Bahamas is the musical name of Afie Jurvanen, and I fell for the sweetly anachronistic tint to this performance that could have been pulled out of a night that happened two generations ago. It’s M. Ward’s slow-burn warmth meets the swaggery drawl of Jason Collett.
His bluesy, understated album Pink Strat is out now on Brushfire Records, and features both Leslie Feist (he was her guitarist, she sings on two tracks) and members of the Great Lake Swimmers. Cover love! Feist is fond of covering his “Sunshine Blues,” and the album closes with this cover of Wreckless Eric’s “Whole Wide World” — also where he took his band name from.
May 24 – San Deigo Women’s Club, San Diego, CA
May 25 – El Rey Theater – Los Angeles, CA
May 26 – The Independent – San Francisco, CA
May 27 – The Independent – San Francisco, CA
May 29 – Doug Fir Lounge – Portland, OR
May 31 – Biltmore Cabaret – Vancouver, BC
June 2 – Club Sound – Salt Lake City, UT
June 3 – The Fox Theatre – Boulder, CO
June 4 – Bluebird Theater – Denver, CO
June 6 – Santa Fe Brewing Co. – Santa Fe, NM
June 8 – The Parish – Austin, TX
June 9 – The Parish – Austin, TX
June 10 – Club Dada – Dallas, TX
June 11 – Fitzgerald’s Upstairs – Houston, TX
June 13 – One Eyed Jacks – New Orleans, LA
June 15 – Variety Playhouse – Atlanta, GA
June 16 – Lincoln Theater – Raleigh, NC
June 17 – 9:30 Club – Washington, DC
June 18 – Irving Plaza – New York, NY
On Thursday night, Ryan Adams showed up unannounced to open for Emmylou Harris at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles. The lucky crowd got to hear four completely stunning new songs (including “Dirty Rain“) that showcase that heartbreaking sound that I haven’t heard from Ryan in a while. The truth remains that his voice is one of the most piercing I know.
He also performed gorgeous versions of two of my more recent favorites: “Blue Hotel” and “Everybody Knows,” as well as his duet with Emmylou. The crowd reaction is hilarious; at the beginning of one new song, you can hear a girl asking the name of the artist, and the guy next to her saying, “He said his name is RYAN.” Then you hear a guy lean in an say, “Um, that’s Ryan Adams.”
Ryan is in excellent spirits, joking with Emmylou when she asks the crowd if they managed to keep his appearance a secret (“It was a secret to me!” Ryan says. “I’m glad I was eating across the street!”). Then they launch into one of the most stunning versions of “Oh My Sweet Carolina” that I’ve ever heard (the song they originally duetted on, on Heartbreaker). That is such a goddamn good song. I always forget how many times in a row I can listen to it — it’s a lot.
These songs are enough to make me wish I was going to Europe this summer:
RYAN ADAMS ACOUSTIC EURO-TOUR 2011
June 07 – Cork, Ireland Opera House
June 08 – Dublin, Ireland Olympia Theatre
June 10 – Stockholm, Sweden Cirkus
June 11 – Oslo, Norway Folketeatret
June 13 – Malmö, Sweden The Consert House
June 14 – Copenhagen, Denmark Koncerhauset
June 16 – Lisbon, Portugal Aula Magna
June 17 – Porto, Portugal Teatro Sa Da Bandeira
June 19 – London, UK Barbican
June 20 – London, UK Barbican
June 22 – Brighton, UK Dome
June 23 – Manchester, UK Bridgewater Hall
June 25 – Glasgow, UK Academy
June 26 – Oxford, UK Oxford New Theatre
June 28 – Amsterdam, Holland Concertgebouw
I rode my bike to work this morning against the winds, and noticed a yellow crocus has bloomed in my front yard since I last looked. Pretty soon I will plant my garden, and for the first time in a long time last week I fell asleep with the window opened to the sound of warm rain.
For all the pristine icy clean of winter, the hearth of a fire, the months for introspection, I am thrilled at the thaw. I’ve been squirreling away songs for this spring mix since January, in an act of hope that warmer days were indeed on the horizon. For most of us, those days are here (in fits and starts, but trying and that’s what counts).
I’ve put together a mix of the fresh bright music that is soundtracking my season. Lots of new stuff, lots of aural joy and hope for regrowth. Let’s relish what we have.
USED HEARTS / FRESH STARTS ::
THE FUEL/FRIENDS SPRINGTIME 2011 MIX
Born With A Broken Heart – David Wax Museum
The title for this mix gets its namesake from Boston’s David Wax Museum, when they sing here that “some of us come with new hearts; most of us come with used hearts / baby why do you look so sad?.” Against a shiny cavalcade of mariachi-worthy brass and handclaps, this is an assertion that our used hearts can do just fine together in the new year.
Look Good In Leather – Cody Chestnutt
Track two here was chosen because every season needs at least one song that you have to dance to whenever it comes on. Cody offers us a secret for the springtime, it seems — looking good in leather (who knew), and superb albums like The Headphone Masterpiece, which I just discovered about nine years late. Heck. So. good.
CPR – Claws Part 2 – Typhoon
The entire new album from Portland’s Typhoon may be the most perfect spring soundtrack ever; definitely on heavy rotation this month. This melodic, orchestral song weaves and builds slowly (over handclaps!), telling the story of one who sold everything that they didn’t want, and what they couldn’t sell they gave away. It’s part of why Craigslist is so popular in the springtime (well, that and Missed Connections, obv).
Yer Spring – Hey Rosetta!
This song starts quietly restrained, the “fucking around in the dark,” as they sing. It ends with rising up, and the explosive redemption of a full choir, like you walked into a cathedral and they were all singing for you. Reminiscent of fellow Canadians Arcade Fire, but with their own dazzling wash of color and joy.
Crop Circles Plus Legs – Like Pioneers
Clocking in at under two minutes, this primal song from Chicago’s Like Pioneers gives me what I want, and then stops before I’m sated. Sometimes it is good to be left hanging.
I’ll Be Around (feat Timbaland) – Cee-Lo
Earlier this year, Nick Hornby sent me this song as part of a delectable mix that’s way funkier than I claim to be capable of, when left to my own devices. I was walking around Minneapolis when I first listened to the opening lyrics here, and not only did I yelp out loud, I decided it was one of the greatest rhymes/opening lines ever penned. This song is also very good for the seasonal dancing and/or strutting.
Everyday – Vetiver
Simply put, one of the sunniest damn songs ever recorded.
Awake My Soul / Réveille mon âme – Mumford & Sons
Last summer after the splendor of Telluride, I discovered this humble French version of “Awake My Soul,” in a blooming Parisian courtyard. Since spring is about awakening, this works for me on the mix, x1000.
Bright Lit Blue Skies – Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti
I love how this Ariel Pink song sounds like it could soundtrack a groovy chase scene in a late Sixties episode of Batman. Bam! Pow!
Beautiful Lie – Ivan & Alyosha
Seattle’s Ivan & Alyosha wowed me at SXSW, and weave a slightly psychedelic pop sound that reminds me of Cotton Mather, a very good thing.
The World’s Greatest (R. Kelly cover) – Bonnie “Prince” Billy
I can’t stop listening to this cover lately; I am including it mostly because of the lyric about “I’m that little bit of hope, with my back against the ropes.” That’s a perfect metaphor for Spring, ain’t it?
Simple Girl – Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr
Spring needs whistling.
Are You Lightning? – Nada Surf
One of the best things about spring is the colossal thunder and lightning storms. Meteorological craziness, unhinged and beautiful and free. From my favorite Nada Surf album, this gorgeous gem asks “Are you lightning? Cuz I’m waiting.” This song (and this album) will forever remind me of the timid, terrifying beauty in new starts.
Cuyahoga (R.E.M. cover) – The Decemberists
The Decemberists take on one of my favorite old R.E.M. songs in the studio at KCRW, an ode to skinned knees and river beds, with a jangle that feels just right.
Tear The Fences Down – Eulogies
From their new album by the same name, Eulogies sing here about “Colorado snow, just a memory.” We know it’s returning by October, but for now let’s focus on the new green growing things.
Oslo Campfire – Port O’Brien
There’s a hazy nordic ebb throughout this Port O’Brien song that seemed to fit on this mix. I have a firepit outside my house, and this spring I am dedicated to the idea of using it more often. I love the smell of campfires, even moreso the next morning when my hair still smells like it.
No Time for Dreaming – Charles Bradley
For many of us, the freshness of spring is the perfect time for dreamin’. 62-year-old Brooklyn cook-turned-soul-singer Charles Bradley has no time for that, he sings. Why? Because he’s gotta get on up and do his thing. Fair enough, Charles. Totally fair use of springtime. Golden State – Delta Spirit
This one’s in here because a) Delta Spirit’s new album rocks and b) it’s a piano-pounding homage to my home state, where springtime doesn’t just arrive, it explodes. “These roads stretch a thousand miles…” and I want to see all of them.
Early Morning Rain (Gordon Lightfoot) – Paul Weller
Rain, rain, rain. I love everything about it, especially the smell. In Colorado we really only see rain in the springtime and then pretty much every afternoon in July. Weller’s voice here is so rich, as he sings of early morning rain, airplanes, travel, and pinging around far from home. After a busy spring of travel, this is a song I’ve listened to dozens of times in the past weeks, usually while I’m waiting on an airplane to take off.
Snow Is Gone – Josh Ritter
I have to close with this song; have to. It is the quintessential springtime song. There’s a live version from 2003 of Josh doing this song on KCRW, and he introduces it by explaining that it is “about how you’re rooting for spring as the home team.” Sometimes I listen to this in the cold months, just to remind me what’s coming, and what’s now here.
Wake up kids: today is the Christmas, birthday, and Valentine’s Day of the indie music world all rolled into one. Record Store Day is in its fourth year today, and you would be smart to head down to your local independent record store to celebrate the vibrant role they all play in keeping good music alive. There are also a slew of Record Store Day exclusives being offered today, so maybe break that piggy bank to take with you as well.
In the spirit of celebrating everything that’s right about Record Store Day today, Fuel/Friends has a special giveaway pack for one lucky reader.
To note all the excellent new releases that will be available today for the first time, the first item in the pack is the debut record from The Head and The Heart on vinyl. Sub Pop is releasing their album today, now remastered and with “Rivers and Roads” on it, with expanded liner notes / sweet art. You know by now why I like them; or you can read what I wrote for Sub Pop. Can’t wait to hear the record on warm, crackly vinyl.
The second item in the gift pack is to note all the re-releases coming out on vinyl today. For the first time, Matt Costa‘s 2006 debut record Songs We Sing is coming out on vinyl through the good folks at Brushfire Records. This is a sunny acoustic gem of an album that will serve you well all summer long, also one that will sound great on vinyl.
And finally, Fingerprints Records in Long Beach –a terrific independent record store– is contributing a signed poster from the in-store they are doing today with Brett Dennen. I bet your local record store is having musicians play amidst the stacks today as well.
To enter to win the Fuel/Friends RSD 2011 prize pack, leave me a comment telling me what you are doing today and why. I’ll pick one winner at the end of the weekend. I am in Chicago, so a whole new city beckons. I have my Reckless Records tshirt to guide me.
Eric Anderson is the core of Seattle’s Cataldo, and I love his music terrifically. I’ve written a few times before about him and included his songs on both my summer and fall mixes last year. There is something in the pointed honesty and cleverness of his lyrics, which when combined with the catchy melodies (banjo! singalongs! quiet handclaps!) reel me right on in. As he writes, the music “hopefully seems like it was composed by a hard worker with a mild taste for adventure,” which is an excellent summation.
His latest, greatest album Signal Flare came out in 2008, so it has been a long wait for some new music. Eric is finally is ready to release another, but needs a Kickstart. He has crafted the Kickstarter packages in finely dashing style too – in addition to the album you can get bonuses like a handwritten haiku, a pho date, a custom cover song, even what is apparently the best ice cream in all of Seattle. This is a man who is having some fun – and you can benefit. Please head over to his page; this is a rich, earthy, thoughtful, poignant album that needs to be heard.
Here is the gorgeous music video that Seattle videographer Christian Sorensen Hansen made of “Deep Cuts,” the opening track from the new album. Sorensen Hansen is the same distinctive director behind The Head and The Heart’s “Lost In My Mind” video — so evocative, his work.
I can’t tell which resonates in my heart louder: the song itself (“let’s begin at the end / of a bad year, with bad things at my back…“), or the combination of the sound of rain falling (!), the blanketing fog, the ocean horizon twinkling with lights, and the rising embers from the campfire:
PS – The new Cataldo album includes a re-worked electric version of “My Heart Is Calling,” which is good because I’ve listened to the version from Signal Flare about a jillion times.
Kelli Schaefer took me by complete surprise the first time I saw her perform, at my inaugural house show back in November. Her voice is massive and swells effortlessly (and shiver-inducingly) from deep places within her, just as her piercingly smart lyrics do. One of the most immediately riveting performers I have seen in years, she has silenced the crowd every time I have seen her since then. In her kinetic, can’t-take-my-eyes-off-of-you magnetism, a friend commented that she is reminiscent of The Tallest Man On Earth’s live show. While their music is divergent, they hold power over a crowd in the same way.
On the same gorgeous Saturday last month when The Head and The Heart performed in the historic Shove Chapel for me, Kelli sat high in the pews, listening underneath the stained glass windows. She took the stage herself to grace us all with two stripped and strong acoustic songs from her debut full-length album The Ghost of The Beast (2011, Amigo/Amiga Records). She was feeling a bit under the weather and apologized for her voice, to which all of us listening laughed out loud. She was incredible. She was magnetic.
I am thrilled to present her as the second Fuel/Friends Chapel Session.
Gone In Love – Kelli Schaefer
This song is one of the most gorgeous and compellingly authentic explorations of what true love looks like that I’ve ever heard. By true love I don’t mean roses and greeting cards — I mean wiping someone’s tears with the sleeve of your jacket, holding someone even though your arms are shaking, and singing hymns to someone you love as they are passing. Serious stuff, the times when we all need love the most. As Kelli sings, “When the burden is love, it is the only weight that ever was worth carrying.” Those of us sitting in the pews may have felt like we were hearing one of the truest sermons around, and by the end of the song I had silent tears running down my face but couldn’t say why. As the song says, “We will beat the nighttime bloody with this song, joy’s strong mallet.” It is a song to push back the darkness, with each other.
Ghost Of The Beast – Kelli Schaefer
Many of Kelli’s songs seem to wrestle honestly with faith and salvation, especially the way that it meets the punch-in-the-face reality of illness, desire, and failure. I appreciate this, very much. This song took on a different dimension as it rang out through the church (interfaith though it is) – “Oh mother, you taught me good, you made me want to do the things that I should/ you told me Jesus’ gonna make me a saint, gonna take my hand and make my life complete/ but the narrow path is closing in / sometimes I think I’m too fat to fit on it…” The song, like all her music, plumbs the depth and is beautiful because of her honesty. When she struck the last note and the song ended hanging cliffside, there were several seconds of stunned silence among us sitting there, we onlookers and the other band, and then we all started clapping as loudly as we could.
Some of my favorite Ryan Adams songs have always been those where he lets that soulful, bluesy wail go (see: “Hotel Chelsea Nights”). I miss that lately with the more jammy sound he’s been pursuing with The Cardinals, so I was thrilled when a blogger posted this new song he performed back in October at a benefit for Dave Eggers’ 826LA charity. I’ve made an mp3 and the sound quality is pretty dang decent. Dirty Rain (partial) – Ryan Adams
As one of my fellow Ryan Adams nerds assessed on the alt-country.org boards, “There is more soulful singing in those 2 minutes then on all of Cardinology or III/IV combined.” Agreed, and grateful.
I’d heard of 22-year-old Brit James Blake for the riveting imagination he brings to his hazy, glitchy downtempo music that is currently taking the UK (and beyond) by storm. The songs I had heard were glazed, breathy, blissful.
When I was in Los Angeles last week, my friend Garrett played me this Joni Mitchell cover that Blake did on BBC1, and we just sat sprawled on the couch and listened about ten times on repeat in the growing darkness. Neither of us moved to turn it off. It was nothing like what I had heard from Blake before. This cover is an elegy, the soulful excavation of the moment a heart actually breaks. The androgynous, haunting quality of his voice here immediately impacted and riveted me in a way that I can’t remember since Jeff Buckley, or maybe Antony & the Johnsons. Be prepared to bleed, as she warns.
Just before our love got lost you said
“I am as constant as a northern star”
and I said “constantly in the darkness
where’s that at?
if you want me I’ll be in the bar…”
On the back of a cartoon coaster, in the blue TV screen light
I drew a map of Canada, O Canada
with your face sketched on it twice
oh you’re in my blood like holy wine
you taste so bitter and so sweet
oh I could drink a case of you, darling
and I would still be on my feet
oh I would still be on my feet
Oh I am a lonely painter, I live in a box of paints
I’m frightened by the devil
and I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid
I remember that time you told me you said “Love is touching souls”
surely you touched mine
’cause part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time
oh, you’re in my blood like holy wine
you taste so bitter and so sweet
oh I could drink a case of you, darling
and I would still be on my feet
I would still be on my feet
I met a woman, she had a mouth like yours
she knew your life
she knew your devils and your deeds
and she said “go to him, stay with him if you can
but be prepared to bleed”
Oh but you are in my blood
you’re my holy wine
you’re so bitter, bitter and so sweet
oh, I could drink a case of you darling
still I’d be on my feet
Seven Swans Reimagined is a whole album of excellent Sufjan covers from indie artists including Joshua James, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and a band called Unwed Sailor that I once saw in Nashville (and bought their tshirt for an unwed sailor I know, as marketing). All profits benefit breast cancer research, also a worthy cause we can support. Go check it out and donate $10 for some beautiful tunes. That doleful cello is so rich on Joshua’s version:
I woke up bright and early in San Diego this morning to take the train back up to Los Angeles, where I am enjoying the weekend. For the record, the early train leaves at 7:39, not 7:49. Always double check.
So I went walking on the Del Mar beach instead and sang this song under my breath, over the sound of waves. It was, in a word, a pretty perfect morning.
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
His bluesy, understated album Pink Strat is out now on Brushfire Records, and features both Leslie Feist (he was her guitarist, she sings on two tracks) and members of the Great Lake Swimmers. Cover love! Feist is fond of covering his “Sunshine Blues,” and the album closes with this cover of Wreckless Eric’s “Whole Wide World” — also where he took his band name from. 
To note all the excellent new releases that will be available today for the first time, the first item in the pack is the debut record from 
The second item in the gift pack is to note all the re-releases coming out on vinyl today. For the first time, 
Name: Heather Browne
