Category Archives: Americana

Dale Watson Announces U.S. Tour Dates

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Texas honky-tonk troubadour Dale Watson’s brand new studio album, From The Cradle To The Grave, is set for release nationwide April 24 on HYENA Records. Watson will hit the road in May to support its release with a run of East Coast and Midwest tour dates. It will mark the beginning of a year long promotional push that will find Dale performing in all corners of the United States, as well as, Europe and Australia. If you’ve never seen Dale in concert do youself, and your buddies or your gal, a favor.

On second thought don’t take your gal, you’ll never measure up after she sees Dale do his stuff.
Dale Watson’s upcoming tour dates are:
May 11 / WFPK “Live Lunch” / Louisville, KY
May 12 / Midnight Jamboree at Ernest Tubb / Nashville, TN
May 13 / Hideaway BBQ / Raleigh, NC
May 14 / Shenanigans / Richmond, VA
May 15 / The Iota Club / Arlington, VA
May 16 & 17 / The Rodeo Bar / New York, NY (Yeah!)
May 19 / Johnny D’s / Boston, MA
May 20 / The Ale House / Troy, NY
May 21 / The Sportsmen’s Tavern / Buffalo, NY
May 22 / Beachland Ballroom / Cleveland, OH
May 23 / Martyr’s / Chicago, IL
May 24 / Club Tavern / Middleton, WI
May 25 / Vnuk’s Lounge / Cudahi, WI
May 26 / Lee’s Liquor Lounge / Minneapolis, MN
May 27 / Knuckleheads / Kansas City, MO

Chris Knight – The Knitting Factory -New York City – 4/6/07

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Chris Knight tells stories about the down and out, the desperate, the unlucky and folks generally off societies grid and influenced by his childhood growing up in the tiny mining town of Slaughters, KY – and here in the tiny downstairs Tap Room at the Knitting Factory a near capacity crowd came to bear witness to their lives in song.

Dismissed by critics as the poor-man’s (so to speak) Steve Earle, Knight has his own stories and they tend to be more direct, more sparse and grittier then Earle would pen. Knight is also not afraid to show his redneck roots in song and onstage which Earle, with his newfound Liberalism, seems uncomfortable with is not outright embarrasses with his Texas heritage.

This cold New York eve Knight covered songs from his entire catalog, “Enough Rope” from his last release from last year by the same name, is followed by the question “Are there any PETA people here tonight? I love animals, I just don’t take any shit off of them.” Knight joked and then breaks into “Bridle on a Bull” which features the lyrics “If your mule don’t want to plow/Talk to him with a two-by-four/And if he still don’t want to plow/Talk to him just a little bit more/And if he just don’t want to listen/Haul him off to the dog food store.”

In fine Southern and country music tradition Knight told many stories about how his songs came about. He tells a story of how his song Devil Behind The When (from the CD “The Jealous Kind”) involving the hiring of a religious drummer demonic birthday card.

Next is asong of the recently release “The Trailer Tapes” (Thirty Tigers) was about “I big city boy coming to the country and stirring up trouble. Yeah, I know this is going to go over big here in New York City. Laughs and gawfaws all around. The song kiils in it’s menace and heat. “Rita’s Only Fault” from the same release follows, about a former beauty queen’s revenge after a husband’s abuse was somber and heartfelt.

The crowd was almost dead silent during the solo guitar accompanied songs (despite the loud rock band playing on the upstairs stage), but once the songs were over the crowd is clapping and whooping as much as any Mason Dixon dive (with better beer.) I met some boys a few sheets to the wind who had driven all the way from Connecticut to see the show. “We had to come seee our boy.” the tall, lanky guy with a trucker cap beamed.

Knight the tells the story about a shoe in Switzerland when a local fan came up to him after the show and asked if he was okay after what happened to his brother. Knight had performed “Down The River” (from the CD “A Pretty Good Guy”). The song tells the story of two brothers that go fishing and the older one is murdered as revenge for a pool hall brawl.

The fan said “I hope your alright since that happed to your brother.” Knight then deadpans in his Kentucky drawl “If I can make people think these things are happening to me, I’ve done my job.”

He’s got me believing.

Porter Wagner/Marty Stuart – Joe’s Pub – New York City – 3/30/07

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At one time Porter Wagner was something of a visionary. A TV star before most of country music had anything to do with the new-fangeled contraption. Wagner’s TV show was syndicated out of Nashville and was the most popular country show of the ’60s, growing from 18 stations in 1961 to over a hundred stations in the early ’70s ( In 1981, after nearly 30 years, and his television show went off the air). Crooning and strumming guitar bejeweled in his Nudie suits and flanked by a young, buxom newcomer named Dolly Parton – who’s career was launched on his show. Dolly and Porter won the Vocal Duo of the Year by the Country Music Association for the years 1968, 1970 and 1971.

The Thin Man from West Plains, Missouri, was coming to Manhattan for the first time in nearly 20 years to play some of his many hits and showcase some work off his forthcoming CD from Anti records, the Marty Stuart produced “The Wagonmaster.”. I find myself at a 7:30pm sold-out show at Joe’s Pub on the East Side (claustrophobic even by Manhattan standards) among the devotees.

After a warm and heartfelt introduction by Mart Stuart, which included a story of when Stuart was shopping the CD around Nashville nobody was biting. “So we went to Los Angeles and approached Anti / Epitaph, that’s right we had to go to a punk label to make real Country Music.”

Then the man hisself entered the stage looking younger than his almost 80 years, still tall and thin and donning a spangled white Nudie suit and jeweled boots. Maty and Porter then took seats donning acoustics and began a trip through a simpler time, starting the show with “Satisfied Mind.”

Stuart played backup guitar like the master he is while Porter strummed occasionally on his acoustic and read the lyrics from his music stand.

Porter was in a jovial mood and joked with the audience like that did back in the day. He missed some of the lyrics and explained it away as “That used to be Dolly’s part. I called Dolly and told her I was coming to New York said “They are some of the nicest people you’ll meet.” First time she ever told me thee truth.” He cracked.

Porter sang the song that sat in Stuart’s studio for about 30 years after Johnny Cash gave his then band guitarist (and son-in-law) a song about being institutionalized (Porter and Cash were both) “Committed to Parkview.” Marty told the story “John said ‘I’ve got a song for Porter; it’s about a stay in Parkview, which is an asylum at the edge of Nashville. Porter and I both have been guests there.’ Cash gave me a cassette of the song in 1981 and asked me to get it to Porter. I never got around to it until we started collecting songs for this project. I searched my warehouse and found the envelope with ‘Committed to Parkview’ on it, with a note from John to Porter. now you got it!” Porter laughed.

Then came the “Big Sandy River,” “The Rubber Room” and the classic “Green, Green Grass of Home.”

Porter told a tale (after prompted by Stuart by a ‘fan question”) about seeing Hank Williams play in Arkansas when he was Young and then honored Hank by preforming Luke the Drifter morality tale “Men with Broken Hearts” and “Lonesome Whistle.”

Then the pair played the solemn “Cold Hard Facts of Life” and the ironically funny “I’ve Enjoyed As Much of This As I Can Stand.”

Marty played a blistering mandolin solo and then it was on to “Dooley”, “..about a man who created a wood picture beautiful woman.” Porter said as he introduced the song.

The fact that Porter Wagner was sitting here in this room was even more miraculous after Porter tells the story of how before recording the new CD last summer he almost died of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. “I’m truly blessed to be here.” He said, tearing up a moment. “I’m truly blessed.”

As were we.

Porter Wagner in New York

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Friday (3/29) Grammy winner and Country Music Hall of Famer Porter Wagoner will make a stop to Joe’s Pub to grace the City with his signature brand of sentimental storytelling to the City. Wagner was signed to Anti records last year and his new release, the Marty Stuart produced ‘Wagonmaster” is slated to be released on May 2007.

A compilation of Wagner’s most eerie work “Rubber Room: The Haunting Poetic Songs of Porter Wagoner 1966-1977” was released last summer.

Last of the Breed – Radio City Music Hall – 3/22

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It’s not often I get to wear my Lucchese and Stetson on the D train headed downtown to the Rockafeller stop to Radio City Music Hall but on this wet, muggy Spring evening I had an occasion to do so. The brief “Last of the Breed” tour showcasing three legends of Country Music – Ray Price, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson – accompanied by nine-time Grammy winning Western-swing band, Austin’s Asleep at the Wheel was making a stop on their brief tour in New York City.

Southern emigres and enthusiastic wanna-bes from miles around have descened on this sold-out transformed house of honky-tonk in a kind of red state / blue state détente to pay tribute to great, timeless music.

Three men with careers spanning over 150 years and 300 releases between them could easily be defined (along with George Jones and Kris Kristofferson) the most influential living figures of country music. Their paths have cross-crossed the country music landscape over the years (Willie used to be Mr. Price’s bass player, Mele and Willie topped the charts with a cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty). If there can be a unifying force between of all of them it would be the genre-bending Texas swing master Bob Wills and his fiddle-playing,improvisational style, and that style was on full display this evening.

You respect your elders, so Ray Price (81) kicked things off with a half-hour set backed by his Cherokee Cowboys. Dapper in a suit and red tie Price exudes the smooth baritone that has defined him all these years while highlighting some of his greatest work- Steel guitar and twin fiddles set down the foundation for San Antonio Rose, Crazy Arms, Heartaches by the Number, Please Release Me, Help Me Make it Through the Night. Songs of love and heartache from a man that makes you believe he’s been there.
A brief instrumental interlude and in Mele Haggard shuffles nonchalantly onto the stage as though he were just one of the band, taking center stage, takes up a fiddle and gets things moving with “Take Me Back to Tulsa.” The packed hall went nuts and I almost smell the holy hillbilly sacrament of whiskey and old leather right there on 6th Avenue. The sound of the ages rode on Merle’s voice that night, “I Wonder if You Feel the Way I Do This Morning, This Evening, So Soon”, “Silver Wings”, “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink”, songs of the downtrodden- “This goes out to all the convicts here tonight.” he announced before breaking into Sing Me Back Home, and taking sly jabs at current events – “Honey, don’t worry about what George Bush does” was slipped into the lyrics of “That’s the Way Love Goes.” Haggard was full of passion, piss and vinegar.

Then just when you think it couldn’t get any better in strolls Willie, saddle up ‘ol Trigger and he and Merle take off with the classic Haggard 60’s retort “Okie From Muskogee” where I assume Willie sang the line “We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee” with some sense of irony. Then “Pancho and Lefty” and “Reasons to Quit,” “Ramblin’ Fever” and a new song by Willie “Back to Earth.” Mickey Raphael, Willie’s faithful band harmonica wizard punctuated Willie’s off-kilter phrasing and Merle’s solid-as-stone baritone with sounds reminiscent of a whippoorwill call or a lonely train whistle.

Ray Price reappeared to cover a few songs from the release, honoring Wills with “Roly Poly” and “Please Don’t Leave Me Any More Darlin” and one of my favorites, “Night Life” this portion brought the two rambunctious youngsters to heal by the old-school elegance of a master and they followed suit willingly on support.

Willie then took the reins and did cuts he can now do in his sleep – “You Were Always on My Mind”, “Whiskey River” and “On the Road Again” introduced his song “Superman: as one he wrote while taking time off recuperate from carpal-tunnel and introduced a new song “You Don’t Think I’m Funny Anymore” that was genuinely hilarious.

The years of classic country music strata was unearthed before a rabid New York City crowd which was on their feet, wooping and hollering, after almost every song. For a moment the fervor was so genuine, the dotted Stetons in the crowd, the drunk in the lobby being “handled” by the cops- I felt the soul of a honky-tonk permeated the Hall that Rockefeller built leaving it altered forever. It took these legends – this music that Nashville seems hell-bent to squelch as a result of market-testing or sheer embarrassment of their hillbilly roots – to make myth live this warm city night.

Oh Boy Records to Release Tom Snider’s Peace, Love and Anarchy – Rarities, B-sides and Demos

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Hey Todd Snider fans, good new coming by way of Upstage: (Nashville, TN) — Though singer/songwriter Todd Snider released his last album on Universal Records, he built up a strong and loyal following during his five-year tenure with Nashville based Oh Boy Records. Oh Boy Records sifted through their archives – and with Snider’s help – compiled a collection of rarities, B-sides and demos appropriately titled Peace, Love and Anarchy (Rarities, B-sides and Demos, Vol. 1). The album, which streets on April 3, is an invitation for us to peer in and watch a gypsy whittle, and for us to whistle along while he works.

Snider, praised as a next-in-line luminary by folks such as John Prine, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Jeff Walker and Billy Joe Shaver, appears onstage as a barefoot tipsy gypsy, looking for all the world like he’s stumbling into brilliance, eloquence and gut-busting humor. It’s a great act, and this is not to say that he’s not himself out there. He is, and it’s his best self. It has landed him in hallowed performance halls, on the Jay Leno and David Letterman shows and in the good graces of his heroes.

What people don’t see, though, is the fellow who wakes early each morning, picks up a guitar and works on his poems. He writes them out by hand, and at first a Snider song is something like a big block of good wood. Then the knife comes out, the wood is shaped over days and weeks and sometimes years, and he shows it to people once he’s done with it. His recordings, too, blend the inspiration of a moment with a thousand afterthoughts. They wind up on finished recordings because they are… well, finished. Even the jagged stuff is there on for a purpose.

All of which makes Peace, Love and Anarchy (Rarities, B-Sides and Demos, Vol. 1) something of a revelation. Here are Snider’s songs at first blush. Some of these compositions – among them, “Nashville,” “Feels Like I’m Falling In Love” (for co-writer Jack Ingram), “Deja Blues” (for co-writer Shaver) and “Feel Like Missing You” – grew up to become master recordings, while “Nashville” was whittled down some more before appearing on the East Nashville Skyline album. The title song of the latter album never made the album in question, and it appears here for the first time, complete with resplendent harmonica/steel guitar interplay between Snider and the legendary Lloyd Green.

“Cheatham Street Warehouse” is a full-on rock ‘n’ roll tribute to a favorite Texas haunt, with Snider’s tough-as-the-blues electric guitar duel with Tommy Womack in the middle and Green’s searing steel solo dominating at song’s end. “Combover Blues” is a slice of poignant wit, and Snider can’t recall precisely why it was left off his original Oh Boy recordings. “I Will Not Go Hungry” is a weather-beaten spiritual reach, while the “Dinner Plans” haiku is all red wine reality.

“Stoney” is taken from the much-bootlegged but never-issued Todd Sings Jerry Jeff album that he recorded over a few nights in East Nashville as an aural thank-you note to one of his inspirers. He sat in a chair with eyes closed and played the songs from memory: Todd Snider knows Jerry Jeff Walker songs as well as he knows anything in the world, including but not limited to rolling paper techniques, lighter fluid methodology and San Francisco Giants baseball. “Some Things Are” is another openhearted endeavor, as is “From A Rooftop,” Snider’s postcard from the right side of town.

Peace, Love and Anarchy is not a post-contract, drag-the-lake affair. It is a carefully constructed collection, and a testament to the potency of a catalogue built during Snider’s five-year tenure with the small-but-stout Oh Boy Records family.

Todd Snider – Austin City Limits- This Land Is Your Land

Spicewood Seven – Kakistocracy

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The simple-minded view of country music as a soundtrack to the religo–fasict faction of red state America completely ignores the poor, working class roots of country music and the and the multifaceted, complex great artists that created it. Sometimes a release reminds you of all of that and does it in spades.

Texas’ Spicewood Seven brings us Kakistocracy (rhymes with democracy), meaning “government by the incompetent and corrupt, and in the midst of the current Bush administration I’d say that’s about right.

Keeping up the tradition forged by the likes of Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson. Loretta Lynn, Steve Earl and many others Kakistocracy is a condemnation of the corruption of American values by the powerful elite. Great music has always been created in response to war. From Woody Guthrie to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young – the horror of war cries out for artists to address it.

Led by lyricist Luke Powers and multi-instrumentalist Tommy Spurlock (a longtime stalwart of the Austin music scene who’s recorded with everyone from George Jones to Shania Twain), the Spicewood Seven include guest shots from a variety of names both well-known (Garth Hudson of the Band adds organ) and some less-so – Leon Rausch, Brennen Leigh, David Hearne, Elana Fremerman, Jimmy Karstein, Rosie Flores, Jane Bond. All songs were written by Tommy Spurlock and Luke Powers, the disc was mixed and produced by Tommy Spurlock for Austin Records.

Song themes run from the Iraq war (“Crawford, Texas,” and “Going Down the Road to Baghdad”) and the blight of methamphetamine on rural America (“Crystal Time”). Protest music succeeds or fails by the same standards all music does, is it boring? Spicewood Seven makes music that speaks to your mind but also moves your ass.

Much fuss was made a couple of years ago when Green Day released the punk-opera”American Idiot” in response to the buffoons in Washington. Kakistocracy makes American Idiot sound like easy listening.

(I’m Goin’ Down to) Crawford Texas(mp3) 

Going Down the Road to Baghdad(mp3)

Charlie Louvin Plays New York City

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I won’t be making it back home to South By Southwest this year and one of the things that made that a crappy deal was missing Charlie Louvin the surviving half of the legendary Louvin Brother when he plays there to support his great new self-titled which was produced by Mark Nevers (Lambchop, Calexico, Candi Staton) and Charlie Louvin, and was recorded in Spring/Summer 2006 in Nashville. It features guest performances by Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy, Will Oldham, Tom T. Hall, George Jones, Bobby Bare Sr., Tift Merritt, Marty Stuart, David Kilgour, and members of Bright Eyes, Lambchop, Superchunk, Blanche and Clem Snide, among others.

Well it seems My Louvin will be making a stop in New York City (see the banner above and click for details) just to quell my sadness. Catch this elder statesman while you can!

Terry Flynn – Again Tonight

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When I was at the one of the Mercy lounge showcases for the Americana Music Conference I was in the upstairs room waiting for Marty Stuart I ran into a frietndly fellow with a chair right near the front. We chatted for a while, shared a beer. He said his name was Terry Flynn and he handed me his CD, Again Tonight.  “I hope you like it” he said before I lost him in the crowd. I’m here to say I do.

Atlana native Terry Flynn has a country-soul voice like Ray Price for Elvis in his early hillbilly years. His songs about love found lost and found again. Sorrowful hope. Atlanta is a lovely song to his home state and a woman returning from New York. “Still In Love With You” is a slow burning rockabilly tune that delivers and the title song begins with a Spanish style guitar into and then kicks into a full rave. This is a great release from a fine and genuine artist.