I don’t think I’ve ever written anything about Jake Speed without mentioning Woody Guthrie. Call me lazy, but the political Folk pioneer is such an obvious influence on Speed’s songs and lyrics it almost seems dishonest not to mention it.

While listening to World Come Clean, Jake Speed and the Freddies’ brand new release, I never thought of Woody once.

On the album, Speed and his band still work within a traditional Americana format, but the songs are a bit more expansive and the claustrophobia of Folk clichés is alleviated by the more dynamic songwriting and performances. The album’s songs are far less predictable than ones from previous Speed releases, showing the maturity of Speed as a songwriter, refreshingly not purely working within the idioms of Folk music. There are shades of Rock, Blues, Country and Gypsy Jazz (and, yes, still lots of Folk) in the mix and The Freddies’ turn in typically perfect performances, showing they may just be the best Roots band in the city.

Thankfully, Speed’s lyrical approach remains socially/politically aware, with jabs at the U.S.’s current sad state. Most of the songs began as “Songatorials,” from Speed’s weekly song offerings for CityBeat throughout 2007, “Speedy Delivery,” based on current events. While these issues have often been diluted with a tinge of sharp humor on previous Speed recordings, here, Speed plays it more straight. In fact, there’s a sense of urgency and even a little anger in the feel of many of these tracks, something largely absent from Speed’s discography so far.

The fiery nature of the lyrics is translated wonderfully by the musicians (Freddies Justin Todhunter, Kentucky Graham, Chris Werner, and assorted "guest Freddies"), who perform most of the songs with the energy of a Punk Rock band. The album shifts gears halfway through with gentler songs that turn the anger and despair into hopefulness about the world and the future. Giving the album this kind of duality (and breaking it up so exactly) creates an enjoyable and interesting listening experience.

Some see Speed as a bit of a novelty act, his aw-shucks shtick and throwback duds making him seem like a costumed strolling troubadour at some Renaissance Fair-like Pioneer Days festival. But those people aren’t listening or paying close enough attention. World Come Clean should go a long way in dispelling such surface observations.

Jake Speed and the Freddies will celebrate the release of World Come Clean this Saturday with a free show at Northside Tavern. The Queen City Zapatistas open. Go to Jake Speed and the Freddies official site for more info.

The air seems sweeter here in the front of the website, the sun a little brighter and the deadlines a little more immediate, but as Uncle Ben once reminded Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility. So here we are in relatively short order with a batch of new reviews and a few more older titles in my continuing quest to revisit the deserving releases from the not-so-waning months of 2011. We’re getting there, slowly but surely. Read them while they’re hot; there’s more where they came from.

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Before I get into to the nitty-gritty of the A$AP Mob, Schoolboy Q and Danny Brown show at Bogart's last night (Oct. 4), I’ve got a couple of bones to pick first.

Bogart’s, what the hell is up with searching your patrons 90 times before they're let in? I mean, I know it’s probably scary having blacks, whites, Asians, and Latinos all in the same place, consuming copious amounts of drugs and alcohol, but I thought the presidential campaign event with The National was at The Emery Theatre downtown and not in Corryville. I appreciate your high standards for keeping the venue safe, but next time I go out to smoke a cigarette, trust me when I tell you I’m not going out to get my 9mm.

Secondly, Cincinnati Hip Hop heads, what’s up with your lack of punctuality? We finally had an awesome lineup of up-and-coming Hip Hop artists come to one of our bigger venues and you guys can’t show up and support them? I get it, alcohol is expensive at the venues, you can’t do your drugs there and you may have just bought the ticket to see A$AP Rocky. But next time, show up for the openers. Maybe you’ll find a new artist to know and love.

Anyways, that’s enough bitching; let’s get down to it.

When I first arrived at Bogart’s, it only took until 7:38 p.m. before I got that first aroma of Mary Jane, which not only got more prominent as the night went on but was the perfect precursor to opening act, Danny Brown.

Danny Brown started in a timely fashion (right at 8 p.m.; kudos for actually starting on time, dude) but, unfortunately, it was to a sparse crowd. Though the place wasn’t filled, Brown played to the audience like it was a sold-out stadium.

In his unfairly short 30-minute performance, Brown blew through 12 songs, including fan favorites like “I Will,” “Piss Test” and  “Monopoly,” ignoring the fact a lot of people didn’t know what to make of his abstract approach to hip-hop. With his bottle of Hennessy in hand, Brown closed his tight set with the smoke session banger “Blunt After Blunt," which had most everybody in the crowd, fan or not, sparking up and chanting the chorus.

After Brown, member of the Black Hippy Hip Hop group and T.D.E. star Schoolboy Q took the stage. I have been a fan of Schoolboy since I first heard his mixtape, “Habits and Contradictions,” but seeing him live totally change my perspective on him as an artist. He’s got this calm cool on stage and this subtle charm really won me over throughout the set.

Surprisingly, his show was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. His heartfelt song “Blessed” made me want to cry, his need for an inhaler halfway through his performance because he is “sicker than a motherfucker” made me laugh, and cuts like “There He Go” and “Nightmare on Figg St.” made me want to do the crip-walk (don’t worry, I didn’t do it, mostly because I don’t know what it is.)

Although Q ended on a new, bass heavy club-banger, he promised us it wouldn’t be the last we’ll see of him, quieting the hushed moans and groans from audience members waiting to hear his hits “Hands on the Wheel” and “Brand New Guy,” both of which feature headline act, A$AP Rocky.

It became abundantly clear to me that everyone was there to see A$AP after the crowd nearly doubled in size before his performance, especially when I went outside and saw people were still buying tickets (who spends $30 for an hour of music?)

Anyhow, I feel a bit torn as I write this because I truly do enjoy A$AP’s music and found his show to be really fun and energetic. But I ended up being really disappointed by a lot of it. Tracks like “Purple Swag” and “Wassup” got the crowd bouncing and were choice show-starting songs, but there was just too many weird fillers awkwardly inserted in his show. Between his obscure pre-recorded spoken word interludes, his “cockiness dance” inspired by D-Generation X wrestler X-Pac, the excruciatingly long time that A$AP Mob was on stage and handing the microphone out to random fans, it just seemed like he was trying to waste time or something.

Don’t get me wrong, it was really cool that he referenced my early childhood hero X-Pac, gave the fans a chance to speak (one kid even spit a pretty sick verse when he got the mic) and let his crew get some air-time (A$AP Twelvy killed it, by the way) — it’s just not what I paid to see.

But the performance wasn’t all bad. The high energy of his set and appearances by openers Danny Brown and Schoolboy Q gave the show a whole new element. Especially when Q and Rocky were trading verses on “Brand New Guy” and “Hands on the Wheel,” which easily became the highlights of the night.

When A$AP Rocky finally took the microphone back from his exponentially less captivating crew (again, minus A$AP Twelvy; think Odd Future but slightly less talented), he brought some “phonk” to the end of his show by playing drug-induced southern style tracks like “Trilla” and “Peso,” steering the entertaining but peculiar night to a close.

I thought the concert had a terrific atmosphere and you could tell there was a lot of love between the fans and the showmen, making it a wonderfully intoxicating time for everyone.

Now if A$AP Rocky just cut out the filler by playing more of his solo tunes and security at Bogart’s took a couple hits off the chronic (the crowd was smoking and chilled the fuck out), everyone would have had a better time.

At one point during the show Rocky said, “It’s OK to dislike things, it doesn’t make you a hater, you’re just human.”

This really sums up how I feel about the night; I’m not trying to be a hater, Rock, there’s just room for improvement.

Bellevue-based three-piece Slow Blind Corners kicks up a pleasant, upbeat racket of shambolic, ’60s-styled Pop on their debut CD, New Places. The songs follow a pretty simple formula: acoustic guitars, bass and drums provide the backbeat for vocal harmonies, psychedelic-era-Beatles-informed electric riffing and the occasional bubbling synth line, which all run wild on top of the proceedings.

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I drifted off Thursday night and had my wonderfully fitful sleep punctuated by the strangest dream. Like most dreams, it was disjointed and surreal, but it made an odd sort of sense. It’s never easy to describe these nocturnal apparitions but it was so vivid, I shall give it a try.

Friday, July 13

I was walking downtown. I knew exactly where I needed to go but I didn’t know exactly how to get there. A ridiculously convoluted route got me to the desired entrance, I received my press credentials and a map of a fascinating kingdom which I entered through the back gate, popping up in the midst of a Craft Beer Village, a place I would revisit many times.

Because of family obligations, I had arrived late, and the celebration, which had been dubbed Bunbury, was already in full swing. I headed for what I perceived to be the main concentration of activity and there ran into Brent and his wife Kat, who I frequently cross paths with at these sorts of soirees and who are always a welcome sight and great companions. Almost immediately, I encountered my nephew Jim, who proceeded to buy me a multitude of beers, a welcome refreshment on a steamy afternoon.

We made our way to the Globilli stage to see The Crash Kings, a keyboard/bass/drum trio that made sounds like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath with a twist of Styx (when they were a decent Rock band) refracted through an Indie Rock prism. Keyboardist Tony Beliveau was improbably wearing a long sleeve flannel shirt in 90-degree heat, but he said they were from L.A., so he may have legitimately been cold. They played songs from their eponymous debut and a few from their as-yet unreleased new album, there was an epic bass solo at one point, and Beliveau made other worldly sounds with the use of a whammy bar on his rig, which I had never seen before. The Crash Kings were incredible, and they would have kicked 1975 square in the balls.

At the Landor Stage, Ponderosa were cranking out some sweet Indie Rock/Soul from their first album, Moonlight Revival and their new album Pool Party, which ultimately led to a cover of Prince’s “I Would Die 4 U.” Kalen Nash, clad in a much cooler serape and stalking the stage in Hobbit-like bare feet, bemoaned the loss of the Southgate House and said to the crowd, “Let’s bring that back.” We couldn’t have agreed more.

Back at Globilli, O.A.R. were giving a sizable audience a fair dose of heartland Indie Rock and getting an enthusiastic response in turn. The band started in Maryland but rose to prominence as students at Ohio State, and became something of a regional phenomenon. Much like the Dave Matthews Band, O.A.R.’s reputation grew by grassroots methodology and hard work. Marc Roberge acknowledged their local ties and thanked fans for their loyalty with a rousing set. Jim’s pals Andre and Kevin arrived at some point, more beers were acquired and all was well.

I took my leave of Jim and his friends to check out Ra Ra Riot at the Bud Light Stage. I love their studio brand of visceral Chamber Pop/Indie Rock and they most certainly do not disappoint in the live arena as they tore shit up good and proper. Ra Ra Riot make compelling feel-good music but I always feel a touch of melancholy when I listen to them, remembering their courage and loyalty when they remained together as a band in the aftermath of losing their original drummer John Pike, a drowning victim five years ago. Their biggest successes have come in the wake of that tragedy, but they remain in contact with Pike’s family who have in turn remained fully in Ra Ra Riot’s corner. That is truly inspirational, and that depth of feeling is translated into every note that RRR puts out into the universe. The real headline from RRR’s set was Wes Miles’ announcement that Bunbury was “the best run festival we’ve ever played,” high praise from a band that’s attended SXSW, CMJ, Seaport Music Festival and a good many others.

Somewhere between O.A.R. and Ra Ra Riot, I ran into Sean Rhiney (Messerly & Ewing) and Brian Kitzmiller (Black Owls), and was introduced to a flock of people (between them, Sean and Brian know every human in the Tri-State area) whose names are lost in a haze of previous beers but who were constant friendly faces in a sea of humanity over the next three days. I raise a perpetual glass to your continued well being and camaraderie.

It was back to the Globilli stage for The Airborne Toxic Event (named for a phrase in Don DeLillo’s 1985 chemical spill thriller, White Noise), which I’ve found to be one of the better muscular Indie Rock outfits. On the surface, they might seem like one of many innocuous radio-friendly ciphers but they’ve got a fascinating back-story, a fairly intricate sound and impressive songwriting talent. Frontman Mikel Jollett and his TATE cohorts played with a calculated frenzy to a rapturous response, and Jollett even injected a few serious moments into the festival’s spirited atmosphere to plug the Wounded Warrior Project and to offer some bi-partisan criticism (“Don‘t tell us you’re with us if you’re for cutting veterans’ benefits, don’t tell us you’re with us if you’re for raising taxes on returning veterans...”). A show with a message and a blazing soundtrack … not too shabby.

Then it was back to Landor for the most anticipated show of the night, and quite possibly the best show of the festival; the triumphant return of Cincy's Foxy Shazam. Eric Nally was in rare form, in both gymnastic stage behavior, microphone stand ballet and crowd interaction. A sampling of his repartee: (facing GABP) “Hey Votto, if you can hear me, hit the motherfucker out of the park..."; “I did an interview and when I read the story, the writer said we were unique, and I said, ‘Yeah, we‘re unique, just like everybody else..."; “Spill a little wine over here, spill a little wine over there, eventually everything’s red, spill a little blood over here, spill a little blood over there, eventually everything’s dead.”

During “Unstoppable,” someone winged a bottle of Gatorade at Nally, who flung it straight back and took issue by singing “Whoever threw that Gatorade is going to pay” at the close of the song. He then chastised the offender, saying, “Don’t make me explain to my kids why I have a bottle of Gatorade stuck up my ass,” and noting that he would let security allow the thrower backstage if he wanted to fight. Classic Nally.

Later, Schuyler White danced on his keyboard then tossed it onto the front row of the audience and dove into the crowd, playing while the audience held him in place. Classic Foxy. The crowd went batshit crazy when Foxy launched into “I Like It” from their latest and best album, The Church of Rock and Roll. At the breathless conclusion of Foxy’s set, the bar was officially set for the next two days.

With a fairly elaborate stage set complete with women on trapezes and giant video monitors displaying some sort of acid freak-out movie from the ’60s, Jane’s Addiction clearly trumped Foxy in terms of spectacle but fell short in terms of raw energy. Dave Navarro peeled off plenty of scorching riffery, his patented classic combination of ’80s Hard Rock and ’90s AltRock with his guitar set to stun, Stephen Perkins bashed his kit like a man possessed and new bassist Chris Chaney supplied a thunderous heartbeat, while Perry Farrell stalked the Globilli Stage like an earthbound raptor, howling his way through a set comprised of songs from their latest album, last year’s The Great Escape Artist, and heavy on the classics from their other three discs.

The show couldn’t be characterized as lackluster or phoned in, as it was a feast for the senses; plenty of engaging trappings and a propulsive soundtrack that tapped into memories of a visceral and compelling band on the edge of the alternative frontier two and a half decades ago. It was all incredibly entertaining, but it was a far cry from the scalp-tingling urgency of JA’s hungrier days, which is why this tour was designed with so much visual overload; few if any bands are able to recreate their earliest chemistry 25 years after the fact. My favorite JA memory will always be their opening set for Iggy Pop in 1988; seeing Jane’s at Bogart‘s that night was the aural equivalent of licking an electric outlet. I was certainly not disappointed with what transpired during JA’s Bunbury set, but neither was I spellbound by it. And Farrell’s humorously profane diatribe (“Let the pussies hear you!”) linking Pete Rose’s absence in the Baseball Hall of Fame to Jane’s Addiction’s lack of nominations two years after their eligibility was a bit awkward; he seemed to think steroids were somehow involved in Rose’s case, and as far as JA is concerned, well, four albums over a quarter century span, regardless of the influence of the first two, does not a Hall of Fame career comprise. I was glad to have experienced Jane‘s Addiction in the 21st century and I like the bombast they’ve created to present their old and new material but, as Blue Oyster Cult once noted, this ain’t the summer of love.

At some point during the JA set, I spied my most excellent zen editor Mike Breen, so I sidled over for some quick face time (being freelance I don‘t get into the office as much as I probably should), and he seemed to be digging the show greatly. I look forward to his thoughts on it because I greatly respect his musical opinions in a completely non-ass nuzzling way. (Editor's Note: You're hired! Fireworks rock! And "Free Pete Rose"!)

And Jim’s wife, my niece Robin, came late to the festival but somehow spotted me in the twilight and gave me a nudge in the back. Even though she is only five years my junior, I have been married to her aunt for almost three decades, and so I am and will forever be Uncle Brian, which is both touching and charming. A good number of the nieces and nephews I inherited when I started dating my wife have kids of their own now. Time and the generations march on.

I left Mike to his JA reverie when I spotted revered music connoisseur and branding legend Matthew Fenton (once an occasional CityBeat music contributor), who came down from his lair in Chicago to experience Bunbury’s inaugural year. I had e-mailed him to ask if he and his most excellent girlfriend Kelly would be in attendance, but never heard back. Turns out he’d quit his job after last year’s MidPoint and has taken up the study of improv comedy at Second City, a program from which he will graduate next month. I am both astonished and completely unsurprised because Matthew is a genius that makes geniuses insecure. Matthew assured me that Kelly would be around for Saturday’s festivities and introduced me to his older brother John, an equally princely guy by all indications.

Now we have a festival.

Saturday, July 14

I made my way back to the media entrance, this time being tended by old friend Jacob Heintz (Buckra) and the lovely and talented Sara Beiting (a former CityBeat all-star). The cloud cover was heavier, and it had already rained relatively hard north of the city but it didn’t seem to have impacted the downtown area too badly. I grabbed a beer and made my way through the throng … or did I make my way through the throng and grab a beer? The skies were not the only things that were partly cloudy.

At the Globilli stage, I was just in time for the start of Alberta Cross, a British duo now getting their mail in Brooklyn and fleshing out their live sound with a full fledged band. They sported an expansive vibe that had an appealing Verve quality, or Oasis without the contentious brothers problem screwing everything up.

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According to its government's Web site, New Zealand’s population density is 14 people per square kilometer. (The U.S. population is more than double that—31 people/km^2.) Needless to say, concentrated masses of human beings aren’t particularly easy to come by out there.

“New Zealand is pretty far-removed from anything that would warrant being in a band, and you can’t really tour there,” lead singer Nick Johnson says. So it’s little wonder Cut Off Your Hands waved goodbye to their island home and hit the road to tour the sometimes overcrowded yet always far more plentiful cities of Europe and the U.S.

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Cincinnati singer-songwriter Moegly (a.k.a. Nicholas Moeggenberg) is one of those dreamy, skinny, intelligent boys who always go over well with the coffee shop crowd. His debut five-song (well, six with the hidden track) EP, It’s Getting Hard to Find Good People, is a smooth, gentle Indie Folk effort that sounds especially good in its jumpier moments.

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Since her 1994 indie debut, The Honesty Room, Dar Williams has attracted a diverse and pathologically loyal fan base with her quirkily hybridized Folk/Pop ministrations. Like an elegant gene splice of Shawn Colvin and Loudon Wainwright III, Williams can easily triangulate the emotional distance between breezy humor, somber reflection and crystalline heartbreak, on subjects as intimate as family and love and as broad as culture and politics, by finding the commonalities between them and translating them through her muse. Equally relevant is the fact that Williams hasn’t shied away from experimenting with her base formula over the past two decades; her desire to extend her reach is a testament to her restless creative spirit and her success in doing just that is a testament to her steadfast audience.

In the Time of Gods is Williams’ ninth studio album and, like the majority of her catalog, it is a work that somehow manages to be both spectacular and subtle. In keeping with her need to experiment, Williams conceived In the Time of Gods as a concept album with each song representing a particular Greek mythological archetype, while also weaving contemporary emotional, social and cultural concerns into the narrative. It’s an unlikely formula, and one that requires an almost impossible songwriting balance, but Williams was clearly up to the task, because In the Time of Gods stands with the best of her albums to date.

Part of its brilliance is that Williams uses the Greek pantheon as a launch point to create her own dieties and address her unique issues, proving that mythology must be both consistent to be permanent and malleable to be relevent. The element that drives all of this home is Williams’ impeccable songwriting skill as she finds the connective tissue between gods and goddesses like Hera (“I Am the One Who Will Remember Everything”), Hermes (“You Will Ride with Me Tonight”), Dionysus (“I Will Free Myself”) and Poseidon (“The Light and the Sea”) and places their gifted and flawed archetypes in real life situations with real life outcomes.

As always, Williams’ musical accompaniment in this endeavor is engaging and beautiful and exactly right, providing the consistency that runs through her  estimable canon. With a surgeon’s skill, Dar Williams has grafted the wisdom, wonder and humanity of Greece’s ancient pantheon onto In the Time of Gods’ modern cautionary tales, further evidence of the contention that Williams is among the finest Folk/Pop songwriters of the last half century.

(Dar Williams performs in Cincinnati on June 23 at Mt. Lookout club The Redmoor.)

I haven't done LSD in at least a decade, but Thursday's MidPoint Music Festival sure felt like a psychedelic flashback. My long-ish, strange-ish trip began at 9 a.m., as I drove into downtown and found Central Parkway colorfully dressed up as if an army of elderly women had sneaked in overnight and turned the strip into a Dr. Seussian wonderland. The colorful crocheting that hugged the trees, lampposts and practically everything else sticking out of the ground was actually the work of The BombShells' Yarn,  who've dropped similar "yard bombs" on statues downtown (like the William Henry Harrison one in Garfield Park).

Regardless of whence it came, it set the trippy tone for my first day at MPMF.11. And things only got trippier. I'm a big fan of the surreal and bizarre, so it wasn't a bad trip, by any means. And the soundtrack was pretty kick-ass.

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