I was lucky to be one of 104,793 people packed AT&T Stadium for the final show of George Strait’s Cowboy Rides Away Tour.
it just blows me away how easy he makes it look no matter the size of the venue.
If you weren’t able to attend the event not to worry, this was too big a deal not to capitalize on. A 20-track live album recorded of the event will be released September 16th and a two-hour “George Strait: The Cowboy Rides Away†concert special airing Aug. 29 exclusively on CMT. (check local listings).
The Cowboy Rides Away: Live From AT&T Stadium Track Listing:
1. Check Yes Or No
2. The Love Bug (with Vince Gill)
3. Fool Hearted Memory (with Jason Aldean)
4. Arkansas Dave (with Bubba Strait)
5. Cowboys Like Us (with Eric Church)
6. That’s What Breaking Hearts Do
7. Marina Del Rey
8. Here For A Good Time (with Sheryl Crow)
9. I Can Still Make Cheyenne
10. Jackson (with Martina McBride)
11. A Showman’s Life (with Faith Hill)
12. Murder On Music Row (with Alan Jackson)
13. The Chair
14. Give It All We Got Tonight
15. Run (with Miranda Lambert)
16. I’ll Always Remember You
17. Ocean Front Property (with Kenny Chesney)
18. Troubadour
19. All My Ex’s Live In Texas (with Jason Aldean, Ray Benson, Kenny Chesney, Eric Church, Sheryl Crow,
Vince Gill, Faith Hill, Alan Jackson, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride)
20. The Cowboy Rides Away
Billy Joe Shaver will laws be a welcome sight at Casa Twang. Shaver was the first interview I conducted of this blog and his generosity and great stories fueled me to keep at this because there is still great music comes from the
adventurous kind.
Shaver’s ’s latest work, “Long In The Tooth,†shows he’s still got some adventures to partake in.
Though done in the style that Nashville pop-stars like to slag as “Grandpa music,†â€Long In The Tooth†has Shaver digging deep in the soil of 70’s Outlaw Country. A movement that Shaver helped cultivate, and that those Music City marionette’s claim allegiance to.
Shaver penned all 10 songs and they’re is all you’ll need for a state of the state. Politics, war, religion, class divide, love, heartache, and yes, the sad state of the country music.
The first cut Hard To Be An Outlaw” features Shaver’s old pard and character witness, Willie Nelson, this is a
hat-tip to the Country Gold OGs as both a nostalgic lament and a scrappy swipe at Music Row pop-country. “The Git Go” is a loping study in fatalism/destiny lament covering class disparity in politics made even more forlorn by Mickey Rafael’s mournful, nuanced harmonica.
“Music City USA” features a more jaunty, and optimistic view of Nashville as a place where dreams, a great music, can still be had.
Love is alive on this album. “I’ll Love You as Much as I Can†is a sweet waltz sang to a longtime sweetheart. “I’m in Love” is reworked from 1998’s album “Victory,” and, though a tad more world-weary, it’s still pure poetry.
Another contemporary Outlaw of sorts, Todd Snider, goosed Shaver into making this album by making him realize he still has a lot to give. We are lucky he did. Nobody would fault Billy Joe Shaver if he took to pasture and rested on his many laurels. But by the sound of “Long In The Tooth” he’s not ready to pack in that guitar just yet.
the newest video for “It Ain’t You” from Asleep at the Wheel front-man Ray Benson’s latest solo release “A Little Piece” (Bismeaux Records.) The vide is a video scrapbook of Benson and Willie Nelson’s 40-plus year friendship. A friendship that started when Willie suggested AATW move from their hometown in Philadelphia to Austin, Texas in 1973.
Ray and Willie duel on “It Ain’t You” and, as it is an old Waylon Jennings co-write, it recognizes the influence all three have had on the Texas music scene from a rear-view mirror if age and wisdom.
Ray Benson says of the song/video:
“When Sam, co-producer of my solo CD, played me this song written by Waylon Jennings and Gary Nicholson, I was amazed that no one had ever recorded it! It’s definitely an undiscovered gem and strikes an emotional response with many people. After listening, I called up my pal Willie Nelson and asked if he would sing the song with me. He agreed and we went out to Luck, TX and recorded his vocal.”
“Willie is 81 years young and I’m close to turning 64. The song is about growing old and yet feeling and acting young…it felt so appropriate for us to do. The video has captured the feeling of the song with its slow motion effects, an inside look at the backstage concert preparation and a peak of our long history together as friends. Hope you all enjoy it.”
Enjoy this lovely tune from two masters trading wistful recollections. The cut also features some of Willie’s signature jazz-tajanzo guitar licks.
Common sentiment has you believe that TV singing competitions are a cultural wasteland not worth our attention.
Grace Askew is proof that sometimes paying attention pays off.
“The Voice” Season 4 contestant Grace Askew delighted when she did a excellently brash cover of Lee Hazlewood’s “These Boots Are Made for Walkin,'” made famous by Nancy Sinatra
Twangers, ya know I like it greasy. If you give me swampy and greasy at the same time you’ll have a hard time sending me home.
Recorded at the legendary Sun Studio, “Cinnamon” is a woozy slice of what Askew has coined “bluntry” (blues+country, or perhaps stoned country) Labels aside, it’s a greasy, swampy delight made more so by Askew’s marble-mouthed delivery in her native Memphis country grammar.
Shot in an abandoned house , with single-source light saturated clack-and-white, Askew dances as she sings this sexually-charged come-on.
Askew embodies a potent blend of charisma and authenticity that makes her a force to keep your eye on.
“Cinnamon” is from Askew’s debut newest release ‘Scaredy Cat
There’s much talk about a backlash brewing against the male-centric Bro-Country mainstream country radio has been riding high on for the past few years. This musical uprising is said to be stewarded by women challenging the stereotypes paraded around in daisy dukes in derogatory narratives. Trouble is the men in these songs are simple, one-dimensional characters as well and the potential for expansion for anyone, topically or stylistically, are very narrow.
These women work the same mainstream fields that currently allow bro-country a thriving bounty. Small tweaks to adjust for new market fluctuations will be made. But the labels are in business to be in business, not to make some grand cultural statement.
Pretty tame stuff to fuel a backlash.
The products, or songs, might strike many as flimsy representation of human condition , but I argue it’s less about the songs and more about the process. Consider Sunny Sweeney; in and out of the the gravitational pull of Music Row, the big boys never knew what to do with her. Her first album bore the Lone Star mark of her native home of Texas and was re-released by Big Machine Records.
But charting and Music City are joined at the hip, and after being the first artist signed to a joint venture between Big Machine and Universal Republic Records – Republic Nashville – the more polished “Concrete,” was released but netted no significant radio play.
Sweeney and Big Machine split in 2012.
Now we have her provocatively titled new release, “Provoked.”
Combining DIY ethic with crowd-sourced funding, and support by indy Americana super label Thirty Tigers, “Provoked” contains Sweeney’s earlier fire tempered with an ear for a hook and just the right amount of studio provided by Luke Wooten (Dierks Bentley, Brad Paisley and sister neo-traditionalist Kellie Pickler)
From the cover Sunny looks right through use with her big, blue tinted eyes. What looks like tape with the title is masking her mouth giving the duel impression of being gagged and screaming the title at once.
Bro-country, like music of music city product, is thin tropes masquerading as the human experience, topical and stylistic, are very narrow. condition. Instead of working within those narrow confines Sweeney reaches back to a time when Nashville released songs dripping of love, tears, pain and blood – Tammy, Loretta, Kitty, George Jones , Willie and Waylon can all be heard between the spaces.
Sweeney says the album reflects her coming to terms with the mistakes she has made and the recovery that the last few years have brought her. “The album is a journey from nearly hitting bottom and losing everything personally to regaining my footing and being able to find not only my true self again, but real happiness.†“Provoked” might be a result of hard times and challenges of the spirit, but it has allowed Sweeney to regain her voice.
“You Don’t Know your Husband” kicks off with an acapella declaration of other-woman context rich in sass driven by cooking dobro and electric guitar that mirrors the dysfunctional menace the story rightly deserves.
The first single “Bad Girl Phase” is a Brandy Clark/Jessie Jo Dillion/Shannon Wright co-write and follows along with the badass gal theme covered by everyone from Miranda to Nikki Lane. Sweeney pulls off the song like a honky-tonk woman swagger over a greasy strut accompaniment.
“Second Guessing” and “Carolina on the Line” are tear-stained. moody studies on faded dreams and broken hearts and coming to terms in spite of it all.
When Lucinda Williams does a song it stays done but give Sweeney props for having a go at “Can’t Let Go.”
“Front Row Seats” mid-temo rocker offers the same kind of wry observations of the seamier side of polite society similar to Kacey Musgraves’ “Merry Go ‘Round”
“My Bed,” a co-write Sweeney with singer/songwriters and 2/3rds of the Pistol Annies, Angaleena Presley and Ashley Monroe – is a duet with singer/songwriter Will Hoge. It;s a intmate glimpse of a couple’s love souring on the vine. ” I’ll always love you/At least that’s what we said/Now you’re just sleeping in my bed.”
“Uninvited” is a dreamy study of social exclusion real or imagined sounds like a Radiohead brought up on The Possum.
on “Provoked” Sweeney proves that a more substantial response to Bro-Country, or really anything Music Row is shoveling out as the flavor of the moment, is to follow your heart and kick some ass. Sweeney sure does that and reminds us that life is more than just radio decoration.
I’m really looking forward to this self-titled release from Austin’s punkgrass band Whiskey Shivers. Now the reveals of the Homer & Jethro-inspired cover for the album ahs amped up teh anticipation.
I’ve yet to catch these boys live but I’ll make up for that when I catch a NorTex stop.
From the release:
“Whiskey Shivers isn’t just the five of us on stage, it’s everybody in the room,” (frontman and fiddle master Bobby) Fitzgerald says. “We try to bring everybody into the moment and get them to realize there’s no wall between us and the crowd. We’re all in this together, and we’re all here to have a good time. We’ll do our best to facilitate it, but it takes all of us to make it happen. When you start to feel that, you can’t help but feel a little attachment and become invested in the show. You realize, ‘Oh, I’m here to have good time too!'”
Despite their joyful demeanor, the guys in Whiskey Shivers aren’t pretending that life is always easy. Far from it, Fitzgerald explains. Their new self-titled album, out September 23 and produced by fellow roots music boundary-pusher Robert Ellis, is heavy with traditional bluegrass themes and imagery lamenting universal struggles – work, pain, sin, regret and death.
It’s in the contrast where Whiskey Shivers’ music shines. They infuse their songs with punk rock energy and a darkly comical light-heartedness, stretching the bluegrass genre to fit whatever they feel is right. For them, being happy is a conscious choice, and making fun of life’s struggles is part of their philosophy.
“We’re all going through s**t all the time. We recognize that life’s tough,” Fitzgerald says. “We try to write songs that recognize the hard times that we all share. When you put your problems out on the table where everyone can see them, it doesn’t really have the same power over you any more, and you can start to acknowledge it, separate yourself from it, and go on with your life. Try to take a night where you can forget about your problems and just feel good, have a good time with your friends, make new friends, and be part of a little community for a while.”
That sort of musical honesty is what brought together the ragtag group of string players from small towns around the country to Austin, TX, where Whiskey Shivers was formed when stand-up bassist Andrew VanVoorhees answered a dubious Craiglist ad from a man named “Bob” looking to form a bluegrass band.
The full lineup now consists of Bobby Fitzgerald (vocals, fiddle) from Dundee, NY, Andrew VanVoorhees (bass, vocals) from Prineville, OR, Joe Deuce (washboards) from Vider, TX, Jeff “Horti” Hortillosa (vocals, guitar) from Middlesboro, KY, and James Bookert (banjo) from Georgetown, TX.
Whiskey Shivers will hit the road hard this summer and fall, including sets at the Americana Music Festival in Nashville and a string of dates with the Legendary Shack Shakers. See below for a full list of dates.
Fitzgerald admits that it can sometimes seem impossible to maintain such a high level of energy night after night on the road. “Well, it can seem that way, up until the moment the show starts,” he says. “We could have a really tough day, driving through bad weather on no sleep, feeling like s**t, the sound is terrible, or whatever else is going on that day. And then as soon as we start playing, it all just kind of falls away. All of the sudden we’re having a good time again, and the momentum carries itself. That’s why we’re doing this, because we love it.”
Clawhammer banjo fuses with guitar-fuzz bombast spectacularly in “Wheelbarrow” the first release from Aussie country music vet Kasey Chambers’ upcoming 7th solo release “Bittersweet (August 29)
Chambers lends her unmistable pipes, which has a wonderful feel to the upper register, to this tale of trade-offs and empathy.
The stark stark black-and-white video, directed by Renny Wijeyamohan and shot in Southern Highlands of New South Wales, has a Bonnie & Clyde motif of bank heist and love. But love runs shallow and the Clyde in this case is left holding a sizable kiss-off in the end.
Like the garland embroidered shirt on the picture there is a vintage quality to Austin singer/songwriter Kathryn Legendre’s newest cut “Have You Forgotten Me?â€
Classic country blends with a contemporary spirit reminiscent of Emmylou Harris or, more recently, Laura Cantrell – with a little Furnace Room Lullaby-era Neko Case darkness thrown in. A welcome throwback sound currently being fueled by the likes of Sturgill Simpson.
Pedal steel and Texas-twang erect a pining testament to beaten, broken hearts that was once a staple of jukeboxes across every honky-tonk in this great land.
Do you taste my lips at the end of your smoke?
When you say my name, is it enough to choke?
Or have you forgotten me?
Damn fine music to drown your sorrows by. I look forward to more.
Stream/purchase the cut “Have You Forgotten Me?†below.
The Americana Music Association has released the whole enchilada, the full list for their conference and festival. And all I can say is WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!
I’m only one man, how can I make it to so many great performances, many of them happening AT THE SAME TIME!
I know, I know, roots-music blogger problems.
With more artists and more venues this year’s AmericanaFest is really stacking up to be the best yet.
AMA Executive Director Jed Hilly tells the Nashville Scene. “We couldn’t be more excited with this year’s lineup. We anticipate over 160 official showcases by the time September rolls around. … We’ve added 40 more artists than we had last year, and we are thrilled to add on five more venues to the festival.â€
In addition to the already daunting list of performers I’m happy to see roots-duos Carolina Story and Grace and Tony, Austin’s David Ramirez and Shinyribs and, the excellent Zoe Muth, and Sturgill Simpson who’s come a long way since his AmericanaFest debut last year.
Pick up the Aug/Sept issue of Cowboys and Indians magazine (above) to read by article on AmericanaFest and the history of the movement.
The 15th annual Americana Music Festival & Conference occurs September 17-21, 2014 in Nashville, Tenn. The 13th annual Americana Honors & Awards Show on Sept. 17 at the historic Ryman Auditorium.
I’ll see you at the hootenanny!
List of artists newly added to AmericanaFest 2014
Andrew Combs
Anthony D’Amato
The Audreys
Banditos
Baskery
The Black Lillies
Black and the Rodeo Kings
Bobby Bare Jr.
Bradford Lee Folk
Brooke Russell & the Mean Reds
The Bros. Landreth
The Brothers Comatose
Cale Tyson
Caleb Klauder Country Band
Carolina Story
Cory Branan
Cory Chisel’s “Soul Obscura”
The Danberrys
David Ramirez
The Devil Makes Three
Elizabeth Cook
Ernie Hendrickson
Falls
Feufollett
Frank Fairfield
Grace and Tony
Griffin House
The Haden Triplets
Harlan Pepper
Howard Fishman
Humming House
Humming People
Ian McLagan
Imelda May
James Maddock
Jim Lauderdale
Laura Cantrell
Lauren Shera
Leftover Salmon feat. Bill Payne of Little Feat
Liz Longley
Los Colognes
The Mastersons
Matt Anderson
Matt the Electrician
Matthew Perryman Jones
Matthew Mayfield
Mathew Ryan
Mike Farris
Mipso
Moot Davis
NQ Arbuckle
Over the Rhine
Peter Bradley Adams
Phil Madeira
Police Dog Hogan
Parsonsfield (formerly Poor Old Shine)
Promised Land Sound
Robby Hecht
Robert Ellis
Ryan Tanner
Shinyribs
Sleepy Banjo Boys
Sons of Bill
Steelism
Steep Canyon Rangers
The Stray Birds
Sturgill Simpson
The Hot Nut Riveters
The Mae Trio
The Silks
Tim Carroll
Truth & Salvage Co.
Webb Wilder
Willie Sugarcapps
Zachary Lucky
Zoe Muth
List of artists oreviously confirmed for AmericanaFest 2014
Allison Moorer
Amy Ray
Angaleena Presley
The Avett Brothers
The Barefoot Movement
Ben Miller Band
Billy Joe Shaver
Black Prairie
Brennen Leigh and Noel McKay
Buddy Miller
The Cactus Blossoms
Carlene Carter
Caroline Rose
Chatham County Line
Chuck Mead
Danny & The Champions of the World
The Deadly Gentleman
Del Barber
The Deslondes
Doug Seegers
The Duhks
The Dustbowl Revival
Emily Barker & the Red Clay Halo
Ethan Johns
The Fairfield Four
The Grahams
Grant-Lee Phillips
Green River Ordinance
Greensky Bluegrass
Gregory Alan Isakov
Greyhounds
The Harpoonist & the Axe Murderer
Hayes Carll
Howlin’ Brothers
Immigrant Union
Israel Nash
Jamestown Revival
Jason Eady
JD Wilkes & the Dirt Daubers
Joe Henry
Joe Pug
Joe Purdy
John Moreland
Jonah Tolchin
Jonny Two Bags
Josh Ritter
Joshua James
Lake Street Dive
Lee Ann Womack
Leo Welch
Lera Lynn
Marah Presents: Mountain Minstrelsy
Marty Stuart
Matthew Ryan
McCrary Sisters
Nathaniel Rateliff
New Country Rehab
Oh Susanna
Otis Gibbs
Parker Millsap
Paul Thorn
Pete Molinari
Quebe Sisters Band
Rhett Miller
Robbie Fulks
Robyn Hitchcock
Rodney Crowell
Ruthie Foster
Ryan Montbleau
Sam Outlaw
Sarah Jarosz
Sean Rowe
Shakey Graves
Suzy Bogguss
Todd Snider & Friends
Tom Freund
Tony Joe White
Trigger Hippy (feat. Jackie Greene, Joan Osbourne, Steve Gorman, Tom Bukovac & Nick Govrik)
Whiskey Shivers
Willie Watson
