Tag Archives: Country

Steve Gulley and Tim Stafford: Dogwood Winter

Leave a reply

Bluegrass, folk and acoustic country from songwriting pair

Grasstowne’s (and Mountain Heart’s) Steve Gulley and Blue Highway’s Tim Stafford have turned their songwriting partnership into a pleasing musical collaboration. Though songs have been their calling card, their bluegrass-inspired duet singing on the opening “Why Ask Why?” is a welcome revelation. Adam Steffey (mandolin), Ron Stewart (banjo), Justin Moses (dobro) and Dale Ann Bradley (harmony vocals) add zest to Gulley and Stafford’s guitars, but the music on this album is a lot broader than bluegrass. “Nebraska Sky” opens like a James Taylor soft pop tune before the close harmonies bring it back to the mountains; “Torches” maintains the Taylor vibe throughout. There are high-balling banjo romps, acoustic folk harmonies, sad country songs, and fiddle-led waltzes that sing of hard times and wistful memories, difficult relationships, and poignant stories of those on the margins. The closing “Angel on its Way,” sung solo by Gulley to Stafford’s acoustic guitar really shows off the craft of their songwriting. It’s always a treat to hear songwriters perform their own songs, especially when they’re as talented performers as Gulley and Stafford. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Rosehill: White Lines and Stars

Leave a reply

Optimistic country, rock and pop from former Texas High Life duo

Rosehill is the new duo formed by the founding members of Texas High Life, Mitch McBain and Blake Myers. Their earlier tavern rock has taken a twangier direction, and Radney Foster’s production gives them a winning polish. The duo writes hummable melodies and lyrics that catch familiar moments such as the togetherness of the title track’s nighttime drive, and the colorful late-night crowd of “Midnight America.” There are college-students fending off hangovers with a plate of scattered-smothered-and-covered, waitresses working the graveyard shift, and truckers catching up on missed miles. The lyrics are rife with optimism, searching out opportunity beyond tough circumstances and finding healing salvation in love. The album’s few notes of pessimism include the alcoholic spiral of “Glass of Whiskey” and the regretful bachelor of “Picassos for Pesos.” Even here there’s a self-awareness that suggests escape routes rather than incurable misery. McBain and Myers celebrate the weekend but never get really rowdy, they enjoy the warmth of love without crowing in excessive celebration, and they see life’s troubles while keeping them in perspective. The music combines twang and rock into something that’s neither Nashville slick nor roots raw; something that would sound at home on country radio without bowing to the Nashville studio sound currently in vogue. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Glass of Whiskey
Rosehill’s Home Page

Riley: Grandma’s Roadhouse

Leave a reply

Terrific 1971 country-rock obscurity with Gary Stewart

Record thrifters know the thrill of discovering a previously unknown recording that’s both a missing piece of history and worthwhile spin on its musical merits. Crate diggers and vault anthropologists continue to make incredible discoveries, and such is this obscure 1971 album. Pressed by the band in an edition of 500, it was sold at shows in upper Michigan and quickly disappeared into the collections of band members, families, friends and fans. Its claims to fame are several: it’s an early example of country, rock and soul fusion, it was recorded in the famed Bradley’s Barn studio in Nashville, and it marks the recorded debut of then-future country star Gary Stewart.

The group was named for its leader, Riley Watkins, and started out as a late-50s instrumental band backing first generation rockers who toured through Michigan. They relocated to Florida in 1963 to play the beach circuit, and there met the Kentucky-born Stewart. Stewart sat in and eventually joined the band (then called the Imps) for six months of shows in the wintery North. By decade’s end Watkins had formed a new trio with bassist Jim Noveskey and drummer Jim Snead, while Stewart had signed on as a songwriter in Nashville. One of the perks of Stewart’s songwriting gig was a sideline as an engineering assistant for Bradley’s Barn. Thus the connection was made, as Stewart invited Watkins to record tracks at the Barn. Stewart may have thought this an opportunity to put a band behind his songwriting demos, but Watkins jumped on the opportunity to record many of his originals.

Over the course of a year Watkins’ trio would race to Nashville to record their original songs, along with demos of tunes written by Stewart and his partner Bill Eldridge. As in the Florida days, Stewart sat in with the band, adding lead and rhythm guitar and harmonica, and singing lead on a couple of tunes. The band played emotional country rock that mixed elements heard in the Band, Poco, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Moby Grape and the Allman Brothers, as well as the southern soul sounds of Tony Joe White and Joe South. The band distinguished their sound with powerful guitar, bass and drums and strong multipart vocals. Watkins and Stewart sing a duet on the title track, and the harmonies on “Love, Love You Lady” suggest CS&N. Stewart steps to the front for the Creedence-styled “Drinkin’ Them Squeezins,” and the gospel sound and brotherhood-themed lyrics of “Listen to My Song” bring to mind Joe South’s “Walk a Mile in My Shoes.”

The turn from the late ‘60s into the early ‘70s was a special time for pop music, mining the late 60s underground for nuggets of invention while shucking away the ponderous ballroom jamming. The ease with which this band combined rock, country and soul follows the heavier experiments of FM, but the conciseness of their compositions would have sounded at home on AM. It’s a shame these tracks didn’t get into the hands of someone at Capitol, as no one in Nashville at that time could have known what to do with this “headneck” music. Riley and Stewart write of greasy roadhouses and cheating lovers, but also love, brotherhood and fine weed. The entire album feels warm and familiar, as if it’s been sitting on the shelf next to Cosmo’s Factory, Don’t It Make You Wanna Go Home, Black and White and The Allman Brothers Band all these years. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Field of Green
Grandma’s Roadhouse’s Facebook Page
Delmore Recordings’ Home Page

Raul Malo: Sinners & Saints

Leave a reply

Raul Malo revisits his country, rock and Latin roots

After spending the better part of the last decade edging away from the sounds of the Mavericks, Malo began to find his way back from cover songs and supper club countrypolitan with last year’s genre-bending Lucky One. Here he takes an even more personal step, producing himself in a home studio and finishing off the tracks in Ray Benson’s Austin-based Bismeaux Studios. Malo reconnects with the upbeat Tex-Mex (or really, Cuban-Country) and gripping balladry that made his earlier work so arresting; the relaxed tempos and too-neat productions that failed to spark After Hours are counted off here with verve, and the arrangements are given soulful edges that match Malo’s deeply emotional vocals.

The balance weighs making music from the heart over production perfection, as evident on a cover of Rodney Crowell’s “’Til I Gain Control Again.” Sung in a complete take, Malo aptly describes the recording as “not perfect, but the emotion is there.” If it’s not technically perfect, Malo’s probably the only one who could point out the problems, and singing with the dynamism Waylon Jennings brought to his earlier cover, it’s hard to imagine the words being put across any better. Just as effective is the Spanish-language “Sombras,” with Malo pledging no less than his life to prove his love, and the drowsy “Matter Much to You” builds tension by hesitating to make the operatic Roy Orbison leap you might expect.

Cuban roots open the album with a lonely trumpet that beckons a bullfighter into the ring, but before the toreador appears, Malo’s organ and guitar add surf twang and spaghetti western mystery. Augie Meyers’ classic Vox Continental appears on several tracks, adding the texture and tone of the Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados; the latter guest on “Superstar,” with Michael Guerra’s accordion casting a truly incredible spell. The rock ‘n’ soul of “Living For Today” suggests Delaney and Bonnie, but with the seeds sewn in the Nixon era watered by decades of American imperialism the lyrics have sprouted into mortal fatalism and the politically charged feeling that “we tried givin’ peace a chance / the only thing that’s wrong with that / we been at war since I was born.”

The original “Staying Here” sounds like something Elvis might have cut on his triumphant late-60s return to recording in Memphis. Malo plays everything on this track but the lead organ, but you’d be hard-pressed to know this was a one-man overdubbing band if you didn’t look at the credits – he’s that good at drums, bass, guitar, Mellotron and even tambourine; his voice is so fetching that it’s easy to forget his talents as an instrumentalist. Malo’s new songs are complemented by a cover of Los Lobos’ “Saint Behind the Glass,” further demonstrating that the contained form of his previous lounge material may have been an interesting singer’s exercise, but the expansive soul of these performances is the greater listener’s joy. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Living for Today
Raul Malo’s Home Page

The Famous: Come Home to Me

Leave a reply

Post-punk informed country twang

San Francisco’s The Famous, led by guitarist/vocalists Laurence Scott and Victor Barclay, debuted five years ago with the post-punk rock of Light, Sweet Crude. They still profess deep affection for the Pixies, but their new release isn’t nearly as raw as the debut, and the country twang explored on the earlier “Deconstruction Worker” is the new record’s raison d’être. Scott’s vocals retain their edgy emotion, and the music still has its rock power, but the band plays with more dynamics, and the tempos mull over the lyrics’ angst rather than spitting them out. If country music’s original outlaws had made their break with Nashville in the post-punk era, it might have sounded a lot like this. Scott’s bitter words and needy tone straddle the line between anger and remorse on the perfectly unconvincing “Without You,” and though “Perspicacious” sounds like the post-punk power-pop of Sugar, Scott retains the twang in his voice. The band shows their instrumental chops on the lengthy spaghetti-western intro to “Happy,” and the title track mixes the growl of Tom Waits and dark theatrics of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins with a mix of trad-jazz trombone, hard-twanging guitar and pedal steel. The closing instrumental “Under the Stars” is wistful, with countrypolitan piano, lazy steel and a terrific Endless Summer guitar that draws the day’s surfing (or perhaps trail ride) to a close. The melding of eras and influences is heard throughout the album, with heavy lead guitars winding into hard-charging Gun Club-styled verses, and spare solos that build into musical walls. This is a terrific evolution from the band’s debut, focusing the muscle and energy of their post-punk rock into compelling, emotional twang. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Under the Stars
Stream Come Home to Me
The Famous’ Home Page

Marty Stuart: Ghost Train- The Studio B Sessions

Leave a reply

Stuart amazes with the honesty and heart of his country music

Like ex-presidents who turn the mantle of their former office into opportunities to improve the world, talented musicians can turn the freedom of their post-hit years into explorations of that which really moves them. And such is Marty Stuart, whose baptism in bluegrass led to a run on Nashville in the mid-80s and, more successfully, in the early 90s with a four year chart run that included Hillbilly Rock, Tempted and This One’s Gonna Hurt You. His subsequent releases kept his core fans, but provided only middling commercial returns. But as his chart success waned, his artistic vision expanded. 1999’s song cycle The Pilgrim was his most powerful and coherent album to that date, showing off both his musical range and his ability to write songs that are literary, but still communicate on an emotional level.

Throughout the current decade he’s explored gospel (Souls’ Chapel), Native American struggles (Badlands: Ballads of the Lakota), and country and folk standards (Cool Country Favorites). And this time out, Stuart salutes the classic country of his youth, but other than a couple of well selected covers, he uses all new originals to conjure the sounds that inspired him in the first place. What will really ring in listeners’ ears is how natural and heartfelt this is. Like a dancer floating through his steps, Stuart plays songs as an extension of his soul, rather than as a performance of words and music. Recording in the legendary RCA Studio B, Stuart amplifies the echoes of performances past, much as John Mellencamp has on his recent No Better Than This.

Stuart is a country classicist, and his new songs resound with the spirits of Waylon, Merle, Buck and Johnny. The instrumental “Hummingbyrd” recounts the playfulness of “Buckaroo” and the Johnny Cash co-write “The Hangman” retains the Man in Black’s gravitas and frankness. The opening “Branded” splits the difference between Haggard’s “Branded Man” and Owens’ “Streets of Bakersfield,” tipping a musical hat to the piercing guitar of Roy Nichols. Don Reno’s “Country Boy Rock & Roll” gives Stuart a chance to roll out his rockabilly roots, and show off the glory of his band, the Fabulous Superlatives. Stuart and guitarist Kenny Vaughan sing a duet and duel on their electric guitars as drummer Harry Stinson and bassist Paul Martin push them with a hot train rhythm – this one’s sure to leave jaws hanging slack when played live.

The album’s ballads are just as good, not least of which for the emotional steel playing of Ralph Mooney (whose own “Crazy Arms” is covered here as an instrumental). Co-writing with his wife, singer Connie Smith, Stuart sings tales of romantic dissolution and regret. Smith joins Stuart for the exceptional duet “I Run to You,” drawing together threads of Gram and Emmylou, the Everly Brothers and classic Nashville pairings of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The album’s saddest song, however, is “Hard Working Man,” which questions the soul of a nation whose work ethic is undermined by globalization. There’s personal salvation in “Porter Wagoner’s Grave,” but the questions raised in “Hard Working Man” is what will really haunt you.

The album ends with “Little Heartbreaker,” the best Dwight Yoakam song that Yoakam didn’t actually write lately, followed by a short mandolin solo that brings things back to Stuart’s bluegrass roots. The sounds of Stuart’s influences are immediate throughout, but as someone obsessed with country music from his teens, and a protégé of both Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash, this is less a nostalgic interlude than a heeding of his mother’s words: “When you find yourself, if in the middle of nowhere, go back to Jerusalem and stand. Wait on divine guidance. It’s the only guidance worth having.” The recent neo-redneck movement may position themselves as modern-day hellraisers, but this rockabilly, Bakersfield twang and heartbroken balladry are the true sounds of rebellion, or as Stuart describes them, “sounds from the promised land.” [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

MP3 | Branded
Marty Stuart’s Home Page
Marty Stuart’s MySpace Page

Ola Belle Reed: Rising Sun Melodies

Leave a reply

Pioneering Appalachian singer, songwriter and string player

Ola Belle Reed is destined for repeated rediscovery. An Appalachian singer steeped in the mix of folk styles born of America’s melting pot, she was discovered at her family’s country music park, by 1950s folk revivalists. By that time she’d already been playing and singing for several decades, and her national emergence at the 1969 Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife showcased a talent that was pure in its folk roots and mature in its expression. Her appearances resulted in recordings for the Folkways label and a 1976 audio documentary, My Epitaph. Her songs have been recorded by Marty Stuart, Del McCoury, the Louvin Brothers and Hot Rize, but it’s her own versions that best capture the folk tradition that she so fully embodied. Belle looked, dressed, talked and performed as a folk musician – part of a folk community rather than a commercially-bred folk scene.

Reed was bred among musicians: her father was a fiddler, one uncle ran a singing school and another taught her to play clawhammer banjo. Her father, uncle and aunt started a band in the early decades of the twentieth century, and Ola Belle and her brother Alex played in the North Carolina Ridge Runners before forming their own band in the late 1940s. Her husband Bud was also a musician, and his family combined with Reed’s to open the New River Ranch country music park. The park hosted most of Nashville’s major stars and many of Wheeling’s best acts, with Ola and Alex’s New River Boys and Girls serving as the opening act and house band. Oddly, at the crucial moment when Gei Zantzinger arrived to record the group, Alex chose not to participate – leaving the recording to be billed under Ola Belle’s name.

This set of nineteen tracks collects eleven from her previously released Folkways LPs and adds eight previously unreleased cuts from 1972 and 1976 archival recordings. The titles include Belle’s best-known originals, including the oft-covered “I’ve Endured” and “High on the Mountain,” as well as terrific renditions of fiddle tunes, mountain songs and nineteenth century standards that include “Bonaparte’s Retreat,” “Foggy Mountain Top,” and “Look Down That Lonesome Road.” Her son David Reed provides harmony on Ralph Stanley’s gospel “I Am the Man, Thomas,” but its her solo vocals that show how thoroughly she could imbue a lyric with aching loneliness. As she says in introducing “Undone in Sorrow,” “When I do a song that is as old as the hills and has the oldest flavor, as Betsy said, ‘If it’s a sad sad sad mournful song, when I get done with it, it’ll be pitiful’.”

Reed’s strength as a musician was matched by her humanitarianism as a Christian, both of which you can hear in the life force with which she leads her group through the disc-closing (and previously unreleased) rendition of “Here Comes the Light.” As she’s quoted saying in the 40-page booklet: “That’s what I am saying, that you cannot separate your music from your lifestyle. You cannot separate your lifestyle, your religion, and your politics from your music, it’s part of life.” Jeff Place’s extensive liner notes do a terrific job of telling Reed’s story through quotes, interviews and archival photos. If you haven’t already been clued in to Reed’s original recordings, this is an exemplary way to make their acquaintance. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Ola Belle Music Festival

Jerry Lee Lewis: The Essential Sun Country Hits

Leave a reply

The Killer’s original country sides for Sun

Few remember that Jerry Lee Lewis’ first recording for Sun was a 1956 cover of Ray Price’s classic, “Crazy Arms.” Lewis’ country roots were largely overshadowed by the string of incendiary rock ‘n’ roll sides he recorded in the late 50s, and all but buried by the scandal that derailed his career in 1958. It wasn’t until the mid-60s, at Smash Records, that Lewis once again found sustained commercial success, but this time on the country chart as a balladeer. His renewed popularity led then-Sun owner Shelby Singleton to dig up earlier unreleased country sides, including three from Lewis’ last Sun session in 1963, and release them as singles. Varese’s fourteen-track collection pulls together three sides released at the time of Lewis’ tenure with Sun, eight sides first released by Singleton between 1969 and 1972, and three sides that went unreleased as singles, but have turned up on various compilations over the years. Tht titles include several top-10s, 20s and 40s, but more interestingly, it shows that Sun had tried Lewis out on the country chart with a 1958 cover of Charlie Rich’s “I’ll Make it All Up to You” and used “It Hurt Me So” as a B-side. Lewis’ success at Smash comes as no surprise once you’ve heard these tracks he waxed at Sun in the late 50s and early 60s. He’s a talented and nuanced country singer and honky-tonk pianist whose love of Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams is born out in covers of the former’s “Waiting for a Train” and the latter’s “I Could Never Be Ashamed of You.” What does remain surprising is how easily he dropped his outsized rock ‘n’ roll persona to sing these more intimate songs of woe.  To complete the picture of Lewis’ country career you’ll need to pick up a collection of his Smash hits, such as Killer Country, but the roots were clearly planted with these efforts at Sun. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Courtney Jaye: The Exotic Sounds of Courtney Jaye

Leave a reply

A singular vision of Hawaiian-tinged Canyon Country

Those who know Courtney Jaye from her 2005 release on Island, Traveling Light, don’t really know Courtney Jaye. A pleasant album with glossy production, an airbrushed cover and some memorable pop hooks, it propelled her into the pop mainstream, culminating with some film and television placements (including a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain”), and a performance on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show. Not Conan or Letterman or Kimmel, but Leno, which tells you where her label was headed. She could see the direction the machine was taking her career, but unlike many talented young artists who sell their dreams short, Jaye shucked off the industry’s plans, took stock and reinvested in her own artist visions. She relocated to Northern California, Austin and eventually Nashville, and gathered into one set of songs the wide variety of sounds that had excited her ear.

The result is this independently recorded and released second album, with a cover that teases with the allure of Sandy Warner, and pays off with an alchemy of musical styles that bounce from girl-group to Topanga Canyon singer-songwriter to country twang to Hawaiian slack-key and exotica to classic Brill Building pop. Her knack for writing killer pop hooks is not only intact, but amplified by productions that have the spontaneous DIY charms of 1960s singles that weren’t belabored into aural numbness. Stripped of the debut album’s production gloss, Jaye’s voice is freed to launch emotional barbs into your heart. If you listen to only one song on this album, check out the video below for “Don’t Tell a Girl.” The melody and chorus hook are so necessarily repeatable as to make the track’s 3:30 about ten minutes too short. Somebody needs to spring Phil Spector from prison so he can produce a Wall of Sound version of this song.

The album opens with a lo-fi count-off and the drippy slide guitar that George Harrison played in the 1970s, but the rhythm has a Latin tinge and Jaye’s double-tracked vocal tumbles out with both need and doubt. It’s the sort of idiosyncratic mix of sounds that could only spring from an artist’s singular history of influences, giving the pained lyrics the bounce of false hope and the ache of unfulfilled longing. Jaye manages to suggest both the adolescent heartache of girl-groups and the more seasoned sorrow of grown women. She evokes Brenda Lee, Connie Francis, Kelly Willis and Rosanne Cash, but also, on the dreamily harmonized “Sweet Ride,” the mid-70s Fleetwood Mac sound of Buckingham and Nicks. There’s bending steel, acoustic and electric guitars, drums, ukuleles and baion beats that trace Jaye’s travels between Hawaii, California, Texas, and Tennessee. There are even some Arthur Lyman-styled bird calls on the instrumental “Maru Maru.”

A few of the tracks may remind you of Sheryl Crow’s summery singles, but just as you warm sound of “Sunlight,” Jaye cranks up the Gram Parsons-styled honky-tonk of “Box Wine.” And again, it all fits together into what Jaye’s dubbed “Tropicalicountry”: a blend of Hawaiian and country roots with the indie freedom of Austin and the mid-70s buzz of Los Angeles. Jaye began her journey to this amalgam with the Gary Louris-produced EP ‘Til it Bleeds, but here, co-producing with Seth Kauffmann (who also plays most of the instruments), she’s gotten the full symphony of sounds out of her head and onto tape. And just when you think you’ve hard all the album’s surprises, Jaye duets with Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell for a twanging back-porch country cover of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Sometimes Always.” And just like the rest of the album, it works perfectly and without compromise. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Hear a live acoustic version of “Sweet Ride”
Courtney Jaye’s MySpace Page

Alabama: Setlist – The Very Best Of

Leave a reply

Nice collection of live tracks, including 7 previously unreleased

The Legacy division of Sony continues to explore new ways to keep the CD relevant. Their Playlist series was the first out of the gate with eco-friendly packaging that used 100% recycled cardboard, no plastic, and on-disc PDFs in place of paper booklets. Their new Setlist series follows the same path of a single disc that provides an aficionado’s snapshot of an artist’s catalog. In this case the anthologies turn from the studio to the stage, pulling together tracks from an artist’s live repertoire, generally all previously released, but in a few cases adding previously unreleased items. As with the Playlist collections, the Setlist discs aren’t greatest hits packages; instead, they forgo some obvious catalog highlights to give listeners a chance to hear great, lesser-known songs from the artist’s stage act.

Unlike many of the volumes in this series, Alabama’s entry includes a wealth of previously unreleased material in its first seven tracks. These newly available recordings are drawn from a 1981 show in Salt Lake City, Utah and a 1982 date in Florence, Alabama. The rest of the set’s tracks date from the mid-80s and are drawn from the previously released Alabama Live and Gonna Have a Party… Live. All but one of these thirteen titles reached #1 on the country chart, with “My Home’s in Alabama” having peaked at #17 as an indie release that paved the way to RCA and Total Chart Domination. To really understand how thoroughly Alabama owned the country charts in the 1980s you have to realize that these twelve chart toppers were part of an eight-year string of twenty-one straight #1 singles, a feat that was followed by dozens more hits, including another eleven #1s!

The group’s formula stayed remarkably steady from their beginnings through the end of their hit-making years, setting Randy Owen’s masculine-yet-emotional lead vocals and the group’s rich harmony singing against powerful bass, guitar and drum backings. The combination paired the punch of Southern rock with the down home feel of country’s roots. Alabama was more derivative of ‘70s country than earlier honky-tonk or hillbilly sounds, but there’s an earthiness to their playing and singing –especially evident in these live settings – that distanced their music from the factory sounds of Nashville. More importantly, performing as a self-contained band, rather than a solo singer with backing musicians, Alabama cut a new figure in country music, drawing up a template that’s been emulated by dozens of followers.

The cheering reception each Alabama song gets from the live audiences is now familiar, but the reaction they stoked in their live shows, bringing rock ‘n’ roll dynamics to country audiences – something Waylon Jennings pioneered in the ‘70s – still sounds fresh. Alabama dials it back and lays harmonies into “Feels So Right” and “Lady Down on Love,” builds to multiple emotional climaxes on “My Home’s in Alabama” (sung with extra resonance to the enthusiastic home-state audience), and revs it up for the foot-stomping “Mountain Music.” While the group’s other live releases give a better sense of their stage shows, this collection provides a good introduction to the group’s live energy, and the previously unreleased tracks will help fans cope with the group’s retirement from the road. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]