Archives for March 2020

Stream Pick: Poly Action

Enjoying all the reenergizing magnetic pop of Poly Action‘s brand-spankin’ new album Human Behavior, which is out today (March 31), streaming all over the place and available for purchase in digital format and (your AMM host’s preferred medium, especially during these quarantined times) vinyl. Spin it.

In honor of the occasion, Poly Action front man and songwriter Ray Garza is presenting a solo set with a couple of the new tracks at 6:30PM on Poly Action’s Instagram. And your support via the band’s Bandcamp would also be greatly appreciated.

-Image courtesy of the artist.

Half Dream: “Strange Lover”

Between the ongoing coronapocalypse fever dream, self-quarantine claustrophobia, and surreal political exchanges, things may seem a bit lucid right now. But for Knoxville-raised guitarist-vocalist Paige Renée Berry, the idea of overcoming trauma and fear through music is all too familiar. Berry founded Half Dream just a few years after relocating to Austin, united by a shared love of ’70s folk and modern indie, not to mention one heck of a big collective heart.

The quartet was initially set to embark on an East Coast tour after the release of their debut EP, Monster of Needing, on Thursday, but we’re hoping Half Dream becomes a recurring thing around town. So treat yourself to Half Dream’s aural remedies with Monster of Needing‘s second single, “Strange Lover”


-Jack Anderson

Texas Standard: March 31, 2020

On the front lines in the war against COVID-19: how the fight is playing out in rural Texas, and the potential health crisis few are talking about. We’ll have the latest. Also, Texas counts! We all know that, right? But many worry that Texas might miss out on an important tally that could cost Texas more than just hundreds of millions of dollars, we’ll explain. And how to make sense of Coronavirus case counts. Plus where do doctors turn for medical supplies? How the current crisis may force a rethink of the healthcare supply chain. Those stories and a whole lot more today on the Texas Standard:

Stream Picks: The Sagebrush Show

So, the setting is very classic Tonight Show. Speaking of which, today’s Austin Music Minute spotlight presentation doesn’t have to be viewed at night. It’s for anytime, like over morning coffee, lunchtime nibbles, or freaked out on the couch because really, what the hell does “time” mean these days and does it matter?!

Okay. Deep breaths.

And now, ladies and gents, it’s The Sagebrush Show, curated by your AMM host’s good buddy and fellow music lover Denis O’Donnell, esteemed proprietor of some ATX hot spots you know and love (The White Horse, and former Eastside dive Hard Luck Lounge). Following the Hard Luck Lounge’s recent closing, O’Donnell turned his attention and applied all blood, sweat and tears to a brand new South Austin venue and hang, Sagebrush. Obviously, due to current circumstances, they can’t open the doors anytime soon, so O’Donnell thought: Why not bring the music to folks via the internet? 

These are solo sets filmed (with strict social distancing protocol set in place) at the new venue, and include a lovely chat with each artist (at least 6 feet apart between host and guest). So far, the roster includes ATX peeps Selena Rosanbalm, Corey Baum, Jordan Matthew Young, Blake Van Buren, and AMM-featured artist Candler Wilkinson, and each video has info on how you can send monetary tips their way through Venmo, PayPal or both. Check it out now on YouTube.

-Masks on. Image courtesy of Sagebrush.

The Breaks Shelter in Place

This week on The Breaks, Confucius and Fresh

  • Touch what it’s been life to sheltering in place due to COVID-19.
  • Discuss how these new circumstances are pushing artist to find creative ways to connect with fans.
  • Talk about the new  Jay Electronica release “A Written Testimony.”
  • Chat about Slim Thug potentially brokering a truce between Trae tha Truth and Z-Ro.
  • In his Unpopular Opinion, Fresh reminds people to say inside because COVID-19 does not discriminate.
  • Confucius voices his frustration about non-billionaires defending billionaires for their small donations for COVID-19 relief.
  • This week’s local song of the week is “It’s All Good” by Paris Aryanna.

Listen to this episode of The Breaks

Listen on The Apple Podcasts App, Spotify or Stitcher

The Breaks are on every Saturday 10pm-1am on KUTX 98.9.
You can hear the latest full broadcast of The Breaks Saturday night show.
 

 

 

Jessi Alexander: “I Should Probably Go Now”

For Nashville’s Jessi Alexander, preserving the myth of Southern hospitality in country music is as easy as breathing in the Tennessee air.

You’ve heard her handy work top the pop charts time and time again for major acts like Miley Cyrus, Celine Dion, Tim McGraw and Blake Shelton, not to mention three bold solo records, culminating in last Friday’s rustic eight-track, Decatur County Red. Between COVID-19 and the devastation left by the March 3rd tornados, Jessi Alexander’s run into a couple obstacles for her national tour, but you can still show some love by bumping up her streaming numbers, kicking off with “I Should Probably Go Now”!


Photo: Kristin Barlowe

Texas Standard: March 30, 2020

Texas officials preparing for a scenario similar to New York and New Orleans, as the search for hospital beds kicks into high gear, we’ll have the latest. Senator John Cornyn announces Texas is set to get 237 million in additional emergency relief. He still faces pushback over comments about the origins of the Coronavirus. Also, oil prices. How low can they go? Plus you’ve heard everybody’s working from home? Don’t bet on it. What the numbers say about who is and who isn’t. Those stories and so much more today on the Texas Standard:

Dr. Derrick E. White (Ep. 17, 2020)

This week on In Black America, producer and host John L. Hanson, Jr. presents a discussion of the rich history of Black college football and its contributions to the National Football League with Dr. Derrick E. White, Associate Professor of History and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.

Live Stream Pick: Frederico7

Wicked cool. Austin-based Brazilian psych-pop artist Frederico7 redefines the realm of world music with the Afro-Brazilian sonic feast Exótico Americano, taking it to another level with bits of funk, soul and dub, a mega-melding of American and Brazilian roots.

This is what you want in your living room, dig? And this is how you can get it. Frederico7 songwriter/front man Frederico Do Mar is presenting a series of live stream solo sets every Tuesday and Friday evening at 7 p.m. on Facebook Live, for your personally-curated (home) dance party. Music, stories and a robust community vibe streaming live from the Lion’s Den with Frederico7. Check it.

Texas Standard: March 27, 2020

Concerns about safety for people in detention and behind bars in Texas. Whats best for their health and efforts to stem the spread of COVID-19? We’ll explore. Also, a steep learning curve for stay at home students statewide, as well as their parents and teachers. We’ll hear about that challenge. And in a state that loves pickup trucks, how manufacturers are shifting gears, using parts to help wage war against the Coronavirus. Plus with bars and music venues shuttered all over Texas, the parties move inside and online this weekend. All of that and then some today on the Texas Standard:

Wind Farming

Texas leads the country in wind energy production — and more wind turbines are popping up across the Lone Star landscape all the time. That was the inspiration for this Typewriter Rodeo poem.

Crisis and Guilt

During this time of crisis, you might be at home feeling guilty that you aren’t doing more to help people. You might not know what to do. You might feel you ought to be doing more.

On this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke answer a listener question: “how do you assuage the guilt about not being able to do more? Not able to order enough take out, sew masks, help coworkers homeschool their kids (or give breaks)??

Thank you for the question! Stay safe!

 

This Song: Thao and The Get Down Stay Down

On March 10th, Thao and the Get Down Stay Down released a new single called, “Temple” along with an accompanying video. 6 days later residents in the San Francisco Bay Area, where lead singer, songwriter and guitar player Thao Nguyen lives, were ordered to shelter in place. In this episode, Thao talks to host Elizabeth McQueen about the inspiration behind the new song and what it was like to release music during a pandemic. She also shares how making her upcoming record, also called Temple, helped prepare her to address her sexuality publicly and to create a safe space in her life where she could exist as her full self.

Listen to this episode of This Song

Listen to Thao and the Get Down Stay Down’s new song “Temple.”

Find out where you can Pre-Order “Temple

Check out Thao and the Get Down Stay Down’s Tour Dates

Watch the Video for “Temple”

 

Live Stream Pick: Selena Rosanbalm

Greetings again from the Austin Music Minute‘s quarantine scene!

This time, the spotlight is on the mighty Selena Rosanbalm, front woman for Rosie and The Ramblers. Longtime fans have done their two-steppin’ to the band’s top-tier heartbreakers at The White Horse, as Rosanbalm leads the way with her devastatingly unwavering croons. All the good stuff, because you know the tales all too well – and your heart pangs at the recognition.

Today’s (Thursday, March 26th) AMM live stream pick is Rosanbalm presenting a solo live stream set via Facebook and Instagram at 3PM. Your generous tips will be heartily accepted through Venmo @theBalm and PayPal – selena.rosanbalm@yahoo.com.

-Photo courtesy of the artist.

Hamartia: “Stone Cold Stunner”

What happens when you combine the bleak ’90s outlook of Pavement and Jeff Buckley with the proto-punk vigor of Television and…interestingly enough…the care-free candor of Steely Dan’s yacht rock? You end up with a timeless sense of melancholy, embodied by Austin art rock quartet Hamartia (not to be confused with the hardcore outfit of the same name), who walk the tightrope between shoegaze fragility and bold ’70s hedonism.

And while Hamartia’s noticeable influences are inseparable from their sound, the result is something decidedly unique and worth a few listens just to put your finger on it. Hamartia’s just kicked off their character arc earlier this month with a lead single all about finding the one for you as the years go on, “Stone Cold Stunner”!


Texas Standard: March 26, 2020

We’ve asked listeners statewide what questions do you have about the Coronavirus. Today, we’re getting some answers. Dr. Fred Campbell of the Long school of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio takes on listener questions about COVID-19. Plus, attention shoppers. A certain statewide grocer on the front lines of this crisis asking for help from the public. And how high tech is trying to tackle COVID-19. Also, amid warnings about future lack of bed space, are Texas hospitals ready? Those stories and so much more today on the Texas Standard:

The Texas Polio Epidemic

The silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic, if there is one, seems to be that it spares children. The polio epidemic that raged off and on in the United States for about 40 years did the opposite. Indeed, it seemed to focus on children. Whereas there is hope that COVID-19, like the flu, will weaken in warmer weather, polio was most aggressive in the summer months. As such, Texas was perhaps the hardest hit state of all.

Dr. Heather Green Wooten, a medical historian, and author of the award-winning book, The Polio Years in Texas: Battling a Terrifying Unknown, told me the story of how Texas responded to the polio epidemic that terrified the state every summer for years.

Dr. Wooten told me that when San Angelo had a breakout of polio in 1949 – the hardest-hit town per capita that year in the U.S. – it was horrifying in scope for the city of 50,000. Sixty children in San Angelo came down with polio in one summer. Many died. Movie theaters and swimming pools and public gatherings were shut down. Travelers passing through would roll up their windows so as not to breathe the potentially contaminated air. They wouldn’t even fill up a low tire at the gas station for fear of taking the virus with them. Some residents refused to talk on the phone with anyone, believing that perhaps, somehow, polio could travel through the phone lines.

This kind of fear gripped Texas every summer for years. Parents would not let their children swim or go to summer camp or do anything in groups in an effort to keep them safe. Houses were kept spotless and were scrubbed top to bottom to kill all the germs. In fact, Wooten told me, “When mothers lost a child to polio, they suffered added anguish because they felt they would be judged as bad mothers and poor housekeepers. They would explain to reporters that ‘they had always kept a very clean house and didn’t understand how this could have happened.’”

There was a public service song by Red River Dave, frequently played on the radio in those days. It stressed cleanliness. Here’s a sample:

Take care that all the food you eat and kitchen ware is clean/

Kill the rats and kill the mice and make the roaches go/

That’s the way to really whip that mean old polio

The response to polio was largely a grassroots one, with the common man (and children) largely funding the research, the treatments, the hospitals and rehab centers. The March of Dimes, launched by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was enormously successful in this regard. It mobilized school children and civic groups of all kinds – Rotary International, Kiwanis, The Masons – to collect dimes, quarters and dollars from anyone and everyone. Theaters would play a short film like “The Crippler” before every movie, and then turn on the lights and collect donations from the crowd. It was incredibly effective. The March of Dimes also introduced us to the concept of the poster child, one of the most persuasive fundraising strategies of all time. Collection receptacles, in the form of little iron lungs, were placed at cash registers everywhere.

Wooten said that the small donations coming from almost every American gave each person a stake in beating polio. I like that one year the March of Dimes national campaign was launched from the community of Dime Box, Texas, about 70 miles east of Austin. How’s that for creative marketing!

When World War II broke out, the March of Dimes feared that donations would dry up.  However, FDR made beating polio part of the war effort. He said on a radio address: “The fight against [polio] is a fight to the finish, and the terms are unconditional surrender.”

Big money entered the fight as well. Texas’ great oilmen gave millions to build hospitals, treatment facilities and fund research. Two of the greatest contributors were oil magnate Hugh Roy Cullen and politician Jesse Jones, both historically among Texas’ most generous philanthropists.

Great institutions in Texas like the Scottish Rite Hospital for Crippled Children and the Gonzalez Warm Springs Rehab Hospital for Crippled Children were among the best in the country, as was the Jefferson Davis Hospital in Houston. A fascinating side note is that these hospitals were also among the first institutions to be fully integrated, accepting all children on equal terms, regardless of race, religion or creed. Wooten noted that the children took to integration beautifully and became each other’s best therapy. Doctors found that putting them together helped them function as a team against the disease, cheering each other on against a common enemy.

You know the rest of the story: Dr. Jonas Salk, funded by the March of Dimes, discovered the first vaccine for the virus in the early 1950s, and rather than getting a patent and becoming an instant billionaire, he made a gift of his vaccine to all humanity.