MUSIC

Foxy Shazam

PHOTO: PROVIDED BY MEMI

The Foxy Shazam Variant

After a nearly eight-year break and the pandemic’s interference, Foxy Shazam returns with two new albums and three new members

BY BRIAN BAKER

As Amber Ru n occasionally notes on Late Night with Seth Meyers, “You guys, things have been crazy,” a phrase that can be directly applied to the past eight years for Cincinnati rockers Foxy Shazam. e band went on hiatus in 2014 before reuniting in 2019 and releasing new music. With that came hopes of touring, but COVID-19 had other ideas.

After nearly two start/stop years of foiled plans, Foxy Shazam nally is back with double-barrelled fury. eir Feb. 12 show at the Andrew J. Brady Music Center appears to be pandemic-proof, and they’re on track for the Valentine’s Day release of their new album, the cryptically titled e Heart Behead You.

“It actually does have a meaning,” says Foxy frontman Eric Nally with a laugh. “I’d call it my poetry. It’s a Rock & Roll way of saying, ‘Let your heart be your guide.’ Take your head out of the equation, don’t overthink anything.”

But it took a second to get to this point.

In April 2014, Foxy Shazam selfreleased the Steve Albini-produced album Gonzo and embarked on a national tour. Six months later, the band announced via Facebook that they were going on inde nite hiatus. e next few years found Foxy’s membership vying for the side project diversity prize. Nally did a cameo on the Macklemore/Ryan Lewis single and video for “Downtown,” which turned into a global touring gig, plus he launched his solo career. Trumpeter Alex Nauth founded the lauded Pop/ Punk trio Skulx. Bassist Daisy Caplan opened with and folded Babe Rage then formed the much-acclaimed Lung with electric/eclectic cellist Kate Wake eld. Guitarist Loren Turner did a stint with TrxlleyDxdgers. And keyboardist Sky White started the Wendigo Tea Company and threw his lot in with the J. Dorsey Band and Freekbass.

“If you don’t go your separate ways for a little bit, you don’t have anything left to give that you haven’t seen or been a part of,” Nally says. “When Foxy wanted to take that break — and there were no hard feelings — we had a signi cant amount of time to refresh and recharge.” e band joined back up in 2019. With Foxy’s retooled resurrection, productive weekly rehearsals suddenly turned into productive writing sessions, and the stage was set for more than just a simple reunion. Foxy Nation nearly lost its collective mind when

an April 2020 show at the Taft eatre was announced; the show sold out within four hours. But the pandemic quickly cooled those heels. e concert was rescheduled for July, and then canceled.

In December of 2020, Foxy selfreleased Burn, their rst new album in seven years, and announced another Taft show for late January 2021. at was followed by yet another cancellation due to COVID. is was all extremely frustrating for the members of the newly con gured Foxy, who were anxious to show o the line-up. Caplan and drummer Aaron McVeigh opted out of the reunion and were replaced by drummer Teddy Aitkins and mysterious bassist Trigger Warning (who always appears donning some type of mask). Guitarist Turner left just before the release of Burn, and local Automagik guitarist Devin Williams tagged in. ere is a sense of destiny at work here. Nally met Aitkins a decade and a half ago at a truck stop in bad weather on the way to New York. Nally noticed the drum key on Aitkins’ keychain and mentioned they needed a drummer in a subsequent conversation. Aitkins relocated to Cincinnati and had a brief run with Foxy, but something didn’t quite click; he eventually played in an early iteration of Automagik. And Warning had been the band’s early touring bass backup before Caplan was fully committed to Foxy and was available when the current need arose.

“Teddy’s style of playing is very unique and that might have been why it didn’t work out then, but where we’re at now, he’s the exact thing we need,” Nally says. “Trigger has been around a long time and he knows us from an early point. And Devin is so passionate about what he does. I never see him without a guitar in his hand. We’ll be outside at a lunch place and I’m like, ‘Why do you have your guitar?’ It’s just natural to him.”

Both new albums, Burn and e Heart Behead You, bear the marks of Foxy’s extracurricular evolution and the fresh-blood contributions of Aitkins, Warning and Williams, the latter on a busman’s holiday from Automagik. And both — though distinctly di erent — are fantastic additions to Foxy’s impressive catalog.

“Burn was getting everybody back together and seeing how we could transition from what we’d been doing, and e Heart Behead You is more in that groove of it’s not a new thing now,” Nally says.

Nally relied on unusual sources of songwriting inspiration for e Heart Behead You. He cites both Alice in Wonderland and the board game Candyland as in uences.

“I was telling people, ‘It’s this whole lush Wonderland/Candyland thing. e whole album’s about love,’ and everybody was like, OK, yeah, whatever,’” Nally says. “Everybody tries to write a good love song, whether or not you use the word ‘love.’ I don’t want to sound cheesy, I still want to feel dangerous, I still want to feel like a Punk band or a Rock band. At the same time, let’s embrace love. I think we did that in a way that’s our own and isn’t too cheesy or huggy-kissy.” e newly recharged Foxy is de nitely on a roll, with two new albums recorded and released in just over two years and a new video for the song “Dancing with My Demons” from e Heart Behead You, which was lmed in the haunted surroundings of Bobby Mackey’s (at press time, Nally was attempting to get horror director Eli Roth to post the video because he feels it’s in the director/actor’s wheelhouse).

But the stage is where Foxy has always shone the brightest, and Nally is ready for the world to see the new lineup’s considerable chops, particularly with the catalog material.

“I have to be careful. (Former bassist) Caplan’s going to be reading this,” Nally says with a laugh. “For me, the technicality is a little more re ned. Early on, I sought out members for the band. We were there because we were supposed to be there and we haphazardly gured out a way to make it all work. With this group, the parts are already written, there’s hardly any room for interpretation yet they’re still unique players and any musician understands they can bring themselves to something that’s already written. I think we picked the right guys. What they bring naturally works with what we’ve done in the past and what we’re making now. e way to play good is to feel good, and I think that’s what it sounds like.” e rst scheduled Foxy Shazam show at the Taft eatre in 2020 had the air of a one-o reunion, but the band’s tenacity to get back onstage coupled with the releases of 2020’s Burn and 2022’s e Heart Behead You exhibit all the earmarks of a semiretired champion ready to take on all challengers. Again.

“Yeah, there’s a lot more to come without having to wait because of how much time we’ve had to ll our reservoirs,” Nally says. “I’m excited that things can start being easier for us to be on the road. is is de nitely Foxy back in full force.”

Foxy Shazam plays the Andrew J. Brady Music Center (25 Race St., Downtown) on Saturday, Feb. 12. Attendees must be fully vaccinated or show proof of a negative COVID test from the past 72 hours. Info and tickets: bradymusiccenter.com.

SOUND ADVICE

Clem Snide

Tuesday, Feb. 15 • Southgate House Revival

“Roger Ebert,” the rst song on Clem Snide’s most recent record, 2020’s Forever Just Beyond, opens with a modest beat and twinkling piano before ringleader Eef Barzelay’s plaintive, everemotive voice delivers the following: “Did you know these were Roger Ebert’s dying words: It’s all an elaborate hoax.” e very next song, “Don’t Bring No Ladder,” is another melancholic tune about death featuring this lyrical request/observation: “And if you could bury me naked/And if you could bury me deep/Believe that from the darkness something will emerge/We are forever on the verge of some hard truth.”

Yet Barzelay, as usual, lifts the heady proceedings with his wry sense of humor, distinctive vocal delivery and textured, easygoing musical arrangements that rarely rise above the practical. Forever Just Beyond, which was produced by and co-written with Scott Avett of e Avett Brothers, was the culmination of a challenging previous decade for Clem Snide. Barzelay founded the band as a trio out of Boston in the early 1990, and together they found success behind a playful, often rollicking songwriting style that pulled equally from Folk, Pop, Rock and Country, cresting with 2005’s excellent End of Love.

But by 2010, following a series of band-member defections and label and management issues, Barzelay was the last man standing. In an e ort to support his wife and two small children, he became a songwriter for hire, eventually landing a gig as the voice of Chobani Greek yogurt. en, in 2016, he noticed that e Avett Brothers covered a Clem Snide song, which eventually led to the collaboration with Scott Avett and the resulting new material. And now, after COVID-related delays, we nally have a solo tour featuring Barzelay armed with only his guitar and voice.

“I look up to Eef with total respect and admiration, and I hope to survive like he survives: with total love for the new and the unknown,” Avett said in press materials when Forever Just Beyond dropped. “Eef’s a crooner and an indie darling by sound and a mystic sage by depth. at’s not common, but it’s beautiful.”

Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $15 advance and $18 day-of show. Masks are recommended, but not required. (Jason Gargano)

Ghost and Volbeat

Saturday, Feb. 19 • Heritage Bank Center

Recently, Volbeat’s longtime drummer Jon Larsen tested positive for COVID-19. While that could have meant the end of the tour, Volbeat took things in stride and brought in a pretty impressive replacement, ex-Slayer drummer Jon Dette. As of press time, we don’t know which amazingly talented drummer will grace the stage at the Heritage Bank Center, but we know that fans will be extremely lucky to witness either drummer in action.

Volbeat is touring in support of the band’s most recent album, 2021’s Servant of the Mind, which frontman Michael Poulsen said he wrote over about three months during the pandemic. In a way, you might look at Servant of the Mind as Volbeat’s version of a sourdough starter. e band has matured and developed across their eight studio albums. is new one, though, still clearly showcases Volbeat’s signature ingredients found all the way back on its debut album, 2005’s e Strength/ e Sound/ e Strongs. Volbeat’s newest single, “Heaven’s Descent,” speeds through the entire birth of an undead revolution. It’s driving and wild… and exactly what you’d expect from Volbeat.

Tourmates Ghost will bring their own smart, Dark Rock with a side of sarcasm and spooky makeup to the Heritage Bank Center.

Ghost frontman Tobias Forge has said the band’s new album, Impera, dives back into the 19th century and the Victorian Age, but that the devastation and the destruction of all the progress will no doubt seem like he’s holding up a mirror to what our country has been through in the last few years. In an interview with Kerrang!, Forge said, “I believe in the fall of the shitty empires and the rise of the good ones — you can decide yourself which you think I’m talking about.” Oh, we know.

Ghost’s albums over the years have dealt with everything from the biblical story of how the world began to the Dark Ages and more. Forge (playing the part of a costumed “Papa Emeritus” pope-like gure) and his band the Nameless Ghouls bring to stage not only precise and powerful Rock but nothing short of wild theatrics. Don’t let the costume makeup and dark robes fool you, though. Ghost has a lot to get o its chest, and this new tour, featuring “just bangers,” is exactly where we want to be as our world falls apart.

And if you want to commemorate seeing Volbeat and Ghost’s Cincinnati tour stop? e bands have put out a double-sided 7-inch that is only available on tour. Make sure you get there on time so you can nab the limited-run single and to see Twin Temple, the satanic Doo-Wop group that will open the show.

Doors open at 5 p.m. Tickets are $39.50-$99.50. Proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test from the past 72 hours is required for entry. (Deirdre Kaye)

Clem Snide

PHOTO: CRACKERFARM

Volbeat

PHOTO: VOLBEAT.DK

Superwolves

PHOTO: JONAH FREEMAN AND JUSTIN LOWE

Superwolves with Emmett Kelly

ursday, Feb. 24 • Southgate House Revival

Will Oldham (aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy) is something of a rapscallion. e Louisville native has been on the scene for more than three decades now, yielding an artistic legacy both voluminous and committed (some might say mannered). His work as a singer-songwriter — initially through the 1990s out t Palace Music, followed by multifarious projects since — leans toward the gothic.

Oldham plays up his would-be Appalachian credentials by conjuring elemental themes via lyrics that can be direct one minute, obtuse the next. His fragile, ennui-riddled voice certainly sets a mood, and his sporadic work as a movie actor in sideways indies like Julien Donkey-Boy, Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy and A Ghost Story have only added to his prickly, rough-hewn presence.

Matt Sweeney is the opposite. e New Jersey native is an easygoing magpie, an ace guitarist who is as happy delving into mathy ri age (via his 1990s out t Chavez) as he is the moody atmospherics of his collaborations with Oldham, which include a 2005 self-titled album called Superwolf and its long-simmering follow-up, 2021’s Superwolves.

“It’s a given collaborator’s uniqueness that makes joining forces feel necessary in the rst place,” Oldham said in an interview with Stereogum last April. “ ere are ways that Sweeney thinks and works, music that he loves and audiences that he reaches, that I could never grasp on my own. And that’s the same for all of the successful collaborations I’ve been a part of. e other party must be similarly needy and drawn to the idea of co-owning the task.” e duo’s songwriting process starts with Oldham’s lyrics, which he sends to Sweeney for musical treatment.

Sixteen years in the making, the results on Superwolves are beautiful and haunting – 14 songs over 45 minutes that delve into the realities of parenthood (Oldham became a dad for the rst time in 2018) and the perils and glories of aging (both guys have now passed age 50). e galloping “Hall of Death,” which features mesmerizing arpeggio work from Sweeney, is about as upbeat as they get. e sparse and evocative “My Popsicle” brings to mind early Cat Power. Perhaps best of all is album closer “Not Fooling,” a spooky and poetic ode to the apocalypse as Oldham’s world-weary croon and mystical lyrics intertwine with Sweeney’s intricate guitar work to moving e ect.

Doors are 7 p.m. Tickets are $25. Masks are recommended, but not required. (JG)

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