Wooden Wand’s Avant Folk Coming to a House Near You

As Wooden Wand and under his own name, singer/songwriter James Jackson Toth has recorded dozens of projects, ranging from wailing freak folk to crunching hard rock, and released a sprawling catalog of cassettes, CD-Rs, vinyl, and digital efforts. But for all his diversity, Toth had a consistent pattern of hopping…

Mark McGuire Stops Thinking and Starts Shredding

Since the dissolution of Ohio-based experimental trio Emeralds in early 2013, guitarist Mark McGuire has kept busy. He’s explored smooth jams with his project Road Chief, and contributed to Do the Beast, the first album from the Afghan Whigs since 1998. He also found time to record and release his…

Wooden Indian and Califone Obscure as Much as They Reveal

Whatever dust songwriter Tim Rutili, who records and performs as Califone, got on his shoes when recording parts of his 2013 album, Stitches, in Tempe and Phoenix appears to have stuck. On Friday, March 21, he’ll join forces with psychedelic Phoenix outfit Wooden Indian for a mini-festival at the Icehouse…

Jess Williamson to Bring Her Strange Folk to Phoenix and Arcosanti

There are names you might expect to read in a review of Jess Williamson’s Native State: Karen Dalton, Joanna Newsome, Devendra Banhart. But Pitchfork’s Lindsay Zoladz struck mighty close to the source when she compared Williamson’s voice to that of a coyote. Though it was clearly intended as an accolade,…

Parquet Courts, Destruction Unit, Dogbreth – Crescent Ballroom – 1/20/13

Parquet Courts, Destruction Unit, Dogbreth Crescent Ballroom 1/20/2014 Those looking for the through line connecting Brooklyn-by-way-of-Texas post-punkers Parquet Courts to Dogbreth and Destruction Unit, the two Phoenix bands they shared the Crescent Ballroom stage with Monday night, might look to the impassioned yet cynical refrain of the Courts’ “Master of…

Grandma’s Contraband Christmas Cookies

Once again this year, Chow Bella writers are gnawing on the holidays — in the form of stories of Christmas and food. Hope you have some Alka-Seltzer handy. Enjoy. When my mother and father divorced in 1990, lots of things changed, but not Christmas. Christmas was divided up before the…

Lluvia Flamenca Unites the Southwest and the World

If you’ve ever wandered into Crescent Ballroom early on a Saturday evening, you’ve likely been privy to the bewitching performances of Flamenco Por La Vida. Led by Angelina Ramirez and Carlos Montufar, the group expresses its Latin gypsy soul through sound and dance in the Ballroom’s lounge weekly, but on…

Doug Stanhope Is Arizona’s Darkest Comedian

“Most comics are pretty dark people,” Doug Stanhope says. Few comics are quite as dark — or willing to get as pitch black — as Stanhope. Our conversation with him, following the terrible news that his best friends and Bisbee neighbors Nowhere Man and a Whiskey Girl, had passed away,…

Bill Callahan Keeps His Wits While Forwarding Dream River

Bill Callahan picks his words carefully. If one thing defines his recent work – pastoral, grooving, and far removed from his noisier days recording under the name Smog – it’s the way he selects his words. “The only words I’ve said today are beer and thank you,” he croons on…

The Body Really Is as Suffocating and Bleak as You’ve Heard

Chances are, whatever you’re listening to right now isn’t as heavy as The Body’s Christs, Redeemers. The record, the latest from southern-born duo Chip King and Lee Buford, opens with a haunting drone, “I, The Mourner of Perished Days,” before “To Attempt Openness” kicks in, marrying Buford’s doomy drums and…

Bill Callahan Gets Down in the Dirt with Dream River

Bill Callahan picks his words carefully. If one thing defines his recent work — pastoral, grooving, and far removed from his noisier days recording under the name Smog — it’s the way he selects his words. “The only words I’ve said today are beer and thank you,” he croons on…