Earlier today I was learning Jason Mraz’ uplifting song Make it Mine, now I just saw his cover of the Beatles song In My Life, that I also like to play on guitar. These slower acoustic covers of the song work well for me, I dig Jason’s version. Hopefully his version will bring something new to me playing the song. I just love the lyrics:

Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

That’s how I want to live my life. Here’s Jason ending his Gratitude Café tour with this song:

This week’s song comes from a band composed of four incredibly talented musicians, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. It’s an instrumental piece called Sojourn of Arjuna, which first appeared on Victor Wooten’s solo album What Did He Say?, then on the band’s fifth studio album Left of Cool, released in 1998.

This melody is well-known by Dave Matthews Band fans. Béla Fleck used to interpolate the melody into DMB’s song #41 while on stage with DMB. These days, as Jeff Coffin plays saxophone in DMB, he usually does it. #41 is a song that could basically go on forever, the longest performance of the song is over half an hour. Traditionally, LeRoi Moore used to take a sax solo right after Dave’s vocals. Now Jeff Coffin does it, sometimes interpolating this melody right away. I’ve heard it a million times on #41, and I still like to hear it.

Here’s the whole song by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.

A few days ago I talked about new album releases and the difficulty of spotting all the interesting ones. Well, here’s one that had slipped my radar and was released yesterday: Newton Faulkner’s Rebuilt by Humans. It’s is a follow-up to his debut album Hand Built by Robots. I haven’t been listening to this British singer-songwriter that much, but I’m liking his music more and more. He has a cool overly percussive style to play the guitar (unless he’s just fingerpicking), evident in his live performances. His style bears some resemblance to another young guitarist, Petteri Sariola, who I wrote about last winter.

The new album by Newton Faulkner sounds good, like his last one did, but it’s too early for me to say anything more about it. Here’s a live performance of, If This is It, which is the first single off the album.

Is it just me or has there been lots of new albums released this year? I haven’t made a constant effort to track everything down, but I can say I’ve been more alert than usual due to running the music blog. Considering artists you don’t know that well, new releases don’t make that much difference since there are many songs on the their previous albums new to you as well.

My recent favorite has been the week-old Pearl Jam album Backspacer. Other interesting recent releases include Draw the Line by David Gray and Mason Jennings’ Blood of Man. This biggest new album for me this year was – hands down – Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King by Dave Matthews Band, followed by seeing this incredible live band twice after the album was released. The coolest new artist this year was Zee Avi with her self-titled debut album.

Keeping up with new album releases and show announcements is a tricky business. If you have any tips to share, feel free to comment. I know there are some websites that are supposed to track these for their users, so I’d be interested to hear if any of them works out for you. On Wikipedia, there’s a list of albums released in 2009, and Metacritic has a list of upcoming releases. But these list are always incomplete while containing so much stuff that it’s easy to miss the interesting ones.

Personally, the upcoming album that I’m most looking forward to, is Battle Studies by John Mayer, due to release on November 17. Then there are two live albums that are now in pre-order, En Concert by Jack Johnson and Beautiful Mess –Live on Earth by Jason Mraz. Here’s the first single off the new John Mayer album, it’s called Who Says.

Can’t get anything done, how do you expect that from me…

That’s how Tristan Clopet’s EP Duende starts, and what a cool start to an album that is. This groovy song is called Your Love is a Drug, and it works well as the first song of the album. Otherwise, this wasn’t such an easy album for me to get into, but over time it’s grown upon me and now I can say, it’s actually so good!

And that’s something that happens with good music a lot. First it can be difficult to get into, but then it opens up, little by little. You realize things you didn’t hear at first. Or maybe you heard them just alright, but now suddenly they start making sense to you. Truly one thing I love about music.

The second track, The End of an Era, is based around some chords strummed acoustically, and contains a catchy chorus. The next one, called Let it Go, builds upon a bluesy riff. All over, the songs are musically diverse, and I like Tristan’s singing. Somehow, I also seem to dig the lyrics, although I couldn’t say if they are special in some way.

The fourth track is a quieter one, it’s called Flowers in Bloom. One record that comes to my mind at this point, is Jeff Buckley’s Grace. If you like that one, why not give a shot to Tristan Clopet?

The next song, Concrete Dreams, starts with a catchy riff and then takes the record to a new, more reggaeish direction. The last track, Oceans, starts quietly, but suddenly a groovy bass line takes over, followed by some reggae and many other things. This is my favorite song of the album.

The album can be listened to on Tristan’s homepage. And if you like it, you can buy it on iTunes. Many thanks for Tristan and his team for providing me with the record, along with a cool T-shirt!

Lately it’s been difficult to find time for music blogging. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, I have a long list of things to write about. But I’m taking my time. So to get things started again, here’s a quick song of the week. It’s a song called Rumors from Josh Ritter’s 2007 album The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter, a nice record that I’ve been listening to pretty much lately.

But the music’s never loud enough…

After releasing two independent albums on their own, the Maryland-based band Fiction 20 Down is releasing their debut album Comfortable Fools this Saturday at their show at the Recher Theater in Towson, MD.

The album opens with two catchy tracks reworked from their last (and independent) album, they are called Wind Me Down and Wake Up. It’s good that they’ve included the best songs from their independent release here for more people to hear. The third track is a new one, Top n’ Tails, another catchy song with a nice reggae feel. I love it how this song goes from one part to another, changing. Moreover, catchy is a word I’d use to describe the record – I’ve caught myself singing along the choruses of many songs on this album.

The next track, Gossip & Gunplay, is also reworked from the previous independent album. I’m happy that it also found its way to here. The track after that is called Gossip & Gunplay (extended). It’s a brilliant idea to include the reprise of a good song. However, I wonder why it’s right after the song. Talking about reprises of songs, I would say “the king of them” is Before These Crowded Streets by Dave Matthews Band, which is also one of my favorite albums. There the reprises are placed shrewdly at the ends of the tracks and you don’t have a clue what you are hearing unless you pay close attention to the songs.

Back to this album, all of the following tracks are new ones. My favorite one and also the most versatile track musically is Rock Bottom Blue, the longest track of the record containing a cello accompaniment. I also like the transition to next track, The Common Sense. These two tracks have many similarities and make a good combination.

The next two tracks also have something alike. First Honor Echoes is a quieter one, then Away She Comes takes it a step further. After them, the catchy title track Comfortable Fools closes the album.

With smaller bands you always wonder whether they really got the talent to be successful. These guys do. This is just my personal opinion, but I think they are trying too hard to come up with hit songs – almost every song off this album sounds like it could be one. Often the best songs by the bands I love are not the hit songs but the deeper ones that take time to understand. So, I think what the guys should do more, is making music out of the heart, instead of thinking about a “hit formula.”

Check out Fiction 20 Down’s MySpace page to listen to some of the new songs. And if you’d like to download them, some are available at their promo area with the promo code glimmer01.

I feel Fiction 20 Down has done a good job with their debut album. They have now signed with an entertainment agency to support them at national level in the States, which sounds good. I wish them all the best and hope the new efforts get more people to enjoy their great music and good spirit.

LeRoi Moore at Cricket Wireless Pavilion on Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2007. (Photo by Ryan Eilders)

It’s a year to the day since the sad event of Dave Matthews Band’s beloved saxophonist LeRoi Moore passing away. The band has done a great job honoring his memory with their tour this year, and especially with their new album Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King featuring saxophone parts by LeRoi.

Here’s a tribute video featuring a song called #34, which was the 34th track on DMB’s first major label release, Under the Table and Dreaming from 1994.

I already tweeted about this song some time ago, but I’ve been enjoying playing this acoustic version on guitar so much that I wanted to talk more about it, a nice summer song that it is. Jack Johnson has been a big inspiration for me with the guitar. I found his music at a time when I was struggling with barre chords. Learning some of his songs that he plays with barre chords only, those uncomfortable chord shapes started becoming a second nature.

Sure, you could use a capo and play them with mostly open chords, but then you’d lose some of the sound and feel the left hand muting techniques bring to his songs. My guitar currently has the strings quite close to the fretboard (low action, as it is called), which makes barre chords lighter to play, as well as makes it possible to use some of the percussive techniques Jack uses.

I feel that Jack has gotten many little things right in his songs; they usually work for me very well. I think I have learned a lot about music by listening to his songs, there’s so much space in there that it’s easy to recognize different things.

This version of The Horizon Has Been Defeated is played in D with all open chords. The picking pattern is similar to what he uses in his song The News from the album Brushfire Fairytales, so it was easy to pick up after playing that song. This version of the song made it to the UK release of his album On and On (which my copy is not). But here he plays it on a radio show.

After seeing Dave Matthews Band twice, I didn’t know what more could I expect from a show. Still I was very eager to go check out Amos Lee, who I hadn’t seen before. And I was pleasantly surprised how good the solo acoustic show. Being an intimate one-man show, it was something very different from the energetic full band DMB.

The show took place at Stadtgarten in Cologne. It is a great place for music like this. It’s nice and clean and they a bar at the back to easily get some Kölsch. The opening act was Alin Coen, a young woman from Hamburg who also played guitar and performed a solo acoustic. She sang some of her songs in English, some in German. I thought it was cool to hear some songs in German because I don’t get to hear them so much. She was very well received by the audience.

Amos started the show by playing some chords, and only when he started to sing most of the audience (including me) realized that the song was the first track of his first album, Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight. He seemed maybe a little shy at first, not making much eye contact with the audience. But it quickly turned out that’s just his style to perform, and he really knew how to take his audience. He actually talked pretty much between songs and sometimes made funny remarks even during them. All in all, it was a very entertaining show.

I could recognize most of the songs he played, but I’m not (or wasn’t) that much into his music that I could have sung along beyond some choruses. I had been listening to his studio albums, but the acoustic live versions were something completely new for me. The songs worked well also that way.

Amos’ last studio album, Last Days at the Logde, was released over a year ago, and he was now promoting it in Germany. The first song off the new record was Truth, there he asked the audience to  sing along the chorus, the first one of sing-alongs. Little song Bottom of the Barrel was one of my favorites. “Get right down to the bottom of the barrel and float back on top,” the lyrics just sound so cool when he sings them. Moreover, he has a good voice that suits well for small acoustic shows.

When the encore started, someone from the front row shouted “five more songs,” and that’s what he did. Maybe my favorite song of the whole night was Love in the Lies in the encore, it’s so beautiful. The hit song Arms of a Woman ended the encore. After that, I think the sound guy and the light guy had no idea if he’s going to come up again. People just clapped, they didn’t brighten the lights or put on the house music. After several minutes Amos finally came to play two more songs, obviously baffled that people were still clapping.

It ended up being quite a long show, which was good. The audience was so excited, even though he’s not the biggest name in Germany. One good thing about the German audience is how quiet they are during the songs. I go pretty much to small shows at bars, so I’m used to hearing chatter all the time, but there people were really listening.

My friend Susi also taped the show and the recording can be found on Try JM downloads area as MP3. You’ll also find the setlist there. Taping is pretty rare in these parts of the world, and it was funny standing next to a taper because you couldn’t talk to her during the show. But it was okay, since the music was so good that you could just listen.