After several long years of superfandom, I finally got the opportunity to see The Damnwells live. The band, these days, consists primarily of singer/songwriter/guitarist/god Alex Dezen, and rather than assembling a band himself, he went out and hired himself a great live band, Harper Blynn, to open the shows and back him up as the Damnwells. We made the trek to see the show at The Hub in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and then at the 7th St. Entry in Minneapolis.
download Harper Blynn’s set – April 16, 2011 – Cedar Falls (started a bit late, because it took a few songs to realize how awesome they were)
download The Damnwells set – April 16, 2011 – Cedar Falls
download Harper Blynn’s set – April 17, 2011 – Minneapolis
download The Damnwells set – April 17, 2011 – Minneapolis
Cedar Falls videos:
She Goes Around:
Golden Days:
Minneapolis videos:
I Am a Leaver:
hilarious intro to the last song of the show and the tour:
I Will Keep the Bad Things from You:
This past weekend’s trip down south to see the Damnwells and take in Record Store Day was pretty amazing, and we can’t help but relive it by listening to some live recordings and pulling out the new vinyl we bought on Record Store Day. Lots of good stuff to behold. Also, we’ve got a whole whack of great new music.
This one felt like such a busy show, yet we only managed to play 4 artists in 2 hours – I don’t think we’ve ever done that before! We had to pay tribute to the late, great John Bottomley, who left us this week, but left behind a lot of great music. RIP. We look forward to my trip to finally see the Damnwells live, and we were joined in-studio by Taylor Ashton of hot up-and-coming roots band Fish & Bird to chat about their great new record and upcoming shows.
playlist
part 1 (John Bottomley tribute)
part 2 (Damnwells preview)
part 3 (Taylor Ashton – Fish & Bird)
It’s Record Store Day/Damnwells weekend, so we’re out of town and lovin’ it, but not to worry, we’ve got your usual Sunday goodness pre-recorded for your listening pleasure. We got off to a start with some Tom Waits songs, for no real reason, before settling in for a good long set of rockin’ good tunes. We also preview a few great upcoming shows including the Japan benefit featuring Keri Latimer, Greg Macpherson, and Ridley Bent, as well as the CD release for the new album by Matt Epp, and next week’s return of an old friend.
Back in January, I somehow convinced Jaine to drive all the way to Chicago to see our pal Del Barber open for the great James McMurtry because, as I said at the time, “he never comes so close to Winnipeg.” Thanks to James for at least waiting until 2 days after we returned from that (insane) trip to announce a Minneapolis show. When he did announce said show, it was billed as being with The Bottle Rockets, a full band electrified show (Chicago was solo acoustic) and it was on Spring Break. How could we say no?
So, we loaded up the van and trekked down to Minneapolis to see the show at The 400 Bar in Minneapolis on April 1, 2011. It was pretty amazing, despite the cramped, noisy, dingy venue.
Want proof? Check out the evidence below:
Wish you were there? We wish you had come too. Hear what you missed with our exclusive noisy lo-fi bootleg of the ENTIRE show! Download it and pretend that you’re rocking out in the comfort of your very own home, car, workplace, prison cell, etc. It’s noisy as all get out, and not edited or fixed up in a dignified way, but hey, had you shown up, I’m sure you could have done a better job!
Choctaw Bingo:
Levelland:
The Lights of Cheyenne:
A (long) while back, I finally got around to recording a generic non-time-sensitive standby show for Steel Belted Radio, for those instances when we can’t make it in to the studio and don’t have time to whip something up. I’d say that we’re pretty reliable at getting new stuff on for you, so if we skip a few weeks a year, hopefully you won’t mind.
We’ve aired the standby show a number of times over the years, but it wasn’t until TODAY that I actually listened to the damn thing and found out that I’d labeled it in the wrong damn order! Yikes!
I hate it when I make a mistake. Hate it. But I hate it more when nobody tells me. If you notice me doing stupid crap like this again, TELL ME! Please!
Anyway, here, for your downloading pleasure is a pretty solid “best of” Steel Belted standby show. (now, if only I could dig up the playlist…)