Nashville for Free

Photos from 8 Off 8th at Mercy Lounge (February 13th, 2012) by Kate Cauthen, featuring Night Beds, Sol Cat, Henry Wagons, Buffalo Clover, The Electric Crushes, Delta Saints, The Greater Good, and Little Bandits.

Missed last week’s performances? Check out 8 Off 8th tonight to see Andrea Davidson, Skyler, Ashley Lee, Ryan Kinder, Holly Winter, The Co, Schools, and Tesla Rossa.

View the gallery after the jump!

(more…)

There are quite a few different trivia nights in Nashville, and everyone has a favorite. What you may not know, however, is that a lot of these trivia events are hosted by the same company at different bars. To the best of my knowledge the big three are Trivia Time, Geeks Who Drink, and Better Trivia. All of these companies run the trivia at several different bars in Nashville. If you’ve been to a trivia night in the past year, chances are one of them ran it.

I’ve been to trivia hosted by all of them (my trivia nerdom started with Academic Team in high school), and while I think I prefer Geeks Who Drink my friends and I are far more likely to hit up a game by Better Trivia. The games are shorter than Geeks Who Drink (while you still get in a lot of questions) and there’s one in closer proximity to some of us, so there ya go.

The questions are usually pretty good, minus the always excruciating final wager. There are tons of opportunities to win free beer via an “impossible question” where the best you’ll ever be able to do is offer up an educated guess, and if you win the whole shebang you’ll get a $30 gift card. Second place gets $20, third gets $10. Just make sure you keep track of your points, because I’ve caught them on a few mistakes.

Last night, for the first time ever, our team actually won. We surprisingly won by a lot, too. Thanks in a large part to one member’s love of rap and the fact that I for some weird reason know that Neil Diamond used to fence at NYU. Oh yeah, and if you ever plan on attending make sure you follow them on Facebook because they always give a pretty big clue to one of their questions, and since most games are won by a matter of a few points you should really take what you can get.

Better Trivia is held on Tuesdays at 7:30pm at the following locations:
Cross Corner in Brentwood
Sportsman’s Grille in Hillsboro Village (upstairs)

-Emily

Hello dear friends! It’s that time of the year again, and this year we’ve decided to stop digging for a half-decent event to write about every day and instead focus on enjoying the holiday.

So, from the N4F crew, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or, at the very least, enjoy the time off work. We’ll see you next year (or maybe a little before then).

Music discovery platforms are a dime a dozen. Some of them are better than others – that goes without saying. The best ones all have something in common though. You see, they’re more selective in the music they feature on their sites, so the music they send you is actually good, because it was basically hand-picked for you.

Which leads me to Brite Revolution. Brite Revolution is a music discovery site/magazine based right out of our dear city. Their site, which is free to join, features free music from some of the artists you love (Avett Brothers) as well as some bands that will become your favorites (Humming House). You’ll join for one band and will stay for the bands you discover.

But Brite Revolution has even more than just songs from the artists, there’s also original content including videos, interviews, live performances and more. And since Brite is local a lot of the music they feature is local too!

It’s a really cool site that I wholly suggest checking out, and I’ve heard that they have plans to create even more content designed to get you even more involved and social in regards to music discovery.

-Emily

It’s been a major few weeks in Nashville. Three weeks ago it was Soundland, which was amazing and exhausting, two weeks ago was the bluegrass conference which we didn’t attend, and this past week was Americana Festival. It was the 10th Americana Festival to be exact, and the first time N4F got to cover the event – yahoo!

The festival kicked off on Thursday with showcases in venues all over the city. Though I would’ve loved to have seen the awesome show at the Rutledge (Connie Smith was there) I figured it’d be packed and instead opted to see one of my favorite songwriters, Brian Wright, at the Basement. It was actually the first time I’d seen him with a band and he blew me away. Great voice, great songs, and a great performer. After him The Greencards, who won Americana Music Association Awards for New/Emerging Artist of the Year in 2006. As expected, they were very good.

The next night was the Americana Music Association Awards at the Ryman. It was the first year I got to go and man, was it a good year to attend. Performers included Lucinda Williams (a personal favorite), Justin Townes Earle, The Avett Brothers, Buddy Miller, Robert Plant, and more. And Jim Lauderdale hosted, and I adore him. The man has some killer jokes and, of course, killer music.

(more…)

Photos from SoundLand Music Festival (September 20-24, 2011) by Kate Cauthen, featuring M. Ward, Dawes, Jonny Corndawg, Justin Townes Earle, Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit, Robert Ellis, Madi Diaz, Humming House, Foster The People, Cults, Reptar, Ghostland Observatory, Cherub, Ziggurat, The Low Anthem, Jessica Lea Mayfield, Apache Relay, Tristen, Black Belles, Those Darlins, &  JEFF the brotherhood. More photos here. 

Being a blogger of free and cheap things has many advantages. I save a lot of money doing it and sometimes there are awesome perks. Case in point, this year N4F was given press credentials and got the VIP experience: music, conferences, VIP parties, and sweet, sweet swag.

Let us start with the music. If you jumped on a wristband when they first went on sale you would’ve snagged it for for a mere $35. That’s $8.75 per night of rock. Nights with musicians like M. Ward, Cults, Foster the People, Justin Townes Earle, Yelawolf, and more. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, and it is. The music this year was great. Since there were fewer venues (that were closer together) there were fewer conflicts and most of the venues were walking distance from each other, which has all kinds of benefits.

It would be hard to pick a favorite show of the festival, but standouts for me were Those Darlins at the Factory Party, Dawes and M. Ward at the War Memorial, Foster the People at the 12th Ave Block Party, and Jason Isbell at the Cannery Ballroom. Other great shows were Madi Diaz at the Mercy Lounge, Humming House at Station Inn, and Tristan at the Factory Party. Let’s just say there was a lot of great music and leave it at that for now, because there is so much other stuff to get to.

(more…)

In case you hadn’t heard from my constant tweeting about it, Girls played a free in-store a Grimey’s yesterday that was live-streamed on a whole buncha websites. Did you see me? I was there, right up front. That’s how I do.

The show itself was solid. I’d seen Girls live three times before yesterday and I have to be honest, the first two times were a little rough for me. I loved the record but man, those songs don’t lend themselves to an exciting show. But I have to say, every time I see them they’re much better than the last time. This time, however, they had a secret weapon: three awesome back-up singers. It’s hard to imagine that three strong-voiced women could bring a lot to a lo-fi druggy pop band (and I sometimes have to wonder what they think about playing songs with titles like “Vomit” and “Hellhole Ratrace”) but dude. They brought it.

It was a great little set. I didn’t keep track of songs played (terrible memory for that stuff), but it was mostly new stuff. Did you see it? It was on the internet. I spent a good part of the show watching the cameraman who was crouched in front with a camera narrowly avoiding getting hit by Chris Owens’ guitar head.

Oh yeah, I also brought my camera to the show. I’m no Kate Cauthen, but I think I got a few solid pics. Check them out behind the cut.

(more…)

Photos from the 73rd National Folk Festival (September 2-4, 2011) by Kate Cauthen, featuring Oyama & Nitta, Massive Monkees, The Holmes Brothers, The Marshall Ford Swing Band, and Samba Mapangala. More photos here.

If you haven’t heard of Spotify then you must have been intentionally avoiding any news stories and conversations about music, the cloud, and the internet in general, because it’s kind of a big deal.

Spotify has been available in Europe for years as a way to listen to music for free as long as you agree to listen to commercials. For as long as it has existed there have rumors about Spotify coming to the United States, but until now it’s been nothing but that, a rumor.

But somehow the rights have been aquired and Spotify has launched in the United States. Right now free accounts are still mostly invitation only, but if you don’t have any friends with Spotify there’s still hope. We got Spotify by going through Klout. Spotify is being smart about dishing out invitations, if you’re considered a half-influential user on Twitter or Facebook on Klout you can get access to a free Spotify account.

But how is Spotify? (more…)