Archive: 2015

Once again the Heartbreaker Banquet returned to the dusty old Western town of Luck, Texas on Willie Nelson’s ranch outside Austin. Since 2012 this one-day event has functioned as an exclusive, invite-only offshoot of SXSW. Each year the organizers bring in a consistently impressive lineup composed mainly of established acts within the Americana and alt. […]

I first learned about the Tuesday music release date when I began copping the ICE magazine newsletter in about 11th grade. They used to have it on the sales counter of Rhino Records in New Paltz, NY, a place I have been shopping since it opened up in town 25 years ago this year. I […]

Photos by Cathy Poulton of Neil Diamond at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, PA on 3/15/15, Edit this setlist | More Neil Diamond setlists

Wednesday marked the first full day of big unofficial parties at SXSW, and in true Texas fashion a previous forecast of rain actually became a perfect sunny day. Perhaps it was due to the fact that many people were still at work or maybe just weren’t dedicated enough to kick things off so early, but […]

Brandi Carlile is on top of the world, and nowhere was this more apparent than on stage at the Music Hall of Williamsburg last Wednesday night. Carlile took the intimate venue by storm after finding out her newest studio album, The Firewatcher’s Daughter, broke into the top ten on the Billboard 200. In a genuine […]

Age and optimism are recurring themes for the jazz trumpeter Herb Alpert this week at the Café Carlyle in New York, where he and his wife, the singer Lani Hall, are performing nightly through March 21. Alpert told a full club on Wednesday that he will turn 80 later this month. He spent only a […]

Wally’s obscure 1974 LP is a lost soft-prog masterpiece, suggesting the bizarre crossover of David Crosby fronting Curved Air.

With all the recent Phish related discussion of late is Trey Anastasio’s involvement as lead guitarist for The Grateful Dead’s Fare Thee Well performances in Chicago this summer, there was buzzing from phans as to how lengthy a summer tour Phish would lay out surrounding the Soldier Field dates.  Well, as  has been the norm […]

“Ladders” [rating=7.00] “Lawn Mower Maintenance and Postnatal Care” [rating=8.00]  This week started a whole new chapter for the Yahoo video platform Yahoo Screen. That is, the cult favorite and critically ignored Community began its fabled sixth season, premiering on the 17th. With a strong two episode set and free viewing space, Yahoo has done something Netflix, Hulu, […]

Jones Family Photo Credit: Otis Ike Each year it seems like the music portion of SXSW gets started a little earlier and this year the parties and shows were pretty much in full swing by Monday. While one part of you knows that preserving yourself for the marathon week to come is crucial, it is impossible […]

[rating=8.00] Are you still hanging on to Led Zeppelin’s 2007 reunion in London? Are you weary about the off and on again status of Australia’s Wolfmother? And then there’s the roller coaster ride of questions that surround California’s Queens of the Stone Age. Well, if you like any or all of these bands, maybe a […]

Fans of Grateful Dead music have much reason to celebrate of late. With the affectionately (and, from a marketing perspective, cleverly) dubbed “GD50” celebration – 2015 marking what would have been the band’s 50th anniversary – there has been an abundance of artists taking advantage of the reignited interest in the extensive songbook of Grateful […]

[rating=8.00] Papa Mali’s latest album Music Is Love is proof that positive eccentricity can be a definite a virtue in the realm of music. The Louisiana native, whose given name is Malcolm Welbourne, collaborates with producer John Chelew (Blind Boys of Alabama, Charlie Musselwhite, John Hiatt) on a set of tunes as spooky as they […]

[rating=9.00] If you take Pink Floyd, stick them down south and add just the right amount of grit and dirt, you’ll have the killer Austin band the Bright Light Social Hour. A Southern psych rock aesthetic runs through the veins of their new record Space is Still the Place. It’s trippy, but not meandering, and […]

Andy Fraser, bassist with Free and co-composer of the classic “All Right Now” died on March 16th  A cause of death was not immediately announced, but Fraser had been battling both cancer and AIDS recently. Fraser was part of John Mayall‘s Bluesbreakers as a teenager before co-founding Free with Paul Rodgers in the late ’60s. A survivor of both cancer and AIDS, Andy […]

“Bingo” is a pleasant surprise — returning to its dominantly dry-comedy format, the show manages to harness some actual plot development.

Those who were unable to score a golden ticket to Ryan Adams’ one-man two-night stand at Carnegie Hall can now experience every one of the 42 career-spanning (and a pair of previously unreleased) songs Ryan played over the course of November 15 and 17, 2014 with the April 21 release of RYAN ADAMS: LIVE AT […]

[rating=9.00] Funny how one can measure the shifts in civilization by the span of time that has lapsed between new albums from a favorite band. And in the eight years that lapsed between Modest Mouse records, we’ve experienced a societal de-evolution the likes of which none of us presently alive on Earth have ever endured. […]

Legendary songwriter, vocalist, guitarist and 19-time Grammy Award-winner Eric Clapton will release a brand-new ‘Best Of’ compilation, entitled Forever Man, via Reprise Records on April 28th in the U.S. Featuring 51 tracks over three CDs, Forever Man spans three decades of Clapton’s Reprise Records years and features classic studio tracks and a Blues-themed disc. The collection traces much of Clapton’s career featuring the […]

Based on location alone, New Orleans’ BUKU Music + Art Project is poised to be the most New Orleans thing there is, right? Held on the sweeping grounds of Blain Kern’s Mardi Gras World — the place where floats are built and props hang from rafters staring you down like that teenager on molly — […]