James McMurtry (Solo)
This is a seated show. In James McMurtry’s new effort, The Horses and the Hounds, the acclaimed songwriter backs personal narratives with effortless elegance (“Canola Fields”) and endless energy (“If It Don’t Bleed”). This first collection in seven years, out August 20, 2021 on New West Records, spotlights a seasoned tunesmith in peak form as he turns toward reflection (“Vaquero”) and revelation ( closer “Blackberry Winter”). Familiar foundations guide the journey. “There’s a definite Los Angeles vibe to this record,” McMurtry says. “The ghost of Warren Zevon seems to be stomping around among the guitar tracks. Don’t know how he got in there. He never signed on for work for hire.” The Horses and the Hounds is a reunion of sorts. McMurtry recorded the new album with legendary producer Ross Hogarth (John Fogerty, Van Halen, Keb’ Mo’) at Jackson Browne’s Groovemaster’s in Santa Monica, California, a world class studio that has housed such legends as Bob Dylan (2012’s Tempest) and David Crosby (2016’s Lighthouse) as well as Browne himself for I’m Alive (1993) and New Found Glory, Coming Home (2006). McMurtry and Hogarth first worked together 30 years ago, when Hogarth was a recording engineer in the employ of John Mellencamp at Mellencamp’s own Belmont Studios near Bloomington, Indiana. Hogarth recorded McMurtry’s first two albums, Too Long in the Wasteland and Candyland, for Columbia Records and later mixed McMurtry’s first self-produced album, Saint Mary of the Woods, for Sugar Hill Records. Another veteran of those three releases, guitarist David Grissom (Joe Ely, John Mellencamp, Dixie Chicks), returns with some of his finest work. Accordingly, the new collection marks another upward trajectory: The Horses and the Hounds will be McMurtry’s debut album on genre-defining Americana record label New West Records (Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Lucinda Williams, John Hiatt, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Buddy Miller, dozens more). “I first became aware of James McMurtry’s formidable songwriting prowess while working at Bug Music Publishing in the ’90s,” says New West president John Allen. “He’s a true talent. All of us at New West are excited at the prospect of championing the next phase of James’ already successful and respected career.” McMurtry perfectly fits a label housing “artists who perform real music for real people.” After all, No Depression says of the literate songwriter’s most recent collection, Complicated Game: “Lyrically, the album is wise and adventurous, with McMurtry — who’s not prone to autobiographical tales — credibly inhabiting characters from all walks of life.” “[McMurtry] fuses wry, literate observations about the world with the snarl of barroom rock,” National Public Radio says. “The result is at times sardonic, subversive and funny, but often vulnerable and always poignant.” His lauded storytelling — check out songs such as “Operation Never Mind” and “Ft. Walton Wake-Up Call” on The Horse and the Hounds— consistently has turned heads for decades now. “James writes like he’s lived a lifetime,” said John Mellencamp back in 1989, when Too Long in the Wasteland hit the Billboard 200. “James McMurtry is one of my very few favorite songwriters on Earth and these days he’s working at the top of his game,” says Americana all-star Jason Isbell. Website | Twitter | Facebook
Mel Melton & The Wicked Mojos
A North Carolina native, Mel went to Lafayette, Louisiana in the summer of 1969 to visit a college friend and play a little music before going back to UNC. His plans changed when he became totally immersed in the rich culture and physical beauty of southwest Louisiana. He moved permanently to Lafayette at the end of the summer and began playing in a band he co-founded with Sonny Landreth, the Louisiana slide guitar-playing superstar. To help support his new musical career, Mel took a series of jobs in the best Cajun restaurants in the city and discovered a new talent and another part of Cajun lifestyle, Louisiana cooking. Over the next few years he honed his musical and cooking skills, eventually becoming a well known Cajun chef. At the same time, he was becoming known as a singer and harmonica player specializing in a zydeco style of harp playing that has become his trademark. Mel arrived in Austin, Texas in 1972 at the start of the Austin music scene. He took a job at a BBQ joint near Lake Travis as a dishwasher, but eventually moved up the ranks to cook. The restaurant happened to be a hang out for several European chefs who worked at the resorts situated on Lake Travis and Melton was offered a cook position at one of them. While there, he joined Austin’s Chef Association and after several years, became chef at the Tarry House, a private club frequented by many Texas luminaries such as Walter Cronkite, Tommy Lee Jones, Sissy Spacek, and many Texas politicians including the Governor, who held a weekly staff lunch at the club. In the early 80’s Sonny and Mel formed the band “Bayou Rhythm”, adding C.J. Chenier to the lineup. The band headlined shows nationally and also opened shows for a number of legendary musicians including: Ray Charles, B.B. King, Dr. John, The Neville Brothers, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Dave Edmonds, and The Fabulous Thunderbirds. During his time with Bayou Rhythm, Mel was challenged to a gumbo cook-off by Rockin’ Dopsie at the 1986 American Music Festival in Chicago. The event was so well received that Melton decided to always cook for the band’s gigs and his peerless Cajun cooking quickly become a signature twist to his shows. In 1986, Melton left Bayou Rhythm and moved to Chicago to pursue a full time chef career. In his first month there he won the prestigious Grand Prize at the Rolls Royce-Krug Champagne Invitational Chef Competition. Melton opened two new restaurants while in Chicago, one of which was named as one of the top ten new restaurants in the area. He frequently did cooking demonstrations and prepared food for a variety of events, including The Chicago Jazz Festival, The American Cancer Society Ball, Mardi Gras at The Limelight Club, and many others. He also appeared on the local television program “Two on Two,” and several radio programs. The year 1990 found Melton back in North Carolina, where he still continues to spread his interpretation of the food and music he grew to love down in the bayou country. Mel is back in the spotlight, cooking on stage with his band, The Wicked Mojos, as well as off-stage. He has served as executive chef and independent restaurant consultant to many of the Triangle’s most notable restaurants and food service organizations.Twitter | Facebook
School of Rock Chapel Hill’s End of Season Showcase
Free Show / $10 Suggested Donation12:00 – Best of Shania Twain and Sheryl Crow !1:00 – Best of Creedence Clearwater Revival !2:15 – Best of Evanescence and System Of A Down !3:15 – Best of Michael Jackson and Prince !4:15 – SENIOR SENDOFF CEREMONY !4:30 – Best of Marvin Gaye and Al Green !5:30 – Best of Bruce Springsteen !6:45 – The Beatles’ “White Album” !8:15 – End of Show Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Guy Wire
Guy Wire: Guy Wire is four guys playing homemade pop/rock nuggets. Steve Carr and Christian Fisher, Triangle area band veterans, started Guy Wire in 2019. Seasoned rhythm section players Paul Drake and Nick Vigneaux rounded out the band. Guy Wire recorded an EP (bandcamp) and has performed at a number of Triangle area venues.Bandcamp | Facebook The Petty Thieves: Founded in 2015, The Petty Thieves are a good-time band playing their favorite Tom Petty songs. They’re not impersonators, just fake Heartbreakers who play with the rock-n-roll energy of a live Petty show.Website | Instagram | Facebook Mad Crush: The members of Mud Crash all looked at the eclipse without protective glasses and emerged not blind at all, but instead with magical insights — specifically, magical insights into how to rock the house, amuse the curmudgeonly, and break otherwise intact hearts, all in one go. Members of Chapel Hill’s Mad Crush, the band acclaimed by Billboard, Robert Christgau, and WUNC’s Frank Stasio, will give their songs a licking and see what remains ticking.Bandcamp
Shamarr Allen
Shamarr Allen is the definition of New Orleans Music! Hailing from the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, Allen has influences in jazz, hip hop, rock, funk, funk blues and country. He is the lead vocalist and trumpeter of his band “Shamarr Allen and the Underdawgs” In addition to performing with his band, Allen has collaborated with many renowned artists such as Willie Nelson, Galactic, Mannie Fresh, Patti Labelle, Harry Connick Jr. and Lenny Kravitz to name a few. In addition to displaying his skills on the frontline as a lead performer, Allen is also a music composer, writer, producer and multi instrumentalist. With a scintillating and unique sound, look and exemplary talents, Allen transcends musical boundaries. He is the True Orleans Experience!Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Soundcloud
Chris Knight
After 23 years as a recording artist, singer-songwriter Chris Knight remains boldly empowered to make music that always delivers the unflinching truth. In fact, the man raised in Slaughters, Kentucky uses a simple, direct barometer to regularly check his muse: “If I can’t believe myself, I won’t sing the song.”That brutally honest, no-frills philosophy fits his Americana-fueled, backwoods-grown merger of folk, country, and rock. It’s been at the backbone of nine studio albums, beginning with 1998’s acclaimed self-titled debut and traveling through scorchers such as the one-two punch of 2001’s A Pretty Good Guy and 2003’s The Jealous Kind, two demo-styled discs (2007’s The Trailer Tapes and 2009’s Trailer II), and the recent, electric guitar-fortified opus, 2019’s Almost Daylight. Because Knight’s music has always sat outside of the mainstream, onstage is where he makes his fans one show at a time. It is exactly where his searing tales of rural characters, fringe survivors, and tumultuous small-town existence find a captivated audience. A few edgy, raw gems that immediately come to mind are “It Ain’t Easy Being Me,” “Carla Came Home,” “I’m William Callahan,” and “Everybody’s Lonely Now,” the latter two from Almost Daylight. “I’ve written songs about a lot of different things going all the way back to my first record,” he says, “and some folks still think ‘somebody kills somebody’ is all I write about.”What Knight writes about is what he knows. He was raised in mining country, so it’s no surprise that he would earn a degree in agriculture from Western Kentucky University and then work as a mine reclamation inspector and then miner’s consultant. But eventually his passion for writing songs and playing guitar, both inspired by his musical hero, the late John Prine, led him to chronicle his surroundings in words and music. “I came from a big family and grew up in the woods six miles from two small towns, so there were a lot of stories,” he says. “There were always a lot of ideas to write about.”Those ideas have earned Knight praise from publications such as The New York Times (“the last of a dying breed…a taciturn loner with an acoustic guitar and a college degree”) and USA Today (“a storyteller in the best traditions of Mellencamp and Springsteen”), to name a few. Like his beloved Prine, whom Knight duets with on Prine’s chestnut “Mexican Home,” the cut that closes Almost Daylight, Knight fits comfortably in Texas honky-tonks, downtown Nashville venues, and cool Manhattan rock clubs.It’s no wonder that Knight has single-handedly scraped a reputation as one of America’s most uncompromising and respected singer-songwriters through 23 years and nine studio albums. He’s done this minus fanfare and artifice. The native son of Slaughters, Kentucky (population: 238) only sings songs he believes. He also speaks only when he has a potent message.“If I don’t have something worth saying, I’m not opening my mouth. I haven’t suited everybody, but every time I get a new fan it tells me I’m doing something right. I think all my records have set a precedent, if only for me at the very least. I just want people to think the latest one stands up to everything else I’ve done.”Website | Facebook | YouTube
Alesana
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RIDE
As Ride were working on their excellent new record, the quartet realised they had now been a band longer in their second phase than their original incarnation had lasted. When Andy Bell, Laurence “Loz” Colbert, Mark Gardener and Steve Queralt reunited in 2015, it was with a desire to re-conjure the musical alchemy that had made them one of the most exciting British bands of the late 80s and early 90s. Yes, there was a legacy to celebrate, album anniversaries to mark and old classics to dust off, but what Ride really wanted to do was keep pushing forward, pick up the thread of what made them such an exhilarating proposition in the first place. It was a reunion underpinned with a sense of unfinished business. There have been two records since then, 2017’s Weather Diaries and 2019’s This Is Not A Safe Place. Both produced by Erol Alkan, they were albums that re-lit the spark, both pleasing old diehards and introducing one of the most forward-thinking guitar bands of their generation to a whole new audience. Everything feels like it has been leading to Interplay, the group’s forthcoming seventh album. It’s the sound of Ride connecting all the dots, taking the frenzied guitar attacks, hypnotic grooves and dreamy melodic hooks of their early work and setting it to a more expansive sonic template, one that takes in synth flourishes, psychedelic folk, electronic beats and noir-pop soundscapes. “You learn this is a special thing,” says singer and guitarist Gardener of the dynamic between them. “It’s easy to take it for granted the first time round, when you just come out and everything is great.” Shall we take a quick trip back to that period for the uninitiated? Ride were formed in Oxford in 1988 by four friends rooted in art-school aesthetics who combined 60s guitar-pop sensibilities with avalanches of noise and driving rhythms. It was a recalibration of indie-rock that would come to be defined as shoegazing, music that was both experimental and pop, powerful and fragile. Preceded by a run of three criticallyacclaimed EPs, their 1990 debut album Nowhere is regarded as one of the greatest debuts of the ’90s. By the time they released fourth record Tarantula in 1996, however, they’d hit the skids, intra-band turmoil prompting them to call it day. But something curious happened whilst the four-piece had put the band out to pasture and when Ride reunited in 2014, they were surrounded by a wave of groups — Tame Impala, Beach House, Animal Collective amongst them — who sounded like they had been inhaling heavy doses of early Ride recordings. Eight years into their second era, the band are increasingly beginning to acknowledge the period themselves. Interplay is pockmarked with nods to their younger selves. “It’s got a lot of references within the writing to earlier days,” says Bell. “Then on a sonic level, it’s got the feel of some of the later 90s stuff. There’s a grown-up-ness to it as well as the early influences coming through.” “Obviously, there’s a big heritage angle to this band because loads of people were so in love with Nowhere,” adds Gardener. “But for me the whole reformation was because I felt we still had great chemistry as a band. That was why I wanted to do it, for moments that we felt in the studio making this record.” Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
All Under Heaven
Originally formed in 2017, New Jersey’s All Under Heaven regrouped in 2020 and will release their new LP, What Lies Ahead, in May. The new album marks a shift from songs backed by walls of guitars to a broader spectrum of tracks embracing keyboards, synthesizers, and beats. With nods to bands like Starflyer 59, The Cure, and Pinback, All Under Heaven weaves themes of loss, love, and friendship into their dynamic sound, carving out their space in the shoegaze sphere.Instagram | Spotify
Rich Ruth
Recorded under a loft bed in the guest bedroom of his Nashville home, Michael Ruth aka Rich Ruth’s I Survived, It’s Over starts in a humble space. And while many contemporary music projects are produced in such an environment, I Survived, It’s Over sets itself apart in its transformative properties as well as its transparency What we have here is honest sound exploration, session musician-level instrumentation, and a true love for nature run through the fingers of a dude who can channel some acute and undeniable magic. This music goes deep. “I conceived much of this record amidst the quiet and tumult of 2020 in my neighborhood that had recently been ravaged by a tornado,” Ruth recalls, “I spent most of my days working on these pieces between bicycle rides – watching the beautiful Tennessee ecosystem flourish in Shelby Park, listening to Keith Jarrett’s The Koln Concert and John Coltrane’s Ascension.” Underneath the swell of the strings and the shredding of the guitars, this record has hard working, rustbelt, drum-heavy roots all over it (which makes sense as Ruth hails from outside of Toledo, the album was mixed by John McEntire from Chicago band Tortoise). Many of the flutes, saxophones, pedal steel, and other instruments were recorded remotely because we live in the future, but this only adds to the collage of sampled and sample-able material that Rich Ruth has to offer. The organic relationships between the artist and other musicians on the album is evident even in the compilation style sampling that needs to occur in putting such a project together. “Working on this music is a daily meditation,” says Ruth. “I constantly experiment with sound until it reflects the way I am feeling and attempt to sculpt something meaningful from it. Through years of being a touring musician, it is a constant inspiration and privilege to collaborate with the individuals that graced this record with their voices.” And those relationships pay off, because I Survived, It’s Over is a sonic meal. It’s rich (no pun intended) with massive instrumentation that’s usually reserved for more symphonic delights. But at the same time it’s simple and leaves space to breathe–space you didn’t know you needed. In his own words; “I Survived, It’s Over is a meditation on healing, confronting trauma, surrendering, and finding peace. I wanted to encapsulate the tranquility and disarray found within this process.” Ruth’s heart and the peace that his presence produces is all over this album. And despite his midwestern humility and willingness to brush off any praise, he’s put together something really special that carries its own weight. It’s the kind of record that only comes around every once in a while and it’s worthy of all the head-bobs, acclaim, and celebratory potlucks that Mike and the gang have coming their way. – Mic Fox, 2022Bandcamp | Instagram
