Ear Conditioning

New Southern Gothic

by Shelton Hull

The emphasis falls on the “New” in New Southern Gothic, which may well be the oldest-sounding new band since Eddie Condon’s revivalist group of 1957. The group itself – Mark Creegan, banjo and vocals; Nestor Gil, words and rhythm guitar; Matt Gray, drums; John Hankla, lead guitar; Frank Lewis, bass; Sean Smith, keyboards – is unapologetically southern in its egalitarian approach to songcraft. Huey Long would be proud. It must help that these men have all been friends for years, but even still the band’s progress from idea to incarnation has been rapid by anyone’s standard.

Conceptually, the group was built around the lyrics of Nestor Gil, a poet and performance artist of longstanding virtue. “Some time ago,” he says, “I talked to Frank on his back porch and said ‘Hey man, I think I’m gonna try to get some guys together to put a band behind all these songs that I’ve been writing.’” New Southern Gothic began rehearsals in March as a quartet of Gil, Gray, Hankla and Lewis before Creegan and Smith joined in May. “It’s something we’ve all talked about for years.”

In his solo work, as with the group, Gil’s guitar is never more than a few inches away, but certainly the core of his appeal is a deep, resonant tenor trained to project through all the obstacles of a spoken-word gig: the staleness of smoke in recycled air, the background noises of glasses and glottis, the hum of air-conditioning. He falls closer to a classic troubadour than the standard-issue band singer. His Cuban roots flavor the vocals like a spicy marinade. With three to six strings strumming at a time and all six members’ voices in play, it makes for interesting, accessible harmonies that flesh out the familiar Nestor Gil themes: love, family, the advancement of time. The lyrics are concrete in substance; they evoke vivid images and arouse commonly-held values.

“Luckily, I write very simple songs. I write songs that are built off of very simple chord progressions. That way, when these musicians – real musicians – get ahold of them, they’re able to explore a great deal, whereas if I was writing some really complex stuff, maybe it would just be a matter of them working their way into what’s already there. … A simpler arrangement leads to more opportunities for these guys to build upon the sound with their own voices, so I think it was just serendipitous.”

Lewis agrees: “I have a blast, man. I’ve never been a songwriter – I’ve always been more of a player, so it’s great to have the blocks there where I can put my stamp on it.” Gil adds, “It’s almost like, ‘Well, what do you want to play? Come and play that, and we’ll build the sound from that.’”

“Everyone in the band really enjoys playing music,” adds Smith, “and doesn’t necessarily care about the trappings of the band – we’re just all trying to become better at what we do, and because we’re stretching and reaching all the time, it happens without tension. … It’s kind of weird, because the songs are so beautiful and everyone fits so perfectly together. For me, it’s amazing when you sit and listen to us, because it’s working very easily together.”

In just a handful of shows, New Southern Gothic has shared the bill with groups like Blue Horse, Baleen, Flip the Radio, Troy Lukkarila and Big Black Joe. Their autumn has been spent recording, with an eye towards release this year. The project has progressed so fast, they’d hardly had time to set up their website. Until then, they can be accessed via http://newsoutherngothic.blogspot.com.

Catina Jane, a friend, has photos of their 9th and Main gig with Troy Lukkarila (October 1) posted on her own site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/catina_jane/tags/newsoutherngothic .

Assorted clips can be found at http://www.vimeo.com/user=nsg .

Nestor fits New Southern Gothic within “this idea of a New South that isn’t just a black-white paradigm, but kind of a multicultural mix. When people come here, it seems that they get southern. There’s a mossiness, a sweatiness, a swampiness and an old oak foresty, drawbridge on a small road in the middle of nowhere feeling.” As he’s speaking, in the middle of the night, a train roars by, which he cites as an influence, too. As such, the band’s name could just as easily be the genre in which to categorize them.

New Southern Gothic: http://newsoutherngothic.blogspot.com ◼