NEWS FEATURES Aug 10 edition, Acoustic Americana Music Calendar & News 2008

.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
.
"Tied to the Tracks"
ACOUSTIC AMERICANA
MUSIC CALENDAR & NEWS
.
NEWS FEATURES for Aug 10, 2008
.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
copyright (c) © 2008, Larry Wines. All rights reserved.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
.
The Acoustic Americana Music Calendar with updated posts and our popular “anniversaries” of things that happened each day in the history of music, entertainment, and the rest of the world, is now at http://acousticamericana.blogspot.com. Myspace has made changes that limit the size of posts, and that makes it far too time-consuming and ponderous to post the calendar there in small pieces.
+
Our myspace site, www.myspace.com/laacoustic is still the place to go for news of the syndicated “Tied to the Tracks” radio show, and its new TV counterpart that launches soon.
.
FUTURE EVENTS are all moving to our Blogspot page. Archived NEWS FEATURES are still found on our myspace site, where you can also peruse radio playlists and other old things, back to when acoustic music was made by indigenous natives pounding on hollow logs with rocks.
.
MOST RECENT previous News Features posted August 4, 2008.
.
.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
NEWS FEATURES:
August 10, 2008
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
.
1) TALKING STICK FINDS NEW HOME
The Talking Stick has been a popular, if Lilliputian, coffeehouse and acoustic music venue for several years, in it’s now-vacated location across from Santa Monica City College. More than a year ago, word came that a mega-developer had bought-up the entire block of small retail and office businesses and their expansive parking lots in back, and that all would be demolished to create yet another of those lookalike, relentlessly generic strip malls for corporate America to occupy with the same things they put everywhere else. Alas, the new development would not accommodate any of the individualistic little landmark establishments, including The Talking Stick.
+
Several times, end-of-business dates were announced, but the developer encountered delays that enabled the tenants to stay. Meanwhile, the developer, as new landlord, sought to extract rent until the tenant businesses were demolished. That delay enabled The Talking Stick to find a new location, where they have resumed business, at 1411 Lincoln Bl, in nearby Venice, 92091.
+
Happily, monthly series like ERNEST TROOST’s “Juke Joint Gang” and other popular musical offerings continue uninterrupted. Other singer-songwriter and acoustic band events, including DANIEL McFEELEY’s series, will resume soon.
+
Check the venue’s website (www.thetalkingstick.net) and our Acoustic Americana Music Calendar, and plan to drop-by for good coffeehouse fare, sandwiches, and live music.
.
.
2) INDIE ARTIST’S SMART & GREEN PROMO
UK-based singer-songwriter KRIS SEARLE arrived in L.A. this summer, and recently released a CD. He tells us, “This month you can WIN a SOLAR CHARGER for your MP3 player, laptop or phone, with the 'in Power' Portable Solar charger, donated by REAL SPIRIT USA. If you are somewhere without electricity, and you desperately need to charge your portable device, you can now, with your own portable pocket power charger. Just lay it in the sun and plug in your device and you will have power. You can get a lot more solar products from here: www.advancedpureliving.com/inpower.htm. I will definitely be using one when I go to the Burning Man Festival this year. ... so if you buy my album before 31st August you will be put into the draw for a SOLAR CHARGER worth $100…!” Find details of that, and Kris’ music, at www.myrecordlabel.net and at www.reverbnation.com/krissearle. He’ll be playing Oct 16 at 8 pm at the Whisky in West Hollywood, and Nov 20 at 7 pm in the Music Box at the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood.
.
.
3) TOGAMAN’S WEIRD INSTRUMENTS FEATURED IN FILM, TV SOUNDTRACKS
JONATHAN WILSON (togaman@bowedguitar.com) runs TogaMan Guitars (www.togamanguitars.com) where he makes “bowed string instruments for guitarists.” There’s some innovative stuff happening there, with popularity proven by their current move to larger quarters. Jonathan tells us, “It seems that a [TogaMan] GuitarViol was unofficially used for the soundtrack of ‘IRON MAN.’ I say unofficially because they seem to have omitted any credit on the Soundtrack CD. (Yeah, I have a copy). LOGA TORKIAN mentioned to me over the phone, a couple months back, that he contributed some queues. (Perhaps ‘Mach I’). Why he was not credited, that's a mystery. I saw the movie with my family and recall hearing some familiar sounds. I blew it off because I was really into the movie itself. I was contacted by (composer) RAMIN DJAWADI'S assistant, several months back, before the production of ‘Iron Man’ began. It was uncertain [whether I would be] able to get one built in time due to my backlog. I followed-up because I began building full time, and the turnaround was then feasible. No response. I figured they may have walked down the studio hall to find out that HEITOR PERERIA had one handy. Not the case. Turns out that LOGA TORKIAN (Niyaz/Azam Ali) was called in to do the queues with his. Alright Loga!”
+
He added, “Speaking of Loga and Azam, there is a new double CD from NIYAZ, ‘Nine Heavens,’ featuring the GuitarViol (which Loga calls his ‘Kamaan’). One disc is electric and the other has unplugged versions of the same songs. What a concept!.”
+
Jonathan continues, “Some interesting other things have been coming to pass. JOHN SWIHART, ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ soundtrack composer, has been using his [GuitarViol] for ‘FEAR ITSELF’ on NBC. JULIO REVUELTAS, grand-nephew of classical composer SILVESTRE REVUELTAS, the ‘Stravinski of Mexico,’ has been quite prolific on You Tube with his ‘Viotarra’ (his name for GuitarViol). His technique is as astonishing as his music. Definitely go to his You Tube channel and watch / listen. One of my favorites, [is] ‘Czardas of V. Monti,’” at youtube.com/watch?v=Op7GsUAiRnM .
+
Finally, Jonathan says, “Okay, for those of you who have ACOUSTIC GuitarViols on order, I am very close to bending and carving your instruments. I appreciate your patience all of these months.”
.
.
4) WESTERN MUSIC & COWBOY POETRY TROTS ONTO MYSPACE
We reckon it’s true, we hear more often from our western / cowboy / western swing music friends than we do from anybody else that the fingers that can braid ropes and pick instrument strings and shoe They give each other a good ribbing, with song lyrics like, “I’m no cowboy dot com.”
+
Riding to the rescue is the international WMA – the WESTERN MUSIC ASSOCIATION (www.westernmusic.com). In addition to the organization’s newly-upgraded website (we reported on that on July 19, and it’s still adding features), WMA has jumped-aboard the myspace wagon.
+
WMA’s member artists are all receiving instructions on getting their original music and cowboy poetry posted on the myspace page, and anyone who enjoys the music can go there, as with any myspace page, and listen free to the posted selections. The url is www.myspace.com/westernmusicassociation .
+
WMA plans to rotate featured artists through the available spots, so as more is posted, you’ll want to bookmark the page.
+
In addition, we’d like to remind you of three other web resources for western music and cowboy poetry. We’ve shared these before, and continue to recommend all three:
+
a) www.cowboypoetry.com which is a huge resource and database from the “Bar-D Ranch” (get it? Poets, Bar-d?) it’s a nonprofit that’s growing by leaps and bounds.
+
b) The Bob Nolan website, which has featured music and film clips each month. The August Song of the Month is "The Wind is Warm Again" by Bob Nolan & Robert Wagoner. The url is www.bobnolan-sop.net
+
c) HPR2: The Western Music Channel, on web-based Heartland Public, and the only place in the world featuring 24-hour-a-day Western / Cowboy music. The url for music and playlists is www.hpr.org.
.
.
5) ONE OF OUR VIDEO PICKS HITS #1 ON AMAZON
Last week (Aug 4 edition), we recommended three videos, two from well-known political satirist-songwriter ROY ZIMMERMAN (he plays Aug 10 & 11 at McCabe’s and Coffee Gallery Backstage, respectively). Our third pick was from cowboy artist CLYDE LUCAS.
+
Now, that music video that CLYDE LUCAS created around his original song, “John Wayne - He's America,” has reached NUMBER ONE on Amazon.com.
+
We wrote, “Whether to balance things, or simply to remember that we are the sum total of all our experiences as individuals and as a society, we recommend his original. It has plenty of clips and images from The Duke’s films, and offers a fine microcosm of how and why a Hollywood figure can become a larger-than-life heroic icon from the roles he plays. It is now playing on the ‘American Cowboy Magazine’ site (videos) and on the Official John Wayne website. Congratulations to indie artist Clyde for those recognitions.”
+
Clyde wrote to say, ”Wow, THANK YOU so much for the nice article. You capture what I was really trying to say. Not that Mr. Wayne was an actor, but he lived his dream. It was Mr. Wayne who used to sit in a theater as a kid and watch Harry Carey, [and] he dreamed of being a cowboy on the screen, too. I had hoped the song said that...We must all live out our dreams! Thank you again - Clyde Lucas.”
+
Clyde’s fully-produced, now NUMBER-ONE Amazon video, “John Wayne - He's America,” is at
+
www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=john+wayne&x=12&y=12
+
and it’s still available at http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1630415417
.
.
6) THIS WEEK’S MUSIC VIDEO PICK
It’s an all-star music tribute to the late PORTER WAGONER performed as the finale at the Americana Music Awards in Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, on November 1, 2007, with LYLE LOVETT, PATTY GRIFFIN, BUDDY MILLER, JOE ELY, JIM LAUDERDALE, DARRELL SCOTT and others, and it’s on You Tube, at
www.youtube.com/watch?v=odAR3GzW1b8
+
We also received a nice note from Nicole Poulos of Sideways Media, with an MP3 track from indie singer-songwriter JIM BOGGIA (www.jimboggia.com). Now, we don’t ordinarily use our video pick to tell you about an audio-only MP3 selection, but we’ll make an exception. It’s a track from Jim’s new album, “Misadventures in Stereo.” Nicole tells us, “He actually recorded on analogue, straight to tape with a live band, so you really are able to hear all those imperfections that end up being the gems of the song. The track below is about a solider in Iraq and is an incredibly poignant and powerful track. Jim vocals almost tell the story just as much as the lyrics do. You can hear the raw emotion in his voice, and keeping in mind that it was done in practically one take really shows the level of how organic it is.”
+
Jim’s song, “Three Week’s Shy,” (audio-only) is at http://bluhammock.com/asset/JimBoggia_ThreeWeekShy.mp3
.
.
An in-depth special feature:
7) FANS, SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, MARKETING, AND THE BLOGOSPHERE
As longtime journalists, we often struggle with the ubiquity of countless blogs that randomly spread “news” and “information” without observing the rules of journalism (citing sources, multiple sources where necessary, fact-checking, verifying accuracy, and all the things that Fox News doesn’t bother to do, anyway). We also recognize that mainstream media, since its consolidations into corporate mega-giant empires, has failed us miserably (beyond Fox, which is too biased to be considered mainstream).
+
The vast public realized too late that Big Media marched to the beat of the White House drum to invade Iraq, and even now, there’s insufficient cynicism about Big Media’s blind acceptance, as truth and gospel, of the proclamations and “expertise” of Big Oil.
+
Certainly, we know that the rise of the blogosphere is largely a product of the failure of mainstream corporate media, where even “investigative news” shows are sponsored by the Wal-Marts of the world, to assure their sponsors’ immunity from being investigated (i.e., don’t bite the hand that feeds you.)
+
Recently, we heard an artist fall into a rant, claiming the World Trade Center Towers were “brought down” by demolition charges, and that an airplane didn’t hit the Pentagon on 9/11. He said he has blogged about all that. Yikes.
+
The same state-of-flux that exists in the music business generally has a dimension in the blogosphere. There’s no denying that many indie artist and band websites reach plenty of fans, and often, they are read by an audience that isn’t reached by mainstream media that’s lost (or among certain age groups, never had) the attention and respect its news divisions once commanded.
+
For artists, the situation presents an opportunity, and one that comes with a social responsibility. It’s the performance stage as a soapbox, or what Teddy Roosevelt would have included in his characterization of a “bully pulpit.” You have a stage. You have a mic. When you’re off stage, you have the cyber extension of that, with your blog. You can use all of it to gratify, entertain, and try to build your fan base it, to educate or enlighten it, or you can decide to do what the Dixie Chicks did, awaken fans to your outrage, and risk getting Dixie-Chicked for your words (whether spoken or printed on-screen). Yes, your blog IS an extension of your stage presence. Some artists see that and use a unified approach, where everything is mutually-supportive of everything else, and that kind of connectivity can maximum results. Others compartmentalize their lives, ranting in one context, being sweetness and light in another, and they risk being seen as contradictions, or as unauthentic.
+
This week, some major Nashville country performers are using the country music video channels to present world premieres of de facto (or overt) McCain campaign or anti-Obama songs, without fear of being Dixie-Chicked. Will their blog entries fess-up to their politics? Funny that some genres and aspects of the music biz allow for contradictory outcomes, but they do. Nashville country is, of course, very Republican, and it practices retribution on the careers of those who are not. They enjoy characterizing bitter and violent rap diatribes as representatives of all that they are not, and by extension, painting their opponents as anti-family, and anti-“goodness” - even as their own country songs are often about divorce or shootings after catching cheating spouses.
+
Makes you want to ask them whatever happened to the socially-conscious folk artists who are no longer welcome in Nashville. They probably talked too much between songs. That emphasizes the point of spoken and written words vs. song lyrics. Regardless of your politics, as an artist, your songs are not subject to the same scrutiny as words you say on stage or a rant in essay form that resembles journalism (i.e., a blog).
+
Back to the Dixie Chicks. Their bitter experience, after letting audiences know they saw the US government was being run by a dufus, and being banned from corporate country radio for saying it, caused them to proclaim they would “Shut Up and Sing.” (They haven’t shut-up, though they became satirical and clever.) Other artists were, and remain, undaunted, properly asserting the age-old traditions and purposes of folk music to protest war, abuse of power, denial of human rights, society’s absurdities, and to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
+
Make conscious, aware, decisions what you say on stage; remember, people come to see you because they expect you to entertain them, even when that includes informing them. And apply the same criteria for conscious decisions to the extension of the stage, in your blog. It’s not just stray remarks that bring you trouble or cause potential fans to see you as a hero or a nut. One key decision is what to present as humor, and what to offer outside a humorous or satiric context. Here are notes on each:
+
SERIOUS STUFF? Act responsibly when presenting anything as news or information, both as a matter of social responsibility, and to protect your own credibility with your fans and those you want to add as fans. Learn the rules of journalism and apply them if you want to be an effective spokesperson for any cause, even a charitable one that you support. Be genuine, informed, knowledgeable, and credible. (Remember the fable of the boy who cried wolf…)
+
COMEDIC & SATIRIC STUFF? Many artists’ blogs are great places for satire and humor, so we’ll offer a good example of something that operates in that realm. Here’s the latest in a series of “Letters from America” from the blog written by the L.A.-based band, THE SORCERERS (www.the-sorcerers.com). The band’s members have known considerable commercial success. They’ve been around awhile. Some of their humor works, some doesn’t. The way they use their blog is often very effective, as it is here:
+
“The Sorcerers were laid low and distracted by financial concerns, personnel changes, delays in surgeries, identity theft, automobile accidents, the gas / food riots, the rotting of the American economy, the last minute stab at profits from all corporations aligned with the dunderheads in Washington D.C., a failed two-pronged war, the Big Sur wild fire, the price of food, another Adam Sandler film, the West Nile Virus, general confusion and malaise, humidity’s effect on guitar strings, gray tree squirrels, the bloody price of gas, other nonspecific stuff including speed bumps and anti-inflammatory lozenges, plus The Sorcerers’ oft reported fitful nature and gleeful distain.”
+
They continue, “Even so, The Sorcerers have returned to form and now will concentrate on the ‘Western & Country’ project in which The Sorcerers’ dependable view of Americana will be re-focused on life in the West, life from a Western point of view and a view of life from points West. In other words, The Sorcerers’ will write what they know, life, as seen from California, the home base of The Sorcerers, the music entity that works from within a female Black Labrador doggie and will not come out. There are, apparently, only two ways out of The Sorcerers’ Lab and The Sorcerers do not, at this juncture, approve of either. Owners of female Black Labradors will explain the details to the rest of you. Owners of cats and forest dragons can make their own diagrams and come very close to the problem facing The Sorcerers, vis a vis a coordinated, convenient, dignified exit from The Lab.”
+
Scatology aside, they are effective at creating a context of satire that enables them to make their points without the burden of following any rules of checking facts or accuracy. To wit, they write, “There have been several ‘Letters From America’ compiled and not circulated because they were too angry and sad … EXAMPLE:”
+
“The Oil Men have one last great evil moment of wild, unbridled profits before the general election, before the troops are called to their corporate offices, before they are dragged from behind their desks and properly dealt with in the streets. It is a modest proposal whose time has come.”
+
They follow that with, “So, rather than continue in that vein, The Sorcerers decided to go back to work and also to conduct a product sale, which seems the only sensible thing to do in these times of awkward American decline. The Sorcerers’ first release, “AMP, American Musical Portraits,” previously priced at a reasonable, $2,999.99 per disc, is now on sale for the hilarious price of $6.99 which includes shipping to anywhere in the known world. Buy now, safely and securely at www.the-sorcerers.com .”
+
Did they hook you all the way through to their marketing pitch? Did they make you laugh? Did you identify with their concerns and complaints, without being depressed? If you answered yes, then you just saw an effective use of an artists’ blog.
.
.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
.
NEXT WEEK, we’ll bring lots more news.
.
=====================
.
copyright (c) © 2008, Larry Wines. All rights reserved.
.
=====================
.
Be sure to check EVERY WEEK for
.
+ the extensive and always huge Acoustic Americana Music Calendar’s event listings
at http://acousticamericana.blogspot.com, or at www.myspace.com/laacoustic.
.
+ news of the “TIED TO THE TRACKS” radio & TV shows coming soon in syndication.
.
+ the latest NEWS FEATURES from the acoustic music universe!
.
.
WANT TO CONTACT US?
tiedtothetracks@hotmail.com
.
.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
.