Last week we brought you the news that Jim James would finally release his long-in-the-making solo debut Regions of Light and Sound of God on February 5 via ATO Records. The album, according to James, was inspired primarily by Lynd Ward’s 1929 graphic novel Gods’ Man, which “chronicles an artist’s struggles with temptation and corruption, along with finding true love.” While that doesn’t really give us much to go on in terms of what to expect, we were fortunate enough to have the My Morning Jacket front man offer up an advance taste of the record’s lead single – Know ‘Til Now.

The track, which blends jittery Radiohead-inspired beats with psychedelic soul sounds, is currently available as a free download, but also via this Andy Warhol screen test-inspired music video that features looping footage of a static wide-angled shot of James with his back turned to the camera…

Jim James – Know ‘Til Now

Bowery Presents continue to stretch their reach outside of their home base in New York City, as next month the concert promoters will open their second venue in Boston – The Sinclair. The 525-person venue, located in Harvard Square in the Cambridge area of Beantown, will take a page from their sister venue Brooklyn Bowl by also featuring a 104-seat restaurant “helmed by one of the country’s top chefs, James Beard Award–winner Michael Schlow.” The club will officially open on Tuesday, October 30, with a gig from The Meter Men with Page McConnell, and currently have shows scheduled with K’NAAN, psych-rock legend Roky Erickson, folk-rockers David Wax Museum and more.

• List Time: 17 Songs That Influenced Animal Collective’s New Album
• LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy is rumored to be producing the next Arcade Fire record
• Cover Alert: Those Darlins tackle Iggy Pop
• MMJ’s Jim James gives his thoughts on President Barack Obama for 90 Days, 90 Reasons
• Download This: Hurray For The Riff Raff – Mercury Lounge – NY, NY – 2012-08-26
• Unheard recordings of Ringo Starr’s first band have been unearthed after 50 years

Finally, Light In The Attic first caught our attention back in 2008, when the Seattle-based label reissued the fantastic lost debut from Rodriguez. The label, who has built a reputation on re-releasing similar lost albums, reissuing hard-to-find and out-of-prints records and putting out compilations, will celebrate their 10th Anniversary with a two pack of concerts – the first at El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles (9/28) and the second at The Showbox (10/12) in their hometown that will both feature LTA artists: Rodriguez, Michael Chapman, and Donnie & Joe Emerson. Prior to the concerts, the label has announced that they will hit the road on a 2,500 mile road trip up and down the West Coast, where they will visit 58 record stores over the course of 12 days – and they want you to join them. If you’d like a spot in the van, simply email roadtrip@lightintheattic.net and tell them why you deserve to be chosen to join them. The winner will be announced on September 17th, 2012 at the Light In The Attic blog.

Newport Folk Festival @ Fort Adams State Park – July 27-29

Words: Jeffrey Greenblatt
Photos: Gerry Hardy

In my review of the 2010 Newport Folk Festival, I deemed the granddaddy of all music fests the “music fan’s, music fest,” and upon my return visit this year that statement has never rang more true. Despite persistent gloomy, overcast skies and periods of rain (which included a monster storm early Saturday evening during My Morning Jacket’s headlining set), people were still smiling throughout and were genuinely excited to see and talk about the music and find out what they may have missed at another stage.

[All Photos by Gerry Hardy]

And then there were the musicians, who all repeatedly echoed the same sentiment about how honored they were to be playing there, and how amazing the experience was from an artist perspective, as it offered them an opportunity to catch up with their friends in other bands that they don’t get to see too often as they criss-cross the country on their various tours.

Over the course of the weekend I managed to catch bits and pieces of sets from roughly 22 bands that included rising jamgrass act Trampled By Turtles covering Bob Dylan’s Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You, Joe Fletcher & The Wrong Reasons paying tribute to Levon Helm by tackling the Basement Tapes deep cut Crash On The Levee and fest headliner Jackson Browne sitting in with up and coming psych-folk singer Jonathan Wilson for Gentle Spirit. Having taken in so much great music, here are my personal highlights…

Friday Highlights

Wilco – Fort Stage – 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM

If you haven’t caught Wilco on their current tour, you’ve been missing out on a band that is firing on all cylinders, consistently nailing it night in and night out with standout performances and song selections that dig deep into their catalog. With their opening night headlining slot, Wilco delivered the goods once again, honoring the late Woody Guthrie’s 100th birthday by kicking things off with the Mermaid Avenue chestnut Christ For President, a theme they would return to in their encore. The band’s 23-song set was highlighted by a sublime acoustic arrangement of Spiders (Kidsmoke), a ripping take on tour staple Impossible Germany that showcased guitar god Nels Cline’s frantic fret work and a jangly Handshake Drugs. The set also included some classic Jeff Tweedy stage banter, with a must hear story about him going to see The Ramones in St. Louis when he was 14 years-old that he threaded throughout the second half of their set.

For their encore Wilco invited out Woody Guthrie’s granddaughter Sarah Lee along with her husband Johnny Irion, for takes on two more tracks from Mermaid Avenue: the fan favorite California Stars and the country-inflected Airline To Heaven, with Cline showcasing his lap steel skills.

READ ON

This weekend the granddaddy of all music fests – the Newport Folk Festival – will get under way with three days of roots, folk, funk, soul and rock or what can basically be defined as quintessential American music. For the 2012 installment the fest has grown in size with the addition of a fourth stage, and will “unofficially” open on Friday night at the historic Fort Adams State Park with a fantastic triple-bill that features Wilco, Blitzen Trapper and Megafaun. The fest, which will once again be streamed live on NPR featuring both audio and video, sold out in advance for the second year in a row. Following Friday’s triple-bill, the event officially kicks off on Saturday morning at 11:15 AM with the Graverobbers, and will wrap up around dusk on Sunday night, with a fest-closing set from the legendary Jackson Browne.

Founded in 1959 by George Wein as an offshoot of his already successful and well-established Jazz Festival, and possibly most famous as the place where Bob Dylan shunned the folk world when he went electric in 1965, the festival fell on hard times and was forced into taking a 14-year hiatus starting in 1971 before it was revived in 1985 – and has been thriving ever since with its diverse lineups.

Over the years the iconic fest has hosted a veritable who’s who of musicians from Joan Baez to Johnny Cash to Muddy Waters in its classic years, and more recently has seen the likes of Fleet Foxes, Neko Case, The Decemberists and even Trey Anastasio log time at the tents and stages.

READ ON

New Multitudes at Webster Hall, March 14

Words: Jeffrey Greenblatt
Photos: Jeremy Gordon

Without Woody Guthrie there would have been no Pete Seeger, no Bob Dylan and no Bruce Springsteen, as his songbook  inspired multiple generations of budding musicians with his socio-political charged folk songs about the America he lived in and traveled around during the Great Depression. So there’s no shortage of reasons why the iconic folk singer’s 100th birthday is being celebrated in such a big way in 2012.

[All Photos by Jeremy Gordon]

As we’ve  previously mentioned, the all-star roots-rock conglomerate of Jay Farrar, Jim James, Will Johnson and Anders Parker we’re given the opportunity to honor the late Guthrie, by recording a new album culled from previously unseen and unrecorded material, under the moniker of New Multitudes. The quartet brought their brief ten-date, cross-country run to New York City’s historic Webster Hall on Wednesday night, a venue that, as it was dutifully pointed out from the stage, Guthrie himself had actually played, adding a sense that this was indeed one for Woody.

The night was broken into two distinct parts,  with the first section dedicated to bringing to life the songs of New Multitudes, ones that the singer-songwriters had crafted from notes and journal entries from the time that Guthrie had spent in Los Angeles. The confessional songs detail intimate moments of Guthrie’s life, touching on love, life and of course politics and society, often times all in the same song like the emotional wrought My Revolutionary Mind sung by James. The first part of the night came to close with the album’s title track, with all four members of the ad-hoc band out in front of the stage with acoustic guitars strapped on, as their voices blended beautifully on the Farrar sung track about challenging a new generation of activists to not be reticent and to take up causes for which to fight.

READ ON

Back in 1998, UK folkie Billy Bragg teamed up with up and coming alt.country act Wilco, to write and record new songs culled together from a treasure trove of previous unheard and unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics. Called Mermaid Avenue, for the street that Guthrie and his family lived on in Coney Island, the recording sessions yielded enough material to be spread across two albums, that were released two years apart, and feature a number of songs that both Bragg and Wilco still perform in concert.

With Guthrie’s centennial birthday being celebrated all throughout 2012, its no surprise that the sessions for these HT approved albums are being revisited, and will be released as four-disc box set. On April 21, Nonesuch Records will release Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions, which will include the original two volumes of Mermaid Avenue, a third volume with 17 previously unreleased recordings from those sessions, plus the 1999 documentary on the sessions, Man in the Sand, as well as a 48-page booklet with new liner notes by Nora Guthrie. Mermaid Avenue, Volume III, will also be made available digitally, separate from the box set.

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• Robert Plant to debut his new band the Sensational Space Shifters this July
• Cover Alert: Alabama Shakes tackle Led Zeppelin
• MMJ front man Jim James is working on a solo album to be released this year
• Download This: Loose Fur – St. Anne’s Warehouse, Brooklyn, NY – 2002-12-06
• Tenacious D release more details about their third studio album Rize of the Fenix

Finally, earlier this year the Brooklyn Academy Of Music announced that they would be turning over the keys to the building to The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner to curate a music festival this spring dubbed Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, after a Walt Whitman poem. The three-day fest, which is set to take place from May 3 – 5, will utilize all three spaces within the building and be headlined by The Walkman, St. Vincent and Beruit, and will features sets from the likes of Sharon Van Etten, The Antlers, Caveman, Atlas Sound and more. Three-day passes will run you $110 , and will go-sale to the public on March 6, with individual day-passes going on-sale on March 12, for $45.

As we previously reported Anders Parker, Jay Farrar, Yim Yames and Will Johnson headed into the studio to record a new batch of Woody Guthrie songs (think Billy Bragg & Wilco – Mermaid Avenue) which will be released on the album New Multitudes.

Now that we received an album release date of February 28, a tour has been announced. It’s unclear if this ensemble is going to get a name, if they are “New Multitudes” or they are simply going to be billed individually. Also unclear is which Showbox venue (The Market or SODO) in Seattle they will play.

Tour Dates:

March 6 – The Fillmore – San Francisco, CA
March 7 – Music Box – Los Angeles, CA
March 9 – Crystal Ballroom, Portland, OR
March 10 – The Showbox – Seattle, WA
March 12 – The Birchmere, Washington, DC
March 13 – Union Transfer – Philadephia, PA
March 14 – Webster Hall – New York, NY
March 16 – The Paradise – Boston, MA

(h/t Paste Magazine)

Roughly two and a half years ago we reported that Jay Farrar (Uncle Tupelo/Son Volt), Jim James (MMJ) and Will Johnson (Centro-matic) had headed into the studio to a record a new batch of songs inspired by Woody Guthrie’s unrecorded lyrics, a la Billy Bragg and Wilco’s amazing Mermaid Avenue records. According to Paste, the trio were personally invited by Guthrie’s granddaughter, Nora, to sift through the songwriter’s notebooks and scratch pads to gain insight on the artist and his unfinished work.

On February 28, the trio will help celebrate Guthrie’s 100th birthday, which will be celebrated all throughout 2012, with the release of Multitudes. The majority of the lyrics of the twelve-track set were “culled from Woody’s times in L.A…it’s a part of the story that is still mostly unknown. From Woody’s experiences on LA’s skid row to his later years in Topanga Canyon, they are uniquely intimate, and relate two distinctly emotional periods in his life.”

• List Time: Stereogum’s 50+ Most Anticipated Albums Of 2012
• Patrick Carney will produce Rolling Stone contest winner The Sheepdogs
• Cover Alert: The Flaming Lips tackle The Beatles
• Jack White to appear on an upcoming episode of American Pickers
• Download This: Jefferson Airplane, SUNY Stony Brook – 5/1/1970
• Bonnie Raitt to release her first new album in seven years this April

Finally, tomorrow marks the opening night of the New York Guitar Festival. To kick off the event, which runs from January 6 – 29 at venues across Manhattan, a free program paying tribute to Brian Eno’s landmark Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks will take place at the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden downtown. The album, which came out 30 years ago, was originally commissioned as the soundtrack to Al Reinhardt’s Oscar nominated documentary, For All Mankind. Phish bassist Mike Gordon, Levon Helm musical director Larry Campbell, David Torn, Noveller and Tortoise’s Jeff Parker will join Brooklyn ambient ensemble Itsnotyouitsme in offering their live interpretation of the album. For more, be sure to read Sam Davis’s interview with NY Guitar Festival producer David Spelman on Relix.com.

All week long we’ve been looking at our staff’s choices for the best albums of 2011 five LPs at a time. Our submissions include all styles of music from bluegrass to jazz, jam to indie, electronica to rap, as well as everything in between (but sorry Nefertiti’s Fjord it just wasn’t the year for lesbian-Afro-Norwegian-funk music). At the end of the day, we’re a music blog. Everyone is encouraged to write about what they like with no motives, no editorial biases, and no strings attached. We hope that comes across in our picks.

We’re in the home stretch so let’s check out numbers 10 through 6…

10) TV on the Radio – Nine Types of Light

Key Tracks: Second Song, Will Do, Caffeinated Consciousness

Sounds like: A producer cut through a bit of the fuzz of TVOTR to make a very listenable experience.

The Skinny: Sadly the last TV On The Radio record that will feature bassist Gerard Smith, who passed away only nine days after the release, Nine Types of Light showcases TVOTR at their most accessible and sonically pleasing timbre to date. If the album were to have a single it would be the love-longing song Will Do which proclaims, “I think we’re compatible I can see that you think I’m wrong” coupled with “Your love makes a fool of you, you can’t seem to understand – our heart doesn’t play by rules….” Sounds like the guy isn’t getting the girl and unfortunately, is stuck in a state of being ready to go if his hopeful partner ever were to change her mind. Caffeinated Consciousness ends with three minutes and twenty one seconds that you just wish could be heard (with the horn section) by 20,000 screaming fans in the encore slot at an arena – and no, Phish covering TV On The Radio doesn’t count.

- DaveO

• Previously: #25 – #21, #20 – #16, #15 – #11,
• Spotify: Best Albums of 2011 Playlist

READ ON

It’s safe to say that a majority of our readers are quite familiar with the musical history of Port Chester, New York’s Capitol Theatre. Built in 1926 and designed by the architect Thomas W. Lamb, who also designed the United Palace Theater in Upper Manhattan, the theater may be most famous for hosting the Grateful Dead an astonishing 18 times during an 11-month period, but also saw just about every major and influential music act grace its stage from Pink Floyd, Traffic, Joe Cocker and Janis Joplin (who played her next-to-last show there) in the early 1970′s to Phish, Blues Traveler, God Street Wine and Strangefolk in the 1990s. The 1,800-plus seat venue hasn’t hosted a rock show since 1997, but that is all about to change as it was announced that Pete Shapiro has struck a long term deal to present shows at the historic theater.

The Cap will undergo a four-month long, $2 million renovation that according to the New York Times “will include replacing carpets, repainting walls and upgrading bathrooms, as well as adding state-of-the-art light, sound and video systems,” with the Bowery Presents set to book a mix of rock, jazz, Latin and blues act, along with comedy shows. Maybe we’ll finally get that Trey show that was booked at the theater back in 2008, and then subsequently moved to the Roseland Ballroom.

• List Time: Paste’s 20 Best Cover Songs Of 2011
• Danny Clitch released an iPad app of his 1990s photos
• Cover Alert: My Morning Jacket tackle Gil-Scott Heron
• The Hive declares 2011 the year that music went social 
• Download This: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – Snow On Albuquerque: The Songs Of Neil Young & Townes Van Zandt
• Captain Beefhart’s “lost” album Bat Chain Puller to be released next year

Finally, back in October we reported that the influential music site Pitchfork would be  curating their first-ever multi-day festival in New York City, with the help of the fine folks at Bowery Presents, that they had dubbed FORMS. The fest, which was set to take place from February 1 to 4, and “celebrate the interconnected and growing worlds of independent music, art, and gaming” with somewhere between 50 to 75 acts performing at a variety of Bowery booked venues around the city. Well those that were expecting the announcement of more details, may have been in for a bit of disappointment when earlier this week Pitchfork posted the following message on the website about the status of the event…

Pitchfork, The Bowery Presents, and Killscreen are postponing FORMS, the NYC-based event series we collectively created as a way to celebrate the best of music, art, games, and the intersections in between. As the series took shape these past few months, we found it growing bigger and more complex in very exciting ways. We followed those threads, expanded the vision, and simply ran out of time. Pitchfork, Bowery Presents, and Killscreen have a history of throwing spectacular events and producing great content, and we have decided to give ourselves more time to ensure that FORMS is the best it can be. For now, we plan to take a brief pause and provide more information later.

We’ll keep our fingers crossed that this only a bump in the road for what sounded like an interesting venture, and we’ll keep you posted as more information on the status of FORMS as its revealed.

HT faves My Morning Jacket’s final tour of 2011 is well underway and we’re glad to see they’ve been changing it up a bit this run. Tonight’s MMJ news doesn’t deal with their live show, it’s about the announcement of two new studio projects. Tomorrow on iTunes you’ll be able to purchase a special holiday EP called iTunes Sessions featuring a brand new track entitled Welcome Home, a batch of Christmas classics (Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, I’ll Be Home For Christmas and Please Come Home For Christmas) and a “beautiful rendition” of Wonderful (The Way I Feel). Seattle’s The Head And The Heart provide guest vocals on When The Bells Start Ringing, which was recorded last month in Amsterdam. You can download When The Bells Start Ringing free-of-charge from iTunes.

But wait! That’s not all…the Kentucky based rockers also announced an independent record store exclusive 7″. Friends Again, a song the band recorded for the Live Muppet Project that never happened is on Side A of the vinyl, while an “alternate universe take” of the Circuital track Outta My System is on Side B. The band advises to check with your local independent record store to see if they have it.

Start spreading the news indeed, My Morning Jacket will return to NYC’s Madison Square Garden for the first time since NYE ’08-’09 on December 14 with Band of Horses in tow as part of a December tour that will also find the group visiting San Francisco’s Bill Graham Memorial Auditorium on December 2 and the Sunset Cove Amphitheatre in Boca Raton, Florida on December 10.

Today’s announcement includes 12 shows in December starting with the December 1 show at the Gibson Amphitheater in Los Angeles we mentioned on Friday and running through the band’s second-ever Madison Square Garden headlining appearance.

Here’s the complete list of dates:

Dec 1st: Los Angeles, CA @ The Gibson (w/ Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings)
Dec 2nd: San Francisco, CA @ Bill Graham Civic (w/ Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings)
Dec 6th: Tulsa, OK @ Brady Theatre (with Delta Spirit)
Dec 7th: Dallas, TX @ Verizon Theatre (with Delta Spirit)
Dec 8th: Houston, TX @ Verizon Wireless Theatre (with Delta Spirit)
Dec 10th: Boca Raton, FL @ Sunset Cove (with Delta Spirit)
Dec 11th: Orlando, FL @ Hard Rock Live (with Delta Spirit)
Dec 12th: Greensboro, NC @ War Memorial Auditorium (with Delta Spirit)
Dec 14th: New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden (with Band Of Horses)

A pre-sale for members of MMJ’s Roll Call fan club starts today, while tickets for the general public go on sale this coming weekend.

Last October, HT faves My Morning Jacket came to New York City for an epic five-show run at Terminal 5 in which they played all of their studio albums from front to back while also littering each setlist with rarities and covers. Since those performances, the Kentucky-based band have not returned to the Big Apple. Yesterday, the group’s Twitter feed came alive with a message that gave NYC MMJ fans wood…

Speculation has been running wild about what the five-piece will announce come Monday. While we usually avoid rumors, MMJ’s tweet makes it fair game. Clearly My Morning Jacket will be heading out for a tour following their European tour in November. LA blog Scenestar recently published an article saying the group would play the local Gibson Amphitheatre on December 1, but that post was quickly deleted as was a livenation.com listing for that show. You can view a cached copy of the blog post here. Also, The Brady in Tulsa, Okla. put a December 6th date on a sign at the venue’s box office. This all leads us to believe the tour will start on the West Coast and head east, so we’re thinking they arrive in NYC towards the middle of December.

Now, where will My Morning Jacket perform in NYC? Your guess is as good as ours. They seem to love Terminal 5 for some reason, but we’re thinking positively that they will either play a short run of shows at the Beacon or will return to Madison Square Garden, the site of their epic New Year’s Eve ’08 – ’09 performance. A quick poll of the HT staff finds most of us thinking they would be able to sell out “The World’s Greatest Arena.” By process of elimination, Radio City Music Hall is off the table due to the annual Christmas Spectacular.

READ ON for more MMJ in NYC speculation…

On November 8, singer-songwriter Laura Veirs will release her first album of children’s music called Tumble Bee: Laura Veirs Sings Folk Songs For Children. Inspired by the birth of their son, Veirs and her longtime producer Tucker Martine dove head first into the history of children’s folk music to select songs for the 13-track album, which range from the traditional to contemporary from the likes of Woody Guthrie, Peggy Seeger and Harry Belafonte. The album will also feature an impressive array of guest spots that include Jim James, Bela Fleck and Colin Meloy (The Decemberists) – who will release his first children’s book , Wildwood, on August 30.

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• Brian Wilson to release an album of classic Disney songs
• Cover Alert: Amanda Palmer & Kim Boekbinder tackle Postal Service
• Lou Reed & Metallica album – LULU – due out on November 1
• Download This: Tom Waits Never Talk To Strangers BBC Studios ’79
• Check out the trailer for the 8-bit Neutral Milk Hotel video game

Finally, next month the Charles River Museum Of Industry & Innovation will play host to the multimedia plastics art exhibit Another Side Of In, that will feature the work of  a team of three artists, one of which happens to be Phish bassist Mike Gordon. According to the Boston Globe, the exhibit “blends the plastic Lexan with light and sound software for an interactive experience.” For his contribution, Cactus composed customized sound clips, for which his mother, Marjorie Minkin, created relief works for the looped sounds while listening to them. Jamie Robertson designed and built wireless electronics to enable viewers to interact with sound and light on each piece through proximity with the works.  The museum will also host a free opening reception for Another Side Of In—which will be on display from Sept. 11 through Dec. 23—on Wednesday, September 13 from 6:30PM to 9:30PM.

A true sign of a band’s heart is how they react to adversity. On Saturday night at the Kahbang Festival in Bangor, Maine HT faves My Morning Jacket made lemonade out of lemons, and showed they are true professionals with the heart of a champion, when they treated fans to a rarity-laden acoustic set without drummer Patrick Hallahan, who had an “allergic reaction to eating some shellfish.”

[The offending lobster roll via @PatrickHallahan]

The group set the tone immediately with the first Tonight I Want To Celebrate With You of 2011 as the crowd quickly noticed this was no ordinary MMJ performance. Jim James explained Hallahan’s absence and told fans the band wanted to play as a foursome rather than cancel. Hallahan tweeted, “My apologies for not being able to play tonight…first show I’ve ever missed. #mynightmarerealm.” It’s tough not to feel for the guy as he missed his first My Morning Jacket gig since joining the band in 2002.

[JJ Strums While The Bear Looks On - by John Gross]

The bust outs continued throughout the 14-song set, with Bermuda Highway, Look At You and I Will Be There When You Die each making an appearance on a My Morning Jacket stage for the first time in 2011. Hallahan’s drum stool was held down by the band’s mascot, a stuffed bear as his mates went on without him. We’ll be on the look out for audio and video, especially of what’s sure to be an interesting unplugged rendition of Dondante. So kudos to MMJ’s Jim James, Tom Blankenship, Carl Broemel and Bo Koster for not only playing a show most acts would have cancelled, but for making it such a special night for those in attendance. Let’s hope Hallahan recovers in time for tonight’s show in Boston.

[Thanks to Jamie Lairson for the report]