Friday, October 21st at The Hood Bar & Pizza
By Lisa Morgan
The Hood Bar and Pizza is offering plenty of selections this season, and I’m not just talking about their killer bar menu. They are using both indoor and outdoor staging areas to provide a wide (and I mean W I D E) variety of offerings to appease all music appetites.
CHICANO BATMAN returns! They’ll be playing an early show, along with opening acts SadGirl and Slipping Into Darkness, on the outside stage from 6pm – 10 pm. The Alt-Latino band that was featured at Coachella Music and Arts Festival and supported Jack White’s Lazaretto Tour in 2015, will be displaying their tropical Brazilian flavored psychedelic, slow-jam-soul. Tickets are $15
INSIDE THE HOOD WITH TIM MCNARY:
Inside, a free, more acoustic show will be launched after 9 pm with touring Nashville recording artist, Tim McNary, debuting songs from his third album, Above the Trees. McNary’s story is as unique as his music, and not what most people would expect coming out of Nashville. His music is more accurately defined as “World Music” than the typical “Country” that many folks assume is Nashville’s sole music commodity. McNary’s journey to find his voice was hard won, and finds its way into a compilation of songs that you will feel in your bones as much as you will hear with your ears.
His story makes a lot of sense when you become familiar with his music, but at first listen, his story is a lot to grasp. A brief conversation would sound something like several sequels to a great series of books, leaving you anxious for the next publication. Brought up in an ultra- conservative Evangelical home that was, in his own words, “cult-like,” McNary was sheltered from the music of the world – home schooled, and forbidden to listen to the radio or watch TV. The only music he had was from the church he and his family attended three days a week. “It was a pretty toxic environment actually, and breaking away from it has been a lifelong process. At 13 I stopped going to church, and by 20, I completely abandoned Christianity.”
Blooming late in his exposure to the giant world of music, McNary developed some very diverse and eclectic tastes. At first it was classical music. Then in college, he found The Cure. “I started listening to all kinds of stuff; some of it’s embarrassing. I wouldn’t even want to admit to it…like (he hesitates) Air Supply. My first album was Whitney Houston’s Body Guard. That was an amazing album. I still standby that one actually.” A charismatic guy with his eyes set on politics, McNary moved to South America to broaden his world view and life experience. There, while teaching English to the poor, he discovered Brazilian Jazz, MPB (post-bossa nova urban popular music), and “cheesy Latin pop,” which he admits he still has a predilection for.
Returning from South America, McNary took a job with a bank, and joined a rock band. It was only eight years ago, McNary launched out on his own, falling on the sword of the full time troubadour, dedicating himself to doing what he, in many professional opinions, was born to do. Suffering from heartache, internal conflict, and debilitating depression, he turned to the thing that always made it better – his music. “I’ve always been singing, making up songs in my head. Like a lot of artists, I don’t remember a time I didn’t sing. I think everybody has it in them; just some people are more drawn to it. It was something I’d do to calm myself and make myself feel better. It continues to this day.” His music began with simply processing his emotions. Eastern philosophy, reading, poetry were the things that influenced his sensibilities.
“Above The Trees, was written during a roller-coaster five year period that included periods of homelessness, two band break ups, the theft of my van and musical equipment, bouts with depression, the discovery of meditation and it’s life-changing impact, and moving to Nashville, Tennessee in the Summer of 2013 . The album’s overarching themes are a longing for personal connection, and the journey towards courage, and hope for transcendence.”
The EP was recorded with Producer, Paul Warner in a mountain cabin in North Georgia. “Instrumentation spans from a 1930 lard barrel we found on the cabin’s front porch, to my Casio CT638 electric keyboard, to the beautiful cello playing of Bryan Gibson, upright bass playing of Rob Henson, and Drumming of Darren Stanley, among others.”
As someone who listens to a lot of music from a broad spectrum, I have to say, there is something very special about this album, McNary’s voice and his music in general. I’m not even sure he is aware of just how special it is. Already a fan of his sophomore album, While We Are Waking, Above the Trees reached another level of depth lyrically and musically. It has become a soundtrack I turn to when I need to get my crazy life calm and centered. Perhaps it’s the Eastern philosophy that bleeds through emitting a sense of Zen, but don’t get me wrong – this EP is in no way sleepy or something you’ll be able to meditate to. You will want to roll down the windows of your car and play it loud. The storylines take you on a journey while the melodies and instrumentation lifts you like a magic carpet as you travel somewhere deep into South America, and bribe a boat captain to give you transport. A few tracks in, you’ll be on the treasure hunt for a soulful connection, or as McNary pens it, a “Missus.” In “The Heist” you join forces with the oppressed on the precipice of rising up against tyranny to a hypnotic tribal beat as McNary gently raises a fist of warning to the facilitators of injustice. The themes of his youth are not discarded but ironically redeemed as he gives breath to the longing in all of us to be held and passionately connected, “like the morning holds the sun,” “like secret lovers gripping in the dark,” or, “Like new believers holding on to God.” Brilliantly, delicately and deliciously produced by Paul Warner, this album will lift you above the trees any time you choose to let it, and so will McNary’s live performance.
THE ADOBE COLLECTIVE will be joining Tim McNary on stage. The Joshua Tree Music Festival veterans and high desert favorites, bring new music from their album Take Heart, Take Care, an edgier compilation of their signature psychedelic folk rock. Their vocal harmonies, as always, blend like warm butter.
HOW WE BECAME GIANTS will close out the night. Hailing from Old Town Yucca Valley, and debuting for the first time here in the low lands, How We Became Giants is a band fronted by Wade Crawford and backed by Terrence Dunn (drums) and Rudy Raya (bass). Crawford and Dunn were more recently known as Wade Crawford and the Country Trash (one of my favorite roots rebel original country bands). In this configuration, Crawford trades out his acoustic guitar for an electric. Their genre is, quite refreshingly simple – “Rock”. There are no hyphens, no fancy word combos to describe this power trio; this band will simply bring you good old fashioned, straight forward, original rock and roll that will make you throw your fist in the air and shout to the sky, “Rock and roll is alive and well.”
If you want to hear fresh, new inspiring live music that will allow you to escape the political pollution weighing down on all of us, plan on making a night of it at The Hood. That’s where I’ll be. There will be no cover for this inside show. It will start at approximately 9 and go until Crawford feels like setting down his axe.
theadobecollective.bandcamp.com
