Second Annual No Depression Festival Line-Up Announced

No Depression magazine (and now web site), the go-to authority for roots and Americana music for 15 years, has announced the line-up for their second annual No Depression Festival, and it’s a peach! The Swell Season, Lucinda Williams, The Cave Singers, Alejandro Escovedo, Chuck Prophet, Punch Brothers and Sera Cahoone. The fun starts on Aug. 21, 2010, at Marymoor Park  in Redmond, Wash. Pre-sale tickets are available 10 a.m. Thursday 4/29 until 10 p.m. Friday 4/30 (password: HAPPY). Tickets will be available to the general public beginning 10 a.m. May 1.

If you order your tickets in the presale, email your confirmation to info at nodepression dot com to be entered in a drawing for a special No Depression prize package. Three winners will be chosen at random and will win a No Depression t-shirt, tote bag, anthology, and stickers.

News Round Up: Robert Plant to Tour with Patty Griffin, Darrell Scott & Buddy Miller

Robert Plant appears to be following the Americana music muse that led him to a successful collaboration with Alison Krauss and T. Bone Burnett on the Grammy-Award winning Raising Sand.

Plant has confirmed a 12-city North American tour  beginning in July.  Plant’ will be supported on tour by the  Band of Joy, a name taken from a pre-Zeppelin  ’60s Birmingham, England group he performed in with drummer John Bonham.  Plant and Band will preview material from a new album set for release on Rounder in late summer/early fall.  Band of Joy will feature Patty Griffin (who has recently release her own new album Downtown Church), multi-instrumentalist/singer Darrell Scott,  bassist/singer Byron House, drummer/percussionist/vocalist Marco Giovino, and co-producer/guitar/singer Buddy Miller (who also appeared on Raising Sand.)

Music Review: The Drive-By Truckers – The Big To-Do [ATO Records]

First off; cards on the table, the Drive By Truckers are a one of the reasons I started an Americana/roots blog. They and a handful of other bands crossed my path while living in New york City and coming to grips with my Southwestern roots. The mighty DBTs embraced what Patterson Hood brilliantly coined the “duality of the Southern thing” (from the Southern Rock Opera song Southern Thing):

You think I’m dumb, maybe not too bright
You wonder how I sleep at night
Proud of the glory, stare down the shame
Duality of the southern thing

In the South we call it the ugly sister exception – I can call my sister ugly, but if you do it’s out of line and you’ll probably get your ass handed to you. It really just boils down to the attitude shared by many disenfranchised tribal-like cultures – we can take care of our own, thank you – no outside help is wanted or appreciated. This attitude spoke to me and my upbringing and it opened up a world of familiar yet new, interesting and exciting musical narratives and sounds that was part Cormac McCarthy and part Lynyrd Skynyrd Southern-swagger meets the Replacements punk pop smarts. it was like the Drive By Truckers took the current alt.country genre replaced the engine and floored it.

It’s a common Catch-22 many of us apply to bands. We want our precious, unearthed gems to stay our little special secret and to achieve only enough success so they can continue to make music but not enough where they achieve the dreaded “sell out.” The Drive By Truckers haven’t reached the mega-fame of U2 or Radiohead, but they are far from  from their humble Alabama beginnings. And as they say the band have done good for themselves.  Rave reviews and relentless touring and sizzling live shows led to divorces, band changes (both encompassed by singer/songwriter Jason Isbell’s divorce from bass player/singer Shonna Tucker leading to his subsequent departure from the band) kids, marriages, playing back-up and for legends Bettye LaVette and Booker T Jones, Austin City Limits, David Letterman etc. etc. This special secret was getting progressively less secret. Patterson Hood even took to wearing thick hipster classes and drinking wine instead of Jack Daniels!
As success has come the narratives from A Blessing and A Curse, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark as well as The Big To-Do are less abut the cultural landscape of the South and more about the emotional landscape of middle-age which, By the nature, is going to be less interesting and more self-indulgent.

The “rocking” moments are here but they are few and more subdued than in the band’s piss-and-vinegar past. Patterson Hood’s Daddy Learned To Fly and After the Scene Dies both carry shades of past rock greatness. The Fourth Night of My Drinking follows the Groundhog Day-like binging of some poor schmuck, full of boozy minutia  like “There was a taste in my mouth, I wasn’t liking it.” The tune grooves more than actually rocks, but it picks up the tempo near the just to crest into a peculiar Pink Floyd finale. This Fucking Job has a great title, but that’s where the vitriol ends. It’s a blue-coller bitch-and-moan counterpoint to David Allen Coe’s  hillbilly au revoir Take This Job and Shove It, with riffs cribbed from The who’s Can’t Explain. Hood’s Santa Fe is not groundbreaking but has a nicely satisfying sorry of lost love and twang. Even when Hood covers familiar dark backwoods of the human soul. like in The Wig He Made Her Wear, the menace is cut buy the arrangements. it just sounds so damn…peppy. With The Wig He Made Her Wear hand claps just ladles cheese on an otherwise great song.

Mike Cooley, who continues to be criminally unrepresented, only has three cuts. Get Downtown is a rollicking boogie-woogie tune that would tickle The Killer and a bittersweet ballad for his son Eyes Like Glue closes the album. Though Cooley showed on The Dirty South‘s Where the Devil Don’t Stay and Daddy’s Cup that he can speak with dignity and bravado from even the most pitiful and poor white trash’s POV,  the jaded stripper in Birthday Boy seems to have no redeeming value and comes off as more pathetic than sympathetic.

Shonna Tucker’s weighs in again as the newest singer/songwriter in the band  (she’s played bass for the band since 2003.)  The atmospheric weeper, You Got Another, and the doo-wap girl-group-style cut (It’s Gonna Be) I Told You So, seem like oddities on a DBT album but come as a nice surprise and allows Tucker to put her stamp on the group. I’ve said it before, to me Tucker has the charm of the drunk girl who sings passably at karaoke but does it will such passion that you have to admire her nerve.

Wes Freed continues, with his fantastic outsider art style, to portray the DBT brand as hand-crafted, epic and menacing.

Ex-Trucker Jason isbell sang “So don’t try to change who you are boy, and don’t try to be who you ain’t” on the Dirty South’s Decoration Day’s fantastic Outfit. On the Big To-do the mighty Drive-By Truckers aren’t necessarily being what they aint, they certainly aren’t what they used to be.

Official Site | Buy

This Fucking Job

Eyes Like Glue

Music Review: Kara Suzanne – Parlor Walls [self-released]

One of the great things about the Americana music genre the ability of the musicians to work familiar ground into unfamiliar and surprising places. Kara Suzanne and her excellent backing band, the Gojos – David Cieri – clavinet, hammond B3, mellotron, piano, wurlitzer, Steve Lewis – guitars, harmonica, lap steel, pedal steel Bill Mead – drums, percussion , Jordan Scannella – bass – have mined the genres of American music with Parlor Walls.  Country, jazz, blues, Cajun and more have been seamless woven together to craft an outstanding release.

The refracted musical influences run from the pedal-steel and piano smokey-bar crooner You’re For Real,  to the yearning for lost love of neo-folk of Madeliene, the  ’20s Jazz meets country ditty Eyes Wide Open, the flawless punk-pop of General Henry (which sounds like it’s lifted from the Chrissie Hind book of snarl and pout rock), the Polynesian jazz of A Little Spin and the country-fried barn-burner Not’ Doin.

Suzanne ‘s vocals style is expressive and expansive and ties the songs together exceptionally well. Her semi-veiled narratives lyrics of hard times – the 70s country-rocker title cut ” We had a little house Clothes that Momma made Still I questioned and I cried Asking where and asking why,” love lost, inand the slinky Euro-Raggae laced Bits Of Blue “Horses at the O.T.B. are running like I’m making to do, Cause my love, won’t wait for you” and regret of found love in the revved-up honky-tonk of Doses “Little doses of you are all I can stand , With the closeness of you I do what I can”

With all that’s going on here Parlor Walls is quite an accomplished effort. A sort of American-style neo-skiffle album that provides many layers of complex beauty for anyone that appreciates great music.

Official Site | Buy

Kara Suzanne – Doses

Kara Suzanne – Bits of Blue

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B4QDzd8T5w[/youtube]

News Round Up: Twang Nation Approved SXSW Showcases

The extraordinary Elizabeth Cook talks to the Utne Reader about her irreverent career, influences and her upcoming Don Was produced album Welder.

Jim Lauderdale takes time from his South-By-Southwest appearance talk to Spinner.com about, well, his career, influences and her upcoming album Patchwork River, which was produced by longtime production partner Tim Coates and Doug Lancio,. Lauderdale also answers the timless question, “Beatles or Stones?”, in a diplomatic fashion that shows why he’s Mr.Americana.

South-By-Southwest has some great showcases, but I want to highlight three that I would love to attend.The

  • Roots music blog ninebullets.net is holding the party I wish I was organized enough to pull off. On Wednesday., March 17 at Opa! (2050 South Lamar Blvd.)  featuring; American Aquarium, Austin Lucas, Kasey Anderson, Glossary and Joe Pug.
  • No Depression Showcase will take place on Friday, March 19 at the Continental Club will feature Deadstring Brothers, Elliott Brood, Chatham County Line and more.
  • Not sure who’s putting this one on but on Friday 19 March the Red Eye Fly club will host Lucero. Deer Tick, Justin Townes Earle, Glossary, and Trampled By Turtles.
  • Also at the Red Eye Fly (man, I want to hot this club next ime I’m in Austin) Legendary alt.country/roots record label Bloodshot Records will hold their 15th SXSW party Friday, March 19th. Included in the line up are label mates Ha Ha Tonka, Justin Townes Earle and Waco Brothers, Rosie Flores and more.

News Round Up: Dixie Chicks Split For New Album

  • Sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Robison (born Erwin) will record an album together without their Dixie Chick partner Natalie Maines. Manine’s father reports that the split is “temporary.”
  • It appears that the appearance at Ft. Worth’s Bass Hall of Merle Haggard and Kris Kristofferson on February 17th won’t be a solitary outing. The two legends will also appear at in  Houston, TX on Norman, OK on the 6th, Norman, OK on February 18th, Bossier City, LA on the 19th, Robinsonville, MS on the 20th and Chicago, IL on the 21st.

News Round Up: New Roky Erickson/Okkervil River in April

  • The Rick Rubin produced American recording done by Johnny Cash near the end of his life featured some inspired covers (most famous being the cover of Trent Reznor’s Hurt on 2002’s album, American IV: The Man Comes Around) Paste.com lists 10 songs they wished  Cash had lived to cover featuring works by Joe Strummer, The Silver Jews and  Ryan Adams. Though I’m sure a list like this could go on and on I have to take exception to a couple of the entries on the Paste list; Bob by the Drive By Truckers could be their worst song and I doubt that the mighty Cash could make it better (and there are tons of better DBT songs for him to cover; Cottonseed perhaps?)  and Death Cab For Cutie?! Really?! (via the 9513.com)
  • Aquarium Drunkard posts a fine ode to the greatness that is Jerry Jeff  Walker.
  • Legendary Austin musician Roky Erickson returns on April 20th with his Anti Record’s release True Love Cast Out All Evil, his first new album in fourteen years. Producing the release is Will Sheff and his band, Okkervil River, backs Erickson.

News Round Up: Willie Nelson Wraps Up T-Bone Burnett Produced Album

  • WillieNelson.com posted that The Texas Yoda has wrapped up his newest, as-yet-untitled album,  recorded live in Nashville in four days and produced by prestigious Americana producer T-Bone Burnett. From the post “Some folks have mistakenly called it bluegrass,” says Burnett. “It’s actually pre-bluegrass. It’s some of the songs Willie’s been singing his whole life.” The material ranges from 1920s to 1960s.” The album features a string section, Buddy Miller on guitar and Mickey Raphael on harmonica, includes “The Man With the Blues,” which Burnett says is the first song Willie ever wrote. Other tracks include covers of “Dark As a Dungeon” by Merle Travis and “You Done Me Wrong” by Ray Price. No release date has been set.
  • The 11th Annual Musicfest at Steamboat concludes today at the Steamboat Colorado ski resort. Seriously, people, next year someone at the event needs to hook a blogger UP!

News Round Up: Emmylou Harris , Miranda Lambert and Brandi Carlile Join Lilith Fair Line-Up

  • Longtime member of Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys passed away at the age of 72. (Billboard)
  • The End Times Opry stops into New York City’s Lower East Side cozy Living Room on December 20th 7-10PM. The End Times Opry is a result of a group of artists who performed at the Pumpkintown Opry, in Pumpkintown South Carolina, for aging church groups. The End Times Opry fuses comedy, spoken word, and music for a collective entertainment experience. Performers include singer/songwriter Alexa Woodward , sonwriter/puppeteer Phoebe Kreutz, singer/songwriter Annie Crane , singer/songwriter Dan Costello, the band BoomChick, singer/songwriter Jack Hardy, singer/songwriter Frank Hoier and comic relief by Michael Robinette and Charles Massey of No Expectations Comedy.
  • Emmylou Harris , Miranda Lambert and Brandi Carlile will join Sugarland, Indigo Girls and Sheryl Crow performing with the newly reestablished Lilith Fair created by Sarah McLachlan. Some of first-round 18 cities already announced for this traveling tour are Atlanta, New York, Dallas, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Denver, San Francisco, Montreal and London.
  • Ranch Twang favorite, The Mighty Drive By Truckers, have left New West records and signed with Dave Matthew’s ATO Records (yes, THAT Dave Matthews.) Thier ATO Records debut record and the band’s 10th, The Big To-Do, is scheduled to be released March 16, 2010. The Big To-Do features thirteen new tracks from the Drive-By Truckers and was produced by their long time producer, David Barbe (Sugar, Bettye LaVette). “It’s very much a rock album,” says Patterson Hood of the Trucker’s upcoming release. “Very melodic and more rocking than anything we’ve done since disc 2 of Southern Rock Opera.” The Drive-By Truckers will be hitting the road at the beginning of the new year and a full tour supporting The Big To-Do will be announced in early 2010.
  • St. Luis based root-rock stalwarts The Bottle Rockets will release a new live 7-inch single through Euclid Records store on Dec. 15. Recorded during the band’s in-store performance on Record Store Day this past April 18, the release will be strictly limited to 300 copies. The 45s are sold exclusively at Euclid Records (www.euclidrecords.com) for $9.99. For each sold a dollar will be donated to the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund (NOMRF) to benefit musicians displaced or suffering loss of equipment in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Euclid Records is located at 601 East Lockwood in Webster Groves, Mo. (Country Standard Time)
  • Fox Searchlight’s fading country singer comeback move, Crazy Heart,starring Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Lost Highway’s Texas singer/songwriter Ryan Bingham, looks like a great movie. It seems that it was lucky to make it to the theaters at all.

The Revival Tour – Slims – San Francisco, CA – 11/6/09

Me and many others have drawn a crooked, dirty line from old-time country, mountain and folk music to punk music. Working class themes punctuated by simple rhythms defined more by passion then artistry While I consider myself a music fan, I know next to nothing about current punk (or post-punk) bands, so I took it on the advice of a friend to check this tour out. I did some research and like what I learned.

The tour started last year as the brainchild of Chuck Ragan, frontman for  post-hardcore/punk band, Hot Water Music, and presented by Ragan’s own label Ten Four Records. The format gathers a revolving cast of musicians from various punk and post-punk bands to revive the old style jamboree and hayride format of organic collaboration. The musicians either stripped down their original material to fit the folk/ Americana acoustic format or they have written material that fits the genre structure for the show and egos are kept in check as musicians accompany each other in various combinations.

Aside from Ragan, this bill for the Orlando show featured Jim Ward (of At The Drive-In, Sleepercar and Sparta), Frank Turner (of Million Dead), Joey Cape (Lagwagon), folk/Americana singer Audra Mae, The Anderson Family Bluegrass Band, Konrad Wert (Possessed by Paul James) and featured the frequent and excellent fiddle playing of Jon Gaunt & Digger Barnes on the upright bass bringing up the low end.

The show starts with all the musicians on stage exhibiting the democratic and supportive ethos that characterizes the tour. It sounds like a recipe for chaos but all the performers are amazing and the caradre from the musicians spills out into an adoring crowd that whoops and claps along.

Audra Mae and The Anderson Family Bluegrass Band were the only full-time Americana acts on the bill and they delivered in spades. The former sang with a clear stream voice that warmed your heart and made you forget your troubles and the latter,  Mom Christy on upright bass, Dad Mark banjo and their family Paige (guitar/vocals), Aimee (fiddle), Ethen (mandolin) and Daisey (fiddle), tearing it up onstage and winning over an audience that probably could not name one song by Bill Monroe.

El Paso, TX based Jim Ward, formerly the rhythm guitarist of At The Drive-In, the vocalist/guitarist in Sparta, and currently fronting his Alt-Country project Sleepercar performed a spirited set and appears to be comfortable in his newly chosen genre (must be those Texas roots) and British folk/punk Frank Turner (formerly the vocalist of U.K. post-Hardcore band Million Dead) performed a rollicking set drinking songs from across the pond and remained us all that “What you call Americana and country has been kicking around my country for a couple of thousand years.” tis true. Both  performers left me wanting more.

Possessed by Paul James did a sit down set with a soar and yelp of his voice he embodied the best tradition of a one man band and local boy (well, Santa Barbara) Joey Cape played a great set to an audience that seemed to know his songs word for word and sometimes filled in. Cape’s  voice, more than the others,  lent itself well to the more subtle singer/songwriter format. Jon Gaunt was a great pick for fiddle support. He reminded me of O’Death’s Bob Pycior as a find of a guy that brings ferocity yet precision to the instrument.

As a master of ceremonies Chuck Ragan is a modest one. His graveled vocals and acoustic attack that can only come fro a guy that cut his teeth on punk’s intensity and he commands the stage during his set.  As he plays through his set the rest of the band enters the stage and things end as they began , camaraderie and revelry on a large scale. Check closed by saying “See you next year!” so it appears  that the Revival Tour will continue for years to come. I’ll be there.

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