earache!

After an epic SXSW, Jim James returns Monday to Stubb’s. The My Morning Jacket frontman, taping Austin City Limits on Sunday, touts his first solo LP, Regions of Light and Sound of God. Read More | Comment »

About 45 miles north of Cabo San Lucas, on the resort-riddled southern tip of the Baja Peninsula, sits Todos Santos, a quiet hamlet on the new four-lane highway running northeast to La Paz. Read More | Comment »

Today is the final day of South by Southwest's Panel Picker voting, where the community helps select panel discussions within the tech, music, and film industries for the 2013 festival. The array of potential topics is extensive, with nearly 3,600 combined submissions to SXSW. Read More | Comment »

Radiohead week in Austin has spun me into an existential music crisis. I consider the UK sextet the most important band of the past two decades. It’s an arguable point, sure, but the city's been giddy at hosting the band since last night's Erwin Center show sold out immediately, and its Austin City Limits taping became the hottest ticket in town. Read More | Comment »

Let’s get one thing straight. George Jones is a legend. George Jones is one of the greatest country singers and songwriters to ever grace God’s own Grand Ole Opry. I’d never seen Jones perform before and was so excited to finally do so that I spent the entire day listening to damn-near his entire catalog. What I should have been doing was drinking. Read More | Comment »

On October 7-9, accordionists from around the world will gather in San Antonio for the 11th annual International Accordion Festival. Held every year at La Villita along the Riverwalk, the free festival proves the accordion is a universal language. Read More | Comment »

A rare appearance by the Eels tonight at Stubb's prompted a call across the Atlantic to its prolific brain, one Mark “E” Everett. Read More | Comment »

Early last year, 4AD released the two-disc, 31-track compilation Dark Was the Night to benefit the Red Hot Organization’s efforts to raise HIV and AIDS awareness. The compilation is more than one of the best albums released in 2009, however. Read More | Comment »

Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard wasted no time last night at Antone’s, launching immediately into “California Zephyr,” the lead track from their recent collaboration One Fast Move Or I’m Gone. Read More | Comment »

From his home in the mountains of western North Carolina, Malcolm Holcombe’s voice rolls across the phone in a graveled, folksy drawl. He deflects the conversation with questions of his own and offhand, down-home one-liners. Read More | Comment »

Five years ago, Jim James, Conor Oberst, and M. Ward teamed with Saddle Creek producer Mike Mogis for a short tour that established the three songwriters as new voices of indie folk, and sold out the Paramount Theatre. Read More | 1 Comment »

Popular local Americana artists Reckless Kelly will be rolling their tour bus up to the gates of the Dell Diamond this Tuesday, June 30 to participate in all kinds of baseball-related fun. Following their supersuccesful Celebrity Softball Jam held last April 19 at the Dell, Austin's local boys done good will be handing over the cash they raised at that event to the Miracle League and South Austin Little League. In addition to the check presentation, RK will be performing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and competing in a "trike race" following the sixth inning of the Round Rock Express' game vs. the Iowa Cubs. First pitch at 7:05pm. They were kind enough to invite me to the CSJ and I must say it was a good time was had by all. Plus, I got to rub shoulders with Eric Winston of the Houston Texans and Ray Benson just to name a few. Seeing Dale Watson play ball in his biker boots was worth the price of admission alone. And you couldn't meet a bunch of nicer guys. Please check out the photo gallery above for my pics from the Softball Jam and click here for more on the Express. Read More | Comment »

When Steve Earle was only 16 years old, he had already dropped out of high school in San Antonio and begun playing in coffeehouses and any bars he could sneak into. In Austin and Houston, the folk scene of the early Seventies was thriving, and Earle went looking for his place within it, tracing the winding and wrecked path of his idol, Townes Van Zandt. Van Zandt's inspiration consumed the younger songwriter’s music and life, and helped propel him to national acclaim with the release of his first album, 1986’s Guitar Town. Alcohol and heroin had taken everything away from Van Zandt by his arrest in 1993. More than a decade after his death, the spirit still lingers indelibly upon Earle. Last year, holed up in his tiny New York City apartment, Earle began recording the long-planned tribute to his late friend and mentor. Between songs, the tape kept running as Earle would talk about Van Zandt, telling stories that have slipped from mere memory into legend, quietly baring the intimacy between Earle and Van Zandt that rings throughout his new album, Townes (New West). Speaking from his home just outside of Woodstock, NY., which he shares with his wife Allison Moorer, Earle reflected back on his past with Townes and finally making the tribute album to him. Earle plays a special solo acoustic show tonight at the Paramount. Joe Pug opens. 8pm. Read More | Comment »

As evidenced in this interview last week, Richard Buckner is a man of few words, yet even that is a few more than the full Cactus Café got by way of acknowledgment from the notoriously opaque songwriter Friday night. Not that anyone was disappointed by the lack of banter – the audience was entranced by the nearly 90-minute continuous song suite that rarely broke from Buckner’s familiar morose intensity. Local rising star Leatherbag opened the night with a stripped down set, featuring only frontman Randy Reynolds with guitarist Geoff Dupree. After witnessing the full band’s inspired and blistering set the week before at their taping for Austin City Limits’ new Stage Left Web series, the return to Reynolds' sparser songwriter roots proved equally revelatory with his new music. Opening with a delicate version of the title track from last summer’s Love and Harm, Leatherbag’s tunes were given a different shade with the sparser set up. The new songs from his fresh Everything I Once Knew EP, as well as a few still unreleased, continued to mine Leatherbag’s recent turn towards a New Sincerity, from “Power of Love”'s unironic timbre to the Tweedyesque “Stand Close,” while closer “Caroline” even hearkened Townes Van Zandt’s poetic love ballads. Read More | Comment »

In the Music issue of the Oxford American, former No Depression editor Grant Alden contributed an article on the fall of the critic, or more accurately, the fall of his job as critic. No Depression was a landmark music magazine, responsible for defining alt.country in the 1990s and fostering the reemergence of Americana to its current thriving state. I lamented its folding as a bi-monthly publication last year (it has currently been revived as a quarterly “bookazine” published by UT Press), both for the loss of its thorough, extended features and coverage of regional artists that remain largely obscure. The magazine briefly tried to continue its mission online, but it was clear the editors’ hearts were not into online publishing. Read More | 2 Comments »

Although Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson was the Tuesday keynote speaker for the Interactive portion of South by Southwest, his concepts of the Long Tail and the freeconomics of his upcoming book, Free, have had perhaps more theoretical impact on the emerging digital music economy than any other writer today. His conversation with doubtful venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki was spirited, but left the question open of whether the model of Free, proven to have worked in a limited capacity already, will be able to generate money for the more general economy. Music, of course, is ground zero for many of these ideas. Anderson’s declaration that “Free is the best way to maximize your reach” may be true, but the important aspect of that equation for artists and their business partners (be they labels, managers, or agents), is converting that attention and reputation to money. Read More | Comment »

Last week, the Country Music Association released the findings of their Consumer Research Study, estimated by CMT president Brian Phillips as “perhaps the most far-reaching and comprehensive study of country music consumer attitudes and behavior ever undertaken,” and sampling more than 7,000 consumers. Perhaps the most interesting finding was that among those fans devoted to the genre and labeled “Countryphiles,” only about half have home Internet access. This is compared to the 70 percent of country music consumers considered more general music fans that do have home Internet access. The digital divide between Countryphiles and the trending of the rest of the industry makes sense, as this group is largely rural and older. Radio is still the dominant medium for discovery of new country music among these consumers, and they still purchase CDs over Mp3s. According to the survey, the group’s disinterest in the Internet was propelled by “three key reasons…: the cost, they had no interest/or need, and their inexperience or content concern.” Read More | Comment »

With his first show in four months, Gordon Lightfoot filled out Bass Concert Hall Tuesday night with a patient audience. There were noted rough patches to the 70-year-old Canadian songwriting legend’s set, but the crowd was forgiving and clearly there for the nostalgia, which Lightfoot delivered with warm humor. Bearing a strong resemblance to Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Lightfoot’s voice took a couple of songs to warm up, scratching through “Cotton Jenny” and “Carefree Highway,” though the more traditional, almost Irish folk sound of songs like “Sea of Tranquility” and “14 Karat Gold” sounded more comfortable. The requisite hits like “Sundown” and “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” were the most engaging, the brief moments when his backing quartet came alive. Maintaining the soft, country rock feel to “The Watchman’s Gone” or “Rainy Day People” would have been less disappointing if he hadn’t shown flashes of acoustic solo strength. The transition from “Ribbon of Darkness” into “Sundown” was a highlight, and allowed his lead guitarist to stretch out some bluesy notes that lifted the band beyond their simple, underwhelming rhythm. Then again, it’s hard to fault Lightfoot for the easy sound he’s known for, even given the moments that hinted at something more. “Triangle” opened the second set with its winding balladry, along with a decent take on Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee” and a moving “If You Could Read My Mind.” “Baby Step Back” added some comparative fire to the set, along with “Make Way for the Lady,” but it was tunes like “Early Morning Rain” and “Waiting for You” that reminded of Lightfoot’s timeless songwriting. Read More | Comment »

This past Monday night, I had the honor of joining a panel discussion hosted by the Austin Music Foundation on the future of Austin music. About 150 Austinites turned out for the event at Antone’s. Moderated by David Sullivan, who chaired the musicians’ services sub committee of the recent Live Music Task Force, the panel also included Rich Garza from Giant Noise PR, who is responsible for the success of last year’s Pachanga Fest, Waterloo Records owner John Kunz, Transmission Entertainment’s Graham Williams, and artists Carolyn Wonderland and Alex Vallejo. Carolyn Wonderland, who seems only able to speak in poetic metaphors, served as the highlight of the panel, but the conversation was lively, balancing a guarded recognition of the tough times that the economy is leveraging on Austin music with an excitement for the possibilities. There was a general echo from all the various industry representatives of Wonderland’s statement that we need to embrace the change to new mediums and models rather than resist them. Otherwise artists, retailers, PR, and even media risk falling behind the pace of their audiences and ultimately being left out. Read More | Comment »

February 1 marked the 20th anniversary of Blaze Foley’s death, when he was shot and killed outside the Eastside home of his friend Concho January. In those twenty years, the enigmatic songwriter has developed an almost mythic status, especially here in Austin, and his legend often makes it even more difficult to distinguish exactly who Foley was in real life. On Gurf Morlix’s new album, Last Exit to Happyland, he offers up an ode to his late friend with “Music You Mighta Made,” which not only captures the man, but also the lost possibilities that have lingered within Foley’s legacy. To get a better sense of how Blaze was actually received during his lifetime, I dug up this live review from the Chronicle archives. Written by Rob Klein and published on January 27, 1984, the review captures Blaze in perhaps his most famous setting, the Austin Outhouse. Read More | Comment »