“The name ‘Ditchbird’ sounds like a folk artist,” he says from his home studio in Minneapolis, where both Real Enough For You Now and the harder-hitting Some Dreams EP were recorded, “but I wanted to make sure people were aware that I’m not going to sing songs with an acoustic guitar on my couch forever. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I have more rock songs in me. It’s the sound I grew up hearing.”
About fifteen minutes into our conversation, Nat Puff has some choice words for me. It had taken that long for us to properly introduce ourselves – it was an early morning and we were both very tired – and I joked that it ultimately didn’t matter because I was, in my words, “just a person.” READ MORE…
Glide is proud to premiere the song and video for the knock-em dead single “Alone,” which features the cool windswept pedal steel of Jon Rauhouse. In a crowded Americana scene, Megan and Shane stand out as licit ambassadors for a vintage sound, where accomplished vocals, stirring musicianship and colorful nuances give its music a sense of time and place. Let’s hope they can get out to Nashville soon and use their teaching chops to put on a clinic of their own.
While too many artists these days patronizingly try to copy their peers, nobody actually goes to the source itself. While James Houlahan might not evoke the name recognition of others, his instinct and passionate take on folk is one to behold. On his new LP, Ordinary Eye, Houlahan features Lou Reed / Fiona Apple drummerDanny Frankel and violinist Scarlet Rivera, the timeless fiddler on Bob Dylan’s classic 1976 album Desire and was part of the infamous Rolling Thunder Revue tour.
Produced by longtime collaborator Fernando Perdomo, the album was recorded at L.A.’s Reseda Ranch Studios during the weeks leading up to America’s Covid-19 quarantine. This context adds new gravity to Houlahan’s music, while the A-list studio band—including drummer Frankel (Lou Reed, Fiona Apple, Nels Cline), violinist Rivera (Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue) and vocalist Esther Clark—fulfill this fully realized effort.
Glide is premiering the video for the hush landscaped folk of “On My Own,” which showcases Houlahan’s crafty songwriting styling that is a mix between the introspectively daring sounds of Bill Callahan, Greg Brown, and Will Oldham.
Washington, DC psych/post-punk artist Binding Spell, aka producer and songwriter Roger Poulin, out July 30, is preparing to release his new LP, English Basement, a nine-track collection of genre-blurring post-punk that finds Poulin reflecting on himself, his relationships and the world at large from the confines of his subterranean home studio in Capitol Hill. READ MORE…
GoldenOak released its second album, “Room to Grow” on June 24, and it’s already in the running for one of my favorite local albums of 2021. They’ve hit their stride in every way possible: lyrically, vocally and musically. READ MORE…