Former Drive-By Truckers guitar man Jason Isbell and his band the 400 Unit were up in the House of Blues Parish Room on Friday night and our photography master Julia Pretus was there to capture some cool Black-and-Whites.
Jason Isbell
The initial artist lineup for the 2010 CMJ Music Marathon in NYC was announced today. Many more acts to be announced soon, but the top of the lineup is definitely some interesting stuff and shows worth seeing if you’re in the area. Passes are on-sale now. READ MORE
photo by Mr T in DC
It has only been a few months since I made the move to Brooklyn from Charlottesville, so I thought I’d give a little Cville music shout-out. Although it’s a pretty small city, Charlottesville has always had a fairly bustling live music scene. But over the last few years, it had been marred by a ton of turnover with the town’s mid-size music venues. The Satellite Ballroom closed, Gravity Lounge shuttered its doors, and Is hardly lasted a year. The Paramount was a nice size, but it was much less focused on the mid-tier, touring rock bands that helped make the scene vibrant. And the entire time I lived in the town, there was an ongoing restoration of the historic Jefferson Theater that simply never came to fruition.
Well, it looks like things are finally starting to pick up again. Gravity Lounge reopened under new management as The Southern and it looks like the long and storied Jefferson Theater renovation will finally be completed. They recently announced their grand opening including a pretty solid lineup of bands for late 2009 and early 2010. Good stuff.
Like New Year’s Eve, Halloween is another holiday that a lot of bands choose to celebrate in style. There’s just something about mixing the live concert experience with all the fun and choas of Halloween that really brings out the freaks. While most bands typically play into the Halloween vibe in some way, touring bands often approach Halloween as an opportunity to really create a unique live music event. Just as we did with our New Year’s Eve concert round-up, we’ve compiled a list of Halloween concerts that will be going on this weekend (see below for the long list).
We have also noticed a few bands that are taking a similar approach to Halloween as Phish by doing some sort of “musical costume” and either covering another band’s music or playing a full show of thematic covers. Here are a few of the more interesting “musical costumes” we’ve seen announced this year:
NPR’s got a live stream with former Drive-by Trucker, Jason Isbell, playing the Mountain Stage with his solo band the 400 unit. Good stuff.
Waking up in Astoria, Queens, Sunday was a warm beautiful day. Alas the weather forecast told us that it would not last and we were facing one of those days at a festival. You know, those rainy miserable days that make you question how badly you want to hear some live music.
By the time we got to Pier 11 to catch the ferry over to the festival site, the rain was beginning to fall. There were a fraction of the number of people that were waiting on Friday. No doubt the weather was keeping many people home. Sure enough, by the time we got across the river, the rain was coming down hard and steady.
There was only one man that would motivate me and my seven-month pregnant wife to head out in this weather – Trey Anastasio.
