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Photography by Emili Carmichael

In a recent email interview with keyboardist/saxophonist Rob Crowell of super band Deer Tick, hilarity ensues. I laughed, I cried, I learned that tequila by itself is more powerful than tequila in a fancy drink, and I defended the amount of fingers that I possess.

Deer Tick will perform at The Loft on Saturday, April 28th along with Turbo Fruits and Telegraph Canyon. The author would like to stress that she does, in fact, have the normal amount of fingers.

On your most recent album, Divine Providence, which song was the most rewarding to record?

I liked recording “The Bump” the best. It was written immediately before we recorded it, and was spontaneous and pretty raw. Good times.

Which song of yours is the most fun to perform onstage?

“Funny Word” is always a good time, between the fact that it’s really high energy and the stage antics that usually accompany it.

You had an amazing 2011, making it on to Paste’s ‘Best Albums of 2011′ list and performing on Letterman. What has been the highlight of your career as a band thus far?

DudeSmash will be the highlight for sure. If you don’t know what it is, you’ll be able to Google it soon.

How often does guitarist Ian O’Neil get compared to Andy Samberg?

More often than he gets compared to Cher, less often than he gets compared to Bob Dylan.

If you could tour with any band, living or dead, who would it be?

The Replacements.

If Deer Tick were a liquor, what sort of drink would you make yourselves into?

Tequila. [Editor's Note: Not quite a full drink, but I'll let it slide.]

How many fingers am I holding up?

13.

Deer Tick will perform with Turbo Fruits and Telegraph Canyon at The Loft on Saturday, April 28. Tickets are available here. Doors at 8pm. Show at 9pm.

There are tons of reasons to make it out to Bear Creek Golf Club in Dallas on Thursday, April 26 for this fabulous tournament. Shall I list a few for you?

• You love to golf
• You love disco classics (from bands like Le Freak!!)
• You love to dress like the cast of Saturday Night Fever or Caddyshack—whichever direction you choose
• You love at least one woman – mom, sister, daughter, friend

Yes, we’ll be dressed like we’re in the Decade of Disco and perhaps even some Caddyshack inspired attire. But it is 2012, and we need to educate and support women in our own neighborhoods about breast health. That is what Komen Dallas County is all about. Of the funds raised, 25 percent goes to find a cure and 75 percent stays right here in Dallas County, helping the women in our lives prevent and beat cancer.

Although early detection saves lives, currently only 62.5 percent of women in Dallas County receive an annual mammogram screening. Fundraisers like Caddyshack for the Cure™ help Komen Dallas County fill the gap in breast-health services for medically underserved patients in the community by supporting breast-health education, breast-cancer screening and treatment for uninsured and underinsured Dallas County residents.

Spots are still available for the tournament. The registration fee is $600 for a team of four or $160 for an individual. This includes lunch, dinner, golf and cart fees, and admission to the private Le Freak concert, which will take place following the tournament. (And a portion of the registration fee is tax deductible.)

Lunch and practice begin at 11:30 a.m. and the tournament tees off at 1 p.m. If you can’t make it out for golf, swing by for dinner at 5:30 p.m. and the Le Freak concert at 7:30 p.m.! Call 214/750-7223 for more information or register here.

Hope to see you there!

Follow Green River Ordinance on your favorite internet thingy: website, twitter, facebook, youtube

Video shot and edited by giovanni gallucci. © 2011 http://LiveLoudTexas.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States License. Attribution required.

Former Austinite Kina Grannis stopped in Dallas on her In Your Arms Tour for an intimate evening with a capacity-crowd at the Kessler Theater. During her show the singer-songwriter was charming, sweet, and at times a little bit goofy. The crowd loved every ounce of her.

Before we continue, let’s back up for a second. I have never seen the Kessler as full as it was during this show. I’ve attended several events at the south Dallas venue over the past couple of years. I should have seen a sold-out crowd by now but I haven’t. Not only was this crowd at capacity, but the theater had all the chairs removed in the center of the hall to accommodate the additional Kina fans.

So why Kina Grannis? She is grateful and she shares her gratitude freely with her audience. During her performance she specifically took the time to thank everyone in attendance for supporting her. OK, “so what” you say. It’s typical for an artist to throw out a “Thank you,” “You’re the best crowd EVAH!” or a similar accolade during a performance. Certainly, Kina did just that and “the crowd went wild” right on que as expected.

However, Ms. Grannis took anther step which was demonstratively different from anything I’d seen any other artist do at a show. She asked the venue staff to turn up the house lights so she could see the faces of those who came out to see her. this wasn’t for just a few seconds. She literally took her time, scanning the crowd, looking at the individual faces of those who took the time to come out and stare at her face for an hour that evening. It was a remarkable gesture. It showed a level of gratitude on the part of this particular artist which was undeniable. It will certainly leave a lasting impression many in attendance.

Looking at this young multi-instrumentalists’ past helps one understand other reasons why this 17-year-old looking 26-year-old Californian draws such a large crowd.

Grannis recorded and self-released two albums, One More in the Attic and In Memory of the Singing Bridge in 2006 at 21 years old. These were not her debuts however. She has been composing and performing since she was in elementary school. In early 2007, she recorded “Ours to Keep” written by Rachael Lawrence and Deborah Ellen. This song has been featured regularly on General Hospital and was in an episode of the ABC Family’s mini-series Samurai Girl in September 2008.

On November 14, 2007, she created a YouTube account and began posting videos of her songs online. Her first video, “Message From Your Heart,” was entered into Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest. Since then, her YouTube videos have received more than 96 million views and have propelled her to become one of YouTube’s most popular personalities.

The Doritos contest, which she won, landed her a contract with Interscope Records. Grannis planned to work with Interscope Records to produce a new album but in January 2009, she announced that she was leaving the label to be an independent artist. During an interview with Billboard, Kina explained that the whole process of “artist development” didn’t sit will with her. She preferred to work alone as an artist so being independent made the most sense to her at that point in her career. She is still an indy artist and doing very well, thank you very much.

Her next effort, Stairwells was released in February of 2010. The work included many original songs already appearing on YouTube, as well as three previously unreleased songs: “World in Front of Me,” “In Your Arms” and “Mr. Sun.” Stairwells debuted at No. 139 on the Billboard 200, No. 5 on the Billboard Top Internet Albums chart, No. 2 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, and No. 18 on the Billboard Independent Albums chart.

In the month following its release, her single “Valentine” was played by Paul Gambaccini on BBC Radio 2, the most popular radio station in the UK. The music video for “Valentine” directed by video director Ross Ching has been viewed well over 13 million times on YouTube.

In early 2011, Grannis was awarded the title of Sirius/XM CoffeeHouse’s 2010 Singer-Songwriter Discovery of the Year after a months-long online voting period. Her song “Heart and Mind” was used for the German TV series Anna und die Liebe. Later that year, Grannis released a stop-motion music video for the single In Your Arms, using 288,000 Jelly Belly jelly beans. It took about 2 years to complete the project. The video accumulated over 1 million views within the first three days. To date, the video has well over 6 million views.

During her short performance at the Kessler Theater, Grannis was accompanied by Keith Tutt II on cello and Imaginary Friend on Guitar (for the last encore of evening). While the adoring crowd knew much of Kina’s set the three songs which were particularly well-received were her own Valentine and two covers.

The first was Taylor Swift & Civil Wars’ Safe and Sound. She handled this number better than Swift could have in a live setting IMHO. Her vocals were fragile where necessary, strong in others and defiant in all the right places. The last crowd favorite was her closing number, a cover of Cold Play’s Fix You. Keith Tutt and Imaginary Friend excelled on the harmonies, filling the Kessler with the tune’s haunting lyrics:

Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you…

As the last notes echoed through the venue, the crowd, sitting on the floor for the majority of the evening, stood with a roaring ovation to see Ms. Grannis into the evening for her next show.

For more photos of this event go to: http://liveloudtexas.com/gallery-kina-grannis-kessler-theater/

You can visit Kina on your favorite internet thingy here:

Website: http://kinagrannis.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/KinaGrannis
Google+: https://plus.google.com/113922681403146970349/posts
iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/kina-grannis/id415821967
Last.fm: http://www.last.fm/music/Kina+Grannis
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/kinagrannis
Next Big Sound: http://nextbigsound.com/25240/stats-Kina-Grannis
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/kinagrannis
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/kinagrannis

Photos edited by giovanni gallucci. © 2011 giovanni gallucci, http://LiveLoudTexas.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States License. Attribution required.

Kina Grannis performs at the Kessler Theater Sunday, April 15, Doors at 7, Show at 8pm. The below interview was conducted in October 2010, when Grannis appeared in the Cambridge Room at House of Blues.

Kina Grannis is freezing. The green room at the House of Blues, which is adorned with funky wallpaper instead of living up to its namesake, is entirely too cold for the month of October in Texas, and Grannis’s thin black sweater isn’t helping very much.

It’s the Fall of 2010 and Kina is getting ready for her performance in the Cambridge Room, a cozy environment perfect for her fans that take her lyrics to heart. The audience will be able to get close enough to the stage to shout out their requests and see her fingers fly across the frets.

We begin the interview, and within moments, she and I are talking like old friends. Put two California girls in a room in Texas and they’re bound to bond over the lack of palm trees in the Lone Star state. After a stint in Austin, Kina can relate.

Photographer Emili Carmichael is taking pictures of Grannis during our conversation. “I feel like that light is probably doing scary things to my face!” she laughs as Carmichael’s flash emits a blinding light and the camera shutter clicks open and closed. It is pretty much impossible to make this girl look anything but gorgeous.

The first time I heard Grannis’s voice, I was casually listening to The Sixty One, browsing for new artists to add to my self-professed awesome collection of underground singers when I stumbled across her cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence“. My ears have forever submitted to her sweet voice and talent powerhouse. Her music is a comforting blend of honesty and hope. Grannis, the eternal optimist, has a way of writing the most dismal affairs into positive, uplifting melodies.

As a child, Grannis always wrote songs, but never gave much thought to the fact that she was songwriting. “It was more a game I played where I would tell my sisters to pick a title, and I’d write a song on the spot.”

Halfway through high school, Grannis attended a Christmas choir concert that would serve as a wake up call to take her on the spot songs and put them to music. Grannis recalls the concert well, saying, “I just started crying, like, bad crying. I went in to the bathroom, and my sister came in and she was like, ‘what’s wrong, what’s wrong?’” At that point, Grannis knew she needed to sing.

She picks up her Taylor guitar and begins to strum. “I locked myself away in my room just looking up tabs and chords and taught myself how to play,” she grows excited, beaming with the memory of her accomplishment. “A month later I wrote my first song, kind of unintentionally. I was just sitting there one night, and then a song came out and I was like, ‘oh my gosh, I just wrote a song!’”

Now a bona fide singer-songwriter, Kina sits in the green room with her tour manager, waiting to go onstage. We discuss her current tour, and the fun she has had in cities such as Portland and Vancouver. “I should definitely explore Dallas someday,” she says, her eyes searching around the dimly lit green room. “I was actually so surprised the first time I came to Texas, how green it was. I think growing up, you envision Texas as people busting through double doors in cowboy boots, and tumbleweeds everywhere, and then I moved to Austin and I was like, ‘wait, this is so pretty!’”

After graduating from the University of Southern California, Grannis made her home in Austin, playing music. “I met a ton of songwriters there. I feel like the music community is so supportive.”

Moving to Austin didn’t happen by accident. “It was really a strange thing actually,” she laughs, launching in to what sounds like a Craigslist nightmare. “It was the beginning of my senior year in college that this random man in Austin contacted me online and said, ‘I just found your MySpace; you should move to Austin and be in my band.’ And I was like, ‘you’re crazy, what?’”

It took some convincing for the petite songbird to give up her Southern California lifestyle. “You know, in my mind, music is in LA. My plan after I graduated was basically do the whole ‘struggling artist’ in LA thing where I’d probably have to get a full time job in order to pay for rent and try to get as many gigs as I could, and keep writing, which sounded very difficult.”

After much thought, Grannis forfeited the Pacific Ocean for a singer-songwriter lifestyle in the hill country. “It occurred to me that I could stay in LA and have a real job and try to do music and really struggle or I could move to this really creative, awesome town, and be totally free to do music full time.” For the first time, Grannis’s sole focus was music. “I did a lot of writing there. If not for Austin, I wouldn’t have done a lot of my writing that really got me going.”

But her time in Austin was brief – after only six months, Grannis entered the 2007 Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest that sent her back to LA and would eventually pave the wave for a promising music career. “It was crazy,” Grannis says of the experience. “It was basically two months of posting a video [to YouTube] every single day. And I had never posted videos before then, I only started because of this contest. I didn’t know what to do. I think my first video, I did fifty takes because I was like, this is so awkward!” It was through this process that Grannis became more comfortable in front of the video camera. Today, she is a star on YouTube, nearly 100 million views over, as well as one of the most subscribed-to artists, amassing over 500,000 subscribers.

Her hard work earned her a spot as a top three finalist for Doritos Crash the Super Bowl. Grannis and the two other finalists were placed in a viewing room to await their fate. “They said after the first quarter, sixty seconds of one of your music videos is going to air and you will be on the front page of iTunes, and you’ll be signed to Interscope Records,” she recounts, letting out an anxious exhale, heavy with the memory of anticipation. “It was so stressful and we’re all looking at each other like, ‘if you win, I still love you!’”

“The commercials started, and they had it go all black and intense; it was like, ‘Doritos! Crash the Super Bowl!’” she says, making crashing noises and miming big gestures with her hands, “and then I heard my little guitar part start playing, and then I just started crying. It was this total crazy whirlwind.”

Soon after, Grannis noticed a change in her online presence. “On my MySpace, I got home and I was looking at the number of plays, and there were way too many zeroes on the end, I was like, is this correct?”

Before the contest, Grannis tried tirelessly to get even a few people to attend her shows. “If twenty people were there it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is crazy!’” But that is nothing compared to her present following. “Right after the contest I had a show at Hotel Café, which was this venue at the time I’d always wanted to play, and it was full, and all these people were singing along!”

Despite her current status as an insanely popular artist who consistently sells out shows across North America, Europe and Asia, Grannis remains humble about her craft. When she meets fans, they are overjoyed to tell her how much they like her music; but here is her secret, “They’re really excited, but I’m so excited! I’m like, you like my music? Yay, that’s so cool!”

Kina has come a long way from writing songs in the stairwells of USC (where the title of her 2010 album comes from). She has performed on Ellen and Jimmy Kimmel Live, as well as gained the attention of USA Today, E! News, Time Magazine, Good Morning America and more.

This kind of stature can really get to a person’s head, but Grannis remains nothing but thankful. “I have to say that it is so amazing for me to be able to go around the country and to see real people in real life. I’ve been dreaming of sharing my music for a very long time and it’s one billion percent because of [fans] who not only are coming out to shows but also tuning in and watching my silly videos and tweeting with me and I just wanted to thank [them] so much because [they] make my life exciting and happy,” she says with a smile, her hands on her heart.

“Thank you so much,” she says to me as the interview concludes. Her black flats skim the ground as she shuffles toward me for a hug, “It was a good time killer to fill this gap before I go on.” She flashes a demure smile and the door to the green room closes. While our time is over, hers is not: Kina Grannis is going places. 100 million views and counting can’t be wrong.

Kina Grannis performs at Kessler Theater Sunday, 4/15. Doors at 7pm, Show at 8pm. Tickets are $15.

Indie duo Bowerbirds, comprised of lovebirds Phil Moore and Beth Tacular, have had an interesting couple of years. Beth almost died due to an unsolvable illness and the two broke up before realizing that they needed each other. These hardships brought the art rock band closer together and brought us a beautiful third album, The Clearing. Tonight the band is playing in Dallas at the Loft. We caught up with Moore to learn about the toughest thing about dating a bandmate, and what you wouldn’t expect the pair to do in their free time.

Your most recent album The Clearing came out a month ago. I’ve been reading about the hardships that you and Beth went through before making this album; is the title in response to these events?

That was a time right when we started writing this record and things settled down. During that time we worked out a lot of our issues with each other.

What is the most difficult thing about being in a band with someone who you are also so close with on a personal level?

I think it’s mostly just being able to switch from work mode to relaxation mode. It’s hard to not continue to talk about our band and the work to be done. It’s hard to know when to stop and talk about the weather, or something like that. 

The Clearing is your third album. What has been a career high thus far? 

When Will Arnett tweeted about us and said he really liked our song “Tuck The Darkness In” and told people to go buy the album on iTunes. That was pretty amazing.

You recorded The Clearing in a little cabin in North Carolina. What was that experience like?

It’s our house where we live in the country; it was a get away. We woke up in our normal bed, made coffee, and recorded every day for several months.

You’ll be in Dallas in a couple weeks, anything looking forward to?

I like that music is really important out there.

Your sound is so calm, comforting and laid back, what is something that would shock me about the Bowerbirds; something that I wouldn’t expect to be true?

We really like dancing and we posted something about that on Facebook. People wrote back that their dreams of us were crushed because of these romantic ideals that they had about us.

People got upset about it?

It was Skrillex or something, and we were like, this is awesome! because we had just discovered it, and people were like, “no, you’re the people I listen to when I don’t want to listen to that stuff!”

Bowerbirds perform at The Loft tonight, April 12. Doors at 8:30pm. Tickets are $12-$14.

A legend in his own time Clinn Rippy is a mystery to many. Even assigning a title to the man is … difficult. He is a musician who is respected by the industry, a performance artist who baffles the art community and a human being the critics have a field day with. This film is the first ever to discover the human behind the artist.

Follow the production of Who Is Clinn Rippy? on your favorite social network thingy:

twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/clinnrippy
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/WhoisClinnRippy
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/travelingbandito/videos

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States License. Attribution REQUIRED.

Today we have a new partner – Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland in Ohio. Currently between buildings, the Museum launches today on ArtBabble as they prepare for a grand reopening in their new building in October 2012.

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Oxford, UK quartet Jonquil, notable for their  afro-indie pop beats, is embarking on their first US national tour supporting their recently released album Point Of Go. We caught up with frontman Hugo Manuel to chat about the band’s time at SXSW, how they use accents to their advantage, and that time sheep flocked to their recording studio.

You recently wrapped up a stint at SXSW 2012. How was the SXSW experience?

Very tiring and slightly stressful, but completely rewarding and excellent. I think this year what defined it for us was the abundance of swimming. We had a nice pool and a bit of time off…so we managed to get some good swimming in every day. Lots of Marco Polo and underwater handstands. That’s what we’re all about.

Have you been to Dallas? What comes to mind when you think of Dallas? 

Never been before. I wasn’t sure it was a real place. I thought it was a TV show.

Jonquil is touring in support of your recently released album, Point Of Go. What was the most exciting thing that happened during the recording process?

Sheep nearly invaded our studio out in the country. There is a security camera pointing to the outside of the door and we could see on the TV screen sheep just aimlessly trotting towards the door, eventually surrounding it. We were actually too scared to leave so we just knuckled down, played some really loud stuff, and they eventually subsided.

It’s no secret that ladies love a strong English accent. While touring in the states, have you ever used your accent to your advantage? What was the result?

Yes all the time. I like to thicken it up and go a bit James Bond. I don’t get it, because the same does not apply to guys loving American girls accents. No offense.

If Jonquil were an ice cream flavor, what would it be?

Steak and ale.

Jonquil performs tonight, April 9 at the Prophet Bar. Doors at 7pm, tickets are $12.