pretty good show tomorrow at Kilby Court

It's a Saddle Creek extravaganza at Kilby Court tomorrow.

Here's the lineup:
Son Ambulance
Maria Taylor
Nik Freitas (who, if I'm not mistaken, was just signed to Connor Oberst's Team Love record label)
Johnathan Rice (who isn't signed to Saddle Creek, but good nonetheless)

If it were just Maria Taylor and Nik Freitas I'd want to go, but throw on Son Ambulance and Johnathan Rice and this show just became really really awesome.

You're hearing this from another venues blog so you know it has to be good, but if you don't believe me, watch these:

Let's make this short and sweet.

By now it should be painfully obvious that I'm a sucker for some good indie folk. Hopefully you do too, or else most of the things I talk about are of no use to you.

I stumbled upon this Colorado artist on accident, and I'm really happy that I did. Gregory Alan Isakov reminds me of Rufus Wainwright but with a guitar, or Jeff Tweedy with more banjo, or linkin park but with more rapping... (that's comedy). Awesome folk melodies. Good singing. How can you say "no" to a banjo? I'll be listening to this guy for a while I think. I'll have to go in to his albums, and touring, and all that jazz on another post, because he deserves it.

As always, here is his myspace, however, sadly there is no video yet.

Anais Mitchell or I'm reclaiming my street cred

It's really too bad I didn't write this post a couple months ago. If I had I could have alerted you to the fact that Anais Mitchell was about to head out for a European tour, and then tour for a few weeks across the states. As it stands now, it looks like she is just finishing her US tour with a few shows in the northeast, and then only popping up to play here and there afterwards. I'm always telling you guys that you can't live in the past though, we've got to move on with our lives. Right? Don't I always say that?

So, I'll just provide you with a link to a GREAT Anais MItchell song, and a link to her myspace, and highly recommend her to you. I was recently fortunate enough to catch her show in Austin, TX and it definitely left me wanting more. Her music is unique, passionate, and just downright really nice to listen to. She completely stole the show in Austin, and I really think that we'll see big things from her in the future. There is one little issue about working on a "folk opera", which I commend her for going after, but as soon as she gets that out of her system I'll look forward to another album to follow up 2007's "the brightness".

Anyway, as I always do, I'll leave you with a video... Watch it.

Utah Arts Festival opening night review

Last night I made it out to the arts festival and had a great time. I was only there for a couple hours, so by no means is this a review of the entire event, or even of the entire night seeing as I had to take off a little premature, but you'll take what I give you ;)

Artists:
I was incredibly impressed with local artists Iosua & Andrienne Taeoalii, coming from Murray, UT. They had some really great spray paint picture of various popular icons, both modern and historical. I'm certainly not an art critic, so forgive me if I sound green, but their stuff was really great. It really wasn't all that expensive, their pieces sold for $65, and if I had and extra $65 that I didn't have to spend on gas I totally would have picked up a spray painted picture of Che Gueverra.

Runner up, the guy that made this stuff. Sorry whoever you are, I forgot your name, but I remember your website to buy your stuff, so that has to count for something.

Music:
Usually when I'm watching a band and the 60's generation, who are now well in to their 50's, start doing there woodstock dancing I realize it's time to leave. Last night was different. Janiva Magness rocked my world. I know this is probably going to ruin my street cred completely, but I can't sit here and just lie to myself! I won't do it! She's a blues singer, and her band just did there thing last night. Everyone was dancing on the grass, kissing loved ones, drinking goats milk (I know weird right?), and just having a good time. By far the musical high light of the night.

I was really disappointed in Kid Madusa just cause I think Linsday Heath is awesome, and usually I really like the music that she makes. This time I didn't even want to stick around and finish listening to the set... sad.

yes i did always wonder what eminem and regina spektor sounded like together

go buy girl talk's feed the animal's tonight. it's real good. nice review.

sorry...it's a must have for anyone the likes flosstradamus and stuff like that. gregg gillis takes about 200 different samples and somehow mixes them all together into one seamless piece of music. and he's good at it, but he doesn't take himself too seriously. for example: he throw m.i.a. over the old cranberries song. he also throws in the likes of metallica, ac/dc, queen, dexys midnight runners, ll cool j, salt n pepa, of montreal, sting, beastie boys, and well, you get the idea. you'll catch yourself smiling as you listen to this cd because it's funny to hear eminem layered over regina spektor.

girltalk is doing a download it at your own price a la radiohead's in rainbows. i'll save you a google and tell you to click here. if you buy it for more than $5 you get some cool stuff and if you spend more than $10 you get even more stuff. i seriously think this is the new face of the music industry, but that's another post for another day (or month the way i've been posting!).

and as always, thanks to lindsay for the heads up.

How many of you subscribe to the interface?

It's a free video podcast that you can subscribe to on itunes. I have to give credit to my friend Kate for telling me about it a couple of months ago, and I have no excuse for only writing about it now. Sorry. If you don't want to go the itunes route you can also check out spinner.com to find it.

Anywho, their latest podcast was from Britain's own Jamie Lidell, and I loved it. Totally worth the free download, and minutes of my time... and I figured if there was ever a time for you bloggers to jump on the podcast bandwagon, now would be it.

They usually have great artists perform, I'd say about 90% of the time, and a new one comes out about every week. Go ahead and subscribe, cause it's free, and a no brainer, and you love to do things that I tell you to do... Don't lie to me, I know you do.

Here's a video...

alright, here is something you can dig

How many of you are all encompassingly getting down with this British soul revival thing going on? I know you are, or else Amy Winehouse wouldn't be in the news every single day of my life...

Eli "Paperboy" Reed is a new artist putting out some soul vibes, and of course I'm enjoying it, or I wouldn't be telling you about it. His myspace says he's from Massachetts, but looks he's taking advantage of the british thing as he's about to take off for a European tour. He just released an album in April, and with the help of modern technology and Al Gore, you can purchase it online!

He's got a style that reminds me of upbeat Otis Redding songs, although it would be unfair to compare the two any further. For those of you who enjoy listening to a more pure 50's and 60's soul sound you'll enjoy Reed, if you prefer the more modern stuff that people like Mark Ronson is doing to soul these days it might not necessarily be your thing. Give him a chance either way, it's easy to listen to, dance to, cry to, make eggs to, write blogs to, stare blankly at the wall because you didn't sleep very much to, create run on sentences to, and other things.

At the very least, here's a video: