Alt-J – An Awesome Wave
As my bio and previous posts suggest, I tend to gravitate toward bands and albums of the heavy variety (e.g. Machinist! and Fero Lux), so it is not often nor without a heavy heart that I stray from my niche, let alone find something that will hardly leave my CD player for months at a time. An Awesome […]
Need To Downsize Your Kit?
Above: Terry Bozzio’s not-so-compact-kit. Image Credit: Wikipedia OK, so you want a new kit but you hate big, bulky drums. As much as small drums make me cringe, I get it. You don’t want to go through the trouble of having to try and fit a drum set that comes with a 22″ or 24″ […]
Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance – One for the Road
For me, there are certain albums that are tied to certain vistas and experiences. Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the America’s largest railway museum in Union, Illinois. Nostalgic for a time when you could travel the world at a pace more conducive to reflection, I set my sights. For half the journey, […]
Chicago Acoustic Underground Celebrates a Decade of Supporting Original Musicians
Michael Teach listens intently as singer-songwriter Sarah Eide and her band knock out a set of original tunes in the living room of his Chicago apartment. “I love that!” he proclaims into his Neumann TLM-103 microphone as the group wraps up their first number. “What a cool song!” Your average 70-year-old doesn’t get quite this […]
Shootout: Walrus Audio Voyager, Mayflower, Iron Horse and Jupiter
Intrigued by Walrus Audio’s lineup of overdrive and distortion pedals, but don’t know which is right for you? We recently conducted a shootout between four of the Oklahoma-based boutique pedal-crafters’ finest: the Voyager Preamp Overdrive, Mayflower Overdrive, Iron Horse Distortion, and Jupiter Fuzz. Check them out in the video above to hear their varying shades of […]
Interview with D’Angelico Master Builder Victor Baker
Editor’s note: Victor Baker is no longer working on D’Angelico’s Master Builder guitars, but we’ve kept this interview up because it serves as a look into the intricate craftsmanship that goes into these guitars. It’s a New Yorker made by the hands of a New Yorker in New York. To clarify, that’s a D’Angelico New Yorker archtop […]
Khruangbin – “History of Flight”
I was pretty shocked to discover that Khruangbin is just a little band from Texas. I first discovered their track “A Calf Born in Winter” on Bonobo’s Late Night Tales compilation and was hooked by their gorgeous reverb-sapped guitar tones. When I dug a bit deeper into the band’s catalog and heard their more Daptone-influenced […]
Shootout: Black Lion Audio Micro Clock Mk3
What difference does a word clock make? Read on to find out. For this shootout, we recorded acoustic guitar with the Black Lion Audio Micro Clock Mk3 vs. no word clock, and piano/vocal comparing the BLA Micro Clock Mk3 with its predecessor, the BLA Micro Clock Mk2. What Does a Word Clock Do, Anyway? Digital […]
Episode 31 – Patterson Hood
Chris sits down with The Drive-By Truckers co-founder and frontman Patterson Hood, who was later cajoled into singing a song about GG Allin.
