Once upon a time, Roger Klug was one of the kings of Cincinnati power pop. His brief stints with the Willies and the Tritones, among others, paved the way for the Detroit native/Cincinnati resident’s stellar solo career. This solo career started with 1995’s home-recorded Mama, Mama, Ich bin dem La La Land, then the full-blown splendor of 1997’s Toxic and 15 Other Love Songs, followed by the Guided-By-Pollard brilliance of 1999’s Where Has the Music Gone?: The Lost Recordings of Clem Comstock, where Klug and a smattering of friends crafted a compilation of fictional bands across a disparate range of musical genres, all under the auspices of the album’s titular and completely mythological producer/songwriter.

“That’s the most fun I’ve ever had making an album,” says Klug over omelets at Café Alma. “There was a little of the alter ego thing going on with that. My memory of that was sitting on my side porch, no guitar in hand, just a big notebook, hearing the record in my head, grabbing lyrics out of the air. That was a really great feeling. I never felt so prolific.”

Although the gigging never stopped, it would be a decade before Klug dropped his fourth studio album, 2009’s superb More Help For Your Nerves. (It’s worth noting that Klug created his own label, Mental Giant, and self-released his entire catalog.) Klug and his self-proclaimed Power Trio, featuring bassist Greg Tudor and drummer Mike Tittel, supported Nerves into the following year, to a certain extent.

“We were performing as the trio at that point, but we didn’t have it together enough,” says Klug. “I remember thinking we could play almost all of those songs live, but it didn’t have as much piano as Toxic, and it certainly didn’t have the horns and strings like Clem Comstock.”

At a certain juncture in 2010, Klug’s profile in local music became virtually non-existent. So what occupied Klug’s time and attention when he stepped away from music?

“Raising a family, earning a living, teaching at CCM,” says Klug. “It takes up a lot of time, I won’t lie. And sometimes when you’re doing other musical stuff, it does take away your own musical energy. That is a pitfall. At one point, I’d quit the music business and I was going back to school to be an accountant. So while I was reading intriguing accounting books, I was like, ‘I’m going to record this now.’ COVID did kind of deflate my live situation, but I was still able to do stuff with the Cincinnati Symphony because we were all masked up and socially distanced.”

Klug was also drawn back into music by way of Tittel’s own project, New Sincerity Works. It was a satisfyingly easy gig for him for one simple reason.

“It was a segment of my life working on other people’s projects,” says Klug. “The pressure is almost off. I’m not worried about the vocal or the song. You don’t think, ‘I want to play something good,’ because that’s a given. You just kind of respond to it: ‘This will make it sound better,’ or ‘Where is the space I can occupy where the mixing engineer will turn me up?’ Mike wasn’t like, ‘Hey, I want this,’ he was like, ‘Just play.’ Mike’s very much an art director in his professional and creative life, but he’s also smart enough to let people do what they do.”

The wheel began to turn back in a familiar direction earlier this year when Klug accepted an invitation to play a benefit for the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. The concert’s theme was Bob Dylan, an artist near and dear to Klug, so he was determined to make the most of it.

“It was one of those deals where people were picking songs from Facebook or whatever, so I nabbed ‘Simple Twist of Fate,’ because that’s one of my all-time faves,” Klug says. “We did that one pretty faithfully, kind of like Jason Isbell or Wilco would do it. Then I noticed that no one had taken ‘Lay Lady Lay,’ so we did this whacked version of it, as if the Cure were performing, then we mashed it up with ‘Bob Dylan’s Blues’ as Greta Van Fleet-doing-Led Zeppelin would have done it. And it went over really well; we had the crowd, and it was really gratifying. That was the catalyst.”

The next occurrence was a bit of technological serendipity. Klug was rummaging through an old hard drive and he stumbled upon an off-the-board recording he had made of a Power Trio show at the Northside Tavern a decade ago. It was a document of a time when the band was playing every three or four months at the Tavern, and they had gotten fairly tight after their layoff.

“I had kind of dismissed the recording,” says Klug. “It was just a snapshot of the band. And off-the-board tapes are very isolated; there’s a certain claustrophobic sound. If I could turn back time, (he channels Cher at this point), I would have put up a couple of ambient mics to catch the sound of the room. But instead of listening to the micro of it — ‘Oh, missed that guitar lick’ or ‘That vocal take was a little short’ — I listened to the macro of it. And I thought, ‘This is pretty cool.'”

Realizing that this recording represented a period just after the Trio had reconvened, and that there were few surviving audio artifacts from that time, Klug made the decision that this show should be the Power Trio’s first live album.

“It was like when you get a weird idea,” recalls Klug. “I thought, ‘I want people to hear this.’ Then you immediately self-doubt it. Then you run it by your mates, like ‘I’m thinking about putting this out,’ and they don’t say anything at first, and you’re like, ‘What’s their deal?'”

Eventually, everyone was on board with the release, and thus was born the Roger Klug Power Trio’s first live album, the two-disc triumph, Live! Off the Board. (“The working title was Naked and Unashamed (Without No Clothes)…”) There were several considerations that sealed the decision.

“Mike and I have talked a lot about recording an album being boring, because everyone does it the same way and has the same plug-ins, and everything is so scrubbed and perfect,” says Klug. “How do you fight AI? How do you fight perfection? What better way than to put out a live thing that wasn’t even meant to be a release? Was it an A+ performance? No. But there’s weird stuff in there, like a couple of songs we only played that one time. And we played the Kinks song, ‘Johnny Thunder.’ I have no memory of whose idea that was. If we were going to play something from Village Green, I’d have wanted to play ‘Big Sky.’ Plus that was the only RKPT gig where I dragged a piano to it. We had a Wurlitzer onstage, and that’s the only time we ever did that.”

With the Jan. 10 show at the Northside Tavern and the Feb. 28 gig at MOTR Pub, the Roger Klug Power Trio has officially ended its hiatus. Klug makes no bones about the path forward for the band.

“There’s too much stuff that I’m sitting on that’s half finished,” he says. “The live unit is playing again, so there’s a compelling reason for it all. We don’t really have a sound because I’ve always been here, there and everywhere. I recorded a yacht rock song, and Mike and Greg play on it, and I’m toying with the idea of releasing it as our first return release, just to thoroughly confuse everyone. ‘This is our new sound. We went away to work on our mental health.’ Anyway, we shan’t be going away again for a while.”

The Roger Klug Power Trio plays MOTR Pub on Feb. 28 at 9 p.m. More info: motrpub.com.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Jan. 7 print edition.

The post Roger Klug Revives His Power Trio With Long-Lost Live Album appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.

As Sylmar stands at the precipice of one milestone, the band is recovering from another one. The Cincinnati quintet has just returned from their first European tour, a rousing success by any measure.

“There were only ten shows,” says frontman Brian McCullough over coffee at Deeper Roots. “There were more, but the ones with really good guarantees were cancelled because we didn’t sell enough tickets. The other ones sold out and they were phenomenal. It was Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria, and they really enjoyed it. And they listened.”

Local, regional and national audiences have been listening to Sylmar’s brand of dynamic indie rock for nearly a decade, a period that will be officially celebrated in February 2026 with the band’s tenth anniversary. The more immediately laudable event is the October release of Sylmar’s third full-length album, the cryptically titled Matching Caskets.

“The title is from a song we haven’t put out yet,” says McCullough. “I like the image of two people who commit to the bitter end. That’s the line: ‘Though we are the same/No, we’re not the same/But we bought a pair of matching caskets.’”

While the song lending its title didn’t make the cut for Matching Caskets, a similar emotional theme bubbles up in the track “Vidalia’s Dementia (Onions),” pulled directly from McCullough’s life.

“It’s the story of this older couple where one is going through breast cancer and the other is developing dementia,” says McCullough. “My grandparents both had dementia and my father had breast cancer. It’s a love song but it’s also a ‘fuck it’ song, like, ‘Let’s have some fun while we’re old and above ground and above the law.’ When you’re old, you can do whatever the fuck you like. The song isn’t necessarily depressing, but in our music there’s always a range of emotions, like, ‘We’re dying but we’re going to party to celebrate that we only have a little bit left.’ There’s some depth to it.”

Matching Caskets is unquestionably Sylmar’s heaviest album to date, in terms of emotional impact and sheer volume. While there were moments of raucous fury on 2021’s Glass Ladders, there is an almost relentless feeling to the material on Matching Caskets. Even in its softer, more delicate tracks, the album bristles with undeniable power.

“Angular is what I call it,” says McCullough. “It can go from a heavy ephemeral moment to just me singing and it really is a beautiful thing live, especially in a small room. You’ll see a killer rock act that will move you dynamically. All the songs are that, basically. The first four or five songs are riffy, dynamic Queens of the Stone Age type stuff, and then the back end is really pretty. The front is more traditional Sylmar, where maybe there’s some political critiques or tongue-in-cheek stuff, and the back is sadder and quieter.”

McCullough readily admits that most of Sylmar’s songs find their true forms once they’ve been subjected to the band’s live process, where the material’s sonic identity is forged and solidified. Most of the songs were written during Covid lockdown and then fully realized in its aftermath.

“We got really lucky in 2022 and 2023 to go on some really long tours — we basically toured the whole country — and we played the shit out of these songs,” says McCullough. “They ended up developing into what they are, which I think are pretty interesting songs, with maybe more depth than some of our past stuff. It’s in the textures of different instrumentation and that just evolved from playing live a lot.”

McCullough is also fully aware that a certain percentage of Sylmar’s existing fanbase may be alienated by the density and volume of Matching Caskets, but he and the band are relying on their fans’ boundless devotion to accept the new album and its forceful direction.

“We started seeing more people coming to the shows with purple hair, because the songs went from straight ahead pop-focused to more art rock/progressive type stuff,” says McCullough. “At first, I was a little averse to it, but now I love it, because our fans are very loyal and they’ll travel forever to see us.”

Even with the crucible of the stage to reshape the songs’ structure, the foundation of Sylmar’s material begins with the band’s impressive egalitarian writing process. Without that sturdy base, there would be nothing to reinvent.

“With the way my mind works in creating a song, the volume and the shifts are just the way they come, every single time,” says McCullough. “Like ‘Babysitter’ on the new album, where you’re just skating the whole time, I’d love to write something like that but it always ends up being a roller coaster. That’s just how Sylmar is, that’s how we’ve developed our sound, and that’s why people like to see us live.”

From Sylmar’s launch in 2016, the band has maintained an inclusive writing stance when working up new material. Since the release of Glass Ladders, some changes have taken place that marginally impact that paradigm, namely the departures of guitarist Dan Sutter and bassist Dominic Franco.

“To be honest, I don’t think we were using Dan as the weapon he was,” says McCullough. “You can’t tell an amazing natural guitarist what parts to play when they can make a better part. Dan and Stephen Patota and (Sylmar drummer) Ethan Kimberly play at Anjou in Walnut Hills. It’s like watching Bill Frisell, he’s that good. And Dom was a great player and a great hang, but he’d be the first to tell you that music was not his priority. He’s a programmer, so he bought a trailer and he and his girlfriend travel around the country and he works remotely, and climbs. He’s a big climber.”

McCullough’s startling revelation that he nearly shuttered Sylmar after Sutter left the band is somewhat mollified by his realization that the band’s secret sauce was installed in the drum chair.

“Ethan is very much Sylmar, and without him, the band ain’t shit,” says McCullough bluntly but with a laugh. “Ethan has been taking the lead more. I love it when he writes songs. He’s in so many projects, and what he’s really talented at is he’s got his style. He’s able to foster his style with every group he plays with. And he writes great bass lines.”

The other leg of Sylmar’s current writing triumvirate is guitarist Luke Glaser, who McCullough claims does much of his writing for the band in relative stealth mode.

“Luke has always been the central guitar writer,” says McCullough. “He’s the type of guy who won’t get an idea for a couple of months, then suddenly your phone hits and you’ve got four new ideas, and it’s like, ‘Oooh, I’ve got things to work on.’ Songs just tend to happen when you’ve got great players.”

Just as Matching Caskets was largely worked out when Glass Ladders was released, Sylmar has another album waiting in the wings just as their new album is released. Given that their current modus operandi is to record in their practice space and perform all the adjacent business functions — art, promotion, finding distribution, etc. — without assistance, it’s amazing they find time to write and record.

“We’ve got another record ready to go, but for the future, I think I’m writing a lot of the songs,” says McCullough. “I’ve got the energy for it. We’ll see what happens.”

The two latest musical masters to claim Sylmar membership are guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Dylan Etienne and bassist Lee Sullivan. Etienne, a recent graduate of CCM, has performed with a variety of local bands, including Goof Juice and Low Gap, and Sullivan is playing simultaneously with Kimberly in Touchdown Jesus. They originally signed on with Sylmar as touring members, but they seem to be taking hold as permanent replacements.

“Lee is a great guitarist but he’s playing bass with us, and Lee and Ethan have a really good connection, and Dylan is just an amazing guitarist and he takes us places that always surprise me,” says McCullough. “And even though they’re just players, they already feel like part of the band. They’re bringing new ideas to the table and they’ve recorded on the new songs.”

As McCullough looks back at the past decade and forward into Sylmar’s future, he tends to be realistic about the band’s place in the musical food chain, and yet hopeful about the infinite possibilities afforded by their talent and determination.

“My greatest fear is that we become a bunch of hacks and we’re just playing covers of old Sylmar songs. If it ever gets to the point where the players don’t mesh, it’s just got to end,” he says. “But right now, it sounds better than ever, and it’s crazy how that keeps happening. Every time we have a new group, it’s like, ‘Damn, it’s a different animal.’ We’re still gaining fans and people still appreciate it. What more can you ask for?”

Sylmar will join The Wonderlands and Saving Escape for a show at the Woodward Theater on Dec. 27 at 8 p.m. More info: woodwardtheater.com.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Dec. 24 print edition.

The post Cincinnati Band Sylmar Marks 10th Anniversary with Career-Defining ‘Matching Caskets’ appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.

A conversation with Jess Lamb is a hybridized combination of disparate and yet inextricably connected qualities. It’s a tarot reading, a palmist’s insights, an astrologer’s consultation, a musical treatise, a philosophical dissection, a sweat lodge journey to the soul’s center and a repudiation of the illusionist’s art in favor of true magic.

Case in point: Lamb wanted to conduct our interview at Iris Cafe in Over-the-Rhine, without knowing that the grandmother who helped raise me after my mother’s death was named Iris. When I note this coincidence, she responds with “That’s amazing!” The exclamation doesn’t hit like hipster chatter designed to fill empty space but is spoken with the wide-eyed wonder of a believer who finds miracles in the mundane and sees signs in the most random tea leaves.

“Follow the signs,” Lamb states categorically. “Once you notice one, you’ll notice three, then you notice five, and, like right now, you’re creating portals. I believe that with all the AI things happening that there’s going to be a resurgence of people going analog and wanting to live like they’re in the ’90s. I believe that could bring back the music industry where people are selling physical items and in control of that, making human-to-human connections.”

That belief in signs and hope for a future that successfully draws on a reliable past may well be the secret ingredient that makes Lamb’s music so compelling. She has steadfast faith in her path, the work she creates along the way, the people she collaborates with and the intersectional environment where it all takes place.

“I think that’s born into us, that force of ‘Got to be who I am,'” says Lamb. “I see it; I’m drawn to it and to working and collabing with others who are just the biggest local stars that I’ve been in front of. I want to speak life to Cincinnati. I’m always going to be here. I have property here; I started my label (City Queen Sounds) here. When people go looking for the soul, and the songs that take you there, it’s deep, it’s different and that’s Cincinnati. I think this is where we’re going to shine the brightest during these times.”

It speaks volumes to Lamb’s local commitment, and to the artists she wants to promote, that we’re well into our conversation before it turns toward her personal work, her latest releases and future plans and her upcoming gig at MOTR Pub featuring many of the players who have accompanied her on past residencies and jam session dates. It’s just as important for her to elucidate what she refers to as “shadow work,” the act of artistic creation that draws on the darkest aspects of inspiration and experience in order to inject that creation with the greatest level of authenticity and emotion.

“I admire artists who become the character of their creation,” says Lamb. “I think that’s what really anoints great actors, but that also comes with some torment because you have to get in it and have the deepest experience. There has to be pain. This is something I tried to avoid a lot in my life, but, of late, I’ve been really obsessed with being in the shadow work. The more shadow work we’re willing to do, the deeper our spirit is, the more our hearts radiate and shine. It’s like a recharge. Go dark, come out so light.”

Lamb’s latest singles are great examples of what she does best with her soul/R&B/indie rock heart and vocal cords, the first being Bootsy Collins’ stunning remix of “Beautiful,” the closing track on her exquisite 2020 album, You Are. The original featured a wealth of vocal talent, including Siri Amani, Krystal Peterson, Mol Sullivan, Anna Applegate, Kate Wakefield and many others who are present in Collins’ wildly imaginative remix that took Lamb and her co-writer/co-producer Warren Harrison by surprise.

“I sent Bootsy all of the hundreds of stems we had recorded. We had so many legendary voices on there,” says Lamb. “When he sent it back, there were totally different lyrics, and I was like, ‘I don’t even remember recording this,’ and Warren was like, ‘I don’t even know how he got those.’ Then we realized we didn’t clear out the logic folder where you can delete takes you’d done, which we forgot about. Bootsy created this beautiful new version five years later with stuff we would have deleted. And actually, the lyrics are even more relevant to now, so this is the timeline jumping. I find hidden prophecies all the time, things that didn’t mean anything to me five years ago and now they’re changing my path.”

The second single is the brand new track “Since You’ve Gone,” which initially feels like an anthemic break-up torch song that touches musically on soul, jazz, art pop and gospel. Lamb notes the song goes infinitely deeper than lamenting a failed relationship.

“I wrote that for my grandmother, Viola Lamb,” she recalls. “She was one of my many nurturing energies that really made me be salt-of-the-earth with the way I create and do what I do.”

As it happens, “Since You’ve Gone” is new only because it’s making its studio debut. If you’ve seen Lamb live over the past decade and a half, you’ve probably heard it.

“That may be the song that I’ve sat on the longest before putting out a recording I thought did it justice,” says Lamb with an ever-present smile. “And with a lot of the Thursday night bandmates: Chris Robinson (guitars), Warren Harrison (strings), Nate Trammell (drums), Amanda Eldridge (bass), Anna Applegate and Tiffany Sullivan (vocals) and me on keys and vocals.”

Oddly enough, Lamb’s piano part was re-recorded note for note by Shelby Lock, who mixed the track from her Silver Moon Sound studio in Santa Cruz, California; it was discovered that Lamb’s keys had been recorded in mono. Everything else was done in Aaron Madrigal’s Tone Shoppe studio in Northside, live on the studio floor, with engineering done by Madrigal and Eric Cronstein.

“We had the band in a circle and that’s live, minus the keys,” says Lamb. “That’s total live performance energy, how we’ve performed every Thursday night, jamming for years. I knew that song had to be huge, full band. It feels like a church choir. They have such deep soul.”

The best news accompanying “Since You’ve Gone” is that it announces the arrival of Lamb’s first full album since You Are five years ago. Lamb is naturally excited about the 2026 release of the nine-track set, recorded like its initial single.

“It will also feature Siri Amani and Victoria Lekson, my harpist and best friend on every track, although she wasn’t on ‘Since You’ve Gone,'” says Lamb. “You’re going to hear lots of choir, harp, sultry electric guitars, and I’m going back to my gospel roots. Everything I’m writing is in this gospelesque/traditional R&B vibe. The album is called Hymns For My Friends. These are the songs we wrote for each other.”

Lamb will be hyperactive in the new year as she’ll continue to teach songwriting at Xavier University and give private lessons, while vigilantly scouting for talent to feature on her City Queen Sounds label (“I’m trying to showcase the best female artists that I’ve gotten to work with. And I’m sure there are female artists out there that I haven’t met, and I’d love to meet them. If anyone wants to pop into a show and introduce themselves, I would love that.”) She’s also writing the curriculum for an imminent songwriting class at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, and preparing for another fantastic jam session at MOTR Pub on Dec. 18 with the usual crew and, as advertised, several friends. That vibe has always been consistent and constant.

“We’re unlocking things. The more I meditate, the more I create and it’s just for the sake of life,” Lamb says enthusiastically. “I have so much soul, I have to give some of it away. I think the souls of things are so thick to me, it makes me even more present in moments of performing, where the spirit can just take control. I feel like I don’t even know what happened in that set, and I wouldn’t be able to play it exactly that way again.” 

Jess Lamb plays MOTR Pub on Dec. 18 at 8:30 p.m. More info: motrpub.com.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Dec. 10 print edition.

The post Jess Lamb on Spiritual Creativity, Cincinnati Roots and Her Upcoming Album ‘Hymns For My Friends’ appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.

There is an entertaining book lurking in Ryan Malott’s memories. For two decades, he was the frontman and creative spark plug for the galloping Americana outfit 500 Miles to Memphis, and he’s always been quick to credit local legend David Rhodes Brown for being the catalyst of the band’s first major evolution, with his pedal steel prowess combined with his years of band and road experience.

In the same vein, Brown’s death from lung cancer in 2022 effectively put the final stamp on 500 Miles to Memphis. Brown had already been diagnosed when 500MTM released 2021’s Hard to Love, and Malott had the sense then that their self-described best album was likely their last.

“That is the loudest and most aggressive album that we’ve done and it’s my favorite,” says Malott over beers at the Northside Tavern. “I love that album. I’m most proud of the lyrical content of it. I really feel like I hit my stride with communication. And it’s loud. And fast.”

Three years ago, at a tribute concert for Brown organized by Malott, Kelly Thomas and Brown’s widow Bobbi Jean Kayser (who herself sadly passed away back in August after her own cancer battle) at the Southgate House Revival, Malott confessed that he was contemplating stepping away from music in order to concentrate on sifting through Brown’s tape archive to identify and release his work. He did just that, creating the Sad Cowboy label and releasing a trove of Brown’s recordings, making his catalog available digitally for the first time.

“I named the label after one of my favorites of David’s songs, ‘The Saddest of Cowboys,'” says Malott. “I created the label in the beginning as a platform to release old Warsaw Falcons albums because they’d never been released digitally. I went through tons of cassette tapes and stacks of CDs, and some of them were usable and I was able to extract the audio, clean it up and remaster it. I even had a lot of reel to reel masters that I was able to transfer digitally, remix and release. Everything held up pretty well. I was able to keep him alive through that. It was like he was always there. I was having conversations with him through the music, and I was appreciating him as an artist, which I had never done before. I got a bonus year of David.”

With the cessation of the process — save for one last album slated for release in the new year — Malott felt a natural emptiness, as Brown’s absence suddenly became more palpable. Although 500MTM played a couple of reunion shows, Malott realized that his passion for the band was inextricably intertwined with Brown, and that it was time to close the book on 500 Miles to Memphis.

“We did the reunion back in June, which was a benefit for Bobbi Jean, who passed just a few weeks after, and I reunited the Warsaw Falcons and played with them,” says Malott. “It was the first time I’d been onstage with 500 Miles to Memphis in two or three years. I’m up for reunion shows, but after the tour for Hard to Love, it just felt like the right time to stop.”

Perhaps the greater realization for Malott was the amount of time he now had to spend with his family, time that had previously been slated for writing, recording, local gigging and farther flung touring. He found full-time employment and reveled in returning to the home life he had precariously balanced with his band life for so many years.

“All that time investment I was putting into music is going to my children,” says Malott. “Now that limited resource of time is for my wife and kids, where it should be. I’m very lucky.”

Even as his ardor for his own work began to wane ever so gradually, he found that his love of music in general was gaining traction. With Sad Cowboy established as a viable label, Malott sought out artists who could benefit from his wide-ranging experience, in much the same way that he had absorbed similar lessons from Brown. In addition to the Warsaw Falcons material, Malott has subsequently released works by Bandages, Get Wrecked and Veronica Grim (who recorded Malott’s “Straight to Hell,” the last song he wrote for 500MTM that they never used). The rewards of those releases have been two-fold: exposing people to Brown’s incredible talents and to mirror the experiential wisdom that Brown bestowed upon him.

“I’ll have people message me and be like, ‘Holy shit, I didn’t realize David had these records out. I had never heard this stuff before and I didn’t realize how good David was,'” says Malott. “They’ll say, ‘Thanks for filling me in on this whole Dave thing. I’m going down this rabbit hole.’ And I’m like, ‘Yes! That’s what I did!”

“Then I started thinking about how I could keep the memory of David alive even more,” Malott continued. “David funded our second album, Sunshine in a Shot Glass; he introduced me to Erwin Musper, who produced it; he gave me a place to live. So I thought, how can I pay it forward? I’m not going to let anyone live in my house, but I’m going to continue this label and selectively record bands for free and help them pursue their careers. Sometimes that means helping them write or throwing on background harmonies or playing guitar; whatever I can do to help them make the best record possible. Then I give them like a kickstart to their career, like, ‘Here’s the contacts you need: You need a publicist; you need to play these festivals,’ and just share this knowledge that I’ve amassed over the years.”

Although Malott has largely set aside his own musical aspirations after a two-decade pursuit, he’s not averse to getting back on a stage for the right offer. Enter former 500MTM guitarist Stephen Kuffner, who called Malott and asked if he would be interested in playing with him at MOTR Pub. Always prepared to help a friend, Malott responded with a semi-rousing “Sure. Why not?”

“I didn’t ask for any details,” says Malott. “I was just like, ‘What’s the date? What time do you want me to be there?’ He didn’t tell me it’s with Owls of Ohio, his new band that he’s fronting. I found that out online. As far as material, I’ve got some new stuff I’ve been messing around with but haven’t recorded yet.”

An obvious question hangs in the air after Malott has discussed his love of family life and being satisfied with what he’s accomplished with 500MTM and the Sad Cowboy label. Given the right circumstances, would he ever return to music as a career, or was the title of 500MTM’s 2010 album, We’ve Built Up to Nothing, somehow prophetic?

“There are times that I’m like, ‘Nothing is great,'” says Malott with a laugh. “I don’t have any fucking projects on my calendar and I’m fine with that. I have zero responsibilities and stress as far as music goes. Children, day job, wife, home…that is about as much as I can handle anymore. As far as music goes, I’m not really thinking about it.” 

And yet, Ryan Malott has songs that he’s been messing around with, and a studio in which to record things he hasn’t recorded yet. And he admitted that he’s inspired by the Clash, and he could start another band, and he could have another project left in the tank. Maybe, just maybe, that kind of math does itself. 

Ryan Malott performs with Owls of Ohio at MOTR Pub on Dec. 4 at 9 p.m. More info: motrpub.com.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Nov. 26 print edition.

The post Inside Ryan Malott’s Journey From 500 Miles to Memphis to Reviving David Rhodes Brown’s Catalog appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.

Ricky Nye has more juggling expertise than a train car full of Ringling Bros. clowns. While he’s prepping for a pair of Raisins reunion shows, he’s simultaneously managing the details of staging the first Blues & Boogie Piano Summit since 2017, taking place at the venerable Memorial Hall on Nov. 8.

Nye organized the first Piano Summit in 1999 with no intention of turning it into an annual event. It began as a favor for his friend and colleague Carl Sonny Leyland, who returns to the bill this year after several previous Summit appearances. Nye’s friendship with Leyland dates back to the days of the early Arches Piano Stage shows held at the Cincy Blues Fest.

“Carl Sonny Leyland flipped the switch for me regarding getting into boogie-woogie,” says Nye over lunch at the Gaslight Bar & Grill. “Carl called me to say his wife’s cousin was getting married in Indianapolis and they were coming through town and he said, ‘Is there something you could set up for us?’ We were both friends of Big Joe Duskin, so I called Joe and he said, ‘Sure.’ I secured the Southgate House, the original location, on a Tuesday night, and then I got an email from Renaud Patigny, from Brussels, a friend I met at the Arches Stage in 1997. He stayed another whole week, came to all my gigs, came to my place to hang out. He was coming through Cincinnati on the day of the Summit, so I said, ‘If I pick you up at the airport, will you come to the show and play?'”

Nye spent five weeks assembling the Summit, complete with what he admits was a primitive promotional poster. When Patigny saw the poster, he delivered an appropriately abrupt assessment.

“He said, ‘Your poster is shit,‘” Nye recalls with a laugh. “He then pulled from his suitcase a poster for a series he was doing called “Brosella Boogie Woogie”— he had sponsors, was doing this twice a year — and said to me,  ‘You can do it!'”

The following year, Nye had a poster professionally designed and got a handful of sponsors to offset costs. The biggest obstacle remained that he was the only one involved at every level of the operation.

“We had about 200-250 people,” Nye says.”The multitude of tasks just about killed me.”

By the third year, Nye’s brother Ken began assisting in handling some organizational aspects of the production, allowing Nye the opportunity to concentrate on necessary show details. Attendance went up dramatically.

In the sixth year, Nye attempted something radically different. He switched venues from Southgate House to Xavier University, with relatively disastrous results.

“I held it at Xavier because people said, ‘We want to bring our parents and our kids,'” Nye says. “I lost my ass due to low attendance, so it was back to the Southgate House. In the seventh year, it really took off.”

The last two years of the Summit were particularly harsh for external and self-inflicted reasons.

“The second to last year was the weekend before the 2016 election, and I think the public was feeling clenched,” says Nye. “Attendance was bad and I lost a lot of money. The next year, I had in mind to do a duets program which involved a little more dough; that bit it even harder. I couldn’t take the risk anymore, although I was actually thinking about making it to 20 years and then saying, ‘Thank you and good night!'”

The Summit was shuttered for 2018 and 2019, then Covid, lockdown and a bruised entertainment industry provided an alibi for the show’s absence in 2020 and 2021. Nye had largely set aside any thoughts of another Summit when he was contacted by Memorial Hall manager Joshua Steele about contributing to the venue’s Jazz at the Memo series.

“I’ve known Joshua since he was manager of the Carnegie arts center in Covington,” Nye says. Then Steele inquired about the long-dormant Boogie Summit, and Nye admitted that he was overwhelmed by the financial risk involved in the production.

“He said, ‘Let’s do it together. We’ll share the risk,'” says Nye. “To which I said, ‘Sold!’ And I will say this: The Southgate House, both locations, were excellent venues for the Boogie Summit. I’m very grateful to the late Ross Raleigh and his daughter Morella, who runs operations now.”

This year’s lineup features familiar names to fans of the Summit. Joining Nye on the bill are the aforementioned Leyland, formerly from Southampton, England, and now a California resident, local blues prodigy Ben Levin and husband-and-wife duo Ethan Leinwand and Valerie Kirchoff under the banner of the St. Louis Steady Grinders. 

“Ethan specializes in barrelhouse, which is an intricate style. He’s an evangelist for this stuff,” says Nye. “He and his wife, Valerie, have this duo, and it’s ’20s and ’30s blues. It’s like stepping into a time machine. Having Ben on the bill is logical: a former student and current colleague, he’s 26 years old now and has become known worldwide as a leader on the bandstand and in the field of blues piano. Carl took part in the first Summit and several subsequent ones and has been a major influence for me. He’s extremely well-versed; along with traditional boogie-woogie, he plays ragtime, rockabilly, Western swing, traditional jazz and blues.”

The band that will accompany the players consists of drummer Josiah Wolf, upright bassist Matt McCoy and tenor/baritone saxophonist Eli Gonzalez, all of whom have earned Nye’s deep respect and effusive praise. The format for the Summit will be the first two pianists, then an intermission, then the next two pianists (some solo, some with the band) followed by the grand finale featuring all four pianists.

“The first two pianists will duet with the last two, so people will get that flavor and see two pianists interacting with this music,” says Nye. “The show is very entertaining. It’s not a clinic; it’s all about having a good time.”

Nye’s knowledge of the history and evolution of boogie-woogie and its adjacent subgenres and related but distinctly different styles is professorial and his passion is boundless. He can wax eloquent on progenitors like Albert Ammons, Meade “Lux” Lewis and Jimmy Yancey, and yet humbly sees the role of himself and his colleagues in that lineage. But Nye knows that history is only part of the equation. The Summit is a way for the past to be translated and reconfigured for the future.

“My motivation is that, for some people, I’m their only glimpse into this way of playing piano,” says Nye. “It’s a big, wide world. I’m a little sliver of the pie, so if you think I’m good, check out my friends. You’ll see some very exceptional folks.”

Nye’s goal has always been to find the balance between honoring the past and shaping the future, and this new collaboration with Memorial Hall could energize him into continuing his involvement with The Blues & Boogie Summit well past its 20th anniversary.

“Sometimes people are fed something called “boogie-woogie,” but it’s not,” says Nye. “People that play in any style have to pay respect to tradition. You learn from the masters and then, through time, you find your voice. To find your voice is everything. Style is king. That’s the answer. That’s where you want to be.”

The Return of the Blues & Boogie Piano Summit takes place on Nov. 8 at 8 p.m. at Memorial Hall. More info: memorialhallotr.com.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Oct. 29 print edition.

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There are several dichotomies that characterize Cincinnati singer/songwriter Maurice Mattei’s new album, Never Die Ever Again, the third installment in his de facto man-with-a-guitar trilogy. Mattei’s writing process was comfortably consistent and yet distinctly different; his songs are completely contemporary yet presented in a design format literally borrowed from the 1960s, and he has eschewed his avowed love of odd numbers by offering an even dozen songs on Never Die Ever Again.

“I was going to include a hidden track, but decided not to because I wanted to keep it like an old country or pop album to fit with the cover,” says Mattei over Cokes on the patio of Poppy’s in Cheviot. “So it’s six songs a side and that’s it.”

As noted, the design aesthetic of Never Die Ever Again isn’t just a homage to the ’60s style guide for album covers, it’s a dead lift. The front cover is adapted from the actual artwork from John Gary’s 1965 release When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, and the back cover design comes from one of Mattei’s personal favorites, the George Jones/Melba Montgomery debut duet album, 1963’s Singing What’s in Our Hearts. Both albums were acquired during Mattei’s crate-digging expeditions at the West Side St. Vincent De Paul store.

“I’m fascinated by the covers in the ’60s, before they got all arty,” says Mattei, also a photographer and designer by trade. “I found the John Gary album and bought it for the cover, then I Photoshopped my head on him. I Photoshopped out his type and put in mine, but in the same style — Helvetica and titles on the side. The back didn’t fit right so I used the back of the George Jones/Melba Montgomery album. They look great together, and I kept it weathered so it looks like it came out of a secondhand store.”

“Weathered” is a good adjective for Mattei’s songs. His characters are careworn and weary, victims of bad luck, bad choices or a combination of both. His spare acoustic guitar accompaniment — particularly on his last four solo albums; 2017’s Jealous Wreck, 2019’s Velvet Lined Room, 2023’s double set Jungalingle and Never Die Ever Again — serves to heighten the atmosphere. Mattei has devised an apt description for the songwriting style that has driven most, if not all, of his band and solo releases.

“You have method acting, where the actor inhabits the character, like Daniel Day Lewis or Brando,” says Mattei. “Well, this is method songwriting, in the sense that I get into that character’s persona and write as that character. ‘A Week and a Day’ is a classic case. I’m not really that person. I try to inhabit what that person does. It’s touching, in a way. You see that person’s whole life in three verses.”

“A Week and a Day” is among many high points on Never Die Ever Again. The track exemplifies Mattei’s best qualities — deft acoustic guitar work and his irresistible lyrical gift, which can be, at turns, hilarious (he works a Swisher Sweets reference into “Home Wrecker”) or heartbreaking. “A Week and a Day” examines a man who is addicted to the front row at strip clubs, who self-describes his problem as having “a head for figures.” And when he finds he can’t stay away even with a preacher’s help, he says, “Found a club in the yellow pages/Full’a workin’ girls dancing in cages.”

If Never Die Ever Again is the final arc in a trilogy (Jealous Wreck also features just Mattei and an acoustic guitar, but is exempt since it was studio recorded with producer Mike Tittel; the last three were home recorded by Mattei and his son Alex), Mattei sees clear differences in each similarly constructed works. He previously noted that Velvet Lined Room had been a little lighter, while Jungalingle, which was massaged and shaped during the Covid lockdown, was a good deal darker, so Never Die Ever Again strikes a balance between its predecessors.

“I think this is kind of a black comedy,” Mattei says with a laugh. “It’s got funny things in it, but there’s some darkness. ‘A Week and a Day’ is a funny song, but it’s dark because this guy just can’t resist going to strip clubs. And ‘Hang a Right’ was a last-minute addition. I wasn’t sold on it and I wasn’t going to put it on, but I thought, ‘Well, I do need a bit of an uptempo number here,’ so I threw it in there. I do like the story and the rhyme scheme, and I think it fits the album really well.”

It’s always been easy to draw a line between Mattei and Bob Dylan. Mattei understands there are answers contained in a blowing wind, and sometimes twists of fate are simple, but their consequences are often fiendishly complex. With Never Die Ever Again, Mattei has found another gear, combining his inherent musicology with Van Dyke Parks aplomb, and sharpening his lyrical focus with Randy Newman’s sardonic whetstone.

“It has that edge to it, although it’s nothing I could chart out,” says Mattei. “I have a lot of Randy Newman records, and I like his stories and his characters.”

The shift in Mattei’s writing process may be one of the clearest differences in Never Die Ever Again. Adhering to his standard two-to-three-month writing period, there was an added wrinkle when he began experiencing arthritic pain in his hands that limited his guitar playing.

“I sat on the songs for a while this time around, more than I usually do,” Mattei notes. “Part of that was because I couldn’t play some of them like I could or should, especially for recording. It’s all acoustic, so you can’t hide. So I had to wait until I could pull it off, and I was still struggling a little but it was good because it actually got me to listen to the songs more. Writing is a little strange. You write a song but then you have to learn it in a way, and sometimes it takes on various forms that you didn’t expect. If you don’t sit on it for a while, you’ll just perform it the way you initially wrote it, and that’s not always good.”

Another shift in Mattei’s writing process came with the album’s final track, “Thankful.”

“That was actually a poem I wrote a year or two ago,” Mattei recalls. “I really liked it so I added music to it, which I never do. I start with a title, and it all happens simultaneously. I had to add a couple of verses because it was too short, but I really like the tune. It’s a nice closer.”

If there’s any doubt that Mattei can draw inspiration from just about any source, consider the story of how he came up with the album’s title.

“I don’t know exactly how this started, but my son and I were trying to think of a new James Bond movie title,” Mattei says. “And I said, ‘What about Never Die Ever Again?’ This was like three years ago. I’ve had that lying around and I thought, ‘I’ve got to have an album that’s called that.’ It’s kind of pertinent because some of the songs deal with death. It kind of makes sense.”

Never Die Ever Again is available at Shake It Records, Everybody’s Records and mmattei.com. Mattei will continue celebrating the album’s release at Arnold’s Bar & Grill on Saturday, Oct. 25.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Oct. 15 print edition.

The post Live and Let Die: Inside the Method and Madness of Maurice Mattei’s New Album appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.

In 1999, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Raul Pacheco, guitarist/ founding member of Latino rock outfit Ozomatli. Named for the Aztec god of dance, fire and music, Ozomatli was a virtual melting pot of musical style, an unconventional hybrid of every conceivable subset of Latino music (cumbia, norteno, merengue, salsa) as well as ska, funk, reggae, jazz, hip-hop and punk, all presented with the panache of a savvy rock band.

The band was forged in the crucible of activism; the members met while fighting to form a labor union for disenfranchised workers and discovered their musical talent and commonalities in the process.

After their 1995 formation, Ozomatli quickly became known for their frenetic live performances, earning rabid fans in and around Los Angeles. Fledgling indie label Almo Sounds signed them and released their eponymous 1998 debut album. Their subsequent 1999 tour stopped in Cincinnati, leading to a CityBeat assignment and my conversation with Pacheco.

One of Pacheco’s many stories was his account of Ozomatli’s then-recent opening for Santana, and how Carlos Santana sought them out backstage after his set. The world-famous guitarist was intent on sharing wisdom with his young openers, telling them to work on their interpersonal relationships so that they would know they could trust and rely on each other going forward.

The six founding members of Ozomatli remain the band’s heart and soul, and they’re now in the midst of their 30th anniversary tour. It would seem Santana knows a thing or two about a thing or two.

“That’s probably the most important, because you’re individuals and everyone is different,” says Pacheco of Santana’s advice. “Everyone has desires and you have to be open to how those desires are being met. We’ve learned how to do that as best as we could and it’s allowed us to keep it together for this long.”

Ozomatli’s absolute dedication to activism and the pursuit of equality has been woven into the fabric of the band from the start. That passion was recognized 20 years ago when the U.S. State Department named Ozomatli official Cultural Ambassadors, sending them on global tours to promote unity and acceptance, experiences as impactful on the band as it has been on their multinational audiences. When Pacheco reflects on the band’s numerous musical and political accomplishments — their Wikipedia page is a scrolling list of notable benchmarks — he cites the heart of Ozomatli’s motivation as his personal pride point.

“I think it’s just playing to huge crowds who don’t know us and rocking the shit out of it,” says Pacheco. “Connecting with strangers who don’t even speak our language in some part of the world where we’ve never been. That’s very unique, special and fun, and it’s a testament to the power of music. You show up and it’s like, ‘I’ve never heard this band. I love them!’ That’s something to be proud of, just basic human connection with strangers. I’m really lucky that I have the ability to do that, and I’m really happy that there are people who are open to not knowing what’s about to happen and be like, ‘All right, lay it on me.’ That spirit of fearlessness, on both sides, is really important.”

Given Ozomatli’s reputation in L.A. — the city once declared April 23 as Ozomatli Day — it’s no surprise that the current immigration policies being enforced in California are of particular concern to the band. Their specific focus is the disinformation being disseminated and the potential escalation that could result.

“I have places in New Mexico and Los Angeles. I grew up in Los Angeles, and I’m mainly there,” says Pacheco. “Because of social media and how they portray it, and the level of violence that’s happening when people resist, it’s on every street corner. It’s not. It’s in a very small section of Los Angeles. The thing is, they’re rounding up people without questions and it’s disturbing. I’m afraid that people on both sides are going to start shooting at each other, and that’s an excuse for the government to become more militarized. And there’s an element of someone not identifying themselves, and people having to defend themselves. It’s a weird game, and that’s scary because innocent people could get hurt. None of us want to go that route.”

Ozomatli’s emphasis on social activism and touring constantly to spread their messages has had the unintended consequence of limiting the band’s studio efforts. Although they’ve only released eight studio albums in their 30-year history, they have all been powerful musical statements. Thankfully, new Ozomatli music is on the horizon; the new single “Red Line,” a reference to the underground rapid transit track running between North Hollywood and downtown, was released in late July (another new track drops soon). Unsurprisingly, there’s a message in “Red Line.”

“It’s the idea of communities that are separated and how public transportation is this defining thing for people,” says Pacheco. “If you have money, you tend not to take it, especially in L.A., which is a very car-centric culture. And it’s not very efficient. It’s better than it has been, but working people need that part of their lives to be easier. A person who jumps on the bus, then takes a train to the other side of town, does their work and goes home, that’s a real commitment. There’s dignity in choosing that because that’s what you need to do to provide for your family and yourself. The chorus — ‘Don’t take the Red Line’ — is the outsider looking in, but we’re also speaking from the place of the insider, like, ‘If you don’t come, it’s OK. We don’t need your approval for the choices we make to survive.’ It’s touching on all these elements of classism, and I think that will always exist at some levels.”

Pacheco finds that, after 30 years of trying to effect change in a world that desperately needs it, most situations boil down to a singular cause.

“There are people who like sharing, and people who don’t,” he says simply. “That’s been around since the beginning of time. We’re on the part of sharing because that’s how we grew up and how we got by. It’s not unnatural for us to be on that side of the fence, so to speak, and to bring light to those kinds of issues. We’re seeing a lot of that in this country right now, but it happened in the late ’60s, the ’70s and at different times in the ’80s. There’s always been moments of trying to solve issues in a way that some people would say is cruel and other people would say, ‘It’s about time.’ We’ve always been on the side of the have-nots, and the perspective of our songs aligns with that side.”

Returning to our original interview, Pacheco recalled how Santana personally introduced Ozomatli to his audience, where he called the band “the future of music.” With 30 years in the rearview mirror, and hundreds of accomplishments notched and accolades bestowed, does Ozomatli feel like they’ve lived up to Santana’s sweeping prophecy?

“He was referencing the egalitarian mix of acknowledging the beauty and admiration of music and its traditions all over the world,” says Pacheco. “I think we’ve lived up to that tradition, that he is a big part of, and that many bands all over the world are a part of. I love North African music, and the transference of cultural music from that region that came to America with slaves and some of it turned into blues and it fueled American music, then it went back to them in a different form. We’re always borrowing; there’s always layers on top of one another. You see it in food, in music, in language, and it’s normal. It’s been going on forever. This is how cultures are made, transformed, grow and change. This sense of being at the center was what Santana was referring to because, in his mind, the center is all of us. We’re in a long line of bands that have done that and will continue to do that.”

Ozomatli plays the Ludlow Garage on Aug. 24 at 7:30 p.m. More info: ludlowgaragecincinnati.com.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Aug. 6 print edition.

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Owen Lee was already a rock star when he accepted his new position as official keyboardist for Cincinnati stoner/psych quartet Electric Citizen, their first actual membership addition in the band’s history. Oddly enough, Lee’s stardom was not within the rock realm.

Since 1996, Lee has been the principal bassist for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO); his CSO bio notes that his favorite composers are Mozart, Brahms, Bruckner and Brahms, and his current playlist includes Grand Funk Railroad, Hawkwind and Motorhead. Talk about two sides of a coin.

Born and raised in Santa Monica, California, Lee’s early rock influences stemmed from the rich punk and metal scene that permeated the Golden State in the ’80s. Somehow, he dodged the siren’s call to perform that music, preferring to maintain his strictly fan status and choosing instead to focus on his equally powerful interest in classical music, which resulted in his bachelor’s degree in double bass performance from the University of Southern California. Lee also minored in Russian literature. Is there such a thing as a three-sided coin?

After graduation, Lee headed to Texas for a position with the prestigious Houston Symphony. While he was content in Houston, he kept his ear to the ground for other opportunities around the country.

“Since I was in my early twenties when I got into the Houston Symphony, I still checked the American Federation of Musicians’ monthly newsletter to see if there were any possible better jobs,” says Lee. “I knew I had to keep taking auditions when I was still young and single because auditions get harder when family and other life responsibilities start coming into the picture. So in 1995 when the CSO announced their principal bass vacancy, I sent in my resume. Orchestra auditions are extremely competitive, especially for top orchestras like Cincinnati and Houston and particularly for a principal position. When I auditioned for the CSO I was competing against over one hundred other candidates who applied for the one open spot.”

Despite long odds, Lee’s talent, passion and determination won the day; next year, he’ll celebrate his 30th anniversary with the CSO.

“It’s a dream job!” says Lee. “I’ve been here 29 years and I still wonder why I was handed the winning lottery ticket because there are so many great bass players out there.”

Across those three decades, Lee has naturally accumulated a memory attic of treasured remembrances.

“Playing Strauss’ Alpine Symphony, conducted by our then Music Director Louis Langrée, is one concert that really sticks out in my mind out of hundreds of wonderful concerts I’ve played with the CSO,” Lee notes. “The many tours we’ve taken to Europe, Asia and Carnegie Hall also stand out. I’ve also been the featured soloist on a number of programs so I’m grateful for those experiences.” 

Another prominent bullet point on Lee’s musical resume is his position as adjunct associate professor at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. Is Lee’s coin actually a cube?

“That is one of the great joys in my musical life, along with the CSO and Electric Citizen,” says Lee with no small amount of pride. “Three of my former CCM students are now members of the CSO, including the orchestra’s associate principal and assistant principal bassists. Other former students of mine are in orchestras across the USA, Asia, and one in Norway.”

The interesting facet to Lee’s dual membership with the CSO and now Electric Citizen is his perspective on the very different roles he performs in both entities and how he sees the commonalities rather than the disparities between the two. This is evident when he talks about conversations he’s had with Electric Citizen guitarist/songwriter/braintrust Ross Dolan.

“As a classical musician, the work ethic of all my Electric Citizen friends is incredibly impressive,” says Lee. “It reminds me of the wonderful classical musicians I’ve made a living playing with. We have this stereotype of a hard working person living this monastic life, but I see that same work ethic even though we’re coming from very different genres.

“I don’t know how much Ross is joking about this, but he’ll say, ‘I’m a nothing musician, you have all this training, you’ve made it in one of the top orchestras.’  And I always say, ‘Just because you’re a chef trained at the Cordon Bleu doesn’t necessarily make you a great cook.’ A lot of people know how to cook and never went to the Cordon Bleu or the Culinary Institute of America. When you create something, whether it’s a meal or visual art or music, you’re using your taste and judgment. Ross and I have a lot of very philosophical conversations, and I think he says these things tongue-in-cheek, and I say, ‘Whether you’re trained or not, you have taste and judgment and the discipline, the work ethic and the standards.'”

At the same time, the irony of Lee’s double musical life is not lost on him. The reverence he displays for the great composers of history and the amazing musicians who interpret their compositions hundreds of years later is exactly the same reverence he feels for the numerous metal bands he idolizes, like the band who has hired him as their permanent keyboardist after nearly six years of being a utility player on an as-needed basis.

“I never thought I’d be a musician in the stoner/psychedelic rock scene, especially in one of that genre’s respected bands like Electric Citizen,” he says with genuine humility. “I would have been happy to just continue going to their shows, drinking beer and having a good time but somehow I ended up friends with them and, after that, somehow winding up as their keyboard player. Life takes interesting turns.”

That may be the understatement of the century. From the other end of the telescope, Electric Citizen lead vocalist Laura Dolan has a unique take on Lee’s orbit in the band’s universe.

“We were playing local shows around 2014, and Owen was coming to our shows and we were like, ‘Who is this guy?'” she recalls. “He was this really interesting guy who knew a lot about music, and we became friends. Suddenly we find out he’s the principal bassist of the Cincinnati Symphony, and we’re like, ‘What are you doing, coming to our shady rock shows? We’re not worthy!’ But he was raised in California in the prime of rock, so he was a metalhead before he was a classical musician, and he was our friend before he joined the band. We’ll have him as long as he’s willing. And we, as fans, get to go to the CSO all the time and fanboy him throughout. Sometimes he’ll throw us the metal hand from the stage.”

To learn more about Lee, visit cincinnatisymphony.org. 

The post Cincinnati Symphony’s Principal Bassist Finds New Gig with Electric Citizen appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.

Change and love may well be the overarching themes in the current career cycle of Electric Citizen. The two concepts are ironically dichotomous; both are malleable and potentially capricious, and yet they represent life’s most reliable constants.

In the wake of the aptly titled EC4, Electric Citizen’s fourth album and first new material in seven years, lead vocalist/lyricist Laura Dolan has considered the impact of those elements on her psych/metal band’s journey.

“This genre, this music, what we do, we’re probably never going to make a real living at this,” she says over coffee at Sitwell’s. “We’ll get free tickets to amazing experiences across the U.S. and Europe and connect with all these like minds, our fans and other fans that are right there with us. When you strip all that away, you have to enjoy this, and we do. We started it for fun, and we’re still having fun.”

EC4 represents significant band changes. Although the original quartet remains intact — Dolan on lead vocals, husband/primary songwriter Ross Dolan on guitar and the exquisitely thunderous rhythm section of bassist Nick Vogelpohl and drummer Nate Wagner — the new album introduces Owen Lee as a contributing member. Lee became a utility keyboardist in 2019, playing local and out-of-town gigs that accommodated his day job as principal bassist for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

“It’s funny where life takes you,” says Lee. “I never imagined I’d be in a real rock band. I never imagined I’d be friends with them, much less playing in the band, helping write songs and playing on an album.”

Lee discovered Electric Citizen through CityBeat and became a constant presence at their shows. He eventually developed a friendship with the band, particularly with Vogelpohl because of the obvious bass connection. Accordingly, Vogelpohl asked Lee to play at his wedding.

“Nick asked me to play background music as people were coming in,” Lee recalls. “When I saw Ross and Laura, I started playing Electric Citizen.”

“We’re like, ‘Is that “Shallow Water”?’ It was beautifully transcribed,” says Laura Dolan. “Suddenly, our song could become a classical song. That’s why we wanted Owen’s double bass on (EC4‘s) ‘Tuning Tree.'”

Even with Lee’s brilliant “Shallow Water” rendition, he still had to audition to join the Electric Citizen clubhouse.

“That’s Ross,” Laura Dolan says, laughing.

“He’s a very good gatekeeper, in the most elevated, complimentary way,” Lee notes. “He’s keeping the standards. I respect that.”

The band had booked a weekend Wisconsin show and just lost their keyboardist. They’d already invited Lee to accompany them to man the merch table, and he took the opportunity to throw his hat in the ring.

“I said, ‘Would you want me to play keyboards?’ Ross said, ‘Yeah, okay, come to practice,'” says Lee. “I busted my butt. I worked as hard as I’ve worked for anything in my life, and I only had 48 hours to get it together. I played through the songs until I knew them cold. That first practice, they were like, ‘Wow, killing it!'”

EC4 is also Electric Citizen’s debut for Heavy Psych Sounds, the California label with a formidable metal roster. With the band’s three-album RidingEasy deal concluded, the Dolans began the new label search.

“Ross and I make these decisions together. We considered other labels but Heavy Psych Sounds was perfectly aligned with what we’re doing,” says Laura Dolan. “They’re the perfect medium of not needing too much from us.”

“I kind of lost it when I found out,” says Lee of the HPS contract. “I was like, ‘Pinch me!’ Bands I’ve loved for years are on there: Dead Meadow, Pentagram, Kylesa. We’re on the label with all my heroes.”

Electric Citizen intended to alter their sound and their approach to achieving it, which they did to spectacular effect. EC4 displays the band’s patented range of delicacy and density with a newfound sense of depth and integration as their two extremes are woven into a single blistering tapestry. Case in point: the aforementioned “Tuning Tree,” which began as a simple jam between Lee and Ross Dolan.

“Ross had the skeleton of the song and I played around with it. We were recording the whole thing,” says Lee. “We kind of forgot about it until it was time to record. I didn’t even remember what I did that he liked. It had been years earlier. I was playing like 5% of what I’d played in the moment, and Ross was like, ‘No, no, it was this,’ and he played it back.”

“Ross’ iPhone recording ended up being the final version,” adds Laura Dolan. “I said, ‘Don’t change a thing. I’ll find a way to write around it.’ Owen said it was the first time he’d composed anything on the double bass.”

“Because a symphony orchestra is really just a giant cover band,” says Lee.

The key to Electric Citizen’s new sonic direction was ultimately a shift away from the analog mastery of local genius Brian Olive, who produced the band’s first three albums, 2014’s Sateen, 2016’s Higher Time and 2018’s Helltown. Early on, the Dolans said they’d be happy to have Olive produce their entire catalog, but their desire to find another gear for EC4 inspired them to enlist the assistance of equally gifted studio magicians Mike Montgomery and John Hoffman.

“Ross consciously went into this saying, ‘I want something a little more mellow and a lot more layered,'” says Laura Dolan. “We love Brian and we always will. The shift was literally the analog-to-digital decision and wanting to explore those options. We wanted the freedom to layer, and to edit those layers back if they were competing. The patience to layer as much as we needed, that was Mike. For the first time since Sateen, we have acoustic guitar and bass layers, and the revelation with EC4 is that those sit in the mix in a way that fills the space without competing. It’s a really beautiful thing.”

Dolan and Lee’s most potent point while discussing EC4‘s success is the clear vision and relentless pursuit of quality embodied by Ross Dolan’s talent and work ethic. Lee notes that with the album essentially wrapped, the guitarist and chief songwriter scrapped three songs that he felt didn’t quite measure up.

“I admire that in Ross. I try to use that practice myself,” says Laura Dolan. “I’ll go through a few sets of lyrics and melodies that don’t quite click. There’s such a gift in standing back from your own art and saying, ‘That’s not it.’ If you’re obsessed with everything you do, you’ll never have the perspective to elevate it. Ross does that very well. He writes and plays guitar on everything, and has since he was 15 years old. He doesn’t want to replicate.”

Time also looms large in EC4‘s creation. The band wasn’t compelled to produce an album in a proscribed period, which allowed them the luxury of doing exactly what they wanted, regardless of a clock or calendar.

“The only pressure to create music that you put out into the world is that it will remain forever,” says Laura Dolan. “If it’s not what you want it to be, keep working until it is. That’s the approach we took. We feel pretty well embraced with the news of this album and tour. It’s always been a project of friends writing music they love, taking sounds of the past and pushing them into the future. Seven years went by in the blink of an eye.”

The long gap between albums was clearly not intentional. Covid erased Electric Citizen’s European touring cycle, while EC4‘s subsequent delays were expanded by the band’s collective full-time job responsibilities, the birth of Vogelpohl’s first child and, most seriously, Laura Dolan’s melanoma diagnosis.

“I dealt with that on the heels of Covid,” Laura Dolan recalls. “I caught it early and I’m completely fine, so if there’s a message to get out to the world, it’s to get your skin checked. That’s what saved my life.”

That observation leads inexorably to Electric Citizen’s very existence. Diligence saves your life, and love makes that life worth living. Love kept the band together through dark, troubling times, so when Laura Dolan says she loves the people they’ve worked with, the labels that released their music, the fans that support them and the day jobs that pay the bills, it’s an authentic expression of real emotion.

“We’re friends first. We love each other,” says Laura Dolan. “Between my delays, production delays and Covid, we never stopped getting together as a band. In fact, we made a side project (Siss) through it all. There’s something about being able to divide this from the necessities that almost makes it more enjoyable, then we get to toe-dip into these amazing experiences. If I designed this in some conscious way, maybe that would be exactly how I would.”

To learn more about Electric Citizen and to listen to EC4, visit electriccitizenband.com.

This story is featured in CityBeat’s July 23 print edition.

The post Cincinnati Band Electric Citizen Goes Classical and Expansive on New Album ‘EC4’ appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.

For the past decade and a half, Jeremy Harrison’s stock in trade, first with Banderas and then Honeyspiders, has been a tumultuous musical attack where volume was a palpable member of the band. Fans of Harrison’s amps-to-11 and Jagger swagger approach might find the relative quietude of his debut solo album, Songs of Love and Blight, somewhat disarming, but repeated listenings will reveal that Harrison’s intended impact is achieved with emotion and passion rather than sheer volume.

That being said, the album’s opening track, “Flower Weaver,” begins with a swirling cacophony of sound and fury that is quickly accompanied by a plucked acoustic guitar and Harrison’s sonorous vocals, sounding like a mournful dirge sung from the bottom of a well. “A Mouth Filled with Sky/A Wound Filled with Clouds” follows a similar blueprint, with a noisily amorphous introduction that suggests Brian Eno conducting an undulating swarm of bees, which gives way to an added folky guitar epilogue, successfully creating a forcefully ambient campfire song. “Crook of Rain” finds Harrison channeling the likes of Nick Cave, Iggy Pop and the late Mark Lanegan at the microphone, with a soundscape that could have been a demo for an Afghan Whigs/The National collaboration. The song abruptly cuts off at two-and-a-half minutes; it might have been nice to hear it meander for an equal amount of time, but Harrison was intent on serving brevity with his expansiveness.

The wonder of Songs of Love and Blight is the album’s sonic diversity which, like many works released in the past five years, was crafted during the relative vacuum of the Covid quarantine. Written and recorded in the seclusion of Harrison’s home studio, the album boasts funereal Gothic structures (“Panoptica”), dark 16 Horsepower-tinged Americana (“Aster,” “Strange Familiars, “The Jewel in the Well”), and aggressively dark wave hymnal ambience (“Chased Paths,” “Banishment Song”). 

The sonic diversity of Songs of Love and Blight is a product of Harrison’s lo-fi bedroom recording and his willingness to allow the songs themselves to dictate their direction. He also consciously avoided the hard rock tropes that have successfully steered his band incarnations in favor of the liberating experimentalism of his solo persona, mixing hallucinatory psychedelic folk with electronic drone and texturally gripping sound collage. Because of its unique origin story, the compelling and shiver-inducing Songs of Love and Blight may never be exactly replicated, but Jeremy Harrison has effectively proven his capabilities as a solo artist, and his next sonic excursion could easily be more exciting than his pioneering debut.

Listen to Songs of Love and Blight on Bandcamp. 

The post From Amps to Atmosphere: Jeremy Harrison’s Quiet Reinvention appeared first on Cincinnati CityBeat.