Sound Stories & Interviews

Scott McMicken, singer and lead guitarist of Philadelphia-based rock band Dr. Dog, never really liked playing music festivals.
And he’s had ample opportunity to form an opinion—Dr. Dog is a veteran of some of the country’s biggest fests, including Bonnaroo and Coachella. But that was before McMicken played Pickathon in 2009.
“Pickathon is definitely my favorite festival,” said McMicken, whose band is headlining this year’s event alongside Neko Case. “Pickathon was a real game changer for me.”

So maybe iTunes threw you a bone and upped your sampling time to 90 seconds a song. Even then, there is no way you can truly sink into an album before you buy it. And with iTunes in the pocket of mainstream music, forget about discovering something unique or paying a fair price for a digital album.
Enter Bandcamp.com—the website that lets upstart bands post entire albums so that you can stream them, share them and, in many cases, pay what you want for them. Web developers and friends Ethan Diamond, Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker launched Bandcamp in 2008 as a way to help bands release albums affordably and efficiently. Today, it serves as a window into true indie music.

In 1955, a 14-year-old boy named Emmitt Till posthumously ended up at the center of this country’s civil rights movement. Though the story of the teen’s murder has long since passed into the pages of America’s history, country singer Emmylou Harris gives him new voice on her latest album, Hard Bargain.
“I was driving with NPR on and they were doing a story on him,” says Harris. “The thing that hit me is that he sorta sparked the civil rights movement. His mother kept his casket open and people finally saw the terrible ugly face of prejudice.”

Take a stroll through a metal foundry while listening for patterns in the sounds made by the machinery and you might hear a bit of the industrial tenor that makes up the noise-rock backdrop for Brooklyn band, A Place To Bury Strangers’ third album Worship.
It may seem unlikely that a sound so seemingly unrefined could be pleasant, but lead singer Oliver Ackermann’s vocals that echo with the dark-pop coloring of The Cure’s Robert Smith lend a fluid element to the music, rendering songs like “You Are The One,” “And I’m Up” and “Slide” impeccably smooth and endearing.

The Bend SummerFest has earned a reputation for cramming a staggering amount of music into the two-and-a-half-day festival, and this year is no exception. With a total of five stages, the festival provides everything from hip-hop to jazz to bluegrass, and it’s all free. The only drawback is, you probably won’t find time to hear all of it. To maximize your experience, here are a few bands that should draw your attention.

Start with a passion for music, add friends who are constantly asking for album and concert recommendations, then throw in a tiny bit of Internet savvy, and you’ll eventually end up with the modern version of a professional music writer—the part-time blogger.
Of course blogging doesn’t always have to involve writing. Sometimes creating a blog post is as simple as posting a video or a widget that streams songs.
Either way, when you find a blogger who aligns with your own taste in music but also pushes you to explore not just bands that weren’t on your radar but entire genres of music, you’ll end up sharing the writing with your friends just as much as the music they are promoting.

You know that conversation when a friend tells you that he or she just had an amazing weekend at an event you hadn’t even heard of? And though you may feign recognition and play that you didn’t go because of your own big important plans, you still end up feeling like an eight-year-old kid, kicking sand with a pouting bottom lip and your hands stuffed in your pockets?
This summer, the brand spanking new What The Festival could easily be one of the events that lead to those conversations.

Resolute till the end, eclectic rock band Broken Down Guitars outlasted 27 other bands over nine weeks of competition, and secured enough votes in the final round to claim the title of  “Last Band Standing” as well as $12,000 in prizes. BDG bested three other semifinalists, including All You All, Jacuzzi and Greyside, last Thursday night at Liquid Lounge to claim victory in the competition.
Over its three-year run, Last Band Standing has produced three distinctly different winners. Hip-hop group MOsley WOtta won in 2010. Horn-infused rock band Necktie Killer triumphed in 2011. And this year, a band that expresses itself with a variety of vocals, violin and a sultry style of rock-and-roll claimed the honors.