Well, well, well... it looks like we have one more day of Indian Summer here in Nashville before winter sets in. Also, it is weird when there are still stars out when I'm pulling the car around in the morning. When does the time go back to normal?
So, we have a good shuffle which includes a few bands who are new to Ear2theGround and a cover of a classic and much covered song:
The Chaw are a dark and bluesy rock band from Concord, California. They are about to drop their first full-length album (self-titled). The album comes out November 6 (so after you vote go buy the album). We have had the chance to get a sneak peak, and this is a good one. Today we have Everything Wrong.
Here is the Kickstarter Video for this new album
The band is stream two songs from the new album at Bandcamp where you will also find the band's EP available for Free Download.
I met Diana Lawrence at the Americana Music Fest. She released an EP called To: Aging Children back in August, and we have the beautiful pop-folk ballad, Praise for the Days. This is pop-folk that reminds me of Joni Mitchell and Anna and Kate McGarrigle. Stirring and grand and delicate.
Here is Diana with Phoebe Hunt who we saw on the final night of the Americana Fest
Girl Scouts are a Philadelphia band who play recklessly, emotionally charged indie rock with abandon. They are tons of fun. They released a split EP with New Hampshire/Connecticut band Old Gray. We have Buh Buh Bubbaram today... "Go Home!"
We don't do much Jam band here at Ear to the Ground. I guess it's just not my thing really... but, I couldn't pass on this cover of the Beatles' Helter Skelter by Gov't Mule featuring the great Audley Freed. The song comes from the three-disc Mulennium Live Album.
It's all but officially summer. Temps are supposed to climb into the mid to upper 90s here this week, and I'm sure the humidity will ratchet up and few notches. Here in the South, we know it's not the heat, it's the humidity....
Reminders: The Band of the Month polling has begun - exercise your right to check out righteous music and pick your favorite's here. (Voting continues until the end of the month, and this time you can come back and vote as often as you like).
Over the weekend, we offered the World Premier of the brand new promo video for our April Band of the Month - The Disappointment. The post which is here, also offered detailed to purchase and download the band's latest release and provided details for checking out the band live in Brooklyn. Again - it is here.
Finally - Ear to the Ground's favorite cartoonist (and an early and often influence on our tastes in music - as well as our partner-in-crime at a number of live shows in the late 80s and early 90s), Ron Ruelle has released a new book featuring the Sunday strips from his At the Zu/Darwin & Co. strips.
You can order the book here. And check out the dedication page!
One last thing before we get to the morning shuffle - Today is the 70th Birthday for the "Cute" Beatle (Paul McCartney) and another Paul (Weller) of The Jam & The Style Council, has released version of the Beatles' Birthday which you can download today only on Amazon:
Tonight, we plan to load in a ton of songs into the mix, but before we did, we thought we should take a shuffle through some of the coolest songs in our archives.
Blue Sky Mine the sort-of title track to Midnight Oil's 1990 album Blue Sky Mining found the Australian band and their politician/activist/environmentalist lead singer offering up a scathing indictment of the greed over people and the planet mentality, and doing so in an amazingly danceable format.
Don't Be Cruelwas recorded in the summer of 1956 in New York City buy a 21 year old singer from Tupelo, Mississippi named Elvis Aaron Presley. The song was written by Otis Blackwell. The Jordanaires sang back-up on the record. When my daughter was in 4th Grade, I helped chaperone a trip to Memphis which included a tour of Graceland and accompanying us on the field trip was the grandfather of one of my daughter's classmates who happened to be Gordon Stoker - one of the original Jordanaires, how cool is that?
And finally, we have Free Man in Parisby Joni Mitchell from her classic 1974 album Court and Spark.
