Look at me I'm Romeo Sid Vicious » intro

Please Consider Where I’ve Been (an intro to Tim Barry)

Romeo Sid Vicious — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:47:51 +0000

Stepping out of the legendary punk band Avail and into bare feet and the occasional tour bus Tim Barry has carved his name in the hearts of alt country fans everywhere. From the opening strains of Laurel Street Demos’ Idle Idylist to his presence on the Revival Tour he is a powerhouse. His songs evoke the kind of emotion that Southerners grasp on a level not available to the rest of the world. From train songs to heartbreaks Tim covers the range. His influences range from punk to vintage country and his songwriting shows it. While I refer to his music as alt country it really transcends the genre. There is an honesty to this music that is rare in any genre. You can listen to a few of these songs and say “Mr. Barry your punk is showing” and not be off the mark and still on others you can hear the haunting melodies of the country greats. I don’t think any music fan won’t find something to like in Tim’s catalog.

I have missed him the last couple of times he has been through Houston and it is much to my dismay. I don’t have a single cool story to tell about this man. In fact I am pretty much a new fan. I had heard his name floating around amongst my musical peers but I had never listened to his solo music. I had been an Avail fan for a long while but for some reason I had skipped Tim’s solo career. Last year I got a copy of the Revival Tour’s stop in Denver and Dog Bumped was the first time I had ever heard Tim Barry. Since then I have procured all of his released music and it’s been in heavy rotation since I first bought Laurel Street Demos last year. Much like most of the other intros I have put up Tim is a Suburban Home Records Artist and that’s, at least around these parts, a mark in his favor. While his solo catalog is small compared to bands like Drag The River there is so much ground covered in the few LPs he has released that it never ceases to amaze. Choosing these tracks was no easy task and I did sit and ponder which tracks to include. I hope that I have done Mr. Barry justice in my choices.

(I did things a little differently on this set of tapes and included the albums in the ID3 tags so there isn’t a track to album list for each tape. You’ll just have to buy them all!)

Tape 1 Track Archive

Tape 2 is two tracks off of each of Avail’s full length albums. Tim’s method of delivery may have changed but these tracks will show you that from his humble punk rock beginnings to his quieter method these days the intensity hasn’t gone anywhere. I couldn’t choose a favorite part of Tim’s career if I tried. Although Pink Houses holds a special place in my heart. I probably listen to more of his solo stuff nowadays but that’s just where I am at. Also I’m old…and GET OFF MY LAWN!

Tape 2 Track Archive

Tim has a new album in the works so be sure to keep your eyes on Suburban Home Records for more details…

Linkage:
Tim Barry’s Website
Tim Barry on Suburban Home
Tim Barry on MySpace

Enter: Two Cow Garage

Romeo Sid Vicious — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:00:35 +0000

I haven’t been a fan of Two Cow Garage for that long, which is a travesty, but they have taken a rightful place among most played artists. I went a different route with this intro as, much like Cory, I was working with a limited selection of releases only this time I had but a single bootleg recording with which to supplement. So instead of walking through the Columbus, OH rockers’ career in chronological order I decided to slap down one tape of my favorites from all of their albums and give you the only concert I have in full and un-cut. While seemingly limited two tapes is more than enough to show anyone who’s tastes cross mine that Two Cow Garage is an awesome band. I advise listening to these tapes while point you browser at Suburban Home Records and buy their three albums as quickly as you can.

Tracks 01, 08, and 11 are from Speaking In Cursive
Tracks 02, 03, 05, 12, and 15 are from III
Tracks 04, 07, 09, and 13 are from The Wall Against Our Back
Tracks 06, 10, ad=and 14 are from Please Turn The Gas Back On

Track Archive Here
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This is a show I found linked on the Drag The River message board. It was formerly hosted on cotapers.org but isn’t in their database anymore. Thankfully there were two seeders for the torrent and it took about eight hours. I’ll probably never know who the seeders were but I owe them a debt of thanks. Also thanks to the original taper: James Freeman for making this available for us. I did convert the FLACs to MP3 for this tape but it’s always nice having FLACs of concerts laying around. And there you have it….

Track Archive Here
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Well folks that’s all for this intro. I have one more in the alt-country vein then I am going to bring in some Texas/Red Dirt music to fill out the intros series. I may have two or three more months of weekly intros in me. If you have heard me mention a band and would like to request an intro please feel free to drop me a line on twitter and I’ll see about taking care of it for ya’.

Get To Know Drag The River

Romeo Sid Vicious — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:32:59 +0000

I have to admit that this intro was a little harder than I expected to put together. I am a big fan of Drag The River or I wouldn’t be slapping these tunes up here for people to get to know the band but wow the history here is daunting by itself. Couple that with the amount of work produced by the band and its members and I had a pretty huge project staring me in the face. Of course I didn’t let that stop me from putting together a set of tapes that will hopefully show the band’s growth as well as their history. I should make it clear that I didn’t even try to find music from everyone who has been in this band and simply pulled from own collection. That may be a little lazy but if I had tried to track down a little from every single member this intro wouldn’t have come out until next month. So we all just have to make do with I had laying around and hopefully three tapes will be enough to make anyone go out and track down the full DTR catalog as well as the works of all the members current and present.

This first tape is all Drag the River all the time. The first three tracks are off of Hobo’s Demo’s (2000) which was recorded in ’96 and ’97 at the Blasting Room in Ft Collins, CO. Chad Price and Jon Snodgrass played and/or sang on all the tracks and a slew of other musicians in and out of the studio such as Chad Rex, Paul Rucker, and Zach Boddicker. This session also produced Chicken Demo’s (2004) which tracks 7 thru 9 hail from but which was released after Closed. (2002) which is where tracks 4 thru 6 can be found. I decided on release order for this one and freely admit it was an arbitrary decision. The next three tracks, if you managed to keep up through the above mess of a description, come from It’s Crazy (2006) and track 10 is the first DTR track I ever heard and the one that caused me to fall in love with this band. Tracks thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen all make an appearance on You Can’t Live This Way (2008) and the last three tracks can be found on Bad at Breaking Up (2009). This does not represent the full catalog of releases as there have been EPs and other appearances along the way but I feel it covers the major releases for DTR and gives a good solid overview of the band as a whole.

Tape 1 – Track Archive

The next tape, much to my dismay, only has one track from the whole band live. I was shocked to discover I hadn’t collected much live DTR and will have to remedy that in the near future. This tape is mostly Jon Snodgrass live and couple off his Visitor’s Band solo release. That covers the last track and the all the middle tracks but the first two tracks are Chad Price live and are well worth listening to. Chad’s has his first solo effort in the breech and ready to fire over at Suburban Home (there’s even a single track sneak peak) and I really wish I had more of him to put on this tape but woe and alas it is what it is.

Tape 2 – Track Archive

I almost didn’t make this last tape, and then after making it almost didn’t post it but decided it was a neat look at the forces that created DTR and the history of, admittedly only a small few, the band members. These are all tracks from the bands that the members of DTR played in prior to forming DTR with the exception of tracks seven, eight, and nine which are from Chad Rex and the Victorstands gravity works fire burns. The first three tracks are from Armchair Martian which was a Jon Snodgrass punk band. The next three are from the Karl Alverez days with All, yet another punk band, which was the kicking, screaming, live-birth of the Descendants when Milo Went To College. These three tracks are off of Allroy’s Revenge. The last three tracks are also from All but feature Chad Price and are from Mass Nerder. While not even close to a complete rundown of all the bands that the members of DTR have played in this tape should serve as a decent overview of the history and the roots of Drag The River. Since it is, according to Jon, “Chad’s and my band” I think I captured the history of the driving forces behind the alt-country powerhouse that is DTR.

Tape 3 – Track Archive

With such an amazingly dynamic lineup over the years I can’t do justice without listing the members, past and present, and tossing some links out to any current projects they may be working on and any projects that may have passed away but still have some internet presence left hanging around. So without further ado, and according to wikipedia (which may be wrong) I present Drag The River’s members:

Chad Price (Current): All, Drag The River, Solo
Jon Snodgrass (Current): Armchair Martian, Drag The River, Solo
J.J. Nobody (Current): The Nobodys, Drag The River, JJ Nobody and the Regulars
Zach Boddicker (Current):Drag The River
Chris Pierce (Current): Drag The River
Dave Barker (2005-2007): Pinhead Circus
Casey Prestwood (2005-2006): Hot Rod Circuit
Paul Rucker (1996-2005): Armchair Martian
Karl Alvarez (1997-2002): All, Drag The River
Chad Rex: Solo

And of course the standard linkage:

Suburban Home Records
Drag The River Homepage
Drag The River Myspace
Drag The River on PunkNews
Prior Drag The River Coverage on 9b
Drag The River on Wikipedia

It’s Always Darkest

Romeo Sid Vicious — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:57:21 +0000

Just in time for #musicmonday on twitter I managed to finish up the latest in my intros series. This week we have William Elliott Whitmore for your listening pleasure. I have only been listening to this guy for about a year now, after seeing a post about him on 9b but in that year I have purchased every album he has released. He’s just that good. With a voice that Tom Waits could only dream about Whitmore moans out every track with an amazing passion. I have read the bio on his website, the reviews all over the web, and I have to say that getting to know WEW is best done by simply listening to his music. So press play and off you go…

Tracks 1-3 are off of Hymns for the Hopeless(2003)
Track 4 is from The Day the End Finally Came (2004)
Tracks 5-8 are from Ashes to Dust (2005)
Tracks 9-11 hail from Latitudes (2005)
Tracks 12-14 are off of Song of the Blackbird (2006)
Tracks 15-17 come from Animals in the Dark (2009)
Track 18 is from the single Animals in the Dark (2009)

Click here for the track archive
William Elliott Whitmore’s website
Nine Bullets – Since Autopsy IV is responsible for my introduction WEW it’s only fair I toss his site in here as well.

And I almost forgot…the embed code so you can plop this little tape anywhere you like

Meet Mr. Branan…

Romeo Sid Vicious — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:33:13 +0000

Wow the second post in as many days! Aren’t you all impressed as hell right now? Yeah…I didn’t think so. Anyway I got to thinking about all of the music I discovered either directly through Lucero or indirectly by hanging out on the message board and how many of my friends haven’t heard any of it but what I played at them. So I decided that once or twice a week I’ll toss up an intro of sorts to a different artist that is somehow related. So here we go, spinning off into musical oblivion, hang on because I have no idea how down this rabbit hole goes.

Today’s compilation is titled Meet Mr. Branan and it is just what the title says: and introduction to Cory Branan. In the interest of full disclosure I have to admit that Cory is a friend of mine and not just an artist whose music I dig. However I had never met him or even heard of him until I got turned on to Lucero and heard their song “Tears Don’t Matter Much”. I was singing along one day and all of a sudden I had to find out who could “…play those wild ass shows, …and sing so sweet” and that was the day I discovered Cory Branan.

The first time I saw Cory play was at the Dickson Street Theatre in Fayetteville, AR when we bailed out of Houston to run from a storm that didn’t even knock out our power. Needless to say we had a great vacation in Fayetteville, you see I have family there, and I got to go out on the town a couple of the nights we were there. Dave ‘Tato’ Morris introduced me to Cory before the show and we tossed back a couple of Jaeger shots. I am pretty sure that’s when it started going downhill, but in a good way, and we ended up at Maxine’s drinking $ 0.50 Schlitz until the wee hours. Well enough of my ruminatin’ on the past let’s talk about this here music.

Tracks 1-6 come from two different versions of Cory’s first CD “The Hell You Say”. The first pressing, commonly known as the “Memphis” version contained Pale Moon on Paper Town, One Of Theirs, and Green Street Lullaby (Dark Sad Song). Those tree songs were replaced with Skateland South and American Dream at the second pressing. Until very recently copies of this version were very rare indeed. To be sure they are still rare but if you trek out to see Cory live, and you damn well should, you just might find a copy on the merch table for the price of every other CD there. This is an album owning Two Copies of.
Tracks 7-9 hail from “12 Songs” and it has the disctintion of being Cory’s last album on the label we won’t mention here. This is the album where you can see how fast of friends Cory and Lucero are as Ben sings and plays on this one along with Roy Berry. I miss the Roy Ninja. (You’ll have to google that cause I am not sharing any more) With four years between albums Cory’s songwriting style stayed the same. That is to say he remains spastic and a little schizoprhenic but all in a damn good way. My favorite track on this album is Love Song 12.
Tracks 10-13 come from Cory’s session at Ardent Studios. You can check out the videos of that session or grab the tracks, cut up by yours truly, here. There are some songs here that will make an appearance on his album that is due out later this year and some that you will only get to hear bootlegged or if you drag yourself by your worthless collar out to a show. When I tracked this up from the mp3 on the ardent page I left in the banter because you really don’t get a feel for Cory without his banter. Make no mistake: Cory is a dork but he’s a dork with a guitar and songs that will make boys drink until they forget their name and a voice that makes girls clothes fall right off…
Tracks 14-19 are from Nights Like These, a bootleg, of a show Cory played with ben Nichols. They played “buddy rock” and while it’s not tracked perfectly I didn’t edit them so you may need to go track down a copy, it’s not hard, so you can figure out what Cory and Ben are on about in the some of the interludes that got left in. This one also has some songs that will probably never make it onto wax, like The KISS Song, and not sound like a broken record that you can only truly appreciate live.
Track 20 is the first song of Cory’s I ever download. I can’t convice the bastard to play it live for me but I giggle at his response every time someone asks. It is a party song for sure and it’s a damn fine one. But I guess we all grow out some things.

To be sure Cory is an amazing artist and a great friend. Here are some links as well as the track archive for the above tape:

Cory Merch
Cory’s Website
Cory’s Myspace (I can’t believe I am posting a MySpace link)
Last Chance Diner (Cory’s fansite with a woefully outdated theme. It’s all my fault and I need to fix since I manage the damn site after all)
Cory’s Ardent Session Audio
Cory’s Ardent Session Video
Track Archive for Meet Mr. Branan

And last but not least the embed code so that you can go forth and share the Branan love (he might kill me for that line):

A Lucero Primer

Romeo Sid Vicious — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:08:07 +0000

This is sort of a Lucero primer. I have made many Lucero CDs over the years to turn people on to their music. Today I decided that I would be lazy and simply make three one hour playlists and post them here. Now I can simply give people a URL instead of spending time making plastic discs that people just rip and file away somewhere. Three one hour playlists turned into four playlists as I decided to toss in some of Ben Nichols’ solo work as well as some tracks from his prior band Red 40. I enjoyed putting these together and I hope you will enjoy listening to them. You can get all of the music here, on the original discs, from the Lucero Store. In fact you should pop over and order everything while you listen. I tried, and most likely failed, to put the tracks in order of their original release so that as you listen you can see how the band grew and how their style became what it is today. Enough rambling, on to the music…

I chose “Cowboy Emo” as the name of this compilation due to a rumor of the conversation between Ben and Brian that laid the groundwork for Lucero. I won’t bore you with the whole story but rumor has it that Brian described the music he wanted to play as “Cowboy Emo” during that conversation. I don’t think there’s much emo and not much cowboy in the music but it’s a fitting title nonetheless. The track archives have proper id3 tags and even some horrible cover art I threw together so they should drop nicely into iTunes or whatever you use. There’s even a code snippet you can use to embed these tapes on your own blog if you want!

This first tape has songs from the first four Lucero albums:

Tracks 1-3 are from the Attic Tapes which was recorded prior to the release of their first album. I have heard this was around 1999 but that could be wrong.
Tracks 4-7 are from the boys self-titled release on Madjack from 2001.
Tracks 8-13 are from Tennessee released in 2002. Coincidently the first Lucero song I ever heard “Sweet Little Thing” was from this album.
Tracks 14-17 hail from That Much Further West which was described by Rolling Stone as “The country album Paul Westerberg never wrote…”. This album was released in 2004.

Tape 1 Track Archive

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Tape 2 shows the growth of this band. Only having a line-up change once and going back to the original line-up has proved to be a strong point for the boys. They have grown together musically and listening to Ben’s lyrics mature from fleeting romances to deep desires has been a pleasure over the years. Of course he hasn’t stopped writing songs about drinking either but even those have a touch more maturity to them. Any band that’s been together as long as they have either sounds the same as they did at first or they grow. Lucero took the second route and each album is a little different but after a while you can still tell when there’s a Lucero song on even if you hadn’t heard it before. The first time I got to see them play live it was on the tour supporting Nobody’s Darlings and I have seen them every chance since.

Tracks 1-5 are from Nobody’s Darlings released in 2005.
Tracks 6-11 are from Rebels, Rogues, and Sworn Brothers released in 2006
Tracks 11-14 are from the yet to be released 1372 Overton Park which is due out in October ’09

Tape 2 Track Archive

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This tape is live Lucero. You really can’t experience what a Lucero show is like just listening to tracks recorded live but hopefully this will inspire you to go out and see them because their music is amazing but their live shows are a whole lot more.

Tracks 1-4 are from Dreaming in America (You should by the DVD as well).
Tracks 5-8 are from their session at Ardent Studios in Memphis.
Tracks 9-12 are bootlegs from a show on Feb 5, 2009 at Ottobar.
Tracks 13-16 are bootlegs from a show on March 14, 2009 at Black Cat

Tape 3 Track Archive

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This last tape is Ben Nichols playing solo, you can hear Cory Branan on a couple of tracks, and stuff from Ben’s band prior to Lucero which was called Red 40. Ben’s solo album “The Last Pale Light In The West” is an amazing album and a bit of a departure from the standard Lucero fare but I think the tracks on this tape will show that it’s a must buy for anyone who likes Lucero.

Track 1 is from All Aboard: A Tribute To Johnny Cash. Ben’s song is not the only reason to get this album but it sure doesn’t hurt either.
Tracks 2-4 are from Ben’s recent solo effort The Last Pale Light In The West released in 2008.
Tracks 5-9 are from a show Ben did with Cory Branan some time back. Track 5 is a cover of a bad ass but lesser know Replacements tune.
Tracks 10-14 are Red 40 tracks. Their whole effort as a band is available on a single album and it’s worth owning. While not the same sound as Lucero it’s some pretty fun pop punk.

Tape 4 Track Archive

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