In another chapter of the ongoing struggles for No Depression, publisher Kyla Fairchild has posted that operational expenses has forced the new website incarnation ” to discontinue the editorial budget at the present time.” In other words, no more original content, record reviews, interviews, and stories.

ND was THE editorial beacon for the growing alt.country/roots/Americana music scene between 1995 and 2008. Their print operations ended last June due to revenue slowdown from declining subscriptions and advertising. A new web site tobring content and news to fans and persue a different business model was announced at the 2000 Americana Music Association conference and was unveiled that October.

Fairchild states that NoDepression.com will continue as an online presence with more focus on community contributions to provide content. As indicated preciously, here is also plans to make its entire archive of 75 issues  available online. (via the 9513)

As Americana music starts to move more into the mainstream with artist like Robert Plant and Allison Krauss winning Grammys and indy-popsters like Ben Kweller releasing country-tinged albums I hope some of that popularity finds its way to the publication that helped hold the many genre threads together for so long.

I love songs about horses, railroads, land, Judgment Day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. And Mother. And God. – Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash would have been 76 today. Nobody did more to usher country music from the turbulent late 50′s and 60′s, when rock and roll was eclipsing the music that had come before, then the Man in Black. He influenced the next generation of talent Dylan, Neil Young,  Joni Mitchell,and was open and humble enough to be influenced by them. Many he featured on his television show, many times to the displeasure of the ABC honchos. He did it because he saw in them a piece of himself…storytellers of the human condition scribing the dark and the light.

Johnny Cash died less than four months after his wife, June Carter, on September 12, 2003. He is buried next to his wife in Hendersonville Memory Gardens near his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash- I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry

• The deadline for discounted tickets for DelFest has been extended until March 2nd at midnight. Some of Bluegrass’ best will be featured at the 3-day festival- Sam Bush, Old Crow Medicine Show, Leftover Salmon, JD Crowe & The New South, The Lee Boys as well as headliner legendary Del McCoury and more. The festival takes place Memorial Day Weekend, May 22-24th on the Allegany County Fairgrounds in Cumberland, Maryland.

• The 11th annual Pickathon Indie Roots Music Festival, which takes place  just outside Portland, OR.,  has released their new website and festival line-up which includes Blitzen Trapper ,  The Sadies, Dale Watson, Justin Townes Earl, Those Darlins and Joe Pug.  Pickathon takes place July 31-August 2.

• Now a little love for my old hood New York City.  The always excellent and lovely Joe Whyte will big show with his  band and will be featuring some new tunes. It’s on Monday, March 2 and it’s  free show at Rockwood Music Hall (196 Allen St., NYC) Go, you won’t be disappointed.

Hang Jones’ (Stephen Grillos) furthers his domination of  global media by having his debut release, The Ballad of Carlsbad County, is now available digitally on  iTunes and Amazon. Hang Jones has a few dates lined up in and around his San Francisco base of operations. Other dates will be added so check his MySpace page for the latest.

02/28/2009
Black Cat Bar, Penngrove
10PM

03/27/2009
Dolores Park Cafe
501 Dolores St, San Francisco,
FREE SHOW
8:30

04/11/2009
Plough & Stars
116 Clement St San Francisco
$6,  9:30

4/16/09
Johnny V’s
31 E. Santa Clara St, San Jose

4/26/09
KOWS 107.3 FM, Occidental
Time: TBD
Interview with DJ Scott P on his show Songs in Round

05/31/2009
Ace in the Hole Pub
3100 Gravenstein Hwy N Sebastopol,
7PM

06/13/2009
Nomad Cafe
6500 Shattuck Ave. (at 65th St.) Oakland
7PM

Hang Jones – The Reckoning

• The always excellent mp3 blog HearYa has offered up some in studio choice cuts from RiotGrrrrl hillbilly trio, and TwangNation favorite,  Those Darlins.

• Speaking of free downloads, Largehearted Boy has some rare and legal downloads from the likes of Kelly Joe Phelps, Mark Olson and Gary Louris, Son Volt, Steve Earle and Jason Isbell.

• If you tuned in to watch watch Fabchannel’s live webcast of Neko Case from Amsterdam Sunday you were probably pretty surprised that it didn’t seem to work. Unfortunately, the webcast didn’t happen because Neko fell ill and was unable to play. More information can be found  on her official site. Case is rescheduling her performance for sometime in August or September.

• Eleven Hundred Springs will be presenting the Country Jam Concert Series featuring EHS, Jesse Dayton, the Tejas Brothers and Deke Dickerson. The show will take place at Dallas’ Double-Wide bar on April 24th, things get started at 8pm.

Buddy Miller, one of Nashville’s most prolific singers, songwriters, guitarists, recording artists and producers suffered a heart attack in Baltimore, Md., on Thursday, Feb. 19. He was on tour with Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin and Shawn Colvin; the tour is dubbed “3 Girls And Their Buddy.”

Miller, 56, was taken to John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and he underwent a triple-bypass heart surgery on Friday, Feb. 20. The surgery was successful, and Miller will likely be recovering in Baltimore for several weeks.

Named the “Artist of the Decade” by No Depression magazine, Miller has written songs that have been recorded by the Dixie Chicks, Lee Ann Womack, Brooks & Dunn and others. He is a veteran of Harris’ Spyboy band, and in the past year he has been touring as a featured instrumentalist in Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ band. He has produced albums for Solomon Burke, Allison Moorer, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and others. Miller has lately been producing a new album for Patty Griffin. He has been called “the best country singer” alive by Steve Earle.

Miller is married to Nashville singer-songwriter Julie Miller, and the pair have a duo album coming out on New West Records on March 3. (source: tennessean.com) Update: Word is that Miller didn’t actually have a heart attack, but was experiencing chest pains when he was taken to the hospital.

Buddy Miller – Written in Chalk

If you will indulge me a half-cocked theory that the genre lineage represented by the forefathers of swaggering, guitar-driven Southern Rock Lynyrd Skynyrd and of roots-reverent, punk-drunk alt.country Uncle Tupelo beget the fierce, dark Faulknerian beast, The Drive By Truckers. Jason Isbell was a key element in that propagation when he replaced Rob Malone on guitar and vocals during the Southern Rock Opera tour in 2001, a time many see as the start of their golden era.

Making his mark on the band’s fourth studio album, Decoration Day, Isbell did something awe-inspiring – he stood toe-to-toe with great songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley and penned the title track for the album
in a reported three days after joining the band. If that weren’t enough he also wrote the outstanding Outfit, a song about Southern pride, familial loyalty and not “Gettin’ Above Your Raisin’” that is still part of his live set. He was 22 at the time.

Isbell’s first solo release after divorcing his wife, Trucker’s bass player – and in the wake if Isbell’s departure vocalist – Shonna Tucker, and leaving (or getting pushed) by the band was 2007′s Sirens of the Ditch was a strong but wobbly sound of a young man finding his feet as a solo artist but offered a jewel in the reverent requiem Dress Blues.The new self-titled release seems even more unsure and scattered and offers nothing close to Dress Blues.

Now 30, Isbell’s silky baritone makes him a kind of rougher Ray Price raised on rock and he sounds great here. His exceptional band, the 400 Unit (this being his first release with his touring band) do what they can with the material given to them.  Steady beats and searing guitars give what little cohesion and fuel is felt in the album.

The sweeping Seven-Mile Island begins the album with dobro and driving drums which start out strong but stay so far up in the mix that they become distracting over the duration. But the story is of haggard drifters torn between family and freedom is there gleaming brightly under all the noise.

Isbell can still melt you heart; Sunstroke, and the dusty Steve Earle-style weeper Cigarettes and Wine, or melt your eardrums;  Good, but for the most part this release is, and it pains me to admit this, forgettable.

Many strong songwriers that start in the alt.country fold find that the genre is constricting sanf strike out toward other horizons and though Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit is not as far off the reservation as Neko Case or Jeff Tweedy have wondered but there is a level of experimentation here that is less then the sum of its parts. Many of the sings like Streetlights and The Last Song I Will Write take a middling mid-tempo arrangement and render any veins of storytelling gold into lead. I’ve seen Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit do some of these songs live and they come off much better in concert,  but that just puts a finer point on what these might have been if approached with a little more care and a lot more fire.

I wish Isbell would take his own advice as he laid it out ” real nice and slow” in his Drive By Trucker’s era gem Outfit; “…don’t try to change who you are boy, and don’t try to be who you ain’t.”

Official Site |  MySpace |  Buy

• Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum will hold its quarterly series, Nashville Cats: A Celebration of Music City Session Players on Saturday, Feb. 21, with a salute to drummer Jerry Carrigan. Among his many sessions, Carrigan played drums on Jerry Reed’s “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot,” Charlie Rich’s “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” and Tony Joe White’s “Polk Salad Annie.” Carrigan also played on sessions with Johnny Cash, John Denver, George Jones, Don McLean, Dolly Parton, Johnny Paycheck, Elvis Presley, Charley Pride, Tammy Wynette and many more.

• Speaking of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum; country music legend Ray Price will visit the Museum on Saturday, March 7, to share memories of his close friend and mentor, Hank Williams. The intimate interview, which is presented in conjunction with the Museum’s exhibition Family Tradition: The Williams Family Legacy, will begin at 1:30 p.m. also in the Museum’s Ford Theater.

• The 9413 celebrates the greatness that was Lecil Travis “Boxcar Willie” Martin as part of their excellent and enlightening  Forgotten Artists series.

• HearYa – Indie Music Blog posts that San Francisco roots trio The Devil Makes Three will release Do Right Wrong on May 5th via Milan Records.

The Devil Makes Three – Old Number 7

• Neko Case has posted a bulletin on her MySpace page that she will be featured on FabChannel.com for a live streamed concert from Amsterdam. The concert will be broadcast live on that website this Sunday morning, Feb. 22, at 10 a.m. Eastern / 7 a.m. Pacific. According to the bulletin, “If you aren’t able to catch the live stream, keep checking back to FabChannel as they’ll be posting the entire performance for streaming next week!” Case will also be playing 2009′s  Bonnaroo Festival in in Manchester, Tennessee.

• Rachel Brooke has been working with Mr. Lonesome Wyatt from Those Poor Bastards on a full length album called it “A Bitter Harvest”.  It has a May release date and will be available on CD and Viny.

Until then Rachel has these tour dates coming up:
Mar 6 2009
Metrotimes Blowout! @ Carbon Lounge. Rachel and Junk, Switchblade Justice, Mantons, and Jason Croff Hamtramck, Michigan

Mar 26 2009
The Painted Lady, with Junk and Switchblade Justice Hamtramck, Michigan

Mar 27 2009
CS3 (Calhoun St.) with the Sour Mash Kats, the B-Sharps, and Paul Kuhlhorst Ft. Wayne, Indiana

Mar 28 2009
Shady Nook with Blue Collar Bastards Saybrook, Illinois

Mar 29 2009
TBA Kirksville, Missouri

Mar 31 2009
Players 5th Street Pub and Jon Jackson, TBA Quincy, Illinois

Apr 1 2009
Scagnoli’s Cajun and BBQ Lafayette, Indiana

Apr 3 2009
Annabell’s with the Misery Jackals! Akron, Ohio

Apr 4 2009
Molly Malone’s with The Misery Jackals, Wonky Tonk, Frontier Folk Nebraska Cincinnati, Ohio

Apr 5 2009
FooBar with the Misery Jackals and Dave Smith and the Country Rebels Nashville, Tennessee

“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.” – H. L. Mencken

Despite the atmosphere of hope in the wake of a new President these are troubled time in America. War, torture, unemployment, jihad (foreign and domestic,) global warming and/or cooling, a society obsessed with bullshit and celebrates mediocrity….the only thing missing seems to be is locusts and floods, but hey the year is still young.

Throughout history hard and turbulent times have beget great music. The 1920s and 30s widespread poverty due to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl resulted in Aunt Molly Jackson’s Hungry Ragged Blues to Woody Guthrie’s  This Land Is Your Landl. The 60′s gave us Crosby, Stills Nash & Young’s (well, mostly Young’s) “Ohio”, Bob Dylan singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” and John Fogerty wailed Fortunate Son. Sure the pop factories still pumped out confections of distraction, but the real stuff, the stuff that sticks and level-sets a society led astray by self-obsessed cynicism and thrusts us toward a greater sense of responsibility, civility and justice. That’s the stuff we remember.

William Elliott Whitmore has found a new home of kindred spirits with L.A.’s Anti- records, the more diverse sister label of the punk focused Epitaph records, and home for Bob Mould, Jolie Holland, Merle Haggard, Neko Case, the artist Whitmore is often (Erroneously IMHO) compared to Tom Waits, and the label where Marty Stuart had to shop the late, great Porter Wagoner’s last album (Wagonmaster) when Nashville refused to support the legend. He’s done his time on the road with bands like The Pogues, Murder By Death, Clutch and Lucero and cuts a lanky, tattooed profile of a punk front man or carnival barker. With punk cred and a hard core troubadour’s (sorry Steve Earle) ethic, Williams is the the most interesting kind of artist, a walking cultural mash-up with music and a voice that transcends fashion and speaks from the ages.

Some have referred to Animals in the Dark as a political work. I don’t see at as much as political but as a work. like his earlier Southern Records stuff, about perseverance of the human spirit against natural and man made woe and worry. The troubles here are just given a different face.

The trouble, and record, starts with Mutany, a military drumbeat driven call and response tale of a ship headed into bad weather and a crew taking responsibility for their ship and dispatching the drunken, incompetent captain.Whitmore shows his wry humor in this song by inserting the oft-heard (and sampled, right Nelly?) old school call and reponse from rapper Rock Master Scott & the Dynamic Three “The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. We don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn.” Love it.

Who Stole the Soul is a ragged lament of lost beauty and justice with a cello accompaniment brings a sense of loneliness and adds depth to Whitmore’s usual solo acoustic guitar. Johnny Law is Whitmore’s version of I fought the Law…with just as simple a structure and refrain, but he pulls short of claiming that the law won since he has the last word for the corrupt law man.

Old devils is where the album gets it’s name and it’s a song where Whitmore really starts to name names and harken back to a time when folk music was the Rage Against the Machine of its day. Corrupt politicians, draconian laws and unjust wars are all called out and the universal shit that comes down on the heads of those at the bottom is named. Hell or High Water is a wonderful barroom ballad of hope and faith in camaraderie in spite of all that came before of that will follow and faith again is the theme within There’s Hope For You with it’s Band-style organ and bashing swell of an ending.

Hard times traces an immigrant’s travels from Germany to the New World all the while struggling and bravely facing the adversity that chiseled and galvanized past generations and puts a spotlight on our own condition – what Clint Eastwood calls the “Pussy Generation.” There’s no appeal to higher authority of the deistic or terrestrial variety. It’s all bootstraps and grit.

Lifetime Underground brings Whitemore’s usual weapon of choice into the picture – the clawhammer-style banjo. Another tale of facing adversity, this time his own, as an ever traveling minstrel working the beer halls and Elk’s lodges of America in relative obscurity. Let the Rain Come In is a woozy pedal steel blues number that furthers the theme and facing off on the world and all comers. A Good Day to Die is a sentiment that nicely wraps up this fine release. Beauty and adversity are all faced in equal (existential? theological?) regard.

William Elliott Whitmore takes his music and themes into more primitive and universal territory than his more precious contemporaries like Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Iron & Wine that come off as dorm room folkies in comparisons. Whitmore’s work comes from a harder, darker place…wherever people are struggling and gives them unity in commiseration, hope and, yes, beauty.

Official Site | MySpace | Buy

William Elliott Whitmore – Old Devils – Raleigh, NC 11-5-08