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What:
The Laura Blackley Band
When:
Thursday, Nov. 18, 9 p.m.
Where:
Preservation Pub
Cost:
Free.
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The One and Only
Laura Blackley stands by her originality
by Paige M. Travis
Club owners and booking agents, beware. Don’t say the word covers to Laura Blackley. First of all, she prefers the term standards, and she doesn’t much like to play more than one or two per show—definitely not a full set of them. Blackley is a purveyor of the songwriting craft who doesn’t need to beg, steal or borrow ear-friendly hits; she writes her own, thank you very much.
It’s a shame to hear Blackley report that her band’s travels up and down the East Coast have included run-ins with booking agents who want her to perform other people’s songs, presumably in an effort to please their customers, who, presumably don’t want to hear originals.
“There’s only so many times you can hear ‘Mustang Sally,’” Blackley counters. She’s calling from another three-day weekend of touring, this time from Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, Ga., to Athens and then Savannah, three locales supportive of the original tunes Blackley has to offer.
For the past five years, the Asheville-based Laura Blackley Band has followed this weekend-warrior path, sticking mostly to the Southeast but straying as far north as Boston and as far south as Miami. They’ve been at it “as long as Britney Spears has been legal,” quips Blackley, who doesn’t reveal whether all her important milestones are correlated with the pop star’s life.
Although Blackley and her partners in rock—drummer Julie Couch, bassist Tony Harp and guitarist Mars Farriss—aren’t old enough to have lived through all the hard times their rode-hard, road-weary sound suggests, they’re definitely a seasoned bar band, offering boozed-up rock numbers driven by Blackley’s coarse cords and Farriss’ guitar strains that move seamlessly from blues to twang.
This year marks the release of the band’s debut record, Liquid Courage, on SBS Records, the label of their friend and musical supporter Michelle Malone. A musical warrior in her own right, Malone heard Blackley for the first time when the Atlanta-based singer-songwriter came through Asheville and found Blackley, performing solo at the time, as her opening act.
“From what Michelle had said, I think she really liked my songs,” says Blackley, who returns the compliment and then some. “I think she’s the greatest. We totally hit it off. Here’s a woman who’s done this in a man’s world and hasn’t destroyed herself in the process.”
Malone’s years of experience and role as a mentor paid off in the studio as well when she served as producer of Liquid Courage.
“She’s got such a great knowledge base,” Blackley says. “Her ideas were just dead on. She came up with things I wouldn’t have considered. Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.”
Blackley’s songs most often come from her gut—a swaggering bravado that challenges any takers with sarcastic wit—”Your Mama Must Be Proud”— or brutal honesty. She finds other personae worth trying on in strong female figures who she believes haven’t gotten their due in the annals of history. Exhibit A: Bonnie Parker, the infamous fugitive outlaw whose crime-and-murder spree with her lover Clyde Barrow was committed to cinematic history in the 1967 film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. Blackley loved the film when she was a youngster, but as an adult viewer, she discovered that the screen depiction of Bonnie didn’t suit her understanding of the historic felon.
In “Bonnie Parker’s Ballad,” Blackley writes the tale how she sees it: “Well Faye did you sell me up the river / Had me screaming and crying like some fool / I shot that gun because I wanted to / Because Bonnie Parker ain’t nobody’s tool.”
“I didn’t think Bonnie Parker would’ve been the kind of woman who would’ve been so afraid he was going to leave her,” says Blackley, who characterizes Parker as a “tough as nails” woman who wouldn’t have cried and caved like Dunaway did. “It oughta be remembered as a partnership.”
Other strong and spirited women find their way onto Liquid Courage, including Miss Helen, a ghostly star of Asheville folk legend, and a woman who graces a photo on the CD’s cover. In the picture, two women stand together, their faces twisted in mugging and laughter. One holds bottles of champagne and 7-Up. The other holds a paper cup. Blackley found the picture in her grandmother’s belongings and believes one of the women to be her great-aunt Josie. The women’s expressions and cocktail of choice immediately struck Blackley as cover-art material, and perhaps as inspiration for the title track. “I’ve got a bad attitude, and I don’t owe nothing to you,” it begins. The words could be spoken by either of the high-spirited gals, who don’t have to be related to Blackley by blood to share her tough-as-nails zeal for the pursuit of music. Her own music.
November 18, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 47
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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