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Marcia Ball & DeVotchKa

Air dates: May 28-Jun 03, 2003
Tape location:The Boulder Theater

The 'e' in etown stands for eclectic this week as we welcome back piano-pounding Texas swamp rocker, Marcia Ball, who plays her trademark mix of raucous boogie and heart-melting ballads from her album "So They Say." Also paying a visit this week is Colorado's "Best Underground Band" according to the Denver Post; DeVotchKa introduces us to what Westword magazine calls its "Latin-Slavic-flavored ensemble…one spicy ethnic feast." Plus, Nick chats with Tim Wirth, President of the UN Foundation, about the important role citizens can play in addressing global problems. Add an inspirational e-chievement award and it's a perfect show, right here in etown!

Marcia Ball
Marcia Ball grew up in the small Texas border town of Vinton, Louisiana, where she discovered the piano and the blues at an early age. By 1966, she was a student at Louisiana State University, where she played some of her very first gigs with a blues-based rock band called Gum. After graduating in 1970, Ball set out for San Francisco, but decided to stay put in Austin, Texas, after stopping in the city for car repairs along her way to California. Before long, Ball was performing in the city's clubs with a progressive country band called Freda and the Firedogs, while beginning to hone her songwriting skills.

When the band broke up in 1974, Ball launched her solo career, signing to Capitol Records and debuting with the country-soul album Circuit Queen in 1978. She released six critically acclaimed Rounder albums during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1990, Ball recorded the hugely successful Dreams Come True on the Antone's label and at the end of 1997, she finished work on a similar "three divas of the blues" project for Rounder. Soon after, Sing It! was released in 1998 and was nominated for both a Grammy® and a W.C. Handy Blues Award as Best Contemporary Blues Album. Ball also received the 1998 W.C. Handy Blues Award for Contemporary Female Vocalist of the Year (and was nominated again in 2000, 2001 and in 2002) for Best Blues Instrumentalist-Keyboards.

Ball's debut release on Alligator Records, Presumed Innocent (2001), was in the Top 20 chart positions at Album Network, Gavin and FMQB and won the W.C. Handy Blues Award for "Best Blues Album of the Year." Following its success, Ball's latest offering is So Many Rivers (Alligator Records, 2003) featuring her trademark mix of raucous boogie and heart-melting ballads, but also exploring a wider variety of rhythms, lyrics and song structures than ever before.

Join etown for an encore performance from Marcia Ball, "a class act whose soulful, horn-laden swamp pop and murderous honky-tonk make her a stellar example of musical artistry." Austin Chronicle

DeVotchka
It wasn't too long ago that a weary band hauling a violin, a tuba, an accordion, and trumpets into a rock club were told they must be in the wrong place; when a band fusing musical elements from across the globe needed to fight to be considered a rock band instead of being marked by the dubious 'world music' tag.

A decade ago, DeVotchKa drove an overstuffed tour van onto a very different musical landscape. Ten years later, it seems the world has caught up with them.

In that time, DeVotchKa put out three increasingly celebrated self-released records (SuperMelodrama; 2000, Una Volta; 2003, How it ends; 2004).

In 2005, a moment of serendipity rewarded eight years of the band's hard work. After months of searching, two first-time filmmakers heard the sound of their movie on a Sunday morning Los Angeles radio broadcast, the DeVotchKa song "You Love Me." Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris hired DeVotchKa to score their first film, Little Miss Sunshine. Already established as one of the most exciting underground bands in the country, fittingly it is the story of a van full of dysfunctional underdogs that introduced DeVotchKa's music to a worldwide audience.

In the summer of 2007, DeVotchKa returned to Tucson's Wavelab studio to record their first full-length record in four years. The band realigned with producer Craig Schumacher (Calexico, M. Ward, Neko Case) who left his sonic stamp on the band's How It Ends and Una Volta. The resulting record is very much DeVotchKa- somewhere out of time, certainly out of place, and somehow it makes perfect sense.

DeVotchKa is:
Nick Urata: Vocals, guitars, piano, Theremin, trumpet
Jeanie Schroder: acoustic bass, sousaphone, vocals
Shawn King: drums, percussion, trumpet
Tom Hagerman: violin, accordion, piano

website: http://www.devotchka.net

etown Interview: Tim Wirth

e-chievement award: Sister Liz Brown, Excel Inc.
Sister Liz started a non-profit community service organization in Okolona, Mississippi, in 1988. They provide a variety of services to people of all ages. The organization has brought the community closer together and has helped ease long-standing racial tensions.
email: excelcmn@bellsouth.net
Address: 230 W. Main St., Okolona, MS 38860
Phone: 662-447-2030

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