Former Calways singer-guitarist Todd Deatherage is working on new material for an upcoming album to be released by 13 Recordings (Eleven Hundred Springs, Slowride) sometime in the next few months. Twin Buddha Records was nice enough to let Deatherage out of his just-signed contract with the label when the Calways broke up late last year. In the meantime, Deatherage can be spotted at his weekly gig at Muddy Waters, or in various area bars lip-synching Tom Petty songs. Really. (This week, it was at The Corner Tap on Lower Greenville.) We don't call him Todd Petty for nothing...
As we recently mentioned, Last Beat Records and Two Ohm Hop Records have teamed up for a joint showcase at this year's South by Southwest Music Festival. The showcase is now scheduled for March 16 at The Ritz Lounge and will feature performances from Captain Audio, Stumptone, Pleasant Grove, Mandarin, and Sub Oslo. Until then, you can check out Pleasant Grove -- with new members Mike Sanger on drums and Joe Butcher on steel guitar and keyboards -- at the Barley House on January 28, opening for The Deathray Davies. Stumptone will be playing the same night at the Liquid Lounge with Wiring Prank and The Falcon Project, an extremely rare Dallas appearance for all three groups. As for Captain Audio, their new album is almost ready for release, and you can hear it on February 12 at a listening party at the Angstrom Gallery in Exposition Park. Take it one sentence at a time, and you might be able to understand it all...
Since we're pimping shows anyway: Chomsky, The Deathray Davies, and Stereo Rookie perform on Saturday at Club Clearview; The Gospel Swingers play Bar of Soap on Friday; The Cock-Outs hit the stage at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios on Friday with Peeping Tom and Where the Action Is; and Swivel and Blush (see story on page 90) appear Friday at Moon Tunes in South Dallas. Sorry, we're out of synonyms for "perform" now...
For those of you upset because A Quick One -- the Who cover band featuring ex-Buck Pets Chris Savage and Ricky Pearson and Tripping Daisy's Phil Karnats and Ben Curtis -- has said its third gig will be its last, simmer down. According to Savage, he's trying to recruit Curtis and Karnats for his new band Pelicans, which includes him and Pearson on guitar and bassist James Means. Savage says if it happens, Pelicans' three-guitar attack "will be a cross between Radiohead and Lynyrd Skynyrd." We can't top that...
The Volares are set to begin recording their follow-up to their 1998 debut, The Night We Taught Ourselves to Sing, at The Echo Lab (the recording studio in Argyle once known at various times as 70 Hurtz and Transcontinental Recording Company) with Centro-matic drummer Matt Pence engineering. Singer-guitarist Bucks Burnett says basic tracks for the album (tentatively titled Anthology 4) were recorded in April during a two-week stint in London, and the sessions will also include a trip to the home of former Small Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan, so he can play on a handful of tracks. We're just guessing, but we would guess the disc will sound something like XTC playing Led Zeppelin songs. Or possibly the other way around...
In an effort to make the big mural depicting various human oddities on the side of its building somewhat relevant, Fat Ted's will begin hosting Fat Ted's Sideshow, an every-Thursday-night affair presided over by "ringmaster" Barry Kooda. The event, which begins on January 27, is a cross between an open-mike night and a freakshow, the first installment featuring two-headed turtles and a song-and-dance routine by fake Siamese twins. (Um, OK.) The shows happen between 9 p.m. and midnight and are free. The restaurant has put out "an open call for all freaks" to show off their unusual wares before, after, and during Kooda's sets, which reunite him with former Nervebreakers Mike Haskins and Bob Childress. You can stop what you're thinking right now: We're not signing up...
The Lucky Pierres will be playing live on Austin's KUT-FM on January 30, on a program simply and appropriately titled Live Set. The broadcast happens from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., and don't worry if you don't happen to be in the vicinity of KUT-FM's meager signal. Apparently, the entire shindig can be listened to on the Internet at www.kut.org. Of course, if you're into listening to music on your computer, you can always check out Scene, Heard: Dallas Observer Radio -- one hour each week of good music and bad jokes, or something like that -- which broadcasts live every Tuesday at 4 p.m. and is available on archive the rest of the week. (That's what the fine folks at Yahoo! Broadcast Services tell us anyway.) It's fun for the whole family -- that is, if your family consists of a Jewish cowboy, a goofy kid with anger-management issues, and an absent-minded Anglophile. Hey, just because it's a plug doesn't necessarily make it shameless. Trust us, we're plenty embarrassed.
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