Vancouver-based Mother Mother have become a fixture at WOXY thanks to their first two albums. Back in 2007, their debut album Touch Up was picked up for distribution by the Last Gang label following an earlier (and slightly different) self-release of the disc. When we started to play songs like “Neighbour” and the title track “Touch Up”, listeners began to heavily request the band and they ended up hitting #68 on our 97 Best Of 2007 countdown.

Their second full-length release, O My Heart, was released in the fall of 2008 and, this time around, the response from WOXY listeners around the globe was even stronger. As the requests and e-mails poured in to the station, we gave the record quite a bit more airplay than the first. It ended up becoming our 20th most-played release of 2008 and we began to lament the fact that the band’s touring schedule never brought them anywhere close to our neck of the woods. As soon as we started to plan a return trip to EAR studios for SXSW, we reached out to the band’s management to see if they would be making the trip too. The stars finally aligned and we were able to host the band during our week in Austin.

Sometimes a band sounds so good on record that you assume there’s a bit of studio trickery involved to make it all work. When you listen to the songs in this live performance I think you’ll recognize that the opposite is in play here. Mother Mother replicate their vocal harmonies (frequently in triplicate) so effortlessly live that it’s almost scary. It’s all the more impressive when you realize that part of those unique harmonies is the band’s newest member Jasmin Parkin who just joined the lineup in late January (and replaced original member Debra-Jean Creelman).

In the interview here, Ryan Guldemond (lead vocals/guitars) discusses how he approaches the songwriting process, the experience of touring across the U.S. with fellow Canadian rocker Sam Roberts, and the possibility of working with R&B singer Solange Knowles who tracked them down at SXSW to express her love for their music. The fact that they haven’t broken through to a wider U.S. audience is a bit of a mystery to us, but hopefully they’ll continue making music as strong as Touch Up for a very long time.

Tracklisting -
O My Heart
Body Of Years
-Interview-
Burning Pile
Wrecking Ball
Miles

Mother Mother – O My Heart (Live On WOXY.com)
Mother Mother – Body Of Years (Live On WOXY.com)
Mother Mother – Wrecking Ball (Live On WOXY.com)
Mother Mother – Burning Pile (Live On WOXY.com)
Mother Mother – Miles (Live On WOXY.com)

What kind of name is Pete & The Pirates anyway? Dare I say it conjures the image of either the band in the Free Credit Report commercial or some swingin’ hepcats from 1958 rockin’ out in full buccaneer attire. Arrrgh!

Well, these pirates (including two real-live Petes) hail from Reading, England, and make terrific, classically British indie pop that we’ve been into for a while. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that we made booking a session with them at SXSW a priority and thankfully, they’re nothing like either band described above.

Forming in 2005, the five-piece were first introduced to us by Paul from the Artrocker Radio Show, whose consistent airplay and staunch support earned our attention. Little Death, the band’s debut album, scored high praise from a number of outlets and singles like “Mr. Understanding”, “Knots” and “Come On Feet” hit the WOXY chart in Spring of 2008. Their AA-sided single follow-up, “Jennifer” and “Blood Gets Thin”, completely won over our listeners late in the year and confirmed that the band was no one-album wonder.

2009 marked their second trip to SXSW and they planned to make the most of it. Ours was the first of five performances the band had scheduled on the day, yet they arrived on-time, ready to go and did not disappoint. We’re always happy when a band gifts us a new tune in the session, but Pete & The Pirates ended up treating us to three new and unreleased tracks, expected for inclusion on an upcoming release.

View the entire photoset here….

Tracklisting
Jennifer
Blood From A Stone (new / unreleased)
Good Girl (new / unreleased)
- interview -
Where Did You Go? (new / unreleased)
Mr. Understanding

Pete & The Pirates – Jennifer (Live On WOXY.com)
Pete & The Pirates – Blood From A Stone (Live On WOXY.com/new-unreleased)
Pete & The Pirates – Good Girl (Live On WOXY.com/new-unreleased)
Pete & The Pirates – Where Did You Go? (Live On WOXY.com/new-unreleased)
Pete & The Pirates – Mr. Understanding (Live On WOXY.com)

Having a session with The Rosebuds is one prime example of why we go to SXSW every year and do what we do. You see, we have always been fans of the band, and have played music from each and every one of their studio releases. But for whatever reason, tour routing, lack of a show around us etc., we have never had the pleasure of hosting Ivan & Kelly in the WOXY.com studios.

So, it was a natural fit to have them close out one of our days at EAR studios during SXSW 2009. Ivan and Kelly were playing a string of shows at the festival again this year along with a full band but it was just the two of them that joined us for this stripped down set. The longtime North Carolina residents, have played SXSW several times now, and we chat about the festival, the creative process for their latest album, Kelly’s love of good literature and the possibility of writing a book of her own.

The married couple truly charmed us all with their music and even more so with their gracious and kind personalities. In this session you will hear tunes from both of their most recent full length albums, Life Like and Night Of The Furies. I think you will especially enjoy the acoustic version of “Get Up, Get Out.”

View the entire photoset here….

Tracklisting
Cape Fear
-interview-
Life Like
When The Lights Go Dim
Get Up, Get Out

The Rosebuds – Cape Fear (Live On WOXY.com)
The Rosebuds – Life Like (Live On WOXY.com)
The Rosebuds – When The Lights Go Dim (Live On WOXY.com)
The Rosebuds – Get Up, Get Out (Live On WOXY.com)

How we stumbled upon The Distant Seconds is probably not unlike how you’ve come across a band or two: we found them online.

Matador Records chief Gerard Cosloy, an Austin resident, raved about them during an interview, leading us to make direct contact for a copy their freshly minted debut Spectral Evidence. Recalling the nervy guitar work of the likes of Television, Bottomless Pit, and even Spoon, the disc quickly made its way onto our playlist and became one of WOXY’s most played records during the first few months of 2009. So when we went looking for locals to round out the early portion of our week at SXSW, The Distant Seconds received one of the first calls.

Singer & guitarist Matt Baab and drummer Charlie Ewing were previously in The Soft Set, another well-received Austin outfit before forming The Distant Seconds with Kirk Miles and New Orleans-transplant Brandon Bunch in 2005. After a self-released set of demos made the rounds, the four recorded Spectral Evidence in Denton, TX, with producer Matthew Barnhart (Shearwater, The New Year). In fact, they’d recently recorded a batch of new songs, once again with Barnhart, for an upcoming EP and were good enough to premiere a few of them during their set.

View the entire photoset here

Tracklisting
Akron Bureau (new/unreleased)
Between The Brackets (new/unreleased)
- interview -
We’re Unstoppable
Spectral Evidence
I Don’t Want To Go Back To Memphis (new/unreleased)

The Distant Seconds – Akron Bureau (Live On WOXY.com/New-Unreleased)
The Distant Seconds – Between The Brackets (Live On WOXY.com/New-Unreleased)
The Distant Seconds – We’re Unstoppable (Live On WOXY.com)
The Distant Seconds – Spectral Evidence (Live On WOXY.com)
The Distant Seconds – Don’t Want To Go Back To Memphis(Live On WOXY.com/New-Unreleased)

When we were investigating some local bands for our SXSW bookings this year, we came across a great record called Space Punk Starlet from The Frontier Brothers. While the band have called Austin home since
2006, they have quite an interesting mythology. You see, the Dallas Observer have already called them “the love children of Randy Newman and Stephen Malkmus”, but it goes farther than that. Much farther in fact, as they claim to be from a planet over “700 billion light years away” in our interview where every band sounds like U2.

A quick online search yields several videos of the band in brightly colored, skintight spandex outfits, roaming the streets of Austin during last year’s SXSW. While their spacesuits weren’t on for this session (they decided on their “human disguises”), they explain how the Austin music scene is so strong that even bands from other planets want to call it home.

In this live performance, you’ll hear several cuts from Space Punk Starlet, the band’s debut full-length album. You find it online digitally or order a cd from cdbaby.com!

View the entire photoset here…..

Tracklisting
Jump Blues
How Do You Make Movies When You’re Under The Sea / Kickstand Woman
-interview-
Don’t Try And Take My Guns (new-unreleased)
Space Punk Starlet

The Frontier Brothers – Jump Blues (Live On WOXY.com)
The Frontier Brothers – How Do You Make Movies When You’re Under The Sea (Live On WOXY.com)
The Frontier Brothers – Don’t Try And Take My Guns (Live On WOXY.com / New-Unreleased)
The Frontier Brothers – Space Punk Starlet (Live On WOXY.com)

This San Francisco trio have been playing together since 2006. Roland Curtis & Chris Crawford became friends when they were working in a record store together. They met singer Jason Heiselmann soon after and worked through a few setups before settling on playing together as a trio. All three guys have recording & engineering experience, but decided to hit the studio with Trans Am’s Phil Manley so that they could capture their live sound with a little outside input from someone who is genuinely a musical hero for the guys. Late last year those recordings became their self-titled debut cd and we fell in love with it immediately, giving it quite a bit of airplay here at the station.

The best thing about our yearly excursion to EAR Studios is the ability to meet up with bands that we really love who may not be stopping in Cincinnati anytime soon. We started inquiring about French Miami’s availability in Austin almost as soon as we started making plans for this year’s performances. Turns out that it was the first SXSW trip for the band and their stop at EAR was their first of many, many performances for the week. In the interview, they give us the heads up that they’ve already started working on a second album, so hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for some new music from the band.

In this performance you’ll hear several tunes from their debut record, most of which will be familiar to anyone who has regularly listened to WOXY over the last few months.

View the entire photoset here…

Tracklisting
Goddamn Best
SFO
Science Fiction
-interview-
Multi-Caliber Rifles
Lil’ Rabbits

French Miami – Science Fiction (Live On WOXY.com)
French Miami – Multi-Caliber Rifles (Live On WOXY.com)
French Miami – Lil’ Rabbits (Live on WOXY.com)
French Miami – Goddamn Best (Live On WOXY.com)
French Miami – SFO (Live On WOXY.com)

French Miami – Live On WOXY.com (full session download)

We decided to take in a nearly a full week’s worth of Austin this year, so we set our course for EAR Studios once again, focused on bringing WOXY listeners SXSW 2009. Since we were starting our live broadcasts two days prior to the official start of the music portion of the festival and before most bands hit town, we sought out a few of the city’s finest to begin our week. Being the “Live Music Capitol of the World” and truly one of the globe’s music centers, the local scene in Austin easily ranks with those of cities three and four times its size. Our lineup on Monday was comprised solely of local bands that, collectively, more than held their own against the rest of the week’s schedule of national and internationally based artists.

The first band of our 27 bands, Brazos, formed a few years ago as the bedroom project of Austin’s Martin Crane. Both a well-received debut EP and a follow-up single released in 2007 got people talking, while Crane recruited some help and morphed Brazos into a full-fledged band. Phosphorescent Blues will be Brazos’ debut full-length, scheduled for release later in 2009.

Now a trio, the band boasts a classic indie pop sound driven by shimmering guitar work and Martin’s literate, insightful lyrics, treating us to four unreleased songs, which should feature on the record. However, they opened the session by taking a poem from Adrienne Rich and putting it to their own music.

View the full photoset here

Tracklisting
The Observer
Tell
-interview-
Day Glo
For So Long Now

Brazos – The Observer (Live On WOXY.com)
Brazos – Tell (Live On WOXY.com)
Brazos – Day Glo (Live On WOXY.com)
Brazos – For So Long Now (Live On WOXY.com)

Brazos – Live On WOXY.com (full session download)

For last year’s SXSW Lounge Act sessions, we invited A Place To Bury Strangers to EAR Studios and they definitely turned out to be one of the loudest sessions that week. This year, we followed up with some good friends of APTBS, Atlanta’s All The Saints. Both bands were initially labelmates on Killer Pimp before All The Saints found their debut record Fire On Corridor X reissued through Touch & Go in 2008.

In 2004, Matt Lambert, Titus Brown and Jim Crook relocated to Atlanta, GA from Tuscaloosa, AL. While they had known each other from college, they didn’t start playing music together until they hit Georgia. They worked with producer/engineer Ben H. Allen to craft their debut over a period of almost 2 years. In the interview, the guys say that Ben helped bring them to the next level & used his “pop sensibility to clean things up a little bit” in their recording process.

SXSW week ended up being pretty busy for the trio because not only did they have several shows to play, but they were also on the prowl for a “cozy new home” after the recent announcement that Touch & Go would be closing up shop. While it’s definitely a letdown that the band were unable to release their already completed 2nd album through the label, something tells us they’ll find another great home soon.

They run through a few cuts off their debut and made it through through 2 brand new songs during this performance. They were attempting a 3rd new track called “Half Red Halfway” when they blew an amp in the studio and we had to cut things short. The full podcast of this session has been edited so you’ll only really hear the bizarre moments after this happened, as it took a minute or two during the live session for everybody to figure out what was going on. But, All The Saints literally closed out the day with a bang and we wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Tracklisting
Closer Owner (New-Unreleased)
Farmacia
-interview-
Now Boy (New-Unreleased)
Regal Regalia

All The Saints – Closer Owner (Live On WOXY.com / New-Unreleased)
All The Saints – Farmacia (Live On WOXY.com)
All The Saints – Now Boy (Live On WOXY.com / New-Unreleased)
All The Saints – Regal Regalia (Live On WOXY.com)

All The Saints – Live On WOXY.com (full session download)

Born in Alabama, Dorothy Mae Whitsett (aka Lady Dottie) got her start singing in a gospel choir. She was raised in a family of 14 but it’s hard to imagine that she ever had trouble being heard with her powerful voice. Her musical prowess knows no bounds. She started singing the blues at age 20 and, at one point, even performed jazz standards in a piano bar.

Along with her band The Diamonds, Lady Dottie has become a San Diego staple, serving up a raucous mix of the blues, soul, and rock with three current weekly residencies across the city. Their live performances are legendary, sometimes even crossing the 4 hour mark. They do a mixture of covers & original tunes, many of which surfaced last year on a self-titled debut release from the Hi-Speed Soul label. We were hooked from the moment we heard the band’s single “I Ain’t Mad At Ya” and started spinning a few cuts from the record. When the
possibility of a Lounge Act session was mentioned for our week in Austin, it was one of the easiest decisions of the week.

Lady Dottie proved that she can tear the roof off at any time of the day or night when she showed up for this 9am performance on the last day of SXSW. You’ll hear a full set of original tunes from the band in this session which we hope will turn even more listeners on to this talented group of musicians.

View the entire photoset here…

Tracklisting
I Ain’t Mad A Ya’
Come Along Together
Crazy Bout’ You Baby
-interview-
Livin’ It Up
I’m Ready

Lady Dottie & the Diamonds – I Ain’t Mad At Ya’ (Live On WOXY.com)
Lady Dottie & The Diamonds – Come Along Together (Live On WOXY.com)
Lady Dottie & The Diamonds – Livin’ It Up (Live On WOXY.com)
Lady Dottie & The Diamonds – Crazy Bout’ You Baby (Live On WOXY.com)
Lady Dottie & The Diamonds – I’m Ready (Live On WOXY.com)

With a name like Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band, you have to start with some intrigue. And there is alot more about this band that is both interesting and most importantly, worth hearing. The name was coined by the 11 year old brother of lead singer Benjamin Verdoes, who is named Marshall and is now 13 years old and also happens to be the drummer in the band. The Seattle based band caught the attention of lots of people before they had even released a song with some clever PSA like commericials that spread around the web like wildfire through You Tube.

And when the band was finally ready to let the music out, people were more than ready. The full length debut album from MSHVB is a really excellent album, combining so many of the things we love about indie rock. The band was kind enough to make EAR studios their first stop in town during their first SXSW as a band, ever.

But as you can tell, the results from the session don’t sound like a band that just fell out of a van after a long road trip, but rather of a seasoned group placing another notch on their belts.

View the entire photoset here…..

Tracklisting
Cheer For Fate
Who’s Asking
-interview-
On The Collar
Albatross, Albatross, Albatross

Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band – Cheer For Fate (Live On WOXY.com)
Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band – Who’s Asking (Live On WOXY.com)
Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band – On The Collar (Live On WOXY.com)
Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band – Albatross, Albatross, Albatross (Live On WOXY.com)