Article submitted by Laura Berbusse

As most local music lovers know, one of the worst mistakes you can ever make is to assume a show will start on time, especially when it's held in a college town and hosted by an all-ages venue where a couple of indie-looking not-quite-twenty-somethings working the front counter emblazon your hand from knuckle to wrist with an unsightly dark green music note, your all-night pass to a rather inglorious expanse of concrete floor overdue for its annual hose down—as in, with water, not bullets—and adorned with a tiny stage, a couple of trash cans, and a few mismatched, semi-functioning folding chairs,  all illuminated by the soft glow of a lone soda machine. The next biggest mistake you can make is to actually transport yourself to said show on time.  As of early evening on the 19th of April, the date Sean Michel among others was set to play in Fayetteville at the Music Hall, hidden behind a seedy gentlemen's club with a not-so-discreet sign displaying Amateur Nite Every Wed. and a likewise questionable Chinese take-out place, I was fully aware of this.  However, no one would've guessed so by the wild display my friends and I put on as we made like rabid Beatles fans in Hard Day's Night and sprinted across all four busy lanes of North College Avenue toward the crowd of young people gathered around the tiny brick building.
So why were we in such a desperate hurry?  To see Midwest Caravan, of course.  Okay, so we were actually there to support Sean Michel, but before Sean, Nicholas, Michael, or Ryan had a chance to pluck a guitar string, the prepubescent-looking (from afar) Midwest Caravan singer and guitarist Sammy Williams, 24, whom I had previously mistaken for a roadie of the former, uttered his first scratchy and subtle "We have a Myspace," into the mike, barely audible over all the feedback.  After I had faded into and out of consciousness amongst the screaming during the last three sets, comprised of an overly enthusiastic high school band, an overly enthusiastic high school band wearing ties, and an early nineties cover band, the metaphorical bar looked like more of a speed bump. A sad, sad little speed bump.  Then, second from the bottom of the set list, with only an electric guitar and a drum set, Midwest Caravan fashioned an entirely new bar, serving up intoxicating melodies like smooth ethanol-based beverages for your ears.
The face of Sammy's disproportionately six-foot-something counterpart, Joie Lyle, 23, was only visible in his grungy charcoal hoodie for a few brief moments after he ascended the stage before the superposition of his flailing limbs created a strobe effect around his body and his comparatively miniature drum set.  After the guys finished their set, I watched in awe as he packed the entire thing, chipped cymbal and all, into a Rubbermaid bin and then later used his floor tom as a front row seat during Sean Michel's set.  Clearly a different kind of drummer, both literally and figuratively, I imagine Joie's conversations with fans often go as deep as the one I had with him:

"I'm here because Sammy got a deal with Epic Records, and I moved here to help him out."  

"Really?!"

"No."

"Oh."

Midwest Caravan, who cite their influences as Matthew Sweet, Superdrag, Gin Blossoms, Pedro the Lion, Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., and Presidents of the United States of America, have a distinct presence.  Indeed, Joie and Sammy exude the perfect balance of unpretentiousness and talent, perhaps the main reason they sound like they should be on the Juno soundtrack.  "This is a song about crazy girls," Sammy, clad simply in denim shorts and flip-flops, announces to the unjustly sparse audience (many presumably driven away by the quality of the previous performances, I'm sure) just before hopping along to the chorus of "Stop Calling Me."  With songs like this and "Zombies," these relative newcomers are proving that you don't need cryptic language in order to get your listeners to think.  I mean, if you were dating a girl whose jealous ex-boyfriend was a zombie who wanted to kill and eat you, it would suck.  It would really really suck.
Perhaps the pair owes their success with simple, straightforward songs to their simple beginnings.  When the band in which Sammy played in his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana, broke up, he decided to start playing folk and country songs solo under the name Midwest Caravan.  The name came to him out of nowhere and "just sounded folk-y."  He adds, "This was when Bright Eyes was getting big, so I thought it was much cooler to not just use my name."  Sammy was involved with booking shows in Shreveport for a while when he met a couple of bands from Arkansas, and after college, he moved to Little Rock.  Around the same time, Joie also moved to Little Rock, starting off playing drums with Nick Flora and then moving on to play with Sean Michel, with whom Sammy did quite a few shows solo. Joie quit that, moved away, and then came back to fill in on drums with Sean Michel during their tour.  Sammy explains further, "He ended up staying, and I was tired of performing solo, so I showed him some new songs and we started playing. We thought it went pretty well with the two of us and decided not to add anyone else to the band."
Although Midwest Caravan haven't officially recorded anything as a band yet, they are anything but idle and plan on putting something together with Andy "The Nightwolf" Turner in Arkadelphia as soon as they are able.  Hence, the hilarious yet tragic "White Trash" is currently the only song featured on their Myspace profile, www.myspace.com/midwestcaravan, on which they proudly claim Little Rock as their hometown.  "We love playing The Whitewater Tavern in Little Rock because it seems that people are always there no matter who is playing, and they are having a good time and geniunely love music."  A good thing since they just played there May 13.  "We also love playing Juanita's because their sound is amazing."
Okay, so in all fairness, my friends and I weren't running that night to try to catch Sean Michel's set.  Or Midwest Caravan's.  We were merely avoiding being run over while returning from a nearby fast-food restaurant since we had actually arrived at the venue at the exact time the first set was supposed to start.  (Yeah, what's it to ya?)  After taking in the aforementioned controversial scenery and reading the vast array of brightly colored flyers plastered to the glass doors of the Music Hall, we knew we were in for some lessons in existentialism.  Perhaps embracing our existence and running in front of traffic thirty minutes later wasn't the best idea, but you can't just stay behind the white lines your whole life can you?  We were acting out a metaphor for life, really.  In retrospect, I regret the decision to carry my rapidly melting cup of ice cream with me.  The scene ended in a perfect illustration of why I can't have nice things. Anyway, you know who doesn't have nice things? Midwest Caravan:  proof that you don't need a lot of extraneousness to have a legit band and distinct sound.  You know who would probably like to have nice things?  Midwest Caravan.  Go see them July 8th at Juanita's, July 10th at On the Rocks and July 24th at Vino's.