Taxicab Racers’ Michael Roddy is ready to hit the road

Taxicab Racers’ MySpace page cites, among other influences, “sounds, lights, driving, epic nights, the fine art of falling apart, Thom Yorke.”

These influences are all apparent in founder Michael Roddy’s music—and quite a few others besides. In an interview with The Pulse, he also mentions the Cardigans’ lead singer Nina Persson, Matthew Good and Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew as vocal mentors, and New Order as a seminal electronic inspiration.  If you listen to the music samples provided on the page, you’ll hear a panoply of sounds, from the punked-out chords of “Clown,” to the swelling harmonics of “Time and Place.”

Though the idea of Taxicab Racers was born in 2004 in Roddy’s native Dalton, GA, he still considers it “more of a project than a band.”  Roddy didn’t listen to a lot of electronic music growing up, but he and a high-school pal began working on music together, Roddy on keyboards and vocals, his friend on guitars, using drum-workshop software such as Fruityloops and Propellerheads’ Reason. The band’s first show was in May 2004 in a Dalton deli for about 70 people. “For the first three years, we played to a loop when we played live,” Roddy says. “Fifty percent of the band was on a computer. I call it ‘ghost man on third.’”

The Canadian singer-songwriter mulls bittersweet changes

When preparing for this interview, I was at a loss. I did not know what kind of music I was stepping into. Basia Balut? Who is this and how do I even pronounce it? (FYI:  Bah-shuh.) When I dove into her new album Oh My Darling, I was immediately reminded of the NPR songbird, Joanna Newsom, crossed with Amy Millan and a closet full of random instruments. Her album features six pieces, which is a feat in itself, and is well orchestrated. The songs “Little Waltz” and “December” spoke to me the most, as they were heartbreaking, even to the heartless, yet had an undercurrent of hope. Her songs are the epitome of bittersweet. I had to find out where she was coming from, and my psychotic psychoanalysis of lyrics fueled my curiosity.

Singer-songwriter Tift Merritt is inspired by Another Country

Tift Merritt doesn’t like labels. Is her music country? Alt-country? Alt-country-rock-soul?

“I’m a singer-songwriter,” she says. “I make singer-songwriter records. There’s not really a place in the music world for people who just identify themselves that way.”

Merritt, who’s in town September 9 for a show at Rhythm & Brews, comes from Southern roots. Born in Houston, she moved to Raleigh, NC as a child. Her father, who listened to everything from Dylan to Dolly Parton, taught her to “pick out songs by ear.” From the beginning, she says, she was drawn to female singer-songwriters—Emmy Lou Harris, Joan Baez as well as Parton—and her idol was Joni Mitchell.

Time-traveling Eddies of the Wind winds up in Chattanooga

It’s 1910, and musical group Eddies of the Wind is traveling from Chicago. “We were being chased by Chicago mobsters who wanted to acquire the rights to our music,” says bandleader Jack Gray. “We possess a time-altering device known as The Bell Medallion. We randomly ended up here in Chattanooga—but we like it. We decided to travel to 2008 because we found that at no other time could an artist have so much control over their own product. We felt we could make a living in 2008 and then transport our wages to 1949 where the cost of living is still low.”

That’s how Gray explains the group’s retro look, and in fact, has created a whole mythology (or actual resume, if you want to believe) about the group’s journey. He refers to their sound as “a time capsule of modern music, featuring our own original compositions that lament the past, present and future of humankind.”