Karen Booth
Sometimes it’s a good idea to shut up and let someone else do the talking. Today is one of those days–I’m so pleased and honored to have Jody Stephens, founding member of legendary band Big Star, grace my humble blog that I’m at a loss for words, which almost never happens. Ask anybody. Jody fills us in on everything he’s been up to lately, (including the newly released Big Star Live 7″ featuring Jon Davis of Superdrag ) before tackling the high school highlights, so I will gladly step aside and allow him to take the much-deserved reins.
Jody Stephens
Overton High School, Memphis, TN, Class of ’70
Currently: I work along side of John Fry managing Ardent Studios. I also help out with our little indie label Ardent Music. We have a roster of one: Star & Micey. We also have a new Big Star EP release out on 7” vinyl. The three songs on the EP include John Davis on guitar and lead vocals and were recorded live during Big Star’s tribute to Alex Chilton at the Levitt Shell here in Memphis, May 15, 2010.
Chris Stamey has produced a few Big Star’s Third Live shows that have been incredible to be a part of. We plan to do more of them.
Golden Smog comes calling every now and then. We just played a couple of nights at the Fine Line in Minneapolis. GS is like a traveling medicine show…it’s good for what ails you.
And, while we used the name Big Star for the last time at the Levitt Shell show last year, it’s kind of hard to give up playing those songs together. So… Jon, Ken and I joined up with JB Meijers in the Netherlands this past April to play a few dates featuring Big Star songs. We were billed under our own names and had a few wonderful Dutch artists join us.
Song that reminds you the most of high school: “Aquarius.” While I was a senior in high school my brother Jimmy (bass) and I (drums) got picked to be part of the University of Memphis production of the musical Hair. The song “Aquarius” opened the play. I was 17 years old at the time and my eyes were opened to paraphrase a lyric from the play. It was controversial for its time and definitely a life changing experience for me. It also was the catalyst for my reintroduction to Andy Hummel and, via Andy, my introduction to Chris Bell, John Fry and Ardent Studios.
Favorite piece of music memorabilia (poster, t-shirt, etc.) in high school: I didn’t hang on to much from high school but I do still have a program from Hair.
Band that you hated that everyone else at school seemed to love: I started thinking about this one and realized that, amongst the people I knew at Overton, I was pretty much a loner when it came to being into music. I would hitch hike in to mid-town and hang out with guys that had the same interest in music. We were all into The Beatles, Stones, Kinks and the music coming out of Stax.
Best show or concert you saw in high school: The first thing I thought of…The Zombies was potentially the best concert, but I don’t remember it. I was shy, but I did have a date for this. In pursuit of a solution for being shy, I somehow obtained a 1/2 pint of Old Charter (a confidence builder)…such a mistake. I had too much “confidence” and wound up “sleeping” through the concert. Lesson learned. I went to see Led Zeppelin a year later, no date, no alcohol and was completely blown away.
Optional bonus question: Best high school make-out song: I didn’t date much in high school. Paper route money didn’t go very far and what I had went to things like buying records, drum stuff and going to see bands. When I had a couple of girlfriends in college, music’s role was more important to the healing part of breaking up. David Pomeranz’s New Blues and Time To Fly were good albums for that.
Here’s the skinny on the new Big Star Live 7″ released yesterday, with a personal account from Jody Stephens. There will be a digital release to follow, but you’ll have to wait a few weeks for that.
For our last performance as Big Star, Jon, Ken and I had some very good friends join us to celebrate the music and lives of Alex, Andy and Chris on May 15, 2010. The performances really tell the story of what happened and how we all felt about that evening at Memphis’ Levitt Shell. The idea of trying to release the show in its entirety was overwhelming in the sense of time and effort needed for all performance clearances. So I thought, first artist first: John Davis was the first of many wonderful guest artists to join us on stage. He wailed on three songs: “In The Street,” “Don’t Lie To Me” and “When My Baby’s Beside Me.” These were just the right amount songs (and time) for an EP release. So with mastering engineer Larry Nix and Big Star’s engineer, John Fry, and our Neumann cutting lathe all residing in the Ardent Studios building how could we not cut vinyl? We hope to release more of the show down the road.
Future pop-star Anna Catherine with current pop-star Miley (photo used by me, without anyone's permission)
In celebration of Father’s Day, John Strohm shares an essay about his children and music, including the world premiere of a song he recorded with his daughter, Anna Catherine, entitled “First Grade”.
All three of my kids are musical, but they express their music in wildly different ways. Sophie, my youngest, is always singing some song or other, and if you stop to really listen to the words they are usually some bizarre adaptation of a Taylor Swift song filtered through a 3-year-old’s world view. A simple love song becomes a song about why big girls wear T-shirts and sneakers to daycare instead of dresses and sandals. Bennett, age six, is a natural comedian. He’s always cutting up, and wherever there’s any doubt about how to fill the air he defaults to “I like…big…BUTTSANDICANNOTLIE!!!,” to which he’s also added his own ad-libs, including “I like them BIG AND JUICY!” Although music is a constant for both of them, neither has ever really given me a way in. Their expression is personal and strictly non-collaborative.
Anna Catherine, who will be nine this summer, is different. She’s pretty much always seen herself as an emerging pop star. When she was two – when Bennett was literally a newborn – she proposed a family band. She’d been sitting quietly in her car seat for several minutes (a feat in itself), when she announced, “Daddy, we need a band.” I said, “We do?” “Yes,” she said, “you can play guitar, Mommy plays pian-do, I play drums, and Bennett…plays bass.” By the end of Kindergarten, she’d formed her own band called “The Music Twins and the One Other,” and stardom seemed imminent.
The Music Twins consisted of Anna and her best friend Jane Margaret; the “one other” was another kid in after-school daycare who’d complained to the teacher that she wasn’t included in their “game.” They had no choice. But the Twins were clearly the creative core. Jane Margaret was already sort of a stage kid; to her parents’ bafflement she insisted on singing and drama lessons at age four. She also wrote songs, and although Anna insisted the Twins’ repertoire was an equal collaboration, I could tell it was a sensitive point that Anna hadn’t brought in any original material (whereas Jane Margaret daily brought in classics such as “Around The World in 80 Days,” which detailed their boat journey with real geographic references such as “China” and “Mexico”). Anna wanted to pull her weight – she had to come up with some songs.
So I was only slightly surprised when she came home one day towards the end of Kindergarten and announced, “Daddy, you need to help me write a song.”
“Okay,” I said, “what are we writing about?” (Silence – eyebrows raised in expectation) Clearly this part was up to me. “Well, okay,” I said, “what do you care enough about to want to sing about?” Silence again. After ten or fifteen minutes of conversation (and her profound frustration), I figured out that she wanted to write about being the youngest kid in her class (technically second youngest, as the song provides), and she was willing to write a song about her excitement over finishing Kindergarten. This is the result:
john & anna catherine strohm “first grade”
Regarding my own contribution, I wrote the chords but Anna came up with the melody. I filled in a couple lines and rhymes (I doubt any Kindergartner would come up with the line “Kindergarten memories will soon begin to fade” – how are they supposed to know that?), but most of the words are hers. She wrote the first line and the hook. After we’d completed the first verse and the chorus she insisted we were done – sort of like calling the crayon drawing complete before filling in the sky. I really wanted a second verse and I spent a few minutes trying to workshop ideas, but it was pointless. She was very happy to sing the same verse twice, so that’s the song. We recorded it on my iPod immediately. I’d have forgotten all about it had I not gone digging through my collection of recorded fragments while writing my own songs. Glad I did.
Evelyn and her loving brother, Esten.
In celebration of Father’s Day, Tom Maxwell shares a sweet and funny essay about music and his daughter, Evelyn.
My daughter Evelyn has an incredible ear. For me, musical pitch has always been a subjective exercise, an approximation. I consider myself a vocalist, not a singer. If I have to pick out one of my songs on the piano, the melody flies out of my voice. I become unsure of the intervals and sink into a quagmire of relativism. Evelyn has no such issues.
Many years ago, I drove an old Mercedes diesel. If you turned on the ignition without first putting on your seatbelt, the car made an awful, buzzing alarm sound, like an old digital clock. It happened once, as I took Evelyn home from karate class when she was three.
“That’s an ugly noise,” she said.
“Yes, it is,” I responded, then seized upon a teachable moment. “You know, Evelyn, I bet we could go home and find that sound on a piano key.” I was trying to show her that there was music in everything; that even the car buzzer has a harmonic base, a corresponding piano key. I was proud of my insight and parental leadership and expected to elicit an “a-ha” moment.
“Oh, Dad,” she said. “You’d have to play four keys all next to each other to make that sound.”
Blown out of the water by a three-year-old. Evelyn already understood about dissonance and micro-tonality. She could also, by this time, pick out individual instruments in a recording, and name them. I know a lot of grown-ups who can’t do this.
I began to introduce Evelyn to the music I listened to. The Beatles got a lukewarm reception, aside from “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Little Richard was another story. I played his early, raucous stuff – “Keep A Knockin’,” “Good Golly Miss Molly” – filled with shrieks and distorted tenor sax. Evelyn loved it. “Play some Big Richard,” she’d say.
“Honey,” I’d say, “his name is Little Richard.”
“That shouldn’t be his name, dad. His music is so great, he should be called Big Richard.” I agreed.
Evelyn took to the piano quickly, picking out songs by ear. My attempts to teach her some fundamentals were ignored. She’s going to do it the hard way, I thought – the one aspect of me I didn’t want her to inherit. In lieu of learning scales at the age of five, she’d offer to play me “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” with her toes. Naturally, I was impressed, and then chastised myself for rewarding such indiscipline. As the years progressed, Evelyn has learned music as a social lubricant, a palliative and a way of connecting with her family and friends. She saw how much my pals loved to hear Elliot Smith’s “Waltz No. 2” on the screen porch after hours, and learned it on piano. She heard Jan Johansson’s “Visa Från Utanmyra” so many times that it too appeared under her fingers. She picks out Queen’s “Under Pressure,” the Jeopardy! theme and Lady Gaga songs with equal relish and facility. I know that much of what she does is to please, to engage me when I turn inward. I also know that through this, she’s finding her own voice. She will find it by listening to, and internalizing, great music. Now, at ten, her piano ability is beginning to outstrip mine, and she’s composing her first song. This, friends, is where it gets good.
I can’t teach her anything. First off, I’m her father, a natural disqualifier. Secondly, I’m prone to exasperation. Thirdly, she’s too much like me – working diligently on only that which interests her, while studiously avoiding routine. She will have to invent, and reinvent, her own musical wheel. My teaching, I’ve come to realize, is more indirect. She sees the joy on my face when I rehearse or play songs for friends. She hears what I listen to, from the Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello that was the soundtrack to her birth, or Fats Waller. (“I want to play like him,” she once told me. “Better get started now,” I advised. The man was a hell of a piano player.)
When I sit beside her at the piano, and really inhabit the moment, I am made aware of miracle upon miracle. First, the miracle that she even came into the world, and has grown into such a self-possessed, loving, marvelous person. Then there is the miracle of communicating with her musically as well as emotionally. Often, when she stays with her mom, she’ll call out of the blue. “Got a minute?” she’ll ask. “Listen to what I’ve learned on the piano!” I will, and we’ll talk about this and that. Sometimes we’ll duet over the phone (the Doctor Who theme is a favorite). I will be nonchalant, but when we hang up it will always take me a moment to recover. I will stand stock still, feeling the joy and gratitude radiating through my body. Perhaps, as the coming years bring Evelyn into sullen adolescence, these calls will stop coming. But for now, there’s much to learn, and practice, and share.
