O&B Best of 2008-ers Dr. Dog get more popular by the day, thanks to a solid discography and some of the best harmonies around. Despite their ever-expanding acclaim, the band wasn’t too busy to talk with us at this year’s Bonnaroo festival. We sat down with bandmates Toby Leaman and Zach Miller to discuss their latest release, Shame, Shame, and they even dropped some juicy details about new material that they have planned. Continue reading…
In the early 2000s, art/folk/experimentalists Califone played a few shows in which they improvised accompaniment to silent films. The sessions were documented in the Deceleration series, and though the discs are quite good, they seemed like a different side of Califone, rather than a natural path.
Enter 2009 and All My Friends Are Funeral Singers. Tim Rutili set out to make a movie using only cell phone cameras. Things changed, ideas grew, and a feature film was born. This time, it had a Califone soundtrack and Califone stars, and the film itself had the Rutili touch. Funeral Singers is a remarkable, wildly imaginative film that — along with the band’s 2009 album of the same name — sees Rutili at a creative high point. All My Friends Are Funeral Singers premiered at Sundance, SxSW, and Sarasota film festivals. Paste magazine called it one of the highlights of Sundance, a “whimsical movie…full of fascinating characters…directed with a light, deft touch.”
To win a copy of All My Friends Are Funeral Singers, just comment below and include your email address in the form (your email won’t be visible to the public). The winner will be chosen at random on July 12, 2010. Califone tour dates are below…
There are over one hundred bands playing at this year’s Bonnaroo festival, so you might as well face it — you’re not going to see everyone you like. Instead, you’re inevitably going to be faced with a choice that could very well make or break your musical experience.
No one wants to be on the wrong end of the “Oh man, did you see so-and-so’s set? It was mind-blowing!” conversation, silently steaming over why you chose to watch Gaslight Anthem over Edward Sharpe. But don’t despair — after hours of intensive, scientific research, we here at Owl and Bear have come up with a list that guarantees your satisfaction. Continue reading…
Since its inception in June 2002, Bonnaroo has become the premiere North American music festival. This year’s outing will be my third excursion to the farmlands of Manchester, Tennessee — I was there for Wilco and Bob Dylan in 2004, and I returned for Beck and Radiohead in 2006.
Each year challenges attendees to survive three days of camping, sweating, and drinking with 80,000 of your strangest friends. So, in part one of Owl and Bear’s Bonnaroo preview, we’ll let you in on a few secrets to surviving a sweltering — but inevitably fun-filled — weekend at Bonnaroo. Continue reading…
Even if “Lean On Me” has been played a billion times, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a great song. And even though Bill Withers basically retired from music in 1985, the fact that he’s a great songwriter remains.
Aside from the numerous Grammys Withers has won since his retirement (thanks to re-recordings and samples taken from his songs), little news has come from the Withers camp — until now. On May 11, filmmakers Damani Baker and Alex Vlack released “Still Bill,” a documentary about their quest to track him down. Continue reading…