• Been craving some fresh tracks from that “dirty old one man band” from Austin, Texas Scott H. Biram? Ivy League Sessions has the remedy for ails you friends. Three unreleased cuts fresh from the man an 18 Wheelercouldn’t kill.

• Speaking of Austin, the good folks at the exceptional 9513 have a review of Melonie Cannon’s new sophomore release, And the Wheels Turn. 9513 thinks the the release might teach the pop-country divas currently in vogue a thing or two about writing and performing.

• You know Joe The Plumber, right? Joe Wurzelbacher is the an Ohio plumber (though has no plumber’s license and apparently believes he doesn’t need on) that approached Barack Obama to ask how his tax plans might effect a plumbing company he was looking to buy and was then mentioned by McCain in the the last Presidentail debate 12 times as an example of the working class? Seems he’s using his new found celibrity status to seek a country music recording contract…oh and to bash Obama on Isreal.

As the 2004 2004 Presidential Election was drawing near James McMurtry gave away a free download of his state of the union anthem, “We Can’t Make It Here.” The song seemed to strike a chord with the public and went on to win Song of the Year at the Americana Music Honors and Awards. Author Stephen King described it as the “best American protest song since ‘Masters of War’” in his Entertainment Weekly column. On the brink of the 2008 election, McMurtry is now giving away a previously unreleased live version of “We Can’t Make It Here” from his 2008 concert at Southpaw in Brooklyn, NY.

Following the release of her new album Little Honey, Lucinda Williams has just released a politically-charged, digital only, four-song Live EP titled Lu in 08. The EP features three covers and one Williams original. The tracks will be Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” Bob Dylan’s “Masters Of War,” Thievery Corporation/Flaming Lips collaboration “Marching The Hate Machines” and the unreleased “Bone Of Contention.” The three covers were recorded live in Greensboro, NC in September 2007 and “Bone Of Contention” in Milwaukee, WI of July 2008.  Here the EP streaming here.

Concept albums appear to have had their time in the sun. The days when an entire story, not just a series of songs that have a sense of cohesion but a full on story reflected as a somewhat linear narrative from song to song unfolding from two sides of vinyl or a cassette tape seem numbered by a pick and choose distribution of digital downloads and the lust for hits that has plagued the music industry since day one. Still you can find purists that will sit you down in front of a turntable for a full rendition from the book of Pink Floyd’s The Wall or The Who’s Tommy.

But all that happened on the pop and rock side of the tracks, a concept albums in country and roots music has always been an even rarer creature. In 1975 Willie Nelson showed that a country music concept album not only could be created, but could be a hit with Red Headed Stranger, an unorthodox work featuring a fugitive preacher, on the run from the law after killing his wife, that went on the reach multi-platinum levels and made Nelson the icon he is today. But that was one album made over thirty years ago and the music industry and taste landscape has changed considerably.

So who in the hell would dare look at over this hostile aural landscape and plunge head first into the breach? Enter Hang Jones, pseudonym for San Francisco based singer/songwriter Stephen Grillos. His new release The Ballad of Carlsbad County tells a dark tale of a New Mexico town rife with drunken lust, envy, jealousy, deceit and finally the murder of a young woman and the wrongful conviction of a murderer that nonetheless was innocent of this specific wicked deed.

The songs uncoil this venomous tale with sparse arrangements - Grillos on lead vocals, guitar and mandolin, Matt Cunitz on upright bass, pump organ, backing vocals and Mayumi Urgino on fiddle and backing vocals - are ate less step-by-step chapters than character studies that moves the story and sets a mood.

Album opener “Mexico Line” tells the story of a man headed South-bound, on the run and armed. The song gallops and you feel the desperation in the man by Grillos’ passionate delivery and Urgino’s sawing like she’s possessed in a superb fusion of Gypsy/hillbilly fiddle. Imagine deliverance meets the Red Violin and you’re not far off.

“The Reckoning” is a lilting, beautiful song of foreboding and danger (Don’t go chasing shadows, son, you’ll only find death) “Comin’ Round” is as upbeat mandolin, washboard and fiddle tune that sound like a loose and raucous collaberation of Steve Earle and Kurt Cobain on a hot July front porch night.

“She Said” and “Wasted Time” are a soulfully melancholy tunes reflecting a man’s obsession for a woman out of reach. That obsession is given a finer point on the tune “Caroline,” which finds the subject weaving between desperate pleading and vaguely threatening.

“Red” is easily my favorite cut on the album. An emotional pique comes to a slow boil over strummed guitar and a bobbing and weaving fiddle. “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” is a dirge-like murder ballad that follows in it’s aftermath. “Arm Yourselves” is a Tumbleweed Connection-style rag addressing mob vengeance. “Hangman’s Noose” is a dark song of acquiescence and longing, a man’s view that death is a final means to an end in his loved ones arms. The album concludes with “Alive” where a man is faced with muddied morality of murder as a necessary step toward freedom.

As a concept album The Ballad of Carlsbad County is more then the sum of it’s parts. Each song stands on it’s own and the story isn’t a straitjacket on the organic nature of the whole. This dusty, dark beauty is one of my favorite releases of the year.

Hang Jones Caroline(MP3)

Buy |  Official Site |  MySpace | Facebook

Hang Jones - Caroline

• Philly.com has a Q&A with Philadelphia’s own roots group Hoots & Hellmouth.

• South Carolina’s TheState.com has a Q&A with Patty Loveless who will be performing at the Newberry Opera House this Saturdsay October 25th.

• Howe Gelb talks to 3news in New Zealand music, politics and his place as the “reluctant godfather of alt-country.”

• I recently reviewed the excellent Hank III release “Damn Right Rebel Proud.”  Some other folks seemed smitten by the release as well (here, here, here, here, and here.)

Three-time Grammy Award-winner, Lucinda Williams, will make her October 23rd concert at the legendary First Avenue in Minneapolis available to all as a fee audio webcast.

Fans can chat live while listening to the show by going to www.lucindawilliams.com where listeners can tune in as Williams performs her new album, Little Honey in its entirety, followed by a second set of songs from her extensive catalogue.

Some things just go together..rice and beans…woman and trouble and, Unkown Hinson and Halloween!

The self-proclaimed “king of country-western troubadours” will release his new live album “Unknown Hinson Live and Undead” on Halloween. Copies of this sure to be smoking (and hilarious) performance can be purchased when Hinson performs at the 3rd Annual Hallerween Extravaganze at the Grey Eagle Tavern in Asheville, NC. It will also be available at www.unknownhinson. com

Unknown Hinson has toured with Hank3 and Rev. Horton Heat. Billy Bob Thornton names Unknown as one of his favorite songwriters and a genius picker. Matt Groening (the Simpsons) labels Unknown as a guitar maniac (and funny as hell to boot!) Hank3  has Unknown’s face tatooed on his bicep! Marty Stuart introduced him as his illegitimate brother at the Ryman in Nashville, and is placing Unknown on the front cover of his upcoming book of personal photographs. Tom Petty came backstage at a Hollywood event to ask Unknown how he gets his “sound”. The Rolling Stones invited him to participate in the soundcheck session for their latest show in Charlotte, NC.

Official Site |   MySpace

Unknown Hinson Venus Bound

• Dial up WNCW next Tuesday, Oct. 28, the station will be airing an hour-long special to announce the 2009 MerleFest lineup. The hour will be filled with the reading of the lineup, music from those artists and talk about the festival. The 22nd annual MerleFest will take place in Wilkesboro, NC, April 23-26, 2009. Tickets go on sale Nov. 11 at MerleFest.org.

• (No Depression) After wrapping up his debut for Anti Records (Merle Haggard, Tom Waits, Porter Wagoner) Animals in the Dark (drops Feb. 17, 2009) singer-songwriter and dark-folk, claw-hammer banjo player extrodinairre William Elliott Whitmore will join roots rock band Murder By Death for a month-long sprint across the U.S. The joint tour is a follow up to the limited edition split 7″ Whitmore and Death by Murder released yesterday, which is available at Murder by Death’s website. It’s the first in a series of seven 7″ recordings that MBD will be doing in collaboration with their friends in other bands. A full list of tour dates are available from Anti Records.

HeadS up Twangers, “Johnny Cash’s America” premieres tonight, Thursday night, October 23, 2008, at 9PM ET/10PM PT on The Bio Channel.

The documentary explores the prominent themes of Cash’s life including love of the land, freedom, justice, family, faith and redemption through exclusive interviews, photos and unreleased music and footage. Interviews include Cash’s sister Joanne, son John Carter Cash and daughters Cindy Cash and Rosanne Cash, childhood friends and fellow band mates as well as Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp, Sheryl Crow, Al Gore, Tim Robbins, Loretta Lynn, Snoop Dogg, Vince Gill, Ozzy Ozborne, Steve Earle, Merle Haggard and Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn) all of whom are connected to Cash in surprising ways.

The special features 27 of Cash’s songs as well as unreleased and never-before seen footage including the 1965 “Johnny Cash Show” featuring solo performance of “Five Feet High and Rising,” outtakes from the recording studio with Cash and Bob Dylan from his elusive Eat the Document documentary and rehearsal footage for a Highwaymen recording session. The Cash family – Johnny’s sister, son, and other relatives – take viewers to rural Dyess, Arkansas to Cash’s childhood home and visit brother Jack’s grave which elicits a moving, impromptu singing of “Will The Circle Be Unbroken.”

Witchita, Kansas based Bloodshot Records recording artists Split Lip Rayfield are gearing up for the group’s fifth studio album “I’ll Be Around” is its first collection of new material since 2004’s “Should Have Seen It Coming”and their first since losing their friend and collaborator Kirk Rundstrom to cancer. Lawrence Kansas’ Lawrence.com reports that the album is “vintage Split Lip: blazing-fast banjo  licks balanced by high-lonesome ballads and a healthy sense of humor.”

Split Lip Rayfield - Aces High(mp3)
Split Lip Rayfield - Heart of Darkness(mps)

Split Lip Rayfield - Red Neck Tailgate Dream

There’s a lot of things you can say about Shelton Hank Williams III, he’s profane, his lyrics are simplistic, he advocates substance abuse and a destructive lifestyle - my money would be that he would look you in the eye, give you smile and spit on your shoes.

The newest release by Hank III “Damn Right, Rebel Proud” follows the same breakneck path his last album “Straight to Hell” took us. Barrels of whiskey, bales of pot, cocaine, scraped knuckles, black eyes and gratuitous hell raising are the order of the day. And if it’s too loud (or fast) get the hell off the road.
The album wastes no time bolting from the chute with the arm jerker “The Grand Ole Opry (Ain’t So Grand)” which could be considered the rallying song for the “Reinstate Hank” campaign which Hank III

spearheads. The tune levels a bead at the beloved Nashville institution for keeping Hank III’s grandfather, Hank Sr. off it’s membership (though he was the first performer to receive six encores at the Opry, in August, in 1942, the Opry’s WSFA fired him due to “habitual drunkenness.” Despite this firing the Opry continues to use the name and likeness of Hank Williams Sr. in promotional materials.) Name checking Johnny Cash, Johnny Paycheck, Waylon Jennings, Jimmy Martin, and III’s daddy, Hank Jr. (aka Bocephus)  III leaves no one wondering where he comes down on the issue.

The songs cover the familiar country music terrain of hard living and wild times - “Wild & Free,” “Me & My Friends,” and the honky-tonk moshers “Six Pack Of Beer” and “Long Hails & Close Calls,” the latter’s spirit owes as much to thrash metal (III played bass with Superjoint Ritual, a New Orleans metal band formed by Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo) as it does Bill Monroe.

But it’s not all raising hell, fun and guns. Hank III is man that makes no apologies for his life choices and calibrates the causalities left in his wake,  which makes “I Wish I Knew,” stand out in it’s lament for a lost love and the choices made to drive her away, and “Candidate For Suicide” and “Stoned And Alone” show III moving to more refelective themes and broadening his narratives and, yes, getting older.

III’s voice has always had a haunting, keening quality that harkins back to his grandad and skipped over his daddy’s baritone delivery. The whole package is perfectly held together by III’s passion and the crack band, especially Andy Gibson on steel guitar and Dobro and Johnny Hiland on lead guitar, which leaves most country, as well as punk and metal bands, in the dust.

iTunes has “Damn Right, Rebel Proud” classified under rock (It’s now been moved under the country music section), maybe it’s all the profanity that runs through the album that got it booted to another area. This release is just as deserving of the country music moniker as the pop-country fodder - Kenny, Toby, Carrie and Taylor - glutting the country section of iTunes country music section. For spirit alone it’s more deserving than most of what is found in any online classification, on the mainstream radio country charts and the mainstream country music industry at large (III;s label, Curb Records, declined to put their name on it, instead reviving the Sidewalk Records imprint to keep a safe distance from it.) Seems Hank III, like his legendary Granddad before him, is seen as a black sheep. Here’s to the rebels.

Hank III - “The Grand Ole Opry (Ain’t So Grand)”