#antigonerising

We were sitting around talking music when a volleyball friend who loves music even more than me and, near as I can tell, spends every spare dime going to shows and drinking really good beer when he’s there, asked me a question that was a little hard to answer without sounding smug or arrogant. “Man, it must be awesome to play live music. What’s it like?” To which I replied: “Well, it’s…awesome.”

Not that I was ever in a really good band. In high school we only knew maybe 5 songs and played them over and over for an hour while the people at the roller rink…didn’t really care. We may have been rockin’ “Born to be Wild” but they were too busy rollin’ on skates to notice.

And in my early 20s I played in a band that was, frankly, lame. But it was a good time to play country music because that was the era that spawned the country music outlaws (Waylon, Willie, Tompall, et al). Playing those songs, even badly, WAS awesome. And about mid-way through the 3rd set and heading towards midnight no one much cared how good we were. The patrons in the bar were full of beer (so were we) and they just wanted to hoot, holler and dance (so did we). I’m sure we even had a couple of good moments each set when the lead singer wasn’t cranking up his bass and drowning out my, uh, amazing rhythm guitar work. I played the original Ovation acoustic with some pickup or another- the one with the rounded composite body. It looked like this:

Playing in that band was…awesome.

I love live music, appreciate those who are really good at it and still enjoy playing it when I get the chance, rank amateur that I am. I especially like smaller venues where you can get up close and personal with the performers. You can see what kind of guitars they play. You can see whether they’re phoning it in or really trying to connect with their audience. And you can see whether they actually like each other, enjoy playing their music together, and are thankful towards whatever deity they pray to that THEY are among the fortunate few that get to feel that special joy that comes from playing music in front of a crowd that loves your music, and by extension, you.

Antigone Rising is one of those bands.

I discovered them by accident last fall. My sisters were coming into town on their “birthday trip” (don’t ask- kids now have birthday WEEKS and my sisters, not to be outdone, now apparently have birthday TRIPS) and had seen the posts my wife and I occasionally put up from a singer-songwriter venue called Eddie’s Attic. So I looked up who was playing and they sounded like our kind of music so I bought the tickets and we went. I’m probably not their biggest fan only because I just recently started listening to them. There is someone who has logged thousands of miles following them around. After seeing them play I get it.

Oh, their music is good. And fun. And their lead guitar player is literally my newest favorite guitar player. The music was everything I hoped it would be: solid musicianship; a little country and a little rock (I think the current term is alt-country); tight three-part harmonies; a bass player who wears a battered cowboy hat and a drummer who appears unfazed by it all; a sprite of a lead singer with a huge voice; really good songs. And members who appear to genuinely like playing together. Did I mention they were fun?

Because here’s the thing. I’m too old for the pretentiousness of feigned boredom or studied earnestness. I’ve never cared for insouciance. I don’t need arrogance- I know you’re really good, that’s why I’m paying to see you play.

Antigone Rising has so much fun that you can’t help but have fun, too. Some bands for me just seem to have a joyousness when they play. You know that rare occasion when you’re at a concert and you just can’t stop smiling? Flogging Molly. The Sugarland “Love on the Inside” tour when they closed their show with “Walking on Sunshine” (and anytime Kristian Bush and his brother are back home at Eddie’s Attic). EARLY Bruce and the E Street Band. Jerry Jeff Walker back in the day.

That’s Antigone Rising.

I know this is supposed to be a review of their EP Whiskey and Wine Volume I. As per usual I’ve gotten a little off point. So here’s my review and recommendation- go buy it. It’s a good set of songs and now that Vol. II is out I can’t wait to buy that when they hit town here in Decatur on Friday. And, wherever you happen to live, try to support hard-working musicians who love what they do and brighten our world just a little bit because they do it.

...who took 17 years between his epic novel Gravity’s Rainbow and (whatever the next one was). I must confess I tried several times to get through all 760 pages. I never succeeded.

But he and I are sort of alike. It has been about a year since my last post and yet my blog is still sitting somewhere out there waiting for me to bang on the computer keys and start up again. If the internet-driven age has sped everything up exponentially then that’s something Thomas Pynchon and I have in common- a long time between our, uh, literary postings.

Thing is I love to write but, like golf and learning to get better at “Travis-picking”, who has the time? Here is a link to a video of the great Merle Travis who, according to the “experts”, didn’t actually “Travis pick” although the style was named after him. Sort of. Click here for the video.

And I’m also a little competitive. My little younger skinnier (now that’s he’s taken up running and working out) brother, who is a professional writer AND a professional musician, keeps posting more than me...and now has taken to posting YouTube videos of himself along with his singing/playing partner. At least he’s not Travis picking. Yet.

Even my sister the prairie preacher-woman posts to her blog more than me. And she has to write a sermon every week which she doesn’t even post to her blog (I am making no judgement as to whether that’s a good thing or not; you can make that judgement yourself based, in part, on the following picture). 

(This picture is NOT actually a picture of my sister but in all fairness my sister IS a United Methodist minister in Kansas.  And the woman in the picture DOES look suspiciously like she could be one of my dearly departed great aunts- the one who kept reading the Sunday Times well into her 90s and not the one who pinched the children and told them to hush when the other great aunts weren’t around).

So I gotta do something.

Here’s my plan: I’ll start this Wednesday with review of a band coming to my town later on this week: Antigone Rising. Follow them. Support them. Be an advocate.

And beginning next week I’ll launch a three-part series that takes place in Waffle House #1000 that may read a little like a convoluted and self-referencing Thomas Pynchon novel.

After that who knows? How long is 17 years in internet time?

Going strong since 1993, the members of alt-country group Antigone Rising have rubbed elbows with the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, the Allman Brothers Band and Rob Thomas — all while making a name for themselves by putting in the hard work (early in their career, they played about 280 shows a year).

The sister-fronted band stopped by USA TODAY's StudioA for a three-song set. Here, they play "That Was the Whiskey."