…for String Cheese Incident’s last scheduled show at Red Rocks two Sundays from now.

You could say that I’m excited.

I recently acquired the lil’ blue beauty you see pictured above as a direct result of totaling my old car on the way to Summer Camp a month ago.  The accident seems to be a mixed blessing.  One of the unexpected pros of the situation was learning to drive a stick.  A more pertinent “benefit” would be the truck’s stereo setup, or lack thereof.  Specifically, I am now cruising around with a Clarion cassette tape deck with no visible screen.  I may not be able to bump like I used to, but I am now faced with the forced opportunity to fall back in love with cassette tapes, whose usefulness to me was rather limited before the age of 10, when we got a CD player in our house.  But, a decade and a trip to the used record store later, I am the proud owner of three gently used classic cassettes:

That’s right.  The best of The Allman Brothers, Boston’s self-titled, and the Best of Grand Funk.  Classics, indeed.

At this point, I would like to ask anyone reading this who has some jammin’ Phish or Dead tapes to share if they would be willing to send ‘em over for some good ol’ fashioned blanks & postage.  Shoot me an email at kanejamison@burningoak.com, I’d greatly appreciate it, since I have a few upcoming road trips and the local shop has zero Grateful Dead or Phish tapes for sale.

Additionally, any classic albums I should be considering for road trips?  My next trip to the record shack will likely involve the purchase of some Little Feat, Rolling Stones, and taking a hint from a favorite character of mine, some Creedence.  This may be the start of a new obsession…

Update:  It should also be noted that I will only be accepting cassette submissions from bands and promoters from this point forth.  CD’s will be passed among friends or delegated as coasters.

About a month ago I had a chance to talk to Keller Williams via phone about his new album, this summer’s tour, his new bandmates, Bob Weir, the future, and everything in between. I believe he was walking around in the woods at the time as you’ll see in his first response. Throughout I’ve thrown in some pictures from his recent Urbana show at The Canopy Club on 04/25/2007. Check it out:

Kane Jamison: You’ve always been solo, other than some Keller Williams Incident shows, Keller and the Keels, the new album, Dream, and now the WMD’S tour. I was wondering what sparked the transition towards working with the full band more often.

Keller Williams: Well first and foremost it is definitely not a tour, we are just doing…. Whoa! There’s a snake… hello!… Uhhh… oh my god that’s a big snake right there, hang on just a second….

Ok… I’m just going to walk over here… Let’s see, we are just doing four festivals, four weekends in a row, that’s what we have right now. There is a possibility that one day there will be a tour, but as of right now we are just kind of playing it slow and playing it easy. I’m definitely excited about these festivals though. It’s kind of… I’ve always wanted to do the band projects, and a long long time ago there wasn’t really anything in the budget for it, you know? I just wasn’t able to afford it, the money wasn’t there, and it just wasn’t feasible to do it, and then all of a sudden, it just started to work as a solo act. And now I can afford it, and I’m really excited about it. It’s not going to be anything different, it’s not going to be a new sound, I’m not venturing out to look for something completely new, it’s going to be a lot of the similar songs, and it’s just going to be new life breathed into those familiar songs. It’s still going to be me, people are still going to see a Keller Williams show, it’s just going to have that new life breathed into it.

Kane: Alright, you said you were excited about the upcoming festivals. I personally am a Summer Camp fan being from Central Illinois. You’ve been a staple there in recent years, why that particular festival?

Keller: Simply because I get invited. There’s so many festivals that want to change it up so much and have acts every now and then, but I think it’s really great to be able to play a festival and go back there every year and see how it progresses and see the same folks. You know, it’s them that invite me, and I’m really grateful that they do.

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Heads up for some new videos at NotMTV.tv.  Highlights from Summer Camp 2005 include Keller Williams, Oteil and the Peacemakers, Groovatron, Umphrey’s McGee, Hot Buttered Rum String Band, RAQ, moe., Michael Franti and Spearhead, and Particle.  Click on the picture to head straight there.

I just caught wind of an amusing application via False45th called the Last.fm Mainstream-O-Meter. If you have a Last.fm account you can just pop in your username and it will compare your listening habits to anyone else who has listened to that artist, and then spit out your “mainstreamness.” You can check out my results here, anyone got me beat?

Sidenote, I think I’d prefer they named it “mainstreaminess,” taking a page out of Colbert’s book.