The California-based Donkeys spent three years on their second album, Living on the Other Side, from start to release, and that combined with the quartet's warm, fluffy, unhurried music might create the impression that the band moves slowly. Some songs sound downright lazy.
"We're laid-back dudes," said keyboardist Anthony Lukens in a phone interview last week. "We try to make it sound like nothing's contrived or rushed. So I would probably take that as a compliment if something sounded, maybe, effortless would be a nicer way to say it. ... We're hardly lazy. ... We're definitely relaxed dudes. It takes us long time to get from Point A to Point B, because we're going to hang out and talk about it for a long time."
Michael
J. Miles, the freelance educator, composer, and musician currently in
the area as Quad City Arts' latest visiting artist, isn't blind
to the common associations connected with the banjo. "The general
awareness," he says, "if there is
any, of the banjo sits on
things like The Beverly
Hillbillies or Deliverance
or O
Brother, Where Art Thou?"
Parlophone - the label home to everyone from the Beatles to Colplay in the UK - found the Swedish quintet Love Is All a touch hard to work with.
There is no disputing that Sean Ryan is inexperienced. He's a senior at Augustana College, and he nearly boasts that the songs on his debut album, Lonesome Driver Music, were dashed off and barely touched again.
The Quad Cities quartet Chrash goes by many names, and right now its preference appears to be Chrash Flood. That shape-shifting seems to reflect an almost willful desire for obscurity.
When
J.J. Grey got off the road late last year, he immediately started
preparations for what would become the Orange
Blossoms record.
When Lois Deloatch recorded what became Hymn to Freedom in late 2006, she intended it as a tribute to pianist Oscar Peterson, a living legend.
Carrie Rodriguez has always gravitated toward the spotlight, even if it's taken a while to get there.
