CheckOneTwo

SHOW REVIEW
SILVERTON
FAYETTEVILLE/OLD POST OFFICE/MAY 6TH

Midnight Tuesday has come and gone, and I’m in a dim ‘n’ rowdy Fayetteville basement brimming with broken guitar strings, a whirling barefoot tambourinist, and a sweetly sweating wave of countrified bo-ho coeds.  We are the latest lucky victims to come under the spell of Silverton, an eight-piece folk-rock act that is helping redefine what it means to be a country music act in Arkansas.

Seeing Silverton live is an exercise in involuntarily shedding one’s cool pose.  Comfortable in the corner nursing a beer?  Put it down and move to the front.  Are you the laconic head-bobbing scenester, smirking at those who dare to dance?  Prepare to give yourself up to the ecstasy. 

The sheer size of Silverton is a logistical challenge for most venues.  Tonight, even minus the presence of vocalist Haley Mattox, Silverton’s seven remaining members arrange their equipment with the precision of a jigsaw puzzle enthusiast.  While drummer Josh Spillyards,  tambourinist Thom Asewicz, and bassist Ryan Hitt occupy the tiny step-up stage,  lead vocalist/guitarist Phillip Huddleston, vocalist Jessica Hendricks, Jesse Bates (guitar, pedal steel) and keyboardist Whitman Bransford take up spots on the floor at eye-level with and a nose’s worth of distance from the
crowd.    It’s a necessary move logistically, but it also instantly connects Band With Fan and ratchets the energy up immediately.

Bam!  Silverton opens up with a rollicking take on “Highway Rough” that sends Asewicz into instant percussive overdrive.  Silverton is a band that owes a heavy debt to the country ghosts of days gone by, and soon segues into a shuffling, sing-along version of “I Get By” that signals a night of tunes very different than those generally provided by a band of twenty-somethings.   Some like to speak of “old souls,” and that wouldn’t be misplaced when it comes to describing Silverton.  If I close my
eyes, I can sense this music being played in the roadhouses of my father’s younger years, or my grandfather’s.

The energy of Silverton is the type that can overcome obstacles that would cripple a lesser band.  Broken strings by Huddleston and Bates pose little problem, and  the buzz is enough to overcompensate for the utter lack of a PA system.  Tonight is not about technical superiority or acoustics.  Tonight is about howling dogs, shimmyshaking, and erasing boundaries.   By show’s end, the magical line between musician and audience has evaporated entirely—Hendricks is in the crowd dancing  with one-and-all, Asewicz is everywhere at once, and the twirling coeds from the audience have magically infiltrated the band space, snaking and slinking between the pedal steel and the keyboards.  For a few moments, lines are obliterated and what was billed as a concert becomes an experience. 

Catch the Silverton train whenever you get a chance.  Their next gig is at Riverfest on Friday May 23rd, opening for 607 and Arrested Development.

Sibilance,

Glen

QUESTION:  WHAT’S THE BEST LIVE SHOW YOU’VE SEEN THIS YEAR?

OK, kiddies, I know some of you don’t remember the glory days like I do.  No seat belts, in the back of your dad’s Chevy Goodtimes Van, bouncing around like pinballs with your sister and trying not to step on all of the 8 tracks scattered around on the floor.  What’s that, you say?  8 track?  Oh, 8 tracks were a huge step forward in technology back in the day.  It let you listen to an album IN THE CAR, man!  Picture a thick rectangle about the size of a healthy-sized pop-tart, jammed into the dashboard and playing Johnny Paycheck songs over and over.

Well, the 8 track was a short-lived medium, giving way to the cassette, then the CD, and now the mp3.  Today’s whippersnappers ain’t down with the 8 track and they’re generally only found as novelty items when the Old Dude Down The Street has a garage sale.   The kids, they don’t know.

Except for Nathan Browningham.  Browningham KNOWS.

Tonight, Sticky Fingerz, 10 p.m.–come on out and help Browningham kick off his new The Dead Media label.  All 8 track!  All the time!  New 8-track release from local loudsters The Crisco Kids!  Yes, you can buy an 8-track of the new Crisco Kids album.  And an 8-track player.  Hell, you can buy a t-shirt.  It’s on tonight–with Stacy Mackey and The Buttons performing w/Crisco Kids. 

Check out The Dead Media’s MySpace site at http://www.myspace.com/thedeadmedia for Browninghams’ vision.  A small taste here:

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8 tracks

i remember seeing a pile of 8 tracks at a thrift store back in october of 2006. “wow, i can’t imagine putting any music on those”, i thought. now, in august of 2007, i have 2000 8 tracks, forming little skycraper stacks around our home. my wife loves weaving through the media-hamster-trails i’ve formed. i got to this point because of a $3 8 track cartridge tape recorde,r purchased from a thrift store in december of 2006. after giving the 8 track recorder a good cleaning (which is IMPERATIVE before operation), i recorded some cd music that i like onto an 8 track cartridge. recorded over ol’ glenn miller’s greatest hits, if i do say so. i must have been blown away, since you’re reading this. i was, and thus began my quest for information, and the highest in 8 track technology. from the endless, mind numbing (from your perspective) tidbits, i began to get a picture and timeline of audio recording history. i came to the minority conclusion, that 8 tracks were cheated. vinyl records, reel to reel tape, cassettes, cds, vhs, and now mp3 and beyond all enjoyed, are enjoying, or will enjoy decades of being taken to thier maximum potential as far as highest fidelity and quality goes. not 8 track. almost as soon as things started to develop, the started to slide down hill. production of tapes and players continued, to suit people who had invested in them already, but with a focus of phasing them out in favor of the more compact and portable cassette. after the first 5 or so years, there wasn’t much put into research, development, and quality, because the record companies had decided it was to be…..dead media.

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Seriously, this is where you need to be tonight.  Hope to see you out, gettin’ your 8 track on.

Glen

QUESTION:  DID YOU HAVE 8-TRACKS AS A KID.  IF SO, WHAT WAS YOUR FAVE?