Bonus MP3: Backside Pick -- "Higher Ground"

Tonight, Hailey's hosts the record release party for Denton's own Backside Pick's sophomore release, Higher Place. Good Hailey's regulars probably already know the band as bar-manager Rocky Ottley's progy-funky rock band. Ottley, who writes and arranges the songs himself, thinks you're gonna like the album's title track, so he passed...

By Daniel Rodrigue

May 8, 2009

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Tonight, Hailey's hosts the record release party for Denton's own Backside Pick's sophomore release, Higher Place. Good Hailey's regulars probably already know the band as bar-manager Rocky Ottley's progy-funky rock band.

Ottley, who writes and arranges the songs himself, thinks you're gonna like the album's title track, so he passed the song along for your downloading pleasure, as a preview of tonight's show. Check it out after the jump, though really, one mp3 can't replicate what Rocky and Co. have planned for tonight...

Bonus mp3:

Backside Pick -- "Higher Place"

At midnight, Ottley says Backside Pick will be playing the songs from the new album from start to finish. And, if you listen to "Higher Ground" and like Backside Pick, but you can't make it to Hailey's tonight? Well, the show will also be streaming live on Ustream.TV.

Let's face it. Thanks to a certain local school of music, the Denton music scene has long had a glut of jazzy, jammy, proggy, funk- and R&B-centered rock acts.

Not all of these acts are of the same caliber. But the better of these acts develop huge (and hugely devoted) fan bases, thanks to that same area scholarly influence. We're talking 200 to 400 folks who will, on a weekly basis, pack Denton hotspots as diverse as Hailey's, The Boiler Room or The Greenhouse to catch favorite acts like Oso Closo, New Vintage, Fatty Lumpkin (the openers on tonight's bill), and, yes, Backside Pick, too.

Expect tonight's record release party to draw a huge turnout. (And, yes, I realize that of the bands I mentioned don't "sound" exactly "the same." The point remains the same.)

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