Tonight, Tonight: Jacob Metcalf at Dan’s Silver Leaf

Free spirits must be free so the DFW music scene (and the Dallas Family Band) will be void one wonderful voice, songwriter, and beardy smile that belongs to Jacob Metcalf. Jacob will be heading to Guadalajara, Mexico in less than a week to join some friends as they ride through Middle America to make new friends, experience a different world, and redefine what they call “home”. He shares a few thoughts about his trip on his Myspace page and his companions have been sharing their journey on their own site, www.missionvango.com.

Jacob Metcalf will be joined by Baruch the Scribe who are good reason to arrive at Dan’s Silver Leaf in Denton early tonight. Show is slated for a 9:30PM start and you kids over eighteen-years old can get in for just $5. Small price to pay to bid Jacob bon voyage and let him know he and his music will be missed (and should be recorded and released and shared with the world).

(Jacob Metcalf / myspace / twitter / facebook)

Can’t Stop: Watching: Sarah Jaffe

As if Dentonite songbird Sarah Jaffe isn’t a local music favorite yet, Dallas Observer posted a few videos of her last Friday which I’ve watched multiple, multiple times today. She won’t be back in town for another two weeks when she plays at the Granada Theater with Seryn but as I’ve mentioned before, she is definitely worth checking out live. From the sounds of this video of her new, unreleased song, “A Sucker For Your Marketing,” I will undoubtedly buy her upcoming release… which, cross your fingers, may be released as early as this fall?

(Sarah Jaffe / website / myspace / facebook / last.fm)

Can’t Stop: Listening To: Lalagray

The first time I heard about Ashley Myrick (musically known as Lalagray) was through Twitter since I happen to follow some DFW musicians that enjoy tweeting. @lalagray was getting more and more mentions, so naturally, I checked out her account, saw that she likes to tweet regularly, and hit the “follow” button. During my blogging hiatus, I really didn’t keep tabs on the local music scene much but knew she sang with The Beaten Sea and Dallas Family Band, and I listened to a few of her simple recordings on Myspace. I liked what I heard. But I was on a hiatus and listened to nothing but Mumford and Sons so I didn’t dive in too much further. (I told you yesterday, it’s been a pretty mild summer.)

Fast forward to yesterday when I finally had a breather at work and could spare a few minutes to check out her new site, www.lalagray.com, and the three tunes from her upcoming album. I had been listening to The Beaten Sea for about an hour, took the detour to her site, then proceeded to stream those three songs until the end of the work day. Yes, I listened to three songs over and over for about five hours. Prior to yesterday, I was already familiar with her beautiful voice, but to hear that voice combined with full instrumentation blew me away. Beautiful voices are a dime a dozen but the grandness “Devil’s Nest” reaches at its peaks is enough for me to head to Dallas for her CD release show, September 4th at LaGrange. Her supporting cast assures me that her live show should be as fantastic as her mastered recordings.

(Lalagray / website / tumblr / myspace / twitter / facebook)

Summer’s over. Almost.

I didn’t mean to take a summer hiatus but there you go. My summer included such fun things as training for a 5K, sub-par summer television programming, my ten-year high school reunion, having my house broken into and robbed, one snow cone, and lots of sweating. Not the most exciting summer and definitely not the reason I stopped writing but it’s been a summer nonetheless which is my favorite season, 100+ degree oppressive heat and all.

I think part of the reason I stopped updating this blog is due to the fact that I somehow became a “music blog” and understandably so, since I wrote about NX35 for fifty days in a row. But I never really wrote about music before that. I wrote about myself and various other things I enjoy like TV, food, naps, and baby animals doing silly things on YouTube. I thought perhaps I could abandon all that and learn the ways of becoming a snarky, obscure music-lovin’, hipster blogger but snark gets old and deconstructive, and to be honest, a lot of obscure music remains obscure for a reason. (Wait, was that snark?)

With that said, I’ll be posting again and will leave you with what’s been playing through my headphones this morning:

The Guestlist w/ Yeahdef