Sound Stories & Interviews

It probably comes as no great surprise to the fans of Shelton Hank Williams, aka Hank III, that the artist who confounds country music conventions and tours on a split personality country-metal bill, does things his own way.
Whether it's sticking up his middle finger at Nashville and its most hallowed grounds, the Grand Ole Opry, or feuding with his own record label, Hank III does more to earn his outlaw image in a day than most so-called alt-country acts do in their entire career. That can make it tough on people like, you know, fans and journalists. So when we got word that Hank wasn't sending any advance copies of his new album, Rebel Within, to the local press, it came as no great surprise. And when Hank's in-house publicist informed us that the enigmatic stepchild of country music's first familywould be available for a 20-minute interview from the road, I was only cautiously optimistic. True to his word, the call eventually came – two hours before our press deadline on Tuesday, roughly half a week after it was scheduled.

Nonesuch Records
What gets me about these two-person bands – the White Stripes, Jucifer, Juanita & the Rabbit – is how big they can sound. And on their new album (the band's sixth), the Black Keys don't just sound big. They sound like a goddamn orchestra.

If Neil Young were the godfather of grunge, then Tim Cridland, aka Zamora the Torture King, might just be the godfather of the modern circus sideshow. But the comparison might be a little more accurate if Neil Young had played lead guitar in Soundgarden, which is the equivalent of what Zamora has been doing in the alternative circus business since the early 1990s when he helped form the infamous Jim Rose Circus with a small group of throwback performers.
Cridland, who grew up in a small university town in eastern Washington, became fascinated with sideshow acts and plied the college's library for literature about vaudeville and circus shows. Before long, he was hanging around the fringes of traveling acts, coaxing performers to show him the finer points of fire swallowing and other sideshow staples. Working in the fertile Seattle scene of the late '80s and early '90s, Cridland and few other performers started sharpening their own modern sideshow act, holding court weekly at the famed Crocodile Café. Cridland got his break in 1991 when organizers of the inaugural Lollapalooza, the model for most modern music festivals, tapped Cridland and the Jim Rose Circus to take its act on the road to perform for massive audiences.

LCD Soundsystem
This is Happening
DFA Records

Coming on the heels of the universally acclaimed Sound of Silver, This is Happening had mighty big shoes to fill. But rather than filling them, James Murphy (the producer/musician/vocalist behind LCD Soundsystem) decided to trade them in for some black Chuck Taylors or whatever those post-punk kids were wearing in the late '70s and early '80s. I'm about 12 listens into the album, and the post-punk/art-rock/new-wavy influences have become impossible to ignore. The album is packed with Brian Eno/Frippertronic guitar solos (“Drunk Girls”), early Talking Heads percussion, driving disco beat and African-sounding guitars (“Home”), massive Gary Numan-esque synth strings (“I Can Change”) and Bowie-like (really, Eno again) guitar hooks (“All I Want”).

He's a big dude. He's massively bearded. And when he sings, he sings about drinking and fighting and losing his mind and everyone in the joint listens because it's impossible not to. Add the fact that he goes by the name The White Buffalo and you've got a recipe for an imposing, if not slightly terrifying, figure.
But if you call The White Buffalo on his cell phone, he'll respond to his given name, Jake Smith, and he'll probably be driving through Los Angeles traffic near his home, where he lives with his family. Smith doesn't look much like a stereotypical dad, but more like someone who, if 25 years older, could have battled Jeff Bridges for the lead in Crazy Heart. Smith is, indeed, a dad, but that hasn't stopped the songwriting powerhouse from continuing to pen powerfully dark, boozy tunes that he's been booming through bars and clubs over the past few years.

“We both like the Beach Boys a lot,” writes M. Ward, answering e-mail questions about She & Him, the bubbly pop duo of which he makes up half.
This isn't shocking. One doesn't have to listen much past the first track of the band's newest album, Volume Two, to guess that Ward and the act's songwriter and singer, Zooey Deschanel, enjoy the work of Brian Wilson and company. She & Him has made a name for themselves in the past two years by reviving the sunshiny radio pop of years past, but doing so with an innovative edge that has attracted fans who've probably never had much interest in the Beach Boys.

There are only a few rock stars who can make a claim about how they want to pitch a television show about their band and be taken seriously. But Kyle Gass is one of those select few. First off, he's already been part of an act, Tenacious D, that was known for its TV series long before ever even releasing an album and secondly, his idea for his current band, Trainwreck is just crazy enough to work.
“So here's the deal. We tour around in a shitty wreckabago and we get mixed up in some crazy shenanigans and then we solve crime. Because, you know, you gotta have the Scoobie Doo element,” says Gass, outlining the basis of the show (the theme song for which appears on the band's album) he actually pitched to studio execs.

If you’ve already picked up the print edition of the Source this week, you’ve already seen the two-page spread we used to prove that (almost) every band in Bend is somehow connected.
Also, if you like local music, check out our FREE LOCAL MUSIC SAMPLER where you can stream and download new songs from some of your favorite artists.

I first heard Band of Horses playing at the Les Schwab Amphitheater four years ago playing over the PA between sets of a Flaming Lips show. I ended up spending the summer of 2006 listening to their debut, Everything All The Time, and almost nothing else.About a year later, Band of Horses released the highly anticipated follow up, Cease to Begin. The album lacked the grandiose spectrum embedded in their debut and sounded like outtakes from previous recordings. I'm still not sure if it was a result of co-founding member Mat Brooke leaving, but it became uncomfortably clear, Band of Horses may have little left to offer.