SMASHIN' TRANSISTORS: JOHN WESLEY COLEMAN "Summer Of '79" 7inch EP: It's always the quiet ones ya gotta watch out for, huh? Wes is a man of, well maybe saying of few words is not 100% exactly the description I am thinking but his words are well chosen & soft spoken and add a bit to any conversation but he never has to overstate himself. He's the kind of guy who you find yourself standing around a late night fire with, enjoying some burgers on seared on a grill manned by a bandmate and talk about things like living and losing and fishing and rocking for hours while passing around a bottle of bourbon. As a member of the Golden Boys, he's quite the opposite of off stages impressions as he, closed eyes and wearing his heart on his sleeve bloody cuffs and all, shows he can croon a weeper about pickling your soul in alcohol is one way to ease the pain as well as he can scream through a tornado of chicken scratching feedback and bashing drums. On this solo undertaking he uses a little and makes a whole lotta commotion. Slippery sliding guitar moans, an organ liberated from a roller rink with it's floorboards dry rotted from spilled cherry Cokes and rat piss and tin can drums get in a free for all rumble of 70's glam pop and deepwoods trash bop on the "Summer of '79" with Wes chewing on the question 'Why ya be the Rolling Stones/Do you think that is rock-n-roll". Theme park tail chasing meets teen tragedy when the Wooo-Oo-Oo-Oo's come in. Next, "Work Today" comes crashing in sorta outta tune and off rhythm with a undulating Black Lips take a stab at a Byrds "8 Miles High" raga run wiggles in and out at proper moments.
The b-sides "Intro" it's as if the same organ that was acquired on "Summer Of 79" fell off the back of an old Dodge truck en route from a session on an 1940's radio soap opera to a storefront church with a congregation of wino's who don't really pay attention to the preaching Wesley's doing (but will hang out for the heated room and free cookies). He then sends them back out to the sidewalk though when he turns it up again and starts speaking in the rock-n-roll tongues of "Goodbye Little Queenie", a demon exorcising mash up of what side one offers up along with a little bit more hot sauce.
http://www.boomchickrecords.com/
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
2008 interview with Sean O'Neal of AV Club
In John Wesley Coleman’s world, lots of things are broken. Today it’s his phone, cut off due to non-payment, and the expired tags on his car, which just netted a hefty ticket and has him worried about driving downtown for an interview. Coleman explains his predicament from a borrowed landline, offering an invite to his East Side home instead. There, everything is in shambles—a heap of records, videotapes, newspapers, notepads, half-read books, and bills blanketing every surface—and Coleman makes a futile effort at tidying up, apologizing for his busted eyeglasses, smashed on a recent tour with Coleman’s psych-country outfit Golden Boys. “The Spider Bags’ singer accidentally hit me in the face with his guitar,” Coleman explains with his characteristic laugh: a beery chuckle that says, “Whaddayagonnado?” It’s just one more broken thing in a life full of them.
But then, Coleman is cool with disrepair: A self-described “mechanic of popular culture,” the 32-year-old’s art is defined by its rough assembly, not to mention its fascination with squalor. Coleman even calls himself a “trash poet”—though he dislikes the term “poet” as much as he hates “singer-songwriter” (“It reminds me of all the cottage cheese floating around Sixth Street”)—a sobriquet that best describes his recent release on Monofonus Press, American Trashcan. The combination poetry book and CD (subtitled The Collected Trashy Recordings Of John Wesley Coleman) filters Austin through a gutter-eyed view that could make Bukowski blush. Written while living in a particularly seedy patch of Chicon, Trashcan celebrates a world populated by hopheads, hookers, and homeless schizophrenics, littered with beer bottles and smeared with shit. “It’s all stuff I thought about while waiting at the bus stop,” Coleman says. “Prostitutes and cats and basketball. Cops, rock ’n’ roll, movies. Things people do on drugs and alcohol. Fighting.”
But rather than impart redeeming social messages, Coleman’s instinct is to amuse: The autobiographical poem “X Spot” rehashes the time his dog ate the “sweet offerings” from a “crack addict’s ass” before kissing him on the lips—“so I went to Spider House and dunked my head in some sanitizer that’s supposed to kill AIDS.” The songs walk on the wild side too, alternating between a ghetto-glam strut recalling Coney Island Baby-era Lou Reed and the go-for-broke spirit of early Pavement. Lyrically, Coleman cites inspiration from balladeers like Townes Van Zandt, Scott Walker, and Woody Guthrie (“Two chords and hundreds of stories”), and refers to Lee Hazelwood chiding Leonard Cohen for “writing songs to get women, as opposed to writing songs for women to get.” Similarly, Coleman isn’t writing with fame, fortune, or females in mind: “I just like entertaining people, whether it’s with a broomstick or a drum or a movie or a good story.”
“When I was really young, I used to watch Michael Jackson videos and try to imitate him,” he says. “My family used to pay me to do performances in the yard, so I’d put on a record and jump around. I grew up around a piano, which I didn’t know how to play, so I’d make up my own compositions.” That moxie matured when, during teen years defined by punk and skateboarding, Coleman took up guitar at 14 (“I didn’t know how to tune it until I was 17”) and started creating bands because “I can write songs better than I can cover them.” (Though he has one renowned remake: A “totally fucked-up” version of George Michael’s “Faith,” just released as a 7-inch.) Since then, Coleman has maintained an intimidating creative output: Besides performing solo and with Golden Boys, he’s plotted several more books, experimented with stand-up comedy (“I get drunk and show up with zero material”), produced a “nest” of paintings, and scripted a film about a homeless songwriter, loosely based on local legend Blaze Foley. “I finally saw Last Night At The Alamo and decided it was time for me to do something like that,” he says with a shrug.
Fitting, since if Coleman resembles anyone, it’s those shaggy-dog dreamers of Eagle Pennell’s films—unflappable folks jerry-rigging big ideas from little scraps, like the notes that Coleman is always jotting down. Those scraps have created a life where “I don’t really have dry spells,” and in addition to his considerable ongoing projects, Coleman also has an upcoming Golden Boys release and European tour, a job recording bands for Monofonus, and even the Pennell-esque scheme to “walk in with a brown suit and briefcase and sell a fried chicken jingle.” Yet such larks aside, Coleman’s not looking to “sell out”—even if it means paying that phone bill.
“I got my guitar. It’s not in the pawnshop,” Coleman says, breaking out that laugh again. “Got books, got my friends, I got my dog. Things are good.” Even when it seems like everything’s broken, Coleman’s happy just to rearrange the pieces.
http://www.avclub.com/austin/articles/one-mans-treasure-john-wesley-coleman-iii,524/
But then, Coleman is cool with disrepair: A self-described “mechanic of popular culture,” the 32-year-old’s art is defined by its rough assembly, not to mention its fascination with squalor. Coleman even calls himself a “trash poet”—though he dislikes the term “poet” as much as he hates “singer-songwriter” (“It reminds me of all the cottage cheese floating around Sixth Street”)—a sobriquet that best describes his recent release on Monofonus Press, American Trashcan. The combination poetry book and CD (subtitled The Collected Trashy Recordings Of John Wesley Coleman) filters Austin through a gutter-eyed view that could make Bukowski blush. Written while living in a particularly seedy patch of Chicon, Trashcan celebrates a world populated by hopheads, hookers, and homeless schizophrenics, littered with beer bottles and smeared with shit. “It’s all stuff I thought about while waiting at the bus stop,” Coleman says. “Prostitutes and cats and basketball. Cops, rock ’n’ roll, movies. Things people do on drugs and alcohol. Fighting.”
But rather than impart redeeming social messages, Coleman’s instinct is to amuse: The autobiographical poem “X Spot” rehashes the time his dog ate the “sweet offerings” from a “crack addict’s ass” before kissing him on the lips—“so I went to Spider House and dunked my head in some sanitizer that’s supposed to kill AIDS.” The songs walk on the wild side too, alternating between a ghetto-glam strut recalling Coney Island Baby-era Lou Reed and the go-for-broke spirit of early Pavement. Lyrically, Coleman cites inspiration from balladeers like Townes Van Zandt, Scott Walker, and Woody Guthrie (“Two chords and hundreds of stories”), and refers to Lee Hazelwood chiding Leonard Cohen for “writing songs to get women, as opposed to writing songs for women to get.” Similarly, Coleman isn’t writing with fame, fortune, or females in mind: “I just like entertaining people, whether it’s with a broomstick or a drum or a movie or a good story.”
“When I was really young, I used to watch Michael Jackson videos and try to imitate him,” he says. “My family used to pay me to do performances in the yard, so I’d put on a record and jump around. I grew up around a piano, which I didn’t know how to play, so I’d make up my own compositions.” That moxie matured when, during teen years defined by punk and skateboarding, Coleman took up guitar at 14 (“I didn’t know how to tune it until I was 17”) and started creating bands because “I can write songs better than I can cover them.” (Though he has one renowned remake: A “totally fucked-up” version of George Michael’s “Faith,” just released as a 7-inch.) Since then, Coleman has maintained an intimidating creative output: Besides performing solo and with Golden Boys, he’s plotted several more books, experimented with stand-up comedy (“I get drunk and show up with zero material”), produced a “nest” of paintings, and scripted a film about a homeless songwriter, loosely based on local legend Blaze Foley. “I finally saw Last Night At The Alamo and decided it was time for me to do something like that,” he says with a shrug.
Fitting, since if Coleman resembles anyone, it’s those shaggy-dog dreamers of Eagle Pennell’s films—unflappable folks jerry-rigging big ideas from little scraps, like the notes that Coleman is always jotting down. Those scraps have created a life where “I don’t really have dry spells,” and in addition to his considerable ongoing projects, Coleman also has an upcoming Golden Boys release and European tour, a job recording bands for Monofonus, and even the Pennell-esque scheme to “walk in with a brown suit and briefcase and sell a fried chicken jingle.” Yet such larks aside, Coleman’s not looking to “sell out”—even if it means paying that phone bill.
“I got my guitar. It’s not in the pawnshop,” Coleman says, breaking out that laugh again. “Got books, got my friends, I got my dog. Things are good.” Even when it seems like everything’s broken, Coleman’s happy just to rearrange the pieces.
http://www.avclub.com/austin/articles/one-mans-treasure-john-wesley-coleman-iii,524/
Terminal Boredom Review of Steal My Mind
John Wesley Coleman III "Steal My Mind" LP
This thing has subtly become one of my most-listened to LPs of recent vintage somehow. Not sure how it happened. It's a real sidler. A go-to record for when you're just sitting around drinking and smoking cigarettes with a couple pals. It pulls up a chair along with you and takes a nip and a drag and gets comfortable. Sort of what you'd expect from a guy who covers Warren Zevon and Lester Bangs. Boozy and sun-baked rock-n-roll Americano played loose and gutsy. I think "Steal My Mind" is actually stealing a J.Mascis guitar hook. Actually reminds one of the Meat Pups in passages and surprisingly poppy in a rough-n-tumble way. What I wanted Golden Boys to sound like a lot of times. "Bad Lady" is the perfect combo of sax, beer and shitkicking. Country-singed and essentially turkey-free. "Tonight" opens with throbbing style and "Liqour Store" closes the first side with what I can only call completely stoned Seventies pop-rock. Depressing at times, yet upliftingly so in some strange way. I'm going to get a lot of use out of this LP over the summer. I can already smell the warm dusky breeze wafting through the yard, perfumed by the smell of the earlier BBQ and the beginning of a campfire, me, my bros, my dog, a cooler full of beer and the untapped evening waiting to unfold. Great fucking record, no bullshit. 500 copies. (RK)
(Certified PR // www.certifiedprrecords.com)
http://www.terminal-boredom.com/reviews26.html
Thanks Luke.
A Million Miles From Nowhere: In case you missed out on these 2 gems...:
Although I consider myself a big GOLDEN BOYS fan, I was really dissapointed by ‘Cash Flow’ John Wesley Coleman’s debut album from 2005. I wonder if anyone was interested in such a god-awful mishmash of poor songwriting and annoying experiments. Needless to say, I wasn’t really looking forward to Coleman’s second solo album but I am completely amazed at how good it turned out to be! The songwriting is really excellent this time and there are no irritating intermezzo’s. The first two songs have very repetitive lyrics but they just sound wonderful: good hooks and a great sound! Warren Zevons’ “Lawyers Guns & Money” sounds like a forgotten Crazy Horse gem and with songs like “Donkey Song”, Coleman proofs he’s one of the most interesting songwriters these days. It’s hard to pick highlights because there really aren’t any weak songs on ‘Steal My Mind’. When you flip over the record, you think it will all go downhill after so many great tunes but the opening song “Threw It Away” makes you realize that 'Steal My Mind' is a genuine masterpiece! The sleeve says that the record was recorded in the summer of 2009: “10 hours, eleven songs, 2 bottles of Bullet Bourbon, 100 beers, a carton of smokes, marijuana & stuff and Chinese food and good friends altogether to make this live shit!!!”. I am glad someone released this session because you can feel that there was magic in the air. Shoot me, call me a fanatic or whatever, but I think this is a perfect five star record! Essential!!!
Although I consider myself a big GOLDEN BOYS fan, I was really dissapointed by ‘Cash Flow’ John Wesley Coleman’s debut album from 2005. I wonder if anyone was interested in such a god-awful mishmash of poor songwriting and annoying experiments. Needless to say, I wasn’t really looking forward to Coleman’s second solo album but I am completely amazed at how good it turned out to be! The songwriting is really excellent this time and there are no irritating intermezzo’s. The first two songs have very repetitive lyrics but they just sound wonderful: good hooks and a great sound! Warren Zevons’ “Lawyers Guns & Money” sounds like a forgotten Crazy Horse gem and with songs like “Donkey Song”, Coleman proofs he’s one of the most interesting songwriters these days. It’s hard to pick highlights because there really aren’t any weak songs on ‘Steal My Mind’. When you flip over the record, you think it will all go downhill after so many great tunes but the opening song “Threw It Away” makes you realize that 'Steal My Mind' is a genuine masterpiece! The sleeve says that the record was recorded in the summer of 2009: “10 hours, eleven songs, 2 bottles of Bullet Bourbon, 100 beers, a carton of smokes, marijuana & stuff and Chinese food and good friends altogether to make this live shit!!!”. I am glad someone released this session because you can feel that there was magic in the air. Shoot me, call me a fanatic or whatever, but I think this is a perfect five star record! Essential!!!
Sunday, August 29, 2010
JOHN WESLEY COLEMAN III:
Steal My Mind: LP
I don’t know why I’m having such a hard time finding the words to express just how good this album is, but for some reason I can’t put my finger on exactly what keeps me going back to the turntable to play this fucker again and again. Having heard the Golden Boys and digging them a hell of a lot, I thought that an album by one of them would sound a little different. Like what? I’m not sure, but not like this, and not this good. This record sounds like the Cheater Slicks decided to record with a big time Nashville producer and Bob Dylan’s organ player. There’s even a little Velvet Underground influence going on on side two. Standout tracks are “Donkey Song,” “I Can’t Sleep,” “Where Did My Friends Go,” and “There Goes My Baby.” Track this down and play the shit out of it. –Josh Benke (Certified PR)
Steal My Mind: LP
I don’t know why I’m having such a hard time finding the words to express just how good this album is, but for some reason I can’t put my finger on exactly what keeps me going back to the turntable to play this fucker again and again. Having heard the Golden Boys and digging them a hell of a lot, I thought that an album by one of them would sound a little different. Like what? I’m not sure, but not like this, and not this good. This record sounds like the Cheater Slicks decided to record with a big time Nashville producer and Bob Dylan’s organ player. There’s even a little Velvet Underground influence going on on side two. Standout tracks are “Donkey Song,” “I Can’t Sleep,” “Where Did My Friends Go,” and “There Goes My Baby.” Track this down and play the shit out of it. –Josh Benke (Certified PR)
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