Event
SEAN HAYES w/ special guests The Blank Tapes
SEAN HAYES
"Before We Turn to Dust," San Francisco based songwriter Sean Hayes' newest release was written and recorded in the same year he became a father. You can hear the love and struggle throughout. In one moment Hayes is singing "you may spend all your money before you turn to dust / but you'll never spend all your love." In the next moment, reminiscent of Bill Withers' classic "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone," he flips it with his line "I miss her when I'm gone/ but I've got to make my money" and goes on to intone "bring it home, bring it home, bring it home/ to my lady and my baby."
There is something raw and down-home about this music. Simple and straightforward the piano, guitar, drums, bass, occasional horns and back-up singing surround his warm, vibratoladen voice that leads the way, down "side street alleys" or to "that spot with the jukebox
where we can sing your favorite tune."
Like great Country or Soul music these songs tell simple stories that also make you want to move. "Damn, the way you walk that thing/locked in the pocket make a body ring" from the song "Bam Bam" almost has your hips in motion from the lyrics alone.
Frazey Ford from the folk group The Be Good Tanya's joins the singing for a duet on the album's last track, a lullaby "Innocent Spring."
Hayes is notably accompanied by veterans Andrew Borger (Tom Waits/Norah Jones) on drums, Devin Hoff (The Nels Cline Singers, Xiu Xiu) on bass and relative new comers Ezra Lipp (Thao + The Get Down Stay Down) on drums and multi-instrumentalist Eric Khun (Silian Rail) on keys, drums and percussion. The record was mixed by Eli Crews (tUnE-yArDs) at New and Improved Recording in Oakland CA.
Sean Hayes was born in New York City, raised in North Carolina, and came of musical age in San Francisco. "I remember going to sleep listening to the radio next to my bed," he says, listening to a wide variety of music from the get-go. It was not until I went to college for a year in east Carolina that I heard a banjo and a fiddle and bluegrass." He began to play a mix of traditional old-time music, bluegrass, Irish music, and original songs in Asheville, NC and Charleston, SC.
On a whim, Hayes threw some clothes and a guitar into the back of his friend's car and made his way to San Francisco. "I spent a few years in a great little folk scene in San Francisco with Jolie Holland being the queen bee. She is an amazing talent." Later, he would open tours for Holland. "San Francisco has always felt like a do-it-yourself town," he says, continuing, "There's not a lot of music industry, but there is a lot of spirit."
Hayes cites various influences from the soul, folk, R&B, reggae, and gospel worlds, such as Otis Redding, James Brown, Joni Mitchell, 'The Anthology of American Folk Music,' 'American Primitive, Volumes 1 and 2' (pre-war gospel compilations), and Nina Simone. He adds, "I also
love Bob Marley and his rhythm section. I think of him as more folk than reggae."
Over the years, Hayes' songs have been re-mixed by DJ Mark Farina ("Dream Machine"), covered by folk group The Be Good Tanya's ("A Thousand Tiny Pieces"), been featured on HBO's "Bored to Death", and used in a TV ad campaign for Subaru ("Powerful Stuff"). He sang a duet on Aimee Mann's latest record and has toured with acts such as Ani DiFranco and the Cold War Kids.
His hometown SF Weekly has raved, "Take him anywhere, play him for anyone, and the response is always the same: People want more. They'll write down the name if they don't know it already an impressive treat in your pocket. Hayes' music succeeds on the tension between warm, resonant soul and dirt-road folk, all laced with a wandering troubadour's coo. the danceable folk singer Hayes gets his groove on, laying his buttery, quavering voice over swinging drum patterns, mellifluous piano, and funky horn parts what sets him apart is his voice -- a wounded, wavering tone that sounds like a fragile creature, very crushable."
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle called him "a singular urban/backwoods sound and vision extraordinary Hayes achieves a certain intimate rapport between the performer and audience"
Birth, Death, Love, Sex and Money: the stuff of life, its all here on Sean Hayes newest release"Before We Turn to Dust."
The Blank Tapes
The Blank Tapes is now and always has been Matt Adams, a soft-spoken kid from a Southern California suburb who learned to play practically every instrument a good garage band needs, and then started making beautifully idiosyncratic records on his trusty home eight-track because well, why wait? When he first heard the Beatles and the Kinks, he knew he needed to make his own songs, too, and so in 2003 he did, with the kind of inspiration and confidence and personality you'd think have faded out in 1967. By the time he left his home in Orange County for San Francisco in 2005, he'd put dozens if not a hundred of his own songs on tape, all lovingly and painstakingly and perfectly recorded in a series of ever more modest bedrooms and sheds. The local press loved him and when he landed in the Bay Area, the press there loved him just as much, too. ("Somebody sign him, quick!" said Rolling Stone.)
But the funny thing is this is all the ancient history of Blank Tapes nowor maybe just the prelude. Adams is the kind of guy who writes a song just as natural and as he wakes up everyday. He's got maybe almost four hundred originals hovering inside his head, he says, and he remembers them all perfectly. He's got lost albums and unreleased albums and more albums for the future planned out to the last detail. He paints his own albums covers and posterswith talent enough that he worked for Mad Magazine!and booked all his own tours and makes the show go on whether its him and a portable amp on a lonely bridge in Austin or him and eight other rock 'n' roll powerhouses cracking the stage in half.
In 2010, he got not one but two surprise smash hits in Brazil, leading to his first tour outside North America. He shared bills with sci-fi garage legends Thee Oh Sees and home-taper extraordinaire R. Stevie Moore in Europe. He provided much of the soundtrack to the cult surf film 'Stoked and Broke' and took a stripped-down Blank Tapes to Japan to tour with the film. And he custom-wrote a special song for Burger Records Weiner Dog Benefit comp, doing his utmost to help a little puppy pay a vet bill.
Now he prepares to release his newest LP Vacation on Oakland's Antenna Farm Records, the rightful next step after 2010's Home Away From Home and a string of singles and cassette albums on Burger, White Noise, Dome of Doom, Curly Cassettes and 20 Sided Records. It's the first-ever full Blank Tapes album recorded somewhere besides Adams' trusty 8-track. Ever since the birth of the Blank Tapes, Adams has figured out the classic part of classic rockthe kind of songs that aren't so much written as revealed. And Adams lately gets his revelations while traveling, so Vacation is an album written on the road with a little nod to the rootless spirit of the actual On The Road.
His songs are alive with style and sentiment of immortals like Ray Davies and Robyn Hitchcock ("Earring") or Kris Kristofferson and Terry Allen ("Working," "Vacation") or even Lou Reed ("Pearl," written about girlfriend and Blank Tapes drummer Pearl Charles the night he met her) and Buddy Holly (the adorable bridge of "Coast to Coast") or even Os Mutantes on "Brazilia," a bossa-delic song inspired by Adams' informal park jam sessions on his Brazilian tour. With studio help from drummer Will Halsey and a series of bassists, Vacation is an everything-old-is-new-again albuma record chasing down timelessness in its own time.
Now relocated back to Los Angeles, Adams finds the music he's loved since that first borrowed guitar is now the new sound of Southern California, thanks to standard bearers like the Growlers, Nick Waterhousewho played the same off-the-path bars as Blank Tapes, waaaaay back whenand Burger Records, who've already released an earlier Blank Tapes full-length. After a year of low-key shows, he's secured a spot with the Danny Rose booking agency and debuted what he calls the most fully realized version of the Blank Tapes yeta lean and pristine trio with D.A. Humphrey on bass and Charles on back-to-basics Moe Tucker-style drums, with the kind of three-part harmonies the Wilson brothers used to love. There's a new energy, he says. For the longest time the Blank Tapes has just been him, writing and recording as time and circumstance allow. But now, after almost exactly ten years and a new album and a new line-up, the Blank Tapes have finally become what he's always wanted.
-Chris Ziegler
|
|
 |
LocationTemple Emek Shalom (View)
1800 East Main Street
Ashland, OR 97520
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: No |
|
Contact
|
