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Column: Introducing
Indie Tastemaker Ariel Panero
It’s a late summer Saturday just before dusk, and Ariel Panero is scrambling around trying to keep things under control. He’s hosting a concert in a cramped parking lot in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, and about 400 barely legal hipsters are wandering around the premises, eating Chinese food, drinking free cocktails, and smoking various types of cigarettes. A Volkswagen with its front end smashed sits in the middle of it all, surrounded by enormous bags of fireproofing material. The only light is provided by a few bulbs dangling in front of the stage. The lines for the porta-potties are ridiculously long.
This unorthodox venue is at least a little bit illegal. Panero has no noise permit, after all, and although he has permission to use the space, if anyone complains about the high volumes—which can be heard from three blocks away—his goose is cooked. Tonight’s show features under-the-radar acts the Smith Westerns, Knight School, Ecstatic Sunshine, Grooms, and These Are Powers. Panero arrived at 8am this morning to set up the generators, the stage, and everything else. But though he’s tense for a while, eventually he settles down and relaxes. He even finds time to chat up his parents, who have come out for the festivities.
Double Dagger: More Is More
Double Dagger frontman Nolen Strals is awkward as the word itself. He bites his lip incessantly, squints his eyes through glasses that magnify his poor vision. His lanky gait, stooped posture, and monitor tan speak of days spent hunched over a computer screen. Stick a digital recorder in his face, and Strals stutters through the most basic interview questions.
“But put a microphone in my hand, and I’ll run away with it,” Strals says, romping around the Brooklyn sidewalk in a comical effigy of his own stage presence—all pumping arms and exaggerated strides, like a nerdy Henry Rollins. The M train rumbles and roars on elevated tracks overhead, rendering comments by bandmates Bruce Willen (bass) and Denny Bowen (drums) inaudible, but their smiles are loud, clear, and knowing.
On stage, at the helm of Baltimore’s Double Dagger, Strals is a monster. He struts and glowers, contorts his face, and works the crowd into a frenzy. He sweats profusely, and shakes it off in violent seizures. He incites the crowd to a near-riot, then dives off the stage and into the fray that is largely his own creation. On stage, Strals undergoes a transformation: The perfect mascot for a band whose very essence is transcendent.
Surfdog Records: How One Indie Label Came to Be
As the locals relax inside the Java Hut storefront in Encinitas, California, sipping their coffee, stocking up on their stash of dirt cheap surf wax, and soaking in the perpetual morning mellow, Surfdog Records silently buzzes behind the wall. From the converted surf shack offices in back of the label’s own hotspot coffee shop, a mere seven employees passionately handle endless phone calls and emails, stress, deadlines, paperwork, and client problems as they manage a roster that includes Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), Dan Hicks, and Brian Setzer among others. The fast-paced, sometimes frantic energy generated by the staff is in stark contrast to the sun-drenched picnic table set out in the grassy courtyard for business meetings and the surf-inspired murals of blue waters and ocean inhabitants that swim along the building’s walls. It’s a hive of activity on the coast of a sleepy little surf town, moving as rapidly and forcefully as the waves are crashing outside the window.
At the heart of it all is label boss Dave Kaplan, a man with a deep-seated, lifelong love for music who used to spend his days as an accountant, crunching endless numbers that meant absolutely nothing to him. While he left college with bright memories of playing in bands and going out to see endless shows, he also left with a business degree, “… and the natural thing you did after you graduated and took the CPA exam was go and interview with accounting firms.”
LAKE: Happy Accidents
“Wow! Hold on a second!” LAKE’s Ashley Eriksson exclaims suddenly, again breaking her line of thought during a phone interview that has already taken several enjoyable tangents.
“I can’t tell if it’s a bug, but there’s this leaf-looking thing that’s the only thing moving on the ground—or wait, I think it’s just a moth.” There is a pause. “It’s definitely a moth,” she assures me.
Eriksson is outside her home on Whidbey Island, an hour north of Seattle by ferry, where she lives with her boyfriend and LAKE collaborator, Eli Moore, in a cabin in the woods at the edge of his parents’ property. Eriksson was in the middle of explaining how she has to check herself from incorporating too many naturalistic lyrics into LAKE’s songs when the mystery moth interrupted her.
His Name Is John Michael Rouchell
At the end of 2006, things seemed to be going pretty well for John Michael Rouchell. The New Orleans native’s band, Ellipsis, was one of the most popular bands in the city, opening up for Incubus, playing the main stage of the world-famous New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and touring all over the country. The group had just released their second album, One Course Current, but instead of looking to his high school band’s bright future, Rouchell took a long, hard look in the mirror.
“I took a look at myself in the mirror one day and said, ‘I’m not happy,’” Rouchell remembered. “‘I don’t like what I’m doing; I don’t like what we’re playing. I really love these guys, they are awesome people, but I am just not doing what I want to be doing. I’m not writing the songs that I want to write because I am writing songs for this band that’s just not me anymore.’ I just didn’t feel like I was being honest.”
With that, Rouchell left the group that he’d grown up with, and the lifelong musician— who often played guitar with Parliament in his teens—spent time jamming with local talents Blair Gimma and Theresa Andersson. One day, late in November 2007, he made a bet with a friend that took him down yet another musical path.
Alela Diane: All in the Family
Alela Diane Menig grew up in Nevada City, CA, a former gold-rush town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The tight-knit community, anchored by a main street that has changed little since its heyday in the mid-1800s, is a haven for hippies and creative types, and its schools place a heavy emphasis on the arts. Alela spent her youth taking photos and painting, getting good grades, singing in the school choir, and occasionally heading out to see her dad, Tom, perform as the leader of the DeadBeats, a Grateful Dead cover band in which she says he “still shreds on the electric guitar.” But despite musical parents and a father who seemed to have a guitar in his lap at all hours of the day and night, Alela (”a-LEE-la”) was rarely inspired to write songs and play music.
And then her world got turned upside down.
Soon after Alela headed south for college in San Francisco, Tom and Suzanne Menig split up, a heartbreaking event that unleashed a torrent of unforeseen songwriting talent in their daughter. The songs were melancholic, focused primarily on the break-up and its aftermath, with her parents selling the home Alela grew up in and her mom moving to Santa Cruz. The creative outburst turned into 2006’s The Pirate’s Gospel, an album of lingering folk that announced Alela Diane, the name she records and performs under, as a formidable songwriter with a remarkably rangy voice. The album sold well in the US, and unexpectedly took off in France. read more
Ric Leichtung and Brooklyn’s DIY Underground
Twenty-three-year-old Ric Leichtung attended his first SXSW this past year, and while his stay there most probably included a near-overdose of the requisite Austin trifecta—beer, bands, and barbecue—he wasn’t on vacation. As a booker for the Secret Agency, a promotional outlet that organizes all-ages music and arts events in Brooklyn’s DIY music scene—a culture that circumvents conventional, age-restricted venues in favor of an emancipated, self-starting ethic—Leichtung knew he needed to represent.
“Matador, Panache, Siltbreeze—all these excellent tastemakers and purveyors of independent music had their showcases,” Leichtung said. “We needed one.”
Priced out of downtown venues, where spaces off 6th Street can command rental rates of $1,500 per evening during SXSW, Leichtung picked an unorthodox “venue” that doled out enough cool and street cred to attract some buzz-worthy underground bands, and their subsequent crowds. Over a hundred people crowded the Lamar Boulevard bridge south of downtown Austin. The powder keg of an impromptu venue, a raucous crowd, and rising talent exploded into punk-rock heroics.
“We had Tyvek. We had Psychedelic Horseshit. We had Kurt Vile, who just signed to Matador. It was crazy. The bridge—it rocked—it swayed. You could feel it,” Leichtung said.
Michael Bailey: Behind the Booking of the Fillmore
Want to be a concert booker? Cool job, right? Michael Bailey, one the best and biggest in the biz, sat down with Crawdaddy! to chat about the ins and outs of what a booker does, and its integral role in the operations of the music industry. Bailey has been booking San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium since 1988, well before the dawn of Live Nation, hired by legendary concert promoter Bill Graham himself. As a living component of the Bay Area’s storied musical past, present, and future, Bailey’s career is steeped in rock ‘n’ roll history, and he has all the insights you’d ever want or need to know about the glories and intricacies of being a live music booker at one of the most legendary concert halls in the world.
Crawdaddy!: First things first: What does a booker do?
Michael Bailey: In general, a booker finds an artist that is out and wants a place to play. So I’ll go out and try to find a building that is appropriate for the artist. We have buildings that we run and use, and then there are open buildings. So we try to find out what the artist’s needs are and what the best fit is at the appropriate time and then give them the options that they can choose from.
Jill Newman: Concert Producer for the People
Tuesday, Midnight.
West 16th Street, New York.
Another sold-out show by the legendary Roots crew.
“If I can’t say to you, ‘Come see this, this is gonna be incredible,’ my name won’t be on it,” says concert producer Jill Newman. Her name is proudly affixed to this bill, and her advice is well heeded: A thick line of hippies, hipsters, and hip-hoppers jam every inch of concrete between the Highline Ballroom and 9th Avenue. The Roots have just returned from London, where they played another Newman-produced show with David Murray and Ornette Coleman at Coleman’s Meltdown festival, and their Jam on this evening will include guest spots from Bilal and Styles P, among maybe 20 others. After a long day of recuperation from the show, which ended a shade after 3am, Newman and I met at her midtown office to discuss destroying genres and putting on bad-ass shows.
***
This Love Is Fucking Right! Slumberland at 20
by: Michael Miller
When a 24-year-old Mike Schulman started Slumberland Records 20 years ago in Washington, DC to put out some of his friend’s singles, his ambitions were modest. Two decades later, Slumberland has more of a presence than ever. He’s relocated to California, has a baby and a day job now, but talking to him, it’s not hard to tell that music is still high on his list of priorities. He’s still running around to record stores—now he’s surfing the internet, too—finding music that he thinks is “fantastic!,” which he says enthusiastically about each of his bands. True music lovers are lovers forever—family, jobs, changes in scenery won’t stifle that. We caught up with Schulman on the phone a few weeks back to talk about Slumberland’s 20th anniversary, where the label’s been, and where it’s headed.
Crawdaddy!: Tell me the story of how Slumberland was started.
Mike Schulman: I had a group of friends and we were all in a couple of bands together, in different combinations—maybe six or eight people who made three or four different bands. We were all pretty green. We got really excited about music in high school and college, as one does. We were all really into poppy stuff, but also the noisy stuff: The Birthday Party, the Lower East Side thing, punk rock. So we started bands because that’s what you do.
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by: Michael Miller
published: January 20, 2010
in column: Introducing
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