The members of My Morning Jacket “hand-picked” nine venues to debut the music of Circuital at for a short tour that augments all the festivals they’re playing at this summer.
If the average music festival is a 26.2 mile marathon, then SXSW is a 140-mile Iron Man challenge. Waking up on day four, our skin was burnt, our ankles were swollen, and our ears were bleeding. But just when it seemed like all hope was lost and we’d spend the day sleeping – one brave, grown-ass man poured a red bull into his coffee, gave a stern look across the kitchen table and said the following words:
“…Tighten. The Fuck. Up.”
And just like that we were off for the final day of SXSW.
[Kanye and friends took over SXSW 2011 with a late night concert]
Our first stop was the MOG party for TV on the Radio and Big Boi. TV’s set at Mohawk was basically the same thing we saw of their set the day before at Stubbs. But to see them in a venue like the open-air, multi-level, very limited capacity Mohawk added a great deal of excitement. The energy was fluid throughout the venue, and the band’s huge sound was even more encapsulated than usual.
There was about an hour break between TV on the Radio and Big Boi, and Yuck played the indoor stage at Mohawk. Despite their hype, we decided to hold our place to see Daddy Fat Sax in action. When he came on, he and MC Black Owned C-Bone led the excited crowd in a splattering of old school Outkast tracks and newer stuff from his own solo recordings. As the late afternoon sun started to fade, the onstage dance party kept energy and spirits high.
READ ON for more on Day 4 at SXSW from Three Grown Men…
Activist and scene fixture Wavy Gravy will celebrate his 75th birthday in style come May, when he hosts a bi-coastal series of concerts. On May 14, Bob Weir and Mickey
We lost a great bluesman yesterday when boogie-woogie piano player Pinetop Perkins passed away in Austin, TX at the ripe old age of 97. Perkins, a chain smoker who claims
One element that has been missing from the Allman Brothers Band March Madness run at the Beacon were horns. The Juke Horns are a Beacon run staple and finally made
Umphrey's McGee performing at The Fillmore,
On this fine evening, they would be playing the Viper Room in West Hollywood, not too far from their home base in Venice Beach. We met up following their sound check to discuss the band’s history, their dynamics and their self titled new album.
It probably would have been enough to let the cameras roll, do some tight close-ups of Alan Evans, Neal Evans and Eric Krasno getting all funky and dirty as only they know how; pan the sweaty Brooklyn Bowl crowd a few times and let the intensity of the music just carry the thing. But the Bowlive DVD is only partly about Soulive in concert; what you’re really getting with this abundantly pleasant release is two stories in one.
Umphrey’s McGee returned to San Francisco’s Fillmore on March 12 and 13 for a pair of performances that saw Colorado upstarts Big Gigantic open.
[All photos by Dave Vann]
Saturday night’s show featured a jam-heavy first set including extended takes on one of the newer songs in the UM repertoire Conduit, as well as Red Tape, a song from 2009’s Mantis that the band frequently showcases a middle section of improvisation. Before closing the first set with a mashup of Everybody Wants To Rule The World and The Way You Make Me Feel, guitarist Brendan Bayliss had the honor of helping a fan propose to his girlfriend from the stage, and she of course said “yes.”
Sunday’s show was easier to move around in compared to the sellout the previous night and the band paid tribute to the late Owsley ”Bear” Stanley by performing a partial instrumental rendition of Steely Dan’s Kid Charlemagne, a song written about Owsley’s influence on the 1960’s Bay Area LSD scene. Night two also saw Dominic Lalli of Big Gigantic lend his saxophone skills to The Rollin Stones’ vamp Can’t You Hear Me Knockin.’
The next show for UM is UMBowl II at Park West in Chicago on April 2. Previously sold out, the band is releasing a limited number of general admission tickets tomorrow, March 22, at 12PM Central Daylight Time.
READ ON for more of Dave Vann’s shots from UM in SF…
As the last of the empty bottles of Shiner Bock are cleaned up and the dust begins to settle on SXSW 2011, we can start to take a look back
