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The kind of country music Kristen P. (KP) Hawthorn creates abandoned the mainstream a long time ago. Not all country songs have twang, and the artists who create them don't all wear cowboy hats, flannel shirts and denim, and hail from Texas or the deep South, meaning California native Hawthorn isn't Miranda Lambert. She offers a distinctly feminine perspective to a heavily male dominated genre without projecting any kind of tough girl image in her music, and that is refreshing. Hawthorn's debut solo set, Til The Glitter End , is being marketed as country music - its nine tracks were recorded in Nashville where she's now based - but anyone who believes the star sounds more like a 70s, Laurel Canyon, singer-songwriter can be forgiven. The SoCal influence is apparent in her sometimes oblique and introspective lyrics, traits most conventional country songs aren't known for. You'll also find the canyon's impact in her musically astute arrangement...

Until last night I've never been to the Colonial Theater in the very hip town of Phoenixville, PA. It's a historic movie house that dates back to 1902. Today, it still shows films - it's home to the locally famous  Blobfest - and it's also an occasional concert venue where I saw The Jayhawks for the third time. Unlike a lot of older sites, the Colonial has comfortable seats and clean, modern restrooms, so if you visit there you're off to a good start. The concert hall walls are peeling and could use some paint, but that's a minor quibble completely offset by those two more important positives. You also have a good view from everywhere. We were in the second row of the balcony, close enough to take a good photo like the one above, but not close enough to destroy your hearing. The current Jayhawks are lead singer, electric and acoustic guitarist and co-founder, Gary Louris and original member Marc Perlman on bass. They...

Here's an old post from ten years ago. It's been significantly revised and republished today as a new Almost Hits entry along with its original comments. The Supremes roared out of Detroit in 1963 with the classic Motown sound that young people all over America craved. It began their reign as the most successful female group of all time, a crown they held for decades. Unfortunately, The Spice Girls (ugh!) eventually sold more records and stole their throne. Signed by Berry Gordy in 1961, the trio made seven earlier attempts to have a hit, but until "When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes" reached number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 near the end of 1963 - just a few weeks ahead of the British Invasion - they had little success. After that, Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard and Diana Ross were off to the races. Over the next few years, they placed twelve #1 singles on the Hot 100. "Lovelight" had the vibrant accessi...

Roy Orbison passed away not long after Traveling Wilburys   Vol. 1  was completed, but the remaining quartet of George Harrison, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and Bob Dylan carried on. Even without their operatic voiced, pop singing bandmate the Wilburys were still the most star-studded, rock supergroup of all time. Orbison was easily the strongest singer of the five, and the former Sun Records prodigy was definitely missed when it came time to record the band's follow up. Both Harrison and Lynne sing well enough to get the job done - but neither one is outstanding - and at times Petty and Dylan can sound a little similar to each other. To play a joke on their fans, the ex-Beatle - the Wilburys' founder and nominal leader of the band - decided to name their second and final album Vol. 3 . It wasn't a hilarious joke, but it received a few light chuckles from me and some other fans. That light-hearted album title kind of matches the music found on...

Good time rock 'n roll isn't dead yet, and The What Four, a new, Southern California quartet (with two additional background singers providing support) proves it. I normally don't rely on an artist's own words to describe their music, but there's no way I can top the marvelous and deliberately cumbersome description The What Four posted about themselves on their website :  "Blending 60s girl-group harmonies with gritty guitars, whip-smart lyrics, and anthems for the romantically over-it and perpetually underestimated that will hit you right in the nostalgia. The record captures the quiet desperation of suburban adolescence—awkward crushes, misfired confidence, and the defiant joy of being a little too much." Visually and musically, The What Four may remind listeners of The Stray Cats, The B-52s, The Go-Go's, Blondie, and a few 60s garage rock bands on their spirited, four-song, debut EP, Four (The Record) . It's po...

The original Indigenous were a young, blues-rock, family band who released Things We Do , their national debut album, in 1998. The lineup included two brothers, their sister, and a cousin. They grew up together on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota and are members of the Nakota tribe. As a unit, they made four more albums and two EPs before calling it quits in 2006. After the split, singer and guitarist Mato Nanji continued using the Indigenous name with new sidemen while his family pursued other endeavors. On this excellent disc Nanji was supported by his brother, Pte, who played bass. Sister, Wanbdi, was the group's drummer. Their cousin, Horse, added color with his percussion work. The quartet's musical career was heavily influenced by the siblings' father, Greg Zephier, who was a musician in the 60s and 70s and later became an advocate for Native American rights. He also served as his kids' music teacher. Zephier was a bi...

Here are my thoughts on Bruce Springsteen's  Born to Run that many people are celebrating this week because of the 50th anniversary of its release. I always liked, but never loved, The Boss. It took me until I saw him live at the Spectrum (R.I.P.) in Philadelphia during his 1984  Born in the U.S.A. tour to completely win me over. It's true, there's nothing like seeing him in concert. Most of my resistance to Springsteen came from what I believed at the time was his totally unappealing singing voice after listening to his first two critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful LPs, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.  and The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle . WMMR-FM, 93.3, in Philadelphia played those two albums constantly along with an unreleased version of "Fever" so maybe I just learned to tolerate his voice after hearing it so often, but I also believe he improved. By the time Born to ...

I'm one of the many music aficionados who have deservedly spewed venom on Yoko Ono over many decades for her awful music but never for breaking up The Beatles. She may have greatly annoyed three of them, but she isn't the reason they disbanded. Instead, you should blame most of the Liverpool four's internal friction on the death of Brian Epstein. Without him, the Fabs' business affairs became tangled in a fatal, downward spiral that caused hard feelings among them for a long time. But today, I'm willing to cut Ono a little bit of slack regarding her music. When she wasn't striving to be as musically outrageous and avant-garde as possible John Lennon 's muse sometimes wrote and recorded work that wasn't too far out of the mainstream. The primary criticism on most of her songs from Double Fantasy ,  Milk and Honey  and beyond comes from her completely unappealing singing voice, not from her songwriting. Every Man Has a Woman  isn'...