After years playing with big R&B orchestras, including his own Nashville-based group, The Dynamites, Walker has begun performing with a smaller, more intimate backing band in what he calls a soul-jazz style.
Author: Kyle Petersen
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Bluegrass stalwart Town Mountain hones its sound on a new album
Southern Crescent will also benefit from a new tact on the business side of things. The LP is being released via LoHi Records, a new label out of Greensboro, backed by entrepreneur Jim Brooks, singer-songwriter veteran Todd Snider and Railroad Earth fiddle player Tim Carbone, among others.
Chapel Hill’s Mount Moriah filters Southern roots through a singular vision
Heather McEntire and Jenks Miller of Mount Moriah both come from unlikely musical places. The singer previously fronted the post-punk renegade Bellafea, while the guitarist crafted sprawling, often droning compositions in the heavy-psych/metal band Horseback.
Unapologetically Southern
For all of the obvious sonic reverence and Southern hip-hop lineage, Big K.R.I.T. is first and foremost one ferocious rapper. The Meridian, Miss.-based MC performs at The Orange Peel Wednesday, Dec. 9.
Annabelle’s Curse continues to evolve past obvious comparisons
The story of the Bristol, Tennessee-based Annabelle’s Curse begins, as so many band origin stories do, in the vicinity of a college campus. “I had a mutual friend who invited me over for a party,” says guitarist Zach Edwards. There, he met singer-songwriter Tim Kilbourne. “We ended up playing music together and I kind of just never went home.” Annabelle’s Curse performs at The Grey Eagle Sunday, Dec. 6.
The Juan Benavides Group moves its weekly residency to The Millroom
The local world music outfit has outgrown its popular spot at 5 Walnut. The move to The Millroom triples capacity and promises room for dancing.
The Milk Carton Kids’ contemporary take on American folk music
The Milk Carton Kids are really just two Los Angeles-based singer-songwriters — Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale — who figured out that they sounded good playing together. But to the rest of the Americana world, the two are magic in a bottle, blending the fraught folk weariness and preternatural guitar picking of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings with the fragile pop harmonies of Simon & Garfunkel.
Watkins Family Hour takes its casual, intimate vibe on tour
Sean and Sara Watkins, the brother-and-sister duo who rose to fame as youngsters in acoustic trio Nickel Creek, alongside virtuoso mandolin player Chris Thile, started the Watkins Family Hour as a monthly residency in Los Angeles over a decade ago. It was a way to play music in an informal setting. That show comes to The Grey Eagle for two nights, Friday and Saturday, Sept. 11 and 12.
Steep Canyon Rangers celebrate new record and 10th anniversary of Mountain Song Festival
The band launches its ninth studio album, Radio, and performs on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 11 to 13, as part of Mountain Song Festival. That event was started by the Steeps and celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.
Rock ‘n’ roll survivalists
For the past few years, J. Roddy Walston & the Business, who play The Grey Eagle on Friday, June 12, have been slowly emerging as the next great rock ‘n’ roll saviors.
Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan delves into his love of post-punk for new album
In some respects, the sound recalls the musician’s early records as Portastatic, his longtime side-project away from Superchunk. That outfit saw him experimenting with four-track home recordings that made ample use of keyboards and drum machines.
Sound values: How LEAF’s eclectic lineup defines the festival’s ethos
The 2015 lineup for LEAF, which prides itself on its globally conscious reach, is unsurprisingly excellent. Topping the bills each night are acts that range from soul revival firebrand Charles Bradley & his Extraordinaires to Australian world-roots act Xavier Rudd & the United Nations, demonstrating the festival’s knack for mixing quality bedrock American music with an eclectic range of styles that span the Earth.
Phosphorescent bluegrass: The Punch Brothers tackle 21st-century smartphone stress
Chris Thile stays pretty busy. When Mountain Xpress caught up with him, the McArthur genius and virtuoso mandolinist was just about to board a plane for St. Paul, Minn. There, his band Punch Brothers was scheduled to perform, and Thile was slotted to guest-host A Prairie Home Companion for a couple of weeks. The variety […]
Rising stand-up star Hannibal Buress downplays his Bill Cosby moment
It was the 31-year-old Chicagoan’s casual stand-up riffing on the Bill Cosby rape allegations that sparked a media firestorm. Buress went from being a quickly rising comedian to the guy who inadvertently brought down the biggest black entertainer in history.
Atlanta’s Suno Deko crafts wide-eyed, loop-based experimental pop
Even a fleeting experience with the music of Suno Deko will inevitably be a pleasant experience. The shimmering, experimental-pop project of Atlanta-based musician David Courtright takes the stage at The Mothlight on Sunday, Nov. 9. Building his songs primarily on intertwining, gently cascading electric guitar lines and sinewy vocal parts in the vein of Ben […]
Sharon Van Etten returns to The Grey Eagle on Tuesday, Oct. 21
Sharon Van Etten first appeared on the national music scene in 2009, with her debut album Because I Was In Love. Her debut was in a fairly conventional singer-songwriter fashion. Armed with nothing much more than an acoustic guitar, a collection of songs about a bad breakup (they were almost too difficult to listen to) […]
The Afghan Whigs play The Orange Peel
These days ’90s alt-rock band reunions are a dime a dozen. Then again, there really wasn’t another ’90s band like The Afghan Whigs. When its major-label debut, Gentleman, dropped in 1993, the group’s sprawling soul-and-R&B-inflected rock histrionics and dapper style stood out among a crowded field of flannel-clad grunge upstarts. The Greg Dulli-led outfit went […]
Harvest Records celebrates a decade in business with Transfigurations II music festival
Although “pretty much everybody” told them it wasn’t a good idea, Matt Schnable and Mark Capon opened Harvest Records in 2004. “We were just out of college and pretty headstrong about it,” says Schnable. “We figured even if were open just a year, at least we had seen something through.” The West Asheville-based store was […]
Case file: Singer-songwriter Neko Case brings the conversation back to her music
Since the release of last year’s The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, her sixth album as a solo artist, Neko Case can’t seem to quit talking about gender. Songs like “Man” and “I’m From Nowhere” added to her collection of tunes that elliptically reject […]
David Wax Museum becomes a family band
When David Wax Museum first emerged on the national Americana scene in 2010, it felt like an exhilarating step forward for American roots music. Effortlessly blending Mexican folk elements and instruments into a mix of Appalachian old-time and modern indie rock, David Wax and Suz Slezak seemed to intuitively understand how traditional music should grow and […]