Category Archives: alt.country

Tom Waits in Dallas

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Last night’s Tom Waits show in Dallas was along waited treasure for this fan. You can read more here and here. Waits has been mining a vein of American music that is uniquely his own through his career and his songs have been covered by Allison Krauss, Johnny Cash and the Ramones among many many others (notice the intended omission of one Ms. Scarlett Johansson.)  

Big thumbs down for the venue, The Palladium Ballroom, for the lack of air conditioning for a two thousand plus crowd on a hot Texas June night.

Tom Waits: Innocent When You Dream, Houston 2008

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cn2osC5aRg[/youtube]

Loretta Lynn at the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Glitzy entertainmant industry parties in New York City are common (not that I’m invited, they do have some standards) but on the recent occasion of the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction it took “the pride of Butcher Holler, Kentucky” to give those jaded industry wonks something to talk about on the way out of the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square. Loretta Lynn brought down the house and left them wanting more.

Hayes Carll Simulcast: Today

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Just in from the fine folks at Lost Highway Records: Bored at work?  Hayes Carll is performing live at 3:00 PM PST (6:00 PM EST) and it’s for all of us junkies!   Mike Nesmith’s (yes, THAT Mike Nesmith) VideoRanch.com and KPIG in Freedom, CA will simulcast Carll’s performance for your listening enjoyment.  You’ve got two ways to satisfy your Carll craving:

Visit www.videoranch.com and download the 3D Browser. It takes only a second and will be a trippy way to
watch Hayes perform.

Not into downloading files? Then visit www.kpig.com this afternoon (June 18) and listen to the performance.

And as always… make sure to swing by www.hayescarll.com for new tour dates, streaming music from Trouble In
Mind and loads of reviews.

Yahoo Music Blog’s 25 Music Legends

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Rob O’Connor compiled a list of 25 Music Legends (With At Least 25 Years of Service) for his Yahoo music blog. His list speaks well of the longevity of great country music by including some legends scattered in with Blues and Rock greats.

Merle Haggard bows in at #23 (as a country music artist, he’s about as close to rock ‘n’ roll as a country musician can go without acting crossing over the line.) Loretta Lynn comes in at #21, Dolly Parton at #18, Willie Nelson at #12 (I assume it’s his Zen-like state that enables him to endure the rigors of the road after all these years. He’s able to get to that mental state where you don’t know where you are and you don’t care.) George Jones is in at # 9 and Johnny Cash makes the grade at #5 (He owned the color black.)

Topping the list at #1, no surprises, is Robert Allen Zimmerman (aka Bob Dylan)

Americana Music Association 2008 Honors and Awards Nominees Announced

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓

The 2008 Americana Music Association Honors and Awards Nominees have been announced with Alison Krauss & Robert Plant getting the most nods for their moody roots release “Raising Sand.”  Some are dead on and some, like the The Avett Brothers who have come out with no new release for 2008, you just wonder if the AMA is going to have it’s own equivalent shoo-in like the Country Music Awards giving Kenny Chesney Entertainer of the Year for something like 13 years in a row (5 years in a row, actually.)

Here’s the list

ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Alison Krauss & Robert Plant
Raising Sand
Hayes Carll
Trouble in Mind
James McMurtry
Just Us Kids
Levon Helm
Dirt Farmer

ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Steve Earle
Levon Helm
Jim Lauderdale
James McMurtry

INSTUMENTALIST OF THE YEAR
Buddy Miller
Chris Thile
Gurf Morlix
Sam Bush

NEW EMERGING ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Justin Townes Earle
Mike Farris
Ryan Bingham
The Steeldrivers

SONG OF THE YEAR
“Broken” Tift Merritt
“Cheney’s Toy” James McMurtry
“Gone Gone Gone” Alison Krauss & Robert Plant
“Poor Old Dirt Farmer” Levon Helm
“She Left Me for Jesus” Hayes Carll

DUO/GROUP OF THE YEAR
Alison Krauss & Robert Plant
Drive By Truckers
Kane Welch Kaplin
The Avett Brothers

In more Americana Music Association news, the AMA is going to give their Lifetime Achievement in Performance Award to alt.country pioneers Jason and the Scorchers. The Awards show will be held Thursday, September 18 at the Mother Church of Country Music, the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Original Jason and the Scorchers members Jason Ringenberg, Warner Hodges, Jeff Johnson and Perry Baggs will be on hand not only to accept the honor, but to perform together for the first time in more than a decade.

Documentary on Country Music Planned

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓

From Variety.com – Plans are in motion for documentarians David Leaf (The U.S. vs. John Lennon) and Morgan Neville (The Night James Brown Saved Boston) to chronicle the history of country music/ the series will be produced by Shout! Factory and Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

The individual segments will be thematically divided. On the slate are “The Roots of Country and Bluegrass,” “The Honky Tonk Tradition,” “Outlaw Country,” “The Nashville Sound,” “The Politics of Country,” “Country Songs and Songwriters,” “California Country” and “No Depression,” a look at the alternative country music movement.

Modern country stars will be participating in the films, providing their personal connections to the past.
“We are always looking for new ways to reach and expand our audience and tell them the story of this uniquely American genre,” said Kyle Young, director of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

The Hall of Fame and Shout! Factory, founded by music industry vets Richard Foos, Bob Emmer and Garson Foos, first partnered last year to create DVD collections culled from the museum’s archive.

I hope this is half as good as the BBC 2003 four-part series Lost Highway: The True Story of Country Music.

Gibson Guitars Top 10 Alt-Country Guitarists

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

Gibson Guitars blog continue their survey of random alt.country categorization (see Top 5 Essential Alt-Country Albums , 3 Great Alt-Country Obscurities and a nice write up on the Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers and Uncle Tupelo pedal steel player Sneaky Pete Kleinow) with the excellent addition of the Top 10 Alt-Country Guitarists. Just one question, where the heck is Kenny Vaughn (Lucinda Williams, Marty Stuart) on this list?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOUL7Vi02ew[/youtube]

Robbie Fulks in the The Boston Globe

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

The Boston Globe has a nice feature (He’s country but he jumps genres with irreverence) on alt.country journeyman Robbie Fulks. A excerpt:

Fulks, who plays a duo show with his friend Robbie Gjersoe at Club Passim tomorrow night, says that hearing Chet Atkins do Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” on “A Prairie Home Companion” gave him validation for his obsessive urge to demolish musical barriers.

Curiously, he’s both country to the core and an incorrigible iconoclast. “I feel it’s an ongoing tension in my life,” says the singer, who parlayed the considerable buzz of his mid-’90s arrival into a steady, if largely under-the-radar, career as an “alt-country” mainstay.

The tension, he says from his Chicago home, isn’t between country music and everything else as much as it is between “genre and experiment.” Given the choice, he’ll jump the wall every time.

Robbie Fulks “Cigarette State” – Corporate Country Sucks

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laFfx6hPes0[/youtube]