Pokey LaFarge at Rams Head On Stage in Annapolis All shows are 21+
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refunds. Refunds are only available for cancelled shows. Pokey LaFarge
“The man singing these songs isn’t exactly the same man who wrote
them,” says Pokey LaFarge of Rock Bottom Rhapsody, his eighth and
latest studio release. “This album is about the story of who I used
to be.” In early 2018, LaFarge — searching for the sort of
artistic freedom and inspiration he wasn’t finding in the Midwest
— relocated from his longtime home base of St. Louis, Missouri, to
Los Angeles, California. New songs came quickly to LaFarge in his new
environment, but new temptations soon found him, as well. Though he
declines to get into specifics, LaFarge admits that he experienced a
significant “fall from grace” during the last months of 2018.
“Things sort of started to unravel in my mind,” he recalls. “I
was letting evil spirits and demons rule me, and I came into certain
agreements with them, and it took me down. I was giving too much power
to the darkness, and I got in too deep, and I made some bad decisions.
The reality of the situation is that I hit the closest to rock bottom
that I ever had, and I’ve definitely had some hardships in my
life.” While songs like “Fuck Me Up,” “End of My Rope,”
“Fallen Angel” and “Ain’t Comin Home” were all written
before LaFarge’s life went into a downward spiral, their lyrics
definitely speak of a soul in crisis — even though their author
himself wasn’t fully aware of it at the time. “It’s a case of me
writing the story and writing the song, and then unfortunately living
it,” he reflects. “The last three, four years have just been the
hardest that I can remember. I’d played the Ryman, I was selling
theaters and clubs out all over the world, I got to travel the world,
I was making a living, I got to buy a house; I could have whatever
food and booze I wanted at any time, women… but I was unhappiest
I’d ever been, because I don’t think I really believed that I
deserved my success, even though I worked so hard to get everything I
had. And I was going towards the darkness. I was longing for death
more than I was longing for life — not necessarily literally longing
for actual death, but destruction definitely ensued; self-sabotage and
self-destruction definitely happened.” But shortly before the
recording of Rock Bottom Rhapsody began, LaFarge experienced a
spiritual awakening — and the faith he re-embraced in his hour of
darkness helped to buoy him through the making of the album. “I
wrote this record before the fall from grace, and then it was recorded
after the fall from grace. So you see how that could be kind of
odd,” he says. “What I was searching for was peace and humility in
the aftermath of the carnage, of things I had wrecked, and —
seemingly at the time — completely destroyed. I was just, like,
trying to survive; I had to fight every time to get up to that
microphone and just sing. It was kind of like a last stand, like the
Alamo, or something. I was like, ‘Man, I’ve gotta get this out,
and then I’m gone. This could be it.’ I didn’t know if I was
gonna kill myself, or if I was going to pack up my things and walk
away and disappear… or if this was going to lead to some sort of
personal redemption through my reborn faith, and the pursuit of
enlightenment and wisdom and peace and all those things that God can
bring into one’s life, if we just stay the heck out of the way.”
Though he was struggling for spiritual equilibrium at the time,
LaFarge at least had some rock-solid musical support to lean on.
Recorded primarily at Reliable Recorders on Chicago’s Northwest
side, Rock Bottom Rhapsody was produced by LaFarge’s friend and
collaborator Chris Seefried (who also co-wrote several of the
album’s tracks), and features the considerable talents of guitarist
Joel Paterson, keyboardist Scott Ligon, upright/electric bassist Jimmy
Sutton, and drummer Alex Hall (who also engineered the record), with
additional vocal harmonies added by Ligon and Casey McDonough.
“It’s pretty much the same guys as I had done [2015’s] Something
in the Water with, and the same studio where I’d recorded it, so
there was definitely some familiarity and comradery there,” says
LaFarge. “I would put those guys up against any Nashville band, any
L.A. or Austin band. They’re just class. And if you want to record
with them, you kinda got to go to them — even if it means leaving
the perennial sun of Los Angeles for the colder-than-Mars tundra of
Chicago, with the polar vortex blowing through.” Though full of
soulful life, tracks like “Bluebird,” “Storm A Comin” and
“Lost in the Crowd” all feature leaner instrumental arrangements
than the ones that characterized 2017’s Manic Revelations. “Chris
and I wanted to strip it back from the last record,” LaFarge
explains. “We didn’t want any horns, we didn’t want anything to
get in the way of the vocals and the lyrics. I think before, I was a
little more concerned with style and concept, and that in turn made
things just a little too complicated, like I was trying more to serve
the music and the musicians than I was trying to serve the song…
“I had already mapped out the sort of instrumentation I wanted to
have on the road with me,” he continues, “and that’s pretty much
what you hear on the record. It’s going to be me on guitars, then
piano and organ, electric guitar, upright and electric bass, and drums
— a five-piece, including me.” After taking a break from the album
to take a “dark, sad, villainous role” in the forthcoming Netflix
feature film The Devil All the Time — “The irony wasn’t lost on
me that, one month after finding God, the first feature film
opportunity that comes across my table has that for a title,” he
chuckles — LaFarge returned to L.A. and recorded the gorgeous
“Lucky Sometimes” at Valentine Studios in North Hollywood. The
recording features a string quartet led by violinist Paul Cartwright,
and Miles Davis keyboardist Deron Johnson on piano. “We did it live
in the studio, Frank Sinatra-style,” LaFarge exults. “It was
pretty cool!” Through it all, LaFarge’s plaintive vocals remain
pleasingly front and center. “I’ve always loved crooners,” he
says. “Some people might think of crooners in the sense of the Bing
Crosby-Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin type of era, which of course I love,
but also I would consider people like Roy Orbison, Nick Cave, Bob
Dylan and Tom Jones crooners, as well. I’ve always loved that
narrative style of singing, always loved ballads — just taking your
voice to the limit and telling a story.” Musically, LaFarge
continues to mix and match a wide variety of styles and traditions,
while never losing track of his own vision. “I listen to a lot of
Latino music, and I listen to a lot of French music, whether it comes
from France or Africa, and I listen to a lot of rocksteady — you
know, fifties and sixties Jamaican music. I’ll mess with rhythms and
try to come up with stuff that sounds almost more traditional in
certain genres, and then keep playing it and try and get it into
something that I’ll want to sing every night. This record is kind of
like Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan hanging out with chanson singers and
French jazz bands in like the forties, but I was never trying to make
it sound like a particular person. It was more like, ‘If it sounds
too much like this person, I need to make it sound more like me.’”
Despite the trying period that preceded its recording, Rock Bottom
Rhapsody is ultimately far more uplifting and life-affirming than its
title would suggest. “That desperation, that struggle,” LaFarge
ponders, “Did it add something to the record? It certainly did. I
mean, I don’t know if it made it better; it just is what it is.
It’s not up to me to decide if people are going to feel that…
“Certainly, there are things in The Bible that I’ve interpreted to
mean that suffering is a part of life,” he continues. “And along
with that, there’s different seasons; and there’s pleasures and
joys and triumphs, as well. And when we’re on top, we think we’ll
never fall. But that fall has certainly given some deeper meaning to
things that I’ll write going forward, and that’s something to be
grateful for.” Official Website | Facebook | Instagram Esther Rose
“I’m always changing,” Esther Rose sings at the top of her
sophomore album, ‘You Made It This Far.’ The line is at once a
promise and a plea, a concise distillation of her commitment to
evolution as well as her dogged determination to meet every challenge
in her path with unconditional acceptance. Laid-back yet deliberate,
her delivery here marries old-school country and rural folk with a
plainspoken philosophy that’s thoroughly modern, and the end result
is a record that’s as joyful as it is restless, one that weaves
fiddle and lap steel around profound revelations, late night
conversations, and all the moments in between. “There’s this theme
of radical acceptance running through the whole album,” explains
Rose, who recorded the album live to tape in just four days. “I
didn’t realize it until after I’d finished writing the songs, but
they all came from this place of trying to understand and truly accept
myself and others in our most vulnerable moments of confusion or
despair.” A New Orleanian for the last decade, Rose first gained
national prominence with the release of 2017’s ‘This Time Last
Night,’ an intoxicating debut that prompted Fader to praise her
“honest, gorgeous country songs” and rave that “her voice has a
pitched-up June Carter quality, her melodies are simple like Jimmie
Rodgers’s, and her tone is reminiscent of bluesy, lovelorn greats
like Rex Griffin and Patsy Cline.” The record earned Rose festival
performances from Savannah Stopover to Americana Fest alongside dates
with The Punch Brothers, Pokey Lafarge, and The Deslondes, and it even
caught the ear of fellow Detroit native Jack White, who was so taken
with the music that he invited Rose to duet with him on his
‘Boarding House Reach’ album and to share the stage for a live
performance at Jazz Fest. Official Website | Facebook | Instagram |
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13/06/2020 Last update