You read that right, the Foo Fighters are looking for a few lucky, hard-core fans to throw them garage shows next month and one will be in Seattle on April 27th. Are you the biggest Foo Fighters fan with a mega garage? We think it’s going to be a pretty tough competition everywhere, but every kid, his mom, and grandma are Foo Fighters fans up in here. How will you stack up?
Steve Martin, one of the most diversified performers in the motion picture industry today—actor, comedian, author, playwright, producer, musician – has been successful as a writer of and performer in some of the most popular movies of recent film history.
Martin has released his second full length bluegrass album Rare Bird Alert on Rounder Records. He will be joined by the Steep Canyon Rangers, who toured extensively with Martin over the last year. Rare Bird Alert features 13 new Martin-penned tracks, including a live version of “King Tut,” and was produced by Tony Trishka. Paul McCartney and The Dixie Chicks make special guest vocal appearances on the album. Martin co-wrote two of the CD’s songs with the Steep Canyon Rangers.
Foo Fighters will be releasing a covers album entitled “Medium Rare” in honour of Record Store Day.Record Store Day (April 16th) is a day where independently-owned record stores join with artists to celebrate music, and release special edition vinyl and CDs.
The Foo Fighters album will feature covers from Paul McCartney and Wings, Cream, Joe Walsh, Mose Allison, Thin Lizzy, Prince, Gary Numan, Gerry Rafferty, Ramones, Pink Floyd, Husker Du, Angry Samoans and The Zombies.
Full tracklist is below:
At this late stage, you might expect singer David Johansen and guitarist Syl Sylvain, the only remaining members from the original New York Dolls lineup, to start drifting into nostalgic ballads and cautionary tunes heavy on mortality and contrition.
Think again. Returning after a 2004 reunion and a pair of solid albums, the Dolls have yet to lose their sense of fun or mischief.
“I’m so fabulous, I don’t want to look at you,” Johansen snaps in I’m So Fabulous. And he is.
The ’70s band that paved the way for The Ramones, Kiss, the Sex Pistols and Talking Heads isn’t breaking new ground, and with its legacy intact and untainted, it doesn’t need to. The Dolls unapologetically celebrated the New York decay and debauchery that thrived before Mayor Giuliani’s Lysol sweep. They still strut with an anti-establishment smirk and a joyful devotion to their hometown’s seamier pleasures.
Pop stardom has, for many years, attuned listeners to the arrival of shining new faces filled with vital new ideas, to which attention must be paid. Instantly. Briefly, for the most part. It says here that there is another path, at least if what one cares about is music, and not celebrity. The steady lines in Buddy Miller’s face, the passions which abide within his voice, and the effortless inflection of his guitar…all matched against words given shape by and with his wife, Julie, her writing and singing voice twining against his…they speak, as well, to the arrival of genius. Just not clothed in the baggage of youth.
It works like this: Malcolm Gladwell (the brilliant and best-selling synthesist of the varied research which seeks to explain how our brains work) recently summarized the research of a University of Chicago economist named David Galenson, who has been studying the age at which genius presents itself to the world. Two paradigms emerge. The precocious Pablo Picasso arrived as daunting and fertile talent in his early 20s, while the meticulous Paul Cézanne did not have an exhibition of his paintings until he was 57. Gladwell has also been advancing the thesis that it takes 10,000 hours to acquire mastery of any given skill.
This explains the slow, steady career arc of Buddy and Julie Miller. Buddy will be 56 when Written in Chalk hits stores, though his work has been on regular exhibit since his wife, Julie (who is somewhat younger), began recording in 1990, and more so since he finally started making his own records in 1995. If his genius has not yet been widely recognized, no matter; the other musicians, they know. (There was a reason the final print edition of No Depression magazine proclaimed him to be artist of the decade, and it was not simply the mercurial humor of the magazine’s two editors. It was the music.)
He has been a singer, and the successful writer and co-writer of songs other people sang, many of them country stars, including the Dixie Chicks, Lee Ann Womack, and Brooks & Dunn. He has been a multi-instrumentalist and harmony singer for a succession of acclaimed performers, beginning with Julie, and then in prompt succession Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams. And, most recently, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. And he has produced records – in the studio he built in their home — released separately under his name and Julie’s, and bearing their names together (as with Written in Chalk). That same living space has produced acclaimed albums by Solomon Burke, Allison Moorer, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore.
For some years it was Julie who stood center stage, first back in Austin, Texas, where they met (she didn’t want the band to hire him), then in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and, finally, Nashville, where they settled in 1993, a short drive from Music Row. Along the way the Millers became close friends and supporters of Shawn Colvin, Jim Lauderdale, Peter Case and Victoria Williams, played in bands with guitarists Larry Campbell and Gurf Morlix, and drummer Don Heffington. Worked on their art, slowly, surely. Perhaps uncertainly, but working, always. Beginning in 1990 Julie released four albums within the Christian market, and then two on the now shuttered roots label HighTone. Her last one, Broken Things, came out in 1999. Buddy has so far made five proper long players under his own name, though Julie’s singing and writing voice is ever-present throughout. And then, at last, in 2001, they finally, formally released an album under both names. Eight years later, one of the most respected creative teams in Nashville — and beyond — has returned with a new suite of songs.
All things being equal, it’s a remarkable accomplishment. Both the album, and its making. Julie has had a tough time of it. Some years back she was diagnosed with fibromylgia (which is characterized by muscular pain, fatigue, and sleep deprivation), and so has had to cope with the ravages of a chronic illness. Five years ago her brother, Jeff Griffin, was struck by lightning while mowing their parents’ yard. She is a woman who feels deeply, and there is a careful emotional raggedness to many of the songs she unveils here. (And an unexpected helping of humor and joy, and abiding faith, too.) And Buddy…he’s just been busy. In the two weeks he had set aside to finish this album last spring — originally simply to have been another Buddy Miller album — he was also trying to learn several dozens of songs he would be playing on tour with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. And to remember how to play the steel guitar he’d agreed to bring along for that gig. In between lining up production gigs, and the like.
It didn’t get done. Or, rather, Written in Chalk didn’t get finished during that particular two-week slot, though he tried. But instead of simply meeting a deadline and turning in what he had finished, Buddy set the album aside and went back onto the road. This left time and room for a duet with Robert Plant (which they played publicly for the first time as part of the Americana Music Association’s 2008 Honors & Awards last September), and the additional gestation time seems to have emboldened Julie to become a full partner in the process. (Indeed, Buddy has only one co-write, and the balance of the album, save his well-chosen covers, comes from Julie’s pen.)
Buddy was born near Dayton, Ohio, to an Air Force family, and mostly raised in Princeton, New Jersey. Julie Griffin was born and raised in Waxahachie, Texas. They met, in 1975, in Austin, when he auditioned for a band she was in. She didn’t take to him right off, but they’ve been married a long time. Only a couple of such confidence and competence could chance the emotional honesty of Written in Chalk. Only musicians of such renown could round up collaborators like Larry Campbell (who has played with Dylan, Levon Helm, and one or two others), keyboard player John Deaderick (Dixie Chicks, Mindy Smith), drummer Brady Blades (Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle), and singers like Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris, and that guy who used to be in Led Zeppelin. But, in the end, only Buddy and Julie Miller could make a record this good.
The Majestic Silver Strings is Buddy’s reimagination of classic country songs with unrestrained guitars, atmosphere and attitude. Buddy and the three acclaimed guitarists Bill Frisell, Marc Ribot and Greg Leisz (together they are The Majestic Silver Strings) together push each song into a new cosmos warped in reverb. Guest vocalists include Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin, Lee Ann Womack, Chocolate Genius and Julie Miller.
Like Brian Wilson’s “Smile”, Dave Getz’s project was 40 years in the making. As with “Smile” , “Can’t Be The Only One” is well worth the wait. The richness and textures the music of world renowned drummer and percussionist Dave Getz presents us here is displayed in a mix of R&B , Blues , Jazz and Rock and Roll that rejects standard formulations we so often hear today and truly does ‘break away’. The choice of Kathi McDonald as vocalist on “Can’t Be The Only One” is inspired and will warm the hearts of all upon hearing this song Janis Joplin wrote but sadly , never had the chance to record. Ms. McDonald on “House On Fire” shows why she is considered one of the great Blues singers performing today. Sam Andrews and Peter Albin , Getz’s bandmates in ‘Big Brother and the Holding Company’ both contribute on the standout “More”, Sam providing the lyrics and Peter playing Bass.The Breakaway , Getz’s band consist of the best of the best Bay area sidemen. Tim Finch and Chris Collins outdo each other on guitar throughout.With Mark Little on Piano , Peter Penhallo on Organ , Jon Evans on Bass , Kate Russo on Violin , additional and back round vocals by Andra Mitrovich , Sonny Walker , Amber Morris and Lyn Asher plus Johnny Thompson on Guitar and Scott Thompson , Rob Fordyce and Daniel Fusco on Bass we get an idea of how respected Dave Getz is in the Bay Area Music community. James Gurley , the recently deceased Big Brother guitarist provides his last recorded performance on Trail Of Tears”. James gives us a surreal listening pleasure here that brought me smiles and tears. This is a great record.
“Me and our kid were to blame for the split of Oasis,” says Liam Gallagher. “Not me. Not him. And it certainly wasn’t these guys.” These guys are Gallagher’s bandmates in Beady Eye: guitarists Andy Bell and Gem Archer, and drummer Chris Sharrock. Until summer 2009, the four of them, plus Gallagher’s older brother Noel, made up Oasis, the biggest British rock’n'roll band of their generation. Then, on 28 August 2009, following a final, tumultuous slanging match between Noel and Liam – and shortly before Oasis were due to perform at a Paris festival – the older Gallagher decided he’d had enough.
Charles Bradley’s voice has evolved from a lifetime of paying dues, having nomadically labored for decades at various day jobs from Maine to Alaska – singing and performing in his spare time – before re-settling in his hometown Brooklyn and eventually finding a musical home at Dunham. In his distinctively rough-hewn timbre one hears the unmistakable voice of experience – each note and gruff inflection a reflection of his extended, sometimes rocky, personal path. It’s only fitting that No Time For Dreaming’s producer Brenneck (also a member of The Dap-Kings and The Budos Band) would recognize in Bradley a kindred musical spirit – a singer whose performances exude both raw power and poignant beauty. Recorded at Dunham Studios, and mixed at Daptone Records’ internationally revered “House of Soul” Studios, No Time For Dreaming is the inspired sound of an awakening.
Howler-America Give Up
Craig Finn-Clear Heart Full Eyes
Kathleen Edwards, Voyageur
Nada Surf,The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy
First Aid Kit, The Lion’s Roar
Snow Patrol Track-By-Track Video: ‘Fallen Empires’
