Phoenix leapt onto the American music scene in 2009 with Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, an album that garnered the band their first Grammy Award and facilitated their meteoric rise. After a
Guitarist Scott Murawski (Max Creek, Mike Gordon, BK3) discusses plans for 2013 and much more.
Billy Martin discusses his duo with Wil Blades, the future of MMW and more.
Reid Genauer discusses his upcoming reunion with the original members of Strangefolk.
PGroove keyboardist Matt McDonald sits for a revealing interview.
Ryan Dembinsky chats with multi-tasking musician Jim Ward about his various projects.
When Van Ghost releases their forthcoming studio effort The Domino Effect, it will serve as a fitting allegory. The band is at the tipping point, the sweet spot where the grind becomes success. They have checked all the boxes: the catalog, the festivals, the press, the fanbase and the team. Now, it’s time to let the pieces fall into place and reach a broader audience.
Of all the exciting things on the docket, the development that has perhaps aided the success more than any other is the establishment of the permanent lineup. In the past, the band functioned as a bit more of a collective, but now the five-piece led by Michael Harrison Berg and Jennifer Hartswick is as Michael puts it, “the band.” This adds a challenge to the scheduling given the various members’ other projects, but it’s done wonders for cementing the sound and taking things to new heights musically.
We caught up with Michael Harrison Berg to catch up on the new music, the recent “Pick the Single” partnership with Grooveshark, the story of that curious guitar and a little fantasy football.
Hidden Track: To start, I’m dying to know the story of your electric guitar. I’ve been noticing it in a lot of pictures and it looks an awful lot like a Doug Irwin guitar. Could it be?
Michael Harrison Berg: A ton of people ask me that. It is actually called a Phiga from a custom shop luthier in Texas named Phil Gawen. It is an identical replica/tribute to Jerr’s Bolt guitar. Even though we don’t play Dead songs or sound like the Dead, it’s a cool way for me to represent for that community. Anyone who knows freaks and usually even the people who have no idea think it’s cool. It’s really buttery and stays in tune so well. I love it and have almost switched over to exclusively doing that even though I always write on my acoustics.
READ ON for more of our chat with Michael Harrison Berg…
This week for Postcards From Page Side, I decided to focus on an issue close to all of us, whether we realize it or not: voter registration and the impact on not only our scene, but our world in general. HeadCount is a non-profit organization focused on registering voters at live concerts, amongst other things. Co-founder Andy Bernstein was gracious enough to take some time to chat with me about HeadCount’s first eight years as a non-profit and what lies ahead for the organization with the impending election year in 2012. “It’s been a very interesting few years for us. In a lot of ways, I’m more excited and honestly more proud of the work we are doing this year than any of the years that came before it,” says Bernstein. “We really wanted to take it to the next level in 2011 and 2012 and take action, by taking the momentum of the election and turning our community into a force.”
My conversation with Bernstein quickly turns to not only the past and present of HeadCount, but also most importantly, its future, namely the election year of 2012. And trust me, HeadCount has big plans. More than just sending teams on the road to register voters, they are all about having “fun” at the shows while educating the masses. “Going into this year we took a kind of different approach. Our goal this year was to really have fun with the community on a socially conscious level. That was everything that we feel the previous years had been calling for. We wanted to just strengthen our tie to the community on a pro-social level and that would take us back into the presidential year with a whole new position and ability to reach people and get the vote out.”
Bernstein continues to elaborate on certain, specific ways that HeadCount is continuing to reinvent themselves. “We have done three major things this year. The first is a survey called the Fan DNA Project that we are doing at shows asking about their musical tastes and political beliefs. We are going to compare different fan bases and different festivals [to find out] what do we all have in common? Where are we different? What do we believe in? It will help the bands understand their fanbase better and HeadCount understand the people we are trying to reach better.”
READ ON for more on HeadCount’s history and future plans…
To say the Felice Brothers marched off the edge of the map on their latest album Celebration, Florida would be a stretch, but the band definitely veered away from their well-worn path. Foregoing the straightforward folk romps for which they have become known, the Felice Brothers took their core acoustic song structures and morphed them into ambient, sonic departures. The distinction relative to band’s previous albums is dramatic, however, the reliance on elements like organs, drum machines, synthesizers, ambient sounds and found objects for percussion did not drive the material, but rather gave the band opportunities to learn, and ultimately build on their abilities as studio musicians.
[Photo by Nolan Conway]
“The skeletons of the songs themselves were written outside of that kind of influence,” lead singer and songwriter Ian Felice explains. “I wrote them with just an acoustic guitar or piano and a voice. When we moved into the space, we had a vision to depart and experiment with different kinds of instrumentation and sounds, so we got a couple different organs and beat making machines, and it was a big learning process, because we actually had to learn to play a lot of these things. It didn’t really inform the record or the songs that much, A lot of it has to do with keeping ourselves interested in the music.”
A “reinvention album” so-to-speak like this will probably take fans by surprise, but to the band, it just felt like growth. They didn’t want to make another album like Yonder is the Clock or the previous self-titled album. The Felice Brothers succeeded, as this time around they are more likely to hear references to Brian Eno than The Band. The process was intentional; they wanted it to sound different.
READ ON for more of our chat with Ian Felice of The Felice Brothers…
After grinding away at it since forming over eight years ago with incessant touring and a steadily growing fan base, Baltimore’s The Bridge is poised to take it to the next level. And while it’s perhaps a bit ironic for a jamband, it’s an old-fashioned album release that has them elevating to the next tier of improvisational bands.
The band put all its chips in the middle of the table with its latest release, National Bohemian, by hiring former Los Lobos sax-man Steve Berlin to produce; orchestrating a well-coordinated tour of both headlining and support roles (Tea Leaf Green and Galactic); and promoting the music with a professional video and proper publicity push. It’s exciting to see an up-and-coming jamband put so much energy into a record release, so we caught up with guitarist/vocal Cris Jacobs to hear more about the recent developments.
Hidden Track: To get started, I think it’s interesting to hear how bands characterize each others personalities. How would you describe the dynamic of the friendships in the band? Who are the goofballs?
Cris Jacobs: It’s a very brotherly type of relationship. We all thrive on being able to bust each others balls whenever possible. There’s literally no mercy. It’s like “Oh really! Nice shirt there Liberace!” Basically everything that anyone says, does, or wears is under constant scrutiny and is fair game for everyone to jump on and make fun of until the person has their soul beaten to a pulp and they have no self-esteem left. All in good fun of course. But seriously, we really do love each other and get along pretty damn well for six guys in such close conditions day in and day out. Even if the mere sound of someones voice is like nails on a chalkboard first thing in the morning and we bicker over stupid shit out of frustration or just plain road-irritability, I’d say we’d all jump in front of a bus for each other. We’re a very close group, we have a lot of fun, no one is an outsider or a loner really.
We all have our different personalities for sure. As far as who the goofballs are, what time is it? Who decided to have a drunk night? Any given minute it can be any of us and we all have our goofy tendencies, but I’d have to say all around, Patrick. He’s the wide-eyed wonder. And Kenny, one of the most unique personalities I’ve ever come across. And for the first and last 15 minutes of a van ride Dave has the hyperactivity of a 5 year old after too much sugar. We don’t quite know why it only happens during those times, but its quite a consistent and amazing phenomena.
READ ON for more of Ryan’s chat with Cris of The Bridge…
