2008 Forward Music Festival

I'm thrilled to be involved in planning the Forward Music Festival: showcasing Midwest music and amazing music venues across downtown Madison, Wisconsin on September 19&20th.

Here are the first announced headliners:

Neko Case
Dan Deacon
Leslie & The Lys
The Detroit Cobras
Killdozer
Dillinger Four
Bob Mould

...and many more to come!

Two-day wristbands are on sale now for only $25 at www.ForwardMusicFest.com.
An extra $10 guarantees admission to a headline show of your choice.

For an audio preview of the announced headliners, check out:
Forward Music Festival Muxtape

Dirty, Real Fingerprints

Holly Andres - Calvin (2006)

Today's post is dedicated to the incredible people that came out to my JustSayin Shows this week. We screamed and sweated and swatted flies bloody with Frog Eyes, the Butterfly Assassins, and a newly crippled Crane Your Swan Neck. We harmonized and drank out of paper bags with The Daredevil Christopher Wright and Laarks. We were reminded that sometimes there is nothing you can type into a search engine that will return the desired results. That sometimes a photo album is best when it can be flipped through and accidentally scuffed with dirty fingerprints. That music can be heard more clearly when you take off headphones and put on shows with real people. We hope to see you soon at The Project Lodge, these are Madison nights we will never forget.

The Daredevil Christopher Wright - East Coast (mp3)

I Can Only Write About Dolphins

Joseph Kosuth - Art As Idea: Nothing (1968)

When you're out of control, place your head on the floor - she said - on the floor. With her tail in the air, her skull pushed from one side of the room to the other. Mental illness is like dolphin tricks without the training or applause. The skin like dolphins without the sheen, the eyes like dolphins without the eagerness, the conversation like dolphins without the glide. On second thought today was nothing like a dolphin. There is nothing like a dolphin. Nothing.

Jon Athans Project - Humid in Town (mp3)

I Smell Like A Glacier Shit in a Bar

Robin Schwartz - Portraits Of Amelia #32

Well, hello. Fancy meeting you here. Us. Here. Together. Again. I've been gone and I've been neglectful, but I've brought back some stories to tell you about beauty and the state of Montana. I'll start with this Connie Smith song that snuggled warmly between the harshness of conservative radio sermons, overlapping mountain ridges, and beer bongs along my path. It has the innocence of open country much like Robin Schwartz's life portraits of her daughter Amelia. It has the beautiful hurt of sleeping under the stars and then under a downpour. And most importantly it has the memory, the mental embrace, of the things we will never forget.

Connie Smith - Burning a Hole in My Mind (mp3)

Today at the Bottom of the Lake

Holly Andres - Fiona I (2006)

It's a flood. It's a flood. It's the illegal activity of a gang of disenfranchised liquid droplets. It's the view from the bottom of a fishbowl without all the fun plastic magenta kelp. It's one part helplessness, one part disdain, and three hundred parts water. It's the heavy stink setting after the fresh clean. It's a new home, a home taken down and marked by leagues below tide level. It's a monotone recitation of the longest insurance claim you've ever read.

The Builders and The Butchers - Bottom of the Lake (mp3)

True Love Is A Shotgun Wedding

Anastasia Cazabon - Tree (from Stories)

Holding hands with Anastasia Cazabon (whose photographs I've been featuring this week), Nashville's Caitlin Rose tells stories of an evolving country. She speaks in a new generation of American twang and "Im-a-gonnas" about another generation of young American alcoholics falling in love at backyard weddings. The stories are old themes voiced with a new ease and energetic pace. They're fearlessly grainy in the same way that the black and white photographs of the 1970s differ from those in the 1950s. In the way that writing about evolution is no longer about getting richer, sleeker, or more efficient. Hers are evolutionary stories in surprising but truthful directions, where sometimes dead flowers mean so much more than live ones. It's the sound of a future grown out of the past, but not out of its expectations.

Caitlin Rose - Dead Flowers (mp3) [buy]

Good Morning

Patrick O'Dell

To find someone to clap between your sentences. For impact. For impact. Would be the goal of the song. Someone to buy you Rogaine. On sale. On sale. Without telling your friends. To pick up the tab when you forget. This time. This time. Your wallet at home.

Ingrid Michaelson - The Way I Am (mp3)
Link removed at the request of the artist.

* Win two free tickets to see Ingrid Michaelson on Saturday the Barrymore. Simply email or leave a comment.*

Without Reservations For Dinner or Summer

Ryan McGinley - Tree #3 (2003)

This is the kind of summer I want to have. Naked and in a made up language. Want to join? It looks something like crazy on video, but completely essential in concept.

Sigur Ros - Gobbledigook (mp3)


*In gossip news, if Bjork and Matthew Barney are the Brangelina of music and art collaborations, this is certainly the Bennifer.*