Music

Wednesday, February 20, 2019 at The Depot gave audiences the perfect pairing of two very smart pop acts, who knew how to meaningfully touch the hearts of their young fan base: opener Tessa Violet, and headliners COIN.

Contrary to her observation that the crowd was not “warm enough” for the main act, Violet was more than apt at getting everyone to sing along to songs (and even dance to her choreography) that were largely unfamiliar to us. In between songs were mini confessionals that helped construct a living scrapbook of her journey through depression, love lost, and, as one song spells out, “Bad Choices.” “When I started writing this, I wanted to write about how sexy and sassy I was,” she said endearingly, by way of introducing the song. Alas, she tells us how it took on an agency of its own, to be about “what pretty much sums up my whole life thus far.”

While Violet’s asides were frank and vulnerable, they did not pander, which is why her set was so memorable. Scanning the room, even teens wearing the toughest facades sang along to the lyrics of “Make Me a Robot,” an autobiographical song about her recent struggle with mental illness, and her journey toward self-love. “Make me a robot. Make me a robot. Make, make me cold,” the room sang. The flashlights lit up on their phones, and swayed. “Make me a robot. Make me a robot. Take, take my soul.”

With the scene sufficiently “warmed up” (the bassist took off his shirt at one point because he was so warm, and probably at the persuasive chanting of “Take it off!” led by Violet), COIN gave us a set featuring tracks from their 2017 LP, How Will You Know if You Never Try and their more canonical 2015 self-titled debut album. Some songs from their upcoming album upped the groove of their usual sound; i.e. “Simple Romance,” which recalls “Feeling” with a teasing dash of falsetto. Echoing like The Wombats and Spoon and probably an amalgamation of others from the best of 2000s indie pop, the band rightfully deserves the traction they’ve gained this past year.

The stage setup was simple: just four guys in front of a backdrop of horizontal neon lights. But seen especially from the back, it looked effortlessly cinematic. Silhouetted frontman Chase Lawrence threw himself on the keys, moppy hair flying and tongue out. “Run” and “Talk Too Much” were of course the popular hits that brought out the Snapchats. The latter’s guitar solo was especially delicious to behold live.

To view more photos from the sold-out show, go here.

See all our music coverage here.

Ben Weiss invited some musician friends he knew, Zach Downes and Andrew Nelson, to jam at a party for a few hours with a musician he’d never really played with, Katia Racine. “Three hours flew by,” Weiss says, “So at the end we all looked at each other and said ‘Well, we should start a band.’”

And that’s how the Salt Lake-based band Pixie and the Partygrass Boys was born four years ago.

Since joined by Amanda Grapes on fiddle, the band has been an important part of the Salt Lake music scene. On any given night you might find Pixie and the Partygrass Boys as the opener at The Commonwealth Room, playing a regular gig at the Hog Wallow or at their once-weekly bluegrass jam at Gracie’s.

Part of the band’s popularity is their genre-busting style—Weiss describes the band as “non- traditional bluegrass with heavy jazz and funk influences. “The crossover of playing Stevie Wonder with a bluegrass band seemed like a no-brainer for us,” says Weiss. “People who love bluegrass get to see something they might not usually see at a bluegrass show, and people who don’t normally like bluegrass might find something that they do like because we’re playing something familiar with a bluegrass style.”

And while the band started with a lot of covers, these days they play more and more of their own music. “Every member of the band is a composer,” says Weiss, “We all write songs then get together as a band to arrange them.” The fans are happy with the transition, too, he says, “It’s a really special thing to watch our fans come because we are fun and we play songs we write and now they come and sing along to songs we’ve written.”

Ultimately, Weiss says the goal of the group has always been the same, “When we started this band we wanted to have fun. We wanted to play music people could dance to and we wanted to have a creative outlet to express ourselves freely. We always try to have the most fun in the room, and you know, sometimes we do. It’s not traditional but we always keep it ‘grassy.”

Watch all of our Small Lake City Concerts at saltlakemagazine.com/small-lake

Carmen is an opera sung in French with Spanish characters that takes place in Italy—with English subtitles.

Utah Opera kicks off its 2016 season with Carmen, a classic opera by Bizet that tells the story of loyal soldier Don Jose, his love and Carmen, the gypsy who steals his heart (yes, I know we’re not supposed to say gypsy anymore, but what should we call her?)—and it has become one of the most well known operas of all time.

And I’m going to be honest with you. I’m not an opera writer. I’m not even going to summarize what the Utah Opera has put together here and here about the history of the performance and about Bizet because everything I know about classical music and opera I learned from Looney Tunes.

But here’s what I do know: I know pop culture and modern music. Carmen has permeated the both genres centuries after its release. You might not know the story, but you know the songs. From Up to The Muppets (my personal favorite), “Habanera” is everywhere—even in pasta commercials.

So, combine music you know with beautiful costumes, the always fantastic Utah Symphony Orchestra and support from Madeleine Choir School and Carmen is sure to delight.

Carmen debuts on October 8 and plays through the 16th. Tickets are still available here.

Americana singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cook plays The State Room on Sunday, October 9.  Last month she talked with Salt Lake magazine by phone from Nashville to discuss her new album, rehab and feminism.

SLM: Good to talk to you, I’m a big fan. I wanted to talk to you about Exodus of Venus because it feels different than your other albums. Do you feel like it’s different?

EC: I feel like it’s way different. The passage of time and everything that happened in my life just sort of reset me artistically and that’s what happened.

SLM: How would you define the change? I’ve read reviews where they call it dark, but I don’t think it’s dark. I think that’s a mis-categorization. I think maybe its more grown up.

EC: I think that’s fair. And sometimes life gets heavier as you go and you take more blows. It’s all part of the process.

SLM: You’ve gotten a lot of attention for this album. It was kind of like you burst onto the scene and got a wider audience than you have for some of your previous work.

EC: That’s good news. (laughs)

SLM: So last time I saw you, and I think the last time you were in Salt Lake, you were playing with Todd Snider.

EC: That’s right, I remember that.

SLM: And you’ve done a lot of collaboration and a lot of touring with him. He’s got kind of a cult following, it’s fair to say. Do you feel like your audience is often the same as his?

EC: There’s some crossover. It’s not exactly the same but there’s some crossover because he’s been so kind to introduce me to his audience so many times as I’ve played shows with him.

SLM: In the Rolling Stone interview you did when your album came out you said something funny about how people think the two of you just do drugs and sleep together but you’re actually creative partners.

EC: You know, above all else we’re just friends. We get together and we talk shop and we commiserate over the music business and ex-husbands and ex-wives and show each other songs that we’re starting. It’s really a lot of that.

SLM: I always think it’s so interesting. I don’t know if Emmylou Harris has ever had an interview where people haven’t asked her about her relationship with Gram Parsons.

EC: Right. Like no one believes that that relationship could have been platonic.

SLM: Or like she hasn’t done enough on her own to not be asked about him every once in while.

EC: (laughs) Right.

SLM: But on the same note, I noticed when I was pulling things together to prepare for this interview that a word that’s used a lot—even in the subheading of that Rolling Stone interview—is outspoken. And I thought to myself, how many times is a male singer-songwriter called outspoken?

EC: True. There’s a different set of standards, a different set of rules.

SLM: I have this idea for a thesis paper I’m never going to write about country music and feminism and how country music is full of these strong female characters—you have Loretta and you have Dolly—and you have all of these women who are strong, but you have an audience who would never, ever identify themselves as feminists.

EC: Right. I’ve heard it said that Gretchen Wilson, she’s someone who came on to the scene in country music really fast and we all thought she reset everything in terms of what females were doing, and then she drank from a whiskey bottle and it was over. It was just over. No country radio shows were letting her in the door. There were suddenly like, “No. We won’t have our women carrying on that way.”

SLM: I find it fascinating. I’m from the south and all the women in my family carried on more like the outspoken women of country music than the others. My family is more Loretta Lynn than Tammy Wynette. But it’s interesting to me at the end of the day who audiences are listening to. And there’s definitely a theme of strength in your music. And sometimes it’s really on the nose, like “It takes balls to be a woman,” and sometimes it’s more subtle than that when you talk about the strength of a mother whose child has been abducted. And I just think it’s a fascinating topic and an interesting peek into American culture.

EC: It is. I’ve always thought it was interesting too, that Tammy Wynette sang “Stand By Your Man” but she was divorced and Loretta Lynn is the one who sang about leaving and threats all the time, but she was the who stayed with her husband through all those years.

SLM: A lot of that is public perception. We package ourselves as something you aren’t necessarily and it cuts both ways. So, as a follow-up to that, how do you feel like you package yourself?

EC: You know, I let the music dictate how it seems to be branded. I really am not that calculated with it. I might be better off if I was but I just sort of let the music do it and however that’s perceived the rest follows.

SLM: I think your radio show (Apron Strings on Sirius XM) does a lot to brand you authentically without a huge marketing machine behind you.

EC: That’s definitely true.

SLM: So people who didn’t come to know you through the stuff that you did with Todd Snider, and this follows up with the radio stuff, you were on Letterman a lot. And Letterman did more for Americana music than any other platform when he was on air, I think. So I wonder if you see anyone who has taken that—is there a show now or a personality who is carrying that torch of bringing that music to the masses.

EC: Well, I think there are several who are doing a little bit, but not to the extent Dave did. Like Conan dabbles in it. Colbert dabbles in it. Fallon dabbles in it. But I don’t sense there’s the hardcore fandom that there was with Dave.

SLM: And you said in that Rolling Stone article that I keep referencing that you still speak to him, that you sent him your new album—he’s still paying attention to the scene even if he’s not bringing it to the rest of us.

EC: He’ll ask me, “Who should I be listening to? Who should I be checking out right now?” And I enjoy sharing that.

SLM: That’s a question I always asks everybody I interview, too. Who should I be checking out right now?

EC: Lydia Loveless—she’s so good and she’s so young. She’s going to do great things—and Robert Ellis is good.

SLM: So with regard to influences, you grew up in a musical family, but what were you listening to, outside of your family’s music?

EC: I had the cultural experience of MTV coming on the air when I was like ten, 11, 12 somewhere in there. And it really opened my eyes and ears to a whole other genre of music that I didn’t know existed up until then. They were playing Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen.

SLM: So you were listening to rock while the rest of your family was still listening to more traditional country?

EC: When I came to that age. Yes. My sister left a few cassette tapes in her closet. She’s 11 years older than me, so I was pretty young when she moved out of the house but she left and Eagles cassette tape and a Creedence Clearwater Revival cassette tape, and I think a Lynard Skynyrd cassette tape.

SLM: That’s all you need! That’s the southern rock anthology.

EC: It’s still some of my favorite music ever made.

SLM: So when you songwrite, you obviously draw a lot from your personal experiences in that song writing.

EC: True. My lyrics come from my journaling.

SLM: How often do you journal?

EC: Every few days.

SLM: So how’s that process work, you journal and then every so often you go through it and pull stuff out? What’s it look like?

EC: Right. That’s exactly it.

SLM: That definitely puts you in a place of vulnerably, if it’s literally from your diary. That’s really just leaving it all on the stage.

EC: It would just feel inauthentic to do it any other way.

SLM: Is it cathartic? Is it useful to you to process things that happen to you through that lens?

EC: Very Much, yes. It’s my greatest incentive on doing this.

SLM: I thought one of the most interesting things I read about you while doing my research was that you went to rehab even though you didn’t think you were an addict because you thought there might be something you would get something out of it. Did you get something out of it?

EC: You like to think that everything happens for a reason, but it was a very tough experience and I lasted like, 11 days. I felt like the treatment I was getting wasn’t helpful for me at that moment. I was in for an eating disorder as well and I was losing weight because I wasn’t getting enough food. They highly regulated my calorie intake and I was hungry all the time.

SLM: So, do you think the people who staged this intervention and told you they thought you needed to go to rehab thought they were acting in your best interest. So it’s such an interesting thing to read to your story compared to the New York Times and New Yorker stories about Jason Isbell when he went to rehab. Because it sounds like the genesis was the same. It was people who love you coming together and saying this is something you need to do, but the outcome was very different.

EC: Right. That was the greatest impact. He had a chemical substance addiction.

SLM: So, I’m a single mom and I talk to my other single mom friends and we’re like, sometimes a forced vacation sounds like it maybe wouldn’t be so bad. Like, maybe it would be nice to have someone take care of us at rehab.

EC: There were people in there doing that! And that’s sort of how I looked at it too, you know, I thought well, we’ll go and we’ll find out. I’m definitely not in a good place. Maybe I do have some problems that I’m not identifying. And it’s fair for me to go and I was under a lot of pressure to go from people who love me. They cancelled a tour I was supposed to go on. But once I got in I didn’t find it relaxing.

SLM: It wasn’t all spa robes and flip-flops and talking about your feelings, then? Maybe I need to find a different vacation.

EC: Right. Yeah, do that. This one was really good at looking resort-ish. It had a fountain and a koi pond. I never got to go by the koi pond. I never saw the koi pond one time

SLM: Maybe you get the koi pond on day 12.

EC: They were treating hardcore addicts and people in crisis. I was certainly in crisis. But not the same way they were tailored to assist in.

SLM: So you checked out of the rehab that you didn’t need in the first place, but because you were still in crisis, you obviously found something that worked better for you at that point.

EC: I needed one-on-one therapy and time.

SLM: And journaling!

EC: Yeah!

 

Elizabeth Cook plays The State Room on Sunday night. Tickets are still available here. Lee Harvey Osmond opens.

The audience stood for a standing ovation as soon as Brian Wilson came onstage and before a single note was played—deservedly so. Wilson is a sacred cow in American music. But, after last night I’m left wondering if his tour should be put out to pasture.

At first I thought it was just the sound mixing—instruments often over powered Wilson’s weakened voice—but the mixing seemed fine when the rest of the band (ten of them!) joined in harmonies. And then I thought maybe it was the weird juxtaposition of listening to surf music while being in a grand hall and seated. It felt strange to not be on my feet and dancing to “Salt Lake City” and “I Get Around.”

The show started with “California Girls” and went through several Beach Boys hits before for all intents and purposes Wilson checked out and former Beach Boys Al Jardine and Blondie Chaplin started running the show. They had the added help of Jardine’s son Matthew to hit the high notes, literally, that Wilson could no longer reach. The final song of the first set was a misplaced Chaplin number “Wild Honey,” which stylistically was more of a nod to the guitarist’s time with the Rolling Stones than his time with the Beach Boys, and during which Wilson ambled off the stage mid-song. And it felt like he never fully returned.

The second set of the show was dedicated to Pet Sounds, which is widely regarded as one of the best albums ever made, and the tour is a celebration of the album’s 50^th anniversary.

Wilson and Jardine walked the audience through anecdotes about each song as they played, with help from the younger Jardine on vocals for many of the tunes. But throughout the show the band had to slow their tempo to allow Wilson time to catch up with his lyrics—often delivered flat and in a broken cadence. And the Pet Sounds portion of the show is the part I was most looking forward to— and the part I have the most emotional attachment to.

While I was shocked at the difference between the quality of this show compared to Wilson’s show at Red Butte in the summer of 2015, and in spite of all of the observations above, I still  cannot give Brian Wilson a bad review. He is still Brian Wilson and I am still just a girl with no musical background who is paid to give her opinion about concerts in a mid-sized American city. He still wins. He’s still great. And if he comes to town again I’ll go see him. But my expectations will be managed accordingly, because as it turns out, even greatness slows down.

Greatest of all time. It’s become such a common phrase that the kids even have an acronym for it these days—GOAT. But, even though the term has come to be hyperbolic—make no mistake—sometimes it still applies. And it definitely applies to Pet Sounds.

Pet Sounds, of course, is the Beach Boys album. The brainchild of Brian Wilson. And it changed the everything with its orchestral movements and sweeping harmonies. Starting with the opening of the first track “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” the entire album serves to notify the listener that The Beach Boys had grown up—that Brian Wilson had grown up.

But the album almost never was. Band member Mike Love didn’t like it. The album’s name came from Love’s admonishment that only “the ears of a dog” would like the album. And the band’s record company almost didn’t release it at all. But, history has been kind to Pet Sounds. Legendary producer George Martin even said that without it there would have been no Sgt. Pepper album from the Beatles.

And now Pet Sounds is 50. And Brian Wilson is touring (with more of the original Beach Boys than the Beach Boys that currently tour with Mike Love—who, it bears reminding, is the actual worst). And on this tour he will be playing, in addition to many Beach Boys hits, Pet Sounds in its entirety.

Wilson played a Red Butte Garden show in 2015, and though he’s definitely slowed down and needed help on and off the stage, Wilson behind a white piano backed by Al Jardine and Blondie Chaplin was a welcome sight to the crowd.

Expect another enthusiastic reception when Wilson plays Abravanel Hall on Wednesday night. I bet he’ll even play “Salt Lake City.” Tickets are still available here.

For my generation, the mixtape was ubiquitous. It was the clearest declaration of love one could give. It was giving a piece of your soul to someone on a 90-minute Memorex. And it was arduous task. You had to own the tape the songs were originally on or, at the very least, have recored them from the radio (which took way more work than you might think, kids). And you had to have the proper equipment—namely, a double tape deck. And in the end you had this thing. This tangible, beautiful thing that proved your love. This wasn’t for the faint of heart. It was not stored in a cloud.

When I was in college in Kentucky, I had a friend who was working through an awful rip-your-heart-out break-up from his high school girlfriend. He and I spent hours upon hours discussing the songs he should put on the mixtape he would create to woo her back into his arms. And as friendships like ours often go, he and I lost touch. But, I saw him on campus one day a few months later and I asked him, “Hey, what ever happened to that mixtape you were making for Josephine? What did you put on it? Did it work?” And he smiled at me coyly and said, “I just put James Brown’s ‘Sex Machine’ on it, over and over again,” and after a pause, “We’re back together!”

That, ladies and gentleman, is the power of the mixed-tape.

 

 

So, when this Craigslist missed connection was sent to me, I stood at attention.

“I was looking for blank cassette tapes at the thrift store to make some mix tape of my own when I found yours.
Labeled only on the tape itself, The All Mixed Up on one side and Fall In Love With Me on the other. Non descriptive J Card.
These are the kind of thrift store finds I always dream of. I bought your mix tape plus a blank one for a dollar and went on my way.
I figured I’d at least have a cool story to tell my friends if it all went badly, but never expected my own emotional response to the tape when I listened to it. There was no track listing, which made the mystery all the more intriguing. You never know what you’re gonna find on a blank mix tape. I definitely fell for you by the time I started side B, A Smiths cover song leaked over from side A. And by the time the Yo La Tengo track started to play as a parting gift on side B I knew I had to find you. I’m not sure how your relationship played out, or who that tape was meant for, but I feel like it’s only fitting for me to give back to you. Mix tapes are very sentimental. And even if you don’t want the tape back, I want you to at least know it’s in good hands. You might not even exist, or you might exist in a completely different time. And that’s ok. I found your sonic diary in the same batch, some recordings of a lecture on side A and other bits and pieces that go on for 20 minutes, travels and sounds you’ve heard. This might not be you but I believe in the power of mysteries.

I might not ever find you but I’d like to. Tell me who else was on that tape. Tell me which artist you put on there multiple times, I found another cassette mix with just that one band too. I’d like to hear what else you can make, and maybe make you a mix of my own.

I’ll be waiting…”

Good reader, I have to know how this story ends. So, people of Salt Lake, if you ever gave a little piece of your soul to a love interest and titled it “Fall In Love With Me” with a B-side “The All Mixed Up” please email me AND the creator of this ad as soon as possible.

And for what it’s worth, any girl/guy who doesn’t fall in love with a guy/girl who puts The Smiths and Yo La Tengo on a mix-tape isn’t good enough for you anyway. And donating it to the DI? Beyond the pale.

You deserve better.

(Call me.)

 

 

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