Ever since seeing the darkly striking Australian western The Proposition I’ve been fascinated with the similarities between the Land Down Under and the American South and West of the nineteenth century, both good (confronting a wild frontier to achieve independence and establish a society) and bad  (attacking and displacing an indigenous people.) Now due to The Wildes, an Americana/alt.country band from Victoria, Australia, I am now just as fascinated with roots music as interpreted in the land of Oz.

Some of the cuts on Ballad of a Young Married Man take an old-testament page from fellow countryman Nick Cave (and script writer for the aforementioned movie The Proposition). The title song, “Jack the Blacksmith,” “Nothing” and the tribal drum-beat brooder “Slap-Back Mary” could have all come from Cave if was inclined to pen country-hued songs.

The chugging “Streets of My Hometown” carries the DNA of Steve Earle’s Hometown Blues and the sweetly melancholic “Sue-Ellen” sounds like a lost Waterboys cut. “If I’ve Done You Wrong” is a organ backed barroom weeper that basks in its unrepentant spirit and the wonderfully reflective “Loverman” is a rustic beauty. The bonus track Broken Blossoms is a piano and banjo bawler that I imagine could have been penned by that trash can troubadour Tom Waits. The Wildes cover a wide expanse of Americana dirt roads and wear their influences proudly on their sleeves, but their interpretation on these styles are uniquely their own.

Official Site |  MySpace

Sweet Teresa.mp3

David Fricke  over at RollingStone.com has some noce things to say about the upcoming Hank Williams Unreleased Recordings box set - “…the 54 performances in this three-CD set pack a magical, concentrated immediacy that is, in its time and way, as electrifying as Johnny Cash’s Sixties prison shows or Bob Dylan’s early acoustic concerts. Williams’ nasally drawl is crisp and strong, like the young Dylan without the sandpaper; he holds the long, desolate notes in “Cool Water” with stunning force.”

Country Music legend Marty Stuart’s “Sparkle & Twang: An American Musical Odyssey“, an exhibit of four decades of rock, country, rockabilly, bluegrass, rhythm & blues and gospel music memorabilia from Stuart’s personal collection
will make its way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland from Oct. 30 through March 1. The 300 items, including musical instruments, stage clothing, handwritten lyrics and photographs. Among them are Hank Williams’ handwritten lyrics “Cold, Cold Heart” and “Your Cheatin’ Heart, Elvis Presley’s sweater worn in a photograph with Junior Parker, Johnny Cash’s first black suit from 1955 and handwritten lyrics for “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Man in Black,” Performance outfit worn by Bob Dylan, Clarence White of the Byrds’ blue leather suit, Pop Staples’ 1962 Fender Jazzmaster guitar and Marty Stuart’s first guitar and performance outfit, sewn by his mother.

Much of my wayward youth was spent journeying through various musical genres. Like the geographical type, musical travel helps impede bigotry, in this case musical bigotry. This experience has helped me to look at the music I hear more fully and not to reflexively dismiss something just because it doesn’t for some rigid idea of what I should like.

One genre (sub-genre really) I still love is, for lack of a better term, World electronica. Old world sounds mixed with laptop beats that meld into a surprisingly great thing. One artists that did this melding particularly well was the tango/electronica focused Gotan Project stewarded by  dj, producer and Frenchman Philippe Cohen.

If you mentioned to me that this Parisian was now not only jumping genres by another border altogether by packing up his laptop and heading to Nashville I would have told you it was a recipe for disaster, and I would have been dead wrong.

Cohen had solid instincts to hire some of Nashville and Texas’ best - Jim Lauderdale, David Olney, Sam bush, Melonie Cannon and Rosie Flores to name a few - and to hire Bucky Baxter (Bob Dylan, Ryan Adams) to co-produce. Like with the Gotan Project works, the songs here are lush and custom made for early morning brunch or relaxing late night listening, but the soul is still intact and beauty undeniable. Atmosphere is scattered throughput the songs in the form of musicians chewing fat, crickets and distance dog barking and train whistles. What could have easily been ham-handed is an outsiders’ loving snapshot of country music and culture.

From the pedal steel and banjo flecked opener of Jim Lauderdale sung “The Academy of Trust” to the unlikely covers of
Abbas “Dancing Queen” (featuring Melonie Cannon) and the Sex Pistols “Pretty Vacant” (featuring the amazing Rosie Flores.) All this with the warm, organic production of a front-porch guitar pull with the slightest tinge of electronic wizardry.

Cohen has proven himself to be a true connoisseur of sound and annihilator of boundaries with this fine release.

Moonshine Sessions Main Site |  MySpace

The Moonshine Sessions - Luna’s Song

New York based Gothic/Country/Punk band O’Death are named after the Dock Boggs penned song made famous by Ralph Stanley on the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack. Like that hauntingly plaintive Appalachian dirge “Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin,” the third LP from O’Death, 14 tracks recollect tales of sorrow and ecstasy nearly reaching levels of a Pentecostal tent revival on a hot, sticky Summer night. If Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were invited to contribute to the same “O Brother Where Art Thou” soundtrack it might sound a lot like this.

The release commences with “Lowtide” with its gypsy plucked violin trot that quickly breaks lose to a full runaway gallop, all cleaved through with Greg Jamie’s unnerving vocals.  Jamie intermingles British Sea Power and Brake’s Eamon Hamilton nervy wail and Pixie’s main howler Frank Black to result in something unflinchingly manic.

“Fire On Peshtigo” is a searing thrash-hoe-down that gives off as much heat as those described in the lyrics. You can almost imagine Bob Pycior’s fiddle smoking and threatening to burst into flames. “Legs To Sin” is a mountain jig that owes as much to white-hot punk as it does to old timey dittys.

“Mountain Shifts” is a woozy junkyard waltz that might tickle Tom Wait’s fancy. “Vacant Moan” starts with Gabe Darling’s slow discordant  claw-hammer banjo but quickly careens toward a wheezing, stuttering thunderous end.

“A Light That Does Not Dim” recalls The Pixie’s “Nimrod’s Son” (which O”Death covered on a 7″ single in October 2007) with all it’s primal impact and “Grey Sun” puts a fine point on the Gothic elements of O’Death’s with the refrain “hang the hardship baby, we go to sleep and then we die.”

“On An Aching Sea” is a slinky trash can sea-shanty of a poisoned marriage and “Angeline” is a sweetly aching tale of loneliness, abandonment and mortality. Like the before-mentioned Ralph Stanley’s genre of mastery, Bluegrass, there is no shortage of dark and tragic narrative in these songs.

Like their sonic brethren The Felice Brothers, Th Legendary Shack Shakers and Those Poor Bastards, O”Death takes a fever dream of music echoing from the saloons, alleys and churches across America’s past and distills it into a dark elixir of blood, moonshine and adrenaline.

O’Death - “A Light That Does Not Dim” - Roisin Dubh in Galway - 09/26/2008

Before he became the equivalent of a hillbilly Che Guevara Steve Earle was the king of roots-rock. Since moving to New York City, and shunning his redneck past, the roots-rock division seems open for the next singer/songwriter able to blend introspective, populist narratives  fueled by an amped-up rock sound. Slaughters, KY’s Chris Knight’s “Heart of Stone” makes a convincing run at that title.

Small people in small towns with little to hope for populate Knight’s landscapes. Enduring and overcoming economic and cultural obstacles that would make lesser souls crumble and succumb.

The classic tale of the road is told on the opener “Home Sick Gypsy.” Though there is a series of sexual liaisons alluded to it’s made clear that it’s rough and lonely going out there for the working musician.

“Hell Ain’t Half Full” is a raucous morality tale that cuts just as deep against the meth cooker as it does the preacher with nothing good to say. The song ends on a note of stark humanistic self-reliance for our moral salvation since “Up in Heaven above, God ain’t paying much attention at all.” Another Dollar is another moral tale, this time on greed, that is far too busy rocking to become sanctimonious.

“Something To Keep Me Going” is an electrified country song about love gone wrong where memories do as much to call him back to his ex-lover as they do to remind him why he needs to keep heading on down the road. The tile cut sets a story of rural abandonment of family and how hardships can shape a man for the worse. Knight uses the chorus to caution the listener to persevere and overcome and “Don’t break yourself on a heart of stone.” “Crooked Road” is introspection of a man that is, like Knight himself, from a coal mining town and trying desperately to leave the hard, dangerous work behind to save himself and his family.

“Hear of Stone” returns Knight with producer Dan Baird of Georgia Satellites (who produced Pretty Good Guy and The Jealous Kind) and Baird has the good sense to let well enough alone. With a vocal style reminiscent of a Southern Randy Newman Knight taps into what made country music (and later folk) great since the days of Jimmy Rogers and the Carter Family. Walking that delicate line that balances sentimentality with an iron core of earnest character to make it through another day.

In Nashville last year I was fortunate to catch Knight in a round table that included Southern fiction writers and song writers on how story-telling through the different mediums were alike. Like the great writer on the panel William Gay, Knight’s takes are stark in their telling and elusive in their seeming simplicity. It’s there that the common can become extraordinary.

Chris Knight - Heart of Stone

The Weight are a Brooklyn, NY based country rock band that, in spite of it’s North-Eastern local, delivers the Southern-fried goods. The band was beget by singer/songwriter and veteran of the Atlanta, GA, punk rock scene Joseph Plunket who began dabbled in country music and recorded several EPs and one long-player with a revolving cast of musicians as he tapped his inner hillbilly.

Now blessed with a stable and top-notch line up Plunket, along with Fletcher “Poor Boy” Johnson on guitar, piano, and harmonica, Will Noland on bass, Jay Ellis on drums and Johnny Carpenter on pedal steel, has recorded an album of shear authentic and audacious country-rock, stripped clean of post-whatever and 100% free of ironic smugness. Imagine as the 60’s came to a close that back off in the woods of Saugerties, NY the Band had hung out with Gram Parsons instead of Dylan cutting tracks in the basement of Big Pink, that alternate history it might have sounded something like this.

The Weight’s newest release “The Weight Are Men” kicks off with a gentle strumming of “Like Me Better,” a bittersweet barroom testament to love gone wrong delivered by Plunket in his earnestly gruff vocal style. The highway rave-up “Had It Made” follows with its Southern boogie roots planted firmly in Chuck Berry’s territory.

“Johnny’s Song” is a lulling tune on life and love that builds to a big singalong finale and “Talkin” is a tune taken right from the Neil Young book of groove-roots compositions (complete with yawning harmonica) and offers one of my favorite lines from the album - “Give me a lady and rent control, it might take one, it might take both, to satisfy my soul.”

“Sunday Driver”  is reminiscent of the best of The Band’s bittersweet compositions. It’s a slow-moving, pedal-steel laced gem that really showcases Plunket’s voice. “Hillbilly Highway” is a traveling man’s fiddle-laced yearn to come back to his love that should be on mainstream country radio (it won’t be, mainstream country is too rigid and short-sighted.) “A Day In The Sun” is a harmonica fueled Southern boogie gives a the release a woozy “Sticky Fingers” send off.

Bottom line, “The Weight Are Men” is one of the best roots-rock releases of 2008.

The Weight - Had It Made (mp3)

We mere mortals can only hope to be meager conduits for the grand themes of life – Love, hope, fear, death – these concepts are bigger then any one of us but that doesn’t stop the courageous and foolish from shaping these experiences into music and words.

Joe Pug, a Chicagoan sometimes-carpenter, is standing on the shoulders of Guthrie, Dylan, Van Zant, Prine, Clark, Simon and Young to join the ranks of present-day troubadours like Ryan Bingham, Willy Mason and Ray LaMontagne. Joe Pug’s songs belie this greenhorn’s recent foray into the craft of songwriting and his world-beaten voice belies his youth (early-twenties.)

“Hymn 101” is worth the price of admission alone. A trotting acoustic guitar supports the lyrics  “I’ve come here to get high, to do more than just get by, I’ve come to test the timbre of my heart.” and “I’ve come here to meet the sheriff and his posse, to offer him the broad side of my jaw, I’ve come here to get broke, and then maybe bum a smoke, we’ll go drinkin’ two towns over after all.” This is goddamn staggering in its courage and rich in it’s symbolism.

“Call It What You Will” has a mournful mood that brings to mind Townes Van Zandt at his most melancholy. “I call today a disaster, she calls in December the 3rd” Pug sings being at once melodramatic and nonchalant. You can almost feel the whiskey and brimstone on Pug’s breath when he sings “I am the day, I am the dawn, I am the darkness coming on” on the harmonica laced Hymn 35

There is a timeless quality to this 7 song EP, like a found chest of remembrances in your grandparent’s attic, there are treasures for this that pay attention. And the foolish courage of man armed with only an acoustic guitar standing as a lightening rod for the ages is a wonder to behold.

Joe Pug performing Hymn#101

Some compare Rodney Parker to the Old 97’s Rhett Miller is style, tone and subject matter. You won’t find me doing that.

I was designing band and club graphics, doing mural painting and bartending part-time in Dallas’ Deep Ellum in the early 90’s and remember Rhett with his “Mythologies” era Brit-pop stylings, with his teen beat poster-boy looks, playing the bars and coffee houses with an endless pack of swoony sorority scensters in his wake. Safe to say when he headed into alt-country territory with the Old 97s I could appreciate the song craft but he was still a bit too precious.

That said, to compare Denton–based Rodney Parker to Rhett Miller is to give the latter too much credit and the former not enough. If pressed I’d have to say I would liken Parker to West Texas singer/songwriter Joe Ely. Like Ely Rodney Parker, and his phenomenal band the 50 Peso Reward, forge honky-tonk tinged pop spinning tales of love and pain all shot through with humor. But Rodney Parker and the 50 Peso Reward spices up this recipe considerably with a hefty dose of rock. And like any good Texas music worth it’s salt there is plenty of bravado, brawling and whiskey in equal measure.

The Lonesome Dirge tears out of the shoot like an amped-up Ring Of Fire - all Mariachi horns and squeeze-box accordion and Gabriel Pearson setting a furious gallop of military-styled drums that drives this song of roasting rattlesnake, drinking moonshine and spiritual cleansing toward a searing a Springsteen-like anthemic conclusion. Speaking of Springsteen, Parker and Co.take the Boss’ spooky atmospheric “Atlantic City” (hey, that pretty much describes all of Nebraska) and makes it a defiant opportunistic declaration rather than Springsteen’s original exercise in existential resignation.

“In The River” is probably the closest Parker and Co come to a mainstream country song, except that it’s good and structured in ways that take you by surprise. “Brother” is a helluva pedal steel girded mid-tempo rocker about sibling rivalries and “Ghost” moves into melodious Ryan Adam’s-style pastoral narrative territory ending on an Irish ballad note. I’m not sure what brought the Emerald Isle spirit running throughout this release, but it rears it’s head again on “I’m Never Getting Married” which is a straight-up Irish whisky-soaked sing-along celebrating bachelorhood.

It’s good to get the message here in New York City that great music is not only surviving but thriving in the Lone Star State and bands like Rodney Parker & Fifty Peso Reward are doing us proud.

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

Willie’s collaboration with the likes of Kid Rock, Toby Keith, Sheryl Crow, Julio Iglesias, as well as upcoming work with Ashley “Cowboys Crusher” Simpson and Beyoncé seems to attest to some kind of professional gregariousness. It’s appears as if the man will collaborate with most anyone who bothers to ask no matter how unworthy and that his most consistent flaw professionally is that he see no flaws in his collaborators.

My read on these collaborations are that they are shrewd moves to expand his fan-base, his status as Country musics’ elder statesman and his pocket book. Yeah, Willie is crazy like a red-headed fox. Making great music might have been a secondary reason for these collaborations, but not the primary motivation. This brings me to Willie’s most recent release “Moment of Forever” (Lost Highway - 01.29.08) which is a collaberation with Kenny Chesney and Buddy Cannon producing. Sure Willie may have his eye on the mega-selling stardom Chesney attains in his own career but it’s also resulted in one of the more consistently good releases his done in a long while.

The album starts with the production aping a Daniel Lanois’ aural hall of mirrors in outer space vibe. Whether Emmylou Harris’s Wrecking Ball, U2’s Joshua Tree of Willie’s own Teatro, Lanois ia a master of echoey-atmosphere. This Willie penned cut strikes the right balance of forlornness and fortitude with his singular guitar work given its due. But given the obviously derived production I’m left wondering what would it might have sounded like if the real Daniel Lanois had been at the helm.

The Kris Kristofferson/Danny Timms penned title song is a pure delight. The accompaniment adds just the right mix, especially with the help of Willie’s sister and long-time band member Bobby on piano. “The Bob Song’ was written by Big Kenny of Big and Rich fame. I can imagine Big Kenny bringing his big goof sensibilities and channeling Kenny Chesney’s hillbilly Jimmy Buffet-beach comber vibe and sitting on the beach, drinking a bottle of tequila and writing this. As of yet I have not consumed enough tequila to enjoy this silly, painful song. I actual cringe when I listen to it. (With this song and “Bob” from the Drive By Truckers “Brighter Than Creations Dark”, what is it with sudden bumper-crop of crappy songs with Bob in the title?)

“Louisiana” is a Randy Newman penned song originally titled “Louisiana 1927″ and released on his 1974 album “Good ‘Ol Boys.” Newman wrote the song about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 but it can easily can be used as historical allegory to the recent Katrina flood tragedy. The lyrics have been changed in the version Willie sings to update the story and make the meaning completely contemporary. “The president came down in his big airplane, with his little fat man with a note pad in his hand. President says Fat man, oh isn’t it a shame, What the river has done to this poor farmer’s land?”

Farm Aid comrade Dave Mathews wrote “Gravedigger” for his solo release and this cut may very well do for Willie what Trent Reznor’s Hurt” did for Johnny Cash. Willie bring gravity to the song. It’s contemporary and timeless at once and fits Willie’s darker material like a well-worn boot. “Keep Me From Blowing Away,” written by Paul Craft and just a great waltz with the always expressive Mickey Raphael’s harmonica and Willie’s uniques guitar work on his beloved Trigger. “Takin’ on Water” finds Willie getting a little funky complete with horns.

“Always Now” is a classic Willie penned tear-jerker and sound great, with a Tejano-sounding accordion that adds the right spice. Unfortunately there is a Caribbean-sounding steel-drum in the arrangement, I blame it on Chesney still looking for his lost shaker of salt. The Chesney penned “I’m Alive” is a surprisingly smokey-pop piece. It sounds likes the Burt Bacharach cut Dusty Springfield neglected when recording “Dusty in Memphis.” I believe this is my favorite cut on the album. Damn you Kenny Chesney, DAMN YOU!

“When I Was Young And Grandma Wasn’t Old” is a Buddy Cannon piece that sets a Texas scene that is as walks the like between cliched and sublime and come up in spades. “Worry B Gone” was written by the masterful Guy Clark and is a duet with Chesney is a genuine feeling front-porch ditty. At one point Willie replaces “sip” with “puff” in the line “Just give me one more sip of that Worry B Gone.” Classic! “You Don’t Think I’m Funny Anymore” is Willie writing a song to be being goofy and still it still comes off like it’s made for the ages. “Gotta Serve Somebody” is the classic Bob Dylan tune served up here with slinky-as-funk Memphis-style horns.

I wanted to hate this album, I really, really did. I mean you have the country-beach-comber Kenny Chesney co-producing how could it be good? But good it is. Good, damn good, not great. People looking for the next Phases and Stages, Spirit or Red-Headed Stranger are going to be somewhat disappointed, but given some of the major missteps in Willie’s long career (”Countryman” anyone?) I believe I’ll just breath a sigh of relief and kick back for one more listen.

I was going to embed the video for “Gravedigger” but Universal Music has had YouTube disable embedding for it. Hey idiots, it’s called free publicity!