Amanda Jo Williams at the Unknown Theater

“Country girl from outer space” Amanda Jo Williams has been winning over Angelinos with her uncanny ability to project an unfiltered open heart through her cartoonishly vulnerable voice and her spare elemental compositions. She also comes across as disarmingly endearing in many of the bizarre videos on her myspace page. You can see her for free tonight, Thursday Aug 26th at the Mountain Bar. Live shows feature her freaky tribal hilbilly folk band careening through her simple rollicking  country grooves with wild unfettered abandon while Amanda sits centerstage with her tiny guitar and big drum unselfconciously doing her thing. Paper Magazine describes a show saying,”Williams strummed A-minor for fifteen minutes straight while her band stomped rhythmically around her backwoods muppet ballideering.”

It’s the emotional whallop her music delivers that makes her more than just another freak in the freak kingdom.”Listening to Amanda Jo Williams’ rough-shod country-folk is like eating a squirrel stew supper before falling into bed,  her primal music is an open maw to the mysteries and fears of the world. With a twang-heavy voice that sometimes breaks into manic gibberish, she sounds like an unruly, sometimes lonely little girl left to her own devices.”says the L.A. Times

“My music is basic and simple”, Williams says in her interview with  Daiana Feuer on Tumblr, “I do stuff that’s more from space, channeling how aliens would tell us to be when we’re more evolved. Anything is possible. You can see what you want to see when you want to see it, when you are ready to see. When your will is aligned with the universe and what you are born to do, when those things are aligned, you can find the place where you belong.”

"People need music where the artist is honest and themselves."- Amanda Jo Williams

Jeffertitti’s Nile will also bring their “hypnotic river of sound” to Chinatown on the same bill, providing some riffy Beatlesque melodicism and heavily effected sonic extrapolations.

also a live set by Latin Meds (josh charney of le switch is in latin meds)

and DJ  Hey Okay!

The Mountain Bar

it’s a DRAMATURGY production

Jeffertitti's Nile

Spirit Vine (photo by Karri Bowman)

SPIRIT VINE conjures a retro-future where folks still read The Doors of Perception, seek enlightenment in shaman directed spiritual sweat-lodges and go Bathing at Baxters.

They’re bringing their reverb drenched tribal love rock to Spaceland Thursday May 6 along with Roughed Up Folk – My Pet Saddle – and members of Dios performing as Special K & Flying J (who will be performing songs from an upcoming Beck covers album).

Spirit Vine’s GOLDEN ep has been getting some well-reviewed attention, and the band is working on a full length album while weathering some changes. I had a chance to interview their dynamic lead vocalist Jacquelinne and here without furthur comment  is our conversation:

WES (Mister Nervous):

You guys have come a long way as a band since I first saw you at 14 Below, but right away I was impressed with the message you were trying to get across in the music and words. Could you try to describe the intention, the message that drives your music?

Jacquelinne (Spirit Vine)

Anything that inspires, helps people grow, transforms, pulsates, makes people imagine…I am really into cycles right now…death and rebirth, moving out of the past and keeping your intentions as honest as possible.

WES:

Your recent GOLDEN ep has been getting some very positive write-ups online lately and you’re still recording new stuff. Are you planning to release a full cd in the future?

Jacquelinne:

Hell yeah! We are in the midst of writing it right now….so amazing to see how the sound evolves…like watching a baby grow in front of your eyes….the process will be a little different too….we used to record in a back house/Wooden Ship in Echo Park…now we have graduated to Kelly’s farm in Silverlake…we will also be in good hands with Anthony Caruso who will be recording this record…everything else is a secret

WES:

Three of you were in Wake Up Incinerate (I still play that cd sometimes) and Spirit Vine is a very different thing. What prompted you to form Spirit Vine?
Jacquelinne:

Honestly, Gabe and I started smoking a lot of weed…we were definitely opening doors of perception…we got really into old Pink Floyd, Syd Barett, Bob Dylan ( I know, I know I started my Bob Dylan phase later…at least I admit it) Memphis Jug Band, and a bunch of old blues. We started writing in a style that felt really honest and coming from the soul and knew we were flying in the right direction.

WES:

How do you compose your songs? Is it individuals bringing complete songs to the band or is it more of a democratic group effort?

Jacquelinne:

There is no format…it started as Gabe and I writing a lot and then became whatever feels good…whatever is good for the tune

WES:

Do you think the “album” era is really over (full cd’s over 30 minutes often produced to be consistent in theme and sound) or is there still interest in longer works by artists?

Jacquelinne:

Oh no…I hope not! I love collecting records and if money served me right I would collect a lot more….one of my favorite things is the smell of old vinyl and geeking out to all of the cool artwork, lyrics, thank yous, who played what on this record, blah blah blahs

WES:

People have tried to describe your sound but is there a way you like to characterize it?

Jacquelinne:

Maybe if Mazzy Star had a drug problem and had a love child with Keith Richards who was also sleeping with Stevie Nicks who then injected Howlin’ Wolf and Sun House into the veins of Lennon’s imagination, Lou Reed’s swagger and Iggy Pop’s fist….phew!

WES:

Do you guys do a lot of reading? What is it you’re reading recently?

Jacquelinne:

Uh yeah! My mom always jokes that I am exactly like my dad…enjoying myself in a room full of books…it is so weird it is hysterical….right now I am reading Crime and Punishment, Jazz, The Sorcerer’s Way and well How To Read the Tarot….Gabe is currently working on Cash by Johnny Cash and onto Joseph Campbell…again and again and again and again

WES:

You have been playing some more high profile venues lately like the Hotel Cafe, what do you think has been the most responsible for the band’s rise in visibility?

Jacquelinne:

Weed

WES:

The band is going through some changes recently and it looks like you’re going to have a new bass player. Is there anything you’d like to say about that?

Jacquelinne:

Yeah anyone wanna join us? No, really, we are pretty sad about it…we are loosing an OG member and the backbone to the sound….he always has a place with us.

WES:

What’s your favorite food (or if you prefer what is your favorite color)?

Jacquelinne:

Pizza and salsa and tacos and avocados and… wine… I don’t care that it is not a food!

WES:

Is there anything you want to add, or something you’re just aching to say?

Jacquelinne:

We ain’t dead…yet

The LA FOLDAWAYS are finally entering intense rehearsals in May. A side project from the Mister Nervous band, Wes and a dedicated crew of misfits will be pulling together a repertoire of “classic” rockNroll including numbers from The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, The Kinks, Van Morrison, Shocking Blue (!), The Who… and more stuff including some interesting takes on old blues and RnB songs. A core trio is working as the lynchpin – and a large pool of  singers and players will rotate as the “front” or songleaders in many performances.

Not quite a tribute, “Classic Rock” or jam band – more a combination of all three. Shows will often feature completely different band line-ups, as available players will work in different combinations making each show completely unique. The LA Foldaways mission: to treat many of our favorite vintage songs as vibrant living things to be joyously jammed (as opposed to reverently copied).

We’ll let you know more soon.

The Sundowners do what they please

There’s nothing quite like a SUNDOWNERS show. The songs this band plays are completely their own and influenced (as lead singer and guitarist Dennis Stahl says) by,”…all the good shit from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s. This is not a contrived sound for the masses, it’s a heavy psychedelic, spiritual blues sound:100% organic and designed to open the mind. There are a lot of acts out there, yes, but only a few bands. What this means is three guys and a lady who play together and off of each other. We don’t cater to any particular audience, just those interested in good rock and roll from every era.”

From the hills of Alta Dena where the air is justa little clearer and the altitude justa little higher their music will probably remind you of a lot of things but it’ll never sound even slightly derivative. And live the band projects an atmosphere of affection and whimsy that makes it feel like you’ve been invited into a happy house-party with your new favorite slightly bent friends.

Michael Harpel and Dennis Stahl

On  SKELETONIZE , their second album,  the songs pull from an even wider landscape of sounds and moods than on their sprawling two disc debut cd. Just when you think you know where the journey is headed the band’ll switch it up and take you to some new unexpectedly wonderful place…as Dennis recently remarked “we’ll do uptempo and downtempo in the same song”. This flies in the face of the current trend of easily pigeonholed cookie-cutter compositions many groups use to try to zero-in on their currently chosen demographic target, which naturally makes this unaffected take-us-as-we-are crew very near and dear to Mister Nervous’ heart.

And so we are pleased beyond words to say the Sundowners are opening up our Mister Nervous record release party this Thursday!

The Sundowners love you and they're your new best friends!

THURSDAY MARCH 18th

THE UNKNOWN THEATER
1110 Seward St.
Los Angeles CA 90038

(with MY IMAGINARY FRIENDS and MISTER NERVOUS)

Doors open at 10pm
$10 at the door (however: drinks are very reasonable!)

Thursday 3/18  -  Doors open at 10pm

$10 at the door… awesome space, affordable drinks, great music!

You’re coming, yeah?