[Austin TX] A chance encounter with a favorite Austin band right on East 6th. I felt bad taking them for granted all those years with all these outsiders packing the porch, sidewalk, and street trying to get a glimpse. I did notice during my pre-SXSW research that none of the roots bands held a candle to what is commonplace in Austin. The Carper Family is three ladies who do variations on traditional country. Jen plays guitar, Beth plays fiddle, and Melissa plays upright bass. Although harmonizing is a key characteristic of the band, they take turns singing songs, each of which have their own flavor. While all three band members have their charms, I am a Melissa Carper aficionado. Jen is kind of party girl country, Beth is more traditional porch fare, and Melissa is a sweet tumble of Southern lesbian dreadlocked shy bad-assness all in one. She’s also the only band member who writes her own songs. Rockboy requested her “PBR in the Car” and I requested her “My Christian Girlfriend” – my request was satisfied because they already planned to close with that song. Although it would probably annoy her to hear me say it, Melissa’s songs are amazing because they blend old timey (and upbeat) sounds with radical lyrics. “My Christian Girlfriend” is a lesbian’s lament about the traditional Christian girlfriend she longs for who will bear her baby, via turkey baster of course. Be advised to also check out Melissa’s band Sad Daddy. They were so big a guy with a gold diamond in his ear was shooing people away from the entrance. They might as well have had a red carpet. [checked for accuracy by Rockboy]

This place was old-time Texas, a proper dance hall. It typically wouldn’t be for me, but having lived outside of Texas for the last year, I was loving it. I do generally enjoy the spirit and soul of the south very much. The best thing about Blanco’s was that there wasn’t a touch of irony – it was full of very very old people in sincere cowboy hats. Arty Hill hails from Maryland, writes his own songs, and had a backing band that seemed to be mostly from Austin. The band did everything from honky tonk to modern country to outlaw country (some very Robert Earl Keen songs). Some choice lyrics: “The Lord was Sunday, but church was Saturday night,“ “I get hungry for baby, she’s like a bourbon and red eye steak.” My favorite member of the band was the absolutely orgasmic drummer – even when he was playing a slow steady beat, which he usually was, he was throwing metal-ecstasy faces all over the place – we were pretty sure we’d seen him play with Austin bands. He makes me laugh one month later. Every drum stroke, a revelation. I was admiring all of the two-stepping ancient couples, thinking how sweet it was that they’d stayed together so long, and then one of the old men winked at me behind his woman’s back… It wasn’t a harmless friendly wink either. Our foreign-accented waitress (who did not fit the clichés of the place) was being hit upon by the ancient white-bearded professor looking fellow sitting behind us. All in all, we had a mighty fine time – maybe Blanco’s is for me.

Rockboy has been dying to see Junior for years, so ShellFish and I finally gave in. I had very low expectations, which was unreasonable since I have never seen a low quality musician at The Continental Club. Well, Junior was fantastic. He may have a lot of old-timey country stylings but, at heart, he’s a guitar nerd. It swiftly became clear that Junior is the party, and the rest of his band, including his suburban-looking wife Tanya Rae, were only there as back up. For instance, the drumset had two parts. Junior plays a bizarre ½ guitar – ½ lap steel contraption, and he plays it well. When he bent over, that’s when you knew we were heading for a fingering party. He managed to fit little speed metal riffs, and jazz loops, into pretty traditional country songs. I really liked his voice, a deep rumble, kind of like Bing Crosby, but Junior also played around with some silly voice tricks. The crowd was eating out of his hand and loved it all. I also liked his wise-guy stylings – he’s still got swagger, despite being 70, and a lot of his lyrics were funny. He also did a straightforward surf piece, and even slid in some bluesy and punky elements.

after sitting next to their skilled guitar player during the bluegrass workshop, and seeing the respect he was paid, and hearing that they gig all over, I was expecting something great – well, I’ve never seen four men destroy such promising instruments like these four men did: upright bass, guitar, guitar, mandolin/fiddle – it was the weakest ass shit I had ever done seen in my life – the Yo La Tengo of whatever-you-want-to-call-their-music – I heard recently that the difference between the young and the old is that the old understand restraint, well the degree to which these guys have restraint mastered suggests they must be one step from the grave – they were particularly bad when they sang the lead vocalist’s own songs – he’d simper as he described them and they were these cheesy trite bland horrors – I swear he’s trying to turn a church band into a pop band – his voice is weak too, sometimes John Denver, usually church folk – it was the ultimate irony when he was trying to express how he’s changing the world with his music and stated “Nothing speaks louder than music” – the one time they were tolerable was when my guitar man sang – ironically, I feel like their sound has some promise if they would only play more interesting songs– I’ve honestly never seen these instruments handled like they did – they could do ambient bluegrass or something– they also played the song that I hear everywhere I go in Gunnison and will forever consider the theme song of Gunnison: “Wagonwheel” – turns out it’s a song for which Dylan wrote the chorus and never recorded, and then Old Crow Medicine Show wrote verses around it and made it hugely famous… in Gunnison

I have too much back info on this band – mostly because a key member is a neighbor and a fellow sociologist. This makes it difficult for me to be objective and to see them as a ‘real’ band, because I know how they formed. Said friend is humble and downplays the situation. And of course all or most bands form in these ways. Well, seeing them all amped up and slick at the Brewery convinced me they are a real band, and they have a real sound. It’s a sound that I believe may have morphed since I saw them last many months ago during the monthly Gunnison art crawl. The young blonde lovely has taken over lead vocals (and guitar), while the brown lovely handles backup vocals and fiddle. The two boys and a man variously manage the banjo, the electric bass, guitar, and lap steel. Their sound flits about enough that it’s hard to pin it down but it’s some combo of alt country, folk, and Americana. All covers, I believe. They did help me pin down the Old Crow Medicine Show origins of the apparently #1 song in Gunnison (as per coffee shops) – the song is ‘Rock Me Baby.’ This band is peaceful, sincere, and … pure.

old school banjo from a very old man – stoic

We were pretty skerred to see our first music in Gunnison but they weren’t too bad – of course, the dobro player is our neighbor and a potential coworker – band consists of him (in his 40s) and four college kids – two sweet girls and two bored-looking (or cool-trying) boys – they played Americana of all sorts – their first song was a cover of a song from an Austin band sigh

Kristin Ezbicki is an unassuming
singer-songwriter with country sensibilities who showed up on a porch on Willow Ave on a sunny afternoon in Somerville, MA. Dubbed Porchfest, the event was a city-wide initiative to highlight local artists by having them perform on people’s porches. After a rainy miserable week, the sun came out for a few hours as Ezbicki took the stage to promote her recent album, Bring Me to the Light.

Given the venue (a porch), the limited staging space she had to share with a guitarist, a keyboard and a drum kit, and a roving audience who came and went by foot, on bicycle, plus the constant stream of cars passing by, Ezbicki handled the entire atmosphere with aplomb. But what quickly became evident, despite Ezbicki not being a household name, was that the people who stopped to listen to the music stuck around. She was good. Her voice was warm and her songs struck a chord with the crowd.

Weaving deftly between haunting lost-love melodies like Anna and an Edgar Allan Poe poem A Dream Within a Dream set to original music, Ezbicki ran through a forty-five minute set of original tunes. The highlight was the gorgeous rendition of the album title track, Bring Me to the Light that soared through the crowd (which, fortunately for all involved, happened to be at its largest size at that moment).

For a change of pace, Ezbicki invited the house band on stage for a jam session of familiar tunes including Honky Tonk Woman and Dead Flowers (both Rolling Stones covers). And the surprise of the night was a woman named Anastasia who was recruited from the crowd to play guitar – and took lead vocals on an impressive version of Coldplay’s Clocks.

Ezbicki handled all the elements and surprises and put on a terrific showcase for her talents and her original music. Reportedly, her debut album was six years in the making. Here’s hoping the next one comes sooner than that.

so Rockboy billed this band as a fantastic garage rock band he’d discovered at a previous SXSW – this didn’t really fit what I found online about them but I had faith – uh, well, not at all – they’re a mix of all of my guilty music pleasures: The Eagles, Tom Petty, The Beach Boys, Cracker, Jackson Browne – his voice was very David Lowery at times, which is definitely a plus for me – they were a tight bundle of country psych, jam rock, and southern rock – they made me intensely homesick for California and for long desert highways and for the 70s (even if all of these are ½ fantasy memories of mine) – they are from San Francisco – so their sound wasn’t necessarily anything new, but their sound was smooth and full and they came off as strikingly professional

three average guys singing average songs, mellow jammy singer/songwriter with a country tone, reminded me of Songs: Ohia but less fabulous of course, some Neil Young, the interesting thing was that they acted as the house band for the night, playing on the window stage while the other bands were setting up, very classy of the Hole

apparently the entire Austin lesbian scene has discovered what I already knew about Daddy Carper – she’s a smooth package of sexy bluegrass genius

[Atlanta, GA] I had never heard a lick of music from this band before the show but it was love at first sight – everyone else I ran into before this show had seen them like 5 times and had stories about spitting on the crowd, spitting into each others’ mouths, and kissing each other – I didn’t see any of that but they did have tribal drums, tight jangle pop guitar, and a punk ethic – some spaghetti western and even hints of O’Death – bit of psychedelia – some surf rock – they were pretty much The Strange Boys (local) perfected – like being in a Robert Rodriguez movie – some of their songs were more rowdy pop punk (like Redd Kross, as Rockboy pointed out) – the building was so moved that the Emo’s employee who was trying to stop the crowd surfers ended up giving up and jumping in himself

[Austin, TX] so all the young people and the hip people cleared out before this show, leaving the middle-aged and old people and the genuinely cowboy hatted people, and the mildly embarrassed remains of some young or at least younger people – this band is mildly legendary in Austin but pretty much just among the adult contemporary set – I found out at the show that they’d won a Grammy and was prepared to still not be impressed but they were just so polished and pretty, I couldn’t help it – it was kind of country swing but very sophisticated with hints of old-timey jazz – besides being all shiny, the music was complicated with little surprises at every turn and lots of heart – not to mention that I found myself wildly attracted to the lead guy, a mammoth long-legged old mountain-porch of a man – maybe I was being delusional but I recognized both his name (Ray Benson) and him…past lives

former member of The Weary Boys, a band that never impressed me as much as they did the general Austin populace – I wasn\”t feeling moved by this incarnation until I realized I really liked them, I did – they\”re founded in harmless country rock but there\”s just enough Southern rock and jam band posturing to make them just up my alley

[Denver, CO] a top show – they were weird in just the right ways – their frontman was a white guy with a gold tooth, a baseball cap and thick-framed glasses – their guitarist and co-vocalist was a gothic man with slicked back hair and dark-rimmed eyes who made me want to laugh because he seemed to see the humor in being a gothic man – I had a bad view but there was an extremely short man playing a double-necked red velvet guitar and supposedly an old old man playing a lap steel – the more unremarkable bass player and drummer round up the group – just looking at them immediately made me think of Nick Cave and gothic country and rockabilly – and so went their sound, a gothic hyped up Americana with gospel influences – dynamic stage presence and a seemingly adoring fan base – the two vocalists together inspired all kinds of visions of debauchery – also got a visit from HBomb and TheSpunkyOne

[Lexington, KY] all American boys doing rousing roots rock, strong vocals, charismatic lead singer with the air of a revivalist, really likeable

so here’s the story – I came to love one song (“Good Bye Mary Lou”), a punkish bluegrass song, by this no-name band called Angels of Light and propagated it through all mixes therewith – I had a vague notion of Akron/Family but didn’t know they’d been the backing band for Angels of Light until I read their show bio – the show bio also mentioned Michael Gira as the lead singer of Angels of Light which got Rockboy excited because he knew him as the lead singer of the Swans – anyway, we went to this show because of a string of distant associations – I was mostly pleased and the anti-anything-remotely-psychedelic Rockboy was not – they are in essence a jam band, tapping such a wide variety of sounds that I characterize them officially as a schizophrenic band – they literally have no distinguishing characteristic which, even if I am a girl who loves variety, may not be a good thing for a band looking to make a name for themselves – they began with a song that made me love them: a more psychedelic Songs: Ohia (melancholy folk) – suddenly it was thrash which firstly is a signature move of this generation (to intersperse loveliness with hardness) and secondly seemed an misguided attempt to prove they’re not soft or that they’re hip to all aspects of our culture – but in sum, it didn’t sound good and it didn’t sound organic – they then proceeded into the other tagsound of this generation of music, Afro pop, which they did very well, reminding me of Paul Simon – in the end, I believe that they will return, if they want to endure, to the sounds that are their strength: very pretty and sophisticated pop – if it matters, they dress like 70s road hippies with t-shirts and bandanas which seemed to me a lame attempt to suggest campfire jams

the more that I understand the sound of Texas swing, the more I appreciate this band – they elaborate on the sound and play intelligently and creatively – always based in country but sometimes leaning more toward the bluegrass then toward a solid swing song and then a waltz and then almost jazzy – they\”re very good musicians and make the song their own while maintaining its integrity – Jeremy, the lead singer\”s, voice might not be remarkable but what is remarkable is his deft management of the band and dedication to the music he loves

the lead singer of this band annoys me to the point that I can\”t fairly judge their music, she is so unjustifiably full of herself and blatantly self-aware on the stage, we were semi-positive that we were giving this band a second chance and they got the same rating they got the first time: unsatisfying rockabilly poseurs, perhaps because they\”re from Seattle and don\”t have the Texas roots as a foundation

a lot of prep work went into this show: discussion, watching of the biography, etc. and it made it all the more exciting to see the actual 77-year-old man walking down the little aisle – the charm that won him 5 (plus?) wives is still apparent – he just opens his mouth and amusing folksy tales pour out, that’s his “ramblin’” part – the names of celebrity pals were dropped left and right (Kris Kristofferson, Woody Guthrie, etc.) – he’s a good guitarist, trained by Woody Guthrie and acting as mentor to Bob Dylan eventually, as informed by the movie – he doesn’t write too many of his songs and talked about the person who wrote each song before playing it – style ranged from bluesy to Guthrie-esque to Townes-esque folk-country – overly-delighted fawning middle-aged crowd that is typical to the Cactus Cafe – the downside was that Jack was struck with allergies or a cold and his voice kept getting scruffy to the point that he eventually cut his second set short – his first set wasn’t even that long -RamblinBoy reported that he actually played more songs than what he did in Marfa the weekend before possibly because he didn’t have enough of a voice to chat too much – we got to talk to him on the way out after waiting out a very old hippie who actually had a twig sticking out of his hair

totally captivating, three winsome (very) young girls who rock like boys – one or two of them actually went to a girl rock camp, there was a pretty little long-haired blonde who keeps her wild-side feminine, there was a sexy official-bad-girl in tights / mini skirt / raccoon hat / LA Guns t-shirt, there was an underage cute one in a curly bob who is probably the secret baddest of them all, oh and there was a guy playing drums but nobody paid attention to him, they met in Tennessee and do raucous sitting-on-your-porch country numbers that they wrote themselves

in same indie-psych-rock vein as The Parson Red Heads but not as pleasing – I attribute it to the pop-rock quality of the singer\”s voice

80s Texas country cool lead singer (suit, gum-chomping, Elvis sneer, and sunglasses indoors) ended every song with a gimmicky Elvis-like thank you – there\”s no doubt that they\”re good at what they do but also true that 1000s have already done what they do – wide range of country, rock and pop – distinctly heard the influence of Roy Orbison, The Traveling Wilburys and Tom Petty (but this would be as deep as I delve into country)

really disappointing, bill themselves as NY-style experimental country but it\”s more like average-Joe alt-country with a lot of pretension, some five guys sitting in a row without instruments but with sunglasses provided the vocals, lots of jangle, low-key and uncomplicated, vocals were especially low quality

Andrew Mitchell hit the stage at Kennedy’s Midtown bar with his guitar, opening with a more than respectable version of R.E.M.’s (Don’t Go Back to) Rockville. His 45-minute set also included the Styx cover Come Sail Away and Woody Guthrie’s Pretty Boy Floyd, a throwback to 1939. Considering he was playing to only a handful of people, he still gamely put on a noteworthy show.

it is unfair to blame my mild disappointment in them on them because I had built them up unreasonably in my head and created a sound for them that didn\”t really exist, I had filled in all of the fuzz from the first time I saw them with really bad sound with this fantastic original sound, so they didn\”t have on their old ranchero clothes and they are not bizarre creening country but pretty straightforward 60s garage rock, they are very rounded and irresistibly danceable, there is some country in there and maybe old-school rockabilly, the voice remains though and is the key to their originality, very good band

very disappointingly the sound went kaput with them and they\”re supposed to be one of the best local bands right now, the vocals weren\”t turned up enough, wearing old fashioned ranchero wear, from what I could hear they were very appealing, slow shuffling country-infused rock with creening off kilter vocals and flat chords, reminded me of a more Americana Gun Club, innocent darkness

they\”re good musicians: members from WT Special Heather Rae and the Moonshine Boys but why be a cover band if you know how to write songs?, they cover swing and honky tonk from the early 20th century

Burton on pedal steel and singing – young hipster too self conscious to seem comfortable singing old Texas swing songs, rest of the band is a conglomerate of people from other bands in the Austin swing scene

had bad memories of this band and they were reconfirmed, he was a dead ringer for Townes looks-wise but was just an average country singer, quiet voice and unremarkable music

dark country with a punk undertone, very reminiscent of The Gun Club which is an excellent excellent thing, Stevie Tombstone is an aging skinny Nick Cave lookalike and his wife is a young blonde hottie who plays bass, they made me want to go hang out on their porch after the show, they don\”t play very often and the young crowd did not understand how lucky they were

solid Texas swing, rockabilly kid in a pale blue shirt does the classic vocalizing and keyboard, brought up a woman to vocalize as well, pleasant family atmosphere on a Sunday afternoon kind of music