New Americana and Roots Music Releases for 2015

The Lone Bellow - Then Came The Morning

2014 was another bumper crop year for Americana and roots music. We shared our favorites and you weighed in with more. 2015 shows no signs of easing up as stalwarts like Steve Earle and James McMurtry and young guns like The Lone Bellow and American Aquarium are planning releases.

The list below is not a definitive 2015 Americana release list, it’s all early months. But it’s as close as I can get with the information available at year’s close. The list is in chronological order based on release date, which mostly occurs on an planned Tuesday target which for some reason (none good) persists.

See one missing? Leave it in the comments.

Look for new things coming in the New Year at Twang Nation. It’s going to be a great year.

Have a happy, and safe, New Years. See you on the other side.

January 13TH
Justin Townes Earle – ‘Absent Fathers’
Cody Jinks – ‘The Adobe sessions’
Cody Canada & the Departed “Hippie Love Punk”

January 20th
The Waterboys – ‘Modern Blues’
Ryan Bingham – ‘Fear and Saturday Night’
Haley Cole – ‘Illusions’
Caitlin Canty – ‘Reckless Skyline’

January 27th
The Lone Bellow – ‘Then Came The Morning’
Paul Kelly – ‘The Merry Soul Session’
Punch Brothers – ‘The Phosphorescent Blues’

February 3rd
Bob Dylan – ‘Shadows in the Night’
Murder by Death – ‘Big Dark Love’
Hiss Golden Messenger – ‘Southern Grammar EP’
Gurf Morlix – ‘Eatin’ At Me’

February 10th
Father John Misty – ‘I Love You, Honeybear’
Robert Earl Keen – ‘Happy Prisoner’
Gretchen Peters – ‘Blackbirds’
Rhiannon Giddens – ‘Tomorrow Is My Turn’
Blackberry Smoke – ‘Holding All the Roses’
Owl Country – ‘Owl Country’
6 String Drag – ‘Roots Rock ‘N’ Roll’

February 17th
Phosphorescent – ‘Live at the Music Hall’
Steve Earle & The Dukes- ‘Terraplane’
Whitehorse – ‘Leave No Bridge Unburned’
Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band – ‘So Delicious’
Wrinkle Neck Mules – ‘I Never Thought It Would Go This Far’
The Mavericks – ‘Mono’

February 24th
Elvis Perkins- ‘I Aubade’
James McMurtry – ‘Complicated Game’
Steve Gunn & Black Twig Pickers – ‘Seasonal Hire’
Nora Jane Struthers – ‘Wake’
The Lowest Pair – ‘The Sacred Heart Sessions’
Elana James – ‘Black Beauty’

March 3rd
Ryan Culwell – ‘Flatlands’
Brandi Carlile – ‘Firewatcher’s Daughter’
Gill Landry – ‘Gill Landry’
Andrew Combs – ‘All These Dreams’
Caroline Spence – ‘Somehow’
Dorthia Cottrell – ‘Dorthia Cottrell’

March 10th
Joe Pug’s – ‘Windfall’
Tom Paxton – ‘Redemption Road’
Porter – ‘This Red Mountain’

March 13th
The Coal Creek Boys – ‘Out West’

March 17th
Liz Longley – ‘Liz Longley’
Stone Jack Jones – ‘Love & Torture’

March 24
Humming House – ‘Revelries’
Gabrielle Papillon – ‘The Tempest of Old’
Doc Watson, Bill Monroe + – Classic American Ballads from Smithsonian Folkways

March 27th
Allison Moorer – ‘Down To Believing’

March 31st
William Elliott Whitmore – ‘Radium Death’
Sarah Gayle Meech – ‘Tennessee Love Song’
Simon Joyner – ‘Grass, Branch & Bone’

April 1st
The Devil’s Cut – ‘Antium’

April 7th
Delta Rae – ‘After It All’
Folk Family Revival – ‘Water Walker’
Carl Anderson – ‘Risk of Loss’
Pokey LaFarge – ‘Something in The Water’
Ray Wylie Hubbard – ‘The Ruffian’s Misfortune’

April 14th
Dwight Yoakam – ‘Second Hand Heart’
Lowland Hum – ‘Lowland Hum’
Shinyribs – “Okra Candy”

April 15th
Lucia Comnes – “Love, Hope & Tyranny”
The Damnwells – ‘The Damnwells’

April 21st
John Moreland – ‘High On Tulsa Heat’
Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers – ‘ Loved Wild Lost’
Jimbo Mathus – ‘Blue Healer’
Ryan Adams – “Live at Carnegie Hall’

April 27TH
Lewis & Leigh – ‘Missing Year EP’

April 28th
Charlie Parr -‘Stumpjumper’
Odessa – ‘Odessa’

May 4th
Shelby Lynne – ‘I Can’t Imagine’

May 5th
Mandolin Orange – ‘Such Jubilee’
Hannah Miller – ‘Hannah Miller’

May 12th
Jimmy LaFave – ‘The Night Tribe’
Eilen Jewell – ‘Sundown over Ghost Town’
Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell – ‘The Traveling Kind’
Della Mae – ‘Della Mae’

May 19th
Darrell Scott – “10 – Songs of Ben Bullington”
Jamie Lin Wilson – ‘Holidays & Wedding Rings’

June 2nd
The Mike + Ruthy Band – “Bright As You Can”
Dawes – “All Your Favorite Bands”

June 9th
Sam Outlaw – “Angeleno”
The Deslondes – “The Deslondes”
Dale Watson – “Call Me Insane”
Courtney Patton – “So This Is Life”
Uncle Lucius – “The Light”
Chris Hennessee – “Greeting from Hennessee”
Sammy Kershaw – “I Won’t Back Down”

June 23rd
Beth Bombara – ‘Beth Bombara’
Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams – ‘Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams’
Richard Thompson – “Still”
Kacey Musgraves – “Pageant Material’

July 17th
Jason Isbell – ‘Something More Than Free’

July 31st
Daniel Romano – ‘If I’ve Only One Time Askin’ ‘

August 7th
Lindi Ortega – “Faded Gloryville”

August 11th
Angela Easterling – “Common Law Wife”

August 14
Rod Picott – “Fortune’
The Waifs – ‘Beautiful You’

August 21st
The White Buffalo – ‘Love and the Death of Damnation’

September 18th
Turnpike Troubadours – “Turnpike Troubadours”

September 25th
Patty Griffin – ‘Servant Of Love’

October 30th
The Yawpers – ‘American Man’
Steve Martin and Edie Brickell – “So Familiar”

The Best of 2009

best-09

It’s been a bumper-crop year for Americana and roots music. There are many reasons for this sonic bonanza but I believe the main drive results from an aging generation used to genre defying music now looking for something a little more comfortable, but no less challenging, as they move from their 20s to their 30s. A generation that grew to see mash-ups as a newly formed musical expression are much more comfortable with genre bending acts like The Drive By Truckers and Deer Tick, and the success of recent T. Bone Burnett stewarded projects, the O’ Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack and Robert Plant and Allison Krauss’ Raising Sand brings older performers and songs to a new audience and shows that the music is not only interesting and exciting, and in a culture steeped in hipster irony something emotionally authentic, but it can make money as well.

Maybe part of the boom was the newly added Americana Grammy category (yeah, I don’t buy that either), or maybe this aging population are used to the internet and discovering music their way instead of having pre-fabricated crap shoved down our throats by the big labels whose only business plan over the last decade is to sue the fans and squeeze musicians tighter, and the commercial radio stations that enable them. As a grassroots cultural correction Americana, like punk rock in the 70’s, is a response to this environment of mediocrity. Only this time it’s with a banjo instead of a Fender Jaguar and a Mohawk (though some of these musicians do sport Mohawks) and wielding the power of social media that does much of the jobs the big labels used to do a generation ago. Whatever the reason for all the music, I’m just happy to be a recipient and humble purveyor of all the goods, and I hope some of you readers find some of this stuff interesting as well.

I’ve expanded my top 10 list to 20 this year to make room for this great embarrassment of riches. By doing this I’ve also done away with my addendum Honorable Mentions, which was always kind of like a cheat anyway.

I was honored to be included with 29 of the best music blogger compadres around in the top 20 Bird List, but I have to admit that the list I submitted for that list has changed about 10 more times ultimately resulting in the list you now see before you….enjoy, disagree, fume and fret ,leap for joy, whatever…just get me some of that spiked Nog while you’re up.

1. Charlie Robison – Beautiful Day (turning life’s lemons into Luckenbach lemon-aid)
2. Kris Kristofferson- Closer To The Bone (#2 this year, but career-wide nobody can touch Kristofferson for songwriting.)
3. Gretchen Peters with Tom Russell – One To The Heart, One To The Head (a brilliant Western cinematic duet)
4. Lindsay Fuller and the Cheap Dates –Self Titled (Flannery O’Connor with a telecaster)
5. Miranda Lambert – Revolution (The anti-Taylor works from inside Music City)
6. George Strait – Twang (The King of Country. Period)
7. Tom Russell – Blood and Candle Smoke (Beat poet hillbilly travels dusty roads and smoky coffee shops with members of Calexico)
8. Carolyn Mark and NQ Arbuckle – Let’s Just Stay Here (Quirky yet familiarly cozy Canadian country music)
9. Corb Lund – Losin` Lately Gambler(See Canadian reference above)
10. Grant Langston – Stand Up Man (Bakersfield is alive and well)
11. Wrinkle Neck Mules – Let The Lead Fly (alt.country is alive and well)
12. William Elliott Whitmore – Animals In The Dark (punk and folk ethos delivered with timeless soul)
13. Amanda Shires – West Cross Timbers (Winsome chanteuse travels dark and dusty regions of the heart)
14. Angela Easterling – Black Top Road (Roots/Rock sweetheart with a folk sense of cultural activism)
15. Willie Nelson & Asleep at the Wheel – Willie and the Wheel (perfect union channels the spirit of Bob Wills)
16. Todd Snider – Excitement Plan (Steve Earle should study this release, social commentary doesn’t have to suck)
17. Justin Townes Earle – Midnight At The Movies (the younger Earle continues to make his mark by reaching into country music’s past)
18. The Felice Brothers – Yonder is the Clock (The Basement Tapes run through a dark prism)
19. Guy Clark – Somedays The Song Writes You (A Texas treasure that can do no wrong)
20. Deer Tick – Born on Flag Day (Indy spirit that uses twang as a strong driver)
21. Those Darlins – Self-titled (Riot Grrrl spunk with a Carter Sisters trad reverence)

It’s been a bumper-crop year for Americana and roots music. There are many reasons for this sonic bonanza but I believe the main drive results from an aging
generation of people used genre defying music but now looking for something a little more comfortable, but no less challenging, as they move from their 20s to their
30s. Kids that grew to see mash-ups as a newly formed musical expression are much more comfortable with genre bending acts like The Drive By Truckers and Deer Tick.
The success of recent T. Bone Burnett stewarded projects, the O’ Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack and Robert Plant and Allison Krauss’ Raising Sand shows that the music is not only interesting and exciting but can make money as well.

Maybe it was the newly added Americana Grammy category (yeah, I don’t buy that neither), or maybe this aging population are used to the internet and discovering music their way instead of having pre-fabricated crap shoved down our throats by the big labels whose only business plan over the last decade is to sue the fans and squeeze musicians tighter, and the commercial radio stations that enable them. As a grassroots cultural correction Americana, like punk rock in the 70’s, is a response to this environment of medicocrity. Only this time it’s with a banjo instead of a Fender Jaguar and a Mohawk (though some of these musicians do sport Mohawks.) Whatever the reason for all the music, I’m just happy to be a recipient and humble purveyer of all the goods, and I hope some of you readers find some of this stuff interesting as well.

http://www.thebirdlist.org/

I’ve expanded my top 10 list to 20 this year to make room for this great embarrassment of riches. By doing this I’ve also done away with my addendum Honorable Mentions, which was always kind of like a cheat anyway.

I was honored to be included with 29 of my music blogger compadres in the top 20 Bird List, but I have to admit that the list I submitted for that list has changed about 10 more times ultimately resulting in the list you now see before you….enjoy, disagree, fume and fret ,leap for joy, whatever…just get me some of that spiked Nog while you’re up.

1. Charlie Robison – Beautiful Day (turning life’s lemons into Luckenbach lemon-aid)
2. Kris Kristofferson- Closer To The Bone (#2 this year, but career-wide tobody can touch Kristofferson for songwriting.)
3. Gretchen Peters with Tom Russell – One To The Heart, One To The Head (a brilliant Western cinematic duet)
4. Lindsay Fuller and the Cheap Dates -Self Titled (Flannery O’Connor with a telecaster)
5. Miranda Lambert – Revolution (The anti-Taylor works from inside Music City)
6. George Strait – Twang (The King of Country. Period)
7. Tom Russell – Blood and Candle Smoke (Beat poet hillbilly travels dusty roads and smoky coffee shops with members of Calexico)
8. Carolyn Mark and NQ Arbuckle – Let’s Just Stay Here (Quirky yet familiarly cozy Canadian country music)
9. Corb Lund – Losin` Lately Gambler(See Canadian reference above)
10. Grant Langston – Stand Up Man (Bakersfield is alive and well)
11. Let The Lead Fly – Wrinkle Neck Mules (alt.country is alive and well)
12. William Elliott Whitmore – Animals In The Dark (punk and folk ethos delivered with timeless soul)
13. Amanda Shires – West Cross Timbers (Winsome chanteuse travels dark and dusty regions of the heart)
14. Angela Easterling – Black Top Road
15. Rita Hosking – Come Sunrise
16. Todd Snider’s Excitement Plan
17. Justin Townes Earle – Midnight At The Movies
18. The Felice Brothers – Yonder is the Clock
19. Guy Clark – Somedays The Song Writes You
20. Deer Tick – Born on Flag Day
21. The Builders & The Butchers – Salvation is a Deep Dark Well

Thankful For The Music

Okay, I got a lot of hits and responses to my post on the dismal glitter parade that was the Country Music Awards. I’m encouraged that it was almost universally positive, though some was not (when will people get that just because I don’t like Taylor Swift’s songs or music I am not opining on her as a person? How many of these people know Taylor Swift personally? Maybe she’s a horrible diva that likes bathing in champagne and looking at her charting position and cackling “Suckers!!”), But I don’t just enjoy cursing the darkness (hilariously), I like to light a candle now and again.

The relationship of country music and Music City has been fraught with tension since Judge Hay started MCing the The Grand Ole Opry on the WSM Barn Dance from the fifth-floor radio studio of the National Life & Accident Insurance Company in downtown Nashville on November 1925. Music City is in the business of business.  The product they have historically offered is, at its best, a reflection n tradition and heritage of the Amerivcan human soul, the good bad and the ugly. Trouble results when the bean counters weigh in on song creation, studio production and trends are chased, not because they are interesting branches or simpatico with the music, but just to cash in. This output is mediocre if monetarily profitable. As a fan, and not a shareholder, I find this unacceptable and a damn shame and am noy t shy to say as much.

I am currently reading the Ralph Stanley’s biography Man of Constant Sorrow and am struck by how resolute the man and his brother, Carter, was about keeping their “simple, mountain music sound” and how Ralph threatened to quite the band when the introduction of the new-fangled instrument ,the dobro, was considered as an addition to a Stanley Brothers song. Stanley was about 23 at the time. Can you imagine anyone that age starting out in music having that clear and focused of a vision of their music and not just will to allow outsiders to shape them to make as music as possible? Br. Stanley had a clear idea of their brand of “hillbilly music” and what the fans wanted it that he was willing to chuck the whole thing to save it.

I believe there are a few creators still out there today creating a brand of hillbilly music, maybe a more distant cousin of Stanly’s, but it’s no less bracing in it’s allegiance to tradition even as it breaks genre grounds in other directions.  Covering the miles, often in a car or a van instead of a bus or charted plane, they bring grateful fans a sound that just can’t be found largely on commercial country radio, and willing to hang around the place afterward toseel a CD or shirt,  press some flash, sign an autograph and take a picture or two.

Off the top of my head I offer from my home state of  Texas Dale Watson, Wayne Hancock, James Hand, Jake Penrod, Junior Brown, Hayes Carll and legends like Ray Willie Hubbard and Tommy Alverson.  In other regions there is Joey Allcorn, Elizabeth Cook, Robbie Fulks, Chuck Mead and the new school with Those Darlins, Justin Townes Earle and William Elliott Whitmore, Grant Langston, Angela Easterling, the Felice Brothers , Lindsay Fuller, Amanda Shires, and many many more are out there many night of the year doing what they love telling their stories and leaving it all out on the stage.

Like i said in the original CMA post, I criticize because i come from this music. Its part of my Texas heritage and part of my family business. I love it and , like family, am not shy to pipe up when I think it’s done wrong.

Americana Conference Wrap Up

I’m baaaack. So if you’ve been keeping up with my tweets, or just reading the news,  you know the 10th Annual Americana Association Conference and Festival in Nashville last week was quite a shin-dig. I missed goodBBQ and that laid-back Southern charm and although the conference attendance seemed to be down a bit (well, a lot actually), if my Shiner fogged memory serves me, the showcases were better than ever.

There were a number of memorable nuggets that I wanted to quickly share. For one thing, there must be an aging painting in Jim Lauderdale’s attic becuase the man that is ubiquitous not only at the AMA event but in Americana music in general, still beams with youthful charm.

The performance that made my biggest impression was a serendipitous discovery. A friend’s showcase Friday afternoon at BB Kings brought Dallas’ Somebody’s Darlng to my radar. I should be ashamed of not knowing about them earlier since they hail from my home town and they rocked my ass with a their roots-rock soul sound.

Then there was the two great guitar pulls. The Douglas Corner Cafe featured The Americana Renegades Show with excellent performance by Irene Kelley, Roger Saloom, Joe Whyte and Stoll Vaughan. The club was like a Blue Bird Cafe II with a reverent and attentive audience. Then I lucked into getting out of the rain and a long line at the Station Inn to see Nanci Griffith, Mary Gauthier & Elizabeth Cook in their own audience hushing performance was a great treat.

Seeing Bearfoot do their short set at the Compass records’ notorious Hillbilly Central open house was also a nice surprise. I was not familiar with this newgrass band but they held the packed audience in spellbound attention with their performance and did musch less cocaine than the former Hillbilly Central residents.

There was the spellbinding rustic winsomeness of Amanda Shires. The leather-tough gold-hearted girl  – Angela Easterling (w. Will Kimbrough), and the omnipresence of Austin Texas with The Gourds, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Asleep at the Wheel, Reckless Kelly, Radney Foster and Charlie Robison.

Then there was standing near the stage to behold the wonder that is John Fogerty (along with Buddy Miller) at his semi-secret show at the Cannery. Wow…wow…

It was old-school alt-country at the closing night at the Basement with the ex-singer of Nashville super group BR549, Chuck Mead, and the only band that rivals the Drive By Truckers for a live performance, the Bottle Rockets, sending the whole thing off to a booming, bitter-sweet end.

Then there were the artists, radio, writers, fellow bloggers and general soldiers that, like myself, champion this music each and every day out of love more than riches (Ha!)

You can’t be everywhere all the time, and the four performance spaces for the AMA festival are a considerable distance from each other, so there are tough choices to be made and many show I wish I could have attended. But with a little logistics and a dash of serendipitous happenstance this trip to Nashville was a great party with wonderful memories (from what I can remember!)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE55QrdMR2M[/youtube]

Willie Nelson Premieres New Video for Shoeshine Man

  • Willie Nelson premiered his new video covering Tom T. Hall’s Shoeshine Man (below) The song is not on his upcoming covers album American Classics so I have no idea whay he made this video, but he seems to be having a ball. The Texas Yoda has taken a page from the DIY codger goofing around in front of a video camera recently used by Neil Young for his video Fork in the Road.
  • The Americana Music Association announced the lineup for its 2009 festival,  Sept. 16-19 at around several of  Nashville’s best venues – The Mercy Lounge, The Cannery Ballroom, 3rd & Lindsley, The Station Inn and The Basement.  On the roster is Cross Canadian Ragweed, Angela Easterling, Asleep at the Wheel, The Bottle Rockets, Jim Lauderdale, Buddy Miller, Joe Pug, Charlie Robison, Marty Stuart, Patrick Sweany, Those Darlins and many more.
  • Popmatters.com has posted an mp3 for Chain, a cut off Vic Chesnutt’s upcoming release At the Cut (Constellation) to be released 22 September (US)
  • Randy Travis, Martina McBride and Ray Price join an International  line-up of over 60 International, UK and Irish acts performing on three separate stages at the UTV CountryFest ’09  August 1st – 2nd  at the Kings Hall in Belfast.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDtaJmrVfx8[/youtube]