SXSW Announces First Round Of Scheduled Performers For ’09 Fest

OK, so there’s a clause at the bottom of the press release we just received–y’know “The list is subject to change” blah, blah blah–but lo and behold, here it is: The first round of announced performers for the 23rd SXSW festival, schedule to take place this year March 18-22. After…

Clearing Out the Mailroom: Thursday, January 8, 2009

We’ve got quite a backlog of CDs we’ve never gotten around to, so we’re going to try to chip away at the pile with this regular feature. The plan: to take four or five at a time and play each CD for as long as I can stand it. Confusion…

The Polyphonic Spree Go Small For Once.

First: Yes, the above trailer for The Minis is, indeed, quite real.Second: Yes, that is The Polyphonic Spree’s “Soldier Girl” setting the inspirational mood at the end of the trailer. Insert your own joke, I guess. –Pete Freedman…

Nickelback

Even by Nickelback standards, Dark Horse is ridiculously brazen, comically outsized and defiantly Bruckheimer-esque. The songs not explicitly about bonin’ chicks concern such subjects as romancin’ chicks (“I’d Come for You,” an unapologetic quote of Bon Jovi’s “I’ll Be There for You”), the dangers of doing (the wrong) drugs (“Just…

Akon

The Smoking Gun Web site exposed Akon earlier this year, unearthing police documents showing he’s greatly exaggerated his arrest record and incarceration time. And so on his third album, Freedom, he downgrades himself from Konvicted (his last CD’s title) to “Troublemaker.” Even this description refers more to his tendencies to…

Marcia Ball

Geography partly explains the power and appeal of blues belter and boogie-woogie piano banger Marcia Ball—but, again, only partly. Raised on the Texas border in the small Southwestern Louisiana town of Vinton, Ball discovered her own voice at ground zero of American roots music. Rockabilly, zydeco, country, R&B, swamp rock…

Dale Watson

No one can accuse Dale Watson of not being country enough. The Austin-based singer-songwriter has a bottomless bar-room voice, a wonderfully baroque delivery, and a pronounced ornery streak he proudly displays on “Country My Ass,” in which he attacks watered-down C&W with the couplet “Force feed us that shit/Ain’t you…

Fair To Midland’s Still Getting Defined

A good five hours before his band was set to perform for the first time in four months, Fair to Midland frontman Darroh Sudderth awkwardly ambled about the empty pre-show confines of the Curtain Club early Saturday evening, doing his best to prepare for the night ahead. Mostly, though, his…

A Very Hipster New Year

New Year’s Eve at Hailey’s got off to a slow start. Doors opened at 7 p.m., but naturally, people had to look their best and be fashionably late. Thus, the vast majority of people arrived between 11 p.m. and midnight. And when they did, it was as if several busloads…

Our annual Death Pool: Which artists will croak in ’09?

It’s January, which means it’s that time of year again. No, we don’t mean it’s time to honor your New Year’s resolution to have more empathy for your fellow man or to stop putting so much stock in gossip and rumors. It’s time to lay odds on which musicians are…

Lou Gramm’s Still a Jukebox Hero

There existed only one band from the late ’70s through the early ’80s: Foreigner. The group gave us immortal rock tunes such as “Cold as Ice,” “Feels Like the First Time” and “Urgent”—and who could forget “Waiting for a Girl Like You”? Now, the voice of Foreigner, Lou Gramm, is…

Airline: Now Free To Move About The Cable Airwaves

The good news just keeps rolling in for Airline: After recently earning a spot to play in the upcoming RedGorilla Fest, the band has just now announced that has also inked a licensing deal with MTV, The Oxygen Network and E! to have their music used on several shows for…