The University of Blog

Avett Brothers in the middle of their set
Last night I went to the last Summerfest — the free concert series outside of the Blue Note. It was easily one of the best concerts that I’ve seen in a long while. Ha Ha Tonka and Backyard Tire Fire opened for the Avett Brothers.

The Avett Brothers were a ton of fun. They were energetic and provided a new and unique sound. When I saw these vested-men with stringed instruments in hand, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. It was a bit of bluegrass, a bit of rock and a lot of fun. The best thing about the entire show was that it was free. I cannot believe I did not take more advantage of these free Wednesday night shows. Alas, it was the last one, but it was wonderful.

Each band seemed to have a good Midwestern sound. The songs had stories. Not only did I enjoy dancing and feeling the music, but I found myself paying attention to the lyrics, which I rarely do. And the messages of a lot of the songs, I understood and felt.

I rushed from an SPJ event to get there in time. I caught the end of Ha Ha Tonka’s set. Freshman year, I knew them as Amsterband and actually was able to interview them for a story. I put the story in this post so you can get a better idea of their southern-rock sound.

Ha Ha Tonka’s Brian Roberts

The band has performed nearly 250 shows in more than 60 cities.

By Laura Parkinson, Staff Writer
April 6, 2007

The Ozarks are home to country shows, outlet shopping and lakes. Amsterband, a foot-stomping indie band, will perform at the Blue Note Saturday, proving that there are several talented acts coming out of Southern Missouri.

Since haphazardly choosing the name before entering a talent competition three years ago, Amsterband has come a long way. It has performed nearly 250 shows in more than 60 cities and has just signed with Chicago-based Bloodshot Records.

“We didn’t plan on making it a career,” lead singer Brian Roberts said. “We wanted to have a good time, play around Springfield, play at parties and the bar scene. Those were the initial goals and aspirations. Otherwise we would have come up with a better band name.”

Although Roberts laughs about his inability to come up with a good name, the name is probably pretty apt. Amsterband was inspired by Roberts’ trip to Germany mixed with his Ozarkian heritage and desire to create a “liberal enclave in the conservative Ozarks.” He grew up with Luke Long (bass, vocals) and Lennon Bone (drums, vocals) in West Plains, Mo., and met Brett Anderson (lead guitar, piano, vocals) at Missouri State University.

“The more we did it, the more serious we got about it,” Roberts said. “We felt like mixing indie rock and Ozarkian foot-stomp style of music that we all enjoyed playing. We did some touring two years ago, and we’ve been touring it ever since.”

Roberts’ influences include Mark Bilyeu of Big Smith and more recent groups such as R.E.M., The Shins, The Magic Numbers and The Flaming Lips. The band is now moving away from other bands’ sounds to create a sound that is uniquely them.

“Any band when you start out, if it’s your first band, you are probably going to stink,” Roberts said. “We definitely stunk up the place for a long time. (But) the more time you play with each other and dig into your own background, you can carve out your own sound. We are just now doing that.”

The band’s second record, Buckle in the Bible Belt, gained the attention of Bloodshot (home of Neko Case and Split Lip Rayfield), which will release the record nationally and also add tour dates to Amsterband’s already busy schedule. Roberts said he hopes the record captures something from the band’s past, as well as places it hopes to go with its music.

“It grabs a lot of attention,” Roberts said. “I think that it accurately represents our sound on stage.”

Even though the record stands on its own, the band really enjoys touring new cities and encountering different audiences. And, even though it has traveled to many large cities, Roberts prefers playing in smaller ones such as Warrensburg or Emporia, Kan.

“I love playing in those markets,” Roberts said. “Emporia doesn’t get big bands. When you play there, it’s bonkers.”

Amsterband has toured with Ben Kweller, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, Steel Train, Say Anything and Soul Asylum.

With so much traveling, the band is collecting many road stories. While in Indianapolis, Amsterband was looking for a place to stay at night. Long said he woke up in the back seat in nothing but his overalls. When a possum jumped out across the road, Long got out of the car to chase it, ran into a fence and ripped himself up pretty badly.

“There have been lots of great shows and happy moments along the way,” Roberts said. “You get to travel with three best friends and make music. We are very fortunate that we’ve made it to this point.”

With their new label, the members of Amsterband hope to continue developing and improving “both with audience and music.”

“Hopefully we continue to mature and make better music,” Roberts said. “We all four love playing together, and hopefully we continue to make interesting music.”

My schedule includes the wonderful absence of class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is one of the best scheduling decisions that I’ve made in my college career. Also, I don’t start until nine or ten. On Wednesdays, I had my Intermediate Writing class. I am really excited. I am going to learn about long form, narrative journalism and it will have an arts focus. We will get information on characters, dialog and development of a story. This is a perspective that so far, I have not received from any of my journalism classes. It will be a lot of work, but it is worth it. For the first time in a long time, I am actually excited about a journalism class.

After my conference on poverty, I went to stay with my aunt and uncle who live in San Francisco. It was great to be able to visit them- it had been a couple of years since I’d been out there last. I knew my mom wanted to be there, but it was nice to have some one-on-one time with them. I visited my grandpa in Palo Alto on one day and then we had a nice family dinner where my other aunt and uncle stopped by.

Then since they had to work on Monday, I made a day of it. I visited my aunt’s office and then we went out to a sushi restaurant where it rotates around and you grab whichever sushi you want. When my aunt grabbed the raw calamari, I knew that the limit of my cuisine curiosity ended there. Needless to say, I did not try it. After my meal, I visited the modern art museum or (MOMA) and saw the Frieda Kahlo exhibit. It was super crowded but definitely worth it to be able to see those unforgettable works in person.

I also had a nerve-wracking bus ride to the Haight (or hippie central). While the bus was uncomfortable, it was great to explore the city and be able to see some sights. Earlier in the week I visited Pier 39 and had some delicious clam chowder. Then I was able to visit the public radio station KQED—the most listened to public radio station in the United States. I met up with a someone who runs a health show that introduced me to everyone at the station including the former news director who was really excited about convergence. I walked out of his office wanting to work there. The huge bowl of dark chocolate sitting out reaffirmed that desire. If anything was a sign, that was.

All in all, it was a great trip full of excitement before school starts Monday–A mini-vacation that was greatly needed.

Stardeath and the White Dwarfs

Last weekend my roommates and I hit up the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival in Lawrence, Kansas. The campsite is only about ten minutes from my home, but we decided to camp this year. After driving three hours to get in Thursday afternoon, we arrived to warnings of the biggest storm since the mid-1970s (the year of seven tornadoes). Needless to say, we stopped in at the grounds and then headed back to my house to sleep. Back at the campgrounds, everyone was safe but may have had a flooded tent or have had to sleep in their cars. I felt a bit like a wimp for leaving, but I had no desire to sleep in a car.

Friday is when all the music that I was really excited to see went down. We saw Stardeath and the White Dwarfs (Wayne Coyne’s nephew’s band—they are in highschool, and are really good), Apollo Sunshine, Galactic, Flaming Lips, Built to Spill and Cake. Cake had a scheduling issue and ended up playing really late, but it was really cool to see them perform and play the songs that I listen to regularly. By far, the Flaming Lips put on the best show – Wayne Coyne certainly knows how to perform to a festival crowd. My roommate Kristin had seen them several times and was fairly unimpressed, but the combination of the songs, confetti and crazy dancing made it a great experience and not one that I will soon forget. When I hear “Do you Realize” I will now remember that moment dancing at Wakarusa to that song with my closest friends.

Flaming Lips

Saturday was a day full of mild exhaustion, dirt accumulated from camping and fun music. We headed to the music tents early to check out the bands — Ozomatli played last year, and are a mixture of Spanish, hip-hop, rap and salsa. The Old 97s played before Ben Folds and were a mixture of pop and rock-and-roll. I saw Ben Folds last year at Mizzou and it was fun in the festival crowd. It was too bad that he overlapped with STS9, that did amazing things with colored lights, smoke and 3D lasers. I lost the people that I came with to crazy crowd dancing. For me the night ended with Yard Dogs Road Show. It was a bit of vaudeville mixed with theatrics – there was even a knife eater (there is little that is more impressive in a performance than knife eating).

We packed up early Sunday, checked out Dr. Dog and the communal drum circle and headed out. For Wakarusa, I really enjoyed the bands that were not quite as “jam-bandy.” I like finality. I could dance forever to one song, but I like noticing the changes in songs. I also like lyrics. I think that Wakarusa did a good job this year of creating a mixture of jam-bands and more mainstream bands. I’m sad the weekend is over, but excited for the summer ahead.

Wakarusa last year with my friend Kristin
For the next four days, I will be at the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival in Lawrence, Kans. There are a lot of smaller bands and then the Flaming Lips, Cake, Ben Folds and the Old 97s. I went last year and it was a lot of fun, but I commuted from my house 15 minutes away. This year will be the first year that I am camping. I haven’t camped since a family trip more than three years ago. We used to take camping family vacations all the time. Needless to say, I miss it. The music will be really good this year. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I am completing my last week at KBIA, NPR affiliate, this week. I have really enjoyed my time there. I am thinking that I would like to work there as part of my editing class next semester. Just the atmosphere is greatly different from KOMU (the NBC affiliate). It has a laid-back nature, but everyone is working on what they need to. It is a smaller newsroom with more opportunities to work on stories. In the coming months, I would like to work on longer-form stories with tons of natural sound.
Yesterday I worked on a story out of Boonville about a development issue. It was more complicated than most stories that I work on just because I have no background knowledge of development issues. I read a previous article 3 times to try to comprehend the issues. A reporter needs to know about a lot, or at least learn how to understand… I LEARNED how to understand more about development. Listen to it here

Our convergence class hooked us up with some freebies—including a free ticket to Ira Glass, host of This American Life. My friend from Lawrence was in town and we ventured to Jesse Hall together. It was great because he opened with his voice among the darkness. He said that he tried to persuade the producers of the show to have the entire show in darkness. They told him that maybe that would fly in Lawrence, Kans., but not here.

It was one of the most inspiring performances/ speakers that I have ever witnessed. We are just about halfway through the semester, which means that I am incredibly burned out with pretty much everything. Thus, to hear from someone who has the same perspective on journalism and his own formula for making it work, I was enthralled. Journalism can be about people and life, not just hard news.

Glass talked about how he got into radio. And what was really amusing about it was he played one of his radio stories eight years in that was self-admittedly really awful. It is okay to suck, at least initially. And it may take awhile to find that voice. He then shared his formula for a great story, which includes motion. There is always a bigger “thing” in his stories. Everything moves in that story to a greater thing—clues or information or something that is essential to the story. He also mentioned that there can be a little something in a story that is just there purely for the enjoyment of the journalist or highlighting the humor lightheadedness of life.

Among his advice to aspiring journalists, he played some interesting and FUNNY stories. One of his stories that I really enjoyed was when he went to the Oreo cookie factory, he was actually surprised that it smelled, well, like cookies since he was so used to Oreos being a processed food. Who knew that Oreos smelled like cookies. Only Ira Glass.

I love public radio. I have always loved public radio from listening to Morning Edition before school to Car Talk on Saturday Mornings. The dial was always tuned into NPR, and I continue to love it and wake up to it. That is why I was super excited for my shift at KBIA as part of the convergence reporting class.

The first shift, I worked on a day turn story. The most challenging part was figuring out how to record a phone conversation on the phones. It is fairly simple if you push record. I didn’t. Needless to say, I had to do the interview again. Not the most pleasant experience, but good for me to learn. I feel like I learn by mistakes more than anything else.

Also, I pitched another idea about the volunteers for True/False Film Festival and was able to work on it. The most important thing about this class is coming up with solid story ideas (and a lot of them). I really enjoyed working on this story and talking to the volunteers. I got some killer natural sound (nat sound as they say in the radio world) and some interesting characters to highlight. The piece turned out well. Give it a listen.

I had the pleasure of attending the University Concert Series production of Mel Brook’s musical The Producers at Jesse Hall. My brother makes me so jealous when he says that he attended a performance of The Producers with Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane in Chicago before it opened in New York. However, I got to see the winner of twelve 2001 Tony Awards on Sunday night. Even though it was a traveling company without the original cast, it was absolutely fabulous and so funny. Easily one of the best Broadway shows that I have seen.
Dancing old ladies, sexual innuendos and colorful characters made the performance simply fabulous. I haven’t been able to go to enough professional shows this year. I remember when I as in highschool, we were able to get tickets for $5 and I would review the shows for the local newspaper. I miss this option. However, I hear that if a show is not sold out, that you can get a ticket for $6 for the remaining seats. I have not tested this theory, but the program is great.

Some upcoming shows include Evita, Kenny G, Moving Out, Jesus Christ Superstar, Hairpray and Ira glass. There is a diverse program and so many great show come into Columbia, it would be a crime to not take advantage of the great cultural offerings.