Tangents with Johnny Headband, (pre-)-Party Night: Power, Performance, Sound, Fury, all of that…

I want to tell you something, something heartfelt, something potentially cheesy-sounding, about the power of music. Particularly the power of live music.

Or maybe just the power of musicians’ firing on all cylinders.

The power of Johnny Headband.

See… Whenever I think of the Blind Pig… it’s not the smoke of the 8 Ball Saloon, the smell of popcorn or the awkward, self-consciousness of seeing myself all aloof in dual-mirrors beside the stage…

I think of Johnny Headband.

The band isn’t even from Ann Arbor, no, the quartet’s mostly settled around Detroit and it’s not even that they play the Blind Pig that often, nay, in fact, they don’t get around to playing out live that often anywhere, lately.

But one show. One show, man. Not even necessarily every show, but there was just this one show… Every cylinder, every move, every note, hit me, blew me down, and burned right into my being… I won’t go on as to how, cuz it’s a ya had to be there kinda thing…

The reason I’m telling you this is that Johnny Headband are the kind of band who are very aware of this power…And they aim to capture it at every show, with every move, every note…every freakin cylinder, firing.

Johnny Headband kartwheel through a range of provocative styles – from funk, to space-rock, to ambient head-swimming dream pop balladry; disco gets the grimace of rock n roll and synth-pop gets blown out by feedback; sunflower-indie-waltzes are surged by the motorik-beat of some Krautrock-coopted new techno trip.

It’s a strange sort of sonic charm – they want to create their own field of gravity on that stage and make sure you’re in their orbit.

Such that it is – they, though they won’t be at the Blind Pig, they will return, finally, to Ann Arbor on February 10^th – to Arbor Vitae, alongside Lightning Love, Charlie Slick and Timothy Monger. What a line up… folk, pop, and new weird funk, all inside this unique space, above Wazoo Records. (336 ½ State Street).

Monger had a record out last summer – Slick put his out in November – and now Lightning Love’s celebrating an EP release while Johnny Headband look forward to the release of their LP Who Cooks For You, this April.

video:

Johnny Headband – Over There from Johnny Headband on Vimeo.

Singer/keyboardist Chad Thompson quips a self-deprecating promise to “play more shows this year than the past three-combined!” The hits understandable downtimes when their bassist (and Chad’s brother) Keith, tours with the Electric Six… or when their guitarist, Pan!c, is working with Detroit based electronica-group Lettercamp… or if their drummer, RGS, has to drive in from his homebase of Kalamazoo.

Who Cooks For You has been, mostly, ready since Thanksgiving. “We’re taking a What About Bob approach,” said Chad, “…baby-steps…baby steps to the bathroom…baby-steps…”

“Not being able to control the future sometimes results in not wanting to start,” said Chad, a full time media producer/editor and sound engineer. “You sit day after day somewhere, becoming a person that doesn’t resemble what you feel you are and slowly you start to believe that ‘this is what life is…’ or, ‘I guess I have to get used to this…” and you stop doing the things that gave you emotional and physical strength.”

“…so…you eat Thai food. You focus on survival and basic needs, like cell phones and Netflix… Who Cooks For You is the result of spending nights and weekends squeezing the last bit of enegery into something that, at times, felt meaningless…only in that, there seemed to be no point to making music in a life that had no time for it… If only the time spent doing something you loved was when most of your creative energy was gone…there seems to be no point.”

But a point presents itself, there becomes a point…

All that up there, the airings of a worn but satisfied soul, a soul that’s spent hours in his studio with his closest musical collaborators, all that’s part of the process. “Mind games, self-doubt, belief-again, then more doubt, plateaus…breakthroughs…”

“As time goes on, there becomes a point…”