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| Friday, October 13, 2006 at El Corazon |
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(click for full-page printable poster)
GENRES
Metal
Rock
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Nashville Pussy
Priestess
Hellbound For Glory (members of Zeke & The Accused)
Friday, October 13, 2006
El Corazon 206-262-0482
109 Eastlake Ave E, Seattle, WA (MapQuest)
10pm (doors open at 9:30pm). 21 & Over.
$13.00 advance tix from TicketsWest.
$15.00 at the door.
It’s been said that the devil has all the best tunes, but that’s not the case anymore, since a lil’ ol’ band from Georgia -- known to friends and followers as Nashville Pussy -- found a way to pick the lock on that storehouse of demonic sonics and make off with some of its most incendiary contents.
While they’ve been at it for the better part of the decade, the band -- fronted by the hard-livin’ hard-rockin’ husband/wife team of Blaine Cartwright and Ruyter Suys -- has never been more intensely supercharged than on Get Some. The disc, their fourth full-length and first for Spitfire, offers heaping helpings of neck-snapping guitar riffage and a full-on embrace of the sort of good-time decadence that’s part and parcel of life below the Mason-Dixon line. It also shows off Cartwright's razor-sharp wit, which permeates the disc with laugh-out-loud moments that'd do John Belushi proud.
“Most of this album is based around life in Atlanta, because there’s something about the city that encourages people to just get crazy,” says singer/guitarist Cartwright. “You’ve got all sorts of music that came from the deep south, from James Brown to Lynyrd Skynyrd, and it’s all whoop it up music. It’s gotta be -- it’s too hot to hate.”
Get Some, which was helmed by producer Daniel Rey (Ramones, White Zombie, Masters of Reality), ratchets up the heat even further. In songs like “Good Night for a Heart Attack” (which Cartwright describes as “a Van Halen party song , but funnier”) and “Lazy White Boy,” the band brings the noise with no-bullshit, blue-collar attitude -- and a goodly bit of funk.
That latter element is the key to Get Some’s appeal. The groove-conscious tone is buoyed by the joined-at-the-hip rhythms kicked out by longtime drummer Jeremy Thompson and recently-recruited bassist Karen Cuda (who was introduced to the band by pals in the Streetwalkin’ Cheetahs). The booming low end they supply makes it all-but-impossible to keep the booty from shakin’ -- particularly on a cover of Ike and Tina Turner’s funk classic “Nutbush City Limits.”
“We’ve been trying to nail that one for years,” Suys reveals. “It’s a natural, since Blaine and I have that married-couple thing going on, but the real reason I’ve always been into doing it is that it’s one of the first songs AC/DC and Brian Johnson did the first time they jammed together.”
The “married couple thing” is the glue that’s held Nashville Pussy together through several lineup changes and a passel of label affiliations. Cartwright (a veteran of high-octane roots-punkers Nine Pound Hammer) and Suys (a Canadian native who calls herself “a born-again southerner”) formed the band in 1996, quickly churning out the feral, claws-out Let Them Eat Pussy.
That disc earned the band a Grammy nomination (and the chance to treat the Goth nation to a shot of Southern Discomfort when they toured with Marilyn Manson). It also brought them accolades from a head-spinningly diverse array of musical peers, from Motorhead mainman Lemmy to eternal outlaw Steve Earle.
The turn of the millennium only strengthened Nashville Pussy’s hold on the pleasure center -- as demonstrated by the 151-proof High as Hell, which propelled them through a slew of road trips criss-crossing the lower 48. That pace tested their mettle, but as Suys tells it, it only strengthened her and Cartwright’s unified desire to spike the Kool-Aid of audiences everywhere with sex, sin and synapse-destroying rock and roll.
That mind (not to mention speaker) blowing assault is led by Suys’ six-string slinging, which alternates between pounding the listener over the head and engaging in full-on sonic seduction. That’s a testament to her encyclopedic knowledge of riffs -- as she puts it, “I listen to stuff from all over the map … B.B. King, Funkadelic, Ted Nugent” -- as well as her uncanny ability to translate those influences into a style that’s distinctly recognizable as Nashville Pussy.
“The thing about this album,” she says, “is that we’re having more fun than we’ve ever had. Me, Blaine and Jeremy have always had a ball, and now, with Karen, we’re finally reaping our rewards. We’re enjoying ourselves, and I think that shows in the music.”
After four albums and hundreds of nights blasting eardrums around the world, Cartwright says the band hasn’t moved too far -- in terms of attitude, at least -- from where it started. “Your thousandth joint might not be as amazing as your first, but you’ve gotta keep trying,” he says with a laugh. “At least I’ve gotta keep trying. I’m no quitter!”
And in terms of sound? Furrowed-brow types might throw around all sorts of fancy terminology in describing how Nashville Pussy’s hard-living hard rock cuts to the quick, but Cartwright prefers to put it in terms just about everyone can understand.
“It’s like AC/DC making out with Motorhead while Lynyrd Skynyrd watches.”
Priestess.
Now there’s a heavy name.
You’ve got an image in your head, and it’s mistaken. You’ve heard the name Priestess, and you’re juggling impressions. Are they Goths, prancing around the pentangle in their Lugosi capes? I think not. Could this be…Christian rock? God, no. Just another gang of suburban riff-clowns raised on a sallow junk-food diet of hair bands? None of the above. Cue up the Montreal band’s debut, Hello Master, and let us demystify. Metal? No …Priestess is Heavy Mettle… And they do inspire devotion.
“It feels like we hit it off with people who wanna hear a heavy rock group with catchy songs,” says singer/guitarist Mikey Heppner. And, hello …master of understatement. Heppner’s a bantam dynamo whose unaffected approach is the face of a like-minded band. No stylist, no shtick, no pose – without gimmick, they fire maddeningly memorable and crunching hooks out to an audience that travels under no banner.
“Ordinary kids,” says Heppner. That sliver of rock fans somewhere between the hard rock, garage and indie tribes - you know, that 70% sliver. Priestess finds a commonality between those nerds, jocks, stoners, loners, party kids and hipsters for whom rock n’roll is somewhere between soundtrack and salvation.
Formed in Montreal in 2003 with a desire to rewire a balls-out ‘70s rock ethic with classicist songwriting, they defiantly refused to equate heavy music with the Big Downer. “Some bands are gloomy – because that’s the only way to be cool.”
Here’s the other way: rejoicing in heaviosity, with the accent on both ends. In their time as rock n’roll redeemers, Priestess has run through everything from the Beatles to prog to punk to Nirvana and back to AC/DC. “One of the hardest things to do is take a major-chord chorus and make it cool and heavy,” Heppner says. “AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long is in a major-chord - super-happy key. But it’s unstoppable and I can listen to it every day…forever.”
In the lean and punishing I Am the Night, Color Me Black, in the canyon-sized Talk To Her, the snarling Lay Down and an instant classic called Two Kids, they have already written four chapters in their own new testament.
“There is a level that we… must get to,” Heppner says of the band’s live show. Anyone who’s heard Heppner’s opening shout “We are Priestess and we are going to fuck you!” knows what that means. It’s no surprise that they caught the attention of Motorhead, opening for them on their last tour …Lemmy practically wrote the book on fucking the crowd up. Then, three triumphant shows at SXSW ’06 capped a “crushingly great” 6 1/2 week tour with fellow crushers Early Man and The Sword that found the band breaking out of major markets into places like Buffalo – where ordinary kids who couldn’t care less about the Montreal resurgence were moved to seize Heppner from the stage and send him crowd-surfing, mid-solo. They were believers.’
So back to that name: “The minute we tossed it out there, we knew it was perfect.”
Why? Think about it. Rather than playing to a herd of headbangers hurling themselves at the stage while their girlfriends cower at tables in the dark corners, Priestess wants to cross the most elemental human divide: gender. “Zeppelin sort of had a mystical pagan allure in the context of heavy, distorted guitars,” Heppner says. He finds in that a balance of undeniable masculine heft and feminine melody. “We get a lot of girls in the crowd. That’s very important.”
It’s more than a manifesto. It’s a creed--- They are Priestess. The cult starts here.
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