Texas Music // Current

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5 days ago

The Hidden Art of Camouflage Photography

The Hidden Art of Camouflage Photography http://www.uniquescoop.com/2010/02/hidden-art-of-camouflage-photography.html

neham
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Spotlight: Jonathan Tyler & the Northern Lights

When they hit the tiny BMI stage for their Austin City Limits Festival debut, Jonathan Tyler & the Northern Lights had some of... more

xiola
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Afro-Punk Tour 2009: American Fangs

Meet American Fangs. Exclusive interviews, Live and backstage footage from the first Afro-Punk Tour.... more

xiola
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White Stripes Documentary Set For SXSW Premier

White Stripes are set to debut their documentary, ‘Under Great White Northern Lights‘, to U.S. audiences during SXSW.... more

CarlosG
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Bob, baby: Metal and Steel

"I won't mind, 'cause I won't feel a thing..." Music video by Bob Schneider performing Metal And... more

xiola
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Stream Spoon's New Album! (photo)

Transference , the latest album from Austin, TX, rockers Spoon, doesn't drop until next Tuesday, January 19 -- but you can... more

current_music_bot
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Andrea Chase singing "Tyrone"

This girl can SING! Check her out! :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVurfWusneg

xiola
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Take Away show: Jonathan Tyler & the Northern Lights perform "Devil's Basement"

Bad-ass blues rock band from Dallas, Texas perform their rootsy "Devil's Basement" in front of Eskimo Joe's in... more

DrPhiloneous
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Spoon's New Album, Transference, Coming in January

Merge Records has confirmed a Jan. 26 U.S. release of Spoon’s seventh-full length album, Transference. The ghost of... more

xiola
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"Thrill the World" Dancers Transform Into Zombies to Reanimate Thriller in Texas!

By 6:45 Saturday night, I finally had my roar turns down pat. But that air-guitar-tick-tock move was still not quite there.... more

remanns
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If there’s such a thing as a “typical” road that most young singer-songwriters take from picking up their first guitar to releasing their debut album, it goes something like this: You get enough songs together to shyly test out at some open-mic nights, eventually segue into happy-hour gigs, opening slots or shows of your own on slow nights at a local club or coffee shop, build a small following, save up some cash or find an investor, hit the studio and, voila — debut album. For all intents and purposes, your music career starts now.

Amanda Shires took a somewhat more scenic route. In the 18 years between picking up her first instrument (a pawn shop violin) and recording what she playfully insists on calling her “first” solo album, this summer’s West Cross Timbers, Shires played with a kid’s western swing band, performed onstage with the surviving members of Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys, taught fiddle at Playboys singer Tommy Allsup’s summer music camp, toured and recorded three albums with the Lubbock-based alt-country band the Thrift Store Cowboys, knocked out a solo record of instrumental fiddle tunes and recorded a duets album, 2008’s terrific Sew Your Heart with Wires, with Nashville-based songwriter Rod Picott (with whom she’s also toured Europe — twice).

Somewhere in there, she also got to open for and meet her hero, George Jones, and swap Bob Wills/Playboys stories with Chris Isaak and his drummer during a chance encounter at the Denver airport. He talked her into playing a couple of requests on her fiddle, which earned her a fun little anecdote and celebrity blurb for her Web site: “She played so pretty that Kenny and I missed our plane,” goes the Isaak rave. “America needs pizzicato.”

Add it all up, and it’s clear that Shires — though hardly “getting old,” as she puts it — has a lot more miles on her career odometer than the average 27-year-old rookie singer-songwriter. Which goes a long way toward explaining why West Cross Timbers, though charmingly naïve and vulnerable around the edges, plays more like a confident stride forward than a tentative baby step. Songs like the opening “Upon Hearing Violins,” a spry, catchy breakup anthem, and the darker revenge fantasy “I Kept Watch Like Doves” skip lightly but assuredly down well-trodden confessional roads, pointing early on toward a solid but not otherwise remarkable introduction. But then you come to “Mineral Wells,” and all of a sudden Shires sounds like a writer with hundreds of songs and decades of seasoning under her belt.

Fittingly, it was the last song she wrote for the record. And it’s her favorite, too.

“Yeah, that’s the one that I think shows me at my best,” she agrees. Not surprisingly, it’s also the most explicitly personal, addressing with striking lyrical economy (and an equally minimalist arrangement) the subject of her parents’ divorce when she was a toddler and its longstanding effect on her own identity. “Something happened in ’84/Ended up with two places to be from/the only tree with leaves in Lubbock with roots in Mineral Wells.”

“I was born in Mineral Wells, but I have to claim to be from both Mineral Wells and Lubbock, or somebody gets pissed off,” she explains. “My dad lives in Mineral Wells, and my mom lives in Lubbock. The song started out being about them, in the verses, but then in the choruses it started being more about leaving where you’re from, or divorcing where you’re from. Not in a mean kind of way, though; it’s just kind of about wanting something that you can’t have at the moment. It’s about missing something … a loss.”

Mineral Wells and Lubbock share equal claim to Shires’ music roots. It was in Mineral Wells, on a trip to visit her dad, that she felt love at first sight for that fateful pawn shop violin (“It just looked real exotic and mysterious to me,” she says. “I’d never really asked for anything before, but I begged for it.”).
Click link to continue...If there’s such a thing as a “typical” road that most young singer-songwriters take from picking up their first... more

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4 months ago

Ben Kweller - Country Roads, Take Me Home

The Texas Return of Prodigal Son Ben Kweller:
Ben Kweller walks up to a picnic table behind Flipnotics looking, for the most part, just like any South Austin hipster. He’s wearing a Levi’s corduroy jacket — you know, the kind with the sherpa fur collar — and a trucker hat, his wavy mane of hair flowing out from beneath.

He looks like a kid, your average slacker. Carrying a straw tote bag, he pulls out a Thermos, a tiny silver cup filled with herbs and a metal straw that also serves as a filter. “This is maté [pronounced mah-tay], by the way, from Argentina,” he says as he pours hot water over the concoction. “It’s an herb, basically a tea — totally legal!”

That’s something your average guy doesn’t do, bring his own tea setup to a coffee shop. And don’t be deceived by his youthful appearance. Kweller is a family man, a seasoned industry veteran and a shrewd career manager. This former child prodigy isn’t afraid to challenge himself, take risks and try new things, without really seeming to reinvent himself at all.

Signifying a return to his Texas roots, both physically and metaphorically, the indie-pop rocker has just released his first country album, Changing Horses. Kweller, his wife Liz and 2-year-old son, Dorian, moved to Austin from New York City last year. Since then Kweller’s been spending more time exploring the great outdoors with his son than trying to establish himself in any sort of scene.

“I’m a Texan,” he says. “It’s really nice to be back where I’m from. All summer we swam. We went to Hamilton Pool, and to Reimers Ranch and Blue Hole out in Wimberley and San Marcos, all the rivers and the natural springs, and fishing in the lakes.”

Perhaps it’s the fact that Kweller’s been a working musician for nearly 15 years that makes him less enamored with the spotlight than some of his peers. In 1993, when Kweller was just 12, he started the band Radish with John Kent and Ryan Green in his hometown of Greenville. With critical attention and a dose of hype around a band of teenage Texans, Radish eventually signed with Mercury Records, releasing the album Restraining Bolt, and had some notable television appearances on Conan O’Brien and David Letterman.

But by 2000, Kweller had decided the time was right to make a change, and moved to be with Liz, first to Connecticut and ultimately, New York City. “I was done living in Texas. And John was starting a recording studio in Texas. He was also writing his own music and wanting to start a new band. So we really never broke up, but it was just that we knew we wanted to try different things.”

The years with Radish provided valuable perspective, though. “By the time I was 18 and ready to start my solo career, I had already seen the good and bad of the music business,” Kweller says. “So I knew all the things I wanted to keep close to me and all the things I wanted to push away. I just knew how slimy and sharky it could be. I learned a lot when it comes to the business side.”

In New York, Kweller was on his own, honing his slightly quirky, indie-pop sound and solo performance chops. “I guess when I was in that apartment on Smith Street in Brooklyn, and I wrote all these songs, and they were a lot more autobiographical and personal, I looked around the room and realized I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t have a band, so I guess I was Ben Kweller at that point.” His first solo LP, Sha Sha, contained the radio-friendly hit “Wasted and Ready,” and Kweller has been recording and touring steadily ever since.

The move to Austin was a quality-of-life decision, made with his family in mind and a desire to give Dorian the kind of childhood that he himself had. “We moved here because it’s our favorite town in the world. We love New York City, but we didn’t see ourselves there forever. ”

Dorian is already playing music with his dad, accompanying him by banging on the drums or piano.

Click link to continue...The Texas Return of Prodigal Son Ben Kweller: Ben Kweller walks up to a picnic table behind Flipnotics looking, for the most... more