Another group of alt-country musos is taking on the Woody Guthrie legacy. This time around it is Jay Farrar with Will Johnson (Centro-matic, South San Gabriel), Anders Parker (Varnaline, Gob Iron), and Yim Yames (My Morning Jacket, Monsters of Folk). I liked Parker’s work with Farrar in Gob Iron and know of My Morning Jacket [...]

The Carolina Chocolate Drops have a new album due on 28 February called Leaving Eden. They’ll be touring in support of it and will be here in Madison at the Capitol Theatre on 4 May. Tickets go on sale 10 February and are $19.75 adv, $25 DOS. The band are back to being a trio [...]

Progressive rock festivals here in the States have been having a rough time lately. Last year’s NEARfest was cancelled due to lack of interest. While the sluggish economy was no doubt part of the problem, organizers laid the blame squarely on the fact that concert goers were simply not interested in a festival line-up that [...]

Ian Anderson has announced the release of TAAB2, the sequel to Tull’s Thick As a Brick. Anderson explains:
The theme of this anniversary “part two” album is to examine the possible different paths that the precocious young schoolboy, Gerald Bostock, might have taken later in life and to create alter-ego characters whose song-section identities illustrate the [...]

RE:GENERATION Music Project is a movie about five DJs who step outside their genre for musical inspiration.
Follow DJ Premier, Mark Ronson, Skrillex, Pretty Lights and The Crystal Method as they remix, recreate and re-imagine five traditional styles of music. From the classical perfection of the Berklee Symphony Orchestra to the bayou jams of New Orleans [...]

In the same vein as my last post, here’s an essay about the appeal of Yes to black fans by Tom Terrell of NPR.
I never thought of Yes as being particularly funky. De gustibus non est disputandum, I guess.

An old but interesting article from the Houston Press called “Companions Unobtrusive” noting how Rush has a fair number of black fans. It starts off amusingly.
The evening was approaching midnight, and the music of many a Dirty South rapper had ridden the airwaves during the past two hours. Then, suddenly, a rock song found its [...]

I heard this on All Songs Considered and thought it was a hoot. Mitchmatic is from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and this song is about trying to woo a young lady. It’s like the Bewtiched theme with a beat.
Why Don’t You Know? by Mitchmatic

After I saw that Etta James had died, I found an article noting that Johnny Otis passed away earlier this week. He was 90.

Etta James passed away today from leukemia. She was 73.
I posted a show of hers back in 2007 and it is here.