For those of you who like Neko Case, listen up! I was playing on the internet this morning and Lissie Maurus, a Southern singer/songwriter caught my eye. She was just at South by Southwest and seems to have caught some folks' attention. There's a little bit of buzz going on about her right now, and rightly so.

She's got quite a voice and I have the feeling that like Neko, the songwriting and production quality (all that wonderful guitar reverb!) of recording will get under my skin and put me in that happy, warm place every time I listen.

Do not underestimate the power of making a good cover. That is how, especially on the internet, people will find you. That's how I found Lissie, watching Lady Gaga covers.

Here's her cover of Gaga's "Bad Romance"



And here's an original called "In Sleep"



What do you think?

This blog entry was written my my Dad, Jeff. Every so often I ask him to write a review of a show he's seen in Los Angeles. Check out his review of "Howling Blues & Dity Dogs."

Who was Leo Frank? No, he was not Ann Frank’s father. And, while he was also a Jew, he was an American and not a German. And no, he did not die at the hands of the Nazis. He was lynched by Georgia whites in 1917 for a murder he may not have committed and after the Georgia Governor had reduced his sentence from death by hanging to life imprisonment.

Why are we talking about Leo Frank? It’s because the play with music Parade is currently being performed at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles . Fresh from runs in New York and London, where, respectively, it won a Tony award and was nominated for an Olivier award, an ensemble of about two dozen talented men and women deliver a powerful performance of this “musical” about a subject which, although almost 100 years old, still has relevance today in our “red state vs. blue state” reality.

Here’s a quick summary of the story...

READ MORE OF JEFF'S REVIEW HERE

“It just ends up a little more badass,” says a flu ridden Jessi Darlin from Utah over the phone about a Carter Family cover. “I definitely think that when we cover songs we reinterpret them, we toughen them up a little bit.”

Those Darlins originally caught my eye as the three-woman band that met at the Southern Girls Rock Camp in Tennessee. They have a raucous down-home party sound and could definitely drink me under the table. Nikki Darlin plays the baritone ukulele and Kelley and Jessi switch off playing lead guitar and bass. They wear funky fox fur hats, cowboy boots with mismatched socks and short skirts. Most of the record sounds like it was recorded live at a crazy party, so seeing them live on Tuesday at the Rickshaw Stop will be a treat.

The Darlins song themes include drunkenly eating a whole chicken (more on this later), getting hung up on and DUIs. Hardly themes you would expect from three women who met at Girls Rock Camp (Kelley Darlin started the camp) and now teach there. Or maybe you would?

I asked Jessi what she has learned from being in a band of mostly women (the Darlins are joined by a gentleman drummer) and what she would want other female musicians to know:

READ MORE OF MY ARTICLE HERE

Those Darlins "Whole Damn Thing" from Tugboat Productions on Vimeo.