The Record Company: The Name That Will Soon Be Everywhere

Less than a year ago, one of Harvest 2012’s most promising “discovery” bands wasn’t a band at all. California’s The Record Company were just three young guys listening to old blues records together and jamming late into the night.

“It’s pretty crazy to me to go from hanging mics in the living room last November, just jamming around, to playing big North American Festivals like Harvest less than a year later,” said Chris Vos, the distinctive lead singer of the blues-rock trio. “It’s been a pretty fun little ride.”

Many in the Los Angeles music industry believe that The Record Company is poised to follow in the impressive footsteps of The Black Keys and The Alabama Shakes in the revivalist blues-rock movement.

It all started after Vos moved from Milwaukee to Los Angeles in early 2010 with his wife, a marketing executive, who wrote “a lovingly fraudulent Craigslist ad,” promoting Vos as a session guitarist.

“[The ad] made me sound like I was doing all this stuff, when I wasn’t actually doing anything at the time,” he laughs. “But Alex [Stiff, bass player in The Record Company] happened along it and thought it was great. Then he met me and it was this whole other thing... so we just ended up hanging out as friends.”

The turning point didn’t come until a year after they met, when one night, while listeniing to Hooker ‘n Heat – the 1971 album by John Lee Hooker and Canned Heat – they were inspired.

“Alex said, ‘why don’t we form a band and do something like this. Something that’s raw, just like we want to.”

That’s exactly what they did. With Vos on guitar and vocals, Stiff on bass, and Marc Cazorla on drums, they set to work right away on a low-pro, straight from the gut, collection of tunes.

“We recorded ‘Born Unnamed’ – which is now on the record – on the first day. It was literally 20 minutes after we’d formed a band,” Vos says. “We did one take, live. That’s exactly what you hear on the record.”

The record, Super Dead, is a 6-song EP that’s been gaining unbelievable momentum. Resonating with listeners and critics alike for its authentic yet modern take on the blues.

The band themselves have helped facilitate the major buzz that’s been building throughout 2012 by offering their EP exclusively, to this day, as a free download.

“We encourage piracy – that’s our motto right now,” says Vos.

“It’s not about the money. It’s about connecting with new people and getting to new places, and playing the music I want to play.”

It’s been a long time to get to that point – playing the music he wants to play. Vos has been a touring musician most of his adult life, but always in other styles than blues. Stiff and Cazorla were successful musicians already, playing in the electronic rock band The Frequency (who appeared at Harvest in 2008), but had never tackled blues either.

“I have a lot of respect for the pioneers of [blues] music. It’s sacred music to me. I didn’t have the guts to throw my hat in the ring,” says Vos. “I think that is, as an artist, a big leap – to expose what you care about the most in your heart and soul to people. It’s a difficult thing to get over.”

The Record Company have accomplished gritty, wailing blues rock that is both steeped in the classic blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, yet distinctly modern, upbeat and highly danceable – a sound that the trio found authentically.

“Right off the bat, we knew what we wanted to be, how we wanted to approach it, what we wanted to sound like. This came easy because there are no pretenses. We aren’t playing any games. We are what the music is, and the music is who we are.”

See The Record Company on Saturday of the Festival in the Hoodoo House – both headlining the early show and late night show, as well as opening for Charles Bradley in the Mojo Tent Friday night.

Download their debut EP Super Dead for free at www.therecordcompany.net. 

Charles Bradley's Heart of Gold

Last month, I – along with 1000 or so other people – had a religious experience in a festival tent as we watched Charles Bradley leave everything he had on stage, pause for a costume change, then do it all over again.

Decked out in sparkles and spandex straight from James Brown’s wardrobe, Bradley – backed by his stellar band the Extraordinaires – adopted the moves of his idol as well, kicking, screaming, and even dropping into the splits on occasion – a feat impressive for anyone, let alone someone in his mid-sixties.

But best of all was not his moves, but how moving he was. His passion was palpable; the energy electric, and his love for everything about that very moment was so evident and so sincere, that it brought tears to the eyes of most everyone in the crowd. That, in turn, made Charles’ eyes shine with tears of gratitude during the bulk of his set, overwhelmed by the erupting crowd who, as mentioned, were having a religious experience.

I made a prediction to a friend: “Harvest crowds are already more enthusiastic than average. When Charles’ vibe collides with Harvest crowd vibes, the whole tent is going to implode with happiness.”

I stand by that prediction, though perhaps only figuratively.

The thought occurred to me while watching his stirring live performance that this is a man who relentlessly pursued his musical dreams for decades to get to that point: to be on that stage, in front of that crowd, with that reaction, at that moment.

I was watching someone’s lifelong dream come true right before my eyes.

Now the fact that he’d been homeless most of his life didn’t matter. The fact that he worked for years as a James Brown impersonator, waiting for the opportunity to do his own music, didn’t matter. The fact that it wasn’t until he was 63 years old that he finally recorded and released his debut album didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter because that album – No Time for Dreaming – was named one of Rolling Stone’s top 50 albums of 2011. That album has taken him across the globe in the last year, performing at some of the biggest festivals in the world. That album has resonated with nearly all who have heard it.

And when you’ve worked that hard and long for something, there’s no taking it for granted.

“At my late age, and all the things I’ve been through, I finally have the chance to express myself in a humble way,” Bradley has said in an interview. "When God's ready to give it to you, he give it to you. And I think now, this must be my time. Because the love that I'm experiencing, it's a great love."

Harvest patrons will get the chance to experience Charles Bradley & his Extraordinaires twice during the festival – when he headlines the Mojo Tent on Friday night, with Maritime blues band The Hupman Brothers and California blues-rockers The Record Company supporting, and on Saturday night in the Blues Tent, opening for fellow Daptone Record artist Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings.

Five Meditations on Meandering Downtown, Capital City

I am now a seasoned stroller of this city,
walking for its own sake and the for charming revelations
that come from partial observations in motion.

One: Right sidewalks are always superior their counterpart on the left,
especially on the Royal Streets.
The architecture is better, as in the sunlight,
and the careful landscaping fills the surrounding air with sweetness.
Best of all scents are the roses that grow at the entrance to the Sports Hall of Fame,
perfect to stop, smell, and ponder the irony.

Two: Leaves fall from somewhere, everywhere –
Brown snow that flutters down, kicked to curbs,
inanimate until wind catches and turns to swarms of locusts,
that are daunting to walk through because it seems they would hurt.
They don’t; but they do get caught in hair.

Three: Porches are abundant on residential streets,
so much so that they are rather taken for granted.
I used to covet these private places of leisure,
before noticing that even on sunny weekend afternoons,
nearly all users are the elderly and smokers.
Now I associate porches with pseudo-eminent death.

Four: The old train bridge is my silver-medal fixture of the downtown.
(Gold medal: City Hall at twilight – lit in foreground, royal blue background
Bronze medal: coffee shop in afternoon – man in cut off shorts, like exhibitionist never nude)
The train bridge’s one shortcoming is that when it is ideal to go, everyone does,
Thereby negating the idyllic properties –
you’re either dealing with non-ideal weather, or non-ideal traffic.
Solution to latter: blast Aretha Franklin as a personal musical backdrop.
The diva mindset is essential to pull off a proud and unapologetic stride
down the centre of the walkway.
The sea of people will part (unknowingly) for an adopted Aretha swagger.

Five: I am not alone in my aimless amble around the city.
I pass paired pedestrians going north-south, and again east-west.
Or perhaps south-north, and perhaps again west-east.
Regardless, we are all passers-by of nothing in particular
except for charm and each other, circumstantially.

Greek Toast

The morning started with a hearty breakfast, followed by a simple errand.

“I just have to drop these plates off at my neighbour’s,” Ryan said, gesturing to a stack of the fanciest plates I’d ever seen lent out.

The neighbour in question was a young Greek man named Mariose who’d taken to feeding Ryan authentic Greek food in exchange for authentic Maritime beer – not so much an international trade agreement as a hospitable one-upmanship. Ryan would leave beer in front of Mariose’s door one day, and the next a carefully tin-foiled plate of souvlaki or rice pilaf would be waiting in front of his.

Four exchanges later, we knocked on Mariose’s door on a Saturday morning with the fancy plates and thank-you beers. Mariose opened the door and immediately invited us inside. He didn’t ask why we were there; he didn’t even ask us to come in. It was an order.

“Hello friends!” he said brightly, though he’d never met me before. “Come in, come in!” He put his strong grip on each of our shoulders and ushered us inside, sitting us down on the couch before I could process what happened. I’d gone from familiar hallway to stranger’s living room in three seconds flat.

Mariose was a short and stocky man wearing a tight t-shirt that showed off his biceps, and rock-hard gelled hair that wavered as little as his smile.

“Would you like some tea? I have many flavours,” he said in a thick Greek accent. “I have Earle Grey tea, chamomile tea, green tea, chai tea, lemon tea, and this... this is something from Japan. Japanese tea.”

“That’s a lot of tea,” I said.

“Yes. Many flavours,” he said. “Which would you like? Can’t decide? I make them all!”

Both of us were quick to say, “no, no, no!” knowing his hospitality would know no bounds except the ones imposed by us as fiercely as he imposed his generosity. We picked the one of many flavours we preferred and he put the kettle on.

“Maro!” he suddenly yelled. “Come out from there! We have guests!”

I looked around confused, looking for a cat hiding under the table or something, until a woman answered his call in rapid Greek from the other room.

“In English!” he yelled.

She responded in Greek.

“We have guests! In English!”

“Toast! Can you make me some toast?” She asked with an accent even thicker than his.

“See? That wasn’t so hard!”

She responded angrily in Greek.

He waved off the disembodied voice with a beaming smile toward us, and started effortlessly making one-sided conversation with us while he threw two pieces of bread in the oven.

He poured our tea and sat down across from us, telling us all about his mandatory service in the Cyprian army – which explained his impressive build and complete control – until he was interrupted again by his girlfriend calling to him in Greek, still invisible in the other room.

He ordered her to speak English again, and again, she refused, but I ascertained that she was asking about the status of her toast, as he jumped up from his seat and jogged over to the oven. He pulled the toast out, put them on one of the just-returned fancy plates and set them down on the coffee table in front of us, along with a spread of options, including butter, peanut butter, honey, and six varieties of jam.

“Many flavours!” he said proudly.

We both stared at what had materialized in front of us in a matter of seconds, unsure what to do.

“Eat!” he ordered. “This is for you.”

“But...” I said as Ryan already started spreading butter on his piece. “Isn’t this for your girlfriend?”

“No, for you, for you,” he said, picking up the other piece and placing it in my hand.

“Oh... kay. Thank you.”

His smile broadened even more, and he bound back over the oven with two more pieces of bread.

“Hurry up!” he yelled to his girlfriend as he sat across from us again. “We have guests!”

She responded in Greek.

“In English!”

She responded in Greek.

“She never speaks English,” he said to us, with a shake of his head.

“That’s okay. I never speak Greek,” I said.

“Very funny!” he said with a barking laugh. “She’s very funny,” he said to Ryan, pointing at me in a you’d-better-watch-this-one kind of way.

A few minutes later Maro’s voice made another appearance, calling out in Greek. Again, he jumped up and ran to the forgotten bread in the oven.

I’d eaten the first piece he’d given me, not because I’d wanted to, but because I felt awkward about not eating his girlfriend’s toast when given to me, and I had a feeling I didn’t have much choice anyhow. I had heard about European hospitality, so thought he might get offended if I didn’t graciously accept anything he threw at me.

I had been picking away at my piece, ignoring that my stomach had already reached its capacity with our large breakfast. Ryan had already finished his piece in three bites; it was the tea he was having some difficulty getting down.

I had just taken the last bite of my toast, relieved that I’d gotten through it, just as Mariose pulled the third and fourth pieces from the oven with his bare hands, throwing them down on the empty plate in front of us, shaking his scalded fingers, then doubling back to the toaster oven to put two more pieces in.

I glanced at Ryan with a bemused smile which he returned with an amused one. He picked up his second piece, while I just stared at mine.

I was forming a game plan in my head when Maro emerged from the back room. She was beautiful, with long black hair and a petite frame; a much more lovely source of the barking Greek voice than I’d expected.

“Where is my toast?” she asked Mariose.

“What?”

She repeated her question in Greek.

“In English!”

“You don’t understand me when I speak English!” she snapped. She turned to us. “It’s true.”

“Your toast is cooking.”

“Cooking!? How long it take?”

“It’s cooking! Never mind!”

I saw a win-win opportunity so I held up the plate with my second piece. “You can have this,” I offered.

“No!” Mariose said forcefully. “That’s yours. You eat. Try some jam! Many flavours!”

“Try the honey,” Maro offered. “Honey good on toast. Mix with...” she trailed off and turned to Mariose to say something in Greek.

“Peanut butter!” he yelled so adamantly I jumped in my seat.

“Honey and peanut butter,” she told me. “It is my favourite. Very good.”

“What are you saying to her?” he asked.

She responded in Greek.

“In English!”

“She already know what I said! It's only you who doesn't understand!”

“Bah!” he said with a wave of his hand, walking back to the oven to fetch two more pieces and put two more in.

The four of us sat around for another hour, eating an endless supply of toast, drinking many flavours of tea, and having pleasant conversation, only interrupted by sudden outbursts of, “What?” from Mariose when Maro tried in earnest to speak English, or “In English!” when she couldn’t think of an English word, so spoke Greek.

“If I knew the words, I would say!” she’d snip back.

“If you spoke English more, you’d know the words!”

“You don’t understand my English!”

“What?” he’d ask.

She’d respond in Greek.

“In English!”

I had to keep my lips firmly pressed together most of the time to keep from laughing at their looped conversation, thinking to myself that the morning that started with a hearty breakfast and errand, had turned into a personal performance of a foreign
Abbott and Costello routine.

If too much toast was the price to pay for this kind of entertainment, I could survive eating the cost.

American A-failure

I’ve been seeing these American Apparel banner ads on some of the lower-brow blog sites I visit, and it dumbfounds me how these constitute as acceptable clothing for everyday life, not, say, what you wear under clothing, or, say, what you dress your little dollies up in, or, say, what you wear whilst hookin’, or, say, what you wear if you live in a cartoon. I mean seriously, look at their “ways to wear it” page. These are their serious suggestions for how you should look when you leave your house every day. No. No. No!

I had a conversation with my friend Nicole about this, and she told me a story about this girl she met in (insert any big city here... they all have ‘em). Her story inspired me to write in an open letter to American Apparel. (It may or may not be very loosely based on fact.)

Dear American Apparel,

There is a girl I know who calls herself “Castle”. When I met her, the first thing she asked was my astrological sign, which I thought was the worst possible first question until her second, third, fourth, fifth, et cetera, questions all pertained to whether or not I had ever heard several different indie bands with no less than six words in their name. Bands like “The Walrus Sat On My Xylophone”, “Strategically Running Through Vast Fields of Opression” or “Doogie Houser M.D. and the Sixteen-Year-Old Medical Geniuses”. She listens to said bands, not on an iPod, but on mixed cassette tapes for her Walkman, which she carries in a neon fanny pack. She wears as many clashing patterns as possible in any given outfit, and thick-framed glasses that do not have any lenses. She also enjoys lycra, ugly sweaters and wearing XL tattered tee’s as dresses. She does not wear pants. Ever. I asked her if she has ever seen Glee once and laughed snidely saying, “I don’t even own a television.” Despite this, she likes to quote The Simpsons like they still have relevancy. She calls herself a Buddhist, even though her knowledge of Buddhism is suspiciously within the realm of its Wikipedia page. She says her favourite author is The Bronte Sisters. Yes, all of them. She attends, and participates in, poetry slams. She has a Chinese character tattoo of the word pASSion (ed note: I might have taken liberties with the capitalization). She says intentionally weird and provocative things, then laughs a lot at her own statement. She sneers a lot at others’ statements, weird and provocative or not. She is on Team Jolie. She wears sweatbands as an accessory over her sad-fading-rainbow hair. She exclusively drinks Bordeaux, because she “so enjoyed [her] time summering in the South of France”. She will only date men with ironic moustaches and chicken legs, but will never call said men her boyfriend as “labels stifle [her] freedom of expression.” She prides herself on her unique and subversive style of dress and life, even though she looks like every other fucking hipster on the street, in trendy vegan restaurants, organic coffee shops, abstract art installations, and underground concerts. Why? Because she, and everyone of her kind, shop at American Apparel.

I hope you’re proud of yourselves.

You are the worst,

The Rest of the World

Rainy Day Woman

I had to post something if for nothing else than to get that creepy Oprah face off the top of my blog. What a thing to assault you fine readers with every time you so kindly pay my words a visit.

So I woke up this Monday morning to grey, rain and rudely freezing temperatures. I mean, really, what kind of way is that to be welcomed into a new week? Then the coffee ran out too early, and I forgot my iPod and I smoked too many cigarettes, despite the aforementioned dark, wet and chill. Yes, Monday lived up to its reputation, through and through, start to finish.

Needless to say, I'm stewing over this whole rain situation, and I’m starting to wonder how I’d ever been drawn to the brooding lyrical appeal of Blind Melon’s “I don’t understand why I sleep all day and start to complain when there’s no rain,” or Ryan Adams singing, “as a man, I ain’t never been much for sunny days...” Terrible grammar aside, I used to sit and nod and think, “I feel ya, Ryan Adams.” But now I sit and shake my head and marvel at the naivety of my former self. Damn Sam, I DO NOT love a woman that rains.

In an effort to make the best of a bleak situation, I’ve been reflecting on my favourite rainy day songs for a hypothetical Rob Gordon Rainy Day Mixed Tape.

Here’s the shortlist (with fancy links and everything):

Nautical Disaster by The Tragically Hip
Just Wait by Blues Traveler
Grey Street by Dave Matthews Band
Homeless by Paul Simon
Never Going Back Again by Fleetwood Mac
Hold On by Tom Waits
All You Ever Wanted by The Black Keys
Every day is like Sunday by Morrissey
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart by Wilco
Mykonos by Fleet Foxes
To Build A Home by The Cinematic Orchestra
English Girls, Approximately by Ryan Adams

And on a hopeful end note, with regards to the weather...
A Change Is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke

Happy listening, gentle people. I wish sunlight for you all.

Eprah's Favourite Things (de jour)

So I’ve decided my life goal (starting nnnnnow) is to become the next Oprah. Achievable? Inevitable, more like.

To kick things off, I’ve done my own ghetto-ass version of her favourite things. Upon reading this, I encourage you to jump out of your seat and run around the room screaming with a maniacal enthusiasm befitting an Oprah audience. Just don’t look under your chair... you will be disappointed.
And since I’m emulating Oprah, I might as well practice yelling names in a drawn out way. Kinda like this.

SCAAA-AAAARVES!

Scarves are the greatest accessory ever. They are the only accessory I wear and I wear them all the time. In fact, I feel naked if I don’t have one on (however, I would also feel naked if it’s the only thing I have on. An important distinction, I feel). They come in multiple colours, styles, patterns... they keep you cozy and comfortable while making you look totally bad ass (Note to men: It’s not bad ass at all when you wear them, unless you’re one of the lucky few who can pull it off. And you’re probably not.) Anyway, they’re magical. Look into scarves.

COV-ERRRRRRS!

A good cover song warms my heart like a good scarf warms my neck. There are two kinds of covers that especially deserve to be in my favourite things. The first is when a song I already love is reinterpreted it in a fresh way, especially when the new version surpasses the greatness of the original in some way. You know, like Barenaked Ladies doing Bruce Cockburn's Lovers in a Dangerous Time or Sinead O'Connor doing Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U, or The Black Crowes doing Otis Redding's Hard to Handle (although, real talk, although it's more famous as a Black Crowes song, I think the Otis Redding version is superior.)

Those are all well and good, but then there are those covers that take god awful cheesefests and turn them into quite good little numbers. I’m talkin’ Morrissey does Miley. (Don’t panic; that doesn’t actually exist. I just made it up as an extreme example. Truthfully, I don’t know how I’d feel if Morrissey warbled his way through some Hannah Montana mess.) The problem with the later class of covers is that the indie crowd eats irony up (with their handlebar moustaches, geek specs and fierce ennui) so now ironic covers have become old hat (like their fedoras and stupid trucker hats. Ugh. Indies.) But disregarding that, there are some exceptional ironic covers out there – Ben Folds’ Bitches Ain’t Shit is probably the ultimate example, but there are other good’uns. The short list:

The Flaming Lips doing Kylie Minogue: Can't Get You Out of My Head
Cake doing Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive
Alanis Morrissette doing Black Eyed Peas: My Humps
White Stripes doing Dolly Parton: Jolene


THE WAAAAAAALKING BRIIIIIDGE!

Picture this. You walk along a gravel path, through green fields that inevitably has cute Labradors playing fetch and children frolicking and adults determinedly speed walking or meandering hand in hand. Then you come to a knoll and you walk up that knoll and you’re there. You’re on the walking bridge. It’s a beautiful structure – it used to be a train bridge so it still have the intricately crisscrossing steel beams, though they’ve rusted with time, which only makes them more beautiful. And the sun beams shine through the steel beams and try their best to warm you, despite the breeze from the water that gets colder the closer to the centre of the river you get. And there are spots along the way with benches so you can sit down with a notebook and your iPod and just spend a couple minutes feeling peaceful and calm and content. That’s the best part, I think, the benches. Because one problem with how wonderful the walking bridge is is that everyone thinks it’s wonderful, so its traffic directly correlates with weather conditions. But hey, it's worth it.

IMPERIAL PILLLLSNERRRRRRR!

Picaroons has this new beer. It’s delicious. It’s called Feelsgood Imperial Pilsner, which is a reference to a keener arts and music community in Fred-town, but is also fairly apt as to how it goes down. On the label, there’s a photo of a cute little pug dog wearing a crown. So that’s awesome. Don’t get me wrong, it ain’t knocking Dooryard out of my Picaroons top spot anytime soon, but there is definitely potential for it to replace Dark and Stormy Night as my penultimate choice. I mean, little pug dog. With a crown. Like a little pug king! You silly puppy. Adorable.

RADIOLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAB!

Chances are, anyone who’s spoken to me in the last two weeks has already heard my feverish rant on how special this radio show is. I’ve become borderline obsessed with radio documentaries of late (if only this had happened a year ago, when I was disinterestedly studying this shit), but there is nothing borderline about my current obsession with Radiolab. It’s full on.

How can I explain Radiolab? It’s really one of those things you have to listen to for yourself to really get it, but it’s this radio show out of NYC that takes these huge sprawling topics and covers them in endlessly fascinating ways. And they manage to make it very academic, very scientific, very informative, but still conversational, down to earth, easy to follow. Make sense? Kinda? Maybe this will help; here’s how they describe themselves.

“Radiolab believes your ears are a portal to another world. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience. Big questions are investigated, tinkered with, and encouraged to grow. Bring your curiosity, and we'll feed it with possibility.”

Swoon! I have never been so riveted by radio.

Suggested episodes for when you have an hour to expand your mind and rejuvinate your soul:
Choice
Memory and Forgetting
Who am I?