Music, Memphis Flyer

Space Opera

Chris Davis — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Dragoon melds prog, pop, and punk on new release. by Chris Davis You can't always judge an album by its cover, but perhaps, in the case of Dragoon's This Galaxy Is but a Nursery, you can. An illustration by California artist Jeremy Melton depicts the Memphis trio, Bobby Matthews (vocals/guitar), Stan Gallimore (drums), and Tripp Lamkins (bass/guitar), clad in 2001-style space suits.…

Todd Snider's "What the Folk" Fest at the Levitt Shell

Chris Herrington — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

by Chris Herrington Memphis-launched, Nashville-based singer-songwriter promised last summer to make his "What the Folk" Fest an annual Levitt Shell event, and he makes good this week with a return to the Midtown site. As sharp and funny a songwriter as exists in contemporary music and a peerless musical storyteller, Snider released his most recent album, Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables, in 2012.…

Bob Saget, Billy Idol talk Bonnaroo 2013 (Plus, your chance to win tickets!)

Shara Clark — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 16:04:02 -0500

The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival returns to Manchester, Tennessee next week for its 12th year, drawing nearly 90,000 music lovers to a 700-acre stretch of farmland for four days of fun in the sun June 13-16. The festival is known for its diverse bill of artists, and this year’s lineup features headliners Paul McCartney, Bjork, Mumford & Sons, and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, as well as comedic performances by Daniel Tosh, Bob Saget, David Cross, and others.…

Meeting in the Middle

Chris Herrington — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Mid-South artists draw on Nashville and Louisiana for new releases. by Chris Herrington Down in Louisiana Bobby Rush…

Eden Brent at the Levitt Shell

Chris Herrington — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 04:00:00 -0500

by Chris Herrington Greenville, Mississippi, lies between New Orleans and Memphis, and so does the sound of Greenville native Eden Brent, a blues artist whose music combines Delta grit with Crescent City swing. A barrelhouse piano player and charismatic vocalist, Brent has emerged as one of the blues scene's most promising contemporary artists over the past half-decade, winning the Blues Foundation's International Blues Challenge in 2006 and winning multiple Blues Music Awards in recent years.…

Sound Advice: Wednesday Madness w/ the City Champs and More!

J.D. Reager — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 17:10:00 -0500

Live music fans in Memphis are in for a rather hectic, choice-filled treat tomorrow night (Wednesday, June 5), as there are no less than four high-quality shows taking place at various venues around Midtown - most of which are scheduled to take place concurrently.

The early-bird offering of the evening is an appearance by local soul-jazz trio the City Champs at the Levitt Shell.…

On Again? MLK the Movie

Greg Akers — Fri, 31 May 2013 11:12:13 -0500

The Martin Luther King Jr. biopic titled Memphis, helmed by Paul Greengrass, has been percolating and not percolating for a couple years.

Now it's taken another step closer to reality, according to The Wrap.…

Icon’s Return

Jackson Baker — Thu, 30 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Paul McCartney enthralls at FedExForum. by Jackson Baker A full 20 years after last performing for a Memphis audience at the Liberty Bowl, Paul McCartney returned Sunday night, this time to FedExForum for his 2013 "Out There" tour. And, though the show was dominated by classics from several different periods of the 50-odd years this remarkable artist/icon has been performing, there was no oldies-show aura to any of it.…

Gogol Bordello at Minglewood Hall

Chris Herrington — Thu, 30 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

by Chris Herrington New York-based "gypsy punks" Gogol Bordello don't exactly fit the conventional image of a great rock-and-roll band. The band is built on a traditional guitar-bass-drum foundation, but the sonic signature is in the crosscurrent of violin and accordion and in the Marco Polo pogo-ing of various extra percussion and extra voices.…

Let There Be Rock

Chris Shaw — Thu, 30 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

The Scion Rock Fest brings five stages of heaviness to Beale Street. by Chris Shaw The biggest free festival in hard rock comes to Memphis this weekend, changing Beale Street into a temporary haven for hard rockers and metal heads. Started in 2009 in Atlanta, Scion Rock Fest is the only festival of its kind in the United States, with attendees filling out a simple RSVP form online before picking up their tickets at independent music stores and tattoo shops chosen by Scion Audio Visual Group.…

Sound Advice: DJ Jameson at the Lamplighter

J.D. Reager — Wed, 29 May 2013 15:38:00 -0500

Tomorrow night (Thursday, May 30), The Lamplighter will host a special DJ night featuring local record-spinner DJ Jameson (a.k.a. Jameson Sweiger, formerly of the Ohio psych-punk outfit Puffy Areolas) and touring Madison, WI resident DJ Clay.

For those who attend Thursday's gig, Sweiger has a special treat in store - a free, hand-made mix CD featuring selections from the evening's set that will be given away to the first 30 people that come through the doors.…

Country Comes Home

Chris Shaw — Fri, 24 May 2013 11:27:00 -0500

The organizers of the first annual Delta Country Jam are ready to bring country music back home to Mississippi.

“With this festival, music is coming back home to its roots, and I can’t think of a better spot to bring thousands of people together to listen to country music and to experience the musical heritage that we have in Mississippi” said Webster Franklin, President and CEO of the Tunica Convention and Visitors Bureau.…

On Their Block

Stephen Deusner — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Parquet Courts mines the Queens street scene. by Stephen Deusner On "Stoned and Starving," a standout cut from the Parquet Courts' first proper album, Light Up Gold, singer Andrew Savage wanders around the Ridgewood neighborhood of Queens trying to score some munchies. He flips through magazines, scratches lottery tickets, reads ingredients and warning labels.…

Paul McCartney at FedExForum

Chris Herrington — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

by Chris Herrington Rock-and-roll royalty greets a city that's produced more than its share when Beatles co-founder Paul McCartney takes the FedExForum stage this weekend. The 70-year-old icon has had a surprisingly fertile last decade, kicked off by his fine, 1999 back-to-basics album Run, Devil, Run.…

A Debut and a Return

J.D. Reager — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Memphis musicians James Godwin and Aaron Rude ready new material. by J.D. Reager This weekend's music calendar is jam-packed, providing two opportunities to catch Memphis acts on the rise and putting out brand-new material. The first of those opportunities comes Friday, May 17th, at Bar DKDC when lo-fi garage-rockers James and the Ultrasounds celebrate the release of their fine debut EP, Lovers and Ghosts.…

The Shins at Minglewood Hall

Chris Herrington — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

by Chris Herrington Emerging from Albuquerque at the onset of the aughts, the brainy power-pop band the Shins became one of the key acts in the commercial resurgence of indie rock in the past decade. The band's 2001 debut, Oh, Inverted World, and its entrancing single, "New Slang," made the band a cult fave and the follow-up, 2003's Chutes Too Narrow, boosted both the band's profile and its craft.…

Jonny Fritz at the Hi-Tone

Chris Herrington — Thu, 09 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

by Chris Herrington As Jonny Corndog, this alt-country singer-songwriter puts across a jokey update of Bakersfield and/or trucker country on 2011's Down on the Bikini Line. Now recording under the more normal Jonny Fritz name for the new Dad Country, he makes further inroads into being what Robbie Fulks once was: an indie ace at balancing cartoon country with the real thing — knowing full well that the real thing is often cartoonish and the better for it.…

Roundup

Chris Herrington — Thu, 09 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Triple-threat folk, the BMAs, a Latin debut, and a lost great. by Chris Herrington James Manning has been booking acoustic shows at Otherlands Coffee Bar for the past few years. This week, Manning moves that scene to a bigger venue for a great three-band bill at the New Daisy Theatre.…

Elements of Dewey Phillips' WHBQ sound booth have been salvaged and stored

Chris Davis — Wed, 08 May 2013 20:59:00 -0500

Renovation has begin on the Hotel Chisca, where WHBQ's "Red, Hot, & Blue" disc jockey Dewey Phillips first introduced the world to Elvis Presley, and rock-and-roll. Working with a skeleton crew of volunteers filmmaker turned preservationist Mike McCarthy removed glass, and acoustic tile from the booth where Phillips conducted the world's first Rock-and-Roll interview.…

Sound Advice: Patrick Dodd Comes Home

J.D. Reager — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:30:12 -0500

This Thursday, May 9, The Poplar Lounge will host a special "welcome home" party of sorts for Memphis blues singer and former contestant on NBC's The Voice, Patrick Dodd.

Dodd, a longtime fixture on Beale St.…

Justin Timberlake Announces FedExForum Concert

Chris Herrington — Mon, 06 May 2013 09:47:00 -0500

Dates were announced this morning for Justin Timberlake's "20/20 Experience World Tour," which kicks off on October 31st in Montreal and will arrive in Timberlake's hometown on Monday, November 18th at FedExForum.

Tickets for Timberlake's Memphis concert — part of his first tour in six years — are slated to go on sale on Friday, May 17th, with members of Timberlake's “The Tennessee Kids” fan club eligible for “pre-sale” purchases at 10 a.m. that day.…

Remembering Sid Selvidge

Chris Herrington — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:00:54 -0500

A bittersweet accompaniment to having so many great artists in your city is the pain of losing them, and Memphis lost a major one yesterday with the passing of Sid Selvidge, who lost a lengthy battle with cancer on Thursday morning.

I didn't really know Selvidge well, but had crossed paths with him several times over the past decade, first for a Flyer cover story on Beale Street Caravan, the made-in-Memphis but broadcast worldwide radio show Selvidge presided over.…

Memphis musician Sid Selvidge dies after a struggle with cancer

Chris Davis — Thu, 02 May 2013 16:53:00 -0500

Sid Selvidge had a goal. He once told a reporter that he wanted to celebrate his centennial singing on the stage at the Levitt Shell.…

Titus Andronicus at the Hi-Tone

Chris Herrington — Thu, 02 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

by Chris Herrington The Hi-Tone returns this week. After closing on Poplar earlier in the year, the venerable Midtown music club is reborn — sans "café" — this week at 412-414 N. Cleveland.…

The Possum Has Left the Building: George Jones (September 12, 1931 — April 26, 2013)

Chris Davis — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:40:29 -0500

George Jones, known as the Cadillac of Country Music because of his vocal range and nuanced phrasing, has died.

While looking back over past articles I stumbled across a piece I'd written prior to Jones' 1998 appearance at The Mid-South Fair. And while I may have overstated my point when I said he ignored Rock-and-Roll completely (some great Rockabilly cuts for Starday say otherwise), it's a fun read touching on the good, the bad, and the ridiculous.…