The Bottle Rockets wsg/Mark Olson

Tue. Oct 6, 2015 at 7:00pm EDT
21 and Over
Price: $25.00
21 and Over
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Price: $25.00
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Event Description
The Bottle Rockets wsg/Mark Olson


Sportsmen's Tavern


 


326 Amherst St.

Buffalo NY 14207


716-874-7734

Tuesday October 6 @ 7pm

The Bottle Rockets
wsg

Mark Olson


$25


 


“A combustible combination of the Replacements and Buck Owens.” – ESQUIRE


“Before the Drive-By Truckers got in gear, when Ryan Adams was still settling in Whiskeytown, the Bottle Rockets were setting off musical M-80s as perhaps the most underappreciated roots-rock/Americana band of the mid-‘90s.” –REUTERS/HOLLYWOOD REPORTER


“If Uncle Tupelo is the Beatles of the alt-country movement, the Bottle Rockets are certainly the Rolling Stones.”SPARTANBURG HERALD-JOURNAL


When The Bottle Rockets hit the scene in the mid ‘90s, the world wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. With their punk-rock pedigrees and arena-rock energy, their tougher-than-Springsteen storytelling and their romantic hearts sewn bare on their denim sleeves, the pride of Festus, MO confounded musical generalities as they laid waste to clubs across the Midwest and then, soon enough, the nation.


Back in a time when the critical language and resulting idioms for mixing underground rock with country was in its infancy, The Bottle Rockets were fearlessly – and quite loudly – playing rootsy weepers alongside howling rave ups, with singer/guitarist Brian Henneman leading the charge as some sort of Roger Miller of the indie set. It’s a sound propped up (and hopped up) just as much on the pillars of Leslie West & Mountain as it was on those of the Ramones and the Clash.


The Bottle Rockets’ first and second albums, Bottle Rockets and The Brooklyn Side, are widely revered as not only two of the band’s finest releases, but also two formative, flagship recordings in the nascent era of a now-broadly recognized genre. The band was unceremoniously birthed in 1992 and they very quickly became a forebearer for the new style alongside Uncle Tupelo, Old 97’s, and Whiskeytown.


The songs, stories and sentiments found on these groundbreaking albums sound just as fresh and relevant now as they did when they were first released. The Bottle Rockets never did it the easy way and never compromised their sound or themselves. Always too punk for country audiences, too genuine for the smug irony of the hipster scene, and too smart for the outdoor one-hitter rock festival crowd, The Bottle Rockets remained The Bottle Rockets, and this is a document of where it all started.


Bottle Rockets and The Brooklyn Side are collected here as a remastered two-CD deluxe reissue set of the long out-of-print albums, with an additional 19 previously unreleased tracks. The package consists of an extensive 40-page booklet detailing the band in full context of the ‘90s alt- scene, with editorial contributions from respected peers and fellow musicians such as Steve Earle, Patterson Hood,Lucinda Williams, and many others. Both reissued albums and bonus material have been meticulously remastered under the supervision of famed producer and musician Eric “Roscoe” Ambel.


Bottle Rockets was originally released in 1993 and was the first true showing of the band’s signature country-aware, rough and ragged rock ‘n’ roll style, matched with Henneman’s blue-collar songwriting skills, with lyrics depicting the life, struggle and dark humors of everyday people. The eponymous album notably features back-up vocal performances from former members of Uncle Tupelo: Jeff Tweedy (now of Wilco) and Jay Farrar (Son Volt). Bonus tracks include original demos from Henneman, both solo and backed by the members of Uncle Tupelo, acoustic demos, and Chicken Truck/pre-Bottle Rockets-era recordings.


In 1994, The Brooklyn Side came out to a relatively greater amount of significant success, marked both by its stature in the now burgeoning alt- movement and as The Bottle Rockets’ most popular effort to date. Following the album release, the band later signed with major label Atlantic Records, toured widely, and reached a national audience with an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Bonus songs for The Brooklyn Side reissue include acoustic demos, unreleased tracks from the album sessions, and live recordings from the era.


Please direct press and interview requests to josh@bloodshotrecords.com


Mark Olson "Good-bye Lizelle"


Glitterhouse Records, 2014



8



  • Former Jayhawk legend finds love and his muse in the colder climes of Europe


Mark Olson’s somewhat flakey and unfathomable relationship with the music industry earns a new chapter in this intriguing new solo album. He obviously helped to spearhead the nascent Americana music movement in the 1990s via one of the genre’s most consistently adored and influential touchstones, The Jawhawks. Then he suddenly left, then he came back, then he left again. The band obviously continued to make more great music, but then lacked one of its core ingredients in Olson’s unique harmony and songwriting.


After a jubilantly successful world tour in support of a reunited Jayhawks album just a few short years ago, he has decided to quit and go solo once again. ‘Good-night Lizelle’, from the front cover on down, is the celebration of the artistic coupling he has found with his new partner, Norwegian artist Ingunn Ringvold; in fact it seems a little mean that this isn't credited as a duo album, as Ringvold co-wrote, played and sings on pretty much everything here as much as Olson does, and a great creative partnership it seems to be. Ringvold plays a very significant Emmy to Olson’s Gram to really wonderful effect on the ballads that make up the core of the record such as ‘Cherry Thieves’, which sounds like it should be an Everly Brothers classic, also rootsy tunes like ’All These Games’ and ‘Heaven’s Shelter’, which are rich in harmony and are totally, if raggedly, beautiful. Always perfectly crafted as we’ve come to expect.


The album begins with stabs of harpsichord chords, and a skittering melody which is equally unpredictable and melodically thrilling. The oddest thing on the record is ‘Running Circles’, which is all middle-eastern instrumentation and percussion, with a prayer to “shelter us from harm, shelter our family”. It’s certainly not what you would expect from him, but repeated listens strengthen its purpose. His recent comments that this album has been influenced by world music percussion are credible, but limited to only a couple of the experimental tracks that front the album. Among the numerous moods, ‘Poison Oleander’ is the one and only ‘rock’ song we get here. A chugging groove of a tune, which owes a lot to Ringvold’s counterpoint to Olson’s melody, and threatens to lead in no uncertain terms.


Olson is an artist who has always opened his mind to the possibilities and influence of travel, and he used his portable recording system to make the recordings for this record, so it was recorded in various apartments around the expanses of Europe, outside in parks, and in various cabins and available spaces, with augmentations made later in studios. It is a portrait of an artist reveling in the potential of not just his happy new relationship, but the ancient and the new worlds of music; the traditional and the familiar. It’s hard to credit this as a solo Mark Olson album, as Ringvold makes such a very significant contribution to this album, but a significant, bold and beautiful record it is nonetheless

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Sportsmens Tavern 326 Amherst Street
Buffalo, NY 14207