Category Archives: alt.country

Americana Music and the Big Tent

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This morning the Americana Music Association  shared a link to an online Spin.com (Meet the New Stars of Americana) past covering the Americana scene in Red Hook Brooklyn and touching on the Americana genre in general.

I take a view much like I believe Jed Hilly and the AMA do, since they sent this article out via twitter and their own official email blast, that any press is good press and it helps to lift all Americana boats in the ocean of mass-media and National consciousness.  It takes a real aberration of opinion, like calling Robert Plant the King of Americana or declaring the predecessor to Americana, alt.country to be dead , to rile my feathers enough to take use this blog as a virtual soap box..

But the article is pretty much what i would expect from Spin magazine. A 20-something speaking using context of indy-rock and language of 20-somethings to establish shared taste and like-mindedness. Ever generation does this. Have you listened to most 20-somethings on the  train talking to one another? It’s like razor wire, like, for your, like, ears. Right?!

I’m just glade that in this instance Uncle Tupelo , Whiskeytown and Bill Monroe are the topic of conversation instead of the whatever skinny-jean and hoodied is the flavor of the week.

If there’s anything in the article that peeves me it’s the reference to Americana pioneer Gillian Welch, who co-produced of the 9 million unit selling O, Brother, Where Art Thou and Alison Krauss, the most awarded woman in Grammy history (26 awards of  38 nominations) as “niche acts.” I think most musicians would love to have that niche. there is also the painfully ham-handed application of sub-genre definitions – “chillbilly, bootgaze, artisanal rock, outhouse, tin can alley, or hobohemian.”

Fans of Americana share, aside from band-wagoners, share a lot of the same attributes as folk, blues and jazz fans. there is a reverence to a purity and reverence to an idea of “tradition” that sometimes gets in the way of innovation and creativity. But in the case of Americana, a mongrel genre at best, the litmus of genre purity, or as I like to call it the “more authentic than thou” argument, makes no sense for a field that can claim genre-bending acts like Those Darlin’s , Hank Williams III and the Legendary Shack Shakers as members.

Washboard lessons held in Brooklyn, John Deere caps and pearl-snap shirts from Urban Outfitters  and a vague grasp of bluegrass history is no threat to Americana.  Age, geography, wardrobe or other litmus tests aside from the musical variety which I partake in ad nauseam, is pure horseshit.

Concert Review: Robert Ellis – Hotel Utah – Sunday, May 29, 2011

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The Hotel Utah saloon , located South of Market near the waterfront and off a feeder from the Bay Bridge, wreaks history along with the usual bar fragrances.The saloon was built in 1908 and one the watering hole for  opium dealers, gamblers, bible-thumpers, police, longshoremen, this was a place of history and an apt venue for a Ellis and his band’s Bay Area debut.

Ellis has been winning accolades from the New York Times and American Songwriter , but aside from all the positive ink (pixels?) Ellis and his excellent band are making their mark the old-school way – steady home gigs and hitting the and taking the show on the asphalt ribbon.

I talked to Ellis , who looks like he could front a metal band but belies that image with his thoughtful and soft-spoken manner as he sips a Jameson neat. We talked about life on the road and the bands first trip to California, the current state of Bluegrass and the Majesty that is George Jones. Ellis was brought up in Houston surrounded by music. His mother taught piano and the last few years he’s paid for his biscuits by teaching Taylor Swift songs to kids (which he enjoys) and paid his live music dues covering classic country playing the legendary Fitzgerald’s club in Houston every Wednesday night.

Ellis and The Boys  -  Kelly Doyle – guitar, Geoffrey Muller – Bass, Will Van Horn – pedal steel and Ryan Chavez – drums – took the stage at about 9:45 PM to a small but enthusiastic audience and commenced to run through a set featuring many songs from their upcoming New West release Photographs (7/5)

The sparse crowd were caiught up in the band as they slid from classic honky-tonk (Comin’ Home and I’ll Never Give Up On You) to psychedelic edged country rock jams to Tin-Pan Alleys grooves (Two Cans Of Paint). The great thing about the band was the ability to squeeze a great amount of diversity while still coloring within familiar genre lines. Through the sonic twists and turns Ellis’ voice anchors it all with a sound near a Jimmie Dale Gilmore keen blended Harry Nilsson folk nuance.

After plying the band with a round of Jameson they humored me by seamlessly breaking into a reverent version of the Possum’s tear-in-my beer A Good Day for the Roses followed by a rousing version of The Race is On. That’s what I call a damn great band!

Check these guys out when they hit your town and look for great things from them in the future.

Official Site

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKsgQcqHdlU&feature=related[/youtube]

Americana Music Association Honors & Awards Nominees Announced

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From the Gibson/Baldwin Showroom in New York City local resident and legendary Americana performer Rosanne Cash announced the 2011 Americana Music Association Honors & Awards nominees. The announcement was followed by performances by New/Emerging Artist of the Year nominee and  The Civil Wars and an all-star set by Levon Helm,  Jim Lauderdale and Rosanne Cash (who tweeted that she was brought to tears by the event) which included The Band’s The Weight.

As in years past the nominees are a well-known safe bets with few surprises and tends towards the NPR-side of the Americana fence. No need to look for Whitey Morgan or Rachel Brooke here.

The Nashville -based trade organization moved toward the mainstream with the nominations of Grey’s Anatomy favorites Mumford and Sons and the Civil Wars, the later also aided to stardom by being heralded by no less than Taylor Swift and Boy George. Good for them, despite the mainstream success, these bands are actually great and will find longevity in the Americana community. Both are each nominated for both New/Emerging Artist and Duo/Group of the Year.

The AMA displayed spunk in nominating the extraordinary Elizabeth Cook the Album of the Year field for her latest Welder, Song of the Year nomination for the flash-back country-funk El Camino and Artist of the Year against some limey bloke named Robert Plant.

Recent New/Emerging Artist of the Year honorees Justin Townes Earle and Hayes Carll are each up for Album of the Year for Harlem River Blues (along with Song of the Year for the album’s title track) and Artist of the Year and Song of the Year for Kmag Yoyo respectively.

The Civil Wars and Mumford and Sons each earned nominations in both the New/Emerging Artist and Duo/Group of the Year categories, while Buddy Miller also secured two nods: Artist and Instrumentalist of the Year.

Album of the Year category also includes Lucinda Williams’ Blessed, and the  Song of the Year category includes The Decemberists featuring Gillian Welch’s “Down by the Water. And Mumford and Sons GRAMMY-stage mates The Avett Brothers are up for Duo/Group of the Year—which the band won in 2010. Sarah Jarosz, Will Kimbrough, Gurf Morlix and Kenny Vaughan all  will compete for Instrumentalist of the Year.

The 10th Annual Americana Music Association Honors & Awards ceremony is scheduled for Thursday, October 13 at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville as part of the 11th Annual Americana Festival and Conference October 12 through Saturday, October 15.

The complete list for Americana Music Association Honors and Nominees:

ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Band of Joy, Robert Plant
Welder, Elizabeth Cook
Harlem River Blues, Justin Townes Earle
Blessed, Lucinda Williams

ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Buddy Miller
Elizabeth Cook
Hayes Carll
Robert Plant

NEW/EMERGING ARTIST OF THE YEAR
The Civil Wars
Mumford And Sons
The Secret Sisters
Jessica Lea Mayfield

DUO/GROUP OF THE YEAR
The Avett Brothers
The Civil Wars
Mumford And Sons
Robert Plant and the Band Of Joy

SONG OF THE YEAR
Decemberists with Gillian Welch- “Down By The Water”
Elizabeth Cook – “El Camino”
Hayes Carll – “Kmag Yoyo”
Justin Townes Earle – “Harlem River Blues”

INSTRUMENTALIST OF THE YEAR
Buddy Miller
Gurf Morlix
Kenny Vaughan
Sarah Jarosz
Will Kimbrough

 

 

Americana Music and Craft Beer

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Frank Booth: What kind of beer do you like?
Jeffrey Beaumont: Heineken.
Frank Booth: [shouting] Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!

David Lynch understood the cultural identity of beer when writing these lines for the characters in the 1986’s Blue Velvet. Dennis Hopper as the psychopathic Frank Booth demeans the prissy, European suds of choice of terrified preppy college -boy Kyle MacLachlan with his manly, working-class beer of choice, PBR! There has never been a more stark or disturbing example that beer is an important element of cultural identity.

Of course anyone that has traversed the natural habitat of the urban hipster watering hole know that PBR tall boys is the brew De rigueur (Blue Velvet fans I guess.)  Texas honky-tonks have the Wrangler and Lucchese-clad locals swill the local favorite Lone Star long-neck. Then there is the ubiquitous Bud lite and Coors lite just about everywhere else.

I once heard someone equate country music with one of the latter big company lagers. I couldn’t agree more. Kenny Chesney is the Bud lite, or with his recent foray into beach topis the Corona, of country music. It makes perfect sense that the crowds at his sold-out stadium shows would overwhelmingly be represented by tasteless yellow fizz water. That they display the same lack of discretion for their beer as they do for their music should not come as a surprise.

Last week was American Craft Beer Week . Beer is as infused with the American spirit as apple pie, capitalism and firarms. Native Americans mixed maize, birch sap and water to create a beer like brew and Ben Franklin is purported to have said “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” He might not have said this bit it’s true they early colonist were big fans of their suds.

I see craft beer producers like I see the musicians I cover on this blog. Hayes Carll or Amanda Shires are like Stone Brewery or Russian River, They all use elements of traditional America (by way of Europe and all the other cultural  influences that make this country great) and created something innovative but still traditionally American. The audience at their shows prove that the association is not just theoretical. They tend to be college educated, make more and hoist local brews in greater numbers than mass-produced brew at every event I’ve attended (100+ and counting.) I would love to see 21st Amendment or Cherry Voodoo sponsor a West Coast tour by Hang Jones or Tiny Television. perhaps a newcomer like Armadillo Ale Works in Denton, TX could partner with a local band to grow both brands.  They are all kindred spirit appealing to the same demographic and I believe there is a glorious synergy suds/twang to be had.

So sit back and put on a local Americana or roots music band and pour a locally brewed beverage and rejoice in the great American tradition of enjoying great things and entrepreneurial spirit of  sticking it to the big guys trying to hoodwink you into confusing crap for cream puffs.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i5k4I1AOEI[/youtube]

Concert Review: Hayes Carll – Slims – San Francisco, CA – 5/14/11

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The first thing I noticed about the near capacity crowd at Slims was the lack of Pabst Blue Ribbon tall boys. The brew de rigueur of the skinny jeans and tattoo set has been a main staple for big city shows of the twang variety since I first saw the Drive-By Truckers in New York City in 2006, but the cheap suds were nowhere to be seen. There was the occasional Bud light, local micro-brew (served in plastic cups as not to be too fancy)  and whisky neat but the ubiquitous PBR was oddly out of place. The crowd also skewed older and working stiffs decked out in the pro-shops finest with their blond wives were mixed with a few that looked like extras from HBO’s Deadwood. This was not the hoody and cap set herding to a scene, these people were here for great music.

With a voice pitched somewhere South of Dylan and north of Kris Kristofferson Carll began he show surprisingly with the tearjerker Chances Are but the crowd stayed quiet and ate it up. We were then rewarded with the long-haired honky-tonk road song Hard Out Here. things were less quiet with the “Hell yeahs” and “Yee -haws.”

Carll was in town supporting is excellent new release KMAG YOYO which is an Army acronym for Kiss My Ass, Guys, You’re On Your Own,. He introduced the song as a “Young soldier in Afghanistan, then get’s into the heroin trade and is then injured by an IED. In a morphine induced hallucination imagines he’s working for a secret Pentagon program that feeds you acid and send you in space. Look for it on country radio!” The song is a (fast) talking blues number in the spirit of Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues or Johnny Cash’s I’ve Been Everywhere and it drove the crowd into a frenzy.

About 30 minutes into the set shots of tequila was delivered to the stage. “We played L.A. the other night and not one drink was bough for us. Here we are 37 minuted in the set and we have shots. Thanks San Francisco!” Four more rounds of drinks followed.

Carll took the time to praise the legendary Texas singer/songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard and explained how when they met to write a song together that Hubbard was in his phase of using animals as subject matter to great success with the song Snake Farm, which Carll sang the chorus of with a surprisingly simpatico crowd. He said they wrote a song called Chickens but had overestimated the poultry-folk movement of 2006. Carll then sang a song he and Hubbard wrote, and was released on Carll’s Trouble in Mind and Hubbard’s lengthily titled A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There Is No C). With lines like “There’s some money on the table and a pistol on the floor. Some old paper back books of Louis L’Amour…” It’s a natural and perfect result from a a Carll/Hubbard collaboration.

There was also a song from a Carll collaboration with Bobby Bare Jr. and Corb Lund entitled One Bed, Two Girls and Three Bottles of Wine about a Southern California tryst gone limp. The song has a honky-tonk heart of the absurd found in the best Roger Miller or Shel Silverstein numbers.

After about two hours of great song after next Carll and his sizzling band who moved through every instrument  but bag pipes, encored with a rousing version of the Possum’s White Lightning which was a great chaser from a musician cast in the same dry-witted and tuneful mold as Guy Clark and Terry Allen.

Music Review: Austin Lucas – New Home In The Old World [Last Chance Records]

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I first heard Austin Lucas on a song on a promo compilation compiled by Suburban Home Records (specifically Suburban Home Records Mix Tape Volume 5.) The compilation was a great mix of current and classic performers but the song that kept me coming back was a demo version of Sleep Well, a languorous slice of sparse, somber beauty that haunted me and drew me in again and again.

Lucas is journeyman of sorts. In his career this Indiana native has navigated metal, punk, folk and country. His dexterity and fidelity to the craft led him to collaborations with fellow punk vets Chuck Ragan (Hometown Caravan) and Frank Turner (Under The Influence: Volume 7) and led to Lucas landing a spot on Regan’s post-punk foray into roots-folk collective known as The Revival Tour.

On first impression Lucas proves the idiom “You Can’t judge a book ..’ Much like Aaron Neville,
with whom Lucas not only shares a startling looks-to-voice disparity but also an expressive  vibrato.

Lucas’ voice also carries the high lonesome of Bill Monroe in the opener Run Around, a jaunty front-porch break-down and Sit Down, a lost love number accented with Todd Beene’s weeping pedal steel and barroom piano. These are songs I’d recommend to anyone bemoaning about country music’s glory days gone by.

Thunder Rail and The Grain with their ringing guitar hooks, earnestly cryptic lyrics are post-punk gems that show Lucas has been an astute student of 80’s era R.E.M. His voice even takes on Stipe-like qualities on the latter.

There is a more filled-out version of the aforementioned Sleep Well featuring Lucas’ sister Chloe on backing vocals. This version holds just as much poignancy as that demo introduction, though I do miss that harmonica.

Keys is a lyrical and poetic testament against the insidious seduction of war “ I was told once only battle can save me from my own worthlessness.” If truth is the first casualty of war it falls on the Lucas to offer truth sanctuary within his allegory.

Throughout this fine release is a crackerjack band comprised of Lucas’ father Robert – who handed down his music legacy to his boy, Lucas’ sister Chloe and wife Cate on vocals ,cChris Westhoff,  Jason Groth & Mike Kapinus from Magnolia Electric Company, Todd Beene from Lucero, Christian Rutledge from Bowery Boy Blue .

 

Official Site | Buy

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW3AfUbYLx4[/youtube]

News Round-Up: Kris Kristofferson Steps In For Loretta Lynn at Stagecoach Country Music Festival

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  • Loretta Lynn has had to cancel several upcoming shows due to recuperation from recent knee surgery and at one canceled performance another legend is able to help out. Next weekend’s Stagecoach Country Music Festival in Indio, California will feature Kris Kristofferson in the April 30 and May 1 at the Empire Polo Field slots Lynn would have played. The veteran singer-songwriter-actor has tuned into the a kind of a country music reliever. Last fall he stepped up to a solo performance since his gig partner, Merle Haggard, began suffering from blood pressure-related issues and had to miss their scheduled performance at Neil Young’s Bridge School benefit concerts in Mountain View, California.
  • Who says nothing good comes out of Music City? Nashville’s Infamous Stringdusters, have announced the We’ll Do It Live,a 5 city  tour to record their first official live album. People that purchase tickets in advance will receive an exclusive lib EP of bonus material not to found on the final album.
  • At 84 Dr. Ralph Stanley is an American icon and cultural treasure and an original pioneer of bluegrass music. His new gospel album A Mother’s Prayer (Rebel) captures this artist at the peak of his wisdom and artistic power. The album is produced by his son Ralph Stanley II  who also plays in the band. Songs include John the Revelator and What Kind of Man by Stanley and Larry Sparks.

It is with great excitement that we, the Stringdusters, announce our first official collaboration with you, the people. This is a live album that’s long overdue. Four of our favorite rooms (and one soon to be) in five great cities–we set up the mics, together we set up the celebration. It’s a record for all the world to hear, but some of you will actually be a part of it, partying down in the control room, singing backup while we dance across the recording studio stage. This is what we love to do. This is where our music comes to life. Join us, and this time WE’LL DO IT LIVE. 

As a big thanks to each of you that join in the experience, EVERYONE WHO PURCHASES TICKETS IN ADVANCE for these shows will receive and EXCLUSIVE LIVE EP (by email) of BONUS MATERIAL off of the live album

Much love,
The Infamous StringdustersIt is with great excitement that we, the Stringdusters, announce our first official collaboration with you, the people. This is a live album that’s long overdue. Four of our favorite rooms (and one soon to be) in five great cities–we set up the mics, together we set up the celebration. It’s a record for all the world to hear, but some of you will actually be a part of it, partying down in the control room, singing backup while we dance across the recording studio stage. This is what we love to do. This is where our music comes to life. Join us, and this time WE’LL DO IT LIVE.

As a big thanks to each of you that join in the experience, EVERYONE WHO PURCHASES TICKETS IN ADVANCE for these shows will receive and EXCLUSIVE LIVE EP (by email) of BONUS MATERIAL off of the live album

Much love,
The Infamous Stringdusters

News Round-Up: Pre-order Charlie Louvin, Still Rattlin’ the Devil’s Cage

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  • Judd Films and Devil’s Cage Productions have launched promotional site for the biography – Charlie Louvin, Still Rattlin’ the Devi’s Cage. The site offers trailers and a chance to pre-order one of the 1000 copies being produced (release targeted for 7/15) All proceeds from this initial release  will go to Mrs. Charlie Louvin and her family. The film features appearances by  Charlie, Sonny Louvin, George Jones, Marty Stuart, John McCrea, and Emmylou  Harris and chronicles Charlie’s resurgence and influence over his 60 + year  career and 50th anniversary of the Louvin Brothers release Satan is Real.
  • The line-up for the Johnny Cash Music Festival will include close family members and friend – Rosanne Cash, John Carter Cash & Laura Cash, Tommy Cash, Kris Kristofferson, George Jones, Rodney Crowell, Chelsea Crowell and more. The festival is presented annually by Arkansas State University, with participation by the Cash family, to benefit the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home Project in Dyess, Arkansas. The project involves establishing a museum to honor the Johnny Cash legacy as well as restoring or re-creating his boyhood home. ASU is lining up sponsors for the event.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWp7MGY3II4&feature=related[/youtube]

Music Review – Lucinda Williams – Blessed [Lost Highway]

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It’s a staple of the blues mythos that things are bad and bound to get worse – Born under a bad sign, Born to Lose, Ain’t No Luck But Bad Luck… yeah, not a lot of sunshine on this side of the street.

Since moving to L.A. and marrying her manager, Tom Overby, on stage after a Minneapolis, Minn. concert in a nod to the late Hank Williams (no relation)- who married his second wife, Billie Jean, on stage in New Orleans – the Queen of Americana Music has seemed more satisfied of late and, dare I say, happy.

Williams catalog, like the great songs from country and blues music, is full of great songs about lost or unrequited love, but happiness? How does that work?

On her 9th studio album, Blessed Williams’ proves it can work quite well. The album opener Born To Be Loved is a tender blues number of affirmations. “You weren’t born to be abandoned. You weren’t born to be forsaken, you were born to be loved.” Williams world-weary voice and great immediacy of Producer Don Was and musical accompaniment drains any sap that might have crept into the song Buttercup is a barn burner that continues analogous caparisons with love and the natural world that was part of her last release Little Honey.

Not that everything has been rosy in her life; Williams saw the death of her longtime manager Frank Callari and the suicide of musical contemporary Vic Chesnutt, but the respective odes to these lost friends, the Wicked Game-slink of  Copenhagen and the rocking Seeing Black take these difficult topics and reflects on them with maturity and grace.

This approach is also applied to Soldier’s Song , a statement on war told as a shifting narrative from the killing fields to Main Street. It’s striking in how Williams finds from the poignant to normality and back again to heartbreaking conclusion.

I Don’t Know How You’re Livin’ is a song of devotion and faith that rolls on waves of pedal steel and slide guitar and Convince Me simmers with a longing  from the narrator that succinctly sets the tone for the records, and Lucinda Williams new direction overall. She’s seems be be hopeful by creating songs that direct us toward, if not outright deliver at our feet, hope.

Buy | Official Site

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrN9Wgh5Aic&feature=related[/youtube]

Music Review: Sunday Valley – To the Wind and On To Heaven [self-released]

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Here is a record that has been on heavy rotation at Casa Twang for the past two weeks.

For the past decade or so Music City has fumbled like a mad scientist to piece together sure-fire radio hits from the worst parts of rock and country music , though there have been major financial success, the lifespan of the work is questionable. The musical limbs seem to reject each other. And we’re not talking about rap and country music here (shut it Colt Ford!) It’s country music and rock music. They share the same DNA for tap-dancing  jeebus sakes!

These hacks should take a page from South-Eastern Kentucky’s Sunday Valley. The trio’s name ,the title of their debut album (recorded at Shangri-la Productions in Lexington, Ky with producer Duane Lundy) and sizzling cuts like Jesus Boogie might lead you to believe they are a Christan band, and they might very-well be. But they travel the road straddling the spiritual and the secular blazed by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Ralph Stanley, Johnny Cash and Elvis. The borderlands of gospel, country and country music become a blur out the window of a pedal-to-the-metal 18-wheeler fueled on whiskey, a electrified Telecaster the holy Pentecost.

Case in point, the souped-up gospel of All The Pretty Colors and Sometimes Wine whips up a rightous ruckus as Sturgill Simpson sings with full-on abandon and treats his guitar like it spoke ill of his mama. Gerald Evans’ chugging bass and drummer Edgar Purdom’s tight , heated keep a heated, steady pace. There is also a nice uncredited fiddle and barrel-house piano to round things out.

Never Go To Town Again is Southern rock with the brake off. Simpson sets himself up in a John Henry-like man vs machine duet with his Telecaster. He wails and calls while the machine snarls and snaps with a fury that would  make Cerberus whimper.

Things throttle down a bit for some Allman Bros-esque Blue-Eyed soul. Oh, Sarah yearns dreamily toward a road-as-mistress theme and I Wonder and I Don’t Mind are great barroom weepers that burns with longing and regret, the latter tales off like a great, lost Marshall Tucker Band song.  Cut The Sails is straight-up acoustic fireside country ballad tracing back country music nautical roots in the spirit of George Strait  or John Anderson. These all really showcase the nuance and range of Simpson’s voice.

Simpson reportedly left a steady job with the railroad to pursue his dream of making music like they couldn’t dream of doing anything else. This is music that is as good-hearted as it is raucous,  full of piss and vinegar as well as good will, and and as ready to love as itchin’ to fight.

My Space | Buy

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Vfx4OvpXE[/youtube]