Peter Mulvey is yet another acoustic singer song writer who hasn't quite made it to the top but has all the talent and professionalism needed. He's been around long enough and his self produced debut album "Brother Rabbit Speaks" was created in 1992 which showed the self motivated and self produced quality that Peter has in his pocket. To get an idea of his sound, think Newton Faulkner but a bit less rhythmic and more melodic approach while his singing voice is more mature and consistently boasts top notch lyrics. Peter has a showman feel [...]
I haven't purchased much new Christmas music this year, but I have been pleasantly surprised by what I did! Visit the blog to hear some great music! First, on a whim induced perhaps by an impending infusion of caffeine, I bought this year's holiday collection from Starbucks, Winter Wonderland . These collections are often hit or miss, but more often both, with some good tracks interspersed among bad ones. Not so for this collection. Pink [...]
Today you get eight versions of painter-turned-music-legend Joni Mitchell's ( fansite wiki AMG ) 1971 " River ." She first started singing by belting out Christmas carols in a children's hospital. By 1971 she was in California, missing the winters of Canada and writing a "selfish and sad" paean to the end of a relationship. I don't have a lot to say about this song, except that I had planned at one point to include every single one of these versions on this year's compilation, Have Yourself A Depressing Little Christmas. (Watch this [...]
The honest, richly-spun folk sounds of Gregory Alan Isakov captivated a packed house in Denver last week as he opened for the Calexico show . I've written about the marvelous skiffle of Isakov's " The Salt and The Sea " tune before, and have been appreciated the bright talent of this local artist in several venues across Colorado this year. I love to hear Gregory sing; his voice is really something special in the singer-songwriter pantheon, with hints of sly knowing, balanced with a warm and soaring verve. "Gonna write one [...]
Peter Mulvey : Black Snow [ purchase ] Wintertime, and especially the holiday season, can be overwhelming. When you get to thinking of all you have to do, with limited time and resources, it's easy to just shut down completely. For Peter Mulvey, the perfect symbol of these feelings is a bank of black snow. You can't make anything out of it, you don't want to walk in it, all you can do is wish it would melt. Peter Mulvey began his musical career busking in the Boston subway [...]
Things happen in limos. You sit in there, cut off from the world. This can produce a mood of delicious self-indulgence. But sometimes, the effect is more like sensory deprivation. Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem : Limo To Memphis [ purchase ] First, let me thank Boyhowdy once again, this time for introducing me to the music of Rani Arbo. Truthfully, I should have found her myself. That's because she records for Signature Sounds, possibly [...]
Though my father hasn't missed it in decades, I haven't been able to attend the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival since I started teaching over a decade ago -- something about the way a last gasp of hunker-down-and-teach takes over public education as we approach state testing, and the long downhill slide toward the end of the school year. But every year as we hit the last weekend in April my mind begins to muse upon the great acts I saw down there the few years I made it: Los Lobos, the Indigo Girls, Taj [...]
Hope no one minds an early "Sunday" post this week; my brother and his wife are on their way in from Brooklyn for the long weekend, and I don't get to see them as often as I'd like. I'll have a short post up for Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, if I can; in the meantime, enjoy today's feature on "American Primitive" folkartist Gillian Welch and her partner David Rawlings, the tenth post in our popular Covered in Folk series, where we pay tribute to the songwriting talents of a single artist. [...]
The ninth post in our very popular Covered In Folk series addresses the solo output of Paul Simon. This is unusual -- with the exception of our ongoing Beatles series ( part 1 , part 2 ), previous posts have covered the total output of a given artist; see, for example, posts on the songs of Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground and Tim and Neil Finn . It's also backwards, since Simon's solo career is really his second wave of fame, after his first incarnation as a folk icon [...]
It took me a while to get into Dar Williams . The way she plays with the strong break between her bold lower tones and her breathy upper register is an acquired taste. Her songwriting is generally wry and poignant, but it takes more than one skim-the-surface listen to appreciate its complexity. She tends towards strong, heavy production, which attracts a younger alt-folk crowd, but can overwhelm her well-crafted, literate lyrics. But at her best, Dar is an incredible artist. Her songwriting and her stage [...]
Whether stripped-down so as not to overwhelm the authenticity of the song and singer, or jazzed up to resonate with modern musical sensibilities, it is the passage of familiar song, motif, and situation between audience and performer which makes the "folk" in folk music. Songs about trains are ultimately songs about longing; songs about the road resonate with those who wander and those who long for a change, though in different ways. Such songs play broadly to universal themes, the better to leave room for such connection. In collapsing the participant/observer gap, the songs have [...]
A couple of guys I've written about in the past have odd little records out this week. I already wrote about the limited edition release of Grayson Capps' 2003 release yesterday and I intend to write about the American release of AJ Roach's new record...but today brings us this acoustic recording, by Peter Mulvey . The songs on the new record, Notes From Elsewhere , have all appeared on previous studio albums from Peter Mulvey, usually embellished with a full band but still very much in the singer-songwriter template. But here Peter strips [...]
This is from His 2000 album The Trouble with Poets. MP3 File
Cat Stevens Alexi Murdoch Peter Mulvey Minnie Driver Great Northern Eleni Mandell Richard Buckner (live) Smashing Pumpkins (live) Marc Broussard (live) Bonus song with HOME in the title: M. Ward ~ To Go Home Which song do you dig best? Or did I [...]
She Doesn't Use Jelly by Molly Lambert I have been taking estrogen supplements for a few weeks just because I thought it'd be fun to take menopause drugs experimentally. Besides, they're herbal, so it's not like they're actually going to work. "Ludella (live)" - Nick Moss and the Fliptops Nick Moss and the Fliptops website For a girl I'm not much of a crier. I'm not one of those hardliner "I never cry because I'm a tough bitch" girls (btw [...]
So the original idea for this post was to share oodles and oodles of vids from YouTube of people covering U2. But, while prepping the post, with all those vids in Blogger, my interweb crashed. We're talking at least a hundred of them out there at YouTube. So I just have a few versions of The Fly, which is one of my favorite U2 songs. [...]
There are more albums out with this "storybook" cover thing going on. Here are four that I actually like the music on (at least a little bit). Sonya Kitchell: Words Came Back To Me ~ I'd Love You Peter Mulvey: The Knuckleball Suite ~ Old Simon Stimson Kaiser Chiefs: Employment ~ I Predict A Riot [...]
I tried to throw together some songs with either "glory" or "hour" in the title (with a little Jem thrown in for good measure). Martine Sexton ~ Glory Bound (one of my all-time favs) Serena Ryder ~ Stay for an Hour (nice pipes) Branches ~ Sixteen Hours to Georgia (alt-country-rock-ish) Public Enemy ~ Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos (a classic) Tricky ~ Black Steel (cover of above) Jem ~ 24 (cinematic) Julius [...]
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There Goes the Fear
Are You Embarrassed Easily Too?
She'll Grow Back
I AM FUEL, YOU ARE FRIENDS
Star Maker Machine
Cover Lay Down
Keep the Coffee Coming
songsillinois
The Late Greats
This Recording
I’ll Just Leave This Here #161
Madden Miles Presents The Candace Bailey Beat Tape
REMIX SUNDAYS- May 27th, 2012
Potrait of The Day: Model "Sarah Jimenez"
