In the interest of providing a soundtrack for the holiday weekend, and in case you missed one, we’re re-running the whole Stormy Mondays Acoustic Mix series, from Volume I up through last week’s installment. Hours and hours of gravely vocals and smoldering solos, Americana at its best. It’s just the right music for digesting some pumpkin pie, so as always enjoy!
SM Acoustic Vol. I
Dance, Dance, Dance – Neil Young
One More Day – The Wood Brothers
Blue Jeans Pizza – moe.
One > Take 5 – RyG
Stealin’ – Garcia Grisman
Living in the Country – Leo Kotke & Mike Gordon
Let the Morning In – The Slip
SM Acoustic Vol. II
Cassidy – GD
Predicting the Rain – The Slip
Intro > Almost Cut My Hair – David Crosby
Heart of Saturday Night – Tom Waits
Low Spark – JB and Friends
SM Acoustic Vol. II Bonus Mix
Blackbird – Bob Weir
Kind of Bird – Gov’t Mule
Motion Pictures – Neil Young
Castles in the Sand – Keller Williams
READ ON for three more Stormy Mondays – Acoustic Mixes…
For The Avett Brothers, 2009 could easily be considered their “break out” year – releasing their highly acclaimed major label debut I And Love And You and playing to larger
Where do these guys get off? It’s not enough that they sold out five of their last eight shows of the tour, but now they start charging $100/head to fucking watch them rehearse? What a bullshit money-grab. But this sentence, that I promised to open with, couldn’t be farther from the truth. What Chicago-based sextet Umphrey’s McGee is accomplishing by throwing these events effectively demonstrates what separates the men from the boys in the world of improvisational music.
A little background. S2 is an hour-long session – this one was closer to 75 minutes – with 50 fans who buy tickets and the members of UM and their crew. There is a giant projection screen visible to both the band and those in the audience and the attendees are encouraged to use their cell phones to text in themed suggestions. The texts arrive on UM sound caresser Kevin Browning’s laptop and he decides what gets put up on the screen for the next section of music. There were four sections of improv – containing between 9-12 themes – with short Q&As between featuring questions from the audience hosted by Lighting Crew Chief Wade Wilby.
More background: we need to look at 2009 as a whole and look at how these events are the perfect culmination of what I equate to the poker term of “showing your hand.” UM has always taken a methodical and precise approach to their music and to a degree their improvisation. The concept of “Jimmy Stewart” was explained in its best detail to date right here on Hidden Track in August of 2008 with help from the band and the band’s street team coordinator Jon McLennand. And in case it was not apparent from the written form, S2 is a variation on “Stew” short for Stewart. They also call these events Stew Art. READ ON for more on S2…
While the first seven episodes of Saturday Night Live’s 35th season have been hit or miss, this past Saturday brought us one of the funnier moments from the iconic comedy
Garage a Trois is a band which at first could be thought of as an all-star band of heavy hitters, but that would be a severe understatement. The band, which started as a trio consisting of saxophonist Skerik, guitar virtuoso Charlie Hunter, and drummer Stanton Moore, later adding vibraphonist Mike Dillon, has grown into a tightly structured, well oiled funk beast. Hunter is no longer part of the group, in that slot is one of the most in demand keyboard players around, Marco Benevento, who permanently joined the group in 2007.
It Might Get Loud is as revealing as a guitar documentary gets, even with the warts and all finale of the three playing a rough version of The Band’s “The Weight.” But that’s what makes the film worthy, it shows three rock stars at their most vulnerable and human – proving once again, the guitar rules over everything else.
After laying low for most of this year, James Murphy, the brainchild behind LCD Soundsystem, is revving up for a busy 2010. In addition to the impending release of the
After a nearly seven year stint between albums, legendary trip-hop duo Massive Attack are set to release their highly anticipated fifth studio album Heligoland on EMI’s Virgin Records on February
Gov’t Mule have outlined a second leg of dates behind their most recent studio album, "By a Thread," which surfaced earlier this year. Following its traditional New Year’s appearance at
