#Signature Sounds

[impostorhottie]

i love it when mk.gee goes “mm-mm” like ok 😋

[listening-through-the-lens]

Eilen Jewell Keeps Her Hand On The Wheel

Eilen Jewell New Release Reviewed Eilen Jewell – Photo: LTTL Eilen Jewell’s New Album ‘Get Behind The Wheel’ Out Now Via Signature Sounds Continue reading Untitled

[sinceileftyoublog]

Evanston Folk Fest Saturday: 9/7, Dawes Park

Sierra Ferrell

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Every musician I watched on Saturday at the Evanston Folk Fest grappled with, directly or indirectly, what folk music means in 2024. I knew going in, given the prestige of the musical lineup and speakers in the interview tent, that the festival would not be one that casts off "folk" as a mere aesthetic, visual or instrumental. Indeed, even if many of the booked musicians didn't fit the general schema of the folk genre, they abided by its most important tenet: music not just by the people but for the people, independent of level of expertise.

From left to right: Oliver Bates Craven, Ferrell, Matty Meyer, Geoff Saunders, & Joshua Rilko

Headlining the night was Sierra Ferrell, a singer-songwriter from West Virginia whose unique mix of bluegrass and Latin-influenced arrangements (and, yes, wild outfits) have allowed her to garner steadily increasing crossover appeal beyond her initial viral rise. Earlier this year, she released her fourth studio album Trail of Flowers (Rounder), which managed to widen the spectrum of her sound while emphasizing--let alone not losing--her idiosyncrasies. On standout fiddle jam "I Could Drive You Crazy"--Ferrell's proclaimed greatest relationship skill--you can hear crowd chatter from a show she did on a previous New Year's Eve. Such noise was almost perfectly replicated on Saturday, as Ferrell's band (multi-instrumentalist Oliver Bates Craven, mandolinist Joshua Rilko, bassist Geoff Saunders, drummer Matty Meyer) led off with the song's melody to welcome her onto the stage. As she waltzed on, revealing her poofy pink dress and feathered-and-flowered hair, done up like an Appalachian Björk, her fans did indeed hoot and holler.

Ferrell

Likewise, no matter the studio sheen of Trail of Flowers (or "Fox Hunt" being thumping enough to soundtrack an NFL cut to commercial), live, its songs fit seamlessly into a set that seemed intimate despite the large crowd. Album opener "American Dreaming" has found a second life as a song to be played near the end of the show, a crowd singalong due to its catchy melody and commonly felt story of a person unable to sit still. For touring musician Ferrell, who started out as train-hopping, van-dwelling, busking nomad, the only difference now is she can better afford nightly lodging. When performing, her unmistakably raspy voice takes even sharper twists and turns: During "Chittlin' Cookin' Time in Cheatham County", she occupied the shrillness of Joanna Newsom, flutters of Josephine Foster, and barroom gurgle of Tom Waits from moment to moment. Later, during Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee", but in the style of its most famous iteration by Janis Joplin, you half-expected Ferrell to do a Joplin impression. She has the skills, but instead, she made it her own, a true folk singer who can sing a song from the collective consciousness, but not showy enough to discourage others from joining in.

Rilko

Craven, Meyer, Farrell, & Saunders

Craven, Meyer, Farrell, Saunders, & Rilko

Hiss Golden Messenger

Hiss Golden Messenger

Midway through his solo set, Hiss Golden Messenger's MC Taylor let the crowd know he was going to do a cover of a folk song. "I was a folklorist in my former life, so I feel qualified to play it," he quipped. The song was Grateful Dead's "Bertha", and it received such rapturous applause that Taylor joked he should have led off with it. First, Taylor's always qualified to play Dead songs. His venerable band has been interpolating "Franklin's Tower" into Lateness of Dancers bop "Lucia" for years, and he's beginning to release live recordings on his Bandcamp page at the pace of a certain band that was oft-bootlegged. More importantly, though, at this point, Hiss Golden Messenger has developed a catalog of contemporary folk classics. As soon as Taylor came on stage, introduced by Evanston mayor Daniel Biss, an eager crowd member requested "Sanctuary", to which a chuffed Taylor requested patience, replying, "We'll get there!" As Hiss Golden Messenger studio songs and full-band performances expand in length and sound, they always sound good stripped down, too, from newer tunes like "Shinbone" to favorites like "Biloxi". Of course, it's the biggest treat to hear songs from acoustic masterpiece Bad Debt, an album he'll play in full next month at SPACE. Taylor gave the Evanston Folk Fest crowd a preview of what's to come with "Balthazar's Song", a tune that could make you melt on the coldest day of the year.

Hiss Golden Messenger

Hiss Golden Messenger

Mayor of Evanston, Daniel Biss

Willi Carlisle

And then there was the artist who, perhaps expectedly, most reckoned with the idea of what folk music means, Arkansas-based singer-songwriter Willi Carlisle. Sure, some of it was tongue-in-cheek, asking what an upper-middle-class Chicago suburb was doing deciding what constitutes a folk festival, but for the most part, Carlisle framed folk music as being in constant battle with that which represents an existential threat to, well, regular folks: capitalism, empire, and the patriarchy. Carlisle is a captivating storyteller and musician, reciting his poetry at a breakneck pace and ad-libbing, too, switching between banjo, fiddle, guitar, and a capella. I'm glad he's released a taste of what his shows are like with Tales From Critterland (Signature Sounds), which features three of the many songs he played on Saturday, plus their proper introductions: "The Arrangements", inspired by and dedicated to his and all bad fathers, "Critterland", which came from his attempt to live in an intentional community, and Steve Goodman's "The Ballad of Penny Evans". It was that last one that was the song of the day on Saturday, perfect for time and place. Let's acknowledge the elephant in the room: Goodman's best known in Chicago for writing the song that plays at Wrigley Field after the Cubs win. The crowd at Evanston Folk Fest was likely more familiar than is the average Chicagoan with Goodman's penchant for writing incredibly moving and righteous songs, but for those who weren't, Carlisle's show-stopping version of Goodman's anti-Vietnam War ballad surely gave them the chills. On Tales From Critterland, Carlisle explains how Goodman lifted the melody from a song about slavery, sung from the point of view of the slaveowner, repurposing a great melody for a song with complete opposite levels of morality, an exercise in the evolution of songs. On Saturday, Carlisle simply dedicated his performance to all the Palestinians murdered by a despotic Israeli government. It was a moment that most spoke to folk music's true power, that of "This machine kills fascists" protest, an ability to foresee unfortunately everlasting societal ills, and a dare to hope for a better world.

Carlisle

[garudabluffs]

Green River Festival ready for 37th year of celebrating live music Jun. 20, 2024

"This weekend’s 37th annual Green River Festival offers nearly nonstop music - beginning on Friday, June 21 - for three days on the Franklin County Fairgrounds, alongside plenty of food for all tastes, a juried craft fair with handmade creations, and lots for the kids to do.

“There is so much excitement for the musical lineup this year that is a strong mix of indie rock, Americana, international stars, funk, reggae, pop and more. It’s going to be a blast,” said John Sanders, festival director and partner at DSP Shows, who purchased the festival last October from Signature Sounds Presents."

READ MORE https://www.masslive.com/entertainment/2024/06/green-river-festival-ready-for-37th-year-of-celebrating-live-

The Parlor Room Transitions to Nonprofit

November 18, 2022 "Chris Freeman, the President and Director of the organization." + "The transition to a non-profit came as a solution to low profit margins and difficulty drawing in younger audiences. “We’ve been a culturally successful venue for a long time,” said Freeman. “We’re known for giving fair deals to artists and keeping the music as the center of attention. But it got to the point where it was more work than was profitable for Signature Sounds to keep the venue open.”

READ MORE https://thesophian.com/the-parlor-room-transitions-to-nonprofit-hopes-to-bring-in-smithies/

Signature Sounds sells Green River Festival to DSP Shows Oct. 12, 2023

"Signature Sounds today announced that it has sold the Green River Festival to leading Western Massachusetts concert promoter DSP Shows.

DSP concurrently announced that it has signed a five-year lease to keep the genre-spanning fest at at the Franklin County Fairgrounds. Next year will mark the festival’s 37th

DSP Shows, which is based in Ithaca, New York and Northampton, is a one of the leading independent concert promoters in America and has been recognized as one of the top 100 promoters in the world by trade magazine Pollstar."

More music, bigger stages: In new hands, Green River Festival returns next weekend

John Sanders of DSP Shows, who has been booking shows in the Valley for the past 25 years, is stepping into Olsen’s former role as festival director. Sanders estimates he’s booked about 5000 shows over the course of his career, at venues that include the Iron Horse, the Shea Theater, the Academy of Music, and the summer series at the Tree House Brewing Company in South Deerfield.

“The Green River Festival is the premier outdoor event of the summer, and Jim has done a great job of programming it and building it into an incredible festival with a great reputation in the industry,” said Sanders, who has attended the festival since 2001. “It felt like a good fit with what I’ve been doing in Pioneer Valley all these years.”

Green River fans need not worry — this will not be a drastic change.

Article continues after...

Smalls Pleasures: How One Concert Promoter Found Success in the Little Things

Dan Smalls, founder of DSP Shows

DSP Presents, which he now owns with partner John Sanders. Since the formation of what the partners now call DSP Shows, they’ve moved beyond putting on shows exclusively at the local theater and promote shows at small venues all across New York State and New England.

Apr 5 2022 READ MORE https://www.eventbrite.com/blog/creator-spotlight-dsp-shows/

READ MORE https://www.amherstbulletin.com/GreenRiverFestPreview-55644686

[kbsd]

bucky egan // "free" by florence + the machine

the feeling comes so fast and i cannot control it i'm on fire, but i'm trying not to show it

[jarofalicesgrunge]

Kurt Cobain signing Autographs 1991 ©️📸

[soundleer]

I'm in love with your art style of sprunki mostly tunner I'm in love

whee thankii!! im in a mood to treat you smthn so here's a warmup drawing of tunner holding his jellybean self hyee!!

itty bitty critter :33

[socialiseisnotinmyname]

Sentitwin Week Day-1

"Do you remember when they used to have so much fun pretending to be eachother?"

(Note: I may accidentally post the post(s) a day earlier due to my timezone)

this was a pain to finish man... but Look At THEM HA AHA MY BOYS BABY BOYS MAWH×20 They are sooo CUTE I love the results haha❤

It's felix and adrien: right to left :)

(or you already figured that out)

(Tumblr is gonna butcher my drawings isn't it, please zoom in to see the details better :,))

[rocketbirdie]

So here's an underrated boss battle theme from Remake, which they apparently decided to use for a silly ghost instead of for a calamitous world ending eldritch monstrosity. Now in crunchy PSX quality!

[onceinawhilemoon]

sure, sherry. your brother would just let M walk free after he literally checked every single box under Ways to Antagonize Mycroft Holmes by: killing his agents, actively fucking with intelligence and national security operations, being a literal threat to the nation, and committing the cardinal sin of stalking and threatening to hurt an overprotective mama bear’s cub (aka YOU), a crime easily punished by imprisonment, death, or worse (see: otto richter). but sure… 

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Happy birthday to Albert Camus!

(November 7, 1913 - January 4, 1960)

"In this light and silence, years of night and fury melted slowly away. I listened to an almost forgotten sound within myself, as if my heart had long been stopped and was now gently beginning to beat again."

Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays (Return to Tipasa)

[listening-through-the-lens]

"Lethal Love" From Eilen Jewell's New Album

New Song Eilen Jewell Eilen Jewell at Port Fairy Folk Festival 2023 – Photo: LTTL Eilen Jewell Releases Second Single “Lethal Love” From The Album ‘Get Behind The Wheel’ Out May 5, 2023 (more…) “”

[sinceileftyoublog]

Willi Carlisle & Golden Shoals Live Show Review: 2/9, Schubas, Chicago

From left to right: Grady Drugg, Willi Carlisle, Sophie Mae Wellington

BY JORDAN MAINZER

For Willie Carlisle and Golden Shoals, playing live is both an opportunity to share the stories behind the songs and the stories behind the band itself. Both the Fayetville, Arkansas singer-songwriter and Nashville-based folk duo work outside the machinations of the mainstream country scene but are intimately aware of it. Their songs, though, have the perfectly classic country mix of truth and legend, tales of living outdoors and the ills of late capitalism seamlessly weaving the rawness of reality with the showmanship of exaggeration. Their show at Schubas on Friday exemplified what they do best.

Carlisle delivered a triumphant set balancing his new album Critterland (Signature Sounds) with back catalog favorites. Accompanied by guitarist Grady Drugg and fiddler Sophie Mae Wellington (who also showed off her flatfoot dancing skills), Carlisle contextualized his songs with his personal history and ethos. When he started playing music, Carlisle traveled the country with his banjo, sleeping in his van or outside, including in Millennium Park and under the Clark Street Bridge. He busked in Mariano Park; like a tried and true flaneur with a flair for the colloquial, on Friday, he referred to Mariano Park what we Chicagoans call it: the Viagra Triangle. To Carlisle, though, these days, a song like "The Van Life" from 2022's Peculiar, Missouri is less biography and more a recognition of, as Carlisle put it, "the failure of the American left," the crisis of the unhoused, and immoral eviction laws.

Carlisle & Wellington

With so much weight behind his songs, it would be easy for Carlisle to fall victim to overexplaining. However, I found his banter essential, just as much a part of the show as the songs themselves. Take a song like "The Great Depression". Carlisle knows that giving a song that title while adopting even a bit of an old-timey aesthetic conjures thoughts of stock market crashes, John Steinbeck, and Woody Guthrie. To hear that it's really about epigenetics, and the passing down of not just generational trauma but the love of song, was revelatory, and made me appreciate it even more as a folk tune. When Carlisle played "The Arrangements" for his father, his father apparently replied, "I didn't know you knew your grandfather that well." Carlisle clarified that both his grandfather and father were good dads, adding a layer of complexity to it all; as a result of our actions, what we pass down, up, or to the side is not always so clear-cut.

During his set, Carlisle mentioned the paradox of "authentic" country music in 2024: After all, those who claim to be authentic are, as he noted, rehashing the very concept of authenticity. What was more important on Friday was a sense of audience or listener inclusion, true to the spirit of the punk music he grew up on or the folk music he's adopted. Hoedown "Boy Howdy, Hot Dog!" and Gospel-style main set closer "Your Heart's a Big Tent" inspired not just singalongs but stomp-alongs. And a show-stopping a capella performance of Critterland closer "The Money Grows on Trees" quieted the crowd to a state of rapture, save for what will be Carlisle's eternal outlaw chorus. ("Oh, hippies, hillbillies, won't you gather 'round? / A good man murdered, a bad man drowned / The cops are all moonshiners now / But the money grows on trees / Yeah, the money grows on trees.") The stories from an area of Northern Arkansas where, according to Carlisle, rumors fly and can rival network TV, may not be, for lack of a better word, authentic. But Carlisle knows, even on mostly true story "Higher Lonesome", that relying on our memory is not always the best way to be an effective troubadour, or even to get at the core veracity of life.

Golden Shoals' Amy Alvey & Mark Kilianski

Golden Shoals' two members came from contrasting backgrounds, and like Carlisle, they apply a punk spirit to folk music. Fiddle player Amy Alvey, from California, met guitarist and banjoist Mark Kilianski, from New Jersey, at Berklee College of Music in 2008. (Kilianski first picked up a guitar so he could learn Limp Bizkit's everlasting dumbass anthem "Break Stuff".) They started playing together in 2013 and touring full-time in 2016. Each member brings their distinct experiences into the Golden Shoals songs they write and sing. Many of the tunes could be country-folk standards, like Kilianski's rollicking "(Who'da Thought) Thinkin' About The Good Times (Could Ever Make You Feel So Bad)" and weary tale of hitchhiker's luck "Coffee in the Morning". Alvey is a rapt observer of place. On the as-yet-unreleased "Everybody's a Somebody", she sang about the "kind of famous" people in Nashville, squinting hard enough to see whether that truly is Orville Peck and Sierra Ferrell sitting at the bar at the American Legion. Another new song detailed the changes permeating Fredericksburg, VA, a city she's never called home but visited many times. The chosen details ranged from evidence of gentrification to "the Bachmans buried their favorite dog," which, yes, is a reference to the family of Daniel Bachman.

Kilianski

Alvey's "Bitter", co-written with Rachel Baiman, came to light after Spotify ghoul/CEO Daniel Ek basically insinuated that working musicians need to release new music every week in order to compete in the market. Though the irony was not lost on Alvey that the song is available to stream on Spotify, the band found a way to pivot: they've now been selling homemade bitters as part of their merch. It seemed like a metaphor for the night's bill. The music that artists like Carlisle and Golden Shoals make may never again be "popular," and it's not more--gulp--authentic because it's not popular. But it adapts within the hell-world, and finds strength in its own spirit and the reception of those who may find some validity in the stories for themselves.

Alvey

[thankstothe]

He's so fucked

[weirdmageddon]

fuck it i did it myself

[cyberkaban]

Dr.Easterman lore or something

Oh no evil psychosis-skeleton with red glowing eyes, whatdoido😫😭💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀