Daily Music - The Austin Chronicle (2024)

The world is seemingly filled with sensitive singer-songwriters agonizing over lost love and metaphorical rivers that are wide and deep. Anne McCue isn’t one of them. OK, she occasionally writes of romance and the mundane parts of life, but the Nashville resident’s ace up the sleeve is her guitar playing. Where most folkies are content to strum an acoustic guitar and leave the heavy lifting to a sideman, the Australian McCue can stand toe-to-toe with nearly any guitar slinger you might name.

Her appearance at the Cactus Cafe last night was a loose-limbed affair. She was breaking in her new rhythm section, locals George Reiff on bass and Rick Richards on drums, but if the slim blonde hadn’t mentioned it was their first show together, you might not have known. Highlighting songs from her latest, Koala Motel, she used every guitar in the battery she brought on stage, from the National steel to the Danelectro 12-string to the lap steel, and each allowed her the freedom to explore a different type of roots music, including swampy Creedence stomp, ethereal blues, and countrified jangle.

Let us stop and reflect for a moment on Booker T. & the MGs. They returned to Austin for the second time this year last Thursday, and it was sweeeeeeeeeeeet soul music by the chairmen of the board. That they returned with William Bell and Eddie Floyd and had Jimmie Vaughan guest on guitar was merely icing on that black-and-white confection of a band.

Plus, I got to meet Eddie Floyd by accident and thanked him for doing the show by telling him about my nephew Tyler, who attends the American YouthWorks program, the recipients of the evening’s proceeds. Naturally, the best part was the schmoozing and seeing unexpected longtime friends like Seventies Playmate Janet Quist. It was such a glittery affair, I fully expected to run into my brother, and voila! There he was, two tables down, surrounded by more beautiful women than Brad Pitt announcing he’s single.

Ten Pounds to the Sound hosts a benefit tonight at Austin Figurative Gallery (301 Chicon) for the No Idea Festival 2008, the annual improv gathering tentatively set for Feb. 14-17 and featuring the Weird Weeds, experimental Japanese guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama, Damon & Naomi collaborator Bhob Rainey, and NYC-based percussionist Sean Meehan. The event spotlights San Francisco oboist Kyle Bruckmann alongside Kurt Johnson and festival organizer Chris Cogburn, as well as a solo performance from local clarinetist Jon Doyle.

For the seventh consecutive year, Mother Egan’s Irish Pub (715 W. Sixth) celebrates the birthday and “Eternal Life” of Jeff Buckley on Saturday, this time benefiting the Capital Area Food Bank and featuring Ryan Holley, Jade Day, and Tina Rodriguez, among others.

TODAY'S EVENTS

Austin Public Pools Opening at Multiple locations

24 Hour Party People at Hotel Vegas

MUSIC | MOVIES | ARTS | COMMUNITY

Saturday night at Ceremony Hall, the New Music Co-op presents Electrons & Phonons: New Music for Instruments and Electronic Sound, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Eight local musicians, including Kirk Laktas of My Education, Doug Ferguson, and Travis Weller, among others, demo found objects and hand-built contraptions as instruments.

Local experimental vet Rick Reed is "the proud owner of a vintage synthesizer called a Synthi AKS. It was made by an English company called EMS sometime around 1971 or so. They only made about 800 of them. It's such an unusual instrument that I thought I might talk a little about both the instrument and the company that made it."

Reed recommends going here to see why this is remarkable. Grab your turtleneck and blazer and be there. 8pm, $10.

Local dance-rock troupe Clap! Clap! is throwing in the towel. “Having eight people, as much as it helped us with the live shows, was too difficult to manage,” says frontman Joshua Mills.

For those who missed the group’s set at Fun Fun Fun Fest, the Clap! has a final round of applause scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 8, at Emo’s with the Always Already, Prayer for Animals, and Haunting Oboe Music. “We want to leave people wondering what comes next,” Mills concludes.

Three years ago today, Ol' Dirty Bastard, not surprisingly, passed away. I doubt he would've ever been spotted flashing euros in his videos.

Saturday night, expect fist-pumping, high-fiving, and possibly even a mantage (that's a montage with guys fist-pumping and high-fiving) at the Scoot Inn's Confidence Rock Hoot Night.
What is confidence rock? Here's a definition from the organizers: "Music that calls to mind a video montage of someone preparing to do something awesome. You get a sudden urge to put on a headband, or you sense that the drummer is only using one arm. Confidence rock more often represents kicking ass than being in love or something lame like that, although sex and its rituals do require a certain confidence."

High five! Providing the boost is the stellar all-local lineup of You Make Engine, Darling New Neighbors, Follow That Bird!, Night Viking, and Fine-Fifteen, among others, grabbing source material from confidence rock luminaries like Journey (natch), Queen, Survivor, and Stevie Nicks, with "parental affirmations during childhood" and "monster trucks" as the more amorphous influences. Starts at 10pm.

San Francisco’s entertainment dens and gilded ballrooms opulated in wake of the 1906 earthquake. Seventy-two hours after a 5.6 ripple undulates the city and surrounding Bay Area - last Friday - Danzig jolts Market Streeet’s Warfield Theatre in the heart of downtown. At least one man sprints for it.

Opened in 1922, the Warfield tops layers and layers of civilized rubble far beneath the underground tunnels and rumored catacombs, and within its phantom of the rock opera walls, up along the red-carpet staircases and through to the balcony, vaudeville still beats for 2,400 exultant pleasure seekers. In the 1940s, my great-grandmother escorted my mother to the movies there. In the 1990s, Guns ‘n’ Roses previewed its Use Your Illusion tour there, Sinead O’Connor put her current tour to shame there, and Ali Farka Toure made blues for the ages and beyond there, all witnessed by that same man hoofing it down Market at the stroke of midnight.

Glenn Danzig had finally produced the glass slipper/sneaker/steel-toed boot mere minutes earlier.