Twangville presents a local alt-country show on Thursday, March 8 at The Blue Cafe in Long Beach, CA with three great bands: The Vaquetones, Merle Jagger and Michael Ubaldini. This is one in a series of Twangville shows that happen every second Thursday at the Blue Cafe.
Careless Hearts, On the Radar
Check out San Franscisco Bay Area twangers, Careless Hearts. The foursome lead by the songwriting and vocals of Paul Kimball consists of guitars (Paul Kimball and Derek See), bass (Rob Miller) and drums (Craig Heitkam). Their self-titled debut is full of sad songs influenced by traditional country songbooks juxtaposed with rockin’ twang channeling the likes […]
Bottle Rockets in So. Fla.
Good concerts come to my South Florida town about as often as cold fronts. The dearth of viable venues south of the Carolinas and the unusual length of the peninsula discourage artists from making the long trip. Sure, the major acts fly in from time to time. You can still watch the Billy Joel hit […]
Twangville Live in the OC
Twangville Presents a live and local show Sat. Feb. 17 featuring Mike Stinson, Gina Villalobos and Haymaker at the Blue Cafe in Huntington Beach, CA. Three great LA-area artists bring Twangville live to this local club. Twangville Live presents Americana/Alt-Country once a month at the Blue Cafe.
The Offramps, On the Radar
If you are ever looking for relatively unknown bands of high caliber, Miles of Music has a qualification where they stamp albums with an “It’s a Cracker” label. This is a guarantee that if you don’t like the music you can send it back no questions asked. I’ve found that in the space of indie […]
Tom’s Pick of the Week, Drive-by Truckers
DBT!… DBT!… DBT!… my favorite rock band since GBV hung the towel over a year ago. The Drive-by Truckers return with their latest release A Blessing and A Curse. While I’m not as emotionally attached to this one as I was 2004’s The Dirty South, I undoubtedly believe this will add yet one more notch […]
SXSW 2006: The Bands (Part 2)
Coulda, shoulda, woulda… With over 1,200 bands appearing during the course of the festival it was inevitable that I would miss a few gems. Here are a few artists that may have slipped by me at SXSW but they didn’t escape me completely. Susan Cagle – I missed her in Austin but I made up […]
Best of Winter 2006, a Playlist
The bar has been set high! I’m astounded by the number of great albums that have already surfaced this year. Will Hoge shunned traditional record promotions by leaning heavily on juggernauts MySpace and Purevolume all the way to offering up a free download from the album once every week. Josh Rouse travelled to Spain offering […]
Let the Music Play: The 2006 SXSW Recap
Another SXSW has come and gone. This year’s event brought over 1,000 bands to Austin for five days of music, cheap beer and great barbeque. Sounds pretty good to me. Although this year’s event was light on new discoveries, it was filled with old favorites. And now for the highlights: The New Orleans Social Club: […]
Tom’s Pick of the Week, Bruce Robison
There are several interesting releases this week. I’m intrigued by releases from just about all these artists. Though, the only one that I’ve been able to preview that I feel comfortable recommending is Texas-based, Americana singer-songwriter, Bruce Robison’s Eleven Stories. Check out track #2 “Virginia”: [audio:http://www.sustainrecords.com/audio/Bruce%20Robison%20-%20Virginia.mp3] Notable releases for week of April 4, 2006 from: […]