Popmatters.com has a review of the DVD “Bill Monroe: Father of Bluegrass Music” which they discribe as “Informative and educational, intriguing and entertaining, part American history lesson, part biography and part concert film…”

The good folks over at The 9513 brought to my attention that current Twang Nation favorite Jamey Johnson will be joining Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, and Kenny Chesney (?!) for the 2008 Farm Aid music festival in New England on Sept. 20. Nashville Scene (High Lonesome Sound) and CMT.com(Don’t Tell Jamey Johnson That He’s “Too Country”) both offer features on Johnson.

The guardian.co.uk Music Blog has a brief run down of the current state of American alt.country/Americana scene (Are you ready for (more of) the country?)

Chrissie Hynde of the bad the Pretenders states that the bands first new album in six years (”Break up the Concrete”) will be “moving in a country direction.” Of all the country music carpet bagging that has been happening recently I have to say that a musician with Hynde’s credibility makes me think she’ll do it right, but she is a vegitarian, so does this mean that Jessica Simpson has to get another t-shirt?

From Country Standard Time: Don Helms, pedal steel guitarist for Hank Williams’ Drifting Cowboys, died this morning at 81. He is featured on more than 100 Williams recordings. Helms played a lap steel (also known as “Hawaiian steel”) guitar. This type of steel guitar lacks the foot pedals found on the more modern pedal steel guitar, which did not come into prominence in country music until after Hank Williams’ death in 1953.

Now go put on a Hank Sr. song (”So Lonesome I Could Cry” is a good one) and listen to the distict wail of Helms’ pedal steel.

A Smithsonian Institution exhibit on the roots of American music opens today in Shepherdsville, KY.

The Tennessean.com has a piece on a guy I like and will keep my eye on, Montgomery, Ala., native Jamey Johnson.

The New York Times reviews Loretta Lynne’s recent show in New Jersey. Even though Lynne was ailing from a recent back operation the crowd was charmed and captivated.

Hot on the heels of “The Plague” which was released just last March Madison, WI based Gothic-Country band Those Poor Bastards will release “Satan is Watching” this October. Just in time for All Hallows Eve, kiddies.

For the vinylphiles among you, this will be the first TPB release offered as a limited edition 12″. Track liting will be released when the final release date is ironed out.

Those Poor Bastards - Pills I Took

We all know that ringtones are the new 45 rpm and it appears that country music is gaining some ground in the sales of “polyphonic,” synthesizer-like reproductions of a melody, and the much more popular “mastertone” or “realtone” format, which is excerpted from an actual recording. according to Nielsen RingScan, mastertone buys accounted for 91 percent of ringtones sold last year in the United States.But so far, the big money is not quite there:

“Ringtone royalties are minuscule in the overall scheme of things,” Todd Ellis, Licensing Manager for Sony/ATV Music Publishing said. “Compared to CD sales, they’re still rather small. But they are gaining some significant income, especially in the pop and R&B worlds. Country has been a little bit slow to catch up. The really large [Country] hits will do well, ringtone-wise, for income, but the big money is still with R&B and rap songs. Ballads don’t usually do as well as ringtones because they don’t sound as good as upbeat songs that have a real catchy chorus or a cool intro.”

Apparently being hip enough to use your phone as a lame music player does not automatically mean you have forward thinking taste in music as Rascal Flatts and Carrie Underwood lead in country music sales of mastertone rings. No thanks, I’ll stick with my Willie Nelson “On The Road Again” ringtone when you hit me, yo.

Country music icon Glen Campbell is set to release an album of cover songs that have “personally moved and inspired him.”

The ironically Titled “Meet Glen Campbell” (c’mon, it’s a covers album, is the listener really meeting Campbell?) will include Travis’ “Sing,” Tom Petty’s “Angel Dream” and “Walls,” The Replacements’ “Sadly Beautiful,” U2’s “All I Want Is You,” The Velvet Underground’s “Jesus,” and Jackson Browne’s “These Days,” among others.

Recorded in March and April at The Recording Studio and Jim Henson Studios in Los Angeles, Meet Glen Campbell is produced by Julian Raymond (Rosanne Cash, Fastball, Shawn Mullins, Wallflowers) with engineer/co-producer Howard Willing. The album  features musical contributions by Campbell contemporaries as well as younger rock and alt-country artists who joined him in the studio, including Cheap Trick’s Robin Zander, Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. and Jason Faulkner from Jellyfish, and Chris Chaney from Jane’s Addiction. Campbell’s sons and daughters, who regularly perform with their father, recorded backing vocals for the tracks.

Meet Glen Campbell full track list:
1.  Sing [Travis]
2.  Walls [Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers]
3.  Angel Dream [Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers]
4.  Times Like These [Foo Fighters]
5.  These Days [Jackson Browne]
6.  Sadly Beautiful [The Replacements]
7.  All I Want Is You    [U2]
8.  Jesus [Velvet Underground]
9.  Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) [Green Day]
10. Grow Old With Me [John Lennon]

Also in new release news Old Crow Medicine Show  are set to release Tennessee Pusher on September 23rd.Listen to the first single “Caroline” at the band’s MySpace page.

Glen Campbell in Concert-Wichita Lineman

No Depression magazine, the bible of alt/roots/country/Americana music and lifestyle for thirteen years is making a comeback of sorts. Nodpression.com will be relaunched in late September and will be edited by the magazine’s founding co-editor Peter Blackstock and will include regular blogs by many of the magazine’s most frequent contributors, including Blackstock and fellow founding co-editor Grant Alden.

The new site will also include record reviews and live reviews, features on emerging artists, news updates, the current web site’s popular upcoming-releases list, reader-participant discussion forums — and, perhaps most significantly, a vast and cross-referenced archive featuring almost all the content from No Depression magazine’s 75 issues published from 1995 to 2008.

In preparation for the September relaunch, the website is promoting the No Depression Founders Circle, a way for fans and supporters of the magazine to take a financial stake in the new web site’s continued existence. I think this is a good move that I wish had been taken back before the magazine folded. I for one would have paid for the coverage ND provided that I could not find gathered between a set of magazine covers.

In my opinion ND lost their way when the publishers started to think about their audience as a demographic instead of a congregation of sorts. They went from having John Prine and Johnny Cash on thre cover to featuring the then alt.rock flavor of the month The Shins. Like a politician, they attempted to move to the mainstream, toward popularity with the mainstream and their pocketbooks, at the riisk of alietnating thier hard-core and reverent followers. Someone should have told them that a vast majority of Americans distrust politicians and lawyers for just this very reason, they appear to stand for nothing but whatever will help them win at the moment. That is almost exactly the definition of shiftless. The congirigation lost faith after that and hard times became even harder.

As an added incentive for getting eyeballs, folks who sign up for the website’s mailing list at NoDepression.com will be eligible to win an Epiphone DR-100 Vintage Sunburst acoustic guitar which has been provided by Epiphone. Great email bait! I singed up this morning!

Also a new No Depression “bookazine” (to be designated No Depression #76) also will be available in print-form on the shelves of bookstores nationwide in October. The publication, a joint venture between ND and the University of Texas Press, will be issued twice annually (every fall and spring). Blackstock and Alden will serve as co-editors, with Alden also reprising his magazine role as art director. A handful of book-release events at bookstores and record stores nationwide are also in the works. I appuad this effort and look forward to it, at the same time I wonder why something like this couldn’t have been applied to the magazine in it’s former incarnation.

All of this is no surprise for anyone that read the publishers online adios to the magazine: “Plans to expand the publication’s website (www.nodepression.net) with additional content will move forward, though it will in no way replace the print edition.” Why Grant and Peter weren’t doing this in conjunction with the print version of ND all along is a mystery to me, but I say better late than never. Get over there, sign up for their emails and send them cash. The world that I cover and we all love is a better place with them in it.

• The Americana Music Association has released an initial list of arists that will be playing around Nashville during their music festival and conferencethis September 17-20 2008. Some of the performers will be: Jim Lauderdale, Mike Farris, Kane Welch Kaplin, The everybodyfields, The SteelDrivers, Tift Merritt, Jason & the Scorchers, Joe Ely, Malcolm Holcombe, Rosie Flores, Band of Heathens, Laura Cantrell, Cross Canadian Ragweed, James McMurtry, Jason Isbell and much much more.

• The drop date for Chris knight’s new album, Heart of Stone, has been pushed back to September 2nd due to “production issues.” Guest musicians on Heart of Stone include Mike McAdam (Steve Earle, Radney Foster) on various guitars, Keith Christopher (Georgia Satellites, The Yayhoos) on bass, Tammy Rodgers (The SteelDrivers) fiddle and vocals, mandolin and banjo, and Michael Webb (The Wreckers, Allison Moorer) on B-3 organ, piano and accordion. Producer Dan Baird also contributes on guitar and vocals. Knight says of Heart of Stone “It might just be my best. For some reason, there’s a cohesiveness here that’s not like anything I’ve done before. But at the same time, it’s not real predictable. There’s a lot of texture to it as well, but it’s a simple record. I don’t know how that happened. But I know it when I hear it.”
• The documentary “Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music” will air on PBS stations tomorrow night. The film is directed by Robert Elfstrom and is a “cinema vérité look at Cash.”  PBS produced the documentary almost 40 years ago (!) Robert Elfstrom also takes some time to answer some questions for the the Tennessean (via the 9513)