Posts Tagged ‘rock’
The Mighty Orq
Oklahoma City Limits 4801 S. Eastern.
Friday December 4th 9 pm
Biography
Fall 2008
Houston, Texas
The Mighty Orq (pronounced Ork) is a power trio from Houston, TX known for their unique blend of emotionally charged vocals, soaring guitars, and powerful drum lines.
The Mighty Orq has quickly risen to be one of Houston, Texas’ biggest bands by combining the energy of classic rock with undeniable pop hooks and melodies. Influenced by legendary Texas bands like ZZ Top, Soulhat, and Kings X, the band has been able to reach out to wide-ranging audience that continues to grow and diversify.
The band is best known for their high-energy live shows where through their music they take the listener to the extreme edges of rhythm, melody and dynamics. They have been actively touring through Texas and the South for four years, while maintaining a rigorous 200+ shows per year. This daunting schedule as well as the addition of Houston journeyman bass player Tommy Luna, has allowed the band to fine tune theirs into a razor-sharp trio. The national release of their new album To The Bone will coincide with huge shows around Texas and another 18+ months of touring the world to support it. This is a task that the band is not afraid to take on. After all, this will only bring more people to see what the next big band from Texas is all about.
“TO THE BONE”
Financed with the help of family, friends, and the selling of personal belongings; including guitars, drums, and many of Westside’s childhood Japanese toys. The album was recorded in five sixteen-hour long sessions in February 2007. The “To The Bone” sessions took place at Showplace Studios in Dover, New Jersey. Mr. Ben Elliott, the owner of Showplace, recorded, engineered, and mixed the album. Ben has recorded or engineered with Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow, Dillinger Escape Plan, etc… Ben is a super cool guy that is a great mixture of the old and new schools of recording. He has a wall of outboard gear that is virtually priceless that he uses to get a lot of his signature “wacky” guitar sounds (listen to “Blue Eyes” on the record). But at the same time, he’s recording using the latest version of Pro-Tools on a Mac. His patch bay looks like a giant plate of multi-colored spaghetti. Some additional recording was done with our friend Bryan Jones at Matchbox Studios in Austin, TX. Bryan is a killer engineer with a great ear for songs.
Here are our thoughts on “To The Bone”, track by track:
1) “Falling Down”—The tried and true “tale of excess” song. Probably our most Arc Angels(seminal Austin, TX band comprised of Doyle Bramhall II, Charlie Sexton, Tommy Shannon, and Chris Layton) sounding song. Great set opener. First song we recorded for the album.
2) “Different This Time”—Tight bridge, just wish we could’ve had some “Klezmer”type guitar over it. Time & money didn’t allow for it.
3) “Rainy Day”—Poppy. First of two “pretty” songs on the album. Matt’s feeble attempt to pay tribute to the man, Ringo Starr.
4) “HO”—It’s slang people. It stands for whore. We can be literal here. We hope to have a hip-hop artist from Houston or Louisiana to remix this song. It would be the perfect Gulf Coast club anthem. Yes, there was a Jenni. Yes, she did spell it with an I. Yes, her Dad was in prison and her Mom was out of work. Ask us about Suzy & Sally’s stories when you see us. However, we think you could substitute just about anyone’s (male or female) name in the song.
5) “Set Me Free”–Starts with the chorus lick. Deals with the feeling you get after hanging with anyone you really care about. Nothing to think about for awhile is a good thing.
6) “Hangin’ On”—Riff, riff, riff. Hi-hat opens in the right spot for the groove to breathe a bit. Political ramblings from The Mighty Orq? Yes. Don’t tell us who we should/shouldn’t like or what we should/shouldn’t do. Someone’s there to help you out though.
7) “If You Will”—The title comes from something Hadden Sayers (longtime Texas troubadour songwriter and Matt’s former boss) used to say. Big guitar. The 16th notes on the bass really drive the song. This is a staple of the live show; we never know where this song is going to go.
“Blue Eyes”–Number two in the “Pretty Song on To The Bone” series. All guitars make the sounds on the album, no keyboards. Ben has a killer guitar pedal collection and we used a bunch of them on this song. Written for a lady in Orq’s life. Yes, she does have blue eyes.
9) “4+1”–It was almost called “Wild Side”, but we didn’t want any of Motley Crue’s lawyers coming down on us (regarding the song “Wild Side” from the Crue’s 1987 album “Girls, Girls, Girls”). We had done a show with a band from New Orleans called Supagroup, and they kind of inspired us to write this song. We were going for heavy, and this is it. To us, it’s a bit like something ZZ Top would do. ZZ is in our blood. No digital editing was done on the bridge in the middle of the song. That tight stop & start was live in the studio.
10) “The Good Love”—Almost didn’t make the album. Later it was going to be a hidden track. We finally decided to just include it. The “bluesiest” song on the album. A true “metaphor” song. This song gets taken pretty far “out” when we play it live. Slide guitar over a heavy groove. Respect to Zeppelin on the turnaround.
11) “Scars”—Good closer for an album. Deals with the death of Matt’s son Abraham in June of 2005. Double time section at the end signifies the birth of Matt’s daughter, Pearl Johnson. Happy times. More slide guitar. Louisiana “flavored” groove. Think if Sonny Landreth (Lafayette, LA slide-guitar genius) had been from Houston, he may have written a song that sounded like this.
We are not your typical “band for a night”. We bring a sonic experience to the venue. Whether that venue is under the stairs at a bar on 6th Street in Austin, or in front of a thousand people in a concert hall. We are just as happy and comfortable taking our music “out” to a crowd of hippies for four hours as we are playing a tight thirty minute opening slot. The attitude is still the same, even if the notes we play and how we play them is different. New set lists are written every night before the gig. We play so many shows that if we played the same set from night to night, it would get real old, real fast; for us and for our audience. We’ve all had to do that in other bands we’ve been in, and were sick of it. That’s where playing weekly gigs comes in handy, it really teaches you to keep it fresh from week to week. We’ve even had fans end up getting jobs at the bars we do our weekly gigs at, just so they could get paid to see us every week. That’s pretty cool.
Since our set and songs change from night to night, we’ve started to have more and more people recording the live shows. We encourage the taping done at our shows. All we ask is that it is done with respect to us, the other audience members, and the venue. We also ask that we get a copy of it the next time we’re through town. Tapers are some of the biggest music fans in the world. We would be stupid to not let them record.
That’s where we’re at right now. We have worked extremely hard to get to this point and have no plans of stopping anytime soon. This is what we do and who we are. We’re going to gas up the van, drive to the gig, play our asses off, and do it again the next day. We will also put out records that attempt to say something, not just thrown together crap so you have something to sell at your shows. This process takes time and money; two things that we don’t have a lot of yet. However, if you’re still reading this, you may have a copy of our new record sitting next to you. So either load, place, or insert it in your favorite listening device and turn it up LOUD! We hope ya dig it.
To The Bone,
Orq, Westside, & Matt
Indigenous
Inigenous
October 4th 9:00 PM Oklahoma City Limts
Mato Nanji’s always provided the heartbeat of the band Indigenous — along with the warm dusty voice and the soaring, spirited guitar fireworks that have earned the group from South Dakota’s Nakota Nation a place among roots rock’s elite. But with the emotionally charged and musically visceral Broken Lands, the band’s second album on Vanguard Records, Nanji makes a transformation from sparkplug to visionary.
“I’ve wanted to make an album like this for years,” Nanji explains, “but to a certain extent my hands were tied. Now I feel like I’ve achieved so many things I’ve wanted this band to be. The songs I’m singing are more personal. The sound of the band has broadened, and we were able to explore all the influences that are woven into that sound – blues, soul, R&B, and even country — more than ever. And the guitar playing is more controlled, to really let the songs speak for themselves. On top of all that, I’ve grown as a singer. After being frustrated for a while, all of this makes me very happy. “What it amounts to,” Nanji announces, “is that Indigenous is a brand new band.”
He means that literally. From the group’s beginning in his parents’ basement through the release of 2006’s Vanguard debut Chasing the Sun, Indigenous was a family band. But after that disc was recorded Mato’s bassist brother Pte, his drummer sister Wanbdi, and his percussionist cousin Horse left to pursue other musical paths. “Everybody decided to go their own way, leaving me to carry on Indigenous,” Nanji says. “Playing with my family for 10 years was a lot of fun, but it was time to grow.”
So Nanji recruited guitarist Kris Lager, keyboardist Jeremiah Weir, bassist Aaron Wright, and drummer John Fairchild to tour behind Chasing the Sun. They also appear on Broken Lands, joined by drummer Kirk Stallings, percussionist Chico Perez, and Mato’s wife Leah Nanji on backing vocals. Producer Jamie Candiloro (Ryan Adams, R.E.M., Willie Nelson, the Eagles) completed the studio team.
“Jamie shined on bringing out the energy and honest sound we had going on,” Nanji says. “He had us set up and play live in the studio as if we were on stage. Some of the songs, like the acoustic-guitar shuffle ‘All Night Long,’ went down with even the vocals recorded live while the band played. Others, like ‘Should I Stay,’ are more textured, but benefit from the energy that comes with playing the basic tracks live.”
Nanji’s big-toned guitar on Broken Lands’ dozen songs about romance and destiny continues to demand comparison to his idols Stevie Ray Vaughan, Los Lobos, Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana. His burnished style — full of ringing sustained notes and artfully bent strings — elevates the emotional appeal of numbers like the romantic soul-searcher ‘Should I Stay’ and the brooding blues-rock masterpiece ‘Waiting.’ Nonetheless, Nanji kept his gear for the sessions trim: a couple amps, including the distinctive organ-like whir of a Leslie speaker, and his trademark Stratocasters augmented by a Guild acoustic.
“I wanted to get more slide guitar into the album, too,” he says, “which gave me and Kris, who’s an exceptional slide player, new ways to have interplay.” So Lager added bottleneck to ‘All Night Long,’ the sweet ballad ‘Eyes of a Child’ and other numbers. “I’ve loved slide ever since I found Elmore James in my father’s collection of old blues albums when I was a teenager,” Nanji says. The other sonic addition is Leah Nanji’s harmonies on much of Broken Lands, “I’ve always been a big fan of women singing backing vocals,” Nanji says. “Leah was able to do some of that on Chasing the Sun, but to me her voice is an essential part of Broken Lands.”
Leah was also essential as a songwriter, co-authoring all of the songs with Mato except his self-penned ‘Just Can’t Hide.’ “This is the first time I’ve had a hand in writing every song for an Indigenous album,” Nanji says. “It’s very liberating, because I feel like I’ve truly invested myself. Leah and I have been writing songs together for years, and we had written about 20 for this album and narrowed it down to the best dozen.”
One of the most compelling is ‘Place I Know,’ a riff-rocker that decries the poverty and isolation of Reservation life and gives the album it’s title in the line, “all is lost in these broken lands.” “I love the way all of these songs came out, but ‘Place I Know’ is one of the closest to me,” Nanji says. “It’s important to bear witness about the things that inspire love in your life and about the things that make you sad. “But working on these songs at home with Leah in Sioux Falls was really fun,” says Nanji. “I got to just sit and play them again and again on acoustic guitar without pressure, and that helped me develop my vocal melodies and grow as a singer. Because of that, Broken Lands has my best vocal performances.
“Broken Lands makes me feel like I did when Indigenous was just starting out,” Nanji says. “We were excited about making music and making records, and maybe getting to tour all over the United States, which we did.
“Now Indigenous is a new band again and I feel that same excitement,” he continues. “But this time — when we start touring in August — I want to take these new songs and this great sounding band all over the world.”
I got the Promotion Blues
Promoting the blues is a difficult task that has sometimes paid dividends and sometimes only disappoints. I’m a blues fan by default. The music I really like just happens to be rooted in the blues. Because of this I have a taste for blues but it must be seasoned with a bit of rock to really grab me.
As a promoter I have tried to brand the type of show I do so that I could build a relationship with my customers. I have with a few exception booked acts that I want to see. An act that I feel will impress people whether they have heard of them or not. Hopefully they trust my judgment and will attend because they have discovered artists by virtue of attending one of my shows. I began this venture under the title of Route 66 Blues Project. I later changed the name to 79th Street Sound Stage so as to not limit myself to promoting the blues exclusively.
I recently booked Ana Popovic who is a blues based female guitar player from Europe. I had heard of her through blues societies and through the Blues Foundation when she was nominated for a Blues Music Award I had only heard some of her albums and explored her website. I liked the fact she had many influences both Jazz and Rock but it was bluesy.
I had a decent turnout targeting the blues community for the show. The problem is a decent turnout is under 100 people. If the show had sold 100 or over I would have been ecstatic. The blues I have found has a limited audience. I think I made a mistake promoting her as a blues artist. I was asked believe it or not to refund the ticket price to someone who thought Ana wasn’t the blues. The rational was when asked why she wasn’t the blues the best they could come up with was because she used a wah wah peddle. Sacrilege I suppose.
Now I don’t pretend to be the authority on what is and isn’t blues. I don’t promote blues acts exclusively. In fact my most well attended shows have not been considered blues acts at all. I think the problem with trying to define the blues hurts the genre by limiting its appeal and dividing the fans that already exist. Instead of being able to depend on a supportive fan base of a genre you have hope to appeal to a certain segment of the genre’.
How do you overcome the pitfalls that come with promoting the blues? I guess the answer is distancing yourself from the genre’. I promote music. You call it what you want. I hope you call it good. You can call it blues if you want but all you’ll get from me is that it is bluesy.
Ana Popovic