UK 2018

In the spring of 2018, I travelled to Brighton UK to attend the Great Escape music festival. I had come to see Say Sue Me, one of my favourite new discoveries as well as 3rd Line Butterfly, legends from the early Korean indie scene. These two bands along with Adoy and Billy Carter were scheduled to play at a Korean Music Spotlight event. I had never heard of Adoy or Billy Carter so, in the weeks leading up to the festival, I did some reading online and listened to a bit of music from both bands.

Adoy had a laid back, smooth R&B sound that I just couldn’t connect with. And, I wasn’t sure about Billy Carter who were often described as a “blues band”. Usually, when I hear “blues band” I immediately get suspicious and think that I am not going like it. I do like old lo-fi blues but most modern takes on the genre are not interesting for me. I wondered what kind of blues would come out of Seoul?

As I would soon find out, describing Billy Carter as a “blues band” left a lot of elements out of the equation. Yes, they had solid roots in blues but they were so much more than that. The Billy Carter lineup at the time was Jiwon Kim on vocals and keys, Jina Kim on guitar and vocals and HyunJoon Lee on drums.

The Windmill Brixton

The first time I saw Billy Carter, they were opening for Say Sue Me at The Windmill Brixton in London UK. I didn’t have time to listen to their records much beforehand so I was hearing most of their songs for the first time. But even after just one show, I knew that I was interested in seeing more of Billy Carter. After their set, I met Jina and Jiwon while i was buying a t-shirt at the merch table. I remember getting the impression that they were not interested in talking to me. I think we were a little suspicious of each other : ) It makes me laugh now when I think about it!

The Great Escape Festival 2018

The day after the Windmill gig, I got to see Billy Carter play at a little club called Volks as part of the Great Escape Festival. This club was off the main drag near the beach. When I got arrived, there were probably less than 30 people in the place, almost all men. Even before the band got on stage I felt a bit nervous for them….”Why aren’t there more people here? Why isn’t it darker in here? Why is it all old men?” When I go to shows, I almost never worry about the band being shitty. I often worry about the audience or the venue being shitty instead. This was what I was feeling here…

The band set up, had a quick sound check and then launched right in. From that point on, I don’t think that I blinked the whole time. The musicianship was incredible, the singing powerful. The band played in front of 30 people as if they were headlining a stadium. I was really floored. For most of the songs, there was only drums (by the excellent Hyun Joon Lee) and Jina’s guitar. Jiwon added keys and melodica here and there. But the sound, especially from the guitar, was massive! I couldn’t understand how these three people could make so much great noise together. And the physicality of the band….they never stopped moving, jumping, dancing…

As the band was packing up, I went out for some fresh air and wondered how I could describe the show I that I had just seen. For some reason, the word that came to mind was “demonic”. When I was watching these musicians on stage, they looked like they were possessed. Not in some affected theatrical way. Instead, they seemed to truly love and believe in the music they were making. They were possessed by their own art. It was contagious. I felt it too.

While I was outside for a smoke, I happened to see Jina and Jiwon come out of the club and light up. Now, I am not exactly a shy person but, after seeing what I just saw, I have to admit that I was a little bit afraid of these two! Eventually curiosity overcame fear and I walked over to say hi. We had a cigarette together and ended up having a really nice talk about everything from music to human rights in Korea vs Canada (my home). I remember Jina saying how much she would love to live in a place like Canada and feeling pretty proud about that.

I was able to catch Billy Carter one last time that weekend. This show was an official Korean Music Showcase full of industry people. The lineup included 3rd Line Butterfly, Billy Carter and Say Sue Me. It was an epic show for me, one I will never forget. I was thrilled to see these bands together in such a small space. At the end, I did a little tour around to say farewell to everyone I had met over the weekend. Just before I left, Jiwon (who I was mildly afraid of the day before) ran over and gave me a huge hug. So much for being scary haha..

The Great Escape 2018 was a pivotal event in my life. It reignited my love for live music and introduced me to artists that I might otherwise never get the chance to see. Billy Carter was a big part of that experience and I have been keeping up with them and their new projects as they continue to evolve as artists and activists. They will always occupy a warm place in my heart.

Billy Carter at Great Escape Festival Brighton UK 2018

Happy Anniversary!

The Red EP 10th Anniversary

The first Billy Carter EP was released 10 years ago this summer. This 5 track introduction to the band is probably the grittiest sounding of all their releases. It is one of my personal favourites and, I think, one of the most important Korean indie rock records of all time. Today, I still listen to it with the same joy as I did the first time I heard it many years ago.

The title track “Silent/침묵, starts with a simple drum beat that soon gets swarmed with dirty fuzzy guitar noise. This gives way to a sticky and aggressive guitar riff that is a signature of Jina Kim’s sound in the studio as well as in live performances. Jiwon Kim’s soulful vocals power through it all and add to the high voltage blues assault. After a couple of choruses, the song itself suddenly goes silent. A ripping single note fuzz attack opens it back up over rising drum beats and wailing vocals that carry the song to the end. It sounds like a demonic chant. The lyrics are an indictment (in Korean language) of the tendency towards silence in the face of sadness and injustice. You can hear the blues influences in this song. But, the punk rock (bordering on metal) noise and riffing takes it to the very hard and ragged edge of anything I would think of as a blues.

Lost my Way, the second track, is definitely rooted in 12 bar blues. Jina’s guitar line defines the pace of the song as much as the drums. This is real rhythm guitar playing, keeping pace with, mirroring and complimenting the drum track. Because the sound is already so huge, it’s easy to forget that there is no bass player here. Jina’s guitar playing does double duty in holding down the basic rhythm of the song (a layer of sound normally provided by the bass guitar) and providing fun and energetic riffs and chords as well. This is one of the best parts of seeing them live and I have often wondered how it is even possible for a band to make so much satisfying noise with just a guitar and drum kit and some occasional keys and melodica. Jiwon and Jina share vocals on this track both alternating lines and harmonizing. Their singing styles are different but also complimentary. They sound great together, like two friends singing at the top of their lungs on the way back home from a bar at sunrise after many drinks and smokes. This song starts loud and frantic and just gets louder and more raucous as it rolls along. A fun track beginning to end.

The third track, Time Machine, pulls back the volume and intensity, but only just a little. A sad and lonely harmonica gives way to Jiwon’s powerful smokey slow blues style and Jina’s choppy guitar chords and low note grinding riffs. The lyrics seem to be reflection on past personal and family trauma and its’ lasting effects. “If I got a time machine, would go back and tell my dad not to cheat on his wife..If not, your daughter can never believe her men in her life.”. These are personal and direct lyrics, the sort that would come up later in the bands’ career especially on their last full length release Don’t Push Me. The guitar noise builds steadily as the song progresses, occasionally disintegrating into dissonance and broken rhythms adding to the sense of hopelessness and desperation that threads through the whole song.

Spring (봄), the second to last track, starts with a Johnny Cash style freight train Boom-chicka-boom rhythm guitar that bounces along until the vocals begin. This time Jina takes the microphone while playing a fun delta blues kind of guitar melody (so fun that I had to learn to play it myself). Jiwon adds a few sweet harmonies halfway through. Then, at about two minutes in, just as you are starting to think that Billy Carter decided to give you a nice easy listen, the song bursts open in a nuclear storm of guitar noise and full throttle screaming. Once the dust settles, Jiwon takes her turn at a verse and the guitar melody finally unwinds to the sound of birds tweeting in the spring sunshine. My Korean is not good enough to understand most poetry and metaphor. I suspect that the lyrics are much darker than the music might lead you to think. Somehow, I feel like they may be referencing environmental destruction or emotional disappointment here but… I can’t be sure. I will have to ask next time I get a chance!

The EP closes out with You Go Home. It features big juicy guitar riffs chugging along as Jina and Jiwon take turns singing about what sounds like a very messy end to a night of heavy drinking. A universal experience I think, especially in Korea : ) The song winds up with shouts of “Go Home!”, “잘 가!” “안녕!” “annyeong!”. For some reason at the end of this one I can feel the bone chilling cold of stumbling home on an icy winter night, full of beer and soju, howling wind making my cigarette burn down at double speed. BRRR!!

After The Red

In addition to The Red, Billy Carter have released three other EPs titled The Yellow, The Green and The Orange. Each one goes in a slightly different direction musically but they are all unmistakably Billy Carter. I love each of them and would have a hard time picking a favourite.

Billy Carter has also released two full length albums, “Here I Am” in 2016 and “Don’t Push Me” in 2020. “Here I Am” is a fantastic listen that I think is closest to The Red EP in overall feel. “Don’t Push Me” saw the band move in a slightly different direction. The music maintained the same urgency but the lyrics became much more openly political and straightforward, addressing human (and animal) rights issues in a very direct way. It was a hugely influential album for so many people that I know including my daughter, who lists it as one of her favourites of all time. The album showcased Billy Carter at the peak of their powers as musicians and social critics. Unfortunately I was never able to see any live shows after this release but maybe sometime in the future…The band has been on hiatus since this release and I am not sure if they will ever resurface again as Billy Carter. Even if they have played their last show, I think they have left a collection of songs that any band on earth could be proud of and I am very happy to have had the pleasure of seeing them live even a few times. Happy Red Anniversary Billy Carter!

In the beginning

This morning, I made a quick (and mostly impulsive) list of my favourite Say Sue Me songs. I was planning to take a long walk and I thought it would be fun to compile the tunes into a playlist to keep me company: a kind of “Greatest Hits” according to me. While I was doing this, I wondered: “Which song was it that first made me want to hear more from this band?”

The answer came quickly: “One Week”.

I first heard this relatively unknown band from Busan, Korea sometime in 2017/2018. At that time, the only thing available to me was a compilation of their first 2 Korean releases “We’ve Sobered Up” and “Big Summer Night” co-released by Damnably in the UK and Electric muse in Korea.

This one:

On first listen, I knew that I had never heard anything quite like it but, at the same time, it was warm and familiar. It felt like meeting an old friend unexpectedly. I was immediately hooked.

At that time, the song that I liked the most was “One Week”. I have listened to this recording hundreds of times and I have heard the band play it many times live. I still love it as much as when I first heard it. The energy never fades for me. While I was listening to it today, I thought: what it is that I like so much about this song? The answer was…everything. I think this song is pretty much perfect. I wondered if it might be fun to look at the song piece by piece and write a little essay about it.

So here we are:

Lyrics

Most Say Sue Me songs have English lyrics, this one included. Singer Sumi Choi 취수미, tells the cute and funny story of a presumably bratty younger sister who, for some unknown reason, decides to be good to her big sister, much to her older siblings surprise. She can only manage to keep this up for “just that one week“…as she wavers back and forth between “evil jealousy and pure love again”.

It is such a relatable and charming story told in the most straightforward manner. The little sister is just stating the facts without explanation in the inimitable way that only a child can. If you listen to Say Sue Me over their long career, you will notice that Sumi is capable of poetic and deeply moving lyrics. But this is something else. It is the voice of a child from the past, written perfectly without any affectation.

Music

This compilation album has a do-it-yourself, live-from-our-basement lo-fi sound. It did get professionally remastered some years later and I have both versions. They are not so different but if I had to choose, I might pick the original version.

The base layer rhythm guitar is scratchy and distorted and sounds like it is coming out of a tiny transistor radio speaker, ragged and compressed. Underneath, Jaeyoung Ha 하재영 plots a simple bass line that just sticks to the root notes, no flourishes. I think there is power in this approach to bass playing especially in a song like this. The Ramones did this for their whole career.

Original drummer Semin Kang’s 강세민 steady rhythm and fills are deceptively simple and perfect here. If you listen closely you can hear spaces where he is just so slightly behind the beat that it gives the whole song a cool slack character. You feel like you are already a couple of beers in while listening. He sounds relaxed and it is contagious.

Then there is guitarist Byungkyu Kim 김병규. I would argue that Byungkyu is one of the most underrated guitar players working today. Yes, his technique is flawless. But with the caliber of musicianship in todays’ indie scene, this is not so unusual. Where Byungkyu shines is in his ability to create tension and release, his ability to deliver raw emotion in solo passages and his sense of melody and phrasing. He can dissolve a solo into a whirlwind of dark noise and then ride back out again on the most heart-wrenching crescendo of notes. In general, I don’t often enjoy guitar solos. But Byungkyu is a different story. Whenever I have seen the band live, there are a couple of his solos that always move me to tears. Every time.

With these early songs, he is not quite there yet, but his playing still forms the core of the Say Sue Me sound. Heavy, wet sounding spring reverb on single note themes run throughout this record. The verses of “One Week” have a simple line on the low strings sometimes mirroring Sumi’s vocals and sometimes knitting the bars together. Then the chorus ramps up with bouncing energetic 2 note chords higher up the neck from Byungkyu, with Sumi raking muted strings through a big wall of reverb underneath. It vibrates with fun energy. The noise underneath makes it sound like you are desperately trying to tune in the scratchy song on a shortwave radio as it comes over the airwaves from the opposite side of the world.

The best part is…

…the bridge: the music and the recording as well. The guitars rock back and forth on 2 chords and tons of reverb noise under Sumi chanting “I’m changing every week” opening up to a round of “evil jealousy, pure love again” as the volume goes up, the cymbals get hammered and the vocals get doubled and layered with harmonies. The last chord of the last round of “pure love agaaaaaaaaaain”! is a BIG FAT F-major that sounds like four hands are hammering it down on a gigantic church organ. A perfect stuttering drum fill brings it back to a volume-up chorus and then the final chord ringing out. This is one of those songs that you can’t possibly play loud enough.

It is a brilliant song from beginning to end that instantly cemented my love for this bands music.

What came after…

“One Week” is not necessarily my favourite Say Sue Me song but it is the one that got me hooked on their music. Since that time, the band has released many singles, EPs and albums and a few band members have come and gone. The core sound of these early recordings is still there but the song writing and musicianship keeps getting better with each release. Listen to the song “The Last Thing Left” from the album of the same name to get an idea of how far this band has come since the early days of “One Week”.

If you want to hear more Say Sue Me, you can stream them on all the usual platforms. For merch and physical copies of music, check out their Bandcamp. If you want to see what’s up day-to-day or check out the current tour, here is their Instagram .

What was the song that first got you hooked on Say Sue Me? Please leave a comment below.