Taylor takes all and Kanye leaps: the Billboard music awards – in pictures

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  Winner takes all … having scooped eight awards, Taylor Swift poses in the press room.

  Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

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  Team spirit … Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Harry Styles of One Direction arrive ahead of the ceremony.

  Photograph: Michael Tran/Getty Images

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  Double-act … Iggy Azalea and Britney Spears pose before performing their single Pretty Girls.

  Photograph: Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic

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  Itemised … Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris at the awards.

  Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

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  Mariah Carey arrives before the ceremony at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

  Photograph: Michael Tran/Getty Images

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  All About That Bass’s Meghan Trainor, who won the top Hot 100 song and top digital song awards.

  Photograph: Xavier Collin/Image Press/Splash/Corbis

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  Kanye West has a moment of uplift at the ceremony.

  Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

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  Hozier with his awards haul … for top rock artist and top rock song.

  Photograph: Xavier Collin/IImage Press/Splash/Corbis

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  Awards nominee Nicki Minaj performs at the ceremony.

  Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty

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  Nominee Ed Sheeran on stage at the awards.

  Photograph: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

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Mary J. Blige Talks Meaning of Being a Champion in Doc
05/2015


Mary J. Blige is one of the few music stars who was filmed for Champs, a documentary exploring the stories of boxing champions Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Bernard Hopkins.

In a scene deleted from the original movie, but available now, Mary breaks down how boxing translates in her own life. "Boxing films resonates with people because it shows them the human side of life," she says.

"My life as a child I learned to how to not fight every fight physically, but fight every fight mentally." She adds, "When I learned how to love myself, I started winning every fight."

The inspirational film, which stars 50 Cent, Mark Wahlberg, Denzel Washington, Ron Howard, is available on DVD now.


http://tinyurl.com/n66bcvl

Van Halen busy but no new album in sight

Van Halen’s scorching performance of “Panama” opened the 2015 Billboard Music Awards last night, and had the crowd in the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on their feet. It was their third national television appearance in the last month and half, having played on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and “The Ellen DeGeneres Show."

In an interview backstage afterward, David Lee Roth spoke about how much dance music has influenced Van Halen, as well as why making a new album with the band may not happen for the foreseeable future. “Everybody has a different approach. The Van Halens are perhaps a bit more traditional. I just spent the last 2 years living in Japan. Took the dog, my baseball hat, and headed out. I didn’t know anybody there. Went to school and so forth. My approach to life, in general, and the state of mind implied is a bit different — I am obsessed. It’s not an option. It’s a question of what time you wake up and get started. We’re always working and making the music. I’m always writing and I have written with a number of other people, and I’d always look forward to doing it again with Van Halen, but that works on a very traditional — think like Rolling Stones — template,” he said. The interviewer points out that “it’s like 10 years between albums,” and the singer responds that neither he nor the Van Halens want to wait that long, and they gradually do some work. “Somewhere in between, we’ll get interstitials. And in between, we’ll start to add things in addition, too.”

The band has been in rehearsals for their upcoming North American Tour, having added 2 dates “due to overwhelming demand” — August 15 at the Nikon At Jones Beach Theater (in addition to the concert there 2 nights earlier) and another Hollywood Bowl show on October 4. The 41-date tour starts July 5 in Seattle and ends with the just-added Hollywood Bowl performance.

Bass player Wolfgang Van Halen has been posting online clips of the band rehearsing deep cuts. The latest was a short instrumental of “Feel Your Love Tonight” — a song from their 1978 debut album, “Van Halen” — they have not played live since the early 1980s.

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Rolling Stones respond to fan questions during first ever online Q&A

May 18, 2015 2:08 PM MST

Robert Rheubottom

Rolling Stones Examiner

The Rolling Stones perform live at Mt Smart Stadium on November 22, 2014 in Auckland, New Zealand.

Photo by Fiona Goodall/Getty Images

The Rolling Stones handled numerous fan queries during their first ever online Q&A. Each member of the legendary British rockers participated in the Q&A held May 18 at their official Twitter account, responding to fan questions live via video.

According to a news release posted May 18 at the official website of The Rolling Stones, fans began posing questions to the band via Twitter using the hashtag #AskThe Stones on Thurs., May 14. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers each sat down and responded to the questions via videos posted at their Twitter account on Monday.

Sitting down in turn with a female interviewer who posed the questions, Stones drummer Charlie Watts was the first to answer questions. Watts, whose Twitter hashtag is #CharliestoocoolforTwitter, was asked whether he would ever get a Twitter account. The notoriously taciturn musician simply responded "no," but added, "I don't have a mobile phone let alone a Twitter account."

Next up was Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood. When asked about his musical influences, the two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, said, "Mozart and Chuck Berry!"

Frontman Mick Jagger seemed most comfortable responding to questions. Asked about his favorite rappers, Sir Mick said, "Vybz Kartel and JayZ."

Keith Richards was the last member up and seemed in a jovial mood. When queried whether he ever looked into the mirror and felt lucky to be alive, Richards quipped, "I look in the mirror as little as possible except to shave."

The Stones answered numerous other questions ranging from queries about their upcoming Sticky Fingers reissues to feelings about the passing of the late BB King, among multiple others. To check out all questions and answers, click here.

The Stones are currently in rehearsal in preparations for their AEG Live produced Zip Code tour and will launch the North American leg in on May 24 in San Diego, California, at Petco Park. Tickets for all U.S. dates can be purchased at AXS. Tickets for their Canadian headline performance at Quebec City Summer Festival (FEQ) on July 15 in Quebec City, Quebec, at the historic Plains of Abraham can be purchased here.

See below for The Stones' entire North American tour schedule. For the latest details on The Rolling Stones, click here.

Rolling Stones 2015 North American tour dates:
May 24 – San Diego, Calif., Petco Park
May 30 – Columbus, Ohio, Ohio Stadium
June 3 – Minneapolis, Minn., TCF Bank Stadium
June 6 – Dallas, Texas, AT&T Stadium
June 9 – Atlanta, Ga., Bobby Dodd Stadium
June 12 – Orlando, Fla., Orlando Citrus Bowl
June 17 – Nashville, Tenn., LP Field
June 20 – Pittsburgh, Pa., Heinz Field
June 23 – Milwaukee, Wis., Summerfest / Marcus Amphitheater
June 27 – Kansas City, Mo., Arrowhead Stadium
July 1 – Raleigh, N.C., Carter-Finley Stadium
July 4 – Indianapolis, Ind., Indianapolis Motor Speedway
July 8 – Detroit, Mich., Comerica Park
July 11 – Buffalo, N.Y., Ralph Wilson Stadium
July 15 – Quebec City, Quebec, Festival d’été de Québec

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Muse release new song 'Mercy' from upcoming LP 'Drones'

Ashley Perez

Chicago Music Examiner

May 18, 2015 5:15 PM MST

Play

"Mercy" - Muse

Muse via Youtube

Muse's new album “Drones” is less than a month away, yet they have revealed another new song. This time the track is the dreamy, piano infused “Mercy,” which follows a narrative originally found in earlier released tracks “Dead Inside” and “Psycho.” You can watch the lyric video above.

Photo by Frazer Harrison

Speaking about the song in a press release, frontman Matt Bellamy says “The opening line of ‘Mercy’ — 'Help me, I’ve fallen on the inside' — is a reference to the protagonist [of the album] knowing and recognising that they have lost something, they have lost themselves.” He continues: “This is where they realise they’re being overcome by the dark forces that were introduced in ‘Psycho.”

This marks the fourth track to be released from the album, with the previous ones being “Psycho,” “Dead Inside,” and “Reapers.” “Drones” comes out June 9 via Warner Bros Records. Pre-orders are still available.

“Drones” Tracklist:
01. Dead Inside
02. [Drill Sergeant]
03. Psycho
04. Mercy
05. Reapers
06. The Handler
07. [JFK]
08. Defector
09. Revolt
10. Aftermath
11. The Globalist
12. Drones

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Samantha Fish to release third studio album, Wild Heart

May 18, 2015 5:36 PM MST

Samantha Fish

Courtesy of Miss Jill PR

Atlanta, GA – On July 7, singer/guitarist Samantha Fish will release her third studio album, Wild Heart, produced by Luther Dickinson. With Fish on guitars and Dickinson on various stringed instruments, they rounded out the lineup with Grammy Award-winning Brady Blade (Emmylou Harris/Bob Dylan) on drums. Special guests include Lightnin Malcolm (guitar), Sharde Thomas (drums), and Memphis session singers Shontelle Norman-Beatty and Risse Norman.

Wild Heart was recorded in three different studios in the fall of 2014. Starting at Brady Blade’s Shreveport, Louisiana, studio, they laid the basic rhythm tracks and vocals, then moved to Dickinson's Zebra Ranch Studios in Hernando, Mississippi. The duo put the final touches at both Willie Mitchell’s Royal Studios and the legendary Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee.

Growing up in Kansas City in a musical family, Fish’s first instrument was the drums before she switched to guitar. As she listened to her musical heroes, she began exploring their influences by going back in time. Over the years, she’s cultivated her own sound by blending her influences, ranging from Tom Petty to Sheryl Crow, R.L. Burnside, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, as well as her musical peers.

Only into her mid-20s, she already released two CDs, played all over the world, and shared the stage with well-established to legendary artists from Tab Benoit and Johnny Lang to Buddy Guy. Label-mate and sometimes touring colleague Mike Zito produced her critically acclaimed albums Runaway and Black Wind Howlin' (2013).

All that ambition and passion paid off in 2012 when she won a Blues Music Award for Best New Artist Debut for her 2011 release, Runaway. The critical praise, winning fans at shows, and all the long hours of driving put more fuel into her fire. This desire is now revealed with Wild Heart as the pivotal moment in her budding career.

Last summer she traveled to Nashville and wrote with accomplished songwriter Jim McCormick, whose songs have been cut by Trisha Yearwood and Keith Urban. Together they wrote five of the twelve songs on the album, including the title track.

Fish and Dickinson wanted to make a live and honest record, capturing her emotional intensity and power-trio integrity. “She is so smart and talented," said Dickinson. "It was a joy to take her under my wing and share what I've learned with her. Samantha brought her emotional energy from her performances, which transcended into the record. The songs are very personal and she delivered. I am proud to be a part of the record.”

“I was blown away by his ability to color a song," said Fish. "I stepped out of my comfort zone and I couldn't be more proud of what we made.”

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'Entourage' Movie Soundtrack: Diplo, Tame Impala, Pharrell Featured

by Ryan Middleton May 16, 2015 12:48 PM EDT

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Kevin Dillon, Adrian Grenier, Kevin Connolly and Jerry Ferrara (Photo : Michael Buckner/Getty Images)

One of the summer's most anticipated movies, Entourage, is just two weeks away from opening night and fans of the show can hardly wait. The HBO series highlights the inner workings of Hollywood in a comedic manner and does so with a great soundtrack propelling it to a worldwide audience. The show featured tracks, notably hip-hop, from the likes of Jay Z, T.I., Kanye West, Eminem, N.W.A. and many more. That tradition of big tracks to go along with the overtop acting is coming to the big screen and the film soundtrack has been unveiled. Among those who will appear on the tracklist include Diplo, Pharrell, Tame Impala and Jane's Addiction.

Other tracks on the soundtrack include classics like "We Fly High" from Jim Jones and Mase's "Feel So Good."

The soundtrack is not the only part of the movie that will feature some big name musicians. Artists like Calvin Harris, Pharrell and T.I. have all confirmed roles in the film. Pharrell and T.I.'s roles have not been revealed yet, but Calvin Harris will play an evil DJ villain in the movie Vinnie Chase is filming during the Entourage film.

The film hits theaters on June 3, while the soundtrack drops one day prior on June 2. You can pre-order the soundtrack now on Amazon. See the full tracklist below via Indie Wire.

Entourage Soundtrack Tracklisting01. Figure It Out - Royal Blood
02. Superhero - Jane's Addiction
03. Drop - Diplo, DJ Snake feat. Big Freedia
04. Push - A-Trak
05. Darkness - Du Tonc
06. Hunter - Pharrell Williams
07. Give Up The Goods (Just Step) - Mobb Deep
08. What Would U Do? - Tha Dogg Pound
09. Bells - Allison Taylor
10. Elephant - Tame Impala
11. We Fly High - Jim Jones
12. Superthug - Noreaga
13. I Need My Girl - The National
14. Feel So Good - Mase

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‘Entourage’ Movie to Land in a Transformed, Buttoned-Up Hollywood

By MICHAEL CIEPLYMAY 15, 2015

Photo

A scene from the coming movie version of “Entourage,” featuring the consummate Hollywood agent Ari Gold, front right, played by Jeremy Piven. Times have changed since the HBO series began in 2004, as agencies have merged or vanished, all under the influence of the new power player in town: private equity. Credit Claudette Barius/Warner Bros. Pictures

BURBANK, Calif. — “The ride ain’t over,” declares a poster for “Entourage,” the coming movie version of the hit HBO series.

Or is it?

Much has changed in the 10 or so years since “Entourage” turned Hollywood’s decadent business culture into a TV soap opera. The film, scheduled for release on June 3, is bound to evoke an era when DVD sales were a cash cow, YouTube was for amateurs and the movie business was a more dominant cultural force. Television, social media and sports have stolen much of the industry’s glitter. And the freewheeling days at the top talent agencies have largely disappeared, with the two largest shops — William Morris Endeavor and Creative Artists Agency, or W.M.E. and C.A.A. — now controlled by private equity firms focused on the bottom line.

“It’s harder now,” said Douglas Ellin, the creator of the HBO show, who also wrote and directed the movie.

Warner Bros., HBO’s sister unit at Time Warner, will soon find out whether there is enough skulduggery left in these parts for a big-screen comeback. “Entourage” brings back the movie star Vincent Chase, played by Adrian Grenier and inspired by Mark Wahlberg, who is reunited with his crew in what might be their last romp through the canyons, clubs and glass-walled conference rooms once ruled by Ari Gold, played by Jeremy Piven.

Vinnie Chase and his crew continue their adventures in Hollywood.

By Warner Bros. Pictures on Publish Date March 27, 2015. Photo by Claudette Barius.

Mr. Gold is the consummate power agent, a fictional rendering of a Hollywood archetype personified through the years by the likes of Lew Wasserman, Michael Ovitz and now Ariel Z. Emanuel. Mr. Ellin based Mr. Gold (somewhat) on Mr. Emanuel, the co-chief executive, with Patrick Whitesell, of what has become W.M.E./I.M.G., an entertainment and sports conglomerate now majority-owned by Silver Lake Partners. (Silver Lake’s rival, TPG, controls C.A.A., which has also pushed aggressively into sports.)

“Entourage,” the TV series, was born into a very different environment. In 2004, at least seven major talent agencies clustered in the heart of Beverly Hills, all within walking distance of a favorite lunch spot, The Grill. Today, the agencies have merged or scattered, budgets have been tightened and the business is focused on much more than movie stars and their foibles. The business has shifted from when the show had its debut and Mr. Chase and his pals arrived in a growling yellow Hummer. HBO has moved on to “Silicon Valley,” a comic series about Northern California’s tech culture, where trendsetters ride the Google bus to work. (And in a possibly bad omen for the film, Viacom partly blamed “Entourage” reruns’ falling short of expectations when it took a $785 million write-down last month.)

Warner Bros. has paid close attention to the cultural shift.

“Sadly, all good parties must come to an end,” says the voice-over in an unusually wistful trailer that finds Mr. Chase woefully over budget on a film he is directing for Mr. Gold — now a studio chief, and not a happy one. He finds his power usurped by a nasty money man, played by Billy Bob Thornton.

“Entourage,” the film, may be something of an elegy for the movie business. Before the final credits roll, Mr. Gold may wash his hands of Hollywood altogether, people briefed on its plot hint. (“There may be something even larger for him,” acknowledged Mr. Ellin, who declined to elaborate.)

All of that is in keeping with the spirit of the HBO show, which never hid from the warts, blemishes and personal and business failures of its characters. Mr. Chase wound up in drug rehab, as his career rose and fell. Mr. Gold was kicked out of one agency, founded another, and lost his wife, at least temporarily, to the celebrity chef Bobby Flay before the eighth season wrapped in 2011.

Calling Mr. Flay his sworn enemy, Mr. Gold said “it will be agent meets fist” for anyone who dared to dine at or recommend a Flay restaurant. (Mr. Flay is currently having real-life marital woes of his own.)

Photo

Ariel Emanuel, one of the high-powered talent agents on whom the Ari Gold character of “Entourage” was based, in 2012. Credit Alex J. Berlinerm/ABImages, via Associated Press

Mr. Emanuel, who represents Mr. Wahlberg, is still an agent. But in the real world, he and Mr. Whitesell now spend less time wrapped in the antic lives of their movie clients and more on the corporate complexities that came with their $2.4 billion deal last year to merge W.M.E. Entertainment — which had been formed by the merger of their Endeavor agency and William Morris — with I.M.G., a sports powerhouse based in New York.

A spokesman said Mr. Emanuel was declining interviews touching on the “Entourage” film, but Mr. Ellin said he had watched the new film several times. “Ari loves it; he was with me in the editing room,” said Mr. Ellin.

In real life, the agencies’ corporate structures have brought corporate behavior, which has posed a challenge for Mr. Ellin, who had to work a little harder to find the fun in chronicling it.

“You need to act a little bit more businesslike, a little more Wall Street,” said Gavin Polone, who was once an agent at International Creative Management and the United Talent Agency and now produces for film and television.

A veteran of the glory days, Mr. Polone was fired twice from agency jobs, but he sued and wrangled a $6 million settlement from the second of those incidents. “If you’re a young agent now, you’re not going to make the kind of money I was making when I was 28 years old,” he said in an interview last month.

The competition between agencies still occasionally erupts into Ari Gold-like corporate combat. United Talent recently raided more than 10 agents and dozens of clients from the much larger C.A.A. That agency responded with a conspiracy lawsuit that might have become grist for an “Entourage” subplot in its early days.

But that drama was more an exception than the rule. And Mr. Emanuel — focused on stable profits, not settling old scores — mostly stayed out of the fray (though W.M.E. taunted C.A.A. by sending framed “CAAN’T” posters to the defectors).

Tom Strickler, Mr. Emanuel’s partner in founding the agency Endeavor, is now the chairman of the Extera Public Schools charter school group. He said he was amused to hear that his newly finance-minded old colleague had recently been lecturing fellow agents on the importance of Ebitda — earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

“When I was an agent,” Mr. Strickler said, “we thought Ebitda was a character in ‘Star Wars.’ ”

Correction: May 15, 2015
An earlier version of this article misstated what Ari Gold told anyone who dared to dine at a Bobby Flay restaurant. Calling the chef his sworn enemy, he said that for anyone who ate at or recommended one of Mr Flay’s restaurants, “It will be agent meets fist.” He did not say, “I’m going to excommunicate him from this entire town,” a threat directed at another character in a different episode.

Home First Spin, Video SoulBounce

Emily King Fights Off ‘The Animals’

Rob

May 14, 2015 | 10:00 am

Emily King may have taught a lesson on leaning on your fellow man with her last single “Good Friend” back in March, but now she’s telling a darker side of the story with a her latest song “The Animals.” While good friends are essential in life, they are often hard to come by. Whitney Houston once warned us that the world is full of zanies and fools, and King’s “The Animals” finds her following up on that warning and reminding us to keep our distance from people who disguise themselves as friends but are really wolves in sheep clothing.

While the message of the song is rather dark, the music is not. It’s actually rather vibrant and colorful as King’s music normally is. She’s not holding back at all with this single release, as the song is accompanied by a stunning animated visual which finds her traveling across an imaginary land and slaying dragons. “I didn’t learn the first time / Lord, I learned the second time / Never again will we ever be friends / No, I won’t don’t feed the animals,” she chants.

Fortunately King doesn’t plan on stopping the slayage here. This video came paired with the announcement that her forthcoming album will be named The Switch and is slated to be released on June 26th. This year just keeps getting better.

[EXCLUSIVE] Kenny Lattimore Talks 'The Anatomy of A Love Song,' Mentoring The Youth, Ex-Wife, His Perfect Woman, More

Elle Breezy Tue, Apr 14, 2015

If you’re ready to be wooed and romanced, Kenny Lattimore is back supplying that musical soup! The Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter's new album, Anatomy of a Love Song, his first since 2008's Timeless, arrives in stores today (April 14).

The 45-year-old R&B veteran has weathered the treacherous changes of the music industry. Ever since his wedding song hit “For You” and the chill groove “Never Too Busy,” he remains on top of his game. His powerful, smooth tenor has been the soundtrack to rendezvous, as well as the good and bad situations in every romantic relationship.

The new album, Anatomy of a Love Song, infuses a tender sound on today’s music scene, but if you expect dated music, think again; it's more like classy and grown & sexy. You can hear it in the songs "Love Me Back" and "You Have My Heart," two of the album’s singles. Lattimore went back in the studio and created a nice blend of the old and the new, keeping his image as a classy crooner intact.

In our interview, Kenny spoke about formulating his sound in today’s market, what he thought about his ex-wife’s Chanté Moore’s presence on reality TV, how to dress as sharp as he does, the qualities he looks for in a woman, and more.

Peep it below, and be sure to purchase Anatomy of a Love Song above!

You know a thing or two about a good love song. Tell us about your seventh studio album Anatomy of a Love Song.

Well, Anatomy of a Love Song is about all of the components that make up a great love song. It starts with the lyrical content, we know a great love song will talk about the ups and downs, the goods and the bads, the ins and outs. But at the same time, I wanted the music to reflect the artists I loved from the past like Marvin Gaye, Ron Isley, Donny Hathaway, some of the sounds that I like throughout the years; there’s some music that reminds you of the Philly sound.

I’ve really been calling it my journey back to love because for a while, I really wasn’t recording and I was feeling like I wasn’t sure how important it was for me to record an album at this point in my life and career. There’s a gentleman named Carvin Haggins who produced about three songs on the album, and Carvin was like, "The industry needs your voice. The world needs your voice." And initially I listened to him, thought that was a nice statement, you know like "Oh! That’s nice! (laughs)." But the great thing is he went a step further and said, "I want you to come where I’m at and start recording." I couldn’t turn that down, it wasn’t gonna cost me a dime to go an experiment and figure out what I wanted to do to be relevant in this day and age. So we started working it out, and I began to fall back in love with the recording process. It’s kinda interesting to be in that position where you go, “Oh, I remember what this was like, again! I remember being in the studio and getting into my own skin where I was comfortable and able to push out my ideas of what was happening in my heart end emotions. So that's where I found myself, falling in love with it all over again.

As a modern soul man, where do you fit yourself in this new industry climate?

Well, I had to surround myself with young producers and classic hit producers, so that they could tell me where the industry is and give me an interpretation of “how far we think you should go” (laughs). Because you can challenge me and give me a lot of things I can do, and it comes out a little better than you thought, but it still doesn’t mean that you use it all. So, I try to surround myself with people who would be honest, who know my brand, who push me to be more than I thought I could be but never make me compromise where I feel silly like I’m trying to be 20-years-old. I call on the new adults 25 and up that are just falling in love for the first time FOR REAL, wanting to be in committed relationships, all those kinds of things, to be able to still relate to me. That was the approach for this album, to make it accessible for new adults, but at the same time let’s do some things for your faithful fan base you’ve had through the years.

To what do you owe your longevity in the business?

Wow, really God’s favor. Because I’ve seen people come and go who were mega talented. The only thing I personally did was stay true to my sound. It was about choosing songs that I could deliver authentically. And if I could authentically deliver them, then the communication, the message would still be relevant. Sometimes it’s about what you’re talking about, and love never goes out of style, so I try to make sure I’m talking about the real stuff (laughs).

Do you have a favorite song from the new album?

I don’t have one favorite song, but I’ve been enjoying the first official single “Love Me Back” because it’s different for me. Sometimes you record an album, and you just do a great body of work and you put it out there and it may work for people, but I feel like I’m living this album and living the songs. “Love Me Back” has a feel-good sound to it and it really is where I am right now in my life.

What do you think of the state of the music industry now?

I think it’s wide open. I think there are so many artists who may not ever receive mainstream critical acclaim or mainstream opportunity to be exposed. And I can’t explain who gets chosen for that. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to be out in front of people for as long as I have, but we just have to learn new ways to promote the music and get it to the people. Traditionally, it was radio, and we could go to record stores, but most of those things don’t exist anymore. So we have to use the outlets we DO have in social media and technology to make sure the music is reaching our people. We're able to do direct sales a lot easier now. I can get someone’s email address, and they can sign up for a news blast, and I know they’re gonna get my product. We have to think differently about what our brand is and as artists, who lived through what I call the golden age of the industry, we just have to come outside of ourselves, from the spoiled-ness, because we were pretty spoiled back in the day. A lot of money was thrown around and spent on us, and now, you have to take responsibility for your brand.

How do you feel about your ex-wife Chanté Moore airing out your child custody business on the show R&B Divas L.A.?

One, a lot if it wasn’t true, number two, I thought it was reckless and irresponsible because my son, nor I, was a part of that cast. And there’s nothing wrong with doing reality TV, but if you look at the formula for reality TV, what makes it dynamic is the interaction of its cast members. So I thought it was irresponsible, and I think it was a mistake. It hurt our son, it hurt other people, and it was unnecessary.

A passion of yours is your KL Foundation. Tell us about that.

Currently, I am partnering with an organization called the Young Ambassadors Leadership Academy because the KL Foundation has existed for a while. In its existence, we have just been doing research. I love to go out and lend my time and energy to non-profits because I feel like I’m learning. I’m giving and learning by giving back. So what we’ve decided to focus on is a curriculum. I wanna use arts, education and mentoring to empower young people, so the way I decided to do it was partner up with an existing program that’s been working for 12 years. I sent my son to the program to see how he feels in it, so I’m not reinventing the wheel. The next seven months, we’ll either be expanding the Young Leadership Academy or I’m gonna pick up one more partner because my goal was to have an organization on the east and west coast, because I’m from Washington, D.C. originally but I live in L.A. I wanted to make sure I have organizations on the east coast and west coast to help me achieve my goals of uplifting children through the arts and mentoring.

You’ve starred in many stage productions like Loving Him Is Killing Me, The Bachelor Party, and Whatever Happened to Black Love. Are there any other acting gigs in the works?

I hope so. I have such respect for the craft. It’s one of the reasons why I executive produced with my friend Patricia Cuffie-Jones, the production Love Soul Deep, because I do see an expansion of my brand into more film and television and the theatrical. I just like to do things at a certain quality, and if I can’t do things at a certain quality, then I won’t even do it (laughs). So I just try to make sure what I’m bringing to my audience is something that’s brilliant and worth their dollar, because I know there are less dollars to be spend. So I just wanna make sure the quality of what I attach myself to is top notch.

What other artists are you listening to right now?

Let me see, the last things I bought on my iPad were Jeff Bradshaw, Teyana Taylor, Kelly Price, Jonathan McReynolds, that’s a little different, I’m listening to different types of things. So those are the last four things I bought.

What does Kenny like to do other than music? Any hobbies?

You know, I guess I’m a regular type of guy, taking my son to the movies, but hobbies? I don’t think I have any hobbies really. The way my life is set up in the music industry right now, I’m either on the road, or when my son comes home, I’m just full-time dad. I’m doing everything, And sometimes I gotta go out and work but I gotta cook, and I gotta do the school stuff with him and it’s pretty overwhelming. Really, my next hobby will probably be the spa (laughs) ‘cause I need to relax! That’s probably what I don’t do as much (laughs). But overseeing the brands is sort of a hobby. I mean, although I make money at it, I find the music industry, being a part of the marketing and exploitation of the music extremely time-consuming, but it’s creative and fun.

So your hobby is your job, which is a good thing.

It really is my job. I feel like I’m just living my dream where it’s not a lot outside of that other than just doing regular things. So, if you were my friend [and we're] just hanging out, we would go bowling, to the movies, restaurants, regular kinds of things, but when I come home, I’m not necessarily picking up a paint brush or building models. When I come home, I’m analyzing the business, trying to figure out ways to make it better.

What qualities do you look for in a woman?

Confidence, character, integrity, honesty. At one point, men are very physical, and maybe women are too, but after you’ve been married, and you’ve been through real relationships and you’ve had some ups and downs and you begin to think about things that really matter... maturity. The qualities that would be amazing to me is a woman who’s mature enough to be cool in her own skin but not afraid to uplift and support me. And it takes someone who’s really secure to do that and when I say support me, I mean really be able to celebrate whatever’s going on with me and I would celebrate her. She doesn’t have to be in the music industry, she doesn’t have to do what I do (matter of fact, I prefer for her to be doing something else), but I’m attracted to visionary women because my mother was one. So I’m attracted to the woman that has some things going but knows when she needs to turn it off, even for a second for balance, to celebrate life.

You dress sharp! Do you have a certain stylist or certain designers you like?

Thanks, I appreciate that. I have been working with a couple different people; Genelle Brooks is a stylist out of L.A., who’s been helping me recently, and one of the things we’ve been doing is making me comfortable. So she’s been helping me pull things that are more jeans, boots, beautiful tops, which are fitted but comfortable for me to perform in. Because generally in the first half of my show, I go casual then I dress up towards the latter half, which is always more visually stimulating I think for the audience. But for the suits and tuxedos, there’s a brand called Goff Duran that I love to wear. They've put me in a custom tux or put me in a suit that’s so beautifully fitted. I look back at pictures of myself from years ago and I go “Whoa, I did NOT know how to pick the size of a suit!” Although oversized stuff was a style in the 90s as well, but there’s nothing like a beautifully fitted suit.

What do you want your legacy to be?

Oh wow! That I sang to the hearts of women and to the minds of men, and that I always encouraged them in love, that’s my musical legacy and purpose. If I can do that, and help somebody by encouraging them in love, then I’ve done what I was supposed to do musically.

Purchase 'The Anatomy of A Love Song' on iTunes!

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Gabrielle Aplin announces new album Light Up The Dark

Singer-songwriter Gabrielle Aplin has announced full details of her new album Light Up The Dark.

The album is the 22-year old's follow-up to her 2013 debut LP English Rain, which you can preview on the right-hand side of the page. It will be released on September 18th and you can hear the album's title and opening track now by scrolling down and clicking.

Aplin has written the album with long-time writing partner Luke Potashnick and has stated that Joni Mitchell and Feist's The Reminder are big influences on the album, she said: "Her voice is just here, right at the front, and everything sits around it perfectly. I’ve also become much more comfortable writing songs about other people’s stories as well as my own, much of which is inspired by travelling and everything I’ve seen since my first album.”

You can see the album's artrwork above.

The singer will play this summer's Glastonbury Festival as well as a host of other festivals across the world.

The tracklisting for Light Up The Dark is as follows:

'Light Up The Dark'

'Skeleton'

'Fools Love'

'Slip Away'

'Sweet Nothing'

'Heavy Heart'

'Shallow Love'

'Anybody Out There'

'Hurt'

'Together'

'What Did You Do'

'A While'

'Don't Break Your Heart On Me'*

'This Side Of The Moon'*

'Coming Home'*

'Letting Go'*

'The House We Never Built'*

'You Don't Like Dancing'*

* = Deluxe Edition Only

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Elvis Biopic 'Nobody' Wins Awards

May 12, 2015

The independent short film "Nobody," which focuses on 18-year-old Elvis Presley just before his career took off, has been playing the festival circuit and winning awards.

The film recently won the 2015 Audience Choice Award at the National Film Festival for Talented Youth in Seattle, Washington, as well as the Best Narrative Short Film at the 2015 Twister Alley Film Festival in Woodward, Oklahoma.

"Nobody," starring Drake Milligan as Elvis, was filmed in Memphis at Elvis' alma mater, Humes High School and at Sun Studio, and his wardrobe was provided by Lansky Bros., where Elvis bought clothes while he was in high school and throughout his life. The film was written, directed and produced by Elvis fan and recent Columbia College Chicago graduate William Bryan. Singer/actor/musician Ted Torres Martin is the voice of the movie's soundtrack.

Learn more about "Nobody" on the film's website or Facebook page.

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Jimmy Fallon Thanks David Letterman ‘For Innovation, Fun and Just Plain Weirdness’

TV | By Joe Otterson on May 19, 2015 @ 7:13 am

“I, like every kid who grew up watching him, will miss him,” the “Tonight Show” host says during heartfelt tribute to the “Late Show” host

Jimmy Fallon paid tribute to retiring “Late Show” host David Letterman on Monday by thanking Letterman for years of “innovation, fun and just plain weirdness.”

“I, like every kid who grew up watching him, will miss him,” Fallon said. He then pulled out a page from his eighth grade yearbook in which Fallon’s teacher had predicted he would one day take over for Letterman on “The Late Night Show” — a prediction that came true when Fallon took over the show from 2009-2014.

Fallon then shared a story about being invited onto Letterman’s show once he was hosting “Late Night.”

“You don’t want to see a talk show host go on another guy’s talk show to talk about the talk show,” Fallon said.

Nevertheless, he went and was surprised when Letterman asked to see him before their segment. Fallon peaked his head around the “Late Show” curtain to see Letterman sitting at his desk with a smile on his face waving at him.

“I think he taught us how to be smart and stupid for comedy,” Fallon said. “He just wants to have fun and be goofy, and I’ll always remember that.”

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Netflix Pix: Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda in Grace and Frankie

May 18, 2015 8:02 PM MST

Play

Grace and Frankie, a new Netflix exclusive comedy series stars Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen.

Netflix

Grace and Frankie

Rating: 5 Stars

After many hours of writing and research, I love to remove myself from the grips of deadlines and due dates by creating a different reality for myself through a good movie or series. There is nothing better than relieving stress and sloughing off the day’s work load by putting on a great film.

Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

I’ve always been a fan of the classics, including the actors and actresses who made the film come to life. Netflix is the go-to for classics. One exclusive Netflix series intrigued me because of the cast involved in the series.

I used to watch Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in various films, giving the stories life and more importantly, the viewer a laugh. Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are back in the hilarious Netflix exclusive series listing, Grace and Frankie, but this time they are covering the topics of aging, love and new age relationships.

In the new series, Grace and Frankie, Fonda plays Grace, a woman and mother who lives on the right side of the tracks so to speak. She is married to her husband of many years. He’s a high-paid lawyer and has provided well for the family. Martin Sheen plays Robert, Fonda’s husband. Sheen brings even more legitimacy to the program.

Frankie comes to life through the brilliant acting and comical characterizations of Lily Tomlin. We can’t forget excellence in the penning process for giving all of the cast good lines, but Tomlin delivers Frankie’s prose as if it is an intricate part of her. Her alternative methods of getting through life shine in this series.

Tomlin plays Frankie, wife to Sam Waterston’s character Sol. Sol and Frankie have been married for many years as well and Sol is a partner in a law office with Robert. Over the years the two connected in more ways than just business companions. They have fallen in love and started a relationship without their wives’ knowledge.

Sol and Robert proclaim their love for each other over a dinner conversation with the women. Of course the ladies are in shock and denial. The men stick to their proclamation and want divorces.

The whole ordeal is handled as gracefully as possible. There are no despicable characters in the relationship between husbands and wives. Both women are ultimately left on their own, while financially the husbands keep them stable. At one point, Robert chooses to end Grace’s credit card use, but changes his mind later. The four remain as friends somewhat, especially Sol and Frankie.

Grace and Frankie are done with the façade put on for years for their husbands sake. It becomes quite clear they cannot stand each other, although it is more obvious that Grace can’t stand the “hippy” style Frankie lives by. The two end up at the beach house, purchased by both couples as a place to vacation. This is where the fun begins.

Frankie opts to leave and give Grace some time in the house by herself. She heads for the beach to drink peyote tea and experience an enlightening trip. This set up gives Tomlin the opportunity to shine in the comical genius only she can provide. Frankie ends up on the beach with her eventually and the two heartbroken women share in a peyote trip around the campfire, thus opening the season of Grace and Frankie with hilarious results.

The new Netflix exclusive series Grace and Frankie is in season one, but hopefully the series will continue. It’s worth the watch, with a great cast and true professionalism in acting. There are cameo appearances by several other “blast from the past” actors and actresses, such as Mary Kay Place.

Grace and Frankie not only lets us laugh at our aging process and all that entails, but allows us to take a peek inside the modern relationship complications that can eventually work if given a chance. I’m enjoying the comeback of all the cast, just to see them share their gift of comedy again, still seemingly comfortable in front of the camera.

Season One of Grace and Frankie is available on Netflix now. Get ready for an all-star cast and a night of hilarious comedy, geriatric style. Now we know the age of 70 doesn't mean walkers and canes, but living life to the fullest.

By Mike Reyes 2 hours ago

Last September’s The Maze Runner surprised audiences with a pretty healthy box office haul. Ready to go for two more rounds of cash cow success, 20th Century Fox almost immediately greenlit the sequels, and we now have our first look at the second entry in the series. Put on your shades, as it’s time to get a glimpse at Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.

When we last left Thomas and the rest of his crew, they had discovered that the maze that they were trapped in was a test of survival, run by WCKD – a shadowy organization behind the maze. Well, it looks like WCKD is going to give these kids "the truth" about why the maze exists, as well as why they were made to suffer.

Taking over for the responsible adult of medium recognition duties in Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials is Game Of Thrones star Aidan Gillen, who plays Janson. The de facto authority figure, at least according to the trailer’s context, Janson looks like he’s ready to tell Thomas everything he (and we) wanted to know about the maze, but didn’t have the chance to ask. While Janson seems like a decent guy on the surface, ready to divulge all the information one could need to be swayed in the right direction, we can’t shake Gillen’s Littlefinger persona from our minds. Clearly, something’s not adding up.

Sure enough, it doesn’t look like the true purpose of the maze is a pretty one though, as Thomas and company escape the confines of their supposedly safe surroundings and into "The Scorch." Naturally, things aren’t as safe on the outside, as civilization has fallen to sandy shambles. How the former maze running crew will fare in an environment that’s not as lush and providing as the inside of the maze was, looks like the main narrative thrust of Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, and it look even more exciting than the first film’s enigmatic premise. Considering how much of a fluke the first film’s success seemed to be, this is pretty much the essential ingredient to making Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials as much of a success as its predecessor, which made ten times its production budget in box office grosses.

With The Hunger Games series closing out as of this November, it looks like we’ll have something to hold us over once Katniss has shot her last arrow, as Maze Runner: The Death Cure is scheduled for release in the prime September slot of 2016. If the series continues to develop along this grim, yet fascinating path that Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials promises in its trailers, and if fellow cable TV baddie Giancarlo Esposito is as awesome of a casting fit as Aidan Gillen looks to be, then we’ll have no problem giving Thomas our undivided attention after the fact.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials reveals its secrets to us all on September 18th.

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By Nick Venable 17 hours ago

The past several years of television have given audiences a wide selection of stars generally suited for the big screen, with an ever-expanding lineup of limited series and miniseries. Now we can look forward to Academy Award-nominated thesp Jude Law making his debut on American television as one of the most powerful men in the world, as he has signed on to play the Pope for the miniseries The Young Pope, which HBO has signed on to co-produce. I wonder if this means we’ll get debaucherous sex scenes and harrowing violence.

For The Young Pope, which is set to span eight episodes, Jude Law will play a fictionalized American pope who goes on to become the most conservative leader that the Vatican has ever housed, according to THR. There are several oddities surrounding this plotline, not the least of which is that Pope Francis, who currently holds the title, is possibly the most liberal and kindhearted leader in the Catholic Church’s long and winding history. So it might seem kind of damning to bring in a closed-minded pope just when things have gotten good. Plus, there the whole “Englishman playing an American in Italy” thing, hampered even more by the fact that the miniseries will be presented as an English-language project. We can only hope that some Italian makes it to the final cut.

HBO will be co-producing The Young Pope with the U.K.’s Sky and France’s Canal Plus, along with Wildside and Haut et Court TV. It will be co-written by This Must Be The Place writer/director Paolo Sorrentino, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas co-writer Tony Grisoni, This Must be the Place co-writer Umberto Contarello, and Deadly Code’s screenwriter Stefano Rulli. Sorrentino will be directing all eight episodes, however.

Law had a pretty solid 2014, appearing in Wes Anderson’s Oscar-winning The Grand Budapest Hotel and cursing up a brutal storm in Richard Shepard’s crime comedy Dom Hemingway, and he kicked off 2015 with Kevin Macdonald’s submarine thriller Black Sea. 2015 will see him taking on a supporting role alongside Melissa McCarthy in Paul Feig’s Spy, and he’ll play the classic American novelist Thomas Wolfe in Michael Grandage’s literary-minded biopic Genius. He’s currently filming Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur for Guy Ritchie, in which he’s playing Vortigern. No one can say that Jude Law is playing to stereotype.

The Young Pope, which will take place in both the U.S. and Italy, is scheduled to begin its Italian production at Cinecitta Studios, presumably later this year. Can we expect to see Law’s name play heavily into awards season next year, or whenever HBO decides to debut it? Depends on how over-the-top things get, I guess.

The first time I saw Leon Bridges I was transported to a different era entirely. At Warsaw, Brooklyn’s Polish community-center-cum-music venue, Bridges and his bandmates stood framed by velvet curtains on a wooden stage trimmed with bright lights, harmonizing and crooning about love and longing. It was early 2015 but it could’ve been 1955. Experiencing Bridges is half audio, half visual; his aesthetics work hand in hand with his tunes. Captured in black and white, the video for “Coming Home” (above) takes place in his hometown of Fort Worth, TX, as he strolls down empty streets soulfully strumming his guitar and singing: “The world leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, girl / You’re the only one I want, I wanna be around, ” with a wistful look in his eye. Shots of the recording studio could easily be Detroit’s Motown Records, home to The Supremes and Marvin Gaye, artists Bridges fits seamlessly alongside. He's only 25, but he looks utterly at home in an alternate era, one where a three-piece suit, a felt hat, and a pipe hanging out of his mouth is the de rigueur. He is on Instagram—what artist isn’t?—but his pictures are carefully stylized, so wonderfully anachronistic in its analog feel in this digital age.

With his debut album, Coming Home, out on 5.23 via Columbia Records, Leon Bridges is currently on an endless tour across the States and Europe, right through till October. We caught up with the singer to talk about his "Plain Jane" beginnings, his vintage threads, the significance of his song "Brown Skin Girl," and how studying dance in college lead to him making music.

Noisey: The first thing I noticed about you is that you have a very specific style. Have you always dressed like this?
Leon Bridges: I used to dip in and out of dressing like this in the past, but I was never consistent with this. I haven’t been dressing like this since I was in high school or anything—I only took it on about a couple years ago when I started writing this style of music. It was something I wanted to be more consistent about because dressing like this, and making the music that I make, brought me so much joy.

What were you like in high school?
I was just a kid trying to fit in, but there was really no way for me to fit in. I didn’t have that classic look at all. I was into contemporary art—Ginuwine, Usher—you know, watching One Tree Hill. [Laughs.] I was a Plain Jane high school kid.

How did you make the transition from hip-hop to soul?
When I was 19 or 20 I was really into hip-hop, and one thing I took from that was the phrasing, the storytelling. I wrote a song about my mom called “Lisa Sawyer,” and this was before I decided to pursue soul music. A friend of mine asked me if Sam Cooke was one of my inspirations, and I felt bad because I had never really listened to him. So after that I really started digging in and listening to Sam Cooke and the Temptations. I never went to no record store to buy a whole bunch of records. I was just looking it all up on Pandora and YouTube. After listening to it I started to realize that is where I was meant to be. I started asking myself, why aren’t there any other young black men making this kind of music? I felt like I connected with it as a black man. I went for it, I didn’t know how it would turn out because I’m no musician—I only know how to play guitar a little bit. Over time it grew and grew, and here I am.

I heard you perform “Brown Skin Girl” when you were opening for Sharon van Etten and it was really important to me because I myself am a brown skin girl. I feel like rarely are there love songs that reference women of color without objectifying them in some way. What was your mindset in writing that song?
Exactly. I was randomly thinking about the India Arie song, and I wanted to make a song to really highlight and talk about brown skin women, from Mexican to Puerto Rican and Indian to black women. It’s just a simple song. It’s one of my favorite tracks that’ll be coming out on the new album—the album version is actually way different from the live version. It’s more downtempo and laidback.

What was it like growing up in Fort Worth? What’s the music scene like?
For me, growing up in Fort Worth as a kid was just going to school and being at home. There was nothing outside of that for me—I wasn’t really allowed to go to parties. Then I started writing and playing music and discovered the music scene. What really inspired me from Fort Worth were a couple of really good singer/songwriters around the area—their consistency and almost throwback sound. It wasn’t soul music, more Americana and folk, like Bob Dylan vibes. I definitely took from that, I was really inspired just from being around those guys. They kept me on my feet.

Do you see yourself staying in Fort Worth or moving to a different city?
I wanna stay in Fort Worth, it’s home for me. I go all over the world and after being a lot of places, it’s great to come back to something I’m familiar with and see people who knew me before all of this happened. Not saying that anyone who knows me after is not genuine, but it’s a sense of home. The studio is there, my musical mentor, it’s perfect for me.

What’s your relationship with your family like? You have a song out about your mother, so I wondered if family plays a large role in your music writing.
I’m really close to my mother. My mother and father were separated, and I spent most of my time with my mother. We’ve been through some really hard times together. I like to highlight my family’s life in my music, especially because of the rich New Orleans history we have, my family is deep-rooted in New Orleans. So I try to embrace that in my music and highlight their life in an artistic way.

So you just started playing guitar a few years ago?
Yeah about four years ago, and I was always determined to do something good with it. I’m no guitar player really, I didn’t have enough time to catch up before all of this happened! But I thank God that I’ve grown as a writer. The guitar is a great songwriting tool and I like to crank it out on stage sometimes.

What inspired you to start playing guitar?
When I was going to college, I was actually originally pursuing dance, and I had a friend who would bring a keyboard to school. And we would sit around and sing songs and improv between classes. Eventually I grew tired of having to depend on other people to be creative, so I went out and bought my own guitar and started writing.

You were studying dance?
Yeah! I’ve been dancing since I was about 11 years old. When I got to college I started learning ballet technique, modern, African, and jazz technique. I was set out to be a choreographer. And then when my friend with the keyboard started coming around, I realized that I could sing songs and write a little bit.

I definitely get the sense that choreography and performance are important aspects of your live shows.
Choreography has definitely played a big part in being in front of people, because I’m a really shy person. It taught me how to move and be a performer.

Do you think about the performative aspect of your music while you’re writing?
Not really, when I write it’s just making a song. Then when I bring it to the stage, well, being in front of a lot of people has pushed me to be a better performer. Playing around Fort Worth, there was really no performance aspect. Now that I’m in front of a lot of people, it pushes me. What certain songs are gonna look like on stage, it’s more spur of the moment. I work it out along the way.

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BB King memorial planned for Saturday

added: 19 May 2015 // by: Noise11

BB King will be farewelled at a memorial service is Las Vegas this Saturday.

King's daughter Claudette has announced the funeral details for her father at her Facebook page.

'HELLO ALL. Thank you everyone for your well wishes. My dad's service is next Saturday, May 23rd in Las Vegas. Lying in state Friday, May 22, 2015. More later,' she wrote.

The public viewing of the blues legend will be held this Friday (May22, 2015) at Las Vegas' Palm South Jones Mortuary 3 to 7 p.m.

The funeral service for family and close friends will be on Saturday morning (May 23, 2015) at 9:30am followed by the public memorial at 11am.

BB King is expected to be buried in Indianola, Mississippi, not far from his birthplace of Berclair.

BB King died on Thursday, May 14, 2015 at age 89. His cause of death was confirmed as a series of mini-strokes brought on by diabetes.

New Music Upcoming Releases

Track
Listing

CD 1

Performed by Sam Cooke

1. Wonderful World
2. Having A Party
3. Chain Gang
4. Bring It On Home To Me
5. Cupid
6. You Send Me
7. Only Sixteen
8. Sad Mood
9. Twistin' The Night Away
10. Sugar Dumpling
11. You Were Made For Me
12. Loveable
13. Movin' And Groovin'
14. I'll Come Running Back To You
15. Somebody Have Mercy
16. Love Me
17. One More Time
18. Nothing Can Change This Love
19. Win Your Love For Me
20. (Don't Fight It) Feel It

CD 2

Performed by others

1. Soothe Me - The Sims Twins
2. Rome (Wasn't Built In A Day) - Johnnie Taylor
3. I'm Alright - Little Anthony & The Imperials
4. Sho' Miss You Baby - Johnnie Morisette
5. Wade In The Water - The Soul Stirrers
6. Dance What You Wanna - Clifton White
7. Don't Fight It, Feel It - The Sims Twins
8. Never (Coming Running Back To You) - Johnnie Morisette
9. You're Workin' Out Your Bag - L.C. Cooke
10. I'll Keep Thinking Of You - Kylo Turner
11. Stand By Me Father - The Soul Stirrers
12. Nobody Loves Me Like You - The Flamingos
13. Meet Me At The Twistin' Place - Johnnie Morisette
14. The Smile - Sims Twins
15. Somewhere There's A Girl - The Valentinos
16. You're Pickin' In The Right Cotton Patch - The Sims Twins
17. Wildest Girl In Town - Johnnie Morisette
18. Hold Me - Jackie Ross
19. Jesus Be A Fence Around Me - The Soul Stirrers
20. In My Heart - Johnnie Morisette

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Ed Sheeran – 5 (2015)

Dar Williams – Emerald | David Duchovny – Hell Or Highwater

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Kelsea Ballerini

Chris Benton | | Artists | No Comments

Here is the interview with Kelsea Ballerini. She was great to interview. She was very down to earth and even with some of her success she was so humble to talk with. Hope you all enjoy this as much as we did doing the interview.

NCS – How does it feel to have the album that you are working on have the songs be all written or co-written by you?

Kelsea – It’s awesome and I think it’s important for me. I do not think I would be an artist if I wasn’t a songwriter first. There are so many good songs around Nashville, but writing and co-writing for me has made the album more personal. It made it me and that’s really important to me for my first album.

I have been writing for this record since I was 12 years old. I feel like it’s really a snapshot of my life from ages 12-21. It’s all real and I am so excited about it.

NCS – Where does most of the inspiration come from for your songwriting?

Kelsea – When I first started writing it was all about my life, my family, boys or whatever. But I think a great song can pull inspiration from other people’s lives, or movies or books and anything around them. That’s something I have been trying to focus on. There are a couple of songs that have that. They are now a story that I have gone through, but it’s inspiration from somewhere else that I kind of related to the experience and then wrote about it.

NCS – If you could co-write with anyone dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Kelsea – That is a great question. My favorite songwriter is Hillary Lindsey. She’s very much alive, LOL. She’s in Nashville and I have never met her yet, but she is one of the reasons I wanted to be a songwriter. I think she’s the ultimate storyteller. I would adore to write with her or Ryan Tedder. Ryan Tedder is amazing too. Those are kind of my top two.

NCS – Did you write “Love Me Like You Mean It”? And if so, what inspired that?

Kelsea – I did! I was singing in the lobby of Black River with three of my good guy friends that are songwriters as well and we all had already written songs that day. We were just hanging out at the end of the day. We had pizza, of course, because everything is better with pizza LOL. We were just hanging out and one of the guys played a few things on my guitar and all of a sudden we just wrote this song. It was just fun. There was no pressure at all. We were singing it and it just felt really good. One of the guys built a demo for it and sent it to me a couple of weeks later and I just remember I had this moment with that song. I thought to myself, oh my gosh, I think that’s it. I think that’s my song.

That was before I even signed my record deal so to have that moment a while ago and to see what has happened now with it has been a really, really cool journey.

NCS – It proved that your guy’s feeling was right.

Kelsea – YEAH! Gut feelings are good.

NCS – Where were you when you first heard the song played on the radio?

Kelsea – I was on a 21 week radio tour and it’s really cool because you get to hear it a lot when you go to the stations, because they will play it for you. You will get in your car and they will tell you when it will be on, but the first time that I heard it was unexpectedly. I was in Nashville actually, I was merging onto the interstate. I had my GPS in one hand and my window down trying to merge. My radio was turned down, almost all the way down, but I heard the beginning of the song and I FREAKED out. I really did. I freaked out. I have a video of it and I am like I am going to get in a car wreck but I am so excited.

NCS – Who was the first person you called?

Kelsea – I heard it on The Big 98 WSIX and I called the PD there and thanked them, but I called my mom, first of course. I was crying, then she cried, then we just had a little cry party. After that I called the PD and thanked them.

NCS – How does it feel to have a Billboard top 30 single?

Kelsea – Well, that is crazy! It feels great. Honestly, it’s just so rewarding. It’s a humbling and awesome feeling to see something that you created, which has been a dream that I have had for a really long time, start to come to life and to see it work. I am so happy with my first top 30 on Billboard.

NCS – It’s not done yet and I have a feeling it’s going to go higher.

Kelsea – That is so exciting. I really hope it does, but I am very thankful that it’s doing well.

NCS – Who were or are some of your biggest musical influences?

Kelsea – I grew up listening to a lot of top 40 pop and also a lot of like Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, and Diana Ross. So I have this weird mix of hooky melodies and weird grooves and stuff like that. But I love the simplicity and classic-ness of the other styles. I grew up on a farm so I just came out country, so I think the mix of all of that really started my songwriting. I started writing songs that were country before I knew what country was. I remember writing these songs at 12 and 13 and thinking I love these and am proud of them, but I do not know where they fit because I was listening to pop radio.

One day I heard the song “Stupid Boy” by Keith Urban, that’s when I really discovered country music. It was weird because I was already kind of writing it, I just didn’t know it.

I went out and got the Keith Urban record,Dixie Chicks, Sugarland and Taylor Swift. Those were my first 4 country records.

NCS – Has Nashville been everything you thought it would be?

Kelsea – Yes and more! Absolutely, Nashville is the coolest place. It’s such a creative community whether you are an artist, writer or a graphic designer. There are just so many creative jobs in Nashville. It is such a team process, so building that team and being able to collaborate with people that are just smart and creative has been so fun. Coming from Knoxville, you don’t have that community there of songwriters and other artists. It’s really important. It’s just a cool city and I love it here.

NCS – How does it feel to be named one of CMT’s Next Women of Country?

Kelsea – It’s so cool! I remember when I was new to town, I was 15 and I couldn’t drive yet. My mom works full time so I just stayed at home by myself a lot all that summer. Every morning I would wake up and watch CMT videos. Even walking into the CMT building was like mind-blowing for me. I walked in and I had my little introduction showcase with them. Leslie Fram called me the same afternoon and said, “I would love to invite you to be a part of our CMT next Women of Country”. I could have just died. There is such an awesome, strong group of women right now in country music and to be recognized as a part of that is special. It makes me feel really honored.

NCS – Do you feel it’s harder for a woman to break into country music right now?

Kelsea – I think it has been harder the last couple of years, but I think it is changing right now too. I am constantly doing stuff with other female artists like Maddie and Tae and Raelynn. They are just doing so well. Maddie and Tae just had a huge number 1 and Raelynn has a top, I think 15. They are girls. They are killing it. There is a huge group of us and I feel like we are all strong in what we do. I think country radio is listening, and not only listening, but also being supportive of it. I think it’s about time.

NCS – How excited are you about debuting at the Grand Ole Opry on Valentine’s Day?

Kelsea – I am so excited. I am literally saying “Kelsea just don’t cry until you get off the stage”. LOL, I have been to the Opry twice now to watch, so to go from being in the audience to on the stage is a big step. I feel like as a writer, playing the Bluebird was like the place for me. When I played it for the first time, I will never forget it, because it was such a special moment. I feel like the Grand Ole Opry is that for country artists. It is just a huge honor. I just hope I don’t cry on stage or trip in my heels.

NCS – Was it awesome how you got the news from Lady Antebellum?

Kelsea – It was so awesome. Oh my gosh, yes. I love them. I am such a big fan of theirs. I adore Hillary and she is a friend. I was on the red carpet for an awards show and I had no idea. Then I was interviewing them and it was on my last interview. It just surprised me. I will never forget that moment.

NCS – We see that you have your first headlining show on February 18th in Nashville, what can you tell us about that?

Kelsea – I am just starting to put full band shows together, but I have studied tours and shows since i started getting serious about music. I am very fascinated about touring. I love bells and whistles. I love any little thing that you can take it from being a performance to a show. We are trying to plan a lot of little bells and whistles for this Nashville show. I am very excited about it, and also showing people in town what I have been working on. I am excited to let them hear some of my new music and kind of share all that with my friends, family and people in the industry that haven’t gotten to see it yet. It’s going to be really cool.

NCS – We also see you are going to be out on the road with Tim McGraw and Billy Currington. How did that come about?

Kelsea – I just signed with CAA and they are fantastic. So, I have some openings for Billy and Brett coming up really soon and then this summer I am doing fairs and festivals and those are opening for Tim McGraw and Keith Urban. I will probably stand beside the stage shaking while watching them.

NCS – Where do you want to be in 5 years?

Kelsea – Probably on a tour with a hydraulic lift, LOL. For me my ultimate goal is to tour in arenas. That’s like my biggest dream. So, I hope I am lucky enough to be able to do that in 5 years.

NCS – What’s one thing you want to be remembered for in your life with your music?

Kelsea – I really hope that anyone who gets my music or that I get to meet through my music feels like we are friends, and feels like whatever they are listening to is real and it’s their life too. If I get to meet them, we are like BFF’s ,all of a sudden. That’s so important to me having that connection with people. I am so thankful for the people that support my music. Getting out there and meeting them has been so awesome and such a blessing. So, i guess that’s what I want to be remembered for is being a friend.

NCS – What advice would you give a musician just starting out?

Kelsea – I would say don’t box yourself in. One of the biggest struggles I had when I first moved to Nashville was finding out who I was and what I wanted to say. Every other voice that is successful is successful because it’s their voice. You have to find your own. It was such a long process for me, but not just worrying about where it fits or how it fits, just knowing that it’s true to you. That’s what always works, ALWAYS!

NCS – We had more, but we cut it short to honor your time.

Kelsea – Dawn says we have time for one more question.

NCS – Okay, we will give you an easy one. What do you do for fun when you are not doing music?

Kelsea – MUSIC! LOL, No I am a big homebody so if I am not out on the road or working on music here in Nashville, I am in my apartment in my pajamas watching Net Flix. That is constantly what’s happening.

o

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[Edited 5/21/15 15:49pm]

Alfonso Ribeiro: ‘America's Funniest Home Videos’ announces new host

May 21, 2015 4:12 AM MST

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On Tuesday night’s finale of Dancing With the Stars, Tom Bergeron announced that Alfonso Ribeiro, himself a past DWTS winner and Carlton from Fresh Prince of Bel Air, will take over as host of AFV! We compiled this exclusive highlight reel from his A...

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Alfonso Ribeiro is the new host of ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos.” The former “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” star and Season 19 “Dancing With the Stars” champ will fill current host Tom Bergeron’s shoes on the slapstick fan-made video show, according to ABC News on Wednesday. Bergeron has been the host of the popular clip show since 2001.

Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Ribeiro revealed that the show won’t be much different when he’s at the helm, but he admitted he may have a different energy and style than Bergeron has. While he’ll be careful not to overpower the comedic value of the videos, Ribeiro admitted he’s “very animated and energetic,” so that part of his personality will likely shine through – possibly via impromptu dance moves. Ribeiro also described Bergeron as his “idol in the hosting world,” and said that he is humbled the longtime host gave him his blessing as his replacement.

Bergeron initially made the announcement about Ribeiro’s “America’s Funniest Home Videos” hosting gig during the “Dancing With the Stars” finale. But some fans mistakenly thought Bergeron meant Ribeiro was taking his place as host of “Dancing With the Stars.” Of course, it’s hard to imagine anyone but Bergeron in that role.

While Ribeiro is best known for his role as Carlton Banks on the ‘90s sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” he has a bit of a hosting past on his resume as well. Ribeiro was host of the multi-episode TV documentary “Unwrapped 2.0.” In addition, he was host of the television shows “Catch 21” and “Your Big Break,” and he’s even guest hosted on “Access Hollywood” and “Soul Train.” He’s already part of the ABC family, so the “America’s Funniest Home Videos” hosting spot sounds like the perfect next move for him.

Alfonso Ribiero’s “Americas Funniest Home Videos” gig is big news, but the show has had an interesting lineup of hosts over the past two decades. In addition to Bergeron, past “AFV” hosts have included Daisy Fuentes, John Fugelsang and Bob Saget. “America’s Funniest Home Videos” returns for its 26th season this fall on ABC.

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Review: David Letterman Says Goodbye, With Self-Mockery and a Little Mush

By ALESSANDRA STANLEYMAY 21, 2015

David Letterman during the taping of his final episode of the “Late Show” on Wednesday. Credit Jeffrey R. Staab/CBS Entertainment, via Associated Press

“You know what I’m going to devote the rest of my life to?” David Letterman said on his last night as the host of the “Late Show” on CBS. “Social media.”

Mr. Letterman ended his 33-year career in late night on Wednesday as he had started it — with the irreverence, self-mockery and mischief that made him such an iconoclastic talk-show host.

His farewell was much better than the usual mawkish television send-off: He mixed favorite segments like his Top 10 list with clips of classic skits and a few restrained fillips of sincerity and humility. His final show was not at all like the Pharaonic and mushy last bow Johnny Carson took when he left “The Tonight Show” in 1992. As could be expected, it was a bracing antidote to the weepy extravaganza that ushered his rival Jay Leno into retirement last year.

Mr. Letterman’s retirement has gotten an extraordinary amount of focus — a frenzied outpouring of fan devotion, celebrity tributes and nonstop media attention — perhaps because he was so important to the last generation of viewers who grew up watching shows on a television set, and not on a smartphone.

Mr. Letterman’s crack about younger performers who use Twitter and Facebook was a shout-out to the talk-show host’s core audience, the late-night viewers who decades ago defined themselves as the insurgents who preferred Mr. Letterman to Mr. Leno.

The studio audience began laughing appreciatively the minute he introduced a 1996 clip of one of his more famous pranks, when he posed as a server at a drive-through Taco Bell and tormented customers with terrible service.

The clips of his absurdist gags, riffs on conventional television comedy, were fun, but they were also a reminder of how inventive and seditious Mr. Letterman was in his heyday, and how much his successors in today’s late-night constellation owe him. One acolyte, Jimmy Kimmel, the host of his own late-night talk show on ABC, was so worshipful he ran a rerun on Wednesday so as to not pull focus from Mr. Letterman.

On his show, Mr. Letterman demanded a lighter touch. In the Top 10 list, “Things I’ve Always Wanted to Say to Dave,” Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a “Seinfeld” alumna, said, “Thanks for letting me take part in another hugely disappointing series finale.”

Mr. Letterman joined CBS in 1993, a year after HBO introduced “The Larry Sanders Show,” a behind-the-scenes parody of “The Tonight Show” that starred Garry Shandling as an insecure, self-absorbed talk-show host.

But Mr. Letterman’s onstage persona, as host of “Late Night” at NBC, and later at CBS, was a one-man sendup of the talk-show genre. Even after more than 30 years, Mr. Letterman never lost his arch, ironic self-awareness; he did not sink into the easy, quid pro quo conventions of late-night talk shows, but kept defying them.

Over the last few weeks, a parade of celebrity guests including Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and George Clooney have paid their respects to Mr. Letterman. On Wednesday, he described all the encomiums as “over the top” and said he found it “flattering, embarrassing and gratifying.”

Mixed feelings make sense in a comedian who was always paradoxical — a winning, witty and supremely confident performer who offstage was practically a hermit and riven by self-doubt.

Fans are devoted to Mr. Letterman in part because they know his psyche so well: He is an intensely private celebrity who kept processing his personal life in front of the camera. He helped the nation heal after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by movingly expressing his feelings of sadness and helplessness. He brought his medical team onto his show after his 2000 quintuple bypass, and he even described his affairs with women in his office as “creepy” in an unnerving mea culpa in 2009.

On Wednesday, Mr. Letterman said that one of the worst things about retiring was that, as he put it: “When I screw up now, and Lord knows I’ll be screwing up, I have to go on somebody else’s show to apologize.”

He mixed jokes about his future with serious references to pivotal moments in his past. He chose as his last musical guests Foo Fighters because the band canceled a tour in South America to play on his first show after the heart surgery.

As he has on many a night, Mr. Letterman made a humorous reference to his 11-year-old son, Harry, imitating his voice in a squeaky falsetto. He also paid a solemn, quite personal tribute to his son and his wife, Regina, who were seated in the audience.

“Thank you for being my family,” he said. “I love you both and really, nothing else matters, does it?”

Mostly, though, he did what he did best: make fun of himself. “It’s beginning to look like I’m not going to get ‘The Tonight Show,’ ” Mr. Letterman joked.

Mr. Letterman defined himself as the loser in his long, bitter battle with Mr. Leno. His rival got the “Tonight Show” gig and higher ratings, but in the end, Mr. Letterman won the legacy.

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Alex Chancey

05.21.1510:30 AM ET

Foo Fighters Play Letterman’s Farewell

Live version of “Everlong” is the soundtrack to highlights of Dave’s entire career.

Wednesday night was David Letterman’s signoff as host of The Late Show, wrapping up almost 35 years as a talk show host. At the end of the show, last bastions of rock & roll Foo Fighters played their classic “Everlong” under a montage of Letterman’s TV career, from the opening credits of his 11 year run as host of NBC’s Late Night through to recent moments on CBS’ Late Show.

The highlight reel was gold for any longtime fans of Letterman: Chris Elliott’s various characters on Late Night; Andy Kaufman’s legendary fight with wrestler Jerry Lawler; A-plus-listers Dave welcomed on stage during his tenure at the Ed Sullivan Theatre; things exploding and/or being dropped off of buildings; Stupid Pet Tricks; and the late great Calvert Deforest, perhaps better known as Larry “Bud” Melman.

Wednesday was the true end of an era with Letterman retiring and this clip reel measured out the size of the large shoes—maybe pants would be a better metaphor—that Stephen Colbert is filling.

Goodbye David Letterman and thank you for making the world a better place

May 19, 2015 8:44 PM MST

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Dave announcing his retirement

Late Show with David Letterman

As a lifelong comedy fan and a die-hard late night talk show freak, this is a dark week for me. I feel a need to personalize this article because David Letterman is retiring tomorrow night (May 20) and I've been watching him every weeknight for the past 33 years (yes, my longest relationship with a member of the opposite sex, but I digress). That's over 6000 hours of watching the greatest talk show host of all time. One may argue that the greatest was Johnny Carson, Dave's idol and mentor, but for someone who grew up being so obsessed with comedy that she delved into that world for a brief time and continued to write about it when she finished that part of it, he has been my constant. His humor influenced the way I look at the world when I was growing up, and that it still permeates around everything I am today, and I know I'm not alone on this.

Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

During the final months of “Late Show with David Letterman,” numerous guests have been expressing how much he has meant to them and their careers. The importance of what he achieved in late night television has touched and impacted everyone in comedy today, even those who got their starts with Dave at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles in the 1970s. The tributes on his show to him done with words, song, and sometimes, actual tears, have probably finally driven it home for Dave himself how much he has meant to all of us.

From the early days of “Late Night with David Letterman,” it was clear that there was a revolution going on in television comedy. It may of started in 1969 with “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” grew in 1975 with “Saturday Night Live” and inflated even more a year later when “SCTV” debuted in Canada. Even though Letterman was taking things to the next level with his little watched and short-live morning show, when he debuted on late night television in 1982, things changed.

With “Late Night with David Letterman,” Dave brought an edginess and sardonic wit that spoke to his generation. The comedy was surreal and completely fresh. Sure, you would have guest interviews, but even those had a new take and often dangerous quality to them. The comedy bits were inspired, too, from writer Chris Elliott’s fun and absurdist characters such as The Guy Under the Seats, The Conspiracy Guy, and his out-there Marlon Brando impression to Merrill Markoe’s (former head writer) most beloved contributions, Stupid Pet Tricks and Stupid Human Tricks. Also, we can never forget the stunts like the Velcro Suit, the Alka Seltzer Suit, and throwing objects off of the rooftops of buildings.

Paul Shaffer was the hip part of the equation. As his comedy partner, and musical director of 33 years, Paul brought the banter and the bands to Letterman’s shows. Shaffer’s contribution is insurmountable. He is beloved and always added to the humor. His songs selections for guests and segments are so smart and dead on. Paul's influence has been seen in every late night bandleader and sidekick since.

Letterman moved to the 11:35 time slot when he went to CBS in 1993 with “The Late Show with David Letterman”. Over the years, the comedy has been less experimental, but still powerful. We watched him become a more thoughtful interviewer, but he can still knock you out with his questions and responses.

David made things real for us when things were happening in his personal life. His brave emotional honesty came out on television after his quintuple bypass surgery, when his son, Harry, was born 11 years ago, and when he admitted his infidelities after someone tried to embezzle him and release the information. His vulnerability was compelling and honorable. Letterman was downright heroic when his was the first comedy show that went back on air after the 9/11 attacks. His words that night expressed what we were all feeling and helped us to heal.

This is the eve of David Letterman’s late night goodbye. His guests tonight are Bill Murray (his first guest on all three incarnations of his talk show) and Bob Dylan. Though he has given us over a year's notice before he leaves, for us fans, and everyone whose career was personally impacted, 11:35 will have a giant hole that can’t be replaced. Stephen Colbert will do a wonderful job taking over that space in September, but he, and all late night talk show hosts owe Letterman everything. Jon Stewart and Jimmy Fallon have already discussed his impact and their love for him on their respective late night programs. Conan O’Brien wrote a beautiful and funny tribute to Dave in a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly. Jimmy Kimmel has always idolized Letterman and is not airing a new episode tomorrow.

From the bottom of my heart and soul, you will be greatly missed, David Letterman. Thanks for making us laugh and letting us hear the truth for all of these years. We love you.

Bob Belden dies at 58; jazz musician shared three Grammys

Bob Belden in February in Tehran. (Vahid Salemi/AP)

Bob Belden, a jazz saxophonist, composer, arranger and producer who was among the first American musicians to perform in Iran since its 1979 revolution when he toured there earlier this year, died May 20 at a hospital in New York. He was 58.

The cause was a heart attack, his sister Elizabeth Belden Harmstone said.

In February, Mr. Belden and his group Animation went on a four-day tour of Iran, performing tunes by Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and Mr. Belden’s own compositions. The visit, which came as Tehran and Washington engaged in nuclear talks, was arranged by Search for Common Ground, a U.S. nonprofit that aims to promote better ties between the longtime rivals.

Mr. Belden was known for conceiving and producing multi-artist thematic albums, including “Miles From India” (2008), on which Indian and American musicians performed Miles Davis tunes. He followed that up with “Miles Español” which matched alumni of Davis’ band such as Chick Corea and Ron Carter with Spanish musicians.

Considered one of the leading experts on Davis, Mr. Belden shared three Grammys — one for Best Historical Album and two for Best Album Notes — for his work in the 1990s on boxed sets of the trumpeter’s work for Sony/Columbia.

Mr. Belden released a series of albums that turned the music of Puccini, Prince, Sting, Carole King and the Beatles into jazz.

One of his most popular releases was the 2001 Blue Note album “Black Dahlia,” an orchestral suite inspired by a notorious 1947 case involving the murder of a young actress.

James Robert Belden was born Oct. 31, 1956, in Evanston, Ill., and grew up in Goose Creek, S.C. He settled in New York after graduating in 1978 from North Texas State University and touring with Woody Herman’s Big Band.

He made his recording debut as a leader with the 1989 album “Treasure Island” on the Sunnyside label. He then released a series of albums for Blue Note, also serving as the label’s director of A&R (Artists & Repertoire) in the late 1990s.

A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

— Associated Press

Cannes 2015: Woody Allen, Charlize Theron and Robbie Williams walk the red carpet - in pictures

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  Woody Allen attends the premiere of Irrational Man, his 50th film as director

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  Actor and model Aymeline Valade attending the opening ceremony film, La Tete Haute (Standing Tall)

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  Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts arrive for the first showing of their film, The Sea of Trees, directed by Gus van Sant

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  Cate Blanchett, who stars in Carol, Todd Haynes’s critically acclaimed Patricia Highsmith adaptation

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  General delegate Thierry Frémaux , Charlize Theron, director George Miller and actor Tom Hardy attend the Mad Max: Fury Road premiere

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  Robbie Williams pops up to give The Sea of Trees a shot

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  Naomi Watts attends the opening ceremony and premiere of La Tête Haute

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  Sean Penn and Charlize Theron attending the premiere of Mad Max: Fury Road

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  Colin Farrell with Lea Seydoux; both appear in Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster

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  Julianne Moore attending the premiere of Mad Max: Fury Road

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  Jake Gyllenhaal, on the jury for the Palme d’Or, arrives at a premiere

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  Vincent Cassel as he attends the premiere of Il Racconto Dei Racconti (Tale of Tales)

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  Dutch model and actor Doutzen Kroes takes her turn on the red carpet

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  Emma Stone attending the premiere of Irrational Man, in which she stars with Joaquin Phoenix

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Cannes: ‘Paulina’ Wins Top Award in Critics’ Week Section

“Paulina,” from Argentinian director Santiago Mitre, has been named the top film in the International Critics’ Week section at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

Critics’ Week is a section of seven features and 10 short and medium-length films from up-and-coming directors that runs independently of the main festival.

A remake of the early ’60s film “La Patola,” Mitre’s drama deals with a lawyer who leaves her city job to teach in a depressed town, where she is sexually assaulted. It was one of the first films to screen in the Critics’ Week program, and immediately won strong reviews.

Also read: Cannes Report, Day 9: ‘Love’ Leaps From Raunchy Posters to Big Screen, Alicia Vikander Teams With Tom Hanks

Other Critics’ Week honors went to “Land and Shade” (“La Tierra y la Sombra”) by Cesar Augusto Acevedo, which won the France 4 Visionary Award and the SACD Award.

The jury was headed by director Ronit Elkabetz, and also included director Katell Quillévéré, cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, Toronto Film Festival programmer Andréa Picard and journalist Boyd van Hoeij.

Also Read: How Cannes Films Have Fared at the Box Office: The Hits and Misses

The awards:

Nespresso Grand Prize: “Paulina”
France 4 Visionary Award: “Land and Shade” (“La Tierra y la Sombra”)
Sony CineAlta Discovery Prize: “Varicella”
Canal Award: “Ramona”
SACD Award: “Land and Shade” (“La Tierra y la Sombra”)
Gan Foundation Support for Distribution: “The Wakhan Front”

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Maggie Gyllenhaal on Hollywood Ageism: I Was Told 37 Is ‘Too Old’ for a 55-Year-Old Love Interest

Getty Images

Every time we think things are getting better for women in Hollywood, something comes along to remind us — naaah.

Maggie Gyllenhaal, an Oscar nominee getting Emmy buzz for her work on the Sundance miniseries “The Honourable Woman,” reveals that she was recently turned down for a role in a movie because she was too old to play the love interest for a 55-year-old man.

No kidding.

“There are things that are really disappointing about being an actress in Hollywood that surprise me all the time,” she said during an interview for an upcoming issue of TheWrap Magazine. “I’m 37 and I was told recently I was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55. It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made me feel angry, and then it made me laugh.”

Good for Gyllenhaal for having such a pungent sense of humor. Hollywood has come under severe scrutiny for the persistently low number of leading roles for women in the movies, and the ACLU recently requested that state a...imination.

The San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film found that there are fewer jobs available for leading actresses since female characters made u...otagonists in the top 100 domestic-grossing films of 2014. This figure is 3 percent below 2013’s study and 4 percent below the number in 2002.

Gyllenhaal declined to specify the project on which she was considered too old, but we’re wide open to suggestions. What’s casting out there with a 55-year-old leading man?

And despite the recent slam, Gyllenhaal said she was hopeful for women. “A lot of actresses are doing incredible work right now, playing real women, complicated women,” said the actress, who won a Golden Globe in January for her role in “The Honourable Woman” as an Anglo-Israeli businesswoman. “I don’t feel despairing at all. And I’m more looking with hope for something fascinating.”

Hit Songwriter Bios—Hillary Lindsey

From ASCAP:

"Hillary Lindsey grew up in the small town of Washington, Georgia writing songs since age 10. She moved to Nashville to enroll in Belmont University's Music Business school in 1994. After fostering relationships within the musical community, Hillary was quickly signed to Famous Music Publishing. In her first year as a writer she had eight cuts.

"Hillary has had her songs recorded by Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Martina McBride, Lee Ann Womack, Lindsey Lohan, Sara Evans and Jessica Andrews. In 2002, Hillary enjoyed her first #1 song 'Blessed', recorded by Martina McBride. During 2003, she had the following singles on the country charts: 'Three Mississippi' by Terri Clark (top 30) and 'Backseat Of A Greyhound Bus' (top 15) by Sara Evans. In 2004, Hillary had two singles 'This One's For The Girls' by Martina McBride (top 5) and 'Simple Life' by Carolyn Dawn Johnson (top 15).

"Hillary has also enjoyed international success with EMI Belgium recording artist Sarah, who took her song 'Very Last Moment' to the top of the pop charts. Recently pop star Lindsey Lohan also recorded 'Very Last Moment.' Warner recording artist Ilse Delange, brought her song 'I'm Not So Tough' to the number one position in her native country, Holland. Hillary's most recent international cut was on Austria's Star Mania winner Verena, with a song called 'Take It.'

"Most recently, Hillary's songs have been recorded by Faith Hill, Trisha Yearwood, Shelly Fairchild and Jessica Andrews. American Idol Winner Carrie Underwood took her song 'Jesus, Take The Wheel' to the top of the country singles charts in January, 2006."

Hillary Lindsey has participated in the Durango Songwriters Expo several times and is always a crowd favorite. Aside from being one of the hottest writers in Nashville, by all accounts Hillary is also one of the finest singers in the business.

Congratulations Hillary, Brett James and Gordie Sampson for your 2007 Grammy win (Best Country Song) for "Jesus Take The Wheel"...and to Carrie Underwood, of American Idol fame, who made it a hit and won the Grammy for Best New Artist!

Jesus Take The Wheel Lyrics
(Words and Music by Brett James, Gordie Sampson and Hillary Lindsey)

She was drivin' last Friday
On her way to Cincinnati
On a snow white Christmas Eve
Goin' home to see her Mama an' her Daddy
With the baby in the back seat
Fifty miles to go an' she was running low
On Faith and gasoline
It'd been a long hard year

She had a lot on her mind
An' she didn't pay attention
She was goin' way too fast
An' before she knew it, she was spinnin'
On a thin black sheet of glass
She saw both their lives flash before her eyes
She didn't even have time to cry
She was so scared, she threw her hands up in the air

Jesus take the wheel
Take it from my hands
'Cause I can't do this on my own
I'm letting go
So give me one more chance
To save me from this road I'm on
Jesus take the wheel

It was still getting colder when she made it to the shoulder
An' the car came to a stop
She cried when she saw that baby in the back seat
Sleeping like a rock
An' for the first time in a long time
She bowed her head to pray
She said, I'm sorry for the way I've been living my life
I know I've got to change, so from now on, tonight

Jesus take the wheel
Take it from my hands
'Cause I can't do this on my own
I'm letting go
So give me one more chance
To save me from this road I'm on
Oh, Jesus take the wheel

Oh, I'm letting go
So give me one more chance
Save me from this road I'm on
From this road I'm on
Jesus take the wheel
Oh, take it, take it from me
Ohhhh, why... ohhh...

A Conversation With Hillary Lindsey

I had the chance to talk to Hillary Lindsey last week. Hillary has had cuts for Martina McBride, Gary Allan, Taylor Swift, Little Big Town, Sara Evans, and won a Grammy for “Jesus, Take The Wheel”, one of her sixteen cuts for Carrie Underwood. We talked songwriting, growing up, and the art of the cowrite.

You are from Georgia, right?

I’m from Washington, Georgia, two hours east of Atlanta. My father was a drummer (and he still is), and my grandfather played every instrument under the moon, and sang as well. Growing up around the house, we sang constantly. My dad will leave me voicemails with random lyrics from songs I haven’t even heard. It’s how my family just says hello.

Did that plant the seeds of songwriting at all?

I think so — my mom loved music as well. We always had music on in the house. I don’t ever remember not singing. I just listened to a tape of me and my grandfather from when I was four years old — I just listened to it while I was home for Christmas and I am sitting on his lap and we are singing “Animal Fair“. I’m four years old singing “the money, he got drunk”. I named my first publishing company Animal Fair Music after that.

What did you grow up listening to?

In Washington, we didn’t have a record store, so you had to go to Athens or Augusta to get anything. We listened to a lot of James Taylor, a lot of Motown, the occasional Merle Haggard. I was a radio junkie, listening to all the cheesy 80s pop music and Madonna. I had a boyfriend who would skip school to go to Turtles’ in Athens. He introduced me to stuff I would have never heard on the radio: Steve Earle, Nanci Griffith, Tori Amos.

How did that musical upbringing transition into songwriting?

My girlfriend and I would always make up songs — just being silly. My grandfather passed away, and he had an old piano he left me. I never took lessons — I am still just good enough to write a song. My best friend found out that her parents were getting a divorce, and it just rocked us all. I have no idea why, but I sat down at the piano and wrote my first song about that.

Did that first song make you realize it was something you could do?

It made me realize it was something that I really loved. I just wanted to keep doing it. Once I wrote that first one, I didn’t stop. The piano room was right beside my mom and dad’s bedroom, and it drove them nuts. I would write songs about stuff that my friends were going through, then it became all about boys. Some of those are embarrassing. I just never stopped.

When did you leave Washington, and where did you go?

I graduated and went to Belmont University. I was still writing songs, majoring in music business. I knew that I didn’t want to get screwed and wanted to learn the lingo of contracts. At night I would go home and write and record on my tape recorder. Same stuff — boys — it’s still about boys.

Did you know that songwriting was a viable career when you went to Nashville?

No, not at all. I was doing it as an artist originally — I thought that’s what everybody did. Belmont is just a block away from the row, and all those publishing companies were right there.

Is there a song that stands out as the first song that you thought was great?

“I Can’t Make You Love Me” killed me when I was young. I used to sing it a lot. In Washington, I was probably the only other person that was musical. We had a karaoke machine, and I would go sing everywhere — pageants.

A great Allen Shamblin song.

And Mike Reid — three or four years ago, I played with him at Joe’s Pub and he let me sing it. I about lost it.

How did you transition from Belmont to the publishing business?

I would go play this place called Jack’s Guitar Bar. My roommate would force me and my guitar into the car and drive me over there. It was pretty incredible talent — Patty Griffin, Keith Urban, all sorts of great folks were playing there at the time. I was getting my chops up a bit, but so nervous. I didn’t want to sing after Patty Griffin, of course. I hadn’t gotten the nerve to take any meetings. My roommate had an internship at a record label. She came home one time and told me she had taken one of my tapes to work. I was so mad, but she said they loved it. Randomly enough, that tape got passed around to some publishers. Pat Finch from Famous Music took me to lunch and signed me.

What does writing look like for you on a daily basis? Do you primarily cowrite?

I do cowrite. Growing up, I didn’t know there was such a thing. After I got my first deal, I got introduced to it and I hated it. I was uncomfortable, but now it is so hard to write by myself because I love it.

What does it take to be a great cowriter? It seems like it takes a special discipline.

I think you just have to be free. A lot of the times you write with the same people, so you get comfortable, but you have to be able to say the stupidest thing, because that often leads to the most brilliant line.

Do you approach different cowrites differently?

Yes — one guy might be a great guitar player, so you make him take it that way, or you might be a great lyricist so you drill down on that.

Who are your best cowrites? Who brings out the best in you?

I have my guys — Troy Verges, Gordie Sampson, Brett James, Luke Laird. I always have said that if I got married, they would be my bridesmaids. We came up together and we still write so often together. But then I write with new writers like Ryan Tyndell (who wrote Eric Church’s “Springsteen”) and Ross Copperman — it is so fun to write with new blood. It’s like a first date — you get nervous, but it is so exciting when it goes well.

How does it work writing for specific artists? How does that influence the song?

It’s kind of different every day. Sometimes your publisher will call and say “so-and-so” is going into the studio in a few weeks, and you get a goal like that. Then some days, it just comes from my own life and I have no idea its going to be for. That’s how I started — writing songs for me, not looking at the pitch sheet. It is a business, the goal is to get a cut. So you have to be focused, but not so much that you cut out the soul of a song.

If you hear that an artist is looking for a cut, how do you get into their mindset? Or is it more of a stylistic thing?

It’s both of those things. Like I thought of Sara Evans, and the thing that popped into my head was “Born to Fly”. I think of her flavor, the tone she puts on songs. Some people might think that its really cookie-cutter, but to me, its still me sitting back on my bedroom floor in college. Even when you are being very intentional about it, I’m still a songwriter, I still have that deep need to write.

Tell me a bit about “A Little Bit Stronger” with Hillary Scott and Luke Laird.

We wrote that for Hillary and Lady Antebellum. She had just been through a bad breakup and was just talking it all out. She just said something — I think she might have said “some days I feel a little bit stronger” and we were like “whoaaaaa!”. They actually recorded it, a full on demo (hear it here). Somehow Sara heard it, and loved it, and Hillary sang on the record with her. You can’t plan it, but it paired up with Sara’s story at the time.

By my count, you have had 16 cuts with Carrie Underwood. How did that come about?

When she won American Idol, they held a writers camp and she would go from room to room and check out people. She had a lot of songs of mine on hold. I don’t know how it happened, but she just gravitated towards the way I write. I’ve been very grateful that she continues to want to write. We did a writing camp at the Ryman — pretty crazy. We would have dinner on the stage when the whole thing was over. Writing camps are pretty strenuous, when all you want to do is write THE song. Some days she would sit in with people, some days she would just let us go. I don’t even know if any of the songs from that camp made the record.

You’ve had a lot of cuts for women. Is that just a factor of the songs you write?

I think the melodies and content of the songs lend themselves to women. I have had guy cuts, just not a lot of them. Gary Allan’s latest is my first guy single, and it just hit #5 today.

Tell me about that song, “Every Storm Runs Out Of Rain“.

Matt Warren is good friends with him and just called me up. We wrote five or six songs over a span of a few months. Matt had that title, and was singing it really soulfully, like a gospel choir or something. About a month later, we were making coffee and I just started playing around the title, and we just wrote it really fast.

Tell me about Carrie Underwood’s “Do You Think About Me“.

I love that song! I wrote it with Cary Barlowe and Shane Stevens in Key West, at the Key West annual songwriters festival. That year was the first year that we all went together, and stayed at a house. We were sitting by the pool, and Cary started playing that lick. I flipped my guitar over and started playing the beat. I don’t even really remember how it all came together, but it all came so fast. The three of us sound so good together — it instantly sounded good. We thought with the three way harmony, that Lady Antebellum would cut it, but they passed. I don’t even know who pitched it to Carrie, but she loved it and cut it. We finished writing it and jumped in the pool.

How long ago was that?

It was several years before it was cut. It’s weird like that — I mean, look at “The House That Built Me“. That song sat on the shelf for seven years.

Who are some of your favorite writers?

Speaking of that song, Tom Douglas is amazing. He is a dear friend, and I am just blown away by his wisdom and brilliance. He is a sweet, warm guy, and an amazing songwriter. “Little Rock”, by Collin Raye, I love that. There are so many writers in this town that are amazing, but Tom Douglas stands out to me right now.

Tell me about the Music City Hitmakers tour with Brett James and Gordie Sampson.

It was Brett’s cousin Charles’ idea. I had never sung with a symphony before. I sing “So Small” with just piano and the symphony, and the first night I sang it, I almost lost it, forgetting the words and everything. Putting the songs in that setting changes everything. I remember going to see James Taylor and the Nashville symphony in college. Great songs are great songs, but with the orchestra behind it, they take on a whole new meaning.

Louis Johnson of Brothers Johnson, dies at 60

By Daniel Kreps, Rolling Stone

Updated 5:32 PM ET, Fri May 22, 2015

"I've never been given parts to play in my whole life. I'm the most rare bass player in the whole world," Johnson told Rolling Stone contributing writer Steve Knopper in 2013 for the upcoming book "MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson." "No one ever gave me music paper to read; no one ever gave me anything to read. They tell me, 'Here's a track, play what you want.' "

The Los Angeles-based Brothers Johnson, a group featuring Louis and his brother George, got their start backing up Quincy Jones before releasing their acclaimed, Jones-produced debut LP "Look Out for #1" in 1976. Over the next five years, the Brothers Johnson racked up three Number One hits on the R&B charts: 1976's "I'll Be Good to You," their 1977 cover of Shuggie Otis' "Strawberry Letter 23," and 1980's smash "Stomp!" (Their rendition of "Strawberry Letter 23" was later featured prominently in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown.) The Brothers Johnson's 1980 album Light Up the Night, featuring "This Had to Be" co-written by Michael Jackson and featuring the King of Pop on background vocals, ascended to the top of the R&B album charts.

"Louis 'Thunder Thumbs' Johnson was one of the greatest bass players to ever pick up the instrument," Jones tells Rolling Stone. "As a member of the Brothers Johnson, we shared decades of magical times working together in the studio and touring the world. From my albums 'Body Heat' and 'Mellow Madness,' to their platinum albums 'Look Out for #1,' 'Right On Time,' 'Blam' and 'Light Up the Night,' which I produced, to Michael's solo debut 'Off the Wall,' I considered Louis a core member of my production team. He was a dear and beloved friend and brother, and I will miss his presence and joy of life every day."

After the brothers parted ways in the early Eighties to pursue solo careers, Louis became known for his bass-playing prowess, emerging as a prolific, in-demand session musician. Johnson served as the primary bassist on Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall" and later lent his skills to Jackson's "Thriller" ("Billie Jean," "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," "P.Y.T."), Paul McCartney's "Give My Regards to Broad Street" soundtrack and the all-star "We Are the World" collaboration.

"When I went to the session with 'Billie Jean,' I took like 10 basses and I lined 'em up. I'd say, 'Michael, pick one,' " Johnson told Rolling Stone. "He'd pick one with the zebra wood on it. It had 12 different kinds of wood, different layers. It was dark brown and tan and light-colored, and it looked like a tiger or a zebra. Michael picked it because it sounded good. I hot-rodded it. I beefed it up and put extra magnets underneath the pickups. I did all the things I knew how to do to get the best sound. That's how come the bass sounded like that."

Johnson is also credited with creating the bass line from Michael McDonald's hit version of Leiber & Stoller's "I Keep Forgettin'," a melody that was later sampled by Warren G and Nate Dogg for "Regulate." Over his long career, Johnson also worked with Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Herb Alpert and George Benson.

"I had access to all musicians and artists, from Barbra Streisand to Paul McCartney to Michael Jackson," Johnson told Rolling Stone. "It was like an open door. The Lord blessed me with that — I prayed to God and my prayer he answered. He said, 'OK, you got the whole world now.' Every time I'd get in the car to go somewhere, I'd hear me playing the bass ... I was all over the place. I released the funk on everybody."

As news of Johnson's death spread, hip-hop artists, funk legends and bassists inspired by "Thunder Thumbs" showed love on social media. "Thank you for blessing me and the world with your original #funk. RIP," Lenny Kravitz tweeted, while Bootsy Collins added, "Another Brick in our music foundation has left the building. Mr. 'Louis Johnson.' " Slave's Steve Arrington wrote, "Just heard the great bass player and song writer Louis Johnson has passed away. Awe man....Going to miss U Thunder Thumbs." My Morning Jacket bassist Tom Blankenship and the Roots' Questlove wrote similar tributes to Johnson.

Bass Players to Know: Louis Johnson

A long, long time ago, when I decided to leave the confines of my basement and embark on weekly private lessons, I was lucky enough to find a teacher who opened my eyes and ears to the playing and players of bass. Yes, we focused on technique and theory. And yes, I was a known procrastinator — notorious for squeezing in ten minutes of practice time in the lobby of the music school just before the lesson. Luckily enough, my teacher turned me on to a number of bass players that made me rethink the sound and style of the instrument: Jamerson, Jaco, Wooten, and countless others.

Fast forward to the current day, and I find myself in the position of highlighting these extraordinary “Bass Players to Know,” hopefully shedding light and passing on some worthwhile knowledge to you, the reader. Constantly occupying the role of both teacher and student, I continue to revel in the recommendations of my musical peers, because frankly, I’ve still got a lot to learn. This particular column is inspired by one of my Philly bass brethren — a fellow funk advocate who suggested that it was time to explore the grooves of Mr. “Thunder Thumbs” himself, Louis Johnson.

So Who Is Louis Johnson?

Born in 1955, Johnson appeared on the Los Angeles music scene as a professional bass player in the 1970s. Alongside his brother George, the two played with both Bobby Womack and the Supremes before joining Billy Preston’s band in 1972. After working with Preston on Music In My Life and The Kids and Me, the two left the band and ended up working with producer Quincy Jones on his project, Mellow Madness. This led to a unique partnership with Jones, as he started producing The Brothers Johnson’s records, beginning with Look Out for #1. The following Brother’s Johnson releases, Right On Time, Blam!!, and Light Up The Night, all faired well on the Billboard charts and featured funk and disco grooves with a heavy emphasis on Louis’ slap style bass playing.

In addition to working with the Brothers Johnson, Louis was an in – demand LA session player from the mid 1970s through the late 80s. Quincy Jones enlisted him to play on Michael Jackson’s records where he laid down the groove for “Billie Jean,” among other songs on Thriller and Off The Wall. Johnson also worked with Herbie Hancock, Bill Withers, Grover Washington, Jr., Lee Ritenour, Herb Alpert, Aretha Franklin, George Benson, Michael McDonald, and fellow bass funk master, Stanley Clarke. He released a few solo records (though they didn’t catch on with the masses) and was an early promoter of Leo Fender’s Music Man Stingray bass.

Let’s Talk Style

Living up to the nickname “Thunder Thumbs,” Johnson is one of the true grandfathers of funk and slap-style bass playing. On par with the likes of Larry Graham, Louis plays with a diverse and evolving technical style. Favoring the aggressive tone of his thumb and index finger (as opposed to traditional index and middle finger plucking), his mastery of punchy, percussive funk is evident in both his live and session work.

As one of the early adopters of slapping, Johnson approaches rhythm from both the right and left hand. His right hand technique has varied throughout the years, often due to various hand issues that have forced him to adapt. If you get the opportunity to look at his videos, you’ll see that he has an equally forceful and defined attack with his thumb striking the top of the string or pulling from below. Similarly, he uses his index finger to pull (or “pop”) the string, and at times, grabs the string simultaneously with his thumb to “snap.”

His left hand is equally important as a percussive tool, giving him the ability to integrate dead notes, chokes, hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides to add complexity to the slap licks. He instinctually creates syncopated rhythmic patterns with both hands playing off of one another.

When it comes to different slap patterns, Johnson plays to the advantages of the instrument and the key—playing in E or A yields the luxury of using open strings and anchoring around the pentatonic notes in the middle of the neck (the 5-9th frets). Johnson also has the physical advantage of being able to reach his left thumb over the top of the neck to fret notes on the E string. This gives him the flexibility to play slap patterns in any key, providing the fretted root note on the E string. His patterns typically revolve around either the major or minor pentatonic “box,” relying heavily on the 3rd, 5th, and flat 7th. Johnson’s slapping style set the precedent for using the octave and moving up and down the neck with a triplet figure, root-octave-root. He takes a particularly daring attitude towards the instrument (especially during the Brothers Johnson years), by skipping around from one register to another and adding 7th, 10th, and octave chords.

Where Can I Hear Him?

“Strawberry Letter 23” (The Brothers Johnson: Right On Time)

Warning: if you listen to this song, you will probably find yourself crinkling your nose and sporting the “stank face.”

Featuring a few different slap bass parts, Johnson creates a complex groove with edgy pops, double attacks on the lower strings, ascending octaves, and even the standout chromatic triplet line.

“Get On The Floor” (Michael Jackson: Off The Wall)

As one of Quincy Jones’ preferred bass players, Johnson contributed some superbly funky bass parts to both Thriller and Off The Wall. This particular tune is unmistakably Louis—co-written with Michael Jackson, the prominent and aggressive slap tone gives the song a funky, disco-floor feel. He integrates heavily punctuated pops, slides into notes, accents with the higher octave, and an abundance of percussive attacks.

“Stomp” (The Brothers Johnson: Light Up The Night)

The tune begins with a simmering, percussive groove that nods to the chorus and features layered rhythm guitar parts, strings, and horns. Jumping into the verse, Johnson gets the feet a-movin’ with a staccato, two-phrase bass line built around the root and flat 7th. During the choruses, he settles into a syncopated groove that follows the minor scale, descending and then ascending, with back and forth step-wise motion guiding the line. As if these parts weren’t enough to justify the cool factor of this song, Johnson busts out a super stanky slap breakdown.

R.I.P. Louis Johnson of the Brothers Johnson

(May 22, 2015) Louis Johnson (see his Facebook page), the renowned bass player who was one-half of the popular musical group The Brothers Johnson, has reportedly died at age 60. Both as a member of the sibling duo and as a session musician, Johnson was lauded as one of the great bass players of his generation. His slap-bass style earned him the nickname "Thunder Thumbs" and brought a fresh sound that was just right for the emerging funk music scene of the 70s and early 80s.

- See more at: http://www.soultracks.com...rVQwC.dpuf

I took a pic of this very cool painted tour poster in Brooklyn last week:

ALL ON SALE TIMES ARE IN THE TIME ZONE OF THE VENUE/CITY LISTED.

[Edited 5/24/15 4:50am]

Diane Birch Posted some of her demos and rejects from her 2009 debut album. No news on new music yet, but some of these are nice and are new to me:

https://soundcloud.com/ch...-and-demos

o

Recent 5/11/2015 Stageit concert with new material. Just ok sound quality hopefully someone will post in HD:

[Edited 5/24/15 6:32am]

Anne Meara, Comedian and Actress, Dies at 85

Anne Meara in her West Side apartment in 1995. Credit Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Anne Meara, who became famous as half of one of the most successful male-female comedy teams of all time and went on to enjoy a long and diverse career as an actress and, late in life, a playwright, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 85.

Her death was confirmed by her husband and longtime comedy partner, Jerry Stiller, and her son, the actor and director Ben Stiller. They did not provide the cause.

Ms. Meara was an experienced but relatively unknown stage actress when she joined forces with Jerry Stiller, as members of the Compass Players, an improvisational theater troupe that evolved into Second City (where another male-female team, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, had gotten their start), and later on their own as Stiller and Meara. The duo began performing in New York nightclubs in 1961 and within a year had become a national phenomenon.

But even during the heyday of Stiller and Meara, Ms. Meara also pursued a separate career as an actress. She had already amassed an impressive list of stage credits before beginning her comedy career, including an Obie Award-winning performance in “Mädchen in Uniform” in 1955 and roles in several Shakespeare in the Park productions. (She was a witch in “Macbeth” in 1957.)

Photo

Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara on the set of "The King of Queens" in 2003.

Credit Stefano Paltera/Associated Press

She later appeared both on and off Broadway, in films, and especially on television, where she was seen on a wide range of series, from “Rhoda” and “Archie Bunker’s Place” on CBS to “Sex and the City” and “Oz” on HBO.

A tall redhead with a brassy voice and a self-confident demeanor, Ms. Meara was a natural for comedy but frequently played dramatic parts as well. “Comedy, drama, it’s the same deal,” she said in an interview for the Archive of American Television in 2008. “You don’t really act differently; you just make adjustments.”

Anne Meara was born in Brooklyn on Sept. 20, 1929, and raised in Rockville Centre on Long Island. An only child, she was the daughter of Edward Meara, a lawyer, and the former Mary Dempsey, who committed suicide when her daughter was 11. After studying for a year at the Dramatic Workshop at the New School in Manhattan, Anne began her career in summer stock in 1948.

She met Mr. Stiller in 1953 and married him soon after, but it would be some time before they began working as a team. The idea, they both agreed, was his; she did not think of herself as a comedian, but because work was scarce she reluctantly agreed.

“Jerry started us being a comedy team,” she said in 2008. “He always thought I would be a great comedy partner. At that time in my life, I disdained comedians.”

In the 1960s Stiller and Meara were regular guests on the variety and talk shows of Ed Sullivan and many others, and performed in nightclubs all over the country. In the 1970s their voices were heard on radio commercials for Blue Nun wine and other products.

Ms. Meara and Mr. Stiller’s relationship was the basis for their best-known comedy routines, which told the continuing story of Hershey Horowitz and Mary Elizabeth Doyle, a short Jewish man and a tall Catholic woman who had virtually nothing in common except their love for each other.

On their first date, arranged by a computer, Hershey and Mary Elizabeth were surprised to learn that they lived on the same block but knew none of the same people. (There was one significant difference between the real-life couple and the comedy version: Ms. Meara, though born and raised Roman Catholic, converted to Judaism in 1961.)

Photo

Ms. Meara on "The Ed Sullivan Show" with Mr. Sullivan, left, and Jerry Stiller in 1970. Credit Associated Press

By the end of the decade, Mr. Stiller and Ms. Meara were both concentrating on their individual careers, but they continued to perform together from time to time. She made several guest appearances on the sitcom “The King of Queens,” on which Mr. Stiller (who had also memorably played Frank Costanza on “Seinfeld”) was a regular; her character married his in the series finale in 2007.

In 2010 they began appearing in a series of web videos produced by their son in which they sat on a couch and talked, to the camera and occasionally to each other, about a variety of topics.

In 1975 Ms. Meara starred in “Kate McShane,” an hourlong drama about a lawyer that, despite generally good reviews, was canceled after two months. “They never really made her a full-blooded woman,” she said of her character in 2008. “She had no love life; she was really a nun.”

That was her only starring role on television, but she kept busy in a range of supporting roles on the small screen well into the 21st century. In addition to her prodigious prime-time work, she appeared occasionally on the soap opera “All My Children” in the 1990s. During her career, she was nominated for four Emmy Awards and won a Writers Guild Award as a co-writer for “The Other Woman,” a 1983 TV movie.

She had memorable character parts in movies as well, including a teacher in “Fame” (1980) and a personnel manager in “Reality Bites” (1994), Ben Stiller’s feature-film directorial debut.

Onstage, she was in the original Off Broadway production of John Guare’s dark comedy “The House of Blue Leaves” in 1971 — her son had a small role in the 1986 Broadway revival and the lead role in a second revival, in 2011 — and she was nominated for a Tony for “Anna Christie” in 1993.

In addition to her husband and her son, Ms. Meara is survived by a daughter, the actress and comedian Amy Stiller, and two grandchildren.

Ms. Meara branched out into writing in 1995, when her comedy “After-Play” was presented Off Broadway. Her “Down the Garden Paths” had a brief Off Broadway run in 2000, with a cast headed by Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson.

“After-Play” has been produced by a number of regional theaters, sometimes with both Ms. Meara and Mr. Stiller in the cast. But neither of them was in the original cast, and she did not conceive it as a Stiller and Meara vehicle.

“I wanted to do something on my own,” she told The New York Times in 1995. “It’s the same way he feels good about doing ‘Seinfeld.’ The irony is, I feel we’re closer personally than when we were out going to nightclubs.”

Posted on March 7, 2015 in Interviews

With her latest album Lights Out still causing quite a stir, NYC songstress Ingrid Michaelson is excited to announce her return to Australia. After selling out her previous two tours, Michaelson returns for a string of endearingly quirky live shows in major cities.

Her sixth album, released in April 2014, debuted at the #1 U.S. Independent Billboard Charts, topped the U.S. Billboard charts at #5 and launched into the #2 position on the U.S. iTunes charts after its first day in store. The video for her new single, Girls Chase Boys, has attracted the attention of almost 2 million viewers for its charmingly flirty interplay between gender-bending girls and boys… chasing girls and boys.

“Lyrically deep and musically adventurous, Michaelson has it all” – BBC

Michaelson’s aptitude for contagiously crafted performances and her panache for the unexpected sees it as no surprise that she has graced the screens of the likes of Good Morning America, The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, to name a few.

Look at the amazing clip for ‘Girls Chase Boys’ HERE

Hi Ingrid, we are so keen for you to come back to Australia!

I first heard of you when I saw your music video for your cover of Gotye’s song Somebody that I used know. That was amazing! You did all the instrumentals yourself?
My friend Chris who was in my band she helped me figure out what all the parts were. I mean I play piano and keys and a little guitar but I don’t play bass and drums so he showed me what the other parts were then we taped it and he edited altogether.

This is your third time down under, and with your latest album being so successful we are stoked to have you back. You had to postpone your last tour till now, how keen are you to come back here to play your four shows?

Well I postponed it because of personal reasons, family problems. I want to tour last year when the album came out and it makes sense but I just couldn’t for personal reasons. I do not want to leave people hanging so we decided to come back. The timing might be a little strange because the record is new anymore. The last two times I’ve come this shows have gone so well and the audience are so sweet so I did not want to just cancel the tour, I want to live up to my promise of coming back.

I have heard that your story telling captivates the crowd as well as your songs which is refreshing as that rarely happens! Have you got a whole set of new stories to tell for this tour? Can we have an example?
I kinda talk about things as they happen every once in a while there will be a song that will have it’s own story that goes along with it. Like there was this one song, I have not done this for a long time but it was a cover of an REM song. one night I met the lead singer of REM was very intoxicated and I was at the party and I have this long story that I tell and then I play the song. So like a little package together. A lot of my interactions with audiences usually come out of something that happened during that day or even just with the interactions of people in the audience and things that they say to me in the moment. Other artists that asked me how can I perfect my talking to the audience and asked should I have stories ready to go. I think people really appreciate spontaneity and they don’t want to hear what has been said 50 times before. I think artists need to feel comfortable on stage. There is a fine line between engaging an audience or being overtaken by the audience because if you allow people to feel comfortable enough to talk to you like shout things out sometimes they can overtake you and sometimes you have to crack the whip to get the audience back. Over the years thats something that I’ve learnt how to do. I really do just love having all the people in front of you and pretending that they’re not there for me just does not make any sense. I love it when people respectfully interact with me and it makes for a very memorable show, and unique show. I use the audience energy their experiences so some shows a much more talky than others, I don’t try and force it, if it is there is is there if it is not it is not. I really do generally love interacting with people. T

Who are you bringing with you as your band?
I will be bringing Allie who was come with me to Australia before and my bandmate Billy who has never been to Australia before so he’s really excited he is actually in Bali at the moment and meet him on Monday in Sydney. He is very very excited. Allie and I have been twice before so we have seen the Blue Mountains we have seen koalas, we’ve walked up the Sydney Harbour Bridge so we are seasoned professionals and he is very excited about doing all the touristy things.
Will you have much time to do that?
The way that works out when we come to Australia is we flying into Sydney then we have one day to rest, one day to promo and then we have our show and we fly, show, fly, show, fly, show then fly home. We never really get any time to do anything. We fly to the city go to the venue and do the show. The two shows we’ve had in Melbourne have been really awesome and fun. There is just never any time in Australia, like in the states we are in tour buses and do was show, drive for a few hours then we are in the next city.

Your video Time Machine certainly has fans on you facebook page dying to see the video as you teased them with snippets each day leading up to the release. This video included some pretty high profile comedians, (Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office), Donald Faison (Turk from Scrubs) and David Koechner (Champ Kind from Anchorman) Matt Jones (Badger from Breaking Bad), Jorge Garcia (Hurley from Lost), Rob Delaney, Steve Agee, Brian Baumgartner (Kevin from The Office) and Garret Dillahunt) did you have fun filming that? It certainly came off as hilarious! (you can watch that music video here
I reached out to Rob Delaney is a comedian and a blogger, and to Donald Faison, he is a friend of mine and then we contacted Rainn Wilson who has a production company called Soul Pancake and they produce the video. Rainn contacted all the rest to see if they want to be in it, they all said yes because they trusted Rainn and we had an amazing time and was really funny. It was shot over a year ago but we haven’t been unable to release until now. While we were all doing it I could not believe that it was actually happening, an idea of mine, and it was really fun. Your music video for Girls Chase boys is now up to nearly 1 million views on you tube. It is a classic take off Robert Palmers video which I have always hated due to very obvious reasons! I love your song anyway but this music video makes it just perfect! Who came up with this concept for the music video? Yeah I wanted to do something dancy but I’m not really a dancer per se but I like the idea of having some movement in the video. I usually do come up with the music video ideas myself. So I was thinking of some iconic videos that have movement like some crazy choreographed movement and that’s the one that came to my mind and so I pulled up on my computer and watched it then I started again and I muted it and played my song with it. It did not Sync off or make any sense but I thought the whole idea of the song is that just everybody is searching for love and no matter who you identify that as, how you achieve the, is that we just all wanna be loved. We thought it would be kind of fun to put that idea in a playful way into the video and so we switched the gender roles, I became the Robert Palmer character and and the sexy women in the back became sexy men. The director said that we should put women in their too and then there will be swaying hips and you don’t know whether you are seeing a man or a woman, it was blurring gender lines and just getting back to we are just humans. It wasn’t meant to be a jab at the video, it wasn’t meant to take a feminist stance although it did and I’m glad it did but it was not what I was thinking. I just thought it would be awesome and fun to do. To have dudes with beautiful chiseled faces with red lips, I liked it visually, and it would be interesting and different. I was pleasantly surprised with that, we got on a really good PR ride with it and it was really good fun. It helped to get the message across about what the song was really about.

How does your song writing normally go, do you start with an inspirational idea and dwell on it for a while?
I haven’t really got a set way of doing things, I’ve been doing a lot of cowriting lately, this latest record I think by three or four songs each song was cowritten. So you get into a room with someone with some idea of chord progressions or a word. I really don’t have a set way but from me it’s definitely about chord progression. I don’t think I have to write a song with the word in for example Parachute but normally it is chord procession and then you think of a lyric and you think oh that is cool and you go with that. I have written songs before that’s just started off with the title. Then other times I start with a poem. So I don’t really have a set way, I am very open.
You have said that you have been in the past a bit of a control freak when it comes to your writing but you have been letting go and it is liberating. Is it still difficult to let go?
Yes I think so for almost all of my writing, I wanted to be the only person to write the songs and I think in the time of my life it was important. But the older you get I think that there is a reason why that most songwriters make fewer and fewer records because you can’t keep saying the same things over and over again if you’ve been doing it for a few years. I got to the point where I needed help, I felt everything I needed to say had been said and I had done it in a way that it needed to be done, I needed help really! It made for just such a great experience to open up and work with other people. I will still write by myself but I don’t plan on going back to that being the only way that I write. If you get with the right writer is actually really magical and it’s really nice to share with somebody to to have something that you have made together. You can celebrate the success with somebody else rather than just yourself.
You have seriously thought provoking lyrics and music videos, what is your view on todays pop culture that (possibly a huge generalisation here) has neither of those things?
I mean I think that there is always going to be pop music that is really sex driven and always has been. I wonder what happens when these people get older and can’t show their arse any more (laughing). This is why I really admire Taylor Swift as she is a beautiful beautiful girl. She is also very clever funny and smart and she is self-deprecating and she is very self-aware and that is the mark of being a real artist that has a future and longevity. That being said I do like music with a great beat it doesn’t have to be thought-provoking necessarily, I think there is so much music in the world that there needs to be music that just makes you feel good and music that makes you wanna dance or cry or makes you think.
Well our time is up, that went quick, thanks so much for your time and I hope to meet you at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne and i hope that your trip goes really well!
Thank you very much! See you soon!

Tour

Melody Gardot eager for album release

By bangshowbiz.com May 25

Melody Gardot feels like she's "waiting for a baby to be born" with her new album.

The 30-year-old singer/songwriter is gearing up to release her fourth studio record 'Currency of Man' and said she's eager for the collection to be available because it's as if she's in the final stages of labor.

Speaking about the release, she told BANG Showbiz: "It's like waiting for a baby to be born, it's like, 'Get it out! Come on!' I feel like I'm on those last little labor pains in a way because we worked on this album almost a year ago, so now it's like an overdue thing. I'm happy that it's finally going to be in people's hands."

The 'Preacherman' singer's LP will be her first since 2012's 'The Absence', and although her previous collections have been critically acclaimed, she insisted this is her favourite out of all the albums she's made.

She continued: "It's my favourite one out of all those discs we've done so far. That's hard to say, but the reason is there's some things that we discovered in the process that I think are going to be formulaic for my later music."

Melody Gardot (bangshowbiz.com)

Melody also spoke about what inspired the 10-track collection, saying she hoped to create "an anthem for every man" by taking influence from people who are rarely spoken about in society.

She added: "I was writing this record and I was like, there's so many beautiful people around and nobody is really paying attention, so these are songs for people that maybe in the grand view of society, people forgot, and it's nice to have an anthem for every man."

Melody's new album 'Currency Of Man' is out on 1 June on Decca.

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The Prodigy announce tour with Public Enemy

added: 26 May 2015 // by: Music-News.com Newsdesk

Having recently landed their 6th consecutive #1 album with the supreme force that is 'The Day Is My Enemy', and straight off the back of two sold out shows at Alexandra Palace to round off their UK tour, The Prodigy are pleased to announce a run of further live shows across the UK and Europe to close 2015 with support coming from Public Enemy.

Liam Howlett said: 'We are hyped to announce we have our old skool heroes Public Enemy joining us on our UK and European tour.'

The UK leg kicks off in Nottingham on November 24th and runs through to December 4th where they'll take to the stage at Wembley Arena. Fans can grab a ticket when they go on sale via theprodigy.com exclusively from Wednesday 27th May and general sale from Friday 29th May.

If you can't wait that long to experience the new album live, you can catch The Prodigy headlining Isle of Wight Festival in June and T In The Park in July.

'THE DAY IS MY ENEMY' ARENA TOUR:

24/11 Nottingham Capital Arena, Nottingham
26/11 Newcastle Arena, Newcastle
27/11 Manchester Central, Manchester
28/11 Sheffield Arena, Sheffield
30/11 3 Arena, Dublin
01/12 Odyssey Arena, Belfast
03/12 Barclaycard Arena, Birmingham
04/12 Wembley Arena, London

'The Day Is My Enemy' is available now:

iTunes: http://po.st/iTunesTDIME
Stream: http://prdgy.co/DayIsMyEnemyStream

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Whitesnake

The Purple Album

added: 25 May 2015 // release date: 15 May 2015 // label: Frontiers
reviewer: Andy Snipper

From the opening blast of ‘Burn’ this album drives hard, fast and with huge power – Whitesnake plays the songs of Deep Purple, interesting concept and it takes someone like David Coverdale to make this a re-imagining of the classic songs rather that a weak ‘tribute’.

Coverdale was urged, apparently, by the late Jon Lord, to reimagine his work with Deep Purple and this album only contains tracks from his time with the band but frankly I don’t want to hear Coverdale covering ‘Hush’ or ‘Smoke On The Water’.

To take that track ‘Burn’, it is a classic and you approach a new version with trepidation but the band give it their all, staying true to the original but never trying to repeat it lick for lick – what would be the point. Tommy Aldridge’s drums pound like a steam hammer while new guitarists Reb Beach and Joel Hokstra rip a new solo into the number Michael Devlin’s basslines are taut and driving while Coverdale does what he does better than almost anyone else – that man wails.

Of course, you cannot get away from Whitesnake’s sound but the songs are so strong that the listener can fall into the trap of hearing this as a new band, full of piss and vinegar, but also remind just how great a band Deep Purple were.
Even when the volume is turned down and they play acoustic and bring up the emotional content – ‘Sail Away’ for example – Coverdale’s vocal is intense and powerfully restrained.

The classic tracks are here – ‘Mistreated’ is magnificent, powerful and as fresh as they could have wished for and Coverdale really carries the vocal, ‘Stormbringer’ is immense and dense, you feel the tornado around you and the fear and excitement is palpable.
‘Soldier of Fortune’ sounds utterly modern with the sensitive guitar and vocal feeling just right for today with the advent of the mercenaries and ‘Private Armies’ proliferating in the Middle East.
My personal favourite is one of Purple’s lesser tracks ‘Lay Down, Stay Down’ – just balls out rock with no attempt at redemption.

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'Burn After Reading' is hilarious

Play

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She’s Back! Julie Carmen Returns To Big Screen Opposite Scott Eastwood, Rita Wilson in “Dawn Patrol”

Posted by eesparza on May 26th, 2015 09:02 AM | FILM, Film News, Spotlight

Actress Embraces Intense Drama As The Alpha Latina Gun Toting Mama!

PC: Emily Scher

Dawn Patrol Premieres June 5^th, 2015
A Summer Surf Flick With Serious Social Themes—
West Side Story Set at a Locals-only Beach.

HOLLYWOOD, CA – After a hiatus for graduate school, award-winning actress Julie Carmen stars in edgy surf film, Dawn Patrol, opposite Scott Eastwood and Rita Wilson, premiering on June 5, 2015.

Daniel Petrie, Jr.’s suspense drama, Dawn Patrol is an electrifying surf culture film with a West Side Story vibe at a locals-only beach. In her portrayal as the enigmatic Laura Rivera, Julie Carmen holds Scott Eastwood’s character hostage as he recalls the twists and turns of how and why he murdered her son.

Movie Trailer:
http://www.fandango.com/j...ew/p11066

Who’s the thug?

Dawn Patrol’s female roles are unlike the women we’ve seen in films before. Julie deconstructs the narrative of her new film and defends her character’s gun toting ways.

“Laura Rivera” is ‘Everywoman’ who loses a child to murder,” she explained. “We see her in every culture throughout time and to label her a thug is to obliterate the mother’s point of view. Who carries the weight of the orphaned parents?”

Dawn Patrol is told by giving alternate, Rashomon-like accounts, exposing the xenophobia and racism that rips a remote, multicultural surf city apart. Laura explodes with the rage and confusion of a mother confronting her child’s killer, and plots a haunting, lasting revenge.

Julie Carmen PC: Emily Scher

“I was directed in a style inspired by Latin American magical realism and that contrasts with how Scott Eastwood, Rita Wilson, Jeff Fahey, Kim Matula, Dendrie Taylor and Chris Brochu tell their story, in an ultra realistic way,” said Julie.

Early in her career, directors Robert Redford, John Cassavetes, Michael Mann and John Carpenter recognized the innate chameleon like quality she brings to her roles virtually disappearing into her characters. Julie has a unique ability to infuse her performances with her personal passion to make the world a better place.

From Broadway—when she first danced in Luis Valdez’s Zoot Suit—to her award winning role in Cassavetes’ Gloria opposite Gena Rowlands, Julie Carmen’s fascination is her ability to get into the soul of the characters she portrays allowing us to feel their joys and triumphs and their pain. She makes us feel.

Dawn Patrol surfs into select theaters on June 5, 2015.
#DawnPatrolMovie

Follow Julie Carmen on Social Media:
Twitter: @JulieCarmen3
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JulieCarmenActress?ref=hl
www.Juliecarmenactress.com

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Melissa Etheridge Talks Tour with Blondie, Joan Jett, New Los Angeles Live DVD

Melissa Etheridge (Photo : John Tsiavis)

Melissa Etheridge is about to release a tribute to her last tour with the new live DVD A Little Bit of Me: Live in L.A. while simultaneously preparing for her next gig, a co-headlining run with Blondie that will bring also Joan Jett into the fold for a few shows. Music Times had the chat with the Grammy/Oscar-winner while she prepped for the upcoming tour...we found her favorite Los Angeles venues, what city's audiences trumps even her hometown crowd, as well as being a Debbie Harry-fangirl during high school.

Music Times: I understand you've got a new live DVD coming out, A Little Bit of Me: Live in L.A.?

Melissa Etheridge: Yeah, it's coming up. It's from a show we did, the last show in December, of the tour that I did in the fall. I wanted to record it because it's one of my favorite bands, one of my favorite groups I've ever played with and it was just such a fun, fun show.

Excellent. What venue were you at?

The Orpheum here in downtown L.A. It's a beauuutiful theater, it's gorgeous.

I think on your first DVD you played the Kodak Theater and I know you've got a plethora of venues in Los Angeles...

Yeah, we've got some great places to perform out here, for sure.

Do you have a favorite?

Here in L.A.?

You got it.

Well let's see. I like The Orpheum a lot. It's beautiful. I like...oh goodness, I love The Greek [The Greek Amphitheater]...there's actually some places here I haven't played. Never played The Hollywood Bowl. I would lovvve to do that.

Huh, really? Well I'll send them a note...

Please let them know...I'm working on it!

Wherever you decide to play, I'm sure they're happy to have you back on film in Los Angeles...I know your last couple have been in New York City (Lucky Live and The Awakening Live).

Yeah the Lucky one was in New York City. But c'mon...New York City! Actually, uh, don't tell L.A. but I prefer the New York City audiences. They're a little wilder, a little bit more dangerous, and edgy and fun. L.A....they tend to relax a little bit. But yeah. I do enjoy my New York audiences.

Fair enough. I haven't checked up with the paparazzi...are you still based out of L.A.?

Yeah, I'm out here in paparazzi-land. Out here with Kanye and Miley and J. Lo. We're all living out here.

That sounds like your crowd.

I moved out here to get away from it all and they all came. They followed me so I'm not sure what I'm going to do now (laughs).

I was curious if you get a hometown crowd response, being based in L.A. all these years?

Yeah, it kinda does. I've lived here for 30 years...I've lived here longer than I've lived anywhere so I've turned into a California girl. I certainly can tell lots of Southern California jokes when I'm here. Just being here, raising my family here so definitely hometown. Definitely.

You mentioned one of the highlights of A Little Bit of Me was the band you were with...can you tell me what's so great about the current band?

Well, Jerry 'Wonda' is on bass (Jerry Duplessis), and he is from The Fugees and a producer. He produced a couple tracks on the album, like "Monster" and "Do It Again." He's just an incredible musician. And he brought his musicians, that I recorded with, that I loved. Brandyn Porter on guitar Arden Altino on keyboards, and then I had Blair Sinta on drums, who's been playing with me for the last five years, and he just like...part of my brain. He's so good. A couple background singers and then we just had...you know, when things click personally and onstage, it really shows. There's just a beauty and an ease and a real joy, and it comes across. It really did with this band.

Okay, well that highlights the end of your last tour...but looking forward you've got a co-headlining tour with Blondie coming up, also in June?

Yes! That starts in July...I'm doing a little patchwork this summer. I'm doing some solo shows, I'm doing some shows with the band, I'm doing some shows with the band where I play with Blondie, I'm doing some shows with the band where I'm playing with Blondie and Joan Jett. So there's a lot of different stuff...even around New York I think I have a couple band gigs and some solo gigs.

Were you a Blondie fan?

Oh yeah (emphasis). Oh my gosh..."Heart of Glass"? It came out, what, 1980, end of 1979? (Early 1979...good guess nonetheless). End of my high school, right before I went to Boston...it was the call to a new decade. The '80s. The music that was coming, it was just...so good. So good and I totally followed it. Blondie is just a special part of American music.

I have to admit, when I think of "Melissa Etheridge tour partner," Blondie isn't the first name that comes to mind.

(laughs) No...but I think when these things come together, it's just good music and a good time that you want to have. And her (Debbie Harry) and I, we're switching off headlining...because, you know, who's to go first? We don't know. But I think that the fans of both will find pleasure in both bands.

You and Debbie do have a very similar vocal color...

Yeahhhhh...

Not really.

(laughs) Yeah, not really. You know, it's a kind of rock 'n' roll. And I'm all for it.

While we're talking about rock 'n' roll...how did the dates with Joan Jett come about?

Yes, there's multiple but there's not many. I think a handful, only about five. Those were kind of last minute. I changed my agency, my booking agency, from CBA—which had been my agency for 25 years—to William Morris, WME. And, instantly, they hooked me up with Blondie in March for shows in July, which is unheard of. You usually book Summer in the Fall. So i'm just grateful...there probably would've been more shows together had there been time to really think about it and put the whole tour together, but we got these shows together and I'm just really William Morris Endeavor for doing that.

I imagine there's a lot of work that goes into balancing out those schedules...

You have no idea (laughs). I don't do that but someone did an I am very grateful for it.

You've been pretty active over the last five years, releasing three LPs of new material. Are you already looking forward to something else?

Heh. I'm always looking forward. I was just in the studio again with Jerry, we recorded two or three. Where that's going...not sure. I'm really giving This Is M.E. a lot of time to grow. With the new music industry and owning this record, I don't have to be done. It's not over. I get to keep working it. So I'm always looking forward but I'm not jumping there yet, to exactly what I'm gonna do.

Could you air that out a bit, what you mean by letting it "grow"?

Meaning I'm touring with it, it's just starting to get a little bit of play in Europe. "Monster" is starting to grow over there so I'm going back over there this summer. Wanna get back there in the fall. Still trying to get things to happen here in America. I'm going down to Australia in January...Australia, New Zealand. I won't want to release anything new until, well, next year sometime.

As you add more and more to the catalogue, does it get more challenging to make a setlist from night-to-night?

Yeah...well, I'm always doing the hits because...I love them and I love sharing them with the audience. It's almost half the show now. So that does limit what new songs I get to do, so I do a handful of hits and I do a handful of deep album tracks and that's pretty much what makes the show up. But I do keep a fresh setlist every show.

Excellent. But we as fans, we appreciate hearing the hits.

Aww. Thank you so much.

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Katharine McPhee Returns with New Single 'Lick My Lips', Announces New Album 'Hysteria'

Katharine McPhee in "Lick My Lips" (Photo : YouTube)

It's been five years since Katharine McPhee has released a new studio album. Since her 2010 record Unbroken, she's been focusing on acting with a roles in hit TV shows like Smash and Scorpion. But now, the American Idol alumna is returning to the world of music with a new album Hysteria and a bopping new single "Lick My Lips."

"Lick My Lips" will act as the lead single from McPhee's new album Hysteria, which Billboard reports is due for release on July 21. The sunny new song features a sweet as candy beat, with McPhee's vocal giving the right amount of light touches and sass over the heavy production, which offers up a beat and melody that just begs to be danced to.

"You make me lick my lips / You're my favorite flavor / When we kiss / I just want savor every drop of it / I just can't get enough / You make my lick my lips, my lips," McPhee sings in the sunshine-filled chorus.

The accompanying music video features McPhee mugging for the camera in a variety of figure-hugging skirts and barely there bras. It's a little sexual and definitely cheeky. The clip also has a notable '50s vibe to it, with McPhee and her female crew hanging out in a sundae shop. The atmosphere is completed with some diner-approved cherry pie, greasers coming their hair, old school updos and plenty of vintage vehicles and motorcycles.

Watch the new music video for Katharine McPhee's "Lick My Lips" below:

BB King to have public viewing in Vegas and Memphis, funeral in Mississippi

Interview: Meghann Wright on Making It as a Musician, Warped Tour & her New Album 'Nothing Left to Lose'

Meghann Wright (Photo : Tyler Lizenby/Courtesy Effective Immediately PR)

It's hard out there for career musicians, and that's something that singer-songwriter Meghann Wright knows all to well. A bluesy rocker from New York by way of every other genre on the planet and Hawaii, Wright knows the struggle is real. From the pain and passion in her lyricism to her musician community The City and The Heart, Wright is looking to alleviate the hardships of the world for those around her.

Born to two music loving parents, a classical musician mother and a rocker father, Wright was always surrounded by notes as a child. "For me, growing up music was my whole life. I did other stuff obviously, but it was a constant. I never wasn't listening to music unless I was in like class or at a job where I couldn't listen to music," she said.

Thought her parents never imagined her as a musician, after graduating college Wright moved to New York City to pursue that dream in the December of 2008 and hasn't looked back since, weaving a community and sound for herself as a solo artist after years of being a "gun for hire" guitarist and bassist.

Fresh off a North American tour, now Wright is prepping the release of her new album Nothing Left to Lose filled with biting music, honest lyricism and catchy blues music that recalls the best of the Lillith Fair artists of the '90s.

MT: Was it a hard transition going from a hired guitarist and bassist, to being a singer?

MW: Yeah. I was in a bunch of different bands; I either played bass or guitar usually. I guess the hardest part was learning to sing and play at the same time because I hadn't really done that so much. It's weird because it's so effortless now, but at the time when I was still learning, it felt almost impossible. I didn't understand how people did it.

MT: I imagine it would be like rubbing your belly and patting your head type of thing.

MW: Yeah exactly.

MT: Since you moved to New York, you seem to be really inspired by the city. What is it so much about Brooklyn and New York that resonates with you?

MW: I don't know. I love New York because it's just full of so many people. You're constantly surrounded by millions of people, but at the same time you feel isolated and lonely. I think one of the ways that people cope with being around each other all the time is by kind of ignoring them. If you get on the subway, everyone's got headphones on or they're trying to avoid eye contact and stuff. It's weird.

If you really take the time to think about these people, everybody's living their own life. Everyone's got their own challenges and own dreams and aspirations and their own suffering and all this stuff. So many of them came here because they had a dream. They were motivated to become something or do something or anything and when you really look at them and think of them it's like you're watching a million little movies all playing out at the same time. One within the other within the other within the other. Everyone's so different; they come from everywhere. They might not speak the same language as you, they might have different values than you -- that's just really incredible.

MT: When you moved to NYC you started your community The City and The Heart. Can you tell me more about that?

MW: When I first came here and I was trying out all the singer-songwriter things, I was doing open mic nights and different little jam nights in the city, and I kept meeting more and more women who had a similar story to me. They came from somewhere else and they wanted to do music, but they didn't really know how. They didn't know how to get booked for shows, they didn't know how to find other bandmates, they didn't know how to get themselves recorded affordably or for free, stuff like that. So I just kind of ended up trying to help with whatever I could. Then people started sending people my way like, "Hey, I heard from my friend that you help out doing stuff and maybe you could help me with this?" So it just kind of became a community on its own.

Then, I got it in my head that I wanted to make a record featuring all these women that I was meeting. So a friend of mine, Tatiana Moroz, got us some time at Premiere Studios and we recorded some songs there. And some of the women actually submitted songs that they had already had recorded and we put out the compilation record last year. There's like 19 artists on it. You can actually go get it for free if you want. It's a bandcamp, it's thecityandtheheart.bandcamp.com.

MT: Very cool.

MW: We had a bunch of showcases. We did one last year that was a fundraiser for Safe Horizon and actually this year on Warped Tour I'm going to be traveling with a compilation of new ones. So it will be Volume 2 and donations that I receive from that will also be going to Safe Horizon as well.

MT: Can you tell me more about the new compilation?

MW: Yes, it's going to be featuring some of the same artists and some new artists and again, it will be for free, but if people want to donate money to the record itself, any of the donations are going to be going to Safe Horizon. Basically, they're assistance and shelter and a lot of other services for victims of domestic violence.

MT: When you were on your last tour, you did your series of Cover America. Are you done with that tour now? Did you have a favorite song that you discovered when you were on tour?

MW: Yeah, it was actually cool. With my band and every city we were in, I was like, "I wonder what I should do today?" I'll just look up bands, but some I wouldn't know and somebody else would be like you should do this one, it's so great. So yeah, I can't even remember the name of the band, its like Margot & the Nuclear So and So's or something like that. I think so. But we did a song of theirs called "Broadripple Is Burning." We were in Indiana and Sean Donnelly from The Green Gallows is from Indiana, so we knew him and we sang that and that was really fun. I think my favorite one we did was a Kings of Leon song, or wait no that wasn't Akron. I think it was Tulsa.

MT: Yeah, they're from Oklahoma.

MW: I'm pretty sure it was Tulsa, but we ended up putting the phone to videotape up on top of the van and I sang and Sean played guitar and then the drummer actually played drums like on the van door.

MT: You're about to head out on Warped Tour next month. Can you tell me more about your plans for that?

MW: I'm definitely going to be continuing the Cover America Series and I believe it's going to be exclusively premiered everyday when I send a new cover in at Elmore Magazine online. That's where they've been posting the premieres for that for this last tour. So we'll be doing the Cover America Series. It's just a cool way to pay homage to bands that came before.

I'm going to do my best to try to play covers of bands from that town, but also on Warped Tour at some point. And I'm also going to have The City and The Heart compilation and a new record out as well called Nothing Else Left to Lose, which comes out in June right before Warped Tour.

MT: Can you tell me a little more about your album?

MW: It's kind of like a lot of different things. At first I wasn't super stoked about the title, I wanted it to be something else, but me and my management were going back and forth talking about what should this be called. Then I came up with Nothing Left to Lose because it's a lyric from one of my more recent songs I've written called "Leaving Cleveland," which will be on that record. And it was kind of funny, but it was kind of sad, which is how life is.

Not on this last tour, but on the tour before I went through a break-up and I was very sad about it and I partied really hard and ended up, over the course of the tour, losing my wallet, losing my phone and losing my boyfriend and it was just like I lost it all and then I came home and I had to reevaluate my life and figure out who I was and what I was doing and even just my music career, it's hard. You don't make money, unless you're at the top. It's difficult to be a working musician and make a living and adjust to that. I ended up pawning my saxophone; I don't have many belongings left anymore. It's just me, and life goes on. That's literally all I have in life right now, at this point in time. So that's kind of where the title of the album came from.

MT: You'll get there one day.

MW: What do they say? It's about the journey, not the end, not the destination.

Meghann will be playing Saturday May 16 at The Grand Victory in Williamsburg and on Friday, May 29 at Maxwell's in Hoboken.

Listen: https://soundcloud.com/meghannwright

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Will Bruce Springsteen Have New Album Out by End of Summer 2015?

by Ryan Book May 25, 2015 11:57 AM EDT

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Bruce Springsteen in 2012 (Photo : Jim Dyson/Getty Images)

Is it possible that Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band could be releasing a new ...the summer? The sources are less than concrete, but rumors of just that are rampant on the Springsteen fan site BlogItAllNight.

"Here is a great way to start out the weekend," wrote the source. "I heard that Bruce Springsteen has finished recording his new album and it is now in the mixing stage. The best part of it all was that I was told it would be released this summer! It seems unprecedented for Springsteen to release a new album without a few months notice but after all, he is The Boss. As for what the album consists of, I was told it was very different from what Springsteen has put out before. So with my grain of salt, here is to hoping that this particular rumor is true!"

Obviously, this is a less than solid lead. But in the current day and age, anything has to be considered, even if it is with a grain of salt. The poster is correct...a Springsteen album should theoretically be one of the most hyped releases of the 2015 if it existed. Then again, several of the biggest albums of the last few years—including Beyoncé's self-titled album and Drake's If You're Reading This It's Too Late—have been released without any previously fanfare...so it's tough to say for sure that Springsteen wouldn't attempt the same stunt.

If anything brings doubt to the suggestion that Springsteen might release a new LP during 2015, it's the gap between it and his last album, High Hopes. Across the last 20 years, The Boss has not exactly lagged in between new releases, but he's always had gaps of at least two-to-three years between releases. High Hopes was released during January of 2014, less than a year-and-a-half ago.

Of course, that could be the perfect false flag for Springsteen. Until the end of the summer, all we can do is hope.

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Paul McCartney Teams With Lady Gaga For 'High In The Clouds' Animated Film Soundtrack

by Caitlin Carter May 21, 2015 12:59 PM EDT

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Paul McCartney and Lady Gaga In Studio (February 2015) (Photo : Instagram @LadyGaga)

After collaborating with the likes of Kanye West and Rihanna, Paul McCartney is continuing to work with a younger generation of influential artists. This time around he's teamed up with Lady Gaga and Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready for the soundtrack to a new animated feature he's producing titled High in the Clouds. The film is based off the children's book McCartney co-authored in 2005, and Macca will also voice one of the film's characters, Deadline reports.

Gaga hinted at the collaboration back in February, saying she was working in the studio with McCartney on an unspecified project.

"Had a beautiful session with Sir Paul McCartney and friends. Working on one of his many secret projects! Killer musicians, vibe, and lots of laughs," Gaga captioned a photo on Instagram of herself alongside McCartney, McCready and a room full of instrumentalists. "Always a good time with my buddy. I'll never forget when he called me last year to work and I hung up the phone cuz I thought it was a prank!"

In another Instagram post, she recalled the first time she heard from the former Beatle, saying she hung up on him thinking it was a prank call.

"Always a good time with my buddy," she wrote. "I'll never forget when he called me last year to work and I hung up the phone cuz I thought it was a prank!"

Speaking to the London Evening Standard recently, McCartney said he is "flattered" to be asked by younger artists to collaborate. “The secret is I keep myself very open to suggestions — I still feel like I’m about 30.”

High in the Clouds will be directed by Cloud With A Chance Of Meatballs 2's Cody Cameron. No release date has yet been given. The 3D feature film was first formally announced in September 2013 with a planned 2015 release date, which didn't end up happening. It is also unclear whether McCartney will provide the film's score, though he initially said he planned on doing so.

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Sarah McGowan Talks New EP 'Indian Summer,' Plans For 2015 & More; Performs "Molly" Live [EXCLUSIVE PODCAST]

by Caitlin Carter Feb 3, 2015 16:32 PM EST

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Sarah McGowan (Photo : Courtesy of Sarah McGowan)

Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Sarah McGowan started writing songs at the age of 14 in her hometown of Darien, Connecticut. After composing an original piece of music and performing it at her high school, she began to pursue music as a career and has since evolved her sound from Taylor Swift-inspired pop to a dark, folk style.

She completed her degrees in Music and Spanish at NYU in 2014 and just released her first EP, Indian Summer, last month.

Indian Summer is a four-song effort with eclectic themes and sounds. You'll hear folk-pop on "When I Come Home," retro-surf rock on the tongue-in-cheek "Williamburg Boy" and brooding folk on "Molly" and "Indian Summer."

While she promotes the new EP in venues across New York City, she's also hard at work on her upcoming full-length album, which she hopes to complete sometime in 2015.

Music Times recently sat down with McGowan to talk about the process and inspiration behind Indian Summer, the milestones she has reached so far, what she continues to struggle with, and what she has in store for 2015. She also dished on some fun facts you might not know about her, such as her love of reading and cheese and her former career as an EMT. She even treated us to a live, acoustic performance of "Molly."

Listen: https://soundcloud.com/sarahmcgowan

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Bobby Womack, The Preacher, boxed set review: 'superb'

'This collection is an essential demonstration of a man in his prime', says Mick Brown

Bobby Womack, performing with Gorillaz in 2010 Photo: Murphy Mitchell

By Mick Brown

9:00AM BST 26 May 2015

After enjoying early success as a member of the Valentinos, working as guitarist for his mentor Sam Cooke - and then being cast into the wilderness for marrying Cooke’s widow Barbara three months after Cooke’s death - Bobby Womack built his reputation as a session musician and a songwriter, not least for Wilson Pickett. Pickett’s breakthrough singles ‘In The Midnight Hour’ and ‘Don’t Fight It’ had been recorded at Memphis soul record label, Stax. But the hits that Womack wrote for Pickett, notably ‘I’m A Midnight Mover’ and the gorgeous ‘I’m In Love’ were recorded at another Memphis studio, American Sound, which had been founded by Chips Moman, who had originally been a producer at...Stax.

It was at American, with Moman producing, that Womack recorded his first solo album, Fly Me To The Moon, in 1968. This superb five album box-set charts the development of Womack’s career, from that debut, to his 1972 album Understanding, which gave him his first US R&B number one, Woman’s Gotta Have It. Fly Me To The Moon includes Womack’s readings of those two Pickett hits, and handful of other original compositions, not least the grittily testifying Someone Special. But it also marks the beginning of Womack’s proclivity for recording cover versions of established standards and pop hits.

• Bobby Womack interview: 'People can feel what I’m saying in their heart'

Whether this was because, as has been suggested, he had given most of his own songs to Pickett; his record company saw it as a commercial proposition or, most likely, because Womack himself was always interested in exploring as wide a range of material as possible (he once recorded a country and western album) is a moot point. The outcome was Womack tackling a wide range of covers over the next four years, from the sublime - his gently propulsive reading of California Dreamin’ - to the frankly bizarre: Jonathan King’s Everyone’s Gone To The Moon. Perhaps the most arresting of all is a nine minute version of Bacharach and David’s Close To You, on his third album, Communication, which begins with a surreal, sermonising rap about his arguments with his record company moving on to an absolutely gorgeous reading in which Womack strips every fibre of faux-sentimentality from the song, refashioning it as a impassioned plea for togetherness.

^{Can you feel it: Bobby Womack in the 1960s}

Looking back over the entirety of his career, it is no exaggeration to say that Womack was the most consistently brilliant soul artist of his generation; the dynamism of his live performance, like a store-front church revival meeting - thrillingly captured here on The Womack Live cd 1970; his gift for melody as a songwriter - demonstrated here on a raft of songs from That’s The Way I Feel About Cha to If You Don’t Want My Love (Give It Back) to Woman’s Gotta Have It, all them infused with a warmth and ease as sweet as a sunny southern morning. And of course, there is that voice - a velvety rasp which could move in an instant from a conversational intimacy, nowhere better displayed than on the heavenly Harry Hippie, to a spine-chilling scream. It is an abiding irony of Womack’s career that it was not until 2012, when Damon Albarn produced The Bravest Man In The Universe - Womack’s 27th album - that he achieved the sort of widespread recognition he had so long deserved. It that can be seen as a worthy testament to a great singer at the end of his career , this collection is an essential demonstration of a man in his prime.

Simply wonderful, all of it.

The Preacher is out now on Charly Records

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Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs by Karen Dalton, review: 'haunting'

11 female singers take on the long-lost work of folk singer Karen Dalton, who died of Aids in 1993

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Karen Dalton, pictured in 1963

By Helen Brown

12:00PM BST 25 May 2015

“Funky, lanky and sultry” is how Bob Dylan remembers folk singer Karen Dalton in his Chronicles. He first saw her playing her red, 12-string Gibson in Greenwich Village in the Sixties, mesmerising scenesters with strange, bluesy covers of traditional songs. Half-Cherokee, “Sweet Mother KD” had, he says, “a voice like Billie Holiday’s and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed”.

Born in Enid, Oklahoma, in 1937 and diagnosed “a real artist” by the family doctor when she was just 14, Dalton had collected old tunes from early childhood. When her only two studio albums – It’s So Hard To Tell Who’s Going To Love You the Best (1969) and In My Own Time (1971) – flopped, she slipped into addiction, lost her children, wandered through periods of homelessness and died of Aids in 1993.

Dylan's one man gig - awesome or odd?

She was rediscovered a decade later when a new generation of American musicians such as Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom began name-checking her. By that time, part of her appeal – like that of vanished English folk singer Vashti Bunyan – lay in her mystery. Bunyan fans could look into the gossamer webs of her lyrics for clues about their heroine, but Dalton only recorded covers.

She did, however, leave four notebooks with folk guitarist Peter Walker containing lyrics and poems that have now been turned into songs by an intriguing array of 11 pioneering female artists, including gravel-voiced country singer Lucinda Williams and former Belle & Sebastian singer Isobel Campbell.

It could have been an over-earnest, over-reverent project. But just as Dalton punched air holes in the old songs she sang, so each woman finds her own space in these simple lines about love, loss and the search for spiritual peace. As Dalton’s poetry is short on detail, it forces the singers to work harder at channelling her outsider soul. Special mention, on this score, to LA-based experimental musician Julia Holter for her mostly a cappella My Love My Love, which appears to have been recorded outdoors: a clarinet intermittently wraps itself around the vocals like a stray cat and the piece ends with birdsong. Colorado folk singer Josephine Foster (whose creaking-croon of a voice is closest to that of Dalton) has similar success with the confessional Met an Old Friend in which the titular pal is “sorry that I’d gone astray/ He asked me if I needed help/ I told him to help himself.”

Who loves you the best no...ren Dalton

Strong on atmosphere, this tribute album is, admittedly, short on melody.

Indie rocker Sharon Van Etten gives a masterful emotional sweep to the title track and Virginian “intuitive folk” singer Diane Cluck turns an elegant, Regina Spektor-esque tune trick with This Is Our Love. You feel each artist shares your yearning to hear Dalton sing each song herself.

Haunted and haunting.

Download this Remembering Mountains by Sharon Van Etten

Remembering Mountains: Unheards Songs by Karen Dalton is out May 26 on Tompkins Square Records

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In Her Own Time

The return of Karen Dalton

By Jim Caligiuri, Fri., Feb. 8, 2008

Photo by Elliot Landy, www.landyvision.com

"My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton," writes Bob Dylan on p.12 of Chronicles: Volume One. "She was a tall white blues singer and guitar player, funky, lanky, and sultry. I'd actually met her before, run across her the previous summer outside Denver in a mountain pass town in a folk club. Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday's and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed and went all the way with it. I sang with her a couple of times."

Besides a possible early-1960s love interest of Dylan, Karen who?

"All of us in the Bad Seeds were huge Karen Dalton fans," says Nick Cave in the liner notes to the 2006 reissue of Dalton's second and last album, 1971's In My Own Time. "We had this friend, Mick Geyer, his life's adventure was to seek out art and music in life that was wonderful. Part of his job was to open our minds to things, and we met him in the punk rock days when we were ready to chuck everything out the window. He liked a lot of jazz music, and different things, and he was always very much like, 'Yeah, get rid of that, but don't get rid of this, listen to this, listen to this.'

It’s Not So Hard to Tell Who Loves Karen Dalton: (l-r) Bob Dylan, Dalton, and Fred Neil at the Cafe Wha? in 1961

Photo by Fred W. McDarrah

"Karen Dalton was one of those people."

Along with In My Own Time's shamanistic introduction from Patti Smith guitarist and music scholar Lenny Kaye – and a "poem" from Devendra Banhart – that's giddy praise for a woman who didn't perform after the mid-1970s and died of AIDS in 1993.

Dalton's voice has that effect on people.

"She sure can sing the shit out of the blues," is how folk godfather Fred Neil put it.

Dalton in Paris

Photo by Dan Hankin

A forlorn cry from the abyss, she doesn't have to dig deep for the blues. The blues are Karen Dalton. She makes other singers sound like frauds.

"She understood the blues better than the folk singing milieu she was hanging out with," furthers Cave. "Absolutely. She's a blues singer to me. It's full of idiosyncrasies that you can't repeat – it's in her voice and it's just extraordinary. She is my absolute favorite blues singer – female blues singer, let's say."

Let's. Following Seattle indie Light in the Attic's deluxe treatment of In My Own Time ("Reissues," Dec. 15, 2006) came Delmore Recordings' 2-CD live set, Cotton Eyed Joe ("Reissues, Dec. 14, 2007), previously unheard hauntings from her residence in Boulder, Colo., in 1962. Dalton's 1969 debut, It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best, completes the triumvirate of her recorded output thus far. That's the easy part. Digging for the story of Karen Dalton's life, by contrast, takes on the specter of chasing ghosts.

The original bio for In My Own Time notes a passport that "says she's from Texas," but better sources claim Dalton was originally from Enid, Okla., her mother full-blooded Cherokee. She turned up in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, at the height of the folk revival, with her 12-string Gibson guitar, a long-neck banjo, and her otherworldly vocals. She immediately drew attention from the aforementioned folksinging milieu. Around the same time, she could also be found in Boulder.

Tim Hardin in Colorado with Dalton and Susie Bergman

Photo by Dan Hankin

"A nice little cow town with a university," says Joe Loop of Boulder back then. Loop operated the Attic, a homey coffeehouse where he occasionally ran tape on the proceedings. Cotton Eyed Joe comes from his personal collection. "In 1961, the folk thing was starting to happen, blossoming on the two coasts. People would come through looking for gas money, and some of them stuck around. Most of the people who played at the Attic were from the University of Colorado, but Karen was an experienced performer and had her stuff together.

"It's amazing how many musicians would go out of their way to play with her back then. She played with all the best people: Fred Neil, Tim Hardin, Dino Valenti. All those people loved her and loved playing with her, but it wasn't the kind of stuff that the record labels were looking for."

A combination of stage fright, drug and alcohol problems, and the fact that Dalton didn't write her own material didn't help. She also had difficulty in the studio, all but hoodwinked into recording her first album. Producer Nik Venet had tried unsuccessfully to record Dalton, so he invited her to a Fred Neil session and asked her to cut Neil's "Little Bit of Rain" for his own private archives. She cut the entire album that night, most of the tracks in one take.

Covering the breadth of her character, Dalton's Capitol Records rollout includes tunes from Neil, Hardin, Jelly Roll Morton, and Eddie Floyd & Booker T. Jones. While not a commercial success at the time of its release, It's So Hard had been reissued twice in the past decade, by Koch in 1997 and the French Megaphone label in 2006.

Photo courtesy of Light In The Attic

The Holy Modal Rounders' folk subversive, Peter Stampfel, who played with Dalton, seems to capture her essence perfectly in the liners to the Koch reissue when he writes: "She was the only folk singer I ever met with an authentic 'folk' background. She came to the folk music scene under her own steam, as opposed to being 'discovered' and introduced to it by people already involved in it."

Today, by phone, Stampfel recalls Dalton with a resigned bluntness.

"We hung together from 1969 to the mid-Seventies, performing rarely. We'd take amphetamines and rehearse a lot. That band played maybe three gigs. She used to shoot amphetamines. Then, like a lot of people when they get older, she turned into an alcoholic."

Stampfel remembers that Dalton had been in the hospital just before In My Own Time, recorded in Woodstock, N.Y., with Electric Flag bassist and Dylan/Miles Davis sideman Harvey Brooks directing a select group of sessionistas. Dalton tackles Motown classic "How Sweet It Is (to Be Loved by You)" and "In a Station" by the Band's Richard Manuel, and while the album's full production is disorienting, it recalls the early work of one of Dalton's contemporaries, Bonnie Raitt: commercial, bluesy, singer-songwriter-friendly. Dalton's ragged vocals commanding the orchestrated surroundings are singular if nothing else, and all agree that the stark reading of the traditional "Katie Cruel" is haunted beyond words.

Photo by Elliot Landy, www.landyvision.com

Woodstock Festival co-promoter Michael Lang put out In My Own Time on his Just Sunshine imprint and then arranged for Dalton and band to tour Europe as the unlikely opening act for Santana. During the trek, they played Montreux, and she never made it out of the dressing room. Acoustic guitarist Dan Hankin, who backed Dalton from 1965 into the early 1970s and appears on both studio albums, remembers the ups and downs all too well.

"She was just falling prey to her own demons and drug abuse," he says from his home in Colorado. "Before we went on this European trip, she bought me a guitar. After that trip, she went back to Woodstock and was trying to get another band together. She invited me to join her, and after several weeks with nothing happening, I started saying, 'When are we gonna rehearse?' I had to leave because I had a life elsewhere, but she didn't want me to leave.

"After I got back, she called me up in the middle of the night and demanded that I send her the guitar back. I sent it back and never spoke to her again."

Hankin can be seen in the DVD that accompanies Cotton Eyed Joe as well as the French release of It's So Hard. Only four songs and less than 15 minutes long, it captures Dalton onstage in New York and in the Colorado mountains circa 1969-1970. It's a thrill to see her perform, missing a couple of teeth, and with waist-length brown hair and the shadow of a smile, Dylan's description of her as sultry is more than apt.

Karen Dalton discography ... so far

"She was living in the mountains outside of Boulder," explains Hankin, "in a little old mining cabin without running water and an outhouse. I sort of inherited that cabin when she left. It was only $30 a month. The scene I was in with Karen was very low-key. It was people who weren't in the mainstream of society. We mostly played in living rooms or in tiny little bars for drinks."

Until three years ago, few besides Joe Loop even knew that the footage from a French film crew following Dalton at the time even existed. Nick Cave has Joe Loop to thank for even more: He sold his entire collection of Dalton tapes to the Megaphone label, which is planning another release later this year. There's more Dalton than live Attic recordings, too.

"Other stuff was recorded at someone's house," reveals Loop. "One was from 1963. They're just personal recordings, some string-band-type stuff. What's going to be released next is where she accompanies herself on banjo."

Though Dalton disappeared from the public eye soon after her sophomore release, it's a fair guess that she continued to play in living rooms, out of the spotlight. While Lenny Kaye describes Dalton's last days as "living on the New York streets, destitute, her health gone," Peter Walker sets the record straight.

"Let me put to rest these ideas that she died in destitute poverty and drug addicted homelessness," he states. "She was perfectly functional mentally. She was living in Hurley, in upstate New York between Kingston and Woodstock. She lived with AIDS for more than eight years, but with an excellent quality of life considering the disease."

A guitarist of some renown in the 1960s of the Cambridge, Mass., scene, Walker once directed music for Timothy Leary's infamous "celebrations," in which the guru would rant to acid-drenched audiences of thousands. He met Dalton early in the decade and remained friends with her until her death.

"Karen was part of the crowd that hung around with Tim Hardin," he recalls. "They all loved her because she was the cover girl for the Ode Banjo company, the most traditional of instruments available only through mail order."

Walker spent time with Dalton in the 1980s when she had an apartment in the Bronx and he worked in New York City. He became her caretaker later, offering her a place to live when the disease had nearly won. He maintains he has her diaries but admits that a box of tapes she left behind was destroyed in a fire.

Delmore Recordings' Mark Linn, who guided Cotton Eyed Joe onto the market and played an enormous role in this story, ultimately delivered the most poignant reflection on Dalton.

"There's a small amount of people that have the original records [who] were intensely affected by them – by her voice," he offers. "I think you can really feel the pain. She lived a hard musician's life. It wasn't about trendiness or stardom. It was about playing music.

"She wasn't really made for her time."

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New Music: Lianne La Havas – Unstoppable (FKJ Remix)

Posted on May 23rd, 2015 by ThisIsRnB in MUSIC |

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Lianne La Havas has returned with the sultry and smooth new single “Unstoppable,” which is the first release off her anticipated sophomore album Blood, due out July 31. Included on a limited edition 7″ vinyl release of the single is a brand new remix of the song by French Kiwi Juice (FKJ).

Equally as infectious (possibly even more) than the original, the remix delivers a breezy vibe with lush percussion that is perfectly complimented by La Havas’ vocal. Lianne wrote the record to help to repair a relationship that she had ended.

“Our polarities shifted around, there’s nothing else left holding us down,” sings the 25-year-old. “It’s just gravitational, we are unstoppable.”

Stream the new remix below, and you can order the 7″ vinyl here.

Lianne La Havas (Live at Afropunk 2014) [FULL SET]

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New Music: Josué feat. Billy Green – Summer Time

Posted on May 23rd, 2015 by ThisIsRnB in EMERGING ARTISTS, MUSIC, SOUL |

The unofficial start to summer seems like the absolute perfect time to introduce you to emerging Australian soul singer Josué. The Sydney native has been grinding on the live circuit for several years with his band, but now he is gearing up for the release of his debut EP ‘Bad News,’ due out in July.

Leading the project is an incredibly infectious single, perfect for the warm weather, amply titled “Summer Time,” featuring MC Billy Green. The song’s groove will stick right to your bones with it’s sweet soulful melody, surrounded by Josue’s smooth vocals and Billy Green’s slick verse.

“When it’s hot outside I’m thinking about summer time / When it’s cold outside I’m wishing it’s summer time / When I’m next to you I’m thinking about summer time,” he sings.

Enjoy the good weather with the feel-good single below:

Listen: https://soundcloud.com/jo...illy-green

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Leona Lewis’ New Single “Fire Under My Feet” Gets A Massive Benny Benassi Remix: Listen

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By: Mike Wass / May 22, 2015

Leona Lewis' "Fire Under My Feet" Video

Leona Lewis returns with stomping soul-pop anthem "Fire Under My Feet." Watch the clip.

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Leona Lewis means business with new LP I Am (due June 7). After switching record labels and regrouping from the commercial disappointment of third LP Glassheart, the British songbird displays newfound confidence on mid-tempo anthem “Fire Under My Feet.” She’s clearly hoping to grab a piece of Adele’s adult-oriented, soul-pop pie, but the 30-year-old is keeping it semi-contemporary with a killer remix package.

The “Bleeding Love” diva unleashed the Endor remix on the same day as the original, but she now calls on veteran Italian DJ Benny Benassi to deliver a massive main-room overhaul. Perhaps best known in the US for his surprise 2010 top 40 hit “Spaceship” or for producing Madonna’s “Girl Gone Wild,” the 47-year-old knows how to bring a club monster to life and works his usual magic on “Fire Under My Feet.” Listen to the flawless floorfiller below.

Leona Lewis’ “Fire Under My Feet (Benny Benassi Remix)” below:

11 Revelations From Gwyneth Paltrow's Interview With Howard Stern

'UnREAL' Review: The Drama Lifetime Was Born To Make Arrives In Insane Glory

Merrill Barr Forbes Contributor 5/27/15

Last year, Lifetime showed the world its capability in creating legitimate, dramatic programming in the form of The Lottery, a post-apocalyptic/conspiracy drama from Children of Men writer Timothy J. Sexton. However, while decent, the series failed to grasp an audience which, along with being produced outside the network itself (the producing studio was Warner Horizon), forced Lifetime’s hand in the form of a cancellation following the conclusion of season one. But, one failure’s certainly not enough to squash the A + E owned network’s goals of turning itself into a home of substantial programming, and its latest effort, UnREAL, not only tops The Lottery, but is actually one of the best new shows of the summer because it embraces the insanity it presents on screen through a level of confidence rarely seen from a show of this type that doesn’t have the name Aaron Sorkin attached to its production credits.

Created by Marti Noxon and Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, UnReal follows the behind-the-scenes production of a reality dating show. Over the course of the season, the show’s staff must work to manipulate and steer their contestants in ways that, while making for “great” TV, often results in decisions of questionable ethics. In addition, as well oiled as the machine appears under the leadership of Quinn King (Constance Zimmer), the entire staff has their world undone when Rachel Goldberg (Shiri Appleby), a freelance producer, returns to set for the first time since an on screen incident that occurred at the end of the show’s previous season.

Given all the different “behind-the-scenes of TV” dramas Aaron Sorkin has created over the years including Sports Night (the behind-the-scenes of a sports show), Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (the behind-the-scenes of a late-night variety show) and The Newsroom (the behind-the-scenes of a 24 hour cable news station), it’s a wonder why it’s taken this long for someone to come along with a behind-the-scenes drama about the world of reality television. However, after watching UnREAL, the reasoning is clear. There’s nothing “sexy” about the shadow world of reality TV because all the “sexy” is on screen. Instead, the world behind the camera is one of lies, deceit and grandstanding manipulation, and it’s hard to portray that world with characters the audience can also sympathize with… and that’s where UnREAL succeeds brilliantly.

The main character of the series, Rachel Goldberg, hates her job but is also keenly aware of the fact that she excels at it in ways that would strike fear into the hearts of most. Her ability to mold a scenario exactly the way she wants is unparalleled, and if her savvy were being used for nearly any other profession, it’d be the kind of talent that would raise her to a place of infinite power. That said, what UnReal chooses to do is show the dark side of that power. How does a person that can bend anyone to their will deal with keeping their own life in check? How do they process the world around them when everything’s come crashing down and the only thing left to do is concede to the fact the only way to climb back up the mountain is to do the same thing all over again that made them fall in the first place? These are the questions UnREAL seeks to answer while also giving weight to a genre written off by many as pure trash – which is another thing, the trashy nature of reality television, the show brilliantly puts on display.

UnREAL may be set in a world of personalities trying to create “great” television through sleazy action, but the show itself is great drama packaged on a network desperate for the kind of recognition its sister networks achieve on a nearly constant basis. UnREAL is the show Lifetime was born to create. Its cast’s predominately female perspective gives it a unique voice in the way it portrays the decisions its characters make. How truly “pro-equality” can you be when you’re, for better or worse, selling out your own for your sake and your sake alone? At what point does personal betterment overtake the importance of the greater good? These may not be themes you’d expect from a Lifetime show, but they’re most certainly the ones to be found within the first three episodes of UnREAL.

UnREAL premieres Monday, June 1st at 10/9c on Lifetime.

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'Gilmore Girls' reunion: Scott Patterson alludes to something being in the works

May 26, 2015 7:56 AM MST

Tiffany Bailey

Chicago TV Examiner

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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It looks like there is a good possibility for a “Gilmore Girls” reunion. Several of the show's stars will be reuniting at the ATX Television Festival in just a few days. According to a May 25 report from Entertainment Weekly, Scott Patterson has alluded to the fact that there are talks going on about doing a short television series or movie to give fans an update. There have been talks about doing a reunion for several years. With almost a decade passing since the series finale ended, “Gilmore Girls” want more!

Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images

There would have to be some adjustments made to accommodate things that have changed for the “Gilmore Girls” cast, including the death of Edward Herrmann who played Richard Gilmore. Fans fell in love with the entire Gilmore family and all of the residents of Stars Hollow when they watched all seven seasons. So much has changed with the characters, many of them have moved on to new ventures. Melissa McCarthy made a great career in film for herself, Lauren Graham has been doing television and recently wrapped “Parenthood,” and Alexis Bledel did some teen-friendly movies.

Several “Gilmore Girls” fans have been actively tweeting about the show on and off since it has been off the air. There were several cliffhangers left, which was thought to have been done because there was going to be a follow up. Did Lorelai and Luke get married? Did Rory and Logan ever rekindle their relationship while she was on the campaign trail? There are so many more moments that could be addressed but for now fans will have to settle for the ATX Television Festival reunion coming up.

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'The Lizzie Borden Chronicles' ends Season One with murder, mayhem, and a twist

Mark Whittington

Houston TV Examiner

May 25, 2015 4:59 AM MST

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On the morning of August 4, 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were murdered and mutilated in their Fall River home.

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The first and perhaps only season of “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles” came to an end on Sunday with an unusual amount of carnage, even for an episode of the highly fictionalized account of the most famous ax murderer of all after the 40 whacks. An unusual amount of carnage occurred, even for an episode of this delightfully campy series starring Christina Ricci as a reimagined late 19th Century serial killer. Oddly, much of the killing took place in a gun battle between two Wild West gunslingers and a family of Boston mobsters. Lizzie only dispatched one or two victims.

Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Marc Jacobs

The real Lizzie Borden, after the trial in which she was acquitted of taking an ax to her father and stepmother, lived a mostly quiet life in her town of Fall River. That would have made for boring television, hence the eight episode series that featured death and mayhem, not to mention an account of the seamier side of 19th Century life, including a good look at what an insane asylum was like, with electric shock therapy and squalid conditions that seemed designed to make the insane more so.

According to a website called Bustle, ratings for “The Lizzie Borden Chronicles” have only been so-so, though they seem to be building up as more people discover its gruesome charms. The Lifetime Channel has not made a decision on whether there will be a second season though the delightful twist at the end left open a great many possibilities for more. Here’s hoping there will be more because Lizzie makes mass slaughter as much of a guilty pleasure as Dexter, her kindred spirit, used to.

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David Oyelowo on Potential Ava DuVernay Marvel Movie and Whether He Would Ever Play a Superhero

Movies | By Linda Ge on May 26, 2015 @ 5:23 pm

“Everything she touches she elevates” actor tells TheWrap of his “Selma” director taking on “Black Panther” or “Captain Marvel”

As Ava DuVernay continues talks with Marvel about directing a superhero movie, she is getting a vote of confidence from someone who knows her work well — “Selma” star David Oyelowo.

In a wide-ranging interview with TheWrap while promoting his new HBO film “Nightingale,” Oyelowo said he found the prospect of DuVernay helming a Marvel film exciting.

“The thing about Ava is everything she touches she elevates,” said the actor, who also previously worked with DuVernay on “Middle of Nowhere.”

“She bakes into it who she is,” he added. “So, if Marvel is as smart and as brave to go on that journey with Ava, I’m personally the first in line to see what she does with that.”

As TheWrap exclusively reported, Marvel Studios is courting the director to helm one of its upcoming films, most likely “Black Panther,” which has Chadwick Boseman attached to star, or “Captain Marvel,” the studio’s first female-led solo film.

Oyelowo, who plays a mentally unbalanced army vet in HBO’s latest offering, said he expects something new and different in a Marvel-DuVernay collaboration.

“I think she’s going to take it in directions that are both exciting and provocative, and different to what you’ve seen thus far,” he said. “It’s always going to be a Marvel movie, but she is so singular as a director that I think her, plus that brand is an exciting idea.”

But the actor hesitated at the prospect of donning a superhero costume himself.

“For me personally, I tread with caution around the notion of those kinds of characters,” he said. “Depending on which one of them you’re playing, there’s always a danger you’re going to get so identified with this larger than life character, that it could become tougher for audiences to believe you in other roles.”

He is speaking from personal experience, and harkens back to when he recently played civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. in “Selma.” While he filmed “Nightingale” before the award-winning film, the latter is coming out after he gained notice in the DuVernay project, which was released in December 2014.

“For me it’s such a blessing that ‘Nightingale’ is coming out after ‘Selma,'” he said. “As much of a blessing as it was for me to play Dr. King, I don’t want to be solely recognized as having played him. I want to play lots of different characters so ‘Nightingale’ feels like the diametric opposite of Dr. King. So yes, I don’t know that I’m going to be in a hurry to play a superhero for those reasons.”

“Nightingale” premieres Friday, May 29, on HBO at 9 p.m. Stay tuned for more of Oyelowo’s interview this week on TheWrap.

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‘Supergirl,’ ‘Muppets,’ ‘American Crime Story’ Score Most Exciting New Series Honors for Critics’ Choice TV Awards

TV | By Tim Kenneally on May 26, 2015

Photo: Bonnie Osborne

Charlize Theron tapped to present Seth MacFarlane with Genius Award

Looking forward to catching “Aquarius,” “American Crime Story,” “Supergirl” and “The Muppets”? You’re not alone.

The Broadcast Television Journalists Association (BTJA) announced the honorees for the Critics’ Choice Television Awards’ Most Exciting New Series category on Tuesday, a list that includes “Aquarius,” NBC’s upcoming series about the Charles Manson murders starring David Duchovny; FX’s new anthology offering “American Crime Story,” about the trial of O.J. Simpson; CBS’ upcoming woman-in-tights series “Supergirl”; and ABC’s upcoming series “The Muppets.”

NBC’s “Blindspot,” Fox’s upcoming adaptation of “The Minority Report” and its Ryan Murphy-produced horror-comedy anthology series “Scream Queens”; and Lifetime’s “UnREAL” are also among the honorees.

The selections were made by BTJA members based on pilots, early episodes and trailers for series premiering after May 1.

On Tuesday, the BTJA also announced presenters for this year’s Critics’ Choice Television Awards, including Charlize Theron, who will present the Louis XIII Genius award to “Family Guy” and “American Dad!” honcho Seth MacFarlane.

Other presenters for this year’s ceremony include “The Big Bang Theory” star Johnny Galecki; Bob Odenkirk of “Better Call Saul”; “American Horror Story” veteran Sarah Paulson; and Allison Janney, star of the CBS sitcom “Mom.”

This year’s Critics’ Choice Television Awards will air live on A&E from the Beverly Hilton Hotel on May 31 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT. “So You Think You Can Dance” host Cat Deeley is hosting the festivities.

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SXSW 2015: A First Look at ‘Angie Tribeca,’ Steve Carell’s New TV Series

By Mekado Murphy

March 14, 2015 6:37 pm March 14, 2015 6:37 pm

Photo

Hayes MacArthur and Rashida Jones in "Angie Tribeca."Credit TBS

AUSTIN, Tex. — The first five minutes of the pilot for the TBS comedy “Angie Tribeca,” co-created by Steve Carell, contain more gags than a full episode of most sitcoms. It starts with the titular police officer (Rashida Jones) going through her morning training ritual, which becomes more and more outrageous as the scene progresses. In the tradition of spoof comedy series like “Police Squad” and “Sledge Hammer” this new show takes satirical aim at the procedural. The festival showed the first two episodes as part of their Episodic program, which presents television premieres.

“It’s really, really stupid,” said Mr. Carell, at a panel following the screening. “We just wanted something that was irreverent and silly and made us laugh.” Mr. Carell created the show with his wife Nancy and directed the pilot episode.

Ms. Jones also spoke at the panel with her co-star, Hayes MacArthur (who plays a character named J. Geils), about taking on this show (scheduled to air this fall). “I read it and was like, there’s no chance I’m not doing this.” The show requires its cast to engage in some ridiculous physical comedy while keeping a completely straight face.

Reports from the South by Southwest conference and festival in Austin.

“All the jokes are so supported by wardrobe, makeup, explosions, all this stuff happening around you that you can just play it straight and honest and let the absurdity erupt around you,” Mr. MacArthur said.

“My mom came to visit me on set the other day and she almost turned around. She was like, ‘I thought I was on your set, then I saw horses and Native Americans and I thought I was wrong,'” Ms. Jones said. “No, no, no. That’s our set.”

Video

The star of the new TBS comedy series discusses the show at the South by Southwest festival.

By Mekado Murphy on Publish Date March 14, 2015. Photo by Mekado Murphy.

A couple of running gags involve a screaming cop and another includes a weak-stomached officer who is compelled to vomit at the sight of a different atrocity each episode. Another frequent gag in the first episode involves a joke for Ford vehicles that removes any shred of subtlety that kind of product placement may have had on another show.

“They didn’t come to us. We just wrote it that way hoping they would sign off on it at the end of the day,” Mr. Carell said. “Once they got wind of it, they were all on board and they gave us all those cars to use.”

The show also contains some fun cameos, including Adam Scott and James Franco (playing a character named Sgt. Pepper). Mr. Carell also revealed that Bill Murray will make an appearance on the show this season.

Mr. MacArthur’s character was intended to be short-lived, as well. When they first wrote the pilot, the Carells had planned to kill off Angie Tribeca’s partner each episode. But working with Mr. MacArthur, they changed their plan. “We loved him so much, we couldn’t kill him,” Mr. Carell said.

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[Edited 5/28/15 7:31am]

London-based artist Espa has put out her debut single from her upcoming EP, LG60.


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Lauren & Maxwell

"this picture was originally meant to be a part of the VIBE cover but the tragic unexpected loss of THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G preempted it's use"- Maxwell

Kacey Musgraves Is Making Country Music Good Again

Cover Story: She's a millennial remaking country music to be more accepting. Turns out that’s how the best country music always was.

By Duncan Cooper

photographer Daniel Shea

The old joke used to go: “What do you get when you play a country song backwards? You get your wife back, your house back, your truck back, your dog back…” These days the clichés are worse: you’d get your booze undrunk on a tailgate unpartied, an unshaken ass in jeans that aren’t cut off. Scanning the FM dial, it’s as if the same hacks who ushered in the demise of rock radio—by pandering to mall rats with pop-punk and egregiously pushing boundaries with rap-rock—have found a new genre to pillage. Bro-country. Hick-hop. With increasing abandon, country music has gone astray.

There are, thankfully, exceptions. The rise of Kacey Musgraves, these past two years, with her family-band sound, rural Texas upbringing, and credentials as a working songwriter, feels like a back-to-basics corrective to a genre that’s somehow forgotten how much it used to love basics. Musgraves’ first single, “Merry Go ‘Round,” was a feat of banjo-led tradition that also declared itself modern in its first three lines: If you ain’t got two kids by 21/ You’re probably gonna die alone/ Least that’s what tradition told you. Critics from NPR and the New York Times celebrated her progressive words and conservative sound. Kiss lots of boys, or kiss lots of girls if that’s what you’re into, she sang on her second breakthrough track, “Follow Your Arrow.” Light up a joint, or don’t. When I meet her for the first time on a bright white Texas morning, just about the first thing 26-year-old Musgraves does is swap nose rings with her sister, so she’ll look better for the photos we’re about to shoot on horseback. She’s not your usual country star, nor is she anything but.

Misa Arriaga and Kacey Musgraves