The Athens Music Scene

[joeyz]

Dromedary These guys are great!!!

Straight up, I had to ask Dromedary's Andrew Reissiger about the band's name.

As my editor tipped me off, a "dromedary" is a type of camel that has a single hump, while a "bactrian" camel has two humps.

However, there are two talented instrumentalists that comprise Athens' world-influenced Dromedary: Rob McMaken on dulcimer, mandolin and guitar, with Reissiger on charango and guitar.

So, what gives? How does one plus one equal a single-humped camel?

"Well, a camel illicits an image of traveling and world music," explains Reissiger, "which is what we do, for lack of a better word. We wanted to be the two-humped camel, but 'bactrian' sounded like something contagious, so we opted for 'dromedary' instead.

"If you want to go further into it with the one hump, we take all these different genres, styles and instruments and lump them together into one thing. That's what we do, and that one thing is Dromedary."

Now it's time for Dromedary to saddle up the camel again, as the band prepares to celebrate the release its new album, Live From the Make Believe, the follow-up to the duo's 2001 debut, Artifact.

After recording all of the first record at the home of Erik Hinds, musician and founder of Athens-based Solponticello Records, Dromedary ended up cutting the new disc in two days in two entirely different settings and situations. The initial set of tracks laid down were the result of an impromptu recording session at 3rd Ear Recording with engineer Tom Lewis last August.

"I had been sitting in on a session at Tom Lewis' studio for a Julie Powell record," notes Reissiger, "and was really blown away by the sound that Tom could capture and the overall mood and the vibe of the place. Tom has really, really big ears. He's a musician, so he has a different slant on recording and preserving the sanctity of the musical space.

"[W]e take all these different genres, styles and instruments and lump them together into one thing. That’s what we do, and that one thing is Dromedary."

"We ended up recording half the album in one day at his studio," he said, "but, at first, we had no intentions of using any of these songs for a record. We just wanted to feel out where we were and see if we were even ready to do another album. After a few weeks of listening to those tapes, we realized we had something."

With six songs suddenly in the can, McMaken and Reissiger realized that what they had recorded was very much in the same vein as Artifact, with the two just sitting in front of a pair of microphones, documenting their sound.

In an effort to branch beyond such a studio set-up, Dromedary opted to bring in a few friends and record more material during a concert at the Healing Arts Centre in September 2002. For the gig, Dromedary tapped Yugoslavian violinist Andrej Kurti, a University of Georgia performing arts doctoral student, as well as Rob's brother Ryan McMaken to lend a touch of dobro to the proceedings.

"We always thought about expanding into trio and quartet combinations," Reissiger said, "not as a permanent thing, but as an alternative to the duo. Part of recording live, too, was the possibility that it could be fused with what we had already done in the studio. So we brought in Tom to record the show."

"We didn't know how we were going to go about piecing the two together," he explains, "whether to switch back and forth between the studio tracks and the live songs or what. In the end, we felt it would be best to keep them separate. The first half of the record being an experience of its own, and the latter half does the same thing. As a whole, it constitutes something even greater."

Aside from the split-sided nature of Live From the Make Believe, Dromedary suggests that the biggest difference in the new album is the subtle switch of instruments - a change that allowed the duo to get back to its musical beginnings.

"The first album featured a cümbüs, which is this big Turkish banjo," Reissiger said. "There wasn't any dulcimer on Artifact, even though that represents the very roots of Dromedary, when Rob and I began by playing old Appalachian and Celtic songs on dulcimer."

Three years of performing together has also strengthened the musical interplay between McMaken and Reissiger beyond that of their initial recordings. The improvs come fast and frequently on Live From the Make Believe, and Reissiger said that the duo was better prepared for how to capture such intimate intricacies to tape.

"Our musical dialogue has grown a lot," he said. "We were able to improvise a lot more on the new LP because we have grown so comfortable doing it. We've gotten to know where each other tends to take things, even though there's always that element [of] surprise.

"We're definitely figuring out how to get that across on CD. It's a trick to be able do that, because you usually spend all your time working on how to play your darn instrument. That's where the majority of your effort goes, then you have to realize, oh, yeah, a microphone reacts differently than a human ear."

For Live From the Make Believe, Dromedary recorded four new songs, while an Artifact relic, "Four Camels Waltzing," is included in a live, re-worked version for a quartet. The remaining seven tracks feature Dromedary interpreting material by the likes of Portuguese guitarist Carlos Paredes, American jazzman Bill Evans, Quebec folkster Daniel Thonon - and even British artful-rockers Radiohead.

Of the new Dromedary material featured on the new disc, the standout cut is "Cassiopeia's Dance," a heady, six-minute excursion into the roots of Mediterranean, Appalachian and Eastern folk.

The song features some particularly exquisite interaction between McMaken and Reissiger - with Ryan McMaken throwing in a bit of "Amazing Grace" that should be as stirring to any Nick Drake fan as it is to world music aficionados.

"That was a fun one," Reissiger said of "Cassiopeia's Dance." "The song grew out of this Greek-flavored scale and melody that's actually accessible on a dulcimer. It has a dronish quality that's beyond Appalachian. It's almost Indian-esque.

"We were really able to explore on that song, and we didn't need electronic instruments or computers to do it. You can use acoustic instruments and create these textures that are reminiscent of the past, present and future."

The connection between the past and future seems to be another theme employed throughout Live From the Make Believe, with Dromedary pushing their traditional arrangements into contemporary territory - a mix used to exhilarating effect on the cover of Radiohead's "Airbag."

"Rob is a big Radiohead fan," Reissiger says, crediting his partner with the song selection. "But I didn't know the song almost up to the point that we recorded it. I had never heard the original version knowingly, so I was just following Rob.

"I was coming at it from an innocent perspective instead of trying to mimic what the band does. ['Airbag'] just sounded sort of European and still Eastern to me, so I tried to play it with a little bit of flamenco sound on certain sections and drones on the others."

Dromedary plans to celebrate its new tunes with Athens audiences during a pair of upcoming album release shows. On April 24, McMaken and Reissiger will perform a special homecoming show at the Flicker Theatre & Bar, the site of the duo's first gig as Dromedary back in December 2000.

Following a Friday-night sojourn to Atlanta's Red Light Café, Dromedary heads back to Athens on April 26 for a second CD release party, this one slated for the Healing Arts Centre and will likely include a few special guests, according to Reissiger.

"[The Healing Arts Centre] is the most unique room I've ever played in," he explained. "It's a pure listening room, there's no P.A. system, so it's authentic in that what you hear is what is there. It's got some natural reverb to it with the hardwood floors and all, so it just sounds great.

Reissiger admitted that even the neighborhood traffic that bled through into the tracks while recording at the Healing Arts Centre was actually a pleasant bit of artistic and musical serendipity.

"The venue is a little close to Prince Ave.," he said, "so occasionally you might hear a car go by on the CD, but I think that's cool. It's like these old jazz recordings from the '20s, '30s and '40s - where you hear glasses clinking together and conversation.

"There's probably a few songs on the new album where you don't even notice that it's live, 'cause it's so clean. Then there's one or two tracks where you can hear the hum of a car go by or when someone dropped their keys. It's imperfect, but it's so perfect. It's reality."

David Basham

[joeyz]

Check out this Athens Hip Hop act! Ishues

Rock Athens

http://www.ishues.com/

Ishues mp3 - better day

Edited April 13, 2004 by joeyz

[GabrielYoungFan]

I knew he was going to be next I just knew it! Some of his stuff is not bad.

[joeyz]

Glad to see you've been putting your crystal ball to work :D, GYF. What's your next prediction?

[GabrielYoungFan]

Heidi Hensley :P

[joeyz]

She's already on the thread dooche bag!!!

[GabrielYoungFan]

Watch it boy you are on thin ice with me right now> :) Just a friendly warning dork. I think you do Drivin' and Crying next.

[joeyz]

Drivin N Cryin

Yet another Athens band to hit the semi-big-time... whatever that means

Check them out @ http://www.drivinncryin.com/

[joeyz]

More Athens Hip Hop!

In the time honored tradition of creating hip-hop collectives such as the Wu-Tang Clan, The Fugees, and more recently Nappy Roots, Herb and Skills has grown from a wealth of accomplished individual artists to become more than the sum of its parts. But don't be fooled, Herb and Skills' The Gathering carries a unique and original sound by melding big beats and well-timed samples with the warm tones of guitar, double bass and percussion. Lyrically, the group runs the gamut from classic emcee battle songs to socially conscious tracks that give their sound an emotional, soulful feel more akin to old school artists than today's superficial and commercialized hip-pop. It came about when Dark Starr Emporium's Jorma Starratt joined forces with Hano Leathers of the Attica Sound Farm recording studio in Athens, Georgia to form the Attica Sound label. These two put together elements of the rich underground hip-hop world of Athens and added talent from New York to Hawaii. Herb and Skills was originally the production of collaborators Leathers and Starratt, but over time, the individual elements that came together to create the album presented such positive cohesion and talent that the hip-hop collective was born.

[joeyz]

Here's some southern white-boy Reggae... these guys have something special going!

Reggae refreshed with Dubconscious

American kids play Jamaican music at the Irish Pub Tuesday

by Lynn Wallace

April 05, 2004

Born out of Athens, Ga., Dubconscious has something new to add to the independent music scene. With a thriving mixture of cool beats and mellow island rhythms, this talented six-piece exhibits nothing else but reggae at its finest. But don't be fooled -- its members didn't have to come from the islands to learn to love its reggae sounds.

"We're all American kids that listen to American rock 'n' roll -- Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd ... stuff like that," lead singer and rhythm guitarist Adrian Zelski said. "But the Bob Marley influence definitely was the biggest to channel us into reggae. Present day, we listen to Burning Spear all the time, Augustus Pablo (and) Lee Perry."

However, Zelski says that he and his other bandmates -- Matt Woolley on drums, Jerry Hendelberg on keyboards and melodica, Scott Pridgen on tablas and percussion, James Keane on lead guitar and Solomon Wright on bass guitar -- are somewhat in the minority for playing reggae music.

"I don't think people, especially white people, are very comfortable playing reggae," Zelski said. "I definitely think there's a lot of the Rastafarianism or religious pretext, to which it scares people off, or ... some people feel like you have to be at the islands to be listening to it."

But with Dubconscious, Zelski says he wants to help change that mindset.

"I'd really like to just introduce it as an art form that doesn't have to have any genre," Zelski said. "It doesn't have to be Rastafarianism; it doesn't have to be just people from Jamaica. It can be people from Athens (or) Tallahassee. It can be a band that has its own sound and its own identity within those rhythms."

Part of this unique identity comes from the band's innovative lyrics and free-flowing songwriting styles.

"(Our songs are inspired by) just opening up for the moment, really," Zelski said. "Just allowing a chant to come into my mind or just a poem that's in my brain. I write poetry a lot in my head and on paper. Everybody in the band (contributes), too. So, there're five (other) members who write songs. It's a very collaborative thing."

This undying collaborative effort seems to keep the band running strong, especially in its current state.

"This is our first year just going for it," Zelski said. "Everybody quit jobs and we got a tour bus and we got a manager and the sound guy and the merchandise person. (Last year) was our first year of intention, really, and this is our first year of going for it tour-wise. We're hoping to do something around 150 (to) 200 (shows) this year."

The band is scheduled to play Tallahassee Tuesday, April 6 and Zelski reveals it may be one of his favorite stops on the tour.

"We love college towns, they're the most fun," Zelski said. "They're the only ones that can generally accept a party vibration seven days a week, which is nice."

And for Dubconscious, Zelski says, feeling the vibration is what it's all about.

"The band's overall mission is to play music, to hear feedback (and) to see how people respond," Zelski said. "Hopefully it (will mean) something ... (and have) a way to influence us and influence the crowd. We really want to give the full respect to the people for coming out and paying attention and dancing, hopefully and having fun. You know, just celebrating life."

SOME MUSIC

Who's Afraid of the Light

Once or Twice Remembered

Past Tense

Edited May 11, 2004 by joeyz

[joeyz]

Sunray Music Festival Soon to hit Athens Area

Check out the Beatking thread for it here!

Info about the festival on Beatking

Thanks,

DLove!

Being put on by Stage Left Presents