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)

• Happy birthday to Willie Nelson’s longtime drummer and the “Paul” of the Willie’s song “Me and Paul,” Paul English.  Happy birthday also to legendary Texas singer/songwriter Guy Clark.

• The latest installment of Popmatter.com’s excellent Torch & Twang series Juli Thanki delivers a post exploring ithe intersecting careers of bluegrass legend  Bill Monroe and musician and folklorist Ralph Rinzler.

• I’m a long time fan of Libertyville, Illinois rocker Ike Reilly. So when I read over at the fine 9513.com that Reilly was teaming up with on-and-off country outlaw 2.0 Shooter Jennings for the song The War On The Terror and Drugs (from Reilly’s upcoming release Hard Luck Stories) I was intrigues. Turns out it’s damn fine! (Song Illinois)

• Front Porch Musings is offering a sweet playlist from performers playing the Americana-by-way-of-punk showcase showcase The Revival Tour.Featured are Chuck Ragan (Hot Water Music), Jim Ward (At the Drive-In, Sparta), Frank Turner (Million Dead), and much more.

• Country, roots, Americana- as the rest of us are grappling with nomenclature (fancy word for names) for music, George Jones uses his old-guard status to reclaim flag and call Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift “not country music.”
  

• Austin’s Band Of Heathens are tearing up the (Americana) charts with their new release One Foot in the Ether.

• William Michael Smith’s latest Houston Press column Lonesome Onry and Mean finds kinship and flattering things to say about the new releases from Texas songwriting legends Guy Clark and Kris Kristofferson.

• Patty Loveless honors legendary songwriter Harlan Howard at the ACM Honors  in Nashville Tuesday night. (CMT.com)

• Of you tweet between 9/23-9/28 with @theavettbros and #Avett in the text you will be entered in a for a chance to win a Deluxe Box Set of The Avett Brothers’ new release I & Love &You.

• The latest Rolling Stone features Jason Fine’s article on Bakersfield legend Merle Haggard sordid history (Issue 1088 – Merle Haggard: The Fighter.) Rollingstone.com has a photo gallery of Haggard tracing his early years to his rise as one of Country Music’s greatest singer/songwriters.

• A film caturing a special evening at Jazz at Lincoln Center with Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis playing the Music of Ray Charles  can be seen in select cinemas from October 15 and will arrive in-stores, just in time for Chrstmas,on both Blu-Ray and DVD on October 20 from A&E Home Entertainment for $19.95 (SD) and $29.95 (BD). The concert event, including a half-hour backstage, behind-the-scenes interview special, airs on HDNet in true high definition on October 18 at 8:00 p.m. ET and on SIRIUS XM’s Real Jazz channel, SIRIUS channel 72 and XM channel 70 on October 18 at 8:00 pm ET. Blue Note Records will release a live album of the concert in Spring 2010.

• Thanks to @kimruehl at No Depression and About.com Folk Music for the “official” Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival Twitter hash tag #hsbf. Let’s trend it up people!

• You know Americana as a genre has arrived when not only do they have their own Grammy category (or is that the death knell?) but also the Americana Music Conference is written up in the Wall Street Journal, Paste Magazine and CMT.com. With great power…

• When in Nashville I always find time to visit the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The place displays and represents the historic roots of country music in a tasteful and engaging way that I never get tired of. Where else can you see Mother Maybelle Carter’s 1028 Gibson and Elvis’ Gold Cadillac? But the place seems to be at capacity for a genre that is still making history. Now it seems that there’s a possibility that the Hall could double its size in the near future.

• The 9513 reviews the new Guy Clark Somedays the Song Writes You.

• San Francisco’s free (!) Americana and Roots festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, has published a down-loadable daily schedule, as well as a map of the Golden Gate Park festival grounds and artist’s bios.

• Rosanne Cash will perform her new release, The List, live at WNYC, New York on  9/23. The List is a collection of classic country songs culled from a list of 100 songs her father, Johnny Cash, insisted she had to learn.

• MadeLoud.com has a great interview with Nashville-based Americana chanteuse Caitlin Rose about her influences and living in the heart of Music City.

• American Songwriter Magazine’s Holly Gleason lists her take on The Essential Guy Clark Songs.

• The ‘Queen of Country Music’ Kitty Wells celebrated her 90th birthday with her fans in Nashville on Sunday at Ernest Tubb Record Shop’s Texas Troubadour Theatre. Wells 1952 hit It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels was a female point of view response to Hank Thompson hit The Wild Side of Life, and paved the way for future female performers like Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton.

• Wall Street Journal’s Jim Fusilli interviews John Fogerty who’s releasing an album of roots and Americana classic covers, The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again.

• Watched the painful sugary-froth that was the CMA Fest. Can we finally just yank “country” out of Country Music Association? Crappy-pop-rock-with-a-fiddle maybe?

• Texas Monthly’s Pitch Perfect features five legendary Texas musicians—Guy Clark, Patty Griffin, Sonny Throckmorton, Robert Earl Keen, and Jack Ingram— and asks them to sgare the mystic secrets to writing a great country song.  It’s a funny, informative a great read.

• The nominees for the 20th International Bluegrass Music Awards Awards has been announced (Yay SteelDrivers!) The ceremony will be hosted by Grammy-winning country artist Kathy Mattea and the legendary bluegrass band, Hot Rize, on Thursday, October 1, 2009, at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee.

• Legendary guitar pioneer Les Paul died today at the age of 94 at White Plains Hospital due to complications from pneumonia.

• More info on Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Son Volt’s Jay Farrar work for the upcoming Jack Kerouac soundtrack collaborative album entitled “One Fast Move or I’m Gone: Kerouac’s Big Sur.”  The twelve song set is due October 20 via F-Stop/Atlantic and will serve as the soundtrack to the Kerouac documentary of the same title.  Farrar and Gibbard were approached by the filmmakers in 2007 about writing music for the film, which documents the events surrounding the author’s time spent in the Big Sur region of California.

• The Wall Street Journal talks to some of the performers on the Big Surprise Tour. The toue is traveling the East coast and  showcases the Old Crow Medicine Show, Justin Townes Earle, The David ­Rawlings Machine (featuring Gillian Welch) and the Felice Brothers.

• Houston Presses’ William Michael Smith in his Lonesome Onry and Mean column tells of  his son leaving the petroleum engineering program at University of Houston to, over time, become a guitarist for Hayes Carll, looking down the stage and seeing Guy Clark (arms folded) and being heckled by David Allan Coe (My Son, the Guitar-Slinger)

• Jennifer Aniston has signed on to signed on to produce and star in Goree Girls, a film about the Goree All Girl String Band, a country music group that had a popular 1940s-era radio show despite the fact that its members were all inmates at a Texas prison. (E Online)

• Kevin Costner wants to help victims of Canada’s Big Valley Jamboree country music festival in Canada where his band “Modern West,” was set to perform.  Storms at the event injured 70 people and a 35 year-old woman died when the wind blew down a speaker on her.

• The Wall Street Journal has a great article on Alison Brown, Missy Raines and Dale Ann Bradley (The Sisterhood of Bluegrass.)

• Lyle Lovett will combine both originals and songs “by some of my favorite Texas singer-songwriters” on his next album, which is due out Oct. 20. (Billboard)

• And in more Texas legends news; Guy Clark’s new album, Sometimes the Song Writes You, will drop on Sept. 22 on Dualtone Music Group. Clark collaborats with Shawn Camp, Rodney Crowell, Joe Leathers, and more on the album . He also follows Steve Earle’s recent release and covers If I Needed You, written by his late friend, Townes Van Zandt. (CMT)

PopMatters.com’s Jill LaBrack posted a thoughtful review of the recently released  Hank William Box Set The Unreleased Recordings. Also at PopMatters Michael Metivier posts an equally thoughtful and culturally insightful review of country muisc legend Charlie Louvin new release Charlie Louvin Sings Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs.

The Drive By Truckers never use a set list in their shows but they are giving some lucky fan an opportunity to bid to create a dream set list that the band will play on their January 15th show Athens Georgia’s legendary 40 Watt. The winner will also get handwritten set list of the show signed by the entire band and get to attend a private meet and greet with the band and be given access to the VIP section (with a guest) for the show. All proceeds to the show will go to benefit Nuci’s Space.

The Sounds of Texas Music Series tickets are on sale. The show will take place at the  historic (and completely restored) Crighton Theater on the square in downtown ConroeTexas.  the 2009 series line-up includes: Los Lonely Boys with Del Castillo (Jan. 24); Chris Knight with Mark Germino (Mar. 28); Guy Clark with Jubal Lee Young (May 9); and the Flatlanders (June 6). Tickets are $168, individual tickets $47. They can be purchased from the Crighton Theater box office, 936-441-7469, ext. 201. For more information, see www.SoundsOfTexas.com.

My fist trip to Berkley since moving to the Bay Area was a great introduction to the town. After the beautiful, if congested, drive over the Bay Bridge at dusk, I headed to the Berkeley branch of Texas-based Half-Price Books where I purchased a used copy of Gail Folkins’ excellent Texas Dance Halls: A Two-Step Circuit. I took this as an omen.

I found the venue, The Freight & Salvage Coffee House, and parked on a nearby street. While heading to the space I had the good fortune to stumble on Everett & Jones Barbecue, where the wait is worth it and the hot sauce really is. I had the brisket plate. Then on to the show. The Freight & Salvage Coffee House has the DIY vibe of an 60’s coffee house where patrons would sit wired on Italian coffee and listen to songs about the coming revolution blowing in the wind. The capacity crowd this night might be a bit grayer and less primed for rebellion, but they still came to hear songs steeped in authenticity and passion.

At 58 Tom Russell looks like a younger version of the actor James Caan, and like his Bronx born doppelganger Russell has a workman-like delivery of his art. There are few performers more uniquely authentic than the Los Angeles native and El Paso resident. As a founder of contemporary Americana music songwriter Russell defies rigid genre boundaries to create work shaped by many sources -country, folk, Tejano – that lead to great, rather than a correctly formulated, songs. Like his contemporaries Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt and Willie Nelson, you do a disservice to the man by applying a label to him.

Russell has true Renaissance instincts that have shaped his music as well as his life – right out of the University of California Russell taught school in Nigeria during the Biafran war, he’s has published three books and is currently showing his paintings at Austin and Marfa Texas based Yard Dog galleries.

During the two-plus hour show Russell recalled great stories about friends, lost love, musicians, beat poets, songwriting, border politics and hearing the Doors’ “People Are Strange” on a seedy Mexican cantina juke box. The bartender smile a toothy smile when he say Russell’s amusement and states  “Las puertas son las mejore!” Is it any wonder this all results in such great songs.

San Antonio’s Michael Martin provided intricately dazzling guitar and mandolin workto counter the hard tales Russell sang of illegal Mexican workers (Who’s Gonna Build Your Wall?) grappling with mortality (The Pugilist at 59) and the pain of love (Down the Rio Grande and Navajo Rug.) Many of the songs are autobiographical and the gritty roads and and tequila soaked rendezvous are all palpable. If Willie Nelson is Texas’ Django Reinhardt then Russell is the states’ adopted Jack Kerouac.

As the attentive crowd sat rapt Russell then focused on the plight of Native Americans through a selection of songs including a stirring version of Peter La Farge’s lament of the Pima Indian who was one of the five Marines and one Navy Corpsman who raised the flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima, The Ballad of Ira Hayes.

Russell closed out the show with an encore featuring the somber prison song Blue Wing and put a fine finish on my introduction to Berkley. As learned and  unorthodox as I could have hoped for.

Tom Russell -  Gallo del Cielo – Freight and Salvage, Berkeley CA