Sure, there’s plenty of musical diversity at SXSW. There’s also variety in the venues, not to mention the time of day. This video playlist is a sampler of the performances that happen in hotel ballrooms (Nathaniel Rateliff, SMYL, The Lost Brothers), chapels real (Quiet Slang at St. David’s) and not (Margo Price at Luck Ranch […]
SXSW 2018 – The Sounds, Part 2
RUBY BOOTS I’d previously only seen Nashville by way of Australia songwriter Ruby Boots play acoustically. SXSW offered the perfect time to remedy that as she had band in tow. It represented a better reflection of the recently released Don’t Talk About It, which rumbles with electrified melodies and a healthy back-beat. Boots and company […]
SXSW 2018 – The Sounds, Part 1
LEE BAINS III & THE GLORY FIRES If you haven’t seen Bains and company live then you’ve been missing something special. Well, perhaps special isn’t the right word; maybe cathartic? The quartet unleash a fury of rock and roll complete with blaring guitars, roaring vocals and enough energy to power a small town. Bains bounded […]
SXSW 2018 – The Scene
For me, the true harbinger of spring is the arrival of the SXSW Music and Media Conference in Austin, Texas. Or rather, spring begins for me when I arrive in Austin for SXSW. With upwards of 2,000 bands and more than 20,000 attendees from around the world, SXSW is the world’s premiere music conference. Even […]
Monday Morning Video – Play Ball with Josh Kantor
It’s that time of year – Opening Day is this Thursday. What better way to celebrate than a video from Josh Kantor, Fenway Park organist and indie music enthusiast. Here’s his take on the Replacement’s “Here Comes a Regular.”
Monday Morning Video – Deer Tick Go to the Bar
Feel like starting the week with some rock and perhaps a sing-along? Deer Tick have got you covered with the raucous “Let’s All Go the Bar.”
Paul Thorn – Don’t Let the Devil Ride
As many before me have observed, there’s a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning.  Particularly  when applied to many congregations in the American South, that observation pertains as much to the music as it does the time of day.  Many hymns originated in the late 19th century as verses created or borrowed from Christian […]
Mayer’s Playlist for Winter 2018, Part 2
Simple Scenes, Marie/Lepanto (from the Big Legal Mess Records release Tenkiller) It perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise that Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster (Water Liars) and Will Johnson (Centro-Matic et al) named their new project after a rural road sign that marks an intersection near two Arkansas towns (Marie and Lepanto). Tenkiller exudes a sense of […]
Monday Morning Video – Daniel Johnston & Friends
This week we’ll honor Daniel Johnston and his starkly beautiful “True Love Will Find You in the End.” Johnston has long been revered among musicians, as the many covers of this song attest. Here is just a sampling with performances from Wilco, Elizabeth and the Catapult, Spiritualized and Basia Bulat. We close out the collection […]
Vivian Leva – Time Is Everything
Terroir. Â It’s a word used in wine tasting to denote a wine that really tastes of its place. Â On her debut album, Time Is Everything, Virginia-native Vivian Leva delivers the musical equivalent of terroir. Â She doesn’t just sing in the style of Appalachia, it oozes from the pores of the songs. The record starts with […]