Creative Caffeine: Nashville Recording Studio

Nashville Americana star Todd Snider has a new live album, The Storyteller, due out on February 1, and his U.S. tour to support the release includes a stop at the Loveless Barn on February 9 as part of the Music City Roots concert series.

Storyteller’s two-disc, 24-song set includes Snider favorites such as “Tension,” “Rose City” and “Sunshine,” with backing from Colorado’s Great American Taxi.

Snider will share the Music City Roots bill with country vet Charlie Louvin, Two Man Gentlemen Band, The Carter Brothers, The Band of Heathens, My Name Is John Michael and host Jim Lauderdale.

Published by Dave Paulson 1-6-11 in The Tennessean

What began as a musical project between six local Nashville friends, bothers Jeremy and Richie Lister and John and Mark McLemore and pals John Martin and Adam Chance has since turned into something of a phenomenon thanks to national exposure provided by the NBC talent show, “The Sing Off.”

In fact, our local boys, who go by the group name of Street Corner Symphony, made it all the way to the finals in the second season of the show and finished in third place, rallying fans across the country with their modern blend of a cappella. The guys caused quite a sensation on the show with their versions of Radiohead’s “Creep,” Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Train’s “Hey Soul Sister” and even a Beatles medley that would have made the original band proud.

To celebrate their progress on the show, Street Corner Symphony performed Tuesday night at Exit/In and the response for tickets was so overwhelming a second late set was added to the lineup.

“This is a great town and a beautiful moment in time for us to come together,” Jeremy Lister told the audience.

Hosted by industry insider Dean Shortland, the group was joined by some very famous faces including Yale’s own a capella group, The Whiffenpoofs, a highly lauded bunch that has been around since 1909 and each year chooses 14 new seniors to make up the voices. They too competed on “The Sing Off” but were voted off in the early rounds.

And winners of “The Sing Off,” Alabama gospel group ‘Committed’ also made an appearance but it was two local faces that caused the biggest stir in the audience. Singer/songwriter Ben Folds, who was one of the judges on the television show, surprised guests when he joined Street Corner Symphony on stage during the early show and Alison Krauss drew huge applause when she dropped in for the late show to sing her tune, “Maybe” backed by all three groups.

Krauss has been publicly acknowledged as one of Street Corner Symphony’s biggest influences and it seems she’s quite fond of them too.

“I looked for different phones so I could call in and vote again and again,” she told the crowd. “I couldn’t even sleep the night before the finale.”

Original Heather Byrd article at http://nashville.metromix.com/events/essay_photo_gallery/byrds-eye-view-street/2392365/content

Country star Carrie Underwood’s first feature film foray, Soul Surfer, is scheduled to hit theaters April 8.

Ahead of that release, church leaders, pastors and youth workers are getting an opportunity to take an early look during a series of screenings (information at www.soulsurferwave.com.). Interlínc, which works to share Christian music with youth leaders, has also shared an early teaser promo for the film via YouTube.

Underwood plays a youth counselor in the film, which is based on the life of surfer Bethany Hamilton, who fights her way back to the sport she loves after losing her arm in a shark attack. The cast also includes Helen Hunt and Dennis Quaid, with 17-year-old AnnaSophia Robb portraying Hamilton.

The country star spoke with the Associated Press about the movie in September, and said she was pleased with her first big-screen work.

“I really liked how everything turned out, including myself,” Underwood said in an interview Tuesday. “I was really expecting the worst from myself, and I really surprised myself.”

Learn more about Hamilton and the film at www.soulsurferwave.com.

Published by TUNEIN The Tennessean 1-11-11

Don’t expect to hear much noise from half Nashville-based supergroup the Dead Weather in 2011. Rock duo The Kills, fronted by Dead Weather singer Alison Mosshart, will release their fourth album, Blood Pressures, on April 5.

The announcement follows news that Dean Fertita, the Dead Weather’s other non-Nashvillian, would be reconvening with his Queens of the Stone Age bandmates to start work on a new album in January. Meanwhile, Dead Weather bassist Jack Lawrence has been on the road with his old garage rock group the Greenhornes.

Dead Weather drummer/singer Jack White, of course, has been keeping his hands full: The White-produced Wanda Jackson album comes out January 25, and he had a hand in Danger Mouse and company’s spaghetti western-inspired Rome album project, set to drop in March.

Still, with most of White’s Dead Weather and Raconteurs bandmates out of commission, there seem to be fewer obstacles in the way of a White Stripes reunion.

Published by Dave Paulson 1-11-11 in The Tennessean.

The King of Pop returns from the grave with a collection of odds and ends loosely held together by splashy guest star cameos.

The buzz: This 10-song collection—the first new music from Jackson since 2001—has been embroiled in controversy by the late star’s own family, who’ve claimed it’s not actually the singer’s own voice. But the album arrives with stars like 50 Cent, Akon and Lenny Kravitz to bolster its appeal.

The verdict: When Michael Jackson died in 2009, he was on the brink of a tour intended to remind the world what an incredible talent the King of Pop was, even as he reached his fifties. Of course, that tour never happened and, unless you were on the moon for the rest of that summer, you know that his death brought on a massive resurgence in the popularity of his music. Here, on his first posthumous release, there’s been a clear attempt to modernize the singer—by pairing him with more current stars and Top 40-friendly beats, Jackson’s longtime producer Teddy Riley clearly hoped to rocket him back to the mainstream. Yet, these songs feel tenuously held together and never click into place. It’s not that his voice isn’t as strong as it’s ever been—just that the emotion that made songs like “Billie Jean” and “Thriller” explode out the gate is either missing entirely or hidden beneath layers of hyper-polished production. That being said, the anthemic ballad “Hold My Hand” with Akon blends the two singers well and could easily have been a sing-along crowd-pleaser on the Jackson comeback tour that never happened.

Did you know? Though Jackson’s estate says there are about 60 incomplete songs left by Jackson, they plan to only release the 17 to 20 that they feel are “worthwhile.”

Official website: http://www.michaeljackson.com/
Release date: Dec. 14, 2010
Record label: Sony

Published by Jessica Jardine in Metromix, 12-13-10.

Country fans who somehow find themselves listening to the Britney Spears’ single, “Hold It Against Me,” might be reminded of an old Bellamy Brothers song.

“Back in 1979, I wrote a little song called ‘If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body, Would You Hold It Against Me,’” said David Bellamy in a press release that landed in e-mail inboxes with the subject line, “If I Said You Ripped Off My Song, Would You Hold It Against Me?” “That little song went No. 1 and has since become one of the defining songs of our career. If you listen to the lyrics of Britney Spears’ new single, ‘Hold It Against Me,’ you’ll find some major similarities. We feel completely ripped off.”

Indeed, Ms. Spears’ new single, written by Bonnie McKee, Lukasz Gottwald, Mathieu Jomphe and Max Martin, asks, “If I said I want your body now, would you hold it against me?”

USA Today’s Edna Gunderson reviewed the single in Tuesday’s paper by noting that it was “built on one of the dumbest pickup lines in bar-hopping history.”

It’s doubtful that Spears is trying to hop on David and Howard Bellamy’s fame wagon to advance her career: She’s no country music scholar, and she wasn’t born until two and a half years after the Brothers topped country charts with their hit.

David Bellamy has explained for years that he was inspired to write the song after hearing Groucho Marx utter the pickup line on his You Bet Your Life show.

No word from the Marx estate on this situation, and Spears’ camp did not reply to a Tuesday afternoon e-mail inquiry.

Published by Peter Cooper on January 11, 2011 in The Tennessean.

Everyone knows Jeff is the accordion player to call… but wow!  We love his piano playing quite a bit too!

Studio owner Jeff Brock producing the legendary Tommy Emmanuel.  Jeff really isn’t as stressed as he looks.