PureHoney’s publisher talks Bumblefest Music Festival and the wonders and challenges of print ‘zines
September 13, 2016
This weekend, PureHoney, our favorite South Florida-based, independent, grassroots entertainment ‘zine, will celebrate its fifth anniversary with an expansion of its usual anniversary party into a full-fledged music festival: Bumblefest. PureHoney publisher Steve Rullman says he is taking the ‘zine’s usual anniversary to the “next level.” Instead of two stages there will be five. Instead one venue there are now four, and instead of 10 bands, there will be 24.
Posies’ Ken Stringfellow talks keeping busy and big — but tough — year with his old band
July 22, 2016
When we caught up with singer-songwriter multi-instrumentalist Ken Stringfellow he was as occupied as you might expect … even in a foreign land like Helsinki, Finland. Touring through town as part of the Marky Ramone’s Blitzkrieg tour, filling the spotlight for the late Joey Ramone, Stringfellow — who has also been a member of REM and Big Star, not to mention having founded the still active alternative rock band The Posies — also had time to visit a studio and record with a Finnish band.
Broncho frontman talks about how he comes up with those catchy tunes, plus more in PureHoney
November 2, 2015
As the end of the year looms, 2015 has yet to conjure a song more infections than the one I wrote about in August 2014 by BRONCHO, “Class Historian” (Broncho’s new single: the catchiest indie rock song I’ve heard in years). Jump through the title of the article to hear it for yourself. It’s a brilliant, post-punk-inspired bauble. If anyone can find a catchier song, I invite you to share a link to it in the comment section.
Since then, the Norman, Oklahoma band has been on a long on and off tour supporting its second album, Just Enough Hip to Be Woman. It’s an energetic, smartly constructed record of 11 songs rooted in the hooks and swagger of early-‘80s post-punk that’s only 32 minutes long. You can hear the entire album for yourself on the band’s soundcloud here:
BRONCHO features guitarist/vocalist Ryan Lindsey, guitarist Ben King, bassist Penny Hill, and drummer Nathan Price. I spoke to the band’s frontman via phone ahead of BRONCHO’s first South Florida appearance opening up for The Growlers at the Culture Room. Naturally, I had to ask him about the magic behind “Class Historian,” and how he writes his music, specifically where did that long stuttering hook in “Class Historian” come from?
“When I first started playing that song, probably the very first time I played it, I came up with the idea,” he reveals. “I was thinking that that would be an instrument playing that part, but when I play by myself, I vocalize a lot of parts, and it just kind of stuck. It made more sense, so I just kept singing it rather than finding something else to play it. A lot of times stuff will happen that way, whether it be vocally or if I’m thinking about putting a part somewhere, I’d just be singing it and that, lots of times, will just turn into a verse or something.”
So words and lyrics, therefore, are a bit secondary to melody and music for Lindsey. Lindsey says they come to him from spontaneous moments of melodies popping into his head. He also finds words and their structure by following the music. “Lyrically, I’ll come up with ideas through singing through songs,” he says. “There’ll be a word that makes sense with the rhythm of the song, and then I’ll try to build the rest of it off of that, and then we kind of fill the blanks during the recording, try to figure out the rest and make sense of it.”
With “Class Historian,” I made a big deal in last year’s post of Lindsey’s phrasing and how he chooses to reinvent the accents of parts of words. Particularly the way he extends the first syllable of the word “historian” and rushes the rest of it, sort of nonchalantly tossing the word off. “I think you can get away with simple stuff,” he muses. “If you mess around with the really simple things and chop ’em up, I think, for one, it feels good rhythmically, and it adds a little rhythm to an otherwise really simple part. I think mixing that in as much as possible feels better to me. It’s more something I would want to sing and more something I would want to hear.”
When it comes to finding the words, he credits guitarist Ben King for helping out. “I’ll basically bring a chunk of ideas that I have, and on the last record Ben really helped me fill in the gaps … he wrote a bunch of lines, too, so most of the time it’s Ben and I working on the lyrics. As far as the band goes, it’s kind of a mix, but Ben’s a great person to work with on lyrics. He’s the only guy in the band with a degree,” Lindsey adds with a laugh.
Lindsey was at a recording studio in the band’s hometown, while taking a break from touring, when we spoke. Asked if he is writing while on tour, he replies, “Kind of. It happens sometimes on tour or when I’m home. If an idea comes to me, I’ll start singing. I’ll sing it in my head for a while and sometimes play it randomly. I’ll just think about it and come up with a lot of ideas prior to playing through it, and then I’ll start playing through stuff and see what makes sense. It’s pretty casual, really. Sitting down and like really saying, ‘I need to write a song,’ it sounds really stressful to do that.”
During the band’s tour for its first album, Can’t Get Past the Lips (2011), the group mixed in several new songs that wound up on its 2014 album. Lindsey sounds a bit surprised at himself when he admits that none of BRONCHO’s new material has appeared on its current set lists. “For the last record we played a pretty good chunk of the songs live for a while,” he says. “We played ‘Kurt’ and ‘It’s On’ for a long time and then ‘Class Historian’ we played for a while before we recorded it.”
He says the band’s current tour has felt so breakneck, it has even disoriented Lindsey’s sense of time. The last album is over a year old at this point, and the touring has been unrelenting for band members. Dates recently included festival appearances at SXSW and the Firefly Music Festival in Denver, among others. “It’s been a real blur,” admits Lindsey. “Like I just ran into a friend last night, and I hadn’t seen him since January, but I thought I saw him like a month ago,” he says with a laugh, “so it’s all a blur. It’s like a dream state.”
* * *
For PureHoney Magazine, I wrote about the band’s evolution in its sound between this record and its 2011 debut, which had a rawer, garage rock sound. Lindsey and I also spoke about the song “Deena,” another wry cut that speaks to the band’s post-punk influence. He was real happy to talk about that song, which you will hear and be able to download as an mp3 for a limited time when you jump through the image below. He told me, “It’s nice hearing people talk about ‘Deena’ because I don’t hear very many people bringing that song up, but that was one of my favorite songs on the record.” You can check that out by jumping through the PureHoney logo below:
BRONCHO and The Growlers are touring Florida right now. They will be in our South Florida area this Tuesday, Nov. 3. BRONCHO will play an in-store performance at Radio-Active Records in Fort Lauderdale for free (plus free pizza) at 5 p.m. that day (details). Then they warm up the stage for The Growlers at The Culture Room, whose doors open at 7 p.m. (tickets here). The tour continues northbound, the following day, in Orlando (visit the band’s website for all dates, which continue through Nov. 21 in California). Photo of BRONCHO by Rozette Rago, provided by the band.
(Copyright 2015 by Hans Morgenstern. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.)
Despite what you may have seen at last night’s MTV Music Video Awards, classic rock ‘n’ roll is not going to ever go away. As this veteran music writer grows older, every year there seems to be some group of younger and younger musicians who come up with new music that harkens back to the roots of rock. Last week, I pointed out Broncho, a band from Norman, Oklahoma, who have come up with one of the catchiest tunes of 2014. Their song “Class Historian” hits on the tiniest details of ‘70s era post punk with an uncanny sensibility (Broncho’s new single: the catchiest indie rock song I’ve heard in years).
Tomorrow, Ty Segall will release his 12th full-length album, Manipulator. Over the past few years Segall has refined his garage rock noise-pop to feature more diversity in his song-writing and a stronger grip on the subtleties of the rock song. Opening like nothing else in his catalog: with a blare of harmonizing organs, the album bounds along through 17 tracks as varied as anything else in his career. Some even include strings. But he has not compromised his command of the electric guitar, offering many a shifty, screeching solo over the course of the sprawling, near hour-long LP (and double vinyl – order here to support IndieEthos).
“The Singer” is one of several tracks that feature a string section. It also has the added bonus of whispered vocals to add emphasis to a few words that end certain phrases — very ‘60s psychedelic. But, more than ever, the influences that shine brightest are that of the early ‘70s glam rock scene. Segall’s voice more than ever recalls Marc Bolan, and there’s even a song (“The Clock”) that features strings and an acoustic guitar line that sounds eerily like the one that drives “Andy Warhol,” a deep cut on Bowie’s classic 1971 album Hunky Dory.
A back-to-back trio of songs early in Manipulator cast a powerful shadow of the guitar crunch bravura Segall is best known for over the album. “It’s Over,” features the pounding, driving, feedback-fueled stuff fans would be more familiar with.
“Feel” opens more subtly but eventually features a muscular guitar solo that builds and builds to more rapid plucking until it gives way to a drum solo featuring a nice amount of cowbell. Finally, “Faker” features dominating, strutting guitar work that stands as testament to Segall’s connection with the instrument.
But there are more surprises in store. “The Connection Man” is driven by pulsing archaic electronics that brings to mind the tools of the Silver Apples. Over all, Manipulator is one grand rallying cry celebrating the immortality of rock ‘n’ roll, produced with great affection with his stalwart collaborators Mikal Cronin (bass), Emily Rose Epstein (drums) and Charles Moothart (guitar) and several other guest musicians adding vocals, keyboards and strings. Manipulator speaks to Segall’s strength of a musician open to growth and experimentation without betraying any semblance of a signature style and could very well stand as his best album yet. I’ll leave you with a link to an mp3 of a preview track released a few weeks ago, “Susie Thumb” (jump to KEXP.org for it).
Ty Segall will be in Miami with Wand (Drag City/LA), Plastic Pinks and DJ Sean Ashworth on Thursday, Sept. 11, 9 p.m. at The Stage Miami courtesy of Miami’s coolest vinyl shop Sweat Records, where you can also pick up the record and tickets to the show. Ages: 18 and up. Tickets: $12 in advance, $15 at the door. His U.S. tour kicks off Aug. 28 Click here for tour dates. Pitch Perfect PR provided me with a preview of the album for the purpose of this review and an up-coming article in “Pure Honey” magazine.
‘Little Haiti Rock City’ to explore the legacy of Churchill’s Pub in Miami… if Kickstarter can help
June 25, 2014
It’s not often that I promote a project’s Kickstarter campaign, but there’s no denying my personal connection to the subject of Little Haiti Rock City (here’s a link to the campaign). Though I hardly know the filmmakers, director Franco Parente and producer Angel Eva Markoulis certainly share my sentiments for the bar in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami called Churchill’s Hideaway, which was once run by British ex-pat Dave Daniels.
Daniels, a former pal of the famed BBC DJ John Peel, could certainly be considered one of the original Miami hipsters. His anything-goes attitude to the musicians he allowed on stage even allowed me to get on stage to lash at guitars and sing with the preeminent local noise band the Laundry Room Squelchers, who have long had residence on Thursday nights at the bar. The group’s founder, the legendary Frank “Rat Bastard” Fallestra, was always happiest when the din produced made people leave the bar. That Daniels could not only allow that but continue to invite Rat back over, night after night for literally decades, speaks to the kind of man Daniels is.
Daniels (left) with Rat.
Churchill’s has not only incubated the likes of artists like Rat but also musicians like Sam Beam of Iron and Wine (who I first discovered there). Interpol’s drummer, Sam Fogarino, reunited with his old mates in the Holy Terrors a few years ago after an Interpol show (it was the better show that night). Now, after 35 years of ownership, Daniels has sold the bar, and I could hardly avoid the howl of protest from many local musician friends (this show happened, and it was one for the ages). Of course, the local musicians and fans have been only understanding, but they also harbor a bit of dread that the place will just never be the same.
Parente also has that same feeling. He has already spent much time with Daniels since he started shooting footage for his documentary on a bar that he considers Miami’s equivalent to New York’s CBGB. “I’d like to think it’s about the legacy that Dave built or rather allowed to build itself. What most people don’t see is the community of artists, musicians and just regular people that have coexisted within that space in Little Haiti.”
“The story we’re telling of Churchill’s wouldn’t exist were it not for him since it just wouldn’t be the same,” adds Markoulis.
Local musician Steven Toth, a.k.a. Mr. Entertainment, who put together the tribute show “For the Good of Music/A Night for Dave Daniels,” epitomizes the many local artists who would have never found their voice were in not for Daniels’ openness. “Well, Dave has been like the coolest uncle ever, and we aren’t related,” he says. “He gave me and my band a chance when we may not have even been good enough. He encouraged us to play, always told me how much he loved my street performing, and pretty much never said no to any of my crazy ideas. What Dave gave to us was freedom and a home all in one.”
During his interviews with Daniels, Parente found some insight into what motivated Daniels to open his stage to pretty much anyone with an instrument of some kind. “I think it’s been his interest all along to watch people flourish and shed the armor,” he says of Daniels. “I know he’s a businessman and always has been, but he’s a businessman with a heart, and that’s a dying breed.”
The idea of the dying breed is also part of the urgency that motivated Parente to begin work on this documentary before he had all the funds necessary to complete the film. Now, he and Markoulis have taken to Kickstarter to finish their work. “It’s a monumental task to raise this much money with smaller donations, as opposed to large investors bankrolling it,” admits Markoulis. But she also offers a perspective that will make it easily feasible. “If everyone who stumbles upon our project page pledged the cost of going to the movies, we’d have our funding and be able to preserve a piece of music history.”
As of the publication of this post, they are halfway to the $79,000 required to continue their work, but they only have eight days to go. Markoulis says if everything goes as planned, they could have their film completed by next year. They also hope to get the new owners on the record, even though the filmmakers admit some of these owners have chosen not to reveal their identities, which goes to show just how intimidating it is to be seen as a replacement for Daniels. “We are in the process of setting up an interview,” notes Parente, “but it’s a transitional period and direct access to the new owners has not been easy to come by. They’re not sitting at the end of the bar sipping on cider like Dave did for so long.”
“We would really love to include them in the documentary and the future of Churchill’s Pub,” adds Markoulis. “Hopefully they will be willing to sit down for an interview with us.”
Despite the doubts that seem to haunt the new ownership by many, both filmmakers remain optimistic about them. “We stand by them and hope that they make positive changes to the place and that we as a community can have Churchill’s here forever,” Parente states. “The reason we are making this film is not to preserve the building, but what Dave and his way of doing things have allowed to go on and came from that building.”
You can read much more about the film, including more specifics about how the filmmakers plan to use the Kickstarter funds, by jumping though the image below to this article I wrote for Pure Honey, earlier this month:
If you live in South Florida, one of the best ways to experience this venue while supporting this film is by checking out a show this Saturday, June 28 (here’s the Facebook event page to join). There’s a $10 cover and all proceeds go towards the Little Haiti Rock City Kickstarter campaign. Bands slated to appear include:
-The PawnsShop Drunks
-Humbert
-Charlie Pickett
-Shark Dust Sisters (featuring members of Load, The Holy Terrors & Quit. Plus special guests)
-The Tremends
-Fulltime, MotherFucker!
-Rat Bastard
-Mr. Entertainment (playing the sidewalk, like the old days)
Remember, even if you are not in Miami, you can donate. Once again, here’s the link:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/littlehaitirockcity
Brontis Jodorowsky on the psychomagic of ‘Dance of Reality,’ training for ‘Dune’ and a future with director of ‘Táu’
June 13, 2014
The way Brontis Jodorowsky explains it, his father’s new film, The Dance of Reality, is much more than a cinematic adaptation of the memoir of the same name. After all, his father, Alejandro Jodorowsky, is the man behind “Psicomagia” (Psychomagic), a form of therapy through art. His memoir, published in Spanish in 2001, stands as an example of that. Though it features cruel stories of abuse the director suffered as a child, it is less a fact-based memoir and more an “imagined autobiography” that becomes a sort of redemption for his family.
Speaking via Skype from his home in Paris, Brontis, who in the film plays the role of Jaime Jodorowsky, the grandfather largely responsible for the traumatic upbringing of his father, offers insight into the film and the purpose of it as mystical therapeutic device. He speaks soothingly and builds on his statements explaining the psychomagic behind the film. “I have my father, the public figure that you know. He’s my father. But I also have another father that is the private man, and I also have another father, which is the archetype of the father inside of me that is built up with Jaime, Alejandro and also with me being a father. So there’s a father figure composed by different experiences, and inside this father figure, we have this very negative part, character, father figure, that’s only negative. That was Jaime, my grandfather. So by doing this process of remaking the story and giving him a chance through the movie to humanize, to take off the costume of the domestic tyrant and open his heart, we transform a negative part of the father archetype in our family story into a character that is not a saint but has a different aspect and that can change, you see, that can progress. A heart can be opened, so the father figure in our family tree, genealogy, changes, so we’re transmitting to our children and grandchildren another vision of what the father is.”
The bond between Alejandro Jodorowsky and his son is profound. It comes out beautifully in this new film, the director’s first feature in 23 years. It also comes out in a documentary about the director’s efforts to adapt Frank Herbert’s Dune as a movie. Jodorowsky’s Dune captures one particularly raw moment where the elder 
Jodorowsky seems still a bit haunted by the fact he had his the 12-year-old son train for years to prepare for the part of Paul Atreides, yet the film was never shot (Brontis calls this an example of a “private message” from his father). Brontis looks on the bright side. “Yeah, well, you know, what I acquired during those two years of training was so useful afterwards in my actor’s life, especially all the [physical] training part because that taught my body to learn, which is the most important thing that you can learn: is how to learn, so afterwards, when I went to do theater, I always worked in a very physical type of theater. My body was always involved, but I had a trained body that could learn … It was not a waste of time.”
Jodorowsky’s cinematic version of Dune would have been the first ever attempt to adapt the 1965 novel. Though Jodorowsky made great efforts to gather collaborators like H.R. Giger, Orson Welles, David Carradine and Pink Floyd as just some of his “creative warriors,” every Hollywood studio he presented his grand treatment, which included the script by Dan O’Bannon, storyboards by comic book artist Moebius and lots of detailed concept art by Giger and and Alex Ross, they balked at his ambition, which included no fixed limit to the film’s runtime. “They were afraid of him,” says Brontis, “of his personality, so it wasn’t a problem that it was two hours, three hours or five or 10. How long is Star Wars? Too long, much too long.”
Brontis continues, noting that there was also a fundamental cultural conflict between the source of Jodorowsky’s unrestrained creativity and Hollywood’s bottom-dollar attitude. “Also, I think this is an American thing, that Americans don’t want the success to come from outside, so I think that in a way, they saw the project, but I can’t be sure of this, maybe it was just paranoia, in a way, 
I sense they saw the project, and I think they saw that, wow, maybe that would be a kind of future for movies, and they said, well, why give it to him? Let’s take the ideas and do it ourselves. Instead of doing one movie, we’re going to do this, that and that … I think it’s part of the movie industry’s history. It’s a world of artists and crooks at the same time, of people who dream wonderful things and big bank accounts both at the same time,” he says with a laugh.
Despite all that, the future has been good to the Jodorowsky family, and you will be hard pressed to find a creative clan with a more positive and creative drive, fulfilled with their place in the universe. Brontis has mostly worked in theater, but only recently returned to cinema. In 2012, he acted in Táu, a film shot in the same Mexican desert where his father shot El Topo, in which the younger Jodorowsky made his acting debut alongside his father. With Táu, under the direction of Daniel Castro Zimbrón, for the first time in his life, Brontis took the lead role in a movie. The collaboration went so well, they plan to begin a second film together, later this year. “Now we’re going to do another one that we start shooting in November or December that’s called the Darkness,” he reveals. He notes that it has already been work-shopped at Morelia, Toulouse and most recently at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
During his visit to the Miami Beach Cinematheque, he will introduce Táu at a rare U.S. screening, as the film was never picked up for distribution in the United States. Then it’s on to Speaking In Cinema, an hour-long chat with “Village Voice” film critic Michael Atkinson and “Miami Herald” film critic Rene Rodriguez , who both wrote their own positive reviews of The Dance of Reality (click on their names to read their articles).
It will be interesting to watch how the critics work with Jodorowsky, who says he is looking for having a little more time to deal with questions for Dance than usual screenings allow. “I’ve done quite a few festivals now, and there’s always a Q&A,” says Brontis, “but sometimes it’s just 20 minutes, so I just have time to answer one question.
There is much more with both Jodorowskys in other articles I’ve written. The titles of the articles below are hot links where you can read more (except for Alejandro’s quotes, no quotes overlap):
Brontis Jodorowsky to Speak in Miami Beach: “Miami Must Have Some Rock ‘n Roll”
Pure Honey Film Bits: Jodorowsky
Alejandro Jodorowsky replies to my questions via email, Part 2 – Spanish version
Alejandro Jodorowsky on Dune Documentary: “There’s Nothing Crazy About a 14-Hour Film”
Legendary Director Alejandro Jodorowsky on The Dance of Reality, Dune, and Fatherhood
The of course, there are the reviews:
Jodorowsky heals psychic wounds with fabulist recreation of childhood in ‘Dance of Reality’
Film Review: ‘Jodorowsky’s Dune’ celebrates the creativity necessary to do justice in sci-fi cinema
This interview was done to coincide with this weekend’s second installment of “Speaking In Cinema.” Both Jodorowsky’s Dune and The Dance of Reality are now playing at the Miami Beach Cinematheque, which is hosting the event. Brontis Jodorowsky will present The Dance of Reality in person on June 14. On June 15, he will also introduce Jodorowsky’s Dune and Táu. On Tuesday, June 17, at 7 p.m., Brontis will join “Village Voice” film critic Michael Atkinson and “Miami Herald” film critic Rene Rodriguez for the Knight Foundation-sponsored series “Speaking In Cinema” to discuss this film and other works by Jodorowsky. A meet-and-greet party at the Sagamore Hotel ends the night. Tickets for each screening and the event can be found by visiting the calendar page of mbcinema.com.
More music on the Independent Ethos, you say? Well, every month, “Purehoney Magazine,” which I also contribute to, puts together a compilation of alternative indie rock that includes free downloads and steamable tracks from artists around the world. They’ve granted us permission to share the latest comp here. This month’s compilation features The Casket Girls, Painted Palms, Nightmare Boyzzz, and The Sh-Booms, among others. Stream it below:
Independent Ethos 