Ingrid Michaelson at Headliners 6/4

Earlier this past winter my wife and I were stranded at home by a freak ice storm with two tickets in hand to see Ingrid Michaelson play at the 930 listening room. Ice storms aren't common to the folks of the Louisville area as we usually only receive a dusting of snow each year.
Needless to say, we were pretty bummed. Well, it just so happens Ingrid is coming back through the area and providing us with another chance to see her play.
Ingrid has found success with multiple songs featured in the hit series "Grey's Anatomy" as well as her single "The Way I Am" being featured on the Old Navy fall sweater commercials. Because of the commercial, the song is often referred to as the sweater song (not to be confused with Weezer's "Sweater Song"). The 28 year old singer songwriter has managed to bypass the record label model of climbing the ladder and instead has used a trampoline to launch her career by word of mouth and MySpace.
Now that the weather's nice and humid they'll be nothing to stop us from making it down to WFPK sponsored show at Headliners Music Hall this Wednesday. Greg Laswell will be opening the show that starts at 8:00pm (doors @ 7).
Tickets available at Ear X-tacy (cash only) and at TicketWeb as well as at the Door for $15.00.






Buy Ingrid's new album "Boys and Girls" locally at Ear X-tacy or digitally on iTunes.

Ingrid Michaelson - The Way I Am

MMJ @ ear X-tacy

Hurry on this one as I'm sure it will sell out fast.

Photos and Review: The Swell Season

Monday May 12th @ The Brown Theatre

Getting to the Brown was a little bit of a struggle as a Barack Obama rally was being held around the corner at the Convention Center. It was a really strange sight to see the the masses of people waiting in line for the rally. It makes me feel good to see so many people excited about who the next president may be. Sen. Obama's caravan of black SUVs was parked out in front of the Brown Hotel and secret services agents complete with earpieces were standing guard.

After The Swell Season (joined by members of The Frames) took stage, the Obama references continued. It turns out that while out looking for tea earlier in the day they had stumbled upon the rally. Glen Hansard seemed very inspired by what he had seen and joked about not being bale to vote since he is from Ireland.

The show itself was very good and the sound was amazing. I could see set lists posted in front of the artists but it sure didn't seem like they were following any script. The songs were broken up by some of the longest between song banter and stories I have ever heard. Thats not to say I was annoyed at all, most of the stores were very interesting. They also seemed to improvise a lot near the end of the set chatting with each other off mic about what to do next and even playing a few new songs.

My favorite moment of the night was just before Falling slowly when Glen used an analogy to describe how he feels about what the song has done to his life. I will try and paraphrase: "It's like when you have this goal to kick your ball to the end of your garden where you brother is trying to catch it or kick it back. But, when you kick your ball it goes over the goal post, over the back wall, over the river, into the next town and into a place where you never imagined it would be. 4/5ths of you is going "Omigod I cant believe how far my ball went!" those 4/5th completely outweigh the 1/5th of you thats going "I want my fucking ball back".

I just learned that a soundboard recording of this show can be downloaded from a company called Played Last Night . The show costs 9.95 unless you have a special code that was passed out at the show that gets you 4 dollars off. Here is what they have to say about it:

"There is something special about this show, we just can't put our finger on it. The band has a very controlled and calm performance. The crowd is great, but then you hardly expect anything less from Louisville. Recording is excellent, its just a good good show. Some real nice covers as well."

Backseat Sandbar's Birthday Show

Backseat Sandbar is celebrating their first Birthday this Saturday with a free show over at the Pour Haus in Germantown. Cory and Nick have been working hard informing folks around the city of local art and music events for nearly a year now and they have reason to celebrate, congratulations guys!

details straight from Backseat Sandbar...

Backseat Sandbar turns 1 on May 23rd & we’re having a little party to celebrate. For the occasion, The Zero Element, Skyscraper Stereo, The Instruction, and DJ duo Azns n Bnzs are going to play at The Pour Haus. The show is meant to provide a cross section of the Louisville Music scene genre-wise, and we specifically chose each band as the embodiment of this scene…whether you’ve heard of any or all of these guys or not….

For the evening, the already incredibly cheap drinks are going to be even cheaper at $1.25 PBR & $3.25 well drinks. The Instruction is going to head on stage first right at 9. I know its the first band an all….but we only chose bands we really liked and you’d be missing out by coming late. These guys recently won a local “Battle of the Bands” at Headliners. When we met them & received their CD, we were instantly hooked. We reviewed it HERE. Everyone we’ve played the album for asks if it is Matt Berninger of The National singing. Interested? After that, we’ve got The Zero Element. The Zero Element just got two forms of shoutout from People Noise. The first was in our Take 5 series, when Zeke answered that The Zero Element was one of his favorite Louisville bands, and the second was asking them to open last Friday’s show at The Pink Door. Next up is local hip hop heads Skyscraper Stereo who rap about more than guns and drugs, and are known to occasionally do it over 8-bit beats. Lastly, our good friends Azns n Bnzs, whose last show we promoted was the incredible Clay Buffett in March, where they performed alongside Skyscraper Stereo. Cheap drinks, good music, good venue, and free admission should make for an all-around awesome night…

For an idea of how far we’ve come…our first post on May 23rd, 2007 was a youtube video about a talented beer pong player. Louisville has embraced Backseat Sandbar far more than we ever anticipated & we intend to keep going strong….going to more and more shows and doing more and more concert reviews, and bringing all the information that you actually care about to one spot.

We hope to see all of you kids out at The Pour Haus on May 23rd…in the meantime, have a sampling of the talent…

Zero Element- XOR
Skyscraper Stereo- 1up
The Instruction- Hello Darlin’
Azns n Bnzs- Lately Misunderstood

Evil Urges Listening Party Announcement

We are excited announce that we will be hosting Louisville's Official Evil Urges Listening Party. The event will be held at Vernon Lanes on Saturday May 31st and will start at 9pm. After we spin the cd, members of the band Murals will be playing a set pure Louisville rock to keep the party going strong. Last month My Morning Jacket gave us a sneak peek at the title track and we posted the mp3 of Evil Urges here.
Mark your calendars and come on out and enjoy the High Life on draft and bowling til your fingers bleed at Vernon Lanes!

Pre-Order My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges at iTunes or Amazon.

Ticketmaster Video

A few weeks ago I ranted about how much I hate Ticketmaster. Tonight ESPN did a story on the problem. A couple things stand out to me. One is that Ticketmaster also owns TicketsNow.com a ticker broker company, so they are making money twice! Second, is that some guy is paying people in India to sit there and enter Captchas all day long so people can purchase tickets fast and in large quantities. Here is the video:

My Morning Jacket SNL Vids

The following is from Linda Park's Velocity Blog.

"Tom and I spent the early afternoon in Herald Square trying to find a black shirt with black buttons (so as not to clash with the black velvet jacket he wore). Thank G for H&M (my favorite store on earth!). If you ever wondered what bands are doing before performing on SNL, there's one example.

An evening at Saturday Night Live is a long one (you arrive around 4 and are there for about nine hours).

However, they are kind enough to provide you with good food, bread pudding, cheesecake and gelato (cookie dough gelato, no less!)

The band went through another set of rehearsals (the first being on Thursday) that sounded great in the studio. I will admit (and am sort of embarrassed, but) I got a bit choked up when I watched them do "I'm Amazed." That song is purty good, I must say.

From 8 - 10 they do a dress rehearsal with a live audience to run through all the skits and both band performances. It was quite interesting to see how things evolved from dress to the actual show, and I think they did a great job of cutting out the fat. My favorite bits of the night were the MacGruber series and Bill Hader's Italian talk show host.

Say what you will about SNL's somewhat inconsistent nature, it's pretty awesome to watch the show come together and see how hard the performers work. They seem like a genial, close-knit bunch (I've read about how it's a pretty dog eat dog environment, but you don't get that feeling when you're there - at least not the parts I saw).

Oh, I forgot to mention that Kristen Wiig and Fred Armisen warmed the crowd up with a cover of Blondie's "One Way or Another." She has a great voice, actually, which only makes her even cooler (if that's possible). She has that Suze Orman voice down... and who was in the audience for the live show but... Suze Orman!! I got to walk out next to Suze Orman!! She was pretty good natured about the skit. I did not ask her for investment advice or if Oprah is nice or anything like that.

My Morning Jacket did really well, I thought. I figured I wouldn't be surprised having watched the whole process, but then they did the stop-action thing at the end of both songs (which they didn't in rehearsal) so that was pretty cute. Those boys know how to entertain. I think we were all (the wives) sort of nervous for them, but I don't know why - they've never not delivered in the hundreds of times I've seen them. However, this was probably their most high profile performance EVER.

When the show is over, the cast, crew and loads of other people head to the after party and it was chock full of celebs (I admired Will Arnett from afar... I love that guy). I asked Bill Hader if he would do the LP Questionnaire, and he said yes so I'm excited about that. Will Forte told Tom he wants to go to Bonnaroo so maybe we'll see him again someday. I never talk to famous people, mostly because what on earth am I going to say, really? But also because I think if I was a famous type person, would I want me stumbling up like a moron going, "You're so cool. Tee hee. Can I steal your fork?" Probably not.

So that is what it's like to spend a Saturday at Saturday Night Live. We got back to the hotel around 4.30 am. I haven't stayed out that late since... umm... yeah. I can't wait to get back to NYC next month for MMJ at Radio City Music Hall. They should dress up like the Rockettes.

It was a good week,
Ms. P

ps. How great was it that Pooch made it into the band pics?! He was super happy."