Mark Karan is one of the greatest treasures of the jamband community and has played with a number of great bands and artists. He’s been a member of the Grateful Dead family playing in the various configurations of Dead-related projects and since 1998 has been a member of Bob Weir & RatDog and also has his side band Jemimah Puddleduck. Now Mark has decide to unleash his first official solo release, Walk Through the Fire, due out in stores tomorrow through Quacktone Records/DIG Music. We’ve been waiting for a solo album from him for quite some time and it was totally worth the wait. Mark was kind enough to call-in so we could discuss the album.It seems that the title came to him while undergoing chemotherapy as he has been battling cancer for the past few years. Listen up:
It seems like Tom Morello is starting a new music project every 5 minutes - which is lucky for us because we can’t get enough of him. This time, Tom teams up with Boots Riley (The Coup) and Stanton Moore (Galactic) to create to a hard rocking, funky, revolutionary band called Street Sweeper Social Club whose new album came out yesertday. Here’s how the band was born - Listen up:
Check out this song from the album, “100 Little Curses”:
At first I tried to decipher the meaning behind the band name – okay, so obviously it has to be about them “sweeping the streets” with their music and message and continuing the socially conscious revolution, right? Listen up to hear how wrong I was:
The first time I was exposed to The Walkmen was when their song We’ve Been Had was featured in the Saturn Ion commercial. Every since the haunting piano echoed through my television speakers I had to track down that band to hear more. In August, we were given their latest offering You & Me. Almost all the songs capture a feeling of uneasiness as they explode with a wall of sound that is uniquely their own. We were fortunate to have the guys stop by our studio and play a few songs for us and talk about You & Me and give us the scoop on their new album which is already in the works. It seemed to me that You & Me was a personal album for the guys, as it centered around two people or the feelings that two people shared. But there was no great hidden meaning behind the album, the title just came naturally. Listen Up:
The first song on the album Dónde está la Playa gave me chills the first time I heard it. The guys offered it up to us acoustically here in our WNEW.com studios. Dig it:
It never ceases to amaze me how much great music there is to discover. Until this week, I had not heard Judith Owen’s latest album Mopping Up Karma. Normally listed as a jazz artist, Judith’s music transcends the usual labels and propels her into a category all her own, especially with this album. One really interesting fact about Mopping Up Karma is that it is made up of a number of songs that she had recorded about 10 years ago that were never released. This created an interesting listening experience because Judith is a very different person today than she was 10 years ago (hey, aren’t we all?). So you have the Judith of 10 years ago singing along side of the Judith of today – two women at different places in their life with very different opinions of themselves. Every song tells its own story of overcoming obstacles within herself with the Judith of today fighting her way out of the darkness and dragging her older unhappy self into the light. She’s finishing up a residency at the Metropolitan Room this weekend, and we were fortunate enough to have her stop by to play my two favorite songs from the album.
The title of the album is Mopping Up Karma and apparently there have been some journalists who didn’t understand the meaning behind it – perhaps they didn’t listen to the album. . .
Listen Up:
Here’s the first single from the album that she performed for us live in our WNEW.com studios called Creatures of Habit.
In 2006, Brooklyn band Bishop Allen did something amazing – put out an EP of at least 3 songs every month (48 total) for an entire year. Rumor has it the project began when frontmen Justin Rice and Christian Rudder stumbled upon a discarded piano and dragged it into their rehearsal studio. That’s a pretty amazing feat for any artist to do, and a few of those monthly EPs got passed to me through a friend and I was amazed at what I heard. Their sound gets compared to The Kinks quite a bit, and rightly so – they have the same honest sound with extremely catchy songs, but there is a style to it all their own. Their music has been in rotation on all my mp3 devices since the first EP crossed my desk.
Bishop Allen churns out some amazing music that very often gets compared to The Kinks. There are always a few songs on every album that have a sing-along quality, and today they have released their new album Grrr... which is more of what we love from them with a larger number of these songs having that element to them. We’re lucky that they’re a local band so we asked them to stop by, give us the scoop on the album, and play a few songs for us.
Their last album The Broken String included a lot of the monthly EP songs on them, but reworked in some different ways. Because they had written so many songs for the EPs, I was curious if they simply went back into the EPs to hunt for more gems or worked on all new stuff.
Listen Up:
The title of the album Grrr… is definitely an interesting one, but not the first title they had in mind for the album as they explain.
Listen Up:
One of the songs that you find available for free download just about everywhere right now from them is The Ancient Common Sense of Things. It seems to be one of their favorites to play live, and here’s why.
The world’s greatest bar band George Thorogood & The Destroyers have been rocking audiences in an almost non-stop tour for over 32 years. Recently, he checked in with us to give some details on his never ending tour, shared some fond memories, and tell us about a new live album headed our way.
I remember the moment clearly when I tuned in to MTV in its early days to watch George do his rendition of Bad To The Bone where he faced off against Bo Diddley in a game of pool. George always had a knack for covering other people’s material in such a way that he made it his own. George always picked songs that people may not have heard of in years or at all. But now it’s not so easy to surprise people with new versions of his favorite songs.
Listen Up:
Throughout his career, there have been songs that he’s covered that have been favorites of fans and some that have fallen flat. There’s one song in particular that George never thought would get the huge response that it did – it was Hank Williams' Move It On Over.
Read on for the rest of our interview, and click here to win FREE TIX to see George Thorogood and The Destroyers on Friday 3/20 at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair, NJ.
Every March, Allman Brothers fans make a pilgrimage to New York City to see their favorite band tear the roof off the legendary Beacon Theatre. Now that the theatre is fully restored and looking great, the guys are back once again for their yearly residency. But this year is very different – it’s the 40th anniversary for the band and they’ve dedicated this Beacon run to the late great Duane “Skydog” Allman. One of the founding members of the band, Butch Trucks, was kind enough to come to visit us here at WNEW.com and give us some insight on this years shows and the history behind their love affair with the Beacon as well as tell us about his newest venture moogis.com, a new subscription based website and online community which offers up concerts, interviews, and lots other great stuff including all 15 of this years’ Allman Brothers shows at the Beacon live for your viewing pleasure. First, let’s get a little history from Butch on how the band got back together in the 80’s after taking a break because of a certain music fad that had gripped America.
Changing Horses is an album 5 years in the making – after all, it was ready in 2004. But Ben Kweller wasn’t ready to unleash this countrified masterpiece on us until the time was right. It’s brave to step outside your comfort zone and produce something yourself that you die hard fans will love and open yourself up to a whole new audience. Our friend Ben stopped by the studio on his current tour to talk about the new album and play some songs for us. Being a Texan, you would expect country music to be part of his DNA, and this album clearly shows that it is. But how did the album come to be? What triggered a whole country album versus putting a single country song on a rock/pop album? Ben has the answer, Listen Up:
Turns out that for those of you who read Mark Twain, you already are familiar with the title Changing Horses. For those not familiar, you might think that the title implies him “changing horses” from making rock music to country music. To each his own I guess, but here’s the real story behind the title, Listen Up:
Here’s the first of three songs Ben performed for us here in our WNEW.com studio, this is Things I Like To Do, Dig it:
A few years ago, when I worked for a different three letter network, I was assigned to interview Sam Roberts for his recently released We Were Born In A Flame album. At the time I had never heard of him, so I read the bio and popped in the CD. It’s very rare that I can say that I loved every song on an album, but I gotta say that his album impressed me. It seems like everyone from his native Canada knows and loves him, like he’s some great secret us Americans haven’t been let in on. I was excited for the interview and then the day he was supposed to come in – he cancelled. I missed another opportunity when his last album Chemical City was released, and now he is unleashing his newest creation Love At The End of The World and this time I made sure that I’d bring him in to check out the new stuff and play a few songs for us. For this album, Sam was inspired by a visit to the South Africa (where he spent some time as a child) and a brief stay in Australia to weave together some songs that are a bit more psychedelic than he previous albums. It’s an interesting title, Love At The End of The World. Sam says that the meaning behind it changes day to day, but here’s what it means to him at the time I interviewed him:
[on album title]
Here’s Sam Roberts with his lead guitarist Dave Nugent playing the title track for us here in our WNEW.com studio.
Love At The End of The World
A great deal of Sam’s songs are very character driven stories, and it’s one of the things I love about his music. The emotional journey that is transcribed into every song are the heart and soul of his craft. For this writing process, he has an unorthodox way of coming up with his music, Listen up:
Everybody loves Willie Nelson – I mean, what’s not to love? He’s got so many great songs, an outlaw-type history, and a killer sense of humor. Who else could record a song called Cowboys Are Secretly Frequently (Fond of Each Other) with a straight face? Back in ‘77, Willie made an album called To Lefty From Willie in which he covered songs from fellow country artist Lefty Frizzell. He made the album a couple of years after Lefty died, so you could say that this was a tribute album.
Matthew Houck A/K/A Phosphorescent stopped by our studio to discuss his own tribute to the red headed stranger called To Willie in which he covers songs he loves from Willie’s catalog. But how did he decide that a tribute to Willie was a good idea? It turns out that doing this album was always part of the master plan. Listen Up:
Here’s Phos doing one my favorite songs from the album in a stripped down acoustic way, this is Too Sick To Pray recorded live here in our WNEW.com studio. Dig it:
Too Sick To Pray
Being so familiar with the material and growing up loving Willie and all that he does, you’d think that he would approach this album differently that his other albums. After all, when you’re recording Willie, you want to mix things up right? Wrong. In staying true to himself he is in essence staying true to Willie’s music. Listen Up:
So if you plan on being in the NYC area, you can check out the guys as they do the album in it’s entirety at The Bell House in Brooklyn on 2/28 (a cool new venue that opened in September of last year). Phos is also working on a new album as well and promises to give us the scoop as soon as it takes shape. Here’s another stripped down acoustic song from Phos that he did for us in our WNEW.com studio, Cocaine Lights
Cocaine Lights
For more from Phosphorescent, you can check out his myspace at http://www.myspace.com/phosphorescent.
Sometimes I discover great music from emails from friends. Normally these emails are met with some skepticism as some of my friends don’t have the same musical taste as I do. After all, I was once told that I definitely needed to check out a song mash-up of Bon Jovi vs. Bee Gees called How Deep Is Your Bad Medicine. . .it was not the musical feast of awesomeness they promised. I was passed a link to the Jones Street Station (formerly Jones Street Boys) myspace page to check out a song called Evergreen was blown away. Hometown boys from Brooklyn, New York they are a cauldron filled with various musical influences including bluegrass, indie rock, and country just to name a few. The guys are also opening for Ben Kweller on his current tour, so after a brief listening party of their latest EP, they guys came in to chat and play a couple of tunes for us. First off, they recently changed their name – now bands usually don’t do this too often, and it’s not like they did a major change like the Muslims did when they recently changed their name to the Soft Pack. They changed one word – “Boys” to “Station”. Here’s why, listen up:
As I mentioned before, my favorite song of their new stuff has to be Evergreen. The hypnotic harmony and dreamy tone the guys create on this one is fantastic. The song has a really good story behind it too – it involves pregnancy, a mansion party for guy who invented the Smart Car, and Russian poet Joseph Brodsky. Listen up:
Here they are live in our WNEW.com studio performing a beautifully crafted acoustic version of Evergreen. Dig it:
We've reached a milestone here at WNEW.com - our 1000th post. In a little under nine months, since our launch in April 2008, we've brought you a thousand posts on all things rock 'n roll, old and new, and other stuff we felt like posting. By way of a look back, here are some of our favorite things from the first 1000 posts:
Rock commentary of the highest order from our outstanding roster of writers: J.A. Bartlett, Alex Young, Fusion 45, Bill Melville, Paul Rhodes, Kevin Phillips, Chris Clancy, our hardworking Archivist, big winner Mari S. (go Cards!) and the rest of the many awesome contributors we've had so far.
There have been a lot of great moments captured in these first 1000 posts - here's a look at the posts you've clicked on the most:
Thank you kind reader for hanging in there with us throughout our early days. We've had a great time bringing you these posts and we've particularly enjoyed the conversations (and controversies - sorry Cure fans!) that have resulted. We hope you'll still be with us when we hit our 10,000th post - this time I promise I'll bring cake.
September 29th
Kris Kristofferson - Closer to the Bone
Steve Vai - Where The Wild Things Are
Cory Chisle and the Wandering Sons - Death Won't Send a Letter
October 6th
Built to Spill - There Is No Enemy
Roseanne Cash - The List
The Gossip - Music For Men
Hockey - Mind Chaos
Noah and the Whale - The First Days of Spring
October 13th
Bowling for Soup - Sorry for Partyin'
Bob Dylan - Christmas in the Heart
Echo & the Bunnymen - The Fountain
The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
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