News Round Up: Patty Griffin & Bruce Robison News

  • The New York Times also features a piece on Willie Nelson’s American Classic.
  • I have come to the acceptance step of the grief cycle, bit Todd VanDerWerff’s excellent and exhaustive re-review of the HBO Western series Deadwood at The Onion’s TV Club brings a smile to my face.
  • Check out Kim Ruehl’s interview with Santa Cruz’s roots band The Devil Makes Three from the Bumbershoot music festival.
  • Tom Russell posts a new addition to his blog giving context and back stories to the songs on his upcoming Calexeco-backed album Blood and Candle Smoke.
  • Bruce Robison posts on his MySpace blog that he will have a song in Texas cartoon mogal Mike Judge(Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill) film Extract and that he’ll be heading out  on tour with Robert Earl Keen and Todd Snider. (via the 9513.com)
  • Patty Griffin’s upcoming Buddy Miller produced Gospel album Downtown Church will be released in early 2010 and was recorded earlier this year in the sanctuary of the Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville, according to her website.

Rounder Records Turns 40

  • The Green Bay Press Gazette has a great interview with Justin Townes Earle. Earle talks candidly about his past addictions and is troubled relationship with his father. as well as his excellent new release Midnight at the Movies.
  • Robert Earl Keen’s Lost Highway debut “The Rose Hotel,” produced by Lloyd Maines, will be released on On Sept. 29
  • Rounder Records will celebrate their 40th anniversary on Oct. 12th at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, TN with performances from Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bela Fleck and Irma Thomas will join in this momentous celebration along with musical host Minnie Driver and special guests to be announced.
  • Shreveport-based , the Louisiana Hayride (1948 to 1960) will  be inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame. In it’s day the country music showcase featured Hank Williams, Kitty Wells, George Jones, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley.
  • The grave of the late great Texas blues musician, Blind Willie Johnson, is  finally discovered. Johnson’s songs have been covered by everybody from Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton to Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.
  • Details magazine sits down with Native Texan and anti-Taylor Swift blond bad ass Miranda Lambert for some Q&A.
  • Nashville Scene‘s newest cover has  “Three Hot Acts Present a New Breed of Female Songwriter” featuring Caitlin Rose, Tristen Gaspadarek and Those Darlins.

Texas Monthly Features Five Texas Music Legends

  • 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.

Music Review – Rita Hosking – Come Sunrise (self released)

come sunriseRita Hosking might call Davis, CA home (18 km / 11 mi West of Sacramento) but the geographical and cultural influences that shape her excellent new release, Come Sunrise, could plot here anywhere between a rural West Texas roadhouse or the front porch of an Appalachian cabin.

Recorded in Austin with producer, engineer and Robert Earl Keen guitarist, Rich Brotherton and featuring some of Austin’s best musicians – Lloyd Maines on Dobro, Glenn Fukunaga on upright bass, and Danny Barnes on banjo, Warren Hood on fiddle, Brotherton plys several instruments himself and Sean Feder from Hosking’s backing band Cousin Jack on percussion and harmony vocals.

With a vocal style somewhere between Natalie Merchant and Gillian Welch Hosking sings all 11 of her original songs with a delicacy that belies the force of her delivery. This is the kind of music I imagine a few generations ago would have easily landed on bestselling Hillbilly charts before some executive in the 40’s decided the term too degrading (and probably less market-friendly) and changed the name to Country & Western.

Now this music finds its home in the Americana genre, where skilled musicians like Hosking remind us that music that tells tales of people’s lives, with instrumentation and arrangement that also hearken from that heritage, is so wholly satisfying in a world more and more addicted to entranced and irony.

The slow burners are the real stand outs.  Simple pleasures yearn from the title track as Maines’ Dobro and Hood’s fiddle envelope you with the sonic equivalent of a down comforter, Montgomery Creek Blues is a dreamy pedal-steel laced tale of drunken revelry that ends in murder and Hiding Place (my hands-down favorite) is a sparkling ode to solitude that betrays a hint of menace from possible pursuer.

Precious Little, Little Joe and Holier Than Thou
are straight up honky-tonkers that shoudl strike shame in the heart of every Music City big label suit.

With Come Sunrise Hosking gives us a prism that isolates the distinct historic threads of country and folk music and then combines it again
into a wholly satisfying and extraordinary body of work.

Official Site | MySpace | Facebook | Buy

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

Those Darlins Ready New Summer Release

  • Craig Shelburne  over at the CMT blog has posted a great video I had never see with Willie Nelson and fantastic bluegrass Melonie Cannon covering Willie’s Back to Earth.
  • Speaking of Texas (Wille, Texas…same thing) If you’re in the San Francisco area tomorrow night head over to the historic Fillmore to catch Houston’s own Robert Earl Keen with the great Hayes Carl as the opener
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    I heard that Miley Cyrus is slated to Perform at the 4th Annual Country Music Awards on April 5. Aand here I thought it was Miley’s buddy Taylor Swift’s job to serve the ‘tween demographic with insipid tales of mall heartache. Or maybe that’s Carrie Underwood… Point is the CMA’s continue to embody thier new acronym definition, Country Music my Ass.

  • Murfreesboro, Tenn’s country-punk sweethearts of the prison rodeo, Those Darlins,  got a lot of deserved attention at SXSW ’09 and it looks like they are due for more love this Summer when their self-titled debut album is released on July 7th (vinyl on July 23rd) on OH WOW DANG records. Here’s the title cut off their current Wild One EP to hold you over until then.

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Those Darlins – Wild One(mp3)

Chris Morris Returns with Hillbilly Deluxe

  • MyWestTexas.com’s Jimmy Patterson  looks over the life of country music legend Waylon Jennings as a catalyst that changed the genre forever.
  • Chris Morris, the programmer for the defunct 103.1 country, blues, roots program “Watusi Rodeo,” has found a new venue online with  “Hillbilly Deluxe” on Scion Radio 17’s Web site.  The three-hour show streams continuously, so drop in and take a listen. There will be a new show posted every month. Great luck with the show Chris!
  • Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival has announce the initial lineup for the eighth annual 2009 four-day camping and music festival held on June 11 – 14 on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee, 60 miles south of Nashville.  Some of the country and roots artist to perform are Wilco, Andrew Bird, Merle Haggard, The Del McCoury Band, Lucinda Williams, Neko Case, Jenny Lewis, Robert Earl Keen, Tift Merritt, Mike Farris , Todd Snider and The SteelDrivers.

Son Volt live at Bonnaroo 2006: Windfall

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

Or, The Whale at Hotel Utah

  • For one week only you can download honeyhoney‘s song “Brahm’s Lullaby” for FREE! honeyhoney’s “Brahm’s Lullaby” was featured in an Anti-Smoking campaign commercial in California (titled Grim Reapers.) Beginning Tuesday, February 3rd – honeyhoney’s “Brahm’s Lullaby” will be available for purchase on iTunes.
  • ACountry.com is giving away tickets to the city to your choice of Robert Earl Keen’s scheduled stops between February 11th to April 4th. 2009 marks the 20th Anniversary of Robert Earl Keen’s “The Road Goes on Forever” and will be the subject of a live tribute album to be released on Jan. 6, 2009 as well as a new book The Road Goes On Forever The Music Never Ends… which will be released in March, 2009.

Gurf Morlix Last Exit to Happyland

Austin Texas based roots musician, Gurf Morlix, is finishing up his new release Last Exit To Happyland. A noted producer of the Americana elite (Lucinda Williams, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Slaid Cleaves, Mary Gauthier, and Robert Earl Keen, Tom Russell, Blaze Foley, Ian McLagan, and the Hot Club of Cowtown),  delivers some great new songs. Backed by the mighty Rick Richards on drums, and with vocal support from Patty Griffin, Ruthie Foster and Barkara K, he explores the territory where folk and blues and country intersect, a place he likes to call “The Muddy”. Last Exit To Happyland will be released on Rootball Records on February 17th, and marks his evolution from sideman (Lucinda Williams’ band leader for 11 years) and producer to world class singer-songwriter in the spotlight.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 8

Head up Northern Californians, the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival is on for this weekend (Fri, Oct 3rd – 10:30am – Noon & 2:30pm – 6:45pm & Sat Oct 4th 10:45am – 7:15pm – Sun Oct 5th, 2008 – 11am – 7pm) at the Speedway, Lindley & Marx meadows in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA.

The three day event has 5 stages featuring artists like Jimmie Dale Gilmore,  the Waco Brothers, Richard Thompson, Three Girls & Their Buddy (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller), The Del McCoury Band, Steve Earle & The Bluegrass Dukes, Guy Clark & Verlon Thompson, Robert Earl Keen, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys, Elvis Costello’s High Whines & Spirits, Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, The Infamous Stringdusters, Alison Brown Quartet with Joe Craven, Justin Townes Earle and so much more!

If you see mw at the show make sure t say “Hi” and save me a spot near the stage!

Lone Star 92.5

Has Clear Channel lost it’s little rigid, corporate mind?

The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram’s Cary Darling (great name!) has an interesting article on a local radio station with went from the old tried-and-true classic radio format to an alt-country mix, an example playlist contains the Drive-By Truckers, Johnny Cash and Robert Earl Keen, coupled with a low-key PBS style of corporate sponsorship instead of the hyper-audio-effects whiplash-inducing commercials that make most terrestrial radio hard to take seriously. Even thier web-site shows images of Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Tom Petty. Nice!

XM and Sirius satellite radio and it’s more niche formatting (think radio in the 70s) has displayed enough relative success at pealing off listeners that Clear Channel is throwing the dice and taking some calculated chances. D.js. are seen as more than playlist parrots and more like the musical authorities with their own crates of vinyl they schlep to the station and with tales about the music and the artists.

I still think Clear Channel is an example of everything wrong with a corporate media giant, but I will take my hat off to them for treating listeners and the music with respect and not simply a spreadsheet list of product and consumer.

Lone Star 92.5’s Commercial Featuring Wille Nelson