AUSTIN DAZE: How did Old Settler’s compare to SXSW?

MARTY STUART: SXSW is such a cool event but you have to know going into it that you can only pick your spots because it’s kind of like trying to sweep up the ocean into a bucket. It’s gotten so huge so that anywhere that we played during SXSW that we connected with the crowd I felt like was a real achievement. Here it is more concentrated and down home. After 20-something years you guys have definitely got a spell setting out there. We just walked into something that was really great. Thank you for having us.

AD: It is run by all volunteers which we find pretty amazing because everybody loves the music so much they are willing to just get together. Read the rest of this entry »

We give you harp playing legend, Charlie Musselwhite.

AUSTIN DAZE: I was asking some Austin musicians if they had any questions and they asked: How do you get that sound? What key do you play that in?

CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE: I’m always happy to answer them whenever I can.

AD: Were you self-taught?

CM: Pretty much. The thing about the harmonica is that it is the only instrument that you cannot see what is going on. You have to create a mental image and everybody creates their own mental image of it and it’s not something you can show anybody. I forget who said this but somebody said, “Talking about how to play harmonica is like whistling about chickens.” You can make these sounds but you can’t really describe a lot of it. Read the rest of this entry »

She is the female James Brown of soul and responsible for leading the soul/funk/R&B revival. She’s been doing her thing for 13 years and the rest of the world is finally taking notice. With a voiceto be reckoned with, Sharon Jones can no longer be ignored.

AUSTIN DAZE: When did you know that this was what you wanted to be doing?

SHARON JONES: I didn’t think that I was going to be doing this until the 80s and 90s. All my life I would get inspired by gospel and just singing but the main thing, when I knew that the funk and soul was it, was when I met Gabe almost 13 years ago. I went in to do background on an album and once I finished I was like, “That’s good music these guys are playing.” Then the first time we went to London I opened up for Maceo Parker and that’s when I knew, I knew that this was it. Because I had a title–people were calling me the female James Brown and I had never heard them call any other woman the female James Brown. I never heard them call anyone the Queen of Funk. I know Aretha is the Queen of Soul. So I thought, this is something here; I better stick with this. Read the rest of this entry »

For Jason Hann and Michael Travis, there is life afer String Cheese and it’s called EOTO,a 100% improvised live Breakbeat/ House/ Drum n Bass/ Trip Hop project. Jason Hann explains.

AUSTIN DAZE: What does a trip to Austin mean to you all and where do you like to hang when you are here?

JASON HANN Wow, well Austin is just an amazing city to always get back to. Especially being in the middle of Texas– it’s pretty refreshing. We used to go through there with String Cheese all the time. What are the name of the Springs?

AD: Barton Springs.

JH: Oh yeah. Love that. That’s unbelievable. There isn’t a better place for live music..

AD: How do you all feel about the state of the jam band scene? What about your place in that scene now that you are no longer with String Cheese Incident?

JH: It’s hard to make a judgement other than that there are a lot of bands out there these days which is great. It also seems like there is definitely an influx of Electronica into festivals. So there is an evolution happening in that sense. One thing we definitely noticed is that it doesn’t seem like kids are touring as much because there is going to be something coming through their town or they have a lot of three day weekend festivals where people would rather settle in for a three day and see an amazing amount of bands than following a particular band to a ton of cities. In that sense, it is sort of changing. Not for better or for worse, just different. There is still a lot of really good players and bands out there. I think it’s pretty healthy. Read the rest of this entry »

We had a nice chat with Moving Matter. These guys are carrying the torch and keeping the jam band scene vibrant.

AUSTIN DAZE: Where did your band name come from?

MOVING MATTER: It was from this book and we were talking about stuff like how everybody is moving matter and energy and all that kind of deep crap. Also, it felt cool to have a verb name, kind of like Talking Heads type thing.

AD: Tell us about the jam band scene in Austin, Texas. Do you feel there is one?

MM: Yeah, there’s still one around. I don’t know if it’s at its height but it is coming back—it’s fluctuating as everything does. When we were getting out of high school and college we had Larry and Tunji and there was a big scene around them.

AD: Tell us your thoughts when you hear that Austin is the “Live Music Capital of the World”.

MM: Definitely. There are more places to play and more live music every night than anywhere in the world. It makes it hard and hurts bands financially.

AD: What sets a Moving Matter audience apart from the usual crowd?

MM: An alcohol problem! They like all styles of music and have an appreciation for jazz and techno. Read the rest of this entry »

[fa:p:id=1571541346,j=r,s=s,l=i]AUSTIN DAZE: How did you get started in music?

CARL FINCH: I got started in the Baptist Church children’s choir. The conductor of that choir at the Church pulled my parents aside and told them that they should get me piano lessons. So I started piano lessons when I was pretty young, 7, I think. So I took piano lessons and then went to play guitar and then went to play rock and roll in high school. When I went to college I decided I needed to get serious so I got a degree in advertising art and then I got a masters in drawing and painting and thought I was going to teach college. While I was working on the masters I kind of collided with the idea of getting the band together to do the things that I was doing. I was working with sound installations—I had evolved away from painting and I think I also realized I wasn’t very good. I excelled as a conceptualist so anything could be the medium in that case. I always leaned towards sound. One thing that I really loved was the idea of leveling music out to be on the same plane and the way I saw to do that was to put as many different styles together. That was the whole bottom line concept—to totally even the whole playing field with music so you could eliminate the notion of having to label one style cool or not cool. Read the rest of this entry »

[fa:p:id=1066712495,j=r,s=s,l=p]AUSTIN DAZE: Tell us about your new CD. What can we expect?

FREDDIE “STEADY”: Well the new CD is called Tex-Pop by The Freddie Steady 5 and the title pretty much implies what the music is. I had my first pop group The Explosives in the late 70s early 80s and then I did some records with my band the Shakin’ Apostles in the 90s for a label called East Side Digital–they were part of Ryko Disc. While with them, I made what I thought was my most pop record ever and I turned it in and the president said, “I really love this. We are kind of going in that country direction.” And I went, “UH”. My point is, that I’m so inspired by the Beatles and British pop and sixties stuff–that’s why the stuff is pretty and arranged and melodic–but it still sounds like a guy from Texas doing it. My long time partner, Cam King, who was also in the Explosives, co-produced this record with me and we co-wrote four songs on it and it’s kind of, if anybody knows my history, it’s kind of like The Explosives but with a keyboard. It’s kind of power pop. It’s Tex-Pop. Read the rest of this entry »

[fa:p:id=1066718605,j=r,s=s,l=p]AUSTIN DAZE: Native Roots blends both the spiritual philosophies and musical elements of reggae and Native American culture. How did this first happen?

JOHN WILLIAMS: Native Roots is a partnership between me and the lead singer Emmett Garcia. As far as the reggae music, for me, it goes back years and years into the ’70s. The Native American movement was real strong in northern Arizona—I grew up on a reservation there—and we just listened to Bob Marley every single night. What he said seemed to relate directly to what we were experiencing. The message was that we needed to lift up and stay strong when everything was pushing us down. That was my first experience with reggae music and Rasta. And then I did some traveling. I played a variety of styles of music and was playing in a band that had a Santana-like sound. We got to go to Europe, and I really found how universal reggae music was. I thought it was just us in northern Arizona that were listening to reggae music day and night, and I found out the whole world was. So when I came back I made a conscious effort to mold my musical focus on reggae music and to do it in the true spirit. Read the rest of this entry »

[fa:p:a=72157600257285560,id=511763999,j=r,s=s,l=p] BILL & JILIAN NERSHI, SCOTT LAW

AUSTIN DAZE: How has the experience been here at Old Settlers? What do you think of it?

BILL NERSHI: It’s cool. I hear the campground scene is cool but we haven’t gotten to check that out but it’s on the agenda for later on. It’s good to be playing music in Texas.

AD: The last time we spoke ya’ll were just starting out and you weren’t sure where the music was going to take you. What do you think about where you are now with the band?

BN: I would say right now, the Honkytonk Homeslice thing is still heading toward the culminating point. It’s been somewhat challenging working through the whole thing that’s going on with String Cheese coming to a stop and being the brunt of that to some extent, which is a strange position to be in as a band. Read the rest of this entry »

[fa:p:a=72157594267830938,id=269827709,j=r,s=s,l=p]AUSTIN DAZE: What does playing at ACL mean to you?

STRING CHEESE INCIDENT: This is actually only our second year here. 2003 was our first year. It’s changed in the three years that we have been away. It’s so great to see so many bands getting together, see all the fans getting together and enjoying the music. It’s extremely hot. ACL, what it means: extreme humidity and lots of heat. We have a really great group of friends and family that we have gotten to know over the years from coming to Austin, so Austin, in a lot of ways, has become a yearly home for us. It just feels good to be around everybody and see how everybody has been doing over the course of the years that we have been doing this. It’s a little bit like a family reunion. Musically, it’s an opportunity to, in a professional setting, see some other people and check out the vibe from the crowd side so it’s really refreshing for us. Read the rest of this entry »

[fa:p:a=72157594267830938,id=269827768,j=r,s=s,l=p]AUSTIN DAZE: Tell us how you got into playing music and some of your influences.

MATT COSTA: Well when I was a kid my godmother had a piano at her house and she would watch me when my parents were gone. I always would just be drawn to the piano and I would just start playing. So my parents decided that since I was always drawn to music they should start putting me in music classes or get me involved with music. My parents put me in school band, I played the trumpet and I took some piano lessons. I got my first guitar when I was 12. I’ve pretty much just been involved with music my whole life. Read the rest of this entry »

[fa:p:id=269827665,j=r,s=s,l=p]AUSTIN DAZE: Tell us about your new album “Town and the City”. What was the recording process like?

LOS LOBOS: We were recording at Cesar’s house and it was a pretty casual atmosphere. It took a little while to get the ball rolling. We usu- ally go in with a couple of ideas, hopefully to get the thing going, and then get a feel for where it is headed. We don’t have all the material written and it’s not rehearsed or anything. We just go on inspiration. We started off with a couple of songs and then in the middle started writing and everything and we went out with an album. Read the rest of this entry »

[fa:p:a=72157594267830938,id=235385271,j=r,s=s,l=p]AUSTIN DAZE: How has the Reggae scene changed since you started?

YELLOWMAN: It changed a lot. It changed a lot because most of the Reggae music right now is a different kind of music – not the roots, hard core drum, real music. You understand? What we are trying to do right now, we try to do rhoomba (?), the Reggae in the dance halls. Reggae strayed away from the dance halls because of the new younger artists. But now we are trying to bring it back. Read the rest of this entry »

[fa:p:a=72157594267830938,id=237019821,j=r,s=s,l=p]AUSTIN DAZE: How did you get involved with music?

CINDY CASHDOLLAR: Well, let’s see, I got involved in music when I was actually kind of young because I grew up in Woodstock, New York during the time before the first festival but when there was still so much music in town–you would just hear it. People were playing in the little tiny center of the town or on the sidewalks. So I started playing guitar, just regular guitar, when I was eleven. And my dad was a big country music fan and my mom liked all kinds of music–she had a huge collection of what they call world beat music now. She had everything. She was a big Dave Brubeck fan and an Olatunji fan and so there was all that in my house just on the record player. So between the two influences I had a lot of different musical angles coming at me all the time. Read the rest of this entry »

[fa:p:a=72157594267830938,id=237019990,j=r,s=s,l=p]AUSTIN DAZE: Many consider you to be a living legend at this point in time. What are your thoughts on that?

PETER ROWAN: Well, you know, just to be living is a legend in my mind. That’s a nice compliment because everybody I worked with was a legend. It doesn’t have any reality, but I’m a storyteller so it makes it fun to be seen that way because that means that I can draw on my background and tell part of the legend. Legendary, Peter Rowan. Alleged, Peter Rowan. It’s helpful in terms of just relating to the audience, because I’m the teller of the tale. I’m telling the legend of the bluegrass life. So, It’s good. Read the rest of this entry »

[fa:p:a=72157594270496732,id=235357897,j=r,s=s,l=p]AUSTIN DAZE: Tell us about your new CD.

ED HAMELL: Tuesday the 7th of February, on Righteous Babe Records. The name of the CD is, “Songs for Parents who Enjoy Drugs”. You know, obviously inspired by my four- year-old son and maybe the state of the nature. And levity. There is a lot of humor in it because although I’m probably pretty angry, disgruntled, and pessimistic, I try to remain optimistic through humor. I guess that’s the best way to describe it.

AD: This is your second release with Ani Difranco?

Read the rest of this entry »