Category: Uncategorized

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Los Angeles’ WYO Shares Swaggering and Slinky “Rectified”

Los Angeles-based outfit WYO has quickly established a cinematic sound inspired and informed by the breathtaking beauty of frontman Andy Sorge’s home state of Wyoming and guitarist’s Scott McKay Gibson’s favorite refuge. According to the band, “within the melodies and lyrics are reminders of the beauty and magic all around us, and nature’s unwavering ability to bring us back to ourselves.”

Thematically, the Los Angeles-based outfit’s work takes an honest look at love and loss, and the soul-searching and clarity that frequently emerges in the spaces between.

The band has received praise from the likes of Music Connection, Performer Magazine, Buzzbands.la, Ear to the Ground, Huffington Post, Earmilk, Pop Dust and a host of others. Building upon a growing profile, the band has made the rounds of the festival circuit playing sets at SXSW, Eat See Hear Festival, Kaaboo Festival, and have played School Night LA and Jam in the Van.

WYO’s latest single “Rectified” is a swaggering hook-driven tune anchored around a slinky, R&B-inspired arrangement featuring reverb-soaked boom bap-like drumming, a strutting bass line, bursts of twinkling keys and atmospheric electronics that’s roomy enough for a jazz-meets-house music piano solo and a buzzing post punk-like guitar solo. The song’s genre and style-defying arrangement serves as a lush and satiny bed for Sorge’s plaintive delivery.

“‘Rectified’ is a bold anthem of resolve that embraces the only solution when things aren’t going right — to course correct and rectify,” the band explains.

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

News/Announcements: Shoutouts to Patreon Patrons and Creatives Rebuild New York

2023 was one of more embittering, infuriating and maddening years in recent memory for me. And it probably doesn’t help that with this line of work. it’s all too easy to battle and endure feelings of loneliness, despair and failure; to feel and believe that you’re an imposter. I’ve personally found it to be a brutal, unforgiving and wildly interesting life and career path that can’t — and will never — compare to most other jobs I’ve ever had. And I’ve had quite a few of them in my life!

The Joy of Violent Movement turns 14 in June. 14 years of doing anything is a very long time. It’s a close to a quarter of my life. For the blogosphere that’s roughly between 10-139 lifetimes. It hasn’t always been easy. There have been moments, where it felt impossible to manage this thing, to keep it going. To be frank, as the kids say “the math ain’t mathing.” But what I can say is this: I’ve felt and believed that I needed to go out on my own because I didn’t believe — or feel — as though I’d get a fair shot to do this work anyplace else. 

I’ve long felt a strong desire — and need — to create something similar to the wildly eclectic, dynamic, global sort of environment I grew up immersed in as a young Black boy in Corona, Queens. Sadly, when I read my favorite music magazines and sites, I didn’t always see that covered or represented. From experience as a music journalist and working in book publishing, I’ve learned that you can demand fairness, diversity and inclusion, but the powers in control can ignore you. So, sometimes you have to grit your teeth and just do it your own damn self, you know?

Now, when I started JOVM back in 2010, I didn’t — and just couldn’t have — imagined the majority of the things I’ve experienced and covered throughout the site’s history to have happened. 

What will year 14 hold for JOVM? Hell, I don’t really know. Plus, I turn 45 in March. So, it’s also a milestone year. My hope is always for bigger and better for the site and for y’all as readers. 

Of course, with your support I can keep this unique space going. Now, I’ve said this ad infinitum through site and on my social media feeds: All work — including creative work — is impossible without money. The old adage is true: Time is money. Effort is money. And it costs money for the thing(s) that you need to actually do the work. 

If you’ve been frequenting this site over the past handful of years, there are a handful of folks I want to thank once again for their support:  

  • Sash
  • Alice Northover
  • Bella Fox
  • Jenny MacRostie
  • Janene Otten 

All of those folks have been generous Patreon patrons. Every and any amount really helps keeps this sort of journalism, photojournalism, and criticism alive and ongoing. 

So if you’re able and willing, please feel free to check out the Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/TheJoyofViolentMovement. Whatever you can give is appreciated and will help. Independent journalists and artists are small businesses. And supporting small businesses survive and become sustainable is desperately needed — especially if they’re Black businesses. 

Additionally, I have to thank the helpful, hardworking and dedicated folks at Creatives Rebuild New York. I’m proud, gratified and humbled to have been included in their 18-month Guaranteed Income for Artists program. Understandably, being included was also deeply vindicating. Someone out there thought my work — this very work! — was worth supporting financially. Obviously, the funds from it have managed to keep this labor of love going during one of the most uncertain periods in recent human history, while lessening some of the normal financial pressures of being an American artist, creator and journalist. 

Frankly, I haven’t been able to thank them enough. But I’ll be grateful for the program for the rest of my life. 

There are several other ways that you can support this site and my work. You can also support by checking the JOVM shop. I sell prints in various sizes. I also have bumper stickers. Check it out: https://www.joyofviolentmovement.com/shop 

You can also support my following me on the following platforms:

You can hire me for headshots, portraits and events. Seriously, I’m available for that, too. You can click here: https://www.photobooker.com/photographer/ny/new-york/william-h?duration=1?duration=1# or you can contact me directly.

I’m an Eargasm Earplugs Earinflunecer. Buy a pair, protect your hearing and save 10% by clicking on this code: https://lnkd.in/ewX8ezKZ. I do get a percentage of each sale from that discount code.

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Robert Finley Shares a Swaggering, Bluesy Ode to Karma

 69 year-old Winnsboro, LA-born, Bernice, LA-based singer/songwriter and JOVM mainstay Robert Finley grew up one of eight children in a family of sharecroppers. As a child, Finley as unable to regularly attend school and often worked with his family in the cotton fields. When he was a teenager, he briefly attended a segregated school, but he was forced to drop out in the 10th grade to help the family out financially.

As an adult, Finley has lived a full, complicated and often messy life: He’s an army veteran. He was also a skilled carpenter. He has survived house fires, a bad accident and went through a divorce. He started to lose his sight in his early 60s as a result of glaucoma. And although, he was forced to retire from carpentry, Finley realized that he now had an opportunity to pursue a lifelong dream — becoming a professional singer and musician.

The Louisiana-born and-based JOVM mainstay believes that his sight was improved by the power of prayer — and that his faith has also helped him focus on launching a music career in his 60s. According to Finley “losing my sight, gave me the perspective to see my true identity.”

Acclaimed musician, producer and Easy Eye Sound label head Dan Auerbach immediately saw Finley’s potential, quickly proclaiming that the Louisiana-born and-based artist is “the greatest living soul singer.” As Auerbach recalls in press notes, “He walked in like he was straight out of the swamp.” He adds, “He had leather pants, snakeskin boots, a big Country & Western belt buckle, a leather cowboy hat and a three-quarter-length leather duster. The final touch was the folding cane the legally blind Finley wore on his hip, in a holster. Basically, he was dressed for national television.” 

Auerbach went on to produce Finley’s 2017 breakthrough sophomore album Goin’ Platinum, an album released to widespread critical acclaim from the likes of the Associated Press, who praised Finley’s ability to lend “instant credibility to any song” and The Observer, who wrote “Finley’s versatile voice ranges from prime Motown holler to heartbroken falsetto croon.” Finley went on to support the album with international touring across 10 countries — with his live show drawing praise from a number of publications, including The New York Times and several others. He was also profiled on PBS NewsHour, which led him to becoming a contestant on the 2019 season of America’s Got Talent, eventually reaching the semi-finals. 

Finley’s third album 2021’s Sharecropper’s Son continued the JOVM mainstay’s successful collaboration with Auerbach, and features songwriting and cowrites from Finley, Auerbach, Bobby Wood and Pat McLaughlin. And much like other Easy Sound releases, the album featured an All-Star backing band of acclaimed players that included Auerbach (guitar); Kenny Brown (guitar), a member of R.L Burnside‘s backing band; studio legends Russ Pahl (pedal steel) and Louisiana-born, Nashville-based Billy Sanford (guitar); Bobby Wood (keys and as previously mentioned songwriting); Gene Chrisman (drums), who’s a Memphis and Nashville music legend; as well as contributions from The Dap Kings‘ Nick Movshon (bass), Eric Deaton (guitar); Dave Roe (bass), who was member of Johnny Cash‘s backing band; Sam Bacco (percussion) and a full horn section. 

Sharecropper’s Son may arguably be the most personal album of Finley’s growing catalog, drawing directly from his life and experience. “I was ready to tell my story, and Dan and his guys knew me so well by then that they knew it almost like I do, so they had my back all the way,” Finley says in press notes. “Working in the cotton fields wasn’t a pleasant place to be, but it was part of my life. I went from the cotton fields to Beverly Hills. We stayed in the neighborhood most of our childhood. It wasn’t really all that safe to be out by yourself. One of the things I love about music is that, when I was a boy growing up in the South, nobody wanted to hear what I had to say or what I thought about anything. But when I started putting it in songs, people listened.”

I managed to write about four of the album’s singles:

  • “Country Boy,” a swampy and funky bit of country soul featured a tight, strutting groove, bluesy guitar lines, shimmering organ and Finley’s soulful and creaky falsetto paired with autobiographic lyrics, which were improvised on the spot with the tape rolling. “When we play live, I always leave room in the show for lyrics I make up on the spot while the band hits a groove,” Finley explains. “I guess the younger generation calls it free-styling, but for me, it’s just speaking from my mind, straight from my soul.” While lyrically, the song touches upon classic blues fare — heartbreak, loneliness, being broke, being a stranger far away from home and the like, the song is fueled by Finley’s sincerity. He has lived through those experiences, and you can tell that from the vulnerable cracks in his weathered croon. 

  • Album title track “Sharecropper’s Son,” a strutting blues holler featuring James Cotton-like blasts of harmonica, shimmering Rhodes, a chugging groove, a classic blues solo, and Finley’s creaky and soulful crooning and shouts. And much like its predecessor, the song is fueled by both the lived-in experiences of its writer and the novelistic details within the song: you can feel the hot sun on Finley’s and his siblings’ skin, the sore muscles of backbreaking and unending labor in the fields. But throughout the song, its narrator expresses pride in his family doing whatever they could do legally to survive and keep food on the table. 

  • “Make Me Feel Alright,” is a swampy boogie that’s one part John Lee Hooker barroom blues, one part Mississippi Delta Blues centered around a twangy blues guitar line, a shuffling rhythm and Finley’s expressive crooning. While being the sort of song you want your bartender to play loudly on a Friday or Saturday night, as you try to spit some game to some pretty young thing, the song as Finley explains in press notes “is about not looking for love, but for companionship. Sometimes you want to find someone to have a good time, You meet someone, have a fun night and then go on your separate ways with your own problems at the end of the night but still experience love in the moment.” 

  • “I Can Feel Your Pain” is an old school soul ballad centered around twinkling Rhodes, Finley’s expressive crooning, a two-step inducing rhythm, bluesy guitar blasts and a soaring chorus. But at its core, the song is an earnest expression of empathy for everyone who has had a difficult time of things, during this most unusually difficult period. And it comes from the deeply lived-in place of someone who’s experienced profound difficulties and inconsolable loss. 

Finley’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Black Bayou is slated for an October 27, 2023 release through Easy Eye Sound. Black Bayou sees the JOVM mainstay continuing his collaboration with Dan Auerbach. Much like its immediate predecessor, the new album’s material is a deeply personal portrait — but this time of Finley’s Louisiana, from an insider, who has lived there all of his life. Sonically, the material coalesces all of the vibrant sounds of the bayou, including gospel, blues, rock and more. The end result is a vivid collection of songs that depicts life in North Louisiana — with Finley playing the role of charismatic and knowledgeable tour guide. “I think that’s one of the biggest things about the album is it tells the truth and the truth will set you free,” Finley told American Songwriter.

“It’s amazing to realize how much of an impact Louisiana has had on the world’s music,” Dan Auerbach says in press notes, “and Robert embodies all of that. He can play a blues song. He can play early rock and roll. He can play gospel. He can do anything, and a lot of that has to do with where he’s from.”

Recorded at Auerbach’s Nashville-based Easy Eye Sound Studio, Black Bayou sees the pair adopting a much different creative process. Rather than write songs beforehand, as they did on 2017’s Goin’ Platinum and Sharecropper’s Son, they devised everything in the studio, with Auerbach leading a backing band of some of the world’s best players, including: Auerbach’s Black Keys bandmate Patrick Carney (drums), G. Love & Special Sauce‘s Jeffrey Clemens (drums), Eric Deaton (bass), legendary Hill Country blues guitarist Kenny Brown and vocalists Christy Johnson and LaQuindrelyn McMahon, who happen to be Finley’s daughter and granddaughter.

They worked quickly, devising their parts spontaneously and using getting everything in one take.“I started singing, and they started playing,” Finley explains. “That’s how we made the album. It wasn’t written out. Nobody used a pencil and paper. We just sang and played together in the studio.” The result is an album that reveals Finley as a truly original Louisiana storyteller, who evokes the place and its unique — and deeply influential — culture for the rest of the world.

Black Bayou‘s first single “What Goes Around (Comes Around)” is a swampy blues rock song that subtly recalls Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s “Green River” with the song built around an irresistibly funky and shuffling 12 bar blues-driven groove paired around the collaborators’ unerring knack for anthemic hooks and choruses. The song serves as the perfect vehicle for his whiskey soaked gospel-like croons and shouts warning the listener about the weighty impact of karma.

“You gotta reap what you sow… do to another what you would have done to you. Be real, tell the truth. For all those out there hurting, you just have to keep the faith,” the JOVM mainstay says of the song. “I’ve seen it over the years, especially with my career – you got to put joy out into the world and it will come back. It’s never been anything short of the truth for me.” 

Directed by frequent visual collaborator Tim Hardiman, the visual for
“What Goes Around (Comes Around)” places the strutting, cooler-than-cool Finley in a larger-than-life, stylish backdrop.