Music Review: Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest of Us [Mercyland Records]

An Easter vacation was the perfect opportunity to listen to  “Mercyland: Hymns For The Rest Of Us” a compilation release by singer/songwriter, producer and musician Phil Madeira. As the title suggests the thematic underpinning of the album is spirituality but, luckily, this is not the God-as-backdrop trotted out in too many Music City productions. Nor is it a blandly fuzzy new-age soundtrack to glaze your eyes.

Community runs deep in Mercyland. Started by Madeira as a project on the crowd-funding site Kickstarter, the project achieved it’s funding goal of $5,000 and went on the an an additional $32,205 on top of that.

Like one of the albums contributors and fellow traveler, Buddy Miller, Madeira reminds us that the divine can come from common places. Reaching back to a source of faith that nourished bands like the Louvin and Stanley brothers and later by Johnny Cash and Billy Joe Shaver, these are songs of common experiences of love, hope and grace.

Some of Americana music’s finest have gathered here to bear witness. Miller, Emmylou Harris, The Carolina Chocolate Drops and others work as missionaries that work across faiths and genres to create a unifying spirit of music.

The Civil Wars begins things with joyful noise as with “From This Valley”  John Paul White strums his acoustic guitar and hollers “Woo hoo!” He and Joy Williams voices intertwines and soars like morning doves.

Shawn Mullins’ follows with a simmering swamp-blues “Give God the Blues.” Mullins calls out creeds, saints and sinners alike, tears down the walls of division and assures all that none have a monopoly on the Lord’s love. He assures us all that “God’s above all that.”

Buddy Miller has a long career of testifying without sermonizing and on his calmly spirited “I Believe in You” he deftly commands this force of song-craft.  Like an old-style tent revival run up against a traveling medicine show the varied spice of life is tasted. The Carolina Chocolate Drops’ banjo-driven gospel “Lights In The Valley.” Madeira’s self-titled contribution  “Mercyland” is a New Orleans-style story of hope and redemption. Madeira joins Cindy Morgan in the gloriously yearning “Leaning On You.”

Developing allegory is a tougher job than just using ready make symbols for threadbare religious shorthand. The concept of spirituality is a tougher job for a lazy songwriter than just rhyming “Jesus comes” with “bangin’ drums.”
The greatest and most enduring gospel songs, from The Great Speckled Bird to Amazing Grace, are master works of allegory and allow a richer and deeper musical expression and broadness in narrative to speak to beauty, devotion and sacrifice.

Phil Madeira and his musical congregation do good and great work on this collection of songs that inspire without beating you over the head with the Good Book. They also don’t put you to sleep in the pew to dream of post church fried chicken. That’s a miracle it itself.

Official Site  |  Buy

Listen to Pistol Annies “Run Daddy Run” from Hunger Games Soundtrack

Singer/songwriter/producer and Americana stalwart T Bone Burnett seems to be practicing a sort of genre alchemy  with the upcoming Hunger Games soundtrack (March 20.)

Mr. Burnett seems to be taking poetic license with Suzanne Collins’ trilogy which follows the heroine, whose home in District 12 that encompasses current-day Appalachia, an region Burnett knows something about. The setting of the books is a sort of future version of the old frontier which also plays to Burnett’s wheelhouse.

Burnett excels  in making neo-rustic music that would appeal more to Hunger Game readers parents. The young women that are the primary demographic for the books are more likely to be fans of indy rock, pop or country pop.

Burnett displays his craft to fuse his world to the new audience adeptly on the  Taylor Swift and Civil Wars track “Safe and Sound.” Now he’s done the same for the same for the Pistol Annies’ cut Run Daddy Run. The song is sung by the group, which consists of Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley, and sounds more akin to O Brother’s Didn’t Leave Nobody but the Baby sung by Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch. This is a different sound than the sassy country found on the recent Pistol Annies debut.

Check out the track below and let me know what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYhvKabzUZ4&feature=player_embedded

Twang Nation Interview with GRAMMY Americana Album of the Year Nominee Linda Chorney

The GRAMMY nominees categories that I cover does not come with choreographed dancers or share the stage with Rihanna. They appear further down on the list near Best World Music Album and Best Spoken Word Album -  the Americana/folk/bluegrass and the speck of trad country that might find its way into a movie soundtrack or liner note nods. This is the the pre-telecast posse, the back of the bus and behind the gym crowd. This is where the cool kids hang out. Where Lou Reed can sit between a nominee for Best Opera Recording and Best Comedy Album. These are the rough and rowdy mongrels of music.

I watch the nominee concert dutifully but it’s nothing to do with me or my readers.  I am waiting for the full list to be posted online. Then I run my eye over it. downward to the Best Folk Album, some nice surprises with The Civil Wars and Eddie Vedder.  Best Bluegrass Album, great to see the old guard Del McCoury and Ralph Stanley in the mix with Steve Martin and Jim Lauderdale. Next the big enchilada – Best Americana Album. Ry Cooder, Emmylou Harris, Levon Helm, Lucinda Williams legends all…wait…who’s this? Who is Linda Chorney?

I’m a frikkin “Influencer” for krips sake (or so Klout tells me), how is it I don’t know this person? Where did she come from and how, after 6 albums, is it that I haven’t heard of her until now? i like a to be surprised as much as the next music blogger, but sometimes there is this feeling that if you missed this artist how many others are sliding past your gaze. I needed to atone and find out who this person is.

So i did what any red-blooded Americana blogger would do – I Googled her. First off a video that appears to be centered on scuba diving in some tropical locale. She’s easy on the eyes, but how does she sound? First impression is Aimee Mann, Chrissie Hynde and Michelle Shocked on a serious Meet The Beatles! bender. I emailed her directly from her site. She can’t already have a layer of people to sift through for a conversation. I’m the the official GRAMMY folk/Americana blogger guy. I figure that that should account for something!

Maybe it did. Maybe I caught her at a vulnerable time in the wake of her nomination. Maybe she confused with with her friend Bryan Lang. Whatever…i had an interview set.

I hope the below exchange let’s you get to know Linda Chorney and you find her as charming and talented as I did. enjoy…

 

Twang Nation – So, how are you feeling?

Linda Chorney – I’m still a little but in shock but I feel great. When I told my mom and dad (about the Best Americana Album Grammy nomination) and my mom said this is one of her greatest moments since your birth for me.

TN – Wow, you can’t buy fans like that.

LC -  (laughs) When I was younger they paid for my demo tapes and have been coming to biker bars that I’ve played throughout my life. They’ve waited for me to get my big break and now it’s kind of come.

TN – Tell me a little about how you got here.

LC – I once broke the top 40 in the adult contemporary on the Friday Morning Quarterback (music industry news publication) with my song Living Alone. We thought then that something was going to happen. Then the day we had some deals on the table was on September 11th (2001) and everything sort of got put on hold. I said to myself that I didn’t die that day, and nobody I know died. How important is another song? So I didn’t take (the deals falling through) that hard. Though I took the the events of September 11th very hard and wrote a song about it on my third album.

TN – I’ve been blogging about this genre for several years and lived in New York City for 5 years, how is it I’m just now hearing about a Grammy nominated Americana artists based from New Jersey?

LC – Probably because I’ve been bopping around the whole world. I played on Bleecker Street for years, at Red Line and the Back Fence and a few other clubs. I’ve played the Hamptons. I like to travel! I’ve bartered my way around the world. I’m an avid scuba diver but diving costs a lot of money so when I travel I will write a few dive places and say “Hey I’m a singer/songwriter and will perform for your crew aboard or your place in exchange for scuba diving. Diving can easily can run you a couple of hundred bucks a day. One place that responded was the Bottom Time Bar in Palau Micronesia and that where I shot my video for my song Sink or Swim (see below) I played a weekend and was able to dive for two weeks for free.

TN – Not a bad gig.

LC – it was awesome! I also went to Mount Everest where I sang at 17,000 feet – I’ve sung below sea-level and sung 17,000 feet above sea-level.

TN – Did you know you were in the running for a Grammy nomination?

LC – From the feedback I was getting from Grammy 365 people. I said to my executive producer, “Jonathan is all the people that say I’m great and are voting for me actually do vote for me I think we might have a shot.” I had no idea what I was doing. This is my first time with the whole Grammy process, two weeks before the ballets were due I had zero contacts. My husband and I stayed up 20 hours a day and we wrote every single person we could on the Grammy 365 site to ask for their contact information. Out of the roughly 6000 emails we personally wrote – we didn’t have a staff it was just me and him – then around 2000 people responded and I asked them to consider my stuff. I was overwhelmed with responses. One guy was the historian on (Martin) Scorsese’s George Harrison documentary, he said very nice things about my stuff, he said it touched him and that he was going to talk to other people about me and get them to consider my music – this happened several time with others -  I was just blown away!

TN – Tell me the story about your executive producer and how y’all met.

LC – I was in Colorado playing a ski resorts, because the moneys good and I sell a lot of merch and get to keep all the money, and I would ski to my gig every day with my guitar on my back to perform at 10.000 feet. At one gig this quirky guy comes up to me after buying all my CDs I had for sale  and said “You have something special here. I’m a doctor but I wanted to be a musician, so I know how hard it can be. I’d lie to send you something.” I had no idea who this guy was or if he was hitting on me so I gave him a P.O. Box address and sure enough a few weeks later a chord-less mic and guitar pickup showed up in the mail and it contained a note that read “This is for you kid, way to go.” Over the years I got to know his family, and we became really good friends. Last year he approaches me and says “Linda, I want you to make the album you’ve never been able to make before, and I’ll pay for it.”

Every other album I’ve done has been out of my own pocket and I was always watching the clock , I didn’t have the money for live drums or more time for the engineer, I knew how to make a great album but I never had the resources. Jonathan says “I want you to do this album without compromise Linda. I’m going to give you the money for this album and I don’t want anything in return. I just want you to make the greatest album that you can and I want to be part of the process.” I was so touched by this! Jonathan also knows some musicians like Jeff Pevar (CPR) and Leon Pendarvis (band leader for the Saturday Night Live band) who is a great keyboard player. So he got them involved in the project. I knew Lisa Fischer (singer and background vocalist for the Rolling Stones, Luther Vandross, and others) because she sang background on my adult contemporary charting song Living Alone. And I knew bass player Will Lee (The Late Show with David Letterman, B.B. King, Cat Stevens, Ringo Starr, James Brown and many others), then I knew people here in my neighborhood (Asbury Park, NJ) who should be famous , like  Arlan Feiles, who has his own album coming out soon and to me is like Bob Dylan with a prettier voice. I had him sing a duet with me called Finally on the album and then I have a song on the album called Do It While You Can, with a kind of a Satchmo vocal vibe to it and Richie Blackwell (Bruce Springsteen) helped with that. So this whole thing is a passion project. There was no thought to “Let’s make this song four minutes so we can get radio airplay.”

The second CD (on Emotional Jukebox) has a symphony I fantasized about making (Mother Natures Symphony.) The 15 minute piece begins with classical to Bluegrass to folk then back to classical and then ends with a Beatles ending.

TN – Wow, you’re not one to walk the genre straight and narrow are you. You also cover Led Zeppelin’s Going to California on Emotional Jukebox.

LC – I do! I had to fight to have that on because I jammed it in the end with a  Flamenco solo by this guy Hernan Romero (Al Di Meola) who  this amazing player that was just in the Latin GRAMMYs who I met in Boston who’s been on a couple of my albums. I had this idea of the song that ended up being 7 minutes long and we still got airplay. They don’t make songs like that anymore. I like solos. On my song I’m Only Sleeping I put a whirly solo it it. I like music!

TN – Where was the album recorded?

LC – We recorded at Sear Sound in New York and Lupos Studio with Frank Wolf, who I’ve worked with in the past, engineering the project. He’s an amazing talent. I spent the most time on the album than anybody. I did all the editing and arranging myself on my Pro Tools at home at night with the master and poured over every single bar on the album to make sure I had all the instrumentation in all the right places so it was tasty, clean and interesting to me. that was my goal. I probably spent over 2000 hours on it.

TN – well your hard work is being recognized. When did you find out about your nomination?

LC – We were having a party that night and somebody gave me a mock GRAMMY because we all conceded to the fact that I didn’t stand a chance against these amazing and well-known artists – John Hiatt, Jeff Bridges, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Ry Cooder – who is one of my heros – there was just no slot open for an unknown. So all the people went home from the party and then I started getting all these emails saying “Congratulations.” “You have my support.” “I’ll see you in L.A.” I thought this has to be a mistake. This must be a chain email that I’m on and somebody else was nominated. Then I had a hard time finding the list of nominees online. Then we found the list of nominees on GRAMMY.com and there in Americana Album of the year was my name first on the list. I had to wake up my executive producer, Jonathan, at midnight to tell him about it. We freaked out.  He believed in me and my music and he’s such an amazing person.

TN – I love that you are on the nominee list, and that the GRAMMY Americana category appears to be a big tent where talent is rewarded no matter how what your profile.

LC – Early in the process I did put my album up for a lot of categories – best Album, and all of that. In retrospect i should have concentrated on the one category. I submitted for 8 but but as I was getting up to speed submitting my work it occurred to me that I might have been spreading myself too thin and that might not be in my best interest. So then I started concentrating on the Americana music category.

TN – Have you got your speech ready?

LC – (laughs) Not yet.I think I might have a mock one ready for You Tube and to post on my blog (lindachorney.wordpress.com) to thank the people that helped me.

Americana and Roots 54th Grammy Awards Nominees – 2012

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) announced its nominees for the 54rd Annual Grammy Awards. I was pleased to see Americana and roots performers being nominated for some of the more prestigious awards like Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Below are nominees that fall into the Americana and roots category and other artists in other categories that might be of interest to readers of Twang Nation.

Best Americana Album
Emotional Jukebox – Linda Chorney
Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down – Ry Cooder
Hard Bargain – Emmylou Harris
Ramble At The Ryman – Levon Helm
Blessed – Lucinda Williams

Best Folk Album
Barton Hollow – The Civil Wars
I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive – Steve Earle
Helplessness Blues – Fleet Foxes
Ukulele Songs- Eddie Vedder
The Harrow & The Harvest – Gillian Welch

Best Bluegrass Album
Paper Airplane – Alison Krauss & Union Station
Reason And Rhyme  – Jim Lauderdale
Rare Bird Alert – Steve Martin And The Steep Canyon Rangers
Old Memories: The Songs Of Bill Monroe – The Del McCoury Band
A Mother’s Prayer- Ralph Stanley
Sleep With One Eye Open- Chris Thile & Michael Daves

Best Country Album
“Here For A Good Time” — George Strait

Best Children’s Album
I Love: Tom T. Hall’s Songs of Fox Hollow (various artists collection)

Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes
The Bristol Sessions, 1927-1928: The Big Bang of Country Music (various artists collection)

Record Of The Year
Rolling In The Deep – Adele
Holocene – Bon Iver
The Cave – Mumford & Sons

Album Of The Year
21 – Adele

Song Of The Year
The Cave – Mumford & Sons
Holocene – Bon Iver
Rolling In The Deep – Adele

Best New Artist
Bon Iver

Best Pop Solo Performance
Someone Like You – Adele

Best Pop Instrumental Album
The Road From Memphis – Booker T. Jones
Setzer Goes Instru-Mental! – Brian Setzer

Best Pop Vocal Album
21 – Adele

Best Rock Performance
Down By The Water – The Decemberists
The Cave – Mumford & Sons

Best Rock Song
The Cave – Mumford & Sons
Down By The Water- The Decemberists

Best Rock Album
Wilco  – The Whole Love

Best Alternative Music Album
Bon Iver – Bon Iver
My Morning Jacket – Circuital

Best Country Duo/Group Performance
Barton Hollow – The Civil Wars

Best Country Song
Threaten Me With Heaven – Vince Gill

Best Instrumental Composition
Life In Eleven РB̩la Fleck & Howard Levy, composers (B̩la Fleck & The Flecktones)

Best Engineered Album (Non Classical)
Follow Me Down-  Brandon Bell & Gary Paczosa, engineers; Sangwook “Sunny” Nam & Doug Sax, mastering engineers (Sarah Jarosz)
The Harrow & The Harvest – Matt Andrews, engineer; Stephen Marcussen, mastering engineer (Gillian Welch)
Paper Airplane – Mike Shipley, engineer; Brad Blackwood, mastering engineer (Alison Krauss & Union Station)

Twang Nation – Holidays at the Ranch Mix -2011

Here’s a little something to stuff your sock,  warm your chestnuts and spike your nog. There’s some traditional (Gene Autry – Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer) and the less-so (Drive-By Truckers – Mrs. Claus’ Kimono.) But, I’m sure there’s something here for everyone, except your Uncle Jack, that ass hates everything. Enjoy and Happy Holidays, y’all!

Twang Nation – Holidays at the Ranch Mix -2011

Gene Autry – Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
Willie Nelson – Pretty Paper
John Prine – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
Emmylou Harris – O Little Town of Bethlehem
Drive-By Truckers – Mrs. Claus’ Kimono
Steve Earle – Nothing But A Child
Johnny Cash – Silent Night
Commander Cody – Daddy’s Drinking Up Our Christmas
George Jones – Mr. & Mrs. Santa Claus
Dolly Parton – Hard Candy Christmas
Michael Martin Murphey – Two-Step ‘Round The Christmas Tree/Two-Step Medley
Waylon Jennings – Away In A Manger
Dwight Yoakam – Run Run Rudolph
Merle Haggard – If We Make It Through December
The Mavericks – Santa Claus Is Back In Town
Alan Jackson with Alison Krauss – The Angels Cried
Clay Walker – Blue Christmas
Chris LeDoux – Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
Suzy Bogguss – Two-Step ‘Round The Christmas Tree
Deana Carter – Carol Of The Bells
George Strait – White Christmas
Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys – Christmas Time’s A-Coming
Dwight Yoakam – Here Comes Santa Claus
Neko Case – Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis
Asylum Street Spankers – Zat You, Santa Claus?
Jim Lauderdale – Holly & Her Mistletoe
Otis Gibbs – Jesus On The Couch
Robert Earl Keen – Merry Christmas From The Family
Lyle Lovett – Christmas Morning
James McMurtry – Holiday

 

Music Review: Mandolin Orange – Haste Make / Hard Hearted Stranger [self-released]

This is not typically the kind of music that floats my boat. Most Americana that works the folkie singer/songwriter side of the fence leaves me cold. To me like it’s more commercially lucrative cousin pop-country; a watered down version of a powerful source who’s soul was sold long, long ago. Like corporate beer and steak chain restaurants something wonderful went terribly wrong while bringing something to the masses. And even though folk never sells in Music City numbers the brunch-folk styling of Jack Johnson and M Ward have led to a relatively wide audience and financial independence for the artists.

But sometimes a performer reminds us of what once was. Dylan did this. So did Townes Van Zandt. The Chapel Hill, NC duo of Andrew Marlin (guitar, mandolin, harmonica)  and Emily Frantz (violin/fiddle, guitar, vocals), collectively known as Mandolin Orange, draw from a deeper well than those others to craft their songs and sound. Like Welch and Rawlings or Parsons and Harris there is a reverence for history while charting new sonic landscapes.

There is subtlety in the arraignments. Songs like No Weight and Runnin’ Red would make perfect living room performance faire for a polite audience. But  like a trace of arsenic after a sip of fine whiskey or a Smith & Wesson hammer clicking back under a table set for a romantic dinner there something  menacing just below the surface.

From the excellent Runnin’ Red “The waters runnin’ red tonight, and our bridge is burnin’ hot, we parted ways in the middle, now we gaze from each side” and the Van Zandt-like Clover “You used to live untruly, so kindly, and it left you lying here in ruin, you cut the hand of a good friend and you smiled in all your doing.”

This is not music made to be pretty, but pretty music made to be honest.

To ratchet the burden even higher Mandolin Orange has crafted 18 consistently excellent songs across two disks,  individually titled Haste Make / Hard Hearted Stranger. There may be a thematic difference between the two but I can’t discern between them. The albums sweeps past you like memories of a whiskey-fueled Saturday night or the landscape from the window of a speeding 18-wheeler. They shift and blur into a singular whole that surprises you when it ends. It surprised me even more that after 18 songs I still wanted more.

Site | Buy

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival – Sunday10/2 Recommendations

As I wait patiently for my last-minute backstage access I give to you Sunday Recommendations. Sunday will be a travel day for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival stages. The great stuff is scattered like medicinal Mary-Jane smoke in the Golden Gate Park wind. As in HSB in the past.The most fun by far will be on thePorch Stage at 1:25pm with Those Darlins.  Ms. Emmylou Harris closing the event is the place to be at the Banjo Stage 5:45.
Banjo Stage

11:00am Dry Branch Fire Squad
1:20pm Bela Fleck & Zakir Hussain & Edgar Meyer
2:45pm The Blind Boys of Alabama
4:15pm Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys
5:45pm Emmylou Harris

   Rooster Stage
11:00am Jessica Lea Mayfield
12:05pm Kevin Welch & Kieran Kane & Fats Kaplin
1:20pm Brokedown in Bakersfield (featuring Nicki & Tim Bluhm, Scott Law, Lebo, Steve Adams & Dave Brogan)
2:10pm Ollabelle
4:15pm Justin Townes Earle
5:45pm The Jayhawks

Star Stage
11:45am The Low Anthem
1:20pm Dr. John & The Lower 911
3:05pm DeVotchKa
4:50pm Elbow

Towers of Gold Stage

11:00am Abigail Washburn
12:30pm Buddy Miller

Arrow Stage

11:00am Joe Purdy
1:10pm The Devil Makes Three
4:00pm Mother Hips

   Porch Stage
12:10pm Dive Bar Dukes
1:25pm Those Darlins
2:40pm Frank Fairfield
3:55pm The Swanson Family Band
5:10pm Over The Rhine

Ryan Adams Confirms New Album ‘Ashes & Fire’ – October 10th.

Americana enfant terrible Ryan Adams has confirmed his new album ‘Ashes & Fire’ will be released on October 10th. It will be his his 13th(!) solo release. Adams has in recent times moved away from the country-based music in which he made his bones and worked on a couple of books electronic and heavy metal music. He’s also taken the occasional opportunity to dump on the heritage of country music.

The album was recorded  in California with producer Glyn Johns, who helmed iconic records like the Who’s Who’s Next and engineered music for the Bob Dylan, Clash, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles. Appearing on the album will be previous collaberator Norah Jones, who appears on three songs — Come Home, Save Me, and Kindness — and keyboardist Benmont Tench, a longtime member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Adams will set out on a solo acoustic tour this Fall, hitting cities in California and the Pacific Northwest; dates are forthcoming. Hardly Strictly perhaps?

Ashes & Fire tracklisting:

Dirty Rain
Ashes & Fire
Come Home
Rocks
Do I Wait
Chains of Love
Invisible Riverside
Save Me
Kindness
Lucky Now
I Love You But I Don’t Know What to Say

This clip from his surprise opening stop for Emmylou Harris at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles, CA, on April 21, 2011 gives me hope that the album will be a great one.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wfBDJLUVeE[/youtube]

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 11 – Confirmed Acts (so far)

The good folks over at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass have using some clever audio teases to reveal acts confirmed for the upcoming 11th Americana festival. the event takes place in San Francisco’s beautiful Golden Gate Park and is put on by friend of Americana music, banjo player and investment banker Warren Hellman (Fri Sep 30, Sat Oct, & Sun Oct 2, 2011)

Here are the confirmed acts from reveals so far:

Dr. John, Punch Brothers, Gomez, Dark Star Orchestra, Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussein & Edgar Meyer , The Civil Wars, Bob Mould, The Devil Makes Three, John Prine,  Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch + David Rawlings,  Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses, Robert Plant & the Band of Joy, Del McCoury & The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Cass McCombs, Fitz & the Tantrums, The Jayhawks, Abigail Washburn, Robert Earl Keen, Buckethead (!),  The Flatlanders, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Chris Isaak, Frank Fairfield, Irma Thomas, Elbow, The Mekons, Earl Scruggs, Patty Griffin, Old Crow Medicine Show…

There is also word, though no confirmation, that Merle Haggard and Kris Kristofferson will also be there. Sta tuned for more from what is shaping up to be the best Hardly Strictly Bluegrass  yet.

Kris Kristofferson

I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive. – ragid Deaths in Americana & Country Music

Neo-soul chanteuse Amy Winehouse’s death at 27 was a tragedy everyone had predicted for years. Some say that the self-imposed drama and lack of self-control fed the creative muse that led to great art. Mostly it saps the performer’s soul and robs them, and their fans, of their future greatness. Country music has no shortage of self destruction and many, Waylon, Haggard, Cash, Jones  to name the most famous names gave it their best shot but lived a while longer to tell their tale.  Here are a few that pushed it so far to led them to the last round-up.

  • Keith Whitley’s drinking habits rivaled his influence on Music City. Whitley was a longtime alcoholic beginning before he was of of legal age and continuing through his early career as a bluegrass performer. Many times he had tried to overcome his alcoholism, but failed. While married to country singer Lorrie Morgan she would try and hide alcohol from him, even going as far tying their legs together before bed to ensure Whitley would not wake up in the middle of the night to drink. She would discover later that he was drinking perfume and nail polish to get get loaded. At the time of his death his blood alcohol level was .477 (the equivalent of 20 1-ounce shots of 100-proof whiskey and almost five times over the then Tennessee level of 0.1 legal intoxication limit (wikipedia)
  • Gram Parsons not only brought country music to the 60’s culture that had largely shunned it, he also was was one of the first to die from a a occupational hazard of living the high-life of the era including being a jamming, and heroin using, buddy of Keith Richards. Parsons was a founding member of the Americana movement and his solo work, work with the Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers and his collaborations with protege Emmylou Harris is legendary. Parson’s career was plagued by drugs and alcohol use and before a tour was scheduled to commence in October 1973, Parsons decided to go to Joshua Tree National Monument in southeastern California. Less than two days after arriving at the park, Parsons died on September 19, 1973 at the age of 26 from an overdose of morphine and alcohol
  • Hank Williams did more that just lay down the template for all country music to follow, but also the hard living that has become it’s legacy. An undiagnosed case of spina bifida occulta is beloved to have caused of his life-long abuse of alcohol and drugs. Dispute warnings from his boss and co-writer Roy Acuff, William’s demons worsened and led to his firing from the Grand Ole Opry for habitual drunkenness and, ultimately leading to his death at the age 29 on on January 1, 1953  in the back of his ’52 Cadillac on his way to a show in Charleston, West Virginia.