In Review: Calumet Queen by Kiely Connell
by: Tremblin’ Jack
Hailing from Hammond, Indiana, Kiely Connell has finally decided to lay claim to the throne and take her rightful place as the Queen of the Calumet Region. I don’t pretend to fully understand the region’s monarchy, but I can honestly say that, based solely on her music, I think she should have taken her chances at being a musician. She really has some chops (songwriting that is, not sideburns).
Listen here:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/calumet-queen/1577765681
Kiely is a humble soon-to-be monarch who sings about us common folk. She even reportedly recorded her newest EP in producer Don Bates’s Motel (Pictured Here). Together with her longtime collaborator & guitarist Drew Kohl, drummer Taylor Jones, bassists Jess Perkins and Cameron Carrus, steel guitarist John McNally, cellist Chris Perdue, and fiddle player Lauren Saks, Connell delivers a record to her loyal subjects that is deserving of the royal treatment.
“Calumet Queen” opens the record with Connell reminiscing about her own roots. “She’s got mud running through her veins, she’s got a soul so old you’d be amazed, she’s been wandering ’round the riverbanks, just waiting on the Calumet River to crown this Calumet queen,” sings Connell. Are muddy veins what it takes to be a monarch?
The record’s second track, “The Blues That Really Burn,” serves up a heaping helping of relentless and repeated punches to my nether regions. “Think I’ll take another Paxil before I crawl back into bed, Pull the same old musky T-shirt over my troubled head, Seems I spend every waking moment tucked in my bed fast asleep, but it’s been four months since I had a dream,” sings Connell. “When will I see the state, I’m in and know I should’ve learned, that it’s the blues that really burn.” They do burn…like really hot. Hotter fires burn with more energy, which are different colors than cooler fires. Although red usually means hot or danger, in fires it indicates cooler temperatures. While blue represents cooler colors to most, it is the opposite in fires, meaning they are the hottest flames. Well played, Kiely, well played.
“Caroline’s Corner Café” is probably my favorite from what we were able to hear so far. It’s a brooding track in which Connell lovingly and cleverly paints a picture of a small wood-panel-clad café interior that questionable characters tend to haunt. “There’s a judge and lawyer and a preacher discussing the latest case, who’s gonna walk and who’s gonna talk while the preacher prays for their souls.” “Caroline’s Corner Café” is the kind of song that makes you feel uneasy from the start. The tension builds musically as Kiely leads us through a late-night tour of the aforementioned dive.
This Friday, November 12th, 2021, Queen Kiely will be releasing her first full-length album and will be crowned, “Calumet Queen. Her coronation will be held on November 20th, 2021, at a local pub in Nashville, Tennessee, called “The 5 Spot.”
Calumet Queen is a record that I suggest you take time to listen to. Though this is Kiely Connell’s first full-length offering, she is obviously a seasoned professional. Kiely has honed her craft over the years of playing in Nashville and is a well-known and loved local folk artist on the scene. It’s wonderful to see her finally getting the recognition she so deserves.
This record is Bohemian-Oatmeal-Certified Tasty. ALL HAIL THE QUEEN.
In Review: “Small Town Minds” by Katie Frank
by: Tremblin’ Jack
Every once in a while you hear a record… (Come on, you can do better than that, Jack.)
Every now and then you stumble on a new artist… (You suck at opening lines, Jack, you really do.)
We found someone…(yeah, that’s the one, really got their attention now)…her name is Katie Frank, and she just released a new EP called Small Town Minds (really doing it now, Jackie boy), and I like it (beautifully said).
Listen here:
https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/katiefrank/small-town-minds
Katie moved to Nashville to escape the Philly Phanatic. (Is it a bird or a horn or the deformed spawn of Barney and a bald eagle? One may never know…anyway…) Philadelphia, ahhh, the birthplace of a lot of things other than Katie (she’s from Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania), including: plastic cheese, scrapple (WTF is that stuff, anyway?), people who want to be from New Jersey, New Jersey transplants who wish they were born in Philly, some guys that signed some old piece of paper (Herbie Hancock, I think, was one of their names), people who celebrate cracks in bells, and a few strip clubs…you get the gist.
On her newest effort Small Town Minds, Miss Frank is well-seasoned, like the paper-thin beef on a Gino’s cheesesteak…(—bam! Another Philly reference…great job, Jack, you’re slaying it…). Together with a moderately talented producer, Bobby Holland (Maggie Rose, zz ward, The Daybreaks, Kesha), and her all-star cast of players—Matt Pynn on pedal steel (Miley Cyrus, Billy Ray Cyrus, Post Malone), Billy Justineau on keys (Eric Church), and Justin Ostrander on lead guitar (studio musician for Billy Ray Cyrus, Toby Keith, Sam Hunt)—Frank has created something special. The kind of roots/pop/country you would have expected out of the likes of early Sheryl Crow vis-à-vis her “Leaving Las Vegas” days.
The EP starts off with the up-tempo title track, “Small Town Minds.” “Nobody’s coming for your pride, nobody’s breaking in tonight, until you're safe inside your little small town mind, while the world leaves you behind,” sings Katie.
“Dark Cloud” starts with a baritone at the front of the mix while a pedal steel cries in the distance, haunting, evocative, brooding… Katie’s voice navigates us though an all-too-common story of young love and a codependent relationship.
Our personal favorite track is “Come Clean.” “We love, we hate, we give, we take, we’re bound to break each other down.” (Waaaaaah, come on, Jack, you're almost done, keep it together.) “But I don’t wanna go, can’t watch you anymore, nothing’s gonna turn me around.” Katie proclaims, “You keep throwing dirt on me, so I can’t see, you won’t even recognize me, when I come clean.” …We do, Katie Frank, we do.
All in all, Small Town Minds by Katie Frank is a solid seven-song EP that leaves you wanting more. Katie, who left healthcare and the Northeast behind in search of greener leaves (I think that’s how the saying goes), has found her place in Nashville and has driven her flag deep into the bedrock. Small Town Minds is Bohemian-Oatmeal-Certified Tasty… Dig it.
(Great job Jack, you did it. I’m proud of you…is hugging yourself sad?)
In Review: “Wasted Love” by Nathan Evans Fox
by: Tremblin’ Jack
Nathan Evans Fox… So nice they named him thrice? Having three names means one thing to us: class. All the best artists have three names: Olivia Newton John, Chef Hector Boyardee, John Wayne Gacy, Billy Ray Cyrus, the list goes on and on. Nathan Evans Fox has seemed to pull off something that these other fine artists never did (no, not a sick new mullet). He made a solid country record. His new full-length effort, Wasted Love, will make you stomp, holler, and cry in a way that has not been done in some time.
Bandcamp here:
https://nathanevansfox.bandcamp.com
CLICK THE LINK… Click it! Once you do, you will be thrust into a dusty bowl of the modern Nashville sound. Cosmopolitan Country, when done well, can bore deep into your soul via your ear hole (need to trademark this phrase). That's just what Fox has done on Wasted Love. It's a slow burn kind of record that hearkens back to the good old days of country…the ’90s, of course.
“One Of These Days” opens the record with a somber but hopeful track. “One of these days, I'm gonna go crazy from all of this workin and none of this paying me, one of these days the stock I’m from gonna know the reasons I changed my name,” sings Fox. Gaaaaaawwwwwddddd, the FEEELLLLSSSS! Parents suck, am I right?
The record's second track picks it up a bit on “Mercedes Benz,” a song about getting out of where he is, together with his significant other, and making it somewhere else (enough to buy a vehicle with the starting price of 64,000 SPONDOOLICKS, which is slang for money, derived from the Greek spondulys, meaning shell). WOW, now if that's not the American equivalent of love, I don't know what is. Mercedes makes a good car, with a solid body and an incredible engine. Worth the price, I guess. You were right again, Nathan, I’d stick with you for a Mercedes.
“Lordhamercy” is a soulful third song that would be good to make sweet love to. I mean, why not?
“Carolina Boy” follows with a swift kick in the cojones. This is a song about loving home from a distance. We can all relate to the overwhelming heaviness of having to tell your family you don't want to end up like them. Fox does it with impeccable style and grace as we join a conversation about his conflicted feelings toward his native land of North Carolina. Job well done, sir.
This record is chock full of great songs, but our personal favorite has to be “Some Things Are Coming Back.” This track continues the overall nostalgic but mournful narrative that things can never be the same, no matter how bad we wished they could be. “The folk scene left Atlanta, the cassette tape kids moved in, got back the old ways of listening, these old ways of singing left.” Fox reminds us that loss is just part of the human existence—easy for a FOX!
Wasted Love by Nathan Evans Fox lands every punch and jab that he attempts to deliver. It is a beautiful reminder of how childhood memories, be they good or bad, shape the people we become. Life is funny like that; one minute you’re a hospice Chaplain (Nathan actually did this for what some might call a living), the next you’re a country singer in Nashville… This record is Bohemian-Oatmeal-Certified Tasty, so dig in.
In Review: Artvertisement by Darrin Bradbury
by: Heracleatus
Darrin Bradbury’s recent Artvertisement LP represents everything wrong with today’s tech-suckling, haste-drunk, “hip” youth culture—what with their Myspace, AOL Instant Messenger, and Baha Men CDs. It illustrates that the very same generation which prides itself on its cerebral collectivism and which so oft decries the dehumanizing shackles of modern consumerism—all while bathed in the sleek LED glow of the most recent Apple™ product—is also tediously susceptible to careless lapses in sin tacks. This, of course, only proves to undercut the seriousness with which one can be expected to assess their insertions. That being said, I, of course, am neither an enemy of progress nor modernity. (Trust me, I watched the Britney Spears documentary on Hulu.) No, I have but one cruelty-free bone to pick, and it is with POUR SPELLING. For as we now find ourselves in the age of autocorrect, “lol,” and strangers sending me eggplant emojis for some reason, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard! In short, kids these days lack the gumption!
Bandcamp Link:
https://darrinbradbury.bandcamp.com/album/artvertisement
Full disclosure: I have no idea what gumption means, but it sounds like the type of thing an old coot would say, and I’m too busy untangling my hose to spray at loitering neighborhood kids to ask Siri.
Herein lies the rub with Mr. Bradbury’s most recent offering. First, let’s get one thing straight: From the moment I lit my DW Homes Sandalwood candle, cracked open my Pamplemousse La Croix, and turned on Artvertisment on my Spotify Premium account—which offers unlimited skips, ad-free listening, and the ability to download songs for offline listening at the low, low cost of $9.99/month (Be sure to mention Bohemian Oatmeal in the How did you hear about us? box. I don’t think it does anything, but it makes us sound official when we put our brand and their brand together.)—I was absolutely floored. Frankly, for much of the record, it felt as if the raw, probing humanity of John Prine and the frenetic, pop-culture-infused existentialism of David Foster Wallace had given birth to a witty yet apathetic child who founded Pavement. (TL;DR: It’s tasty.)
Perhaps the most perfect summation I could give of the record’s overall effect comes from Bradbury himself in the tune “Deanna, Deanna,” where he croons, “And we both laughed a little in a way that kinda felt like crying.” In just under 28 minutes, Bradbury, along with co-producers and bandmates Preston Cochran, Scottie Prudhoe, and Ryan Sobb, took me on a sort of postmodern, manic-depressive odyssey that adeptly paired moments of feverish, plebeian satire with sobering philosophical truths into one hilarious yet melancholy whole.
…But that’s when I saw it…
I was so caught off guard by the depth and nuance of this record that I had one of the aforementioned loitering neighbor kids come and help me unlock my iPhone so that I could give the album cover a better look. “Ah, Advertisement by Darrin Bradbury. How nice—wait a second.” *adjusts glasses…broils with rage* HE MISPELLED ADVERTISEMENT!” I began uncontrollably retching at the mere thought of this oversight.
You mean to tell me that Bradbury, alongside some of Nashville’s most brilliant, burgeoning talents, managed to put together an intricate and astounding work of art and FORGOT TO SPELL-CHECK THE TITLE OF THE ALBUM!?! Not one single person had the integrity—nay! the decency!—to see the product through to its proper finish. This is exactly what’s wrong with today’s younger generations. Oh, autocorrect didn’t work on Photoshop? (Yes, I know what Photoshop is.) I mean, seriously. You want to feel good about handing the torch off to the great minds of tomorrow, and you can’t even trust them to know how to spell advertisement correctly. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills** here. I feel my blood pressure rising just typing this. Admittedly, it may have been the Cracker Barrel I ate. I love their food, but it just doesn’t sit with me the way that it used to—maybe it’s the sodium content? Anyway, Advertisement* by Darrin Bradbury is exactly what’s wrong with the world. Abysmal failure. The End.
Wait, what’s that? He meant to spell it that way? …He…oh! Art-vertisement—like “art” mixed with “advertisement.” It’s almost as if it was intended as a statement about the utter subjugation of artistic expression by the money-grubbing tentacles of consumerism, or maybe it’s just clever. Either way, that’s actually pretty genius…
Well then, *clears throat* Artvertisement by Darwin Birdbarry is Bohemian-Oatmeal-Certified Tasty.
**Bohemian Oatmeal Crazy Pills™ coming soon! They may look and taste like Tic Tacs dipped in RC Cola… and they are ©