Photo: Diane White You’d be hard-pressed to find a more tightly knit band than White Mystery. Like Jeff the Brotherhood, but with one less Y chromosome, the Chicago garage-rock duo proves that the siblings who play together, stay together. “A brother and a sister, you kind of have this nurturing relationship,” singer and guitarist Alex […]
Joshua Boydston
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Clip art
“If you really want to make something happen for yourself, you can’t wait around thinking,” said Nik Harper. “Just go out and make what you want. That’s literally all we did. We’re really lucky that people liked what we were doing.” Their video for Philadelphia rapper Lushlife’s “Magnolia” (see below), selected to be showcased at […]
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Big time
Dominic Lalli and Jeremy Salken — the two minds behind electronic duo Big Gigantic — met while playing in various jazz and funk bands around the greater Boulder, Colo., area before rooming together and deciding to collaborate. Old habits die hard. “[Lalli] said, ‘I’m making these beats, and I want to play sax over it.’ […]
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Lotus flowers
Photo: Tobin Voggesser American music’s evolving scope hasn’t played into the hands of many bands as well as it has for instrumental act Lotus. The collective of Deadheads with penchants for Aphex Twin and The Orb has ridden the rise of electronic dance music to sold-out tours and high-profile festival slots. “When we first started […]
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’Wood burning
A lot rides on a debut album: It’s the first — and sometimes only — chance to tell the world what you’re all about. Ramsay Midwood did just that with 2002’s spectacularly named Shoot Out at the OK Chinese Restaurant. “There were a lot of gunfights in Chinese restaurants in California … too much MSG […]
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In a ‘Huff’
Photo: Nathan Poppe A band’s first tour is a necessary evil. The drives are long; the rides … uncomfortable. It’s cheap beer and cheaper food with little to no sleep, just to play for maybe a couple of handfuls of people, returning home with not a dime in the members’ collective pockets. Oklahoma City outfit […]
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Once you go Black …
Joe Lewis couldn’t have known that picking up a guitar to kill some time during a particularly boring shift at a pawn shop would make his life calling clear. In retrospect, however, it feels like fate. “It was just being bored. You start messing around with stuff, and it was pure chance,” he said. “I […]
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Tiger beat
Photo: Nathan Poppe It doesn’t take long following in someone else’s footsteps to want to step out on your own again. Oklahoma’s Beau Jennings literally has been retracing the footsteps of famed Okie humorist Will Rogers over the past few years for his passion project, the film The Verdigris: In Search of Will Rogers, all […]
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Black Canyon — Black Canyon
Now, with Morisse joined by Riley Jantzen (ex-Mayola), Tyler Hopkins (The Nghiems) and Kurt Freudenberger (The Pretty Black Chains), a much louder Black Canyon comes across more like an Oklahoma-bred Gaslight Anthem. It’s a whiskey-chugging, cow-tipping rock record that wears its heart on its tattoo sleeve, and it’s a damn good one at that. Morisse’s […]
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Music explosion
Most bands never get the chance to meet their musical heroes. The dudes of Diarrhea Planet get to hang out with theirs on a near-daily basis. “Right when I started school in Nashville, I went out to a club and watched Jeff the Brotherhood play. It blew my mind,” guitarist Emmett Miller said. “I wanted […]