INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Local scene 02/20/08

Standard in Austin

Local label Standard Recording Company will host a showcase at the 2008 South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, featuring Standard artists Arrah and the Ferns, Everthus the Deadbeats, Marla Hansen and Harley Poe. Christian Kiefer, Matthew Gerken and Jeff Pitcher will also perform songs from a project that should go over great with history majors, Of Great and Mortal Men: Forty-Three Songs about Forty-Three Presidencies. (Fifty years from now, Sufan Stevens’ finally-completed effort to record an album devoted to each state will join Forty-Three Songs as required listening for schoolchildren, shortly before several of those states are completely inundated by rising seas.) Locally, Everthus and Arrah are, of course, playing Spin Nightclub and Indy CD and Vinyl Saturday, Feb. 23; Harley Poe is at the Melody Inn Friday, Feb. 29; and Marla and the presidential boys don’t have shows scheduled until the SXSW showcase. More at www.standardrecording.com.

Haque joins Owl

In other local recording news, jazz and classical guitarist Fareed Haque has been signed to Owl Studios, which plans to release an album by his Flat Earth Ensemble later this year. The Flat Earth Ensemble, a quintet of guitar, Hindustani violin, tabla, bass and accordion, explores the intersection of jazz and South Asian musics. Haque and Flat Earth join a who’s-who of Indianapolis jazz musicians already with Owl, including Cynthia Layne, Derrick Gardner, Frank Glover, Steve Allee, Rob Dixon and the Buselli-Wallarab Orchestra. More on Owl at www.owlstudios.com and Haque at www.fareed.com.

Dixon/Rhyne Project album coming

Speaking of Owl, keep an eye out for an upcoming full-length on the label by the Dixon/Rhyne Project, with saxophonist Rob Dixon and B-3 organ virtuoso Melvin Rhyne. Last Wednesday night at the Jazz Kitchen, they gave a hair-raising performance of one tune, “Johannesburg,” that’s destined for the album. The song opens with a busy and slightly off-kilter theme played by Dixon against complex and uneasy chords laid down by Rhyne, with the B-3 eventually dropping out for a few measures to leave just sax and drums. After solos by Dixon and Rhyne, the trio returns for a final build into a climax featuring a moaning, high-register sax, a nearly overpowering wash of organ and propulsive but unobtrusive drums. Nothing really resolves after this climax; no easy peace or reconciliation after all that inspired shouting. “Johannesburg” compels further exploration (say, on a studio recording), but suffice it to say that Dixon and Rhyne are writing and performing substantive, intelligent, challenging and beautiful music.

Upcoming shows

There’s an embarrassment of good acoustic and world music to be seen and heard this weekend, besides performances by Doug Hoekstra and the Irish Aires previewed by Nora Spitznogle elsewhere in the section. Bloomington, Ind.’s Tim Grimm will be joined by Columbus, Ind.’s Krista Detor for a 7 p.m. show Saturday, Feb. 23 at Danville’s Royal Theater (59 S. Washington St.); both performers recently contributed to Wilderness Plots, an inventive stage-show and album based on stories by Bloomington writer Scott Russell Sanders. Tickets are $15 in advance and $18 at the door. And Indianapolis-based Tonos Triad — Aaron Ransdell, upright bass; Yevgeny Baburin, guitar; and Rob Schindler, accordion, melodica and percussion — will be performing at the Indy Hostel (4903 Winthrop Ave.) at 7 p.m. Feb. 23 for a $5 cover. Schindler plays a makeshift set that sounds promising for a fan of outsider music consisting of suitcase, license plate and cardboard box. More on Grimm at www.timgrimm.com and Tonos at www.myspace.com/tonostriad.