Scene and Heard

For more than ten years, since the Pixies ended their run with a meltdown that left pretty much everyone pissed off, the chances of this group ever getting back together were basically nil. All four members scattered: Frank Black embarked on a solo career that has produced ten albums, many of which were critical triumphs and all of them anticipated eagerly by long-time and new fans. Joey Santiago did session work and got into scoring television and film projects in L.A., and received critical kudos for the two albums he did with wife Linda Mallari as The Martinis.  Kim Deal put together the Breeders who opened for Nirvana, headlined at Lollapalooza, and recorded a platinum album. After finding little satisfaction in studio work, Dave Lovering gave up music entirely and began a career as a professional magician.

But like star systems in an expanding universe, each of the Pixies would feel the pull, sooner or later, back toward the center, where once they had exploded and showered the musical vacuum with pointed, ironic, blackly humorous, and unforgettable songs. It took a few years – twelve, to be exact. But in late 2003, against all expectations, they did get there.

And once again, everything changed.

The Pixies’ 2004 tour was a total surprise and at the same time no surprise at all. Of course, it was a miracle that they were all up there onstage, pummeling through the songs that had inspired bands from Nirvana to Radiohead and guitar-thrashing teenagers in garages throughout the Western world. On the other hand, once they were there, how could they not sound glorious? If anything … if possible … they were stronger than ever, despite their tempestuous legacy.

The band’s return was documented on digital film. Those who disbelieve, or who consider a Pixies resurrection too good to have actually happened, are proven wrong with Pixies Sell Out, a DVD extravaganza that captures the greatest shows from their 2004 reunion tour. Footage includes hair-raising performances from around the world: the Move Festival in England, Voodoo Festival in New Orleans, T in the Park in Scotland, Fuji Rock Festival in Japan, Coachella in California’s desert valley, Austin City Limits festival, and the heart of the DVD, the Eurockeennes Festival in France.

Typically, though, the Pixies comeback began with a burst of confusion and contradiction. Reactions within the band, for example, were hardly consistent when word spread that Frank Black wanted to put the act back together:

“I was elated,” enthuses drummer Dave Lovering.

“I dreaded it,” admits bassist Kim Deal. “I just hoped it would go away.”

Just as typically, given the patterns of communication that had helped drag the Pixies to their demise in the early nineties, it began with Frank Black and his habit of expressing wishes indirectly. Rumors persist that he had originally broken up the band by letting his colleagues know it was over via fax. (“He remembers it that way,” Kim insists, “but it never happened. It could never have happened because he isn’t a confrontational guy. He couldn’t fire anybody, so he just stopped talking to us.”)

This time out, he apparently let everybody know what was on his mind by talking to the media. In an interview with London’s XFM Radio in the summer of 2003, he mused about his dreams of getting the Pixies together again. He even sweetened the bait by revealing that they still hooked up now and then to jam, though “not for public consumption.”

“Well,” Black says, coming clean at last, “we never actually jammed or anything. I was sort of stealing a quote from George Harrison, who said, when asked about his band’s much anticipated reunion, ‘Hey, if we all got together and jammed in the living room, you guys in the press wouldn’t even know about it.’ So I was being completely sarcastic, and the next day it was in The New York Post. It was like the cat that was never actually in the bag was out of the bag anyway.”

That’s all it took for the rest of the band to catch on. “I actually heard about it from my dad,” Lovering laughs. “One day he says to me, ‘I hear the Pixies are getting back together.’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ See, I knew that would be impossible. I would never, ever have conceived of a reunion actually happening. So I discounted it until one day Joey called to say, ‘Guess what? Charles [Thompson, a.k.a. Frank Black] wants to get the band back together.’ And that just made my whole world much better.”

Black had asked guitarist Joey Santiago to convey his wishes to Lovering and Deal – just in time, it turned out, for him to disappear into a series of solo projects that made him unavailable when the rest of the band decided to see how it felt to play together again. With Black tied up on a European tour, the three met in November ’03 at the Breeders’ studio in Vernon, south of downtown L.A.

“Joe and I had agreed that if we sounded like shit, of course we wouldn’t do it,” Kim remembers. “So I packed my stuff into a Volvo station wagon in Ohio and checked into corporate housing near Joe’s house. He had burned ten of our songs onto a CD, which I picked up at his house – David already had all the Pixies stuff on iPod. We listened to those songs, and then we drove down to the Breeders’ space and got to work.

“It began quietly,” she continues, “like, ‘Okay, how does this one start?’ But toward the end of the day Joe and I were amazed at how, for better or worse, we sounded exactly the same as we used to. We even joked about whether this was good or bad, but we all agreed it was remarkable.”

In four days they worked up a list of forty songs, which they polished on and off through the winter, until Black was free to join them. “I was worried because he’d been doing solo stuff for a decade,” Kim says. “I thought that might give him a different sensibility of performance. When you’re in a rock band, it’s part, part, part, like with the Who, it always goes like this: ‘We won’t get fooled again … AAAGGHH!! Yeah!!’ But then you get this Mac Davis thing, where you decide that maybe you won’t go to the verse just yet, you’re going to ride the opening notes until you feel like singing the verse. If you have to cough, you can just cough. You can stop the song to take a drink of something and start the song back up.

“But Charles sounded great,” she smiles. “He sang like a beauty. It was gorgeous. I was so impressed.”

“On my first day back with the Pixies, we took a break to get some tacos,” Black recalls. “It reminded me of our early days of rehearsing in some industrial place, with little amps, a minuscule P.A., and a couple of mikes. I was feeling so up that I said, ‘Hey maybe we should do an unannounced gig in a few days, at some local club.’ The rest of the band looked at me like I had two heads because, to be honest, I’d forgotten a lot of the words to the songs. I was all over the place on that first day. But I knew there was a lot of muscle memory involved, and after I reviewed a little bit that night it all came right back by the next day. And by a couple of days after that we were sounding exactly the same as we had years before.”

With everyone onboard now, plans were laid for their reunion tour.

Opening in Minneapolis, the Pixies tour rolled first into Canada. From the start they drew packed houses and won rapturous reviews: At one of their early shows, in Saskatoon, Pop Matters described the performance as “ninety minutes of bedlam.” And even as part of an all-star bill at Coachella, The New York Times reported, “the day belonged to the Pixies.”

More important to the band was the feedback they were getting from their audiences, which was unlike anything they’d experienced. “In every city, people were so happy we were there,” Kim marvels. “People were crying. It didn’t really hit me until later in the summer, when Charles, Joe, and I went to a Stooges reunion in Berlin. And I realized, ‘Oh, my gosh, maybe people were reacting to us the way I was to the Stooges.’”

“When we started this tour,” Frank adds, “and all the crowds were singing along with us, we were like, ‘Wow, did you hear that tonight? That was amazing!’ But the whole time I’d been thinking, ‘Hey, man, we’ve been through this before. Don’t you remember that first wave of popularity in Europe? It was ridiculous. But you guys don’t remember – we were all too drunk!’”

But, as Frank concedes, there was something different in the response they got throughout 2004. “There were lots of younger people who’d never seen us before. Instead of thrusting their fists in the air and screaming along with the lyrics, the way it was the first time, there was a kind of deference. There was a lot more people standing there, really quietly, and going, ‘Oh, so this is what it’s like to hear the Pixies!’ It was more of a religious than a military zeal.”

Each gig stood out. Most were extraordinarily positive: great performance from the band, enormous warmth from crowds that ranged from early teens to late forties. Some were a little strange, like their appearance at a metal festival in Vienna. “These were young metal fans who had no idea who we are,” Frank laughs. “We were used to that ‘oh, my God, they’re back!’ reaction, so there was a little tension there. But when we were onstage we approached it like being some little band from Boston again, trying to make our way into the world. That was kind of nice, actually – a bonding thing, like ‘We do what we do, and if they don’t like it, screw ‘em.’”

And a few would prove unforgettable. They made their first-ever appearances in Iceland and in Japan; their set in the lush, green setting of the Fuji Rock festival is one of the highlights of Pixies Sell Out. But for all four members of the band, the highlight of their reunion was in the dry desert heat at Coachella.

“It was … indescribable,” Kim says. “We had worked our way west toward Vancouver, playing regular-sized shows. But when we walked out onstage at Coachella, the sun had just begun to curve down, so it was getting cooler but it wasn’t dark yet. We could see all these people and they were so happy. It wasn’t like, ‘Geez, they’re clapping loud.’ It was more this sense of excitement that the Pixies were there. I was so overwhelmed that I screwed up the beginning of our first song, ‘Bone Machine.’”

“I think we played Pomona the night before,” Dave continues. “A lot of the Coachella bands were there, so there was this feeling that it was a big event. Getting there, it was wonderful to hang with the bands backstage. It reminded me of one of the first times we’d played in London, at a place called the Mean Fiddler, after Surfer Rosa had come out. The audience just shocked me. It was the same at Coachella: I hadn’t ever seen that number of people with that amount of love. It was incredible.”

After Coachella, the Pixies routine that only got weirder – i.e., more comfortable, more fun – with each gig, and they found themselves getting along. “We buried the hatchet,” is how Santiago explains it, while Dave elaborates: “We’re all older and wiser, so we could deal with each other much better this time around. Other than that, there was no difference in what it was like to go on the road again. It felt exactly the same, from rehearsals to being onstage.”

They even passed time on the road playing games, including one ancient music geek diversion based on band names. “Okay,” Kim explains, maybe getting a little excited. “I’d start and say the name of a band, like ‘Asia.’ Then someone else would take the last letter of that word and name another band.” (“Alabama?” the interviewer suggests.) “Yeah, exactly. Then I’d say … well, I couldn’t say ‘Amboy Dukes,’ it would have to be ‘Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes,’ so … ‘Abba’? We’re stuck in the A’s, aren’t we? We’d play that for four full hours and have a blast.”

All four agreed on the most important point of the tour: The Pixies were beating everyone’s expectations, including their own. ‘We’re definitely tighter,” Santiago observes. “And I was trying new things, using more effects in a very flavorful way. I’d never done that in the past.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about the drum parts I’d recorded with the Pixies, which I was never happy with,” Dave adds. “Neil Peart [of Rush] was my favorite then, so I would always go nuts and throw a lot of fills into our early stuff. Now I’ve pared it down and it’s like, ‘Aha! Now I understand how it goes!’ I’m thirteen years too late, but at least it’s coming together now.”

“We were always about trying to play like the record,” Frank says. “That was our thing. Now, our thing is to play as we used to. While there are subtle differences – like, we’re probably a little more muscular as musicians – we do in fact sound the same, which is ‘mission accomplished’ for us.”

In assessing the result of nearly twenty Pixie years, from their first gigs in Boston through catalog of history-changing CDs (Come On Pilgrim, Surfer Rosa, Doolittle, Bossanova, Trompe le Monde), their crash-and-burn breakup, and their improbable return, it’s Kim who wraps up the ongoing saga with perfect, eloquent brevity:

“We sound the same … only better.”

Louisville, KY – Join Clara and the Nutcracker Prince as they battle the Mouse King and travel to The Land of the Sweets in the holiday classic Nutcracker in a Nutshell.  Designed to delight audiences of all ages, Nutcracker in a Nutshell is a shorter, child-friendly version of the traditional Nutcracker ballet.  The ballet has something for everyone…a delightful party scene, an exciting battle between mice and soldiers and the wonderful fantasy of the Land of Sweets. 

In what is becoming an annual holiday tradition for thousands, the MAGIC™ Dance Company is performing the 5^th Anniversary production of Nutcracker in a Nutshell at the magnificent Louisville Palace Theater.  With gorgeous costumes, beautiful set design and incredible dancing, the magic of the holidays opens up before your eyes through this wonderful production.

Nutcracker in a Nutshell performances are Saturday, December 3rd at 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm.  Ticket prices for the production are $20.00 and $17.50.  Information on the show, photo galleries from past productions and ticket information is available at either Nutcracker in a Nutshell website (www.nutcrackerinanutshell.com) or through the Louisville Palace Theater (www.louisvillepalace.com). 

Corporate parties or groups are welcome.  For group ticket information please contact Marie Gould (502-439-9830, mcgould@bellsouth.net).

The all-new, live show “Mythbusters: Behind the Myths,” starring Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, co-hosts of the Emmy nominated Discovery series “Mythbusters” will begin a 28-city tour on January 6, 2012.  The show promises to be a fantastical evening of on-stage experiments, audience participation, rocking video and behind-the-scenes stories.  For the first time ever, fans will join Jamie & Adam on stage and assist in their mind-blowing and mind-twisting approach to science. “Mythbusters: Behind the Myths” brings you face-to-face with the curious world of Jamie and Adam as the duo matches wits on stage with each other and members of the audience.

For more information about Mythbusters go to: http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/mythbusters/

Louisville, KY (11/01/11) – Roger Waters, the co-founder and principal songwriter of the archetypal progressive band Pink Floyd, has announced the return of the historic production of “The Wall” to North America in 2012. His aural and visual masterpiece of alienation and transformation will be performed in-its-entirety featuring a full band and state-of-the-art production. “The Wall” live has played more than 120 shows around the world for more than 1.6 million fans making it one of the most successful tours of 2010 and 2011.

The 2012 tour will begin on May 1^st in Houston, Texas at the Toyota Center making a 36 show trek throughout North America, including several outdoor stadium performances with state of the art modifications transforming the arena production into magnificent outdoor events.  The tour will make a stop in Louisville, KY at the KFC Yum! Center on Sunday, June 10^th at 8:00 p.m. 

Tickets for the Louisville show, $58.00 | $79.00 | $103.00 | $204.00 (plus applicable fees) go on sale to the public on Monday, November 14 at 10:00 a.m. at www.Livenation.com , www.Ticketmaster.com, the

KFC Yum! Center box office and all Ticketmaster outlets.  Charge by phone at 1.800.745.3000. 

“Thirty years ago when I wrote ‘The Wall,’ I was a frightened young man,” Waters recalls. “In the intervening years it occurred to me that maybe the story of my fear and loss with its concomitant inevitable residue of ridicule, shame and punishment, provides an allegory for broader concerns: Nationalism, racism, sexism, religion, whatever! All these issues and ‘isms are driven by the same fears that drove my young life.”

Waters’ first reinvented his iconic stage production of “The Wall” in 2010 utilizing modern day   technological advances and special effects which have been embraced by audiences around the globe with countless sold out performances and multiple-night stands including a record-breaking 9 sold out shows at the River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina.   “The Wall” remains one of the most influential albums in the history of recorded music with a profound effect on pop culture, resonating with multiple generations of music fans.

Prior to 2010, “The Wall” show was simply too large to contemplate a tour, but new arenas and advances in touring technology have solved that dilemma. Waters has updated the look and feel of the show to ensure it matches the astonishing theatrical extravaganza that The Wall’s live incarnation became so legendary for – thus allowing yet another generation to be inspired by the grandeur of the breathtaking visual and aural spectacle.  The 1980 original production of the “The Wall” had been performed live-in-its-entirety just 29 times during Pink Floyd’s 1980 tour in support of the album and once in Berlin in celebration of the fall of the Berlin wall.

The Associated Press described opening night in 2010 with, “Roger Waters tore down the house Wednesday night in Toronto…He walked out to thunderous applause beginning with the first track of the seminal concept album, ‘In the Flesh’, and the adulation never stopped.” While during the New York stop, the New York Post declared, “When Roger Waters finished building “The Wall” in its entirety, at Madison Square Garden, it was just another brick on what was the best arena concert I’ve ever been to. Period.”

In addition to Roger Waters (lead vocals, bass), “The Wall” live touring ensemble includes: Snowy White (Guitar), Dave Kilminster (Guitar), GE Smith (Guitar & Bass), Jon Carin (Keyboards), Harry Waters (Hammond Organ), Graham Broad (Drums), Robbie Wyckoff (Vocals), Jon Joyce, Pat Lennon, Mark Lennon and Kipp Lennon (Backing Vocals).

Roger Waters “The Wall” North American Tour Itinerary:

May 01                        Houston, TX               Toyota Center                           On Sale 11/14

May 03                        Austin, TX                   Frank Erwin Center                  On Sale 11/14

May 05                        Tulsa, OK                   BOK Center                               On Sale 11/14

May 07                        Denver, CO                Pepsi Center                             On Sale 11/14

May 11                        San Francisco, CA      AT&T Park                                On Sale 11/18

May 13                        San Diego, CA            Valley View Casino Center       On Sale 11/14

May 15                        Phoenix, AZ                US Airways                                On Sale 11/14

May 19                        Los Angeles, CA         TBD                                           On sale 11/18

May 22                        Portland, OR              Rose Garden                             On Sale 11/14

May 24                        Seattle, WA                Key Arena                                 On Sale 11/14

May 26                        Vancouver, BC           BC Place                                   On Sale 11/14

May 28                        Edmonton, AB            Rexall Place                              On Sale 11/14

May 31                        Winnipeg, MB           MTS Centre                              On Sale 11/14

June 03                        St Paul, MN                Xcel Energy Center                   On Sale 11/14

June 05                        Detroit, MI                 Joe Louis Arena                                    On Sale 11/14

June 06                        Grand Rapids, MI      Van Andel Arena                      On Sale 11/14

June 08                        Chicago, IL                 Wrigley Field                            On Sale 11/14

June 10                       Louisville, KY             KFC Yum! Center                     On Sale 11/14

June 11                        Indianapolis, IN          Conseco Fieldhouse                  On Sale 11/14

June 13                        Atlanta, GA                Philips Arena                            On Sale 11/14

June 15                        Ft Lauderdale, FL       BankAtlantic Center                 On Sale 11/14

June 16                        Orlando, FL                Amway Center                          On Sale 11/18

June 19                        Nashville, TN             Bridgestone Arena                   On Sale 11/14

June 21                        Buffalo, NY                First Niagara Center                 On Sale 11/14

June 23                        Toronto, ON               Rogers Centre                          On Sale 11/14

June 25                        Ottawa, ON               Scotiabank Place                      On Sale 11/14

June 26                        Montreal, QC            Bell Centre                               On Sale 11/14

June 28                        Albany, NY                 Times Union Center                 On Sale 11/14

June 29                        Hartford, CT              XL Center                                  On Sale 11/14

July 1                           Boston, MA                TBD                                           On sale 1/30/12

July 03                         Pittsburgh, PA            Consol Energy Center               On Sale 11/14

July 06                         New York, NY             TBD                                           On sale 1/30/12

July 09                         Raleigh, NC                RBC Center                               On Sale 11/14

July 10                         Charlotte, NC             Time Warner Cable Arena       On Sale 11/14

July 12                         Washington DC          Verizon Center                         On Sale 11/14

July 14                         Philadelphia, PA        Citizens Bank Park                    On Sale 11/7

For complete ticket and tour information, please visit RogerWaters.com, Ticketmaster.com and LiveNation.com.

(Louisville, KY– November 2, 2011)  The Southeast Tourism Society has named WFPK Waterfront Wednesday one of the Top 20 Events for the month of April 2012. The WFPK Waterfront Wednesday concerts take place on the last Wednesday of the month, from April through September in Waterfront Park, and are free and open to the public. The Top 20 Events are listed on the Southeast Tourism Society websites: www.southeasttourism.org and www.escapetothesoutheast.com.

The success of the concert series, presented in partnership by 91.9 WFPK-FM and Waterfront Development Corporation, reached new heights during its tenth season. “We’re thrilled that the appeal of these concerts drew an average of 7,000 people this season, culminating in September with around 12,000,” said Stacy Owen, WFPK Progarm Director. “Moving from the Harbor Lawn to the larger space of the Big Four Lawn made it possible for more people to enjoy the music, festivities and the beautifulWaterfrontPark.”

“The WFPK Waterfront Wednesday concerts have become a Lousiville institution,” said Ashley Smith of Waterfront Development Corporation. “They bring our local community together and draw people from around the region to our city. When the warm weather arrives, people know where to find the music – impeccably programmed. We look forward to accommodating even larger audiences on the Big Four Lawn in 2012 and are proud to have the April 2012 concert chosen as one of the Top 20 Events in the Southeast.

WFPK Presents:

The Civil Wars
with The Staves

Friday, January 13th @ 8pm
The W.L. Lyons Brown Theatre
All Ages
Reserved Seating 
Advance $20

Day of show $23
 

Tickets On Sale 10/28 @10am

Tickets can be purchased at The Kentucky Center box office,
www.kentuckycenter.org or by phone (502) 584-7777, 
(800) 775-7777 or TTY (502) 562-0730

In some ways, music doesn’t get much more modest or minimalist than it is in the hands of The Civil Wars, a duo comprised of California-to-Nashville transplant Joy Williams and her Alabaman partner, John Paul White. They travel without a backup band, and on their first full-length album, Barton Hollow, the bare-bones live arrangements that fans hear on the road are fleshed out with just the barest of acoustic accoutrements. Each song is an intimate conversation, and no third wheels or dinner-party chatter are going to interrupt that gorgeous, haunting hush.

On the other hand, there’s been something distinctly loud about the duo’s introduction to the world, even prior to the album’s release. Their signature song “Poison & Wine” was heard on Grey’s Anatomy—in the foreground, in its entirety, over a key climactic montage, prompting hundreds of thousands of viewers to Google the mystery music. And they got a wholly unsolicited endorsement when America’s biggest pop star gave The Civil Wars a seal of approval. After first tweeting her love for the duo, fellow Nashvillian Taylor Swift included “Poison & Wine” as a selection in her official iTunes playlist, saying, “I think this is my favorite duet. It’s exquisite.”

Swift took the words right out of the folk-country-Americana world’s mouth. If it looks like The Civil Wars’ appeal might cast a net that extends well beyond the typical audience for acoustically based music, that may be due to the inherent sensibilities Williams and White bring to their collaboration, which are quite disparate, if not necessarily warring. Both were gigging and recording on their own prior to teaming up a year and a half ago, neither solo career quite suggesting what their conjoined sound would turn out to be. “I do naturally bend pop,” says Williams, who adds that she “grew up on Billie Holliday and The Beach Boys.” White, meanwhile, was raised on Kristofferson, Cash, and Townes Van Zandt by his retro-country-favoring dad. “Somehow we’re pulling from each other what we crave and what our strengths are,” he says.