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Larkin Poe at Valley of the Vapors Independent Music Festival, 2018

Larkin Poe at Valley of the Vapors Independent Music Festival, 2018
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Larkin Poe
SQZBX STAGE @ LOW KEY ARTS
Valley of the Vapors Independent Music Festival
Hot Springs, Arkansas
March 20, 2018

'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.


After recently re-reading Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism I began thinking of what my goals in music writing are. I have written for twenty-five years, twenty for All About Jazz. I have always tried to focus my writing on what is good in and what can be learned from music. I have been more interested in leading readers to something they might like in the music I review, than in pointing any fingers at the art for any shortcomings I perceive (the "judging ill" part of Pope's clever couplet). It was with these thoughts in mind that I journeyed about an hour from my house to the famous Hot Springs, Arkansas for The Valley of the Vapors Independent Music Festival.

Hot Springs is the county seat of Garland County located about sixty miles southwest of the State Capitol Little Rock. The city is situated in the pocket of the Ouachita Mountains and is positioned among several natural hot springs for which the city is named. The city has a storied history. The center of the area is the oldest federal reserve (in 1832 declared the Hot Springs Reservation by the United States Congress, granting federal protection of the thermal waters. The reservation was renamed Hot Springs National Park in 1921. The hot spring water has been popularly believed for centuries to possess medicinal properties and was a subject of many Native American legends. Following the federal protection in 1832, the city evolved into a successful spa town from which a myriad of new industries arose.

Incorporated January 10, 1851, the city was home to Major League Baseball spring training, illegal gambling, speakeasies and gangsters such as Al Capone, Owney Madden, and Charles "Lucky" Luciano during and after Prohibition. Other notable items of interest sported by Hot Springs are horse racing at Oaklawn Park, the Army and Navy Hospital, and the childhood home of the 42nd President Bill Clinton. For every Saturday night, there is a Sunday morning: One of the largest Pentecostal denominations in the United States, the Assemblies of God, traces its beginnings to Hot Springs.

They say that you become part of a place once you start taking it for granted. I was not thinking of these things, per se, as my wife and I drove down Highway 5 on this cool, early spring day. We were en route to see a performance by Larkin Poe: a duo or quartet (whatever the venue calls for) helmed by sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell of Atlanta, Georgia. These young ladies began their musical life with older sister Jessica as the Lovell Sisters, playing crack wooden comb specializing in progressive acoustic music, fusing bluegrass and classical genres, not unlike Nickle Creek. In 2009, Jessica got married and went to college and the Lovell Sisters evolved with Megan switching her dobro for a 1940s-era lap steel guitar and Rebecca choosing a Fender Jazzmaster and Stratocaster under the new autograph of Larkin Poe.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

In its fourteenth year, the Valley of the Vapors Independent Music Festival has been a carefully kept secret featuring over 40 acts in three main venues: Maxines and Adair Park (downtown) and Low Key Arts on the edge of town. It was the latter venue where we arrived early to catch a couple of shows before Larkin Poe performed. I am a sixty-year old man with the mind of a pimply-faced seventeen-year old. That creates a psychic rip that often manifests is odd ways. I am unsure exactly what I was expecting, perhaps an adorned performance hall replete with a bar and ample seating. Well, that is exactly what I got save for the venue was an old warehouse, a bit dark and drafty, with tables and chairs and a dance floor and a tiny stage making for an intimate performance experience nevertheless. Oh, and there was a women's and unisex restroom.

What passed for the bar served local micro-brewed beer from Superior Bathhouse Brewery housed in one of the famous bathhouses just down Central Avenue from the venue. I quaffed a perfectly acceptable Imperial IPA called "Chaudfontaine Houblon" slated as a ..." Belgian-style Imperial IPA or if you prefer, a hopped Tripel, crafted using Bagstone yeast and Chinook hops. It was a fine libation for what was to turn out to be a fine evening.

Demographics of the crowd ran the gambit from infants to sturdy septuagenarians with a median age of about thirty years old. The crowd was well-behaved and fun. What I was beginning to realize was I was about to witness music being made on the ground floor of experience with bands setting up their own sets, rapping with the people in the crowd as they casually approached the stage. It was a warm and friendly experience, one that is much more appealing than one of the nameless festivals that have popped up over the past decade.

What passed for the bar served local micro-brewed beer from Superior Bathhouse Brewery housed in one of the famous bathhouses just down Central Avenue from the venue. I quaffed a perfectly acceptable Imperial IPA called "Chaudfontaine Houblon" slated as a ..." Belgian-style Imperial IPA or if you prefer, a hopped Tripel, crafted using Bagstone yeast and Chinook hops. It was a fine libation for what was to turn out to be a fine evening.

My wife and I arrived in time to catch two bands before Larkin Poe: the neo-rap duo Dip from Athens, Georgia and the Canadian band Beams. Both groups are so new and grounded that BandCamp sports their respective websites. The Dip that appeared here last night was the main duo of Christopher Grimmett and Noah Ray. They played a 21st-Century brand of the Beastie Boys to sampled loops all sporting a similar rhythm and beat. I was pretty sure that it was the heaping-est pile of bullshit I had ever heard until I realized that I was having a grand time as were the rest of the attendees. I had to stop myself and think what the entire exercise of Valley of the Vapors was all about. What I realized is that Dip and other artists I had not seen were on the entry level of music production and performance, making the equivalent of the 1920s—'40s "Chittlin' Circuit." They reminded me what it was like to be a performing musician, and I never had the guts to make a go of it.

Beams was a bit more appealing to my listening tastes. From Toronto, the band is a sextet consisting of a guitar-bass-drums rhythm section and a xylophone-saw player with two female vocalists, one playing a pretty interesting banjo. The band has self-released seven EPs and CDs of an eclectic mix of alt-rock-oriented music that was at once impressively complex and ear-worm ready. Don't let the banjo and xylophone throw you off, when the needle hits the groove this this bunch, something great will happen. Both musical sets were about thirty minutes long, just long enough for my pre-Alzheimer's Disease attention span to remain engaged.

With the preliminaries addressed, it was time of the act we came to see. We have previous seen the pair, in the company of a bass and drums at the Pilgrimage Music and Cultural Festival held each September in Franklin, Tennessee. They rocked that venue with confidence, performing much of the same music in that slightly longer show. I was expecting it to be a treat to see the band, whittled down to a duo, in a more intimate setting and I was not disappointed.

My wife wanted to stand in front, so she could see and talk to the band which she had several opportunities to do. Rebecca and Megan come on the stage to set up, their individual effects pedals looking much like mine did (back in the day) and I was struck with the down-to-earth attitudes that everyone had and the friendliness and warmth of the mostly young crowd who did not mind an old man standing into watch the show. Once ready, the ladies retreated to the back to do what musicians do, coming back out and opening their show with "Summertime Sunset." Rebecca alternated between two Fender Stratocasters (both with rosewood fretboards) and doing double duty with a foot drum while Megan played her duct-tape repaired lap steel guitar.

They followed with their popular "Trouble in Mind" before moving to their romping cover of Ram Jam's (by way of Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter's) "Black Betty." Playing with a total authority, Rebecca can flat rock and sing with a controlled abandon that is electrifying. The pair played several pieces from their EP Peach (, 2017) including: "Cast 'Em Out," "Look Away," and their crowd favorite, a searing version of Eddie James "Son" House's "Preachin' Blues." With Rebecca's throbbing guitar and Megan's white hot-screaming lap steel guitar, we know we are miles and lightyears from that Spring day 1930, where in Paramount Record's Grafton, Wisconsin studio House breathed life into the Ur-blues.

Ladies close the show with Cher's 1966 "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me down). Written by Sony Bono, the song has been covered by everyone from Vanilla Fudge to Frank and Nancy Sinatra. That said, the Lovell sisters issue the smartest cover of the often-forgotten song, proving it to be a masterfully chosen cover. Larkin Poe has a well-established social media presence and are very approachable as artists. Tonight, Larkin Poe is in Oxford, Mississippi and tomorrow somewhere else. I wish them luck and hope they will remain young forever.

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