Must See Them Live
- The Seattle Times
Like the Whore Moans, these Maldives (pronounced "mal-deevz," like the island nation) are in between albums, just getting arrangements figured out for a second album. One look at this crew, and you realize this isn't your average Seattle rock band: banjo, violinist, pedal steel guitarist. These, along with more common guitar, bass and drums, create a gripping sound, drifting between alt-country and Crazy Horseera Neil Young. Pumping life into singer-songwriter Jason Dodson's mournful creations, this band at times sounds like The Band not a coincidence, as the Canadian rock legends are a huge influence on Dodson. He grew up in Vancouver, where his music-loving mother played Willie Nelson, Dylan and the Stones, all of whom made a huge impression on him. The Maldives songs started as his own solo efforts, until he slowly built this exceptional band: Jesse Bonn (guitar), Tim Gadbois (guitar), Ryan McMackin (drums), Chris Warner (bass), Chris Zasche (pedal steel), Seth Warren (violin), Kevin Barrans (banjo and ZZ Top beard) and Tomo Nakayama (percussion, when he's not busy with his other band, Grand Hallway). This is another band that must be witnessed in the flesh to be fully appreciated. The Maldives play the Tractor Tavern a venue that is just about perfect for their sound. Songs like "Blood Relations" and "Tequila Sunday" slowly grow from modest emotions into epic compositions, as the Maldives layer up and hit ferocious grooves. These Maldives range in age from 25 to 31, with the rugged-looking Dodson on the high end. They are not against drinking, but this practice is a dry one, and the musicians dive into their song with quiet intensity no messing around as they prepare for their second album. Dodson perhaps more Tolstoy than Dostoevski had assembled this band only shortly before recording the Maldives debut. "I don't think the first record sounded like them," Dodson said. Before, they were playing his songs; now, they are playing their songs. "The lyrics are still about the same things," Dodson says, in his modest way, "simple things, love and death."
A LOT Country! A LOT Rock!
- The Stranger
The thing about the Osmonds was that they were neither a little bit country nor a little bit rock 'n' roll. The Maldives probably never bargained for being mentioned in the same hemisphere at the Osmonds, but here we are. Screw the Osmonds! The Maldives are A LOT country, A LOT rock 'n' roll. It's clear that Seattle is a hotbed for kickass alt-country music. Why this is the case I don't know; the dank and mountainous Northwest is a far cry from the dusty, desolate flats of the Midwest or the humid hills of the South. I'd wager it's a blue collar thing. Seattle is historically a working class town, and the Maldives and the Moondoggies, and the Cave Singers play a form of working class music. Plus there's the Tractor Tavern, which is reknown across the West Coast for hosting this kind of music, so there's built-in support for it. I saw the Maldives (pronounced MALL-deeves, it's an island chain in the Indian Ocean) at the Tractor a couple months back as they twanged their way through a mesmerizing set. Well balanced between hard-rocking Drive-by Truckers grit and waltzing Band-ish traditionalism, they rolled along with a nuanced sound provided by fiddle, weepy steel and gentle acoustic and scruffy electric guitars, rich organ, and some accordion, plus a smart, subtle rhythm section. Singer Jason Dodson looking much like the mustachioed Jason Lee from My Name is Earl has a helluva voice, striking, clear, and bright like the full moon on a hot August night. He belted and crooned, singing of undying affection, misplaced dreams, family ties, and sailboats. The crowd swayed along. There's something about country that, like blues and reggae, resonates with a potent and undeniable truth. It's folk music. In the right hands, it tells the story of a people. And even here in Seattle, thousands of miles away from the plains and the Opry, the Maldives do it right.
Unheralded Songwriter
- The Stranger
"Listening to The Maldives play their dusty, rainy-day country rock, one might wonder if this (mostly) bearded group of twenty somethings would be better suited to the lonely, expansive corn fields of Kansas than the crowded city streets of Seattle. Geographic incongruity aside, vocalist Jason Dodson, one of the best unheralded songwriters in Seattle, has a keen ear for relating his city blues with a country twang, accenting his voice with ambient pedal steel, fully electric guitars, and the occasional fiddle. The result is Dodson's somber songs of hope and failure, the kind of plaintive, self-reflective stories you'd hear from a heartbroken farm-hand sipping on whiskey in an empty tavern."
The Maldives + one hobo
- The StrangerLocal alt-country outfit the Maldives played an opening slot for the first night of Noise for the Needy at the Tractor Last night. I only caught four songs, but they were enough to hook me on the band's Band/front porch blues/Buffett reel and sway. The singer had a rightly wearied voice, but it was really the nimble lead guitarist and what looked like a middle-aged bearded hobo sitting and playing banjo that really sold me. The six-piece band was tight enough for songs to come together naturally but loose enough to ride them out shambling. First song was far more country than alt-, knee-slappin' with banjo, fiddle, and strummy guitar, but the next number, riding smoldering slide guitar, took off into more rocking territory. Hobo switched from banjo to keys to accordion for each song, beefing up and diversifying the sound as needed. Their final tune, a sad, sweet, slow ballad was their most powerful, evoking early-era Jimmy Buffett in its country-cum-folk easiness, the singer's vocals and lyrics ("By the wind, sailor") elevating the low-key arrangement. Yes, I said Jimmy Buffett, and yes, that's a good thing. I have a soft spot for twangy songs about sailboats.
Honky-Tonk Heroes
- Seattle Weekly12/20/06
"I don't think Seattle really has a country-rock 'scene.' I don't know anyone who goes out wearing a cowboy hat," laughs Jason Dodson, the 30-year-old singer-guitarist and chief songwriter for the local, well, country-rock outfit The Maldives. "But there is definitely a community here," he continues, "and I think we've become a part of that. There's a certain sound some people wanna hear, and they seem to be responding to us when we play it." That sound - an evocative, oft-haunted confluence of acoustic strumming, mournful pedal steel and violin, regal piano, the occasional ragged electric-guitar outburst, and the rabbity-voiced lyrics of a lonely, soul-troubled singer - is a familiar one to anybody who's spent quality time with Neil Young, the Band, or Gram Parsons. It's a time-honored style of music that's been updated by countless contemporary artists, but unlike, say, My Morning Jacket or even Band of Horses, The Maldives don't paint the tradition with indie-rock colors. In early 2005, The Maldives decamped to Anacortes to record their self-titled debut album; it didn't come out until July of this year, mainly because Dodson had to scrounge up enough cash to have it properly mastered and replicated. Not that he's complaining about the DIY approach or its prospects for success. "My dad wrote me a letter. He was like, 'Look Jason, you're not Bob Dylan, you're not Bruce Springsteen; these people were 21 when they first started making money making music.' He was like, 'you're getting on, maybe you should think about a future,' and all I could think was, like, 'Dad, you don't even know...' Music today is not run by major companies anymore - the old model for making money from music doesn't work anymore. Now it's like anybody can make it on their own if they have the time and the balls to do it, if they're making music that's worthwhile. The only thing you have to do as an artist is basically push yourself - you have to advertise and market yourself.' So far so good. Dodson says he's developed great relationships with Easy Street, Sonic Boom, and KEXP. But, he notes, The Maldives' live show are what are ultimately expanding the fan base. "The stuff we're playing out now is definitely louder that what's on the record, which isn't sleepy, I don't think, but it doesn't have as much edge to it. We're a lot more engaging now, and people seem to dig it. If we're connecting with audiences and making them feel something, I can't ask for much more than that."
The Maldives: Country-Rock's Big Band
July 10th, 2008
By Don Slack
KEXP, November 18, 2008 - Along with Fleet Foxes and the Moondoggies, The Maldives' members belong to a thriving Seattle roots-music scene. They've quickly become a popular draw, regularly selling out clubs here. With nine people in its lineup, it's one of the area's biggest bands in more ways than one. Having such a large group by the station for an in-studio performance presents a few challenges. While I was certain that all nine members would fit into KEXP's performance space, I wasn't as sure if they'd get comfortable with the set-up in the hour preceding the performances — or that we could do justice to every band member in the overall mix. I should have known that I had nothing to worry about, though, with KEXP studio engineer Julian Martlew behind the control board; he captured every instrument clearly in the mix. The band was also in fine form, and we ended up with five excellent performances, including four newer songs that will appear on an album due out next year. As fans of The Maldives know, it's easy to be drawn in by the band's communal vibe, and it was difficult to resist singing and clapping along during its spirited performance. If you love Neil Young, The Band and The Flying Burrito Brothers, I highly recommend giving a listen to the soulful country-rock sounds of The Maldives. Please feel free to sing and clap along.
Link to ArticleTwang is the Thang
September 2nd, 2008
By Jonathan Zwickel
The Maldives are the best unsigned band in Seattle. They play the kind of country music that would exist today if Garth Brooks never happened. Years ago it would've been called alt-country or country rock or some other amalgamation, but today we can call it country and love it for that. Bandleader Jason Dodson has a voice and delivery you believe in; he sings songs of dead relatives and growing up and moving away. They played in full form yesterday, nine pieces strong, including full-time fiddle and lap steel, percussion, banjo/accordion, acoustic and electric guitar, keys, bass, and drums, with plenty of backup vocal harmonizing. Even with all that sound there was room in the music. It breathed. It sounded like old records from a thrift store basement in Bakersfield. They're currently at work at the album that will break them to the rest of the world this winter. Don't sleep.
Link to ArticleAppearances count for a lot at Doe Bay Music Festival
6/14/2008
By Jonathan Zwickel
The setting was the principal allure of last Saturday's inaugural Doe Bay Music Festival. Orcas in the summertime is Eden, a fantasy island blanketed in wildflowers and blackberries, patrolled by eagles and killer whales, warmed by the sun and a soft sea breeze. As in the Caribbean, Orcas operates on "island time," that languid, laissez-faire state in which things happen when they happen (if they happen at all). Google Maps says 120 miles one-way from Seattle; it feels like a million.
The best way to get to the festival was by strapping on a backpack and sticking out your thumb. This was true for three reasons: 1) An hours-long wait for cars at the ferry terminal in Anacortes, plus accompanying fees, made walking onto the ferry much more attractive than driving. 2) Orcas Island is one of the last places in America where hitchhiking is not only allowed but encouraged. And 3) You might get picked up by an Orcas local like James, a tree trimmer with an eye patch who drove a shiny black Jeep Grand Cherokee and was listening to Three Days Grace.
"This place is a gold mine," he said, undoubtedly true for a guy in his line of work. There are a lot of trees on Orcas.
The Doe Bay Resort & Retreat sits on a particularly gorgeous vista, on a bluff overlooking its namesake bay and out toward the azure expanse of Rosario Strait. Tent camping was available for festivalgoers, as well as accommodations in cabins and yurts spread across the property. An on-site café offered organic meals and bottled beers to go. The only required equipment was a sleeping bag and maybe a tent — another reason for traveling light.
Tucked back on a meadow a short, tree-lined stroll from the resort's clothing-optional hot tubs was a wooden bandstand. Here eight bands from Seattle, Portland and San Francisco played from noon till past 10 p.m. Organizers Chad Clibborn (who plays drums for Seattle indie-rockers Friday Mile) and Joe Brotherton (who owns the resort) intentionally limited ticket sales to a couple hundred. This was an intimate event, essentially a field test to gauge interest and see how the grounds held up. The festival was not without snags, but overall it was a terrific success, especially for its first year.
Not surprisingly, a sun-dazed, hippie-ish vibe mellowed the proceedings; Frisbees flew, beer flowed (from kegs inside the sanctioned beer garden and from brown-bagged cans and bottles on the lawn), toddlers toddled and picnickers enjoyed their fare on blankets set out in front of the stage. The sound quality was purely professional, though the bands played to a half-filled field.
Early in the day, Friday Mile, 17th Chapter and Tim Seely all turned in passionate sets. But the music ultimately took a back seat to overall ambience. The hands-down musical highlight was the pre-headliner band, The Maldives, whose bruising country rock increases in potency with every performance.
As darkness fell, headliners Left Hand Smoke fomented a raging dance party in front of the stage, reaching back to freshman year, 1997, with their die-cut jam-band nostalgia.
Clibborn and Brotherton are planning a sequel for around the same time next summer. Impossible to improve upon the setting, but a few changes might have drastically positive effects: Book some Orcas/Bellingham bands to attract more locals and diversify the lineup. Decrease the ticket price ($40 at the door, which was dropped on the fly to $10 after 5 p.m.). Organize after-hours entertainment.
Sunday morning, under an endlessly blue sky, members of The Maldives gathered at the grassy edge of the bluff to play a relaxed, impromptu acoustic set. It was a gorgeous moment, the kind of magic that happens only when you remove yourself from the familiar and land somewhere extraordinary.
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Ships Passing
7/23/2008
Luke Baumgarten
There's nothing even remotely Maldivian about Seattle's country rock nine-piece, the Maldives. The name's a nod to a chain of a thousand or so islands off India's southwest coast. The band, though, is all Northwesterners, centering on songwriter Jason Dodson. They play country rock, riveting, but straightforward. There's nothing islandish about them — not even a squint of Jimmy Buffet's twangier moments. Nothing sub-continental either. No sitar. No ragas.
While it says nothing about who they are musically, the name does say quite a bit about where they — and more specifically Dodson — came from. It's cutesy and evocative with an appended "the," pretty much the standard naming schema for every indie rock band for the last two decades. Indie, turns out, is exactly where the Maldives started in 2002.
Dodson told Seattle Weekly in late 2006, "We started out doing this kinda Wilco or Flaming Lips–style indie pop, but to be honest, I'm just not good at writing those kinda songs." In an e-mail to us, he elaborated, "My voice, both vocal and in writing, just comes out naturally in a country vein." That realization led to soul-searching. Dodson at one point took the name and went solo, spending a year on the road before reforming the band. It made all the difference, he says. "If you have clear sense of sound and vision, you attract the most brilliant, and compatible people to work with."
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The Maldives: How country rock looks and sounds in Seattle right now
By Jonathan Zwickel
Sully's Snow Goose is a tiny Bavarian lodge-style tavern at 60th and Phinney in Phinney Ridge. Within the 100-year-old A-frame, the bar's taxidermied namesake hangs above a pair of wooden skis on the far wall; a stone hearth occupies the opposite end of the room. A gas fire pulses silently. Outside it's 50-some degrees and the wind is so violent it topples an umbrellaed picnic table in the beer garden. In a few hours it will be snowing at Snoqualmie Pass.
Jason Dodson and Jesse Bonn — bandleader and rhythm guitarist of country-rock collective the Maldives, respectively — sit at an antique wooden table near the fireplace, soaking up warmth.
"This is why they call it Juneuary," Bonn says.
Cozy and communal, it's an appropriate spot on a dreary, dull silver evening, literally around the corner from the house Dodson shares with Bonn and his wife. We're three Guinnesses into a several-Guinness conversation when I ask the money question.
"Is Seattle a country town?" Dodson repeats. "That's like saying is whiskey a country drink. I would say that whiskey is a great beverage. Drinking is country. If you drink tequila it's country, if you drink whiskey it's country. Seattle is a music town, so absolutely it's a country town."
From their appearance, you wouldn't peg these 30-something dudes as members of the most country country-rock band in Seattle. Dodson sports a lumberjack's black beard, a wallet chain and tattooed forearms. Bonn has the blue eyes and slick, shoulder-length blond hair of a SoCal surfer, plus more tattoos.
The fact is, this is how country looks in this town right now, and the Maldives — who play Nectar on Saturday (9 p.m.), as part of the Noise for the Needy multi-nightclub fundraiser — is how it sounds.
Unlike much of the crop of alt-country, country-rock and Americana acts currently flourishing in Seattle, Dodson grew up with the music in his blood. ("Country has always been, as far as I can remember, going way back to my mom, what I listened to," he says. "Yes, I was in a punk band, but I wasn't good at it.") When he talks about his influences, classic country forefathers like Bob Wills and Charlie Rich come up as often as no-brainers like Neil Young and the Band.
Dodson was born in Virginia but moved around a lot thanks to his dad, a chain-saw salesman who took the family wherever the work was: the Carolinas, Oregon, Sacramento, Alaska and, finally, Vancouver, Wash. From there he followed a girlfriend to the University of Washington and eventually got a job at Scarecrow Video. That's where he befriended Bonn and later Seth Warren, the Maldives' fiddler. The band came together in the early 2000s, quickly plowing through members ("The running number is 32," Bonn says) while accumulating a regular lap steel player, drummer, bassist, percussionist and lead guitarist.
The final piece of the puzzle was prodigiously bearded hobo-about-town Kevin Barrans, who plays banjo, accordion and mandolin. He joined up last year after his band played a double bill with the Maldives. Between the nine members, eight full-time bands are represented.
After a lot of hard gigging and harder drinking, the past year has found the Maldives living up to their potential. Unsigned, with only a 2-year-old, self-released CD behind them, they regularly sell out the Tractor Tavern. Their performances are part rock 'n' roll grit, part gently swooning folk, all country. Lap steel, banjo and fiddle take lead over electric and acoustic guitars; despite so many members onstage, the sound is finely woven, never crowded or rushed. Dodson's voice is at once longing and satisfied, the voice of a man who's figured out a few modest goals in life and is on his way to achieving them. While his songs often seem deeply personal, he says they're mostly inspired by dreams and alcohol.
"There's a difference between what's real and what's literal," he says. "People confuse those two terms. I write in the real."
It all adds up to the sort of band that could unify the nations: There's something here for cranky country traditionalists, mainstream country soccer moms and alt-country scenesters. Bereft of irony or fashion, the Maldives offer nothing but the heart on nine passionate sleeves. For Dodson, it's a matter of finally finding the right people and the right setting to create.
"It's really important to have a sense of place and family, to be close to something," he says. "My family moved around so much that any sense of home was — to quote Tom Waits, any place I lay my head is home. But what we had was a family within ourselves. What we had was each other. That carries over to where I'm at now. Your family is your friends."
Link to Article
No Depression Magazine
February 16, 2008by Peter Blackstock
A friend ventured to suggest, as the Maldives began their set to a surprisingly packed house at the Tractor Tavern (and this even on a night when the Drive-By Truckers were playing across town), that the young Seattle ensemble may be the heir-apparent to the rambling backwoods aura of The Band. That's a tough call, seeing as how just a couple days earlier, this same venue had hosted the Gourds, who seem even more obviously in line to carry that particular torch. Regardless, the Maldives proved themselves to be arguably the most promising roots act to emerge from the Northwest since the mid-'90s heyday of the Picketts, headlining a night of young and hungry up-and-comers from throughout the broader northwestern landscape.