This Sunday's lineup at the African American Heritage Festival is particularly impressive. Starting at 2:50 pm, the Verizon Wireless stage will feature Big Daddy Stallings,Winslow Dynasty (featuring Dontae Winslow), Fertile Ground, and the Jazz Allstars (featuring Terence Blanchard and Gary Thomas). You can also catch Anita Baker on the Main Stage at 7:30 pm. Admission is just $5, children under 12 are free. Visit aahf.net/2009/ for more info.

Tickets to Whartscape—the sprawling, freewheeling indie music festival—go on sale at noon today. Venues include the BMA, Load of Fun, and the MICA Art Studio Center parking lot. Considering all the bands slated to perform, the mega-pass would seem to live up to its name.

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?

I don't recall ever having a moment of Pauline conversion as a result  of a piece of art, but I guess this, from a long way back, counts. When I was 11 or 12, I sang in the choir at my prep (junior) school, as a treble of course. At Corpus Christi we went up to the main school, just down the road, to sing the "Hallelujah Chorus" from the choir loft. It was the first time I'd experienced the sound of tenors and basses around me in a choir, and I thought it was FANTASTIC!

It was the first time I'd felt the tingle down the spine feeling of doing something musical that's real, and really now. These days, I'm a bit of an old lag, obviously, but I can still remember that excitement. I had no idea at the time, of course, that I'd be given the grace and privilege to spend a working life in music.

Peter Hammill's legendary prog-rock band, Van der Graaf Generator, plays the Rams Head in Annapolis on July 1st. Cult favorites with a fanatical following, the band has performed only a few times in the States, so this is a rare opportunity to catch a truly iconoclastic, adventurous, and bold group. An acquired taste, perhaps, but so is Ornette Coleman and Moondog. You'd be hard pressed to find a more intense—and intensely rewarding—listening experience.

The Virgin Mobile Festival will return to the area after all. This year's event will be held at Merriweather, rather than Pimlico; it's one day (August 30), instead of two; and it's free.

And at that price point, the lineup rates as superior with Weezer, The National, Public Enemy, Blink-182, Girl Talk, Franz Ferdinand, St. Vincent, The Hold Steady, others on the bill.

According to IMP, 35,000 free tickets will be distributed June 25-27. Those who bought tickets to past Virgin Fests will get first crack at them, with the general public getting a shot on the 27th via ticketmaster.com.

Good luck.

Interesting show tomorrow night, hosted by Baltimore contributor Geoff Himes. There's a good article in today's Sun about it.

THE ROOTS CAFÉ PRESENTS:
The Night of 1000 Dylans

Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, Sonia (of Disappear Fear), June Star, Anne Watts (of Boister),
Mark Brine, Red Sammy and Mary Battiata (of Little Pink) perform the songs of Bob Dylan
in a benefit concert hosted by Geoffrey Himes,
at the Patterson Theatre

Friday, June 19, at 7:30 pm
3134 Eastern Avenue
Baltimore, Maryland
410-276-1651

All proceeds benefit
the American Friends Service Committee, the Roots Café and the Creative Alliance

More info: www.creativealliance.org

Almost every American songwriter of any ambition cites Bob Dylan as an inspiration, and the best songwriters in the Baltimore-Washington area are no exception. During this special show to raise money for three of Baltimore’s best community organizations, ten of those singer-songwriters will play the Dylan songs that mean the most to them.

Boister's Anne Watts played an intimate show at 4th&Bergen as part of Brooklyn's annual Jaken Bacon Festival last weekend. The performance ended with a few woozy, accordion-fueled sing-a-longs that would have made Tom Waits blush. Even the Vampire Weekend groupies in attendance were impressed.

[Image: John Lewis]

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?

Norman Rockwell: Artist and Illustrator by Thomas S Buechner. I became a visual artist because of this 13" x 17" x 2" opus that covers Rockwell's entire career. It has over 600 illustrations, including these incredible gatefold pages that open up to over 30" in width. When I first discovered this book on my parents' bookshelves I was probably only a few inches taller than it was, which is probably what first attracted me to it. As a kid it fascinated me. I copied his work and pored over the photos and drawings he used as a reference from the time I could hold a crayon through just before I left for art college. As a master of composition, color, anatomy, and light, Rockwell could have painted anything he wanted, and he chose to paint the most ordinary moments in life. His technical skill inspired me to create my own art. But his socially aware, gently firm statements and observations on race, class, and society influenced a line of thinking that extends beyond the visual realm. I probably lean so far left politically as I do because of this book. Now it sits on my bookshelf, a gift from my mother a few years ago, and I was surprised when opening it again for the first time in years that it still has the power to teach me new things and inspire new ideas.

Nolen Strals and Double Dagger play at DC's Crooked Beat Records this evening at 7 pm. Double Dagger will also appear at Whartscape on July 12th and open for Half Japanese at the Ottobar on July 24th.

From last Friday's New York Times...

Ponytail, a spastic prog-punk quartet from Baltimore, is the auditory equivalent of downing 15 pounds of Skittles, while Thank You, also from Baltimore, feels more like eating gravel: each band makes artful, visceral noise that hits in the gut. 

Bon appetit.

photo credit: fisherkiller

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you?

I saw How to Draw a Bunny, the documentary about Ray Johnson’s life. I had been familiar with Ray’s work, and I felt some sort of connection with him. Here’s a guy who could have been as popular as Andy Warhol, a guy who was on his own planet—probably even more so, to be completely honest—who never had a gallery showing, never used celebrity to sell his art, and was in absolute service to the source. That was inspiring to me.

Of course, there are records that changed my life. The first time I heard [Sly Stone's] There’s a Riot Goin’ On, I felt like I had found my purpose in life, even if it was just to listen to that record. I still listen to the first McCartney record every other day.

But Ray Johnson, I love that man. I didn’t know him, and I’m sure he could have been as much of a dick as he was a great artist, but there’s something about the dryness of his character and the fact that he just worked and worked and worked and worked. After he drowned, they found that his house was filled with his work with just a little mattress on the floor and stacks of books.

Other than having a family, I hope that’s all I leave behind—a body of work and the fact that I went to work every single day.

Richard Swift writes amazing songs—his latest CD, The Atlantic Ocean (Secretly Canadian), is proof of that, and "Lady Luck" may be my favorite song of the year (so far). He opens for The Fray at Merriweather Post Pavilion tomorrow night. If you're going, get there early and cheer loudly for Mr. Swift.

The Knot, the excellent new disc from our very own Wye Oak, is streaming in its entirety at the Merge Records site. Check it out and look for a glowing review in our next issue.

Wye Oak plays the Ottobar on July 21st.