Joy. Another delightful music section in this week’s Dallas Observer. Let’s start it off with Jonanna’s perfectly splendid write-up of her evening with Montrose…

…Finally, Montrose began to play. At first just spacey chords, surrounded by parentheses of reverb. But then he began the foreplay, lithely fingering the fretboard and picking up speed until the room filled with a gorgeous mélange of airy jazz and fuzzy rock, soul licks and flares of Hendrix, all of it backed by a rhythm section as solid as Stonehenge. Montrose’s guitar strings bent to his benevolent will, as did the crowd. My forgotten crab cakes congealed on the plate.

Montrose, I realized, was one of those special breed of musicians. He just oozes music, and his laconic coolness is not an affectation at all but rather a complete and utter comfort living amid the language of free-form jams. He’s transfixing and genreless and somewhat psychedelic, thereby garnering comparisons to Prince, Lenny Kravitz and Hendrix. He is a hidden secret of Dallas, surrounded by a cadre of insanely good musicians, and he should be famous. I suggest you check him out before he is….Please Read the Rest.

Check out dates and tunes so’s you can enjoy Montrose too.

“Eureka” by Montrose

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Jonanna also pens some sumpin’ sumpin’s ’bout local regional bands and artists and their rise to fame and fortune…

Invasion: Polyphonic Spree’s Fragile Army is finally poised to invade the nation. The album is set for release June 19, and if you want you can buy the special edition with a 52-minute DVD documentary (made by Julie Doyle) and a Hal Samples-shot video, along with a Fragile Army patch. Then the Spree kick off their tour June 23 at the Granada and conclude with a performance at the August 3 Chicago Lollapalooza, with 25 dates in between. Even though we all know the Spree would never hurt a fly, it’s still kind of creepy to know they’ve evolved from the cult-rumor-inducing robes to black, military-style uniforms. Really, guys? Black? In the summer? In Chicago?…Read it fool.

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Darryl Smyers talks about a long-time FineLine fave, The Cut*Off.

…Currently recording at Pleasantly Lane Studio with über-producer Salim Nourallah, the Cut*Off find themselves at an important juncture, that point where things progress from a hobby to a full-time job.

“I think the goal of any band is to make a career out of playing music,” says bassist Chad Sones. “If you can make a career out of something you enjoy, then you’d be pretty set.” Along with drummer Jake Webster, Sones is responsible for focusing the band’s intensity. The rhythm section’s interplay is vital to the band’s success, balancing the sloppy cacophony of classic psychedelia with an intense groove that serves Barnhill’s songs well…Read.

“Enjoy the Weather” by The Cut*Off

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Photo by Hal Samples

Precious Andrea Grimes talks of precious Fred Holston and his equally darling dad…

…Fred interns with Dallas homeless advocate and photographer [Hal] Samples and plays the sitar at coffee shops when his dad isn’t chauffeuring him around Deep Ellum and Lower Greenville to play his keyboard. Oh, and last Wednesday night? Fred was in Denton, banging his tambourine on stage with Austin buzz band the Black Angels at 1:30 a.m.

His dad, Bill, took a nap before making the 40-minute drive north with his son; he knows a night out with Fred could go late, and the human rights lawyer has to be at work at 7:30 a.m. But he says quality time is worth the lack of sleep. Three or four nights a week, Fred and Bill head out to a concert, art show or open mike. Bill is never far away, keeping an eye on his sitar-playing, hair-bleaching, occasional curse-word-dropping son.

What a little turd, right? I should be irritated by the 15-year-old running around my favorite bars, playing his incessant tambourine and yammering about the local rock star he got to take pictures of this week. I should loathe the fact that he gets to scrub big, black Sharpie X’s off his hands every morning before school. No fair! A big night out for me as a teenager meant a church lock-in. I ought to be wildly jealous and suspicious of this Dallas wunderkind and the bespectacled father who’s always supervising him from behind a cold bottle of Shiner.

But alas, I am a Fred fan, charmed by his naïveté and enthusiasm for things that I’d forgotten were once truly exciting, like rock and roll shows and wearing weird hats. (Fred’s got a coonskin cap he particularly favors.) Fred likes what Fred likes. If it’s dorky or too sincere, he doesn’t care. And it shows, especially in a crowd.

The first time Dallas photojournalist Allison V. Smith met Fred, she was shooting Good Records for Spirit magazine. “The place was filled with cool kids,” she says, but Fred “stood out” with a tambourine, bleached blond hair and fake henna tattoos on his arms. She snapped a photo of him sitting Indian-style in front of a bright yellow rack of indie-rock records. Cool, right?

“I think I’m younger now than I was when I was 15,” says a bushily goateed Bill. Bill was a square kid. But in a way, Fred is too. The way some teens would obsess over boy bands and pro athletes, Fred is consumed by the indie music scene. Yet his enthusiasm for the indie-rock reveals the true essence of Fred: Deep down, he’s not the apathetic, detached hipster ideal that someone who spends as much time at Good Records as he does should be.

He’s a 15-year-old kid who gushes on his blog about riding to SXSW with a rock band. Even his MySpace page address is an homage to one of his favorite bands, the Brian Jonestown Massacre. He pledges on the page that Andy Warhol “will forever be my favorite artist and visionary…” I’m going ot have to insist that you read the rest.

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There’s more kids. Lots more. Oh yeah, and don’t fergetta VOTE!

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