Mac Rebennack, a.k.a. Dr. John, is America’s answer to Vladimir Horowitz. He is the foremost master of boogie-woogie and barrelhouse piano, as well as having invented a large piano vocabulary all his own, including elegant turnarounds on R&B numbers and ticklish right-hand runs on the upper keys. More significant, Dr…
Every once in a while, when I’m preaching the gospel of Dallas music to out-of-towners, some faraway friend asks about the band Doosu. That’s odd for a few reasons, but the biggest one is that this outside-Dallas Doosu chat is more common than inside-Dallas Doosu chat. At least that was…
Between you and me, I’m beginning to tire ever so slightly of The Polyphonic Spree. Some days I get into my silver VW Bug, pump up the jams on my 40-gigabyte iPod and realize that the magic just isn’t what it used to be–the novelty of fitting 86 people on…
It’s Saturday afternoon at the Dallas Music Festival, and the Gypsy Tea Room is packed. Five hundred guys–and they are almost all guys–crowd the hall. They’re not here for a performance but for an industry panel, titled (badly, like most panels) “Growing Your Band at the Club Level.” They have…
Lyle Lovett is a Zen master of cool and calm, no doubt about it. But on this particular occasion he is just a wee bit ruffled. An article in The New York Times recounting a motorbike ride he took with a reporter through the Hill Country got botched in the…
For the average person, “spoken word” is not a good thing. It evokes images of people with mikes, flannel shirts, strident voices and issues with their parents (or parent-substitute, the government). No thanks. Spoken word was pitched as a trend, hyped as poetry-meets-rock-and-roll. Suddenly, every coffeehouse had an open-mike night,…
It’s not often we ask a band, “Where did the emo go?” We wouldn’t bid tearful farewells if a band filled with Caucasian, well-to-do musicians gave up on sappy, pseudo-punk tunes, whether they’re whiny like Dashboard Confessional or tolerably upset like Pedro the Lion. So what’s our beef with Slowride?…
Gone but not totally forgotten, though three of its former members have done their damnedest to erase all record of rage or even minor irritability. No one sounded like Rage Against the Machine before (save, maybe, Public Enemy and the MC5), and no one has since–especially Audioslave, which calms like…
This South London collective of delightfully cracked and activist musos and DJs serve up wickedly ingenious music that smashes genres with every pummeling drum beat. Then they slather the crust of their sinfully delicious concoctions with canny commentary and observations, keen literary allusions and a firm grip on musical history…
Richard “Kinky” “Big Dick” Friedman’s running for governor of the great state o’ Texas, and what else is new? Seventeen years back he ran for justice of the peace in Kerrville and almost won; might have, if only people would have voted for him. So now he throws his Stetson,…
Sixty-two-year-old Ronald Isley is nearing the end of an unexpectedly busy year: a handsome reissue of the Isley Brothers’ 1973 LP 3+3; Body Kiss, a slyly persuasive new Isleys disc featuring Ronald and guitarist Ernie (and songwriting from R. Kelly); and a brand-new collaborative CD from Isley and composer/arranger/producer Burt…
Drinking coffee with Jason Pierce of Spiritualized one morning earlier this year (actually, I drank coffee; he drank Rolling Rock), I asked him why Amazing Grace, his band’s latest album, sounds so much rawer and more off-the-cuff than the couple that preceded it. He took a swig (actually, two) and…
They are a young band. They have a Web site and a mailing list and a few starry-eyed fantasies, like the one in which the A&R guy comes to their best gig, stands in the back, with a low-slung hat maybe, smoke curling from his silhouette. You know: the discovery…
The whole point of rock and roll, as Placebo front man Brian Molko sees it, is never growing up. That’s what everyone who straps on a guitar or picks up a microphone is after. It’s certainly not a new theory. Pete Townshend even wrote a song about it. Actually, Pete…
A year and a half ago, this EP wasn’t possible. Tweed was ambitious, sure, but something was amiss and obviously so. Their songs, falling unencumbered into that wide world of Americana, were simple and fun, but Tweed was just another good bar band, known around these parts for their completely…
There’s been a shift in my party conversation lately. A few weeks ago, I was just another freelance journalist yapping about the same old things: what I did that weekend, what movies I’d seen, and can I get another beer? Then, I became the music editor at the Dallas Observer,…
If I were Britney Spears’ mom, Lynne, I’d be…very rich! But I’d also be confused: The routine deluge of self-promotion that’s accompanied the release of Spears’ fourth album, In the Zone, has included a fair amount of anguished why-won’t-the-media-leave-me-alone?, dropped purposefully into network-news interviews, VH1 specials and any number of…
A couple of years ago I sat in a New York news channel’s green room for an hour and a half waiting for Mavericks front man Raul Malo to finish soundchecking for a three-minute on-air live slot he was scheduled to perform in support of his majorly slept-on 2001 solo…
Lest you think Desert City Soundtrack’s album Funeral Car might contain a few rays of sunshine peeking through the dark clouds, the first track, “My Hell,” sets the record straight. It begins with slow, deliberate piano, soon accompanied by a mournful trumpet and then joined by equally downtrodden vocals gently…
Edwin McCain isn’t one of those musicians anyone really thinks about. He doesn’t have any buzz–never really did, even when VH1 was spinning the video for his single “Solitude” and hometown homies Hootie and the Blowfish were all the rage and pumping him hard. But if some bands are, say,…
Well-regarded Texans Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis have given themselves an early Christmas present: Happy Holidays, a seven-song EP of seasonal songs the singing-and-songwriting husband and wife recorded together and are selling at shows and through their respective Web sites. Since the Lifetime network keeps reminding me to be forgiving…
Once upon a time, there was a little orchestral pop band from Oklahoma. No, I’m not talking about The Flaming Lips. Seriously, folks–the Sooner state has birthed many great bands other than them thar Lips. Bands like, um…Color Me Badd? OK, point withdrawn. When it comes to the sounds of…
