Sound Stories & Interviews

Joseph Balsamo is a multitasker. But not in the manner you'd expect from a musician like him. It's not that he can sing and play the guitar – which he can – but if you drop him a line on a Friday afternoon and he's painting the inside of a house to prepare for new renters, he'll gladly pick up the phone. But that doesn't mean he'll stop painting.
Over the next half-hour, as he applies a layer of interior paint to the walls of his home, Balsamo talks by way of a hands-free device about his music career and Box Car Stringband, the dirty blues and rockabilly duo-turned-trio that is quickly making strides as one of the area's most engaging live rock shows. While Balsamo, a longtime blues fan, has played for a while as a solo act in local bars and cafes, its with Box Car that his songs really take off.

The self-titled debut LP from Portland band Ravishers, is seriously… cool. Not cool without merit, like that guy in high school who was only popular because his parents had money, but cool like Arthur Fonzarelli. You know, naturally cool.
Ravishers (formerly known as Dominic Castillo & The Rock Savants), have spent the last few years putting together this album and the attention to detail on each song is proof. The shifts from down to up-tempo beats within each song are subtly constructed and perfectly timed. You're going to hear some exceptionally stoic vocals on most every track (think The Cure or The National), but they're often rolled in with such sugary piano, horns, drum beat, and even hand claps that Dominic's smooth singing becomes more indie-pop sounding than anything else. This is especially evident on “Keep You Around,” (a track from the Savant days) that with the harmonized vocals of Kelly Masigat becomes an open road kind of summertime song.

Last year, the city of Los Angeles recognized what thousands of Angelinos already knew: That Ozomatli has become more than just another L.A. band, but perhaps the city's de facto house band – combining L.A.'s wide range of cultural and social influences into a sound that's as good of a soundtrack to real life in the city of angels as anyone is likely to find. This is why the city declared April 23 Ozomatli Day.
So what do you get for being one of the founding members of a band with its own day recognized by one of the largest cities in the world?
Well, not much, but it feels good.

Over the past half-decade, Brandi Carlile has rightfully earned a seat in the highest echelon of contemporary singer songwriters, mostly through the folk rock mastery she displayed on 2009's Give Up the Ghost. Her studio records have been impressive, but it seems that this album – recorded live with the Seattle Symphony at the gorgeous Benaroya Hall – is the disc that those new to Carlile should give a listen to.

Paul Simon, Velvet Underground and Blind Willie McTell covers on the same album… you don't hear that every day. But then again, maybe you're just not listening to enough G. Love, a guy who has managed to mash Bob Dylan, Delta blues and hip-hop throughout most of his career. He is nothing if not eclectic – and on his new album, Fixin' to Die, he's still beguilingly surprising.
For this outing, the Philadelphia-born artist (real name Garrett Dutton) decided to go back to his roots – far back to the days before he began merging blues-folk with a little R&B and hip-hop to create a laid-back, funk-soul vibe. Even before he hooked up with his band, Special Sauce, or did his first recordings for the Okeh label or landed on pal Jack Johnson's Brushfire Records. For his first album billed only as G. Love, he invited Americana darlings, the Avett Brothers, to produce and perform; they bonded after meeting in Boston.

Sometimes your favorite bands break up too early. And sometimes the members of those bands go on to other projects, other bands and make other albums. And you're likely disappointed. Then there's Andrew Carroll, whose delectably poppy indie-rock band, You Me & Iowa, parted ways two years ago, despite a pair of solid, sonically advanced LPs, leaving him out on his own for the first time in six years.

Sometimes you can hear the sound of the freeway from inside Gregory Alan Isakov's house. The noise of the Boulder, Colorado, traffic seeps through the walls – not a lot, but just enough – and that can be a problem when the singer songwriter is at work laying down the tracks for his next album.
Isakov has never been one for recording studios, opting rather to record and produce his albums mostly on his own, with some help from friends, typically right in his own his home, even if that means forgoing the luxury of soundproof walls. But in the mornings, the buzz of vehicles is low enough when he rolls out of bed and makes his way to the nest of wires and cables that inhabit his home during recording time to allow him to lay down some of his delicate, heartfelt folk numbers, which we heard on 2009's excellent Empty Northern