Lately, we’ve been ridin’ this down-home Folk/Americana/Indie wave in the Queen City music scene. Jake Speed. Wonky Tonk. Frontier Folk Nebraska. Wussy. Fairmount Girls. Gul'durnit, we love ‘em!

Maybe it’s our hospitable river-town tendency to have a big, open heart for such middle American tunesmithery. Maybe it started with our love for the Ass Ponys and their AltCountry ways back in the ‘90s. Who knows?

Nothin’ wrong with any of this, mind you. But I’d like to take a moment on this here blog to clue you into a small contingent of freaky, confrontational local bands from the past that were the furthest thing imaginable from such comparatively downright friendly musical acts.

Read More

Voting for Greater Cincinnati's annual celebration of our amazing local music scene, the Cincinnati Entertainment Awards, is now open. Vote for your faves or, even better, do some research online, check out all of the nominees and THEN pick who you think is most deserving.

Click here to get started on your ballot.

The 16th annual CEA ceremony will be held at Covington’s Madison Theater on Jan. 27, featuring more live performances than ever and first-time host Ted Clark, known for his monthly “live chat show” Ted Clark After Dark. Ted will present a special edition of Ted Clark After Dark at the after-party, this year held at The Loft, just around the corner from the Madison and above Tickets (the former home to the Rock club Radio Down). The after-party will also include the annual “Fashion Trashies,” presented by members of local Indie Pop legends The Fairmount Girls and honoring the best/worst/weirdest-dressed CEA attendees.

Tickets to the Jan. 27 ceremony/party will go on sale this coming Wednesday through CincyTicket.com. Proceeds from ticket sales are being donated the Cincinnati USA Music Heritage Foundation.

Another new aspect of this year’s CEAs involves the “New Artist of the Year” nominees. The acts nominated in that category will perform at the first-ever CEA new music showcase at Bogart’s on Jan. 18 (confirmations pending). Audience votes at the event will help determine the winner of the category, along with votes from the nominating committee (who also choose the Album and Artist of the Year winners).

Tickets for the new music showcase will go sale soon through Ticketmaster.

Now, a few words on "the process." Since the nominees were announced on Wednesday, I've received several queries asking "How do I get nominated for a CEA?" from various artists and/or their representatives.

It's the same answer found in the old joke, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"

Practice. And also work hard and keep spreading the word about your awesome music.

As has been the case in the entire the 16-year existence of the CEAs (and as has been noted every year in our coverage of the event, including this year), a nominating committee is assembled each year to determine the CEA nominees. These include writers, promoters, club owners, local-music radio hosts and others whose opinion on local music-makers we trust. This year's committee included approximately 40 such people. We try our best to include those whose expertise is either wide-ranging or specific to a particular genre represented in the CEA categories. (Judges do not have votes counted if they're cast for an artist with whom the judge directly works.)

This year, invitations to participate in the nominating process were sent out to nearly 70 people, so obviously certain experts declined to participate, missed the deadline for nominees or just ignored our request.

The committee is asked to nominate up to three artists per category who caught their eyes and ears this past year. The only guidelines are that the artists should have been active in the past 365 days, the nominees should be largely original (though certainly talented, straight-up "cover bands" are generally not eligible) and the judges are also instructed to give special consideration to any act that has released new recorded material in that same time-frame.

The CEA nominating judges are listed in the CEA "program" annually. I will not release their names here because I've personally received many rude or stupid emails telling me what an idiot I am for not nominating "fill in the blank." The nominating committee was kind enough to participate; I don't want to open any of them up to such haranguing and harassment.

Finally, I'd just like to say that every year there are TONS of really great acts that deserve a nomination but don't get one. It's not personal. It's not "political." It's not "who you know." It's simply a matter of time and space. If every artist who deserved a nomination got one, the CEA show itself would run 16 hours — and that's just to read the nominations for each category.

I agree to some extent that award shows like these are a little frivolous and that the process for nominations isn't perfect. It never is, for any awards show. We have thought about letting the public nominate the artists (a la the long-gone "CAMMY" awards presented by The Enquirer), but ultimately feel that the way the CEA process is set up works best. Because, ultimately, whoever wins their category is going to deserve it.

Though we take the process seriously, we've always thought of the CEAs as more of a celebration than a contest. I invite you to think of it the same way and join us for the show, whether you were nominated or not. The CEAs are for the ENTIRE Greater Cincinnati music scene. The awards are just a good excuse to get everyone together. Instead of being a sore sport about your lack of attention, come out and congratulate and party with your fellow nominees.

Scoring major glowing reviews in national music magazines for your first two albums might intimidate some artists. But for Wussy, set to release its newest (a self-titled effort) for locally-based Shake It Records, a natural progression and tightness has resulted in their best album yet.

Read More

With a slew of uplifting singles and a band name like Blessid Union of Souls, it shouldn’t be a shock to discover that the chart-topping Cincinnati band's frontman Eliot Sloan puts a lot of stock in his spiritual beliefs. But the band — one of the most commercially successful acts to ever come out of Cincinnati — was rarely overt about religion in its slick, hook-laden Pop songs. Until now. This Tuesday sees the nationwide release of Blessid Union’s album The Mission Field, the most direct and explicit expression of Sloan’s Christian beliefs on a BUoS release by a long shot.

Read More

By pure coincidence, the Cincinnati USA Music Heritage Foundation is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the recording of legendary Bluegrass track "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in Cincinnati's Herzog recording studio on the same evening as Earl's grandson — former BR549 member and successful Indie/AltCountry singer/songwriter Chris Scruggs — is playing just across the river at Newport’s Southgate House.

Read More

The best music show on TV, PBS’s Austin City Limits, has announced the lineup of artists for its 35th anniversary season (yup, ACL can now officially run for President) starting Oct. 3. The roster is another great mix of established artists and relative newcomers, with the Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Elvis Costello, Ben Harper, M. Ward, Andrew Bird, St. Vincent, Band of Heathens and Okkervil River slated for episodes. The season will also feature the first appearance by Cincinnati’s Heartless Bastards.

Read More

The initial lineup for this year's local-music-heavy Indie Summer series (taking place each Friday this summer on Fountain Square) has been announced. The successful series has teamed with the MidPoint Music Festival this year (musicians, don't forget the submission deadline is May 1) and will include a few special "late" shows of note. On June 26, Chicago's Mucca Pazza plays at 10 p.m., while locals Bad Veins take that timeslot on July 24 for their official release party for their Dangerbird Records debut. Below is the rest of the schedule so far.

Read More

Ill Poetic — the multitasking Hip Hop artist who made his bones in the Cincinnati and Dayton scenes and writes a monthly words-of-wisdom column for CityBeat called Hip Hop (Un) Scene — will be providing some dispatches from the road this month for us as he embarks on the J. Rawls-headlined “#Ohio Takeover Tour.” The tour (featuring a roster of Ohio acts) is an early promotional push for The Hip Hop Affect, the anticipated new release from Rawls, a renowned DJ/producer whose credits range from work on the first Black Star album to working with Madlib and The Beastie Boys. Recently, Rawls leaked the new track “We’re on Top (#ohiotakeover),” a “posse cut” featuring 23 MCs from the Buckeye State.

Read More

In the days after local TV news reported on the death of David Hebert — a longtime drummer better known to everyone as “Bones” — it was clear that the New Orleans-style memorial procession (a nice nod to Hebert’s hometown) and gathering in Northside in the wake of his shooting at the hands of police was going to be the image most (especially those who didn’t know him personally) would remember. The large group of friends who came together amidst the deep hurt and shock showed how much Bones meant to the community and was a testament to his kind spirit. As the police investigation continues and those friends skeptical of the “official report” try to find justice, some local musicians moved by the sudden, violent death of Bones are using their skill set to express their feelings about the situation.

Read More