Watch Gillian Welch & David Rawlings play a Tiny Desk Concert

Some 15 years since their last Tiny Desk Concert, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings return to perform songs from Woodland.

Happy Birthday Dee Dee Bridgewater!

Cheers to jazz singer extraordinaire Dee Dee Bridgewater on her 75th birthday! Here's a Birdland show and Tiny Desk Concert. 

Neko Case opens up about the roots of her rage in new memoir

The chat show & podcast hosts interviewing Neko Case seem more interested in her book's cute kitty cover than it's contents.  

Remembering John Barry on his birthday

Raising a glass to film composer John Barry with "You Only Live Twice," a BBC doc, Terry Gross interview and more.

LINKS
John Barry YouTube Playlist YouTube Playlist

Vanity Fair The Man Who Knew The Score by Bruce Handy

R.I.P. rock writer Ed Ward, 1948-2021

Sadly, Austin-based rock historian Ed Ward, who wrote for Rolling Stone, Creem & Austin-American Statesman, has died at age 72.

LINKS

Austin-American Statesman Austin rock 'n' roll critic, historian Ed Ward dies at 72. Read Michael Barnes' obit here.  

Listen to archived episodes of Ed Ward's History Of Rock and Roll podcast right here. 

Quarantunes: Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi

Here's Rhiannon Giddens and her partner Francesco Turrisi playing a Tiny Desk (Home) Concert for NPR. 

Watch Jenny Lewis play a Tiny Desk Concert and a new tune

Jenny Lewis, Anna Butterss & Emily Elbert perform "Rabbit Hole," "Do Si Do" and "Just One Of The Guys" followed by "Under The Supermoon" 

Merry Christmas from Los Lobos!

Los Lobos played a few songs from their Llegó Navidad album for their recent Tiny Desk Concert and also released a video for "Feliz Navidad" 

Happy Birthday Dee Dee Bridgewater!

Celebrating the birthday of the amazing Dee Dee Bridgewater with a selection of songs from Memphis... Yes, I'm Ready.

Watch Wu-Tang Clan's Tiny Desk Concert

Check out the 20-minute workout of Wu-Tang classics to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).

Steve Gunn @ The Drake Hotel, tonight

Steve Gunn's new album Way Out Weather was released on October 7. Watch his Tiny Desk Concert below.

Steve Gunn is a New York-based guitarist and songwriter. With a career spanning nearly fifteen years, Steve has produced volumes of critically acclaimed solo, duo, and ensemble recordings. His astounding solo albums, as well as his work with GHQ and longtime collaborating drummer John Truscinski, represent milestones of contemporary guitar-driven, forward music. A voracious schedule of international performances has cultivated a fervent fanbase for Gunn’s music throughout the world. These days you can find him playing with his band as well as sometimes serving as guitarist in fellow Philadelphia-bred troubadour Kurt Vile’s band the Violators.

Mining the catalogs of Basho, Bull, Chapman, and Sharrock, among other titans of stringed-things and record-session royalty, Steve has steadily processed these inspirations into a singular, virtuosic stream. Friendships and collaborations with Jack Rose, Tom Carter, Meg Baird, Mike Cooper, and Michael Chapman colored the disciplined evolution of the discursive, deconstructed blues sound, at once transcendent and methodical, that is now Gunn’s signature.  Close listening reveals the influence of Delta and Piedmont country blues, ecstatic free jazz, and psych, as well as Gnawa and Carnatic music, on the continually unfolding compositions.

Gunn’s 2009 solo album, Boerum Palace (availble here), demonstrated a fully realized power for songcraft; Steve started to sing more and developed a commanding vocal style equal to his guitar practice. His acclaimed instrumental duo recordings with Truscinski, Sand City (2010) and Ocean Parkway (2012), cemented his place among the top of his peers, both present and past. These documents display Gunn’s compositional penchant for charting musical travelogues that ramble through city and wilderness alike. Dispatches home are not merely descriptive but corporeal; the evocative, rhythmic power of his writing and phrasing carries the listener along bodily. Steve builds songs as exploratory vessels, opens them up for mechanical tinkering, and lives in them through ceaseless improvisatory permutations.

In 2013 Paradise of Bachelors released Time Off, his first album as leader of a trio including longtime friends John Truscinski on drums and Justin Tripp on bass, and a record on which Steve’s compelling singing features more prominently than ever before. The album features his oblique character sketches and story-songs about friends, acquaintances, and denizens of his Brooklyn neighborhood, using the trio band format to launch his compositions into new, luminous strata. This is Gunn at the top of his game, writing his most memorable tunes and lyrics, utterly unique but steeped in traditions both vernacular and avant-garde.

A heady and elliptical travelogue, Gunn’s follow-up, Way Out Weather (available via Paradise Of Bachelors), demonstrates a radical widescreen evolution, featuring a larger band and lighting out for lusher, more expansive, and impressionistic territories than Time Off. This is the virtuosic guitarist and songwriter’s career-defining statement to date.