Alabama Shakes | Hold On

I'm in Florida on vacation and the other night I had dinner with my brother Ralph, his wife Corinne, their kids Lizzy and Ralph, and Anne, Ralph's girlfriend. Just before dinner, my nephew Ralph fired up Spotify on his computer and we went for it, both of us throwing out names of bands we liked and listening to their music in a matter of seconds. "Have you heard the Alabama Shakes?", Ralph says. "No", I say. A quick click...and "Hold On" came streaming out of his computer speakers.

Lead singer Brittany Howard's voice commands the space immediately and the band lays down a soulful, spare and tempting groove. They are from Athens, Alabama and over the last six months have started to capture some ears and attention. They recorded a four song EP in East Nashville, have opened for the Drive-By-Truckers and are due to release a full-length record this year on ATO.

Best of Uncharted Waters 2011 Part 3

As the final days of 2011 roll by, I'm taking a long look back and still taking in the beauty of this past year's music. Still can't get enough of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Paul Simon, Feist, Katie Herzig, Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling, on and on. I'm listening on my new iPod nano a lot of the time and I can't believe how good it sounds.

As one year ends and another begins, we're offered a chance to mark the spot, reflect on the amazing gift that artists give us and themselves with their work and know that this past year's music leads us on into what will soon fill our ears in the new year.

I found this great video of Laura Marling's "I Was A Card". There's nothing I can write that matches the artistry here.



Best of Uncharted Waters 2011 Part 3

“I Was Just A Card” Laura Marling A Creature I Do Not Know
”Timshel” Mumford & Sons Sigh No More
”Discoverer” R.E.M. Collapse Into Now
”One Ticket To The Moon” Dave Stewart The Blackbird Diaries
”Sugar Boogie” Marcia Ball Roadside Attractions
”Dancing At A Funeral” Brett Dennen Loverboy
”Sounds Like Hallalujah” The Head and the Heart The Head and The Heart
“Waking Sleep” Katie Herzig The Waking Sleep
”Spilling Faith” Ben Harper Give ‘Til It’s Gone
“Little By Little” Gregg Allman Low Country Blues
”Scarlet Town” Gillian Welch The Harrow and the Harvest
“Half Moon” Iron and Wine Kiss Each Other Clean
”Major Minus’ Coldplay Mylo Xyloto
“Towers” Bon Iver Bon Iver
”House Full Of Empty Rooms” Kathleen Edwards Voyageur
”Questions for the Angels” Paul Simon So Beautiful Or So What

Best of UW 2011 | Part 2

Each segment of this Best of Uncharted Waters 2011 demonstrates what an amazing outpouring of music we saw over the last twelve months. There's so much variety, depth of feeling and excellence of performance. Check out the list for Part 2 below and see if you agree.

Alison Krauss and Union Station added to the brilliance of the year with "Paper Airplane". It's Alison's 14th record and once again her sweet voice, understated fiddle playing and the band's flawless accompaniment make this an inspiring listening experience.

Here's "Miles To Go."



Best Of Uncharted Waters 2011 Part 2

"Battery Kinzie" Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues
"Old Tin Can" Catherine MacLellan Sillhouette
"Weird Summer" Mike Doughty Yes and Also Yes
"Take It All" Adele 21 XL
"Jesus" Amos Lee Mission Bell
"Humpty Dumpty World" Ry Cooder Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down
"City Of Refuge" Abagail Washburn City Of Refuge
"Love and Altar" The Low Anthem Smart Flesh
"Sunset Over Hope Street" Ari Hest Sunset Over Hope Street
"Come See About Me" Tedeschi Trucks Revelator
"All The Way Under" John Hiatt Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns
"Miles To Go" Alison Krauss and Union Station Paper Airplane
"Sweet Louise" The Belle Brigade The Belle Brigade
"Rox In The Box" The Decemberists The King Is Dead
"The Most" Lori McKenna Lorraine
"Early In The Morning, I'll Come Calling" James Vincent McMorrow Early In The Morning

Sarah Borges | Radio Sweetheart

How can we resist this radio sweetheart? The probable title of Sarah's new CD describes the way all of us at mvy feel about her. From the moment we heard her first record "Silver City" we were hooked and have loved playing her music and watching her rock ever since.

Sarah is in the final stages of a fundraising campaign for the new album that will be released in mid-2012. It's being produced by Steve Berlin of Los Lobos. If you can help, go to www.sarahborges.com. A little goes a long way.

Sarah and I spoke about her campaign the other day, her record and Elliott, her new baby with guitarist Lyle Brewer. Listen to my interview with Sarah

Uncharted Waters | Best of 2011

I've been taking a look back over the music released this past year and zoning in on the songs and artists that I played on Uncharted Waters, mvy's new music show. It's quite illuminating to re-visit SO MUCH great music-there hasn't been a year like this in a while.

Last Friday I started a three part series in which I will play the best of the best of 2011. Out of the 500 plus songs I featured over the year, I found close to 100 that I consider significant. So the 45 songs that will be part of this best of series really represent the cream of the crop.

I'll post each segment's list (find Part 1 below) along with a video of one of the songs from that week. Check out the video of "I've Got This Friend" by The Civil Wars. The duo of Joy Williams and John Paul White was big news and their album Barton Hollow was one of the records that made this year shine!



Best Of Uncharted Waters 2011 Part 1

"Underneath The Sycamore" Death Cab For Cutie Codes and Keys
"All My Possessions (Ode To Troy)" Chadwick Stokes Simmerkane II
"Only God Can Save Us Now" Over The Rhine The Long Surrender
"The Day is Coming" My Morning Jacket Circuital
"Vicksburg Stomp" Hot Tuna Steady As She Goes
"I've Got This Friend" The Civil Wars Barton Hollow
"Try To Understand" Eric Lindell Between Motion and Rest
"Last Leaf" Tom Waits Bad As Me
"No Button" The Little Stevies Attention Shoppers
"Captivity" Ben Sollee Inclusions
"What'll I Do" Lisa Hannigan Passengers
"Sugar Mama" The Deep Dark Woods The Place I Left Behind
"Run Away" Sarah Jarosz Follow Me Down
"Miracle" Superheavy Superheavy
"Tango For Django" Robbie Robertson How To Become Clairvoyant
"Cicadas and Gulls" Feist Metals

Laura Marling | A Creature I Don't Know

The delicacy of precisely placed fingers on a guitar's nylon strings, words sung with care and clarity. A voice speaking from the past, or is it the future, or the spiraling present moment? "...me and time go way back when...", sings Laura Marling in the song "Don't Ask Me Why". The British singer-songwriter's third album "A Creature I Don't Know", recorded with all acoustic instruments in London by Ethan Johns wafts up like invisible smoke and infiltrates. It carries like the wind; there you were, here you are, changed.

At 21, Laura Marling is confident from years of listening and playing, at first with her parents and siblings in her home in Eversley, Hampshire, England. The youngest of three, she heard the music of Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and James Taylor around the house. She stared playing guitar as a child, began performing as a teenager and was a member of England's Noah and The Whale. Marling set out on a solo career in 2007.

With literary references to John Steinbeck and Robertson Davies, and sonic nods to Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, this collection of songs has great depth and power. The living thing that is the record album is all the more vibrant with questions unanswered, time undefined and an interior wanderlust. Thank you, Laura Marling.

Feist | Metals

Suggestive, reflective, askew. An image that looks like a photograph, but is it? Just by seeing the cover of Feist's new album "Metals", you get an idea of what's inside. The funny thing is, I didn't see the "F" in the deadwood tree until now and I didn't realize that "Metals" was printed upside down. Either I wasn't paying attention as I pulled out the CD multiple times to listen to over the last few days or, and I think this is it, there's some kind of sleight of hand going on.

Leslie Feist knows how to cast a spell. And it seems even more so now, or maybe in new ways. She took a year-long break from touring and music making at the end of the last decade after going at it non-stop for seven years. "I was being still and trying to learn how to be quiet and remember silence isn't aggressive," she says.

On her return last autumn, she spent three months writing the record in a garage behind her house. In January of this year longtime collaborators Chilly Gonzales and Mocky, joined her in Toronto to arrange the record and then the three, plus percussionist Dean Stone and keyboardist Brian LeBarton, all settled in Big Sur, California to record.

The beauty and the beast of living for life and art and nature rise up through every track. Gentle, swelling vocals, group singing, sweeping synthesizers, and great guitar playing from Feist. "I feel a little more like a narrator now," she says. "Rather that saying here's my truth, I am able to say here's something I just observed to be true. Which depending on the day can be absolutely not true. There's less certainty with time, as much as you'd assume the opposite to be the case."

She found her way to the album title "Metals" as she was thinking about "quiet, raw, dormant ore versus the highly engineered result of forging that into skyscrapers." and the word "'mettle' as in a man proves his mettle by how his reaction takes him from raw act to reaction." "Metals" is a potent, primordial exploration.

Katie Herzig | The Waking Sleep

There are lots of ways to go about recording an album. For Katie Herzig, on the new "The Waking Sleep", it was "building" a record, assembling fragments of sound into a spacious, openly woven album. When she and co-producer Cason Cooley set up in the studio to start, Katie said "I don't have any songs!" Sound by sound, word by word they emerged.

"Find your voice, find your voice, make a noise," she writes in "Make a Noise". Finding her voice on this record came as she went. From this side, it feels like a giant door opened, and lo and behold, on the other side, there was a path and a process leading to all that she knew deep inside, all that she was capable of.

There is a big world that she and Cooley fashioned inside the tracks, spending hours experimenting with individual sounds, most musical, but some natural sounds--hands rubbing together, a hand brushing over someone's beard. The sound of daily life. Sounds upon sounds, layered and buried, songs rising up to life, and now with the album complete, we're all invited in for the lift, the joy, the revelation.

Bon Iver | Bon Iver

Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and his brother Nate found a ranch style house a few miles from their childhood home in Wisconsin. And in the space that once housed an indoor pool, Justin created a recording studio and his new self-titled album, a stunning follow-up to 2008's "For Emma, Forever Ago".

Vernon has assembled a great supporting cast of musicians including pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz and bass saxophonist Colin Stetson. Bon Iver is out on tour, with friends The Rosebuds on some dates and Kathleen Edwards on others, and many of the shows are sold out.

Mavis Staples at Newport Folk

The joyful and effervescent Mavis Staples performed at Newport Folk Festival yesterday, running through a spirited set of songs, both old and new. "The Weight", "I'll Take You There" and "You Are Not Alone", the title track of her 2010 Grammy winning CD.

I sat down with Mavis after her performance. Click here to listen to the interview.

That old feeling...

Walking around Fort Adams today, the grounds buzzing with the activity of intense preparation for the arrival of 20,000 people 35 musical acts, I got that old feeling. The one that washes over me and makes me so happy to have music in my bones, in my heart and in my life.

As we were setting up in our tent backstage, I heard Suzanne Vega's voice floating in the air. I think it was Klondike who was playing a song of hers to check the sound at the Harbor stage. It sounded so beautiful, and everything I was doing and thinking faded into the background and I thought, "this is as good as it gets. I am so happy right now."

Chadwick Stokes | Simmerkane II

The first solo album from State Radio and Dispatch band member Chadwick Stokes, was released Tuesday. "Simmerkane II" was recorded in Jim Parr's studio in Oak Bluffs and produced by John Dragoneti. Lots of Chad's musical friends, including Parr, Dragoneti, Embree, White Buffalo and Carly Simon collaborated. A bonus CD is included with three tracks that Chad recorded with The Sierra Leone Refugee Allstars

Chad and his brother took a train-hopping trip across country last summer and many of the songs were inspired by that experience. The songs are tender and insightful. The beautifully detailed lyrics tell stories that reveal a sharp eye and a deep heart.

Chadwick Stokes stopped by mvyradio this week.
Listen here