Dallas’ own Thomas King Cone IV distills the sounds of such disparate acts as Dwight Yoakam and Dire Straits into radio-friendly retro-country that should be his ticket to a larger audience. Cone’s male model good looks may actually serve as a distraction from his quality songwriting as his growing (mostly…
If not for his cantankerous personality and eccentric behavior, it would be easy to label Wayne “The Train” Hancock’s complete approximation of Hank Williams as simply the work of a gifted impersonator. Yet over the course of more than a decade, Hancock has released some of the most authentic and…
Most parents find it difficult dealing with the sounds emanating from their young child’s room. The yearly onslaught (especially during the holidays) of products geared toward the wee ones can be daunting to say the least. What follows is a guide through the minefield of pre-adolescent music, one that might…
Thankfully unrelated to the heavy-handed ’70s hard rock guitarist Ronnie Montrose, this is actually Montrose Cunningham, a Dallas multi-instrumentalist who worships at the funky altar of Prince and Terrance Trent D’Arby. Inertia, his sophomore effort, released in 2004, is full of soulful funk and sexy ballads, never straying too far…
Speaking from Northern California on the eve of an American tour, Thomas Dolby sounds energized, ready to bring out machines old and new, to dress up like an aviator lost in an electronics store, anxious to prove yet again that he is anything but an ’80s one-hit wonder. “People who…
New Pagan Love Song, Paul Brill’s wonderfully skewed neo-pop confection from 2004, established the New Yorker as a singer-songwriter of unusual subtlety and brave innovation. Mixing the plainspoken charm of Ben Folds with the sonic weirdness of Sparklehorse, Brill found a fertile, unforeseen meeting place of the sweet and the…
Sabrina Ewing, singer of Austin’s all-female punk revivalists The Applicators, is a single mom with an attitude. Speaking from her kitchen, Ewing is both peppy and articulate as she discusses the pros and cons of females in punk rock. “We don’t need to rely on being girls or fall for…
John Gorka “I’m not afraid of drums,” says John Gorka, one of contemporary folk’s most accomplished songwriters, discussing the genre’s historically odd recoil from percussion. “I’d like to be thought of as in the folk tradition,” says Gorka, “but I really like the beat.” For more than 20 years Gorka…
Henkka Seppala, bassist for Children of Bodom, Finland’s favorite death metal export, does his best (in broken English) to explain why his band covered “Oops, I Did it Again” as a single in 2005. “And the drunk somebody said, ‘Hey, let’s do Britney,'” says Seppala. Despite his pedestrian second-language skills,…
For two decades Walter Salas-Humera and his Silos have been one of the leading lights of Americana music. Sadly underappreciated, the New York-based Silos have released more than a dozen efforts that merge country, folk and indie rock in increasingly fascinating ways. The band’s high-water mark was Cuba from 1987,…
Of all of the albums a band might choose to re-create, Pussy Cats, Harry Nilsson and John Lennon’s drunken incursion into the bowels of New York City, would rank high on the unlikely list. Recorded during Lennon’s separation from Yoko Ono, the original album was a high holy mess: a…
Although there have been many attempts to properly anthologize The Clash, most efforts became bogged down in trying to cherry-pick tracks off of albums such as London Calling which were self-sufficient statements. The Singles presents a complete picture of the seminal band by gathering together every single and B-side the…
While certainly overrated in rock ‘n’ roll, instrumental virtuosity gains a bit more credence in bluegrass and folk circles. San Francisco’s Stairwell Sisters features five women who attack an assortment of string instruments with a veracity that rivals some of rock’s most venerated fret-burners. Feet All Over the Floor, the…
A devout Christian who writes defiantly leftist songs, Bruce Cockburn is both a phenomenal guitarist and an acclaimed lyricist. Cockburn has been Canada’s best purveyor of world-beat folk for more than four decades. His most recognized songs are “Wondering Where the Lions Are” (1979) and “If I Had a Rocket…
When asked about having an e-mail address, Amy Muncy, a 32-year-old employee at CD Source, one of the area’s best and most unusual music shops, shakes her head. “Look, I work at a CD store. I can’t afford a computer.” Muncy, a slightly gothic, caffeine-addicted fan of Buckethead and Cannibal…
If there is such a genre as ambient Americana, then Tom Freund is its standard bearer. First gaining attention as a touring member of pioneering roots rockers the Silos, Freund has parlayed a decade-long friendship with Ben Harper into a series of atmospherically rustic releases that culminated in 2004’s Copper…
Henry Saint Clair Fredericks, better known by his stage name, Taj Mahal, is less a traditional blues artist and more a cross-cultural musicologist who just happens to play some damn fine blues guitar. Over the course of four decades, Mahal has perfected his unique melding of blues, reggae, Cajun, gospel,…
Because he recorded for countless labels over the course of seven decades, John Lee Hooker’s hugely influential brand of blues and boogie has never been successfully anthologized until now. This four-disc set clocks in at more than four hours and features 85 examples of Hooker’s distinctive brilliance. It’s a massive…
Les Claypool has always understood that without a good dose of humor, instrumental virtuosity can produce music as empty as Eddie Van Halen’s noggin. As leader of Primus, Claypool successfully melded his overpowering bass-guitar skills with a keenly sly wit and thrilled an unlikely demographic of air-guitar-playing frat boys and…
Thursday, October 26 at Gypsy Tearoom
Chin Up Chin Up performs with Oxford Collapse on
Thursday, October 26 at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studio
in Denton.
It’s always a good sign when guys who use “brothers” in their name are actually brothers. Noel and Hollis McKay are fifth-generation Texans who revel in the best things the state has to offer: food, a frosty beverage and an honest twang. Their impressive sophomore effort, Cold Beer and Hot…
