Category Archives: alt.country

Kris Kristofferson Talks About New Release

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  • Kris Kristofferson and producer discusses Kristofferson’s upcoming Closer to the Bone (Sept. 29 on New West Records) and how they were trying to capture the intimacy that defined his last release This Old Road. Closer to the Bone will contain the song Good Morning John which comes from a letter Kristofferson wrote to Johnny Cash for a sobriety party. Kristofferson will perform on Nov. 1 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and on Nov. 10 he’ll receive the BMI Icon Award during the BMI Country Awards in Nashville. (billboard.com.)
  • The New York Press has a great feature on Twang Nation favorite The Builders and The Butchers.
  • Malcolm Holcombe’s will release For the Mission Baby in the U.S. on September 29, 2009, and in the UK/Europe on October 5, 2009. The album was recorded in May ’09, produced, recorded and mixed by Ray Kennedy at Room and Board Studios in Nashville, TN.
  • In my ongoing quest to make San Francisco a hotbed of Americana/roots music I recently came across Rhubarb Whiskey. The band features Cindy Emchy on accordion and vocals and Boylamayka on dog-house bass,  guitar and mandolin and background vocals and are a blend of vaudeville, gypsy jazz and Southern-Gothic. Check ’em out. (Main Site | MySpace)

John Dawson Passes at 64.

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  • Although it’s over a year old there is a great article (Facing the Music) on the seismic changes in the music industry through the lens of Music City and some of the unique ways some people are planning for the future instead of wringing their hands or suing their fans. The article was by Donnie Snow for businesstn.com
  • John “Marmaduke” Dawson, a longtime Grateful Dead collaborator who co-wrote “Friend of the Devil” and who, along with Jerry Garcia, developed a devoted following with his psychedelic country group New Riders of the Purple Sage, has died at the age of 64 from stomach cancer. (via the 9513 and Spinner.com)
  • Paste Magazine spends some time with Americana Music Association executive director Jed Hilly. Jed discusses the growing influence of the genre, the Recording Academy adding an Americana Album of the Year Grammy for 2010 and that you need not be an American to play Americana. As a member of the AMA I’m glade to see some cred coming.

Band Round-Up: Jason and the Punknecks

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Though Jason and the Punknecks aare described by some as punk-country. Gratuitous tattoos and a stage show that gets a bit rowdy the band has more in common with Bill Monroe than the Sex Pistols (though, as I’ve argued before I think the Sex Pistols have more in common with Monroe that 95% of what comes out on Music City.)

This band sounds to like they adhere to tradition without being enslaved by it and tap joyously into the rowdy and hell raising spirit that has been part of road houses and honk- tonks for decades.

The  husband and wife duo of  Jason and Polly Punkneck make the kind of music fit for Carter and Cash, and sure they work their corn-pone shtick a little thick, but there’s no denying the music. They adhere to a sound (and work ethic) as old as the hills and plains and a revel in a hillbilly attitude that Nashville has spent years trying to varnish over.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyT5-yTyq9s[/youtube]

Music Review: Holly Williams – Here with Me (Mercury Nashville)

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holly-williams-here-with-me-coverIt’s one thing to be Shooter Jennings or Justin Townes Earle, but being the Granddaughter of country music legend Hank Williams and the Daughter of the hard-living, hell raising outlaw and legend of sorts Hank Williams Jr., well that’s a whole other mountain to climb.

Like her half-brother Hank Williams III, Holly Williams takes the fundamentals laid down by her ancestors and burns her own brand on the work. Here With Me is much more a country record than her previous release for Universal South The Ones We Never Knew and perhaps the turn in style was a result of the automobile accident that nearly took the lives of her and her sister Hilary. Maybe, like Hank III, the primary motive for moving into the family business was the promise of a ready audience and cash.

Whatever the motive this is a great release that brings to mind the work of another blood kin of country music royalty, Rosanne Cash. Like Cash, Williams does great things with a modest vocal range and brings a sophistication to the songs (many of which she wrote) without completely smothering out the rustic charm with glossy productions and lazy paint by the numbers fluff reaching for a top charting radio hit.

Holly Williams is every bit the outlaw her destiny assumes she’ll be, she just prefers a level of uptown refinement to her country pedigree.

Official Site | MySpace | Buy

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExpUM6nNxf0[/youtube]

John Fogerty’s The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again To Be Released in September

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  • John Fogerty will release his new album The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again (Rides? Shouldn’t it be “Ride?”) a  collection of covers and originals this September 1st. The release will feature new takes on classic Country and Americana tunes originally written by or for Ray Price, Buck Owens, the Everly Brothers and John Prine. The album is Fogerty’s a 36 year conceptual follow-up to 1973’s Blue Ridge Rangers, a post-Creedence solo release of gospel and country covers. That album had him playing all instruments but on this new release he has a powerhouse backing him – including Kenny Arnoff, Herb Pederson, Jodie Kenny,  Buddy Miller and more.
  • The Americana Music Association has announced that mandolin master Sam Bush will receive the Lifetime Achievement for Instrumentalist award at the 8th Annual Americana Honors & Awards ceremony scheduled for Thurs., Sept. 17 at the historic Ryman Auditorium.

Ben Gibbard and Jay Farrar Collaborate on Jack Kerouac Inspired Album

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  • Gothic-roots band Builders and the Butchers premier their first ever music video Golden and Green (and they used one of my favorite fonts, Bleeding Cowboy,  for the opener. Cool!) The song is great and the video is an odd mash-up of an early 20th century gang post-heist, the 1963 film Children of the Damned and Narnia. (Spinner)
  • Singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile‘s third album, Give Up The Ghost, will be released on Columbia Records this fall.  The album is produced by Rick Rubin. Carlile has announced the dates for her Give Up The Ghost Traveling Show beginning September 10th at The Depot in Salt Lake City, UT.   The tour will make stops at legendary venues across the country including Chicago’s House of Blues, New York’s Beacon Theatre and The Wiltern in Los Angeles.
  • Ricky Skaggs  will honor the man who introduced him to bluegrass. On Sept. 15, Skaggs will release Ricky Skaggs Solo (Songs My Dad Loved) on his own Skaggs Family Records featuring 13 tunes he was introduced to by his father, Hobert Skaggs. (Billboard)
  • Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Son Volt’s Jay Farrar are collaborating on an album inspired by legendary Beat writer Jack Kerouac. (Spinner)

Lost Highway to Release Willie Nelson Compilation

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  • Chet Flippo over at CMT’s Nashville Skyline and Miss Leslie at the 9513.com are strolling down the mine-laden path of “What is country music?”
  • Classical Americana? Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas and Buddy Miller will be among the musicians who will perform with the Nashville Symphony on Sept. 12 during the inaugural Classical Americana concert at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. The concert is one of the events leading up to 10th annual Americana Music Festival and Conference taking place Sept. 16-19 in Nashville.
  • Lost Highway Records will release a compilation of music Willie Nelson has made on their label. Willie Nelson’s Lost Highway will be released on Aug. 11 with three previously unreleased songs. The 17-track album features Grammy-winning duets with Ray Price (”Lost Highway”) and Lee Ann Womack . Other guests on the album include Elvis Costello, Diana Krall and Lucinda Williams.I;m not sure that the work Willie has done while on Lost Highway really warrents the compilation treatment but I will hold judgment until I hear it.
  • Bob Schneider teamed up with Dixie Chick Martie McGuire for a  sold-out show at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, CA. SPINearth.tv (SPIN Magazine’s new global music site) recently published an exclusive photo collection from the DVD taping of the show.

Brad Paisley, Alison Krauss and Union Station to Play theWhite House

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  • Brad Paisley, Alison Krauss and Union Station to play Obama White House for next week’s White House Art & Innovation Events: Music Series Celebrating Country Music & Smithsonian’s National Design Awards Event.
  • The Washington Post takes a look at Nashville’s Bluegrass scene and follows the high lonesome from the Ryman Auditorium’s annual Bluegrass Nights at the Ryman to one of my personal favorite The Station Inn.
  • Juli Thanki over at the 9513.com reviews the new self-titled album by riot grrrl/roots group Those Darlins.
  • Decider Milwaukee sits down with Portland’s indy Americana band Blitzen Trapper.

Interviews with Jay Farrar and Twang Nation on Twitter/blip.fm

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  • The Phoenix New Times’ Martin Cizmar ponders if, while interviewing Son Volt front man Jay Farrar,  he should ask him about the new Wilco record? (he does.)
  • Annie Zaleski at the Riverfront Times also interviewed Farrar and got some details on his side project Gob Iron, and the connection between Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt’s new label, Rounder Records.
  • Speaking of Son Volt, Kentucky.com’s Walter Tunis is digging their new release American Central Dust.
  • Radney Foster’s 50th birthday bash is tonight at Hills Cafe in Austin at 6pm w/ Radney, Wade Bowen, and many more.
  • And in shameless self-promotional news- Join Twang Nation on Twitter and listen to music I dig up over at blip.fm.

Music Review – Rita Hosking – Come Sunrise (self released)

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come sunriseRita Hosking might call Davis, CA home (18 km / 11 mi West of Sacramento) but the geographical and cultural influences that shape her excellent new release, Come Sunrise, could plot here anywhere between a rural West Texas roadhouse or the front porch of an Appalachian cabin.

Recorded in Austin with producer, engineer and Robert Earl Keen guitarist, Rich Brotherton and featuring some of Austin’s best musicians – Lloyd Maines on Dobro, Glenn Fukunaga on upright bass, and Danny Barnes on banjo, Warren Hood on fiddle, Brotherton plys several instruments himself and Sean Feder from Hosking’s backing band Cousin Jack on percussion and harmony vocals.

With a vocal style somewhere between Natalie Merchant and Gillian Welch Hosking sings all 11 of her original songs with a delicacy that belies the force of her delivery. This is the kind of music I imagine a few generations ago would have easily landed on bestselling Hillbilly charts before some executive in the 40’s decided the term too degrading (and probably less market-friendly) and changed the name to Country & Western.

Now this music finds its home in the Americana genre, where skilled musicians like Hosking remind us that music that tells tales of people’s lives, with instrumentation and arrangement that also hearken from that heritage, is so wholly satisfying in a world more and more addicted to entranced and irony.

The slow burners are the real stand outs.  Simple pleasures yearn from the title track as Maines’ Dobro and Hood’s fiddle envelope you with the sonic equivalent of a down comforter, Montgomery Creek Blues is a dreamy pedal-steel laced tale of drunken revelry that ends in murder and Hiding Place (my hands-down favorite) is a sparkling ode to solitude that betrays a hint of menace from possible pursuer.

Precious Little, Little Joe and Holier Than Thou are straight up honky-tonkers that shoudl strike shame in the heart of every Music City big label suit.

With Come Sunrise Hosking gives us a prism that isolates the distinct historic threads of country and folk music and then combines it again
into a wholly satisfying and extraordinary body of work.

Official Site | MySpace | Facebook | Buy

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