OCTA18 Festival

OCTA 18th Anniversary – Welcome!

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Me and my editor-in-chief Luna (both in the picture) would like to welcome you to our little online festival and celebrate the 18th anniversary of onechord.net. During this next week you will see lots of amazing unique performances from the artists that shaped the past 18 years of onechord.net. I’m forever grateful to all the artists that took the time to be a part of this event. It means the world to me to be able to share this celebration with artists that I love wholeheartedly. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The anniversary festival begins today at 7 p.m. (Finnish time, that’s noon on EST if I’m not mistaken) and then it’s on every day at the same time. Except Wednesday will be an off day. I think both the organizer and the audience might need a day to recharge batteries, plus I have some work to do set up the videos for the rest of the week. I would love it if you watched / shared / commented, because there will be lots of wonderful songs and lovely performances. I hope things go smoothly. At least, I hope hosting does not become an issue. I did buy an upgrade for this month to get rid of bandwith limits and so forth. If some problems rise, I try to tackle them on Monday.

And phew! 18 years. Where did all that time go. I sure never thought when I started that I would still be doing this 18 years later, but here I am and at least I have no immediate intention to stop. So who knows, maybe this gets to see 20th anniversary festival too. Of course trying to keep this thing alive is often a huge struggle with the dayjob taking away all energy etc, but thankfully this is also very rewarding and something that I love to do. These days this is sort of an enjoyable burden. If one day the word enjoyable vanishes from that previous sentence, then it’s time to call an end to this chapter of my life. But it’s definitely not today, today it is the time to celebrate the past, present and future of this little music blog. Thank you to everyone whom I’ve met or online met over the years. Thank you to all the artists that I’ve ever featured. Thank you to all the readers. You are the reason why this blog stayed alive throughout these years. I hope you all join in on this event and watch the beautiful videos that the songwriters and musicians have created. Love love love.

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Four Arms to Hold You, International music

Jason Hawk Harris, Erin Enderlin, Vincent Neil Emerson & Garrett T. Capps

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Most of my blog time for the next three weeks will be spent on the online anniversary festival, but first I want to quickly tell you that I absolutely love this new album from Los Angeles-based americana songwriter Jason Hawk Harris. The album Love & The Dark came out on the 23rd of August on Bloodshot Records and it’s one hell of a country record with a whole lot of rock’n’roll and heavy-hearted narrative. Super entertaining, but also able to drop your heart to the apartment below. One of my personal favorites of the year so far. Here’s a couple of great songs from the album. Listen to / buy the whole great record by hitting those links on the Bandcamp player.

Jason Hawk Harris Website

I’m embarrassed that I’ve missed this magnificent EP series from country singer-songwriter Erin Enderlin. I just stumbled upon this now when she is already in Chapter Three, but better late than never. All three chapters are full of wonderful real country music and captivating storytelling. Many of these songs are also available in form of an excellent music video. Here’s Tonight I Don’t Give a Damn from Chapter One and I Can Be Your Whiskey from Chapter Two.

Erin Enderlin Website

Continuing with tremendous classic country songwriting. Vincent Neil Emerson from Fort Worth, TX is a new find for me, but I’ve really loved all the singles I’ve heard from this forthcoming album album Fried Chicken and Evil Women, due out on the 13th of September on La Honda Records. Here’s a couple of those wonderful singles. A music video for Willie Nelson’ Wall and an acoustic live of 7 Come 11.

Vincent Neil Emerson Website

Let’s stay in Texas to wrap up this little blog entry with a song from the brand new Garrett T. Capps album All Right, All Night that just came out last friday on the 30th of August on Shotgun House Records. I’ve barely scratched the surface of this one at this point, but sure sounds like a damn good country album. Lately is on the weekly playlist at the moment, so let’s go with another great album cut Alone With You that features the wonderful Jamie Lin Wilson on vocals.

Garrett T. Capps Website

Four Arms to Hold You is an ongoing feature with a weird name. It might not contain a whole lot of words, but it does contain a whole lot of love towards the featured songs. Basicly this is just four albums / songs / artists that have done their part in holding me together and therefore I want to tell the world or the seven readers of this blog how much I love them. Not entirely sure do these kind of posts serve any kind of purpose and I do hope I manage to write longer posts too. Right now it just feels like the playlists and these kind of short posts are the only way to keep this dear hobby alive. Plus it’s really the music that matters, not my random ramblings and these posts will always contain magical music.

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Playlist

OCTA Weekly Playlist Episode #56

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Another week, another weekly playlist

Big thank you to everyone who either submitted or will submit a video to the anniversary festival. The official submission window is now closed, but of course all those that I’ve had direct contact with can and hopefully will submit before the event starts. If someone who would really love to be a part of this just sees this now, ask me and I might have time to include a few more. But no full surprise entries anymore, because in that case I might run out of time.

Some big album releases again this week. I spent the Saturday at Yola / Iron Country Sisters concert in Helsinki, so I haven’t done a whole lot of listening yet, but Joan Shelley, Jesse Malin, Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster, Garrett T. Capps, Humbird and Aaron Lee Tasjan are some of my own favorites. Other new albums on the list are from Whitney, Parsnip, Boy Scouts and Black Belt Eagle Scout. Lasers Lasers Birmingham album is a month old, but I just got into this one and I’m enjoying it a lot. Kele Goodwin album is even a year or two old, but it just got a new vinyl release on Oscarson, so it felt like a good time to include a song from it. I found it many months after the release back then, so I don’t think I ever featured this beauty here. Some great new EPs too this week. Lagniappe Sessions from Erin Rae and William Tylerplus a new one from Molly Taylor (thanks to Jodi James for bringing her music to my attention).

This week’s Finnish entries are an album cut from the new Samae Koskinen record and the brand new singles from Iron Country Sisters, Viitasen Piia, MeriTuuli, Litku Klemetti and Rock Siltanen (forgot this one a week ago, I’m ashamed).

The big release news of the week is that there’s a new Vetiver album on the horizon. Excellent first single is now out on Mama Bird Recording Co / Loose Music. Some other favorite singles came from Will Johnson, Ags Connolly, Caleb Caudle (cover of Hank Williams classic), Durand Jones & The Indications and Red River Dialect. Everything else would also be worth mentioning, but you’ll find them all from the list below.

That’s it for this week. I’ll start preparing the online festival, so the other blog stuff might suffer a bit. Day job and that will take most of time and sometimes it seems like sleeping is a pretty decent option too. I’ll try to squeeze in some other posts too, but there won’t be many. But there’s definitely something I should do. For example that Jason Hawk Harris album is so awesome that it deserves a whole lot of love. I don’t have clue will there be a new playlist next week, it depends how quickly I work on the festival thingy. Next weekend is pretty much dedicated to the festival and I’m trying to get everything drafted during that weekend. So that on the last week all I would have left would be to add the last few submissions that arrive close to the start.

OCTA Weekly Playlist Episode #56

1. Joan Shelley – The Sway (Like The River Loves The Sea, No Quarter Records, 2019)
3. Jesse Malin (feat Lucinda Williams) – Room 13 (Sunset Kids, Wicked Cool Records, 2019)
2. Garrett T. Capps – Lately (All Right, All Night, Shotgun House Records, 2019)
4. Humbird – April (Pharmakon, Green Thumb, 2019)
5. Vetiver – To Who Knows Where (single, Loose Music / Mama Bird Recording Co, 2019)
6. Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster – Cut Your Teeth (Take Heart, Take Care, Big Legal Mess, 2019)
7. Aaron Lee Tasjan – Strange Shadows (Karma for Cheap: Reincarnated, New West Records, 2019)
8. Iron Country Sisters – Bones (single, Soit Se Silti, 2019)
9. Erin Rae – You Must Ask the Heart (Lagniappe Sessions EP, 2019)
10. Molly Taylor – Don’t Leave Me Hanging Around (Summertime Blues EP, 2019)
11. Caleb Caudle – Howlin’ at the Moon (single, 2019)
12. Lasers Lasers Birmingham – Don’t Go Trying to Fix Me (Warning, 2019)
13. Ags Connolly – Wrong Again (You Lose a Life) (single, Finstock Music, 2019)
14. Will Johnson – Necessitarianism (single, Keeled Scales, 2019)
15. Kele Goodwin – Handrails (Moonbug, Oscarson, 2017/2019)
16. Red River Dialect – My Friend (single, Paradise of Bachelors, 2019)
17. Whitney – Friend of Mine (Forever Turned Around, Secretly Canadian, 2019)
18. Parsnip – Rip it Off (When the Tree Bears Fruit, Trouble in Mind, 2019)
19. Boy Scouts – Cut It (Free Comoany, Anti-, 2019)
20. Black Belt Eagle Scout – Scorpio Moon (At the Party With My Brown Friends, Saddle Creek, 2019)
21. Tiny Ruins – One Million Flowers -solo (single, Marathon Artists, 2019)
22. Viitasen Piia – Viimeinen valo josta puhutaan (single, Texicalli Records, 2019)
23. MeriTuuli – Metsään (single, 2019)
24. Samae Koskinen – Läpi routaisen maan (Maidstone, Johanna Kustannus, 2019)
25. Rock Siltanen – Uskon Huuhkajiin (single, 2019)
26. Litku Klemetti – Keijukaisvalssi (single, Luova Records, 2019)
27. Durand Jones & The Indications – Cruisin to the Park (single, Dead Oceans, 2019)
28. Monks Road Social – It It Was All Down to Me (single, Monks Road Records, 2019)
29. Paul Cauthen – Prayed For Rain (single, Lightning Rod Records, 2019)
30. Charley Crockett – 5 More Miles (single, Son of Davy, 2019)
31. The Lonesome Billies – Good Ol Complacency (single, Stay Lonesome Records, 2019)
32. Beams – Sweet Tea (single, 2019)
33. William Tyler – New World Symphony (Lagniappe Sessions EP, 2019)
34. SASAMI – Take Care (single, Domino Recording Co, 2019)
35. Jack Klatt – Looking For Love (single, Yep Roc, 2019)
36. Sunny War – Love Became Pain (Shell of a Girl, Hen House Studios, 2019)
37. Jason Tyler Burton – Fires of ’88 (single, 2019)
38. Paul & The Tall Trees – My God (I Remember ’98) (single, Big Crown Records, 2019)
39. Jason Hawk Harris – Phantom Limb (Love & The Dark, Bloodshot Records, 2019)
40. Erin Enderlin – Whatever Gets You Through the Night (Chapter Three: Whatever Gets You Through the Night EP, Blaster Records, 2019)

Playlist link

Oh and do buy the vinyl/cd/download. Spotify and other streaming services are perfect for these introductory purposes, but try to buy at least the music that matter the most to you

If you are looking this after a week has gone, the embedded Spotify will show the latest playlist. I’ll just update the same playlist because a) if someone wants to follow it, they can just follow that one list and will get a new set of songs each Sunday b) so that I don’t have a trillion of different playlists on my Spotify account.

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Four Arms to Hold You, International music

Frog, Eamon Fogarty, Fernando Viciconte & Wharfer

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Tonight’s round up story starts from Astoria, New York with the new Frog album Count Bateman that was co-released by Audio Antihero and Tape Wormies on the 16th of August. It’s a very delightful album full of beautiful lo-fi indie songs and mellow and soft americana. Blissfully strange yet somehow instantly catchy. Here’s RIP to the Empire State Flea Market from the album. Follow the links on the player to buy/hear the whole lovely record.

Frog Website

Traveling on to Santa Barbara California and adding some jazzy vibes and psychedelic moods into the mix. Eamon Fogarty’s new album Blue Values came out on the 26th of July on Jealous Butcher. I still need to take some deep listens with this one, because I feel like there’s layers that haven’t completely sunk in to my consciousness. Nevertheless, I already and absolutely love some of these songs. Utopia In Blue, God’s Guts and If the Spirit in particular are just remarkable. The record ends with an intriguing cover of Chris Bell’s classic I am the Cosmos, but Eamon Fogarty’s own songs are the ones that shine most brightly.

Eamon Fogarty Website

Next up Portland, Oregon and the new album Traitors Table from Fernando Viciconte that came out on Fluff and Gravy Records on the 21st of June. It was a collaboration with Luther Russell and it’s a very powerful and provocative album. The whole thing is great, but I’m especially fond of the latter half of the album. It may be fragile and somewhat stripped-down, but damn these songs still have fierce power. Here’s one of the singles called Hey Darlene. As usual follow the links on that bandcamp player to buy/hear the whole gorgeous album.

Fernando Viciconte Website

Small step into Seattle, Washington for the last entry of this small blog entry. I haven’t been very good at promoting the forthcoming Wharfer album Teeth that is due out on the 11th of October. I’ve only shared the two advance singles on the weekly playlist so far. The latest one Myrtle Beach is there right this minute, so let’s go with the first single Obsidian on this blog entry. Here’s some dark folk brilliance from Kyle Wall aka Wharfer.

Wharfer at Facebook

Four Arms to Hold You is an ongoing feature with a weird name. It might not contain a whole lot of words, but it does contain a whole lot of love towards the featured songs. Basicly this is just four albums / songs / artists that have done their part in holding me together and therefore I want to tell the world or the seven readers of this blog how much I love them. Not entirely sure do these kind of posts serve any kind of purpose and I do hope I manage to write longer posts too. Right now it just feels like the playlists and these kind of short posts are the only way to keep this dear hobby alive. Plus it’s really the music that matters, not my random ramblings and these posts will always contain magical music.

Continue Reading