Tag: Stax Museum of American Soul Music

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Music Record Reviews

Stax ’68 Compilation to Drop Soon: World Premiere of “Going Back to Memphis”

1968 was an epochal year for Memphis, for America, and for the world. Flip through the book 1968: Marching Through the Streets, by Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins, and you’ll see listed, for every month of the year, hot spots of protest and government clampdowns by the dozens across the globe. America was deep in the Vietnam War, and resistance was rising to a fever pitch. Like today, it must have been easy to imagine that civilization itself was coming apart at the seams.

For Memphis, and its music industry leader, Stax Records, these existential threats were compounded by local circumstances. Sanitation workers, arguably the lowest on the rungs of the South’s caste system, were on strike, protesting low pay and two of their cohort being crushed to death by obsolete equipment. Naturally, the untended garbage, like the city’s decadent rot of racial baggage, began to stink. Inside the Stax offices, they were still reeling from the double bombshells of late ’67: the loss of Otis Redding and many of the Bar-Kays in a horrific plane crash; and the label’s break with Atlantic Records, who claimed not only their star performers, Sam & Dave, but Stax’s entire back catalog.

2018 has been rife with memorials to that year, chiefly in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who’s  assassination came during his support of those striking workers. But this past February, Al Bell, Dr. Zandria Robinson, and Marco Pavé joined in a panel discussion of the year 1968 more generally, and how it compares to our present world. Of course, Dr. King figured heavily in the conversation, but so did Stax’s need to compensate for lost recordings and artists that year, and the way such a project resonated with Dr. King’s message of black entrepreneurial empowerment and independence.

It was all too clear, as Bell described it, that Stax had to fight for its life by immediately creating a whole new catalog. And half a century later, that catalog lives on.

Now, packaged together for the first time, comes a retrospective of all the rich and varied music Stax created as it shifted into overdrive that year. It was a singles-oriented label, of course, and that’s reflected here. Stax ’68: A Memphis Story (Craft Recordings) showcases  the A- and B-sides of every single released over those twelve pivotal months. While most of the tracks have been released digitally in either The Complete Stax/Volt Singles, 1959-1968 – Volume 1 or Stax Singles 4: Rarities & The Best Of The Rest, there is something powerful in hearing these tracks all in one place.

And for the true completist, there are even two tracks that have not appeared on any previous digital compilations: “Used to Be Love” by Lindell Hill and “Going Back To Memphis” by Billy Lee Riley.  The Memphis Flyer is honored to premiere the latter here today.

Stax ’68 Compilation to Drop Soon: World Premiere of ‘Going Back to Memphis’

Riley was one of Sun Records’ rockabilly stars in the previous decade, scoring hits like “Flyin’ Saucers Rock & Roll” and “Red Hot.” This track for Stax, however, is pounding blue-eyed soul, more like Tony Joe White with the Memphis Horns. And this is representative of what Stax was reaching for in 1968, as they sought to diversify. Earlier subsidiary labels like Volt and Hip were given new attention, and others, such as Enterprise, were created. Riley’s release on Hip marked his return after perhaps the longest and most fortuitous AWOL in music history. In 1962, Riley’s first session for the label fizzled out when the artist inexplicably disappeared. The rhythm section made the most of it anyway, and the B-side they cut that day, “Green Onions,” helped put Stax on the map.

Six years later, Riley was part of the Stax family’s wider reach, which also included an Arkansas boy who would later score hits with George Harrison and Eric Clapton: Bobby Whitlock. He had risen up through the garage and frat band scenes, and Stax was his ticket to wider recognition. The Memphis Nomads, aka the Poor Little Rich Kids, are another group to sprout from that scene. And then there were the white artists who were so immersed in classic soul that they brought there own convincing variations on it to the label, as with  Linda Lyndell, whose “What a Man” was later lifted by Salt n’ Pepa. 

Other diverse sounds are showcased here as well, including jazz, as in the Eddie Henderson Quintet’s transformation of “Georgy Girl,” or Isaac Hayes’ groovy “Precious Precious.” But ultimately, such diversity is overshadowed by the raw soul that was Stax’s specialty, and there’s plenty of that here. In retrospect, it’s stunning that a single year, begun in desperation, brought us Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” Sam and Dave’s “I Thank You,” Eddie Floyd’s “I’ve Never Found a Girl (To Love Me Like You Do),” Booker T. and the MGs’ “Soul Limbo,” or Johnny Taylor’s “Who’s Making Love.”

And, as with Stax Singles 4: Rarities & The Best Of The Rest, the B-sides offer up plenty of gems as well, from Otis Redding’s “Sweet Lorene,” a personal favorite, to the girl group sound of the Goodees’ “Condition Red.” And, this being 1968, the turmoil of the era’s topical issues is echoed in everything from William Bell’s Otis memorial, “Tribute to a King,” to the Staple Singers’ classic “Long March to D.C.” The political content is further raised by historically informed liner notes from Andria Lisle, Robert Gordon, and Steve Greenberg.

Parallel with this release, we in Memphis also reap the benefits of two exhibits that help us journey back to those troubled times. The Stax Museum of American Soul Music currently features The Sound of ’68, with photographs and mementos that document life inside Studio A at Stax Records as seen by Don Nix, an early member of the Stax family who later became a songwriter, producer, and solo artists for the label, and Alan Copeland, the drummer for the Poor Little Rich Kids.
Alan Copeland

Jim Stewart with members of the band Poor Little Rich Kids

And be sure to also see Give a Damn! Music + Activism at Stax Records, the foundation’s exhibit now installed at Crosstown Arts. It presents artifacts of the label’s increasingly political content, culminating in the desk and work space of Black Moses himself, Isaac Hayes.
Ronnie Booze

Isaac Hayes’ epic desk

Still, all activism aside, and returning to the music at hand, the chief topic echoing through Stax ’68: A Memphis Story continues to be love and it’s many permutations, from feel-good stompers like “Lovey Dovey,” by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, to William Bell’s classic “I Forgot to Be Your Lover.” For all the crises of 1968, Stax soldiered on with its trademark celebratory vibes. And that may be what still helps us the most through these dark days, fifty years on.

Note that pre-ordering the set, which is released on October 19, will give you access to several gratis tracks: “Long Walk to D.C.” by The Staple Singers, “Used to Be Love” by Lindell Hill, “Send Peace and Harmony Home” by Shirley Walton, and today’s premiere track, “Going Back to Memphis” by Billy Lee Riley, which will be available outside of the Flyer‘s site on October 12th.

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Music Music Blog

Jim Stewart Makes a Rare Appearance at Stax, With Special Donation in Hand

CREDIT: api photographers

api photographers

Estelle Axton & Jim Stewart

This Wednesday, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music will host a rare visit by the label’s original co-founder, who will present a rare piece of memorabilia to the museum, pay honor to alumni of the Stax Music Academy, and tell tales of the label’s early days. Jim Stewart, who lives in Memphis to this day, albeit with a low profile, is a spry 87, which perhaps accounts for his reticence with the media. I spoke with the museum’s executive director, Jeff Kollath, about the events scheduled for the evening and how Stewart views his legacy.

Memphis Flyer: It must be a big deal for Jim Stewart to return to Stax.

Jeff Kollath: Yeah, I think so. He’s attended Stax Music Academy concerts before, so he’s obviously incredibly supportive of what we’re doing. But I think the thing he’s most proud of, in terms of legacy, is what the Stax Music Academy does. I think he sees what those kids are doing as an extension of the type of things that he and his sister [Estelle Axton]  and [onetime executive vice president] Al Bell were trying to accomplish by giving young people in Memphis opportunities fifty-plus years ago. Obviously it’s in a formal educational setting now, as opposed to running a recording studio. But for us, the legacy he created with his sister and Mr. Bell, was one of espousing corporate social responsibility before anybody knew what corporate social responsibility was. And it’s totally true. In terms of enmeshing yourself in a community, being a part of that community, working with the community, supporting that community, and especially for two relative outsiders to come to South Memphis and do that 58 years ago, is pretty remarkable. Whenever he’s been around, that’s the part that always strikes me. When he sees the kids, it’s coming full circle.

It’s only gaining momentum as many years’ worth of students go on to play music.

Yeah, some of ’em aren’t kids anymore. Some of them are full-fledged adults. The Academy started before the museum did, back in 2000. Some of these kids are well into their thirties now. But I think music is just a means to an end. It’s part of the process. And I think the great youth development work that everyone at the Academy does, making informed, engaged, empathetic citizens, is just as much of a testament to Academy graduates as how great they are as musicians.

So they’ll be playing tomorrow night, too.

Yeah. The Stax Music Academy Alumni Band will be playing, and then John Paul Keith is going to play a couple songs from the early Satellite Records catalog, which he did for us during our 60th anniversary stuff last March. I think he’ll do “Blue Roses,” which is appropriate, because that’s the only song that Mr. Stewart has a songwriting credit for, and that was the very first single out on Satellite. I don’t know the other song he’s gonna do. He’ll do something else from the early, early days, from when Mr. Stewart used his wife’s uncle’s garage on the north side of Memphis. And then Krista Wroten is going to play a fiddle tune, since obviously Mr. Stewart got his start as a fiddle player. That was how his love of music really began, playing fiddle around West Tennessee, as Red Stewart and the Tennessee Cotton Pickers.

Jim Stewart Makes a Rare Appearance at Stax, With Special Donation in Hand

Will there be an open discussion?

Yeah, there’ll be some things at the start of the event, then we’ll do some talking, some music, and then Mr. Stewart and [onetime Soulsville Foundation President and former Stax employee] Deanie Parker will have a conversation. And then we’ll go into the rest of the music for the night. It’ll be a nice program. Hopefully some folks will hear some stories. It’ll be a good chance for former Stax employees and musicians to get together and see each other again. There’ll be a few folks floating around.

And he’ll also unveil the new bit of memorabilia that he’s donating to the museum?

Yes, we’ll do that at the start. That’s a surprise, we can’t tell you about that. But we’re pretty excited about it. We really wanna encourage folks to donate. If they’ve got it, share it with us and the world. We’ve been around 15 years, and we’ve got a lot of great stuff out, but we’ve got room for more. Jeff Dunn donated his dad [Duck Dunn’s] jacket that he’s carrying on the cover of [Booker T & the MGs album] McLemore Avenue. He donated that last summer when we did an event for the recent Duck Dunn book. We’re gonna put the McLemore Avenue jacket out on display this fall. 

McLemore Avenue, by Booker T & the MGs

An Evening to Remember, Wednesday, July 25th, 6-8 pm: a special celebration during which Satellite/Stax Records founder Jim Stewart will present the Stax Museum with a very special donation of memorabilia. Live music by the Stax Music Academy Alumni Band, John Paul Keith, and Krista Wroten. Free and open to the public. Doors open at 5:45 p.m.

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Music Music Features

The Soulsville Record Swap at Stax

CREDIT: Don Perry

This Saturday afternoon, Goner Records and the Stax Museum will host the Soulsville Record Swap, a giant swap meet featuring albums, 45s, music memorabilia, and everything in between. Goner Records has been hosting a record swap for the past three years, but co-owner Zac Ives said this is the first time that Stax has gotten in on the action.

“The new director over at Stax reached out about six months ago, and this is one of the things we discussed doing right away,” Ives said.

“We were both really excited to work together, and we have some other things planned for the future.”

Don Perry

Ives said that vendors are coming from as far as Seattle to sell records this Saturday and that all vendor spots have been filled. In addition to awesome music memorabilia from Memphis and beyond, the Soulsville Record Swap will feature food trucks from Central BBQ and Hot Mess Burritos. The Stax Museum will also be selling deeply discounted CDs, books, apparel, and more. Admission for the event is $5, unless you want to get in an hour before everyone else (10 a.m.), in which case the cost of admission is $10.

“All of our record swaps in the past have been great, and working with Stax is going to make this event our biggest one yet,” Ives said.

Because no Goner-related event is complete without a pre-party and an after-party, there will be both. The pre-party goes down on Friday at Memphis Made Brewery from 7 to 10 p.m., and the after party will be at the Goner Records store from 7 to 10 p.m. as well. Both parties will feature DJs that have yet to be announced.

If you’re a fan of Memphis music (you better be), there’s no better place to spend your Saturday afternoon.

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News The Fly-By

Memphis Slim Home Is Re-born As Music Collaboratory

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

For years, the historic home of blues artist Memphis Slim, just a block away from the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, could have inspired a blues song itself.

A fallen tree leaned onto the wide porch, damaging part of the roof of the crumbling structure. Vegetation had begun growing on the inside. But after years of planning and months of construction, the house reopened last month as the Memphis Slim Collaboratory, a low-cost music studio and workshop space developed through a partnership between Community LIFT, the University of Memphis, LeMoyne-Owen College, the Memphis Music Foundation, the Hyde Family Foundations, and ArtPlace America.

Slim, best known for the blues standard “Every Day I Have the Blues,” lived in the two-story home at 1130 College in Soulsville before moving to Chicago in 1939. The original structure had to be demolished because it was in such poor condition.

Bianca Phillips

Memphis Slim Collaboratory

“The intent was to renovate, but the contractors spent about $25,000 looking into how to do that before they realized it wouldn’t be possible,” said Charlie Santo, a city and regional planning associate professor at the University of Memphis.

But the original bricks from the chimney and wood from the house frame were salvaged and reused in the new two-story construction.

Downstairs is now home to a full recording studio, and upstairs, there’s a computer lab, where musicians can work on promotional materials or upload music online. Workshops will be hosted in the computer lab space. Although the collaboratory held a grand opening at the end of April, they’re still hooking up equipment inside, and it may not be open for recording sessions for a few more weeks.

The Memphis Slim Collaboratory will be membership-based, and it’s open to anyone. Eight hours of recording time will run about $60. Leni Stoeva of Community LIFT said they’re aiming to attract emerging musicians.

“It’s for anyone who is pursuing a music career. They don’t have to be established professionals. We’re really targeting young people who are serious about music. But we’re also open to older people who just decided to pick it up and want to fine-tune their craft,” Stoeva said.

Stoeva said they’re not trying to compete with other music studios in town but rather act as a resource for artists who may not be able to afford a recording session elsewhere.

“If you go to Ardent [Studios], you’re working with somebody who is seasoned and knows what they’re doing. Here, you’re getting a discount rate, but you’re going to be working with someone who is learning the industry,” Santo said.

It was Santo’s class, over several years, that developed the concept for the collaboratory as part of a broader Memphis Music Magnet Plan. In 2008, his city planning students began brainstorming ways that the city could use its musical heritage as a catalyst for economic development.

“It’s about using music and art to tell stories and activate spaces and reclaim vacant properties and connect people,” Santo said. “We’re trying to build on this neighborhood and its existing assets. This neighborhood played a crucial role in establishing Memphis’ cultural identity.”

The Memphis Slim home was donated for the collaboratory project by LeMoyne-Owen College. The construction was funded through grants from ArtPlace America and other philanthropic organizations.

Stoeva hopes the collaboratory and the overall Memphis Music Magnet Plan will help spur development around Soulsville.

“A lot of people come to Stax. They get off the tour bus, and there’s nothing else around except for residential,” Stoeva said. “Redeveloping this area will help small businesses and other music-related projects.”

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Music Music Features

Paul Rodgers’ The Royal Sessions Release Party

I have been a fan of Free and Bad Company since way back at Skateland. So when singer Paul Rodgers cut a record at Royal Studios and announced that he was dedicating his proceeds to music education in Memphis, I flipped my lid. Then I found out he was coming to town Saturday to sign copies of The Royal Sessions and perform at the Stax Museum. I don’t even know where my lid is anymore.

Rodgers’ solid voice sits comfortably in its range. He’s never resorted to the shrieking-banshee stuff that cost Robert Plant some cool points. Rodgers knows where his voice belongs. That makes for an interesting contrast when he approaches the work of Otis Redding, who really knew how to push his voice. Rodgers’ voice doesn’t really break. But it works.

When I heard about the charitable concept of the record, I had to wonder if Rodgers was having some kind Ikiru moment. His donation of procceds from The Royal Sessions is a wonderful gesture to the people whose music formed the basis of his success. It’s great to see a celebrity so mindful of where he came from, even if that place is a world away from Rodgers’ birthplace in Middlesbrough, England.

The Brits heard Southern, African-American music for what it was, and they made great art emulating the sounds of Memphis and the Mississippi Delta. The Stones, the Beatles, and Led Zeppelin form a hybrid rose grown from Memphis’ musical stem. With The Royal Sessions, Rodgers has lovingly acknowledged his musical roots.

Come to the Stax Museum on Saturday to support music education in Memphis. You’ll meet and hear a genuine superstar who can still do his thing.

Paul Rodgers’ CD Release Party for The Royal Sessions is at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music on Saturday, February 15th, 6-8 p.m. Admission is $10 or free with the purchase of The Royal Sessions CD.

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Music Music Features

Due Respect

Some people irrationally love Memphis. Others irrationally hate Memphis. The truth is that the whole thing is complicated. Memphis can make you cry tears of joy or sorrow with equal ease. It depends on where you’re looking. Stax is one of our holy places and a point of faith. It’s a source of pride, where we can point to people of different races working together. And they did. But the truth is complicated.

Robert Gordon’s new history of Stax Records, Respect Yourself, dives into that complicated story and revels in its complexity. Other books have outlined the story. Gordon fills in detail that brings Stax down from the mountain of ideas and into the human, Memphian realm. This is not idolatry. It’s history.

Inevitably cast in the light of race relations, the Stax story is also a tale of great women: Founder Estelle Axton’s story is moving.

“She just seemed to have a great attitude,” Gordon said in a recent interview. Axton was the Union Planters National Bank employee who, with her brother, not only opened a business in a poor, black neighborhood but also opened the doors of that business to the neighborhood. “Her welcoming spirit had so much to do with the whole label. Not to underplay Jim’s musicality or organizational abilities. Those are all essential. But she was the face out front and helped imbue that spirit into the label.”

Axton’s open-mindedness was essential to the label’s early success. But her fate at the label is one of the hardest parts of the book to read. It’s a great story about women in the workplace and about people living in Memphis. But it’s complicated.

Gordon and I recently drove south to New Park Cemetery in Horn Lake, where Rufus Thomas, Al Jackson Jr., and all but one of the Bar-Kays who died with Otis Redding are buried.

“The Bar-Kays: what a story,” Gordon said. “Their narrative very much shadows the Stax narrative. That was the second tragedy [after the loss of chart-topper Redding]. Their comeback has never stopped. It’s been ongoing. They’ve never stopped pushing to create. I try to give them their due in the book, because they have never stood still creatively.”

The loss of Redding and all but two of the Bar-Kays is well told. It’s primary-source history, but it never gets dry. The tale of an integrated label in the South finding huge success with an integrated talent roster is thrilling. The loss of Stax’s shining star and the kids he nurtured is still raw in the telling. And that’s where this book succeeds: in taking the names out of the museums and liner notes and giving them their full due.

“Have you ever seen that footage of them performing with Otis?” Gordon asked. “That is like 36 hours before the accident. You look at all of that energy onstage. You just think there’s no way it could ever be terminated. Can you imagine being at the label? Isaac Hayes, I remember him saying that he couldn’t create for a year. That he just shut down. I imagine that you would be stunned. The sense of promise. The sense of a new generation. And to have it ripped from your guts. So many of them were still teenagers. Matthew Kelly was 17. One of the preachers at the funeral said, ‘It’s a strange phenomenon. These guys are experiencing sunset at the morning of their lives.’ Oh my God. It’s so true.”

For Memphis history buffs, the business side of the story is essential reading. One central tenet of the Stax mythology is the financial mismanagement of the label. This is another place where complexity beggars the myth. There was arguably more mismanagement among the white bankers at Union Planters Bank who financed label operations than there was at Stax. The major labels were no help either. This part of the book really works and sets the book on your shelf beside Hampton Sides’ Hellhound on His Trail. The books complement one another. Gordon’s work on union leader T.O. Jones and the sanitation workers’ strike adds context to the Stax story. That context is missing from Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music, which was only partly about Stax.

Some of the grittier aspects of the Stax story gave Gordon pause. Johnny Baylor was Stax’s distribution man. His tactics were illegal on several fronts, but he broke open new markets one after the other whether it involved a handshake or a pistol. Baylor’s story makes for fascinating reading.

“I worried a little bit about that,” Gordon said. “The gangster thing is such an attractive idea now. But in the end, I had to think that’s what happened. I have to stick to what happened. At one point I remember thinking: Will the kids at Stax Academy want to be reading about Johnny Baylor? Maybe I should be writing a different book.

“But in this book, Johnny Baylor is part of what happened. A pretty brutal man. I think representative of a certain period of business. Especially in distribution … distribution of all things. Not just records. Who was Motown’s guy like that? I don’t know, but I know that there was one. So that part of the industry doesn’t get talked about so much.”

Respect Yourself succeeds by talking about the hard stuff. But that’s what makes the sweet stuff so meaningful.

Robert Gordon will read from and sign Respect Yourself at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music on Saturday, November 16th, beginning at 5 p.m.; at Burke’s Book Store on December 19th; and at the Booksellers at Laurelwood on December 20th. 

Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion

By Robert Gordon

Bloomsbury, 384 pp., $30

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Music Music Features

Local Beat: Takin’ It to the Streets

In celebration of 10 years of the Stax Music Academy, the Soulsville Foundation, which operates the music academy and the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, is bringing the culture back onto McLemore Avenue with the first Soulsville street festival, dubbed “Stax to the Max.“

The free outdoor festival will take place from noon to 10 p.m. on Saturday, April 16th, on the grounds surrounding the museum. There will also be free admission to the museum during regular hours, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

As part of the entertainment, ensembles from the Stax Music Academy and the Soulsville Charter School orchestra will be joined by the Rhodes College Jazz Band and an ensemble from the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. Local jazz/funk trio The City Champs will also perform, as will comedian Sinbad.

The headlining event, however, will be “Stories of a Real Soul Man: An Evening with David Porter & Friends,“ a program built around the venerable Stax songwriter and performer. Joining Porter will be current Soulsville president and Grammy-certified saxophone great Kirk Whalum, singer Wendy Moten, guitarist Gary Goin, J. Blackfoot (of the Soul Children), newcomer Jeremy O’Bryan, and others.

“Stories of a Real Soul Man” is a touring production created by Porter, which features storytelling, live music, and video.

Record Store Day

While Soulsville is having a street festival, the country will be having Record Store Day, a “holiday” of sorts designed to promote business at brick-and-mortar record stores. The local chapter of the Recording Academy is holding one of their Grammy GPS events Saturday in conjunction with Record Story Day. Dubbed Exploring the Resurgence of Vinyl, the event will be held at Ardent Studios from 2 to 6 p.m. and will be built around a panel discussion that will look at aspects of using vinyl — from recording to production to promotion and distribution. Panelists include Ardent owner John Fry, mastering engineers Larry Nix, Scott Hull, and Jeff Powell, and manufacturer Eric Astor. Admission to the event is $20, or free to Recording Academy members. For more information, contact the Memphis chapter of the Recording Academy at Memphis@grammy.com or 901-525-1340.

While the number of specialty releases flooding stores on Saturday is many (see thevinyldistrict.com/Memphis for a lengthy guide), Goner Records in Cooper-Young will have their own exclusive. San Francisco-based Goner artist Ty Segall is putting out a six-song, 12-inch EP of covers of British glam-rock band T.Rex, with a clear vinyl pressing available only at the Goner store. Goner will open at 11 a.m. for Record Store Day, with everything in the store 10 percent off and local bands The Limes and Manatees playing a free show in the adjacent alley from 2:30 to 5 p.m.

Meanwhile, over at Shangri-La Records on Madison, there will be live music on tap to celebrate Record Store Day, with Good Luck Dark Star and The Wuvbirds playing at 6 p.m.

Music notes: Congratulations are in order to the four finalists who emerged from last weekend’s Memphis Music Launch event, sponsored by the Memphis Music Foundation. Delta Collective, Butta MD, Go Judo, and Arvada made it through the pitch and performance process and will go on to develop projects for a showcase concert in July. … Some shows of note this week: With the local underground hip-hop scene having a bit of a rebirth, scene godfathers the Iron Mic Coalition are also having a resurgence. The group will celebrate its seventh anniversary on Saturday, April 16th, at the New Daisy Theater. Group members such as Jason Da Hater, Fathom 9, the Mighty Quinn and others are scheduled to perform. Tickets are $11. Doors open at 9 p.m. … The Peabody‘s annual Rooftop Party series kicks off Thursday, April 14th, with live music from Ingram Hill. … Snowglobe’s Tim Regan brings his Austin-based band Oh No, Oh My to town for a gig at the Hi-Tone Café on Sunday, April 17th. Doors open at 9 p.m. and admission is $8. Regan’s Snowglobe bandmate Jeff Hulett opens.