-
Hard Working Americans Live at Kenai Peninsula Fairgrounds on 2014-08-03
Just posting this here for posterity and for your revisiting/listening pleasure. In 2014, Todd Snider missed his plane en route to a Hard Working Americans gig but luckily there was already a tremendous vocalist as well as masterful shredder in the band who was able to step in and sing his heart out. I’ve been holding off on listening to a lot of harder-to-find and newer-to-me Neal stuff because I…
-
Call and Response : A Mix by Michael Feuerstack
Montreal musician Michael Feuerstack was kind enough to curate this week’s playlist for Petal Motel. Earlier this month, he released the album Harmonize the Moon on Halifax’s Forward Music Group. Formerly recording with The Wooden Stars prior to a stint under the nom de plume Snailhouse, Michael recorded this album all on his own at his home in the spring of 2020, pensive, lyric-forward songs that took shape over gentle,…
-
Marjorine – Salton Sea
Salton Sea by Marjorine Nicholas Comaratta spent the last ten years playing in psych bands and experimenting with hardware-based electronic music. When the pandemic hit, he had to deeply re-think his creative approach and figure out a way to balance and marry the worlds he’d been liminally wavering between. On the anniversary of Sgt. Pepper last year, Nicholas spent the night reading about the record and its creation until the…
-
Josh Kimbrough
We interviewed Josh Kimbrough, the fingerstyle guitarist and composer from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Josh put out his fantastic solo debut record, Slither, Soar, and Disappear last year on Tompkins Square, as well as a Christmas EP entitled Yule Chime. Josh grew up in the Chapel Hill-area and became an integral part of the music scene there at an early age. In the interview, he described how his interests and…
-
Mountain Music
Soon I will go to the mountains.. these are the songs I’m excited to listen to there. Last week I watched Without Getting Killed or Caught and was struck again at how the songwriters who write these stories of immense sadness and joy have such a lore that surrounds them which makes these stories even more vivid and compelling, and all the more heart-rending. Often the real-life stories are even…
-
Bill Callahan – Cowboy
When it comes to songwriting, few compare to Bill Callahan. He has a rare gift for telling the truth without much fanfare, gut-punching tenderness and understated depth, prismatic stories of vivid characters sometimes in the guise of objects or animals. Bill captured my attention when I was just a teenager with his brilliant A River Ain’t Too Much Love when he was recording as (Smog) and every release has just…
-
marine eyes – idyll
idyll by marine eyes idyll is the debut record from Los Angeles-based Cynthia Bernard, aka marine eyes. Cynthia is also half of the electronic ambient duo awakened souls. She worked on this album while her children were sleeping or attending virtual school to create this collection of songs that signify the coming of the spring. idyll is a collection of organic materials coming together – field recordings, synthesizers, guitars, and…
-
The Howard Hughs Suite & Geir Sundstøl – Afterglow
Portuguese label The Slow Music Movement rounded up 13 songs by artists (some already Petal Motel faves, some soon to be Petal Motel faves) to make songs that explore their respective folk roots but simultaneously look ahead and incorporate fresh, musical innovations to carve out the Future of Folk. Longtime Petal Motel favorite The Howard Hughes Suite teamed up with Geir Sundstøl to create this illuminated first single from the…
-
Trevor Beld Jimenez – Get Ready to Fly
Petal Motel is pleased to premiere the brand new video for one of our very favorite songs from Trevor Beld Jimenez’s solo album I Like It Here, which came out last November on Curation Records. Back in the early pan days, Trevor did a lot of live streaming and this was one of the first songs we heard and it became an instant classic, in our eyes. The video is…
