Kristin Hersh is presenting a live performance of Paradoxical Undresing at Bumbershoot in Seattle this September. According to Bumbershoot's site:

This solo spoken word and musical performance draws from Hersh's acclaimed memoir of life as a teenager wrestling with issues of mental illness, creativity, teenage pregnancy, and the pressures of sudden fame. Combining film, music, and scripted excerpts from the book, the show is an intense, moving, and original experience.

You can purchase the book on Amazon.

In October and November Kristin will tour internationally as part of Throwing Muses, who reunited in 2009. That tour will bring the band to NYC on October 16 at Bowery Ballroom. Tickets for the NYC show go on sale Thursday (9/1) at noon.

All dates and a video of Kristin performing at a Paradoxical Undressing show in 2008...

Continue reading "Throwing Muses going on tour (dates)"

John Wesley Harding and Eugene Mirman at LPR in 2009 (more by Tim Griffin)

"I wanted to bring together my novel writing friends (who mostly envy my musician friends) and my musician friends (who mostly envy my novel writing friends) under one flag," says John Wesley Harding. "Then add Eugene Mirman and his comedians of comedy... The fact is: I like everyone who's performing.

Novelist/singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding brings his Cabinet of Wonders back to City Winery on March 11th. Joining him in his quest for the perfect variety show will be an all-star lineup featuring Andrew Bird, David Wax Museum, Paul Muldoon, Tift Merritt, Daniel Felsenfeld & The Jessold Consort, Eugene Mirman, JWH, Jonathan Coe and Kristin Hersh. A little more than a month later, he'll do it again with another show at City Winery on April 22, this time featuring "Rick Moody, Eugene Mirman & more". More details on that one TBA.

In between (and before) those dates, John Wesley Harding AKA Wesley Stace will do readings in and around the area, including one on 3/10 at Book Court in Brooklyn and one on 3/17 as part of a panel at LIO in Brooklyn. He'll be speaking about Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer, his new book. Maybe you read about it in the New York Times:

WESLEY STACE'S new book, "Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer," is both a murder mystery and a novel about classical music, with a character who sometimes assumes another identity. Mr. Stace, an enthusiastic, donnish Englishman with an honors degree in English literature from Jesus College, Cambridge, and a head stuffed full of historical trivia, is an expert on both double lives and music. Improbably, he is also John Wesley Harding, an Elvis Costello-like singer-songwriter and folk rocker who has released more than a dozen records and is cool enough to have enlisted most of the Decemberists as the backup band on a forthcoming album.

Eugene Mirman talks with Stace about the book in a video you can watch below. Eugene Mirman can also be found at Union Hall in Brooklyn this Sunday, 3/6.

The Decemberists play Prospect Park on June 14th with Best Coast. Ticket info is forthcoming.

The David Wax Museum, who recently played their own show at City Winery (and who are part of John Wesley's Cabinet on 3/11), will also be at SXSW where you'll be able to catch them at a BrooklynVegan day party right at noon on Friday, 3/18 at Barbarella on Red River. Stay tuned for more details on that party coming shortly (but I can say it is the same one Middle Brother is playing later in the day). More David Wax dates at their website.

All Stace & Andrew Bird dates are below...

Continue reading "Andrew Bird playing w/ John Wesley Harding, Wesley Stace released a book, David Wax Museum heading to SXSW"

Screaming Females @ the 2010 Siren Festival (more by Dominick Mastrangelo)

today in NYC
* Rene Lopez @ Southpaw
* Tim Keiper @ The Stone
* Herman Snertgart @ The Stone
* Sean Hayes @ Le Poisson Rouge
* Billy Idol @ Hammerstein Ballroom
* Aziz Ansari @ The Wellmont Theatre
* Translations, Heliotropes @ The Woods
* CocoRosie @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
* Williamsburg Salsa Orchestra @ Cameo Gallery
* The Bad Plus, Sam Newsome @ Bowery Ballroom
* Jackson Browne, David Lindley @ Beacon Theatre
* Happy Ending Music Series @ Joe's Pub
* Toadies, Gringo Star @ Gramercy Theatre
* Ben Frost, Ezekiel Honig, Borne (DJ set) @ Littlefield
* Marc Ribot ("Silent Movies" CD Release) @ Le Poisson Rouge
* Mostly Other People Do the Killing, Matt Mottel @ Zebulon
* Tommy Keene, Title Tracks, Valley Lodge @ The Rock Shop
* Mystery Jets, Dominant Legs, The Rassle @ Mercury Lounge
* Kria Brekkan, We Are All Romans (DJ set) @ The Manhattan Inn
* Vampire Weekend, Beach House, Dum Dum Girls @ Radio City Music Hall
* Frankie Rose & The Outs, Light Asylum, MINKS, Mirror Mirror @ Glasslands
* Nachtmystium, Zoroaster, The Atlas Moth, Dark Castle @ The Studio at Webster Hall
* Janka Nabay, Highlife, Ali Kamiya Dit Ba, Lichens (DJ International Tapes) @ Shea Stadium
* Screaming Females, Shellshag, Big Eyes (Screaming Females Record Release) @ Knitting Factory

Vampire Weekend kick off their three-night run at Radio City Music Hall tonight.

Tonight at Joe's Pub: Happy Ending Music and Reading Series featuring Darin Strauss, Matthew Sharpe, Kristin Hersh and musical guest Anni Rossi.

Marc Ribot plays a release show for his new solo guitar record, Silent Movies, officially out September 28th on Pi Records (though you'll be able to grab it at the show). The sounds on the record are subtler than his Ceramic Dog trio; without the band he take cues from the pratfalls and heartbreaks of films like Charlie Chaplin's The Kid. Tickets are still on sale. - Andrew Frisicano

What else?

DOWNLOAD: Vic Chesnutt - Warm (MP3)

Vic Chesnutt, RIP

What this man was capable of was superhuman. Vic was brilliant, hilarious and necessary; his songs messages from the ether, uncensored. He developed a guitar style that allowed him to play bass, rhythm and lead in the same song -- this with the movement of only two fingers. His fluid timing was inimitable, his poetry untainted by influences. He was my best friend.

I never saw the wheelchair--it was invisible to me--but he did. When our dressing room was up a flight of stairs, he'd casually tell me that he'd meet me in the bar. When we both contracted the same illness, I told him it was the worst pain I'd ever felt. "I don't feel pain," he said. Of course. I'd forgotten. When I asked him to take a walk down the rain spattered sidewalk with me, he said his hands would get wet. Sitting on stage with him, I would request a song and he'd flip me off, which meant, "This finger won't work today." I saw him as unassailable--huge and wonderful, but I think Vic saw Vic as small, broken. And sad.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to listen to his music again, but I know how vital it is that others hear it. When I got the phone call I'd been dreading for the last fifteen years, I lost my balance. My whole being shifted to the left; I couldn't stand up without careening into the wall and I was freezing cold. I don't think I like this planet without Vic; I swore I would never live here without him. But what he left here is the sound of a life that pushed against its constraints, as all lives should. It's the sound of someone on fire. It makes this planet better.

And if I'm honest with myself, I admit that I still feel like he's here, but free of his constraints. Maybe now he really is huge. Unbroken. And happy.

Love,
Kristin

100% of all funds raised will go to Vic's family.

ALSO
* Michael Stipe remembers Vic Chesnutt
* Patti Smith & Jeff Mangum remember Vic Chesnutt

Kristin Hersh (el fletcher)

Kristin Hersh is going on tour across Europe this May. She'll play shows both solo and as part of the reunited Throwing Muses. Then in June Hersh currently has just one show scheduled, and it's at the Bell House in Brooklyn on Thursday, June 18th ("a partially seated event. First come, first served"). Tickets are on sale.

Earlier this year, Throwing Muses performed at the "Music of REM" concert on March 11th at Carnegie Hall. The next night, March 12th, the band played with Hersh's other group, 50 Foot Wave, at the Music Hall of Williamsburg.

All Kristin Hersh and Throwing Muses tour dates, and a live video from 2007, below...

Continue reading "Kristin Hersh/Throwing Muses - 2009 Tour Dates (Bell House) "

"Standing room" tickets have been released for all six NYC Neil Young shows. They cost $75, but they come with a "free" copy of Chrome Dreams II - Harp Magazine's 9th favorite album of the year.

"Cinnamon Girl" is an all-women Neil Young tribute CD that's coming out in February for charity. Tracklist below....

Continue reading "Neil Young standing room tickets on sale"