Umphrey’s McGee – Stubb’s Austin, TX 4/19/14 (Show Review)
A fellow music writer once described Eric Clapton as all technique and no soul. Where I differed from this writer was in my view that being highly talented but lacking soul is not necessarily a bad thing. The same can be said for Umphrey’s McGee. Not that Umphrey’s and Clapton are even in the same […]
Turchi Throws Down With Kudzu Boogie (INTERVIEW)
Listen to Reed Turchi’s gravelly, snarling voice and swaggering slide guitar playing and you’ll find his self-proclaimed style of “kudzu boogie” spreading over you and engulfing you much like that omnipresent Southern-growing plant it takes its name from. The music is steeped in the rhythmic dirty grooves of North Mississippi Hill Country blues brought to […]
Greyhounds – Fronting The Legacy of Memphis & Austin
Natural chemistry is one of the hardest things to find for a musician. You can do as many collaborations and sit-ins as you want, but finding one or two other musicians who you mesh with consistently is no easier than finding a significant other to spend the rest of your life with. Andrew Trube and […]
Luther Dickinson – Keeping It Real With Folk Punk Country Blues (Interview)
Luther Dickinson is excited. It’s not the fact that, at the age of 41 the Mississippi guitar player has already built a towering musical legacy as a founding member of the North Mississippi Allstars, the band he has fronted with his younger brother Cody since the mid-90’s. Nor is it any of the many (and […]
South By Southwest 2014 (SXSW) – 10 Established Stand Outs
As of this week, twenty-eight years have passed since the very first South By Southwest (SXSW) Music Conference took place in Austin, Texas. A lot has changed since then; massive growth, corporate influence and marketing dollars, and the evolution of the festival from a fairly underground industry event to a vital influencer of mainstream culture. […]
Drive By Truckers Hit Album 12 With ‘English Oceans’ – An Interview With Patterson Hood
The Drive-By Truckers (DBT) may be one of the most resilient bands around. For going on twenty years these Southern rockers have stayed on the road almost constantly while somehow managing to release at least one album almost every other year since starting the band. It helps that the band is fronted by Patterson Hood […]
St. Paul and the Broken Bones – Distinctive Croon & Effortlessly Retro
Every so often you hear a band that truly surprises you in the most delightful kind of way. Some weeks back I came across an album from a little band out of Alabama called St. Paul and the Broken Bones. Instead of the catchy, upbeat hook that bands often use to establish their presence on […]
Les Claypool “twangifies” with Duo de Twang (INTERVIEW)
Few musicians are as recognizable as Les Claypool. Between his bizarrely unique and hugely influential style of bass playing, darkly comical lyrics, and cartoonish, sinister vocal delivery, Claypool is a musical personality who would be impossible to rip off. In over three decades as a professional musician he has been involved in enough bands, collaborations […]
Railroad Earth – Interview With John Skehan
They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, and in the case of the New Jersey’s Railroad Earth that distance can be measured in time. It’s been three years since the group’s last studio release, but during that time the band has only grown as they’ve become a major touring act known for their unpredictably […]