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Thursday, July 10, 2008
Willie & Wynton on Leno tonight
DVR alert! Willie Nelson will perform with Wynton Marsalis on “The Tonight Show” this evening. The duo, whose new album is called “Two Men With the Blues,” will perform “Bright Lights, Big City.” According to this essential fan site, Willie stepped in for an ailing Natalie Cole at Wynton’s Hollywood Bowl concert last night.
In other Willie news, guitar player Jody Payne has retired from the group after 30-plus years. His replacement? Willie’s 19-year-old son Lukas.
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Weekend Picks: Old school goth, intelligent hip-hop and guitar virtuosos
Friday: Peter Murphy at Emo’s. The former lead singer of Bauhaus has had a vigorous solo career in his own right. Anyone remember the song ‘Cuts You Up’? Anyone? No? Just me, huh? With Ali Eskandarian. 10 p.m. $15. —- Joe Gross
Friday: Grimy Styles, El Tule at Flamingo Cantina. Grimy Styles features Austin’s premiere dub experimentalists. El Tule blends cumbia, Latin jazz, elements of reggae and more into a high energy, danceable mix, bound to coax a hip-switch or two out of the Friday night Flamingo crowd. —-Deborah Sengupta Stith
Friday: Freedom Summer at the Victory Grill. This event, hosted by PODER (People in Defense of the Earth and her Resources) and the local chapters of the ACLU and the National Hip-Hop Political Convention, has the duel aim of entertaining and educating the public on issues of racial profiling, police misconduct and other causes important to the hip-hop community. The show kicks off with a two hour spoken word session at 7 p.m. followed by an excellent selection of local socially conscious rappers including Element 7d, Mirage, Dred Skott and Global. Get your learn on. $5-$10 suggested donation. —-D.S.S.
Saturday: Bobby Bare Jr. at the Continental Club. Bobby Bare Jr. steps out of his Black Francis personna (his Pixies cover band headlines Friday night) to play some Bare Jr. songs. But make sure to come early to see opening act Mario Matteoli play songs from his bouncy new LP “Golden State.” The former Weary Boy takes his Townes fascination back to the flower children era for a sound that’s as light and glowing as it is dark and deep. On this day you can’t get to the Continental too early, as the great James Hand, who’s just wrapped up a new LP for Rounder, plays at 3 in the afternoon. Only in Austin. $12. —-Michael Corcoran
Saturday: Brothers and Sisters at Club DeVille. The new album is called ‘Fortunately,’ and it’s the country-fied indie rock of your Neil Young-oriented dreams. Dislike the new My Morning Jacket? Check this out. With the increasingly cool Shapes Have Fangs and more. —-J.G.
Sunday: Nels Cline Singers at Stubb’s BBQ. If you have seen Wilco perform, you are familiar with guitar genius Nels Cline, whose technique, tone and style are awe inspiring and have led Rolling Stone to call him a “Guitar God” and Jazz Times to label him “The World’s Most Dangerous Guitar Player.” But there is more to Cline than Wilco, as evidenced by his jazz trio The Nels Cline Singers. The band plays inside at Stubb’s tonight. —-Matthew Odam
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New Okkervil LP Sept. 9
The critically-acclaimed Austin/ Brooklyn band Okkervil River will release “The Stand Ins,” a sequel to last year’s “The Stage Names,” three weeks before their set at ACL Fest. Produced by Brian Beattie and the band, the LP features a duet between Will Sheff and recently departed keyboardist Jonathan Meiburg (Shearwater) on “Lost Coastlines,” a song about the highs and lows of keeping the band together.
Originally, the band had intended “The Stage Names” to be a double CD, but scrapped that idea, perhaps because they forsaw every review opining that the good double disc would’ve been a great single disc.
Tracks on the new LP, which also has a sequel cover by William Schaff, include “On Tour With Zykos,” which Okkervil will be in the fall. Other openers include Black Joe Lewis & the Honey Bears, Sea Wolf and Crooked Fingers.
Here’s Okkervil closing a 2006 set with “Kansas City” from one of their earlier albums.
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Live Chat With Statesman pop critic Joe Gross at 2 p.m. July 10
Folks,
I will be hosting another weekly live chats about music (Austin music, Texas music and otherwise) July 10 at 2 p.m.
Topics include the Lil Wayne show taking place that evening, new albums (including the general awesomeness of the new Yaz box set) and still more singles of the summer (by which we mean songs, not specific single people).
And yes, these topics are mere jumping off points. Chats will take place from then on in every Thursday at 2 p.m.
Thanks!
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Alabama 3 attacks attack ad
It’s hard to imagine a political party being this crass- well, maybe not. The Democratic party of Washington has been using “The Sopranos” theme song- “Woke Up This Morning” by A3- as background music on an ad that portrays Italian-American Republican candidate Dino Rossi as a bit of a gangster.
Read more here and see the offending ad, which wasn’t approved by the band.
Click here to hear Alabama 3’s great cover of “Hotel California” and stayed tuned for some possible exciting news about A3 and ATX.
Here’s an interview with the band from SXSW:
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Quiz Time!
Q- One Austin band has already played Coachella and Bonnaroo this year, with sets at Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Music Festival down the road? Who has pulled this festival grand slam?
No, not Ghostland. Spoon’s a good guess, but that’s not the band. Okkervil? No-kkervil. The mystery act is Electric Touch. Who?
Remember Nic Armstrong and the IV Thieves, who moved here from England for awhile to steal our women and booze and rock ‘n’ roll hearts? Well, bassist Shane Lawlor never went back to Nottingham. Instead, the bassist turned frontman hooked up with twin brothers Christopher Leigh (Messina) and Louis Messina to form E.T., whose self-titled debut comes out August 26 on Justice Records. It’s a strong album- think of a more Britpop version of Kings of Leon- but that’s not why Electric Touch is the king of the “artists lounge” circuit. (And it sure isn’t the name, which sounds like a solvent used to clean disco balls.)
Quiz #2: Can you circle the key name in the above paragraph? That’s right, Louis Messina. The twins are the sons of legendary- and I don’t use that word lightly- concert promoter Louis Messina. “It’s Louis Messina on line one” has caused many a pup to hop to through the years.
So they have connections. Good for them. Take advantage of every opportunity in the music business, but know that with the leg up comes more pressure to deliver. Let’s see whatcha got, Electric Touch. August 10 at Stubb’s.
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Live Chat With Statesman pop critic Joe Gross at 2 p.m. today!
I will be hosting another weekly live chats about music (Austin music, Texas music and otherwise) today at 2 p.m.
Topics include the Lil Wayne show taking place tonight, new albums (including the general awesomeness of the new Yaz box set) and still more singles of the summer (by which we mean songs, not specific single people).
And yes, these topics are mere jumping off points.
Chats take place every Thursday at 2 p.m.
Thanks!
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Live shots: Los Lonely Boys at Zilker Park
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Austin music lovers crowded Zilker Park last night for a free concert from Los Lonely Boys, part of KGSR’s Blues on the Green series.
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Exit Fest Fallout
According to ExitFest “Born on the Fifth of July” organizer Will Matthews, there was nothing wrong with the July 5 rock festival at Waterloo Park that a couple thousand patrons couldn’t cure.
“I was impressed by the festival,” Matthews said this week. “The bottom line for the festival was that people didn’t show up. If people had shown up, we would be having a completely different conversation.”
Indeed. There were virtually no patrons at ExitFest. I saw perhaps 60 or 70 at any one time. There was also almost no advertising for the festival, nor were final line-ups posted anywhere on the Web site. There was a $20 cover ($10 for kids under 10, a deal-breaker for many parents).
It was also held on the long Fourth of July weekend when many folks head out of town. And many of the bands said they went unpaid, or in the case of the South Austin Jug Band, canceled their appearance when the pre-show deposit was not made in time.
The plug was pulled on the festival before headliners Nelo and the Black and White Years played. “The festival was not doing what we thought was going to happen, so we decided to stop the show early on before the Black and White Years went on. It was the best idea for the festival at that time.”
The list of complaints by bands included that there was no water or beer for them, which can be genuinely dangerous if you’re playing in over 90-degree heat. Many bands brought their own.
“I could chalk all this up to inexperience,” Matthews said of his first go at staging a music festival. “I’m not ashamed of that. You learn from your mistakes, you pick up, you make sure that everyone is compensated and then you plan a festival that is more financially productive,” meaning that he intends to eventually pay the bands what they are owed, though Matthews declined to discuss questions of production or financial backers.
There was also no beer, which would seem to violate a cardinal rule of the Austin outdoor festival business: Austinites actually don’t care as much as you might think about what they hear as long as they can drink beer in a field.
“I don’t feel the need to sell beer at everything that we do,” Matthews said.
As for what he would do differently, Matthews says he would start with a different date. “If you’re not established on a national holiday, it’s hard to compete with it. I heard a lot of people say they had partied at lot on the Fourth and the Third and just didn’t make it out,” he said.
Matthews, a former University of Texas fullback, couldn’t resist a football metaphor. “I know that on third and long when the coach runs the ball and he doesn’t get the first down, people call him an idiot. If he gets the first down, they say he has guts and he’s a genius.
“I’m not hiding from this, he continued. “Everybody knows my phone number, it’s still up on our Web site. We’re not scared. We plan to do more shows, more festivals and more things to fix our image in the community.”
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Shaver to play CommonThreadz benefit
In many developing countries, children are not allowed to attend school if they don’t have the proper school uniform. Or they wear the stigma of AIDS if they are without one. A new Austin-based nonprofit, CommonThreadz, has been formed to fund uniforms for orphans and other underprivileged kids. Every t-shirt sold represents a kid with a new school uniform. CommonThreadz apparel is available here.
The nonprofit will launch July 30 with a benefit concert at Antone’s headlined by Billy Joe Shaver. Tickets are $15 and are available at Antones.net.
In case you’re wondering, Shaver’s shooting case up in Waco, now 15 months old, is still pending. He’s been charged with aggravated assault and possessing a firearm in a prohibited place, but not indicted.
