Fort Worth singer/songwriter Tim Halperin plays his final area show this Friday at the Chicken Ranch, a club located in the Stockyards. The TCU student will then be off to his hometown of Omaha for a few months to reconnect with his roots.

“The guys I used to play with are all in Omaha,” says Halperin. “I hope to get a band together here in Texas for the fall.”

Halperin released his debut EP, You Are the Moon, in January and response has been so overwhelmingly positive that, well, none are left.

“I actually just sold out,” says the shocked singer. “I will be getting more duplicated in Omaha in a couple of weeks.”

Listening to songs such as “Just Can’t Get You,” “Nice to be Free” and “What I Want” (the last of which is available for download on his Myspace page), it’s easy to see how Halperin has so quickly gained a solid following.

Of course, a high profile gig opening for Nashville crooner Matt Wertz and a featured spot on XM Radio’s Unsigned show hasn’t hurt his exposure.

Obviously influenced primarily by Ben Folds and (don’t cringe too much) Billy Joel, Halperin is the proverbially nice guy who doesn’t finish last, a college kid from Nebraska who uses his innocence to best advantage on songs that speak to a specific demographic: nerds. --Darryl Smyers

California’s Pennywise has been playing its brand of working man’s punk for nearly 20 years now, and the members show little sign of slowing down.

Even after the 1996 suicide of original member Jim Thirsk, the band soldiered on, releasing a new effort every two years and continuing to embrace the punk ethos of defiant liberalism--along with a refreshing DIY mentality. Bassist Randy Bradbury took some time to talk to DC9 about the band’s newest CD (Reason to Believe, available via free download from MySpace records when you add Textango as a friend) and how the band plans to stay hard into its third decade.

So does the fact that 600,000 people have downloaded the new CD from MySpace validate your band’s continued relevancy?

Having the CD available for free is really a new frontier. We are riding the wave of the new frontier. Within days, we hit half a million downloads. For us, the top priority has always been to get people to hear our songs, so we’ve taken the smallest advance that we ever have just to achieve that goal. We’re the first band to totally give away our record for free [Editor's note: These guys might beg to differ]. We were joking around saying that we should have made it multiple choice: Pay this much if you’re just a little bit of a fan all the way down to the biggest fan ever paying what they thought it was worth.

You’ve been playing in the band for twelve years and came on right after the death of Jason Thirsk. How difficult was it to simply keep the band going?

We launched a new weekly DC9 feature called Aural Ambush yesterday, in which we hit the streets, armed with an archaic discman, and ask the people of Dallas their thoughts on a song from a band coming through town.

Yesterday's bit focused on the Austin-based What Made Milwaukee Famous' song "Sultan." In cased you missed it, here's what our fellow citizens had to say. Not sure we really get the Goldfinger comparison the second guy mentioned--like, at all--but to each his own, I guess...

You can catch What Made Milwaukee Famous playing with The Whigs (who we wrote about in the paper this week) at The Loft tonight at 8:30.

In the meantime, if you dug the track yourself, here it is, on the house...

Bonus mp3: What Made Milwaukee Famous -- "Sultan"

Enjoy. --Pete Freedman

John Freeman's had himself a rough 2008 so far, between opening Sloppyworld, perhaps closing Sloppyworld, definitely closing Sloppyworld and trying to scrounge up the money to pay Sloppyworld's leftover bills. Now, just four months before he heads off to New York City to write rock operas with Corn Mo, Freeman's still looking to pay off Sloppyworld's debt. And this time, at least, he's got a pretty enticing offer out there.

"I am selling off almost all of the Sloppyworld PA
equipment to cover some outstanding fees and help pay for some repairs to
the space," he writes in an email.

I'm sure a few venues out there could use an upgrade to its sound system. And I, for one, can confidently say that, for all its issues, the one thing that Sloppyworld never had a problem with was its sound. Interested parties should email John for more information. --Pete Freedman

OK, so this isn't really news, per se--anyone who's been to the Palladium recently has seen this on the venue's TV screens--but My Morning Jacket, who our sister paper LA Weekly just deemed the "best live band in the world," officially announced today its upcoming August 23 show at the Palladium Ballroom.

Sure, we're stoked about the show, and we'll let you know about tickets as soon as that info becomes available, but, I have to admit, we're a little lukewarm when it comes to what we've heard of MMJ's new record, Evil Urges. Night and Day editor Noah W. Bailey got his hands on a copy recently and has been jokingly playing it ever since...mostly because, even as an MMJ fan, he can't stand it.

"If you'd like a mix of Prince and Chris Cross, you'll like this," he says. "But I think it sucks."

Worst part is, we all agree. Well, to an extent. Merritt Martin, whose desk is right next to Noah's, has heard it more than the rest of us (Noah's been taunting her with repeat plays of the song "Highly Suspicious" from the disc), and she says: "Well...it is insanely catchy."

But even she's hedging her bets, qualifying that offer with this one: "It's like an earworm," she says. "It just digs itself into your brain. It's kind of like cancer."

So, yeah, there's that. --Pete Freedman

Jesse Hughey wrote up a review of The Lash Outs' new self-titled disc for this week's paper, praising the band's lyricism and enthusiasm within its straight-ahead punk rock approach.

Specifically, he name-checks this song, "The Kids Don't Wanna Dance," and rightfully so. Check out these lyrics:

And when I walk the vacant streets of Ellum / I can't help but feel a little sore / And you know what hurts the most? / My heart's a-breakin' 'cause the kids don't dance no more.

Hear it for yourself on this free download...

Bonus mp3: The Lash Outs -- "The Kids Don't Wanna Dance"

Yeah, it's bratty. But ain't it also an accurate description of Deep Ellum's musical climate at the moment? --Pete Freedman

Elvis T. Busboy and The Blues Butchers, a Dallas cover act, are the ostensible headliners at the Blue Shoe Project’s free festival Saturday, but the real highlight will be Marquise “Big Daddy” Knox from St. Louis. Knox is just 17 years old, but sings with a deep, mature-beyond-its-years, drawling delivery reminiscent of a certain blues legend who died a decade before he was born. Knox plays electric guitar and harp with taste and restraint seldom heard among any of his bluesmen peers, let alone players his age. He'll also be leading a blues workshop for children at 3 p.m. on Saturday.

Other performers include Tutu Jones and Gerry Moss.

The fest runs from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Village at Colleyville. VIP passes are available for a $100 tax-deductible contribution to the Blue Shoe Project, which educates youngsters on the importance of blues to American music. Last year, the project put out Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen – Live in Dallas, which won the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album.

It’s a family-friendly event, so be discreet if you must partake in champagne and reefer. --Jesse Hughey

In this week's paper, you'll see a flattering review of local indie rock set Airline's newest release, Farewell Republica. In the write-up, Darryl Smyers call the disc, "detailed, dramatic and not a little dense, this is local music of rare insight, by a band demanding a following."

Listening to the title track, hearing the carefully constructed, nimble frailty of lead singer Robert Holley's voice as it floats atop the walking key parts and the ambient guitar, you can see where Darryl's coming from. The song's a pleasing output, if a little sleepy, but that's kind of the idea with this act. Live, you won't see Airline bouncing about; instead they pick their motions carefully, crooning more than rocking out.

Catch them live tonight at 8 p.m. at The Aardvark in Ft. Worth. Or just download this track for free.

Bonus mp3: Airline -- "Farewell Republica"

Or, y'know, do both. --Pete Freedman

The Stars' improbable run in the Stanley Cup playoffs continues tonight as Mike Modano and the gang head to Detroit for the first game in the western conference finals. Or so I'm told. Last time I really cared about hockey I was trying to make Gretzky's head bleed.

But, hey, this is pretty cool: When the boys in green and black come home for game three at the AAC, the crowd will be treated to a first intermission performance from the Toadies, who'll play a short set from the friendly confines of the player's bench. And it seems it's all because the AAC's sound guy is a big fan of one of the Toadies' other projects.

"The Stars play the Burden Brothers' 'Beautiful Night' all the time," says the Toadies' label rep at Kirtland Records, Tami Thompsen. "We've talked with them for a while about trying to do something, and now it's finally worked out."

I doubt the gig will be televised, though, so the only ones who'll have a chance to see this set will be the fans in the crowd. --Pete Freedman

When TVT Records filed for bankruptcy back in late February, it was easy to figure out what it would mean for artists on the label's roster, like Dallas' own The Polyphonic Spree: no more label obligations, monies owed, etc. But the fallout for those owed money by the label, which, it should be noted, was named Billboard's top independent label as recently as 2006, extends far beyond just the Sprees, Pitbulls and Lil Jons of the world.

A document currently circulating around the web lists all of TVT's unsecured claims--and, suffice to say, there's a ton of unpaid invoices out there that top the $4,968 owed Tim DeLaughter and Co.

The two highest claims are important, as their being owed so much money opens up a lot of area for question:
- Kaye Scholer, LLP, an entertainment-based law firm is owed $4.7 million and change.
- The Harry Fox Agency, which deals in licensing and distribution, is owed $7.3 million in change.

But even the smaller claims carry weight. Check out the Dallas area businesses and artists owed money:

Akkolyte, Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez's grindcore duo (the two also perform with their father, Dennis, in experimental jazz project Yells At Eels), offers up a live show that's about as fun as grindcore can get (it helps that it's about as loud as any musical duo can get, too), and tonight's gig at the Double-Wide should only be more entertaining: The brothers are planning to record pieces of tonight's gig for potential release.

"We will be recording various improvs, a sing-along, and whatever madness we can coerce out of the audience," writes Aaron Gonzalez.

The sing-along, no doubt, will pair with the group's "Pharmacopocalypse" track, in which the brothers playfully sing in about a "massive celebration at the end of the world" in a schoolyard tone.

Anyway, it should be a good time. If you've ever dreamed about showing up on a local grindcore act's recorded output, but you just don't have the musical chops to pull it off, well, your prayers have finally been answered, bub. --Pete Freedman

Bonus mp3: Akkolyte -- "A Generation of Fuckfaces"

Spoke with Rhett Miller earlier this week for a story about the Old 97's new disc, Blame It On Gravity, which you'll see in next week's paper.

In the meantime, head on over to the band's Myspace page, where someone went ahead and added on two more tracks for you all to listen to. The additions are actually the two most Murry Hammond-influenced on the disc: On "My Two Feet," Rhett borrows the chorus from an unreleased Murry write; and "Color of a Lonely Heart is Blue" isn't just sung by Murry--it just might be the best song on the disc. Check it out. --Pete Freedman

I haven't watched a single second of American Idol this season, the show's seventh, and clearly I'm not alone; the ratings just keep dropping for the reality singing competition that made Burleson's Kelly Clarkson a star.

But area TV viewers did have a reason to watch the Fox reality show thanks to dreadlocked Rockwall native Jason Castro and his, uh, "high on life" sleep-walk to the top four.

Not at all surprisingly, though, that run came to its end last night, as America collectively decided that, if you make this far into the competition, you should probably should know your song selections well enough to not mumble through the fourth line--especially if it's a song as seminal as Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man."

But at least he seemed to know his departure was coming, even going so far as to admit--before he was officially eliminated, no less--that he took Simon Cowell's advice and did indeed already pack his bags so he could head home quickly.

The lesson learned? That, even on reality TV, the supposedly endearing charm of an aloof and apathetic stoner type does grow stale with time. Way to go, Jason!

Full sayonara clip after the jump. --Pete Freedman

Wish you could have been on the video espousing your love/hate of the song? Well, you're in luck (sort of), because we're making Aural Ambush a weekly thing here on DC-9. Each Thursday we'll offer up a video of on-the-street (OK, it might be indoor) reviews of songs from bands about to hit Dallas area stages. -- Chelsea Ide