Tampa Calling

As I said with my last post about Nerdapalooza, I wasn’t really familiar with the whole genre (or its fan base) until mere weeks before attending the festival, but I had a short list of people I wanted to see as Trevor and I shoved off from St. Petersburg last Saturday morning.

Now, I’m typing this a little under 24 hours after getting home from the festival. Showered, rested, and fed, I’m still not sure how I want to cover it. There were plenty of disappointments, such as Kabuto The Python (the #1 thing I wanted to see) not thinking to try the rapping with a mask thing out before stepping out onto a stage, which resulted in Kabuto the Mime. There was The Protomen’s set so mired in feedback that you would have thought they brought it along as a special guest. Then there was the most frustrating part of all, the festival’s complete and utter inability to stay anywhere close to the schedule (more on that later).

But this isn’t meant to be a diatribe from some outsider coming in to point at the nerds and talk about how shitty their convention was. And as I drove home, I reflected on some of the cool shit we saw. The first band we caught, Captain Dan & the Scurvy Crew, were quite entertaining both sonically and visually as they took the stage in complete pirate garb. Kabuto aside, the rest of the Scrub Club showcase was phenomenal. As a “crew” they seem to embrace a “hiphop first, nerd second” approach to their music and stage show that really appealed to me.

Then there was the out of left field “holy shit I am gonna talk about that for months” set by Schaffer The Darklord. I’d listened to his material on Myspace in preparation for the festival and was lukewarm to it at best. However, live … live is where it was at. Those lazy beats and rhyme delivery were pushed aside for an uptempo, high energy tight stage show that captivated the entire room. Watching him on stage I kept thinking, this dude is like nerdcore’s version of Col. J.D. Wilkes (for those who don’t know, read about JD here). I don’t think there is any doubt that Schaffer stole the entire festival with his shortened performance. Read the rest of this entry »

For the last few months I’ve been thinking about ways I could utilize my twitter account to capture my immediate feelings about things before they have the ability to be filtered and clouded by time and/or sobriety. Then along came the Katy Perry show and I decided I wanted to go, not because I am a fan of her music (though I know her two hits), but because I thought it would be a fun show. More on that later. Somewhere along the timeline from finding out I had a press pass for the show to actually getting to the show, I decided it would be the perfect candidate for testing the “live blogging via twitter” idea out at the show. Here are those tweets:

Tweets, Review & Video after the jump

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Okay, last month we stumbled, both technically and performance wise, through the debut podcast. Come month two, we’re ready to drop the cream of Americana podcasts (from one of the best Americana blogs) on you, and our tech is prepped for the amount of awesome that you’re likely to find yourself listening to multiple times a week. I know I’m coming off like the Kanye West of the Americana blogging community, but I don’t give a fuck. I like fish sticks and I’m telling you, you’re gonna love it and you’re gonna listen to it numerous times. I feel that confident.

So, here is the tracklisting for what very well may be the only thing you listen to for the rest of this week:

1. Drive-by Truckers – Nine Bullets
2. Autopsy IV Commentary
3. Strawfoot – Cursed Neck
4. Pinebox Serenade – Woven Arms
5. Uncle Sinner – When Jesus Comes
6. Autopsy IV Commentary
7. Olin & The Moon – Call Me Up
8. American Aquarium – California
9. Eileen Jewell – Sea of Tears
10. Autopsy IV Commentary
11. Drag The River – Old Sad Songs [extended] (Lucero Cover)
12. Gillian Welch & Old Crow Medicine Show – The Weight (The Band Cover)
13. Scott H. Biram – Sinking Down (FD Session)
14. Jon & Chad (Drag The River) – Dancin’ In The Moonlight (Thin Lizzy Cover)
15. Autopsy IV Commentary
16. Grayson Capps – Going Back To The Country
17. Chris Knight – Enough Rope
18. Autopsy IV Commentary
19. Two Cow Garage – Should’ve California

IF YOU LISTEN TO THIS AND ENJOY IT PLEASE FORWARD IT TO SOMEONE ELSE!

This review comes courtesy of Autopsy IV.

Justin Townes Earle: Midnight at the Movies (Bloodshot)

When Justin Towns Earle’s debut, The Good Life, came out a year ago, I hardly paid it any mind. Months later, when I finally got around to listening to it, I wasn’t expecting much — just the son of a legend fumbling through an album he only got to make because of his father’s name.

With Midnight At The Movies I wondered: Could Earle come close to the masterpiece that The Good Life was? Turns out that he may just have surpassed it, if that’s possible.

On the new disc, Justin seems more settled in his resolve to forge his own path and more comfortable with his songwriting. On tracks like “Mama’s Eyes,” Justin shows no hesitation about exposing himself to the listener, warts and all. When you couple that the ragtime hop of the track “Walk Out,” you start to uncover the true strength of this album. It’s somber, introspective and tender at its core, while still managing to maintain a country swagger.

The variety of styles on the album help to offset its greatest weakness: it’s length. Clocking in at a mere 33 minutes, it seems like the album is over almost as soon as it starts. But as Bobby Womack once said, “Leave them wanting more and you know they’ll call you back.”

With 12 tracks of all-killer-no-filler, you’ll definitely find yourself calling Midnight At The Movies back quite a bit this year. I’ll probably be calling it up come time for my year-end best-of list, but for now I’ll just call it Essential Listening.

Strawfoot is “an angry preacher and a bunch of foul-mouthed heathens” from somewhere in St. Louis. The moment I heard the track “Damnation Way” from the Rodentia compilation I was excited almost to the point of being giddy to hear more music from them.  Within 5 minutes of hearing them for the first time I was downloading their complete album from Amazon MP3.

Often in times like these you find that your hopes are met by inconsistent music that never quite measure up to the song that got you there. By the time I had gotten to the third track, “Chasing Locusts,” I knew that “Damnation Way,” the tune that had introduced me to Strawfoot, wasn’t even their best.

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