Displaying items by tag: Rock

David Burchfield writes Americana that swaggers wildly through raw emotion within a meticulously written and arranged package. With connections to his indie folk, classic country, and bluegrass roots, Burchfield carves a unique path in the folk rock world with his powerful 5-piece, the Fire Guild. American Songwriter has said: "This type of solid songcraft would make Burchfield fit right in on a bill with the likes of Lucinda Williams or Jason Isbell." Burchfield’s literate lyrics meet emotive grace in nods to Jason Isbell, Watchhouse (Mandolin Orange), and David Ramirez. There is a powerful candor in Burchfield’s writing – raw, emotive, and rich with details that bring the listener right into the scene of his passion. Solo, Burchfield performs with a surprising ferocity and conviction that has silenced even the rowdiest of rooms. Critics have called his 5-piece band, David Burchfield & the Fire Guild, akin to “the Band meets the Stray Birds” – equal parts all out roots rock party and sensitively arranged balladry. Burchfield has opened for Nicki Bluhm, Anders Osborne, Noah Gundersen, David Ramirez, and Joe Pug.

“Mighty and joyous rock-injected blues…luxurious vocals and fine guitar work. Her voice is as muscular as her name is evocative.” – Austin Chronicle

“Carolyn Wonderland is the real deal. She’s an amazing guitar player. And damn, can she sing.” – Los Angeles Times

“With incendiary guitar chops and raw, powerful vocals, fiery Texas blues rocker Carolyn Wonderland draws instant comparisons to fellow Texans Stevie Ray Vaughan and Janis Joplin.” –NPR Music

“Hey, have you heard Carolyn Wonderland? She’s something else. She should be nationwide.” – Bob Dylan, talking to Asleep At The Wheel’s Ray Benson

The depths of the Texas blues tradition with the wit of a poet. She hits the stage with an unmatched presence, a true legend in her time.

She’d grown up the child of a singer in a band and began playing her mother’s vintage Martin guitar when other girls were dressing dolls. She’d gone from being the teenage toast of her hometown Houston to sleeping in her van in Austin amid heaps of critical acclaim for excellent recordings.

Along with the guitar and the multitude of other instruments she learned to play – trumpet, accordion, piano, mandolin, lap steel – Wonderland’s ability to whistle remains most unusual. Whistling is a uniquely vocal art seldom invoked in modern music, yet it’s among the most spectacular talents the human voice possesses.

That vocal proficiency was well-established in the singer’s midteens, landing her gigs at Fitzgerald’s by age 15. She absorbed Houston influences like Little Screamin’ Kenny, Albert Collins, Lavelle White, Jerry Lightfoot, Joe “Guitar” Hughes, Little Joe Washington, “borrowed” a car to sneak out and jam ended up swapping songs with Townes Van Zandt at Houston’s Local’s on White Oak, got involved in the underground theater scene becoming the first “Photochick” in Jason Nodler’s “In the Under Thunderloo” and soaked up touring bands like the Paladins, Los Lobos, and the Mad Hatter of Texas music, Doug Sahm. Her music played in television series such as “Time of Your Life” and NBC’s “Homicide.” The Lone Star State was as credible a proving ground for blues in the 1980s and 90s as existed, especially in Austin with Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Angela Strehli, Omar & the Howlers, and Lou Ann Barton all in their prime. By the following decade, Austin’s blues luster thinned, but Houston, always a bastion of soul and R&B, boasted the Imperial Monkeys with the effervescent Carolyn Wonderland as ruler of the jungle.

In the early 1990s, Wonderland & the Imperial Monkeys were invited to the Guadalupe Street Antone’s in Austin. There, they were treated like royalty with the singer as the queen of hearts in the club’s post-Stevie Ray Vaughan stable, which included Toni Price, Johnny and Jay Moeller, Sue Foley, Mike and Corey Keller, and the Ugly Americans. It was a good bar for the Monkeys to hang, and Austin felt so comfortable that when the band called it quits a few years later, after a run-in with black ice and a semi that wound young Miss Wonderland in the hospital, she set her sights on Austin at the start of the millennium. Besides, Doug Sahm had told Carolyn while they were signing autographs together at the High Sierra Music Festival, she ought to move to Austin, as it was the land of free guitar lessons. She was there in months.

Living in Austin renewed Carolyn Wonderland’s focus on her multiple talents, underlining rich vocals with excellent guitar work, trumpet, and piano, as well as that remarkable ability to whistle on key. Despite spending two years homeless (or as she puts it, “van-full,”) Austin has been fertile ground for Carolyn. A series of each-better-than-the-next discs began with Alcohol & Salvation in 2001 (“songs about booze and God; records are a time capsule of what happened that year”) 2003’s “Bloodless Revolution,” The Bismeaux Releases: 2008’s “Miss Understood,” 2011’s “Peace Meal” (recorded at Bismeaux and Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock,) 2015’s “Live Texas Trio”; and here we are with 2017’s “Moon Goes Missing.”

Carolyn also got to stretch out with other bands and notably appears in Jerry Lightfoot’s Band of Wonder’s 2002 release, “Texistentialism” featuring Jerry Lightfoot, Vince Welnick (Grateful Dead, The Tubes, Todd Rundgren,) Carolyn, Barry “Frosty” Smith (Lee Michaels, Sly & the Family Stone, Rare Earth, Soulhat) and Larry Fulcher (Taj Mahal, Phantom Blues Band). She has released many songs for charity, 2016’s “Room at the Inn” (iTunes) benefits Doctors Without Borders, 2013’s “Money in the Game” (featuring Marcia Ball and Shelley King) benefits Planned Parenthood, “the Farmer Song” from “Miss Understood” benefits Farm AID, “Annie’s Scarlet Letter” from “Bloodless Revolution” benefits NORML, 1997 Justice Records released Carolyn’s version of Little Screamin’ Kenny’s holiday lament, “Blue Lights” (featuring Ian McLagan) benefitting MD Anderson Children’s Art Project.

Carolyn’s first appearance on vinyl? She’s with James Williamson (Stooges) on the April 2014 Record Store Day single, “Open Up & Bleed” AND on the full LP inspired by that fun session, “Re-Licked” featuring Raw Power Era songs with cool and risky guests.

Her circle of musician friends and admirers broadened to include not only Ray [Benson, who produced Miss Understood] but also the late Eddy Shaver, Shelley King, and yes, Bob Dylan, who likened her composition “Bloodless Revolution” to “a mystery movie theme.” She appeared on the same taping with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings when she made her debut on PBS’ “Austin City Limits” (Season 35.) and had the thrill of her life when Bonnie Raitt joined her onstage for “The Road to Austin” concert film featuring Stephen Bruton and all his friends, got to play with James Cotton, Pinetop Perkins, and so many others at Antone’s, she and Erin Jaimes put together a benefit for Uncle John Turner and Johnny Winter insisted on bringing his band by to play, Carolyn’s wedding to A. Whitney Brown was officiated by Mike Nesmith (Monkees,) who serendipitously introduced them on set at VideoRanch in 2010. (there is a video of the two of them on stage together that day!) She began co-writing with locals Sarah Brown, Shelley King, Marcia Ball, Ruthie Foster, Cindy Cashdollar, and Guy Forsyth; sat in with Los Lobos, Levon Helm, Vintage Trouble, Robert Earl Keen, and Ray Wylie Hubbard; and toured relentlessly for the past two decades, sometimes with luminaries like Dave Alvin, Buddy Guy and Johnny Winter, so far spreading her music in US, Europe, South America and Japan. She also claims membership in the all-girl Sis Deville, the gospel-infused Imperial Crown Golden Harmonizers, the Texas Guitar Women, and the Woodstock Lonestars.

Carolyn recently joined John Mayall’s Band as his guitarist and is balancing life on the road with writing time at home and on the way. She’s been touring for over 25 years and ain’t done yet. Come and see it at a show! (seriously, she’s perpetually on tour.)

Sunday 3pm

Pinetop Inferno sets the blues on fire – these are the words of Ogden Standard Examiner writer Raychel Johnson after she attended one of the band's live performances.

“To me, music is food and you need a variety to stay healthy and strong,” - Luther Dickinson on his prolific musical output, which, at last count, includes three new, somewhat divergent roots albums planned for 2015.

When Luther Dickinson was growing up in rural Mississippi — just 40 miles south of Memphis, but deep in the hill country — his favorite band was Black Flag, the caustic L.A. punk band that defined the hardcore movement in the 1980s. That may surprise listeners who have been following his career as a folk-blues-rock innovator. With his brother Cody, Luther is a charter member of the North Mississippi Allstars and has recorded with an amazing array of musicians over the years: Beck, Patty Griffin, Mavis
Staples, John Hiatt, Buddy Miller, RL Burnside, Lucero, Jon Spencer, and Robert Plant. He’s also produced albums by Jim Lauderdale, Amy LaVere, and Otha Turner, whose Everybody’s Hollerin’ Goat was named one of the top 10 blues records of the ‘90s by Rolling Stone. 

"The best bluegrass-rock-country-soul-gospel-anything goes hybrid band" -The Bluegrass Situation

Mountain Heart is thrilled to announce their new partnership and an upcoming studio album, their first since 2010!

Mountain Heart Entertainment is the new official partnership created after purchasing the band from former member Barry Abernathy. Abernathy has resigned to focus on family. The group is now officially a team on and off stage. For the first time in the band's 17 year history, Mountain Heart represents a group made up of all equal partners to create and share their music with fans everywhere!

Sunday 3pm

Pinetop Inferno sets the blues on fire – these are the words of Ogden Standard Examiner writer Raychel Johnson after she attended one of the band's live performances.

"The best bluegrass-rock-country-soul-gospel-anything goes hybrid band" -The Bluegrass Situation

Mountain Heart is thrilled to announce their new partnership and an upcoming studio album, their first since 2010!

"The simple fact is that James McMurtry may be the truest, fiercest songwriter of his generation..." - Stephen King | Entertainment Weekly

James McMurtry is an American rock and folk-rock/Americana singer, songwriter, guitarist, bandleader and occasional actor (Daisy Miller, Lonesome Dove). He performs with veteran bandmates Daren Hess, Cornbread, and Tim Holt.

It can be argued that it was Booker T. Jones who set the cast for modern soul music and is largely responsible for its rise and enduring popularity. On classic Stax hits like "Green Onions," "Hang 'Em High," "Time Is Tight," and "Melting Pot" the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Musicians Hall of Fame inductee and GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award recipient pushed the music's boundaries, refined it to its essence and then injected it into the nation's bloodstream. In June of 2013, Sound the Alarm, the new album from Booker T, finds the Hammond B3 organ master looking ahead yet again, laying down his distinctive bedrock grooves amid a succession of sparkling collaborations with some of contemporary R&B's most gifted young voices.

No strangers to the OFOAM stage, The Sister Wives will kick off the first annual Ogden Roots and Blues Festival in style!

Ranging from soulful blues to fiery rock to all-out dance band, the Sister Wives defy the conventional norms typically set for all-women bands with the range and depth of their musical energy and virtuosity.

The Sister Wives display a multitude of musical attitudes in a style that is part Stevie Ray Vaughn, a little Sippie Wallace, and a little Allman Brothers.

Their live shows persuade even the most skeptical that "Girls Rock!".