Rock legend and SXSW Music Keynote alumnus Neil Young sits down this coming Tuesday for an interview to discuss his streaming audio brainchild, a high-quality music service called Pono.
SXWS writes: “Young has long been an advocate for studio-quality music in the digital age, and laments the relatively inferior quality offered by the status quo services. Pono, built from the ground-up, is his attempt to remedy this problem, and deliver to the listener the exact, full sounds the artist intends. He is also sure to share some great stories from his amazing career.”
The interview is scheduled from 5 to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, March 11 at the Austin Convention Center during the 27th annual South by Southwest Festival, which gets under way Friday in Austin. The 10-day event is expected to attract more than 30,000 to its tech, music and film segments, according to USA Today.
SXSW, as the conference is known, kicks off with the tech portion, targeted toward emerging start-ups and hard-to-get-into sessions that feature panelists pondering the latest tech trends.
More Pono news: A press release from Warner Brothers posted at Computer Audiophile announces the launch of Pono. The music system is getting very mixed reviews from Neil fans. (read the comments at the above link)
(Although it is now only March 8) >>> March 10, 2014 – (Burbank, CA.) – PonoMusic is a revolutionary movement conceived and founded by Neil Young. Our mission is to bring the highest-quality digital music to discerning, passionate consumers, who wish to experience music the way the artists intended, with the emotion, detail, and power intact.
“It’s about the music, real music. We want to move digital music into the 21st century and PonoMusic does that. We couldn’t be more excited about bringing PonoMusic to the market,” said Neil Young, founder and chairman of PonoMusic.
PonoMusic encompasses both an online music store (PonoMusic.com) and a playback device (The PonoPlayer). The PonoPlayer is a digital-music experience unlike any other, offering the finest quality, highest-resolution digital music from both major labels and prominent independent labels, curated and archived for discriminating PonoMusic customers. The Pono desktop media management application allows customers to download, manage and sync their music to their PonoPlayer and other high- resolution digital music devices.
“Our goal was to offer the highest quality digital music available from all the major labels with the world’s greatest sounding, user-friendly portable music player. We’ve achieved our goal and we are excited to launch our Kickstarter campaign next week to invite music lovers everywhere to join the PonoMusic community and reserve a PonoPlayer for their own enjoyment,” said John Hamm, CEO of PonoMusic.
Billy Talbot, bass player for Neil Young & Crazy Horse, talks to Radio.com about his solo album, song writing, spirituality and the future of Crazy Horse. Also about PONO, Pearl Jam is a garage band, Nirvana.
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A snippet from the interview (~5 min 40)
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:: Billy Talbot’s website: BILLY TALBOT BAND. Including his latest solo album “On The Road To Spearfish”, audio & video.
This is from CBC.ca, an exclusive interview Jian Ghomeshi does with Neil before the latest Massey Hall show. Neil Young talks about his Honour the Treaties tour — a series of benefit concerts raising money to fight an expansion project at the oilsands in northern Alberta. Neil talks about the First Nations, the oil sands in Fort McMurray, being political as a musician, freedom of speech…
Short clip:
Audio of the full interview (aired on CBC TV this Wednesday):
On Neil Young’s 68th Birthday American Songwriter looks back on a 2011 Cover Story “Neil Young & Daniel Lanois Love and War.”
It’s a well-written, thoughtful Q & A with the legendary songwriter, and a nice issue for collectors of Neil memorabilia.
Does he really look like Gregory Peck?
Meanwhile fans are looking forward to Young’s 4-day acoustic concert series at Carnegie Hall in New York come January, with hopes for a U.S. Tour.
The interview starts:
“Serious, intense, with hooded blue-gray eyes that always seem capable of pinning you to the wall, Neil Young looks like a man who has forged an uneasy peace with himself and the choices that he’s made.
“Gone is much of that early restlessness and ire; the kind of discontent that found him pitching televisions out of third story windows into southern California canyons, or scowling onstage amid a 15-minute version of “Down By The River,” without ever acknowledging his audience.
“Two months from his 65th birthday, there is an air of quiet acceptance about him as he sits with perfect posture in his smart white Panama hat, trimmed beard and green military jacket. His lived-in features – chiseled and defined – give him the air of an aging leading man, and as you take a step back and squint, he resembles no one so much as Gregory Peck, with the same mixture of obsession and righteousness.”
As Nash tells it, Young introduced his classic 1972 album “Harvest” to his friend in a “Big” way. Nash recently told the story to Terry Gross on her NPR show “Fresh Air.” (click to listen to the interview)
Dan Coleman shares this great story on his blog: Open Culture. Nash calls Young the “strangest of my friends.”
Nash says: “The man is totally committed to the muse of music. And he’ll do anything for good music. And sometimes it’s very strange. I was at Neil’s ranch one day just south of San Francisco, and he has a beautiful lake with red-wing blackbirds. And he asked me if I wanted to hear his new album, ‘Harvest.’ And I said sure, let’s go into the studio and listen.
“Oh, no. That’s not what Neil had in mind. He said get into the rowboat.”
“There was a period where Neil would start saying, “I remember the day I was lookin’ in the mirror, just lookin’ in the mirror, and my father said to me, ‘Son, you’re just a fuck up.’” ” by Frank “Poncho” Sampedro offbeat interview, May 2013
Neil Young on Tour
Sugar Mountain setlists
Tom Hambleton provides BNB with setlists, thankfully. His website is the most comprehensive searchable archives on the Internets about anything Neil Young related setlists. Goto Sugar Mountain.
Rock legend and SXSW Music Keynote alumnus Neil Young sits down this coming Tuesday for an interview to discuss his streaming audio brainchild, a high-quality music service called Pono.
memphish on 
Albert Stromann on 
liza on 
Baz on 
