On the Money: Removador Recordings and Solutions

American Songwriter ran a cover story on Jack White in 2009 when he was getting his Third Man imprint off the ground (more like re-launching/expanding it), and around the same time, I spoke with Ian Rogers about his music marketing company TopSpin. He seemed slightly wary yet still supportive of the idea of successful artists [...]

Carry On: Josh Rouse

No one can accuse Josh Rouse of playing it safe. Not only is his new album, El Turista, overflowing with jazzy rhythms and Spanish lyrics, but the disc opens with the track, “Bienvenido,” which has no lyrics at all. According to Rouse, the concept for his entrancing new record wasn’t contrived. But it wasn’t exactly [...]

Drinks With: Arctic Monkeys

photo credit: Timshel Matheny
Skip Matheny— currently a songwriter in the band Roman Candle and former bartender in a retirement community — caught up with Alex Turner and Matt Helders of the Arctic Monkeys before their show in Chicago, Illinois, last fall.
Online Exclusive: This is a full transcript of this text, which includes several questions and answers [...]

Creating Bad Blake And The Authentic Sounds of Crazy Heart

All photos by Dustin Cohen
Like the character he plays so convincingly in Crazy Heart—Bad Blake, an aging Texas troubadour grown weary of his hard-drinkin’, honky-tonkin’, country-music career—Jeff Bridges has been around music all of his life.
But unlike Blake, he has loved every minute of it so far. And that actually has helped him approach his [...]

On the Horizon: Joe Pug

Unknown performers need back stories. That’s just the way it is. Even when they’re finessed and assembled selectively—as all stories are, really—they help us figure out how to interpret the new sounds we’re hearing, and the sources we’re hearing them from.
Joe Pug’s story happens to be a particularly good setup for a 20-something singer/songwriter who’s [...]

Spoon: The Power of Transference

In 1995, Spoon were often dubbed “the next Pixies.” The tag never quite fit, but the two did share a love for writing glorious pop songs and then shrouding them with walls of noise and mystery. Over 15 years, the Austin, Texas band have survived lineup shuffles and early record label neglect, finding their signature [...]

JOHN HIATT > The Open Road

JOHN HIATT
The Open Road
(NEW WEST)
Rating:
John Hiatt immediately sets ablaze asphalt underfoot.
“Shrunken head and Mardi Gras beads,” the celebrated songwriter sings as howling, hooky guitars unhinge The Open Road’s title track, “hanging on the rearview mirror that bleeds/Keeping her eyes on the open road/No telling where that son-a-bitch goes.” Either way, journey outweighs destination. “Got [...]

A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs

A FINE ROMANCE: JEWISH SONGWRITERS, AMERICAN SONGS
By David Lehman
(SCHOCKEN)
Rating:
This compact book is a lucid personal response to a thick and complicated subject; how and why so many standards from the Great American Songbook came from the minds, hearts and pens of Jewish songwriters, from the Gershwins, Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin to Rodgers, Hart [...]

SHEARWATER > The Golden Archipelago

SHEARWATER
The Golden Archipelago
(MATADOR)
Rating:
Shearwater is the stuff of lore. Unlike most post-rock outfits of their kind, the Austin five-piece steer clear of long-winded, psychedelic schtick in favor of something far more palpable and if nearly theatric in its approach. Their songs unfold like some lost epic poem, evoking an almost mythic iconography of vast landscapes, [...]

The Art of Home Recording

While subscription and streaming services continue to make headlines, who knows what the future holds for the value of recorded music? At the same time, though, a $17 billion global musical instruments and products industry is hedging a strong bet that the art of recording isn’t going anywhere.
And with the hyper-aware culture of the Twitter [...]

KEL AUDIO HM-7U

KEL AUDIO HM-7U
LIST PRICE: $349
KELAUDIO.COM
The last decade has seen the number of cheap, brittle sounding condenser microphones skyrocket. Most of these are aimed at the home studio market and only succeed in looking like the large diaphragm condensers and tube microphones of the past. The KEL HM-7U large diaphragm condenser microphone is an exception. [...]

Lyric Spotlight | March/April 2010

A Q&A with Lyric Contest 3rd Place Winner Effron White
In your AmericanSongspace.com bio, you mention a couple of song placements, one on an Australian TV program and another on Canadian TV. How did those come about, and how did they pan out financially and/or creatively?
I don’t know specifically how those songs got placed. I assume [...]

Classic Albums: Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions

STEVIE WONDER
Innervisions
(MOTOWN)

With Talking Book, soul hit-machine Stevie Wonder created a modern album to be reckoned with: “You Are The Sunshine of My Life” and “Superstition” topped the r&b and pop charts, earning three Grammys in the process for the song cycle outlining his romance with singer/songwriter Syreeta Wright. But following Talking Boo’s success, Wonder took [...]

On Track: Josh Turner

Josh Turner anticipates the day his log cabin is finished on his 40-acre spread south of Nashville.
“It’s pretty secluded and private out here,” he says of the homestead he shares with wife, Jennifer, and their two boys, Hampton, three years old, and Colby, just seven months.
The compound is the fruit of a career ignited on [...]

Behind The Song: “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing”

Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell sang, it has been remarked, like lovers, although they weren’t. Similarly, Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, the team behind one of Marvin and Tammi’s most enduring hits, “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” wrote as if under the influence of amatory forces; even if, in the spring of 1968, when [...]

Drive-By Truckers: Patterson Hood Speaks

“I’m honestly pretty beat and haven’t had a lot of time decompressing,” Drive-By Truckers singer Patterson Hood confesses after the thump ‘n’ bump rockers finished a three-day stand at Athens, Georgia’s legendary 40 Watt Club. Never mind that he’s in full promo grind for DBT’s The Big To-Do, Hood is producing “some music for these [...]

Guitar 101: The Bridge to Somewhere

It’s been a cold 2010 so far in Nashville, and I hope to have thawed out by the time you read this. By the way, we need a famous bridge around here like the Golden Gate, which reminds me that I’ve decided to write about bridges. The kind you put (or don’t put) in a [...]

THE GUESS WHO > Playlist: The Very Best of The Guess Who

THE GUESS WHO
PLAYLIST: THE VERY BEST OF THE GUESS WHO
(RCA/LEGACY)
There’s something mildy unhip about Canada’s most successful rock band, The Guess Who. Once you accept this fact, you can enjoy them for what they are: arena rocking, classic rock radio comfort food; a strange amalgamation of The Beatles, Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin.
Their name [...]

AURALEX Room Analysis Plus Kit

[Product shown above is Auralex Space Coupler]
AURALEX Room Analysis Plus Kit
LIST PRICE: $499.00
WWW.AURALEX.COM
The Auralex Room Analysis Plus Kit is a solution for anyone who’s looking to fix their acoustical problems without just haphazardly sticking a bunch of random foam on their walls. The Room Analysis Kit comes with an omni-directional microphone, USB drive with [...]

CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS > Genuine Negro Jig

CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS
Genuine Negro Jig
(NONESUCH)
Rating:
Having become arguably the hottest band to hit the old-timey music circuit since Old Crow Medicine Show, the Carolina Chocolate Drops have the steep task of improving on 2007’s Dona Got a Rambling Mind and translating once again the high energy of their live shows to a recording studio. That [...]