Posts tagged with "JUNE 2012"
TENACIOUS D
TENACIOUS D
Playing their music for fun and the industry for laughs
How does a comedy duo follow an album that won neither stellar reviews nor sales? Turn it into a joke, of course. Tenacious D’s 2006 film The Pick of Destiny and its accompanying soundtrack garnered a lukewarm reception at best, but it has since gained a cult following. After six years, Jack Black and Kyle Gass have returned with their follow-up, Rize of the Fenix—rife with self-deprecating...
THE MEMORIALS
THE MEMORIALS
From Berklee to Berkeley, their art has always been a collaborative effort
When recording their second album, Delirium, the Berkeley, Calif., outfit known as the Memorials employed a wonderfully effective everything-but-the-kitchen-sink sonic philosophy. For the follow-up to 2011’s self-titled debut, band organizer and former Mars Volta drummer Thomas Pridgen, vocalist Viveca Hawkins and guitarist Nick Brewer kept the tempo cranked...
EVERCLEAR
EVERCLEAR
Life changes bring the inspiration for their long-awaited new album
Everclear fans have been waiting for an album of new material since 2006’s Welcome to the Drama Club. Now that the band has released its eighth studio record, Invisible Stars, leader Art Alexakis explains that it simply took that long before he felt he had something new to say. “I wasn’t writing songs for a while because I didn’t feel like I had anything...
ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO
ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO
Exploring the world around him, from the streets of Mexico to the sky
Austin-based singer and songwriter Alejandro Escovedo often finds himself pigeonholed as an alt-country act. But the man who—lest we forget—was a founding member of pioneering punk band the Nuns and roots-rockers Rank and File and True Believers, is a rocker at heart. “If you look at my solo records and the bands I’ve been in, at the core of it...
SHAWN COLVIN
SHAWN COLVIN
Feeling at home with some of music’s greatest singers and songwriters
It’s been 15 years since Shawn Colvin’s “Sunny Came Home” catapulted the singer-songwriter into the mainstream. Since then the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter has collaborated with artists from James Taylor and Béla Fleck to Mary Chapin Carpenter and Sting. For All Fall Down, Colvin adds to that list producer Buddy Miller (who recorded the album at his...
JOE BONAMASSA
JOE BONAMASSA
A guitar master enjoys an overnight success decades in the making
Joe Bonamassa nurses a sore neck as he discusses his new album, Driving Towards the Daylight—the result of too much headbanging onstage the night before. “We added a bit of ‘Still of the Night’ by Whitesnake,” he muses. “Maybe that’s what wrenched out my neck.” Bonamassa, 35, isn’t letting a wrenched-out neck slow him down now. He’s an acknowledged...