Musician. Producer. Recording Engineer. Photographer. Non-traditional college student… John Curley is best known for his work with the Afghan Whigs, but he’s also played in a few local bands, and produced and/or engineered music for hundreds, mostly at Ultrasuede Studio. He’s still playing, still producing, but recently went back to college as well. We chat with John about all those things — and the worst radio promotion the Afghan Whigs ever did — in this episode.
John Curley, WXPN/former 97X DJ Dan Reed, and Greg DulliThe Afghan Whigs original lineup. John at Ultrasuede Studio (Photo credit: Anna Bentley, the Cincinnati Enquirer)
After 25 years in Camp Washington, John’s Ultrasuede studio (formerly the historic QCA Studio A) was forced out in 2018 when a new owner bought the building . Check out this CityBeat article about Ultrasuede’s final days on Spring Grove Avenue.
Photo credit: John Curley
At the Spring Grove address, John produced and/or engineered essential recordings by numerous acts, including Joe’s band Wussy, The Greenhornes, White Stripes, Ronnie Spector, Patti Smith, Ass Ponys, Buffalo Killers, Magnolia Mountain, Pearlene, Heartless Bastards and Barrence Whitfield & The Savages. His early production successes include the Whigs’ covers EP Uptown Avondale and album tracks such as Congregation’s “Miles Iz Ded” and Gentlemen’s “If I Were Going.” He even recorded the violin-like whine that opens the Whigs’ Black Love album by ambient mic’ing the railroad tracks that wind past the studio and recording the sound of a freight train’s squealing brakes, which were later cross-faded in the mix with a Hammond B-3 organ.
Before we get to the virtual tunes, let’s have a moment of silence for John Prine, Adam Schlesinger, Hal Willner and all the other talented musicians we’ve lost to COVID-19.
As if we needed any more bad news, The National’s Homecoming festival has officially been cancelled. But list member Dale Doyle (the original D2) is doing the album artwork for Matt Berninger’s solo album and says the tunes are great. So we have that to look forward to.
It’s yet another week of live music lockdown, which stinks. But it seems like more and more artists are turning to the “home concert” option to stay connected. Here are a few of note:
List members Dave and Jacqui are turning their Parlor & Patio house concert featuring Liz Longley into a virtual event next Friday (4/17). This is sad news for people who like free pie (they serve it at intermission of their house shows), but good news for those who originally couldn’t snag a seat when the show sold out in 48 hours! Here’s the Eventbrite link. Just like usual Parlor & Patio shows, all ticket proceeds go directly to the artist.
List member Doug Hill-Harriss is still trying to convert me into a Radiohead fan, so he mentioned that they are posting a classic show every Thursday on their YouTube channel. Read more here.
What did I expect from a guy with a hyphenated last name…
Shawn Colvin is playing from her house on Saturday afternoon:
Rob Fetters will be doing gig #3 Saturday at 9 pm. Here’s what list member Lisa Collins had to say about his first show: LOVED the Rob Fetters show! Wow! Such a great songwriter!
Jesse Malin will be doing his third home show this Saturday at 4 Eastern on YouTube. Both previous gigs have been killer. (Last week’s show is posted below.) Don’t just take my word for it, here’s what Rolling Stone had to say in their “Best Streamed Performances of the Stay-at-Home Era” article:
For the past two Saturdays, Jesse Malin has been performing full two-hour concerts from his Manhattan apartment, each with their own theme. Dubbed “The Fine Art of Self-Distancing” (a play on the title of his 2003 debut, The Fine Art of Self-Destruction), the intimate gigs touch on songs from throughout his career, along with covers by Neil Young, Squeeze, and his old band D Generation. He also does a goofy show-and-tell routine and offers his recommendations for staying sane during quarantine: books by Alan Ginsberg and Debbie Harry, a doc on the Bad Brains, and what he calls Scorsese’s last great film, The King of Comedy. But it’s Malin’s stories — told by a guy who literally grew up in and around the New York punk scene — that are the rare gems, like one in which Joey Ramone tells off Lorne Michaels for never booking the Ramones on SNL.
And my boy Bill Janovitz from Buffalo Tom is doing his 4th weekly “Virtual Happy Hour” – last week’s 24-song set included covers of Hüsker Dü, Fountains of Wayne, Psychedelic Furs, Lefty Frizzell, Bill Withers and the Rolling Stones. His rehearsal version of the Fountains of Wayne tune is below.
Dan’s with the Band
“These virtual concerts are all well and good, but how about a story from list member Dan ‘Reds are gonna win it all’ Lewis?” you say…. So here’s Dan’s sordid saga about what went on backstage at a KISS concert:
My brother met the tour manager in our hometown of Lancaster Ohio (small world). He got us passes. If it wasn’t for a neighborhood buddy who I hadn’t seen in a while… back in eighth grade, if he didn’t invite me up to hear the new KISS record, I’d probably be a lawyer today. (I didn’t even like KISS but he had every Cream and Circus rock magazine …so very cool). So my brother says he’s got backstage passes for KISS. This is like 1998. I’m like, “I prefer to remember them from the Destroyer tour. But sounds like it would be fun.” Guy was great. Showed us the oxygen masks behind stage. Machines that blew the smoke out, then the machines that sucked the smoke back in!! (Because they were getting old, etc.)
There you have it, Dan Lewis’ tale of “sucking” backstage at a KISS concert.
Tributes to Prine
First Avenue Club in Minneapolis — documentary
List member Mighty Joe Sampson (as heard on the 97X podcast here) sent the link below. Cool doc celebrating 50 years of the iconic Twin Cities club. You’ll see some familiar faces mixed in the awesome archival footage
Gigs, interviews, and clips…
Shameless self-promotion
Sometime tomorrow, you’ll be able to check out a new episode of the 97X Rumblings from the Big Bush podcast featuring our interview with John Curley of the Afghan Whigs. NBD.
Hate to start on a sad note, but losing Adam Schlesinger from Fountains of Wayne and Ivy (and other projects) was a real kick in the trousers. This line from a Washington Post tribute sums it up nicely:
… his sharply tuned ear for both catchiness and emotion meant that Schlesinger could do something rare: He wrote songs that were not only wonderful but also could help you understand what it was that you loved about an entire genre of music.
Jesse Malin plays at 4 p.m. on YouTube. Last week’s gig is here (and below)
Bill Janovitz (Buffalo Tom) is doing another Happy Hour at 4:30 on FB (at that link he has video of his rehearsal of the Fountains of Wayne song “Hackensack”)
Rob Fetters is playing another “from home” show at 8 p.m.
FWIW, I think the Instagram interface is the worst of the bunch… small screen, and the artist is usually partially obscured by the comments stream.
Shows already recorded for your viewing pleasure:
Richard Thompson did a great gig. Then again, every gig he does is great.
If you’ve never checked out the Comedy Bang Bang podcast, you need to do so. And here are videos of the host (Scott Aukerman) and a frequent guest (Paul F. Thompkins) adding their own version of the Star Wars cantina music to classic scenes from several movies. The entire playlist is below… watch all of them as it has a cumulative silliness effect.
Adam Schlesinger’s passing reminded me of this great Robbie Fulks tune:
Bill donated $ from the tip jar to Partners in Health, an organization fighting coronavirus in impoverished countries.
The documentary about Chuck Prophet doing a live performance of his album Temple Beautiful with an orchestra is here:
And Bob Dylan released a 17-minute tune about the JFK assassination…
The new album from Waxahatchee, Saint Cloud, is heartily endorsed by list members Rico, Bruce and yours truly. An early contender for album of the year.
New releases from Lilly Hiatt, Clem Snide and Cable Ties are also worth a spin or three.
Tanya Donnelly has a new album coming out with the Parkington Sisters as her backing band. Here’s a nice video from the Parkington Sisters:
The Broken Record podcast is one of my favorites – so far this season they’ve chatted with legends such as Bob Weir, Robbie Robertson and Booker T, as well as whippersnappers like Run The Jewels. And the 97X Rumblings from the Big Bush podcast has a new episode out too.
On a sadder note, John Prine is in critical condition.
Joe Sampson joined 97X as a Miami University student intern (a.k.a. “Breakfast Club co-producer”) in 1993 and stuck around as a weekender after he graduated before moving on to short stint as a writer for CityBeat, and a 12-year career as a news producer at Channel 19 and later Channel 9 in Cincinnati. He now has come full circle as a Miami U. professor. We chat with “Mighty Joe” about his late nights with “Mama Jazz,” 97X softball teams, and his undying love for both Steve Baker and another 97X student intern.
Day in Eden: Joe is in the 3rd row, in the red hat… next to Dave, who is doing his best “Schneider from One Day at at Time” impersonation. Joe in his MU dorm room, circa 1992. He wanted us to note the presence of both Foghat and firehose posters…
Joe is now a Senior Clinical Professor of Journalism (sounds fancy!) at Miami University. His students have won several regional and national journalism awards over the years.
“It’s a major award!!!” Joe is back row center… back row right is Ringo Jones, lead singer of the band Mad Anthony.
As far as we can tell, Joe and his wife Alison are the only former 97X Breakfast Club co-producers who are now married to each other. Alison was a co-producer for Dave and Rictile in the mid-90s as “Connie Consuelo.”
Rumblings from the Big Bush was NOT Joe’s podcast debut. He and another MU prof created a podcast about “being Muslim in the Midwest” as part of a cultural exchange program with the Goethe Institut in Germany.
Lest you think Joe is all work and no play, here’s a photo of him posing with a bunny.
This coronavirus lockdown is a real kick in the trousers for fans of live music. Yes, it’s flattening the curve, but it’s also flattening the hearts of music fans everywhere, and flattening the already-skinny wallets of many performers.
Several artists are turning to “virtual concerts” to raise funds for themselves, raise funds for charity, or just to keep from going stir-crazy.
I’ve tuned in to a few: Lucius with Courtney Barnett, Josh Ritter, Indigo Girls, Orville Peck, Julia Steiner (lead singer of Ratboys – check ’em out), Bill Janovitz from Buffalo Tom, Liz Longley… not the same as being at a club, but better than sitting in your basement staring at the same four walls.
Check out Orville Peck’s version of “Islands in the Stream” – video is cued up to that spot
In case you missed it (and there’s a 99.9% chance you did miss it), the podcast that I co-host is yesterday’s news! Er, I mean, it was in yesterday’s Cincinnati Enquirer. What do you mean you don’t subscribe to a newspaper? What do you mean you don’t even know what a ‘newspaper’ is?
Full disclosure: Luann Gibbs used to work at 97X. But neither Dave nor I knew that she was going to mention us.
“Extra, extra… two old guys talk about a radio station that died a decade ago!”
It was our “the new phone book’s here” moment.
Actually, Dave and I don’t harbor any delusions of grandeur. (Occasionally, we do have delusions of adequacy, but we lie down until those go away.) Our podcast is extremely niche. Some podcasts have thousands of regular listeners, some have hundreds… we have “tens” of listeners. As I often say, “we’ve made about 50 people very happy” by bringing back fond memories of a small-but-mighty and much-beloved indie rock radio station. But it’s always nice to get a bit of recognition for the hard work you’ve done.
And now that we’re all under house arrest, there’s never been a better time to check out some new podcasts.
This post originally appeared on my personal blog, but I’m re-posting here because it’s about music… and music posts are pretty scarce these days..
Back in my Catholic grade school days, the nuns talked about the Corporal Works of Mercy, one of which is “feed the hungry.”
William Shakespeare said “if music be the food of love, play on!”
Bill Janovitz, the lead singer of my favorite band, Buffalo Tom, hosted a “Virtual Happy Hour” this past Saturday afternoon, via the band’s Facebook page. After mixing himself a martini in his kitchen, he headed down to the basement to play songs from throughout his career, usually on acoustic guitar, occasionally on piano. It was like manna from heaven. A feast for the music-starved masses.
I’ve seen Buffalo Tom several times — in Cincinnati, in New York, L.A., Chicago — and have loved every second of every show. But last night’s solo gig was not just something I wanted to see, it something I desperately needed after a long, long week of work and worry and weirdness. And it wasn’t just me that needed this catharsis — a thousand folks tuned in from around the world. Australia, Italy, England, Abu Dhabi…
I’m not big on the FaceGrams and the InstaTweet and the other social mediums, but yesterday, it sure came in handy as a way to bond with like-minded fans. It provided a true sense of close connection in a social distancing world.
Bill was in his basement, sipping a martini and playing his songs. 800 miles away, I was in my basement, singing along at the top of my lungs (something I’d never do at a regular Buffalo Tom concert – I respect the other fans too much to torture them with my off-key warbling) and crying in my beer at the sad songs. It was more than music, it was magic.
Fancy suit. Sensible footwear.
In addition to being a fabulous songwriter and performer, Bill is also a caring dude. He’s heavily involved in the Hot Stove Cool Music fundraisers that provide scholarships for kids and families in disadvantaged neighborhoods in Boston. Yesterday’s gig raised more than $4,000 (via Venmo and PayPal “tip jars”) for local venues, promoters and musicians who are out of work during the coronavirus lockdown.
Bill’s already booked another “Virtual Happy Hour” gig for this Saturday, March 28th, at 4:30 EDT. Grab a beverage and belly up to the basement bar for some musical salvation. This go-round, the donations go to Bill, because he was originally scheduled for a gig that evening. So tip generously.
Until then, why not use a bit of your “house arrest” free time to check out Buffalo Tom’s most recent album Quiet and Peace. It’ll be good for what ails you.
Kathie Lucas went from fast food to “Fast Times at WOXY.” She worked at 97X for a decade, yet was never live on the air. Instead she handled a number of crucial behind-the-scenes roles from 1994-2004… “Director of First Impressions,” Traffic Director (i.e. scheduling the commercials), Promotions Director… she even raised her daughter Sophie at the station! We chat with Kathie about her many roles (including a starring role in a commercial), her Harlequin romance moment, the infamous “butt coolers” at Lollapalooza, and her amazing warehouse stash of 97X promo items.
Kathie and Bryan J. outside the station, with the giant wood-carved Elvis looming in the background Kathie savoring her Dave Matthews moment. 97X staffersJulie Maxwell, Susan Schreiber and Kathie Lucas
Here’s just a sampling of the type of promo items that 97X gave away back in the day:
Ah, the days of floppy discs…
“Gonna be another hot one… better get your ass to the butt cooler!” Kathie with her husband (and Dave’s man-crush) MikeKathie with her daughter Sophie, who spent her baby/toddler years at the station. Both Dave and the Farrah poster are scheduled to appear at the 97X reunion at Bake’s house this summer
Hey kids, let’s Spring Forward into some live tunes (see what we did there?)
On Monday, you should get to bed early to make up for lost time.
You’ll need the extra rest, because it’s a very busy week of music.
Tuesday gigs:
Fruition plays Madison Live, with former Houndmouth member Katie Toupin as the opener
Bear Hands plays Riverfront Live
Ms. Lauryn Hill is at the Taft Theater
Jerry Springer records another batch of podcasts at Folk School Coffee Parlor in Ludlow, KY.
On Wednesday, Pigeons Playing Ping Pong (they’re a jam band, in case you couldn’t tell by their name… “I’ll see your String Cheese Incident and raise you 200…”) will be at the Madison Theater, with Goose as the opener.
Instead of “say ‘cheese'” it’s “say ‘Duuuuuuude!'”
Other Hump Day gigs:
Theo Katzman plays 20th Century Theater
Ladysmith Black Mambazo is at Memorial Hall
MammaBear plays MOTR
Thursday shows:
Whiskey Myers plays Taft with The Steel Woods
Melvin Seals and the JGB play Ludlow Garage (Jerry Garcia will NOT be there… well, I suppose it depends on what sort of mushrooms you have for the pre-show dinner)
Kelly Richey and Sherri McGee play Dead Low Brewing
Fea, Patsy, and Megahussy are at Southgate
Death Hags and Brindle play MOTR
Ben Levin is at BrewRiver
This coming weekend is close enough to 3/17 to serve as a handy excuse for a “St. Patrick’s Day Weekend” at every bar in America. Please be careful out there.
Friday is busy night for gigs too:
of Montreal plays the Woodward, with Lily and Horn Horse
Caamp plays a sold-out show at Madison Theater
Tommy Emmanuel plays Taft with opener Sierra Hull
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram plays the Mad Frog
Motherfolk and Bad Bad Hats play Southgate’s Revival Room
Lost Dog Street Band plays Southgate’s larger Sanctuary
Culture Queer plays MOTR with Disaster Class and Quotah
Saxy man David Sanborn has a sold-out gig at Ludlow Garage
Here’s your Saturday smorgasbord:
Guster plays an evening of acoustic music and improv at Memorial Hall
Kasim Sultan’s Utopia plays Ludlow Garage
Dermot Kennedy is at Taft
The Nude Party and Boa (seems like a fitting pairing) play Southgate
Anna Burch and Carriers play MOTR
The Ark Band is at Fretboard Brewing
Georgia Middleman and the Ruby Green Duo play the Downtowne Listening Room
Ben Levin and Noah Wotherspoon play Mansion Hill Tavern
Camp Springs Tavern (co-owned by the extremely talented designer/artist Keith Neltner) hosts a 4-Year Bash and Print Trader art show, with a nice music lineup:
On Sunday, Bogart’s has a nice double bill: Anderson East and Foy Vance. And Southgate has a four-band lineup of Tiny Moving Parts, Belmont, Capstan and Jetty Bones.
Recommended Reading
This Robbie Robertson interview (with video clips) about the new movie about The Band called Once Were Brothers is worth checking out. I hear the movie is quite good too.
Recommended Viewing
If you weren’t alive when Battle of the Network Stars was on TV, have you really ever lived? Feast your eyes upon the glory of this clip:
Wussy crushed it, as always, at Woodward this past Friday. Such a fantastic band! In my next life, I want to be married to Chuck Cleaver and/or Lisa Walker.
Album Cover of the Week
Ach du lieber!
Shows that I’m attending
A recurring theme in the tons* of emails we get every week is: “Hey TWILM Editor, you seem like a really cool person. What shows are you attending?”
Why, thanks so much for asking! Here are the shows for which I have tickets in hand (I type with my other hand):
Rob Fetters at Roebling Point Books in Covington on Saturday, March 21
Bob Mould at 20th Century on Sunday, March 22
Shovels & Rope at Ludlow Garage on Wednesday, April 8
Watkins Family Hour at Memorial Hall on Saturday, April 11
Liz Longley at Parlor & Patio on Friday, April 17
Robyn Hitchcock at Southgate House on Sunday, April 26
Greg Dulli with Joseph Arthur at Woodward Theater on Wednesday, April 29
The National’s Homecoming Festival on May 8-9
Andrew Bird, Calexico and Iron & Wine at PNC Pavilion on Saturday, June 20
