Alexander Wayne recognizes a good opportunity when he sees it. Wayne, a 21-year-old from Dublin, Georgia, is a guitarist for a new band called The Everyday Anthem. Wayne and lead singer Nicholas Pena have hopes of adding members and recording an EP, but their current objective is to find an audience. To do so, Wayne signed up for SoundCloud, a website that allows artists to post their music for others to see.
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Family and Friends has the features of future stars
It’s a busy night at Walker’s Coffee and Pub, and the drunk man at a booth isn’t making it easy for Mike MacDonald.
MacDonald and David “Tuna” Fortuna are in the middle of serving customers when the man stumbles towards Ryan Houchens and JP McKenzie, who sit quietly at the bar. The man belligerently explains how much he loves all four men and the work they’ve produced as he wraps his arms around McKenzie and Houchens.
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The band Family and Friends is a local Athens band still working hard to make it big. To get a better sense of the group, I talked to a few of the members and asked a few personal questions about their musical tastes.
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The year 2007 featured the start of Bandcamp and SoundCloud, which are two avenues that artists pursue to share their music. The growth for the sites has been notable, and over the span of eight years they’ve both gone from unknown to unexpected successes. This timetable gives an overview of the successes the sites have encountered.
Clay Walker has issue with rock stars playing country music
Last week country singer Clay Walker voiced his displeasure with rock singers releasing country music.
“I can’t stand to see outdated rock ‘n’ rollers coming in to play country music,” Walker said to the Modesto Bee. “That really pissed me off. We have great singers, great country musicians. There’s no reason we have to dilute it by letting people in the format that don’t have any business being in the format.”
Walker’s comments appear to be aimed at Steven Tyler. Tyler, the Aerosmith lead singer, plans to release a country album in the near future and had his new single “Love Is Your Name” come out this past week.
In my opinion, Walker is completely unjustified in his comments about country music’s invasion.
If you look back at when country music really took off in the 1950s and ‘60s, study the names that led the movement: Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty, Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Rich. All four of these artists were primarily rock singers who transitioned to country as the genre got its footing, and without it country music would not be as it stands today.
Besides some of country music’s forefathers having rock ties, who is Clay Walker to say who can and cannot play country music?
First and foremost, music is all about freedom and allowing every person who wants to play the music do just that. That being said, Walker is not a superstar country musician by any stretch of the imagination. If a famous star like Garth Brooks or George Strait made these comments, perhaps there would be more substance to the gripe; the 45-year-old Walker has not had a No. 1 song since 1997.
It sure looks like Walker took this opportunity to have his name mentioned in the mainstream for the first time in years. He may not like what Tyler and others have done with country music, but the fact is this: Tyler will probably get more play time with his new music than Walker will.
The power of the concert review
The website Ultimate Classic Rock ran an interesting story on May 11 concerning the breakup of the rock band Cream. To make a long story short, a review from the Rolling Stone’s John Landau left guitarist Eric Clapton devastated. Landau basically said that Cream was not being inventive with the brilliants minds in the band and were simply producing music similar to so many other musicians at the time, which opened Clapton’s eyes and caused the band to break up.
Apple’s Artist Activity: Great in principle, bad in implementation
Last week Apple announced it was revamping its nearly-forgotten social networking service named iTunes Ping to create Apple Music. One of the new features that caught my eye of Apple Music was the “Artist Activity” feature, which will show who different musicians are listening to at any given point in time.
Jordan D. Hill 