Author: David Menconi
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #8 March-April 1997
Buick MacKane – The Pawn Shop Years
The most memorable True Believers performance I ever witnessed was on a hot June night 12 years ago at the fabled Continental Club in Austin, Texas — a show that concluded with the Believers, Doctors’ Mob and Scratch Acid all onstage together in varying states of sobriety slogging through Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #7 Jan-Feb 1997
Backsliders – Fallen angels with grizzled faces
The music scene around Raleigh and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is about as balkanized as…well, the former Yugoslavia. You’ve got your punk rock kids, technique fetishists, frat-party bands, heavy metal bands, pop bands. Most all of them keep to themselves in their respective, mutually exclusive corners, which goes for the bands as well as audiences. [...]
Town and Country - Shorter Artist Feature from Issue #2 Winter 1995
Jolene – Ardently pursuing their Hee-Haw memories
Talking about middle-class white kids and how they first got into music, producer Jim Dickinson once said, “Everybody learned it from the yardman.” Well, not quite everybody. “My first experience with country music was actually watching ‘Hee Haw’ when I was a kid,” admits Dave Burris, guitarist for the North Carolina country-rock band Jolene. “After [...]
Town and Country - Shorter Artist Feature from Issue #6 Nov-Dec 1996
Pinetops – Perfecting the art of perseverance
According to Billboard magazine, 29,429 albums were released in 1995. Alas, none of them were by Jeffrey Dean Foster’s band, the Pinetops. That also goes for this year, every other year, and every other band Foster has ever been in. While he’s been close, he still has yet to have an album out that he [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #5 Sept-Oct 1996
Chris Hillman & Herb Pedersen – Bakersfield Bound
Bakersfield Bound breaks no new ground, forges no new connections, invents no new styles, makes no bold statements. It is of little sociological, political or even cultural importance. In fact, it has no reason to exist except for the best possible reason of all: It’s really, really good. Between the Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers, Manassas [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #5 Sept-Oct 1996
Brian Paulson – Been there, done that
If you’re reading this magazine, you almost certainly own at least one album Brian Paulson has produced. He’s been pretty hard to avoid in ’90s alternative country circles, and the genre is unimaginable without such Paulson-produced landmarks as Uncle Tupelo’s Anodyne, Son Volt’s Trace or Wilco’s A.M., not to mention Joe Henry’s Short Man’s Room [...]
Screen Door - Last Page Essay from Issue #4 Summer 1996
Beatle Bob – A Dancin’ Fool
If you don’t know Beatle Bob, you just don’t get out enough. Lord knows, HE does, and he’s probably even been to a show in your town in the not-too-distant past. According to his personal log, Beatle Bob went to 407 shows in 1995, the majority in his hometown of St. Louis. But he also [...]
Miked - Live Reviews from Issue #3 Spring 1996
Old 97′s / Freight Whaler / Two Dollar Pistols – The Brewery (Raleigh, N.C.)
Nowadays, it seems almost every musician in the incestuous Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle music scene moonlights in at least one country band. Two of the Triangle’s better side-project bands opened this show for Dallas’ Old 97′s, who were as charming as ever (imagine an alternate version of the movie “Revenge of the Nerds”, in which the [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #3 Spring 1996
George Huntley – Brain Junk
Don’t know why, but I always expect lead guitarists to want to crank the volume and rock loudly when they strike out on their own. Yet here we have the first solo album from George Huntley (the literal and figurative George H. figure in Raleigh, N.C., collegiate pop-rockers the Connells), and the surprise is that [...]
Town and Country - Shorter Artist Feature from Issue #1 Fall 1995
Whiskeytown – A short interview’s journey into Hell
I have to tell you about the bizarre thing that happened while I was talking to Ryan Adams for this story. It was at a monthly show called the Songwriters Alliance Series at the Berkeley Cafe. A guy here by the name of Jeff Hart puts it on and invites people from local bands to [...]
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