We’ll draw three (3) random winners on June 16th – good luck! One entry per person, U.S. residents only.

Standback Features:

1.    Lightweight and durable – Weighs less than a pound and will support up to 100 lbs.
2.    Amp stays on floor maintaining your low end (Coupling effect)
3.    Folds flat to fit in your gig bag or in the back of most amps
4.    Adjustable amp angles

Ticket info is available here, but you can enter to win a FREE pair of tix simply by re-tweeting “I wanna see The Brothers Comatose @performermag” – we’ll pick one winner before the weekend!

As if that weren’t enough, The Brothers Comatose will get naked for you.   In what they are calling Operation:  Buck Wild, the SF-based string quintet will be uploading a new photo – with one more item of clothing removed – for every 50 presale tickets sold for their upcoming May 19th Album Release show at The Great American Music Hall.

Here is photo 1 – Enjoy!

How can you resist?
What’s under that poncho?  What happens to the cat?  Is that one guy outside??  Only one way to find out!

Every guitar has stories to tell. Some were played by masters, many were destroyed, and all contain a secret history that only exposes its edges when pressed through the fire of an amp. Tony Cochran knows this, and builds guitars that look as legendary as they sound, which is one of the reasons his Boostercaster is currently featured in the National Guitar Museum’s traveling exhibition, Guitar: The Instrument that Rocked the World.

How long have you been making these guitars?

I started making guitars about a year and a half ago.

Why do you build these guitars?

I like visual complexity. If it doesn’t interfere with the musicality, then why not? I mean, how many Telecasters can you look at, you know?

How did you start?

I was trained as a painter and artist and worked in a body shop for 15 years. So I was building a motorcycle for my brother but making it look different, using brass and rivets instead of flames and chrome like other bikes. After that my brother asked me to work on a guitar he had just gotten and that one turned out so well I wanted to do a second one, and that one turned out so well I wanted to a third one…

How do you conceive these guitars? Do you have a list of what you want to make or do you design each project based on what you have?

A combination of materials can be used to create a visual effect, and that’s what I do to the guitars. I don’t build guitars from scratch, I take guitars that have a history and give them a new history. So you find something that’s got good bones and plays well. I’m not trying to find a guitar to fit a preconceived idea. I see the guitar done when I see the guitar. So if I were going to buy a Les Paul clone I would see the guitar and know what it’s going to look like when it’s finished before I take it home.

It’s like a painting; you know how it’s going to look finished when you start otherwise you never know when you’re done. Some artists work until they’re fatigued, rather than until it’s done. When I start I know 90% of what it’s going to look like and leave 10% to chance – because that’s fun part.

Do you adjust the electronics?

It depends, when you’re buying used guitars not every piece always works. I always make sure everything works as expected. That’s about it. I know a player buying the guitar is probably going to change the pickups, just like if they were buying a new guitar.

Some of your guitars have little widgets you’ve added that create interesting sounds. How do those come about?

It becomes part of the history; who knows whether they ‘work’ or not. Anything you add to a guitar might change the tone, or might not. It’s all subjective, there’s nothing wrong with making a guitar look cooler. Most look cool already, but they’re all pretty similar after a while. I don’t see any reason to not add a device that may or may not work.

It seems like you could get some unique sounds and feedback with all the metal on these guitars.

It’s not necessarily going to make the guitar sound better or worse, but it could change it. I hope it affects the tone, but that’s all subjective. One guy’s beautiful tone is another’s buzz bomb.

How much do they weigh?

I try not to add weight, so about the same or less as when I start.

Take me through a build.

The typical build starts by disassembling the entire guitar, then I shape the body, head, and neck to how I picture. You can’t change one part without changing all the others; you’ve got to make sure the feel of the neck matches the body. Then I add color and start putting the guitar back together, assembling as I go along. Each step speaks to the next one. Like a painting, it has to come together as a whole. I think of these guitars as art first, and mechanical musical instruments second.

So the process is very fluid?

I never question what’s going to come next. Sometime I have to stop and figure out how to make that happen in the physical world. Eventually you have to pick up a tool and make everything fit. It’s a puzzle, but a puzzle I designed.

How long does a typical guitar take?

It depends on how many evenings I have because I have a full time job writing a comic strip. They’re a labor of love so I don’t want to rush it. They can take upwards of a month.

It’s inspiring to see every guitar you make is so different from the last.

We got a letter the other day from someone wanting me to copy another guitar they’d seen and I told them to ask the person who made the guitar to copy it. I won’t even copy myself.

Each guitar has a detailed story about where it was ‘found,’ – are you trying to create an alternate universe for these guitars?

You’d be surprised how many people ask if the stories are true. We’re just one generation away from a weird story becoming the ‘truth’ anyway. If I say I found this guitar in the attic of a haunted house, what will they remember when we’re dead?

www.tonycochranguitars.com

Enjoy!

Sad news to report – legendary bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn has passed away at the age of 70. Dunn died Sunday in his sleep, while on tour in Japan.

Dunn’s credits are too numerous to count, but his presence on ’60s soul and R&B records cannot be understated. He’s also well-known to movie and TV audiences as a key member of the Blues Brothers’ rhythm section. According to Wikipedia:

Dunn was notable for his 1960s recordings with Booker T. & the M.G.’s and as a session bassist for Stax Records, which specialized in blues and gospel-infused southern soul and Memphis soul music styles. Dunn also performed on recordings with The Blues Brothers, Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Albert King, Levon Helm, Neil Young, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, Guy Sebastian, Rod Stewart, Bob Dylan, Roy Buchanan and Arthur Conley.

“We’re building a totally free platform of tools for artists and labels to sell, share, and promote music directly to their fans. We feel it’s vital that all musicians have access to basic web tools that are free, open, and theirs to own.”

CASH Music, a non-profit organization that builds open source digital tools for musicians and labels, is headed by Maggie Vail (formerly of the Seattle/Portland indie label Kill Rock Stars) and Jesse von Doom. Together, along with a small team of supporters, they have set out to level the digital playing field for artists by making tools that musicians would actually want and need to use, as opposed to what faceless, corporate tech companies dictate to them.

Could you explain what CASH Music has to offer artists?

The most important thing is that we’re a non-profit and all the tools we’re building for artists are open source, meaning that anyone can use them and build on them and then share that back with the community. We feel strongly that this is not something where people need to be making money off the backs of artists. This sort of distribution chan

nel should just honestly be direct to fans, and in a way that means actually the fans and the band – nobody in the middle.

So there are no gatekeepers in the way.

Yeah, and we want to make it as easy as possible for artists to use themselves. It’s not quite there yet, and that’s why we’re raising the funds through a Kickstarter campaign for the hosted version of our platform. By “hosted,” we mean that it lives on our servers, anybody can sign up with an email address and have a page with all the functionality needed to sell, stream, promote, manage tour dates, manage mailing lists – all that kind of stuff.

So right now CASH’s platform is a download that you would install yourself, on your own web server, correct?

Yes, and we did that first (which is a little bit backwards for most start-ups) to make a point: we believe that the most valuable relationships you’re going to have are going to be directly on your own site. Maintaining and owning that information is really important. We’ve only released version one [of the platform] at this point, and it just has email collection, tour date management and social feed management – we can bring in your Twitter and your Tumblr and all those sorts of things fairly easily. The next version is coming soon; that will include commerce – the big part that I know everyone’s been waiting for –

Shopping cart type stuff?

Yes, and each iteration is going to be easier to use.

Let’s take a step back. How did CASH get started?

There were a couple of things that happened at the same time. Jesse von Doom, who is my co-Executive Director, and I started working together about five years ago. Right after that I was working on the posthumous Elliott Smith record, New Moon, and getting ready to send it to press and radio. I was thinking, ‘Is there any way you could do a secure streaming site? Does that exist? Can you do that? Do you know how to?’ Jesse, being who he is, went above and beyond and built this really amazing streaming site. You could see when people logged in, you could see how many times they logged in – that made follow up so much easier. That site became one of the many tools that the platform, that CASH has been doing for many years.

The other piece was when Kristin Hersh [Throwing Muses] and Donita Sparks [L7] were talking and decided that they wanted an easy way for artists to set up a subscription service, where you buy into something and you get songs later – you can support an artist year round. This is actually what Kristin does, and that’s pretty much how she makes a big part of her living these days. So those two things were sort of the beginning of all this.

How much technical know-how would an artist need to get up and running with the tools?

Well, ideally, and in the end, you’re not going to have to have any. With the hosted version you just need an email address. For the distributed version, it’s going to work with WordPress and Tumblr, so you could conceivably make your site on super-easy-to-use platforms and then just plug in these functional elements into those places, and you’ll have a fully working website that will do all of the things I mentioned before.

Because we are non-profit, we don’t need everybody to use us exclusively; this is going to be a very open platform. It will be compatible with all services – as many as possible – so if you feel more comfortable with your stuff living there, or if you want set up your own Amazon S3 account, you can just go ahead and sign up for one. We’ll teach people how to do that because it’s really important to own where your stuff lives.

What aspects of CASH are you most proud of?

That we exist [laughs]. It’s kind of a wild idea – actually, it’s not a wild idea – it’s a really basic idea, but because you can’t make tons of money on it people think we’re crazy. Neither Jesse nor I are looking to get rich. Really we just want to have a job where we can do artist advocacy.

What areas could CASH improve on with future iterations of the service?

We go to people and say, ‘What do you need? What do you want? What would be useful to you? Do you want to be able to get this management? How do we do this to make your job easier?’ I think that’s going to be a lot of what we’re going to be doing in the future. We’re doing these Hack Days where we sit designers and developers down with musicians and say, ‘Go crazy. You guys just go nuts and figure out how to build something that will work for musicians.’

With other competing services – those two parties don’t really talk to each other.

No, they absolutely don’t! The programmers and developers try to develop things they think artists want and the artists have all sorts of suggestions that don’t make it to the developers, so there is a disconnect.

What else is in store for the future with CASH?

I think we’ll move into a little more education and, like I said before, teaching artists about things like Amazon S3 servers and why you want to own your stuff and how to do even basic coding. Understanding that sort of thing is going to appeal to some artists. Some won’t want to do it and of course we’ll always have options for [them]. I think it should be very interesting, what the future holds. We have a lot of grand plans.

www.cashmusic.org

Young Hines

“Flashes of ’60s folk festival gold, textures of CSNY”

Young Hines kick starts his new record with a snazzy blues riff in “Young Again,” then segues into the surefire crowd pleaser “Give Me My Change,” complete with attitude and furtive emotion.  With such a trademark sound, the pulses of the drums and mean guitar jangles complement the lead vocals like apricot jelly on English toast. Eerily, the music of Young Hines echoes the White Stripes with a flourish of Foo Fighters decorated by the swells, growls and swoons.

“Don’t Break My Fall” is more soothing, and brings about happy-go-lucky visions of summer at the beach, most notably with textures and flavors of The Thrills. The hook in the chorus is quite memorable, as Hines delivers, “It’s time that I come around,” almost pleading to see his lover after an unrequited romance.

“I Ask This of You” provides the balance needed for this record, punctuated by gorgeous piano keys, bells and chimes.    “Just Say No Sometimes” feels like you’ve been teleported to Woodstock, right in the midst of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s groundbreaking set. The beats and rhythms mixed in with acoustic guitars are quite glorious, not to mention the George Harrison-like leads. Props to the timely vocals, giving the album another beautiful track that paints a pure portrait of late-’60s love rock.

“Better Things” features lush, serene piano parts and a breezy verse, moving into riveting choruses that build through vocal crescendos with serenading, reverse-tracked guitars and organs. This track feels more space-aged, like a song off Coldplay’s X&Y.

Give Me My Change is a rare find and well worth many repeated listens.

www.facebook.com/younghinesmusic

White Birds

“A happy, heartbreaking collection of lo-fi gems”

What makes a great breakup album? Ask these guys.

Made up of members from the now-defunct Drink Up Buttercup, White Birds have released a knockout punch of a debut that takes its listeners on a dreamy, reverb-laced journey through post-breakup contemplation. Leave any depression at the door, however. Though failed relationships are the focus of the lyrical content, the band provides a hazy soundtrack that dives in and out of beach pop, doo-wop, shoegaze, and even a touch of the blues.

The single “Hondora” is a great example of the interesting juxtaposition on When Women Played Drums. Lead singer James Harvey and company’s powerful voices pour out catchy melodies while crooning sad quips like, “Thought that it would never be this way / Now I’m crying.” But a relaxed acoustic guitar and punchy bass line give a soulful, uplifting feel to their words. It’s tough not to smile during this one.

But things aren’t always sunny. In the visceral “Veins Lined With Rust,” Harvey solemnly strums his guitar while describing catching a significant other in the act. Though it’s raw, it retains the album’s pop feel while injecting some darkness.

This is a completely different direction for the ex-Buttercupers – who used to bang on trashcans and drunkenly stagger on stage during live shows – but it’s a very welcome change. These understated pop songs are powerful and will stick with you whether you’re heartbroken or woefully infatuated.

www.truewhitebirds.com

The Touré-Raichel Collective

“Inspired collision of world music powerhouses”

Opening up The Tel Aviv Session, it was painstakingly difficult not to get lost in the mesmerizing guitar picking and picturesque imagery of gypsy beggars playing flamenco music on a lone boat in the quiet blue sea. The geographic influences of these world music heavyweights, Idan Raichel and Vieux Farka Touré (Tel Aviv and Mali, respectively), are prevalent and oozing like sweet honey from this eleven-track album. Bassist Yossi Fine and calabash player Souleymane Kane met at a German airport and have now joined this inspiring collaboration known as The Touré-Raichel Collective. Their debut album, The Tel Aviv Session, is an exciting introduction that promises greater things from the duo.

What’s perfect about The Tel Aviv Session is that it’s an album for any moment. The opening track “Azawade” could be a sexually charged soundtrack for a candlelit night with your exhausted lover, or the background music in a smoky, golden hookah bar – the guitar harmonizing with the water pipe’s bubbling. However, the following tracks “Bamba” and “Experience” conjure up outdoor sensations and portraits of wayfarers embarking on a long, oceanic adventure. Rich and cleanly produced, this collective of international musicians has created a gem: a gorgeous album that can easily transport its listeners to the farthest reaches of the globe.

Produced by Idan Raichel

Mixed by Idan Raichel and Lane Gibson

Mastered by John Davis at Metropolis Studios London

www.toureraichel.com