A busy week for new music, and that means a jam packed Featured Friday Playlist. If you want, you can check out the whole list which is embedded just below or you can follow along all week as I recap the list in five segments. Part 1 is down below the jump covering the first 15 songs.
It is also a good time to tell you that much of the music featured here is available on Bandcamp and that today Bandcamp is waiving revenue sharing to put more of the proceeds of purchases directly in the hands of the artists you and I love. If you love independent music like I do, support the artists in the most direct way you are able. Bandcamp is one of the better avenues.
I didn't post the link yesterday, but if you are on Facebook - here is the Event page for the #E2TG 5 Year Anniversary show... Actually, it is the event page whether or not you are on Facebook... but anyway...
We have a great Trending Tuesday shuffle... let's dive in....
Happy Friday! Sue and I had our first Radio DJ training at WXNA, and I got to see the studio of the first time. When I know more about an on-air date, I will definitely be posting about that here.
I am excited to announce that the line-up for the E2TG Anniversary Extravaganza has been set. Look for the big reveal Monday morning (it may leaked sooner - so now would be a good time to double-check that you have "Liked" the Facebook Page. It is going to be a good one, so go ahead and mark May 18 as "busy" on your calendar.
Tonight my plans include hanging out at The 5 Spot for the Tim Carroll Rock and Roll Happy Hour and then making my way to The Family Wash for the Mark Huff CD Release show with Jon Byrd opening up. Good times...
Tomorrow is Record Store Day. Make your plans accordingly....
Here are some of the songs we are featuring on E2TG....
My sincere hope is that a large number of people saw John Moreland on Colbert last night and became instant fans. I realize that the possibility of seeing Moreland at The 5 Spot or the backyard at Fond Object may be less likely, but in my opinion this is important music that needs to be heard. One thing I try to do (both for myself and others) is just appreciate that someone discovers great music for themselves and not worry about when they made that discovery. For me, I am glad I discovered John Moreland's music when I did (which was somewhat before anyone who discovered him last night and somewhat after a lot of my songwriter friends).
I had just rolled over to try to sleep when my phone buzzed. A bad habit I know, but I looked at it. "David Bowie Dead at 69". And, I thought it was one of those terrible internet hoaxes. I put the phone down - convinced that was the case, but I picked it up again, and I discovered that it was true. I felt numb.
My own exploration of his music was as random - just like all my explorations of music tend to be. I am not even certain where it began or the exact order. I knew David Bowie from MTV - probably before, but MTV opened up several musical doors for me.. say what you will about it. "Ashes to Ashes", "Let's Dance", "China Girl".... Lou Reed was an early influence of mine, and I found out that Bowie has co-produced Transformer - an album that helped transform me. I got a cassette of Hunky Dory and I wore it out. There was a lot I didn't understand about myself. Bowie's music helped. Ziggy Stardust....
I am having hard time really accepting that he is gone, but I am heartened by all of the posts on my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds - so many vastly divergent musicians and fans sharing many shared experiences some of which echo my own. Music, for me, has been a companion through many lonely times, but it has also been a source of connection with others.
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As we must, we press on... My week long Birthday adventures kicked off last night with a couple of cool rounds a Bobby's Idle Hour on Music Row. First, "Earie" award winners Joe Nolan, Drew Kohl, and Andrew Adkins shared a stage, and they all sounded fantastic.
There was a second round, and I had intended to leave, but I ended up staying. Three singer-songwriters that I had not heard before - Kyler Daron, Joey Maloney, and Peter McKeown. Seems an appropriate part of my Birthday Week.
Tonight, the week continues - moving on up to the Eastside for night 2 of Darrin Bradbury's month-long residency at The Basement East. Tonight's guest are Zach Schmidt and Tim Easton - two of East Nashville's finest songwriters. Come on out and hang and listen to cool tunes.
All I can say is that life is probable sometimes, and although we don't always choose the things that happen (or maybe in some ways we do), what we do choose is whether or not to be fully present in those moments (to the best of our ability).
Well, it's late for the shuffle, but circumstance kept me from posting. As compensation, I extended the shuffle which means tons of music and just a bit of my celebrated wisdom. That last line is ego disguised as wry humility cleverly cloaked in a veneer of ego.
In case you missed it, the Ear to the Ground review of Darrin Bradbury's Motel Oatmeal was featured for a time on the front page of No Depression - the preeminent Americana magazine/website,
The review is still a featured review, and you can read it here.
One thing I take pride in with E2TG is the diversity of music that I'm willing to include in my mix. Frankly, as much as I love Americana and as much as Americana is a pretty wide ranging "genre" of music, sometimes I need some metal, some punk, some music from far corners of the world, some experimental crazy stuff, some classical...
I need to give a shoutout to my friends from Valued Customer who has done more than their fair share in expanding my mind and my musical knowledge beyond all constraints. They have a blog of their own called P E A C E F O R K which explores some less travelled (but supremely awesome spokes in the complex web of musical styles and influences. Some of the music they've been posting should be showing up here soon, and I can't wait to share it.
While I've got your attention - I direct you to Valued Customer's masterpiece Kalpa which can be yours if the price is right (or wrong).
Another day, another cool mix of music.... Today we close out a few albums we've been spinning for some time, we have a track from one of the coolest and most underrated bands of all time, and we close things out with four tracks in a row from some Ear to the Ground favorites.
In case you missed it (shameless self-promotion): Check out an audio rendition of a excerpt from my novel-in-progress...
Today's shuffle takes us from the Mississippi Delta via one of Nashville's hottest bands, up to New York with a singer-songwriter who's lead instrument is the bass. To the North Mississippi Hill Country with a legendary blues player, to New York City where a cover of a Howlin' Wolf classic gets a dub remix, and ends up with some Connecticut teens taking on a lo-fi classic from the Pacific Northwest. Not a bad ride for a Tuesday...
I didn't sleep particularly well last night, and so I knew I would need some cool tunes to make it through the morning commute. With that in mind, I decided to run my usual shuffle for the full ride into work, and thus was born a new feature* at Ear to the Ground called Full-Ride Friday (hashtag #frf - patent pending** - void where prohibited) **there is not patent pending...
* Bloggers Note:I sure hope no one notices that about 90% of the time I announce I new feature, it never appears again. If they notice, they may realize that I'm just making this up as I go around and thus may figure out that I'm not a real music blogger.
Anyway, I hit shuffle and 21 songs later, I made to my desk to begin my day... Go past the jump to experience the first (and maybe last) ever Full-Ride Friday Shuffle!
I’ve been thinking a lot about genres in music.Overall, I think they are dumb.That’s just my opinion, and I do understand
that it can be important for a band trying to get into a venue or festival or
to get played on this or that station to have a clearly defined genre label. When I need to use a genre label, I try to
defer to the band’s own description.
Don’t even get me started on sub genres and sub sub genres,
and all the pseudo genres that some clever music journalist invented.I hope that artists will just continue to
make great music and only after the fact and only when necessary worry at all
about picking a genre or genre to categorize their sound.Because that is really all genre labels are really
is a way to put everything in a neat little pile.
It always annoys me when people say I hate _____ (fill in
the blank with a genre label).When I
hear that, I always think to myself, and what do you mean by ______.And usually there is some specific type of
music that they don’t like, and they are arbitrarily eliminating a whole bunch
of really good music from ever entering their consciousness. It doesn’t make
sense to me, but I’m kind of weird like that.
Here at Ear to the Ground, we don’t set any restrictions or
limits on the music we feature, and really we go out of our way to add a
variety of different genres and types of music to our playlists.
Today’s mix begins and ends with the Blues (or at least some
variation of that clear yet still indistinct genre label.)
Here at Ear to the Ground, you never know what to
expect.At least that is my hope.I build a playlist, and I let the Shuffle
function do the rest.Sometimes, I want
a particular artist to come up sooner, but it all seems to work out.Anyway, musically, stylistically, and
emotionally – today’s songs cut a pretty wide path through the landscape of
human interactions.From the breezy
indie pop of Conway and an upbeat mega hit from Pharrell Williams to some
harder edged music from Tomas Doncker and The Lies.Borderline creepy sweetness from Sam Davison
to Deena oh so cheerful, let down song.
The 700th post here at Ear to the Ground arrives with another great mix of music. We have two sub-themes going in this otherwise loosely constructed collection of songs. Bells and Italian Food. Read on...
Here at #E2TG, we pride ourselves on bringing great music to your internets. What we lack in time and exclusive access, we try to make up for in pure quality and absolutely insane diversity.
Today's Shuffle makes a whirlwind trip from latter day Country music pioneer Sturgill Simpson all the way to a lusciously bizarre Nina Hagen cover of a Neil Diamond penned The Monkees' song. In between, we stop in and visit with #E2TG favorites Tomas Doncker, Marla Mase, Darrin Bradbury, and twice with Miss Shevaughn and Yuma Wray, and we feature three Mama Coco's Funky Kitchen related artists. Plus a bunch more... here's the list
1. “Winterlight”/The Autumn Defense/Ten Full Paces
Such a great sound. Saw them live in the parking lot of Grimey’s for Americanarama last September.
2. “living on”/The Lies/whatever
3. “Look in Your Eyes”/Taco Land/Home Sweet Home
During the hiatus, our old friends Taco Land dropped a new album called Home Sweet Home, and this track has such a great sound. It’s everything we’ve come to expect from Taco Land and more.
“Power”/Tomas Doncker/Power of the Trinity – Global Soul….
“Ven Hacia Mi (Come Unto Me)”/The Mavericks/In Time* - Another from my friend Ronnie’s 2013 mix CD – love this!
“Feel So Down”/Solardrive/Solardrive – another great song from Solardrive – the awesome project fronted by Balthazar Getty.
“Terra Animata”/The Plum Magnetic/Terra Animata – New Orleans based World/Fusion/Rock band.
“Big Mountain Fudge Cake”/The Foresters/Living Hold – the three Nork Brothers from Connecticut continue their musical growth spurt with a Zeppelinesque rocker.
“Calypso Foam”/The Graveyard Kids/Mama Coco’s Funky Kitchen: Section 5 (Graveyard Kids II) - Another great band from the seemingly bottomless wellspring that is Mama Coco’s.
“Splinters”/Austin Lucas/Stay Reckless – three time CXCW alum… shows how it’s done with a smart, heartfelt song.
“Life is Hard”/Darrin Bradbury/True Love – “It’s funny where it stops, it’s funny where it starts, and the whole thing in the middle well it’s bound to break your heart.” – such a great line in a song that name drops Jack Kerouac, Lenny Bruce, and Daffy Duck!
“Magic and Fire”/Brave Baby/Forty Bells – another great song by this South Carolina indie band.
“Could We See”/Grounded/untitled – Grounded were first featured on Ear to the Ground back in September 2012. They have such a unique sound, and I love the acoustic vibe of this song. Trivia: This is the second time that Grounded have appeared in a Shuffle with Darrin Bradbury’s song “Life is Hard”. Their song “Break it Up” appeared with a live version of Bradbury’s song on January 9. #themoreyouknow
“The Best Record Ever Made”/Bill Lloyd/Boy King of Tokyo - a true Nashville treasure who has worn many hats in his long career, and worn them well – I may add. This homage to great records from his 2012 album – has a simply gorgeous hook.
