Listening Party: The Truth About Lies, Shawn Gallaway and Dominoes

This week, we start with local “acoustic, emo and indie” duo

The Truth About Lies. Vocalist Blake Westbrook and guitar/harmonica/piano player Tyler Mundy don’t seem to aspire to greatness, instead proclaiming via their MySpace bio that they are “just some band from Asheville who enjoys playing music.” You can get the basic idea of their sound from the song “Dear Father.”

Shawn Gallaway has a mission with his music. It’s all about “empowering people to take caring, positive action in their lives and in the world right now … through both his music and art.” His music appears to carry these themes, bearing titles such as “Go Gratitude,” “New Energy Movement” and “I Choose Love” (which we suggest as a starting point on your Gallaway experience). He also bears a striking resemblance to a Night Rider-era David Hasselhoff.

Lastly, we’ve recently found the official

Dominoes page on MySpace. You may wonder why a local rap artist with less than 500 friends would need to make the distinction — perhaps there are hordes of potential impersonators out there — but at least he’s making things clear from the start. There’s not much in the way of background on Dominoes (who, despite the plural of the name, seems to be an individual), but we do know him to be a “young gutta a** n***a straight from da SOUTH!!!!!!” We suggest starting with the

133t-enabled “5ouf 5id3 5ouljah.”

Now, it’s your turn. Tell us what you think by posting your comments in the fields below.

— Steve Shanafelt, A&E editor

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8 thoughts on “Listening Party: The Truth About Lies, Shawn Gallaway and Dominoes

  1. TinaT

    My favorite this week is without a doubt Shawn “Hasselhoff” Gallaway. Sweet sounding voice and nice guitar chops. Thanks, Steve, for bringing him to my attention.

  2. soulja

    i’m really enjoying the Official Dominoes tracks. Good wordplay and metaphors on “Show you how to…”, “…Straight to the Mountains, we skip hills”
    i’m pretty sure they are a group, though, or have a lot of guests (such as Hell Relle on “Make em lean”)
    plus, Show you what a Hustla do” is a nice hustlas’-ball kind of tale of ‘the game’ here in the lovely asheville housing pro-jects, and “Show you how…” (from Da Takeova Mixtape) is probably the best produced track, with plenty of talented wordplay from a line up of guests.
    not exactly lil wayne or TI, but still very talented, informed, and relevant ‘hustla music’
    “Why you talkin so loud, is you the Police?”

  3. soja

    well, actually, someone fixed the link.

    when the story was first posted it was a link back to the same story. i had to search for “asheville rapper dominoes” on myspace and then fish around a bit.

  4. Jay

    I was not impressed by any of the artists. Not that they aren’t talented, but they are just not my thing.

    1. The Truth About Lies – Too whiny for me. It’s sort of like a teenage Ben Folds Five but much whinier. Again, this probably has most to do with my personal taste. The musicians seem talented and I think they’ve figured out how to make some decent recordings via home studio. That is commendable.

    2.Shawn Gallaway – Nice recordings. Each song has different instruments and the guy has put together something substantial here.

    But it’s too cheesy for me. To much new age ‘just love’ stuff for me.

    3. Dominoes – What can I say? I guess my only compliment would be “it rhymes”.

    With lines like…
    “treat you like a bitch and put the barrel in your mouth”

    I’m having a tough time getting into it.

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