• The Independent’s Simmy Richman writes an excellent article (Another Country: Why everything you thought you knew about cowboy music is wrong) on Britain’s relationship with Country Music and his own conversion to the genre by a common gateway, Gram Parsons.

• After the loss of Doug Sahm and  Freddy Fender, the future of the Texas Tornados was uncertain to say the least. Well Texas Music Matters has unveiled a new Texas Tornadoes cut, Who’s To Blame Senorita,written by Doug Sahm and his son Shawn. Shawn will also lend support to their new album, Esta Bueno,will be released March and is “…a collection of old sounds and new songs — with five previously unreleased vocal performances by Doug Sahm, new songs written by Fender, and a new song written by Doug and Shawn titled Who’s To Blame, Senorita?

• Marty Stuart officially announced the creation of the Mississippi Country Music Trail. the Trail will feature 30 markers celibrating a variety of country music artists, including Jimmie Rodgers, Charley Pride, Conway Twitty, Jerry Clower, Faith Hill, Tammy Wynette, Mac McAnally and Stuart himself.

• In another stoke of tone-deafness the Academy of Country Music has released their nominees for their 45th annual awards (April 18.) Nowhere in the Song Of the Year category will you find in one of the most popular (and good) songs sweeping awards outside of their narrow vision of mainstream country radio -  Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett’s Golden Globe -winning and Oscar nominated The Weary Kind from the great Jeff Bridges movie Crazy Heart. Hey ACM, do us all a favor and j ust give all the awards to Swift and put something else on in that time slot!

• The will of the late singer/songwriter Stephen Bruton, is being contested by his possibly estranged widow. Bruton provided the inspiration for the Crazy Heart character Bad Blake played by Jeff Bridges and worked with T. Bone Burnett on the movie’s soundtrack in his days of fighting cancer.

• And for more in Crazy Heart news, the good folks at the 9513.com have a great interview with Ryan Bingham. Bingham. reflects on his Golden Globe winning and Academy Award nominated song The Weary Kind.

• PopMatters debuts a new monthly country music column, Kickin’ Up Dust. First up? Willie Nelson!

• The CMT blog has a nice run down of early 2010 Americana releases. Looks to be another bumper year!

• The Levon Helm documentary Ain’t In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm will make its world premiere at this year’s SXSW Festival. (Country Standard Time)

• Speaking of great 2010 releases, seminal 80′s cowpunk band, and the 2008 Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Jason and the Scorchers will release their first album in 14 years. Halcyon Times will be released in February 2010 and was co-produced by Scorcher member Warner E. Hodges and Brad Jones, and features guest contributions from Dan Baird and Tommy Womack.

• The Country for Our Country benefit concert will occur  in Tyler, Texas this Saturday night (10/24). The event will celebrate the troops and benefit wounded soldiers by providing them with counseling and support during a difficult transitional period in their lives. The benefit will feature performances by Joe Nichols, Heidi Newfield, Derek Sholl, and Kacey Musgraves and The Big D & Bubba Show will emcee the event.

• Nashville’s legendary Station Inn get a two-year option on its lease.

• Check out Ryan Bingham’s new video for his song Country Roads.

• Paste magazine’s Andy Whitman gives his view of the landscape of country (really Americana or alt.country) music of the aughts (’00.)

• Also in Paste, Wilco to start work on new album in January.

• John Fogerty and Bruce Springsteen will unite for a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame event.

• Find Lighten’ (the opposum) over at georgejones.com and get entered to win prizes like: Cracker Barrel Gift Cards, Autographed CD’s, and concert tickets.

• The Country for Our Country benefit concert will occur  in Tyler, Texas this Saturday night (10/24). The event will celebrate the troops and benefit wounded soldiers by providing them with counseling and support during a difficult transitional period in their lives. The benefit will feature performances by Joe Nichols, Heidi Newfield, Derek Sholl, and Kacey Musgraves and The Big D & Bubba Show will emcee the event.

• Nashville’s legendary Station Inn get a two-year option on its lease.

• Check out Ryan Bingham’s new video for his song Country Roads.

• Paste magazine’s Andy Whitman gives his view of the landscape of country (really Americana) music of the aughts (’00.)

• Also in Paste, Wilco to start work on new album in January.

• John Fogerty and Bruce Springsteen will unite for a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame event.

• Find Lighten’ (the opposum) over at georgejones.com and get entered to win prizes like: Cracker Barrel Gift Cards, Autographed CD’s, and concert tickets.

Portland Oregon’s Michael Dean Damron, or Mike D. as he was known when fronting his former hell-raising roots-rock band I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House, isn’t your garden variety sensitive, market tested, conveyor belt type of singer/songwriter. The emotion, fear and anger is laid out on his third solo release Father’s Day for all to feel. He’s not just singing, he’s testifying.

The youthful flame-thrower intensity of ICLASOBITH has been condensed into a focused,  welding torch constructing a dark and twisted terrain of one mans life and soul.

The lost love songs here – Dead Days, Boy With A Car and the provocatively titled I Hope Your New Boyfriend Gives You Aids (do NOT judge the album based on the title of this song, it doesn’t show up once in this beautifully heart wrenching cut.) display just as much defiance as they do remorse. Love songs are welcome, whining is not.

The specter of the Damron family patriarch is summoned and exorcised in the title track. The song tells of Damron’s father’s life as a hard, violent, and lonely one. The song is both a celebration and an unflinchingly cautionary tale. The excellent Angels Fly Up carries on the divisional theme, devils and angels, suicide and celebration- that seems to run through Fathers Day.

Tornado Song is a chugging blues-Gospel number veined with wailing harmonica and I’m A Bastard has Damron unmitigated affirmation of his place among the best of the worst in the troubadour trade.

As if the original songs weren’t enough to make this a fine album the three covers Damron has chosen to include speak volumes, fit nicely and are done with deftness and deference. Drag the River’s Beautiful And Damned is a solemn pedal-steel laced number and a ’round the campfire treatment of Thin Lizzy’s Dancing In The Moonlight are wonderful. The real courage, as with anyone willing to cover the Late Great Townes Van Zandt, comes with the inclusion of an accomplished rendition of Towne’s bleak tale of perseverance Waiting Around To Die.

Damron’s whiskey-and-dust vocals  brings to mind modern day contemporaries like Ryan Bingham, Drive By Truckers’ Patterson Hood, William Elliot Whitmore and Lucero’s Ben Nichols. The worn nature of the delivery adds another depth of ragged beauty to each of these gems. Damron sites Steve Earle, Alejandro Escovedo, Townes Van Zant and Waylon Jennings as heroes. But I believe that the true Patron Saint to his unique style of edgy storytelling, with a penchant for tenderness might well be David Allen Coe.

Sure Father’s Day is not a sunny Summer party album, who cares. It’s a great example of a  mature and excellent singer/songwriter venting his own private Winter.

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Father’s Day mp3

These are tough times for America. Wall Street and board room crooks, unnecessary wars, mounting national and personal debt, massive unemployment, terrorists threats.. These are not the toughest times we’ve faced in our history,I think the fisr depression and the civil war were much tougher, but they are hard relative to the lives most people have lived today.

The silver lining is that from hard times comes great music, and country music taps into the populist zeitgeist better than any other genre beside blues. Much has been made about John Rich’s Shuttin’ Detroit Down and Hank William Jr’s Red White and Pink Slip Blues but it’s hard for me to buy populist empathy from a guy that parades around  in mink coats and a guy that puts hotel employees in a choke hold and demands a kiss.

Here is a list of songs that I believe exhibit the best of what it sounds like to live through the worst.

Ryan Bingham - Hard Times – A new artist with an old voice . The name says it all.

The Drive By Truckers - Puttin’  People on the Moon - A stiff shot of old-school Southern rock chased withed populist rage.

Jimmie Rodgers  – Muleskinner Blues – A classic of down-on-your-luck and lookin’ for work poetry.

Johnny Cash - Busted – Harlan Howard’s 1962 penned song of working man’s woe was aa hit for Johnny Cash in 1962 on his classic At Folsom Prison live album and was an even bigger hit for Ray Charles the following year.

Merle Haggard – Workin’ Man Blues – Classic Bakersfield rocks this ode to the laborer.

Frankie Miller – Blackland Farmer – A paen to the 1958 farmers that were just starting to get a glipmpse of the industrial farms that were to change thier professions and lives forever.

Levon Helm – Poor Old Dirt Farmer -  Helm, the only American in the Americana/rock group The Band, tells the story of his Dad’s farm inTurkey Scratch, a hamlet west of Helena, Arkansas.

Johnny Paycheck – Take This Job and Shove It – it’s not all hand-wringing and woe is me in country music. Paycheck’s cover of  David Allan Coe’s song was a huge 70′s hit and a raised finger to The Man.

• Charlottesville, VA’s 6 Day Bender has embarked on their Spring/Summer East Coast tour, They are stopping by two of my favorite clubs in the New York area – Hank’s Saloon in Brooklyn and Arlene’s Grocery in New York City. Go support this fine band!

• MerleFest 2009, scheduled for April 23-26 on the campus of Wilkes Community College, will once again host the MerleFest Mandolin Contest, the Merle Watson Bluegrass Banjo Championship and the Doc Watson Guitar Championship on the first two days of the festival in Alumni Hall.  These contests offer aspiring pickers some time in the spotlight to be heard by the wildly appreciative audiences at the festival, along with a chance to compete for prizes.

• Speaking of festivals Twangfest 13 will be held June 10-13, 2009 in St. Louis: Woot!”  Saint LouisOUIS, MO curretlty have conformation for Big Sandy & the Fly-Rite Boys, Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Sarah Borges & the Broken Singles, Bruce Robison and Eilen Jewell with more on the way. Check thier website for more news.

• The 11th Pickathon Indie Roots Music Festival July 31-August 2 just outside Portland, OR. will feature Blitzen Trapper, The Sadies,  Dale Watson, The Hackensaw Boys, Justin Townes Earle, Elliott Brood, Joe Pug and many other great acts.

• The the 6th annual Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival June 4th – 7th at the Mulberry Mountain in Ozark AR. will feature the Yonder Mountain String Band, Split Lip Rayfield, Lucero, Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Blue Mountain, Cross Canadian Ragweed and many more.

• And though not strictly a roots music festival San Francisco’s second Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival will feature Band of Horses, Bettye LaVette, the Heartless Bastards, Ryan Bingham and Tom Jones (?!)

Fans of gritty, sun drenched tales from the road rejoice! Texas/New Mexico neo-trad troubadour Ryan Bingham and his band The Dead Horses (Corby Schaub – guitar, Matt Smith – drums, Elijah Ford – bass) are readying Roadhouse Sun his sophomore release from Lost Highway records to be released on May 5.  Roadhouse Sun is a follow up to Bingham’s 2007 much lauded debut Lost Highway Mescalito.

Mescalito producer and former Black Crowes guitarist, Marc Ford returns as producer on Road House Sun. And the PR material states that” Bingham covers some new subject matter on Roadhouse Sun as he challenges political accountability in Endless Ways and notes eye-opening similarities to our dark past in Dylan’s Hard Rain. Bingham has established himself as a deeply personal songwriter with a knack for painting vivid pictures in his songs. These images come to life in everything from his bluesy roadhouse romps such as Hey Hey and Day Is Done, to the epic Change Is to the dustbowl hymns Rollin Highway Blues, Country Roads and Snake Eyes.”

I was a fan of Mescalito when it came out, it made my top 10 that year, and after seeing him and his great band several times in New York and once in Nashville I am even more of a fan.

Ryan Bingham-Snake Eyes

• There seems to be a bonanza of tribute albums coming out recently but few I’m really looking forward to, this is one of those, Jeffrey Foucault’s tribute to John Prine entitled: Moon Right Between the Eyes: Jeffrey Foucault Sings the Songs of John Prine. The album will drop on February 17th from Signature Sounds Recordings. You can hear cuts now at Foucault’s site.

• The OCRegister.com’s Ben Wener posted a great review of the February 5th show at the Grove of Anaheim. The nights show was a make up gig that was originally to take place in early December. Hag canceled because, as he later revealed, he underwent surgery for lung cancer, ultimately having the diseased portion removed. In attendance for the performance was no other than Kris Kristofferson who was watching from the balcony.

• Get those DVRs ready folks, The Drive By Truckers and Ryan Bingham will be tonight’s featured performers on Austin City Limits. Check you local directory for air times.

• The mysterious guest to appear at this years Merlefest is none other than…Linda Ronstadt. Really, Linda Ronstadt? Really?

The Drive By Truckers are just off their start to 2009 with 3 sold-out shows for their Athens GA 40 Watt Club Homecoming, they next will be playing this weekend,  with opener Bloodkin, in Knoxville at the Valarium (Thurs Jan 29) and two nights at Asheville’s historic Orange Peel (Fri Jan 30 and Sat Jan 31). Next month they have a few more dates including a two night stand in DC at 9:30 Club and a few dates with Texas’ Hayes Carll.

On Feb. 5th Drive By Truckers Front Man Patterson Hood will play an annual benefit for Athens, GA’S The Robert Osborne Classic Film Festival.

On Feb 7th, PBS will be airing the episode of Austin City Limits starring Drive By Truckers and Ryan Bingham. Check local listings for exact time and date of airing.

April will see the DBTs backing the legendary R&B and soul and funk pioneer Booker T. Jones ANTI- Records debut Potato Hole. The band will be backing Booker T. in some dates including thier first ever New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival appearance on Friday April 24th.

The Drive-By Truckers with Kelly Hogan – I’m Your Puppet