Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers have once again boarded their trusty tour van, which lacks a radio but never a song, as evidenced by these recent covers by one of modern classic rock’s most charming young bands. You can catch them opening for The Infamous String Dusters this week in Wyoming, Montana and more, and soon on the annual Tour d’Amour with ALO. Find the Gramblers full tour schedule here. Best handling of this Funkadelic nug since The Balancing Act owned it in the 80s. And points for tackling Bobby Darin and Patsy Cline – giants true but you kids are walking in them footprints just fine. And for more colorful details from the road, check out Grambler’s lead guitarist Deren Ney‘s excellent new tour blog over here
Archive for the ‘Dear Tour Diary’ Category
The ongoing tour van project of covering iconic pop tunes continues for Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers as they make their way around Utah. This Madonna classic – yes, it is and you shut up if you don’t think so – shows the gang at their most endearingly sweet, fans of pop culture able to do something fresh with it that’s their own. And apparently, this number helped them with a traffic stop in the Beehive State, too. Thanks, Ms. Ciccone. Your gifts just keep on giving.
Catch Nicki and the Gramblers tonight (10/21) at Sidecar in Park City, UT and tomorrow night and tomorrow night (10/22) at Mystic Hot Springs in Monroe, UT. Find the full calendar of fall Gramblin’ over here.
If you Gramblers are gonna keep this up, the Impound humbly suggests you get around to Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight”, Sly & The Family Stone’s “Hot Fun In The Summertime”, Seals & Crofts’ “Diamond Girl”, Extreme’s “More Than Words”, and Barenaked Ladies’ “Brian Wilson”. But just keep these coming whatever tunes you choose. Such a fun snapshot of band life that we’re lucky to share.
Keyboardist-singer-songwriter Chad Staehly of Dirty Impound faves Great American Taxi brings us another tale from GAT’s recent travels.
Well, we all knew it was the back-breaker of the summer and when it got put up on the calendar we all cringed a little bit but decided we’d pull it off knowing things would slow down considerably afterwards…
I guess you never know what’s going to happen when you head out on “tour”, but this one in particular had all the ingredients for a screenplay writing itself as we went, some type of rockumentary or hard luck movie. Not much comes easy when you and four other guys pile into a Chevrolet Suburban, which for all intent and purposes turns into your home for the coming weeks. Yeah, you know, five grown men, well, “grown” might be exaggerating a bit, after all. I don’t know that anyone in our Suburban would admit to having “grown up” yet; we’re all under-developed enough to live in a sport utility vehicle for 3 weeks. Oh yeah, we didn’t live in the Suburban the entire stretch, we decided that we’d skip sleep for two nights and take a detour to Alaska on the big bird. After we had plotted a course from Colorado to California and then back across to Chicago, Cleveland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan, we got a call from our new found friend Jim Stearn about being part of Salmonstock 2011 in Ninilchik, AK, which would be a music festival designed to raise awareness and funds to stop the Pebble Mine on the Kenai Peninsula. We all decided that any chance to go to Alaska is always welcomed and the fact that we could go and play music and be part of a good cause would make it all worthwhile despite having to skip a couple of nights sleep.
While rock is the Impound’s raison d’etre, we do venture off on a good foot from time to time when quality funk comes calling. And The New Mastersounds are nothing but quality. A lean quartet, the lads hailing from the United Kingdom, possess the classic form of The Meters but a more modern inflection that reflects the world traveling they’ve done with their music, bits of Brazil, Africa and elsewhere clinging to the swamp ready boogie base. It’s sexy music and a great deal of fun, too. Dancing will usually ensue when The New Mastersounds unleash their mojo, but there’s more than enough going on musically and composition-wise that one can enjoy a cup of tea and let their mind dig into their groove most pleasantly.
The New Mastersounds recently released their best studio album yet, Breaks From The Border (out August 9 on Tallest Man Records), and their first set recorded in the U.S. It’s one of those seamless, sweet rides that makes you press repeat quickly after the final fading notes just ’cause it makes a body (and mind) feel good.
The rest of this week we’ll have the members of The New Mastersounds popping up on Dirty Impound to answer our Hey Shredder and Gimme Some Skin segments whilst we wax poetic about their playing. And we promise to tap keyboard whiz Joe Tatton once we start our keyboard questionnaire in September. For now, a couple glimpses of Silly Summer Nonsense from the road with one of soul-funk’s torchbearers along with a taste of the new album.
A few thoughts about this trio of clips from Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers, who happen to be the highest octane pop-Americana combo in Northern California (and most of the damn country) right now. Seriously, real classically grounded singer-songwriter, musician-oriented music ripe for the picking for anyone smitten with vintage Linda Ronstadt and other West Coast glories. So, our thoughts:
1. How is it an already ridiculously charismatic band can be this much more charming?
2. In the right hands ukulele and melodica are good things.
3. Their rendition of the Whitney Houston hit made us forget about her reality show craziness…momentarily.
4. Having no radio in a tour van can be hell, but it can also be a catalyst to creativity and fun.
5. We question your red-blooded humanity if you aren’t at least a little bit in love with Nicki.
6. Thanks for making us go back and listen to Anne Murray’s version of “Hey! Baby”.
7. Gregg Allman will feel instantly better if he hears your version of his ditty.
8. Is it okay if we send out a big smooch for all your foreheads, Gramblers, for making music this pure and sweet?
How Will I Know:
Hey! Baby:
Ramblin’ Man:
The second missive from the road delivered by Rachel Antony-Levine and Tomas Salcedo, the two newest members of Bay Area genre-busters Antioquia. The band just hit the road again for a new East Coast tour, stopping tonight, Friday, July 22 at The Juggling Gypsy in Wilmington, NC and tomorrow, Saturday, July 23, at One Stop in Asheville, NC. Find tour date info here.
Antioquia by Sophie Spinelle
Adley and Craig have an obsession with jumping into cold water that borders on unhealthy. It’s not a macho thing, I don’t think. Craig claims he doesn’t ever feel alive the way he feels when he’s jumping into natural, ice-cold water. Accustomed as I now am to this very scenario, I was still alarmed to see Craig and Adley strip naked by the side of the snow-banked road just outside of Yosemite National Park and dive into what must have been the coldest water we’d encountered; there was still ice floating atop it. From the comfort of my comfy pants and sweatshirt, blanketed up in a sleeping bag on the loft inside the bus, I watched a shivering, dripping Craig come waddling back inside, too delirious to dry himself before collapsing beside me. “That was great!” he blurted, shoveling his way into some blankets.
The Antioquia obsession with getting naked and into water has led us to some amazing spots. Just outside of Boise we went to one of the most pristine, perfect camping spots by hot springs that I’ve ever seen. We swore to our hosts that we would not divulge the location (though I’m not even sure how we could since we were never told the name of the place…Idahoans really know how to keep a secret). In Montana, we visited Jerry Johnson Hot Springs, where we saw a moose. Oddly enough, the band saw a moose last year in the exact same spot. Clearly moose love Antioquia.
The first missive from the road delivered by Rachel Antony-Levine and Tomas Salcedo, the two newest members of Bay Area genre-busters Antioquia. The band is currently on tour, moving westward towards their Northern California home. Folks in Montana, Idaho and Utah still gotta chance to experience the mojo in person, and they shoot to East Coast in late July, too. Find tour date info here.
Rachel & Tomas - Newlyweds
I suppose we’re on a honeymoon.
We are, after all, traveling and meeting new people. We stay up until dawn almost every night, dancing unabashedly to the sounds of incredible musicians. There have been more than a couple instances of stealthy nudity.
Of course, the people we’re traveling with happen to be four dudes, all of which I can now identify by the smell of their farts. The incredible musicians we happen to be dancing to are the members of our favorite band, who have recently become our band-mates. And generally the clandestine nudity is more practical in nature than romantic, usually as the result of a 24-hour bus trip in unspeakable heat.
So no, it is not your traditional honeymoon. But that suits us just fine, because ever since we were invited to join (really, invited ourselves to join) Antioquia, we knew that life was about to get a lot more exciting and a lot less physically comfortable. After a week of wedding festivities that officially put us past the halfway point of our tour, I think it’s a great time to take stock of our crazy adventure thus far.
John Hartford by Senor McGuire
Great American Taxi keyboardist-singer Chad Staehly brings us another tale from GAT’s recent travels.
We had been thinking there needed to be a John Hartford music festival for quite some time so when we heard that John Hotzie was putting one together with the Dillman family at the legendary Bill Monroe Music Park in Bean Blossom, IN, we didn’t even bother asking what they wanted to pay us. We were going to be there regardless.
It turned out that we’d basically be shooting halfway across the country in a matter of four days, a quick in and out with the destination being Bean Blossom. We added two bar gigs in Lincoln, NE and Iowa City to help us make our way to Kalamazoo, MI for a date with our good friends [and Impound favorites] Greensky Bluegrass. We were joining them for night one at their annual event opening up the beer garden at band favorite Bell’s Brewery. We were thinking about the Two-Hearted Ale the whole way.
The trip started in a sort of foreboding way as we discussed what to do with the new songs and record Todd Snider had just helped us produce in East Nashville. What’s a band to do that’s been grinding out 160-plus days on the road for the last few years and selling only several thousand of their last CD release, all the while barely making a living? Do we give the songs/album away? Do we quit touring and become a YouTube band? We discussed our lives and how it fit into the life we’ve built in Great American Taxi. I don’t know that we ever came up with a definite answer after hours of discussion…for now it was onto the next show.
