Rodrigo y Gabriela performed at the 1SSTBank Center in Broomfield Colorado on April 10, 2012 on the first leg of their 2012 Area 52 tour. The duo continuing there long standing tradition  of blowing audiences minds with their powerful performances and exquisite musicianship, no add to this an amazing Cuban orchestra and lay behind that beautiful live video of every performer on stage (in edgy black and white) and you end up with a night not soon forgotten. Side note, in a beautiful gesture of thanks, Rod and Gab had a poster of Jim Marshall hung from a music stand, a tribute to the father of the Marshall Amplifier who passed away only a few days before this show..

Photos do not do this pair justice, for full effect please take 10 minutes and watch this killer video of this performance, it is also a rare opportunity to see Rodrigo shred like Santana on an electric guitar.

The pair has been riding high since they took the music world by storm with their self-titled LP back in 2006, raising eyebrows with flamenco takes on thrash metal tunes and forward-thinking originals. Now the duo is touring with C.U.B.A., a 13-piece Cuban orchestra, with whom they recorded their latest record Area 52.

Rodrigo (Sanchez) and Gabriela (Quintero) are two fast-fingered, Dublin-based, Mexicans with a unique sound created on acoustic guitars. Their music is difficult to define, straddling both world and rock, and often imbued with timeless Hispano – classical influences.

The fire in it comes from their life-long passion for metal music. This spring, "Rodrigo y Gabriela," beat both the Arctic Monkeys AND Johnny Cash to number one in the Irish charts.Rodrigo is a deft finger-picker who can move from raging speed to sensual soul in the space of a fret, while Gabriela employs fast, rhythmic techniques.

Her percussionist’s thrashing of strings and drumming of the instrument’s body inevitably raises comparisons with flamenco – which they acknowledge as an influence but swerve as a pigeonhole.

The duo’s repertoire flies beyond familiar Latin folk guitarists’ styles because of the metal connection: their reworkings of Led Zep’s "Stairway to Heaven" and Metallica’s "Orion" are musts, and the presence, on "Ixtapa", of the fiery Hungarian gypsy violinist, Roby Lakatos, is inspirational.

Below is a video from only a couple days before the show I saw on the Jay Leno show.

Rodrigo y Gabriela (Rodrigo and Gabriela), also known as "Rod y Gab", are a Mexican musical duo who specialize in playing fast, rhythmic acoustic guitars. The duo’s members are Rodrigo Sánchez, lead guitar, and Gabriela Quintero, rhythm guitar.

The musicians gained a reputation by playing in the pubs and bars of Dublin, Ireland, and despite their unusual style, gained a cult following. Reviewing one of their gigs, The Independent notes that "Rodrigo y Gabriela’s secret is maybe quite simple.

They are resourceful musicians, and are open-hearted, happy entertainers. That, very often, is what people want. Both live a vegan lifestyle and support animal rights.^[2] They regularly dismiss being classified in a particular genre of music, preferring to say they play a fusion of many influences.

The duo met in Mexico City while playing in a thrash metal band called "Tierra Ácida." Growing frustrated with the limited scope of the domestic music scene, they moved to Europe, where they were well received.

They took up residence in Dublin, Ireland, after hearing it was particularly welcoming to travelling musicians. Playing live gigs in various pubs and busking on Grafton Street and Temple Bar allowed them to practice their sound.

They received their break when Damien Rice approached them to provide the support for the Irish music festival Oxegen. In 2005, they toured extensively in festivals around the United Kingdom and beyond.

The self-titled album, Rodrigo y Gabriela, entered the Irish Albums Chart at #1 beating Arctic Monkeys and Johnny Cash to the top spot. It was released internationally on March 13, 2006, having been given an earlier Irish release.

Rodrigo y Gabriela, which was produced by John Leckie, includes covers of Led Zeppelin‘s "Stairway to Heaven" and Metallica‘s "Orion".

The duo list Metallica as being among their key influence, alongside other heavy metal bands such as Megadeth, Slayer, Testament and Overkill. The other tracks are original works inspired by the places they have been and the people they have met.

Live in Japan was released on October 20, 2008 (UK), and includes 14 tracks, and a bonus DVD containing five videos.^[4] The Led Zeppelin cover can be found on the album Rhythms del Mundo Classics.

Their feature on MTV gave them a huge boost in popularity in the United States. This led to a feature on Nightmare Revisited, a tribute album to the music from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. The duo perform an instrumental version of "Oogie Boogie’s Song."

They released a new album, 11:11, in September, 2009. Alex Skolnick of Testament guests on the album, as do Strunz & Farah. Upon the release of the new album, they received much mainstream American popularity and were the featured music on Monday Night Football on October 12, 2009, as they celebrated Latino Heritage Month.

Their song Santo Domingo was chosen as the Starbucks iTunes Pick of the Week for November 10, 2009.

The duo was the musical guest on "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" that aired on CBS-TV on October 28, 2009, and was re-run on December 29, 2009. They performed "Buster Voodoo." They performed on Jools Holland‘s Annual Hootenanny on December 31, 2009.

In May 2010, Rodrigo y Gabriela performed in front of U.S. President Barack Obama.

They headlined the West Holts stage on the Sunday night at Glastonbury 2010 ^[8] and played the King Tuts Tent at T In The Park on 10 July 2010.^[9] They also had a spot on the main stage at Latitude festival that same July and they managed to draw in a huge crowd.

In 2010, Rodrigo y Gabriela contributed a live version of their song "Hora Zero" to the Enough Project and Downtown Records‘ Raise Hope for Congo compilation. Proceeds from the compilation fund efforts to make the protection and empowerment of Congo’s women a priority, as well as inspire individuals around the world to raise their voice for peace in Congo.

They played the Nice Jazz Festival on 23 July 2010, and the Mcmenemin’s Edgefield outdoor concert in Portland, Oregon on August 14, 2010, as well as the Ravinia Festival on August 28, 2010, and on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on September 30, 2010.

In September, 2010, the duo announced a hiatus from touring due to stress injuries caused by Gabriela’s heavily percussive style of playing.^[10] However, they did manage to play five sold-out nights at Shepherds Bush in London.

On January 20, 2011, Rodrigo y Gabriela entered the studio with Hans Zimmer to write and record sessions of the score from Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. ^[11] The soundtrack was released on May 17, 2011, three days before the film’s general release.

On July 25, 2011, Rodrigo y Gabriela released another live album entitled "Live in France."

Rodrigo and Gabriela were featured in the 2011 Dreamworks film Puss in Boots, scored by Henry Jackman.

During 2011, Rodrigo y Gabriela recorded in Havana, Cuba, with C.U.B.A., a 13-piece Cuban orchestra, and special guest musicians (Anoushka Shankar on sitar and Le Trio Joubran on oud). In January 2012 they released Area 52, their first album backed by other musicians.

The tracks on the album are mostly re-worked versions of songs that have appeared on their duo albums, Rodrigo y Gabriela and 11:11. Reviews have been mixed, with some tracks criticized for the backing band drowning out the guitar work that fans love but others praised where the guitar workouts "are allowed space to breathe by lighter salsa-style backing".

Studio albums

• Foc (2001)
• re-Foc (2002)
• Rodrigo y Gabriela (2006)
• 11:11 (2009)
• Area 52 (2012)

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Above is Joy Williams of the singer songwriter duo The Civil Wars performing on August 21, 2011 at the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in Lyons Colorado. I loved their set and the wonderful dynamic created by these two incredibly talented singer songwriters, who agreed that aside from music, their backgrounds and interests diverge, Yin/Yang at its best. Their original songs and harmonies were something amazing to behold.

Below is a photostory I created using photos from this show and their beautiful music which included the new song they wrote for Taylor Swift which appears on the sound track for the much anticipated movie, The Hunger Games.

Below is a Bio written by Chris Willman about the Civil Wars

In some ways, music doesn’t get much more modest or minimalist than it is in the hands of The Civil Wars, a duo comprised of California-to-Nashville transplant Joy Williams and her Alabaman partner, John Paul White. They travel without a backup band, and on their first full-length album, Barton Hollow, the bare-bones live arrangements that fans hear on the road are fleshed out with just the barest of acoustic accoutrements. Each song is an intimate conversation, and no third wheels or dinner-party chatter are going to interrupt that gorgeous, haunting hush.

Above is Joy Williams of the singer songwriter duo The Civil Wars who performed on August 21, 2011 at the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in Lyons Colorado. I loved their set and the wonderful dynamic created by these two incredibly talented singer songwriters, who agreed that aside from music, their backgrounds and interests diverge, Yin/Yang at its best. Their original songs and harmonies were something amazing to behold.

On the other hand, there’s been something distinctly loud about the duo’s introduction to the world, even prior to the album’s release. Their signature song “Poison & Wine” was heard on Grey’s Anatomy—in the foreground, in its entirety, over a key climactic montage, prompting hundreds of thousands of viewers to Google the mystery music. And they got a wholly unsolicited endorsement when America’s biggest pop star gave The Civil Wars a seal of approval. After first tweeting her love for the duo, fellow Nashvillian Taylor Swift included “Poison & Wine” as a selection in her official iTunes playlist, saying, “I think this is my favorite duet. It’s exquisite.”

Swift took the words right out of the folk-country-Americana world’s mouth. If it looks like The Civil Wars’ appeal might cast a net that extends well beyond the typical audience for acoustically based music, that may be due to the inherent sensibilities Williams and White bring to their collaboration, which are quite disparate, if not necessarily warring.

Both were gigging and recording on their own prior to teaming up a year and a half ago, neither solo career quite suggesting what their conjoined sound would turn out to be. “I do naturally bend pop,” says Williams, who adds that she “grew up on Billie Holliday and The Beach Boys.” White, meanwhile, was raised on Kristofferson, Cash, and Townes Van Zandt by his retro-country-favoring dad. “Somehow we’re pulling from each other what we crave and what our strengths are,” he says.

If the music ultimately leans more toward White’s native South than Williams’ northern Cali roots, he says, “I think Joy’s got some hillbillies in her ancestry or something like that. There’s a song on our record called ‘My Father’s Father’ that we wrote on the day of the inauguration down in Muscle Shoals, not long after we got together. I started playing the guitar figure and she starting singing this amazing Appalachian kind of melody, and I’m like, ‘Don’t even pretend that you’re the pop girl and you come out with shit like that!’ I don’t know where this stuff is coming from, but she’s drawing it from somewhere, and it’s amazing.”

“Poison & Wine” isn’t just The Civil Wars’ breakout song. It’s also a thematic declara-tion of intent for this utterly complementary odd couple, encapsulating everything suggested in the duo’s name when it comes to exploring the conflicts that arise as part of couplehood. Speaking of which: They aren’t, that—a couple, that is. But they’re far from insulted if you mistake them for An Item in the storied tradition of the Swell Season, Richard and Linda Thompson, or other famous duos whose on-again, off-again relationships offstage complicated their stage relations.

“A lot of people think that we’re married, and I think that’s actually quite flattering, to be honest,” says White. “Because we don’t want people to think that we’re up here acting and feigning the emotions that we write and sing about and show on stage. But one of the things that really make this special in our eyes is that if she and I were in a relationship together, it’d be a totally different act. We would write totally different songs.

I don’t think we would be able to go on stage every night and sing ‘I don’t love you.’ I don’t think a healthy relationship could withstand that every single night. There’s areas we can delve into that wouldn’t make sense for somebody that’s till-death-do-us-part. I think there’s also a tension there that wouldn’t be there if it was something that was just rote, something that was an everyday relationship. We try to use that to our advantage.”

“Poison & Wine” fits the paradigm of subject matter too true to be spoken, as opposed to sung. “That song probably does sum us up—The Civil Wars, the name of the band—as well as any song that we’ve written,” White says. It’s the one song on the album written with an outside collaborator, their friend Chris Lindsey. “We’re all married, and we were all talking about the good, the bad and the ugly, and just felt like:

What would you say to someone if you were actually brutally honest—the things that you could never say because it would turn them away or let the cat out of the bag or reveal yourself to be weaker? What would you actually say if you had this invisible curtain around you and could just scream it in somebody’s face and they’d actually never hear it? We were all being very painfully honest, because we’re all very comfortable around each other and know that things like that never leave the room, except in a song. I’m pretty proud of that song, to be honest.”

When “Poison & Wine” was heard in its entirety on Grey’s Anatomy—versus in the background, for a few seconds, as Williams and White had expected—they knew that if the show’s audience liked what they heard, it would put their search skills to the test. The title only pops up in a verse, not the chorus, so it involved some ingenuity or intuition to track the tune down. Fortunately, viewers proved up to the test of finding, and choosing, their “Poison.” At last count, the song’s official YouTube video had been viewed 400,000 times.

White and Williams met in 2008 on what he describes as a “blind date, getting stuck in a room together, not knowing anything about each other.” This was a strictly professional blind date. As Williams recalls, “I got a call for what’s called a writing camp, where several writers were called together to work on trying to write several radio singles for a particular country band. Though I live in Nashville, I worked mostly in L.A. and came more out of the pop world, so I was like, why did they call me? John Paul definitely wasn’t bringing a Music Row sensibility in when he was coming into the write, either, but neither of us knew that about each other. In that room, it was almost 20 writers, basically drawing straws and getting to know each other a little bit. And when he started singing, I somehow knew where he was heading musically and could follow him, without ever having met him before. And that had never happened to me.”

“I’ve done lots of co-writes and collaborative situations, but I’d never felt that weird spark,” agrees White—”that weird familiarity like we’d been in a family band or some-thing most of our lives. The beautiful part of it was that neither one of us would let on, so we both played it cool for a while, saying ‘That went well, we should write another,” and so on. I worked up enough nerve to—so to speak—ask her out. But there was a lot of scuffing my heel on the floor and ‘I don’t know what you’re doing for a while, but I’ve got this guitar, and you sing pretty good, but you probably don’t want to. You’re so much better than I am. Never mind. I’m just gonna go.’ Luckily she felt the same way.”

Months later, they did their first show as The Civil Wars at the French Quarter Café in Nashville—where their future producer, Charlie Peacock, was in attendance and definitely taking notice. Their second show was at a club called Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, Georgia, and it was attended by roughly 100,000 fans. At least, that’s how many people have downloaded Live at Eddie’s Attic, a free digital album, from their website.

The set included eight originals plus a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love.” “We didn’t even rehearse that much for that show, and we were flying by the seat of our pants,” recalls White. “But the sound guy at Eddie’s is legendary for doing really great board takes, and we listened to the tape on the way home and were pretty amazed at the quality of the recording. So we thought, ‘What the hell, let’s see what other people think about it.’ The beauty of putting that thing out as early as we did is, we could always fall back on: ‘Well, it was our second show’,” he laughs.

“Looking back, John Paul and I can’t believe we put out our second show ever,” Williams says. “Hopefully you can hear the growth from then to now. But I’m really glad that we did. To get emails now like ‘A buddy of mine in South Africa just sent me Live at Eddie’s Attic,’ or somebody coming up to us and saying ‘Yeah, my friend in New Zealand was the one that told me about you guys’—in Alabama, where we were doing a relatively local show—that really took us by surprise, the way it started a conversation nationally and internationally.”

The Live at Eddie’s Attic release also had some other happy, unintended consequences. Williams feels that the loose chatter between songs helped establish that, as personalities, the two of them aren’t always (or even usually) as somber as their breakout song might suggest. More importantly, it established them as a fully functional duo that might be harmed more than helped by the addition of a slew of hired hands.

When it comes to keeping “the band” to an un-band-like two people, “there’s probably 10 different reasons for that,” explains White. “Some of it is logistics. It’s so much easier for two people to get into a car. But it just felt like releasing that record with just the two of us also put that stripped down, more organic, more raw kind of sound in people’s minds. And we felt like it was more emotional and told the story a lot better. It’s just she and I and a guitar and piano. If there’s something that is lacking, it’s gonna be painfully obvious. So the song’s guts have to be strong, at least for us, from front to back.”

No frills means no distractions from the quality of their blended voices. “It’s the strangest thing when I sing with her,” White says. “Even the things we do with vibrato, typically, they’re the same—we speed up and slow down at the same pace. She’ll ad-lib something live, and the next time around, I’ll sing the harmony to it. But if I sat and thought about it, I couldn’t do it.” For Williams, who’s sold hundreds of thousands of records recording on her own, sharing the vocals is “one of my favorite things about The Civil Wars, because when you’re a solo artist, you can’t harmonize while singing the lead. To me, all harmony is active listening.”

There’s something circuitously satisfying about the fact that “active listening” is taking place on-stage at The Civil Wars shows as well as among the audience, heightening the sensation that it’s a conversation being eavesdropped on, not just a performance. So much synchronization to go around… but also so much delicious tension, as the duo hardly shy away from the conflict that gives them their moniker. Harmonious discord, thy name is The Civil Wars.

White and Williams are never going to forge a complete meeting of the minds. “You’ll be a redneck once I’m through with you,” he tells her, teasingly. “Oh, just try!” she taunts him. Still a northern California girl after this many years in Nashville, she says, “I still can’t say ‘y’all.’ I still can’t say ‘fixin’ to.’ John Paul, you say ‘might could’ a lot, which freaks me out. But yeah, somewhere in there, if it’s only in the melodies, I’m happy to absorb all that.”

And to dish it back out in the form of universal narratives that are both elliptical and emotional. “After all the writing I’ve done for other artists or writing for TV/film or solo music,” says Williams, “the ability for John Paul and I to share stories of what’s happened in our lives, either current or past, and let those inform the way that we write intrinsically makes us care more about it. We’ve got songs that deal directly with loss that we’ve had in our own pasts.

The opening song, ‘Twenty Years,’ is actually about a family secret, more on my side of the family. We love to write about these things and hint at it while not giving the whole thing away. If the stories that we’re singing about and the things that we’re speaking of are true, hopefully they’ll draw out the stories of the people who are listening, and that can create some invisible cycle of safety and exhilaration and freedom, and of being transported somewhere else for a little moment in time.”

Somewhere like… Barton Hollow? Where is the titular location, anyway? “I guess it’s something to do with the picturesque quality of the phrase,” admits White. “It’s a phrase that you’re not gonna Google and find, whatsoever. I found that out the other day. There is no Barton Hollow, that I can find.” But a few minutes later, he’s changed his tune, de-claring: “Barton Hollow is actually a place that I grew up. It’s a little geographic place close to where I grew up and did a lot of illicit activities,” White continues, embellishing as he goes, while his partner dissolves into helpless laughter. “I have a soft spot for that place.” Maybe the transporting Williams talks about has worked its magic on her partner, too.

~ Chris Willman

The Civil Wars is a group composed of singer-songwritersJoy Williams and John Paul White. The two met during a Nashville, Tennessee songwriting session in 2008. After recording a live performance album and a four song EP, their full length album, Barton Hollow, was released in 2011. The band won the Grammy Award for Best Country Duo/Group Performance and Best Folk Album at the 2012 ceremony.

Williams and White met during a song writing session at a music studio in Nashville, Tennessee in 2008.According to the duo’s web site, they recorded their performance at Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, Georgia on April 8, 2009 and created a free Internet download called Live at Eddie’s Attic.In November, the duo released a digital extended play album, produced by Charlie Peacock, called Poison & Wine and the title song was featured on the TV show, Grey’s Anatomy. In December 2010 the duo was featured in Paste Magazine‘s “Best of What’s Next” column.

In 2011, The Civil Wars performed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,at the Sundance Film Festival and ASCAP‘s Music Cafe. Their album Barton Hollow, produced by Charlie Peacock was released in 2011 reached No. 12 on the Billboard 200 chart and No. 1 on the BillBoard Digital Albums chart,sold 25,000 copies in its first weekand remained at No. 1 on the iTunes chart for 9 days.The Civil Wars appeared on NPR‘s All Things Considered and were featured in The Los Angeles Times.

They appeared on A Prairie Home Companion and their “Barton Hollow” video was played on VH1.They were nominated for a CMT Award in the Duo Video of the Year category and featured on the cover of Pollstar Magazine.The Civil Wars appeared a second time on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in May,were the opening act for singer Adele‘s North American tour,^[19] were nominated for the Americana Music Awards in the Duo/Group of the Year and Emerging Artist of the Year categories,and performed a benefit concert for victims of the 2011 Alabama tornado.In June, they were The Guardian‘s ‘New Band of the Day’.

In the summer of 2011 the duo performed on the Los Angeles radio station KCRW, opened several shows for Emmylou Harris, and performed at Rhode Island’s Newport Folk Festival.In September they rejoined Adele‘s UK Tour and were nominated for a Country Music Association Award in the Vocal Duo of the Year category.They performed on the UK television show Later… Live in October ^[28] and their Barton Hollow album debuted at No. 22 on the UK Download Chart and No. 54 on the UK Albums Chart.

In October the duo was featured in The New York Times, appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman^[31][32] and were featured in Interview Magazine.^[33] They received the Vanguard Award at the 49th Annual ASCAP Country Music Awards in November.

The duo appeared on the cover of the November issue of Nashville Scene and were a topic of conversation on the radio talk show Sound Opinions. The Civil Wars released the Holiday single “Tracks in the Snow” on 10″ white vinyl and the digital version’s B-side “O Come O Come Emmanuel”, was iTunes’s Holiday Single of the Week.

On November 30, 2011, Barton Hollow received Grammy nominations in the Best Folk Album and Best Country Duo/Group Performance categories. Numerous publications noted that The Civil Wars were snubbed a Best New Artist nomination by The Grammys.

In December, The Civil Wars performed at the Grand Ole Opry‘s Ryman Auditorium.^[41] and composed the song Safe & Sound with Taylor Swift and T Bone Burnett for the film The Hunger Games.The Civil Wars also recorded another song for The Hunger Games soundtrack (The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond), called “Kingdom Come”. The soundtrack is set to be released on March 20th, 2012.

Barton Hollow was included on several Best Albums of 2011 lists, including NPR Music, Paste Magazine, American Songwriter, Rough Trade, Amazon.com, Time Magazine, iTunes, Huffington Post, Associated Press, The Tennesseean, AllMusic.com and The Wall Street Journal.

Entertainment Weekly, USA Today and Yahoo Music picked the duo as their Best New Artists and Breakout Stars of 2011.

“Poison & Wine” was also featured on the February 16, 2012 episode of “The Vampire Diaries”.

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The Austin based Band of Heathens performed in Carbondale Colorado on January 13, 2012 and asked me to embed with them before, during and the morning following the show to get them some promotional shots as well as some live photos. This was my third time shooting this incredible band and my first time to be able to hang with the Heathens for an extended period of time, I found them to be sincere, incredibly talented, down to earth and very, very funny.

I followed them to the local radio station and took this short video;

This year has been a year of making noise and news for the Band of Heathens. With 200-plus show dates, a fifth anniversary celebration, appearances at Lollapalooza and other top national festivals and a taping of Austin City Limits with Elvis Costello, it is remarkable that the Heathens even found time to write and record a new studio album, but they did.

The result is Top Hat Crown & the Clapmaster’s Son, a surprising, multi-faceted gem of a disc. Their third studio album and the fifth release overall, Top Hat Crown displays the wide range of classic influences fans and critics have come to admire in the band, yet they’ve added, built and grown. Producer George Reiff, celebrated for his work with the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson, the Courtyard Hounds (Martie Maguire and Emily Robison of the Dixie Chicks) and Ray Wylie Hubbard, tended to the album’s vibe and spirit, which is reaching, rocking, bluesy, funky and enjoyable as hell, from its rocking opening to its serene acoustic conclusion.

The Band of Heathens is constantly being compared to The Band because of the musical finesse that overlays their timeless, rootsy core. And the three founding members are all skilled multi-instrumentalists who can play almost any position in the field. But TBoH has reached so many fans so fast because of the echoes of and subtle homage to so many different artists at the core of the Americana canon, including Tom Petty, Tony Joe White, the Grateful Dead, Leon Russell, George Harrison, and other rarified stylists. You can hear a little of all that at a Heathens show or on disc, and Top Hat Crown feels like the most coherent and mature encapsulation of those elements so far.

The three original principal songwriters – Colin Brooks, (who recently left the band) Ed Jurdi and Gordy Quist – shared the bill at Momo’s, an Austin club. Originally, each singer/songwriter performed his own set. However, they eventually started sharing the stage, and collaborating with bassist Seth Whitney. The Wednesday night series was billed as “The Good Time Supper Club”. A misprint in a local paper billed the act as “The Heathens.” Drummer John Chipman joined the band in 2007, and Keyboardist Trevor Nealon, who played in the studio during the recording of both “One Foot in the Ether” and “Top Hat Crown & the Clapmaster’s Son”, joined the touring unit in 2011.

Ed Jurdi

Gordy Quist

Seth Whitney

John Chipman

Trevor Nealon

“We’re just making it up as we go along,” says member Ed Jurdi. “I mean we don’t follow a script, we’re not good actors and we don’t take our cues well. We all agree it’s important to honestly represent the idea of what we are putting forth. As a band, we are in a position to actualize where we’re going because there is no label and there are no rules. It’s been an exhilarating ride.”

Given the timelessness of their sound, one gets the sense that Jurdi, Gordy Quist and Colin Brooks would have gravitated toward the same essential feel had they met in 1975 or 2045. As it happens, it was in 2006 after each songwriter had established residency gigs on the same night of the week at Momo’s, an eclectic-minded club on Austin’s famous Sixth Street. Friendship, semi-regular sit-ins and harmony jags gelled into something quite rare: a band with three frontmen, each with enough humility and passion to invest in the larger project. (Please stop asking them exactly when, by the way; they don’t remember.) The sum transcended the parts. Bassist Seth Whitney was a member from the get-go. Drummer John Chipman joined in 2007 as their road calendar got heavier.

The Band of Heathens earned its reputation right away as a devastating live band, chiefly thanks to the three strong voices up front, sometimes taking sensational leads, sometimes locked together in big, juicy harmony. The show’s-the-thing focus led them down a somewhat unorthodox path: launching their recorded career with two live discs before they ever went into the studio to make a “formal” album. First came the obvious Live at Momo’s. Next they spread their wings and flew, well, a few blocks, tracking a live CD/DVD concert film at world-famous Antone’s.

The Heathens took their time getting their first studio album out, but when that eponymous debut was released in 2008, they proved they could write and record a coherent statement that measured up to their show. They followed relatively quickly with One Foot in the Ether toward the end of 2009. Both shot to the top of the Americana chart and remained there for months, evincing a longevity rare in any format of music. Each added songs to the band’s set lists that have become staples and favorites: “Jackson Station,” “Cornbread,” frequent set closer “Don’t Call on Me” and the rocking, cathartic “L.A. County Blues.”

Other kinds of recognition and respect rolled in. TBoH was honored as Best New Band at the Austin Music Awards and nominated as Best Duo or Group by the Americana Music Awards. The Wall Street Journal’s Jim Fusilli called theirs the best set he saw during South by Southwest 2009. And the rest of the press has been equally effusive: The Dallas Morning News calls them “a must-see show.” Maverick magazine says they’re “magnificent.” For The Chicago Tribune, the band felt “refreshingly different,” and Country Standard Time hailed their second studio album as “exceptional.”

One can anticipate similar praise for Top Hat Crown, as it stretches without breaking faith with the feel and integrity that got the Band of Heathens this far. Opener “Medicine Man” sets a hoodoo tone with slappy upright piano and a swaggering lyric sung by Gordy Quist. “It was one of the first songs we tracked, he says. “Recording live together in a room, I think it’s the closest we’ve come to capturing the power of the live show on tape.”

Another early Quist lead is “Polaroid,” which the guys say was influenced by the Jayhawks and mid-career Beatles. It coasts along on a robust acoustic strum decorated by jangly chiming electric guitar — a pluperfect fusion of pop and roots. Ed Jurdi gets his first lead vocal licks in with “Should Have Known,” a deeply bluesy slow shake that bolsters the regret of the song. Colin Brooks evokes current events and the craziness of modernity with “Enough,” whose mantra-like lyric and mid-tempo groove will have people nodding along in time. Brooks also shines with his lead on “Gravity,” a tour-de-force of forward motion and organ-generated psychedelic colors. Then some bone-rattle percussion ushers in a glowing, single-chord jam ride and a three-part chorus that swells with love.

Fans of the band will note one familiar song here. “Free Again” was written, recorded and released as a single in a blast of energy in the summer of 2010, inspired by the mind-boggling Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It’s sincere and sarcastic, playful and chastising. And it’s part of a Louisiana theme that closes out the album and ties the whole project together. “Hurricane,” the album’s lone cover, a Nashville-written tune from an old Levon Helm album, is a poignant portrait of an aging Gulf Coast salt reflecting on storms and eerily anticipating Katrina. And “Gris Gris Satchel,” the final cut, is a gorgeous and soothing acoustic tune that evokes old New Orleans and memories of great Crosby, Stills & Nash tracks.

Like that historic group, the Band of Heathens is distinguished by collaboration and load-sharing. And while songwriting and vocal duties are chiefly handled by the three guys across the front of the stage, they are decidedly a five-man band, benefitting from the equal input of all. This can lead to a lot of deliberation and creative tension. But it also means the music that emerges has been through five filters and enjoyed the collaborative creative power of five music-loving minds. “When I write a song with Ed or Colin, I usually hear it a certain way in my head,” says Quist about the power of the process. “When we bring it in to the band, the song almost always comes out turned on its head, leaning in another direction from where it started.” Music fans nationwide will hear that distilled quality upon the release of Top Hat Crown.

New Your Times Review

Saddled Up for Serious Strumming
Michael Nagle for The New York Times
By NATE CHINEN
Published: August 4, 2011

The air was getting thick downstairs at Union Hall in Brooklyn on Wednesday night, and the members of the Band of Heathens were making themselves at home. Ed Jurdi, seated at a keyboard, was belting a Southern soul number called “The Other Broadway,” in his high, tremulous rasp. Colin Brooks, at the other end of the stage, attacked his electric guitar, uncoiling blues licks in a coarsened tone. Between them was Gordy Quist, blithely strumming a rhythm-guitar riff. The band played the song and then extended it, pushing an ecstatic four-bar vamp, louder and wilder with each turnaround but without ceding any control.

The six-piece Band of Heathens comes from Austin, Tex., one of the handful of American cities where a craft-minded rock group can be flush with success, and even the stirrings of celebrity, without making a splash nationwide. That last bit is a work in progress. The band has been touring doggedly in support of “Top Hat Crown & the Clapmaster’s Son,” which was released on its own BOH label in the spring, earning a midlevel perch on the Americana radio chart.

Produced by George Reiff, “Top Hat Crown” is a varied showcase, with songs by all three of the group’s front men, skirting Southern rock (“Should Have Known”), swamp blues (“Medicine Man”) and euphoric hippie jams (“Gravity”). But if the Band of Heathens is going to expand its fan base, the album can only be secondary to tour dates, and shows like the one at Union Hall: hungry, unflagging and lean. Fittingly, for a group that coalesced around a weekly singer-songwriter showcase, the live show is the bottom line.

There were some moments in this show — covers of “I’ve Got a Feeling,” by the Beatles, and “Look at Miss Ohio,” by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings — that called to mind the gnash and grit of an excellent bar band. Which may sound like faint praise, though it shouldn’t. At its best, the Band of Heathens makes the material seem almost irrelevant, which is good, since its songwriting can occasionally feel gestural and glib. (Now that’s faint praise.)

One exception in the show was Mr. Quist’s “Polaroid,” from the new album. Its sunshine-pop chord progression and honeyed vocal harmonies were reminiscent of the Jayhawks, another countrified rock band with more than one songwriter in the saddle. Just as appealing, in more of a vintage Neil Young vein, was “L.A. County Blues,” an older band staple with Mr. Jurdi singing lead.

Whatever the song, the band — with Seth Whitney on bass, John Chipman on drums and Trevor Nealon on Hammond B-3 organ — hummed with purpose, loose in actions but tight in rapport. And the contrast among the three lead singers was rewarding, especially on a newer song, “Gris Gris Satchel,” that had them taking turns in the verses.

That was the song before the closer, “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” a sprawling blast of country-rock with a simple refrain. “You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone,” it went, in yelping group harmony: not a bad mantra for a band on the road.

The Band of Heathens appears on Friday at the Iron Horse in Northampton, Mass., and on Saturday at the Sellersville Theater in Sellersville, Pa.; bandofheathens.com.

Top Hat Crown & the Clapmaster’s Son

3/29/11 – The Band of Heathen’s new album “Top Hat Crown & the Clapmaster’s Son” officially hits the streets today at outlets nationwide. The band’s fifth album in as many years is being called their best yet and is currently making its way up both the Americana and TripleA radio charts.

AMA top Albums of 2010

12/15/10 – Nashville, TN — The Americana Music Association has announced its year end Top 100 Albums of the Year. The Americana Airplay Chart is managed by the Americana Music Association and represents the reported play of terrestrial radio stations, nationally syndicated shows, satellite radio and Internet stations which have agreed to submit weekly spin counts on Americana albums they’ve played during the previous week.

The Band of Heathens “One Foot In The Ether” came in at #7! Many thanks to the AMA community and the many radio stations who have supported the Heathens!

http://americanamusic.org/index.htm?inc=5&news_id=19164

It’s official: Austin City Limits TV taping!

Austin’s The Band of Heathens to Perform on 35th Anniversary Season of Austin City Limits

Nashville, Tenn. – The Band of Heathens continue their rise on the American music landscape by landing a coveted spot on Austin City Limits‘ historic 35th season and garnering a 2009 “New and Emerging Artist” nomination from the Americana Music Association (AMA). The Austin-based five piece are part of an illustrious class for the 2009-2010 season of Austin City Limits which includes established superstars Dave Matthews Band, Beastie Boys, Pearl Jam and Elvis Costello. The coveted PBS TV taping coupled with their recent nomination pays tribute to the band’s commitment to creating and performing quality music.

Since the unveiling of their independent release a year ago, The Band of Heathens have been building on their much deserved momentum and converting fans to their Americana grit and soulful sound with a robust tour schedule of more than 280 performances, television appearances, festival participation and a huge online presence. They recently earned major praise from Wall Street Journal pop music critic, Jim Fusilli, who while at South by Southwest in March wrote “The Band of Heathens, an Austin-based group, played the best set I came across during my five nights in town,” With a new full-length studio album in the works and a host of tour dates, there are only good things to come in 2009.

As their dedicated fans already know, The Band of Heathens’ live show is a must-see and the guys continue to keep up their aggressive touring schedule throughout the summer months with upcoming sets at the internationally recognized Summerfest and Mile High Music festivals. The band will perform their soulful live show in both clubs and outdoor stages from California to the Southwest, and all points in between, undoubtedly winning over fans in each new city.

Living and performing in Austin, The Band of Heathens has been fortunate to collaborate with some well-known Texas artists. Ray Wylie Hubbard produced their studio record which also features guests Stephen Bruton, Patty Griffin and Gurf Morlix. Ed Jurdi, Gordy Quist and Colin Brooks are each showcased in their vocal delivery, songwriting and guitar interplay. The unified front downstage is cemented by a heavy groove courtesy of Seth Whitney on bass and John Chipman on drums.

The much publicized creation of The Band of Heathens adds to their charismatic appeal. The band came to be while the five members were playing in different bands respectively in the “Live Music Capital of the World,” Austin, Texas. The fellas started jammin’ together at Momo’s and it was clear that they were victims of fate more than circumstance. That these guys came together is surely no accident. Music this soulful and tight can’t be anything short of preordained. “This ain’t genericamericana. This is greasy and right,” says KGSR Content Manager and recognized music tastemaker Jody Denberg.

There is never any doubt the band is having as much fun as their listeners and touring throughout the United States has added nuance to their songs. There is a comfort and ease in the material and lyrics; a perfect marriage of roots and jam which allows the casual tone of the songs to work anywhere from a back porch party to a packed club, to just makin’ you feel good about being stuck in traffic.

In 2009 and beyond, The Band of Heathens are connecting people through the music, online and through live performance…you have to listen to believe!

(From the Wall Street Journal)

By Jim Fusilli

Austin

‘The music industry isn’t completely broken,” the hip-hop artist known as Busdriver told me, “but it’s on its way. I see some freedom in that.”… Read More by clicking below

“I’ve had some experience with major labels,” said Emily Wells, who plays viola to hip-hop rhythms and orchestral sounds. “They want to know what you’re doing all the time. They’re nosy. Now I’m entirely self-motivated. I have creative control.”

Getty Images

Jon Jameson and Matthew Vasquez of Delta Spirit at the festival.

Busdriver and Ms. Wells were among the 1,900 or so artists and bands who performed at the 23rd annual South by Southwest Festival held here last week. They’re both based in Los Angeles, but fans all over the world found their music on the Internet, which, for many musicians, is a distribution platform that cuts out intermediaries who may take a slice of income without contributing to the artistic process. By now, that’s old news. What artists are discovering is that, by managing their own affairs, they can control costs and make the music they want.

“Now people have access to everything, and those creating it have the ability to get it to everybody,” said Dan Dyer, an Austin resident who played a handful of shows during the festival. “An artist has to fend for himself and let the audience decide.”

The band BLK JKS, which did two shows here, had a budding global fan base before it toured outside its homeland, South Africa. “We didn’t have an album. We had no video. We still have no video,” said guitarist Mpumard Mcata. BLK JKS put its music on a MySpace page. “Early adopters,” as the band calls its fans at home, helped spread the word. “We try to figure it out in our heads,” added Lindani Buthelezi, who plays bass. “We try not to follow the other way. A target market doesn’t exist for us. Our target market is anybody who would like to listen.”

Though it may not seem so to fans who lined up outside the downtown clubs before showtime, SXSW is a bazaar for industry professionals seeking talented clients and for musicians in search of representation. As always, many musicians would be delighted to sign with any manager, label, booking agent or publisher just to be in the music industry.

Other artists know the independent route suits their style. Like Busdriver and Ms. Wells, BLK JKS doesn’t fit easily into any commercial category or musical genre. It’s recording its debut album for Secret Canadian, an independent that’s marketing the band’s EP, “Mystery.” Ms. Wells distributes her “The Symphonies: Dreams Memories & Parties” via iTunes, emusic and other online vendors. The independent label ANTI will release Busdriver’s “Jhelli Beam” in early June.

“The reality of pop in our culture has changed,” said Mark Mothersbaugh, a 35-year veteran of the music business best known as a member of Devo. “Now, instead of a monolithic list of important artists, you have a web of information. With the Internet, you can say, ‘I want to hear French bistro death metal cha-cha’ — and there’s somebody doing it. You may not find any of these people to be big icons like Mick Jagger, but you have a lot of people with interesting ideas.”

SXSW had its share of familiar names — Metallica, Jane’s Addiction, Devo, Kanye West, Big Boi of Outkast, Erykah Badu, Jimmy Webb and the New York Dolls, to name a few. Some indie acts who’ve found success were in town — including the Decemberists, who did a remarkable performance of their rock opera “The Hazards of Love” (Capitol) and allowed NPR Music to Webcast and archive it before its release this week. A few acts with a cult following may have expanded their base: Grizzly Bear and Department of Eagles, who share Daniel Rossen as a member; the Wooden Birds; St. Vincent; and Andrew Bird, among others. It was a buyer’s market for the open-minded music lover.

The fun of SXSW is running across little-known bands. Though they’ve gotten some attention backing the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach on his solo tour, I’d never heard of Hacienda, a local quartet that plays retro-rock and R&B “well and with a lot of fun,” according to notes I scribbled when I stumbled into its set while in search of another band. Back at the hotel, I sampled Hacienda’s album on its MySpace page and downloaded it from iTunes.

I went to see Juliette Commagere, whose album “Queens Die Proudly” (Aeronaut) is an alluring bit of modern pop featuring her beautiful voice and clever percussion by her husband Joaquin Cooder. Arriving early, I caught a set by Black Gold, a New York duo. I sort of like their debut album, “Rush” (Red Bull), but they rock much harder live. For all the new mash-ups of genres, the kind of music I heard most here was Americana, and the Band of Heathens, an Austin-based group, played the best set I came across during my five nights in town.

JamBase just posted a review of the album. Check it out:

http://www.jambase.com/Articles/14724/The-Band-of-Heathens-The-Band-of-Heathens

“There’s just nothing to dislike about roots rockers The Band of Heathens – dead sturdy, salt o’ the earth songwriting delivered with strong, clear voices, lively picking and jubilant spirit. If early Jayhawks or Steve Earle knocks your dick in the dirt then you’re gonna love you some Heathens, the winners of the 2007 “Best New Band of the Year” at the Austin Music Awards. And kids, if they like ‘em in Austin – a town with more musicians than cockroaches – then you know there’s giddy-up in these shitkickers, who remind one of The Eagles’ first couple albums, which is a much bigger compliment than many youngsters may take it to be.

Built around a core trio of singer-songwriters – Ed Jurdi, Gordy Quist and Colin Brooks – the Heathens seethe with front porch charm, offering up tales of second lines, girls from Manitoba and earthy cornbread making, each tune full of nice details snatched by their writerly eyes. Cleanly produced by Texas elder statesman Ray Wylie Hubbard and bolstered by harmony vocals from Patty Griffin on a few cuts, their self-titled studio debut is plain ol’ quality stuff. If this were 1975 they’d be on the top of both the rock and country charts. Even if times have changed dramatically, it shouldn’t be long before these Heathens are playing far beyond Midland and Lubbock. –JamBase”

Rolling Stone Magazine

See The Band of Heathens in the latest Rolling Stone Magazine (with Barack Obama on the cover). The band was featured in the chart listings under the Americana Radio chart with Alejandro Escovedo and Justin Townes Earle. Currently the Band of Heathens’ new album has been at #5 on the Americana Chart for 3 weeks in a row.

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Guitar legend Willy Porter performed at Steve’s Guitar in Carbondale Colorado on February 8, 2012. If you are not familiar with Willy do yourself a favor and check out his music, he is the whole package, superb singer, great songwriter and off the charts guitarist, seriously, think Leo Kottke, Stanley Jordon and Eddie Van Halen rolled into one intelligent, articulate and funny dude. Keep an eye out for his latest album Cheeseburgers and Gasoline. If you want to check something out right now I’d suggest High Wire Live, recorded live with just him and a Martin Barre, Jethro Tull’s guitarist, you will swear there are 4-5 players on stage.

Being able to see Willy perform live in an intimate setting like Steve’s Guitar was as close to nirvana as I could get,  one minute I was awe struck by his sheer talent, the next laughing hard at his poignant humor, and then moments later I would find myself with my eyes closed, floating away in thoughts to his intricate rhythms and touching lyrics.

Below is a video I took on this evening of Willy performing a new song, Sandoval;

Between songs Willy shared stories about his recent skiing trips in Breckenridge and Keystone, mentioning that he was a bit sore in his “lower 48”, then asking wryly “Don’t any of you refer to yourself as a country or continent?”

Later he told  story of his 11 year old daughter listening to him working on a new song, and the posed a question about holidays and offered “Shouldn’t you treat every day like a holiday”?” He immediately dropped the song he was working on and began writing one along those lines, which he insisted “was infinitely better” and then played the insightful and wise song his daughter had inspired. This is Willy, humble, open minded, highly intelligent, resourceful and truly talented on many levels.

Later in the show he had the audience shout out words and or phrases, within a couple minutes he launched into a song which not only incorporated all of the audiences offerings but tied them together in one cohesive story, a truly magical creative process to with witness. I will post a video of the last 30 seconds of that song here later this week.

I had the pleasure of watching and chatting with Willy before the show during his sound check and was taken by his down to earth attitude, and easy going nature. How easy it would be to be a typical snobbish celebrity, especially when you are so talented that the guitar manufacturer Guild makes a signature series guitar to honor your musicianship.

Steve’s Guitars is a true treasure, they opened for business in Carbondale back in 1993. Since then, this intimate, music-listening room has hosted over 500 shows and presented hundreds of talented musicians coming from all over the states and foreign lands. Beautiful musical instruments adorn all most every square inch of this wonderful old establishment.

At one point in the nearly 3 hour show (two sets) he causally reached over and grabbed an old guitar from the wall and played a wonderfully silly version of his classic “Jesus on The Grill” , here is a sample of the lyrics;

I saw Jesus on the grille, of a south-bound Peterbilt,
Catchin’ bugs between his teeth, and glowin’ for everyone to see.
He don’t stop at those toll-booths, the state troopers let him roll on thru,
Folks stop and stare at his long flowing hair, and his gold-capped tooth.
I saw Jesus on the Grille, rolling down the Interstate,
And I know we won’t be late no darling, with the potentate of hauling freight

Watching Willy’s unique style of picking reminded me of watching Jeff Beck, totally unique, unmistakable and mesmerizing.

He told the story of how his unique baritone 9 string guitar came to be, the top three strings are individual and looked extra heavy, the bottom 6 strings were doubled up like a 12 string, making for an incredible sonic treat which added an incredible “bottom” to some of Willy’s more funky selections.

With wonderful and witty insight into the current political climate Willy captivated the audience, and as he ended the shows “Willy For President” could be heard echoing from the radicals on the “back row”, the only ones who can be trusted according to Willy.

Willy Porter is a contemporary American folk musician and singer-songwriter from Mequon, Wisconsin. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and was a member of the Epsilon Chi Chapter of Phi Gamma Delta, a men’s fraternity.

Career

Porter’s career as a published singer began in 1990 with his album The Trees Have Soul with Paul Perrone. It was produced by Willy Porter, Paul Perrone & Randy Green. Much of this album was developed playing a regular Sunday night gig at the “Club de Wash” in Madison, Wisconsin.

His popularity began to rise in 1994 with the release of his critically acclaimed album Dog-Eared Dream, which had the successful single Angry Words, and led to his touring as an opening act for artists including Jeff Beck, Tori Amos, Paul Simon, and The Cranberries. Porter later opened for Jethro Tull, where he formed a long lasting friendship with Tull’s guitarist, Martin Barre.

Reception

Porter is an accomplished finger-style guitarist though he has focused more on ensemble free-form jam playing since the mid 1990s. His work has garnered widely positive reviews. The Washington Post wrote that “Porter is a dazzling acoustic guitarist with a moody baritone.” The Village Voice said “Porter captures the street corner ethic of acoustic performance perfectly.” The Boston Globe reported that Porter is a guitarist who possesses “the Olympian speed of Leo Kottke bolstered by rootsy vocals and twisting, offbeat lyrics.

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Teresa Suaréz aka. Teri Gender Bender above is the lead singer of Le Butcherettes, a Mexican garage punk band formed in 2007 in Guadalajara. On Saturday, September 17th they opened for the Flaming Lips at the Great Saltair. Her intensity and passion made it impossible not to watch her incredible performance. At once point she stood at the edge of the stage and fell backwards into the crowd with her guitar strapped around her neck, the punk version of a leap of faith. And then another time she dove into the crowd and then surfed back to the stage, when the security guard started to “help” her back on stage she promptly stuck her crotch into his face and pinned him to the stage, see photos below.

I grabbed this wonderful write up form their website;

She walked into the Lollapalooza media compound on a warm August third. Tall and slender, one could only assume that this woman was a performer; someone meant to be on stage. Her hair was long and brown and her skin paler than a lot of the sun-kissed people under the white canvas tents. She had black heels on that hurt; she had the bloody bandages to prove it. Her lips were colored a classic rosy red; her eyes were wide and lined in classic black. Her beige-colored knee length dress complimented her figure.

Teri Gender Bender smiled as she finally got to sit down at the table. With her bottle of water, she kept telling her assistant or public relations representative, or whatever he really was, to find her sun screen to protect her from the Chicago sun. For those of you who live in Chicago during the summer, you know it’s brutal and just plain mean sometimes.

Teri is the lead singer of Le Butcherettes, now a trio originally formed as a duo in Guadalajara, Mexico only a few years ago. Teri, of Mexican descent, moved to Mexico with her mother and brother at 14 when her father died. Born in Denver, Teri’s adolescent life revealed similar experiences to many Latinos in the United States. She explains that not many people around her spoke Spanish, even though she did at home because of her Mexican parents. She was different; strange.

“’We can’t speak a language they can’t understand.’ That’s how I was raised at school,” she said, “learning to be ashamed of myself.”

About half of all Latinos are bilingual, thanks to parents who keep the language alive at home, accounting for the 63 percent of Latinos who were born State side. For Teri, whose parents were both immigrants to the United States, speaking Spanish at home was necessary.

Taking the dramatic experience of losing her father and adding the fact that their mother decided to move them to Guadalajara to be closer to family, Teri found herself in a teenage state of attempting to define who she was. Mexico was no different from Denver, in a sense that she didn’t feel like she belonged very much there either. In fact, she was the gringa, the girl who had a weird accent born State side.

“It was a rude awakening. The poverty everywhere, the rich a block away; just the two extremes,” she explained. “There was a lot of alienation there. People saw me as the gringa.‘What are you doing here? Go back to the States.’ Or why is your Spanish poor?”

Then began her musical exploration, which, she explained thoroughly, she had done as a mode of rebellion. So, firstly, no, the music was not in Spanish. It was sung in English and still is. Secondly, she used her intelligence and philosophical insight to express what she was feeling through her music, focusing on her womanhood but not taking a feminist movement approach. Thirdly, the fact that her music was rough and (what the US would call) garage-band like and punkish called attention to her a little more. At the beginning, it was Teri on guitar and vocals with a female drummer. That was it. The dark underground emo movement that has been alive and well in Mexico was of no interest to Le Butcherettes. In fact, she rebelled against that, too.

“There’s a theme going on; an emo theme that I never related to so that made me want to rebel against it,” she explained moving her hands about. “Some people took it the wrong way because, ‘Oh, how could I not relate to the emo theme?’ That’s how people get started, some people join music just to be like everyone else and then there are artists that join music to do something different. I want to keep changing.”

Teri noticed that her gender said a lot about her without even opening her mouth. The Mexican culture, one that caters more to men than women, was not welcoming to her ways and she felt it. At a young age she decided that whether you were a man or a woman would not be a deciding factor in her judgment of a person. She plays the role of a stereotypical woman because that’s what she was taught to do; but on stage, it all changed for her. Performing with the head of a pig (to represent male chauvinism and drug lords in Mexico) she declared the idea of individuality, independence and a rebellion against the societal standards.

“I consider myself a self-proclaimed feminist but not in the same way that other people would think of a feminist. I’m not a man-hater. To me, being a feminist is living your own life for yourself, be it a man or a woman or whatever you are…” she explained.

With the voice of a strong woman, she’s been compared to Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and has played with them as well as Iggy and the Stooges. From Mexico to Barcelona, Teri, who gave herself the name Gender Bender (formerly Suarez), has displayed a rambunctious and un-ladylike attitude while strumming her guitar with her additional band mates, now both male.

“I realized that ‘Gender Bender’ for me meant that I’m not going to care whether you’re a man or a woman because it’s stupid to think of or keep labeling people by sexes,” she said.

It was a show in Guadalajara where Le Butcherettes were first seen by a strong individual in the mainstream music industry. Teri knew that Omar Rodriguez-Lopez was in the audience and she tried not to freak out. Beginning the show with the lights off, Teri kept telling herself and her drummer to play the show like they would any other night.

“[Before the show] I was like, ‘Don’t stress, he’s here’ and there was something in my gut that was telling me, ‘This guy is special,’” she remembered. “And I wasn’t just thinking about my band, but this guy had the ability to be a good friend. He had a different view on things that many people in that crowd were reserved and small-thinking.”

Rodriguez-Lopez expanded her knowledge and idea of music, if nothing else. She knew that she would learn a lot from working with him and although she hadn’t heard his music, she’d heard of his band The Mars Volta.

“His philosophy is essence is more than music. He gave me examples like Siouxsie and the Banshees,” said Teri. “Like the drums are very minimal but Siouxsie’s voice just overcame it all. He believed in [our music] and not a lot of people did.”

After they went to lunch the day after the show, Rodriguez-Lopez ultimately decided to produce Le Butcherettes’ album, Sin, Sin, Sin, where he played the bass on all 13 tracks.

The performance at Lollapalooza hailed praise from audience members who screamed, “Te queremos!” We love you! In between each song, Teri spoke to the crowd in Spanish, explaining that making music in Spanish is something that she’s now exploring to expand on the audience and those who listen to her music. If anything, Teri has learned to accept and embrace her differences.

“Now I’m so proud of myself. Living in Mexico has made me really proud to be a Mexican, actually challenging myself as an artist,” she said.

In the hot sun, Teri screamed into the microphone, did somersaults, threw her black heels she so painfully wore into the crowd and body surfed, being as rowdy, yet as classically talented as any female performer. She strummed hard, yet never missed a note.

The future of Le Butcherettes is bright and ever changing. Music, for Teri, is about self-expression and the ability to communicate a message to her audience. In the future, Teri is willing to explore the different mediums of making music, whether it’s her on her own or bringing in a 10-piece band.

“It might just be me playing a bass drum and singing with my two guys doing yoga in the background,” she said. “You never know.”

First known as a girl band, Le Butcherettes was created by vocalist/guitarist Teri Gender Bender who later recruited drummer Auryn Jolene to complete the duo. Quick acclaim was achieved in the Mexican underground scene for their live act which included both of them dressed in a 50′s women fashion referring to women being slaves in home chores, using brooms, feather dusters and bloody aprons.^[2] Teri Gender Bender would also use artificial blood, flour, eggs, meat and a real pig head all over the stage, interacting with the public most of the time.

The quick recognition of the band led them to win the award for "Best New Artist" and "Best Punk Record" in the Indie-O Awards 2009.^[4] A difference on the band’s direction led Auryn Jolene to abruptly leave the band claiming the end of it leading to media confusion. Teri Gender Bender later denied this. She moved the band to Los Angeles recruiting drummer Normandi Heuxdalfo. Le Butcherettes played in a number of events, notably Hellow Fest 2009 in Monterrey and being asked to be the opening act for The Dead Weather in their Mexico City and Guadalajara shows. In January 2010, Le Butcherettes were invited by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as their opening act for their Mexican shows in Monterrey, Guadalajara and Mexico City.

Omar Rodríguez-López of The Mars Volta produced (as well as contributed bass guitar to) Le Butcherettes’ first LP Sin Sin Sin. "Henry Don’t Got Love", the first single from the upcoming album, was released in 2010 as a free download from Le Butcherettes’ Bandcamp page. The album was released in May 2011 on Omar’s label Rodriguez-Lopez Productions. They began touring the U.S. with Deftones and The Dillinger Escape Plan this summer, with the new line-up of Teri, drummer Gabe Serbian (of The Locust) and bassist Jonathan Hischke.

• Teri Gender Bender – lead vocals, lyrics, guitar, keyboards

• Gabe Serbian – drums

• Jonathan Hischke – bass, keyboards

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I’m not going to pretend to be a diehard Flaming Lips fan; in fact what little I had heard didn’t particularly resonate with me, although I loved their documentary “The Fearless Freaks” and credit the movie for me gaining an appreciation of the true brilliance of Wayne Coyne.



Later I learned that Q magazine named The Flaming Lips one of the “50 Bands to See Before You Die”, it was then I began worrying about dying before getting to see them play live. For weeks I worried about my premature death while frantically trying to locate their publicist, little did know that if I’d just Tweet Wayne he’d probably reply.



Below is a photo story I created using nearly 400 photos from this show, the audio file was recorded at a Lips show in Alabama earlier this year.

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To my amazement I read where The Lips had just added Salt Lake City Utah to the end of their 2011 tour; Salt Lake doesn’t even appear on the Official 2011 tour T-Shirt. I contacted their publicist who checked out my portfolio and said I could shoot if I had a formal media assignment, enter UncommonMusic.com, they “assigned” me to shoot the show. Weeks passed and no word in regards to my photo pass request.



Somewhere along the way I read a review by a fan at a recent show who complained about Wayne’s voice being gone. So I talked myself out of shooting the show, after all we are talking about a 6 hour round-trip drive and the cost of gas and then hours of processing just to get a few photos of a washed out has been milking another show out of a nearly 30 year old cash cow.



Finally, the day before the show I received an email stating that I was on the photo pass list, wow another decision, I was worn out by the hectic week and really just wanted to relax, do some overdue photo processing, the last thing I needed was more photos to process. Again I decided not to go and went to bed.



Saturday morning started like many other weekends, a bit of photo processing while listening to music and strong coffee. Later in the day I took my daughter to a Tennis match and took a few photos. The match ended early and 4 hours from show time I thought, damn I could still make it.. it’s only a two hour drive ”What the hell, just do it” I said to myself.



Now you can call it a premonition or dumb luck or good karma, or maybe Wayne Coyne used thought control on me, I don’t care, the point is there was a shift in the universe, the tiny one inside my head, and I made a decision that would change me forever.



You see I live my life without regret, but now, thanks to Wayne Coyne and crew aka. The Flaming Lips I had my first true regret in life, actually more than one;

Regret #1 – Why did I not know and have more Lips music? Just think of all the years wasted not having it in my head, how many roadtrips I could have sung at the top of my lungs to “Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles”



Regret #2 – Why didn’t I take my 17 year old daughter? She would have loved every second of this sonic and visual slice of musical heaven, it would be like if someone had taken me to Zepplin or Cream concert when I was too young and poor to take myself.



Regret # 3 – Why didn’t I have more memory cards available for photos? I could have filled twice as many memory cards if I had the space but I had left in a hurry and did not even have my second camera. You see I was going to just shoot the first few songs and then bail. Just get my photos for posterity and boogie. Wow, talk about ignorant and myopic behavior.



Jesus can you just get to the review.. please.. OK, ok here’s my “formal” review.

Formal Review

The Flaming Lips brought their brilliant, passionate and visually stunning show to Salt Lake City on September 17, 2011, near the end of their In Our Bodies Out of Our Heads 2011 tour. Reviewing a show is always subjective but this show was off the chart, seriously it may well have been the most amazing show I have ever seen, the energy was so intense and beautiful.



I make that last statement with careful consideration of the many, many great shows I have seen including U2, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jeff Beck, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, R.E.M., Dave Matthews, and on and on.



Wayne Coyne the leader of the band is a genius, and so deeply genuine, that he draws you in quickly and then holds you and your sensory hostage for the duration of the show, it was like watching a 5 year old on stage, sheer joy, love and exuberance while doing something you were made to do, make music and perform.

 

It is hard to explain why this band is so good, especially live, how do you explain a vibe that imprints a smile so hard on your face that even the next day you can’t get rid of it. Wayne’s enthusiasm is so contagious; he hits the first song running and leaping and never slows down for second, except for brief wise discourses in life, love and music between songs.



I read a review by a disgruntled fan that talked about Wayne’s voice not being what it used to be, I let that review nearly keep me from going to this show, I cannot imagine what a mistake that would have been.



It makes no difference if your voice can still hit every note the same way you did when you were in your twenties when your adoring fans are singing every word at the top of their lungs.



The Flaming Lips owned this venue and the crowd this evening by playing intensely from their hearts and then adding a healthy dose of visual stimuli. Sure the show takes the use of smoke machines, portable video cameras, lasers and confetti to the tsunami level but this is 2011.





I got a kick out the warning signs that were posted everywhere warning patrons about the strong lighting and strobes used during the performance, Wayne even came out before the show and personally warned people about the lights but went on to say in a great deadpan delivery “But the good news is there is a very easy remedy… just don’t look at the lights”.





As I write this review I can hardly talk from cheering so much, I just can’t stop grinning when I think about how Wayne would yell “Come on, come on you motherfuckers” whenever there was a lull in the intensity and instantly the entire venue would comply and erupt in cascading cheers that rose until it was back to the default deafening roar.



On several occasions mascot like beings would make unscripted entrances to the show, each would crowd surf to the front of the stage for a hug, first there was the huge bunny, then a dog and then a young woman. Wayne would stop the show and carefully help them onto the stage, then give them a big long hug and then they would leave the same way they came in, a little stage dive back into the crowd and off they would go.





Wayne explained that one of the greatest things about music is how it can help someone who is struggling with life’s hard times to laugh, love and relax for a while and for several hours on this Saturday night.



If you ever have a chance to see the Flaming Lips live do it, you will not be disappointed, you will be amazed, gratified, uplifted, thrilled and romanced back into a deep and profound love for live music.



And when Wayne looks at you with a huge smile on his face and implores you to cheer by saying “Come on, come opn you motherfuckers”, you will comply, you will cheer, you will dance and you will, for once in your life be fully present in the now. For this is Wayne’s blessing to you and you will receive it motherfucker!



To see hi res photos of this show see gonzoshots.com or my Flickr set here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gonzoshots/sets/72157627705536980/



Set List from the Salt Lake City show:

The Fear Worm Mountain

She Don’t Use Jelly

The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song

See the Leaves

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1 (Acoustic)

Vein Of Stars/The Firebird Suite Is David Bowie Dying? Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung

What is the Light?

The Observer Encore:Race for the Prize.

2nd encore. Do you realize?

——- Formal Review ——-

 



The Flaming Lips are an American alternative rock band, formed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1983.

Melodically, their sound contains lush, multi-layered, psychedelic rock arrangements, but lyrically their compositions show elements of space rock, including unusual song and album titles—such as “Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles”, “Free Radicals (A Hallucination of the Christmas Skeleton Pleading with a Suicide Bomber)”, “What Is the Light?” (An Untested Hypothesis Suggesting That the Chemical [In Our Brains] by Which We Are Able to Experience the Sensation of Being in Love Is the Same Chemical That Caused the “Big Bang” That Was the Birth of the Accelerating Universe)” and “Yeah, I Know It’s a Drag… But Wastin’ Pigs Is Still Radical”. They are also acclaimed for their elaborate live shows, which feature costumes, balloons, puppets, video projections, complex stage light configurations, giant hands, large amounts of confetti, and frontman Wayne Coyne‘s signature man-sized plastic bubble, in which he traverses the audience. In 2002, Q magazine named The Flaming Lips one of the “50 Bands to See Before You Die”.



The group recorded several albums and EPs on an indie label, Restless, in the 1980s and early 1990s. After signing to Warner Brothers, they scored a hit in 1993 with “She Don’t Use Jelly“. Although it has been their only hit single in the U.S., the band has maintained critical respect and, to a lesser extent, commercial viability through albums such as 1999′s The Soft Bulletin (which was NME magazine’s Album of the Year) and 2002′s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. They have had more hit singles in the UK and Europe than in the U.S. In February 2007, they were nominated for a 2007 BRIT Award in the “Best International Act” category. By 2007, the group garnered three Grammy Awards, including two for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.



On October 13, 2009 the group released their latest studio album, titled Embryonic. On December 22, 2009, the Flaming Lips released a remake of the 1973 Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon. In 2011, the band announced plans to release new songs in every month of the year, with the entire process filmed.



History

Early history and releases (Debut EP to In a Priest Driven Ambulance)

The Flaming Lips formed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1983 with Wayne Coyne’s brother Mark singing lead vocals and Michael Ivins on bass guitar. The band debuted at Oklahoma City’s Blue Note Lounge. After going through a host of different drummers, Richard English joined the band in 1984. That same year they recorded their only release with Mark Coyne singing lead vocals–The Flaming Lips.



After his brother’s departure, Wayne assumed the vocal duties and the band released their first full-length album, Hear It Is, on Pink Dust Records (the psychedelic-rock imprint of Enigma Records) in 1986. This line-up recorded two more albums; 1987′s Oh My Gawd!!! and 1989′s Telepathic Surgery, the latter originally planned to be a thirty minute sound collage.



Nathan Roberts replaced English and Jonathan Donahue (also a member of the alternative rock band Mercury Rev) joined in 1989. In a Priest Driven Ambulance, their first album with producer Dave Fridmann, was recorded at the State University of New York in Fredonia for $5 an hour on a $10,000 budget.^[1] The album was host to a marked expansion in the band’s sound and their previous experiments in tape loops and effects were given a more prominent role. During this period, Coyne made his transition to a higher, more strained vocal style akin to Neil Young, which he first used on Telepathic Surgery‘s “Chrome Plated Suicide” and has employed ever since.



In 1990 the band caught the attention of Warner Bros. Records and were signed promptly after a representative of the label witnessed a show at which the band almost burned down the venue (American Legion Hall in Norman, Oklahoma) with the use of pyrotechnics.



Signed to Warner Bros. (Hit to Death in the Future Head to Clouds Taste Metallic)

In 1992, the band released their major label debut Hit to Death in the Future Head after the recording of which Donahue left the band to concentrate on Mercury Rev. Roberts left the band as well, citing creative differences. They were replaced by Ronald Jones and Steven Drozd respectively.



In 1993, they released Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. This was the only studio album since In a Priest Driven Ambulance to date in which Dave Fridmann has not been involved. Because of the success of the album and the single “She Don’t Use Jelly“, the band was featured on three popular television series: Beverly Hills, 90210, The Late Show with David Letterman and Beavis and Butt-head. The success of this record led to long stints of touring, opening for bands including the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Candlebox.



Clouds Taste Metallic was released to much critical fanfare in late 1995, though it did not achieve the commercial success of its predecessor. The strain of the year-long Clouds tour added to the stress from the three years touring in support of Transmissions was a major factor in the departure of Ronald Jones in late 1996. He was said to be suffering from a severe case of agoraphobia, although the documentary Fearless Freaks states that he left because of his growing concerns over Drozd’s drug use.



A change in direction with Zaireeka

The departure of Jones and a general dissatisfaction with standard “rock” music led to the three remaining members of the group to redefine the direction of the band with the experimental Zaireeka (1997), a four-CD album which is intended to be heard by playing all four CDs in four separate CD players simultaneously. The music incorporated both traditional musical elements and “found” sounds (as in musique concrète), often heavily manipulated with recording studio electronics.



As part of the development of this project, the band conducted a series of “parking lot experiments” and then later, “boombox experiments”. In the parking lot experiments up to 40 volunteers were given cassettes created by the band to be played at a parking lot in their cars’ stereo systems simultaneously. In the “boom box experiments” an orchestra composed of up to 40 volunteers with modified “boombox”-type tape players was “conducted” – directed to vary the volume, speed or tone of the tape they were playing (again composed by the band) – by Wayne Coyne.



In the meanwhile, a series of unfortunate incidents (recounted in the 1999 song “The Spiderbite Song”) beset the band. Drozd’s arm was almost amputated needlessly because of what he claimed was a spider bite (it turned out to be abscessed as a result of Drozd’s heroin use^[4]), Ivins was trapped in his car for several hours after a wheel spun off of another vehicle into his windshield, and Coyne’s father died after a long battle with cancer.



Artistic breakthrough (The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi)

Though their experimental endeavors received some press coverage, their real breakthrough came with the 1999 release, The Soft Bulletin. Marrying more traditional catchy melodies with synthetic strings, hypnotic, carefully manipulated beats, booming cymbals and oddball but philosophical lyrics (sung much more strongly than on earlier releases), the album quickly became one of the underground hits of the year, even widely considered to be one of the best albums of the entire decade.



Compared by many music critics to The Beach Boys‘ Pet Sounds because of its inclusion of harmonies and orchestrated sounds, The Soft Bulletin also featured greater use of synthesizers, drum machines, sound effects and more studio manipulation. After this album was released, Coyne stated that, “if someone was to ask me what instrument do I play, I would say the recording studio.”^{[citation needed]} The band considered an attempt to recreate this complex album live solely with additional musicians to be complex and expensive, the group decided to tour as a three-piece and make extensive use of pre-recorded music to fill out those parts that were not performed live by the members of the band. Perhaps most notably, this led to the decision to have the drummer Drozd play primarily keyboards and guitar live instead of the drums. This, in turn, led to a decision to utilize video recordings and projections of Steven playing the drums for some of the band’s older songs.



To enhance the live experience for their audience and to accurately reproduce the sound of The Soft Bulletin live, the Lips devised the concept of the “Headphone Concert”. A low-powered FM transmitter was set up at shows, and the concert was simultaneously broadcast to small Walkman-style receivers and headphones made available for free to audience members. This would, in theory, allow the audiences greater sonic clarity while still feeling the power of a full live P.A.. This concept was debuted in Dallas, Texas and at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas in March 1999, and was subsequently used on the International Music Against Brain Degeneration Revue tour. This tour featured Japanese band Cornelius, Sebadoh, Robyn Hitchcock, Sonic Boom’s E.A.R. and IQU.



Three years later, in the summer of 2002, The Flaming Lips joined bands Cake and Modest Mouse on the Unlimited Sunshine Tour. They also released the full-length Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots to much critical acclaim. Featuring guest musician Yoshimi P-We and demonstrating more use of electronic instruments and computer manipulation than The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi is widely considered to be The Flaming Lips’ first critical and commercial success after nearly twenty years as a band. The final track on the album, “Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)” earned a 2003 Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, and the album was certified gold on April 10, 2006. In March 2007, the band revealed that they have recently teamed up with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to produce a Broadway musical based on the album.



Both The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots have been released on DVD-Audio.

Following the success of “Yoshimi”, Steven Drozd completed rehab for heroin addiction. This decision was spurred by a physical altercation between Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd.



Continued success (At War with the Mystics)

Shortly after Yoshimi, The Soft Bulletin was estimated to have sold 300,000 copies in the United States, and later went gold in May 2007.^[5] The Flaming Lips released two EPs in the same vein of their previous album’s robotic theme and containing remixed songs from Yoshimi, Fight Test and Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell. They also appeared on the track “Marching the Hate Machines (Into the Sun)” on the Thievery Corporation album The Cosmic Game. In 2002 they were invited to work in the studio with The Chemical Brothers, they produce together the single called The Golden Path, included in Chemical Brothers compilation album Singles 93-03. In this song, the lead vocals were performed by Wayne Coyne with Steven Drozd performing harmony vocals. In addition to their EPs, The Lips had been working for several years on a feature film entitled Christmas on Mars. Filming for the movie ended in late September 2005 and premiered on May 25, 2008 at the Sasquatch! Music Festival.^[6]



In 2002, they performed as the opening act, as well as the backup band for singer Beck on his Sea Change tour. In the summer of 2004, it was announced that The Flaming Lips would appear among the headliners on the 2004 Lollapalooza tour, alongside such artists as Sonic Youth and Morrissey; however, the tour was canceled because of lack of revenue.^{[citation needed]} Following the concerts’ cancellation, the band entered Tarbox Road Studio with producer Dave Fridmann and began work on their eleventh album, the more organic-sounding At War with the Mystics. The record, aimed to be a more guitar-based and heavier effort than recent albums, featured more politically conscious lyrics than any of their previous releases, and was released in April 2006 to a mixed yet mostly positive reception. Also in 2004, the band recorded the song “SpongeBob and Patrick Confront the Psychic Wall of Energy” for the soundtrack of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.



In 2005 the band was the subject of a documentary called Fearless Freaks, featuring appearances by other artists and celebrities such as Gibby Haynes, The White Stripes, Beck, Christina Ricci, Liz Phair, Juliette Lewis, Steve Burns, Starlight Mints, and Adam Goldberg. In that same year, The Flaming Lips contributed a version of “Bohemian Rhapsody” to the album Killer Queen: A Tribute to Queen. Also in this year, The Flaming Lips released the DVD VOID (Video Overview in Deceleration), which chronicles all of their ventures into music video that have been produced since they signed with Warner Bros in 1991. In October 2005, The Flaming Lips recorded a cover of “If I Only Had a Brain” for the soundtrack of the video game Stubbs the Zombie, which features modern rock bands covering songs from the 1950s and 1960s. Additionally, the band released one new song, “Mr. Ambulance Driver“, for the soundtrack of the 2005 film Wedding Crashers (a slightly edited version of the song found its way on the new record).



The band released two singles from At War With the Mystics: “The W.A.N.D.”, which was featured in a Dell commercial and which was originally put out as a download-only single in early 2006, and “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”, which became their highest-charting single on the UK Singles Chart, peaking at #16. A 4-track EP, entitled It Overtakes Me, was released later in the UK that year. The only instrumental on the album, “The Wizard Turns On… The Giant Silver Flashlight and Puts on His Werewolf Moccasins”, earned a 2006 Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance,^[7] making it twice in a row the Lips have been nominated in that category and won.



Following the April 4, 2006 release of At War with the Mystics, the band began a tour to support the album in the United Kingdom, including a finale at the Royal Albert Hall and performances at the O2 Wireless Festival. At the Leeds England date of the festival, the band opened for The Who, of whom they are long standing fans.



The band continued to tour throughout the fall of 2006 stopping in Montreal, the Virgin Festival on the Toronto Islands, Atlantic City‘s House of Blues, The University of Vermont in Burlington, their hometown Oklahoma City, the Austin City Limits Music Festival in Austin, Texas, and New York City, NY as well as several other cities. The homecoming show in Oklahoma City was performed at the Zoo Amphitheater and included the unveiling of a new UFO stage prop, and would provide footage for the U.F.O.s at the Zoo concert DVD.



On December 5, 2006, Oklahoma City honored the band with a downtown alley named after the band. Vince Gill and Charlie Christian were also given street names by the city. Flaming Lips Alley is at the center of Oklahoma City’s entertainment district, Bricktown. At the official dedication in 2007, Coyne said of Oklahoma City, “…We’re on the way to becoming, I think, the fucking coolest city in America.”^{[citation needed]}



Christmas On Mars

In 2001, The Flaming Lips began filming a low-budget indie film entitled Christmas on Mars. Completed in 2008, the film tells the story of the first Christmas of a colony set-up on the surface of Mars. Christmas On Mars was written by Wayne Coyne, and co-directed by Wayne Coyne, Bradley Beesley and George Salisbury. The band and their friends act in the movie.



The band brought the film to rock festivals across America during the summer of 2008 and screened it in a large circus tent they had bought for that purpose.

The film was released on DVD on November 11, 2008, along with a soundtrack written and performed by The Flaming Lips.



Recent activity (Embryonic and Dark Side of the Moon)

The band released their first live concert DVD, UFO’s at the Zoo: The Legendary Concert in Oklahoma City, on August 7, 2007. The band also contributed original songs to the soundtracks of several 2007 films, including “The Supreme Being Teaches Spider-Man How to be in Love” for Spider-Man 3, “I Was Zapped by the Super Lucky Rainbow” for Good Luck Chuck, “Love the World You Find” for Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, and “Maybe I’m Not the One” and “Tale of the Horny Frog” for The Heartbreak Kid.



In 2009, the band released their twelfth studio album and first double album, Embryonic. The album, which was the band’s first to open in the Billboard top 10, was widely critically acclaimed for its bold new direction. In December of the same year, the band released their second album of the year and thirteenth overall, a track-for-track cover of Pink Floyd‘s The Dark Side of the Moon, which was recorded with Stardeath and White Dwarfs and features guest appearances from Henry Rollins and Peaches. The album was released physically on vinyl and CD in 2010.



In January 2011 the Lips announced their intention of releasing a new song every month of the year. In February they released the first track titled “Two Blobs Fucking”. The song exists as 12 separate pieces on YouTube and must be played simultaneously to be heard as intended.^{[citation needed]} In March 2011, the Lips released the EP Flaming Lips 2011: The Flaming Lips with Neon Indian. In April, the band released the “Gummy Song Skull” EP,a seven pound skull made of gummy bear material with a gummy brain,which contains a flashdrive with 4 songs on them. This release was extremely limited,but was soon leaked on the internet shortly after it’s release. In May the band released it’s second collaboration EP entitled “The Flaming Lips with Prefuse 73“. It contains four songs and was released in a similar way to the earlier neon indian ep, in that the run was extremely limited and consisted of randomly colored, one of a kind colored discs. This ep was briefly available on the band’s official website but sold out shortly after it was put up for sale. June saw several releases by the band. The first being “The Soft Bulletin:Live la Fantastique de Institution 2011” a live-in-studio recording of the band’s 1999 album “The Soft Bulletin” which was on a flashdrive embedded in a marijuana-flavored brain inside a strawberry flavored gummy skull. This was only released at the band’s two night show at the Hollywood Forever Cemetary on June 14th and 15th. This show was a special two-night, one morning event in which they played the entirety of The Soft Bulletin one night and a new revamped version of Pink Floyd’s 1973 album “The Dark Side of the Moon“. And collaborated with “Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros” for a performance of “Do You Realize??” at dawn of the second day. Also included on this flashdrive was a best-of compilation entitled “Everyone You Know Someday Will Die” put together especially for the occasion by the band’s drummer Kliph Scurlock. It included songs from every portion of the band’s career as well as a newly recorded intro. The final June release was the “Gummy Song Fetus” EP, it consisted of three songs on a flashdrive embedded in a bubblegum flavored fetus made of gummy bear material. This release as with the rest was extremely limited, although the songs did leak on the internet several weeks after it was released. In July, the band released “The Flaming Lips with Lightning Bolt”, a collaborative ep with experimental rock group “Lightning Bolt“. Although called a collaboration,this release(consisting of four tracks) is actually just the Flaming Lips’ versions of two songs(found on side A) and Lightning Bolt’s versions(on side B). This ep was released on randomly colored vinyl as with the previous two collaborative ep’s. Future plans for 2011 releases include the “Strobo Trip Light Toy”, a gummy frog, an artistic collaboration with Oklahoma City based Clothing company Warpaint, and a guitar pedal that will amongst many other things, play new Flaming Lips music. Future collaborations have been referenced in interviews by members of the band, among these are collaborations with Panda Bear, Black Moth Super Rainbow and Ghostland Observatory.

Awards

• Grammys

• Won: (2003) Best Rock Instrumental Performance for “Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)”
• Nominated: (2004) Best Alternative Album for Fight Test EP.
• Nominated: (2007) Best Alternative Album for At War With the Mystics.
• Won: (2007) Best Rock Instrumental Performance for “The Wizard Turns On…”
• Won: (2007) Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for At War with the Mystics.
• Nominated: (2008) Best Surround Sound Album for At War With the Mystics 5.1.

• BRITs

• Nominated: (2007) for Best International Act.

•  

Official rock song of Oklahoma

In March 2009 “Do You Realize??” was announced as the official rock song of Oklahoma. Ten choices were put to a public vote, and out of 21,000 votes cast nearly 51% were for “Do You Realize??”^[9][10][11] The Oklahoma Senate approved this choice unanimously. The Oklahoma House of Representatives failed to confirm the choice after Rep. Mike Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City attacked the band for its use of offensive language, and Rep. Corey Holland, R-Marlow said he had been “really offended” when Michael Ivins came to the announcement ceremony in March wearing a red T-shirt with a yellow hammer and sickle. However, that evening Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry announced he would sign an executive order naming the song the official rock song. Henry said that for more than 20 years the Flaming Lips have produced “creative, fun and provocative rock music.” “The music of the Flaming Lips has earned Grammys, glowing critical acclaim and fans all over the world”, the governor said. “A truly iconic rock n’ roll band, they are proud ambassadors of their home state.” “They were clearly the people’s choice, and I intend to honor that vote.”^[12]

Members

• Current

• Wayne Coyne – lead vocals, guitar, keyboards, theremin, bass guitar (1983–present)
• Michael Ivins – bass, keyboards, backing vocals (1983–present)
• Steven Drozd – drums, guitar, lead vocals, keyboards, bass, backing vocals (1991–present)
• Kliph Scurlock – drums, percussion (2002–present)
• Derek Brown – guitar, keyboards, percussion (2009-present)

• Former

• Mark Coyne – vocals (1983–1985)
• Dave Kostka – drums (1983–1984)
• Richard English – drums, vocals, piano (1984–1988)
• Jonathan Donahue – guitar (1988–1991)
• Nathan Roberts – drums (1988–1991)
• Jon Mooneyham – guitar (one month in 1991)
• Ronald Jones – guitar, backing vocals (1991–1996)

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