Lucinda Williams talks to Rolling Stone about her upcoming tour, getting hitched and heading back to the studio.

Currently on the road “in the hinterlands” of the Northeast — playing out-of-the-way gigs to extremely appreciative audiences – Williams and her backing trio have been prepping for the special shows, busting out rare cuts, some of which Williams hasn’t performed in over a decade. “The guys are rehearsing them at sound check and we’re tryin’ them out,” she says. “Last night we played “Big Red Sun Blues” and “The Night’s Too Long” [both from Lucinda Williams] and they sounded great.” She says she has a tendency to compare her earliest songs to her most recent. She says, “I’m thinking, ‘Boy, I’ve come a long way as a songwriter.’

Terry Penney, Sarah Penny, and Edward Andrade of Chad Reilly and the Wild Horse Band died in a head on collision
early Saturday morning driving back from a gig at the Lone Star Saloon in Uvalde, Texas when a two-door Chevy sedan drifted into their lane on Texas 173 at 3:35 a.m. Saturday.

Police believe Rogelio Palacios, 18, of Kerrville, who also died at the scene, was intoxicated that night.

Along with Frank Wantland, 45, a bass player from Ingram, and Carlos Escobedo, 51, a drummer from Ingram, the Penneys formed a Christian rock band, Pathway. The band recently completed its first demo, “These Days”

Terry Penney and Andrade also played together in a classic rock and blues band in Kerrville called Sol Patch along with Bryan Maldonado, 34, a guitarist, and Melissa Weatherly, 44, a vocalist.

Terry Penney and Andrade were known best as “hired guns,” musicians who would fill in when bands were missing players.

Funeral arrangements are still pending for the Penneys and Andrade.

Lyle Lovett is set to release “It’s Not Big It’s Large,” on Aug. 28. The album, produced by Lovett and longtime collaborator Billy Williams, features the singer’s Large Band on 12 new tracks. The four-time Grammy winner will cover everything from country to blues, to folk, jazz and gospel.

A deluxe version of the CD will be released simultaneously and include a DVD with studio footage, according to a press release.

Lovett, who likes to take his time between albums, released his latest, “My Baby Don’t Tolerate,” in 2003. That set, his first collection of original material since 1996’s “Road to Ensenada,” reached No. 7 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart..

Lovett and his Large Band have been touring with K.D. Lang for the last couple of few weeks. Lovett and band will break off for a headlining stint in California, Montana and Idaho. Then in October, Lovett will return home to Texas for a half-dozen shows, including the Big State Music Festival in College Station, which is home to Lovett’s alma mater, Texas A&M University.

Lovett has  also recently announced that he will join Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, John Hiatt, Patty Griffin and Buddy Miller in headlining “Cayamo: A Journey Through Song,” a six-day Carribean cruise scheduled to launch from Miami next February. Lovett’s tour itinerary is listed below.

Lyle Lovett Tour Dates (dates may change, call ahead)

July 2007
29 – Concord, CA – Sleep Train Pavilion *
30 – Saratoga, CA – Mountain Winery
31 – Redding, CA – Cascade Theatre

August 2007
2 – Bozeman, MT – Brick Breeden Fieldhouse
3 – Missoula, MT – Wilma Theatre
4 – Sandpoint, ID – Festival At Sandpoint

October 2007
10-11 – Fort Worth, TX – Bass Performance Hall
12 – Tyler, TX – R. Don Cowan Fine Arts Center
13 – College Station, TX – Big State Music Festival
14 – San Antonio, TX – Majestic Theatre
15 – Austin, TX – Stubb’s Bar-B-Que

February 2008
4-7 – Miami, FL – Carnival “Victory” Cruise

*co-headlining with K.D. Lang

I love the posters done for Asbury Lanes.

New York area country fans should head down to the Bowery Ballroom this Saturday the 28^th to catch Austin’s own Kelly Willis as she comes to the Big Apple to promote her excellent new release Translated From Love. Tell her the Twang sent ya.

Because I’m a DBT fanboy I’ll just post Patterson Hoods recent release from planet Trucker:

HEY Y’ALL:
Just wanted to touch base.
First off, i would like to thank everyone who came out last week and supported our band.
It was a great tour for us with a minimum of bumps and some amazing highlights.
Thanks to everyone who extended hospitality and made us feel so welcome in their towns.

Coming up we are playing Chattanooga this weekend and in a couple of weeks are playing 3 nights opening for the Allman Brothers.
I have some solo dates in late august and a trip out to the west coast and to Texas in September.

Next week we will be in the studio completing our next studio album.
We’re already about 2/3 done and it has gone exceptionally great, as we’ve cut a ton of new songs and the bar is really high on this one.
Many folks have already heard some of the new songs (although we’ve kept a few under wraps too) and we’ve been really happy with the response we’ve been getting out there. I think Cooley has really outdone himself this time.

In September (25) Anti Records is releasing a new album by Bettye LaVette. She is a soul legend who scored her first hit in 1962.
In 1972 she recorded an album at my Dad’s old studio that featured The Muscle Shoals Sound Rhythm Section.
The album was supposed to come out on Atlantic Records and everyone seemed to think that it was going to be her long-awaited breakthrough.
Instead the album was shelved for over 30 years, stalling her career and causing her much personal and professional anguish.
When the album was finally released a few years ago, it was received as a lost soul classic and led to her current great fortunes and record deal with Anti (who also have released great albums by Tom Waits, Merle Haggard, Nick Cave, Mavis Staples and Porter Wagoner).

Bettye LaVette’s new album is called “The Scene of the Crime” and it was co-produced by David Barbe, myself and Bettye.
For this record we took her back to Muscle Shoals (hence the title) where she was backed up by members of Drive-By Truckers along with my dad ( David Hood) and legendary keyboardist Spooner Oldham.
Work on this album led directly to Spooner’s current involvement with DBT.
We recorded it at the legendary FAME Studios there (where we had recorded much of The Dirty South).
I am extremely proud of this album and can’t wait for it to come out.

While we’re on the subject of album releases, I’d like to remind everyone who hasn’t already grabbed it, Jason Isbell’s long awaited solo album is out now and getting rave reviews from all over. I am listed as a co-producer and most of the band plays on it in various forms.

The album is called “Sirens of the Ditch” and is out now on New West Records.
He’s playing about a thousand dates so go check out his great band and show.

In October we will play the third and final leg of our “The Dirt Underneath Tour” which puts us in a mostly acoustic and somewhat stripped down mode for an evening of stories and songs.
Tour dates are up now and the tour will take us to some of our favorite towns and maybe a couple of new ones also.
After this tour it will probably be a really long time before we do this again, so I highly recommend you checking it out if you haven’t already.
It’s been a really special thing for us and has had an incalculable influence on our next album which will be coming out on New West Records in the very first part of 2008.

Guess that does it for now. Thanks again for everyone’s continued support and love.

See you at The Swamp Show.
Patterson Hood
Drive-By Truckers

———————————————————

Note from Jenn:
Hey guys, a couple of things:
First off, please go buy some art from the Sabina Art Auction! There are lots of DBT-related pieces of art there (even some pottery done by my mama!), plus a photo by Michael Stipe, a print by Clive Barker, and much more – and all proceeds go to an excellent cause.

Back to DBT -
I put up new DBT dates for October! All of these will be The Dirt Underneath shows except for the Texas date, which will be ROCK. Also posted a bunch of new Patterson Hood solo dates!

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS DATES
ALL OF THE FOLLOWING SHOWS ARE ROCK SHOWS unless otherwise noted:
Sat July 28 – Chattanooga, TN – K Fest @ Ross Landing
Fri Aug 10 – Charlotte, NC – Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre w/ The Allman Brothers Band
Sat Aug 11 – Raleigh, NC – Alltel Pavilion w/ The Allman Brothers Band
Sun Aug 12 – Virginia Beach, VA – Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre w/ The Allman Brothers Band

The following dates are part of THE DIRT UNDERNEATH unless otherwise noted:
Oct 12 – Birmingham, AL – WorkPlay Theatre
Oct 13 – New Orleans – Tipitina’s
Oct 14 – College Station, TX – Big State Festival at the Texas World Speedway (this will be a ROCK SHOW)
Oct 16 – Tulsa, OK – Cain’s Ballroom
Oct 17 – Lawrence, KS – Granada Theatre
Oct 18 – Iowa City, IA – Englert Theatre
Oct 19 – Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue
Oct 20 – Madison, WI – Barrymore Theatre
Oct 22 – Chicago, IL – Park West
Oct 24 – Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom & Tavern
Oct 25 – State College, PA – The State Theatre
Oct 26 – New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom
Oct 27 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg
Oct 28 – Baltimore, MD – Ram’s Head Live
Patterson Hood Solo Dates:
Fri Aug 24 – Birmingham AL – Birmingham Museum of Art – Art On The Rocks
Sat Aug 25 – Athens GA – Melting Point with Bo Bedingfield
Thu Sep 6 – Seattle WA – Tractor Tavern
Fri Sep 7 – Bellingham WA – NightLight Lounge
Sat Sep 8 – Portland OR – Dante’s (Part of Big Fest)
Tue Sep 11 – San Francisco, CA – Swedish American Hall
Wed Sep 12 – Los Angeles, CA – The Hotel Cafe
Sun Sep 16 – Austin TX – Austin City Limits Festival

Cool! See you at the shows!

Drive By Truckers – Daddy’s Cup (Live at Red Rocks)

It’s no secret that the music industry and undergoing a transmutation of seismic proportions. Illegal downloading, labels suing fans, online radio…this is not your daddy’s Peaches Record store.

The always excellent Chet Flippo over at CMT.com takes a look at the industry through the actions of the purple provocateur Prince and his recent giveaway of his latest CD, Planet Earth, that came bundled free with UK Sunday newspaper The Mail.

Prince’s bread and butter this far into his career is concert tickets, and instead of wasting time, effort and money trying to woo listeners to his new work he uses the music as a means to a promotional end, Prince gives away his latest CD, his Label, , Sony BMG, throws a hissy and refuses to distribute the CD in the UK, the press covers both events and Prince pockets a cool $500,000 from The Mail.

Technology has changed the rules of distribution and consumer behavior and the best the labels could do was to sue the fans and alienate them further. Brilliant! It took a technology company to do what the labels couldn’t stop squabbling long enough to do, make significant cash. It took Steve Jobs to kick their ass, bring them together and show them the future all while taking his cut and selling jillions of iPods.

The Opry entertained everyone within their frequency range on the radio, the Beatles brought their media of the time to bear in getting their music, and their personalities, out by doing Hard Days Night. and Porter Wagoner was using T.V. to get his music, and his Nudie suits, on screens all across America. Past artists looked for new opportunities and they, or their managers, capitalized on them.

Chet’s colleague Patrick Goldstein saw the future and became a casualty when he dared use old media (the newspaper) to advocate for new media business models in conjunction with musical artists willing to offer their music that would then share in advertising revenue.

Artists have to be paid for their work. I do believe that. But I also believe that the rules have changed and income streams and earning potential come from different and untaped places. The field is wide open for those artists willing to look at their world in innovative ways.

Longtime admirer of Buck Owens, Dwight Yoakam has recorded a tribute to the Sherman, TX native on “Dwight Sings Buck,” due Oct. 23 via New West. The track list includes covers of all 11 of Owens’ top five country hits, including “Act Naturally,” “My Heart Skips a Beat” and “I Don’t Care (Just As Long As You Love Me).”

A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Buck Owens American Music Foundation, which serves to safeguard the legacy of Owens and his signature electric Bakersfield sound that arose from California in the 1950s.

“After his death, it was the clearest way I could express my love for him and acknowledge the depth of our friendship” says Yoakam. Owens died in Bakersfield last March at age 76.

Tracklist:

“My Heart Skips a Beat”
“Foolin’ Around”
“I Don’t Care (Just As Long As You Love Me)”
“Only You”
“Act Naturally”
“Down on the Corner of Love”
“Cryin’ Time”
“Above and Beyond”
“Love’s Gonna Live Here”
“Close Up the Honky Tonks”
“Under Your Spell Again”
“Your Tender Loving Care”
“Excuse Me (I Think I’ve Got a Heartache)”
“Think of Me”
“Together Again”

From Billboard – Lucinda Williams fans will soon have a chance to hear the songwriter perform five of her eight studio albums in their entirety, one night at a time. On Sept. 5-6 and 8-10, Williams headlines at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles and will perform in New York Sept. 29-30 at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza and Oct. 2-4 at Town Hall.

The first night of each five-night run will kick off with a performance of 2003’s “World Without Tears.” “Essence” from 2001, “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” from 1998, “Sweet Old World” from 1990 and “Lucinda Williams” from 1988 will be played on subsequent nights.

The album-focused sets will be followed by a more traditional set from Williams and her band (guitarist Doug Pettibone, bassist David Sutton and drummer Butch Norton), including cuts from her most recent album, “West.” Tickets for all shows go on sale tomorrow (July 21)

“West” bowed at No. 14 on The Billboard 200 and topped the Tastemakers tally in March.

I hope Lu is running the board tapes on these show and releases them by Christmas.

This last Thursday the planets lined up just right above the New York skyline and the night was graced by not one, but three excellent performances for a yearning for some fine alt.country faire.

The mighty Drive By Truckers dropped into the city to perform a free show at Clinton Castle national monument at Battery Park to play a free show for the River to River festival. The rainstorms that had come down all week held off but provided a cool, cloudy evening for the show.    

I arrived at 8:00 to the capacity show that was already in progress and in the middle of the song of sexual discord “Panties In Your Purse”. The crowd was a mix of hipster, Wall Street workers that had strolled over from work a few blocks away and folks that look like they had taken their motorcycles or pick-ups from the nether regions of the East to catch the show.

With the “extremely amicable” departure of singer /songwriter/guitarist Jason Isbell I had some trepidation that the remaining band would be lacking in some significant way. I should have known better than to question the resiliency of mighty Truckers. With Athens, Georgia’s John Neff added in as guitarist and pedal steel and did a fine job brandishing his yellow metal flake Telecaster and the legendary Muscle Shoals keyboardist Spooner Oldham was joining the Truckers on some of the dates and added a layer of funk and rhythm I had yet heard at a DBT show.

The classis were mixed with the new cuts from the latest “A Blessing and a Curse” – “Heathens”, “Sounds Better In The Song”, “Sink Hole”, “Puttin’ People On The Moon”, “Bulldozers and Dirt”, “The Night G.G. Allin Came To Town”, “Where The Devil Don’t Stay”, “The Living Bubba”, “Sands Of Iwo Jima”, “Zip City”. There was a nod to New York City with the frequent set standard by the musician, author and poet Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died.” They night finished off with the night with a rousing rendition of Bruce Springteen’s harrowing song of alienation and violence State Trooper.

After the show I headed uptown to the Mercury lounge to catch Ex-Trucker Jason Isbell, but first opening the show was a man whose moniker sets a dizzyingly high level of expectations, Justin Townes Earle.

Being Steve Earle’s first born means growing up under difficult conditions (read the book Hard Core Troubadour for more details on this) and having some big boots to fill. And Justin’s middle name is, of course, in honor of Steve Earle’s musical and chemical, mentor Townes Van Zandt. Even bigger boots.

And judging from this evening’s show Justin is well on his way to being his own man. With only an acoustic guitar and a backing ukulele (didn’t catch the musician’s name) Donning a silver specked western shirt Justin covered quite a bit of his folk-ragtime tinged EP Yuma (which he himself went out front and sold at the door for $10.) The Ghost of Virginia. You Can’t Leave Yuma, Let the Waters Rise, A Desolate Angels Blues – as well as a Buck Owens cover that I did not recognize – All in all a splendid performance from a man with an impeccable Americana pedigree, but doesn’t just ride his namesakes shirt tales.  

During the show Jason Isbell was mulling about in Mercury Lounge’s sold out small space. Now it was his turn to be the man in the front and not off to the right side of Patterson Hood.

Isbell and his Muscle Shoals area band the 400 Unit: Jimbo Hart (bass), Ryan Tillery (drums) and Browan Lollar (guitar) got right down to it with the searing blues-rock “Try” from the newly released Sirens of the Ditch, most of which was covered in this show.

Isbell then launched into a tribute to his former band mates by playing a song he cut with the Drive By Truckers the wrenching “God Damn Lonely Love” – he later made a kin-hearted reference to the truckers earlier show by saying – “I hope you got to catch those guys tonight. I was stuck here getting ready for this.”

Then came “The Assassin” and the excellent “Hurricanes and Hand Grenades” and the coming of age “Grown.”
As with his former band playing the distinctly New York song  “People Who Died” Isbell’s band – specifically guitarist Browan Lollar sang the Talking Heads “Psycho Killer.”

The band then played the band then played the weakly poppy “New Kind of Actress”, which seeing it live didn’t make me like it any more then I did before. Then another nod to the DBT days with “Decoration Day.” The show ended with a blasting version of Thin Lizzy’s  “Jailbreak” which left me exhilarated as well as drained from the long, delirious, night.