More YouTubes goodies…

Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Leon Russell, and Doug Kershaw play Hank Wwilliam’s “Jambalia” – 1974 Willie Nelson’s 2nd Annual 4th Of July Picnic. Bryan/College Station, TX

• In anticipation of the upcoming Santa Rosa Merle Haggard/Kris Kristofferson show this Wednesday (see you there!) the San Francisco Chronicle’s Joel Selvin has posted a fine interview with The Hag conducted on his 200 acre ranch outside Mount Lassen, California.

• In response to the tough economy and the fees attached to her, and many others, concert tickets, the queen of alt.country Lucinda Williams will offer each fan who attends a Lucinda Williams show in 2009 standing credit on merchandise sold at the concerts. Williams adds, “I understand that this may only be a small gesture and in no way solves the problem long term, but I feel that it is important to try and do something to make it a little easier during this time.” For more information visit Lucinda’s official site.

• John Prine is slated to play a show with Steve Earle on at Wolf Trap’s Filene Center in Vienna, VA on FridayJune 5th, 2009.

Here’s a little gem from the YouTubes:

Neil Young & Waylon Jennings- Are You Ready For the Country? -  Sept 20 1984 -  ‘Nashville Now’ TV show

• The first track from Bob Dylan’s forthcoming release, Together Through Life, has been posted as a  free download on BobDylan.com. Seriously, you don’t have to enter an email address or anything. Titled  Beyond Here Lies Nothin, the song features Mike Campbell from Tom Petty’ Heartbreakers on guitar. The release will be available for  free from midnight, March 30th through midnight, March 31st.  Together Through Life will be released on Columbia Records on April 28th.

• Dyman’s Rolling Thunder camapdre Ramblin’ Jack Elliott will revisit neighborhoods he used to frequent with the likes of Jack Kerouac and Dylan in the 1950s and ‘60s when he plays a special show at the Highline Ballroom in New York City on May 13th.   The 77 year old Elliott is making a number of select appearances in support of his upcoming release A Stranger Here, available April 7th on ANTI- Records.  Produced by Joe Henry (Bettye LaVette, Solomon Burke, Elvis Costello/Allen Toussaint), A Stranger Here is a collection of carefully chosen pre-WWII blues songs, re-crafted with backing by legendary Los Angeles session musicians such as Van Dyke Parks and David Hidalgo.

• I saw the Shooter Jennings and Jamey Johnson Crossroads on CMT the other night and was duly impressed. They were like a couple of old friends sharing a HUGE bottle of Jack and talking country music history in reverence and passionate tones it deserves. As I currently enjoy Johnson’s exellent That Lonesome Song, I wonder when Shooter will release anything that reaches the excellence of Put The O Back In Country. In the meantime we get an inexplicable “Greatest Hits” (Bad Magick: The Best of Shooter Jennings – March 24) after three studio release and a live album (which is the same as a greatest hit IMO.)

• In more Shooter news, Ted Russell Kamp has taken time from his main gig as the .357’s bass player to release his newest solo album Poor Man’s Paradise which was recorded in  Ted’s living room, Shooter’s tour bus & countless hotel rooms across America. Kamp a great instrumentalist, a sharp dresser and a great guy. Go give him a listen.

Archie Green, a former shipwright and carpenter turned folklorist who energetically promoted the idea of public folklore — that is, that folklorists should work outside the academy to gather, preserve and publicize local cultures through government agencies, museums, folk festivals and radio stations. His signal achievement in this area was the lonely lobbying campaign he conducted for nearly six years to create the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, which became a reality when Congress, by a unanimous vote, passed the American Folklife Preservation Act, signed into law by President Gerald R. Ford in January 1976. Archie Green was 91 when he died of kidney and heart failure March 22 at his San Francisco home.

Here’s a video done during Biram’s recent European tour (hereafter called the “I Broke My Damn Leg Tour.”) This fine cut is entitled  Sinkin’ Down and shows how Biram is really starting to grow as a musician and not just a crazy-ass blues hillbilly. It’s from his new forthcoming Bloodshot Records album entitled Something’s Wrong/Lost Forever.  It is set for a May 2009 release and will available on CD and limited edition LP. (tip of the hat to ninebullets.net for bringing this viddy to my attention.)

Ray Wylie Hubbard has always done things his own way. So after years of being asked to steward a festival he always put it off. Until now…

Hubbard has invited his favorite artists to play the First Annual Ray Wylie Hubbard Grit-N-Groove Festival to be held on Saturday April 4th in Luckenbach Texas (where else?!) From the poster design to the seating layout he has been involved in every aspect to ensure his festival has the grit and groove we have all come to expect and love about him. The vibe will be acoustic throughout the day with The Band of Heathens and Ray and his band closing the evening with full rockin’ band sets.

The concert will be held in the dance hall with seating on a first come first serve basis.

• Craig Shelburne  over at the CMT blog has posted a great video I had never see with Willie Nelson and fantastic bluegrass Melonie Cannon covering Willie’s Back to Earth.

• Speaking of Texas (Wille, Texas…same thing) If you’re in the San Francisco area tomorrow night head over to the historic Fillmore to catch Houston’s own Robert Earl Keen with the great Hayes Carl as the opener
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  I heard that Miley Cyrus is slated to Perform at the 4th Annual Country Music Awards on April 5. Aand here I thought it was Miley’s buddy Taylor Swift’s job to serve the ‘tween demographic with insipid tales of mall heartache. Or maybe that’s Carrie Underwood… Point is the CMA’s continue to embody thier new acronym definition, Country Music my Ass.

• Murfreesboro, Tenn’s country-punk sweethearts of the prison rodeo, Those Darlins,  got a lot of deserved attention at SXSW ‘09 and it looks like they are due for more love this Summer when their self-titled debut album is released on July 7^th (vinyl on July 23^rd) on OH WOW DANG records. Here’s the title cut off their current Wild One EP to hold you over until then.

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Those Darlins – Wild One(mp3)

• Tapes of George Jones, Dolly Parton, Hank Williams Jr., Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, Roy Acuff, Tammy Wynette, Buck Owens, Charley Pride, and other country greats were among some of the hundreds of tapes that were discovered in a barn in southern Pennsylvania. This long-rumored treasure of lost recordings were made at high schools, dances, fairs, festivals, and auditoriums in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and elsewhere were made in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with a few in the 1940s. (Tristram Lozaw  at The Boston Globe)

• Lucero front man Ben Nichols says his new solo EP, Last Pale Light in the West, was inspired by Cormac McCarthy’s Western gothic novel Blood Meridian. Nichols played cuts from the EP and honored Lucero requests Friday night at SXSW.

• Austin American-Statesman’s Austin360 writer Brian T. Atkinson  posts an interview with Langhorne Slim just before his final SXSW appearance at Purevolume.com.

Elvis lives! Elvis Costello, that is. Costello will again join with T Bone Burnett as producer for “Secret, Profane & Sugarcane,” (Hear Music, June 2nd) his first acoustic American roots album since 1986’s “King of America” (also a Costello/ Burnett collaberation.) The album was recorded during a three-day session at Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studio.

The band arranged for Sugarcane includes such Bluegrass and traditional country musicians as Jerry Douglas (dobro), Stuart Duncan (fiddle), Mike Compton (mandolin), Jeff Taylor (accordion) and Dennis Crouch (double bass).  Emmylou Harris sings on one song, and Burnett adds his Kay electric guitar sound to several songs, which is the only amplified instrument on the album.

Ten of the album’s 13 tracks are new Costello compositions, including two written in collaboration with Burnett.  One song, ” I Felt The Chill,” was written by Costello and Loretta Lynn, while two of the album’s tracks — “Hidden Same” and “Boom Chicka Boom — were originally written by Costello for Johnny Cash.

The vinyl version of the album will feature two additional songs:  an acoustic arrangement of Lou Reed’s “Femme Fatale” and Costello’s sequel to an old Appalachian murder ballad entitled, “What Lewis Did Last”.

Costello will do select tour dates with “The Sugarcanes,” a band featuring musicians who played on the album, in June and August.

“Secret, Profane Sugarcane” track list:

1. Down Among the Wine and Spirits
2. Complicated Shadows
3. I Felt the Chill
4. My All Time Doll
5. Hidden Shame
6. She Handed Me a Mirror
7. I Dreamed of My Old Lover
8. How Deep is the Red
9. She Was No Good
10. Sulfur to Sugarcane
11. Red Cotton
12. The Crooked Line
13. Changing Partners

• PopMatter.com’s Bob Proehl reviews Bob Wills’ newly released Tiffany Transcriptions and does a great job of highlighting the history of Wills and Western Swing. (Stay All Night (Stay a Little Longer): One More Time with the King of Western Swing.)

• Billboard.com posts on the South-By-Southwest tribute to Texas music legend Doug Sahm which featured performances by Jimmie Vaughan, the Gourds, Dave Alvin and Sarah Borges & the Broken Singles, Los Lobos, Delbert McClinton, Charlie Sexton, Little Willie G, Terry Allen and a collaboration between Joe “King” Carrasco and the Texas Tornados.

• Two native East Texans are among three country music artists destined for the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame. Jacksonville native-turned-Longview resident Neal McCoy will join Panola County native Linda Davis and western singer-songwriter Michael Martin Murphey as 2009 inductees into the hall of fame. The hall of fame show is scheduled for 7 p.m. Aug. 15 at the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame facility, 300 W. Panola St. in Carthage.

• From Country Standard Time:  Willie Nelson has postponed six tour dates due to illness, according to his web site. The illness was not specified.  Postponed dates were March 17 in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.; March 18 in Melbourne, Fla., March 19 in Panama City, Fla., March 20 in Choctaw, Miss., March 21 in Marksville, La. and March 22 in Springdale, Ark.

• Famed moonshiner Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton died at the age of 61 at the his Parrotsville, Tennessee home. He allegedly committed suicide by inhaling carbon monoxide in an old Ford Fairlane he kept in a barn on his property  a few days before serving an 18-month sentence in Federal Prison for illegally brewing spirits and possessing a firearm as a felon. Read Johnny Knoxville’s fitting post here.