(Another one from George Jetson — jb)
TL;DR — this album is great, buy it here
or, fight the amazons by going here
For the longer recommendation, read on:
Everything starts somewhere, but many times I forget where, and it doesn’t matter, not even to me. But in the beginning that I recall, I heard a self-titled album from 2011 by Middle Brother, which was called, for you non-careful readers “Middle Brother”.
Apparently, Middle Brother (the group) is (or was) a supergroup, made up of John McCauley, Taylor Goldsmith, and Matt Vasquez — the singer / songwriters / leaders / frontmen from three hugely popular groups — Deer Tick, Dawes, and Delta Spirit, respectively. Oh, you’ve never heard of them? Well, me neither, perhaps they’re not that popular (or super), but I’m getting to know them, and maybe you’d like to, too.
If a person likes Middle Brother, it is natural to check out the “source groups”, and so I have. The best song on Middle Brother (the album) in my view is “Million Dollar Bill” which is a Dawes song, but the group which has won my highly coveted favor is Deer Tick.
I don’t know anything about Deer Tick except what I read on Wikipedia, so you can read all that for yourself if you want. I’m not gonna say I’ve been a fan from the beginning when I’ve been a fan for 3 weeks. I will say that I rarely like an album upon first listen or even 20th listen, and the album that has caught me up is “Deer Tick, Vol 1” which you can find at the links above.
I’ve listened to all the previous Deer Tick albums, and I don’t know what artistic growth or path has led Deer Tick to create the catchy, easygoing tunes on Vol 1, but I don’t really care to investigate. At the moment, I am really just happy to enjoy it before I analyze it too much, figure out who else it sounds like, any of that usual stuff. It simply popped out fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus for me along to enjoy, as far as I know.
Interestingly, “Deer Tick, Vol 1” has a companion album, descriptively titled “Deer Tick, Vol 2”, and the two of them were released simultaneously to show different sides or sounds of the same band. Vol 1 is the acoustic album, where Vol 2 is the rocker. Vol 2 has not yet endeared itself to me, but I don’t care in the least, because Vol 1 is all I want to hear at the moment.
So, let me know if you already like any of the groups or albums mentioned above, or if you give it a try and it works out. Or suggest something else.
Dawes is good. “From a Window Seat” was a go to on my semi monthly commute from Colorado to North Dakota. Definitely in my top ten “Songs About Flying Commercial”. Will have to check out Deer Tick.
Back before we were fed music from the streaming firehose, I discovered a lot of great music by poring over the credits on records I liked and buying those of musicians who stood out to me and had produced their own work. A lot of them could be found in the cutout bin, fortunately for me not so much for them.
I saw Deer Tick open for Trampled by Turtles (a great band BTW) a couple of years ago in San Diego. It was a fine show from both bands.
I listened to a couple of cuts from “Vol 1”. Not my cup of tea, really. But as challenged, this is a band I saw in my local bar when I lived in Myrtle Beach in 1989 or so and bought their CD “Crazy Days”. The band is Let’s Get Mikey, and the song is “These Days”
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=x8FDrkZQWZk&list=RDAMVMx8FDrkZQWZk