The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, November 11, 2003, Image 3

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The Battalion
Page 3 • Tuesday, November 11
A new Day, a new season
Howie Day rocks up the charts with his second album, ‘Stop All the World Now'
By Lauren Smith
THE BATTALION
Howie Day, a 22-year-old songwriter from Bangor, Maine, said his
music smells like London in May and like Maine in January. This
metaphor is due in part to the fact that he wrote all of his songs for his
sophomore release “Stop All the World Now” in his Maine apartment
and recorded 11 songs for the album in London.
“I breathe strong sort of images of seasons, which is pretty weird.
It probably comes from being from Maine, and the name of this record
!50 would i was almost ‘Winter’s Summer,’ as in the winter owns the summer,”
garage p Day said. “A lot depends on where I recorded the song, some might
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remind me of London in May and sometimes it goes back to where 1
actually wrote the song.”
No stranger to life on the road. Day has opened for Tori Amos, Jack
Johnson, Sting and John Mayer, and he is currently touring the coun
try as a headliner for the first time. Day has been a solo artist for the
past six years and is playing with a band for the first time.
Day’s live shows pre-band accompaniment were different than the
typical acoustic sets of a man and his guitar, as he pushed norms by
using his feet to push pedals and scratching the lower strings for extra
percussion beats.
“I adjusted to playing with a band quicker than I thought I would,”
Day said. “I think it is more difficult to go from having a band to being
a solo artist. Although the transition was very different, there is now
just more sound behind what I was already doing.”
Day explores love, love lost and regret in his introspective lyrics,
which makes him seem vulnerable as he shares his mixed emotions
about getting older. Day said it is nice to have two albums and an EP
full of material because his catalog of what he can play each night has
tripled in size.
Day’s first CD, “Australia,” was independently released in 2000 and
was recorded in 1999 in a Boston studio with funds from his own bank
account. By word of mouth and a little bit of Napster sampling, his
album sold 30,000 copies. He caught the eyes of Epic Records execu
tives, signed Day and started distributing the album, which has now
sold more than 125,000 copies.
As Day released his first true major label debut, he said he felt a lit
tle older and a little wiser. Though Day could go back and work on
both of his albums for another year, he said he feels
pleased with the way his labor in London turned out.
Day relates making a record to doing a painting,
because there could always be more paint on a paint
ing, and it could always be better.
“The reality is that it is just a snapshot of a
moment in time of where you are as an artist, and you
have to kind of know the point where it is time to stop
painting,” Day said. “You are always going to want to
go back and paint more, but you have to stick it in the
back of your mind and remember what you want to
do differently and do that on the next one, and then
you can have that progression as an artist, and people
want to see that.”
At age 15, Day started playing gigs at bars and
coffee shops near his Maine home and latched on to
the University of Maine, where the college students
in the area became his audience. When he was a high
school student, Day said he was into the same things
as the college kids, and he became more serious about
his writing at 17.
Charlotte Cauwe, a senior communications major,
recently caught one of Day’s shows in Austin, one of
his three stops in Texas, and said he was everything
live that she expected him to be.
“I feel like he never plays the same song twice,”
Cauwe said. “He is constantly bringing something new to his fans. His
songs are fresh, and his lyrics truly strike a chord in me.”
When Day returned from touring with Amos in Frankfurt,
Germany, he moved back to his old apartment in Maine and devoted
all of his time to writing. For “Stop All the World Now,” Day wrote in
the dead of winter and in the summer months.
“I felt like there was a real dynamic between the summer songs and
the winter songs,” Day said. “I think about records that I get into sort
of in the winter time, and I can listen to them several years later and it
reminds me of that winter, so I think there is a really strong time peri
od and seasonal thing that goes with songs.”
As Day has risen from coffee-shop crooner to MTV star and head-
Courtesy OF EPIC RECORDS
Howie Day made three Texas stops on his national tour last weekend in Houston, Austin and Dallas.
liner of an international tour, he has been aided in his efforts by devot
ed fans and members of the Howie Day Rep program, which includes
5,000 reps, who are mostly college students.
Though Day is not a supporter of file sharing, he said Napster
came at a good time for him.
“I was pretty much unknown, playing really far away from
home, and it helped me build a core audience,” Day said.
James Gardner, a student at Blinn Junior College, said he dis
covered Day through Napster.
“I was actually downloading some John Mayer stuff, and
Howie played some shows with him,” Gardner said. “So 1 gave
him a listen and have been hooked ever since.”
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Dressy Bessy
Dressy Bessy
Kindercore Records
Pop music should be fun. It should bounce through a CD with
melodies you can’t help singing out loud in your car, even in traffic.
There’s something about a great pop record that makes you just not
care that it is put out by a band called Dressy Bessy.
Dressy Bessy’s self-titled third album works so hard to get there
and almost makes it. That could be its biggest problem, because just
as great pop can transcend prejudices, bad pop can reinforce a sin
cere hatred for bubble gum-flavored garbage.
Dressy Bessy is a neo-pop band out of Denver whose third album
is, at best, the good kind of pop that warrants a listen. Lead singer
Tammy Ealom coos thinly over an abundance of oddly powerful
three-chord songs, but the charm eventually runs lean.
Where a repetitiveness of tempo and style is the album’s weak
point — especially over two discs — Ealom is the definitive
strength of the band. Her notorious knack for bringing the crowd
into the vigorous live showspills over into this CD.
While Dressy Bessy comes across as fun and energetic, it is not
always interesting. Ealom’s well-crafted lyrics, often intimate por
traits of the female psyche lost in the angry growl of bands such as
Kittie or the plastic cutout whisper of Britney Spears, are repeated
ly overshadowed by bland, cyclic songs.
In “This May Hurt (a little),” Ealom opens a window into notions
seldom expressed in today’s music with the line “Cross-legged in
the kitchen then we’d giggle cry and rub our eyes,” but it shuts just
as quickly with another dull chord progression and the monotonous
hi-hat and listeners are left looking in.
In the end, the great lyrics and initial hooks are not enough to
stay with you or save what could have been a commendable pop
record. If the same craft that was used for the lyrics was applied to
the music, this album would be better than average.
Chris Knight
The Jealous Kind
Dualtone Records
Chris Knight’s third release takes the soulful resonance of his
Kentucky home and stirs in the darkness of stories that come down out
of the mountains and find their way on to this rough and truthful
album. The record sounds like a cold day spent inside, and is all the
better for it. Knight says his songs are without compromise, that there
is no pretense. His bare melodies and honest lyrics are the sharpest
way to transcend the common complaint of country music’s triteness.
In “A Train Not Running,” a bankrupt town is illustrated by the
absence of the shipping train at the closed coal mine; with “Devil
Behind the Wheel,” Knight’s soul rides shotgun while the “the devil’s
behind the wheel straight downhill... in a long black Coupe Deville.”
Knight’s southern gothic style, as it unfolds, affecting stories in a
way that draws a reaction other than scorn from a listener, is an art few
have mastered. Knight’s music is full of powerful visions that seem
broken off a whole rather than shaped by studio technicians. The rough
edges are there — in Knight’s voice, and the acoustic guitars, and they
never wear down.
Knight draws on methods tested by many Texas Country artists.
Creating substance in the form of thoughtful lyrics and songs built
around flawed people are something mainstream country music has
been sorely lacking for too many years, and something at which
Knight is getting better.
Singer-songwriters are often considered the truest musicians today,
which can cause them to be judged a little more harshly. Sometimes the
reworking of something that’s been done before turns out well; some
times it is better than the original. Knight’s third revision of classic
country music surpasses attempts by most other artists. Knight stands
up to any criticism with individual strength and this remarkable record.
This is a great album, worth more than $15. Knight is still young,
so a comparison alongside the great singer-songwriters is something
that is not possible just yet. Knight works hard at it though — there’s
a blue collar on this record.
- Will Knous
Jason Boland and The Stragglers
Truckstop Diaries
Tenkiller Records
Jason Boland & the Stragglers tries to buck the trend of the soph
omore jinx with the release of its second album, “Truckstop
Diaries,” and has surpassed its initial attempt in terms of quality of
songs and music.
Originally released in 2001, Jason Boland & the Stragglers made
its money on this album by telling believable stories over simple but
not simplistic melodies. Boland soulfully croons about the lost loves
of his life and the roads he has to run just like all the other routine
ly mocked country artists. However, Boland defies convention—
changing perspectives of even the better times with lines such as
“lying ain’t nothing but ‘falling with style.’” Instead of whining into
a whiskey bottle, along with what seems like everyone else, about
his unfound love, he makes his confession to St. Valentine himself
in “St. Valentine.” It is this sly reversion of convention in its music
that makes Jason Boland & the Stragglers one of the premier bands
traveling the South in the burgeoning Texas music scene.
The album can be inconsistent.The problem lies where the gems
are interrupted rudely by fillers — songs seemingly written by the
band the day before the album was to be released — disappoint
ments such as “Mexican Holiday,” a middling attempt to emulate
the Tejano sound that can be seen finely executed by Robert Earl
Keen, but are best left alone by Boland. But there are enough terrif
ic songs on this album to warrant purchase. “Traveling Jones” rolls
on sweetly like the Texas highways it alludes to. Jeremy Watkins’
double duty solos on the harmonica and fiddle convey the air of rest
lessness that the song intones. The mid-tempo, radio-friendly sound
of this first single propelled it all the way to number eleven on the
Texas country charts.
Overall, the good far outweighs any bad. Tuneful dobro slides,
heartfelt sentiments and incisive lyrics make up one of the best
country albums in recent years. Take another look at it.
- Will Knous
— Will Knous
MSC
ASIAN CULTURES EDUCATION
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Come le^rn to q^nce...
Indian style!!!
Indian Dance
Tuesday, Nov. 11th, 2003
7:00-8:15 p.m.
MSC 201
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