Tag Archives: Elephant Micah

EGRET, ELEPHANT MICAH, PILLARS AND TONGUES, MIKE TAMBURO at SKULL ALLEY, Sunday, September 5th

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EGRET (from Louisville)
ELEPHANT MICAH (from Bloomington, Indiana)
PILLARS AND TONGUES (from Chicago, Illinois; on Empty Cellar Records)
MIKE TAMBURO (from Pittsburgh, PA; on the New American Folk Hero label)

Sunday, September 5th
at SKULL ALLEY
1017 E. Broadway (near the corner of Barrett and Broadway)
8 PM, $6, ALL AGES!

EGRET is a newer Louisville band composed of Greta Smith on vocals, autoharp, and guitar; Paul Rushford on lap steel and guitar; Chet Gray on cello, guitar, kazoo; and Zack Kennedy on drums and percussion. They recently released their first album Bright Up There! which can be purchased at ear X-tacy or Underground Sounds.


ELEPHANT MICAH is music by southern Indiana based singer and sound recordist Joseph O’Connell.  Taking cues from 1970s songcraft (Townes Van Zandt, Joni Mitchell) as well as midwestern lo-fi rock (Guided by Voices), ELEPHANT MICAH has gradually built a cult audience over a decade of do-it-yourself releases and tours. His latest release, Echoer’s Intent, is the first ELEPHANT MICAH album to fully foreground O’Connell as a writer and solo performer.  These minimal, mostly live recordings often approximate more “traditional” blues or Appalachian stylings.  In the same breath, O’Connell takes up imitation and authenticty as his central lyrical themes, producing an album that is both a critique and an example of what can only be termed folksploitation.

Listen to “Loon Call” by ELEPHANT MICAH here: http://www.elephantmicah.com/Loon%20Call.mp3.

PILLARS AND TONGUES is a trio based in Chicago, Illinois whose musical pursuits seem to defy genre categorization. The ongoing result of these pursuits has been called, variously, “holy” and “sexy” and it may well be the tension between these two concepts which lights the fire under (over?) PILLARS AND TONGUES. Think on those things which are so beautiful they become obscene. Speaking literally, the trio makes extended use of the human voice, violin, double bass, drums, bells and organs. The music is perhaps distinctly American in both its affair with American forms and its refusal to adhere to them at all. Their most recent album, Lay of Pilgrim Park, was released this year on Empty Cellar Records.

Listen to a track by PILLARS AND TONGUES from Lay of Pilgrim Park here: Made Sheen

MIKE TAMBURO is a 21st century Renaissance man who has forged his way into the consciousness of the American underground music community. For the past 13 years, Tamburo has been relentlessly releasing records (31 releases and counting) under different monikers and projects including Meisha, Arco Flute Foundation and various imprints under his own name. He has performed over 500 shows all over the United States, traveling to every nook and cranny, searching for some kind of an understanding of what America truly is. Though always considering himself a multi-instrumentalist, he gained fame and notoriety with his fingerstyle guitar playing and his idiosyncratic use of effects; only to swear himself off of the acoustic guitar, eventually setting it on fire and hurling it off of Pittsburgh’s 40th Street Bridge. His effects soon followed. Tamburo is a man who continues to reinvent himself, recently finding his new musical passion in the hammered dulcimer; building upon his own unique compositional stylings, he has developed a voice for the instrument that is very much his own. He is greatly inspired by American folk and minimalist music traditions as well as Indian classical music, but often expands outward to include influences from avant-garde to noise to modern compositional music. A Tamburo performance is always a very transportive experience. Tamburo is also an artist, film maker, writer, instrument builder, curator of the Fantastic Voyagers Festivals, Kundalini Yoga and Pranayama devotee, and inner state researcher; exploring alpha and theta states, floatation tanks, ethnobotany, orgone energy, and ecstatic states of being. He also runs the New American Folk Hero label, which continues to release an eclectic roster of creative and experimental musics.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=101904136535547.

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JOE MANNING, ELEPHANT MICAH, NATHAN SALSBURG, TIME & TEMPERATURE at THE LOUNGE, Friday, March 26th

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JOE MANNING (from Louisville, Kentucky)
ELEPHANT MICAH (from Bloomington, Indiana)
NATHAN SALSBURG (from Louisville, Kentucky)
TIME & TEMPERATURE (from Columbus, Ohio)

Friday, March 26th
at THE LOUNGE
947 E. Madison (at the corner of Chestnut & Wentzel), 889-5889
9:00 PM, $6, 21-and-over

Louisville’s JOE MANNING has been playing music around town for a while, either solo or as a member of Kings Daughters and Sons (currently), Leota and Engine (both sadly defunct). In fact, he’s been a part of Louisville’s music community for so long that perhaps no introduction is necessary. What is necessary is Joe’s music, which contains a plaintive and yearning expressiveness that somehow eases the worried mind. Check out what these nice people have to say about Joe’s music: “[Manning’s] deep voice is rugged and weary, an uncommon beauty unafraid of exposure and judgment” (Peter Berkowitz, Courier Journal). “There’s nothing hurried about Joe Manning’s music. It unfolds leisurely but intently, a slow burn snaking its way into your heart” (Jeffrey Lee Puckett, Courier-Journal).


ELEPHANT MICAH is music by southern Indiana based singer and sound recordist Joseph O’Connell.  Taking cues from 1970s songcraft (Townes Van Zandt, Joni Mitchell) as well as midwestern lo-fi rock (Guided by Voices), ELEPHANT MICAH has gradually built a cult audience over a decade of do-it-yourself releases and tours. Echoer’s Intent is the first ELEPHANT MICAH album to fully foreground O’Connell as a writer and solo performer.  These minimal, mostly live recordings often approximate more “traditional” blues or Appalachian stylings.  In the same breath, O’Connell takes up imitation and authenticty as his central lyrical themes, producing an album that is both a critique and an example of what can only be termed folksploitation. This spring, O’Connell embarks on a nine-week tour coinciding with the release of Echoer’s Intent.

Listen to “Loon Call” by ELEPHANT MICAH here: http://www.elephantmicah.com/Loon%20Call.mp3.

NATHAN SALSBURG is an archivist, producer, guitarist and writer based in Louisville, Kentucky. He has worked for the Alan Lomax Archive since 2000, for which he currently serves in the capacities of production manager, photo and video archivist, and general digital catalog editor. Since 2006 he has produced and hosted “Root Hog Or Die,” a vernacular/traditional music program on East Village Radio, and is curator of the Twos & Fews recording imprint, also a vernacular music entity, and a collaboration with Chicago’s Drag City label. Its first album, I Want to Go Where Things Are Beautiful, drew on Mike Seeger’s 1982 recordings of the late miner, union activist, and singer Nimrod Workman; its second, Ouled Bambara: Portraits of Gnawa, features 2005 recordings of several master musicians of the Gnawa, a Sufi order of trance healers, living in Marrakech, Morocco. He has recently finished the production of a tribute album to the singer/guitarist E.C. Ball, late of Rugby, Virginia, entitled Face A Frowning World, released in December 2009 on New York’s Tompkins Square label. It features contributions from Michael Hurley, Jon Langford, Catherine Irwin, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Jolie Holland, and the Handsome Family, among others. Salsburg maintains an index of on-line vernacular music resources at his blog, roothogordie.wordpress.com, and contributes occasional music writing to the Louisville Eccentric Observer and the Other Music weekly update. His most recent musical contribution was to the third volume of Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthem guitar compilations. He is currently working on an album of his own acoustic guitar compositions and arrangements.

TIME & TEMPERATURE is Valerie alias Val Glenn from Columbus, Ohio. Meager beginnings in 2000 under the name The Cooking Show, [with some] bad good songs. 2002 in Atlanta, [she] became addicted to ebay, acquired a 4-track, Casio SK-1 and Boss DR-202 and The Cooking Show became Juguar. Committed social suicide opening for Tracy and the Plastics that spring. With the implied eschewal of electronics in 2004, Juguar became TIME & TEMPERATURE. Played first show as T&T with best chum ELEPHANT MICAH in Gambier, Ohio in August, 2005. Something fatalistically intentional or intentionally fatalistic happened that night. The rest is mystery. Many secret recordings which were never relased. In May of 2007 Trust Apples came out in an edition of 100 on White Cassettes.

Listen to tracks by TIME & TEMPERATURE here: http://www.myspace.com/grayfavorite.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=335029798762.

For more information, check https://othersideoflife.wordpress.com. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.

CATHERINE IRWIN, ELEPHANT MICAH, THE HOLLOWS at the SWAN DIVE, Friday January 22nd

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CATHERINE IRWIN (member of FREAKWATER)
ELEPHANT MICAH (from Bloomington, Indiana)
THE HOLLOWS (from Bloomington, Indiana)

Friday, January 22nd
at the SWAN DIVE
921 Swan Street
9 PM, $5, 21-and-over

CATHERINE IRWIN has called Louisville, Kentucky home, or at least her home base, all her life. She began performing by playing guitar in punk bands “and not caring a bit about country music,” she says. Still, the seed for her band Freakwater was inside her: “Most of the country music I heard on radio, I hated. But I loved the Carter Family, the way they would approach songs about death and dying or being saved and rejoicing the same way. That kind of music seems to age better. I can’t see myself playing punk anymore, but this kind of music I can see playing the rest of my life” (Chicago Tribune). Her songs are just packed with sapience, despondency, and wry wit, though you don’t have to look past “Louisville Lip” or “Dirty Little Snowman” to see she’s one of America’s greatest living songwriters. Even so, she remains humble, even self-depreciating: “If I had a master plan, it’d be trying to get people used to the idea of frumpy middle-aged losers singing music” (Boston Phoenix). She will be joined at this show by (we think) fantastic Louisville guitarist Michael O’Bannon, formerly of Blinders, Antman, and current member of 1069.

Kentuckiana’s ELEPHANT MICAH has been practicing the fine art of flying under the radar for almost a decade now. In the middle 2000s, along string of home-fi folk rock albums (released by BlueSanct Records and Time-Lag Records) earned the band praise from avant-music mag The Wire and overseas gigs with Jason Molina’s Magnolia Electric Company. In 2010, Elephant Micah returns with a major CD/LP release on Time-Lag Records and its first American tour in five years. ELEPHANT MICAH is the name of a music collective led by musician Joe O’Connell. In addition, he has released work on his own LRRC (Luddite Rural Recording Cooperative), which has also released work from collaborators Justin Vollmar and Jason Henn.

THE HOLLOWS feature neo-country songstress Kate Long backed by an accomplished cast of fellow Bloomington music mainstays (see also: Fatted Calf String Band, Magnolia Electric Company, Panoply Academy, etc).  Be sure to catch them on this rare Louisville outing!

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=246305277152.

For more information, check https://othersideoflife.wordpress.com. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.

JOE MANNING, SPIRITS OF THE RED CITY, ELEPHANT MICAH at SKULL ALLEY, Thursday, October 29th

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Tonight!

Unfortunately due to events beyond their control, SUNSET (from Austin, Texas) had to cancel. But the show will go on, with…

JOE MANNING (from Louisville, Kentucky)
SPIRITS OF THE RED CITY (from all over)
ELEPHANT MICAH (from Bloomington, Indiana)

at SKULL ALLEY
1017 E. Broadway
Thursday, October 29th
7 PM, $6, ALL AGES

Louisville’s JOE MANNING has been playing music around town for a while, either solo or as a member of Kings Daughters and Sons (currently), Leota and Engine (both sadly defunct). In fact, he’s been a part of Louisville’s music community for so long that perhaps no introduction is necessary. What is necessary is Joe’s music, which contains a plaintive and yearning expressiveness that somehow eases the worried mind. Check out what these nice people have to say about Joe’s music: “[Manning’s] deep voice is rugged and weary, an uncommon beauty unafraid of exposure and judgment” (Peter Berkowitz, Courier Journal). “There’s nothing hurried about Joe Manning’s music. It unfolds leisurely but intently, a slow burn snaking its way into your heart” (Jeffrey Lee Puckett, Courier-Journal).

SPIRITS OF THE RED CITY is an eight-member collective of friends and wandering musicians led by Will Garrison. Members call home places as close as Minneapolis and as far as Alaska and New York City. Call the music time-weathered folk or strewn remnants of Americana or something else entirely. Here is what you will hear: Opaque lyrics, at once lonely and longing and hopeful and weary and love-strewn, given breath with explorative structure and melody, and supported by an ensemble featuring cello, violas, trumpet, drums, banjo, accordion, ukulele, layered vocal harmonies and more.

ELEPHANT MICAH is the name of a music collective led by musician Joe O’Connell. He has recorded for BlueSanct Records and Time-Lag Records. In addition, he has released work on his own LRRC (Luddite Rural Recording Cooperative), which has also released work from collaborators Justin Vollmar and Jason Henn.

Check out the Facebook invite here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=179101624534.

For more information, check https://othersideoflife.wordpress.com/upcoming-events. To join our email list, send an email to hstencil@gmail.com.