THE PREVIEWS
GARY CLARK JR. • 5 | LEE BAINS • 7 SILVERSUN PICKUPS • 8 JACK WHITE • 15 | SKRILLEX • 17 | NAS • 18
THE CUBES • 10
• 12 THE MAP
October 23, 2012 Gambit’s Guide To Voodoo Music Festival 2012 www.bestofneworleans.com
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c i t ’s c e rld o l W c ouse E The t s tume H o M os C
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EXTENDED HOURS FOR HALLOWEEN Starting Oct. 23 Hours: Tue-Fri: 11am-7pm Sat: 10am-7pm Sun: 12pm-5pm Mon: 11am-6pm Tue: 11am-7pm Wed: 11am-6pm
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CONTENTS
PAGE 5
PAGE 8
PAGE 15
PAGE 18
8 Silversun Pickups
17 Star and Dagger
7 Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires
10 Music Schedule
17 Skrillex
12 Festival Map and Information
18 Nas
15 Jack White
18 Justice
15 Toots and the Maytals
19 Dave Stewart
7 Newdoo: Changes at Voodoo 8 Neil Young and Crazy Horse
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MUSIC VOODOO WEEKEND THURSDAY 10/25
WALTER “WOLFMAN” WASHINGTON FRIDAY 10/26
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5 Gary Clark Jr.
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GARY CLARK JR.
THE THIRD MUSKETEER KKKKKKKKKKKKKK
PHOTO BY FRANK MADDOCKS
G
KKKKKKKKKKKKKK
Miss Claudia’s
VINTAGE CLOTHING & COSTUMES One birthday beyond the music gods’ frequently fatal 27th trip around the sun that consumed the genius of Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse, Robert Johnson and, yes, Hendrix, Clark still dwells in the astrological Saturn in return phase that yields either expansion or extermination. Though not a sink-or-swim scenario, Clark’s Blak and Blu release carries the threat of a sophomore jinx. Clark’s early rise was an organic, word-of-mouth climb as he recorded material for his own Austin, Texas-based Hotwire Unlimited label beginning in 2004. But his 2011 EP Bright Lights launched a much sharper rise toward fame and fortune. Clark has the chops of an A-list axe-slinger, as he uses Epiphone Casino and Gibson ES335 electric guitars to fantastic effect on Blak and Blu, which features cherry-picked cuts from Clark’s Hotwire catalogue in addition to new songs. His voice — as soulful as it is world-weary — shines through the album. Yet, Blak and Blu, produced by Michael Elizondo (Dr. Dre) and Rob Cavallo (Green Day) and recorded with players not from his typical touring band, is both thrilling and puzzling. The blasting horn arrangements and sexual swagger marking the opening “Ain’t Messin ’Round” are reminiscent of
5:45 P.M. | FRIDAY LE RITUAL VOODOO STAGE
Lenny Kravitz-like pop, but its boasting of, “I don’t believe in competition/ Ain’t nobody else like me around” befits an alpha-male bluesmen. His stellar guitar work moves from the Chuck Berry-boogie of “Travis County” to the full-tilt frenzy of “When My Train Pulls In” to the distorted, furious fuzz of “Numb.” In seemingly striving to avoid a retro-roots pigeon hole, Clark makes curious choices in tone and temperament on tunes like “Please Come Home,” exuding a pathetic, pubescent puppy-love vibe, and “The Life,” a goofy stretch into hip-hop. The closing “Next Door Neighbor Blues” offers relief from such diversions, and Clark’s solid slide work on his Epiphone acoustic and lyrical imagery of Cadillacs and pissed-off, pistol-waving women create a front-porch foot-stomper good enough to rank Clark among the titans in blues’ time-honored tradition. In a studio take on a thunderous moment from this past New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Clark’s mojo melds into magic on “If You Love Me like You Say” by fellow Texan Albert Collins. As in his Blues Tent performance, Clark weaves Hendrix’s trippy instrumental “Third Stone from the Sun” in and out of the verses, rendering in it a majestic revelation as blissful as it was decades ago. Blak and Blu inspires debate over Clark’s tone and temperament and whether they are best realized not in the studio but in live performance. The album also generates hope as he armors himself against music industry machinations with Shakespeare’s “To thine own self be true” advice. Or perhaps it’s best if, as night falls on City Park, this beatific young man, a rising star burning brightly, flips his finger to the deus ex machina behind the curtain and rips a face-melting “Voodoo Chile.” — FRANK ETHERIDGE
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ary Clark Jr., a Texasbred, 20-something blues talent possessing the good looks and guitar licks perfectly suited for stardom, arrives at Voodoo with all the gravitas surrounding an unassuming anointed one. Positioned on Voodoo’s playbill just below Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members present (Metallica) and future (Jack White), Clark, 28, returns to New Orleans for his third show in 15 months as both a familiar name and face. On the dog-days end of a summer in which he graduated to Bonnaroo’s big stage and was cited in Spin as “Most Booked Festival Act,” Clark shredded our House of Blues’ Parish in September 2011 in a raucous crowd-pleaser highlighted by an encore cover of Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up” and communal realization that a star this bright would never play a room that small ever again. In February, Clark stole the show at the star-studded “Red, White and the Blues” concert at the White House in celebration of Black History Month. Standing in doe-eyed humility before President Barack Obama and showcased in a national PBS broadcast, Clark, backed by a “house” band that included silkysmooth Stax Records Hammond B3 impressario Booker T., served up two traditional tunes: “In the Evening (When the Sun Goes Down)” — a favorite of everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Ray Charles — before unleashing a blistering “Catfish Blues,” a simple song covered by many but electrified by another young man likewise blessed with immense talent, searing psychedelic energy and crossover appeal: Jimi Hendrix. Clark’s comparison to Hendrix is both deserved and obvious. But between self-conscious quotes in magazines like Rolling Stone (which quoted him on his much-anticipated, much-publicized Warner Bros. debut Blak and Blu, released Oct. 22, as saying, “There’s a lot more pressure, which I can understand. But at the same time, I’m only human. I can only do so much.”) and slick publicity photos shot in settings decidedly more Lower East Side than Texas hill country, one might ponder the consequences of laying such a heavy load on such slim shoulders and sensitive, artistic mindset.
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PICK UP A GUIDE TO VOODOO AND A COMPLIMENTARY PAIR OF GAMBIT SUNGLASSES (WHILE SUPPLIES LAST)
LEE BAINS III & THE GLORY FIRES L
of mind for the South. He heard a way to be excited about his Southern culture but to throw away all the racist trappings of it, like, ‘This is the new South.’ That’s how I heard that music. As I got older, I realized the older dudes sitting and listening to that music in the high school parking lots or wherever, they did not feel the same way I did.” Bains discovered Birmingham’s tight-knit, landlocked punk circuit, including all-ages venues The Boiler Room and Barn Stormers. “It was eye opening,” he recalls. “You’d have exposure to so many ideas, and such a wide range of emotions you’d go through just sitting through those shows.” Bomb in Gilead shows off Bains’ growling, church-raised gospel chops — on opener “Ain’t No Stranger,” Bains’ Southern soul swagger croons and howls, not unlike a swampy Jim James. On the classic Muscle Shoals soul of “Everything You Took,” Bains namedrops both the Ramones and Walker Percy, with a heavy dose of gospel on its chorus. The album title is a deliberate misspelling of the popular spiritual “There Is a Balm in Gilead.” “My grandmother was a choir director. They grew up singing the old hymnal in the Methodist church,” Bains says. “My babysitter was deep into the Holiness Pentecostal church,
and I heard that song through her as well. It stuck out to me. I’d always listen to the words in hymns. Most would just kind of bleed together — just the same types of images and themes. That one, I could’ve sworn they said, ‘There is a bomb in Gilead,’ and I had all these images running through my mind of what that could mean.” Bains recorded Bomb in Gilead in Water Valley, Miss., and mixed the album in Detroit, filtering punk energy and coun-
NOON | SATURDAY WWOZ / BUD LIGHT
try roots through Mississippi and Detroit’s rock ’n’ roll muscle. It’s a near whirlwind tour for Bains — he returned to Birmingham after school in New York, where he hoped to escape his jaded history with his homebred scene. (“Alabama, by now I hope you know, I’d die for you if called to
do so, but I’m being courted by California, Tennessee,” he sings on “Righteous, Ragged Songs.”) “I have a home in Alabama, and I have a family, and a history, and I feel like I’m a part of it,” he says. “I feel more at home in Birmingham than I do anywhere in the world.” —ALEX WOODWARD
T
he Voodoo Experience always has something new to offer and the attractions sometimes get moved around the City Park festival grounds. Here are some of the changes and additions for 2012.
Camping is the biggest addition. Fans can camp in areas adjoining the festival grounds. There are both general admission camping grounds and VIP camping, which comes with quite a few amenities. General admission includes a 12-by-12-foot space and campers need to bring their own tents. Voodoo provides showers and medical services and there will be food vendors.
The VIP LOA Grand package includes a safari tent for two people with bedding and electricity, breakfast and late-night snacks, a WiFi lounge, showers, toilets with running water instead of port-o-lets and showers. The VIP camping area also will have two mealtime parties. Kermit Ruffins will host a barbecue Saturday afternoon and Lil Band o’ Gold will prepare jambalaya at another cookout Sunday afternoon. It also comes with artist passes allowing stage access with some restrictions. The LOA VIP area on the festival grounds will include food by chef Scott Boswell of Stella! and Stanley.
PHOTO BY CHERYL GERBER
NEWDOO Two stages have been moved. The popularity of the Le Plur DJ and electronic music tent has resulted in its relocation to a larger space closer to the Voodoo mainstage. The Bingo! stage and Le Carnival area revert to their previous location along City Park’s Roosevelt Mall, where Le Plur was last year. Voodoo will have a locker service. Attendees can rent lockers to store their belongings by reserving one on the website www.entertainmentlockers.com. Single and three-day rentals are available.
Shuttle bus service to Voodoo has been reinstituted. Shuttles provide transportation from the Hyatt Regency New Orleans to the festival’s main entrance. Round trip tickets are $20 per day or $50 for a three-day pass.
October 23, 2012 Gambit’s Guide To Voodoo Music Festival 2012 www.bestofneworleans.com
ee Bains III hails from two worlds that seemingly couldn’t be more different — spirited Southern choirs and punk rock. On There is a Bomb in Gilead, the soft-spoken Birmingham, Ala. native’s latest album with his band The Glory Fires, Bains straddles those disparate scenes, with backyard barbecue anthems and slowburning Southern soul. “Say a prayer for punk rock,” he sings on “Righteous, Ragged Songs,” “and say a prayer for me.” “Both traditions can really value a genuine, earnest feeling, and a chance to heal people and bring people together and make positive change,” he says. “A lot of the punk rock bands that got me into that music reminded me a lot of the more accessible gospel music, like of the ’60s and ’70s — I guess you’d call it ‘inspirational’ and not Bible-thumping gospel. Listening to MC5, and bands like that, gave me that same feeling.” The Bains family raised its children on Southern rock staples and Alabama’s native Muscle Shoals sound. Three-year-old Lee was his father’s go-to party trick once Lee learned all the words to the Charlie Daniels Band’s “Devil Went Down to Georgia.” “My dad grew up in Birmingham around a town called Bessemer,” Bains says. “He grew up in the ’60s, when segregation was at its height. To him, Allman Brothers and those bands signaled a new state
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October 23, 2012 Gambit’s Guide To Voodoo Music Festival 2012 www.bestofneworleans.com
PHOTO BY JULIE GARDNER
NEIL YOUNG AND CRAZY HORSE
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W
hat is there left for Neil Young to say? He emerged as a counter-culture Magic 8-Ball almost predicting a BP oil disaster vision in “Vampire Blues” on 1974’s On the Beach, which opens, “I’m a vampire, baby, suckin’ blood from the earth.” He had cocaine edited out of his nose in post-production by Martin Scorsese, who confessed to snorting the stuff himself while directing what arguably stands as the finest rock concert/band documentary ever: 1977’s grand finale by The Band visualized into 1978’s The Last Waltz. He has emoted complementing lyrics and melodies like those in “Don’t Be Denied” so heartbreakingly good it makes you want to hug your dog and cry. What does he say in regard to the populist anthems — “Rockin’ in the Free World” and “Ohio”? He forgoes amber waves of grain for fist-pumping rockers that both enrage and inspire. And at 66-years-old, Young still has a lot to say. Young issued Waging Heavy Peace (Blue Rider Press) in September and the rambling 512-page memoir includes diatribes and insights from the poet, prophet and punk’s decades in the cultural spotlight. A reflective Young says he now regrets the scathing and stereotyped “Southern Man” and confirms the beef with the Florida natives in Lynyrd
9 P.M. | FRIDAY LE RITUAL VOODOO STAGE
Skynyrd, who returned the volley with the “I hope Neil Young will remember, a Southern man don’t need him around anyhow” in their anthem, “Sweet Home Alabama” — was purely pop-culture chatter. Young writes of his “Southern Man” lyrics: “I don’t like my words when I listen to it today. They are accusatory and condescending, not fully thought out, and too easy to misconstrue.” We learn of a devoted environmentalist whose enthusiasm for cars includes several bio-diesel vehicles and an electric-car dream that literally went down in flames. Young’s staggering genius came with plenty of struggles and demons. There are many failed relationships, overdoses and artistic misses, such as this summer’s concert/film Journeys, another collaboration with filmmaker Jonathan Demme, but one that falls well short of Demme’s portrait of Crazy Horse in 1995, The Complex Sessions. But judging from reviews of the current tour with Crazy Horse and listening to the superb recently released album Psychedelic Pill (accented by a surreal video for the single “Walk Like a Giant”), Young arrives at Voodoo at the top of his game and can let the music speak for itself. — FRANK ETHERIDGE
SILVERSUN PICKUPS A
heavy downpour nearly canceled the Silversun Pickups’ 2009 Voodoo performance. “We were in the bus, and we weren’t sure if we were going to play because it was raining so hard,” vocalist-guitarist Brian Aubert says. “The promoters, everyone, were just waiting, waiting, waiting, scrambling to find a club and maybe do a show. Five minutes before we were up, we were good. We ran out on stage. One of my amps blew up.” What if it happens again? “I’ll have five amps!” Aubert says with a laugh. The Los Angeles band won’t need them for backup, but for muscle. Silversun Pickups’ third album, Neck of the Woods, bursts with textures and layers of guitars and drums, from the shoegazing mega-pop of push-pull opener “Skin Graph” or drum-driven tracks like single “The Pit.” “We wanted drums and bass to carry a lot of (the album) themselves, with different tones and different sounds,” Aubert says. “We played around with negative space. We did it in our producer’s garage — just go in and built it all from scratch, the drums are always set up.” Emerging from the thriving Silver Lake scene in L.A., Silversun Pickups hinge on a ’90s rock revival, evoking My Bloody Valentine-sized walls of sound with the pop precision of Smashing Pumpkins and lush shoegaze bands like Swervedriver and Ride. Aubert’s introspective, raspy near-feminine vocals glide over stadium-filling guitars. Drummer Christopher Guanlao balances programmed Brotherhood-era New Order drum tracks with pummeling live drums, and bassist Nikki Monninger (who sits out this tour while pregnant with twins) slithers on bass. (Filling in for Monninger is Happy Hollows bassist Sarah Negahdari.) For Neck of the Woods, the band worked with producer Jacknife Lee, who advised the band to stretch its legs and build its dynamic sound live in the studio — at Lee’s house in Topanga Canyon, Calif., Aubert’s hometown. Aubert wrote chunks of the album while on tour in Europe, though writing on the road typically goes against band rules. “All of a sudden songs kept popping up around places,” he says. “I have no actual system for writing down songs. When we first started writing this record, the first thing I had to do was find bits of paper.” Despite the wanderlust writing sessions, Aubert found himself in familiar territory — the landscapes changed, but the people and problems remained. Aubert’s introspection dove deeper under the covers (“Where it starts and where it ends is here in my bedroom,” he sings
7 P.M. | SATURDAY LE RITUAL VOODOO STAGE
on the self-argument “Simmer”). “They’re going through the same shit, the same pressures, the same loves,” he says. Coincidentally, the band retreated to Topanga Canyon (the countrified L.A. suburb home to career-defining sessions by Fleetwood Mac and Gram Parsons) to record with Lee, who has helmed albums by The Cars and R.E.M. Aubert wandered his old neighborhood after late-night recording sessions. “To come back home, to the most familiar place ever — everything’s changed. Not only physically has it changed, but it rebooted itself,” Aubert says. “There was nothing for me there anyway.” On “Make Believe,” Aubert sings “I’ll give everything I’ve got to fill the canyon with useless debris.” His return to Topanga was bittersweet, but it was dumb luck how it complemented the album, he says. “I wish we planned it, like we had some power,” he says. “There’s a lot of themes on this record, about nostalgia, and spelunking into yourself and not expressing your immediate feelings, figuring out how your machine is built. So it makes sense you’d (record) it where you were born.” Aubert’s head-clearing getaway and homecoming book-end with another tour and a final destination in New Orleans. The band will stay in the city after its Voodoo performance and before a November tour of Australia. Aubert is particularly excited about Halloween. “New Orleans is the first place for Halloween I didn’t have to psyche myself up for digging it,” he says. — ALEX WOODWARD
October 23, 2012 Gambit’s Guide To Voodoo Music Festival 2012 www.bestofneworleans.com
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SCHDEULE SUBJECT TO CHANGE
FRIDAY-SUNDAY OCT.26-OCT.28
October 23, 2012 Gambit’s Guide To Voodoo Music Festival 2012 www.bestofneworleans.com
Le Ritual Voodoo
Le Plur
The Red Bulletin
Preservation Hall
WWOZ Bud Light
Le Ritual Voodoo
Le Carnival
Le Plur
The Red Bulletin
Preservation Hall
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28 WWOZ Bud Light
Le Ritual Voodoo
Le Carnival
10:00am
10:00am
10:00am
10:30am
10:30am
10:30am
11:00am
11:00am
11:00am-11:45am
11:00am
11:30am
Mainline Brass Band
11:30am
11:15am-12:15pm
11:30am 12:00pm
noon -3:15pm
Luke Winslow King
11:45am-12:15pm
Money Mitch
12:45pm-1:45pm
1:00pm
Force Feed Radio
1:30pm 2:00pm
4:00pm 4:30pm
3pm-4pm
Y LUV 4:15pm-5:15pm
5:00pm Infantree 5:30pm 6:00pm 6:30pm
5:45pm-6:45pm
Gary Clark Jr.
7:00pm 7:15pm-8:30pm
8:00pm
The Avett Brothers
8:30pm
9:30pm 10:00pm 10:30pm 11:00pm
Beverly Skillz 4:30pm-5:45pm
NERVO 5:45pm-7pm
Die Antwoord JFK of MSTRKRFT 8:30pm-10pm
9pm-11pm
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Kaskade
12:45pm-1:45pm
1:30pm-2:30pm
Andy Suzuki & The Method
Little Freddie King w/ Guitar Lightnin’ Lee
3pm-4pm
3:45pm-4:45pm
CC Adcock & The Lafayette Marquis
3:15pm-4:30pm
7pm-8:30pm
7:30pm
9:00pm
TBC Brass Band 2:15pm-3:15pm
2:30pm
3:30pm
noon-4pm
101 Runners Present “We Love Big Chief” Atribute to Big Chief Bo Dollis Featuring Big Chief Monk Boudreaux and Members of the O
5:15pm-6:30pm Paul Sanchez Rolling Road Show featuring cast members of 9 Lives
4:30pm-5:30pm
Delta Rae 6pm-7pm
George Porter and his Runnin’ Pardners
7:30pm-8:30pm
Skerik, Mike Dillon, George Porter, Johnny Vidacovich and Edward “Kidd” Jordan
2:15pm-3:15pm
3:45pm-4:45pm
Star and Dagger
1:30pm
2:30pm 3:00pm
2:15pm-3:15pm
The Revivalists
FILTHY WARM UP with Carmine P. Filthy, Unicorn Fukr and Rekanize
4:00pm 4:30pm
3:45pm-5pm
K’Naan
4pm-5:15pm
Jim-E Stack
5:15pm-6:15pm
Thomas Dolby
5:30pm 6:00pm
5:30pm-6:30pm
AWOLNATION
6:30pm 6:45pm-7:45pm
Supagroup
9:00pm-10:15pm
Say Anything
7:00pm 7:30pm 8:00pm 8:30pm
7pm-8pm
DJ Qbert & D-Styles of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz
11:00pm
Sister Alvin Youngblood Sparrow and the Dirty Birds Hart’s 3pm-4pm
8:30pm-11pm
9:30pm-11pm
Metallica
Justice
Soul Rebels with special guests 4:30pm-5:30pm
4:45pm-6:00pm presents New Orleans Nightingales with special guest Irma Thomas
The Features
2:30pm
Chicano Batman
3:30pm 4:00pm
4:15pm-5:15pm
Zeale 5:45pm-7pm
Toots and the Maytals
Dave Stewart
4:30pm 5:00pm
The Vettes
8pm-9pm 8:15pm-9:15pm
Anders Osborne w/ Johnny Sansone and Big Chief Monk Boudreaux
6:00pm 6:30pm 7:00pm
7:30pm-8:30pm
MyNameIsJohnMichael
3:00pm
7:30pm 8:00pm 8:30pm 9:00pm
WWOZ Bud Light
11am-noon
Christopher Joseph
Asylum Chorus
St. Cecilia’s
11:45pm-12:45pm
noon-12:45pm
Stephie and The White Socks
12:45pm-2pm 1pm-1:45pm
DallasK 1:45pm-2:45pm
New Rebel Family
2pm-3:15pm
Dev
3pm-4pm
Vintage Trouble
3:15pm-4:30pm
1:15pm-2:15pm
New Leviathan Oriental Fox-Trot Orchestra
Coheed & Cambria
Borgore
with special guest members of the Givers and Preservation Hall Horns
5:45pm-7pm 6pm-7pm
Nas 7:30pm-9pm
Jack White
6:15pm-8:15pm
Skrillex
Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Big Al Carson
Royal Teeth 2pm-3pm
Sexdog
Black Box Revelation
4pm-5pm Lost Bayou Ramblers
12:30pm-1:30pm
2pm-2:45pm
3pm-3:45pm Tangiers Blues Band The Models
Modestep 4:30pm-6:15pm
Dash Rip Rock
2:45pm-3:45pm
4:15pm-5:15pm 4:30pm-5:30pm
Le Carnival
11:00am-12:45pm
Melody Clouds
1:30pm 2:00pm
Preservation Hall
and Chrisoph Leo Jackson Andersson and the
12:30pm
5:30pm 6pm-7:45pm
Casa Samba with Africa Brass
Etienne De Crecy
with special guests
2:45pm-3:45pm
The Gaslamp Killer 7:45pm-8:45pm
Fleur De Tease
Muscle Theory
6:30pm-7:30pm
Silversun Pickups
9:30pm
10:30pm
1:45pm-2:45pm
6:30pm-7:45pm
9:00pm
10:00pm
1:15pm-2:15pm
Feufollet
12:00pm
1:00pm 1:30pm-2:30pm
Ingrid Lucia
5:15pm-6:30pm
Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires
Debauche
Brass Band
3:15pm-4:15pm
5:00pm
8:15pm-9:15pm
Bootsy Collins
1:00pm
3:30pm
Pimps of Joytime
8:30pm-9:30pm
Treme
2:00pm Big History
7pm-8pm
Cheick Hamala Diabate
Coyotes
noon-1pm 12:15pm-1:15pm
12:30pm
12:30pm
3:00pm
11:45am-12:45pm
12:00pm
Le Plur
The Red Bulletin
3:30pm-5pm New Orleans Bounce Azztravaganza Dream: Katey Red
Marcia Ball
& Cheeky Blakk + Magnolia Rhome, Ha’ Sizzle. Walt Wiggady & DJ Lil’ Man
5:30pm-6:45pm
5:30pm-6:30pm
Lil Band Tomahawk O’ Gold 7pm-8:30pm 7:15pm-8:15pm
7:30pm-8:30pm
Kid Koala
The New
JD & The Orleans Straight Shot Bingo! Show
October 23, 2012 Gambit’s Guide To Voodoo Music Festival 2012 www.bestofneworleans.com
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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26
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October 23, 2012 Gambit’s Guide To Voodoo Music Festival 2012 www.bestofneworleans.com
OCT 26.27.28
METALLICA + NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE
KASKADE + JUSTICE + SILVERSUN PICKUPS + AWOLNATION
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JACK WHITE + SKRILLEX + THE AVETT BROTHERS
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JACK WHITE A
fter years performing in different bands — most notably as one half of the garage-blues duo The White Stripes, then in power-pop supergroup The Raconteurs and as a swamp goth in The Dead Weather — a solo release from Jack White was a long time coming. While not straying far from the sound of his other projects, noisy interpretations of blues with an energy that draws from both punk rock and gospel, 2012’s Blunderbuss shows White at his most earnest and vulnerable. On “Love Interruption” he sings “I want love to roll me over slowly/ Stick a knife inside me, and twist it all around.” His cover of Little Willie John’s “I’m Shakin’” is a barnburner fueled by claps and an army of powerful female backup vocalists. White first came to prominence with the enigmatic White Stripes with maybe sister, maybe ex-wife Meg White (it’s his ex wife; Jack White took her surname), whose sparse, endearingly untrained drumming complemented Jack’s noisy guitar work. After releasing six albums, the duo officially broke up in 2011, although they hadn’t been playing together much during that time. White kept himself busy with side projects The Raconteurs, alongside Brendan Benson, Jack
Lawrence and Patrick Keeler, and The Dead Weather, a haunting blues outfit lead by witchy Kills singer Alison Mosshart. His first solo release coincides with an increased interest in White, who has become famous for his eccentricities and obsession with aesthetics. The Detroit native lives in Nashville, where he established the home base for his Third Man Records. The headquarters of the label, which releases albums primarily on vinyl and functions as a record store, performance venue and recording space, reveals White’s control over his image and his meticulously dressed employees and yellow-and-black color scheme (the same way the White Stripes embraced red and black). His attention to detail also crosses over to performance — touring for Blunderbuss, White alternates between all-female and all-male backing bands. Other interesting nuggets about his strange personal life have emerged, like the “divorce party” he threw when his marriage to model/singer Karen Elson ended. But behind the weirdness and aesthetic choices, White shows consistency in talent, in all iterations and color schemes. — LAUREN LABORDE
PHOTO BY NICK BUSCO
Toots and The Maytals
standards. This “failure” of complete U.S. saturation means that for many listeners, the Maytals’ early output remains an unspoiled pleasure. And what a pleasure it is: the Studio One gospel of Never Grow Old and Life Could Be a Dream, backed by the Skatalites and captured by production icons Clement “Coxsone” Dodd and Lee “Scratch” Perry; The Original Golden Oldies Vol. 3, a joyful noise coming from the back of Prince Buster’s Record Shack; and above all, The Sensational Maytals, put to tape with Byron Lee at Federal Studios from 1964-66. The latter plays like a greatest-hits collection, and it is, contrasting opening tandem “It’s You” and “Daddy” later forming the first double-No. 1 45 in Jamaica’s history, and the effervescent “Never You Change” appearing here in the first of several guises.
As strong as that run was, the Maytals went wild after Hibbert’s release from an 18-month marijuana-related imprisonment in 1967 (with 54-46 becoming the most invoked inmate number ever), teaming up with Leslie Kong for a unflagging sprint of singles from 1968 until Kong’s death in 1971. That year, returning producer Lee dubbed them Toots and the Maytals, spawning a second decade that saw six more albums, including genre psalms Funky Kingston, In the Dark, Reggae Got Soul and Just Like That. — NOAH BONAPARTE PAIS
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T
oots and the Maytals, we call them, but to the island of Jamaica, they were and always will be simply the Maytals: the rah-Jah Temptations of ska, reggay champions before there was reggae music, the most soulful and sensational vocal group to come out of the Caribbean in the 1960s. Led by the restive rasp of Frederick “Toots” Hibbert, the original trio (Hibbert, Henry “Raleigh” Gordon and Nathaniel “Jerry” Matthias) fell short of the stateside chart heights and pop-cultural impact of Bob Marley and the Wailers, though a handful of its Jamaican-record 31 No. 1 hits — chiefly “Sweet and Dandy,” “54-46 (That’s My Number)” and “Pressure Drop,” all products of a fertile, rapid-fire recording period from 1968-70 — became ubiquitous cover selections and worldwide rocksteady
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and Dagger enlisted Eagles of Death Metal guitarist, quasiNew Orleanian and rock ’n’ roll elder statesman Dave Catching. Yseult and Catching met in the ’90s when White Zombie took Catching’s band on tour. Catching assimilated into Star and Dagger quite naturally while he co-produced Tomorrowland Blues at his Rancho de la Luna studio in Joshua Tree, Calif. Rancho de la Luna is most famous as ground zero for the recording of several Queens of the Stone Age albums. “New Orleans is officially my home,” says Catching, who also is known to DJ around town and has made a cameo in the parading Mardi Gras rock band Pink Slip with Sue and Jimmy Ford. “My business is out in Joshua Tree, and it is always busy,” he says. “I live at my studio half the time, and the rest I try to spend in New Orleans.” Singer von Hesseling is a relative newcomer to the stage, but is familiar with New Orleans’ rock ’n’ roll scene via her husband Ryan Hesseling’s ownership of One Eyed Jacks. Her voice — more Heart than L7 — is Star and Dagger’s soulful centerpiece. “It’s almost funny sometimes to hear Marci’s beautiful voice on top of these metal riffs,” Yseult says. Finding themselves temporarily
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3:45 P.M. FRIDAY LE CARNIVAL
homeless after Hurricane Katrina, Yseult and husband Chris Lee of Supagroup bought a place in New York, where Star and Dagger lately has spent time playing shows and looking for a label to release Tomorrowland Blues. “I still have the place in New Orleans,” Yseult says. “New Orleans is home, but after Katrina I remembered how much I loved New York.” Following a year of brief tours and shows with Down, High on Fire, Helmet and Eagles of Death Metal, Star and Dagger is ready to return to New Orleans and will screen the video for “Your Mama Was a Grifter” during its show at Voodoo. — MICHAEL PATRICK WELCH
un into a dance crowd, yell “Skrillex” and shield yourself from projectile vomiting, shrieking teens and arms-flailing party bro howls. Follow it with the question, “What is dubstep?” and throw on a flak jacket for the barrage of opinions. What was once a burgeoning electronic music obscurity has become a synonym for gym-mom dance-pop, pimply high school party music and the butt of a poorly written music joke in 2012. In the late ’90s, South London DJs chopped up 2-step, dub reggae and drum-and-bass elements distinct from the powerhouse grime and house music scenes dominating the clubs. Subtle pitch shifts and dark, bass-heavy “drops” and sparse beats were defining characteristics. Fast-forward to 2011, and a former emo band frontman in oversized sunglasses and a goofy haircut has amassed three Grammy Awards and millions of fans for his take on the genre. Skrillex (real name Sonny John Moore) relies on aggressive drops and explosively warped sub-bass robot blasts, taking the club culture to packed stadiums, with DJ as heavy metal guitar wizard. Skrillex released a string of EPs in 2010 — breakout hit and Grammy-winning single “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites,” with its skittering
patterns and big beat electro-pop, introduced the “drop” to mainstream audiences. Forty seconds in, Skrillex turns the knobs to Transformers frequencies. That “drop” is his signature, and its imitators and contemporaries of what is derogatively named “brostep” rely on the drop’s success on the dance floor, or in the car or dorm room. Though critics and DJs deny Skrillex as a “true” dubstep producer, he isn’t attached to the name, either. He points to progressive electronic producers like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher as primary influences. Last year’s “Bangarang,” his biggest hit to date, is a straight-forward house banger, equal parts Daft Punk dance party and radio-friendly dance rock, a la fellow Voodoo headliners Justice. Skrillex mines dubstep’s bass-obsessed breakdowns but cranks the volume to sugary highs with absolutely no room for club dance floor subtlety. — ALEX WOODWARD
SKRILLEX 6:15 P.M. SUNDAY LE PLUR
October 23, 2012 Gambit’s Guide To Voodoo Music Festival 2012 www.bestofneworleans.com
don’t like to say it’s straight-up metal,” former White Zombie bassist Sean Yseult says of her new heavy guitar band Star and Dagger. At a fighting weight closer to Down than her other band Rock City Morgue, Star and Dagger flirts dangerously with Southern metal. Its online debut offered a different sound. The band put its heavy metal aside on its first single, the anomalous boogieblues stomp, “Your Mama Was a Grifter.” Yseult wrote the campy lyrics, a duty that normally falls to guitarist Donna She Wolf, late of Cycle Sluts from Hell. The song’s video slips the band’s founding female members — a trio rounded out by singer Marci von Hesseling (owner of the French Quarter wig and costume shop Fifi Mahony’s) — into a black-and-white homage to Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The band’s first press photo shows the three women performing a seance, but Star and Dagger also features two men. After drumming on Star and Dagger’s three-song vinyl EP and its upcoming debut album, Tomorrowland Blues, Dustin Crops departed and Queens of the Stone Age drummer Gene Trautmann took over the kit. “He’s kick-ass,” Yseult nearly shouts. “It’s really exciting to play with him.” Around the same time, Star
PHOTO BY LESLIE VAN STELTON
Star and Dagger
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SPOOKY TUNES
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his crosstown G.O.A.T. rival to a “Tae Bo ho” (“You a fan, a phony, a fake, a pussy, a Stan/ I still whip your ass, you 36 in a karate class”). That didn’t happen. Instead, Nas signed with him in 2006, joining Def Jam for four LPs, saving the best for last. A clean break from the recent past, Life is Good digs deeper. “Loco-Motive,” a Large Professor class in session, extols Illmatic the right way, first with the circular chug of an elevated train, then with internal rhymes worthy of “Halftime.” “Accident Murderers” hits inner-city violence harder than Bill O’Reilly could ever blather, and “Nasty” usurps Pharoahe Monch with filthy samples and a hell-raising to-do list: “I come from the Wheel of Ezekiel/ To pop $1,000 bottles of scotch, smoke pot and heal the people.” Amen? — NOAH BONAPARTE PAIS
JUSTICE
PHOTO BY PAUL HEARTFIELD
HALLOWEEN
n the Dow Jones of hip-hop, Nasir Jones is a volatile stock: the boy king of Queensbridge, eloquent author of rap’s unarguable, eager bait taker, subprime beef grinder and kerosenesoaked torchbearer, his exothermic legacy going up in a puff of rehash smoke. But no — this is a dozen years ago, and Y2K isn’t the end of Nas’ world after all. It’s only the close of the first act, and there are two (or three, or four) falls and rises still to come. Life is Good (Def Jam), the 11th album by the legendary New York MC, says everything about where his valuation stands. With time-capsule boom-bap production values and a head-down vocal approach, it’s his best work this millennium — maybe his best since 1994 debut Illmatic, considered by no one to be outside the five greatest hip-hop albums of all time. Though continually striking fool’s platinum after followup It Was Written, Nas wasted a decade chasing his own shadow, his limitless talent retreating further inside ornate, empty temples of self worship (I Am..., Nastradamus). Stillmatic, an otherwise stale solo reunion, introduced a new target: an invigorating (however insincere) war of words with Jay-Z, the venomous “Ether” memorably reducing
9:30 P.M. SATURDAY LE PLUR/THE RED BULLETIN
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lectronic musician Deadmau5 was a big draw at Voodoo’s Le Plur stage in 2010, and Skrillex, the strangely coiffed leader of the current electronic dance music revolution, will likely draw similar crowds for his City Park set. But before acts like Deadmau5 and Skrillex were headlining festivals with their brand of electronic music, known for aggressive bass “drops,” there was the French duo Justice. The pair, consisting of Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay, followed the influence of fellow Frenchmen Daft Punk, who changed electronic music with catchy pop hooks ripe for sampling (as Kayne West did in his single “Stronger”) and make for instant dance floor classics (like the ubiquitous “One More Time”). Justice, which came to prominence as prolific remixers of popular groups, revitalized the genre by filtering brash progressive rock through disco — one critic called it “disco punk.” The rock influences also appear in Justice’s stage shows, in which the duo often performs behind a giant illuminated cross. The cross is a regular motif for the band, and that symbol serves as the title for its critically acclaimed 2007 debut. A popular single from that release is the
poppy “D.A.N.C.E,” which includes the earworm chorus of children singing (“do the D-A-N-C-E, 1-2-3-4-5”) over sweeping disco. The rest of the album is more abrasive, as in the propulsive “Waters of Nazareth” and “Stress,” which turns out to be an appropriate name for the paranoid track (the music video for the song was controversial for its depiction of African youths committing acts of vandalism while wearing jackets bearing the signature Justice cross). Cross was nominated for a Grammy for best electronic/dance album, and “D.A.N.C.E” was nominated for best dance recording. Justice followed up with 2008’s A Cross the Universe, a live album and documentary. In 2011 the duo released Audio, Video, Disco, a more rock-oriented venture that was not as positively received as Cross. — LAUREN LABORDE
DAVE STEWART D
PHOTO BY CRISTINA DUNLAP
to work a normal job again in my life.” Stewart says financial freedom has allowed him to achieve more artistic and commercial success. He got into film, doing music videos and experimental film projects. He also penned The Business Playground: Where Creativity and Commerce Collide, a business tome that has been translated into eight languages. “This collision point [of art and money] has been happening throughout the centuries,” Stewart says. “The king’s request for a painter to paint his ceiling or bringing in troubadours to sing him songs — I feel like there’s always going to be these troubadours, those that echo their muse as they reveal what is happening in the world. But these days, with things like Spotify — which went from seeming like an
5:45 P.M. | SATURDAY LE CARNIVAL
artist’s salvation to being one of the worst things for an artist — you have what I call extreme commerce that has a supernova effect on artists, flying them into stardom. Some can handle it, some can’t.” Stewart has handled financial success, but he still finds performing challenging. “Playing music live, no matter the scenario, puts you in a place where you are as thrilled and excited and nervous as when you first stepped on a stage,” he says. At Voodoo he will be backed by a stellar band formed for recent recording sessions at the Nashville studio of Joe McBride (country star Martina McBride’s husband). Fully aware of the funk and second-line strut of New Orleans’ Soul Rebels’ take on the Eurhythmics’ “Sweet Dreams,” Stewart, who calls himself a “born collaborator,” has a treat for his Voodoo audience in the intimate confines of the Bingo! stage immediately following the Soul Rebels. “This tour is a bit of a traveling circus in that my friends can come up and play,” says Stewart. “In New Orleans, we’re going to work up something that ends with this freaky, 10-minute jam with the Soul Rebels and others. It’s going to be insane.” — FRANK ETHERIDGE
October 23, 2012 Gambit’s Guide To Voodoo Music Festival 2012 www.bestofneworleans.com
ave Stewart’s frenetic genius is perhaps best revealed by his genes. Speaking by phone from his adopted home of Los Angeles, Stewart suggests the congenital curiosity that took him from music to film to nonfiction writing “is probably a mixture of how my mom’s mind used to work. “She was institutionalized in a mental hospital because they thought she was going nuts,” he says. “The head doctor interviewed her and told her, ‘You’re just really intelligent.’” Stewart proudly explains that his mother dropped out of school at age 12 but returned to school and entered a university nine months later. She went on to have a distinguished career teaching children with learning disabilities. She also painted large murals in Stewart’s native Sunderland in northeastern England. But it was a wayward cousin who drifted to Memphis and sent Stewart and his brother records capturing the city’s blues and Stax sound. “I was very fortunate in that, at age 12 or 13, somebody bought me a guitar,” he says. “Instead of playing football, I started playing music, not learning the English pop songs of the time, but learning all this blues stuff — Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters.” A decade later, he and Annie Lennox’s Eurhythmics were hailed as the time’s greatest pop sensation — the duo sold more than 100 million albums powered by hits such as “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” and “Would I Lie to You?” While scoffing at the pop label, because he and Lennox were inspired by and aiming for the blues, Stewart acknowledges his enormous commercial success allowed his career to spawn into much more. “Around the time after the third Eurhythmics album, I was talking to my attorney about buying a nice car or some sort of purchasing notion. He told me, ‘Dave, I think you have reason for cautious optimism.’ I realized then, I’m never going
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