Nashville for Free

If you haven’t heard the Westbound Rangers yet then you must not get out to a lot of the free and cheap music shows in Nashville. I mean, these guys get around. From Musicians Corner to Music City Roots to their own shows, these guys have performed their special brand of bluegrass all over Nashville.

But here’s your chance to redeem yourself if you haven’t seen them and relive the awesomeness if you have. Tonight at 7pm Westbound Rangers are playing a free show at 3rd and Lindsley to celebrate their fourth birthday (happy birthday!). Yup, totally free. That means you get to see some fantastic traditional bluegrass played by some talented young dudes around a single mic.

This isn’t your great-grandfather’s bluegrass, but he’d probably really enjoy it. It’s all about musicianship and the songs for the Westbound Rangers, and you have to give them props for that.

-Emily Harris

Has anyone else noticed that ukuleles have become incredibly popular over the past few years? I bet you have. Who hasn’t seen at least one YouTube video of a cute, goofy girl covering a pop song (probably a Hall & Oates song) on the ukulele?

It’s not just hipster girls playing the uke either. Apparently this ukulele resurgence is taking place across different nations, cultures, ages, and musical tastes. People all over the world are turning to this adorable four-stringed instrument to express themselves?

The Mighty Uke is a documentary about this very subject. It’s playing tonight at Vanderbilt’s Sarratt Cinema at 7:30pm. But that’s not all! Right after the screening (the film is 76 minutes, FYI) Nashville’s very own ukulele band, The Ukedelics, will play a 30 minute set.

Uke on!

-Emily

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…)

If you didn’t already know that The Great Escape is one of the best places in Nashville to get inexpensive CDs, DVDs, vinyl records, comic books, and more, then I feel terrible for all the money you haven’t saved. But I’m here to enlighten you to the cheap side, so I’m going to do my job and let you know that this Saturday, the 18th, The Great Escape is having a HUGE blowout sale where many of their CDs will be priced at a hard-to-beat ONE DOLLAR.

Details are slim, but expect to be doing some digging at The Great Escape’s Charlotte location this weekend. According to their email they’ll have thousands and thousands of CDs for sale, including brand new stuff that just never made it onto the racks, warehouse stuff, and CDs that are normally priced up to $8.99. I’d suggest getting there early, because you know what they say – the early bird gets all of those advanced copies of Merge and Beggars releases that he or she has always been meaning to buy but just hasn’t. Also, come back during the day, because they’ll keep restocking throughout the day.

The store opens at 10am and the sale lasts all day.

Happy digging!

-Emily

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

There’s is nothing we at Nashville for Free enjoy more than some good, free music. That’s why events like this one get us incredibly excited. Yep, it’s the Regions Free Day of Music at the Schermerhorn. There will be free music all day, from 10am-11pm. That’s 13 hours of great music.

And before your eyes glaze over because you think it’s going to be all classical music I should have you know that while there will be plenty of sweet classical music, there will also be gospel, latin, pop/rock, swing, and more. Heck, there are four stages, there’s going to be something good happening at at least one of them at any given moment, possibly four. Yes, I know picking between four stages and performers is difficult, but when you live in Nashville you have to learn to make decisions and sacrifices.

As I’ve already mentioned, the event is this Saturday from 10am-11pm at the Schermerhorn. You can find a full schedule here. I recommend Rumba and Vanderbilt University’s Sankofa African Percussion Ensemble. Don’t ask questions, just go.

-Emily

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.

This past Saturday brought the first fEASTival Nashville. As you may have guessed by the name, the festival was held in East Nash and promised all the best the neighborhood had to offer

There were food trucks galore and plenty of great music, that’s for sure. I mean, there was basically a food court and there were three different stages for music. For a festival in its first year fEASTival did a commendable job.

However, there were a few things that could be improved upon. Firstly, you have to purchase food tickets to get food from the vendors, and there was no standard entree price nor a menu up at the ticket counter that listed the vendors and their food prices. This typically meant that you’d either buy too many tickets and might waste money or you’d have to sheepishly return to the ticket counter to buy more. I understand that tickets serve their purpose for festivals, but I don’t like having to buy them blindly like that.

The biggest disappointment at fEASTival was the lack of artists. I was expecting more pretty and interesting works by local artisans to peruse while eating my Banging Taco. Maybe the threat of rain kept some people away, but next year I just hope that they get more booths of stuff to buy.

So basically there were two things I really hope fEASTival imrpoves upon next year. It’s obvious that a lot of work and went into it, and for a first year street fair it was pretty well-stocked with food and tunes. I take that back, the food and tunes rivaled any other fest in Nashville. Hope to see it come back and be even more rocking next year!

-Emily

As you could probably guess, Record Store Day is one of our favorite holidays at N4F. The sales are huge, there is awesome live music to be had all over, and there’s a ton of free stuff.

Record Store Day started in 2008 with the purpose of, you guessed it, promoting local record stores. This year there will be over 275 special record releases from bands like Bruce Springsteen, Ryan Adams, Big Star, Deerhoof, Fleet Foxes, Sonic Youth, and literally hundreds of others. Yes, I’m using literally in a literal, not figurative fashion. And it really does do its job of promoting record stores. Grimey’s has said that the annual holiday has given them some of their best sale days ever. Rock on, Record Store Day, rock on.

And, of course, the record stores use it as an awesome excuse to party like you wouldn’t believe. Grimey’s has gotten acts like Charlie Louvin and the Avett Brothers to play at past Record Store Days and last year Emmylou Harris played two songs in the Groove’s parking lot. But enough reminiscing, let’s talk about what’s going down this year.

(more…)

No, Diamond Eye Music does not have any sort of connection to the song “Diamond Eyes.” It’s a relatively young publishing company that’s having a little showcase at 6pm tonight at The Basement.

Of course, the first question you want to know the answer to when talking about a publishing company is “what are some of their songs. Well, here are a few:

• Big and Rich’s “Kick My Ass”
• Tracy Byrd’s “Cheapest Motel”
• Andy Griggs’ “Tattoo Rose.”

Chris Hennessee, Jaron Boyer, and Adam Ryan will all be performing tonight. Might be a good chance to hear some songs you like performed by the people who actually wrote them, which is always cool.

-Emily