Daily - The Austin Chronicle (2024)

Spaced Out

Sunday at Salvage Vanguard, Church of the Friendly Ghost debuts a new monthly series. Open Spaces, organized by Weird Weeds drummer Nick Hennies, seeks to bring works of one artist into focus, rather than a whole lineup of bands. Hennies kicks off the series with two pieces, one for percussion and one for vibraphone."There's always so much going on in Austin that I thought it would be nice to provide a space once a month where something calm and meditative but sonically interesting could occur," Hennies explains. "The more you take away from music and decontextualize sound the more you're forced to focus on the details of the events."In addition, CotFG holds a volunteer meeting tomorrow at Hot Mama's Coffee House (2401 E Sixth St.), 6pm, and all are welcome.

Accolades for Austin Authors

Good news for two Austin-based authors just showed up in our in box. The first concerns Darryl Wimberley, author of the popular Barrett Raines mystery series and the just-released Kaleidoscope; his 2007 novel The King of Colored Town has been awarded the first-ever Willie Morris Prize for Southern Fiction. The honor includes a cash prize and a roundtrip ticket to the awards ceremony at New York's Mercantile Library for Fiction on Oct. 22. In the meantime, you can go congratulate him yourself when he reads at BookPeople on Saturday, Sept. 13, at 3pm.The Chronicle's Film News columnist, Joe O'Connell, received a spot of good news himself over the weekend –he's one of six finalists for the Violet Crown Book Award in Fiction for his novel Evacuation Plan, the only Austin author to make the shortlist. The Violet Crown award is given by the Writers League of Texas, the largest regional writing group in Texas and the second largest in the nation. The winners will be announced on Nov. 1 at this year's Texas Book Festival.

Two things that you need to do before this weekend!
1. RSVP so that you can enjoy some nice tasty Drambuie at the Drambuie Den.
2. MAKE SOMETHING!... or at least propose to.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1. Monday and Tuesday (Sept 15 & 16) Drambuie will be hosting their Drambuie Den over at Pangaea night club (409 Colorado) from 6-9pm. They'll have complimentary hors d'oeuvres, entertainment and co*cktails featuring Drambuie elixir. All you have to do is RSVP HERE!2. The Maker Faire is returning to Austin on October 18 & 19 and they are still looking for Austin's best Makers. If you have a project, or skill, or idea go to makerfaire.com right now and sign-up! The submission deadline has been extended to this Sunday, Sept 14 so don't delay!
For some video and photos of last year's Maker Faire Austin click HERE.

Kasey, Shane, and a Monkey on a Wire

It’s rare to conduct a phone interview with an artist and feel like you’ve really connected. That’s what happened when I spoke to wife and husband team Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson last week. They were at their home outside Sydney, Australia, packing for a U.S. tour, and seemed thrilled to just be talking to someone from here.“Shane and I have often joked about if we ever lived in America, it would be in Austin,” Chambers claims. “For the music, obviously, but more for the ribs. We’ve been counting down the weeks 'til we can get to Austin and eat ribs. We don’t really have ribs in restaurants down here, so we’re really excited.”Austin always had a love affair with Chambers, beginning with her 2000 release The Captain (Asylum). They play a sold-out Cactus Café on Saturday night in support of their first record as a duo, Rattlin’ Bones (Sugar Hill), released next Tuesday. More acoustic bluegrass than anything either of them have done in the past, it recalls the Americana sounds of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings or Buddy and Julie Miller.“I think this record is closer to the stuff we listen to at home than any record either one of us have ever made,” Chambers asserts.

Fair Wages Cost a Penny

Whole Foods Market tomatoes have just got a little more ethical. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has been criticizing the Austin-based grocery chain for months, alleging they were "more interested in cheap tomatoes than the well-being of those working to get produce to the store." Now they are praising the firm for signing on with the Penny a Pound initiative, where commercial buyers like Whole Foods will back paying an extra 1 cent per pound surcharge for a wage increase for tomato pickers in Florida.Whole Foods is also looking at extending its Whole Trade Guarantee program, which promotes ethical sourcing for its foreign-grown produce, to domestic supplies (bit sad that they'd have to, since it should go without saying that workers should be getting fair pay.)As for CIW, having previously taken on Taco Bell and Burger King, and with Whole Foods now on board, the union has set its sights on its next target: Chipotle.

Graveyard: Ungrateful Are We the Dead

Seldom have the opening notes of any rock album had the effect of the deep, dark, descending tones of Graveyard opener “Evil Ways.” Axel Sjöberg’s gravity-free cymbal/toms dance thickens the ether out of which guitarists Jonatan Ramm (lead), Joakim Nilsson (rhythm/vox), and Rikard Edlund (bass) spark a firestorm of doomy roar that the Gothenburg, Sweden, fivepiece has thrilled record heads with since spring.“I’m been alive and I’ve been dead,” cries Nilsson, “Must be something wrong with my head.” The chorus scrapes the bark off the similarly galvanizing opening notes of Black Sabbath’s eponymous 1970 debut: “There’s a hole in my soul that can’t be filled.”At Encore Records and Video during this year’s South by Southwest, Graveyard took the sweet, corner, in-store stage and for 30 rocket-engine minutes proved the group’s debut no fluke. “Evil Ways,” “Don’t Take Us for Fools,” “Submarine Blues,” “Thin Line,” “Satan’s Finest,” and non-LP track “Ungrateful Are We the Dead” made up one of the band’s very first U.S. soil set-lists. A chat with tall, blond, bearded, Scandinavian drummer Sjöberg confirmed the band’s excitement in the music festival and Austin. Tomorrow, Wednesday, Sept. 10, Red 7 horn blowers get a chance to wear their fire retardant black tees in defense of Graveyard, fellow late-1960s-loving Swedes Witchcraft, and Brooklyn bangers TK Webb & the Visions.

Is It Any Wonder?

Opposite Day for McCain Education Policy

Semper Paratus

Back in August and early-September of 2005, during those harrowing Katrina weeks, The Austin Chronicle desperately tried to stay on top of breaking hurricane and relief news. We cobbled together an Evacuee Services page from scraps of what our servers and personnel could handle.These days, we have blogs. Today we launch In Case of Emergency, a blog effort to stay prepared – for times in which public service cannot wait for a weekly print edition.Two days ago, the National Hurricane Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) placed serious bets on a Texas coast landfall for Hurricane Ike sometime this weekend. The projected track of the beast currently churning through Cuba, exposes a vulnerable gulf coastline, with a range of possible dangerzones stretching from Southwest Louisiana to Northern Mexico.Louisiana and Florida declared states of emergency earlier in the week, and yesterday Texas Governor Rick Perry issued a disaster declaration as Ike barrels northwest.Austin is situated but a few hours from the coastal region. Safely enough inland, we are a logical staging area for statewide relief efforts. On a personal level, many of us high and dry (…) in the state capital have friends and loved ones living on the coast. Coastal concerns are our concerns.Just last week, Austin opened doors to a number of facilities and resources for anticipated Hurricane Gustav evacuees. Fortunately, the fallout from Gustav was relatively minor, and evacuees made it safely back home in a matter of days. Back in 2005, Austin played a major role in providing a safety net for thousands of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. Our town came through in a pinch.Watch this space for updates as Ike inches towards the Texas coast. An access link to In Case of Emergency will appear on the front page of our website in times of need. Be sure to check out our list of Resource Links in the righthand column alongside the blog posts. Hopefully, all our efforts are pre-cautionarily for naught, and no one will ever have to actually use the resources amassed within.