Based on the band’s two available singles and a
floor-shaking performance at Indy’s Radio Radio back in August, the prospect of
a full Captain Ivory album is pretty exciting. With individual influences like
AC/DC, Elton John, Miles Davis and The Clash, Captain Ivory arrived at its
collective bar-room blues stomp quite organically. “Both me and (lead vocalist)
Jayson (Traver) had a pretty strong blues and classic rock background. Justin
(Leiter, drums) is a little more punk-rock influences but he gelled with us on
those influences.”
So, it started, like so many soon-to-be great bands started,
with the blues. They even dress like “blues-guys.” But they defy the “if it
walks like a duck” adage by incorporating both classic and modern rock into
their sound, and steer clear of the white-boy blues stereotypes. “There’s some
Radiohead in there, some Zeppelin, some White Stripes,” says Bolog, “we’re all
over the place.”
Together only fourteen months, Captain Ivory has spent a majority
of that time cutting its road teeth. Fifty shows in and they’ve moved beyond
“driving four cars to a show, we finally have a van and a trailer.” And they
have more than enough material for the album they are about to start recording.
The band’s current points of reference should be serious
contenders for inclusion. “False Remedy” is a slithering blues with a
radio-filtered vocal and a Steve Zwilling organ line that recalls those great
old Animals singles. There is a two-part dissonant harmony guitar solo near the
end of the song that would make bass player Alex Patten’s hero Miles Davis
stand at attention. “Six Minutes to
Midnight” is a 70’s boogie workout punctuated by a Bolog slide-guitar seminar
and an enticing gospel finish. Jayson Traver’s vocals call to mind Robert
Plant, but don’t feel like an attempted imitation. Justin Leiter’s drums and
Patten’s bass are out front, a blues-jazz boot of fusion that kicks every
measure forward. The songs are peppered with riffs that in less learned hands
would be punishing frat-house cocktails, but served by Captain Ivory they go
down like the smoothest whiskey.
Captain Ivory, especially at this stage in their
development, finds itself facing the challenge of so many of their Mid-western
contemporaries. “This is what we’re going to do for a living, and everybody’s
on board for that”, says Bolog. But in their home-base of Detroit "...it can
sometimes be difficult to find bands we gel with well musically, (and) we play
a lot elsewhere”.
This week, “elsewhere” equates to Indianapolis. Captain Ivory
will be on the bill Friday November 1 at Radio Radio with Hero Jr. and The
Hawkeyes. Doors at 8, $10 in advance/12 at the door.
R.I.P and F.U.
“It’s about to get real”, Cheetah Chrome (Jan. 2013)
I was probably nine or ten years old the first time I heard
“Walk on the Wild Side”. It was the mid-70s. I had two teen-aged brothers and
we lived in New York City, so there was always a radio tuned to WNEW, 102.7 on
the FM dial. I remember it being a summer weekday morning. I was free of school
and too young to have a job. We lived on Coney Island, steps from the Atlantic
Ocean and the famous Boardwalk. Even from the high-rise windows of our
apartment it felt like you could reach out and touch the hot sand. You
certainly could taste the salt water in the air. I didn’t yet understand the
graphic sexual language of the “Walk on the Wild Side”, so I honed in on its
music. It’s stand-up bass line synched with the rhythm of the early morning
tide, their short waves rising and crashing to the shore. Those bone-chilling violins were like the
Atlantic wind whistling through the girders of the Cyclone roller coaster. The
gyrating “doo-do-doos” of the Thunderthighs, well, it would still be a few
years before I could analogize those. “Walk…” was among the first rock and roll
songs to stick in my head for the long run. A few years later, mired deeply in
a predictable KISS fixation, I never pretended that they lived in anything but
a world of sexual fantasy. But “Walk on the Wild Side”, that was a piece of New
York City street reality. That was the New York I wanted to observe as I got
older. It didn’t sound romantic or enticing but it sounded so….real. And kids need reality because this is a
fucked up and cruel world that sometimes seems to be aligned against them in
unimaginable ways.
I’m not into hero worship. My dad was my only hero. But I
have been inspired and enlightened by many authors, artists, and musicians. So
when Lou Reed passed away this weekend, quietly and with dignity, I briefly
reflected on that moment almost four decades ago when I first heard his
voice. And then I was reminded by the
other voice I heard come out of the radio that day. That voice inspired me in
other ways. It sparked my interest in radio. I would hear that voice over the
years, interviewing some of the most brilliant musicians of my generation and
introducing the songs that would become part of the soundtrack of our
lives. It was the voice that told me
John Lennon was dead. And this weekend, he died as well. But his death, sadly,
is merely a symbolic one – and most undignified. And his entire legacy is now
but a mere footnote to his long-held dark secret.
I’m not into hero worship because heroes can let you down.
I’ll always have “Walk on the Wild Side”.
And thank goodness for that, because adults need reality, too.
Originally published by DoitIndy
Originally published by DoitIndy
