Doing impersonations is serious business. Get them right and your audience falls all over you. Hell, even the subject might let you know you’ve done an admirable job.

Get the mimic wrong… Well, he or she will let you know about that too.

David Lowery doesn’t dread the camera flashes or the crappy YouTube videos; in fact, he welcomes them.
Lead singer for Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, a pair of bands with faithful followers during their decades of work, Lowery embraces the passion his fans have for the live show.

You want audio — go right ahead.

From a childhood church choir to sharing the stage with some of the the biggest names in music today, The Watson Twins have fallen onto the proverbial fast track. The twins open up to Blur about identical looks, varying personalities, and a noticeably new sound.

“The Greatest Living Country Singer” Saved By Family and Faith   
 
The Classic Center Theatre in Athens, GA. will host Jones in concert on Friday, February 5 at 7:30 p.m. 
 
When Starday Records producer Pappey Dailey told him to quit singing like his idols and try singing like himself, the ex-marine and then 24 year-old country music hopeful, George Jones, mastered his first Top Five hit “Why Baby Why” and set the course for a career that would span more than 50 years and produce 150 chart-topping recordings.
One of seven children, Jones …

Athens Blur rings in the new year with our 13th issue on January 15…here’s a sample of some tunes from artists that will be spotlighted:
(Sorry, folks. No downloads. But stream away!)
Timi Conley
Yeasayer
Beach House
Galactic
Daphne Willis
Editors
Happy 2010!

To download the print version 
of the Best of 2009 spread,
click here! 

In the most literal sense, Hall & Oates began as elevator music. Taking refuge in a freight elevator from a fight inside a Philly nightclub in the late ’60s, a young John Oates & Daryl Hall would meet for the first time, beginning a ride together that would never come down. For the better part of three decades, they would own pop music, penning countless Top 10 hits and selling over 60 million records to become the most successful pop duo of all time. Now, following the release of a career spanning, four disc box set, John Oates took a few moments to reflect on his music, the importance of songwriting and today’s musical climate.

A lot of things come off Alaskan fishing boats when they dock after long hauls at sea — grumpy men, pervasive aromas and, of course, loads of fresh catch. What doesn’t always step off the decks and onto the docks is mesmerizing folk-pop music, though that’s exactly what happened each time Van Pierszalowski, who along with Cambria Goodwin makes up the creative core of West Coast buzz band Port O’Brien, unloaded from his father’s salmon fishing boat on Alaska’s Kodiak Island. The arrangement was simple: Each summer, Pierszalowski would travel from California and go to sea with his father, sometimes for as many as six weeks at a time, while Goodwin would stay on shore and run the local bakery. Each would write songs in their respective isolation and converge when the fishing trips ended, a collaboration which spawned many of the songs that carry POB’s early discography on either of two albums released in 2007 — The Wind and the Swell and All We Could Do Was Sing.

Of all of the unexpected musical moments of the 1990s, from a scruffy band of Seattle misfits knocking Michael Jackson from the top of the pop charts, to the surviving Beatles issuing new recordings and hip-hop becoming the music of choice for suburban teenagers, it’s possible that no development was more unlikely than the brief resurgence of interest in swing music. A full 50 years after its peak and just as music seemed to be moving away from the traditional tools of the trade, the Brian Setzer Orchestra, the movie “Swingers,” and a ubiquitous commercial for khakis momentarily had trend-humping hipsters digging through their grandparents’ record collections looking for Louis Prima and Cab Calloway records. Most unlikely of all was the ascension of a band from Durham, N.C., a band whose deft combination of hot jazz, jump-blues, and ’40s pop meant that it wasn’t really a swing band at all. But just like all those bands, this one was gone as the new century dawned, a band whose music was now a relic of two eras and an unfortunate casualty of changing tastes. Unlike all of those bands and bandwagon jumpers, though, the Squirrel Nut Zippers are back.

Fall Tour 2009
Brock Butler Tour Diary:
I like tours of Va. and the Northeast. I had a fine time at the Norva. I’m pretty sure it’s the only venue that in the elevator (also rare) has a button for the floor labeled “basketball court.” Fairly standard show. Hollins all gal college: either we are the loudest band ever to play there or…they didn’t get the right permits. The show’s stopped by local law enforcement — very enthused law, I might add, who demanded I stop speaking through the microphone even …