Show at The Hat Trick Lounge Friday Night

Slightly Mutual (my acoustic group) & One Fast Move will be at The Hat Trick Lounge in downtown St Paul tomorrow (friday) night.

It's only a $5 cover for a few hours of acoustic Americana music. We'll have a few friends sitting in with us giving us a full acoustic band with 3 part harmonies. I'm pretty stoked to hear it all come together.

The show starts at 9pm (we're on first) and will go till after midnight.

We'll also have our promo cd for sale for only $3.

While you're at it...

- Go to our website and sign up for our email list.

- And... go to our MySpace and add us as a friend.

Here's a link for Google maps for the Hat Trick Lounge.

Scott Weiland vs Blake Shelton

A few weeks ago I saw that Scott Weiland on his band would be on Jimmy Kimmel Live and I figured "hey, this should hopefully be good". Stone Temple Pilots put out a lot of music that I enjoy and rock & roll is my friend.

A couple nights ago I noticed Blake Shelton was going to be on so I figured I'd watch to compare and contrast an artist I haven't really been a big fan of (Shelton) and an artist I've been a long time fan of (Weiland).

Well, there was definitely a huge difference... just not like I thought.

Scott Weiland and his band sounded absolutely terrible. Weiland's voice sounded like it hasn't aged well and his guitar player had a nasty (not in a good way) tone. I can't remember the name of the song... I only made it about 2/3rd of the way through the song before I had to admit how bad it was and turn it off.

Since Jimmy Kimmel Live handles music different than other late night talk shows (it has more of a concert feel) I wondered if maybe it wasn't all Scott Weiland and his band's fault.

That leads me to Blake Shelton's performance.

From the opening of the song there was definitely a difference. While it still had more of a "live" feel than other talk shows the mix of instruments was solid and smooth. What was most impressive was Shelton's vocals. Him and his back up singer blended almost perfectly and his tone and phrasing were ridiculously on.

Being that he's Miranda Lambert's boyfriend I've always been very skeptical of him but with the performance of his song "She Wouldn't Be Gone" he's starting to win me over.

How about a playlist?

Sometimes shuffle doesn't feel like shuffle. You skip through your library and some songs seem to continually pop up. Here's a top 10 list of those songs that I've been let play through lately...

1. Death Cab for Cutie - Company Calls Epilogue
2. Johnny Cash - You Win Again
3. Eric Clapton - Smile
4. The Get Up Kids - Mass Pike
5. Sarah Bareilles - Many the Miles
6. Randy Rogers Band - Again
7. The Ataris - Better Way
8. George Strait - That's My Kind of Woman
9. Amos Lee - Skipping Stones
10. Brad Paisley - I'll Take You Back

And we're back!

To get things going again here are 5 albums from 2008 covering a handful of genres that I recommend you purchase at your earliest convenience.

• Randy Rogers Band - Randy Rogers Band | The self titled album is great front to back. Over the past 2+ years they have worked their way into being my favorite current band. The mix good country songwriting with a solid southern rock sound. The back and forth of Geoffrey Hill's guitar and Brady Black's fiddle is the icing on the cake. My favorite tracks are "Didn't Know You Could" & "Buy Myself a Chance".
  
  
• She & Him - Volume One | Zooey Deschanel & M. Ward come together to create a great debut album of retro pop & classic country. From what I've seen, read and heard Deschanel's songs and performances keep getting better and better and if Volume One is any sign of things to come you'll also want to stay tuned for the forthcoming Volume Two. My favorite tracks are "Change is Hard" & "You Got Me".
  
  
• The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing | The iPod commercial band. This euro-pop band is full of catchy upbeat songs. What sold me on them was a concert I saw of their's on DirecTV's music channel. Just a duo that uses loops to round out their vocals, drums and guitar. Bottom line this is a fun album. My favorite tracks are "Fruit Machine" & "That's Not My Name".
  
  
• Joshua Radin - Simple Times | The man I associate with Zach Braff's soundtracks. I saw him in concert last August and while he definitely makes music for the lady folk his solid songwriting and more upbeat style on his new album is hard to deny. My favorite tracks are "One of Those Days" & "You Got Growing Up To Do".
  
  
• Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago | The indie darling of the year, but for good reason. He went away to a cabin for a few months and then wrote and recorded an album's worth of songs. When all was said and done he created a unique sounding album and got the music heard by a few right people and it spread like wild fire. My favorite tracks are "The Wolves (Act 1 & 2)" & "Re: Stacks".
  
  

Sunny Sweeney at Woody's Tavern - Ft Worth, TX: Concert Review

I had the pleasure of catching Sunny Sweeney and band while down in Texas this past weekend. They were playing at Woody's Tavern in Ft. Worth.

I walked in right as they were starting their sound check and got to talk to Sunny for a minute and even meet her husband. As they got into sound check it was apparent that the sound guy thought it was his show and not Sunny's as he proved to be very difficult and unable to get the band what they needed in their monitors. As a band leader and singer there can be nothing more annoying after a long day than dealing with a testy sound guy that trys to talk over your head and isn't helping you out.

Regardless her band proceeded to put on a 2 hour show that left me feeling glad I was there.

They opened up with Sunny's version of "Folson Prison Blues" and the set took off from there. She did most of her songs from her album, through in a handful of covers, a number of originals that didn't make the album and a handful of new songs.

Her new songs sound great. "Contrary & Western", "Trains don't sound like Johnny Cash Anymore" and another one called "Sweet Dance" (i think) that she wrote with Radney Foster were the ones that still stick out in my mind.

As the songs passed the drinks added up she definitely wasn't shy about saying what she felt as she gave quite the intro to her album's title track "Heartbreaker's Hall of Fame". Since she seemed a tad remorseful for saying what she did as she said "I think that's the alcohol talking" I won't repeat it, but it had the whole crowd laughing.

Sunny's band was absolutely solid. The rhythm section played with energy and kept the songs movin, the pedal/lap steel player took every great song and made it even better and the guitar player (the new guy) was phenomenal.

A few highlights:

- A guy I met named Keith showed me a picture that he had of George Jones kissing Merle Haggard on the cheek. He gave it to Sunny since she's obsessed with Hag and she dedicated "Mama Tried" to him.

- Sunny's new guitar player, a guy named Casper, used to play with Buck Owens. He's a great addition to the band. He even added some vocals on "Lavender Blue".

- They did the fastest version of "If I Could" I think anyone has ever heard. I was proud of myself though because I was able to keep up and sing along.

If you ever have a chance to catch her live you will not regret it.

Another album to look forward too?

Though I am a Christian man and even play guitar and sing at my church I rarely ever get excited for a new christian music album.  Well I think I found one I might like.

Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA is releasing a collection of hymns as recorded by 5 of their bands that play on the weekends.  I don't think the album is set to release until later this month but Tim Smith (The worship pastor there) posted a final mix of one of the songs on his blog - "What Wondrous Love is This?"

In the post he's referencing a sermon preached by the speaking pastor there (Mark Driscoll) so you'll need to scroll down to the bottom (right beneath the lyrics) to listen to the song via a flash player.

Click here to go there now.

I couldn't find an official release date but Rain City Hymnal is supposed to be out sometime this month.

Some tidbits

I thought I'd start off the week with a few things I was introduced to, remembered or happened upon over the weekend.

• I don't know what made me remember this but I decided to check in on the status of Scarlett Johansson's Tom Waits cover album.  Low and behold there's a release date set for May 20th with the album being titled "Anywhere I Lay My Head".  It has 10 cover tracks of Tom Waits' songs and one original. 
  
  Will I buy it? Well, while researching the details on this album I came upon this blog and I think his answer sums it up...
  
  "I’d probably buy anything Scarlett Johansson asked me to. She could be selling prostate cancer for the price of my 401k..."


• Now I remember what made me think of Scarlett Johansson singing. She's in a music video a friend just sent me. I don't think I'd ever be intrigued enough about a Black Eyed Peas story to give them space here but their lead guy will.i.am put together an interesting video for a song he created based off of a speech by Barack Obama after the New Hampshire primary.
  
  This in no way indicates the political beliefs of or should be seen as an endorsement for Obama from Music to Live to but I just thought it was interesting enough to write about.
  
  Watch the video below.
  
  


• I head down to Dallas/Ft Worth in less than 3 weeks and I found another band I want to check out. 1100 Springs. This is a group of well seasoned musicians coming together to play some country music. Most notably for me is that the old drummer from the band The Toadies is now playing drums for these guys. They're playing in a small town about 30 minutes from where I'm staying while I'm down there so I think I'll check em' out and I'll report back here how they are.
  
  Check out their website here.