(This feature originally appeared in the SF Weekly.)
Seated at the Riptide, way the fuck out by Ocean Beach — just one block from the end of America — banjo picker and vocalist Eric Embry and I shoot the shit going pint for pint around a lacquered tree trunk tabletop. Across the room, a couple of jovial drunkards are crooning along to a jukebox spitting out one of George Jones’ classic ballads. Embry’s relaying a fantastic story about his encounter with Ralph Stanley, who, as a member of the Stanley Brothers, was a pivotal force in the development of bluegrass in the late ’40s and ’50s.
“After the first of two shows [at the 2005 San Francisco Bluegrass and Old-Time Festival], I approach him and say, ‘Mr. Stanley, I’m the MC for your second show, and I don’t know if you ever do this kind of thing, but I want to know if you’d maybe like to do a tune together,’” the 32-year-old Embry explains in a wily Tennessee-bred drawl. He’s flashing a big, handsome grin and his eyes rattle about with excitement as he talks. “And Stanley says, ‘Well, we’ll have to rehearse a little bit.’ So we sit down by the merch table, sing a couple of tunes with the band, and at the end of the show, we actually do one.”
Restored to its glorious 1941 interior (knotty pine shiplap walls ‘n’ ceiling, brick floors, and a wood-burning fireplace), the Riptide has been a Sunset haven for roots music since 2004. It’s also where I recently stumbled across Embry’s ass-kickin’ new outfit the Burning Embers, who could be considered the bar’s house band. They’ve been regularly blowing away growing audiences since late last year when Embry — after spending several years knocking about the Bay Area’s rich bluegrass scene — brought together vocalist and fiddler Katy Rexford, fiddler Diana Greenberg, drummer (and Riptide co-owner) Les James, guitarist Clint Epps, and a rotating cast of guest musicians, including bassist Rob McClosky and Dark Hollow guitarist John Kornhauser.
“We do anything that’s got really good, interesting, two-part vocals,” Embry says — after intimating that he actually “hated the hokey, high-pockets” bluegrass he heard as a child growing up in “touristy” Gatlinburg, Tennessee. “Katy and I love singing old George Jones and Melba Montgomery duets,” he adds, “and the Louvin Brothers, and of course a lot of Stanley Brothers-type stuff.”
With more than half the group comprising transplants from either the Plains States or the South, the band — which plans to record in Asheville, North Carolina, in August — possesses a grounded, intuitive feel for traditional music. The plaintive nasal harmonies of Embry and Rexford float and skip over the group’s choppy, syncopated twang. Unlike many bands tackling the old-time jams, though, the Embers’ top-shelf musicians don’t come off like some overly reverential museum exhibit.
“We play a kind of honky-tonk bluegrass,” James, a self-proclaimed “Okie,” tells me. “For a ‘bluegrass group,’ the instrumentation is not traditional and the song selection is of a wider range than a lot of groups who call themselves ‘traditionalists.’”
Then again, what ultimately breathes serious life into the Embers’ music is not the group’s unique instrumentation but the same sense of brashness that Embry exuded when he approached a living legend/total stranger like Ralph Stanley. This is the attitude all of the Embers play with, as they engage a musical heritage that had been kicking around long before any of them set foot on this earth. And it’s the right mix of respect and iconoclasm to have if a musician really wants to make this music pop.
“It’s hard to explain,” James ponders, struggling for the right words. “For Eric, he didn’t just hear some country music last month and now he’s dressing up like a cowboy. This is life for him.”
None of you should be reading about Whirlwind Heat. That’s because this trio of emaciated shaggy hairs from Grand Rapids, Mich., was never anything but utterly banal. Back in 2000 — as young upstarts — the group played a brand of robot punk shamelessly nicking tricks from real heavies, Brainiac and Six Finger Satellite, which is where the Whirlwind Heat story should have ended. But then Jack White caught the band at a Detroit club, dug its shtick, and handed over his industry Rolodex, which is why in 2006 I’m writing about Types of Wood for a Bay Area alt weekly. It’s the group’s third high-profile release since 2003 and a vapid collection of cheeky, indie-dance novelties that — believe it or not — turns back the years to the Clinton era. Cuts like “Gene Pool Type” and “My Electric Underwear” are products of the same college-brow zoinks humor as Beck’s Mellow Gold and the collected works of They Might Be Giants and Ween. Y’know what I’m talking about: quirky, bouncy pop full of pseudo-intellectual lyrics sung in a deadpan, Caucasian rap. Now if only the “Heatboys” could work a little of that classic Deadeye Dick mojo into their act, then they’d have finally forged their own, unique sound.
Kalas is Matt Pike’s new outfit, and for the Bay Area quintet’s nine-track debut he wields his ax only on a single cut (“Frozen Sun”). That’s because Pike’s primary role is that of a lead vocalist, which is kinda fucked-up. Think about it: The dude from Asbestos Death, Sleep, and High on Fire — a modern-day guitar god whose fusion of hardcore, sludge, and Sabbath has placed him in the same pantheon as Ginn and King Buzzo — is merely singing. Of course, Pike is a powerful screamer, and his shredded croon actually takes center stage in Kalas’ fairly melodic fusion of groove-laden stoner fuzz and metalcore aggression, which isn’t caked with the weed, mud, and fog of HoF (much less Sleep’s Dopesmoker). Sure, Kalas’ twin guitarists, Paul Kott and Andy Branton (the latter formerly of Econochrist and Samiam), do unleash some serious riffage — albeit steeped in that thin, clean, straight-edge sound, one aligned with Pike’s lyrics, which pass on the mythological for the political. But Pike’s greatness ultimately lies in his mountain-plowing ax work, and several of these jams would feel far more dynamic and way heavier if that six-string were strapped to his chest for the entire disc.
Of course the new disc from guitarist Mick Barr of Orthrelm and drummer Zach Hill of Hella — the poster boys for a music that was once tagged “brutal prog” — is generating a serious buzz from us music writers. We’re all taking turns describing the NorCal duo’s Shred Earthship disc as the product of two virtuosos of experimental metal finally coming together. And while there’s no denying the technical mastery of both Hill and Barr, who’ve packed this 1.2-hour collection of jammers with more chops than a dojo, to get all Berklee College of Music about this subject — as if these dudes are nothing more than the indie counterparts to ace progressive metalheads Tony MacAlpine and Tim “Herb” Alexander — is to criminally overlook the evolved sense of collective consciousness exuded from this complex, dense, challenging music.
Fun and progressive rock are two things that have never gone together. Fun was the last thing yer average proghead (the scrawny, humorless, and all too pretentious concert-band dork) was supposed to be having back in ’75 when he — always a he — dropped that needle on The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Table, the sprawling concept album (and short-lived ballet on ice) from Yes keyboardist and composer Rick Wakeman.
Since the mid ’90s, Providence, Rhode Island, has produced a long list of mind-blowing underground bands including Lightning Bolt, Forcefield, Arab on Radar, and Olneyville Sound System. Unfortunately, several of these groups, as they made the transition from local outsiders to subterranean heroes on the national level, have become renowned as just noisemakers. But in reality, the music has always been but a mere component to much larger multimedia projects. In addition to those fantastical neon costumes and hand silk-screened cover art, these creations utilize quasi-mystical sculpture, absurdist theater, kaleidoscopic video projections, and potent psychedelic animation. The occasional DVD documents that freakish Providence meme, including Load Records’ massive Pick a Winner video compilation (2004) and said imprint’s brand-new one from Barkley’s Barnyard Critters titled Mystery Tail.
In the past few years, the U.S. has produced some fantastically cracked underground folkies deeply inspired by such tripped-out Brits from the ’60s as Incredible String Band, Pentangle, and Tyrannosaurus Rex. But then again, we broke from the United Kingdom a long time ago, and our country’s music roots lie not in Stonehenge and Chaucer but in Appalachia, New Orleans, Nashville, and hippie-with-a-pedal-steel California.
