VIA PRESS RELEASE | The acclaimed documentary Indigo Girls: It’s Only Life After All is playing in theaters across North America now. Alexandria Bombach’s documentary on the iconic duo premiered on opening night of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and was screened at numerous festivals throughout the year including SXSW, Hot Docs, and Tribeca Film Festival. Distributed by Oscilloscope Laboratories, the film currently holds a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes and will be available via video on demand on May 7th. Tickets and additional information on the theatrical release is here.

To celebrate the theatrical release, Oscilloscope Laboratories has shared an exclusive clip from the film that dives into the deep communal connections that the Indigo Girls have created with their fans. “Festival audiences have embraced and celebrated this story of Amy and Emily, and now we get to bring this film to fans in theaters all over the country,” notes Filmmaker Alexandria Bombach. “A film about community should be seen in community.”

“From our earliest days at Little Five Points Community Pub in Atlanta, the ideal of ‘community’ has informed our music and activism,” adds Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls. “We feel blessed to have worked with such a compelling crew of folks, who created a document that reflects the vital part our audience, activists, friends, family, and mentors play in our ongoing creative lives.” Indigo Girls’ Emily Saliers says, “It is a beautiful documentary that captures the life force of our community. Now our community has an opportunity to see it on the big screen—we are thankful for that.”

With forty years of making music as the iconic folk-rock band Indigo Girls, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have made their mark as musicians, songwriters, and dedicated activists. They have represented radical self-acceptance to many, leading multiple generations of fans to say, “the Indigo Girls saved my life.” Still, Amy and Emily battled misogyny, homophobia, and a harsh cultural climate chastising them for not fitting into a female pop star mold. With joy, humor, and heart-warming earnestness, Sundance award-winning director Alexandria Bombach brings us into a contemporary conversation with Amy and Emily—alongside decades of the band’s home movies and intimate present-day verité.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Rhino is launching a new career-spanning archival series honoring Robert Hunter’s work as a solo artist with a deluxe reissue of his 1974 debut, Tales of the Great Rum Runners. While Hunter is widely revered as the primary lyricist for the Grateful Dead, this series will explore the depth of his solo work, offering a renewed appreciation for his exceptional artistry. Tales Of The Great Rum Runners (Deluxe Edition) will be available on June 7 from Rhino on 2-CD and 2-LP. Pre-order HERE.

This Deluxe Edition introduces a freshly remastered version of the original album alongside 16 previously unreleased recordings, including alternate versions of album tracks and several session outtakes. All the music has been remastered from the original master tapes by GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer David Glasser using Plangent Processes tape restoration and speed correction. Tales Of The Great Rum Runners will also be making its debut on streaming services on June 7. Available today is a sneak peek, with a newly remastered version of “Standing At Your Door” now available digitally.

Originally released in spring 1974, Tales Of The Great Rum Runners marked the inaugural release on Round Records, an offshoot of the newly formed Grateful Dead Records. Among its 13 tracks were several destined to become staples of Hunter’s live repertoire, like “Boys In The Barroom,” “Rum Runners,” and “It Must Have Been The Roses.”

Recorded at Mickey Hart’s converted barn studio in Novato, California, the album reveals Hunter’s multifaceted talents and features him singing and playing various instruments, including guitar, tin whistle, and bagpipes on “Children’s Lament.” He was accompanied by a revolving cast of Bay Area musicians on the album, including Jerry Garcia, Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux, and Mickey Hart of the Dead, as well as guitarist Barry Melton (Country Joe & The Fish), bassist David Freiberg (Quicksilver Messenger Service/Jefferson Starship), and pedal steel guitarist Buddy Cage (New Riders Of The Purple Sage).

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Voluminous of discography with an unflagging underground spirit, Sunburned Hand of the Man has returned with Nimbus, releasing April 12 on vinyl (black or “big blue”), compact disc, and digital with cover art by Tony Oursler through Three Lobed Recordings. It’s a wide-ranging set packed tight but flowing loose with psychedelic groove jams, post-Beat poetic recitations, and even a delightful folky strummer courtesy of returning member Phil Franklin. Loaded with guitars and rhythm and synths and even mellotron, the album is a fine extension of the Sunburned ethos.

Sunburned Hand of the Man reared to life in mid-’90s Boston, growing out of the deep underground psych-art-scuzz outfit Shit Spangled Banner, but the contracting and expanding troop really hit their grooving-jamming-racket stride in the decade following as part of the burgeoning New Weird America movement (their 2004 CD No Magic Man was released by Bastet, a label associated with Arthur magazine).

Once wildly prolific, with roughly 20 releases coming out in limited editions (mostly CDrs and a few cassettes) in 2008 alone, Sunburned’s output has slowed in recent years, but they’ve still managed to rip multiple CDrs every year in this century so far, some archival, others freshly recorded. Regarding vinyl, Nimbus is a follow-up to Pick a Day to Die, issued in 2021, also by Three Lobed Recordings.

Fluidity of lineup with a solid core is something of a Sunburned constant. Nimbus was recorded last year with Michael Josef K, Matt Krefting, and original member Phil Franklin returning to the fold and fortifying a core of founders John Moloney and Rob Thomas. The other players include Conrad Capistran, Gary War, Shannon Ketch, Wednesday Knudsen, Adam Langellotti, Jeremy Pisani, Taylor Richardson, Ron Schneiderman, and Sarah Gibbons, who’s credited here as making her proper recorded debut with Sunburned.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Trailblazing feminist icon, musician, outspoken women’s rights activist, and original rebel girl Kathleen Hanna has revealed the first serial excerpt with People magazine, offering fans a taste of what to expect from her memoir Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk due out May 14 with Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Hanna is also thrilled to announce the lineup of brilliant minds who will join her “in conversation” on a US book tour, including Amy Poehler, Molly Ringwald, Hanif Abdurraqib, Lindy West, Brontez Purnell, Puja Patel and more. Fans unable to attend the tour in-person can join the live stream on May 22! A portion of all ticket sales will be donated to Peace Sisters, a non-profit organization for which Hanna is an Ambassador. Tickets are on sale now.

Hanna’s band Bikini Kill embodied the punk scene of the ’90s, and today her personal yet feminist lyrics on anthems like “Rebel Girl” and “Double Dare Ya” are more powerful than ever. But where did this transformative voice come from?

In Rebel Girl, Hanna’s raw and insightful new memoir, she takes us from her tumul­tuous childhood to her formative college years and her first shows. As Hanna makes clear, being in a punk “girl band” in those years was not a simple or safe prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightning rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | “Joan’s ideas and musings ricochet from the profound and humanly factual to the observant and slyly humorous. Her words can be both poignantly executed and captivating in a colorful closeness that pin-points the chinks in our armor that mirror all facets of the world we inhabit. A National treasure she is indeed.” —Bernie Taupin, author of Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton, and Me

When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance, an intimate, autobiographical poetry collection from legendary artist and activist, Joan Baez, will be released April 30 on Godine.

While Baez has been writing poetry for decades, she’s never shared it publicly. Poems about her life, her family, about her passions for nature and art, have piled up in notebooks and on scraps of paper. Now, for the first time ever, her life is shared in verse, revealing pivotal life experiences that shaped an icon, offering a never-before-seen look into the reminiscences and musings of a great artist.

Throughout the collection, Baez shares poems for or about her contemporaries, reflections from her childhood, personal thoughts, and cherished memories of her family, including pieces about her younger sister, singer-songwriter Mimi Fariña. Speaking to the people, places, and moments that have had the greatest impact on her art, this collection is an inspiring personal diary in the form of poetry.

Joan Baez is a dynamic force of nature. Her commitment to music and social activism has earned global recognition, ranging from induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, to the Ambassador of Conscience Award, Amnesty International’s highest honor.

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“Let me take you by the hand/And lead you through the streets of London/I’ll show you something to make you change your mind” —“Streets of London” by Ralph McTell

The folk revival that began in the late ’50s and lasted almost into the early ’70s, is often most associated with New York’s Greenwich Village and Cambridge in Massachusetts while other American locales like Philadelphia and Chicago were also part of the scene. The folk revival, or “folk scare” as it was so humorously referred to by one of its key participants, Dave Van Ronk, was however, not just an American phenomenon. While America had a long roots music history, England also did and the folk revival there happened a little later and centered around a basement club in London’s Soho district called Les Cousins. Initially a French restaurant and then a discotheque, the folk club incarnation launched in April of 1965.

Like folk clubs in America, it served many purposes. It revived the songs and artists from folk’s past, which in some cases had been around for centuries. Folk was also a catch-all term that included blues, bluegrass, country, and other forms of roots music, even early forms of jazz, ragtime, and jug music. Maybe most importantly and foremost for many in England, it described an acoustic-based music played by artists who were song interpreters and stylists, and in some cases guitar wizards.

The list of musicians who actually played at the club in one form or another just hung out there, since its founding in 1965 and final year in 1972 is staggering. This comprehensive and widely varied, 72-track, 3-CD box set covering music released between 1963 and 1973 does not include any live performances from the club, but instead features some of the key figures of the British folk scene, American musicians who count Les Cousins as a key stepping stone in their music evolution and artists who may not have been strictly folk, but who are part of the club’s rich musical history.

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The bassist, composer, and bandleader Moppa Elliott is best known for his playing in the wildly inventive ensemble Mostly Other People Do the Killing, but his creativity is manifest in various other groups, including the quintet Advancing on a Wild Pitch and the nonet Acceleration Due to Gravity. Both have new LPs out now via Elliott’s Hot Cup label. On Disasters, Vol. 2, the five-piece delivers a warm and deep straight-ahead set of Elliott originals, and on Jonesville, an album inspired by bassist Sam Jones, the nine-piece group offers a wilder compositional ride. They are rewarding both singly and considered together.

Released in 2022, Disasters, Vol. 1 was recorded by Mostly Other People Do the Killing in a trio configuration of Elliott, pianist Ron Stabinsky and drummer Kevin Shea, with Stabinsky and Shea doubling on Nord electronics. Across that record, Stabinsky’s piano establishes Elliott’s “inside” compositional core as the bassist’s foundation is supple but sturdy. Shea’s frequently explosive drumming sends the record down a less conventional path. The electronics ensure Disasters, Vol. 1 won’t be mistaken for any other album.

As stated above, Disasters, Vol. 2 is a more straight-ahead affair, though it thrives on toughness of execution, in part through the choice of baritone sax, played by Charles Evans, and trombone, played by Sam Kulik. Alongside Elliott, pianist Danny Fox and drummer Christian Coleman round out the band. Two compositions “Marcus Hook” and “Dimock” return from the first volume; as on the prior set, all of the pieces are named after “towns in Pennsylvania that experienced historical disasters.”

Through an underlying disdain for conventionality, Advancing on a Wild Pitch brings the descriptor straight-ahead into question across Disasters, Vol. 2 in a manner that’s a bit reminiscent of Charles Mingus. Not surprising given Elliott’s chosen instrument, but the feel is based more in the horns recalling Jerome Richardson and Jimmy Knepper. As in Mingus’ work, there’s a boldness in both ensemble play and soloing here that suggests an affiliation with the avant-garde without ever embodying it.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Get ready for an endless summer of fun, fun, fun with The Beach Boys, the all-new documentary streaming exclusively on Disney+ beginning May 24, 2024.

The Beach Boys is a celebration of the legendary band that revolutionized pop music, and the iconic, harmonious sound they created that personified the California dream, captivating fans for generations and generations to come. The documentary traces the band from humble family beginnings and features never-before-seen footage and all-new interviews with The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, David Marks, Bruce Johnston, plus other luminaries in the music business, including Lindsey Buckingham, Janelle Monáe, Ryan Tedder, and Don Was. Viewers will also hear from the group’s Carl and Dennis Wilson in their own words, plus view a new interview with Blondie Chaplin and hear audio from Ricky Fataar.

A Kennedy/Marshall and White Horse Pictures Production, The Beach Boys is directed by Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny and written by Mark Monroe. The film is produced by Frank Marshall, Irving Azoff, Nicholas Ferrall, Jeanne Elfant Festa, Aly Parker, with Nigel Sinclair, Mark Monroe, Tony Rosenthal, Cassidy Hartmann, Glen Zipper, Thom Zimny, Beth Collins, Jimmy Edwards, Susan Genco, Marc Cimino, Jody Gerson, Bruce Resnikoff, and Ben J. Murphy serving as executive producers. “I’m super happy with the way the documentary turned out, they did an amazing job,” says Brian Wilson. “It really brought me back to those days with the boys, the fun and the music. And of course those incredible harmonies.”

The official soundtrack, The Beach Boys: Music From The Documentary, will be available to stream and download on May 24 via Capitol/UMe, and the group’s iconic 1964 album Shut Down, Vol. 2 is now available on limited edition blue and white marble vinyl. Additionally, the group’s only official book, The Beach Boys by The Beach Boys, was released on April 2 via Genesis Publications.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Minneapolis hip-hop pioneers Atmosphere have announced a reissue of their 2007 mixtape Strictly Leakage, available May 17th via Rhymesayers Entertainment.

Early on, Strictly Leakage had been pressed on a limited run of vinyl and CD, but it wasn’t long before they sold out, and fans were left chasing bootlegs and digital files in order to hear the project. Finally, the project returns to double-vinyl LP and CD, made available for retail distribution for the first time. Additionally, an exclusive pressing of blue & green colored vinyl LP’s and limited cassettes are available for pre-order directly from the artists at atmospheresucks.com and rhymesayers.com.

Often recognized as one of the most consistent and prolific duos in independent hip-hop, Atmosphere hit a stride of extraordinary output from July 2007 to April 2008, even by their own standards. Within those 9 months, they released a full-length album, four EP’s, and a 42-minute mixtape of exclusive material, altogether totaling 48 new songs released, all while they were consistently touring as well.

This rapid-fire string of releases introduced some of their most popular songs to date and showcased their dynamic range, from moody and reflective, to upbeat and optimistic, to a boom-bap throwback style of rap, the latter of which was most prominently displayed on the mixtape. Introduced on Christmas Day 2007, the mixtape was a “gift” to fans in the form of a free download, aptly titled Strictly Leakage—a nod to both eschewing standardized industry practices in favor of giving the music away, and to another prominent hip-hop album title from the era that inspired them and perhaps more specifically, these recordings.

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California-based tenor saxophonist Harold Land had a long and versatile recording career both as a sideman and as a leader. Of the latter albums, The Fox, first released in 1960, is widely considered to be his best; it sees reissue on 180 gram vinyl April 12 as part of Craft Recordings’ ongoing Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds Series. It is an album defined by sturdy ensemble play, inspired soloing, and a multifaceted backstory. We delve into it all below.

On The Fox, Harold Land and his assembled crew tear into the opening title track with such energy that it sounds like the year is not 1959 (this set, an early producer credit for David Axelrod, was recorded in August of that year) but 1949, infused as it is with uncut “get the no-talent scrubs off the bandstand” bebop verve.

1949 was the year Land debuted as a leader on record, cutting “San Diego Bounce” b/w “I’ll Remember April” by the Harold Land All-Stars, a 78rpm disc issued by the Savoy subsidiary Regent. That record’s vintage means Land was firsthand witness to the angular intensity of the original bebop era, though “San Diego Bounce” isn’t bop but a potent strain of instrumental R&B.

Land’s rise in stature included a lengthy stint performing and recording with the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet, a key group in the refinement of hard bop in the mid-1950s. Following the end of that band due to trumpeter Brown’s untimely death in a car accident, Land joined the outfit of bassist Curtis Counce, a move that first brought him into the sphere of Contemporary Records, where Counce recorded and Land cut his debut LP, Harold in the Land of Jazz in 1958.

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