The Unbeliever - Robert Wilson will save your country-rock soul

It’s a Friday night at Puddle Jumpers in downtown Tavares. Robert Wilson is standing on the stage arranging his harmonicas and tuning his acoustic guitar, a bulky binder in front of him, crammed full of thoughts, lyrics, and songs. He is tall, but not intimidating, a grizzled but friendly troubadour who has seen a lot from behind the microphone. I walk up to him and say hello. He says that it’s good to see me, and I believe him.

Wilson’s musical roots run deep in the sounds of Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings, country-Americana legends whose sounds were uncompromising and raw. These legends loomed large to a lanky, awkward young man with few friends who found himself bullied and made fun of. His effusive nature belies a shy interior, but he says that his desire to be heard overtook his reluctance to put himself out there, and he picked up a guitar and started writing songs.

Wilson is just getting started in what promises to be his busiest year yet. He has three albums scheduled for release in a 6 month window. Up first is his first solo record in years, Crime of the Century. Eschewing the production of a band and a large studio, Wilson sequestered himself in his home studio with nothing but a guitar to pound out musical ideas he had been cooking but had not brought to the band. In these songs we find Wilson stretching his legs on his own, taking up all the musical space for himself. There’s no committee, no middleman between his voice and the record. Wilson sells the honesty of all the lyrics he sings with an earnest devotion to the music and style, which pulls from homage, but becomes something all it’s own. The music just is; a statement of being from an artist whose music career has spanned over fifteen years in Florida.

Tonight he is leading his band, the Dead Show Dealers, through a raucous jukebox journey through their brand of Americana rockabilly. He’s a natural storyteller, his original songs and selection of covers telling tales that are close to his heart; sometimes sincere, sometimes absurd, but every one honest. His energy and passion on stage is palpable. The songs crescendo and build, living lives of their own. Their sound is unapologetically unproduced and unfiltered. His voice is comfortable in a deep dive baritone or a fleeting falsetto. Wilson’s harmonica cooks while Bink Skiba’s dirty blues lead guitar colors the musical passages with sonic color and nuance while Joe Ramirez on bass stays solid in the pocket for everyone to fall back on, and Johnny Krueger dances over the top of the fray with the banjo. I clap along with the beat and Robert is smiling.

Long before the Dead Show Dealers, Wilson took the stage as Gas Jackson, his rabble-rousing, loudmouthed alter ego who became more trouble than his success was worth. Later this year, he’s re-releasing an album of Gas Jackson songs, aptly titled The Ghost of Gas Jackson.The ghost haunts him still, his success under the moniker standing in stark contrast to the amount of destruction the alter-ego inflicted on his life. In Wilson’s own words, Gas Jackson was a “monsoon”, a larger than life being whose rock and roll lifestyle was as exhilarating as it was destructive. He was harsh on stage, often saying things and singing songs about things that wouldn’t exactly be welcome in church on Sundays. His fans loved it. As Wilson says about his brazen style, “If you’re gonna make a joke about something offensive, you’d better be sure it’s funny.”

It took a while, but Wilson was driven to finally leave Jackson in the past, for his health and peace of mind. Of that time, Wilson reflects on how true to himself he was being. “I felt like I was hiding behind a character,” he says now.

With Gas Jackson behind him, Wilson had to take seven years before he got back into music again, erecting his home studio with the intent to sell out, write commercial jingles and songs for others. But something tugged at him, something in his head that said I don’t want to be forgotten. “I still had something to say,” Wilson says. “My mother always wanted me to be a preacher. It turned out that I was, it was just a different kind of gospel.”

The Dead Show Dealers retake the stage effortlessly, a transition so seamless that you’d swear they never left the stage to grab a fresh beer or mingle with the other attendees. Harmonica notes come flying out as if impromptu flourishes, a creature in and of itself, barely restrained by their author, let off the leash and allowed to occupy the front of the musical space, never going the same place twice and hungry for the spotlight. When it’s finally reeled in, you feel that you’ve been subjected to a wild ride. The crowd cheers and Robert bows.

After a few years of writing new material, Wilson formed the Dead Show Dealers, a kind of rotating jam club consisting of various friends and musicians he had known throughout the years. It was a come as you are atmosphere, no commitment, just show up and jam. Wilson was the creative driving force and the dock to which all other boats moored, but it allowed Wilson to amplify and diversify his sound. What once was a one man show of acoustic guitar and harmonica became a multi instrumentalist dream, with bass, banjo, percussion, and electric guitar, just to name a few. The culmination of this work is set to be released as a live album, Live at Orlando Brewing, recorded at the Orlando Brewing Company across two nights of performances in 2018.

Wilson calls his shows Family Reunions, since it’s the unifying glue that brings fans and friends together, young and old, near and far. When Wilson and his band take the stage you can’t help but tap your foot and bob your head. He is the preacher and we are his congregation, lifting the music up in worship as his disciples of the style country blues that he’s espousing from his pulpit. Wilson is the kind of artist that you want to listen to, the kind of music that makes you suspend your conversation to really pay attention to the live act that’s performing at your bar that night. His stage presence commands your attention and lures you in.

Come and be a part of the family, and they’ll always have a warm smile waiting for you at the next reunion.

Robert is putting his instruments away after the show, sharing a drink with a friend. He gives me a big hug and thanks me for coming. Of course, I say. I’ll see you at the next one.

Matt

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Live from Here with Chris Thile - There and Back Again

Man, I loved A Prairie Home Companion.

An old-timey NPR variety show recorded with a live studio audience, filled with folky tunes and sketches about whiny Minnesotans? This was not in the realm of the kinds of things I typically listen to, but I found it incredibly entertaining. There was something romantic about the way it was sustaining the tradition of the live stage variety show. Garrison Keillor was the voice of Lake Wobegon, and hearing his drawling cadence over folksy music was all it took to transport me to the deep north of perpetual complaint and communal sense of misery.

A Prairie Home Companion had to come to an end, as all good things do (accusations of Garrison Keillor engaging in “inappropriate behavior” notwithstanding). In its place, we have its spiritual successor, Live from Here with Chris Thile, of Nickel Creek fame (and many other accomplishments, I’m sure to be reminded). The standard had been set very high after A Prairie Home Companion and I’m happy to report that things are in good hands at the auditorium.

The format of the show is similar to APHC. It’s breezy and light in its radio show variety format, the likes of which have been largely left by the wayside in today’s mostly digital Youtube/Spotify/Netflix landscape. There are musical acts, sketches, and commentary, moving along nimbly under Thile’s guidance. The show is lighter on sketch comedy than APHC was (I’ll always have a soft spot for the adventures of Guy Noir), but that’s probably my biggest complaint. The musical acts still maintain the spirit of its predecessor, with Thile punctuating the other musical acts with singing of his own. The essay/stand-up comedy segment is often witty and worth dialing up the volume a few notches to pay close attention to, regardless of who is delivering the dialogue. The content is constant, a kind of stream of consciousness of music and words.

Live from Here works perfectly as an effervescent Saturday listen. The listener gets out of it what they bring to the show. Thile and company present an impressive sonic canvas, a green blanket of grass for the listener to roll around in, eat a picnic of Americana a la mode, and take in a view of rolling hills on a cool sunny day. It’s also the perfect background noise, the kind of thing you could have on while cleaning your house, driving to visit your mother, or entertaining people for coffee. It demands so little of your attention, yet remains perfectly enjoyable.

To listen to Live from Here is to lose yourself in a time warp of sorts. It evokes the feeling that everyone is your neighbor, attending Sunday potlucks with family and friends, punctuated with great music, and the smiles are plentiful. The atmosphere of Live from Here is bright, and it’s almost impossible to be in a bad mood while listening. The show is escapism, a sort of time machine to another era, and it makes me feel like I’m wrapped up in a warm blanket on a cool morning, even though the content might be light years away from what I usually call my preferences. It’s chicken soup for the human condition, and I challenge you to give it a listen, and see if you don’t also get swept into that sacred garden of family, friends, music, and laughter.

I’ll see you there.

Matt

The Lingering Allure of Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a year and a half old, as of this writing. I purchased the game on day one for the Wii U since I was in no kind of decent financial position to get a Switch at the time. I must have played that version for over a hundred hours, barely bothering to get any of the Divine Beasts, preferring to get lost in the gameplay mechanics and seemingly infinite wilderness playground that Nintendo had created for me. Later in the year, Santa brought a Switch into my household with another copy of the game, and my second playthrough began as if the first had never happened, taking new directions and exploring new spaces, progressing further and sinking even more time into the endeavor. I finally completed the story on the Switch, gaining momentum after the second Divine Beast and powering through to the end, by disregarding my ever-growing list of side stories and quests. It was at that moment that I finally put the game down, probably the one I spent the most time with in 2017, and headed off to discover other worlds.

But to walk away from this version of Hyrule is to not really leave. The world keeps begging for you to return. The portability and ease of use of the Switch certainly plays a big part in keeping me invested. It’s so easy to play in small chunks, whether at the laundromat or on lunch breaks at work. And there’s always something new to find, something to do that keeps tugging on my attention span, some rock formation in the distance that I want to climb or the possibility of an undiscovered shrine or korok seed somewhere just around the next bend.

I haven’t found Breath of the Wild to be the physics playground that many have, however I’m constantly amazed by what players are accomplishing in the game, as I’m reminded frequently from the game’s very active player base, a constant presence in reddit’s r/gaming or on the splash pages of Youtube. Nintendo built a massive playground for us to play in and explore, and each player can accomplish that in their own way, in their own time. There’s nothing pushing you forward other than your own set of goals and what you want to accomplish. My side quest list shows no signs of decreasing, every time I knock one or two off, another few seem to come right up in their place, and I frequently pay little to no attention to it anyway as I explore territories that are still new to me.

The game has been critically lauded, and there’s nothing I can say here that adds anything new to that conversation, but my experience with most games is that once they’ve been beaten or completed, my motivation to return from them drops off precipitously, to the point that I rarely, if ever replay games or return to their worlds. In the few instances that I do, I piddle around aimlessly, then lose whatever sense of interest I had pretty quickly. Breath of the Wild continues to bring me back, even in small chunks. I don’t have to spend hours in a row with the game anymore, but it occupies a place in my heart that’s comforting to return to, asserting a sense of wonder that has not yet begun to decay. I can’t see any signs that it will happen anytime soon.

Matt

Game Journal - 9/24/18

Game playing is largely unfocused at the moment. Scattershot, across the spectrum.

  • Donut County - After hearing the staff of Giant Bomb gush over the title (their weekly Giant Bombcast podcast is, in my opinion, essential listening for game enthusiasts), I picked it up on iPad for five bucks. I then spent the better part of the next two hours making things fall down holes. It’s non-committal, plucky fun, and I mostly just breezed through the text/story portions to get to more hole-dropping goodness. The art style and music are kooky but catchy. It’s money well spent.

  • Batman: Return to Arkham - Arkham Asylum - The original release of this game was one of my favorites from last generation, even though I had to turn it down to Easy mode to finally be able to immerse myself in it. But once its hooks are in you, they’re in deep. Even in the limited time I have to devote to playing games, Arkham Asylum drove me to 100% completion, and I will probably continue that on this version, although I’ve been kind of plodding through it, a few missions at a time.

  • Hearthstone - Another game that I’ve had downloaded on the iPad for quite a while, but never had the fortitude to stick with it to the point of getting into it, I finally pushed forward through the tutorial and came out the other side with at the very least, a basic understanding of the game, which was more than I could say when I first installed it. I don’t know if it will hold my interest for long, as I’m not much for these kinds of card games, but at least I made it to the game proper and even won a match against a human opponent (who quit midway through the game, but a W is a W, amirite?).

  • Pokemon GO - The journey continues with more seemingly unreachable goals, achievements requiring a lot of perseverance, patience, and the understanding that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I evolved my first tier 3 Pokemon, only to learn that to continue on my progress path, I would need to do it again, and I burned through my opportunity to gather that achievement too early. Hindsight is 20/20, but that one burned my ass. Either way, it’s still a fun organization simulator, forcing me into regular Pokemon inventory purges, and subconsciously filling my head with Pokeinfo that I never thought I’d amass.

Play on.

Matt

My Best of 2017 Spotify Playlist

For the last three years, I’ve been undertaking a musical project designed to find new music that I would have probably never found otherwise. It’s a project that I started first with my girlfriend back in the latter half of 2015.

Every month, I create a playlist that I title INTM (It’s New To Me). Over the course of the month, I listen to an assortment of playlists across Spotify in search of my new favorite songs that I’ve never heard before. There is no set source for these songs. I’ve heard snippets of songs in movie trailers, playing over the promo reel in department stores, and Shazam-ing speakers in restaurants, adding them all to different playlists over the years as contenders for the best of the best. These lists have vacillated between fifteen songs to almost a hundred in a single month. At the end of the year, I cull through what has historically been close to three hundred songs in order to choose the top 80, and over a rigorous deliberation phase, splitting that into two playlists, my top 40 and 40 honorable mentions.

This has been extremely rewarding for me, allowing me to find hours of new music and artists, some with mainstream recognition, and others with barely any following, but these songs have become some of my favorites, earning serious replay time in my home and car stereos. My tastes generally sway to wall-of-sound pop songs, but some denser material finds its way in as well.

Either way, these songs (in no particular order) are the soundtracks to my year, earworms and artsy-fartsy gems alike. Give them a listen and see if any of them move you the way they moved me.

Matt

A playlist featuring Johnnyswim, Great Good Fine Ok, Betablock3r, and others

What the Hell is Nintendo Labo?

This past week, Nintendo revealed Labo,  games that come with a set of cardboard cutout peripherals that, once assembled, accommodate the Joy-Con controllers and Switch console itself to perform all manner of play mechanics. The possible creations include a small piano, remote controlled animals, and an entire backpack/hand grip/pulley configuration that allows the player to control a giant mech. I could spend many words and a lot of time trying to convey what this looks like, but it’s probably best that you just watch the reveal video.

A lot of the reaction I’ve seen has been positive, a burst of enthusiasm for Nintendo being Nintendo, flipping our expectations on their ear because that’s just the kind of company they are. But I was left scratching my head.

Who the hell gave this the green light?

This seems like the kind of thing that may look great on paper, but not translate well to the real world. We’re talking peripherals made out of cardboard, a material that is not known for strength or durability. Getting the peripherals even slightly damp would be ruinous. The initial video also makes it look like it’s geared towards younger children, an unparalleled destructive force.

In the video, it shows some of the games included in the Variety Kit, and it seems just a compilation of small games that look more like showcases for the cardboard controllers and nothing with a lot of depth. Wii Sports was tasked with a similar role for the Wii, a pack in designed to be a proof of concept for Nintendo’s new motion controls, but Wii Sports worked because the games were infinitely replayable, as fun on the thousandth time as they were on the first. I’d love to be wrong about the Labo, but from where I stand, this looks more like a flash fad, and nothing that has legs.

My girlfriend is a pediatric occupational therapist, and when I showed her the video, she was immediately excited by the potential therapy applications for the Labo. Where I saw an easily broken children’s toy, she saw an opportunity to engage kids with video games on a more tangible and tactile level, possibilities that I had not considered. I had to admit that she had a point, and perhaps I was being overly critical of a product that isn’t intended for me.

Perspective is everything, and time will tell if the Labo is a success or failure, but one thing is certain; Nintendo will keep sending this stuff out into the world, keeping us on our toes in a way that Microsoft and Sony have never been able to do, and I will always applaud their creativity.

Matt

Film Review - The Shape of Water

Written and Directed by Guillermo Del Toro and starring Sally Hawkins, Doug Jones, Michael Shannon, Octavia Spencer, and Richard Jenkins

I have to admit, I’m not very familiar with Guillermo Del Toro’s filmography. I saw Pacific Rim in IMAX 3D with my son when it came out, and loved the rollicking rock-’em sock-em robots vibe. I saw Hellboy and liked his stylistic take on a very stylized graphic novel. Both of these films were interesting, but I have never seen Del Toro explore any themes of resonance. I have heard that Pan’s Labyrinth is a gut-wrenching powerhouse of feels, but I wouldn’t know personally. I knew that Del Toro could deliver the goods visually, but did he have the chops to bring down the house emotionally?

The short answer is yes.

The Shape of Water is one of the most human monster movies that I’ve ever seen. Lots of screen time is devoted to the mysterious amphibian creature everyone has seen in the marketing, but he is not the film’s main character, despite events revolving around his imprisonment and escape attempt. That honor goes to Sally Hawkins, playing Elisa Esposito, a meek mute janitor at the secret government facility that serves as a prison for the creature. Hawkins’ performance is the heart of this movie, and she delivers the goods without saying a word.

Shortly after the creature’s incarceration at the facility, he and Elisa form a bond that transcends language, she being unable to vocalize, and the creature only able to utter guttural sounds. She sympathizes with his situation as someone unable to communicate with a world that doesn’t truly understand. Through basic hand gestures and body language, the two find themselves in each other, and when Elisa learns of the heinous endgame in store for the creature brought upon by shady government operatives (Michael Shannon, who seems to be having fun playing an unhinged psychopath), she enlists the help of her only friends (Octavia Spencer, whose sass steals scenes, and Richard Jenkins, whose earnest bleeding heart cries out for fulfillment and purpose) to break the creature out and return him home.

To reveal more about the events would venture into spoiler territory, but even the sequence of events is not the true draw here. Sally Hawkins and Doug Jones (who plays the amphibious creature) hook the viewer and bring them along as they sell one hell of a love story, that just so happens to involve the creature from the Black Lagoon. The development of their relationship is played straight, without any hint of irony, and what Del Toro leaves us with is a compelling journey of watching two people connect, despite any traditional means to do so, and the connection they form is something more inspiring than any recent traditional love story or rom-com. Even during the film’s most fantastical sequences (of which there are a couple), there is never a sense of absurdity accompanying them. Instead, it is the heart and the love between these two beings that shines through, carrying the weight of the film with them.

The Shape of Water succeeds far more often than it fails. If Del Toro has this kind of depth waiting for me in his back catalog, then I can’t wait to dive in.

Matt