Modern living can be overwhelming. The constant barrage of advertisements, an onslaught of corporations demanding your loyalty, and the constant, forced connection of social media combine to make solitude and presence borderline impossible. Finding peace and calm is something to be celebrated, and when you can harness that moment it can become something beautiful. READ MORE…
ALL BITE are preparing to release their debut LP, Get Well Soon, on December 3, and ahead of the new album, the trio are releasing their new single, the hyper-speed, folk-punk-inspired track, “If You’re Like Me.” READ MORE…
Husband and wife Megan and Shane Baskerville’s first date was at a Motorhead concert at First Avenue in Minneapolis and, as their romance blossomed, they formed a ska band and eventually opened a School of Rock franchise in Arizona. In a previous life Shane had toured with a number of punk bands while Megan was a student of bluegrass, having grown up with a passion and love for country music.
William Russell Wallace’s essence is a timeless concoction that is a rare balance of vocal execution and harmonically driven rock and roll in its most raw form. With a throwback Americana style that sounds as if The Jayhawks jammed with Patti Smith, Wallace hoots, toots, and struts with a contagious abandon. Fans of new soul revival artists like Low Cut Connie and Ron Gallo will find something to adhere to on Wallace’s new album Confidence Man.
This set lights up like kindling drenched in gasoline. The instruments are bright, the music well-produced, the voice is a pit bull with a groove that is rock music as it should be in 2021. Stuffy Shmitt (vocals/acoustic guitars, National Steel guitar) has lots of musical pulp on his varied short masterpieces.
His core band is producer Chris Tench (electric & acoustic guitars /xylophone/piano/tubular bells/xylophone/glockenspiel), Parker Hawkins (electric+upright+fretless basses/vocals) & Dave Colella (drums/percussion).
On the 11-cut, 49-minute CD (already available), Stuff Happens (Realistic Records) was recorded in Nashville, TN. The songs have personality, wit, expressiveness & are ballsy.
One of my most played albums of the year, STUFF HAPPENS, from the idiosyncratic Stuffy Shmitt featured in our review section back in February of this year. It made an immediate impact, to say the least, with its stockpile of raging rockers alongside smooth ballads, which found the author digging into the memory vaults and recalling incidents and characters from his explosive past.
Settled and reinvigorated in East Nashville, following a near self-destructive existence in New York, Stuffy hooked up with producer Brett Ryan Stewart and multi-instrumentalist Chris Tench to record the album at Stewart’s studio in Franklin, Tennessee. What also followed were some striking videos to promote a number of the songs, filmed by the talented husband and wife duo Ahana Kaye and Iraki Gabriel.