Music
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Ever wondered what Green Day‘s ode to soul-sucking boredom “Longview” would sound like if it was re-recorded on a doorbell? How about the hard-charging Dookie classic “Welcome to Paradise” rendered in 8-bit glory on a Game Boy cartridge? Well, then you’re in luck, because on Wednesday (Oct. 9) the band announced that as part of […]
In May, Olivia Rodrigo was due to be one of the first artists to play at Manchester’s Co-op Live Arena. The city’s new indoor arena, funded by Oak View Group and has Harry Styles as an investor, was beset by delays and resulted in a number of canceled shows, including two dates by Rodrigo. Now […]
On singer-songwriter Julie Williams’ new five-song EP Tennessee Moon (out Oct. 17) the Florida native draws listeners into songs that evince all the facets of who she is, both as a person and as an artist, intertwining elements of folk, ‘90s country, and pop with her soothing vocal.
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“Music was always in our household in every single car ride, my mom and I listened to ‘90s country women like The Chicks and a lot of folk too, indigo Girls, John Denver, Dan Fogelberg, that was the soundtrack to my mom’s car,” Williams tells Billboard. “And my dad played a lot of Michael Jackson, Prince, the Temptations. So there was music constantly.”
In elementary school, Williams became involved with music programs, then singing and performing at church. By middle school, Williams was singing the national anthem prior to Tampa Bay Rays baseball games. A friend from church who played guitar began giving Williams guitar lessons and eventually they formed an acoustic music duo and playing at bars around Tampa Bay.
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Williams’ aspirations have always centered around making a difference in the lives of others, and to that goal, she studied public policy at Duke University, but was also still drawn to music. She signed to Small Town Records at one point, and continued writing songs more regularly, pouring out songs of elegance, vivid detail and forthright honesty.
In 2019, shortly after graduating, she chased her musical aspirations to Nashville. Williams, a proudly mixed-race, queer singer-songwriter, found her musical breakthrough when she wrote “Southern Curls,” detailing her experience of growing up in the South, but with, as she sings, “the wrong kind of Southern curls.” The sharply-written, exquisitely-sung track also delves into forging her own path in her early days in Nashville, with the lines, “Twenty-three in Music City with dreams and high heeled boots/ Singin’ for a crowd of blue eyes/ Will they want me too?”
“That’s when it felt like, ‘Oh, I’ve tapped into who I am as an artist and the type of songwriter I want to be,’” Williams says.
She continued writing and performing songs, resulting in her 2023 self-titled EP. Meanwhile her music and artistry caught the attention of The Black Opry, as well as CMT. She was named a member of CMT’s Next Women of Country class in 2023, and was part of the CMT and mTheory Equal Access program.
Her keen artistic mission further evolves on her new five-song EP. Williams is a writer on every track, working with writers including Melody Walker and Natalie Closner. She looks back on the last moments of a relationship in “Tennessee Moon,” while “Reckless Road” meshes banjo, pedal steel and acoustic guitar, evoking the timeless feel of ‘90s country songs.
“I know it’s not going to be an easy road,” Williams says of her journey as an artist. “Every single day is a grind and a step. But for me, if I’m moving in an authentic way and I know that I have people around me that love me, I don’t care. I just love it so much. I’m just going to keep doing it for as long as I can.”
She just launched her Tennessee Moon Tour, which runs through November. Billboard spoke with Williams about her inspirations, career journey, her new EP, her work with the Black Opry and more.
What is one album you could play forever and never get tired of playing?
Eva Cassidy was one of my first musical influences and my dad used to play [Cassidy’s versions of] “Autumn Leaves” and “I Know You By Heart.” Her album Songbird is one I listen to, and it feels like my Dad is with me.
Who would be your Mount Rushmore of country music?
The Chicks, 100 percent. I remember when they got kicked out of country music radio and I was so mad. I remember in my fourth grade class, we had to write a speech. I wrote about how mad I was at the president [then-president George W. Bush] because he got my favorite band kicked off the radio. And then Sara Evans, I loved “Born to Fly,” and all of the late ‘90s, early 2000’s country.
What inspired the title track to Tennessee Moon?
I went to Percy Priest Lake [in Nashville] with a former partner, and I took this photo of them under the sunset, as the daylight was fading away. I could just tell that the relationship was fading, but I wanted to capture it and hold onto what it felt like in this golden era. Something about sunsets, as beautiful as they are, you can’t quite capture them. I think there’s beauty in how fleeting it is — and there are people in our lives aren’t necessarily meant to stay, but we just appreciate them when we have them.
One of your frequent collaborators on this project is Melody Walker. How did the two of you connect as musicians?
I believe we met at a Song Suffragettes show. I was a big fan of the music she was making and we sat down to write and came to her with that photo that inspired “Tennessee Moon.” I just said, “I want a song that feels like this picture.” Within two or three hours we had the whole song and we just keep coming back to each other because if we really do have that writing chemistry, I think we push each other in some ways. I can sometimes get so lost in lyrics and verses — if I could just write verses for the rest of my life. She’s like, “Okay, what’s our hook? What’s our big moment?” We work well together and it’s great to have people in Nashville that you feel a hundred percent comfortable to be yourself around.
Another song on the album, “Just Friends?,” also highlights part of your journey as a queer woman. How did that song come about?
I was playing shows with an artist called Denitia, and she has a song that’s called “Old Friend.” And I was hearing her play this song night after night about looking back at an old friendship, and it made me think of some friendships in my past and one in particular. I just was wondering why I am not close with that person anymore and why looking back at it, I felt so much pain and regret, almost felt like it was a breakup. I look back now, and realize, “I think I had feelings for that person,” but I didn’t even know at that time.
That was just such a powerful time to write this song that touches on that confusion of young love, of friendship, female friendship, especially for queer women, kind of discovering who it is that you love — it can be a confusing process at first. I grew up with very, very liberal, accepting parents and I still felt confused. So, I wanted a song that would capture that and I wanted to give myself a little bit of grace, too. I was very lucky that my queer journey, it wasn’t a sad one. I was very lucky that when I told my family they were accepting and my friends as well, but it still was something that took that time. So, I wanted to show the beauty in that journey, too.
What was your journey like in finding community as an artist in Nashville?
I didn’t find that community when I first moved to Nashville, but also because I don’t think I really knew myself too much then. I still was straightening my hair. I found this picture of the first Whiskey Jam [concert] I was playing, and I used to spend hours straightening my hair just to then curl it into those big, southern curls. I was like, “Why am I straightening and curling my hair again just to get a different curl pattern, because I think this is what people want to see?”
I moved here and I was in a long-term partnership that I thought this was going to be the person that I was with for the rest of my life, and I didn’t think I’d ever have a chance to explore my queer identity and I didn’t really know myself. Writing songs like “Southern Curls” and getting connected with organizations like Song Suffragettes and the Black Opry, I met some of my favorite people that I work with and my favorite collaborators.
How has the Black Opry been instrumental in your career?
I met [Black Opry founder/leader] Holly G and a number of the Black Opry folks, and just sat with them in a hotel room and passed around a guitar and played songs. I told Holly at that moment, “I will play whatever show you have. It could be in a dumpster and I’ll be there.” I was really wondering if I was going to stay in Nashville. I had gone and visited friends in New York and DC and was like, “I think I’m going to go back into the policy world. I don’t know if this is going to work out over here.”
Right after that was when I first went on my first Black Opry tour, and it really changed everything. I started playing with Black Opry and then realizing that there were opportunities outside of Nashville, that there were venues and places that wanted to be a part of what Black Opry was building.
How did you build upon those shows you played with the Black Opry?
I would just reach out to [those venues] as an individual — this is before I had an agent. I would just reach out and say, “Hey, I saw you booked Black Opry this time. I’m a Black Opry artist. I would love to come and play.” And so I started booking myself and doing my own tour. That’s when [management company] Prater Day saw what I was doing and wanted to jump in, too.
The past few years, I’ve played over 120 shows and I think it’s 26 states now and a few countries. And I think that once again touches on that magic that I had found when I first started playing. But now I get to feel that all around the country and the world and meet new people. And so, I think my career is now growing because of my time on the road and the road will continue to have a huge part in my story.
You are also an activist and in 2023 launched Green Room Conversations, to raise awareness of sexual harassment in the music industry, and to offer a safe space for women to discuss navigating the industry. Why has that been so important for you?
I wanted to start that organization, just being a touring musician and just a woman in this industry. I’ve had my own share of stories, and I think you could throw a rock and ask somebody to share a story that they have had in the music industry. I wanted to empower people with those little frank lessons that can help save people from a lot of uncomfortable situations. I remember when I first met [singer-songwriter-radio host] Rissi Palmer in a little café in North Carolina, it was just before I moved to Nashville. I remember asking if she had any advice for me and she said, “Do not take a business meeting with a man past 6:00 p.m.. That’s not a business meeting; that’s a date. If he wants to work with you, you can get coffee the next day.”
I think music is an industry, where at least for artists, there is no HR [department]. It’s an industry where show are late at night, that often involve alcohol. You could be in a position where you have to share a hotel with a co-worker because there’s not enough money to get everybody solo hotel rooms. Or you’re writing a song about sex and love, but that doesn’t mean you want to sleep with your coworker.
We come into this industry with so many hopes and dreams and we tell people to say yes to every opportunity because that could be your next break. We’ve been going to different colleges, talking with music business students. We’re just saying those frank things that women have been saying in green rooms forever, like, ‘Watch out for this guy,’ or ‘This person who you think holds so much power over you in your career, you don’t have to work with them.’ Sometimes you need that permission to say no and know that it’s not going to destroy your career. And in fact, there’s people out here that can support you.
What book or podcast are you into right now?
One that I’m reading right now that I’m really liking is called Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. It’s a little weird, but I love it. It’s so cool. I’ve just been just diving in.
“I have a question,” Dabeull asked. “Do you have the funk?”
There was only one answer at Brooklyn Steel, an 1,800-capacity venue in New York City — an affirming roar.
The French producer was in New York City in September promoting his new album, Analog Love, with his first ever full-band tour. But the short jaunt, which also stopped in San Francisco and Los Angeles, was freighted with extra importance — less of a tour, more of a mission of renewal. “My job is to make funk a modern music again,” Dabeull says.
He speaks about this goal in unabashedly grand, romantic terms. “I don’t make funk music for money,” he explains. “I make funk music for people’s dreams.”
That is no small task, but Dabeull’s efforts have been more successful than most. His top five songs on Spotify have over 135 million streams combined, outshining many of his funk-obsessed peers — not to mention many of his early influences, whom have often languished in obscurity in the streaming era.
Dabeull “is one of the best, if not the best, modern funk artists out there because of his analog aesthetic — it’s all raw synths recorded live,” says Ivan “Debo” Marquez, one of the co-founders of Funk Freaks, a DJ collective and record label from Santa Ana, California. “Nobody in the modern funk scene has actually had the reach that he’s having.”
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It took a while, though. For years, Dabeull had to prioritize other styles of music, like electro house, to help generate income, as he wasn’t established, and the genre he adored was out of favor.
He grew up in Paris, and discovered American funk through friends and increasingly frequent trips to record stores as a teen in the late 1990s. “I never went to school for music,” he says. “My school is reproducing the Bar-Kays, Kleeer, really good funk from the 1980s.” (Kleeer’s 1981 album is titled, appropriately, License to Dream.)
A young Dabeull would play LPs on repeat, picking apart the grooves: “What bass is that? What guitar is that? What effects are on that guitar?”
In the U.S., much of the vital funk of the early 1980s — often known as “boogie” — never got its due outside of the Black community, “hampered by a disco backlash at pop radio,” as Nelson George wrote in his book The Death of Rhythm & Blues. “Of the 14 records to reach No. 1 on the Black chart in 1983,” George noted, “only one reached the pop top 10.”
This freeze-out still has lingering effects to this day. As Dabeull put it, “for a lot of people, funk music [from this era] is seen as cheesy.”
Dabeull performing in Brooklyn
Lucia Aboytez
It’s an unfortunate phenomenon: Nearly universal love for the hits of Michael Jackson and Prince doesn’t necessarily trickle down to Midnight Star’s “Wet My Whistle” or Kashif’s “I Just Gotta Have You (Lover Turn Me On).” Some indelible music from this period, including tracks from the S.O.S. Band, the Chi-Lites, and One Way, never even made it to Spotify — another obstacle to fandom in the modern era, as finding the good stuff can take on elements of an archival project.
In many of these songs, the bassline is the true star, svelte and muscular like an Olympic athlete. This is why good DJs can still rely on these records to whip up dancefloor mayhem. “Some people like steppers, the slower stuff,” Marquez explains. At Funk Freaks parties, in contrast, “we like the get-your-ass-dancing, sweat-the-alcohol-out feel” of boogie.
And Dabeull’s strongest productions can hold their own alongside the original gems. On songs like “On Time” and “JoyRide,” a track for frequent collaborator Holybrune, the basslines are formidably plump, but still limber. Synthesizers flash like emergency flares; the drums remain curt and clipped; vocalists trace breathy arcs in the space cleared by the bullish low-end.
Holybrune also sings on “You & I,” Dabeull’s most popular song, which sounds as if he took Dennis Edwards’ 1984 classic “Don’t Look Any Further,” crumpled it into a compact ball, and then shot it out of a cannon. Dabeull’s band shores up its bona fides by hurtling through other throwbacks: At the show in Brooklyn, they played a snatch of Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland” along with the Rah Band’s “Messages From the Stars;” one guitar riff evoked “Get Down Saturday Night,” Oliver Cheatham’s sparkling ode to weekend debauchery. (The band also delivered a runaway-train version of Michael Sembello’s Flashdance anthem “Maniac” — less groovy than “Boogie Wonderland,” but no less effective.)
In case anyone doubted Dabeull’s fealty to 1980s funk, when it came time to record Analog Love, he got his hands on the mixing console Jackson had used to record Thriller. “He’s a bit of a perfectionist,” Marquez says. (Funk Freaks released a vinyl-only Dabeull 7″ in 2020.) Dabeull prefers the word “picky.”
“We are not here just to play the songs on the album,” Dabeull says. “We want to bring it back to the way it used to be.”
Lucia Aboytez
The console, which weighs more than 1,000 pounds, had previously been in the possession of the French band Phoenix, who paid $17,000 for it during the sessions for their 2013 album Bankrupt! But the equipment had fallen into disrepair. “They said, ‘If you can fix it, you can have it,’” recalls Julian Getreau, who serves as music director for Dabeull’s nine-person band, and is credited on his releases as Rude Jude.
While that mending process took two months of “working every day,” according to Dabeull, it was worth every ounce of elbow grease: “Making funk on this board was magic,” he says reverently. “To keep the funk alive, you have to do it properly,” Getreau adds. “You cannot go the easy way.”
Maybe it’s the board — there’s a touch of the Jacksons’ “Walk Right Now” in the hard charge of the Analog Love track “Look in the Mirror,” while some of the louche slink of Thriller‘s closer, “The Lady in My Life,” seeps into Dabeull’s “Fabulous Kisses.” “Let’s Play” goes another direction altogether, reimagining West Coast G-funk as tender music for lovers.
A sizable chunk of the crowd at the Brooklyn Steel show was not alive in the mid-1980s when Jackson conquered the world with Thriller — that was their parents’ music. The importance of this is not lost on Dabeull. Many listeners who worship funk are “a bit older; they get nostalgic about what they heard when they were younger,” he says. “We want people that are younger to get intrigued and get into it, so it’s not seen as an old kind of music.”
His plan seems to be working, at least in the three American cities he visited on tour. Because Dabeull’s show in L.A. sold out quickly — “that’s the Mecca of funk,” Getreau notes — some fans hopped a plane to see him play in New York, adding the price of a cross-country flight to their concert ticket. (Holybrune kindly ferried their posters backstage for Dabeull to autograph.) Another fan made the pilgrimage south from Montreal, declaring the show “the most fun she’d ever had.”
After his performance, Dabeull seemed slightly dazed by all the attention Stateside. “For us, it’s unbelievable,” he said. A few minutes later, a member of his team informed him that all the merch had sold out. “It’s crazy,” Dabeull replied. “Why?”
His publicist offered a gentle retort: “Because people like you.” Or, perhaps, they really do have the funk.
Beyoncé and Jay-Z have received a public apology from Piers Morgan after the polarizing talk-show host aired inflammatory allegations about them on his program. About a week after interviewing Jaguar Wright on Piers Morgan Uncensored — during which the singer-songwriter called the Roc Nation founder and Sean “Diddy” Combs “monsters,” and claimed that the famous […]
Post Malone has been added to the lineup for the upcoming eighth edition of Eagles guitarist and solo star Joe Walsh‘s VetsAid benefit show. The 2024 concert, which will take place at UBS Arena in Belmont Park, NY on Nov. 11, will also feature previously announced guest Eric Church, Toto, Kool & the Gang and Walsh.
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“VetsAid is for EVERYONE: fans of all ages, backgrounds and musical genres,” Walsh said in a statement. “So who better to join the party than Posty – the man who can do it all? And do it so well?! Mix in the best of country with Eric, rock with Toto and funk with Kool and The Gang and you have a VetsAid for the ages. What better way to honor our veterans and their families this Veterans Day than with a night you will never forget?”
Tickets for the event whose proceeds go to veterans’ service charities are available now here. The grant recipients who will benefit from this year’s show are all based in New York and New Jersey and have committed to using the funds exclusively in those states, according to a press release.
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The 2024 large grant recipients are: Travis Manion Foundation, Fourblock, Hire Heroes Foundation, America’s VetDogs, Vets4Warriors, Our Military Kids, Foundation for Women Warriors, HunterSeven Foundation, Merging Vets & Players, while the community grant recipients include: Homeward Bound Adirondacks, Project Refit, AMVETS Service Foundation of New Jersey, North Country Veterans Association.
The first VetsAid took place in 2017 and featured Walsh — a Gold Star son — jamming on his own songs and collaborating with Zac Brown Band, Keith Urban and Gary Clark Jr., while subsequent editions welcomed everyone from Chris Stapleton, Haim and Ringo Starr to ZZ Top, Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Brad Paisley, Eddie Vedder, Gwen Stefani, Metallica’s James Hetfield, Nine Inch Nails, Black Keys, the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, Jeff Lynne’s ELO, Flaming Lips and Stephen Stills. To date, the events have distributed $3.5 million.
For more information on VetsAid click here.
I’m not crying, you’re crying. In the case of Celine Dion and Kelly Clarkson, both things can be true. On Tuesday (Oct. 8) Dion posted a tear-stained video of her reaction to Clarkson’s moving Kellyoke cover of Celine’s iconic 1997 Titanic ballad “My Heart Will Go On” on the singer’s daytime talk show last month.
“I just saw you singing ‘My Heart Will Go On,’ and I’m crying again,” the Canadian star said in the clip where she was seen wiping away tears. “You were absolutely incredible, fantastic. I loved it so much. I hope we can see each other in person soon.”
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“So, I got this video sent to me and and it all flooded… I was working with Jason [Halbert] my musical director here at the show… we were actually doing stuff for Kellyokes, and all of a sudden I get this thing from my manager and I cried,” Clarkson said while describing her reaction to Dion’s high praise in a two-minute video posted Tuesday night from what looks like her dressing room.
“Because it was Celine Dion saying that she saw my performance and she knows my name,” Clarkson, 42, explained with a beaming cat-swallowed-the-canary smile while casually swinging her arms and throwing an aw shucks look up at the ceiling. “So that’s cool.” Clarkson then rolled the Dion video and said that it blew her away, adding that there was one thing in particular that made the compliment extra special.
“Twenty-two years ago on American Idol I got laryngitis,” the OG Idol winner recalled, noting that everyone got sick at the time and despite her vocal struggles she had to take the stage to belt Dion’s equally challenging 2002 ballad “I Surrender All.”
“I bawled that night because I’m just mortified that Celine Dion is going to see this performance,” Clarkson, who was 19 at the time, said of her impressive take on the song, delivered while wearing an asymmetrical, one-strap black dress and bejeweled choker. “I could have cared less about votes at that point. I just didn’t want to see Celine Dion see or hear this because it was so bad, because I was so sick.”
Cut to 22 years later, and Clarkson said she finally got the Celine performance she’d always wanted. “And I felt like I sang it all right, you know?” she said. “I got to honor someone who is such a hero to me, vocally, like she is one of my main inspirations of why I’m a singer.” Clarkson said she’ll probably watch the video over-and-over, while also not-so-low-key, inviting Dion to come visit her on her show. “Like, I can quit now in life,” she gushed about checking off the ultimate career bucket list item.
Along with the video posted on X, Clarkson wrote, “@celinedion you have no idea how much you even noticing my existence means to me! Thank you so much for being such an amazing example of true passion and being one of the greatest vocalists of all time that I am still, to this day, inspired by [heart emoji].”
Check out Clarkson’s video below.
.@celinedion you have no idea how much you even noticing my existence means to me! Thank you so much for being such an amazing example of true passion and being one of the greatest vocalists of all time that I am still, to this day, inspired by ❤️ pic.twitter.com/tAqJVkN9JU— Kelly Clarkson 🍷💔☀️ (@kellyclarkson) October 9, 2024
Mexican superstar Luis Miguel will close his international tour in Mexico City at the GNP Seguros Stadium on Nov. 30, Mexican promoter Ocesa announced on Tuesday (Oct. 8).
Known as “El Sol de México,” which loosely translates to “México’s sun,” Luis Miguel has chosen the Mexican capital as the stage for one of the most important moments of his career to make a spectacular closing of his Luis Miguel Tour 2023-2024, which grossed $318.2 million and sold 2.2 million tickets in its first 146 concerts, according to figures reported in September to Billboard Boxscore. This made it the highest grossing tour of all time among Latin artists.
Tickets for the last show will be available at the Gran Venta HSBC on Oct. 14 and 15, and the following day at the venue’s box office or through ticketmaster.com.mx, Ocesa said.
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The singer of “La Incondicional,” “Culpable o No” and “Suave” returns to Mexico City, where he began a series of concerts at the Arena Ciudad de Mexico on Tuesday that will end on Oct. 24, with which he will set a new record as the artist who has had the most number of concerts at that venue, with 18 presentations, according to the promoter Zignia Live.
Luis Miguel’s current tour began last summer, with 10 concerts at the Movistar Arena in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and then another 10 at the venue of the same name in Santiago, Chile. Those 20 initial dates grossed a total of $28.1 million and sold 227,000 tickets, establishing it as the third highest grossing tour of his remarkable career. After that, he toured the U.S., Mexico and Latin America, returned to the U.S., traveled to Spain and, most recently, returned to Latin America.
Luis Miguel’s U.S. stint was fruitful, grossing $49.8 million, but his return to Mexico — his native country — was even more successful, generating $57.5 million from 20 concerts. By the end of 2023, he had earned $141 million, still far from the all-time record, but enough to easily surpass his own 2018-2019 Mexico Por Siempre tour, which grossed $101.4 million, making it his most successful tour to date.
Luis Miguel has captivated generations with his unmatched voice, unique style and stage presence, which continues to establish him as the most beloved Latin artists of all time. He has been honored with multiple awards, including Billboard Latin Music Awards, Grammys and Latin Grammys. His discography is one of the most acclaimed in the industry, selling more than 15 million copies of his album Romance. He holds the record for the longest tour by a Latin artist, and is also the singer with the most performances at the Auditorio Nacional, one of the most important cultural venues in Mexico and Latin America.
It was July 8, 2023, and the locals at the Oregon Country Fair were twirling.
Leah Chisholm had grown up attending the earthy music and arts festival with her parents and brother. Now she was onstage there, performing. The globally popular DJ-producer, better known as LP Giobbi, had recently performed at Coachella and would soon jet to Belgium to play dance megafestival Tomorrowland, but DJ’ing the fair — “my favorite place on the planet,” she says — meant more to her.
LP’s mother, father and other family and friends were in the front row, vibing to her blend of remixed Grateful Dead songs and house music, including tracks from the debut album she had released two months prior. The fair had hosted acts like the Dead, Bruce Hornsby and The Black Crowes in its more than 50-year history — but LP Giobbi was the first electronic artist to headline. This homecoming show could have been a peak moment. Instead, it was a wakeup call.
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“I just felt so exhausted, and that was such a sad thing for me,” she says. “It was like, ‘I got it. This is not how I want to live my life.’ ”
Just from scrolling her Instagram, it had been evident that since rising to electronic world prominence circa 2021, LP had been Doing a Lot. She was hopping across time zones for gigs at clubs, festivals and afterparties. She released her album Light Places in May 2023 and launched her label, Yes Yes Yes (named after the unofficial motto of the Oregon Country Fair), the following September. She founded the organization Femme House, which works to create opportunities for women and gender-expansive people, people of color and LGBTQ+ creatives in music through education, scholarships and more. She was (and still is) the global music director for W Hotels. Raised by Deadhead parents (Mike and Gayle, who’ve been to more than 100 shows since first seeing the band in 1973), LP launched her Dead House party series — where she puts her dance music spin on the jam band’s songs, including at official afterparties for acts like Dead & Company — and officially remixed Jerry Garcia’s 1972 debut solo album, Garcia, in January 2023.
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She was, as they say, killing it. And she was fried.
Ashley Osborn
“I had put so much pressure on myself,” LP says today on a sun-drenched September afternoon in Laguna Beach, Calif. She has been working on music here in a friend’s backyard studio, where we’re barefoot and curled up on the couch drinking purple smoothies. “It was like, ‘This is an opportunity most people never get. You have to give your all into everything you do.’ That took over as me being a workaholic.” Amid the “extreme highs and extreme lows” of what effectively became a never-ending workday, it was hard to really show up for her family, friends, fiancé or “for the music, really.”
It wasn’t unusual for LP’s tour manager to catch her crying on flights while she listened to the Dead’s wistful “Brokedown Palace” on her headphones, feeling both closer to and farther away from her family as Garcia sang, “Mama, mama, many worlds I’ve come/Since I first left home.” “He’d be like, ‘You OK?’ And I’d be like, ‘I’m just trying to process!’ ” she says, breaking into her generous and terrifically oversize laugh.
Figuring out how to grow and enjoy her success while also staying connected to where she came from is why her new album is called Dotr. Out Oct. 18 on Ninja Tune, the project is named for how she signed notes to her parents when she was a kid and didn’t yet know how to spell “daughter.” She tears up several times while talking about them. “They’re everything to me,” she says.
While LP produced Light Places amid the swirl of a rising career, she made her new album as the road “kind of swallowed me whole” during a period of tremendous grief. Three of the album’s 17 tracks are named for significant women in LP’s life who died while she was making it. Her fiancé’s mother, Patricia Lynn, whom LP knew for more than a decade, died in March 2023. Her piano teacher since childhood, Carolyn Horn, died the next month. Then Susan Milleman, a professional singer and close friend of LP’s mother, died the month after.
“I was in the studio trying to finish songs,” she says, “and I was just like, ‘I don’t give a fuck about anything right now.’ ”
But she worked through the pain. Amid house tracks featuring artists like Brittany Howard and Portugal. The Man, there’s Lynn wishing her a happy birthday in a sampled voice message. A sample of Milleman singing centers a track named for her, and “Carolyn” opens with a stunning piano solo that LP recorded when she realized Alzheimer’s was starting to noticeably affect her teacher.
While making the music, a light bulb went off in LP’s head about her 20-hour workdays and infinite to-do lists. “Here I am promoting women and Femme House, and I was not tapped into any of my feminine energy,” she says. “It was all very like, masculine productivity ‘do do do’ energy that just got out of balance. With all these powerful women who passed away who I was honoring, it was just like, ‘Wake up.’ ”
Ashley Osborn
Through “a lot” of therapy, she made adjustments. While her tour schedule and general output are the same, now “I’m just doing it differently,” she says. “I’m not sending as many emails, and I’m not making as many DJ edits.” Plus, the hard work has paid off. “I’m waking up to the idea that I don’t have to prep seven hours for every gig because I’ve become a pretty good DJ,” she says. “I can go to dinner with the promoter and friends and family instead of working in my hotel room until the second I step onstage. My life is still pretty unbalanced, but in that unbalance, I’m finding balance.”
For her aptly titled Way Back Home Tour, she’ll play 21 shows across the United States from October through December. Nearly all of them will be performed in the round, which makes “a really big difference” in how she connects with the audience. The tour will take her through standard U.S. dance hubs like Los Angeles, Chicago and Brooklyn, but also places like Asheville, N.C., and her native Eugene, Ore.
These B-markets have become familiar terrain for LP through her Dead House sets, where she plays Dead tunes crossed with electronic music. These typically more rural, hippie-friendly cities, and the audiences who see her play in them, are more her speed. “Those are my people,” she says.
She means this more literally than most in the sprawling Dead tribe. Mike and Gayle raised her in Dead culture even before she was born, attending the Eugene show of the band’s legendary July 1987 tour with Bob Dylan, when Gayle was eight months pregnant with LP. “I made it all the way to the front of the stage because the crowd just opened a path to let me through, I was so huge,” recalls Gayle, who adds that her unborn daughter was “particularly active in the womb during the ‘Drums/Space’ segment” of the show. Deadhead culture later helped LP — who found her stage wardrobe of vintage Dead T-shirts stashed in the crawl space of her parents’ house — orient her career around the sense of community that is the core of not just the jam world, but the dance world, too. While her parents see themselves in the fans coming together to lose themselves on dancefloors at their daughter’s shows, they’ve also worked to understand her career — Gayle reading up on foundational house music figure Frankie Knuckles, even going to see where he used to play in Chicago. (Now 37, LP listened mostly to jam bands and jazz until her boyfriend, and now fiancé, introduced her to electronic music when they got together 12 years ago.)
But while LP fits elegantly into the long-standing crossover between jam and electronic music, these facets of her career are still different enough to warrant separate teams. WME represents her for her global DJ career, getting her gigs in Ibiza, across Europe and beyond, while she works with Ben Baruch of 11E1even Group — the management firm that also represents jam acts like Goose, The Disco Biscuits and Dead & Company bassist Oteil Burbridge — for Dead House. With Baruch, she has taken her Dead concept to the source, playing Dead & Company’s Playing in the Sand Festival as well as afterparties during its 2023 summer tour and following one of its 2024 shows at Sphere in Las Vegas.
It’s naturally all been a mind-bending thrill for her parents, whom LP introduced to the Dead’s Bob Weir at a show. Gayle thanked Weir “for all the years of joy you’ve given my family.” Weir looked her in the eye and put his hand on his heart. “The pleasure,” he responded, “is all mine.”
“There are moments where I can be like, ‘OK, I’m aware of how cool this is,’ ” LP says, “and that was one of them.”
Another making-it moment came in 2023, when Taylor Swift asked LP to remix her song “Cruel Summer.” When Swift tagged her in an Instagram post about the edit, LP gained 1,000 new followers in 10 minutes. But she was also concerned the project might affect how she was trying to position herself in the underground dance realm. “I’ve been working hard to get the respect of the CircoLocos of the world,” she says, referencing the revered techno party based at Ibiza club DC10. The day the Swift remix came out, she got her first CircoLoco offer — and the team there complimented her on the remix.
“It legitimized me to people who have no idea what dance music is,” she says. “But what I didn’t see coming is that the cool kids were also like, ‘Wow, congrats!’ ”
Ashley Osborn
Her grinding has also given her leverage and a platform. “It’s just so cool that the more I do or the bigger I get, I can use this power [for] the thing I care about most, which is empowering women in our industry.” She initially thought expanding Femme House, which she co-founded with artist management consultant Lauren A. Spalding in 2019, would be an uphill battle; instead, power players have been eager to get involved.
Spotify, Insomniac Events and New York promoter Jake Resnicow have been key Femme House supporters, with Insomniac working with LP on, among other projects, booking rising Femme House artists as openers for the promoter’s shows at the 2024 edition of the Amsterdam dance industry gathering ADE.
“There are so many people in positions of power who have come to me and been like, ‘How can we make our lineups more diverse? How can we release more diverse artists?’ What I’m learning is that people eat what they’re fed, and the industry is finally like, ‘Do we have a balanced meal on our plate?’ ”
Meanwhile, LP and her fiancé recently finished building a house in their home base of Austin. The space includes a studio and room to expand — because the album is called Dotr not only to honor her parents “but also because I want to call in my own daughter.”
With family so close to her heart, it makes sense that she wants to start one of her own. When it happens, she foresees “a time when I have to slow down even more.” But it’s OK, because as she has recently figured out, it’s less about doing the most than about being present for life as it happens.
“I’m not the best producer, the best piano player or the best DJ,” she says. “What my gift actually is is feeling good and whole in my body, finding my joy and being a reflection of that joy for other people so they can see it in themselves.”
When Hurricane Helene flooded the streets of Asheville, N.C., it forced the postponement of a Sept. 30 Gangstagrass show at The Orange Peel.
As a result, the band — a genre-busting hybrid of bluegrass and hip-hop — revised its itinerary and spent the previous night in Atlanta, creating a dinner menu of grilled salmon, beef, asparagus, mushrooms and sweet potatoes.
Despite the daunting weather and travel issues, the band was in a congenial mood. Just a week earlier, its new album, The Blackest Thing on the Menu, became its second project to reach No. 1 on Billboard’s Bluegrass Albums chart dated Sept. 28. The act’s previous No. 1, 2020’s No Time for Enemies, was the first atop the chart to feature two MCs. Neither No. 1 was originally on the career menu.
“It’s not like it was a goal from the start, or anything on the agenda,” founder Rench says. “Our aim is to make great music, put out our message and play awesome shows. Billboard charts aren’t really a part of that. It’s just kind of gravy on the mashed potatoes.”
The first Gangstagrass No. 1 occurred during the pandemic, and the members told themselves it was a fluky representation of their pent-up fan base’s support.
“Doing it again,” MC R-SON says now, “that’s extra special.”
So was the timing: It occurred as the International Bluegrass Music Association held its IBMA Awards and conference in Raleigh, N.C. Gangstagrass decidedly tests the boundaries of the genre. It fires up the traditional banjo and fiddle with unexpected beats and raps, fusing the sound of rural Kentucky with the music of urban New York.
On paper, the mixture probably shouldn’t work. But Gangstagrass is built on a belief that folks who ride tractors have more in common with people who ride the subway than might be expected. Bluegrass and hip-hop both represent working-class cultures, and both rely heavily on the music’s pulse, be it a rolling banjo or a syncopated drum machine.
“If you have poor folks anywhere, they’re telling their stories, and they’re building from that,” R-SON says. “It works better than people would ever have imagined, just because a lot of their existences are similar.”
Rench didn’t necessarily recognize that when he launched Gangstagrass as a studio experiment in 2006 from his home in Brooklyn. He made it available for free online, and the reaction quickly exceeded his expectations.
“It was getting downloaded so much, it was crashing the site, and so I could see that people really liked it,” Rench says. “I knew then that putting together a live band to actually do this, with instrumentalists, would take it in a much bigger direction.”
Adding to the plot, producers for the FX series Justified enlisted Gangstagrass for a theme song, “Long Hard Times To Come,” in 2010. The group’s diverse musical origins appealed to an eclectic audience, too, bringing together seemingly incompatible constituencies.
“We got little kids, middle schoolers, high schoolers, college kids, their parents, their parents’ parents, their parents’ parents’ parents,” MC Dolio the Sleuth says.
“We have New York hipsters, we have proud rednecks from Texas,” Rench adds. “It really is like kind of a little bit of everything.”
The fan base also includes some of the band’s professional peers. Dobro icon Jerry Douglas, who joined the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame on Sept. 26, appears on “The Only Way Out Is Through,” the lead track on The Blackest Thing on the Menu. Dan Tyminski, the lead singer on The Soggy Bottom Boys’ “Man of Constant Sorrow,” joined Gangstagrass to perform that song at the end of the IBMA’s 2022 convention.
“The best players and these bluegrass legends, they really get it,” Rench says. “The bluegrass purists that are skeptical [of] us really don’t have much to stand on when they see all their favorite bluegrass players backing us up.”
Gangstagrass likely reflects larger cultural trends. Beyoncè’s Cowboy Carter debuted at No. 1 on Top Country Albums earlier this year. And Vice President Kamala Harris is the first female candidate of color to run for president on a major-party ticket. Polls and analysts suggest she has a good chance of winning. The Gangstagrass audience portends a possible future where people of disparate backgrounds can increasingly find commonality.
“We can see how crucial it will be for people to not be afraid of each other,” Rench says. “There’s a difference between being different and being divided, and if we can get them to not be divided and to be comfortable with each other and understand that they’re part of the same citizenship of the earth and of the country, that’s a huge step forward.”
That’s an ambitious goal, but one that’s delivered with a good helping of joy. The new album features a song, “Mother,” that explores economic disparities and a foreboding environmental outlook, but it’s followed by “Obligatory Braggadocio,” a comical self-celebration — “I got big wheels on my big truck” — over a rowdy Southern rock musical bed.
Even the album’s title is the result of an inside joke that stems from fiddler B.E. Farrow asking a waiter, “What’s the blackest thing on the menu?” When Rench suggested the title months later, the band broke into laughter, then grew quiet. The Blackest Thing on the Menu made a statement about the band.
“I kid you not,” Dolio says. “Two rainbows shot out from the sky, a double rainbow — double rainbow — right in front of us over New York City.”
It was a development as unlikely — and as hopeful — as the band itself.
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