The Dirt-Music blog from Frank Migliorelli and The Dirt Nappers

This summer we started working on a follow-up to City Eastern Serenade, with the intention of getting it out sometime in the fall of '16. During the recording of the record, I thought I would put up a few shots of what goes on during the various sessions. This footage is from a tracking session with Tony Tino and Phil Cimino, two great players who have done a bunch of live gigs with me. Tony played on a number of tracks on the last album, and we thought recording the two of them together for a number of tunes would be fun. City Eastern Serenade took over a year to make, with various stops and starts, but this album is going to be a bit more spontaneous, and more "live" sounding- We tracked through six tunes over the course of the day. Many of you may have seen the end of the day bourbon shot on Facebook. Here are three clips from the session- I don't really know how to write a proper chart. I just kind of lay out the tune and these guys figure it out.  I would...

So last month I quit my gig at the NYPL- sometimes you just have to make some changes, but all that aside, it was a great excuse to head to the Ginger Man with my amazing staff and quaff a final beer together. At the bar they laid a serious bottle of Mexican cactus juice on me, and an official going away card built by Kang, one of my developers- Kang had been running some workshops with the staff on how to make pop-up stuff, and this is by far in my humble opinion, his greatest creation to date. Thanks dude! Adios.....y gracias.

So as you may or may not know, I have a strong connection to public libraries these days, and this came across my desk the other day.... Check out this project “Volume” by the Denver Public Library- https://volumedenver.org/ The library invites local musicians to submit their recordings/albums to a curated website that is sponsored by the institution, providing an accessible, excellent, locally driven collection of music. Indie music is more regional again, and having a local library step up and create a channel for independent music is actually pretty cool. I’m not sure what the response has been, but from the site it looks like there is some really good activity. I love the fact that they don't censor, present a range of music, and have a solid selection process. Presenting under-served, less popular types of music in this arena has some great potential- especially since a huge part of the library experience involves browsing- Imagine a parent who wants to find some kids mu...

OK- Here goes- Not sure how many of you actually read this, but I’ve been doing this the past few years, and I hope you dig it….kind of a top 10 list, but it is pretty hard to keep it to 10, so we spill over a bit...and I usually don't point out things I didn't like, but there's a few notes of disappointment here.....but here it is, my look back at '15. Comebacks that worked- Sleater/Kinney and Blur! Comeback we didn’t need- Electric Light Orchestra Best free album of the year- Star Wars- the album from Wilco …not the movie soundtrack. A really great album. This year I leaned a bit more to the country side more than the rock n’ roll side, and by far, the two albums that got the most play through my earbuds were “Something More Than Free” by Jason Isbell and Second Hand Heart by Dwight Yoakam. Isbell’s album is just one great crafted song after another- the kind of stuff that stops you in your tracks and say “damn, what did he just say?” - and Yoakum sounds like ...