Presenting the Hank III Exclusive World Premier Video of “Long Hauls and Close Calls” from the forthcoming new release “DAMN RIGHT, REBEL PROUD” in stores on 10/21 in CD and Double Vinyl format.
I’m posting this as a mirror to the Record Store Day web site which broke the video first.
Hank III - “Long Hauls and Close Calls”
You like girls? You like Country Music? Well sure you do…hell you got a pulse don’t you?!
The always incorrigible Blake Clayton at the REAL country podcast “It Burns When I Pee” features Episode 18 - “Twang Aint Just A Guy Thang” and features some talented (and beautiful) ladies that are out there putting their own THANG in TWANG.
Rachel Brooke is the featured interview. She’s got an amazing voice and a style all her own. There is also featured music from Star Anna, Elizabeth Cook, Carmen Lee, and Little Lisa Dixie.
It wouldn’t be an episode of IBWIP without another great, morally questionable comedy skit. Because of the state of our litigious culture they can’t mention the title of the skit, but it doesn’t stop the brilliant legal minds at IBWIP from doing it anyway.
There is a great giveaway featuring a Rachel Brooke Giveaway Pack and the cast talks about it’s up coming road trip to Cincinnati, OH. for the Metal Farm Magazine Release Party.
Oh and by the way, the official “It Burns When I Pee” web site is up and running (still looking for those Norma Jean nudie pics)…the Net will never be the same! Go show Blake some love and get his podcast and buy a damn shirt or two.
It saddens me to see to see the belongings of greats being sold off when they die. Case in fact the ebony, hand-made Chinese wedding bed previously owned by Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. I guess in the end, it’s all just stuff…
The upside is that after Barry Gibb (yes THAT Barry Gibb) purchased the Cashes’ Hendersonville lake home in 2006 he gave the bed to a friend as a wedding gift. The new owner of the bed moved it so that it wouldn’t be damaged by construction around to the 14,000-square-foot house. As a result of a mishap of that construction the house was destroyed by fire in 2007.
So the bed was saved and is up for sale. Call Rhee Martin (615-253-0119) if you’re interested.
Amanda Petrusich has interviewed Liz Phair and Feist for Pitchfork.tv, not she turnes her talents to documenting the vast and rugged territory that is Americana.
From Pitchfork.com: “It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music. (Her first book was last year’s entry on Nick Drake’s Pink Moon in the 33 1/3 series.) Part memoir and travelogue, part sociological study and piece of criticism, It Still Moves features stories and interviews that explore the history and current state of Americana, “from Elvis to Iron and Wine, the Carter Family to Animal Collective, Johnny Cash to Will Oldham,” according to a press release.”
She’s taken on quite a task here but I look forward to reading “It Still Moves.”
A few events celebrating It Still Moves’ publication are scheduled throughout the coming months.
It Still Moves events:
09-11 Brooklyn, NY - Book Court
09-18 Brooklyn, NY - WORD
09-19 Nashville, TN - Americana Music Association Festival
09-23 New York, NY - KGB Bar
10-09 Oxford, MS - Thacker Mountain Radio
10-10 Nashville, TN - Southern Festival of Books
11-01 Austin, TX - Texas Book Festival
Straight from the Truckers:
The Drive-By Truckers are pleased to announce a 23-date co-headlining tour with their friends The Hold Steady. The bands will alternate who closes the shows throughout the tour, pre-sale begins Tuesday, August 19 (http://rockandrollmeanswell.frontgatetickets.com) and the public on-sale starts Friday, August 22.
The tour is aptly named the Rock and Roll Means well tour. The name of the tour is taken from a lyric of one of Mike Cooley’s songs, “Marry Me.” The line is one of Craig Finn’s favorite lyrics (which he often quotes) “rock and roll means well but can’t help telling young boys lies.”
“We’re all really excited to tour with The Hold Steady. They’re one of the greatest bands out there now and their new album is amazing. Craig writes songs I wish I’d written,” says Patterson Hood. Finn credits seeing DBT live on their Southern Rock Opera tour as the inspiration for him to start playing music again. USA Today rec ently called Southern Rock Opera “this century’s best rock album.”
The Drive-By Truckers have just wrapped a sold out tour of Europe and will play the Outside Lands Music Festival this weekend in San Francisco. Their latest album, Brighter Than Creations Dark was released in January and debuted at #37 on the Billboard Top 200 Chart.
Drive-By Truckers & The Hold Steady - Fall Tour Dates
Thu 30-Oct Louisville, KY Coyotes @ City Block
Fri 31-Oct Nashville, TN Ryman
Auditorium
Sat 1-Nov Atlanta, GA Tabernacle
Sun 2-Nov Tallahassee, FL The Moon @ FSU
Mon 3-Nov Raleigh, NC Lincoln Theater
Wed 5-Nov State College, PA The State Theatre
Thu 6-Nov New York, NY Terminal 5
Fri 7-Nov New York, NY Terminal 5
Sat 8-Nov Philadelphia, PA Electric Factory
Sun 9-Nov Boston, MA Orpheum Theater
Tue 11-Nov Toronto, ON Phoenix Theater
Wed 12-Nov Pittsburgh, PA Carnegie Music Hall
Thu 13-Nov Bloomington, IN Bluebird
Fri 14-Nov Chicago, IL Riviera Theater
Sat 15-Nov Minneapolis, MN First Avenue
Sun 16-Nov Minneapolis, MN First Avenue
Wed 19-Nov Boise, ID Big Easy
Thu 20-Nov Seattle, WA Showbox
Fri 21-Nov Seattle, WA Showbox
Sat 22-Nov Portland, OR Crystal Ballroom
Sun 23-Nov San Francisco, CA The Fillmore
Mon 24-Nov San Francisco, CA The Fillmore
Tue 25-Nov Los Angeles, CA Wiltern
To celebrate the August 19th release of “Gravity’s Our Enemy” Cadillac Sky and Skaggs Family Records will be holding two, count ‘em, two release parties.
The first takes place in Nashville, Tennessee where those C-Sky’s boys will take the stage at the prestigious Grand Ole Opry. The show starts at 9pm. The second will take place Wednesday, August 20th in Fort Worth, Texas, hometown of the band, at Lola’s. The party gets started at 7:30pm (admission is free with purchase of the cd), so get there early to get your place in line!
If you can’t make it to a show in person Cadillac Sky will bring the party to you. Just log on to www.skaggsfamilyrecords.com on Tuesday at 9:00pm (Central) and witness the birth of “Gravity’s Our Enemy” live on the webcast as it happens.
Cadillac Sky - “Born Lonesome”
Anybody that has read this blog for more than three seconds knows that I only review music that I like. I’m from Texas. I was taught if you don’t have anything good to say keep your trap shut. People work hard on the music they produce and I respect that even if what they do may not be my shot of whiskey. That said, I would like to review the new release by Jamey Johnson three times to show how much I like it. I would like to but I was also taught to not repeat myself. So here goes…
Singer/songwriter Jamey Johnson is part of a movement that could be considered the new outlaws. Artists like Ryan Bingham, Hank Williams III, Shooter Jennings and the band Eleven Hundred Springs look back on country music’s diverse legacy (as well as a potent shot of rock thrown in for spice) to build a new movement that champions sincerity and grit over image and marketing.
These young’uns are not afraid to wear their influences on their sleeves and, honoring country music’s history, willing to put their personal stories- happy, sad, sordid - to music. While celebrating country musics roots these artists ride precariously close to what has been labeled alt.country/Americana/roots music. These sub-genres are considered the aural ghetto of what the big Nash-Vagas music and mainstream country music radio deem worthy of the country music label. Some radio programmers have even described the sound as “too country.” The nerve!
The sound of “”That Lonesome Song”" is not as spare (or groundbreaking) as Willie Nelson’s “Red Headed Stranger,” but like Willie did at the time of RHS’s release, I can imagine Johnson receiving feedback from the Nash-Vegas label gatekeepers that these demos sound good, but when can we record of the final songs? (To their credit Mercury Nashville seems to have had the sense to leave the songs as is.)
Johnson found work early in Nashville cutting demos for other songwriters so he knows when the varnish is applied and how the official way a Nashville record is suppose to sound. He has purposely thrown all that out the window for something truer and rougher around the edges. The occasional flub and musicians chewing fat is all here in all it’s beautiful imperfection. Johnson is backed by exceptional Kent Hardly Playboys (Kent Hardly Play, Boys - get it?)
Imperfection is also a theme that runs throughout this release, Johnson’s own. Sure the songs on “That Lonesome Song” sound lonesome (It’s intellectually lazy to mention as much, it’s right there in the title!) but they also have a vein gritty resilience running throughout. Ex-Marine Johnson pulls no punches mining his life for songs and there was some hell to be sure, booze, drugs, divorce, risking his golden-boy Nashville career (Johnson wrote “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” which was a hit for Trace Adkins and George Strait had recorded his song “Give It Away”), it’s all here encapsulated in 13 bleak cuts of cathartic beauty. And after it all he sounds like he’s enjoying life.
The release starts with appropriately enough with the sound of a prison door being closed behind Johnson as he leaves jail and is told to “Stay out of trouble.” I suppose heeding that advice led to his nearly year long seclusion as well as this body of work.
“High Cost Of Living” follows with it’s woozy pedal steel and tells a stark tale of substance abuse taking its toll on his life, his health and his relationship with his wife. “The high cost of living ain’t nothing like the cost of living high” Johnson sings in his plain Alabamian baritone drawl that advises us to “Leave that stuff alone.” The song then dissolves into guitar and pedal steel searing swapping solos. “Angel” is a lost-love lament done in slow-motion classic Texas waltz style that aches with longing, regret and a weeping pedal steel.
“Place Out On The Ocean” is a breezy beach song Kenny Chesney would never have the subtlety or sense to record. It’s like Guy Clark went some time in Key West and came home to Austin and wrote a ditty. Johnson even uses the cliched hip-hop couplet of “Mercedes” and “Ladies” and somehow just fits naturally.
As a humorously black foil to the song “Angel,” “Mowin Down The Roses” kicks off like a slinky funk tune complete with a mumbled “Crank it, aw here it comes” but shows it’s dark hillbilly humor right soon as the subject catalogs the remembrances he is dutifully trashing in his estranged’s absence.
“The Door Is Always Open” is eerily reminiscent of Waylon Jennings at his rollicking dusty best in yet another thematic turn of events as he assures his ex that she will always be welcomed back in his arms.
“In Color” is probably the most single-worthy (whatever that is) of the release. It’s a nostalgic mid-tempo tune on lineage and recollection that comes off as genuine, and stops short of cloying sentimentality by playing it straight.
“The Last Cowboy” begins with a distant tolling bell and then laments the vanishing world of great country music and the culture that cultivates it. In a nip if not a bite at the hand that fed him Waylon Jennings, John Wayne, Gene Autry and Roy Rodgers are name checked as heroes that have been forgotten by Nash-Vegas establishment. The title song again conjures up visions of Waylon Jennings at his forlorn, ornery best.
“Between Jennings And Jones” concludes the release, It is a song that was derived of after a friend of Johnson’s said he found his first release in the CD store “Between Jennings And Jones” and the song recounts Johnson’s history in Nashville with it’s highest highs and lower then lows, with a few laughs and memories thrown in for good measure.
I had the pleasure of meeting Jamey Johnson a couple of years ago after seeing him perform at Nashville’s legendary Bluebird Cafe (where he played in a guitar pull with my uncle Tony Lane) and he genuinely seemed like a good guy that was loving life (and tequila, a few shots of which I enjoyed along with him) and living no wilder then Southern boy who had come into his own. It’s a shame that he had to fall when he was riding high but if “That Lonesome Song” is any indication of how he’s doing I’d say he’s back in the saddle.
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