LITTLE ROCK — It’ll be outlaw roots rock from both barrels as Bloodshot label mates Scott H. Biram and Lydia Loveless bring their gritty songs, honest voices and rowdy ways to Stickyz Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken Shack in Little Rock’s River Market District at 9 p.m. on Tuesday.
“It’s been good,” says headliner Biram of the tour, while traveling to Buffalo, N.Y., earlier this month. “We’ve had decent crowds and I’ve gotten to play some places I haven’t been before, like Rock Island, Ill. You can’t complain about that.”
It’s hard to believe that there are places the 38-yearold Biram hasn’t been. He has played guitar since he was 13. He bounced around in punk and bluegrass groups in his native Texas for years before settling on his one-man-band approach. He has crisscrossed the country quite a few times and will make his 16th tour of Europe this fall.
For just one fella, Biram can conjure up a bluesy racket. Imagine a more amplified Lightnin’ Hopkins - one of Biram’s heroes - and you’re starting to get the picture.
“It’s what works for me,” Biram says. “I have a big, full sound. I sound like a three- or four-piece band. I have a stomp board that goes through big subwoofers and I’ve got a really great guitar tone that I’ve slowly developed over the years.”
For a perfect example of Biram’s sound, you can’t do much better than Bad Ingredients, his 10th album, which was released last year.
It’s a collection of 13 acoustic and distorted electric blues laced with rock ’n’ roll, country and pure, ornery, roadhouse attitude tunes. It’s an alchemy as old as rock ’n’ roll itself, the merging of blues and hillbilly music, though with Biram there’s an added measure of something heavier.
“The blues was the first kind of music I learned to play on the guitar,” Biram says. “My dad listened to the blues a lot. I grew up listening to Leadbelly and Lightnin’ Hopkins, but also Doc Watson and Bill Monroe, so I’ve got a good blues and bluegrass background. But then I moved on to punk rock and heavy metal. It all got mixed together and became this one big circus,” he says, laughing.
Just check the fuzzed out “Killed a Chicken Last Night,” which is a sort of tossed off, demented blues that gets bracingly pierced by a vicious, jagged guitar solo that wouldn’t sound out of place on the noisier parts of the first Velvet Underground album.
The album’s centerpiece, however, might be the acoustic “Broke A,” about a busted, lonely life of booze and bars and bad women, but also seems, with its rush of words at the end of its verses, to aspire to something almost positive.
“I wrote that in about five minutes and recorded it and didn’t realize what it was about, or what the back story was, until later on,” Biram says. “I just sort of put it all together in my head, all these random pieces of things, and the songwriting ties them together.” THE MACHINE
Opening for Biram on this leg of the tour is country-punk spitfire Lydia Loveless, whose second album, Indestructible Machine, is equal parts Patsy Cline, Hank Williams III and Charles Bukowski.
Loveless, all of 21 years old, already has a catalog of songs that are way beyond her years. A gifted songwriter with a powerful voice, she doesn’t shy away from subjects like alcoholism, obsession and bad choices, and Indestructible Machine (the title comes from the line “I’ve got to treat my body like an indestructible machine” in the gorgeous and bitter “Learn to Say No”) is a fully realized compilation of unflinching songs.
“When I was writing that [album] I was going through a pretty rough patch,” says Loveless, speaking from the road as she and her bass player/husband Ben Lamb made their way toward a Pittsburgh gig in their Dodge van a couple of weeks ago. “I was pretty angry and was pretty much a total recluse.”
Growing up bored and restless near Coshocton, Ohio, Loveless played in a punk band with her sisters before deciding to strike out on her own at 15, which was also around the time she started writing songs.
“I always wanted to be a singer, but I didn’t feel like I was writing good songs. I was watching other people write these great songs and it was depressing because I wanted to do that. But at some point I really had a breakthrough with the guitar and that expanded my ability to write.” (Not that she’s the second coming of Chet Atkins, mind you. Loveless regularly disparages her guitar skills. “It’s not like I’m doing any blistering solos,” she says.) HIT HER STRIDE
A 2010 album, The Only Man, hinted at her songwriting power, and she hit her stride a year later on Indestructible.
“I’m getting better at writing on the road,” she says. “I’m better equipped with digital recording devices.”
And while she’s not gathering material specifically for a new album just yet, her writing process has changed a bit.
“Before, I didn’t really have a direction. I mean, nobody really needed me to write songs. It was just something I did on occasion. It’s definitely more of a regimen now, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
A recent single was released that includes the scathing “Bad Way to Go” and a cover of Elvis Costello’s “Alison,” a song with ties to Loveless’ childhood.
“We would get in the car and my mom had a CD and had that [song] on repeat and played it every g day,” Loveless says, laughing. “It annoyed me so much I just said, ‘I can’t listen to this anymore.’”
Fast forward to last year and, “I was drinking wine at home and started trying to figure out how to play it and found that I really enjoyed it.”
After seeing her shut up a rowdy Chicago crowd with her take on the song, the Bloodshot brass sent her into the studio to preserve it digitally.
As for her tour mate Biram (the pair played in Hot Springs earlier this year), Loveless has nothing but good words.
“There is nothing I don’t like about him. He’s a really nice guy and an amazing musician. We are a good match as far as attitudes go.”Scott H. Biram
Opening act: Lydia Love
less
When: 9 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Stickyz Rock ’n’
Roll Chicken Shack, 107
River Market Ave.
How much: $8 advance,
$10 at the door
Information: stickyz.com
(501) 372-7707
Style, Pages 47 on 06/24/2012