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

Show previews 11/08/06

Anything but calculated

Copeland with The Appleseed Cast, Owen, Acute
Thursday, Nov. 9, 7 p.m.
Emerson Theatre
www.emersontheater.com
$12-$13: tickets at kulture-entertainment.com

It’s hard not to notice a significant element of Radiohead’s sound creeping into the first few tracks on Copeland’s third CD, Eat, Sleep, Repeat.

Anyone familiar with Radiohead’s classic 1997 OK Computer will hear that band in the quavering vocal and processed drums of “Where’s My Head,” the opening song on Eat, Sleep, Repeat. They’ll recognize a Radiohead signature in the shimmering guitars on “Control Freak” and “Careful Now.”

But the overt Radiohead-esque elements of Eat, Sleep, Repeat disappear almost completely as one ventures farther into the CD, and by the time one reaches the last of the 11 songs, it’s clear that Copeland has created an album that stands strongly on its own and represents a significant step into fresh musical territory for the group. Many of the songs, in fact, feature full string arrangements or horns, and the band avoided using rhythm guitar parts or riffs entirely.

Aaron Marsh doesn’t at all deny the Radiohead influence. “It’s weird because Radiohead has been one of my favorite bands since I was 16 years old, 17 years old, and it’s very strange to me that the influence would come in now,” Marsh, 26, said in a recent phone interview.

Copeland’s In Motion — the follow-up to the Atlanta-based band’s 2003 debut CD, Beneath The Medicine Tree — sold 100,00 copies, a huge amount for a band on a small independent label. In fact, that album made Copeland the best-selling act on the roster of its record company, the Militia Group.

But the band members — Marsh, guitarist Bryan Laurenson, bassist James Likeness and drummer Jonathan Bucklew — didn’t let the lure of that success prevent them from reinventing the band’s sound on Eat, Sleep, Repeat — although Marsh said the sound the band created was anything but calculated.

“It was all pretty natural,” he said. “We had the idea to utilize a string player friend of ours, so I guess just having that resource kind of opened up a lot of ideas for us as far as having kind of lush string arrangements in there and that kind of thing … we’ve always kind of had the ethic of if the song is good, it doesn’t really matter how it’s treated. The important thing is the base, the song itself, and the treatment of it is all kind of icing on the cake from there.”

—Alan Sculley

Sister DJs

Venus Envy 2.0
Saturday, Nov. 11, 10 p.m.
Therapy Nightclub and Lounge
$5

The first Venus Envy event, a charity show featuring all female DJs from Indianapolis and beyond, was a remarkably diverse affair, bringing together sounds from a wide variety of backgrounds, mixed together with the same crazed energy they brought to their beats. Venus Envy 2.0, Nov. 11 at Therapy Nightclub, promises to bring the same broad range, with DJs including Shiva, Pixie, Anyalida, Thaimaishuus and Chicago’s Dirtybird working the boards. This time around the charity donations will go to Dress For Success in Indy.

Shiva, the veteran Indianapolis DJ behind both events, says that the purpose of the event is to include women where their input is often left out and to bring them together to share their music experiences.

“As women in a male-dominated field, too often these DJs are up against preconceived notions of what they should have to do to promote themselves, whether it is pressure to over sexualize their image to play to the male idea of what they should look like, or to play down their intelligence and/or ideas so as to appear ‘safe‚’ to get DJ bookings,” Shiva says. “Venus Envy is a space where women can come together with other women, play records, network with other women DJs and know that they are valued for their talent AND their opinions. These events have been put together by women, with the goal of promoting women DJs and women’s causes, without making a novelty of the women performers by over sexualizing them for the sake of promotions.”

—Paul F. P. Pogue

True genius of the electric bass

Michael Manring with Don Ross
Saturday, Nov. 11, 9 p.m.
Radio Radio
$12

Any hipster knows that the new age music made popular by Windham Hill records in the ’80s has been making a long, slow comeback in the underground. This overwrought, “spiritual” genre was defined by its deliberate tempos, smooth melodies and the praise heaped upon the suspected virtuosity of the musicians. Music heavily influenced by the sounds of the ’80s has already swelled close to its saturation point. It can only be logical that kids will soon be trading in their New Order records for George Winston long players.

If you’ve heard a Windham Hill record, chances are you’ve heard the solid bass playing of Michael Manring. Originally from Washington, D.C., and a student of Weather Report bassist Jaco Pastorius, Manring is the top session bassist for the new age recordings that go down in the name of Windham Hill, and he has been or is currently a member of Montreux, Natural Bridge and various combos for guitarist Michael Hedges. He is also the author of several solo records and is recognized as one of the true geniuses of the electric bass.

Don Ross, yet another heavyweight contender in the new age field, is best known for his talent as a guitarist and award-winning fingerpicking stylings on the instrument. A child of the ’60s, his goofball appearance makes one think of Arlo Guthrie’s humorous folk, but Ross’ style, while dipping into folksy territory, is also latent with jazzy and classical tendencies.

—Michael Tapscott

Whiff of soulfulness

Amos Lee
Sunday, Nov. 12, 8:30 p.m.
The Music Mill
$19.50

In a very similar vein to former tourmate and Blue Note labelmate Norah Jones, Amos Lee mines the adult contemporary genre with a slight whiff of soulfulness. Like Jones’ common labeling as a “jazz artist,” the label is also harnessed around Lee’s neck and is equally misleading. They both have simple and appealing songwriting chops and voices that are throwbacks to an elder era. Lee and Jones belong to something that could be called the Starbucks genre of music, pleasurable background music and easy listening, but hardly fine art.

Amos Lee is a Philadelphia native who attended the University of South Carolina in the ’90s (as did the very comparable vocalist Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish). He was a school teacher before making the decision to be a full-time musician, and after going through the prerequisite toiling of waiting tables, building a hard-working backing band and relentless touring, Lee finally made it.

Lee’s voice is an undeniably nice instrument, but his failure to really let it loose and his staunch stance to only record his own material trip up his records. With bright acoustic guitars and Wurlitzer organs, there is a comfortable air of familiarity enveloping his music. While he claims classy influences like John Prine, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Jackson Browne and Donny Hathaway, and all these can be heard in his music, Lee’s songwriting is a little too clumsy to be mentioned in the same breath as these artists. He’s more like a Gordon Lightfoot or Jim Croce, an artist from whom small pleasures may be extracted, but whose entire catalog is spotty and monotonous.

—MT

Rock your face

Devil To Pay, Eldemur Krimm, Red Horse and Blacklight Barbarian
Sunday, Nov. 12; doors open at 7 p.m.
The Melody Inn
$5
www.melodyindy.com

If you’ve been there, you know the feeling: that feeling of watching the sun pop up over the eastern seaboard and cast its angry glare over the barren semi-urban landscape. The pills ain’t working no more, and you’ve seen the sun come up like this three times since you were last asleep. A rusty ZZ Top song comes on the radio and Billy Gibbons’ guitar speaks to you like the voice of God. You spontaneously combust right there in your front seat and melt that ZZ Top song, all of your Soundgarden, Black Sabbath and Fu Manchu CDs, 12 Vicodins, six Xanaxs, three gel caps, a one-third full bottle of Crown Royal, a couple of doobies and the latest copy of Juggs down into a primordial soup that condenses into a rock band.

A band called Devil to Pay.

For the past few weeks, our heroes in Devil To Pay, Indiana’s proudest and loudest, and the only band in the world with a frontman that’s got an ACE bandage holding his intestines in, is touring the West Coast with Portland, Maine, stoner rockers Eldemur Krimm. No doubt they’ve seen the sun come up a few times, and probably heard a few ZZ Top songs along the way. When I caught up with them somewhere in the great Northwest they were cold. Really cold.

“Getting the fuck out of this cold weather in the Northwest will be like winning on Deal or No Deal,” DTP front guy Steve Janiak tells me, speaking from some guy’s apartment in Portland, Ore. “We can’t wait to get to San Francisco and Palm Desert. Shit, anything desert. It’s cold here, dude. Why didn’t we tour during the summer?

“We did have a killer show in Seattle, though.” Janiak continues. “We played this club with lots of history called El Corazon [formerly Graceland], but from what we heard, the scene has changed so much since the glory days. We talked to the bar owner who said he threw out Courtney Love for always being so trashed and once broke the bass player from Alice in Chains nose.”

When Devil To Pay comes home to roost at the Melody Inn this Sunday, expect an incendiary performance that can only come from weeks of living in close quarters with little or no showers and, of course, watching the sun come up on a few too many bleary-eyed mornings. Look for a set split evenly between older songs like “Tractor F’in Trailor,” “Dinosaur Steps” and “Mouthful of Spite” and songs from their latest CD, Cash Is King, like “The Mountain Comes to Me,” “Little Horns” and “Belial.”

Also be sure and catch Eldemur Krimm, which Janiak describes as “The baddest potty-mouthed space rock you ever heard in your rock and roll life. They’re from Portland, Maine, they carry weapons, they own a tractor. They will rock your face like Noxzema.”

Meanwhile, Janiak is thinking ahead to San Francisco. “We’re going to give them all Grateful Dead covers, and really jam them out, to give the tapers something for their money.” He waits a couple beats. “Just kidding Brah. We’re gonna go in and rock ass like we do anytime we play.”

—Jeff Napier

Mushrooming popularity

Death Cab For Cutie
Tuesday Nov. 14, 7 p.m.
Murat Theatre
$28.50
TicketMaster: www.ticketmaster.com

Over the years, the members of Death Cab For Cutie could quickly dismiss any notion of moving up to a major label simply because they made it hard for record companies to make a serious attempt to sign the band.

According to bassist Nick Harmer, any label that wanted to court Death Cab For Cutie was met with a long list of requirements that would have to go into the contract — any number of which were immediate deal breakers.

“For a long time, the music industry was such and we were as bad as such that you would look at that list and just laugh,” Harmer said. “There was no way a band that no one knew would be able to get these kinds of things.”

But about two years ago, the idea of being a major label band stopped being a laughing matter for Death Cab For Cutie. The group was approached by Atlantic Records, and suddenly the band members discovered that they had gained new-found clout when it came to exploring major label record deals.

“We sent our wish list over to Atlantic, and they called us back and said, ‘Yeah, that looks pretty good,’” Harmer said. “And we said, ‘Whoa, whoa, wait, slow down. What?’ We didn’t expect that they would be so interested and really so, I don’t know, brave, I guess, to take some risks and meet us halfway.”

Now Death Cab For Cutie find themselves signed to Atlantic, and the band’s first CD for the label, Plans, is in stores. It’s all a sign that in the past few years Death Cab For Cutie have ceased to be an unknown quantity within the music business. In fact, more than a few observers think Death Cab are poised for a major commercial breakthrough, although that hasn’t happened yet with the Plans CD.

Fortunately, Harmer said he and his bandmates — singer/chief songwriter Ben Gibbard, guitarist/producer Chris Walla and drummer Jason McGerr — have never bought into the notion that stardom is at hand for his band.

“I think with every record and every tour we’ve done as a band, we’ve always tried to just make slight improvements over where we were at, and it’s been a nice, logical sort of step-by-step process,” Harmer said.

But even Harmer won’t deny that Death Cab no longer fly completely under the mainstream radar.

The band, which formed in Bellingham, Wash., in 1997, first began to build awareness through touring, favorable press for early albums, but with the 2003 CD, Transatlanticism, awareness of Death Cab For Cutie mushroomed. Not only was the CD seen by many as the group’s strongest effort, the band gained extra visibility through the popular television series The OC, whose character, Seth Cohen, frequently espoused his total affection for Death Cab’s music, and an appearance on the much-publicized “Vote For Change” tour in fall 2004. Before all was said and done, the CD had sold some 300,000 copies — a huge number for an indie album — and a move up to a major label certainly seemed logical.

The music on Plans feels very much in character with Transatlanticism and the continuity between the two CDs is also helping the group’s live show, which leans strongly on material from those works.

“The songs are all really occupying the same space and sort of existing near each other in very good ways,” Harmer said. “They’re very complementary. I think it’s going to be a very interesting and good set for us.”

—AS

Electro-industrial bleeds high rock fashion

Razed in Black with i:Scintilla and Form 30
Tuesday, Nov. 14, 8 p.m., with an after-party at 12:30 a.m.
$11 suggested donation
Proceeds benefit the Indiana Youth Group and the Humane Society
Therapy Nightclub and Lounge
www.razedinblack.net , www.indygoth.com , www.groovetickets.com

Fashion and style go hand-in-hand, especially in the multifaceted world of industrial/neo-goth music legends Razed in Black (Cleopatra Records). RiB’s Hawaiian-raised frontman Romell Regulacion (vox, guitars, synth) has had the musical itch since childhood. His mother taught him the artistic intricacies of styling hair, and now the Paul Mitchell national educator and diverse composer is working on releasing the second series of This Is NeoGoth and Dark Trance vs. NeoGoth, as well as a cover of “Out of Control” by She Wants Revenge for a tribute album.

RiB returns to the Circle City to perform with Chicago’s i:Scintilla and locals Form 30. The IndyGoth.com appreciation night will feature vendors, DJs, dancing and giveaways to preview the new site, which host Chris Conner of Eden Promotions will soon revamp into an umbrella site, AltIndy.net.

“The first time I saw RiB live, I was dumbfounded. There have been very few shows in which I have gotten chills down my arms. This was one,” Conner says.

Regulacion, who works for Riah Salon in Jacksonville, Fla., used to keep his life as a hair designer separate from his music career and personal life. Now he embraces all three. “It was only when I started to work closely with my mom that I decided to focus when things quickly gained in that career,” he says. “She’s always been hip to current trends, believes strongly in advanced education and truly possesses a passion that can be felt more than observed.”

Regulacion now follows in his mother’s footsteps. Kenchii Cutting Edge Shears have even designed custom “Razed in Black” signature one-off scissors for him. “I’ve accompanied them with a handful of hair shows,” he says. “Keep an eye out for some Razed in Black and Kenchii crossovers — fashion and music!”

Regulacion will perform with his bandmates Phil Guerrero on guitars, who recently started a clothing line called Kutten Kustom and designs rock wear for Jim Breuer, RiB and other celebrities. Other bandmates include keyboardist Conor Haley, who owns Rock Starz Tattooz & Piercingz in Honolulu, Dylan Page and Danny LaForga, special effects lighting experts.

The RiB after-party will take place after the show, with DJs RiB (Regulacion), Copper Top and Zlaya spinning industrial, EBM and synthpop. “Therapy has a cleanliness about it — an almost innocent aura,” Conner says. “It is the single most diverse venue in Indianapolis.” Therapy will also host Conner’s new Tuesday night goth/industrial nightclub event, Electro Faktory. The RiB show is one of many concerts to come.

Joining RiB on stage are Form 30 and i:Scintilla. Since Alfa-Matrix signed i:Scintilla, the band, led by vocal vixen Brittany Bindrim, has moved from sequenced drumming to live drums, increasing their song dynamics to more social and less personal. Form 30 has also changed since its show last fall with RiB. Its new lineup includes DaiV3.0. on bass, Vivian Eleven (the newest addition) on guitar and Jase Milner on vocals, guitar and keys.

“We are definitely going back to our roots with the new songs [think Nimbus],” DaiV3.0. says. “Where the Ignited EP was meant to sound a little more mainstream, we really amped up the electronics and drums for the newer stuff. We will once again have that thick wall of sound of two guitars that many have expressed our music really needs.” Form 30 will have a song featured on the soundtrack Dark Victory, and the band hopes to release their new album next spring. The musicians continue to garner RiB’s approval.

“I’ve known the boys Form 30 for a while now — definitely a great group of guys and a gem for the Indianapolis scene,” Regulacion says. “Since our first visit years ago, we’ve made a healthy number of friends who we still currently keep in touch with. [Indy’s] a city that has always been a preferred stop on our tours.”

—Leslie Benson

Swamp rock boogie

Kevin Gordon
Wednesday, Nov. 15, 8:30 p.m.
Spencer’s Stadium Tavern
$5
www.spencerstavern.com , www.kevingordon.net

Spencer Valentine, owner of Spencer’s Stadium Tavern, is looking forward to Kevin Gordon “putting a little swamp rock boogie in this old joint. It should get hot in here.” Valentine has been hosting music at his downtown tavern since St. Patrick’s Day.

Gordon is looking forward to his first trip to Indianapolis. “Playing live is a lot of fun. The people I meet, some of the insane things you see while traveling — it’s all good input for songwriting.” He’s touring with a bass player (Tom Comet) and a drummer (Rick Reed) and “loves the energy, the interplay between instruments, and the safety-in-numbers thing.”

Nashville, Tenn.-based Gordon grew up in Louisiana listening to Jerry Lee Lewis and Ray Charles records playing on his parents’ console. That music struck a nerve and stirred his interest in performing. As you might expect from a published poet who holds an MFA degree from the University of Iowa’s prestigious Writers’ Workshop, Gordon’s songs are well-written. He combines them with roots-rock style and unpredictable intensity for blistering, interesting live show.

Gordon’s latest album, O Come Look at the Burning, is generating positive buzz everywhere from the Martha Stewart publication Body + Soul to Hugh Hefner’s Playboy. The Playboy review was a total surprise to Gordon. He heard about it from his stepdad, a loyal subscriber.

—Nora Spitznogle