Lucinda Willimas to Play Complete Albums in Fall

From Billboard – Lucinda Williams fans will soon have a chance to hear the songwriter perform five of her eight studio albums in their entirety, one night at a time. On Sept. 5-6 and 8-10, Williams headlines at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles and will perform in New York Sept. 29-30 at the Fillmore at Irving Plaza and Oct. 2-4 at Town Hall.

The first night of each five-night run will kick off with a performance of 2003’s “World Without Tears.” “Essence” from 2001, “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” from 1998, “Sweet Old World” from 1990 and “Lucinda Williams” from 1988 will be played on subsequent nights.

The album-focused sets will be followed by a more traditional set from Williams and her band (guitarist Doug Pettibone, bassist David Sutton and drummer Butch Norton), including cuts from her most recent album, “West.” Tickets for all shows go on sale tomorrow (July 21)

“West” bowed at No. 14 on The Billboard 200 and topped the Tastemakers tally in March.

I hope Lu is running the board tapes on these show and releases them by Christmas.

Johnny Cash’s “The Great Lost Performance” to Be Released July 24, 2007

A first-ever release of a performance by the Man in Black at the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park, New Jersey on July 27, 1990 will be released as “Johnny Cash – The Great Lost Performance” (Island/UMe), released July 24, 2007, debuts nearly 17 years to the day of the original concert.

The nearly hour-long CD features the classics – “I Walk The Line,” “Hey Porter” and “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Ring Of Fire,” but will also feature duets with wife June Carter Cash on “Jackson” and “The Wreck Of Old ’97.” The CD will also feature Cash’s first performance of his original “What Is Man?,” and his only recorded version of country gospel’s “Wonderful Time Up There” and “A Beautiful Life,” and his only concert version of “Life’s Railway To Heaven,” whose studio version by Cash
was released only posthumously.

Props to the 9513 for the heads up!

MTV Urge Interviews Porter Wagoner

Country music’s legend, Porter Wagoner, sits down with MTV Urge for an interview and discusses his start as well as serious health problems he had to overcome to record his new album, Wagonmaster.

You can find the interview here. You’ll need to download the Urge software first, but it”s worth it.

An excerpt: URGE: Your first big break came on Red Foley’s “Ozark Jubilee” show, the first nationally televised country music program. How did you develop your trademark flashy, Nudie-suit image there?

Porter Wagoner: Nudie [Cohn] came to the Ozark Jubilee one day, and I didn’t know who he was. It was in the real early ’50s. He said he made suits for cowboys and people in the movies. And he had a new idea for suits that included rhinestones and sequins … people hadn’t seen anything like that. My answer was, “It’ll probably cost so much I can’t afford it,” because I was barely getting by then. He said, “If this don’t work, they won’t cost you anything. If it does, then I’ll make some money off of making clothes for you throughout your career.” About three or four weeks later I got a big package that had a suit of clothes in it, and a shirt to match it and a pair of boots. It was a peach-colored suit, and it had a big covered wagon across the back of it. It was just unbelievably beautiful. It was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. That weekend I wore it onstage, and boy, people just went “wow.” That was the first one he’d made for anybody. He had made a lot of different clothes for cowboys like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, but they didn’t have the sparkle or the glitz.

URGE: You had a life-threatening illness shortly before recording Wagonmaster. How did you bounce back?

Wagoner: I had surgery this past year, July the 14th. I had an aneurysm I had to have taken care of. It got into my kidney. We was talkin’ about doin’ an album at that time, and of course that stopped everything. I started healin’ up, but it took me a long time to get my strength back. Marty [Stuart, album producer] talked to me in the hospital several times [saying], “Let’s get together with a couple of guitars and we’ll sit down and pick some together, and I’d like it if you sang some for me, too.” That really gave me a lot of encouragement, knowing that he was still interested. On the first day, I think we worked 30 to 45 minutes, maybe. He said, “Let’s don’t do too much the first few times here.” And that’s the way we did it. I got to singing and pretty much got my voice back. I was so thrilled to be able to sing again that it really just gave me new inspiration. I was just very fortunate to have somebody like him. Marty loves me like a brother. I had no idea how brilliant he was in the studio. I produced a lot of records, and produced Dolly’s records all the time when she was with me, but he knew new things that I didn’t know. He made a believer out of me. If you could imagine how proud I am of the project. I feel like it’s a touch of brilliance, I really do.

Porter Wagoner – Committed To Parkview

Steve Earle To Host Sirius Radio Show

From Harp.comSIRIUS satellite radio has just announced that country-rock legend Steve Earle will host a weekly show on the Outlaw Country station, channel 63.

The Steve Earle Show: Hard Core Troubadour Radio will be a one hour program featuring Earle’s personal music selections as well as on-air interviews with special guests. In more than thirty years of music-making, Earle has been nominated 11 times for a Grammy award, and has one win for The Revolution Starts Now in 2005. Earle has recently been in the studio recording his upcoming album on New West Records, with producer John King of The Dust Brothers, and also had a weekly show on Air America which he is leaving for his new gig at SIRIUS.

Outlaw Country was created by Little Steven Van Zandt and is home to the equally maverick likes of Shooter Jennings and Cowboy Jack Clement. Earle’s program will be broadcast Saturdays at 8pm ET and can also be heard Sundays at 1am and 9am and Monday nights at midnight.

I wonder if Sirius will give Earle the long leash that Air America did when he goes off on the powers that be. They will if they’re smart. Steve Earle’s politics are as much a part of what results in his extraordinary talent as his heroin use and obnoxious attitude. Let Earle be Earle. Let him rant and rave about the carpetbagger boy-king W and play some of the best music ever to travel the galaxy.

Emmylou Harris Prepares Box Set / New Release

From Billboard.com – Emmylou Harris is preparing a 80-song boxed set due Sept. 18 via Rhino, which features two discs of obscure studio work and two additional CDs of rarities, many of them previously unreleased.

“For the most part, none of these songs have ever been on a compilation before,” Harris tells Billboard.com. “They’re kind of favorites — I call them my orphans, songs that maybe I didn’t even perform that much but I loved enough to record in the studio. They didn’t quite fit either the Hot Band or whatever I was doing. Things like ‘Coat of Many Colors,’ which was one of my favorite songs of all time, or ‘Ballad of a Runaway Horse’ and ‘1917.’”

Also included are several unreleased recordings with her Trio, which also featured Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt. “There’s an outtake from the aborted Trio album that we did in 1978, a Carter Family song called ‘Palms of Victory’ that’s just live off the floor,” Harris says. “There’s not even a solo on it — it’s just the band and the three women singing and I sound like I’m channeling Sara Carter. I wish — in my dreams!”

The second two discs boast numerous tracks Harris has recorded for tribute albums to such acts as Gram Parsons, Merle Haggard and Townes Van Zandt, as well as the original demo for “All I Left Behind” with Kate and Anna McGarrigle.

Harris put her next studio effort on hold to finish the boxed set, but is making progress on a new Nonesuch album with assistance from the McGarrigle sisters and Seldom Scene lead singer John Starling. Harris duets with the latter on “Old Five and Dimers” (“I finally decided that I was old enough to cut that song, reaching the grand ole age of 60,” she laughs).

“It’s kind of a combination of some of my own songs, some songs that I’ve wanted to record for a long time and some new things that I came across,” she offers of the effort. “You’ll get obth Emmylou the interpreter and Emmylou the songwriter.”

Harris, who will also tour heavily into the fall, has recently recorded guest spots for Parton’s next studio album, an Anne Murray duets album and old friend Danny Flowers’ “Tools for the Soul.”

Emmylou Harris – Making Believe

Lone Star 92.5 Lone Star Fandango – ZZ Top, David Allan Coe, Hank Williams III, Shooter Jennings, Old 97s, Drive By Truckers

Speaking of great Summer concerts – Lone Star 92.5 presents a Lone Star Fandango with ZZ Top, David Allan Coe, Hank Williams III (not on his tour itinerary below), Shooter Jennings, Old 97s, Drive By Truckers and the Drams at the Smirnoff Music Centre, Dallas, TX on Sunday, July 15, 2007 01:00 PM

CMT on Gruene Hall

In its continuing quest not to completely suck CMT has a nice write up on Gruene Hall in Gruene, Texas. Gruene Hall, Texas’ oldest dance hall, was opened by Pat Molak in1974 and then featured a young unknown named George Strait and his Ace in the Hole band who played one or two shows a month there starting in 1975.

“I have many great memories of playing at Gruene Hall,” Strait says. “It was definitely one of the highlights of my early career. Pat Molak, who owns it and I still consider a friend, let us play there one Sunday afternoon for, I think, 50 cents at the door. He had never heard us and wanted to check us out before he let us do a weekend night. This led to many great nights at one of Texas’ greatest dancehalls.”

Cash American VI News

Thanks to JakobGreen at the Hank III board for this one

American VI will be the second album of songs from the final recording sessions Johnny Cash made before he died. Like its predecessors, American Recordings, Unchained, American III: Solitary Man, American IV: The Man Comes Around, and American V: A Hundred Highways, American VI is produced by Rick Rubin and will be released on Rubin’s American Recordings record label. Lost Highway Records currently distributes country releases from the American Recordings label. Though the liner notes of Unearthed (a box set comprised of outtakes from the first four entries into the series) claim “around 50” songs were recorded during the American V sessions prior to Cash’s death on September 12, 2003, only two albums worth of material will be released, including American V: A Hundred Highways.

One track known to be recorded during these sessions but not included on American V is “There Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down”. Another track that could possibly be included is “A Satisfied Mind” which was released on the soundtrack to Kill Bill, Vol. 2. Rubin is credited as producer and the track is copyrighted 2003, which would suggest that it came from Cash’s final sessions.

Sheryl Crow’s “Redemption Day” was recorded by Cash weeks before his death and is a likely candidate for inclusion on American VI.

Doug Kershaw has told audiences in 2006 that he has heard Cash’s recording of Kershaw’s signature song “Lousiana Man”, but its status for inclusion on American VI is unknown.

According to a USA Today article, American VI could be released in early 2007. Most likely it will be released Mid-2007.

Track listing…

“A tentative track listing has been revealed on ManInBlack.net, a Johnny Cash fansite. It includes the following songs…”

1. “San Antonio”
2. “Redemption Day”
3. “Here Comes a Boy”
4. “That’s Enough”
5. “1st Corinthians 5:55”
6. “I Can’t Help But Wonder”
7. “Nine-Pound Hammer”
8. “North to Alaska”
9. “His Eyes on the Sparrow”
10. “If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again”
11. “The Eye of an Eagle”
12. “Don’t Take Everybody for Your Friend”
13. “Belshazzar”
14. “Loading Coal”
15. “A Half a Mile a Day”
16. “Flesh and Blood”
17. “I Am a Pilgrim”
18. “Beautiful Dreamer”
19. “Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down”
20. “Family Bible”