Show You Should Know: Mile Twelve and Old Salt Union @ The Burren (May 5th) Featured Concert Music Features Uncategorized by Brian Carroll - April 18, 2017April 18, 20170 We had a good ol' time last September with the folks of Mile Twelve in the old boiler room area at Freshgrass. Since that time the band has added the mandolin prowess of David Bendict to the mix and are teaming up with another Freshgrass alumni band to take some good old fashioned bluegrass music to the back room at The Burren in Davis Square. "With in-depth musical compositions, a catchy hook, and a high- energy metaphorical punch to the gut, they are truly front runners in the new generation of string music" is a hard tagline to ignore, and Old Salt Union surely lives up to it. Intertwining traditional bluegrass with jazz infused inspiration and a bit of blues for
Otis Mountain Get Down (Sept 8-10): First Round of Performers Announced Festivals Uncategorized by Brian Carroll - April 12, 2017April 12, 20170 The fifth annual Otis Mountain Get Down will take place September 8 - 10 at Otis Mountain in Elizabethtown, NY. Part rock n' roll party on a mountain with some sprinklings of a 'weekend camping get together with your best friends' on steroids, the main point of the Get Down stays true to itself: to produce an experience that encourages new and meaningful interactions with art, music, the outdoors and each other, while also embracing and supporting our local communities, music and culture. The fest's varied line up in terms of genres points clearly to that fact and the names of the artists that are frequenting all the best Northeast stomps and touring their asses off all over the place is a surefire
Tug At Your Heartstrings: The Brother Brothers Tugboats EP Album Reviews Music Features Reviews Uncategorized by Brian Carroll - March 31, 20170 There is this space where very few songs live. That perfect balance between light and lonely sadness that flutters your chest a bit and when you close your eyes to listen to it you can feel your throat start to clench up a bit and your eyelids dampen ever so slightly. That is where the songs of Adam and David Moss live. That perfect place where emotion runs freely and unapologetically. Beauty thrives and a bit of sadness isn't a bad thing. Over the course of my short time knowing the music of The Brother Brothers I feel like I have gotten to know these songs fairly intimately, in live settings or on the old Youtube but the recordings on the
Fresh Track: Twisted Pine “El Chepe” Vulfpeck + “The One I Love Is Gone” Bill Monroe Mash-up Featured Track Uncategorized by Brian Carroll - March 29, 2017March 29, 20170 In case you were living under a rock late last week and missed it, Twisted Pine's mash-up of "El Chepe" by Vulfpeck and "The One I Love Is Gone" by Bill Monroe skyrocketed to nearly 100,000 views after the funk group picked up the video and shared it on their page claiming "so grooving" about Pine's take on their track. The local community did the same and this thing has been shared all around the New England scene and beyond with over 850 times. The quartet, made up of Dan Bui on mandolin, Chris Sartori on bass, Rachel Sumner on guitar/vocals and Kathleen Parks sharing vocal duties and fiddle (as well as some fancy handy work on the granola-percussion) effortlessly blend a
Rewind/Fast Forward: Old Sky’s “Green on Fire”, Listen To This Now! Featured Album Uncategorized by Brian Carroll - March 28, 2017March 28, 20170 Though a large portion of what I listen to on a daily basis is clips and quick portions of songs that wind up in my inbox one way or another, occasionally something catches my attention by a chance meeting at a venue or a bar with someone I probably should have been listening to for a long time. The most of the music I listen to that is over a year old is either something incredibly nostalgic to me or a record I fell in love with when it was released and I can't stop from spinning it today (regardless of how full that inbox remains of new things to dig into, or discard). "Green on Fire" from Old Sky
Peep This: Live From Nowhere Presents Nico Rivers “Tidal Wave” Featured Videos Music Features Uncategorized by Brian Carroll - March 24, 20170 We are big fans of folks doing cool things here on RLR, especially when those things are after our own heart just like the great people over at Live From Nowhere. We featured another one of their sessions a number of months back and are really pleased to be able to feature them again, this time with Nico Rivers tune "Tidal Wave". The isolation of this place and the very out of place high tech microphones and Nico's mahogany Martin guitar amid a backdrop of decaying walls and rotting floor beams, fluffy white piles of fresh snow offsetting the fading graffiti against the walls...its a really haunting and slightly jarring image to see. Beautiful but perhaps a bit dangerous as
Kiss The Ground, Reach for the Stars: Kayla Schureman’s Debut Soars Featured Album Interviews Uncategorized by Brian Carroll - March 21, 20170 Listening to countless numbers of records, singles, songs, voices every week can be a monotonous and tedious endeavor. Things start to sound the same, voices bleed together and guitar lines go from one song to another and the realization that there truly are only so many chord progressions that exist seeps into your mind. That is, until the tedium of uniformity is broken every so often by a special moment. That is what happened the second I heard Kayla Schureman's voice. The record kicks in with "Airshow" and as strange as a comparison as it sounds, it brings me back to early 90s band "Big Head Todd and the Monsters" in how the chorus kicks in with is melodious flow and
Show You Should Know: Aoife O’ Donovan, Julian Lage and Chris Eldridge (3/19 Burlington, VT) Featured Concert Uncategorized by Brian Carroll - March 17, 2017March 17, 20170 Warning: broken record announcement. Aoife O' Donovan is one of our favorites and the chance to catch her up here in our new home of Vermont is something we have eagerly anticipated for the past 9 months of living here. The icing on the cake of musical delectability and virtuous prowess: she is on tour with two of the finest pickers to ever pick a pickin' machine, Julian Lage and Chris Eldridge. The show is this Sunday and in the type of venue that best serves this type of music: a listening space. A spot where each note, each word, can properly decant itself out into the audience and the appreciation for the subtlety of brilliant songwriting and interwoven guitar lines that take
HEY VERMONT! : Lula Wiles at W. Newbury Hall (Newbury, VT) March 12 Featured Concert Uncategorized by Brian Carroll - March 6, 20170 I don't need to say this, but since I have transplanted to a new state in the last 9 months and all my fellow green mountain staters may not have heard me say this enough: you need to see Lula Wiles. The badass songstress trio with harmonies that would make a chorus of angels envious and songs of love lost (and a murder ballad or two) that would make them blush comes to the Northeastern part of the state this coming weekend...and you should be there too. Check out this live video we shot of the gals a while back and head below to get your tickets. We will see you there! Tickets are 20 bucks and well worth the price of admission.
Show You Should Know: Sunaana Fest in Portland, Maine This Weekend Featured Concert Uncategorized by Brian Carroll - March 2, 20170 It has been unseasonably warm these past few weeks and while we still have a nice base layer of snow up here in VT its slowly been seeping up that grayed, brownish dirt hue that makes a rolling white hill of beauty turn into a mushy field of...yuuuuck. The good news is that the season of festivals is drawing close and already the Sunaana Festival in Portland, Maine makes a very early appearance and opportunity to catch 12 bands in a weekend...oh, and did we mention there will be A LOT of real good beer? From the festy folks: Bold and cold! Sunaana is a winter festival created to embrace the time of year when the days are short and the nights are