Monkee Business

Peter Tork and James Lee Stanley began playing music together as high-school friends, and even though the two have since gained fame for their roles in landmark TV shows, they still find playing music together the most enjoyable form of expression. Tork, of course, was the bassist in The Monkees, and he played the wide-eyed, innocent absurdist on the group’s TV show. Stanley has a recurring role on Deep Space Nine, where his ability to look like a middle-aged alien has found him donning the characteristics of a Romulan, a Klingon, and a Vulcan.

But the duo isn’t coming to Nashville as The Monkee and the Alien. Instead, they arrive Tuesday at the Bluebird Cafe as two whimsical songwriters with a knack for stripped-down, melodic songs that look at life with wit and poignancy. The two have a new duet album, Two Man Band, and both have recently released solo albums—and Tork, for one, believes he’s doing the best work of his life.

“I just think that, as a musician, I’m vastly better,” he says. “I don’t know how that relates to the marketplace, but my understanding of music and the skills I have as a performer are a dozen-fold better than they used to be. I’ve sort of lost that, ‘Oh, I don’t know what I’m doing’ quality, but I still think I have a lot of spontaneity and passion for the music. And I have just started playing lead guitar for the first time in my life, and I do have a real gee-whiz attitude about that.”

Stanley has been making records as long as Tork has; the singer-songwriter has released 13 solo albums since the ’60s. “I’ve never really had that big hit,” he says, “but I’ve made a pretty good living and have been able to keep doing it, which I’m real thankful for. I get to do what I love.”

For Tork, who has continued to take occasional guest roles on TV sitcoms through the years, his current tour of small clubs is a huge counterpoint to the arena shows the regrouped Monkees have played in recent years. He says he cherishes the chance to communicate with audiences on a more intimate level. “I feel like I am...at the frontier of my life all the time,” he says. “Paying attention has left me in awe of the process of life. I’ve managed to experience what I’ve been presented without getting too jaded, and that’s a huge blessing, I think.”—Michael McCall

Next Wednesday’s 2 Foot Flame show at Victor/Victoria’s will bring to Nashville a couple of near-legendary indie music-makers, one from the far side of the continent and the other from the far side of the globe. On their own, vocalist/guitarist Jean Smith and drummer/pianist Peter Jefferies have been making angular, uncompromising music long before Sebadoh or Pavement became household names. Together with part-time member Michael Morley (himself a member of bona fide cult outfits Dead C. and Gate), the pair formed 2 Foot Flame as an outlet for spontaneous collaboration.

Smith and Jefferies are certainly busy enough on their own. Smith is a member of Mecca Normal, a Vancouver duo that combines the singer’s uncommon vocals with the shredding guitar work of David Lester. Together since the late ’80s, the group has released a handful of singles and LPs, each of which contains a few sparkling gems in the midst of some compelling, if rough-hewn, compositions. New Zealander Jefferies, meanwhile, has amassed his own impressive legacy of recordings. Originally a member of Kiwi group This Kind of Punishment, he has since gone on to record several collections of his own darkly appealing piano- and guitar-based songs for American indie labels Ajax Records and Trance Syndicate.

2 Foot Flame’s second LP for Matador Records, Ultra Drowning, mixes Jefferies’ clattering rhythms and brooding piano with Smith’s elastic, guttural vocals, uniquely observed lyrics, and scraping guitar licks. Morley contributes his own guitar skronks and squeeks along with washes of synthesizer. It’s a heady, atmospheric mix, although it generally lacks the pleasingly unpredictable melodic turns of Smith’s and Jefferies’ other work. It should be interesting to see how the whole affair comes off live, particularly given the group’s stripped-down touring lineup. Whatever the case, the show should be worth checking out, if only to witness the work of two musicians who rarely make it to these parts.—Jonathan Marx

A few thoughts after last week’s Tin Pan South “Muscle Shoals Night” at Henry’s Coffeehouse:

♦ Coffeehouses were once great places for music. That was before the espresso machine. At Henry’s Coffeehouse, song after song was disrupted by the loud, phlegmatic gargle of steaming milk, which lent a jarring, percussive effect to even the most pedestrian material—of which there was unfortunately more than a little, whenever Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham weren’t polishing off “A Woman Left Lonely” and other gems. Of course, 10 mucus-clogged bums backwashing a tub of Listerine couldn’t have drowned out the music bizzers yakking at the bar. “Holy shit, that fella in the yella shirt can sing!” bellowed a grizzled 16th Avenue refugee in the middle of a Walt Aldredge number. “He looks like a young Roy Acuff!” Really? Would you have yammered through his set too?