One Chord to Another turns 12!

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Happy birthday to One Chord to Another. This little blog is now 12 years old. That’s almost as shocking to me as the fact that the Karate Kid actor is well over 50 and one of my all-time favourite albums, Frosting on the Beater by The Posies came out 20 years ago. Time sure flies and when looking back, 12 years doesn’t feel that long. However, I’m still somewhat proud of the fact that I’ve been able to keep this going on at some level through all these years. Of course onechord.net could have been a lot better, if I was a better writer or knew more about music or have had some confidence to push it further. Overall, I’m still quite happy with what I’ve done over the years. This is never going to be an influential music media, but it’s not supposed to be either. It’s just me writing about the music that I love and sharing the songs that I’ve formed relationship with. That’s the way it’s going to be also for the next 12 years (ok, 12 might be pushing it, but maybe at least three more to get to 15).

12 years isn’t a cause for a big celebration, so I thought I just do what I always do and mention albums that mean the world to me and create pointless lists. To get this even somehow loosely connected to the number 12, these are my 12 favourite releases of the year 2013 so far. There is some kind of order, but I didn’t spend hours thinking about it. The order of these might be totally different when December comes and it’s time to sum up the whole year. And I might have forgotten something extremely important and there’s a lot I haven’t even heard yet and obviously a lot hasn’t been even released yet like the new The Deep Dark Woods and the new Jeremy Squires. So this is more than just a little pointless list to do at this time of the year, but that’s why I buried it on this birthday post that nobody reads..

Top 8 International Albums

frontier1. Frontier Ruckus – Eternity Of Dimming
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
austinlucas2. Austin Lucas – Stay Reckless
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
HeavyBlinkersHealth3. The Heavy Blinkers – Health
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
isbellsouth4. Jason Isbell – Southeastern
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
smallhouses20135. Small Houses – Exactly Where You Wanted to Be
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
moreland6. John Moreland – In The Throes
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
bobbyemmettbrighter7. Bobby Emmett – Brighter Days (mono)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
marinedreams8. Marine Dreams – Corner of The Eye
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Top 3 Finnish albums

lieblingsi21. The Lieblings – Take Us To Your Leader
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
samae2. Samae Koskinen – Hyvä päivä
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
mattijasupin3. Matti Jasu & The Close Encounters – Pin On the Map
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Top 1 EP

jeremysquires1. Jeremy Squires – Central Nervous Station
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Small Houses & Ochre Room Finland Tour (+ Small Houses Euro Tour)

smallhouseseurotour1

These are exciting times for me, because one of my favourite singer-songwriters Jeremy Quentin aka Small Houses will soon tour in Finland (11.09-14.09) with excellent local group Ochre Room. These concerts in Finland are part of Small Houses first Euro tour that started today in Iceland. Scroll down to see all the tour dates.

Jeremy Quentin is a Philadelphia-based (originally Flint, Michigan) folk / alt-country singer-songwriter, who has three released albums under the moniker Small Houses. First one Our Dusking Sound (2010) might be only good, but the last two, North (2011) and Exactly Where You Wanted To Be (2013), are wonderful albums. If you’ve followed this blog during the recent years, you are well aware that I’m a great admirer of Jeremy Quentin as a singer and as a songwriter. He is able to create enchanting moments with his beautiful singing voice and gentle finger-style guitar playing. For me, it all started with the song Late July back in 2011. It was my first introduction to Small Houses and ended up being my favourite song of the year. The album North was full of delicate folk melodies and inspiring songs. Especially the songs Country Flowers, North and the aforementioned Late July are very dear to me and are always able to serve as a perfect antidote against stress and anxiety. You can listen to North at bandcamp and/or watch these videos, Late July and the official music video for North below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_hK2qyGlQc]

In early 2013, the third Small Houses album Exactly Where You Wanted To Be hit the stores and our hearts. It’s certainly one of the top 10 releases of 2013. Jeremy had become even stronger and more confident as a songwriter without losing that pure gentle honesty of his music. You can listen to Exactly Where you Wanted To Be at bandcamp or watch these videos, official video Oh, Hiding Out, I Saw Santa Fe from Halfway House Sessions and the official video for Our Sweet below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbHA_4mg3nU]

Jeremy Quentin is already making new music. This unreleased song Old Habits is stunning and a huge favourite of mine.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGAkkQy-d3c]

Further Studies:

classroomsession

I really like Lawrence High School Classroom Sessions. Several of my favourite artists like Chris Bathgate and Small Houses have done these where they discuss their art and play their music. Jeremy did this in early 2012. There are five youtube clips. This is a link to part 1: Sarah’s Song and conversation. You will easily find the rest from youtube.

alleyeson

On a more recent note, Jeremy Quentin just appeared on a documentary web series All Eyes On. This project by Mike Gallagher focus on one person each month. In august 2013 all eyes were on Jeremy. So good way to learn more about the person behind the music is to go to All Eyes On website (and scroll down a bit). There you can watch video interview & live sessions + listen to three podcasts.

All Eyes On Website

And let’s not forget that besides Small Houses, you’ll get to see a wonderful Finnish folk-rock / americana band Ochre Room. They released their amazing debut album last year and have been working on the follow-up during the spring and summer of 2013. I’m extremely excited to hear some of these new songs for the first time on this tour. Here are some great ones from the debut album Evening Coming In. Blue Ribbon, Don’t Try and video for My Summer.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/87674287″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]
 
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/87676561″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”100″ iframe=”true” /]
 
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_QZQEU37DM]

Oh and a big thank you for Ochre Room for organizing this tour. It doesn’t really get much better than this. I think I’ll have to go to either Rauma or Helsinki as well. Only Turku isn’t enough. By the way, The Turku concert at Pikku-Torre is also Flavour Of The Month’s 15 Year anniversary. That’s worth of an own blog post within a few days. Anyway here are all the Small Houses Euro tour dates with the Finnish ones highlighted:

SMALL HOUSES EURO TOUR:

04.09.13 – Cafe Rosenburg – Reykjavik, Iceland
05.09.13 – Ob.la.di Ob.la.da – Reykjavik, Iceland
06.09.13 – Ob.la.di Ob.la.da – Reykjavik, Iceland
07.09.13 – Cafe Haiti – Reykjavik, Iceland
11.09.13 – Klubi – Tampere, Finland
12.09.13 – Kahvila Soppi – Rauma, Finland
13.09.13 – 8raita – Turku, Finland
13.09.13 – Pikku-Torre – Turku, Finland
14.09.13 – Korjaamo – Helsinki, Finland

18.09.13 – Kampen Bistro – Oslo, Norway
19.09.13 – Landet – Hägersten, Sweden
20.09.13 – TBA – Lund, Sweden
21.09.12 – Norreport – Halmstad, Sweden
27.09.13 – KussKuss Küche – Berlin, Germany
28.09.13 – Børneteatret – Copenhagen, Denmark
29.09.13 – YouAreAwesome – Bremen, Germany
03.10.13 – The Jet Lounge – Amsterdam, Netherlands
04.10.13 – SWAN – Amsterdam, Netherlands
07.10.13 – The Windmill Brixton – London, England

And some important links:

Small Houses Website
Small Houses at Facebook
Ochre Room Website
Ochre Room at Facebook

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No more gravatars

A couple of minor changes. From now on, all comments will be held up to moderation and gravatars are off. This is because apparently blog commentator’s gravatar can cause legal trouble to the blogger. Yesterday I received a lovely settlement fee demand for 768,75€, because a certain stock photo agency claimed that there is an unauthorized image on my blog. As a proof they had printed the photo in question and an incredibly blurry screenshot which could be from on my site or not. It was impossible to tell for sure and there was no url present. The only two photos on the screenshot were gravatars of blog commentators. I couldn’t find the image/gravatar from my website and still don’t know has it been there at some point. The only possibility is probably some kind of spam comment that had gone through the filters and I had deleted it at some point later on. Even if it has been there, I really don’t understand how is it my responsibility if a blog commentator uses an unauthorized photo as his/her gravatar. Shouldn’t that be his/her problem or gravatar.com’s problem. I mean how on earth can a webmaster know if a commentator uses an unauthorized photo as gravatar. I obviously contacted the stock photo agency in question and we shall see how it goes. If there’s any common sense left in the world, I don’t need to pay them for an image I’ve never used or even seen before. Still this blog is a one man hobby and I don’t really want to fight these kind of battles and therefore gravatars are off. They don’t really add any value to the blog anyway.

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