Music News

As some of you may have noticed, we haven't been to many shows lately.  That's probably been confusing for some people who've come to think of this as a "music blog," just like the music posts once confused those who once thought of this as a "Buddhist blog." But hey, life is change baby, and we blog about whatever's on the minds of the various desks making up the editorial board of this blog.  We are legion . . .    

We're not sure why we haven't been to many shows lately, but that will change soon, if not tonight with The Orb at Terminal West.  But in case you're betting money, we're actually more likely to miss tonight's show than to make it.  For starters, we don't have tickets and even though the show's not sold out and tickets could probably be easily purchased at the door, the absence of tickets removes one compelling motivation to go.  Plus we've seen The Orb a couple of times already - it's a good show but like we've said, we've seen it - plus it's raining out (it's been dreary all day) and we had a meeting with some downtown clients today so we're tired.  We haven't completely thrown in the towel yet, but we wouldn't place any money on our making it tonight.

We'll definitely make it to The Earl tomorrow night, though.  We do have tickets for that one and others are counting on us to meet them there.  Besides, the show is Thor & Friends, with Wye Oak headlining, which should be great in the relatively intimate confines of The Earl.   But the very fact that we'll be at a show tomorrow night is another reason why we probably won't make it to tonight's show - back-to-back weeknight shows can be exhausting.

But after a few nights of recovery after Thor and Wye, we've got tickets to a Saturday night of Montreal show at Terminal West, and you can rest assured that we will be there.

We're also pretty sure we'll still be making it out to shows next year.  Today was a big day for festival announcements, including Knoxville's Big Ears Festival, and we like what we're seeing.  The full lineup for Big Ears in March 2019 includes:

Just like last year's Big Ears Festival, this incredible lineup is so completely up our alley it's almost unbelievable.  Who else could this festival be targeted for if not us?  Who else is a fan of both The Art Ensemble of Chicago (who we haven't seen since 1979 at Jonathan Swift's in Harvard Square) and Avey Tare (who we haven't seen since last July with Panda Bear performing Sung Tongs)? Who else likes both the Zen vocalist Meredith Monk and the all-woman folk trio Mountain Man? Speaking of folk, our favorite banjo player Bela Fleck is back again as well as Rhiannon Giddens (they both played last year).  And then there's Carla Bley, the composer of Ida Lupino, who we missed at Big Ears two years ago, but is coming back again this year.  We won't make the mistake of missing her twice - we last saw Bley perform at an outdoor set in Boston's Copley Square in 1978.  Speaking of 1978, we've been collecting Harold Budd records since he first started recording with Brian Eno back then, but we've never seen him live and there he is in the Big Ears lineup.  And who wouldn't be excited about Richard Thompson, Wadada Leo Smith, Bill Frisell, and Lonnie Holley.  Many of the rest we've never heard of, but they're in good company and we look forward to discovering them.

We've already spent a small fortune on VIP passes for Big Ears 2019, as well as a room at the downtown Hyatt right in the middle of the festivities.  Money well spent, but there were more announcements today as well.  Here's the lineup for Savannah's Stopover Festival:

A pretty strong lineup, but part of the reason that we haven't gone to Stopover before and probably won't this year either is that as the name implies, these sets are mostly by artists on their way to Austin's SXSW "stopping over" in Savannah for a gig and most of them schedule their next stop for Atlanta, so we can catch many of them right here at home without having to rent a room in Savannah.

But if we did want to go down to the Low Country for a show, we could always go to Charleston for High Water, which also announced its lineup today: 

That's an even stronger lineup than Stopover.

The strongest lineup of all may be announced tomorrow, when Atlanta's Shaky Knees Festival announces its lineup for May 2019.  For five years now, Shaky Knees has pretty reliably been putting on the best indie rock festival in the nation, and I have absolutely no clue who they will be announcing tomorrow.  But last year's festival, although exhilarating, left us exhausted and we suspected then that 2018 might have been our last Shaky Knees - we'll leave it for the kids to celebrate - unless the lineup is so overwhelming convincing that we simply can't refuse to go.  We'll see tomorrow. 

Lastly, but certainly not leastly, Jonathan Richman will return to the Avondale Towne Cinema on February 19.   He has a new album out, a dronish set of songs featuring former Talking Head Jerry Harrison on keys, but as always he will be touring with Tommy Larkins on the drums.  You can listen to the new album on the widget below - we recommend Track 3, which he previewed the last time he played the Avondale Towne back in '16, which seemed especially relevant that evening, coming as it was just a few days after Pumpernickel's election.