Ryan Dembinsky

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid – Frank Zappa

The path to the recording studio was anything but a straight line for Alby Cohen. While he studied jazz at Goddard College under both Ernie Stires and Don Glasgow of the Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble, he never attended sound school. He had tinkered with 4-tracks in high school and college and knew basic tracking, but initially had more of an interest in being a musician.

He began his musical career by playing drums and singing in a band in Ithaca called Damn Brandy, which led him to take a field semester away from Goddard. As the story unfolds, the band gained some traction and next thing he knew he’d been living and touring out of Ithaca with Damn Brandy for a matter of years. The band recorded a couple of demos and went to studios to do some mastering, but before long, lives got in the way and the band broke up.

After the band split up, Alby moved back to Brooklyn; finished his last year of college remotely; put himself through grad school; and ultimately fell into advertising. He slugged it out in the corporate world, but eventually fell prey to the credit crisis in 2008. He got laid off. Meanwhile, a gentleman named Doug Martin – now his boss – had asked a few years back if he wanted to be involved in a studio he planned to build. The stars eventually aligned with the studio coming to fruition right and Alby hitting a career inflection point, so he decided to go full tilt. Cohen didn’t have much engineering experience at the time, but after realizing over the course of several rounds of corporate interviews that he had to go with his heart. He chose music.

READ ON for more of the Alby Cohen Story…

New Orleans youngster Trombone Shorty continues to bring the NOLA sound onto the national stage as he and his band Orleans Avenue performed on Conan Monday night. The song Do To Me is the first single off the  new album For True due out September 13th, which just might catapult Trombone Shorty to household name status. READ ON for the clip…

Rest assured, this video is here because of the music, not because a member of the band was on a show everyone loves. It’s true, the folk collective Cowboy and

The Cave Singers emerged as one of the big winners at the Newport Folk Festival this past weekend, as they delivered a terrific set which was featured live on NPR

When The Del McCoury Band teamed up with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band to record the album American Legacies, the merging of the two bands represented more then just a simple musical collaboration. The union brought together two groups who serve as the ambassadors of their respective genres, stewards of American music heritage. Over the years, beyond being of the foremost musicians in their fields, both The Del McCoury Band and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band under the direction of Ben Jaffe have taken on roles tasked with spreading the legacies of bluegrass and New Orleans Jazz music.

Del McCoury has not only spread bluegrass to the younger generation (quite literally) through teaching and playing with his own sons, but he has participated in countless collaborations throughout the festival circuit and embraced the various derivations of traditional bluegrass such as newgrass and the jambands. Similarly, Ben Jaffe and Preservation Hall have reached new audiences by incorporating New Orleans Jazz into collaborations with My Morning Jacket, Ani Difranco and Tom Waits, among others.

In what was undeniably one of the greatest honors I’ve ever had as a writer, I sat down with both Del McCoury and Ben Jaffe at the Ameritania Hotel just around the corner from the Ed Sullivan Theater right before the bands took the stage to tape their performance for the David Letterman show later that night. In speaking with Del and Ben, it takes all of about five seconds to see why everybody wants to play music with them. They radiate charisma and come across instantly as truly genuine people who are happy to be doing what they do. What follows is an intimate conversation that touches on the cross-fertilization of the two genres of music, the surprising similarities between New Orleans Jazz and bluegrass, the importance of family, and honoring one’s heritage.

Hidden Track: I was going to ask this to both you, but before Ben gets here, Del, when you were first starting out in music and learning your chops what led you to your style, to bluegrass, and to your instrument?

Del McCoury: I learned to play the guitar when I was about nine. My brother taught me to play. When I was about 11, he bought a record of Earl Scruggs and when I heard him play that three finger style banjo, it turned a light on. I thought, “That is what I want to do!” I learned it, and I played it until I went to work for Bill Monroe.

He needed a guitar player and a lead singer, which I thought, “I don’t know if I can do this?” I had played with him here in New York City, my first time in this town. Later, I went down to Nashville, because he offered me a job, and when I got there he still didn’t have a lead singer and guitar player. All along I think he was thinking that of me, because a lot of his musicians through the years could play different instruments and sing.

Anyway, he put me on that path instead of the path I wanted to go on, which was playing banjo and singing harmony. I could sing all the harmony parts. I was kind of a natural tenor singer and I sang baritone in a lot of bands, but when he got me to play guitar, it was a pretty big challenge, because I had to learn to play all the songs he had recorded and wanted to play at the shows. He told me, “You know, if you can make the grade doing this, you’ll like it better.” I remember thinking, “I believe he’s wrong there,” but he was right. So that’s what got me here on this path. It was actually Bill Monroe.

[Ben arrives and pulls up a stool]

READ ON for more of Ryan’s chat with Del and Ben…

While straightforward dance pop is hardly standard Hidden Track fare, an emerging pop sensation by the name of Emii recently caught our attention, as her history doesn’t read anything like that of your typical rising starlet. In fact, despite being rather easy on the eyes, she really couldn’t fit the mold of the budding celebrity any less. Before moving out to Los Angeles to record her first E.P., Emii actually fronted a metal band, worked at a comic book store in New York City and was an avid martial artist. Plus, she’s only two singles into her career and already has a collaboration with Snoop under her belt.

Interestingly, since her music career ramped up, the fascination for comic books and martial arts has not waned in the least. Rather, Emii remains a proud comic book/gamer nerd. So much so in fact that her last video, Mr. Romeo, which featured Snoop Dogg, was actually designed to look like the Final Fantasy video game series and she still makes a point to hit up the comic book shops whenever she comes to town.

“We were just talking about going to Forbidden Planet before we head back to L.A.,” Emii jokes. “And the last time I was here, I got to do a tour of Marvel Headquarters. My publicist said to me afterwards, ‘This is highlight of your existence isn’t it?’ They let me cart around the Thor hammer; I was like a little kid in a candy store. It’s sad though, the comic book store I used to work at in New York is no longer there, but it’s alright, because we have Forbidden Planet and Midtown Comics. So, I can still go and find a safe haven when I’m in New York.”

READ ON for more on the adorable pop star Emii…

At long last, Pearl Jam unveiled the official trailer to their eagerly anticipated Cameron Crowe-directed documentary, PJ20. With over 1,200 hours of rare archival footage at his disposal and a

Everybody has one of those bands that they feel like they should know a little bit more about. For some people it might be the Kinks, King Crimson or Pavement;

It’s too bad the new video from Foster the People already has a name via its song title, Helena Beat, because this one ought to be called Lords of the

In advance of the weekend’s performance at the Great South Bay Music Festival in Patchogue, NY, the Brooklyn-based band The Ramblers offered up a free exclusive download of their latest