Lorenzo Music

Despite grumblings about the supposedly long lost Madison music scene, new and talented bands keep rising up as if nothing had ever burned or closed down. The better ones, like anywhere else, are those that seem to defy easy categorization. You hear a hint of this and a reference to that, but you can’t pin the group down. Such is the case with Lorenzo Music.

At the core are two musicians who have experienced the changing musical tides here between the lakes. Tod Schwenn spent a good amount of time in Rapscallion during the late-80s and early-90s, around the same time Tom Ray was in Fallacy. After those bands broke up, the two decided to start jamming and writing together. The songs came together so well that they decided to form a permanent band and, after finding the right musicians, did their first gig in March of 1996.

Lorenzo Music explores many areas of sound, going from keyboard- driven, Doors-like jams to lounge swings to power guitars in a single song. The key is that they do it gracefully, at times almost unnoticeably. Most of the keyboards are done on a vintage Rhodes electric piano that Ray bought for $150 when such instruments were out of style. Schwenn supplies the guitar and the two share the vocal work. Every musician in this band has experience: second guitarist Brandon Krueger was in Peep Show, bassist Mark Whitcomb played in Insanity A.D., Carl and Swiggo, and drummer Scott Beardsley also gigged with Swiggo as well as Mindox (which also featured Buddo of Magic 7 & Last Crack).

Read More...

The Reptile Palace Orchestra

The sign on the door read, “REPTILE PALACE ORCHESTRA appearing every weekend this month. Please come and enjoy their eclectic mix of traditional and original world music that rocks. Elvis + Armenia + Funkadelic + Bulgaria = RPO.”

I didn’t recognize the band name, but I decided to check it out anyway. They were already on-stage. Dancers grouped in front of the stage as the band launched into their next number, which the lovely lady singing, announced as “Kochari.” The dance floor came alive as body parts were swung to and fro. More numbers followed fusing world music and ethnic styles. One song was in Spanish, the next from Bulgaria, then another in Armenian. Then Turkish, Finnish, English, Italian, Greek, and occasionally a song in a gypsy dialect. As the band played on, I tracked down a bartender and asked him to tell me more about the band.

Read More...

She Might Have A Gun

My dog Zeus always sits in the same room as me when I write.  He is my barometer to gauge the intensity of music.  Although my Michigan Shepherd didn’t run out of the room like his ass was on fire like he did when I wrote about “Kill Switch…Klick,” he did become highly agitated and restless when I put on the She Might Have a Gun CD, Live Drugs. In fact, I haven’t seen him this distraught since I fed him leftover Sloppy Joes last summer.

Rising out of the debris like bum in Tenny Park on a Sunday afternoon, She Might Have a Gun is the end product of too many Madison bands [Magic Seven, Horizon 90, Last Crack, Autumn’s Dance, One Day War, Breath of Life, The Lotus Band, Krash Holiday].  Curiously, much like Green River/Mother Love Bone/Pearl Jam a decade before them.

Formed in the summer of 98, by Trinity James Mellon and Jamison Downing after they both found themselves without a band. Scraping together other musicians to fill the hole, She Might Have a Gun was born. Dispensing with all regards to the current trends, She Might Have a Gun blazes it’s own way, distributing its sonic barrage with tribal abandonment.  She Might Have a Gun’s music bites you in the ass like a beer soaked squirrel in your sleeping bag. The band consists of Jamison Downing and Noah Rickun on guitars, Trinity Mellon on vocals, Chin on bass, Hooch on congas and poetry and the multi-talented and infamous Buddo on drums. I spoke with the band while they were trying to decide what limo company to hire for their next show.

Read More...

The Siegel-Schwall Band

The Siegel-Schwall Band first emerged in 1966 on Vanguard Records in the height of the Summer Of Love blues boomlet. Young Corky & Jim were students of the Chicago Blues and could be found cutting their chops in the Windy City’s clubs with legends like Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and Hubert Sumlin on an average Thursday evening. Siegel-Schwall released nine studio albums and collaborated with conductor Seiji Ozawa and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra before parting ways in 1974. Their traditional routine of yearly reunion shows since their 1988 Reunion Concert album on Alligator Records has finally been broken, and the group has released Flash Forward, their first studio record in 32 years featuring all originals, and their most polished effort to date. Maximum Ink spoke with Jim Schwall and drummer Sam Lay about what lies ahead for them.

Originally starting out as a duo for small club gigs, Jim would play guitar, Corky would play piano, harp, and percussion, and they both would sing. A rotating rhythm section was added when bookings for larger gigs became standard. When they were signed to Vanguard Records, Siegel-Schwall released four records: The Siegel-Schwall Band, Say Siegel-Schwall, Shake and Siegel-Schwall 70. The group moved to RCA/Wooden Nickel in 1971 and released Sleepy Hollow, 953 West, Last Summer and the aptly titled R.I.P. before breaking up in 1974. Siegel went on to pursue a solo career intertwined with a fusion of classical music and blues and Jim Schwall earned a PhD in Music.

Read More...

Tormentula

“Whorrorcore,” was the reply that I got from Tormentula drummer / vocalist Alice Bludgeon when I asked her to describe Tormentula’s music. I’ve wanted to do a story on Tormentula ever since their CD, Submit You Unworthy Soul, came out last summer. Not a pretty record and occasionally not easy to listen to, but nonetheless a superior record of enraged estrogen recorded for all of the world to hear and one of the best hard rock CD’s to come out of Wisconsin. So impressive is Submit Your Unworthy Soul, that the CD was stolen from my office while I was setting up this article.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from these women with faces made up better than KISS, playing music to stomp gonads to. What I did find was an intelligent and articulate woman (drummer / vocalist Alice Bludgeon) whose love for rock and roll music is as passionate as Angus Young. “I think that music should be challenging to the musician and to the listener,” said Bludgeon.

Read More...

The Electric Hellfire Club

“My motto is “Failure to evolve is exactly that, failure.” If I sounded the same that I sounded in ‘93, then I fucked up somewhere along the line. The intention of the band was not to create a formula and make a million dollars. The intention of the band was JUST to make music,” states Thomas Thorn, lead singer and founding member of the infamous Electric Hellfire Club.

Electronomicon is the fifth full-length release from Satan’s little helpers, and is certainly no failure. In fact, it is their most ambitious and best sounding album to date. Part of the genius lies in the fact that it was recorded at the famed Abyss Studios in Sweden, and produced and engineered by Tommy Tagtgren. EHC was the first American band to ever record there, (and may be the last, as studio owner Peter Tagtgren has decided to close the studio.)

Read More...

Magic 7

What’s so magical about Magic 7? It depends who you ask. For fans of Last Crack it’s the first time writing duo of Paul Schluter and Buddo have worked together in more that five years. For the former member’s of Madison’s best known hardrock outfit, it’s an opportunity to put the past behind and focus on the present.

“This wasn’t pieced together just to get all of the members of Last Crack, except for the drummer, together in another band,” said guitarist and principal songwriter Paul Schluter in a recent interview. “We’ve all worked together before, we’re in each other’s heads and it’s a great starting point, but I think the thing that makes this band special is that we’re relying on mostly new music. Last Crack was fun for us, but it was in the past. What makes this band worth being around is that it’s a whole new style of music for us, a lot mellower at times, a lot more melodic, a lot more mature, and at times completely different sounding.”

Read More...