Welcome to 2010 folks, not let’s get a cup of joe and roll up our sleeves, and get into the latest in music happenings…

• The New York Times features an article, Nashville Inches, Ever So Grudgingly, Into The Future, where it compares the lack of innovation in Music Row to the stubborn (and suicidal) stance to the recording industry over the last decade. Country music has learned tat “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” in as much as it’s attained it’s current  brand of pop-country. This is where the article overlooks Nashville’s history of of style assimilation over the past 50 years from co-opting the 1940’s crooners to the current filching of bad 70’s rock.

• New York City twangers need to head over to the always excellent Rockwood Music Hall on Tuesday, January 12 to see friend of  Twang Nation Joe Whyte (the King of NYC Americana)  who will be appearing with his full band, Cat Popper (Grace Potter, Ryan Adams) on bass, Rob Heath (Kevin Kinney, Jill Sobule) on drums, and Dan Marcus (Norah Jones, Ana Egge) on guitar. Whyte will be playing current favorites as well as premiering new music to appear on his follow up to Devil in the Details.

• American Songwriter’s newest legend’s issue features Townes Van Zandt, Robert Earle Keen, Bobby Braddock, Rickie Lee Jones, Richard Thompson and John Prine.

• If you didn’t hear, died on Christmas Day at his Athens, Georgia, holidays singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt took his own life by overdose of muscle relaxants.  Paralyzed from the waist down after a 1983 car accident, Chesnutt was wheelchair-bound since the age of 18 and suffered from years of depression. His music is a unique blend of idiosyncratic folk/Americana, bracing in its beauty as much as in its honesty. Here are some tributes: PopMatters.com, Online Athens, the New York Times and the Guardian.uk.

• Country Music Neo-Outlaw Jamey Johnson shows his respect for the classics by covering Vern Gosdin, George Jones, George Strait and, his most obvious influence, Waylon Jennings, at the Chicago Country Music Festival.

• Break out a jar of granny’s skull rattle folks, Juli Thaki at the 9513.com has given us her top 26 songs about moonshine.

• Tom Russell has written what could be considered a companion piece to his new release Blood and Candle Smoke at the Rumpas (Where God and the Devil Wheel Like Vultures: Report from El Paso.) The dispatch reflects Russell’s style he cultivated by hanging with American underground great Charles Bukowski and similar threads from this and previous releases about his home in El Paso, TX,  the culture, people and the drug wars.

• The Los Angelas Times’ Ann Powers reviews the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum benefit featuring Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill and Dwight Yoakam among others (including the spirit of Townes Van Zandt.)

• The Flower Pickin’ festival (October 16-19)will feature Carlene Carter, Justin Townes Earle, Jimmy Tittle, John Francis and more. The festival celebrates the day that Johnny Cash was arrested for public drunkenness in Starkville, MS in the early morning of May 11, 1965 following a performance at Mississippi State University. He spent one night in jail and paid a fine of $36. Cash sang about his run-in with “the law” in Starkville on his album, “At San Quentin (The Complete Live Concert),” recorded in 1969.

• 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)

The Canadian late night talk show the Hour has a great interview with Steve Earle.  Earle talks abut making his career and his newest release Townes, a tribute to his mentor Townes Van Zandt and recounts some great stories with his time with Townes. The snake wrangler story is worth the watch!

Jim Fusilli at the Wall Street Journal (wsj.com) reviews the Steve Martin Concert at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. Martin, Supported by the Steep Canyon Rangers, performed work from his latest bluegrass release “The Crow—New Songs for the Five-String Banjo” (Rounder)

John Jurgensen, also of the Wall Street Journal,  covers the upcoming Elvis Costello twang-tinged release Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, Costello’s varied career and his thoughts on the current state of the record industry. The album was cut in three day in Nashville and is produced by Americana-roots journeyman T-Bone Burnett (who Costello collaberted with on 1986’s King of America) and featured Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Jim Lauderdale.

Whitney Self  at the CMT.com blog reviews the recent Jamey Johnson show at Nashville’s legendary Ryman Auditorium and and states is the rowdiest (and drunkest)  he’s ever seen at the venue.

AamericanaRoots.com give sa listeds to the new Scott H. Biram Bloodshot release Something’s Wrong/Lost Forever.

Kevin Ransom at Ann Arbor’s Mlive.com interviews Austin’s guit-steel master Junior Brown.

• The fine folks at the 9513 brought to my attention the sorry news that Kris Kristofferson’s longtime guitarist Stephen Bruton has succumbed to throat cancer.

• More details on Stephen Bruton at Billboard.com.

• More sad news, Lynyrd Skynyrd Bassist Donald “Ean” Evan dies At 48 after a battle with cancer.

• Country music legends Charley Pride and Marty Stuart and bluesman Pinetop Perkins will headline the third annual Mississippi Grammy gala.

• Recycle your cell phones to support Nuci’s Space and get free merch coupons from the Drive-By Truckers official Store!

• The New York Times has a piece on Steve Earle and his course in recording his trubute to his mentor Texas singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt.

• Chicago’s Joe Pug has been tapped to perform at the 2009 Lollapalooza.

• New releases by Texas singer/songwriters Slaid Cleaves (Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away), Wayne “The Train” Hancock (Vipers of Melody) and Dale Watson (The Truckin’ Sessions Vol. 2 ) are in stores and online today.

• HearYa.com gives thier view on Steve Earle new Townes Van Zandt covers album Townes.

• 77square.com posts a conversation with Wayne “The Train” Hancock about his latest album Vipers of Melody.

Introducing the new video by William Elliot Whitemore for his song Hell or High Water (thanks to ninebullets.net for bringing this to my attention.) Twang Nation Review of Whitmore’s newest release Animals in the Dark.

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=55794026

These days duets are more like joint corporate sponsorships than a simpatico union of the heart and mind through song. Great male and female collaborations transcend their individual craft and emerge with something altogether new and remarkable. Kitty Wells and Red Foley, Ferlin Husky and Jean Shepard, George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Johnny and June – they made music that was more than the sum of their already amazing parts.

The Americana world seems to be coming into its own in the duet field. What arguably began with Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris got a real boost with 2005’s Begonias featuring Whiskeytown and Tres Chicas’ Caitlin Cary and her friend singer/songwriter Thad Cockrell. 2007 saw Robert Plant, Alison Krauss and T. Bone Burnett’s  Raising Sand set a standard for craft as well as sales. Now 2009 has already endowed us with two dazzling releases that build handily on this legacy.

Gretchen Peters is no stranger to the world of Nashville songwriting. Her songs have been recorded by Trisha Yearwood, Pam Tillis, George Strait, Martina McBride, and Patty Loveless who was nominated for a 1996 song of the year Grammy for Peters’ “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am.” for such a prolific songwriter it’s surprising that her seventh solo album, One To The Heart, One To The Head is a covers album. On it she partners with L.A. native, El Paso resident and Renaissance man Tom Russell who penned one song, Guadalupe, co-produced and painted the album cover image of what looks like a stylized dead horse. Russell knows his way around songwriting, his songs have been covered by Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith, Dave Alvin and Suzy Bogguss as well as 16 solo releases. These are two heavyweights and they bring their considerable collective talents to bare on a great release.

OTTH,OTTH is referred to as a “western album” which Peters tapped into her earlier life in Boulder, Colorado to draw inspiration. The instrumental opener North Platte does set a western landscape with a Elmer Bernstein or Jerome Moross sense of expanse as well as gravity. The landscape contracts just a bit for the stark and beautiful Prairie In The Sky which beautifully highlights Peter’s shimmering trill as she floats over cello and piano accompaniment. Bob Dylan’s Billy 4, from the soundtrack to Sam Peckinpah’s film Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, gets a serious borderlands infusion with Joel Guzman’s extraordinary Conjunto-style accordion and Russell bringing his silky-graveled voice counter to Peters’.

Tom Dundee’s tale of cultural isolation shines as the classic country sound of These Cowboys Born Out Of Their Time and with Russell’s end of the road lament Guadalupe woe never sounded so good. The accordion and barrel house piano that kicks off Bonnie Raitt’s tequila fueled barroom sing-along Sweet & Shiny Eyes sets just the right cantina vibe. It takes guts to cover a Townes Van Zandt song and Snowin’ on Raton is done with delicate beauty and  a proper sense of deference. If I Had a Gun furnishes this album with its title. “If I had a gun you’d be dead. One to the heart, one to the head. If I had a gun I’d wipe it clean, my fingerprints off on these sheets. They’d bury you in the cold hard ground, fist full of dirt would hold you down. They’d bury you in the cold hard ground, it’d be the first night I sleep sound.” Peckinpah would be proud.

Gretchen Peters Site | Tom Russell Site | Buy

Buddy Miller was featured on the cover of the No Depression’s final issue last year. The bible of alt.country/Roots/Americana declared Miller the Americana journeyman the Artist of the Decade and it’s hard to argue he’s not. On top of his great solo work Miller played lead guitar and provided backing vocals for Emmylou Harris’s Spyboy band, performed with Steve Earle on his El Corazon tour, performed on Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s 2000 album Endless Night and appeared on several albums by songwriter/singer Lucinda Williams. Most recently Miller has been busy performing lead guitar and backing vocal duties for Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ Raising Sand touring band. Julie, his wife of over 20 years, is no slouch either with six solo albums, and three collaborating with Buddy, under her belt. Her songs have been covered by Dixie Chicks, Linda Ronstadt, Lee Ann Womack, Emmylou Harris, Julie Roberts and others.

But as prolific as they are Written In Chalk is their only their third collaboration in their first over six years, and though both Buddy and Julie share vocal duties the real magic comes when Julie’s lyrics are swathed in her world-weary angel vocals and complemented by Buddy’s chameleon-like guitar picking that’s been hewed by years of studio sessions.

Buddy and Julie collaborated on Wide River which was later recorded by Levon Helm and the superb album opener Ellis County, a song aching for the good old/hard days, is cut from the same Steinbeckian gingham. Robert Plant described Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On) from Raising Sand as “shimmy music” and Gasoline And Matches has the same vibe, swamp mud guitars and bad ass drums. Julie winsomely sings Don’t Say Goodbye which features Patty Griffin who has the good sense to lend only a supporting role to Julie’s already elegant voice.

Robert Plant lends restrained support for Buddy in a backwoods rendition of Mel Tillis’ What You Gonna Do Leroy which is reported to have been recorded in a dressing room at Toronto’s Molson Amphitheatre during the Raising Sand tour. The song sounds like the source material for a thousand rock songs not least of all Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues. A Long, Long Time exquisitely shows off Julie’s  smoky jazz side and Patty Griffen makes an appearance on the excellent cut Chalk. As good as she is Griffen is she seems superfluous when you have Julie Miller at your disposal. Hush, Sorrow is a pensive beauty with Buddy accomapnied by Regina McCrary. Agian I say, when you have Julie Miller….

Smooth is another “shimmy” style swampy rocker with Buddy and Julie sharing vocals. Julie show up on another delicate beauty with June which was written and recorded as a tribute the day June Carter Cash died. The song is justly somber and celebratory. The Selfishness Of Man is a slow motion testament on hope featuring Emmylou Harris. I love Emmylou but my earlier comments on Patty Griffin’s appearances still apply. Julie would have been a better choice.

Buddy & Julie Miller Site | Buy

As I’ve posted before Steve Earle is in the process of recording an album of cover songs of his freind, mentor, Texas legend and source of his son’s middle name Townes Van Zandt entitled simply Townes. Pitchfork has posted that the album will be released May 12 on the New West label and will also be available as a deluxe two-CD set and on 180-gram vinyl.

From Pitchfork: “Dust Brother John King, who produced Earle’s 2007 album Washington Square Serenade, mans the boards on one song, “Lungs”. On that same song, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello guests on guitar. Singer-songwriter Allison Moorer, Earle’s wife, sings backup on “To Live Is to Fly” and “Loretta”. Earle also recruited a backing band of bluegrass all-stars to play on several songs. And duetting on “Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold”: Earle’s son Justin Townes Earle, appearing on record with his dad for the first time. ”

Head over to Pitchfork.com to hear a stream of Earle’s cover of Van Zandt’s “Lungs”, featuring Tom Morello doing his wikki-wikki turntable-scratch thing on guitar.

Townes track list:

1 Pancho and Lefty
2 White Freightliner Blues
3 Colorado Girl
4 Where I Lead Me
5 Lungs
6 No Place to Fall
7 Loretta
8 Brand New Companion
9 Rake
10 Delta Momma Blues
11 Marie
12 Don’t Take It Too Bad
13 Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold
14 (Quicksilver Daydreams of) Maria
15 To Live Is to Fly

The first time I ever saw Larry Jon Wilson was while watching the excellent DVD on the outlaw country music movement of the 70s Heartworn Highways. He was sang Ohoopee River Bottomland with more soul than a a white man deserves to have.  Along with his contemporaries Townes Van Zandt, Mickey Newberry, Tony Joe White and Kris Kristofferson Williams rejected Nashville’s rigid ideas about country music and forged some of the finest music you’ll ever hear. Kristofferson said of Wilson that “he can break your heart with a voice like a cannon ball.”

For The Sake of the Song has a nice post about Larry Jon Wilson’ career and offers some mp3s for you to download. Do yourself a favor and get to know this exceptional man’s music.

Larry Jon Wilson -  Ohoopee River Bottomland from Heartworn Highways

The new release by Gretchen Peters with Tom Russell, “One to the Heart, One to the Head,” should be available on or before Feb 1 2009. It features Russell’s song, “Guadalupe,” plus songs by Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt, Rosalie Sorrells, Jennifer Warnes, Ian Tyson, Stephanie Davis and others. Russell calls it his favorite western-flavored record since “Blood on the Saddle,” by Tex Ritter.  (via the 9513)

The making of “One To The Heart, One To The Head.”