Hicks with Sticks
San Francisco Bay Area Twang Calendar Highlights
Bands / Clubs |
Tue 8:
Shut-Ins/Yard Sale @ Club Waziema, 543 Divisadero, SF 8pm free |
Fri 11:
Jenny Kerr Band/Brooke Brown/A. J. Roach & his Strange Pilgrims @ Dolores Park Cafe, 501 Dolores St., SF 730pm |
Fri 11:
Axton Kincaid/The Burning Embers @ The Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF 730pm $7 |
Sat 12:
A.J. Roach Berkeley Hills house concert, $15 suggested, contact tommont at comcast dot net for more info. |
Sat 12: Dirk Hamilton,The Water Brothers & Dave Halford on Sat Jan 12th at the Empire Theatre in Stockton |
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CALAMERICANA ASSOCIATION TO PROMOTE GOLDEN STATE MUSIC
There's a hole where California's Americana music ought to be. Read the music press and it's all about Texas, Tennessee and even Branson,
Missouri. Watch the Country Music Awards and it's about pretty dresses, nice hairdos and little else. Scan the local papers and wonder, yet again, how they manage to ignore all the
Americana thriving in our back yard.
The Hicks with Sticks Bands page lists 70, mainly amplified, twang bands in the greater Bay Area, the Northern
California Bluegrass Association lists 160 bands bluegrass and old time bands in Northern California and the California Bluegrass Association lists another 150 bands, statewide, beyond the NCBS list. More Americana can be found among the twanger-songwriters, twang duos, jug bands, amplified Americana
beyond the Bay Area, the bands HWS, NCBS and CBA have missed, and hundreds of bands like the Waybacks, Rube Wadell and Or, the Whale that may not fit into subcategories but are
solidly roots Americana. California, with well over 1000 Americana bands, is easily the world leader in Americana music. It's the kind of statistic that makes
people say, "Well yes, of course," when they think about it. The challenge is in getting them to think about it.
 The mission of the newly formed CalAmericana Association is "to advance the interests
of California's Americana musicians, fans and supporting organizations" – that is to get "them" to think about it. The idea is to provide a big tent for all the roots
Americana from twanger-songwriters through acoustic and electric up to rockabilly. CalAmericana will issue an e-newsletter, hold conferences and
sponsor events and festivals, and it will also take on promotional responsibilities much like labels once did, but instead of doing it for a band, it will promote Americana styles.
The organization has had it's first meeting and is on its way to nonprofit status, but there is much to be done and volunteers are needed to develop the logo,
help with web pages and join the membership, development, publicity and events committees. Find more at www.CalAmericana.org.
COMPACT DISKS AS A COMMODITY
  It isn't often that a popular indy band like Radiohead or a big star like Madonna find themselves in Hicks
with Sticks News, but they are changing the concept of what CDs are about, and that's our kind of news.
Radiohead's latest collection of songs, In Rainbows,
didn't get released as a CD. Instead, it was released as MP3 files on their website; fans could pay whatever they wanted or nothing at all. Madonna, meanwhile, has left Warner Brothers, her label of
25 years, to sign a mega-deal with Live Nation which is not a label, but marketing company. According to the Material Girl, "The paradigm in the music business has shifted
and as an artist and a business woman, I have to move with that shift." The paradigm that's shifted is that bit streams have been replacing CDs as a means
of music distribution, so she's leaving the CD makers for the image makers.
The only way to hear music a century ago was to hear it live. There were no
CDs, records, cassettes, 8-tracks, wax cylinders, or radios which later solved the problem of bringing the music to the listeners instead of the listeners to the
music. Storage media like records and CDs allowed listeners to play what they wanted when they wanted as long as they purchased the media which held the music.
But a CD and stereo are unwieldy compared to a microchip and a player that is barely larger than a credit card. Music today is viewed by consumers as more
of a commodity than a collectable so they want to handle their music in bulk like flour, sugar or rice. They want to store this commodity in bins like iPods or hard
drives, not on shelves, so Radiohead, Madonna and others are turning to merchandising based on live performances. Radiohead is essentially giving its
music away to sell concert tickets. Madonna wants to sell tickets and everything else any way she can, which is why she wants a marketing
company, not a mere label, behind her. And where is the CD in this picture? Not in Tower Records. The CD isn't going away but for most bands it is already
about as significant as a t-shirt on the merch table.
It's fine to be in music for the love, but how is a band to earn money in 2007? Pretty much the way they did in 1907: tour, tour, tour.
"GREAT WORLD OF SOUND" TOYS WITH THE MUSIC BUSINESS
 "Great World of Sound" only screened in a handful of art houses for a week because it was a good movie backed with a near-zero promotional budget.
Great World of Sound is the fictional name of an independent record label making its money off dreams rather than music. As bands dream of fame, GWS schemes to profit from their aspirations.
Pat Healey
and Kene Martin play Martin and Clarence, two hard luck guys who need jobs and land with GWS as "artists and repertoire" reps (A&R men)
hired to scout the field for promising bands. The problem is that they've fallen for what amounts to a motivational pitch instead of landing real jobs. The
company lures A&R men much as it lures bands. Martin and Clarence get a pittance of a salary and pay their own expenses to find bands that, in turn, must
pay their own expenses while awaiting GWS's promise of a payday from potential stardom. The harder everyone works, the faster they go broke, and the company profits because dreams die hard.
This is not a sentimental move, nor is it a "gotcha" movie. It's a character study about two guys who don't "get it" until they're forced to get it. They are, in
effect, symbols of what happens when scams pass for business in the music industry.
HICKS WITH STICKS RADIO TRACK LIST
Thanks to all who listened to, and supported,
Hicks with Sticks on KALW as a guest on Saturday October 20th. The show featured (mainly) new Bay Area
releases; the track list and audio sample can be found here
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FREE RECORDING SESSIONS
  Ex'pression College in Emeryville specializes in digital arts courses including sound recording. They have an open invitation to bands to record in their
fully-equipped studio for free.
The students need to build their recording skills and the arrangement helps both the musicians and the
students. The recordings can be hit and miss because students are just coming up the learning curve. Still, this is a very good deal for a band in need of a demo
or in need of some studio experience themselves. Find the offer at
www.expression.edu/sound_arts/bands_wanted. |
 A.J. ROACH REVELATION CD
A.J. Roach began his career as a solo
performer. He now adds another dimension to his considerable talent with the support of a regular band. He's always scored well with his distinctive singing and inspired song writing, and
the band deepens the impact of every song while adding variety and depth to Revelation as a whole. It's also freed him to use more metaphors within metaphors to combine beauty, angst and
depth without needless abstraction.
"Down to the River" opens the CD with a clap-worthy gospel-influenced number about suicide as a path to salvation, which admittedly doesn't make a lot of
sense unless it's viewed as a metaphor for holding onto one's sins when losing them threatens one's sense of self worth. It isn't about Virginia Tech, but
knowing that A.J. attended classes in the same buildings where Seung-Hui Cho took 32 lives before taking his own makes the song resonate just a little bit more.
"Devil May Dance," true to its title, uses deception, particularly self-deception, as "sincere as any neon sign" to make its statement about the contradictions we
place on ourselves. Next, "Fashionistas" exposes shallowness as an false front to cries for help.
"I love you more than you love yourself and I wish it wasn't true" is the refrain
that echoes through "Sears and Roebuck Suit" which is about the love A.J. feels for his father who, in real life, has told A.J. that he doesn't see how the song is about him.
There are so many songs about love and whiskey that it's difficult to imagine how an another take on the subject could be original, but originality is what A.J. achieves on the hauntingly beautiful "Chemicals."
Religious imagery delicately permeates the CD but it is not obvious or onerous until the title track "Revelation," which is a strong cut musically but it is a cliché of
a salvation song drawn from the silliest chapter in the Bible. As the CD's last vocal track, it doesn't get in the way of the other songs which need no salvation.
Perhaps A.J. just needed to walk his muse down Easy Street for a while.
A.J. tours, and does particularly well in Europe, but he doesn't play the Bay Area
very much even though he lives here. His next concerts are January 11th at the Dolores Park Cafe and a house concert on January 12th. Hicks with Sticks
doesn't publish house concerts on its calendar, but will provide contact info on an individual basis to those who email to request it.
Last, enjoy the A.J. Roach video experience by searching www.YouTube.com for some of Revelation's songs on video plus a clip with Patti Smith.
R.I.P. PORTER WAGONER AND HANK THOMPSON
Country music lost two of its greats with the recent passing of Porter Wagoner and Hank Thompson. Porter Wagoner's gospel-influenced country infused
his hits like "Satisfied Mind," "Misery Loves Company" and "Green, Green Grass of Home." Wagoner, with his nudie suits, pomped up hair and down-home personality, was a natural for the stage, particularly
the big stage of the Grand Ol' Opry and television.
Hank Thompson is largely  credited with pioneering the change in country music from the jazz-oriented western swing stylings of Bob Wills to the
honky-tonk style associated with Hank Williams the First. Thompson wrote "Humpty Dumpty Heart," "Six Pack to Go," and his biggest hit, 1952's "The Wild Side
of Life," a tune about a good girl gone bad that inspired the Kitty Wells answer song, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels." Both men, who were two
years apart in age, played well into their golden years.
ALL THE NEWS THAT PRINTS IN FITS
  As some leave, others arrive. Valerie Jay has enjoyed
her first 15 months of motherhood but is anxious to get back into music. She's performed some solo shows and is busy putting the Americanos back together for more... The newly formed
San Francisco Cattle Company performed a handful of shows before suspending operations for paternity leave... People want Johnny Cash. Just ask Bay Area band Rusty Evans and Ring of Fire
which is touring the country and has bookings well into 2008 playing Johnny Cash tributes. Evans, who has covered the Man in Black's songs for decades, has plenty of good songs of
his own, and none of the tunes on his two CDs are Cash numbers. But Johnny Cash is selling big time now that he's gone and audiences are clamoring for
Rusty Evans and Ring of Fire... The bluegrass-country crossover trend continues. The Bay Area already has Jeanie and Chuck's Country Roundup
playing on both sides of the fence and the formerly all-bluegrass Burning Embers are getting more honky-tonk with every show. Now members of Homespun Rowdy, regulars at Amnesia's
Bluegrass Mondays, have been going to the woodshed to toss back a few Pabsts and play country... Moving in the opposite direction, Merle Haggard has followed the Steve Earle/Del McCoury
example and released a bluegrass CD. Bluegrass has not mellowed "The Hag" who was something of an "Oakie from Muskogee" flag-waver early in
his career but now wants to know where his country went as his interview at http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071008/LIFE/710 080311 explains... Hicks with Sticks News has been announcing new Bay Area
bands since January 2006, so in keeping with tradition, here are two more. Hilary Marckx and 45-90 are the newest band on the rockabilly radar. They, like
1/4 Mile Combo, Bluenotecats, Chrome Johnson and the Buckshot Boys, hail from the Marin/Sonoma/Napa area making the north Bay Area counties the new powerhouse in Bay Area rockabilly. http://www.45-90.com/information.htm
...   The Country Squires have risen out of the ashes of Calamity and Main with (yes,
he's in yet another new band) Misisipi Mike Wolf (Misisipi Rider, Starlene, J. Byrd Hosch, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Alfonse "Call Me 'Al' " Bowzerski and his Hawaiian
Glockenspiel Ensemble, etc., etc.) on guitar and vocals, Maurice Tani (77 el Deora, Starlene) on guitar and vocals, Christopher Fisher (77 el Deora, Cottonpickers) on drums,
Doug Blumer (D.B. & the Beerhunters, Misisipi Rider) on bass and vocals and, though it's hard to say whether he's in the band or being backed by the band at selected dates, Smelley Kelley from the
hibernating Plain High Drifters on vocals... Scotty Hay, the Plain High Drifters' pedal steel player, is moving out of the area which is why the Drifters, a band
that can never die, appear to be headed for hibernation once again... Bender's
at Van Ness and 19th was gutted by fire two years ago. They've placed a Bay Guardian ad saying "We're Back" but they're still working on the place, there's
no sign of life on their web site, and they were closed on a recent Friday night. The opening can't be that far off though... In other club news, things are looking up for the Uptown
in Oakland. Somebody has gone in there and done some serious booking with ads running in the weeklies to back the shows. Bands, it's time to put the Uptown back on your radar. Www.uptownnightclub.com ... Also
look for more life stemming from the ownership change at Ireland's 32 on Geary in San Francisco.  It's not just for hard core Irish nationalists any more. Www.irelands32sanfrancisco.com ... The Marin IJ ran a front-page story on
Stacy Samuels, the banjo picker who is a fixture at 49er games and sometimes at A's games. He's the most entertaining element of the hapless Niners this season. Find out
what makes Stacy pick at http://www.marinij.com/ci_7302181.
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