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The thing about Shawn Mullins is that his voice is so big it fills the room all by itself - he doesn't need a full band behind him for a full performance.

So two or three songs in during his acoustic show at the Troubadour last night, you forgot he was the only person on stage.

Shawn's currently promoting his new album Honeydew, and this show at the Troubadour was sparsely filled, mostly with industry folks - and I understand this was by design. The Troubadour had set up chairs on the main floor, in addition to their balcony, and nearly everyone had a seat. And the audience felt comfortable enough to ask Shawn questions in between songs, like whether or not he would collaborate again with the Thorns, to which Shawn said it was a possibility, and then jokingly asked if this was a press conference.

Shawn gained national attention some years ago when "Lullaby" became a #1 pop hit, followed by another minor hit, "Shimmer," from his Soul's Core album, which I hear as an Americana album, not a pop album. If you need further proof, you should have been at the show when I started bawling when he sang, "I'd drink a whole bottle of my pride," from "Shimmer." That's some good songwriting.

Shawn also told my favorite story about "Blue As You," from 9th Ward Pickin' Parlor, in which he was writing with Matthew Sweet and Pete Droge (the three of them round out the supergroup The Thorns), and Matthew was a little hung over from the night before and was napping in the other room. But they needed him to contribute the third verse to the song so they could properly share writing credits, so they carefully woke up him, and Matthew mumbled, "Interstellar rainbow on its cosmic wheel; rollin' where the wind blows, never standing still," while Shawn and Pete hastily wrote it down. And Matthew promptly went back to sleep.

THAT's great songwriting.

And there's more where that came from on Honeydew, as evidenced by "For America," "Cabbagetown," "All In My Head," and especially in the tragic "The Ballad of Kathryn Johnston," all from the new album. Shawn also covered James McMurtry's "Where's Johnny," and came back for TWO encores (even the Chris Thile Fan Club didn't get TWO encores!), which included two Kris Kristofferson songs.

An awesome show, and a sweet new album.

Slim Cessna's Auto Club tried to save me last Monday night, so I had to let Bad Religion lead me astray again last night. They do good work.

My knowledge of Bad Religion is peripheral at best, but it appears that I'm even more indie than I thought - because I thought the songs that weren't their radio hits were their least interesting songs (except for "The Hills of Los Angeles." That song kicks ass.). However, are they still a punk band? 'Cause I went to this show to see a subculture that seemed to be absent...Can the punk experts elaborate? I need to know!

(And if you want to take me to one of their sold-out shows in Anaheim this week, I love you.)

This weekend, my dad made my mom and I watch PBS's documentary about Pete Seeger (such a thing is to be expected when your mom is a former hippie and your dad is an aspiring banjo player), and what I learned is how grateful I am to be living in a society that doesn't ban artists from the radio or blacklist them from TV shows because of their political views. Oh, wait....

It’s a rarity that I find a band I am truly fond of, but when I found Shane Tutmarc & The Traveling Mercies I got lucky! And, now the time has come for me to share them with you too. How did I get so lucky? Well, it’s a well known secret that a friend of mine, whose name goes unmentioned, is to be attributed with blessing me. Have Mercy!

Shane Tutmarc hails from Seattle, WA and is best known as lead man for the now defunct band, Dolour. A very bright and ingenious songwriter, Shane, his brother, Brandon, and their cousin Ryan have formed a tight family band, and the Mercies are just oozing with talent. It’s like a fresh breath of air to hear them play. And, the topics that Shane Tutmarc writes about have certainly hit home with me as I’m sure they will with music lovers all over. They pull sounds from many different music genres to keep it fresh and progressive. The instrumentations only add more color to songs about life and love. It’s the "next best thing in rock and roll", and I know you won’t be disappointed.

With their recent release "Hey Lazarus!", Shane Tutmarc & The Traveling Mercies are a band to keep your eye on!

Shane Tutmarc & The Traveling Mercies

You can check out Shane Tutmarc and the Traveling Mercies at:

http://www.shanetutmarc.com
http://www.myspace.com/thetravelingmercies

Also check out Dolour at http://www.myspace.com/dolour

I went to the Foo Fighters show Wednesday night.

Yes, I said the Foo Fighters.

"You mean you know who the Foo Fighters are?" asked my 22 year-old sister, who apparently thinks I live in a cave.

(Okay, the only reason I know who the Foo Fighters and Serj Tankian are is because they've been featured on Loveline. And they sounded pretty smart when they were on that show - especially Serj Tankian - so I figured I'd be interested to explore their music a little. I realize that that's kind of the opposite of what Loveline's goal is - what they really want to do is draw in listeners with the bands, in hopes that the listeners will learn something. Instead, I listen to Loveline in hopes of laughing at their stupid callers, and end up learning about music, too.)

Not realizing that I'd accidentally be seeing Mike Stinson at the Gaysian bar last Saturday, I was afraid of having live music withdrawals, so at the last minute, I scored a pair of "obstructed view" seats in the rafters of the Forum - which is a nightmare venue to try to park at (the freaking House of Blues is easier than this joint), little did I know....So we missed all of Against Me! and most of Serj Tankian, but saw enough of him to realize that he is the brother from another mother of Big & Rich's Big Kenny. And when Dave Grohl announced that this was the show at which, "Everyone who has to work tomorrow is fucked!", he wasn't kidding (I was useless at work on Thursday). The Foos went on at 9:30p, and didn't stop until shortly before midnight. They're a band who is clearly proud to consider L.A. their hometown, and thrilled to have sold-out the Forum for two nights in a row.

But what I was most proud of is that I anticipated an unheard of level of debauchery, being in the "Cheap Seats." I expected to see fights, pot smoking, many overserved patrons...But what I witnessed in Collonade 24 at the Forum was nothing, NOTHING compared to the debauchery that went on in the lawn section of KZLA's Country Bashes at Verizon Wireless in Irvine. We had people puking on other people, enough weed to make Willie Nelson feel at home, men fighting, babies crying, and security guards having sex with female concert goers (we made the venue hire a different group of security guards the next year). The worst thing I saw at the Foo Fighters' show was a guy who'd lit up a joint, only to obey when security told him he had to put it out. WTF? Oh, and the drunk guy who got his leg stuck in a chair while trying to climb into another row was pretty funny, too.

But overall, compared to the country fans, you rock fans have NO IDEA how to party. Once again, the country fans have made me proud.

Sometimes I think I say I'm a bigger Jay Farrar fan than I really am. I guess he's someone I think I should worship, but in reality, don't.

I went to the Troubadour with high hopes on Tuesday, and for the first fifteen minutes of his set, was really impressed but after that, all of his songs kinda started to sounded the same, as I frequently find is the case with shoe-gazers. Since his opener was Anders Parker, also a talented musician, but also a little boring, I was hoping for there to be maybe a little something from their Gob Iron collaboration, and yet...nothing. Having said all that, Jay totally redeemed himself with his encore, a cover of "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way" Jay Farrar-style. BAD. ASSSSSSSSSSS. Maybe I do worship him. A little.

The Punch Brothers were playing Thursday night, but silly me - I didn't realize until I got there that this was a show to be attended almost entirely by the Chris Thile Fan Club. Seriously. With a name like "The Punch Brothers," one would think that this would be more of a collective band unit - no, this show should have been marketed as Chris Thile and Everyone Else - okay, that's unnecessarily mean - Chris Thile and the Punch Brothers, instead of The Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile, as it was marketed. I don't mean to say that it's a bad thing that Chris is the star, because he clearly is - and while the rest of the brothers are also clearly talented (No way is the former member of Nickel Creek going to associate musically with anyone who's not a virtuoso), I'm just saying let's call it like it is. Especially if Chris is going to keep referring to Punch, the new record by the Punch Brothers, as his second solo album....I mean, come on.

But yeah, I'd go see them again, too. In a heartbeat. Even with the Chris Thile Fan Club.

In 1955, Freddie Bell and the Bellboys recorded a song called "Hound Dog." While performing in Las Vegas that year, a young up-and-coming singer named Elvis Presley caught their act, liked the song, and decided he would record the song too.
Presley's record was a hit and he became a huge star. Bell's record was not a hit and he continued playing casino lounges.
Sometime around 1990, I witnessed Freddie Bell's act in a casino lounge in Reno. He did some of the expected lounge standards and told raunchy, stale jokes like this one:
"While the astronauts were up in space drinking Tang, I was down in New Orleans getting some poon!" While half the audience groaned and the other half struggled to do the math, he punctuated his point with "Poon!" (rimshot) "Tang!" (rimshot).
He preceded his version of "Just A Gigolo/Ain't Got Noboby" with an angry diatribe against David Lee Roth, who he accused of stealing "his" song.

Freddie Bell died on February 11, 2008. He may have been the last of the old-school Vegas lounge singers. He was certainly the last of something.

I've only seen Kelly Willis - one of my all-time favorites - play live once, and hardly even that. It was about a 20-minute Rykodisc showcase at SXSW (Yes! Only twenty minutes - not even the "full" 40-minute set that comprises a normal SXSW showcase!) some years ago, so you can only imagine the panic I felt when I read on her website that she was taking an indefinite hiatus from touring to focus on being a mom and raising her children (by the way, it's not like Kelly tours all that much to begin with - so when she says she's not touring any more - I kinda take that seriously!). I called my friend Pam and begged her (okay, she's a Kelly Willis fan, too, so it wasn't like I was pulling her arm or anything) to go with me to Santa Barbara last weekend to see her show at the Lobero Theatre. She agreed, and off we went, Thelma and Louise style, to Santa Barbara.

I should back-up a bit, before I get too carried away, and mention the prelude to our evening in Santa Barbara. The previous evening, a Friday night, I went (yet again) to The Mint to see Hayes Carll and Chuck Prophet (Chuck produced Kelly's latest record, Translated from Love, and was also playing in Santa Barbara the next evening). I've seen Hayes in better form - I imagine that because this was his first trip to Los Angeles, he wasn't as surrounded by as many people who were familiar with his music as he's used to. The band scheduled between Hayes and Chuck was the Carnival Dogs, but it seems that most of the band was unable to make it, so as filler, they got some terribly boring coffee-house singer to perform for a half-hour, and then two members of the Carnival Dogs joined the founder of the Mint (I found this a little confusing, 'cause I thought the Mint was founded in the '30s, but it seems that this was really the guy who refurbished it a few years ago) for three or four really boring songs that made me seriously consider leaving. I stuck around, though, and got to see Chuck play for about 30 minutes before I had to go back to work. Chuck was so-oo good, and it was really hard to leave early.

I wish I could say that Pam and I headed up the coast to Santa Barbara early enough on Saturday to do some wine tasting and sit down to a nice dinner, but c'mon, we don't have our shit together THAT much. We made it in time to walk up and down State Street a bit, and have Ben & Jerry's ice cream (Brownie Cheesecake is DELICIOUS!) before heading back over to the Lobero. Outside, we marveled at how cool it was that so many people knew who Kelly Willis was, and then we realized that her show was part of a subscription series called "Sings Like Hell." It was a very different setting and crowd than we're used to at the smoky bar joints - a sit-down theatre with no alcohol allowed inside. We worried that people would complain if we tapped our feet too loudly, and backstage, even Kelly admitted that shows like that are terrifying - because those people are actually listening! Kelly played a fantastic set accompanied by only a couple of guitars (and Chuck and a drummer at one point for "The More That I'm Around You"). I also learned at the show that the Dixie Chicks had requested to record Kelly's "Not Forgotten You" for their debut album, which Kelly denied them, saying, "That's MY song!", not realizing that they'd go on to sell a gazillion copies of that album. Now, of course, she's a sister-in-law to one of them, and the song they recorded by Kelly's husband, Bruce Robison, "Travelin' Soldier," became "the fastest descending #1" in the history of the Billboard charts. I would have loved to hear Natalie Maines singing that, and it seems like it would have been such a great inclusion on their Wide Open Spaces record, but I'd take Kelly Willis singing her own song over that any day.

This show has definitely left me yearning for the day when Kelly returns to touring again.

is Willie Nelson. Went to his show at the new Nokia Theatre in Downtown L.A. Across the street from the Staples Center.
First of all the Nokia Theatre is a decent venue for once. Not to big and not a bad seat in the house.
This was my first time seeing Willie Nelson perform live. I missed Johnny, Roy and Jerry Lee is unreliable (sorry Killa) and well Willie is one of the last "outlaws". Highlights was nod to Crazy and then a triple treat of Hank Williams, plus a few hits.
He has a couple of his sons perform with him. One of his sons is awesome blues guitarist but when he sang I was a bit thrown off. I thought it would be deeper but it wasn't. Just didn't mix. Both sons are into Bob (Marley, that is) which I think brings musically a even more laid back/relax vibe to the night.
At the beginning of the show he played this mini movie/video of him kicking back in Lucky, Texas for the annual lawnmower race. Stars like Luke (I heart) and Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, who I thought was awesome in The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by the way, and unfortunately Jessica Simpson were featured. It was very cute and had a few laughs.
Willie played his anti war song A Peaceful Solution which got everyone on their feet. It has great lyrics. I really do think we need to take back America.
I was disappointed that he didn't perform Hello Walls, one of my faves!

There are only three of the original five members of The Duhks (pronounced "Ducks") left, and it was with much curiosity that I went to see them at the Knitting Factory last night. Much of the Duhks former appeal, I believe had to do with the look of former lead singer Jessee Havey - a girl who's arms and upper chest are covered in tattoos - singing old timey music. Certainly not the norm.

However, as much as I love Jessee, I found myself a quick fan of the new lead singer, Sarah Dugas, and thought her introduction was a perfect one - just enough fan favorite songs, plus plenty of songs from their forthcoming album, which they just recorded in Nashville. Sarah's voice is similar, albeit not identical, to Jessee's, but Sarah sang even the "old" songs with as much sass and confidence as if she was the one who had performed the songs on the record, too.

Appropriately, fiddler Tania Elizabeth and banjoist Leonard Podolak took over introductions on a few songs that had a place in the band's history prior to Sarah's inclusion, but in such a seemless way that one never knew she hadn't always been part of the band. Guitarist Jordan McConnell is still with the band, but percussionist Scott Senior has been replaced by Sarah's brother, the understated but very talented Christian Dugas (Scott has chosen to remain off the road, due to the birth of his second child, and ironically, Christian and Leonard also played together in a band called Scruj MacDuhk - from which Leonard came up with the current band name).

So, yeah, I'm anxiously awaiting the new album from the Duhks, and the next ripple in their pond.