Backseat Sandbar

Finally. The day that many Louisville music lovers have been waiting for has come. Tonight Second Story Man release their full-length album “Screaming Secrets” in a celebratory show at Skull Alley. We were lucky enough to sit in on the band’s final practice before the show earlier in the week, and let us be the first to say this show will be incredible. Every guest musician that performs with the band on the album will be on hand to play, as will some other local heroes (horn section from Lucky Pineapple!). Here are the details:

- Doors open @ 8:00 pm
- $5 cover (dirt cheap for this caliber of show)
- softcheque opens the evening at 9:00, with Straight A’s soon after
- Second Story Man provides your nightcap

The band will have “Screaming Secrets” for sale on CD AND Vinyl and you should buy both. Throw in a few t-shirts for good measure. We will definitely be seeing you there.

21c will be presenting the Hear + Now Music Series starting October 8, 2009 with the album release of Rachel Grimes, Book of Leaves (from Karate Body Records).  The show will also feature works by Daniel Gilliam, Lou Moseson and Sara Maclean.  The Series will feature newly composed works by regional creators and performed by regional creators for all of us to experience.  I’ve even heard that there will be a baby grand piano placed in the center of the room with seating in a theatre in the round style.  21c always pulls out all the stops and this series looks to be very exciting.

The pianist from Rachel’s, and currently of King’s Daughters & Sons ensemble, offers a stirring new solo piano set, packaged in a gatefold LP with a limited number of copies coming with an original sheet music score. Pre-order the regular LP HERE. In stores Sept. 22.

Photo via The Decibel Tolls

I just saw Softcheque play at Rock the Whole Lot and was blown away.  I can’t believe that I haven’t heard this band yet, but better late than never.  Softcheque is driven by its two female singers with absolutely enchanting voices and supplemented with a mellow drone of keys and percussion.  Immediately, Bat for Lashes came to mind and the similarities are scary.  Each combine hypnotizing vocals with a dark and eerie journey sound.  Keep on on on this group, they have a ton of talent and will win you over after a single song.  You can catch them at Phantom Family Halo’s album releases party at the Z bar on October 17th.  Check out a video from their show at DCE below (via The Decibel Tolls)…

Nashville’s The Features are coming back to Louisville to perform with two of Louisville’s finest…namely The Fervor and The Instruction.  After having been seemingly forever since they performed in Louisville (did they come in 2008 at all?) they’ve been here three times so far in 2009.  First they came and performed with Lucky Pineapple & Broken Spurs in February, and again to the Waterfront with the Broken Spurs.

Mat Herron’s The Fervor has been playing a string of dates with Wussy  (Cincinnati sensations who maintain a large degree of hype around them and finally look to be trying to break out and do something with it).

ALBUM RELEASE PARTY: The performance will operate as the album release party for The Instruction, whose debut album Failure by Design was recently release on sonaBLAST! Records, so if you’re into The Instruction, or good area music in general, you should be sure to catch this show.

$12 bucks. Doors at 8pm.  Show at 9pm.

Kanye West took a three week vacation to Hawaii and belched this album while he was there.  Now he wants you and everyone else to go and spend their money on this monumental failure entitled 808s & Heartbreak.  I was a huge fan of The College Dropout (and liked Late Registration and Graduation).  You may think that the departure from the Education-themed titles is the source of this album’s troubles – - a valid point – -  but the dagger in the heart of this album is AUTO-TUNE.  Auto-Tune is a program that “uses a phase vocoder to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. It is used to disguise inaccuracies and mistakes, and has allowed many artists to produce more precisely tuned recordings.”  In other words, it give the ability of people who can’t sing the ability to not sound like shit.  While this program has been relegated to aging artists such as Cher (remember that crap song “Believe”?) and Madonna (basically any of her new stuff), Kanye felt the need to go nuts with the program for the entire album.  In an interview Kanye is quoted saying that Auto-Tune “is the funnest thing to use.”  For the same reason wild children are given markers that can’t write on walls, someone needs to delete this program from Kanye’s computer permanentaly.

So let me get this straight.  You can wire his entire jaw shut and he will still put out an amazing album, but after he shows the world he is more than a producer and has some real talent rapping, he decides to go and become some weird T-Pain/Britney Spears vocalist.  That just isn’t right.  There is not a single song on this album that I can direct you to for even a glimmer of optimism (unless you count the fact that it is only 12 songs long).  Like salt in a wound, Kanye’s final song on the album is a live freestyle titled “Pinocchio Story” (recorded in Singapore).  Creatively the song includes the following lyrics:

I just want to be a real boy,
Pinocchio story goes, I just want to be a real boy
Pinocchio story goes

The album is set to be released this coming Tuesday, November 21, 2008.  As a service to yourself and music in general, leave this one on the shelf.

For a cool mash-up, press play on both of the videos below and turn Cher’s down a little under half way…

Kanye West- Love Lockdown

Cher- Believe

This week Rob Carpenter of The Muckrakers Takes Five for Kentucky.  The Muckrakers have been going strong for as long as I can remember and they have a new album out this week. The Muckrakers celebrated their ten-year anniversary by losing one band member, nearly losing another in a serious accident, and coping with the collapse of their first record label. Needless to say, the anniversary party wasn’t a lot of fun. Combine all that with an exhausting year and a half of traveling across the country in support of 2006′s “Front of the Parade,” and the band had just about had enough of the rock and roll dream. Named after the economic term for incurred costs that can never be retrieved, their new album, The Concorde Fallacy, is a direct reflection of the lessons they’ve learned and the lives they’ve lived over the past few years — battle scars that prove that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. So how do you figure out who you are when the distractions the world has to offer are taken away? Maybe Carpenter says it best in the song “Seventh Sign”: “When everything is broken, you turn the page on what you’ve learned, and leave the rest behind.”

With the new album they will be turning the page with a very busy this week, playing shows at WFPK’s Live Lunch, 4th Street Live, Phoenix Hill Tavern, ear X-tacy and Derby City Espresso.  You can check out their new album here.

Here are Rob’s responses…

Questions

1. What neighborhood did you grow up in?

I’m actually from a little town in West Kentucky called Murray – but I moved to Louisville because everyone else lived here. (That, and it’s the home of the Cincinnati Reds’ AAA farm team.) Brian and Dave grew up in the PRP area and Micah grew up in JTown.

2. When did you start playing together? Did you have a different band name?

The band started out as a duo while I was a student at Western Kentucky University what seems like an eternity ago. We added Brian (bass) for our first record and then Dave (drums) when the group relocated to Louisville. Micah joined on guitar shortly after the release of our second record. It’s an urban myth that Mayor McCheese plays keys with us. Not true. Yes, he’s sat in with us a few times, but his job at McDonalds keeps him really busy.

3. First show you played in Kentucky (plus any details you remember about it)?

Technically the first show we played in Kentucky was for a parents weekend event at WKU. It was totally spur of the moment – but we had so much fun doing it that we decided to play a few more shows. Now here I am…10 years later. Our first show in Louisville was opening up for 100 Acre Wood at the Rudyard Kipling on a snowy December night a couple of years later.

4. First show outside of Kentucky…how did you book it?

Our first out of state show was in Nashville, Tennessee. Being big fans of cliches, we decided to drive down to the Music City and busk. We found a busy street corner in downtown Nashville, pulled out the guitars, and played songs for a few hours. We put a tip jar out and everything. While we didn’t make that much money in tips, a club owner happened to be walking by and ended up booking us for a few

5. Favorite Kentucky band (other than yours)?

The pre-mentioned 100 Acre Wood eventually became Digby and I’ve been one of their biggest fans for the entire ride.

The Muckrakers – The Seventh Sign