200 businesses, and you, pitch in to provide health care to Austin musicians.
Despite the raucous rock star debauchery that is so fun to fantasize about, the truth is most working musicians are just that: working musicians. As independent contractors, health care benefits are as fanciful a notion to musicians as a tap dancing Smurf with a marshmallow hat. Not gonna happen. That is until the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians stepped to the plate in 2005. HAAM provides healthcare to Austin’s low-income, uninsured musicians. Recognizing one of the most important sectors of the Austin economy (generating nearly $1 billion annually) was made up largely of artists earning less than $15,000 a year, HAAM set out to keep live music in Austin alive—literally.
Drew Smith’s Lonely Choir, circa 2008 Music was never just background for Drew Smith. His parents kept the vinyl spinning as he was growing up—albums by Harry Chapin, Paul Simon, Peter, Paul and Mary, and John Denver. And young Drew Smith soaked it all in with precocious appreciation. He cared about every aspect of the recording: how the melody flowed, why the songwriter chose this word instead of that one. At the age of 12, Smith bought a copy of Marc Cohn's self-titled album, with the hit "Walking in Memphis," and learned to play piano to accompany himself singing every song on the album.
Guitar gods come in all shapes and sizes, just like the rest of us. Some go to great pains to dress and act the part. Some don’t. Redd Volkaert, who looks more like a salt-of-the-earth character in a shoot ‘em up western or the produce manager at Randall’s than one of Austin’s most gifted shredders, belongs to the latter category. But when he plugs in and begins to spray notes from the stage like he’s manning a Gatling gun, or takes it way down with the finesse that belies a man with fingers the size of Elgin sausages, you know you’re witnessing a player who belongs in Guitar Town’s top-tier—the elite of Austin’s vaunted guitar army.
Her true calling, almost forever left behind in Syria.
At the age of 13, Zein Al-Jundi was a featured soloist at the opening gala for the newly renovated Roman amphitheater in the ancient Middle Eastern city of Bosra. Yet it would be decades later before even her own Austin-born teenaged children came to know their mother had once been a child star in her native Syria.
When Al-Jundi took the stage Friday at La Zona Rosa (a concert promoted by Putumayo World Music), no one in the packed house could guess the international recording
If you’ve ever moved to a new city or school, made a fresh start in a new industry, or even changed majors in college, you’ll appreciate the eager attitude and deft craftsmanship that Topaz & Mudphonic bring to a wholly new experience in creating their debut release Music for Dorothy. This group of agile musicians make an easy, graceful, and lasting entrance onto the stage of funky rock, as if they had been there all along.
