Category Archives: alt.country

MySpace Showcase Tuesday 12/5 – Cadillac Sky

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Well, Thanksgivings over and I’m out of excuses for not posting a new My Space Showcase…so here goes, and I’ve got a nice treat for all you bluegrass fans. I’m breaking the rules somewhat because these boys already have a record deal, but they’re my rules to break, and I can’t keep them under my Stetson.

Ft. Worth Based progressive Bluegrass phenomenon Cadillac Sky is the most recent signing to Skaggs Family Records. I allways thought that bluegrass is prog-hillbilly music and Cadillac Sky just reaffirms my brilliant (you heard me!) hypothesis.

Cadillac Sky is made up of two national champion pickers, a respected guitar veteran, an upright bass prodigy and an award winning songwriter and have built a reputation as an amazing live band – leaving fans, as well as fellow musicians clamoring for more at every performance. Cadillac Sky will make their first big splash onto the progressive Bluegrass scene when their debut Skaggs Family full-length “Blind Man Walking” lands in stores on January 23, 2007.

Twang says check ’em out!

William Elliott Whitmore Interview at HeroHill.com

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A nice conversation with banjo picker and soul and whiskey voiced William Elliot Whitmore. An excerpt:

HH:: You have very diverse musical influences. Most people wouldn’t expect someone who plays the banjo to be into Minor Threat and Public Enemy. Are there any artists you still hope to play with?
WEW:: There’s lots of great music to soak up isn’t there? I’ve had the good fortune of having been exposed to a wide variety. Everything from Ralph Stanley to The Coup. The Coup’s new record is great. Another one of my new favorites is that Lupe Fiasco record. I would love to play shows with him. My dream list of bands to tour/collaberate with would be; The Evens, Lupe Fiasco, Animal Collective, Mike Watt and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.

Jack Parks CMA Review – Funny Meanness

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Listen up hillbillys, it’s time for Uncle Jack Sparks to rant and review of the Coutry Music Awards. Always a heaping helping good time of meanness at the expense of Nashville’s conveyer belt country products and insight into acts that really should get the awards.

An excerpt: The only list you’re going to read grounded in twang reality. If you’re new to this exercise, and you think what you listen to on stations like K102, KEEY is country music, or even worse, you think it’s good, you should stop reading now. As always, this will end up being an indictment of the Nashville system of picking singers and music based on delivering a demographic for the advertisers who sponsor country radio and should not be taken as an insult to the extremely talented and hardworking studio musicians, the real artists of country music, who’ll never get recording contracts because they can’t get botox injections, braces for their teeth, or saline bags for their boobs.

Spady Brannan – “The Long Way Around and Other Short Stories” (Postscript)

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The Long Way Around and Other Short Stories is the first solo release from Nashville veteran session bass and string player Spady Brannon. For the last three decades then man has established his bonafides by touring with Crystal Gayle and Reba McEntire, and recording with Tammy Wynette, Eddie Rabbit and Phil Vassar. He’s penned hits for Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers (“Real Love” “Think About Love”), Trisha Yearwood (“I Did”) and Highway 101 (“Desperate Road”) and Roy Orbison. He even scored a European hit for one time ABBA vocalist Agnetha Faltskog with “Once Burned Twice Shy.”

For all that time working for Nashville acts Brannan’s first release isn’t typical Music Row product but reflects a roots-rock sensibility that’s more John Hiatt or Tom Petty than Chesney or Toby.

The themes are typical barroom crooner fodder, love gained, love lost, but does done with a freshness, authenticity and warmth that far surpasses most of what comes out of Nashville these days. Twang (Some Days) is mixed with Boz Skaggs-like blue-eyed soul (Long Way Round) and swamp-groove (Smilin Eyes) to round out this great forst release from a seasoned veteran who is able to separate the wheat from the chafe resulting in a satisfying helping. Here’s hoping for seconds.

Gob Iron – Death Songs for the Living – Sony

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Gob Iron (Brit for harmonica) is Comprised of Jay Farrar (Son Volt) and Anders Parker (Varnaline) together they breath life, longing and menace into retooled traditional folk songs. Recorded in the span of five days in the Autumn of 2004 Death Songs for the Living came together when Anders Parker was enlisted to take part in the recording of an aborted Son Volt album. The sound of both musicians merge and entwine so well you’d swear they’d been doing it for years.

These are songs about love, loneliness and death. Sparsely produced, mostly acoustic but with flourishes of Crazy Horse style dissonant electric guitar. The space between each songs are moody acoustic guitar instrumental interludes that fill out the overall Western-noir feel of the work.

Dwight Yoakam – Concert Hall at The New York Society for Ethical Culture (10/12)

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Dwight Yoakam mosied into the sold out show on this brisk October night on Central Park’s upper west side as naturally as if he were playing at a State Fairgrounds or a Texas honky-tonk. The adoring crowd of big-buckle Yankees, pretty ladies in tight shirts and tattoos dancing in front of the stage hoping to catch the Honky-tonk man, in his stylish dudes, eye and there was a smattering of Southerners, like myself, appreciative to have a cultural diplomat of this talent stopping in town.
Tift Merritt was a surprise opener for the show and show and she charmed and wowed the crowd with her passionate voice and goofy jokes.

Yoakam’s sharp dressed band hit the stage at about 9:50 in his trademark off-white Stetson set over his eyes, and after a quick “Thanks ya’ll!” they break into “She’ll Remember” the toe-tapping rave-up from his latest release for New West records “Blame the Vain.” The nearly three-hour set was brimming with an embarrassment of riches, “Turn It On, Turn It Up, Turn Me Loose,” “This Time,” Jume Carter’s “Ring of Fire,” – Johnny Horton‘s “Honky Tonk Man,” “Stop the World (And Let Me Off),” “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere,” “Little Sister” as well as “Guitars, Cadillacs” — the song that startled the Nashville brass who had written Yoakam off when he was living in Nashvile in the early 80’s.

Yoakam also paid tribute to his late friend and Bakersfield style mentor, Buck Owens by covering his classics “Act Naturally,” “Cryin’ Time” and “Together Again”. The tribute ended with the duet the pair recorded in the 1990s, “Streets of Bakersfield.” I’m sure Owens was smiling down at the performance that night.

After a few minites off stage the band came back out to close things out with Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and the great song of spurned female commupance “Intentional Heartache.”

When he’s in the spotlight, Dwight Yoakam ranks with just a handful of country singers that make it all seem effortless.

Meat Purveyors Last Show – Bloodshot BBQ – Union Pool, Brooklyn

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It was a cold and bittersweet day this Saturday, Nov. 4th, it was the day of Bloodshot’s Annual CMJ (weasels!) Showcase. Yes it was a great day-long party and BBQ at Union Pool in Brooklyn featuring the Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, Mark Pickerel, The Silos, the Deadsting Brothers, Austin’s own Scott H. Biram, Bobby Bare Jr.’s Young Starvation League and, sadly, Austin’s own Meat Purveyors where to be performing their last show as their bass player, Miss Cherilyn DiMond, has decided to get married and move on to other pastures in Maine. I missed most of the shows due shooting the shit and catching up with old friends and making some new ones.

But I got to make time for my homeboy Scott H. and his crazy grease-soaked stomp-blues revival and the very last show of the Purvs. Scott did his best in the 45 min allotted for him but c’mon! He’s just getting the crowd hoping, hollering and speaking in drunken tongues.

I skipped on Bobby Bare Jr. (yeah, I know) but I was near the front of the masses for the Purvs.

Taking the stage at 5:30 and a few moments of reflection from lead singer Jo Walston the band tore into an hour-and-a-half of thrash-grass sampler from their ten year career. “TMP Smackdown”, “Pain By Numbers”, “I’d Rather Be Your Enemy,” “Truckers Speed,” “Tallboy”, “Working on a Building” it was a trip down memory lane in a meth-fueled trailer park. The band then threw in killer covers of Ratts “Round and Round” and Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and “Lucky Star” just to top of the night right.

There were tears, laughs and discussion of weed-induced hetro and or lesbian sex by Jo as she up-ended a stiff shot of whisky. The rest of the Purvs, Cherilyn DiMond on stand-up bass (and the instigator of the Purvs demise due to that aforementioned marital commitment (Damn woman, where your priorities?!), guitarist extraordinaire Bill Anderson and on speed-metal mandolin Peter Stiles, gave the rabidly-rowdy and adoring crowd (some of which had traveled all the way from Austin to catch the show) the red Meat they came to hear.

More tears, more denial and two encores I was too drunk to recall the details of..if it had to end this is the way it should have gone.

Thanks to the Meat Purveyors for then great years and to Bloodshot for being cool to me and putting on such a great shindig,

November Vanity Fair Country Music Spread

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The November issues of Vanity Fair magazine has a pretty decent spread on country artists. There’s obvious -Cheesney, Hall and Oates…er…I mean Brooks and Dunn- the legends, Willie, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, Dolly Parton, I still get a heat flush looking at that woman! Then there’s the presence of Mr. Who Cares…Kid Rock? How does this no-talent yankee still get play. I guess there’s a lot of people that want to get to Pam…
Shooter, Shelby Lynn, Dwight, Rosanne, Lyle….all there. I could squabble about the obvious omissions (Hank III, Scott H. Biram, Gary Allen, Old Crow Medicine Show) but whatever…it’s a nice feature.