The Band of Heathens continues to gain momentum on the Americana music scene. Ed Jurdi, Gordy Quist, Colin Brooks, and Seth Whitney have been regulars in and around Austin since starting out with the informal Good Time Supper Club a couple years back. (Another original Heathen, Brian Keane, has since left the band to concentrate on his solo career.) Last fall they released the critically acclaimed Live from Momo's, and this spring they won Best New Band honors in the Austin Music Awards.

This Friday, June 1, the Heathens will play a special show at Antone's. Austin's METV will be on-hand to record the performance for a forthcoming compilation DVD (assuming the nearby ROT Rally doesn't dominate the soundscape). The show starts at 8, but admission is free if you arrive before 7:30. Plus, early birds will be treated to free soul food from the magnificent Gene's New Orleans Style Poboys & Deli.

The Heathens will head into the studio later this year with Ray Wylie Hubbard producing the sessions for an early 2008 CD release.

A new reviews aggregator called Summize offers an interesting way to visually assess online chatter about a wide range of products.

In its initial launch, most reviews seem to be pulled from e-commerce partner Amazon, so the quality of the quoted reviews is highly variable. But where Summize adds unique value is in assigning green (good), yellow (fair), and red (bad) colors to individual reviews, which are then rolled up into a proportionally weighted "snip."

For example, here is the snip for Kelly Clarkson's Thankful:

And here's the snip for Bob Schneider's The Californian:

It's an interesting tool that adapts Edward Tufte's innovative sparklines to the realm of product reviews. Should be fun to see how Summize develops over the coming months.

New reviews this month:

Robbie Fulks, Revenge!

Guy Forsyth, Unrepentant Schizophrenic Americana

Rodney Hayden, Down the Road

Jimmy LaFave, Cimarron Manifesto

Chris Knight, The Trailer Tapes

Cory Morrow, Ten Years

Drew Kennedy, Dollar Theatre Movie

A full-capacity 20,000 people are expected for Saturday's free Road to Austin Concert featuring Kris Kristofferson, Bonnie Raitt, Delbert McClinton, and a host of local artists like Bob Schneider, Joe Ely, and Carolyn Wonderland. With the weather gods smiling on us for once this spring, get there early if you hope to make it through the gates.

With the weekend festivities approaching, Michael Corcoran of the Austin American-Statesman wonders if Austin can still call itself the "Live Music Capital of the World" — and unsurprisingly, his answer is yes:

Is the music as good as it used to be? Is it still possible to walk into a club on a Tuesday night and get blown away by a band you've never heard of? Why can't it be more like SXSW year round?
 
The answers: yes, yes and we'd all be dead. Anyone who doubts the strength of the local music scene should just drop in at the Saxon Pub on South Lamar Boulevard any night of the week, but especially on Sunday when the Resentments play rock 'n' roll on acoustic guitars. Very popular with European fans of Texas music, the Resentments, led by Bruton and Jon Dee Graham, are the kind of 100 percent Austin band folks instantly fall in love with, like the Commandos in the '80s and the Scabs in the '90s, when they first move to town.
 
And that's one thing about Austin — just about everyone moved here from somewhere else. When we find things here that are missing back home, especially heartfelt music and the tight community built around it, we revel in it. We made music a way of life. How could that not still be happening now, even as there is so much physical change in Austin? Is finding paradise today any less a thrill than it was years ago?
 
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Taking a trip down memory lane, Corcoran and other Statesman folks share their first Austin magic moments.

For me that moment has to be during SXSW 2005, about 7 months after moving to Austin. I didn't have a wristband or badge that year, but I did make it to a few private parties. The last one I planned to attend was Los Super Seven at Las Manitas, but a late afternon thunderstorm and a general wariness of being an unknown amongst dozens of well-connected VIPs made me waver. The skies cleared about a half-hour before the party, and my wife convinced me to get out and at least enjoy the free food. I'm glad I did. I was as invisible as expected, and spoke only a couple of times (and then to say "excuse me" or "thank you"). But once the music started, any social anxiety faded away. Calexico, Raul Malo, Joe Ely, Ruben Ramos, Rick Trevino, Augie Meyers, Charlie Sexton, and others in the Los Super Seven collective somehow managed to squeeze onto a makeshift stage in the restaurant's back room, and they filled the steamy joint with a cacophony of horns, keyboards, guitars, drums, and impassioned vocals. I left speechless (and more than a little deaf), with a smile plastered on my face. After a rough first few months in town — new job, few friends, the loss of my sister just weeks earlier — I finally felt like I belonged in Austin.

This Friday, May 18, is the deadline to submit a song for the 2007 Mountain Stage NewSong Contest.

Ten finalists will be selected to vie for the Southwest region (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico) crown in a live competition July 12 at the Cactus Cafe in Austin. The regional winner will then move on to the national finals in New York on September 29, where 12 artists will compete for prize packages including a spot on the Mountain Stage radio show, $300 cash, a showcase at next year's Folk Alliance conference, a full scholarship to the NewSong Academy, and discounts from sponsors like Oasis Disc Manufacturing and Musician's Atlas.

The entry fee is $30 for the first song, or $34.95 for the first song plus a 3-month subscription to Sonicbids. Discounts are available for multiple song entries, and artists from all genres are accepted.

In the contest's six years, no winner has ever come from Texas or its surrounding states.

The lineup for this September's Austin City Limits Music Festival is now official. Headliners include Bob Dylan, Bjork, the White Stripes, Wilco, and the Arcade Fire.

The lineup certainly seems eons better than last year's. Now my wife and I just have to decide … are we going this year? Not sure yet.

Blues legend Pinetop Perkins is the subject of a new documentary film, Born in the Honey. Antone's is hosting a DVD/CD release party May 24 with a night of the blues featuring Pinetop and friends including Chris Layton, Hubert Sumlin, and Gary Clark, Jr.

If you've spent much time in the Austin music scene, chances are you've run into Pinetop Perkins. Nattily dressed and always sporting a hat, he's a regular visitor to places like Antone's, Threadgill's, and the Broken Spoke. And he's a genial man who isn't shy to introduce himself.

Now 93, he's one of the last original Mississippi Delta bluesmen. Pinetop played with the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson, B.B. King, Earl Hooker, and Muddy Waters before finally setting out as a solo artist in his 80s. Since then he's received numerous honors, including multiple Grammy nominations, an NEA National Heritage Fellowship in 2000, and a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2005.

Originally a guitar player, he switched to piano after taking a knife in the arm for his role as the third wheel in a lovers' quarrel. The man has lived a fascinating life.

Search giant Yahoo! this week released a new way to find music lyrics. Now you can search for lyrics on a dedicated page or you can simply add "+lyrics" at the end of any Yahoo! search string to get a list of matching results.

It's a new service geared towards popular artists on major labels, so for now there's a relatively limited results set. You can find lyrics from mainstream artists like Willie Nelson, Pat Green, and the Old 97's, but not much from Cross Canadian Ragweed, the Randy Rogers Band, or Ray Wylie Hubbard.

Still, it's an impressive start to a tool that's sure to grow exponentially.

If there's any pastime I love more than music, it's sports. And specifically Dallas sports. So I start today with a heavy heart after watching the Dallas Mavericks get run out of the playoffs by the high-octane Golden State Warriors.

Some commentators are calling it the biggest upset in NBA playoff history, and it may be. After all, Dallas won 67 games this season (seventh best all-time and by far the most in franchise history); Golden State won 42. But facing a team that has given them heartburn the last two seasons, the Mavs just never could get it going. Dirk Nowitzki struggled, sure, but so did just about everyone else on the court. It wasn't a pretty series for the Mavericks. But Golden State played some beautiful basketball and poured its heart into the series.

It doesn't sting quite like last year's loss in the NBA Finals. After all, once Golden State whipped Dallas in Game 3 to take a 2-1 series edge, it became apparent that Nellie and the Warriors just might have the Mavs' number — something my wife tried to convince me of before the series even started. I never gave up, though. Down 3-1, I double-checked the schedule to make sure a proposed Sunday outing wouldn't conflict with a possible Game 7. Then the Mavs won Game 5, further bolstering my fledgling hopes. But it all fell apart in the 3rd quarter last night, and the season ended with another thumping.

I've loved the Mavericks my whole life. I was 5 years old when they played their inaugural season in 1980. I was a member of the Junior Mavericks fan club when Dick Motta helmed a squad that included childhood idols Rolando Blackman, Mark Aguirre, Jay Vincent, and of course Mr. Maverick, Brad Davis. I still have my team-autographed card from a Junior Mavericks night, complete with a Polaroid of me and Bill Garnett.

I rooted for the Mavs in good times and (mostly) bad. I was excited when the team had three first round picks in 1985 and chose the international trio of Detlef Schrempf, Bill Wennington, and Uwe Blab. I ached when the overachieving 1987-88 team lost the Western Conference Finals to the L.A. Lakers in 7 games, and ached even more when the sensational Roy Tarpley was suspended the following season.

As a high school senior and editor of my school paper, I was invited by the 1992-93 team to spend a night with the press corps. The game was unexceptional — a 109-100 loss to Boston, which dropped the Mavs to a 4-42 record on their way to a dismal 11-71 finish — but I'll never forget standing in front of Sean Rooks' locker as he recounted his evening's battles with the Celtics' aging great Robert Parish. I felt so uncomfortable and out of place that I never asked a question, instead just jotting a few notes before dashing out of the locker room and escaping from the bowels of Reunion Arena. But I still have somewhere the full media kit from that night's game, including the printed game notes that made me feel like something more than a high school kid pretending to be like the big boys from the local media.

I began to believe in bigger things when the Three Js (Jim Jackson, Jamal Mashburn, Jason Kidd) rode into town in the mid 90s. And then when fellow Mavs fan Mark Cuban — one of "us" though substantially wealthier — took over the struggling franchise and began to rebuild with Don Nelson, I kept in lock-step with his vision for greatness.

The last couple years the Mavs have indeed come close to greatness. Last season's playoffs were an extraordinary ride. This year's regular season was something special to behold. It's a remarkable turnaround for a franchise that finished the 1990s with one of the worst winning percentages in all of professional sports. And yet here we are, again dreaming of what might have been.

It hurts. Sports are funny like that. With rare exceptions (such as the boisterous Oakland crowd) we as fans have no impact on actual games or the players themselves. Yet we invest so much personal energy and brain space to the games we love to watch. We're voyeurs, basically. But we get so involved in the games and its personalities that we project their successes and failures onto ourselves. So when they win, we all celebrate. And when they lose, we all hurt.

So right now it hurts. The consolation: There's always next season.

I worked for PC processor manufacturer AMD until last month. While an insider I was lucky to get the scoop on some interesting music related initiatives, but I never felt comfortable writing about them while still an employee.

The company received quite a bit of media attention when it began to ramp up its entertainment industry efforts in 2005, but the coverage seems to have slowed along with AMD's market performance.

Over the last few months I've noticed several local artists using their liner notes and media interviews to thank AMD for its technology support:

• Grupo Fantasma recorded its live album ("for almost free," according to the Statesman) with AMD's help
• Guy Forsyth used "cool AMD gear" for one of the two discs on his forthcoming live release
• Dale Watson used a visit to Johnny Cash's cabin, now owned by friend Johnny Knoxville, to record From the Cradle to the Grave. As he told Richard Skanse in his Lone Star Music Q&A: "I was talking to a couple of friends of mine, including Charlie Boswell from AMD, and said we were still going to the cabin, but just to hang out. And he said, 'Man, we'd love to go up there and provide some recording equipment for you …'."

AMD also has been active in providing its technology to a number of performance spaces, including KLRU's Austin City Limits studio, ACL Fest, and the Grand Old Opry.

Quietly, AMD and digital audio experts Charlie Boswell and Kelly Stuart are making a real difference in the local and national music scenes.

With the critical acclaim still pouring in for From the Cradle to the Grave, new to stores just last week, Dale Watson wants his fans to know the next album bearing his name isn't in quite the same league.

KOCH Records is releasing The Little Darlin' Sessions on May 8, but not without protest from the artist himself:

The Little Darling CD was never finished (we cut a lot of songs but never were given the chance to correct mistakes or overdub background vocals or anything else.) i.e. We were given one run through and that was it. They wouldn't allow any of my originals and that result is tandem to me doing Karaoke on Little Darling songs. A couple of the songs I begged not to have to sing as I really did not like them. In that regard it really was Nashville 1966. KOCH is releasing it under protest of me and Lloyd Green.
 
They are basically unfinished roughs. We offered to go in for free and fix the record but they were done spending anything on it. I plan on the next record to be with Lloyd and the guys again but with me and Lloyd producing, and with a lot of my new originals. The next Hyena release will be the monumental record of legendary musicians meeting new originals thus being the record that the Little Darling Sessions failed to be. To those of you that choose to buy the record, please give a sympathetic ear to my vocals and the musicians playing. Many of these recordings were run throughs. It's is not the record we thought we were making. That said, it was a joy to work with these legendary pickers and look forward to recording the next record with them.
 
Sincerely,
Dale

Aubrey Mayhew — better known today for his extensive JFK memorabilia collection — launched Little Darlin' in the mid-1960s in reaction to the growing influence of over-produced Nashville sound. The long-gone label released country and gospel records from Johnny Paycheck, Don Williams, Jeannie C. Riley, and Stonewall Jackson, among others.