In The Groove
As a father and touring musician I made this album to keep my kids company in my absence, hopefully for them to sing along with in their mom’s car. These songs evoke memories of my mother playing her Martin parlor guitar and of my father, at the family turntable, telling stories about Furry Lewis and Gus Cannon or explaining a song’s meaning. I wanted to share these childhood favorites with my kids.
This collection of childhood favorites was recorded for fun, at home, with family and friends in the spirit of sharing. Everyone is welcome. I wanted to share these songs with my kids and my friend’s kids as well as expose my daughters to the joy of learning, performing and recording music that my father shared with me.
The recording was largely done in 2017 during dinner parties, sleep overs and play dates, either in a family style social setting or while the kids slept. After burning rough mix CDs for the family car, I set the project aside until 2023. Finishing the album with fresh ears album benefitted from my film score work done in 2020 and 21. I love letting projects simmer on the back burner until the time is right. The perspective of time can’t be bought or faked. My daughters sang on the album, both in 2017 and in 2023. Overdubbing my daughters on top of their younger vocals, 6 years later, was a unique sensation and document of their youth. You can hear my youngest daughter sneeze and improvise wordless melodies but my oldest daughter stole the show after her first overdub party, taking me aside and asking ‘don’t you get paid for singing on a record?’ - Luther Dickinson
The 1989 album changed my life in countless ways, and it fills me with such excitement to announce that my version of it will be out October 27th. To be perfectly honest, this is my most FAVORITE re-record I’ve ever done because the 5 From The Vault tracks are so insane. I can’t believe they were ever left behind. But not for long! Pre-order 1989 (Taylor’s Version) now.
Package Details:
1989 (Taylor’s Version) CD
21 Songs
Including 5 previously unreleased songs from The Vault
Collectible CD album in jewel case with unique front and back cover art
1 Disc album with unique collectible disc artwork
A collectible lyric booklet with never-before-seen photos
10”x10” double-sided Foldable Poster
Side 1 includes full size photograph of Taylor Swift
Side 2 includes a print of the original handwritten lyrics of “Welcome to New York”
Heading back to the band’s studio in London, Bombay Bicycle Club have lovingly crafted album six – My Big Day. It’s a powerful, expansive body of work, replete with an irrepressible dose of joy. My Big Day also found the band’s studio door wedged open for a collaborative experience, inviting the likes of Jay Som, Nilüfer Yanya, and Holly Humberstone and Damon Albarn who all feature. On first listen, Bombay Bicycle Club have opened up the curtains and let this revelatory set of vibrant, joyous compositions bask in the sunshine. It’s an album that means business, sculpted by one of Britain’s best guitar bands.
“I’m still learning how to experience joy, how to be free, how to be comfortable in my own skin,” says Jaime Wyatt. “A lot of us grow up feeling like we have to hide who we are just to be accepted, but that comes from a place of fear and judgment. I wrote these songs as a way of letting go of all that, as permission to feel good.”
Feel Good, Wyatt’s extraordinary new album, is more than just a permission slip, though: it’s an invitation. Recorded with Black Pumas’ Adrian Quesada, the record is bold and ecstatic, built on tight, intoxicating grooves that belie the songs’ substantial emotional stakes. Wyatt’s writing is raw and intuitive here, tapping into the deep recesses of her subconscious as she reckons with grief and growth, and her delivery is visceral to match, cutting straight to the bone with equal parts sensitivity and swagger. Taken as a whole, the collection stands as a radical act of creative liberation from an artist already known for pushing limits, a genre-defying work of healing and self-love that tips its cap to everything from Al Green and Otis Redding to Waylon Jennings and Bobbie Gentry in its relentless pursuit of peace and pleasure.
Members from The Offspring, Smash Mouth, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Street Dogs and The Briggs have united to form the new band THE DEFIANT! The members of The Defiant are no strangers to success as individuals but as a group their music stands for so much more on both a personal and professional level. Together the five members create a rock ’n’ roll pedigree that culminates into a riot of melodic punk. The Defiant will release their twelve-song debut album this October with touring to follow. The Defiant is: Pete Parada on drums (The Offspring), Greg Camp on guitar (Smash Mouth), Johnny Rioux on bass (Street Dogs), Joey LaRocca on guitar and keys (The Briggs) Dicky Barrett front and center (The Mighty Mighty Bosstones)
A tech company's "senior spirit guide" finally comes to the defense of the "financially unsuccessful" Vincent van Gogh; wonders of the natural world are reimagined as "muster points for brainstorming innovators"; the "artificial char lines" on fast-food burgers are cited as if signs of the apocalypse. For the better part of three decades, Aesop Rock has used the syntax of the moment to pinpoint the fault lines in that moment's supposedly solid foundation. With his tenth album, Integrated Tech Solutions, Aes wields insidious corporatespeak as a tool to pry that parasitic worldview away from the parts of life that truly matter.
A concept album about an organization offering "lifestyle- and industry-specific applications designed to curate a desired multi-experience," Integrated Tech Solutions picks apart the charlatan language that hears app inventors put themselves on continuums starting with cavemen and continuing through da Vinci. On "Mindful Solutionism," the wheel evolves seamlessly into modern agriculture-and then into atomic bombs, Agent Orange, cigarettes, and surveillance cameras. In a rare moment of transparency, the engineers Aes give voice to sum up this spiral in just a few words: "We cannot be trusted with the stuff that we come up with."
Appropriately, the album sounds like the past and future at once. Largely self-produced, Integrated Tech Solutions catches Aes at his leanest and most innovative, leveraging "Solutionism"'s careening bounce against the wistful "By the River" or the slow creep of "Salt and Pepper Squid." The effect is a record that sounds itself like an organism growing, mutating, hurtling toward profitability-and then destruction. As fans have come to expect, Aes is cuttingly funny and slyly profound at once, whether recounting a childhood restaurant run-in with Mr. T ("100 Feet Tall") or quipping, on "Pigeonometry," that "white dove is a pigeon-you motherfuckers is bigots." At the same time, Integrated Tech Solutions is working on another parallel project: tracing the sprawl of modernity and cutting directly to its core. "I've been doing laps of the lost worlds," he raps on "All City Nerve Map," sounding at once wearied and reinvigorated. "I can draw a map to the raw nerve."
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of CHVRCHES critically-acclaimed debut album 'The Bones of What You Believe', they are releasing a newly remastered version. The album spawned seven singles including their massive alternate hit "The Mother We Share”. The 2LP/2CD version features previously unreleased songs, four from the album session, including “Manhattan” along with five live songs recorded at Ancienne Belgique.
Personally curated by Johnny Marr, Spirit Power encompasses songs from across four widely acclaimed UK top ten solo albums 2013’s The Messenger, 2014’s Playland, 2018’s Call The Comet, 2022 double album Fever Dreams Pts 1-4), non-album single releases ‘Armatopia’, ‘The Priest’ (w/ Maxine Peake), two brand new songs, plus a cover version of Depeche Mode’s‘ I Feel You’, released for Record Store Day 2015 and revealing the degree to which Marr has found his métier as a vocalist of singular expressive power.
The album features nine new tracks including their irresistible single, “Last Night Was Good For My Soul,” which was released earlier this spring and is currently top 20 on Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay chart. Of the song, Music Row praises, “This Nashville female trio harkens back to the glory days of the ‘girl group’ era. Over an addictive funk/disco groove, they harmonize and emote marvelously on this sunny thumper,” while, You Know I Got Soul declares, “‘Last Night Was Good For My Soul’ is that feel good music we’ve been craving. It has an undeniable groove that will have you nodding your head from the first listen,” and Rated R&B proclaims, “In true Shindella fashion, the three vocalists soar over the disco-inspired production with their silky smooth harmonies.”
Known for their energetic live shows, The Shindellas recently performed a tribute to Evelyn “Champagne” King at the 8th Annual Black Music Honors. The group is set to perform selected dates across North America, including at the Crown Me Royal Film Fest in Memphis, TN on August 6th. Visit theshindellas.com/tour for the complete itinerary and to purchase tickets.
The Shindellas—Tamara Chauniece, Stacy Johnson and Kasi Jones—made history as the first R&B band to perform at the CMT Awards in 2021. In addition to widespread critical acclaim, the trio has tributed Missy Elliott at the Café Mocha Radio Show 2022 Salute THEM Awards ‘My HBCU Joy’ Presented by Toyota Motor North America and AARP, performed at the 2022 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting, Disney’s Dreamers Academy, ESSENCE Festival of Culture, TEDxNashville Women and the 2021 CMA Country Christmas.
Already receiving widespread critical attention, the Nashville Scene asserts, “The trio is a true vocal powerhouse, and they eschew the idea of a lead singer in favor of trading verses and singing in glorious three-part harmony,” while NPR Music praises, “Girl group vocal pop has evolved across many generations, without always getting its due as a legitimate musical tradition…As a sophisticated girl group rising out of the Nashville music-making community, the Shindellas are positioned to defy all these perceptions and more.”
“A lot of this record is questioning all the bad stuff we see in the world and the difficult things we go through in life, and asking how to deal with it,” says vocalist/guitarist Brian Fallon, whose bandmates include drummer Benny Horowitz, bassist Alex Levine, and lead guitarist Alex Rosamilia. “I think the answer is that we’re all in this together and that somehow makes it okay, even when it’s anything but easy. The main message of the album is empathy.”
The first release from their own Rich Mahogany Recordings (a label distributed via Thirty Tigers), History Books finds The Gaslight Anthem working with acclaimed producer/engineer Peter Katis (The National, Interpol, Death Cab for Cutie) and recording at his Bridgeport, CT-based Tarquin Studios. “We didn’t have any interest in reinventing what The Gaslight Anthem sounds like,” Fallon reveals. “We wanted to stay true to ourselves but also let Peter do what he does best, which is to make things sound beautiful and sad and fun and exciting all at the same time.” Featuring a guest appearance from longtime Gaslight Anthem champion Bruce Springsteen, History Books matches its unfussy yet gracefully crafted sound with the force-of-nature energy that’s defined the band since getting their start playing basement shows back in the mid-aughts. “None of us wanted to make a very somber or serious record showing how much we’ve matured,” says Fallon. “We’ve all changed and grown and learned so much, but the overall mood was a feeling of excitement to be back together and making music that means something to us.”
The follow-up to 2014’s Get Hurt, History Books takes its title from a heavy-hearted track about the power in letting go of what no longer serves you. “I think forgiveness is so important on so many levels, but I’ve learned that in some cases you need to cut ties with the people who’ve done you harm,” says Fallon. Rooted in lyrics that perfectly encapsulate Fallon’s penchant for gorgeously lived-in poetry (e.g., “Nights of smoke and dirty jokes/Darkened rooms with lonely ghosts/They were beautiful some time ago/But time keeps rollin’ us on”), “History Books” also echoes the album’s themes of transience and transcendence. “In some ways each song is a history book—they each tell a story of the past, and all the things that we’ve left behind,” Fallon points out.
Bruce Hornsby‘s landmark 1998 album Spirit Trail turns 25 this year. In September, Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers will launch a fall tour honoring the occasion with a Spirit Trail: 25th Anniversary Edition boxed set.
Spirit Trail 25th Anniversary is a 3-album box set that includes the remastered album, four unreleased tracks and ten live songs.
Metric’s relentless pursuit of timeless songwriting and fiercely independent ethos have cemented their place as one of the most essential and ahead-of-the-curve bands of the last two decades. By constantly upping themselves across nine unpredictable and adventurous studio albums, the trailblazing Toronto outfit founded by songwriting and production partners Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw along with bandmates Joshua Winstead and Joules Scott Key is proof that you can amass an untouchable catalog without ever signing to a major label or changing your lineup. Their latest LP, Formentera II, out October 13 via their label Metric Music International and Thirty Tigers, is a testament to their singular purpose. It stands among their best and most genre-defying work and closes the 18-song cycle started by 2022’s critically acclaimed Formentera.
The most potent memories I have of music are from my early childhood listening to the oldie's station, riding in the back of my Pops' 1975 Cadillac Seville to work alongside him moving plants in Sacramento at the now long gone Capitol Nursery during white hot summer afternoons, and then the drives back home in the purple twilights and oily blue-oranged nights. I'm talkin' The Temptations, War, Earth Wind and Fire, Al Green, Sly and the Family Stone, The Delfonics, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan...soul music. I loved the melodrama of it all. The world outside refracted and transmuted through the crackling speakers past Pops' thumping thumb and my tiny whirring mind and left whatever road behind us fundamentally changed in our wake. Through the years other sounds too left its imprint well before I picked up a guitar. Rap, Punk, hardcore, dub, R&B--and a little later in middle school, blues, folk and country. But those early Cadillac memories always remained the bedrock. With folk and blues music, I fell in love with the immediacy of it and found the acoustic guitar economical for all the solitary roaming of my early 20's. All the while I knew that one day, when I had something I felt like I could add, I wanted to incorporate the sound of those early Cadillac memories. But only after I felt established as a songwriter in its most simple form, banging on a wooden guitar and yodeling up some melody did I feel comfortable exploring other sounds and only recently did I find the time and space to do that. The pandemic trapped all the world in their rooms. While recording my last record in the height of it and at the behest of my friend and You, Yeah, You producer Brad Cook and his friend Justin Vernon, I bought my first keyboard. A Roland Juno DS. I started tinkering on it throughout the past couple of years and as I became more stationary started writing songs on different instruments that I accumulated. Layering sounds on garageband in my apartment writing bass and horn parts, making drum loops, adding synth... I became pretty obsessive with the endless possibilities it brought and got quicker and quicker at making songs that way. It was just so fun and limitless. All the while the world never stopped plotting. Threats of nuclear war, A.I. surveillance, the age of misinformation etc. My personal life changed too. I moved to Nashville, became the new kid on the block, wrestled with public attention, fell in love, got my heart broke and became incredibly busy as a "professional" touring musician. Most importantly I witnessed the slow death of my Pops, the king of soul, Tommy Lee Burt. As it became time to start writing for my 3rd LP for Oh Boy Records and figuring out how I wanted to express all that has happened since YYY, I decided it was time to try and embrace that old Cadillac sound from my childhood. Do the sound my way, fuse it with my other aforementioned musical influences and use that for the modicum of the record. I decided to write an album that says, "Sure, the world is fucked and the evil overlords may very well destroy it, but that's none of my bussiness and I choose love and rock and roll, baby". The demo versions of these songs and the way I wanted them to sound were already pretty spelled out with me playing all the instruments on them (of questionable quality) so, scared shitless, it dawned on me that to get this sound across I had to take the seat of co-produce for the first time and record this album with someone I could easily communicate ideas with, meet the songs where they're at and then elevate them to a higher level and that happened to be with my good friend and neighbor Andrija Tokic. The result is Traffic Fiction.