Reviews

Album Review – Whitey Morgan & The 78’s

Reviews 43 Comments

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This is an important album. It is important for the burgeoning country scene in Michigan. It’s important for Bloodshot Records. And it’s important for all REAL country fans. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but in some ways that’s what makes it so important. It is straightforward, honest to goodness, good old fashioned country music delivered with no frills, and it’s about time something like this found its way back into “New Release” listings.

Ruby Jane – The Show Stealer

Reviews 20 Comments

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I know some of you think that I’m a little crazy for touting Austin’s 15-year-old fiddling phemon Ruby Jane so highly. That is because you have never seen Ruby Jane live. If you had (or have), then you know that despite all of my ridiculous accolades, nothing I’ve written about her does any justice to how astonishing a Ruby Jane Show is. It is the best music I have ever seen live.

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Album Review – Roger Alan Wade’s “Deguello Motel”

Reviews 29 Comments

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Every once in a while an album comes along that you can tell the extra effort was put out to make it right. It’s far beyond just a collection of songs, it unfolds like a story, with all the songs together becoming stronger than the sum of their parts. Its an album that shows patience and wisdom. There’s a grand vision, and more importantly, that vision is realized in the final cut. Deguello Motel is one of those albums.

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Album Review – Hillstomp’s Darker The Night

Reviews 10 Comments

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This is not music that you sit back and marvel at the eloquence as your foot taps. It is like a chest-thumping ritual that makes you succumb to the carnal cry of the country. Imagine the music you would hear coming out of a ramshackle shack far out deep in the woods in the dead of night, with a dusty light and the raw energy of people and music bleeding out between the cracks of the old boards that are perceptibly pulsing to the sweaty beat. This is Hillstomp.

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Movie Review – Last Rites of Ransom Pride

Reviews 29 Comments

Chris Large Photography 403 860 9068 clphoto@hotmail.com

Last Rites of Ransom Pride, written by Ray Wylie Hubbard, and starring Dwight Yoakam, Kris Kristofferson, and Lizzy Caplan, is like a Cormac McCarthy novel set to life: brilliant characterization in by-gone, almost mythical settings. This is not a heavily thematic movie, but there is enough plot and artistic attention that you do not walk away feeling like you indulged a guilty pleasure.

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Album Review – Jamey Johnson’s “The Guitar Song”

Reviews 101 Comments

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This is going to be a long one. So for those short of attention, let me summarize by saying that compared to most of the independent/Outlaw/underground country I am used to listening to and reviewing, this album is somewhere between mediocre and average. But compared to the rest of the material coming from major labels in Nashville, this album is remarkable.

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Review – Possesed By Paul James “Feed The Family”

Reviews 20 Comments

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In some of his songs the ambiguity of the lyrics allows them to hit your brain and bend to your own life’s experiences and needs. It’s like a cure all. Normally in an album review I would list certain songs, talk about them, compare them with each other and other songs for other artists. I would pick out favorite tracks, and talk about the weak ones to prove my objectivity. But with Possessed this seems like folly. There are no weak tracks.

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Review – Justin Townes Earle’s Harlem River Blues

Reviews 75 Comments

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…production can only go so far. There’s no meat here, no body. No soul, no blood, no deep roots–just aping and parody that is orchestrated, arranged, and packaged very well. I keep listening, waiting for those one or two songs that will cling to me so I can use them to buoy together an affinity for this project, but they haven’t come.

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Album Review – Dale Watson’s “Carryin’ On”

Reviews 17 Comments

Dale Watson Carryin' On

The standout in this album is Dale’s voice. He exhibits superlative control and wide wisdom singing his parts that come across confidently, without any sign of weakness or chipped paint even after years of honky tonkin’ and road doggin’. If Nashville had tried to strap an Auto-tuner to him, he would have fried the machine from the complexity of runs, and the diversity of volume and note changes just in a simple, short phrase. Nashville younguns take note of a master…

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A Letter To Ruby Jane Smith

Reviews 16 Comments

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On Friday (8-27-10) I saw Ruby Jane Smith perform at The Kessler Theater in Dallas, TX. I was going to write a review for the show, and then write Ruby a fan letter because I was so moved by the performance. As I was writing the letter I noticed I was writing a quasi review as well, and so I decided to post it here in lieu of a traditional review.

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Willis Alan Ramsey Delivers in Dallas

Reviews 7 Comments

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I had no idea what to expect when driving down into Dallas to see Willis Alan Ramsey perform. Information on the legendary, but somewhat reclusive songwriter is scant at best. No website, calendar or social network sites to help. If you’re not religiously scanning the fine print of your local alternative newsweekly, and you don’t live in or near Texas, you’re likely to miss him.

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I’m Impressed by Possesed by Paul James

Reviews 4 Comments

(Possessed just released his latest album “Feed the Family” through Hillgrass Bluebilly Records, and it will be released worldwide Sep. 21st.) After recently reviewing the underground film The Folk Singer, I wanted to get more information about the “main character” (so to speak), the artist Possessed by Paul James, and luckily a check of his […]

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Peewee Moore Hits The Outlaw Mark

Reviews 6 Comments

If someone asks you to define just what exactly you mean when you say “REAL” country or when you call someone an “Outlaw.” If words fail you when someone asks you to clarify what you mean when you say your music has to have “that sound.” When you say “I know it when I hear […]

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Movie Review – The Folk Singer

Reviews 30 Comments

The Folk Singer is the exact right movie for this very moment in time. It courageously reaches down to the deepest measure of the human soul and spirit and mines what cannot be expressed in words. It says what we are all thinking, but were incapable heretofore of saying. You watch this movie and say, […]

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Album Review – Jayke Orvis “It’s All Been Said”

Reviews 20 Comments

When maestro mandolin player and songwriter Jayke Orvis left the .357 String Band, some heavy metal transplants were screeching that he took all of their grittiness, guts, and anger with him. Taking that theory to its natural conclusion, I guess a few were expecting his solo project to be some sort of bloodletting ritual that […]

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Interview w/ The Shack Shaker’s JD Wilkes

Reviews 8 Comments

Pound for pound, possibly the most underrated personality in music is the frontman and founder of the Legendary Shack Shakers, one Colonel JD Wilkes. Don’t take my word for it. Ask Jello Biafra of Alternative Tentacles and The Dead Kennedays who called JD Wilkes, “the last great Rock and Roll frontman.” Robert Plant is also […]

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