Austin Sound

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: two rock stars walk into a toy store. There’s not much of a punch line, but this little teaser video for the new Roky Erickson and Okkervil River collaboration is pretty cool. In fact, it’s kind of adorable. The two Austin luminaries take a trip to Toy Joy with a camera in tow and spend awhile rummaging around through all the stuff. It’s a little trippy, and all pretty amusing, with some poignant shots of Roky among the toys looking a little bewildered. Kinda like this guy! In case you don’t know what all this is about, the “Rokkervil” album will be coming out on April 20th on Anti-, titled True Love Cast Out All Evil. More details on that here, but they have released the cover art, which you can see below, along with the track listing. They have a youtube channel up, so hopefully we’ll get more videos of Erickson and Sheff running around hallowed Austin sites - maybe taking a dip in Barton Springs, or having a picnic under the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue, or something. Video and album details below:

Way back in 2008, details began to emerge about both the Black Angels and Okkervil River getting to cull through a slew of archived Roky Erickson material to help produce new albums. We haven’t heard much about the Black Angels’ efforts, but we’ve had the opportunity to see the Angels psych it up with Erickson on stage quite a bit. Today, however, it was announced that Anti- will release the “Rokkervil” effort on April 20th. Titled True Love Cast Out All Evil, - which sounds more Daniel Johnston-y than Roky Erickson, but hey, who are we to judge the merits of crazy vs genius! - the album was produced by Okkervil’s Sheff and will apparently feature long lost Erickson tunes mixed with Erickson’s “home videos and recordings made in the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.” Um, fun? Naturally it seems Sheff has gone after the most mentally tortured Erickson material. If you were lucky enough to witness Okkervil’s pairing with Erickson at SXSW 2008,

Friday: March 19, 2010 5:32 pm

Photos from Roky Erickson and Okkervil River Showcase Last Night