TAV FALCO
Like many of the musicians, scholars, carnies and flaneurs that inspired him, Tav Falco
is a Southern provocateur grifting his audience with the ol’ song and dance act before
shuffling out the back door with a wink and a nod. His historico-musico revue, The
Unapproachable Panther Burns, originated in 1979 at the nadir of Memphis’ postmodern,
post-Beale, post-Sun, post-Stax era, when the Mississippi River town had seemingly
disappeared from the cultural map and shriveled into an obsolescent landmark. Only
groups like the Dixie Flyers, Mud Boy and the Neutrons, Big Star and Panther Burns
were intent to keep the fires burning with or without commercial success, and their
contribution to experimental pop music, dirty rock ‘n roll and the blues revival have been
incalculable.
Falco spent his formative years in the country near Whelen Springs, Arkansas, before
landing in Memphis in the late 1960s. Co-founding with decadent poet Randall Lyon, the
art action group TeleVista in which he worked alongside renowned photographer
William Eggleston, Falco spent the next decade filming and photographing the city’s
legendary cadre of country blues and rockabilly musicians, artists, and politicians,
expanding his lens to the outer realms of the Mississippi hill country and the Delta. In his
travels he documented Sam Phillips, R.L. Burnside, Phineas Newborn, Jr., James Carr,
Cordell Jackson and Jessie Mae Hemphill to name but a few. Throughout his career in
photography, video, film and music, Falco has merged the grainy portraiture of a gonzo
documentarian with the spellbinding mythos of a backwoods raconteur. None is more
illustrative of this raison d’etre than the band he founded with fellow musician and
Memphian enfant terrible Alex Chilton – The Unapproachable Panther Burns. A
reference to an ol’ Mississippi tall tale, Panther Burn was a large 19th century plantation
outside of Greenville where legend had it a cunning panther stalked and terrorized the
local population until it was corralled into a cane break and set aflame. According to
witnesses, the screams coming from the panther were an unholy amalgam of animal lust
and divine transubstantiation, which continue to curse the plantation.
Playing in the Memphis cotton lofts - wood-lined structures Falco likened to a guitar
sounding box - Panther Burns developed their own tone science and gut-bucket approach
to musical forms. The unbridled Panther Burns shows, which often featured guests like
Charlie Feathers and Jim Dickinson, became monumental, renegade events. Evercommitted
to preserving indigenous music and furthering new and daring expression, in
1985 Falco and the Panther Burns founded Counter Fest, an annual festival showcasing
the best and the worst of the Memphis arts underground. The band quickly became a
favorite in New York City, as well, where No Wave was emerging at the time. Rough
Trade Records enthused over the band and released Panther Burns’ debut album Behind
The Magnolia Curtain in 1981.
After twelve LP and EP releases and countless globetrotting tours, Falco expatriated to
Europe, where he found his most embracing audiences along the Seine and Danube
rivers. The lure of the Mississippi was not far from his mind when he finally chose the
river towns of Paris and Vienna as outposts of mother Memphis. The dramatic flair of his
music has always colluded with cinema, and Falco was destined to step foot in its dreamfactory.
In addition to his own expressionist-inspired films “Shadetree Mechanic” (1986), “Memphis Beat” (1989), “Born Too Late” (1993), “Masque of Hotel Orient” (with
Kenneth Anger, 1996). Falco appeared in the unredeemed Jerry Lee Lewis biopic Great
Balls Of Fire (1989) and portrayed the leader of a motorcycle gang in the award-winning
rock’n’roll road movie Highway 61 (1993), riding his own vintage Norton motorbike.
Among numerous other movies, he appeared in By the Ways, a documentary film about
color photographer William Eggleston, and enjoyed a retrospective of his own short films
in April 2006, at the Cinémathèque Française. In 2014 Lamplighter Films/Frenzi Films
co-released first feature film directorial effort of Falco entitled, Urania Descending,
which has premiered in London and Vienna.
Falco’s interest in Latin sounds has evolved into an ardor for Argentine tango. Becoming
a tango dancer himself, Falco is regularly gliding in baroque ballrooms of Vienna’s many
palaces and in the milongas of Paris and Buenos Aires. The profound influence of tango
is evident in Falco’s albums, as woven through Shadow Dancer’s songs of unrequited
love, betrayal, and lost causes. As The New York Times has declared of unorthodox
preservationist Falco, “(He is) a singer, guitarist and researcher of musical arcane who
hasn’t let his increasingly technical expertise and idiomatic mastery compromise the
clarity of his vision.”
Falco continues to perform with Panther Burns, appearing at events like the It Came
From Memphis series at The Barbican Centre in London in 2005. Appearances include
2006’s ArthurNIGHTS Festival at the historic Palace Theatre in Los Angeles, 2007’s
command performance at Fondation Cartier in Paris, 2008’s headlining at the Strade Blu
Festival in Tredozio, Italy, 2009’s Alternatilla Festival in Mallorca, Spain, the Barreiro
Rocks Festival in Lisbon 2010, a London showcase at the 100 CLUB in 2011, the and
multimedia event at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and Music in New Orleans in
2012, along with the Byron Bay International Blues Festival in Australia in 2013. In 2015
Falco was invited to appear at Silencio - the private club of David Lynch in Paris.
The previous album release, CONJURATIONS: Séance for Deranged Lovers was
recorded in a secret studio in Saint-Germain-des-Prés on Paris’ left bank. The record is
composed of all original songs, and consummates Falco’s vision with a particularly
poetic, yet turbulent thrust. The lineup includes Giovanna Pizzorno, an original member
of the Memphis all-girl band the Hellcats, and drummer with Panther Burns since the
mid- Eighties, lead guitarists Gregoire Cat and bassist Laurent Lanouziere, A new
FRENZI re-Issue series of the Panther Burns catalog is now underway with LTM records
in the UK in 2015 beginning with the introductory release, HIP FLASK.
Recorded in Rome, the new studio album, COMMAND PERFORMANCE, was released
in March 2015 by UK label TSB Records. The lineup includes guitarist Mario
Monterosso, Giovanna Pizzorno, and keyboardist Raffaele Santoro. Falco’s exceptional
voice, described by one journalist, as sounding like Marlene Dietrich under torture,
evokes the phenomenal fires of the Panther Burns. This new album is a real statement of
intent from a man and his band who hit new peaks of performance - showcasing not only
stunningly varied selections of the obscure and the well known from the blues palette, but
an amazingly broad selection of new original material as well.
Equal parts primal, early rock’n’roll, deviant hill country blues & avant-garde art - TAV
FALCO’s PANTHER BURNS are ramshackle, raw, unholy & utterly amazing. Panther Burns is not just Music...
it is a state of mind. Tav Falco is one of the truly original and romantic forces in American music - the voice that America lost and found. He is tender and virile, flamboyant, witty and dangerous. Falco brings daggers back to the stage. HE is the one who always holds out a hand to the enemy.
Raised in rural Arkansas, Tav Falco formed the first incarnation of Panther Burns in Memphis in 1979, offering an artful mix of punk, garage, rockabilly and "art damage" influences, and sharing stages with the likes of The Cramps and The Gun Club. Legendary friend and mentor Alex Chilton (ex-Box Tops and Big Star) orchestrated their acclaimed debut long player Behind the Magnolia Curtain for Rough Trade Records, before going on to produce the next three Panther Burns albums, using vintage Memphis studios such as Ardent, Sam Phillips Recording and Easley McCain.
Tav Falco & Panther Burns have been cited as an influence by everyone from Jon Spencer Blues Explosion to The Fall, Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized. "Renegade Tav Falco explores a highly personal vision of rock n' roll," enthused Edwin Pouncey in The Wire in November 2014. "Possessed by a wide range of influences that range from country and blues, novelty numbers and punk rock, to La Monte Young styled drone. But Falco has earned the right to stand shoulder to shoulder with the musicians and artists he so fervently admires."
Robert Palmer of the New York Times declared of Falco: "He is a singer, guitarist and researcher of musical arcane who hasn't let his idiomatic mastery and increasing technical expertise compromise the clarity of his vision."
"Tav Falco has spent much of the past two decades crafting a revisionist pop culture history," said David Sprague in entertainment bible Variety. "He was post-modern when post-modern wasn't cool."
A permanent move to Europe in the late 1980s saw Tav based first in Paris, then Vienna, and an expansion of Panther Burns' raw garage sound to embrace Stax, lounge and even Argentinean tango influences (Falco is an accomplished dancer, as well as a photographer and filmmaker). His new set Command Performance was realized in Rome in 2014, and tops an extraordinarily rich back catalogue covering four decades and a dozen studio albums.
"Command Performance further explores Falco's world of twilight swamp rhythms, Stax vamps and ballroom damage, also tackling bare-knuckled protest blues on Whistle Blower and Doomsday Baby. Though he's been based in Vienna since the 90s, part of Falco's heart still resides in Memphis, where he lived for 17 years. It's reflected here in homages to the city (Memphis Ramble) and ripsnorting covers of Charlie Feather's Jungle Rock and departed friend Alex Chilton's Bangkok" (Classic Rock, 02/2015); "Gravitating to Rome for his first studio offering since Conjurations in 2011, Tav packed a wishlist of covers, some thumbnails of new material, and the idea that something would take shape there. The resultant recording sees the Italian vibes mingling with the more familiar aroma of Memphis magnolia for a uniquely intoxicating voodoo blues rumba concoction - 8/10" (Vive le Rock, 06/2015); "The range of material here is more narrow than on Conjurations, but the approach is more immediate and daring. Sonically this is the best record the Panther Burns have ever made, and with less grit in the mix the decadent ooze in the band's aesthetic is all the more heady" (All Music Guide, 03/2015); "Command Performance is more truly a vocal record and as such it bears comparison with Dylan's Shadows in the Night in the way that it somehow connects starlit balladry with the macabre underbelly of rock n' roll. His take on Jungle Fever by hicupping rockabilly god Charlie Feathers is the album's highlight and best captures the Lynchian cabaret feel of the session" (The Wire, 07/2015)
CD/DL tracklist:
1. Breakaway
2. Fire Island
3. Whistle Blower
4. About Marie Laveau
5. Doomsday Baby
6. Bangkok
7. Master Of Chaos
8. Jungle Fever
9. Memphis Ramble
10. Me and My Chauffeur Blues
11. He'll Have To Go
12. Rumbetta