Music

Photograph by Adam Stensland

On Saturday night at his Heavy release party at Smith’s Olde Bar, the moment of truth for Atlanta singer-songwriter Wesley Cook will arrive when the album’s closing track comes up on the set list. The song, Where We Want to Be (and indeed Cook’s entire new album) is dedicated to his brother Doug, who took his own life in April 2012. In the emotional track, Cook communicates directly to his brother, singing “I beg you, let me carry you” and “Until we are reunited, I’ll see you in my dreams.” The emotional wallop aside, vocally, the song is also demanding, ranging from a soft vibrato to a soaring falsetto and a big rock finish. When Cook recorded the song in January, he locked himself in a darkened vocal booth with a bottle of water, a cup of coffee and sang the song to a photograph of his brother.

Like the “Caution: HOT!” warning label on styrofoam McDonald’s coffee cups, there’s a reason New York singer-songwriter Jay Brannan has posted an explicit message to fans on his official website. In part, it reads: “PLEASE DO NOT SEND OR DELIVER ANYTHING TO MY HOME. I will not open, read, consume or keep any unsolicited mail or deliveries from people I don’t know.”

When Athens indie rockers Neutral Milk Hotel hit the Tabernacle for a pair of sold out shows this weekend, fans will need to abide by a few new rules, rules not needed when the act last gigged a decade and a half ago. In order to thwart the efforts of scalpers, Jeff Mangum and his bandmates have instituted a “paperless ticketing” policy for this tour. In other words, to gain entrance into this Saturday and Sunday night’s shows downtown, you’ll need to turn up with a photo ID and the same credit card you used to purchase the tickets and have it swiped in order to verify your purchase. Also, folks representing the Tabernacle are asking that you arrive early so that all the people who won’t read this (and who will inevitably be fumbling around in their wallets looking for the piece of plastic they left at home, thus creating a log jam) can be sufficiently coddled/educated prior to show time.

Everyone seems to understand the significance of Outkast's homecoming weekend - and to be eager to document being part of it. Here are the best photos so far. We'll be updating as the weekend goes on.

On a drab Saturday evening inside the 1,500-seat auditorium of Victory World Church in Gwinnett County, a boom-mounted camera sweeps the crowd. Six screens glow blue above the stage, each ticking with a countdown clock. Finally the lights dim, the crowd rises and sways, and a towering figure in a checkered cardigan and baggy leather pants takes center stage, flanked by four singers, four guitarists, a drummer, and a keyboardist. Behind him is a massive white cross, built of wavy tiles.

Rolling Stones keyboardist Chuck Leavell began his music career as a tagalong kid brother on his older sister’s date to a Ray Charles gig in Tuscaloosa in 1965. “I was 13 and my parents had something else going on that night,” Leavell recalled to Atlanta magazine this week from his 2500-acre tree farm in Macon. “So they said, ‘Why don’t you take Chuck with you?’ She graciously said yes. I was already playing music, learning piano and guitar. I was very interested in music. But I had never seen anything that powerful. I mean, Ray Charles is Ray Charles but then he had [David] Fathead Newman on sax, the Raelettes were singing. The band was just so tight. I walked away that night knowing exactly what I wanted to do with my life. If I could be in a band that was anything near that good and that powerful and that moving, that’s what I wanted to do. It was life changing.”

Best friends forever. That’s the theme of CeeLo Green’s new TBS reality show, CeeLo Green’s The Good Life, which will focus on the recent reunion of Goodie Mob, the Dirty South hip-hop group that first made Green famous back in the 1990s. During a panel and Q&A with the band and the show’s producers at Savannah College of Art and Design’s aTVfest Friday afternoon, Goodie Mob member Big Gipp summed up the message of their new show.

Last summer, before an inch of film was ever shot on the set in Mississippi, the actor who played Jackie Robinson in 42 met up with the director of The Help in Atlanta, they rented a car and road tripped it together to Augusta. Getting the most minute details of James Brown’s life right was a top priority for Get on Up director Tate Taylor and actor Chadwick Boseman, who plays The Godfather of Soul in the new biopic opening in theaters today. With the tsunami of lawsuits and arguments that swirled after the soul pioneer’s 2006 Christmas Day death in Atlanta, it probably didn’t hurt to have the support of the Brown estate either.

Greg Shrader, cofounder of online start-up Maestro.fm, is outside a Decatur coffee shop listening to his favorite Atlanta band, The Constellations, on his iPhone. He has never downloaded the tune onto his phone, and it’s not taking up any space there—his copy of the song is miles away on his personal computer. But as long as Maestro.fm’s Connector software is