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Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Griffin mourns for father; replaced by Colvin, Schneider
Sad to report that Patty Griffin’s father passed away Monday afternoon. The singer is in Maine with her family and won’t perform Thursday at Zilker Park for the “Concert Under the Stars” fundraiser for State Sen. Kirk Watson.
Filling in will be her good friends Shawn Colvin and Bob Schneider. Details can be found here.
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Sound and Jury finalists battle Weds. at Antone’s
Now in its third year, Dell’s the Sound and the Jury contest, an online battle of the bands, offers independent, unsigned bands a shot at performing before thousands during the Austin City Limits Music Festival. An online vote produces 100 finalists; then a panel of judges narrows the field to 20 before online voting reopens and produces the final five. To have a chance at winning, bands must be marketing experts, employing tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace - as well as good old-fashioned phone calls and word-of-mouth. We talked to each of the five finalists for this year’s battle of the bands, who will compete live before judges and fans at Antone’s, to hear their stories of struggle for a shot at one of Austin music’s sweetest prizes.
The finalists:
- Andrew Tinker, originally from Denton, an optimistically inclined pop quartet with a piano-driven songwriting sensibility, led by Tinker, former French horn player for the Polyphonic Spree and a summa cum laude graduate of the University of North Texas’ college of music. Read more
- The Bright Light Social Hour, Austin, a hard, funky rock quartet inspired by ’70s classic rock bands with a dash of soul. Read more
- The Bubbles, Austin, a garage pop band with short, sunny songs and giddy live energy. Read more
- Mobley, Austin, danceable hook-heavy rock with flourishes of electronica. Read more
- OK Sweetheart, Denton (by way of San Francisco), the new moniker for the band of singer-songwriter Erin Austin, a woman about country - raised in upstate New York, college-educated in Tulsa, Oklahoma, moved to San Francisco and currently living and recording in Denton - with a charming, smooth voice. Read more
The Sound and the Jury starts at 7 Wednesday night at Antone’s, 213 W. Fifth St. Free.
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Meet this year’s Sound and the Jury finalists: OK Sweetheart
Nathan Presley/SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Now in its third year, Dell’s the Sound and the Jury contest, an online battle of the bands, offers independent, unsigned bands a shot at performing before thousands during the Austin City Limits Music Festival. An online vote produces 100 finalists, then a panel of judges narrows the field to 20, before online voting reopens and produces the final five, who will perform in front of judges and fans live. To have a chance at winning, bands must be marketing experts, employing tools like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace — as well as good old-fashioned phone calls and word-of-mouth.
The American-Statesman talked to each of the five finalists for this year’s battle of the bands to hear their stories of struggle for a shot at one of Austin music’s sweetest prizes. We will be running these interviews in advance of the final round, which will take place at Antone’s Nightclub, 213 W. Fifth St., Wednesday Sept. 30 at 7 p.m.
The band: The new moniker for the band of singer-songwriter Erin Austin, a woman about country — raised in upstate New York, college-educated in Tulsa, Oklahoma, moved to San Francisco and currently living and recording in Denton — with a charming, smooth voice.
Point of origin: Denton, by way of San Francisco
American-Statesman: You’re currently recording an album in Denton with Midlake drummer McKenzie Smith. What’s your experience living and recording in Denton been like?
Erin Austin: There’s such an amazing community of musicians in Denton that are so open and so generous. There’s something about Denton that’s just crazy magical. There’s this overwhelming musical generosity. It’s like, I just called the cellist from the Polyphonic Spree and she came over after dinner and spent seven hours putting down a cello part. That’s how my whole record’s been. It’s all these people I know and respect musically coming together and helping me.
AS: Your education is is in classical music — what led to you pursue pop singing and songwriting?
EA: I never really enjoyed singing classical, which is maybe a bad thing to say because I majored in it in college! But it was ingrained in me, since I started doing it when I was 12, so that’s why I went into a classical program. My parents were really conservative so I listened to a lot of Christian pop when I was real little. When I first started public school in fifth grade, because we rode a bus that played secular music on the radio, we had these Walkmens and could listen to our Amy Grant or whatever 80s Christian artist. But as soon as I realized the bus was playing pop music I’d take off my headphones. Pop music was such a secret music to me when I was little and it was really fun uncovering it. Eventually I decided classical wasn’t really who I was. I listened to Wilco, Andrew Bird, Death Cab for Cutie … it got to where I said “Why don’t I do music like that, like the people I love?”
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ACL 2009 preview: Heartless Bastards
Erika Wennerstrom performs with her band, the Heartless Bastards, during SXSW earlier this year at Stubb’s.
Deborah Cannon/AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Erika Wennerstrom’s gritty growl seethes anguish, but her lyrics favor empowerment over negativity. “I consider my songs to be positive,” the Heartless Bastards’ lead singer says. “Maybe I’m singing about something bad that’s happened, but it’s about coming out of that situation.” Cases in point: “Could Be So Happy,” “Wide Awake.” (The Austin-based band, whose collection “The Mountain” drained music critics of superlatives earlier this year, performs at 3 p.m. Sunday on the Dell stage.)
American-Statesman: How was Lucinda (Williams)’s wedding (onstage Sept. 18 at First Avenue in Minneapolis)?
Erika Wennerstrom: It was great. I was really flattered that she invited me. It was a really nice experience.
Has she influenced you as a songwriter?
Well, more since I’ve toured with her. I had heard her before, but when we toured together I became a huge fan. I think it’s inspiring to open for a really great songwriter like that.
Did you write the songs on ‘The Mountain’ after moving (from Ohio) to Austin?
I can’t remember how that happened. Songs just pop into my head, and I feel if they’re catchy enough, they’ll stay there. I don’t record them or anything. Eventually, I’m like, “OK, I really need to try to finish this and form the words.” I was writing the whole album around the same time, and sometimes I just work on a little bit of one here and another there.
How has living in here impacted you as a songwriter?
You know, as far as I’m concerned, I’m a creative person, and I’m gonna be a creative person wherever I am. I absolutely love living here, but the lyrics (on “The Mountain”) are about changes in my life that I could’ve formed other places. I’m not going to attribute my creativity on this album or taking sounds in a different direction to living in Austin.
It’s hard to deny certain peripheral sounds creeping in, though.
I will say that since we moved to Austin I’ve been influenced by old school country. In Ohio, radio plays new country, which I’m not really into. I did a side project called Sweet Tea with Alex Maas from Black Angels, and we did an old Ray Price cover and the June Carter and Johnny Cash version of “If I Were a Carpenter.” Maybe geography will influence my next album.
Well, you’ve been traveling a lot, and that must have an influence.
Yeah, I would say that touring influences me a lot. Some days we’ll be in the van and I’m looking out the window and there’s this giant mountain. I might have a song in my head all day driving through the mountains. New things influence me, but I really think that (our sound is) shaped by things that I grew up with.
It seems to translate well at ACL, since this is your third time at the festival. What do you look forward to this weekend?
I like ACL because it’s just the right size. The stages are spread out, but it’s pretty easy to get around. I’d say my favorite part is that I run into a lot of people I know, and that was the case even before I lived here. It’s always nice to see familiar faces. This year, I’m looking forward to seeing Andrew Bird and the Decemberists and Them Crooked Vultures. I’m most excited about seeing Levon Helm.
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Meet this year’s Sound and the Jury finalists: Bright Light Social Hour
Jon Salmon/SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Now in its third year, Dell’s the Sound and the Jury contest, an online battle of the bands, offers independent, unsigned bands a shot at performing before thousands during the Austin City Limits Music Festival. An online vote produces 100 finalists, then a panel of judges narrows the field to 20, before online voting reopens and produces the final five, who will perform in front of judges and fans live. To have a chance at winning, bands must be marketing experts, employing tools like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace — as well as good old-fashioned phone calls and word-of-mouth.
The American-Statesman talked to each of the five finalists for this year’s battle of the bands to hear their stories of struggle for a shot at one of Austin music’s sweetest prizes. We will be running these interviews in advance of the final round, which will take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday (Sept. 30) at Antone’s, 213 W. Fifth St.
The band: A hard, funky rock quartet inspired by ’70s classic rock bands with a dash of soul, represented by guitarist and vocalist Curtis Roush and bassist and vocalist Jack O’Brien.
Point of origin: Austin
American-Statesman: You have a song called ‘Detroit’ that has a really unique sound, much more obviously Stax and Motown-influenced than most indie rock. The song also discusses city’s dire economic straits. What inspired you to do that song?
Curtis Roush: My inspiration initially was about the sad state that Detroit is in economically. So it evolved into a love song about life in Detroit right now, but told through the medium of the Detroit sound in the ’60s and ’70s. You can either interpret the song as about a relationship, or think of it as the city of Detroit shouting out to the rest of the United States — ‘Remember when I built all your tanks in World War II?’ It had been on my mind a lot in terms of keeping as informed as I could about the financial crisis and the larger recession. It was always on my mind and I wanted to find a way to put it into a song. At that time I was thinking about how the recession was affecting people in real ways. Detroit was a nice focus for that feeling.
AS: Your MySpace mentions that you like to sometimes hand out free homemade cookies at your shows — will attendees of the battle of the bands be enjoying those?
CR: We’ve given some thought to that. I would love to bring cookies but I definitely don’t want to be those guys that are like “Hey, judges, we’re bringing you cookies! Vote for us!” For the audience we’ll have some, maybe. But the next night we’re playing at Beauty Bar so we’ll definitely have cookies for that.
Jack O’Brien: Curtis makes totally organic homemade-from-scratch cookies. We like to bring as much as we can. But we’re concerned about making it seem as if we’re trying to suck up to the judges. But, you know, we always do it!
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Meet this year’s Sound and the Jury finalists: The Bubbles
Now in its third year, Dell’s the Sound and the Jury contest, an online battle of the bands, offers independent, unsigned bands a shot at performing before thousands during the Austin City Limits Music Festival. An online vote produces 100 finalists, then a panel of judges narrows the field to 20, before online voting reopens and produces the final five, who will perform in front of judges and fans live. To have a chance at winning, bands must be marketing experts, employing tools like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace — as well as good old-fashioned phone calls and word-of-mouth.
The American-Statesman talked to each of the five finalists for this year’s battle of the bands to hear their stories of struggle for a shot at one of Austin music’s sweetest prizes. We will be running these interviews in advance of the final round, which will take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday (Sept. 30) at Antone’s, 213 W. Fifth St.
The band: A garage pop band with short, sunny songs and giddy live energy, represented by guitarist and vocalist William Glosup.
Point of origin: Austin
American-Statesman: There’s a lot of bouncy positivity in the Bubbles’ music — is that something the band specifically sets out to do?
William Glosup: We’re not trying to be a kid’s rock band or something like that, but we really want to expel a lot of fun and energy and honesty. We see ourselves as a good times band. We’re really focused on having a good pop sensibility and writing fun pop songs that everybody can sing to or put on at parties. We really like bands like the Apples in Stereo, and the Strokes and Dr. Dog.
AS: You had one of the more unique ways to mobilize fans, with a series of YouTube videos encouraging fans to vote and featuring performances of your music. How did you come up with that idea?
WG: We got blown out of the water on the first round of online voting. And we thought “Oh my God, there are so many things we could have done to do that better.” So we realized we had to be on top of our marketing. So pretty immediately we were like “Let’s give everybody a better insight into the Bubbles. Maybe if we make some videos they’ll see a different aspect of our music.” We borrowed our film contract friend’s camera, and basically we wanted to do each video in one shot. We didn’t want to have to deal with any editing. We just wanted to have it be like a very genuine skit, using the same kind of humor we use in the music. Basically it was all improv. We planned out like the basic ideas of the concept, and which song we were going to play, and that was it.
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ACL 2009 Preview: Sara Watkins
Jeremy Cowart/SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
The spotlight is nothing new for Sara Watkins — as one-third of progressive acoustic bluegrass trio Nickel Creek, she released her first album, “Little Cowpoke,” at the tender age of 11. But with her self-titled solo debut, released on Nonesuch Records in April, the now-28-year-old fiddler, guitarist and ukulele player — and one heck of a singer, to boot — steps out on her own for the first time. Fortunately, she’s had some help in the form of famed producer and former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, who produced her eponymous album. Both will be playing the Austin City Limits Music Festival this weekend — Watkins behind her own album and Jones with newly minted supergroup Them Crooked Vultures. We spoke by phone with Watkins from her Los Angeles home about the rigors of songwriting, her thoughts on the dissolution of Nickel Creek and the joys of working with Jones.
American-Statesman: You’re about to set off for six weeks of touring, both playing your own shows and supporting the projects of friends and family, including your brother Sean. You’ve been playing professionally for a long time — have you gotten used to that frenetic pace or is still tough?
Sara Watkins: I’m accustomed enough to it so that I know everything will be fine. But it’s funny, I’m tour managing myself now so I have to stay on the ball every second. I had a couple of near-anxiety attacks but it’s going really well. But there’s no relaxing and having a beer after the show. It ends up being a very dense six weeks, but I’m looking forward to it. It’s a lot of variety. That helps tours a lot. It helps to have little phases like that where I’m doing different things. It helps me anyway.
In a 2005 interview with PopMatters, you mentioned that you found songwriting challenging, probably more so than the guys in Nickel Creek. Has it gotten any easier for you?
Well all the songs are always a challenge. But I’ve learned that, for all the songs that I’m happy with that I’ve written, I wasn’t really thinking about the success or failure of what that song was. I’m the type of person who, lots of times, I can just psych myself out while I’m working on a song — my brain goes in spirals really fast. But looking back on those few songs on the record, I didn’t do that. I wasn’t really conscious or thinking about them as a goal. I was just kind of writing them. It was very pure in that way. I sort of take it as a bad sign if I let myself be distracted and try to figure out what I want from it. I don’t have children myself, but I feel like it’s like having a kid and deciding it’s going to be a doctor when it’s 2 years old instead of just loving it and hoping it will be a functional part of society. That’s how I want to approach songs
Nickel Creek was famous for its wide range of covers, from Pavement to Britney Spears, and that’s a tradition you keep up with this album, with songs by Jimmie Rodgers, Tom Waits and even Austinite David Garza. How do you select which covers you record and put onto an album?
(David Garza) will be playing with me at ACL! I’m excited. Anyway, a lot of the material comes from the family hours. Over the course of the last of five or six years I’ve been doing the Watkins Family Hour at this Los Angeles club the Largo, frequenting the club with me and my brother sitting in with people. For this thing we definitely wouldn’t do Nickel Creek songs. We’d do songs that we liked, or had written on or were working on or cover songs that Nickel Creek would never play. So it started off with things that are near and dear to our hearts, like bluegrass stuff we loved forever and knew and identified with. And very quickly over those years, we started digging into a wider range of material. And it was really fun. It was a totally different outlet for the band and for the different people who came in and played. So it was a much more by the seat-of-your-pants kind of thing and that was kind of refreshing for us. So the things that made the record are things that became part of the family hour over the years.
It’s been about two years now since Nickel Creek played its final shows. In retrospect, do you feel good about the decision to disband and pursue other projects?
Totally. We’re all very grateful for that decision. When we were making the last record I was like “How long are we going do this?” Not because it was lackluster, but because we all worked so hard on that record and worked so hard on touring and trying to get it out there. We got exhausted. With that record we wanted to say bye in the best way we could, and after that, just sort of basically lay fallow and start forming some new stuff. We’re all huge fans of each other and we love each other and had we pushed it because we were scared of seeing what was on the other side, we probably would have started resenting each other.
You’d worked with John Paul Jones before, playing with him on Mutual Admiration Society, before you tapped him to produce your debut. What kind of strengths did he bring to the table as a producer?
He brought a whole lot of legitimacy. All the guys on the record either knew him personally or musically and I’d never heard them play better than they did knowing they were playing for John. For him, nothing but your best will do. You want to make the right decision because everybody respects him so much. And he’d work 10 hour days and he’s just so good at making decisions that you’re confident in. And he and I were both on the same track, so when I didn’t know what to do, he’d be like “This is right” and I’d be like “Oh, yes, you’re right, it is.”
Can you point to any specific times when he had that kind of insight?
He’s a little bit more invisible than that. I couldn’t necessarily pinpoint things he did or didn’t do. He’s really good at making everything seem natural in the studio. He sends people in the right direction and guides them in such a way that they don’t realize they’re being guided. He has a discussion with you and it keeps coming around to just the right place in a really healthy way. Since you feel that you are not being forced, nothing is manipulated. When you come up with something in the way that your brain works best, it’s going to be more honest and it’s going to last longer than if you’re doing something just because somebody says “Play this way for me.” If you are guided around your own understanding of a certain idea it’s going to be much more effective than if you are just expressing the producer’s idea.
Jones will be at ACL this year, playing with Them Crooked Vultures. Has there been any talk of him joining you on-stage for any of your songs?
You know, I haven’t asked him. I have no reason to think that he will. I should talk to him, though. He’s been very busy, so I’ve been trying not to pester him. I’m really excited to see his show. I was in LA when they were working on the record, and he was just so happy working on that project. He would come and hang out late at night smiling ear-to-ear, really excited. And that was before anybody really knew what was happening; we just knew he was working on something.
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