The High Caliber had a great time going up to Nashville to play the closing night of this year's International Pop Overthrow - Nashville Edition. Playing the IPO is a great way for us to play amongst kindred spirits. With a name taken from the uber-power pop band Material Issue, the festival is pretty much a collection of underground bands working their magic in the verse/chorus, 3-minutes-of hooks tradition. We played the IPO in Chicago last year, and the two most influential bands for the bands who played it with us seem to be the Beatles and Cheap Trick. All in all, one big, fun "earworm" farm.
The drive up was pretty fun. One of the guys in The High Dials once made a comment about drive time being the band's time to develop what he calls "the hive mind." On most trips, and this was no exception, we'll listen to music and comedy bits. The comedy in particular tends to keep spirits up and it also provides us with plenty of in-joke references throughout the trip (and then some). Former/future bandmate J. Christopher Arrison has hooked me up with a lot of comedy files for my mp3 player, and as a result he's always in tune with our references….he is indeed a Caliber Man even when not actively serving (thank you, Chris).
Each IPO show features at least a half dozen bands. This is done without much problem because there is a backline provided and each band plays a 20-25 minute set. This time around the amps were provided via a sponsorship from Fender, so I wound up getting to play my regular amp- a Hotrod Deville. Reid got to play a Twin Reverb. The 25 minute set thing works out pretty well, bands play a sampling of their material, and it's pretty easy to see where a band is coming from within 5 or 6 songs. If you like it, you can always grab a CD or plan to catch a "real" show, and if you don't care for the band, they'll be gone quicker than a bad sitcom episode.
The first band we played with was a guy named Billy King from Brooklyn, Michigan. He was backed by a simple two-piece rhythm section, but he was a really good guitar player, and he managed to make his 12-string sound like he was playing two guitars, covering lead and rhythm. A fellow named Andy Zipf was next. He was a singer/songwriter with an acoustic guitar, and before I got the hell out of there, damn if he didn't win me and the rest of the room over. To simplify, the two reference points I'll use are Radiohead's Thom Yorke and The Verve's Richard Ashcroft. An A&R man would probably see him as the next Coldplay/Chris Martin, and the notion of him becoming crazy huge in the UK is not far-fetched.
The next band of the evening was The Season. Okay, they were all fairly nice young men and they did let Ian borrow their kick drum pedal, but outside of that, they really weren't my thing. (I just opted to delete the rest of the paragraph. They are probably confused, eager to please kids who will figure it out one way or another later on….I hope. My prayers are with my fellow musicians in The Season.)
Our set was: Let It Leave, Skeleton Man, Damn Near Broke, Can't Resist, Days Go Sailing By, and Child Of the Moon, which we kept from our recent Rolling Stones set from the Gimme Shelter benefit. We went over well. Nathan has only recently started to add backing vocals, and it's becoming quite the accolade gatherer. Folks were praising his contributions on the mic after the Stones show, and this was his first time onstage singing on our originals. He's doing a great job and it's a great sign of things to come.
Bang Bang Bang played after us. They are getting a bit of a buzz in Nashville, which is their hometown, and brought a good amount of people to the show. They reminded me a bit of Kings of Leon.
Everyday Atlas came on after us, and they had a wonderfully unpretentious sound reminiscent of Jellyfish. One of the things I've noticed at the IPO shows we've played is the splitting of lead vocals among quite a few bands. Everyday Atlas was the second band after the Hi-C to do this, and they wouldn't be the last of the evening either. I suppose this can be traced back to the Beatles, and then got picked up by Big Star, Teenage Fanclub, Sloan, and y'know…lots of pop groups who are loved by the new breed of power poppers.
Luxury Liners were next, and reminded me a bit of one of my favorite bands, The Lemonheads (who originally split lead vocals….). Actually, they reminded me A LOT of latter day Lemonheads. I liked them, but to be fair, I was also getting a bit tired at this point. I probably would have appreciated them more if they went on earlier in the evening. We swapped CDs though, so I'll be able to check them out more.
The last band was Watershed, who hail from Columbus, Ohio. They took the stage all guns a-blazin, and all of a sudden nobody in the room was tired anymore. They were awesome. They were everything I like about power pop and punk pop without any of the stuff that bugs me (oddly enough, the things I don't like about those genres are the cloying cleverness of the former and the poop jokes of the latter, which I suppose could cancel each other out, but fortunately, Watershed utilized neither). They too shared the lead vocals, but they had a sound closer to Cheap Trick than the Beatles. They even ended with a cover of Cheap Trick's "On Top of the World" which, thanks to their harmonies, had a few of us preferring their version.
After their set, I ran up to the bassist/vocalist and told him how much I loved their set. I wasn't fishing for a return compliment- seriously, I had to refrain myself from hugging the guy when I went over and it wound up being some weird shoulder-grabbing configuration, but his response further endeared Watershed to us:
"You guys were great….because you play great songs."
Ah yes…the songs….I do love how the IPO can bring us together like that.