Crib Notes

The Balkans had a lot of fun in Lexington, and that’s an understatement. The venue they played, the Void Skate Shop, was very cool; low key and intimate with a skate ramp next to where the bands played. Everyone there was fun and enjoyed the show, and the Balkans put on another great show as well — a turnaround from their personal low at the previous stop. But they are ready to come back to Atlanta and show their growth from two weeks on the road.

While they were setting up for the show Frankie and Brett, mostly Frankie, pretended like they were in the car singing along to various random songs.  Songs such as “Lay, Lady, Lay,” “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter,” “The Coffin Song,” “All the Tired Horses” and a Tom Petty song were met with various degrees of approving and jokingly disapproving laughter until the rest of the Balkans pulled Frankie off the stage to change into their stage clothes. The band returned wearing various flamboyant vests and shirts.  The set was played with a combination of enthusiasm and professionalism mixed with boyish fun reminiscent of the Brooklyn show. They were on the floor, in with the crowd, and the crowd was in with them. Everyone was there to have fun together as the Balkans shared some good music and inside jokes.  For example, instead of spending forever between songs tuning Frankie repeatedly played “Lay, Lady, Lay.”

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We left New York with a feeling of success, and that the Balkans had made at least one fan out of the trip. The 7 Inches blog wrote a review of the Brooklyn show and the Balkans’ awesome 7-inches.

On the drive from New York to Ohio I stopped to buy oil for the car and instead of offering to help me, like the gentleman he is Stanley threw his empty water bottle on the ground, like he does his drumsticks. A man in a turban (we think) who was associated with the gas station and possibly the Islamic faith, ran over and cussed out the very frightened Jewish Stanley. We were scared off of the premises, but Stanley managed to capture a photo of the man on our way out. The rest of the drive was rather uneventful except for the Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat soundtrack and Russian disco that we listened to on the final stretch of the drive.

Columbus was an interesting city. It’s a college town with your typical shops and college students milling around, but there were also an unusual amount of tattoo parlors, strange looking people and rednecks. The local band the Balkans and Carnivores were playing with turned out to be fifteen year-old kids from the suburbs, so the idea of asking them for a place to stay was out of the question. Stanley got his hair cut at a salon next to the venue and his hairdresser — who happened to be from Atlanta — told him about a website where you can look find a place to stay as a touring musician. So Woody looked it up and found two reasonable looking people nearby. One guy called back and said he would come to the gig and could put them up between himself and his neighbor. The plan was to check him out and if he seemed sketchy, tell him we were driving to Lexington after the gig and run to a hotel. He showed up and it turned out that the Carnivores had met him earlier in the day at the record store where he works and invited him to the gig. He ended up being overwhelmingly hospitable and offered to help set the bands up with better places to play in the future.

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We headed out of New York for a “short” two hour drive to Philadelphia for a gig at the Danger Danger Gallery.  Massive rain storms, again, and just plain congestion turned our 90 mile trip into a five hour drive each way. We will not have happy memories of the New Jersey Turnpike. Despite the traffic and the warnings that the venue was in a very bad neighborhood, it was overall the best gig yet.

The neighborhood was sketchy, but I found shelter in the Dock Street Brewery with some local friends while the Balkans missed out and ate vegan wraps next door. People actually turned-out for the gig. The Balkans put on a strong show and were dripping with sweat by the end. Stanley did his customary dramatic finish where he abruptly stands up and throws away his drumsticks. The basement had flooded out because of the earlier rain, but the bands were still able to play. The main room hosted three rock bands and the other room had two electronic acts, which seemed to get more of the crowd’s approval. Maybe the Balkans will make it back to the city of brotherly love someday…

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Wednesday morning we packed up and headed north of the Mason-Dixon Line.  And can you spell disaster, because I’m pretty sure Woody Shortridge can’t.  That’s what the past few days have been: a fun disaster.

We were supposed to go to New York via Hoboken, NJ for an interview and in-studio performance with Planet Verge.  As we approached New Jersey we were hit with torrential rains.  Luckily we had allotted extra travel time, but we weren’t prepared for tornadoes.  Yes, there were tornado warnings in the New York area.  Thus the Planet Verge gig was rescheduled for Thursday evening, but the studio was unavailable so the Planet Verge hosts were going to do the recording guerrilla-style.  We were unexpectedly thrown into downtown Manhattan at 6 p.m. with buckets of rain.  We made it slowly, but safely to Brooklyn to park the cars for FREE.

True, we had a lot of fun exploring the city. The Balkans took the time to check out Chinatown for some cheap stuff.  However, once again New Jersey got the best of us.  We picked the “worst time” to drive from Brooklyn through Manhattan to Hoboken: 5:30 p.m. The studio was less than 8 miles away but it took us almost 2 hours to make it. Amazingly we arrived in Hoboken on time, early actually, but one of the girls at Planet Verge was late.  We went to check out the performance space, the parking lot of the studio, but there was no outlet.   While the Planet Verge host searched for an alternative spot the parking lot proved a playground for the two bands, special thanks to some Styrofoam scraps (some of which Brett hit me over the head with).  And Stanley Vergilis proved to be the best at jumping for a hole in the wall.

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I left the boys for one night during our day of rest in Athens, GA and they got a warning from the UGA police: making a left turn out of a right turn lane, very BA.  Monday morning we headed out for Virginia.  Our soccer-mom-mobile was so weighted down that we had to turn off the AC to make it up hills.  Things were pretty quiet until the boys woke up around two, following lunch at Taco Bell.  Brett Miller took hold of the iPod and we had a sing-along that went from early Beatles– including a “Yellow Submarine” round—and “Let’s Get It On” to some ’90s favorites, mostly Pearl Jam.  Interruptions were limited to desperately rolling down the windows when Woody Shortridge’s stomach occasionally reacted to his lunch.  Woody had just put everything but the last 90 cents from the Athens gig into the car’s tank and had nothing to lose.

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The Balkans aren’t driving a fancy bus, they won’t be staying in hotels or even eating at mid-priced chain restaurants during their nine-stop tour of the east coast this summer.  But they do have complete ownership of the whole tour.  They’ve booked the shows themselves, made T-shirts, pressed records and crammed equipment into a soccer-mom-mobile plus a turtle top.  They spent months convincing concerned parents that they weren’t going to die, and after a full-band and parent meeting last Saturday they were reluctantly given the go for takeoff.  Yes, this is a tour with plan and potential.  It is also a tour with four recent high school graduate boys and a hand full of girls in tow.

The tour started sometime Saturday afternoon while I was in the shower. I emerged to find the car packed full with little room for my own bag.  We arrived in Athens to find people slightly confused as to who the Balkans were. Flagpole, Athens’ local alt-weekly, listed the band as an “Atlanta duo” while Jake, a listing’s paper, had a photo of all four members of the band, but they were labeled the “Blakans.”

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>>The recent meltdown of lead singer Nathan Williams of Wavves continues to gather commentary from everyone. To refresh your memory, Ohmpark gives an interesting chronicle of the event and aftermath.

A few weeks ago, Wavves had a meltdown on stage at a big music festival in Spain which Pitchfork called “the most epic onstage meltdown a band of their small size could conjure”

>>Last year Matador teamed up with True Panther Sounds record label to help put out Girls’ debut 7″. The band is back at it again with a target release of September 22.

We are proud to announce the September 22 release of the debut full-length from Girls, entitled Album. The record will be released by True Panther Sounds, the label that released Girls’ debut 7?, “Lust For Life,” last year, in conjunction with Matador.

>>Shining Path, the Balkans and the Trashcans show is still creating quite the buzz amongst fans. 7″ Atlanta does a good job describing the show and an even better job of making you feel guilty for missing out.

The Trashcans shared the bill Friday at the Watch Yr Head House with a couple of awesome young bands.

The house is located off Memorial and has a basement in which the bands play and a barn-style garage for chilling in between sets.

>>If I had the money, I still wouldn’t carry a Gucci man-purse — no matter what Crunk and Disorderly says:

Titty Boi and Dolla Boy [collectivly known as Playaz Circle] were two of the more fashionable acts to perform at Birthday Bash this past weekend. And yes, that’s a fork dangling on Dolla’s chest. Tell mama the first thing that comes to your mind.

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On Sun., May 10 Creative Loafing celebrates the second of two record release parties for our 12-inch LP compilation the Mixt A Vol 1 at Criminal Records at 3:30 p.m.

The record includes 10 songs from the likes of Predator, Grip Playaz, the Balkans, the N.E.C., A. Leon Craft, Anna Kramer & the Lost Cause, Mums F.P., Stanza, Carnivores and Zoroaster featuring Brent Hinds from Mastodon.

The record is strictly limited to 500 copies. The first show happens at Eyedrum on Thursday night. The $10 cover the door gets you into the show as well as a copy of the record. The N.E.C., Grip Playaz, the Balkans and A.Leon Craft are all scheduled to perform. Doors open at 7 p.m. Music starts at 8 p.m.

The second record release party goes down at Criminal Records on the afternoon of Sun., May 10. The Carnivores, Stanza, Mums F.P. and Predator are on the bill. There is no cover charge to attend the show. LPs will be on sale at the store for $10 and the music starts at 3:30 p.m.

In addition to the 10 songs on the LP, dozens of bonus tracks will be included in a free download that includes songs by Abby Go Go, All Night Drug Prowling Wolves, Batata Doce, the 4th Ward Afro-Klezmer Orchestra, the Coathangers, Danny!, Pill and many more.

» Music Issue ‘09

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CL’s Chanté LaGon and Chad Radford discuss the first of two record release parties celebrating our 12-inch LP compilation Mixt A, Vol. 1, taking place tonight, May 7, at Eyedrum. The N.E.C., Grip Plyaz, the Balkans and A. Leon Craft all perform. Cover is $10 and includes a copy of the limited-edition vinyl. Doors open at 7 p.m. Music starts at 8 p.m.

Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.

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Outtakes is a series of blog posts in which CL staff photographer Joeff Davis talks about photo shoots from this week’s Music Issue:

The concept for the Balkans photo was to shoot these kids at a high school because they’re so frickin’ young. We wanted to try to capture some of that young teenage hyperactivity.

When two of them showed up over an hour late for the shoot it seemed like it would be hit or miss. But when they finally parked their car, they sprinted the last block like Olympic athletes so we forgave them. One showed up with four medals around his neck and the other took his shirt off and started blowing his nose into the other’s hand.

At the end of the shoot we accosted a dog that looked like royalty as it was walking down the street with its owner. So we posed the boys with the dog and had each band member hold a piece of the leash. The contrast between the very regal dog and these young crazy kids worked great, but in the end we decided to go with a photo for the CL print version that best captured their youthful energy. — Joeff Davis

See more photos from the Balkans photo shoot.

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Atlanta’s the Balkans are raising the bar on DIY cred. They make their own records — practically from scratch.

Balkans bassist/guitarist Woody Shortridge makes the mold by pouring liquid silicone over a record placed at the bottom of the box. Then, the record is made by pouring a liquid resin into the mold. The kind he uses dries in 15 minutes. He adds urethane dyes to create colorful swirling patterns. The whole process takes less than an hour to complete.

Balkans bassist/guitarist Woody Shortridge learned about copying records this way from Adam Bruneau who originally posted about it on his blog. Together they perfected their technique and Cave Paint Records was born.

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