June 2007
In the Fall of 2006, itching to release their first live album, Hot Buttered Rum announced that it would be recording a handful of shows for official release. Live in the Northeast (released May 2007) beautifully reveals the true core of live Butter: music that is forceful without being flashy, serious without being stuffy, intricate without being inaccessible, and diverse without being distracting. The performances were professionally multi-tracked and later carefully mixed by Butter's long-time sound engineer, Josh Osmond.
Of all the great artists making the rounds this year, none have been more ambitious than Umphrey's McGee. They released the follow-up album to Safety in Numbers called The Bottom Half; a risky two-disc endeavor of leftover studio gems and insightful audio fragments. The band has also since embarked on a national tour that will take them all across the nation, including stops at such top festivals as
This was my first time in the old fashioned Theatre of the Living Arts since it has turned into the Fillmore at the TLA, and it was a very interesting bill for me. I am very familiar with the current afrobeat champions from Brooklyn, on the other hand, I've never heard of State Radio so I was interested in seeing a new band.
With the end of the String Cheese Incident looming, keyboardist Kyle Hollingsworth debuted yet another side project aptly called soulside. Of all his collaborations, this one might seem like the most odd of pairings: Kyle, DJ Logic, and Speech of Arrested Development. Flanked by Ryan Jalbert on guitar, Garrett Sayers on bass, and
