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 […]
Mayer’s Playlist for Winter 2018, Part 1
Time Will Be the Healer, Glen Hansard (from the Anti- Records release Between Two Shores) Songwriting is arguably a numbers game. For many artists, the quantity of songs released is a fraction of those that are written. It’s a shame, really, as some quality songs can get left on the shelf gathering dust. For his […]
Looking Back at the 2018 UK Americana Music Awards
Hackney Empire is one of those gorgeous spaces that hides in a city. Its exterior – completely deceiving, just another big, boxy building on a street of big, boxy buildings, but its interior – completely transporting. It’s one of those spectacular theaters that just seems to go up and up and up – shallow but […]
Monday Morning Video – Folk Alliance 2018 Video Companion
We’ll wrap up our Folk Alliance International coverage with a collection of videos from this year’s conference. Most of these performances are from the official performances that took place in hotel ballrooms but you’ll see a few from the late night hotel room showcases. This video playlist includes Colter Wall, John Gorka, Jaimee Harris, John […]