As we reported back in January, Bloomington, IL bar-rockers Backyard Tire Fire went into the studio with producer/member of Los Lobos Steve Berlin. The band announces that the new album will be called Good to Be and will be released on February 16th, 2010 on the band’s own record label Kelsey Street Records, and will be distributed by Thirty Tigers/SonyRed.
The band has put two songs from Good to Be up on their MySpace Page. The title track “Good to Be” I’ve heard performed live already and has the trademark Tire Fire sound. The other track is “Food For Thought” which showed up in their Daytrotter.com session. It is one of my favorite songs from that session. My first impression of the tracks is that Berlin didn’t really mess too much with the band’s sound, but I think I’m noticing some new reverbby guitar sounds that I don’t think existed on the other records.
Backyard Tire Fire released their last record The Places We Lived on vinyl– they have been very upfront about their desire to keep the recordings very analog. I’m hoping they continue the tradition with a vinyl release of Good to Be, too.
In the middle of her solo performance at The Mill in Iowa City Thursday night, Pieta said to the small crowd, “It’s like I’m playing to you in my living room!” Pieta was referring to the small crowd on Thursday night, but the stage was adorned with a chair and nightstand as well as lamps and an old dress form giving the stage a homey touch with lighting designed by Stan Crocker, who has done a lot of lighting design for TV shows like CMT’s Crossroads.
Last night was the first night of a three-week artist-in-residency at the Mill Restaurant in Iowa City of Pieta Brown. As stated earlier, the This Land Is Your Music series is showcasing Pieta Brown’s music but also includes other musicians from the area as well as other artists. Pieta stated in an interview with Ben Kieffer on IPR’s The Exchange that she wanted to take the opportunity to try out her music– new music and old in different configurations– solo, duo and full-band. She feels that The Mill was is a good place for her to try out new material which will be drawn from her new EP on Red House Shimmer, as well as songs that she is recording for her next full-length to come out next spring.
Last night’s show featured Pieta performing solo with Bo Ramsey’s son Alex Ramsey opening. In the back-room gallery the art of Pieta’s sister Zoe Brown and photographs by Dustin Busch were on exhibit. A last-minute addition to the lineup were three writers from the University of Iowa International Writing Program reading their short stories.
Alex Ramsey has contributed his keyboard skills to a number of Eastern Iowa music releases including a two records from the Pines as well as the last couple of Bo Ramsey albums but to date he hasn’t had much exposure as a solo artist. I made the very incorrect assumption that Alex, like his brother Benson would provide a sound that draws from the folk and country blues that is identified with so many artists from our area. Alex played a set of original piano-driven music that reminded me at times of Radiohead’s piano-focused songs but I would also compare it to the late Epic Soundtracks. It’s the slightly off-kilter but soulful vocal combined with the piano that brought me back to 1991’s Rise Above. Alex’s set was a combination of vocal and instrumental songs– most of which were described as works-in-progress. Alex performed three covers– one by Dr. Dog– “Livin’ A Dream,” a relatively obscure John Lennon track “Mr. Hyde’s Gone (Don’t Be Afraid)” which I think is only included on the Anthology box as a home demo, and he wrapped up his set with “Waltz (Better Than Fine)” by Fiona Apple. He said during the show that he wished he had a CD he could sell us– I do, too!
Following Alex was three participants in the International Writing Program reading their own short stories. I wasn’t able to catch their names, but one of them was Maxine Case from South Africa who read her short story “Homing Pigeons” (exerpt here). Another writer was Garcia Groyon from the Philippines. I can’t identify the first writer from the pictures. I think it was pretty cool that they were able to participate– it reminded me of the incredible resource the U of I writing program is.
Up next was Pieta who set out to do a solo set, but ended up adding in some special guests towards the end of it. I’d never seen her perform solo before, so it was a treat to hear how her guitar work changes to fill in the missing guitar parts typically provided by Bo Ramsey. She’s not a flashy lead guitarist, but I was impressed with her ability to drop in a arpeggiated chord or two to round the songs out. “New songs and new guitars– probably not an advisable combination” she quipped at one point– apparently she had all new guitars in tow. The last time I saw her she mentioned that she was getting her own Reverend Flatroc, so this time the guitar was here. In a pretty butterscotchish color apparently called “Rock Orange.”
The set was a pretty good mix recent songs, older songs and new songs as she set out to do. Curiously, she only did one song from her upcoming EP Shimmer– “You’re My Lover Now”– which seems to be the “single” if there was one. Of course, the Shimmer songs were recorded back in March and she said that she just got back from recording songs for her full length, so possibly these are fresher to her. She told me that she doesn’t really hit the stage with a setlist in mind. Three of the songs were from her self-released Flight Time EP with just one track from Remember the Sun and her arrangement of the traditional “Little Sparrow” from her I Never Told EP. She dropped in her version of the blues standard “Rollin’ and Tumblin'” and “Calling All Angels” which she did as part of her KCRW session back in 2007.
We were blessed with some new songs that all sound like they have some potential in the studio. “The Other Way Around” and “It Wasn’t That” were new songs to me. She also did “Faller” which I had heard when she did her show at the Mill with a full band back in June.
After the first nine songs she decided to invite her sister Constie Brown up to sing on “Remember the Sun” and “Just” and then she invited Dustin Busch up to the stage to provide some slide guitar to “Rollin’ and Tumblin'” and “Harry’s Blues.” Pieta said that her original plan was to play all of the instruments she had on stage by herself as she handed Dustin the Flatroc and a slide. She added that growing up music was always about getting people together to play. Dustin quickly adapted to the guitar and provided some nice accompaniment to Pieta. I’m looking forward to seeing his opening set at the This Land Is Your Music show on 11/19.
The backroom gallery was the back area of the restaurant that could be closed off and I think is sometimes used as a “backstage” area for bands. In its capacity of art gallery it was able to have some lighting to show the paintings of Zoe Brown and the photos of Dustin Busch. The gallery seemed to enjoy a pretty constant flow of people.
I like Zoe’s paintings quite a bit– you can see more of them in my slideshow below or at the flickr.com set. She’s not afraid of big expanses of color. Dustin’s double-exposureish photos were pretty cool, too. I would have liked to see more of them and maybe larger.
Ultimately, I think this is a really cool thing that Pieta is trying to put together. The idea is pure– bring the regional art together in celebration and give back. I think in our Internet-enabled era where we find our art and culture on a nearly boundless territory we often forget that there are artists in our own backyard that are worth supporting.
If you are available on either of the next two Thursday nights– 11/12 and 11/19– make the effort to come out. These are guaranteed to be loose, fun shows as Pieta considers the Mill to be her home turf.
The 11/12 show has Bo Ramsey opening and supporting her in her set with a gallery of Codi Josephson’s work. The 11/19 show will have Dustin Busch opening with Pieta fronting a full band that, billed as “Skyrocket,” I believe will have Jon Penner, Steve Hayes and Al Shares (I think). The gallery on the 19th will be a installation of photographs of Iowa photographer and supporter of the local scene Sandy Dyas.
The cover is $10 will proceeds going to support Iowa Public Radio, KCCK, and the Friends of Hickory Hill. Doors are at 7PM with the show starting at 8PM.
Pieta’s Setlist:
West Monroe
Other Way Around*
Bad News
Faller*
It Wasn’t That*
Calling All Angels
Little Sparrow
Gravel Road Blues (Joe Price Cover)
You’re My Lover Now
Remember the Sun (with Constie Brown)
Just (with Constie Brown)
Rollin’ and Tumblin’ (with Dustin Busch)
Harry’s Blues (with Dustin Busch) (Mississippi Fred McDowell Cover)
The original Works Progress Administration was part of FDR’s 1939 New Deal initiative which put millions of people to work in the darkest part of the Great Depression. This spirit of community and creativity is carried in the philosophy of a band that takes its name.
Works Progress Administration is a supergroup of sorts– an “expanding collective” according to the band’s website. At its core it is Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket and solo, Sean Watkins formerly of the excellent Nickle Creek and Luke Bulla who spent time in Lyle Lovett’s band. On record the band includes Sean’s sister Sara from Nickle Creek, Benmont Tench from Petty’s Heartbreakers, Pete Thomas from Elvis Costello’s Attractions, ace sessionmen Greg Leisz and Davey Faragher. Faragher was a founding member of Cracker as well as part of Costello’s Imposters. Works Progress Administration is a continuation of the collaborative nature of the relationship between Philips and Sean and Sara Watkins of Nickle Creek. Philips, the Watkins and Pete Thomas were also in the group Mutual Appreciation Society which recorded an album in 2000 and was released by Sugar Hill in 2004.
Even though WPA is a collective effort of its members, it’s clear that this band is really leaning on Phillip’s songs since he’s provided half of them. Sean Watkins, not content to stay at the bench, has contributed three standout songs (love “Paralyzed”!) and Luke Bulla’s “Cry For You” is an easy favorite of mine and would seem to have a lot of potential to be a highlight live. Seeing this group play CSPS in Cedar Rapids would be a real treat!
WPA will be at the pearl in the crown of New Bohemia in Cedar Rapids known as CSPS on Tuesday, December 1st at 8PM. Tickets will be $20 in advance and $25 at the door.
Click Here for the Works Progress Administration’s Website where you can see other tour dates and stream the new album.
Click Here for the Legion Arts / CSPS website where you can get information on how to get tickets.
Listen/Buy Works Progress Administration. This band is independent– meaning no record label. If you like what you hear please support this band by buying their album!
Javelin is an electronic duo from NYC that is steeped in the tradition of old school cratedigging and cut up sampling. They’ve gained a lot of notice over their first self-released cassette Jamz n Jemz which Pitchfork gave a 7.4 rating saying, “At a time when it seems like everyone’s roommate is cooking up bargain-bin symphonies, Javelin stand out like two heady chefs, turning canned food classics into tiny little pieces of inspired, inverted gourmet reimaginings.” They gained the attention of David Byrne who has signed them to Luaka Bop for their first full length to come out next year.
Thrill Jockey will be releasing two EPs from Javelin leading up to their label debut. The first self-titled EP is limited to 500 on vinyl and is part of the amazing Thrill Jockey subscription. The best part is that each of the sleeves are pulled from thrift store vinyl and are screened by Crosshair Screenprinting and Design in Chicago who were responsible for the amazing Spring 2007 Tortoise tour poster. See the streaming player below for closer “TWYCE” to see examples of the covers. I didn’t count them, but maybe all 500 are in the display? Lots of interesting cover selections both obscure and familiar– play “spot the cover” at home!
The tracks on the 5-track EP are new with the exception of “Lindsey Brohan” which was on Jamz n Jemz. The version of “Lindsey Brohan” on this EP is prepended with the Jamz n Jemz opening “skit” “Snow Aorta” where someone is interviewed about jumping expensive bikes into water.
This EP will be followed with another EP on Thrill Jockey early next year.
Click Here to visit the Javelin EP page on Thrill Jockey’s site where you can listen to streaming samples.
Benson Ramsey and David Huckfelt are collectively known as the roots-folk group The Pines. Based in the Twin Cities and on the Twin Cities label Red House Records, Benson and David are part of the newest generation of the Eastern Iowa sound started by Greg Brown and Bo Ramsey (who is Benson’s dad) among others. In September The Pines released their third album Tremolo— which is their second album on Red House.
I picked up Tremolo when it came out and have been listening to it pretty regularly. I feel that as much of a progression that Sparrows in the Bell was from their self-titled release on the now-defunct Iowa City label Trailer Records, Tremolo is a further refining of their sound.
The Pines will be at The Mill Restaurant in Iowa City on Friday, November 20th. The show starts at 9PM and tickets are $8.
As previously announced, November brings a special “songwriter in residence” at The Mill in Iowa City by Pieta Brown called “This Land is Your Music : Pieta Brown & Friends” which is a series of three shows on November 5, 12, and 19 which is described as “celebrating Music, Land & Community.” Each of the shows will center around Pieta’s music with her playing in solo, duo (with Bo Ramsey) and in a full band configuration. In addition to her set, there will be an opening act and there will be an exhibit in the “back room” at The Mill featuring the art of a local artist.
November 5th: Pieta Brown solo with opening act Alex Ramsey. Alex is one of Bo’s sons and brother of Benson Ramsey of The Pines. Alex has provided piano to the last couple of Bo Ramsey releases as well as The Pines. The exhibit will feature artwork by Zoe Brown, who is Pieta’s sister and provided the artwork for Pieta’s last EP Flight Time. The exhibit will also feature art by Dustin Busch. Dustin is an Iowa City stallwart having been playing solo and also part of Kelly Pardekooper’s Devil’s House Band.
November 12th: Pieta Brown with Bo Ramsey, with Bo Ramsey solo opening. This will be interesting as I’ve never seen Bo as a solo performer. I have a bootleg from a couple of years ago where he was touring with Greg Brown and he opened solo and it was really cool. The exhibit will feature art by Codi Josephson who runs Home-Ec Workshop in Iowa City. This will probably be the CD release show for Pieta’s new EP Shimmer produced by Don Was, which comes out that Tuesday, 11/10.
November 19th: Pieta Brown and Skyrocket, with Dusty B. (aka Dustin Busch) opening. Dustin Busch is a former Iowa City musician who is currently the guitarist in the Tucson group The 17th Street Band. The exhibit will be a collage of work by local photographer Sandy Dyas. Sandy’s book “Down to the River” is a collection of pictures of Eastern Iowa musicians including Bo Ramsey, Pieta Brown, Kelly Pardekooper, Greg Brown and others. The book comes with a CD of songs from these artists and is well worth seeking out.
Any way you look at this, this is a really cool event and it is wonderful that Pieta is giving back to the community that fostered her career. If you have the opportunity to see any of these shows, by all means, don’t miss it!
Click Here to visit the Mill calendar which will have information on how to purchase tickets.
Click Here to pre-order Pieta’s new album Shimmer.
Next Tuesday night, October 27th, folk and blues singer-songwriter Chris Smither will be making a stop at CSPS in Cedar Rapids during his Fall tour in support of his new album on Signature Sounds Time Stands Still which came out on September 29th.
A collection of stripped-down orignals and a few choice covers by Dylan, Knopfler and Frank Hutchison, Time Stands Still was recorded in an astounding three days and captures the immediacy of his live show.
Chris’s songs have been recorded by artists such as Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, and Donna Krall. It was Raitt’s recording of “Love Me Like A Man” for her 1972 album Give It Up that marked the beginning of a long-standing working partnership. Diana Krall covered this same song in 2004 for her album The Girl in the Other Room.
The show will be at 7PM next Tuesday night (October 27th) and tickets are $18 in advance and $22 at the door. Don’t miss this opportunity to see this acclaimed songwriter and performer at the amazing CSPS!
Click Here to listen to “Surprise, Surprise” from Time Stand Still.
Next weekend– 10/18– we see a couple of female singer-songwriters both making their debut in Cedar Rapids and at CSPS. While both take a distinctively different approach to their art, they both are utilizing a business model that involves direct contributions from their fan base.
Melissa Greener is described as an up-and-coming singer-songwriter with “quirky and literate songs” and compared to the energy often attributed to Ani DiFranco. Based in Manhattan, her goal is to move back to Austin, TX where she lived and worked for a time and considers home. For her sophomore release Melissa is fundraising at different levels with the goal of completely paying off the recording she has completed which will allow her to be debt-free and able to focus on the business of touring.
Opening for Melissa is Margaret Stutt who performs as Pezzettino (“Little Square”). Like Melissa, Margaret is also doing a direct-to-fan type of self promotion and sales. Someone who seemingly doesn’t need to sleep, she is a constant stream of activity and creativity. To fund her tour of houses and art spaces which has her stopping in Cedar Rapids for two nights, she has been taking donations and requests for songs– mostly cover tunes– where she deconstructs the song in question, rebuilding the song in her own distinctive way and making a video for the song. Sometimes dark and moody, sometimes quirky and funny, but distinctly Pezzettino these pieces are generally created and completed within a day! Margaret is a classically-trained pianist (at least until she was 12), but her instrument of inspiration is the accordion. She takes the squeezebox to task with her very personal and emotional songs on her release Lion and the follow up Lamb to be released in 2010 will be a more subdued affair.
Don’t miss this opportunity to see two these two up-and-coming artists. The show will be at 7PM at CSPS. Tickets are $10 in advance and $12 at the door. Because the show is on Sunday, it starts early, it will end early for all you concerned with getting up for work the next morning!
Pezzettino is pressing a very limited edition (300 copies), random color vinyl 7″ single of “You Never Know” with artwork by Milwaukee artist Dwellephant. As Margaret says, the b-side will be a surprise because, “you never know,” right? Click Here to learn more and order one!
According to Digital Music News, in celebration/honor/whatever of Mojo Nixon’s new album Whiskey Rebellion which comes out on October 7th, 2009 he and Amazon.com are making his entire catalog free for downloads for three weeks starting October 7th!!
You might recall Mojo Nixon from his halcyon MTV days when he seemed to host every other week and his videos for “Burn Down the Malls,” “Elvis is Everywhere,” and “(619) 239-KING” played very frequently. He also had the video for “Debbie Gibson is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child” which starred Wynona Ryder as Gibson banned from the network, which precipitated his slow decent from the public eye. You might remember his song “Don Henley Must Die” as well.
Nixon has continued to record under various side bands and projects over the years after sucessfully wrenching his catalog from the Enigma/EMI/IRS deathclinch. He is apparently as onery as ever and during this economic recession is hoping that his package of free mp3’s will stimulate everyone.
Umphrey’s McGee is a band that embraces technology. This is one of the things that really impresses me about the band. You can download every show within days of the performance at umlive.com in mp3 and FLAC formats with cover art, you can purchase a CD of the show at the show if you prefer. They have done subscription simulcast video over the internet, they twitter, they Facebook, they MySpace, they blog. They support taping and they have a very extensive archive of live shows on archive.org. Not to mention the bonus material afforded to the purchasers of Mantis via Push!
As a result there is a lot of content readily available from the band. Even before a potential new fan would need to purchase anything they can get a pretty good sampling.
MP3HD is an attempt to provide a compressed, yet lossless file format (think a .WAV file) while maintaining the ubiquitous compatibility with mp3-capable software and mp3 players. This is achieved by providing mp3 compressed data along with the lossless data inside the file. This makes the mp3 player think it is playing a regular mp3 file, but devices and software that is mp3HD-compatible will be able to play the higher-fidelity lossless content. Even with the stacking of the file content they are able to achieve on average 4X compression over the uncompressed .WAV version. This is primarily because the mp3 portion tends to be very compressed. The Umphrey’s show has 128Kbps mp3’s, which by most people’s standards is pretty lossy bitrate. Amazon.com provides mostly 256Kbps or in some cases 192Kbps mp3 from their store for example.
Certainly one might question the need for MP3HD. Anyone who has been dealing with lossless music files over the years have been using FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Compression) to do their bidding, and FLAC is free– that is no one is paying to provide that support– all software and hardware that is able to play mp3’s today should be paying licenses to Thomson. Both Microsoft and Apple provide their own version of lossless compressed files, too– Apple’s ALAC, and Microsoft’s WMA Lossless. But, as you might imagine, neither of those formats are supported directly on the other’s media players, and neither player supports FLAC.
As a result, if I want to have the lossless versions of Umphrey’s McGee shows, for example, I would download the FLAC files, and either burn them to a CD if that was my medium of choice (my CD burning software support FLAC) or I would have to convert them to mp3 using a utility or extract to WAV and convert with iTunes or Windows Media Player. (Note: There are other ways to achieve this but I’m not interested in providing a primer on making mp3 files here) I can then put these on my media player of choice. This is a lot of messing around to get to the final result and most people aren’t interested in doing all of that work so they will just stick to mp3’s. The other issue here is that I end up having to manage two or more copies of the music. The lossless version in addition to the one that is the copy of the mp3’s for my media player.
I don’t mind juggling the files around as I’m pretty used to it by now, but the ability to only have one file that has both compressed and lossless is very appealing to me. I don’t like 128Kbps mp3’s, however, and I don’t have any devices that can play mp3HD so I have to convert them anyway to get a higher bitrate. I looked at the tools provided by all4mp3 and it appears that one can choose a higher bitrate for the mp3 data– of course this would be at a sacrifice of the 4X compression.
So, we’ll see if this takes off I guess. I think ultimately this is the right idea, but there is a lot of consternation surrounding the licensing. I would rather that Apple just added FLAC support to the iPod/iPhone/iTunes, really. (Another solution would be the open source project Rockbox can be installed on an iPod providing FLAC support which isn’t a solution for most iPod owners).
Getting back to the Umphrey’s show, it is a pretty good performance. The Murat is a very friendly location for the band to play– and they say so during this show. It also explains why they chose The Murat for their live album. The songs shared make up most of the second set and the encore from the 3/13 show. Looking at the setlist database at umphreys.com it looks like they edited out the “Another Brick in the Wall”/”Thriller” mashup second set closer, which is probably due to licensing the song. The Jimmy Stewart from this set is a vocal Jimmy that is pretty good, too. (A “Jimmy Stewart” in the band parlance is an improvisational performance).
Click Here to download the Umphrey’s McGee 3/13/09 Murat Show in mp3HD at all4mp3.com
Melissa Greener
Opening for Melissa is Margaret Stutt who performs as 
