Shannon LaBrie "I Remember a Boy"

Hope the weather is spectacular where you are. After all, spring has sprung, and for fully half the country it is uncommonly warm for this time of year. Glorious sunshine, everything blooming, this is the season when we all feel alive. Make time this weekend to get out and enjoy, if the sun is shining in your neighborhood. And if it is raining, just think, the pollen is being washed out of the air, and that should help things this time of year, too.

Photo Credit: Charity VanceA few months back while it was still the dead of winter, I was in Nashville and attended a show at The Basement featuring The Mastersons. Yes, they were just part of our Music Fog Marathon last week, and videos will be forthcoming from that session. I find Nashville so enigmatic because I used to live there. No matter where I go in that town, I run into people that I know. It is almost as if I conjure them up. That night was no different, and among the folks at the gig was an old friend named DeWayne Brown. Several years ago at Bonnaroo, DeWayne gave me and the XM crew lots of tips about how to survive in the mud, as he was a veteran at it. Come to think of it, he has always given me good advice---about music or otherwise. That night he introduced me to Shannon LaBrie. And since it’s spring and that’s when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love...well you know, here is the first video from her. It is a sunkissed affair, with longing for what once was. The song “I Remember A Boy,” comes from her self-titled EP, just out.

- Jessie Scott

Emory Quinn "Holes Through the Windows"

OK, so I came down with the community croup from kissing babies and shaking hands at the Music Fog Marathon, and I have been mostly holed up trying to recuperate since then. Last night, driving home from my Threadgill’s gig, I stopped at a stop sign at the corner. I guess I was waiting for the light to change, except there wasn’t one, which became evident to me when people started honking. Yikes! I raced to the next corner, and there WAS a red light at that one, where I again sat, feeling embarrassed as the honking cars tailed me there. See you at the next light...that is the name of the most recent Emory Quinn album.

Photo Credit: Bill EllisonWe welcomed EQ back in front of our cameras for the full Music Fog treatment. We have encountered them twice before. Once was at MusicFest at Steamboat in 2009, and we saw them again at the "Black Tie and Boots" Texas State Society Inaugural Presidential Ball. (A footnote, I have now been to two of those soirees, and they are a blast. Evening clothes and cowboy boots are my idea of heaven...) Anyway, I figured it was time for a return visit, as EQ stays busy gigging and turning out albums. The guys drove up to our Music Fog Marathon at Threadgill’s WHQ last week from San Antonio and got busy. Clint Bracher, Nathan Rigney, Case Bell, and Erik Frankson visited the 2012 Music Fog Marathon on day one, and plugged in to play one of the songs from See You At The Next Light, “Holes Through the Windows.”

- Jessie Scott

ORBO & The Longshots "Highway Tears"

My houseguests left on Monday. When you live in Austin, Texas, you always have houseguests during SXSW®. It’s kind of like living in Orlando, where you always have guests that are heading to Disney World®. And I have to say, that there is a certain similarity in that Austin actually becomes a theme park of a sort this time of year. The theme is music. In retrospect, I am sifting through magazines and websites to read the raves on bands I missed, of which there are many. The Dunwells were terrific, Brown Bird wowed them, and JD McPherson was on everyone’s lips as well. Maybe we will see them all on the next Music Fog Marathon! But today we dig one event back, to October’s sessions held during Americana Fest in Nashville, at Marathon Recorders.

ORBO & The Longshots got its start in the year 2000, by singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer Ole Reinert Berg-Olsen aka ORBO. They have six albums under their belt, and won the Norwegian equivalent of the GRAMMY® Award, Spellemannsprisen, for their 2008 album High Roller. Ten years of endless touring means this band has learned their craft the hard way---on the road. In fact they will celebrate their one-thousandth live show this year. ORBO & The Longshots have recorded their albums all over the world, from the mountains of Norway, to the legendary Sun Studio in Memphis, TN. Their new album Prairie Sun was recorded at Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, California, and features special guests Delbert McClinton, Fats Kaplin, and John Jorgenson. We bring you a tune today as yet unreleased in the States, which we recorded during our October Music Fog Marathon, “Highway Tears.”

- Jessie Scott