Duncan Sheik

MAXIMUM INK recently caught up with singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik hoping to break away from the panel discussions at the Sundance Film Festival to take in some snowboarding. Eleven years earlier Sheik found himself navigating an entirely different slippery slope. The single, “Barely Breathing,” from his self-titled debut stayed a record-setting fifty-five weeks on the charts and made him a Grammy-nominated pop star. A role, he admits, he was ill-suited to play.  “Call me lazy,” Sheik says, “but at the end of the day I prefer to be sitting in the audience than performing on stage.” Not satisfied continuing with the personal love songs of his debut, Sheik moved to narrative songs packed with elusive introspection, subtle themes and smart literary devices. At the same time he was feeling he was having less and less of an effect on his audience. Being in the spotlight was just not a natural setting for Sheik and yet his desire to create remained strong.

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Jessie Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter

Ever since two cavemen started beating sticks on hollow logs it has apparently been the goal of musicians to be louder. Symphony orchestras, Celtic, Polka, bluegrass, country, rock and roll and sometimes-even jazz, strive to amp up the volume. Now I love nothing better than to have my eardrums blown out by great live music, but not long ago I found myself on a road, miles from any sign of human inhabitation. I stopped my car and stepped outside. The quietness was deafening. A rushing white noise, phase shifted through my ears, like the beginning of some bad rock song from the 1970’s, but after a few minutes I started picking out the chirping of birds and insects. A minute later I could hear the leaves of trees rustling in the slight breeze. I was amazed at the complex audio beauty of a seemingly silence place. The same thing happened to me the first time I saw Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter. There are few bands in the world as quiet as Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter. You can literally hear a beer glass fall on the floor while they are performing.

Fresh off a twenty-day tour of 2,000 seat theaters opening for Bright Eyes, Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter is hitting the road again. Their latest CD, “Oh My Girl” on Barsuk Records has been selling steadily and has landed on the Best of 2004 lists by such notable publications as the New York Times, The L.A. Weekly, Harp and Maximum Ink.  The band isn’t resting on its laurels.  “When you get home from a tour,” said Jesse, “it’s like, what do I do?”

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Jill Sobule

After a series of near failures with the record industry, Jill Sobule scored with the heavily played tongue-in-cheek MTV hit “I Kissed a Girl,” and followed up with “Supermodel,” which appeared on the Clueless soundtrack. Her first album was produced by Todd Rundgren, and she recently played lead guitar in Lloyd Cole’s band. The Denver-born singer/songwriter/guitarist has penned songs about such diverse subjects as the death penalty, anorexia, shoplifting, reproduction, the French resistance movement, adolescence and the Christian right, but a lot of her songs are about love. Sobule’s music secretes an aura of love, so instead of asking my heartthrob a bunch of questions that she has probably been asked a hundred times before, I asked her to ask herself the five questions that she has never been asked in an interview, that she always wanted to be asked, then answer them…

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Kasim Sulton

Kasim Sulton has had quite a career.  He’s played bass with Todd Rundgren (both solo and with Utopia) for over a decade, recorded on Meatloaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” and on the critically acclaimed 1976 album release by Steve Hillage “L”, which is a favorite with English ravers 25 years after it’s release. A multi-instrumentalist, Sulton has also recorded or performed with The Tom Robinson Band, Rick Derringer, Frankie Eldorado, Shaun Cassidy, Joan Jett, Patti Smith, Akiko Yano, The Ricky Byrd Trio, Blue Oyster Cult, Jackie DeShannon, Eileen Ivers, Celine Dion, The Indigo Girls, Steve Stevens, Mick Jagger, Jim Steinman and Daryl Hall and John Oates. To make a long discography short, Sulton has played on 102 albums. 

Kasim also has 3 Solo albums, “Kasim,” “The Bassment Tapes” and “Lights On” with Thommy Price. I interviewed Kasim on July 30th, 2001.

Maximum Ink: How did you start playing music?
Kasim Sulton: Staten Island, NY.... first band was Kastle. My fate was decided when I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964.

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Saving Abel

On tour with their debut self-titled release from Virgin Records, SAVING ABEL is looking to give crowds a “straight up rock show,” according to bass player Eric Taylor.  The band has been playing since 2004 and are currently touring with AVENGED SEVENFOLD, BUCKCHERRY, and SHINEDOWN. Southern grown rock, with a whole mess of other influences from the ALLMAN BROTHERS to LYNYRD SKYNYRD to 3 DOORS DOWN, Taylor says the band is ready to show the world what they are made of.

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The Scarring Party

The Scarring Party could be the set up to a joke wherein a tuba, banjo and an accordion take the stage. They could be a Tenacious D, a Juiceboxxx or a Macho Man Randy Savage rap album, but they’re not. They are a bizarre exercise in the defiance of time. They are practitioners of parallelisms, administers of allegory and subtle masters of musicianship. They could soon be the undisputed new big thing of Wisconsin. For now though, they are simply Milwaukee’s two-year-old four piece, neo-vaudevillian folk-pop favorites.

“With all that stuff [we bring] on stage it’s almost like prop comedy, to some people” Daniel Bullock, songwriter of the group says, “and that’s why they look down their noses at it.” What’s clever banter on stage, becomes coffeehouse quips in, well, a coffeehouse with tuba player Isa Carini and percussionist Chris Roberts backing him up there too. “I think when you’re in an acoustic band,” Bullock continues, “the way you create tonal difference is by pulling out new instruments. There’s always more stuff that can make it different, you know? It’s never a matter of getting a new pedal or something, it’s always a matter of ‘Oh my god, now I’ve got to like, build this thing’ or ‘I’ve got to rub this instrument against that instrument to make this totally different sound.’ People think it’s novelty, but really it’s just...”

“I think people get into it too, the instrumentation” percussionist Chris Roberts adds. “They’ll be like, ‘Wow, there’s a tuba on stage’, maybe I’ll watch this band. Not just like a typical rock band.” Indeed, typical rock band they are not.

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The Schwillbillies

An interview with Geeter of Madison’s punk-hillbilly outfit The Schwillbillies

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