For three days, beginning at 8 p.m. Friday, Little Rock’s White Water Tavern will be ground zero for fans of that rootsy strain of rock ’n’ roll that has been referred to as Americana, cowpunk, folk rock or alt-country.
Fifteen acts from Texas, Alabama, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Ohio and Arkansas will share the tiny White Water stage during this year’s edition of the Holiday Hang Out, the brainchild of Travis Hill, owner of Little Rock-based label Last Chance Music. He took his annual Dec. 2 birthday show (which began in 2010 with a concert by Slobberbone, Two Cow Garage and Glossary) and expanded it last year into a weekend-long rockfest featuring his friends and favorite bands. The event drew fans from 21 states, Canada and even a few from the United Kingdom to the cozy confines of the White Water, the venerable neighborhood watering hole and music spot.
Whew! Oh, and did we mention there will also be books for sale and food on Sunday?
But first, the music.
The wide spectrum of alt-country is represented by the weekend’s lineup: the feisty, punk-inspired jams of Two Cow Garage and Slobberbone, Red Collar’s working-class anthems, the folksy leanings of North Little Rock’s Adam Faucett and Oklahoma’s John Moreland, the catchy bar-band tunes of Glossary, the loose-limbed country rock of local faves Mulehead and the retro-country-influenced rock of John Paul Keith (see the handy-dandy graphic on Page 6E for the complete list of performers). There’s a little of something for everyone at the Hang Out.
“Last year, I said, ‘Let’s turn this into something that’s White Water-centric, something that is for our family and friends and bands we love, with musicians who are touring and also local musicians,’” Hill says while sipping beer during an interview on a recent evening at the White Water.
The sets on Friday and Saturday night will be mostly electric, with bands crowding onstage toward the end of each night for what will likely be boozy, covers-filled jam sessions. Sunday’s performances will be acoustic.
“It’s like getting drunk at a Christmas gathering, or a dysfunctional family reunion,” says Little Rock’s Kevin Kerby. A Hang Out veteran, Kerby’s most recent album is last year’s tremendous, stripped-down Apostle’s Tongues. He will pull double duty over the weekend, playing with his band Mulehead - which includes drummer Geoff Curran, guitarist Dave Raymond and bassist Brent LaBeau - on Saturday and performing an acoustic set Sunday.
The bands are a mixture of locals (along with Faucett and Kerby, Little Rock’s Bonnie Montgomery and Isaac Alexander will also appear) and national acts, and though some record for Hill’s Last Chance label, not all of them do.
Admission for Friday and Saturday is $25 each night. Sunday night’s admission is $5. Weekend passes for theHang Out are available at lastchancerecords.com for $60.
Passes include entry to each night’s shows, a VIP Poster, laminated pass, Holiday Hang Out koozie, White Water Tavern shot glass, physical tickets for each night, a stickers package and a digital recording of the shows.
BREAKFAST, BOOKS & BOOZE
Hill wanted the Hang Out to hook up with Mary Chamberlin’s Tree of Knowledge, an independent literature distribution project. Chamberlin had been manning the annual Breakfast, Books & Booze events at White Water.
Chamberlin went to work for White Water owners Matt White and Sean Hughes not long after they took over the bar in 2007, and “we had a lot of discussions about how much potential there was within the bar, a bar that was already a neighborhood institution with so much history,” she writes in an email interview from her job on tour selling merchandise for country rockers Lucero (whose Ben Nichols performs Saturday at the Hang Out).
Tree of Knowledge, she says, is not a brick-and-mortar outfit, but rather a side project of hers that “offers unique literature in nontraditional environments.”
She had been involved in pop-up book sales through Tree of Knowledge and thought that transforming the bar into a bookstore for a day selling independently published books, comics and ’zines while serving breakfast would be a perfect fit.
Apparently it was, because this year will be the seventh BB&B event.
The book sale, which begins at noon Sunday, is family friendly, Chamberlin says, and the fare, which will be served all afternoon, features a breakfast burrito bar created by White Water chef Michael Campbell with meat, vegetarian and vegan options as well as a Bloody Mary bar and desserts.
Kerby says he got a lot of his Christmas shopping done last year at Breakfast, Books & Booze.
Chamberlin says of last year’s event: “It was great. Not only was it a good way for Hang-Outers to nurse their hangovers, but they got to experience something truly unique to Little Rock and White Water, and the locals still got to enjoy the brunch, books and music and meet people from out of town that had traveled for the bands.” LAST CHANCE
Hill, 42, of Little Rock grew up in Ashdown and fell under the whole country-rock spellafter hearing Whiskeytown’s quietly beautiful 1997 album Stranger’s Almanac.
“I started coming to shows here after Matt and Sean took over,” he says. Soon, he was helping with booking shows. “Everybody that’s on my label is someone I saw here first that changed my life and I became an instant fan.”
And Hill, it should be noted, is no hipper-than-thou, label-owning wallflower in the shadows when it comes to shows. He’s usually right up front, a beer in one hand and screaming himself hoarse along with band. Flip back to the front page and take a look at the picture at the top. See the guy in the crowd with the black baseball cap and his left hand reaching toward honkytonk heaven? That’s Hill.
The independent, get-in-the-van, do-it-yourself community that has popped up around the White Water and the bands playing this weekend is what the Hang Out is all about, Hill says.
“I wanted it to be Last Chance, White Water, the Little Rock music community, independent publishing - everything that this place is about to us.”
Bespectacled and bearded singer-songwriter Faucett, whose next album will be released by Last Chance in February, believes that Little Rock has become a sort of gathering spot for these like-minded artists and fans from all over the country.
“It really is like this weird stop on [Interstate] 40 that embodies this larger region,” he says while seated next to Hill at the White Water. “It’s more than just the Arkansas thing, and that’s what I love about this bar and the label … it’s more about making our town a hub for this larger [musical] community.”
So what is it about this brand of rock, this barroom poetry set to guitar-and-drum-based tunes, that is so vital to Hill?
“The songwriting,” he says. “If the songwriting is not there, I don’t care what you layer on top of it. What separates a good band and a great band, to me, is the words and the songs. Adam’s music and Two Cow Garage’s music would be two different classifications if you were trying to put them on the radio … but if you put them both in a room with an acoustic guitar, it all boils down to [the power] of those songs.”
A strong artistic commitment is also a common thread, Faucett says, looking over a flier of the weekend’s lineup.
“There’s a high level of conviction that everybody shares here on this list,” he says. “Maybe not stylistically, but it seems that a lot of these people are [making music] because they have to, not just because they can, and that gives the audience and the performers a deeper connection.”
Holiday Hang Out 2013
WHERE: White Water Tavern, 2500 W. Seventh St., Little Rock,
whitewatertavern.com
ADMISSION: $25 each night, Friday-Saturday, $5 Sunday
acoustic sets. Advance tickets, $60,
lastchancerecords.com
WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday; Breakfast, Booze & Books
begins noon Sunday (no admission charge); music after
5 p.m.
FRIDAY, DEC. 6 Adam Faucett John Moreland Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires Glossary Two Cow GarageSATURDAY, DEC. 7 Mulehead Slobberbone Red Collar John Paul Keith Ben NicholsSUNDAY, DEC. 8 Bonnie Montgomery John Moreland JKutchma Kevin Kerby Isaac Alexander
Style, Pages 31 on 12/03/2013