Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
September 5, 2014 - All poetry, short stories and artwork are submitted by people that live here in the Harrisonburg area.
Citation preview
ISSUE EIGHT
Edited by Mike Arellano and Iain Oldman
September
ISSUE EIGHT
Cara Walton Photography
Shhhh. Did you hear that? Yes, yes that was the pathetic last groan of the summer season, a drawn out, humid fart that lingers in the wind, whispering “remember meeeeeee” in the thick brush of trees and corn stalks. Labor Day came and went, and with it, summer. Somewhere out there, inevitably, some bored dad wearing an apron with a real dumb slogan pasted across the front leaned over to an in-law and croaked out that cliche, “Yup, summer’s over now. I guess I have to close up the pool.”
WORST WEEK EVER
All poetry, short stories and artwork are submitted by people that live here in the Harrisonburg area.
Mike Arellano and Iain Oldman
EXCEPT SUMMER IS NOT OVER. GOD, IT NEVER ENDS!!! September is the month where we wait for everything to get cooler, and therefore better, but it just never comes. September has ALWAYS sucked. This month is synonymous with catastrophic natural disasters, from devastating earthquakes to the continuous battery of hurricane season. Jesus, I wonder what’s gonna kill me next.
I just want to wear sweatshirts again, guys. Really. This is the Worst Week Ever.
James Carter “The Way Back”
By “BS”
Elwood “Trip” Madison
A quartet of fuzzed out, abstract art bands fill out the bill on September 7th at Blue Nile, featuring Baltimore outfit Zomes, a weighty breath of lo-fi organs and tempered rhythms, featuring Hanna Olivegren’s breathy, echoing Swedish vocals. Joining them are Brooklyn’s Yvette, a creepily heavy industrial-revival duo, and local electronic weirdos Yardang and Zooanzoo. Don’t miss this chance to expand your horizons.
Sep 7Zomes, Yvette, Yardang, ZooanzooBlue Nile9 PM $4
Sep 12Bryan Elijah Smith & the Wild Hearts, Krista PolvereClementine9 PM $8 advance $10 door
Come out to Clementine Cafe for the Harrisonburg CD release show for local superfolk group Bryan Elijah Smith & the Wild Hearts. Almost a ten year staple of Harrisonburg’s music scene, Bryan Elijah Smith will be debuting his newest release “These American Hearts” while Australian singer/songwriter Krista Polvere opens the night of raucous fun.
Always weird as shit and undeniably entertaining, Gull returns to Harrisonburg with one hell of a lineup to back him up. The one man band behind the mask, equipped with a drum set, guitar, and a doozy of a pedalboard, Gull loops and clicks his way into your memory. West Virginia’s Bishops stops in to present their great brand of 90’s throwback indie with Harrisonburg’s country western superhero Uncle Bengine, and the town’s newest act, Azores, join in to complete a bill that is cracking quality, top to bottom.
Sep 17Gull, Bishops, Uncle Bengine, AzoresBlue Nile9 PM $5
A weekend of great DJs and electronic artists hits the Blue Nile on September 18th and 19th, all to celebrate the return of Pyramids (!) and the launch of Matthew Abraham’s new mixtape under the name of Luc Ives. He’ll also be premiering his new apparel line, Lucsevi, so be sure to show up early and pick up some fine ass threads. Joining him on stage are locals Mojo Hand and Ryan Clark, two DJs of fine style and taste, and Worst Week Ever’s favorite local hip hop group, the compositely chilled out, fuzzy Go Go Leche. Make sure you stop by for at least one of the nights to avoid missing what should be an absolutely bonkers weekend.
Sep 18-19Pyramids, Luc Ives, Go Go Leche, Mojo Hand, Ryan Clark SlocumBlue Nile9 PM $3
Two of our favorite Virginia acts visit the Blue Nile on September 20th, bringing their own brands of indie infused rock n’ fucking roll. Dead Professional wowed us at MACRoCk with his absolutely fun brand of Billy Joel-esque solo rock, crafting songs that you know your parents probably boned to. The Bodies follow up with their toned down, laid back tunes featuring great instrumentation and harmony.
Sep 20Dead Professional, The BodiesBlue Nile9 PM $4
Court Square Theater puts on a three day showing of the oft-forgotten darker side of one of America’s prodigal children’s poets. Told in rhyming couplets, Shel Systerstein wrote the tale of a failing musician losing a bad bet with the Devil. This performance is a one man show, deceptively hilarious, and features musical accompaniment from MACRoCk alums Atoka Chase. Make sure to make it out one of the three days Court Square Theater is showing the production in order to avoid missing out on a forgotten piece of American culture.
Sep 25-27The Devil and Billy MarkhamCourt Square TheaterThursday & Friday 8 PM, Saturday 2 PM$7 advance, $10 door
We here at Worst Week Ever really dig babe in corstes, so you know we’ll be there at Court Square Theater when the newest exhibition of burlesque talent comes to show off their talents. Hosted by Ophelia Derriere and featuring burlesque dancers from Richmond and Pennsylvania, as well as the graduates from Harrisonburg’s own “Boom Boom Basics” burlesque school. Come for the wonderful ladies, stay for all the ridiculous shit that I PROMISE you will see.
Sep 27 Back to School Shake-O-RamaCourt Square Theater 8 PM $10 in advance $15 at door
Visiting Harrisonburg all the way from the most magical city in Canada, Montreal metalheads The Great Sabatini are sure to make the foundation the Blue Nile basement rumble in fear. These guys are LOUD, dishing out wave after wave of crusty, sludgy riffs. Don’t come to this show if you have heartburn, the Great Sabatini may very well turn that into a heart attack. Opening for them are one of our favorite local zonky group of dudes, Savage Kenny, playing whatever the hell they want without a mind for genre or expectations. They’re awesome. Come out to this Worst Week Ever Booking show on October 2nd so as not to miss either of them.
Oct 2The Great Sabatini, Savage KennyBlue Nile9 PM
WORSTWEEKEVER
YOU CAN SEE THE MOUNTAINS FROM HERE
YOU CAN SEE THE MOUNTAINS FROM HERE
SHENANDOAH ALLEY
There’s a solemn anticipation in the room as four men, modestly dressed and mussy, methodically remove their respective tools of trade: one banjo, a dobro, an upright bass, and the anticipated six string. The understated orchestral musings of the bar prepare the necessary tuning measures, the nervous clinks of glasses prelude every turn of the key, every glance of an ear down to the string.
This is Sunday. This is the Lord’s day, a continuous twenty four hours of simultaneous afternoon tea and brunch, the day designated for American football, cleaning gutters, and recovering from a half empty, sun-poisoned bottle of whatever sitting on your windowsill. This is Sunday. Sunday is also a day belonging to Shenandoah Alley. For close to two years now, Harrisonburg’s
own folk and bluegrass quartet have been illuminating the different rooms of Capital Ale House with their melodic concoctions of traditional sound and substance and a distinctly modern song structure. If you’re lucky, you can catch them playing on the rooftop patio, serenading pedestrians bustling along the sidewalk, dropping chords on them with the intention of rain. And that’s sort of the high and low of the group. If you’ve never seen Shenandoah Alley, you’ve heard them, somewhere. The crunch of a skeletal leaf collapsing under a hiking boot. A calf braying. Choruses of whippoorwills getting up in the morning. When you hear them play, you know you’ve felt something like this before. It’s an instinctive grumble in the pit of your gut, an unidentifiable, ancestral passion for Appalachia, and wheat threshing, and the fog pouring down the mountains. That is how Shenandoah Alley separate themselves from the increasingly saturated tent of acts that place themselves under the ambiguous (and dishonest) umbrella of “folk” or “americana”
or “bluegrass” music. There is an authenticity to the collaboration of these county bred boys. Last month Shenandoah Alley released their self-produced self titled album, and boy, was it an impression. The new album certainly has a new direction, albeit a slight discourse, from their previous catalogue. For one, the band introduced a dobro into the mix, replacing the mandolin, and Michael Stover’s contributions were immediately felt in the overall tone, adding a casual air, weeping out the velvety confession of chords that only a slide
instrument could deliver. No, the sound isn’t decisively more Western now, but the dobro adds an ease necessary for accompanying a banjo picked with the prompt of a machine, paired with a guitar of similar disposition and an upright bass seemingly doubling the pace. The collective sound has the distinctive Blue Ridge bluegrass pace with an added dose of casual country. And it’s just fun. The opening track “Flat Top Mountain” is a jovial, hoppy tune extolling the inherent nature of the freeborn man. It contains an underlying, Nick Cave-esque comedy to it, and
dobro and banjo accents flutter around the song. This is the type of song that makes you say “Hell yeah” out loud, lean forward in your rocking chair, and crack open another beer. A few songs later and we’re treated to the inexplicably comedic “Hotel Appalachia”, where the banjo is unleashed and the morbid humor of the band comes to fruition when the group shouts out ‘Come on in the kitchen/ We’ll serve you up some squirrel gravy on clay pigeons/ What’s your fixin’/ We’re a finger lickin, chicken pickin’, motherfuckin’ bluegrass band’. Awesome. Hell yeah, man. Shit, I’m grabbing a beer. We even get a reminder of Harrisonburg scene history with their recomposition of everyone’s favorite Dirt Pond diddy “350”. Valley transplant and ex-Yelwar member Aaron Moss makes an appearance on the album, contributing the song “Trail of Tears”. The band rounds out the album with a formidable collection of vibrant, diverse songs. We’re treated to jumps of love-laden folk ballads to more modern blues compositions, and the instrumentation is INCREDIBLE. Every member feeds off of the next, not requiring any one member
to be a prodigy of their instrument, though each one is more than technically advanced, stepping back to let the next man shine, who in turn invites the rest of the band to come up full volume, voices included.
Mike pulled up with our friend (and ex-Yelwar harp jawer) Alex to the old farm house around quarter to eleven, per the instructions of Blake Cramer. A thinning haze continued to pour out from the ground, as if the earth were smoking, and the sun was well underway turning green grass golden. Birds fled the field as Mike’s truck spun by, heading up Shenandoah Alley’s unofficial but totally official headquarters.Almost as soon as Mike shut the truck door, he
heard Eric Shy and his tinny companion chirping at the morning from the front porch. They walked around to the western face of the house and found Shy plucking away at his banjo, staring into the empty fields before him. A cow skull hanged from a post. You can see the mountains from here, clearly. Mike and Alex soon discovered they had beaten Blake to dawn, a fact that Michael Stover remedied by raising him with a steady blare of Reveille from his trumpet, which worked with military precision. A short time later, and Shy, Nick Boucher, Cramer, and Stover were packed into their trucks, seating priority given to their instruments, with Mike and Alex in tow. Two hours after that and they had arrived in Bedford to perform at NoahFest, a day long concert and entertainment display organized to raise money that goes directly to community-selected children suffering from cancer and other diseases. This year was their third installment, and most successful to date. Alex, let’s say, took full advantage of the day. Unshaven and shaded by sunglasses, he took a
quick stroll with a mini-horse named Butterscotch. For God’s sake, the horse was named Butterscotch. Usually reserved for children, the bouncy castle was a refuge for Alex’s slight frame, whereas the human gyro ball proved to be a test of his character and stomach lining. The man was illuminated, inspired by the strength of the Saturday afternoon heat. Attraction after attraction after attraction wormed their way into Alex’s concentration like a poison. Yet, even he never broke focus when Harrisonburg’s own folk and bluegrass quartet took the stage and subsequently owned it. There are shows that highlight a band’s comfort level, exposing the environment a group best thrives in and for Shenandoah Alley, all you had to do was crane your neck and take in the amphitheater of blue-tipped mountains all around you. Some people say this is God’s country, and they mean it. Indelible odors of nightshade and dogwood and hay inspired the band, injecting virility into their fingertips, bathed in the perfect glaze of strong Virginia sun, whose rays danced around the group’s brass strings like a determined bee.
The picture was too clear to be ignored: this land is not God’s country, it belongs to Shenandoah Alley.
Or rather, Shenandoah Alley belongs to this land.
FIRST FRIDAY SEPT 5THFirst Friday | September 5th:*5-8 | Spitzer Art Center | John Bell & his BRCC Alumni*5-8 | Arts Council of the Valley’s Darrin McHone Gallery | The Long View: paintings by Lyndi Angermeier*5-8 | Ten Thousand Villages | Works by Ashley Sauder Miller*5-8 | Linda S. Hoover, CFP @ Ameriprise Financial/Denton Park | Photographer Scott Jost, music by Clymer Kurtz Band and food by Flanders Waffles*5-7 | Clementine, Ruby’s Lounge | Collection of work by Hannah Johnson*5-8 | Oasis | Painted Wood: a collaborative show*5-8 | Wilson Downtown Gallery @ Kline May | That Girl: Paintings by Denise Allen*5-8 | Larkin Arts | Bombproof*6-8 | Artful Dodger | Works by Jess Camili and Allison Nickens
*5-7 | Blue Nile | Cats Ahoy! Kitty art for Megan: a community show in loving memory of former Nile employee, Megan Gruneisen.*5-8 | Church of Incarnation | Ordinary Beautiful: Juried Show*5-8 | Three Notch’d | Works by Derek Niver
By “BS”
DANIELLE CAMPBELL PHOTOGRAPHYBy “BS”
WORST WEEK EVER
Cara Walton Photography
there are individuals whoare going to diebottom of the tomb stoneshold a great deal of memory with usbesides thoughts
there is little
decades Kenneth W. Phipps Jr.
the ground and I connect in a personal wayit isn’t the sameit is probably justdecades of lust
though
Cara Walton Photography
decades Kenneth W. Phipps Jr.
they envy our relationshipthese relationship types of thingsare blinding me of mostsensational decadeswhich lusted me first
aroused with zero limbs pleaded for help received none
and accomplished other
and the decades of lustof loveof the many thoughts
by the othersthat pity us
By “BS”
Elwood “Trip” Madison
BASKAmerican Hollow
For the past two decades North Carolina has been exporting some seriously heavy, smoke filled metal that gets you baked the second you press play. Weedeater. Torch Runner. Sourvein. The mighty Buzzoven.
And now, Bask. The quartet from Asheville (including Harrisonburg native and Lex Vegas, Ray Worth) concocts a marathon of acid-laced electricity that’s as diverse as it is classical for their debut album American Hollow. The opening track “High Mountain Pass” is a great throwback to the desert-stoner rock of American lore, bred from fuzzy guitar licks that should shake the glass of every Trans-Am, and carried by epic and thoroughly rock n’ roll vocals. Expectations of genre should be tampered there, though. Bask carries you through a circus of heavy genres, mutating from classic stoner rock to instrumental orchestration reminiscent of early Baroness, including even some black metal blasts in “Land of the Sky”. They even pull americana out of their ass in their ballad track “A Man’s Worth”, a change of pace track at the end of the album. The thing is though, none of it comes out of nowhere. American Hollow is a delicately, purposefully engineered album where nothing surprises you. No single song is alienated.
The future has to be bright from Bask. Their songwriting seems fully matured and this is an album that seems impossible for anyone to be bored by, yet this is only their first offering, and you have to imagine there’s much, much more in the tank for these metal mountain stoners.
Writ
ten
by Ia
in O
ldm
an
One of Washington D.C.’s most powerful and wild punk bands, Priests lambast anyone who has built up tepid expectations for them over the years with their new release Bodies and Control and Money and Power. If you thought they were reliant on a stable of cut-and-dry riot grrrl compositions and throwbacks (Tape Two really doesn’t go anywhere) then get ready to have your shit ROCKED.
Frontwoman Katie Alice Greer brings it, but that’s nothing new, her unbridled energy is undeniable and almost impossible to parallel. What Priests really crank up on their new album is their instrumentation. The guitars are unleashed, and we’re treated to spurts of chaos where the rest of the band keeps up with Greer’s presence. Solos fly out of nowhere. The tone gets scratchy while the bass explodes with innovative time and chord. Drums go absolutely apetits. Everything remains distinctly punk (and of course riot grrrl) but Priests drop in elements we haven’t heard from them in the past: short breakdowns, stops, and volume fluctuation. What you hear on Bodies and Control and Money and Power is a group that have grasped their potential and matched innovation with their unstoppable power, resulting in a must-listen album that cements them on top of the district’s most talented bands.
American MountainTHE MODERN FOLK
There’s a tendency among solo artists to approach a blues song with delicacy, or absolute structure, as if somehow breaking from the mold of classic delta blues will conjure the ire of the spirits behind the pines. In truth, it’s haughty and self-destructive.
Harrisonburg native Josh Moss said “fuck that” and recorded an album of authentic, deeply dark folk under the name The Modern Folk, and it’s just that. American Mountain is a force of innovative lo-fi mountain brutality, a gravestone of a record that just hits home, regardless of personality or past. Moss’ guitar is the driving constant of the album, of course, but he manages to construct landscapes of minor key psych-folk by including instruments commonly implemented with sunnier dispositions, like the mandolin or banjo or fiddle, boasting a dark tone that you’d expect to hear bouncing down from the slopes of a coal-stripped mountain top. American Mountain sounds like a release from Constellation Records, and rivals Eric Chenaux’s gloomiest tunes. That’s not to say the album is intentionally depressing, or monotone in it’s emotional theme (check out the track “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground”) but the Modern Folk just belts out their blackened fuzz-folk SO WELL. This is an album so distinctly individual in tone and temper that it seeps under your skin and sticks with you, like tar.
Writ
ten
by Ia
in O
ldm
an
A place to die face to facePULCHER FIGHT
Harrisonburg transplant and current Richmond dweller Andrew Seymour puts out an impressive display of song writing in his newest release A Place to Die Face to Face under his performing name Pulcher Fight. Seymour keeps everything low key and minimal in recording, and the result is surprisingly entertaining for a hand full of songs that could just as easily have been recorded with a full band, replacing drums with feet tapping and palm clapping, bass with simple hooks from the E string. The entire album feels like a lost recording of Bruce Springsteen playing songs with friends in a den.
The songs are catchy, like, really catchy, eschewing the doleful trappings of singer/songwriter folk expectations. This isn’t an album where you listen to a guy hate his life for five tracks, making you hug your pets, and the songs themselves are relatable themes. The third track “Down the Road” starts ‘Clean up your vomit before you leave, no one else is gonna do it for ya’ and sinks into a confession of stagnant maturity, while his titular track bemoans the modern life of awkward social interactions and expectations. For an album so simple and lackadaisical at it’s core, A Place to Die Face to Face is deceptively mature and universal, all the while maintaining an absolutely pleasant sound.
7”PROTESTER
The cover of the district outfit Protester says everything you need to know about the band, a white X against a black panel, brandishing the words “D.C. Hardcore”. And damn, are they right about that.
Working with a motor that doesn’t stop, Protester dishes out speed and power with everything you really want from a hardcore band. It has anger, it is coarse and loud, and every track hits you in the mouth. The great thing is that these guys have managed to avoid the dull and dumbed down tough-guy song preferences that seemed to have taken over some of nearby Richmond and Baltimore’s bigger hardcore acts. Protestor is all about speed, baby, speed. Their new seven inch belongs to the school of “slow down for what?”. These guys are all Floorpunch and Fear, and toss aside the easy break-down saturated traps of Terror and Trapped Under Ice. Keep your eye on these young bloods from our nation’s capitol, they’re just getting started.
Writ
ten
by Ia
in O
ldm
an
“The goal of my site is to feature what i think of as “folk music”, which is music made by people who are trying to get by leading lives in our modern world who love to express themselves through music. any genre or medium is welcome. I prefer submissions via soundcloud, bandcamp, or youtube, because these formats allow me to easily embed your music in my post and it leads readers directly back to your site, video stream, etc.”
www.themodernfolk.net
Check out some more independent music at:
Click here to read the June IssueClick here to read the July IssueClick here to read the Aug. Issue
![25 Worst Band Names Ever [from WISE YOUNG FOOL]](https://img.pdfslide.us/doc/110x75/55cf9cc3550346d033aaf483/25-worst-band-names-ever-from-wise-young-fool.jpg)
