If Printer’s Alley is the closest thing Nashville has to the Reeperbahn, the Captain’s Table will serve as the Star Club Monday night for The Kaisers, a quartet from Edinburgh, Scotland, that bangs out the kind of hell-bent R&B-saturated rock the Fab Four played back when John Lennon wore a toilet seat for a tiara. With three LP’s and four EP’s in just the past three years, the prolific Spinout Records artists—who perform in matching coifs and black-vests-and-jeans uniforms—won rave reviews on their previous U.S. tour, and their live shows are said to combine post-punk energy with early-1960s pop panache. The Kaisers play Monday night at 9 p.m. at the Captain’s Table. The opening act will be like-minded Nashville surf-cult enthusiasts Thee Phantom 5ive.
K.T. Oslin has been in a Nashville studio plotting her return to recording, working on an album that promises a few surprises for fans of her sleek country records. Collaborating with rock producer Rick Will, and employing such instrumentalists as guitarists Jay Joyce and Doug Lancio, Oslin is preparing an album of old country, folk and mountain songs retooled with blues-tinged torchiness. Among the songs recorded thus far: Jimmie Rodgers’ “Miss the Mississippi and You,” Webb Pierce’s “Pathway to Teardrops,” Jimmy Martin’s “Oh What You Got,” the Louvin Brothers’ “My Baby,” the Delmore Brothers’ “Sand Mountain Blues,” Wilma Burgess’ “Tear Time,” Irving Berlin’s “Cuba,” Richard Thompson’s “Never Gonna Run” and the standard “Down in the Valley.” What’s especially interesting is that the Oslin record reunites Will, Joyce and Lancio—all of whom teamed up on the late-1980s noise-rock LP by Nashville’s Bedlam.
Anyone with the guts to go to New York at age 19 and try to make it as a singer has two likely options: taking a serious beating and giving up, or developing a thick enough hide to keep trying. Allyson Taylor may have left the city after four years, but she didn’t leave the business. Since moving to Nashville in 1989, the Columbia, S.C., native has gigged steadily at local clubs, and she recently signed with Bob Doyle’s Major Bob Music as a writer and performer. Taylor has been writing with such local tunesmiths as Kim Williams and Tony Colton; she has a cut entitled “She’s the Only One” on Asylum’s upcoming Thrasher-Schiver LP.
This Friday, Taylor will perform a label showcase at the Ace of Clubs, and if Nashville is looking for a singer to span the fan base from Faith Hill to Melissa Etheridge, Taylor is up to the task. On her four-song cassette, she moves effortlessly from torchy ballads (“And I’ve Cried”) to country rock (“I Wanna Love You Wild”), and she sings with both polish and feeling. If she can generate the same heat live she produces on tape, she’s an act worth catching. Showtime Friday is 7 p.m.
Josie Kuhn, a powerhouse vocalist better known overseas than she is at home in Nashville, headlines the H.O.N.A.R. Jam ’96 at Barbara’s in Printer’s Alley Friday night. A benefit for Helping Our Native American Relatives, a group that distributes clothing and other needed items to Native American reservations across the country, the evening will also feature appearances by Joe Sun and Warner Bros. Western recording artist Bill Miller. Tribal dancers and additional artists will perform. The event is a project close to Kuhn’s heart: She has Native American blood on her mother’s side, and she has delivered (and personally distributed) supplies to the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Kuhn’s fine 1994 LP Walks with Lions, which was produced by Steve Forbert, is well worth seeking out. For more information, call Barbara’s at 259-2272.
If you blinked while watching the April 20 episode of Malibu Shores, Aaron Spelling’s NBC knockoff of Melrose Place, you missed a cameo by none other than Nashville’s Dave Harrison. Harrison, who is now the drummer for the popular Edwin McCain Band, appeared with the group in a concert scene on the show; he and his bandmates reportedly did about two dozen takes of a scene in which the group emerged from a limousine. (The repeated takes were mainly due to band members bumping their heads or catching their clothes on the door.) Although the Edwin McCain Band has a song in the upcoming summer blockbuster Twister, and they’re signed to an Atlantic subsidiary label founded by Hootie & the Blowfish, Harrison and company claim they’re not quite in the limo league yet: The classy wheels belonged to Whitney Houston. So how did they end up in Whitney Houston’s limo? We didn’t ask, and they didn’t tell.
Elliptical dispatches: Miami artist Nil Lara, whose self-titled Capitol debut LP combines Cuban and Venezuelan percussion and instruments with remarkably accessible pop melodies, opens Monday night’s concert by Ben Harper at 328 Performance Hall. Lara has received excellent notices from Billboard and the New York Times, and he’s a good match with Harper, who sings stark, socially conscious folk-influenced blues with a Caribbean lilt on his two Island albums. Don’t miss Lara’s opening set at 8 p.m.
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