Category Archives: Music

Gary Clark Jr.

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Here’s a new figure bursting onto the R&B guitar scene in the last few years, Gary Clark Jr. Here’s his bio and two of his songs, ‘Don’t Owe You A Thang’ and ‘Bright Lights’. He has a new EP Bright Lights and a self-titled debut album.

Rarely does an artist explode onto the music scene with the force and impact of a comet. But when it does happen — as it did when 26-year-old singer-guitarist Gary Clark Jr. delivered an incendiary debut performance of his song “Bright Lights” at Eric Clapton’s 2010 Crossroads Guitar Festival last June — the result is magical. Funky, hip, and badass, Gary Clark Jr. is a rocking soul man for a new generation.

Weaned on John Lee Hooker, Lightnin Hopkins, and T-Bone Walker, Clark fuses his deep blues influence with a love of classic hip-hop and contemporary soul. His voice weaves between a melodic lilt and a seasoned blues howl with his guitar licks dancing and dodging between and behind the beat as if the essence of Snoop and Dre loom in his head by way of the Mississippi Delta. The virtuosity Clark displays, and the tone he rings from his cherry-red Epiphone Casino guitar, put most modern rock shredders to shame.

Born and raised in Austin, TX, Clark began playing guitar at age 12. He performed small gigs throughout his early teens before popping up on the radar of legendary promoter Clifford Antone, owner of Austin blues club Antone’s. Through Clifford’s connections, Clark was soon sitting in with and learning from an array of musical icons, including Jimmie Vaughan. Vaughan, and others in the Austin music community, mentored Clark along his path, facilitating his steady rise on the Texas music scene. His peers have showered him with acclaim for his galvanizing live performances. In 2001, Austin’s mayor, Kirk Watson, declared May 3rd to be “Gary Clark Jr. Day.” Clark was 17 years old.

Clark went on to win the Austin Music Award for Best Blues and Electric Guitarist on three separate occasions, in addition to receiving awards from various blues magazines and associations around the country. After playing the nationally televised show Austin City Limits and touring with such artists as Jimmie Vaughan, Pinetop Perkins, and Doyle Bramhall II, Clark released two self-produced albums, and composed the original score for the film Full Count. Clark’s creative versatility and love for not just blues, but also soul, hip-hop, classic rock, and jam bands, has allowed him to transcend his own musical talents. He starred alongside Danny Glover and Stacy Keach in John Sayles’ 2007 film Honeydripper.

In 2010, Clark was the only young newcomer to be selected by Eric Clapton to perform at the Crossroads Guitar Festival, where he performed with Doyle Bramhall II and Sheryl Crow. A DVD of the show, released last November, led to Clark’s signing with Warner Bros. Records for whom he is currently working on his major-label debut album. Clark’s singular talent has also attracted a bevy of artist support, including accolades from Sheryl Crow, Citizen Cope, Damian Marley, Ron Wood, and Questlove. As the latter recently Tweeted after witnessing a December performance at New York’s Brooklyn Bowl: “I don’t think y’all understand the greatness that is in front of you. Gary Clark Jr. is kickin’ ass and takin’ names.”

Mississippi John Hurt – Monday Morning Blues

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Here’s a follow up to Friday’s post with another venerable Mississippi blues man doing his thing:

You See Me Laughin’

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Here’s some Blues for the weekend:

You See Me Laughin’ is a personal journey into the lives and music of the last of the hill country bluesmen who’ve kept their music alive on the back porches and in the tiny juke joints of the Mississippi backwoods.

This documentary is a must-see for blues fans world-wide. It features many blues artists who would remain virtually unknown outside of their rural areas were it not for the efforts of the good folks at Fat Possum Records. The artists featured include D.L. Burnside, T-model Ford, Asie Payton and others. Pop stars Bono and Iggy Pop make comments about the artists and the genre. This documentary clearly shows that the blues musicians featured have truly “paid their dues”. Unfortunately some of them have since passed away. This well-produced documentary keeps their music alive for others to appreciate.

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yKVjpCDg1U

Part 3:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXJgyz1rQ_k

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz_DmvoI2-Q

Bonus: Here’s a great site dedicated to R.L. Burnside, another legendary Mississippi Delta Blues player who passed away in 2005.

Basin Street Blues

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Via Boing Boing, here’s an interesting take on a New Orleans classic, ‘Basin Street Blues’, from Kid Koala and a Louis Armstrong performance below that from 1964:

Storm Corrosion – Drag Ropes

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From the self-titled album featuring PT’s Steven Wilson and Opeth’s Mikael Akerfeldt, Storm Corrosion goes on sale May 8th as a special edition blu-ray or available via iTunes or Amazon MP3.

From the biography on Amazon:

Storm Corrosion is the coming to fruition of a meeting of musical minds that has had fans of adventurous, progressive and heavy music shivering with anticipatory excitement for many years.

 

Storm Corrosion is unlike anything you have ever heard. It is collaboration between two of the modern era of progressive music’s greatest and most revered artists – Steven Wilson, prolific sonic polymath and frontman with UK prog standard bearers Porcupine Tree, and Mikael Åkerfeldt, leader and chief creative driving force for Swedish progressive metal legends Opeth. The resulting album takes the listener on an unprecedented journey into realms yet undiscovered.
“We never discussed what we were going to do,” recalls Åkerfeldt. “I went down to hang out at Steven’s house, and we drank wine and talked about music, but neither of us had anything prepared. We wrote the song ‘Drag Ropes’ [Storm Corrosion’s opening track] that first night, and we both thought it was pretty cool. We’d never heard anything like it and it doesn’t really sound like our bands. We found our own niche, right then and there.”

 

“It was special, different and intriguing,” agrees Wilson. “We ran in the opposite direction of the idea of a prog metal supergroup that people had been talking about and expecting from us. It was a chance to delve into more experimental ideas. We were being wilfully self-indulgent in the best possible way, making music to please ourselves. There’s something wonderfully pure and liberating about that you can hear that in these songs.”
Wilson has mixed and contributed to several Opeth albums over the years, of course, but this is the first time that he and Åkerfeldt have written music together. Recorded at Wilson’s No Man’s Land studio in leafy Hertfordshire, England, Storm Corrosion is a six-song exploration of the outer limits of these two artists’ febrile creativity.

 

As with their individual recent works – Wilson’s Grace for Drowning and Opeth’s Heritage in particular – which have challenged their respective fan bases and added new, vibrant colors to once familiar aural palates, this album is an exercise in total musical freedom, wherein anything is possible and ideas are snatched from the ether and moulded into something utterly new, beguiling, disturbing, and otherworldly. From the sprawling, multi-faceted dynamic splurge of ‘Drag Ropes’ and the unsettling sweep of title track through to the fragile menace of the closing ‘Ljudet Innan’ (which means “ancient music” in Swedish), Storm Corrosion is an epic, disorientating trip.
“You can hear it in Opeth and in my music, the idea of taking something beautiful and destroying it,” explains Wilson. “We have both always loved the idea of discord, of beauty, and ugliness side by side. Without being too pretentious, that’s what life is like, so you hear a lot more of that coming out in Storm Corrosion. It’s heavy, but without the use of the metal vocabulary. You can hear that on Grace for Drowning and on Heritage too. So I think, in many ways, this is the completion of a trilogy.”

 

Although manifestly conceived in the grand, esoteric tradition of records like Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden and Scott Walker’s The Drift, Storm Corrosion is unmistakably a work of intense originality and one that has grown organically from a process that has plainly thrilled its creators.
“It was very much a 50/50 effort and very easily achieved,” states Åkerfeldt. “We just sat down, started from scratch and created it all from nothing. There’s some beautiful music on there but it’s a demanding record. If you’re doing other shit as you listen to it, it’s going to pass by like elevator muzak. You really have to sit down and pay attention! If you allow it to sink in, it could be a life companion…”
Anyone who has followed the careers of Wilson and Åkerfeldt should already be prepared to embrace the unexpected as their artistic sensibilities fully collide for the first time, but both men are resigned to the fact that Storm Corrosion is a deep and daring piece of work that will simply not strike a chord with every Opeth or Porcupine Tree fan. This is something else, something other…and it’s truly extraordinary.
“For me, self-indulgence is one of the fundamental things about being an artist,” Wilson concludes. “Do not make music or art to please other people. If you do, you’ve stopped being an artist and you’ve become an entertainer. This is a very cinematic, impressionistic and immersive record. We just got together and it poured out of us. With this record you’re entering into a very unusual and unfamiliar sonic universe and that’s a very exciting thing to be part of.”