#jeff austin

[comicarthistory]

Whiz Kids #1 cover. 2003. Art by Jeff Austin and Jeff Weigel.

[filmjunky-99]

s t a r t r e k d e e p s p a c e n i n e created by rick berman, michael piller The Adversary [s3ep26] 

[inky-curves]

Faust Vol. 2 #8 (1991) Art by Tim Vigil & Jeff Austin

[krispyweiss]

Billy Strings at Legend Valley Concert Venue and Campground, Thornville, Ohio, June 25, 2021

Billy Strings and his band played music for 45 straight minutes before silence briefly filled the air at Legend Valley at Concert Venue and Campground.

But this wasn’t the end of the first set. This was simply the wrapping of an adventurous, jam-filled series of segues that found guitarist Strings - with banjoist Billy Failing, mandolinist Jarrod Walker and double bassist Royal Masat - using the explosive instrumental “Pyramid Country” and associated reprises as vehicles to get to and through the original “Fire on My Tongue,” the Beatles’ “And Your Bird Can Sing” and the Grateful Dead’s “Wharf Rat.”

Sound quality was an issue - instruments fading and re-emerging as the music struggled to fill the expansive air - but was essentially dialed in by the mid-way point of the two-hour, 40-minute performance.

“Hello, everybody,” Strings said as “Rat” concluded and night began to fall on the rural field in Thornville, Ohio, formerly known as Buckeye Lake Music Center.

The set - one of two 80-minute jobs the quartet served up June 25 for the sold-out, socially distanced-in-pods audience - still had a ways to go. And though Strings and company would continue to play under a dazzling display of lights and the guitarist would still sometimes filter his acoustic instrument through an envelope that made him sound like Dickey Betts, the show moved away from rock ‘n’ roll toward ’grass - and not the kind the band said they enjoyed while fishing for bass in the venue’s stocked pond, pre-show.

Strings heralded the shift with his signature, “Dust in a Baggie,” on which the band - with the ensemble groupthink of a standalone act, rather than a backing trio - added traditional bluegrass harmonies to genre-expanding musical arrangements. The Dillards’ “Tom Dooley” and the traditional “Reuben’s Train” - with Strings’ effects-laden guitar mimicking a lonesome whistle - reinforced the turning of the corner.

The second half began with another instrumental - “Libby Phillips Rag” - on which the quartet paired bluegrass pickin’ with jamband sensibility and the performance brought such joy to Strings he laughed out loud while singing the traditional “Will You Be Loving Another Man” that roared out of the backside opener.

A couple of songs later - as a nearly full, waning moon emerged from low-hanging clouds - Strings sat on a stool for solo-acoustic versions of “House Carpenter” and “Brown’s Ferry Blues,” which included a birthday shout to the guitarist’s dad alongside some lightning-fast runs on the fretboard.

Strings was moved to tears - “fuck, don’t cry,” he said as he wiped his eyes - when the band re-emerged and he talked about the late Yonder Mountain String Band founder Jeff Austin, who died two years earlier. Seeking to dull his raw emotions, he performed Austin’s “Run Down” and YMSB’s “Sorrow is a Highway” with enough fire to burn off the mental keloids.

More nods to the Dead’s - who made their debut in the venue 33 years earlier to the day - repertoire followed with encore renditions of “Jack-a-Roe” and “Mama Tried.”

Thus wrapped a nod to the traditional with a heavy-lidded stare to where bluegrass is headed. Strings and company seem just the guides to follow on the next leg of the fabled long, strange trip.

Grade card: Billy Strings at Legend Valley, Thornville, Ohio, June 25, 2021 - A-

6/26/21

[krispyweiss]

Sound Remembrance: Little Feat’s Paul Barrère Leaves Big Shoes and Many Memories

On Father’s Day, Sound Bites found himself at Jorma Kaukonen’s Fur Peace Ranch seeing Funky Feat in concert.

It was the blog’s first time seeing Paul Barrère onstage since a Little Feat/Allman Brothers double bill in 1991 and a long time coming as two previous engagements between Bites and the guitarist had been scrubbed due to the latter’s battle with liver disease, which took the 71-year-old Barrère’s life Oct. 26.

When the guitarist and singer took the stage, Sound Bites practically fell out of his front-row seat when he realized the contemporary Barrère looked almost exactly like Pa Sound Bites - right down to his all-black attire and the Nehru collar on his shirt - who had died eight years earlier and turned his young charge on to Feat four decades ago.

Too young to have seen the band with Lowell George, the blog saw four shows - including one with dear old Daddy - with the Craig Fuller edition when Barrère was still on top of his game.

After Fuller left and the lineup began shifting, Sound Bites lost interest in Little Feat as a live act, although their recorded music remains a steady part of his aural diet. And seeing Barrère one more time became something of a mission.

Sitting there at Fur Peace on Father’s Day watching a musical idol who strongly resembled his lifetime idol, Sound Bites knew this would be the last time. It was the closing of a chapter, a decent show that carried more weight than the music for wholly unexpected reasons.

There was no indication Barrère was near the end of the road, but he was a musician on the downward side of his career. Still, that show meant a lot to Sound Bites at the time, means even more today than it did a week ago and it - along with 2019 concerts by the Jeff Austin Band and Circles Around the Sun - confirms the wisdom of the blog’s mission to see as many of the concerts he want to see as he possibly can, even if it means staying out after midnight on a school night.

Better to be sleepy than to miss out on an opportunity that might never come again.

10/29/19

[cultfaction]

Preview- Femforce #205

Beyond the dimensional portal hidden in the caves of Taragonia, the evil Loggriss extracts DNA from captives Nightveil and Nyoka. Loggriss formulates serum to create monsters used to attack the Earth. Tara and her jungle girls along with Ms. V and Femforce rush to combat this new menace. Written by Bill Black with art by Jeff Austin, Bill Black, and Eric Coile.

Preview- Femforce #205

[krispyweiss]

EP Review: Yonder Mountain String Band - I’d Like Off

Over Yonder Mountain plays the original String Band. And the OG YSMB has released I’d Like Off, an extended play dating to 2010 and featuring “one of the last studio sessions from the original lineup.”

It ends on an eerie note, given Jeff Austin’s 2019 suicide and the fact “I’d Like Off” is likely to be the swan song of the mandolinist - who left Yonder in 2014 - and guitarist Adam Aijala, bassist Ben Kaufmann and banjoist Dave Johnston.

Hey you in the mirror/did you finally get your way/and tell those clowns around you/what you told me yesterday/that inside there’s a noise/that sounds like dreaming/by the way I didn’t catch your name/I’m getting off now if it’s OK, goes the last of the title track’s three verses.

It’s the lone ballad on an EP otherwise made up of the bluegrass burners “Ripcord Blues,” “What the Night Brings,” “Pockets” and “Don’t Lean on Me.”

Austin’s family was “a little shocked” by the band’s release of I’d Like Off, suggesting some sort of internal conflict. That’s a shame, for the music is quintessential YMSB and a tasty piece of ear candy for fans of the original group.

Grade card: Yonder Mountain String Band - I’d Like Off - B+

4/10/24

[aboutzatanna]

Testing the boundaries of Tumblr for a bit.

NSFW Nude Zatanna by Jeff Austin.

Link to Comic Art Fans.