Subterranean Bums’ continually shifting lineup both layered and stripped their folk format. Friends jumped on and offstage with new instruments to add to the mix of songs like “World Full of Downers” and “Oklahoma Thunderstorm.”
Off with the electric bass and on with the horns. Now let’s get some upright bass.
Their show at The Burro on May 28th was blissfully youthful Americana. It was something in the same vein of The Avett Brothers before they became the Avett Brothers, though perhaps more pharmaceutical, so to speak.
Wiry vocals, jittery melodies, outbursts and prone to lampooning, it was a performance that literally had the babies in the crowd dancing along. Seriously, I saw it with my own eyes. You must be doing something right when that happens, right?
Sticking with the friends theme, there was no shortage of supporters both on stage and in the crowd for the Subterranean Bums/Eating the Invaders show. You couldn’t help raise your glass to the music of Eating the Invaders. They write suburban hymns which are best enjoyed while drankin’, which was especially fitting for a show at The Burro. Their songs are played seemingly for fun’s sake. This seems obvious, but it’s not every band’s MO. It’s easy to tell when a group plays songs regardless of audience reception–though it’s important to note that the audience certainly enjoyed themselves as much as the band did that night.
Where the crisp trumpet of Steve Jackson was often showcased in the music of Subterranean Bums, Eating the Invaders music isn’t the same without the harmonica of David “Driveway” Moore. Rumor has it, he even snuck in a kazoo solo.
All in all, a great night accompanied by friends and acquaintances, offstage and on. And maybe a few cabaret dancers thrown in there for good measure.
Off their new album, Cloak and Dagger, Voice and Brain:
Back & Forth
Underneath the crowds of faces
Are heart’s just yearnin’ to be complacent
Wanting something lasting
Some place to go to rest your bones
I want the thing that I’m willing to live for
To be the same thing I want to die for
Please peel off your faces
Let me see your veins, let me see your skull, let me hear you bleed
Oh and I know
People come and they go
I just want you to stay
Brighten up one more cloudy day
La da da da
Da da da da da
La da da da
Da da da da da
Da da da
Oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Oooh oh
I’m doing the best I can
To understand
What it takes from me to
Be a good man
It’s just so hard when it’s so easy
To act just like a child
So I pace the floor
Back and forth
Thinking the next step
Might bring me more
Of an idea or clue or something to let me know
What’s going on inside your pretty little head
Oh and I know
People come and they go
I just want you to stay
Brighten up, brighten up
Oh and I know
People come and they go
I just want you to stay
To brighten up one more cloudy day
La da da da
Da da da da da
La da da da
Da da da da da
La da da
Oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh
Oooh oh oh
James Marshall Owen can’t turn a gig down. If he’s already got a date on the books, he’ll say no. Otherwise, he’s on it like Mick Jagger on a mic.
He’s a bone’ fide Buster Dilly, master collaborator and pinch-hit guitar slinger. Call him when your bass player gets sick. Call him when you’ve got a super fantastic gig, with no one to play with, and you need someone to wear a sharp suit, a tie, and learn the tunes on stage and kick. that. set’s. ass.
That said, I’ve always wondered about the equipment Marshall throws in his knapsack to head out the the door and catch the bus, or a quick hitched ride to the latest musical emergency. Usually, he plays whatever is available. But his preference? That’s what I wanted to know.
He plays three instruments: Guitar, bass and banjo. His main money-maker is a work-in-progress electric built by both factory and artisan hands.
You know what? I’ll let Marshall tell you the rest (you can also hear it yourself when Marshall plays the dotmatrix project this Thursday with Eating the Invaders and The Subterranean Bums).
Main electric instrument: 1995 Yamaha Pacifica “112″
It’s the Strat-style six-string, with a Rose Wood fingerboard, brass nut, and a custom-made maple flame wooden pick guard. Gael carved that for me.
This guitar is kind of an ongoing project. I’d like to refinish it and replace the remaining plastic parts with rosewood to match the fingerboard.
Every time I break a string, it’s at the bridge (aka saddle), where there are tiny (invisible to MY eye) burrs.
I love the pickups; with a humbucker in the bridge position it’s definitely more versatile tone-wise than a Telecaster, which is typically my second choice.
It was a fairly unpopular model they only made for a couple of years. It’s like a cross between a Strat body and a Telecaster neck and electronics. It was a piece of crap but I loved it. That was stolen in the parking lot of a certain 24-hour diner after an Eating the Invaders show at the Green Bean about a year ago.
On both guitars (as well as my hand-assembled Franken/LesPaul Copy, which is currently being rocked by Mike of Our Horse Jethro).
Ernie Balls tend to last pretty decently, but the way I play, pretty much any set of electric strings ends up grimy and too heavily used to stay in tune properly long before I get around to changing ‘em.
In any case, I’ll change around depending on my mood, but aside from being pretty picky about using heavier gauges, I like any old set of strings as long as they’re new. Wait. What?
Ampage: Fender Princeton Chorus 2×10
It’s not that I don’t like tube amps, just don’t have one!
Pedals and effects: Horrible fuzzy
I’ll use a wah or chorus once in awhile but I usually just stick to a 6-band EQ that I kick on for volume boosts or drastic tonal changes mid-song. Oh, I also have a bass distortion pedal; I like using that with the guitar cause it’s a horrible fuzzy sound and there’s a blend knob so you can mix the clean signal with it.
Acoustical preference: A piece of shit and a pawn shop
I swore on a Yamaha FG400 or something like that for years. I bought it for $50 from this guy I knew from a community theatre production we were in; it had sat in his closet for about 10 years, so it looked like shit but turned out to be wonderful.
Last summer, I had some cash burning a hole in my pocket, so I took that guitar to Yesterday’s Music in High Point, which is a fantastic shop run by fantastic people (Paul & Cathy Szydlik) who gave me a great trade-in for a brand-new 2005 Alvarez AJ60SC acoustic-electric.
With maple back/sides and spruce top, it’s a much lighter-sounding instrument than the one I was used to, but it has pretty good balance of highs and lows, and the neck is amazing. It’s as comfortable to play as an electric, but you can still really dig in.
Bass face: a 4-string Schecter custom
Not much to say about this one; I also got it brand-new, though with the scuffs I’ve given it in a year you wouldn’t know it. I don’t know what kind of strings I got for it. Ernie Ball’s medium maybe?
I don’t change setup much from one group to another, although if I’m gonna use any effects, it’s way more likely to happen with Project Tritium.
Don’t think I’ve used the bass fuzz with ETI (yet). I’ve recorded some electric parts on the Yamaha for Subterranean Bums, but I primarily play acoustic–and banjo.
The loaner: A banjo
My only banjo is an old untunable Sears Silvertone, and Les Paul signed it in Sharpie so I just play whatever banjo Jack Carter or Emily Stewart loans me.
I have no clue about banjo strings at all! It’s the one instrument I’ve never broken a string on. (Knock on wood).
I’ve been surrounded by creative people all my life, but not in the way I am here in Greensboro, NC. The passionate vibe to create and the hustle people have to support themselves is unlike anything I’ve experienced before.
I mean, both of my parents were art teachers, which provided them a consistent income, but they spent a vast majority of their creative energy fostering the creative development of others. They both had the skills to pursue doing art for a living (I’ve seen their work), but at some point early on they made pragmatic, career-based decisions to teach and raise a family instead.
They chose one life over another.
Over the years that I lived in NYC leading up to my move here, I befriended numerous people who were musicians, composers or artists after hours with a consistently advancing career in the commercial art world by day. Sure, there was always a struggle for time, but the job could be replaced in the blink of an eye with a linear move elsewhere in town. Making it as an artist, first and foremost, was a goal, but it was without a true sense of immediacy.
In These Parts
The people I’ve come to know here live their craft, bent on doing whatever it takes to keep doing what they do — whether they’re single or married with kids, creating is not an option, it’s a necessity… like breathing.
Take Harvey Robinson at Monkeywhale, or his PiC Carolyn de Berry. Not only do they create beautiful short films and photographs, but they prolifically pimp the best work that our creative community has to offer, 24/7. All of this with an eye on financing a feature film. Somehow, they make a living doing commercial work in the short time between.
My brother, Andy Coon, is creating, producing and shooting a web series, The Corporate Assassin, while taking on numerous freelance gigs to contribute to his mortgage payments. He’s married, wants kids and needs health insurance.
Molly McGinn works part-time at an agency, runs three blogs and assists at her friend’s palates studio so she can make both rent and music with her girls in Amelia’s Mechanics.
Dan Bayer shoots local HS sporting events and runs sound at shows around town (including ours at DMP) while trying to get a sound studio off the ground.
I could go on for a long while like this.
This is Greensboro — a town chock full of talented artists, musicians, filmmakers… but also defined by an aggregate population seemingly more interested in what’s on television & clubbing downtown than supporting the arts.
Check that. Not the arts, their arts.
See, that’s what community is about — recognizing common interests and supporting each other in our pursuits. At least it is to me.
So you say we’re not Austin, or even Chapel Hill. Go where the interest and action is, right?
You tell that to one of my friends. You tell them that if they want to make a living at their craft, they should uproot to find a “market” willing and able to support them.
These people aren’t suits, willing to constantly start over, moving from one town to another to make a better buck. They’ve invested time, energy and love to help shape this community and honestly love what they do while valuing their place here.
So they do what they have to do to get by.
Josephus Thompson III wrote an article, steeped in personal experience, about this very subject in GoTriad last week. He ended it as such:
[...] The Bible says, “Faith without works is dead,” so we work and keep the faith; we pray and we stay on the straight and narrow, traveling the unbeaten path believing we can make it and cascading through all the gray areas of the unknown, postponing or as Langston might say, deferring our dreams. So, we must not defer, we must not linger in our fantasies, but pursue our desires and our dreams. And at the end of the day we do, doing whatever it takes to get us through to the next stage of our lives — hopes, dreams and ambitions in tow. For we understand and know that we must do what we have to do in order to do what we want to do.
Sometimes, that notion becomes lost in the darkness of pursuit and struggle. I’ve experienced it myself. So to both the friends I’ve come to know over time and the creative souls I’ve yet to meet, I’ll let Josephus III take us out…
