Brad Paisley arrived by boat to his party at the Nashville Shores water park and sang some old favorites to a crowd that knew all the words. It was a multigenerational gathering and kids played on an inflatable slide. One young boy bobbed on his fathers shoulders near the front of the stage.Paisley said his wife, actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley, was shocked when she first saw the kind of access her husband, one of countrys top stars, gives fans. You wont find that kind of interaction in places like Los Angeles or New York where celebrities try to create a wall between themselves and fans. And neither rock n roll nor hip-hops biggest stars are doing anything like this, either. But thats the way its always been in country.It was important to guys like Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff and these early guys on the Opry, Paisley said The saying I think was, Keep it close to the ground, boys, which meant make it relatable, make it real life This is what our format is and so we do this really well.
I just turned it on and I liked it, says Croft. Our sound is just happy accidents, really. Its never been premeditated.A few years later, Jamie Smith joined on drum machine and playing samples. Keyboardist Bafia Qureshi left the band earlier this year, sending them even further into minimalism. Their fondness for slick R&B comes through in covers of Womack and Womacks Teardrops and Aliyahs Hot Like Fire.Sim, who turns 21 on Monday, says playing in the daylight - as they did at the Coachella and Sasquatch festivals - can feel a bit naked and exposed The band always dresses in black and performs with dramatic backlighting.
The album, to be released Tuesday June 15 on Barsuk, was recorded at their home in Stratford, Connecticut, and includes the bands take on songs by Girls, Belle & Sebastian, Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Fleetwood Mac.Before they hit the road for the Crushes tour, beginning on the records street date in Northampton, Massachusetts, Hammel spoke to Billboard about creating the album, the stigma of doing covers and touring with their two young daughters.Jason Hammel Were obviously big music fans, and often wed hear a song and say we totally need to cover that and somehow be a part of that song Weve been talking about it for years and kept an ongoing list Finally we said, OK, we dont have enough Mates material yet for a new album, but we want to play and record, so lets do it It was harder than I thought to choose -- we both really had to be into the song, and we both have our own personal taste Once we agreed on a certain number, we started arranging Sometimes we would do the song justice, and sometimes it just sounded awful.
I didnt want my work to be like a bar graph of, How many new producers can she afford? M.I.A. says. Thats not how I measured it. Retaining a connection to her first two albums was more important. If you have all three, then it makes sense that they came from the same person. And I didnt want it to be like, Then she met blah-blah!In any event, she adds, the song that everybody liked off Kala Paper Planes wasnt made by one of those producers. So I dont know why were constantly second-guessing that, because its unpredictable -- especially with me. You have to be honest with your art and then hope for the best. I can have any producer on my album thats from that world, but it doesnt really mean anything. Youre just going to get a diluted version of me.certainly doesnt deliver a diluted version of MIA if anything, it emphasizes the contradictions at the heart of who she is, with lush love songs jostling against scrappy political rants MIA says shes not sure its her responsibility as an artist to resolve those paradoxes Thats what I was trying to work out whether the future is something you level out or if you describe the extremes more.
Covers were popular at this years festival. Aside from the Flaming Lips fuzzy, full-length rendition of Pink Floyds Dark Side of the Moon, here are a few of the most remarkable onesMemphis, an interracial romance set against the backdrop of the 1950s rhythm n blues explosion, has won the 2010 Tony Award for best musical.The show of soulful sounds and a parade of engaging characters beat out Fela! - the innovative Afro-beat biography of Nigerian superstar Fela Anikulapo-Kuti Green Days rock musical American Idiot and Million Dollar Quartet, a fictional re-creation of a jam session of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis in a Memphis recording studio.