Tuesday Tunes - Gillian Welch

Hello! This is Brenden speaking. For today's edition of this prodigious periodical, I'm going to introduce you to one of my new favorite artists ever - Gillian Welch. If you've never seen the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, you probably should so you'll know what it takes to be a bonafide genius, or at least a Dapper-Dan man. Also it has one of the best soundtracks ever, made up of Bluegrass and Gospel music.The movie, to be short, is a setting of Homer's Odyssey in the 1930s deep south.

So to make a long story short (too late!), I had the idea a little while back to find more music like what I enjoyed so much in the aforementioned soundtrack. To do this, I looked up all the artists featured on the soundtrack and hit up the UGA Music Library for recordings. They had 11 CD's of music by these artists, including the soundtrack and a live concert version of the soundtrack. The first CDs I checked out from the library were two albums by Gillian Welch: Harrow & Harvest and Time (the Revelator). At first, I was only going to share two songs for this post. Then I decided it had to be at least three.....

The first song I'm going to share today is one of my favorite songs from the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack: I'll Fly Away.

This next number is from Gillian Welch's 2001 album Time (The Revelator). It's called I Want to Sing that Rock and Roll.

And here's Down Along the Dixie Line from The Harrow & The Harvest (2011). When I first heard this song, it was one of those experiences where everything stops and the only thing you're aware of is the music. For whatever reason, this song hits home for me in a way that is really rare. It reminds me of all the people and experiences I've moved away from over the years and of how sweet it is when you get the chance to go back to where you came from.

To complete the set, here's one that's more upbeat: Six White Horses.

This music has soul, even though it might not be super-bad (see James Brown). There's a kind of immediacy to it that makes it unique. From the two CD's of Gillian Welch's I've heard, there isn't a single song that wouldn't be worth posting for Tuesday Tunes (that's why I couldn't just post one or two or three songs today). It's all really solid stuff. I hope you enjoy these songs. I certainly do.

Tuesday Tunes: Andrew Bird

It's that time of the week again. It looks like the Tuesday Tunes is barely keeping our blog alive.

At least this post has something to do with what we've been up to lately.

This past Friday evening, Brenden and I made a second trip to the Georgia Theatre. We arrived at the venue entrance at 7:20pm. We thought the doors opened at 7pm and that the show started at 8pm. But we discovered that we were off by an hour (on the early end). Even so, there was already a line forming outside the building. So we got in line and got to see a parade with balloons and dogs and children in wagons pass by as we waited to be let in!

So anyway, we went to another concert. And it was amazing.

Andrew Bird, "an American musician, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist" (see Wikipedia), was our main entertainment for the evening. Here We Go Magic opened for him and they were good but memory of their performance has been overridden by the awesomeness of Andrew Bird. Something notable about Here We Go Magic's performance was that it was Brenden's first time hearing and seeing a live guitar solo.

I don't want to make this post too long and it would be good to actually post one of these things on a Tuesday. So here is a YouTube video of one of my favorite songs from his album Break It Yourself (that he played at the show) and some pictures from Friday evening.



Andrew Bird opened his show by himself, playing "Hole in the Ocean Floor." When you listen to the YouTube recording, it sounds like he's got a string section playing with him the whole time, but he actually did this solo. He used instant playback and looping to make this work. It was pretty awesome. He continued using this for the rest of the show but he also had an actual band to help out with some of the other instrumentation.

Here's a picture of him performing "Hole in the Ocean Floor"

He plays violin.

And guitar.

In this picture you can see his guitar slung on his back as he's playing the violin.
He also used that glockenspiel in front of him.
And he whistled.
And he sang.

It was pretty great.

Tuesday Tunes - Episode 2. And it's October now!

Well it's just past that time of the week again! This here is episode 2 of Tuesday Tunes, brought to you by me (Brenden) this time. Natalie's music sharing initiative has broken my long blog silence. So for those of you who have come to love and expect Natalie's voice on this blog, I apologize if the change is jarring and I sincerely hope not to scare away any of our readers (even though Halloween is coming).

As a matter of segue, I happen to be a big fan of October. I like to read scary books in October and I like to listen to scary music in October and I like to eat scary food in October (see our post from 11.8.10) and I like to put up scary decorations in October. I love the changing of the leaves and the crisping of the air and the glorious combination of melancholy and ripeness. Oh, what the heck. Here's a poem:

To Autumn

BY JOHN KEATS

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

   Steady thy laden head across a brook;

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

For my scary book last year I read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and it was AWESOME. The book is completely different from the pop-culture version in a refreshingly philosophical kind of way. This year I'm reading Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Natalie and I have also checked out some books from the library including an illustrated guide to the paranormal and a book of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

(The illustrations by Stephen Gammell are a zillion times scarier than the actual stories)

So, anyways. October is fun and Halloween is also fun. And can you guess what else is fun? Music. Which finally brings be to the impetus for this post: Tuesday Tunes. Early in the summer I had the exciting idea to make a mix of songs with Halloween-related themes and you will find below the end result of my efforts. I wanted to make a playlist of songs on horror and/or paranormal subjects that people might not automatically associate with Halloween. I knew there had to be more out there than "Monster Mash," "Thriller," and "Purple People Eater." I also wanted to make a list of songs that might be worth listening to all year, should one be so inclined to celebrate horror/paranormal themes beyond the month of October. It was really hard narrowing the list down to 80 minutes (the arbitrary length of CDs originally based on Beethoven's 9th Symphony) and there were some honorable mentions that might possibly grace some future Tuesday Tunes episodes for your listening pleasure and overall edification.

Halloween Mix 2012 on YouTube

UPDATED: Halloween Mix 2012 on Spotify
Unfortunately a few of the songs on the YouTube list aren't on the Spotify list because those songs aren't available on Spotify. Sorry for the inconvenience. Any complaints may be submitted in the comments section below.

Enjoy! Please comment below with any songs like these that you'd like to share!

Introducing Tuesday Tunes...

...on Wednesday. Whatever. I haven't fallen asleep yet (due to a combination of excess caffeine, thinking too much, and a stomachache) so it's still Tuesday for me.

Music is kind of a big thing in Brenden's and my lives. Not sure if you were aware of this.

I kid.

Anyway, I decided we'd share this aspect of our lives with you a little more by starting this blog thing called Tuesday Tunes. This is both an effort on my part to discover more music and to get Brenden more involved in our blog.

The gist of it is we share a musician, composer, song, or piece that we've been listening to recently. We'll publish these posts on, you guessed it, a Tuesday (except for this post, of course.) We probably won't do this every week but we'll try to do it enough to make it a pretty regular thing.

I'll start with Cat Power's song "Cherokee."

Cat Power (Chan Marshall) released her latest album Sun earlier this month and I've been listening to it basically every day since I purchased it. I listened to her a lot back in high school and into college, particularly her albums You Are Free and The Greatest. But since The Greatest came out in 2006, she hadn't released any new original music until this month's release of Sun.

Sun is different from her previous albums and the direction she's taken it works so well. She's incorporated a lot of electronic sound into this album but her somewhat jazzy voice is the same (though the style in which she sings on Sun is a lot more upbeat than previous albums.)

"Cherokee" (the song I'm sharing with you) is the opening track to Sun and probably my favorite on the whole album.

I hope you enjoy it!

Discovering the Athens Music Scene

There's this free magazine published weekly here in Athens called Flagpole. It provides a nice calendar of events for the week, including concerts and shows downtown. I've lived in Athens for over a year now and I just recently discovered this magazine and, with it, the awesome music scene in Athens.

I'd heard of the music scene in Athens but I ignored it because, well, I've kind of become somewhat antisocial since moving to Georgia. (Bad. I know. I'm working on it.) Because of my antisocial tendencies, I generally tend to avoid places where there are a lot of people (duh)-- including downtown and various events. But after discovering Flagpole magazine and their website, I realized I'm not allowed to be a hermit anymore because then I'm going to miss all of these awesome concerts. Just recently I missed concerts by Explosions in the Sky and Azure Ray. It kills me to think of the shows I may have missed this past year I've been living huddled up in my house.

Well, on Thursday last week, Brenden and I grabbed lunch at this awesome burger place called Stuffed Burger where they literally stuff your meat patty with food. It sounds a little gross but is actually really delicious. Anyway, at this burger joint, the latest Flagpole magazine was sitting in a stand near the counter. I grabbed it to flip through while we waited for our food. I quickly discovered that there was going to be an Album Leaf and Tycho concert on Saturday night at the Georgia Theatre. I didn't know who Tycho was but I've loved the Album Leaf since high school and I told Brenden right then and there that we were, in fact, going to a concert on Saturday.

And we did.

We sat on bar stools in the balcony to avoid the bulk of the crowd on the main floor which was standing room only. The music was so good. It was loud and I never really thought about listening to the Album Leaf at such a high volume but now that I have, I'm not sure how else to listen to him. Tycho was pretty good too. The crowd seemed to be more familiar with Tycho than Album Leaf, which okay, I'll admit, I'm really behind in discovering new music. New music for me, lately, has been the most recent albums of artists I liked in high school.

I'm sort of on a quest to rediscover things that once made me really happy but I pushed aside for one reason or another. This concert was a stop on that quest.

I determined I still really love live music shows despite the crowds.

Thank you Album Leaf and Tycho for bringing me back.

Here are two Youtube videos of songs from Tycho and The Album Leaf. The first video is Daydream by Tycho, which they performed at the show and the second is Into the Sea by The Album Leaf, which is a track I just really like (for some reason this video's length is seven minutes but the song is only about four and a half minutes long so the rest of the track is silence.) Enjoy!