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Monday, June 21, 2010
Austin Music Hall, Backyard architects sue Direct Events et al
Claiming it is owed more than $84,000 for architectural work at the Austin Music Hall and $34,000 for work at the new Backyard, Sixth River Architects filed suit June 15 against Direct Events Inc. and Tim O’Connor and Doug Moyes dba Two Lawnmowers. Planet Earth LLC was added to the Backyard suit, while Silent Running Inc. is a co-defendant in the Austin Music Hall suit.
The plaintiff’s case includes an April 9, 2010, “Payment Plan Agreement for the Austin Music Hall Outstanding Debt,” in which Sixth River president Rollie Roessner agrees to lower the “actual total unpaid invoice amount” from $66,160 to $57,500. O’Connor signed the agreement April 9.
Terms call for $10,000 to be paid no later than April 12, with an additional payment of $10,000 due May 31. The final payment of $37,500 is due Oct. 31, according to the agreement. A penalty fee of $1,000 a day is to be applied upon failure to pay.
Moyes did not return an e-mail asking for comment last week. O’Connor could not be reached Monday. Direct Events CFO Will Hodgson also could not be reached via phone or e-mail Monday.
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Jimmie Vaughan returns to headline SMF
Smithville resident Jimmie Vaughan will headline the second annual Smithville Music Festival Nov. 6, it was announced last week. Other acts, as well as ticket info, will be announced soon.
Here’s the fest web site.
Shout! Factory will release Jimmie Vaughan’s first new album in nine years, “Plays Blues, Ballads & Favorites,” on July 6. The album contains wild covers of songs by Jimmy Reed, Little Richard, Willie Nelson and others. The local record release party is Aug. 6 at Antone’s.
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Music Monday Pick: Seth Osborn of the Tiny Tin Hearts
Welcome to Music Monday Picks, where once a week we talk to an Austin musician and find out what’s been burning up their CD player, turntable or iPod lately. Looking for a good musical recommendation? Take some advice from someone in the local music trenches who knows their stuff. Recommendations can be local, national or international, new or old. They only need to fit two criteria: 1) the musician in question needs to have just discovered them, and 2) it has to be fantastic.
This week: We grab a quick e-mail pick from Seth Osborn, vocalist and piano and banjo player for the Tiny Tin Hearts, the sweeping eight-piece rock collective that won the Austin Chronicle’s first Sound Wars battle of the bands and released its debut seven-song EP last year. The octet bring their classical-influenced majesty to the Parish Saturday, June 26, on a bill that also includes Salesman and Doug Burr. Doors open at 8 p.m., and the show is $10.
Seth Osborn recommends: “Treats,” the debut album from Brooklyn noise pop duo Sleigh Bells, which has received accolades from Pitchfork, Paste magazine, the Chicago Tribune and others.
Seth Osborn says: “The newest band that I’ve discovered and have been enjoying pretty well is Sleigh Bells and their album ‘Treats’ — it’s like fuzzy distorted chaotic dance-y pop music. It’s definitely a passing phase of Brooklyn hipsterdom and pretty silly but a lot of fun to listen to.”
Check out a video for Sleigh Bells’ “Infinity Guitars” below. Photo of the Tiny Tin Hearts by Valerie Fremin.
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End of an Ear celebrates five years this week
When beloved Hyde Park vinyl haunt 33 Degrees shuttered its doors early last decade, co-owner Dan Plunkett wasn’t ready to abandon his love of record stores. Teaming with friend Blake Carlisle, he began scouting locations for a new store, spending a year formulating plans for his next big venture. In 2005, the two opened End of an Ear at 2209 S. First St. in a tiny building that used to host an art gallery.
Five years later, Plunkett and Carlisle are celebrating the store’s first half-decade as a small-but-potent music source — and a hive for the community that’s boasted art shows and in-stores and a healthy section for Austin music.
“There was nothing really south of the river at the time that interested us,” recalls Plunkett. “We just wanted to create a store that we would want to shop at. And it’s getting there. It hasn’t totally blown us away yet, but it’s getting better.”
Part of End of an Ear’s success, Plunkett says, was its timely arrival — the store opened its doors just in time to crest the wave of the oft-reported vinyl resurgence. The increasing levels of interest in records has helped propel sales at End of an Ear even as CD sales have declined, and the industry’s annual Record Store Day gave the store it’s biggest day ever in 2009 — and again in 2010, doubling the previous year’s numbers and far out shadowing Christmas and South by Southwest.
“When we allotted space for the store we started with a certain vision that was like ‘This will be enough for our vinyl.’ But no, it’s not, we need more and more all the time,” says Plunkett. “If you look at the numbers, vinyl jumps so much every year. It’s still such a small percentage of the market, but for us that is our market. Our vinyl sales have jumped up about 50 percent every year.”
To celebrate its 5-year anniversary, End of an Ear will be having in-store performances Wednesday through Sunday, including Ola Podrida, Windsor for the Derby, Jonathan Meiburg and Thor Harris of Shearwater, and others. Peep after the jump for a full line-up, as well as End of an Ear’s 25 best-selling titles of the last five years.
Wednesday June 23rd
5pm - Ralph White
6pm - Jonathan & Thor (of Shearwater)
Thursday June 24th
6pm - The Viet Minh
Friday June 25th
5pm - ST 37
5:30pm - The Octopus Project DJ Set
Saturday June 26th
4pm - Horse + Donkey
5pm - Windsor for the Derby
Sunday June 27th
5pm - Ola Podrida
End of an Ear’s 25 best-selling titles of the last five years
1. Neutral Milk Hotel “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea”
2. Cat Power “The Greatest”
3. (tied) Bon Iver “For Emma, Forever Ago”
(tied) Animal Collective “Merriweather Post Pavilion”
4. Fleet Foxes “Fleet Foxes”
5. Arcade Fire “Neon Bible”
6. Sufjan Stevens “Illinois”
7. Spoon “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga”
8. FM3 “Buddha Machine”
9. Thom Yorke “The Eraser”
10. Iron and Wine “The Shepherd’s Dog”
11. Explosions in the Sky “All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone”
12. The XX “The XX”
13. (tied) Death “For the Whole World To See”
(tied) Vampire Weekend “Vampire Weekend”
14. Band of Horses “Everything All the Time”
15. (tied) Explosions in the Sky “The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place”
(tied) Panda Bear “Person Pitch”
16. Okkervil River, “The Stage Names”
17. Black Angels “Passover”
18. Beirut “The Flying Club Cup”
19. Beirut “Gulag Orkestar”
20. Radiohead “In Rainbows”
21. Beach House “Teen Dream”
22. Spoon “Transference”
23. Vampire Weekend “Contra”
24. “Casual Victim Pile: Austin 2010”
25. Yeasayer “Odd Blood”
Update: The list of End of an Ear’s best sellers has been expanded to 25 and re-organized to reflect albums with releases with multiple covers or editions, such as Cat Power’s “The Greatest.”
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CD review: Gaslight Anthem `American Slang’
Gaslight Anthem
‘American Slang’
(Side One Dummy)
Grade: B-
There is absolutely nothing wrong with “American Slang” (released June 15). It has a surfeit of razor-sharp guitars, pounding drums and blue-collar, broken-hearted music poems penned by Gaslight Anthem lead singer/guitarist/honcho Brian Fallon.
BUT (you knew that was coming), “American Slang” also often feels like it’s the musical equivalent of hormonally enhanced beef; sure, everything’s big and juicy and an easy swallow but with a vague taint of having grown too much too fast. That’s in comparison to “The `59 Sound,” the band’s 2008 masterstroke that was a pop-punk evolution of Social Distortion’s grease-caked rock chased with Bruce Springsteen’s working-man anthems.
While the Boss’ faint presence worked as a guide before, here he’s all over the place as Fallon recounts young men and women filling bars, “mysteries of New Orleans” and getting “your name tattooed inside of my arm.” It’s a “Born To Run on the River at the Edge of a Nebraska Town” grab bag at lots of points, which makes it something of a kindred spirit to the Killers’ underrated but uneven “Sam’s Town.”
All of which means this album’s title track and maybe one or two more will pump through satellite radio channels at Applebee’s locations all over the country. Not a bad thing, certainly, but still a little dispiriting, just like this album as a whole.
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CD review: Marah ‘Life is a Problem’
Marah
`Life is a Problem’
(Valley Farm Songs)
Grade: C
Lots of changes in Marah-ville since last we checked in on brothers Dave and Serge Bielanko and their octane-burning roots rock outfit after 2008’s well-received “Angels of Destruction.” Biggest is the departure of Serge Bielanko, along with the band’s longtime rhythm section, which was bound to mess with the band’s tone and musical interplay no matter who came aboard to fill out the roster.
Rather than fight change, Dave Bielanko decided to take a creative detour and make Marah’s latest an exploration into folksy AOR territory. So “Life is a Problem” isn’t quite a stopgap, but it’s also a Marah record pretty much in name only.
Still present: Bielanko’s gift for yearning, weary choruses caked with nicotine and beer bottle sweat rings. “Valley Farm Song” and “Tramp Art,” among others, prove that Bielanko’s way with a word works in just about any musical idiom.
Sadly absent: the breakneck pace of “Point Breeze,” “Faraway You” or “The Hustle” that made Marah live shows experiences that bordered on revelatory. The benefit of this is that we get more of a glimpse into Bielanko’s lyrical chops - often very good but still a ways from great - but it’s hard to not feel like something’s missing, hearing such a white-hot rock band content to never take their tempos much past a shuffle.
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CD review: `Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine’
Various
`Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine’
(Oh Boy)
Grade: B+
The best tribute albums reveal new facets and strengths of their subjects, parsing the often-intimidatingly prolific catalogues of music’s titans through the prism of today’s talents. So it goes for the masterfully curated “Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine,” which pares down the folk rock icon’s 15-plus studio albums across four decades to a stunningly cohesive 45-minute, 12-song disc that serves as a perfect Prine primer.
In hewing close to the spirit of Prine - his intimate, emotive singing and evocative, quintessentially American songwriting - while taking artistic leaps of faith when necessary, “Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows” respects without regurgitating. Justin Vernon’s ethereal opening take on “Bruised Orange (Chains of Sorrow)” pulls double duty as both an excellent cover and the best Bon Iver song not on “For Emma, Forever Ago.” Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band bring a honky-tonk energy to the Southern drama of “Wedding Day in Funeralville,” while My Morning Jacket’s take on “All the Best,” off Prine’s career-revitalizing, Grammy-winning 1991 classic “The Missing Years,” makes the most of the song’s potential for harmony. The Drive-By Truckers lively up “Daddy’s Little Pumpkin” with a Southern-fried charm. And the Avett Brothers’ knowing twang makes “Spanish Pipedream,” a high point off Prine’s classic self-titled debut album, a toe-tapping delight.
As with any tribute album, inconsistency occasionally fells the precedings - the Old Crow Medicine Show isn’t quite up to offering a fresh take on “Angel from Montgomery,” one of Prine’s most covered songs. The more straightforward acoustic interpretations of classic Prine - from singer-songwriters like Josh Ritter or Justin Townes Earle - hew a bit too closely to the source material. But taken together, “Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows” offers an almost perfect encapsulation of a singer with a winding, impressive career. For young cats looking for a Prine access point, you couldn’t ask for a much better way to jump in.
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