Rock the Wherehouse and AmericanaUK Interview

Sitting here at the Wherehouse getting ready to rock  the apocalypse. The bands were fed a nicely varied menu and appropriate quantities of liquid. George’s band goes on first, followed, we think, by Johnny Dowd and Mike “Jim” Edmondson.Lots of beautiful people have wandered in, but where to put the band? Chaos ensues.

Johnny checks out Georges spirit

 

Suddenly apocalypse is post, and George Spafford is at the mic.

Then John and Mike hit the stage without a pause, and don’t stop till they get enough…

Thanks to the Wherehouse for the welcoming space, to the friendly crowd, to the Freejays for closing out the night, and to George for his hospitality.

Del Day February 28, 2019

Ithaca NY’s Johnny Dowd has been patrolling the dark, uneasy, unclassified byways and B-roads of the American heartlands for over two decades. A blistering, uncompromising guitar slinger and songwriter, Dowd is set to release his new album ‘Family Picnic’ this month, an ‘americana’ gem that returns to the topics and themes that inspired his legendary debut, ‘Wrong Side Of Memphis‘ and once again underlines Dowd as one of America’s true musical explorers. Americana-UK catches up with him as he prepares to embark on another European tour and asks him about the music that accompanies any such road trip.

So Johnny, how’s life on the road for you and what’s in that glovebox?

There comes a time on every tour when the next drive is too far, your emotional tank is nearly empty, and you can think of nothing but your mortality. At that point, you pull out ZZ Top’s ‘Greatest Hits,’ and you are again ready to conquer the world.

After a gig I want to hear something as far away from the music I played as possible. Sun Ra fits the bill. Any Sun Ra album. It doesn’t matter. He is the tallest giant in a universe of giants.

Today is an easy drive. You feel like you are not a day over 60. In other words, all is groovy. It’s time for Grant Green’s ‘Ain’t it Funky Now.’ Funky and sophisticated.

One of the first albums I bought was James Brown, Live at the Apollo. The very first album I bought was by Percy Faith. I don’t know what that was about. I do love a string section. So many great James Brown albums, but I guess James Brown Live at Paris Olympia 1971 has got to be high on the list. Speaking of high, I don’t know what the band was on, but some of those tempos are ridiculous.

This is another album that’s good after a greasy English breakfast. Incredible playing, uber funky, socially interesting. Of course I’m talking about ‘Headhunters,’ Herbie Hancock. Anything you can do, he can do better.

It’s that boring time after sound check and dinner. You really have nothing left to say to your band mates, let alone strangers. I might go to the van for some alone time and listen to Mary Wells, ‘All the Best.’ This album is like a time machine for me. I can usually only listen to a couple of songs before I start getting too emotional. Then it’s time for a brewski.

Any time is a perfect time to play this record. You could listen to it before your greasy English breakfast, just to get your mind and belly in alignment. ‘Paid in Full,’ Eric B. and Rakim. (Have I mentioned Betty Davis, the woman who put the funk in Miles?) ( Yes, MANY times…. ed.)

Late night. Trying to find the hotel. Lost. Twenty minute drive turns into an hour-and-a-half. No problem. ‘The Very Best of ‘ Johnny Guitar Watson (Rhino Records) will keep you focussed, relaxed, and alert. I just love his guitar playing.

You have a day off. You would prefer to stay in your motel room and watch tv. But your band mates want to drive somewhere to see ancient ruins. What can you do? Dial up some Sonny Sharrock, ‘Ask the Ages.’ This album affects me the way The Dark Side of the Moon affects hippies.

Sometimes, hopefully only once per tour, you are lying in bed in your motel room, it’s 3 AM, and sleep is impossible. You are engulfed in an ocean of loneliness and regret, and there is only one album that really captures that feeling: ‘Only the Lonely,’ Frank Sinatra. But if it’s the last day of the tour, and you are headed to the airport, then the only album to play is his ‘Songs for Swinging Lovers.’ Boundless swinging optimism. So that is touring. Hours of great music in the van. Followed by a gig, motel, breakfast. Repeat.

 – Original Article

Live @The Mohawk Dec. 7 7pm

Johnny Dowd, 7 p.m. Dec. 7, Mohawk Place (47 E. Mohawk St.), $7.

Experimental alt-country artist Johnny Dowd will be posting up at Mohawk Place for a set Saturday night.

The influential Ithaca musician is back on the road to perform songs from his well-received March effort “Family Picnic.” The record once again finds the seasoned Dowd delivering a dark and avant-garde take on Americana, full of noise, black humor and twisted tales of love and murder.

Those unfamiliar with Dowd’s brand of roots music of should look to fellow left-of-the-dial genre acts like Palace Music, Songs: Ohia and Lambchop for comparison.

Ithaca-based glam-rocker Kurt Riley also will be featured on the bill with local support provided by dreamy post-rock outfit Which Witch and minimal guitar rock group Rabbit Jaw.

 – The Buffalo News

New CD release and the 2006 Tour that inspired it

 

Johnny Dowd: Live at GrassRoots 2006

By Hans Werksman werksman.blogspot.com

Johnny Dowd has dug up a rocking show from the past. Live at GrassRoots 2006, recorded in Trumansburg, NY in July 2006, catches him in full flight, with Michael Stark (keyboards, organ), Willie B (drums, bass pedals) and Kim Sherwood-Caso (vocals). He played quite a few songs that were unreleased at the time – the scary blues rocker Demons and Goats for instance would turn up on his Wake Up the Snakes album in 2010.

While most artists play it safe on stage and stick close to the studio versions, Dowd and his band love to turn things upside down and inside out. Warts and all is pretty much their modus operandi, but it works like a charm. Uncle Willie comes barreling down the tracks like a runaway train. The Good Die Young, a song that became a highlight on the Hellwood album Chainsaw Of Life is a slowed down lament that hits hard. Miracles Never Happen is dedicated to his mother, who would be surprised that her son is still kicking ass today, a music critics favourite, and a cult artist with a fervent and vocal fan base. Drunk is skewed and lopsided, almost falling apart, with Kim Sherwood-Caso as the one who keeps it together. Performing a song with reckless abandon is what Johnny Dowd does best, but he is smart enough to take a time out after such a demanding oexxcursion and let “his band within a band” Tzar (Willie B and Michael Stark) plus guest vocalist Eva Revesz do their electronic thing with Don’t Drink the Water – that must have confused the hardcore folkies in attendance. Closing the show with God Created Woman, a song that was already part of the shows of his first band Neon Baptist and a stand out track of his Pictures from Life’s Other Side album he bade the audience farewell, after putting on a show that delighted his fans, converted a few and generally confusing and/or irritating the rest.

Live at GrassRoots 2006 is released on Mother Jinx Records and is available thru his website (and the merch table at his shows).

Tracks:

1. Poverty House
2. Linoleum Floor
3. Miracles Never Happen
4. King of the Jews
5. Uncle willie
6. The Good Die Young
7. Drunk
8. Don’t Drink the Water
9. Demons and Goats
10. Ding Dong
11. God Created Woman

 

As you can tell from Hans’ review, the band was burning pretty hot, as is usual after coming off tour. We wish we had a tape of this 2006 show:

The Sun 2006 review

Speaking of great albums, did you miss this? It was a very good year…

 Johnny Dowd

By Listen Up June 14, 2006

One of 2006’s most intriguing discs so far is Johnny Dowd’s Cruel Words, a combination of poetic lyrics and funky rhythms, with synths, organ, bass, and guitar. Even with the music, the performances — half spoken, half sung — owe more to the theater than to traditional singer-with-band-onstage shows.

Celebrating cynical existentialism, Dowd brings odd stories to life: a wheelchair-bound veteran who questions the price of loyalty; a cowboy who shoots off his “member” because it’s the root of all his troubles; the suicide of a man whose lipstick-scrawled message on a motel room mirror claims he’s the “King of the Jews” — he lay surrounded by women’s shoes, a Telecaster, and, on the nightstand, an empty notepad.Fort Worth native Dowd grew up in Pauls Valley, Okla., pretending to be James Brown (circa Live at the Apollo) before moving to Memphis, where he picked up his first guitar and discovered Hank Williams as Luke the Drifter. Mix in bits of free jazz and psychedelia, and you get an idea what Cruel Words sounds like.

The songs occasionally — and purposefully — jangle like shards of glass in a cardboard box. Dowd’s creaky, out-of-breath voice isn’t a lot better, but the sum of the album goes far out and almost touches the ragged edge where interesting things can happen to music and listeners.

Dowd wrote a dozen of the 14 songs here and interprets bandmate and drummer Brian Wilson’s “Wilder than the Wind ‘66” and Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.” Dowd and his tight outfit turn the otherwise innocuous JBG into a vaguely ominous threat.

Cruel Words is an aural guided tour through a sideways world where nothing is pretty, it just is. The words and music work so well together that listeners can almost see it.

 – Original Article

 

Johnny Dowd: Cruel Words

Alan Brown   31 Aug 2006

“Mystery, oh mystery / Cowboy’s life is strange / Gets very existential when his brains are rearranged”, drawls Johnny Dowd to the accompaniment of vibrant ’60s retro organ and bombastic drums on the darkly comic opener “House of Pain”, about a philanderer who decides to take a gun to “that thing between his legs”. For the uninitiated listener, this opening gambit amounts to a baptism by fire into the nightmarish domain inhabited by Dowd and the array of desperate, murderous, and marginalized characters he has chronicled in song over the last eight years.

Ever since Dowd decided at the age of 50 to utilise the offices of the removals company he co-owns in Ithaca, New York, to record his self-released, stripped-down, country-blues-soaked-in-blood debut Wrong side of Memphis, he has rejoiced in portraying the seedy underbelly of contemporary small-town U.S.A. But even though the subject matter may have remained a constant over the years, his music has long ago wandered far from its initial raw blues path to incorporate free-flowing jazz and swamp psychedelia.

Cruel Words, Dowd’s sixth album and second for Bongo Beat Records following 2004’s Cemetery Shoes, is no exception with his penchant for country blues and retro keyboards serving as a foundation from which to build a wonderfully ragged fusion of otherwordly funeral funk (“Ding Dong”), hard rockin’ wig-out (“Cradle of Lies”), scuzzy electric-guitar-fuelled rap (“Anxiety”), and distorted penny-opera jazz (“Unwed Mother”) to accompany his profound spoken-word lyrics. It also comes as no surprise to find that the cowboy-turned-eunuch of the opening number is not the only disenchanted individual to appear in Dowd’s latest batch of excellent musical vignettes. There’s the disillusioned wheelchair-bound vet in the funky anti-war song “Praise God” who questions the sacrifice he made for a country that has no more need for his services. On “Final Encore”, Dowd, sounding like a burnt-out Nick Cave, paints a bleak picture of a suicidal musician’s final moments in a cheap motel.

Elsewhere, Jon Langford (who previously performed with Dowd on the latter’s self-penned song “Judgement Day” for the 2002 anti-death-penalty album The Executioner’s Last Songs) and Sally Timms of the Mekons join Dowd regulars Brian Wilson (former employee of Dowd’s moving company who plays drums and bass pedal), Mike Stark (keyboards), and longstanding back-up vocalist Kim Sherwood-Caso (who was sadly absent on Cemetery Shoes) to provide additional vocals on the country lament “Drunk”.

While you’d hardly expect this cacophony of woes to end on a happy note, Dowd wraps things up thrillingly with his longstanding live-set finale “Johnny B. Goode”, a hell-bound reinterpretation of the Chuck Berry classic. With Sherwood-Caso’s angelic backing vocals shadowed by a snarling, creepy Dowd, pounding keyboards, and distorted electric guitar that threatens to drive the song into freefall only to pull back from the abyss at the last moment, this provides a menacing yet exhilarating end to an enjoyably inventive and deliriously dark album.

 – Original Article

 

JDF would like to contribute a small collection of photos of the 2006 European tour, some by Mike Edmondson, some by Michael Stark and some by a photographer at a show ( if you identify yourself, we’ll identify you!):

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

 

Live @ Lokaal42 – last day of Family Picnic tour!

Eindelijk bij Lokaal42 Johnny Dowd! Met zijn nieuwe album Family Picnic op zak tourt hij vanaf april 2019 door Europa en doet daarbij ook ons lokaal aan!

– Johnny Dowd –
Alternatieve countryzanger Johnny Dowd fascineert fans en critici al sinds zijn eerste album Wrong Side of Memphis in 1997 uitkwam. Met ongeveer één nieuw album per jaar blijft hij zijn eigen draai geven aan de Amerikaanse rootsmuziek. Hij maakt donkere, maar humoristische en catchy songs die doen denken aan Tom Waits, Nick Cave en Captain Beefheart.

– Family Picnic –
Op 1 maart 2019 komt het nieuwe album Family Picnic uit, waarin Dowd terugkeert naar de roots rock arena waar hij ooit mee begon. Dertig jaar lang maakt hij al albums die de trends trotseren; een unieke verzameling werk dat met kop en schouders uitsteekt boven zijn gelauwerde tijdgenoten.

– Johnny Dowd over zijn nieuwe album –
“Had to dig pretty deep for this one. Not sure how many more tunes I have in me. Tick tock. This record took an unexpected turn to the past — my past. It’s kind of like “Wrong Side of Memphis” 30 years down the road. Surprisingly little has changed for me (emotionally, that is). I’m still drawn to the same themes — unrequited love, murder, general foolishness. Waltzes and shuffles and boom chuck beats abound. Ice cream chord changes. Plus Kim Sherwood-Caso and Mike Edmondson. What’s not to like? An Americana classic, if I do say so myself.”
— Johnny Dowd

Finally at Lokaal42 Johnny Dowd! With his new album Family Picnic in his pocket, he will be touring Europe from April 2019 and also visiting us locally! – Johnny Dowd – Alternative country singer Johnny Dowd has fascinated fans and critics ever since his first album Wrong Side of Memphis was released in 1997. With about one new album a year, he continues to give his own twist to American roots music. He makes dark but humorous and catchy songs that are reminiscent of Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Captain Beefheart. – Family Picnic – On March 1, 2019, the new album Family Picnic will be released, in which Dowd returns to the roots rock arena he once started. For thirty years he has been making albums that defy trends; a unique collection of work that stands head and shoulders above its acclaimed contemporaries.

Live @ de Peppel with Melle de Boer (Family Picnic review by Da Music)

Exclusief in De Peppel: Johnny Dowd! Met zijn nieuwe album Family Picnic op zak tourt hij vanaf april 2019 door Europa. We zijn trots te melden dat de show in De Peppel de ENIGE is in Nederland! Mis het niet!

– Johnny Dowd –
Alternatieve countryzanger Johnny Dowd fascineert fans en critici al sinds zijn eerste album Wrong Side of Memphis in 1997 uitkwam. Met ongeveer één nieuw album per jaar blijft hij zijn eigen draai geven aan de Amerikaanse rootsmuziek. Hij maakt donkere, maar humoristische en catchy songs die doen denken aan Tom Waits, Nick Cave en Captain Beefheart.

– Family Picnic –
Op 1 maart 2019 komt het nieuwe album Family Picnic uit, waarin Dowd terugkeert naar de roots rock arena waar hij ooit mee begon. Dertig jaar lang maakt hij al albums die de trends trotseren; een unieke verzameling werk dat met kop en schouders uitsteekt boven zijn gelauwerde tijdgenoten.

– Johnny Dowd over zijn nieuwe album –
“Had to dig pretty deep for this one. Not sure how many more tunes I have in me. Tick tock. This record took an unexpected turn to the past — my past. It’s kind of like “Wrong Side of Memphis” 30 years down the road. Surprisingly little has changed for me (emotionally, that is). I’m still drawn to the same themes — unrequited love, murder, general foolishness. Waltzes and shuffles and boom chuck beats abound. Ice cream chord changes. Plus Kim Sherwood-Caso and Mike Edmondson. What’s not to like? An Americana classic, if I do say so myself.”
— Johnny Dowd

– Support: Melle de Boer –
Van Melle de Boer is bekend dat hij misschien wel de mooiste liedjes schrijft in Den Haag en zijn sporen lang en breed verdiend heeft met Smutfish/Smetvis en Henk & Melle.

Zaterdag 20 april speel ik in Poppodium de Peppelmet John Dowd en Michael. Ik spit in mijn oude, hervonden liedjes. Ze katapulten me naar een andere periode en daardoor snap ik mijn nu iets beter.

Saturday April 20 I play in Poppodium de Peppel with John Dowd and Michael. I dig into my old, recovered songs. They catapult me ​​to a different period and that is why I get a little better now.

Melle de Boer

Exclusive in De Peppel: Johnny Dowd! With his new album Family Picnic in his pocket, he will be touring Europe from April 2019. We are proud to announce that the show in De Peppel is the ONLY in the Netherlands! Don’t miss it – Johnny Dowd – Alternative country singer Johnny Dowd has fascinated fans and critics ever since his first album Wrong Side of Memphis was released in 1997. With about one new album a year, he continues to give his own twist to American roots music. He makes dark but humorous and catchy songs that are reminiscent of Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Captain Beefheart. – Family Picnic – On March 1, 2019, the new album Family Picnic will be released, in which Dowd returns to the roots rock arena he once met began. For thirty years he has been making albums that defy trends; a unique collection of work that stands head and shoulders above his acclaimed contemporaries.- Johnny Dowd about his new album – “Had to dig pretty deep for this one. Not sure how many more tunes I have in me. Tick tock. This record took an unexpected turn to the past – my past It’s child of like “Wrong Side of Memphis” 30 years down the road Surprisingly little has changed for me (emotionally, that is) I’m still drawn to the same themes – unrequited love, murder, general foolishness. Waltzes and shuffles and tree chuck beats abound. Ice cream chord changes. Plus Kim Sherwood-Caso and Mike Edmondson. What’s not to like?

Support: Melle de Boer – Van Melle de Boer is known to have written the most beautiful songs in The Hague and has earned his spurs long and wide with Smutfish / Smetvis and Henk & Melle. Saturday April 20 I will play in Poppodium de Peppelmet John Dowd and Michael. I dig into my old, recovered songs. They catapult me ​​to another period and that’s why I get a little better now. Saturday April 20 I play at Poppodium de Peppel with John Dowd and Michael. I dig into my old, recovered songs. They catapult me ​​to a different period and that’s why I get a little better now.
-Melle de Boer

Johnny Dowd – Family Picnic

19 april 2019

Patrick Van Gestel

Mother Jinx Records

De afgelopen paar platen maakte Johnny Dowd het de neutrale luisteraar niet eenvoudig. Met elektronica in combinatie met hyperkinetische gitaren leek hij zijn duivels uit te willen drijven, gezien het in de voorafgaande zeventig jaar met drank, drugs en doodgewone rock-‘n-roll toch niet gelukt was. Of hij dan nu rust gevonden heeft? Wel… niet echt.

Maar hij brengt het wel weer op een iets meer toegankelijke manier. ‘Family Picnic’ is eigenlijk gewoon een … euh, picknick, vergeleken met pakweg ‘Execute American Folklore‘. Maar verwacht je niet aan wonderen. Johnny Dowd is nog altijd voor honderd procent Johnny Dowd. Dat wil zeggen: prachtige eenvoud, maffe teksten en die uit honderden herkenbare drawl, die hem typeert.

En dan zijn er uiteraard die mistroostige teksten, die hij steevast declameert. In de opener Hoodoo kan hij zich nog net inhouden. Daar laat hij zijn gitaar de vrije loop en krijgt de vibrafoon voorrang. Maar dan is er de wals, die het sarcastische The Man Of Your Dreams is, en de prachtige blueskraker Vicksburg, waarin hij de Amerikaanse burgeroorlog op de korrel neemt op zijn eigen unieke manier: dood en verderf, maden en vliegen bevolken een nummer over deze en bij uitbreiding alle oorlogen.

Als je nu denkt dat de elektronica helemaal verdwenen is, heb je het ook mis. Dat was al aan de opener te merken, maar ook aan een song als Shameless. Je vraagt je enkel af of Dowd dit nu doet omdat hij hiermee de volledige controle heeft (en dus geen drummer en bassist nodig heeft). Maar het doet er eigenlijk al lang niet meer toe: dit is gewoon de stijl die Johnny Dowd hanteert en zich helemaal eigen heeft gemaakt. Like it or not. Hij weet die elektronica ook perfect te integreren in zijn gitaarspel. Getuige een nummer als Stuttering Wind.

“I sing songs of lust and depravity / that’s the only kind of songs come out of me” zingt hij in het überironische Thomas Dorsey, waarin hij zijn bewondering voor de desbetreffende gospelzanger de vrije loop laat en dan smeekt: “I wish that satan would let me go”. Maar wat ons betreft mag Dowd gewoon blijven wie hij is: een getikte rockzanger met meer dan één hoek af, die zijn blik op dit leven – Family Picnic, ziet u? – met u deelt.

Het heeft iets kinderlijk eerlijks, dat nieuwe album van Johnny Dowd. En tegelijkertijd ademt het ouderwetse kwaliteit uit, maar dan wel op Dowds eigenzinnige manier.

  – Original article

The last couple of albums Johnny Dowd did not make it easy for the neutral listener. With electronics in combination with hyperkinetic guitars, he seemed to want to cast out his devils, since he had not succeeded in the previous seventy years with alcohol, drugs and normal rock and roll. Whether he has found peace now? Well … not really.

But he does bring it back in a slightly more accessible way. ‘Family Picnic’ is actually just a… er, picnic, compared to, say, ‘ Execute American Folklore ‘. But don’t expect miracles. Johnny Dowd is still one hundred percent Johnny Dowd. That means: beautiful simplicity, silly texts and those from hundreds of recognizable drawl, which typifies him.

And then of course there are those dreary texts, which he invariably declares. In the opener Hoodoo he can just restrain himself. There he lets his guitar run free and the vibraphone is given priority. But then there is the waltz, which is the sarcastic The Man Of Your Dreams , and the beautiful blues cracker Vicksburg , in which he takes the American civil war in his own unique way: death and destruction, maggots and flies populate a song about this and by extension all wars.

If you now think that the electronics have completely disappeared, you are also wrong. You could tell that from the opener, but also from a song like Shameless . You only wonder if Dowd does this now because he has full control (and therefore does not need a drummer and bass player). But it doesn’t really matter for a long time: this is just the style that Johnny Dowd uses and has completely mastered. Like it or not. He also knows how to integrate that electronics perfectly into his guitar playing. Witness a song like Stuttering Wind .

“I sing songs of lust and depravity / that’s the only child or songs come out of me” he sings in überironic Thomas Dorsey , in which he lets his admiration for the gospel singer in question run wild and then begs: “I wish that satan would let me go “. But as far as we are concerned, Dowd can just continue to be who he is: a crazy rock singer with more than one angle, who looks at this life – Family Picnic, you see? – share with you.

It has something childishly honest about it, that new album from Johnny Dowd. And at the same time it exudes old-fashioned quality, but in Dowd’s wayward way.

– translation by Google