Photo: Samantha Lamb For all the talk of Oklahoma singer-songwriter Parker Millsap and his Pentecostal roots, there’s a point that gets glossed over along the way. People note that gruff howl of a voice rumbling out of his gut with a tent-revival vigor equal parts fire-and-brimstone and piss-and-vinegar. Millsap himself nods to those Sunday morning […]
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Straying from the norm
Photo: Doug Seymour Don’t bother asking The Stray Birds how they came up with their beautifully evocative name. Even they’ve forgotten by now. “We were trying to name the project and felt like we should be some kind of bird. Obviously, The Byrds is out,” said Oliver Craven, the band’s jack-of-alltrades. “We travel around a […]
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OKG7 It’s a miracle on 23rd Street
Basil Mediterranean Cafe 211 NW 23rd St. basilmediterraneanrestaurant.com 602-3030 Heading west on NW 23rd Street, its not hard to miss the green building that looks ever so much like an old KFC and Long John Silver’s. Try Mediterranean favorites like hummus or dolmas, or dig into a gyro platter. Perhaps you might want to treat […]
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Slaid, Slaid songs
Roots rocker Slaid Cleaves’ influences are all of the usual suspects expected from someone of his songwriting ilk: Jimmie Rodgers, Johnny Cash and Bruce Springsteen. But it was a youthful listen to one of his father’s Hank Williams albums that set Cleaves on his songwriting path. “I listened to those lonesome, sad songs, and it […]
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Gettin’ Dirty
Formed in the Texas border town of El Paso, The Dirty River Boys are an anomaly. Going against a rising tide of heavy metal acts, singer and guitarist Marco Gutierrez said the band didn’t find its home until it relocated to Austin. While he believes it was a “change that needed to happen,” the band […]
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Roots radical
Bill Kirchen Bill Kirchen is a man of many titles. Some people call him one of the “founding fathers of Americana”; others, “Titan of the Telecaster.” He helped pioneer the Americana movement, as well as the “twangcore” and “dieselbilly” scenes. Many know him as the lighting-in-a-bottle guitarist behind country rock’s Commander Cody and His Lost […]
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Migration formation
The Blue Door is hallowed ground for most folk artists, but The Stray Birds’ recent fixation on one of the listening room’s more recent products has the bluegrass trio that much more eager to make its debut there Thursday. “We got to meet and open for John Fullbright in Tulsa last summer. We are obsessed […]
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Mulling it over
Shawn Mullins Photo: Michael Wilson When a musician is widely known for one song and one song only, the relationship can be complicated. Folk rocker Shawn Mullins’ Grammy-nominated track “Lullaby” was inescapable as soon as it debuted in 1998, and he hasn’t had another song approach that level of success … but he loves the […]
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Sam I am
Photo: Keisha Register They say home is where the heart is. For musicians, however, the grind of touring often can be a blessing — an escape from personal demons or the perils of comfort and complacency. But if you’re anything like Samantha Crain, life on the road is just a desire coming to fruition. Crain […]
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‘Circus’ folk
Singer-songwriter Rebecca Loebe rarely feels right at home on the road as she does when she plays The Blue Door, as she will Thursday. The Atlanta native cut her teeth in Georgia’s famed Eddie’s Attic, the club that helped foster the careers of Indigo Girls, Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles and The Civil Wars, among others. John […]