I just interviewed Nite Jewel aka Romana Gonzalez which will be on this site in a few days. Until then, you can peep out the second single “In the Dark” off her upcoming album, One Second of Love which drops March 6th, 2012 on Secretly Canadien. The album has Sade moments. It has Cluster moments. And it has Debbie Deb Moments. Makes perfect sense that the L.A. singer is cool with Peanut Butter Wolf, Dam Funk as well as Ariel Pink.

tourdates after the jump

All Tour Dates W/ Chairlift Except Bowery Ballroom In NYC W/ Sophia Knapp
Mar 14-17 SXSW – Austin, TX
Mar 26 Brighton Music Hall – Boston, MA
Mar 27 Il Motore – Montreal, QC
Mar 28 Legendary Horseshoe Tavern – Toronto, ON
Mar 29 Magic Stick – Detroit, MI
Mar 30 Empty Bottle – Chicago, IL
Mar 31 Triple Rock Social Club – Minneapolis, MN
Apr 03 Larimer Lounge – Denver, CO
Apr 04 Urban Lounge – Salt Lake City, UT
Apr 06 Electric Owl – Vancouver, BC
Apr 07 The Crocodile – Seattle, WA
Apr 08 Doug Fir – Portland, OR
Apr 10 The Independent – San Francisco, CA
Apr 11 Troubadour – Los Angeles, CA
Apr 12 The Casbah – San Diego, CA
Apr 14 The Crescent Ballroom – Phoenix, AZ
Apr 16 Club Dada – Dallas, TX
Apr 17 The Mohawk – Austin, TX
Apr 18 One Eyed Jacks – New Orleans, LA
Apr 19 The Earl – Atlanta, GA
Apr 20 Local 506 – Chapel Hill, NC
Apr 21 U Street Music Hall – Washington, DC
Apr 22 Johnny Brendas – Philadelphia, PA
Apr 24 Bowery Ballroom – New York, NY

Diehard just released a 4-song covers EP, Old Habits, for free on their Bandcamp page. Fans who pledged at a high level of their Kickstarter campaign were able to request the songs chosen to be covered and now they’ve been collected for all the world to download.

Their debut full length, The Times We Didn’t Have Fun, is now available for “name your price”.

The band has some shows coming up in NYC. Keep reading for the dates.

Saturday, March 3, 2012 @ Cake Shop, New York, NY w/ Versus & Wussy. $10, 8pm, 21+

Thursday, March 8, 2012 @ Cameo, Brooklyn, NY HillyTown Presents w/ Quiet Loudly, When Particles Collide, Weird Children. $8, 8pm

Thursday, March 29, 2012 @ Shea Stadium, Brooklyn, NY w/ Shark?, Speedy Ortiz, Grass is Green.

Footnote to Donewaiting’s 9th Anniversary: P.Blackk & DJ Bruni (above) almost had to cancel their performance because someone ran a stop sign when Blackk was headed back the venue.  Zero Star (below) performed with a 102 degree fever and a tension headache.  One person on twitter described the evening like this “@wesflexner  if @Zerostar82 was Jordan with the flu, last night was @PBlackk‘s Willis Reed moment @aceofcupsbar”

Under the picture of P.Blackk is a DJ Detox’s Donewaiting’s 9th Anniversary Hip Hop MIX.  It has music by P. Blackk and Zero Star mixed in with Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean, Talib Kweli, Jay Electronica, Mos Def & more. For Tracklist visit DJ Detox’s Soundcloud page.

Zero Star & Pos 2

When reflecting on 9 Years of DW I am gonna have to say Bricksquad and it’s associates have been a pretty good friend to donewaiting. Both OJ the Juiceman and Waka have talked to us on the phone. Gucci was the hero of an early donewaiting true story novella.  So I am proud to announce that The Gucci Mane is back. The Gucci Mane is back. Complete with Big Meech intro…. Here is Gucci with his new mixtape that guests Waka Flocka Flame, Jadakiss, 2 Chainz, Future & More. Download Trap Back at Dat Piff.

Track list after the jump.

MP3: Bill Fox – I Only Did it Cuz I Felt So Lonely
MP3: The Mice – Little Rage

I think we’ve spent plenty of time talking about Bill Fox’s two solo albums and most recent record, One Thought Revealed, so let’s take a second to revisit Fox’s beginnings with Cleveland power-pop band The Mice. Fox started the band with his drummer brother, Tommy Fox, eventually bringing bassist Ken Hall on board. The For Almost Ever EP came out in 1985, and it made a believer out of many, including Bob Pollard, who shares Fox’s love of tasty hooks and faux English accents. “Not Proud of the USA” is like a Cleveland kid’s version of the Sex Pistols.

A full-length, Scooter, followed in ’86, adding some jangle to the fuzz and further perfecting that mix of power and pop. (Superchunk later covered the track “Bye Bye Kitty Cat.”) You can now download both releases as one, For Almost Ever Scooter, courtesy Scat Records. A final album, Canterbury Bells, was never released, but you can probably find it if you dig around the Internets a bit.

Above is an mp3 of one of my favorite Mice tracks off Scooter, “Little Rage” (which Fox has been known to play solo from time to time), along with an mp3 of “I Only Did it Cuz I Felt So Lonely,” a Mice-evoking song off Fox’s recently released limited-run Before I Went to Harvard cassette.

Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, Bill Fox, P. Blackk, Zero Star, Sundown and DJ Detox will play Friday, Feb. 3, at Ace of Cups. Note: That’s a lot of bands, so this will start earlier than most shows. Be sure to get there by 10pm to see Bill Fox.

P. Blackk drops a video for Chasin’ Dreams Off P. Blackk’s project Blackk Friday.Produced By Iyeball (of Fly.Union). Shot by P. Blackk. Live performance shots by Luke Sirimongkhon.

P. Blackk is confirmed to play Donewaiting’s 9-year Anniversary and needs to email me back confirming the set-time and what his needs for his deejay set-up are.

MP3: “Back To You”

Seattle’s Fly Moon Royalty brings textured doo-wop on this uptempo plead for one more chance. Fly Moon Royalty will release their new album, Fly Moon Royalty, a week from today, on February 6th via Sportn Life Records.

Live video of Piece of Me after the jump.

Click here to view the embedded video.

MP3: TOMORROW FEAT SHAWNNA + AJA

From a press release

Sean Rose stands in the forefront of the Las Vegas Hip Hop scene and continues his movement with his latest single, “Tomorrow.” The DJ Booth-premiered single features Aja and former DTP-member Shawnna from his upcoming album, Overdrive, releasing on February 10. The track is produced by Cam of J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League.

MP3: She Knows (Prod By FlashBeats)

From a press release

J.G.O. representative and Leimert Park native Jamaal releases the first single to his forthcoming mixtape entitled, ‘The Cool Table,’ dropping on February 28, 2012. The visual for “She Knows” drops next week. This track is produced by Flash Beats.

MP3: My Mysterious Death (Turn It Up)

The more your hear about the origin of Old Columbus bands, the more you realize how many of them formed accidentally, the result of spontaneity and serendipity. Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments was one such band. On a night about 20 years ago, soon after the dissolution of Ron House’s previous band, Great Plains, a band playing Stache’s ended early.

The story could have ended right there. Everyone at the bar could have just continued to get drunk and/or gone home. Instead, though, House and Girly Machine guitarist Bob Petric hopped on stage with some friends, borrowed the idle guitars and amps and started jamming on blues riffs. “We just kind of jumped up out of sheer boredom,” Petric said when I interviewed him last year. But something clicked, and they decided to do it again. And again. (Sound familiar?)

“It was kind of a fuck-off band for a couple of years where we just got together and jammed,” House said last summer. “The Columbus scene was really taking off—like the New Bomb Turks, Gaunt. So I didn’t have to do very much, just shout and scream and people would notice us locally. The whole scene was a more brutal, punkier scene. There was enough things going on that all we had to do was just go out and play and things would happen for us.”

That’s probably not giving the band quite enough credit, especially House’s lyrics and snotty delivery and Petric’s axe-wielding. But things did happen, like eventually signing to Onion, a subsidiary of Rick Rubin’s American Recordings, to release Bait & Switch.

“Johan Kugelberg was looking to sign bands for [Onion],” House said. “He asked three other bands and they all turned him down so he asked us.”

“The fact that Rick Rubin read my name on the liner notes — that, to me, is sufficient grounds for satisfaction,” Petric said. “When Johan put out the record, he was more of a little kid about it than we were. I remember Johan calling me up, saying, ‘Hey, Bob, the second time this week I walked into Rick’s office and he was laying on the couch listening to the Slave Apartments record, man.’ To me, that’s like having Johnny Cash make dinner for you or something.”

Petric also looked back fondly on the time TJSA spent on the road with Guided by Voices. “Being able to go on tour with GBV for three weeks, that was like vacation,” he said. “There was a positive but gentle-hearted competition between us and GBV. Bob [Pollard] was just effusively praiseful of the Slave Apartments. He really liked us. He said nice things about my guitar playing, too. I remember one time in Seattle, Bob got a kick out of the fact that Ron and me and Craig Dunson and Ted [Hattemer], we all huddled up and did this chant, ‘Beat GBV! Beat GBV!’ Bob Pollard came up and was just laughing his ass off, saying, “That’s why you guys rule!” He ended up singing ‘Cheater’s Heaven’ with us.”

A jam at Stache’s. A fertile scene. A big Swede with art-rock tastes running part of a major label. It’s an unlikely series of events, but one we’ll gladly celebrate this Friday at Ace of Cups, when TJSA plays Bait & Switch in its entirety —- something that’s never been done, and likely never will be done again.

See you there.

Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, Bill Fox, P. Blackk, Zero Star, Sundown and DJ Detox will play Friday, Feb. 3, at Ace of Cups. Note: That’s a lot of bands, so this will start earlier than most shows. Be sure to get there by 10pm to see Bill Fox.

MP3: $100

Justin Kinkel-Schuster of St. Louis, MO band Theodore got together with Oxford, Miss. multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bryant to play some songs and record. Eventually a new project, Phantom Limb, was born — although another band named Phantom Limb already exists so the pair changed their name to Water Liars and titled their debut Phantom Limb.

Album opener “$100″ kicks off with a big, sludgy guitar riff, then melds into a kind of rumpled folk-pop that fits in nicely alongside other artists who call Misra Records home, or have at one time: Centro-matic/South San Gabriel, Great Lake Swimmers, Phosphorescent, Southeast Engine. It’s also a good introduction to Kinkel-Schuster’s tenor, which the Riverfront Times once said was the best in St. Louis.

Phantom Limb is out Feb. 28 on Misra, which is now based in Dayton, Ohio.