02.02.07
Behind the music
Have you ever wondered what we do when we aren’t sitting around writing about music? Would you believe that we’re both government agents working undercover in Nashville to protect the world from bad music? Yeah, it’s like Homeland Security but WAY cooler. Okay, no we don’t do that. [No one who ever met us would believe that.--Mimi] Actually Miss Mimi is a physicist and I’m a postal worker. Right, not exactly truth, though that may be the kind of lie where there’s a grain of truth. I guess you could say that about the secret agent thing. The real deal is that I am a high school teacher, at an all-boy Catholic school and Mimi raises alpacas and shears them to knit hippie sweater things out of their wool. [The physicist thing is not mutually exclusive with animal husbandry.--Mimi] [I can totally see Mimi raising a pack of alpacas. They’re very soft. You teaching a bunch of impressionable Catholic boys, however, does not seem entirely on the up and up.—Daisy]
All righty, this is where I stop being funny and tell the truth. We eat, we sleep, we drink, we go to parties, we work as we need to pay the bills, we run into people we know at the post office [Like Stephen Simmons today.--Mimi], we buy groceries, and we do all the other crap one does in a postmodern world, just like you. [You put your pants on one leg at a time?—Daisy] Except you might not get as many crazy emails as we do.
What we really do is go to a lot of shows and end up writing about almost none of them. Sometimes we discover people we like then get their albums and review those instead. Sometimes we hate the acts we see and decide it’s all better left unsaid. Sometimes we’re too drunk to report on nights out. Sometimes we remember everything but can’t tell you about it without incriminating ourselves. [HA HA. Yeah, that’s you, not me.--Mimi] [You two really do need an alcohol nanny.—Daisy]
Recently Mimi went with me to see Scott Miller play at 3rd & Lindsley. See now, Mimi loves me. She goes to see the amateur beer-league sporting events of guys I like. She’s been known to do my laundry. We won’t even get into what my eating habits would be like if she didn’t prepare half my meals. [I can cook. When we call you for Sunday dinner, don’t fuck off to sit around in your underwear. You will be sorry.--Mimi] When the best-friend reckoning comes, I am gonna owe her like you can’t believe. Scott Miller, however, was a triumph of sorts.
So we get to the venue. It’s a weird one we’ve never been super fond of. Sandra McCracken opened and she was pretty great, though she brought out a crowd of creepy couples in love and strange girls to cheer for her. We changed tables four times, hoping for a good view. Right before Scott came on, we ended up right at the edge of the stage, nearly on the stage, sitting with Chris Milam and his charmingly adorable friend. [Shout out to Jim? Hey, Jim, you’re awes.--Mimi]
What’s like to see Scott live with just him and his guitar when you’re practically sitting next to him? It’s perfection. [Uh. He was good. But perfection is someone doing a violin concerto in your living room when it’s snowing outside and having Thai food delivered.--Mimi] [Can we have Thai food delivered in a snowstorm and watch Metalocalypse and not be in our living room when it's cold enough to snow? Maybe somewhere on the equator instead?—Cric] What could have made that night better? Hmm, a houseboy to drive us home, and pre-warmed (in the dryer) jammies and slippers waiting for us when we got there. [I love that you feel the need to specify how the jammies are to be warmed. In the dryer, as opposed to someone wearing them until you’re ready for them, which would just be weird.—Daisy] Maybe. What made it so good? Well Scott sang his songs, which were all great, especially stripped down and bare like they were, with just him and his shiny guitars.
The thing is, he writes smart songs about love and drinking and history and TRAINS! [The history/political songs are amazing.--Mimi] Scott makes amusing self-deprecating statements. And then the best jokes, probably only good in context, like: “You guys don’t care about communism anymore, do you?” and “A restraining order just means I love you more than the law will allow,” and “If you don’t buy my records I’m gonna go teach school in Virginia and teach your children. And you don’t want that.” [Nope, those are still pretty funny, even out of context. Especially the restraining order one.-- Daisy]
Really, if all shows were like this, I’d find a way to never have a day job again so I could just do this all the time. I’d especially go to shows Mimi attends begrudgingly only to end up being wooed by political jokes, history songs and good times.
Yep, it was that great. I saw Josh Rouse that week too, but the whole incrimination thing keeps me from talking too much about that. I’ll say it was awesome. You should be listening to him, especially the EP of his new project with his lovely Spanish wife, She’s Spanish, I’m American.
Now it’s too cold in Nashville to even go outside unless you absolutely have to. So here at HCT HQ, I’m mostly just sitting around staring at the stack of CDs I have to review and wondering where I should start. Okay, well, I’m sometimes doing that combined with all the other things I do (eating, sleeping, drinking, looking for goodness on YouTube, voting for the only decent person left on Nashville Star).
Hmm, we’ve been lacking pointless video links around lately. I need to make this a more regular thing.
Here’s a sort of video, sort of behind-the-scenes of Emmylou recording ♥Steve♥’s “Good-bye.”
A match made in Heaven, I’m telling you.
Are you still reading? You’ve read this far down? Well, I think you should tell me what you’re digging right now. [Solomon Burke’s Nashville. Good call there, ladies.-- Daisy] Some music you read about here or something you’re appalled we aren’t covering? Something old, something new? Tell us! We want to hear about what you like.
What’s on the horizon? More reviews of music that makes us spastic imbeciles, shows that might just live up to the high standards recently set, and hopefully some warmer weather. [Cricket has never heard of the serial comma, btw.--Mimi] Seriously, this is Tennessee, if it’s not going to be warm then Al Gore should build us some sort of crazy weather bubble over the state to keep us in comfort year round. It could do double duty by keeping out pollution too! Hell, I’d quit smoking if I had a weather bubble. [No, you'd just go outside the bubble to smoke, like you do at the house.--Mimi]
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Brynwulf said,
February 2, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Needless to say, you gals ain’t gettin’ no sympathy from me about the weather. Buh!
However, I am pretty sure I have you to thank for the Two Gallants CD that showed up on my doorstep last week. I guess I had it on my lala.com want list and someone sent it to me. I’m listening to it at work (instead of working), and thinking “Wow, how’d I find about them?” Then Cricket informs me she talked about ‘em awhile back. Voila!
Who you should be listening to? I See Hawks in L.A. Lemme know if you need to be fixed up.
Robo said,
February 2, 2007 at 9:28 pm
“You guys don’t care about communism anymore, do you?” and “A restraining order just means I love you more than the law will allow,” and “If you don’t buy my records I’m gonna go teach school in Virginia and teach your children. And you don’t want that.”
AMAZING.
Also, I can’t stop listening to Lady Sovereign. Which I know you will totally just tickle me to death for saying.
Cricket said,
February 2, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Bryn, dear, at least you’re used to the snow. It’s not like you went to clear off your car, opened the door, leaned in, started it, hit the wipers and subsequently dumped all the snow from your windshield into your lap, all over the floor and the car door. Um, not that I did that this morning. *cough* Hawks. In LA. yes, I’m totally going to get ont hat.
Robo, it was HILARIOUS. Mimi appreciated it, but I think not enough. And, er, Lady Sovereign? What is up with her hair? I haven’t seen hair like that since I was in middle school. And even then we made fun of those girls.
Jim said,
February 4, 2007 at 1:12 am
Not only am I charmingly adorable, but I’m also adorably charming… and single. Thanks for the shout-out, ladies! I got nothing but love for the Troubs.
Esse said,
February 5, 2007 at 8:12 am
When I’m sitting her typing unintelligible words about the ear, nose, and throat, my mind keeps winding its way back to 16 Horsepower and the weird relationship I have with their music. They broke up in 2006, but not before producing so much material that I’m still sifting through it. They make strange gothic steampunk prog alt-folk/country, and yes, it does need all of those labels to properly convey what the hell is going on with them. Their music is what I think of when I think of Carnivale, dusty and desolate and moaning to the moon. Their music is not happy music; you would not play it at a Sunday dance. Their music is music for the heartbreak of leaving your family, for having one heel of bread and the pith of an orange in your bag and miles left to go, for mourning and for feeling and for dancing under a night-dark sky. They compel emotions from you that you never really wanted to feel, but are necessary to you somehow. It is what I read Gaiman’s “American Gods” to. It is not easy music, or singing music, or music to love to. It is music that distills the essence of life, in all its pain and occasional pleasure, and brings it out of stringed instruments as if there was no other way to play it.
I love it and am off-put by it at the same time. Start with Folklore.
Knoxvegas said,
February 5, 2007 at 8:43 am
What is it about songs about trains? Gotta love ‘em.