightclubbers, the follow-up record, "Feeling Strangely Fine," inched toward platinum sales. The clincher, "Closing Time," was catchy enough to ensnare even the modern rock fans who didn't immediately empathize with singer-guitarist Dan Wilson's tale of precarious decision-making in a bar at 2 a.m., just before everyone is turned out to the sidewalk sale. Some bars now play the song at closing time as a cool nod to their customers. With that hit and the latest, the plucky "Singing in My Sleep," on the resume, Wilson and his bandmates — John Munson and Jacob Slichter — are now open for business, and this month they venture out on another arm of a lengthy tour, bringing them through Tulsa and points south. We caught up with Wilson in a Santa Monica, Calif., studio — tore him away, actually — to talk about Semisonic's success, the makings of a good "bedroom album" and the latest generation of crack rock bands coming out of Minneapolis. Thomas Conner: You sound exasperated. Is this a bad time? Dan Wilson: Oh, I'm just in the studio working on a song, and it's very hard to drag myself out right now. We've been on tour so long; it's so hard to find time to do this. Conner: What's the song like that you're working on? Wilson: It's upbeat, hard to describe. It's kind of got a Lindsey Buckingham thing to it. I've been hearing a lot of music lately, watching him play the guitar with his fingers blazing. I'm trying to cop that. Conner: Is this a break in the tour for you? Wilson: It's kind of a multi-purpose trip to L.A. before we go to Las Vegas to be on "The Penn and Teller Show." The last thing I saw on that show was a man putting this lighted wire down his nose and throat. It was all very grotesque. Hopefully they won't ask us to do that. Conner: This next leg of the tour brings you down south, which I think you've missed thus far, right? Wilson: Yeah, we're trying to hit some of the places we didn't get to last year. We kept missing Texas, and we've never been to Louisiana. We sort of saw the spring shaping up where we could play some of these places. I value that in a band — getting out there and playing the long shows and giving the fans as much as we can. I have a wife and daughter who I miss very much when we're on the road, but there's something about that contact with the fans that's really important. It lets you know if you're dealing out the real stuff. Conner: You once said that you wanted "Feeling Strangely Fine" to be a "bedroom record." What's that? Wilson: Well, not in the sense of turning it on and having sex with someone. It's one that you put on with headphones in a dark room when the rest of the family is asleep and listen to the whole CD. I dreamed that that's how people would use this record. I wanted it to be something really intimate and inside your head. Conner: So how do you go about crafting a bedroom record? Wilson: I wanted to make sure the lyrics were really apparent. On our last album, "Great Divide," we buried the vocals in this swirl of guitar tones and intricate samples. I was disappointed when the reviews came back — and I take what they say pretty seriously — saying that the melodies were great but the lyrics were meaningless fluff. Fact is, I think I try to be as honest as I can in my lyrics, and those (on "Great Divide") are some of my best. So I wanted this record to have a really intimate vocal sound up front. Conner: I would venture to guess that approach helped streamline the arrangements, yes? Wilson: Yeah. It put us in the situation of saying, "If there's no room for the vocals, then take out 11 of the guitar samples." It's looser sounding. It feels more like three guys having an interesting, passionate, intense time in the studio. Conner: What are some of your favorite bedroom albums? Wilson: "OK Computer" by Radiohead is a great one. "Hejira" by Joni Mitchell. Liz Phair's "Exile in Guyville." Tricky's first album ("Maxinquaye"), though I don't like the whole thing. John Coltrane's ballads album. I was the family member who never came up for air. I was always in front of the stereo listening through the headphones, and none of my family members could get my attention. Conner: I once heard "Feeling Strangely Fine" compared to R.E.M.'s "Murmur." It started to make some sense when I thought about it, mainly because of that intimate feel. Make sense? Wilson: That mysteriousness is probably — hopefully -- there in our record. "Automatic for the People" is my favorite R.E.M. record, and I was probably trying more to emulate that kind of directness, space and emptiness for the bedroom vibe. It just can't be a constant onslaught of fun, you know? Conner: "Murmur" hit the atmosphere about the same time some of modern rock's seminal bands were coming out of your hometown, Minneapolis. Were you caught up in the legendary Minneapolis scene? Wilson: My idols were the Replacements and Husker Du, plus Prince, Soul Asylum, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis as producers. It was great — Minneapolis was one of the few towns in America where, for about 10 years, all of your teen idols were from your hometown. A lot of people in Minneapolis grew accustomed to having their entertainment needs fulfilled by local musicians. Conner: An enviable position, for sure. What's it like up there now? Wilson: Honestly, I think this will be a great year for Minneapolis music. There's a new album by the Hangups I think is incredible — a lot of early R.E.M. and Badfinger and Small Faces in this really weird but personal retro-sounding album. There's a provocative band called the 12 Rods that make some really weird sounds. My brother Matt came out with an album last year that I think was criminally underpublicized (Matt Wilson's "Burnt White and Blue"). And, of course, I think we've added a lot to the scene, too. Conner: How so? What's the legacy there in Minneapolis? Wilson: Anything we aspire to ends in this butt-shaking groove. SEMISONIC WITH REMY ZERO When: 7 p.m. Wednesday Where: Cain's Ballroom, 423 N. Main St. Tickets: $13 at The Ticket Office at Expo Square, Mohawk Music, Starship Records and Tapes and the Mark-It Shirt Shop in Promenade Mall By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Leon Russell "Face in the Crowd" (Sagestone Entertainment) Ol' Leon's voice is just barely hanging in there, crusty and clogged and in need of some vocal Liquid Plumr. That's never handicapped Bob Dylan or Neil Young, and whether or not you think Russell measures up to those comparisons, "Face in the Crowd" at least pushes that old, gravelly voice of his hard enough to make it stand out in a crowd again. His testosterone-fueled howlings in "Dr. Love" cop some much-needed sexiness from Dr. John's bag of tricks. His growling ups and downs in "So Hard to Say Goodbye" restore some of the spunk of his hit-making days, too. Unlike his last record, the third "Hank Wilson" incarnation, "Faces" isn't rushed as much it sounds eager and comfortable — and seeing or hearing a comfortable Leon is a special treat. Russell could still benefit from the control and finesse of a smart producer — the arrangements and recording of son Teddy Jack tend to gum up in the speakers — but by reviving his distinct songwriting voice, Russell is assured to remain clearly identifiable in the crowd. BY THOMAS CONNER
© Tulsa World It was way late in Las Vegas one breezy summer night, and I couldn't sleep. Not that this is a problem in Vegas -- sleeping is uniformly discouraged in that mecca of mayhem and momentum — but it was a predicament for me. My intrepid party and I had spent the day riding an actual roller coaster around the New York, New York Hotel and Casino complex and a virtual roller coaster in the IMAX "Race for Atlantis" ride in the Caesar's Palace mall. There was also the harrowing bungee ride atop the Stratosphere tower and the swooping simulation of Star Trek: The Experience. I'd seen a lot of action, I smelled of muscle cream and the after-dinner coffee at the all-you-can-gorge buffet was furthering my punishment by holding my eyes open. I padded downstairs to the lobby of our hotel, the Debbie Reynolds Hotel and Casino. Unlike the other glitzy amusement-park hotels in Vegas, you can actually pad into the lobby of Debbie's place. There's a homier air to the place, and we'd even run into Mama Reynolds herself in the halls before. She'd begun referring to my companion and I as "the boys." Two elderly women were in the tiny casino, maintaining looks of fierce determination and making a couple of nickel slots sing their siren song. A lonely, bored bartender slumped over the waitress stand watching ESPN across the tables in Bogie's Bar. It was unusually sedate for 2 a.m. in a Vegas hotel, and I didn't mind a bit. I wound up in the movie theater, a small screen and about 50 seats that was kept running 24/7. I sat down in the middle of "The Tender Trap" and chuckled my way through that wild party scene. After that, there was some documentary footage of Bing Crosby. Reporters were asking him questions as he walked into a Hollywood studio office one sunny day in a crisp baby-blue suit and a neat straw hat. He was talking about a new film project that would get under way as soon as his co-stars finished their "gig in Vegas." He was waiting on them because "Vegas is more fun than this." These days, the idea that Vegas is more fun than Hollywood is a debate drawn on generational lines. The old guard laments the recent Disneyfication of the Strip, the blasting of landmark casinos to build live pirate ship shows, and the odd transformation of gambling into "gaming." The young families of the '90s, though, cheer the family-friendly attractions and the covering up of the city's inherent sleaze element. You can still have fun in Vegas, but in vastly different ways. Debbie Reynolds' hotel is a good example of the desert city's molting. The dumpy little building still looks like an excavated Holiday Inn and still stands on Convention Center Drive just a block off Vegas' famed Strip, but it's out of Debbie's hands and into a Bulgarian head-lock. A debt-plagued Reynolds sold the struggling hotel and casino at auction this summer, weeks after my charming visit. The buyer: the World Wrestling Federation. We visited again just before Christmas, and the switch from "Singin' in the Rain" to "Wrath in the Ring" had already begun. The once colorful staff has vamoosed, replaced by neckless security men and empty floors where Hollywood movie memorabilia had been gathered, its memories flourishing in this humble cranny. The photos of classic film stars that lined each floor's hallways were up for grabs. Debbie's magnificent Hollywood Movie Museum was vacant. When warm weather returns to the valley this spring, an entirely new tower will be constructed over the existing casino, which will be enlarged and remodeled. The whole structure will be covered in black glass and boast a giant neon lightning bolt running from the roof to the entrance. Wrestlers and wrestling fans of every dimension and shade soon will hoot and growl and yee-hah up and down the formerly dignified hallways. There will be much ooh-ing and ahh-ing. Which is not a bad thing. Vegas is all about ooh-ing and ahh-ing, and the transformation of Las Vegas — from frenzied flophouse to family-friendly funhouse — has rescued the city from a slow slide into extinction. With hotel owners constantly trying to one-up each other, the displays and attractions are the most bold and dazzling you're likely to find anywhere in the world. Vegas is now the most iconoclastic city in history, determined to provide its visitors with a one-of-a-kind experience. Still, while Vegas erects an enormous replica of the Great Sphinx, builds a sparkling new casino with a richly Italian theme and opens countless buffets offering food from around the globe, the city's uniquely American heritage is disappearing faster than a roll of quarters at the Wheel of Fortune slot machines. It's great to spend a day or two wandering through the wonders of the southern Strip, but even the most bubbly traveler eventually suffers from stimulus overload. After a few days of costumed chambermaids and animatronic waiters, you'll probably start hunting someplace you can get a drink without an Egyptian barge hanging over the bar. Such remnants of a more grounded Vegas still exist. In fact, we found our favorite across from the Debbie Reynolds hotel: the Silver City Casino. Sure, it's got a theme, but unless you look up at the dirty Western wallpaper over the gaming tables, you'd never know it. The carpet and the change ladies have been there since the '70s, and it's worth braving the entrance for the cheap and tasty food alone (esp. the 99-cent breakfast after 11 p.m.). The Silver City, on Las Vegas Boulevard just north of Convention Center Drive, has a compact floor of slot machines that pay off better than most of the name-brand casinos. There are no attractions or dazzling displays here, save the colorful blend of frat boys and grizzled old-timers at the craps table. Drinks are even cheap when they're not free to gamblers. The Silver City is nothing but clean, hard gambling with nothing to distract you from the simple and perilous joys therein. Just south down the Strip is the elegant Desert Inn. Aside from booking quality musical entertainment, the Desert Inn sports the ultimate Vegas casino. Again, no gimmicks or amusements here — just a beautifully decorated room full of pricey tables. You'll see the vacationers in Bermuda shorts at tables next to the oil barons in tuxes. Nearby is the Sahara, one of the first hotel and casinos built on the Strip. The casino there is pretty shabby, but the breakfast buffet is an inexpensive lifesaver when the harsh light of day rouses you from your hotel bed. Unlike most of the city's notorious buffets, the Sahara's morning spread is simple and hearty. Most of the casinos downtown retain their former dignity despite Fremont Street being turned into a pedestrian mall covered for several blocks by an arched ceiling with hourly light shows. This is where much of the city's hard-line bettors have retreated — plenty of plaid sports jackets and Foster Grants murmuring into payphones. The Gulch and the Nugget still boast slots and tables worth the investment. While you're downtown, enjoy a bountiful but affordable continental meal at the Plaza. The entire Fremont strip is your atrium view. When the tables have taken you for granted, blow the rest of your cash on shows. This is the real pleasure of Vegas. Skip the overblown fads of "Lord of the Dance" and impersonator Danny Gans and take in the classics before retirement takes them away. Siegfried and Roy are still taming tigers at The Mirage, and Lance Burton, Master Magician, still tricks the eye at the Monte Carlo. Two of the best shows involve the kicking up of heels. "The Great Radio City Spectacular" at the Flamingo Hilton is a classic Vegas extravaganza, full of feathers and thighs and sequins. It stars the Radio City Rockettes plus Susan Anton or Paige O'Hara, and it's running indefinitely with a dinner show and cocktail show every night except, oddly enough, Fridays. The other show features just as many fabulous dresses even though the stars are really men. "Boy-lesuqe" with Kenny Kerr is the longest running headlining show in Vegas, and the drag is phenomenal. Kerr's bawdy repartee with the audience and his crew will have you in stitches, and if you're lucky he'll do Streisand. "Boy-lesque" runs Tuesdays through Saturdays at Jackie Gaughan's Plaza. Also not to be missed is the Liberace Museum. Drive east on Tropicana in search of it, but don't be hunting for a palacial estate. The museum is housed in four different spaces of an east Vegas strip mall, the main building is probably an old IHOP. The cheap admission is worth the chance to see the gaudy leftovers of this enormously popular late performer. The rhinestone jumpsuits are one thing, but the rhinestone Rolls Royce is a sight to behold. Check schedules for Debbie Reynolds, too — her show is a spunky set of singing, dancing and movie memories. She'll pop up for performances every now and then because she still lives in Vegas, even though commercially — as the wrestlers take hold — there's not much of a home for her anymore. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World For those who found Seinfeld's take on the existential nothingness a bit too tony and smug (they wound up in jail -- how poetically just), MTV offers "The Sifl and Olly Show." A late-night offering since its debut in July, "The Sifl and Olly Show" hit prime-time last week. It now airs each weekday evening at 6:30 p.m. on MTV, cable Channel 42. (Fellow night-owls, rest easy — it repeats at midnight.) Like "Seinfeld," this show is about absolutely nothing. Sifl and Olly stand at a microphone and chat about whatever bizarre things are running through their stoned little minds — arguing about Cars songs, discussing the aesthetic properties of waffles, breaking into song about Claire Daines. It's not as much a retooling of "Beavis and Butthead" as it is a lo-fi knock-off inspired by "Fernwood Tonight." Both hosts have the same command of the loopy, making a seemingly safe little chat show into something wholly bent and bizarre. Their banter and double-take exchanges make for hilarious TV. It's the songs that make or break each episode, too. It's on MTV because Sifl and Olly come from a genuine rock 'n' roll perspective. Even though they can't really carry a tune, their spark and spunk wins every time. Not bad for a couple of sock puppets. Yep, Sifl and Olly are sock puppets. It's come to this. Rapture, anyone? The move to prime time doesn't mean new episodes have been added — those come in January — but the first-season rotation lasts a while and is full of yuks. For those willing to surrender a bit of intelligence for half an hour (think about the other TV programs you watch before answering that), here's a quick guide to watching "The Sifl and Olly Show": Settle in. Whether watching the prime time or late-night broadcast, it's a good time for a snack. Especially if you have the munchies, in which case you're more likely to dig the show. Don't sing along to the theme song. As you'll see in one show, the singing of the show's repetitive theme attracts vicious bear attacks. Wagering. Odds that Chester actually will introduce Sifl and Olly are about 5-3 against. Odds he'll simply walk off when given his cue are about 50-50. Who's who. Sifl is on the left, the gray one. He's fairly cool and laid-back when not lying about his relationship with MTV News anchor Serena Altschul. He provides a fitting contrast to Olly, on the right, who's a bit excitable, particularly when hawking questionable merchandise. Polite conversation. After being introduced — or not -- Sifl and Olly will chat a bit, welcoming folks to the show. There will be another few moments like this later, as if the camera catches them having a rather bizarre personal conversation. Whether you figure out what exactly they're talking about is irrelevant. Backdrops. Sifl and Olly are "standing" in front of a blue screen, so various images and scenes are sometime projected behind them. Be prepared for anything, from twirling skulls to the surface of a waffle slowly oozing with syrup. Interview time. Each show features two interviews with some other sock puppet character. This is why they can call their show a "talk show." Each interview is prefaced by a graphic with a spinning, computer-generated skeleton which, as one fan web site observed, may "symbolize the serious, in-depth questions Sifl and Olly will ask that get to the deep inner-workings of the guest." Not quite. If the interview doesn't collapse entirely due to a poorly chosen subject or our hosts' inept interviewing skills, it inevitably backfires on them. Past guests have included an orgasm (with his runt pal, G-Spot), an atom on the comb of Elvis Presley, a woman named Sex Girl, a psychedelic mushroom, the Grim Reaper ("I'm from Montreal. I'm a French-Canadian") and the planet Mars. Rock Facts. Each show is peppered with trivia questions about rock stars. They're all bogus, though they provide another opportunity for wagering: odds that a Rock Fact will have something to do with Bjork are about 3-1. "Calls From the Public." Sifl and Olly take calls from their fellow sock-puppet public. Somehow, simply by yelling into the phone, other sock puppet characters can be heard AND seen by Sifl and Olly. Thus, we get to meet many amusing locals, from a scary S/M duo threatening to beat up Sifl to someone trying to sell our hosts some legless dogs. Their landlord frequently calls to complain, as well; it seems the Sifl and Olly home is amok with monkeys and water slides. Don't buy anything. Sifl and Olly are spokes-socks for the Precious Roy Home Shopping Network, an enterprise in dire need of investigation. Olly becomes particularly exasperated when pitching products — such as scarehookers (fake pimps to keep hookers away), Insta-Jerky (a chemical that turns anything into edible jerky) and pirate beavers (specially raised rodents trained to attack wooden legs of threatening pirates) — and he sometimes must be sedated. Performance. Art? Occasionally during a show and always at the end, Sifl and Olly sing a song. Sometimes it's a cover (their on-the-road version of the Cars' "Just What I Needed" is priceless, as is their adorably spooky take on "Don't Fear the Reaper"), more often it's an original tune about something trivial and strange — how we deal with stress, Claire Danes, marrying a vegetable, Claire Danes, hiding in a cabinet or Claire Danes. The music is sub-karaoke and neither of them can sing, but if you've held out this long you've already been won over by their childlike charms. And what exactly is Chester? You're right, he's not a sock puppet. He is a mold turned inside out. In particular, he is a mold from which small, plastic Buddha statues are made. Watch in good spirits and remember — that whirring noise you hear is Edward R. Murrow spinning in his grave. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World A well-traveled pair of children's high-top sneakers sits atop the Hammond B-3 organ. The organ itself is at the bottom of the back stairs, in the utility room next to a rope rack where dresses are drying. The main studio is upstairs, in a converted maid's quarters — one room filled to the brim with keyboards, bass guitars and high-dollar recording equipment. A hall closet has become a vocal booth, just a few doors down from the kids' bedrooms, emanates TV sounds and the faint odor of socks. This is the environment in which a jolly giant, Wayman Tisdale, recorded his latest major-label jazz record. The disc, "Decisions," is the first record of his music career that isn't titled with a basketball pun — the previous two were "Power Forward" and "In the Zone" — and the first made in the wake of his professional basketball career. "This album is my coming out party," Tisdale says, breaking into his court-wide grin. The decisions that brought Tisdale to his current situation were weighty but welcome. He launched his basketball career at the University of Oklahoma, where he was a two-time All-American. He was chosen as the second overall pick in the 1985 NBA draft and set off on a 12-year run through the NBA, playing four years each with Indiana, Sacramento and Phoenix. Through with hoops A dozen seasons were plenty, though, and Tisdale bowed out of the sport earlier this year. In our interview at Wayman's south Tulsa home last week, Tisdale said his hoopster career almost went on too long. "I knew coming into the league I wanted to play about eight years. I never thought I would make 12," Tisdale said. "When I didn't enjoy coming to the gym each day and staying late, I knew it was time to let it go." Tisdale's exit from basketball was hardly retirement. In fact, he immediately turned back to the work he always loved, the work that sustained the low points of his sporting career, the work that would not leave him alone: writing, playing and recording modern jazz. Long before Tisdale learned layups, he learned licks. His father, the Rev. Louis Tisdale, bought his sons Mickey Mouse guitars when Wayman was young, but Wayman was the only sibling who didn't "start using them as a hockey stick or a baseball bat." He took to the instrument and worked at it until he'd broken four of the six strings. With two left, the only parts of a song Wayman could play were the bass lines. So Wayman became a bass player. Then one summer, Tisdale grew two feet. Suddenly, his priorities changed. "I wasn't comfortable, you know, standing a foot taller than everyone in the (church) choir, even the director," he said, "so I thought, 'I've got to find something I can put my energy into that will suit me.' " Jazz on the sidelines Onto the court he went. But music was never put away, only put aside. As coaches told Wayman repeatedly that he would be in the NBA one day, Tisdale lumbered home from practice and followed along with a guitar to Stanley Clarke records ("That's where I got my style," he says). He kept his hand in something musical throughout his college and professional basketball career. By the time he began playing with the Phoenix Suns, he also had landed a record contract with MoJazz, a Motown subsidiary. "That's when the ribbing got pretty tough," Tisdale said. "These guys see this multimillion-dollar basketball player getting on the bus with this big bass, and they say, 'Oh, man, here comes Michael Jackson.' I laughed it off and just said, 'Someday you'll see. You'll see.' When my first record came out, a lot of those guys came up to me all wide-eyed, saying, 'Man, I can't believe you did it. And it's cool.' " Getting that deal was a tough sell, at first. Record company scouts tended to groan when a pro athlete wandered into their offices. "Being in the NBA was my worst nightmare as far as being taken seriously in music," Tisdale said. "You walk in and say, 'Hi, I'm Wayman, and I'm in the NBA,' and they think, 'Oh no, another vanity project,' or they hear the tape and think, 'Is it Milli Vanilli?' This was right after Deion Sanders had done his thing and a bunch of other players and done rap records that were really awful. "I was going to put it out myself, but a friend took my demo down to Motown. They loved it, and the last thing he told them was who I was. They were sold." Slam dunk The two MoJazz albums met with rave reviews. When MoJazz dissolved, Atlantic's godfather of jazz, Ahmet Ertegun (who signed the quintessential jazz bassist, Charles Mingus), flew Wayman to New York, once again defying his own promises to retire just to sign Tisdale to Atlantic. "I couldn't believe I just stepped up from one big label to another," Tisdale said. "He kept telling me I had the capability to cross-over." What Ertegun heard in Tisdale's "Decisions" demos was not just the overriding smooth jazz, but gospel, adult contemporary and R&B. The songs are easygoing gems that are somehow more than jazz. Wayman even sings on a handful of radio-ready tracks. "If I can't sing the song when I'm done with it, I won't do it," Tisdale said. "I'm melody and hook oriented. That's why I differ from most smooth-jazz players, I think. It's feel-good music. It's got gospel, Latin, R&B — that was my goal. The one common denominator in the whole thing is the bass." Tisdale is confident he's made the right "Decisions," and he plans to be as much of a musical star as he was a sports star. "A person who's been on top knows how to get on top again," he said. "The Grammies — that's my goal. Basketball taught me what it takes to get on top every day, and music won't be any different." BY THOMAS CONNER
© Tulsa World For a moment, I thought it was a joke. "Hi, Thomas, it's Frank Black," said the voice on the phone that morning. "I'm at my manager's house, and I'm making some calls this morning, and I saw you on the list for interview requests, and I just thought I'd call and see if you wanted to set something up." An artist doing his own schlepping? Sounded fishy, to me. Sounded like my friend Robert, too, who also happens to be a fairly rabid Frank Black fan. I nearly laughed aloud. As the conversation trickled on, though — this actually was Frank Black, former lead singer of the Pixies and now slightly less manic solo artist. We arranged our interview for the following week, and I voiced my surprise at his grassroots service. "Well, I'm just a regular guy," he said. "As a fan of your crazy music for the last 10 years, I somehow doubt that, but we'll talk more later," I said. On the appointed day, I called him at 8 a.m. Not exactly a rock star hour. Maybe he's a regular guy, after all. "My mornings are pretty regular guy-ish," Black said. "I get up, give various animals a treat. If I'm in a coffee streak, I'll make coffee. If we have nice foodstuffs in the house, I might prepare myself a gourmet breakfast or skip it altogether. Then I make phone calls." The Pixies re-established the chaos at rock's core, laying the foundations for '90s modern rock with their serrated guitars, sloppy playing and Black's alternating mischievous irony and brain-curdling shouts. Listening to them rage through such visceral, subversive rants like "Gouge Away," "Debaser" and "Bone Machine," sunny mornings with breakfast and puppies are not exactly how I had envisioned Black greeting each new day. The years have mellowed Black, though — not to mention the distance from the Pixies' former glory. The group disbanded in 1993, and Black took off on a solo career portraying himself as an average suburban nobody with unexplained obsessions. The sales have shrunk ever since, and so have Black's notions of how to conduct business. "I was calling you because it's just easier for me to get things done when I have the chance," Black said. "The band has decided to do this next leg of the tour without a crew, without even a tour manager. It's my job to advance the shows. We've been in constant downscaling mode for the last couple of years ... We're enjoying becoming more self-sufficient. The more we do it, the less we need. I don't freak out if we show up to a gig and the monitors sound horrible. We booked the gig, and people are there. The only thing that really bugs me is a messy, dirty backstage men's room." Black's latest record illustrates the new stripped-down approach, as well. "Frank Black and the Catholics," Blacks' fourth solo release and the first to bill his new backing band, was recorded directly to two-track digital tape. No multitracking. No overdubbing. No studio trickery or polishing. In fact, the album they released was intended to be a mere series of demonstration recordings. "We were really just making an expensive demo," Black said. "We had booked four days in a studio that was a thousand dollars a day. Time itself said to forget the multitracking and play live, which we'd never done ... I've been in a pattern of writing in the studio, of building a backing track and worrying about the lyrical content later. We couldn't do that here. After the second day in the studio, we realized it sounded good, familiar, like we knew we sounded in a club." The Catholics include bassist David MacCaffrey and drummer Scott Boutier, formerly the rhythm section for Conneticut's Miracle Legion. The eponymous new album features former Bourgeois-Tagg guitarist Lyle Workman; on tour, though, Rich Gilbert, from Human Sexual Response among others, handles the guitars. Black's first couple of solo records were largely collaborations with Eric Drew Feldman, a one-time veteran of both Pere Ubu and Captain Beefheart's Magic Band. Though Feldman still contributes on occasion, he backed away from the projects as a tighter band began to gel around Black. Black said Feldman still may join the Catholics as a keyboard player, but he's busy producing PJ Harvey at the moment. The return to the band construct has streamlined his sound, Black said, and he's glad to be a member of a posse again. "It's hard to miss the Pixies when we've got another band dynamic going," Black said. "It feels more band-like now. The choice of bandmates is more mature, too. You sort of fall into a situation with a bunch of people when you're younger. That had no experience behind it. This has 10 to 12 years of experience behind it. Now it's more possible to be the Rolling Stones when before we were more like the Monkees. There's something to be said for experience. It creates a groove of its own, which I think is heavier." Heavy grooves are certainly what Black enjoys. The new album is fairly typical and full of them, though the live recording keeps things moving briskly. The groove is the easy part, Black said. It's the lyric writing he dreads, which may explain a good deal of his, um, bent verses ("My Fu Manchu / Is a hard-earned way / Occidentally tic-tac"). "The easy part is strumming the guitar and getting that first lump of clay that looks like a song. You shape it, figure out the chord progression, and the melody comes out of that. The next part is pushing myself to write the lyric. I have to push," Black said. "It's like an algebra assignment. I'm not looking forward to it, and I put it off. Once I get into it, I enjoy it, but there's a mental block to that point. It's the scholarly side of songwriting. It's about having words rhyme together and having the song make sense, even if it's just to yourself. It's puzzle solving. "At this point, I'm not worried about what the song's about yet. You can write a song about anything. It's about putting words together. I get out dictionaries and reference books, geographical dictionaries, rhyming dictionaries. There's language in these books, and that's what it's all about. I'll get to three notes in the melody, and I'll think, 'Here, I want to go wah-wo-wah.' What word sounds like that? I'll stumble on a word for it. It might be obscure, but it will set off a flurry of activity. Then it's, `Oh, this will be a song about that.' " One thing Black does not write about much, though, is himself. No confessional singer-songwriter stuff here. "I don't get too caught up in that whole diary rock thing, when you have to write something from the heart. That's icky," he said. "You will write from the heart, whatever you write. There's a lot of fake stuff from the heart. People get caught up in striking a certain kind of pose, and it makes for some lame songs." Frank Black and the Catholics When 8 p.m. Saturday Where Cain's Ballroom, 423 N. Main St. Tickets $11, available at The Ticket Office at Expo Square, Mohawk Music, Starship Records and Tapes and the Mark-It Shirt Shop BY THOMAS CONNER
© Tulsa World EUREKA SPRINGS, Ark. — You could hurl a chunk of the native limestone just to the north and east and hit a small child in Branson, Mo., but that entertainment boneyard culturally is worlds apart from this charming hamlet in the Ozark hills. Sure, Eureka Springs gets its share of buses packed with sightseeing seniors, but these same Ozark hills serve as neat dividers, organizing the area into distinct cultural compartments. You can visit whichever part of Eureka Springs you want to visit — hibernating in your B&B or exploring the ridges and restaurants. Best of all, even after its recent growth spurts, you can soak up the town's tightly woven community spirit without once feeling like the yokel tourist. Most of the buses stay out on the highway, dumping the polyester press at the ham-n'-beans "kountry kitchens" and sub-Branson hootenannies like the Ozark Mountain Hoe-Down. The real treasures are in the heart of the historic old town — treasures for those seeking a romantic, easygoing getaway that is wholly organic and adult. Let the families meander the topography to find the Great Passion Play or the surreal and dinky Dinosaur World. The heart of Eureka Springs, though, beats with a truly romantic and natural pulse. Exposition The unique character of Eureka Springs is easily explained by its history. As the name suggests, this particularly picturesque area of northwest Arkansas first lured visitors to its natural springs. Indians said the waters bubbling from the rocks had healing powers, a claim white settlers latched onto in the late 19th century. During the Victorian era, the city blossomed around the construction of numerous bath houses and sanitoriums, where desperate health seekers came to "take the cure" of the healing waters. As modern medicine developed, water cures became quaint and fell out of favor. Two world wars and the Great Depression took a heavy toll on Eureka Springs, and many of its grand Victorian buildings were torn down to salvage the lumber. The town quickly became a relic, full of abandoned mansions and unkempt springs. In the '60s, though, two distinctly different groups came together to recover the area. As explained in "How We Got This Way (The Short Version of a Very Long Story)," published on the web site for the Eureka Springs Tourist Center (http://www.eureka-usa.com), the two groups had different ideas of what it meant to restore Eureka's "sacred ground." Groups of artists, writers and nature advocates collected in the historic district, restoring the old architecture and opening bookstores, galleries and restaurants. Out on the highway, Christian visionaries Gerald and Elna Smith created their own tourist mecca: the Great Passion Play, with nightly dramatizations of Jesus Christ's last week on earth. It's the same dichotomy that makes Tulsa such an entertaining place to live — the high concentrations of both liberal, civic-minded people and conservative, religious-minded people. The diversity is rich and makes the place difficult to market. And isn't that what you want most in a vacation spot -- something that's difficult to describe, tough to drape with splashy advertising and full of surprises? Sounds like heaven, and Eureka Springs is more than a little slice of it — a la mode. Autumn splendor Autumn is the ultimate chance to take in Eureka's splendors, too. The dollops of tree-covered peat that carpet the area transform into a rainbow of color each October, like Magic Rocks in a goldfish bowl. This year's summer heat may soften the autumn palate a bit, but it's still the ideal chance for adults to get away, take stock of time and have a cappuccino while the newlyweds clatter down the brick streets in horsedrawn carriages and Ford Escorts strung with soda cans. Here are some suggestions for a lovers' weekend away: Don't miss Autumn Breeze, home of one of the finest meals I've ever enjoyed. This simple, elegant restaurant just south of U.S. 62 on Arkansas 23 (past the Bart Rocket show, thank heavens) bills itself perfectly as "A Dining Pleasure." As you gaze upon the lit-up woods behind the cozy restaurant, enjoy the coconut beer-battered shrimp — with a heavenly orange-horseradish sauce — before a wholly satisfying meal. The Veal Olympic swims in an angelic lobster sauce, and the Beef Wellington is baked to perfection. The crowning glory is the famous chocolate souffle. Still feel like Mexican food? Avoid the poor service and reheated chow at Cafe Santa Fe and opt for innovative vegetarian fare at The Oasis. Hidden down a set of stairs on Spring Street, this tiny kitchen — and you eat practically right there in the kitchen — creates tasty and fiery new combinations from the same old formulas. Enjoy fine continental cuisine at Jim and Brent's Bistro, on Main Street south of the museum. The cozy cottage high on the bluff also offers a breezy deck for relaxing outdoor dining. Don't skip the cheese loaf as an appetizer. As autumn breezes grow crisper, duck into the Mud Street Espresso Cafe in a basement at the first bend in Spring Street. It's a clean, well-lighted place with a kitchen open late, but the creative coffees and sinful desserts (from peanut butter-chocolate cake to sweet potato pie) are the main attraction. Devito's, on Center Street just past Spring Street, balances elegance and ease, all the while serving magnificent Italian food. It's just far enough removed from the bustle to make it both accessible and peaceful. Before you depart, make the brunch at the Cottage Inn, west on U.S. 62. Recently featured in Bon Appetit magazine, this airy abode serves a divine midday meal, from the basic pastries to succulent polenta cakes. Be sure to get the banana nut bread, too. Whether you drop in for drinks or stay for the grand meals, Rogue's Manor on Spring Street is a captivating rest. The giant panes in the Hideaway Lounge gaze onto the vertical cliff against which the curiously designed B&B was constructed. The view only gets better with each sampling from the bar's wide array of single-malt scotches. Bring your Visa card The cool shops are centered in the old downtown area, along Main Street and up Spring Street. Even the T-shirt shops lack the overbearing kitsch of most tourist traps. In fact, seek out one T-shirt shop, in particular: Geographics, "Purveyors of Decadence in Academia." They print just about anything you can dream up to put on a T-shirt and are far more clever with their designs than those who give too much away by wearing "I'm With Stupid." Many of the most clever shops can be found along the high and low ends of Spring Street. Women will enjoy Charisma, 121 Spring, an arty closet featuring earthy designs by local artists. Its sister store just down the wooden stairs is the Back Porch. It's heavy on teddy bears but keeps the precious quotient palatable by including some smart antiques and colorful china and stemware. Antediluvian decorators will love the shop next door, Garrett's Antique Prints. The bins are full of matted prints, maps and etchings, many from books, dating back into the 16th century — many surprisingly affordable. Down the hill are some intriguing candles-clothes-and-oddities shops. Crazy Bone, 37 Spring, has a unique line of hardwood wall clocks with handpainted faces, in addition to its array of funky furnishings and Brighton leather goods. New Agers will have to pace themselves among the street's numerous retailers brimming with candles, bath salts, aromatic therapies, herbal remedies, native drums and a geologist's archive of crystals and stones. Magic moments Some recommendations for non-billboarded attractions, treats and oddities: The city is named after its waters, and there are 63 active springs within the city limits alone. Many of them are on private property, but pay attention as you stroll along streets in the historic loop for the dozens of small parks surrounding some of the springs. Most are planted like cottage gardens and make sweet moments of quiet repose. Several local churches make for profound or merely curious stops. Thorncrown Chapel, off U.S. 62 West, is a breathtaking example of architecture incorporating nature. It's high-paned sanctuary transcends the boundaries between indoors and outdoors and is liable to bring out the gooseflesh no matter what your spiritual beliefs. St. Elizabeth's Catholic Church is worth a look-see, too. It made "Ripley's Believe It or Not" because it's the only church known that you enter through the bell tower. After a long day of exploring and climbing those Arkansas hills, treat yourself to a massage at the Palace Bath House, 135 Spring Street. This local monument is the oldest Eureka Springs bath house still in operation. Though the minerals are now added to the water, the service and treatments available are exceptional, peaceful and affordable. Mushy couples should pack an old pair of shoes and head down the Beaver Dam scenic loop off U.S. 62 West. Keep your eyes peeled for the infamous Shoe Tree along the side of the road. You can't miss it — it's a towering oak and it's absolutely covered in old shoes. The origin of this oddity is rooted in a legend of young love: apparently, about 15 years ago, Billy and Becky went for a ride after a local hoe-down and wound up in the back seat along the side of the road during a violent storm. In a fit of glee, they took off their shoes and ran about in the rain. Billy lovingly joked about Becky's ratty, old work boots, and she dared him to fling them into the tree. He tied the laces together and hung them on a branch on the second toss. Since then, couples have tossed their own shoes into the tree as a sign of flowering affection. So far, the sneakerosis has led to no lasting botanical damage. For the night Though I could find no official designations, surely Eureka Springs in the bed-and-breakfast capital of the world. It seems as though 90 percent of the town's Victorian homes — from the cottages to the sprawling barns -- have found new lives as boarding houses. The two hotels looming on the town's physical and cultural skylines are the Basin Park Hotel — built on a hill so that every floor is a ground floor — and the Crescent Hotel — complete with a documented ghost. On our most recent visit, we tried something different. The Enchanted Forest is about two miles north of town on Arkansas 23, and it features three spacious cabins high on a hill and deep in the woods. Despite the steep drive up the hill (bring your SUV), the silent seclusion was welcome after each day of hiking busy streets and trails. Each cabin features a full kitchen and a hot tub, plus a roomy deck with the ultimate view of the coming fall foliage. Rates are amazingly reasonable. Call (800) 293-9586 for information and reservations. IF YOU GO Information: For all the information you will ever need about Eureka Springs, dial up the web site for the Eureka Springs Tourist Center, http://www.eureka-usa.com. Really, this site has everything you need to know about where to stay, where to eat, where to go, where to shop, how to get there and how everyone else got there. You can even fill out a form requesting specific information and receive a reply via e-mail. Where: The easiest way to get there: head east on U.S. 412, which branches off of U.S. 44 just before Catoosa. The road becomes the smooth and scenic Cherokee Turnpike before cutting through Arkansas. At Springdale, head north on U.S. 71 about 20 miles to Bentonville. Turn east onto U.S. 62 and wind your way to Eureka. Be warned — the curves will tug at your stomach. (You can also continue east through Springdale and weave your way through state highways to Arkansas 23, which approaches Eureka from the south. It's much more scenic, but slower.) Accommodations: In choosing someplace to stay, consider what you will be doing there. If you plan to spend most of your time strolling around the historic district, ask your B&B if they're on or near a trolley route. It's a charming town, but cramped, so parking can be problematic. Even so, the trolleys don't run very late at night, so make sure you won't be caught walking up those steep hills on a stomach full of rich food and spirits. |
Thomas Conner
These online "clips" reproduce a self-selection of my journalism (music etc) during the last 20+ years. It's a lotta stuff, but it only scratches the surface. I do not currently possess the time or resources to digitize the whole body of work. These posts are simply a bunch of pretty great days at the office. Archives
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