Photo by Philip Laubner
The thought of old honky tonks, saloons or even an old juke box probably doesn’t conjure images of blogs, RSS feeds, or Youtube; but Music Fog creators Jesse Scott and Jim McBean have been using connectivity to bring Americana music to a wider audience. I spoke to Jesse Scott at a honky tonk show hosted by Andy Rubin, at his bookstore, Cyclops, on North Avenue. She told me that Music Fog’s motto is: “How hard could it be?”
Music Fog was created by Scott and McBean after they both lost their jobs when XM radio went through a merger with Sirius; Scott being the program director of the Americana format on Cross Country XM and McBean was the head of production at XM. They started by taking a tour bus to music festivals where performers like Jeff Tweedy and Buddy Guy would come on their bus to do impromptu interviews and performances.
“At first we just had audio, and then we realized that it was just too good and we needed to expand to video.”
Music Fog now publishes a song a day in video format, and Jesse writes a new blog entry every day. They’ve only had the site up for eighteen months but they’ve already gone beyond one million views. The video’s are high quality and the performances are amazing. Their philosophy is to keep it clean on the page, just like the music, no BS.
Photo and story by Philip Laubner.
Photo by Philip Laubner
This night at Cyclops included The Mystiqueros from Austin, TX and The McTell Brothers from Virgina.
The McTell Brothers, who started the evening, are a pair of down-to-earth, but kick-ass blues, folk and rock players. If you closed your eyes and just listened you might think they were seasoned old pros rather than fourteen year old fraternal twins.
Photo and story by Philip Laubner.
Photo by Philip Laubner
Currently Jesse Scott is traveling with The Mystiqueros, an Austin Texas based honky tonk band with not one, but three excellent song-writers. She’s accompanying the band as they do a short tour up to NYC. There’s a reason why someone as connected as Jesse Scott is traveling with them: incredible, impassioned song writing.
Photo and story by Philip Laubner.
Photo by Philip Laubner
For those of us who were lucky enough to be there, especially those of us who write or try to write songs, it was like being in a master’s class. The format was unplugged, intimate, and intense and I sat on the couch of Cyclops transfixed by the song writing and sounds of Walt Wilkins, John Greenberg, Bill Small and percussionist Ray Rodriguez.
Photo and story by Philip Laubner.
Photo by Philip Laubner
I spoke to band member Walt Wilkins after the show, an Americana legend and founder of the band, Walt’s written songs for the likes of Ricky Scaggs, Kenny Rogers, Pam Tillis and Pat Green among others. I asked him about the unplugged format of the evening: “We play listening rooms and book stores like Cyclops, where people get to hear all of the lyrics, to dance halls, all the way up to full-band festival shows; I don’t prefer one format to the other, they each have their advantages, we’re lucky to be able to play them all.” A highlight of the night for me came when they played the Jimmy Davis song
“Miss.” There’s no BS in The Mystiqueros, the song or the raw vocal delivery of Bill Small; it was incredible.
Photo and story by Philip Laubner.
Photo by Philip Laubner
The future is bright for the The McTell Brothers. Not only do they write great songs like the rockin’, but humorous “Bunny Blues,” but they choose great covers like my personal favorite, Wall of Death by Richard Thompson which features the brothers sharing a take-no-prisoners unison harmony.
When asked about the significance of Americana, Scott replied, “This is where the great American song lives, where people really still write from the heart, and where it isn’t all about commercial success.”
Photo and story by Philip Laubner.
