They provided the heartbeat and the soul for a generation of music lovers–yet few knew their names or their faces. Though they played behind Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder and virtually every artist who passed through Motown’s Detroit studio, they got little if any recognition. “When you’re making history, you don’t know it because […]
Grant Britt
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Aw, ma
He says his music isn’t violent, it’s aggressive. But after seeing his bloody puss on the cover of his ’02 debut I Get Wet, some might wonder about Andrew W.K.’s message. “He’s passionate,” Wendy Wilkes says. “He’s not violent, he’s excited. He’s about the most gentle person you’ll ever want to meet.” She should know–she’s […]
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Two Dollar Pistols’ Hands Up approach
“I tend to get a little nervous when we’re put in a situation where we’re the only band doing the kind of thing that we do,” Two Dollar Pistols’ John Howie Jr. says. Playing the recent Shakori Hills Grassroots festival in Chatahm County, the Pistols front man even told the crowd he felt the band […]
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Shakori Hills, muddy roots
While officially it’s billed as a “World Music and Cultural Arts Festival,” some attendees of last year’s Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival, held near Pittsboro, had a different name–Mudfest. The festival, held amid a downpour, introduced a new twist on valet parking. Instead of handing in a ticket to retrieve their cars from the parking lots […]
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In rockin’ eighty-eights
Long, tall Marcia Ball‘s syncopated piano gator rhythms have been inflaming dancers since she started swinging those long legs while pounding the keys in the ’80s. She tears it up live, and manages to get that energy on records–though she admits to being unsatisfied with her studio work. “It’s finished, it’s static, it’s locked in, […]
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The Indy Bookshelf
Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archive By Dick Waterman Thunder’s Mouth Press, 174 pp., $29.95 The blues scene has been exhumed, poked, prodded and raked over until it would seem there’s nothing left to look at or discover. Most so-called blues archives collections turn out to be just dusty, faded rehashes of […]
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Ken Wiegand: Big Bamboo
At 35, Ken Weigand decided he was done with music. But even though he had a straight job running an architectural business, the bass player for Big Mama E and the Cool said he found it difficult to give up. “I tried to go the straight and narrow route,” Weigand sighs, “and kept finding that […]
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Blues back home
Kent Cooper didn’t discover the blues, they just crept up on him. When Cooper, a Durham area native, moved to New York in the ’60s, he lived next door to blues guitarist Sonny Terry. The two became friends, and Cooper accompanied Terry to the Apollo Theater for blues shows that ran from noon til’ 3 […]
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Leadon soars solo
Bernie Leadon was a Burrito and an Eagle before becoming a session man and playing with artists like Emmylou Harris, Randy Newman, Alabama, the Jefferson Airplane’s Marty Balin and The Jayhawks. So what does he have that everybody wants? “Nice guitars,” Leadon quips. “One time I did a session here in town and somebody went, […]
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Mississippi rocket launchers
He doesn’t walk through town in a robe and crown, but around Memphis, Jim Dickinson is considered royalty. In the ’60s and ’70s, he was a member of the R&B royal family, playing keyboards with Atlantic Records’ house band, the Dixie Flyers, and accompanying and producing artists including Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan and the Rolling […]
