Archive: 2009

Last December, Ben Harper debuted his new rock band, Relentless7, with a series of shows at small venues such as Spaceland in LA and the Mercury Lounge in New York City. Before the quartet heads out for an extensive world tour they’ll be playing a warmup show at Highline Ballroom on Feb. 17. Tickets for […]

Happy Birthday Bob Marley! Bob Marley – Trenchtown Rock

As if the Downtown New York City music scene hasn’t taken enough body blows in recent years, the building that houses The Mercury Lounge has been put up on the market according to Curbed. Does anyone have an extra $6.5 million to keep the joint a music venue? We’d be sad to see it go. […]

Each year the Sundance Film Festival throws a handful of interesting music-themed films into the mix. While the major Hollywood studios might not ever get behind these indie films, they are still definitely worth checking out.

When You’re Strange: Doors documentary featuring new, unseen footage from 1966-1971 narrated by Johnny Depp

The Carter: Love him or hate him, Lil’ Wayne is everywhere, including Sundance with this behind the scenes film about his rapid rise to super stardom over the past year.

READ ON for two more music-related movies debuting at Sundance 2009…

Listening to longtime HT favorite Marco Benevento’s latest studio effort, Me Not Me – a collection of unique sonic rearrangements of a wide variety of cover tunes – it quickly became apparent that this album would be more fun to listen to having the original versions at hand for comparison. Spanning quite the gamut, from […]

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/3089176[/vimeo] Fleet Foxes – Mykonos

This wasn’t Guitar Center or Musicians Warehouse or any of the other large corporate owned multi-instrument behemoth, this was your friendly neighborhood guitar shop. With a dazzling array of guitars hung to a basic pegboard backdrop, a cash register, “No Stairway To Heaven” – an ode to Wayne’s World – and “Shoplifters Will Die” signs, the stage was set for America’s favorite “one man jam-band” to take the stage.

[All photos by Megan Case]

The lights fell at 8:45 p.m. and Keller’s Guitar Shop & Clinic opened for business. Its chief proprietor, Keller Williams, ambled to center stage, with guitar in hand and a goofy grin on his face as a flurry of notes reverberated out of the Variety Playhouse’s speakers. Perhaps the most lovable and likeable acoustic axe man around, Keller’s unique sound and presentation are his hallmark; his clever, cheerful and upbeat grooves are his trademark. The sold-out show seemed relatively sparse when Keller started up, but slowly and surely filled in.

The first time I saw Keller back in ’99, I was absolutely blown away. He is able to combine his virtuosic guitar playing with bass lines, drum fills, beats, horns and keyboards looped through delay devices, which creates a thick pillow to either play, sing or solo over. The results are truly unique and often times sublime. Keller’s show on the last day of January in Atlanta was much of the same and that’s a good thing.

READ ON for more of Matt’s review of K-Dub at the Variety…

After a long nine years, Guns N’ Roses leader Axl Rose has finally granted another print interview. Billboard’s Jonathan Cohen recently got the reclusive rockstar to answer questions about Chinese Democracy, Best Buy’s promotion of the album, Universal’s handling of the disc and much more. Check it out.

The organizers of this year’s Grammy Awards Ceremony have done a good job of putting together a lineup of all-time greats including Radiohead, (with guest drummer Dave Grohl), Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, Adele and U2. As far as the awards, Lil Wayne leads all nominees with eight nominations. Friday [all times EST]: David Letterman: […]

Last week we kicked off the fifth edition of our Digging Deep series with five stellar videos featuring fun covers of some of our favorite songs from the YouTube archives. This week, we’ll conclude with five more kickass clips…

1. Former Drive-By Trucker Jason Isbell and his 400 Unit band have covered a number of songs since forming, but one of my favorites is their take on the Rolling Stones’ Sway…

READ ON to see covers of Buffalo Stance, Don’t Do It, Laid and more…

While Ryan Adams‘ future performing live may currently up in the air, the prolific singer/songwriter celeb dating-blogger will release an iTunes exclusive EP in time for Valentine’s Day. The seven track set titled Extra Cheese features some of Ry-Ry’s “best” love songs like Two, Answering Bell and My Love For You Is Real. The digital […]

The idea behind Origins of a Song is to take a fictitious look at a scenario that may or may not have led to the birth of a select few of the most memorable of songs. I secretly think they would make for sweet Saturday Night Live skits, but they haven’t called yet. This time, we’ll take a crack at the brilliant Robbie Robertson classic, made famous by Rod Stewart, Broken Arrow.

An annual tradition for nine-year old Robbie’s birthday, his mother has set the table with his favorite birthday breakfast, chocolate chip pancakes doused with Hershey’s syrup and loaded with vanilla ice cream and Cool Whip topping. The family, including Robbie’s mother and older brother Wayne, has been waiting patiently for over 15 minutes, the pancakes are getting cold, the ice cream is melting, and Robbie’s presents are just sitting there, begging to be opened.

Robbie [whining]: Mom, can I open my presents yet?

Mom: Not yet, honey. I know you are excited, but we have to wait for your Aunt Lenore.

Robbie’s older brother Wayne, clearly getting quite a kick out of his younger sibling’s uncontrollable anticipation, leans over and gives him a noogie.

READ ON for more about the origins of Robbie Robertson’s Broken Arrow…

The Umphrey’s McGee fanbase continues to get younger… [youtube]e1kKeKyb45A[/youtube] Melinda Identifies The Members of Umphrey’s Don’t forget to head over to WNEW to check out the latest stop on the Umphrey’s Virtual Tour. We featured Wappy Sprayberry on Tuesday.

It’s precisely a band like U-Melt that allows me to keep faith that the jamband scene hasn’t morphed into a hippier, hettier (gah!), scruffier version of indie rock, filled to the brim with lightning flash buzz bands that are followed seconds after their debuts with heaps of backlash and hipster scorn. Too much to deal with, man; that kind of pressure makes bands essentially have to compete against themselves, let alone navigate the quotidian shitshow of trying to make it as a working musician.

[Photos by Jeremy Gordon]

No, U-Melt is that latter day jamband that’s done right by itself and its fans through earnest and steady growth. Where I was once skeptical of their “all-in” approach – so many styles, genres and components strained into a mass that wasn’t once much for hooks and songs and more on long, occasionally great passages of improvisation – every time I’ve seen them I feel like they’ve been a bit more “on”: more authoritative, more interesting, more assured and more fun. If there’s still such a thing as a grower band in this fractious scene, U-Melt is it.

Hidden Track caught up with keyboardist Zac Lasher at the start of the band’s extensive winter and spring tour, following a terrific kick-off show at Mulcahy’s on Long Island. If you haven’t checked ’em out in a while, or even if you have, do yourself a favor, as the saying goes…

HIDDEN TRACK: U-Melt really continued to hit the road hard in the last year. Looking back over 2008, any particularly great nights or individual sets come to mind?

ZAC LASHER: Oh yeah, two in particular. One was our moe.down show, which was pretty spectacular because we were fortunate enough for moe. to have invited us back—they don’t often do that for bands that have played moe.down before. We played the Beer Tent again and sometime during that day a friend of mine pointed out to me that it was Michael Jackson’s 40th birthday. So, we decided to do an impromptu Michael Jackson thing and I’ve never heard an ovation for U-Melt like we got for that Michael Jackson medley. And the other one was we started out the year with a bang, our New Year’s show late night at the Highline Ballroom was pretty excellent.

READ ON for more of our interview with Zac Lasher of U-Melt…

It’s taken me a day or two to come up with a way to review the show I saw last Friday night in downtown Nashville. Lucero, a Memphis band I’ve been a fan of for a few years now, performed a two-night stand this past weekend.

I was a little late due to work obligations and then a car accident on the interstate. When I finally arrived, I found the place completely sold out and jam-packed. Don’t get me wrong – the large crowd was expected, that’s become the trend when Lucero travels to Nashville and their success is definitely a great thing for the band. I was able to catch the last three songs of what I believe to be a great up-and-coming band, The Dexateens.

The Dexateens are southern-garage rock from Alabama and I think (and hope for their sake) they become a band to reckon with in the near future. I was really happy I arrived in time to check out a few of their songs, so happy, I actually purchased one of their albums at the show. I can’t tell you the last time that happened.

READ ON for more of Jennifer’s thoughts on Lucero in Nashville…

Following up the soulful, boogie-rock of their last album “Armed Love,” The International Noise Conspiracy pick up where they left off with The Cross of My Calling. This time around they are opting for a slightly more psychedelic rock sound.           

Tommy Keene is one of America's two great practitioners of power pop along with Matthew Sweet. Yet while the latter, as befits his name, anticipates the best is yet to come, there's an ironic contrast with Keene’s moniker: his tunes carry an ever so slight but nevertheless palpable air of melancholy.

Multi-platinum rock band 311 have been hard at work in their own North Hollywood studio, The Hive, with legendary producer Bob Rock (Metallica, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith) putting the final touches on their ninth studio album. The highly anticipated record, Uplifter, is set for release via Volcano/Jive Records in late spring.   This is the band’s […]

Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band pre-recorded the music that was played during their Super Bowl half-time performance on Sunday (February 1), according to one of the event’s producers. Apparently the only live element of the performance was the Boss‘ vocals, while the music was laid down ahead of time. “The Super Bowl performances are all […]

Franz Ferdinand have announced a tour of North America, kicking off April 13 in Seattle, WA. The band will hit the road to support the release of their new album ‘Tonight: Franz Ferdinand’, which was released last month via Domino/Epic. The band are also set to perform at the Shockwaves NME Awards Big Gig, taking […]