Nashville Indie Roots band The Winter Sounds performs a free show tonight at MOTR Pub in Over-the-Rhine. The band matches beats and synths with a more organic, rootsy base that somehow successfully marries romantic, lush ’80s Pop and contemporary Indie Rock and Folk for a distinctly exquisite and evocative sound. The Nashville Scene sez the band churns out a "well-coalesced mixtape of Indie Rock’s finer moments from the past 10 years, resulting in a familiarly anthemic wall of guitars, electronics, strings and melancholy melodies that all add up to a no-brainer for critical acclaim.”

Great sassy local Indie Pop/Rock band Automagik opens things up around 10 p.m. tonight. (Give the band's self-titled nine-track release a listen here.)

Here's a couple of videos from The Winter Sounds — a version of their song "Carousel" and a cover of a-ha's ’80s smash "Take On Me" (which was also covered to great acclaim by Cincinnati's own Shiny and the Spoon; check it here).

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After two days of driving in the Vanarama — a 1996 GMC Rally 3500 in school-bus yellow — we're only about 3.5 hours outside of Austin.

This is the second time I've made the trek to SXSW, but every time I make the four-state drive, a few things remain constant: Arkansas highways suck and everything truly is bigger in Texas.

On the last stretch of 11 South, as you approach Crockett, Texas, road signs alternate between "Cemetery" and "Forest." This wouldn't have been so intimidating if we hadn't exchanged ghost stories about dead relatives and scary camping trips (Google "Appalachian Trail" and "scary photos"). We then stayed in a hotel that we seriously scoured for bed bugs before bringing in our gear. But cheap is worth it, right?

We are by no means alone in this endeavor. Thousands of bands travel across the country and the world, whether or not they're "officially" a part of the festival. This is the biggest weekend of the year for bands — whether they're on the rise or struggling to get a fresh start — and they'll do whatever it takes to be heard.

Tuesday (today) marks the beginning of the SXSW (as far as the music portion). The All Night Party's Midwest by Southwest showcase kicks off tonight and will feature some of our hometown favorites, including The Sundresses, The Lions Rampant, Wussy and The Seedy Seeds.

This official showcase is an anticipated event, not only for us Cincinnatians, but also the locals. The Austin Chronicle has named Wussy as one of the top 10 shows to see Tuesday. (Scroll to the bottom of the link for the Wussy write-up,.)

We're not even in Austin yet and Cincinnati's already making headlines at SXSW.

Tomorrow the music portion of the huge, annual South By Southwest festival in Austin, Tex., kicks off and, as we told you before, Cincinnati music is very well represented this year. Local promotional/licensing organization The All Night Party presents its first ever showcase at SXSW tomorrow at Soho Lounge, featuring performances by Cincy area bands Wussy, The Lions Rampant, The Seedy Seeds and The Sundresses, along with pals Oh My Me (from Lexington) and The Whiskey Daredevils (Cleveland).

The Counter Rhythm Group — which has also been assisting local artists with creative promotional opportunities — is helping out with the showcase (and corresponding Midwest by Southwest tour) and, kind folks that they are, the company is offering a free compilation download featuring several of the artists with whom they are working. Click here, hit "Free Download" and enter your email address to get an instant link to the digital files, which include excellent tracks from some of the area's finest, including State Song, Shiny and the Spoon, Ampline, Mad Anthony, The Pinstripes, Alone at 3AM and The Tillers, plus SXSWers R. Ring (one of their first publicly available tracks), Wussy, Ohio Knife and The Sundresses.

Pass the link around to show off your city's stellar music scene to all of your out-of-town pals (especially any living in Austin, so they can get out and show some support). And keep checking this blog for reports from the ground in Austin throughout the SXSW festival to see how our locals are faring.

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Fox 19, in conjunction with the Red Cross, is airing a telethon all day today in an effort to raise money for the victims of the devastating tornadoes that recently blew through the area. The event — dubbed the "Road to Recovery Telethon" — runs until 11 p.m. tonight (and kicked off at 4 a.m. this morning). Click here if you'd like to donate online.

If you want to check out some live music and help those same victims, you have some opportunities this weekend. Saturday at the Newport Syndicate, local "Party Rock" cover band DV8 will provide the tunes for an 8:30 p.m. benefit. Tickets are $15 at the door and all proceeds (and any additional donations) will go to the Matthew 25 Ministries, which has been helping with relief efforts (as it so often does). Click here for more info.

On Sunday, several area musicians join forces for a benefit for Northern Kentucky victims at Duck Creek Country Club, just across the river from the Old Coney amusement park and Riverbend, in Cold Spring, Ky. The show features a mix of Roots, Blues, Country and Rock artists from the area, including The Tempers, Straw Boss, The Perfect Children, Stickey Honey, Muleshine, Wendy Oakley & The Posse, Mudpies, Dave Hawkins and several others. Music starts at noon. Raffles and other opportunities to give will be available.

If you know of other benefits for area tornado victims, please post below.

Hip Hop star Young Jeezy performs tonight in Corryville, bringing his tour behind the recent Thug Motivation 103: Hustlerz Ambition album to Bogart's for an 8 p.m. show. The Def Jam Records recording artist released his major label debut, Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101, in 2005, spawning the hit single "Soul Survivor," featuring singer Akon. The South Carolina-born, Atlanta-based MC (once a member of the group Boyz n da Hood) put out two more albums — The Inspiration and The Recession (in ’06 and ’08, respectively) — which featured guests from R. Kelly and Keyshia Cole to Nas and Kanye West (their collabo "Put On" was nominated for a Grammy), and he's appeared as a guest himself on singles by Usher ("Love in This Club") and Rihanna ("Hard"). The Thug Motivation masterclass skipped ahead to 103 (perhaps Thug Motivation 102 is audit-only?) and was released late last year after several announced release dates came and went. The album landed at No. 3 on the album charts its first week out (in the midst of holiday shopping fever, making it more impressive).

TM 103 once again features a pretty heady guest list, with cameos by Yo Gotti, Lil Wayne, Freddie Gibbs, Jay-Z, Andre 3000, Jill Scott, Snoop and Ne-Yo, who appears on the most recently released single "Leave You Alone."  Check the video below (NSFW for language, excessive head tattoos and gratuitous product placement for Crown Royal and Ciroc vodka). Tickets for tonight's show are $25 (plus fees). Read more about Jeezy here.

• Indie rockers Brighton MA — neither from Brighton nor Massachusetts — hit MOTR Pub tonight for a free show with great locals The Mighty. The Chicago band was formed by two members of Scotland Yard Gospel Choir upon their departure from that acclaimed Indie Pop ensemble, emerging as a successful and acclaimed unit in its own right not long after. An intense mesh of Folk, Rock and Pop, the band's songs have been used on TV shows (like Gossip Girl and Community) and in a successful Jack Daniels ad campaign last year during the holidays. The band also scored a sweet tour van to take a trip on Route 66 for an extensive promotional web series called "Rock the Route," which was sponsored(-the-hell-out-of) by Red Bull. Earlier this year, the group released a new 7-song EP called Billboard Sun, a warm-up for their second full-length, due later this year. Tonight's show starts around 10 p.m.

Oh, and Brighton, Mass., is the neighborhood in which singer Matt Kerstein was born (in case you were wondering).

Here's the band's "Good Kind of Crazy" (aka "the song from the Jack Daniels commercial"):



• Equal Vision recording artists We Came As Romans (cover models for the April edition of Alternative Press magazine) will rock Covington's Madison Theater tonight with guests Emmure, BlessTheFall, Color Morale and Woe is Me (all on the road together currently as "The Fire and Ice Tour"). Doors open at 6 p.m.; showtime is 7 p.m. Admission to the all ages show is $19. Read more about the Romans here and check out their most recent music video, "Understanding What We've Grown to Be," below.



• Syracuse, NY, native (boo! Go Bearcats!) Martin Sexton comes back to Greater Cincinnati tonight, performing at Oakley's 20th Century Theater "An Evening with …"-syle (meaning no opening act and lots of Martin all night long). The folksy Americana singer/songwriter is known for his fingerstyle guitar playing, skilled songwriting and soulful singing, as well as his "guitar-solo vocals," where he mimics guitar leads, Peter Frampton-style (at the 2006 Jammy Awards at Madison Square Garden, he had a sung-solo sing-off with Frampton — maybe Pete will show tonight?). Read more here.

Tonight's show is at 8 p.m. and admission is $22. Below is the official video for Sexton's title track off of the recent 5-song EP, Fall Like Rain:

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On this day in 1987, the Beastie Boys' debut LP Licensed to Ill became the first Rap/Hip Hop album to reach No. 1 on the Billboard album charts. Though the band members today seem embarrassed by some of the ridiculousness evident all over the album (including, no doubt, the Wiffle Ball Bat-assisted sexual assault references), it could have been worse for the now-enlightened MCs, who originally wanted to title the record, Don't Be a Faggot. Columbia refused to release anything by that name so the group was eventually convinced to go with something a little less … dumb.

In 1999, Beastie Adam Horovitz wrote a letter to Time Out New York apologizing for their youthful indiscretions on that first album, saying he wanted to "formally apologize to the entire gay and lesbian community for the shitty and ignorant things we said on our first record. There are no excuses. But time has healed our stupidity. … We hope that you’ll accept this long overdue apology."

The Boys' still perform bits of Ill, but with some careful self-editing. Here they are doing "Brass Monkey" at Madison Square Garden a few years back.

But what we really wanna know is … when does Tom Carvel get his even-longer overdue apology?

Born This Day: Musical movers and shakers sharing a March 7 birthday include celebrated French composer Maurice Ravel (1875); legendary Jazz sideman and producer, late drummer Lee Young (1917); one of the greatest frontmen in Rock & Roll history, J. Geils Band's Peter Wolf (1946); the man who played one of the most recognizable organ solos in Rock on "Whiter Shade of Pale," Procol Harum's Matthew Fischer (1946); Pop/Dance music performer Taylor Dane (1962); singer/songwriter for Louisville based Hard Rock crew Tantric, Hugo Ferreira (1974); and multi-instrumentalist with Funk/R&B/Rock & Roll legends The Isley Brothers, Ernie Eisley (1952).

Ernie Eisley was born in Cincinnati 60 years ago and he joined his brothers' group when he was old enough, playing bass on the band's "comeback" hit, the funky "It's Your Thing," in 1969. His bros — led by Ronald Isley — were already hugely successful, selling a million copies of their 1959 single "Shout," not to mention "This Old Heart of Mine" and "Twist and Shout," which, of course, became one of the group's biggest songs thanks to a cover version by a little British band called The Beatles.

When Ernie teamed up with his brothers, they became more of a "band" than a "vocal group," and enjoyed a long string of hits for which Ernie was crucial (either as songwriter or player), including "Fight the Power," "Between the Sheets" and a reworked version of their older tune "That Lady," this time featuring an amazing Rock guitar lead from Ernie.

The group split in the ’80s — Ernie found success with Isley-Jasper-Isley, the group formed with brother Marvin and his brother-in-law — and joined forces again in 1991; littlest bro Marvin retired in 1997 (and passed away two years ago), leaving only Ernie and Ronald. In 2001, the Isleys hit the charts with "Contagious," which made them the only group to have a Top 100 hit in six decades in a row (from the ’50s-’00s). The Isleys were inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — a no-brainer, really — in 1992. While Ronald embraced being embraced by contemporary R&B and Hip Hop artists from R. Kelly to Tupac Shakur (and spent some time in the jail for tax evasion in more recent years), Ernie retreated from the spotlight somewhat, working with community groups and schools in St. Louis, where he now lives. But he still hits the road from time to time with Ronald and has continued to work as a solo artist.

Ernie has also participated in the "Experience Hendrix" tribute tours of the past few years. It's fitting — Hendrix played guitar with the Isleys when Ernie was 11 years old, even living with the Isley family in New Jersey for a couple of years before becoming hugely successful on his own.

Here's a fantastic archival video from Soul Train featuring The Isleys performing "That Lady."

Head to Northside's Mayday tonight to check out the first installment of a new monthly music series showcasing brand new bands from the Greater Cincinnati area. The "Unsung" night will go down the first Wednesday of each month. For tonight's first Unsung, the featured act is Formerly Ghosts.

The trio —  Sebastien Hue, Pyn Wayne and Jimmy Shivers — says, "Sonic Youth, Gary Busey and John Wayne-Gacy did not have a three-headed love child, but if they did, it would be Formerly Ghosts," which should be more than enough to get you to Mayday around 9 p.m. for the band's free performance.

If that's NOT enough, check out (and download for free) some demo tracks from band here. And become Formerly Ghosts' friends on Facebook (and read more info on the threesome) here.

I attended my first South By Southwest festival in Austin, Tex., over 15 years ago to cover local Funk group SHAG's appearance at the festival for a much younger CityBeat. It seemed exciting back then that one of Cincinnati's biggest bands was invited to showcase at SXSW. This year, the amount of acts from the area performing is unprecedented — never has Cincinnati had such a presence at America’s premier music fan/industry showcase and conference (which starts a week from today).

And it’s not just performers. Representatives from local promo company The Counter Rhythm Group will be on hand in force, venture development group CincyTech is hosting regular chats as well as a Cincinnati hospitality headquarters and party in Austin and the progressive promotional/licensing machine The All Night Party is sponsoring both a tour centered around the Texas festival and its own showcase night at the event, a first for a local organization.

And, as we have most SXSWs over the past 17 years, CityBeat will have a reporter on the scene providing regular updates for this here blog. Be sure to check back often starting next week and see how are hometown heroes are doing.

Here’s an overview of just some of the Cincy-centric happenings related to SXSW 2012:

• The All Night Party presents the Midwest by Southwest tour (also sponsored by this summer’s Bunbury Music Festival and assisted by Counter Rhythm and Reveal Concepts) featuring, as the tagline reads, “Four Midwestern Bands — On A Mission to Rock.” The tour has Cincinnati bands The Sundresses (repeat visitors to SXSW) and Wussy, as well as Cleveland rockers The Whiskey Daredevils and Lexington’s Oh My Me. The jaunt begins Thursday at Mount Lookout’s The Redmoor. (Doors open at 6 p.m., showtime is 8 p.m. and tickets are $10.) MWXSW will hit several other cities before and after the ANP SXSW showcase Tuesday at the Soho Lounge. The Lions Rampant will appear on the bill in Austin, as well.

If you'd like to help the caravan out, there is a Kickstarter campaign with some cool perks you can check out here. (Quick, only three days left!) Here's the promo vid:

• R. Ring, the acoustic duo featuring local musician/engineer Mike Montgomery (thistle, Ampline) and Dayton, Ohio’s Kelley Deal (Breeders), will perform at a showcase hosted by the Misra label on March 15. Misra is releasing the twosome’s first single in a few months, with a full-length to follow.

• Ohio Knife, a new duo project from The Chocolate Horse’s Jason Snell, Andrew Higley and Joe Suer, is also headed to Austin and the local branch of branding agency Landor is tagging along. The company is hosting a travelogue website here so you can follow along at home. Ohio Knife plays a tour kickoff show Friday at The Comet in Northside. The band will hit other clubs in Tennessee and Texas along its way to SXSW.

• Local Indie Pop faves Pomegranates are now labelmates (on the Modern Outsider imprint) with fellow Cincy band Bad Veins. While the Veins won’t be performing in Texas (they’re preparing their own tour launch March 19 in Colorado), the Poms will play the official Modern Outsider SXSW showcase on March 14 at Trinity Hall.

• Indie/Folk/Electro/Pop powerhouse The Seedy Seeds took part in a SXSW launch party a couple of weeks ago. The band performs at the All Night Party showcase Tuesday.

• Eccentric breakout rockers Foxy Shazam are one of the headliners of a showcase presented by the huge booking company The Agency Group on March 15 at Latitude 30; the day before they’ll play an afternoon party.

• Cincy RCA Records recording artists Walk the Moon aren’t technically “showcasing” for SXSW, but they will be in Austin for the MTVu Woodie Awards ceremony and festival held in during SXSW, where they’ll be performing and hoping to score the Breaking Woodie award they’re competing for against acts like tUnE-YarDs and Lana Del Rey. Vote for the hometown boys here, where you can also watch a live stream from the March 15 festival.

Floridian Indie Rock band Ex Norwegian performs tonight at The Comet in Northside with new local all-star crew The Stealth Pastille (featuring Seth Bender, Jonathan Blackburn, Wil Talbert and Nicholas Vogelpohl). Ex Norwegian has been a buzz band for the past couple of years based on the strength of their Power Pop catchiness and colorful sound. Tonight's show is free and kicks off around 10 p.m. Check out Ex Norwegian's recently released single "Original Copy" in the clip below, followed by an even newer video for "Choice of Friend," from the band's forthcoming third album, House Music.





• Michigan rockers Rocky Loves Emily bring their "There's No Need for Backstage Passes" tour to Bangarang's of Covington tonight for a 7 p.m. show. The band is joined by guests For the Foxes and New Country on the tour, the name of which either refers to the RLE's close relationship with its fans (they proudly declare that they're on their Facebook every day and respond to any fans who wanna chat) or perhaps it's just a warning to groupies telling them not to waste their time. The band is made up of good, down-to-earth Christian boys who will hang out with fans after shows, but won't get into any of the stereotypical debauchery many Rock bands indulge in on the road.

RLE is currently gearing up for the release of its first full-length, due from Tooth and Nail/EMI Christian Music Group this spring. Here's the clever video for the band's catchy tune from the American Dream EP, "Clueless," in which they audition several new lead singers.