Secret Stages, In Summary

WORDS  Brian Carroll

In August, I went to Secret Stages in Birmingham and had a blast. Featuring over sixty unknown bands in five neighboring venues, it was a music lover’s Disneyland and I highly recommend you go next year. Here are some of my favorite shows from the two-day event:

The Debauchees – Louisville, KY

Like a Rockabilly Arctic Monkeys, mysterious young Louisville trio The Debauchees delivered a sharp and clever set with a shy, devil-may-care attitude and wound-up punk energy in spades. Singer Sydney Chadwick hid behind her hair, a Squire guitar, and dangerously advanced vocal and guitar melodies flanked by a super-tight rhythm section. With no aspirations to stay in the garage, the band led the crowd through a cool, mischievous set that began at viable, Mr. Gnome-like Pop/Rock and crested with face-melting Math Rock and Jazz flourishes without losing their signature sound. I was surprised to see how surprised the band was that everyone liked them so much. It’s entirely possible Louisville audiences don’t know how to process a band this aggressive and mischievous. 

The band has a record on Spotify called Big Machines and Peculiar Beings. You’re likely never to find a more delectable concoction of sweetness, detachment, and ennui than spinning, eerie 6/8-power-ballad “It’s All Endorphines.” After looking that song up, check out the next track, hyperactive Latin phrase dropping “I’ve Got Energy.” Looking back, I can tell that the band played a couple of searing ass-kickers that aren’t on their album, so put the band’s live act on your radar. Something about their inescapable Southernity combined with such a European sound makes you want to root for the group as they find their way through the murky indifference of the American music landscape. Anthony Fantano is full of shit, Big Machines and Peculiar Beings is a great record. Check it out.

Mechanical River – Charleston, South Carolina

Charleston two-piece Mechanical River put on the most-talked about set of the weekend at brightly-lit fashion store Harold and Mod. Essentially a cymbal kicking one-man band with a tambourine shoe and electric cigar box ukulele, backed by yet another multi-instrumentalist, singer / songwriter Joel T. Hamilton howled to the pop deities Casio and Roland through a microphone embedded in a football helmet. 

Laying out their gear on an ironing board, the band’s homespun charm, positive songs, lack of slickness, and outright sung compliments won over the crowd, changing the early dynamic of the weekend from a ticking a checklist of second-hand-buzz bands to seeking out the groups with the weirdest names that no one knew anything about. 

With soft fuzz and reverb repurposed as a warm glaze, Mechanical River’s natural combination of folk, Lo-fi Electro Pop, and Chillwave sounds like a Walkmen- and My Morning Jacket-friendly update of XTC’s lush psychedelia lightly frosted with the spooky Folk sweetness of Devendra Banhart and John Jacob Niles. Though much cleaner than his live set, Hamilton’s latest album, Astral Castle, is beautiful and worth seeking out. 

Passing Parade – Jackson, Mississippi

What started as a hard-rocking and tuneful Power Pop set by the down-to-earth guys in Passing Parade quickly evolved into something stranger to the morbid delight of those in attendance. After a couple of balls-to-the-wall, high-flying stadium Rock songs, the band took it down a notch to explore noisy Delta-inspired blues for the rest of their set, and in the mix I heard a glorious, beefy rebirth of the Morphine sound. Maybe I’m just the sort of listener who gets the band, but hearing a loud, swaggering Rock set with swamp roots exposed stood out as authentic when compared to so many of today’s Indie Rock acts that mimic safe, easy-peasy influences. In talking with the singer Cody Cox about life in Jackson, it sounds like the state next door’s capitol city is enjoying a musical renaissance, with group shows among original bands at an all-time high and plenty of neutral, unbranded turf to go around. 

Courtesy Armand & Secret Stages

Armand Margjeka – Birmingham, AL

I wanted to include one of the several wonderful local bands in attendance at Secret Stages. From the impeccable art direction and costuming of sprawling Hip-Hop group The Green Seed to the nuanced, jazzy guitar feedback symphonies of Baghouse, the festival was a great way for me to check out several of Birmingham’s most popular bands all in one go. 

Solo artist Armand Margjeka, backed with four additional players in support of his recently released album Hummingbird, put on an otherworldly, moody set with the most inherent journalist cud of the bunch: First off, the guy’s from Albania, and though gruff in appearance, is a sweet, soft, and modest balladeer at heart. Margjeka began his set with an unusual stylistic homage to Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight,” accomplished by use of requisite a capella vocal effects and moody lighting (drum pad suit a no-show). 

It was the perfect sundown music, but as the band quizzically explored other comfortable Eighties Contemporary influences like Peter Gabriel, Robert Palmer, and Paul Simon, I kept wondering if they were ever going to break out the rugged Eastern European gypsy folk you could hear being repressed in the architecture of Margjeka’s songs. When finally unleashed and fully endorsed by his band, the Near-Russian influence emerged to a powerful, impish extent at the set’s nadir that the crowd roared in delight and approval. While you might be tempted to hear a replication of Margjeka’s tricky intercontinental bait-and-switch on Hummingbird, the record, unfortunately, doesn’t do the robust, twangy live set justice. Seek out Armand Margjeka, Baghouse, and The Green Seed in concert ASAP. 

In closing: Secret Stages is tricky for just one person to cover, with four or five concerts going on simultaneously, no one experiences the same festival as the person next to them. I swore I’d return in 2015 to recapture the permasmile of being up close to so much unknown music. Even though I was perpetually on the move, it was the closest thing I had to a vacation this year. The event showcased a mind-blowing amount of incredibly grateful and talented underground musicians, and I can tell the festival was a moving, bright point of the year for many of them. Many thanks and good blessings to the people behind this event for giving them all equal billing. That sort of open-minded, generous spirit is what being a good host to musicians is all about, a point sadly lost on the overwhelming number of originality-phobic venues here in Montgomery. As for you, reader of music columns, you must find a way to go to Secret Stages next year.

For details on this year’s event and to stay tuned for 2015, visit www.secretstages.net.

Local Music Round-Up: Fall 2013

WORDS Brian Carroll

This month, MADE highlights a few of Montgomery's own distinguished, sorely under-served rock bands. While our city lacks agreeable turf for physical music distribution and consignment, these bands have set a name for themselves anyway - based purely upon the strength of their live shows and personalities.

Eleven Year Old
Prattville's Eleven Year Old plays bad ass garage-tinged surf music. By hitting two of the three or four or ten eternally cool 1950's and '60's guitar styles, their music projects the requisite dedication and focus respected in bands who attempt mining in such rich, classic veins. The youngest band on the list, these guys may look to be just out of high school, but are quietly serious about the music they make and never fail to impress. What sets them apart from last-gen Alabama surf acts like Daikaiju and Man or Astroman? is a welcome lack of kitsch in their presentation. Solid beyond their years, Eleven Year Old is a must-see band, unburdened with caricature, who fire up crowds with a driving and crucially likable sound.

The Hard Gospel
Another great band from Prattville, this doomy three piece is comprised of veterans of the Montgomery hard rock scene, and sounds a bit like Queens of the Stone Age had a baby with Motorhead. Elements of punk and wicked, sinewy guitar leads provide punctuation to the band's concept: dark, loud, moral ambiguity. The Hard Gospel, as an idea, straddles lines between heaven and hell, and as a band, between classic '70's metal and the modern vestiges of commercial rock. Due to each member's experience working in related styles, they sound remarkably polished for a new band. Having just released their hi-fi debut album, “The Commandments of Morality,” directly on bandcamp to excited local buzz (in The Gump, that means a few bands liking each other's Facebook posts), The Hard Gospel is a band of musician's musicians, but they don't overdo it; The rarity of their live shows makes each one subconsciously feel like a guarded secret of the well-informed, and it works.

V-8 Death Car
A new, eager to play, good-natured band out in Dothan, V-8 Death Car spends a lot of time in the city of Montgomery, delivering old fashioned major chord rock and roll, nostalgic drive-in movie era branding, and a slight classic punk vibe, which, all combined, has the odd but understandable effect of landing them in '70s power pop territory. Figuring out which direction they will veer, musically, is one of the best things about discovering new bands, but personally I'm hoping that they give in to this "Teenage Kicks"vibe at which their music hints. V-8 Death Car holds the distinction of being the band most likely to appreciate press given to them, having worked hard in the last few months to get our city's deserved attention. We hope to see more recordings from the band in the future, but they're working on it. For now, you can sample their wares on YouTube.

Reverse Engineer and the Pinebox Sound Label
Ed Kemper Trio veteran Kenny Johnson runs a local record label called Pinebox Sound that hosts several related bands worth checking out including Black Racers, El Chupa Cabras, and Reverse Engineer. Fans of the EK3 will not be surprised by the overarching, maniacal, Brainiac-esque hard-rock style evident on some of these projects, however, Montgomery has a lot of hard rock bands (probably too many) and it's unclear specifically why, other than that our people are angry, which has become obvious nearly to the point of dismissal on the grounds of false dramatics being no less wearing than the false realities against which they rail. That's why its great that the most recent work on Pinebox's Soundcloud page, particularly with Reverse Engineer, show that Johnson has taken a natural, introspective leap to more avant-garde instrumental compositions, ever pushing artistic boundaries. An expansive, nervous, multi-textured improv collaboration featuring diverse local players, Reverse Engineer is crisply recorded and acid-jazzy, the sort of band that would sound perfect between Bitches Brew and Sun Ra listening sessions.

Jeff McLeod and No
An article on Montgomery music would be incomplete without highlighting the prolific Jeff McLeod, who over the course of his career as a musician in this city has put together numerous bands and albums with intelligent, unique, high concepts. These days McLeod pulls double duty as lead singer and guitarist for local hard rock band “No,” while his solo recordings find him pulling a free-handed humanity out of the freshest experimental gear as part of a wizard-like, chaotic, esoteric attack on convention. His albums feature a wide variety of instruments put to use exploring ambient and noise in mostly-instrumental music, and are sometimes augmented by electronics that act as an antithesis to the canned or metronomic sound the word typically conjures. Six of his numerous solo releases can be heard at jeffmcleod.bandcamp.com, and the terrific and terrifying pure essence of negativity manifested as a genius rock trio "No" can be seen playing live, often misunderstood, wherever the loudest local music is to be found. ...And the Lawyers Guitarist Jason Fifield fronts a local favorite: A two-piece indie rock band named ...And the Lawyers. With a signature funky afrobeat guitar sound that favors intriguing jazz chords and uptempo, progressive rhythms, ...And the Lawyers puts on a wonderfully diverse set, some songs highlighting Fifield's acerbic, playful spoken vocals, full of non-sequiturs and humor, others going in a more instrumental, bombastic or pastoral direction, with immaculate clean-channel guitar noodling and a big drum sound. Not to be confused with smooth jazz Tuscaloosa band “The Doctors and the Lawyers,” Fifield's band brings a much-needed homespun weirdness and occasionally comic mischief to the Montgomery scene.

Beaches & Burritos: Touring With Hail The Titans

WORDS Josh Carples

When the weather warms up, it’s sometimes nice to book shows near a beach. Of course, in April the weather didn’t quite warm up as much as expected, and yes, the water was a bit cold. That didn’t stop people from hitting the beaches, and it didn’t stop us from getting in the water. How often do people in Montgomery, Alabama get to step in the waters of the Atlantic, right? Salt life, baby! (No, not really.)

So we hit the road to Florida, first to Destin, then to Jacksonville. A special note about Destin – your GPS system, if it hasn’t been updated, may send you on a road to a toll bridge. That road will not lead to the toll bridge. In fact, it will lead you to the toll bridge employee parking lot and a cul-de-sac style dead end. That’s when you send your drummer out, on foot, to talk to the person in the booth. “How do we get to where you are?”

So anyway, sometimes when you’re on the road, showers are scarce, and the ocean is your salty-but-cleansing friend. So we travel through Jacksonville toward the beach. Traveling through a new city, you get to see all the sights and local businesses, and some of the names really catch your attention, but not necessarily in a good way. There’s the “Hands On Children’s Museum,” and a bit down the road is “Kids by the Hour.” Luckily, our van has windows, and we don’t all sport mustaches, so your kids are safe. I just, personally, would have gone with different names.

One of the perks on the road is finding local food places. And I think we found the holy grail of burrito restaurants in Jacksonville – Burrito Gallery. Had George Lucas and Steven Spielberg met there to discuss Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, that film would have ended much differently. Ever had a yellow curry chicken burrito? You should. I got the carnitas burrito, and it was great. I can only assume the secret ingredient is unicorn tears because it was pretty magical. Unicorn tears, man. Unicorn tears.

Josh Carples is a member of the Montgomery-based band Hail the Titans, a singer-songwriter, actor and writer, and he somehow manages to work a “big boy” job in his free time.  Find out more at HailtheTitans.com and JoshCarples.com.