Crib Notes

Cowboy Envy has always been about a wink and nod. The wink is three women dressed up as cowpokes who sing old-fashioned Western songs; the nod is their rich three-part harmonies that fuel new life into a fading genre of music.

“It’s hard to find Western music these days,” says lead singer Berne Poliakoff, known as “Frenchy” in her Cowboy Envy persona. “And that’s a shame because it’s great music. We all have these songs in our subconscious.”

The new Cowboy Envy CD, Unhitched, illustrates the dichotomy between the inside joke and the strength of the band’s musical chops. At one point on a song called “Vim, Vit and Vigor,” Frenchy is chastised by her two bandmates for spending too much time messing with her hair. Then, a few songs later, a lonesome harmonica opens a track and the three voices meld for an evocative take on the old cowboy standard, “Oh, Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie.”

That playful seriousness has won Cowboy Envy a wide range of admirers, including Douglas “Ranger Doug” Green, leader of the pre-eminent Western band Riders in the Sky. “It is an act of art to balance irony, pure silliness and contemporary sensibility with deep love and obvious respect for tradition,” Green has said of Cowboy Envy. “They are the freshest thing going in Western music today.”

Read the rest of this article here.

(Photo courtesy Cowboy Envy)

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The UGA music business program is hosting what promises to be two fascinating panel discussions tomorrow (Saturday, April 12) at its campus in Buckhead that features some heavy players on the music scene.

The panels will focus on “The New (And Hopefully Improved) Music Business.”

The schedule is as follows:

12:30pm Keynote Address: Jeff Hoffman Founding Partner Priceline.com

1:15-2:45pm Panel 1

DJ Toomp, Songwriter/Producer (Ludacris, Young Jeezy, T.I.); Bernard Parks, NZone Entertainment; Justin Williams, VP Strategic Development at Echo Donald Woodard Attorney, Lord, Bissell & Brook; Tara Murphy, President, 360 Media; Tanner Smith, Program Director, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

3-4:30pm Panel 2

Margaret R. Marshall, Greenberg Traurig, LLP; Sachar Oren, President and CEO, Neurotic Media; Josh Rifkind, Artist Management (The Whigs); Ian Burke, Launch Pad Record; Shane Harrison, Atlanta Journal Constitution; Bryan Calhoun, founder and CEP of StrategusPro/Music Business Toolbox (consultant to Kanye West and Ludacris)

The panels are free and open to the public. They will be held at Terry Executive Education Center in Atlanta located at One Live Oak Center, 3475 Lenox Road, Atlanta, GA 30326. More info: 706-542-7668 or Bruce Burch bburch@terry.uga.edu. For directions, click here.

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For anyone who was involved in the Atlanta music scene in the late 70s and early 80s, Russell Shaw was the most influential writer in the city.

He wrote CL’s popular “Music Menu” feature from 1978 until 1984 and was a fixture at local clubs. He championed bands he liked and wasn’t afraid to write witheringly about the ones he didn’t.

After he left Atlanta, Shaw lived in Portland and was the author of seven books. He was a blogger for the Huffington Post and for zdnet.com.

Shaw, 60, died March 14 in a hotel room in San Jose, where he was going to cover a Emerging Technologies Conference for zdnet.com. He complained to a co-worker that he caught a bug on the plane taking him there, and died later that evening. The cause of death has yet to be determined.

A funeral service is scheduled for March 23 in Florida, but no details are yet available.

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The tornado that struck downtown Atlanta Friday night left the Tabernacle with significant roof damage and water damage inside.

The venerable concert facility owned by Live Nation has no shows scheduled until March 29. The company expects to learn the full extent of the damage on Friday.

“Structural engineers are looking at the building,” Molly Sandman, a spokeswoman for Live Nation, says. “There is damage to the roof, but we don’t know the extent of it. There’s also water damage. But we’ll get it all fixed up.”

A press release issued today by Live Nation described the damage as “significant.”

Finish reading about the Tabernacle’s damage control in the Fresh Loaf post.

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REAPPEARING ACT: David Lee Roth (left) works his mojo at the Van Halen show Sunday, Feb. 10, at Philips Arena.

(All photos by Perry Julien. See more below the jump.)

A few conclusions from Sunday night’s Van Halen concert at Philips Arena:

• David Lee Roth is one campy dude.
• Wolfgang Van Halen may only be 16 years old, but he’s a helluva bass player.
• His father, Eddie Van Halen, is still a guitar god.
• After years of acrimony between Roth and the rest of Van Halen, they really seemed to be enjoying themselves.

The band performed to a sold-out crowd in Atlanta, opening with “You Really Got Me” and closing with its best-known song, “Jump.” My seat was about 10 rows from the stage, and nobody sat down from the opening notes until the final song. The crowd was primarily baby boomers, many of whom brought their kids to see one of the definitive bands of a bygone era.

David Lee Roth sported a six-pack of abs, and wore an open shirt to show them off. And Eddie Van Halen — still skinny after all these years — stayed shirtless for the entire show. The two former adversaries seemed to revel in being on the same stage again. Roth was often pure camp with his top hats and the exaggerated grin of a Vegas showman, but he was in fine voice and it was a charge to see the original band (plus Wolfgang) back together again.

One of the highlights came when the other band members left the stage and Eddie Van Halen performed a long solo that led into “Eruption.” But two-thirds of the way through, the P.A. system went out. Van Halen gamely played on, then stopped as the crowd began to applaud and chant, “Eddie! Eddie! Eddie!” (more…)

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If you’re out and about this season and spot someone who looks like Francine Reed singing a Christmas carol by a Salvation Army bucket, it probably is Francine Reed singing a Christmas carol by a Salvation Army bucket.

“At Christmas, when I go by a Salvation Army bucket, I’ll stop and sing a few minutes,” Reed said when we checked in with the beloved jazz/blues singer the other day. “You know how everybody just walks past them, and I want to give them some attention. I was on the other side of that many years ago.”

Reed’s Christmas CD — Here Comes Frani Claus — is unfortunately out of print. But she says it’s her favorite time of year. “I love the holidays,” she says. “Smiles are what people need right now.”

Discovering Francine Reed singing a Christmas carol outside a grocery store? Yes, that’s a guaranteed smile.

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