Dan Wilson is laughing. He’s chuckling from a pay telephone on the concourse of a shopping mall in Minneapolis. The background tinkling of a holiday bell-ringer accents Wilson’s conversation over the long-distance line. Dan Wilson’s happy because he’s recalling the time when his band, Trip Shakespeare, was deemed the absolute…
In Dallas two weeks ago, a couple from Finland stood silently at the grave of guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan. After 20 minutes or so, the Finnish man reached into his pocket and walked to the tombstone. He took something out and clicked it across the letters in the name, then…
“Now, let’s get one thing straight–I’m really a pussycat,” Kim Wilson says, able to hold back the laughter for only a second. Considering the history of his band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, a bulldog is closer to the truth. For 17 years, through good times and bad, Wilson has pushed an…
Although every record label wants to claim it was the first, no one really knows who invented the boxed set. Usually comprising a cardboard box, a handful of CDs and a book full of pictures, boxed sets focus on the music of a single artist, time period or genre. A…
It wasn’t so long ago, if you were able to snag a pair of tickets to a George Jones concert, only half the battle was won. For certain, you wouldn’t get many betting types to make book that this country music living legend would actually perform. And if he did,…
It’s an autumn afternoon in downtown Tempe. The sun is clear and strong and there’s a breeze kicking around the aromatic remnants of the previous night’s rain. Business is brisk at the Coffee Plantation. The Tempe hot spot is cluttered with the usual crowd–students, artists, the fashionably underemployed and the…
In 1987, Vern Gosdin was ready to chuck the whole music business. He’d spent the last three decades playing his clean, pure, Southern-style country music in ornery taverns and toiling on teensy labels, and dammit, it was high time to start thinking about a pension. “You get a little age…
AZMC ’91: PLAYING FOR KEEPS Ahhh . . . there’s nothing like a music conference. Musicians of every size, taste and hair style steal into town. Music-business people–everyone from writers and deejays to promoters and record-company executives–fly in and schmooze themselves silly. During the day, everyone drifts in and out…
The lights went down. From the buzzing P.A. system a voice requested, “Won’t you please welcome Nirvana!” The band ambled out onto the stage 15 minutes later. After the usual tuning of guitars and pounding of drum heads, Kurt Cobain leaned over the microphone stand, strummed the opening chords and…
Charles Michael Kitteridge Thompson IV is bored. Mr. Thompson, better known by his stage name “Black Francis,” is submitting to an interview about his band, the Pixies. But the singer-guitarist sounds like he’d much rather be doing something else. “I’m not comfortable making a big deal out of things,” he…
“Uh, can I get you something?” asks the waitress. “Yeah, a beer please,” answers Nirvana’s giant, ragged bassist Chris Novoselic. The Howard Johnson server promptly leaves the table, as if she’s just been given an order in an alien dialect. Maybe she doesn’t realize she’s speaking to one of America’s…
It was Christmas night, 1976, and Freddie King was onstage at the New York Ballroom in south Dallas. A larger-than-life character, the hulking King was pouring on the Texas blues–his guitar screaming out the chunky lines that rock guitarists everywhere still lift, his powerful voice bouncing between a bellow and…
Given her family background, it’s no real surprise that Laurie Lewis developed an interest in music. Her grandmother turned out old Norwegian songs on the piano. Her mother sang Lutheran hymns while her older sister played the flute. And her father worked his way through medical school while playing piccolo…
It’s prime time in some generic ‘burb in the eastern United States. Tired from the commute home, white-collar Joe plops down in front of the TV in time for the evening news. There, between reports of another bank failure and the ballooning deficit, are those ultraexpensive news-hour commercials: Depends, Preparation…
The Maricopa County Demand Reduction Program Task Force–that multiagency gang of law enforcers which has been busting pot smokers at rock concerts for the past year and a half–is known by many names. Informally, it is called the “Do Drugs, Do Time Task Force.” In even more informal circles, that…
“It’s easy to write a song when you’re upset about something,” says Jeff Tweedy of Uncle Tupelo. “I mean, the last thing you want to do when you’re happy is sit down and write about it. It almost seems like you’re bragging.” Tweedy certainly isn’t a boastful guy. He could…
Several years ago, jazz pianist Billy Taylor received an unusual request. The prestigious Juilliard String Quartet asked him to compose a piece that combined jazz with classical music. Although George Gershwin and Aaron Copland had explored the jazz-classical overlap, the area was largely uncharted territory. The work Taylor came up…
Same smoochy lips. Same stylized eye. Did the Arizona Lottery lift the ad campaign for its new “Lady Luck” game off the cover of the 18-year-old rock album Ladies Invited? In some ways it’s a perfect fit: the graphics of a long-out-of-print disc by a Boston boogie band, whose best…
“I killed a man in the ten items or less lane . . . /Get your hands off my astronaut Tang, you old bastard!” Murders in supermarket express lanes. Sex with Chihuahuas. Bank robberies committed in the nude. This is all fodder for Alice Donut songs. The New York quasi-hard-core…
Midway through his set, John Prine began to hear the noises, too. Opening for musical soul mate Bonnie Raitt, Prine was playing solo. Dressed in a blue silk shirt and jeans, he sported what has become his post-Seventies look: well-worn cowboy boots; mid-length dark and graying hair; and a soul…
Save for Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn and Hank Williams the Elder, there is no other individual in country music who can lay a more legitimate claim to icon status than Merle Haggard. Factoring in all reasonable elements–writing, singing, musicianship, stage work, political and social commentary–the Hag has earned his stripes…
Evelyn Grgurich remembers the first time the lineup for this year’s Sedona Jazz on the Rocks festival was discussed. “I brought up Pat Metheny’s name a few times,” she recalls, referring to the experimental jazz guitarist. A seven-year member of the Jazz on the Rocks board, Grgurich also served a…
