Music

Like so many bands traveling between Denver and Salt Lake in the winter, white-out conditions on I-80 forced Larkin Poe to cancel their January date at The Commonwealth Room. They returned to share the love to a sold-out crowd on Valentine’s Day. They were, as their opening number suggests, “taking the long road. Ooh, diggin’ deep. We’re gonna strike gold.” On Tuesday night, they hit paydirt! They followed with “Kick the Blues,” and primed the packed house for a thrilling, rockin’ blues ride. Larkin Poe is a band made up of two sisters, Rebecca and Megan Lovell who have Georgia and Tennessee roots and play an electrifying style of blues and Southern-fried rock ‘n’ roll.

For me, Larkin Poe is at their best when they tap into that old-school blues sound. And as Rebecca Lovell explained, at every show they pay homage to the pioneers of that genre. With Rebecca Lovell playing lead guitar and vocals, accompanied by her sister, Megan, on lap steel guitar and vocals, and backed by drums and bass, they performed a 21st century rendition of Son House’s 1930s blues standard “Preacher’s Blues.” In the 1950s, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins wrote the new blues standard “I Put a Spell on You.” Shattering the hex seven decades later, Rebecca Lovell conjured up a future classic– from the spellbound perspective—and mesmerized the audience with “Bad Spell.” They teased us with the first few bars of Link Wray’s 1958 classic instrumental “Rumble” before launching into “Holy Ghost Fire.” The past and present collided with a thunderous musical explosion. 

Though anchored in the blues, Larkin Poe is at their core a southern rock ‘n’ roll band who play in 5th gear on an open highway. With only an electric guitar, a lap steel guitar, bass, and drums, Larkin Poe generated a piercing blast of down-home jams. “Blue Ridge Mountains,” “Summertime Sunset,” and “Southern Comfort” were high-octane, full-throttle numbers. “Wanted Woman” showed off the sisters’ guitar mastery and vocal dexterity.

The band downshifted long enough for Rebecca Lovell to show off her soulful voice with “Might as Well Be Me,” a great bluesy ballad. I’d like to see her explore more of this. The woman can sing the blues! She also writes great songs. “Mad as a Hatter,” a song she wrote when she was only 15 years old, describes her grandfather’s battle with mental illness and shares her fear that she might inherit his demons. Sometimes blues music isn’t just learned, it’s also experienced. 

They ended their 15-song set with “Bolt Cutters and The Family Name” and followed with an encore, “Deep Stays Down.” They embraced the old stage maxim: always leave your audience wanting more. That was certainly true of Tuesday night’s show. With so many great songs in their arsenal, and despite a full 16-song show, I hoped they’d play more from their impressive catalog.

Goodnight, Texas, opened the show with the vivid tune “Tucamcari,” imaging the windswept New Mexican town like a musical soundtrack from a gritty John Ford western. They reframed Dylan’s “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm no more,” into a more realistic “I’m Going to Work on Maggie’s Farm Forever.” Goodnight, Texas’s reimagined farmworker is trapped in a work/poverty cycle and doesn’t have an option to leave the farm like Dylan’s protagonist. It’s a bitingly clever and well-constructed song. In all, they played nine stunning numbers. With their finale, “The Railroad,” you could almost hear the hammer strike the spike as they laid down the track. I wanted more. A short opening set just wasn’t enough. I’d love to see them again, this time, headlining in the State Room. I can imagine a number of great local Americana acts who could open for them. Judging from the crowd’s enthusiastic response, I know I’m not the only one.

Who: Larkin Poe w/Goodnight, Texas

What: Blood Harmony Tour

Where: The Commonwealth Room

When: February 14, 2023

Info: https://thestateroompresents.com

         www.larkinpoe.com

         www.hiwearegoodnighttexashowareyou.com

The Lone Bellow offered us a little teaser last summer when they opened for country-pop sensation Maren Morris at Red Butte Garden (she hand-selected them). That seven-song set whet our appetite for the main course, a full-set, KRCL Presented show at the Commonwealth Room on Feb. 5, 2023. The band is touring in support of their just-released Love Songs For Losers, an 11-song gem that’s rising in the charts. Recorded in the supposedly haunted house of the late Roy Orbison (if you believe in that sort of thing), the end result is a highly spirited record. The single “Honey” has already hit #2 on the Americana Singles chart and the band is sure to fill their setlist with a hardy sampling of their great new material.

The Lone Bellow, a trio of southerners who met in New York City in 2012, play contemporary country/folk or what they term Brooklyn Country. Featured musicians include Zach Williams on guitar and lead vocals, Kanene Donehey Pipkin on mandolin, bass, keyboard and vocals and Brian Elmquist on guitar and vocals. The trio inked a record deal with Sony imprint Descendant Records and released their debut self-titled album which reached #64 on the Billboard Top 200 in 2013. People magazine placed the record in their top ten albums of 2013. The record provided listeners with a visceral musical experience of alluring harmonies and impassioned lyrics. “Green Eyes and a Heart of Gold,” is an exuberant song about how a strong relationship can get you through hard times. The trio sings “Green eyes and a heart of gold. All the money’s gone and the house is cold and it’s alright.” Their sophisticated blend of country/folk/rock/gospel/blues appeals to fans of both heartfelt country ballads and urbane folkish grit.

The band stayed in the center lane of Americana for their next two records. Stunning three-part harmonies and rich tales of love, loss, pain and joy remained the secret formula that earned them an Americana Music Award nomination for best group in 2015. A move to Nashville in 2016 didn’t untether their musical moorings and years on the road only strengthened their place as roof-raising roots revivalists. 

On Feb. 7, 2020, The Lone Bellow hit a home run with the release of their most creatively daring and emotionally intelligent, full-length album Half Moon Light. Then, the global pandemic abruptly halted their touring schedule. Undeterred, the band continued to make music. In 2021 they released a deluxe edition of Half Moon Light, expanding the original release from 15 songs to 21 (what we called a double album back in the vinyl days). Despite the pandemic, the album soared to #4 on the Billboard US Folk Album charts and #11 on the Billboard Top 200. The first single “Count on Me” seemed ready-made for the emotional rollercoaster we were all on (though it was written pre-pandemic) with soothing harmonies chanting like a mantra “Count on me, if I can count on you.” The line “Let it break you. Let it help you lay down what you held on to” also resonated as many of us used the pandemic to take stock of what really matters in life. The song reached #1 on the Americana Singles chart. Its companion release “Dried Up River” is an equally emotional anthem that found its audience, despite the lockdown. It made it to #1 in the charts.  

Opening for The Lone Bellow is Tow’rs, a Flagstaff-based band featuring husband and wife duo Kyle and Gretta Miller who provide winsome folk harmonies. Their songs blend personal and spiritual growth with a collective sense of neighborliness and nature. Their sound reminds me of a stripped-down version of Elephant Revival with their breezy melodies and Elysian vocals. They’ll be the perfect warm-up for a blissful night of soul-regenerating folk-rock music.

Fans of the Avett Brothers, CSNY, Lumineers, Jamestown Revival, Nathaniel Rateliff, or Watchhouse won’t want to miss this show. I will pair the evening’s music with a  refreshing Yacht Rock Juice Box Hazy IPA from Proper Brewing.

• Who: The Lone Bellow w/ Tow’rs
• What: KRCL Presents: The Love Songs For Losers Tour
• Where: The Commonwealth Room
• When: February 5, 2023
• Tickets and Info: thestateroompresents.com and KRCL.org

For more than a decade, Larkin Poe has delivered their electrified, modernized, Southern-fried rockin’ blues to stadiums and festivals all across the globe. On Friday, Jan. 27, 2023 we get a chance to see them up close and personal at The Commonwealth Room.

Sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell from Georgia, who make up Larkin Poe, are reinvigorating the blues by blending their blood harmonies with super-charged guitar and lap steel riffs. They’re touring in support of their new record Blood Harmony, a great rockin’ blues album that weaves threads of home and family together into a complicated, sometimes painful narrative. In the first chords of the opening track, “Deep Stays Down” Megan Lovell’s haunting swamp blues slide guitar riff takes us somewhere dark and foreboding while sister Rebecca’s soulful voice tells us about the subterranean demons that get buried in the rural South with lyrics like: “The cat’s in the bag, the bag’s in the river and the river runs deep and the deep stays down.” 

The title track “Blood Harmony” celebrates growing up in a musical family and singing with a sibling to create powerful blood harmonies. Rebecca sings: “More than flesh, more than bone. When I sing, I don’t sing alone.” The sister’s bittersweet move from Georgia to Nashville is captured in the radio-ready, Bonnie Raitt-styled “Georgia Off My Mind.” One of my favorite tracks on this amazing record is “Bad Spell.” Rebecca Lovell pens a clever response to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ 1950s macabre blues classic “I Put a Spell on You” from the perspective of the spellbound. The sisters offer us a bad-ass, full-throttled rockin’ blues retort. “Boy, you cast a bad spell, a bad spell over me. And when I catch you, you’re gonna catch hell. I’m gonna get ya in the first degree.”

The Grammy-nominated duo is firmly rooted in the blues and they offer a fresh, new, female perspective that’ll lead the genre into the 21st century. Fun fact: The band is named for the Lovell sister’s great, great, great grandfather, Larkin Husky Poe, who was a cousin of the gothic writer Edgar Allen Poe. That dark literary DNA passed to the Lovell sisters making the blues the perfect vehicle for their artistic expression.

Larkin Poe put a fresh coat of paint on Son House’s 1930s blues standards, “John the Revelator” and “Preachin’ Blues” making them shine for a new generation of listeners. Ninety years ago Lead Belly recorded a 1-minute acapella version of an old, southern field workers’ song “Black Betty” which recounts oppression, injustice and living under the whip. Other artists have recorded versions of the standard, but none captured Lead Belly’s intensity until 2017 when Larkin Poe gave the song a new-age authenticity with their powerful foot-stomping female harmonies.

In 2020, Larkin Poe released Kindred Spirits, a full-length album of contemporary covers. Their version of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” features a slower, more acoustic tempo and the duo’s beautiful harmonies transform the song with a haunting and visceral depth. Their renditions of “Nights in White Satin,” “Bell Bottom Blues” and “Fly Away” are also fabulous reworks.

2020 also brought a full dose of new, original material with Self Made Man, a hard-charging album that reached #1 on Billboard’s blues album chart and featured great new power blues ballads like “Holy Ghost Fire.” Rebecca Lovell sings: “lift our voices with the smoke rising higher. Burn with that holy ghost fire.” While Megan Lovell harmonizes to an uptempo beat, both sisters duel it out with thunderous guitar licks.

In 2018, their album Venom and Faith reached #1 on the Billboard blues album chart and received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album. The record produced the single “Bleach Blonde Bottles Blues,” a song that defines the duo’s driving blues guitar and lap steel sound with a thunderclap beat and mesmerizing siren harmonies. 

Opening the evening is American roots quintet Goodnight, Texas, a band fronted by two lead singers and songwriters, Avi Vinocur from San Francisco, and Patrick Dyer Wolf from North Carolina (so, they’re not actually from Texas). Goodnight, Texas is named for the small town halfway between the two, representing the “meet in the middle” of their songcraft. Blending folk, rock and blues, Goodnight, Texas creates a musical landscape of scenic vistas and open roads. Their song “Tucumcari” captures images of the windswept New Mexican town with a gritty western musical soundtrack. The band creates an Old Crow Medicine Show vibe with old-timey styled Americana songs like “The Railroad,” “A Bank Robber’s Nursery Rhyme,” and “Moonshiners.” Their rural roots style will pair well with Larkin Poe’s electrified Delta blues.

Fans of southern-styled blues like the Allman Brothers, Black Crowes, Gary Clark Jr, Samantha Fish, Kaleo, or ZZ Ward won’t want to miss seeing Larkin Poe in the intimate confines of the Commonwealth Room on January 27, 2023. They’re sure to get your feet stompin’, your hands clapping and your head bobbing. I will pair the evening’s music with a fine Golden Spike Hefeweizen from Uinta Brewing. Cheers!

• Who: Larkin Poe w/Goodnight, Texas
• What: Blood Harmony Tour
• Where: Commonwealth Room
• When: Jan. 27, 2023
• Tickets and info: thestateroompresents.com

The State Room hosted a fruitful Harvest in a sold-out show on Saturday night. Singer-songwriter Paul Jacobsen served as master of ceremonies (and more) ushering in a bounty of talented, local artists to pay tribute to Neil Young’s influential 1972 album. It was a massive, three-part-24-song-musical feast that thrilled the jam-packed audience (ok, I’m done with the produce metaphors). With so many talented, local artists it’s impossible to highlight the standout performances. So, here’s the setlist.  

Act One included a handful of Young’s non-Harvest treasures like “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” performed by Provo pop-duo Adam and Darcie. Daniel Young, who kept the ensemble on time all night with his skillful drumming, took lead vocals on a fine rendition of “From Hank to Hendrix” accompanied by Dylan Schorer on pedal steel, M. Horton Smith on guitar, and Julieanne Brough on keys. Hollering Pines lead singer and songwriter Marie Bradshaw rocked “Harvest Moon” while also providing backup vocals throughout the evening. American Songwriter contest winner Ryan Tanner took the keys and wrapped up Act One with a superb rendition of “After the Gold Rush.” 

Act Two of this star-studded performance featured Harvest in its entirety with Paul Jacobsen skillfully launching the first track “Out on the Weekend.” An assembly of other great players subbed in and out all night, but the foundation of the evening’s host band included Paul Jacobsen on acoustic guitar, Daniel Young on drums, Pat Boyer (Desert Noises) on bass and occasionally shredding a mean lead guitar, TJ Nokleby (Parlor Hawk) on guitar, Brian Hardy (The Lower Lights) on keys, Marie Bradshaw on backing vocals, Dylan Schorer (Hollering Pines) on pedal steel and Megan Nay (Fire Guild) on fiddle.

Provo’s Mia Grace “filled our cup” with “Harvest,” the album’s title track. The next song from the album reminded us that in 1972 even hippy folk artists, marching for peace and justice, could be tone deaf to misogyny. “A Man Needs a Maid,” is a cringeworthy song title that went unchallenged fifty years ago. On Saturday night however, Julianne Brough tackled the song from a female perspective and turned it inside out with her poignantly beautiful rendition. Her reinterpretation was a true highlight in an evening full of high art. 

Porter Smith of the indie rock band Lantern By Sea shined on “Heart of Gold.” Cory Mon delivered an upbeat “Are You Ready for the Country” before handing it off to Kimball Frank for a heartfelt singalong with “Old Man.” Stephanie Mabey brought us back to the album’s  orchestral folkiness with an ethereal “There’s a World.” Dr. Dominic Moore took us on an electrified trip to a subterranean world with the rafter-shaking “Alabama.” Sadly, that powerful song still rings true.

The full stage momentarily cleared and Joshua James came out with his guitar and did an amazing (you could hear a pin drop) rendition of  “Needle and the Damage Done.” Cardinal Bloom’s Joey St. John offered his last “Words” to the show’s loving rendition of Harvest. 

A short intermission gave way to Act Three: A final round of Young’s classics. Whisperhawk (Michael Gross) launched into a thunderous “Cinnamon Girl.” Michelle Moonshine did a lovely “Comes a Time” with Marie Bradshaw on backup vocals. To see both singers/songwriters on stage together was a treat. Bradshaw then took us on a musical ride somewhere on a desert highway with “Unknown Legend.” Ryan Innes (NBC’s The Voice) belted out a soulful “Helpless” and left us wanting more. Neon Trees bassist Branden Campbell joined the ensemble and Porter Smith returned for a lively version of  “Ohio.” M. Horton Smith (Hollering Pines) set his mandolin aside and took lead vocals on “Farmer John.” Mick Rudolph (Seaslak) jammed out a mesmerizing and dreamy “Cortez the Killer” before Joshua James pulled the trigger on “Powderfinger.” The stage filled for the group finale with “Rockin’ in the Free World.” 

Let me catch my breath. This show could have easily sold-out a second night (I’d actually go see it again). I hope the success of this event will generate renewed interest in this type of collaborative celebration. We could use more performances that showcase our locally-based talent. Next time, I’d like to see merch tables so fans can purchase the great original music many of these artists have recorded.

I apologize for failing to mention any of the many players who contributed so much to make the evening a success.

What:  Fifty Years of Neil Young’s Harvest–A Tribute

Who: An all-star lineup of locally-based artists

Where: The State Room

When: January 7, 2023

The pandemic, for many touring musicians, was a rare chance to take an extended break and recharge their creative batteries. Not the Kitchen Dwellers, who are performing at Dec. 30 and 31 at the Commonwealth Room in Salt Lake City.

The Montana-based string band wanted to make a new album (which became the 2022 release “Wise River”) that made a statement about the group.

“We kind of took that route in just saying let’s use this time to our advantage. Let’s use this time to really come out of the end of this thing better than (when) we went into it,” said banjo player Torrin Daniels in a late-December phone interview. “So that was kind of the approach, I guess, going into recording ‘Wise River.’ We wanted the finished product to show that we had been putting the work in and that we didn’t take this (pandemic) time to rest.”

 The result was a year-plus period in which the four musicians – Daniels, mandolin player Shawn Swain, bassist Joe Funk and guitarist Max Davies – improved and grew more collaborative in their songwriting and emerged with what Daniels feels is the best representation yet of the band’s music and playing.

“The first couple of albums that we put together were really evidence of us still trying to figure out what exactly we are and how we fit together and how to play our instruments and write songs and things like that,” Daniels said. “This most recent one (“Wise River”), I guess, is just a more mature version of whatever we’ve found ourselves to be.”

That Daniels feels the Kitchen Dwellers are only now really beginning to hit their stride as a band is perfectly understandable. The band, after all, is still relatively new, having formed in 2010 while in college at Montana State University in Bozeman.

It was actually a markedly different outfit at the start. Early on, the group had a fiddle player as a fifth member, and most notably, a different guitarist in Kyle Shelstad, who wrote nearly all of the songs for the original Kitchen Dwellers. The original group released a self-titled album in 2013 and earned second-place honors in new band competitions at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and the Northwest String Summit before Shelstad split with the Kitchen Dwellers in 2014.

This left Daniels, Swain, Funk and Davies (who replaced Shelstad) to find a way forward as the Kitchen Dwellers.

 “I think he really wanted to move back to the Midwest where he was from and the rest of us really had no interest in doing that,” Daniels said, starting to explain the split with Shelstad. “And part of it was creative differences. He’s much more of a folky type of songwriter and I guess maybe more of like the indie sort of feel to his writing. He has a band now that is much more fitting to that whole scene.   

“I think ultimately it (Shelstad’s departure) was really good for us because we were able to sort of really pursue the type of music that we wanted to play,” he added. “None of us were really contributing to the writing of songs when he was in that band because he’s a very prolific songwriter. I think it maybe intimidated the rest of us, or made the rest of us feel that wasn’t our part to play, like we weren’t the songwriters of the band. And I think him leaving and us going our separate ways really enabled everyone involved, it empowered us to all pursue our songwriting.”

The Kitchen Dwellers’ music is certainly informed by bluegrass, but other influences also figure into the music. For one thing, none of the musicians played bluegrass or were in acoustic string bands before meeting at Montana State University. Daniels was into punk and heavy metal. Swain shared an affinity for metal, as well as the Grateful Dead. Funk was into electronic music and Daniels favored classic rock.

Those backgrounds inform the music of the Kitchen Dwellers, even though Daniels, Swain, Funk and Davies play instruments commonly featured in bluegrass. But the song structures often borrow from rock and pop, while there’s an energy and edge to the playing that aligns with the rock influences of four band members.

 “It seems counter intuitive when you first look at it,” Daniels said of the transition from rock to bluegrass-rooted music. “I think it really translates well when you start playing bluegrass, especially if you grew up playing that punk style of music or metal style of music. You were already used to playing fast. And especially with metal, I’ve found metal guitarists and (players) like that have this dexterity and finesse to their technique because a lot of it is so technical and it involves so much thought and finesse while you’re playing, which translates well to bluegrass music. A lot of bluegrass instruments require the same level of finesse and attention to detail as far as your technique goes. So when you start to learn how to play acoustic instruments like that, a lot of the thought processes kind of translate over very well.”

In making “Wise River,” the Kitchen Dwellers sought to grow and evolve as a band by stepping outside of their comfort zones in several ways. Where the current lineup’s first two albums, 2017’s “Ghost in the Bottle” and 2019’s “Muir Maid,” were produced by musicians from the string band/bluegrass world (Leftover Salmon’s Andy Thorn on “Ghost in the Bottle” and Chris Pandolfi of the Infamous Stringdusters on the latter album), the Kitchen Dwellers reached outside of their genre for “Wise River” by bringing in Cory Wong of the funk band Vulfpeck to produce.

“He connected with us because he had sort of had this interest in working with a string band and working with bluegrass music, which is something he doesn’t typically do,” Daniels said. “So it was kind of like, we were coming together sort of as these two different parties from two different musical worlds to try to put both of our best feet forward to record this album.”

The four band members also agreed with Wong’s suggestion to work with Nashville-based songwriter Elliot Blaufuss to hone the material for “Wise River.”

“I think it helped bring a lot of new songwriting ideas to the table,” Daniels said. “I think it made us all better songwriters just getting the opportunity to work with Elliot.”

The Kitchen Dwellers have done a good deal of touring in support of “Wise River” since the album was released in April. The band has a busy year of shows on deck for 2023. But first, Daniels is excited about finishing 2022 with a pair of blow-out performances on Dec. 30 and 31 at the Commonwealth Room in Salt Lake City.

“We have these folks that follow us around the full year and a lot of them are really good friends of ours now. We feel like we kind of go through the whole year with a lot of them and we have these shared experiences with them,” Daniels said. “I guess for this upcoming new year’s run in Salt Lake, we’ll probably throw some new stuff out there that maybe we haven’t ever played before, whether it’s a cover or an original (song) or what have you. We try to throw some new stuff out on New Year’s. It kind of fits the occasion. Everyone’s done with their year and ready to celebrate. So we try to throw some stuff out there that leans toward that feeling. 

“It feels like we’re sort of tying up the year and letting it all hang out on the last couple of nights,” he said. “So I’m really looking forward to that in Salt Lake. It’s going to be an awesome time.”

The Urban Lounge felt a little like an exclusive speakeasy on Tuesday night. Fortunately for me, I knew the password–July Talk! The Toronto-based sextet uncorked the lightning from the bottle and gave a thunderous and theatrical performance. For those not yet acquainted with July Talk, they’re an award-winning avant-garde Canadian alt-rock band whose songs blend a dark, gothic rock with light, airy pop. The contrast in genre is accentuated by the lyrical themes of life’s blurred contradictions such as love and hate, trust and deception, or madness and sanity. On stage, they played it out with two lead vocalists, Peter Dreimanis and Leah Fay. Dreimanis reached into the darkness with his smokey, almost demonic vocals (think an unrestrained Tom Waits), while Fay countered with her impish, sweet pop (think Cyndi Lauper).  

The well-choreographed performance began with their alt-rock hit “Picturing Love,” the first song from their 18-song set. “Picturing Love” explored the boundaries between reality and fantasy, in particular, how our online fascination with celebrities and other strangers distracts from real love and happiness. In contrasting vocals, Dreimanis broke away from the fantasy life while Fay tried to lure him back in with her siren call. Captivated by the opening beat, I couldn’t look away as the song moved from light hypnotic harmonies to ground-shaking rock. This operatic power play continued with “Lola + Joseph,” “Guns + Ammunition,” “Beck + Call,” and “Push + Pull.” Fay and Dreimanis invited us into their struggle when they jumped off the stage and lay on the floor in the center of the crowd for “I’ve Rationed Well.” I hope they have a good dry cleaner. 

July Talk also mixed great music with performance art—Fay and Dreimanis acted out the lyrics while the rest of the band delivered the musical emotion. For “Headsick,” a song about the madness in a toxic relationship, you could see the temporary insanity forming in Dreimanis’ expressions as the song progressed. Other stand-out songs included “After This” and “Summer Dress.” Much to the crowd’s delight, they played “The Garden” for their encore. One fan likened them to peppercorns on vanilla ice cream—two contrasting flavors that blend perfectly. I tend to lean toward Squatters Outer Darkness Imperial Stout—Dark, creamy and packs a punch.

Austin-based Darkbird opened the show. The six-piece band fronted by lead singer Kelly Barnes fashioned ’80s-styled new wave with a fresh, modern approach. They started their eight-song set with the retro rhythmic rocker “Crimes.” They moved nicely between early 80’s new wave dance vibes (think early Blondie) with “Kiss Goodbye” and “Heartbeat” to hard-driving punk rock with “Bad Self.” Barnes delivered an energized performance pumping up the crowd and setting the tempo for the evening. With a forthcoming full-length album on the horizon, Darkbird is a band on the rise. They have a growing catalog of interesting and innovative songs, and I’d like to see them headlining in the near future. 

Both bands displayed a fiery passion for their art. Darkbird is just starting to build a national reputation while July Talk, already an award-winning alt-rock band in Canada, is still flying under the radar in the US. Great music and high art, however, know no borders. I felt privileged to see such remarkable talent in an intimate space.

• Who: July Talk w/ Darkbird
• What: Alternative indie-rock/pop
• Where: The Urban Lounge
• When: Nov. 29, 2022
• Info: www.theurbanloungeslc.com, www.julytalk.com, www.darkbirdband.com

Read more of John Nelson’s music coverage here.

If you were to be asked what artist is the best-selling Christmas artist, answers would invariably range from Elvis Presley and Bing Crosby to Mariah Carey, Josh Groban or Kenny G. 

But that honor actually goes to Mannheim Steamroller, whose dozen Christmas albums (and counting) have racked up 31.5 million copies sold worldwide to date. And while Mannheim sounds like the name of a German heavy equipment apparatus, it is actually the nom de plume of Chip Davis, an Omaha-based composer/producer who has been churning out neoclassical new age holiday and secular music under this stage name since 1974. 

Born Louis F. Davis, Jr., the Ohio native is a musical iconoclast and former child prodigy who went from writing his first piece of music at age six, eventually worked at an ad agency writing jingles before founding this musical persona after numerous labels shot down his neo-classical music pitch.

“[Mannheim Steamroller] was just my notion of trying to create a sound that was different, but also at the same time had classical roots to it,” Davis explained in an early November interview. “I see it as an eclectic mix of classical forms alongside modern-day rock and roll instruments and some older instruments from the 18th century like the harpsichord. [Those major label execs] said that there wasn’t a place on the shelf for something that was eclectic like that, but at the same time they wanted to know if I could send them a box of my debut album because they wanted to pass it around in their office.”

While it may have been a daunting proposition to go forward on his own, Davis was already experiencing concurrent success via CW McCall, a country music persona created by ad agency client and late friend Bill Fries. With the latter providing the voice, concept and lyrics for McCall, Davis wrote the music. In addition to scoring a number of chart-topping country hits, the duo recorded the global No. 1 hit “Convoy” (and earned Davis the 1976 SESAC Country Music Writer of the Year). With the metaphorical wind blowing at his back, Davis founded the independent label American Gramaphone and took the name of his new project from a play on the 18th-century musical technique known as the “Mannheim crescendo.” The first in the “Fresh Aire” series of records was released in 1975 at a time when the new age genre was coming into being. Davis’ belief in Mannheim Steamroller found him taking out a loan to finance the first tour.

“On that initial tour, the money was used to cover the costs of playing those first three cities—Omaha, Denver and Salt Lake City,” he recalled. “That was in 1975. Mannheim Steamroller was a five-piece with two keyboards, a bass player that also doubled on lute and other fretted instruments. I was playing percussion and recorder and we had another percussionist. Then when we got to a city, we’d hire a small orchestra to play the orchestral parts that were on the record. Ironically, the band behind CW McCall are the same players that are the Mannheim Steamroller players.”

All this bootstrapping eventually led to Davis indulging his childhood adoration of the holiday season nearly a decade later via 1984’s “Christmas.”

“I grew up in a pretty small town in Ohio of about 500 people when my grandmother was a piano teacher and my dad was a piano teacher at the school there,” he said. “Christmas music always had a special place in my heart for all the seasonal things that happened, which included my grandmother’s fabulous cooking and all of that. I decided to find out where some of the roots of Christmas music came from. Which is why on the first “Christmas,” there’s a song called ‘The Christmas Sweet,’ which is a suite of four pieces. I took songs like ‘I Saw Three Ships’ and went back to the origins and played it on instruments that would have been used at that time. Being a wind player, I could pretty much play all of those.”

That fascination with Christmas music grew into a cottage industry for Mannheim Steamroller, leading to another 11 Noel releases. Further opportunities sprang up and included performing at the White House for the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony three times under three different administrations in addition to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Davis has also produced Mannheim Steamroller holiday ice-skating shows involving other well-known artists like the late Olivia Newton John, Martina McBride, Kristi Yamaguchi and Brian Boitano. 

Currently, two traveling troupes of Mannheim Steamroller perform across the country every holiday season, with a third ensemble playing at Universal Orlando Resort during the holidays. Hip surgery a decade ago means Davis has hung up his touring shoes.

“It’s very tiring. When we first started with the “Fresh Aire” tours, the band was the crew,” Davis said. “We put the stage up and did everything. It was exhausting.”

These days, Davis hangs out on his 150-acre farm just north of Omaha. But rather than live the life of a country gentleman, the 75-year-old musician is still intimately involved with the stage shows he promises will tap into the Christmas spirit fans have come to expect.

“These tours are a combination of the live music and sound effects like in some cases where there is a thunderstorm happening with one of the pieces,” he said. “There is also a multi-media show that includes slides and film. And then of course, the musicians and the live orchestra.” 

Davis’ restless creative spirit has continued to yield musical fruit in the past two decades ranging from albums focusing on Disney music (1999’s “Mannheim Steamroller Meets the Mouse”) and American heritage (2003’s “American Spirit”) to amassing a notable catalog of natural sounds, from the Tucson desert to the full sonic span of all four seasons in the Midwest highlighted in his “Ambience” series. His latest creation is “Exotic Spaces,” a series that finds him casting his musical net rather widely. 

“What I did was I tried to musically describe places like the Taj Mahal, so that gave me an opportunity to write using sitars and other really cool instruments like tabla and those sort of things,” he said. “Then one of my favorite cuts on it has me using hydrophones (microphones designed to be used underwater for recording or listening to underwater sounds). I’ve been a scuba diver since I was in my 20s and with the hydrophones, I actually recorded the song of the whales. I have one of the songs—I say it’s in the ‘key of sea.’ I use the whale song as the melody and it really is in the key of C. I wrote background stuff around the whale song and I had a really fun time doing that because it lined up so perfectly with what I was composing.”

It’s just the latest leg in Davis’ lifelong journey of following his own musical star, a piece of advice he received from a Nashville lawyer many moons ago.

“What I tell any budding young composer or musician is to follow your own star,” Davis said. “Don’t let anybody detract from what you’re doing because it’s you that’s doing it. It’s the only way I know how to do it.”

See Mannheim Steamroller performing at The Eccles Dec. 29 and Dec. 30.

I first saw July Talk in Prague during their 2015 European tour. I had just arrived in the city, so I set out to discover how folks in the Czech Republic rocked and rolled. I stumbled upon a venue called The Roxy (it sounded so West Hollywood). So, down the rabbit hole, I went. July Talk, a Canadian indie-rock band headlined. Not familiar with this relatively new band, I didn’t know what to expect. I discovered a five-piece band whose music vacillated between dark, thunderous gothic alt-rock and more contemporary, breezy light pop. The music paired perfectly with the host city’s medieval, gothic architecture and post-Soviet optimism. 

July Talk’s expertly crafted music and stage show embraced life’s contradictions. Their show felt like a push and pull between love and hate, dark and light, good and evil. Peter Dreimanis’ raspy, gothic rock voice spewed from the pillars of hell. In contrast, Leah Fay’s innocent, wispy, saccharin-pop vocals conjured the beauty to Dreimanis’ beast. The lead vocalists artistically played out life’s imbalances in songs like “Guns + Ammunition” and “Summer Dress.” On stage, Dreimanis and Fay performed the songs with the sexual tension of a seedy motel room. The chaos and seduction of their stage performance gave their music a unique artistic depth and brought it to life. 

Fast-forward seven years and July Talk is coming to The Urban Lounge on Nov. 29, 2022, and I can’t wait to see them again. Since our chance meeting in 2015, the band has released two more full-length albums and a new EP in 2022. Their self-titled debut record received a Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year (2015). The Juno is Canada’s version of the Grammy. The band released their second album, Touch, in 2016 which included the aptly titled song “Push + Pull,” a single that held the #1 spot on the Canadian Alternative Radio charts for thirteen weeks. Their tune “Picturing Love” reached #2. All three of July Talk’s studio albums have won the Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year.

July Talk’s avant-garde alt-rock/indie pop music is both hypnotic and catchy. In concert, they bring the songs to life like a rock opera. Don’t miss an opportunity to see this multi-award-winning quintet from north of the border. It’s your chance to travel down your own rock ‘n’ roll rabbit hole.

Austin-based Darkbird opens the show with their disco-pop new wave revival. Their 2021 single “Heartbeat” is a Blondie-styled retro dance number that’ll get you in the groove. Their latest single “Kiss Goodbye” rides the same new wave with an ’80s synth dance beat and a Devo-like guitar riff. They can quickly change lanes to Runaways-fashioned punk rock in “Bad Self.” If you listen closely you might even get a hint of Brenda Lee in “All There Is.” Without losing any authenticity, Darkbird blends ’80s new-wave flavors with modern indie-rock ingredients to create a tasty musical treat.

• Who: July Talk w/ Darkbird
• What: Alternative indie-rock/pop
• Where: The Urban Lounge
• When: Nov. 29, 2022
• Tickets and info: www.theurbanloungeslc.com, www.julytalk.com, www.darkbirdband.com