Ashton Shepherd - Sounds So Good (MCA Nashville) - Like her Texas counterpart Miranda Lambert, Alabama native Ashton Shepherd serves up a gritty remedy for the sugary pop-confection emanating most recently from Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift. Like Gretchen Wilson (without the goofy Muzik Mafia taint) Shepherd is a hell raising gal that calibrates good loving and a good time. Sure the release has producer Buddy Cannon’s Nashville sheen ladled over it like he does Kenny Chesney’s slop, but Shepherd shines through it with bad-ass glory. “Takin’ Off This Pain” puts all the cards on the table as a testament to women’s love woes. “I Ain’t Dead Yet” is a lovely Texas waltz about yearnings for good times in spite of domestic and maternal obligations. “Old Memory” is a slow burner that dwells on lost love that makes you forget the lady is only 21 years old. This is unabashed country music gold!

Dawn Landes – Fireproof (Cooking Vinyl) - Brooklyn by way of Louisville, Kentucky native singer/songwriter/producer Dawn Landes travels the same quirk-folk roads as her contemporaries Feist, Joanna Newsom and Chan Marshall (Cat Power) and like them she makes music that is both bold and subtle. On her second album, Fireproof, Landes hit a spot between the traditional and the contemporary. Like T. Bone Burnett producing The Breeders.

Singing with a voice that reflects a whispery-fragile grace reminiscent of Hem’s Sally Ellyson (some of the members of Hem appear on the release as well as members of The Earlies) and Suzanne Vega. Landes also plays everything from guitars, Optigans to bells and uses her experience as a producer to blend and fade between styles while preserving an overall mood of beauty veined with menace.

“Bodyguard” opens kicks things off like some kind of Appalachian beatnik mutation with it’s circular phrasings of “Where’s my bodyguard..” and “I saw a man, I saw a man, I saw a man..” it sublimely creepy. “Picture Show” has a Tom Waits scratchy junkyard carnival vibe that wobbles and skews under beat poetry. My preference for music with an open smile instead of a smirk and songs like “Tired Of This Life” and and the pedal steel tinged “Twilight” exhibit a simple, honest beauty that is reminiscent of Joni Mitchell.

I don’t often review singles on this blog but I heard something recently off an album that I won’t be reviewing in it’s entirety so I thought I would give it  a shot.  I was flipping channels over the weekend (and enjoying the Houston Rockets winning 22 in a row!)  and I came across Snoop Dogg discussing his new release “Ego Tripping.” During the snippet I heard the interview-bot mention that there was a country song on the new release.” “Yeah I love Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson.” Snoop’s well known enjoyment of the chronic helped me to make sense of the Willie appreciation…but Cash?! Really?

Now admittedly I don’t know much about rap music (I relay on C-Dog as my source for that) but I’ve always believed that rap muisc, just like folk, punk and country music is, at it’s core, working class music telling the stories from the common person’s view. Whether for fun or for commiseration it’s all for the folks.
Sure when the labels, managers and marketing department gets done with it it sure doesn’t seem like it but there is a common thread to be found running through Minor Threat, Public Enemy as well as Hank Williams.

That said the story that Snoops song “My Medicine” is defiantly more in the fun column and is about, shocking I know, getting stoned. The laconic shuffle (with guitar provided by Whitey Ford AKA Everlast, no stranger to the rap/country world)  brings Snoop to start out with respect with a shout out to “My Main Man Johny Cash. A real American gangster” and then moves into spoken delivery stretched over Whiteys bottle neck guitar.  “My Medicine”’s feeling and take on the healing effect of the occasional mood elevator reminds me of Willie Nelson and Kenny Chesney’s excellent front porch jam “Worry B Gone.” As Snoop says “The more dedicated, the more medicated.”

With all the carpetbaggers storming Nashville for easy money and  demographic diversification I can’t imagine Snoop thought that his rep really needed him to do a country tinged song on his latest release. I respect him for doing it with the spirit many of those others will never reach.

My Medicine (mp3)

Dixie Lullaby  : A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South (Free Press/Simon & Schuster) by Mark Kemp

Kemp is a native of South Carolina and born in 1960 and came of age at the time the civil rights movement kicked into the high gear and the old Jim Crow order of the South was breaking down. During a time when kids are trying to find their identity it was even more difficult for a son of the South during those turbulent times.

Kemp found refuge in the then burgeoning Southern rock bands, led by the Macon, Georgia’s Allman Brothers Band and followed soon after my Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Charlie Daniels Band, Black Oak Arkansas, Molly Hatchet, Blackfoot, the Marshall Tucker band. Though also infatuated with many of the British Invasion bands these other bands were
tapping subject matter in styles that working class white Southerners could use to help the transition of identity in the New South.

The seemingly paradoxical identity, what Patterson Hood of the Drive By Truckers refers to on the bands opus “Southern Rock Opera” as the “Duality of the Southern Thing” manifested itself in a generation of young Southerners that are both proud of their environment but ashamed at the history that haunts it. Kemp grows to reject Southern music and much of his heritage, moves to New York City where he lands, and due largely to drug problem loses, his dream job at Rolling Stone Magazine. Kemp’s personal journey is nicely paralleled with his Southern travels with his Dad and interviews with musicians and
key individuals like Charlie Daniels, Warren Haynes of the Allman Brothers Band and Gov’t Mule, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ed King and so many others. Some of the highlights of the book is the conversations with Phil Walden, former manager for Otis Redding and the Allman Bothers and founder of the fabled Capricorn Records and his 1992 interview with testy Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson who apparently bristles at the Southern Rock moniker.

I’m within a few years of Mr. Kemp and grew up in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, and I can attest that the stories in “Dixie Lullaby” ring true to experience in leaving the South for New York City (as Kemp did) and carrying a sort of defensive pride for my roots. This comes out most prevalently was what I like to call the “ugly sister effect.” I can talk shit about Texas all day long (corrupt politicians abuse of the death penalty for one), but it makes me mad when others not from the South, and sometimes never been South of the Mason/Dixon, talks trash about the region. Like I can say my sister’s ugly (she’s not though, sorry sis) but by god if you do you’ll get your ass handed to you. Complex, no?

Dixie Lullaby is a great piece of Southern cultural history well told.

Just when your eyes have started to glaze over with all the talk about Elliot Spitzer being the biggest dumb-ass on the planet or if Hillary and Obama aught to just be put into the steel-cage death-match of democracy, It Burns When I Pee has released Episode #13 the “Titties and Country Music” release.

Blake had the good sense to take my advice and got Doyle Mayfield from The Doyle and Debbie Show on to tell tales about his childhood and life performing with his “3^rd Debbie.”

There is also a feature on CMT’s  My Big Redneck Wedding and choice cuts from fine artists like The Pine Box Boys, Malcolm Hocombe, Gerry Stanek, and last but not least Roscoe Fletcher. So get over to IBWIP find out what real country music is all about and get yer Hank on!!!

Charlie Daniels has invited Shooter Jennings to open a series of Daniels’ Volunteer Jam concerts this year. April 11-12 in Harris, Mich. the bill also features .38 Special (which includes Donnie Van Zant, of the country duo Van Zant.)

The origial Volunteer Jam took place in 1972 was suppose to a one-off showcase of Daniel’s friend’s which just happed to be the best Southern Rock bands of the time which including the Allman Brothers Band and the Marshall Tucker Band.

I saw the roots-rock group the BoDeans open for U2 in Ft. Worth for the Joshua Tree tour and they tore up the stage. The DoDeans are back with a new studio release, “Still” which is the eighth studio album for the band and is releasing it via their own record label, He & He LP. The disc was produced by T-Bone Burnett and features 12 new tracks. The band is touring this spring in support of their new album.

The first leg of the tour kicks off at SXSW in Austin, TX, and will cover the eastern part of the country. The group plans to visit the western half of the U.S. in a forthcoming second leg of the tour early this summer.

03/12/2008 - Threadgill’s - Austin, Texas
03/13/2008 - SXSW @ Bourbon Rocks - Austin, Texas
03/21/2008 - House Of Blues - Dallas, Texas
03/22/2008 - House Of Blues - New Orleans, Louisiana
03/24/2008 - Exit In - Nashville, Tennessee
03/25/2008 - Variety Playhouse - Atlanta, Georgia
03/26/2008 - The Handlebar - Greenville, South Carolina
03/27/2008 - McGlohon Theatre - Charlotte, North Carolina
03/28/2008 - House Of Blues - Orlando, Florida
03/29/2008 - House Of Blues - Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
03/31/2008 - Toad’s Place - Richmond, Virginia
04/02/2008 - 9:30 Club - Washington, DC
04/03/2008 - Fillmore NY @ Irving Plaza - New York, New York
04/04/2008 - World Café Live - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
04/05/2008 - The Chance - Poughkeepsie, New York
04/07/2008 - Mr. Small’s Theater - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
04/08/2008 - 20th Century Theater - Cincinnati, Ohio
04/10/2008 - University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, Wisconsin
04/11/2008 - The Vogue - Indianapolis, Indiana
04/12/2008 - House Of Blues - Cleveland, Ohio
04/14/2008 - Royal Oak Theater - Detroit, Michigan
04/15/2008 - The Intersection - Grand Rapids, Michigan
04/17/2008 - Paramount Theater - St. Cloud, Minnesota
04/18/2008 - People’s Court - Des Moines, Iowa
04/19/2008 - Washington Pavilion - Sioux Falls, South Dakota

If your in the 5 boroughs next Tuesday head on over to the Rockwood Music Hall to catch singer/songwriter Joe Whyte and his band. Whyte won’t be playing these parts until May so ya’ll head on over!

Tuesday, March 11
Rockwood Music Hall
196 Allen St., NYC
8pm
FREE!!

Music blog Aquarium Drunkard tracks the beginnings and evolution of the alt.country genre and the current correlation of No Depression magazine’s imminent demise and the new release of a deluxe edition of Whiskeytown’s Stranger’s Almanac.

An emotional version of one of country music’s finest love songs by one of country music’s best male/fames duet singers.

The mighty Drive By Truckers will make their 3rd appearance next week, Tuesday, March 11th, on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Oh how I hope Triumph the Insult Dog sings back up.