LOW CUT CONNIE
Low Cut Connie was recently called “the essence of what rock n roll should be” by Greg Kot (Sound Opinions / NPR)..and the New York Times has said “their live show is a phenomenon.” They have been a rolling DIY caravan with an explosive live act bubbling under the surface of the music industry for 5 years, building an obsessive fanbase from all walks of life...white and black, straight and gay, young and old...salty lunatics of every persuasion. Even former President Barack Obama is a fan. He chose their anthem of low-brow American life “Boozophilia” for his Spotify Playlist and met with Weiner at the White House in 2016.
But with Dirty Pictures (part 1), Low Cut Connie moves beyond the drunken bar boogie they have become associated with into a deeper, darker, dirtier American life.
“We’ve been thought of as a great party band by so many people, and we wear that as a badge of honor, but I really wanted to go deeper with this record.” Weiner said recently. “We’ve been travelling this country now for a number of years, meeting people of all stripes, entertaining them in their bars and sleeping on their couches, laughing hard, holding them tight and sweating it out with them...I wrote this record really thinking about how people are feeling and living in this country these days. It’s a wild scene out there.”
And what is it that best brings Americans together in such wild and dirty times? Weiner has a simple answer: “Rock n roll. Nothing moves people more...it’ll make the most unsuspecting citizen hot, horny, angry, weepy and emotional and ultimately open to life like never before. I’ve seen it happen. That’s what we do. We change the molecules in the room.”
Whether they succeed or not, Low Cut Connie always attempts to make us feel something real, something very raw. With Dirty Pictures (part 1), this little rock n roll band from Philadelphia attempts to undress America, laughing and crying real tears with us all night long.
THE YAWPERS
Led by dynamic young singer-songwriter Nate Cook, Boulder quartet the Yawpers recall a grittier version of Wilco, with as much raw country sensibility as twisted indie imagination. Equally akin to Deer Tick, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Elvis, The Yawpers give a fresh blend of indie-country and rock ’n’ roll. The Band has just released its debut, full-length record, Capon Crusade.
The Yawpers roar over the roofs of a world filled with the ruined and the forgotten, where big dreams and small towns are pitched to the collective curb, and lost men and con men roam the gutters and pulpits. American Man taps into the disparate, murky pools of the American musical lexicon; dark country to kinetic punk, acid blues to flared jeans boogie, low-brow backdrops pitted against high-minded literary references. It’s an edgy, engrossing trip.
Shimmering against blacktop fever dreams and Elvis’s ghostly sneer are the anarchic impulses of the MC5 and psychedelic muscle of Leslie West’s Mountain and Blue Cheer. Raw and melodic, infectious and irreverent, American Man is an update on the Springsteen tramp’s dream of getting out while you’re young, this time played for the inhalants generation. It’s the suicide rap played out in the desert, without velvet rims or everlasting kisses, the tramp as much a drifter as a romantic.
