DANA SWIMMER @ ATH FEST

6/20 - 40 Watt w/ Tedo Stone, Brothers, and David Barbe and the Quick Hooks

6/22 - Little King’s w/ Ruby the Rabbitfoot, Party Dolls, and Little Gold

6/23 - Athfest Freeklife Party @ The Bamboo Forest

Hurray For The Riff Raff - My Dearest Darkest Neighbor coming via This Is American Music / Mod Mobilian 7/1/13.

“These are songs I’ve gathered over the years. I’ve taken them with me wherever I go. For a musician who lives most of her life on the road, the songs you know and love are one of your only consistencies. They carry a feeling of home. These songs have been there for me in a dark hour. They’ve guided me down long roads that stretched through time. They have illuminated me on the human spirit, its unbreakable will, its strength and power.  The songwriters who’ve penned them have inspired me endlessly. I have studied them because I hope to never cease my education on how to write a good tune. I threw on two songs I’ve written that were building blocks for me. These are my attempts at the folk tradition of writing a song where someone else left off. I try to learn from the greats. These are soul songs, let’s sing them together. “  - Alynda lee Segarra

Track Listing

1. Delta Momma Blues (Written by Townes Van Zandt)                                                           

2. Fine and Mellow (Written by Billie Holiday, adapted by Alynda lee Segarra)                                 

3. My Morphine (Written by Gillian Welch)                                                                                

4. Black Jack Davey (Traditional)                                                                        

5. Western Cowboy (Written by Lead Belly arranged by Alynda lee Segarra)                           

6. Jealous Guy (Written by John Lennon)                                                                                

7. Just A Heart (Written by James Hand)                                                                                

8. Angel Ballad (Written by Alynda lee Segarra, based on the Gillian Welch composition “Ruination Day”)             

9. Cuckoo (Written by Alynda lee Segarra)                                                                              

10. People Talkin’ (Written by Lucinda Williams)                                                                    

11. River (Written by Joni Mitchell)                                                                                        

12. I’m Goin’ Away (Written by Elizabeth Cotten)                                                                  

13. Lonesome I Could Cry (Written by Hank Williams)                                                      

14. My Sweet Lord (Written by George Harrison)

Bonnie Whitmore - There I Go Again OUT TODAY!!!

Itunes - https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/there-i-go-again/id652904344

Cd and/or download - http://bonniewhitmore.bandcamp.com/

 

Bonnie Whitmore’s last album had a body count and a title, Embers to Ashes, that implied a fiery finality. There are broken bones and hard lessons learned on Whitmore’s new album, but its title - There I Go Again - suggests less ominous themes.

“I feel like I’ve grown up a lot,” she says. “I turned 30 this year, and I’ve been in the business 15 of those years. Songwriting as a profession is a humbling career choice. To write songs that are accessible and relatable as possible required a level of maturity and focus that I have strived to attain on this record. It’s a less self-indulgent record then Embers. Embers To Ashes was what I needed to get through that period of my life. There I Go Again is a celebration of success and failure. Plus, nobody wants to hear two breakup albums in a row.”

Fittingly, the music also reflects a radiant change of direction. The rootsiness of Embers isn’t absent, but the songs on There I Go Again are decidedly less country sounding. Keyboards are played up in places a steel guitar might have inhabited, the drums are more prominent, and Whitmore lets her big voice run through some big, inviting choruses.

“We knew what we had in these songs,” says Whitmore. “It’s not the same Americana sound that we had with Embers. This one is a lot more put together, and I think it comes across as more polished. It’s definitely a pop record, and everyone loves a good pop record.”

She cites Tom Petty’s ability to balance the earthiness of roots music with hooky pop parts as the model she aspired to on the album. “He makes these amazingly awesome pop songs, but is also able to keep them within the lines. You could hear how beautiful the melodies are beyond the grit of rock and roll,” she says. “I struggle with the question - ‘who inspired you?’ - but Petty’s music has, and always will inspire me.”

Whitmore also credits her parents, both the music they chose to play at home in Denton and on the radio, and also her father’s band, which featured Whitmore starting at age 8, as well as her sister Eleanor.

By 15, Whitmore was playing professional gigs outside the family band. She played and sang in Hayes Carll’s band for a while, and recently she spent quite a bit of time touring and recording with the Mastersons, the husband/wife band featuring sister Eleanor and Houston native and guitarist Chris Masterson.

They’re good family to have: Both of them play on Whitmore’s albums, which Masterson produced.

There have been tough gigs for Whitmore along the way. She went to Kickstarter to finance the new record. There she included a video with some footage from a particularly undesirable gig performing in a sports bar beneath the glow of a giant flat-screen TV.

“Those gigs can be hard to take,” she says. “You’re playing three hours to a group of people that do not seem to realize you’re there. It can be a humbling, disheartening experience.”

But her album title speaks to a commitment to her music. “It seemed like a pretty good title for a second album,” she says. “It provides a sense of diving into the deep and seeing if it floats. That’s what an artist has to do when releasing music now. Nobody is really doing it for the money, we’re doing this because we love it, and that’s the only reason to do it at all. There’s nothing else I’d rather do. Sometimes you have three people come out to a show sometimes you have 300. To me it’s simple. I play music because it’s what I do. Those who want to hear it are what makes it worth it.” - andrew dansby

6/15 Bottletree Cafe  - Birmingham, Alabama

Great Peacock - Dorado - Astral Plain Jane (ft. members of Cosmonaut on Vacation and Teen Getaway)

Bonnie Whitmore’s There I Go Again drops next Tuesday 6/11 on This Is American Music.  Check out the single “Too Much Too Soon” below.

Below is the first single off of Kent Goolsby’s debut full-length Trophies of Youth coming out via This Is American Music 8/6/13.  

Tedo Stone, Ciara…same thing.  Tedo’s Good Go Bad coming 7/9 on This Is American Music. 

Cosmonaut on Vacation / Future Primitives @ Parkside in Birmingham 

Teen Getaway - Hits and Missives out today

buy on cd + download: http://teengetaway.bandcamp.com/

itunes - https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/hits-and-missives/id652903718

teen getaway - hits and missives - this is american music release - may 28, 2013

So here’s the thing: There are lots of bands in Birmingham, Alabama. Always have been. Good ones, too. Rock bands. Loud-ass rock bands. But here’s the other thing: You’ve never heard ‘em. And why would you? Aside from the late, great Verbena and the recently reformed Man or Astroman?, very few of the Magic City’s finest rockers have found an audience past Nashville (if that).

But things are definitely changing. Acts like Alabama Shakes, Jason Isbell, and The Civil Wars have rightly garnered national attention thanks, in no small part, to the allure of The South’s rich musical history – blues, country, R&B… The South is modern music’s Fertile Crescent. Jazz was born here. Rock was born here. Sun Ra, despite his celestial origins, was buried here – and that’s important mainly because Alabama has a lot of wonderful weird.

Teen Getaway is part of that wonderful weird. The band’s latest album, Hits & Missives, is a fine companion through Alabama’s musical landscape — one that travels the Lost Highway with Pere Ubu, Television, XTC, Throwing Muses, The Wedding Present, and R.E.M. as well as Hank Williams. There’s a little twang, a little bump, but a whole lot of what the band calls “Bubblegum Skronk”: Catchy songs battered and fried by copious distortion.

For a band that was originally conceived as a recording project, Teen Getaway has only released a handful of studio recordings. Ask the band about why that is and you’ll likely get a shrug and some mumbling about timing or luck – two things that are essential to a band whose strengths lie not in studio trickery but by ensemble playing. Together Teen Getaway writes songs that are often birthed by improvisation, refined by Oblique Strategies, and then pummeled into a well-oiled machine… Albeit one held together by duct tape or the odd piece of thread. But who cares? Hits & Missives was worth the wait.

Featuring 13 tracks in a mere 39 minutes, Hits & Missives is a record ready for people who are once again ready for Fenders and fuzz. . Despite the standard line-up of two guitars, a bass, and some drums, Teen Getaway’s every squeak serves the melody. The dual guitars of Janet Simpson and Jim Fahy lead the charge, but Andy Sizemore’s bass always carries a key melody, and Spencer C. Shoults drumming – both driving and economical – always find the right place to sing along.

Lyrically, the songs of Hits & Missives deal with a variety of themes and strange characters, including (but not limited to) drunken lunatics, stoned cosmologists, sexual deviants, occult dabblers, and fallen heroes. There’s also a song sung in French. With each song comes an anxiety that’s worked out via each character’s particular dialogue and its twitchy musical accompaniment. Some find what they’re looking for. Others don’t. All long for release… But, then again, who doesn’t?

A large chunk of Hits & Missives was recorded live over the course of cold weekend in January, with Simpson and Fahy later adding vocals and sordid overdubs. The songs were then mixed, slammed to 1/4” tape, and turned back into 1’s and 0’s — passing through a vintage Neve console all the while.

When not tending to Teen Getaway duties, its members are involved in other musical projects. Simpson has created quite a name for herself thanks both to her other band, Delicate Cutters and her involvement in the latest (and greatest) incarnation of James Jackson Toth’s enduring Freak Folk ensemble, Wooden Wand. Shoults and Sizemore also serve as the rhythm section of one of Birmingham’s most beloved punk outfits, Nowhere Squares. Fahy creates rock songs and soundscapes under the name First Kentucky Post and helped launch Birmingham-based record label, Communicating Vessels (home to Man or Astroman?, The Great Book of John, Sanders Bohlke, The Grenadines, and The Green Seed).

Hits & Missives comes to the world via This Is American Music – an up-and-coming label out of Atlanta who have become home to fellow Birmingham rockers Dorado, Cosmonaut on Vacation, not to mention a slew of other fantastic rockers from the southeast (including Glossary – who’s mercurial guitarist, Todd Beene, still has the guts of an old Teen Getaway album hiding in some forgotten hard drive). Needless to say, the band is glad to be in such fine company.

Oh: One more thing: Don’t forget to play it LOUD!!! Released by: This Is American Music Release/catalogue number: TIAM0024 Release date: May 28, 2013