One of my fellow newsies forwarded a link to this amazing rant written by a certain Douglas Britt, the visual art and society reporter at the Houston Chronicle. It seems Mr. Britt has grown tired of creative types getting creative in how they communicate with him. If they’d just stick to the system and follow “simple instructions,” it would make everything better! Unfortunately, those “simple instructions” come in the form of a rambling, 1,400-word screed that I, for one, would have a hard time following even if I had to. It’s worth a cursory read, but only in the same way that a train wreck is worth craning your neck to see as you drive by.
Yet there’s definitely a part of me that sympathizes with Mr. Britt’s plight. [Read More...]
When the first gig your band books is at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, you know you’ve got something good going on. Such was the introductory salvo for Railroad Earth, A Stillwater, N.J.-based act that earned its Telluride gig based on a five-song EP produced before the band had ever played on stage together.
But lest you think the band might be just another in the picker’s parade of 21st century nu-grass bands, look to the back of the stage, where you’ll find the most obvious indication of Railroad Earth’s unusual approach to down-home Americana: drummer Carey Harmon, who provides a firm backbeat to the band’s slippery sonic salad. [Read More...]
The Stone Foxes are stone cold rockers. Storming out of San Francisco with a blizzard of riff-heavy guitar distortion and thunderous backbeats, the four-piece band has the audacity to write a song like “I Killed Robert Johnson,” and the power to convince you that they might just mean it. [Read More...]
On Thursday afternoon in the University of Montana Music Recital Hall, San Francisco violinist Ian Swensen raised his instrument to his neck, caught the eyes of cellist Tonya Tomkins and pianist Eric Zivian, lifted his upper body with a subtle jerk; and suddenly, a tempest erupted. For several minutes, a musical torrent pelted three dozen UM students and faculty as they listened to the visiting trio run through the first movement of Johannes Brahms’ famous Third Piano Trio – a piece that Swensen described moments later as “a growling, clear storm.”
The rapt audience erupted in loud clapping at the end. And then, the musicians onstage began to tear their performance apart. [Read More...]
Artist Angela Babby will be in Missoula tonight, Thursday, Sept. 16, for the Missoula Art Museum’s monthly Artini event, where she will participate in an interview by journalist Jodi Rave at 6 p.m. Jason Heavyrunner will provide the evening’s musical backdrop, and poet Jennifer Greene of Arlee will read from her recently published book, “What Lasts.” Artini takes place from 5:30-9 p.m.; admission is free. “Wolakota,” an exhibit of artworks by Angela Babby, is on view at the Missoula Art Museum through February 6, 2011. For hours and other information, visit www.MissoulaArtMuseum.org.
Against a wall in an upstairs gallery of the Missoula Art Museum, on a medium-sized drafting table, lays an intricate puzzle of carefully cut bits of white paper. Above it, a rudimentarily colored map of the puzzle hangs on the wall, with each piece of the puzzle carefully marked by its intended color.
Next to that hangs the ultimate result: a fluid image of bare, dark branches against an undulating background of stones in snow, the whole thing pieced together out of hand-cut bits of enameled mosaic glass – 1,000 pieces or more, some as small as a fingernail, none bigger than a serving spoon — affixed inside a wooden frame.
The tableaux offers a testament to the process by which Billings artist Angela Babby transforms plain sheets of colored glass into painterly images that seem to transcend, even defy, the painstaking method of their creation. [Read More...]
From a distant edge of the musical horizon, Seattle-based Helms Alee appears in Missoula this week for a gig at the Zootown Arts Community Center. Unleashing tidal waves of noise interspersed with swirling pools of musical flotsam, this three-piece band tosses elements of math-rock, screamo, and emo into a thick stew of sound. [Read More...]
Over the past year, Montana’s medical marijuana industry has grown like a weed, blossoming from a quiet cottage industry into a competitive, highly visible, and at times controversial statewide free-for-all. Ironically, the widespread acceptance of medical pot as a part of life hasn’t created high times for proponents of industrial hemp products.
So as the Montana Hemp Council gears up for its 15th annual Missoula Hempfest, which takes place at Caras Park this Saturday, Jeremy Briggs finds himself having to massage the message about hemp. [Read More...]
Somewhere along the meandering course of the now-waning jam-band decade, horn-driven funk acts seemed to largely drop out of the regional nightclub circuit. While local bands such as Reverend Slanky and Sweet Low Down filled in the gap for fans of 70s-style get-down music, the number of busload bands blowing through town has dwindled noticeably since the turn of the millennium.
It’s no surprise, really: These days, a keyboardist with a decent rack of gear can fill in the ornamental gaps, while not requiring nearly as much space in the van – or food in the belly — as three honking homeboys. With the price of gas continually on the rise, many large bands have abandoned touring altogether, unless they’re able to fill theatre-sized venues.
And then, of course, there are the shifting tides of taste, which have turned in favor of techno-oriented acts in recent years. Where the Missoula-founded jam-band Signal Path once boasted five members playing mostly traditional rock-band instruments, it has now slimmed to two, who make their music mostly on electronic gadgets. New Orleans-based Galactic – one of the earliest and most successful bands in the jam-band movement – has dropped three members (including its vocalist) over the years, replacing them with looped samples and other electronic effects. Other nationally touring acts have similarly slimmed and techno-fied.
Point being, when a good old-fashioned horn band shows up in town, it’s an occasion in the eyes of old-school fans of the bump-and-grind. And when that band is Lubriphonic, hungry fans of the genre are likely to get what they’re looking for. [Read More...]