Entries for July 2012

Ray Wylie Hubbard’s new album, The Grifter’s Hymnal, is like a church service held at the funkiest roadhouse bar this side of the Mississippi. He is at once a ragged prophet, a profane poet, and a lusty preacher. But these days, life for Hubbard is about spiritual awakening, not bible thumping. Unless, that is, the […]

“The ability to fantasize is the ability to survive,” Ray Bradbury said in 1967. Well, I’ve survived longer than I expected or deserve, and some of the credit/blame is certainly shared by my imagination. Upon Bradbury’s recent passing, I had to remind myself that he never said “…guarantee to survive” yet I was no less […]

Mark Abel is a Carlsbad composer who describes his approach to The Dream Gallery: Seven California Portraits as “postmodernist art song.” It’s dense, avant garde material that requires the listener’s full attention for 70 minutes. He’s mixing classical orchestrations, progressive rock chops, classically trained singers, and plenty of musical theatre exposition-song touches, all delivering smartly […]

The Euphoria Brass Band has just hit the streets with their first CD, Coast to Coast. Bold and boisterous, with an emphasis on a funky bass line provided by a funky sousaphone, the CD is an audio essential to get that next party going and a great musical prescription for chasing the blues away. Coast […]

In 1915 was the Pan American Exposition in Balboa Park and out of that closest thing to a World’s Fair yet held in San Diego came one of the Parks great museums (Was it the Natural History Museum, I think so). With the second World’s Fair held in the late ’30s came one of the […]

The 83-year-old Tomcat Courtney shows no sign of slowing down with this follow-up release to his 2008 national recording debut, Downsville Blues (Blue Witch Records), which was a finalist in the Independent Music Awards for Best Blues Album. If anything, Courtney is gaining momentum, having toured extensively (domestically and in Europe) in support of Downsville […]

Hello Troubadourians! I received an email from a reader named John, who asked what I knew about what I would define as “predatory” behavior by people claiming to be representatives of ASCAP and BMI, which John believed resulted in his being turned down for gigs at several venues. I had heard rumors of so-called “crackdowns” […]

The music of the saddle-weary, hard living trail hands and miners of the last half of the 19th century who carved an impossibly inhospitable West into a rustic home, on foot and hoof, has rightly resulted in a rich musical tradition. As it should, it is intertwined with musical stories of the cast iron arteries, […]