Reference@TBML

Free Acoustic Folk Music Concert!

Dana and Susan Robinson are coming to Las Cruces! On Wednesday October 28 at 7:00 pm, this North Carolina husband & wife duo bring their own blend of old-timey and contemporary folk music to the Branigan Cultural Center’s Shannon Room.

The Robinsons bring to the stage an exciting blend of mountain music and songs of the American landscape. With Dana on guitar and fiddle, Susan's clawhammer banjo playing and harmony singing they bring a joyful energy to their concerts. Their music is the sound and feel of bedrock America. Their new CD “Big Mystery” celebrates the indomitable life force of the natural world and shines a light upon the beauty of the small and forgotten pockets of rural America. It, plus other of their recordings will be available for purchase and signing after the program.

Dana and Susan have travelled extensively around the US, and just recently returned from a successful concert tour of the United Kingdom. Now you can hear them for yourself in Las Cruces.

This FREE concert is a partnership presentation of Thomas Branigan Memorial Library and the Branigan Cultural Center.  For more information, contact Mark Pendleton at 575.528.4001 or mpendleton@las-cruces.org. To find out more about the Robinsons, you can visit their Web site.

Olé! Olé! Olé!

This is your invitation to an afternoon of great music and dance from Spain!  On Saturday 24 October at 2:00 pm, Joseph Mancilla and Tracey Trambley will perform live onstage in the Shannon Room at the Branigan Cultural Center. Mr. Mancilla is a Las Cruces guitarist who is equally impressive whether playing classical or flamenco numbers. Ms. Trambley is a flamenco cantaora and bailoara (vocalist and dancer) who lives in El Paso and teaches flamenco at the CityDance Theatre in Las Cruces.

This is a free concert and is a partnership presentation of the Branigan Cultural Center and Thomas Branigan Memorial Library. For more information about Mr. Mancilla you can visit his facebook page.  For more information on the concert, contact Mark Pendleton at 575.528.4001 or mpendleton@las-cruces.org.

Singer/Songwriter Danny Santos to Perform

 

Thomas Branigan Memorial Library is pleased to present the Austin, Texas folk performer, Danny Santos. Singer/songwriter Danny Santos melds the inspiration of his Tejano heritage, and a musical legacy ranging from Hank Williams to the Beatles to create a unique mix of country/folk tinged with bluegrass and the blues. 

Danny Santos will perform at the Branigan Cultural Center on Thursday, July 2 at 7 PM.  This performance is free and open to the public.  Mr. Santos will have recordings of his music available for sale at the concert. 
Please contact Mark Pendleton at 528-4001 or mpendleton@las-cruces.org or visit the library's event calendar with further questions.

TBML Welcomes Hungrytown

Sunday, March 1st at 3 PM

On Sunday, March 1st, come see the award-winning acoustic folk music duo Hungrytown.  Hungrytown is the Vermont based husband and wife team Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson.  Their music, which is widely praised, is firmly rooted in the American Folk Tradition.  Hungrytown features beautifully orginal songwriting that hearkens back to a much earlier time.  Click here to read a review. 

The concert, part of the Branigan Authors, Movies and Music Series will begin at 3 PM in the Dresp Room.  This is a FREE concert, but occupancy in the Dresp Room is limited to 80 by the Fire Marshal, so you may want to plan accordingly. Ken and Rebecca will have recordings of their music for sale and signing.

Visit Hungrytown on the web here. 

New Music Books

Now is the time of year when we are still sifting through all of the year-end year-in-review-best-of lists.  There are some books that just missed the cut-off point and may make it to next year’s year-in-review lists.   

Here are a few recent arrivals to get you going in the new year:

 
The Pitchfork 500: Our Guide to the Greatest Songs From Punk to the Present
The mother of all best-of lists.  See what you may have missed or explore other genres through this expansive book.

No Wave: Post-Punk, Underground, New York, 1976-1980
Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth) offers us an attractive and absorbing book on the New York No Wave scene of the early eighties.  An interesting look at a lesser know genre.

Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB
A new look at the dynamic life of a deceased member of the Wu Tang Clan.  An intriguing look at one of Hip-Hop history’s more important yet disturbed figures.

Slumberland

A new, fictional addition that chronicles a Los Angeles DJ in search of a mysterious Jazz musician in Berlin.  A fascinating look at both club culture and the contemporary Jazz genre, this is definitely worth a look. 
BES

Free Stuff!!!

We all know that the internet is a great place to access free information.  But now, there are even more places for free entertainment.

Did you miss the last episode of House M.D.?  Well now you have several options for legally and freely viewing T.V. shows online.  More and more, network websites are posting recent episodes of televisions online.  Simply go to a network site to view your favorite shows.  A newer site, Hulu (created by NBC), has a far broader offering of t.v. shows.  Hulu is nice because it offers the programs with limited commercial interruptions and you don't need any special software to view the shows.  Hulu covers a range of networks and time periods (Silver Spoons anyone?).

You can also explore music freely and legally online with Pandora.  Pandora is a great site that creates playlists based on your favorite artists.  The playlist are created using certain elemental properties of your favorite artists and finding other musicians sharing those same elements.  This site is a great way to broaden your music horizons.

Another music-related site is liveplasma.  This site also uses a mapping technique to introduce you to new and related musicians.  The mapping has also been extended to movies.  While you cannot listen to music or view movies on liveplasma, you can view the gorgeous representations of the connections between your favorite musicians.

And finally, to really maximize your web experience, you may want to check out the book, Rule the Web by Mark Frauenfelder.  Chock full of tips and tricks for getting the most out of your time online, this book is highly recommended.  BES

This guy looks like he is having a good time...

Three boundary-pushing cheers for the American avant-garde!  Today we celebrate John Cage—composer, poet, and tinkerer.  Cage was widely influential with his experiments in music, text, and the confluence between the two mediums. 

Born in Los Angeles in 1912, Cage studied with Arnold Schoenberg early on at UCLA before branching off on his own.  His early collaborations with dancer Merce Cunningham and artist Robert Rauschenberg proved to be vitally informative in his development as an artist.  As a composer, poet and artist, Cage was willing to relinquish control and open his work up to chance and found objects/sound/text.  One of his most notorious music compositions, 4'33", is played without a note of music but is instead made up of ambient sound.

Click here, here, and here to visit the John Cage pages on the excellent online resource Ubuweb—an immense collection of visual, concrete, and sound poetry.  Also visit the EPC site for Cage.  The Electronic Poetry Center out of SUNY-Buffalo is a wonderfully important resource for locating and researching some of poetry’s more recent innovators and experimenters.  BES

“This Land is Your Land”

As I went out walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said, "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
                      --Woody Guthrie, "This Land is Your Land"*

 July 14^th marks the birthday of Woody Guthrie—one of America’s most influential folk singers. Guthrie, born in Oklahoma, came of age during the Dust Bowl and was one of thousands of “Okies” who migrated to California in search of work. Often concerned with the lives and experiences of the dispossessed, Guthrie was heavily influenced and wrote in the custom of traditional American folk music. Woody Guthrie in turn, served as an influence to subsequent generations of musicians ranging from Bob Dylan to Billy Bragg and Wilco.

Click here to listen to a recording of Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly performing on live on WNYC in 1940.

 

Check out Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie by Ed Cray for an authoritative biography.

As a supplement and way to better understand Guthrie’s process, you may want to look at Woody Guthrie: Art Works.

Online, you can visit Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song (hosted by the Library of Congress).

And visit The Official Woody Guthrie Site (hosted by the Woody Guthrie Foundation) which offers an extensive biography and sampling of lyrics.  BES

*Guthrie, Woody.  "This Land is Your Land".  This Land is Your Land: The Asch Recordings Vol. 1.  Smithsonian Folkways, 1997.