{"id":21813,"date":"2015-02-05T17:26:59","date_gmt":"2015-02-05T22:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=21813"},"modified":"2015-10-25T19:21:18","modified_gmt":"2015-10-26T00:21:18","slug":"motel-mirrors-live-at-ajax-diner-thacker-mountain-radio-thursday-feb-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/motel-mirrors-live-at-ajax-diner-thacker-mountain-radio-thursday-feb-12\/","title":{"rendered":"Motel Mirrors Live at Ajax Diner & Thacker Mountain Radio Thursday, Feb. 12"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MotelMirrors-maybelogo\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s something strange yet familiar about Motel Mirrors\u2014<\/strong>like an old photograph of a place you think you know, but don\u2019t quite remember having visited.<\/span><\/p>\n

The casual chemistry between Amy LaVere<\/strong> and John Paul Keith<\/strong> makes it seem like this happens all the time\u2014boy meets girl, boy plays girl some songs, boy and girl form band.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not that we really decided to have a band,\u201d Keith tells it. \u201cIt\u2019s just that by the time we got done having coffee she\u2019d decided we were a band and was already booking shows for us. By the time I got home, we were exchanging ideas for band names.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"MotelMirrors-1\"<\/a>Or, as LaVere says: \u201cI\u2019ve always wanted a duet partner\u2014it was immediately obvious JP\u2019s musical taste and aesthetic fit mine perfectly. I wasn\u2019t going to let him get away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If the collaboration was obvious to LaVere, the style was obvious to Keith: he wanted to emulate the classic 50s and 60s country duets \u2014George Jones<\/strong> and Tammy Wynette<\/strong>, Conway Twitty<\/strong> and Loretta Lynn<\/strong>. The two dove into their respective record collections, searching for songs they could make their own.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Amy<\/a>And so they became Motel Mirrors. The pair spent that winter with drummer Shawn Zorn<\/strong>, playing residency gigs at a few bars around Memphis<\/strong>, discovering their sound in those songs and developing original material. After a few months, LaVere approached Keith about an opportunity to record\u2014she\u2019d talked about the project with her label, Archer Records<\/strong>, and there was interest. They spent a few days at Music+Arts studio with Jeff Powell<\/strong> (Bob Dylan, The Afghan Whigs, Big Star, Tonic, Stevie Ray Vaughan), tracking mostly live, with very few added accoutrements to their stripped-down three-piece. Krista Wroten Combest<\/strong> dropped by to add some fiddle, Eric Lewis<\/strong> contributed a little lap steel, and they called it a record.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three covers\u2014Mickey & Sylvia<\/strong>\u2019s \u201cDearest,\u201d \u201cYour Tender Loving Care\u201d by Buck Owens and Susan Raye<\/strong>, and Red Foley<\/strong>\u2019s \u201cAs Far As I\u2019m Concerned\u201d\u2014blend seamlessly with originals by Keith and a co-write for the pair, \u201cThat Makes Two of Us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that is important to me about the project is that it\u2019s not hokey or corny or campy or anything,\u201d Keith says. \u201cSometimes when people try to do something with a classic country influence they can get hokey or self-righteous. I wanted to avoid all that and do something that was kind of romantic. The themes are classic\u2014that\u2019s stuff you don\u2019t see a lot of anymore. I wanted to just explore that and do something that\u2019s timeless.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And timeless is a good word for it. If you put the needle down and close your eyes, you might mistake yourself for being somewhere else. At another time, in a different town. In a bar, listening to a band of strangers, whose voices are at once both fleeting and familiar.\u00a0 \"The<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s something strange yet familiar about Motel Mirrors\u2014like an old photograph of a place you think you know,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":21815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[1051,65,1068,5272,5279,5276,5268,2795,5273,5269,5270,5275,5274,1096,468,5277,5,5213,448,4,1188,5281,5271,602,5280,5278,2796,845,846],"class_list":["post-21813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-shows","tag-ajax","tag-ajax-diner","tag-amy-lavere","tag-archer-records","tag-buck-owens","tag-eric-lewis","tag-free-show","tag-george-jones","tag-jeff-powell","tag-john-paul-keith","tag-jpk","tag-krista-combest","tag-krista-wroten-combest","tag-lafayette","tag-memphis","tag-mickey","tag-mississippi","tag-motel-mirrors","tag-off-square-books","tag-oxford","tag-radio","tag-red-foley","tag-shawn-zorn","tag-square-books","tag-susan-raye","tag-sylvia","tag-tammy-wynette","tag-thacker","tag-thacker-mountain-radio"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/motelmirrorsFEAT.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}