Big Star Receives Brass Note on Beale Street

Big Star will soon take their place in front of BB King’s on historic Beale Street in the form of a brass note, which was presented to the original members – Jody Stephens, Chris Bell, Alex Chilton and Andy Hummel – on Saturday, November 13th. Ardent Studios’ owner and founder John Fry, along with Dean Deyo of the Memphis Music Foundation, Susan Murrmann, and author Bob Mehr all had kind words to say about Big Star and its history with Ardent. Jody Stephens accepted the note on behalf of the band and all its members, and lots of friends and family were in attendance to help celebrate.

To view more pictures of the event, check out the Memphis Music Foundation’s  facebook page. Thanks to all who made it out!

In the picture, L to R: Engineer Mike Wilson, booking manager Daniel Russo, new media specialist Rachel Hurley, controller Elizabeth Montgomery, Jody Stephens, John Fry, engineer Jeff Powell, Susan Marshall, and Dena Wheeler.

    

Big Star Bassist Andy Hummel Dies at 59

Big Star drummer and Ardent Studios’ manager Jody Stephens was interviewed by Rolling Stone Senior Editor David Fricke recently about Big Star and the passing of bassist Andy Hummel. From the interview:

Four months after Big Star drummer Jody Stephens and I talked about his late bandmate, singer-guitarist Alex Chilton, who died in March, we talked again – about bassist Andy Hummel, whopassed away on July 19th of cancer at his home in Weatherford, Texas. Hummel was 59. His death leaves Stephens as the only surviving member of the original lineup of the legendary Memphis-born power-pop group; singer-guitarist Chris Bell died in 1978 in a car crash.

Born in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and raised in Memphis, Hummel was an undercelebrated factor in the Big Star legend: instrumental in the formation of the group, as Stephens explains, and a gifted contributor as a singer, keyboard player and songwriter on the band’s back-to-back classics for Ardent Records, 1972′s #1 Record and 1974′s Radio City. Frustrated by Big Star’s inability to commercially capitalize on the critical love for their music – an ultimately influential combination of electric-R&B twang, modern romantic anguish and classic Beatlemania – Hummel quit the group just before the release of Radio City, getting a master’s degree in engineering and a job in Texas at Lockheed Martin Aeronautical while continuing to play bass as a sideline. His appearance at the SXSW tribute to Alex Chilton and Big Star in March, playing on his “Way Out West” from Radio City, was the first time he played with Stephens since 1973. It was also, sadly, the last.

Two days after we spoke, Stephens was in New York for a July 28th tribute show to Chilton at City Winery – an event that also became a celebration of Hummel. “Andy’s impact on my life was huge,” Stephens says fondly. “I wouldn’t be sitting where I am now and had all these experiences without him. I wouldn’t have been in Big Star.”

Becoming Big Star

How did you meet Andy?

I met Andy when I was 13, through a guitar player named Mike Fleming. Mike and Andy were a year older. They both lived in Midtown; I lived on Eastman [Road]. I used to catch bus into Midtown, or hitchhike, and hang out with Andy and Mike.

Then I lost track of Andy. We hooked up again in early 1970. I was performing in a college production ofHair, along with my brother Jimmy. Andy came to see one of the performances and said hello after the show. We talked, and he invited me over to jam with him and Chris and some other folks. That’s how that got started. Andy introduced me to Chris, then to John Fry at Ardent Studios.

For more of the interview, visit Rollingstone.com.

I Never Travel Far Without A Little Big Star: SXSW 2010

Mere days after the death of Alex Chilton, a panel scheduled at Austin’s South By Southwest festival on the legacy of Big Star was repurposed as a tribute to the life and times of Chilton. Entitled “I Never Travel Far Without A Little Big Star,” it included panelists from founding members of Big Star Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel, power pop legends Chris Stamey and Tommy Keene, additional current Big Star members Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow, to Ardent Studios owner and founder John Fry. Bob Mehr moderated the panel.

For the first time since then, video of the panel is available on youtube. Check it out in its entirety below!

     

     

L Nix & Co Featured in Memphis Daily News

Larry Nix, mastering engineer and proprietor (with his son Kevin Nix) of L. Nix Mastering, Inc, was recently featured for an article in Memphis Daily News highlighting his newly refurbished record lathe. From the article:

Producing vinyl records – those albums that most people 40 and older grew up with – has rapidly become a lost art as technology has sent that format the way of the 8-track tape.

But a few local music engineers are turning back the clock by refurbishing a Neumann VMS 70 lathe – a machine that is used to cut vinyl discs – that Stax founder Jim Stewart began using in 1970.

Mastering engineer Larry Nix, owner of L. Nix Mastering Inc., and Jeff Powell and John Fry of Ardent Studios are using the lathe that was used to master vinyl recordings of many classic Stax recordings.

“We literally spent days in here replacing parts and electronics,” Nix said of refurbishing the antique equipment, which sells for about $49,000. “But now it’s in like-new condition.”

The lathe had fallen out of use because of economic pressures in the changing music industry. With the industry having long ago turned to compact discs as the preferred recording, and with people now downloading music, the market for music played on a turntable has diminished.

But vinyl has been making a comeback recently. Sales of compact discs have been slumping as MP3, Windows Media files and Apple have been claiming market share.

So while CD sales have been declining over the past decade, LP sales have been up. Many current artists are releasing their discs on vinyl and a lot of older albums are being re-pressed and re-released on vinyl – or pressed for the first time.

Soundscan, a music sales tracking service, reported a 33 percent increase in sales of vinyl LPs from 2008 to 2009, with sales soaring from 1.8 million to 2.5 million.

“I would love to see everything be more purist,” Ardent engineer Powell said.

Mastering audio for vinyl is a mechanical process, and it’s exactly the kind of process that digital media was supposed to price out of the market.

And the competitive pressure posed by digital recording and mastering were only part of the problem; distribution costs also effectively disappeared in a networked world. The lathe seemed doomed.

“I pretty much shut it down,” said Nix, who was the mastering engineer at Stax from 1970 to 1975 and has worked with prominent musicians like ZZ Top, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Al Green and Parliament.

Nix, who with his son, Kevin, has helped define the Memphis rap aesthetic, now maintains a separate studio within Ardent. He specializes in preparing mixed audio for its final format, be that radio, CD, television or vinyl disc.

With the lathe virtually obsolete, he made arrangements for the historic piece to go to a museum.

Powell asked him to demonstrate how it worked before it got away. When arrangements with the museum fell through, one client – Super 400 from Troy, N.Y. – lobbied hard to start using the lathe again.

“They were really, really persistent,” Nix said.

It is a daunting mechanical challenge to cut tiny grooves into hard plastic, and the margin for error is minimal given the high cost relative to digital mastering.

“If one thing goes wrong, you start over,” Powell said. “Making two or three cuts can ruin your profit margin.”

The process is also done in real time, which means the engineer must seamlessly cut not only all of the songs to disc, but the lead-in, the spaces between the songs and the loop at the end.

The groove is microscopic and must be precise, so there was a refurbishing challenge. Nix is mastering about one project per week, usually in combination with a separate digital master.

While most of the work once came from labels, Nix gets most of his business from independent producers.

The City Champs are a Memphis soul powerhouse and are gaining critical praise. Their album “Safecracker” was recorded without digital technology.

Engineer Scott Bomar, owner of Electraphonic Recording, tracked the album on a Stax-era tape machine and mastered the discs straight to vinyl.

“Watching Larry Nix master vinyl is something really special to behold,” Bomar said.

Powell sees the market for better audio and is glad to have had the opportunity to work with Nix.

“It’s a blast,” he said. “He’s (Nix) the master.”

Original article by Joe Boon in The Memphis Daily News.

Thank You Friends: A Tribute to Big Star & Alex Chilton Friday May 21

To our friends in Nashville: Jody will be traveling your way this weekend to participate in the Musicares benefit at the Mercy Lounge on Friday, May 21st. The benefit, entitled “Thank You Friends: A Tribute to Big Star and Alex Chilton” will feature Jody Stephens (Big Star co-founder), Brendan Benson (Raconteurs), Carl Broemel (My Morning Jacket), David Mead, Bill Lloyd, Joe Marc’s Brother, David Vandervelde, John Davis (Superdrag), Roman Candle, The Shazam, Michael “Grimey” Grimes, Ken Coomer, Neilson Hubbard, Blue Eyed Blacks, Chris Stamey (The DB’s), Mitch Easter (Let’s Active) and more.

From the Mercy Lounge’s Web site (where tickets are also available): Nashville’s Music Community will pay tribute to the pop genius of Memphian Alex Chilton and his seminal band Big Star by gathering onstage at Mercy Lounge for a night of incredible Big Star/Alex Chilton covers (including special one-time only all star band collaborations) honoring his legacy and raising money and awareness for musicians in need. Musicares has recently set up a special fund to help those recently affected by the historic Nashville Flood. Big Star co-founder Jody Stephens is making the trip over from Memphis and Rhino Records has generously donated Big Star box sets and limited edition 7″s for the cause.

Proceeds go to MusicCares.

www2.grammy.com

Remaining Big Star members Jon Auer (from left), Jody Stephens and Ken Stringfellow are shown in this file photo from the Alex Chilton tribute concert in March at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas. Photo by Sandy Carson.

The Big Star Box Set, Keep an Eye on the Sky, is available through Amazon.com.

The Deluxe Edition of Chris Bell’s I Am the Cosmos is available through Rhino Handmade’s site.

Help Fund Nothing Can Hurt Me: The Big Star Story!

Producer-director Danielle McCarthy, who over the course of the last 2 + years has become one of the greatest stewards of the great underdog story that is Big Star’s history, will return to Memphis this week to film the May 15th Big Star show in Memphis’ Overton Park (tickets available here). Joining her will be her co-director Drew DeNicola and her brother and cameraman Patrick McCarthy. The film is being initially funded by the kindness of Big Star fans, through Kickstarter, a fund raising Web site for the arts.

Nothing Can Hurt Me: The Big Star Story‘s Kickstarter page has already raised over $13,000, and is only open until Thursday, 5/13/10, so please take a look at the trailer and the opportunities to donate there!

From John Beiffus‘ article in The Commercial Appeal:

With pledge dollars and mouse clicks, fans around the world are helping to ensure the completion of a feature documentary about Big Star, the influential Memphis power-pop band led by the late Alex Chilton.

“I knew that people would want to see the movie, but the response was a real eye-opener,” said Brooklyn producer-director Danielle McCarthy, who hit her fundraising goal of $6,000 just a few hours after going public with her project last week on kickstarter.com, an online “funding platform” for artists, musicians, filmmakers, inventors and other creative types.

(Read more…)

(Read more about the project at the film’s Web site)

In the photo: filmmaker Danielle McCarthy, Ardent Studios/Records owner/founder John Fry, and cameraman Patrick McCarthy. Not shown is co-director Drew DeNicola.

UPDATE: Now that the Kickstarter page has expired, The Memphis Music Foundation is accepting donations  in support of the film and its crew. Please contact Pat Mitchell Worley at pat@memphismeansmusic.com, or you can call the foundation at (901) 527-1029.

The Big Star Box Set, Keep an Eye on the Sky, is available through Amazon.com.

The Deluxe Edition of Chris Bell’s I Am the Cosmos is available through Rhino Handmade’s site.

       

Levitt Shell Spring Season Kick-Off Party with Big Star

The Levitt Shell Foundation has announced it’s final lineup of guests for the Big Star show in Memphis’ own Overton Park on May 15th, 2010. The guests include: Andy Hummel (Big Star), Mike Mills (REM), Brendan Benson (The Raconteurs), Sondre Lerche, Amy Speace, Susan Marshall, Van Duren, and Tommy Hoehn. Ardent Music artists Star & Micey will open the show.

Tickets are on sale now at www.levittshell.org, or call 1-888-71-tickets.

 

 

The Big Star Box Set, Keep an Eye on the Sky, is available through Amazon.com.

The Deluxe Edition of Chris Bell’s I Am the Cosmos is available through Rhino Handmade’s site.

Big Star Show at Levitt Shell to Proceed

Spring Season Kick-Off Party

with

Big Star

Is on!!

Levitt Shell

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Doors at 6:00pm/ Show begins at 7:00pm

General Admission $20

VIP Packages $65

Levitt Shell is EXCITED to announce that we will present BIG STAR and the band’s tribute to the late Alex Chilton with a series of special guests!

The world of music suffered a tragic loss with the untimely passing of Alex Chilton.  Chilton was a prolific songwriter and musician, and his years with Big Star produced 4 studio albums, 3 of which have been listed in Rolling Stone’s Greatest 500 Albums of All Time!  Levitt Shell is proud to present Big Star as the band honors their part in Alex Chilton’s life of music.

We will have special guests appearing with Big Star, and will announce these special guests in the coming weeks.  Proceeds from an auction of unique items will benefit Alex Chilton’s widow and estate.

All proceeds from Spring Season Kick-Off Party with Big Star will benefit Levitt Shell’s free concert series, presenting 50 FREE CONCERTS in 2010!

General Admission is $20 in advance of the show, or $25 at the door.

VIP Packages are available for $65.  VIP Packages include 1 General Admission ticket + 1 admission to Soundcheck Party at Levitt Shell at 4:30pm on the day of the show.

Food and beer will be sold at concessions

This event only, no coolers or picnic baskets

All ages are welcome

You must be 21 or older to purchase beer

Purchase Tickets Now @ www.levittshell.org/ Or Call 1.888.71.TICKETS

John Hampton Remembers Alex Chilton: The Inveterate Showman

When I hung the phone up, I had just finished going through my iPhoto pictures, trying vainly to categorize them for the thirty seventh time. I kept coming across one in particular that fit into 9 of my categories and I had to get it down to 1. It could be “Ardent Folk”, “Music folk”, “Family”, “Bizarre”, “Bigger that Life”, “Clients”… it was a picture of Alex with my first wife, before I had met either. Hmmmmm. When my phone rang, I answered it with my “EEEYELLOW”. Adam, my assistant, was telling me that Alex Chilton had just died. That was followed by that eerie silence. First I thought “he can’t be dead. I just saw him.” I guess it’s a weird form of shock. Adam was saying something about Fry – John Fry, our founder. Since I was going right by his house on my way home, I thought I would just drop by and check on him. His wife was at home, but then again, she wasn’t around in the day.

I first met Alex at Shoe Studios in Memphis when he was producing another friend, Tommy Hoehn. And Jon Tiven was there as pseudo executive producer. Tommy and Alex had written a song called “She Might Look My Way”, which someone said had missed the cut for Big Star’s Radio City record.

The drums weren’t quite the “vibe” and they needed a drummer. I got the gig. At Shoe, you couldn’t see into the control room. The usual glass ONLY through the headphones. Being the first time for me to ever play in ANY studio, it was … disconcerting at best. So I played as directed and the record was eventually released on Henry Loeb’s “Power Play” records which had also released the Scruffs first single. WOW! I had just played on my first record ever and Alex, the Big Star, had produced it. I was hot stuff, right? Well,considering I was just out of high school and already headed toward my goal-working in a recording studio. I was a happy dude. It was 1974.

March 17, 2010. As I headed down John’s street, I first looked the 1/4 mile to the garage to see if he had company. He did, but I drove up anyway. I called him from his driveway and when he answered, I asked him if everything was cool in there. He replied he was in the “shock bubble”, but assured me he was fine (for now). John had worked extensively on both of the Big Star records and had become very close with Alex, Chris Bell, Andy Hummell and Jody Stephens. They were his friends as well as his label’s pride. #1 record and Radio City were two of the most influential records ever made. But with distribution problems surrounding Stax… well, Big Star’s sales just never happened. I had heard rumors of Big Star’s records ending up in the soul music section of record stores, which I guess made sense in a weird sort of way. If the rumor is true, it would explain why such an influential band had such dismal sales. When you want to buy a rock record, you go to the rock section and if the record isn’t there, you usually buy something else instead of asking “Where are your Big Star records?” I tend to believe the story given the track record Stax had at the time.

Cut to 1977. A guy named Miles Copeland (as in IRS Records, as in Stewart as in The Police) had called to book time for a band he wanted Alex to produce called “The Cramps”. Alex asked if I could engineer the record. Since all I knew at the time was how to align a tape machine and repair faders, I was the perfect choice! Right?

 

We had a BALL doing that record. Lux Interior was always in character, Brian threw a cinder block at a pile of stuff we had built from folding chairs, flourescent tube lights, a couple of cymbals … and we recorded the subsequent chaos. Lux sang “Human Fly” and “Sunglasses After Dark”. It was NYU performance art becoming a validated rock music scene. Alex basically taught me how to make a rock-a-billy record, and we superimposed that methodology on the Cramps. NOW Alex had been there when I engineered my first record.

As luck would have it, I had inadvertently caused some distortion on the Cramps record. And Alex wanted remuneration for it. So Ardent gave him a week to fix the problem, which he used to record his record “Feudalist Tarts” (a cute little trick he had learned from HIS producer, Jim Dickinson) But wait! That’s cheating! No, I guess in Alex’s eyes, it was legit. I mean, Dickinson did it, so why can’t Alex? Jim always avowed that ‘you can’t have music without some element of crime’.

After that, I hadn’t seen Alex until it was time for him to produce a record on Tav Falco, who had just returned from Belgium where he was learning to Tango. That record, “Behind the Magnolia Curtain” was yet another cult fave, and Alex was now an underground super-star.

1968. Alex Chilton came out of the chute at 16 and within a couple of years had made a plane-load of money having his voice heard around the world. When the “Tops” were opening for the Beach Boys on tour, he stayed in drummer Dennis Wilson’s guest house with none other than Chuckie Manson! (Dennis had thought Charles was harmless enough, so Alex figures what the heck?)

After his ginormous success as the vocalist for the Box-Tops, as in The Letter, Soul Deep, Neon Rainbow, Cry Like a Baby, … a rock-pile of SMASH hits … he met Icewater’s Jody Stephens and Chris Bell (more on Chris soon) and rocket scientist Andy Hummell. Alex and Chris were fairly confident they could make a PowerPop band ala Raspberries, Byrds, Badfinger; PowerPop wis music largely influenced by ’60s British Music: Todd Rundgren’s “Runt” LP, Raspberries single “Go all the way”, Badfinger’s “Baby Blue” and “No Matter What” (a song Paul wrote for the Beatles), Dwight Twilley, Matthew Sweet … that was PowerPop. It’s a long list. And Alex was standing right in the middle of it’s birth. Had it not been for the demise of their distributor, Stax, I’m convinced they would have been the hottest thing since sunburn. “Back of a Car”, “September Gurls”, “Thirteen” … come on. Tell me that isn’t some of the best music you’ve EVER heard.

Though Alex could be cantankerous, i.e. kicking his Fender Twin at the famed and packed Antenna Club or slapping my hand away from the e.q. on a mix, I’m convinced THAT was the inveterate showman he was. Because he really was a great dude. I told him my birthday once around 1976. One day in 1997 at Ardent, he walked up to join me and a friend at 7 card stud, and out of nowhere, he looked up at me , kind of gazing through me, and said “November …(pause) … seventeenth.” Uncanny.

1986. When we started the Replacements “Pleased to Meet Me”, I was listening to their demos-soon-to-be-masters they had recorded the week before, and I thought to myself, “Paul sure sounds like Alex”. Again in 1988, as we heard Tommy Keene’s demos for “Based on Happy Times”, I thought to myself, “Tommy sure sounds like Alex”. Influenced.

Alex made an indelible mark on music. A BIG one. Anyone who is highly influenced by this artform, call me. I LOVE recording PowerPop. Just ask Gin Blossoms.

R I P Alex. We love you. God loves you. We’ll miss you.

No questions, please.

Alex Chilton Dies in New Orleans at 59

A sad day for everyone. Our thoughts are with family and friends.

From Jody Callahan and Bob Mehr’s article in The Commercial Appeal:

Alex Chilton, the pop hitmaker, cult icon and Memphis rock iconoclast best known as a member of 1960s pop-soul act the Box Tops and the 1970s power-pop act Big Star, died Wednesday at a hospital in New Orleans.

The singer, songwriter and guitarist was 59.

“I’m crushed. We’re all just crushed,” said John Fry, owner of Memphis’ Ardent Studios and a longtime friend of Chilton’s. “This sudden death experience is never something that you’re prepared for. And yet it occurs.”

In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine named all three Big Star albums to its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

“It’s a fork in the road that a lot of different bands stemmed from,” said Jeff Powell, a respected local producer who worked on some of Chilton’s records. “If you’re drawing a family tree of American music, they’re definitely a branch.”

In the mid-’70s, Chilton began what would be a polarizing solo career, releasing several albums of material, including 1979′s Like Flies on Sherbet — a strange, chaotically recorded mix of originals and obscure covers that divided fans and critics.

Chilton also began performing with local roots-punk deconstructionists the Panther Burns.

In the early ’80s, Chilton left Memphis for New Orleans, where he worked a variety of jobs and stopped performing for several years.

But interest in his music from a new generation of alternative bands, including the Replacements and R.E.M., brought him back to the stage in the mid-’80s.

He continued to record and tour as a solo act throughout the decade. Finally, in the early ’90s, the underground cult based around Big Star had become so huge that the group was enticed to reunite with a reconfigured lineup.

The band, featuring original member Stephens plus Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies, continued to perform regularly over the next 16 years. Big Star became the subject of various articles, books and CD reissue campaigns, including the September 2009 release of the widely hailed box set, Keep an Eye on the Sky.

“I played with Alex for eight or 10 years regularly, and he was one of the best musicians I ever knew,” said Doug Garrison. “That’s what really locked the first time I played with him, this feel on the guitar. He just played flawlessly. He had a limited technique, but he did what he did really well.”

Chilton was often described as “mercurial,” but those who knew him well described a man with a keen sense of humor, a tremendous musician and a generous friend.

“He was the only person on a record I’ve ever worked with where you’d come up with a horn arrangement, and he’d say, ‘Look, I’m going to make you guys a co-writer on the song now,’” said Jim Spake, who played sax on the most recent Big Star record.

Chilton is survived by his wife, Laura, a son, Timothy, and a sister, Cecilia.

“When some people pass, you say it was the end of an era. In this case, it’s really true,” said Van Duren, a fellow Memphis musician who knew Chilton for decades. “It puts an end to the Big Star thing, and that’s a very sad thing.”

– Bob Mehr: 529-2517

– Jody Callahan: 529-6531

Details to follow as we receive them.

Photo by Andy Hummel: John Fry with Alex Chilton in Studio B ca. 1973

McGee on Music: Big Star’s Alex Chilton was a Guiding Light – Guardian.co.uk 3/23/10

Thank You Friend: Musicians Remember Alex Chilton – Magnet Magazine 3/23/10

The Life and Music of Alex Chilton - Pitchfork.com 3/22/10

Wouldn’t Be Here if it Wasn’t for You – Roll Away the Stone 3/22/10

SXSW Events Honor Chilton’s Life, Music - Goldmine 3/22/10

Beyond the Box Tops (by Paul Westerberg) - The New York Times 3/21/10

Friends, Disciples Pay Tribute to Alex Chilton at South by Southwest - The Commercial Appeal 3/21/10

The Alex Chilton Panel at SXSW: “Those Whom he Touched were Touched Immutably.” - The LA Times 3/21/10

SXSW 2010 Ends with a Lot of Love for Alex Chilton - The Chicago Sun-Times 3/21/10

Big Star’s SXSW Show Turns Into Powerful Tribute to Alex Chilton – Rock & Roll Daily/Rollingstone.com 3/21/10

Alex Chilton: Friends, bandmates remember the late Big Star Singer at SXSW Panel - Entertainment Weekly 3/20/10

SXSW: Thank You, Friend - Back to Rockville, The Kansas City Star Music Blog 3/20/10

SXSW Panel: ‘I Never Travel Far without a Little Big Star’ - Austin-American Statesman 3/20/10

Big Star’s Alex Chilton Tribute in Austin (Some great photos!!) – rslblog.com 3/20/10

“I’m in Love with that Song:” Remembering Alex Chilton – Popmatters.com 3/19/10

Alex Chilton Dies at 59; Mercurial Leader of the Box Tops, Big Star - The LA Times 3/19/10

Underrated Iconoclast: Alex Chilton’s Lasting Influence - The Atlantic Wire 3/18/10

A Couple Alex Chilton Songs - Gawker.com 3/18/10

RIP Alex Chilton, American Music Man - The LA Times Blog, Pop & Hiss 3/17/10

Alex Chilton Dies on the Eve of South by Southwest Tribute - The Chicago Sun Times 3/17/10

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