• Hearya.com has posted four great live cuts from Justin Townes Earle. The cuts are “Lone Pine Hill,” “Who Am I To Say,”
  “Your Biscuits Are Big Enough For Me” and “Turn Out My Lights.” The session was recorded along with his live show
  accompaniment and friend Cory Younts.
• Tickets for the July 5, 2008 Hootenanny in Orange County CA are on sale now.Some of the artists scheduled to appear are Mike Ness,BR549’s Chuck Mead,Royal Crown Revue, Cadillac Tramps, Grant Lee Phillips, Big Sandy, James Intveld, Guana Batz, Throw Rag, Blood on the Saddle, Roger Allen Wade, Russel Scott, Powerflex 5, Chris Schiflet, Dusty Rhodes, Rickey Warwick, Sh*tkickers, Hellbound Hayride and Wil Ridge
• Aquarium Drunkard has a great post on a two-volume Dirty Laundry compilation that rounds up a collection of black country-soul cuts from the sixties and seventies. Samples offered are James Brown doing Hank Williams’ “Your Cheating Heart” and Bettye Swann doing  “Just Because You Can’t Be Mine.”
• CMT’s Unplugged at Studio 330 has Shooter Jennings playing some cuts off his latest release The Wolf.”

Galleywinter holds a Q&A with Matt Hillyer, lead singer, guitarist and primary songwriter of Texas’ best country band working today Eleven Hundred Springs. Hillyer talks about his influences, Texas musicians and juke joints, the stories behind some of EHS songs and the band’s upcoming Lloyd Maines produced release Country Jam (Palo Duro Records)

20. What do you see as the main difference between the music you’re making and the stuff you hear on mainstream radio?

We’re trying desperately to get back to the heart and soul of country music. You’ve got to get the blues back in to it. That heartfelt feeling that rings true for everyone. We’re trying to keep the formula simple in hopes it will be classic…or at least pay tribute to something classic.

(via the 9513)

If you find yourself in the Dallas area on May 31st get over to the Granada Theater to catch EHS for their CD release party and 10 year anniversary.

The fine folks over at the 9513 are recounting the events from this years 3 day Stagecoach Music Festival at Indio CA
(right down interstate 10 from Palm Springs.)

I hope to catch Stagecoach next year because it offers a wide array of talent that country music all at one geographically beautiful venue.

The man is a mad genius in a world of tin-eared fools. Pehdtsckjmba people, pehdtsckjmba.

Guayaki Yerba Mate presents the fifth Brooklyn County Fair May 11th at Galapagos (70 North 6th Street Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY) with headliner The Flanks as their new CD heads to the press. The Newton Gang (featuring Alan Lee Backer on lead guitar and the former members of Gowanus Corral and the WWJDs) is on the bill supporting their new EP and Yarn makes their triumphant return after touring relentlessly. Jon Itkin makes his BCF debut celebrating his latest release. The Doc Marshalls will support their CD sits as it sits at 20 on the AMA Top 40. Jamie Lyn Smith returns to the BCf with her Red Tail Hawks Band bringing her melodic mountain-style to the big city. All this will be hosted by your fabulous hillbilly hostess Lindy Loo!

I’m drawn to music that sounds both timeless and new. It represents to me the concept of the connection in time of the past and future all running like a river with us standing right in the middle with the muddy now caking our boots. It also assures me that there are forms of innovation happening within country and roots music that stand starkly in contrast to the Nash-pop variety (which is not always bad, but I’ll post more on that later.)

I’ve come across a couple of ladies making waves in that river of time and music by showing a palpable reverence for country music’s traditional roots while bringing a refreshing shot of indie creativity and a sense of daring into the mix.

Colorado native and Seattle resident and Sera Cahoone’s early life experiments with the sax and junior high musical path that led her to the drums where she established her bona-fides as a drummer for the now-defunct indie sadcore band Carissa’s Weird (who’s members also included Ben Bridwell and Mat Brooke now in the group Band of Horses) led to her surprising sophomore solo outing “Only as the Day Is Long.” the release is a country-noir landscape where Cahoone’s voice stretches sleepily over spare, atmospheric dobro, pedal steel, guitar, and fiddle backing. Like a slow-core book end to Neko Case’s Furnace Room Lullaby Cahoone’s themes of innocence, hope and dread are woven throughout. With titles like “The Colder the Air,” “Happy When I’m Gone,” and “Shitty Hotel” you know your not in for a sunny romp, but country and roots music has always mined a rich vein of the melancholy and Sera Cahoone has staked a rich emotional and musical claim.

As her early incarnation with the moniker Save Macaulay a teenager Nashville’s Caitlin Rose was able to deliver classic country tunes with respect and authority in her distinctively Dolly meetsEmmylou vocal style. After dropping alias and at the ripe old age of 20 this Waffle House aficionado has released a quirky and beautiful EP that was cut in two days in November 2007 at the Bombshelter studios in East Nashville.

The love of country’s history exhibited immediately with the EP’s packaging and on the first cut of the Dead Flowers EP. With ‘Shotgun Wedding” Rose sings the tune with a Smokey Mountain lilt over Bob Grant’s excellent mandolin . “Answer In One Of These Bottles” takes it’s place with another classic narrative of drinking to forget Rose then shows she has the pipes to take on the Patsy Cline classic Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray as she covers it with all it’sforelorn beauty. Docket is a quirky Kris Kristofferson -style solo-guitar number that is perfect Summer listening and a lone tambourine accompanies the whimsical Gorilla Man brings to mind ShelSilverstein play on words. Rose then tackles the classic Cosmic American Rolling Stones-come-Gram-Parson a;;ad of heroin overdose from which this stellar EP derives it’s title.

“Only as the Day Is Long” - Sera Cahoone

“Dead Flowers EP” - Caitlin Rose

James McMurtry and Lightning Rod Records are holding a contest for fans to create a music video to the protest song “Cheney’s Toy” off McMurtry’s new release Just Us Kids.

From the entries, McMurtry will choose the best videos and post them on his official MySpace page and website. If needed, fans can create videos using slideshow applications at RockYou.com.  Creators of each of the top five videos will receive t-shirts and autographed copies of McMurtry’s new album,  Just Us Kids (in stores now). McMurtry’s choice for the best overall video will also receive an 8 Gb Apple iPod Nano.

Some video fans have already made.

It’s that time again friends, when decent folks flee to the hills and the rowdys take over town drinking,  firing their pistols in the air and bringing the finest real country podcast on the planet.

Episode 14 of It Burns When I Pee features an in-studeo interview with Dave Sisson of The Gin Palace Jesters and Three Blue Teardrops, hear some tasty tunes from The Steeldrivers, The Devil’s Own, The Misery Jackels, and Carmen Lee, and get raunchy with more Hee-Haw meets Jerry Springer-style comedy.

Go get IBWIP and lord help us all.

It’s been a while since I posted on Austin’s own Sunny Sweeney, so allow me to make ammends by letting ya’ll know Sunny has added a new song “You’re My Hotel, He’s My Home” (co-written with Adam Hood) to her set list and posted the lyrics on her MySpace blog. (via the 9513)

Go out and see Sunny when she come to a town near you.

Sunny Sweeney at Ernest Tubb’s records in Nashville