folk Archives - Page 8 of 8

Who Should Win the NPR Tiny Desk Contest

Feb 152017

Last weekend, Fantastic Negrito won his first Grammy Award for “Best Contemporary Blues Album.” It’s a safe bet that few Grammy voters would have ever heard of him had he not won another award two years prior: the NPR Tiny Desk Contest. And if the future is just, last year’s winner, the wonderful violinist Gaelynn Lea, will soon be collecting Grammy statues of her own.

Fantastic Negrito hails from California, and Lea from Minnesota. So as this year’s contest continues, we think it’s time for the Northeast to – to quote Lea’s winning song – linger in the sun. To aid in that effort, out of dozens of locally-made videos, we’ve picked our favorite Vermont entries in the 2017 contest.

The only real rules for a Tiny Desk Contest video are that the song has to be an original and a desk should somehow figure in (it doesn’t even need to be tiny). But many of the state’s finest musicians went beyond the bare minimum, one dragging a not-so-tiny desk to a mountain summit, another finding a tiny church to match the desk. The songs span from folk to prog, soul to punk to classical piano. There’s also a song about dinosaurs, and a special celebrity entrant: Officer Clemmons from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood!

So read on to discover our dozen-plus favorite Vermont entries. Then head to the Tiny Desk Contest website to browse other entries from Vermont and beyond. Our favorite non-Vermont find: this bizarre David Lynch fever-dream masked performer. Continue reading »

Vermont’s Latest Breakout Henry Jamison Gently Electrifies Gordon Lightfoot Cover

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Feb 102017

Phish and Grace Potter. For years those two have stood as the tentpoles of Vermont’s breakout musicians. But in recent years, a number of great local artists have begun nipping at their heels. Artists like Madaila, Kat Wright, and The DuPont Brothers are touring and getting attention on the national scene and show few signs of slowing down.

The latest of these is Henry Jamison, who last year earned plaudits from the likes of Consequence of Sound and Vice for his wonderful EP The Rains (home to our sixth favorite song of 2016). Now, to promote his current tour, he’s released a new song. This one’s a cover of another great songwriter: Gordon Lightfoot and his classic “If You Could Read My Mind.” Continue reading »

New Orleans Meets the Southwest on Horn-Flecked Americana Album from Stuart Ross and the Temp Agency

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Jan 192017

On certain songs on Stuart Ross and the Temp Agency’s debut album Wandering In The Wild, you’d swear the band hailed from New Orleans’ second-line tradition. On other tracks, the Tex-Mex horn spurts might make you wonder if they hail from further west, sending lonesome signals from the borderlands. Well, they are in fact from a border, but it’s the one between Vermont and New Hampshire.

Though they’re closer to Canada than most of their influences, their sound pulls from musical traditions across the map. Wandering In The Wild is “Americana” in its broadest sense. It draws not just from the alt-country sphere that genre tag is often a synonym for, but from blues (“Devil’s Stomping Ground”), mariachi (the instrumental “Wandering in the Wild”), and big-band jazz (“Spiders”). Sprawling and ambitious, it’s one of the best debut albums we’ve heard in a while. Continue reading »

The Best Vermont Songs of 2016

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Jan 062017

When I launched this blog last month, I kicked things off with The Best Vermont Albums of 2016. I said after that I’d move on to what’s next, not just what already happened. Which I will, I swear (and I have a bit, highlighting great new material from Vultures of Cult (R.I.P.), The New Line, and 1881). But first, one final retrospective.

When putting together the Best Albums list, I realized many of my favorite 2016 songs were not on proper albums. They were from EPs, singles, preview tracks from 2017 albums, covers, or other one-offs. So, for one last look back, we’re counting down our favorite Vermont-made songs of the past year. Then onto 2017. Promise. Continue reading »

Hear Appalachian Folk Tunes Reimagined on an Instrument from Zimbabwe

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Jan 042017

Pete Seeger once told Brattleboro, Vermont musician Brendan Taaffe: “Your mbira playing is beautiful!” Which probably inspires in you the same question it did me: What’s a mbira?

A mbira, as it happens, is a small thumb piano popular in Zimbabwe and the Congo. And Seeger was right: Taaffe’s mbira playing is beautiful. His 2013 record Can’t Hold the Wheel with band The New Line was one of the best Vermont records in the past decade, blending African music into the broader stew of Americana (Taaffe also plays the more oft-heard instruments of guitar, fiddle, and banjo). And now he’s released a follow-up, a six-song EP called Fly Down You Little Bird. Five of the tracks are covers. We asked Taaffe about them and his responses were so interesting and in-depth we’re just going to quote them at length: Continue reading »

The Best Vermont Albums of 2016

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Dec 282016

Welcome to County Tracks, a new blog that aims to explore music new and old from the great state of Vermont. We’ll be kicking off in full in January, but we couldn’t let 2016 pass us by without a look back at all the great music the Green Mountain State produced. From heavy metal to light-as-air folk, Burlington to Brattleboro, Vermont musicians delivered incredible albums across the musical spectrum. Check out our countdown below, and see you back here next year. Continue reading »