Crown Royal recently released its premium whiskey in a limited edition black bag designed by Big Boi as part of its The Crown Life campaign. To celebrate the release, they threw an invite-only party at Atlanta’s Door 44, where Big Boi was on hand for interviews and an impromptu live performance with local hip-hoppers Pill, Killer Mike and others.

Here’s what Big Boi had to say about his Crown Royal collaboration.

First of all, thanks for all the food and drinks.

Anytime, man. You know, I try to be hospitable.

You’ve been very good about giving back to the local community, from your collaboration with the Atlanta Ballet a few years ago to the multimedia street festival you did last Winter with gloATL. How would you say this Crown Royal Black project is giving back to the community?

Basically, it’s a great branding opportunity. What I dig most about it is the creative input I had on designing the bag. The bag’s been the same for over a century, so for them to let me come in and promote something and help market something in a way that I can have my hands on it, not just drinking it, but by giving it a new look, that was a fun challenge to me.

I give back to the community my own way, through my Big Kidz Foundation and things like that. It ain’t like the liquor’s going hand-in-hand with the Foundation, it’s just part of what I do.

You also did a video to promote the Crown Royal Black project. What’s the video about?

I shot a little ten minute documentary about my life and it just really kind of documented a couple of days of me going around, performing in L.A., then we came back to Atlanta and followed me throughout the day. We’re just giving people a personal insight into me and my life. The Crown Life experience is about those crowning moments in life, those special moments you just want to remember. You might want to kick back and celebrate your kid’s graduation or you might have gotten a promotion at your job, or anything, you know what I’m saying? Those special moments in life that you want to celebrate. It might be the last day of school for you, if you’re a college student or whatever. The whole thing is it’s those moments that are special to you.

When it comes to actually drinking Crown Royal Black, how do you prefer it? What do you like to mix it with?

Apple juice. I call it the “Kinfolk” because it takes the edge off a little bit. It makes it a little smoother and the ladies like it.

And that’s always important.

Fo sho.

What do you garnish the Kinfolk with?

I might put a little piece of pineapple in there, or some tangerine. Just a little something something. Not too much. It don’t need much, you know what I’m saying?

Do you plan on working with Crown Royal on any additional projects in the future?

There’s some talks going on in the back rooms, you know what I’m saying? The launch has been going really good so far. We just did Orlando. We had an event in Houston that went really nice. Then we had Chicago, Detroit and another upcoming event in Atlanta. So we’re moving right along, bringing awareness to let everybody know this is out there, it’s The Crown Life and it’s summertime, so just sit back and relax.

Crown Royal Black is not a limited edition item, but the bag you designed is. How long will it be available with the limited edition bag?

Good question. I’m not really sure. For a minute. It depends on how many they’re selling. But it’s already in stores. It came out last week, I believe.

This is definitely a unique way you could send holiday cards this season! Make your own at DylanMessaging.com.

French music blog, La Blogotheque, has just published a two part performance with Yo La Tengo featuring the fine film stylings of Vincent Moon, which you can view below.

The material was tested five nights before fired-up, capacity crowds comprised of fanclub members, friends, family, and fans from all over the world who were privy to R.E.M.’s so-called “experiment in terror,” as guitarist Peter Buck puts it. “We were just trying to do something we hadn’t done before,” Buck says, “which meant there was no relaxing during the set. Every second we were playing something we didn’t know all that well. Which was kind of good — there were all kinds of terror elements going on during that show.”

Here is a video of one of the songs from the performance, “Drive,” off of 1992′s Automatic For The People.

R.E.M. will also be releasing new content every Thursday until the album release via this widget:

The Dead Weather are also hitting the road and have just today announced an Atlanta date at the Tabernacle! Tickets will go on sale Saturday at 10AM.

FULL TOUR SCHEDULE

July
13 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
14 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
16 New York, NY – Terminal 5
17 New York, NY – Terminal 5
18 Boston, MA – House of Blues
19 Ottawa, ONT – Ottawa Blues Festival
21 Montreal, QUE – Olympia De Montreal
22 Toronto, ONT – Kool Haus, Toronto
24 Detroit, MI – The Fillmore
25 Columbus, OH – The LC Pavilion
27 Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue
28 Chicago, IL – Vic Theatre
29 Chicago, IL – Vic Theatre
30 Nashville, TN – War Memorial Auditorium

August
17 Denver, CO – Ogden Theatre
18 Salt Lake City, UT – The Depot
20 Seattle, WA – Paramount Theatre
21 Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom
22 Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom
23 Portland, OR – Roseland Theater
25 Los Angeles, CA – Wiltern Theatre
27 Pomona, CA – Glasshouse
29 San Diego, CA – Street Scene
30 San Francisco, CA – Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival

October
02 Atlanta, GA – Tabernacle

[mp3] The Dead Weather – Are Friends Electric
[mp3] The Dead Weather – Hang You From The Heavens

In his memory, check out this video montage that was created by We Fun director Matthew Robison and Zack Wilson.

The Gaye Blades – Bobby is a Lover

The Almighty Defenders | Photo Credit: David Waldman (Kid with a Camera)

Atlanta favorites, Black Lips, have joined King Khan and BBQ (aka Mark Sultan) to form a supergroup, The Almighty Defenders.

Pitchfork has the details of the inception of the band. I decided to give you the short story, shorter with a haiku:

So these garage punksters are releasing “The Almighty Defenders,” their self-titled debut, September 22 on Vice Records. Below is the tracklist for the album.

The Almighty Defenders:
01 All My Loving
02 The Ghost With the Most
03 Bow Down and Die
04 Cone of Light
05 Jihad Blues
06 30 Second Air Blast
07 Death Cult Soup n’ Salad
08 I’m Coming Home
09 Over the Horizon
10 She Came Before Me
11 The Great Defender

Tessa: Hey guys! The blog I write, Drive A Faster Car, is based in Atlanta and you’re playing at The Earl there in two days. Have you guys played in Atlanta before?
Portugal. The Man: Yeah, yeah… It was two floors…
Tessa: The Earl? The Loft/Vinyl? Star Bar?
PTM: No, it’s big and weird…
Tessa: The Masquerade?
PTM: Yes, The Masquerade.
Tessa: How did you guys end up at The Masquerade?
PTM: I can’t imagine they knew what we sounded like [before booking us]… It felt a little out of place.
Tessa: It’s usually a lot of punk and heavy metal bands at The Masquerade. They definitely do some indie rock shows as well.
PTM: We had a good time at that show though. Got a bass in the face. It was pretty punk rock.
Tessa: So you had a great set tonight and you have one more tomorrow during the day – how are your festival sets in comparison to your usual tour sets?
PTM: For Bonnaroo, we had an hour so we had to cut the fat off of our setlist. We usually we play about an hour and a half. The festival thing is new to us so we’re figuring it out.
Tessa: Is this your first festival?
PTM: Yeah, yeah. We’ve done big shows but it wasn’t anything like this one. We’re hitting up the entire summer festival circuit.
Tessa: And you have a new album coming out in July too and I hear the artwork has some kind of Transformers qualities to it.
PTM: [laughs] It came together really good, just the way it should’ve. I was pretty surprised to be honest. I brought it to Austin — Austin Sellers — he’s the guy that I worked with for all that stuff. I remember I first gave it to him and he was just like “Fuck you, they’ll never let us do this. They’re going to make me work forever on this. It’ll never get pressed.” And uh, we worked it out so it was a really simple piece. It was one cut out of one piece of paper. There’s no plastic in it or anything like that. We saved money in some areas and went overboard in others, so it evens out.

Tessa: So music-wise, how is your new album different from your previous ones?
PTM: Um, I think with the new record we picked up where we left off. I think it was more of an approach to less of a jam than we’ve run with in the past. Which is good for us to do! I think we really needed to make a record like that. Where we actually brought our influences in more. Which is all oldies radio station stuff like The Beatles, Zombies, Sam Cooke. So we wrote some really short structures and it worked out for the best. It’s a little hard to write a pop song. I feel like everybody thinks it’s a cop-out to write a pop song, but it’s actually pretty hard.
Tessa: So this change is just due to you wanting to incorporate more of your influences, not constructing it for radio or the like?
PTM: I think it would be fucking stupid for us to do it for that reason. You have to play music for yourself. In the end, we all listen to The Beatles. With the state of music today, I don’t think there would even be a question of it. It would be just silly to write for radio. It would be fucking cool if they would play us though.
Tessa: What bands are you seeing at Bonnaroo while you’re here?
PTM: Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors… I wish we were staying longer. Beastie Boys, [I] was talking about Phoenix maybe. I thought it would be nice to hang out Saturday too, but we have to miss out. And we’re going to run into half these bands playing on other festival stops.
Tessa: You guys are doing the whole summer festival circuit, right?
PTM: Yeah definitely. We’re playing Lollapalooza, Outside Lands and a lot in Europe.
Tessa: So you have a new album coming out. I’ve read the first line and last line of your new record, and a little explanation behind the correlation, but I was having trouble understanding if it was positive or negative towards Alaska and how it relates to the band as a whole?
PTM: Oh it’s positive for sure. It was a reference to the title. The record wasn’t necessarily about religion. Actually, just thinking about it right now, 90% of that record is not about religion. It was probably more, more than that. It was more a record about escape, a record about learning what you really need to get by, and getting over the things you feel you need to give in.
Tessa: Okay last question — Favorite up-and-coming bands from Portland? Besides you guys of course.
PTM: I got two bands for you: Builders and Butchers and Red Fang. They’re [Red Fang] my love. They’re fucking bad ass. I’m going to throw Hello Electric in there too. I think Hello Electric is bad as fuck.

As music fans descend upon rural Tennessee for the show, Byrne took some time to discuss his performance and the process of choosing bands for his curated stage.

Bonnaroo is often considered the best summer music festival around. As someone who has played many festivals of this kind, what are your thoughts on that from a performer’s perspective?
 
Well, see I only played there once.  But I’ve noticed that in the programming and in the lineup organization that they just kind of widened their scope.  It used to be known as the jam band festival some years ago.  And it was for a while [and] seemed like it was limiting itself to that kind of thing. But it seems to have widened itself out a lot since then. And it kind of brought the audience with it, or vice versa.  It’s hard to tell who is leading who.  But it has a much wider musical scope now than it used to, and I think [it will be able] to push it quite a bit further in years to come. 
 
When the festival organizers decided to make you a stage curator, did they give you autonomy when it came to choosing the artists, or did you have to kind of choose from any sort of preapproved list or anything like that? 
 
Well, I kind of self-imposed a little bit of restrictions.  I mean, I said, “I want to pick acts that I’ve actually seen perform.  I’m not going to pick something that I think is not going to work.”  By work I mean there might be somebody’s recording that’s musically great, but I just might think, “You know outdoors on a hot summer night or late afternoon in Tennessee, sometimes the music is just not going to work, as much as you might love it.”   So I kind of edited it myself and said, “No I’m going to try and think of what kinds of things would work in that venue at that time of the year, in that place that. I also was limited by things that I’d already seen, which kind of limits me quite a bit, actually.

With Bonnaroo being known not just as a music festival, but also as a multimedia art festival with on-site installations and whatnot, I was curious if you had given any thought to doing any sort of art installations at Bonnaroo like the one you did in New York.

No, I haven’t because I am in the middle of a tour.  I basically pass through Bonnaroo as part of my tour, and then I move on to Texas.  So there is no way I could put together something like that, because those kinds of installations take weeks to put together. 

The show you’ve been doing for recent tours is very intricate with a lot of subtleties and such. What are you planning for your performance at Bonnaroo and what are the challenges of putting that show on a big stage in front of such a large audience?

I’ll be doing a version of that show.  It has kind of been evolving over the year, and also when you do it for a festival crowd, you might edit it a bit.  Maybe take out a few of the ballads, because for a festival crowd people’s attention can kind of waver if you do too many mid-tempo songs in a row, at least it seems that way to me.   

The show I’ve been doing has a lot of visual stuff going on.  There’s dancers and there’s three singers that join the dancers and that jump around, and I join them sometimes, so there’s a lot going on stage for people to look at, if they can see it. 

Time permitting, are there any other acts you plan on trying to catch over the weekend?

There are quite a few, but I haven’t checked all the schedules.  I am not going to be there for the whole festival, but I will get to be around for the whole day.  So unless it’s muddy, I will probably bike around and catch quite a number of the other acts. 
 
I’ve kind of made notes – there are a lot of acts that I’ve already seen, here and there.  But I have never seen TV on the Radio live.  I have never seen the Yeah Yeah Yeahs live or MGMT. They’re all like hometown people, so you’d think I would have seen them, but I haven’t.   

Jenny Lewis, I saw live a couple of years ago, and it was just amazing.  So I’d be curious to see her again.  Grizzly Bear another hometown act that I haven’t seen live, but would like to see them.  Neko Case – I saw her few years ago, but it was great, and her new record is really nice, so I’d like to see that.   

There’s probably a bunch of others, but I’ll have to see what’s around, when I’m there. 

His death came soon after the release of his latest album, Whatever Happened I Apologize, which is available as a free download from Rock Proper. Rock Proper is also hosting a fundraising drive on Kickstarter to collect pledges to manufacture 12inch 180gram wax of the album.

Drive A Faster Car is also working on raising the first $1k of $6k needed for our revamp! Help us hire more writers and redesign so we can provide all the content you are looking for! Pledge $5 today and help us exceed our goal!

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