It wasn’t always guaranteed that the guitar would be the instrument associated with rock ‘n’ roll. At the birth of the rock era, piano men such as Little Richard and Ray Charles made hips shake and hearts ache by hollering while tickling ivories instead of plucking strings. Elvis even had a piano-playing rival…
Nobody thinks of Utah as a hotbed for beats, but Late Night Alumni’s John Hancock says that preconception is dead wrong. “Utah has a lot of music,” he says from his Salt Lake City home. “A lot of DJs come through on the way to California. It has a great indie-rock scene too, with Neon Trees and Imagine Dragons getting their start here.” His Late Night Alumni, which straddles electronic and indie rock, is a good ambassador for the state of Utah music.
Many of us like to read while listening to music. The organizers of the Miami Book Fair have run with that concept via the Porch, a stage presenting live music throughout fair week, November 11 through 18. “It’s an outdoor pop-up venue, a community gathering space, and a town center smack-dab right in the middle of the book fair,” the Porch programmer Melissa Messulam explains.
It was more than two decades ago that Steven Toth was coined “Mr. Entertainment.” “I used to juggle and do handstands for a band called One-Eyed Kings,” the Hollywood native tells New Times. After short stints with the band Lee County Oswald, Toth found himself with a surplus of songs he’d written, and thus Mr. Entertainment and the Pookiesmackers were born.
Miamians somehow tend to find one another wherever they are in the world. Singers and guitarists Josh Starkman and George Elizondo were born in South Florida and found different paths toward studying music at the University of New Orleans. Elizondo’s parents met in an English-language class in Miami…
Celebrities hanging out together have become quite the artistic muse. A photograph of Richard Nixon and Elvis shaking hands inspired a movie. The urban legend of Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marlon Brando driving out of New York City after the World Trade Center towers fell was made into a British TV show and short story.
What were the odds that one of the most distinctive voices in rock history had a twin who was her musical equal? When Kim Deal, the bassist of the Pixies and lead singer of one of the band’s most beloved songs, “Gigantic,” came out with her own project, the Breeders,…
Tommi Waring is obsessed with the ’80s. Even though the singer and music producer was born in 1995, he lets the bygone decade permeate every ounce of his music. “I didn’t want to sound like everyone else out there right now,” he tells New Times from his North Miami home. Waring says he’s influenced by artists from 30 years ago…
Joey Maya’s new memoir, The Drummer of Miami Beach: The Story of Joey Wrecked, has plenty of sex and drugs, but where the book really shines is in its depiction of rock ‘n’ roll. There are a thousand autobiographies by famous rockers such as Keith Richards and David Lee Roth that depict…
In 2014, Franco Parente ran a filmmaker’s dream of a Kickstarter campaign. After it was announced Churchill’s Pub was changing owners, he sought funding to make a documentary about the legendary bar with the clever title Little Haiti Rock City. There was anxiety over the future of the venue that had been Miami’s live-music oasis since 1979…
Autumn is here (even if it doesn’t feel like it yet), and the City of Miami Beach wants to get South Floridians outside again. Just about every Wednesday night from October 3 through May 29, a different movie will be screened on the 7,000-square-foot wall outside the New World Center for the SoundScape Cinema Series.
Tom Petty had a complicated relationship with his hometown of Gainesville. He was born, raised, and spent his formative years in the North Florida university town. In the ’70s, he and his band Mudcrutch played all around Gainesville, but once they relocated to Los Angeles in 1974, it seemed Petty…
Musical influences are cyclical. There have been stages in rock history when everyone was trying to sing like Bob Dylan and other eras when everyone channeled their inner Lou Reed. But among the indie rockers who’ve pushed boundaries and topped the charts since the turn of the century, one has…
Asked how his rock band got its name, singer/guitarist Albae Camino recites the dictionary definition of “analog.” The gist is that “computers are digital devices; humans are analog,” he says. “We brainstormed short, simple names representing the way we sound. The four of us go for a pure…
When Burt Reynolds passed away yesterday, much was made of his Florida connections. The star of classics such as Deliverance and Boogie Nights graduated from Palm Beach High School and played football at Florida State University. With the star power to be crowned box office champ every year from 1978 to 1982…
There aren’t too many crooners in modern rock like Scott Yoder. But it’s not Roy Orbison or Chris Isaak who Yoder is channeling when performing. “I always had an affinity for the classic films, like Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel,” Yoder says. “In these film-noir movies, they usually had a scene…
When the garage-rock political revolutionaries of MC5 recorded their live album Kick Out the Jams at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom in 1968, it became an instant classic. But guitarist Wayne Kramer still has an uneasy feeling about that concert. “It was a monumental night, but the pressure was too much…
It’s so easy to mock farewell tours. Classic-rock legends embark upon them every few years when alimony or back taxes call them to the road one last time — until the next time. But eventually, every artist has a tour that ends up being a farewell. Tom Petty’s came last year, Prince’s the year before…
September 2 through 9, Churchill’s Pub, Little Haiti’s legendary live-music mecca, will celebrate 39 years of business. Some performances have been weird, some beautiful, and some beautifully weird. To celebrate this odd anniversary, we list the most Churchill’s-esque shows you might have missed.
“There’s a weirdness from growing up in Miami that lends toward storytelling. Everyone there comes from somewhere else. It made me want to know people’s stories.”
It’s a point of pride for the jam band Umphrey’s McGee that in this, its 21st year of existence, it released not one, but two new records: It’s Not Us and It’s You. “It’s great we can show people that 20 years into the band, we’re not rehashing old music,” keyboardist and singer Joel Cummins says…
Austin is known for its guitar music. Few people think of the Texas capital as an EDM hot spot, but electronic geniuses Tritonal call it home. “I came from a Texan musical family,” explains one half of the duo, Chad Cisneros. “My grandparents played guitar and piano. They had my mom and her sisters cut records as a family band of gospel and Christian music.”
