Cory Graves
Lights All Night Announces Its Full 2015 Lineup And… Live From New York, It's Leon Bridges!
What a whirlwind and breakout year 2015 has been for Fort Worth's Leon Bridges.
After signing a deal with Columbia this past Christmas, Bridges has seen his debut LP hit No. 6 on the Billboard 200, performed with the surviving members of The Beatles at this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, been featured in a big Apple ad campaign and, most recently, headlined a sold-out show at The Majestic this past weekend.
And it's not even over.
As just announced earlier today, Bridges will make his fourth televised performance of the year on December 5 — and his coolest one yet — when he appears as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. Also making his SNL debut that episode? Host Ryan Gosling.
Pretty. Damn. Cool.
I guess that also means we won't catch him busking again at this year's DOMA Showcases? Oh well!
Anyway, on the subjects of awards, Nick Seeley and Daniel Hart recently took home a Bronze award for “Music Original – Underscore” in this year's London International Awards for a song they wrote for an Airbnb ad last year. Here's the award-winning ad they scored.
Speaking of commercials: Rising country star — and recent Sony signee — Maren Morris is the focus of a new Spotify spot where she talks about one of her most embarrassing moments onstage.
Moving on, Lights All Night recently announced its final list of the 50-plus acts playing its two-day EDM festival when it hits the Dallas Convention Center for its sixth go-round this December 31 and January 1. Among the biggest gets are Hardwell, Porter Robinson, Kaskade, Flosstradamus, Baauer, Big Gigantic, Claude Vonstroke, Datsik, Dirty South and Galantis. The full lineup, which includes an abundance of locals from the rising EDM community, can be found here. GA and VIP passes are currently on sale here.
Also announced earlier today, was the second crop of acts playing SXSW next year. Local artists Fat Boogie, Doug Funnie, G.U.N., Sarah Jaffe, The Outfit TX, The Relatives and Jonathan Tyler now join the previously announced Oil Boom and The Quebe Sisters as official showcasing artists at next year’s event.
Next, there were a whole bunch of artists releasing new material this week, a handful of which you can hear for the first time in this very column. Exciting stuff!
Leading off the bunch is a premiere of School of Seven Bells' new single, “Open Your Eyes,” which was paired with a rather lengthy interview with surviving member Alejandra Deheza that recently appeared in Noisey, chronicling the history of the band from its inception, dealing with Benjamin Curtis' death and the completion of the band's third LP, which is due out next February.
Then, just a day before rocking The Bomb Factory stage at last weekend's Elm Street Music & Tattoo Festival, Denton/Austin punks The Riverboat Gamblers released a new Stuart Sikes-produced seven-inch for “Time To Let Her Go,” which you can stream below. On the b-side, the band covered The Soft Boys' “I Wanna Destroy You,” which you can find here. As previously mentioned in this column, it's just the first of a series of singles the band plans on releasing through the next year.
And, in a couple weeks, Tunk is set to release his follow-up LP to 2013's No Meal No Deal, an album called No Defeat II that's set to drop December 1. The album's first single is called “Scarface the Rapper” — y'know, not to be confused with Scarface the movie.
Further on the horizon is the new In Transit EP from Fort Worth rapper Lou Charle$. The album's second single finds him collaborating with Dallas producer J. Rhodes for the second time (as well as with Los Angeles native Miki Rose) for a song about the sage advice his mother always gave him growing up.
And although former D12 member dEnAuN (aka Mr Porter) isn't from Dallas, the video for his new Royce Da 5'9″ and Pharoahe Monch featuring track “Cooking” was, in fact, directed by Dallas' Stacks Moses and animated by Dallas' Romio No E. It's a pretty sweet song, too, and one that even features a little Hannibal Buress cameo.
In other upcoming local release news, Reinventing Jude plans on putting out a new single at Josey Records as part of its Black Friday Record Store Day event. You can find a premiere of that song, called “Train Legs,” below. Fun fact: It was mastered by Carl Saff. Because duh.
Then there's Denton's Skagg Philips, the newish project from A.M. Ramblers' Jordan Batson. The band's debut album, Problems in Japan, is due out December 5, and you can catch below a stream of the title track, which we're proud to premiere.
That same day, Skagg Philips drummer Cory Patrick Coleman will release his sophomore full-length, Gonna Find You, which was recorded by Grady Don Sandlin at his home. Both of those albums will earn their release as part of a dual release show at Dan's Silverleaf on Friday, December 5, where Daniel Markham will also perform. In the meantime, catch Coleman's first single, “Fishin' Tonight” below.
Meanwhile, on November 20, Zhora will release a new video for its single, “Lights,” a song that we premiered back in 2013. That'll lead up to the release of Zhora's debut EP on December 18, and the listening party for that album will take place the following night at Off the Record.
In still more new release news, HipHopDX premiered a new one from Bobby Sessions. Good thing, too, because the only thing that can get a new Bobby Sessions song out of your head is another new Bobby Session song.
Also worth your time is a new collection of songs from Wanz Dover, who, after facing a health scare earlier this year that once again found the local music community rallying to support one of its own, promises that this batch is just the first in “a bunch of releases flooding out.” Good to hear he's feeling like his old self, yeah? Anyway: This ambient collection, called Music For Hospitals, was inspired during Dover's weeks-long stay holed up in an East Dallas hospital. Says the man himself of the album: “This was music written and recorded the two weeks after I got out the hospital. [I] wanted to have my own music to listen to if I ever end up in the hospital again.” In that context, it's a pretty powerful, beautiful listen. So give it one below.
Finally, as we covered yesterday, Denton house venue Macaroni Island hosted its last-ever show over the weekend. As capacity was extremely limited, not everyone that wanted to make it in was able to. As a consolation, an EP featuring a handful of live recordings from that show is now available via BandCamp.
Elsewhere this week: Lola's celebrated the opening of its long-in-the-works renovation project, which added a massive outdoor stage, beer garden and food truck park behind the venue; Demi Lovato recently received some attention for her live cover of Adele's “Hello,” which a few brave souls argued was better than the original; and, following a brief hiatus, independent Dallas radio show Live From the Underground returned with a new episode earlier this month.
Leon Bridges cover photo by Kathy Tran. Got a tip for White Noise? Email us!
