Check out this column Stillwater resident and Colourmusic rocker Colin Fleishacker wrote for The O’Colly. It’s a smart reminder of how albums were meant to be enjoyed.
The album as we know it is dying.
Since the inception of the iPod in the early 2000s, music listeners the world over have fallen victim to a hindrance destroying the way music is meant to be enjoyed, compliments of shuffle settings and 160-gigabyte MP3 players: aural ADHD.
There are three fundamental traits an individual with ADHD conveys: distractibility, impulsivity and hyperactivity-according to the Attention Deficit Disorder Association’s website.
Thanks to the evolution of music listening devices, these three traits have become a part of every music fan’s life, including mine.
In 2003, my dad gave me my first iPod on my 20th birthday. I felt more blessed than Israelites receiving manna from heaven above, now owning 20 GB of free space on which to put all of my favorite albums. The possibilities were endless.
After a few months, the newness of my relationship with my pocket-sized partner began to fade a bit. It was no longer enough to simply listen to an album all the way through.
I needed customized playlists and shuffle settings to appease the need for uniqueness. I searched endlessly for the perfect musical moments to encapsulate every second of my life.
If you are over 21, check out the Sherree Chamberlain Band for free Friday night at 9 inside Eskimo Joe’s, 501 W. Elm Ave. Tulsa acts OK Sweetheart and Fiawna Forte are opening. This story ran in the Friday edition of The Daily O’Collegian and The Oklahoman.
It’s frightening how quickly breakfast can turn into bedlam.
On a rainy morning in early July, Oklahoma City-based songwriter Sherree Chamberlain was driving near the Paseo Arts District.
The Oklahoma State University alumna had a full day planned.
Breakfast with a friend. A paid gig in downtown Oklahoma City with Stillwater rockers Taddy Porter and The Flatland Travelers. Dinner with her soon-to-be manager.
While pulling across traffic, a car slammed into her and knocked her head against the driver’s window. Her car was totaled, and she was stuck in the rain with a car full of instruments.
When Chamberlain snapped back to reality, she said she didn’t want a doctor.
She wanted pizza.
Her bandmates, Eric Kiner, Jonathon Mooney and Joey Morris, heard what happened and got a hold of Chamberlain.
“I was like, ‘Are we going to play or not?’” Kiner said in a phone interview.
Chamberlain said she knew the ball was rolling. Her band was getting paid for playing. She needed to start saving cash for a new car.
“It made sense to play,” she said in a phone interview.
“Sherree’s insane,” Morris said with a laugh over the phone. “When she got that mild concussion, I couldn’t really tell the difference. She’s crazy anyway … It was the perfect show. We didn’t have time for rehearsal, and we played like she had rehearsed for hours.”
Fast forward through the summer to last Sunday.
The rainy afternoon and the allure of bed sheets delayed Chamberlain from an interview, but she quickly apologized for her tardiness and began detailing her active morning.
She worked on music and prepared for the two classes she started teaching at Edmond Santa Fe High School this semester, but she got overwhelmed and hit the hay again.
She said she’s having a “24-year-old meltdown.”
“I’m feeling so old, and I don’t know what’s going on. I’m having anxiety about everything,” Chamberlain said. “I’ve been listening to music I love, lately. I keep going, ‘I wish I could be in this band, or I wish I could be in that band. Why am I not writing music I love to play?’”
She’s balancing a lot, though, teaching classes and preparing for a sophomore album.
Her debut, “Wasp in the Room,” was a gentle folk album that embellished the singer’s talents and her simple, elegant songs.
After a visit to Stillwater on Saturday, she’s taking “a little step away from the cutesy pop singer/songwriter and a little bit more toward being a cohesive band and setting a mood.”
No matter what happens, music is going to be around Chamberlain.
She lets her students at Edmond Santa Fe listen to music while they work. One afternoon a student walked up to Chamberlain and wrapped headphones around her ears. It was her album playing.
Sometimes her students aren’t the biggest fans though.
“I heard one of them the other day go, ‘Miss Chamberlain, I downloaded your stuff off of LimeWire,’” she said.
Another kid asked what she sounded like. He responded with a review saying Chamberlain’s music is weird. Something you’ll either love or hate.
If her student’s review and a car accident won’t stop her from making music, little will.
Michael Huff doesn’t spend too much time in his native state of Oklahoma anymore, but his songs have a good chance of spending time inside your head.
The folk singer is a senior at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., but Huff visited Stillwater earlier this semester to play a couple of acoustic songs.
And Huff clashed with Stillwater in the best way possible.
While playing the song “Little Birdie” off of his debut album, he walked past a store named Rhinestone Cowgirl, a building painted with colors louder than an Aerosmith concert inside of a Chuck E. Cheese.
And at that moment, Huff’s clever tune and dylanesque performance directly channeled a time where sitting on a porch and relaxing was a national pastime.
And the porch is where a lot of his music comes from.
“(My band) would all be hanging out, and we’d start passing around a guitar,” Huff said. “It’s exciting to (play) together. We’re family up there (in Nashville).”
His song “Little Birdie” felt like something you want to pass on to your children, even though Huff’s album cover would fit in with your parents’ vinyl collection.
Huff said his songwriting process comes natural.
“I’m trying to learn what the hell (I’m) doing writing songs and why songs written 100 years ago are still being sung,” Huff said.
Take a second to appreciate Huff’s old sound that hopefully won’t die young.
“I’m going to give (music) my best shot,” Huff said. “I’ll write songs all my life whether or not I can make a penny off of them.”
I recently chatted with the members of Fatty Lumpkin this week to discuss its show tonight and where in the world the name Fatty Lumpkin came from.
Here’s the story.
Urban Dictionary’s Web site offers some dastardly and entertaining definitions of Fatty Lumpkin, but the music this Texas trio is making should be more than enough to pique your interests.
The jam band Fatty Lumpkin will join Stillwater’s The Flatland Travelers for a show on Friday at 10 p.m. at Vault, 716 S. Main. St.
Besides playing the same bill this evening, the bands share a drive to conquer stages bigger than those in Stillwater. Both bands competed in a contest earlier this month and won a chance to play the Wakarusa Music Festival in Arkansas this summer.
Fatty Lumpkin has played Wakarusa once already. The trio was the first to play the 2008 festival which ended with a performance from the Flaming Lips.
Before any of this happened, Fatty Lumpkin was a band name stuck inside the head of lead singer Kelyn Crapp. The band started as a five piece in high school but slimmed to a trio eight months ago. Now Crapp, Seth Myers and Matt Dixon live together to focus on music.
“Music is something that can’t be conquered,” Myers said. “We try to write our music that way to include improvisational parts so we don’t play the song the same way.”
Drummer Dixon said using an open-ended style allows the band a lot of freedom to explore sounds. The band has been working to capture these sounds on an album in what Dixon called “a long process.”
It has been a year since Lumpkin started working on its album, but in a week it will be released. Myers said he worked closely with the self-titled album and has spent the past few years working to become a sound engineer. He has helped record with artists like Don Henley and Chuck Rainey.
With an experimental sound and Wakarusa lined up, Fatty Lumpkin might become part of your vocabulary.
The loudest band in Oklahoma played one of its most energetic sets to date. Climbing amps, throwing tambourines and general madness was everywhere. Keep your eyes on these kids to do some bigger than big things.
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