Whooping Llama

Another musical gift to the interwebs…a spiritual gift, if you will. I’m putting up all three LPs by the Harold Family (the southern gospel group my dad, his siblings, and their dad had back in the ’70s). I’ll add album art when I can get it scanned.

The Harold Family - Gospel on the Move

The Harold Family - The Gospel Ship

The Harold Family - Come to the Water

Here’s a story I recently had published in the Coal Valley News, the Boone County weekly I’m interning at this summer.

It’s a story as old as rock and roll. A bunch of friends get together, plug up some guitar amps and start messing around. Before too long, a band is born.

That’s exactly the way it worked out for members of When All Hope Fades, a local Christian metalcore band. Guitarist Shane Holstein and drummer Tyler Bunting met through their mutual friend Chris Adkins after Adkins transferred from Scott High (where Tyler goes) to Lincoln County High (which Shane attends).

According to the band’s MySpace page, Adkins, Holstein, and Bassist Nolan Graley were all a part of another Christian metal group called “The Darkest Vision.” Bunting joined for a while, later leaving to start another band called “Amidst the Throne.”

Both bands eventually broke up, leading to the formation of When All Hope Fades. Though the musicians had known and played with each other for about two years, this current musical incarnation is only about two months old.

Recently joining the fray is 18-year-old vocalist Justin Kimbler, a fresh Scott High graduate. The band had been searching for a front man for some time, and decided on Kimbler the night before Bunting and Holstein’s interview with the Coal Valley News.

Watching the video of his audition on MySpace, it’s easy to see why the guys of When All Hope Fades took to Kimbler. His guttural screams are almost superhuman. The longer one listens, the more one wonders how his vocal chords don’t spontaneously combust.

Bunting is a wonder in his own right. The meek 16-year-old would draw comparisons to Bleeker from the hit movie Juno before he would John Bonham or Keith Moon, but behind a drum set he produces heavy, spitfire rhythms that could fit anywhere in the rock spectrum.

When All Hope Fades will play their first gig as a band on July 1^st at a private party. The guys also hope to make their way into the recording studio sometime soon. They insist that visions of the big time aren’t occupying their minds at the moment, however. “That comes later. Right now we’re just having fun,” says Bunting.

You can contact members of When All Hope Fades by visiting their MySpace page, www.myspace.com/whenallhopefades304.

Music projects released by people already famous for things other than music always scare me a little. You just never know what to expect. I mean, sure, there’s the all-time Patrick Swayze classic “She’s Like the Wind”…but for every such musical gem we get a Paris Hilton cover of Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.”

Fortunately, She & Him’s debut CD, Volume One, is nothing like any “celebrity album” I’ve ever heard. Comprised of Zooey Deschanel (of Almost Famous, Elf, and Bridge to Terabithia fame) and her singer-songwriter pal M. Ward, She & Him sounds like something Phil Spector would have made if he’d been born in Nashville, raised in Portland by two rabid Beach Boys fans, and fell into an indie rock scene while studying at UC Berkley. Volume One has walls of sound, steel guitars, solid songwriting, infectious melodies, and harmonies galore…and I love it.

Forgive my gushing, but songs like “Sweet Darlin’” restore my faith in modern music. First of all, it has hand-claps. Modern music needs more hand-claps. Second, there are girl-group harmonies. The Beatles and Brian Wilson loved them, and so do I. Third, there’s Zooey Deschanel’s voice. It’s sweet and smooth, almost crooning, and it works wonderfully with Ward’s backing tracks.

Any of the songs on this disc would fit perfectly on any AM pop radio forty years ago. Deschanel wrote most of the album’s lyrics, and it turns out she’s a promising talent in this area as well. Her songs are tightly written and fun…just like the Brill Building pop that inspired this CD. Neil Sedaka would be proud.

Deschanel and Ward also do two great covers on this debut. “I Should’ve Known Better” (originally performed by the Beatles) and “You Really Got a Hold On Me” (originally performed by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles)…the latter being the better of the two.

The song is broken down to two voices and a clunky-sounding acoustic guitar is just a little out-of-tune. This sparse arrangement could have easily made the song seem out-of-place on the record, but instead it shows off the talents of these two musicians in a way that no other song on Volume One does. She & Him doesn’t need walls of sound to sound good…all they need is a Sears-Robuck guitar, a cheap microphone, and a Smokey Robinson song.

I do have one complaint about this CD, however, and it’s purely aesthetic. I purchase most of my music from iTunes anymore, but I made an exception with this disc because I figured it would have all kinds of cool pictures and stuff in the CD booklet. It did not. I should have saved four dollars and just downloaded it.

I recommend She & Him’s debut for anyone who wants to hear the next big thing in indie pop. Frankly, I can’t wait for Volume Two.

The world of music journalism is becoming a lonelier place for roots music fans. No Depression, the best music magazine in the game, has announced that it will cease publication after its 75th issue, coming out this May.

ND (which borrows its name from an Uncle Tupelo album and a Carter Family song) went into print way back in 1995 covering “alternative country…whatever that is” on a quarterly and then bi-monthly basis. I didn’t discover the magazine until September of 2006, when I came upon it while browsing the periodical rack at Taylor Books. That particular edition had the Old Crow Medicine Show on the cover so I thumbed through the magazine a little, moseyed over to the counter, and plopped down my $5.95.

When I got home that night I devoured the cover article…a whopping six-page piece, much longer than anything I’d read in other music magazines like Spin or Rolling Stone. The length didn’t deter me, however, because the writing was so engaging. Before long I’d read the entire magazine. I got a subscription right away.

I’ve read every subsequent No Depression from cover-to-cover, and I’ve never been disappointed. The breadth and depth of their music coverage constantly astonishes me—it’s nothing for ND to write about a classic artist like Mavis Staples or Porter Wagoner only to switch gears and cover bluegrass-punks like the Avett Brothers or Mandy Moore’s new folk album. I’ve learned about artists I never would have otherwise, and I’ve been reminded that country music can be cool.

According to the editors, ND won’t be going away completely. They’re planning on expanding their website, NoDepression.net. Still, there’s just nothing like reading ink on paper and that probably means the long-form journalism that No Depression does so well may fall by the wayside (people just don’t want to read ten-thousand-word articles on a computer screen). This may not be the death of the magazine, but it certainly won’t exist in the form faithful readers like me have come to know and love.

So what happened? It’s not that No Depression suddenly has fewer subscribers. That’s certainly not the case. The problem lies with the record industry bigwigs in Nashville, L.A., and New York, who are scrambling to save their fat behinds as profits dwindle. Subsequently, they’ve cut advertising budgets—something that magazines big and small depend on. Add to that rising postal costs and the ever-falling number of independent bookstores in this country and you’ve got a crisis for music magazines like No Depression. A loyal fan base just isn’t enough anymore.

So hurry, before the presses stop rolling…get yourself out to Books-a-Million or Taylor Books (both stock ND) and pick up the last couple issues. Experience music journalism at its best before you can’t anymore.

I love my No Depression, and losing it so soon in our relationship has caused me no small amount of grief. My only regret is not telling all of you about this magazine sooner. I’ve failed you.

No Depression, my favorite magazine ever, is shutting down. You can read the statement here. It’s frustrating–more and more independent publications are being shut down as fewer and fewer big businesses take over the media. It’s especially frustrating in this particular instance, as there is no other magazine out there that covers the alt-country/roots music scene as accurately and beautifully as ND. I only hope someone steps in to keep them going, they decide to change their business strategy, or another magazine will rise out of the ashes to take No Depression’s place. I doubt any of those things will happen, though.

On a happier note, I have a wonderful girlfriend, who made me
this iMix for Valentine’s Day. Yes, I’m lucky.