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Peacemaker Music & Arts Fest 2016

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Second Annual Peacemaker Music & Arts Fest
Harry E. Kelley Riverfront Park Amphitheater
Fort Smith, Arkansas
July 29-30, 2016

Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia make up what was once the Confederate States of America, eventually to become, "The South." These eleven states have been lumped together as geo-social-political monolith since their formal dissolution in 1865, and fully codified during Reconstruction. It has been my experience that the region has been largely considered negatively as a homogenous mass begat of racism, conservatism, and superstition. The American South earned that reputation justly, continuing these flawed character traits much to our disadvantage into the 21st Century.

Culturally, however, the region is anything but homogenous. Take either the blues or barbeque as tacit examples. These cultural practices vary greatly regionally within the old south. Texas barbeque is full-blooded beef with a thick sweet tomato-based sauce made with brown sugar or molasses. The Texas blues is typified by fleet finger work and direct lyrics, foreshadowing what we think of a electric blues lead guitar and vocals. On the other hand, the Piedmont area of the East Coast has as barbeque that is a playful brand of smoked pork with a thin, vinegar-based sauce intended to notify in inform your higher olfactory centers. Piedmont blues is largely informed by ragtime and is playful and clever, with a delicate, almost refined use of double entendre: Blind Lemon Jefferson versus Arthur "Blind" Blake.

The same cultural heterogeneity exists at the state level. Bisect my home state of Arkansas vertically through Little Rock, and one has two distinctly different personalities. Eastern Arkansas is flat prairie making up the Arkansas portion of the Mississippi River Delta. Predominantly black, this was as much the home of the blues as across that muddy river. Western Arkansas is what passes for mountainous, save for the Arkansas River Valley which extends from Little Rock to Fort Smith. This area is predominantly white and shares with Texas and Oklahoma the tradition of "red dirt music" which is, ultimately the subject of the present article. Red dirt music is not exactly country, not exactly blues, not exactly bluegrass, rock & roll or rockabilly or border Tex-Mex. It is the cracker bastard child of all of these influences: raw and ill-behaved, always spoiling for a fight after too many Falstaffs and shots of Jack Daniels...err...Bud Lites and Crown Royal. And Fort Smith, once the "Gateway to the West," was definitely the place to experience it.

The Obligatory Southern Digression...

Save for the dreadfully hot border weather of late July, everything about this little festival, now in its second year, was damn near perfect. Gates opened at 4:00 PM to a small venue on the banks of the Arkansas River, located just down the hill from Old river port Fort Smith. On the way to the amphitheater, one passes the only whorehouse...err, bordello, on the National Register of Historic Places (even New Orlean's Storyville didn't make that cut), Miss Laura's Social Club. It is located between the river and railroad tracks in the place long known as "Hell on the Border" of the Indian Territory (what Oklahoma was called before 1907). During the period, Isaac Parker, better known as the "Hanging Judge" was the law of the area, building gallows to hang six at a time and executing the sentence on the best known outlaw of the area, Crawford "Cherokee Bill" Goldsby in 1895. I come from a family of long generational length My grandfather and namesake, Charles Council Bailey, was in his late 30s during the period described, living in the middle it all, running a dry-goods store and transport company and playing fiddle for local barn dances. Charlie Bailey was born at the beginning of Reconstruction, in 1868. My father was born shortly after Oklahoma became a state, in a wooden shack on the edge of Hackett (now a suburb of Fort Smith). I am the youngest of Charlie Bailey's grandchildren and spent a good deal of time in the Sebastian County area. For better or worse, I understand the place, and its music, better than I ever will the Arkansas Delta. It is as magical and conflicted as the Delta ever was; its music a eutectoid of country, jazz, western swing, blues, with a whopping dose of hillbilly drag.

The festival was well organized and held on a Friday and Saturday, the gates opening at 4:00 pm and the last band taking the stage at 10:00pm, with everything done by midnight. The amphitheater area is smaller than that of its older brother in Little Rock, where the annual Riverfest is held, drawing crowds of 60-to 70 thousand. The area has a more rural and rustic beauty than little, spooning properly with the Cherokee Nation just across the river. The Peacemaker Festival was a much smaller, more manageable, and infinitely more enjoyable affair and Riverfest, with an attendance less that 10-thousand. The music was also more carefully selected.

The Friday installment of the Peacemaker Festival included: the one-man band Hosty, Piedmont's American Aquarium, the Old 97's, Los Lonely Boys, and the Turnpike Troubadours. Los Lonely Boys were a last-minute replacement for an ailing Leon Russell, who had cancelled his show, having had a heart attack the previous week. Saturday was back, bright, shiny and hot with: Jillia Jackson, the Ben Miller Band, The Revivalists, Blackberry Smoke, and the Cold War Kids. Each act has had a recent release; which I will discuss with those performances I saw.

American Aquarium
Wolves
Self Produced
2015

This Raleigh, North Carolina sextet has been recording for the last decade, starting with 2006's Antique Hearts. Their music and sound can be succinctly in the chorus of "Southern Sadness" from their most recently released Wolves:

"Because there's a certain kind of despair / It hangs heavy in the air / And everywhere I go I'll always smell the Piedmont Pines / And there's a southern sadness that won't let go of this heart of mine..."

Front man/lead singer BJ Barham looks like a newly minted University of North Carolina accountant who sings like the lovechild of Bruce Springsteen and Jason Isbell. Barham's delivery is abrupt and precise, with enough intelligence and bad attitude to create a new southern music narrative. Isbell's name is not foreign here as he produced the band's well-received Burn. Flicker. Die. (Last Chance Records, 2012). On Burn. Flicker. Die., the band fully tempered their southern signature somewhere within the triangle of Wilco (from which the band took its name, "I am an American aquarium drinker / An assassin down the avenue"), REM, and the Drive By Truckers. Whit Wright's pedal steel guitar imparts not so much a country and western aural taste as it does an atmospheric rush-to-the-head experienced with the instrument on Bob Dylan's recent Shadows in the Night (Columbia Records, 2015). The band's sound is finished out with the double guitar front of Ryan Johnson and Colin DiMeo that solidifies Barharm's bite on such lines like, "You're fading slow like a blood stain on my sleeve / And I'm learning faster and faster what it takes to leave,,,"

American Aquarium's performance included much from Burn. Flicker. Die. and their most recent recording, Wolves. Preparing Wolves was a prototype of the new music industry, funded with $24,000 raised through a Kickstarter project to help fund the album's production and recording in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. And that's as Southern as flour-sack panties. The band's sound further hardened, incorporating additional elements of Southern Soul mixed with a Beatles harmonic sensibility. "Family Problems" is "A Day in the Life" torn down my liquor and sustained by the indelible mark of family. Whit Wright contributes a dirty lap steel to the performances, augmented by Ryan Johnson's informed lead guitar. The show stopper at the Peacemaker festival was the loud and corrosive waltz, "Wichita Falls," in which Barham laments:

"I'm sending you a postcard / From Wichita Falls / That's where it all started baby / That's where it all started falling apart..."

The band covered John Prine's "Spanish Pipe Dream" and Willis Allan Ramsey's "Northeast Texas Women," adding just the right amount of obscure nostalgia for this aging Baby Boomer.

Setlist: Southern Sadness; Wolves; St. Mary's; Nothing to Lose; Casualties; Katherine Belle; Northeast Texas Women; Man I'm Supposed to Be; Family Problems; Losing Side of Twenty-Five; Lonely Ain't Easy; Wichita Falls; Spanish Pipedream; I Hope He Breaks Your Heart; Burn. Flicker. Die.

The Old 97s
Most Messed Up
ATO Records
2014.

The grand old men of Alternative-Country-Rock emailed their performance into the Peacemaker Festival demonstrating that they are much more effective in small venues (as they had been at Little Rock's Revolution Room earlier in the year). Rhett Miller and Murray Hammond found their way capably from "Stoned" (Hitchhike to Rhome (Big Iron Records, 1994)) to "Let's Get Drunk and Get it On" (Most Messed Up).

The Old 97s are a durable quartet who combined the rich music of their native Texas with 21st Century college high jinx. Leader Rhett Miller has an insane knack for writing simple, hooked-filled songs that employ any number of Texas and Tex-Mex harmonic devices. As responsible for this sound is drummer Philip Peeples, who can play an number two-step beats with Texas written all over them. Add Murry Hammond harmony and frequent lead vocals and we have nothing but fun. It is a simple and powerful convolution of talent that is 100% entertainment. Is this serious essential music? Serious?...no...essential?...absolutely. That is why their performance this weekend was so workman-like...just trying to get the gig over.

That said, they opened with the near sublime "I Won't be Home," and over the next 45 minutes touching on an impressive 25-year career.

Setlist: I Won't Be Home; Stoned; Wasted; Big Brown Eyes; Doreen; Longer Than You've Been Alive; Barrier Reef; The Other Shoe; Wish the Worst; West Texas Teardrops; Every Night Is Friday Night (Without You); Most Messed Up; Question; Let's Get Drunk & Get It On; Timebomb.

Los Lonely Boys
Revelation
Lonelytone Records
2014.

The sons of San Angelo, Los Lonely Boys, subbed for an ailing Leon Russell, turning in the most searing and electric performance of the entire festival. It is a shame that Los Lonely Boys are best known for their 2004 hit "Heaven," because this band is about so much more than one song. A power trio of brothers, guitarist, vocalist Henry; bassist/vocalist Jojo; and drummer/vocalist Ringo Garza, exist as the keepers of the guitar-based power trio flame. A touring band for 20 year, Los Lonely Boys has honed their live show into a finely-crafted, dramatically-paced presentation. Henry Garza is every bit the rock guitar god image that captivated much of the 1970s and '80s. His performance is the center of the band's set, but he is only a first among equals with his brothers and together, they produce American music in all of its disparate glory. For the Peacemaker Festival, the band restricted themselves mostly to their most recent recording, Revelation, including four pieces off that 2014 release Revelation. There was no "La Bamba" (thank the Good Lord) and no "Cisco Kid" (though that would have been cool). The lone cover was of the Spencer Davis classic, "I'm a Man," which was carried off with all of the requisite fireworks. The encore was, of course, "Heaven." The show-stopper was 15-minutes of molten blues, "Cottonfields & Crossroads," a mainstay of LLB's live set. Henry Garza produces a dramatic, perfectly paced performance of America's sub-atomic music. Excellent performance and worthy replacement for the Master of Space and Time.

Setlist: Don't Walk Away; Blame It On Love; Give a Little More; So Sensual; Rockpango; Nobody Else; Cottonfields & Crossroads; Crazy Dream; Oye Mamacita; I'm a Man; Heaven.

Turnpike Troubadours
Turnpike Troubadours
Bossier City Records
2015

This might be the first time I ever heard the original band performance and a later performed cover of the same song. That would be the Old 97's "Doreen," with which the Turnpike Troubadours opened their Fort Smith Show. The Turnpike Troubadours, of all the bands performing at this festival, are the best example of "Red Dirt Music." This music has a sharp, jagged edge that was honed away long ago in what passes for Nashville country music today. Contemporary country music is the evolutionary result of the last gasp for traditional record industry. It is maudlin, homogenized garbage that smells like bathroom Aramis and brand new Walmart snap-button shirts. The TT's music smells of cigarettes, beer and sweat, as this music is supposed to. While Nashville's version of country music does have lyrics that rank with the best of old Tin Pan Alley, the TT's can spin great one to:

..."Well, it's 1 AM and wild and loud / Like sittin' in the middle of a funnel cloud / A five-spot for a shot and a beer / Now do you wonder how we wound up here...

Her kind of loving is a little like a fist fight / Alright, alright / The kind of thing you never see before midnight/ Girl, I know you're gonna wreck this town / Won't tell me where to be when the walls start falling..."


And if that don't scream "reckless youth," nothing does.

"Diamonds & Gasoline," "Whole Damn Town," and "Long Hot Summer Day," as a song triptych, sums up the TT's live approach...amplified Hillbilly music that leaves you wanting more.

Setlist: Doreen; Every Girl; 7 & 7; 1968; Morgan Street; Shreveport; Good Lord Lorrie; Blue Star; The Mercury; The Bird Hunters; Down Here; Before the Devil Knows We're Dead; Gin, Smoke, Lies; Kansas City Southern; Whole Damn Town; Bossier City; Diamonds & Gasoline; All Your Favorite Bands; Long Hot Summer Day.

Ben Miller Band
Any Way, Shape or Form
Bossier City Records
2014

Joplin, Missouri's Ben Miller Band illustrates the gravitational pull of the Mississippi River Delta on the music of the region. The band's music incorporates almost non-stop use of the slide guitar, sometimes with three members playing at once. Genre-wise (if such a thing matters anymore), elements of folk, blues, bluegrass, and country in their creative corpus. The band's set at the Peacemaker Music Festival bore this out with the band performing several time-tested songs long part of their repertoire ("Black Betty / John The Revelator / Babylon Falling") as well as pieces from the band's 2014 release, Any Way, Shape or Form ("Hurry Up and Wait," "Life on Wheels").

They are a lively bunch featuring multi-instrumentalists Miller, Rachel Ammons (and Arkansas and Hendrix College product), Scott Leeper and Smilin' Bob Lewis. They all do double duty on several instruments that include washboards, saws, and an assortment of other percussion instruments. Miller does a cute trick playing harmonica and singing through the receiver of a 1970s vintage Ma Bell landline receiver to great distorted effect (forget the Shure Bullet, you don't need it). I do not care who you are...this was a nice, downhome touch. Easily the time-stopper of the show was the band's cover of the Texas Prison work song, "There Ain't No More Cane on the Brazos." This performance (after many before) brings home the white blues character of this country piece.

Setlist: Get Right Church; Hurry Up And Wait; the Outsider, Follow You Down, Black Betty / John The Revelator / Babylon Falling; Hurry Up and Wait, Life on Wheels, There Ain't No More Cane on the Brazos.

The Revivalists
Men Amongst Mountains
Self-Produced
2015

The most pleasant surprise of the festival was the electric performance of the New Orleans-based band The Revivalists, led by the über-charismatic David Shaw. A pair we made friend with, Mike and Leah, had flown up from Houston to see the band perform, an impressive dedication for people of my nominal middle-aged group. I was happy to see that there remain music enthusiasts that experience music as something more than mere entertainment. And the Revivalists provided exactly that type of music. Something fresh, yet familiar, that exposes aspect of American popular music not previous heard through our traditional aural lens.

The band is a septet that features a pedal-steel guitar (Ed Williams) and a saxophone (Rob Ingraham) and trumpet (Michael Girardot, doubles on keyboards) horn section. When commenting on the country-centric gravity of the pedal steel, our new-found friends informed me I have heard nothing like this. Like American Aquarium's Whit Wright's pedal steel guitar, Williams uses the instrument as a sharp seasoning in the music, one that relies on its harmonic rather than it melodic value. The band is called an "American rock/soul band founded in NOLA in 2007." That is a gravid statement if there ever was one. If "soul" music could be extracted from the blues and R&B, the Revivalists have accomplished this separation...most brilliantly. What helps this isolation of styles is the heroin-honey voice of David Shaw, more effectively soulful, in a contemporary fashion, than anyone singing today and on par with a Cory Wells, Daryl Hall, or Boz Scaggs. Add to this, the hip hop element of hard rap couplets Shaw writes into his lyrics and you have a pretty impressive creative package.

The band highlighted a good bit of music from their most recent release, Men Amongst Mountains opening their Fort Smith set with a rousing "Keep Going," a song that contains all of the band's considerable bag of trick: catchy horn charts, dramatic pacing and anthemic swells of pathos impossible to unhear. I could credit The Revivalists with retuning the musical hook to rock music. "Stand Up," and "It Was a Sin" are likewise crowd pleasers. "I Wish I Knew You" is the closest thing to a 45 single in the 21st Century, featuring Shaw's trademark sensual freight train of a voice. The Revivalists prove to be everything our concert companions said and they are a band to keep an eye on.

Setlist: Keep Going; Catching Fireflies; Stand Up; Fade Away; Monster; It Was a Sin; All In The Family; Criminal; Men Amongst Mountains; Two Ton Wrecking Ball; Wish I Knew You; Soulfight.

Blackberry Smoke
Like An Arrow
3-Legged Records
2016

Who I came to see was Blackberry Smoke and this smaller festival (having seen them this previous May at Beale Street Music Festival) was well suited for the band. Gearing up for the October release of Like an Arrow, the Georgia quintet came out and breathed more life into American Southern Rock than one million Clear Channel radio stations could peddling "Classic Rock" and one more soul-killing play of "Free Bird." No, these guys released some decent recordings in Bad Luck Ain't No Crime (Cock of the Walk, 2004) and Little Piece of Dixie (BamaJam Records, 2009), before releasing the masterpiece, 2012's The Whippoorwill (Southern Ground) and the very well received Holding All the Roses (Rounder, 2015), for which this Fort Smith appearance was part of the tour supporting Roses.

The band's abbreviated set focused on these last two recordings with the group reprising Led Zeppelin's "Your Time is Gonna Come" in the middle of "Sleeping Dogs." Charlie Starr has grown a full beard to fill out his hillbilly sideburns, looking a bit like the Black Crowes Christ Robinson, but singing like no one other than Charlie Starr. Nothing was played from the upcoming Like an Arrow, but the three singles currently available indicate a deepening of the band's appreciation for the Southern Music of the 1970s with the added elements of today. This performance was the perfect intersection between a new audience experiencing this genre for the first time and an old audience indulging a bit of nostalgia.

Setlist: Fire in the Hole; Six Ways to Sunday; Crimson Moon; Rock and Roll Again; Sleeping Dogs; Ain't Got the Blues; One Horse Town; Ain't Much Left of Me.

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