in which a guitar player tells us how to deal with a live current

We were sitting outside the club yesterday afternoon, eavesdropping. We didn't mean to, but people just kept walking past us saying things like "this is where your dad and I first met" and it kind of makes us curious, you know? Another couple walked up and, looking at the band line-up, tried to reconcile the national acts on the poster with the winding, wooded road they just drove down. Live music puts the Beachcomber on the map, but what keeps it there is you and your stories of how you found us, who you met here and what you did on the dune beside the club (don't worry, we won't tell a soul).

But enough of the navel gazing! We're here to listen to some music. And oh sweet Nelly, do we have music for you. We have another sold out John Brown's Body show tonight. If you got aced out of tickets (we tried to warn you), you can pretend you are on a cruise ship watching from your room (http://www.thebeachcomber.com/stagecam.html). Yesterday we talked to Mike Keenen about a festival they played on a cruise ship in a thunderstorm. Thirty die-hards watched on the deck while the other 4,000 sat snuggly in their rooms watching on monitors. A few stagehands stood by with two-by-fours in case the band got electrocuted. So if you're home, it'll be just like that but without the getting electrocuted part.

On Sunday you will know that all is right with the world because the Incredible Casuals will be playing at 5pm.

On Monday there's a late addition to the calendar: Evelynn Rose. $5 or free with pass @ 10pm. Maverick Magazine calls it "Southern Rock played the way it should be; outrageous and outstanding from the off." Think Black Crowes but twangier. There is no one named Evelynn in the band, if you're wondering.

August 4, 10pm, $20 is Built to Spill with Fauxbois. Built to Spill is one of indie rock's most endearing and enduring bands. A Warner Bros. recording artist since 1995, Built to Spill has also been signed by British based label ATP Recordings. In May they performed at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival, curated by cartoonist Matt Groening in Minehead, England. Which rocks. Tickets are on sale now and going fast: http://www.thebeachcomber.com/tickets/details?id=8111
http://www.builttospill.com/
http://www.myspace.com/fauxboisidaho


August 5, 10pm, $12, Joseph Arthur. A musician's musician, Joseph has been joined on stage by R.E.M.'s Peter Buck. Ben Harper has also been known to sit in on a few songs. Rolling Stone Magazine's David Browne named Joseph Arthur's 'Come To Where I'm From' as "Best Album of the Decade" and Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament lists the album in his Top #25. Joseph's song "Walk Away" will be featured on the upcoming soundtrack for HBO's original series 'Hung'. Get yer tickets here before someone else does: http://www.thebeachcomber.com/tickets/details?id=8120
http://www.josepharthur.com/


August 7, 10pm, $15, Bim Skala Bim - a Beachcomber reunion! Bim Skala Bim dropped off the face of the earth in 2003, to the chagrin of many. Jim Jones moved to California, Dan Vitale moved to Panama and the others are reputed to have gone into hibernation. It's time they came out. Buy your tickets now and be a rock star at the door: http://www.thebeachcomber.com/tickets/details?id=8117
http://www.bimska.com/


August 8, 4pm,$10, Incredible Casuals. Johnny Spampinato was just on New York's WFMU spinning some Casuals tunes, as well as several other tracks from the Beachcomber. Incredible Casuals are, quite literally, known the world over (there's a band in Japan that plays Casuals covers).
http://www.incrediblecasuals.com/


August 10, 10pm, $5 Reggae Night with DJ Bud E. Green. Free with pass.

August 11, 10pm, $22, The Original Wailers featuring Al Anderson and Junior Marvin. Al Anderson and Junior Marvin, from Bob Marley and the Wailers, continue playing and touring as "The Original Wailers." It was these celebrated musicians who gave Bob Marley the platform for his explosive of Roots Rock Reggae. After all these years, the magic and energy is still there.

Al Anderson was called up in 1974 for "Natty Dread," the breakthrough album for Bob Marley & The Wailers in the US. It was Al Anderson's soulful guitar playing on "No Woman No Cry" which opened the doors to a wider rock audience. Junior Marvin joined the band for the legendary "Exodus" album. Junior and Al toured with Marley until his death in 1981. Tickets tickets tickets, going going...: http://www.thebeachcomber.com/tickets/details?id=8092
http://www.myspace.com/originalwailers

We're open for lunch and dinner and have a conveniently located beach just beyond the deck for your enjoyment. We do, do, do for you.

Please continue to enjoy the most magnificent Cape Cod summer in recent history. See you at the 'comah!

Johnny Spamp on WFMU

Johnny Spaminato (Incredible Casuals) played a ton of music from the Beachcomber on Michael Shelley's show last Saturday, telling all of New York and beyond why they should come to the Comber.

You can see the playlist on the website, and there's an mp3 so you can hear it your very own self.

Barrington Levy! (plus heaps more)

Good thing it's so hot. This way we can pretend we're in Jamaica when Barrington Levy comes tonight. We've got rum. We've got Barrington. It's going to be a perfect night with reggae's Mellow Canary. Barrington Levy is the man - renowned as the original singer of the dancehall era, inspiring imitators en-route. Come share show him some love.

You know how we dig Apollo Sunshine, right? If there was a wall of staff picks, where we could have bands sit on little shelves for you to pick up and take home, they'd be sitting on it. The New York Times said "Bouncy 60's-style melodies crack wide open, breaking into outbursts of pummeling and feedback before jumping back into the tune. It's all neatly and cleverly plotted, but with a looming chaos that's anything but nostalgic." Yeah, what they said.

Drug Rug's opening. They rock.

On Saturday we've got the sweet, sweet sounds of Jenny Dee and the Deelinquents. Boston music fans will recognize Jen D?Angora (a/k/a Jenny Dee) as the singer/guitarist in garage stalwarts The Downbeat 5 as well as punk/pop darlings The Dents. The Boston Phoenix said ?There isn't a music on earth that better suits D'Angora's voice than girl-group-era R&B, straight-up, and that's what she's singing here - with bonus points for writing songs that hold their own next to the classics.?

Sunday's a double whammy with the Casuals at 4pm ("At a time when folks don't seem to care about music anymore, this oughtta be just the ticket." Chandler Travis) and King Yellowman at 9pm. You know King Yellowman. You love King Yellowman. You know he's a top-selling artist in Jamaica and abroad and he has toured Nigeria, Peru, Sweden, Italy, Germany, England, France, Kenya and Cahoon Hollow Beach. We should have t-shirts made.

Speaking of t-shirts! (nice segue, eh?)Have you been to our new store in South Wellfleet (aka SWellfleet aka SoWo although the Wo doesn't make sense but since when does that matter)? It's, if we may say so, nothing short of stunning. Packed with grooviness (including Clarke Marty), it's air conditioned and it's right off the highway. So if you forgot that special something for the dog sitter, we've got you covered. Stop in and say hi.

Here are your weekend marching orders:

July 8, 10pm $25
Barrington Levy

July 9, 9pm $12
Apollo Sunshine and Drug Rug
buy tickets: http://www.thebeachcomber.com/tickets/details?id=8069

July 10, 10pm $10
Jenny Dee and the Deelinquents

July 11, 4pm $10
Incredible Casuals

July 11, 9pm $15
King Yellowman and the Sagittarius Band
buy tickets: http://www.thebeachcomber.com/tickets/details?id=8087

Next week we have SOJA, Kathleen Edwards and Langhorne Slim. Hold onto your socks, it's going to be a wild ride.

Stay cool. We know you are.

Kathleen Edwards

This post is courtesy of TwoBusy, whose music commentary we dig very much:

It’s a subtle thing. When you try to describe the music of Kathleen Edwards to someone who doesn’t know her – or who, God help them, is unaware of the sometimes raucous and sometimes sepia-tinged pleasures of alt-country – it can be difficult to find the words to define what it is about her work that makes it such an intimate and unexpectedly moving experience.

That’s not to say that it’s not fun. Not at all. Take a quick scan through YouTube footage of some of her live performances and you’ll find example after example of a woman who, above and beyond her considerable skills as a performer, is also legitimately funny and engaging as an on-stage presence. That wry sense of humor makes its way into some of her music, as well — watch the videos for either I Make The Dough, You Get the Glory (featuring perhaps the greatest- ever incorporation of Marty McSorley into a song) or The Cheapest Key from her most recent album, Asking For Flowers, and you’ll get a sense of the dry wit and laconic sensibility that offers a welcome balance to the more quietly devastating tangents taken by many of her other songs.

In this sense, her work trods similar psychic territory to that explored by Bill Morrissey and Joe Pernice. It’s not that her music necessarily sounds like theirs – although you certainly wouldn’t be completely off-base in placing her CDs next to theirs on the shelf – but there’s a wonderfully sardonic attitude at work in the music of all three, where lovely, instantly memorable melodies are wedded to carefully-wrought lyrics that waver song-to-song and sometimes even moment- to-moment from the heart wrenchingly sad to the wonderfully offbeat. It’s a really wonderful dichotomy, and one that rewards you for paying attention to the music.

And maybe that’s the subtle part: the fact that careful listening matters. Sure, you can sit back at the ‘Comber (or in your living room) and take long sips of that chilly beer and soak up the songcraft of What Are You Waiting For or One More Song The Radio Won’t Play and bob your head along in time with her terrifically laconic (there’s that word again) voice as it traces a careful path through the music… and you can have a perfectly good time doing it. But it’s when you really hone in on what she’s saying – and how she’s saying it – that you begin to discover the full reward of Kathleen Edwards’ songs.

Because her lyrics… man. These aren’t lyrics in the everyday sense of words-that-accompany-a-melody. These are, at times, short stories set to music. And like Pernice and Morrissey – and, for that matter, Richard Buckner and some of the earlier work of both Lisa Germano and Mark Eitzel – they’re stories of yearning and loss, memory and failure, ambition fallen short and dreams never realized. If you’ve read the stories of Raymond Carver or the novels of Russell Banks, it’s a landscape you’ll recognize. And like all of those other writers/artists, the stories she tells are as powerful for what she doesn’t say as they are for the words that actually find voice. Listen to Pink Emerson Radio or Hockey Skates – or, for the experience in its truest form, Mercury – and you’ll find an ache between the words that feels miles wide, years deep, vast and lonesome and unmistakably real.



Kathleen Edwards is playing at the Beachcomber on Friday, July 16th. And you
no longer have any excuse not to go.