Cantwell, Gomez & Jordan

Cantwell Gomez and Jordan

...have a ridiculous story to tell.
Cantwell, Gomez & Jordan arose from the ashes of the much-ballyhooed mafia-ridden "Chapel Hill Scene." Anne Gomez had just been thrown out of UNC's prestigious law school and was looking for some paying gigs to support her Army of Three-Legged Cats.
She was known for her electric bass and vocal stylings in the rather esoteric world of beach resort dance bands like Special Agents of Her Majesty's Secret Cervix, The Blue-Green Gods, and the seminal Shaggy-Dawg's Shag-o-matics.
Anne hooked up with her former sorority sister Shannon "The Biggest Drumset in the World" Morrow. Shannon was the unifying "backbeat" behind HMS Cervix's spankin' rhythm section, as well as the blood that flowed through the mighty Bicentennial Quarters, Hillsborough's finest metal outfit since the Unoriginal Sinners.
Anne and Shannon immediately re-bonded but still needed a guitarist.
They needed look no further than David Jordan. After his expulsion from UNC's Ph.D. program, guitar player David Jordan decided to end his self-imposed hiatus from music. A veteran of such staples of the Catskills circuit as Polycarp, Glockenspiel, and Tony D'Antonio's Blue Velvet Chillers, he had certainly racked up his share of "cred." He had a vision for NC's musical future; he just needed some partners.
David completed his community service just in time to join with Shannon and Anne to create Cantwell (named in honor of Shannon's favorite Alaskan nineteenth-century Goldrush town, the study of which had always been a passion of hers). The music was dangerous, edgy, and threatened to dismantle Rock as we know it — and reassemble it into a soul-less musical Worldcode for the twenty-first century.
But, after a handful of promising shows and one brilliant long-player, Shannon "had to leave town." This time for Joliet. No one said a straight life was easy, and old habits DO die hard. Maybe life "on the outside" was too stressful — and too full of temptation.
Anyway, Anne and Dave still had bills to pay, so they got the first drummer they could find to fill in until Shannon was "all better": Dave Cantwell, backbone of party funk-metal jokesters Analogue (and his own solo experimental hip-hop John Williams tribute "project").
In a bizarre coincidence, the young drummer shared a name with the band he once drunkenly heckled. To avoid confusion (and dispel rumors), Anne and Dave Jordan decided to re-christen the band Cantwell, Gomez and Jordan. Says Gomez: "We were hoping the name would sound like a law firm or an ice cream company or something. You know: conceptual and shit."
Conceptual and shit, indeed! Gomez and Jordan's exciting, original, quirky tunesmithing combines with Dave Cantwell's ham-fisted drumming to create a new NC music like no other. Well, maybe like some other things, but I can't remember any of their names right now.
--Daniel Forthrite
Cantwell, Gomez and Jordan are:
Anne Gomez, Dave Cantwell and David Jordan

Maple Stave
In downtown Durham on a recent sunny Saturday afternoon, the usual business of the bar The Federal idled. A couple leaned in close to chat at an outdoor table, hiding away from a motorcycle's passing blare. The tune of Alan Jackson's ode to making music, "Chasin' That Neon Rainbow," drifted onto the patio from some distant stereo. Seated on two benches parallel to one of the bar's long, brown picnic tables, though, the band Maple Stave fretted, noticeably uncomfortable and unfamiliar with the situation.

"What a great question," said Andy Hull, one of the trio's two baritone guitarists, flatly after a pregnant pause. Everyone laughed with a moment of relief until the drummer, Evan Rowe, sighed and continued. "We're not good at good questions. We've got a list of things we're not good at."

Maple Stave has been a band since 2003; across three EPs and a handful of tours, they've steadily ratcheted the tension and muscle of their maneuverable math rock. From the outset, they seemed a band with a good idea of how they wanted to sound—that is, a fiery mix of Midwestern indie rock titans like Shellac, Slint and Shipping News. Over the last seven years, they've just gotten better at sounding that way by adding nuance and new twists. Those baritone guitars allow for swiveling lows and muscular highs; Rowe, a former marching band drummer, is a mathematical dynamo. Now, though, out here on the patio, Maple Stave is stuck trying to explain the variety and movement of its first LP, Like Rain Freezing and Thawing Between Bricks Year After Year, This House Will Come Down—or, more conveniently, LP1. As a band, they're better than ever before on this album. As analysts of their own music, they still struggle.

"I'm going to end up talking now and then stop talking, without actually making a point here probably," Chris Williams, the band's other baritone guitarist and songwriter, offers sheepishly. The band laughs again, but he presses ahead. "Somehow, all the songs—no, actually, that's it. I don't know where I was going with that. I'm going to go to sleep."

Part of the problem seems to be that Maple Stave isn't used to talking about the songs as a band. Friends for a decade who've been in each other's weddings and stood by as kids have been born and as relationships have bloomed and fallen apart, Hull, Rowe and Williams agree that they understand each others' lives. When an angry new song surfaces in the practice room, they don't have to talk about what it means.

"You can definitely tell where people are coming from," says Hull. "I think it's great that we can do that, that we're friends in that way."

"It's shit that happens to us, and it gets turned into songs. There's a lot of weird desperation and unhappiness on this record, but not hopeless unhappiness," Rowe—at 34, the oldest of the three—says, finally finding a thread in the album.

They don't need to speak, really: On LP1, those experiences translate into 40 minutes that exude action. During "SCOTT!," Williams hurls invectives and orders above a march as precise as the military, his damaged, buried howl the perfect foil for the band's Teutonic clip. "Cole Trickle" is breathless and anxious, musical mimesis of an instant where something has to happen if you're going to survive. "If They Are Brave, They Will Fight" seizes on the sort of glory and grandeur that made Explosions in the Sky famous, except it understates its climax, teasing expectations of conquest with what feels like a quiet escape into defeat.

"This record feels more desperate," says Rowe. "In a way."

Across the table, Hull looks up, smiles and quips: "Now don't oversell it."

And, again, they all laugh.

Shipwrecker

"I love music that balances the rootsy with the off-kilter and unsettling, ending up with country music captured in deep space—your Souled American and Geraldine Fibbers of the world. I love bands with a large membership and, contrary to logic, a less cluttered sound than groups half their size—your Lambchop and Tindersticks of the world. And, man, do I love a sea shanty.

Thusly hardwired, I was instantly smitten when Shipwrecker washed ashore. The Durham six-piece combines all those above loves, leaving plenty of space for accordion to avoid stepping on the toes of lap steel and ukulele. The opening "Angry God," best described as dramatic and briny, sets the mood. And the closer, "Drinkin's All I Got," sets the perfect scene—favorite cassette still in the player, favorite-chair imprints still in the carpet—to lead you into the titular gut-punch line. Granted, the slow tempos (the exception being the jittery, Djangly "John Frum," a speedboat among rowboats) might not wear well over extended time. But this five-song EP offers the perfect portion, especially with the brilliant "Powder and Sweat" holding down the center. It's Davy Jones meets George Jones. It's Ennio Morricone scoring Pirates of the Caribbean 4: Curse of the Blazing Freckles. And it's the perfect roots-orchestral, country-and-Neptune sea shanty." - The Indy Week