TCB

---

Bullet the Blue Sky

• Sound Team sent the Chronicle a preemptive e-mail last Friday announcing that they've officially been dropped from Capitol Records and "couldn't be happier," according to singer Matt Oliver. "Labels have already started sniffing around, but we're in no rush," he adds. The band is working on a new album ("a real doozy") at their Big Orange studio on the Eastside and should have limited-edition 12-inch and CD single "Empty Room"/"Ashes" in stores next month. Fulfilling Newton's Third Law of indie rock, Matador Records has signed Austin folksmiths Shearwater and will re-release a two-disc edition of last year's Palo Santo April 10.

• Happy fifth birthday to the Austin Music Foundation, which celebrates 7pm tonight (Thursday) at Antone's with Stasis, Pink Nasty, and the Jungle Rockers, part of AMF and ME Television's Emerging Artist Series. Free dinner will be given for the first 100 people to show up. And cake! ME's cameras will stick around to film the release party for The Greatest Thing I've Ever Learned, the debut by former Endochine singer Casey McPherson's new group Alpha Rev.

• Continental Club owner Steve Wertheimer recently bought the circa-1933 Avenue Barber-shop on South Congress a few blocks south of the club and hired former Continental employee Big Kev, just back from five years on Green Day's road crew, as lead barber. Meanwhile, the upstairs Continental Club Gallery, featuring artwork from musicians Bob Schneider, Ethan Azarian, and soon Joe Ely, is now open seven nights a week, with David Garza settling into three-month weekly residency there Monday.

• Mark Seliger, who grew up in Amarillo and went to UT before becoming one of Rolling Stone's signature photographers, opens "In My Stairwell" in person at Austin's Fielding Lecht Gallery, 708 Congress, next Thursday. Drawn from Seliger's eponymous 2005 book, "Stairwell" features portraits of friends (Matthew Barney, Susan Sarandon, Willie Nelson) taken in his NYC apartment and runs through May 11.