Feature Articles

I grew up in Austin, and EVERYONE is a musician in Austin. It’s to the point where when you meet someone and they ask what you do, if you say you’re in a band they’ll most likely roll their eyes and ask you what else you do. It’s hard having a ton of friends in bands because you’re always being asked to go to shows, and then there’s the other thing: Sometimes your friends suck.
When I met Jessica Graves through a mutual friend, I found out two things.
1. She’s from Austin too.
2. She’s a singer/songwriter that uses the ukulele as her main instrument.

I was worried that I might not like her music, but I was blown away. Miss Jess, as she is called, is my favorite musician that I am friends with, and she’s up there with the folks I don’t know. Her songs are about all the things you would expect from a girl who’s been referred to as “Mustang” for the majority of her life. She sings about men, rusty trucks, the country, love, desire and heartbreak.
It’s kind of hard to peg her sound, but she has a lot of 20’s and 30’s jazz influences, along with the twang of Patsy Cline and Rhonda Vincent. She plays mostly her own tunes, but she can rock out a helluva cover too. My favorite of her covers is called “Little Bird” by Jonathan Byrd. Her sweet notes make my arm hair stand on end, but when she goes hard, she nails that as well.
When Miss Jess picks up her little blue ukulele and begins to play and sing, she may not have a huge crowd, but she has an innate talent for drawing people in and she always ends up with more folks than she started out with. Her show at SOVA on H St. on Wednesday started with just a few people sitting upstairs, but more and more people moved from other rooms and other bars within the establishment until when she sang her last song, there was precious little room to sit.
Miss Jess doesn’t need no stinkin’ microphone. She can belt it to the rafters without any acoustic assistance, and as her drinking buddy I assure you she’s just as loud in any other situation. She lives in Washington, DC and she plays all around the area. I highly recommend catching one of her upcoming shows. She’s playing the next three Wednesday’s at SOVA. Come out and check her out.
For more info on Miss Jess, head to www.myspace.com/mustangsings--Macy


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On Tour With DC's Eubonics
Byron C. Tau
I first met “Peter Dulligan” the first week of college in 2004. We shared an interest in music; he was pretty funny and well read. He also had a streak of mild paranoia and ineptitude with technology that carries over to this day – hence why I am forced to refer to him as his standard alias Peter Dulligan rather than his real name, for fear that future employers might Google him and find out about his hip-hop career.

We became fast friends in college; started a three-piece rock band; wrote a few songs; lost our drummer and then our drum set. He lost interest in rock and roll and I started writing for the campus newspaper, blowing off class and sleeping in way too much. In short, we went our own directions. He ended up in D.C. here after graduating in December of 2007 for an internship, and I moved down here a few moths later to pursue my own internship.

I’d heard through the grapevine that Dulligan and a friend from high school had started recording hip-hop tracks and that they’d even set up a MySpace, but I wasn’t sure if I really believed it. My first real evidence came a few weeks before I moved down to D.C, I heard one of their first tracks – a song called “Bootstraps” about class and privilege and rich girls.

Fast forward a few months later and Dulligan and his high school friend Dirk Keaton – both from Sugarland Texas – had become more established here in D.C. Calling themselves the Eubonics, they brought a brand of white-boy hip-hop with a middle-class outlook. Both were enormous fans of 80s punk rock like the Dead Kennedys – and it shows a lot in their ethos. On their MySpace (http://myspace.com/theeubonics), they list hip-hop acts like Wu-Tang, UGK, Goodie Mob, Scarface, Z-RO – as well as non-hip hop acts Roger Miller and Joni Mitchell. Their recorded tracks are usually done with garage band and either a popular hip-hop sample or one recorded for them by UConn graduate student and DJ Sly and the Street Beat. For a microphone, they usually record with the internal microphone on an iMac.

Their live shows are usually energetic affairs. They both have a large circle of friends in D.C. who attend faithfully, and they’ve chosen to open for bands that have brought them a bit of attention. They opened for New Jersey punk band Screaming Females at Big Bear Café – and at least 150 people were in attendance.

Recently, I’ve been DJ-ing for them on my Macbook during their live shows; nothing particularly difficult – instead of turntables, I use freeware DJ and iTunes. In any case, I felt obligated to help them out. So when I found out that my friend in New York City was looking for an act to play his birthday party, I suggested the Eubonics. Both sides agreed and they were booked.

The party was supposed to take place in a rented café on the Lower East Side. However, a day before the show, the café fell through. Therefore, the sounds system did too. But the show must go on. The party moved to an apartment in Midtown. In a tiny four room unit with about fifty people crowd around, and both Eubonics shouting at the top of their lungs, the show did indeed go on. The Eubonics played seven songs, all without microphones. Instead of my Macbook, they only had an iPod. But the show was nevertheless a resounding success. At the end, the crowd of twenty-something New Yorkers shouted, “Encore!” and they queued up another song. They sold a handful of their EPs, made a handful of new fans, and promoted their MySpace. Not a bad day’s work.





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Music Magic
By Sarah Long
July 13, 2009

Billy Joel and Elton John. They were the artists of my father’s first two eight-tracks and whose music was played regularly on family road trips when I was growing up. To have them together in concert was a night I could not miss, enough so that I had three alarms set to make sure I woke up the morning tickets went on sale.

The talent and style of each is unique and incomparable, yet somehow, these two experts of their craft manage to blend their music in a way that makes playing together seem so natural. John is bubbly, peppy, and finger-snapping while Joel strikes a slightly more somber and personal note. Together they make “music magic,” the logo emblazoned across the back of John’s sequined and embroidered coat worn to the Nationals Park Saturday night for a stop on their Face 2 Face tour.

The mood of the evening was set by the elegantly appointed stage. The oval shaped floor was lined with bright hardwood, richly polished and gleaming in the manner of a wealthy drawing room and cleverly disguising elevators that lifted and shifted the pianos during the show. Two tiers of curved understated flooring rose and curved beyond the main stage floor to provide visual symmetry and harmony while offering practical additional space for the band members. The setup enabled the grips to work onstage virtually unnoticed and the band to have their piece of the limelight while firmly remaining in support status, hidden in full view when compared to the brightly saturated atmosphere of the main stage floor. Hung on each side of the stage were full-size black and white banners, one for New York and one for London , each bearing well-known buildings and reminders of their respective cities, and outlines by lights that colored and flashed enhancing the mood of each song.

The concert began with a joint performance of John’s Your Song. It was quickly followed with piano problems that offered the crowd a glimpse of the camaraderie between the pair. They joked as John waved for technical assistance and Joel jumped in on lyrics when John’s focus was fixing his piano. As a treat for the crowd, Joel played a couple patriotic numbers, Battle Hymn of the Republic and Yankee Doodle Dandy, as John’s technicians worked on his piano. Ultimately, Joel dramatically threw off his suit jacket and slid under John’s piano to adjust the settings, thereby revealing John’s bare legs and sneakers at the pedals. Discovering that the problem needed more intense repair, the duo pushed their introductory duet pieces to the end and Joel started his set list while John exited the stage.

Their age was beginning to show in looks (John is 62 and Joel is 60) and Joel appeared to be sipping coffee, but the age just added to the familiarity of the song choices. Joel’s songs included River of Dreams, Only the Good Die Young, and got the whole crowded desperately trying to keep up with the lyrics to We Didn't Start the Fire. Fans also heard John favorites such as Tiny Dancer, Daniel, and Rocket Man. When they joined onstage they alternated their hit songs displaying a natural inclination to blend one another’s style and music until I began to forget which song originally belonged to whom.

The sheer volume of songs was incredible. Fans heard 33 songs by two legends. The choice of venue, however, was anything but a joy. Nationals Park, home of the Washington, DC Nationals baseball team, was not suitable for the intimate connection between performer and audience John and Joel can create. Some sections were completely dark with others well-lit, affecting the intensity of the show’s production elements. In certain seats, the poor acoustics created an echo that jarringly blended with the music itself.

Nevertheless, the evening was filled with relevant lyrics, melodic chords, and tunes that brought listeners to jump up and dance or pause and reflect on aspects of life and love. During this time, my guest asked me which song in the whole world I would want to hear them play together. Picking just one was nearly impossible until they ended the show with a stunning rendition of Piano Man. We looked at each other and said this was it, the perfect song to summarize the night as well as the pair. As Billy Joel and Elton John played us a memory, we soaked in the joy of forgetting about life for awhile.