MP3 Steve Earle - "Way Down in the Hole" (Tom Waits cover) Apologies for the unofficial hiatus here @ The Big Ticket. Weddings, birthdays & shows galore have come & gone, and yet Keith Olbermann has remained atop the page. Ugh. Anyway, here's a teaser for the 5th & final season of HBO's The Wire , whose way-too-good-for-the-Emmys 4th season DVD will be in stores December 4th. Season 5 premieres on HBO January 6th, 2008. The theme song, performed this [...]
MP3 Steve Earle - "Way Down in the Hole" (Tom Waits cover) Apologies for the unofficial hiatus here @ The Big Ticket. Weddings, birthdays & shows galore have come & gone, and yet Keith Olbermann has remained atop the page. Ugh. Anyway, here's a teaser for the 5th & final season of HBO's The Wire , whose way-too-good-for-the-Emmys 4th season DVD will be in stores December 4th. Season 5 premieres on HBO January 6th, 2008. The theme song, performed this [...]
"And we're bound for the border We're soldiers of fortune We'll fight for no country but we'll die for good pay Under the flag of of the greenback dollar..." -Steve Earle - "Mercenary Song" Is anyone really surprised that 11 Iraqi civilians were killed by contractors employed by Blackwater in Iraq this week? Since the ...
I couldn't begin to figure in which bin to put this album, Copperhead Road released in 1988. It's country, but it isn't. It's rock, but it isn't. Is it country rock or am I just grasping? What are those instruments I hear? They just don't seem to fit yet they do. I guess I'll just have to call it a Steve Earle and let it go at that. I was inspired by Uncle Earl to play this one. MP3 File

Many called this the weakest day of the festival overall, lineup-wise, but for me, it turned out to be my favorite. Raul Malo - What can be said about Raul Malo, other than he has the voice from the heavens and could sing the phone book and it would sound great. The former singer for the Mavericks kicked off the early afternoon with a fantastic set at the Dell stage, peppering in Mavericks classics like the barnburner "All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down" and "Dance the Night Away", with the steamy Latin love [...]

So there's this article that you need to read. It's an interview with Steve Earle , someone who I really admire, who was awesome in the wire and who's music represents all the things that make artistic endeavour good and worthwhile-ie that music at most vital is the product of the same struggle we face in our lives to find some kind of meaningful truth. And really that should be enough. But sometimes the stars just align. Sometimes the world feels like it's finally righted itself after a long, [...]

Sometimes a song will make you do foolish things. Over the years I've driven many American roads making photographs. Partially inspired by Robert Frank's The Americans and partially by Jack Kerouac's On The Road , which I'm currently re-reading for the first time since I was a teenager in its "restored" single paragraph scroll version. On all of these drives, music has been central to my relationship to wherever I am - sometimes by accident and sometimes quite deliberately. One of my favorites for California has always [...]
good afternoon all! anyone planning on goin to the echo project fest down here in atlanta? its not actually in atlanta but its just south of the city, in fairburn. i am super psyched cause its literally 3 miles from my crib. if you havent heard about it, it definitely looks like it could be [...]

The track listing for the new Todd Haynes directed Bob Dylan biopic, "I'm Not There," has been posted on Vinyl Fever . The film, which follows the life of the singer at different periods of his career, features six different actors playing the lead in each phase, including Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Marcus Carl Franklin, Ben Wishaw and Cate Blanchett (featured in the picture to the left). Other names of note featured in the film are David Cross (of the sorely missed Arrested Development ) [...]
The score: "In 1975, the film Heartworn Highways documented the emerging singer-songwriter scene in Nashville and Austin, capturing intimate performances by artists like Steve Earle and Rodney Crowell while they were still struggling to be heard. 30 years later, we have restored these now historic recordings to their original, unedited length and are making [...]

Sunset in my mirror Pedal on the floor Bound for New York City And I won't back no more And so begins Steve Earle 's new tune, "Goodbye Guitar Town". He dropped into Austin's KUT radio station last week for a nice interview and a couple of acoustic tunes, including this new one. Steve is back to his acoustic Townes Van Zandt-like, finger-pickin' form with this tune. He's called New York City's Greenwich Village home for a few years now, and as he sings about in this song, NYC is home. [...]
Well just to be tricky, I thought I'd do another country tune... Though you can't really call Steve Earle "Country" without quotes around it (or as one of my professors always called it: "inverted commas" (he was English and had a very substantial stutter and I have to admit for the longest time I thought he kept talking about "in verti commerce," though I didn't let the nonsensical nature of that, nor the little bouncy hooks he was making in the air with his fingers (otherwise known as the universal sign [...]

Hey Everybody. just a short post for y'all today. As indicated above, today is very much my birthday. As I write this I am wearing a party hat. Rung in the opening hours of the birthday in the presence of Apostle of Hustle. Chris from Neile's Life was there too and has a full report and mp3's. I was quite impressed by the show, which saw a good turnout beside the shitty weather (which is continuing as we speak). Merge gave me a birthday present when my copy of Arcade Fire's [...]

Bruce Springsteen is set to get the tribute treatment from the musical community on April 5 at Carnegie Hall in New York. If you were lucky enough to click on the ticket sale website on January 31, then you may have already snagged yourself a pair of tickets (in what concert producer Michael Dorf is calling a "premature leak." Those are always a bit embarassing). Tickets legitimately went on sale Monday (and seem to be sold out ) with the proceeds benefitting the Music For Youth program, as with previous tributes to Dylan [...]
I first met Ry Cooder's music in 1969 through my best friend in high school, Rina Slavin, who had some of the best cultural taste around. She had an amazing Skip James record and whenever I heard that high-pitched wail of a voice it sent shivers up and down my spine. Rina also [...]
Sorry to be the bearer of bad(ish) news, kids, but our playlists for December won't be live today. They're completed, but the challenge this month was extra-interesting, and there's a good deal of accompanying work that needs to be wrapped up before they're ready for public consumption. Look for them to go live sometime this weekend - an email will be sent when they do. Want to get the word first? Join the Selective Service email mailing list . I know, I know, like Tom Petty sez, "the waiting is the hardest part," but if Steve Earle [...]

Three Things This Crazy Dickhead needs: 1. A Haircut 2. New Glasses 3. Frontal Lobotomy mp3 Too Crazy To Care The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Thank God For Mental Illness mp3 The Mind Is Evil Clearlake - Cedars mp3 Mind Fields Prodigy - The Fat Of The Land mp3 [...]