After spending the last year working behind the camera at ArtLab Sessions my band Waits & Co. finally had our own chance to record a session. With the release of our Waits & Co. EP it was perfect, but unplanned, timing to go before the lights & cameras at the Waters Ave. compound. Here are some photos from photographer & ArtLab videographer Kelly Roetto. Click on the link to see more of her work, and we look forward to bringing you the latest ArtLab Sessions video soon.
Wet Socks — the Savannah-based garage rock duo whose first album Drips was released on the Retro Futurist label — has just released a new video (though filmed “a while ago”) for “New Crush Part 1”.
And while we’re on the subject, have you seen the video for “New Crush Part 2”?
And if you haven’t seen the “Library Card” video, you really out to.
Weedeater returned to The Jinx last week — the band’s pure power demands to be seen and felt. Kings Destroy from NYC proved a great opener in their first Savannah gig.
Thanks to Dave Spangenburg Photography and Wicked Ways Photography for contributing to this post (and, seriously, please click on through, “like”, and explore both of their Facebook pages). I also have a few Weedeater pics in this post, and the Kings Destroy pics are by Dave and me. (Those without watermark are by Dave, btw.)
Click on through for lots more:
Every show at Hang Fire is going to be a little out of control this month — click here for our post about the club’s expiring lease — including tonight’s (Monday) No Control party with TOW3RS, Curbdogs (Savannah-based rock band), and Sara Curtin (indie rock/folk pop from DC).
TOW3RS — a critically acclaimed project of Derek Torres from Raleigh — performed at SXSW this year and recently recorded a Daytrotter session.
Check out the latest album, the obscurely titled TL;DR:
And here’s TOW3RS at WKNC’s The Lounge in 2014:
For more info, check out the Facebook event page for this Monday night show.
If you’re a live music fan in Savannah, you probably already know that Hang Fire’s lease is up soon. They’ll be gone from Whitaker Street after Saturday, August 29th, as I understand it.
They’ve got shirts for the occasion — in the Insta embed is the one I bought last night. They’re just $15 and available at the bar.
As our Savannah readers probably know, Hang Fire has for years been involved in legal wrangling regarding noise. Condo purchasers above them apparently didn’t check out the space at night before making their purchase. Hang Fire’s impending departure raises all kinds of policy questions regarding the noise ordinance, the rights of bars when gentrifiers move in, the problems of condo associations generally, etc.
Hang Fire’s departure feels like the end of a brief era in downtown nightlife. Wes, Heather, and the rest of the team have nurtured an unpredictably diverse clientele, and, especially over the last couple of years, Hang Fire has been home to some stunningly good shows. The bar wasn’t originally conceived as a live music venue, but it turned into a great one. Bands seemed to relish the immediacy of the crowd, and other groups like the House of Gunt have found a home there too.
The Hang Fire owners have been looking around at potential new spaces, but even if they find something tomorrow, the transition period could easily last 2+ months, even if the new space is more or less ready to go. There are limited spots downtown that would even work for Hang Fire these days — River Street would be out, Congress is pretty full and increasingly pricy, etc. I think there are a couple of subterranean spots on Broughton that could have a bar like Hang Fire, but I’d really like to see them move south of Forsyth Park. Most of the bar’s clientele lives on that side of the park already, and Hang Fire could quickly find a home on a kind of sketchy stretch somewhere, like on Montgomery Street.
Until I hear otherwise, I’m going to assume that Hang Fire will in fact reopen in a new location, but if they decide otherwise, maybe a young entrepreneur will see the obvious need for a place like it.
I imagine we’ll have additional posts about Hang Fire’s departure from Whitaker Street soon, but for now here are a bunch of randomly selected photos from the hissing lawns archive for 2015 only, plus this one older shot of Wes, Rich, and Clayton, from Stopover 2011. If you don’t recognize the acts, hover over to see the file name.
More photos after the jump:
Hey guys,
This is another one of those weeks with plenty of choices of music downtown. There are several early shows this weekend, for those of us who are allergic to the dark. There is music downtown, Starland area, and Tybee Island this weekend. So there is no real reason not to catch some music this weekend.
Wednesday 5th
Weedeater, Kings Destroy– Jinx ($15)
Stan Ray – Warehouse
Thursday 6th
What Moon Things, Jackson Scott, Triathalon – Hang Fire
Eric Britt – Molly MacPherson’s
Friday 7th
Coma Surfs (Portland), Reverends, (Atl), Jones College Radio (Athens), Miquel Moore (Sav’h) – Starland District Art March (6-9p)
Joe Nelson & James Pittman – Foxy Loxy Cafe (7p)
Danielle Hicks & The Eight-Ohm Resistance – Jazz’d
Juanjamon Band – Barrelhouse South
The Grand Gestures, COEDS, Hypnotics – Jinx
Ancient Warfare, Hailey Wojcik, blackrune – Hang Fire
Saturday 8th
Flying Bacon Cheeseburgers (3:30), American Hologram (4:30), Charlie Fog Band (5:30), Kota Mundi (7:00) – Huc-a-Poo’s (Save The Planet Party)
City Hotel, Accomplices – Jelinek Creative Spaces (101 Fahm St)
Rachel Shaner, Charlie Fog Band – Barrelhouse South
Wet Socks, Street Clothes – Jinx
Sunday 9th
Heavy Glow (6-9p) – Chromatic Dragon
Monday 10th
Tow3rs, Curb Dogs, Sara Curtain – Hang Fire
Stan Ray – Warehouse
Tuesday 11th
Ray Lundy – Foxy Loxy Cafe (7p)
Wednesday 12th
Dickies, Jeff Two-Names & The Born Agains – Wormhole
Update: On 9/4, Campfest’s Facebook page announced the cancellation of this year’s event because of circumstances beyond their control.
I’m impressed with the Campfest lineup for Sept. 18-20 at Camp Blue Ridge: Cold War Kids, Hey Rosetta!, Langhorne Slim, Family and Friends, The Whigs, Roadkill Ghost Choir, Hardy & The Hardknocks (check out our post from last week), Alanna Royale, and Margo and The Pricetags. There will also be a beachfront dance party with Brushfire Stankgrass, special performances by New Breed Brass Band, and campfire sets by City Mouse, Nikki Talley, Christopher Paul Stelling, and Wrenn.
The site includes a beach, a pool, cabins, camping, paddleboarding, and various fun activities (Camp Blue Ridge generally operates as a camp for kids, after all). The camp is in Mountain City, Ga., in the extreme northeast corner of the state (about 5 hours from Savannah, I guess).
Tickets are $89 for general admission for the three days. General admission plus camping is just $175. Cabin beds start at $150 per person. Click here for more info on food and accommodations.
We’ve taken a lot of pics of some of these bands — you’ll find shots of some of them after the jump:
So there was another Stopover in The Yard on Saturday — third in a series of collaborations between Savannah Stopover/MusicFile Productions and The Grey.
Missionary Blues brought their wonderful “juke joint style” to the not-unbearably-hot lunchtime show in The Yard at The Grey, and Chef Mashama Bailey prepared a menu of brisket or mushroom tacos, corn on the cob, black beans and rice, and slaw. $21 covers the food, music, and one drink (choices on Saturday were red and white wine, Genesee Cream Ale, and Chatham Artillery Punch).
The next Stopover in The Yard is scheduled for 9/19. Bands for the next several events should be announced soon.
If I’m going to keep taking pictures at these things, I need to bring my bigger camera. I struggle a bit with my Fujifilm x100t in strong daylight, and I need to be able to zoom a little closer on the bands without having to be the only guy standing right in front of them. Hit the jump for more.
Regular hissing lawns contributor Jon Waits wears a number of hats around town. He works as a freelance photographer and as a singer-songwriter he fronts Waits & Co., which has just released the band’s first EP. Check it out below (or just click here to go right to the Bandcamp page for music and merch purchases):
Jon is joined in Waits & Co. by Markus Kuhlmann and John Pizzichemi. Jon reports that the plan is to record a full album in 2016. At this time, the self-titled EP is available only digitally. From the Bandcamp page: “his EP was recorded as you would hear us perform at one of our gigs. We went the old-school route of minimal live takes with no slick over-production or extra editing in tracks afterwards…just three musicians playing straight up good music and having fun together.”
Somewhere in the middle of Hardy & The Hardknocks’ set last Saturday at Bragg Jam in Macon, I suddenly felt like I was in some kid’s basement 30 years ago; he and his friends have just realized that there really aren’t any rules to rock and roll (fuck the school band too), and his parents upstairs are stoned out of their minds, glued to the television.
And then I was back in Grant’s Lounge, a historic dive that nearly closed after a shooting out front in 2014. Just before T. Hardy Morris and his band took the stage, I ordered a bourbon and water (for a friend, I swear), and the bartender scowled at the thought of adulterating the bourbon, but he finally put a splash of water in the cup, and I worked my way to the front.
Hardy and The Hardknocks might play with the reckless abandon of teens in a basement — “He’s drunk!” yelled some guy right behind me (“No, you are,” I almost said) — but there’s a biting precision in this latest project and on the stellar new album Hardy & the Hardknocks: Drownin on a Mountaintop on Dangerbird Records. A review at No Depression calls the sound “garage country”. In a lengthy interview with Paste, Morris goes for “country grunge” — “crunge.” I’d call it “southern grunge” instead — the music just seems rooted more in southern rock than in country (although that pedal steel from Matt “Pistol” Stoessel sure evokes country…).
Whatever we decide to call the sound, it’s fascinating to see Morris at this point. He may look like a kid who needs a big X on his hand in a bar, but he has fronted Dead Confederate for many years. He’s part of the rollicking Diamond Rugs. He did some dreamy folk several years ago before turning out the magnificent solo album Audition Tapes, the songs from which were used for a series of videos filmed at Georgia’s Places in Peril. He and The Hardknocks played a brilliant set at Savannah’s Revival Fest in 2014.
The new songs on Drownin on a Mountaintop feel like both a logical progression of all those projects and at the same time like a necessary, timely step back into early grunge, including the emotional alienation at its heart.
“The whole grunge thing just went to shit real fast,” Morris told Paste earlier this summer. “You know, bands like the Meat Puppets, who had kind of done it before, were doing cool stuff and then Nirvana blew it up. Besides bands like Sonic Youth and a few other lesser-known bands—I don’t know that that sound got explored quite the way it should have.”
Check out the paranoid lyrics of the title track:
And listen to the sneering anger in “Painted on Attitude”:
At Bragg Jam, Hardy & The Hardknocks began with the sometimes-laconic “Young Assumption” (“I’d just as soon stay home”), ripped through some of the best songs off the new record (though it’s hard to pick favorites off such a cohesive record), and grunged down “Share the Needle” and “Disaster Proof” from Audition Tapes.
Drownin on a Mountaintop closes with a lilting, wistful ballad — “Just Like The Movies”. In the poetic album liner notes, Patterson Hood lingers over the beauty of the final refrain: “Love is a language with no subtitles.” Throughout the album, there’s an implicit acknowledgment that there are unbreachable gulfs all around us, but the sheer energy of the music rejects abject isolation.
Where next for T. Hardy Morris? Apparently these songs were recorded before his baby was born last year, and that will change things for sure, right?
I took some photos (including one of the set list I grabbed), so click on through for more:
Well done everyone. An early Monday night show, a venue change, all-ages, all of these things can make for a tough turnout, but an excellent bill and hard work made for a stellar, well attended, Dad Joke production. I unfortunately missed Forced Entry (again), but every band in the lineup turned in great, if brief, performances, particularly the frenetic Downtown Boys. Their sax driven, political punk really hit it out of the park, or at least out of Sulfur Studios, an outstanding venue. Cool stuff all around. I battled technical issues and my own idiocy to capture these images. Check them out, a bunch more after the jump.
Man, I’m getting behind on my posting! Okay, here goes….going to this show was pretty much a no brainer for me. Hotplate is possibly my current favorite Savannah band, as I am a total sucker for the type of experimental/math/complex rock in which they deal. If there’s any genre that gets my blood pumping more than math rock, it’s noise rock, and Philly’s excellent Bardus is a shining example of why. A great set from the grunge worshiping Pretty Please was icing on the cake.
Before Hotplate’s set a plastic dropcloth and ladder were set up on the stage, which, coupled with the fact that most of the band had goggles on, definitely piqued my interest. During their set an artist worked the logoed black tapestry with bleach and a permanent marker (I think), and by the time the music ended a piece of art had emerged. I’m not really doing it justice, suffice it to say it was really cool.
Check the pics, maybe while playing Hotplate’s latest e.p., PLANS ARE BUILT ON THIN ICE, available on Bandcamp. I highly recommend it, and honestly play it on a regular basis. It’s basically one long song, but they’ve split it into four parts, I assume for easier consumption. Personally, I prefer to listen to it straight through. Click on through to Bandcamp for a “name your price” download.
Here’s a band shot video for the song ON.
