This tune's for you

Catching up with What Made Milwaukee Famous

We've all been there. You're entranced by some wonderful song that you can't live without,only to buy the album, hunker down to listen, and find it full of duds. Your purchase ... sucks. What a weird and wondrous experience, then, to cram What Made Milwaukee Famous into the stereo and be greeted with a crayon box full of pop, each song shaded a little differently than the last and highlighted with quite arguably some of the best pop vocals around.

Named for a line in a Jerry Lee Lewis song, Austin's WMMF formed when vocalist-guitarist Michael Kingcaid put out ads in the Austin Chronicle. Kingcaid, having survived the demise of previous bands, eschewed live performances for a year, opting for an extended period of introduction. He explains, "I had the blueprints, at least in pencil, for a long time. None of us knew each other initially. We didn't want to jump out and play any shows when we weren't ready to sound our best." more

Jason Lytle of Grandaddy

Photo: Debra Zeller

Café Du Nord, San Francisco, 8/09/06

Jason Lytle once mentioned in an interview that as a child, he would draw playmates for himself in dirt with a stick. A creative solution to an emotional predicament like loneliness, and one that goes a long way toward explaining the music that would spill out of him in later years with indie giants Grandaddy. While the demise of the band is heartbreaking to many, what survives is a long legacy of storytelling, of stainless steel covered in ivy, dusty roads and drunken robots, and melodies that question technology even while celebrating it. While it’s an indelicate dance to maneuver, Lytle has recently embarked on a series of shows that acknowledge Grandaddy’s past while hinting at his designs on the future.

This show, the first of two at San Francisco’s Café Du Nord, had all the familiar trappings of a Grandaddy show in microscale. The stage was a makeshift campsite of keyboards, a card table, and the requisite beer cooler – itself re-purposed to hold more keyboards. Lytle invited Rusty Miller, lead singer and guitarist of Jackpot, to round out the sound and harmonies. Up to their ears in guitars and appliances, the two faced each other in the near-darkness, illuminated by a small, antique-looking lamp. “From Target”, Lytle explained, lest anyone in the crowd find his set-up too refined. more