• Hearya.com has posted four great live cuts from Justin Townes Earle. The cuts are “Lone Pine Hill,” “Who Am I To Say,”
  “Your Biscuits Are Big Enough For Me” and “Turn Out My Lights.” The session was recorded along with his live show
  accompaniment and friend Cory Younts.
• Tickets for the July 5, 2008 Hootenanny in Orange County CA are on sale now.Some of the artists scheduled to appear are Mike Ness,BR549’s Chuck Mead,Royal Crown Revue, Cadillac Tramps, Grant Lee Phillips, Big Sandy, James Intveld, Guana Batz, Throw Rag, Blood on the Saddle, Roger Allen Wade, Russel Scott, Powerflex 5, Chris Schiflet, Dusty Rhodes, Rickey Warwick, Sh*tkickers, Hellbound Hayride and Wil Ridge
• Aquarium Drunkard has a great post on a two-volume Dirty Laundry compilation that rounds up a collection of black country-soul cuts from the sixties and seventies. Samples offered are James Brown doing Hank Williams’ “Your Cheating Heart” and Bettye Swann doing  “Just Because You Can’t Be Mine.”
• CMT’s Unplugged at Studio 330 has Shooter Jennings playing some cuts off his latest release The Wolf.”

Justin Townes Earle continues to blaze a trail, and the Grand Ole Opry moves a step toward relevency (inviting Sunny Sweeney was a also a plus) by inviting Earle to perform Friday, May 2nd on the 8pm show, also on a bill will be Brad Paisley, Mark Wills and Mountain Heart.

If you find yourself in Nashville do yourself a favor and catch what is sure to be a great performance.

Sometimes, rarely but sometimes, a concert can really floor you. Just surprise you in ways you had no idea you still could be. I’m glade to say this last Saturday I attended a sold out show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom that did just that.

Omaha Nebraska’s McCarthy Trenching opened the show at about 8:15 belting out self-described songs of drinking, killing and horse songs drinking, killing and horse songs with workmanlike diligence and little room for flourish.
26-year-old singer-songwriter Justin Townes Earle then hit the stage sporting a throwback look - sequin-trimmed suit and Brylcreemed hair - to match his gloriously throwback sound. Accompanied by mandolin-banjo-harmonica player and stamp-collection enthusiast Cory Younts, Earle served up with his blend of old school honkey-tonk
(Hard Livin, Ain’t Glad I’m Leavin’) and Tennessee backwoods country (Who Am I To Say, The Ghost Of Virginia) and straight up corn-pone fun (Chitlin Cookin Time In Cheetham County, Your Biscuit’s Big Enough For Me.) All the country music history sketches that make up his new release ‘The Good Life” were on show in full force. Earle showed confidence as he stalked the stage, stomped his boots to cue chorus to bridge breaks and hoisted his acoustic guitar rifle-like Johnny Cash-style. The New York crowd whooped and hollered and the girls near the stage stood transfixed with by his rugged Southern charm. Earle left the stage with a song for his Grandpa (Absolute Angels Blues) after almost an hour and left the crowd wanting more but primed the crowd for what was to come.

The most accurate and hilarious description I’ve come across for the Felice Brothers (actually three brothers and friends) is by way of Andrew Leahey over at All Music Guide - “they’re a pack of earth-stained country boys from the wilds of the Catskill Mountains, not Ivy Leaguers who thought ransacking their parents ’60s records would a better career move than grad school.” Dead on description and doubly so live. Cards on the table, I came to the show for Justin Townes Earle and decided to hang for a few songs by these Yankee roots rockers just to see what all the fuss was about. I’m glade I did.

It appeared that many under 30-year-olds from the Felice Brothers hometown of the Hudson River Valley and the New York City area, where the Felice boys honed their craft in the subway stations, turned out to welcome them back home. Young girls in cotton dresses shouted the band members names like they had them in home room and their drunk boyfriends sang to every song at the top of their lungs like they could do it in their sleep.

The Felice Brothers are often compared to a more punked-out Band, and it’s a pretty fair comparison. Like The Band The Felice Brothers take country and roots music and turn it in on it’s history to exposes the Celtic, blues and gospel innards. Gothic Americana landscapes drenched with sepia, whiskey (on stage and in verse) and blood.

Sometimes it seemed that the band was using their instruments as weapons and songs would veer just out of control just to right itself at the last minute. Tales of broken dreams and dreamers flat broke and staring down narrowing odds (the harrowing Hey Hey Revolver), sin, redemption and Dixieland salvation (Saved (Lieber-Stolle), Mercy) and salacious limo drivers (Cincinnati Queen) and straight up murder ballads that would make Nick Cave take notice (Ruby Mae.) Sometimes the whole affair seemed like a Ken Burns soundtrack mashed up with the Pogues on a particularly heavy bender.

Guitarist and lead gravel-throated vocalist Ian, drummer and vocalist Simone and accordionist and bear of a man James Felice along with a guy named Christmas (bass) and Farley (fiddle and washboard) played music dank with tradition and yet crackling with passion and fire. I’ve always said that if you can fake authenticity you can do anything, but if there is any faking until they make it with this band then my well tuned bullshit detector was unable to pick up the trace.

There have been some leveling of derision at the Felice Brothers for supposedly cribbing their sound to the Dyan/Band basement tapes. These jibes are usually from critics that see no problem giving a pass to the likes of the Zeppelin/Pixies plagiarism that is the White Stripes. I agree with Picasso that bad artists copy and great artists steal. The Felice Bros. are casing the joint and armed to the teeth.

The Felice Brothers Bowery Ballroom 4-12-2008 - I’m Saved

Is there anything more rebellious in country music, more dangerous, than looking upon the glittering cash-choked chintzy Nashville beast and giving it the proverbial finger, all the while embracing the giants that built the beast? Looking it directly in it’s soulless, dead eyes and exclaiming“I know you, and I know where you came from.”

Yes Justin Townes Earle displays his daddy’s instinct to blaze his own trail but doesn’t do it by rocking Guitar Town. No the younger Earle does it by embracing country’s past - Bob Wills, Jimmie Rogers, George Jones, Buck Owens and , yes, Steve Earle’s more melodic side, to craft a release that is as respectfully traditional as it is audaciously gutsy.

This is no mere study of past greats, Earle makes each song his own. “Hard Living” reaches into rollicking Western Swing complete with gypsy jazz fiddle and the title song is a forlorn weepy croon that would be at home in a Ray Price or George Jones set list. “Ain’t Glad I’m Leavin” has a rustic blue yodel feel coming back through the ages.

“Who Am I To Say”, the Civil War narrative “Lone Pine Hill” and especially “Turn Out My Lights” harkins back the Senior Earle’s more melancholy heart-wrenching compositions. “South Georgia Sugar Baby” has a New Orleans voodoo running all around it and “What Do You Do When Your Lonesome” and “Lonesome and You” are great straight up Bakersfield honky-tonk cuts.

“The Good Life” may be Justin Townes Earle trying to find his sound but he makes it damn fun to be along for the ride.

“Ain’t Glad I’m Leavin”(mp3)

The mighty Drive By Truckers will be at terminal 5 Wednesday March 26^th. There’s still a few tickets available, let’s show the Truckers the New York love and sell this sucker out!

Austin’s own baritone-voiced guitar wiz Junior Brown - Monday March 31^st at Maxwell’s - Hoboken, NJ

The Bodeans - Thursday, April 3rd at the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza

Kathleen Edwards - Thursday, April 10 at the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza

The Felice Brothers with Justin Townes Earle and McCarthy Trenching - April, 12 2008 at the Bowery Ballroom

Dolly Parton - Thursday, May 1st (rescheduled from March 7) 8:00 at Radio City Music Hall

James McMurtry - Thursday, May 1st at the Bowery Ballroom

The Wood Brothers - Saturday, May 17th at the Bowery Ballroom

The Bottle Rockets (15th Anniversary Show) - Saturday June, 7 at the Mercury Lounge

Any I forgot? Post ‘em below!

Justin Townes Earle’s Bloodshot debut “The Good Life” hits stores March 25th, but XM listeners can get a taster this month when the “From the Living Room to the Loft” show airs a pre-recorded concert Justin performed supporting Malcolm Holcombe at The Living Room. The show begins airing on January 20th and will be played for two weeks at the following times: Sundays at 6 PM ET, Tuesdays at 11 PM ET, and Thursdays at 3 AM ET.

Chicago-based alt.country stalwart Bloodshot Records has signed Justin Townes Earle to a multi-album, world-wide deal. His debut full-length album, The Good Life is slated to hit stores in Spring 2008. Justin will make appearances at SXSW and tour with The Felice Brothers in March and April. Justin’s previously self-released EP “Yuma” will become available to wide release through Bloodshot soon.

The Good Life is produced by RS Field, who has made his mark on critically acclaimed albums by Billy Joe Shaver, Sonny Landreth, Webb Wilder and Buddy Guy. Recording is underway at House of David studios, the legendary room that has hosted sessions with George Jones, Yo La Tengo, Elvis Presley, Neil Young and countless others. Joining Earle in the studio are a cast of all-star players including longtime cohort Cory Yountes (Bobby Bare, Jr) on banjo and mandolin, pedal steel player master Pete Finney (Dixie Chicks, Patty Lovelace), bassist Bryn Davies (Patty Griffin, Guy Clark), drummer Bryan Owings (Buddy Miller, Shelby Lynne), keyboardist Skylar Wilson and fiddle player Josh Hedley.

This last Thursday the planets lined up just right above the New York skyline and the night was graced by not one, but three excellent performances for a yearning for some fine alt.country faire.

The mighty Drive By Truckers dropped into the city to perform a free show at Clinton Castle national monument at Battery Park to play a free show for the River to River festival. The rainstorms that had come down all week held off but provided a cool, cloudy evening for the show.    

I arrived at 8:00 to the capacity show that was already in progress and in the middle of the song of sexual discord “Panties In Your Purse”. The crowd was a mix of hipster, Wall Street workers that had strolled over from work a few blocks away and folks that look like they had taken their motorcycles or pick-ups from the nether regions of the East to catch the show.

With the “extremely amicable” departure of singer /songwriter/guitarist Jason Isbell I had some trepidation that the remaining band would be lacking in some significant way. I should have known better than to question the resiliency of mighty Truckers. With Athens, Georgia’s John Neff added in as guitarist and pedal steel and did a fine job brandishing his yellow metal flake Telecaster and the legendary Muscle Shoals keyboardist Spooner Oldham was joining the Truckers on some of the dates and added a layer of funk and rhythm I had yet heard at a DBT show.

The classis were mixed with the new cuts from the latest “A Blessing and a Curse” - “Heathens”, “Sounds Better In The Song”, “Sink Hole”, “Puttin’ People On The Moon”, “Bulldozers and Dirt”, “The Night G.G. Allin Came To Town”, “Where The Devil Don’t Stay”, “The Living Bubba”, “Sands Of Iwo Jima”, “Zip City”. There was a nod to New York City with the frequent set standard by the musician, author and poet Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died.” They night finished off with the night with a rousing rendition of Bruce Springteen’s harrowing song of alienation and violence State Trooper.

After the show I headed uptown to the Mercury lounge to catch Ex-Trucker Jason Isbell, but first opening the show was a man whose moniker sets a dizzyingly high level of expectations, Justin Townes Earle.

Being Steve Earle’s first born means growing up under difficult conditions (read the book Hard Core Troubadour for more details on this) and having some big boots to fill. And Justin’s middle name is, of course, in honor of Steve Earle’s musical and chemical, mentor Townes Van Zandt. Even bigger boots.

And judging from this evening’s show Justin is well on his way to being his own man. With only an acoustic guitar and a backing ukulele (didn’t catch the musician’s name) Donning a silver specked western shirt Justin covered quite a bit of his folk-ragtime tinged EP Yuma (which he himself went out front and sold at the door for $10.) The Ghost of Virginia. You Can’t Leave Yuma, Let the Waters Rise, A Desolate Angels Blues – as well as a Buck Owens cover that I did not recognize – All in all a splendid performance from a man with an impeccable Americana pedigree, but doesn’t just ride his namesakes shirt tales.  

During the show Jason Isbell was mulling about in Mercury Lounge’s sold out small space. Now it was his turn to be the man in the front and not off to the right side of Patterson Hood.

Isbell and his Muscle Shoals area band the 400 Unit: Jimbo Hart (bass), Ryan Tillery (drums) and Browan Lollar (guitar) got right down to it with the searing blues-rock “Try” from the newly released Sirens of the Ditch, most of which was covered in this show.

Isbell then launched into a tribute to his former band mates by playing a song he cut with the Drive By Truckers the wrenching “God Damn Lonely Love” – he later made a kin-hearted reference to the truckers earlier show by saying - “I hope you got to catch those guys tonight. I was stuck here getting ready for this.”

Then came “The Assassin” and the excellent “Hurricanes and Hand Grenades” and the coming of age “Grown.”
As with his former band playing the distinctly New York song  “People Who Died” Isbell’s band – specifically guitarist Browan Lollar sang the Talking Heads “Psycho Killer.”

The band then played the band then played the weakly poppy “New Kind of Actress”, which seeing it live didn’t make me like it any more then I did before. Then another nod to the DBT days with “Decoration Day.” The show ended with a blasting version of Thin Lizzy’s  “Jailbreak” which left me exhilarated as well as drained from the long, delirious, night.

For all you hillbillys in and around New York City (they’re out there!) there’s some fine summer music coming your way.

The lovely and talented Elizebeth Cook will bring her brand of sass and twang to the Living Room, Tuesday, June 26th - 8pm

And the mighty Drive By Truckers will be at Castle Clinton National Monument for a FREE SHOW, Thursday, July 19th - 7pm
And speaking of the Drive By Truckers, ex-trucker Jason Isbell will be playing at the Mercury Lounge on the same night,
with Steve Earle’s boy Justin Townes Earle opening the show. I can only hope that some truckers and somebody’s daddy shows up to the show.

See you at the show!