Dwight Yoakam – Suspicious Minds

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Kneeknee

Dwight Yoakam – Suspicious Minds

Dwight Yoakam - Suspicious Minds

Few entertainers have attained the iconic status of Dwight Yoakam. Perhaps that is because so few have consistently and repeatedly met the high standard of excellence delivered by the Kentucky native no matter what his endeavor. His name immediately conjures up compelling, provocative images: A pale cowboy hat with the brim pulled low; poured-on blue jeans; intricate, catchy melodies paired with poignant, brilliant lyrics that mesmerize with their indelible imprint. Then there’s Yoakam the actor, who seemingly melts into his roles, impressively standing toe-to-toe with some of the world’s top thespians: Jodie Foster, Tommy Lee Jones, Forest Whitaker, Nicholas Cage. Add to that Yoakam the entrepreneur and you have a singular talent without peer.

Yoakam’s latest Warner Bros. album, 3 Pears, exemplifies his ability to incorporate multiple, competing influences into a piece of cohesive art. It balances his country core with a fiercely independent embrace of rock, Americana, pop and soul. It blends Yoakam’s respect for his musical predecessors with the collaborative assistance of modern singer/songwriter Beck, who co-produced two tracks, and current rocker Kid Rock, who co-wrote the hooky opener, “Take Hold Of My Hand.” But most importantly, 3 Pears builds on his trademark edginess with a notable, growing positivity.

“The music just kind of dropped in, in that way,” Yoakam reflects. “Music is a bit of a mystery. Like all emotions are. And I think maybe it was something I needed to express and to share with the world at large, something positive when all of us are kind of carrying around this collective, emotional weight.”

Much has been made that the Kentucky-born, Ohio-raised Yoakam was too country for Nashville when he first sought out his musical fortune in the mid-80s, but the truth is his music has always been too unique, too ruggedly individualistic to fit neatly into any one box. Like the icons he so admires –Elvis, Merle, Buck– Yoakam is one of a kind. He has taken his influences and filtered them into his own potent blend of country and rock that honors his musical predecessors and yet creates something beautifully new. As Vanity Fair declared, “Yoakam strides the divide between rock’s lust and country’s lament.”

Picture Source: http://l.yimg.com/kh/images/yahoo/reprise/dwight_yoakam/dwight_yoakam_1.jpg

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Willie Nelson – Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Kneeknee

Willie Nelson – Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain

Willie Nelson - Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain

Willie Nelson was born on April 30, 1933, in Abbott, Texas. Nelson rose to prominence at the end of the 1960s and contributed to the “outlaw country” subgenre, which challenged the conservatism of Nashville. Nelson has written some of the most popular country songs of all time, including “Crazy” and “Pancho & Lefty.” He is also well known for his financial troubles and for his activism.

“If you start out looking at somebody, wondering whether he’s good or bad, I think you’re starting out in the wrong direction. I think we’re all good and we’re all bad.”

– Willie Nelson

Artist and Activist
Singer, songwriter, actor and philanthropist Willie Nelson was born on April 30, 1933, in Abbott, Texas. During his extensive career, Willie Nelson has written more than 2,500 songs and has released close to 300 albums. He has won multiple awards, including countless Grammys, American Music Awards and Country Music Awards. In 2012 the Country Music Association honoured Nelson with an all-star tribute at the CMAs in Nashville. He is recognized worldwide as an American troubadour and icon, transcended musical genres and has remained relevant through five decades for his music, acting, and as the face of such social causes as Farm Aid, development of bio-diesel and the legalization of marijuana.
Early Life
The son of Myrle and Ira D. Nelson, Willie Nelson and his older sister Bobbie were raised by their paternal grandparents during The Great Depression. With their grandmother, Willie and Bobbie attended their town’s small Methodist church where they were first exposed to music. “The first music we learned was from the hymnbooks. Willie had such a beautiful voice,” his sister Bobbie told Texas Monthly in 2008. Both grandparents loved music and encouraged Willie and his sister to play. Nelson’s famous gospel song “Family Bible” reflects the influence of his musical beginnings. He sold the song for $50 to his guitar teacher.

Nelson got his first guitar at the early age of six and soon started writing his own songs. A few years later, he played his first professional gig with a local polka band. Nelson later joined Bud Fletcher and the Texans and played the local club circuit. Also in the group was his sister Bobbie, who played piano. She later married Bud Fletcher. One of his early inspirations was Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys—a group known for their upbeat country dance music, which included some elements of swing.

After graduating high school in 1950, Nelson went into the U.S. Air Force. He did not last long, however. Stationed in Lackland in San Antonio, Texas, Nelson had to leave the service because of back problems. He tried college, attending Baylor University for a time. To make ends meet, Nelson took on odd jobs, including selling encyclopaedias door to door. Read More: http://www.biography.com/people/willie-nelson-9421488

Picture Source: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdpt8ge1lU1rkgtyio1_500.jpg

Jessica Rabbit – Why don’t you do right

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Kneeknee

Jessica Rabbit – Why don’t you do right

Jessica Rabbit - Why don't you do right

Jessica Rabbit is Roger Rabbit‘s human Toon wife and the tritagonist in Touchstone’s 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. In the book, she was an amoral, up-and-coming star and former comic character, over whom her estranged husband, comic strip star Roger Rabbit, obsessed. She is re-imagined in the film as a sultry, but moral cartoon singer at a Los Angeles supper club called the “Ink and Paint Club”. Here, she is one of several suspects in the framing of her husband, who is a famous cartoon star. She is voiced byKathleen Turner. Amy Irving was cast to sing Peggy Lee’s “Why Don’t You Do Right” for Jessica’s first scene in the movie.

Several attractive Toon females (specifically Betty Boop) apparently consider Jessica to be incredibly lucky to be married to Roger.

Jessica Rabbit is beautiful, passionate, sexy and glamourous. She is slender and fair-skinned. She has blue eyes, red pouty lips, purple eyelids, long red hair that covers her right eye, aqua earrings, long purple opera gloves, and shiny red pumps. She claims to Eddie Valiant, “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.” She adores her husband Roger, and claims she married him because he “makes her laugh.”

Jessica is first seen from behind the stage curtains at the Ink & Paint Club, singing “Why Don’t You Do Right?” After her show, followed byEddie Valiant, the Toon-hating detective, Marvin Acme, both ruler ofToontown and founder of the Acme Corporation, enters Jessica Rabbit’s dressing room and informs her that she sure absolutely, truly, and honestly murdered the audience one night, and he really means it. Then, he says that she was superb while Eddie tries to peer through the keyhole to see what’s going on, but he was thrown outside into a pile of trash by Bongo the tuxedoed gorrila. When he hears Jessica and Marvin talking through one of the nearby windows, he pulls up a box and peers through a gap in the curtains. Marvin insists Jessica to play pattycake with him on her bed, but Jessica replies that she has a headache. However, Marvin says that she promised, then convinces her to do it, and she agrees, but she tells him to take off his handbuzzer. While they play pattycake together, Eddie pulls out a camera and takes several pictures by order of R.K. Maroon, owner of Maroon Cartoons. Later, after Roger Rabbit, Jessica’s husband, crashes through the studio office window, leaving a rabbit-shaped hole in the glass and the blinds, and walks across the road at the Acme factory, crying his eyes out, he pulls out his wallet and looks at his photos of him and Jessica on their wedding day, their honeymoon on a beach, and hugging each other in a bar.
Read More: http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Jessica_Rabbit

Ash Grunwald – Lady Luck

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Kneeknee

Ash Grunwald – Lady Luck

Ash Grunwald - Lady Luck

Ash Grunwald put together his first album, ‘Introducing Ash Grunwald’, leaning heavily on traditional blues but it was his second album ‘I Don’t Believe,’ released in April of 2004, that would change his state of play. It was his first album – of many to come – to graft technology onto the deeply rooted foliage of the Delta swamp.

On the back of his increasingly explosive and unique shows, he released a searing live album ‘Live At The Corner;’ “When I play live, it has that four on the floor, modern pulse that we get from electronic dance music,” he says. His next studio album in 2007, ‘Give Signs’, was even more adventurous, and he took his energetic live show to venues such as London’s renowned The Borderline and Shepherds Bush Empire, and opened for acts as diverse a James Brown, Bo Diddley, Keith Urban, Jack Johnson, Missy Higgins & Pete Muray.

In 2008, after collaborating at a song writing workshop with producer Countbounce (Urthboy, TZU), he and Grunwald teamed up to deliver an album of thumping beats and grooves mixed in with blues jams. The result, Fish Out Of Water, was a genre defying record. Although Grunwald had regularly placed beats in his music, it was often simply a mash-up of DIY electronic beats with his blues tracks placed on top. “I wanted to smash the two together really hard, so that you couldn’t tell which side started it first,” Countbounce says. “More of a soul hip-hop approach. The drums would be sampled. And the feel of a hip-hop rhythm section with his guitars on top.”

Mumford And Sons – I Will Wait

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Kneeknee

Mumford And Sons – I Will Wait

Mumford And Sons - I Will Wait

It was December 2010, and Mumford and Sons had been on the road since the previous summer: a glorious, eventful, yet relentless time. Standing somewhere between exhilarated and exhausted, the plan now was for the band’s four members to spend a few weeks apart, write, recuperate, and then reconvene in Nashville in the New Year, with the intention of trying out material for their second album.

The informality of the set-up in Tennessee perhaps helped to dispel any nerves they may have had about following up 2009’s Sigh No More — an album that had gone four times platinum in the UK, and twice platinum in the US. The band assembled in the front room of a house and set about sharing the songs they had been working on alone. “It was a coming together, a sharing of some stuff,” explains Lovett (keys, accordion, drums), “a pool of ideas that would come out of our time apart. So if there was nervousness, it wasn’t nervousness about the record, it was nervousness about how a couple of these new song ideas would go down. But we knew we were going to play music, and it wasn’t time to get into the nuts and bolts of it, it was more like we were starting another year from this point. And that felt very good. Very fresh, and natural.”

Out of that time in Nashville came a couple of songs for the new record — the gorgeous Lovers’ Eyes and Hopeless Wanderer. Then followed more touring, performances at the Grammys and the Brits, before the chance came in the summer to head into a studio in Bermondsey, south London. Here the band recorded the title song for the soundtrack to Wuthering Heights, as well as finding the footings for several of the new album’s songs: Babel, I Will Wait, Not With Haste, Broken Crown, Lover of the Light.

Picture Source: http://sunshineandstarlight.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/mumford_and_sons_large.jpg?w=450&h=252

Justin Timberlake – Suit and Tie

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Kneeknee

Justin Timberlake – Suit And Tie

Justin Timberlake - Suit and Tie

Justin Randall Timberlake was born on January 31, 1981, in Memphis, Tennessee. Raised a Baptist, Timberlake grew up singing in the church choir. From 1993 to 1995, he performed on The New Mickey Mouse Club, along with pop stars Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and JC Chasez. Afterward, Timberlake and Chasez, along with Lance Bass, Joey Fatone and Chris Kirkpatrick, formed the all-male singing group ‘N Sync. The boy band would go on to become one of the hottest pop groups of the 1990s, releasing No Strings Attached in 2000 and Celebrity in 2001.

Solo Career
In 2002, Timberlake decided to pursue a solo career, debuting with the hit song “Like I Love You.” Later that year, he released his first solo album, Justified, which sold over 7 million copies worldwide. He received two Grammy Awards in 2004 for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. The wins came on the heels of a controversial Super Bowl performance with Janet Jackson in which Timberlake accidentally tore off a portion of Jackson’s costume revealing her bare breast.

Successful Collaborations
As a solo artist, Timberlake has often collaborated with the Black Eyed Peas, receiving an Grammy nomination with the band for “Where Is The Love?” He has also worked with Nelly, Snoop Dogg and Nelly Furtado and started his own record company, JayTee Records, in 2005. The following year, he released his second solo album, FutureSex/LoveSounds, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart. The album’s lead single, “SexyBack”, spent several consecutive weeks at No. 1. In 2008, Timberlake helped make Madonna’s single, 4 Minutes”, a top ten hit. Not only did he provide some of the vocals, he was also a co-writer of the song. Timberlake also contributed to several other tracks on Madonna’s Hard Candyalbum.

Picture Source: http://101jakfm.com/uploads/article-images/jt-201301251431193449.jpg

Maroon 5 – Daylight

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Kneeknee

Maroon 5 – Daylight

Maroon 5 - Daylight
Adam and Jesse and I started playing music together in junior high, under the sway of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and their ilk. We generally played in Jesse’s garage in Malibu or David Richman’s basement in Brentwood. A few players came and went, most notably Adam Salzman, Amy Wood, and Jesse Nicita, until finally we scored Ryan Dusick as our drummer in 1994 and the unfortunately-monikered Kara’s Flowers was born.

We considered Ryan’s membership quite a coup, as he was older by a couple years and one of the best musicians at our school. Ryan had also been writing music, and his collaborations with Adam made up the core of our material at the time, which is best described as “heavy” and “brooding”. The lyrics could be characterized as “nonsense”.

After a year or so of this, our tastes were changing, as they so often do at that tender age, and we entered a phase of massive, obsessive Beatlemania that culminated in some ill-advised matching suits and big, bright pop songs with loud guitars. These are the songs that got us signed to Warner Brothers and to a fancy Hollywood management company. We made a record, hemorrhaged money, went on a couple really weird tours, and sold about a thousand records.

The following couple years were spent regrouping, reshuffling, writing songs in the vein of “classic rock” and folk, and coming dangerously close to throwing in the towel. Adam and Jesse went on their Long Island adventure, driving cross-country at a breakneck pace and spending a semester at Five Towns College, purportedly studying music but mostly coming up with colorful nicknames for their classmates and listening to soul, gospel, R & B, and hip-hop. So, in fine Kara’s Flowers fashion, we abandoned the songs that we’d been playing for the prior year and started fresh upon Adam and Jesse’s return.

The Lumineers – Ho Hey

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Kneeknee

The Lumineers – Ho Hey

The Lumineers - Ho Hey

The Lumineers’ story began in a small town in New Jersey, where Jeremiah Fraites and Wesley Schultz were friends. At just 19 years old, Jeremiah’s brother Joshua died from a drug overdose – an event which left the two friends reeling for years as they struggled to come to terms with the loss. Separately, they turned to making music before eventually beginning a collaboration a few years later. Amped by the energy they were able to create together, they moved to New York City to make a go of slogging through that city’s famous community of starving artists.
Finally, disenchanted with opportunities in Manhattan and frustrated with exorbitant rent prices, the duo packed their belongings and headed for Denver, Colo. They found cellist Neyla Pekarek through a Craigslist ad and started playing around Denver as a trio. Cutting their teeth in local bars and clubs, they eventually gathered enough high-quality songs to cut a demo, which was recorded in the attic at Jeremiah’s house. A YouTube clip they posted of them performing “Ho Hey” caught the eye of a Seattle-based management firm which flew them out to record a full-length album at the famed Bear Creek Studio just outside of Seattle.

The resulting recording presented a creative blend of indie rock energy and traditional rootsy music. Where many of the acoustic breakout bands of the past few years seemed to ride on the strength of either their pop appeal or their instrumental proficiency, the Lumineers were artfully straddling a new line, setting a new bar for breakout folk/Americana bands. Read More: http://folkmusic.about.com/od/artistskr/p/Lumineers-Bio.htm

Picture Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/17/new-band-lumineers

Bruno Mars – Locked Out Of Heaven

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Kneeknee

Locked Out Of Heaven

Bruno Mars - Locked Out Of Heaven

Bruno Mars is a 13-time Grammy Award nominee whose debut album has been certified 39x platinum worldwide, has sold over 45 million singles worldwide, and has over 1 billion views on YouTube. Doo-Wops & Hooligans was released in October 2010 and named “the year’s finest pop debut: 10 near-perfect songs,” by Rolling Stone. The album included the 12x platinum blockbuster single “Just the Way You Are,” which hit number 1 in multiple countries and won the critically-acclaimed artist a Grammy Award for “Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.” Doo-Wops & Hooligans claimed two additional hit singles, the 10x platinum “Grenade” and 6x platinum “The Lazy Song.”

Mars has received an abundance of accolades to date, including ASCAP Song of the Year, a Billboard Music Award for Top Radio Song for “Just the Way You Are,” a BRIT Award for International Male Solo Artist, an American Music Award for Favorite Male Artist in Pop/Rock, two MTV European Music Awards including Best New Artist, and the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Male Artist. In 2011, Mars was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.

In October 2012, Mars premiered the first single, “Locked Out of Heaven,” from his highly-anticipated sophomore albumUnorthodox Jukebox. On October 20th, Mars made his comeback to national television when he joined the elite club of hosts and performers for Saturday Night Live alongside the likes of Mick Jagger, Justin Timberlake and Elton John. Mars not only showcased his comedic talent to the millions watching, but also debuted the first live performance of “Locked Out of Heaven” and premiered a brand new song, “Young Girls,” from the historic stage in New York City.

Sister Hazel – Cerilene

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Kneeknee

Sister Hazel - Cerilene

Sister Hazel – Cerilene

Combining elements of acoustic rock, folk, and jangle pop, Sister Hazel formed in 1993 in Gainesville, FL. The band’s five members all boasted ties to the city’s local scene; vocalist/guitarist Ken Block and guitarist/vocalist Andrew Copeland canvassed the coffee shop circuit as a duo, lead guitarist Ryan Newell honed his chops with the local band Waterdog, bassist Jett Beres studied his instrument while pursuing a degree in architecture, and drummer Mark Trojanowski played with several Florida-based jazz ensembles before pursuing a career in pop music. Forging an earthy, melodic sound that highlighted the band’s vocal harmonies, Sister Hazel released an eponymous debut in 1994 before moving to a major label for their second album, 1997’s Somewhere More Familiar.

“All for You” topped the adult alternative charts during the summer of 1997, nearly reaching the national Top Ten in the process, and the success propelled the album to platinum status. After touring heavily and taking another turn in the recording studio, Sister Hazel returned in the summer of 2000 with a follow-up album, Fortress. Released by Universal Records, the album was cut from the same pop/rock cloth as its predecessor, and “Change Your Mind” enjoyed modest popularity as a single. Fortress still failed to match the band’s early success, however, and Sister Hazel were no longer part of Universal’s roster by the time their next album, Chasing Daylight, appeared in 2003. They returned a year later with Lift, and despite Sister Hazel’s relative absence from the airwaves, the group continued to cultivate a respectable grassroots following, using the Internet to their advantage and touring relentlessly.

Sister Hazel continued releasing albums to a small yet loyal audience, including 2006’s Absolutely and a live studio performance album entitled Before the Amplifiers: Live Acoustic. As the decade drew to a close, the band released its seventh studio album, 2009’s Release. Heartland Highway followed in the fall of 2010.

Source: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/sister-hazel-mn0000014822

Source: http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/18425265/Sister+Hazel.jpg

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Dwight Yoakam – Suspicious Minds