From: owner-canadian-music-digest@smoe.org (canadian-music-digest) To: canadian-music-digest@smoe.org Subject: canadian-music-digest V5 #20 Reply-To: canadian-music@smoe.org Sender: owner-canadian-music-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-canadian-music-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk canadian-music-digest Thursday, August 22 2002 Volume 05 : Number 020 Today's Subjects: ----------------- LA Times on Luther Wright and the Wrongs [Paul Schreiber ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 22:27:52 -0700 From: Paul Schreiber Subject: LA Times on Luther Wright and the Wrongs August 16, 2002 POP MUSIC Adding a Twang to a Prog-Rock Classic Luther Wright & the Wrongs redo Pink Floyd's "The Wall" as a country album. By STEVE HOCHMAN, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES A wall made from hay bricks? When Luther Wright & the Wrongs used that prop in a few shows last year in Canada, it was a wink at the massive structure (non-hay) Pink Floyd built on stage in 1980 when performing its album "The Wall." But more immediately, the barnyard stunt celebrated Wright & the Wrongs' new version of that classic progressive-rock concept album, in which they recast all 26 songs in country and bluegrass settings. "We did some shows in Canada with 40 bales of straw and various farm implements and some film clips," says Wright, who brings his band (but no hay) to Molly Malone's on Saturday. "We needed a separate vehicle to bring the straw, and the bars hated us. We made a real mess." The band, though, did not make a mess of the music. The album, "Rebuild the Wall," reveals that inside the Floyd album was a bunch of country songs waiting to get out, from the musical structures to the themes of inner pain and defiant individualism. It was a revelation that came to Wright, 38, while he and the band were on tour in Canada in early 2000. He was playing guitar along to the radio in the van when the song "Another Brick in the Wall" came on. "I kept playing--dinga-ding-ding-dinga-ding," Wright says, imitating the sound of guitar picking. "I realized that when you think about it, 'The Wall' has got the country elements. "So later we started playing along to other songs from the album, and as we got into it more, we got into the themes being classic country hurtin' themes. So we talked about it for a while and then said, 'We'd better prove our point.' " That started a process that at first seemed simple enough, just a little goof. But the further they got into it, the more serious the project became. "The funny thing is we really tried to not make it a real nyuk-nyuk thing," says Wright. "We're trying to avoid the jokey-band thing. But it was hard not to be tongue in cheek with some of it." The band does a pretty good job of balancing the laughs with artistic interpretation, and the album fits neatly in the middle of a current wave of twanged-up classic-rock tributes, from Hayseed Dixie's novel AC/DC tribute to Drive-By Truckers' "Southern Rock Opera," a surprisingly non-jokey meditation on life and death in the career of Lynyrd Skynyrd. "Sometimes it goes a bit far," Wright admits of his album. "But the reason we did 'The Wall' was that it all made sense." Fortunately, it also made sense to Roger Waters, who, while with Pink Floyd, wrote nearly the entire album. "We contacted him through e-mail via his manager," Wright says. "We sent a CD-R and wrote a letter, gave him all the lyric changes we made, explained why. We waited for a couple of months and he sent an e-mail saying that he listened and approved. It's total reverence to the music and the songs." Where the project didn't seem to make sense was in the band's career track. Based in Wright's hometown of Kingston, Ontario, the Wrongs formed five years ago as a side project of Weeping Tiles, a quartet fronted by singer-songwriter Sarah Harmer (who duets on "Mother" on "Rebuild the Wall"). "I'd always been writing country songs," Wright says. "We decided to start a band to pursue the hurtin' country thing." The Wrongs debuted with a 1997 album, "Hurtin' for Certain," and followed in 1999 with "Roger's Waltz," becoming a full-time venture when Weeping Tiles broke up and Harmer pursued a solo career. Although Wright's own songs are the band's focus (a third album of original material has been completed with plans for a 2002 release), it's "Rebuild the Wall" that is drawing the most attention. Last year, the group released half the project as "Rebuild the Wall Part 1" in Canada, receiving positive reviews and even some airplay from the public radio Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and adult alternative stations. A copy sent to U.S. label Back Porch Records, which is distributed by Virgin Records, led to the release of the complete album here in June, with a couple of videos from the project getting exposure on the Country Music Television cable outlet. Wright has no problem with a novelty side trip as the band's calling card. "It seemed auspicious that 'The Wall' was our destiny," he says. "Now that we're out getting more recognition, people are discovering us beyond 'The Wall' stuff. I'm glad we weren't just talking and actually made the album. The songs are really emotive. It's the same feeling as singing on my own songs." shad 96c / uw cs 2001 / mac activist / fumbler / eda / headliner / navy-souper fan of / sophie b. / steve poltz / habs / bills / 49ers / we used to have hope / now we've got soap on a rope / we used to have dreams / now we've got overpaid ... baseball teams / we've got grocery baggers / graffiti taggers / golf ball shaggers / - --Steve Poltz and Jewel Kilcher, "Silver Lining" ------------------------------ End of canadian-music-digest V5 #20 ***********************************