Bedrock 66 Live Shows in 2009

Here's who will be heating up the Hoogland:

February 27


Nashville "A-list" singer/songwriters Kim Richey and Sally Barris

Kim Richey released two of the best country flavored roots rock albums of the nineties. Although the records were critically acclaimed, they remained in the John Hiatt ranks of roots music, that is terribly good but not omnipotently profitable. Leave that part to others, Richey's songs did make a considerable amount of fame and fortune for the likes of Trisha Yearwood (Believe Me Baby I Lied), Radney Foster (Nobody Wins), not to mention Brooks and Dunn, Mindy McCready and many others.

Sally Barris is a Minnesota native, a folk singer with a beautiful voice and the co-writer of a Grammy nominated song performed by Trisha Yearwood and Keith Urban! As a Nashville songwriter, Barris is part of the country music industry that is both legendary and relatively unknown. As a writer she has had her songs performed by the far better know, Yearwood and Urban, Martina McBride, Leann Womack, Kellie Pickler, and Kathy Mattea. As a performer, Barris doesn't quite fit in the mainstream country scene. Her voice and style are more reminiscent of Nanci Griffith or Allison Moorer. Barris is plugging her third cd Resless Soul and is predicted by many reviewers to be on the brink of a break through herself. www.sallybarris.com

For her most recent release, Chinese Boxes, Richey worked with the legendary son of Beatles Producer George Martin, Giles Martin. The result is a lush pop album that is both rooted in America but flavored through an English lens. www.kimrichey.com

Tickets in advance - $15 | at the door - $17


March 14


Justin Townes Earle with Jason Ringenberg
One of the most talked about debut albums has been Justin Townes Earle's "The Good Life". Named for the legendary songwriter Townes Van Zandt by his equally legendary father, Steve Earle, Justin Townes Earle has lived up to the hype on his first record. At 25, Townes Earle is an old soul and his music reflects it. He has written songs about the civil war that illicit a feeling of centuries ago. He also writes about lost loves and life's travails that one wouldn't guess that a twenty-five year old could experience. He's also a traditionalist in terms of the music. Steel guitars and Hank Williams influences appear along side of organ drenched blues that could have come out of Muscle Shoals. It's clear that Justin Townes Earle's first record would have sold simply because of his famous names. The truth is his record would be great by any other name and more importantly he will sell many more to come. http://www.bloodshotrecords.com/artist/justin-townes-earle

Listen to Justin on Morning Edition, December 29th, 2008
Read "World's Forgotten Boy" article about Justin
Jason Ringenberg is a true Illinois treasure. Growing up on a hog farm in north central Illinois and later a bar hopping country punk playin' rocker at SIU-Carbondale, Ringenberg went on to found one of the Eighties most inspired infusions of American roots music and punk rock, Jason and the Scorchers. Termed "cow-punk" at the time the Jason and the Scorchers recorded for the major label EMI. It wasn't long before the band was playing nationally and then internationally. (sharing a stage early on with a relatively unknown R.E.M.) After the Scorchers broke up (only to reappear on special occassions) Jason released a number of critically acclaimed solo lps that continue to mine the fertile land between the Ramones and Hank Williams, Sr. After becoming a family man himself, Jason created a new release for his creative passion, Farmer Jason. Farmer Jason has penned and performs such classics as "Punk Rock Skunk" and Moose on the Loose". (Famer Jason will perform at 2 PM on the 14th at the Suggs Studio on campus at UIS, more info to come.) www.jasonringenberg.com

Tickets in advance - $15 | at the door - $20



April 17


The Del Moroccos
The Del Moroccos are a powerful new 8 piece Rock n' Roll band (guitar, bass, drums, piano, tenor/bari sax, and 3 sexy frontwomen) who put out an awesome full-length show of dirty R'N'R, R&B material with girl group vocals. Knock the Ray-ettes and Link Wray together, with a blast of garage, a hit of late '50s black rock n' roll, dress 'em up like Johnny Cash, and you get a raucous, mean mix of "'50s garage". The members are veteran Chicago musicians from the rockabilly, surf, ska, jazz and R & B scenes, from bands including: Mighty Blue Kings, Jimmy Sutton's Four Charms, Deals Gone Bad, Cave Catt Sammy, The Stranger, Kevin O'Donnell's Quality 6, Reluctant Aquanauts and The Stacks. The Del Moroccos lead guitar player Jimmy Sutton, hand picked the line up for this relentless new sound. The Del Moroccos set list features choice selections of obscure, rockin' early independent record label songs and wild originals, capturing a sound that teeters somewhere between the 50's and 60's, and is performed with the emotion of early punk and mod revival. New on the scene, the Del Moroccos have shared the stage with SUN rocording artist Hayden Thompson, and the Queen of rockabilly, the legendary Wanda Jackson.http://www.myspace.com/thedelmoroccos

Tickets in advance - $15 | at the door - $17

Lux Interior of the Cramps R.I.P

Lux Interior dies at 60; founder, front man of punk band the Cramps
By August Brown

9:39 PM PST, February 4, 2009

Lux Interior, the singer, songwriter and founding member of the pioneering New York City horror-punk band the Cramps, died Wednesday. He was 60.
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FOR THE RECORD:
Lux Interior obituary: The obituary in Thursday's California section of Lux Interior, the founder and front man of the horror-punk band the Cramps, said he died Tuesday. He died Wednesday morning. It also stated that he was 60 and was born on Oct. 21, 1948. In fact, according to his family, he was born on Oct. 21, 1946, and died at the age of 62. The obituary also said the Cramps had toured as recently as November; they have not performed since November 2006.

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Interior, whose real name was Erick Lee Purkhiser, died at Glendale Memorial Hospital of a heart condition, according to a statement from his publicist.

With his wife, guitarist "Poison" Ivy Rorschach, Interior formed the Cramps in 1976, pairing lyrics that expressed their love of B-movie camp with ferocious rockabilly and surf-inspired instrumentation.

The band became a staple of the late '70s Manhattan punk scene emerging from clubs such as Max's Kansas City and CBGB, and was one of the first acts to realize the potential of punk rock as theater and spectacle.

Often dressed in macabre, gender-bending costumes onstage, Interior evoked a lanky, proto-goth Elvis Presley, and his band quickly became notorious for volatile and decadent live performances.

The Cramps recorded early singles at Sun Records with producer Alex Chilton of the band Big Star and had their first critical breakthrough on their debut EP "Gravest Hits."

The band's lack of a bassist and its antagonistic female guitarist quickly set it apart from its downtown peers and upended the traditional rock band sexual dynamic of the flamboyant, seductive female and the mysterious male guitarist.

The group was asked to open for the Police on a major tour of Britain in 1979 and reached its critical apex in the early '80s with such albums as "Psychedelic Jungle" and "Songs the Lord Taught Us."

While the Cramps' lineup revolved constantly, Interior and Rorschach remained the band's core through more than three decades. The Cramps never achieved much mainstream commercial success, but instead found a reliable fringe audience for more than 30 years -- they even played a notorious show for patients at Napa State Hospital in Napa, Calif.

"It's a little bit like asking a junkie how he's been able to keep on dope all these years," Interior told The Times some years ago. "It's just so much fun. You pull in to one town and people scream, 'I love you, I love you, I love you.' And you go to a bar and have a great rock 'n' roll show and go to the next town and people scream, 'I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.' It's hard to walk away from all that."

The band's influence can be clearly felt among lauded minimalist art-blues bands, including the Black Lips, the White Stripes, the Horrors and Primal Scream, whose front man, Bobby Gillespie, allegedly named his son Lux.

The Cramps' most recent album, a collection of rarities, "How to Make a Monster," was released in 2004, and the band continued to tour well into the later years of its career, wrapping up its most recent U.S. outing in November.

Interior was born in Stow, Ohio, on Oct. 21, 1948. A Times report in 2004 said that he and Rorschach (born Kristy Wallace) met in Sacramento, where they bonded "over their enrollment in an art and shamanism class and a shared affection for thrift-shop vinyl before hitting the road for New York City."

In 1987, there were widespread rumors of Interior's death from a heroin overdose, and half a dozen funeral wreaths were sent to Rorschach. "At first, I thought it was kind of funny," Interior told The Times. "But then it started to give me a creepy feeling."

"We sell a lot of records, but somehow just hearing that you've sold so many records doesn't hit you quite as much as when a lot of people call you up and are obviously really broken up because you've died."

august.brown@latimes.com


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