Music Awards 2015

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FORT WORTH WEEKLY MUSIC AWARDS festival 2015 1

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Proud Sponsor of the 2015 Fort Worth Weekly Music Awards

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MAF2015 Welcome to the 13th Annual Music Awards Festival (and 18th Annual Music Awards). And, in an indirect way, welcome to Fort Worth’s heartbeat. “City of cowboys and culture,” the chamber of commerce’s old slogan, barely begins to describe the dynamism manifest in the United States’ 16th most populous city.

Punk, funk, doom metal, underground rap, neo-disco –– you name it, and at least one local band or artist excels at it. Don’t bother wondering why. Just revel in the sounds. Before you know it, Fort Worth will become the cosmopolis it’s always threatened to be.

Quaker City Night Hawks, The Unlikely Candidates, Son of Stan, Pinkish Black, Ronnie Heart, Jetta in the Ghost Tree, Oil Boom, Gollay, Andy Pickett, Squanto, Ryan Tharp, Feletha Black, Dead Vinyl, Jake Paleschic, Un Chien, and Vincent Neil Emerson are just some of the 48 Fort Worth artists slated to perform at MAF ’15, 4-10 p.m. Sunday, June 28, at eight venues in the West 7th Street corridor: Lola’s Saloon, Magnolia Motor Lounge, Trinity River Tap House, Reservoir, Fred’s Texas Café, The Grotto, The Robust Energy Drink Tent Stage at Studio 80, and Poag Mahone’s Irish Pub. Not too shabby, eh?

Every venue will be staffed by friendly, super-intelligent, and good-looking Weekly volunteers, who will be selling soundcards of Frequencies, Vol. 6. Featuring new or previously unreleased tracks by 2015 nominees Son of Stan, Duell, Ryan Tharp, Toy Gun, Dead Vinyl, Blank-Men, Tornup & Berto G., Chris Watson Band, Shake the Moon, Igneous Grimm, Trai Bo, and Chingalotus, Frequencies, Vol. 6 will cost $5 a pop, with proceeds benefiting Lena Pope, an 80-year-old Fort Worth nonprofit providing family counseling and childhood education. For more information, visit LenaPope.org.

Admission to the festival is free. If there’s a better deal in town, well, you don’t know cowboys from culture. – Anthony Mariani

UNIVERSITY DRIVE

W 6th St.

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W 7th St.

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FOCH ST.

MORTON ST.

CURRIE ST.

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CROCKETT ST.

CARROLL ST.

W 5th St.

FOCH ST.

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NORWOOD ST.

1 ENERGY STAGE @ STUDIO 2 ROBUST EIGHTY 3 POAG MAHONE’S RIVER 4 TRINITY TAPHOUSE TEXAS CAFE 5 FRED’S 6 RESERVOIR OUTDOOR STAGE MAGNOLIA 7 MOTOR LOUNGE 8 THE GROTTO

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LOLA’S SALOON

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BLEDSOE ST. FORT WORTH WEEKLY MUSIC AWARDS festival 2015 5

2736 W 6th St. 817-877-0666

(formerly The Pour House) 2725 W 7th St. 817-335-2575

9pm 9pm

Quaker City Night Hawks

Son of Stan

8pm

8pm

The Unlikely Candidates

Squanto 7pm

7pm

Ronnie Heart

Pinkish Black

6pm

6pm

Missing Sibling

The Me-Thinks

5pm

5pm

Trai Bo

Bitch Bricks

4pm

4pm

Feletha Black

The Fluorescents

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The Robust Energy Drink Stage at

509 University Dr. 817-332-9937

3005 Morton St. 817-332-3344

9pm

Ryan Tharp 9pm

BAD BLONDE 8pm

oil boom

8pm

Chris Watson Band 7pm

Dead Vinyl

Caliche Burnout

6pm

6pm

toy gun

Jefferson Colby

7pm

5pm

SHAKE THE MOON

Kyeyote

4pm

4pm

Mountain Kid

Kevin Aldridge

5pm

and The Appraisers

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915 Currie St. 817-332-0083

1001 Foch St. 817-334-0560

9 pm

9 pm

Jetta in the Ghost Tree

Jake Paleschic

8pm

8pm

Un Chien 7pm

The Hendersons

Wire Nest

7pm

6pm

Vincent Neil Emerson

Gollay 5pm

6pm

Mills and Co..

Secret Ghost Champion

4pm

5 pm

Henry the Archer

Igneous Grimm 4pm

LOU CHARLES 8 FORT WORTH WEEKLY MUSIC AWARDS festival 2015

Mostly Acoustic CafĂŠ 517 University Blvd.

817-882-9331

700 Carroll St. 817-332-9544

9 pm

9pm

Panic Volcanic

The Cush

8 pm

8pm

Animal Spirit

Andy Pickett

7pm

7pm

Chingalotus

Nathan Brown

6 pm

Stone Machine Electric 5pm

6 pm

Armadillo Creek

The Cosmic Trigger

Jacob Furr

4pm

4 pm

Big Cliff Watkins

Shadows of Jets

5 pm

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music awards festival

performers

Though they’ve been quiet this year, Quaker City Night Hawks are still one of the biggest draws in North Texas. Their blistering barroom rock, inspired by old-timey gospel as much as the Stones, is the only explanation needed. Look for the band’s new album sometime this year.

Now that they’ve signed to Atlantic Records, The Unlikely Candidates are hard at work on their majorlabel debut. They draw from the best of ’90s pop rock, from Collective Soul to The Lemonheads, to produce the ultimate Gen-Y soundtrack.

Now signed to Relapse Records, Pinkish Black are masters of pushing the boundaries of heavy music.

But even at their heaviest, they still manage to lace melody through their waves of electronic doom.

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Oil Boom’s gutshot blues-pop is catchy, bombastic, and trance-inducing all at once. The single “Sneak Tip” is equal parts ’80s aerobics video soundtrack and rock from a garage made of old Greg Kihn 45s and Frank Stallone concert t-shirts.

Just try to keep from dancing.

Pretty, gritty, sumptuous melody. That’s what Son of Stan is all about. Hailing from that mythical place in the pop canon where Donald Fagen, the Alan Parsons Project, and Frank Stallone overlap, the vehicle for singer-songwriter Jordan Richardson delivers bouncing rhythms and riffs beneath sprawling, giddily melancholic vocal lines (and lyrics).

On his album of the year-nominated Life So Far, 29-year-old Ryan Tharp casually but masterfully traverses the nuances of big guitar rock, from grungy, Temple of the Dog-ish power anthems (“Crawl to Me”) to surging Jack White-ish freakouts (“Bad Scene”) to sly, spacey prog-rock-inspired meditations (“Every Word”). He plays every kind of stringed instrument you can name with authority and sings with a weary back-of-the-throat earnestness.

After years of fronting Flickerstick and after kicking alcohol and drug addiction, singer-songwriter Brandin Lea returns with rawer, grungier, more psychedelic sonics in the form of Jetta in the Ghost Tree. His ability to craft juicy hooks, however, is still in full effect. The band’s debut recording, Clandestine, Vol. 1, is up for rock album of the year.

But establishing herself as a solo folkie poet in the spirit of early Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez has never interested Rachel Gollay. On Gollay’s album of the year-nominated debut, Built for Love, she has achieved the warm and ethereal but reserved studio sound of some of the unabashed FM pop bands she has long adored, from The Carpenters to Elton John to Radiohead.

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Ronnie Heart blends old-school dance music and slick but unpretentious George Michael-ish pop into vibrant stage shows and, soon, a debut full-length, You(r) Mine.

On his debut recording, the album of the year-nominated Again, at Last, singer-songwriter Jake Paleschic hearkens to the best of Lyle Lovett and Jackson Browne, combining sumptuous guitarwork, spiritual lyrics, and high, lonesome vocals into a haunted sound that conjures up dark highways through wide open spaces.

On their fourth album, the good folks in The Cush have neatly grafted the expansively psychedelic soundscapes of their earlier material with a heavy dose of British rock.

A rock album of the year nominee, Transcendental Heatwave alternately floats in space and charges through it, the DNA of bands like Stereolab and My Bloody Valentine readily discernable.

Many of Jacob Furr’s last album, Trails & Traces, was written as he traveled cross-country by car, grieving the cancerrelated death of his young wife Christina. Any moments of self-pity or despair would certainly be understandable, but Furr wrote and recorded a tight, imagistic collection of folkrock tunes that skirt morbidity and embrace the full beauty and harshness of life with gentle enthusiasm.

Make way, Josh Weathers. There’s a new bombastic blueeyed soulman in town. Pulling from assorted Americana traditions, from the Delta blues to Cajun swing, the Chris Watson Band is peaking. And the horn section is sharp.

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Among North Texas’ various ’60s-influenced psychedelic bands, Un Chien mixes dark and light superbly, and onstage frontman Stephen Beatty has the torturedcharismatic-frontman thing down.

Vincent Neil Emerson is barely in his 20s but has quickly made an impact on local listeners by filtering traditional country music through the mind and fingers of a soulful poet. His eponymous debut album should be out any day now.

On his debut recording, the album of the year-nominated It Happens Every Night, singer-songwriter Andy Pickett meanders through winking ’70s-inflected piano pop, conjuring up everyone from Randy Newman to Seals and Crofts, accented with tasty bits of strings, horns, and synths.

There’s a good reason The Me-Thinks have been around forever. It’s because their songs are hooky odes to low-rent L-I-V-I-N, pulled from the smoke of a zillion bong rips and years and years of bowing before the gods of huge amps.

Are Bitch Bricks the best band in town? No one can say for sure, but they make a compelling argument with their debut recording. To the unsuspecting listener, the rock album of the year-nominated I’s of Man could have come out in 1967. Ear-splittingly loud, clanging, angry, and sounding as if it had been recorded over a payphone, the album is a masterstroke of lo-fi brilliance.

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Somewhere beneath the twitchy, glitchy beats and the warbling, sampled chaos of Squanto lies a story about a kid in the suburbs, possibly on drugs, freaking out about … consumerism? The internet? Kids in the suburbs on drugs? Whatever is lurking inside all of this electronic confusion, it’s pretty genius.

Trái Bo isn’t doing anything out of the ordinary – on the surface. It’s just guitars and drums. Just like it was back in 1954. But, damn, these guys can play and write. The band’s debut album, the live studio recording Sigil, is loaded with serpentine, reticulated passages that may change direction suddenly but never sound out of place or shoehorned in.

The Fluorescents are loud and clanging, pounding out songs built around transcendental grooves laced with melody and fueled by locomotive stomp. It’s garage-rock but a garage covered in New York Dolls and Sex Pistols graffiti.

Yacht rock but only if your yacht is black metallic and goes a million miles an hour –– Shake the Moon is all about sumptuous pop rock that’s densely layered, semifunky, and, despite its intentionally rough, occasionally bombastic edges, as smooth as the sand at Venice Beach.

Hovering between The Replacements and The Lemonheads is Missing Sibling, whose most recent studio recording, the bombastic and clanging but hyper-melodic Commiserate, is a nominee for EP of the year.

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From a foundation of Stooges-esque proto-punk, anthemic grunge, and melodic pop, newcomers Bad Blonde have established themselves as a legit force in North Texas –– quickly. These guys have been playing together only a couple of months.

Loud, bruising, and oh-so soulful, Dead Vinyl imagines Led Zeppelin at their bluesiest and rowdiest. This newish project, which features former Frisky Disco wildman Hayden Miller on vocals and Tyler Vela on hot-shit guitar, is working on its debut recording.

Toy Gun frontwoman Stephanie Donaghey’s agile voice can turn on a dime from angsty to angelic. While these punk rockers tend to explore the more brooding side of life, they do it with thoughtful and innovative instrument pairings that are as unique as the stories told.

Nathan Brown was doing the crazy-rocker-playingmultiple-instruments-onstage-by-himself thing long before it became fashionable. Still churning out synthflavored pop-rock, Brown honors the recent past without bowing before it.

Honeybrown roots-rockers Kevin Aldridge & The Appraisers are working on the follow-up to their 2009 debut, The Viper Sessions. The prettiest part of any Appraisers performance is the titular frontman’s vulnerable, thin voice.

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The Hendersons are probably the poppiest, grooviest 817 band you’ve never heard of. From probably a handful of shows since forming nearly a decade ago, the vehicle for singersongwriter Nolan Robertson is now a band-band and has been playing out a bunch. Look out.

The vehicle of veteran session guitarist and producer Taylor Tatsch, Shadows of Jets just make good music: groovy, colorful, and hyper-melodic. “REO Speedwagon fronted by Michael McDonald” may come to mind.

Feletha Black may just be catching on in the local scene, but her blend of nu-soul and ’70s R&B/funk sounds like Erykah Badu collaborating with Curtis Mayfield on acid.

If there’s one band that’s made for wallowing in the bad times, it’s Caliche Burnout. The brainchild of guitarist Cory Wells and drummer/vocalist Scott Feille serves up greasy, loud, propulsive, twangy rock ’n’ roll that’s full of more angst-ridden desperation than Charles Bukowski’s liver.

Panic Volcanic’s fuzzed-out, groove-heavy stoner rock proves you can do a helluva lot with only bass and drums — especially when you have a hard-rockin’ banshee like Ansley Dougherty at the helm.

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Jefferson Colby neither burned out nor faded away. True, the trio led by singer-songwriter Daniel Mabe put out seven albums in as many years starting in 2006, but after a short break, the hard rockers are back. Their latest platter, Dr. M, is up for rock album of the year.

This Chicago native brings unparalleled street cred to the local scene.

A former drug dealer turned indie-rap impresario, Kyeyote spits dizzyingly intricate socio-consciousness lyrics and has a deadpan delivery.

The techno-tribal beats and chanting choruses of Animal Spirit, along with singer Sam Wuehrmann’s graceful, insinuating vocals, make for one of town’s more exotic acts.

Malfredo Alfanira isn’t unplugged or a collection of deconstructed anthems. Chingalotus’ debut recording is simply a mansion built from Popsicle sticks and Elmer’s Glue or a car that goes 200 miles an hour on static electricity.

Stone Machine Electric’s ominously deliberate tempos and walls of distortion and fuzz creep over you like stormclouds full of blotter acid rain. The duo’s most recent recording, Garage Tape, is up for rock album of the year.

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Fueled by proggy arrangements and high-gain amplification, The Cosmic Trigger’s spacey riffage is what the Silver Surfer would listen to in his headphones on his way to tell a civilization it’s doomed.

Is there a rapper around town more recognizable than Big Cliff Watkins? The guy is constantly performing with other groups, doing his own shows, hosting open-mics, and recording. Watkins is a verbal gymnast who can twist a turn of phrase like it’s a balloon animal.

Despite the march of time, Igneous Grimm still throws back, all the way to Moby Grape, Moody Blues, and Pogo, when pop mingled with country mingling with psychedelia mingling with brown baggies, platform soles, and eyeliner (and suspenders), when concerts were fluid journeys rather than staccato series of songs.

Taylor Craig Mills, he of the soaring voice and easy ability to find falsettos, is the frontman for Mills & Co., whose songs are terrifically zen, spotting the good in a sketchy world, which is one reason his music makes the listener feel so fine.

Henry the Archer’s When Something Means Nothing is the kind of first album any band would be proud to claim and any local music scene would like to call its own. The nine tunes are tight, stripped-down, and more hook-filled than a large-mouth bass in a summer Texas lake

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Armadillo Creek uses banjo, upright bass, guitar, drum, and a raucous sensibility to attain its “Texas trashgrass” sound that combines bluegrass and Texas twang.

Experimentalists Secret Ghost Champion conjure up images of King Crimson fronted by Neil Young: Among the many changes in key and tempo, there’s a folksy sensibility at play.

Built from the remnants of Head of Savage and The Royal Savages, Mountain Kid is a whole ’nother something.

Ambitious as Supertramp and as tight as Toto, this new super-group is working on its debut album. Stay tuned.

Party rapper Lou Charle$ has got a lot going for him: youth, looks, a forked tongue, a super video production team, and a propensity for bootyshakin’ beats. The young TCU grad draws from just about every era of hip-hop to produce a kind of postmodern pop-rap that’s bound to get your party started right.

Taking an experimental approach to dub, one that includes a little ambient music and some Quiet Storm-influenced passages, Wire Nest –– the F-Dub duo of Frank Cervantez and John Nuckels –– has received some love from the international press but is still a little known commodity here. Let’s change that, shall we?

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ENTER THE CODE: FWWEEKLY FOR A FREE FIRST RIDE UP TO $20 VALID IN THE US ONLY. EXCLUDES TAXI. EXPIRES ON 7/31/15.

ENTER THE CODE: FWWEEKLY FOR A FREE FIRST RIDE UP TO $20 VALID IN THE US ONLY. EXCLUDES TAXI. EXPIRES ON 7/31/15.

bENEfiTTiNg PRESENTS

foRT woRTh wEEkly

GREAT GREAT FIVE MUSIC. CAUSE. BUCKS.

muSic awaRdS Frequencies, vol. 6 compilation 2015

Frequencies vol.6 Live in Studio

$

5

"Weekend Low," Duell "Light as a Feather," Shake the Moon "LaPlace," Son of Stan "Kirke," Trai Bo "The Dome," Blank-Men "Hooked on You," Chris Watson Band "Boldonia," Dead Vinyl "Walking in Circles," Chucho "My Girl," Ryan Tharp "Come Home," Toy Gun "One Red Eye," Chingalotus "Undrafted," Tornup & Berto G. "Fly On," Igneous Grimm

with 13 songs from nominated bands will be on sale during the Festival on Sunday, June 28 at each participating venue.

The download card will cost $5 and will benefit this year’s charity, Lena Pope.

IN-STUDIO RECORDING PROVIDED BY

911 S. MAIN ST. 817.877.4338

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Proud Presenter of the Fort Worth Weekly 2015 Music Awards.

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