Tag Archives: Americana

Jackson Cage – Belfast, Northern Ireland

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I’m always fascinated when country music is honored and performed by folks overseas. I’m also interested in how new bands are able to use the web to do much of the heavy lifting traditionally done in the past by big labels with big money and a large staff. I get both of these plus great music with Belfast Ireland’s country rock band Jackson Cage. The Jackson Cage I’m most familiar with is a dour song about suburban futility by Bruce Springsteen on his release “The River.”  Jackson Cage the band do exhibit some of New Jersey’s most famous hillbilly’s knack for narrative, but only inasmuch as he was willing to channel Dylan, Woody Guthrie and The Band to tell a compellingly stark tale.

Jackson Cage’s self-funded, self-released, self-promoted and self-titled debut album managed to hit #1 on the most popular Alt Country Albums on Amazon MP3 (it currently sits at #5 just after Ryan Bingham’s Mescalito.) What makes all this more impressive is that Amazon only sells MP3s to US customers.

Jackson Cage is one of those rare cases where a band exhibits a skillful grasp of great music roots while working contemporrary technology just as adeptly. Keep your eye on Jackson Cage.

Jackson Cage – Taste the Moon(mp3)

Jackson Cage – White Line(mp3)

Jackson Cage  – I ain’t gonna waste my time(mp3)

Tom Waits in Dallas

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Last night’s Tom Waits show in Dallas was along waited treasure for this fan. You can read more here and here. Waits has been mining a vein of American music that is uniquely his own through his career and his songs have been covered by Allison Krauss, Johnny Cash and the Ramones among many many others (notice the intended omission of one Ms. Scarlett Johansson.)  

Big thumbs down for the venue, The Palladium Ballroom, for the lack of air conditioning for a two thousand plus crowd on a hot Texas June night.

Tom Waits: Innocent When You Dream, Houston 2008

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cn2osC5aRg[/youtube]

Loretta Lynn Live at Ft. Worth’s Bass Hall

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  • 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.

Pitchfork.com Interviews Emmylou Harris

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Pitchfork.com has a great interview with Emmylou Harris about her new release All I Intended to Be (NoneSuch) song writing routines, about her many collaborations and his she’s traveled the tough country music and come out in one

Pitchfork: You’ve been associated with a lot of very inspired but also very hard living guys. How have you managed to move in the same circles as people like Gram Parsons and Steve Earle and survive?

EH: Well, Steve Earle wasn’t hard living by the time we started working together! [laughs] I was only around Gram for a very, very brief period of time. I was pretty much the country mouse. When I was around Gram, he really trying to straighten up. We spent most of our time singing, and you can’t get all screwed up and sing. So the time we spent together was a pretty healthy time. I wish I could have spent more time around him. Maybe I could have helped him a little bit. But there’s no point in looking back.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_OKQqtmp0o[/youtube]

Emmylou Harris News

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As I’ve mentioned before Nonesuch Records will release Emmylou Harris’ new album “All I Intended to Be” (Nonesuch) on June 10. This will be her first solo effort since 2003’s Stumble Into Grace.

Listen to some samples of the release at the Nonesuch site.

Here is the track listing:

1. Shores of White Sand (Jack Wesley Routh)
2. Hold On (Jude Johnstone)
3. Moon Song (Patty Griffin)
4. Broken Man’s Lament (Mark Germino)
5. Gold (Emmylou Harris)
6. How She Could Sing the Wildwood Flower (Emmylou Harris, Kate and Anna McGarrigle)
7. All That You Have is Your Soul (Tracy Chapman)
8. Take That Ride (Emmylou Harris)
9. Old Five and Dimers Like Me (Billy Joe Shaver)
10. Kern River (Merle Haggard)
11. Not Enough (Emmylou Harris)
12. Sailing Round the Room (Emmylou Harris, Kate and Anna McGarrigle)
13. Beyond the Great Divide (J.C. Crowley and Jack Wesley Routh)

Emmylou is currently on tour:

6/6/2008 Morrison, CO Red Rocks Ampitheatre
6/8/2008 Lawrence, KS Wakarusa Festival
6/14/2008 Lisle, IL Morton Arboretum
6/16/2008 Toronto, Canada Massey Hall
6/18/2008 New York, NY Town Hall
6/19/2008 New York, NY Town Hall
6/20/2008 Oyster Bay, NY The Planting Fields Arboretum
6/22/2008 Vienna, VA Wolf Trap Filene Center
6/23/2008 Charlottesville, VA Charlottesville Pavilion
6/25/2008 Raleigh, NC North Carolina Museum of Art
6/27/2008 Atlanta, GA Chastain Park Amphitheatre
7/17/2008 Avon, CO Vilar Center for the Arts at Beavercreek Resort)
7/19/2008 Alta, WY Grand Targhee Americana Festival
7/20/2008 Salt Lake City, UT Red Butte Garden Ampitheatre
7/23/2008 Vancouver, Canada Orpheum Theater
7/31/2008 San Diego, CA Humphrey’s Concerts By the Bay

Joe Pug – Nation of Heat EP

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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

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMTj6pZ1HCM[/youtube]

Iron-N-Ink Tattoo and Kustom Culture Festival – Long Beach, CA June 6-8

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Looking for a cool place to get a tattoo, see some pin up girls, check out some classic cars, get married on the Queen Marry and catch some great Americana music this summer? Then head over to the Iron-N-Ink Tattoo and Kustom Culture Festival in Long Beach, CA June 6-8.

On the bill is Wayne Hancock, The Blasters, Dale Watson, Rosie Flores, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Junior Brown, The Lonesome Spurs and much more.