Tag Archives: The Weird Weeds

R. Keenan Lawler, Nick Hennies at the SWAN DIVE Saturday, August 8

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R. Keenan Lawler at Terrastock, 2008

(Image of R. Keenan Lawler at Terrastock 2008 swiped with love from Chris Barrus’s Flickr photostream. Image of Nick Hennies and a dog swiped from whiskeyandapples.com.)

R. KEENAN LAWLER
NICK HENNIES (Austin, Texas)

Saturday, August 8
The Swan Dive
9 PM
$5, 21 and over

R. KEENAN LAWLER is a musician and sound artist based in Louisville Kentucky. For over 25 years his musical journey has taken him from early experiments with reverb tanks, noise and tape decks to all manner of avant-garde, “new” music, psychedelia, electro-acoustic, drone, ethnic and sampler-based work. LAWLER is best known for developing a highly personal and exploratory language for the metal bodied resonator guitar which Baltimore’s John Berdnt called “Cosmic, monolithic and deeply American.” Indeed his work is informed by carnatic classical, Charles Ives, Albert Ayler, blues, minimalism and non-western trance musics. Primarily a solo performer, he is also known for collaborative work. The “Keyhole II” album he recorded with Pelt and metal worker Eric Clark is one of Pelt’s most beautiful and memorable recordings, and his guitar playing is also heard on releases by Paul K., Jack Wright, My Morning Jacket and most visibily on Matmos’ “The Civil War.” He has collaborated or performed with a wide range of forward-thinking musicians and mavericks including Rhys Chatham, John Butcher, Eliott Sharp, Charalambides, Ignaz Schick/Perlonex, Kaffe Matthews, Burning Star Core, Jason Kahn, Ut Gret, Thaniel Ion Lee, Ed Wilcox, Ramesh Srinivasan, Kevin Drumm, Arco Flute Foundation, Helena Espvall, Ian Nagoski, Connor Bell, Andy Willis, Alan Licht, Taksuya Nakatani, Tom Carter, Bhob Rainey, Aaron Rosenblum, Joe Dutkiewicz, Evergreen,Eric Carbonara and Joseph Suchy.

NICK HENNIES is a percussionist and composer from Louisville, KY. He received his M.A. from UC-San Diego where he studied with world-renowned percussionist Steven Schick and performed with ‘red fish blue fish’, the SONOR Ensemble, Castanets, and in a duo with trombonist Tucker Dulin. Since relocating to Austin, TX in 2003 HENNIES has performed regularly with The Weird Weeds, the Austin New Music Co-op, Peter & the Wolf, and numerous collaborations with local and visiting musicians. He has worked with a wide array of musicians including Arnold Dreyblatt, Radu Malfatti, Eugene Chadbourne, Stuart Saunders Smith, and Jandek in his first ever U.S. performance. HENNIES’ solo work involves minimalist experiments in timbre with percussion instruments, as well as working with found sounds and electronic sources. His first official solo CD “Paths” was released on Thor’s Rubber Hammer in 2008 and also has released or forthcoming work on B-Boim, Sentient Recognition Archive, and Spectral House.

Listen to a clip from NICK HENNIES’ solo CD “Paths” here: http://nhennies.com/audio/paths-sample.mp3.

For more information, check https://othersideoflife.wordpress.com/upcomingevents for updates and/or email hstencil@gmail.com.

Some Old Fliers from Old Times

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Crown Hate Ruin Flier

Nick Hennies, one of my oldest Louisville friends and a member of the Weird Weeds (and former member of Telephone Man and Nero), recently unearthed some old fliers, some of which I “designed,” so I thought I’d share them with you, all two of my readers. The one above was, as you can see, for a show at the long-gone Ground Zero Records (when Ed had a basement for impromptu shows) by Washington, D.C.’s excellent the Crownhate Ruin and Nero. Unfortunately, Crownhate (which featured Fred Erskine from Hoover and June of 44) had to cancel as they got a flat or something on the way there, so the False Start played instead. Who were the False Start? Well they were a fucking awesome band consisting of Jesse Lebus (my best friend from high school and also the man behind the Rattlesnake Kit and Imagineagents, two fantastic but basically unheard Louisville bands), his brother Morgan (now works at Domino Records here in NYC), their half-brother Jeffrey Treitz and Sebadoh member and man-about-town Jason Lowenstein. Somehow as audacious teenagers Jesse and I got to be friends with Jake because we’d give him tapes of our intentionally-horrible cover band Leafpile (our m.o. was to “cover” songs by playing along with them, taped to air using two boomboxes in my mom’s basement), and he’d give us his Sparkalepsy tapes (get in touch, Jason! I still have that one tape you wanted).

Sevens/Sorts

This next flier I made for a show that Nick put on, but I wasn’t able to go to as I was back at Bard, beginning the second semester of my junior year. The Sevens and The Sorts were both from D.C., again. I guess it wasn’t that far for bands to get to Louisville, though some of it is some rough driving through stretches of West Virginia. Anyway the D.C.-Louisville connection probably goes back to Minor Threat playing there, so I guess it makes sense. Anyway, too bad I couldn’t make this one.

Storm and Stress (and storm!)

This last flier is from a mega-show I booked during the fall semester of my senior year, with five bands. Of course, one of the bands was Julia Schagene, which consisted of Nick, Drew Wilson and Andrew Drummond who was visiting the US from Sheffield, UK. They drove all the way from Chicago through an ice storm (taking about 20 hours for what would otherwise be a 13-hour drive) to play, and I paid them $150 (loved that college money!). The other bands were fantastic, but hampered a bit by the early snowstorm that kept attendance pretty weak. Anyway, all those names you should know. I’d be worried if you didn’t. And it was a fun time.

Update 8/16/07: Here’s the first of a few related albums for you to check out – more on the way:

Nero, s/t (1997) – anybody who calls it “the Dune Concept album” gets a slap in the face.
The Crownhate Ruin, Until the Eagle Grins (1996)
Brother JT and Vibrolux, Music for the Other Head (1995)

Baltimore City Paper’s Year-End List

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What do John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats and I have in common?

Not much, but we both contributed to the Baltimore City Paper’s Year-End List.

Each individual critic’s list is at the bottom, and here’s mine:

1. Scott Walker – The Drift (4AD)
2. Pissed Jeans – Shallow (Parts Unknown)
3. Wzt Hearts – Heat Chief (Hoss)
4. The Weird Weeds – Weird Feelings (Sounds Are Active)
5. Joanna Newsom – Ys (Drag City)
6. Daniel A.I.U. Higgs – Ancestral Songs (Holy Mountain)
7. The Dead C. – Vain Erudite and Stupid: Selected Works 1987-2005 (Ba Da Bing!)
8. Brightblack Morning Light – s/t (Matador)
9. Times New Viking – Dig Yourself (Siltbreeze)
10. Valley of Ashes – Cavehill Hunters Attrition (Black Velvet Fuckere)

Astonishingly, no Beggars and Matador acts charted on the final 10, but I tried my best, having listed Scott Walker and Brightblack Morning Light. I swear, it’s not just nepotism, I really really like those records!

The Weird Weeds, Weird Feelings (Sounds Are Active) CD

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Weird Shadow

Here:

The best dreams are the bad ones, the ones that unsettle you to the point where you start to believe that what happened in those dreams might have actually taken place. And sometimes the best music is that which evokes the same feelings as those unsettling dreams. The Weird Weeds, a young rock trio from Austin, Texas, are quite skilled at inducing that, well, weirdness and dis-ease. The group’s second album, Weird Feelings, takes a stark, darker approach than its self-released debut, appropriately beginning with the minute-long “Bad Dreams.” It segues into the title track, which is augmented by a seven-person chorus singing, “You feel so alive,” in a dizzying, rapturous swell.

Weeds leader Nick Hennies’ subtle percussions mesh perfectly with Sandy Ewen’s and Aaron Russell’s unified-yet-meandering guitars, and Ewen and Hennies harmonize beautifully, as well as sing solo. Most strikingly, Ewen’s and Russell’s melodies and countermelodies combine into an almost music-box sound, evoking childhood memories of lullabies played through the windup backs of overloved plush toys. The sound of the Weird Weeds is simultaneously haunting and beautiful, and by penultimate song “Cold Medicine”–wherein Hennies and Ewen languidly chant, “Go to sleep, go to sleep”–the somnambulant sensation that the weird dream just might really be happening is complete.

There:

The Weird Weeds

And Everywhere:

Friday, September 15th @ The Cake Shop
152 Ludlow, NYC

The Dirty Projectors
The Weird Weeds
Nat Baldwin
Swan Island

http://www.cake-shop.com/

Buy Weird Feelings from Sounds Are Active.

Better Late Than Never: Another Year-End Best-Of List

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If I think that compiling year-end best-of lists are tedious to write, just what exactly does it mean that I want you to read mine? Not much, really – it’s just another exercise one goes through. This kinda thing doesn’t really mean all that much to me, and my answers can change on a whim. And it’s not that I came close to listening to even all the releases with intriguing press releases, or what looked cool in a shop that I put back due to being broke, or whatever. That said, these are all very much worth your while, even without any sort of silly “best-of-2005″ endorsement. So without further ado (in no particular order):

The Weird Weeds, Hold Me (Edition Manifold) CD

I wrote about the Weird Weeds briefly here.

Earth, Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method (Southern Lord) CD

Broadcast, Tender Buttons (Warp) CD

Coptic Light, s/t (No Quarter) CD

Silver Jews, Tanglewood Numbers (Drag City) CD

I promised a longer, “director’s cut” version of this review, but for now that version remains unfinished.

The Howling Hex, All Night Fox (Drag City) CD

Endless Boogie, 1 and 2 (Mound Duel) LPs

Review from the Baltimore City Paper here.

Excepter, Throne and Self Destruction (Load, Fusetron) CDs

Review here, also appeared in Swingset no. 7.

Ones/Hands, 1997-2005 (White Tapes) CD

Review here.

Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom, Days of Mars (DFA) CD

favorite reissues/compilations:

Gary Higgins, Red Hash (Drag City) CD
Crime, San Francisco’s Still Doomed (Swami) CD (review here)
Crain, Speed (Temporary Residence) CD (review here)
Roky Erickson, I Have Always Been Here Before (Shout Factory) 2CD (review here)
Bobby Beausoleil, Lucifer Rising Original Soundtrack (Arcanum) 2CD (review here)

Honorable Mentions:

The Double, Loose in the Air (Matador) CD; Thuja, Pine Cone Temples (Strange Attractors Audio House) CD; Big Whiskey, “Hats Off To Ryan Taylor” (White Tapes) cass; Andrew Paine and Richard Youngs, Mauve Dawn (Fusetron) LP; The SB, s/t (White Tapes) LP; prolly some more I’ve forgotten.

SOME OLD SHIT

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Gonna open up the files, here comes some (mostly) short reviews (most of which have been recently published in the new Bejeezus zine, mainly available in Louisville) that have been languishing in the archives. Enjoy.

Dungen, Ta Det Lungt (Subliminal Sounds) CD

Sweden’s been fertile ground for awesome psych reissues in the past coupla years. And wouldn’t you know it? They’ve got some good heavy slabs of new psych bands out now, too. Dungen‘s this band of Scandi whippersnappers who know how to bring the heavy jamz, with plenty of heaping helpings of melody. If anything, the sweetness might potentially put off some of the heavier psych heads out there. But fuck ’em, this album is great. “Panda” kicks off the show with a tune so catchy I’m tempted to learn some Swedish just so I can sing along. Dungen slows things down a bit by the fourth track, “Du hr for fin for mig” (yeah I have no idea what that means, either), which brings in some sappy strings and mellotron/synth soundz for maximum melodrama moments. Good times, and guaranteed to make the girls swoon.

Buy “Ta Det Lungt” from Subliminal Sounds.

Crain, Speed + 4 (Temporary Residence) CD

Whoa, this is a doozy. The debut album by Louisville’s super-heavy (and super-long-gone) Crain has just been reissued by Temporary Residence, and it’s about time. To say that this reissue was long overdue is an understatement. It’d be difficult for me to overstate the effect that Crain’s music had on my formative teenage years. It would also be impossible to recount the many times I saw them kick total ass live, though I do remember the Speed record release show quite clearly. That night I got my copy of the LP (limited glow-in-the-dark edition!) and, also, my mind blown by the sheer force that was Crain’s lineup at the time. Experience the glory for yourself, re-mastered to finesse.

Buy “Speed” from Temporary Residence.

The Weird Weeds, Hold Me (Edition Manifold) CD

To most people, weird as an adjective is a pejorative. Then again, most people are douchebags. C’mon, it’s not all that misanthropic to say that, oh, 80 percent of the earth’s population ain’t worth a damn. I’m sure most of the time you’ve felt that way too. Anyway, Austin, Texas’s Weird Weeds are weird in a non-pejorative way. That is, they are unique, not ooooh bad I don’t want to deal with this because I can’t/don’t/won’t understand it. Currently a three-piece (tho a four-piece on this CD), the Weird Weeds blend beautifully sung melodies with usually spare guitar lines and minimal drumming as accompaniment (though the first song “Paratrooper Seed” starts with what sounds like a nice synth part). Occasionally the players’ free-improv backgrounds come to the fore in the form of some radical-sounding guitar noodling and drum-thumpery (which adds a nicely-needed tension to the proceedings). All in all, this is emotional music, conveying a beautiful sense of desperation, without being emo blah bullshit.

Buy “Hold Me” from Edition Manifold.

 

Optimo, How to Kill the DJ Part Two (Kill the DJ/Tigersushi) 2CD

JG Wilkes and JD Twitch are the dj duo behind Optimo, the most popular dance club night in Glasgow, Scotland. How to Kill the DJ Part Two is their new mix compilation, and it melds dance floor classics with obscurities, and just plain weird stuff. Eclecticism is the name of the game here, and the listener ultimately is who “wins.” You’ve got your typical 00s party hits like Gang of Four‘s “Damaged Goods” (honestly, I get tired of hearing this one but these guys do mix it in inventively, so they get a pass), Arthur Russell‘s “Is It All Over My Face?” (under the Loose Joint moniker) and Carl Craig‘s “Demented Drums” but then there’s also tracks by the Sun City Girls, Langley Schools Music Project (covering “Good Vibrations” and signifying the change on the decks from Wilkes to Twitch), Suicide and Nurse With Wound to keep things interesting. The bonus disc compiles a good, non-mixed mix that listeners can play with. The now sound is the sound everything but the kitchen sink, people.

Keith Fullerton Whitman/Greg Davis, Yearlong (Carpark) CD

Keith Fullerton Whitman and Greg Davis toured together extensively in 2001 and 2002, and Yearlong is a fascinating document of their live electronic and electro-acoustic improvisations over that year. Though there’s very little music on Yearlong that could be described as “accessible,” there are some very pretty moments, along with some of the harsh sounds typical to a number of laptop improvising schtick. But don’t let the harsh sounds fool you: even at their most aggressive, there is a musicality to Whitman’s and Davis’s approaches, and Yearlong — while not for the average shmoe — definitely rewards patient listening.

Buy Yearlong from Carpark.