First, a clarification: It appears that when Street Beat relayed–rather breathlessly–that popular Beatles cover band Hard Night’s Day had moved into the big time by taking off on a brief national tour, it was having its perineum tickled by new handler-agent Traci Parsons. What seemed to be club dates are…

Electra glide in blue Small Spinning Ginny Last Beat Records There truly is nothing new under the sun anymore, and to describe a band by placing it in a handy niche is no longer tantamount to calling it unoriginal, but the only way to deal with the staggering amount of…

Queso que nada? Cosa Caliente The Recliners RCM Recordings One of the hardest things to get a sense of is humor, which many people confuse with mockery, forgetting that making fun has always been territory staked out by those who can’t quite make do. Nothing has borne this out quite…

“EEEeeeeeeuuuggghhhh!” Playing opposite to type, the local music writer is utterly sincere as she twists her face into a rictus of pure disgust. The effort–which pulls the corners of her mouth down and the cartilage around her nostrils up, and for a moment makes her face look like one of…

A flat natural-born good timin’ man “Every day I tell myself it’s temporary,” Gary Stewart sings at the beginning of his 1974 hit “Drinkin’ Thing,” a monument to self-delusion and dependency written by Wayne Carson, who also wrote another Stewart classic, “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinking Doubles).” His other hits–“Out…

Emmylou Harris has been a respected country artist since her first major label release, 1975’s Pieces of the Sky. Arriving right in time for the advent of country-rock and enjoying a hefty batch of advance credibility through her association with Gram Parsons, Harris has always been one of the most…

More than skin deep Now that Nashville is only slightly less beauty-conscious than the fashion industry–to make it in pop country these days, you gotta be a cute li’l ol’ thang with a perfect figure, bright eyes, flawless hair, and a stunning smile (the girls have to be prettier still)–it…

The apartment complex that Dewaylon McCoy, his mother Eva, and little sister Nashayla share isn’t really scary–it’s just a little bit overpacked and anonymous, one of those places that compel you to say “oh, it isn’t that bad” when greeting first-time visitors. Residents eye each other warily from behind their…

There are moments of almost primal resonance that can come upon you at elemental times: when watching moving water–surf or stream–or fire, or the wind play across fields of dense grass. In those moments you can suddenly feel connected to the thousands upon thousands of generations before you who have…

“Naomi’s is absolutely my favorite place in the world to play,” says roots-country hotshot Mary Cutrufello about her return to the club December 14–her first visit since June. “The people there are really salt-of-the-earth types, and I’d do anything to help them out.” Cutrufello has a brilliant new album out–Who…

Local tidings A Loving Christmas Mark Loving Independent release Mark Loving is a music critic’s worst nightmare: a man who’s always singing to himself around the house and at work, so family and friends finally prevail on him to make an album. Probably a really nice guy. Fingers tremble as…

From Ziklag to Zion Nobody But You Slim and the Supreme Angels Intersound Records Living on the Other Side IIIrd Tyme Out Rounder Records The African-American gospel quartet tradition has had an enormous impact on pop music: The vocal stylings live on in soul and R&B, and the idea of…

A bird in the hand Ah, the ’70s, when the road of excess led not to the palace of wisdom but to the amphitheater of even more excess and the cradle of southern boogie. With 1990’s Shake Your Money Maker the Crowes re-invigorated the genre, pulling it out of the…

Commerce and Christmas have long been linked; heck, at the end of A Christmas Carol Ebenezer Scrooge still had to buy the Cratchits that turkey, and in fact how he handled his money was one of the primary ways in which we could tell the change the spirits had wrought…

Sometimes we don’t really see ourselves until we glimpse our reflection in someone else’s eyes. Or in their mirrored sunglasses: Noted Scottish author and western swing fan Duncan McLean–in town soon for a series of readings and to host a show featuring some of the surviving greats of western swing–traveled…

A murder of two Recovering the Satellites Counting Crows Geffen Records Sheryl Crow Sheryl Crow A&M Records These two sophomore albums are attempts at redefinition, but the efforts work for one–to a degree–and fail the other. Counting Crows’ debut persona was that of the outsider, and their use of mandolins…

Jeff “Chate” Liles is one of the few people who appears in Street Beat and has had enough. Exposure, that is–the swimming pools and movie stars of the glamorous music biz. “Oh, man, don’t put that in,” he said when discussing his move out to Los Angeles a few months…

Across the spectrum A Charmed Life Joe LoCascio Trio Tafford Music Improvisation and innovation in jazz are somewhat akin to a squelch knob on a radio–turn it up high enough and it becomes impossible to listen to. The challenge has always been to stimulate and challenge while at the same…

Although the current lounge revival seems to be everywhere–one half-expects to see squirrels wearing tiny smoking jackets and clutching wee martini glasses as they dart about burying their nuts for the winter–keyboardist and Fort Worth native Red Young remembers when popular appreciation for the sophisticated, swing-oriented music of the ’40s…

Removable labels Dem’s Good Beeble The Gourds Munich Records Authenticity as a concept has been something of a bugaboo since before Ry Cooder started imitating dust-bowl farmers and African-American Pullman porters. Nowadays–with retro Americana all the rage–its boundaries are even more blurred. But just as a guy in an Armani…

Shooting star Chandelier Musings Comet Dedicated Records Those who wander the demo-strewn caverns of Local Band Hell soon learn not to trust much of what crosses their desk; instead, they come to rely more on word of mouth. It’s with great interest, then, that around a year or so ago…

Lauren Agnelli–known to most for her association with neofolkie groundbreakers the Washington Squares–imparts a New Yorker’s sense of forward momentum; one of her favorite words is “apace,” and when she tells you that “when someone makes me feel good, I tell them about it” in her East Coast accent, you…