Metro Pulse/Eye on the Scene

A&E: Eye on the Scene

El Deth Lives

Around 1991, friends Arrison Kirby, Josh Lunford, Dustin Basalla, and Aaron Shugart-Brown started their own music production company in Knoxville that is starting to create a buzz. Its cryptic name, El Deth, was inspired by the words printed on the back of a bootleg Bart Simpson T-shirt Kirby remembers from childhood. Now, 14 years after its conception, hundreds of people and dozens of bands work or have worked with the widely known but scarcely publicized underground label.

“As long as they’re innovative and pushing forward, not stagnating, everyone can come to El Deth,” says Kirby. With bands such as Next to Never, Matgo Primo, and The Weekends, as well as songwriters like Hamilton Ellis, El Deth is not limited to one style of music. Nothing expresses this better than OBADIAH, a band fronted by all four founding members of the label. Its eclectic sound is a complex medley of Euro-rock and space-grunge with radical tempo changes that evoke the feeling of watching a circus being sucked into a black hole to the tune of a lullaby.

From reggae to punk to folk to electronica and back again, OBADIAH presents itself as a collective, the essence of El Deth. Catch El Deth’s CD release party at Blue Cats on Dec. 9 at 8 p.m. A mere $5 to witness an array of El Deth talents: OBADIAH, The Weekends, The Twinkiebots backed by the Tenderhooks, Matgo Primo, Henry Gibson, and Lemon Drop Kid.

Dixie Dirt’s New Digs

If you wanna be in a band around here, looks like all you have to do is ask. At least it worked for Mandy Lawson, who now fronts the Badlights, a new band consisting of Lawson and all four members of Dixie Dirt. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Lawson was already an avid songwriter and has a voice capable of covering the sultry tunes of Etta James and the like.

“One night over a couple beers at Sunspot, I told Kat [Brock] that I’d always wanted to be in a band. She told me to just come over one night and we’d drink some whiskey and play some music,” says Lawson, who is also a talented actress active with the Actors Co-op.

After the duo had immediate musical chemistry, Brock invited the whole band over, thus giving birth to a fresh new side project, which gets its name from a Dixie Dirt song. “Dixie Dirt is my favorite band, so I was really excited,” says a glowing Lawson.

Side projects allow musicians to break away from their norm, and Lawson says the band has welcomed the breath of fresh air. “Dixie Dirt’s songs are pretty complicated musically; they’re also long and introspective. This is just more R&B and bluesy, and there’s also stuff you can dance to. It’s just different from what they normally do.”

The Badlights will be playing a regular Monday night gig at Barley’s, performing a mix of rarely played covers (with experimental accompaniments) and originals by Brock and Lawson. “We wrote an Appalachian love song together, but then we have one that’s more punk. It runs the gamut,” says Lawson.

Cool Yule Mule

If you saw the inaugural issue of Mule—a magazine that covers issues of literary, artistic, musical and otherwise cultural importance—you’ll understand the impetus behind the fundraising show being held Dec. 10 at the Pilot Light. Mule’s stylish graphic design and glossy printing paper raise the bar for other literary magazines, but it’s still a DIY project fueled by the energy of several young diehards whose pockets, alas, aren’t filled with gold coins. Hence, the fundraiser featuring the musical talents of The Cheat and Divorce, two of K-town’s hottest rock propositions. Behind the turntables, Marcus Tanner and Harold Heffner will contribute to the party ambiance and the dance-floor mania. Funds from the $5 will go toward printing the next issue of Mule in January. Creative, independent media? That’s a good thing.

The End of an Era

On Dec. 11, the Pink Sexies will end a four-year run of maniacal mayhem perpetrated for and against the rock fans of Knoxville and beyond.

“We have been together through four years, three records, two babies, one van and many, many facial hair experiences,” says lead singer Hamo Bahnam a.k.a. Ommi Falafel. “We are calling it quits based only on biological reasons; people need to move on with their creative selves and become other things. We want to end the band on a good note. This is not the result of endless squabbles but good timing.”

Guitarist Fred Rascoe (a.k.a. Dusty Cupcakes) moved to Oak Ridge with his wife and new baby to “pursue the first foot fetish museum,” claims Hamo, who says his future endeavors include mustache modeling. He and bassist William Deleonardis (Spank Hotsauce) may work on a project together in the near future, but time will tell. Hamo plans to focus more time on photography and painting. The future of drummer Jason Stark (Ducky Soup), who Hamo states is “still looking for Bin Laden,” is yet unknown.

After the Pink Sexies’ last album in 2003 received minimal support from the label, the band was left to uphold it. “We felt like that was kind of pointless. It was kind of a downer,” says Hamo, who chalks it up to wanting to pursue it but not having adequate time.

After opening for Mike Watt at the Pilot Light, Hamo estimates that their finale might smack of anticlimax. “That was probably our best show ever, and it probably should’ve been the last show,” he says. But with even the requisite amount of Sexies’ antics, plus a guest appearance by the band’s original drummer Cheezo Fondu, how could the last Pink Sexies show (at least until a reunion) be anything but thrilling? Throw down with the Sexies, It Is A Code and who knows who else on Dec. 11 at the Pilot Light.

—Hunter Overby, Molly Kincaid, Paige M. Travis