David Lowery has always been the articulate, inspired, not-afraid-to-let-go-on-stage type of singer for which I am a sucker. Show some passion and an ability to both understand and play music that has roots to songs that came before it, and I may be hooked. And I really like it if they can politely rock the shit out of their own tunes.
Lowery is the frontman for the band Cracker, and also – for those with any memory of 80’s college rock – Camper Van Beethoven. He’s launched a blog that may prove to the the best rock music writing of 2010. On 300songs.com, Lowery writes about each of 300 songs he has penned. But the genius of the execution – the reason the writing becomes more than simple narcissism – is because of the detours he takes, into stories that feel like letters from a friend.
Stories about taking his band into Las Vegas with his band for th first time. Squaring old disagreements. Explaining the history and intrigue of the Lost Coast of California. Including chord charts and lyrics for the featured song. How’s that for a start?
Always, Lowery is writing interesting prose -the Hunter Thompson version of the truth. Real and slightly psychedelic.
Whether or not you are a fan who has seen the band at The Vogue or Birdy’s or a festival in Indy, you can trust me: the music he’s made with Cracker has been some of the best rock/Americana/alt-country/whatever of the past 20 years.
Now we get a proudly woozy blog – about songs I haven’t even heard, but know I need to. Especially now., because Lowery made me want to.
Read it here
Lowery is slated to release his first-ever solo record, The Palace Guards on February 1, 2011 on Savoy/429 Records.
VIDEO: Cracker – “Eurotrash Girl”, with some of guitarist Johnny Hickman’s fine raunch.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38Vun2LYnoY]
Rob Nichols
Charlie Daniels: A Million Miles to Indianapolis
originally posted to NUVO.net | Indy’s Alternative Voice
The temperature was well above 90 degrees by mid-morning. Charlie Daniels and his band were getting ready to play a Brickyard 400 pre-race gig at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2008.
Daniels came on stage at noon that day and captured the sweaty crowd with 75 minutes of hits from the past 40 years, from “Uneasy Rider” to “The South’s Gonna Do It Again,” “Long Haired Country Boy” to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”. The show (loud and arena-like in presentation) also reminded why Daniels is a country music legend – he commanded the stage with a catalog of songs any songwriter would envy, and was able to create a big-but-intimate show, cranking up the volume on his songs without losing their core.
Hey, the Beatles really matter; plus Shea Stadium '65 video
Let me give full disclosure: I went to see a thing called the Classical Mystery Tour last Friday night just outside of Indianapolis. It is essentially a Beatles cover band and the orchestra playing Beatles music. The title is a play on the Beatles “Magical Mystery Tour” and features a Beatlemania-type band (in fact, this tour draws from alums of that stage tour) and normally they play with the symphony orchestra from whatever town the show is in.
The night I saw them, there was no orchestra. It was at Conner Prairie, which is about an 8,000 seat natural bowl space. It was filled up. If you’ve been, you know it is also about bringing the table, the lawn chair, some good food and some wine or beer. Great vibe.
But it was one of the rare stops on this band’s 30 date (or so) schedule that didn’t have an orchestra joining them. I didn’t figure that out until I got there and saw no orchestra. Oops. How good can fake Beatles be, just themselves, a huge bandshell, and a field full of people socializing and eating amidst echoes of the the sound of the British Invasion.
Pretty damn good, is what they were. They did two sets – an hour apiece – dressed in Beatle suits for the first half, playing 1963-66 tunes. After break, they came out dressed like they just jumped out of pictures you see from the Abbey Road era, and played anything after Sgt. Pepper, including songs from that record.
Todd Snider: Busy Man Comes to Bloomington
(originally written for NUVO.net (8.31.10)
I hate musical labels. But I can use them. I’d call Todd Snider a roots rocker, having seen him with his old band The Nervous Wrecks, all sweaty and rockin’. Call him folk, or a kind of Prine/Petty/Jerry Jeff Walker/Jagger hybrid. Some of those work for you?
Todd will perform at the 3rd annual Hillbilly Haiku Concert at the Upland Brewing Company in Bloomington, Indiana this Friday (September 3rd) at 6pm. TV Mike and the Scarecrows and The Elly Maze open.
The Hillbilly Haiku Americana Music Series is hosted by the Upland Brewing Co. to raise money for the Sycamore Land Trust. All proceeds from the concert’s ticket, food, and beverage sales benefit the Sycamore Land Trust, whose mission is to preserve the landscape of southern Indiana. Working with private landowners to protect their family heritage, SLT has conserved over 5,500 acres on more than 66 parcels and helped plant over 55,000 trees.
After he rolls out of town, Snider will head to the Americana Music Festival held in Nashville beginning September 8, and will fire up a group he is calling Todd Snider’s Rock & Roll Revue, featuring Jason D. Williams, Dan Baird and Friends.
New Springsteen "Darkness" Reissue Contains Intriguing Additions
Though grounded in a rock and roll, with a healthy R&B/60’s Soul tradition chromosome, Bruce Springsteen was signed as a folk guy (at least that’s what Columbia Records thought they were getting). As successfully as any artist in modern music, has been able go from folk to rock to soul to pop without losing his ability to write insightful lyrics and embrace rock music.
But the record that has proven to be the strongest, most timeless work is 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town album. It gets a newly remastered treatment (The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story, a 6 CD/DVD set, due out November 14) with a package that includes two CD’s of unreleased, new/old songs from the original recording sessions; a live concert video from 1978; and a making-of documentary – one that debuts at the Toronto Film Festival September 14, and on HBO in August.
I have the orginal CD in my car. It’s a favorite on my iPod. I can still remember the day in 1984 , going to the used record store in Hillsdale, Michigan, and coming out with a used vinyl version. I still have it.
It a record that has some of Bruce’s meanest guitar playing, down-but still-hopeful lyrics and a core set of songs (“Badlands”, “Prove It All Night”, The Promised Land”) that form the heart of most of the band’s live shows.
He had to wait two years following the release of Born to Run before he could even get into the studio to record the album, because of the lawsuit with his management, and a judge’s injunction against recording with his new manager Jon Landau while the court case dragged on.
VIDEO: Dan Baird and Homemade Sin
Fomer Georgia Satellite and longtime member of the turn-it-up-loud Fender Telecaster thinktank, Dan Baird just don’t care what you think. Here’s a video shot close to the stage, with pretty great sound, as his band rocked a bar in Leicester, England earlier this month. Video notable for it’s sweatiness, disdain for subtlety, and general rock and roll bad-ass-ness – Doing Elvis and one of his own songs. Brilliantly rough.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tYp1wLtX1c]