(Image credit: The Bay Bridged http://www.thebaybridged.com/)

ENS West Coast contributor Dave Tobias hit another great show recently and is generous enough to share his experience. Check out his review of Jim James below.

Jim James’ solo tour behind his underrated debut, Regions of Light and Sound of God, swung through San Francisco on Sunday night. This placed the prolific frontman back in the house that built his band, My Morning Jacket, for first time since the release of Okonokos. And he certainly didn’t disappoint.

With almost two decades of work with My Morning Jacket under his belt, this tour is the time for James to shine on his own merits. James’ flying V guitar was out in full force, which wasn’t particularly expected given the dreamy, bedroom pop of his debut solo album. However, when translated to the live stage, James added vitality and energy to the music is a way that only he can; head-banging, hair-whipping solos and stage hopping being the primary efforts.

Unlike the morphing setlists of My Morning Jacket’s tours, James has taken to consistency by playing his entire album in full as the first set, then returning to the stage to play a handful of numbers from his other projects. It was a nice balance between the old and the new, divided very cleanly and placing the music in its proper place. It still gave fans of James’ older material some songs they’d want to hear, while allowing him to remain distinct as an artist within the solo effort.

I found myself reflecting on James’ growth as a musician, and comfort in his place within the modern landscape. He’s proud to be a Southern boy, and thus the country-tinged Americana of a few of his songs works exceptionally well. But he also blends in Allman Brothers-like face-melting guitarwork, and does so without having anyone bat an eye. I give him a lot credit for holding to his roots while simultaneously expanding the musical horizons of his listeners. My Morning Jacket has clearly built their following in the American rock landscape, and if James can continue to produce efforts as breezy as his current release, he’ll begin to create his own niche as well.

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It’s been another busy spring of concert announcements coming from all angles. And spring is quickly turning into summer and those shows are more than announcements, they are happening, and soon.

One of the next ones we are excited about is with Passion Pit and Cults. We are fans of both bands and think it’s a killer bill for a show here in Cincinnati. However, when we saw it was booked at US Bank Arena, we had our doubts. After all, it seems like an awfully big space for those bands, even though they are on the rise.

You may have had the same doubt, but for us, that was washed away when we found out it was a floor only, general admission show. So no need to worry about being in a far corner of an arena, you can be on the floor in a much smaller area to enjoy this show, and it will likely make all the difference.

Passion Pit is touring supporting their most recent album, Gossamer, which is almost a year old, but is still finding new listeners. Cults are still finding new fans as well after their 2011 debut release and should have some new material to share at the show here in Cincinnati.

And oh yeah, we have some tickets for the show to giveaway to you, all you have to do to enter is send a Tweet mentioning this contest and @EachNoteSecure!

Good luck!

Here is some video of Cults playing a jam packed MOTR Pub during Midpoint 2010.

The post Win Tickets To See Passion Pit with Cults appeared first on Each Note Secure.

It’s true. The band that most of us gave up on ever being able to see is back and touring. Neutral Milk Hotel, who need no introduction for independent music lovers, announced last week that they would be re-uniting and playing a handful of dates.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect Cincinnati to be one of the cities that the band booked a show. But lo and behold, today it was officially announced that Neutral Milk Hotel will indeed play a show in the Cincinnati area at The Madison in Covington this October.

This isn’t the bands first trip into town either, they played at Sudsy Malones back in 1996 and 1998.

Tickets for the show go on sale this Friday at 10am. In an attempt to prevent scalping, all tickets will be will-call only.

Tickets will be 31$.

$1 from every ticket sold will benefit Children of the Blue Sky. Children of the Blue Sky, founded by Martina Radwan is on a mission to help abandoned Mongolian street kids rebuild their lives by placing them with foster families, providing them with livestock, and giving them a chance to go to school.

The post Neutral Milk Hotel coming to Cincinnati appeared first on Each Note Secure.

Here is something that should make most of us feel really old. Hail To The Thief from Radiohead was released 10 years ago! The bright side of this realization is that the album is being celebrated, and the celebration is happening right here in Cincinnati.

The Marburg Collective is a home-grown, communally driven record label, event-planning and media arts production center. Its infrastructural organization is fabricated by the carefully creative and craftful efforts of an interchanging core of artists, artisans and musicians.

The Hail To The Thief tribute will be performed live by members of SHADOWRAPTR, The Happy Maladies and ADM at Northside Tavern on May 31.

So come out and enjoy some great local musicians performing a great album!

The post Marburg Collective pays tribute to Radiohead appeared first on Each Note Secure.

It would be an understatement to say that I’m a big fan of These United States. Myself and my former mates at WOXY.com were one of the early supporters of their efforts about five years ago and I’ve done my best to tell you more about their albums, tours and adventures in the years since then. I even ‘presented’ a show featuring the guys back in 2008, show poster and all.

Earlier this week I finally took the time to take in a documentary the band released recently, which was filmed by Jared Varava as he traveled the country during an ambitious tour for the band. It was ambitious because the guys played 33 shows in 33 cities as a part of 33 different lineups.

The film is titled A Picture Of The Three Of Us and was a real treat for me to watch. One of the reasons is that the bands experiences with WOXY played a role in the film, with audio and video from TUS lounge acts showing up. But I enjoyed it especially because it reminded me of a different time, although not long ago, when I was interacting with great bands on a daily basis. I’m happy to say that the TUS guys are also friends, so this film holds a special place in my heart. If you haven’t taken the time to watch it yet, do it today.

Watch the film in its entirety at Paste.

The post These United States release documentary appeared first on Each Note Secure.

Drunk Music Reviews is exactly what it sounds like: Caitlin Behle reviews shows while progressively getting drunker, while illustrator John Sebastian turns the drunken reviews, which could be ridiculous, sloppy or just plain insulting, into a comic.

Part of the charm of SXSW is the people-watching. Austin’s motto is “Keep Austin Weird” and they ain’t shitting you. There are some lovely characters floating around, and like a kid in a candy shop, John wanted to draw all of them. As John put it, “There were a lot of real life caricatures there, it was really hard to not want to draw everybody.”

A sampling (with notes by John):

Nasty Canasta

“Nasty Canasta” is a dude working the door at some bar next to Mugshots. He had a cut off shirt and shoulder hair, and looked like he needed a head tattoo of a sailboat to be riding the sea of head fat.

(Author’s note: Mugshots is an oasis of dirt cheap whiskey with a shady patio. It’s a welcome break from live music if you just need to hang out and get drunk in the quiet of your own shame.).

Junkie Chic

Some girl I saw. She kind of represented the typical SXSW-ian you’d run into there.

(Author’s Note: Other typical SXSW-ians included Overdressed Hipsters, Confused But Delighted Broes, and for some reason, Topless Ladies Riding Pedicabs.)

Shitty Tommy Lee

Shitty Tommy Lee was some guy in spandex animal print pants, hat, and boa, a leather vest, lots of guyliner, and a mesh tank top. He was stuck in LA in 1986 and looked coked out of his fucking mind.

The Melting Girl

We saw The Melting Girl outside of The Russian Room. She was named as such because it looked like her face was melting.

The Pinstripes Sketcher

Meta-DMR sketching! This nerd was drawing The Pinstripes while they were busking on 6th street. His illustrations weren’t great.

The post [Drunk Music Reviews] SXSW Travelogue: Part IV – BONUS CARICATURES appeared first on Each Note Secure.

It was the closer on Saturday night that nearly brought a tear to my eye. The whole ‘family’ was on stage and they all sang together, along with the crowd as the night wrapped up. It’s nights like this that keep me interested in this blog. It’s nights like this that remind me why music is essential. It’s nights like this that make me proud to be a part, albeit a small one, of the journey the MusicNOW Festival has taken in eight short years.

As I walked away from Memorial Hall on Saturday night, and hummed the closing collaboration, as Glen Hansard predicted we would, I said aloud…”THAT is why MusicNOW is special, THAT is why there is nothing like it.”

You’ll have to excuse my hyperbole on this one but I really feel that way. The same thing I experienced when Sufjan Stevens wowed us in 2007, the same thing that filled the room when Grizzly Bear and Andrew Bird played in 2008 and the same emotion that was on display when Justin Vernon and friends performed Sounds Of The South in 2010. There are plenty of other standout performances, but those are especially etched in my memory.

And so was Saturday night.

But it would be wrong for me to gloss over Friday night when recalling the weekend, because it was special as well.

We were treated to several fantastic performances, led by Buke and Gase, who I wrote about here on ENS before the festival. I enjoyed their set, which was heavy with material from their excellent album General Dome. As good as the set was, it really ended up being just a primer for the things that followed. Up next Richard Reed Parry took the stage flanked by a percussionist and another MusicNOW alum, Laurel Sprengelmeyer, better known to audiences as Little Scream. Together they performed a series of new songs, that Richard confessed were only being performed for an audience for the second time ever, and first time on U.S. soil. He also confessed his love for all things MusicNOW, including the statement that Memorial Hall was “his favorite concert hall in the world.”

Finally, the opening night would feature a performance most in attendance couldn’t anticipate from Tinariwen. You can count me in the class of attendees that was mostly ignorant about the band before looking them up as I prepared for MusicNOW. I won’t dive into the history of the group, but will simply say that they have been together since the 70′s, served and performed at military camps together for years, were widely ‘discovered’ only in the early 2000′s and have since become a Grammy winning band and a big live draw. The band of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali not only carried in a fantastic back story, but also a fan base that I none of us have seen at a MusicNOW performance, and might not again. Once the band took the stage, fans began to leave their seats and casually walk up to the stage.

They filled the pit area and the aisles and stayed there during the entire set, cheering and dancing in admiration of the band and their performance. For a typically docile crowd and environment, this was both joyous and exhilarating as I felt like I was part of the experience, yet was also a voyeur to the experience so many others were having.

Saturday

I’ve already made mention of Saturday night at the beginning of this piece. For me, it was another special MusicNOW night. The evening began with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, who festival curator Bryce Dessner has worked with several times in the past, and was anxious to show off to the MusicNOW crowd. The group of over forty 12-17 year olds were incredibly composed, hard working and most importantly are remarkably talented. They did a great set which included several of the MusicNOW performers from previous nights and years premiering pieces they had penned with the Chorus in mind. This included new stuff from Richard Reed Parry and Shara Worden, and Bryce joining the chorus as well for some great pieces.

Glen Hansard was the biggest name on the MusicNOW bill to many, after all, it was the night with the most in attendance, and ever since the film Once, Glen’s music has risen to the surface for many. For those of us that were big fans of Glen’s band, The Frames, his newfound success was a bit of a mixed bag. We were incredibly happy to see him excel, but kinda wished that it was within the context of The Frames. That being said, I loved Once, The Swell Season and even some of the stuff on Glen’s new solo album, so I was excited for the set.

If there was any doubt about whether or not Glen would fit the mold of the MusicNOW experience, those doubts were washed away almost immediately as Glen confessed after just one song that he was already jumping off of the prepared setlist. Any fears that newfound fame had changed the former Irish street musician were squashed as well when his stage banter was welcoming, warm and comfortable. During his time on the Memorial Hall stage, it felt like we got a little bit of everything. From Glen spontaneously breaking into a verse or two of Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’, to a broken string that led to him leading the crowd in Daniel Johnston’s ‘Devil Town.’ Maybe Glen does this every night, but he had me convinced that we were getting a unique show here, and there was plenty more where that came from.

About halfway through the set, and after a surprising yet fantastic cover of Kitty Wells’ ‘Cincinnati, Ohio’, Glen dipped into the Once soundtrack. He explained that he rarely does ‘Falling Slowly’ anymore because it was written to be a duet, but that he was doing it tonight because a member of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and himself had practiced it earlier in the day. After an unassuming 14 or 15 year old girl walked onstage, some might have had their doubts but she not only held up her end of the duet, she had everyone on their feet cheering by the time the song had finished.

And after all of that, it was probably the closer that choked me up the most. The group did an amazing cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Passing Through.’ Words don’t do it justice, thankfully Keith Klenowski captured it on video.

And after all of this, we were treated to the greatest living composer on Sunday night, Steve Reich and So Percussion on Sunday night. I was feeling a little under the weather, so I’m sad to report I missed a big chunk of the night, but from what I’ve heard it was another special night.

Bryce, I trust you man, even when I’m not sure what you are doing with your curation, even when I don’t know much about who and what you are going to present, I trust you because I’ve never been let down at this festival in eight years. I can’t wait until next year.

The post MusicNOW 2013: We’re all just passin through appeared first on Each Note Secure.

Drunk Music Reviews is exactly what it sounds like: Caitlin Behle reviews shows while progressively getting drunker, while illustrator John Sebastian turns the drunken reviews, which could be ridiculous, sloppy or just plain insulting, into a comic.

Day 2
March 15

Our second day of SXSW was all about day parties. While John split off to check out, as he puts it, “sweaty, bearded metalheads” at the Brooklyn Vegan showcase, I headed to the Couch Sessions Showcase to see Erykah Badu and the Robert Glasper Experiment.

JOHN’S EXPERIENCE @ BROOKLYN VEGAN SHOWCASE

First, here’s John’s experience (in his own words):

Inter Arma  

My first thought was “hey, their drummer lacks a shirt, but has a giant stick,” followed by noting their copious amount of stacks. Often times, bigger isn’t always better – but in this case it was. And it wasn’t just their gear that was monstrous. They set the tone by opening up with a very jammy and mellow Meddle-era Pink Floyd-esque tune, and then morphed into crushing, reverbed-out black metal. Very fast and very technical. These guys have chops.

Inter Arma is fucking sick. Also, The JR is giving away free Jameson. -#drunkmusicreviews (tweeted by @seblasto)

Royal Thunder

I might be a little biased – my band Grey Host got the opportunity to play with them a few weeks before this, and they seriously blew me away. It doesn’t hurt that they’re all-around great people. While their production quality and sound may be a bit more contemporary, they remind me (in a great way) of the old proto-metal bands from the late 70s. Driving rhythms, liberally applied guitar effects, and powerful vocals.

Ken MODE

Ken MODE sounded like the shitty skinhead band from the party scene from American History X. #drunkmusicreviews (tweeted by @seblasto)

I was a bit on the fence with them: they had great energy and their singer/guitarist was INTENSE (not to mention his fabulous Tank Girl haircut), but their songs all started to blend together for me. They’re on tour right now with Today is the Day and Fight Amp, and I can see the similarities, but bands like Today is the Day do the same thing ten times better.

Pallbearer

Watching Pallbearer set up. Must be rough to have trouble stacking your god damn double stack. #sxsw #imnotjealousreally #drunkmusicreviews (tweeted by @seblasto)

Jesus god, man. They’re heavy. Onslaught and dirge after onslaught and dirge, and incredibly well-executed. They were like some ancient order of forlorn monks with 10000 volts of electricity running through their funeral chants.

CAITLIN’S EXPERIENCE @ COUCH SESSIONS SHOWCASE

Erykah Badu and Robert Glasper Experiment 

After waiting through a handful of acts while packed into Empire Garage - an electro pop act, Body Language, the Stevie Wonder-inspired neo-soul singer Allen Stone, and the downright awful Amp Live - someone announced that the venue was over capacity and the show was shut down. No Erykah Badu, and no Robert Glasper. The end.

The captions that end with #drunkmusicreviews were pulled from their Twitter account during the show. 

The post [Drunk Music Reviews] SXSW Travelogue: Part II appeared first on Each Note Secure.