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By: ROB BECK
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DECATUR’S WORDSMITHS BOOKS is making a name for itself not only in literature, but in the indie music scene as well. The gay-friendly bookstore solidifies that growing reputation this week with upcoming appearances by three gay musicians: gay violinist Owen Pallett, better known as Final Fantasy, on Nov. 6, and lesbian singer/songwriters Amy Lashley and Steph Taylor on Nov. 10.
Amy Lashley and
Steph Taylor (inset)
Toronto’s Pallett began making music as Final Fantasy three years ago, following a few stints in bands and composing. He says his sound, which revolves around his violin and a sampler controlled by foot pedals, evolves with each new album.
It was the sampler, which he calls an FX pedal even though “it’s kind of an actual new instrument,” he says, which inspired him to put bow to string under the name Final Fantasy.
“I had a couple of friends who were experimenting with it, and I was just walking around one day and had some ideas for some songs for it," he says. "Usually, I sit down and write, so for me to receive any sort of unsolicited inspiration is kind of strange, but that’s what happened.”
Pallett, who says he takes requests in exchange for gifts from the audience — “I'm not out for any kind of cash reward,” he says, “but something like cupcakes for the audience.” — says his musical influences vary depending on what he’s working on at the time.
“For the first album, I was listening to kind of a lot of indie pop music because I wanted to make a pop record,” he says noting that his second album was a string quartet-influenced work. His third album, due next September, will have a big band, "Randy Newman feel," he says, “but in a much less hippie sort of vibe.”
As for his show, Pallett shuns extravagant production values in favor of letting the music speak for itself, something he says grew out of the Toronto music scene that fostered his sensibilities as an artist.
“If you even dress up for a show, people are immediately just kind of like, ‘U-huh, what?’” he says. “Music is the medium, and the cross-pollination between performance art and actual music production, while it does exist, is not really about the light show or the outfit.”
IN ADDITION TO THE DECIDEDLY non-mainstream pallett, Wordsmiths makes inroads with a more traditional gay music set: independent lesbian folk artists. In that vein, Atlanta singer/songwriter Amy Lashley and Florida native Steph Taylor take the stage for their first shared bill on Nov. 10 at 7 p.m.
Lashley and Taylor both look forward to their performance at Wordsmiths. It’s a dual billing two years in the making, after the pair met at an Eddie’s Attic open mic night.
“I think our styles are similar in some ways but different enough to make it really interesting,” says Lashley of the upcoming show.
Taylor says to expect “a really honest and emotionally intense set” from the pair.
Lashley began building a fan base in and around Atlanta more than three years ago, but she came to her current guitar-driven indie folk sound by an unorthodox route.
“I played trumpet before I played guitar,” she says, laughing. “I decided that it’s really hard to play trumpet as an adult if you don’t do it professionally, because the neighbors get mad at the noise when you’re practicing, so I thought that maybe guitar would be a little better.”
Given her popularity in Atlanta, it was a well-informed switch that quickly bloomed into a career, surprising even Lashley, who started performing for fun and “got addicted,” leading her to record an album this fall, due out in January.
“It’s going to be a pretty interesting project,” she says of the Karen Kane-produced disc that also features local pal Julia Carroll on guitar and bass.
LASHLEY’S LIGHTER SOUND provides a dynamic interplay with Taylor’s self-described “dark alternative pop,” which she started performing in 1999 after humble beginnings in small-town Florida that led to Boston’s Berklee College of Music.
“I just started out playing open mics and never really thinking that I was going to want to do this full-time,” Taylor says. “But I got so much great reinforcement that it just felt like my calling.”
She has earned fans around the country who have come to know her ...
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