Category Archives: Outlaw

Kris Kristofferson Talks About New Release

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  • Kris Kristofferson and producer discusses Kristofferson’s upcoming Closer to the Bone (Sept. 29 on New West Records) and how they were trying to capture the intimacy that defined his last release This Old Road. Closer to the Bone will contain the song Good Morning John which comes from a letter Kristofferson wrote to Johnny Cash for a sobriety party. Kristofferson will perform on Nov. 1 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and on Nov. 10 he’ll receive the BMI Icon Award during the BMI Country Awards in Nashville. (billboard.com.)
  • The New York Press has a great feature on Twang Nation favorite The Builders and The Butchers.
  • Malcolm Holcombe’s will release For the Mission Baby in the U.S. on September 29, 2009, and in the UK/Europe on October 5, 2009. The album was recorded in May ’09, produced, recorded and mixed by Ray Kennedy at Room and Board Studios in Nashville, TN.
  • In my ongoing quest to make San Francisco a hotbed of Americana/roots music I recently came across Rhubarb Whiskey. The band features Cindy Emchy on accordion and vocals and Boylamayka on dog-house bass,  guitar and mandolin and background vocals and are a blend of vaudeville, gypsy jazz and Southern-Gothic. Check ’em out. (Main Site | MySpace)

The New York Times on Those Darlins

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  • The New York Times posts a great review of the riot grrrl-trad country group Those Darlins show at the lower East-Side’s Mercury Lounge.
  • Willie Nelson’s Facebook page is posting hints where this year’s Farm Aid will be held. So far we have:  The city for this year’s concert has a professional sports team named after an animal,  the concert will be in a state that is in the top 12 for number of farms  and it will be in a city & state where Farm Aid where Farm Aid has never been held.
  • Speaking of the Texas Yoda – Head over to Texas Music Matter to listen to Amazing Grace: The Willie Nelson Story – a winner of two National Headliners Awards including this year’s Grand Prize for Radio. Nearly a year in the making, the program features rare music plus interviews with, among others, Kris Kristofferson, Norah Jones, John Mellencamp, Ray Price, biographer Joe Nick Patoski, Willie’s best friend and closest confidante (his sister, Bobbie), and the Yoda  himself.
  • Country music legend (and daughter of country music legend Mel Tillis) Pam Tillis talks to the Vancouver Sun about the state of country music.

Band Round-Up: The Builders and the Butchers

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Portland, Oregon by way of  “hey! There’s Russia!” Alaska The Builders and the Butchers play a burgeoning fringe style of Southern Gothic music reflected in bands like vets Those Legendary Shack Shakers, newcomers  O’Death and Hank Williams III favorites Those Poor Bastards. Imagine O Brother where Art Though as performed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds or Iggy and the Stooges and you won’t be far off.

This aesthetic is a favorite of mine and I think a natural progression of people’s, not just kid’s, demand for authenticity and passion in music. Kids reared on punk, metal and hip-hop reach back into their own heritage come up with music that feels real and reflects the outsider status of all these genre’s early practitioners as well as their passionate and unhinged performance style. Great stuff!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-cZEod_gRU[/youtube]

Band Round-Up – Dirty Sweet

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Do you like your rock with a side of sleaze? Then San Diego’s Dirty Sweet might sate your hunger. Their name is taken from T. Rex’s 1971 Glam-rock classic Bang a Gong (Get It On), but the band comes off as less Electric Warrior and more Faces mashed-up with The Outlaws.

Sure there are the lazy Black Crowes comparisons (especially with Ryan Koontz’s 70’s classic rock wail), but the Black Crowes were themselves a pretty linear derivative of sources they now take pains to distance themselves from. Dirty Sweet wears their influences on their sweat-stained sleeves and make you yearn for a time when rock was hard and exciting.  Is there Twang? yeah, in the Slithering Southern Rock of Marrionette, the hot licks in Goldensole and in the lyrics of Kill or Be Killed, but the real treat with thier sound is, like many bands they obviously worship, they just take off the break and gun it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtQMjInGtpA[/youtube]

Ryan Koontz

Drive By Truckers Ready Odds and Sods, Austin City Limits Live CD / DVD

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Over their 13 years performing together the Drive By Truckers have produced a mess of great music, but not all of it made it onto their final 7 studio albums. The mighty DBT and their soon to be ex-label New West Records dug into the vaults and with guidance from longtime producer Dave Barbe, put finishing touches on a selection of songs that were never quite completed. “For me, it’s been a fun stroll through memory lane and a chance to tie up some loose ends” says Patterson Hood.

The result of the collaboration is The Fine Print (A Collection Of Oddities and Rarities 2003-2008) featuring songs written by band members past and present, including Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell. 7 of the twelve songs come from The Dirty South era… a highly creative time for DBT. Hood explains “That was an especially fertile period for the band, as we more or less wrote that album and the one before it, Decoration Day, as well as my first solo album all in a three year period as we were recording and touring behind Southern Rock Opera.”

The record also contains four covers including “Rebels” by Tom Petty, which the band recorded originally for the TV show “King Of The Hill” and “Like A Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan which provided Shonna Tucker with her first ever lead vocal performance on a DBT recording. The Fine Print  will be available September 1, 2009.

This summer New West will also release Drive-By Trucker’s entire Austin City Limits performance as a CD / DVD combination pack as a part of the Live From Austin, TX line. The Drive-By Truckers graced the Austin City Limits stage on September 26, 2008 while touring for their last studio album Brighter Than Creation’s Dark.

A CD/DVD combination package featuring the entire performance will be available on July 7th, 2009. The 13 songs, which were filmed in Hi-Def and recorded in 5.1 Surround Sound for the critically acclaimed PBS show, include a mix of new songs from Brighter Than Creation’s Dark alongside the classics “Let There Be Rock” and “18 Wheels Of Love” (off their second album Gangstabilly) and “Marry Me” (from Decoration Day). The band line-up featured is Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, Shonna Tucker, John Neff, Brad Morgan and Jay Gonzalez.

The DBT are currently in the studio working on the next album for an early 2010 release.

THE FINE PRINT TRACK LIST:
1. George Jones Talkin’ Cell Phone Blues
2. Rebels
3. Uncle Frank (alternate version)
4. TVA
5. Goode’s Field Road (alternate version)
6. The Great Car Dealer War
7. Mama Bake A Pie (Daddy Kill A Chicken)
8. When The Well Runs Dry
9. Mrs. Claus’ Kimono
10. Play It All Night Long
11. Little Pony And The Great Big Horse
12. Like A Rolling Stone

LIVE FROM AUSTIN, TX Track List:
1. Perfect Timing
2. Heathens
3. A Ghost To Most
4. The Righteous Path
5. I’m Sorry Huston
6. 3 Dimes Down
7. Puttin’ People On The Moon
8. Space City
9. The Living Bubba
10. Zip City
11. 18 Wheels Of Love
12. Let There Be Rock
13. Marry Me

Hard Times

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These are tough times for America. Wall Street and board room crooks, unnecessary wars, mounting national and personal debt, massive unemployment, terrorists threats.. These are not the toughest times we’ve faced in our history,I think the fisr depression and the civil war were much tougher, but they are hard relative to the lives most people have lived today.

The silver lining is that from hard times comes great music, and country music taps into the populist zeitgeist better than any other genre beside blues. Much has been made about John Rich’s Shuttin’ Detroit Down and Hank William Jr’s Red White and Pink Slip Blues but it’s hard for me to buy populist empathy from a guy that parades around  in mink coats and a guy that puts hotel employees in a choke hold and demands a kiss.

Here is a list of songs that I believe exhibit the best of what it sounds like to live through the worst.

Ryan Bingham – Hard Times – A new artist with an old voice . The name says it all.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg428ZfOMsA[/youtube]

The Drive By Truckers – Puttin’  People on the Moon – A stiff shot of old-school Southern rock chased withed populist rage.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTkRyLobKSc[/youtube]

Jimmie Rodgers  – Muleskinner Blues – A classic of down-on-your-luck and lookin’ for work poetry.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXV9_WilcHs[/youtube]

Johnny Cash – Busted – Harlan Howard’s 1962 penned song of working man’s woe was aa hit for Johnny Cash in 1962 on his classic At Folsom Prison live album and was an even bigger hit for Ray Charles the following year.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rnAYYh8gGQ[/youtube]

Merle Haggard – Workin’ Man Blues – Classic Bakersfield rocks this ode to the laborer.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbEstJ98TcM[/youtube]

Frankie Miller – Blackland Farmer – A paen to the 1958 farmers that were just starting to get a glipmpse of the industrial farms that were to change thier professions and lives forever.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHvGOAVOqMc[/youtube]

Levon Helm – Poor Old Dirt Farmer -  Helm, the only American in the Americana/rock group The Band, tells the story of his Dad’s farm inTurkey Scratch, a hamlet west of Helena, Arkansas.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBuJB218UvU[/youtube]

Johnny Paycheck – Take This Job and Shove It – it’s not all hand-wringing and woe is me in country music. Paycheck’s cover of  David Allan Coe’s song was a huge 70’s hit and a raised finger to The Man.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knetbVx5A-Q[/youtube]

Record Review – Spindrift: The Legend Of God’s Gun (Tee Pee Records)

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If you’re a fan of Sergio Leone’s Italiano decomposition of American West mythology and its Ennio Morricone heat-induced sound-scapes accompaniment  then Spindrift’s new release The Legend Of God’s Gun (July 21st -  Tee Pee Records) might be up your shot of mescal.

I haven’t seen the movie that this record soundtracks and probably wouldn’t have to to get the gist. Lone gunman enters a lawless town of frontier anarchy,  blood and whiskey spills in copious quantities, sexy senorita will betray and be dispatched, roll credits. To fill in the details there are narrations of a “land untamed and riddled with lust, greed, debauchery and bullet holes” and “Speak up you rusted .45,  How many can you name that you faced and left to die.” Nice!

There are the aforementioned Morricone-esque nervy spaghetti Westerns serenades (In the Beginning, Titoli, Speak to the Wind), heat-shimmering reverberated art rock (The New West, Speak to the Wind, Burn the Church, Blessing the Bullets) and even quasi-electronica (The Scorpions  Venom) and ending with the warpath horse-gallop of Indian Run .

Now I have to see the movie and hope it’s half as entertaining as Spindrift’s soundtrack.

MySpace | Official Site | Buy

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYWaoOlea9I[/youtube]

RIP Stephen Bruton

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  • The fine folks at the 9513 brought to my attention the sorry news that Kris Kristofferson’s longtime guitarist Stephen Bruton has succumbed to throat cancer.
  • Country music legends Charley Pride and Marty Stuart and bluesman Pinetop Perkins will headline the third annual Mississippi Grammy gala.
  • Recycle your cell phones to support Nuci’s Space and get free merch coupons from the Drive-By Truckers official Store!
  • The New York Times has a piece on Steve Earle and his course in recording his trubute to his mentor Texas singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt.

Poodies Locke Tributes, Jeff Tweedy Sued

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  • Jay Bennett, a former Wilco member, is suing band leader Jeff Tweedy in Cook County Circuit Court, claiming Tweedy owes him money from the band’s 2002 documentary and royalties on songs written during Bennett’s seven years with the group.

William Elliott Whitmore made a stop on the Jools Holland Show in England to perform Old Devils.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVJXa19w3W4[/youtube]

Country Singer Vern “The Voice” Gosdin Dies

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  • Singer Vern Gosdin, who recorded country music hits like the award-winning “Chiseled in Stone” during a 30-year career, has died. He was 74. Gosdin reportedly had a history of strokes and suffered the latest one a few weeks ago and was under hospice care and died late Tuesday at a Nashville, Tenn. hospital. The 9513.com offers a fine tribute to the man.
  • Birthday Boy Willie Nelson will join relative young’uns Bob Dylan and John Mellencamp on a U.S. summer tour of minor league baseball parks, beginning July 2 at the GCS Ballpark in Sauget, Ill., and wrapping Aug. 15 at the Banner Island Ballpark in Stockton, Calif.
  • The San Francisco Chronicle has posted a review of the John Prine / John Ritter  Apr 25th Warfield performance.
  • And in painful crossover news Def Leppard has been confirmed to perform on the CMT Music Awards on June 16. The Britsh pop-metal has-beens…er…band have recently been involved in the Music Row marketering wet dream collaborations with Tim McGraw earlier this year on the song “Nine Lives” and appearing with Taylor Swift on CMT Crossroads. What’s next? Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach doing coutry music…oh wait…