Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Monsterboy scares up a video for NPR competitio­n

- JACK W. HILL

Monsterboy, the North Little Rock husband/wife musical duo, has made a video to submit to the NPR Tiny Desk Concert Competitio­n.

“The music video inspiratio­n came from the caveat that the submission had to include a desk of some sort,” writes Veronica Wirges. “As we do not own a desk, we got creative in how to include one to qualify. We started playing with replacing cut out spaces in an image with a video we filmed in our living room. One thing led to another and that’s how we got zombies!

“Here’s the video. I promise it sounds and looks better than my descriptio­n… The song is yet to be released.” Tinydeskco­ntest.npr.org/2020/browse/?id=2950333

The duo is currently streaming on Facebook, Instagram and Twitch. For more informatio­n, visit monsterboy­lives.com/livestream.html.

★★★

Amy Garland and Nick Devlin will perform live and it will be livestream­ed from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Friday at The Bella Vita Shop, Sixth and Main streets, in Little Rock.

The event is part of the 2nd Friday Art Night in May, and the event will be livestream­ed to both Face-bookLive and Instagram.

★★★

Rachael Fields and Larry Brick, who live in Northwest Arkansas and front the Brick/Fields Band, won a pair of awards recently for the song, “Soul of a Woman,” at the 18th Independen­t Music Awards in New York City. See independen­tmusicawar­ds.com/the-18th-independen­tmusic-awards-winners/#song.

★★★

Chris Smither, a singer-songwriter whose March 20 concert at the Ron Robinson Theatre in Little Rock was canceled, is taking requests for a 7 p.m. Room May Home 17 concert. Sessions The are hosted Parlor by his label, Signature Sounds. Fans can let Smither know what songs they would like to hear by posting to his social media pages: facebook.com/ChrisSmith­erMusic/, twitter.com/@chrissmith­er_ and Instagram.com/chrissmith­ermusic/. In addition, Smither’s onehour broadcast from his home on

March 22 can be seen at vimeo.com/402049170.

★★★

Country singer Luke Combs has released a new song, “Six Feet Apart,” which was originally part of a livestream­ed concert in April. Fans can watch via Combs’ Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages. Combs’ latest live at-home weekly concert on May 1 was a fundraiser for out-of-work bartenders. Find the

video and others at facebook.com/watch/LukeCombs/.

★★★

Drive-By Truckers have released a new song, “Quarantine Together,” created during the current isolation time.

“I wrote ‘Quarantine Together’ during our first week in isolation and sent my basic track (recorded in my Heathen Attic) to the gang,” writes Patterson Hood, singer-songwriter and guitarist in the band. “Everyone then put their own parts on it, and David Barbee mixed it.”

Hood and Mike Cooley, the band’s other singer-songwriter and guitarist, will be doing a livestream­ed show at 7 p.m. Friday, via noonchorus.com. The band has also shared a YouTube video featuring

each member of the band performing the song in their own homes. The song is available for listening or buying on Bandcamp. Watch the video here: youtube.com/watch?v=j0D-UghxJU8.

★★★

Michael Bluestein, keyboardis­t in the rock band Foreigner, has created a new video for a song he co-wrote, “Why Corona?” The song is described by his publicist as “a humorous take on his time in quarantine while in the studio.” Check out the video: youtube.com/watch?v=ljYn_eHqcIw.

★★★

The Associatio­n for Cultural

Equity/Alan Lomax Archives has made available 17,000 plus musical performanc­es for free streaming at research.culturaleq­uity.org. Much of the site is devoted to footage shot in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the American South, some

collected by Alan Lomax and/ or his father, John Lomax, in the 1930s.

There are dances, parades and so forth from New Orleans, Cajun country, Appalachia, the Mississipp­i Delta and hill country, Johns Island, S.C., and the Greenville (Miss.) levee.

As publicist Howard Wuelfing writes, “At a time when there was a strict divide between high and low in American culture, and Afro-American and hillbilly music were especially scorned, Lomax argued that such vernacular styles were America’s greatest contributi­on to music.”

★★★

Steven Curtis Chapman has partnered with Brad Paisley,

Tasha Cobbs Leonard and Lauren Alaina on a new song, “Together (We’ll Get Through This).” Chapman has a concert scheduled for the ArcBest Corporatio­n Performing Arts Center in Fort Smith on Aug. 27. Watch the lyric video here: youtube.com/watch?v=N-U7X2DR2C4.

★★★

The Okee Dokee Brothers, a bluegrass and roots children’s music duo from Minneapoli­s, have released a two-CD album, Songs for Singin’ — call and response tunes, sea shanties, church hymns, campfire songs and protest songs. For more informatio­n, see okeedokee.org

★★★

Opera, ballet and classical music fans are invited to browse the site, Musical America Worldwide, which is providing a free guide to free streams at musicalame­rica. com. Click on “Guide to Free Streams.” If you have are a musician, singer or promoter and would like to see your shows listed here, please email jackwayneh­ill@gmail.com, or jmcleod@adgnewsroo­m.com.

 ?? (Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Brian Chilson) ?? Husand and wife duo Chris Long and Veronica Wirges, who perform as Monsterboy, are finding solace in their weekly livestream­s as the covid-19 pandemic rages on. The couple have entered a video into the NPR Tiny Desk Concert Competitio­n.
(Special to the Democrat-Gazette/Brian Chilson) Husand and wife duo Chris Long and Veronica Wirges, who perform as Monsterboy, are finding solace in their weekly livestream­s as the covid-19 pandemic rages on. The couple have entered a video into the NPR Tiny Desk Concert Competitio­n.

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