don't know where I'm going...

Perhaps in U.S. cultural terms, I may be headed to the exact opposite of Boulder, CO. I'm packed up and headed to Odessa, TX. Clearly not heading there for live music but rather following a job and moving back closer to family. As much as I loved living near Denver, I think this move is going to be for good.

So what does Odessa offer as far as music/culture? Great question, I'm glad you asked.

It's not all that uncommon for people to have no idea where or what Odessa is. Friday Night Lights ring a bell? Yes, that's the one. Indie icons Explosions in the Sky hail from nearby Midland. Also, Guy Clark and Roy Orbison came from Monahans and Wink, respectively, Hoyle Nix established western swing in Big Spring and all around West Texas, and of course there's Larry Gatlin, Odessa's own hometown boy. "All in the gold, in California..."

It's not hard to criticize the much lesser presence of live music in the area, but in my new home, it's all going to be about finding the diamonds in the rough. Oddly enough, I have had two great musical experiences in my life in Odessa.

The first time, on the same night that my ex was getting married (My advice - never go, even when you're invited), I took the trip to Odessa to see Modest Mouse play at Dos Amigos. The show was literally played in the middle of a rodeo arena in the back of the venue. This was around the time of Good News for People Who Love Bad News, and it was an awesome show, not to mention much better than going to a wedding you don't want to be at.

The second time, a small group of us made the trek down from Lubbock to see Anathallo and the Colour Revolt play a tiny little honky tonk called Earls II. Pretty crazy place to see two indie bands, but it's one of those places where, when the right person promotes the show, the indie kids just show up. Promoters in this area come and go, but most of the time, someone gets up the energy/courage to start hosting shows again and the shows do fairly well, because the kids want to see live music so badly. Hoping I can play a very small part in making good shows happen from time to time.

But wait, there's more. As it turns out Odessa is a bit less than 3 hours from Marfa, the tiny town in deep West Texas that has turned into a substantial artist community. Unbelievably, this little town has hosted shows by Bon Iver, Jeff Tweedy, The Secret Machines, Yo La Tengo, Califone, Yeasayer. The list goes on and on. This place truly is an oasis when it comes to music offerings in the middle of the desert. In addition, Railroad Blues in nearby Alpine has a solid regular music calendar as well.

My musical landscape is changing, not ending. The blog will probably also change a bit. Expect general interest material about the West Texas region in general. This may include, but is not limited to Midland/Odessa, San Angelo, Lubbock, Marfa, Alpine, and Terlingua. I won't make any broad and bold statements about what will come of Windfarm in the next few years, but I hope to promote arts and culture in West Texas as much as time will allow.

Any West Texans who run across this blog, please feel free to pass along West Texas music events to me.

I sure know where I've been

The time has come. My days in Colorado have come to an end. My four years in Boulder have exposed me to some of the amazing offerings of the Denver music scene, and I expect I will miss it more than I can really comprehend now. Here I take a moment to reflect on Denver music and my experiences with it.

The live show I was most excited about before moving here that did not let me down:
This honor far and away goes to Slim Cessna's Auto Club. The band continues to develop and I simply can't say enough about how amazing their live show is. Munly puts on an amazing show as well, but plays very rarely. Don't turn down the opportunity to see either of these bands.

Best Colorado act that emerged while I was here:
Nathaniel Rateliff has been around the Denver scene for some time, but only this past May has he really hit full stride. I still haven't gotten around to reviewing his album, but it is awesome.

Best act that emerged while I was here:
The Avett Brothers. I tagged along with a friend to check these guys out at the Boulder Theater 3 1/2 years ago or so and I've not been the same since. Have caught them a number of times in various venues and they remain one of my favorite national acts. They went from playing the Boulder Theater to a 3/4 full crowd to selling out two nights in a row in quite a short time. Hearing them open with "Left on Laura, Left on Lisa" the very first time is still one of my favorite music memories.

Best venue:
Hi-Dive in Denver. No contest. These folks bring in the bands that are going to blow up way before most anyone has ever heard of them. Sometimes they book bands that blow up between the time the show is listed and when the show happens. Fleet Foxes, Cold War Kids, The Morning Benders. The list goes on and on.

Best Boulder venue:
The Fox Theatre. A fantastic mid-size venue that brings in great indie bands on a regular basis. The Boulder music scene supports bluegrass and jam bands and electronic music most strongly, but I've seen plenty of great shows here. Bon Iver, Band of Horses, Lucero, DeVotchKa, Dawes. After it's recent merger with the Boulder Theater, hopefully both will keep going strong.

Best music store:
This is such a toss-up, because I really love them all. Twist and Shout is an enormous indie record store in Denver, but you can be rest-assured that you will spend half your paycheck there. It is not unlike Waterloo in Austin, but I think it has more square footage overall.
Albums on the Hill is a strong standby for Boulderites. They've rearranged a good bit recently and are bringing in lots of new and new used vinyl. Finally, at the beginning of the year, Bart's CD Cellar closed down - quite a sad time for the vinyl collector, as they brought in lots of new merchandise regularly. However, the original owner, Bart, has opened Bart's Music Shack on the far west end of Pearl St. It's a small store, but they focus on quality over quantity, so I highly recommend stopping by when you have the chance. Unfortunately it's more a of a destination place now, compared to the convenient location of the other store, but take the extra time and go visit them.

Best site in Boulder with historical significance that no one really knows about:
The apartment balcony where Townes Van Zandt fell/jumped off of while in college at CU. I realized during my last year here that this balcony was just a few short blocks from where I had worked for the past 4 years. I often went out of my way to walk by, trying to imagine the exact circumstances and how the fall might have actually happened. So many college kids have lived in the apartments since, likely not knowing and not caring of the significance of their residence. Well I think it's pretty cool.

























What I'm going to miss a lot:
Picking up my copy of the Denver alt-weekly Westword every Thursday. Between this magazine and the Denver Post Reverb blog, the city covers and promotes its music scene very well. Needless to say there is no alt-weekly where I'm going, and the coverage of the music scene by the newspapers is minimal.

The festival you will hear mentioned alongside SXSW more and more:
The Underground Music Showcase (The UMS). Now in its 10th year, this festival is turning into a fantastic event that does very well to utilize the South Broadway area of Denver. I wouldn't be surprised to see it go city-wide in the next 5 years, in order to bring in some of the larger venues in town. Currently the festival is run by the Denver Post folks, and with the right management, it could begin to employ a full-time staff, similar to SXSW. You should check out this festival soon. It is a steal for the money considering the amount of great music it offers.

Denver has got an amazing thing going with its music scene, and I will miss it a great deal.


One place of no musical significance, but still an important first for me - below is where I got hit by a car on my bike toward the end of my time in Boulder. The car was coming out of the alley, and I was on the sidewalk because the street was a dead end, coming from the right in front of the bluish/grayish garage, and we basically met in the middle, 'neath that old Georgia pine. Luckily neither of us was going to fast, so no long term damage.

Merle Haggard - Learning to Live With Myself

During a recent lull in summer television, I found myself watching a brand new documentary on Merle Haggard, from the American Masters series on PBS, entitled Learning to Live With Myself. I started out with relatively low expectations, but they were raised a good bit when I saw that the director was Gandulf Hennig, the same person who made the Gram Parsons documentary Fallen Angel, of which I was a big fan.

If you look up Hennig's IMDB profile, you'll see the aforementioned documentaries are the only two films he has made (that have made it onto IMDB at least). For a German national, who apparently now lives in Nashville, Hennig has an amazing ability to capture the lives of American musicians in a way that few other people can. He compiles interviews with a wide spectrum of people and his storytelling is simply perfect in its continuity and completeness. (Note: embedded video below may not show up in Google Reader).

Watch the full episode. See more American Masters.

The documentary follows Haggard through his traumatic early life, largely a result of the death of his father when he was 9 years-old, and moves through his troubled early adulthood into becoming a country superstar. They do a beautiful job of portraying the somewhat contradictory roles he filled, being an outlaw of sorts, but also becoming a conservative icon following the release of "Okie From Muskogee." Not only does the film chronicle Haggard's life in depth, but it also stands as a detailed record of the important role California country music, specifically the Bakersfield sound, played in the diversification of country music in the 1960s and beyond.

Not unlike the Fallen Angel documentary, the strength of this work is in the wide breadth of interviews that were conducted. Keith Richards, Dwight Yoakum, Kris Kristofferson, and Marty Stuart are but a few of the stars who contribute to the film, but maybe even more importantly, family members and childhood friends were also interviewed, providing a very strong and detailed picture of a man who doesn't often reveal his public life. Hennig truly succeeded in his endeavor by gaining Haggard's confidence on a level such that there are many candid moments in his interviews with the artist.

One of my favorite moments in the film comes when it was discussed how Dick Clark one time told Haggard, near the peak of his mainstream success, that if he simply recorded a few pop music songs he could literally be one of the biggest stars on the planet. Haggard reportedly told Clark very simply "That's not who I am." Rather, Haggard took it upon himself to promote American roots music, recording songs with the Texas Playboys and releasing an album of Jimmie Rodgers songs.

This film far exceeded my initial expectations and is highly recommended to anyone with an interest in Haggard or in the history of country music in the United States.

I don't know how long it will be available, but apparently you can watch the entire film online at the PBS Web site here (or click the link below the video above).

UMS 2010 Preview

The time has come once again for Denver's best music festival, The UMS, taking place on South Broadway from July 22-25. It's like CMJ without the hassle, like SXSW but with less butt sweat. In short, it's well worth your time. I've put together a short list of the bands I most want to see. In my past experience, there will be someone good playing almost all the time, so this is but a sampling of what the UMS has to offer. You can still by a $30 pass that will get you through the entire weekend of music up through July 21st, so don't delay any longer!

While some of these set times are close together, the beauty of this festival is the proximity of all shows to one another. You can make it between the most distant venues in probably 10 minutes at the most, while it's less than 5 minutes between most.




















These United States - Friday, 11 PM @ the Hi-Dive
(Photo credit Sarah Law)

The UMS has been working the last few years to bring in national headliners, and These United States will be a fantastic act to headline Friday night. I've recently become quite a fan of this band on account of hearing their Daytrotter sessions, and have since bought their most recent LP Everything Touches Everything. The band should have a new record out for their performance at the UMS, which should result in the Hi-Dive being packed wall-to-wall for their
set.




























Munly & the Lupercalians - Saturday, 10 PM @ the Hi-Dive (Photo credit Gary Isaacs)

Munly shows have been quite rare around Denver as of late, and I believe his last two shows have been on New Years Eve with the Auto Club, so the chance to see him at the UMS should not be missed. Munly's double album continues to have no release date, but I expect that he'll be playing mostly material from that record at his showcase this year.























Thrift Store Cowboys - Saturday, 11 PM @ the Skylark Lounge (Photo credit Logan Caldbeck)

Having recently celebrated their tenth year as a band, TSC theoretically could have played at the UMS every year of its existence, but since the festival started out with locals only, and TSC hail from Lubbock, Texas, it just wasn't meant to be. However, now that they're both 10, their parents arranged a play-date for the two. TSC will have lots of new material to play from their soon to be released LP Light Fighter.






















One Wolf - Saturday, 7 PM @ the Skylark Lounge

Another great Lubbock band, One Wolf plays their first UMS this year as well. With two great albums under their belt, and plenty of time honing their live show, this will be a set you don't want to miss.





























Paper Bird - Thursday, 11:55 PM @ the Hi-Dive; Friday, 7:30 PM @ CarToys Stage (Photo credit Gary Isaacs)

I have somehow gone four years in Colorado without getting to see Paper Bird, but I continue to hear great things about them. Hopefully their two appearances this year will finally give me the chance I need to catch their show.





























Amanda Shires - Saturday, 9 PM @ Walnut Room Pizzeria

As 1/6 of the aforementioned Thrift Store Cowboys, Amanda Shires has come into her own as a songwriter with her recent West Cross Timbers. She basically lives on the road, so when it comes to handling a live crowd, Amanda is among the best. Don't be surprised to see a member or two of TSC backing her up on this gig as well.

3 reviews and a story

Band of Horses - Infinite Arms

This album is poppy, but not in a bad way. If I was going to represent it visually, the album would be a plate (the album) with 12 southern biscuits on it (the songs), all covered with honey (the harmonies). I use this example partially jokingly because the harmonies on this album are THICK. They work though. There is no "Funeral" on this album, but in my humble opinion, you only get to write one song like that in your lifetime (with a few exceptions, of course). The songs are recorded such that they don't really get heavy even when it seems like it is a heavy part, but I have no doubt that a song like "Dilly" will sound amazing (and will be plenty hard-hitting) live, because I was lucky enough to hear them play it a few months ago. Don't expect to rock out to this album, but it's a great listen.




The National - High Violet

It seems most bloggers and critics were expecting this to be the album that conquered the world, and they were disappointed that it didn't. Even if it didn't, I think "Bloodbuzz Ohio," "Afraid of Everyone," and "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks" are amazing songs that anchor a very strong album overall. Not unlike BoH above, some want the National to write "Fake Empire" again and again, except more mind-blowing every time. The National seem to just want to make good music, and I think they've done it again here.

If you haven't already, check out their Letterman performance of "Afraid of Everyone", featuring Sufjan Stevens.





Deer Tick - The Black Dirt Sessions

I'm a bit of a latecomer to Deer Tick, having picked up their first two albums in late March. I don't know exactly what to think of them sometimes. From what I know, the band tours constantly, parties hard, and they continue to write great songs. At times it seems like their outward image is an inside joke, where they appear to be an out of control rock band, but they can't say that's what they are doing because it would ruin the image. That's not for me to decide, and it doesn't really matter as long as they write good songs. In short, I like the second half of this album better than the first, with the exception of the second song "Twenty Miles," which is among the best on the record. Besides that opinion, though, I will never again be able to think about this album outside of this one experience:

Approximately a month ago, just after TBDS was released, H. and I were driving through rural west Texas, on a small Farm-to-Market road between Muleshoe and Morton, to be specific (see map below). Basically you see little more than some farm vehicles and meet cars maybe every 5 miles. In short, very little traffic. It just so happens we had been listening to this album, and had just reached the final song "Christ Jesus," which if you haven't heard, is, well, typical Deer Tick. Less than a minute after the song started, we came upon a semi-truck that had written on all sides "Jesus Christ is Lord, not a swear word." The trucks appear to have their origin with these folks (I pasted a picture below), although that is somewhat beside the point. It was a pretty odd experience, feeling a bit like two universes collided in the middle of nowhere and we were the only ones who saw it. So yeah, that's what I'll always think of when I hear this record.


View Larger Map

A picture of a similar truck that I found here.

Halsted - Life Underwater

As I am sure is the case for many of you, I typically have enough new music to listen to from artists I like and from bands recommended to me by friends that I don’t often seek out even more new music from the countless blogs that are pushing someone new every day. Every now and then there are exceptions, and I am in the right mood to check out something that wasn’t even on my radar previously. That said, I am most drawn to bands that send me links with a good concise press release and who don’t sensationalize themselves with a bunch of industry speak.

Halsted, based out of San Francisco, was a band whom I had never heard the name of, much less listened to. You know how sometimes your friend says – “hey do you like the band so & so?” And you, trying not to sound out of touch, say “I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know their music.”

Maybe that’s just what I do, for some odd reason, but I couldn’t have even said that much about Halsted. I also hadn’t heard of the previous release by the band’s principle songwriter, Ryan Auffenberg, who released a record in 2008 entitled Marigolds.

So all that roundabout description is to let you know that I basically knew zero about this band before I pressed play. Typically this situation results in listening to 45 seconds of 2-3 songs, then stopping the music, deleting the mp3s, and playing something else. As it turned out with Halsted, I liked what I heard, and before I knew it, I’d listened to the entire album a few times through. I'm still listening to the album regularly a month later.

Often a band’s first record sounds like it was made from a recipe. Songwriter: 1) writes song, 2) finds bassist, drummer, and sometimes lead guitarist, 3) records songs with band, making them sound just like they sounded before, except with bass, guitar, and drums in the background. This is not the case with Halsted. Each song on Life Underwater sounds carefully crafted and well arranged, and the influences of this band appear to be diverse. At times the band brings up impressions of Wilco or the Gin Blossoms, although the resemblance to those bands is not overpowering.

The album is strong for its duration, although the current favorite for me is "Rising Tide," a mid-paced rocker that I have to imagine sounds great live. "White Hot City Lights," "Sellout," and "Knock on Wood" are additional high points, although there is seemingly a song for every mood on this album, such that any song may emerge as a favorite depending on your situation at the time. The album's tone sound is generally upbeat and filled with strong guitar arrangements throughout. In short, I am thoroughly impressed with Halsted, and look forward to hearing the band progress, as their sound is well-developed for a first record and indicates a promising future.

Check out "Rising Tide," among other songs, on their Myspace page. Life Underwater will be released on Ashbury Records tomorrow, July 13th.

Sometimes the world throws you a curveball

Believe it or not, Kenny Chesney will be recording a version of Guy Clark's song "Hemingway's Whiskey" for his new album, which he also plans to name after the song.

That's right, this guy:

































Since I consider Clark one of the great living songwriters, it's not surprising for this to happen really, and KC even wins a few points in my book for recording the song. I hope it does well and gets the airtime it deserves. No word yet whether Clark will return the favor by recording "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy."

Happy 4th