The music of prog-rockers The Hue will be featured on WXRT’s Local Anesthetic tonight at 7:30 PM CST. Each week on Local Anesthetic, Chicago music guru Richard Milne looks at
Buddy Holly was only 23 when his life was tragically taken – along with Richie Valens and The Big Bopper – in a plane crash. Holly’s brief recording career lasted
Prog-jammers Umphrey’s McGee kicked off a four-show, three-night run at the Higher Ground outside of Burlington, VT last night with a rare songlist show. The Chicago-based sextet generally assembles a
Austin City Limits veterans Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel team up for this week’s episode of the legendary PBS program. The two acts collaborated for the recently released
Railroad Earth has confirmed to Hidden Track that bassist Johnny Grubb will leave the band at the end of the year. According to a spokesperson, Grubb’s last shows with the band will be its New Year’s Run concerts in San Francisco, CA (Dec. 27, 28) and Portland, OR (Dec. 30, 31).
[Photo by Lewis Cooper of GonzoShots.com]
Grubb first indicated he would leave Railroad Earth in a post to his personal blog on Wednesday. According to the bassist, the decision was one borne of a “medium-range plan that had me exiting RRE at the end of [2010]” and continuing into a career in production and computer programming.
“About a year and a half ago (as regular readers know), the flame of my creativity began lighting a different path than the one I was on with RRE,” Grubb wrote. “I’d always been pretty good with computers. I only recently realized that the main reason that I like recording and production so much was mainly because it involves using and being good with computers. It took an iPhone to spark the idea that I should take matters into my own hands and start learning how to program myself.”
Grubb writes that he accelerated his plans depart once it became apparent that Railroad Earth was about to sign a new record deal. The deal was hinted at by RRE’s Todd Sheaffer in an interview with Hidden Track earlier this week. READ ON for more on Johnny Grubb leaving RRE…
Now that we’ve had a few weeks to look at all of the photos from Phish’s Festival 8, we’ve put together our list of the best costumes at the event. It was a difficult decision as there were dozens of amazing ideas from multiple Festival 8 basketball teams to various Angry Mobs of Joggers to Pocahontas, but we whittled down the contenders to a list of ten.
10. American Gladiators
[Photo by Melany]
Thank god these characters ignored the recent version of American Gladiators in favor of the original ’80s edition. They really do look like Nitro and Blaze. READ ON for the top nine costumes at Phish’s Festival 8…
While My Morning Jacket continue their extended hiatus, they did manage an animated reunion. The Southern Rockers will be featured prominently in an upcoming episode of Fox’s American Dad entitled
Kevn Kinney’s an easygoing, disarmingly funny kind of guy, but when he gets down to brass tacks — singing and wailing away on guitar, that is — he packs quite a wallop of soul, R&B, power pop, rock, folk, country, blues and more than a little grit.
That’s long been the secret sauce for the music he’s made with Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ and solo: easy to get into, often lighthearted and even funny, but let it get to you, and you realize it’s loaded with heartbreak, wrenching drama and deep soul. The phrase “Drivin’ and Cryin'” — the band itself’s name taken from one of Kinney’s own songs — pretty much covers it. So does Straight to Hell, perhaps Kinney’s best-known song and something of an anthem in southern rock circles.
The band first formed in 1985, and why it never blew up much beyond its southeast U.S. fan stronghold is one of those music industry curiosities that just never made any logical sense. The present lineup, in place more or less since 2001, includes Kinney and co-founding bassist/mandolinist Tim Nielsen, along with drummer/percussionist Dave V. Johnson and guitarist Mac Carter.
This year yielded Drivin’ and Cryin’s first full-length studio album in 12 years, Whatever Happened to The Great American Bubble Factory.
Kinney lives in Brooklyn these days and often makes the rounds at his favorite New York country and roots haunts (his wife, Shayni Rae, runs the ongoing Shayni Rae’s Truckstop jam, now on occasional Wednesdays at the Bowery Electric). But this month is momentous for another reason: Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ itself has several gigs coming up that represent the band’s first northeast tour dates in more than a decade. HT checked in with the man to find out, well, what took so long.
HIDDEN TRACK: We don’t get to see Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ in the northeast too often. What gives, man?
KEVN KINNEY: Ha, yeah, Drivin’ hasn’t played up here — no, hasn’t played north of the Mason Dixon since we were on tour with The Who in, I want to say, 1997. I’ve been back and forth for seven or eight years — New York and Georgia — since 2001, and i’ve been up here full time for three years. We’ve been doing Shayni Rae’s Truckstop. It was me and Anton Fier and Catherine Popper and the Madison Square Gardens and others. What a great scene that was. READ ON for more of Chad’s chat with Kevn Kinney…
I caught an amazing Bruce Springsteen show this past Saturday night that was so good I was inspired to seek out some Boss bootlegs to add to my collection. Luckily,
We’ve been singing the praises of Van Ghost for over a year at this point and we were excited to come across the band’s first webisode featuring footage of the
