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Ronnie Baker Brooks with The Tommy Castro Band, Magic Dick and Deanna Bogart
Wednesday · Southgate House
A quick scan of the nominees for the 2007 Blues Music Awards’ “Contemporary Blues Male Artist of the Year” reveals that Ronnie Baker Brooks will be vying for the honor at the Memphis ceremony in May. If there’s a little familiarity with the Brooks name among Blues fans, it’s because Ronnie Baker Brooks’ father, the legendary Chicago guitarist Lonnie Brooks, has been similarly honored numerous times by the Blues Music Awards (formerly the W.C. Handy Awards) for his fiery and passionate playing over the years. If the younger Brooks’ first three albums and his first BMA nod are any indication, he’s well on his way to the same kind of long and respected career that his father has enjoyed for the past three decades.
Although Brooks learned from and with his father, it would be a mistake to think that he has established a foothold in the Blues community solely by virtue of his father’s reputation. Ronnie Baker Brooks spent well over a decade in his father’s band, starting as a backing guitarist and eventually pulling double duty as his opening act. After releasing Golddigger, his 1998 debut album, Brooks struck out on his own to build his own audience with his unique spin on the Blues, a combination of the genre’s tradition with dashes of Funk, Soul, Rock and Hip Hop. Over the subsequent eight years, he’s followed his father’s blueprint by becoming a local Chicago fixture and touring relentlessly, stopping just long enough to record his next two albums, 2001’s Take Me Witcha and last year’s groundbreaking The Torch, which itself has been nominated for “Best Blues Album of the Year” in the Chicago Music Awards.
For Brooks, The Torch represents his generation moving the Blues forward, keeping the flame lit and advancing it at the same time. In that spirit, The Torch features production by Prince collaborator Jellybean Johnson, a rhyme from rapper Al Kapone and old school appearances by father Lonnie, Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater, Jimmy Johnson and the final recorded session by renowned Blues vocalist Willie Kent, who passed away shortly after his work on the album. With fans and critics singing his praises, Ronnie Baker Brooks stands poised to become this generation’s next Blues superstar. (Brian Baker)
The Dwarves with Turbo AC’s, Death In Graceland, Angels of Meth and Eighty Sixed
Thursday · The Mad Hatter
Hide your children and double-bolt-lock your liquor and medicine cabinets: The Dwarves are coming to town!
The band is one of those musical entities that more people have probably heard of than have actually heard, like GG Allin or, uh, P.J. Proby. The Dwarves have courted controversy and gotten their name known with stunning, outrageous album covers — 2004’s The Dwarves Must Die was emblazoned with the image of a “little person” being crucified, surrounded (of course!) by three nude women, while their famed 1990 album, Blood Guts & Pussy (rated the most offensive album of all time by Spin), featured naked women (and the same little person) drenched in blood.
One of the band’s biggest brushes with controversy came in the early ’90s, when the band was recording for Sub Pop, which was becoming the best-known indie label in the world thanks to the Grunge explosion. Working at another newspaper at the time, I remember getting a press release from the label announcing the death of Dwarves guitarist Hewhocannotbenamed and offering condolences to the band’s family and friends. Turns out it was a hoax and, not long after the news, I received another press release from Sub Pop, this time announcing the label’s “firing” of the band. The unamused label’s statement said the prank was an “inexcusable exploitation and trivialization of death itself” — frontman Blag Dahlia has since said that the label was in on the joke but used the incident as an excuse to let go a band whose more feral Punk sound didn’t fit in with the suddenly trendy Grunge movement. (He also has suggested that Sub Pop didn’t want to upset their many press allies.)
There’s no telling whether The Dwarves would have made it bigger if Sub Pop had put more support behind them — violent, sexual, druggy, chaotic, 15-minute-long live shows and Mexican wrestling masks are probably harder to market than cuddly longhairs with dirty Pop songs. Epitaph, another indie giant, released a couple of the band’s albums in the ’90s and, while they maintained a cult following, they’ve never bubbled up much out of the underground. It’s a shame, though, that more people haven’t heard the band.
The group’s discography, which goes back to 1986’s Horror Stories, is strewn with funny, propulsive Garage Punk, which the band has augmented over the years with electronic, Industrial and Metal ornamentation as well as some pretty catchy hooks. But it’s the buzz-saw energy and un-PC humor that has been the constant, making a Dwarves show one of those rare Rock concert experiences where you truly have no idea what might happen. The band most recently released a DVD, FEFU, that chronicles their 20-year history of nudity, drugs, mayhem and — oh yeah — music. (Mike Breen)
Heavy Heavy Low Low with Fear Before the March of Flames, Dead Reprised, For the Fallen and Foxy Shazam
Monday · The Mad Hatter
In 2004, five high school students near San Jose, Calif., pooled their raw, untrained talents and created a visceral Screamo band they dubbed Heavy Heavy Low Low. Nearly three years later, the quintet (the genetic rhythm section of bassist Andrew Fritter and his drummer/brother Chris, guitarists Danny Rankin and Ryan Madden and vocalist Robbie Smith) has piled a number of diverse layers into their approach — the downtuned gravity of Death Metal, the noisy levity of Indie Rock the manic acceleration of Hardcore — and created a completely new and unique sonic fingerprint for themselves, a sound that is densely packed, deceptively complex and chaotically arranged and executed.
With a sound so broadly referenced, Heavy Heavy Low Low has been a challenging act to attach to a tour; opening slots for the Fall of Troy, Protest the Hero, the Blackout Pact, Ed Gein and the Warriors have all been largely successful but the band clearly confused as many fans as they attracted. The band’s sound is so singular that their label, New Weathermen, was basically created around them when booking agent Nick Storch found them so compelling he formed the label and signed them just for the opportunity to book and work with them.
Since hooking up with Storch, the band has had a whirlwind year, completing three tours, impressing critics and fans alike with their incendiary live presentation and wrapping up work on their debut full length album, Everything’s Watched, Everyone’s Watching, which was released last fall. There are hints at the band’s frenetic pace to be found in just the song titles on the album — “I Forgot 2 and a Half Days,” “This Is Really Testing the Patience I Never Had,” “Mall-Nutrition” and the irresistibly headed “Eating the Porridge and Killing the Bears.” Prepare to be moved like a marionette in a monsoon: Heavy Heavy Low Low is coming. (BB)
This article appears in Jan 31 – Feb 6, 2007.
