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Musicians, fans look
to distant past for
ideas, inspiration
By Christopher Heine
Staff Writer
The Black Dahlias finished their
fourth song, “Ruins of Hollywood,”
two weeks ago at Knickerbocker’s
Tavern.
Kristin Bailey, who plays the saw
and sings for the six-piece band, slid
green protective goggles over her
eyes.
The Lincoln group started its fifth
song, “Hound Dog Rain.”
Bailey, 32, whipped her hand
back over her shoulder and fired beer
bottle upon beer bottle into a steel
bucket.
This created messy and dramatic
percussion in the center of the stage.
Surprisingly, the glass splinters
affected no one around her.
Her fiancee, Charles Lieurance,
Tuesday Tales keeps
old tradition alive
By Patrick Kelly
Staff Writer
The tradition of storytelling has
brought together people of differ
ent backgrounds and creeds.
Thanks to area artists that tradition
will be celebrated at Tuesday Tales,
a weekly event and part of the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s
Summer Events.
Storytellers from across the
state bring anecdotes of various
cultures to area families. Each
week at 7 p.m. in July a different
pair of storytellers will hold court
on Architecture Hall’s east steps.
The first of such nights will be
on July 6 featuring two members of
the UNL faculty. Matt “Sitting
Bear” Jones, an instructor of
Native American Studies. Jones
will share tradional Native
American tales. Jones will be
joined by Ricardo Garcia,
Associate Professor of psychology
whose work is celebrated in the
Southwestern part of the United
States.
Karen Libman, an associate
professor of theatre and dance at
UNL will regale the audience on
July 13 alongside Jo Ann
Ollerenshaw. Ollerenshaw was a
featured artist at the Nebraska
Storytellers Festival in Omaha.
Omaha sotrytellers Rita Paskowitz
andf Peg Reinecke will share their
work on July 27. The final evening
will feature Western stories from
the trio Cowboy Rhythm who hail
from Ceresco and Albion.
Katherine Voorhees, director of
Arts Are Basic/Outreach and a pro
fessor of fine and performing arts
is enthusiastic about the universi
ty’s involvement.
“The campus is here to serve
the general public and now it will
be a part of die joy of storytelling,”
Voorhees said.
Voorhees also stressed the
importance of heading towards the
Millenium with a firm sense of tra
dition.
crooned and screamed his lyrics with
a twang in his voice.
Lieurance, 36, sat just in front of
Bailey with his eyes closed and lips
pressed against a bulky, Hank
Williams-era microphone.
A fiddler, an accordion player, a
drummer, an acoustic guitarist and a
bass player - all seated around the
couple - stomped their feet while
their torsos swayed with their swing
ing heads to the mid-tempo beat.
The song ended with Bailey chug
ging a Budweiser and hurriedly
crashing the bottle into the bucket to
accent the song’s last note. The crowd
of 75 clapped, whistled and hollered.
Lieurance, the group’s song
writer, said the Black Dahlias’s music
is constructed like old country songs,
and the lyrics are based on original
pre-World War II fables.
“I just really love those crusty,
archetypal |gngs based on ruins and
southern gothic,” Lieurance said. “I
just want to be able to plug into that
dark country folklore, which are a
circle of old stories about southern
gothic and death and ruins and hill
billy.
“We’ve kind of combined our
punk-rock pasts with the death and
ruins stuff. I’m really enamored with
writing these sort of songs.”
And he’s definitely not alone.
The Black Dahlias are a among a
legion of new bands that do most
everything the old way. Such groups
play country-folk, bluegrass and hill
billy music that is largely based on
pre- 1950s southern mystique.
These dated musical forms have
been melded with new and idiosyn
cratic approaches by aging punk
rockers now in their late 20s and
early 30s.
Much of this resurgence has been
spearheaded by Australian punk
musician Nick Cave. A John
Steinbeck aficionado, Cave has
released a slew of recent albums with
ballads that swoon and stomp in a
tone bom before FM radio.
, He sounds like “Oklahoma!”
musical with post-modem noise ele
ments similar in effect to Bailey’s
beer-bottle antics.
A considerable number of veter
an punk musicians have followed
Cave’s example. They’ve given up
the loud rock amplifiers of their
youth to write songs that sound more
of their grandparents’s era.
Live music venues and 20-and
30-something crowds have been tak
ing note.
Duffy’s Tavern, 1412 O St., was
once a live-music venue which pre
dominately showcased punk or post
modern rock groups.
The bar in recent years has broad
ened its niche to include the growth of
groups with country and hillbilly
influences.
A Sunday night show a week and
a half ago might have been the best
evidence to the success of the club’s
move.
More than 100 packed the bar and
listened and watched The Meat
Purveyors and Split Lip Ray field per
iorm their hillbilly
and bluegrass
tunes.
Bill Andersen
is the acoustic gui
tar player for The
Meat Purveyors,
who are based in
Austin, Texas. He
used to play in the
obscure punk
band Poison 13.
Andersen said
hillbilly music
was refreshing
after years of punk
rock.
“I just got sick
of all the loud
rock,” he said.
“This was some
thing that was
really challenging.
It was like learn
ing a new lan
guage. And I’m
probably having
more fun with this
than I’ve ever had
oeiore.
Andy Fairbaim has been enter
tainment director at Duffy’s for more
than four years. Audiences have tired
of the narcissistic, lyrical ranting by
bands of the early 1990s, Fairbaim
said.
“People wanted better-written
songs about different things other
than the heart on the singer’s sleeve,”
he said. “Not everyone wants to hear
someone else’s pain, and musicians
started taking note.”
Most importantly, Fairbaim said,
bands like the Black Dalhlias, Meat
Purveyors and Split Lip Rayfield
have established their own identities.
“These new bands aren’t just
copying the bands from the 1940s or
50s,” he said. “They’re learning
things about writing good songs from
them. But they’re applying influences
like Nick Cave and Lou Reed and
66
I just got sick of all
the loud rock. This
was something that
was really
challenging. It was
like learning a new
language. And Vm
probably having
more fun with this
than Ive ever had
before.”
Bill Andersen
guitarist for the Meat Purveyors
meshing it all together and the results
are pretty cool.”
The Black Dahlias displayed a
contradiction in fashion pertaining to
their modern take on a backwoods
and-hellfire sound. Their attire didn’t
fit the image of a band that’s heavily
influenced by the earlier half of this
century.
Osh-kosh B’Gosh outfits and
funny beards were nowhere to be
found. Their wore a modern mish
mash of suits, evening gowns, and
clean T-shirts. They joked in between
songs with the crowd of 75 as if they
were a big, college-educated family.
With the exception of bass player
Terry Peiper’s greasy jet-black hair
and skin and bones physique, the
group lacked the rough, whiskey
smelling image ot
a real hillbilly
band.
The Meat
Purveyors at least
wore as much
faded Levi
Strauss as they
could seemingly
get on their bod
ies, and Split Lip
Rayfield donned
oily, seasoned
farm hats.
When the
Black Dahlias
busted into one of
their musical rip
roars, however,
they sounded raw
enough for one to
imagine real hill
billies. The odd
• .combination of
their attire and
music turns out to
be an intended
effect.
The Black
uannas saia they wanted to be a mod
em mutation of a Depression-era hill
billy band. They don’t want a cabin on
a Tennessee hillside, a jug of moon
shine and grits every dam day - they
like their furnished apartments,
Budweiser and fast food just fine.
But they would like to think their
songs sound like the 78-speed records
of the Carter Family, the Stanley
Brothers and Hank Snow.My mother
would play all these Carter Family
records when I was a little girl, and I
would hate them,” Bailey said. “But
as I got older, I starting romanticizing
the songs because I remembered
some of the stories Mom told me
about grandma in Oklahoma during
the Depression Era.
“I started envisioning the Dust
Bowl, ‘mother’s pregnant again’ and
one-room houses. I really fell in love
with the songs.” '
