‘King of the Road’ Roger Miller Tribute Recruits Alison Krauss, Kacey Musgraves, Willie Nelson

Roger Miller

Few people these days are aware of the gENius of Roger Miller. If he’s known at all it’s for his deceptively goofy sons like ‘Dang Me’ and Z”You Can’t Rollerskate In A Buffalo Herd.” He was also the one of the greatest songwriters to ever work the country music genre snagging 11 Grammy Awards, a Tony Award for writing the music and lyrics for the Broadway play “Big River’ and was voted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1973 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1995. He performed, and was friends with greats like Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson.

Speaking of Kris Kristofferson, Miller was also the to record and commercially release his “Me and Bobby McGee” a full year before Janis Joplin made it a classic.

Now his friends and new blood that owe him a debt have come together to pay tribute. ‘King of the Road: A Tribute to Roger Miller,’ out Aug. 31 via BMG, pays long overdue respects to one of American music’s premier entertainers and songwriters. The two-disc collection contains new renditions of Miller’s songs by Ringo Starr, Dolly Parton, Eric Church, Loretta Lynn, John Goodman and more than two dozen others, including Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard on one track. Produced by Miller’s son, Dean Miller, and Colby Barnum Wright, ‘King of the Road’ offers a fresh look at the work of a creative giant who has been gone 26 years but whose genius continues to shape contemporary music in ways both overt and subtle.

Read more about the project in a new interview at The Tennessean: https://tnne.ws/2toJY7B

Before Miller’s premature death of cancer at age 56, the Country Music Hall of Famer had 31 Top 40 Billboard country hits (10 of which crossed over to the pop chart), including his signature songs “Dang Me” and “King of the Road.” He held the record for most GRAMMY wins in a single night until Michael Jackson and ‘Thriller’ broke it in 1984. Miller wrote songs and voiced a character for Walt Disney’s 1973 Robin Hood film. He also wrote the music and lyrics for the Tony-winning Big River, helping launch the career of actor John Goodman, who reprises the musical’s “Guv’ment” on ‘King of the Road.’ As Dean Miller writes in liner notes accompanying ‘King of the Road,’ “Roger Miller was too gigantic to be contained by genres and definitions.”

‘King of the Road’ includes versions of Miller’s biggest ’60s hits, like “Chug-A-Lug” (Asleep at the Wheel ft. Huey Lewis) and “England Swings” (Lyle Lovett), and lesser-known treasures from a catalog full of gems. As with Miller’s own output, the album contains plenty of unexpected turns — country superstar Eric Church’s playful take on Robin Hood’s “Oo De Lally,” for instance, or Starr’s selection of “Hey, Would You Hold It Down?,” a song from Miller’s long-out-of-print 1979 ‘Making a Name for Myself’ album. By any standard of measurement, Miller was “one of the greatest songwriters that ever lived” — even if he did say so himself. And he did, in the first of a handful of the album’s live-performance interstitials that capture the spontaneous wit of a mind that operated at a breakneck pace.

There is a television event in the works, more information coming soon.

The scope of material and performances on ‘King of the Road’ both capture Miller’s personality and convey an astonishing legacy that’s still felt today. “Roger Miller didn’t have to say much,” Dean writes in the liners. “You were simply drawn to him. He had a magnetic smile, and electric wit and a passion for life and music that transcended generations.”

‘King of the Road: A Tribute to Roger Miller’ Tracklist:

Disc One
Greatest Songwriter (Banter)
Chug-a-Lug – Asleep at the Wheel ft. Huey Lewis (!)
Dang Me – Brad Paisley
Leavin’s Not the Only Way to Go – The Stellas/Lennon and Maisy
Kansas City Star – Kacey Musgraves
World So Full of Love – Rodney Crowell
Old Friends (Banter)
Old Friends – Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard
Lock Stock and Teardrops – Mandy Barnett
You Oughta Be Here With Me – Alison Krauss ft. The Cox Family
The Crossing – Ronnie Dunn, The Blind Boys of Alabama
In the Summertime – The Earls of Leicester ft. Shawn Camp
Fiddle (Banter)
England Swings – Lyle Lovett
You Can’t Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd – Various Artists
Half a Mind – Loretta Lynn
Invitation to the Blues – Shooter Jennings, Jessi Colter
It Only Hurts Me When I Cry (Live) – Dwight Yoakam

Disc Two
Hey, Would You Hold It Down? – Ringo Starr
Engine, Engine #9 – Emerson Hart ft. Jon Randall
When Two Worlds Collide – Flatt Lonesome
Oo De Lally – Eric Church
You Can’t Do Me This Way and Get By With It – Dean Miller ft. The McCrary Sisters
Chicken S#$! (Banter)
Nothing Can Stop Me – Toad the Wet Sprocket
Husbands and Wives – Jamey Johnson ft. Emmylou Harris
I Believe in the Sunshine – Lily Meola
Guv’ment – John Goodman
Old Songwriters Never Die (Banter)
The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me – Dolly Parton ft. Alison Krauss
I’d Come Back to Me – Radney Foster ft. Tawnya Reynolds
Reincarnation – Cake
One Dying and a Burying – The Dead South
Do Wacka Do – Robert Earl Keen, Jr.
King of the Road – Various Artists

Music Review : Lee Ann Womack – “The Way I’m Livin’ “ [Sugar Hill Records]

 Lee Ann Womack - “The Way I’m Livin’

I knew when Lee Ann Womack was up to something great when she was hanging around Americanafest in 2012. Appearing in a all-request showcase with Buddy Miller she held the Mercy Lounge stage as she has all those packed arenas shows she played not not long ago.

But playing arena shows means playing by a narrow set of rules that (hopefully) lands you on mainstream country radio. Womack has worked the system like a pro, resulting in having four of her six studio albums reach Gold and selling over 6 million albums worldwide

I hope her new release “The Way I’m Livin’ “ hits the charts and makes her gobs of money. But if it does it’ll do so by breaking the current rules of country music, and without compromise.

Womack’s seventh studio album, produced by her husband Frank Liddell (Miranda Lambert, Chris Knight, Pistol Annies) and her first effort for stalwart Americana label Sugar Hill Records, was recording live in the studio with the band. The 13 tracks has her wrapping Her warm-honey vocals around classic country themes of hardship, temptation and salvation, and she’s keeping mighty fine company on the journey.

Her version of Hayes Carll’s jukebox weeper “Chances Are” is pure jukebox greatness. Womack really brings out a new and longing characteristic of the song’s melancholy soul. The title song is a gospel stomper of swampy guitars and sonic salvation that heats up and leaves you wondering if your being taken to the Pearly Gates or Dark Underworld. Either way, the soundtrack’s excellent.

“Send It on Down” is a the other side of the salvation coin. No brashness in this last-ditch plea for mercy and a bus ticket written by Chris Knight. Bruce Robison is represented in a coupe of cuts, “Nightwind” is a beautiful bluegrass-style call to an nocturnal call to a lost love. Lost love is also the theme of “Not Forgotten You” though the up-tempo accompaniment might through you off it’s heart-broken trail.

Womack retains Roger Miller’s rollicking tempo on “Tomorrow Night in Baltimore” but turns it up slightly to a humps it up a bit with blazing electric and steel guitar. Lost love and regret is given emotional gravity as Womack breaths life into Brennen Leigh’s lovely honky-tonk lament “Sleeping with the Devil.”

There’s a sense of freedom and love of music throughout “The Way I’m Livin’ “ Womack, Liddell and the extraordinary supporting musicians have produced a contemporary version of a country gold.

I don’t know what challenges that might have been awaiting Womack had she chosen to mount the gilded running-wheel of Music Row instead of jumping the Americana fence. But I’m certain had she done so “The Way I’m Livin’ “ would have been a very different album. Thanks goodness she didn’t as the freedom to pursue her heart and vision has resulted in one of the best, and most honest, albums of her career.

Official Site | Buy

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5 Cool Kris Kristofferson Covers

One of the things about being one of the best songwriters in the world, loads of folks want to cover your work. The other night over at the Twang Nation Jamboree at turntable.fm the DJs holding forth ran with a Kris Kristofferson covers theme and it sounded pretty great. I thought I would try and track some down and post them here.

Bobby Bare croons a smooth version of Come Sundown. Nothing says heartbreak like a huge white tie.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8JJ3ZYdwQA[/youtube]

Try and look over the full-on Nashville Sound and syrupy strings and try and concentrate on the awesomeness that is Mr. Ray Price covering For The Good Times.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1ZKIX0ICZo[/youtube]

Sammi Smith made it a hit, bit Johnny and June makes Help Me Make It Through The Night spectacular.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df9lIfWSqTE&feature=related[/youtube]

Most people think Janis Joplin was the first to cover Me And Bobby McGee. Those people are wrong. Roger Miller was the first artist to have a hit with the song, hitting No. 12 on the US country chart in 1969.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ko_bzuODTI[/youtube]

Yeah it’s not technically covers but the himself is being backed by the Foo Fighters on Sunday Morning Coming Down and doing The Pilgrim, Chapter 33 being backed by Elvis Costello And The Sugarcanes.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRNYOgEbK80[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO3fkbRq8O0[/youtube]

 

Concert Review: Hayes Carll – Slims – San Francisco, CA – 5/14/11

The first thing I noticed about the near capacity crowd at Slims was the lack of Pabst Blue Ribbon tall boys. The brew de rigueur of the skinny jeans and tattoo set has been a main staple for big city shows of the twang variety since I first saw the Drive-By Truckers in New York City in 2006, but the cheap suds were nowhere to be seen. There was the occasional Bud light, local micro-brew (served in plastic cups as not to be too fancy)  and whisky neat but the ubiquitous PBR was oddly out of place. The crowd also skewed older and working stiffs decked out in the pro-shops finest with their blond wives were mixed with a few that looked like extras from HBO’s Deadwood. This was not the hoody and cap set herding to a scene, these people were here for great music.

With a voice pitched somewhere South of Dylan and north of Kris Kristofferson Carll began he show surprisingly with the tearjerker Chances Are but the crowd stayed quiet and ate it up. We were then rewarded with the long-haired honky-tonk road song Hard Out Here. things were less quiet with the “Hell yeahs” and “Yee -haws.”

Carll was in town supporting is excellent new release KMAG YOYO which is an Army acronym for Kiss My Ass, Guys, You’re On Your Own,. He introduced the song as a “Young soldier in Afghanistan, then get’s into the heroin trade and is then injured by an IED. In a morphine induced hallucination imagines he’s working for a secret Pentagon program that feeds you acid and send you in space. Look for it on country radio!” The song is a (fast) talking blues number in the spirit of Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues or Johnny Cash’s I’ve Been Everywhere and it drove the crowd into a frenzy.

About 30 minutes into the set shots of tequila was delivered to the stage. “We played L.A. the other night and not one drink was bough for us. Here we are 37 minuted in the set and we have shots. Thanks San Francisco!” Four more rounds of drinks followed.

Carll took the time to praise the legendary Texas singer/songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard and explained how when they met to write a song together that Hubbard was in his phase of using animals as subject matter to great success with the song Snake Farm, which Carll sang the chorus of with a surprisingly simpatico crowd. He said they wrote a song called Chickens but had overestimated the poultry-folk movement of 2006. Carll then sang a song he and Hubbard wrote, and was released on Carll’s Trouble in Mind and Hubbard’s lengthily titled A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There Is No C). With lines like “There’s some money on the table and a pistol on the floor. Some old paper back books of Louis L’Amour…” It’s a natural and perfect result from a a Carll/Hubbard collaboration.

There was also a song from a Carll collaboration with Bobby Bare Jr. and Corb Lund entitled One Bed, Two Girls and Three Bottles of Wine about a Southern California tryst gone limp. The song has a honky-tonk heart of the absurd found in the best Roger Miller or Shel Silverstein numbers.

After about two hours of great song after next Carll and his sizzling band who moved through every instrument  but bag pipes, encored with a rousing version of the Possum’s White Lightning which was a great chaser from a musician cast in the same dry-witted and tuneful mold as Guy Clark and Terry Allen.

John Doe and The Sadies Collaborate for Country Club

From JamBase – John Doe (X, The Knitters) and The Sadies join forces for Country Club, an album of classic country covers and originals due out April 14, 2009 on Yep Roc Records.

“Country Club is the result of a drunken promise or threat I made to Travis and Dallas [Good, of The Sadies] the first night we played together in Toronto. These happen all the time but it’s rare that anyone remembers them the morning after, let alone follows through and makes it a reality. I’m really glad we did,” says Doe.

By including varying yet equally beloved movements within the country music pantheon, Doe and The Sadies were able to cover their heroes while filtering the pop sensibilities of ’60s Nashville through the electric honky tonk of Bakersfield, CA.

“We’re not sure why it sounds like it’s from the sixties. Maybe that’s our favorite era of country music or maybe that’s what we listened to when we first learned how to play it,” remarks Doe. “But what was called ‘Countrypolitan’ always seemed one of the coolest hybrids of country music. But we agreed quickly and completely that there were going to be no string sections, horns or choirs. Bakersfield vs. Nashville was never a dispute . . . Bakersfield!” Dallas Good of The Sadies continues, “The songs chosen were very ambitious, and while we haven’t re-invented the wheel we have created a cohesiveness between several hit country & western singles and our own styles.”

Country Club also features guest turns from D.J. Bonebrake, Kathleen Edwards, Eric Heywood and more.

Tracklist & Credits:

1. Stop the World and Let Me Off
Songwriter: Carl Belew
Made famous by: Waylon Jennings

2. Husbands and Wives
Songwriter: Roger Miller

3. ‘Til I Get It Right
Songwriters: Red Lane, Larry Henley
Made famous by: Tammy Wynette

4. It Just Dawned on Me
Songwriters: Exene Cervenka, John Doe

5. (Now and Then) There’s a Fool Such as I
Songwriter: William Marvin Trader
Made famous by: Hank Snow

6. The Night Life
Songwriters: Paul F. Buskirk, Walter M. Breeland, Willie Nelson
Made famous by: Ray Price

7. The Sudbury Nickel
Songwriters: The Sadies

8. Before I Wake
Songwriters: The Sadies

9. I Still Miss Someone
Songwriters: Johnny Cash, Roy Cash Jr.

10. The Cold Hard Facts of Life
Songwriter: Bill Anderson
Made famous by: Porter Wagoner

11. Take These Chains from My Heart
Songwriter: Fred Rose, Hy Heath
Made famous by: Hank Williams

12. Help Me Make It Through the Night
Songwriter: Kris Kristofferson

13. Are the Good Times Really Over for Good
Songwriter: Merle Haggard

14. Detroit City
Songwriters: Danny Dill, Mel Tillis
Made famous by: Bobby Bare

15. Pink Mountain Rag
Songwriters: The Sadies

The Sadies – Flash

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcfd1kFmsqE[/youtube]

Willie Nelson – The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA. – 1/17/09

If you’ve attended a solo Willie Nelson show you know what’s coming. Just as sure as a Texas Summer is hot and that your enchiladas at El Fenix will begin with chips and salsa, the Redheaded Stranger will deliver a canon of some of the best and most loved American songs spanning his 40 year career. The Johnny Bush and Paul Stroud penned Whiskey River, Good Hearted Woman – written by Willie and his partner in outlaw brotherhood Waylon Jennings, Crazy – the Willie penned 1962 #2 country hit for Patsy Cline that was originally written for, and turned down by,  Billy Walker, Funny How Time Slips Away – a song Walker did record and had a hit, the Kris Kristofferson penned Help Me Make It Through The Night and Me And Bobby McGee (made famous by fellow Texan Janis Joplin), Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain – the Fred Rose penned song that was originally performed in 1945 by Roy Acuff , later by Hank Williams but made into a hit by Willie on his thematic masterpiece Red Headed Stranger. The list goes on but you get the idea.

Even after a reprieve in 2004 due to a bout with carpal tunnel syndrome (well not much of a reprieve, Willie wrote two current song list staples, Superman and You Don’t Think I’m Funny Anymore – during the 4 months he was supposed to take it easy) Willie still plays the weathered Martin N-20 with now defunct Baldwin pickups (aka Trigger) in his signature syncopated style that made him too jazzy for 60’s era Nashville but endeared him to an audience that weren’t typical country music fans back in Austin. Trigger bares a ragged hole in it’s body right where decades of downstrokes have landed blows – surrounded by signatures of Johnny Cash, Roger Miller, Kris Kristofferson and others this singular instrument has transcended it’s original intent. It now stands as a talisman as well as, as it’s name suggests, a trusted and loyal friend.

Very few artists have achieved the status of American icon. It’s a short and select group that have one thing in common, they transcend the level of working musician and become a representation of the music itself. 40’s pop, Frank Sinatra, Jazz, Louie Armstrong – Country Music in the minds of many Americans born in the last 40 years is Willie Nelson.

After all this time the humility is still there, thanking the audience after songs or an especially dexterous turn on Trigger. The 1000 watt smile, the twinkle in his eye, the humor, the worn bandanas tossed into an adoring crowd. Except for his well-known predilection for ganja (of which some of the Bay Area’s finest found its way on stage tossed up by a fan that abides) the man could have easily had a place in politics.

Seeing Willie is like visiting the Grand Canyon or the giant Sequoias – he’s less a musician and more like a force of nature, you’re awed to be in the presence of a national treasure and, after repeated visits, subtleties arise that are only discernible after a level of familiarity is achieved. The classics begin to expose nuances, phrasing, odd time signatures – once past the initial awe there’s a lasting beauty that emerges. The audience is enthralled and vocal – “yeehaws” and “ahh-haaas” ring out between each song. Not surprising, this is as far west we you can get without getting your boots wet.

Willie’s son Lukas and his band, the Promise of the Real, opened the show with their brand of jamband psychedelic fusion. Playing in this venue where the Grateful Dead performed so many times must have been a dream come true for these guys. I’m not particularly a fan of this style of music but one thing did stand out for me; whether fronting his own band or supporting his dad Lukas Nelson is becoming a master guitar player in his own right.

The night was topped off for me meeting Linda, a fellow blogger with #1 Willie Nelson fan site Still is Still Moving. Linda’s site is the go-to place for all thngs Willie.

And then there was the Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels in VIP seating within the security barrier right in front of us. The outlaw mojo was in full force on this cool, San Francisco night.

Willie Nelson : Stardust – The Fillmore – 1/17/09

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EOqKMlq05I[/youtube]