Ir’s nearing the witching hour and a topless girl wearing a horses head, tights, men’s underwear and sneakers and drenched with beer is frugging near the stage to Shit Horse, while Odessa Records owner Paul Finn dances with wild abandon and Shit Horses’s lead singer Danny Mason is twirling center stage before settling back into a semi-improvissed rant about love and death “Twelve Horses”. Earlier he would call the band he shares with Americans France lead singer Josh La Joie and bass/Viola player John Jaquies. “Otis Redding fronting the Sex Pistols.
If that doesn’t make you salivate, indie label Odessa Record’s not for you. But then again, if that doesn’t make you salivate neither is Rock NYC.
The above Shit Horse set happened last night at the Nightlights -an 150 SRO room on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolna. A town Jaquies would dub “A little bare foot and granola but every fifth person you meet is in a band.” The singer-songwriter Wesley Wolfe, whose debut album Storage is released on Tuesday, claims unlike his home town of Cape Canaveral, “people are nice to each other, trust each other.”
Chapel Hill also has North Carolina University and Duke nearby. The town is a mini-Boston, very liberal (voted 74% for Obama), also very Townies Vs Yalies, with the local college kid unaware of much except Merge Records in their immediate vicinity. In the midst of North Carolina, folks from Florida and New Jersey have expatted over and live a community life of music and, er, service industrying.Yup, those guys rocking out the Nightlights start concerts late because they all have jobs as Waiters (somewhat malecentric musicianwise, the chicks tend to be not girlfriends but wives) and bartenders.
Just about all of the bands I’m gonna be writing in the next week or so as I detail a music scene and sound very worthy your attention, work in the same bars and restaurants and have been friends for a decade, since high school in cases. They all play on each others albums and bands and mushroom into sub-groups at the speed of sound, and they are mostly in their mid-thirties.
Finn, a man who earned his stripes interning at Team Go in Chicago and then upgraded to Drag City before, unable to afford an apartment in NYC, moved to North Carolina and Merge Records, understands the unsexy nuts and bolts of running an indie label. In the days to come I will write up an interview with Paul in which he explains it. The point might appear to be that in their-thirties this is a last chance by a buncha gifted musicians. But that’s the wrong lesson. The lesson isn’t that Odessa records and its bands are waiting for something to happen. The point is it is already happening, the future is here and they won, and in the next week or so I’m gonna tell you all about it.
Tomorrow I will review day one of Odessa Fest (5 bands, ten bucks, all great) and in the next coupla days you’re gonna meet entreperneures, psychotic rock stars, Marc Bolan look alikes, the woman who babysat Exene Cervanka’s kid, a heavy metal band, the James Taylor of the 20teens , a Zooey Deschanel (or is that Katy Perry ?) lookalike, and a local legend who baffles human comprehension. Now, I’m off to Mercury Lounge…