Four-time Grammy winner Sarah Jarosz is bringing new life to the Americana roots musical genre. Serious enough to win the Fresh Grass Foundation’s 2017 commission to write a thirty minute original piece featuring traditional bluegrass stringed instruments yet fun enough to share cocktail recipes during her two online after shows recently, Jarosz is full of surprises.

On her commissioned piece called The Blue Heron Suite, released on May 7, Sarah never fails to amaze even the most faithful Americana music fan with how versatile her octave mandolin, her acoustic guitar and her clawhammer banjo, joined by a bass guitar (Jeff Picker) and guitar (Jefferson Hamer) can truly be. Falling somewhere between classical music and folk rock, Blue Heron Suite will inspire mandolin and clawhammer banjo players for the foreseeable future.

The commission awarded to Jarosz by the Fresh Grass Foundation states the following on its website: “The FreshGrass Composition Commission is our flagship grant, given annually to an artist whose work reflects the FreshGrass mission to preserve and support innovative grassroots music. Composition Commission recipients write a new long-form piece of music for an ensemble that includes some elements of traditional string band instrumentation,” Blue Heron Suite therefore is not a traditional album of songs (unlike her 2020 Grammy winning World on the Ground album). 

This cohesive new album contains songs, interludes and reprises that are most satisfying to listen to in one sitting, preferably with headphones and with the high quality setting if you are using the Spotify app!

Jarosz has not only excelled at writing and performing a piece that fulfills the purpose of  her award. She has also written a testimony to the comforting and strengthening importance of family and friends at a time in one’s life when crummy circumstances are blindsiding a usually upbeat individual. Jarosz’s theme of experiencing her mother’s breast cancer diagnosis ( now in remission) and the devastation of Hurricane Harvey at a much-loved town near her Texas hometown of Wimmerley back in 2017 is proficiently reflected in the way the music finds strength after the suite’s turning point during Interlude Two. 

An example of how her music evokes the storyline of her experience is Interlude Two’s pleasing clawhammer banjo strumming, calling to mind her thinking over what her mother and friends have said. This interlude then leads to the appearance Jarosz’s trademark powerful vocals (rather than the higher-pitched vocals heard up to this point) for the first time on this album. 

For the remainder of Blue Heron Suite, the music becomes more upbeat —- not exactly her boisterous Little Satchel (a bluegrass standard she covered on World On The Ground in 2020) but that’s what makes Blue Heron Suite so beautifully and genuinely relatable to anyone that has come out on the other side of a crisis or a tragedy.

Sarah’s concert swag available online also will delight and surprise her fans new and old. In addition to some of the prettiest t-shirts and tank tops with artwork by her friend Taylor Ashton,  Jarosz offers imprinted kites (!) and bluebonnet seed packets in true Texas fashion. 

Don’t forget, there are imprinted Blue Heron tumblers for enjoying her cocktail recipes!

 On Thursday, May 27th, Heartless Bastards kicked off Mohawk’s first sold out show since the apocalypse. Demand was high enough for Mohawk to add a second performance to the weekend’s roster. The venue’s capacity was set at 50%, approximately 450 people, so the sold-out show felt comfortable and spacious (and wow, wait until you see the renovated bathrooms at Mohawk). 

Tender Things opens the show with country, hippie charm. From Northern Kentucky, they toted their 6-piece to Austin including a fiddle player and a cowboy on a pedal steel guitar. The Austin crowd receives this country folk getup with open hearts and roaring applause. They play songs from their new album, How to Make a Fool, most notable was “I Don’t Know How to Love You.” The atmosphere is pure elation and joy as this is the first live show for most folks, especially at a venue that feels like home.

Everything feels new but with a familiar air. Austin has been home to Heartless Bastards since 2007, and it feels poignant and right that they play one of the christening shows of live music’s return. Energy climbs as Heartless Bastards take the stage with lead singer, Erika Wennerstrom in a black-velvet-fringe romper with rainbow stripes. Wennerstrom announces that their new album will be released this fall 2021. They play new songs from the upcoming album, songs drenched in rock and marked by Wennerstrom’s throaty voice and lyrical talent and featuring sublime guitar moments by Lauren Gurgiolo, another Austin treasure. Wennerstrom sings, “it’s a beautiful life if you let it be,” from the new album’s namesake track, “A Beautiful Life.” 

Among the new sounds, old favorites are mixed in like “Only For You,” and “The Mountain,” as well as “Extraordinary Love” from Wennerstrom’s solo album, Sweet Unknown. They gracefully and appropriately close with “Revolution,” their 2020 release, before the audience beckons them for a mutually deserved encore. 

The bands continually pronounce and pour out their gratitude to play music, the crowd showers the musicians with cheers and hollers, the full moon rises in the Eastern sky. Half way through the set, Wennerstrom seals the moment by saying we should never take these times together for granted. Both bands will be performing at Austin City Limits this fall season.

-- Mel Green

Photo credit: David Brendan Hall

 There are record albums and songs that resonate to an unexpectedly great extent, not only because these songs are musically excellent but also because they clearly possess timeliness in regard to social change. In 1972, when Title IX’s educational protections for young women became the law of the land, Helen Ready roared out with her ubiquitous hit song, “I Am Woman”. 

In 1980 and 1984 respectively, as more women took careers seriously wearing dress-for-success suit outfits to work and more women were the sole breadwinner, two very popular tunes were “9 to 5” and “Manic Monday”. 

Austin singer-songwriter Grace Pettis just may hit similar musical gold this year with a timely societal  message. 

The title track of her latest album called “Working Woman”, released two days before Mother’s Day but which was written and produced last summer, addresses the pandemic re-realization that women’s work for corporations and for their own families not only remains undervalued but disproportionate to the amount shouldered by many men. Last year, homeschooling while working remotely often fell to the moms! So did covid safety, for example negotiating adult friendship “pods” and the children’s playdates, revealing lingering stereotypes that mothers should and do possess more social skills and more responsibility for familial caution than dad. 

With a rocking beat that sounds like an army of one almost ominously march-marching to speak up at the office about her work load on Monday morning, the title track “Working Woman” sets the tone for an album that motivates and entertains. 

In the vein of “9 to 5” and “Manic Monday”, Pettis’s empathic, mischievous and even rueful humor delightfully sustains the tradition here of consciousness-raising through self-recognition lightened by gentle sarcasm. 

“I Ain’t Your Mother” is the most all-out example of Pettis’ funny sense of humor that stings its target, in this case a spouse thinking every domestic responsibility belongs to his wife. 

Grace Pettis’ voice, an exquisitely soulful voice that brings to mind Mickey Guyton, Ann Wilson, Pat Benatar (and on “Tin Can”, Sia’s Chandelier”!) rather than a typical folk or country singer’s voice, makes the listener sit up and take notice. 

The warmth and strength of her pipes conceivably could make sympathetic listeners feel less isolated as they struggle with injustice. Male allies will feel good about Pettis’ music too. 

Her ample use of background vocals and esteemed folk colleagues including The Indigo Girls,  creates a sense of community. There are just so many great, appealing voices here. Women (and allies), you are not alone.

That a new phase of the woman’s movement has been taking place since March 2020 seems to resonate throughout this album. 

With only 2% of music producers being female, her non-binary band and team speaks volumes for Pettis’ commitment to feminist needs in the wake of this new phase of activism. Her band consists of: Ellen Angelico – Electric Guitar + Pedal Steel

, Megan Coleman – Drums, Ryan Madora – Bass Guitar, Kira Small – Organ + BGVs, 

Mary Bragg – BGVs and producer, and Rachael Moore, engineer.

Photo Credit: Erik Hayden

L.A. based singer-songwriter Sara Noelle is a self-described “ambient-folk” artist and she’s released the first single for her upcoming album (title and release date TBD). Entitled Do I Have To Feel Everything, it’s her first release since her late 2020 single Christmas at Sea.

Produced by Dan Duszynski, the new track begins with insistent harmony synths, before a lush, lightly vocoder-tinged chorus of Saras fills the listener’s ears. Throughout, liquid synth pads tastefully bathe the arrangement, like layers of crystal blue seawater. A simple but weighty bass drum heartbeat holds down the rhythm while toms occasionally tumble through. The song gently crescendos with a full complement of electronic drums and angelic, wordless vocals. Melodically, there are (not unwelcome) similarities to Fleetwood Mac and Death Cab For Cutie, but overall the track gives the impression of being both propulsive yet meditative. It’s a difficult balancing act but one that Noelle and Duszynski pull off with grace, as nothing seems out of place, although many things are happening at once.

Lyrically, the mention of the “silent year/like time stopped,” instantly brings to mind our collective Covid year. And while the vibe of the music is a positive one, lines like “I don’t know where and I don’t know where I am/The closer I get, the farther I am” hint at a persistent sense of limbo and uncertainty about the future that many of of are likely feeling. Although it’s especially resonant at this time in history, Sara Noelle’s track carries a certain timelessness in its lyrical feelings of alienation. Gabe Hernandez

Texas Textbooks’ “Birds” is a warm, twangy, surprisingly smart album just right for summer 2021. The band’s staunch localism, which might have been off putting in a less welcoming package, instead provides a solid roadmap for songs to please listeners in and out of Bat City.

To be sure, this is an Austin album almost to excess -- Texas Textbooks’ love of their hometown is explicit. Seriously, there’s a whole song just called “Grackle,” ending with a Floydian cacophony familiar to anyone who’s ever put away groceries under a treefull of those loud bird bastards. It’s baked into the music, too. Influence from Spoon, …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead and even Fastball is clear in the musical choices made. It’s never dull or samey, however. Textbooks’ composition is pleasantly dense, jangly countrified pop (they say “twangcore” but we’re not absolutely persuaded that’s a thing) with bracing shots of samples and shimmery slide guitar.

Texas Textbooks also stand out from the twangy Texas indie crowd on literary merit. Lyrics are both fun and pleasantly poetic, with a few flourishes of real beauty. Themes range from prosaic (a trip to the HEB with extensive involvement from the aforementioned birds) to enjoyably preposterous (Janis Joplin and Jorge Luis Borges just missing one another -– in fairness, both were at UT in 1961 –- at a diner off Guadalupe), but always catch the attention. Texas Textbooks avoids putting out boring, over misty-eyed meditations on failed relationships and/or the American dream, instead throwing their net wide, snagging everything from the challenges of adult friendship to a fantasia on San Antonio’s 1968 Hemisfair global exhibition. That ambition serves them well and shows a quantum leap beyond their solid debut effort “Pecos & Matamoros.”

All in all, Texas Textbooks is a must-listen for anyone invested in indie pop or the culture of the I-35 corridor. “Birds” is available now through the Texas Textbooks Bandcamp. Check ‘em out.

-- Matt Salter