Death Valley Girls live – 7th Level Music

Live: Death Valley Girls, Shadow Show, Waltzer – Empty Bottle – Chicago, IL – August 04, 2022

It had been two months to the day that I’d seen Death Valley Girls live, and that was at the Levitation France festival in Angers. They had recently returned from a tour of Europe and the United Kingdom and were now approaching the halfway point of a U.S. tour that would wrap up with appearances at this year’s Psycho Music Festival and Levitation Austin. They played The Empty Bottle with local garage-psych rockers Waltzer and Detroit 60s psych-pop trio Shadow Show.

Waltzer played a fun, solid rock set with a band who, if I heard the lead singer, Sophie, correctly had only been playing together for a short time and was made of members of many other cool Chicago bands. You wouldn’t have guessed they haven’t been together long, because everyone was in synch and had the audience moving. “They sound like Caroline Rose fronting L7, but with more psychedelia,” I thought at one point during their set.

I was happy to hear from Shadow Show that they’re working on a new album, and equally delighted to hear their lovely psych-pop covered in lots of groovy fuzz in a live setting. They hadn’t played in Chicago since before the pandemic, so they were glad to be back on the road and playing a fun set. Afterward, I was stunned to learn that the father of bassist Kate Derringer was one of the driving forces behind the 7th Level music club I attended in Ft. Wayne, Indiana back in my high school days – and the inspiration for the name of this blog. Her father had seen my review of Shadow Show’s Silhouettes and asked her, “Who’s this guy who knows about the Level?” She’d read the review and was now just as floored to meet me in a weird “small world” moment.

Shadow Show (L-R: Ava East, Kerrigan Pearce, Kate Derringer)

Death Valley Girls came out and immediately got started with guitarist Larry Schemel and drummer Rikki Styxx creating a witch’s brew of beats and fuzz while lead singer / guitarist / keyboardist Bonnie Bloomgarden and bassist Sammy Westervelt shared a pre-set hug / meditation…and Ms. Westervelt rocked shoes that would make KISS envious.

Bonnie Bloomgarden (left) in Chuck Taylors, Sammy Westervelt (right) in shoes she might’ve stolen from Boots Collins or the David Bowie estate.

The creepy sounds soon transformed in “Abre Camino,” which only seems to get heavier every time I hear it live. They flowed right into “Street Justice” and stomped the gas pedal to the floor after that. Bonnie Bloomgarden was going into near-trances when she’d play keyboards by the time they got to “Disco.” New song “Magic Powers,” with Sammy Wetervelt on lead vocals, sounds better every time I hear it. Bloomgarden was prowling through and hugging many in the crowd as she sang “Disaster (Is What We’re After),” and they came back from the bottom of the stage stairs to play “Seis Seis Seis” as a sort-of encore.

They also hung out and chatted with anyone who wanted to chat after the show. Larry Schemel told me that this is the first tour in a long while for them for which they’ve been able to hand-pick their opening bands, so seeing them live right now gives you an insight into bands they also love.

Keep your mind open.

Death Valley Girls putting together spell components.

Keep your mind open.

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Psycho Las Vegas 2021 recap: Day One

I wasn’t sure what to expect at the 2021 Psycho Las Vegas music festival. I’d bought tickets to the 2020 festival, but that was, like everything else, cancelled due to the pandemic. I kept the tickets in hopes that most, if not all, of the bands would return. Most did, but there were some absences that were bummers (Windhand, Mephistofeles, and Boris in particular). There were also additions that were quite welcome (Osees, Frankie and the Witch Fingers, Thievery Corporation).

I also had no idea what to expect in terms of healthy safety measures and how I, my wife, and people in general were going to react to be at a music festival again, or even in a casino and among large groups of people again. Nonetheless, we took our vaccinated bodies to Sin City and were happy to discover that the airplane, airport, and all businesses in Nevada are under a mask mandate.

My guess is that 70% of festival crowd was masked nearly all the time. The only person I heard complaining about it was Glenn Danzig (more on that later). The biggest health hazard complaint I had was due to the stunning amount of smokers. I’ve been gone from festivals for so long that I’d forgotten how many people smoke at them, let alone in casinos. Plus, marijuana is legal in Nevada, so the stank of the sticky-icky was everywhere. It’s illegal to smoke it in public, but the odds of you getting cited for it are slim to none.

The festival opened on Thursday, August 19th, with the “Psycho Swim” kick-off party. The festival is held at the Mandalay Bay Casino Hotel, and the “Psycho Swim” is at their Daylight Beach Club – where the security didn’t allow you to bring in a wallet chain or even gum. The pool was full of metal fans, psych-weirdos, music nerds, and, yes, some sexy people.

Everyone is sinking in this pool because the festival was so metal-heavy.

No, we didn’t get into the pool. It was too crowded by the time we got there, and we were mainly there to see bands for the first time in almost two years. The first was Here Lies Man, who opened the entire festival with their groovy, Afro-doom riffs.

For the record, I was the only one in the crowd with a Here Lies Man shirt (which I picked up from them at the last Levitation Music Festival in Austin). I got to thank many of the HLM members after the show, and J.P., the bassist, was kind enough to give me his set list.

It was their first show in two years. This would be a repeated theme from nearly every band we saw over the weekend. All of them were excited to be playing a live show in front of a crowd again.

Up next were Blackwater Holylight, who started off their set by saying, “Okay, we’re going to play some depressing songs for you.” Their doom-psych was appreciated by the crowd, and their upcoming album should be pretty good – judging from the songs they played from it.

Blackwater Holylight were perhaps the only band all weekend who appropriately dressed for the desert heat.

We left for a little while to enjoy some air conditioning and lunch at an Irish pub in the shopping center that connects Mandalay Bay and the Luxor (where we stayed for about half the price of a room at Mandalay Bay). I recommend the turkey burger. We returned in time for Death Valley Girls‘ set, which was the best of the night. They played a wild set of mystical psychedelia. Lead singer Bonnie Bloomgarden, seeming to draw power from the moon, wore a red dress that made her look like a ghost from a Dario Argento movie and a belt that looked like she won it in a professional wrestling match with a cyborg from the year 2305 (and, for all I know, she did). There were a few times when I wasn’t sure if she was wiping sweat from her face or tears from being so happy that they were performing their “first show in about three hundred years,” as she put it. Guitarist Larry Schemel was on fire as well, unleashing some heavy riffs throughout the set. I chatted with him afterwards for a moment, and thanked him for coming out to the festival. He thanked me and said, “This feels weird. It’s our first show after so long…It’s bizarre.” He also gave me his set list, which was a surprise gift.

“Look at the moon!” – Bonnie Bloomgarden (in red dress) points out her cosmic guide for the evening.

It was a good start to the weekend. We had good music, good food, everyone was being cool about each other’s health (the resorts had plenty of hand sanitizer stations and free masks), and we had plenty of time to sleep in the next day.

Up next, dirty metal, psych-rock, stoner metal, electro-goth, shoe gaze, and…bossa nova?

Keep your mind open.

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Review: Death Valley Girls – Levitation Sessions: Live from the Astral Plane

Live from the Astral Plane is the latest in the Levitation Sessions put on by The Reverb Appreciation Society. The sessions are recorded live performances that are later streamed for ticket buyers and then released as official live albums from the respective bands. The first, from July of this year, was by Holy Wave. The newest is by Death Valley Girls, and it’s a stunner.

Any album that begins with 1980’s New Age synth-wave directions on how to astrally project is bound to be a trip, but it’s not surprising coming from DVG. They are known proponents of manifestation and utilizing the laws of attraction. The nine minutes of instruction end with “Now, with blessing, go forth.”

And DVG do exactly that, creeping out of your bedroom closest at 2am with the sublimely spooky “Abre Camino” – a track that builds on horror film heartbeat drums from Rikki Styxx and vocals from guitarist / lead vocalist Bonnie Bloomgarden and bassist / backing vocalist Nicki Pickle that border on being incantations. It bubbles like a cauldron and by the time they reach the three minute-fifty second mark you’re thinking, “Holy f*<k, they are not screwing around.”

Lead guitarist Larry Schemel leads the charge on “Street Justice” with riffs that never let up for almost three straight minutes. “Death Valley Boogie” brings in some Southern California surf riffs and some of Pickle’s fastest bass moves. The way “Sanitarium Blues” moves back and forth from low-key psychedelic grooves to hard and fast garage rock choruses is sharp.

Bloomgarden adds organ on “More Dead (Than Alive)” to provide weird contrast to Schemel’s frying pan-hot solo. Somehow, he conjures up even more heat on “666” (but, should we really be surprised with that title?). “Disco,” one of DVG’s early hits, is always a blast to hear, live or otherwise, and this version from the astral plane doesn’t disappoint.

“Wear Black” brings the band’s surf influence back for us. “It’s a man’s world, that’s what you think. It’s a man’s world, it’s not for me,” they sing on “I’m a Man, Too” – a song that throws down the gauntlet at man-splaining, sexual harassment, and male douche baggery (“If you’re a man, I’m twice a man as you.”).

“Dream Cleaver” is a nice tease since it’s the closing track of DVG’s upcoming album, Under the Spell of Joy. “Disaster (Is What We’re After)” has this great garage punk energy through it and some of Styxx’s heaviest, wildest beats. The closer, “Electric High,” chugs like a phantom train that uses bones instead of coal in its engine and leaves you a bit out of breath and wanting more by the end. Yes, the feeling is a bit tantric.

And, yes, you need to hear and own this. Let it take you out of your body, your social media feeds, your mind-space, your ego, and whatever else is containing you.

Keep your mind open.

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