• One of the original alt.country bands (they appeared on the cover of No Depression’s second issue), Blue Mountain, are back together after trials and tribulations and have just released their sixth studio album “Midnight in Mississippi” (Produced by Grammy winner Stuart Sikes) along with a re-recorded greatest hits album, “Omnibus.” I saw these guys for the first time about two years ago in Nashville and they are great live.
• It seems that Toby Keith is an Barack Obama fan and John Rich can hear Johnny Cash’s vioce from the grave (if that were rues I’m sure The Man In Black would have adviced Rich not to release his dreadful love song to John McCain. Not because it supports a Republican, but because it, well, sucks.
• The good folks over at the 9513 think the new George Jone’s release of duets “George Jones - Burn Your Playhouse Down: The Unreleased Duets” doesn’t live up the the Possum’s legacy.
• Pitchfork.com has a Q&A with David Berman of the band the Silver Jews.

Popmatters.com has a review of the DVD “Bill Monroe: Father of Bluegrass Music” which they discribe as “Informative and educational, intriguing and entertaining, part American history lesson, part biography and part concert film…”

The good folks over at The 9513 brought to my attention that current Twang Nation favorite Jamey Johnson will be joining Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, and Kenny Chesney (?!) for the 2008 Farm Aid music festival in New England on Sept. 20. Nashville Scene (High Lonesome Sound) and CMT.com(Don’t Tell Jamey Johnson That He’s “Too Country”) both offer features on Johnson.

The guardian.co.uk Music Blog has a brief run down of the current state of American alt.country/Americana scene (Are you ready for (more of) the country?)

Chrissie Hynde of the bad the Pretenders states that the bands first new album in six years (”Break up the Concrete”) will be “moving in a country direction.” Of all the country music carpet bagging that has been happening recently I have to say that a musician with Hynde’s credibility makes me think she’ll do it right, but she is a vegitarian, so does this mean that Jessica Simpson has to get another t-shirt?

From Country Standard Time: Don Helms, pedal steel guitarist for Hank Williams’ Drifting Cowboys, died this morning at 81. He is featured on more than 100 Williams recordings. Helms played a lap steel (also known as “Hawaiian steel”) guitar. This type of steel guitar lacks the foot pedals found on the more modern pedal steel guitar, which did not come into prominence in country music until after Hank Williams’ death in 1953.

Now go put on a Hank Sr. song (”So Lonesome I Could Cry” is a good one) and listen to the distict wail of Helms’ pedal steel.

A Smithsonian Institution exhibit on the roots of American music opens today in Shepherdsville, KY.

The Tennessean.com has a piece on a guy I like and will keep my eye on, Montgomery, Ala., native Jamey Johnson.

The New York Times reviews Loretta Lynne’s recent show in New Jersey. Even though Lynne was ailing from a recent back operation the crowd was charmed and captivated.

We all know that ringtones are the new 45 rpm and it appears that country music is gaining some ground in the sales of “polyphonic,” synthesizer-like reproductions of a melody, and the much more popular “mastertone” or “realtone” format, which is excerpted from an actual recording. according to Nielsen RingScan, mastertone buys accounted for 91 percent of ringtones sold last year in the United States.But so far, the big money is not quite there:

“Ringtone royalties are minuscule in the overall scheme of things,” Todd Ellis, Licensing Manager for Sony/ATV Music Publishing said. “Compared to CD sales, they’re still rather small. But they are gaining some significant income, especially in the pop and R&B worlds. Country has been a little bit slow to catch up. The really large [Country] hits will do well, ringtone-wise, for income, but the big money is still with R&B and rap songs. Ballads don’t usually do as well as ringtones because they don’t sound as good as upbeat songs that have a real catchy chorus or a cool intro.”

Apparently being hip enough to use your phone as a lame music player does not automatically mean you have forward thinking taste in music as Rascal Flatts and Carrie Underwood lead in country music sales of mastertone rings. No thanks, I’ll stick with my Willie Nelson “On The Road Again” ringtone when you hit me, yo.

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.

I’m in a Unknown Hinson mood. You should be too….

Congratulations to Dallas’ hottest honky-tonk band Eleven Hundred Springs for sweeping every category they were up for in the Dallas Observer Music Awards - Best Band, Best Album, Best Country/Roots Act and EHS lead vocalist/songwriter Matt Hillyer winning for Best Male Vocalist. I can’t say enough great things about Eleven Hundred Springs and you need to check these guys out if you love genuine country music with heart and soul.

Image by Keith Neltner

While working on their spiritual and format rebirth, It Burns When I Pee Episode 17 now offers new cast members, and an all around more righteous path to country music salvation. Featuring an interview with Jayke Orvis, from The .357 String Band and some cuts from their new album Fire & Hail. This episode also unleashes their new co-host Ryan “Creepy Guy” Hamm.

Blake and Ryan also talk about the Tim McGraw concert fight video, Norma Jean watch’s Two Girls and One Cup for the first time, and we play IBWIP Jeopardy. There is another famous IBWIP Giveaway’s, this time giving away an awesome Spfanzine.com T-shirt and Hank Cash CD. Jared Morningstar provides an album review of Justin Townes Earl’s new album, The Good Life.

But most importantly IBWIP graces us with jewels country music that Nashville’s conveyor belt of pop-country crap would’nt touch with a ten foot pole. There are songs from Adam Lee and The Dead Horse Sound Company, Justin Townes Earl, Plunkett, The .357 String Band, and Old Crow Medicine Show.