Motobunny Announces Free Song Giveaway

Motobunny Announces Free Song Giveaway

Led by dual singers Christa Collins and Nicole Laurrene, the band’s aesthetic has as much to do with Laurrene’s Michigan rock roots as the surf sounds and pounding percussion of LA’s punk and garage scenes. Rarely does a rock band present with two such well-matched, intense vocalists, but the rest of Motobunny keep up easily, ripping through songs straight out of a Tarantino film.

Download your copy of Let's Go Out from Shakefire.com

Will The Streaming Revolution Save The Music Industry?

Will The Streaming Revolution Save The Music Industry?

"Do streaming services like Spotify and Pandora hurt musicians? Artists, established and aspiring, can flow both ways on the debate, but there’s no denying that the new model has had a dramatic impact on the industry and its profits. Hari Sreenivasan reports, from PBS.org"

Rory Kelly Covers Charlie Daniels, The Devil Went Down To Georgia

Rory Kelly Covers Charlie Daniels, The Devil Went Down To Georgia

Storming out of Black Mountain region of Marion, North Carolina, Rory Kelly, Billy Miller and Mike "Pops" Kelly have taken a well known song by an esteemed player from the low country area of the state and injected it with their own brand of thundering rhythm and infectious guitar tone. Covering a song that has become such a pop culture staple as this amazing hit by Charlie Daniels, shows the prowess that the fellas have perfected over the last few years and the hundreds of shows they have toured together shredding through, blood, sweat and beers.  

Check out more great music from Rory Kelly

Husky Burnette Debuts Brand New Track - Amazing Grace

 
"Amazing Grace was the only song I'd sing along with in church when I was young, it was my favorite. I never cared much for hymns but this one always hit me right. When I worked up this version it was probably 2010 or 2011. I never did anything with it and it fell by the wayside. Then not long ago I got some bad news about a friend, Kathleen Fiedler, who had passed and got asked to play this at her memorial service. One week later, my first drummer and very close friend, Allen Tate, passed as well. This tune is in memory of those two special people who will never be forgotten. I guess you could say it's also my way of giving back something that was given to me years ago. Enjoy. - Husky Burnette"

Photo by Connie Shelby Brandt

Reno Divorce Debut Brand New Song - California

Reno Divorce, Full Throttle Mile High Punk Rock & Rocll

Reno Divorce Debut Brand New Song entitled, California. Dive in and listen and then head over to their page to download

Shooter Jennings Releases, Brand New Digital Single - Nashville From Afar

 

 

Dive into what Shooter Jennings is cookin' up over at BCR Los Angeles with his new digital single, Nashville From Afar. It will be be coming from his new mix tape out in December with select tracks from Jayke Orvis, James Hunnicutt, Jamey Johnson, Wanda Jackson and Mick Foley. 

Beats Music Plans To Crush Spotify Through Algorithms

Beats' Music aims to crush all other streaming music providers by using a complex and unique algorithm to find music specifically catered to your listening tastes

Read more on Wired

"Beats Music won’t be joining the most-tracks arms race when it launches Tuesday. Instead, the new subscription service brought to you by Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre will win converts through a potent mix of smarter algorithms and human curation. From the moment you first open the app, every interaction is recorded and used to determine the next album, playlist, and track to serve up. The result is more like a personalized mixtape than an online jukebox.

“No one was doing a music service; everyone was building a music server,” Beats Music chief executive Ian Rogers told WIRED. While services like Spotify, Rdio, and Rhapsody have some social discovery tools built in, they all launched similar products in an era when the rule was he with the most tracks wins. As a result, those companies got caught in a race to be the biggest. As they concentrated on the enormity of their music catalogs, their discovery mechanisms lagged. For instance, Rdio’s “Heavy Rotation” discovery option presents you with music your friends currently are enjoying, but it’s not smart enough to tell you to listen to David Bowie’s Hunky Dory because you love Lou Reed’s Transformer.

That’s where Beats Music is different. The service is betting on smarts instead of sheer depth. While it will have enough songs to compete — anybody entering the game at this point has to — with a library millions of tracks deep, it hopes its unique approach to music discovery tools will give it an edge.

As soon as you begin using the streaming service, Beats starts logging your “music DNA.” This serves as a personal profile used to determine which albums and tracks would be most relevant to you. To start generating your DNA, the service asks rudimentary questions, like which bands and genres you love.

But it takes other things into account. Your age is especially important to Beats Music. Tell it when you were born, and it figures out when you were in high school. The music of your youth — the stuff that was popular when you first got a Walkman or an iPod, the band that made it big when you got your driver’s license, the record that was all over MTV just before your freshman year of college — is the music with the strongest memories for you. It’s a fixed point in time that’s the most culturally and musically relevant to you. And it’s being crunched by the company’s algorithm.

Your sex matters, too; women and men usually have different tastes. Also important to Beats: the volume at which you listen to music. Which artists do you crank up? Who do you play quietly? It even tracks the music you send to Airplay speakers. The songs you use to fill your home are given a different mathematical weight than the songs you use to pass time at work.

But the system doesn’t solely rely on algorithms. It’s also backstopped by a small army of curators and behavioral scientists. This human element is there to help present music that doesn’t simply sound like the music you might enjoy, but also feels like it. Just because you listen to Mumford & Sons doesn’t mean you’d want to listen to a bunch of songs featuring banjos, for instance. You’d probably be more at home listening to Arcade Fire than Earl Scruggs. Humans can help make that determination. Algorithms can’t.

At launch, the app takes all this information and presents a personalized “Just for You” list of albums and playlists. The Influencers’ picks are especially fun. My love for Depeche Mode (especially Violator) was picked up by the service without my direct input. The list is filled with David Bowie, T-Rex, Joy Division, The Ronettes, The Beach Boys, and others. While listening, the connection is suddenly apparent.

All this personalization and curation is the result of input from music producer Jimmy Iovine, a longtime proponent of subscription services, and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, who is the company’s chief creative officer. Reznor was key in fine-tuning the curation and personalization aspects, but both he and Iovine wanted an experience that resonates with listeners and artists. That includes fixing how the artists’ pages are presented.

When you discover a new band, it can be difficult to determine which of their albums you might enjoy. The app solves this by presenting the essential albums for any given artist. Search the Beach Boys, and you’re shown Pet Sounds and The Smile Sessions, not that horrible Still Cruisin’ album from the late-’80s. Plus, actual album release dates are used instead of the date they were added to the streaming service. This is great when you want to hear 1970s Bowie instead of 1980s Bowie. Yes, there is a difference.

Beats Music won’t have a free tier. It’ll cost $10 a month, with a special for AT&T customers of $15 a month that includes five family members and 10 devices. This is an anomaly in a field where almost every service offers a free way in for listeners. But then, Iovine and Dre were instrumental in convincing people we didn’t need the lousy earbuds that ship with smartphones and music players.

“We know people will pay for something where there is value,” said Rogers. “Enough people pay for headphones, it’s an exciting business. We think we can do the same thing here.”"

Could Beats Music Become The Industry Standard For Digital Downloads?

Can Beats Music become the new industry standard subscription model for a music service?

Find out more on Beats Music from Billboard

"Beats Music, the premium streaming service developed by Trent Reznor, Ian Rogers and the creators of Beats By Dre headphones, is launching on Jan. 21, with AT&T as the exclusive carrier partner, the company said. 

Santa Monica-based Beats will join a parade of competitors, including Rhapsody, Slacker, Xbox Music, Rdio and Sony Music Unlimited -- all vying to become the dominant subscription service in the U.S., the world's largest market for music. The stakes are even higher as the market for digital downloads showed signs of waning, declining in 2013 for the first time, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The field is likely to become even more crowded this year, with Google Inc.'s YouTube and France's Deezer expected to launch their U.S. services in the next several months.

User's Guide: How Beats Music Works

Beats Music, which was built partly from technology acquired in 2012 from the former Mog music service, aims to set itself apart with stylish design and human curation. The company a year ago hired Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails, as its chief creative officer to design the service's look and feel of the service, with the goal of making it easy and fun to use. It also recruited Rogers, former Chief Executive of Topspin Media who also once ran Yahoo's music service, as CEO of Beats Music. And last summer, Beats tapped Julie Pilat, former Clear Channel veteran, to head up Beats' efforts to distinguish itself from the pack with a heavy emphasis on curation via radio-style programming. 

Many other companies have tried similar approaches with much success, most notably Sirius XM and Slacker. Sirius, for example, has cultivated dozens of radio personalities with ardent fan followings, the best example of which is Howard Stern. Its curated approach is partly what makes Sirius XM the country's biggest paid music service, with more than 26 million subscribers. Slacker years ago pioneered the practice of having DJ's program its many genre stations. 

"Our curated stations perform incredibly well, even when listeners have the ability to choose on-demand music," said Slacker's CEO Jim Cady. "Our premium subscribers spend more than 80% of their time listening to our curated stations, rather than creating their own playlists or listening to tracks on demand. We’ve also seen that heavily-curated experiences, like deejay hosted countdown stations, keep people listening up to three times longer than genre stations. Even the simple act of adding a deejay to a station can increase average listening time by nearly 20%." 

With all eyes on streaming music services as a source of future growth for the industry, Beats has ambitious plans to pour on the glamour, as it did with great success for the premium headphones market more than six years ago, leveraging deep relationships cultivated over the years by Beats' co-founder, Jimmy Iovine, the chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M at Universal Music Group. In 2008, Iovine and Dr. Dre launched Beats Electronics. Its instantly recognizeable headphones were soon spotted on dozens of celebrities and rap artists, who extolled the headsets' ability to reproduce the heavy bass sound prevalent in hip hop music. "We built something that works for us, for me, our friends, Dr. Dre," Iovine said in an interview with Billboard. "We enjoy using it. It’s what we would like to have, and we built it to where we felt it could help others."

While Iovine and his executives work to add star power to Beats Music, AT&T Corp. will provide the corporate marketing and distribution muscle. The carrier has agreed to distribute Beats Music, offering AT&T customers a 7-day free trial of the service. Afterwards, the service would cost $9.99 a month. For customers who opt to sign up for AT&T's family bundle, the service would come with a 90-day free trial. Once the trial period runs out, Beats would charge $14.99 a month, but allow up to 5 people and 10 devices full, on-demand access to the service. 

Beats would not disclose the terms of its arrangement with AT&T, including how the cost of licensing music during the free trials would be subsidized. 

For music services, carrier partnerships can be vital. Telecommunications companies such as AT&T have direct billing relationships with millions of subscribers and can tack on the cost of a music service directly on to their customers' cell phone bills. They also have extensive marketing resources that they can use to help push ancillary services, such as music. For AT&T, the benefit is in offering a product that would draw in users who will pay extra for a data plan to accommodate streaming music. 

In addition, Beats has partnered with Target Stores for a promotion that would give away 30-day free trials to customer who buys anything from the store's electronics department. The company has also started tucking vouchers for free trials into Beats Electronics' packaged audio gear. 

What Beats will not be doing anytime soon, however, is offer a free, slimmed-down version of its service -- something that Spotify, Rdio and services have started to do in order to get listeners to try their products in the hopes that they will convert into paying customers. So-called access models, where listeners pay to access large catalogs of music rather than purchase copies of music, is still a small, but growing portion of the industry's revenue. In 2012, it represented 15% of the revenue for music in the U.S., up from 9% in 2011, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, which is set to update this figure in the coming weeks. 

While streaming music is expanding, digital downloads declined on an annual basis for the first time in 2013. Sales of digital tracks fell 5.7% from 1.34 billion units to 1.26 billion units, while digital album sales fell 0.1% to 117.6 million units from 117.7 million a year earlier, according to Nielsen SoundScan."

Brand New Stevie Tombstone Video - Would You Die For Love

Screen shot from Stevie Tombstone's brand new video - Would You Die For Love on Altco Recordings

Brand new video we shot with Stevie Tombstone, with about 80% being filmed on an Iphone 5. All video was color corrected and edited using Premiere CS6

"From the Slow Drunken Waltz EP. This song asks the age old question - Would You Die For Love? Recorded 2011 in NW Arkansas this tune features Jerry Jones on Harmonica.A stripped down approach to country blues with a gospel undertone. From ALTCO music available on ITUNES."

Download the track from Itunes

 

Stevie Tombstone Lands On Itunes Country Charts

Stevie Tombstone is featured on Itunes Country New & Noteworthy for the week of 11.26.13

The era we live in now, akin to many in the past is full of hype, perceived relevance and one in which media outlets can be bought. Paying for a digital marketing campaign can help to quickly cast a wide shadow, but does it leave a lasting foot print?

Artists struggle in our new era of digital media, as they are continually thinking about the rules that were set into place from decades past. If you don't like how things are moving, just break the glass ceiling above your head and realize the only one standing in the way of broken glass, is you. 

This is a straight forward and no nonsense approach. But then again, anything worth having is worth working for. Laziness will get you nowhere and in the long haul the practice of self defeat is a worse haunt than any abandoned house or insane asylum could ever be. 

After listening and really absorbing the depth of the artistry within Stevie Tombstone's music, it is easy to witness his continual push of boundaries and limitations. Does he look outside of himself to conjure up new ideas? Surely, he does. What also sets him apart is critical thinking and forever examining his approach. 

Stevie is like many savvy individuals that will go the extra mile. There is reward in the long haul, but it just takes that much more of a commitment. 

Download Kevlar Heart from Itunes

Spotify Or Bandcamp? Growing Your Band's Presence

Enjoying her favorite new band

Not sure about how to get your music heard? Well this is where technology can be your best friend. Labels are just one route to make your music accessible, but with the amount of competition, doing more to engage fans is the optimal recipe for success.  

Creating email blasts, using services such as youtube and soundcloud to stream your music, along with promoting yourself on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are effective strategies, but you have to be on top of all content sources. In the article below, Mashable posted a great article on the differences between Spotify and Bandcamp. Dig in and find out where you as an artist could potentially have your music heard by a wider audience.

Check out the original post on Mashable

"We compared Spotify with Bandcamp, a service known for supporting emerging artists, to see why some artists and labels choose one over the other. 

Two different entities, the fundamental difference seems to be that the former caters to consumers, while the latter revolves around producers. 

Nevertheless, each service still has its virtues and downfalls, most of which depend on what kind of artist and label you are.

Spotify: Exposure

One benefit of Spotify is the exposure to a large audience. With over 24 million active users in 32 countries, Spotify is an easy way for artists to cast a wide net and make their music available, especially to listeners who may not otherwise actively seek out their music.

"Spotify is just so huge and everybody seems to use it,” says Andy De Santis, promotions manager of Polyvinyl Records. One of the handful of labels that has a Bandcamp page, Polyvinyl also goes through a distributor that posts its releases on Spotify. "It’s good to have your stuff up there just as recognition for bands.”

With both new and established artists on the Polyvinyl roster, De Santis says the label tries to put everything up on Bandcamp, while a distributor handles bigger services such as Spotify and iTunes. 

Bruce Willen, one-half of emerging band Peals, agrees that Spotify gives the band access to a wider audience. "Any way you can get your music out there for people to easily access it, I think it’s a good thing,” says Willen.

A music veteran himself, Willen was part of Baltimore-based Double Dagger for nearly a decade before forming Peals, which released a debut album earlier this year. Though the band doesn’t have a Bandcamp page, the album is available to stream on Spotify.

For many emerging artists, Spotify is just another way to adapt to the ever-changing industry landscape. 

"Spotify is good for me because it’s exposure, if anything.” R. Stevie Moore, dubbed a lo-fi legend, has been releasing albums on cassettes, CD-Rs and now digital formats since 1968. Moore has experienced the shifting music industry since before digital even took form. While he operates primarily from his Bandcamp page, which includes hundreds of releases, Moore has released a select few albums on Spotify. "Forget the musical industry, it’s a digital industry now. That’s the new music industry.”

Image: Flickr, Anna Vernon

Bandcamp: Profit

Bandcamp’s payout model is one of its most lauded features. Known for paying artists a hefty profit and cutting out the middleman, Bandcamp collects 15% of digital sales and only 10% on other merchandise. Compared to Spotify’s comparatively petty payout of less than a penny per stream, Bandcamp is a much more profitable option for artists who want to sell directly to fans.

"It doesn’t really make an incentive for musicians to distribute their work [via Spotify]. It’s not sustainable for people trying to make a living from making music,” Willen says. "I think it’s just contributing to the devaluation of art.”

While Willen believes Spotify provides exposure for emerging bands, it is detrimental for up-and-coming bands that have a solid audience but are far from Top 40 status. "Their stuff is getting out there, people already know about it, but it’s not really adding as much for them,” Willen says. To him, Spotify is more valuable for unknown bands or chart-topping artists who might get millions of plays.
Additionally, because Spotify only distributes via labels or distributors, independent artists have to find another middleman to get their music to the streaming service.

Jason Shanley, an independent artist who records as Cinchel, says he went through TuneCore, a third-party distributor, to get his music on Spotify. TuneCore, however, requires a yearly subscription, the cheapest of which starts at $9.99 per year, not including other fees for setup. Other than the lag time, he says the payout was too low. "I’m losing too much money with an account there. I think I made $2 from it this year or something.”

Instead, Shanley opts to put most of his discography on Bandcamp. Even though he prices most of his albums at $1 or free, Shanley points to Bandcamp’s name-your-price model as an opportunity for profit from enthusiastic fans. "Maybe about 25% of buyers paid more than the minimum,” he estimates.

"I think there’s a psychology where if you don’t charge anything for it, people don’t think it’s worth anything," he says "But there’s a point where if you charge too much for it, then they don’t feel like it’s justifying that much of a cost.”

Josh Brechner, also an independent artist, notes that Bandcamp helps artists in giving their albums an optimal price. He says Bandcamp recommends charging around $4 for a five-track album. "But they’ll pay more if they like it,” says Brechner, who records under the moniker Visager. "In a way, that’s sort of like, ‘We believe in you.’”

Spotify: Convenience and Distributors

For bigger labels, Spotify may be a better choice to handle a large amount of input. Sub Pop, which has signed hundreds of artists since the ‘80s grunge heyday, works directly with Spotify but does not have a Bandcamp page.

"If we were to add our entire catalogue to Bandcamp, it’s a lot of content, it’s a lot of metadata,” says Richard Laing, Sub Pop’s director of sales. "To be able to manage that stuff, [Bandcamp] is not quite where it needs to be to work efficiently.” 

The label would also have to figure out a new way to pay revenues to the artists involved if they were to start using Bandcamp, Laing adds. "We need payment stream information in a certain way for us to be able to use it.”

For Sub Pop, this is the reason the label chooses Spotify over Bandcamp. "At the moment, [Bandcamp] is best-served for very small labels and self-released artists,” says Laing. "But for a label like us with hundreds if not thousands of releases, it’s not quite in-line with the kind of bureaucracy of a business as it grows like that.”

Bandcamp: No Barriers

Another major plus of Bandcamp is the lack of barrier to entry. Anyone can make an account and upload to his profile in a matter of minutes. There’s no need for a label, distributor or any middle man.

"Bandcamp is for grassroots-level artists,” says Moore, who records and uploads amateur and professional releases on his extensive Bandcamp page. "It’s worked out well for me.”
Because anyone can upload her own music without an intermediary, artists don’t have to wait around for their material to show up on the site either.

"You don’t have to worry too much about publishing. Any kid can do it; he can put it up on Bandcamp and then promote the hell out of it,” Moore says. "I’ve had extreme success with it. It’s right here in the palm of my hands. I don’t have to send out something that somebody else has to put up; I can do it myself. It’s perfect for DIY.”

Similarly, both Shanley and Brechner applaud the lack of restraint on Bandcamp. "For me, it happens whenever I want, in real time,” Brechner says. "They do everything they can to support small artists; they’ve built a platform around it.”

Image: Flickr, Blixt

Spotify: Multi-Platform and User-Friendly Capabilities

Spotify is a perfect example of catering to the audience. Not only are its slick mobile apps more convenient than Bandcamp's, but it also includes playlist features and more social integration. And with a bottom-up approach, this appeal to listeners is a crucial facet that affects artists and labels, as well.

"One of the core functions of a label is to connect music that we’re passionate about and help that music find an audience. Spotify as a service is incredibly easy for that,” says Laing. "A lot of people listen to it on their smartphone or tablet.”

Laing sees Spotify as just another part in the whole of music consumption. "I think ... what raises the profile and generates interests gives us the best chance of gaining more fans and more interest in that music,” he said. "From there, it’s up to us to serve those people in however they want to consume that music.”

Sub Pop's mission is to release its albums on channels where there are possible audience members. With the current segmentation of the market, it’s important Sub Pop is present on most, if not all, of these channels.

Some consumers will buy limited edition vinyl; others will buy a CD from chain stores; still others will listen to an album online. "I think it’s naïve to think that by not putting a record out there, that the excitement or power of a new Sub Pop record is going to change that behavior,” Laing says. "I think that’s backwards.”

Bandcamp: Flexibility and Engagement

In some ways, Bandcamp also caters to the segmentation of music consumption, but from the perspective of the artists. While most Bandcamp accounts host mostly digital albums, artists aren’t limited in what they can sell. They can list everything from physical record copies to other miscellaneous merchandise.

"It’s cool because younger bands can use Bandcamp as their central hub for everything,” says De Santis. "They can choose what they want to stream; they can sell physical stuff; tour dates get posted on there through Songkick.”

Furthermore, Bandcamp lets artists customize their pages' design. "There’s no ads or clutter. It sort of feels like how MySpace was a long time ago for bands,” says De Santis. "Bandcamp just seems like the next wave of that, giving artists the control that they want.”

Shanley is doing exactly that. In addition to his digital releases, he also sells other merchandise, such as physical art. "It’s a storefront,” he says. "It’s almost like an Etsy site, where you can pretty much sell anything.” 

Even within digital releases, Shanley likes the flexibility of Bandcamp to offer various types of files. "I’m also kind of an audio nerd, so I like the idea of being able to download FLAC files instead of a simple 320kbps MP3 file.”

Along with this flexibility, Bandcamp offers detailed statistics that help artists with fan engagement. "It shows me where people are coming from, what songs they’re listening to, how long they’re listening to them,” says Shanley. "When they download stuff, I can get their email address and their ZIP code for some other kinds of ways to communicate with them.”

Finally, a primarily local artist, Shanley says Bandcamp is helpful in setting up local gigs. "It helps me to get something to my fans quickly.”

Different Audiences and Culture

So, Bandcamp or Spotify? While there are similarities between the two services, each still stands firmly in its own realm.

For example, Bandcamp’s users, by virtue of its service structure, may be more active listeners compared to those of Spotify, who may be more passive with Spotify’s continuous streaming layout.

Additionally, Bandcamp is built for artists, whereas Spotify caters more to music consumers. And even though the latter does affect the way artists distribute music, the two are still fundamentally different in their purposes. "For Bandcamp, it’s about being able to distribute and sell your music and connect with people in a different way than Spotify, which is more or less like free music, like radio,” says Willen.

While each has its pros and cons, both services can coexist in the world of digital music, at least until a new medium elbows in."

J.B Beverley Conquers Amazon On The Digital Download Charts

J.B. Beverley sticking at the No. 1 Spot for Hot New Releases on Amazon

2014 is going to be bring in a new level of game play to Rusty Knuckles Music. As many of the bands are starting to hit the charts normally only seen by the major labels, we have been gaining ground in a vast amount of areas. Proud to announce that we also just landed a new distribution partner through Universal for Australia, which also opens up Japan and other Asian markets for touring. Time for that big push across the Pacific Ocean. 

Waking up and checking the reports finds customers going to Amazon and Itunes in droves. Thanks to everyone for the continued support and its great to see J.B. Beverley and Possessed By Paul James and labels such as ours and Hillgrass Bluebilly hitting such a vast audience. This is what hard work is all about.

Order your copy from our store on CD

Download from Amazon

Husky Burnette Featured On Itunes Blues For Two Weeks Now

Husky Burnette featured as main artist on Itunes Blues page for week #2

To say that we are stoked to be seeing Husky Burnette front and center on Itunes Blues page is an absolute understatement. This is a hard fought battle for recognition and exposure for a guy that makes his living as a musician.

I knew the album was great once I heard some rough tracks back in February, but now others are starting to hear just how solid this album is. Huge thanks to Buck Thrailkill and J.B. Beverley at Rebel Roots Studio for capturing the sounds. Cannot thank Itunes folks enough for choosing to feature this album and for all the hard work and dedication that Husky Burnette puts into his live shows, crafting his tunes and most of all for being a humble individual. 

Crank it up folks and get your day started right! 

Order your copy of the album

Download the album from Itunes



Now that we have your attention to Husky's new track, Beat & Lowdown, do yourself a favor and dive into another song below called "That Liquor". 

The Blues are a religion and Brian "Husky" Burnette sho' 'nuff preaches it. You can feel the testimony as he blends Delta Blues, Rock n Roll and Electric Blues. His music is gritty, soulful, southern, low-down and dirty. Husky, who hails from Chattanooga, TN, followed in the family footsteps of rockabilly kings Johnny Burnette and Dorsey Burnette, writing, recording and touring with several national artists over the years. Two of which that stand out are lead guitar position for legendary singer/songwriter Roger Alan Wade and the supporting act on tour for Hank Williams III. He has shared the stage with many others such as Leon Russell, T-Model Ford, Kenny Brown, Guy Clark, Emmylou Harris, Shooter Jennings, Scott H. Biram, Col J.D. Wilkes (The Legendary Shack Shakers/The Dirt Daubers) and J.J. Grey and Mofro. 

Husky recently signed with Rusty Knuckles Music to release his next LP, “Tales From East End Blvd.” in August 2013. The new album was recorded and produced by J.B. Beverley and Buck Thrailkill at Rebel Roots Studio and features Shooter Jennings, Billy Don Burns and J.B. Beverley, among others.

Order your copy now on cd and digital

Have a sample of That Liquor

Husky Burnette - Tales From East End Blvd. - Album Cover

Husky Burnette for Mayor of Chattanooga, TN

Scene 2 at Aardvark Screenprint, which prints, all the Rusty Knuckles merch. Huge thanks to Greg Clayton!

Scene 4 at one of downtown Raleigh's great parks.

Scene 3 on top of a parking deck in downtown Raleigh. Kitty Barks working for a unique shot

Scene 7 - Raleigh Beach damn

Scene 7 - Raleigh Beach Dam

Dive Into Kara Clark's Albums On Itunes

Whether you purchase albums in cd or digital format isn't a concern to us. The big thing we would dig is that you just check out the band or artists and continue to find great music. As the outlets change from indie stores to online retailers and huge outlets such as Amazon, there is more music than ever. Kara Clark is one of those artists that we feel is a cut above the rest. Just check it out and have a listen. She is the songwriter that will take you on a long journey and leave you reeling on the other end of this canyon highway, with a bitter sweet crooked grin knowing another voyage is about to begin.

Check out Kara Clark on Itunes

Kara Clark featured on Itunes

World Heavy Weight Title Match, Pandora VS Spotify

There is absolutely no perfect system in which to enjoy your music, unless you have created a personal studio and lounge that enables you to reach the perfect homeostasis of sound indulgence. What if your thinking about something that is easy and portable, while also being allowed to have it stream through your computer, which music service would you choose? Dive into the article and infographic below to see what exactly Spotify and Pandora have to offer.

Review the post on Mashable.com

"With so many ways to listen to music these days, how do you choose the best option?

Here's a look at how two of the most popular music streaming services, Spotify and Pandora, compare to each other. Spotify may have a chance to gain a larger share of the market, since Pandora announced Wednesday that they were going to cap mobile streaming at 40 hours per week.

SEE ALSO: 5 Alternatives to Consider After Spotify's Free Music Cutoff

Although the two competitors are both music providers, the services they offer are quite different. While Spotify is available is 23 countries, Pandora is only available in three. However, Pandora boasts 65.6 million active users, while Spotify has only 20 million.

Check out the infographic below courtesy of The Music Bed to get a breakdown of Pandora and Spotify's services. Which do you prefer? Let us know in the comments."

Spotify VS Pandora

It Is Hereby Decreed, Pirates Are Helping To Save Music Industry

Digital piracy of music sales could be coming to an end. Or maybe the bigger labels should just evolve.

 Link to original article on Huffington Post

"Digital pirates have long been the bane of the music business, those in the music business say. No longer interested in buying songs when they can get them for free, pirates are the reason behind the recording industry's falling revenue, the argument goes.

Turns out, it may be pirates who are keeping the music business alive.

According to a Columbia University study published this weekend, frequent users of peer-to-peer "piracy" networks in the U.S. legitimately purchase 30 percent more music than non-P2P users. 

The study, called "Copy Culture In The US And Germany," also found a slew of other findings that might upset recording industry players. Top of the list? Internet users surveyed have a widespread dislike of current copyright enforcement practices, including bandwidth throttling, Internet access suspension and "criminal prosecution and fines."

TorrentFreak points out that the survey is merely one in a long list of studies that show pirating doesn't harm the music business, including a study showing that filesharers are more likely to buy physical CDs than non-sharers.

But as Timothy B. Lee of Ars Technica points out, pirates are not necessarily good for the industry just because they buy more music. "It's possible, for example, the most avid music fans are also the most likely to be drawn to peer-to-peer networks," he writes. "Perhaps without those networks they would have purchased even more music from legitimate services." 

Even so, the music industry likely should not ignore the news that pirates are some of its best consumers -- and thus perhaps a bad demographic to alienate. 

In recent years, organizations backed by the American recording industry have taken more steps to curb piracy, including asking Internet service providers to take action against pirates. In January, The Huffington Post reported that Verizon is considering slowing down the Internet of repeat pirating offenders, while Time Warner reserves the right to cut off Internet access "even for a single act of copyright infringement."

Reno Divorce Featured On New Releases Now

Great news coming from the fellas in Reno Divorce. Not only is their album up for pre-sale on Itunes and cds are now available in our webstore, but it will also be hitting stores world wide on February 12, 2013.

Buy your copy on Itunes

Get the cd from our store

Reno Divorce's new album, Lover's Leap is featured on New Releases Now

Reno Divorce's new album, Lover's Leap is featured on New Releases Now

Don't Forget Your Roots - 25% Off Sale

Don't Forget Your Roots

What could be better than hanging with friends and family on one of America's oldest holidays. We know that with great music and killer products ready to ship for Christmas, our store has just what you need. To obtain great savings, all you have to do is enter the correct answer, within the promo code section of the store shopping cart and the savings are all yours!

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Sale runs 11.22.12 to 11.26.12, just click on the links above to enter our store

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Rory Kelly Talks On Stealin'

Rory Kelly on stage at the infamous Rock N' Rassle Apocalypse show, July 2012. Photo © Lance Dawes

 "The reason we chose Stealin' as a cover to release is because, when I was a kid, pops had an old tape with that song, on it. Stealin' as a song always stuck with me. So on our last tour we were all throwing around ideas about doing a cover and releasing it. On our way down to SXSW last year, Stealin' came on my Pandora and I was like "that's the one". So we started playing it live and it was getting great responses and we decided to go ahead and track it. Billy's bass line on the low b string really makes it more modern, and pops low underneath drums make it heavy. It came out smooth and of course we went the route and got Steve Blanton to master it for us, and now we are ready to do a video soon." - Rory Kelly

  Rory Kelly - Stealin' by RustyKnuckles

Uriah Heep, known as one of the Big 4 of Hard Rock, along with Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple

More on Uriah Heep from Wikipedia

Uriah Heep are an English rock band formed in London in 1969 and are regarded as one of the seminal hard rock acts of the early 1970s. Uriah Heep's progressive/art rock/heavy metal fusion's distinctive features have always been massive keyboards sound, strong vocal harmonies and (in the early years) David Byron's operatic vocals. Twelve of the band's albums have made it to the UK Albums Chart (Return to Fantasy reached No. 7 in 1975) while of the fifteen Billboard 200 Uriah Heep albums Demons and Wizards was the most successful (#23, 1972). In the late 1970s the band had massive success in Germany, where the "Lady in Black" single was a big hit. With Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin Uriah Heep has become one of the top band in the early 70's and also people like to call these four bands "The Big 4" of Hard Rock.

Uriah Heep's audience declined by the 1980s, to the point where they became essentially a cult band in the United Kingdom and United States. The band, though, maintains a significant following and performs at arena-sized venues in the Balkans, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia and Scandinavia. They have sold over 30 million albums worldwide with over 4 million sales in the U.S.A. .