Austin musician Jeff Bryant is one of those guys you’ve probably seen a lot, playing keyboard for a number of high profile bands in town, but not necessarily heard. Â All his talented friends finally convinced him to do a record on his own and he released Sleeping With the Lights On earlier this year. Â It’s […]
Monday Morning Video – The Posies Are Throwing a Party
The Posies are throwing themselves a year-long birthday party and we’re all invited. The group, anchored by Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow, released their first album 30 years ago. They’ve been through a lot in the subsequent years – the ups and downs of being on a major label, rhythm section personnel changes and more […]
SXSW 2018 – The Sounds, Part 3
TERRA LIGHTFOOT If there was one artist on my “do not miss” list this year it was Terra Lightfoot. I first saw her at SXSW a few years back and she just keeps getting better and better. The combination of her voice, songs and guitar playing makes for a potent rock and roll cocktail. JAIMEE […]
Monday Morning Video – A SXSW Sampler
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]