Amy LaVere is a slip of a girl with a voice that sounds like a caricature of fine southern lady, all twang and honey. The fact that she plays the hell out of an upright-bass, has a face that belongs on a magazine cover and sings songs about killing unfaithful husbands makes her a marketing department’s wet dream. Oddly enough, none of these things are prefabricated. The road to where she is has been long, but it’s a story that makes perfect sense for a singer/songwriter/actress based in Memphis, Tn. Her show at The Hitone cafe in Memphis, Tn on December 19th was packed to the rafters and made me wonder what exactly that that story is.

Of course, the story begins with LaVere, born Amy Fant, being brought up on Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, as she moved from town to town with her ambulatory parents, racking up 13 different addresses before she graduated from high school. Her last stop before heading back south was Detroit where she sported a mohawk and played drums with wooden spoons in a punk band called Poison Death Mongers. Eventually, as many do, she ended up in Nashville where she worked at a Falcon Goodman Management on Music Row, lived in East Nashville (the old Williamsburg of Nashville before it became today’s Williamsburg of Nashville) and began to hang out on Lower Broadway before it turned into the Country Epcot.

It was during this time that LaVere met Gabe Kudela, who was playing the upright bass with The Legendary Shack Shakers at the time. Kudela and LaVere hit it off right away and after a three week whirl-wind romance they eloped. The bride wore a borrowed Nudie suit. They ended up moving in with Jason Brown, the upright bass player for Hank III, and LaVere’s education began. To pay the bills, Kudela and LaVere worked for a house painting company. As they traveled from Indiana, to North Carolina, to Kentucky, they set up and played any place that would let them. Eventually they ended up in Memphis where they scored a weekly gig at punk rock dive bar Murphys’. They called themselves The Gabe & Amy Show.

The weekly gig began with the two playing every Wednesday night, half originals and half covers. The two lived with the fabled Misty White, a drummer with whom LaVere would eventually play with in an all girl band called The Zippin’ Pippins (named after Elvis’ favorite roller coaster, of course) along with saxophonist Susie Hendrix (The American Deathray, pre- Viva L’ American Death Ray Music). The gigs began to mulitply, and eventually so did the members of the band. The first to be added was Paul Buchignani, a highly sought after session musician, and former drummer for the Afghan Whigs, local cult heroes Neighborhood Texture Jam and Todd Snider. Buchignani still keeps busy playing with Impala, Harlan T. Bobo, Minivan Blues Band, Jack Yarber (Jack Oblivian) and at the annual Ponderosa Stomp in New Orleans - but I guess that’s a whole other story.)

Almost three years after the show began it had become the Rolling Thunder Review and included legendary Willie Mitchell’s son, Huggie Mitchell, on keyboards. Then in 2003 the band imploded, along with Kudela and LaVere’s marriage. So, LaVere bought her husband’s upright bass from him (it had once belonged to former Johnny Cash and Dwight Yoakam bassist Dave Roe, after all), moved into an apartment above a record store and started over.

It was in this apartment that she began jamming with blues prodigy Jason Freeman and local actor Jeff Pope, both of whom would end up being key factors in her soon to blossom acting career. After moving into a house with a backyard to accomodate her dogs, LaVere took on another locally well-known drummer as a roommate. Paul Taylor, who played in a band called DDT with Luther and Cody Dickinson before they formed The North Mississippi Allstars, had been living in Coldwater, MS in a trailer on Jim Dickinson’s land before he decided to move back to Memphis. At the time he had been touring in as the bass player in Jimbo Mathus’ new band. Six months later Taylor and LaVere were an item and he was her new drummer. freeman became her guitar player and the threesome became Amy & the Tramps.

Ward Archer, owner of Archer-Malmo, the largest ad agency in TN and the executive producer of the syndicated radio program, Beale Street Caravan, became enamoured with LaVere shortly after in 2005 and offered her a recording contract on his label, Archer Records. The fruit of that union was LaVere’s Paul Taylor produced debut, This World is Not My Home in 2006. Jim Dickinson sat in on some of the sessions for the album and was so impressed that he agreed to produce LaVere’s latest release, this year’s Anchors & Anvils. Along the way, LaVere also worked with Scott Bomar, who scored both Craig Brewer movies filmed in Memphis, Hustle & Flow and Black Snake Moan, and wound up with a part in Black Snake Moan and the Memphis filmed Johnny Cash bio-pic Walk the Line.

If this entire story seems totally serendipitous, well, that’s how a seeing Amy LaVere play live feels. Serendipitous. To me anyway. Jason Freeman taught Samuel L. Jackson to play the blues in /Black Snake Moan/ and has since left the band to pursue his own music. But his replacement is no less impressive. Now, Steve Selvidge, son of Sid, holds down the lead guitar parts. If you wished upon a star for the best guitar player in Memphis to join your band, if your wish was granted, Selvidge would land on your stage. Even though LaVere has been ridiculously lucky to fall into playing with the vast amount of reveered musicians she has, with Taylor and Selvidge in her corner, she seems to have finally hit just the right note.

Check out this week’s Live from the Hitone with the lovely and talented Amy Lavere by clicking HERE.

Photos by Sean Davis

SETLIST

00:25 That Beat
04:22 Day Like Any
09:50 Overcome
13:05 I Died of Love
18:59 Take Em or Leave Em
23:48 Washing Machine
27:09 People Get Mad
31:46 Killing Him
35:49 Pointless Drinking

You can listen to or dl my favorite song, “Take ‘Em or Leave ‘Em”, from the show from the Scenestar’s Player in the upper right-hand corner.

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