That’s Brother Sal’s new video, featuring Jeremy Renner from “the Hurt Locker” and Brian Wright, Jamie Drake, Matt Ramsey, Jenn Whittenburg, and a bunch of other really talented musicians. In case you’re wondering, if you’re ever standing on the corner outside a venue in Hollywood where Sal is playing, and you see him coming from the end of the block, this video is almost like an exact replication of him walking that 25 yards. It takes five minutes, because he stops, talks to the ladies, shakes a few hands, sings a song or two, and shares a smoke with a hobo. No shit. He’s like the Mayor of Selma Avenue.
You can get this song on Blood and Dust, which is amazing. Plus, Sal will probably be playing it live at the Hotel Cafe on Friday nights for the next few weeks. It’s an eyebrow scorcher live.
While I’m sure everyone’s having fun wearing skinny jeans in the desert heat, paying $18 for a bottle of water, and inexplicably wearing Indian headdresses at Coachella, the best show out West this weekend will easily be Brian Wright, Sally Jaye, and Brother Sal’s Hank Williams Tribute show at Zoey’s in Ventura. Obviously there aren’t any video clips from this show, since it hasn’t happened yet, so I went ahead and used that one of Brian and Sally doing “Stormy Waters,” to give you a digitally compressed glimpse of what these two can do together. They give me that feeling I suspect other people get in church– the good feeling, not that one you get when the collection plate comes around and you’ve only got a five dollar bill and no cigarettes.
Brian’s just back from a really successful European run over the past few months. Rumor has it, he’s doing an acoustic set off his new albumHouse on Fire before the Hank Williams tribute starts. If I manage to stay sober enough to remember the details, I’ll write it up next week, but I wouldn’t count on that.
Should be a hell of a show… or you can head up to Coachella and pay $300 to see a bunch of musicians performing on their laptops. Your call.
It’s hard to sum up most great musicians in just a couple of words, but with Brother Sal, it’s easy: Whorehouse Gospel. Music has never been more accurately described. Sal sounds like a whiskey soaked prophet having a party on an upright piano in an old timey brothel while the company girls shake their tassels.
But there’s also something more to the term. These songs are a raucously joyous explosion of timeless beats, rhythms, and riffs that reverberate on such a guttural, natural, and instinctive level that the sound can only be compared to the ecstatic release of burden that you find in pure salvation and in the arms and legs of a truly gifted lover.
Nobody plays piano like Sal. There are plenty of great players out there, but no one else is quite like Sal. He rollicks on the keys like a vessel channeling something bigger than him. It’s a sight to see and hear, but sometimes seeing it is hard, because Sal’s one of those blurry hands guys. He moves so fast, it’s all just a blur of wood, ivory, and flesh, and I have 20-20 vision and have even seen him play while I was sober (for a few minutes at least).
Sal’s sound is so organic and ageless that it moves you on an almost animalistic level, but there’s also a lot of wisdom in these songs too. They’re the stories and celebrations of life’s victories and defeats and the long van ride in between. The stories are personal but the feelings behind them are universal and transcendent. You may have suffered different losses and you may have won under different circumstances, but you know the feelings behind these songs, and Sal sings with such unadulterated passion that the commonality of the emotion resonates with everyone in the room.
Simply by reading the lyrics “I was tired, broke, and busted” you know the exact feeling driving that song, but it’s not a sad, weepy song that will make you want to try those stupid fucking “additional antidepressants” they’re selling these days. Sal has the musical brass to surprise you with a rhythm that will stop you from holding your head in your hands and crying into the giant can of beer you bought with the change you pulled out from under the cushions of your buddy’s couch you’re staying on. No, this song will make you dance. I don’t care how tired, broke, and busted you are, once that drum drops in with such a down and dirty beat that it sounds like it was as easily smuggled out of the jungle as it was a speak easy, you can’t help but let it move you. It’ll start with your head, then you’ll notice you’re bouncing your shoulders, and now here come your hips, and like that the Whorehouse Gospel has got you.
What do you do most every review of your music compares you to a Southern Springsteen? Give the people what they want, complete the dock-worker uniform.
The people of New Jersey selected “Born to Run” as their official state song, which really sums up the beauty and the spirit of New Jersey: they picked a song about leaving the state, as their state song. That’s beautiful. Of course some assholes in the legislature screwed the whole thing up, but hey, the people have spoken.
THE AVETT BROTHERS, GLORY DAYS
Who knew the only thing the E-Street band was missing was a banjo? And a cello? And a couple of brothers from North Carolina going “wooooo?” Plus, the Avett’s sparse use of that kick drum really makes Max Weinberg sound like dead weight.
I found a video of Bon Jovi covering this song too, but whatever, those nancy guidos can fuck themselves. And I’m pretty sure Jon pissed off the guy that’s supposed to tune his guitar… and vocals. If you want a good laugh, you can watch it here.
ARCADE FIRE, BORN IN THE USA
Arcade Fire has actually played with Springsteen a good bit. I hope the Boss showed some fucking some skinny-legged hipsters how a real man’s blue jeans are supposed to fit. But don’t let pretentious Arcade Fire fans with ridiculous haircuts and thrift store clothes paid for with a trust fund ruin a good band for you. This video of them playing Neon Bible in a freight elevator is amazing.
This video was shot at the Obama Staff Ball at the inauguration. When the light hits the sign just right behind them, it’s looks like it says “America’s Prom,” which seems hilariously appropriate to me. I really wish the Obama staffers had been able to recognize the first verse of this song before it hit the chorus and had started taping it then. Dildos.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, 10TH AVENUE FREEZE-OUT
Yeah, this is actually Springsteen, but hey, I had to hear 10th Avenue Freeze Out and no one does is like the Boss, at least not on youtube. (I’ve heard Brother Sal kill it live with the Waco Tragedies).
From what I can tell, this song’s about moving to LA, yet in the video, Austin Hartley-Leonard avoids the classic shot of the soon-to-be-hooker stepping off the bus with a suitcase in her hand, a twinkle in her eye, and a horrible series of disastrous decisions in her near future.
Hell, there’s not even a discernable trace of regret in this song. Austin doesn’t even mention the smell eeping out of your Armenian neighbor’s apartment in East Hollywood as he makes some version of prosciutto with the cured flesh from the top of a goat’s head. It’s not your typical song about LA, and it’s not played by your typical LA musicians.
With the banjo and acoustic support from Matt Ramsey, Austin taps into the sound of the classic optimism of moving to California from years past. It’s not about a shiny new set of headshots, it’s not about fakin’ it till you make it, it’s not even about your cousin’s friend from New York City that does blow with Michael Bay’s assistant until thing’s get awkward and he pulls his dick out poolside at the Standard every Tuesday night. It’s about opportunity. For Austin, a lot of that opportunity has come from playing with the extended family of musicians that are in and around the Waco Tragedies. It’s not a sound and scene you would expect to come from the blackened and clotted heart of Hollywood proper, until you witness it yourself and realize it couldn’t happen anywhere else.
Of course, I’d be remiss, if I didn’t specifically call out Brother Sal for bringing the good ol’ Whorehouse Gospel sound on piano. Here’s a clip of Austin and the guys doing their thing together at the Hotel Café. Now imagine it without shitty digital compression, or better yet, come feel it this Wednesday night.
It’s like someone locked a badass gospel choir director in a room with the illegitimate road children of the Allman Brothers Band and handle of whiskey, a carton of cigarettes, and a plastic baggie of something rather, then said, “do whatever seems natural,” and they did.
Brian Wright and the Waco Tragedies and theirextendedfamily of musicians are one of the reasons I actually love living in Los Angeles as an expatriated Southerner. Hollywood is about bullshit. And I don’t mean that in a bitter, holier-than-thou, sitcoms-with-laugh-tracks-suck, kind of way, but quite literally, Hollywood is about faking it. Film, TV and Radio are built on faking things in front of cameras and microphones for a few minutes at a time. It’s just the point. And I don’t need to explain to you how it trickles down— you’ve seen Entourage.
But Brian Wright and the Waco Tragedies are real, and they’ve carved out a really cool world of their own in Hollywood proper, far from the hoards of anorexic, scene-searching girls, two Vicodin and four Sea Breezes deep, in line outside of whatever club the Hills producers are desperately trying to wrangle a geeked-out Justin Bobby and convince him to read at least one line for every four he blasts. Hollywood is paradise fallen, but even after paradise falls, it leaves some pretty fucking awesome remnants.
Brian and the Tragedies are putting out another album soon, but in the mean time, if you don’t own Bluebird, it’s your loss. Really, it is. I’d be willing to say it’s one of the best albums you don’t have. And if you haven’t seen them live, well , you must be sadomasochistic, because, man, you’re really dicking yourself over for no good reason there. Jesus Christ— treat yourself right and go get the damn album
