It's a fine line you gotta walk indeed!

By Blurt Staff

Old 97's front man Rhett Miller will release a collection of new songs on June 9^th, his fourth solo album and the first on Shout! Factory.  The self-titled album is described as "an up-close and personal journey through Miller's dark heart and complicated mind - all set to the kind of rollicking tunes for which he's known... the darkest of Miller's deep catalog of releases, and is a personal triumph both lyrically and sonically."

"My approach to songwriting has always been to take a heavy subject and put it to a bouncy tune.  This record takes that trick to the next level." Miller says.  "Don't get me wrong, there are some rays of sunshine on the album, but there is a lot of deep night. The death of my grandmother, the suicide of my hero, David Foster Wallace.  In my head, I was sort of in a dark place when I made this record. [But] it's still a fun record to listen to.  It's a fine line you gotta walk, right?"  

Miller penned all the songs on the record with the exception of "If It's Not Love," which was co-written with Matt Scannell.  Rhett Miller was produced by Salim Nourallah, who also produced the latest critically acclaimed Old 97's release, 2008's Blame It On Gravity.    The 12-song set also features multi-instrumentalist and producer, Jon Brion on guitar and bass, The Apples In Stereo's John Dufilho on drums and Billy Harvey on guitar.  While the album was initially planned as a stripped-down, acoustic record, with the help of his stellar backing band, it quickly turned into one of huge sonic scope.

Of the album's most rocking track, Miller says, "‘Happy Birthday Don't Die" came to me in a fevered rush the morning before I headed to Texas to make the record.  The whole story was there in my head when I woke up.  This weird sci-fi portrait of a little old lady buried in the catacombs of some colony planet celebrating her one-hundredth birthday by dying.  Writing that song was like speaking in tongues, very strange."  Not all the songs on the album are so far-flung, "Sometimes' came out of hearing my two-year-old daughter singing to herself in her crib one morning.  I took her little tune and fleshed it out into first a chorus and then a whole song." 

Elsewhere on the album, one finds the quirky details that are a hallmark of Miller's songwriting.  The "comedy club" in "I Need To Know Where I Stand" sounds suspiciously similar to LA's famed Café Largo where Miller has played regularly over the years.  In the same song, we find "the Hamlet of Wallkill," a town in the Hudson Valley near where the song's author resides.  But it's the simple statements of grand truths that set this album apart from Miller's earlier work.  Take, for instance, the following line from "Like Love."  "We are all alone in this world/from cradle to grave/and maybe after that."  A bitter little sentiment, but dropped into the middle of a fun, foot-stomper of a song, it's a testament to the years Rhett Miller has  spent honing his craft. 

While maintaining his career with the Old 97's, Austin-born Rhett Miller has also released three previous solo albums, Mythologies, recorded during his junior year in high school and produced by future Old 97's co-founder, Murry Hammond, in 1989, 2002's The Instigator, and The Believer in 2006. While based in Dallas, Miller and Hammond formed Old 97's in 1993.  With their effortless combination of rock, power-pop and country, the band quickly became one of the most acclaimed and beloved bands to spring from the 90s indie rock scene.  They have released seven studio albums to date.

Well-known as an explosive live act both solo and with the band, Miller and the Old 97's will be on tour throughout the summer and fall.  Many of these shows will be billed as "An Evening With...," and will feature an opening solo set by Miller during which he will perform songs from the new album and favorites from his solo catalog. 

Track Listing:

1. Nobody Says I Love You Anymore

2. Like Love

3. Caroline

4. I Need to Know Where I Stand

5. Happy Birthday Don't Die

6. Bonfire

7. Haphazardly

8. If It's Not Love

9. Another Girlfriend

10. Refusing Temptation

11. Lashes

12. Sometimes

Tour Dates:

March 11^th - New York, NY Carnegie Hall (R.E.M. Tribute Performance w/ Patti Smith, Glenn

                    Hansard, Calexico and more.)

March 24^th - Solana Beach, CA Belly Up

March 26^th - Los Angeles, CA Largo

March 27^th - Redondo Beach, CA Brixton South Bay

March 28^th - Santa Cruz, CA Crepe Place

March 29^th - San Francisco, CA Yoshi's

April 11^th - Ithaca, NY Castaways

April 16^th - New York, NY Le Poisson Rouge

May 1^st - Red Bank, NJ Count Basie Theatre - Writers in the Raw w/  David Johansen of the

              New York Dolls, Alec Ounsworth of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and others.

May 13^th - Northampton, MA Iron Horse

May 14^th - Boston, MA The Paradise

[Photo Credit: Jason Janick]

From Dracula to Satan and back again... what's not to like?

By Fred Mills

It's always a good day when Tom Waits news gets slipped over the BLURT transom. Apparently the bard and his wife/collaborator Kathleen Brennan have been writing new material and planning some summer recording sessions - this would be for the official followup to the three-disc archival collection Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, which came out way back in 2006. (Read a review of the Orphans tour HERE.)

Meanwhile, though, the Waits camp informs us that he's currently filming The Book of Eli, directed by Albert and Allen Hughes (From Hell, Dead Presidents, Menace II Society). The flick's billed as "a post-apocalyptic Western, in which a lone man fights his way across America in order to protect a sacred book that holds the secrets to saving mankind." Hey! We're back in Zachariah territory! (Inside joke for all you older readers there.) The film stars Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman; Waits has a small role as "Engineer," and film buffs will recall that Waits and Oldman previously worked together in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film Dracula, respectively portraying Renfield and the good Count D.

Waits also has a role as Mr. Nick (the devil) opposite Christopher Plummer in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. That was Heath Ledger's final film role, and as he died prior to the completion of filming, Gilliam tapped Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to fill in (!). Billed as a "fantastical morality tale set in the present day" it also features Lily Cole and Verne Troyner and will premiere at Cannes.

Hey, some of us were actually there!

By Fred Mills

"North Carolina's Punk Rock Legacy 1977-1984" is the title of an in-depth article by noted punk authority Steven Blush, former Seconds zine publisher and author of a number of books including the classic screed American Hardcore: A Tribal History (which later inspired the acclaimed documentary of the same name about the national hardcore scene). It tells the tale, as the title suggests, of what was going on during the punk era in the relatively undocumented wilds of N.C., where bands with colorful names like the H-Bombs, Butchwax and Th' Cigaretz helped midwife the Tarheel alternative scene,  and where the hardcore likes of No Labels, Corrosion of Conformity and Stillborn Christians subsequently picked up the hi-nrg torch.

The piece is found in the premiere issue of ArtSync Magazine, based in, of all places, the tiny burg of Supply, NC. You can find the publication's website HERE, and they've also got the entire issue available in digital form HERE (the punk story is indexed starting at pages 54-55). Worth noting: there's also a killer interview with underground artist Robert Williams.

So as not to make this such a shameless plug, I'll give you full disclosure: I'm among the folks Blush interviewed for the piece (I was present when most of what's covered was happening), along with the likes of R.E.M. producer Don Dixon, the dB's Peter Holsapple, COC's Reid Mullin and Th' Cigaretz' Jerry Williams (who later worked with the Beastie Boys and the Bad Brains). But with six pages devoted to the topic, and liberally decorated with images of zines, posters and recordings to boot, it's well worth your time to check it out if you have any interest in delving into this regional report - the NC punk scene, though based primarily in the Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill) and relatively small compared to the major markets, mirrored much of what was bubbling under in other locales across the country. And what happened there caused ripple effects, too.

As Jerry Williams puts it, "That explosive scene was the orgasm - and that begot children."

One-man band gonna party your town down.

By Blurt Staff

The mighty Heligoats are headed your way if you live on the east coast or in the Midwest. Who are the Heligoats, you ask? Featuring singer/songwriter Chris Otepka, late of the much loved Troubled Hubble, it's a cool-rockin' psychedelic roots-punk outfit - a one man band, at that - from Illinois who've been winning hearts and minds (and Daytrotter audiences) for some time now.

 Otepka's about to blaze a trail to your soul, so check out the concert dates below - the Heligoats are opening for Clem Snide. Soundsamples of the band can be found at the Heligoats MySpace page.

Meanwhile, you gotta check out this positively awesome video for "You Win" that we have posted in our video kiosk. Directed by Ben Chandler, it's some Claymation like you ain't never seen Claymation done before....

Heligoats-Clem Snide Tour Dates:

Mar 12 2009 8:00P

 Local 506 Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Mar 13 2009 8:00P

 Grey Eagle Asheville, North Carolina

Mar 14 2009 8:00P

 IOTA Club & Cafe Arlington, Virginia

Mar 15 2009 8:00P

 Club Cafe Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Mar 16 2009 8:00P

 World Cafe Live Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Mar 18 2009 8:00P

 Bowery Ballroom New York, New York

Mar 19 2009 8:00P

 Middle East upstairs Cambridge, Massachusetts

Mar 21 2009 8:00P

 El Mocambo Toronto, Ontario

Mar 22 2009 8:00P

 Beachland Ballroom Cleveland, Ohio

Mar 23 2009 8:00P

 Tiger Room @ Calhoun Street Fort Wayne, Indiana

Mar 24 2009 8:00P

 Schubas Chicago, Illinois

Mar 25 2009 8:00P

 400 Bar Minneapolis, Minnesota

Mar 26 2009 8:00P

 High Noon Saloon Madison, Wisconsin

Mar 27 2009 8:00P

 House Cafe DeKalb, Illinois

Mar 28 2009 8:00P

 Off Broadway St. Louis, Missouri

Shot by members of USC Trojan Marching Band.

By Blurt Staff

Reads the YouTube video header: "USC Trojan Marching Band + Radiohead @ 2009 Grammys / Behind the Scenes." Well, you can't get much plainer than that. Indeed, the nine-minute clip is just that, and according to the NME it was shot by USC members as they rehearsed "15 Step" with members of Radiohead at L.A.'s Sony Studios along with shots of the group rehearsing on the Grammys stage. Enjoy!

We assume that Radiohead is cool with all this; they seem fan friendly enough not to object. Still, it's a bit of a big deal just the same, as major artists rarely grant permission for unfiltered footage to be leaked.

Rick Rubin dips his hands into the project too.

By Blurt Staff

On June 23, Columbia records will release Pete Yorn's 'Back and Fourth' marking a new musical chapter in which the acclaimed singer and songwriter has taken a different approach to writing and recording with stunning results. 'Back and Fourth' follows Yorn's first three albums, which he considers a trilogy, and is his first album in three years. Yorn wrote all ten songs on 'Back and Fourth' and recorded the album in Omaha, NE, with producer Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Rilo Kiley). Columbia's Co-Chairman Rick Rubin helped guide the project from its earliest demo stages to final mastering.

The songs on 'Back and Fourth' range from lilting mandolin lullabies to bracing anthems. But there's a thread running through the album - an organic feel to the arrangements, a careful pacing to the sequence, a penetrating truth to the stories - that's unmatched by anything else in Yorn's catalogue.

'Back and Fourth' sounds like no other Pete Yorn record because it was made like no other Pete Yorn record. For the first time, Yorn wrote lyrics before composing melodies, resulting in his most personal songs to date. When it came time to record, Yorn traded the family, friends and routines of his life in Los Angeles for the relative solitude of Omaha, where he spent two months in 2008 making the album. And while Yorn played virtually all the instruments on his first three albums, he assembled a top shelf band for 'Back and Fourth', including drummer Joey Waronker (Beck), pianist/arranger Nate Wolcott (Bright Eyes, The Faint, Rilo Kiley), guitarist Jonny Polonsky, bassist Joe Karnes (John Cale), and backing vocalist Orenda Fink (Azure Ray). "That's the essential approach to the new album," says Yorn. "I wanted to share my songs with a group of players who I respected, and then share the experience of recording them together as a group."

Pete Yorn will tour extensively in support of 'Back and Fourth' and also plans to release more new music in 2009.

Track Listing:

1. Don't Wanna Cry
2. Paradise Cove
3. Close
4. Social Development
5. Shotgun
6. Last Summer
7. Thinking of You
8. Country
9. Four Years
10. Long Time

[Photo credit: Autumn de Wilde]

From the filmmaker of the 2005 Johnston documentary.

By Blurt Staff

Footage and audio tracks from renowned visual artist Stephen Tompkins sessions with Daniel Johnston, the Austin-based singer/songwriter featured in the 2005 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston, have now been made available online as a collection named Daniel Johnston: At Home Live and can be found at www.danieljohnstonlive.com and iTunes (as well as Napster, Rhapsody and most digital content providers).

"My aim was to bridge Daniel's early lo-fi and boom box recording technique days with his more commercial/produced later albums. At Home Live seemed to fit nicely between and as a rare look into Daniel's studio where he writes much of his music," Explained Tompkins.  "As I filmed I was delighted that I had my own private Daniel Johnston concert on film. I thought, "What if I could film Bob Dylan performing in his house?"  I wanted my film to be a sort of cinema verite, to show the myth of Daniel Johnston performing in his authentic creative environment, keeping in mind that some people back then had never even seen Daniel in photos or at one of his shows. When you listen to the early tapes, there is an intimate quality to Daniel's voice, as if he's only singing for himself. Daniel's music is an "acousmetre" because the quality of his voice cannot be pinned down to a tangible reality; it taps into one's imagination as to where this music was recorded. I wanted to show that environment on film somehow. So I just let the camera roll from a fixed position, with no cuts at all as if you were just sitting next to him, as a sort of ghost.""Thirteen videos and mp3s are available including songs "Kool-Aid," "I Had A Dream" and "Try To Love." 

Tompkins filmed over four hours of raw footage at Johnston's home in Waller, Texas in 1999 with the only onlookers being neighboring cows. Tompkins intentionally held on to the film for ten years before releasing it, viewing this footage and audio as a time capsule.  The duo of Johnston and Tompkins have a lengthy history, having done a two-man exhibition in Austin titled "The Art Of Daniel Johnston & Stephen Tompkins" and will soon be featured in a new book from Dirty Pilot titled "Year One Rewind."

Fifth album arrives in May...

By Blurt Staff

Purveyors of the new psych-rock scene, Hopewell has been blending vintage fuzz pedal jams with their early space rock and shoegaze roots for over a decade, their 2001 full-length, The Curved Glass being the perfect, noisy bridge between the epic psychedelia of ‘90s acts like Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev and a newer generation of bands that include Dungen, Dead Meadow and Serena-Maneesh. Now back with their fifth album, Good Good Desperation effortlessly slips from cacophonous dueling piano passages, à la Stravinsky, to the Hammond-driven roots rock of The Basement Tapes, while creating something uniquely its own. From the opening vocal harmonies of "Preamble," which takes cues from the classical compositions of Bach and Debussy, to the CAN-inspired two-drummer tribal attack of "Island," listeners are confronted with expansive sonic images of a band's travels and conflicts. Good Good Desperation inhabits a world where "The Album" is not a lost art, and invites listeners on a journey from dirty downtown New York City scenes to blissful Californian deserts.

In between tours and throughout 2008 Hopewell set out to make a record that more captured their live sound. It was during this time that Jonathan Donahue invited the band to play a 30-minute segment of music on his WDST Woodstock radio program in upstate New York. For this show the group composed a structured improvisational piece, a composition loosely dubbed "The Opus," which would become the progenitor for many of the songs on the album to come. Immersed in heavy doses of bands like This Heat, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music and early tribal Jane's Addiction, Hopewell booked time in local Brooklyn studios Seizures Palace and Seaside Lounge (home to great records from bands like Akron Family, Angels of Light and Psychic Ills) and set about recording their own work.

Good Good Desperation could easily be considered Hopewell's Meddle or Tago Mago chapter in a lengthy history that includes countless singles and compilations, and opening for My Bloody Valentine on their recent reunion tour, working in the past with producer Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, MGMT, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah), recording a Peel Session live at Abbey Road Studio, and playing Reading and Leeds Festivals. With Good Good Desperation, Hopewell's journey continues in a grassroots, homespun sort of way -- down their own noisy path.

Happening Sat. March 21 at SXSW.

By Blurt Staff

Among the Lone Star state traditions - strong weed, cheap beer, concealed firearms, underage hookers, etc. - none is more sacred than South By Southwest, and among the most recent SXSW traditions, the annual Mess With Texas bash is one of the most notorious. This year's MWT, the third one, is slated for Saturday, March 21, at the sprawling Waterloo Park. Showtimes run 11:30 until 9 p.m.

How do the names Black Lips, Circle Jerks, Thermals, King Khan, Vivian Girls and Crystal Antlers sound to you? Full lineup is below.

As always, it's free, and open to the public, which means you don't necessarily have to be a SXSW badgeholder to attend. Hey, in today's economic climate, that's a goddam bargain! And what's this we hear about a contest? Read on - deadline is this coming Monday, so get hopping....

***

Mess With Texas Lineup:

The Black Lips
The Circle Jerks
Kid Sister
Cursive
Monotonix
The Thermals
Akron/Family
Lucero
King Khan & the Shrines
Soft Pack
Jason Lytle from Grandaddy
The Bronx
Vetiver
B.O.B
Busdriver
Vivian Girls
Crystal Antlers
Abe Vigoda
Cut Off Your Hands
The Death Set
Thao with The Get Down Stay Down
Japanther
Howl
Sleepy Sun
Red Cortez
+ more



THE CONTEST

Each year the organizers for Mess With Texas put on a contest for the fans. The goal is to make the contest a little more exciting than submitting your email address to a website with hopes that you'll get a response that says you won something. The plan this year is... POSTCARDS. Send us a postcard. It will cost you 42 cents.

Send your postcards to:

MESS WITH TEXAS CONTEST
PO BOX 1558
Torrance, CA
90505

The person that sends what we consider the best  postcard will win $150 cash, all access passes to Mess With Texas, tons of swag from Incase and if you are 21 or older enough drink tickets to get you and your friends dizzy.

 
The postcard can be of ANYTHING. Be creative. Try to make us fall over with laughter. Try to make us say "cuuuuutttteee", try to make us say "amazing!".... It can be anything. For real. And you can submit as many as you like. Just remember to write your email address on the postcard so we can get in touch with you.

 
All postcards must be received by Monday, March 16th. On Tuesday, March 17th we will be posting the winning postcard along with the runner ups on the Incase blog and this website: www.goincase.com

Yet another all-digital offering from the good folks at Merge.

By Blurt Staff

Like It Or Not is a compilation of casettes and 7" releases from Mac McCaughan's pre-Superchunk band, Wwax. Like it Or Not is available exclusively as a digital download in the Merge Store.

Mac's description:

This is a collection of all the studio recordings that Wwax made, all done at Duck Kee Studios on Bickett Blvd in Raleigh in 1987 and 1988. Tracks 1 & 2 were released by our friend Steve Skrzyniarz on his label Leopard Gecko out in Tacoma. The next seven tracks came out on Merge in a double 7" format. The Songs "All Begins Again," "Just Like" and "Misinvite" were originally released as part of the 7" box set Evil I Do Not To Nod I Live, a collection that also included records by Egg, Slushpuppies, Black Girls, and Angels of Epistemology. The last two tracks were on a Wwax cassette that was Merge's second release ever. They include a Saccharine Trust cover we did live, plus the demo of the song "Seven" that we recorded at my house and that I always preferred to the better-sounding studio version. 

We took turns singing the songs in Wwax, but they all bear the mark of Wayne's idiosyncratic sense of timing and Brian Walsby's uncanny ability to keep up with him. The sound is also shaped by the fiberglass Ovation Breadwinner guitar that I borrowed from Wayne and played exclusively through his tiny gray spray-painted Peavey Champ, which achieved a brittleness I've not been able to capture since! This is the first digital release of Wwax songs other than a couple stray tracks here and there, and it's strange to hear recordings that are certainly artifacts of a certain era that's not hardcore but not really something else specific either...which is how they sounded then, too.

Tracklisting:

1. Pumpkin

2. Inn Town

3. Seven

4. Like It Or Not

5. Straw Man

6. Corduoroy

7. Grows On Trees

8. Price of Gas

9. Counting Thoughts

10. Beachworld

11. All Begins Again

12. Just Like

13. Misinvite

14. I Am Right (live)

15. Seven (demo)

Wwax was:

Wayne Taylor - Bass / Vocals

Brian Walsby - Drums / Vocals

Mac McCaughan - Guitar / Vocals