No Depression magazine, the bible of alt/roots/country/Americana music and lifestyle for thirteen years is making a comeback of sorts. Nodpression.com will be relaunched in late September and will be edited by the magazine’s founding co-editor Peter Blackstock and will include regular blogs by many of the magazine’s most frequent contributors, including Blackstock and fellow founding co-editor Grant Alden.

The new site will also include record reviews and live reviews, features on emerging artists, news updates, the current web site’s popular upcoming-releases list, reader-participant discussion forums — and, perhaps most significantly, a vast and cross-referenced archive featuring almost all the content from No Depression magazine’s 75 issues published from 1995 to 2008.

In preparation for the September relaunch, the website is promoting the No Depression Founders Circle, a way for fans and supporters of the magazine to take a financial stake in the new web site’s continued existence. I think this is a good move that I wish had been taken back before the magazine folded. I for one would have paid for the coverage ND provided that I could not find gathered between a set of magazine covers.

In my opinion ND lost their way when the publishers started to think about their audience as a demographic instead of a congregation of sorts. They went from having John Prine and Johnny Cash on thre cover to featuring the then alt.rock flavor of the month The Shins. Like a politician, they attempted to move to the mainstream, toward popularity with the mainstream and their pocketbooks, at the riisk of alietnating thier hard-core and reverent followers. Someone should have told them that a vast majority of Americans distrust politicians and lawyers for just this very reason, they appear to stand for nothing but whatever will help them win at the moment. That is almost exactly the definition of shiftless. The congirigation lost faith after that and hard times became even harder.

As an added incentive for getting eyeballs, folks who sign up for the website’s mailing list at NoDepression.com will be eligible to win an Epiphone DR-100 Vintage Sunburst acoustic guitar which has been provided by Epiphone. Great email bait! I singed up this morning!

Also a new No Depression “bookazine” (to be designated No Depression #76) also will be available in print-form on the shelves of bookstores nationwide in October. The publication, a joint venture between ND and the University of Texas Press, will be issued twice annually (every fall and spring). Blackstock and Alden will serve as co-editors, with Alden also reprising his magazine role as art director. A handful of book-release events at bookstores and record stores nationwide are also in the works. I appuad this effort and look forward to it, at the same time I wonder why something like this couldn’t have been applied to the magazine in it’s former incarnation.

All of this is no surprise for anyone that read the publishers online adios to the magazine: “Plans to expand the publication’s website (www.nodepression.net) with additional content will move forward, though it will in no way replace the print edition.” Why Grant and Peter weren’t doing this in conjunction with the print version of ND all along is a mystery to me, but I say better late than never. Get over there, sign up for their emails and send them cash. The world that I cover and we all love is a better place with them in it.

• The Americana Music Association has released an initial list of arists that will be playing around Nashville during their music festival and conferencethis September 17-20 2008. Some of the performers will be: Jim Lauderdale, Mike Farris, Kane Welch Kaplin, The everybodyfields, The SteelDrivers, Tift Merritt, Jason & the Scorchers, Joe Ely, Malcolm Holcombe, Rosie Flores, Band of Heathens, Laura Cantrell, Cross Canadian Ragweed, James McMurtry, Jason Isbell and much much more.

• The drop date for Chris knight’s new album, Heart of Stone, has been pushed back to September 2nd due to “production issues.” Guest musicians on Heart of Stone include Mike McAdam (Steve Earle, Radney Foster) on various guitars, Keith Christopher (Georgia Satellites, The Yayhoos) on bass, Tammy Rodgers (The SteelDrivers) fiddle and vocals, mandolin and banjo, and Michael Webb (The Wreckers, Allison Moorer) on B-3 organ, piano and accordion. Producer Dan Baird also contributes on guitar and vocals. Knight says of Heart of Stone “It might just be my best. For some reason, there’s a cohesiveness here that’s not like anything I’ve done before. But at the same time, it’s not real predictable. There’s a lot of texture to it as well, but it’s a simple record. I don’t know how that happened. But I know it when I hear it.”
• The documentary “Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music” will air on PBS stations tomorrow night. The film is directed by Robert Elfstrom and is a “cinema vérité look at Cash.”  PBS produced the documentary almost 40 years ago (!) Robert Elfstrom also takes some time to answer some questions for the the Tennessean (via the 9513)

• Nashville Tennessee’s The Bittersweets - Chris Meyers (guitar, keyboards, vocals), Hannah Prater (vocals, guitar) and Steve Bowman (drums) - are offering a song “Wreck” from their upcoming release “Goodnight, San Francisco” ( 9/9/08)  produced by Lex Price, Mindy Smith. Personally I take the title of their new release as a good omen for my new home.

“Wreck” mp3

• The Americana Music Association has announced that Austin City Limits producer Terry Lickona will be their recipient of their Lifetime Achievement Award.

• Not sure how I feel about Johnny Cash Remixed (10/14.) If it’s anything like the Nina Simone or Blue Note remix releases it could be cool. Featuring Buck 65 and Moceon Worker and John Carter Cash involvement in the project makes me think it’s a step in the direction of very cool. Cash often jumped and defied genres his entire career so this release could make a certain amount of sense.

• Right now I’m watching “The Last Waltz,” the Martin Scorsese’s film of the final concert of The Band, 1978, Thanksgiving Day in San Francisco. Featuring guest appearances by Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Emmylou Harris, Neil Young, Muddy Waters, The Staples Singers, Dr. John and many more. Can muisc ever be this essential again? I doubt it.

• Austin-born, Berklee trained violinist-turned-fiddler/singer/song writer, and Chip Taylor protege, Carrie Rodriguez will release her second solo album “She Aint Me.” (8/5) The album is produced Malcolm Burn (Emmylou Harris, Kaki King) and wrote with Gary Louris of the Jayhawks as well as Mary Gauthier, Dan Wilson and Jim Boquist

• The 10th Annual Pickathon Roots Music Festival (August 1-3, at Pendarvis Farm on Mt Scott near Portland, OR.) will feature35+ artists appearing on five stages, including two late-night venues. Some artists featured are Justin Townes Earle, a reunited Bad Livers, The Gourds, Hackensaw Boys and Wayne “The Train” Hancock.

• According to Billboard.com ZZ Top has inked a deal with Rick Rubin’s American Recordings imprint through Columbia. The veteran rock trio is planning to hit the studio with Rubin (Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond,  Slayer) producing, for an album more in keeping with “La Grange”-era ZZ Top than its pop-friendly ’80s sound, according to manager Carl Stubner. I can’t begin to express how happy this makes me!

• Since I’ve been here in the scorched shit-hole that is Irving Texas (but hey, it’s my native shit hole) I’ve tuned into the Clear Channel owned Dallas KZPS - Lone Star 92.5 and found it’s almost completely reverted back to it’s classic rock format it had abandoned to experiment in the alt.country/roots format. So much for experimentation and those great Willie Nelson promos they recorded. Nevertheless I found my solice in the excellent KHYI 95.3 The Range. In one sitting I heard Chris Knight, George Jones. Eleven Hundred Springs. Yeah I know I’m a little late to this party but, hell, I’m just tickled to be here.

• Dallasnews.com has a nice write up on the grand dame of Country Music, Loretta Lynn’s sold out show last Saturday at Ft. Worth’s Bass Hall. The night before Lo-retty had played Stubb’s in Austin’s (latter part via the 9513)

• The New York Times covered the Alison Krauss and Robert Plant show at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden. I was at this fantastic show and my review is forthcoming (I swear! Really!)

• Jonathan Yardley at the Washington Post reviews Dana Jennings’ book about country music and his hard scrabble upbringing in rural New Hampshire “Sing Me Home.” I have read this excellent book and my review is forthcoming (I swear! Really!)

• Stephen M. Deusner at Pitchfork.com uses Miranda Lambert’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” release as a jumping off point to other great country albums over the last few years that “demand to be heard with the same open-mindedness and enthusiasm as Lambert.”

• Barnes&Noble.com has posted a video of “One on One with Emmylou Harris”, recorded live at their Union Square store in New York. Emmylou talks about her new release “All I Intended To Be” and performs her songs off the album “Gold,” “Not Enough,” written about her dog Bonaparte after he dies, and “How She Could Sing the Wildwood Flower” which was written after seeing a PBS documentary on the Carter Family. She also tells a great story about how her babysitter was the conduit for her and Gram Parsons to meet.
  

• Willie Nelson and Carl Cornelius are ready to take the wrapping off the new 30,000-square foot renovation off of the renovation of Carl’s Corner truck stop, the one with the old Tango nightclub giant musician frogs on the roof.
  The new space is now christened “Willie’s Place,” and will includes a honky tonk, restaurant, a poker room and trucker amenities, with a concert July 3. “Willie’s Place” is on IH-35 about 40 miles north of Waco “Willie’s Place at Carl’s Corner” will also process and sell biodeisel fuel.

• Cross Canadian Ragweed frontman Cody Canada draws a line in the Red Dirt between their sound and pop country: “It just keeps getting more pop and more pop. We’re only in our 30s, but we’re kind of old-school, old-fashioned when it comes to country music. If it’s called ‘country music,’ it ought to sound like country music.”

• And last but not least, Twang Nation HQ will be pulling up stakes from beautiful, balmy New York City for new digs in San Francisco, CA. on July 15th (with a long stretch in the homeland, Texas, in between.

Matt Umanov knows a thing or two about guitars.

His New York City West Village shop has been selling new and vintage guitars since 1965 as well as doing excellent repairs and upgrades.

Steve Earle is a neighbor of the shop and eventually found his way in to sample the trade. Matt, who has been matching players with instruments for years, guided his new customer in the purchase of a few Martin guitars and along the way introduced him to the M body style, which combines jumbo (0000) size with 000 depth.

His enthusiasm for the Martin “M” jump-started development of a Martin Steve Earle guitar. Earle turned to Umanov for help with the details and together they created the Martin M-21 Steve Earle Custom Edition, a “poor man’s” M that showcases this body style’s big, balanced sound and playing comfort in an elegant, affordable package.

Delivered in a blue molded hardshell case, each Martin M-21 Steve Earle Custom Edition guitar
features an interior label personally signed by Steve Earle and Matt Umanov, numbered in sequence without a total.

From Variety.com - Plans are in motion for documentarians David Leaf (The U.S. vs. John Lennon) and Morgan Neville (The Night James Brown Saved Boston) to chronicle the history of country music/ the series will be produced by Shout! Factory and Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

The individual segments will be thematically divided. On the slate are “The Roots of Country and Bluegrass,” “The Honky Tonk Tradition,” “Outlaw Country,” “The Nashville Sound,” “The Politics of Country,” “Country Songs and Songwriters,” “California Country” and “No Depression,” a look at the alternative country music movement.

Modern country stars will be participating in the films, providing their personal connections to the past.
“We are always looking for new ways to reach and expand our audience and tell them the story of this uniquely American genre,” said Kyle Young, director of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

The Hall of Fame and Shout! Factory, founded by music industry vets Richard Foos, Bob Emmer and Garson Foos, first partnered last year to create DVD collections culled from the museum’s archive.

I hope this is half as good as the BBC 2003 four-part series Lost Highway: The True Story of Country Music.

60 years ago in this day, June 11th 1949, Hank Sr. made his famous debut on the Grand Ole Opry.  He sang his hit Lovesick Blues and received a record number of ovations and encores, the Opry and Country Music were never the same.

Help reinstate Hank to the Opry.

• The New York Times has an extensive review of Joe Nick Patoski’s biography, “Willie Nelson: An Epic Life.”
• Ted Hacker, he producer of next weekends BamaJam festival (featuring Hank Williams Jr., Miranda Lambert, Ricky Skaggs and much more), and a former country music manager for the Oak Ridge Boys, Diamond Rio and Darryl Worley details the steps it took to put the festival together.
• Ben Cisneros at the 9513 has nice things to say about Dallas’ Eleven Hundred Springs’ new release “Country Jam.”
• And lots of folks have lots to say, lots, about Jessica Simpson’s newest country music single “Come On Over.” The consensus seems to run toward (and I agree) that Jessica is doing to the song what she did to Tony Romo’s chances for the Superbowl.
• There is some talk about bringing back Austins’ legendary Armadillo World Headquarters. This is the place where, after leaving Nashville, Willie Nelson focused on remaking himself as the hippy/redneck savant as we know him today. (thanks to Linda at Still Is Still Moving - the #1 fan site on Willie Nelson)