“Welcome to Jaxxonville” Episode 9: James Tritten from Fortlowell Records

Hip-Hop artist, local resident of Wilmington NC, and Iron Maiden fanatic Fuzz Jaxx interviews yours truly on Episode 9 of Welcome to Jaxxonville. Watch now: https://youtu.be/StnR_V63xhU?si=zkAPGBu82pr2Rl0B

OUT NOW: This Water is Life, Vol. IV ft. Fuzz Jaxx & CoolOutSessions + Tercel

This Water is Life is a self-sustained and ongoing series of split EPs with two express purposes: to highlight new hip-hop / indie rock music from Southeastern North Carolina, as well as to provide a platform for Cape Fear River Watch and Coastal Plain Conservation Group to deliver up-to-date authoritative reports on the health of the Cape Fear River Basin for both human beings and wildlife.

Volume IV features Fuzz Jaxx & CoolOutSessions and Tercel, and is out now everywhere!

Hip-Hop: Fuzz Jaxx & CoolOutSessions

These two hip hop heads Fuzz Jaxx and CoolOutSessions are a force to be reckoned with. Hailing from Georgia (FJ) and North Carolina (COS) the love and knowledge they have for the music and culture is astonishing. Fuzz had bars beyond the average emcee and a stage presence to match. The smooth melodic tones that CoolOutSessions provides compliments Fuzz’s voice and lyrics. The two are creating a different sound that is slowly but surely grabbing ears. Also, the production is far beyond the watered down versions of what hip hop is today. Their sound is a definite throwback and tribute to J Dilla and Native Tongues vibes. 

Indie Rock: Tercel

Hailing from The Cape Fear region, the Tercel sound carries reverence for its homeland. The lyricism of Robin and Savannah Wood pull from the beliefs of climate activism, societal collapse, and the ennui of existence in the modern world. But Tercel is fun. Tercel is joyous. These are heavy words, lightly thrown. Wall-of-noise guitars in alternate tunings, the give-and-take singing between the vocalists, Chris Vinopal’s pedal steel in all its brightness, Taylor Salvetti’s driving drum beats to accent the changes: Tercel knows the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And in this, we are all smothered in the green glow of existence. Go outside. Enjoy the light.

LISTEN TO FULL EP | ORDER VINYL RECORD

In partnership with: - Cape Fear River Watch

- Coastal Plain Conservation Group This Water is Life is brought to you buy: - Dock Street Printing - Fortis Builders - Gravity Records - Persephone's Farm

- Satellite Bar & Lounge

CreativeMornings launches in Wilmington, first event happening Friday

[Repost from WWAY TV; by Matt Bennett, September 24, 2024]

WILMINGTON, NC — CreativeMornings, a global breakfast speaker series for the creative community, has officially arrived in Wilmington, bringing together artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, and other creative professionals.

Kerry Skiles, the host for the Wilmington chapter, says she used to attend events in Raleigh before relocating to southeastern NC.

“When I moved to Wilmington, there wasn’t a chapter here, so I applied to open one with a group of creative friends,” she said. “We wanted to provide something for the creative community to dig into on a monthly basis.”

CreativeMornings meetings are designed to foster a welcoming environment for everyone, regardless of their professional background.

“We think everyone is creative, and everyone is welcome,” Skiles said. Each event features speakers who share their experiences and projects, encouraging attendees to connect and collaborate.

The inaugural event is scheduled for Friday, with James Tritten from Fort Lowell Records set to be the featured speaker. Tritten, along with his wife, Tracy, operates a record label that focuses on indie rock and hip-hop artists. They are also working on a benefit record titled This Water is Life, aimed at supporting water safety in the region.

For those interested in attending, Skiles says all events are free, including attendance, coffee, breakfast, and ideas. “It’s a great collaboration and networking opportunity,” she said. The meetings typically start with socializing, followed by the speaker presentation, and wrap up by 10 a.m., allowing attendees to return to their daily routines.

The inaugural meeting will take place on Friday at 8:30 a.m. at Thalian Hall.

Click here for more information, and to register for the event: https://creativemornings.com/talks/james-tritten

Tercel live at The Cave in Chapel Hill NC

[Repost from Independent Review Crew; by Brian Slattery, February 18, 2024]

After a short break the Wilmington, N.C.-based band Tercel took the stage, interspersing amiable banter with heartfelt anthems that grew more epic as the set progressed. Their songs fit into the mold of melodic indie rock with more than a few rhythmic tricks up its sleeve. Anchored by hard-driving bass and drums, guitars and pedal steel swapped between big hooks and gritty textures, while the vocals soared over it all.

OUT NOW: Al Foul "Darker Shade of Blue" [Digital Single]

The second single "Darker Shade of Blue" from Al Foul's (1971-2022) final album Come Back a Dog — a combination of originals and covers that sketch a gritty-yet-compassionate portrait of raw Americana — is available now on all digital music platforms.  

For fans of Hasil Adkins, Bloodshot Bill, Johnny Burnette, Johnny Cash, Raymond Carver, Nick Cave, Eddie Cochran, The Cramps, Dave Dudley, Elvis, Charlie Feathers, Howe Gelb, Earl Green, PJ Harvey, Richard Hawley, Trini Lopez, Carl Perkins, Reverend Horton Heat, Dex Romweber, Nick Shoulders, Jon Spencer, Mark Sultan, Kip Tyler, Gene Vincent, Tom Waits, Link Wray.

LISTEN NOW | PRE-ORDER VINYL LP NOW

JPW - Raw Action On Route

[Repost from Doom & Gloom From the Tomb; by Tyler Wilcox, September 9, 2024]

A great writer/editor/podcaster/dude — Jason P. Woodbury is definitely all of those things. But he’s also slowly but surely building a beautiful sound world as JPW. This short-but-sweet EP is like JJ Cale and Cass McCombs going on a long desert road trip with no particular destination in mind. Lonesome drum machines, drift-y vocals, burnt guitar lines — the good shit, as we like to say. And hey, another great dude Chris Schlarb (Psychic Temple/Big Ego Records) shows up to lend his skills to a dank ‘n’ dubby remix of “The Road That Knows No Law.” My only complaint for this one is that it should go on for at least 10 more minutes.

OUT NOW: MindsOne & Drew Dave ft. DJ Iron "It's All Family" [Digital Single]

MindsOne has been offering their listeners innovative lyrics, heart pounding instrumentals, precise cuts, and intense live shows since 2002. Their music embodies the spirit of independent hip hop culture and pays homage to those boom bap masters and others who came before. MindsOne have consistently delivered powerful and inspirational music over the years, and have continued to perfect their sound with each project.

The first digital single "It's All Family" with Drew Dave, featuring DJ Iron, off MindsOne's new double album titled Stages (due out next year) is now available on all music platforms as of today.

LISTEN NOW | PRE-ORDER VINYL RECORD

James Tritten: Fort Lowell Records | Building Community Through Music

CreativeMornings is a free monthly breakfast lecture series designed for creative communities. In 2008, Tina Roth-Eisenberg founded the lecture series in Brooklyn, New York as an ongoing, accessible event for New York's creative community. The concept was simple: breakfast and a short talk one Friday morning a month. Every event would be free of charge and open to anyone.  Lecturers include professional creators, designers, photographers and illustrators. 

CreativeMornings now hosts events in 207 cities worldwide in 65 countries. Their events are run by approximately 1,500 volunteer organizers.  Kerry Skiles of Wilmington, North Carolina has taken the lead on hosting the local chapter for our Port City, and has invited yours truly — James Tritten — to be the first guest speaker for CreativeMornings Wilmington's inaugural event taking place on Friday, September 27th at Thalian Hall from 8:30-10:00am.

• Register for your free ticket here: https://creativemornings.com/talks/james-tritten
• Learn more about CreativeMornings here: https://creativemornings.com/pages/about 

About the speaker

Fort Lowell Records’ James Tritten has spent the better part of his life dedicated to two major efforts: creating and supporting good music and giving a damn about the people and places around him.

Working (and playing) his way from Jacksonville, FL, to Boston, MA, to Tucson, AZ, to Raleigh, NC, and finally, to Wilmington, James and his wife, Tracy, launched Fort Lowell Records in 2009 to promote and release music for artists they love – paying back the kind of support they received as young musicians. They also wanted to give back to their now-hometown of Wilmington, and do everything possible to help nurture its soil, and establish deep roots for a long lasting, music-filled future.

To that end, in 2020, Fort Lowell released a compilation album of Wilmington indie rock bands called “GROW,” as a way to raise money for New Hanover County’s chapter of the NAACP. And since then, the couple has started a vinyl series called “This Water is Life,” which not only highlights new hip hop and indie rock artists from the region, but also provides a platform for environmental organizations — like Cape Fear River Watch and the Coastal Plain Conservation Group — to help spread the word about GenX contamination in the Cape Fear River Basin and the fight for clean water.

Bringing together his love for music and a desire to strengthen his community, James and Fort Lowell Records are using creativity to not only shine a light on deserving hip hop and indie artists, but to also make a real difference for the health and well-being of Wilmington.

OUT NOW: JPW 'Raw Action On Route' [Digital EP]

Noted podcaster, liner notes author, and music writer Jason P. Woodbury, aka JPW, returns with another broadcast from the far side of the cosmos. The Raw Action On Route EP collects three recordings made circa JPW’s debut, Something Happening / Always Happening (Fort Lowell Records), which was hailed by MTV News (RIP) as “...a desert broadcast from the past where remnants of space-age pop mingle with an undeniably easy (and breezy) feeling you might've found out Topanga in 1972." Utilizing a sparkly red Partscaster gifted to him by his brother, a set of vintage drum machines, and plenty of reverb and echo, these selections present a darkly comic side of Woodbury’s songwriting: “I Miss That Song” tells the story of a doomed cosmonaut drifting through outer space with an Osmonds’ deep cut playing on a loop in their head, while the instrumental “Old Scratch” blends soundtrack score cues with dubby ambiance, a wheezing pump organ subbing in for reggae’s signature melodica. The EP closes with a remix of SH/AH’s “The Road That Knows No Law,” featuring woozy, Twin Peaks-worth synth textures from Chris Schlarb of Psychic Temple, who mixed these songs to tape at his Long Beach studio Big Ego. Drifting into spookiness but retaining a lo-fi friendliness, Raw Action On Route drops you back into JPW's orbit. Enjoy your spin. 

JPW Raw Action On Route is out now on all digital music platforms.

LISTEN NOW

PRE-ORDER NOW: MindsOne 'Stages' [Double LP]

MindsOne has been offering their listeners innovative lyrics, heart pounding instrumentals, precise cuts, and intense live shows since 2002. Their music embodies the spirit of independent hip hop culture and pays homage to those boom bap masters and others who came before. MindsOne have consistently delivered powerful and inspirational music over the years, and have continued to perfect their sound with each project.

MindsOne's new double-album titled Stages is due out in February 2025, and it is now available for you to pre-order to ensure you don't miss out. Reserve your copy today!

PRE-ORDER VINYL RECORD 

What is musical sainthood? One artist shares his perspective on music's connection to spirituality

[Repost from KJZZ 91.5FM Phoenix; by Lauren Gilger, August 14, 2024]

Who are your musical saints? Not just those artists you admire, but those you view in almost mystical terms.

For Jason P. Woodbury, it’s a long list. Woodbury is a local musician himself, as well as a music writer and podcaster for Aquarium Drunkard.

And, as many good (and bad) things begin, this conversation began on Twitter, or X, with a post from another musician about musical sainthood. It’s a concept that hits close to home for Woodbury — who told The Show he’s always viewed music through a spiritual lens.

He joined The Show to share some of his own musical saints and tell us what the idea means to him.

Full conversation

JASON P. WOODBURY: To start off, I will do the disclaimer, which is to say this in no way adheres to any single religion or dogma. I think canonization in the Catholic Church proper, let's say, you have to have a few requirements, right?

There's like overall virtue. There are, of course, martyrdom — should you die defending your belief or whatever — faith and charity, and then, of course, miracles. And so, to me, songs are miracles. So, all you have to do is have a good song to qualify as a musical saint in my personal canon.

But, at the same time, I think a lot about saints as somebody who has given something up or sacrificed something because they believe that their art has something important to say. So, I tend to think there's a slight trials and tribulations element to sainthood. So, so yeah.

LAUREN GILGER: Just like Joan of Arc, okay. 

WOODBURY: Just like Joan of Arc and the Smiths

GILGER: Right, right, and you say music has always been kind of spiritual to you. You grew up in this way, right?

WOODBURY: Yeah. I grew up in a very, very small church in rural Arizona — in Coolidge, Arizona — and, even before I hit puberty, I was like leading the song service for the church. My dad had done it and uncles, and, to me, music and sacred experience always go — have always gone hand-in-hand.

And the most interesting thing is that even as my own faith and perception of the Divine has changed over the years and become far less tied to one specific religion, that element of music as a sacred space has never gone away.

GILGER: Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about and hear some of your musical saints. Who did you come up with? This can't be an easy list to make.

WOODBURY: No, I mean, because there's so many people that I wanted to talk about. So, I just kind of went with some of my gut responses. And the first one is the late Sinéad O'Connor, who I think of as — she's, you know, I'm sure that somebody listening right now goes, yeah, not my saint, you know, because she's known, of course, for a very controversial moment in which she ripped up a picture of the pope on SNL.

But when you look at Sinéad's life, I think that she is, in so many ways, the prototypical seeker. She grew up in the Catholic Church, had a very violent and strong reaction against it related to abuse that she suffered at her mother's hand.

But Rastafarianism spoke to her. So she's dabbling in these, like reggae religions. And then, of course, I think she joined a break off sect of the Catholic Church, and when she passed away, she had converted a few years earlier to Islam.

So, I mean, so Sinéad sort of had like a journey, but when I look at her music — and I could pick dozens and dozens of songs from the catalog — I just think of someone who, in that Irish poet sense, just had to sing about the most enormous topics she could, the biggest mysteries.

The song I selected is called, "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got," which is the ultimate aim sometimes. This idea of being content. It's a real haunting vocal too.

GILGER: Yeah, let's listen.

[“I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” by Sinéad O'Connor]

GILGER: All right, so who's next on the list?

WOODBURY: All right, so next on the list, I think we're gonna go with the great Sun Ra. Sun Ra is one of the most fascinating characters in the history of music, hands down.

He claimed that he was not from the planet Earth. He was from Saturn, and he was in touch with galactic super beings, more or less, that imparted to him a message that he needed to share with humanity. And so, when the Sun Ra Orchestra — which is the name his group most often used — performed, they'd wear these huge robes, very ceremonial, right?

But, Sun Ra himself was sort of this figure who — really pivotal in the Afrofuturism movement. And he often sang of angels and demons. So there's that, in terms of the religious thing, and he just tended to speak in this sort of nomic riddling kind of fashion. And I think it speaks to a sort of a saint — or maybe we're moving more into the prophet realm here.

But it's like, these people, they don't always make sense in their time, but then many, many years later, you realize just how incredible what they were doing was. And so, I selected one of the more serene Sun Ra songs, and it's called "The All of Everything."

["The All of Everything” by Sun Ra]

GILGER: All right. Next, you have on the list Judee Sill, right?

WOODBURY: Yeah. Judee was this sort of Christian mystic songwriter. She put out two records in the 70s, and this song, "Lopin' Along Thru the Cosmos," is from her self-titled 1971 debut.

["Lopin' Along Thru the Cosmos” by Judee Sill]

And Judee grew up singing Baptist hymns, so she had this like sacred quality. But, by the time she gets to making her own music, she had lived years — sometimes in really, really dire circumstances. Drugs, sex work.

She's a perfect example of a saint who is far from saintly on paper, but when you listen to her songs, I think she just understood some sort of William Blake-style marriage of heaven and hell. Like pain and pleasure, high and low, transcendence and damnation. For her, they're all in the mix, and they're always happening.

There's just a lyric in this that, were I to come up with my own religion, I would keep this as like one of the main commandments. The lyric is, "so keep on moving / or stay by my side, either way / I'll tell you a secret / I've never revealed / however we are is okay."

["Lopin' Along Thru the Cosmos” by Judee Sill continues]

GILGER: All right. Next up, we have — at least one name I had heard of — John Coltrane, but you've got John and Alice Coltrane here.

WOODBURY: Yeah, that's right. And, in fact, the song I selected is just Alice. But, John Coltrane, of course, a jazz legend. Absolute innovator of the form, and one of the all-time greats. John and his wife, Alice Coltrane, made a lot of great music together.

After he passed away, she continued making great records, and her music became even more overtly focused on sort of spiritual forms. This was the 1960s as all sorts of Eastern esotericism was starting to kind of make its way into the US counterculture.

This song, "Journey in Satchidananda" is a song that she wrote about her guru. She's playing harp, and there's tambura, and it's this like just really evocative soundscape that I think it's kind of impossible to listen to it and not fall into some sort of a trance.

["Journey in Satchidananda" by Alice Coltrane]

GILGER: So, let's talk, lastly, about about a song I think everybody knows — and an artist we definitely all know. Madonna's last on your list.

WOODBURY: Yeah. Yeah, "Ray of Light" from 1998. This is a song that I remember being pretty young when it came out — you know, junior high or whatever. But I remember hearing it, absolutely loving it, and being just so taken by it, but also being really nervous to tell all my friends that I like the Madonna song

GILGER: I have the CD. I listen to this every day. Yeah. 

WOODBURY: Oh my gosh, I mean, I think this is her best work, to be honest.

["Ray of Light" by Madonna]

WOODBURY: And this is an interesting song, because it's from an era where she was dabbling extensively in like Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah. And I think when I listen to — particularly the song "Ray of Light" — it just actually sounds like a ray of light. It sounds like a transmission of divine solar energy or something. It is so repulsive and so — it's so immense.

["Ray of Light" by Madonna continues]

I mean, the lyric, "she's got herself a universe completely." It's like, it's kind of a reminder that we tend to think of the cosmos purely from an out — you know, the cosmos are out there. But, I think when I listen to a song like this, it reminds me that the cosmos are kind of in here as well, and I think that that's really what the song speaks to. And of course, the beat is pretty undeniable.

GILGER: Yeah, it's pretty good. All right, we'll end it on that one. Jason P. Woodbury, musician and music writer, host of the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions podcast and creative director of the Wastoids Podcast Network, joining us to talk more about his musical saints. Jason, thank you so much as always for coming on. I really appreciate it.

WOODBURY: Oh, it's always a blast. Lauren, thank you so much for having me. And I look forward to hearing what musical saints this conversation inspires people to bring up. Thanks so much.