Mark Lanegan can back up the best of ‘em or belt it out on his own, and his new album Blues Funeral is creeping over the horizon on its way to an early February release. He’ll be performing with the Mark Lanegan Band at the Echoplex on February 9 and you can get some tickets here … or you can win them from us! Just email a YouTube of some prime old-time blues song that’ll make our hearts stop to us at rsvp@larecord.com with subject BLUES. Skip James? Robert Pete Williams? Deal ‘em out! Starkest and sparest wins!

Here at L.A. RECORD we like to wake up on groggy mornings with a big bowl of FUZZ, and that’s exactly what Danny Holloway specializes in. He’s one of the toppest DJs in L.A., and one of the residents at the occasional FUZZ night, in which you will listen as the other toppest DJs in L.A. drag out wrinkly old 45s with one unbelievable psychotic psychedelic freakout per. On Jan. 27 at the Echo, FUZZ is presenting the 13th Floor-ified (Easter Everywhere era) psych rock of Strangers Family Band plus a set by Holloway that will strip every hair from your head. It’ll be $10 at the door but … wanna go for free? Easy! Just send the most fuzzed-out song you can find on YouTube to us at rsvp@larecord.com with subject FUZZ! Fuzziest wins! Have fuzz! And see you fuzz!

Download: CB Brand x Big Freak Mixtape

The band CB Brand DJs Big Freak on Monday and will be playing their first Troubadour show with Vetiver and Waters on Wednesday, so they have made this mixtape to get you ready for their classically cracked ’70s country—fans of Townes Van Zandt, Billy Joe Shaver and even Waylon, Merle and Willie should save some space for a little extra whiskey.

01. Don Rollins “The Good Bartender”
02. Billy Briggs and the XIT Boys “The Sissy Song”
03. John Wayne “You Tell ‘Em, Duke!”
04. John Phillips “Midnight Deadline Blastoff”
05. Michael Kelly Brewer with Steve Scharren “Lord, I Need A Drink”
06. CB Brand “Let’s Go Get Stoned” (Sparky version)
07. Merle Haggard “Rainbow Stew”
08. Marc Benno “Me And A Friend Of Mine”

Download: True Widow “Skull Eyes”

True Widow tumbled out from the heart of Texas with a knack for the reverberatory arts. Their ‘stonegaze’ sound, as some call it, sounds a bit like a cool soothing rockslide. Their newest album—the improbably titled As High As the Highest Heavens and from the Center to the Circumference of the Earth—was released on Kemado and they will play the New Weird America Fest this Saturday at Nomad. Win tickets here! They speak to us from deep within a mineshaft somewhere in the land that cellular service forgot. This interview by Matt Dupree.

I know people want to know how you came up with the band name, but I’m not going to ask that. How’d you get the name Slim?
Slim Starks (drums): That’s older than the band name! I used to run around with a guy named Richard, when we were like, 15 or something. This really close friend of mine, who still has this habit of nicknaming everybody, he dubbed us as Rico and Slim. So we ran around as Rico and Slim and it just evolved from that. That was when I started getting into rock music, so everybody that met me knew me as Slim. The same guy that gave me the nickname, we’ve got a screenprinting business that’s been going since ’99. Everybody that’s met me via that’s known me as Slim. It’s just stuck. When we started doing press releases and all that shit for Kemado, it was just one of those things. They all knew me as Slim.
What’s your given name?
Timothy! Yeah, how bout that? But we’re all fans of nicknames. Nicknames are a part of life. We’ve all got ‘em—different nicknames for different situations. Like if I get too drunk, and I’m fin’ to get agro, they call me ‘Slam.’ Nicole’s got an alter-ego named ‘Lala’ when she’s loaded. Dan’s got a few alter-egos, depending on what kind of intake he’s on. Keeps it fresh! And who wants to be calling somebody’s name all the time, anyway? Like, my parents call me that. I collect all sorts of nicknames. My friend from L.A. came to visit me at the print shop I live at—it has the business and everything, it’s all in the same warehouse. I never really go out much when I’m home. They dubbed me the ‘Print Troll.’ So I’ve got that. I’ve got ‘Wizard’ from a few people.
Is that the beard?
The beard, the hair. I don’t know—I like magic!
You guys got a pretty sick write-up in Pitchfork. Did you feel suddenly more legitimate the day afterward?
Hell no! We weren’t expecting anything like that, or at least that kind of attention that fast. But it doesn’t really have any bearing on us either way, man. This is our little pet project. It’s more about what we wanna do and how we feel about shit than how people are responding to it. But fortunately people have been responding to it good, so we’re able to get out and play this shit live and come see you guys!
You’re gonna be playing with some pretty heavy acts. Is that unusual for you?
We’ve been fortunate that we’ve really been able to mix it up. We’ve done heavy shows before—our buddies Saviours, we played with them a few times on some really heavy lineups. And we’ve done shows with MV & EE, who are really mellow stuff. So we’re kinda all over the place. It’s a blessing and a curse as far as that goes. But it’s been really cool, man—we don’t get stuck listening to the same type of opening bands everywhere we go. Seems like everyone who’s putting these shows together has a different idea of what they think would be the best thing for us. It’s been pretty cool to just sit back and see how it plays out, you know? Sometimes people are WAY fuckin’ off, but usually it makes for a good night.
Is that because some people think you’re a drone act that’s slower? And others think you’re more of a shoegaze act with crazy, sludgy riffs?
That’s the sense I get. They go for one or the other—there’s no middle. When we go home we try and mix it up. We’ll have a guy open a show that does old bluegrass—mountain music—and then have a metal band play after him and then kinda bring it back down at the end of the night. It’s just fun to mix it up. A lot of bands don’t have that, or aren’t afforded that opportunity. And the coolest thing is that we in the band all have our own taste in music, although we all appreciate a lot of different shit. For some reason, with the True Widow project, we’ve all been able to play with bands that we’ve admired in the past of all different sounds. Every night, at least one of us is stoked on who we’re playing with.
Have you gotten really good at nodding along to people trying to explain your music to you?
Ha ha—yeah, I’m pretty much to that point now. It didn’t get like that on the first record, but there wasn’t nearly the attention. Honestly, certain stories get run and re-run and … yeah, so… you just get to that point. But it is cool to listen to people just take the time to vocalize their thoughts. Some people will surprise you—you might get turned on to a new band. I’ve listened to so many bands now because people thought we sounded like them. Bands that I’d heard of but never listened to, so we’ve actually found some cool music that way. It has gotten a little weary, just because it seems like there are lot of people that are adamant in their opinions on True Widow. If they don’t like it, it’s the worst thing ever. If they do like it, its because it reminds them of a mashup of these two favorite things or whatever.
It’s like a Rorschach test.
Yeah—looking back at yourself.
Or an exercise in poetically describing a sound.
Yeah—the gauge of the strings and the hotness of everything. There’s definitely been some of that surrounding us. It’s fun to see where people go with that. Most of the stuff is detuned to some degree, so its pretty loose and sludgy sounding. Live it’s even more so than the record. There’s no filters there—it’s just raw. But none of us take it that seriously. When we see people getting amped up about little things like you’re talking about its like, ‘Really? I turned a knob on a string. That’s all I did.’ But that person had a deep connection with the music that allowed their mind to wander and go to deep places. On that level, I think its pretty cool when people start to rant about little things. It’s like ‘Wow.’ Part of me thinks you gotta have something better to do but part of me is like it must’ve really struck a chord. There’s been a lot of questions about tuning. A lot of questions about the song ‘Skull Eyes.’ The beginning of ‘Skull Eyes’ is actually a guitar. Everybody just assumes it’s a bass when they review the song just because it’s so heavy. Then when they find out its not a bass but a guitar they really freak out. Especially if they were already interested in the specifics of all that, then they really go apeshit. Its weird—it’s not like we’re in some mad scientist’s lab creating this shit. It’s way more haphazard. Get ripped and see what we can put together that might not or shouldn’t go together, and then if it works try and do something with it. We let shit fall where it does. Then after the fact you get all these inquiries: ‘What were you doing to make this sound?’ I don’t know, man, it’s the only pedal we had! We only had one cord, so we couldn’t plug anything else in! No grand plan there!
Speaking of grandeur, you came up with possibly the most epic title for an album… ever.
Yeah, it’s pretty beastly. We all have a light side and a serious side. That album title resonated for all of us on both levels. Part of it was there was a genuine interest in what that title means and how it works toward what we were trying to do with this record. Aside from that, it’s just been a blast seeing how people respond to it. All the press shit having to type it out over and over, its almost become comical.
Is this another example of you guys going with your instinct and getting a really unexpected response?
People can research it and find out what it means or just take it for what it is. A lot of people think its just another inside joke, which we do have a few of, but that’s our style. It’s cool, it has meaning, and it makes us laugh. I don’t think we’re going to win any awards for longest album title, though.
You’re gonna be playing with Red Sparowes—I think they’ve got you beat on length.
That lineup is killer! We’ve got friends in Night Horse. We’re looking forward to partying with them. California’s been really tough to get to, which is why we were glad when this show came around. We’ve got a lot of friends out there through the band so we were just happy to get a chance to come out and see everybody even though we weren’t going to be doing a bunch of shows. It’s looking like we’re gonna be pretty busy for the next year. And where we’re at with the band, we really just want to get it out in front of people, you know? That’s making itself a reality, so we’re just gonna roll with that and see what happens.

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS TRUE WIDOW WITH RED SPAROWES, NIGHT HORSE, RADIO MOSCOW, THE FUCKING WRATH, IDES OF GEMINI AND SPECIAL GUESTS ON SAT., JULY 2, AT NOMAD GALLERY, 1993 BLAKE AVE., LOS ANGELES. 2 PM / $10. TEEPEERECORDS.COM. WIN TICKETS AND A SPECIAL TEE PEE VINYL PACK HERE OR BUY TICKETS HERE.

Download: Grass Widow “Shadow”

(from Past Time available now from Kill Rock Stars)

San Francisco trio Grass Widow are self-taught musicians and creators of their own record label and bring more than just your average DIY action to the post-punk table. It could quite possibly be love at first listen. That is, if you’re into a Kinks-meets-Neo Boys inspired sort of thing. Which you should be. Hannah, Lily, and Raven talk to us about not being dudes, their thrift store audio collages, and an obsessive-compulsive desire to take pictures of everything they bring on tour. They play tonight at Psycho Beach Party. This interview by Chelsea Green.

Was there ever a specific concert or musical experience that made you decide to get involved with music?
Hannah Lew (bass/vocals): I feel like the kind of music that we do is really based on our personal needs as artists to express ourselves. We’ve really come to music from a personal desire to play, and for the enjoyment that we get from it.
Raven Mahon (guitar/vocals): Growing up in Albuquerque, I did go to some punk shows in high school but there were a lot of stadium bands that came through. My first concert that my mom took me to was Tori Amos. [laughs] That kind of stuff isn’t really approachable or accessible so I never thought, ‘Maybe one day I’ll be on the big stage.’
Lily Maring (drums/vocals): It wasn’t until I went to shows at this coffee shop in my small town where there were all these dude punk bands playing, and that didn’t feel very accessible to me either. That actually made me feel more like I wanted to start playing music, and so I started inserting myself into that scene even though I stuck out like a sore thumb because I wasn’t playing in a punk band. I wasn’t a dude then, I’m not a dude now. So I didn’t feel very inspired or empowered to play music at that point, but I felt like I had to because there was this monopoly on the scene. When I moved to Olympia, there were all sorts of rad ladies starting bands with their friends, playing in their living rooms. Those are the shows where I learned how to play in a band, and I feel like that was the most empowering experience, to just be in this really organic community. That turned into touring basements and living rooms on the West Coast, and that’s how I met Hannah and Raven.
What was it like being an all-girl band?
H: I played in bands with boys when I was younger and I don’t know if it was a gender thing, but I never felt extremely empowered to play instruments. We really learned how to play instruments the way we do—together. We put a lot of emphasis on musicianship. That’s what we care about, so I think it’s really unfortunate when our gender is the first thing that people talk about. In the sphere of how hard we work, it’s ridiculous that it would be the thing that’s noticed. It’s more of society as a whole that wants to compare women. We’re individuals and we’re just trying to express that in what we do.
R: It kind of depends on the context, if we want to draw attention to that or not. If we’re in San Francisco, or L.A., or New York, the conversation doesn’t necessarily come up or seem to be as important to talk about gender. We want to acknowledge and celebrate our gender, but in ways that we want, and not feel pigeon-holed. Every year we play the lunch time show at the Bay Area Girls Rock Camp and the conversation with the campers—who are girls ages 8-18—can be geared towards gender. It does feel important to promote girl power in that context because as a young woman growing up—even now—objectification is still pretty real. Even in the realm of rock music.
H: I think that there are a lot of grey areas within the idea of what it means to be female. There are a lot of different ways to express femininity, and there are some limiting descriptions that we’ll often hear. For example, the term ‘girl group’ describes one type of woman musician because it’s referencing the time. I think there’s a lot of different ways to express what it means to be a woman playing music. I’m just glad that we’re able to express our femininity through our music in a way that’s really us, and really different amongst the three of us, because we’re three different women, which is a big part of who we are too.
L: I don’t know if the whole novelty of girls playing in bands is over yet. It’s easy to feel like we want it to be. The popularity of Girls Rock Camp speaks to that push of normalizing it, and making it more accessible. But it still exists, and it is really important, because girls still don’t feel empowered in a lot of ways.
H: When we all started playing together I don’t really feel like we had a lot of big positive female role models. We made for ourselves what we needed to hear, and that’s sort of our M.O. with writing songs because we write songs that we need to hear, and we sing messages that we want to hear ourselves say. I would just be happy if what women got from what we did was that they wanted to do their own thing too.
In doing your split cassette with Rank/Xerox, you had mentioned in a previous interview that you take old cassette tapes from thrift stores and record over them during your practices, sometimes leaving remnants of the original tape on your recordings.
R: Before we graduated to a computer recording our practice, we would just do it on a cassette recorder and we would just get old cassettes like ‘Bambi’ or ‘Motivational Speaking’ or ‘Improve Your Vocabulary’ tapes, and in between the takes of the ideas and songs we were recording, we would leave little snippets. It was never really planned out, but there was always funny little vignettes in between our songs. When we put together our side of that split, theirs turned out totally immaculate but ours was kind of pieced-together ideas and little sound bites from these thrift store tapes.
Hannah, are you going to be directing more Grass Widow videos? And Shannon and the Clams?
H: Yeah, I have some ideas stewing for a really ambitious Grass Widow music video to coincide with the release of our LP. I just finished a Shannon and the Clams video, and I’m working on another, and also a Yellow Fever video. I have some stuff coming down the pike for sure.
You’re all heading off to Europe after your show in L.A. What are you looking forward to?
R: We played a UK tour that was booked by Chris Tipton at Upset the Rhythm in London. We played in three cities last October that we’re returning to—Amsterdam, Berlin, and Paris. We booked it ourselves this time, so it’s been a lot of work, and we’re not really sure how it’s gonna work out in the end. People have emailed us in the past year or two with requests to come and play, so I wrote them and through that network, found bookers and promoters in other cities. A lot of the places we’re playing are squats and galleries, informal show spaces. We did spend a little bit of time there last October so we kind of got a feel for the whole scene there. It seems pretty different than touring in the US. You really get taken care of. People make sure you’re fed and have a place to stay. We definitely felt people were really generous and hospitable in the U.K., and we’ve heard that Europe is even more so.
L: It’s really exciting because this tour is coinciding with our first release on this label that we’re doing ourselves now. It’s our first 7”. We’ve put an EP out before but it was a 12” and it was on a different label. So now we’re starting our own label, and it’s called H.L.R.—you can guess what that stands for. We’re picking it up from the plant this week. It’s kind of like our release tour, and it’s in Europe. So we’re definitely being ambitious right now—sticking our necks out there and hoping for the best. You kind of have to do things for yourself, and if shit isn’t working out, and if you don’t want to work with someone to book your tour, and if you wanna put out your own record even if it’s gonna put you in the hole, if it’s what you really care about, that’s the way you’ve got to do it, and that’s the way we’ve been doing it.
H: This was probably our most positive recording experience ever because we got to record the vocals altogether at the same time, which we hadn’t done before. Also we had the opportunity to record with Phil Manley at Lucky Cat Studios in San Francisco. That was a really great experience. This new release is also a part of a series we’re doing called Common Chord Series. We’re doing collaborative pieces that we’re going to release in a series of 7’’s and this is the first. It has two covers on the B-side—one is a Neo-Boys cover, which is one of our favorite bands, and the other is a Wire cover. Also, we didn’t really use any effects. We used the natural reverb of the room we recorded in. It was a really good experience and we’re really excited to share the 7” that comes out on May 31st. We’re actually picking up the record the day of our show in L.A., so that’s really exciting.
R: We haven’t talked about whether we’re gonna sell them at the show. Hmm …
H: We’ve been talking about touring a lot, and it’s funny because the first single called ‘Milo Minute’ is on the A-side of our 7” and is about being on tour. To coincide with that, when we were at SXSW I had all of us lay out everything we brought on the trip and I drew our belongings on different pieces of paper, overlapped the three drawings, and that’s what the album cover is. It’s very much about touring.
What were some of the things in those pictures that you definitely need on tour?
L: It was mostly clothes.
H: Tampons!
R: You know what we do love on tour? Coffee. We try to be as healthy as possible. But mostly those drawings just consist of clothes and instruments.
H: I don’t know why—it’s just some kind of obsessive compulsive desire I’ve always had to take everything I own and lay it out in a meadow and just take a picture of it all and be like, ‘This is everything I own.’ I think we started to do that in our music video for ‘Fried Egg.’ We all brought 10 outfits and we changed. I got some of it out of my system, but I really feel like this was doing it in a controlled way without taking everything out of my house. There’s something really great about traveling and having the bare minimum—and when we’re on tour, we just have our instruments, and each other. And some socks!

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS GRASS WIDOW WITH X-RAY EYEBALLS AND DIRT DRESS ON FRI., MAY 20, AT PSYCHO BEACH PARTY AT THE BLUE STAR, 220 E. 15TH ST., DOWNTOWN. 9 PM / $10 / 18+. LARECORD.COM/SHOWS. ADVANCE TICKETS HERE!

MP3: Holy Ghost “Do It Again”

—Daiana Feuer

L.A. RECORD + Royal Elastics + Pigeon John are giving you a chance to win a pair of Royal Elastics shoes! Pigeon John is a L.A.-based rapper with four albums under his belt, with his latest Dragon Slayerout now on Quannum Projects. To enter, tweet @RoyalElastics @dothepigeon @larecord with a photo of a baby pigeon!

Dream come true news of the week: Cha Cha Lounge will be celebrating the launch of shop.chachalounge.com (and Suspect zine!) with a live silkscreening party on Tuesday, Sept. 21, and for one night only you’ll be able to get L.A. RECORD pint glasses! Come by and either buy one of several custom new shirts or bring your own shirts-or hoodies or tableclothes or wedding dresses or anything!-and get them screened while-u-drink! And yes, that is the eagle from the city seal eating a street dog while hanging out on a boom box above the lizard people who live underneath the downtown library.