The Long Way Around and Other Short Stories is the first solo release from Nashville veteran session bass and string player Spady Brannon. For the last three decades then man has established his bonafides by touring with Crystal Gayle and Reba McEntire, and recording with Tammy Wynette, Eddie Rabbit and Phil Vassar. He’s penned hits for Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers (”Real Love” “Think About Love”), Trisha Yearwood (”I Did”) and Highway 101 (”Desperate Road”) and Roy Orbison. He even scored a European hit for one time ABBA vocalist Agnetha Faltskog with “Once Burned Twice Shy.”

For all that time working for Nashville acts Brannan’s first release isn’t typical Music Row product but reflects a roots-rock sensibility that’s more John Hiatt or Tom Petty than Chesney or Toby.

The themes are typical barroom crooner fodder, love gained, love lost, but does done with a freshness, authenticity and warmth that far surpasses most of what comes out of Nashville these days. Twang (Some Days) is mixed with Boz Skaggs-like blue-eyed soul (Long Way Round) and swamp-groove (Smilin Eyes) to round out this great forst release from a seasoned veteran who is able to separate the wheat from the chafe resulting in a satisfying helping. Here’s hoping for seconds.

This has been posted elsewhere but I wanted to put a close to an earlier alert.

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SHACK SHAKERS’ TRAILER & GEAR RECOVERED!

Unbelievable.

At 10am this morning, Officer Rob Eggers with the Nashville Police Dept. awakened the sleeping giant Mark Robertson with the awesome news that the Shack Shakers’ trailer, gear and merch had all been FOUND!

Dumped at a nearby airstrip by the river, the trailer sat idle with 95% of the contents still in tact. Only David’s orange Gretsch (NOT the White falcon! whew.) and Mark’s P-Bass were missing.

The theory goes that some illegal laborers (i.e.: no traceable fingerprints) had swiped our trailer, thinking it contained construction materials and power tools (the property where it was parked had sustained a theft of similar items months before.) When they got the trailer to the airstrip to peek inside, they found only heavy, heaping boxes of t-shirts and unwieldy amplifiers. Only the two guitars were easy enough to swipe in a flash.

This is great news for the band and all our fans, as we can now seemlessly join up with the Reverend Horton Heat, tour the East Coast with all our old familiar gear, and NOT be set back tens of thousands of dollars.

Thanks to the good folks at Fender in Scotsdale for their kind offer to expediate a shipment of replacement gear. And thanks to all of our fans, friends and family for jumping into action at a moment’s notice.

And thanks to Policeman Robbie Eggers..a hell of a cop, bass-player and daddy o’ twins. You guys are the greatest.
Seeya on the big East Coast Holiday tour with the Rev.!
Yer pal JD

Iggy Pop, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, Chris Martin, Kanye West, Flea, Johnny Depp, Brian Wilson,Dennis Hopper, Keith Richards– pay tribute to Cash in the new video for the Man’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”, from his 2006 posthumous release “American V: A Hundred Highways.”

I’m about two weeks behind in the MySpace Showcase feature, yes I know..BAD BAD BAD BLOG MASTER…
but don’t worry your Stetson’s buckaroos I’ve got a couple of treats in store.

First up is O.C. California’s gritty chugg-chuggin “Ditch Diggers” on Sheephucker Records. Now
these songs do sound a bit alike and one is about a pig call, but that ain’t necessarily a bad thing as drunk crackers have trouble with changing up rhythm, and as everyone knows, we do love our swine.

And speaking of white folks, the next band up are homeboys from Austin Texas “Honky.” These boys
cook with Southern rock as hot as Lynard Skynard’s downed plane. A little ZZ Top, a dash of Sabbath, and bottle of something serious.

I just got his from TicketWeb:

The event has been rescheduled for 8:00 PM on Thursday, January 18.

To obtain a refund, you must:

1) Notify us within 48 hours before the new event date, via our online help desk,
or by telephone at 866.777.8932.
2) For mailed tickets,
your unused tickets must be returned to:
TicketWeb Refunds
P.O. Box 77250
San Francisco, CA 94103

If you did not receive tickets via mail, you must contact
us at our Help Desk (http://www.ticketweb.com/help.html),
and give us your sale confirmation number.

Your tickets or confirmation number must be received
at least 24 hours prior to the event in order for a refund to be issued.

Show has been postponed

Thank you for choosing TicketWeb.

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Crap! Postponed at the last miniute?! I snooped around but can’t find out why this happed. We got crappy weather here in New York so maybe it’s a travel thing.

Faith Hill is pissed,and I’m right there with her. On Monday night on the 40th annual CMA show (or as I like to call it the singing dancing parade of crap) during the female vocalist of the year segment they had all the nominees compiled on the screen ready for the money shot. When American Idol county music fem-bot Carrie Underwood was announced as the winner Diva Faith Hill was obviously peeved and mouthed “WHAT!?” into the camera, arms flailing, before walking out of the camera shot.

I’m with you there Faith. Underwood winning female vocalist of the year is like Larry the Cable Guy becoming the head of Mensa.

As much as I sometimes like Gretchen Wilson (one of the nominees) my nominees for this category would be more like Julie Roberts, Allison Moorer, Nico Case, Jenny Lewis (with the Watson Twins) and Rosanne Cash. These woman have more talent in one pedicured fingernail than the manufactured country-pop-drek that these nominees got nominated for. Pipes, looks and hunky singer husbands aren’t enough, where’s the PASSION? Where’s the HEARTACHE? Where’s the AUTHENTICITY?!

Most awards shows for music celebrate the popular and the mediocre. How many of these women will have the staying power of Dolly or Loretta. Not a damn one of ‘em.

see the whole thing here:

Gob Iron (Brit for harmonica) is Comprised of Jay Farrar (Son Volt) and Anders Parker (Varnaline) together they breath life, longing and menace into retooled traditional folk songs. Recorded in the span of five days in the Autumn of 2004 Death Songs for the Living came together when Anders Parker was enlisted to take part in the recording of an aborted Son Volt album. The sound of both musicians merge and entwine so well you’d swear they’d been doing it for years.

These are songs about love, loneliness and death. Sparsely produced, mostly acoustic but with flourishes of Crazy Horse style dissonant electric guitar. The space between each songs are moody acoustic guitar instrumental interludes that fill out the overall Western-noir feel of the work.

Dwight Yoakam mosied into the sold out show on this brisk October night on Central Park’s upper west side as naturally as if he were playing at a State Fairgrounds or a Texas honky-tonk. The adoring crowd of big-buckle Yankees, pretty ladies in tight shirts and tattoos dancing in front of the stage hoping to catch the Honky-tonk man, in his stylish dudes, eye and there was a smattering of Southerners, like myself, appreciative to have a cultural diplomat of this talent stopping in town.
Tift Merritt was a surprise opener for the show and show and she charmed and wowed the crowd with her passionate voice and goofy jokes.

Yoakam’s sharp dressed band hit the stage at about 9:50 in his trademark off-white Stetson set over his eyes, and after a quick “Thanks ya’ll!” they break into “She’ll Remember” the toe-tapping rave-up from his latest release for New West records “Blame the Vain.” The nearly three-hour set was brimming with an embarrassment of riches, “Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose,” “This Time,” Jume Carter’s “Ring of Fire,” - Johnny Horton’s “Honky Tonk Man,” “Stop the World (And Let Me Off),” “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere,” “Little Sister” as well as “Guitars, Cadillacs” — the song that startled the Nashville brass who had written Yoakam off when he was living in Nashvile in the early 80’s.

Yoakam also paid tribute to his late friend and Bakersfield style mentor, Buck Owens by covering his classics “Act Naturally,” “Cryin’ Time” and “Together Again”. The tribute ended with the duet the pair recorded in the 1990s, “Streets of Bakersfield.” I’m sure Owens was smiling down at the performance that night.

After a few minites off stage the band came back out to close things out with Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and the great song of spurned female commupance “Intentional Heartache.”

When he’s in the spotlight, Dwight Yoakam ranks with just a handful of country singers that make it all seem effortless.

It was a cold and bittersweet day this Saturday, Nov. 4th, it was the day of Bloodshot’s Annual CMJ (weasels!) Showcase. Yes it was a great day-long party and BBQ at Union Pool in Brooklyn featuring the Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, Mark Pickerel, The Silos, the Deadsting Brothers, Austin’s own Scott H. Biram, Bobby Bare Jr.’s Young Starvation League and, sadly, Austin’s own Meat Purveyors where to be performing their last show as their bass player, Miss Cherilyn DiMond, has decided to get married and move on to other pastures in Maine. I missed most of the shows due shooting the shit and catching up with old friends and making some new ones.

But I got to make time for my homeboy Scott H. and his crazy grease-soaked stomp-blues revival and the very last show of the Purvs. Scott did his best in the 45 min allotted for him but c’mon! He’s just getting the crowd hoping, hollering and speaking in drunken tongues.

I skipped on Bobby Bare Jr. (yeah, I know) but I was near the front of the masses for the Purvs.

Taking the stage at 5:30 and a few moments of reflection from lead singer Jo Walston the band tore into an hour-and-a-half of thrash-grass sampler from their ten year career. “TMP Smackdown”, “Pain By Numbers”, “I’d Rather Be Your Enemy,” “Truckers Speed,” “Tallboy”, “Working on a Building” it was a trip down memory lane in a meth-fueled trailer park. The band then threw in killer covers of Ratts “Round and Round” and Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and “Lucky Star” just to top of the night right.

There were tears, laughs and discussion of weed-induced hetro and or lesbian sex by Jo as she up-ended a stiff shot of whisky. The rest of the Purvs, Cherilyn DiMond on stand-up bass (and the instigator of the Purvs demise due to that aforementioned marital commitment (Damn woman, where your priorities?!), guitarist extraordinaire Bill Anderson and on speed-metal mandolin Peter Stiles, gave the rabidly-rowdy and adoring crowd (some of which had traveled all the way from Austin to catch the show) the red Meat they came to hear.

More tears, more denial and two encores I was too drunk to recall the details of..if it had to end this is the way it should have gone.

Thanks to the Meat Purveyors for then great years and to Bloodshot for being cool to me and putting on such a great shindig,

The November issues of Vanity Fair magazine has a pretty decent spread on country artists. There’s obvious -Cheesney, Hall and Oates…er…I mean Brooks and Dunn- the legends, Willie, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, Dolly Parton, I still get a heat flush looking at that woman! Then there’s the presence of Mr. Who Cares…Kid Rock? How does this no-talent yankee still get play. I guess there’s a lot of people that want to get to Pam…
Shooter, Shelby Lynn, Dwight, Rosanne, Lyle….all there. I could squabble about the obvious omissions (Hank III, Scott H. Biram, Gary Allen, Old Crow Medicine Show) but whatever…it’s a nice feature.