POKEY LaFARGE

 

Pokey LaFarge (born June 26, 1983) is an American musician, writer, and actor raised in Illinois, and now based in Los Angeles, California.

At the Square Room in Knoxville, Tennessee, April 17, 2010

LaFarge was born Andrew Heissler in Bloomington, Illinois. The nickname "Pokey" was coined by his mother, who would scold him to hurry when he was a child.LaFarge took an interest in history and literature during his childhood, and was greatly influenced by his grandfathers. One was a member of the St. Louis Banjo Club who gave him his first guitar and tenor banjo. The other, an amateur historian, taught him about the American Civil War and World War II.

LaFarge enjoyed the writings of John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, and Jack Kerouac. As a teenager, he combined his appreciation for history and writing with his discovery of blues music.

In his early teens, while he was living in Normal, Illinois, LaFarge first heard blues at Jake's Pizza, run by a man named Juice. Jake's Pizza was decorated with portraits of bluesmen, and exclusively played blues; the music of Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon in particular inspired LaFarge. He discovered an appreciation for older blues musicians like Skip James, Robert Wilkins, and Sleepy John Estes. After hearing Bill Monroe at age 16, LaFarge traded the guitar his grandfather had given him for a mandolin.

He adopted the name "Pokey LaFarge" because it sounded like what he was looking for musically during the time he was moving around the country. After graduating from University High School in 2001,[1] at the age of seventeen he hitchhiked to the west coast and earned a living as a busker on streets, sidewalks, and pedestrian malls. He met Ryan Koenig and Joey Glynn of the St. Louis band The Rum Drum Ramblers while he was playing on a street in Asheville, North Carolina. Koenig and Glynn began playing with LaFarge in 2008, and the addition of Adam Hoskins in 2009 resulted in the formation of the South City Three

LaFarge in Reutlingen, Germany, May 2, 2012

LaFarge independently released his first album, Marmalade, in 2006. During the same year, he toured with The Hackensaw Boys. His second solo album, Beat, Move & Shake, was released in 2008 by Big Muddy Records.

Riverboat Soul, the first album with The South City Three, was recorded in July 2009 at the Nashville studio of producer Phil Harris using vintage instruments and electronics. It was released in 2010 by Free Dirt Records and won the Independent Music Award for Best Americana Album.] The group's second album, Middle of Everywhere, won the same award in 2011. The band also released Chittlin' Cookin' Time in Cheatham County produced by Jack White for his label, Third Man Records. White asked the band to collaborate with him on the song "I Guess I Should Go to Sleep" for his album Blunderbuss, followed by opening for him on tour.

In 2013, LaFarge signed with Third Man Records and released his first album on the label, accompanied by a larger band that included Chloe Feoranzo, Matthew Meyer, and T.J. Muller. During the next year, he signed with Rounder Records and released Something in the Water in April 2015.

In 2017 his album Manic Revelations was released on Rounder Records.

On January 22, 2020 LaFarge announced the release of a new album called "Rock Bottom Rhapsody" which was released on April 10th on the New West label. 

Appearances

The group was featured by NPR on the Tiny Desk Concert series in 2011.

LaFarge wrote a song for the soundtrack of Brick By Chance and Fortune, a documentary directed by friend of the band, Bill Streeter, released in 2011.

On New Year's Eve 2012 the group appeared on the UK BBC2 Jools Holland's Hootenanny television show.

Pokey and the members of the South City Three played on "I Guess I Should Go To Sleep", a track from Jack White's album Blunderbuss released on April 24, 2012.

On September 23, 2012, LaFarge contributed to the soundtrack of HBO's Boardwalk Empire with his rendition of the famous pop standard "Lovesick Blues". The song was featured in the last scene and end credits of the episode "Spaghetti & Coffee"

LaFarge collaborated with JD McPherson on a rendition of country legend Bob Wills' "Good Old Oklahoma", released on June 28, 2013. All of the proceeds from the track go to the Oklahoma City Community Fund's Tornado Relief endowment.

Pokey & The South City Three recorded Jack White's track "Red's Theater of The Absurd" which appeared in The Lone Ranger 's original score. The film was released on July 3, 2013 and the band made a brief appearance in the movie.

LaFarge and his group made an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman on July 16, 2013. They performed "Central Time" from his eponymous album.

LaFarge and the group made an appearance on the APM live radio broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, with Garrison Keillor on October 5, 2013. They performed four selections -- "Central Time", "What The Rain Will Bring", "Garbage Man Blues" and "Close the Door".

Pokey LaFarge performed on The Late Late Show (RTÉ One Ireland) on September 13, 2013.

Pokey made a special solo appearance on the widely popular Dutch television program De Wereld Draait Door (DWDD) on February 15, 2014

The band made an appearance on Good Morning New Zealand on March 18, 2014

LaFarge appeared for a second time on A Prairie Home Companion on June 14, 2014 in St. Louis, MO. They performed "Riverboat Shuffle", "Bow Legged Woman", and "Central Time".

He and the band appeared and performed at the Cambridge Folk Festival UK on August 1, 2014.

The band played the Mustang Stage at the Stagecoach Music Festival on April 30, 2016, in Coachella, California.

The band played on episode 136 of The Marty Stuart Show.

The band appeared in the multi award-winning documentary film The American Epic Sessions directed by Bernard MacMahon and recorded "St. Louis Blues" on the first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s. The film premiered June 6, 2017.

The band appeared on Conan O'Brien on August 17, 2017 and performed "Better Man Than Me" 

He appeared as "Theodore" in the Netflix distributed movie The Devil All the Time (film) and contributed to the soundtrack 

Musical style

The group is thought to be "artfully dodgy ambassadors for old-time music, presenting and representing the glories of hot swing, early jazz and ragtime blues" who have "made riverboat chic cool again." Stephen Thompson of NPR says LaFarge's . .

". . music evokes the old-timey spirit of a thousand crackling 78 RPM records . . and even when you encounter him face to face, he seems to gaze at you out of a dusty archival photo . . Maybe the effect wouldn't be so jarring if LaFarge's music felt inauthentic in some unsettling way . . But his albums never feel like cheap exercises in nostalgia, in part because LaFarge directs his old-fashioned sensibilities in the service of sharp, infectious new material. It feels strange to listen to his work on a CD . . but his songs aren't stiffly posed wax-museum sculptures . . Their energy makes them feel new and alive.

Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show said

"Pokey's got a St. Louis thing going. His muse is the Mississippi; maybe that's what makes his songs run so deep and muddy, though it was on the Ohio that I first met him. With a Bardstown tune he stopped me dead in my tracks—just a kid back then, cutting his teeth on primitive blues, rust jazz, drunk swing – Lord! – what saintly patron brought Clifford Hayes back from the dead and sent him back to Carpet Alley to reclaim his crown? Well, all I can say for certain is nobody sings much like Jimmie Rodgers anymore and nobody crows, rakes, rips, yips, shouts, buzzes or croons quite like Pokey LaFarge either."

Genre

His repertoire consists of a mix of Americana, early jazz, ragtime for string instruments, country blues, Western swing, Vaudeville, and Appalachian folk.

"American music is the tops: People respond to it all over the world because it's expressive and powerful," LaFarge told Madison's Isthmus newspaper in 2011.

Influences

Musicians that have influenced him include Howlin' Wolf, Jimmie Rodgers, Bill Monroe, Milton Brown and the Musical Brownies, Modern Mountaineers, Sleepy John Estes, Henry Townsend, Frank Fairfield, Fats Waller, Emmett Miller, and Willie Dixon.

Members

Pokey LaFarge - lead vocals, guitar, guitjo (2006-present)

Adam Hoskins - guitar (2009-2018)

Joey Glynn - upright bass (2008-2018)

Ryan Koenig - harmonica, washboard, guitar, guitjo, snare drum (2008-2018)

Matthew Meyer - drums (2014-present)

Chloe Feoranzo - clarinet, saxophone (2013-2015)

Timothy Muller - trumpet, trombone (2013-2015)

                               

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“The man singing these songs isn’t exactly the same man who wrote them,” says Pokey LaFarge of Rock Bottom Rhapsody, his eighth and latest studio release. “This album is about the story of who I used to be.”

In early 2018, LaFarge — searching for the sort of artistic freedom and inspiration he wasn’t finding in the Midwest — relocated from his longtime home base of St. Louis, Missouri, to Los Angeles, California. New songs came quickly to LaFarge in his new environment, but new temptations soon found him, as well. Though he declines to get into specifics, LaFarge admits that he experienced a significant “fall from grace” during the last months of 2018. “Things sort of started to unravel in my mind,” he recalls. “I was letting evil spirits and demons rule me, and I came into certain agreements with them, and it took me down. I was giving too much power to the darkness, and I got in too deep, and I made some bad decisions. The reality of the situation is that I hit the closest to rock bottom that I ever had, and I’ve definitely had some hardships in my life.”

While songs like “Fuck Me Up,” “End of My Rope,” “Fallen Angel” and “Ain’t Comin Home” were all written before LaFarge’s life went into a downward spiral, their lyrics definitely speak of a soul in crisis — even though their author himself wasn’t fully aware of it at the time. “It’s a case of me writing the story and writing the song, and then unfortunately living it,” he reflects. “The last three, four years have just been the hardest that I can remember. I’d played the Ryman, I was selling theaters and clubs out all over the world, I got to travel the world, I was making a living, I got to buy a house; I could have whatever food and booze I wanted at any time, women… but I was unhappiest I’d ever been, because I don’t think I really believed that I deserved my success, even though I worked so hard to get everything I had. And I was going towards the darkness. I was longing for death more than I was longing for life — not necessarily literally longing for actual death, but destruction definitely ensued; self-sabotage and self-destruction definitely happened.”

But shortly before the recording of Rock Bottom Rhapsody began, LaFarge experienced a spiritual awakening — and the faith he re-embraced in his hour of darkness helped to buoy him through the making of the album. “I wrote this record before the fall from grace, and then it was recorded after the fall from grace. So you see how that could be kind of odd,” he says. “What I was searching for was peace and humility in the aftermath of the carnage, of things I had wrecked, and — seemingly at the time — completely destroyed. I was just, like, trying to survive; I had to fight every time to get up to that microphone and just sing. It was kind of like a last stand, like the Alamo, or something. I was like, ‘Man, I’ve gotta get this out, and then I’m gone. This could be it.’ I didn’t know if I was gonna kill myself, or if I was going to pack up my things and walk away and disappear… or if this was going to lead to some sort of personal redemption through my reborn faith, and the pursuit of enlightenment and wisdom and peace and all those things that God can bring into one’s life, if we just stay the heck out of the way.”

Though he was struggling for spiritual equilibrium at the time, LaFarge at least had some rock-solid musical support to lean on. Recorded primarily at Reliable Recorders on Chicago’s Northwest side, Rock Bottom Rhapsody was produced by LaFarge’s friend and collaborator Chris Seefried (who also co-wrote several of the album’s tracks), and features the considerable talents of guitarist Joel Paterson, keyboardist Scott Ligon, upright/electric bassist Jimmy Sutton, and drummer Alex Hall (who also engineered the record), with additional vocal harmonies added by Ligon and Casey McDonough. 

“It’s pretty much the same guys as I had done [2015’s] Something in the Water with, and the same studio where I’d recorded it, so there was definitely some familiarity and comradery there,” says LaFarge. “I would put those guys up against any Nashville band, any L.A. or Austin band. They’re just class. And if you want to record with them, you kinda got to go to them — even if it means leaving the perennial sun of Los Angeles for the colder-than-Mars tundra of Chicago, with the polar vortex blowing through.”

Though full of soulful life, tracks like “Bluebird,” “Storm A Comin” and “Lost in the Crowd” all feature leaner instrumental arrangements than the ones that characterized 2017’s Manic Revelations. “Chris and I wanted to strip it back from the last record,” LaFarge explains. “We didn’t want any horns, we didn’t want anything to get in the way of the vocals and the lyrics. I think before, I was a little more concerned with style and concept, and that in turn made things just a little too complicated, like I was trying more to serve the music and the musicians than I was trying to serve the song…

“I had already mapped out the sort of instrumentation I wanted to have on the road with me,” he continues, “and that’s pretty much what you hear on the record. It’s going to be me on guitars, then piano and organ, electric guitar, upright and electric bass, and drums — a five-piece, including me.”

After taking a break from the album to take a “dark, sad, villainous role” in the forthcoming Netflix feature film The Devil All the Time — “The irony wasn’t lost on me that, one month after finding God, the first feature film opportunity that comes across my table has that for a title,” he chuckles — LaFarge returned to L.A. and recorded the gorgeous “Lucky Sometimes” at Valentine Studios in North Hollywood. The recording features a string quartet led by violinist Paul Cartwright, and Miles Davis keyboardist Deron Johnson on piano. “We did it live in the studio, Frank Sinatra-style,” LaFarge exults. “It was pretty cool!”

Through it all, LaFarge’s plaintive vocals remain pleasingly front and center. “I’ve always loved crooners,” he says. “Some people might think of crooners in the sense of the Bing Crosby-Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin type of era, which of course I love, but also I would consider people like Roy Orbison, Nick Cave, Bob Dylan and Tom Jones crooners, as well. I’ve always loved that narrative style of singing, always loved ballads — just taking your voice to the limit and telling a story.”

Musically, LaFarge continues to mix and match a wide variety of styles and traditions, while never losing track of his own vision. “I listen to a lot of Latino music, and I listen to a lot of French music, whether it comes from France or Africa, and I listen to a lot of rocksteady — you know, fifties and sixties Jamaican music. I’ll mess with rhythms and try to come up with stuff that sounds almost more traditional in certain genres, and then keep playing it and try and get it into something that I’ll want to sing every night. This record is kind of like Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan hanging out with chanson singers and French jazz bands in like the forties, but I was never trying to make it sound like a particular person. It was more like, ‘If it sounds too much like this person, I need to make it sound more like me.’”

Despite the trying period that preceded its recording, Rock Bottom Rhapsody is ultimately far more uplifting and life-affirming than its title would suggest. “That desperation, that struggle,” LaFarge ponders, “Did it add something to the record? It certainly did. I mean, I don’t know if it made it better; it just is what it is. It’s not up to me to decide if people are going to feel that…

“Certainly, there are things in The Bible that I’ve interpreted to mean that suffering is a part of life,” he continues. “And along with that, there’s different seasons; and there’s pleasures and joys and triumphs, as well. And when we’re on top, we think we’ll never fall. But that fall has certainly given some deeper meaning to things that I’ll write going forward, and that’s something to be grateful for.”

This info appears in artist web site : https://www.pokeylafarge.net/

    Último trabajo discográfico de POKEY LaFARGE * ROCK BOTTOM RHAPSODY *