Friday

• Liz Phair, U.S. Royalty. 8 p.m. $25. 9:30 Club.
• Gene Wene, The Blackberry Belles. 9 p.m. $20. Black Cat.
• Free Lobster Buffet, Honey House, The Bourbon House (all sound delicious, all are just bands). 9:30 p.m. $8. Red Palace.
• Bellman Barker, Megan Jean and the Klay Family Band, Alma Tropicalia, Fort Washington Band. 9 p.m. $10. Rock & Roll Hotel.
• Preservation Hall Jazz Band: Creole Christmas. 9:30 p.m. $45. Kennedy Center.
• Nasar Abadey, James King, Allyn Johnson. 9 and 11 p.m. Also Dec 18. $15. Twins Jazz.
• The Roches Christmas show with Lucy Wainwright Roche. 7:30 p.m. $35. Birchmere.
• Tim Warfield's Jazzy Christmas. 8:30 p.m. $20/$25. Through Dec. 19. Bohemian Caverns.
• House and Home, Bake Sale. 9 p.m. $8. Velvet Lounge.
• Antonio Parker Quintet. 9 p.m. $15. HR-57.

• WPAS Men, Women and Children of the Gospel Choir. 6:00 p.m. Free. Kennedy Center Millennium Stage.
• Beasts of No Nation, Police and Thieves, Give, The Regents. 8 p.m. $10. Rock and Roll Hotel.
• Alma Tropicalia, Watermelon, Coppertonic. 9 p.m. $8. Velvet Lounge.
• Ghostland Observatory, Dr. Jak. 8 p.m. Sold out. 9:30 Club.
• Drop Electric, Emily Wells, The Sweater Set. $10/$12. 9 p.m. Black Cat.
• O.A.R.  8:30 p.m. $69-$125. Music Center at Strathmore.
• Pieces of a Dream. 7:30 p.m. $35. Birchmere.
• A..J Parham. 9 p.m. $15. HR-57.

• Justin Townes Earle, Dawn Landes. 7 p.m. 9:30 Club.
• Kenny Rodgers' Christmas Hits. 5 p.m. $49.50-$77.50. Music Center at Strathmore.
• The Baltimore Consort. 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Sold out. Mansion at Strathmore.
• Vandaveer, Johnathan Vassar and The Speckled Bird, Erin Lang. 8 p.m. $8. IOTA Club & Cafe.
• The Gay Blades, OK Corral, Prisms. 8:30 p.m. $8/$10. Red Palace.

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There's a reason AT&T has recently been using the long-deceased Nick Drake's well-crafted folk music to hock its wares—his music evokes such an immediate nostalgia and authenticity that it's easy to forget the company's coverage is terrible. Drop the needle on "Which Will" (or really anything from Pink Moon), and get lost in it.

The masters of longevity, Yo La Tengo, have stuck around for over two decades because they've got heart. "Our Way To Fall" shows the band at its softest and most sentimental, with honest, conversational lyrics that somehow escape sounding overly maudlin. If nothing else, the fact that songwriters Ira and Georgia have made it as both a band and a couple for this long ought to be inspiration enough to believe in new love.

The ever-adorable Vandaveer, which most often tours as a brother-sister duo, is deeply charming with its fragile harmonies. "Dig Down Deep" utilizes a rousing—but not too rousing—three-quarter time to get the blood flowing. If all goes well, maybe you can bring your new sweetheart to see Vandaveer play at Jammin' Java in Vienna, Va., this Thursday.

Spinner, AOL's upstart music Web site, approached this year's South by Southwest festival with Texas-sized ambition: It would interview every band and artist performing there—all 2,000 of them.

And so Spinner put out an APB to writers experienced and un-: Give us an interview, we'll give you $50. Don't worry about being familiar with your subject; just listen to enough to write a pithy intro. Never done a Q&A? Totally cool. We've prepared some questions for you.

The assignments went out through Seed, AOL's algorithmic content-assignment site. What started out as embarrassing—interview after interview featuring variations on questions like "Beatles or Stones?" and "How did your band form?"—yesterday became very embarrassing, when Spinner's editors sent a frantic e-mail to their contributors: File your interviews. Please!

That's the thing about hiring untested writers: They may suck at deadlines. Or they may suck altogether.

Or they may not suck at all: Browse through Spinner's South by Southwest Q&As, and you'll read some insightful stuff that goes off the Spinner script. But mostly, Spinner's South by Southwest coverage has been amateur-hour (via Arts Desk contributor Leor Galil). And often, the bands noticed. Take this Japandroids interview:

What's your biggest vice?

Probably last year's September issue.

What's in your festival survival kit?

Water and a seat.

What's your biggest vice?

Probably last year's September issue.

With several dozen D.C. artists attending South by Southwest, it was inevitable that some would end up in the Spinner hot seat. After the jump, check out how they put up with Spinner's citizen scribes.

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INTERVIEWEE: Vandaveer, the gentle, folky project of former These United States member Mark Charles Heidinger.

INTERVIEWER: Simona Rabinovitch, who "covers music, pop culture and travel for the Globe & Mail, Lonely Planet, Dazed & Confused, and more. She's also an editor at Zink Canada, works in TV, and is writing her first book. She enjoys carrots, basslines, and practicing her Russian accent."

THE INTERVIEW: Heidinger gives a few honest (if jokey) answers before realizing he's participating in the least human interview of his life. From the end of the interview:

Who was your first celeb crush?

According to the scrapbook my mother kept, when I was seven I wanted to be a "mommy." When I was eight, after the Big Talk, I wanted to be a daddy. Ergo, my first celeb crush was Michael Jackson but my first self-aware celeb crush was Madonna.

Beatles or Stones?

Definitely.

What's the craziest thing you've seen or experienced while on tour?

The mirror in the morning.

TEXAS BBQ GRADE: Dry. And wry.

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INTERVIEWEE: The Mynabirds, former Georgie James member Laura Burhenn's soulful, classicist claim to the legacy of Dusty Springfield.

INTERVIEWER: Anneliese Curtis Place, no Spinner bio. Great MySpace page, though.

THE INTERVIEW: Burhenn's either oblivious or a good sport. She doesn't even wince at the cookie-cutter questions:

Describe your sound in your own words.

I had always wanted to make a record that sounds like Neil Young doing Motown. After Georgie James broke up, I went back to the idea of hymns and melodies that have been passed from generation to generation. I went into the studio to make this Neil Young doing Motown thing. I had been listening to a lot of Dusty Springfield, Bobbie Gentry, and other amazing female singers like Carole King and Grace Slick. A little bit of gospel, soul and a little bit of straight country. There is something very comforting about it. The whole record is really about loss and recovery, I wanted to make music that felt comforting, that people felt familiar with, like family.

As opposed to, like, someone else's words?

TEXAS BBQ GRADE: Undercooked.

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INTERVIEWEE: DJ Gavin Holland, who's about to move his popular Nouveau Riche dance party to the new U Street Music Hall.

INTERVIEWER: Rika Nurrahmah, no bio. According to Nurrahmah's blog, the writer is a "Junior in the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University who bathes herself in the dandy pleasures of life."

THE INTERVIEW: Holland gives a pretty interesting interview, even though the stock questions are more band- than DJ-appropriate. This one's just weird:

If you had to be on a dating show, how would you pitch yourself?

Dead sexy, ambitious, loves to party, skilled at DJ-ing, and tender and caring. I am a great boyfriend!

TEXAS BBQ GRADE: Smoky.

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INTERVIEWEE: Nadastrom, the house duo of DJs Dave Nada and Matt Nordstrom.

INTERVIEWER: Patrick Shea, no bio.

THE INTERVIEW: Shea works the terrible canned queries into a pretty cohesive interview. Not bad.

For those of us who can't guess, how did you come with your band name?

Dave: Man. It was definitely not the first thing that we were gonna do. You know, obviously it's a partnership and wanting to reflect both our names as individual producers and artists. By the way, Nada is not my last name, it's a nickname I got from this punk band I was in called De Nada. The sad part is, a lot of people will kind of miss that. But the sadder part is when people call us 'Nada Storm.' And sometimes it's our friends.

TEXAS BBQ GRADE: Mesquite.

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INTERVIEWEE: Meredith Bragg, the delicate folkie who's way more adventurous than he gets credit for.

INTERVIEWER: Jessica M. Alexander, no bio.

THE INTERVIEW: There is absolutely nothing about this Q&A that suggests Alexander has ever listened to Bragg's music. The intro:

As part of the Kora Records showcase, Washington D.C. artist Meredith Bragg makes a second appearance at SXSW, with a new record forthcoming in 2010. Spinner recently spoke with him about his visit to Texas, where he'll play some new songs and get out of the blistering cold.

So I've learned that: Bragg has played South by Southwest before, he's recording an album, and D.C. is cold.

TEXAS BBQ GRADE: Plain fucking awful.

Because I wrote about Title Tracks' versions of songs by The Flamin' Groovies and The Merseybeats earlier this week, and because Bob Dylan's truly atrocious new disc of Christmas standards leaked yesterday, I've been thinking a lot about covers.

Let's put aside the illustrious history of ill-advised tributes (read: the entire Me First and the Gimme Gimmes oeuvre). A good cover can both satisfy a simple, dorky impulse—to hear one artist you admire spin another in an interesting way—and prove rather instructional. For example, it can tell you that Title Tracks frontman John Davis is probably a sucker for semi-obscure gems (he is), as well as a student of infectious, pop-classicist hooks. With that in mind, I've collected some recent covers by local artists.

My short list, after the jump, is fairly folk- and indie-centric, and by no means complete. Tell me what I missed in the comments.

These United States and Vandaveer—the folky side project of  TUS's bassist, Mark Heidinger—contributed cuts to Dylan Mania, a French tribute compilation that slipped under the radar when it dropped in May. Vandaveer's take on "The Man In Me" is fairly straightforward, if not nearly as creepy and self-satisfied as the 1970 original. These United States' version of "To Ramona," meanwhile, is more animated and unhinged, benefiting greatly from a galloping rhythm and some thickly applied pedal steel. You can hear both songs on the groups' respective MySpace pages.

Ugly Purple Sweater has a cover of the Woody Guthrie-penned folk standard "This Land Is Your Land" up on its MySpace page. No surprises here, really—except that the duo has tweaked the title a bit, and decorated the song with a fairly silly falsetto. Which, strangely, is pretty awesome.

Last Tide—whom I wrote about in this week's One Track Mind—includes a swirling, eerie cover of Talking Heads' "Memories Can't Wait" in its live set. Cover Me—a blog that, yes, covers covers—has an mp3 of the song from the band's recent appearance on WMUC’s Third Rail Radio program. Also, Last Tide frontman Nate Frey's other band, Detox Retox, does an, um, interesting cover of Joy Division's "Transmission":

The gloomy art-punk outfit Screen Vinyl Image taps one of its sonic forebears in this live cover of an early Slowdive B-side. Bonus! The woozy video quality and seizure-inducing lights are straight out of any shoegaze music vid circa 1989:

Ted Leo doesn't make music in the District anymore, but I like his tense, crescendoing cover of Robert Pollard's "The Numbered Head"—from the recent Score! 20 Years Of Merge Records: The Covers! comp—enough to include it here. You can stream the song at the Merge Records online store. It's got nothing, though, on the all-adrenaline cover of "Suspect Device" that Leo played at Fort Reno a few years ago.

Yo La Tengo hails from Hoboken, N.J, but the group played a pair of (kinda) D.C.-related covers at its 9:30 Club show recently: "Firecracker, Firecracker," by Half Japanese, and "Nervous Breakdown," which L.A.'s Black Flag wrote about three years before the District-born Henry Rollins joined the group. Rollins' provenance was a shaky excuse for Yo La Tengo to play the song, but the crowd was happy to forgive the trio. You can stream the entire set at NPR.

All Our Noise recently shot this footage of him performing a couple of songs at Comet Ping Pong:

Bite Sized Sets At Comet: Vandaveer from All Our Noise on Vimeo.

Vandaveer
Kennedy Center Millennium Stage
2700 F St., NW, Washington, D.C.
6 p.m.
Free