This week, Ontario’s Taylor Kirk brought his fantastic folk-blues project, Timber Timbre, to the TONY offices for a performance. Accompanied by some extra strings, Kirk’s howl chillingly echoed throughout our high walls, making for quite the sight and sound. If you’d like to see them do their thing yourself, be sure to check them out at Joe’s Pub tonight.

Tuba, cornet, shuffly drums and great hats? There are a lot of reasons to love Brooklyn crew Red Hook Ramblers, and we hope we’re providing one for you right here: Check out the band’s joyous performance at the TONY office. If it gets you jumping like it did us, you’ve got a ton of chances to see ’em in action this week. First they’ll be at Maxwell’s with Squirrel Nut Zippers tonight (November 13), then the band plays Sycamore Monday, November 16, and the Slipper Room on Wednesday, November 18. Fancy hat recommended.

The whipsmart British band Sian Alice Group—by turns moody, ethereal and rousing—has been making the CMJ rounds for the past few days. Before heading to Cake Shop for their final CMJ show—today at 4pm—the musicians stopped by TONY’s office to play a song from their recent album, Troubled Shaken, Etc., on the Social Registry. (Read our review of Sian Alice Group’s Tuesday show here and the band’s 2008 Time Out interview here.)

Avant-jazz percussionist Harris Eisenstadt has staffed his Canada Day band with four topflight, highly in-demand players, a strategy that serves him exceedingly well onstage and in the studio. But for the purposes of our Live at TONY taping earlier this month, it meant that only two fifths of the group could be on hand. No matter: Eisenstadt and trumpeter Nate Wooley’s performance was all the more compelling for its skeletal grace. If you like what you hear, pick up Eisenstadt’s new Clean Feed disc and go see Canada Day live this Saturday and Sunday (October 24 and 25) at Cornelia Street Café.

Showing blatant disregard for our furniture—with our permission, of course—Kidz in the Hall stormed into our office to deliver their new single, “Jukebox.” Double-O and Naledge were as engaged as could be and embraced their surroundings while laying down some serious rhymes. See the Kidz embrace a different venue—the Gramercy Theatre—when they play the Duck Down CMJ showcase on Saturday.

Alec Ounsworth has been featured in TONY with the band he fronts, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah—the group even appeared on our cover. On Tuesday, Anti- Records released Ounsworth’s solo debut album, Mo Beauty. Before heading to Mercury Lounge for a CMJ show, he stopped by TONY’s office with a song.

At the beginning of this year, there weren’t many people, bar Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor and TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone, who had heard of Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson. But since releasing his self-titled debut album, MBAR has been featured in our New Year’s revolutions, toured all over the world (we filmed him playing the Great Escape in the U.K.), blogged about his mushroom-woozed SXSW experience and starred in TONY’s Dating issue. He releases his excellent new album, Summer of Fear, this week and plays the Knitting Factory’s Saddle Creek showcase tomorrow night (October 22), and (Le) Poisson Rouge on Friday (October 23).

We’ve extolled the joys of the British combo Mumford & Sons before here—check out our SXSW review from earlier this year—so we were delighted to hear that the band was headed to New York to play this week’s CMJ Music Marathon. The band has just released its debut album, Sigh No More, a rousing mash-up of bluegrass twang and rough-and-tumble spirit, as evidenced in this hand-on-heart performance. Catch Mumford & Sons at the Mercury Lounge tonight and Music Hall of Williamsburg tomorrow.

You know the game where actors work out how many degrees of separation they are from Kevin Bacon? Well, today TONY scored a Kevin Bacon number of one! Sort of. We didn’t act in a film with the movie star, but he did generously take time out to come to our offices and play a song in support of the Bacon Brothers’ show tomorrow at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill.

Bacon Brothers comprises Kevin and his big bro Michael (a film and TV composer), and the two have been playing together since they were kids; their latest disc, New Year’s Day, is the band’s sixth album. If rootsy, raspy country pop is your thing, you’ll be into it—check out their performance (above) of “Children.” A six-piece band and covers galore are promised for the show tomorrow. Rock on!

Photos from today’s performance after the jump!

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If you’ve ever witnessed a show by crafty New York quartet So Percussion, you already know that there’s more to the group than exemplary performances of classic pieces by John Cage and Steve Reich. Collaborations with subversive electronica duo Matmos and plugged-in original pieces have formed an increasingly large portion of the group’s activities. So Percussion’s biggest project to date, Imaginary City, finds the four players—Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski and Jason Treuting—working with director Rinde Eckert and videographer Jenise Treuting in a rich multimedia dreamscape inspired by Italo Calvino’s writings. Intent on testing the group’s urban imagination, we invited So Percussion to take a whack at our stately Tenth Avenue HQ. Watch Beach and Treuting rise to the challenge, then see the whole group at the BAM Harvey Theater Wednesday, October 14, through Saturday, October 17.

Improvisation is a key element of our Live at TONY series, and frankly, we wouldn’t have it any other way. The three members of Elizabeth and the Catapult were running late to their taping earlier this week, and rather than waste precious minutes stopping by their rehearsal space, they simply fished a keyboard out of the Dumpster, procured a carton of percussive rice from the convenience store across the street and headed up to our offices to perform. As you’ll see, the band had no trouble adjusting to its makeshift implements. If you like what you hear, check out Elizabeth and the Catapult live tonight (October 2) next Tuesday (October 6) at Joe’s Pub, where we expect they’ll have access to higher-end gear.

As we learned earlier this week, Anti-Pop Consortium is literally unstoppable. Two of the esteemed alt-hip-hop group’s MCs, M. Sayyid and Beans, stopped by our offices for a stripped-down freestyle performance, and when we asked for a brief sound check, what we got was a torrential flow of verbiage that didn’t let up for nearly five minutes. You’ll have to pardon the in medias res nature of our video, but the rhyming is so inspired, we doubt you’ll mind. If you like what you hear, check out Anti-Pop’s killer new reunion effort, Fluorescent Black (out October 13)—reviewed in this week’s TONY—and catch the group live at Santos Party House next Tuesday (September 29).

Our weekly Live at TONY video series presents musicians with a weird task: Play your song in the middle of the day, in an office, with some people standing around watching you. Since we launched Live at TONY some months ago, we’ve loved seeing how different musicians respond to it.

Team Facelift (pictured) played up to the weirdness, grabbing the mail cart and flinging envelopes around. Francis and the Lights‘ Francis Farewell Starlite chose an arty vibe, insisting we film in black and white (hey, it worked.) And Wild Yaks brought in a six-pack and yowled (and yes, L Magazine, we are nerds, it’s true).

Anyway. You can now check out all our Live at TONY performances right here, in TONY’s new video section—along with all our three-minute flipcam concerts. These shorts are all filmed out and about in NYC. Favorites include Das Racist, Larkin Grimm, Tanya Morgan and Naomi Shelton.

We hope you like ’em as much as we enjoy filming them. Have a lovely weekend.

Stopping by our offices today in advance of his Highline Ballroom gig tonight, U.K. pop crooner Esser decided to get a little creative with his Live at TONY performance. As you’ll see below, all it took was a little last-minute online research on a certain modern-soul icon and a few helium balloons.

If the recent review of Wildbirds & Peacedrums in TONY had you intrigued, you’re in luck. The enchanting Swedish percussion-and-voice duo plays a whole bunch of local shows in the coming days, including gigs tonight (September 15) at (Le) Poisson Rouge, tomorrow (September 16) at Cake Shop, Friday (September 18) at Bruar Falls, next Monday (September 21) at Bowery Ballroom and next Tuesday (September 22) at the Bell House. On the eve of all that madness, W&P was kind enough to stop by the TONY offices for an unplugged performance.

This weekend marks the return of the New York Gypsy Festival, whose fifth edition runs tonight (September 11) through Saturday, September 26. Check the fest’s home page for a full schedule of concerts—ranging from old school to newfangled—and click ahead for an electrifying in-office performance from the manic local string band Luminescent Orchestrii, which helps kick off NYGF ’09 tonight at Hungarian House.

Perhaps you read about Julianna Barwick’s enchanting one-woman-choir stylings in this week’s TONY. If not, here’s a firsthand look: an exclusive in-office performance in advance of the local avant-vocalist’s appearances tonight (September 11) at Columbia’s Miller Theatre—part of a festival sponsored by Wordless Music—and Tuesday (September 15) at Knitting Factory Brooklyn.

As you may have read in this week’s TONY, several local artists are gathering at Joe’s Pub this Saturday (September 5) to celebrate the legacy of one Connie Converse, a pioneering singer-songwriter who lived and worked in NYC from the late ’40s through the early ’70s before disappearing without a trace. Among the participants is David Garland, a singular and engaging local tunesmith who also hosts the fine WNYC show Spinning on Air. He stopped by our offices earlier this week to fill us in on Converse’s sad, enigmatic tale and perform one of her tunes.

Bringing you Live at TONY each week for the past few months hasn’t always been easy. Somehow, someway, equipment woes, elevator mix-ups and myriad miscommunications have managed to plague many of our in-office tapings. But this week’s couldn’t have been easier: Singer-songsmith Sharon Van Etten strolled in with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a smile, and after a ten-second sound check, she proceeded to knock us out with her low-key yet high-intensity modern folk. Check out this performance of “For You”—from Van Etten’s latest release, Because I Was in Love (Language of Stone)—and then catch her live Saturday (August 29) at BKLYN Yard with a bunch of other cool local acts. After that she’s at Joe’s Pub Friday, September 4.

As you may have read in this week’s TONY, tonight (August 21) is a very big night for the Strickland twins. Saxist Marcus and drummer E.J. are each celebrating the release of a new disc—Idiosyncrasies and In This Day, respectively—at a joint Joe’s Pub show. We got a preview earlier this week, as the pair and bassist Josh Ginsburg stopped by our office to perform a quick version of Marcus’s killer tune “Cuspy’s Delight.”