Stole My Heart, John Velghe and the Prodigal Sons Build a Bigger Home

"I've had the chance to say a lot of cool things into the microphone over the past couple of weeks but nothing as cool as what I'm about to say," John Velghe stated, smiling and looking at the back of the house mid-set Saturday night.  Just returned from the South by Southwest (SXSW) Austin music conference, where he played with his old friend Alejandro Escovedo in a show with guests like Lenny Kaye and Garland Jeffreys and a surprise appearance by Peter Buck and Mike Mills, Velghe knew how much weight he was putting on whatever came next.

"I'd like Abigail Henderson and Chris Meck to come up," he said, and the crowd at the Record Bar broke into applause, hoots and hollers. Henderson and Meck are the first couple of the largest community of interconnected musicians I've ever seen in Kansas City. Their organization, the Midwest Music Foundation, also just hosted its third annual MidCoast Takeover--this year featuring 32 of Kansas City's finest performing for two straight days at Austin's Shangri-La. The buzz from those shows has reverberated on many levels (32 band stories for starters), and they received a sizeable mention (and picture) in USA Today.

But this moment was about the stand-out performance on John Velghe's debut solo EP released last year, his duet with Henderson on a cover of Iggy Pop's "I Wanna Be Your Dog."  Everyone on earth plays that song for the broiling assault it wants to be, but Henderson and Velghe hold back.  Saturday night, as on the record, they luxuriated in the sensuous simmer of the thing, Meck providing an equally controlled guitar part, shimmering stardust, hinting at a crown nebula.

Eventually, Velghe's guitarist Mike Alexander [I hope a relation] began to push the song toward a rock crescendo, and everyone--Henderson and Velghe included--performed the final refrains with building bravado. Almost as soon as the song began to sound like the Stooges (or Jett or Escovedo), it came to an end.  This was the Henderson/Velghe version, and nothing outshines that thing they can do. [I hear Escovedo did Henderson's part at SXSW, and I'm sure it was great, but it wasn't that.]

To say Saturday night's show was, first and foremost, heralding the first CD by John Velghe and the Prodigal Sons (Don't Let Me Stay) is also to say the show was about mixing things up.  After all, the Prodigal Sons ("and daughters" as Velghe pointed out, since two different women performed with the band live, and three play on the album) features guitars from the punk band Hipshot Killers propelled by the drums that give (first) name to Mike Dillon's self-described "jazz, funk, rock, crunk" Go-Go Jungle, Mr. GoGo Ray.  The Sons' three horns come from funky hip hop big-band Hearts of Darkness, reggae's New Riddim and the night's opener, Diverse, a jazz band born out of Bobby Watson's UMKC program and intent on reinvigorating the sound of Kansas City. Lawrence-raised singer-songwriter, Kirsten Paludan joined Velghe on the mic numerous times, as she does on the album, and cello and violin players came from, respectively, the UMKC conservatory and Missouri Western. This intersection between traditional and avant garde jazz, funk, punk, reggae, and classical all merge seamlessly in Velghe's music.

In some ways, that story's in the artists he covers.  That night, Velghe and family covered the Jam at that band's greatest pop moment, The Gift, with the song "Town Called Malice"; and they covered the Replacements at that band's greatest pop moment, Pleased to Meet Me, with the song that serves as the apex of that moment, "I Can't Hardly Wait," and they covered Bruce Springsteen with a song that could also be given the same distinction, "Hungry Heart."  Velghe introduced that song, dedicating it to the Ramones (for whom Springsteen wrote it), underscoring the pop impulse at the heart of most rock revolutions. The pop impulse is an effort to open the door to those who are shut out.  Some punks may not remember why we were drawn to that music in the first place, but Paul Weller, Paul Westerberg and that guy from Jersey do. The rock and roll circus canvas was held open for them by the likes of Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Smokey Robinson and John Lennon--the biggest tent artists imaginable.

Velghe descends from that line, particularly the way John Lennon could take all the enormity and raw power of the rock and roll that came before him and deliver it in a lullaby. Both that scope of vision and that intimacy, after all, are the elements that most obviously connect Lennon to Velghe's mentor Alejandro Escovedo in part by way of Ian Hunter and Mott the Hoople (so, then, yes, David Bowie, too).  Those same elements tie Lennon to Alex Chilton and both of them to the Clash and Velghe's early and apparent inspiration, Paul Westerberg and the Replacements.

You can hear all those folks in Velghe's CD (which I had to, I mean needed to) buy at the show.  But you can't really isolate them.  Suffice it to say, "I Can't Hardly Wait"--with all of its punching horn urgency and almost crippling vulnerability--would fit beautifully on this record.  For me, though, the song that sums up where this line can go is maybe the record's quietest moment, "Iron Skin." That one is a lullaby, a dark and seemingly ancient lullaby, all the more beautiful for the way it fingers despair.

From beginning to end, Don't Let Me Stay, is a warm and brilliant record.  It starts off diffidently flirting with the risk of relationships, having lived long enough to know things tend to end badly.  By mid-record, it's finding comfort in the fact of hope on the country-flavored "Heaven's Waitress" and the ability to dream on the exuberant rocker "Austin (You Sorta Stole My Heart)."  After the climactic paranoia of "Owe My Soul" and the wounded triumph of "Mumbling Town" (a riot act aimed at indirectness), the last three songs sing of solidarity in the face of loss. The characters in these songs have pieces gone forever, but as this closes, they've found ways to work with the contradictions and the pain.  Ghosts, too, are part of this community, a rock and roll town pitted against malice.

I write a lot about community, so much so that I worry about using the word for fear of being cliched.  I'm not sure I've ever written the names Abigail Henderson and Chris Meck without attaching that concept, which is one reason they are heroes of mine, so much so I grow self conscious in their presence.  As Velghe's record recognizes from verse one, part of life is that we let each other down. Whatever approximates redemption lies in how we fight forward together anyway. John Velghe and the Prodigal Sons, in their live show and on record, embody that vision as only the finest groups can.

Postscript:  One of the many highlights of the show that can't go unmentioned came as an opening act.  Hermon Mehari's trumpet adds plaintive, searching touches to many of Velghe's songs when he plays his role of Prodigal Son (particularly on "The Occupier," "Assume the Ground," and "Mumbling Town"), but his band Diverse Trio delivered an exciting opening set.  Both bassist Ben Leifer and drummer Ryan Lee maintain the urgency of each moment while making sure the band swings.  Mehari, meanwhile, manages to eloquently state beautiful melodies while playing with a sense of boundaries as daring as any free jazz.  That set closed with Kirsten Paludan and John Velghe coming out for one song before Hearts of Darkness frontman Les Izmore and drummer Brad Williams (Ryan Lee went to keyboards) managed to turn the house out with anthemic KC hip hop. Expect a Diverse blog in the not-too-distant future. I needed to buy that CD, too!

The Prodigal Sons and Daughters, once again (cause a couple only got indirect mention and everyone deserves it)--

John Velghe, singing with a guitar
Mike Alexander, lead guitar
Chris Wagner, bass
GoGo Ray, drums
Hermon Mehari, trumpet
Sam Hughes, saxophone
Mike Walker, trombone
Kirsten Paludan, vocals
James Mitchell, cello
Katie Benyo, violin (live)
Whitney Williamson, violin (on record)
Catherine Root, violin (on record)

More Beautiful Than Silence, K'naan's Ever Growing Reach

Rapper K'naan's unique (not using this word lightly) vision no doubt stems, in large part, from the fact that he experienced the Somalian Civil War at 13 before becoming a refugee to Canada and living through a new kind of ghetto violence in Toronto's Rexdale neighborhood. He describes the meanest of streets, making dark jokes like "Body chalk! I'm used to seeing bodies chopped/I've seen shit to give new meaning to the body shop."  Talking of comrades who are snipers and pirates, he embraces the gangsta's class consciousness without ever turning cynical.

On "Better," he pays tribute to the listener who knows "to grow up is never giving up on your dreams."  And this EP is all about hanging onto such life affirming hope.  With chiming keyboards that give it a girl group shimmer, opener "Is Anybody Out There" contemplates an isolated boy and girl unable to find each other--or any other hand to hold--in the midst of competition and neglect. As if to dramatize our need for one another, K'naan all but gives up center stage to duet partner Nelly Furtado.  Opening the song and singing all the hooks, she asks, "am I alone in this fight," and he steps in slowly.  At the end of the second verse, building beats underscore his call to fight, and the drums take on a martial insistence as he answers Furtado's "Can't do it all alone" with "No one can, baby/No one should baby!"  It's a great pop moment, and it belongs to both of them.

That need for each other carries over into the second cut, trading raps with Nas on "Nothing to Lose." K'naan is able to push Nas to some of his best work, giving his own war stories to match the Somalian kid he inspired.  They conclude more determined than ever--"Difficulty's an excuse history never accepts/So we triumph!"

Percolating bass, beats and chimes counterbalance stately choral backing over piano on "More Beautiful Than Silence," a song about maintaining perspective and strategizing a conversation when "my own fans can't relate to my streets." The cinematic quality of this song, ending with a violin solo overreaching that piano and hanging a final sweet note in the air, is reminiscent of perhaps the only other young artist with a comparably ambitious social vision, Janelle Monae. The fact that K'naan would take time out of his record to reflect on the importance of reflection may be as revolutionary as anything here.  "Better" takes such notions a step further, ratcheting up the pace of those beats against splashes of funky drums, embracing failure as a learning experience and declaring "Music is my ammo/I'm ready for battle."

Beginning with African chanting more than a little reminiscent of "Wimoweh" (Soloman Linda and the Evening Birds' 1939 South African hit, "Mbube"), "Coming to America" ties everything here together with humor and heart. K'naan taunts anti-immigrant sentiment telling his girl, "The green card sure looks fine," but his vision is much larger than personal gain.  He begins the song dedicating it to "anyone who ever had to leave their home." And he tells tales of sleeping with machine guns and playing with hand grenades before drawing the crucial connection that "even in America the hoods need a ticket out."  His refrain directed at America, "I hope we're gonna have a good time," sounds like a promise already delivered in these five out-stretched hands of serious play.  That might be enough, but every note of this short release (and his back catalog before) insist this is just the beginning.

Biker Trash, Raw Tomatoes and an Axis Bold As Love

"Only two things that money can't buy/That's true love and homegrown tomatoes"--Guy Clark

The foreground of the book's cover features what may be a madman, in a knit cap and goatee--his face exploding in assaultive silliness.  Just over his shoulder, transparent but with color contrasting to the general black and white, another shot of the man's face retreats.  In this one page movie, we see a man's cantankerous humor and the toll it takes on his failing body.  That ghost on his shoulder looks like he's hit a wall, and the wall hit back.  On one level, that's the story of Raw Tomatoes, a new book by photographer Alisha Case.  That's the plot of a story that refuses to be reduced to plot.

Raw Tomatoes is Case's tribute to her stepfather, Roy Allen Wogoman.  The subtitle of the book is "Living and Dying with Amyloidosis," which is the rare and poorly understood condition that took Wogoman's life.  Case shot, compiled and wrote the book to raise awareness about this disease that causes the body to generate toxic levels of proteins, a disease Wogoman may have had for 23 years before he was correctly diagnosed.  Decreasing the chance that such misdiagnosis may happen to others is just the start of the things this book achieves.

More than anything, Raw Tomatoes, makes an impression as a book about love.  The title comes from the story Case tells of Wogoman giving her sixteen tomatoes for her 16th birthday.  He'd just started dating her mother, and this simple act went a long way toward winning the girl's heart (she ate those tomatoes in only three days).

But the stories are one thing; what makes the book unforgettable is the way Case captures love with her camera.  It's in the puppy-eyed happiness when Wogoman cuddles with Case's mother Sharon, and it's in the sad light in his eyes while he watches his wife give him dialysis.  It's also in the way--in more than one shot--he rests his hand on the head of what looks to be the world's most contented lap dog.

The love's also in the way Case captures Wogoman's passions.  One of my favorite pictures glimpses five matchbox-sized Harley-Davidson's Wogoman keeps in a china cabinet next to a toy train.  One gorgeous black and white shows him deep focus working in his garage, a 1940s Ford Coupe in the foreground and a three wheel Harley he dubbed his "trike" in the foreground.  The trike sports a novelty license plate that reads "Biker Trash." Another photo shows Roy and Sharon Wogoman on their wedding day, embracing on the favorite Harley he had to sell when he got sick, both of them looking serenely satisfied in their leathers.

Perhaps the most exquisite series of pictures are also the most painful.  It's a sequence of ten photographs revolving around Roy's daily dialysis treatments.  Sharon's blue-gloved hands fix the I.V. in his weathered, tattooed arm.  Red and blue clasps separate a tube carrying clear liquid from another carrying blood.  In the context of this ritual, the colors of these clasps on this torture device transcend their reality, almost looking like hearts, echoing the love of the man and woman fighting this disease together.

Appropriately, the book's love also extends to other collaborations. Highlights include Sharon Wogoman's beautiful photographs of Roy standing proud with his biker best friend as well as a snowy portrait of the couple's backyard.  Sister Rachel Kimbrough contributes two courageous poems which enhance their accompanying photographs.  As powerful in its way as the dialysis sequence are two pictures of Wogoman working in his shop accompanied by the poem that names the pages "Fighters."

Case pretties nothing up here.  She deals the cards as straight as you can imagine this road-worn fighter would have had her do.  In fact, it's not hard to imagine Roy Wogoman insisting on that face he's making going on that cover.  It also figures he'd let that cover show the toll of the disease.  He certainly opened himself up to a series of unflinching shots inside.

Case's book reveals a humble man struggling to live with dignity in the face of a merciless disease.  Though that disease may have won the final battle, these pages show Wogoman won an all-important war. His spirit speaks from these pages, and, though it has a lot of other things to say (about working class pride, about self reliance, about the very definition of bravery), its boldest message models how to give and receive love.

To order the book:  http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2920453

Works For Me, Martin Zellar and the Hardways' Roosters Crow

    

       
              “I ain’t thinking clear,” Martin Zellar repeatedly cries through flames of guitar before Kelly Willis’s sweet vocal collars him.  The two sing the song’s title line, “running on pure fear,” back and forth to one another, and the flames seem to die.  The seething darkness of bass and guitar lightens.  By the time the accordion, mandolin and dobro of “Give and Take (All the Love You Can)” kicks in, it seems the song’s advice might just cure the running altogether.  You can almost ignore the jagged edge in the refrain’s, “you gotta hold all the pain you can stand.”  You can almost not wonder what happens when you can’t stand anymore.

                That is until you hear the song “Roosters Crow.” The title track begins with Scott Wenum’s tom toms ominously beating under an alternating two chord guitar progression, Nick Ciola’s bass plumbing the lower depths.  The opening sets the tone.  “They say roosters crow to greet the dawn/What a load of shit.”  This song’s in second person, and it could be the other side of “Running on Pure Fear,” calling out a woman who’s choosing an escape all too familiar to the singer.  The darkness seethes again, Kevin McKinney’s guitar spinning black crystal to freeze over the path ahead, cracking and leaving jagged surfaces.

                Soon the singer’s crying out wordlessly, agonizing against washes of that cold black guitar sound.  He’s shouting his voice ragged, crying, “Ah there’s so much love/That you can’t give/So much love and pain/Ah, now they’re both so real.”  The rhythm guitar and tom toms build walls around him, the lead guitar filling in the gaps, ending with a shimmering, lethal squall.

                This is an album about life lasting longer than answers, not that answers don’t matter.  “Where Did the Words Go,” makes the point well, a simple meditation over snared percussion, acoustic guitar, piano and cello.  To this aging father, the song sounds like a husband and father puzzling over the growing distance in his marriage and his other family relationships.  He knows the space is normal, but he thought his relationships would turn out differently.  He wants to change what has happened but settles for a simpler dream— “I just hope you can see/how much I love you.”

                The next song, “Seven Shades of Blue,” dares to dream again.  Lloyd Maines’ supportive, shining-while-crying steel guitar encourages each modest desire for a relationship forged from loneliness.  Similarly, Bukka Allen’s exclamatory Hammond B3 and Kevin McKinney’s sure-footed guitar encourage the singer to “turn to God or pack your bags and run” away from a town where “the skies are always gray.”

  

               

               The album ends on a note that suggests that running always stops somewhere, and something like the first alternative needs to be considered.  “Maybe I stumbled onto something that I can call God,” the singer acknowledges, but he quickly adds, “What it is I won’t say, but…it works for me.”  This time McKinney’s playing both guitar and Hammond B3, so the sound echoes what came before.  That running still tempts, but something new says it might not win.

                Of course, this is a Martin Zellar album (one of his finest at that), and moments of clarity have to hold up against all of the unexpected complications of being human.  “Wore Me Down” is a terrific upbeat acoustic attempt to turn the tables on a relationship which only winds up revealing the singer’s responsibility for the fall.  “I’m That Problem” is a rollicking appeal to a lover that makes it clear it's a mistake to take him back.

                Fittingly then, if you leave your CD player on repeat (as mine always tends to be), like that old Roy Orbison record Springsteen once wrote about, you’ll find the hopeful clarity of “It Works for Me” followed by the great “Poison.”  As the record starts over, the singer’s voice entwines with Willis’s again to say, “I know you’re tired/So tired of me/So am I baby/Who wouldn’t be?” 

                Of course, the real irony is that fans of Martin Zellar never will be tired of him or his characters because his particular brand of self-deprecating blues serves as a balm to the lonesome while forcing us to look the causes straight in the eye.  When we face our own mistakes (our ruts and our degradations), and when we share that confrontation with others, there’s potential for finding a way to move forward, if not with dignity...  maybe with integrity or something like it. The musicianship of Martin Zellar and The Hardways, all of the players, and Pat Manske’s production make it easier. An album like Rooster’s Crow makes it exciting.