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East Cameron Folkcore Confront Demons On "Salinger's Dead"
[+ Show ]
12.13.12
Jill Krasny
www.mtvhive.com
East Cameron Folkcore‘s Allen Dennard has never been a big...12.13.12
Jill Krasny
www.mtvhive.com
East Cameron Folkcore‘s Allen Dennard has never been a big Salinger fan, but he can credit the author with saving his life. “I read The Catcher in the Rye when I was in high school and it upset me,” he told Hive. “I remember throwing the book across the room when I was done. I remember feeling very hopeless and bitter.” Still, when the author passed, he was inspired to write “Salinger’s Dead” because he was desperate “to get honest about the reasons behind my drinking” and “to recall what it was that upset me so much about the book.”
Feeling a lot like Holden Caulfield when he enters the mental ward, Dennard confronted his demons and all-consuming “feelings of uncertainty.” He urged his bandmates to do the same, and soon Jesse Moore and the rest of the Austin 11-piece were working hard on their arrangements. It wasn’t long before they had an incredible song on their hands.
“I just started playing this chord progression I’d been working out and within a couple minutes the song was born,” said Moore. “Not many songs come this easily, and usually when they do, I’m pretty skeptical and just throw them away. But I played it for Allen and the band, and it was well-received, so we started playing it.”
But the real clincher is the raw emotion that comes through Dennard’s vocals — you’ll never be able to claim he’s a phony on this one.
East Cameron Folkcore’s new album, For Sale, comes out Feb 5 as a pay-what-you-wish download or limited-edition vinyl LP.
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Texas Music Matters Premiere's Salinger's Dead
click on the link below to listen to the show.
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The Young and Restless - Seven local South by Southwest 'Picks 2 Click' -
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The Young and Restless
Seven local South by Southwest 'Picks 2 Click'
BY CHASE HOFFBERGER, FRI., M...The Young and Restless
Seven local South by Southwest 'Picks 2 Click'
BY CHASE HOFFBERGER, FRI., MARCH 9, 2012
East Cameron Folkcore
Sat., March 17, 1am, the White Horse
East Cameron Folkcore played the bulk of Sound & Fury: Songs in the Key of Love and Death only once, at the Hole in the Wall last spring on the night of the album's release.
"We basically evolved past those songs as soon as we released them," says Jesse Moore, head wrangler for the 10-member ECF, composed of members of Bankrupt & the Borrowers, Bridge Farmers, the Van Buren Boys, Clyde & Clem's Whiskey Business, Hobomouth, and the Bread. "A lot of those songs weren't designed to be played live at all. We had to get them out of our system to quantify them in our own grieving."
Written in memory of Jon Pettis, Moore's Bankrupt bandmate who died in an electrical fire at the band's house in October 2009, Sound & Fury is a defining work in Moore's compositional evolution, a seamlessly articulated tribute tied into an inspiring story about a neighborhood rallying to celebrate a life. Paradoxically, its elegiac message isn't indicative of typical Folkcore shows, which run loud, rowdy, and rooted in political undertones.
"Some of the songs on Sound & Fury I recorded in my bedroom – alone," says Moore. "That was more of my own project, and I used the band to get the way it needed to sound. The songs we focused on came through as more of a collaborative effort, and a process of getting everyone's sound and all their influences into the music."
In ECF's case, getting every member's sound into the music often requires fitting upward of 30 tracks into a single song's mix. Moore points to trombonist Blake Bernstein's "Charlene," one of the songs on the band's upcoming The Sun Also Rises EP, as having 32 individual tracks.
"It's crazy," laughs Moore. "It took us two whole months to just mix this EP."
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Song of the Day - East Cameron Folkcore: “Hollow Men”
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It really does take a village, or at least a northeast Austin neighborhood, to build a band. The ten...It really does take a village, or at least a northeast Austin neighborhood, to build a band. The ten (sometimes more)-piece folk-rock collective East Cameron Folkcore is proof. Pieced together out of a wide palette of talent from the neighborhood of the same name, East Cameron Folkcore creates its own brand of big, cathartic, rock-inflected folk music.
The story of East Cameron Folkcore begins with a heartbreaking ending. The group’s leader Jesse Moore was in the band Bankrupt And The Borrowers, an Austin four-piece that was gaining traction in Austin with rootsy, boozy rock until a tragic October 2009 fire killed band co-founder Jon Pettis. Moore and other members of the East Cameron scene weren’t sure if they could go on, but convinced that that’s what Pettis would have wanted, they forged ahead, including a 2009 Bankrupt And The Borrowers Fun Fun Fun Fest performance that became a heart-wrenching tribute to Pettis and featured an early incarnation of what would become East Cameron Folkcore. Moore had already been playing with members of the group as a side-project, but after Bankrupt And The Borrowers fell apart after Pettis’s death, the nascent band came into single focus. Almost constant gigging and energetic live performances have earned East Cameron Folkcore a treasured spot on the Austin scene.
In April of last year, East Cameron Folkcore released its debut full-length, Sound and Fury. Featuring horns, strings and multiple vocalists, it has the loose feeling of a jam session, albeit one with seasoned players. Conceived, in part, as a tribute to Pettis, the record is nakedly honest. Songs like “Happy-Mess,” “Birds Across A Wire,” and today’s song of the day “Hollow Men” are incredibly moving. Some friends may be gone, but there’s still a whole community to carry on the spirit.
You can see East Cameron Folkcore this Thursday for a Free Week performance at Red7.
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Austin Top 10 -Making local lists and checking 'em twice -
[+ Show ]
Chase Hoffberger
1) East Cameron Folkcore, Sound & Fury: Songs in the Key of Love and Death
2) Whi...Chase Hoffberger
1) East Cameron Folkcore, Sound & Fury: Songs in the Key of Love and Death
2) White Denim, D (Downtown)
3) DJ Rapid Ric, Whut It Dew: The Album (Dew Music Group)
4) Shapes Have Fangs, Dinner in the Dark (Reverberation Appreciation Society)
5) Shakey Graves, Roll the Bones
6) The League of Extraordinary Gz, Concealed Weapons 3
7) A Giant Dog, Trashcan USA
8) Sorne, House of Stone
9) The Moonhangers, The Moonhangers
10) Roger Sellers, Moments
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Sound & Fury: Jesse Moore and East Cameron Folkcore Carry the Fire
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Our footage of Jesse Moore extends from a Bridge Farmers show seven months ago at Red 7. It's loud, ...Our footage of Jesse Moore extends from a Bridge Farmers show seven months ago at Red 7. It's loud, psychedelic and stoned; head-banging wreckage culled by Tyler Huatala and shot out of a canon of fills and low-end rattle.
Jesse Moore's face stays under shadows through that entire show. Holding a guitar stage right, he's masked under the hood of a sweatshirt and the brim of a baseball cap. Though his shrill slide work can be heard from the tops of "Ummo" and "Dancing Bones," Moore is most definitely not at the center of attention.
"That's kind of how I like it with Bridge Farmers," Moore says. "That's how I feel on stage when I'm playing with Tyler and them. I just kind of want to put my hood up and hide in the corner. But it's awesome. It's the difference between not having to sing and not having to be in charge of making everything happen."
In short, it's a welcome change from Moore's usual gig. Since Bankrupt & The Borrowers, a band founded by Moore and multi-instrumentalist Jon Pettis that released one album - 2008's Beers on the Bible - before parting ways in the wake of Pettis' tragic death in an electrical fire, Moore's spent most of his time at the forefront of each of his musical projects. Most notably, Moore heads up East Cameron Folkcore, a ten-piece collective made up of musicians and singers in Moore's northeast Austin neighborhood.
"All these friends lived in the same neighborhood, East Cameron," says Moore. "We'd all get together and try out new songs and arrangements. Jon played horns all the time, and he and I started this band as a side project so that I'd be able to use my songs, since my songs weren't exactly Bankrupt & The Borrowers songs."
Since Bankrupt split, East Cameron Folkcore has taken over both as a vehicle for multi-instrumental experimentation and a celebration of the community in which Pettis so deeply engrossed himself.
The collective recently released an album, April's Sound & Fury, as a loose-ended tribute to Pettis. Recorded over a full year, Sound & Fury is a massive conceptual undertaking, one complete with orchestral arrangements, horn sections and vocal contributions from multiple singers. Pettis' soul shines throughout the album; over the somber tone of "The Cruellest Month" and the pain-through-struggle sentiment surrounding "Hollow Men," featuring the lyrics: "I see your face every place I go. I watch the bulldozers tear down your home. Somehow, I'm still waiting for you to walk through the door."
Most notably, Pettis' presence is felt on two songs in the middle of the album: "Doctor's Orders" and "Carrying the Fire." While "Doctor's Orders" is decidedly downtrodden, "Carrying the Fire" champions Pettis' unbreakable spirit with a charging, victorious chorus: "When the road tells you to go home and you got lots of friends to see and money to make, it gets lonely." The song ends with a rousing cheer from members of the Folkcore before breaking into a piano coda that's as touching as it is sad.
On "Doctor's Orders" you can actually hear Pettis, softly at the end of the song, laughing as if in approval of the music his friends made.
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“Cigarette butts and broken strings everywhere”: A brief oral history of the East Cameron Collective
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Austin’s tightly knit East Cameron Collective is the kind of artistic community that hides in plain ...Austin’s tightly knit East Cameron Collective is the kind of artistic community that hides in plain sight in the Live Music Capital Of The World. Until you attend a performance by an East Cameron-associated artist, that is. At shows by the rough-and-tumble likes of The Bread, Bridge Farmers, or the collective’s sprawling flagship act, the East Cameron Folkcore, sing-alongs are always likely, and barroom camaraderie even likelier. These are high spirits which have weathered tough times—the toughest coming after the ’09 house fire that killed Bankrupt And The Borrowers’ multi-instrumentalist Jon Pettis. Ahead of a weekend-long celebration of Pettis’ life, The A.V. Club met with his former bandmates—Blue “Deadweight” Mongeon, Jesse “Cadge” Moore, and James “Osteo” Taylor—and Versatile Syndicate head/Taylor’s behind-the-scenes foil Gene Griffin to get a background on the collective’s origins, its darkest hour, and its plans for the future.
Coming together
Mongeon, Moore, and Pettis left the northeast United States for Austin in 2006, where Taylor eventually joined on drums. Their ragged, working-class rock seemed without complement in the city—until one fateful show at an unlikely venue.
Jesse Moore: Us meeting everybody started with Bankrupt getting booked at The Rockin’ Tomato on South Lamar. The first show was Idle Kids—which Allen [Idle, lead singer of Hobomouth, and Eric Idle] the drummer for The Bread, played in—Stones We Throw, Bridge Farmers, The Bread, and Bankrupt. We had been here for six months and we hadn’t really seen any music that blew us away—until we got on this show at a pizza place.
AVC: There are several thematic connections between the East Cameron bands, but not a lot of sonic ones. Bankrupt had a bluesy streak, Bridge Farmers are a little trippy, Hobomouth is rooted in the more poetic folk of the ’60s. What was it that made you think all these bands could be friends?
James Taylor: Everyone was passionate, and saw that in the other person. Everyone was that type of guy that you could sit up with until the sun came up, drinking whiskey and talking about music. Everyone was into different things—everyone didn’t sound like Like Dogs, and Like Dogs didn’t sound like anyone—but they were dudes you could drink all night with.
Gene Griffin: The open-mindedness of everybody’s tastes—there’s no certain genre of music that I like. I like good music.
JM: A lot of it was just based around family and community. We all supported each other at each other’s shows, played shows together all the time. You knew if you got into fight, someone had your back.
GG: Or if you’re going through something bad, you know somebody’s going to be there to pick you up.
JT: And all of the bands were at the same level. All of the bands went from playing small shows to occasionally opening shows, or “now we’re all playing weekend shows, ” and that just continued up to today. All of the bands playing bigger and bigger shows.
GG: No one stayed stagnant. Jon sat in with everybody, because he could always just get his horn up, tootle around and [makes cash register sound]: two more drink tickets. [Laughs.]
JT: There’d be some shows where he was playing four times.
The Bankrupt House
The center of the East Cameron universe, site of several late-night jam sessions and a lot of drinking.
GG: And then everybody just started congregating to the East Cameron neighborhood…
JM: After every single show, there’d be a party back at our house. So there was a lot of people meeting. I met Blake [Van Buren, formerly of The Van Buren Boys] there one night. I don’t even remember meeting him. I vaguely remember talking to him about punk music. Then, a week later, Van Buren Boys are recording at a church—because Blake’s family was doing the lights over there—and they just ended up stopping by the house between sessions. After they left, I was like, “Do you guys know who they are?” And everybody else was like, “I thought those were your friends.”
JT: When I was still playing in other bands, the guys in Radioland Murders or Consider The Source would come over [to the Bankrupt House] to practice, and they’d walk through the living room and be like, “There’s bottles and cigarettes everywhere.” And I’d be like, “These guys party, man. It’s awesome.”
Blue Mongeon: Cigarette butts and broken strings everywhere. It was a fun house to live in, because you’d wake up, walk out into the living room, and you could see into Cadge’s room, and Cadge would be in there with a snare in his hand, strumming it. And Jon would be sitting there with a trumpet. And they’d both look at me at the same time, stop what they’re doing, and say, “You want in on this?”
The fire
On the morning of Oct. 9, 2009, a malfunctioning power strip sparked a fire at the house Pettis shared with his fiancée and members of The Van Buren Boys and Bridge Farmers. Though his roommates and finacée escaped the blaze, Pettis did not—smoke inhalation being declared the cause of death. Booked to play Fun Fun Fun Fest a month later, Bankrupt And The Borrowers—with the help of the East Cameron community—used the festival slot to pay tribute to Pettis. Out of rehearsals for that performance, East Cameron Folkcore—which features Moore and Mongeon and is co-managed by Taylor and Griffin—was formed.
JM: A couple bands stopped at that point. None of us even knew if we wanted to keep playing. The Bread had a couple of shows afterward, and it felt weird to be up onstage and still play. There was a couple of weeks of mourning, and then we had three weeks before Fun Fun Fun Fest to put together a set. We all came to the realization that the most important thing about Jon was he always wanted to play music. So for us to stop would’ve been something he wouldn’t have wanted.
JT: Jesse had done Folkcore as a side-project before that, but us jamming together, re-working the songs with different members for Fun Fun Fun Fest—out of that we realized that we need to do something together. There should be a band that everyone should be involved in.
GG: These guys deciding to carry on and do Fun Fun Fun Fest like they did gave a lot of other people strength. It sounds cheesy, but for his best friends to still get onstage and do this festival, it gave everybody else hope. We can move forward with things. We have to.
JT: With Jon passing, everyone was like “No, let’s not get stagnant. Let’s do this.”
GG: We took a few months off. The turning point was January 2010. When January rolled around, everybody was like, “All right, let’s get off our ass and let’s do some shit.”
JT: In January, I started booking full-time, Gene started booking full-time, Jesse got back to town, and everybody pushed on through the spring.
The future
Bankrupt And The Borrowers’ fiery Beers On The Bible EP is currently one of the few recorded documents of the East Cameron scene. Its members look to change that, starting with a pair of East Cameron Folkcore releases partially recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis. The first, Sound And Fury, includes the final horn part Pettis recorded before his death.
JM: Records, tours, shows. Continue the same grunt. We’re definitely not the types of bands who are going to wait around for a phone call from a record label to put us out on the road. We’re going to talk to James and he’s going to make the phone calls. [Laughs.]
JT: That’s the goal for the next year: Bridge Farmers record, maybe reissue the Bread’s record, Folkcore EPs. Other than bartending two or three nights a week, I book full-time. It would benefit any band to just have somebody focusing on that stuff. And it’s definitely helped out with that group of bands. Because everybody’s been playing better and better shows, now there’s a little more money to put that stuff out.
GG: In the last few years, everybody’s musicianship has hit a point where everybody’s got their sound, and it’s all different, and it’s all good. These guys push the bar for each other.
JM: With a lot of the bands, we’ve just been playing shows. Most of our fans and our friends still come out to the shows and they sing along to the songs even though there’s no records—but for continuing on, we need to put out a record to broaden the audience. You have to have a product to go out on the road with, and drop out seeds as you move along.
supersonic
