Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Cream Calendar Shakey Graves w/Wild Child and Marmalakes Tonight at The High Watt
Posted by D. Patrick Rodgers on Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 3:55 PM
Hey! Show of hands: Who here didn't go to Bonnaroo? If you have your hand up, that means you may indeed currently have the energy and desire to see some live music this evening. Good for you. And if you like blues-rooted folk music, I've got the thing for you. Shakey Graves, Marmalakes and Wild Child will perform tonight at The High Watt, and Edd Hurt wrote us up a mighty fine Critic's Pick:
Back in the days of such impure folk purists as Gordon Lightfoot and Ralph McTell, pop music and folk mingled freely — singing the blues with an acoustic guitar went together with string arrangements and big hooks. These days, young pop-folk acts blend hummability with experimental urges, with often interesting results. Tonight’s show features three Austin bands whose oddball harmonies and pop chord progressions are backed by various stringed instruments. Wild Child is a sextet specializing in strange post-Gilbert O’Sullivan songs often laced with semi-atonal banjo licks. Meanwhile, Marmalakes makes sunny folk-pop with dark undertones — last year’s In Arnica EP sported such blithe but opaque tunes as “Septimus Warren Smith” and “White Height.” Rounding out tonight’s show is Shakey Graves, a stone-cold acoustic pop-folk-blues performer whose 2011 Roll the Bones full-length will give you the urge to ramble. —EDD HURT
Kicks off at 9 p.m., and $7 will get you in.
Moving Pictures The Civil Wars’ ‘The One That Got Away’ [Fresh Vid]
Posted by Adam Gold on Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 1:50 PM
Last week we dished some deets on mid-indefinite-hiatus folk-pop duo The Civil Wars’ highly anticipated self-titled sophomore effort (out Aug. 6), and also posted the album’s lead-off single, “The One That Got Away.” Now you can check out the video for the dire dirge, which the duo dropped on YouTube today. It’s a black-and-white clip capturing members Joy Williams and John Paul White cutting the track, lounging around with looks of rock-star exhaustion (See also: Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” video) and avoiding eye contact with each other. Peep it above!
Cream Calendar JEFF the Brotherhood to Headline The Stone Fox's Nashville Outlines Aug. 3
Posted by D. Patrick Rodgers on Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 11:07 AM
Hey, so remember the free block party we told you about? You know, The Stone Fox's Nashville Outlines, which will take place Aug. 3 and feature bike tune-ups, a Third Man dunking booth, food trucks and performances from Bully, Clear Plastic Masks, D. Watusi, Fly Golden Eagle, James Wallace and the Naked Light, JP5, Kin Ship, Natalie Prass, Natural Child, Promised Land Sound (formerly Promised Land), Ranch Ghost, Ri¢hie, Tristen and Weekend Babes? Well, the top-secret headliner — the one that folks at The Stone Fox couldn't tell us about just yet — has now been announced, and as you can see on the poster above, it's homegrown psychedelic siblings JEFF the Brotherhood, last seen crushing it at Bonnaroo.
"Indiana Avenue will be closed at 51st to allow foot traffic to travel freely from the Fox to the Garden Stage, located in the Stone Fox garden lot across Indiana Avenue from the main building," say the Fox folks. "Music will run from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. on the Garden Stage and 6 p.m. to late on the Fox Stage." Oh, also — speaking of people who played Bonnaroo and will be playing non-Bonnaroo stuff soon — Jack Johnson is coming to the Ryman Oct. 2. I'm wondering how narrow the overlap is on the Venn diagram of JEFF fans and Jack Johnson fans.
Creamtastic Lake Fever Presents The Chris Crofton Show, Episode 136
Posted by D. Patrick Rodgers on Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 8:00 AM
You gotta see my china set. I'll throw it in your face. I got a wedding dress with antique lace. I've got Abraham Lincoln's shoe in my safe. And it's The Chris Crofton Show, Episode 136. Hear it after the jump.
Monday, June 17, 2013
The Spin / Bonnaroo Bonnaroo Sunday, 6/16/13 [Ed Helms, A$AP Rocky, Tame Impala, JEFF the Brotherhood, Kendrick Lamar, David Byrne and St. Vincent, More]
Posted by The Spin on Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 7:13 PM
- Photo: Steve Cross
- Kendrick Lamar
Well, The Spin survived once more, by God. From the opening strains of Ri¢hie to the final notes of Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers shutting it down with "American Girl," we entered the trenches for the 12th annual Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival and came out with another fresh set of battle scars. Now, for the final round of this year's war stories ...
The Spin / Bonnaroo Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at Bonnaroo's What Stage, 6/16/13
Posted by The Spin on Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 5:34 PM
Alas, the first victim of the new Bonnaroo performance benchmark set Friday night by Paul McCartney might have been the festival’s closer: a somewhat oddly chosen Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, who opened with The Byrds’ “So You Want to be a Rock 'n’ Roll Star” just as the skies literally threw cold water on the party. (The rain stirred the crowd a few songs later to a defiant sing-along with “I Won’t Back Down.”) As if aware they were filling a slot occupied in the past by a closing-night jam, Petty and his bandmates stretched out on extended versions of “A Woman in Love (It’s Not Me)” and his Traveling Wilburys’ Springsteen goof “Tweeter and the Monkey Man”; hell, he even tossed the jam base a bone with a nifty cover of “Friend of the Devil."
The Spin / Bonnaroo Bonnaroo Sunday Comedy [Bob Saget, The Improvised Shakespeare Company, Jared Logan]
Posted by The Spin on Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 5:11 PM
Everyone’s exhausted by Day Four of Bonnaroo, but the superfans of childhood memories, the stoners, the precious babies who are dying for a little air conditioning (raises hand), the comedy nerds, the out-of-towners and the inappropriately young children (we saw a 7-year-old walk out of Bob Saget’s first set!) still line up for hours of their one human life for a taste of that sweet, sweet comedy.
Comic Jared Logan opened, and spoke at length about his Pentecostal childhood. Referring to the Holy Ghost as “Jesus’ cousin who died, or something,” he provided an example of the babbling voices practitioners use when touched by The Spirit, and how sometimes when his grandmother was touched, the opinions of the Holy Ghost seemed to mesh up with the very opinions she herself held. Though religion was scary for him as a child, he said, an effective horror movie for kids would be something along the lines of a film called Divorce. “And it’s all your fault,” the tagline goes.
The Improvised Shakespeare Company was pretty dang hilarious. The six young men, clad in tight breeches, stockings and flowing pirate shirts, created a play out of the audience suggestion “Wu-Tang Clan ain’t nothin’ to fuck with.” This quickly escalated into a totally off-the-cuff story of “good king Macklemore," his lady wife, “a Tribe known as Quest,” and, uh, Vanilla Ice. A great deal of the improvised dialogue was actually in couplet form, and they also managed to work in song titles and facts about the assorted musicians. Oh, and then it was revealed that Tupac was alive and warned everyone against rap rivalries. Impressively nerdy and very funny.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
The Spin / Bonnaroo Bonnaroo Saturday, 6/15/13 [Jack Johnson, Björk, Billy Idol, Nas, Dwight Yoakam, R. Kelly, Weird Al, William Tyler and More]
Posted by The Spin on Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 2:00 PM
- Photo: Steve Cross
- R. Kelly
Bonnaroo Saturday is, without a doubt, the pinnacle of the party. Even if the headliner turns out to be a dud — as some might say Jack Johnson is, triumphant as his last-minute sub-in really was — Saturday is party day, like it or not. Anyway, with a lineup peppered with greats, locals and promising newbies alike, The Spin slathered ourselves in sunscreen, downed a couple of complimentary drinks and dove into the action whole hog. Let's do this, Bonnaroo.
The Spin / Bonnaroo Bonnaroo Saturday Comedy [David Cross, James Adomian]
Posted by The Spin on Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 11:47 AM
First things first: We were unable to get tickets to see Ed Helms' Whisky Sour Radio Hour thanks to a very early-forming line that seemed to be longer than the one for noted vagina dentata victim Daniel Tosh. Disappointing for us personally, but heartening to know in practice. Hat-tip to Jane from Nashvile’s Corporate Juggernaut comedy collective for letting us know that he was joined by David Cross on some banjo shenanigans, plus The Lumineers, so good for those early birds.
Luckily, we did get in to see the full Cross set on Saturday afternoon. We diligently queued up and made friends with a guy who said he “never really watched” Arrested Development because he was 12 years old at the time. His girlfriend, a voting-age human adult, would have been around eight. Thanks for that, kids. Anyway, opener James Adomian was pretty fantastic. A talented impressionist, he opened with a story about the people you’d meet at the Atlanta airport, like a man whose hobby is to be Santa Claus at Civil War reenactment battles. His New York people were brassy and dickish, his L.A. people were laid-back and dickish, and his Floridan accent was “just like Georgia with better cocaine.” About a third of the way through his set, he dropped the gay bomb (i.e., he is a gay man who does not necessarily "read" as gay). For the majority of his performance from there on out, he riffed on the Gay Villain stereotype in entertainment, from Transformers to The Little Mermaid.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
The Spin / Bonnaroo Paul McCartney at Bonnaroo's What Stage, 6/14/13
Posted by The Spin on Sat, Jun 15, 2013 at 3:42 PM
Seeing as how McCartney is just about the biggest name to play Bonnaroo’s What Stage in the festival’s 12 years of existence, The Spin wasn’t too surprised when we encountered countless bottlenecks and cattle-herding-type scenarios as the Beatle and his four-piece backing band ripped through an opening trifecta of “Eight Days a Week,” “Junior’s Farm” and “All My Loving.” But once we made it into the couple-thousand-ish-capacity barricaded-off bubble down in front, McCartney was taking a moment to “drink this all in” for himself, scanning the crowd with a pleased grin. Then it was back to ripping effortlessly through lithe bass lines on that iconic Hofner of his, pointing his headstock skyward … well, iconically. That’s the thing about being an icon — everything you do is, by default, pretty much iconic.
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