Sometimes the best laid plans are foiled. Sometimes, like it or not, life forces you to regroup and come up with a plan B. 

Sometimes you even need to come up with a plan C, D, E and F. This is the way the world works.  

 

Luckily, for me, this week I only had to come up with a plan B. While I’m no stranger to having my best intentions dashed or the proverbial rug pulled out from underneath me, rarely does a fallback plan come together as smoothly as it has for me this week.

 

Saturday, Sept 13, sBach — an interesting and multi dimensional project of Hella guitarist Spencer Seim (who also plays drums for the Advantage) — will hit Hell’s Kitchen in Tacoma. As far as eclectic and intriguing shows go, this performance should be one of the week’s best. A blazing combination of searing guitar work and video game style beeps and hisses, sBach is a band with few contemporaries. Their sound is as unique as it gets, and their fluorescent aura is hard to deny. The band released sBach — a self-titled stoner opus — on Suicide Squeeze Aug 19. By all indications the record is everything you’d expect from Seim — a visionary effort from a visionary musician.

 

Initially, my plan was to feature sBach in this column space. It seemed like a natural fit, especially after familiarizing myself with the sBach’s Suicide Squeeze bio, which sums up the band like this:

 

sBach is akin to “the collective sights, sounds and sugar rushes in the heads of an entire elementary school being locked into a Chuck E. Cheese franchise while having to subside on an all you can eat buffet of Fun Dip and Pixie Stix as the animatronic band dishes out phosphorescent doom riffs while running amok with the blips and bleeps. Seim is the master of playing his instruments in just the right way enabling a whole frequency of sounds,” says www.suicidesqueeze.net.  “Taking cues from the choppy spazz-math of Hella and the 8 bit Nintendo cacophony of The Advantage, Seim utilizes the trademarks steez and proclivities of his two musical ventures to create a new one which morphs into a kitschy, stoner rock fueled archfiend chock full of bastardized jazz rhythms and chicken scratch electronica. With the grating jingles and chimes of an explosion at a pinball machine factory and the caffeinated scour of just about any song that features Seim’s vivid musical talent, sBach will fray the senses and leave you begging for more.”

 

Kitschy. Rock fueled. And bastardized. sBach seemed to have everything I look for when deciding what show to cover here in the Weekly Volcano.

 

The only problem came when I tried to contact the band. Maybe it was the curse Bobble Tiki put on me last week when I recommended he interview 31 Knots — only to have that band drop the ball on him — or maybe it wasn’t, but either way something went dreadfully wrong. Contacting sBach for an interview proved fruitless. 

 

It was time for plan B.

 

Plan B this week comes in the form of the Toughtimes, a band of relatively young Tacoma musicians bent on bringing fuzzed-out old school blues to life. They’ll do just that Friday, Sept 12 at Bob’s Java Jive.

 

Created in 2000 by cousins Nick Santos-Carter and Anthony D. Estrada, who had visions of soul, blues and funk running through their heads, over time the Toughtimes have developed into a fresh-faced group of blues diehards breathing life into a genre many believe has already seen its best days.

 

“I loved B.B. King as far back as I can remember. When I was 15 years old, I had a cheesy Yamaha sampling keyboard and a drum machine that I used to make hip-hop beats with. I was digging through my dad’s records one day looking for samples and I happened upon a John Lee Hooker record — it was his early Detroit sessions, real raw, stripped down, and it cut to the bone. I gradually put down the sampler and picked up the guitar,” says Estrada.

“Initially we were going to play more soul ballads like the type you would hear coming out of a slammed ‘64 Impala cruising the boulevard, but that changed a little. We went to a harder driving sound geared more towards a younger crowd, and it’s gotten us over so far. I really want to reach a younger crowd with the music we play.”

 

Reaching a younger crowd with the blues isn’t always easy — unless, of course, you call it rock and roll. Over time the Toughtimes seem to have found a winning combination of both.

“Young folks and grown folks alike dig the hell out of what we’re doing,” says Estrada. “It seems like people are shocked at first by the sound that our raggedy three-piece band is putting out, but after the initial shock, it seems like butts start moving and feet get to tappin’.”

Butts moving and feet tappin’ — what more could a young blues man ask for? Whether it’s your plan A, B, or C this week, the Toughtimes show Friday at Bob’s Java Jive should be a present tense history lesson well worth digesting.

 

And the sBach show Saturday at Hell’s Kitchen should be worth its weight in Pixie Stix powder.

 

See one show, or see both. Either way you’ll emerge a winner. 

 

It’s good to have options. I know from experience.

[Bob’s Java Jive, The Toughtimes, Canon Canyon, Rodeo Kill, The Lucky Devils, Sammy Swell, Friday, Sept. 12, 8 p.m., $5, 2102 S. Tacoma Way, Tacoma, 253.475.9843] 

 [Hell’s Kitchen, These Arms Are Snakes, sBach, Helms Alee, Skull Kid, Saturday, Sept. 13, 5 p.m., all ages, $10, 3829 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, 253.759.6003]