Chris Johnson and his beard.
So it may seem odd that I’ve started this blog as a place that celebrates the culture of the Pacific Northwest and yet the first blog I write just so happens to be about a band from the South. Truth is that with music we all know its good to have a great music scene where you are from (and we all know that the NW is one of the greatest), but in the end we don’t care where its from as much as we just want it to be good. So for my first music review, I’m simply picking the “band of the hour” whom I recently saw live for the first time here in Seattle, and whose EP has been on constant rotation in my car ever since. I find it fitting that this wonderful group of musicians from down south will be coming back to play Seattle once again on September 8th at the very intimate and beautiful Jewel Box Theater in Belltown. So given that this ties in with a NW event that you should not miss, this is very much a NW blog.
I spent a number of years studying, playing, and composing music, and in all my studies, no lessons were more important than the lessons I had with one particular piano teacher which were less about playing and more just conversations about “what is music?”. We talked for hours on end about why we find it so beautiful and why we’d each willingly choose to go down a path of sure fire poverty in order to spend a life discovering it. The one solid conclusion that we derived to was that music is simply a human language. We felt that at its core, music is a means of human communication that when done right, transcends the evolution of language, making dictionaries obsolete. We mutually loved music that had this longing to communicate at its core and it is probably also why we hated our studies when it came time to study atonality and indeterminacy.
Tamara Cauble and Chris Johnson of Telegraph Canyon
Its for these reasons and my own longing to connect with any music that comes from someone who is simply trying to communicate something truthful, that I love Telegraph Canyon. Its honest music, free of ego. The band itself is quite big having 6, and what appears to be 7 people at times. A large ensemble of musicians that instead of taking an egotistical approach to their orchestration, (which usually results in a constant bombardment of all instruments), focus on humility and like any good artist, celebrate the negative spaces, or silence, in their work as they do the positive ones. The end result for Telegraph Canyon is simple and beautiful orchestration. It’s why we love the Arcade Fire. A band with many parts, none of them virtuosic or incredibly talented, but all there to serve the song and not themselves. In Telegraph Canyon, I can find a great deal of that same accessibility and collaborative energy that made bands like the Arcade Fire famous.
One of the many things that separates Telegraph Canyon from the rest and why they are a band unto themselves is that in their music you can hear where they are from. Beyond singer Chris Johnson heartfelt and revealing words and the voices of the many instruments that sway in and out, you hear the sound of Texas and the south. Not in any cliche way that echoes the past like some Sergio Leone film or what we define as being southern country from many moons ago, but instead, this is Texas now. Its what happens when a cowboy is raised with a broader pallet than his predecessors and finds the common ground between a sad country song and the lyrical brilliance of a Bob Dylan, a man from another world. It retains the energy and longing to let loose that made hoe downs the place to be after the end of a long work week, but finds alternate sources of that energy in everything from marching band rhythms to foundations of white noise a la Sonic Youth or Wilco . Most importantly Telegraph Canyon retains that certain “thing” from the south that you just can’t put your thumb on, but for anyone who has been on a long road trip through the state, there is just something that makes you change the CD in your car somewhere between El Paso and Austin. Removing an artists from the East or West, and needing put one on that comes from the South and has that “something” that connects with the land’s summer heat and wide open spaces.
NW tour dates:
September 8 @ The Jewel Box Theater ~ Seattle, WA
w/ Drew Grow and the Pastors’ Wives (Portland, OR) and Goldfinch (Tacoma, WA)
September 9 @ Doug Fir Lounge ~ Portland, OR
w/ Weinland (Portland, OR)
Tags: Arcade Fire, Doug Fir, Drew Grow, Drew Grow and the Pastors' Wives, Goldfinch, Jewel Box Theater, NW music, Telegraph Canyon, Weinland, Wilco
