For a guy whose career has evolved more by serendipity than design, Ben Dickey’s professional journey has turned into one heckuva ride. It’s not every day an obscure musician’s famous actor/ director friend hands him the lead in a passion-project indie film, and he not only winds up sharing the screen with one of his musical heroes, he also wins a Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize for Dramatic Achievement in Acting — and a Variety magazine “for your consideration” plug for a Best Actor Oscar nomination.
Dickey’s acting debut in Blaze, Ethan Hawke’s biopic about doomed Texas singer-songwriter Blaze Foley, has already led to more roles, including their pairing as bounty hunters in The Kid, a western directed by Vincent D’Onofrio. But just as exciting, as far as Dickey’s concerned, is the opportunity it provided to record with that musical hero, longtime Bob Dylan guitarist Charlie Sexton (who played Blaze’s other troubled Texas songwriting legend, Townes Van Zandt). After they did the film’s original cast recording (on Light in the Attic Records), Sexton produced Dickey’s solo album, A Glimmer on the Outskirts. That inspired Sexton, Hawke and Blaze executive producer Louis Black to form SexHawkeBlack Records, a new Austin-based imprint under the umbrella of Nashville’s Dualtone Records. Dickey’s March 7, 2019 release is the label’s first.
It’s hardly Dickey’s first recording foray, however. In fact, he says, he preferred the idea of forming a label to shopping for one because he’d been signed before — and still bears scars from watching the dream morph into a momentum-sucking nightmare. But SexHawkeBlack president Erika Pinktipps happens to be friends with Dualtone’s founder; that connection quickly turned into an actual alliance. “We’re all doing this together,” Dickey says, “[it’s] a group of people who all care about each other and have similar artistic arrows pointed in the same direction.”
EVENTS AT THE KITCHEN SINK - Spring 2019
Friday April 12th, 2019
MAKING MAGIC
with Baron Wolman
(plus musical guests Jay Boy Adams and Jono Manson)
5:30pm and 7:30pm - admission free
Limited Seating - RSVP Here:
Recording studio
Click to view PAST EVENTS AT THE KITCHEN SINK
Wednesday May 15th, 2019
Ben Dickey in Concert
Doors @ 7:00 pm / Show @ 7:30 pm
$20 - BUY TICKETS
100% of the proceeds from this event go to the artist
There is no event parking available at the studio. Parking is available in nearby Guadalupe Street parking lots, in the municipal lot next to Allsups gas station, and ample parking is always available across the street from the studio at the DeVargas Mall.
Thom Jurek at All Music said it best, "Only Gram Parsons' term "Cosmic American Music" begins to touch her mercurial, changeling roots aesthetic, . . McNally is a Zen-like, post-Beat song poet”. For those who have followed McNally’s nearly twenty year career the thing that most sticks with the listener about her, is the timeless effortlessness that she brings to all she does. With a long catalog and longer list of peers with whom she has written, recorded and toured, McNally continues to turn out great music that defies blatant genre-fication.
At home across the American (Americana) music spectrum, the Grammy nominee who’s live music career began on the jam band circuit of the 1990’s with bands like Robert Randolph and Derek Trucks, writes as well as she interprets the songs of others, has a top tier musicality to her craft, a soul stirring voice that immediately grabs one by the heart strings and a troubadour’s wanderlust, not to mention as it turns out, she is also an excellent electric guitar player.
Like her anti-hero heros J.J. Cale, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan. Dr. John, and Jim Dickinson, McNally knows who she serves. She serves the song. Her quiet but steady plodding through the many layers of the business of music, hasn’t ever been rewarded with massive fame and fortune but in time that slow burn has become the treasure in and of itself.
The part of McNally’s narrative that is often missed is that not only has she self-managed herself for nearly all of her career but that she has also been a stout warrior-like-artist who often went toe-to-toe with label heads and A&R to defend and fight for her visions. She left the major label world after ten years at Capital/EMI to fend for herself on various smaller labels and self-release paradigms. Perhaps the business of music is finally catching up with her independent spirit. We shall see.
"She has the voice: bruised, smoky and ornery, right at home where country and soul meet. She has the melodies and the timing - she’s irresistible.” — Jon Pareles, The New York Times
“McNally ….sensual, swaggering, smokey. …..exhibiting an ability to depict pleasure and pain with an explicitness that seems deceptively natural for such a reasonably young songwriter.….a healthy dose of lowdown country and ragged soul..McNally's sound bears a timelessness that's truly uncommon.” — Austin Chronicle
“She is probably rock’s most talented undiscovered gem. This woman with the confident voice, pin-point lyrics and effortless guitar playing….Shannon McNally can rock your socks off at the same time she is hitting you over the head with words that actually make sense.” — Glide Magazine
“I first heard of Shannon McNally through John Leventhal, who described her vocal skills as having just the right amount of girlish smoke. At the time I was looking for just the right singer to make a cameo appearance on a song I was recording called “Famous Last Words of a Fool.” Trusting John’s appraisal---from his description I imagined something of a cross between Joan Jett and Lauren Bacall---I set about tracking the mystery singer down. What I eventually discovered in the small town of Holly Springs, Mississippi was this dark-eyed beauty who wrote grown-up songs, played a pretty mean Fender Stratocaster and, at times, sounded a lot Jesse Mae Hemphill. From our first meeting I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was the right man for the job of shepherding the next Shannon McNally record into existence. Now that the record is made, I hope music lovers around the world will come to know what I and many others already know: This girl belongs in the Americana Music spotlight.” Rodney Crowell
“Thom Chacon’s music is simple, but don’t mistake that for a lack of depth. Simple
writing is the hardest writing and always the best. His songs are packed with rich
imagery and instantly relatable sensibilities. He is a real writer and by that I mean
he has infected visions. I salute him.” –Mary Gauthier
Baron Wolman is best known for his work in the late 1960s for the music magazine Rolling Stone, becoming the magazine's first Chief Photographer from 1967 until late 1970. It was in San Francisco, in April, 1967, that Wolman, then 30, met a 21-year-old Cal Berkeley student and freelance writer named Jann Wenner. Wolman had been photographing rock bands and Wenner had plans to form a new kind of music periodical with San Francisco Chronicle music writer, Ralph Gleason. Wolman agreed to join the new periodical, Rolling Stone, and work for free. He also insisted on ownership of all the photos he took for Rolling Stone, giving the magazine unlimited use of the pictures. Wolman began shooting for Rolling Stone from before its first issue was even published, and continued for another three years. Because of Wolman's virtually unlimited access to his subjects, his photographs of Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, Iggy Pop, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Phil Spector, Jim Morrison, Ike & Tina Turner, and other musicians became the graphic centerpiece of Rolling Stone's fresh layout.
For the most part, Wolman eschewed the studio and never used on-camera strobes, preferring informal portraiture, a style appropriate to both the musicians he was documenting as well as the audience for these photographs. Wolman's approach was gradually supplanted by highly stylized, mostly studio image makers, whose pictures were published only upon the approval of the musician and of his or her management. This evolution can be traced on the subsequent covers of Rolling Stone through the years.
The Kitchen Sink
Join us for a special event with legendary photographer Baron Wolman, including a screening of "Making Magic", a short documentary on his life and work, and celebrating the release of a new book of his iconic photos of Jimi Hendrix.
Thom Chacon, the Durango, Colorado balladeer has released his third studio
album, Blood In The USA, on Pie Records/ Appaloosa Records. The 9-song manifesto,
filled with stories of redemption, has the kind of inviting melodicism that will sweep
listeners into his deeper meanings.
With an organic backdrop of acoustic guitar and harmonica, along with Tony
Garnier (Bob Dylan) on bass and Tommy Mandel (Bryan Adams) on organ, Blood In
The USA, the album, is an Americana masterpiece. Recorded live in an all analog
format by producer Perry Margouleff, it delves into dust bowl era themes but brings
it up-to-date, blending a modern edge with the sort of unblinking grit and realism
that originated with the likes of Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston. Sung in a voice
somewhere between 1962 Dylan, 1982 John Prine and Ghost Of Tom Joad-era
Springsteen, Thom Chacon delivers his poetic verse and all-American sentiment
with the kind of memorable characters you just can’t shake.
In January 2018, Chacon landed on the cover of the legendary Italian music
magazine, Buscadero. Thom has since toured Italy extensively and was awarded
Buscadero’s “Best New Artist” of 2018. Chacon has literally traveled around the
world playing his songs: from the intimidating confines of Folsom Prison (“a life-
changing experience”) to Thailand, India and Europe. Having wandered the world,
winning over crowds that appreciate the ethos and honesty of his music, these new
songs are now proudly presented on Blood In The USA.
The Kitchen Sink
Baron on stage at Woodstock with Carlos Santana
Sunday May 26th, 2019
Shannon McNally in Concert
Doors @ 7:00 pm / Show @ 7:30 pm
$20 - BUY TICKETS
100% of the proceeds from this event go to the artist
Friday April 26th, 2019
Thom Chacon in Concert
Doors @ 7:00 pm / Show @ 7:30 pm
$20 - BUY TICKETS
100% of the proceeds from this event go to the artist
Presented
in collaboration with
Southwest Roots Music
and Santa Fe Performance Exchange