Watch Out! Chris Stapleton: “Traveller” – David Letterman

Chris Stapleton: "Traveller" - David Letterman

Chris Stapleton has worked behind the scenes of Music Row for quite some time. He’s written hits for mainstream artists like Luke Bryan, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley and Dierks Bentley. He’s also showed his melodic diversity by penning songs covered by Adele, Vince Gill and Sheryl Crow. He’s also up for Song of the Year at this Sunday’s Academy of Country Music Awards, for Luke Bryan’s “Drink a Beer.”

The man know his away around the craft to chart and to speak to the heart.

His first foray into the spotlight was as the lead singer and guitarist of the neo-bluegrass band The SteelDrivers from 2008–2010, where he was was nominated for three Grammy Awards as a member.

Chris Stapleton’s next act will be the release of his much anticipated debut “Traveler” (May 5th.) Not only will the album feature Stapleton’s tremendous talent but it will feature some of the best musicians going. If that weren’t enough for your hard earned dollar it’s notable that the album is produced by Dave Cobb, tha man at the boards for two recent stellar roots albums, Sturgill Simpson’s ‘Metamodern Sounds in Country Music’ and Jason Isbell’s ‘Southeastern.’

Last night, the singer-songwriter joined a long and prestigious list of country, Americana and roots musicins that have graced the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater apperaing as a musical guest for the Late Show with David Letterman.

Stapleton performed the title song, wrapping his big Southern soul beautifully around his wife and collaborator Morgane’s accompaniment. Backed by a steady, smooth cadence by Derek Mixon on drums and JT Cure on bass, and, notably, the whining to and from of Robby Turner on pedal steel (To Letterman likening the the skill to flying a helicopter is probably not far off. )

It’s both sad and startling to hear this much soul and subtle beauty in country music.

Stapleton will open for Eric Church on April 30th in Boston. He will begin his solo tour tonight in Dallas and will perform at Good Records on April 18th for Record Store Day before continuing on tour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YADQ6MhQuuU&feature=youtu.be

Watch Out! Sturgill Simpson – ‘Listening to the Rain’ – Live from Coachella, April 12, 2015

Sturgill Simpson - 'Listening to the Rain' - Live from Coachella

Sturgill Simpson continued his meteoric career with a day performance at Indio, California mega-festival, Coachella on Saturday.

Check out the clip below as Stu and his extraordinary band – Guitar slinger Laur “Little Joe” Joamets, Bassist Kevin Black, drummer Miles Miller and keyboardist Jefferson Crowe – organically build and riff on the Osborne Brothers classic ‘Listening To The Rain.’

You need no more proof that this to underscore this is one of the finest touring bands – of whatever genre – in America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytxnj19Ll14

Sturgill Simpson – Billy Bob’s Texas – 4/3/2015

Sturgill Simpson - Billy Bobs 4/3/2015

Billy Bob’s Texas was erected in 1981 in the heart of Ft. Worth’s historic Stockyards district to capitalize on the Urban Cowboy fad, booming at the time. This hyper commercialization of country music was due to the passable Texan impersonations by actors John Travolta and Debra Winger in the movie of the same name, and it’s best-selling soundtrack scooped up by people in love with the blue-collar atmosphere the movie mythologized.

This effort delivered millions of new country music fans (and boosted Stetson, Justin and Lone Star beer sales,) but not all was rosy. Many argued that the singular focus on chasing sales diminished the classicly “authentic” country sound.

This is not the first time the “losing authenticity ” argument had been leveled at Music Row. the same grievances are claimed against the current manifestation of commercial country radio known as bro-country.

Now, just as then, there is hope in this dark hour.

The Urban Cowboy craze laid the path to the reenergizing of the genre by artists like Steve Earle, Dwight Yoakam and led the way to alt,country a few years later. Bro-country has led to the same kind of galvanization and created a hunger for something more genuine and less contrived. There is an opportunity for those that can deliver.

Enter Sturgill Simpson. The singer/songwriter has been riding a storybook year of late night TV appearances, a Grammy nomination, an Americana Music Award for Emerging Artist if the Year (10 years into his career.) There have been critical accolades and brisk sales of an album with the unlikeliest of titles “Metamodern Sounds in Country Music.” On top of all this he inked a big label deal with Atlantic Records in January.

Not too shabby.

Not one to sit on his laurels Simpson booked a few Texas dates around his taping of the first episode of the Austin City Limits 41st season. Just a few months after his heralded sold-out at Club DaD he’s back in the metroplex. This stop is the “The Worlds Biggest Honky Tonk,”

The 6000 plus crowd (roughly 10 times that of DaDa for those keeping score) was a study in his growing and expansive demographic appeal. Bearded and tattooed hipsters, camoed rednecks , spangle-jeaned cowgirls, pro shop dandys and North Dallas socialites packed together to witness country music’s climbing star.

His name spread not due to carpet-bombing commercial radio play or a calculated, million dollar media roll out. His was a grassroots effort of pilled-up shirt-sleeves, dogged perseverance of the man, his band and his management team.

I’ve seen Simpson put on generally the same show for 6 people as he did for this crowd of 6 thousand and his appeal, and power, come from his creativity, but also his work ethic. He’s glade you showed up, but if you didn’t the show would go on at the highest level possible.

On this night that workman-like focus, and display of musical dexterity, was in full display. As Simpson delivered bratone blasts of his road weary lines from ‘Living The Dream’ as if describing his current state “Time and time again Lord I keep going through the motions – A means to an end but the ends don’t seem to meet – Walking around living the dream anytime I take the notion – Til the truth comes bubbling up so bittersweet.” This was the man’s life imitating the man’s art.

The setlist revolved around his two studio albums, Bluegrass standards from the Stanley Brothers as well as selections from Texas legend’s Lefty Frizell and his spiritual guide Waylon Jennings served up to woops of appreciation from us locals. It was striking how well Sturgill’s songs bent time and meshed with songs created decades earlier.

The most striking moment was when Sturgill performed his gut wrenching cover of ‘The Promise.’ It was the one time in the show that the chatty crowd focused and synched to sing and sway along to the torchy reimagined tune by 80’s pop band When In Rome.

The show was taut and free of filler and flash. His roughly 90-minute set stood in sharp contrast to the upcoming American Country Music Awards – the rhinestone hype-fest set to take place in a couple of weeks at Jerry Jone’s palace of excess, AT&T Cowboys Stadium.

How his growing popularity, and his inevitable shift into a structure accommodating the change in his professional stature, will affect his viewpoint, and ultimately his music, remains to be seen. But at this point his music, from the heart and the gut, resonants with a growing audience wary of shiny radio fads. There’s a hunger for authenticity and Simpson has shown, with his confessional lyrics, low-key stage presence, and his reluctance to be country music’s savior, is the man for the job.

Like the Outlaw movement he’s most often associated with his outsider status comes from a man living according to his own vision. It’s an imprecise and romantic notion, but that’s exactly why it’s so compelling.

Watch Out! Raelyn Nelson Band ‘Brother’ [VIDEO]

Raelyn_guitar_downtown_600

On their new single. ‘Brother,’ Raelyn Nelson and her crackerjack band plays like a hot rod with a cut break line. They swerve and careen near the edge pulling back just in time to ensure safe passage.  The alt.country influenes are undeniable as they brew a hard cow-punk concoction so infectutous and fresh that it would cause the Bottle Rockets and Old 97s to join the mosh pit. 

Not bad for a uke slinger.

Raelyn’s father was Billy Nelson, the third child from Willie’s first marriage to Martha Matthews. She shows that the outlaw gene might just be hereditary as she blazes her own path with such confidence that she’s been placed on Grandad’s stellar 4th of July Picnic alongside other newbloods like uncle Lukas Nelson and Sturgill Simpson.

She’ll fit right in.

The iPhone shot video for ‘Brother’ displays just the right amount of social media twitch to match the song’s frenetic pace. The theme of fraternal revenge and firearms might be a bit rough for those with tender sensabilities, but it rings as true as the music.

Of the song, video and her unique take os releasing music Raelyn says: “The song came about when I was watching a tv show and got inspired by the story of a girl getting her three older brothers to track down her unfaithful boyfriend. JB (producer Jonathan Bright) and I got together and wrote it and we were trying to come up with a video concept that we could do on our own. It was DIY in every sense, and we shot it all with one gopro camera. The “band side” was done with a tripod, some cheap workshop lights and a clear shower curtain as a light “diffuser”. The other side was just JB running around with the gopro strapped to his head. Then with some tips from friends,YouTube tutorials, and editing software we managed to pull it off. And we came in right on budget! Which was zero….

“As far as part of a larger project, I think we’ve decided this year to skip the traditional “cd release” and just release a single every month or so, with a video and new t-shirt to go along with it. We have the songs, but it makes more sense to us to release them as singles and have something new to offer each month, instead of beating a record to death for a year.”

Listen Up! Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell – ‘The Traveling Kind’

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell -  'The Traveling Kind'

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell know a good things when they have it. The country/roots music legends will follow up 2013’s Americana Album of the Year Grammy-winning ‘Old Yellow Moon’ a second duets collection, ‘The Traveling Kind,’ out May 12th on Nonesuch Records.

Produced by Joe Henry (Billy Bragg, Elvis Costello), the record will feature 11 duet tracks, including six new songs written by Harris and Crowell with co-writing by Mary Carr, Cory Chisel, Will Jennings, and Larry Klein as well as versions of Lucinda Williams’ “I Just Wanted to See You So Bad” and Amy Allison’s “Her Hair Was Red.”

Of the project, Harris comments, “In the words of Willie Nelson, ‘The life I love is making music with my friends,’ and there’s no better friend for me to make music with than Rodney. I can’t wait to get out there on the road with him and play the songs from this new record.”

Crowell adds, “Emmy and I co-wrote six of the eleven songs on The Traveling Kind, which was recorded in a six-day span with our Glory Band, Steuart Smith and Billy Payne. Joe Henry was at the helm as producer and Justin Neibank did the recording. The experience was pretty much akin to falling off a log.”

‘The Traveling Kind’ Tracklist:

1. The Traveling Kind (Rodney Crowell/Emmylou Harris/Cory Chisel)
2. No Memories Hanging Around (Rodney Crowell)
3. Bring It on Home to Memphis (Rodney Crowell/Larry Klein)
4. You Can’t Say We Didn’t Try (Rodney Crowell/Emmylou Harris/Cory Chisel)
5. The Weight of the World (Rodney Crowell/Emmylou Harris)
6. Higher Mountains (Rodney Crowell/Emmylou Harris/Will Jennings)
7. I Just Wanted to See You So Bad (Lucinda Williams)
8. Just Pleasing You (Rodney Crowell/Mary Carr)
9. If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Now (Rodney Crowell/Emmylou Harris)
10. Her Hair Was Red (Amy Allison)
11. La Danse de la Joie (Rodney Crowell/Emmylou Harris/Will Jennings)

Harris and Crowell will play a series of intimate shows in support of the record this May:

May 7 San Francisco, CA The Fillmore
May 8 Napa, CA City Winery
May 10 Chicago, IL City Winery
May 21 New York, NY City Winery
May 26 Nashville, TN City Winery
May 27 Nashville, TN City Winery

Hear the title track from ‘The Traveling Kind’ below.

Listen Up! Lindi Ortega – ‘Tell It Like It Is” [VIDEO]

Lindi Ortega - Tell It Like It Is

‘Tell It Like It Is” is a new cut by Nashville-by-way-of-Toronto chanteuse Lindi Ortega.

The song blends a slow, torchy waltz with a simmering rock-blues request for her lover to stop playing games and shoot straight. Ortega’s shimmering trill is on full display in this rousing cut. Her pleas dip and soar as the band builds to a full rock swagger.

‘Tell It Like It Is” is from an untitled new album. Details on the album will be revealed in April.

Ortega will play the Stagecoach in April and the Live Oak in Ft. Worth on May 6.

Buy ‘Tell It Like It Is” – iTunes.

Watch Out : Whitey Morgan’s – “Waitin’ ‘Round To Die” (Townes Van Zandt) [VIDEO]

Whitey Morgan’s “Waitin’ ‘Round To Die”

It takes guts to cover Townes Van Zandt. A musician will fall short of the original can take comfort that though they get leads of cred for choosing the legendary songwriter.

“Waitin’ ‘Round To Die” is one of Van Zandt’s darkest songs in a discography brimming with melancholy. A nameless drifter recalls abusive from his father, abandonment of his mother, drug and alcohol abuse, fast women and then a stretch in prison. All leading to a husk of man waiting for his new companion, codeine, to take his wretched life.

This is not a tailgate party ditty.

Townes’ first wife, Fran Petters, stated in the Townes documentary, “Be Here to Love Me, that “Waiting ‘Round To Die” was the first song Van Zandt composed during their marriage in Houston, Texas. My favorite version of the song was done Van Zandt on the extraordinary documentary of 1970’s roots music, :Heartworn Highways.” Townes lays the song his Austin, Texas home picking his guitar picking in his signature style as his neighbor and friend Seymore Washington sits nearby. At one point during the performance 75 year old Washington begins to weep.

This is the power of music.

Where’s Townes original was spare and spacious, Whitey Morgan fills the space with a Ennio Morricone-style arrangement swirling around his his Southern-soul baritone.

Whitey Morgan’s “Waitin’ ‘Round To Die” from forthcoming ‘Sonic Ranch’ – May 19th

BBC Lost Highway: The History of American Country

Lost-Highway-The-Story-of-Country-Music-Cover

If you haven’t seen the BBC’s “Lost Highway: The History of American Country’ then you’re in for a treat.

This four-part, four-hour documentary follows the musical lineage from the Bristol Sessions to Nashville, from Texas to Bakersfield, and brings it all together in a beautiful story of heritage and style any songwriter would love.

The history of it’s roots in mountain music, through bluegrass it’s first super star Hank Williams and honky tonkers. From the jazz fusion of Western Swing to the dominance of the adult-pop Nashville Sound through the extraordinary and game-changing emergence of female performers and the evolution of newer forms of the genre – country rock to alt.country and Americana.

Featuring contributions from Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch, Hank Williams III, Kris Kristofferson, Lyle Lovett, Dwight Yoakam and Dolly Parton among others. Lost Highway: The Story of Country Music is produced by William Naylor; the series editor is Michael Poole.

Sit back with your favorite drink and enjoy.

Austin City Limits Announces New Class of Hall of Fame Inductees: Asleep at the Wheel, Loretta Lynn, Guy Clark, Flaco Jiménez and Townes Van Zandt

 Austin City Limits -Loretta Lynn

Austin City Limits has announced thier newest class of ACL Hall of Fame inductees. The five legendary artists being honored are Western swing institution Asleep at the Wheel, country trailblazer Loretta Lynn, songwriting legend Guy Clark, master accordionist Flaco Jiménez and the legendary Townes Van Zandt. The announcement was made yesterday evening by ACL Executive Producer Terry Lickona at Austin’s Rattle Inn. The 2015 ACL Hall of Fame inductees will be celebrated at a ceremony highlighted by all-star music performances to be held on June 15th at ACL’s studio home, Austin’s ACL Live at The Moody Theater. The event will be open to the public and ticket onsale information will be announced at a later date.

“I am truly honored to be included in this year’s ACL Hall of Fame,” said Asleep at the Wheel founder Ray Benson who was on hand for the announcement. “After Willie did the pilot in 1974-5, Asleep at the Wheel was selected to do the first regular episode of ACL. Joe Gracey and I were roommates then, and he was booking the show. He asked who we wanted to share the bill with and I said, ‘The Texas Playboys, Bob Wills’ great band!’ That episode is now housed at the Smithsonian. Over the years I have appeared in numerous episodes both as a featured performer and a guest performer, and I cannot imagine our 45-year career without the exposure that ACL afforded us. Many thanks to the great staff who make the show what it is!”

ACL also announced the first round of new tapings for the series upcoming Season 41: breakout country rebel and Grammy-nominated Sturgill Simpson, acclaimed rock outfit The War on Drugs, and, in a special Bob Wills’ tribute, new Hall of Fame inductees Asleep at the Wheel, joined by guest stars including The Avett Brothers and Amos Lee.

The Austin City Limits Hall of Fame was established in 2014 in conjunction with the iconic television series’ 40th Anniversary to celebrate the legacy of legendary artists and key individuals who have been instrumental in the landmark series remarkable 40 years as an American music institution. The invitation-only inaugural induction ceremony took place April 26, 2014 at ACL’s original Studio 6A. Hosted by Oscar-winning actor and Texas native Matthew McConaughey, the historic evening honored the first class of inductees, featuring American music icon Willie Nelson who starred on the original ACL pilot program, Austin blues rock giants Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble and legendary steel guitarist and Grammy Award-winning music producer Lloyd Maines, in addition to non-performers who played a key role in the evolution of the program: original show creator Bill Arhos and longtime ACL supporter, Texas Longhorns football head coach Darrell Royal. A star-studded line-up paid tribute with incredible music performances, including: Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris, Buddy Guy, Robert Randolph, Doyle Bramhall II and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

Sturgill Simpson Signs With Atlantic Records

Sturgill Simpson has signed to Atlantic Records

in news that surprises no one, Kentuckian Sturgill Simpson has signed to a major label.

Coming off the biggest year of his career Simpson rode a huge wave of critical accolades and year-end lists for his sophomore LP ‘Metamodern Sounds In Country Music’ (including making our #1 position) a growing fanbase spread the word and grew hungrier for his neo-traditional style of country music.

Now on top of being nominated for a Grammy for the Americana Album of the Year (which he should win) and being added to some of the biggest music festivals — Coachella, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Stagecoach,, Governors Ball and Bonnaroo, Simpson confirmed via Facebook last night that he’s joined the Atlantic Records roster. The same label where Willie Nelson found refuge from Nashville label intrusion and current label for Zac Brown Band and Seasick Steve.

Big labels like taking on as close to a sure thing as can be had in these tumultuous time in the music industry. Several labels had been reported to be courting Simpson, but he signed with the one that allowed him the greatest control over his career. If this works out it could be a huge turning point for roots and Americana acts being signed to equally beneficial deals.

Simpson is either currently, or soon to be in a Nashville’s Sound Emporium studio working on this third solo release with producer Dave Cobb.

Hat tip to Saving Country Music for the original post.