Archive: 2011

We’d like to wish a very happy birthday to vocalist/trumpeter Jennifer Hartswick this morning. Come celebrate tonight at NYC’s Sullivan Hall, where Hartswick will perform as part of HT contributor Wade “Wyllys” Wilby’s New York Hustler Ensemble. Special guests include Pete Pidgeon and RAQ’s Todd Stoops along with guitarist Rob Salzer in what will be […]

Not even two weeks after it started, the current leg of Phish Summer Tour 2011 came to a close tonight at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago.

[Photo by Joel Berk]

Phish came out of the gates strong with the first Colonel Forbin’s Ascent > Fly Famous Mockingbird opener since November 3, 1989 (1,249 shows). While the Super Ball IX Forbin’s/Mockingbird contained a narration for the first time since the hiatus, tonight’s version did not. Next, Gumbo saw its first action since Merriweather back in June, while a typically fierce Possum was the fifth of this brief nine-show run. The group was clearly focused on reaching deep into their bag of tricks and in the middle of the set they came out with the Mike Gordon-penned Weigh, a song they’ve only played five times over the past 13 years.

There’s a special connection between the UIC Pavilion and Divided Sky. In 2004, guitarist Trey Anastasio told Charlie Rose that one of the most special moments of his Phish Experience happened during the Divided Sky pause on June 18, 1994 – a feeling perhaps re-created during this evening’s take on the classic tune. Alaska broke up the old school vibe before Bathtub was played on the 14th anniversary of the legendary Went Gin. Though they stuck “in the box” for this Gin, Trey brutalized his Languedoc throughout a hard-rocking, high-energy solo. The fretboard fireworks continued through Maze, beyond Cavern and into a perfectly placed First Tube set closer that fed off the energy provided by the frenzied crowd.

• Phish UIC Pavilion: Night One, Night Two

READ ON for a recap of the rest of the show along with tonight’s setlist and The Skinny…

Glide caught up withChappo drummer, Dave Feddock, to discuss their new EP, their unique fashion sense, and the background story of how they all met.

The Windjammer strikes again. Notorious for its muddy acoustics, the beachside venue somehow managed to muffle the sonically powerful Perpetual Groove.

On the heels of a limited sold-out U.S. summer tour that earned Peter Gabriel some of the best reviews of his career, he will release a full-length CD New Blood on October 11, 2011 distributed by EMI.  A continuum to his recent Scratch My Back release, the New Blood album will feature some of Gabriel’s […]

Ready for release on September 20 is Europe ’72: Vol. 2, a two-CD set featuring 20 newly mixed, never-before-released gems from the famed Grateful Dead 1972 tour overseas.  From all the Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings, engineer Jeffrey Norman spent many months mixing down the 16-track master tapes from every show, while mastering ace David […]

GRAMMY Award-winning singer/songwriter/producer Van Hunt will celebrate the release of his new studio album – What Were You Hoping For? – with a U.S. headlining tour. Launching at Webster Hall’s The Studio in New York City on September 19th, the outing marks his first national tour since 2008. See below for itinerary. Hunt toured widely […]

Back on Monday night, Phish delivered arguably the best version of Undermind yet as part of a fantastic second set at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago. The band has uploaded a pro-shot video from each 2011 show to Vimeo within a few days of the performance ending and for night one of the UIC run, […]

With Equifunk 2011 approaching this weekend, we wanted to give the lucky few who are attending our breakdown of what to expect from each act.

Band Name: Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe

Why they’re funky: Funk Saxophone. Read that again: Funk. Saxophone. Over the past 20+ years KDTU has built a funk empire. The six-man crew has have served as the torch bearers between the afromatic glory days of late ’70s funk into the present day booty revival. They are a contemporary classic of polished soul-funk and they’ve been known to blow the mothasuckin roof off the sucka.

What to expect: Being that there will be so many funk bosses around, expect these guys to host the most sit-ins. Also, expect to sweat in a profuse manner.

• Previously: Equifunk – The Birth of a Festival

READ ON for more bands to check out at Equifunk…

Armed with a semi-planned out schedule and a list of bands I absolutely could not miss, this past weekend I took to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco for my first Outside Lands with 60,000 other fans of live music. From what I have heard, getting to the park was not as difficult as in years past thanks in part to a paid shuttle being run all day from SF’s Civic Center straight to the festival grounds. Enough with the background, let’s get right into it.

Friday, August 12th

The first set I was able to catch was Phantogram who performed at Sutro Stage (the best stage of the festival, sunken down a little, a great place to catch a sunset act), whose material from their album Eyelid Moves translates very well to the live stage. In my biggest regret of the weekend, I opted out of seeing Foster The People to go check out the original lineup of The Meters. Unfortunately, The Meters spent a lot of time complaining about the gear they were provided, with guitarist Leo Nocentelli having the most issues. I don’t know if it was the trouble hearing or not, but the quartet seemed pretty confused and shockingly sloppy throughout their set – not what you expect from the godfathers of New Orleans. MGMT then delivered a tight set on the mainstage that included a cover of English Glory’s Broken Arrows. Their performance of the epic 11+ minute Siberian Breaks impressed me. The omission of their hit Kids from the setlist kept us all in hopes that somehow that it would be incorporated into one of Phish’s two sets, but it was not to be.

Phish delivered two safe sets filled with choice cover selections (this blogger’s first time seeing Frank Zappa’s Peaches en Regalia in 115+ shows), repertoire staples and a welcome performance of the band’s newest original, Steam, which segued nicely out of Velvet Underground’s Rock and Roll. One thing is for sure, Phish playing inside Golden Gate Park is a welcome upgrade over the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View.

READ ON for more of Dave’s Outside Lands 2011 Journal…

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid – Frank Zappa

The path to the recording studio was anything but a straight line for Alby Cohen. While he studied jazz at Goddard College under both Ernie Stires and Don Glasgow of the Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble, he never attended sound school. He had tinkered with 4-tracks in high school and college and knew basic tracking, but initially had more of an interest in being a musician.

He began his musical career by playing drums and singing in a band in Ithaca called Damn Brandy, which led him to take a field semester away from Goddard. As the story unfolds, the band gained some traction and next thing he knew he’d been living and touring out of Ithaca with Damn Brandy for a matter of years. The band recorded a couple of demos and went to studios to do some mastering, but before long, lives got in the way and the band broke up.

After the band split up, Alby moved back to Brooklyn; finished his last year of college remotely; put himself through grad school; and ultimately fell into advertising. He slugged it out in the corporate world, but eventually fell prey to the credit crisis in 2008. He got laid off. Meanwhile, a gentleman named Doug Martin – now his boss – had asked a few years back if he wanted to be involved in a studio he planned to build. The stars eventually aligned with the studio coming to fruition right and Alby hitting a career inflection point, so he decided to go full tilt. Cohen didn’t have much engineering experience at the time, but after realizing over the course of several rounds of corporate interviews that he had to go with his heart. He chose music.

READ ON for more of the Alby Cohen Story…

The Trey Anastasio Band’s short fall tour just got a little bigger with the addition of a pair of shows in the Carolinas. The septet will perform at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville, North Carolina on October 6 and the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on October 7. Tickets will be […]

New Orleans youngster Trombone Shorty continues to bring the NOLA sound onto the national stage as he and his band Orleans Avenue performed on Conan Monday night. The song Do To Me is the first single off the  new album For True due out September 13th, which just might catapult Trombone Shorty to household name status. READ ON for the clip…

After a barn-burner last night, Phish returned to the UIC Pavilion in Chicago for the second of three shows at the 9,250-capacity indoor venue tonight.

[Photo by Joel Berk]

Night two of the UIC run started with a few of Phish’s more silly and short rarities – Dinner and a Movie and Ha Ha Ha. A scorching Chalk Dust Torture gave the audience their first taste of tension and release during Trey Anastasio’s solo. A pair of songs off Round Room – Mexican Cousin and Walls of the Cave – came next and was followed by the old school pairing of Runaway Jim and Foam. I Didn’t Know saw its first action of 2011 as Phish continued to dig deeper into their repertoire. Another well-played Ocelot, the fifth Ginseng Sullivan since the hiatus and a somewhat shaky Wedge led into a Limb By Limb that deliciously moved away from the tune’s main structure. To close the first set, Phish covered The Rolling Stones’ Let It Loose for the first time since they covered Exile On Main Street at Festival 8.

While the opening stanza was light on improvisation, a 20-minute Down With Disease that kicked off set two set a different tone. Disease quickly veered off its standard track, as the band explored a number of interesting spaces, eventually settling into a lengthy transition jam that seemed to zig towards a number of different songs before finally zagging into Twist. Put this Disease at the top of your “must download” list. The group toyed with the beginning of Twist, both in tempo and vocally, during the choruses. Backwards Down The Number Line continues to chase Possum as most played song of 3.0 and after getting the call mid-second set tonight is only two versions behind. A straight-forward Theme led into a Golden Age that contained a spacy end segment that eventually led into a cover of A Day In The Life by The Beatles.

Most of Trey’s You Enjoy Myself solos have been short and to the point over the past few years. For this evening’s second set-closing YEM, Anastasio showed much more patience and built up the pace methodically leading up to a big finish. Sure a three-song encore doesn’t grab the attention last night’s five-song monster did, but the Slave To The Traffic Light that followed Heavy Things was a beaut, while Rocky Top gave the crowd one more chance to get their ya ya’s out. The UIC run and the current leg of Phish tour ends tomorrow.  READ ON for tonight’s setlist and The Skinny…

Natural Child come from Nashville and call themselves “the greatest rock n’ roll band in the world”. Known as much for this bold sense of humor and hard partying ways as much as their rocking live show, the band recently released a 1971 on Infinity Cat Recordings. The sound is raw, loose, and limber, vacillating between the Stones-y demarcation points of bluesy R&B and rollicking acoustic numbers. This ramshackle construction seems to be part of the band’s allure. At any moment self-destruction sounds possible.

Pretty Lights is hosting a show on October 13th at the Tuscaloosa Amphitheater to benefit the Tuscaloosa Disaster Relief Fund. The event will feature performances by Pretty Lights and special guests STS9 and Big Gigantic. Pretty Lights will donate $5 from every ticket sold to the Tuscaloosa Disaster Relief Fund.  The Tuscaloosa Amphitheater has a […]

Kimya Dawson is not preaching to the choir, rather gladly admits standing in the middle, arms around each member, singing her upcoming self-released album, Thunder Thighs due out October 25th via Burnside Distribution.  As Kimya's seventh album, the assumed lo-fi sound has taken a delightful turn with the addition of pianos, backing choirs, string arrangements and several beats produced by rapper […]

David Byrne, never one to abide by guidelines, is one such artist and his recent film release, Ride, Rise, Roar delivers a healthy balance; satisfying the desire to see the live performances, but also offering a close inspection of the proceedings that make his live shows so arresting. 

The musical project known as Owl City was created by Adam Young in 2007. His electronic music made him a Platinum performer with the hit single “Fireflies” on the album Ocean Eyes. His new record All Things Bright and Beautiful continues that trend and brings him on tour this summer.

In anticipation of the 2011 Acoustic Tour, Glide Magazine’s Peter Zimmerman had the distinct pleasure of speaking with both Deb and Steve about the tour and their career in general. What resulted was a enjoyable conversation about the daunting task of choosing (and rehearsing) forty songs for the tour, devising varied setlists, their approach to writing, and perhaps most intriguing, what constitutes a typical day in the life of The Weepies.