Sturgill Simpson’s latest video, is for his dour yet heartfelt of version of Manchester synth-pop band When In Rome’s 1988 hit “The Promise.” (also included below for reference)
Simpson sits singing looking directly at you. Aashed-out colors fill in the grey-tone frame. Colors swirl and wash until replaced by inky clouds claustrophobically closing in.
And then.. he’s gone.
“The Promise” is a cover but Simpson makes it his own and shapes one of the best songs on his excellent release “Metamodern Sounds in Country Music.â€
Ladies and Gents great country music is alive and well and, yes, sometimes it still comes from Music Row.
GRAMMY-award winning singer/songwriter Kacey Musgraves has a response to self-rightous neighbors and it’s “The Trailer Song,†and it’s a honky-tonk delight (with an “awww haaawww’ for bonus points)
The song was written by Musgraves, and her usual partners in crime Brandy Clark and Shane McAnnally
Last week Musgraves performed “The Trailer Song†on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (see below.)
Purchase “The Trailer Song.†at Musgraves’ website.
Musgraves is currently on tour this summer with Willie Nelson and Alison Krauss as well as Katy Perry on her Prismatic World Tour.
“The Devil Is All Around” is the first cut from Shovels & Rope upcoming sophomore release “Swimmin’ Time” (Dualtone Music – August 26)
Courage and perseverance in the wake of hardships and the lures of earthly temptations are a staple in folk, country and gospel music. The video show the natural interplay between Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent as they blend their roughhewn harmonies and give that classic form a kick in the pants.
It’s a righteous spiritual for these unsure times.
The band will tour will start in August in their hometown in Raleigh, NC with stops scheduled in Atlanta, Nashville, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, New York with The Avett Brothers, Old Crow Medicine Show and John Fullbright. Catch ’em if you can!
Shovels & Rope Tour
7/4 & 7/6 – Ottawa, ON – RBC Blues Ottawa Festival
7/5 – Toronto, ON – Toronto Urban Roots Fest
7/10-12 – Oakbank, MB – Winnipeg Folk Festival
7/13 – Morrison, CO – Red Rocks Amphitheatre #
7/26 – Newport, RI – Newport Folk Festival
8/20 – Raleigh, NC – Raleigh Amphitheater **
8/21 – Charlotte, NC – Uptown Amphitheater **
8/22 – Alpharetta, GA – Verizon Wireless Amphitheater **
8/23 – Nashville, TN – The Woods Amphitheater at Fontanel **
8/27 – Louisville, KY – WFPK Waterfront Wednesday
9/18 – Wilmington, NC – Ziggy’s %
9/20 – Charlottesville, VA – Jefferson Theater %
9/24 – Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer
9/26 – Boston, MA – Royale %
9/27 – Boston, MA – Royale %
9/28 – Montreal, QB – Corona Theatre %
10/1 – Detroit, MI – St. Andrew’s Hall %
10/2 – Chicago, IL – Vic Theatre %
10/3 – Minneapolis, MN – First Ave %
10/5 – Madison, WI – Barrymore Theatre
10/7 – Bloomington, IN – Bluebird %
10/8 – Knoxville, TN – Bijou Theatre %
10/10 – Athens, GA – Georgia Theatre %
# – with The Avett Brothers
** – with Old Crow Medicine Show
% – with John Fullbright
On his 1962 masterpiece “Modern Sounds in Country Music” Ray Charles’ broke cultural and racial boundaries, straddled styles, grew his audience and made the charts.
Sturgill Simpson’s newest release tips a hat to that release but “Metamodern Sounds in Country Music” but it doesn’t break any boundaries that weren’t broke decade ago.
Simpson does fight against the current thinking that what’s old is bad. This is not new. Gram Parson’s did it in the 60’s and 70’s and the entire Americana genre is built on that premise. But just as Charles’ classic engaged country music as a lens to take a broader cultural view Simpson uses 70’s country gold as a review mirror to remind us what cultural beauty we’ve squandered.
Music City has always raced towards the shiniest object to gain market share and fill pockets. It’s charter is not historic preservation but cash accumulation. But that history is rich and fertile ground in the mind of Simpson, a mindful disciple that spans history and style with authenticity and a crooked smile.
That richness can be heard, and felt, in the songwriting.
The record opens as an old-timer, billed as “Dood” Fraley, announces the title album and then echoes off into infinite space.
Sunny psychedelic “Turtles All The Way Down” opens with a “Gentle On My Mind” feel with a twist “I’ve seen Jesus play with flames in a lake a fire that I was sanding in” “There’s a gateway in our mind that leads somewhere out there beyond this plane / Where reptile aliens made of light cut you open and pull out all your pain.”
“Tear in my Beer” this ain’t.
Drug use and mind expansion is not new in country music. Way before Willie and Snoop sang “Roll Me Up and Smoke When I Die.” and Kacey Musgraves , Ashley Monroe and Brandy Clark hitched a ride on the current weed bandwagon Kris Kristofferson was smoking his mind in “Sunday Morning Coming Down” (which Simpson references in “Life of Sin”) and Johnny Cash went on a murderous jag in “Cocaine Blues.”
But Simpson reflects a humanity in the mind alterations that grounds it and makes it relatable to even the straightest arrow.
Humanity is often dark, and “Life of Sin” takes a page from the book of Bakersfield and tells a leavin’ tale taht leads to drinkin’ and debauchery that raves like an prairie dust storm.
“Living the Dream” is a laid-back, Waylon-tinged cold reality lament of the futility of performing as you contemplate futility and “sit around and wait to die.”
“Long White Line” is a love song to the open road as a path away from hurt. “The Promise” is the most poignant track on the album. Simpson conjures loneliness and yearning in his softly, almost spoken, delivery as plucked guitar, drums, bass and stings build.
As you can guess this is not the feel good album of the summer. it engage human themes once prevalent in country music, misery. But not in th meost recent emo vairty of the emotion. this is misery as enlightenment. Angst as discovery.
“It Ain’t all Flowers” is a flashback kick in the teeth with “Are You Experienced”-style backtracking before giving way to a slow groover that slithers and seethes Southern sou.
Simpson’s voice is an expressive instrument in itself as if pleads and growls keening into hard-edge shapes and the occasional howl “oooHooooooo!” The band is on par with the level of excellence you’d expect from a Sturgill Simpson release. Kevin Black on bass guitar, Miles Miller on drums/percussion and backing vocal, Mike Webb on keyboards and
Dave Cobb plays. classical guitar/percussion. The stand out is Laur Joamets from Tartu, Estonia ranks up there with the finest interpreters of teh guitar I’ve had th honer of hearing.
Simpson doesn’t care to be country music’s savior but he’s willing to interpret it to make some damn fine new music an d fans are coming in droves. There’s a hunger for it.
Is “Metamodern Sounds in Country Music” groundbreaking? No.and it doesn’t need to be. It just remind us there still some gold in that there High Top Mountain
“Take Me Home” is the second track from Memphis-native and member of The Trishas Kelley Mickwee upcoming solo effort “You Used to Live Here” (July 22nd)
A softly sweeping acoustic ramble that accounts and pieces together memories of love, laughing and pining for where you began.
I guess you can go back home, and Mickwee’s lovely song makes it even more enticing to do so.
“Take Me Home” was co-written with Phoebe Hunt and features Eric Lewis on pedal steel.
When Bryan Simspon walked away from the new-grass quintet Cadillac Sky in 2010, writing that “The vision for my life post C-Sky is still coming together†few could imagine that he meant this.
The fruit of his vision is the newly released The Whistles & The Bells. ‘Skeletons’ is a twitchy dark gem that menaces with ripping guitars and slithers with scattered banjo to build into a sound that owes much to the garage and southern varieties of rock. It’s quite the dark boot-stomper.
The stop-motion video, directed by Joe Baughman, is an excellent accompaniment to running down things that get out and just won’t stay hidden no matter your puny efforts.
Pick up the The Whistles & The Bells self-titled release here)
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from roots chanteuse Lera Lynn, but it’s been worth the wait.
This video for the title cut from her new ‘Lying In The Sun’ EP is set in a moody residence brandishing an acoustic guitar. monogrammed tooled leather strap and semi-retro dress and hair. she stands alone as the band is filmed playing part until the room fills. All the while Lynn delivers the song directly to us.
The song is a moody work flecked with shimmering harmony and guitar much like the light pouring through the window drapes. This song both yearns and burns.
The video was Directed by Bill Filipak with Stephen Shiveley as director of photography.
Attention all Outlaw Country fans. I mean the REAL deal type.
On August 5 the legendary Billy Joe Shaver will release Long in the Tooth on Lightning Rod Records. The album will be release just before his 75th birthday on August 16. Of the album Shaver says it’s “the best album I’ve ever done.â€
“Each song is different with different beats and different kinds of music,†he says. “I even have one rap song. The titles are all so catchy like ‘It’s Hard to Be an Outlaw’ and ‘The Git Go.’ Those are pretty hard to beat. Songwriting is gut wrenching, but if you dig down and write real honest you’ll find something real great. I believe everybody should write. It’s the cheapest psychiatrist there is and, God knows, I still need one.â€
“I’ve written a lot of great songs and I’m still writing great songs, but I felt neglected. I have been, actually. The reluctance to play old people’s music is as bad as it was to play young people’s music. I think it should level out where everyone can hear good art, but it seems like radio doesn’t play older people’s music. Man, it’s like throwing out the Mona Lisa. I don’t understand, but I’m just so proud of Long in the Tooth. This record will be a gigantic step.â€
As lauded a songwriter as Shaver is, he needed some convincing by none other than Todd Snider into making Long in the Tooth. “I didn’t think I had another hope in the world of doing another studio album,†Shaver says. “Then Todd Snider encouraged me to come up to Nashville and I listened. I knew if I didn’t come out with new songs, it wouldn’t be right. I’ve promised hundreds of critics that I would. So, I just buckled down and got the new songs together. Sure enough, it turned out great.â€
I’ve seen Shaver live a few times over the past few years and I’m here to tell you he’s lost none of his fire and wit.
Long in the Tooth. is produced by Ray Kennedy and Gary Nicholson, and features appearances by WIllie Nelson, Leon Russell, Tony Joe White, Shawn Camp, Jedd Hughes, Joel Guzman and others.
Rolling Stone premiered the Billy Joe Shaver and Willie Nelson duet, “Hard to Be an Outlaw” (hear it below) The song is both a nostalgic lament and a swipe at Music Row pop-country. “Some superstars now days get too far off the ground, They sing about the back roads that they’ve never even been down. They go and call it country but that’s not how it sounds. It’s enough to make renegade want to terrorize the town.”
It’s not much of a stretch to imagine the town these texans imagine terrorizing would be Nashville.
Has anyone reached the heights of entertainer as completely as Dolly Parton. Her beginnings as the platinum buxom female talent on the Porter Wagoner show to an international superstar, actress and entertainment entrepreneur Parton is still releasing music and doing loads of media and touring behind it.
Her latest, Blue Smoke is her 42nd studio album. the release doesn’t play it safe. Besides great new cuts are duet with Kenny Rogers and Willie Nelson as well as covers of Bob Dylan (!) and Bon Jovi (!!)
In celebration of this great performer here are some of her most memorable songs from her extraordinary career.
The Americana Music Conference and Festival offers many familiar names. But it’s not often that the name is a star from the Music Row side of the tracks.
In 2012 Lee Ann Womack was there in the thick of it. The multi-Grammy and CMA Award winner shared the stage with Tom T Hall and Peter Cooper to perform “I Love” at the Americana Music Awards. She also shared the Cannery stage with Buddy Miller to do a fantastic all request show.
It takes a lot of confidence to move from the glitter of the spotlight to the more song-centric world of Americana and win over that audience. Womack did it with ease.
On September 23rd Lee Ann Womack will further establish herself in the Americana world by releasing Way I’m Livin.’ The album is not only on the premier roots music Sugar Hill Records label (Marty Stuart, Sarah Jarosz,) it will feature interpretations of stellar artists like Chris Knight, Mindy Smith, Mando Saenz, Hayes Carll, Neil Young, Bruce Robeson, Roger Miller and the aforementioned Buddy Miller.
Womack appears to be doubling down on this new chapter in her life. And she’s done so keeping very fine songwriting company. But I’m certain she’ll ride no one’s coattails.
“I wanted songs that talked about how life really is, the raw spots, the tough places, the meltdowns and messy parts,†“Hard, sad, rough… all the stuff people pretend doesn’t exist! Because once you embrace that, you can figure out what to do; or not do!â€
“And knowing these songs were written to be performed, not pitched, sets a bar! Every songwriter wrote intending to sing’em, to tell these stories, show these postcards, and you can feel the way they built the characters! Bringing that to music was just so incredible for everyone on the sessions.â€
The record will be produced by Lee Ann’s husband, Frank Liddell (Miranda Lambert, David Nail) Womack’s last album, Call Me Crazy, came out in 2008, resulting in one top 20 country single Last Call.
is her 42nd studio album. the release doesn’t play it safe. Besides great new cuts are duet with Kenny Rogers and Willie Nelson as well as covers of Bob Dylan (!) and Bon Jovi (!!) 