#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

[izzystizzys]

There is a scratch mark on the floor of the Council chambers that Mace has never noticed before. Not a deep one, mind, quite shallow. This matters because it’s making the white-hot pulse of agony stabbing through his eyeballs ebb momentarily. Then, he chances a glance upwards at the fidgeting Knight in front of them, and it returns in full force.

Huh, he’s never seen Oppo Rancisis’ face turn that colour before.

“Hmm”, Master Yoda hums, deep and scratchy. His expression is unreadable even to Mace beyond a baseline gremlinness, and the force with which he grips the edges of his seat is making his bones creak. Master of the Order you should become, they said. Follow the calling of the Force, you should. A fulfilling purpose, it will be. Mace is going to hunt the little goblin for sport when this is all over, and he’s going to laugh the whole time.

“Show us the livestream again, could you, Knight Parvo?” Yoda asks. Mace bursts a capillary, he’s pretty sure, and so does poor Knight Parvo, whose orange Mon Cala skin tips all the way into blood red with stress. “Most unusual, this is.”

“Absolutely not!”, Ki Adi intervenes before Mace has to, thank the Force for little mercies. Plo Koon’s tusks tremble slightly with either suppressed laughter or abject horror, maybe both, and Stass Allie has her head in her hands. “The holo stills should be enough”, Ki Adi proceeds to add, and Mace has to reconsider all feelings of grace he just felt towards his fellow Councillor.

He never wants to watch Yoda zoom in on someone’s abs again. Or Depa raise her eyebrows at the curve of thighs bent over the dripping front of a speeder.

“Speeder Wash For Our Troops”, his former padawan reads out loud from a still of what has to be hundreds of the things gathered in the public senate parking lot. “Fund Our Boys And Get A Wet Seeing-To!” The series of images features dozens of Coruscant Guard troopers in various stages of unkitted, gleaming and shining with soap suds and water. The fact that the whole thing is also massive shatterpoint after massive shatterpoint is, quite frankly, insulting.

“Well hello- oh dear”, Obi-Wan’s blue form crackles to life in his chair, followed by several sounds of choking that are definitely not him. Good, Mace thinks acidly. If he has to deal with this, then so does kriffing Skywalker. “I’m sorry, why am I looking at Commander Thorn using a washrag like a lasso on top of a speeder?”

“Oh, the Guard’s little fundraising project”, Bail Organa says, as he steps into the Council chambers. Normally, Mace likes the man well enough. Now, he just smiles and adds on, “I’ve already donated, in mine and Breha’s name. Remotely, of course.”

“The Guard’s fundraising speeder wash?”, Obi-Wan repeats, edges of his holo form flickering with what Mace suspects is Skywalker very unsubtly trying to edge in. Force, but the man really is horrible at any and all stealth, like kissing his secret wife in an open arena in front of his Master. “And they are fundraising for…?”

“GAR budget allocations have to come from somewhere”, Organa shrugs. “And with the tide of public opinion turning, they’ve been tending towards cuts. The Guard feels them more keenly than any other sector - they’ve been reduced from half to quarter rations, and medical supplies have not made more than a token appearance in the last draft. The Chancellor has cancelled three consecutive meetings on the matter, and thus it was agreed that a more hands-on approach was needed. Any surplus will go into the Army fund.”

“Surely it can’t be that dire”, Oppo protests, a slightly less concerning shade of purple now. Senator Organa shrugs again, jostling the smattering of cracks slowly building around his person in a way that makes Mace wince quietly. “It’s all publicly available data, Masters.”

It really can be that dire, as it turns out. And quarter rations is only scratching the surface of how dire, considering the Guard has apparently never had access to bacta in all their posting, and also includes requisitioning forms available to the Senate for reconditionings and decommissionings, two words Mace has only heard Ponds whispers amidst shuddering in the early days of the war before Shaak Ti went off and just about tore some throats out over it.

“Alright”, he concedes, rubbing at his temples. “Fair enough, we have failed to tackle a massive blind spot in the Guard’s well being. There is no Jedi assigned to Coruscant, and that’s an oversight on our behalf. But how in the everloving kriff did this get past the Chancellor and Commander Fox?!”

Who have both signed, black on white. Bail Organa smiles cryptically. “Well, if you scroll a bit past that one image, up to the industrial speeder in the back - Commander Fox is currently having credits stuffed into his codpiece in the back, I believe.”

“HE’S WHAT IN THE WHAT NOW”, Commander Cody screeches through the speaker of Obi-Wan’s holo image, and Mace has to summon every bit of Jedi-serenity he possesses in his body to keep from dropkicking a cackling Yoda through the chamber windows.

[jarofalicesgrunge]

Kurt Cobain signing Autographs 1991 ©️📸

[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 :,))

[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)

[weirdmageddon]

fuck it i did it myself

[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

[cyberkaban]

Dr.Easterman lore or something

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

[jadelemonadee]

HELLO HELLO HELLOOOO IM BACK FROM THE SHOW 😻😻😜😜😻🥰😻 IT WAS SO AMAZING OH MY GODDD I CRIED AT SO BIG/SO SMALL OUGHHHH…..I ALSO GOT SIGNATURES AND PHOTOS AT THE STAGE DOOR 😻 I GOT TO GIVE EVAN’S ACTOR A BRACELET HE WAS SO COOL

(evan hansen, alana beck, cynthia murphy, and heidi hansen)

[thankstothe]

He's so fucked

[boba-beom]

face reveal :> ps. pls be kind!

i swear i live up to my name, had to put the serious face to match beomgyu lmao

please do NOT save my photos 🥹

and ofc me and my bias wrecker <3 had to smile for this one ^^