Archives for April 2019

Mia Gladstone: “Baby Don’t Worry”

Rest assured, Mia Gladstone is NOT just a blip on your radar. The eccentric singer-producer has been dropping singles for the past couple years and between her vivacious personality and uncompromising lyrics, Gladstone is pop-R&B beast. And while her singles may be spread out in terms of release dates, when you listen to them together you really feel the cohesiveness within this young up-and-comer, whose style walks a tightrope between upbeat and chill.

This Wednesday Mia Gladstone shared her third single of 2019 in advance of an upcoming EP. It’s just as impressive as the rest of Gladstone’s burgeoning discography and benefits not only from a message of self-acceptance but also a flute performance by Cautious Clay. Put yourself in the weekend mindset and burn off the stress with “Baby Don’t Worry”!

Something Wicked…

**Deepest apologies to our listeners and The Well for Laurie G’s error on the album title, Death and Consolation. Laurie misread it as “…and Communion.” That’s Laurie’s bad…!

Before hitting the road in support of Death and Consolation, KUTX April Artist of the Month The Well is taking care of the home turf with three upcoming performances:

-There’s the big release show tonight at Barracuda, 611 E. 7th St., featuring Swedish doom band Monolord, and Austin-based doom trio Communion.

-And the album release show, along with the special release of a brew crafted in their honor this Saturday at Independence Brewing Co., 3913 Todd Ln., Ste. 607. 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Featuring performances by Ninth Circle and Ringo Deathstarr.

-And, don’t forget the instore performance Sunday at 5 p.m. at Waterloo Records, 600 N. Lamar Blvd.

Send The Well off proper by rockin’ out. Very recommended.

-Photography by Julia Reihs for KUTX.

Texas Standard: April 25, 2019

A 3 year old found alone at the border, his name and a phone number written on his shoes. An anomaly? Hardly. This instance turning a spotlight on a tragedy more common than many might imagine. So reports Manny Fernandez of the New York Times, and we’ll talk with him. Also, the Texas based Boy Scouts of America facing growing allegations of sexual abuse, we’ll have the latest. Plus, Texas leads the nation in traffic deaths, so what do lawmakers plan to do about it? Those stories and so much more today on the Texas Standard:

The Get Ahead: “Deepest Light”

Much like parmesan with dark chocolate or peanut butter on a hamburger, Americana and Soul isn’t an obvious pairing…but it’s still pretty dang good.

Just ask The Get Ahead, a Portland five-piece founded in 2012 by lead singers Nathan Earle and Juliet Howard. Their shared love of Gospel, R&B, moving a crowd and beyond initially propelled The Get Ahead, and an auspicious meeting with  Son Little resulted in one of their biggest musical heroes producing the group’s 2017 EP Mind is a Mountain.

Recently Earle and Howard were married and in addition to welcoming their firstborn into the world, The Get Ahead shares a new full-length tomorrow! At just shy of a dozen songs, Deepest Light illuminates this period of transition, brings matriarchy to the forefront and will enthrall you with their take on American roots. Enjoy the full thing Friday, and jump the gun on The Get Ahead with the album’s title track!

Effluxion

If you embrace the realm of nerd-dom as your Austin Music Minute maven openly and unhesitatingly does, you may get a chuckle out of Telekinesis‘ reference to the single-word title of their fifth studio release, Effluxion. “You need to say the word out loud…” is the message on the Telekinesis website. “It comes from the Latin term meaning ‘to flow,’ and pronouncing it is the closest you will ever come to feeling like you’re in an episode of Star Trek…”

Michael Benjamin Lerner, songwriter/vocalist/drummer/buzzing mind behind Telekinesis, absolutely felt a connection to the flow of shimmering, lush, infectious power-pop on Effluxion as he worked through the album. The term is not often spotted in today’s vernacular, but Lerner found it’s delightful oddness captured the mood of the creation, the composition, the natural flow of making the back-to-basics LP.

You can see Telekinesis perform tonight at 3Ten, 310 Willie Nelson Blvd. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Joseph LeMay‘s musical project SONTALK opens the show.

-Photography by Rachel Demy.

This Song: GRiZ on Disney’s “Fantasia”

Grant Richard Kwiecinski, who goes by GRiZ, is a producer and multi-instrumentalist who combines electronic music with funk and soul to create a sound that is as uplifting as it is danceable.

Listen as GRiZ describes how seeing Disney’s “Fanstasia”as a child helped him understand that music could take the listener on an emotional journey and how that experience ultimately led to his  interest in making music on the computer. Then listen as he explains why he wanted to explore his own complex emotional journey on his latest record “Ride Waves.”

Listen to this episode of This Song

Listen to GRiZ’s new album Ride Waves

Check out GRiZ’s Tour Dates

Listen to Songs from this episode of This Song

Texas Standard: April 24, 2019

A Texas democrat enters the race for U.S. senate, facing a 3 term incumbent with a massive war chest. Veteran M.J. Hegar throws her hat into the ring for the Senate seat held by John Cornyn. What are her chances and what does it mean for another much talked about potential challenger? Also, the Dallas D.A. getting pushback from the governor and others over plans not to prosecute some petty thefts. The D.A. says its criminalizing poverty. And one giant leap for legalized hemp in the Lone Star State. All those stories and more today on the Texas Standard:

Kim Simpson: “By Lake Kavano”

For starters, this isn’t Kim Simpson‘s first rodeo with radio. He’s the current host of KOOP’s International Folk Bazaar , co-host of Around the Town Sounds and actually once had a spot with us here at KUTX hosting Folkways. On top of that, a book and a Ph.D., Simpson’s been strumming out his brand of sixties-and-seventies-inspired folk since well before his 1992 debut album, and doing a damn fine job of it too.

On his latest record The Comets Swish Their TailsSimpson couples his distinctive fingerstyle guitar technique with striking lyrics, covering anything from spiritualism to folk remedies to “sky omens”. Oh, and he’s the sole performer of every single instrument across all fifteen tracks. The Comets Swish Their Tails came out back in January and the release show takes places one day before Kim Simpson’s 50th birthday, next Thursday, May 2nd at the Townsend. You can hear the full record whenever you get a chance but go ahead and kick back this Hump Day with an elegant acoustic tune: “By Lake Kavano”!

-Jack Anderson

And Stay Awake

And the adventure continues. Although that’s an understatement.

Parquet Courts unleashes brilliant absurdity, revelry, and simultaneously, a kind of…aloofness on their Danger Mouse-produced release, Wide Awake. So, there’s no denying the passion for the music they play, but you get that intertwined with – no eff’s given. You’ve got garage-rocky punk-ass obnoxiousness and you’ve got dreamy. And it all works.

Parquet Courts are back in Austin for a show tonight at The Parish, 214 E. 6th St., sharing the bill with Denton, TX rainbow fuzz-rock warriors Pearl Earl, and ATX rock ‘n’ roll hoodlums Otis the Destroyer. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and Otis starts the music at 8 p.m.

-Look at these geniuses. Parquet Courts, photographed by Eddie Gaspar for KUTX.

-You might wanna click on the MP3 below and listen ’til the end.

Texas Standard: April 24, 2019

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sex. But what about sexual orientation? We’ll take a closer look at the Supreme Court’s decision to hear a trio of cases with the potential of expanding gay lesbian and transgender rights. Also, 3 scientists being fired amid espionage fears at Houston’s prestigious M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. And we’ve been hearing about Central American migrants at the border: a surprising number waiting in Ciudad Juárez are coming in from Cuba. Those stories and much more today on the Texas Standard:

Orouni: “Charles And Sylvester”

The philosophy behind French songwriter Rémi Antoni is all about building bridges between left and right brain, simplicity and complexity and beyond to create the world of Orouni. Antoni started the group as a solo endeavor and now, nearly a decade and a half later, this Parisian indie pop outfit is quick to charm listeners with atypical instrumentation, rich harmonies and a serious dedication to their craft. Orouni recalls sounds of The Kinks and Bob Dylan as much as they do Belle & Sebastian and other contemporaries and just last Friday they released their fourth record Partitions.

The fourteen new tunes on Partitions make for a great introduction to Orouni, so tune up your Tuesday and be a third wheel for a bit with “Charles And Sylvester”!

Texas Standard: April 22, 2019

T-minus 35 days and counting as the Texas Legislature approaches the end of the regular session. Will we be going into overtime? A closer look today on the Standard.

From property tax and school finance reform to child welfare and the environment -a whole lot of unfinished business and just five weeks to get it all done. We’ll have an update.

New numbers on Texas agriculture. What do they add up to? A shifting landscape in rural Texas, for starters–we’ll have more.

Also, the brand that planted the Texas flag in high tech history is breaking new ground and adding hundreds of jobs. All those stories and more as the Texas Standard gets started.

Shifting Sand

Full disclosure: Your humble Austin Music Minute host has been well aware of songwriter Anna Larson‘s skills as a classically-trained pianist (and instructor). But this multi-talented creative mind is fueled by all the gospel, rock ‘n’ roll and many other musical genres she grew up with. And quite frankly, it was invigorating to see many ideas come to fruition through her band, Americana/roots trio The Wheelwrights.

Earlier this year, Larson made her solo debut with the wondrous and introspective Shifting Sand. This is Larson at her most powerful – embracing and inspired by beauty in all its forms, but most especially in dreams, all the magic behind the stories we share…surreal, unsettling, inspiring, wonderful.

You can see Anna Larson at an early show happening tonight at One-2-One Bar, 1509 S. Lamar Blvd. Doors open at 6 p.m. Stay a bit later to catch Cari Hutson and Good Company. Recommended.

The Well: “Sabbah” (Live in Studio 1A)

If you’re still itchin’ for more from our April 2019 KUTX Artist of the Month, then it’s time to dig deeper into The Well. This Austin-based trio draws from a maelstrom of musical influences, filling buckets full of psychedelia, hard rock, metal and punk. Sure, it may be distorted to all hell but that doesn’t mean there’s not a ton of melodic elements and intriguing chord progressions in the mix.

The Well joined us in Studio 1A last Wednesday in advance of their third record Death and Consolation and three release shows later this week. Catch The Well this Thursday at Barracuda, Saturday at Independence Brewing Co., and Sunday at Waterloo Records. Listen back to their This Song and My KUTX episodes when you get a chance, and enjoy a free download of Death and Consolation‘s opening track and an exclusive live recording of “Sabbah”!

14th Annual Fritz Pollard Awards, pt. 2 (Ep. 20, 2019)

On this week’s program, In Black America producer and host John L. Hanson, Jr. presents highlights from the 2019 Fritz Pollard Awards, featuring NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Lifetime Achievement Award winner Warwick Dunn, and Fritz Pollard Alliance founder John Wooten.

Happy Daze

It was loud. And farout. Wurve killed it in KUTX’s Studio 1A Thursday night, giving an excellent preview of what’s to come tonight.

The band just released their debut album, the electrifying Memory Bleach, and you get to hear the new tracks live. Check out their album release performance at The Electric Church Presents: The Green Gospel Revelation, happening at Getaway Motor Club, 3700 Thompson St. in East Austin.

It’s an all-around SICK line-up, including Holy Wave, Sailor Poon, Hidden Ritual and Cosmic Chaos. Damn. So many Austin Music Minute faves in one setting. Ether Wave Light Show and ACID Light Show will provide just the right atmosphere for your 4/20 vibes, with loads of cool pop-up shops to peruse on site. Doors at 6 p.m.

Lit like a Christmas tree. So recommended.

-Photography by Scott Free.

KUT Weekend — April 19, 2019

In a special edition of KUT Weekend, we bring you a half-hour look at why many students of color are struggling in Austin’s public schools. It’s a documentary called Held Back, produced by KUT’s Claire McInerny.

Texas Standard: April 19, 2019

Reaction to the Mueller report from across Texas and from across the political spectrum. So what happens next? We’ll talk with legal scholar Steve Vladek. Plus beyond the legal and political implications, one aspect not getting much attention: how the U.S. was attacked by Russian military units. NPR’s Pam Fessler joins us with details of how a voting system was breached. Also a pattern of Black and Latino suicides and what’s being done. Those stories and so much more today on the Texas Standard:

Prom

It’s the time of year when many high schoolers are donning suits and dresses to attend the big dance. That was the inspiration for this Typewriter Rodeo poem.