Lissie | One of the Best of UW 2010

"Catching A Tiger" is the debut album for California based singer and songwriter Lissie. It was recorded mostly in Nashville and mostly with Jacquire King (Kings of Leon). Bill Reynolds of Band of Horses also participated as he had on her 2009 EP "Why You Runnin'". Great songwriting, strong vocals and sharp arrangements. Definitely one of the highlights of 2010's listening and one of the most promising.






Lissie is included on this week's playlist, part 3 of the Best of 2010 on mvyradio's new music show, Uncharted Waters. Listen to UW Fridays and repeated on Sundays at 9PM ET on www.mvyradio.com


Best of Uncharted Waters 2010 Part 3

Friday/Sunday December 31, 2010/January 2, 2010

"Cuckoo" Lissie Catching A Tiger Fat Possum
"Only Thing That Was Missing Was You" Michael Franti and Spearhead Sound Of Sunshine Capitol
"The Word" Bettye Lavette Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook Anti-
"Central Two-O-Nine" Robert Plant Band Of Joy Rounder
"Please Speak Well Of Me" The Weepies Be My Thrill Nettwerk
"Color Of Rain" Jason Spooner Sea Monster Jason Spooner
"Blue Beard Band Of Horses Infinite Arms
"In The Years To Come" Kim Richey Wreck Your Wheels Thirty Tigers
"Wade In The Water" Patty Griffin Downtown Church Credential Recordings
"The Universe Is Laughing" Guggenheim Grotto The Universe is Laughing
"Hush" Julia and Angus Stone Down The Way Nettwerk
"God On The Drums, Devil on the Bass" Katie Melua The House Dramatico
"In Magnolia" Kenny White Comfort In The Static
"Don't Forget About Me" John Mellancamp No Better Than This Rounder
"I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down" Janiva Magness Alligator
"Always Got Away" Martin Sexton Sugarcoating Kitchen Table Records

Singer Teena Marie Dies | That voice

I just learned that legendary r&b, soul and funk singer Teena Marie died yesterday of natural causes at age 54 and I join with her many fans in mourning her loss. For me, her voice transcended genres. I loved the musical setting of her music, but that wasn't what got me. It was that voice!

Listening back to some of her songs and checking out some videos of her music led me back to her 1984 album "Starchild" and it felt like the first time I heard her sing. I was so drawn to the emotion and vulnerability in her strong, secure, skilled and passionate sound. I couldn't get her voice out of my head. And now it's back with me as she moves on.

Teena Marie was one of the greatest vocalists of the last thirty-five years and was instrumental in paving the way and making a bridge for the mix of r&b and hip hop that is now a staple of contemporary music. She signed with Motown Records in 1976, switched to Epic in '83 and worked continuously until 1990. She took a fourteen year hiatus, returned in 2004 and released three more albums, including 2009's "Congo Square", which reached the Top 20 on Billboard's Top 200.

As I was reading through and listening to some remembrances, I found an interesting connection. Teena Marie worked with songwriter and music producer Richard Rudolph, husband of another great r&b singer, Minnie Riperton. Rudolph produced "Lady T" for Teena Marie in 1980, a year after Riperton died. One of the album's songs "Too Many Colors" features the voice of 7 year-old Maya Rudolph, the actress and Rudolph's and Riperton's daughter. Maya Rudolph became Teena Marie's god-daughter.

That voice...filling up some other space. Peaceful passage.

Ray Lamontagne | One of the Best of UW 2010

Subtlety has great benefits when employed in any form of expression. And when it's combined with a deep and rich inner life, and revealed in song, well, you may find brilliance. Like the light shining through a billion stars in the dark night.

Ray Lamontagne has made a career album in this year's "God Willin' and the Creek Don't Rise", his fourth full-length release. It's most likely a career album that will be matched or supplanted by another one of his records down the road. That's how secure he seems to be in the place he came to with his band The Pariah Dogs as they recorded the album over a two-week period in Lamontagne's home studio in Western Massachusetts. Shades of Neil and Joni. Soaring silence of his heart.

In "Like Rock & Roll & Radio", he oh so gently asks "Are you still in love with me?" and likens the estrangement that he feels with the soulless nature of modern radio. Radio has broken his heart, it seems, with the way it's changed. Will his lover do (has his lover done) the same?

Are you still in love with me
Like the way it used to be or is it changing?
Is it deeper over time
Like the river that is winding through the canyon?

Are we strangers now
Like the Ziegfeld Gal and the Vaudeville Show?
Are we strangers now
Like rock and roll and the radio
Like rock and roll and radio?



Ray Lamontagne's song is part of this this week's Best of Uncharted Waters 2010. Here's the playlist:

Friday/Sunday December 17/19/2010 9 p.m. ET www.mvyradio.com

Best of UW 2010 Part 2

"Corpus Christi Carol/Hammerhead" Jeff Beck Emotion and Commotion Atco
"Terrible Love" The National High Violet 4 AD
"Open Arms" Patty Larkin 25 Vanguard
"Like Rock & Roll and Radio" Ray Lamontagne God Willin' and The Creek Don't Rise RCA
"Lingering Still" She and Him Volume 2 Merge
"Creep Along Moses" Mavis Staples You Are Not Alone Anti-
"Boe Money" Galactic with Rebirth Brass Band Ya-Ka-May Anti-
"Your Night Is Wide Open" Tracy Bonham Masts of Manhatta Engine Room
"Only The Wine" David Gray Foundling Mercer Street
"Carry" Ryan Montbleau Heavy on the Vine Blue's Mountain
"Rockin' Chair" Eric Clapton Clapton Reprise
"That Phone" Grace Potter and the Nocturnals Grace Potter and the Nocturnals Hollywood
"The Curse" Josh Ritter So Runs The World Away Josh Ritter

Frightened Rabbit | one of the Best of UW 2010

Uncharted Waters is the new releases show that I host on mvyradio (Friday 9 PM; replay Sunday at 9 PM). I have started a 3 part series, looking back over the songs, albums and artists that made their way into this weekly musical container.

There's something about the concentration of approximately 50 hours of music (4 shows x 12 months) into 3 short hours that makes me dizzy and full wonder at the power of song. See part one's playlist below.

One of the songs from this week's show is from Glasglow's Frightened Rabbit, who released their third album "Winter of Mixed Drinks" this year. The record's "Swim Until You Can't See Land" seems to be about transcending the trappings of life:

Dip the toe in the ocean.
Oh how it hardens and it numbs.
And the rest of me is a burgeoned man
built to collapse into crumbs
And if I hadn’t come down
To the coast to disappear
I may have died in a land-slide
Of the rocks, the hopes and fears.

As I was listening to the refrain, "swim until you can't see land" I thought, mmm good theme song for Uncharted Waters!



Here's the playlist for this week's (12/10/11) show:

Best of UW 2010-Part 1

"Run" Vampire Weekend Contra
"I've Got Dreams To Remember" Angelique Kidjo Oyo
"Five Small Words" Elvis Costello National Ransom
"Burden Of Tomorrow" The Tallest Man On Earth The Wild Hunt
"Hurricane Season" Trombone Shorty Backatown
"Hitchhiker" Neil Young Le Noise
"I Didn't See it Coming" Belle and Sebastian Write About Love
"Unfortunate Sea" Everest On Approach
"Let Yourself Go" Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Mojo
"Troubled Waters" Catherine Russell Inside This Heart Of Mine
"Swim Until You Can't See Land" Frightened Rabbit Winter Of Mixed Drinks
"Hotel Lights" Amy Cook Let The Light In
"Dry Bones" Robert Randolph and The Family Band We Walk This Road
"Unsophisticated Heart" Joe Pug Messenger

Feist | Look At What The Light Did Now

In the new documentary about Feist, "Look At What The Light Did Now", the Canadian artist/musician likens herself to a peacock, a "scrawny little bird" amid dazzling plumage. The beauty that surrounds her is born in the artistic collaboration with what she calls her "amplifiers"- her band, photographer, shadow puppeteers, video director and all who work with her to bring her work to light. The film itself is a reflection of an amazingly creative mind and reveals the profound benefits of trust.

"If you trust people and their art, it grows", says Feist.

Milton Music

Milton came to the Vineyard last week from his home in New York to spend Thanksgiving with his family and he stopped by mvy to sit down for a conversation and a couple of songs. We became aware of Milton in 2008 and played songs from his third album "Grande Hotel" which was released that year. Friend of mvyradio, Buffy McCleery is a fan, too and she was the matchmaker for this interview. She knew that Milton was going to be on-island for the holiday and we took it from there. Thanks, Buffy!

Listen to the interview here.

Check out clips from "Grand Hotel":

Kim Richey | Wreck Your Wheels

I read on Kim Richey's facebook page that she is in London and it was her first Thanksgiving Day there. "Turkey, mash, chestnut dressing..." Sounds like she brought a great American meal to her friends across the pond!

Over the last several years Kim has split her time between London and Nashville and her new CD "Wreck Your Wheels" was recorded in "Music City" with her touring band. It's her sixth record, and her collaborative spirit is strong. Every song is co-written by songwriters like Mando Saenz, The Jayhawks Mark Olsen, Beth Rowley and long time friend and collaborator Neilson Hubbard.

Kim has many strengths - an absolutely pristine voice and a songwriting skill that rivals the best in the business -and they are all on display here. But the key to her appeal is the subtlety that underlies it all.

Kim's fans contributed to this video for "Wreck Your Wheels"




Listen to clips from the CD...

Belle and Sebastian | Write About Love

The Scottish band that formed in the mid 90's has just released an album "Write About Love", and after years of appreciating what they do from a far, I have been captured, pulled in, won over. The vulnerability and sweetness in their indie sound is emboldened with a pop certainty on this record that lines up with what I have heard between the lines in some of their other work. Seems like a natural, inevitable and wonderful evolution.

Watch...is that Simon and Garfunkel's "A Hazy Shade Of Winter" coming through?



Listen to it...pop...

What's New... today

I'm putting together a set of new music for The Lunch Hour on mvyradio ...The new tunes will roll out at about 12:20 PM.

Paul Simon has a new album, done and due for release in the spring of next year. Just so happens there is a song on it called "Getting Ready For Christmas Day". What to do? Release it! Play it!

I found another track to play from The Autumn Defense's new CD "Once Around". "The Swallows of London Town" is one of the stand out tracks from John Stirratt and Pat Sansone on their fourth CD.

Louisville's Cheyenne Marie Misez has a new CD "Before Lately". "Friend" got me on the first note.

Ryan Montbleau's "Lonesome Serenade" is track # 13 on "Heavy On The Vine", some sweet stuff as the new album is coming to a close. His fans are going to want to hear this song when he plays with J.J. Grey and Mofro next Wednesday (11/24) at The Paradise in Boston!

AND FINALLY! Adele! We just got "Rolling In The Deep" from "21" her second CD due for release in February. I learned a new word from Adele -"chuffed". That's what she is after completing the new record. Quite pleased. You will be, too, when you hear it today on www,mvyradio.com

Dan Zanes | Family Man

Dan Zanes and his band will play at The Zeiterion Theater in New Bedford this Sunday, November 21st. The music Dan has been focusing on for the last thirteen years or so is, by his own description, "handmade music". He has revisited songs of Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie and many others and put his own particular spin on them.

The birth of his daughter, who is now 16 years old, lead him to this "parallel universe". After she was born, as he was wondering what would be the very first song he would play for her, it never occurred to him that it could be one that HE sang to her. Shortly after that, he started to make family music.

There's one thing that runs through all of his music making, from his time with Boston's The Del Fuegos in the '80s, his solo records of the '90s and his family music of the past decade and it's the element of participation. The Del Fuegos never felt like they had played a gig, unless people danced. In 2010, as he celebrates ten years of his Festival Five Records, the idea behind Dan's records and his shows is not only to inspire people to dance and to participate in HIS music but also to encourage them to make their own.

Listen to my interview with Dan Zanes here



Get on Dan's train:

Bruce Springsteen | The Promise

The previously un-released tracks from the "Darkness on the Edge of Town" sessions will be released today as "The Promise". The whole package includes 2 CDs and 3 DVDs. Springsteen says it's "a new/old record, the lost sessions of music that could have/should have been released after "Born To Run" and before the collection of songs that became 'Darkness on the Edge of Town'". Springsteen went back to the music that the had abandoned thirty years ago and selected twenty-one tracks from the '77,'78 sessions. He left many of the tracks just as they were recorded, and worked on some, doing "what I would've done to them at the time and no more."

These songs were recorded at transitional time in Springsteen's career, a time when he was emerging from the tremendous success of "Born To Run" and a time that was marked by intense legal battles. "Darkness on the Edge of Town" is one of Springsteen's most beloved albums. His return to music that was recorded during this period material feels like a necessary journey of discovery and reconciliation.

Listen to www.mvyradio.com today at 12:30 to hear some of the songs.

Check out songs clips from the CD here:

NEeMA | Escape

I just saw the video of a new song by Montreal based singer NEeMA, and I want to share it. "Escape" is from a new album called Watching You Think and the song makes a lasting impression, due in great part to the sweet innocence of the video, which was shot at Ecole St-Ambroise in Little Italy in Montreal. NEaMA (pronounced "Nee-mah") has had a lot experience with working with children in a pre-school in Montreal and also with street kids in Egypt. Mentor's Leonard Cohen and Pierre Marchand (Sarah McLachlan, Ron Sexsmith) helped produce the new record. NEeMA is on tour with The Chapin Sisters.

Check out the video:



Listen to song clips from the album: