Houston Music Blog

​Radar Eyes: State your name and purpose.

Brent Tipton: My name is Brent, and I am curator of Dull Knife.

RE: You've been releasing music by underground recording artists from Houston and beyond for about three years now it seems! What are you guys all about and why do you do it?

BT: Dull Knife recently turned two years old. We're about releasing music we feel strongly about and showcasing it to a worldwide audience, though it didn't necessarily begin that way.

RE: What was your original intention?

BT: The original intention was to release a Hearts of Animals record that people outside of Houston would get to hear. I thought she had a side to her music at times that was very unique and would definitely interest people. Once that record came out, I realized how much I enjoyed the process, and decided to do some more records for local bands. But I didn't want the label to get stuck with the stigma of "local label," so I made an effort to find other unknown bands in other cities to work with.

This past week a few Houston musicians began getting their dreaded SXSW rejection notices; most notably we heard that Robert Ellis' entry was not accepted. That's a tough bullet to take, considering how well his band does on Wednesday night at Mango's and the quality of his solo album. Either way Ellis still our boy, and this industry festival doesn't guarantee anyone happiness or a big break.

Just yesterday we also received our first issue of SXSW's SXSWORLD magazine, which is always a bellwether of what's to come. Once we get that in the mail, it starts to feel real. For the past month the list of showcasing bands on the official Web site has been, shall we say, a little light on the marquee names that we have been expecting. Inside, we did see that long lost proto-punk band DEATH will be making their way to Austin. Canadian metal band Voivod will be playing a Relapse Records showcase with Kill the Client and Tombs, hosted by comedian Brian Posehn.

Village Voice Media, the Houston Press' daddy company, has announced the line-up for this year's SXSW day party at La Zona Rosa, set for March 19 at noon. The show hasn't disappointed since Rocks Off has been aboard, with 2008 bringing the Black Keys, HEALTH and ...Trail Of Dead and last year the Crystal Antlers, M. Ward, Cursive and Gomez enlivening our five-hour event.

This year's line-up is just as striking as the previous two, with current indie darlings and Rocks Off faves Surfer Blood, The xx, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and the legendary Superchunk rounding out our bill. We told you we know how to stack the deck, kids.

Surfer Blood came through Houston in November, and Rocks Off did a quick Listology and Aftermath on their well-received Mango's gig. The xx have never made it to Houston, but the Brit-mopers' 2009 debut has been making regular appearances on our daily playlists. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart are a sweet little indie operation from New York City, reminiscent of Elvis Costello with tag-team male/female vocals.

This week Rocks Off is pleased to announce that Houston pop kids Wild Moccasins will be playing the Houston Press' SXSW showcase. So you guys can now mark the Moccs down as another local band set to bear down on Austin in March. We will have the names of the other performers coming by next week or so. Congrats to the Moccs, who have also been logging time at Sugar Hill Studios working on their LP.

In other SXSW news, word came that the White Stripes will be premiering their first tour documentary, Under Great White Northern Lights, during the film side of the festival that precedes the more hectic music side. That now makes two rock docs that Rocks Off really, really wants to see with the other being the Lemmy Kilmister chronicle, Lemmy.

No word yet if both Stripes and Lemmy will be on hand for the respective premieres, but we wouldn't rule anything out. They are both two of the loudest bands we have ever seen in our short lives, so we would welcome more hearing damage.

​Whenever Rocks Off thinks about Spoon - which, over the past decade, has been quite a bit - the one word that always comes to mind is "punctuation." No other band we can think of consistently crafts songs that are so heavily punctuated, from Britt Daniel's sharp-as-glass guitar riffs to Jim Eno's metronomic drumming to keyboard vamps as regular as sonar pings. Spoon's songs may be busy and frenetic sometimes, but they're never, ever cluttered.

"[Daniel] is taking familiar things and putting them back together in a certain way that's specifically Spoon," Mac McCaughan, former Superchunk front man and owner of Spoon's label, Merge, told The New York Times in a front-page Arts & Leisure article this past Sunday.

Rocks Off has spent the past couple of days listening to Spoon's new Transference - out next Tuesday, and available for $9.99 at Cactus Music for one week only - and, like the band's previous six albums, we don't quite know what to think of it yet except that it sounds very much like a Spoon album. This means that, almost without fail, in six months we will love it to death and in six more months it will be vying for the top spot on our best-of-2010 list.

​We haven't even passed MLK Day, and already Rocks Off is spinning our collective wheels about SXSW. Hell, we haven't even covered RodeoHouston, and we have already begun talking about where we are going to crash every morning at dawn. Rocks Off would like to admit that even on the way home from Austin City Limits in October he was already plotting who he wanted to see six months on.

We are sick and need help.

A while back, SXSW gave Rocks Off a list of local artists who have applied to play the festival so we could help pick a few to play the Press' showcase. The list is only comprised of the bands from Houston who have the highest ratings with the organizers, but nonetheless it is a Rogue's Gallery of some our heaviest-hitting cats. If everyone on it gets in (or even half), Houston is going to slay everyone else who dares set foot on 6th Street. (Surprise: Hip-hop and indie-rock acts make up the majority of the list.) The media hasn't been given the final picks, but Tuesday night on Twitter we did hear in a roundabout way that Wild Moccasins will be there.

Well here it goes, the year's first official blog entry about South by Southwest 2010. Yes, we know that it doesn't start until March 17, but the hype machines have already been running since the fall and rumors have been getting stoked since before Austin City Limits in October. So let's get this frivolous motor running.

In early December, SXSW's organizers sent out the first list of over 200 bands that had made the cut for the festival. It wasn't very surprising, and was mostly populated with bands and artists that have been clogging up the works for years now. What we have seen are quite a lot of no-name international bands and folks from around the state who are still chomping at the bit for a taste of exposure outside Austin, Dallas and Houston.

We have yet to see the big indie "It" bands like the Big Pink and the xx get any official show dates and times, but we can say that we have an inside track that they may both be playing a day party for your favorite alt-weekly. But we aren't sure who we heard that from, since we drink a lot. Stay tuned here for any updates on that one, kids.

​

Balaclavas: "On the way to see Houston's own Balaclavas at the Independent to debut new stuff off the soon-to-be released Roman Holiday, I abruptly hit a curb with my bicycle. Luckily my elbow took one for the team. Well, it ended up getting fractured and I have all kinds of internal business going on with it. But nonetheless I got back up and tied up my bike to a light pole and walked across IH-35 to catch the show. Which was alternately stupid or dedicated." Craig Hlavaty

Scott Miller: "'I've been drunk all around this town, from the downside up to the upside down....' So sings Scott Miller in 'Drunk All Around this Town,' which he calls 'the most beautiful ballad I have ever written.' That might not be true but it is a most apropos song for SXSW, and it never sounded better than it did Thursday night at Waterloo Ice House." John Nova Lomax

Brandon K. Hernsberger

Houston's Two Star Symphony will join the other 230-something artists announced today at SXSW 2010.

​You guys ever wish for something, and then regret the outcome when the Good Lord answers your prayers? Well, the initial list for next year's South By Southwest music festival came out and that's sort of where we are right now. Cringing and sweating, because after this year's line of fests and concert events we sort of wanted to forget about all the long lines, shit-mud on our shoes, and bare-chested dudes waving flags with pot leaves on them.

Seeing that SXSW is more of a concrete-and-brick thing, we won't have to contend with any of that. What we instead get to deal with is an endless line of people shilling their four-piece Killers rip-off band or the next 3OH!3 playing on a street corner a block away from our hotel. Don't forget broken elbows, those always rock too. On a related note, at Fun Fun Fun Fest we saw that the curb we smashed into with our bicycle was broken up and turned into a handicap-friendly ramp. Thanks a lot, Austin. We could have used that in March.

Congratulations to Houston's Two Star Symphony, the only local act - so far - to be accepted into the festival. See who else made it after the jump.

Photo by Daniel Morrison

The Sunday night after SXSW never fails to be a weird experience. Although you are dog-tired, and back in your own bed, you can't sleep. A phantasmagoria of sights and sounds from the past few days runs through mind on a reel that seems to have no end.

You remember short conversations with old friends, most of whom you see too briefly to reconnect with, the hissing sound of ambient cymbal wash that bathes East Sixth Street nearly continuously for 100 or so hours, the peaceful interludes as you cross Town Lake on the Congress Street Bridge, the rickety racket of Austin's booming grackle population...

Photo by clared23

"I've been drunk all around this town, from the downside up to the upside down...." So sings Scott Miller in "Drunk All Around this Town," which he calls "the most beautiful ballad I have ever written." That might not be true but it is a most apropos song for SXSW, and it never sounded better than it did Thursday night at Waterloo Ice House.

Like John Prine, Miller is not just a funny songwriter, although can be one of the most humorous out there. He can also come up with lines that are downright Zen - like "every winter will spring and every summer will fall" from "Loving That Girl is Too Hard on a Man."

Not sure if you noticed, but we took a ton of photos over the last few days. Click the links for all kinds of action.

South by Southwest Day One

Photo by Mark C. Austin

The Austin Music Awards

A chronicle in picture form of some of the SXSW live acts you could have caught on Wednesday, March 18, if only you had been in Austin, TX. And really, why weren't you? Featuring Alejandro Escovedo, Aqualung, The Dicks, and more.

Live at the Red Eyed Fly and Stubb's BBQ

Photo by Patrick Michels

Heartless Bastards

Folks from all over crammed into two of Austin's best known venues on Wednesday, March 18, to catch some of the first acts of SXSW, including the Heartless Bastards, The Decemberists, The Von Bondies, and more.

As usual, Saturday afternoon for me was all about South Congress. Bands like Houston's own Allen Oldies Band - fronted by the High Priest of the Oldies and the State of Texas's official unofficial Minister of Fun - are traditions, as are people like Jon Dee Graham and James McMurtry at Mojo Nixon's party at the Continental Club.

Photo by Mark C. Austin

There are always a few revelations each year. For me, on South Congress anyway, that person was Amy Lavere. A somewhat rare female upright bass player, Lavere has a little bit of a sultry Norah Jones vibe to her, although her music sounds like acoustic Zeppelin.

Chris Gray

Black Joe Lewis and a couple of Honeybears

Well, thank God that's over. SXSW 09 is history now, so before we completely block it out of our mind for another 11 months, here's Rocks Off's top five reasons it was worth going to after all.

Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women: L.A. roots-rocker and all-star band honored his late best friend Chris Gaffney with roadhouse fire, Cajun zeal and honky-tonk sensitivity.

Austin Music Awards: The Dicks, Alejandro Escovedo, the Fireants, Roky Erickson and the Black Angels bridged past and present at the Austin music scene's annual pat on the back.

Echo & the Bunnymen: Ageless Liverpudlians' shimmering post-punk psychedelia melted SXSW fatigue into the warm March air.

Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears: Texas' new king of R&B broke out in a big way with gospel grunts, a Stax-steeped sound and a badass band.

Finally, as seen here and here, the carnival of humanity crowding the streets of Austin during SXSW can be as entertaining as any showcase.

See ya next year, SXSW... 

Photos by Craig Hlavaty

Who says Aftermath ain't rock n' roll?

On the way to see Houston's own Balaclavas at the Independent to debut new stuff off the soon-to-be released Roman Holiday, I abruptly hit a curb with bicycle. Luckily my elbow took one for the team. Well, it it ended up getting fractured and I have all kinds of internal business going on with it. But nonetheless I got back up and tied up my bike to a light pole and walked across IH-35 to catch the show. Which was alternately stupid or dedicated.

Balaclavas now features Rafe from the Dead Roses and the legendary Painteens on saxophone, which makes the new and old stuff sound like the Stooges circa Fun House. Tyler Morris' vocals have gotten even more frantically ominous and Brian Harrison is starting to do weird and beautiful shit on bass. Pretty much the whole game done changed. This is now my most anticipated release this year.

I gotta go now. It's hard typing with one hand, and the meds are kicking in. It's cartoon time!

So I generally don't know how to feel about Daniel Johnston. I think he's a songwriter whose simple chord progressions and simplistic lyrics meld together into absolute brilliance, no matter that his voice belongs squarely in the love-it-or-hate-it camp. I'm just uncomfortable with his history of mental illness, not in the sense that I have a problem with him having problems -- far from it -- but I often wonder just what people are getting out of seeing him stand up on stage, chain-smoking cigarettes and shaking the mike back and forth.

Are we all just staring at some kind of human zoo animal, or are we seeing beyond all that and just appreciating his awesomeness? I don't know, although I suspect the answer lies somewhere in between.

Either way, his awesomeness was on display Saturday night, and after he ditched the backing band and just became a dude on a stage with a guitar, the audience was transfixed, cheering along as he went through a few songs sans anyone else. It was magical, and simple, and a great way to end four days of sensory overload.

Thank you, DJ. Here's hoping you play Houston again sometime soon.

"Fuck National Geographic."

"It's not technically a mullet."

"No, I'm not fucking kidding. She and I are done."

"I can't hear you." (Heard umpteen times)

"Awesome."

"This is awful."

A dozen Austin activists staked out the four corners of the University of Texas communications building earlier today, passing out flyers to people on the way to Ben Harper's Austin City Limits taping. Surprisingly, the flyer had nothing to do with herb not being a gift of the earth, but rather was a call to support the production and engineering employees inside.

KLRU, the Austin PBS station behind Austin City Limits, wants to eliminate longstanding provisions in the employee's contracts, including guaranteed overtime for working more than 10 hours or five days in a row, as well as an extra hour's pay when working too long without a meal break.

The protest went off smoothly, although there was a minor confrontation when a member of station management asked two activists to stop passing out flyers to folks right by the entry stairway. A member of management was also videotaping the leafletters. "He looked like a borg," said one activist, who declined to be identified.

The reactions of passersby were amicable enough. One activist said a guy read the flyer and then handed it back, but not before pulling out his cell phone and punching in the number of the station's general manager. He hit his phone's green button as he walked away.

Photos by Craig Hlavaty

We valiantly attended the Rachael Ray party at Maggie Mae's on Sixth, braving free food curate by the talk show host and Rose's Mojitos by the gallon.

Hometown boy Bob Schneider opened the show upstairs, doing his old reliable ladykilling jams. While downstairs New York's Semi Precious Weapons preened and pouted, jolting the middle of the road crowd out of their food coma with sleazy rock and roll straight outta the Bowery circa 1977.

The food was excellent of course. Not really worth the nearly hour wait in line, but whatever's free, brother.

More pics after the jump...

Photos by Chris Gray

As John Nova Lomax noted a couple of days ago, it appears the foundering economy has taken its toll on SXSW's promotional-item racket, with the budgetary allowance for all manner of items emblazoned with this company or that's logo being one of the first line-items to get slashed. It's not just the festival itself dialing back on the free gizmos. In years past, Rocks Off has been inundated by swag, but this year it's slowed to a trickle.

Here it is Saturday night, and Rocks Off's swag haul barely takes up a third of the desktop in his hotel room. Furthermore, a lot of it is stuff that was given to him. Houston jazz singer Kristine Mills slipped him a copy of her new CD, Bossanovafied, at the Austin Music Awards Wednesday, and he scored "Treat Her Right" man Roy Head's Golden Anniversary disc Thursday at the Continental Club. And on the street, he bumped into his friend Werner Campbell, who gave him a copy of the years-in-the-making rollerderby documentary he
produced called Hell on Wheels.

Photos by Craig Hlavaty

Heartless Bastards' Erika Wennerstrom

Tight economies ain't gotta slow anyone down. SXSW is chock full of free shows and most importantly, FREE BOOZE. Yes, anyone of legal age can literally walk into some shows and guzzle to their dark heart's content. Or until they set something on fire.

Heartless Bastards put on a barroom rockin' show over at Waterloo Records, with lead singer Erika Wennerstrom doing her southern-gothic PJ Harvey thing. "Sway" got people moving, coaxed along by the free Shiner Bock in the back of the joint. We spotted Echo & The Bunnymen's Ian McCulloch next door at Waterloo Ice House with a sullen blonde.

Craig Hlavaty

Aftermath's favorite kind of shows are the ones where people end up on the floor or skating on beer. This was Kylesa last running through material from the new epic Static Tensions at Red 7 with lead screamer Laura Pleasants making like a really, really, really pissed off Joan Jett.

Photos by Chris Gray

Maybe in an alternate universe, she does.

Diehards started lining up at Stubb's shortly after 4 p.m. to get into Metallica.

Photos by Chris Gray

By Friday afternoon, SXSW fatigue has taken hold. You're walking a little slower, less inclined to whip out the notebook to jot down every little observation - Rocks Off has seen many journos just typing notes into their BlackBerries, a trend that both intrigues and dismays him - and wondering how many more pairs of plastic day-glo sunglasses you're going to see before you finally snap.

Luckily, Echo & the Bunnymen came along just in time to interrupt the homicidal thoughts brewing in Rocks Off's brain. The Liverpool quintet's brooding, hazy, post-punk psychedelia made an excellent tonic Friday afternoon. The one-two punch of "Rescue" and "Crocodiles," from Echo's 1980 debut Crocodiles, submerged the Spin party crowd in deep pools of bass and Will Sergeant's skittering guitar. The acoustic overlay of "Seven Seas" made them sound almost like a folk band, albeit an especially perverse one.

The poster show in the Austin Convention Center gave SXSWers a break from all the noise -- and the chance to check out some erotic messiness. Click here for a slideshow.

Pixie Vision Photography

Amanda Palmer is exhausted. Slouched in a dining room booth at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Austin, she arrived Tuesday night after an Australian tour and has already performed once this afternoon. The 17-hour time difference between Oz and Texas has left her jet-lagged, but she has an afternoon of press lined up, followed by three more appearances this week - including Houston's House of Blues Saturday night.

The answer to the query in the title of her solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer, just might be...Amanda Palmer.

Rocks Off: You work a lot, I've noticed. It seems like you're always on the go.

Amanda Palmer: Yeah...it's true.

RO: Why?

AP: I don't know. You've asked me on a day when I could have chosen to make my tour in Australia shorter. I could have chosen to not play SXSW. I could make a lot of different choices, but I think my basic instinct is to be a workaholic. That's hard, though, because often I feel really idiotic, like I'm actually not as effective as I could be if I were pacing myself better.

But the thing that's really frustrating is that the shows never suffer. Like when I'm really, really fucked up and tired and cranky and emotional, the shows are just fucking awesome. And so that can be really frustrating (laughs).

Photos by Craig Hlavaty

Kurt Vile

We once again crossed the big ol' road to hit up the Music Gym to see Kurt Vile and Keys N Krates. Since we hit town, we have found the most satisfaction out of this venue, with it's relaxed and wholly chaotic feel. During regular hours it's a rehearsal space for bands and isn't so deep into the Sixth Street business.

Keys N Krates

Keys N Krates are like Girl Talk, but with live instruments. The four-piece hails from Toronto and at one point somehow managed to meld New Order and Gloria Estefan. The small crowd on the patio was digging it, with errant beer flooding the atomosphere.

Kurt Vile went on a good fifteen minutes late, reducing his set to a two-song jam complete with saxophone, Deep Purple riffin', pre-programmed drum fills.Vile sings behind a bushy mane of Ritchie Blackmore fuzz and his bassist looks like Thurston Moore circa 1980.

Photos by Craig Hlavaty

Last night we stood in line for nearly an hour to catch Seattle garage legends the Sonics at Emo's. The five-piece group were pioneers, ultimately influencing everyone from the Replacements to the Austin's own Big Boys. Their current hold on modern garage rock was evident by seeing members of the Black Lips and King Khan and The Shrines in attendance guzzling beers in the pit during the show.

The Sonics opened with "He's Waiting" with its big bad sax lines and Little Richard-style yelps that defined their two landmark albums. Than ran through an hour set of all their garage standards like "Shot Down" and "Strychnine" as the crowd stood in. They are still still a very muscley and hard cracking band, over forty years on. Raunchy ass rock and roll lives on.

Justin and I started off the day early trying to do more then the previous day. Driving around town is much more difficult then anticipated, even though we were here last year. We spent a lot of time trying to find parking and searching for boots. Not the most exciting start, but well worth the finds: headbands and leather boots.

We went into the convention center to explore the trade shows, the Stevie Ray Vaughan museum was much smaller then I expected but still cool.  We ran into some American Apparel lady who gave us gift cards, skirts and Thigh High Socks - don't really know why, but they were free. Also the free massages are well worth it. Most of the afternoon was spent at the Convention Center.

Jensen

Ain't nothing to fuck wit': GZA and Black Lips at Emos.