![The Heartless Bastards::The Mountain [MP3]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/1476739_lg.jpg)
The Heartless Bastards latest album The Mountain is set for a February 3rd release on Fat Possum Records. Here's your first listen to the album's title track. The Heartless Bastards perform in Charlottesville at the Gravity Lounge on Wednesday, February 11, the day after the band's performance on The Late Show with David Letterman . Tickets are currently on sale. $10 advance / $12 door. [ buy tickets ] Download: MP3: Heartless Bastards--The Mountain ------------
It's been awhile since I last saw 6 Day Bender play live. Actually it's been too damn long. It was almost a year ago, on my birthday to be exact, when I happened to catch the band at the now-defunct Orbit in Charlottesville back in mid-January. It was late, it was my birthday, and at best I recall a cover of Old Crow Medicine Show's "Wagon Wheel" and a young man covered in sweat, wearing a red bandanna, playing a banjo, and leading the band like some cross between [...]
"One song. One take. One cab." That's the Black Cab Sessions' motto. To date the site has captured over seventy live performances featuring the likes of Daniel Johnston, Fleet Foxes, Death Cab for Cutie, My Morning Jacket, Bon Iver, and Calexico. Hell, even Charlottesville's own Paul Curreri was featured in one session when he accompanied Baby Dee on guitar . For their most recent live performance the ebony taxi service squeezed Ryan Adams and Neil Casal into the backseat for this performance of [...]
![Larry Keel and Natural Bridge::Backwoods [New Album]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/1476743_lg.jpg)
Larry Keel and Natural Bridge , who just last month appeared on the nationally syndicated radio show Mountain Stage , have just announced the release of their second full-length album Backwoods. The latest effort features seven new original tracks along with three covers (including a version of the Beatles' tune "Mother Nature's Son") and was co-produced by Keel and longtime friend and collaborator Keller Williams. The pair most recently worked in the studio together on the 2005 release Grass from Keller and the Keels. No strangers to [...]
![Ben Nichols::The Last Pale Light in the West [MP3]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/1476746_lg.jpg)
One of the first albums of 2009 that I'm looking forward to getting my hands on is set to hit stores on January 20 as Ben Nichols, the frontman for the Memphis-based band Lucero , releases his solo debut The Last Pale Light in the West (The Rebel Group). In truth the upcoming release is more of a mini-album or an expanded-length EP (depending on how you chose to look at it. Containing just seven songs, The Last Pale Light in the West is base on Cormac McCarthy's gritty Western novel [...]
Jon Dee Graham is the man. He's an often over-looked artist whose music deserves much more attention than he often receives. I saw Graham perform for the very first time back in 2004 at the Americana Music Conference in Nashville, the same year that he released his unbelievably great record The Great Battle . The night that I saw Graham he was the opening act for No Depression's conference-opening, five-act set at the Mercy Lounge that also included performances by Tift Merritt, Buddy Miller, Dave Alvin, and Delbert McClinton. If not for [...]
I wanted to include this interview I did back in late September with Justin Tenuto of the San Francisco-based indie-rock band Birmonster . The band was just preparing to embark on their national tour in support of their second full-length album From the Mountain to the Sea (which also happened to include a stop here in Charlottesville back in early October). Birdmonster's Gravity Lounge show was indeed a highlight for the year as it also included an opening act appearance by one of my favorite local bands, the incredibly [...]
By the time I discovered the "cowpunk" glory of Rank and File's 1982 debut album Sundown (Slash), Alejandro Escovedo was already an artist whose music I held in high esteem. My introduction to Escovedo and his music began in the late 90's after he made a guest appearance on three of the songs from Whiskeytown's Stranger's Almanac in 1997. Then his name popped up again in a big way when No Depression magazine named him their Artist of the Decade in 1998. I bought my first Alejandro [...]
![Peter Rowan::Texican Album, 1980 [Album]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/1476754_lg.jpg)
After seeing Peter Rowan's stand-out opening set back in November at the Paramount Theater (which was followed by performances from Jesse Winchester and Guy Clark), I was inspired to go back and re-visit some of my favorite Peter Rowan recordings from my own personal music library. While rolling through my collection of CD's and old vinyl records I happened to stumbled across this often over-looked classic. [read the review for Peter Rowan's Texican Badman after the break] Released in 1980, Peter Rowan's Texican [...]
There's some part of me that wishes I could say I've been a life-long fan of Guy Clark's music. But the truth comes in two parts: 1) I haven't lived my whole life yet and 2) It's really only been a little over seven years now since I first discovered the Texas-born singer-songwriter that has become one of my musical heroes, even if I am neither a singer or a songwriter myself. Guy Clark's first songs were recorded and made known to the world by one Jerry Jeff Walker. In 1971, Jerry Jeff recorded and released [...]
![The Avett Brothers::The Second Gleam [Review]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/1476757_lg.jpg)
" Tear down the house that I grew up in / I'll never be the same again / Take everything that I've collected / Throw it in a pile ". And with those words, sung by Seth Avett, the Avett Brothers' most recent release The Second Gleam begins. The six-song EP, which serves as the companion piece to the earlier release The Gleam from 2006, finds Seth and his brother Scott standing at a defining crossroads moment in their career. As the opening track "Tear Down [...]
![Woody Guthrie::This Land is Your Land [Essay]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/1476760_lg.jpg)
My brother and I used to walk along the highways almost every weekend of the summer during the time when we were 17 and 18 years old. Thumbs in the air, we walked from our house in the country to the nearest town, which was only about six or seven miles away. Many times we would leave early on Saturday morning and not return home until late on Sunday evening. If we didn't get a ride from a passing car we could make the trip walking in a little over an hour. I can only remember [...]
" Singing, planting rice, village songs more lovely than famous city songs " Haiku by Matsuo Basho I begin with a poem from the Japanese poet Basho for a couple reasons. The beauty of haiku is its ability to capture vastness in just a few simple lines. In this way, less becomes more. For local musician and singer-songwriter Wes Swing [...]
The (All New) Acorn Sisters sing country songs written by other people. Actually they sing country songs written by other people quite well. The sweet singing duo of Sarah White (aka Sugar) and Sian Richards (aka Cookie) have been performing in and around Charlottesville for a number of years now. The songs they perform come from the deep well of country music, stretching back to the Carter Family all the way forward to the likes of Emmylou Harris. And since they spend so much time on stage singing what others have written, I [...]
![Mark Kemp::Dixie Lullaby [Book Review]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/1476766_lg.jpg)
There are two important threads which run through the heart of Mark Kemp's cultural memoir Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South. The first thread deals with the feelings and experiences from Kemp's own coming-of-age at a time in the rural South that saw the desegregation of public life but no immediate end to the attitudes and feelings still held by many southern whites concerning race. To this end, there are themes of self-discovery, self-destruction, and self-loathing as a whole generation of young people in the South began to [...]
the velvet rut
Avicii – Two Million
Beck – I Just Started Hating Some People Today
Pitchfork Festival Paris unveils initial line-up
Princesse - Tell Me | MP3
