Blogs

“Cowboy Breakfast.”  Friday’s episode of Cowboy Tracks is full of songs and spoken word creating a portrait of food in the old and new west. You’re “purt near” guaranteed to come away with a powerful hankering for strong coffee and biscuits with gravy!

I am almost 100% certain that you have not heard Mike Viola's latest album "The American Egypt." But you need to hear it. It's great, it just came out on July 17th - streaming only, nothing physical until the Fall - and it really showcases this songwriter's talents. Join me on August 1 as I play the whole album and we discuss what a middle-aged man can do with his wardrobe to be described as a mutant ninja turtle. Hint: skinny black jeans.

Catch ÌFÉ live, Saturday, July 28, 2018, at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, CA

"I've heard a lot of rappers freestyle over a beat, but I've never heard a beat freestyle over a rapper," Otura Mun tells me with a slight smile, and I shake my head and make some kind of sound from my chest to recognize the innovative spirit beneath this clever quip. We're talking about improvisation, something that many of us don't expect to hear in electronic music. But ÌFÉ, Mun's electronic fusion group based in Puerto Rico, goes well beyond the expectations of genre, technology, and tradition, bringing an otherworldly dimension of play to a modern musical form that often relies heavily on programming.

Sophomore albums are always intriguing to me when an artist's debut was well received. Seems like the pressure is on to do even better on (often) a shorter amount of time. 

Courtney Barnett delivered with Tell Me How You Really Feel (May 2018) especially when so many garage-rock-slack-style outfits are putting stuff out there. She's from Australia, where many other cool rock bands are from. Maybe that and her collaboration with Kurt Vile in between releases helped. 

Hope you tune in, you nameless, faceless listener, you.

“Out on the Trail” is the theme for the songs and cowboy poems on this episode.