Most teenage indie rock fans show their devotion by etching the names of their favorite bands on their notebooks or schoolbags. For Kirby Campbell, the best way to express his love of local underground rock was to start a music festival. In 2008, the then-high school senior founded the Geronimo festival, a single-day, multi-venue event [...]
MyNameIsJohnMichael is nothing if not ambitious. The band spent 2008 writing, recording, and releasing a new song every week of the year—52 total. The arduous process transformed a singer/songwriter’s pet project into a sextet playing Springsteen-sized indie rock. Completing the 52 songs also gave the band a wealth of confidence and experience, both of which [...]
Concept albums are risky business for any artist. Viewed by some as masterful and others as pretentious, the concept album is one of rock’s more polarizing landmarks. Luckily, local indie rock favorite Glasgow manages to mostly avoid self-importance on its third release, On Earth. On Earth is set up thematically to loosely follow the history [...]
With an economic meltdown at home and endless wars abroad, the America of the early 21st Century is beginning to look a lot like the America of the 1930s. And with folksy, Americana-influenced indie rock bands such as Cold War Kids and Delta Spirit rising to the national spotlight, the sounds of that bygone era [...]
Whenever anyone—New Orleanian or otherwise—hears the name “Blaine Kern,” images of elaborate Mardi Gras floats typically come to mind. Barry Kern, Blaine’s son and President and CEO of Mardi Gras World, is looking to associate the Kern name with year-around entertainment. “We don’t want people to think of us strictly as Mardi Gras World,” says [...]
“We’d like to model ourselves after Ben Harper,” says Revivalists’ drummer Andrew Campanelli. “He’s in the jam scene, but he doesn’t do 30-minute jams, and he writes well-written songs that are appreciated by different crowds. He can play Bonnaroo and Voodoo.” While many of New Orleans’ young rock bands are comprised of college students, most [...]
“I was having drinks with a friend,” recalls singer/songwriter John Michael Rouchell of MyNameIsJohnMichael, “and he called me lazy. He said I should put out a song every week of 2008.” A dare over drinks is hardly the ideal start to such a commitment, but Rouchell is now pumping out a new song weekly. He’s [...]
