Tag Archives: Americana

Old 97’s & Waylon Jennings: Old 97’s & Waylon Jennings

The master and his disciples cut a single in 1996

With a pair of indie releases behind them, and their Elektra debut, Too Far to Care, just ahead, the Old 97’s caught the ear of Waylon Jennings, who talked them up in an interview. Emboldened by this notice, the group wrote to Jennings and asked if he’d like to record together, and charmed by the invitation, he invited them to Nashville. So the quartet and the legend convened to record two originals, Rhett Miller’s “The Other Shoe” and bassist Murry Hammond’s “The Iron Road.” Prodded by a band that was as much rock as country, Jennings’ voice still had the gravity to stand out against electric guitars, bass and drums. Hammond’s opener offers the sort of introspective accounting Jennings often wrote for (and of) himself, while Miller’s tale of infidelity and revenge provides the vocalist some lyrical drama. Unexplained is how the two sides ended up being shelved for seventeen years, until their Record Store Day release in 2013. Reissued on CD, the Jennings tracks are fleshed out with four previously unissued contemporaneous Old 97’s demos, cover art by Jon Langford and liner note by Miller. Two of the demos were re-recorded for later releases (“Fireflies” for Miller’s solo album, The Believer and “Visting Hours” for The Grand Theater, Vol. 2), but these early takes, including a cover of the Magnetic Fields’ “Born on a Train,” are a nice find for Old 97’s fans. The Jennings tracks are the main draw, and they’ll please both the band’s fans, and the Jennings faithful. [Â©2013 Hyperbolium]

Old 97’s Home Page

Owen Temple: Stories They Tell

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A literate album from an observant songwriter

Owen Temple is a singer-songwriter with a sociologist’s eye. His third collaboration with producer Gabriel Rhodes extends a string of albums that looks at people, society and the interrelationship between the two. The triptych began with 2009’s Dollars and Dimes, inspired in part by Joel Garreau’s The Nine Nations of America and his thoughts on the shared beliefs that bind people across geographies. On 2011’s Mountain Home, Temple narrowed his focus to the emotions and situations that frame individuals and create identity. For his latest album, he draws from Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects, threading his songs with observations of the things people make, including physical objects, relationships, and as demonstrated by his latest set of songs, art.

The self-defining act of songwriting dovetails neatly with Temple’s stories of people finding their place in the world. His characters build identities around concrete artifacts (“Make Something”), ephemeral accumulations of power (“Big Man”), mythical cities (“Cities Made of Gold”) and the relationships they form with others. Temple layers his creation theme with the metaphorical garden of “Homegrown,” and its suggestion that building something worthwhile takes time and attention. Rebuilding too, as “Johnson Grass” imagines a retired LBJ groping for a new identity. As a thesis statement, the album’s title track suggests that humanity’s most indelible mark is houtis stories, and by obvious association, our songs.

Temple’s songs are entertaining, but meant to be more than entertainment; the current batch grew out of a five-month-long song-a-week challenge with the Band of Heathens’ Gordy Quist (who pitched in to co-write “Cracking the Code” and “Six Nations of Caledonia”). The material, however, came from Temple’s ever-observing songwriter’s eye. His lyrics outpace his melodies at this point, but the mostly low-key backing tracks include solid rhythm from Josh Flowers (bass) and Rick Richards (drums), graceful steel licks from Tommy Spurlock, and a handful of everything from multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Rhodes. Temple continues to emerge as a philosophical man who promotes empathy with the shared feelings, observations and stories of his songs. [Â©2013 Hyperbolium]

Owen Temple’s Home Page

OST: Running Wild – The Life of Dayton O. Hyde

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Steve Poltz soundtrack for a documentary on Dayton O. Hyde

Steve Poltz’s soundtrack for Suzanne Mitchell’s documentary Running Wild: The Life of Dayton O. Hyde, features eight new lyrical songs interspersed among seventeen short instrumentals. Poltz wrote his songs after visiting with Dayton Hyde at the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary he’d founded in 1988. The instrumentals tend to atmospheric and contemplative, though a few longer tracks, “Happier Hour” and “El Centro,” are full-band arrangements; the former is a bouncy country tune, the latter a growling rocker. Hyde’s background as a cowboy, rancher, rodeo rider, photographer and author were perhaps the only possible path to his ultimate role as a savior of wild horses.Â His accomplishments are extensive, often extending far beyond his personal well-being, and his gratitude is both deep and widespread.

Poltz employs country, rock and blues, collaborating with director Mitchell to fine-tune his songs to the film’s take on its subject’s character. The only track not written by Poltz is Lily Kaminsk’s “Phantom Love,” a haunting, lo-fi pop ballad performed by her band She Rose, and originally released in 2012. Poltz is a prolific artist and well-traveled troubadour, having released more than a dozen solo albums, including a disc full of answering machine recordings and a live CD/DVD package. But with all that under his belt, this is his first venture into soundtracks, and the flexibility of his style turns out to be well suited to both the needs of a film soundtrack and the strong character and fine shadings of this story’s protagonist. [Â©2013 Hyperbolium]

The Coals: A Happy Animal

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West Coast Americana of country, folk and a taste of Dixieland

Though this Los Angeles band’s second album includes eight tracks, it clocks in at only twenty-two minutes. With an average song length of 2’45, you might expect music that’s a throwback to Top 40 pop, but the Coals are a folk-flavored Americana band, with road-weary vocals, acoustic and resonator guitars, drums, bass, keyboards and accordion. Vocalist Jason Mandell is an economical writer, and the band’s instrumental breaks provide accents rather than extended solos. Mandell is also a man in search of romantic redemption, brooding over unwanted farewells, pining for unrequited love, seeking the renewal of second chances and gently shedding the skin of failed relationships. He starts several songs in a shell-shocked monotone reminiscent of Leonard Cohen, but as the lyrics gain emotion, so does his voice gain melody. The band takes a New Orleans turn for “Dirt Road,” heads south of the border with Ryan Ross’s trumpet on “Maria,” falls into an easy country groove for “Steal My Heart,” and gives some old-timey twang to “Lord Lord Lord.” That’s a lot of range for eight short songs, but other than the hanging ending of the opener, none of the tracks feel incomplete. Mandell likes to make his point and move on to the next, which gives the album a jaunty pace. [Â©2013 Hyperbolium]

The Coals Home Page

Stewart Eastham: The Man I Once Was

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Day of the Outlaw front-man goes solo

Former Day of the Outlaw front man Stewart Eastham debuts as a solo with this semi-autobiographical album documenting his transition from Los Angeles to Nashville, and his rebirth in Music City. Ironically, given the genesis of his new songs, the album was actually produced by former band mate Burke Ericson in Los Angeles with West Coast musicians, including Ted Russell Kamp and steel player John McClung. Eastham began his musical journey as a drummer, working his way to the microphone of the band Minibike and its follow-on, Day of the Outlaw. As a vocalist and songwriter, Eastham’s folk-like storytelling provides continuity between the group’s two releases and this solo outing, but where Day of the Outlaw’s The Retribution Waltz leaned towards Stones-ish rock, his solo outing starts with traditional country at its core.

With change clearly on his mind, Eastham’s considered many sides of transition. The gospel-tinged opener “Let It Go” sets the stage by proselytizing an optimistic, future-facing outlook. One can imagine this song helping Eastham let go of the comfort he’d developed in Los Angeles by looking forward to the then-unknown opportunities of Nashville. That cross-country journey is essayed in the steel-heavy, foot-stomping “Born in California,” exploring the dichotomies – countryside and city, home and adventure – that have threaded throughout Eastham’s life. He describes the layer between his lyrics and characters as having gone transparent for this batch of songs, and you can feel the autobiographical connection both directly and in allegory. The co-dependent relationship of “Broken Hearted Lovers,” for example, may be a tie between people, or between Eastham and Los Angeles.

There’s a sorrowful edge to many of Eastham’s vocals, whether lamenting lost love or grappling with the ghosts that still haunt better times. His longing is sad, but not defeated, even in the face of the title track’s fictionalized horrors. He pulls out of the nosedive for the honky-tonk kiss-off “The Lights of Tennessee” and escape of “Butte County Line,” with the latter bouncing along with the small-town problems of Steve Earle’s Guitar Town set to the open-road rhythm of the Allman Brothers The album ventures away from twangy country with strings on “Someone New” and funky organ and bass on “Crawl Up Your Bottle,” but the solid singer-songwriter vibe reinforces Eastham’s decision to go solo, and the results are more personal and powerful than anything he’s recorded before. [Â©2013 Hyperbolium]

Stewart Eastham’s Home Page

The Band of Heathens: Sunday Morning Record

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Band of Heathens refine and expand their sound

The Band of Heathens continues to surprise. While their new album offers up the Americana and Little Feat-styled funk fans have come to expect, there’s a thread of late 1960s production pop that’s a welcome addition. This opening track, “Shotgun,” tips the album’s surprise with its nod to “Everybody’s Talkin’.” Gordy Quist sings the opening “I heard that you were talkin’ ’bout me, I heard you had a smile on your face while you cried, cried, cried,” with a rhythm and melody that easily brings to mind Fred Neil’s original couplet. The song quickly establishes its own sound, but the unison singing, keyboards and electric sitar-like guitar preview echoes of Curt Boettcher, Gary Usher and Brian Wilson heard in several of the album’s tracks.

Ed Jurdi opens the album’s second song with a voice as warm and soulful as Quist’s. Where the opener was pleased to see an indiscreet ex-lover (or, perhaps, a recently departed, smack-talking founding member of the band) receding in the rear-view mirror, “Caroline Williams” is rife with the pain and confusion of the left behind. Recently arrived drummer Richard Millsap adds both rhythm and melody with his tom toms, and a short instrumental pairing of piano and wordless vocals echoes another element of late-60s studio pop. Jurdi and Quest wrote this album amid both personal and band changes, and transition is a running theme. In addition to relationships in formation, reformation and dissolution, there’s a longing for stability and simplicity.

The Heathens’ complexities come to the fore in the personal inventories of “Since I’ve Been Home,” the funky “Miss My Life” and the media-saturated world of “Records in My Bed.” The latter, with some terrific 70s-styled electric piano by Trevor Nealon, fondly remembers the thrill a favorite record brought in a world not yet fragmented by always-on media. Jurdi and Quist are memorable vocalists, ranging from husky soul to fragile Elliot Smith-like falsetto, but Â the variety of duet styles they manage is even more impressive. In addition to rootsy blends of country and soul, they bind tightly for pop harmonies that suggest Simon & Garfunkel, CS&N and the Beatles. Nealon and Millsap have added new elements to a band that was already multidimensional, making the Band of Heathens’ fourth studio album their most adventurous yet. [Â©2013 Hyperbolium]

The Band of Heathens’ Home Page

Hypercast #1: Americana

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A collection of recently released country, Americana, rock and folk, plus a few catalog items for good measure. Click the artist names below for associated album reviews.

Tim O’Brien & Darrell Scott “Just One More”
Vince Gill and Paul Franklin “Nobody’s Fool But Yours”
Brian Wright “Over Yet Blues”
Escondido “Bad Without You”
Merle Haggard “The Fugitive”
Left Arm Tan “69 Reasons”
The Band of Heathens “Records in Bed”
One Mile an Hour “Sunken Ships”
Hall of Ghosts “Giant Water”
Greg Trooper “All the Way to Amsterdam”
Rick Shea “Gregory Ray DeFord”
The Barn Birds “Sundays Loving You”
Mando Saenz “Breakaway Speed”
Stewart Eastham “Crawl Up in Your Bottle”
Kris Kristofferson “Why Me”
Dwight Yoakam “Two Doors Down”
Nick Ferrio & His Feelings “Half the Time”
Kelly Willis “He Don’t Care About Me”

Richard Buckner: Surrounded

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Haunting electronica-backed folk

Though he’d released two indie albums in the mid-90s, Richard Buckner arrived in most listeners’ ears with his 1997 major label debut, Devotion + Doubt. His voice and delivery were unlike just about anyone who’d come before. His early music found cover under the Americana umbrella, but even then the steel, fiddle and vocal edgings that signaled country were balanced by strong elements of folk, pop, rock and jazz. His weary vocals played as hushed confessions, and his impressionistic lyrics were filled with fragments, shards really, of his recently ended marriage. For all but the few who’d latched on to him earlier, it was a breathtaking introduction.

His two albums with MCA led to another indie stint and a 2004 landing at Merge. A string of misfortunes (including a failed soundtrack opportunity, an inadvertent brush with the law and technical difficulties) led to a five-year gap between 2006’s Meadow and 2011’s Our Blood. But now, with comparative ease, he’s produced an album backed with ambient electronic textures, tape loops and layered vocals. Buckner’s trilled notes can suggest Randy Travis or George Jones, but the atmospheric backgrounds, such as on “When You Tell Me How It Is,” frame his voice similarly to Roxy Music-era Bryan Ferry.

Buckner’s lyrics continue in the redacted vein of his earlier work, sketching unmet expectations, tenacity, anxiety and other shadowy emotions. The music follows suit, with a throbbing background for “Mood” and a melancholy optimism in “Go.” The ambient backing tracks provide a surprisingly good fit for what is essentially folk music. But this folk music has a haunted soul, and the electronics are grounded by finger-picked acoustic guitars. The things you’ve loved about Richard Buckner’s earlier records are still here, but he’s stretched out to new timbres that underline his songs with moody electronic textures.[Â©2013 Hyperbolium]

Richard Buckner’s Home Page

Richard Buckner Wants to Play Your Living Room

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FromÂ RichardBuckner.com:

So, beginning in late January 2014, I’ll be traveling throughout Washington, Oregon, California and Arizona with my acoustic guitar, hollering & strumming into thin air to audiences weary of the intimate setting of the rock bar-ambienced dins of out-of-time cocktail-shaker-maracas, bachelorette parties and bar-side conversations about “who’s-that-guy-onstage-again?” and “Ten-bucks-to-get-in-and-it’s-just-a-bunch-of-dudes-shushing-me-when-I-try-and-tell-you-about-my-new-hilarious-fantasy-football-team-name!”. In between the shows, I’ll also be working on my latest collection of run-on sentences (containing parenthesis so I can cram in more unnecessarily-tangented details) featuring nouns disguised as adjectives. I like using determiners as well, but my therapist thinks that it adds to my issues (with over-explaining).

For more information on hosting a Richard Buckner show, visit Undertow.

Rick Shea: Sweet Bernardine

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Semi-autobiographical singer-songwriter country-folk and blues

It’s been four years since this Southern California roots musician released Shelter Valley Blues, and he’s evidently spent the time touring and developing original material for this new album. Titled after Shea’s childhood hometown of San Bernardino, the album spends time with both family and local lights, sketching a biography that recounts experience, history and legend. Shea’s first-person narratives are sung in present tense, but filled with the considered detail and romanticism of retrospection. His images of an East L.A. musician’s lodging provide a noirish setting for “Mariachi Hotel,” and the true headlines of “Gregory DeFord” are turned into an elegy that’s as much for all those crushed by the recession as for the title character. The album includes low blues, folk and honky-tonk, all sung in an unassuming delivery that leaves the lyrics to do the work. The backings generally stick to acoustic textures, but the title track does bust out a compelling electric guitar solo. Shea’s storytelling shows Merle Haggard as a primary influence, but it’s clear that he’s also connected with contemporaries like Dave Alvin, whose King of California pairs very nicely with this new album. [Â©2013 Hyperbolium]

Rick Shea’s Home Page