Glen Phillips : Released [ download ] On-air coverage is the sensitive coverblogger's bread and butter: many artists perform songs live that they never record, and the purity of sound from an in-studio bootleg is far superior to stage recordings, with none of the crowd noise and fuzzy recoding quality that so often undermine clarity and comfort. As such, I am an avid collector of such performances, with a huge collection of in-studio recordings that combine coverage and originals alike. And because it is coverage [...]
Critically acclaimed AMC's Breaking Bad is a gripping drama following the life of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), an overqualified high school chemistry teacher turned meth cook. When stricken with terminal lung cancer and in search of a way to make sure his family will be financially secure without him, he turns to his former student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) to enter a new business of cooking the highest quality meth around. Not only is Breaking Bad brimming with what could be considered as some of TV's best acting, it is accompanied by a top-notch soundtrack that wraps [...]
BAM! Bet you were expecting a Best of 2011 list, yeah? Well I don't got time for that (YET)! No...this is where I acknowledge all the great stuff I missed in 2010. 'Cause it doesn't get any more rock n roll than to talk about shit that's over a year old. Write that down in your How to Be Rock N Roll notebooks. Anyway, the last time I wrote this list , I spent quite a while talking about how there isn't enough time in one year to listen to all the potentially great releases and put [...]
The Reborn Identity - White Mess [ mp3 ] Chromeo - Hot Mess Fenech-Soler - Stop and Stare (White Version) Glen Phillips - The Spirit of Shackleton Chromeo's Hot Mess gets a chilled acoustic makeover
So many songs are just called "Trouble" - seems the word itself is sufficient to set the stage for artists aching to address the challenges and pain of life. We started the week with a cover of the Little Feet song of the same name; as we come to the end of our theme, here's three more favorites, none of them in their original form, all of them relatively rare and hard to find, even as their original versions are likely familiar to the average audiophile. [...]
We've started the budget process over at the school committee table, and the outlook is bleak: State budgets are getting tighter, health insurance takes a bigger bite out of our state-determined minimum funding level every year, and here in Massachusetts, the only way to raise local taxes is to appeal directly to the voters - a tactic we lost by a factor of 5 to 2 just three years ago when we tried to get enough to reopen the middle school library. It's all part of a larger trend, of course. Since 2002, our school [...]
live on A Prairie Home Companion Tom Brosseau is like an angel...alien from North Dakota...definitely something celestial, a force of good, nice things. Listen to him play on A Prairie Home Companion then pop over to Hotel Cafe tonight where he'll be performing with WPA, that's Sean Watkins (Nickel Creek, The Watkins Family) and Glen Phillips. And stare at the word "prairie" for a while. How weird is that word? —Daiana Feuer
Glen Phillips played to a sold-out audience at the Soiled Dove Underground last night, touching on material spanning his solo output, Toad the Wet Sprocket , and Works Progress Administration . Glen appeared slightly nervous at first. Several songs in, a shout-out from the crowd broke down any tension that may have existed. The rest of the night was full of audience engagement, humor, and a perfect performance. The audience gave Glen their undivided attention, but this is the norm at The Soiled Dove Underground. I'm surprised at how many people have never been to [...]
Edie Carey continues the folk tradition with expressive music and lyrics on Bring the Sea
We live in complicated times, in a complicated country. Oil gushes into our waters, and each day, I watch the hurricane news, waiting for the perfect storm that will lead to the destruction of the East Coast beaches in whose warm waves and on whose clinging sand I have spent so many summers. The New Orleans project which won our hearts in the months following Katrina is out of money, though it shimmers with hope on the new series from the folks who brought you The Wire . My inner city [...]
One snowy Sunday night in October, I sat at my kitchen table after tucking my little one into bed and realized that Glen Phillips of Toad The Wet Sprocket was playing at that very moment right up the road with his new band Works Progress Administration , and I had completely missed it. After listening to their bluegrass-laced toe-tapping goodness, I started looking up other tourdates and noticed they were playing in December in Nashville, where a dear friend lives. And thus, this [...]
Glen Phillips: Drive By [ purchase ] My New Year's Resolution is to once again become more active on this site and try to post at least once each week with each new theme. It starts today. This one comes from Glen Phillips' first solo album after his departure from Toad the Wet Sprocket. It's a character study of a child struggling with trying to be a "good boy" [...]
This Saturday, January 9th, is gearing up to be the most frustrating night in recent local folk music history, thanks to a huge convergence of talent in the Boston area. I've got third row tickets to see Greg Brown at Sanders Theater - a great place to see a folkfan's favorite wry basso and sensitive songwriter, who once told me a hilarious anecdote about being asked to sign a woman's breast, "and I had to hold it down with my other hand, it was so jiggly" - so I'm not really disappointed [...]
Part Two of my countdown of the top 110 albums of the decade. You can find 110-101 here . But for now, here's 100-91... 100. Pete Yorn - musicforthemorningafter (2001) Sometimes you make something so good with your first attempt that you can never hit those high standards ever again. Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly knows what this is all about. As does Pete Yorn. These days he's duetting with Scarlett Johansson and making so-so [...]
Next Thursday morning I'm boarding a plane bound for Nashville. That sounds like the first lyric of a good song. I'll be visiting one of my favorite people in the world, and together we are going to cram in a good deal of musical fun into four days. On Friday night we're heading to the Exit/In ( this show happened there , among others, which makes it some sort of hallowed ground) to see the newly-birthed supergroup Works Progress Administration . This civic-mindedly named band is an " expandable collective [...]
he Works Progress Administration is not quite a supergroup (well it, is but...), instead they claim that it's an expandable collective, centred around Glen Phillips of solo and Toad the Wet Sprocket fame, Sean Watkins from Nickel Creek, and Luke Bullett who was a member of Lyle Lovett's large band. The WPA also features many other performers, including Sara Watkins (fiddle), Benmont Tench (piano), Greg Leisz (various), Pete Thomas (drums), and Davey Faragher (bass). The self-titled album also features some of the best album art/liner notes I have ever seen. Here is what frontman Glen Phillips had to say about [...]
The original Works Progress Administration was part of FDR's 1939 New Deal initiative which put millions of people to work in the darkest part of the Great Depression. This spirit of community and creativity is carried in the philosophy of a band that takes its name. Works Progress Administration is a supergroup of sorts- an "expanding collective" according to the band's website. At its core it is Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket and solo, Sean Watkins formerly of the excellent Nickle Creek and Luke Bulla [...]
Glen Phillips made a name for himself as founding frontman for Toad The Wet Sprocket , a high school rock band made good; if you're a child of the eighties like myself, or just a fan of retro alt-rock radio, you've heard his distinctive voice plenty of times, most notably on cultural staple Walk On The Ocean . Indeed, my own personal experience with the artist, now pushing forty, is restricted to a single lawn-seat glimpse at a mid-nineties H.O.R.D.E. festival, an event most memorable for being the first and last rock concert which [...]
Glen Phillips' brand of Southern California folk-rock has always flirted on the edge of its bluegrass and country and western roots. In the years since Toad the Wet Sprocket closed up shop his songwriting has danced closer and closer to those roots and with 2000's Mutual Admiration Society - pairing Phillips with members of Nickel Creek - it seemed to come to the forefront. Taking that collaborative spirit to the next level, Works Progress Administration consists of Phillips and his MAS cohorts Sean and Sara Watkins (Nickel Creek, Fiction Family) with Luke Bulla (Jerry Douglas [...]
[Apologies for the server problems that befuddled Buzz Bands all morning. Back to disseminating:] Big doings all over town — under the stars, there is Jackson Browne at the Greek Theatre; Buddy Guy, Dr. John and the Lower 911 and James Cotton at the Hollywood Bowl; and, on a smaller scale but no less enjoyable, Olin and the Moon's free early show at downtown's Pershing Square. ... ... N.A.S.A. [pictured] brings its Intergalactic Circus to the El Rey [...]
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