It might be easy to gloss over just how good of a songwriter Joseph Huber is from his work with the .357 String Band. The break neck nature of their music tends to make your brain focus on the energy instead of the enigmatic lyricism and above average song structuring. But slow the songs down and you can see it, and that is exactly what Joe has done with Bury Me When I Fall.
Yesterday, fiddle phenom, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and singer Ruby Jane turned 16. Less and less it feels right to call her a “prodigy” as she grows older and her skins on the wall continue to grow as well, surpassing the accolades many musicians twice her age have amassed. Ruby Jane has deserved to be judged against musicians of any age for years, but as she reaches 16, her songwriting and singing have become even more refined.
I know some were insulted when they rolled up to their beloved Saving Country Music and merely saw the title of this article, and those people can feel free to navigate to the comments section and voice their displeasure. But the simple fact is that Taylor Swift’s Speak Now is already the biggest album in all of music in the last five years, and on its way to being the biggest in a decade whose album sales overall look like an inversion of The Price Is Right’s mountain climber game.
On Saturday night the Hole in the Wall in Austin, TX was transformed into “Dirtyfoot” headquarters for fans, bands and extended family of Hillgrass Bluebilly Records for their Launch Party. Folks from as far as Canada, Seattle, Minnesota, and Boston flew in exclusively for the event and helped pack the walls of the Hole to near capacity, while over 150 people from around the world tuned in through SCM Live to share the experience.
7 bands and 5 hours of music meant both Hole in the Wall’s stages were pressed into service….
When reviews and videos began to surface from Bob Wayne’s recent tour with Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers, the big buzz was about Bob’s new fiddle player named Liz Sloan. Not that Bob hasn’t had great musicians in his band before, quite the contrary, and not that a woman should be considered out of place in Bob’s band, but still Liz’s presence intrigued me wildly because I knew there must be a good story behind it.
UnIncorporated is a fun album with great songs that is not afraid to get too deep, or at times to be refreshingly immature.
The beauty of this album is it’s roots in truth. When so many Nashville products try to sing about the common man’s common struggles, they have to do it from the outside looking in. What Ronnie is doing is getting what is inside out, to keep his sanity.
Any review for Those Poor Bastards should probably start off with a disclaimer that gothic country is not for everyone. Nor do I claim to be an expert of the music; I’ve always felt like I’m on the outside looking in. Having said that, I have really become intrigued and entertained with what Those Poor Bastards do, and think of Lonesome Wyatt as virtually peerless in procuring sounds to set the exact mood he envisions for songs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
…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.
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…
I think it is important when we talk about saving country music, that we don’t work from a position of envy. In truth the joke is on them. They may have the big money, the control of the radio stations and the media. But we have each other, and true themes mined from real life experiences. Let them have their fake world, we have real music…
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.
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.
(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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
On Friday night I was treated to Western swing heaven as Ray Benson of Asleep At The Wheel brought his Bob Wills musical A Ride With Bob to my neck of the woods. (You can read my review of the show on the 9513.) The show featured a couple of guest artists, one being Ruby […]
In one respect, we live in a blessed time in country music. If it was 1986, the superpickers of our generation would be stuffing a sock down the front of their spandex tights as hair designers kink their bangs and perm their mullet, getting them ready to go on stage and pull some ungodly bad […]