Knoxville music fans, we travel from East Tennessee to Los Angeles to Pennsylvania to London to Dublin this week for Free Music Friday. OK, maybe just through the music. Regardless, our arms are tired! Ba-dum-pum. Good thing we stick to music instead of comedy. We can’t all be diamonds. So we will stick to music at knoxmusictoday.com. Enjoy another fine week of Free Music Friday!

Fitz and The Tantrums bring the funk AND the soul!

Fools Gold by Fitz & The Tantrums – More Than Just a Dream, the second album by the Los Angeles band Fitz & The Tantrums, is no MoneyGrabber. Or maybe it is! If you remember, we featured a Fitz song very early for Free Music Friday, back in January 2011, in fact. The most recent album is a bit more ‘produced’ as opposed to ‘retro’, but we think you will ‘like’ it. And perhaps ‘dance’ to it. OK ‘enough’.

We have the fisheye on The Ocean Blue!

Give It A Try by The Ocean Blue – So these guys, The Ocean Blue, are British, right? Oh contraire, buddy. The Ocean Blue hails from… wait for it… Hershey, Pennsylvania! That’s right. Home of the candy bar. The band signed a three-record deal in 1988 with Sire Records when they were still in high school. Since then, the band has released six albums, including their most recent release, Ultramarine, which represents the band’s first studio album since 1999. They’re back, people, with fantastic British-Pennsylvania pop!

The Palma Violets enjoy some bangers and mash

All the Garden Birds by Palma Violets - Samuel Thomas Fryer (vocals, guitar), Alexander “Chilli” Jesson (vocals, bass), Jeffrey Peter Mayhew (keyboards), and William Martin Doyle (drums) are London UK’s Palma Violets. The band released their debut album, 180, in February 2013 and the first single from the album, Best of Friends, was voted NME’s song of the year in 2012. Regardless of what NME says, we like this one better. It’s not complicated. All you need is love.

Vampire Weekend hosting ‘What Not to Wear’

Everlasting Arms by Vampire Weekend – Talk about hype. H – Y – P – E. The third album by indie magnets Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires Of The City was released this week. Will it live up to the hype of being one of the most anticipated albums of 2013? Perhaps. Here is a bit more about the new album by Ryan Dombel for Pitchfork.com -

Still, Vampire Weekend make a damn good case for wisdom all across Modern Vampires. Yes, this is a more grown-up album. It largely trades in the Africa-inspired giddiness of their first two records for a sound that’s distinctly innate and closer to the ear. There’s more air in these songs, more spontaneity, more dynamics. The overarching themes– death and a dubious sense of faith– are certainly Serious. But you never feel like you’re being preached at while listening to this album. Koenig and company are probably more clever and gifted than you, sure– but they’re not rubbing your face in it or anything. Their message is one of collective understanding and betterment, and Modern Vampires is the kind of album that’ll have you Googling for Buddhist temples and Old Testament allusions at 3 a.m. while listening to reggae great Ras Michael (who’s sampled on opener “Obvious Bicycle”). Now, you don’t have to get obsessed to enjoy this music, but it’s presented with such care that you can’t help but want to learn about its deeper meanings. So while Koenig gave up a potential teaching career to take his chances as a rock singer, he’s still doling out knowledge in his own way.

Though the record often traverses in darkness– the zipped-tight “Finger Back” alludes to historic atrocities and brutality while “Hudson”, easily the band’s bleakest track to date, imagines an apocalyptic Manhattan– there’s also hope here. Partly because Vampire Weekend seem to have internalized all of the positive traits of their internet-soaked generation while resisting the ugly ones: they’ll offer jokes and humanity on Twitter without navel-gazing; they’ll play a concert for a credit-card company while roping in Steve Buscemi for promo videos that are no-shit funny; they’ll use the tools of modernity to expand their universe rather than contract it. And then they’ll go ahead and crack your heart in two.

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Maryville’s Nathan Nicholson (second from right) and The Boxer Rebellion

Diamonds AND Low by The Boxer Rebellion – It isn’t very often that the headlining band for Free Music Friday features a local. But indeed this week it does! London’s The Boxer Rebellion is Todd Howe, Adam Harrison, Piers Hewitt, and Maryville native Nathan Nicholson. The band recently released a new album, Promises, to much fanfare. Here is a bit more about the band from a fantastic article by our favorite local entertainment writer, Steve Wildsmith for The Daily Times -

Brooding, languid, ethereal — all those qualities worked well for The Boxer Rebellion on its last album, 2011’s “The Cold Still,” but when it came time to record a follow-up, the band was ready to let loose.

Singer Nathan Nicholson, a 1999 graduate of Maryville High School and an American expatriate living in London, is no stranger to brooding material. His crooning vocals, ranging from a tortured falsetto to a lingering note of choirboy-like beauty, seem made for songs that explore the beautiful chaos resulting from missed opportunities, shattered relationships and a longing so deep it manifests itself as a physical ache.

But Nicholson — the son of Maryville attorney Joe Nicholson — and his bandmates (guitarist Todd Howe, drummer Piers Hewitt and bassist Adam Harrison) are no strangers to rock ‘n’ roll, either. And on “Promises,” the band’s new album that was released this week, they seem determined to remind the world of that fact.

“The initial feeling was that we wanted it to be a little more upbeat,” Nicholson told The Daily Times recently in a phone call from the band’s London rehearsal space. “We wanted more of a precise sound, something that would work well on radio. Just from a production standpoint, there’s a big difference between our last album and this album, because on the last one, there wasn’t really any thought toward that. On this one, we wanted it to sound good on everybody’s radio.”

Not that “The Cold Still” does not. Produced by studio veteran Ethan Johns — a guy who’s worked with such eclectic artists as Ryan Adams, Tom Jones and Kings of Leon — “The Cold Still” is a work of staggering beauty, simmering with restrained passion and contemplative as a whole. Johns’s involvement says much about how far the band had come since Nicholson first traveled to London and fell in love with the city as part of a cultural exchange program in 2000. After returning home in February 2001, he didn’t stay long, by 2002, he was back in England, where he met Australian guitarist Howe. Joined by Hewitt and Adam Harrison (who replaced Nicholson’s childhood friend and fellow Maryville boy, Rob Loflin, when Loflin opted to return to the States and enter medical school), the band started building a grassroots fanbase.

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U2 as yutes

Stories For Boys by U2 – Before the Dublin quartet of Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen, Jr. exploded into the stratosphere of the rock gods, they made some really great music. Our Free Music Friday Anthem this week is an under-the-radar song by the band from their classic 1980 debut album, Boy. In including the album in their Top 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time, Rolling Stone commented,

“Too ingenuous for punk, too unironic for New Wave, U2 arrived on Boy as big-time dreamers with the ambition to back it up.“

Indeed.

Who:   Christabel and the Jons

Where:   Knoxville Museum of Art

When: Friday, May 17 (6 pm)

Fans of Knoxville music, SHE’S BACK! Or at least back for a visit. Our good friend and longtime knoxmusictoday.com favorite Christa DeCicco will be returning from the Virgin Islands to spread some wonderful music to Scruffy Citizens this week and next with her band, Christabel and the Jons! Ms. DeCicco has been wintering (and springing, so far) out of country, so it will be nice to see her back on the stage in Knoxville. The band will be the feature performers at the Knoxville Museum of Art’s Alive After Five show this Friday, May 17 and then also appearing next Saturday, May 25, at the Preservation Pub. So be sure to get out your dancing shoes and go see Christabel and the Jons for a few rare Knoxville performances!

And in case you have forgotten, the fantastic Christabel and the Jons –

Knoxville music fans, there are numerous opportunities available in Al Gore’s Interweb to experience music. Our personal favorite at knoxmusictoday.com, Pandora, provides an online ‘radio’ with song selections tailored to the listeners preferences. This week, another internet behemoth, Google, announced a new online music service – Google Play. Is it revolutionary? Not really. Convenient? More likely. Although we had problems getting the system set up, we can likely write that off to allergies and ‘operator error’. Regardless, it is available and it does provide a service. Here is a portion of a fine review of the program by James McQuivey for Forbes.com -

… one announcement debuted at I/O that doesn’t move the needle for Google — at least not as much as it could have — is the Google Play Music All Access pass. Despite the convoluted moniker, the service is straightforward: Pay $9.99 a month (in the US for now, more countries to come) and you’ll have unlimited access to a cloud-based music library with intuitive features that allow elegant discovery, consumption and sharing of music.

If it sounds familiar, it’s because it is. The service can’t differentiate on its music library because the best it can do is license the same library that Spotify and Rdio already offer. All Access also creates playlists for you based on your music tastes as expressed by you directly or learned from your listening patterns and friends. That should also sound familiar because the same value is contained to various degrees in Pandora, iTunes and Amazon Cloud Player.

Bottom line: despite working really hard, the best that Google can do in music is to catch up to everybody else in the field. And that’s precisely what the company has done.

Continue reading here

Knoxville music fans, there is one important question for Free Music Friday this week. Can you dance to it? We know WE can, but can YOU? To take the test, get out your dancing shoes and enjoy this week’s selections. Or at least do a little chair dancing.

And just in case you need something a bit more non-dance worthy, we have plenty of music to sample in our Free Music Friday Archives!

Daft Punk, not so lucky

Get Lucky by Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams - It’s DISCO, people! And it’s BACK! OK, maybe not completely. Daft Punk is Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. And yes, they are French. And they’re playing at your house. As represented by their typical on-stage personas donning masks, the duo has a unique take on musicians as recognizable stars, as related by Monsieur Bangalter -

I think people understand what we are doing. I know many people who maybe like the way we are handling things. People understand that you don’t need to be on the covers of magazines with your face to make good music. Painters or other artists, you don’t know them but you know what they are doing. We are very happy that the concept in itself is becoming famous. In France, you speak of Daft Punk and I’m sure millions of people have heard it, but less than a few thousand people know our face—which is the thing we’re into. We control it, but it’s not us physically, our persons. We don’t want to run into people who are the same age as us, shaking our hand and saying, ‘Can I have your autograph?’ because we think we’re exactly like them. Even girls, they can fall in love with your music, but not with you. You don’t always have to compromise yourself to be successful. The playing with masks is just to make it funnier. Pictures can be boring. We don’t want all the rock n’ roll poses and attitudes—they are completely stupid and ridiculous today.

Phoenix is running from the leu

Drakkar Noir by Phoenix – What is it with the Frenchies this week? Phoenix is from France, but that doesn’t mean they are strangers to knoxmusictoday.com. We featured the band back in January 2011 for a very nifty Free Music Friday. Of course you know who else is from France… Inspector Clouseau -

!!! break the rule of only 1 man per sauna

Station (Meet Me At The) by !!! – Perhaps you remember that we escaped the bloodbath of humanity that was the Mumford & Sons show at Bonnaroo in 2011 to catch the band !!!, also known as Chk Chk Chk. No? Well we do. That show was a Godsend. Or very nearly that good. The band released a new album at the end of April, Thr!!!er. You should chk chk chk it out. It may save you from a Mumford & Sons bloodbath. Just sayin’.

Small Black in Brooklyn black and white

No Stranger by Small Black – The four-piece band Small Black is based in Brooklyn. Which always means spectacular things. Musically. Always. Or at least usually. More often than not. Here is a bit about the band’s upcoming new rekkid, Limits of Desire, from their label and knoxmusictoday.com favorite, Jagjaguwar, from the band’s bio page -

Limits of Desire is Small Black’s most accomplished album yet. It’s a crystalline realization of a sound they’ve been building toward since their self-titled EP in 2009. Now a full-time four piece, Josh Hayden Kolenik (keys, vocals), Ryan Heyner (guitar, keys, vocals), Juan Pieczanski (bass, guitar) and Jeff Curtin (drums, percussion), the band have moved way beyond the hazy home recorded sound of their previous releases toward a full-fledged, but still self-produced, clear approach. Where 2010′s New Chain was a lesson in maximalist pop, Limits of Desire finds the band trimming their sound to the essentials, yet hitting new and unexpected heights with the addition of live drums, electric guitar and trumpet to the existing Small Black palette.

Tonally the songs sweep and glide over lush keys, bolstered by lyrics that illustrate the semi-abstract moments of lost opportunities and misread signs, hinted at by the cover image. The title track whirls softly, and channels luminaries Tears for Fears and The Blue Nile, anchored by Pieczanski’s punchy bass as Kolenik sings: “Other lives droned/ far from the grass where I lay/ each eye stared out the opposite way.” As much as the record is about looking for deeper connections, it’s also about avoiding real life, if only for a moment–getting out of your own head just long enough to calm down and find perspective.

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Club 8 needs some help with directions.
The plane, the plane… is the other way, boss.

Stop Taking My Time by Club 8 – The best thing about Club 8 is that they aren’t from France. The duo of Karolina Komstedt and Johan Angergård are Swedish. The new album from the duo, Above the City, will be released May 21. Here is a bit about the album from the band’s record label, Labrador -

8 is the Number of the perfection, the infinity. It’s album #8 from Club 8. After 18 months of recording and another 6 months arguing about the track order, song titles and album title – Club 8 have finished their album Above the City. While producing they have, among other things, worked with Russian field recordings, children’s choirs, samples from erotic movies and used odd building material as drums. This is Magic!

No doubt.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs know fashion

Area 52 AND Under the Earth by Yeah Yeah Yeahs – People, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are explosive. Certainly. Some of their songs are about as genteel as an air raid siren. Of course, we mean that in a good way. The trio recently released a new album, Mosquito, featuring these two songs. Here is a bit about the new offering by Genevieve Koski for avclub.com -

The release of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ fourth album, Mosquito, coincides almost to the day with the 10-year anniversary of the band’s breakout debut, Fever To Tell, making the new album, intentionally or not, a mile-marker for a group that could have easily disappeared into the black hole of cultural apathy that consumed many of its early-’00s garage-revival peers. But like most of the bands that weathered that decline—and, really, most bands that enjoy any sort of longevity—Yeah Yeah Yeahs adopted an adapt-or-die mentality, something the impish trio of art-punks was in a better place to do than some of its more self-serious peers. Yet while no one would mistake the songs on Mosquito as belonging on Fever To Tell, there’s an essential Yeah Yeah Yeahs-ness to the album, a certain frantic angularity that marks it as a point on a continuum, rather than a drastic left turn. In fact, the most radical aspect of Mosquito is its pronounced sense of play, something the band, and particularly frontwoman Karen O, has always displayed, albeit never quite to this extent.

It would be redundant to call what Yeah Yeah Yeahs are doing on Mosquito “experimental,” since the group has always had a certain confrontational weirdness programmed into its DNA. But where 2009’s It’s Blitz! grafted the band’s brittle intensity onto dance-friendly beats, Mosquito takes a much more open-ended, and less studied, approach to Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ electric eccentricity. There are lots of press-release-ready bullet points about the album pointing to this newfound boldness: Karen O’s characterization of the album as the band’s “version of soul”; goofy songs about mosquitoes and aliens; a verse by Kool Keith’s weirdest guise, Dr. Octagon, on the James Murphy-produced track “Buried Alive”; the singularly ugly album cover, whose Garbage Pail Kids-indebted artwork blows a raspberry at the notion of aesthetics. Hell, even Karen O’s newly platinum-blond hair, such a departure from her signature black mop, could be interpreted as a statement of intent.

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A somewhat disturbing, but nonetheless cool gif, people -

Massive Attack. Any questions?

Teardrop by Massive Attack – An old school Free Music Friday Anthem this week from Massive Attack. The band features the prime duo of Robert “3D” Del Naja and Grant “Daddy G” Marshall with a number of guests and vocalists. This song is featured on the multi-million selling 1998 album, Mezzanine, with vocals by Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins. And this song shouldn’t be new, as it has been featured as the theme song for the TV series House, with cameo appearances in Prison Break, CSI: Miami, Cold Case (TV series), and in commercials for the video game Assassin’s Creed. So there you go.

Knoxville music fans, perhaps you already know The Avett Brothers. We have featured the band several times at knoxmusictoday.com, such as for a recent Free Music Friday here, again for our Bonnaroo 2012 Preview, and for another Free Music Friday here. So it should be no surprise that their upcoming visit to the Scruffy City on Thursday, May 16 at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum would be accompanied by much fanfare. Included in that media stream is a fantastic article by our favorite local entertainment scribe, Steve Wildsmith, for the Daily Times. Here is a bit from the article and be sure to read the entire version of MASTER CRAFTSMEN: The Avett Brothers put a little bit of themselves into each song they record and perform -

When The Avett Brothers first crossed the Appalachian Mountains from their North Carolina home to play for music fans in East Tennessee, there was nothing to prove.

The brothers — Scott and Seth, along with bass player and brother-from-another-mother Bob Crawford, were fresh out of a hard rock band called Nemo, and the Old Time roots-rock they played was forged with the punk energy on which they’d cut their teeth and the all-or-nothing attitudes of their youth. They performed for free in the middle of week at Preservation Pub in downtown Knoxville, turning the watering hole into a dumping ground for the blistering passion with which they still play today.

Next week, the Avetts return to town, albeit to a slightly bigger venue: the Civic Coliseum. Their most recent album, last year’s “The Carpenter,” debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 200 albums chart and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Americana Album. Their current tour will carry them through the summer to some of the biggest amphitheaters and music festivals in the country.

And every time they get on stage, they go to that deeper place from which the music comes, those wells of the soul that seem filled with love and wonder and beauty and loss. They pull it up and baptize both themselves and the audience with those waters, turning concerts into communal experiences that give as much to the guys on the stage as they do to the people in the audience, Scott Avett told The Daily Times recently.

“When we get up there in a place like the Coliseum, it still does not truly feel like any type of arrival,” he said. “There’s nothing better or worse about either setting, because those times at Preservation Pub were such special moments in our lives that we’ll never, ever forget or take out of our equation. It’s just part of the journey, the wave.

“I think a lot about what Willie Nelson said one time about there have been so many different types of seasons in his life. In this life, for this wave, The Avett Brothers happen to be in this particular place. Preservation Pub could very well be part of the equation to come, and that’s all good.”

Such humility might seem insincere coming from anyone else — after all, few other acts who have played Preservation Pub can brag about getting to jam with Mumford and Sons and Bob Dylan before a national television audience during the Grammy Awards — but here’s the thing about the Avetts: They’ve never risen above their raising. Their devoted family men with wives and children these days, and it wasn’t too long ago they brought their father, singer-songwriter Jim Avett, onto the stage at Knoxville’s Bijou Theatre to play a couple of songs with them.

During down time with Nemo, the brothers would honor their dad by getting together with friends and picking acoustic bluegrass and classic country, the music on which they’d grown up; after Nemo’s demise, they pursued it full time, recording their first album, “Country Was,” in 2002. After 2007’s “Emotionalism,” the Avetts were picked up by American Recordings, a subsidiary of Sony, and sent into the studio with noted producer Rick Rubin. “I and Love and You” was their major-label debut, and fans who had helped make the Avetts so successful breathed a sigh of relief: The music retained the sweet soulfulness they’d grown to love, that plaintive breeze of desire and love and loss and country beauty. The band’s collective passion drives the songs, giving the music an almost urgent, pleading quality that maintains a rock intensity to what otherwise sounds like a laid-back Americana song, and with cello player Joe Kwon on board as a full-time member, the Avetts soon found national acclaim.

Ever the perfectionists, however, the Avetts weren’t satisfied with “I and Love and You,” Scott Avett said. It was an admirable record, one from which they still draw material to perform, but in hindsight, they knew they could do better.

“It was our freshman attempt in this bigger world,” he said. “There were these big-timers around us, or how we all view big-timers, so there was some feeling-out we had to do with that. We were learning how Rick, as a fan of ours or an audience member, saw us, and what resonated with him. I think that murkiness was a mixture of maybe us getting our bearings in this new world as well as bringing some hopeful and dark topics to light.

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Fans of Knoxville music, it is time for one of the finest outdoor music festivals in the Knoxville area, Vestival! This year’s version of South Knoxville’s Art & Heritage Festival will feature knoxmusictoday.com favorites Mic Harrison and the High Score, Leah Gardner, Guy Marshall, Jeff Barbra and Sarah Pirkle, and plenty more! So be sure to find your way to the south side of the Scruffy City this weekend to enjoy a fantastic festival!

Vestival marks 13th annual celebration in the heart of South Knoxville

What:   13th Annual Vestival: South Knoxville’s Art & Heritage Festival

When:   Saturday, May 11, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Rain or shine.

Where: On the grounds of the Historic Candoro Marble Company at 681 Maryville Pike

How much: Admission is free and open to the public. A $5 per person donation is requested to support the Candoro Arts and Heritage Center.

The 13th Annual Vestival: South Knoxville’s Art & Heritage Festival will memorialize the late Knoxville architect and preservationist Charles B. Richmond, who co-founded the non-profit Candoro Arts and Heritage Center and served as its president and champion. Richmond, who died January 3, 2013, was also a watercolorist and photographer. His work, as well as a display of marble artifacts from Candoro’s past, will be featured at an opening reception on Friday, May 10, from 5-7 p.m. and during Vestival.

As Vestival tradition holds, the festival begins at 11 a.m. with a casual Mother’s Day brunch, which is free for mothers.

The day continues with live music on two stages resounding with Southern rock, blues, jazz, folk, bluegrass, Americana and more. This year’s Vestival performers are Mic Harrison and the High Score, Nancy Brennan Strange and The Strangefellows, Leah Gardner, Jeff Barbra and Sarah Pirkle, Big Gene and Danny Lee’s Loud Pack, Jack Rentfro and the Apocalypso Quartet, Guy Marshall, Smiley and the Lovedawg, Big Jon and the Nationals, The Pinklets, Sarah Morgan, and Jim Myers.

Dragonfly Arial Arts and Claire Metz Tribal Belly Dance will perform on the grounds at intervals during the festival. Visitors can browse the wares of local arts and crafts artists, community groups and select from a variety of food choices. There is also a tent for children’s activities.

Old-fashioned cake walks, accompanied by live music, take place throughout the day. Participants pay $1 each to walk the walk for their chance to win a cake donated by one of our community’s generous bakeries.

More information about Vestival, including how local businesses can support the Vestival through sponsorship, is available at http://candoromarble.org/ and on Facebook. To coordinate an interview about the event, please contact Sean McCollough at sean@thelonetones.com or Paige Travis, publicity chair, at pmtravis73@gmail.com.

About Candoro Arts and Heritage Center:
The Candoro Arts and Heritage Center is a non-profit organization founded to preserve and support the Candoro Marble Company building, built in 1923, designed by famed architect Charles Barber using carved marble ornamentation by sculptor Albert Milani (whose marble lions guard the New York Public Library and whose eagles grace downtown Knoxville’s U.S. Post Office). The building was used as the factory’s office and place to showcase the factory’s famous pink marble. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the building serves the South Knoxville community as the host of art classes, dinners, special events and yoga classes.

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

MARYVILLE PIKE STAGE
11:30 am   The Pinklets (during the Mother’s Day brunch)
12:30 pm   Nancy Brennan Strange and The Strangefellows
1:30 pm    Guy Marshall
2:30 pm   Jack Rentfro and the Apocalypso Quartet
3:30 pm   Leah Gardner
4:30 pm   Big Gene and Danny Lee’s Loud Pack
5:30 pm   Mic Harrison and the High Score

CANDORO CAFE
12:00 pm   Sarah Morgan
1:00 pm  Jim Myers
2:00 pm  Big Jon and the Nationals
3:00 pm  Jeff Barbra and Sarah Pirkle
4:00 pm  Smiley and the Lovedawg

GRASSY STAGE
12:10 pm  Appalachian Flow Arts
1:10 pm  Dragonfly Aerial Arts
2:10 pm  Claire Metz Tribal Fusion Bellydance
3:10 pm  Appalachian Flow Arts
4:10 pm  Dragonfly Aerial Arts
5:10 pm  Claire Metz Tribal Fusion Bellydance

Knoxville music fans, when two big-time country legends get together to record an album, it is news. And when it is knoxmusictoday.com favorites Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, it makes for a tasty Free Music Friday! This week we explore a bit of the new album by Emmylou and Rodney, as well as some delicious nuggets from the past. And there’s no chicken in those nuggets, people. Only beef! Wait… beef nuggets? Disgusting. But we digress. From Free Music Friday!

And just in case you don’t splash and you don’t country, we have plenty of other music for you to enjoy in our Free Music Friday Archives!

Wheels of Love or maybe just a train behind Emmylou?

Wheels of Love by Emmylou Harris – This is one of those wonderful rolling Emmylou Harris songs.

Here is a slower one, no less delightful -

Emmylou heats up the stage with the Nash Ramblers

Lodi by Emmylou Harris and the Nash Ramblers – In 1991, Emmylou formed a backing band known as the Nash Ramblers to play a series of concerts at the legendary Nashville venue, The Ryman Auditorium. The recordings of the shows were released in January 1992 as the live album, At The Ryman. The band was an all-star group that featured Sam Bush (fiddle, mandolin and vocals), Roy Huskey, Jr. (double bass and vocals), Larry Atamanuik (drums), Al Perkins (banjo, guitar, resonator guitar and vocals), and John Randall Stewart (guitar, mandolin and vocals). This song was written in 1969 by John Fogerty for the Creedence Clearwater Revival album, Green River.

Vintage Rodney Crowell. Excellence.

If Looks Could Kill by Rodney Crowell – This song was included on Rodney Crowell’s magnificent album, Keys To The Highway, released in 1989. As coined by the one and only Ricky Bobby, and reminded to me by The Prince of Nashville, this is one of those albums that pisses excellence.

Perhaps Mr. Bobby can relate that to us -

If it’s ETC, isn’t it ALL essential?

We Believe In Happy Endings by Emmylou Harris with Earl Thomas Conley – OK, so how exactly do you order this beer when it appears on the menu? “I’d like a … um… a Happy …”  If it’s a female bartender, I fully expect to get slapped. Perhaps I should order the Blindfold first -

Ha! Regardless, Emmylou included this duet with Earl Thomas Conley on her Duets album (appropriately). Now did you know this fun fact – Earl Thomas Conley’s eighteen Billboard Number One country singles during the 1980s marked the most number one hits by any artist in any genre during that decade? Did you? I think not. ETC is kind of a big deal.

Heaven only knows how Emmylou ended up in that place..

Heaven Only Knows by Emmylou Harris – Another 1989 hit, Heaven Only Knows was written by Paul Kennerley and recorded by Emmylou on the Bluebird album. Just simply delicious.

Rodney Crowell. Emmylou Harris.

Hanging Up My Heart, Spanish Dancer, AND Bluebird Wine by Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell – Here is a portion of the review by Ninian Dunnett for BBC Music about the recent collaboration between Ms. Harris and Mr. Crowell, Old Yellow Moon, released February 22 of this year -

Emmylou Harris’ shimmering, yearning soprano is one of the great voices in music. Long before it is a country song, or a sad song, anything she sings is an Emmylou Harris song.

Yet at the same time, curiously, the Alabama native is a singer whose best moments come in partnership. And on Old Yellow Moon, in that potentially hokiest of country traditions – the boy/girl duet – an old alliance triumphs with charm.

As Harris’ second-most famous singing partner, Rodney Crowell has sometimes suffered by unfair comparison with the man who came before him: Gram Parsons.

Parsons reframed country music through the lens of the 60s counter-culture – and his legacy is most effectively realised on a wonderful tribute album, Return of the Grievous Angel, which may be Harris’ (as co-producer) own finest achievement.

But Crowell is a different thing, a songwriting craftsman with a naturally emotive tenor that beautifully complements that famous soprano.

Nearly 40 years after he joined forces with Emmylou in her 1970s Hot Band – and supported by impeccable contributions from other distinguished veterans of that era, like James Burton, Bill Payne and Hank DeVito – Crowell drives the partnership through a handful of songs that are as sassy and spry as the best of their early years.

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Keith could only hope to be Skywalker to Yoda Crowell

You Been On My Mind by Rodney Crowell – Ladies and gentlemen, thanks to Rodney Crowell, we know that THIS is how a country song should be written -

Guess it’s time for me to say just how it is that I feel today
Today is just like any other day cause you’ve been on my mind
It really hasn’t been that long but it’s funny where the time has flown
Old memories just keep holding on and you been on my mind

You been on my mind sometimes
I think I must be going blind
I’ve seen a world baby without you
But I don’t see myself there too

Hardly does a day go by when I don’t see your clear blue eyes
Many night I just wonder why and you been on my mind
You’ve been on my mind so long
I’ve been thinking that something was wrong
I’ve told myself I should forget
But I don’t seem to have it yet
I don’t dream that you might change I don’t think that I’m acting strange
I tell myself it’s all in vain and you been on my mind

You’ve been on my mind I’ve said
Till it’s all that’s in my head
Yes I know what I must do
But I don’t think you’ll be there too

Guess it’s time for me to go but as it is I’ll never know
Just what it is that I long for so and you been on my mind

You been on my mind

The Byrds try to avoid picking up the tab

You Ain’t Goin Nowhere by The Byrds – Storytime. Our Free Music Friday Anthem this week features a sweet story found on a blog by Roger McGuinn, founding member of The Byrds about the band’s only appearance at the Grand Ole Opry. According to the Legacy Edition liner notes of the Byrd’s legendary Sweetheart of the Rodeo album, “Being the first group of hippie “longhairs” ever to play at the venerable country music institution, the band was met with heckling, booing, and mocking calls of “tweet, tweet” from the conservative Opry audience.” And here is the McGuinn blog version -

1968
CBS records had enough clout to get the rock group the “BYRDS” on the mother radio of country music WSM’s, Grand Ole Opry. The group had broken with the rock tradition and recorded a whole album of country music. It wasn’t the BYRDS first foray into the country sound. They had previously recorded songs in the country vein on “Turn,Turn,Turn, “5D” and “Younger Than Yesterday,” but never devoted an entire album to the genre. Even Roger’s “Mr. Spaceman” embraced the country beat. The “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” album marked the first time a rock group dared to venture wholeheartedly into the country realm.

The live radio format of the “Grand Ole Opry” makes timing a critical element. At rehearsals, stop watches are marking every second. During the afternoon rehearsal of the show, the BYRDS sang two songs from “The Sweetheart of the Rodeo” album. The chosen single, “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” and another tune on the album, a song penned by Country music legend Meryl Haggard, “Sing me Back Home.”

The band was serious about the authenticity of the album and even cut their hair to appease the country audience. The first song the group sang on the live show, “You Ain’t Going Nowhere,” came off without a hitch but it was the second song that got the group blackballed from the Opry. Just before they began the count for the song, Gram Parsons walked up to the microphone and made a very bold statement. “We were supposed to sing a Meryl Haggard song, but my grandma has been listening to the Grand Ole Opry all of her life and I want to sing a song I wrote for her.” With that departure from the script, Gram began singing his song “Hickory Wind.” Roger looked to the side of the stage and the director looked like he had just swallowed something very disagreeable. Skeeter Davis was the only smiling face when they left the stage and walked out of the Ryman auditorium to the trailing echos of, “They’ll never be invited back.”

Fans of Knoxville music, as you know, when it comes to hardcore metal, death metal, and most heavy what-have-you metal, at knoxmusictoday.com we tread lightly. We will be the first to admit, it’s just not really our thing. But, the many local bands that work hard to perfect their craft in those genres of music are exactly what makes Knoxville’s music scene so fantastic. So, we will pass on the information provided to us by Andrea at Carleo Entertainment and Midnight Voyage Productions LLC about a big show in July. Mark your calendars, people!

Wednesday, July 31st

Presented By Carleo Entertainment & 90.3 WUTK The Rock ‘The Funeral Directory’

Summer Slaughter 2013

with: Dillinger Escape Plan

Animals as Leaders

Periphery

Norma Jean

Cattle Decapitation

The Ocean

Revocation

Aeon

Rings of Saturn

Thy Art is Murder

@ Old City Courtyard
120 E. Jackson Ave | Knoxville TN | Outside Event | Rain Or Shine |
All Ages | 3 PM
$20 Advance | $25 Door

Tickets available at: www.carleoentertainment.com

Knoxville music fans, you know we like the freshest of the fresh music. The just-out-of-the-shower and squeaky-clean music. And this week, we have a metric ton of it for Free Music Friday! That’s right, 2,205 pounds of new music! That should be enough.

And if you missed last week’s Eric Clapton Free Music Friday, or our Nordic Free Music Friday, or the Part 1 or Part 2 of our Free Motown Fridays, you should check them out, along with all of our previous Free Music Fridays for the past two years in our Free Music Friday Archives!

The Shouting Matches sing!

Heaven Knows by The Shouting Matches - Phil Cook, Brian Moen, Justin Vernon… wait… why is that last name familiar? Perhaps because there is a guy named Justin Vernon who has made a few records as Bon Iver. Yep, THAT Justin Vernon! But this isn’t your Grandma’s Bon Iver, people. Obviously. Stephen Thompson related this about the effort for NPR -

It doesn’t even take 10 seconds for The Shouting Matches’ debut album, Grownass Man, to present itself as something lighter in spirit than anything by Bon Iver; even before the opening riffs, a mere glance at the cover shows a smiling Justin Vernon, hanging out with his hometown pals. This isn’t the stuff of mystery or misery, of yearning, of finding one’s voice in a secluded cabin. It’s the work of a guy who loves playing music — who’s drawn influence from Talk Talk and Bruce Hornsby and many points in between — and saw an opportunity to have a blast on the side with friends he’s joined on stage whenever possible.

Continue reading here

Get up, Charlie and Ben!

I Don’t Believe a Word You Say by Ben Harper - Rock legend Ben Harper teamed up with Memphis blues master Charlie Musselwhite for his most recent release, Get Up! Here is a bit about the album by Jason Shadrick for Premiere Guitar -

For Ben Harper, the blues have always been within arm’s reach. His latest collaboration with bluesman Charlie Musselwhite, Get Up!, finally allows Harper the time and space to deal with the blues—on his terms. The two players first met during a session with boogie-king John Lee Hooker more than a decade ago and have been occasional collaborators since. Both Harper and Musselwhite seem to have a profound effect on the other. The gritty and soulful sound of Musselwhite’s harp adds authenticity to the group, while Harper’s songs give “Memphis” Charlie more than a 12-bar form to explore.

And explore he does. Covering the bases from jazz and blues to more folkloric sounds, Musselwhite pushes Harper and his band in a way that really demonstrates why chemistry is so important when it comes to collaborative projects. Their groove is in full force on “I’m In, I’m Out, and I’m Gone,” where Harper channels John Lee with a stream-of-consciousness lyric that fits perfectly with the stomping shuffle groove. On this album, substance and feeling are placed above flash and polish, which is a rare thing these days, but entirely necessary when it comes to the blues.

The Men know all about water. They’re from Brooklyn, you know.

Half Angel Half Light by The Men – So who are these Men? Mark Perro, Nick Chiericozzi, Rich Samis, Ben Greenberg and Kevin Faulkner are The Men. And why are they special? Well, they ARE from Brooklyn. So you know they must be special. Not Portland special, mind you, but special nonetheless. They shot their first video entirely with VHS cameras. That’s special. To some people. In Brooklyn. Not in Portland, of course.

Here you go -

That’s Kurt Vile behind all that hair, people. Really, it is.

Wakin On a Pretty Day AND Never Run Away by Kurt Vile – Philadelphia’s Kurt Vile is no stranger to knoxmusictoday.com and Free Music Friday. For example, you can find Kurt here, and here, and here. So now that he has a new album out, Wakin On a Pretty Daze, one could assume that we will be hearing plenty more of Mr. Vile. And one would be correct! Here is a bit of what Jayson Greene had to say about the new album for Pitchfork.com -

Vile’s music has exuded this unique stoner-Yoda wisdom from the very beginning, even if you weren’t searching for it. His sound– warm, unhurried, and spacious– doesn’t demand close focus, but one of the joys of being pulled into Vile’s lonely, contented universe is in discovering that he is muttering sharply self-aware things to himself.  It adds another layer to Vile’s appeal; seduced by the soothing, watery-blue glimmer of that sound, which promised to make you feel like the only human in the universe, you slowly realized there’s actually one other guy here, and he’s kind of a wiseass.

Wakin on a Pretty Daze is Vile’s most spacious, becalmed record yet, and it contains some of his best-ever brand of cosmic stand-up. It opens, literally, with a stretch and a yawn: On the (almost) title track “Wakin on a Pretty Day”, a wah’ed guitar rubs the grit out of its eyes while Vile beholds his furiously ringing phone with clinical detachment: “Phone ringing off the shelf/ I guess somebody has something they really wanna prove to us today,” he notes. Unperturbed, he moves along, concerned with something far more pressing: “I gotta figure out what kind of wisecrack I’m gonna drop along the way – today.” The music quickens for a beat or two at this prospect, but settles back down. In Vile’s universe, there is time enough for everything.

Continue reading here

Phosphorescent needs a quarter

Song For Zula by Phosphorescent – If you remember, Phosphorescent’s song The Mermaid Parade was perhaps our favorite song from 2011. So now Phosphorescent has a new album out, Muchacho. Here is what m garner had to say about the album for aquariumdrunkard.com -

Believe that album cover for three minutes and twelve seconds. That’s how long it takes for Matthew Houck, the Alabama native better known as Phosphorescent, to finish the high-harmonic tilt of “Sun, Arise! (An Invocation, An Introduction)” and drain it into the aching, pained, sublime “Song for Zula.” If you’ve been following Houck’s exploits for long enough, “Zula” is only the next piece of evidence in the long case to be made for his specific genius: Very few people write, much less perform, about heartbreak with this much conviction. “Honey, I saw love,” Houck sings. “It put its face up to my face so I could see/Yeah then I saw love disfigure me/Into something I am not recognizing.” Sure, it’s an impossible argument to prove, the question of just how authentic Houck’s words and manner might be. But for years now, he’s articulated the skeleton of the lovelorn corpse with a precision that can make his work almost impossible to stand. “Song for Zula,” 2010’s “The Mermaid Parade”—these are the kind of songs that make you pull your car over to the shoulder so you can stare at the dashboard and shake your head in disbelief.

Continue reading here

Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam isn’t just another pretty bird

Lovers’ Revolution by Iron & Wine – Wait… this isn’t Iron & Wine! Yes, Virginia, it is! Of course you know Sam Beam is Iron & Wine. But this song is very un-Iron & Wine-like. People, Listen Up! There is a lot going on here. Mr. Beam brings in a jazz-influenced melody with horns and many layers of sound on this one. Patience, people! This song will grow on you.

Paisley, Scotland’s own – Gerry Rafferty

Right Down The Line by Gerry Rafferty – Our Free Music Friday Anthem this week is very under-the-radar. But no doubt recognizable. In fact, this week’s FMF feature artist Kurt Vile has called this his “#1 fave classic rock hit.” Gerry Rafferty was born and raised in Scotland and wrote some of the biggest hits of the 1970s including this song, Stuck In the Middle With You, and Baker Street. And despite his success, Rafferty despised the commercialism of the music industry -

“There’s a thin line between being a songwriter and a singer and being a personality… If you feel uncomfortable with it you shouldn’t do it. It’s not for me – there are too many inherent contradictions.”

Fans of Knoxville music, is it already THAT TIME? It certainly is! It’s time for FORT SANDERS FEST 2013!! The little festival that could has indeed made the big time with version 2.0 to be held this Saturday, April 27 at World’s Fair Park. The show starts rain or shine at 2:30 with Crumbsnatchers.

Buy Tickets to Fort Sanders Fest 2013 Here

And take a look-see at the impressive lineup of local heroes to play this year’s Fort Sanders Fest -

Marina Orchestra

Paer Baer

Grandpa’s Stash

Hudson K

Annabelle’s Curse

Best Friend

Tame the Hurricane

The Theorizt

Johnny Astro

Backup Planet

Yung Life

The Blue Heavy

O Youth

Crumbsnatchers

And here is a bit more about the festival, from the organizers -

We’re A Music Festival Without “The Man”

Fort Sanders Fest is the first music festival of its kind. It is a festival created for students by students
to celebrate the music, culture and spirit of the Fort Sander’s neighborhood.

All proceeds from Fort Sanders Fest will be donated to the Scarecrow Foundation, a non-profit organization that seeks to end hunger in the United States. The Scarecrow Foundation’s main source of revenue comes from music benefit shows. Fort Sanders Fest is one of those events. The goal of Fort Sanders Fest is to maximize donations to the Scarecrow Foundation and to provide a music and arts venue that showcases local talent to a wider audience.

Fort Sanders Fest sets itself apart from other festivals because it is fully organized by students. Our established team, known as Hype Fidelity, is fully committed to showcasing the quality of local artists and to provide an amazing experience to our attendees. Each year, the festival is open to students and non-students.

Our first Fort Sanders Fest could not have gone better, and we owe it to everyone who bought tickets. Thank you for throwing down with us, while respecting the venue. We are excited about delivering an even better festival in 2013. The planning team will be working non-stop to bring Knoxville the truest music festival in its history.

Let’s throw the greatest local music festival this area has ever seen.