ICHABOD'S NASHVILLE SCENE 2008 RELEASES BALLOT, COMMENTS

TOP TEN COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2008:

1. Cat Power: Jukebox (Matador)

2. James McMurtry: Just Us Kids (Lightning Rod)

3. Carlene Carter: Stronger (Yep Roc)

4. Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis: Two Men with the Blues (Blue Note)

5. Drive By Truckers: Brighter Than Creation's Dark (New West)

6. Steeldrivers: S/T (Rounder)

7. Randall Bramblett: Now It's Tomorrow (New West)

8. Miss Lana Rebel: All I Need (Wantage)

9. Chuck Prophet: Dreaming Waylon's Dreams (Evangeline/Revolver)

10. Jamey Johnson: That Lonesome Song

TOP TEN COUNTRY SINGLES OF 2008:

1. Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh: "Death Letter" 

2. Jamey Johnson: "In Color" 

3  Kenny Chesney & George Strait: "Shiftwork"

4. Damien Jurado featuring Jenna Conrad: "Best Dress"

5. Blitzen Trapper: "Furr"

6. Jamey Johnson: "Mowin' Down The Roses"

7.Toby Keith: "God Love Her"

8. Woodbox Gang: "Termite Song"

9. Sugarland: "Already Gone"

10. Zac Brown Band: "Country Fried"

TOP FIVE COUNTRY REISSUES OF 2008

1. Bob Dylan: Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8 (Sony BMG)

2. Creedence Clearwater Revival: The 40th Anniversary Reissue Series (Fantasy) (see Out My Back Door)

3. Dallas Frazier: The R&B Sessions: Elvira/Tell It Like It Is! (Raven)

4. Ed Sanders: Sanders' Truck Stop/Beer Cans on the Moon (Collector's Choice Music)

5. Nimrod Workman: I Want To Go Where Things Are Beautiful (Drag City)

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST LIVE ACTS OF 2008:

1. Willie Nelson

2. Hackensaw Boys

3. Backyard Tire Fire

COUNTRY MUSIC'S BEST THREE SONGWRITERS OF 2008:

1. Bob Dylan

2. James McMurtry

3. Arthur Russell

COUNTRY MUSIC'S THREE BEST NEW ACTS OF 2008

1. Steeldrivers

2. Carter's Chord

3. Felice Brothers

Albums Continued:

 11. Various Artists: Always Lift Him Up:A Tribute to Blind Albert Reed (Proper American) 

12. Carter's Chord: S/T (Showdog Nashville) 

13. Giant Sand: proVISIONS (Yeproc) 

14. Silver Jews: Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea (Drag City) 

15. Lucinda Willams: Little Honey (Lost Highway) 

16. Eef Barzelay: Lose Big (Savoy) 

17. Felice Brothers: S/T (Team Love) 

18. Eric Sardinas and Big Motor: S/T (Favored Nations)

19. Jeb Loy Nichols: Days Are Mighty (Compass) crisp vocals, electric piano, complaints—real tasteful and dignified and autumnal, but not bad 

20. Justin Townes Earle: The Good Life (debut full-length: autumn def as in harvest, also moon---watch this post-hayride walk-up space kid!)(at least one previous release, an EP last year, so doesn't qualify for New Act, by Ballot rules)(see more about this on 2009 ballot comments, in some contrast to that year's pick)

Also Related: 

Lambchop: OH(Ohio), Backyard Tire Fire:The Places We Lived (Hyena), Joan Baez: The Day After Tomorrow (Proper) Great Big Sea: Fortune's Favor (GREAT BIG SEA) 

Related To Related (Buzzin' Second Or Third Cousins):

Shearwater: Rook

Castanets: City of Refuge 

Silver Mt. Zion: 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons

For Further Study!

 one mentioned later down in here, Laura Love: NeGrass (CD Baby) also see description on Amazon

Related Reissues: 

 Various Artists: Thank You Friends: The Ardent Records Story (Ardent) (country and other, and yeah more other than the first five)  Ross Johnson: Make It Stop! The Most of Ross Johnson (Goner) ("most" incl best and other) Blue Ash: No More, No Less, Carla Olson series (Collectors Choice Music), The Individuals: Fields/Aquamarine ( also CCM)

 (recorded long ago, first released in '08, so by Poll rules, also Reissues): Arthur Russell: Love Is Overtaking Me (Audika), Waylon Jennings & The 357s: Waylon Forever (Vagrant), Fotheringay: Fotheringay 2 (Fledg'ling)

Hon. Mentions:

 Chuck Prophet: Soap and Water (esp. "Freckles," see comments below!) Tony Joe White: Deep Cuts (Swamp), Ronnie Hawkins: Mojo Man/Arkansas Rockpile (Collector's Choice Music) 

 Borderline (not such a bad line, just can't quite decide how good they are, ratings-wise):

 Phil Vassar: Prayer of A Common Man (Universal South) Chris Knight: Heart of Stone (Drifter's Church) (see comments on these way down yonder),  Kathy Mattea: Coal (Captain Potato) Marty Stuart's production makes sure well-chosen songs achieve a suitably dark, brittle, austere glitter, but this set leaves out the way that coal country, people have fun and stick around, for a while anyway (many are leaving); Nimrod's acapella workouts demonstrate one frugal but unabashed way this can be done (whatever the cost of labor and non-musical play)

: 

 Silver Mt. Zion

Tuesday @ Skully's

 Silver Mt. Zion is sometimes billed as Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, which might make them seem like lightheaded acid folkies, but they aren't.  Their new album, 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons, is armed with two down-tuned, smoldering-to-roaring guitars, pushing through violins, cello, contra bass, tom-toms and kickdrums, over which lead guitarist Efrim chants, wails, leads the march towards the forest. (No wonder they've collaborated with Patti Smith: their sound is a natural for her outland visions.) A little too slow sometimes, but the fire always comes back.

The following has provided no follow-up alb 'til '09, but worth mention---good band too, goseeum:

Jason Isbell

Saturday @ the Basement

Despite questions (like, "Did he jump or was he pushed?") regarding singer-songwriter-guitarist-keyboardist Jason Isbell's departure from the Drive-By Truckers, last year's solo debut, Sirens of the Ditch (with most of the full- and part-time Truckers aboard), was worth whatever it took. Isbell's studies, before and after Memphis State, included a Skynyrd-to-Feat-to-Zevon-bred flair for musical pulp fiction (minus the macho tear-jerking), early Steely Dan grooves, and Eudora Welty's tragicomic character studies, plus Isbell's distinctive sense of poetic justice (and injustice). The show adds appropriate covers, like Talking Heads' ever-catchy "Psycho Killer."

Choice Cuts: 

My Morning Jacket: "When You Touch Me, I Scream Pt.2"

 Drakkar Sauna: "Tiny Broken Heart" "Lorene" "The Weapon of Prayer" "Don't Laugh" "When I Stop Dreaming" "Are You Afraid To Die?" (from Wars and Tornadoes: Drakkar Sauna Faithfully Sing Songs of the Louvin Brothers(Marriage): Really enough gooduns for Hon Mention, but the shift in quality is frustrating for spoiled fan. When they don't get stuck in just reciting doctrine, religious and historical, it really works: "When I Stop Dreaming" exemplifies the power of dreaming, surely a key DS fuel/concern; "Lorene" dares to rock a bit, etc.  

Eden & John's East River String Band: "Ain't No Tellin'" "Rolling Log Blues" "Do Dirty Blues" "On Our Turpentine Farm" (from Some Old Rainy Day [East River Records]) : Two voices, male and female; two sets of strings, guitar and ukulele. Too even-steven, steady-eddie a pace, on most tracks—this is East River Delta, after all yall (mebbe if they'd covered more Mississippi John Hurt? Or gotten Terry Waldo's bluesy ragtime piano in there more. But some rare songs chosen, for those who could use some more such, and the cover art by R. Crumb don't hoit) 

Don Cavalli: "New Hollywood Babylon" "Wonder Chairman" "Cherie De Mon Coeur" "Casual Worker" (from Cryland[Everloving])Don C. is sort of the French Hirth Martinez x J.J. Cale: easy rolling, peripheral visions and off-handed sleight: new releases for cratediggers!

 Choice Cut from Dud of the Year: Jody + (sic) Rory: "Play The Song" (from The Life of a Song [Vanguard])Yeah, stop calculating and re-working the angles and tweaking the atmospherics, just play the damn thing! Good advice to Music Row and ever'body. Including themselves on the rest of this soporific, terminally tasteful turkey.

Eric Sardinas and Big Motor

Saturday @ Crave

 Live, Eric Sardinas can groove like a comet rider, and Eric Sardinas and Big Motor is his best studio set, sporting mostly original songs, plus Tony Joe White's smoldering "As The Crow Flies," and Dennis Linde's "Burning Love" (yep, the Elvis hit, but it fits).  B-b-b-aaaad scootah posturing has been outrun (but not run over) by thoughtful self-assertion. This, plus arrangements cross-wiring the leader's voice, guitar and dobro, Big Motor's bass and drums, and guests on incisive keyboards and backing vocals, adds up to Southern Rock with contemporary country appeal, fresh flash, and blues to go.

(Another Choice Cut and) Singles comments:

My Morning Jacket still do a little countryoid warbling in concert, but their '08 studio album, Evil Urges, only sounds countryoid to me on "When You Touch Me I Scream Pt. 2": that sounds sorta like if the Eagles had gone disco and had more bird spirit (in other words, not very Eagles, except what they seemed to be creeping toward on The Long Run). Mainly it's that sort of Gnarls Barkley falsetto with some psychedelic soul and Classic Rock strap-on (Daltry's higher range etc) A concept album about "why can't they let us do our Evil Urges thing, ooo-ooooooooo baby" (got some more airplay after Nov. 4 victory of anti-gay marriage referendums, reportedly)Previous studio album, Z, was kind of Boz Scaggs goes psych-pop, so also a little countryoid, like maybe they're playing a Sunbelt atrium wedding of rich hipsters (Boz being from Texas before Frisco) Juicy, as usual, when Jim James isn't overspaying the vocals (esp. In his "oooo Ah'm a French Horn" mode)(They're actually from Louisville, so as theatrically inclined as many of TX or OK)

Zac Brown Band, "Country Fried": basically like 1950s-certified "Dixie Fried", but an easy-rolling, toe-tapping Danny O'Keefe feel (with Mungo Jerry appetite). No boom-boom, which is appropriate for a food-related song. Toby Keith, "God Love Her": the wild girl who (eventually) saved him, but they're both untamed, at least in memory's gusto. Jamey Johnson,"In Color": all the pieces fit, while remaining in pieces, and stacking, climbing up to the chorus, which climbs up to the title phrase, another seemingly small piece of something, ending abruptly, with the implications, as veterans tend to do, no matter how they take you detail-wise (all about rations, budgets, markers).Damien Jurado, with Jenna Conrad (who wrote) "Best Dress": like Richard and Linda Thompson gone way secular, with the swaying, just-getting started anthem of the couple every bartender knows too well. Sugarland, "Already Gone": not an Eagles cover, and Jennifer Nettles isn't in oversell this time. Sexuality a redolent given, in memory yet green, and yet she sounds like Reba—plus, in the video, the guy finally has a new hat! LeeAnn Womack, "Last Call": the (somewhut) younger Carmela Soprano, already smoldering through the winter of her discontent.

Some "Reissues" and Reissues comments:

Arthur Russell, Love Is Overtaking Me (previously unreleased, incl. In Reissues because recorded so long ago, per Poll rule, ditto Waylon Forever and Fotheringay 2): title denotes a longterm experience, as tracks from the 70s through the 90s find him forever all along the fecund fringe, passing under keening wires and across bumpy crossroads, further into closely watched contents of the Big Sky, where "dreams are realler than they seem," and so are other people. He's very thoughtfully plausible and speculative about both, although "I could just forget her" remains an option, or so he hopes, and that's part of the power, the fuel of these bluejean jacket ruminations on the glide. Russell at his most linear, spelled-out and down to earth, but also "I will find you near and far"—no doubt!

Also, on ilxor's Rolling Country 2008, along with the whole of this doc, but sep and yet referred to as being from it, a gushie take on the AR, with comments on the previously unreleased Waylon Forever:

Arthur Russell's Love Is Overtaking Me is a wonderful country-folk-rock collection, from 70s to 90s, tracks interspersed with approximately countless other projects, many unfinished--but these fit perfectly together, no matter how vast the overview. Seamless but homely detail, bumping and keening and perfectly articulate, his most linear and spelled-out, verse/chorus-wise, or at least as much as those on The World Of Arthur Russell, the other perfect introduction. Not that there isn't plenty of heady atmosphere and momentum, it's just about the way "realism" and "mysticism" fit, when you follow them right, as much as with young Dylan, but musically it's closer to say the Feelies, esp. mebbe The Good Earth, though haven't heard that in a long time; also the Individuals' "Fields": Asleep in your bed/I'm drunk in the fields/I walk by your houuuse" (their Fields/Aquamarine LP/EP on 1 CD finally reissued by Collectors Choice this year: Fields' LP tracks still uneven, but overall a lot of good-to-great stuff, much of it as rare as these Arthur tracks) Also really enjoying Waylon Forever, which filters teenage basement producer Shooter's studies of industrial (and ZZ Top's better electro grooves are also called to mind, whether he was thinking those or not), further advanced by his and the present-day 357s skills and empathy with Waylon, who never gets crowded: "Ainnnn't livin' long like this, am I Bay-bay?" No yer not, but it's short sharp sweet.

Fotheringay: Fotheringay 2---includes a slowed, but not slow "Silver Threads And Golden Needles," hitting me like the usual approach never has--and, like the rest of the album, it totally benefits from the way voice and "rhythm section"( apparently including some piano and guitar as well as bass and drums) were the whole of the original masters, and the garden of arrghh-me-lads grooves (trad and original)remain unscrewed with by discreet Miracle-Gro. Trevor Lucas's speeded-up, tossed-off "I Don't Believe You" accentuates the plausibilty young Dyl in Johnny Pissoff mode: country enough, as bartenders of all genres keep an eye on.(Sandy sings "Silver...", and sounds silver, also been-around flesh & blood.) Also for instance the way the drums play around Denny, when she is the dogged, slightly swaying timekeeper, when she is "John The Gun"(one of only a couple of tracks, I think, that were re-recorded for her solo albums). This is English folk-country music, rolling for the back lanes, though some of it was finished up, accomplished,  with L.A. cats.

Blue Ash: No More, No Less---power pop as passionate and blood-sugary as it is stylized, folk-rocking Dylan's otherwise-unknown-to-me "Dusty Old Fairgrounds" like Thin Lizzy's version of "Whiskey In The Jar"; non-laidback country rock and tinges and twinges of real-country country pop--restless ain't-love-somethin' domestic ruminations--before hitting the stage again, stomping those platform shoes (you can tell they played out A LOT, as well as writing and tape-recording, before and after their brief LP career)(so how is the second album, and the demos/outtakes Around Again?)They've been playing together again the last few years, and scheduled for their native Youngstown OH 11/15/08)

In terms of spicing up canned country-ready rockola home for the holidays (sorry--the Holidays), this following album probably has more in common musically with that there quart of Nickelback than anybody including me is ever gonna admit, but it seems fitting (here comes another show preview):

Americana Godmama Lucinda Williams' more-rocking-than-usual new album, Little Honey, finds "A Real Love, standin' behind an electric guitar." The new guy, who can "squeeze my peaches, sendin' me postcards of girls on beaches," may already know her too well. She observers a Winehouse-like "Little Rock Star" with dry-eyed compassion, having been there (or too close); "Tears of Joy" is brighter for the same reason. "Jailhouse Tears" finds her wryly co-dependent on manipulative duet partner Elvis Costello. Other guests include mountain patriarch Charlie Louvin and the Bangles' own little honey, Susannah Hoffs(cute couple).

Some of the same appeal, as mentioned on RC 2008:

Speaking of bar bands, or pub rock, that live Carla Olson & The Textones album is pretty decent. Words matter to her,and social life as fun & danger-they do the song Dylan gave her, "Clean-Cut Kid"("They took a clean-cut kid made a killer outta him") and some other good covers and originals, but never get too preachy or melodramatic (even the sax is okay, despite being very 80s; never gets or takes too much airspace). Oh yeah, and the drummer is Phil Seymour of the Dwight Twilly Band; he even sings lead on a couple tunes, way better than his solo hit,"Can't Let You Go," which he doesn't reprise here, thankfully. This set's no masterpiece, but pretty good. Now I should listen to the double-disc collection of her work with Mick Taylor (did they play with Dylan at the same time? Any legit tracks of that, if so?) Wonder how her albums with Gene Clark are, I've got those reissues too, somewhere (Clark's Silverado Live, which came about around the same time as the live album and the Taylor collab collection, is pretty decent West Coast country rock etc, pretty spare musically, tho couple of songs have some kind of purple rants in their baggy pants)(also a couple of co-writes with founding Flying Burrito/Eagle Bernie Leadon, from when the Eagles were better).

The one I was talking about is credited to Carla Olson & The Textones, title is Detroit '85 Live & Unreleased. The one I haven't listened to yet is Carla Olson & Mick Taylor, Too Hot For Snakes Plus, a two-CD set including their 1990 live set, which also sported Ian McLagan, Barry Goldberg and ("blues harp maestro")John Juke Logan. Second disc is selected from three Carla solo albums, all featuring Mick.

Found the post, didn't look far enough on RC 2008---good albs:

I did listen to the Carla Olson & Mick Taylor twofer, Too Hot For Snakes Plus. She says in the notes she discovered Taylor from Mayall's albums, not the Stones, and that figures, in her taste for and skilled mining of the Albert Collins/Freddie King/Albert King/Buddy Guy-schooled blues-for-rockers-and-r&b-heads that Mayall and well-chosen employees like Taylor specialized in, in the early and mid-60s. ("For" rockers in that they allowed various Kings etc, and their sharper students to compete with and then enter the growing market of rock and r & b). It's flashy,but with attention to dynamics--one's own, and everybody else's--which goes with the rueful, restless, sometimes eloquent inventory of social tides: romance, friendship, crowds. Country compatible that way, especially since contemporary country draws so much on previous (but already ageing)decades of rock. And I could see Loretta Lynn and Jack White doing right by "You Can't Move In," for instance. But it's more about the way the good and the bad are so connected: that's the blues of it, the country of it too, and Mick Taylor (and other well-chosen employees/comrades) coming up from under, against the tide/wind etc.(Could see 'em opening for Seger etc) "Tryin' To Hold On" builds creatively on a "Slip Away"-type framework (Carla's Detroit crew does a good cover of the actual "Slip Away"); "Rubies and Diamonds" does the same with the riffage and vibe of "It Takes A Lot To Laugh"(and/or Dylan's own sources for that). Other good co-writes, and covers of "Sway," "Silver Train," and Disc 2 starts with an extended but thoughtful take on "Winter," yet (eventually)gets bogged down in what sounds like a too-solo-y edition of the Pretenders. But performed differently (anybody looking for covers?) most of these could work, and some of 'em work anyway, like "Reap The Whirlwind." No prob with "Friends In Baltimore," who ask willfully obtuse questions of a roving muso, until they finally don't even care enough for rhetorical queries (guitar twinges of the phantom connection: they're assholes, maybe they always were, but...)Also, on "Justice," she uses the words of Sterling A. Brown, who I gotta check more of, judging by this verse: "He spoke up at the commissary, and they gave him a date to be out of the county/He didn't go, so/They came for him/And he stayed in the county."

More on Creedence (see archived Voice piece re the reissue series, linked on the ballot up yonder) lacking "a real rock 'n' roll EDGE": that's what I'd tended to think (despite remembering the call to nerves of "Up Around The Bend" and "Fortunate Son") til I heard the albums. That's the point of the piece, the way the sound, the performances charged and carried forward the historical stuff, incl the ultimate limitations of social-commentary lyrics, good as his could be. I think J.D. was just being funny about "Proud Mary," it really is a song about a boat, a boatopia ("people on the river are happy to give"--but what they're gonna give you ain't all good, as the albums indicate--Huck Finn on a sonic raft, a barn door, grid, etc)(but Pendulum mostly drops the hoodoo stuff, and its social commentary could be as much about marriage truces etc as anything else, then going out for a night on the town)"Sweet Hitchhiker" has him zooming by her, turned on but caught up in wondering "How long can I last"--then he crashes, and watches her zooming by, he thinks she's thinking to herself, "How long can I last": could be sex, could be career, they were such a phenomenon--it's a funny song, as written and delivered; this and his other songs on that last album (Mardi Gras, whoopee) are ironic, as his bandmates finally got their own spud-say at the last minute. (h'mm, it's not part of this reissue series).

I actually think their faster tracks like "Travelin' Band" and "Commotion" had plenty of r&r edge; I have a feeling Nazareth (for instance) were listening to them. Nazareth did way more rocking (and just plain compelling) cover versions, though -- as I mentioned on that rockcritics.com link, I've never really understood the appeal of CCR's versions of "I Put A Spell On You," "Suzie Q," or "Heard It Through The Grapevine"; I like them way better as a speedy proto-punk band than a boring proto-jam band. Judging from Don's (nonetheless captivating!) Voice review, this is somewhere he and I clearly have (in presidential debate terminology) some fundamental differences, you betcha.

― xhuxk, Friday, 3 October 2008 17:44 (twelve years ago) link

(after partially recovering from involuntary vision of xxhuxx in Halloween Palin drag, glasses 'n' all, you betcha)Thanks! Yeah, I like the speedy stuff too, except for inst those pooty little licks on "Good Golly Miss Molly," which of course is left in teh dust by Mitch Ryder & Detroit Wheels, and Little Richard, for that matter. They did have some duds, long & short ("Graveyard Train," yeesh, although there may be a better version in the vaults) I gotta catch up on xxhuxx's writing, Edd's Dallas Frzier opus on Perfect Sound Forever, lotta stuff--after I finish or do more of my homework.

― dow

I'm one of those who neglected the Creedence crate-digging (because I tthought I knew their whole range just from the singles, because I neglected etc), so can't compare, but the CDs sound fine, for CDs, and a bunch of good bonus tracks: I didn't have room to deal with more of 'em, not and also tell my tale of why non-bonus mavens should bother, the 'why' waiting in plain sight for me and others, all these years. (Tried to include the bonus tracks that fit with the theme of dealing with historical tags, dust etc)Also some bonus filler of course. Yeah, re Lucinda and Kathleen, I love how some derivative artists can give bonus value beyond the original's limitations (you could say Mellencamp's "The Night Jesus Left Birmingham" templates Prine, but certainly has a bounce Prine doesn't, preferring to keep the cuteness in the writing and the vocal--why can't we have all three? You could also say *some* of Prine's songs go deeper than some of Mellen's, but even if that were true, still Mellen's pop smarts, plus the same concerns etc, can make him preferred listening at times, even in their mutual decline).

― dow, Saturday, 4 October 2008 23:31 (twelve years ago) link

also, "original" ha: Prine's whole thing comes from alt universe's tasteful ageing-in-place of early 60s Bobby D. (except for the part that comes from his early Chicago colleague, Steve Goodman, though maybe they influenced each other)

oh yeah, meant to thank curmudgeon for the Carolina Chocolate Drops vid up there;also, I heard them do a couple of good, brief sets on Public Radio's "Woodsongs" recently. "Will James Breakdown" was built from variations on the Burundi/Bo Diddley beat, and fit in tonally with any number of pre-bluegrass mountain tunes. The Ebony Hillbillies are also in this vein, ditto, in a more Mississippi (Hill Country?) way, was a fairly recent "Beale Street Caravan"  set by The Banjo Project, incl Otis Taylor and (I think) Alvin Youngblood Hart, among other African American performers who don't usually do this kind of music, and you could tell (not as developed as CCD or EH), but they had the spark. Oh yeah, and that 2004 album by the 59th Street Blues Project, with James Blood Ulmer and Charles Burnham, the violinist-fiddler from Blood's Odyssey and recurring Odyssey The Band--and here he also plays mandolin and sings--it's not experimental jazz like his previous outings with JBU, but a Delta/Hill Country/Downhome NYC thing, sharp-eyed observations under a low brim etc jees I can't see enough of this screen, distracting, sorry

― dow

In response to xhuxx: 1) good call on New Bloods, though I wouldn't say "off-kilter," they just have their own sense of balance (like Nick Nolte on a good night) and the fiddle isn't a million miles from Charlie Burnham's work with Blood Ulmer, previously mentioned before the screen glitched out .We've also talked about Carolina Chocolate Drops on a couple of RC Threads, and I've mentioned Ebony Hillbillies a year or two ago (linking then to Kandia's feature on Charlotte Creative Loafing?)but also, I just heard some eerie calm mountainy tracks from Laura Love's Negrass album). Somewhat in the same vein (mines and mountains, but really more of a stringband than bluegrass, though they're new stars on the circuit): self-titled debut of the Steeldrivers--sort of like if Seger were to make an album backed by the Del McCoury Band, like Steve Earle did--only even less trad(making wise use of P.Domain for copyrights, however) yet non'trad in in a subtle enough way(not counting the nongrass vocals, which aren't subtle, just unaffected)yet not newgrass ect (re today's country as retro rock, something like "Heaven Sent" evokes one of Dickie Betts' higher-flying solos, but it doesn't even have electric instruments, much less solos--the whole album is pretty much unplugged, but moves right along, unhurriedly, yet 10 songs in 36 minutes )Gets better as it goes along, too. The second half kicks in quicker than the first. It's on Rounder. Sorry bout any typos, this box keeps distending.Good call on Carter's Chord too--thought the guitars might overwhelm the vocals, but they don't (although the vocals aren't that distinguished--but they put the songs across, like vocals are supposed to do, but often don't--glad I don't have to listen around them, which happens too often)Gorge, tha instrumental Paisley did on Charlie Daniels' Duets album was pretty appetizing (always leave 'em wanting more), so I think I will check out the new album. I'm also really enjoying Willie Nelson's guitar on his album with Wynton's band (which is a pungent witty country-blues-bop landmark like I've hardly heard--some live Clarence Gatemouth Brown, yehah, and Sonny Rollins' Way Out West--not that far from Dylan's "If Dogs Run Free," either, on the cute snide ricochet finale, which also has something to do with the cute snide etc. "Making Whoopee" on Ray Charles Live, from'65 or so)

Chuck E./xhuxx responds to my response:

good call on New Bloods...the fiddle isn't a million miles from Charlie Burnham's work with Blood Ulmer's Odyssey (album and later Odyssey The Band

I hadn't thought of that, and it makes sense, actually! So, that said, given that you've heard the New Bloods, Don, do you think they would or should qualify for a country poll, to your ears? I'd been going back and forth on the question, and decided "no" despite their occasionally hoedowning fiddles, but I may defer to your expert opinion...

Xhuxx, New Bloods' music instantly took me run skip hop dub through the big bad woods with these somewhat gunpowdery little red riding hoods, but woods, like folk, pastoral tec don't nec.=country, they seem a little too urban, in the sense of "I know trouble when I see it three blocks away, cross the street [or the creek] almost without thinking"--not making as big a deal of it, in bravura and/or brooding a way as country tends too--not that some big ceety types don't make a big deal too, but either way goes with urban (New Bloods do take note of shadows etc but they're used to it, without getting that mountain-fatalistic about it, or maybe I'm distracted by the music, but that's part of the non-country feel)(but I'll listen some more)  

Great Big Sea

Wednesday @ Southern Theatre

 Great Big Sea hails from Newfoundland, with full-sail harmonies that don't detract from the gnarly details of their traditional and original ballads.  On GBS's current album, Fortune's Favor, Alan Doyle and co-writer Russell Crowe raise their mugs for the iconoclastic comedian Bill Hicks, celebrating "A Company Of Fools." In "Hard Case," a siren gets a booty call: "Hold me down, under the sea, drag me back to where we used to be." Folkwise, especially live, they can lead us through the hungry shadows, reeling around those old choruses.

kind of funny that Steve Earle should be the one to reign in Queen B.'s vocal mannerisms a bit, but he can be a pretty astute producer of others, and sometimes of himself. Her band's pretty good too, with Solas-co-founder John Doyle, Todd Phillips, Dirk Powell (singer-songwriter- multi-picker and hubby of Christine Balfa, bayou balladeer-heartbreaker/ leader of modern Cajun musical explorers Balfa Toujours). Anyway, another show preview (didn't have room to say that Earle wrote the song I quote in front)

"Everyday that passes/I'm sure about a little less/Even my money keeps tellin' me/It's God I need to trust/And I believe in God/But God ain't us." "God Is God" sets the unsettled tone of Joan Baez's latest album, The Day After Tomorrow. Producer Steve Earle seeks to keep the Queen of 60s Folk Music on a solid spirit level, with compact cadences and carefully selected songs. Further along, Patty Griffin's "Mary" is "covered in roses...covered in slashes," finding her (and/or Her) way through the story's edits, somewhat like everybody else. Road band's the core studio trio I mentioned, with lots of other worthy players and singers on the album.

I finally figured out what I like best/basically about Jamey Johnson, in the following show preview:

After eight years in the Marines, Jamey Johnson won and lost in Nashville, then wrote clean-and-sober hits (plus "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk") for others. He's learning to see (and get) through the old dualities. So, on Johnson's current album, That Lonesome Song, his band bounces the sardonic daydream of "Mowin' Down The Roses" and brushes by the testimonial "High Cost of Livin'," sweetly tempting each. Also, black-and-white images (mere evidence) lead straight up through a World War II veteran's history, always lived "In Color," and still in the present tense. 

--and:lots of cogent comments (on this and other of my own choices) by several experts on the aforementioned RC 2008, which I may as well link here (good year for RC):

Rolling Country 2008

 Carlene Carter: Stronger---on a recent Mountain Stage broadcast (check the MS site for its advent among their podcast babies, which contain a bit more music than the radio edits btw)(update! http://cdn1.cyberears.com/34631.mp3) she introduced one song by referencing her pregnancy and marriage at 15, and dedicating another to her fourth husband, going light and dark without lingering too long or too little, also pointing out that's how she got her kids and grandkids, so hey. And before the teen pregnancy (maybe later as well), she and sister Rosey traveled with her grandmother, mother and aunt(s?),Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, in a little car: she remembers the kids starting out "under the floorboards," and that Maybelle taught her fishing, poker, and a tiny bit of guitar "just enough, maybe": always that selective sense of detail, appropriate for this kind of patter and songs themselves----she acknowledges having many musical influences, says the main one is 'my little Mama," then slides into a  "Ring of Fire," slower than Johnny Cash's hit version, minus the horse trot and kick-in of horns, the better to let the June Carter Cash co-write's underlying currents, the sense of mutability, come through with a stronger sense of personal testimony. "I fell into a burning ring of fire, and it burns, burns, burns": past to present tense, and Carlene's 21rst Century thus far has brought a lot of bad news, to say the least---but bad news in itself is nothing new to her, just those multiplying details that have to be dealt with, part of the family tradition (June Carter Cash, with her pure-products-of-America-go-crazy comic character as part of the Carter Sisters and Mama act, along with the collective ballad-hefting of course, and her studies at the Method Studio alongside Brando, documented all this and much more, in her songs and sometimes harrowing,  never-settling-for-Inspirational memoir From The Heart ["I wanted to call it Out Of My MInd"). In this Mountain Stage set and on Stronger, Carlene's deep intonation is always responsive to the shifting musical traffic patterns around her: she's a canny cab driver,  per her Mama's example, and follows a murmured album opener about leaving home so early, when "life was too simple"---guitars knotting and flexing under and between more audible key phrases like that---with the uptempo shrug, "Why Be Blue, " and other turns made plausible, even "I'm So Cool" ("They're just jealous!"), now seeming implicity ironic, and yet still another chance to kick up her heels when she feels it (from her 1980 Musical Shapes, which I still have somewhere on an ancient twofer CD with Blue Nun, both produced by then-hub Nick Lowe, sporting the use of NL-inclusive Rockpile: has always needed remastering, but contains a number of pub-rock-pop-country-para-new wave keepers). So it's not really about the solid-stolid stance of a Survivor's Wisdom---I don't agree that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," not always true, for sure, but, with a little hipsway sometimes on that last word so far,  here she is, for now, a vivid presence, wised-up enough, though still quite recognizable, knowing, evidently, that satisfying-enough, incl. Uncommon-enough, musical experience is about the total effect, not just settings for the dues-paid verbal pearls, with or without obligatory reviewer-bait from the headlines Even better: Carter Girl (2014 Top Ten)

:Let's go to another show:

Lambchop was once an orchestral party of floating friends and strange guests. Almost twenty years later, as a smaller, imperfectly focused but durable unit, they're flexible role models for quirky indie rockers. Their new OH(Ohio) vividly personalizes the early 70s pastoral romance (hippie make-out music) of sets like Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey," as head Lambchopper Kurt Wagner brings mixed feelings to the one who still inspires his affections and obsessions. But he knows the approach: with tiny, surreal, bittersweet jokes, gentle and otherwise, intimately glinting in bouquets of images, usually changed before wilting. (& produced by Nashville off-ramp wizard/WhisperinEdd buddy Mark Nevins):not totally unlike Love & Theft, though I'd rather hear Cap'n D. growling at his old lady---in both cases, in many cases, I do relate to mixed emotions--ah, the richness as you stir, otherwise they bogs). Wagner does have a sometimes schticky tendency to swallow certain clues like he's proudly swallowing li'l frogs, once he's got me hooked (though it ain't me he's hopin' for to stay hooked, the one that's got him hooked on trying to impress)

Phil Vassar's Prayer of A Common Man is contemporary country as 80s-based yacht rock, rolling smoothly through his Steinway. Also, as required by this Michael-McDonald-helmed tradition, Prayer can get a little funky, a little twangy, a little footloose, a little too sentimental (for yrs. truly, anyway). It's a fairly well-balanced diet of well-stocked songs, and Phil tirelessly fills his still-expensive CD (remember those?) with respectfully observed characters who work hard for the money. As credit evaporates and financial bubbles roll further off-shore once more, Phil's folks rail against "Fat cats, getting fatter…they can kiss my price of gas" (Update: and now they will kiss it, in passing, as such expenses heard back toward Atlantis for a while)

Eef Barzelay, former "leader" of the smooth, tense Clem Snide, specializes in hitching smooth, tense, occasionally gee-orgeous melodies, neuroses and shtick to the devoutly twisted visions of those who make and break deals with self-gratification and self-denial. If you decide either way, your sweet and mortal self becomes too real. So there's always another exciting opportunity to "Lose Big", per the title song of Barzelay's new solo album. And when he comes to town again, we can sing along on old choruses, such as "I don't wanna know me better," with a passing stranger, one raised on the gospel of punk.

Blitzen Trapper are six guys from Oregon, so they have plenty of rainy days to make up their own myths, of the Wild West or anywhere, and play quietly, or whoop it up. Going to their shows, especially, you never know how they'll approach their songs, and the people in them bump and roll through new and old clues to everything. They also have their own take on said clues: somebody sings about "The Walls of Jericho" being raised by a shout, which isn't the way the Bible tells it, but still sounds right as rain can.

Too bad about Shelby trying to sing Dusty, but yall should hear Jukebox, by none other than Cat Power, whom I never cared about before. So? revelatory revisionism is the rule here, albeit on songs that didn't need it like the singer did. Chan Marshall's dry-ice smoke rings around her sincerity are guided by the shining spine of historee, stepping stones/bones rippling together again. She moves over and through the connections between and within songs by Hank Williams, James Brown, Billie Holiday and Cat Power—rounded by brilliantly simple tempo-adjustments of "Blue"and "New York New York", of all thangs. She's also guided by the Dirty Dozen Blues Band, actually a small combo, itself ferried  by drummer Jim White (of the Dirty Three; no resemblance to the same-named Luaka Bop semi-eminence and haughty hipster isolate, whom Whispering Edd Hurt crowns Village Atheist). Still romantique, of course, but no longer playing the waif card too hard. This girl is a woman now! (as  expanded upon in https://thefreelancementalists.blogspot.com/2008/03/record-to-beat-in-08.html)

I covered James McMurtry's Just us Kids in a 4-15-08 Voice piece archived here: https://myvil.blogspot.com/2016/06/make-it-here.html 

Speaking of Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, Shearwater's Rook is the antique future, a rolling and tumbling eco-gothic art-hick evocation of Mary Shelley's The Last Man, seemingly with input from "MacArthur Park"-era Jim Webb and a foretaste of Roxy Music, a mantlepiece masterpiece of trilling, sometimes thrilling, blood-simple Lost Boys, hearts like empty cages, nature and nurture wheeling maybe right past end times: not close enough to be listed as country, but too close for comfort, as history repeats itself with the friction and sparks of seemingly random variations, riding that turntable in the sky, the transistor radio's Top Forty coming back in constellations of singed feathers and quill pens.

On "The Twilight Zone," a guy might find himself walking through no-budget empty streets, or the desert, to who knows where or when. Ray Raposa is that guy, and Castanets was once his murky shadow, then the Grand Canyon of bands, and now, as he creeps, rides and runs, to and through new album City Of Refuge (even meeting or seeing a woman), it's a Southwestern-to-Appalachian, radioactive river of sound. When Castanets discovers outright Country, where will we be?

Felice Brothers suggest baggy-pants carnies trailing Wild & Innocent-era Springsteen and backroads-backing-band to-stardom The Band, only at the other end of the Album era. The tide's gone out, mebbe never to return, so, in the classic manner, they treat records as promotional devices and calling cards, the way early 20th Century labels strongly urged artists to do. On the merry-go-round, going to get their ashes hauled. Too darn cute for me sometimes, but it's not me they're looking for, babe (though if I buy a ticket they'll punch it). The men might know, but the little girls understand.

Miss Lana Rebel: unlike the blurbs had me expecting, All I Need is not so very much the campfire of the lonesome cowgirl, or not so girly or cowed about it, it and she sounds small, clear, strong enough, vocals and spare backing (electric strumming mixes and mingles with electric piano, liquid with a citric aftertaste, slightly burbly, steel guitar, sometimes, and taut, discreetly attentive drums, discreetly attentive [and avid] everything, really). She's confiding, but that might include slipping you a few home truths, as the Aussies say, if you get too moony.Telling you this as a friend, natch, but then another sip, another song.

one more: Miss Lana Rebel, All I Need

I should listen to this. I actually grew up on the same block as her. She was in a noise band called Last of the Juanitas and a country spin-off called Juanita Family & Friends.

― President Keyes,

This pre-release comment still holds true:

So far digging Giant Sand's proVision (Sept. 2): , perkin' in the heat, bootheelin' past the charred traffic jam and through the ghost town saloon (skeleton of David Bowie calls the steps out there). One mainly for the fan club I reckon, though Gelb and his Danish compadres don't really need guests Isobelle Campbell, Neko Case, M. Ward, or so it seems, but they're more than welcome for lagniappe.

Haven't found my notes on the Dallas Frazier Elvira/R&B Sessions yet, but this 2008 report on some of Whispering Edd's bounty shows where Dallas is coming from:

Dallas Frazier on RCA ( a twofer reissue, Edd?) with Singing My Songs (1970) and My Baby Packed Up My Mind and Left Me (1971). So far I kinda prefer the latter, since he seems more uptempo and consistent with the higher, yet rougher vocals, def Eddie Hintonesque, some Andy Fairweather Low (when AFL was covering "My Bucket's Got A Hole In It" etc)with a touch of Roky and even Mouse--eh okay not that extreme sonically, but in some of the scenarios. For inst, even the *relatively* more sedate Singing My Songs has a couple of good takes on being dead, not in heaven or hell, just in the box, the graveyard anyway, but still with lots of lesson-learning personality--those would be "Lord Is That Me" and "Will You Visit Me On Sunday" (the latter also serves as follow-up to non-bragging but very detailed outlaw memoir, "I Just Got Tired of Being Poor." Also awesome is "She Wants To Be Good"("but she can't, because of men like me and you"--boo hoo, it's true!) But "My Baby Packed Up My Mind" is where the Hinton/Low thing really asserts itself, and "I'm Finally Over You" (and also "I didn't shave today, because the drug store ran out of razor blades," and if you find him in the street, it's just cause he's crossing, don't worry bout it), and "Big Mable Murphy" is kissin' sluggin' cousin to "Bad Bad Leroy Brown," sounds like, but also she's got it all over him, like Frazier's voice over Croce's; "Got My Mind on the Border of Mexico ", "She Wakes Me with a Kiss Every Morning", "Ode to a Child of the Wind" ("I never cared for settlin' down, and it never cared for me"), excellent countrypolitan piano and slimmed-down background easing toward para-outlaw mainstream (after crime-doesn't-pay excitement), at least alongside Kristofferson's also kinda late-politan-production-wise The Silver-Tongued Devil And I (also '71, I think, but that was cornier and much monotonier than any of this). Next: his The R& B Sessions (Raven, 2008) (will post notes when find)

Oh, here we go!

Yow, lightning storm out there, and I'm on dial-up; better keep this short, lest we all get Dixie-fried: The R & B Sessions, hitched to Elvira (1966). Def more of the raucous li'l Eddie Hinton upstart, and I shoulda mentioned young Doug Sahm too, esp. since this version of "Just A Little Bit Of You" sure has the rhythm section on the "She's About a Mover" (sib to Beatles' "She's a Woman") tip, back in the headphones (real good sharp mixes on these; could use some more bass I guess, but that wouldn't be true to the intended or probable mid-60s sound, and might be distracting, in this kind of acerbic groove) Does several others found on those Charlie Rich sides we were discussing a little up thread, even does Rich's own "Mohair Sam." Only thing, the prev heard 70/71 country songs are in the midst of or looking back at one's won experiences (like from the grave etc), while a lot of this '66 stuff is hanging on the corner, celebrating and maybe snickering enviously at cool cats like "Alley Oop," fantasizing about being "Mohair Sam"(seems most likely in this context), exhorting self and others to go git started in "Whoop It on 'Um". But some good heavy courting in "Especially For You" and "Ain't That Fine," alleged workadaddy working himself up to lay down the law or/and else in "That Ain't No Stuff", thus mebbe getting his comeuppance in "Been Rained On, " so graduation or postschool life coming in at the end. Tell It Like It Is! (1967) continues this bluster with "Don't Come Knocking On My Door," but raises it to the poignant self-assertion of "Tell It Like It Is" (Aaron or one of the other Nevilles did this first, right?) Ace vocal, but can't see the point of covering it with a clone arrangement, didn't he need a steel guitar or something for whatever market Capitol was going for (maybe toward a Johnny Rivers appeal)? But immediately the kind of transition (in reverse) that derailed Rich when he went from "Mohair Sam," promoted as kind of a groovey novelty, to one of his dramatic ballads; the reverse comes here with "Honk 'N' Tonk," which is a fable bout the music biz, H 'N' T being a duo of fleas, who attract hippie fleas to a club called Hole In The Ground, to dig go-go fleas, imported from a classy beagle--kind of Tony Joe in "even trolls like to rock 'n roll" mode, with Lord Buckley and Harry the Hipster nodding along. Also dig the antsy horny "Ain't Nothin' Shakin (But The Leaves)," "Ain't Had No Lovin'," "Hurtin'" ("Hoitin'," like Cajun Archie Bunker) from "the Hunger for Your Love," and boppin' "Home In My Hand," maybe this is where Commander Cody got it? Best bonus tracks "Tennessee Sue" back in the garage tonk groove (though there are several forgettable attempts at this, like "Clawhammer Clyde," or this twofer's version of "Elvira," for that matter.) And closes with another soulful, lilting (sort of Sonny Curtis?) ballad, "Make Believe You're Here with Me." Thanks again Edd! This will def be on my Reissues list.

So far I'm digging Randall Bramblett's Now It's Tomorrow (Aug, 19, New West): gravelly keyboardy turns of phrase, pointed enough; a bit persistent with the philosophy, but the quality too, and both seem homegrown, from experiences he's still experiencing, as well as older ones. Personally I crave a little sweetening here and there, some girls, a rowdy solo or two, and where's his sax? That's what I knew him for guesting in the Golden Age of Southern Rock (oh there it is, but I'd like more). Prob too quirky for some, and despite interesting stuff about him preserved on robertchristgau.com, it never did quite get me to take the plunge. Says here it's his seventh album, fourth for New West, so the ones xgau wrote about were *all* for a long time, h'mm. I'm also tempted to say something about early Steely Dan, and songs 70s Clapton might have covered, though he couldn't sing 'em this well. A stand-up guy, not a good ol' boy, not quite.

As I barely brought myself to respond in the dog days of late July, when asked what's good in this year:

The Truckers' latest roadkill is uneven as ever, but the best songs are good and numerous enough to put it in my Nash Scene Top Ten…Brighter Than Creation's Dark is not full of sweetness and light, and it is a little too long, like most of their albums, but does seem reinvigorated, after getting past whatever tensions re resulted in the slammed doors and illin' irresolution of A Blessing And A Curse. Also, we got the unexpected emergence of bassist Shonna as songwriter and lead singer on some tracks, a welcome respite from the broody testosterone, and even a few songs, especially the one set in the Grand Canyon, where the drivers-by get out of their truck for a while, and actually seem to enjoy doing so. 

And furrthurrmorrre:

Chris Knight: Heart of Stone (this was a sleeper and grower, slow and steady)---The first four songs seem musically congested, infected by his determination to be jest plain folks, and too dependent on working a tag line that includes the title phrase, very economical-like: So the "Homesick Gypsy" is home once he's left you(though that had promise when it seemed like it was gonna be like "Payday" the movie, then got stuck in repeat); "Hell Ain't Half Full" cos there's room for us all (that one might be good when I can prise its packing loose, it's partly the mix of these four); somebody'll probably do an okay cover of "Something To Keep Me Going"("when I'm gone"); also, you should never break yerself on a "Heart Of Stone." But on tracks 5 through 12, the music's circles grow some circuits and heat up the words, which grow some characters, who rattle their cages, like on fgb vc the guy asks why the more money he gets the more he needs, hell yeah, and it gets to some headbanging. All the good combo stuff seems to come from the implications of drummer, the only player uncredited on the promo sheet, anybody know who it is? Mostly guitars, bass, drums, little B-3, sometimes fiddle and/or banjo from Tammy Rodgers of the Steeldrivers, anybody heard their album? Some pretty good (though brief) live sets on radio, but the lead Steeldriver guy's voice is so thick and meaty, like if Hood had Cooley's lungs, and they don't seem to go in for lengthy solos--all in all, I don't see how they fit into bluegrass, but apparently they do. (Sort of like a rougher Chatham County Line, who are also more about the songs than picking)

Somebody mentioned Kid Rock, which reminded me:

With some of the same appeal, 'tude-wise, but with retro more in the music than the lyric, and at the opposite end of the financial spectrum, comes now Backyard Tire Fire, telling tales out of school, of daring dumbass robberies and backdoor luv, various other blind and/or bold ambitions,and yall check their music at

http://www.backyardtirefire.com I'd say start with the earlier, no-budget EP tracks, barefoot skiffle with rueful-to-absurdist butt basically hopeful assertion, also the live sets linked from there to archive.org, where they crank it up, and then the new album gets a bit studio (somebody got some $ somewhere, by cracky), but it's still theyum. Here's a show preview I wrote, slightly bleeped for supposed "family newspaper":

Backyard Tire Fire's got catchy, itchy tunes, and talking points to sing: "I'm sick of debt. I wanna be out of it." But leader Ed Anderson knows he's well-nourished: "I only cry when my Mama's sick. Otherwise, I can handle my sh**." He's also ambitious: "I wanna be Tom Petty!" Then again, their Petty-est epic is about giving and getting a local non-hero's greeting: "How the hell did you get back here?!" Live sets spill rowdy boondock beans; the new studio album, The Places We Lived, burns electric blue atmosphere (and tires).

Edd is so right about Chuck Prophet's free download album Dreaming Waylon's Dreams. Kind of Velvets x Sir Doug, trippy "casual" and more Houdini than loose, but pretty loose.(More hit than miss, so more VU than Sir D., much as I love him). I never was that big on Waylon, but I dig this (re-vision version of Waylon's Dreaming My Dreams)  and I bet Jessi and Shooter would too.(also it immediately brings out elements of the songs, re feel and POV, that had to find their way to me through Waylon's own tracks)

Edd sez: He just does the whole record, and it sounds a lot like Prophet's Soap and Water, surely the best "Americana" record of 2007, and "Waymore's Blues" is redone as synthetic blooze, and if anyone decries the desecration I'll remind them that "Waymore's Blues" itself ain't nothing but "Kassie Jones" a.k.a. "On the Road Again," if you wanna get that rabbit out the log got to make like a D-O-G. Also recs Jim Dickinson's "Casey Jones (On The Road Again)."

And I picked Soap and Water's "Freckles," which I can *not* get out of my head; kind of a brilliant gloss of Romeo Void's "Never Say Never," seems like, but/and how often does that happen, really? 

More Edd burns reported by me---from the ilx thread Psychedelic Country Music, which I'd totally forgotten about:

Just now listening to Area 615's s/t (1969) and Trip in the Country (1970) on one disc (kindly provided by Edd Hurt), is psychedelic enough to expand my mind enough to halfway grasp new shapes of chesnuts I'd long since really stopped hearing, whether I liked them or not: the former would include "I've Been Loving You Too Long," now on its way to the family bayou of "Jolie Blonde" (wish they'd done that too; the "not category would include "Hey Jude," which starts out with "Loving You"'s old school Cajun tinge, but then zigzags toward "Psychotic Reaction" and other nice thangs (later, way into Trip, "Gray Suit Man" is a yowling garage bust of the Man, chugging away; the bass sounds like a 10-ton jug all through both sets; the drummer is ravenous too; but also use of sustain, fuzz, mebbe Moog, bass harmonica through echo chamber? never crowd the banjo, steel, oh lord the fiddle--some great ballads too, in between the rolling panstylistic puzzle palaces) A-List Nashville Cats, kicking out more than jams, more than resumes; real-enough soul, and some originals I guess, and trad-arr.beyond the festival bait (not that it wouldn't sound great live) It's like the first time I ever heard two LPs on one of those newfangled CDs: two much man!(Made Galileo look lak uh Boy Scout. Sorry bout that, let it all hang out.) Thanks Edd!!!

                                                          Don Allred