Last night on my favorite radio program, Dead to the World, Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann and his son Justin Kreutzmann gave an interesting interview. In the interview Bill talks about his approach to drums and his style. He also talks about meeting Pigpen, Jerry Garcia and playing with Trey Anastasio and Mike Gordon (as Serial Pod). Bill also spends some time describing his digital artwork which you can check out here. Mike Gordon calls in for part of the interview as well.  You can stream the show here or read the transcript from the interview here.

One of the things that makes Keller Williams such a great musician is his influences and choice of cover songs. He plays everything from Grateful Dead to Billy Joel to Bill Monroe to Marley to Funk to Punk to Bluegrass. His influences include Michael Hedges, Ani DiFranco, Jerry Garcia, String Cheese Incident, and many many more. So its a natural transition for Keller to host a radio show in which he plays his favorite music. Enter Keller’s Cellar, a radio show hosted by Keller that is as eclectic ast the music that Keller plays.

On a side note, have you heard Keller’s new release with the Keel’s, Grass? If not check it out today, its very bluegrassy and contains some new territory for both Keller, Larry, and Jenny Keel.

Don’t forget to vote for Keller at this year’s Jammys.

Launch Keller’s Cellar here.

Last weekend’s Langerado Music Festival marks the start of festival season. You can listen to some interviews and performances from Langerado including Keller Williams, G Love, and Michael Franti on the Relix podcast Cold Turkey. The Cold Turkey archives offer a ton of Jam goodness as well. Enjoy and happy festival season!

Get your Cold Turkey podcast here.

Last night (March 1, 2006) Ratdog played the critically aclaimed radio show Dead To The World (hosted by David Gans) on KPFA in Berkley. Ratdog has really gotten tight after all these years of playing together. I love hearing them play Dead tunes because they are like the original versions only a little more jazzy. I also love all of their original stuff as well. The band is such a democracy, you can tell by the way each member contributes to the overall sound Ratdog puts out. Ratdog has taken some time off and is now getting ready to go back on the road (dates here). If you wanna hear a jamming performance a la Grateful Dead, check it out:

Ratdog On Dead To The World 2006-03-01 Stream

Also,

If this one leaves you thirsty for more, check this gem out!

This week on KPFA’s crytically acclaimed radio show Dead To The World, Bela Fleck And The Flecktones stopped by for an incredible little performance. The Flecktones went on hiatus in 2005 and now they are back on the seen and just as good as ever. During 2005, Future Man put out a solo ablum called Evolution de la Musique, Jeff Coffin put out a new solo album called Commonality, Vik had a baby, Bela toured with Case Dreissen, Bryan Sutton, Stanley Clarke, and Jean Luc Ponty. Right before the Flecktones went on hiatus they recorded a new album called The Hidden Land which they’ve just released. These guys sure seem to stay busy! This show is a must listen. If you’ve never listened to the Flecktones you are really in for a treat. The set is mostly acoustic.

There is a great Grateful Dead Performance from September 20, 1991 at the Boston Garden in the first hour which I highly recommend, but if thats not your cup of tea then just skip forward in the stream half an hour.
Listen to Bela Fleck And The Flecktones on Dead To The World 2/15/2006 stream here.

If you haven’t checked out Zilla yet, do your ears a favor and queue these guys up! Zilla is a trio from Colorado comprised of String Cheese Incident drummer Michael Travis, hamer dulcimer guru Jamie Janover, and jam virtuoso Aaron Holstein. Their sound is completely different from anything I’ve heard before. Everything about Zilla is improv, they have no written songs and everything they do is composed on the fly. The idea sounds a little strange before you hear it, but removing the confines of a written composition and melody has freed these guys to take the music to some really cool places. I love the sound of the hammer dulcimer and Janover takes a really beautiful approach to the instrument. Its great to hear the dulcimer sound in a trio format with drums, bass, guitar, keys and a sampler. Check them out:
Zilla MP3 here:

And a killer soundboard recording:
Band/Artist: Zilla
Date: January 29th, 2006
Venue: The Jellyphish Lounge
Location: Houston, TX

Source: Matrix (MG200/M20* > V2) + (SBD >Behringer Composer Pro >TCE M1) > MX 602 > DA-P1
Lineage: DAT > HHB 800 > CD > S.F. 5.0 > CDR
Taped by: Stan Smith
Transferred by: Stan Smith

Get it here:

Bill Graham has done for live music what Jimi Hendrix did for the electric guitar. Had it not been for Bill Graham live music as we know it would not exist. Graham created a successful business model by which musicians could make a living playing live music and music fans could see their favorite acts at an affordable price.

Wolfgang’s Vault (Wolfgang was Bill Graham’s first name) contains high quality audio and video, hand bills, photography, vintage tickets, posters, t-shirts and so much more memoriabilia from Bill Graham’s vault. Graham’s vault contains 8000 recordings from hundreds of musicians that were recorded by Graham during his thirty year carreer. The vault contains recordings from some of the greatest musicians of the 20th century including Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Led Zepplin, Johnny Cash, The Who, The Rolling Stones, U2, Miles Davis, Santana, Elton John, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Aretha Franklen, Neil Young, Chuck Berry, The Allmann Brothers and many many more.

Entrepreneur Bill Sagan purchased Bill Graham’s archive in 2003 from Clear Channel Communications for $5 million and has converted it from analog to high-end digital format, remastering almost every song. The vault also includes a plethora of high quality video of performances. Some of the greatest moments in live music history exist in the archive, including the Sex Pistol’s last performance and the historical The Who performance at Cow Palace where Keith Moon fell into his drum kit. Its very exciting to hear that many of these performances will now see the light of day!

You can stream performances from Wolfgang’s Archive here.

I’ve had a chance to play with the new open source music player for windows, Songbird and I see a ton of potential there. I like the idea of being able to connect to any music store (iTunes, CDBaby, Amazon, etc…). The interface is comparable to iTunes and has a slightly better interface for browsing your library. Songbird already boasts a laundry list of features that iTunes doesn’t have. Songbird is still a little rough around the edges, after all the current release is only a user preview (version 0.1).

What makes Songbird a candidate for iTunes killer is that it is open source so anybody with a great idea (and a little technical inclination) will be able to create plugins. Songbird is built using the same XML user inter face language that firefox uses so developers can easily build application user interfaces for Songbird. This makes me wonder if Songbird will be to iTunes what Firefox is to Internet Explorer.

Another thing that I like about songbird is that it is light weight, using about half the memory that iTunes requires. iTunes works great on a Mac or a PC with tons of memory to spare, but if you’ve got a clunker PC forget about it.

It will be interesting to see how well Songbird will play with my iPod. Songbird has a long way to go before it presents any significant competition for iTunes, but the day will come when an open source music player contends with the big boys.

Here is another great review of songbird that goes into a little more detail about the UI and includes screenshots. ARS technica also has a great article about Songbird here.

You can download (8mb) Songbird here:
Mirror 1 Mirror 2

My next home entertainment gadget purchase is going to be a Squeezebox. I’ve wanted to have an easy way to stream music from my desktop to my stereo for a long time. I’ve considered many options, but after I read the news that Pandora (a music service that I use every day) will be available for Squeezebox the decision is clear. I wrote about Pandora before so I won’t write about it here but I’m very excited that I will be able to listen to Pandora from any room in my house on my stereo and navigate Pandora via a nice little remote control!

Here is the info from Pandora’s website:

Pandora for your Stereo

We’ve got something pretty exciting to share tonight. David Pogue over at the New York Times just broke the news that on March 1st Pandora is coming to the Slim Devices Squeezebox:

“the Squeezebox will do something no other hi-fi component can do: it will hook into Pandora… Slim Devices predicts that Pandora will become a wildly popular feature, and that’s probably true.” (read the entire story)

The Squeezebox, as Pogue’s story attests, is simply the best way to deliver digital music to your home stereo. It’s a beautiful device, with an elegant user interface and exceptional audio quality. Plug it into your home network (wired or wireless) and enjoy Pandora from the comfort of your couch. You’ll be able to listen to all of the stations you’ve been creating at Pandora.com, rate songs, and bookmark favorites all with a simple remote control. Pandora-on-Squeezebox will available to Pandora subscribers ($36 for a year or $12 for three months) and will work with any Squeezebox 2 as well as the new (and very beautiful) Squeezebox 3.

To get you started, on March 1st, Pandora will be offering a free 90 day subscription to new and current Squeezebox 2 and 3 owners. When you connect your Squeezenetwork account with your ad-supported-free Pandora.com account (you’ll do this from your account page at the Squeezenetwork website) we’ll automatically upgrade you to a 90-day-free subscription on Pandora. No credit card required. In the meantime, have fun listening to Pandora online for free.

I just had the pleasure of listening to an oh so tasty morsel of musical performance known as New Monsoon live at the Freebird Cafe in Jacksonville Florida from January 4, 2006. I haven’t had a chance to see or hear New Monsoon live for a really long time and my how they have really grown as a group! They are extremely tight and have really polished their live act. I love bands that know how to mix the right covers in with originals in the propper proportions. Its no fun to see a band that does nothing but covers that sound exactly like the original. On the other hand, a few covers are always in order so that the band can showcase its influences. New Monsoon does this very well. They are heavily influenced by Santana, The Allman Bros, Eric Clapton, The Dead, and an arsenal of other bluesy jammers. One thing that I love about New Monsoon is they have a very unique approach to encorporating blues and bluegrass into their music. There are moments during this performance that they instantaneously switch from a gut wrenching blues guitar solo directly into a bluegrass banjo solo. How cool! Give it a listen, your ears will thank you. You can access New Monsoon live at the Freebird Cafe in Jacksonville Florida from January 4, 2006 in lossless, mp3, and streaming format at the live music archive. Here is the skinny:

Band/Artist: New Monsoon
Date: January 4th, 2006
Venue: Freebird Cafe
Location: Jacksonville Beach, FL

Source: Studio Projects C4’s (DIN, FOB) > Mogami Gold > Denecke PS-2 > Denecke AD-20 > optical > JB3
Lineage: JB3 > firewire > Audacity > FLAC16
Taped by: Jon H.
Transferred by: Jon H.

Also, there is a great live365.com station dedicated to New Monsoon that you can access here.