Eric Bachmann, Iota, Arlington, VA, 9/21/06

Last night I read the new issue of Magnet, which has a running "Please Explain" feature, this month featuring one Eric Bachmann explaining how exactly he lived in his van while recording To The Races: "I have a cot for sleeping, a fold-up chair, a guitar, some blankets, and a few cases of bottled water. I have a membership to the YMCA to take showers and maintain some kind of dignity and by trying to stay in reasonable shape...it's really good if you want to focus and get a lot done."

With that image in mind I headed out to Iota last night to see Bachmann, who's touring with Richard Buckner. Based on Chromewaves' review I expected Buckner to open, but tonight Bachmann took the early slot, opening with Archers of Loaf's "Chumming the Ocean" (!). His backing band (up to three folks depending on the song) included Races vocalist Miranda Brown and Kate O'Brien on violin; they faithfully performed the new album's material and added whole new dimensions to the Crooked Fingers songs. The highlight of the set for me (accurately listed on the setlist with the exception of "Sleep All Summer" also being played after "Carrboro Woman", with killer vocal harmonies from Brown and O'Brien) was Red Devil Dawn's "Bad Man Coming", lifted from a truly creepy dirge to a galloping, mid-tempo country tune, Bachman's impressive figerpicking laying down the foundation for O'Brien's swirling, slightly ominous playing.

Do the right thing and try to catch this show on the handful of southern and midwestern dates remaining. iff approved this message.

Morning Shorts

Anyone remember the Married...With Children episode in which Al gets a song on the radio stuck in his head and can't identify it? It drives him crazy, and he ends up visiting a record store with a famed employee who can identify any song if you hum him a bar or two. Of course, Al knows the whole chorus but the guru comes up empty (the guy before him hums about two notes to get his answer). Poor Al! In any case, the folks at the Onion A/V Club have started up their own service to answer your pop culture stumpers. A sample from Ask the Av Club:
I remember watching MTV over the summer sometime around 1990 (give or take three to five years) and seeing some fairly avant-garde video (people wearing weird costumes on a weird landscape) for an instrumental song. It wasn't by any group I'd heard of (not Enigma or Dave Stewart or anything;didn't sound like them at all). Any clues?

As for this website: feel free to Ask Indiefolkforever something about Joel Phelps tunings on the Warm Springs Night tour.

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Kimya Dawson explains why she named her baby Panda, livejournal users discuss.

Chromewaves reports on the Toronto Eric Bachmann/Richard Buckner show. We'll see 'em Thursday.

Stylus Magazine has a great feature all week long on favorite record stores of the staff, past and present. Today, the east coast is covered. Our pick is Spaceboy Music, a great little shop with a not-so-great web presence on South Street in Philadelphia, where all manner of offbeat singer-songwriters are stocked and the new releases are helpfully labeled.

MP3: Kimya Dawson - I Like Giants (live)

Not just for fetishists anymore

Vinyl may or may not sound warmer, but the LP edition of Eric Bachmann's new solo disc To the Races, courtesy of microindie Foreign Leisure, is the preferred way to hear it.

The CD features the title track as a 2:08 instrumental featuring Devotchka's Tom Hagerman's violin, serving as a short segue between the album's most spiky, driving tracks, "Lonesome Warrior" and "Liars an Thieves".

The vinyl expands the track to over twice that length and adds vocals from Bachmann, and, on the chorus, Miranda Brown, where they sing in a killer melody:

Let's go down to the races/ and hide among the lonesome faces
Nameless fallen heroes come and gone
Stay all night wired and wasted/ til the moonlight melts away on
Heavy eyes as sorrow sings her song

The album's about down-and-out hiding and dislocation, but Bachmann's lyrics are mostly abstract and expansive. It's really only on this track, with its lyrics buried on a 1000-copy limited edition record, that we get the grounded, grungy imagery Bachmann so often used on Crooked Fingers releases, the Bukowski setting of a race track.

Vinyl or no, the album's highly recommended. "Little Bird" is an instant favorite.

Stream the Whole Album
MP3: Carrboro Woman
MP3: Lonesome Warrior
Purchase Vinyl