Austin Stories: Mean Jolene Wraps Up Second LP

A few years back, we here at ATH Records were fortunate enough to help Mean Jolene release Salty, their debut LP (you can listen to it after the jump!). The band went through some personnel changes, but have recently wrapped up their 2nd album. I reached out to Jolie Flink to see if she wanted to share her story about all the work that went into the 2nd album; she shares that story with us below. Read more

Austin Stories: Ish At Free Week

It’s been a hot minute since free week, that thing where bands play to help put money in tip jars for the venues during a typically very dead week in Austin that also serves as a test run for SxSW. We obviously have several friends involved in many aspects of Free Week. One friend of mine is Ismael Quintanilla III. He has shared his photos with us before, but he is also part of a pretty rad little music project called The Guacamole Police and Officer Hass. Unique perspective, shooting and playing Free Week, I poked the bear to get some response.

Read on for some of Ish’s great Free Week photos and some insight into putting in the work…

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Austin Stories: Sour Times by Jared Boulanger

Jared Boulanger has been a long-time friend of the site, and so it seems fitting we start off our 2019 with another Austin Story, this one from the leader of Sour Notes/Memory Keepers, wherein he talks about hardships and being grateful. And, if you’re interested in hearing Jared’s work live, he has two shows for our infamous Free Week: January 1st at Volstead and January 5th at Barracuda! Read on to hear Jared’s story. Read more

The Primitive Circuits Story: An Obituary of an Austin Synth Band

Austin has given birth to my love of music, and since that’s our home base, I wanted to repay that, so I asked a few folks to share their Austin stories with me. Today, I’m sharing a story from our city about Primitive Circuits, written by Andy R. Lemon (also of Teenage Cavegirl). After you hit the jump you’ll find the rest of his story, as well as a few unreleased tunes from the now defunct band!

An Obituary of an Austin Synth Band

Ever find yourself at a combination bowling alley/roller rink/arcade looking up from your pedal board through a Teen Wolf mask over to your best friend who’s dressed like a vampire and playing more synths than Beethoven in Bill & Ted to find yourself surrounded by huge neon robots poppin’ and lockin’ to your version of Sugar, Sugar by The Archies set to the drum sample from Tone Loc’s cover of Wild Thing by The Troggs, and wonder, how did I get here? Read more