I See Hawks in L.A.

In a world that seems bursting with Americana talent, I See Hawks in L.A. soars like a Peregrine Falcon over the angel's folk-rock skyline

 

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — I See Hawks in L.A. have released five critically acclaimed albums since they began writing songs in their Echo Park living rooms 11 years ago. The band’s sound layers electricity and Southern California psychedelia over acoustic guitars and rich vocal harmonies.

Meanwhile, fans have always treasured the Hawks’ acoustic shows, where Rob Waller’s rich voice, the band’s subtle guitar arrangements, and the dark, literate lyrics take the spotlight. A three-year one-mic acoustic series hosted by the band at Cole’s bar in downtown L.A., and memorable acoustic shows all over the U.S. with Ray Wylie Hubbard, Chris Hillman, and Dave Alvin, have honed the Hawks’ sound.

So in 2012, the End of the World according to the Mayan calendar, I See Hawks In L.A. will finally release that acoustic album, New Kind of Lonely, recorded live in a circle at Marc Doten’s Echo Park studio with lovely German microphones. Street date is set for February 21 on Western Seeds Records.

It’s been a long and colorful journey for L.A.’s best-known alt-country band. Countless whiskey-fueled shows from Santa Monica to downtown to the high desert with Mike Stinson, Randy Weeks, Tony Gilkyson and dozens of other artists spawned a now-thriving roots country scene amidst the palm trees and yuccas. Four I See Hawks In L.A. releases notched #1 on the Freeform American Roots (FAR) Chart, and several have hit the Euro Americana Top 10. Dave Alvin has cited the Hawks as “one of California’s unique treasures.”

Treks to Europe and U.K. and repeated tours through most of the 50 states have created a solid following scattered across the globe. “We thrive in the margins,” the Hawks always say. New Kind of Lonely could be the recording to push them into prominence.

On every track, shimmering textures of Martins and Gibsons and upright bass, with touches of dobro and some beautiful fiddle from Gabe Witcher, embellish haunted themes. Death and loss, in very personal terms, weave into almost every song. L.A. Americana’s favorite sister, fiddler/songwriter Amy Farris, is mourned lyrically; the sorrow waiting at the end of every long and joyous marriage is explored in the bittersweet “Your Love Is Going To Kill Me (Someday).”

In reaching back to pre-electric traditions, the Hawks seem to have tapped into the mortality that looms in the work of Hank Williams, The Stanley Brothers, and the Carter Family, far from the feel-good suburbiana of today’s Nashville songwriting. Dark times do need some kind of acknowledgement. I See Hawks In L.A. have taken this on.

But much of the music is rocking and uplifting. “Big Old Hypodermic Needle,” a black humored two beat about two best friends overdosing, is perfect for a barn dance. “Hunger Mountain Breakdown,” in which the singer plans a dramatic ridgetop suicide, is driven by Cliff Wagner’s kickass bluegrass banjo and Gabe Witcher’s virtuoso fiddling. “The Spirit of Death” is hard charging Cajun rock. “I Fell In Love With the Grateful Dead,” a compendium of the three bandmates’ Dead show experiences over four decades, ventures into jam band territory, with lots of notes expended on guitar and bass.

I See Hawks In L.A. will launch New Kind of Lonely with, appropriately enough, an acoustic show at McCabe’s (February 24), followed by an electric version of the new tunes at Pappy & Harriet’s (March 10) in the high desert. The band will tour North Carolina in May and will also perform at the Strawberry Festival in California's Sierras. Over the summer they will hit the road to places new and familiar. - Cary Baker

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Baby and Album

Hilary Duff is Back

Timing a rebirth of one's career with giving actual birth to a child does not at first seem like a realistic plan...thinking more about it, it doesn't even seem like a realistic second, third or fourth alternative plan, but that is what former Disney tweener-starlett-turned-pop-idol Hilary Duff has planned for the next couple months. She has been in the studio, and you can use this link to  watch promotional videos, should you be inclined.

I suggest that cautiously, understanding that most readers of this site are not big Hilary Duff supporters, with reasons ranging from demographics to musical tastes. Yours truly is a big Hilary Duff fan, based on the age of my teenaged daughter and our shared experience of Hilary Duff live, which turned out to be one of the nicest concert surprises of my entire concert-going life. Full Disclosure: I attend concerts at a frequency only slightly greater than that of my encounters with Bigfoot, which doesn't really qualify me as an expert on either phenomena. That said, the Hilary Duff performance I saw in an outdoor setting was fueled by a top-flight band, featuring powerhouse drummer Shawnee-Baby and metal-guitarist Jason Hook, and an utterly charming high energy rock performance by the high-gleen princess of pop, who at the time had the top-selling album in the U.S..

Hilary Duff was golden in that period, bringing the full wattage of her natural charisma to a collection of really strong material featuring really fine production. I once read an interview with the guitarist Hook, who seemed a bit thrown by the Duff organization's commitment to first-class accommodation on all levels. He was marveling at hotel suites with heated marble floors. (It is interesting that Hook's Wikipedia article makes no mention of Hilary Duff, outside of the list of acts he has worked with, though it has clearly been his largest exposure - he toured with her internationally. Maybe the high-end digs didn't set well?)

That Hilary Duff is a Republican - one doesn't sense she has a strong political bent, just a natural inclination to blend seamlessly into the upper "one percent" - is off-putting to someone like myself, as perhaps is her marriage to a pro hockey player, but then she is still very young (24) and developing in her adult vision. (Yeah, right, the nobles obliged do that, one might rightly say.)

As one might expect to have happened, Duff seemed to lose her way about the time she started exploiting her young-adult feminine charms, with videos from her Dignity album (which had the irredeemable qualities of co-writer/co-producer Kara DioGuardi all over it) featuring lush production values and top-end sound that came across as utterly phony. The LP didn't do particularly well, though the videos have racked up as many as 34 million views on YouTube!

Certainly a big part of the attraction is that the face of young-adult Hilary Duff is a pleasure to behold, explosive with the expressiveness that made her such a charmingly unaffected teen actress, but now supported by a physiognomy rather like that of the young Faye Dunaway. This led her to be cast in a remake of the Dunaway-Warren Beatty classic Bonnie & Clyde, from which she was paid $100K to walk away from. There was a dispute over production schedules and Duff's pregnancy, but there were also reports that the film's producer Tonya S. Holly wanted to dump her because she just didn't have the acting chops. Duff landed her Disney gig with virtually no acting experience and has been developing the craft while developing her career, which is bound to present pitfalls, and the Bonnie & Clyde thing, which even featured a public spat with Faye Dunaway herself, probably left scars. Now Hilary Duff is getting her voice back into shape and concentrating on an upcoming album.

Her challenge will be to find that voice that captures her innate charm, while avoiding the clichés that dogged her last LP. At her best, young Hilary Duff was a mainline high of blue skies and optimism. It isn't that easy to be that person after life has dealt a few blows and a few wrong choices have been made. I am not even sure it is possible to be 24 years old and not apparently jaded, given where young Duff has been. The video below is what it looked like with Hilary Duff when last she seemed in the wonder of it all - life and early success. - RAR

 

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CANDYE KANE’S SISTER VAGABOND ALBUM, DUE AUGUST 16 ON DELTA GROOVE, RINGS TRIUMPHANT IN A CHALLENGING YEAR

Winning first battle over cancer, Kane celebrates 11th long-player, a set co-produced by guitarist Laura Chavez. Its predecessor, Superhero, was nominated for Blues Music Award.

LOS ANGELES, California — Candye Kane has been called a survivor, a superhero and the toughest girl alive. (All are also titles of her self-penned songs.) Her eleventh CD release, Sister Vagabond, will hit the streets on August 16, 2011 on Delta Groove Records. Produced by Kane and her noted guitarist Laura Chavez, Sister Vagabond is a worthy successor to their 2010 collaboration, Superhero, which was nominated for Best Contemporary Blues CD in the Blues Foundation’s Blues Music Awards.

The jump-blues singer, songwriter and mother of two from East Los Angeles is a five-time nominee for Blues Music Awards, has nabbed ten San Diego Music Awards and starred in a sold-out stage play about her life. She’s beat pancreatic cancer in the last two years. She has performed worldwide for presidents and movie stars.

But her path to success was not always glamorous or easy. Raised in what she calls a dysfunctional blue-collar family, Candye became a mother, a pinup cover girl and a punk-rock, hillbilly blues-belter by the time she was just 21 years old. Ten CDs, six record labels, millions of international road miles and countless awards later, Miss Kane has proven to be a true survivor as she scrambled her way to the top of the roots-music heap, creating a world renowned reputation that has spanned two decades.

A colorful mixture of the traditional and the eclectic, Kane cut her musical teeth in the early ’80s onstage with Hollywood musicians and friends Social Distortion, Dwight Yoakam, Dave Alvin, Los Lobos, The Blasters, X, Fear and the Circle Jerks, to name just a few. While raising two sons, this role model for the disenfranchised championed large-sized women, fought for the equal rights of sex workers and the GLBT community and inspired music lovers everywhere. Her fans are a mixture of true outsiders: bikers, blues fans, punk rockers, drag queens, fat girls, queers, burlesque dancers, porn fans, sex workers, rockabilly and swing dancers, gray-haired hippies, sex-positive feminists and everyday folk of all ages.

In 1986, then married to Thomas Yearsley of the Paladins, she was touched by the music of Big Maybelle, Big Mama Thornton, Ruth Brown and more. Her self-released 1991 Burlesque Swing caught the ear of Texas impresario Clifford Antone, who signed her to a deal with Antone’s Records. Los Lobos’ Cesar Rosas and Paladin/Hacienda Brother/Stone River Boy Dave Gonzalez co-produced the first album of the deal, Home Cookin’. Picked up by Discovery (later Sire) Records, the Dave Alvin/Derek O’Brien-produced Diva La Grande was followed by Swango in the height of the swing craze.

Rounder/Bullseye Records signed her in 1995, releasing The Toughest Girl Alive, produced by Scott Billington. Four albums followed on the German RUF label, including the Bob Margolin-produced Guitar’d and Feathered. She then pacted with her current label, Delta Groove, releasing Superhero in 2010 and now Sister Vagabond in 2011.

Her full-time, 250-days-a-year touring schedule started in 1992. And today, Kane’s live shows are the stuff of legend. She honors the bold blues women of the past with both feet firmly planted in the present. She belts, growls, shouts, croons and moans from a lifetime of suffering and overcoming obstacles. She uses music as therapy and often writes and chooses material with positive affirmations that leave the audience feeling healed and exhilarated. In a show that is part humor, part revival meeting and party sexuality celebration, she'll deliver a barrelhouse-tongue-in-cheek blues tune or a gospel ballad, encouraging audiences to leave behind religious intolerance. She’ll slay the crowd with her balls out rendition of “Whole Lotta Love” or glorify the virtues of zaftig women with “200 Pounds of Fun.” She often says she is a ”fat black drag queen trapped in a white woman's body” and she dresses the part.

Kane has been included in countless blues and jazz CD anthologies including Rolling Stone Jazz and Blues Album Guide and Musichound: Blues, The Essential Album Guide and Dan Aykroyd’s 30 Essential Women of the Blues. She appeared on the influential call-to-arms of Southern California roots music, A Town South of Bakersfield on Enigma Records, alongside Lucinda Williams and Dwight Yoakam.

In addition to her musical achievements, Kane has become an activist and philanthropist in recent years. In August 2009, she appeared in Dublin, Ireland for the World Congress for Downs Syndrome with her United by Music charity http://www.unitedbymusic.eu The project provides performance opportunities, blues history lessons and songwriting instruction to young people with disabilities, encouraging them to write their own blues songs to help them overcome their daily challenges.

A fighter par excellence, Candye has an authenticity, determination and optimism that keep her shows passionate, honest and irresistible.

“I take things one day at a time and today I am feeling great and very optimistic about my new CD,” Kane says. It’s been awesome to write and co-produce again with my guitarist Laura Chavez. I am grateful for every chance I get to make music live, or in the studio. Most people are given only three months to live after a pancreatic cancer diagnosis and three years later, I am still here. So any opportunity I have to create music makes me humbled and grateful.

“People ask me why I want to work so hard and so much, since I tour 250 days a year. Everyone says I should stay home and relax after my health struggle. But music is my life and neuroendocrine cancer is a mostly manageable disease. I will continue to work as much as I can because I know life is fragile anyway. I would be fine if I died onstage doing what I love like Country Dick Montana or Johnny Guitar Watson. I’m not planning on going anytime soon, but when I do exit this plane, I hope it’s making someone else feel inspired by the powerful words in my songs.”