Classic Rock, Classic Country: As per usual, Willie Nelson will play two nights at The Backyard for both locals avoiding SXSW and tourists willing to skip one night of showcases to see Austin's most enduring music legend. Willie's shows are tentatively scheduled for 3/14 and 3/15, and will go on sale sometime in February. In another move designed to access some tourist dollars, Direct Events has announced a relatively intimate show with Van Morrison at the Austin Music Hall on Tuesday, March 11. Van the Man apparently hasn't heard about the looming recession, as tickets are priced from $102 to a whopping $257. ...

Image courtesy of The Pinker Tones’ MySpace The Pinker TonesTuesday, November 13Beauty Bar (7th St. at Red River)$5, 11 p.m.[info] The Pinker Tones had to cancel their show at the Mohawk in July but the Barcelona based duo of Mister Furia (Salvador Ray) and Professor Manso (Alex Llovet) return to Austin this Tuesday, fresh on the heels of a new remix record titled More Colours!. The Pinker Tones have two prior full-lengths, and compositions for......

As most of us know, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) is making it harder and harder for Internet radio producers to finance their stations. Retroactive royalty fees and increased future fees are forcing webcasters into a corner: the fees increase both per-listener and per-song rates, and are based on audience size, increasing as listeners do. This proposed scheme would put public radio stations that stream their broadcasts and web-based radio programming at a great disadvantage......

Emo’s has built a reputation as one of the city’s most identifiable and prolific venues over the last decade or so. In fact, it has been fifteen years since the infamous live music spot opened its doors. This weekend, the club kicks off a celebration with events spanning eight hot and sweaty summer evenings. In between opening night festivities featuring The Riverboat Gamblers and 2nd weekend reunions like Glorium comes a Saturday night line-up fit......

Damien Rice will perform tonight at Bass Concert Hall in support of his most recent work, 9, an album wrought with angst, anger and (not surprisingly) sexual frustration. Last year, we reviewed the album and were pleased with Rice for not letting the follow up to a brilliant work (his previous full-length, O) suffer the slump: Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice has carried quite a weight the past four years. Ever since his debut release,......

It's been nearly five years since an appearance on KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" rocketed Alexi Murdoch's songs into Honda commercials,The O.C., and Garden State. The teen drama association doesn't do justice to the careful and serious tone of Murdoch's music, which he recorded and released independently despite multiple offers from the major labels. After a long silence since his Four Songs EP, Murdoch's 2006 full-length debut Time Without Consequence didn't pander to casual fans.......

One of our favorite radio shows around is Morning Becomes Eclectic, the weekday program produced by Santa Monica public radio station KCRW. Affable Englishman Nic Harcourt, host of MBE and music director at KCRW, has helmed the program since 1998, introducing his listeners to some of the best new bands around the world while playing a range of genres that encompasses progressive pop, world beat, indie rock, jazz, African, reggae, classical and more. You......

Sub Pop indie heroes The Shins are coming back to Austin right before SXSW shenanigans kick off. The folksy foursome just released their latest album, Wincing the Night Away, last month, and have since garnered heaps of critical and general acclaim. Noticeably fuller in production quality, the record exudes the same spectral, sunshiny pop brilliance of their prior works. We're diggin' it. For those of you more hardcore enthusiasts, get in on the presale......

I'm troubled, I'm dissatisfied. I'm Irish! - Marianne Moore Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice has carried quite a weight the past four years. Ever since his debut release, O, in 2002, critics and fans have wondered how the tortured troubadour would follow up one of the most highly-regarded albums of the past five years. “For me, it was like a challenge to make something that I felt was better than the first record,” Rice recently told......

Los Angeles indie pop/rock band Goldspot just announced a last-minute show at Maggie Mae's this Thursday Wednesday evening. Packed with bubbly melodies and near-skittish guitar hooks, their full-length debut, Tally Of The Yes Men, effuses the sort of buoyant charm that seems to come naturally to those dwelling oceanside. KCRW's Nic Harcourt (Morning Becomes Eclectic) called them his "favorite discovery of 2005." [Myspace] [Homepage] Goldspot Thursday, October 5th Wednesday, October 4th Maggie Mae's 9pm......

Only one more week and I'll be waking up in Austin, ready to put on an entire bottle of sunscreen and head out to Zilker Park for my favorite music festival in the world. I know you guys may have thought I forgot about you - but I've been hard at work on my Austin City Limits Festival Preview Page, trying to wrap up the project before the festival actually starts. From today through......

If you've spent any time in Los Angeles or on the internet for that matter, chances are you are probably familiar with public radio station KCRW and particularly the shows “Morning Becomes Eclectic” and “Weekend Becomes Eclectic.” Undoubtedly two of the best radio shows anywhere. What makes these shows so outrageously great is Nic Harcourt, who hosts the shows and also works as KCRW’s music director. Harcourt has an uncanny ability to go through......

Austinist imagines Parisian chanteuse Keren Ann to be the musical lovechild of Jacques Dutronc and Eva Cassidy, which is to say an intercontinental pairing of jazz and folk/country. On our iPod otherwise congested with frenetic, post-everything tunes, her songs strike a perfect, delicate balance: between nostalgia for a simpler time and place none of us will ever know, and a sensual promise of heated trysts within shrouded bedrooms. Her voice conveys a perfectly disaffected......