HAWK JAM: Any 12-year-old with a skateboard or a Playstation knows Tony Hawk; these days, though, it seems everyone else knows who he is too. The Michael Jordan of the extreme-sports world, he’s a superstar-turned-impresario with a burgeoning video-game and DVD and gear-endorsement empire — and now he’s found a way to take over arenas. Whereas previous marriages of punk rock and street sport have relied on the music to pay the bills, Tony Hawk’s Boom Boom Huckjam Tour is attempting to market skateboarding, BMX biking, and motocross as a spectacle on a scale somewhere between Cirque du Soleil and a monster-truck rally. Hawk has rounded up more than a dozen of the world’s greatest "action sports" stars — including Mat Hoffman, Dave Mirra, and Carey Hart — to perform choreographed stunt routines on a million-dollar ramp system with an extensive light and pyro show. When the tour hits the FleetCenter on November 8, Social Distortion will be providing the live soundtrack. Tickets go on sale Saturday at 11 a.m.; call (617) 931-2000.
PICK TO CLICK: Some of our favorite photo exhibits of the past few years have taken place at Boston University’s Photographic Resource Center, and the PRC’s annual fundraising auction offers you a chance to take some of its work home with you. Up for grabs will be 170 photos by 150 photographers, including Deborah Bright, John Cohen, Thomas Eakins, Jerry Uelsmann, Barbara Norfleet, and Olivia Parker. And — a coup in itself — the auction will be conducted by Antiques Roadshow regular Stuart Whitehurst. That’s on November 7 at 7 p.m., with a reception beginning at 6; tickets are $25. The PRC is at 602 Comm Ave, and the works will be on view through November 7. Call (617) 353-1662, or visit www.bu.edu/prc.
NEXT WEEKEND:
Sacred steel
"Transcendence, that’s the whole object of the game for me," says steel-guitarist Chuck Campbell, speaking into a cell phone as he hurtles down the highway to Nashville. "That’s what we aim for in church and with secular audiences — that point where the energy of everybody coming together gives us the inspiration to do things we’ve never tried before that just uplift everybody."
Chuck and his siblings Darick and Phillip, who together lead the Campbell Brothers band, are, as you might gather, not rock, funk, blues or C&W kind of guys. They play a style of inspirational music that’s come to be called "sacred steel." Characterized by the floating, spectral tones of steel guitars, the sound evolved in Florida’s African-American Pentecostal churches shortly after amplifiers and lap steels were invented. It slowly migrated up the East Coast along with its participants; since the late ’90s it’s become increasingly less esoteric thanks to the efforts of the folk label Arhoolie, which has popularized the music through live collections and titles by leading virtuosos like the Campbells and Aubrey Ghent.
The music has even penetrated the rock underground in the past 14 months thanks to albums by the Word and Robert Randolph. Randolph is a young pedal-steel virtuoso from New Jersey; the Word are a jam-band supergroup built around him whose members include the North Mississippi All Stars and John Medeski of Medeski Martin and Wood. Both discs were released by Medeski’s Rope-a-Dope label, which seems intent on spreading the sacred-steel gospel. This past Tuesday, Rope-a-Dope issued None But the Righteous: The Masters of Sacred Steel, with 17 cuts by the Campbells, Ghent, and others culled from Arhoolie’s releases. (The Campbell Brothers and Medeski will almost cross paths in the city next week: Medeski Martin & Wood play the Orpheum next Friday, September 27, and the Campbells headline Johnny D’s the following day.)
"We had never played in bars until 1998," says Chuck, who’s on his way to a sacred-steel convention in Music City USA with his pedal steel in the car’s trunk. That’s the year the Campbells’ debut, Pass Me Not, which supplies three tunes to Medeski’s compilation, was issued. "I thought it would be awkward, but it hasn’t been at all. A bar is a place where people congregate, which is the same thing as a church. The main idea is people coming together to experience something."
Although the Campbells’ 2001 follow-up was called Sacred Steel on Tour!, they play only about 30 times a year, and mostly around their home in Rochester, New York. "We still have our day jobs," says Chuck, who works for a gas and electric utility, "so being on the road has been an education, because my musical heroes are mostly the players who are on None But the Righteous. As we travel, people tell us about Elmore James, Son House, Robert Johnson — blues guys who do stuff we really appreciate. It’s been an eye opener." Save for a few Miles Davis numbers, the Campbells play the same repertoire — tunes with names like "Jump for Joy" and "There Is No Failure in God" — wherever they appear, making their guitars shout like country preachers or soar like Mahalia Jackson.
Chuck, the elder Campbell at 44, says he savors every chance to play. "I was so excited the first time I heard this instrument, I started playing at 11. The expressiveness of being able to mimic the human voice is still such a thrill. When I hear a good steel player, to this day it sets me off."
The Campbell Brothers make a rare area appearance next Saturday, September 28, at Johnny D’s, 17 Holland Street in Somerville’s Davis Square. Call (617) 776-2004.
BY TED DROZDOWSKI
