It's great to see artists and labels finding ways to inject green thinking into their work.

Last fall, Houston-based Compadre Records announced a slew of eco-conscious changes to its standard business practices. For example, beginning with the release of Trent Willmon's Broken In next month, all CDs will come in biodegradable packaging instead of plastic jewel cases. The label — now part of Music World Entertainment — also plans to make liner notes and credits available via download rather than the printed inserts we're accustomed to today.

Austin musician Billy Harvey is driving nearly 8,000 miles in a 1981 Mercedes that runs on waste vegetable oil. He's touring in support of a new 2-disc release, Grow Garden Grow, which features 28 songs created in the word-of-the-day songwriting game he plays with Bob Schneider, among others:

We all agree on a single title and then we each separately write a song using that title. After years of playing the game I decided to compile some of my favorite songs/recordings so that other people could participate in the result of this work. The green theme was to enforce the organic nature of this body of work, and the creative process in general which happens all around us and in spite of us.

Dan Dyer is going green for his third album, a self-titled release from Fat Caddy Records that "features a hand-made CD packaging produced from 100% recycled materials, using non-toxic and soy-based inks."

Utah Jazz center Mehmet Okur		Son Volt frontman Jay Farrar

I struggled to find a good recent photo of Okur, but the similarities between the Turkish baller and the Belleville singer have struck me each time I've caught bits of Jazz games on TV (like last night against the Spurs).

Maybe I'm just watching too much basketball….

The Houston Chronicle's Joey Guerra has a good profile of Mando Saenz today. Saenz is set to release his second album, Bucket, on Feb. 5.

I haven't listened to the full album yet, but the preview tracks indicate a much more polished, professional sound — for better or worse — than on Watertown, Saenz's debut CD.

It had never struck me before, but his voice kinda reminds me of an Americana-fied Rufus Wainwright. That said, I kinda doubt Mando will host Judy Garland tribute shows any time soon.

Willie Nelson turns 75 on April 30, and to celebrate Legacy Recordings is releasing a 4-disc, 100-track box set. One Hell of a Ride will be available April 1. The accompanying press release breathlessly promises "for the first time in any collection, recordings and performances drawn from the entire range, and all record labels, of Willie Nelson's mythic career."

Liner notes are by Joe Nick Patoski, whose book Willie Nelson: An Epic Life will be published this spring.

How does Willie keep going after all these years on the road? Lots of exercise.

posted by Patrick  # 1/23/2008 0 comments

The top 10 beards in modern music, according to the San Francisco Weekly. I find it hard to see why ?uestlove (pictured at right) is only #9 on the list. And where on earth is Sam Beam?

When you're a hirsute man like me, it's easy to get beard envy. In public, some men can't help but notice boobs or legs. My eyes are more often drawn to beards with a fullness and vitality I'll never attain with my coarse whiskers.

After a couple years with a goatee, I grew my first full beard around seven years ago. It took weeks to grow in. And like this letter-to-the-editor writer from 1890, that pognotrophic cultivation proved awkward:

I began to pass through the dark shadow of a peculiar experience, not less trying to the soul than those other inevitable crises of the conscious existence, such as the first pair of long trousers, the first silk hat, the first request for a kiss from lips unseen in the twilight, the public ordeal of becoming a member of the church or of becoming a husband in one, the first evening party, and the first realization of encroaching old age. Of all these emotional trials I contend that the deliberate and persistent act of letting the beard grow in the only place where it will grow calls for the most exalted courage.
 
Read full letter from "E.N.B." to the NY Times (PDF)

I might not recount my experiences quite so dramatically, but still, it was a time of uncertainty and doubt.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd look like without my beard. I'd look younger, for sure, but concealing my baby face was a major motivation for growing it in the first place.

Beards aren't exactly embraced in corporate America, but so far I don't think my facial hair or shaggy hair have ever prevented me from advancing in the workplace.

If I were to shave, my children might not recognize me; perhaps the same could be said of my friends. But I like my beard, and fortunately so does my wife. I can't foresee myself without it.

A quick update on our friends from Fat Caddy Records…

Austin Collins announced a Feb. 26 release date for his second album, Roses Are Black. Centro-Matic frontman Will Johnson produced this follow-up to 2005's Something Better. Austin shared the rough cuts last summer, and what I heard sounded great. Some of the previews are still available on MySpace.

Black Water Gospel is now The Century. The metamorphosed band — minus original guitarist Jesse Duke — makes its debut this Friday at Stubb's. No word yet on a new release date for the band's second album, produced by Brad Rice and originally scheduled to come out last fall.

Other Fat Caddy artists include The Band of Heathens, Brian Keane, Macon Greyson, and new addition Dan Dyer.

If you share the love, you can help Fat Caddy repeat as Best Local Label in the Austin Music Awards. Voting is open through Jan. 31.

Each year, SXSW gives dozens of international artists their first real stateside exposure. Their names generally are unfamiliar to all but the most plugged-in indie music fans, but for a lucky few that can change after a 50-minute showcase that manages to pique the curiosity of the right people.

I've had the chance to spend some time researching and talking to a few of the European bands heading to Austin this spring. I've really been impressed with one particular artist from Spain: Remate.

A classically-trained pianist who studied at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and writes his songs in English, Remate isn't your average guitar-toting troubadour. But he is a wonderfully literate singer and songwriter critics have compared to fellow alt-folkies Devendra Banhart and Sufjan Stevens.

The Sunday Times and NME are just a few of the publications that have touted his 2-disc, 25-song No Land Recordings, released in the UK just last month on Acuarela Records.

I highly recommend checking out Remate's music. I definitely plan to be in attendance at his SXSW showcase. And if he's lucky, so will some influential tastemakers and A&R scouts.

Rolling Stone's Robert Levine has an interesting report on the sound quality of recorded music. "The Death of High Fidelity" reads like something of a doomsday chronicle, a last testament to the bygone days of audio clarity. It's a bit melodramatic, perhaps, but it raises some interesting points and certainly mirrors thoughts that have crossed every music lover's mind at least fleetingly.

Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost always for the worse. "They make it loud to get [listeners'] attention," Bendeth says. Engineers do that by applying dynamic range compression, which reduces the difference between the loudest and softest sounds in a song. Like many of his peers, Bendeth believes that relying too much on this effect can obscure sonic detail, rob music of its emotional power and leave listeners with what engineers call ear fatigue. …
 
Producers and engineers call this "the loudness war," and it has changed the way almost every new pop and rock album sounds.
 
Read more…

More often than not of late, I'm dismayed by the muddled sound of CDs. And it can't be chalked up solely to amateurish production skills. After all, it's not an issue that's endemic to small labels or independent releases. The big labels are just as guilty; perhaps even moreso.

Is, as posed by the article's conclusion, the age of the audiophile over? Let us perish the thought.

In an informal comparison of audio formats, Levine's colleague Joe Levy finds the richest sounds still come from the 150-year-old technology found in turntables, not the modern marvels of CDs and MP3s. No surprise there. True audiophiles have managed to keep vinyl alive as a viable format, and in recent years it has experienced something of a minor resurgence. But that audience remains a small subset of the music populace.

For the masses, compression reigns supreme. And as Steely Dan's Donald Fagen tells Levine, "With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse…. God is in the details. But there are no details anymore."