In what’s beginning to resemble a miniature SXSW, with over 50,000 attendees, the Americana music industry and fans gathered in Nashville recently for AmericanaFest. Although the vast majority of the event was about live music, with some business-related panels during the day, the apex of the nearly week-long musical bacchanal is still the awards show […]
Natalie Padilla – Fireweed
I’m convinced the hardest thing to do as a producer is to extract the maximum essence of a musician in a recording session and not allow production sparkle to gloss over the natural talent. Ben Winship produced (he just released a recording of his own, Toolshed, that I recommend) the new album from Natalie Padilla, […]
Video Premiere – King Commoner
L.A.-based musician King Commoner is also a filmmaker. I’ll explain why that matters in a minute. He recently dropped a new EP entitled Peril & Woe. The first song, Winter, is a rootsy rock piece with a serious snap-your-fingers-to-it beat. Run My Son drives a little harder and injects a more Southern rock flavor. The […]
Video Premiere – Leroy From the North
A few weeks back I got a chance to hear and review the new EP from LA-based Leroy From the North. Health & Fitness delivers a big dollop of southern rock vibe, with influences from Muscle Shoals to Macon. While the guitar hammers the classic power chords, the lyrics come from current cultural phenomenon. They […]
Video Premiere: Eleni Mandell
Earlier this summer, L.A. folk music fixture Eleni Mandell came out with her 11th album, Wake Up Again. Between some of her songwriting students and collaborations with musicians like Tom Waits, Chuck E. Weiss, and Tony Gilkyson, she’s developed a real knack for telling stories in her songs. Frequently they’re about people and places that […]
Marc Cohn & Blind Boys Of Alabama – Work To Do
Several years later I still remember seeing them do it. The Blind Boys Of Alabama, that night accompanied by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, doing Amazing Grace, set to the tune of House Of the Rising Sun. It was the first 20 years of gospel influence in rock boiled down to its essence in a […]
Quick Hits – Brad Sanzenbacher, Leroy From The North
Like a lazy river winding through the woods on a hot summer day, the new EP, Dying Old Flower, from Santa Cruz Mountains-based Brad Sanzenbacher is as much a feeling as a sight or sound. You can practically smell the riverside rhododendrons on Cacapon, perhaps named after a park in West Virginia with just that […]
Guy Forsyth & Jeska Bailey – Conspirators
The sound crawls out of the Mississippi Delta before taking wing over the vast Texas landscape. After soaring above you it lands back in the cotton field, where sanctity and sin go hand in hand. That’s about the best way I can describe the new album from Guy Forsyth and Jeska Bailey, their first recording […]
Lasers Lasers Birmingham – Warning
The dog days of summer have hit most of the U.S. now, with the heat and humidity encouraging a laconic approach to just about everything. Lasers Lasers Birmingham, the musical progeny of L.A.-based Alex Owen, has dropped the perfect soundtrack to it, Warning, with wry observations on everything from ambition to intuition, all to the […]
Derek Senn – How Could A Man
Central California musician Derek Senn’s latest album, How Could A Man, creates a kind of musical black hole. As you approach it, the shining light (or in this case, the lyrics) tells you of its existence, and tempts you to come closer. As you circle about it though, you realize there’s no escape. Time becomes […]