12.93% of the Music I Listen To Is Mainstream
[via Burning Oak]
Another Fine Boulder Creation
A good friend caught Great American Taxi in Boulder a few weeks ago. When I talked to him on the phone he kept raving about one of the cats Vince is kickin’ it with—guitar player, songwriter and vocalist Jefferson Hamer. Today I bought Hamer’s record, Left Wing Sweetheart from iTunes. The record was produced by Sally Van Meter. Ben Kaufmann from Yonder Mtn. appears.
As an ad man, I can’t help but be drawn to Hamer’s second track, “Brand Names”.
Brand names, brand names look to the label
I’d be so lost without you
Show me, tell me, what would you like to sell me
Quickly now the rush is nearly through
I love scathing commentary on commerical culture delivered in a song for sale.
Honoring North Mississippi’s Blues Tradition
I received a notification on MySpace from blues musician, Olga, about this afternoon’s headstone dedication for Jessie Hemphill. Hemphill, who passed away last year, was best known as a blues guitarist, songwriter and vocalist. She toured widely in Europe and won several W.C. Handy Awards for her recordings.
The dedication ceremony will take place beginning at 4:45 pm at the Senatobia Memorial Cemetery, which is located on Highway 51 South in Senatobia, Mississippi. Reverend John Wilkins, the son of early blues and gospel recording artist Robert Wilkins, will lead a prayer service, after which attendees are invited to join in a group performance of Hemphill’s “Lord Help the Poor and Needy.”
“By erecting this tombstone we wanted to publicly memorialize the important contributions to north Mississippi blues traditions made by Jessie Mae,” says Olga Wilhelmine Mathus, who founded the Jessie Mae Hemphill Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of north Mississippi music. “Her music was timeless, and we wanted to ensure that people can discover and learn about her music and the musical traditions of her family for generations to come.”
The Foundation has received major support from the Alan Lomax Archive in the form of donated photographic prints and field recordings of Sid Hemphill, Rosa Lee and Sydney Hemphill, (Jessie’s grandfather and aunts), Fred McDowell, Lucius Smith, the Pratcher brothers, and the Youngs.
[UPDATE] Thanks to the instant satisfaction iTunes provides, I’m listening to Jessie Mae’s 2003 release “Get Right Blues”. Assembled by folklorist Dr. David Evans, the album collects 15 unreleased tracks from 1979, 1984 and 1985. According to All Music Guide, this album is part history lesson, part folk-gospel revival, part boogie and doesn’t contain a single lame track.
Conductor Phil Has New Strings To Pull
Phil Lesh & Friends, which has been laying low of late, has new members and a fall tour planned with three nights in Chicago and nine nights in Manhattan, along with other key dates including Red Rocks, Paolo Soleri in Santa Fe and The Echo Project in Atlanta.
One of the new players is American singer-songwriter and blues musician, Jackie Greene. The 26-year old Californian says, “I feel very honored to have been asked to take part in such a remarkable band. I am truly in awe of each of their talents.”
Steve Molitz, the keyboard player from Particle is also in the band, as is multi-insturmentalist and session player, Larry Campbell. P&F veteran, John Molo, is on drums.
The Like Of Ike
Heather Browne doesn’t like Ike Reilly. She loves him.
She also loves live music performed in an intimate space, as this eloquent paragraph indicates:
A large part of the reason that I go to live music performances is because I am looking for some element of connection. I can sit at home in front of my stereo, listen to sterile studio recordings made in a far-away state that have been remastered and flawlessly captured. Sure, I hear a lot of good stuff that way . . . but I also feel a need for a visceral connection, an elemental thread of immediacy tying creator to listener in the same physical space. It’s why I prefer smaller venues – not from snobbery, or so I can tell you that I saw them way back when they were still playing the [insert tiny club name here]. It’s so I can see their eyes and feel their words, with flaws and all. I find myself feeling less than satisfied when I see a show at a huge venue on massive Jumbotron screens. The performers are tiny little ants a million miles away, and most of the action comes from the folks dancing around me. That’s fun, and I’ll do it, but that’s not the connection I really want with my music.
Heather goes on to describe Reilly’s show at the Larimer Lounge in Denver, where in a fiery moment he joined Tom Morello on stage (they both grew up in Libertyville, IL) for a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son”. Reilly also played an impromtu set in the beer garden post-show, after a fan asked to hear “Heroin,” a song he had not played earlier in the night.
It seems like it might be easy to confuse Libertyville with Belleville, IL? Belleville, near St. Louis, is hometown to Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar.
PROGRESSIVE country
Same song, different version.
The Duhks rule. The band’s live performance from Merlefest last April is currently the most popular download available from FestivaLink, part of the Livedownloads family of sites.
P4K: Helping Hipster Kids “Get It” Since 1995
The second annual Pitchfork Music Festival kicked off yesterday in Chicago’s Union Park. Pitchfork Media’s founder and Editor-in-Chief, Ryan Schreiber, spoke to the press during the proceedings. Here he is speaking about his site’s soaring influence and popularity:
Q. Speaking of hipster kids, do you feel that your website reaches out to anyone besides the hipster kids?
A. You know, It’s really difficult for me to know at this point who we’re reaching. Because there came a point with readership where we were at like 30,000 readers a day, back in 2000, 2001, and that’s like what a Yo La Tengo or a Built to Spill record would peak at in terms of album sales. And so it was like, God, it can’t really get much bigger, can it? And it just has continued to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So in a way I hope what it’s doing is sort of inviting people in, and saying “Look, there’s an alternative to everything you’re force-fed through MTV, commercial alternative radio.” As common sense as that seems to us, there’s still a lot of people out there who just totally aren’t aware of it. So hopefully we can be sort of a conduit for their discovery of music. ‘Cause you know, there was a time when I was totally unaware of it, and it just took the right time and I just needed the right experience to get in.
[via Muzzle of Bees]
Parish Lets The Good Times Roll
Variety is reporting that Grateful Dead roadie Steve Parish will see his 2004 book, Home Before Daylight, made into a Hollywood movie.
Michael Grais who previously produced the music bio “Great Balls of Fire,” will adapt the book for the screen and produce. He and Parish have already spent a month in Northern California hashing out the adaptation.
Parish said he wrote the book because, though there have been many books published about the Grateful Dead, none “were from the inside. They were not about the fun we had.”
“There has never been and probably never will be another cast of characters like the Grateful Dead.”
[via Partyin’ Peeps]
Radio Execs Listen To Their Nemeses
The music industry has long blamed illegal file sharing for the slump in music sales–U.S. music sales were down 7% last year after a 3% drop the year before, according to the London-based music trade group IFPI. But now, a key part of the industry is trying to harness file sharing to boost its own bottom line.
Earlier this year, Clear Channel Communications Inc.’s Premiere Radio Networks unit began marketing data on the most popular downloads from illegal file-sharing networks to help radio stations shape their playlists. The theory is that the songs attracting the most downloads online will also win the most listeners on the radio, helping stations sell more advertising. In turn, the service may even help the record labels, because radio airplay is still the biggest factor influencing record sales.
[via The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.)]
Telluride Greenery
WHEREAS, for approximately two decades Planet Bluegrass has staged a music festival with the express goal of using renewable energy to help protect our environment while producing a world-class festival; and
WHEREAS, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival is powered entirely by renewable energy, offsetting 100 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions created by the traveling attendees of the concert, or “Festivarian Travel”; and
WHEREAS, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival will host world-renowned musicians, as well as contests, workshops, jugglers, clowns, and many more fun-filled activities that will continue day and night for the entirety of the festival; and
WHEREAS, Planet Bluegrass has exerted countless hours and immeasurable efforts to create a unique, environmentally friendly festival in a naturally beautiful location, not only for the people of Colorado, but for those that have traveled from across the country and from other nations; and
WHEREAS, the State of Colorado appreciates the tireless work of Planet Bluegrass to protect and sustain the environment, while giving the people of Colorado an incredible celebration to attend;
Therefore, I, Bill Ritter, Jr., Governor of Colorado, do hereby proclaim June 23,
2007,
in the State of Colorado.