When planning this week’s column, I found we had two very deserving bands hosting CD release parties at
the same bar on different weekend nights. Please welcome the odd pairing of Go!
Tsunami and Carillon, bound together by nothing more than circumstance.
Let’s take the Friday night spectacle first and discover the peculiar world of
Springfield’s one and only instrumental rock band. Go! Tsunami rides the wave of lyric-less,
rock-n-roll music that began with electric guitar pioneers Link Wray, Duane
Eddy and Dick Dale, peaked with the Surfaris’ 1963 classic, Wipe Out!, and hung loose through the ages with those lovable Fender benders, the
Ventures. After mass public exposure in the film Pulp Fiction, the surf rock genre made another big splash in the 1990s through contemporary
suppliers like the Mexican wrestling mask-wearing rockers, Los Straightjackets.
Go! Tsunami player-participants, “Riptide,” “Stingray Jr.,” “Stan Overboard” and “The Fury” (not their real names) wear personally altered hockey masks and standard issue
coveralls, while playing with nothing less than loud and wild abandon in a
cacophony of rhythm-driven, minor-key songs intended to “conjure images of hot rods, horror movies, long boards, Tiki idols, beach
parties, exotic islands, classic cars, pin-ups, cheap beer and rum,” according to a group summary. The band scored airplay lately on the radio show Surfabilly Freakout from Champaign-Urbana’s WPGU and played several dates in Springfield, Chicago and Champaign over the
last year and a half.
Recently the band went into Marc Broomby’s MoonPanda Studio located in downtown Springfield and recorded these original,
sonic surf songs,creating New Wave Order. This Friday, July 24, the band hosts a CD release party with Daikaiju, a
surf-rock band from Huntsville, Ala., and local outfit Black Feet at Bar None
on Fifth and Monroe. The masked quartet then heads north on Saturday for a show
at Chef Shangri-la, a popular Tiki bar in Chicagoland and rocks the boat in
August at the 2009 Surf Ohio Festiki in Dayton. Go, Go! Tsunami, go and keep
the music ripping, as they say, in perpetual surfdom.
Now we leave the beach for the bells as former Springfieldian Jonathan Cour
returns to his hometown for a Saturday night show at Bar None, sporting a new
band called Carillon and a new CD titled Summer Chemicals. Cour last played the capital city as a promising solo artist, fresh from a big
buzz in the industry on the strength of A Motion Picture Scene, his debut release. After time spent touring with major acts and songwriting
with heavyweight writers, Cour opted to change artistic directions, forming a
band to beef up his sound from acoustic pop to an alt/rock indie direction.
Carillon is a direct effort to bring a harder-edged rock feeling to Cour’s music without losing the modern pop sensibilities that captured the attention
of music power brokers, buyers and listeners. Grant Essig and Matt Hickenbotham
round out the musicians in Carillon and both are seasoned St. Louis players
with major label, touring, and outside the local scene experiences. Essig also
heads the production team and owns the studio responsible for creating the
sounds on Summer Chemicals, which one could say enter into the “atmospheric” category with lots of layered vocals and “found stuff’ to go along with the raw songs. Transferring the recorded feeling into a live
sound will be an interesting challenge, and one I’m sure Cour and Carillon are up for and excited about.
Locals may be curious about one song on the CD called MacArthur Boulevard, but anyone looking for a pleasing, cool sounding record of 20-something,
emotional musings at life, love and the pursuit of learning about it all, will
appreciate the clever lyrics and smart songs combined with the luscious and
pristine production qualities of the record.
And that’s how Go! Tsunami and Carillon found themselves on the same page and the same
stage one weekend in July.
This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2009.
