Tommy Keene delved deep into his record collection for Excitement at Your Feet ( Second Motion Records), his 10th studio effort and first LP of cover songs, due for release Sept. 17. Those who have followed Tommy’s career know his definitive versions of Alex Chilton’s “Hey Little Child” and Lou Reed’s “Kill Your Sons.” Here he covers iconic artists such as the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Bee Gees — but apart from Donovan’s “Catch the Wind,” none of Excitement’s 11 tracks ever troubled the U.S. singles chart.
Instead, Excitement is largely about the artist’s personal musical inspiration. Tommy pays tribute to his aforementioned British Invasion heroes, but also his East Coast punk/new wave roots with covers of Television and Mink Deville. On a more contemporary note, he also tips his hat to Keene Brothers partner Robert Pollard with a cover of Guided By Voices’ “Choking Tara.” Other gems include Echo & the Bunnymen’s “The Puppet” and Roxy Music’s “Out of the Blue.”
(Excitement is not Tommy’s only covers record to be released this year. His version of Slim Dunlap’s “Nowheres Near” was released as the flip side of Lucinda Williams’ take on Dunlap’s “Partners in Crime.” The very limited 7-inch singles were auctioned to raise money for the ailing former Replacements guitarist. Other “Songs for Slim” participants are the Replacements (in the ’90s, Tommy was part of ex-Replacement Paul Westerberg’s touring band), Jakob Dylan, Steve Earle and others. And in yet other release news, Tommy’s extremely rare first LP, Strange Alliance, has been reissued on vinyl by the Austin-based label 12XU, which also reissued Tommy’s first 7-inch single, “Back to Zero” b/w “Mr. Roland.”)
The covers LP follows 2011’s Behind The Parade. A tour for the fall is in the works.
Adam Franklin posted a teaser video this morning for his new album “Black Horses” which will be out next month on LP and CD. Check out his website here for information:
Emm Gryner announced via her site this week that her new band, Trent Severn will be heading out for a series of live shows. You can check out all the dates in our tour section here, but they will be also singing the National Anthem on Canada day on Parliament Hill. Emm describes the excitement as “shitting her pants with joy’. Congrats on such an exciting honor! Check them out live if they’re heading to your area.
According to their website, our friends in The Latebirds will be opening for Neil Young & Crazy Horse! The show will be at Helsinki Classic Festival on August 5th. Being a special guest for Neil Young is a huge honor so congrats and keep up the good work!
With only a month or so to wait for the new official Adam Franklin & Bolts of Melody album Black Horses – to be released by Goodnight Records – Adam has made available on Bandcamp this album of assorted instrumental mixes of tracks from the previous three albums to whet your appetite, called Drones & Clones.
Dying for some live tracks from Brian Vander Ark? You are in luck. He independently put out a digital live album called “Live from Midland, America”. Check it out on his site and purchase it!
Live From Midland, America (live digital album) (2013)
22 Songs from this incredible night of music that includes a stellar lineup of musicians backing Brian.
Only $10!
This album is only available digitally. Click to order the album via PayPal, a link will be sent to your PayPal email or you can specify an alternate address. Keep in mind, we send the link to you manually so it can take up to 24 hours before we get logged in an email you the link for the download.
New Model Army have finally announced the title of their hotly anticipated 12th Studio album – “Between Dog and Wolf”. The self-produced set was finished earlier this year in Los Angeles with Joe Barresi mixing, (Soundgarden, Queens of the Stone Age, Tool). The album is scheduled for release in September.Justin Sullivan says:
“After a series of purist ‘rock-band-in-a-room’ albums over the last eight years, we felt it was time to do something a bit different and sonically this is the best album we’ve ever made. The title comes from a medieval French expression for dusk – when it’s hard to distinguish between dog and wolf, friend or foe. That sense of contradiction represents the band very well and there’s also something of this sense of transformation in the album”.
Meanwhile the feature-film documentary on the history of the band directed by Royal Television Society Award winning Director Matt Reid, which has been over 3 years in the making, is in the final stages of editing for release in September, coinciding with the album.To celebrate its release the band are proud to announce their biggest tour since the 30th anniversary shows. “It’s always good to be back on the road – and the current atmosphere in the band is the most hungry and upbeat that I can remember. We’re really looking forward to this.”Between Dog and Wolf European Tour – Part 1:October
01 Münster, Jovel
02 Hamburg, Markthalle
03 Berlin, Huxleys
04 Hannover, Capitol
05 Rostock, Mau
06 Gdansk, B90
08 Warsaw, Proxima
09 Krakow, Kwadrat
10 Wrocław, Alibi
12 Dresden, Beatpol
13 Prague, Lucerna TICKETS
14 Budapest, A38 TICKETS
15 Vienna, Szene TICKETS
17 Darmstadt, Centralstation
18 Nürnberg, Lowenzaal
19 Stuttgart, LKA
20 Munich, Backstage
22 Zürich, Komplex 457
23 Geneve, L’Usine
24 Lyon, Ninkasi Kao TICKETS
25 Barcelona, Music Hall TICKETS
26 Valencia, Rock City TICKETS
27 Madrid, Caracol TICKETS
December
05 Cork, Crane Lane Theatre
06 Dublin, Whelans
14 Nottingham, Rock City
19 Paris, Divan du Monde
20 Paris, Divan du Monde
21 Köln, Palladium
22 Amsterdam, Melkweg
We fully expect there to be another tour in 2014 visiting more countries. Between Dog And Wolf Tour Part 2?! Hope to see you all there.
We found a great video by Zigglo Live (#20 specifically) that has three songs by Bettie Serveert off of their most recent album “Oh Mayhem!”, they are pretty good quality. Check it out:
New Video from Adam Franklin from his record “I Could Sleep for a Thousand Years” which was release June 29, 2010. This video continues to expand the repertoire of Adam as well as his previous albums, “Bolts of Melody” and “Spent Bullets”. These three records together help outline a continually budding career. Check out the video and his different records in our store.
More Info on Adam Franklin:
From 1990 to 1998 Adam Franklin was the singer, guitarist and main songwriter for London-based Swervedriver; contemporaries of and label mates with My Bloody Valentine and Ride but with a more adrenalized rock ‘n’ roll sound, showing flashes of Husker Du and Sonic Youth. Then from 1999 to 2006 Adam recorded and toured as Toshack Highway, a gentler but no less inventive folky/electronic/film-soundtracky hybrid, releasing a full album and flurry of EPs, split releases, seven inch singles and the like. In 2007 an album that had started out as the next Toshack Highway release became the first album to be released under the moniker Adam Franklin and was titled Bolts of Melody – which also became the name of Adam’s adaptable, forever-changing and quite formidable live group.
Hello loyal supporters of BLURT, SCHOOLKIDS & SECOND MOTION.
We wanted to reach out to all of you to let you know what has been going on, it has been a while since we have been in touch to some of you since our label has been dormat for the past year…and this is the first time we have reached out to our entire mailing list of all three entities. Bare with us and thanks for reading. So if you are confused on why you are getting this, be aware that this is going out to everyone on all three mailing lists, so hopefully its not confusing… we just wanted to send a big thank you to everyone for the support over the years and wish everyone a happy holiday season as it fast approaches.
So for those of you unaware as of April of this year, we now have three entities in our family, our own Magazine (Blurt Magazine), our own Record Store (Schoolkids Records) and our own Record Label (Second Motion). An interesting coup of music entities, designed to help each other so that we are all not alone in this challenging economy and business.
The event of Record Store Day has single handedly saved mom & pop record stores across the country many of which have seen over a month’s worth of sales in one day, last year saw the best sales day in our store’s 40 year history! We had a line of people waiting outside the door for four hours to get in, a sight to be seen. Here is a photo of the line outside:
We are excited as next week we will celebrate “Black Friday” the day after Thanksgiving which will host a large amount of exclusive, limited edition albums. For a full list of what will be available next week, visit Schoolkids Records website and download the PDF of all titles listed. We also have a digital download store on the Schoolkids site too, you can buy anything you want, not just albums released on our label but even the new Grizzly Bear, Tift Merrit, Muse, U2, Ty Segall, Spider Bags, Velvet Underground, The Beatles Vinyl reissues and amazing new Vinyl Box Set.. you name it, across the board we have it all. Keep in mind the Schoolkids site is new and we are working through some bugs but please visit and shop around, and we would love to hear from you on what you would like to see. In the near future we will have T-shirts as well, so check back as we work at getting things up as fast as we can.
For those who are long time loyal fans of Second Motion & Blurt Magazine, you may be interested in reading some of the local press received once the trilogy was completed back on April 1st, 2012. We are excited about the future and growth we are seeing at the store and hope you join us and don’t mind hearing form us from time to time.
News & Observer: ”
NC State Alumni Magazine:
The Indy Weekly:
Now after a long-winded rundown of what has been going on the last two years for us and bringing this all together for our customers to understand what’s up… that now brings us back around to our label and we are excited to announce two new albums on Second Motion Records in 2013!
