We’ve followed New York’s Butchers Blind from their debut EP, through their first full length album and a live session. They’re now the subject of a 20-minute video feature that combines live-in-the-studio performance and interview footage!
Solid Texas country ala Pat Greene and Cory Morrow
When country fans discuss Texas artists, they often limit themselves to the renegade stars, such as Willie and Waylon, who abandoned Nashville, and the songwriters, Townes van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Kris Kristofferson and Billy Joe Shaver who defined Texas country song. But there’ve been a couple more generations of Lone Star singer-songwriters, and as the music’s grown within the state, many artists, including Pat Greene, Cory Morrow, Kevin Fowler and Jack Ingram have initiated, and in several cases sustained, careers within the state’s borders. Texas is a big place, and touring the honky-tonks, clubs, frat houses and bars promoting independently recorded albums can be a full-time job.
The music of these road-warriors is built for dance floors and summer fairs, with two-step rhythms and electric guitars whose twang mate country and rock ‘n’ roll without crossing over to the pop of Nashville, and vocals that invite audiences to share in clever lyrics of familiar situations. Nick Verzosa fits neatly into this tradition, with songs of lost love, broken relationships, new love, summer days and Texas delights. It’s standard fair, but Verzosa’s a convincing singer, and together with producer Walk Wilkins he’s crafted a compelling album whose songs will charm a Saturday-night crowd at Gruene Hall, and whose closing “7th Year Senior†is surely a favorite on Texas’ many frat rows. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com] 
Ten country classics in classic Nashville style
Numerous country stars, including Mandy Barnett and Sara Evans, have used Patsy Cline as a navigational north star. Newcomer Amy Francis follows the tradition with a full-blown countrypolitan cover of Jeannie Seely’s “Don’t Touch Me.†The music swells, the piano slips, and Francis hangs onto each note as if its end will break her heart into ever smaller pieces. Producer Tommy Delamore echoes the original Nashville sound of “Sweet Dreams†and “Fool Number One†without mimicking the original arrangements, and Francis is stalwart and convincing as she sings George Jones’ “Picture of Me Without You.†The ten selections combine classic ‘60s country tunes with a few contemporary selections, including Vince Gill’s “When I Call Your Name.†Francis is a talented singer with an ear for material that resonates with her voice, and she has a talented producer behind the board. This all makes for entertaining covers, but none stray far enough from the source material to reveal the depth of Francis’ own interpretive style or the unique charms of her voice. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]
Legendary singer-songwriter revisits her catalog
Originally released in 1980, the last of four long-players King recorded for Capitol, this album is a hit-and-miss affair touched in several places by the slick studio sound of its era. The idea of having King revisit pearls in her songwriting catalog was a good one, but unlike Tapestry’s emotional reclaiming of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?,†few of these renditions vastly improve on the earlier, better-known hits or provide revelatory insight into Goffin & King’s intentions. The album’s greatest commercial distinction was its single, a cover of the Chiffons’ “One Fine Day,†which gave King her last Top 40 hit, but the earthy power of her voice is compromised in several spots by smooth keyboards, studio-tuned tom-toms and bar band blues arrangements. Still, King gives emotionally fulfilling performances of Freddie Scott’s “Hey Girl,†Maxine Brown’s “Oh No, Not My Baby†and Blood, Sweat & Tears’ “Hi-De-Ho,†and thrives in a version of “Snow Queen†that weds The City’s original jazz groove to the Association’s vocal thickness. The closing cover of the Byrds’ “Goin’ Back†is truly superb, and shows just how easily King could reclaim her songs, as she’d done in bits and pieces on earlier records (e.g., “I Wasn’t Born to Follow†from Now That Everything’s Been Said, “Up on the Roof†from Writer and “Some Kind of Wonderful†from Music). Her first attempt to do so at album length pays some dividends, but isn’t the artistic triumph one might have hoped for. Rockingale Records (the label King founded in 2006) has returned this album to print in 2012 sans bonus tracks, and added an eight-page booklet that includes song lyrics and album artwork. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]
Carole King recovers from the death of her third husband
King’s third album for Capitol was originally released in 1978, and is now being reissued on her own Rockingdale imprint with the original track list and an eight-page booklet that includes liner notes, lyrics, photos and album art. Unlike her other Capitol albums, this was recorded in Austin, Texas, with a soulful group of musicians who were then backing Jerry Jeff Walker. The country-tinged sound is a great deal earthier than the slick studio work on Simple Things and Welcome Home, and King is more contemplative in voice and melancholy in lyrical mood, no doubt due to the death of her third husband, Rick Evers, earlier in the year.
That said, King remained, as she had been on her two previous Capitol albums, generally optimistic. There’s genuine pain in “Dreamlike I Wander,†but she realizes you can both remember and move forward, providing herself the opportunity to heal on “Walk With Me†and emotional advice and pep talks with “Move Lightly,†“Passing of the Days†and “Eagle.†Leo LeBlanc’s pedal steel and Mark Hallman’s mandolin fit nicely behind King’s more emotional vocals, and though she only plays piano on three tracks, Reese Wymans adds expressive keyboards throughout the rest of the album.
The socially conscious themes heard on Welcome Home continue here with the environmentalism of “Seeing Red†and “Time Gone By,†the latter inspired in part by Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang, and the back-to-the-land hippies-and-rednecks idealism of “Good Mountain People.†King digs deeper for this album than she’d done for the previous two, and the country-rock backings are both a welcome change and an excellent fit. The borrowed band is sensitive and soulful, providing delicate musical annotations for King’s lyrics and playing out several songs with deep instrumental grooves. After two pedestrian albums, this (and the next, Pearls) found King back on track. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]
A middling Carole King album with a few moments of inspiration
Carole King’s second album for Capitol was originally released in 1978, and is now being reissued on her own Rockingale imprint with its original track list and an eight-page booklet that includes liner notes, lyrics, photos and album art. The songwriting continued her work with then-third-husband Rick Evers, who co-wrote two of the titles, and also continued King’s weakening commercial success. The album scratched just below the Hot 100, and a lone single (“Morning Sunâ€) just missed the A/C Top 40. As on her Capitol debut, Simple Things, King’s songs are incredibly optimistic, perhaps sparked by the communal living she and Evers had set up. Evers died, reportedly of a heroin overdose, a few months after the album was recorded, so the album’s sunny vibe was thrown into shadow by the songwriter’s loss.
King reaches back to the Brill Building for the cruisin’ themed “Main Street Saturday Night,†but it doesn’t crackle with the authenticity of her earlier work, and Evers’ new-agey lyrics for “Sun Bird†must have seemed deep at the time, but don’t hold a candle to the expressiveness of even King’s lesser works. Even stranger is the catchy “Venusian Diamond,†which combines late-60s Beatleisms with the too-clean studio sounds that marked many productions of the era. Even that’s explainable compared to the bandwagon “Disco Tech,†though even here you get the sense that King has a deeper sense of music’s primordial hold on the soul than many of the hacks writing disco at the time.
A more conventional pop expression of her love is heard in “Ride the Music,†and the following “Everybody’s Got the Spirit†continues the community theme which closed her previous album in “One.†The album’s most emotionally satisfying lyric is in its closing title song, offering the warmth of the California canyon music she wrote nearly a decade earlier. It too has its hippie moments, but closes a pleasant, but ultimately pedestrian Carole King album on a strong and memorable note. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]
Carole King’s 1977 Capitol debut
Previously reissued on CD in Japan, King’s 1977 Capitol debut is now being reissued domestically on her own Rockingale imprint with its original ten tracks and an eight-page booklet that includes lyrics and album art. Simple Things was King’s last album to reach the Top 20 and be certified Gold, breaking a string of Top 10’s that stretched back to 1971’s Tapestry. This set also includes her first collaborations with future-third-husband Rick Evans, who co-wrote three songs. Like all four of her Capitol releases, Simple Things showcases King’s songwriting craft, soulful voice and keyboard playing, but failed to make a serious dent in the charts. Even her fellow singer-songwriters – Carly Simon and James Taylor – were then having hits with other people’s material.
The peppy “Hard Rock Café†(which sounds to be a celebration of hometown gathering places, rather than an advertisement for the then-yet-to-franchise London restaurant) climbed into the Top 40, and the album’s optimistic title track found success on the A/C chart. Fans will find many fine album tracks, all of which are relentlessly optimistic. Even the song of separation, “You’re the One Who Knows,†leans on the lasting value of what was, rather than dwelling on what’s no more, and the closing “One†speaks to King’s growing social conscience. The backing band is professional but didn’t add anything particularly memorable to an album that’s basically a journeyman among the better entries in King’s catalog. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]
A musical family that grew up in separate homes
The Hobart Brothers & Lil’ Sis Hobart bring together three respected soloists from the Americana scene: Jon Dee Graham, Freedy Johnson and Susan Cowsill. The latter had a large helping of mainstream fame in the 1960s with her family’s group, The Cowsills, but since the 1980s she’s made a name for herself a backing vocalist, a charter member of the Continental Drifters and with a low-key solo career over the past decade. Graham’s first notoriety came with the Skunks and the True Believers, and after years collaborating with others (and briefly dropping out of the industry), he began a solo career with 1999’s exceptional Escape from Monster Island. Johnston began his career as a singer-songwriter in the early ‘90s, starting with rootsy sounds that quickly took in more country flavor.
What’s obvious from the album’s very first track, is that the three musicians’ individual paths led them to a place of tight collaboration. Johnston’s indie roots, Graham’s driving rock and bohemian growl, Cowsill’s hook-filled pop, and all three’s immersion in country, blues and folk, come together easily, as if they’d been a group for years. Those fictional years as a family are turned concrete by the shared experiences brought to their songwriting, populating their lyrics with images from blue roads and bluer hearts. Graham’s “All Things Being Equal†reaches outside his personal experience for a harrowing portrait of a failed cotton market, but his “Almost Dinnertime†and Cowsill’s “Sodapoptree†offer gentler notes of warm nostalgia.
The trio’s music is as diverse as their collected experience, including swampy Americana, Mexicali ballads, quirky power-pop and electric folk-rock. The album’s ten tracks are split between seven recorded as a full band (and funded by a Kickstarter campaign) and three demos recorded previously without a drummer; a separate digital download adds nine more demos. You can hear from the demo sessions that the principals’ mutual affinity was immediate, a gathering of like souls who’d been practicing to play together throughout their independent musical lives. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]
MP3 | Ballad of Sis (Didn’t I Love You)
The Hobart Brothers’ Home Page
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An anthology of Tony Rice’s recordings of Bill Monroe’s songs
The centennial anniversary of Bill Monroe’s birth has produced an outpouring of tributes (e.g., 1 2 3 4 5) from many of the musicians who’ve descended from the master’s vision. Each of the disciples has played Monroe’s tunes on stage and recorded them sporadically, but with these tributes they’ve made album length statements about their relationship to the music and the man. Tony Rice has also played and recorded Monroe’s music, but instead of recording a purpose-built tribute, his label has cherry-picked fourteen tracks from nine albums released between 1981 and 2000. This includes solo titles and sessions with David Grisman, the Tony Rice Unit, the Rice Bothers and the Bluegrass Album Band.
Fans may already have many of these tracks on original albums or previous collections (Lonesome Moonlight: Bluegrass Songs of Bill Monroe and The Bluegrass Guitar Collection), but for those not steeped in the Tony Rice catalog, this is a fine anthology. Not only is Rice a preeminent bluegrass guitarist and singer, but twenty years of recordings say as much about Rice’s evolving relationship to Monroe as they do about Monroe himself. The set mixes vocal and instrumental tracks, and ranges from traditional playing to styles influenced by jazz and swing. Marian Levy’s liners fill out Rice’s view of Monroe, though the ink she spends on ponderous philosophizing would have been better spent discussing the songs, performances and settings. Chuck the liner notes and you’ll find all you need to know in the grooves. [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]
Exceptional indie album of folk, country and trad jazz
To say that Jason Serious’ solo debut is accomplished would be to sell it short. Not only is it full of incredibly memorable original songs, but its evocation of American musical vernacular is all the more extraordinary for his ex-pat status and the talented band of Europeans with which he recorded. To write and record something so immersed in American folk, country and early jazz while living in the states would be difficult enough, but to do so in Munich is nearly unimaginable. If this was a homesick love letter trying to bridge the distance, its rootedness would be more easily explained, but these are songs from a rural Marylander whose roots seem unaffected by the change in firmament, and whose sentiments seem to have nourished his talented, widely-listened band mates.
The brassy shuffle “Met Jack Kerouac†and drunken melody of “Buckets of Gin†recall the goodtime music of the Lovin’ Spoonful, and the steel-lined “ESB†mixes hand-clapping upbeat country-folk, colorful imagery and a chorus (“everybody’s somebody’s beautifulâ€) that would make Mr. Rogers smile. Serious is a surprisingly polished artist, given that much of his woodshedding took place on the couch; it’s only in the past few years that he began sharing his solo work with others, and only in the past year that he began recording. The sessions themselves choreographed a dozen local musicians, adding deft splashes of banjo, violin, mandolin, steel, horns and harmony vocals across the nine tracks. Ausgezeichnet! [©2012 hyperbolium dot com]