Chicago troubadour Dolph Chaney kicks off west coast tour with Fresno friends
Plus, a Meteors concert review and Central Valley gets a legit awards shows.
Dolph Chaney kicks off his West Coast tour tonight in Fresno.
It’s the Chicago songwriter’s first show outside the Central Time Zone, and something that’s been a long time coming.
Chaney has been performing since the early 1990s at least, and until now never felt there was an audience to support leaving home for anything period of time.
“There’s only a little of this that’s by choice,” Chaney says in an email interview in advance of the show, which features Big Stir labelmates Blakes Jones and the Trike Shop, plus Sparkletjet and a slew of other guests, including Ron “Doc” Morse, George Rotalo and the Terry Barnes Trio (among others, hint, hint).
“Only now (thanks to Big Stir and the support from FM and online radio) is there an audience who knows me,” Chaney says.
“As staying safe in 2020 kept us all at home for so long, I took the opportunity to work on performance skills as a way to stay sharp and burn off stress. In April 2020, I took an invitation from Woody Radio online to sponsor me in doing livestreams, and through more than 40 sessions for Woody, I started playing much stronger sets and having a lot more fun doing so. I challenged myself with a lot of theme nights —including hundreds of unique covers, but mostly by digging deep into my bag of 35 years’ worth of songs to see what still holds up and feels right.
That process led me directly into recording my most recent album, “This is Dolph Chaney” — songs written in 1991-2008, but recorded remotely in 2020 (with producer/drummer Nick Bertling running things from 100 miles away in Indiana).
So now, with live (streamed) work having informed the (remote) making of an album, it’s time to bring that energy and those songs into actual physical rooms with real breathing humans.”
Talk some about Big Stir records. They seem to have something really cool happening and are the reason you’re gonna be out here in Fresno.
“I’ve been with them for two years, but my connection with co-founder Rex Broome goes back decades. As so many 21st-century relationships do, we met on an Internet forum — for Robyn Hitchcock fans — and quickly became firm artistic and personal confidantes. And like so much in BigStirWorld, the relationship grew the music, which only then grew the outside attention.
As strong as Big Stir artists’ music is (and oh my is it), it’s that organic, relational quality that’s key to why Big Stir means so much to us who know and love it.
I’m delighted to be representing Big Stir on this tour, alongside Blake [Jones], who was there from the beginning.”
On that note: I am feeling some deep comparisons with Jones and what you are doing. A.) Am I off base? B.) From where does that come?
“I think that’s accurate. I feel a lot of kinship with Blake’s music and viewpoint. Like, he’s the artsy big-brother I wish I’d had to feel a little less alone and to show me the fun obscurities that I’ve spent decades finding on my own.
We share influences and maybe more importantly we share an off-kilter and very open-hearted look at our worlds. We’re both fans of the Beatles and Zappa in similar measure. We both like to throw humor in the mix and then follow up the joke with a pathos sucker-punch. And we both find creative pursuits to be a huge source of healing in our lives.
And we like to share.”
What can people expect from you on Sunday?
“The lineup at Fulton 55 makes me particularly happy because I’ll appear between Blake and the Trike Shop and Sparklejet, who I also love very much. Sparklejet has got such memorable tunes and yet they keep their power dry and aggressive. I’ll be playing bandless, busking-Billy-Bragg-style on electric guitar and I feel like my tunes will make for a good bridge from the Trike Shop into Sparklejet’s set.
I hope folks who love them both will find a lot to like in what I do.”
From Fresno, Chaney is on to Los Angles, San Diego and Phoenix, where he plays Nov. 17-19. See DolphChaney.com for details.
The Meteors@Fulton 55, 11/09/21
Promoters often throw the word “legendary” in front of the Meteors’ name — as in “the legendary Meteors.”
It demarcating an iconic status of the English band, which is credited with creating, if not popularizing the genre (or sub-genre) of psychobilly.
They had been a kind of bucket list band for me since I was a youngin’ and first heard “Slow Down You Grave Robbing Bastard” (my band at the time would later cover the song).
I figured I’d probably never see them live. Certainly not down the street from my house on a Tuesday night with a lineup of locals that included John Clifton Blues Band.
But there you go.
Bloodless Bullies kicked of the night and was the most punk of the three acts. That’s punk in sense of attitude — their shirtless, beer-drinking demeanor — and not necessarily in the music itself, which held fairly tight to “traditional” psychobilly.
Think twanged-out reverb guitar, an upright, coffin-shaped bass and standing drum kit. Everything was played at breakneck speed.
John Clifton Blues Band may seem an odd choice of opener, stylistically, seeing as Clifton is known for doing upbeat West Coast jump blues.
Clifton knew as much, telling the audience right off they were going to make this show a “blues party.”
And they did.
Clifton is in his white wizard phase and I’m here for it.
Gone is pompadour and sharkskin suits, replaced with shoulder-length white hair and a beard. He hasn’t lost any showmanship. He is still full-on swagger with an impeccable mic control that has nothing to do with singing and everything to do with looking fuckin’ cool.
The band understands dynamics and is able to pull energy from even the quietest moments. Not many bands can produce a live fade out and make it work.
The Meteors is founding singer/guitarist P. Paul Fenech, playing here with what appear to be hired guns doing exactly what hired guns are hired to do — be good.
To be fair, Fenech is the draw of the band, both in his visceral vocal delivery and his guitar playing, which is as much surf-rock reverb as power-chord punk.
It occurred to me midway through the set, that the Meteors are the skuzzier, demented older brother of The Toys Dolls, which is likely why I like them so much.
They did not play “Slow Down You Grave Robbing Bastard.”
They did play their cover of “Rawhide.”
That served teenage me just fine.
Central Valley Music Awards, year one
Last weekend, the Central Valley Music Awards held its first awards ceremony at the Visalia Convention Center.
I wasn’t there, but from all indications, it was very much a success.
The group hosted a red-carpet event and performance and handed out awards in a number of categories including best heavy metal band (Scoundrel), best rock band (Cloudship) and best Spanish band (Califas). It also handed out awards of excellence to rappers Fashawn and Diego Redd and to producer/songwriter Nathaniel Levington, who has made a name for himself out in Georgia working with DJ Khaled and others.
Chuck Leonard was given a lifetime achievement award.
More than relative success of the event itself, the nights seemed to served as a means of introduction for artists from across genres; a cross pollination if you will.
Here’s hoping that energy carries into a year two.
That’s it for this week. Remember you can now hear me on the Homegrown Show Sundays at 8 p.m. on New Rock 104.1 FM. If you have anything you think I need to be looking at or listening to, feel free to let me know: jtehee@gmail.com