Jon had a quick layover on his way to Memphis to play with Cory Branan (a show that I could not attend, no I don’t want to talk about it, I might cry). [Seriously, we need to find a way to supplement our income so that we can pursue our rock star lifestyle because the day job thing is getting old. What gives, universe?—Daisy] We met up for drinks with a couple other friends. [Which I could not attend. No, I'm not at all bitter, why do you ask?—Daisy] There wasn’t time for a podcast or really even a formal interview but I did learn a few things about Jon, about myself and about the world. Here they are in no particular order:
- Beach towns are apparently great for partying, but not so great for singing mellower, emotionally intense songs. I guess party people only want to party. Who knew?
- Jon commented that all the songs I was requesting he wrote when he was 18. I am emotionally an 18 year old boy, apparently. I guess this explains my intense love of Lucero. [That would explain it. So what's my excuse?—Daisy]
- There is, out there somewhere, hours and hours of Drag the River video footage from recording sessions. I think of this as my own personal collection of private concerts that are just waiting out there for me to enjoy it. I know Jon et al. are very busy but please to be harassing them so we can all watch this footage!!
- Jon and I share a love of Cory Branan and somehow we both always manage to be completely trashed at the end of Lucero shows. It’s crazy!!! Like if we didn’t have proof we were both in the same place, then no one believe that aren’t, in fact, the same person. Wait! There is no proof!! Oh no, maybe I am Jon Snodgrass and you just don’t know it. Yet. (Heeeee!! The idea of Jon pretending to be a girl on the internet is incredibly amusing to me.)
- While on my HCT hiatus, among other things, I went to the Lost Sea. Jon is as excited by underground lakes as I am. We both lamented that we never got to go to the Cavern Tavern. I hear that far underground you can drink a lot more and not get as drunk. Just be careful when you go topside!! [What? This sounds completely made up to me.—Daisy]
- I am stupid for not carrying a camera with me all the time. Not only do I not have any pictures of us together (and lack of pictures furthers the rumor that we are the same person), but I was unable to capture the expression Jon’s face as he discovered that the glass he was drinking from at the bar where I work was stamped with “Fort Collins Brewery” on the side. It was totally a coincidence, too, as I wasn’t even present when the bartender poured his beer.
As I write this I am listening to the Cory Branan & Jon Snodgrass split EP and it is AWESOME. For starters it has the best cover ever on an album. Apparently, Jon designed this himself on bar napkin when he was a few cups into the night. It is a thing of beauty. [Also, presumably designed to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies?—Daisy]
I don’t know if listening to the album makes up for missing the Jon & Cory show in Memphis, but it does have the added benefit of immediately available for repeated listenings. [True enough. I listened to it at least four times through today.—Daisy] I told Jon that if wanted to I could write this whole blog as nothing but my emotional responses to albums and how they related to my current romantic disasters. And, hell, I very nearly do this now. The Cory Branan & Jon Snodgrass split EP is no exception.
The album opens with Jon singing “Alone & Distracted,” a song that tugs at me now, as the man who currently holds my hearts is indefinitely seven time zones away. Jon’s voice has this underlying tone to it that just sounds like loneliness to me and is somehow incredibly sexy. [I agree about the sexiness, anyhow—Daisy] That he writes songs that really speak to me just wraps the package up with a nice bow. I am right now just seconds away from writing “I heart Jon” in sparkly pink pen on every surface in my house, so let’s move on to Cory, okay?
Our love of Cory Branan is well documented here at HCT. This split EP is one more piece of the Cory love puzzle (who also might get his name written everywhere in sparkly pen and surrounded by stars) [Seriously, are we not yet to a ★Cory Branan★ point yet? I think we are.—Daisy]. His first contribution to the album is “The Corner.” This is a song about letting go and moving on (a lesson I should probably be learning). Jon sneaks in and harmonizes throughout the song making it slightly more fantastic. This is classic soft, intense Cory with smart, wordsmith lyrics. It’s a song that is calming, not merely from its softness, but the sound of Jon & Cory’s voices and the guitars and the subject matter just put you in a big fluffy bed on a grey, rainy day and leave you in a place where loneliness feels righteous and almost and not at all like rent torn in your soul.
“Solo in Soho” and “Wild One” come in next. I’m starting to wonder if my own current loneliness is shading my entire perception of this album, or if it really is an unintentional theme here. The guitar playing on “Wild One” speaks exactly to what I want to hear from an acoustic act: it’s rousing and clear and pulls your mood along as much as the lyrics do.
I’m sure every reader of this has heard Cory’s “Walkaround” at some point or another. Half a dozen live bootlegs of it are floating around [on my ipod.—Daisy]. It contains the oft referenced (at least around HCT HQ) lyric, “And any Friday night while you’re sitting here alone / you’ll hear a knock and you’ll open up the door / to the man you are waiting for, just like that I’m sure / and he’ll be holding magic flowers on a golden unicorn.” And even with that, the song isn’t so much about unrealistic expectations, but about making things simple [and maybe a little bit about our tendency to get in our own way sometimes—Daisy]. The song itself changes twice, feeling a little like three songs mashed into one, but somehow it works really well. And once again, Jon backing Cory here makes this version something more fantastic than the many bootlegs and love versions I have heard.
“Born Apart” is the kind of Jon song that makes me think of high, lonesome mountain peaks, winters and whiskey. It is a lament about coming into the world alone and leaving it the same, and yet it isn’t. Maybe I hear more of an admonishment to not take things for granted and to not lie to yourself about what’s really good. Cory backing Jon is fantastic as it comes across almost like a second voice speaking just in your ear, to you alone, driving the message home even more personally.
It seems nearly impossible, given the number of Cory Branan shows I managed to attend and the number of bootlegs I collect while waiting for next album to arrive, that there would be a Cory song I hadn’t heard before, but “Yeah, So What?” might be that song. [I feel like we have heard this before, but maybe only once?—Daisy] I LOVE THIS SONG. It’s got kind of a subtle John Hartford/John Prine/Todd Snider clever stand-off-ishness to it. The lyrics are excellently crafted, the song is upbeat but not overtly silly or bouncy. This is the song that comes up on shuffle when you are doing the dishes and you stop everything and dance around until it’s over. You dance shake your fists with sort of a gleeful punk rock aggression. Perfection! [Yeah, this song is actually that fantastic. It makes me happy in a way that I can't even pinpoint or explain, other than to say it is made of joy and rainbows.—Daisy]
I know my words, even when I am this spastically excited, aren’t always enough to convince you to get an album. It’s cool, Suburban Home Records has taken care of that. You can stream the album in its entirety to make sure you really do like it before you buy it. And if you want to read some smarter, less spastic thoughts on the EP, there is this fantastic interview with Cory and Jon. My life is pretty awesome at times. It’s not just the music, it’s the people and Jon is good people. I am glad for his albums and the time spent with me. ♥Jon Snodgrass♥
© Fifty Foot Productions, LLC, 2009. | Permalink
]]>© Fifty Foot Productions, LLC, 2009. | Permalink
]]>In the meantime there’s some new albums you should be listening too:
DADDY, For a Second Time (Tommy Womack & Will Kimbrough, also on tour, check the dates, go see them and learn to love Tommy as much as I do)
Todd Snider, The Excitement Plan (hopefully you’ve already got this because you’ve been reading all the other good press it’s getting)
Cory and Jon ♥ (speaking of which, Daisy and I are going to see Cory tomorrow and Jon in about month, hiatus or no, I promise to report back to y’all about both)
Ryan Bingham, Roadhouse Sun (Again, everyone has been on about this so hopefully you got the memo already)
Alright, kids, I’ll be back from hiatus when I am a whole person again (July?). In the meantime, to cure what ails me, I’ll be listening to the new Lucero tracks, DADDY, Todd, Jon, Cory, Ryan and Johnny Cash on repeat. When I get back we’ll have podcasts, reviews and metric ton of crazy new stuff, just you wait. I promise the wait will be worth it.
P.S. Willie contest winners are Lisa and Timmy Mac!! Thanks to Random.org for arbitrarily shaking out the list for me. Winners, check your email for details. Hooray!
© Fifty Foot Productions, LLC, 2009. | Permalink
]]>The new podcast is also up. It’s a good listen for a grey spring day. Even if you aren’t in Nashville where the weather isn’t cooperating with the season you should still go download it and listen.
And now that I’ve got your reminders out of the way, I need to clean up some of tabs I’ve had open in my browser for weeks. Here’s some things I’ve been meaning to share with you:
Digital Music News has an article up about the DIY movement killing off the rock stars of the future. I don’t know. It’s kind of a chicken/egg deal. I mean, the industry already really screwed itself out of a lot of it’s audience. The emergence of new media and methods for finding music have changed the way audiences listen and what they look for. So are artists doing it themselves breaking down the system, or artists doing the DIY bit because the system is already completely broken?
Newsweek.com has an article up about whether country music is dead. I’m no friend to mainstream, pop radio country. I love country music, the old stuff, the new stuff you can find digging in the cracks of floorboards in road houses and honky tonks. I love Americana, alt.country, bluegrass and new grass. I hate what everyone thinks of when you say country music these days. While I agree with the author here that radio country sucks, I must say way to gloss over what is happening in American music [I'm gonna have to agree with one of the comments: "Every decade has had journalists who didn't know squat about country music trying to define it." Bitchin' about having to search in order to find good country is about as stupid as Toby Keith. Choices outside of the Nashville sound are a good thing.--Mick]. If he thinks all country music has lost it’s grit, maybe somebody should introduce him to Dale Watson or Jon Byrd.
Sentences I never thought I’d write: Check out Todd Snider on ESPN tomorrow. Oh baseball, you really do bring the world together in strange ways, don’t you? Now if only Todd could make the Yankees fans and the Red Sox fans kiss and make up, my life would be so much easier[Speaking of Toby Keith, there's a hilarious little comment by Snider down that page about the whole Kristofferson confusion and the jingoistic jackass.--Mick ].
New Son Volt album in July. I liked The Search, but still feel somewhat trepidacious at the prospect of a new album. My expectations are hard to reign in from these boys.
I’m probably the last person to bring this up lately, but have you seen The Old, Weird America blog? It describes itself as an exploration of folk music via the Folkways Anthology. I could lose a weekend, or a month, just reading and listening to this delightful exploration.
© Fifty Foot Productions, LLC, 2009. | Permalink
]]>Matt is wonderful, but if you want the true experience of what it was like in the HCT living room that day, I suggest you listen to it after only 5 or so hours of sleep, when you are hungover and have started drinking at lunch time. I won’t admit whether those were the exact conditions of the day, but recreating those conditions might actually make us sound less obnoxious (or at least you’ll understand us better).
Matt is one of those people you want to spend a starry, warm night on the porch with. Bottle of whiskey, guitar, fireflies and endless delightful conversation. He’s pretty, he’s smart, he sings with a soul-nicking raspiness. I’ve never had conversation with him that I didn’t leave me inspired.
Songs in the podcast are all Urmy’s originals and include:
New Year’s Morning
The Old Photograph
Cry Freedom
Poor Man’s Blues
The Lament of Martine
Cup of Grace
Renaissance Rodeo
Plus a lot of talk about stories and poetry and music and other good stuff.
You can find Matt on MySpace, his website and YouTube. His new album should be available shortly (’round about July, don’t worry, we’ll keep you apprised).
Poetry in motion:
© Fifty Foot Productions, LLC, 2009. | Permalink
]]>And then I realized…
Duh. You ‘re already either going to buy this album or you aren’t, whether I like it or not is irrelevant (although I do like it). I mean, it’s possible, but it seems unlikely that someone reading this has been thinking, “Gosh, I’ve sure heard a lot about this Willie Nelson fellow. I should get one of his albums. I wonder which one, oh, sure Naked Willie seems like a good place to start.” No. Just not happening.
You are a Willie fan or you aren’t (and if you don’t like Willie Nelson, well, I just don’t want to know, okay, because I want to keep liking you). If you are a fan, you might feel like you have enough Willie and will save your money by simply wallowing in whatever records you already have. Or, maybe, you’re like me and you just want more more more more. And let me tell you, Naked Willie is so much more than more. So if you are the second kind of fan, go buy it already. And if you are the first kind of fan you should go buy it too. Yes, even if you already own all the songs .
Naked Willie is comprised of songs Willie originally recorded between 1965 to 1974 (I think. I do have the power to look this up but I’m just not going to). You’ve probably heard them before. You love them but cringe at the peculiar and particular sound of that era in Nashville recording. You know the one – the strange, spangly orchestration that almost sounds like polyester pants would, if they could make a noise. It occasionally makes you a little uncomfortable to hear it. And yet the songs are so damn good that you bear it. (This isn’t just a Willie problem, obviously; you find it with Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, David Allen Coe and many others.) Well, guess what? Here comes Naked Willie to the rescue! The songs are stripped entirely of those awkward arrangements, and listening to them feels as good as tossing those polyester pants away and putting on your best, well worn jeans –or maybe going butt naked, like Willie’s album title suggests. Mmmm, comfortable, natural, country-naked goodness.
I listened to this album without having read more about it than the three bullet points on the CD cover sticker. So I knew they were “un-produced” and re-mixed from the original tapes (and, oh, HA, I just got the ‘pull some strings’ joke). What I wasn’t prepared for is how different some of the songs sound. There’s a deep sadness verging on tragedy that lends a sense of creepiness to the stripped down songs. The end result was that my emotional response was completely spun, more raw and open than I’d previously experienced. Because the integrity of the songs is maintained, each is still representative of the era in which is was recorded. There’s sense memory attached to these songs, not only do the songs sound like my childhood, but even if I had never heard them before they would surely still sound like the 70s (without the cringe inducing polyester parts, of course). For instance, the use of piano in country music is largely lost, and so here, even with the strings scrubbed out of the songs, you hear a sound that is amazing, but very much not from the present day. These reworkings stand out as somehow nearly timeless and yet completely bound to the time they were made, which makes for music that has a secondary emotional core, that goes beyond the songs themselves.
Of course now, as I write this, I’ve read the liner notes, and everyone and their brother’s response to the album, and they all have done an excellent job of summing up and rehashing how the album came to be made naked. Many also do an excellent job of pointing out that this album brings Willie back to our attention as in incredible song writer. So I don’t have to say all that again (um, not more than I already have anyway), you can check out reviews at: Popmatters.com, Southernbrand.com, Twangnation.com and Stillisstillmoving.com. Song BMG has a nice little video in which Naked Willie co-producer Mickey Raphael talks about the making of the album. You can also hear a bit of the songs there, in case my words (and other people’s) are not enough to convince you that you want this album.
That all said, I should say something about the songs and so I present (mostly) one sentence about each song:
1. “Bring Me Sunshine” – This could only be improved if the Muppets joined in and sang a round with Willie at the end.
2. “Following Me Around” – The subtly Spanish guitar here spins the melancholy in to something delicious, something to be savored while drinking alone in a plaza cafe in Mexico in the 60s.
3. “The Ghost” – The gorgeousness of this song makes my dim, late night loneliness seem to be eradicated by noontime sunlight.
4. “Happiness Lives Next Door” – The only remedy to this sad song is Dolly Parton’s “Two Doors Down,” which clearly must always be played right after “Happiness” to cure your broken heart.
5. “I Just Dropped By” – The instrumentation/arrangement here is so vastly improved that I almost forget to listen to the lyrics.
6. “Jimmy’s Road” – If you can listen to this without some part of your heart breaking for every soldier who ever fought for you, then you are clearly a soulless monster.
7. “I Let My Mind Wander” – There’s a happiness here that pulls from the debilitating sadness of the song that somehow makes the whole thing work really well.
8. “If You Could See What’s Going Through My Mind” – I might actually be dancing a 70s-ish boogie around the room instead of thinking of a sentence for this song.
9. “Johnny One Time” – Willie singing this is kind of gay, in a good way, and the guitar at the beginning thrills me in an odd sort of way (also it makes me want to lay aside the Brenda Lee version and hope wistfully for a Patsy Cline version to surface).
10. “The Local Memory” – There’s a starkness, just Willie and his guitar in the intro to this that makes me long for all of these songs to be done yet again, this time with just Willie and his guitar.
11. “The Party’s Over” – That’s some Cricket-swoon inducing steel guitar right there.
12. “Where Do You Stand” – Love love love this, would like to send it out as an elementary school type love note– do you like me: check yes or no–to all my future romantic interests: where do you stand?
13. “When We Live Again” – So deliciously romantic, like reading Pride & Prejudice by candle light in a big fluffy bed.
14. “What Can You Do To Me Now” – The simple clarity of the music here pushes this song over the edge into something that can perhaps only be listened to after a really bad break up. Beautiful but too sharply painful.
15. “I’m A Memory” – Again the syrupy sweetness of the old version is gone and yet some cheerfulness lingers and keeps the song from utterly destroying me emotionally.
16. “Sunday Morning Coming Down” – Holy crap!! I didn’t know it was possible to love this song even more than I already did.
17. “Laying My Burdens Down” – If I started every single day by listening to this version of this song, my life might in fact be filled with much more joy and optimism.
It’s all fantastic Willie greatness. If you really can’t go buy the album (like you are bedridden and don’t know how to use Amazon.com), today is your lucky day! I have two copies to give away. All you have to do to enter the contest is leave us a little comment, just a sentence or two, telling me what you would say to Willie Nelson if you ever met him. Two winners will be picked at random on April 15. (And hey, double your chances, Twangnation.com is also having a contest!) Winners will be contacted via email for a snail mail address. Whether you win it, or buy it, you gotta have it, then we can all have gleeful Willie love together again.
© Fifty Foot Productions, LLC, 2009. | Permalink
]]>Sipping fuzzy grape liquor in that barn, I heard some songs that made my knees weak. Songs that soared far above the barn, the crap drink, and the late night, to shower back down in a sound that was ramshackle good. Songs so new they will not be heard for a while yet. But do not drown in your envy just yet! All hope is not lost!! Because there was an album before which has been melting my heart and cleansing my soul and soothing my hideous grape soda induced headache (surely it was the soda and not the liquor). Gavin Glass and the Holy Shakers.
Here at HCT I am mostly just a giddy and gleeful spaz about music I like. I have considered filling my posts with endless anecdotes of how music matches and shapes the endless saga of my doomed relationships. Or I could tie everything back to the glory and wonder that is East Nashville, the pumping, bleeding, broken heart of Music City. But I generally try to restrain myself from filling your head with these unnecessary poetics, but sometimes it seems impossible. Gavin Glass is making it impossible today. Don’t blame this on the hideous grape soda concoction, oh, no this is all inspired by Gavin Glass’s words and music.
East Nashville is a magnificent and mysterious place. A place where anything that can happen. Sure Glass is from Dublin, and was only in town for 7 days to lay down some tracks, but it is the strange magic of East Nashville that led me to be sitting there in that barn with him. It is through that peculiar alchemy of East Nashville, and the places it takes me and the things it brings, that I am now listening to the Holy Shakers on repeat.
There’s got to be a special name for this sound. What do you call Americana, roots rock that is Irish? Since traditional Irish music is the bones of old time music, which is arguably the nervous system of modern country (sorry, that metaphor does suck), if you take those bones, those nerves and return them to the land of their birth and remake the influences of the influences, do you then have something Frankensteinian and yet cleanly reborn? Yes indeed. And even if it isn’t exactly new, it’s fresh, crisp, smart and very fulfilling. Or at least it’s all those things if it’s Gavin Glass and the Holy Shakers.
It could be, and probably has been, said that there is something vaguely Ryan Adamsesque about this album. Though I think it is more Whiskeytown, Wilco, and Elvis (both Presley and Costello). It is an album that is lyrically pretty spectacular and I think because of that you can’t resist the Ryan Adams comparison (even from me who would smite Mr. Adams if she could).
The album opens with “Underneath the Stars” which is a very smooth Alt.country song, ready for radio with its slidey opening guitar and the crescendo of horns at the end and yet there’s a Springsteen undercurrent here that saves it from sounding to clean. “Some days pull on your heart strings/drag you into the fire of burned out desire/messy situations, undone obligations, you are crying like a child who did no wrong” sings Glass, and immediately he has me. This is a song about losing your way when you didn’t know where you were going to begin with. It’s about having forgotten who you are and finding yourself again when you realize love is gone. Or maybe it isn’t about that at all. But every second of this song feels to me like that day you wake up and realize you’ve been with the wrong person, in the wrong time and place, and now you are fucked, but somehow much, much freer for having finally realized it. And now you set out to start all over again.
There’s a definite old time jazziness to “Sweet Ophelia”, both in the instrumentation and the incredible backing vocals. “Ragdoll” is faintly twangy, sweet and strangely sentimental kiss-off song. It has a gorgeous duet with Cathy Davey. It’s a beautifully done tale of the guy walking away, and yet the girl gets her sweet and sassy word in, too. I’m not even exactly sure what “Red Dress” is about but I know it makes me swoon in a girly way, secretly wishing that I had a red dress and some boy would sing this song about me. It contains some nifty guitar riffs that might knock that red dress right off, too. “Jukebox Rag” is filled with bright, hilly, twangily cheerful banjos, mandolins and thumpy, toe-tappin’ on the porch rhythms. “Older Than My Years” is swelled and filled with delicious keyboard sounds and the rest of the band echoing the guitar line that so neatly reiterates the sense of loss and pain in this song. “This constellation spells your name” runs through “Intention” and I feel ripped open like I’m reminded of why I got every tattoo on my body and how I felt at exactly the moment I realized that some new love wasn’t love at all. The beginning of “Silently Mine” has a slow, steady, mellow rock start which slides into some grandly Hawaiian steel guitar just as Glass sings about “the queen of broken-hearted fools” (do I even need to explain why I like that line?).
The harmonica that opens “Southern Comfort” sets the song in the sweaty, deep South, until Glass’s vocals delightfully rock you back to Dublin. This song could be cheesy, with it’s drinking metaphors and yet something holds it back, perhaps the instrumentation here, or the fact that by track 6 I am so completely smitten with Glass’s lyrics and singing that I may no longer be thinking clearly. Much like when I drink too much whiskey. Not surprisingly the combination of the two words ‘smitten’ and ‘whiskey’ is how I ended up with most of my worst boyfriends. Luckily for me Gavin Glass is here to write songs to remind me of the good and the bad of those relationships, and make me feel like I’ve risen from the ashes. “Southern Comfort” ends with a round of “this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine” which sneaks the Soul sound into the song and somehow completely validates my love for Glass.
The hellfire sermon at the end of “Wrecking Ball” is itself damn spectacular, though the song could stand on its own without it. This is a swinging rock song and the drums drive your heart up as they rise, the backing vocals here have driven in from the 60s to remind us of rock ‘n roll when the gloss wasn’t yet worn off yet, and you could fall forever into the sound of a song. The horns make me want to hit the Stax CD collections as soon as I am done listening to these fine, fine Holy Shakers. The horns slow down, the choir comes up and we spin into that hellfire sermon, sounding like it’s coming across radio waves from 70 years in the past.
Wow, that was one of the more self indulgent reviews I’ve ever written, and you know that’s saying something, since self indulgent is all I do when it comes to music. I feel like I need a smoke after that. And some whiskey. And maybe another listen to Gavin Glass and the Holy Shakers. I’m sure I wasn’t convincing here, but that’s okay, you check out Glass on his Myspace page and give some of the songs a listen yourself, then head to iTunes and buy ‘em. And forthcoming is Gavin Glass and the Sacred Thorns (the tracks I heard in the barn studio), when it arrives I will surely let you know with as much spastic excitement as I can muster. And y’all know I can muster quite a lot.
© Fifty Foot Productions, LLC, 2009. | Permalink
]]>Now this is how I like my country music. Despite the questionable band name, Wrinkle Neck Mules are a talented 5 piece from Richmond that, like most country bands I enjoy, dabble in folk, bluegrass, and rock. The entire album is littered with mandolin, pedal steel and banjo played amazingly well. The instrumentation here is full and detailed but never takes away from the whole of the songs themselves (even if “Black Skies for the High & Mighty” is the band’s self described ‘mando porn’).
It might simply be the genres that lend themselves so well to this type of rich arrangement but it’s one of the band’s strongest talents. On the easy going “Cadillac Limousine” the pedal steel and mandolin help turn an otherwise laid back, pretty song into something of a masterpiece that makes me want to take a long ass drive to I-don’t-give-a-fuck, USA.
With Andy Stepanian and Chase Heard writing the majority of material you also get two singers who I appreciate equally (though I prefer the whiskey growl of what I believe to be Stepanian). Both singers suit the material and other than the vocals I probably couldn’t-or wouldn’t want to-differentiate between the two as writers. These songs are dark in their lyrics but get yanked back from the gloom by the dichotomy of the intensely bright arrangements. The music seems to represent some kind of hopefulness punching through the nature of the words.
The band’s opening track, “Bells & Whistles” immediately brought to mind Steve Earle’s, “Copperhead Road” with what I first assumed was a jumpy piano and only later realized was mandolin. My favorite pick, “Cumberland Sound”, could have come straight out of the songbook of Drive By Trucker’s Mike Cooley. The entire album varies in tempo and pace and all the while maintains a sense of unity among the songs, perhaps because of that duality of bright and dark used throughout. The raucous opener and equally uptempo closer,”Broken Rider”, bookend the album fairly well considering the wealth of variety within. While there are just one or two clunkers, this is a country album made for those of you who can’t stand a Nashville shit sandwich.
The more I listen to this the more I love it. I want to get in my truck right now and just go.
© Fifty Foot Productions, LLC, 2009. | Permalink
]]>This might sound stupid but when I go to a bar I want to hear songs about a bar. I want to hear whiskey and beer and screwin’ around with dangerous women. I want a soundtrack, really. On Kick The Dirt Ryan Purcell manages to give me some of that wrapped up in a lengthy nine tracks. Like I said, Purcell only gives me some of that. Half of these songs are about drinkin’ and women, the other half about politics.
The first song, “Guantanamo”, nearly put me off because of the sarcastic nature of the lyrics but I stuck around for the rest because of Purcell’s gravelly voice (nearly every singer I like sounds like emphysema amplified) and I’m glad I did. The second and third song here are sweaty, drunk, country blues bar band music. I swear I thought Faces were playing when I first heard “Palmer’s Pickup Blues”. Purcell himself even sounds like Rod Stewart momentarily. Another one I really enjoy, “Enough”, continues in the same vein with a little Neil Young influence. If I knew dick about chords and notes I could probably figure out if he was ripping off “Alabama” or not.
I prefer Purcell’s drinkin songs to the political stuff although the final track, “The Decider”, is a politically charged punk song straight out of left field about the goings on right now in our government. Normally I avoid music and politics but the final lines sum up exactly how I feel about the hypocritical dissent going on in America right now. People seem to forget who they voted for. [Interestingly, I think you wrote this before the recent election, and yet, the above is no less true.-Cric][It was written during Bush's tenure, yes.--Mick]
The gruff voice is the charm for me but musically these songs are solid numbers with this sort of melancholic-but-functionally-drunk thought process. After looking at his MySpace, Purcell is a parallel to John Eddie in a way. A proficiently capable rock’n'roller in his forties, singin’ about things dissatisfied guys sing about. From Purcell’s own site, “here’s a collection of songs that make you wonder why it is you’re drinking and if you are then why the hell aren’t you at the very least drinking with friends.”
Yep.
[I fucking love the political songs here. Purcell is from my neck of the woods, so maybe we are all just really folk singing hippies on the West Coast, who knows. Also, speaking for the ladies, Purcell's voice is kind of honky tonk sex. Makes you think of waking up in strange room, hearing the shower, noticing cowboy boots that aren't yours tumbled on the floor and instantly regretting what you don't remember about the night before.--Cricket]
© Fifty Foot Productions, LLC, 2009. | Permalink
]]>This week I’ve been rattling around, as I do, slightly disorganized and trying to do way more than I have time for. As always I start my day by reading 624,729 blog posts from various sources. Often I make lists of things I want to share with you all and mostly I never ever get around to doing that. I swear, I’m working this I am totally going to get better about it. Sometimes I don’t share because it’s just too personally depressing. Like this post about Lucero’s Ben Nichols at SXSW. These are the moments in life that I knowing I missed them just breaks my heart. If nothing else to have heard new songs and finally have seen Last Pale Light in the West performed live [You're missin' out, lady. Although it's comparable to any time Ben closes out with an acoustic, my love of the book bumps those songs up a notch--Mick]. You know, assuming there is the possibility of a Lucero related show that I was sober enough remember. Which would totally happen at SXSW, right? Right? Yeah, maybe it’s better that I wasn’t there…
Speaking of Ben Nichols, you all know about $5 Cover already, right? If not, as far as I can tell, it’s sort of a faux/extra real reality show in which actual musicians play themselves and their own music and “act” in loosely scripted scenes making up a show about how musicians in Memphis live ( assuming that real life really is like a soap opera). Well they’ve got the Nichols’ behind the scenes video up. Mostly he talks about how easy it is to play himself. Hee hee hee. It’s damn amusing. Probably not as great as having been at SXSW would have been, but it’s something, right?
So I suspect you all actually regularly check the Suburban Home Records site? So you know that in addition to lots of other wonderful things, there is also a new record from Drag the River’s Jon Snodgrass, Vistor’s Band. No, I don’t have it yet, if I did, instead of these tiny bits of news you would all be reading my long, incredibly spastic love letter to Mr. Snodgrass. But, hey, 9bullets.net has a streaming version [Plus Drag the River's posthumous collection of rare 7" and B-sides, also worth a listen or twelve--Mick]you can listen to! So go on over there, give it a listen, get acquainted with the music and then after you buy the album, you can put it on a listen while you read my future musical love letter to Jon.
© Fifty Foot Productions, LLC, 2009. | Permalink
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