If it's Wednesday it must be time for Stoney La Rue! Catch the newly named winner of the 2007 Artist of the Year at the Gruene with Envy Awards in a free concert tonight at Pub Fiction. You'll hear tunes off his new CD Live At Billy Bob's, including the hit single "Oklahoma Breakdown."Stoney La Rue performs tonight at Pub Fiction, 2303 Smith, 713-400-8400.
American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken is coming to Houston for a show with our own Houston Symphony . The show isn't until July but ticket sales went crazy on Monday when the Symphony held a pre-sale limited to Symphony subscribers and Clay Aiken fan club members. Today tickets were made available to the general public and while sales have slowed some, they are still steady. Chances are Aiken's show will be sold-out, a rarety for the Houston Symphony. The only other shows that have sold out this season are Yo-Yo Ma and the Chieftains.
Think of it Clay Aiken singing "Bridge Over Troubled Water" backed by a full orchestra - what a spectacle.
Before you ask why the Houston Symphony is so quick to pimp themselves out as the biggest (and most well educated) back -up band in the universe, we already did. Here's what a symphony spokesman told us:
"We consider ourselves to be Houston's orchestra, and that means across the entire breadth of music. We're proud on an artistic level to be able to present a wide spectrum of repertoire thereby making the Houston Symphony approachable to a broad and diverse audience."(You can hardly be a "back-up band" for an artist like Elvis Costello or Ben Folds or k.d. lang, all of who have written specifically for the power of a full orchestra.) And, by the way, all the artists who appear with us have invested substantially large sums of money to have symphony arrangements of their material written so they can perform their shows with symphony orchestras all across the country."
We've got a new slideshow up on our homepage. Just click on "Home" up there above — yeah, right up there, next to "News" — and then scroll down and click on "Iggy" to see Dan Kramer's killer pics of Iggy Pop's performance at SXSW.
Dude's pretty buff for an old guy. Iggy, we mean, not Dan. Not to say Dan isn't buff. Oh, whatever. — Keith Plocek
Jon Rauhouse
Steel Guitar Heart Attack
Bloodshot Records
Ace sideman and session player Jon Rauhouse almost left us a couple of years back. Guys as young as Calexico collaborator Rauhouse aren't supposed to have heart attacks, but all those years of touring with tear-ass bands like the Waco Brothers obviously took a toll on the steel guitar maestro. It's not surprising then that he dedicates Steel Guitar Heart Attack to the doctors who pulled him through.
Along with guitar whiz Tommy Connell, Rauhouse sails effortlessly from Benny Goodman big band treatments to Hawaiian lap steel finger-tanglers with consummate ease and grace, ever mindful of the intelligent, intricate melodies. While 75% of the material is instrumental, Rauhouse makes room for the women vocalists he works with regularly as Sally Timms gives a crisp late-night lounge reading of "I'll Be Seeing You," Kelly Hogan reprises a muscular version of Marty Robbins classic "Big Iron," and Neko Case's loopy Eartha Kitt slur is perfect for the old standard "East of the Sun (West of the Moon)." On super slick instrumental tracks like Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine" or the insanely complex and wacky "Holiday For Strings" by cheese-meister David Rose, we literally wait for an announcer to say, "and now, from the ballroom at the top of the Hotel Fountainbleau" or some such aggrandizing supper club nonsense as Rauhouse and Connell trade licks in rapid fire, "oh yeah, take this" rounds. At 18 tracks, Heart Attack calls up precious memories of Speedy West and Lloyd Green as it covers a lot of old ground in an entirely refreshing way. -- William Michael Smith
To listen to our podcast with Mexican singer/songwriter Azul, just click here.
Azul performs with Lila Downs and Magos Herrera in the Divinas concert, Sunday, March 25, at Miller Outdoor Theatre, 100 Concert Drive, 281-373-3386.
Otis Taylor
Definition of a Circle
Telarc
While not one of the best-known contemporary blues players, the bearish, intimidating-looking Otis Taylor is certainly among the most unique. He's the rare artist who actively pushes the boundaries of the genre to create music both challenging and wholly identifiable with no one else. While Definition of a Circle has a couple of searing electric blues numbers ("Little Betty," "Love and Hesitation"), it's when Taylor plays sonic alchemist, layering guitar, bass and organ lines with healthy doses of cello, mandolin and cornet, that the interesting things happen ("Black's Mandolin Boogie," "Maharaja Daughter").
The album also showcases a variety of moods and characters. "Looking Over Your Fence," which features a menacing man who covets his neighbor's wife, and "Something in Your Back Packet," with its juke joint doorman turning away trouble, are both genuinely chilling collages with droning tones. Taylor is also capable of touching tenderness, particularly with his vocals, in "Few Feet Away" (a lullaby to a bi-racial child) and "My Name Is General Jackson" (in which a nervous suitor asks a father for his daughter's hand in marriage). In the latter, a simple catch in Taylor's throat speaks volumes; his lyrics may be sparse, but they carry weight. While a few tracks overstay their welcome (the Hurricane Katrina elegy "They Wore Blue" and "Lifetime of Freedom"), Definition of a Circle is overall an utterly grabbing work that shows the man as a multi-faceted craftsman willing to take real chances. - Bob Ruggiero
If you're looking for some free form jazz, it doesn't get much freer than The Defenestration Unit. The group includes Charlie Naked on tenor Sax, Kid Ornery on trombone, Jim Otterson on electric guitar, Gator Miller on electric bass, Tom Zermeno on percussion and voice and Kirk Suddreath on drums. What it doesn't include is that old 'verse, chorus, verse, chorus' mindset. The Defenestration Unit threw out that formula of songwriting and is instead creating completely free, new music.
Check them out at their regular weekly gig this Wednesday, March 21, at Bohemeo's, 708 Telephone Rd., Suite E, 713-923-4277.
Click here to watch an audio slideshow of last night's Kings of Leon set.
This is my first visit to Austin's citywide music festival South by Southwest (SXSW). It's been a whirling mass of people, music, dope, schmoozing, music, sex, one-upmanship and music. I expected crowds and great (and not so great music). Here's a list of what I didn't expect but got anyway.
TEN THINGS I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT SXSW
10) Everyone calls it South By. The only time I heard the word "Southwest" was at a restaurant when the waiter was trying to explain Texas food to a Scotsman: "Black bean chili is a Southwest staple." Liar, but not my place to correct someone else's waiter.
9) The cops will arrest you for smoking cigarettes in a bar but will happily look the other way if you light up a joint.
8) Contact highs are fun.
This year marks the 50th anniversary for the Stax label and the label is re-launching this year. The MG's were Stax's heart and soul, their taut organ jams the hipster nocturnes of a generation. The rhythm section of Duck Dunn and Al Jackson was the epitome of economy -- the late Jackson was famous for rarely if ever playing a drum fill. Steve Cropper's chiming, chunky rhythm guitar and Jones's soaring organ were fairly well redolent of the smell of Memphis... Pork barbecue and beer.
Click here for an audio slideshow of the Cold War Kids, doing their thing Thursday night at SXSW.
And here to find out what Pete Townshend does when he's not surfing the Internet for kiddie porn. -- Keith Plocek
Perhaps it was last September's Pitchfork headline, "RJD2 Signs to XL, Ditches Hip-Hop," that had the underground rap scene grumbling. In the nearly five years since his solo debut, RJ attained hero status for his unearthly beats and work with cats such as Mos Def and Aceyalone. But now he's making rock and pop music with his recent release, The Third Hand.
"Growing up, I wasn't aware of this distinction between hip-hop and other things," he says. "I listened to all sorts of pop music as much as I did rap...all the stuff that was kind of popular in the '80s." The artists who influenced him range from Tears for Fears to Michael Jackson to UTFO, a mix that bleeds through on the new record in songs such as "You Never Had It So Good," which evokes XTC, or "Have Mercy," which recalls Peter Gabriel's world-beat percussion.
But there's still a distinct RJD2 sound that carries over from his hip-hop records, likely a result of his songwriting approach. "The groove and the rhythmic element, and what's sort of going to be the driving harmonic theme of the song—that's where everything starts," he says. "You can think of it as a loop, if you will, on a sampler."
RJ's singing takes a similar approach. Vocals are just another layer of sound, with melody taking precedence over lyrics. "The music is the star," he says. But can he sing? He does as well as most indie-rock frontmen.
Yesterday we told you Austin's light poles had been wrapped in plastic to dam up the expected flood of stickers for SXSW. Well, that apparently didn't stop some dude from Zune, who got arrested for putting up guerrilla posters, according to Losanjealous.
At least he wasn't blasting Justin Timberlake at 3 a.m. -- Keith Plocek
Click here for an audio slideshow from our sister paper, Seattle Weekly, featuring Oxford Collapse, Tiny Vipers and Loney, Dear.
And here's a podcast with commentary. -- Keith Plocek
