February 17, 2011

We’re sad to report that a longtime member of the Widespread Panic crew, Garrie Vereen, passed away on Wednesday morning due to what a statement calls “unexpected complications from his

Eric Lindell @ Sullivan Hall, February 11

If you were around Manhattan in the late ’80s and early ’90s seeing music night in and night out, you lived through a special time. Bars and clubs all over town were pumping out soulful sounds, bluesy stomps and rockin’ romps. Delta 88 over behind FIT, Manny’s Car Wash on the Upper East, Dan Lynch’s on the corner of 14th & 2nd, the Mondos in the West Village and of course Tramps on 21st or the Lonestar on 5th Avenue. On any given night, at any of these venues, one could walk through the door to hear Dr. John or Joey Miserable & the Worms, The Meters or Joan Osborne, Stevie Ray Vaughan or Blues Traveler, Chris Whitley or the Spin Doctors. And in almost every band there was a guitar slinger burning up the stage.

[All photos by Marc Millman]

If you missed those seedier days in the City, but you’ve been down to N’awlins, then you can appreciate this type of atmosphere. And Eric Lindell from NOLA by way of San Mateo, CA is the right man at the right time to help invoke that atmosphere. Lindell has been making albums since 1996. But he really hit his stride after signing to Alligator Records in 2006, where he recorded three albums. The first album, Change In The Weather (2006) was a compilation of his early albums and EPs. He followed that with Low On Cash, Rich In Love (2008) and Gulf Coast Highway (2009). He played a sampling from those albums as well as last year’s Between Motion and Rest and Cazadero (set to be released on March 22nd).

Lindell’s band has a great mix of a young rhythm section and some older “veterans.” Watching Will McMains (drums) & Myles Weeks (stand-up bass) play off of each other is a lot of fun. McMains looks like he could just be graduating from high school. And yet he plays with a subtle swinging touch that most of today’s rock drummers seem to lack as they pound on their kits. And Weeks really works that upright bass, forcing even Lindell to watch him and just smile as they jam. These two were augmented by another band regular, Derek Huston (ex-Iguanas) on saxophone along with Chris Fitzgerald (saxophone) and Arne Wendt (keys).

READ ON for more on Eric Lindell at Sullivan Hall…

With Three Grown Men’s coverage of next month’s South by Southwest Festival quickly approaching, we decided to peruse the list of the hundreds of bands being showcased to weed out the acts we want to catch while in Austin. The alphabetical list of featured bands on the festival’s website is more than slightly daunting. What we discovered is, about 90% of the featured acts are brand new to us and lots of the band names are completely off the wall and ridiculous. 3GM decided to do an experiment in which we tried to guess what some of these bands would sound like based solely on their moniker and then actually listened to them. Take a look…

Jonathan Kosakow

Band name: Butts

What I think they’ll sound like: The simple and immature absurdity of this band name speaks to me in a way that not many things speak to me. And, it doesn’t hurt that when the band’s biography contains this sentence: “What started as a joke soon turned into something bigger as Butts exploded all over the place.” I’m going to wager a guess and say that Butts isn’t much more than a drummer farting on his snare and a fat man in a tight t-shirt jiggling across a tiny stage.

What they actually sound like: Two chicks – at least I think they’re both chicks – singing about being out of toilet paper over distorted guitar. I’m going to give myself half a point on this one.

READ ON to see how 3GM did identifying the music of SXSW artists Cheeseburger, Yiddish Cowboys, Fat Pimp and more…

Filmmakers Jeff Baraka and Cam Be have put together a fascinating 10-minute documentary about The Roots, which profiles the human side behind the “band that never sleeps.” If you didn’t

Here’s a quote that may shock and horrify Phish fans… I’m trying to teach [Justin Bieber] about Phish and how great they are. We actually met Trey [Anastasio] at a