James Jeffrey-West on Acoustic Conversations
Reposted from fifthandmain.com.
The great thing about the vast majority of musicians is that they are at the same time gracious and generous people, and hungry for attention. That means, if you point a microphone at them and turn on a little red light, by-in-large, they start singing.
So it was when Curt and I started Acoustic Conversations a few years back. The first show was a convoluted mix of stunning flamenco riffs lovingly gifted to us by our good friend John Carlson and poorly mic’d wannabe talk radio. Still, that conversation sparked something cool, and posted a stitch in time that leads to today, the last show of our second season, and our newest addition to the family, James Jeffrey-West.
James is a stunningly warm person. I say that as a point of contrast, I think. He’s a contrast to jokers who try to own a room with ego and pomp; he’s a contrast to yahoos who enter a room with jokester hippery; he’s a contrast to crooners who slide into a room with sticky smug insincerity. When James came into the AC lounge, well, we wanted to give him a hug.
In his bio, James says he plays “good, honest acoustic” music. Insofar as we couldn’t see the allusion when we kicked off the interview, we were wrapped up in it by the end. His songs are gracefully simple packages, easy on the ear and difficult to shake. His song-writing is at once worldly and approachable; he weaves his broad life experience into tales that are most often too short to be completely satisfying.
We talked a lot in this show. So much, in fact, that we didn’t actually get to all the music that we’d intended. It’s a shame, too, because for my money, the best tracks of the evening were those recorded after the show had ended. Take a special listen to Sacramento International, a haunting lullaby to congested air travel; and Half a World Away, an anthem to bifurcated love in ticklish harmonics. You’ll find the show, as well as all six of the tracks we recorded with James available free in iTunes. Please subscribe to support the show.
I deeply hope you enjoy the music of James Jeffrey-West. He’s a new favorite of ours and we’re thrilled to bring him to the show. As ever, comments welcome, but mostly, just go buy his CD. It’s in iTunes, CDBaby, and just about everywhere else music is served.
Homespun Concert Series
Portland folks mark your calendars: Molly Jenson and Cobalt Season playing the Homespun Concert Series this Saturday, June 18; doors open at 7:00 and close at 100 people! Should be a great show — ping me if you’re going to join me for a homebrew!
Kings & Queens Vid with Sam Wegman
Remember Sam? Remember the last tune he did for us? Here’s the video of him in the AcConvo living room actually playing the thing. Sweet, right?
Do You Know The Way… To San Jose?
I’m in San Jose right now. Did you see that coming? What with my clever title and all? To be fair, the tune I have in my head is actually from “Rent” — and let me say this about that: This show breaks me right the hell down. I’m not kidding.
There’s a new release of the show, I believe celebrating the final Broadway performance. It’s a taping of the current Broadway cast, on stage, doing their thing. You can rent it in iTunes now, and I just can’t recommend it highly enough. The current cast is absolutely stunning, and the show continues to inspire today.
As I was saying, San Jose. Yeah, this lame travel schedule has thrown my posting schedule a scooch, but there IS news here, so better late than never.
Acoustic Conversations with Matt Vrba live in the feed
The first time I caught Matt Vrba was some two years ago, singing in a parking lot next to an RV that was pumping out baked beans and burgers. It was a company picnic. A company picnic.
[Chinese monks are walking through the airport right now. In my head they are Shaolin and could kill me by looking at me. In reality, they cannot find their way out of the airport. Attempting to do a good deed by showing them out.]
So, two years ago, Matt Vrba was ingratiating himself by playing solo for the ungrateful unwashed at a company picnic. Now, two years later, he’s relocated to Nashville and we get to catch him on a tour of the Pac Northwest, witnessing him ingratiating himself on our show.
A lot can change in two years.
And yet, the music that originally stuck with me is here and better than ever. This guy has a fantastic story to tell, and he completely kicks it with the live tracks we’re giving away right now. So go, now, open iTunes and update your feed for the show. Watch those tracks trickle onto your computer. Drop them on your iPods and Sansas and … whatevers … and kick it with Matt Vrba.
Want more of Matt? Visit his site at MattVrba.com.
What’s more important than that? Buying music!
If you like Matt, or the other artists we’ve profiled, remember this: A GREAT way to support the show is to click right over on the “Store” link in the top-right corner of the site and buy their music! That’s right, live and in color, straight to you courtesy of Amazon.com, you can buy music, AND fund the show, AND support the artists all at the same time! So help us out, us creative types battling a flagging economy, and buy some great tunes. You won’t regret it. Neither will we.
As ever, thanks for your support, and stay tuned for more great musicians coming this month!
So. Much. Stuff.
The Tyler Stenson show went live in the feed and on the site tonight, and the tracks we featured in the feed — the only way you can get them — are awesome. Speaking of the show, did you notice just how crappy Curt and I sound? Yeah, we did too.
See, there’s this thing about recording. When you have a mixer, and a microphone, and a computer, the tracks have to line up. For example, my mic, plugged into input 1, should be set to record on the computer at input 1. See how that works? Well, in this case, we messed that up. The result? Tyler sounds awesome. Fantastic. Out of this world. I sound pretty good. Curt sounds like he may — though is probably not — in the room at all.
Bottom line, sorry to make you struggle through listening to a few bits of the mix. Totally our bad. Rather than just cut out the lousy stuff, we left it all in thinking you’d rather actually hear the questions at least a little bit over not at all.
In other news, in honor of our second season, I’m pulling all the old tracks from last year out of mothballs and posting them in the feed once again. If you missed them, make sure to subscribe in iTunes and download them. Tonight, I posted all five of the original Bart Ferguson Band tracks from last year, all in 256k AAC MP4, as usual. Those will be available in the feed for 30 days, then gone forever. …
Next up, we’ve got a solid handful of tracks and show with Sam Wegman, a student at PSU with some bona fide hits on his hands if you’re into something of a cross between Elliott Smith and John Mayer. I’ll throw up a vid soon to give you a taste. Seriously — the guy’s got chops. Can’t wait to show you.
Remember to check out the store if you like any of the music you find on the show. While the tracks we record are exclusive, our store will point you to Amazon where you can buy CDs and MP3s from all our artists. Buy through us and support the site, and the show, so we can keep recording.
Very, very special thanks to Josh Olswanger at Session One Audio for picking up our Logic file and working magic to fix our trip to amateur hour. The guy’s a hero in our books.
Tyler Stenson on Deck
The episode is coming soon. For now, take a look at Tyler’s take on Leonard Cohen’s classic, “Hallelujah” from the session.
The "New" Acoustic Conversations
Welcome back! Good to see you. Been good? Seen any good shows? Hanging with good people? Good to hear. I’m proud of you. You done good for yourself, and it’s about time.
What have we been up to? Oh, not much. Redid the site. That’s something. Why? Oh, you know… old sweaters and whatnot. The new site is back on WordPress with a site design from Brian Gardner. That guy’s got chops.
More importantly, we’re full-on into mastering season 2 of Acoustic Conversations. We’re just starting to leak a few recordings and behind the scenes videos from the sessions, so be sure to check back regularly for more goodies. And if you haven’t subscribed to the podcast itself, we don’t hold it against you. Yet. But save yourselves the humiliation and subscribe now. Today. What do you get? Good question!
- Adoration
- Sweet thanksgiving
- Satisfaction in a job-well-done
- EXCLUSIVE pre-release tracks
- EXCLUSIVE editions of GREAT MUSIC
- EXCLUSIVE interviews with GREAT ARTISTS
- MORE EXCLUSIVE behind-the-scenes STUFF
- CHANCE to FREE the ELVES and ALLOW the MONKEYS their DUE
Even more? SURE THERE IS! We’ve added an aStore from Amazon so you can not only enjoy the great EXCLUSIVE editions of tracks we’re giving away for FREE, but you can buy the music of your new favorite artists right here on AcousticConversations.com. Just click on “Store” and start shopping. Do we need to tell you twice? Seriously? Just click on “Store” and start shopping. There.
Welcome to 2009, everybody. We’re glad your here. Come back more. And more. We’ve got a great line-up of awesome artists on deck for this season. We promise. Because we don’t do the bad ones. It’s our way.