A brief hiatus in posts...

Please bear with me because there will be a short hiatus here... it will last until the beginning of the coming week but with it should come rewards, or at least I hope so. In the meantime here a a few more memories from Green Man 2016.  Two acts that call Devon home:

Sam Green and The Midnight Heist, Chai Wallah stage, Friday evening, Green Man 2016.

Ardyn, Walled Garden stage, early Saturday afternoon, Green Man 2016.

The reason for this hiatus is End Of The Road Fesival 2016. This is a picture of a band that is performing there but one that I took at Green Man 2016. 

From Athens, Georgia, this is Mothers. Walled Garden stage, Friday afternoon.
Mothers is a four-piece band; this is Kristine Leschper and Drew Kirby thereof.

It takes a determined attitude to entitle your début LP 'When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired'.

New Music - 2015 - Part 7 - Ruby the RabbitFoot - New As Dew

I'll come clean here - this is actually a 2014 release - but I doubt that many in the UK are aware of the artist who calls herself Ruby The RabbitFoot. She hails from Athens, Georgia.

To some extent one of its greatest virtues is that it isn't challenging, but that can be a good thing in multiple ways. It is acoustic pop, more or less, and there is little country influence either. It certainly isn't all cheerful. This I expect was quite deliberate and, while that was a dangerous hand to play in 2014, I think it worked out for the best here.
It is the music equivalent of comfort food of the best kind (macaroni cheese and fish fingers with ketchup, possibly) and spending the evening wrapped up in a duvet in front of the fire. I'm planning to test this theory, believe me; especially if this coming weekend turns cold, as it is predicted it might.
New As Dew hints at the forthcoming spring and I can't wait for that. It is released by Normaltown Records and the LP is available on vinyl. I'm now curious to listen to the other artists on the label. If you don't actively go looking for new music then you don't find much at all.
It is not the kind of album from which I'm likely to choose stand-out tracks, even when I have listened to it more often, but that is no bad thing either. 

EOTR 2012 - Thoughts on new music 2

The reformed Grandaddy and Grizzly Bear were both awesome and some of my friends might have regarded one or other as their own particular highlight of the festival but were I forced to do so, and somebody just posed this question, the highlight of End of The Road Festival 2012 for me was Alabama Shakes. This is, in some ways, a justification for buying an 'early bird' ticket. Just like trusting labels it is a convenient opt in - I know that I can trust the EOTR organizers to put on more bands that I want to see/hear than will actually be possible - and so I already have a ticket for EOTR 2013 (and NDH 2013, too). This means that as the booked artists become known, over the ensuing months, the excitement is purely that of anticipation. When I came to know that EOTR 2012 had Alabama Shakes on the list anticipation started to take full control. I had pre-ordered the début album 'Boys and Girls' on vinyl and at the first opportunity, so I already knew the songs quite well, and then this happened...

Alabama Shakes, the Woods Stage, at about 19:45 on Saturday.
Songs that do not appear on the album were awesome too.

  

This is soul-blues of the of the highest order and they are generous with it too appearing for a second time, on the Big Top Stage on Sunday evening and also various other unadvertised performances. This is another picture from the Woods Stage on Saturday.

Simply astonishing. 

Brittany Howard does have a phenomenal voice on the recording and yet still chooses to wear glasses while performing live, simply out of choice.  It is quite the statement of who she is and this authenticity is at the heart of Alabama Shakes. When heard live that voice makes the vinyl recording sound rather ordinary and, good-as-she-is with guitar and there is no doubt about that either, live the band is tight as hell.
Live music probably doesn't get much better than this but please feel free to prove me wrong.

Now explain this...

It is what live music is really about: 02:40 BST on September 3, 2012.
They are as thick as thieves.