Category Archives: alt.country

Neal McCoy, Linda Davis and Michael Martin Murphey are 2009 Texas Country Music Hall of Fame Inductees

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  • 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.

Dexateens and Devil Makes Three Ready New Releases

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  • In honor of today’s release of Sony Legacy’s Naked Willie you can head over to Go!Animate and create your own Willie Nelson cartoon n the persona of the Redheaded Stranger, Super Willie, Naked Willie (natch) , Willie harmonica player (and Naked willie producer) Mickey Raphael and a horse named Stardust.
  • Universal South is releasing a wholly unnecessary Shooter Jennings Greatest Hits album, Bad Magick,  album on March 24th. Really? A “greatest hits?” Shooter has 3 studio and one live album, and a live album is a gretest hits album. Rumor is that this is the labels, not Shooter’s decision and ythat he is now done with his contract and shopping for a new label. Maybe he and Tim McGraw can start a label called “They Done Me Wrong Records.”
  • Santa Cruz, California’s own Devil Makes Three will release Do Wrong Right to be released April 21st.  Go catch them this week at South-By-Southwest Mar 18 at Lovejoys (5:00pm) and  Mar 21 2009 at Submerged   (8:00pm)
  • Tuscaloosa, Alabama’s own Dexateens will release their new album Singlewide on May 12th.   Singlewide was recorded in Nashville with veteran engineer Mark Nevers (Lambchop, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Calexico and the Silver Jews.) Their peculiar video for the song John Smith is below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHun18Uj8fM[/youtube]

KBSO 94.7 Badlands FM Returns to Texas Music

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  • After more than a two-year absence KBSO 94.7 Badlands FM in the Corpus Christi area is switching from it’s current Tejano music format back to to a Texas, Red Dirt and Americana music format. Texas music fan and postal employee “Bobby” “My love of Texas music developed after I bought the High Chaparral dance hall in Robstown about five years ago,” said the 47-year-old, originally from Sinton. Larma states:  “When Texas music went off the air, it was heartbreaking. They were actually building band recognition. We aim to do that again.”purchased the station from retiring long-time station owner Manuel Davila. “My love of Texas music developed after I bought the High Chaparral dance hall in Robstown about five years ago,” said the 47-year-old, originally from Sinton. “When Texas music went off the air, it was heartbreaking. They were actually building band recognition. We aim to do that again.” (Corpus Christi Caller-Times)
  • Several events at this week’s SXSW will pay tribute to Texas great Doug Sahm, next week (March 24) co-producers Bill Bentley, Shawn Sahm and David Katznelson will release Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm. (via 9513.com)
  • In her always excellent Torch & Twang series over at PopMatters.com Juli Thanki surveys the colorful, and largely forgotten, career of “America’s Most Colorful Hillbilly Band,” Maddox Brothers and Rose.

Here’s a YouTube treat I came across. Townes Van Zandt plays The Hole on the Solo Sessions Austin Music Network – January 17th, 1995.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8XHFRsze1o[/youtube]

SXSW To Do

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It’s been a long time since I was able to attend the coveted, and now convoluted, South-By-Southwest music festival and conference amnd this year is no exception. But in the nature of bloggy goodwill I will try and list all the Americana-Roots events I have come across. Please feel free to add any I might have missed.

Joe Pug is pretty damn cool. His schedule is:

3/18   SXSW–Stimulus Package Day Party @ Paradise – 3:00pm  (401 E. 6th at Trinity upstairs Free/Public)
3/18   SXSW Official Showcase – 10:30pm Victorian Room at the Driskell Hotel
3/19   SXSW–Schubas Roundup @ Yard Dog Gallery – 12:40pm (1501 S. Congress Free/Public)
3/19   SXSW–Thru Windows Party @ Fado -  11:00pm (214 W. 4th Free/Public)
3/20   SXSW–Bring Down the House Show  – 5:45pm  (Free–email day of  show for address don@nodooragency.com)
3/21   SXSW–Reggie’s/Unscene Party @ The Jackalope – 3:45pm and 4:40pm (Free/Public 404 E. 6th at Trinity)

3/18  – Joe Ely’s playing Momo’s

3/19 Aquarium Drunkard and My Old Kentucky Blog’s “Vaya Con Tacos” party featuring Roadside Graves, Those Darlins, The Rosebuds and many more.

Also 3/19  the Yep Roc at the Continental Club is offering one of the best showcases with Dave Alvin, The Iguanas, The Gourds, Giant Sand and BeauSoleil.

3/20 The always lovely Bloodshot Records day party at Yard Dog art gallery (1510 S Congress) – starts at the crack of noon
No invite or badge required!
12:15 Walter Salas-Humara / I’m Not Jim
12:45 Andre Williams
1:15 Charlie Pickett
1:45 Dex Romweber Duo
2:15 Ha Ha Tonka
2:45 Exene Cervenka
3:30 Deadstring Brothers
4:15 The Meat Purveyors
4:45 Justin Townes Earle
5:15 Scotland Yard Gospel Choir
5:45 Waco Brothers w/ Rosie Flores

and

Bloodshot Records SXSW showcase
Red Eyed Fly (715 Red River by 7th Street)
Saturday, March 21
8p Exene Cervenka
9p Deadstring Brothers
10p Ha Ha Tonka
11p Dex Romweber Duo
Mid Justin Townes Earle
1am Waco Brothers

Hoist a shiner and some BBQ or a taco and enjoy the fine music and hospitality Austin offers.

Ryan Bingham Readies Roadhouse Sun

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Fans of gritty, sun drenched tales from the road rejoice! Texas/New Mexico neo-trad troubadour Ryan Bingham and his band The Dead Horses (Corby Schaub – guitar, Matt Smith – drums, Elijah Ford – bass) are readying Roadhouse Sun his sophomore release from Lost Highway records to be released on May 5.  Roadhouse Sun is a follow up to Bingham’s 2007 much lauded debut Lost Highway Mescalito.

Mescalito producer and former Black Crowes guitarist, Marc Ford returns as producer on Road House Sun. And the PR material states that” Bingham covers some new subject matter on Roadhouse Sun as he challenges political accountability in Endless Ways and notes eye-opening similarities to our dark past in Dylan’s Hard Rain. Bingham has established himself as a deeply personal songwriter with a knack for painting vivid pictures in his songs. These images come to life in everything from his bluesy roadhouse romps such as Hey Hey and Day Is Done, to the epic Change Is to the dustbowl hymns Rollin Highway Blues, Country Roads and Snake Eyes.”

I was a fan of Mescalito when it came out, it made my top 10 that year, and after seeing him and his great band several times in New York and once in Nashville I am even more of a fan.

Ryan Bingham-Snake Eyes

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yhT3lPpbxY[/youtube]

Todd Snider and Sara Watkins Ready New Releases

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  • Paste Magazine used to trend more toward No Depression Americana coverage than Spin-style indy-pop coverage that they’ve moved toward over the last couple of years. This may explain what they’re still in print and No Depression isn’t. But Paste has not forsaken the twang altogether.  Paste’s  Andy Whitman does a round-up of three alt.country releases to check out – The Believers — Lucky You, Dallas’ The Von Ehrics — Loaded and Jason Heath and the Greedy Souls – The Vain Hope of Horse.
  • REM made a surprise appearance at a Carnegie Hall tribute show last night featuring Calexico, Bob Mould, Rhett Miller, Vic Chesnutt And Elf Power, Dar Williams, olie Holland, Patti Smith and Darius Rucker (!)
  • New-Grass supergroup Nickel Creek’s singer-songwriter and fiddler Sara Watkins is preparing self-titled debut of  songs penned during her time spent in L.A. Watkins’ self-titled solo debut features a wide range of collaborators for its 14 tracks, among them Elvis Costello drummer Pete Thomas, Tom Petty keyboardist Benmont Tench, Gillian Welch and Davod Rawlings, as well as her old NC bandmates Thile and Watkins. Led Zep’s John Paul Jones (who beat his bandmate Plant down the Americana path when he produced Uncle Earl’s 2007 Waterloo, TN) produced the album in studio sessions in L.A. and Nashville. Sara Watkins hits stores April 7 on Nonesuch, with a national tour to follow. Nickel Creek went on “indefinite hiatus” in 2007.
  • More Tod Snider news: Snider’s new release The Excitement Plan (out June 9th on Yep Roc) and will feature Grammy-winning producer Don Was (Bob Dyan, Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt) and  a guest appearance by Loretta Lynn. ‘The Excitement Plan’ is “an old gypsy term” Snider adopted from his father. He explains, “I know right now that times are hard for all of us and that new songs from a folk singer are not at the top of so many grocery lists but these twelve songs are different. These twelve songs can be part of your solution. Just give them a chance. Take them in. Use ’em to help you appreciate your girl if you still got one, and/or your job if you still got one. Trust them, trust me and I promise you as god is my witness sometime here in the next sixty to ninety days we will be layin ’em in the sweet peas.”

THE EXCITEMENT PLAN TRACK LIST
1. SLIM CHANCE
2. GREENCASTLE BLUES
3. AMERICA’S FAVORITE PASTIME
4. DOLL FACE
5. BRING ‘EM HOME
6. CORPUS CHRISTI BAY [by Robert Earl Keen]
7. THE LAST LAUGH
8. UNORGANIZED CRIME
9. BAREFOOT CHAMPAGNE
10. DON’T TEMPT ME featuring Loretta Lynn
11. MONEY, COMPLIMENTS, PUBLICITY (SONG NUMBER TEN)
12. GOOD FORTUNE

Snider will tour throughout the spring with highlights including June 11th at NYC’s The Bowery Ballroom (tickets on sale now), and his first performance at Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival June 14th.

95.3 The Range presents Texas Music Revolution 100, March 22, 2009

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  • Shiner Bock and 95.
    3 The Range presents the Texas Music Revolution 100,     March 22, 2009 at the famous Southfork Ranch! This will be a great day of Texas-style twang featuring amazing artists, such as: Dirt Drifters, Darryl Lee Rush, Junior Brown, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Walt Wilkins, Micky and the Motorcars, 1100 Springs, Somebody’s Darling, Two Tons of Steel, Tejas Brothers, Max Stalling, and much much more! Tickets are $26. Aapre-party will be held on March 21 at the Dallas’ Granada Theater on Greenville Avenue.This show is FREE to everyone that buys a ticket to the Texas Music Revolution and will feature Stoney Larue & The Arsenals, Deryl Dodd, Austin Cunningham, Shootin’ Doubles, and Spur 503. Check out the newly updated www. khyi. com for more information.
  • J.B. Beverley & The Wayward Drifters new release Watch America Roll By drops  MAY 5th ’09 on Helltrain Records. The album was recorded at J.B.’s Rebel Roots Studio in Richmond, VA. and the PR says that it’s the “kind of real country music that honors American heritage and culture; the kind of country music rooted in the influence of Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and other legends of the genre.” Judging by the cuts available at the bands MySpace page that’s an accurate description.
  • What do you do when your career is skidding and needs a boost? Don a Stetson, drop your “G”s  and cut some country tunes, Yall! Britney Spears 17-year-old baby sister Jamie Lynn Spears has reportedly relocated to Mississippi to raise her daughter Maddie and has “has been quietly working on a country album since last fall.” As much as I despise this genre carpetbagging, Jamie Lynn is a teenage mama a la Loreetie (though Loreeta Lynn had not one but FOUR kids by the time she was 17!)

New Artist – Mountain Sprout

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I came across Mountain Sprout Hank III’s posting board (where I get a lot of music tips.) This Arkansas foursome  – Melissa Carper pulling cannon fire notes out of the stand up doghouse bass, Adam Wagner yanking the melody up by it’s ear and giving it a musical spanking on the guitar, Blayne Thiebaud burning rosin and bending bow on the fiddle, and Grayson Van Sickle playing machine gun banjo are a no frill straight up bluegrass/honky-tonk hybrid hippies, which is usually not my thing,,,but damn that make it cook with kerosene! Great stuff, check ’em out!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imG2W4OW5HE[/youtube]

Review – Ben Mallott – Look Good, Feel Good (Self Released)

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It’s rare that I play a new release passed my way and my mind is stopped from lazily latching onto the closest analog. Classification is what the mind does to make sense of the word and allow progress but with music critiques it can be a handicap.

The new release by Austinite and ex-Helpers front man, Ben Mallott, Look Good, Feel Good, is a musical monkey wrench to the sated mechanics of the jaded ear.

First the album cover of the album. Mallott looks at you from an old school barber shop’s mirror (flanked with the omnipresent Barbicide jar full of combs) bedecked in an an pink ornate pearl-snap shirt, white pants fringed with gold and kicked-up baroquely tooled boots that would make Nudie Cohn swoon. This juxtaposition of ordinary and flamboyant was a staple of 70’s Nash-Vegas alchemical imagery that Porter Wagoner mastered.

Then there is the voice.  As stated before an obvious analogy doesn’t spring to mind, and to do a just description would lead to a hyphen polluted mess. Suffice to say Mallott can moved from gritty baratone to soaring ache within a single song. Case in point is the opener Heartbreaks, the guitar lays a chugging foundation, and pedal-steel and fiddle gently interlock, to travel the timeworn terrain of the anguish of lost love. What saves the piece from cliche’ is the subtle soul in Mallot’s pipes.

Austin folk goddess Eliza Gilkyson on backing vocal on a gently rolling Shotgun Suzy and I half expected a matador to suddenly appear in the mariachi-horn and guitar start to Purgatory’s Last Massage Parlor which names drops George Jones and features some fine fiddle work. I Want It All is straight up Memphis-seared soul the would Make Van Morrison smile and The Artful Dodger sound like a long-lost opaque ballad by the late Jeff Buckley.

Midnight and Broke Down is a lonesome, lovely tune that comes closest to a trad country piece and Cold Feet is a Jerry Lee rockabilly-style cooker. The somber B-3 organ opening of Love Is Cold Water soon breaks into a shuffling Gospel rouser.

I have said that I think great musicians drawing from a wide view of musical sources have always made the best conduits for synthesis (or in the modern parlance, Mash up) and Ben Mallott adeptly shows this ability with this extraordinary surprise.

Official Site |   MySpace |  Buy

Ben Mallott – Heartbreaks

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awha88Lp37E[/youtube]


Country Music Legend Hank Locklin Passes

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  • Hank Locklin , Country legend, Grand Ole Opry member, pioneer of the country music concept album and “Nashville Sound,” and one of the greatest tenor singers in country music history, died Sunday in Brewton, Ala. His greatest hits included Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On in 1958 and Please Help Me I’m Falling in 1960.  Mr. Locklin had recently released his 65th album, By the Grace of God. He was 91.
  • I knew that country music fans were old school in thier aesthetic preferences but was surprised by the Country Music Association study which found that “countryphiles (18–54 year old passionate fans who appreciate country music and are fervent consumers of CDs, radio, television and concerts) are purchasing few digital downloads and, by extension, only half of country music’s biggest fans have home Internet access. I haven’t seen the details of these findings but it might explain why the top chart sellers are country music artists (well, Taylor Swift anyway.) It’ll be interesting to see what decisions will be made by the CMA because of these findings. Here’s to the return of local Jamborees!
  • Though I’ve decided to not review Middle Cyclone,  the new indy-pop release Neko Case the folks at Hearya.com do and they like what they hear.
  • Juli Thanki over at the always entertaining 9513.com reviews Written in Chalk, the new release by Buddy and Julie Miller (which I will be reviewing.)