Happy Anniversary to Me

To this blog, actually, which began just over two years ago on September 24th, 2007 with the following message:

Music matters around here
Posted on September 24, 2007 by Kevin Oliver | Edit
and hopefully it matters to you, too, or you wouldn’t be reading this. In the posts that follow this initial foray into the blogosphere, I’ll be deconstructing the music scene as I experience it, from a local standpoint and into the effects of national and international trends. From the business of making music to those doing it just for the sheer enjoyment of the sounds they create, it’s all fair game.

Two years on, I’d say that I’ve fullfilled that mission and then some, and the hits on my posts (which have gone from hundreds per month to thousands) bear that out. To the musicians I’ve covered here, thanks for creating something worth writing about. To the rest of you, thanks for reading. Now, as they say on my favorite college radio station WUSC-FM 90.5 FM, back to the music.

Get Dizzy With Lunch Money For Free

Columbia, SC kid’s music band Lunch Money is reaching little ears all over the country, with appearances this year at Kidsapalooza, features on NPR, and an upcoming appearance at the Austin City Limits Festival. To celebrate their increased profile, they are offering a download of their entire new album Dizzy for nothing more than your email address.

Lunch Money’s upbeat acoustic rock is deceptively simple and utterly captivating, with singer Molly Ledford’s childlike perspective on songs such as “A Cookie As Big As My Head” sure to delight children young and old.

Go here for your free download of Dizzy

Peter Himmelman Launches a Curious World

There are plenty of children’s musicians out there who claim to make kid’s music that adults will love (or at least be able to tolerate), but Grammy-winning artist Peter Himmelman makes such intelligent children’s music that I’d have to say that it is adult music which kids will love. Just because he sings about kites and trampolines doesn’t make it any less enjoyable for this overgrown kid.

This Sunday, September 27th at 10 am (Central Time), Himmelman will expand his artistic reach with a web-casted kid’s variety show, Peter Himmelman’s Curious World, on www.landofnod.com.

The show promises to have a studio audience of children talking about questions they’re asked by other kids. Himmelman and his band will also perform in each of the ten weekly episodes set to run each Sunday morning through November 29th, and there will be skits and routines such as a talk with King Ferdinand the Turtle.

Himmelman’s latest album for children is My Trampoline, with songs about a turtle, a trampoline, a picky eater named Peter (which turns out to be altogether autobiographical), and how there are so few children named Steve. The reason this appeals to the adult population so well is that Himmelman plays virtually the same way on the kid’s albums as he does in the ones he periodically releases for the general adult market, and that sophisticated pop-rock style carries over well.

See for yourself how the two worlds of Peter Himmelman aren’t really that far apart. Here’s a live clip of “Only Innocent” from his weekly Furious World webcast (the adult version of Curious World)

And here’s a clip of the title track from My Trampoline:

Matt Urmy’s Poetic New Musical Season

Matt Urmy
New Season Comin’

Poet, singer, songwriter, healer, and performing artist Matt Urmy was born in New York and raised in Nashville, but his genesis is less interesting than his creative output, which pokes around in spiritual and transcendental philosophies atop a musical bed of relaxed folk-rock.

On his third album, Urmy has perfected a raspy resonance that’s partly early Tom Waits (think “Diamonds on the Soles Of My Shoes”) and part fellow Tennessean R.B. Morris (circa Zeke and the Wheel.) The songs sometimes serve as little more than musical beds for bluesy verse, as on the loping story-song “Cup of Grace”, but he’s equally capable of writing affecting melodies on tracks such as “Easy Train.”

There are so many great lines crammed into every song, almost tripping over each other to get out, it would be unfair to single out one or two; suffice it to say that Urmy’s poetry is musical and his music is poetic, and he still manages to sound rough enough around the edges to leave you thinking he’d be a great guy to share a couple of beers with.

Matt Urmy Website

Matt Urmy–Cup Of Grace by kageyo