Monday Morning Music Shuffle - Slow Bar Mix

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Added tons of music to the lineup - so stayed tuned.  

Let's get to the Shuffle - after the jump:

Friday Morning Music Shuffle - Exclusive Exclustivity Mix

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 Greetings from Nashville.  Back with a long set of music for today's shuffle.  So, no more ado about nothing....

Shuffle will follow the.... Might as well.... Jump!

Ear to the Ground Presents: Featured Artists for November/December (11 and 12 of 20)

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11. The Peculiar Pretzelmen (Website, Facebook, Twitter) - "Too Noisy Too weird Two Man Voodoo Mayhem Band"

City:  Los Angeles

Members:  Incroyable, Deacon

 Latest Release (I think): 

A video: 

12.  Shelly Colvin (Website, Facebook, Twitter) - "Mixing a relaxed, seventies country rock vibe with sweeping, breathy vocals that fall somewhere between Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and Hope Sandoval (Mazzy Star)"

City: Nashville

Member: Shelly Colvin

Latest Release:

 

A Video:

Shelly with Thad Cockrell

  

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Wednesday Morning Music Shuffle - I'm Smilin' not Gloatin' Mix

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 Good morning world from downtown Nashville!


I'll save the rhetoric for now.  Call this shuffle, music for the morning after....


I can't explain how much in love I am with Songs of Praise and Scorn by current Featured Artist, Christopher Paul Stelling. Up today is the lead-off track from that album which is called Mourning Train to Memphis. I'm a sucker for a train song, and I once lived in Memphis; so this song strikes a chord with me. 

Jessica Pratt is a San Francisco based Folk singer (hum-dinger). She just recently released her self titled debut album (called Jessica Pratt interestingly enough).  The lead song from this record is the lovely Night Faces. Head over to Stereogum to get the MP3 of Night Faces.  Like what you've heard? Then go to the Birth Records site to get the album.

Shelly Colvin released her album Up the Hickory Down the Pine on October 30th.  The CD release party is this Thursday here in Nashville, and Ear2theGround will be there!  The album is chocked full of great music, and To the Bone is one of them.

Here's Shelly with Red June doing Red Dirt Girl

We close out a delightfully consistent set of music with the title track from the album Forget About Wonderland by the band Walking for Pennies.  I'm really digging this record.

 

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The Invention of 'Folk Music' and 'Art Music': Emerging Categories from Ossian to Wagner We tend to take for granted the labels we put to different forms of music. This study considers the origins and implications of the way in which we categorize music. Whereas earlier ways of classifying music were based on its different functions, for the past two hundred years we have been obsessed with creativity and musical origins, and classify music along these lines. Matthew Gelbart argues that folk music and art music became meaningful concepts only in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and only in relation to each other. He examines how cultural nationalism served as the earliest impetus in classifying music by origins, and how the notions of folk music and art music followed - in conjunction with changing conceptions of nature, and changing ideas about human creativity. Through tracing the history of these musical categories, the book confronts our assumptions about different kinds of music.

GREAT TRAIN SONGS MURRAY,ANNE        COUNTRY    DEFAULT    UPC:724382701224

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Americana Music Fest Part V - Friday Night

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So, when Friday night rolled around, I was running on about two hours sleep and a day at work - plus a 5 hour energy drink I got for free at Live on the Green.  So, to maximize my musical enjoyment and minimize my frustrations, I decided to stick to one venue.  I picked the Cannery Ballroom. The Cannery holds many great musical memories from back in the day.  Most of the shows I saw back in the late 80s were upstairs, but I know of a few shows which were downstairs.

Anyway, I arrived just in time to catch the last song of Shelly Colvin's 8:00p.m. set, and I heard just enough to wish I had been there the whole time.  The song was beautiful. Shelly is a Huntsville, Alabama native currently living in East Nashville where all the cool people live (Blogger's Note: I don't live in East Nashville, so the last statement is obviously false).  She is a genuine, harmonica toting, folk singer.  

Up Next was Amanda Shires.  Amanda Shires is a Texas born singer/fiddle player, who also currently resides in Nashville.  The first thing I noticed was a familiar looking guitar tech.  Yep, that was Jason Isbell or as he was introduced later when he came on stage a few songs into the set, the future Mr. Jason Shires.  Amanda Shire's music is Americana/Alt-Country friendly with strong Indie Rock street cred.  Ah hell, it's just damn good music.  She was backed by a cracking band featuring Rod Picott and supplemented by Jason Isbell on a number of songs.

Next on the bill was Houston native and recent Nashville resident Robert Ellis.  I wasn't all that familiar with his music, but I really enjoyed it.  It did a new song, Houston, as a goodbye to his hometown, and it reminded me, favorably to Steve Earle's haunting Goodbye Guitar Town.  The set ran the gamut from slow sad country to all out rockers.  Bonus points in my book for having the lovely  and amazing Caitlin Rose out for a song.  I was a bit further from the stage for this set, so sorry for the quality of the pictures.

The headliner of the evening was the legendary John Hiatt, making a rare Nashville appearance. Hiatt is one of those larger than life/down to earth performers.  He took the stage and powered through an amazing set that included some songs from his (what was then) forthcoming  (out on September 25th) album Mystic Pinball and a slew of songs from across his storied career, including that one that Bonnie Raitt covered and the one Eric Clapton and B.B. King did.  He also, at the request of a loud member of the audience) did the classic Memphis in the Meantime.  I've been a huge John Hiatt fan for a lot of years, and this was just an incredibly fun show.  

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