I am all at sea

My day job involves advising college students about opportunities to study in rad places, and all this week I get to give one of our programs a test run by sailing on a 134-foot ship and, literally, learning the ropes.

I’ll be sailing out in two hours, under the Golden Gate Bridge, and spending a few days on the Pacific as an active member of a working crew, seeing what students experience on their semesters on board. We dock in Monterey at the end of it all. In addition to being a classroom and lab (I keep thinking of Voyage of the Mimi), it’s also a working ship, so there will be 24-hour watch rotations. Maybe I can get the middle-of-the-night one. I could use some 2am silence on a glassy sea.

Of course, I made a mix and have been listening to it all week in preparation. It’s eerie how fitting each song is becoming for me this week, and how each one is a perfect soundtrack to my unique life right now. Enjoy in my absence…

I’m all at sea
where no one can bother me
…Just me and my thoughts
sitting far away

I sleep by myself
I drink on my own
I don’t speak to nobody
I gave away my phone

Like a warm drink it seeps into my soul
please just leave me right here on my own
later on you could spend some time with me
if you want to, all at sea

Now I need you more than ever
Do I need you more than ever now?
So come and spend some time with me
and we will spend it all at sea

FUEL/FRIENDS ‘ALL AT SEA’ MIX
All At Sea (Live at KFOG radio, SF) – Jamie Cullum
Stuck On A Boat – Port O’Brien
Girl Sailor – The Shins
The Ocean Lifts Her Dress – The Swimmers
Eager to Sail – Wine and Revolution
Lost Coastlines – Okkervil River
Sea Lion Woman – Feist
The Ragged Sea – Alexi Murdoch
The Ocean In Between – Matthew Sweet
Drowning Men (acoustic version) – Fanfarlo
Driftwood – Mark McAdam
Salt And The Sea – Gregory Alan Isakov
Momentary Drowning – Young Coyotes
Deep Blue Sea – Grizzly Bear
Swim Until You Can’t See Land (live) – Frightened Rabbit
The Sea & The Rhythm – Iron & Wine
Deckchairs and Cigarettes – The Thrills
The Waves – Princeton
Creeping Coastline of Lights – Mark Lanegan
The Ship Song (at Glastonbury) – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Sail on Sailor – The Beach Boys
Winter Waves – Chris Isaak

ZIP: ALL AT SEA FUEL/FRIENDS MIX

I took this picture a few hours ago when I walked down to the dock to find the boat.

I hope I get to say things like “hoist the mainstay.”

UPDATE: I totally did.

The thoughts in my head have got me crawling back to bed

Last night San Francisco’s Ryan Auffenberg played to a packed Michelangelo’s Cafe for the Underground Music Showcase. Channeling sweet strong pop melodies, Ryan led all of us to be his brilliant backup singers.

And yes, in the beginning when he asks who wants to sing and you hear a female immediately pipe in, yeah, that would be me. I am a sucker for a good singalong.

Sellout (live at the UMS) – Ryan Auffenberg

Here are a few other images from my day yesterday that went until 4am this morning. I’m recuperating in a dark room right now, preparing to do it all again this afternoon.

Kate Grisgby of The Hollyfelds @ The Skylark

DJ John Hendrickson @ Sputnik

Chris Adolf of Bad Weather California @ The Irish Rover

The Overcasters @ 3 Kings Tavern

Houses @ The Hi-Dive

[audio via The Flat Response – thanks!]

Everything Absent or Distorted on Thursday night

Some images from opening night of the UMS, and a brilliant show from Everything Absent or Distorted. Who says real men don’t wear pink?

The Denver Post Underground Music Showcase continues all weekend long, full of jubilant music.

Just a song before I go

My favorite Denver band Everything Absent or Distorted (a top pick for 2008, and perhaps you heard me rave about them on NPR) announced this week that they are pulling up the tent pegs for some pasture of a different variety, and calling it quits as a band.

From the first time I saw EAOD live, I completely understood what they were trying to do with their music, because it’s the same way it hits me. To the guys in EAOD, music is something cathartic, something beautiful, and something more immense than could ever be captured on record. Every show was a tightly-wound, hot-blooded tour de force of musical intensity. It was never about perfection, it was about grabbing your instrument(s), climbing on your friend’s back, and singing marvelously literate lyrics about what this life can feel like.

As they’ve written in their obituary press release:

In the past five years, we have gorged ourselves on music—at times, coming dangerously close to forgetting that music is not our life, but a thing we do to get on with it. But life, like music, is a jealous lover and does not relent its grip too easily. And so here, between life’s calloused and cut palms, we resign ourselves to it.

We have done what we have done mostly because we had no other choice. We put music to our own struggles against small wars not so that we could win them, but so that we could keep fighting. Winning would mean there would be no more need to sing, but a good fight always needs a song.

EAOD will have a new 4-song EP of music to give away before they go. It’s called The Lucky Ones, and they have given Fuel/Friends readers the first sneak preview. They’ll give the full EP away this Fall.

I have to admit, this song made me choke up because of its honesty.

Monday morning, give us our razors
Feel like dyin’, but we’ll just shave
and go on
and go on…

Closer Than You Think, Part 3 – Everything Absent or Distorted

That is an effing beautiful song.




This weekend at the UMS, Everything Absent or Distorted will play two of their last shows (the final final one is rumored to be sometime this Fall, TBD). Come TONIGHT to the Hi-Dive at 11pm to see them, or at 7pm Sunday in the Goodwill Parking Lot.

My loose UMS schedule can be seen over on my Gigbot page. I’ll try to make 50% of these. I can get (pleasantly, thoroughly) distracted at the wonderfully dizzying scene of the UMS.

See you this weekend on South Broadway.

[top photo by Laurie Scavo]

New fun :: “Walking The Dog”

Back in May I went and saw the new band incarnation of Nate Ruess (frontman from The Format). They’re called “fun” and they certainly were – a shimmering, enthusiastic, multi-instrumental explosion of joy. With members of Anathallo and Steel Train, fun is gearing up to continue the goodness where The Format left off.

Nate’s got a marvelous theatrical voice that rises to the top of any songs he sings over. The Format were one of my favorite pop bands (and one of the best live shows) of my last 5 years, and I was sorry to see them break up.

The good news is, half the genius of Format lives on in fun (minus Sam Means, sadly) and GET THIS, PEOPLE: Nate sings a few Format songs during fun’s sets (like the colossal singalong of “The First Single”!!). I won’t deny how deeply good it felt to sing along with those again at the very top of my lungs. I thought I’d never hear them again live.

Fun just announced a bunch of Fall tour dates, and released a new song. It’s shiny and ebullient, loaded with feel-good “na na na naaaaa!”s. The full-length debut album Aim & Ignite comes out August 25th on Nettwerk.

Escucha:

FUN FALL TOUR DATES:

With Hello Goodbye

August 14th                Chic’s                          El Paso, TX
August 15th                Launchpad                   Albuquerque, NM
August 16th                Club Congress            Tucson, AZ
August 18th                Club Karma                 Victorville, CA
August 19th                Chain Reaction            Anaheim, CA
August 19th                Chain Reaction            Anaheim, CA
August 21st                 Velvet Jones               Santa Barbara, CA
August 23rd                Stockton Empire Theatre    Stockton, CA
August 25th                Chop Suey                  Seattle, WA
August 26th                Hawthorne Theatre      Portland, OR
August 27th                The Boardwalk            Orangevale, CA

Headline Tour

September 8th              Kilby Court                 Salt Lake City, UT
September 9th              Club 156                     Boulder, CO
September 11th            Shelter                         Detroit, MI
September 12th            Intersection                  Grand Rapids, MI
September 13th            Water St.                     Rochester, NY
September 15th            Northstar                     Philadelphia, PA
September 16th            Great Scott                  Boston, MA
September 17th            Mercury Lounge         New York, NY
September 18th            Jammin Java                Vienna, VA
September 20th            Drunken Unicorn        Atlanta, GA
September 22nd            Rocketown                  Nashville, TN
September 23rd            Firebird                       St, Louis, MO
September 24th            Schuba’s                      Chicago, IL
September 25th            Triple Rock                 Minneapolis, MN

Bowerbirds hit Daytrotter, head to Denver for our Underground Music Showcase!

This weekend is my favorite weekend of the entire summer: the Denver Post Underground Music Showcase hits a walkable strip of South Broadway with over 200 bands, singer-songwriters, and comedians at 20 local shops, restaurants and live music venues. Last year I called it “the SXSW of Denver,” and it certainly feels just as saturated with good music as Austin at every turn, but a wristband for all four days of the UMS will only set you back $20.

This year for the first time, the UMS is incorporating some select national acts into the lineup, and I was thrilled to get to help pick some, in my first foray into festival booking. The focus is still our vibrant and gorgeous local scene, but this year we’ve got a few national-level acts that I am very excited about. The first is The Bowerbirds from North Carolina, joining folks like El Ten Eleven (my face is still partially melted from last November) and the superb Ryan Auffenberg from San Francisco. The full lineup is here.

The Bowerbirds have been around since 2006, but my first introduction to their music was only last year when they toured with Bon Iver. There was this…. ohhhh, there was this – which stopped me in my tracks and held me transfixed.

Bon Iver and the Bowerbirds covering Sarah Siskind’s “Lovin’s For Fools” (previous post):

In addition to a recent mention in a piece he wrote for IndyWeek, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) also listed the Bowerbirds in his top picks for La Blogotheque, saying: “Olive Hearts — that song, I went home, and that was the first time i thought about quitting music. Yeah, it really was, I really wasn’t sure I could do it anymore, because that song was so good. I thought what I saw that night just may be better than anything I could ever do.”

Here are two songs off their gorgeous new album Upper Air, out now on Dead Oceans Records.

Beneath Your Tree – Bowerbirds
Northern Lights – Bowerbirds

Bowerbirds also recently stopped by Daytrotter for the second time (first time here), and performed four of their songs for free download, three from the new album.

I’ll have a UMS Festival preview coming later this week, if you live in Colorado, please come out. It’s gonna be magnificent. Bowerbirds play 10pm on Sunday night, and you can find many other forthcoming Bowerbirds tour dates here, for the rest of y’all who can’t come play with us on the streets of Denver this weekend.

Oh Jason, are you still waiting? (I am, I am and I love this part)

It’s the time of the summer for warm nights, where the air hugs close to your skin. One of my absolute favorite tracks on my summer mix is the combustible “July 4, 2004″ from musician Jason Anderson. My introduction to this urgently wonderful artist came via this one song, dropped in my lap by a friend and played on repeat until I can sing along almost every word about falling in love on Independence Day, and do the drumbeats on the steering wheel from the moment they kick in:

July 4, 2004 – Jason Anderson

I cannot stop recommending that song to everyone, and I cannot listen to it enough times to sate me.

Jason is a musician from New York who has taken a prolific, do-it-yourself approach to getting his visceral music out there: releasing several albums for free, recording mostly live (to capture that fantastic energy), and playing shows standing amidst the crowd to gain enthusiastic singalong audience participation.

It’s undeniable that songs like these owe a debt to Springsteen (even with the occasional haunting wisp of a saxophone coming from a long way off), but also punch forward with modern, literate, rock counterparts like The Hold Steady or Bright Eyes at their fiercest and most honest. One reviewer wrote “The life in his voice is enough to fuel the whole of us,” and I agree completely.

Every once in a long while I come across a song that pricks sneaky tears into the corners of my eyes despite it being a rock and roll anthem, and gives me goosebumps just simply because you can hear the triumph of optimism in the face of the struggles.

This second song of Jason’s that I fell for makes me believe, and goddamn it is beautiful. It is (most of) all I want tonight.

El Paso – Jason Anderson

dusk was hugging the foothills as i drove in
the mountains were draped with shadows east of I-10
the first couple stars like light bright pegs
like a candle in a colander

my brother telephoned from new york state
and he told me about a disastrous date
he said i know there’s lots of fish in the lake
but sometimes it seems like they hibernate

This version of “July 4, 2004″ is from his 2007 album Tonight, and “El Paso” is on The Hopeful and the Unafraid. Also check one of the several free albums he has for download, like On The Street.

Let’s just say you love me :: The National cover Mark Mulcahy

Today we got our first listen into the solid forthcoming album of covers of Mark Mulcahy’s songs, Ciao My Shining Star, a benefit album for this wonderfully rich songwriter in his hour of financial need (his wife died, leaving him with small twins to raise).

The lead off track is an icy reworking of “All For The Best” by Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke, and we’ll get to that in a sec, but the one that caught my eye even more quickly is the new cover from The National. I’ve loved this song below for a few years now, and I am flabbergasted at how much the original just sounds like a National song now that I listen to it through that filter. I think this will be the “Sleep All Summer” of my fall – both versions are equally addictive. The closing strings on The National’s version actually caused my chest to hurt.

Ashamed Of The Story I Told (Polaris cover) – The National
Ashamed Of The Story I Told – Polaris

With the backbone of Mark Mulcahy‘s solid songwriting, this covers album looks to be one of the best ones out in 2009 (tied with Dark Was The Night). The roster of artists featured is incredible: Thom Yorke, The National, Michael Stipe, Ben Kweller, Frank Black, Liz Phair, Vic Chesnutt, Elvis Perkins, and more.

So who is Mark Mulcahy and how did he inspire so many of my favorite artists? I first heard of him through Nick Hornby’s Songbook, when he wrote, “I would have missed out on people like Mark Mulcahy, whose first album, Fathering, I bought [on the recommendation of a music shop proprietor], and played repeatedly for months. ‘Hey, Self Defeater,’ the first track … made it onto just about every compilation tape I made that year.”

Mulcahy was also the artist behind the 90s band Polaris, from the TV show The Adventures of Pete & Pete. It was some of the best music ever to hit Nickelodeon — sugar-pop at its finest. I’ve re-upped the previous post with Mulcahy’s songs from the cassette tape you could get from saving Frosted Mini-Wheats barcodes. They are deceptively good for something from a kids show.

Since being introduced, I have come to respect Mulcahy as a literate first-class songwriter, and this song from his band Miracle Legion first appears simple, yet is laden with ache and meaning in the smallest of moments, like watching a sibling cut grass and the overwhelming monotony of life that can imply. The jangly effect of the original reminds me quite a bit of some of my favorite things about late-80s R.E.M or The Smiths. Thom Yorke’s version is distant electronica, layered all crisp and sad and perfect.

All For The Best – Miracle Legion

All For The Best (Miracle Legion cover) – Thom (and Andy) Yorke

Waking up, and the bed was made
no one looked me in the eye
the more I try, the more I cry
and it’s all for the best

Watched my brother cutting grass outside
sitting on the porch he told me
it’s a long way to go before we can rest
but it’s all for the best

You’re so beautiful it sings
on a lonely lazy morning
and when I see you rocking back and forth
whispering that it’s all for the best

One day the stone will roll away
soon you’ll see
you’re far away from home but never far away from me
and that’s all for the best

…and say you love me

Promise me, son, not to do the things I’ve done
walk away from trouble at the end of the day

Say you love me
say you love me

Let’s just say you love me

Devastating and beautiful. That song, and especially Thom’s alienated version of it, slays me.

You need to go snag a few more free songs from throughout Mulcahy’s career, and watch for Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy, out Sept 29th on Shout Factory. I really cannot wait.

Julian Casablancas solo record

This clip surfaced yesterday, a preview of a forthcoming solo album from Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas. Bandmates have pursued other side projects (my favorite of which is drummer Fabrizio Moretti’s Little Joy), and apparently Julian went and recorded something on his own, prolonging the moment when the Strokes all get together in the same room to record something new. This clip implies epic-ness and new worlds of wonder; I have high hopes.

Phrazes For The Young is out this fall on Cult Records, and in true ascetic Strokes form, it’s only eight songs long. The album was written and recorded over the last year in LA, NYC and Nebraska. Julian plans to tour in support of it in the coming months.

[via ultra8201]

Sunrise doesn’t last all morning, a cloudburst doesn’t last all day

From the new EP of George Harrison/Beatles covers by My Morning Jacket frontman Jim James (under the clever, throw-them-off-the-scent moniker of Yim Yames), this song feels like a much-needed salve on my rawness today:

All Things Must Pass (George Harrison cover) – Yim Yames

Sometimes I am glad I don’t know the fancy tricks of studio recording, and how they make Jim’s voice sound like it is coming to me from somewhere outside time, like it was created to someday record this song about the temporal nature of the evening, a cloudburst, love, our lives.

I’m sure it has something to do with reverb and certain knobby magic on the console, but the golden-red aura of his voice is truly exceptional here, and it feels like some kind of hope breaking through.

All the tracks are thoroughly gorgeous, and the EP is available now for just a handful of dollars.