Head over to a favorite blog of mine, NineBullets.net, while they have a tasty live Breathru Radio session from Lucero posted for download.

As I’ve mentioned before Nonesuch Records will release Emmylou Harris’ new album “All I Intended to Be” (Nonesuch) on June 10. This will be her first solo effort since 2003’s Stumble Into Grace.

Listen to some samples of the release at the Nonesuch site.

Here is the track listing:

1. Shores of White Sand (Jack Wesley Routh)
2. Hold On (Jude Johnstone)
3. Moon Song (Patty Griffin)
4. Broken Man’s Lament (Mark Germino)
5. Gold (Emmylou Harris)
6. How She Could Sing the Wildwood Flower (Emmylou Harris, Kate and Anna McGarrigle)
7. All That You Have is Your Soul (Tracy Chapman)
8. Take That Ride (Emmylou Harris)
9. Old Five and Dimers Like Me (Billy Joe Shaver)
10. Kern River (Merle Haggard)
11. Not Enough (Emmylou Harris)
12. Sailing Round the Room (Emmylou Harris, Kate and Anna McGarrigle)
13. Beyond the Great Divide (J.C. Crowley and Jack Wesley Routh)

Emmylou is currently on tour:

6/6/2008 Morrison, CO Red Rocks Ampitheatre
6/8/2008 Lawrence, KS Wakarusa Festival
6/14/2008 Lisle, IL Morton Arboretum
6/16/2008 Toronto, Canada Massey Hall
6/18/2008 New York, NY Town Hall
6/19/2008 New York, NY Town Hall
6/20/2008 Oyster Bay, NY The Planting Fields Arboretum
6/22/2008 Vienna, VA Wolf Trap Filene Center
6/23/2008 Charlottesville, VA Charlottesville Pavilion
6/25/2008 Raleigh, NC North Carolina Museum of Art
6/27/2008 Atlanta, GA Chastain Park Amphitheatre
7/17/2008 Avon, CO Vilar Center for the Arts at Beavercreek Resort)
7/19/2008 Alta, WY Grand Targhee Americana Festival
7/20/2008 Salt Lake City, UT Red Butte Garden Ampitheatre
7/23/2008 Vancouver, Canada Orpheum Theater
7/31/2008 San Diego, CA Humphrey’s Concerts By the Bay

I (justifiably) bitch a lot about Music City and tier ongoing campaign to strangle any beauty and creativity out of
country music, but one tradition I do like is the idea of the annual Fan Fare (my contrarian nature won’t allow me
to use the new corporate friendly title “CMA Music Festival”)

This years event features 30 hours of autograph signings, 100 hours of live music, 400 Country Music artists and
celebrities.”

Now 90% of these “Country Music artists and celebrities” I wouldn’t cross the street to meet, but I do applaud the
populist spirit of the event (as well as inviting Dwight Yoakam back after an unconscionable 20 year absence.)This is
something you won’t find in any other genre and it speaks to country music’s respect for it’s fans. Now if Music City
only reflected that same deference to tradition and fans’ intelligence when producing the music.

Props to retired oil man Larry Berry of Chandler, Texas for returning George Jones’ stolen acoustic Martin-000 guitar which he bought for $10 from two boys at his Fort Worth, Texas, apartment complex in 1962(!)

Berry said he’s been “trying to reach Jones since the 1960s to return it, and finally got through this year.”

The Possum will recieive the long lost instrument on June 14 when Berry will pesent him with the guitar at a performance in Bossier City, La.

What made Berry think that the guitar he bought belonged to Jones? The guitar’s strap had Jones’ name on it with streaks of “White Lightning.”

Yeah, that would do it!

Dana Jennings, New York Times editor and author of the excellent “Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music” (review forthcoming) gives the NYT Paper Cuts blog his country music playlist (Living With Music:A Playlist by Dana Jennings. ) There’s some interesting choices from a guy that obviously loves the music.

The Boston Globe has a nice feature (He’s country but he jumps genres with irreverence) on alt.country journeyman Robbie Fulks. A excerpt:

Fulks, who plays a duo show with his friend Robbie Gjersoe at Club Passim tomorrow night, says that hearing Chet Atkins do Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” on “A Prairie Home Companion” gave him validation for his obsessive urge to demolish musical barriers.

Curiously, he’s both country to the core and an incorrigible iconoclast. “I feel it’s an ongoing tension in my life,” says the singer, who parlayed the considerable buzz of his mid-’90s arrival into a steady, if largely under-the-radar, career as an “alt-country” mainstay.

The tension, he says from his Chicago home, isn’t between country music and everything else as much as it is between “genre and experiment.” Given the choice, he’ll jump the wall every time.

Robbie Fulks “Cigarette State” – Corporate Country Sucks

The Village Voice has a Q&A with Jon Langford of the Waco Brothers and the Mekons (playing the Highline Ballroom this evening.) Langford talks about the Waco Brother’s beginnings, his time on Bloodshot Records and their recent release Waco Express: Live & Kickin’ at Schuba’s Tavern.

Waco Brothers, “Death of Country Music”

The Washington Post sits down for some Mexican food and beer with Texas’ own James McMurtry appropriately titled “His Songs? Bleak. His Future? Bright.” McMurtry talks about his new release “Just Us Kids,” his growing popularity and the sorry state of America.  A sample:

His lyrics focus on broken dreams and hard realities. “I tend to look at the dark cloud behind the silver lining,” he says. (The songwriter Robert Earl Keen says that when McMurtry sits down to write, it’s as if “another tragedy is about to unfold.”)

Whatever he is — bard in a bar band; songwriter’s songwriter; hell, writer’s writer (Stephen King will talk your ear off about him and called McMurtry  “the truest, fiercest songwriter of his generation” ed) — McMurtry, at 46, has crafted one of the year’s best albums in “Just Us Kids,” which artfully mixes provocative portraits with political screeds, including the Bush-bashing “Cheney’s Toy.”

James McMurtry – Ruby & Carlos -  the Granada Theater Dallas, TX

• The New York Times has an extensive review of Joe Nick Patoski’s biography, “Willie Nelson: An Epic Life.”
• Ted Hacker, he producer of next weekends BamaJam festival (featuring Hank Williams Jr., Miranda Lambert, Ricky Skaggs and much more), and a former country music manager for the Oak Ridge Boys, Diamond Rio and Darryl Worley details the steps it took to put the festival together.
• Ben Cisneros at the 9513 has nice things to say about Dallas’ Eleven Hundred Springs’ new release “Country Jam.”
• And lots of folks have lots to say, lots, about Jessica Simpson’s newest country music single “Come On Over.” The consensus seems to run toward (and I agree) that Jessica is doing to the song what she did to Tony Romo’s chances for the Superbowl.
• There is some talk about bringing back Austins’ legendary Armadillo World Headquarters. This is the place where, after leaving Nashville, Willie Nelson focused on remaking himself as the hippy/redneck savant as we know him today. (thanks to Linda at Still Is Still Moving – the #1 fan site on Willie Nelson)