THE SA ROCKS BLOG: May 2008

Prototype, June 5 @ Texas South Dance Hall

http://www.prototyperockssa.com

Radio Junkies June 5 @ Club Rive

http://www.myspace.com/radiojunkiessuck

Alter Ego in New Braunfels today!

Bring your tube! Bring the kids! ALTER EGO early show!

http://www.alteregotheband.com

Papa Wood, May 31 @ Retox

http://www.papawood.com

Thanks for the awesome poster Spade:) Good luck to you all!

The Warhol, May 31

http://www.thewarhol.com/

Los Rokmantix show TONIGHT!

Come out and enjoy a night of art and Rock En Espanol, courtesy of Los Rokmantix, Karnaval, and Sweetooth!

All proceeds from this event will benefit Project Wellness.

Come support local music and art! see you there!

L.A. Arte Cosmico Studio
1913 S. Flores
San Antonio, TX 78204
06:00 PM
Cost: $3-5

http://www.myspace.com/losrokmantix

May 31, @ The White Rabbit

Limelight, May 30

Ledaswan, May 30 @ Ruta Maya

http://www.ledaswanmusic.net

TDH Promotions presents

http://www.myspace.com/topdogpromotions

The Offbeats, May 30 @ The Warhol

http://www.myspace.com/offbeats

Flesh Electric, May 30 @ The Voodoo Lounge

http://www.myspace.com/fleshelectric

The Blend?, May 30, Rock Bottom Tattoo Bar

http://www.theblendmusic.com

Spitfire, May 30 @ The Trap

http://www.myspace.com/thespitfireband

ALTER EGo at Click's Fri. May 30 & in New Braunfels at Bar 444 for an early show Sat. May 31

Radio Junkies @ Club Rive

http://www.myspace.com/radiojunkiessuck

Dead Ringer, May 30 @ Firehouse Pub & Grill

http://www.deadringerzone.com/

Sev7sky @ Jigger's, May 30

http://www.myspace.com/sev7sky

Sam's Burger Joint, May 30

Open Mic Night @ Jack's every Monday

Acoustic / Open Mic every Thursday @ Jigger's

Yoshimoto & The Sons of Sancho, May 30 @ Beethoven's Beer Garden

Exit Stage Left, May 30 @ Roxy's Sports Bar

http://www.myspace.com/exitstageleftonline

Blowing Trees and Morris Orchids @ Retox, May 30

TONIGHT @ Wise Guys

Prototype @ Brook's Pub, May 24

May 25 @ The Underground

Bar 11, May 29

http://www.myspace.com/bareleven

Average Joe's Karoke Fundraiser - TONIGHT

http://www.myspace.com/averagejoessportsbar

Papa Wood tonight @ Scout Bar

Just found out Papa Wood is playing at the new Scout Bar tonight.

281 & Redland
Put us on your bar hopping list :)

http://www.myspace.com/scoutbarsa

TDH Promotions

THERE WILL BE A BENEFIT PARTY AT BLISS TONIGHT FOR MY FRIEND JIMMY MAURICIO WHO WAS DIAGNOSED WITH LEUKEMIA AND HAS BEEN FIGHTING THIS DISEASE VERY WELL. HE IS A PRIOR MARINE WHO IS THE GENERAL MANGER FOR BALLYS TOTAL FINESS. ALL PROCEEDS WILL HELP HIM PAY FOR THE MEDICINES THAT HIS INSURANCE ISNT COVERING. ALL AND ANY AMOUNT OF A DONATION WILL HELP. PLEASE HELP THIS MAN WHO HAS DEDICATED HIS LIFE TO SERVICE. HE HAS SERVED OUR COUNTRY AND OUR CITY TO MAKE IT A BETTER PLACE. WHAT MORE COULD U ASK FROM AN INDIVIDUAL? SO PLEASE HELP......

AGAIN PARTY IS AT BLISS OFF BITTERS AND 281
SO U CAN MAP QUEST......903 EAST BITTERS....

IF U NEED ANYMORE INFO PLEASE CALL 210-787-8282 ASK FOR DOUG

http://www.myspace.com/topdogpromotions

Lavish Luck, May 29 @ Sherlock's Pub

http://www.myspace.com/lavishluck

ALTER EGO @ Cloud 9 Sat. May 24

May 25th @ The Warhol

http://www.myspace.com/thewarhol

The Heroine, May 29 @ Bar 11

http://www.myspace.com/theheroinerock

Rock Bottom Bar, May 25

.08 this weekend!

http://www.myspace.com/point08satx

Prototype, May 23 @ Roxy's Sports Bar

http://www.prototyperockssa.com

Delta House @ The Silo of Cougars, May 24 @ Silo / 1604

http://www.myspace.com/deltahousetx

Flesh Electric @ Jack's, May 24

http://www.myspace.com/fleshelectric

Seven Perfect and NSP @ The Mix, May 23

http://www.myspace.com/sevenperfectband

Lavish Luck w/ Jimi Danger @ The Rev. Room, May 24

Los Rokmantix May 24 @ Sam's Snack Stand

http://www.myspace.com/losrokmantix

The White Rabbit, May 21

Fuze, May 24 @ Speedway Sports Bar

http://www.thefuzeband.com

Sumofist, May 23 @ Retox

http://www.myspace.com/sumofist6969

Minus Zero, May 24 @ Retox

http://www.myspace.com/minuszerosa

Big Soy CD Release Show, May 23 @ Limelight with Blowing Trees and The Living Strategy

http://www.myspace.com/bigsoy

Two much
Fresh from a tour of Ireland, SA power-duo Big Soy unleashes a masterful EP

John Edds and Adam White of Big Soy continue to insist that they were framed.
By Gilbert Garcia

John Edds likes to wind people up. When the Big Soy singer/guitarist takes the stage with drummer/keyboardist Adam White, he often turns into the Don Rickles of indie rock, mocking a kid’s mohawk one minute and egging the crowd into dumb Pavlovian cheers the next.

“I tend to talk a lot of shit when we play,” Edds explains. “I’ll make fun of people, and I’m a total ass, and it’s so fun.

The Irish are used to this sort of calculated, tongue-in-cheek bravado. It’s what they call “taking the piss.” But when Edds and White toured Ireland in April, even their thick-skinned hosts would occasionally work up a bit of agitation in the face of Edds’ rants. “Do you realize,” one guy asked Edds after a gig, “that if you were from here, we would have kicked the shit out of you?”

Fortunately, for all concerned, Edds and White are based in San Antonio, where they’re part of a mini-movement of underground-rock duos that also includes Druggist and Robo Trumble. Even among SA duos, however, Big Soy stands out, largely because of the visceral power and merciless volume of their assault. As Edds puts it, “I play through two amps and we’re loud as shit. That’s the whole secret.”

But at least part of the secret comes from the band’s dark, rhythmically jagged, and harmonically unnerving material, delivered by Edds in a tuneful yelp that alternately suggests that he’s about to come unglued or he’s simply stopped caring about anything. White bolsters his no-frills, rock-solid drumming with strategic, left-handed stabs at his keyboard. Their intuitive interplay reaches a peak with Star By Your Name, Big Soy’s new seven-song EP, which surely rates as one of the finest local rock releases in recent years.

Edds and White are both tall and thin, with dark beards, and a healthy appreciation for the absurd. White tends to be more diplomatic and careful with his words, while Edds conveys an unabashed cockiness. As White jokingly puts it, “[Edds] is the crazy rebel and I’m the square one.”

They met five years ago while both were working at Central Market (they proudly note that they’re currently opposed to the whole day-job concept) and bonded over a shared appreciation of the Walkmen. White also benefitted from some false-pretense cool points. Edds was impressed by White’s collection of vintage punk posters, including a G.G. Allin concert flier, only to learn later that they belonged to White’s wife.

For a while, White played guitar, and even after he switched to drums, the band occasionally toyed with a more conventional trio format. But they grew to like the musical flexibility that comes with a duo lineup: the ability to write a song, rehearse it once or twice, and drop it on an audience the next night, without fear that the bassist or second guitarist will miss the chord changes.

Unlike most two-pieces, however, Big Soy never leaves you wishing for more. Edds masterfully fills both the low and high ends with his meaty guitar riffage and White uses the keyboards to fill in the blanks. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call them a power duo.

Edds says the group’s long-term goal has been to capture their speaker-shredding live sound on their home-studio recordings, and concedes that they didn’t come close to that on their debut full-length, 2005’s Putting the ___ in ___.

By contrast, Star By Your Name explodes from the outset with the bitter, unforgettable “Beautiful” and never lets up. In the frankest possible terms, Edds digs around in the ash heap of a floundering relationship and finds little cause for hope: “What happened to you, beautiful?/you used to be so bright/now you’re so dull.” Later, he observes: “Some things disappear, and there’s nothing in their place.”

Throughout the EP, Big Soy’s playing is a model of spare aggression. Edds turns a recurring, three-note riff into a framework for the feral “Broken Leg,” and White enables the title song to rock out in waltz time.

White says the band is concentrating on producing EPs rather than albums these days, partly because they can “release them more often and not have to make as big a statement as an album makes,” and partly because he says they become lazy if they don’t have a project going at all times.

The band has been anything but lazy, however, when it comes to booking live performances. Two years ago, they set up their own tour of England, and last year they played at a fledgling, SXSW-wannabe festival in Toronto called Indie Week. That’s where they crossed paths with a Limerick, Ireland quintet named Vesta Varro. “We were the only two good bands there, so we made friends and they invited us to Ireland,” Edds says.

While in Ireland, Edds and White learned the difference between good and bad Guinness, delighted in the Green Island’s lack of an open-container law, discussed U.S. presidential politics with Vesta Varro frontman Damien Drea’s jazz-drumming father (who briefly teased the group into thinking he was a bigot when Barack Obama’s name came up), and sold tons of CDs.

“Irish people are super-friendly,” Edds says. “They’re like Canadians, but not as overly apologetic.” By way of explanation, he recalls that in Toronto, he accidentally “shoulder-checked somebody in a stairwell in the hostel we were staying at and almost knocked the guy down the stairs. He goes, ‘I’m sorry.’”

With Star By Your Name completed, the band expects to sign with an as-yet-unnamed Houston booking agency and head out on an extensive East Coast tour in a few months.

“It’s economical,” White says about traveling with a duo. “We tour in a small economy station wagon. When we play a show and make $200, we get $100 each, and that’s not bad at all.”

Edds adds: “Obviously, there’s a lot less personality-conflict issue. Waiting on your deadbeat bass player to show up, or whatever. And Adam and I have almost zero personality, so there’s no conflict there.” •

Papawood, May 23 @ Soho Lounge

http://www.papawood.com/

Exit Stage Left, May 23, Speedway Sports Bar

http://www.myspace.com/exitstageleftonline

Papawood and Drive, May 24 @ Hooligan's

Girl in a Coma, The Blue Bubble Ballroom, May 23

http://www.myspace.com/girlsinacoma
http://www.girlinacoma.com/girlinacoma/main.html

Slurly, Darkwater, Rewired - May 23 @ Jack's Patio

Medic Droid at Rock Bottom Wed., May 21

Metro Station and more at White Rabbit Mon., May 19

SUN*DAY at Rock Bottom Mon., May 19

At Jiggers Monday May 19

Edge of Grace, May 17 @ Click's

http://www.myspace.com/theedgeofgrace

ALTER EGO @ TONIC Sat., May 17

Delta House, May 17 @ Soho

http://www.myspace.com/deltahousetx

Brigitte Handley & the Dark Shadows (Austraila) hits Rock Bottom May 17

http://www.brigittehandley.com/

With Koffin Kats (Detroit)

Prototype, May 17, 2-6pm

Diesel, May 17 @ Firehouse Pub & Grill

http://www.myspace.com/dieseltexas

May 16-17 @ Josabi's - The Rock and Outlaw Shows

Third Eye & Mindcrime, May 17 @ Wise Guys

The Killing Floor - Official CD release date

Both U.S. and International versions of TKF's "La Danza Macabre" will be released on July 1, 2008.

http://www.myspace.com/thekillingfloor

Club Venom (Formerly Papa Ray's) May 17

At the Mix 3/16/08

At Patsy's Ice House 3/16/08

DRIVE @ Retox 3/16/08

Jenny Penny's B-Day Bash @ Jiggers 3/16/08

ALTER EGO at Revolution Roon Friday May 16

Good Luck, Cesar, and Team Lavish Luck in the Tour de Cure 2008!

Many kudos out to Cesar Mascorro, lead singer for Lavish Luck for taking part in the Tour de Cure 2008 to benefit the American Diabetes Association! Help support his ride by clicking this link below or going to their myspace at http://www.myspace.com/lavishluck. Every dollar helps fight diabetes!

http://main.diabetes.org/site/TR/TourdeC%20ure/TDC445518030?px=4086406pg=personal