Album Review: Town Mountain Rips Out "Leave The Bottle"

One of our favorite acts at The Festy a few years back was Town Mountain and now the band is back on our radar with their upcoming release, Leave The Bottle. And this CD reminds me why we loved their "original bluegrass and roots country" in the first place. Start with the title track. Written by Jesse Langlais, the song showcases their tight harmonies and individual musicianship in a classic country song. They then plow ahead with Robert Greer's Up the Ladder and hit deeper roots with Phil Barker's Lawdog - perhaps my favorite track. Or is it Bobby Britt's instrumental Four Miles or Langlais' Away From Home? As fans of the band will notice, these are all original tunes with the only cover provided by the Wood Brothers in Loaded.  These last two songs illustrates the band's easy transition from bluegrass to alt-country. Don't Go Home Tonight without listening to these songs. The CD will be officially released September 4th, 2012.

Kasey Chambers Inspires Us with Storybook

You miss the old styled country vocals of Patsy Cline or Loretta Lynn? Well there's a contemporary artist who sounds quite similar, Australian Kasey Chambers. And on Monday July 30th, Sugar Hill Records releases her latest CD, STORYBOOK, a " fifteen song release of songs that inspired Kasey to become a musician".  There are several "iconic" songs from Gram Parsons (Return Of The Grievous Angel), James McMurtry (Too Long In The Wasteland), John Prine (Leave The Lights On), and Townes Van Zandt (If I Needed You) - among many others. Even Cyndi Lauper and True Colors; Chambers' vocals are something special with that song. My favorite, though, is Fred Eaglesmith's Water In The Fuel; but then there's Paul Kelly's Everything's Turning To White - quite the powerful song. And then Kelly joins her on Hank Williams' classic I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry. An unbelievable duet.  Okay, there's something special with every song on this CD. Check it out. And for those in the Washington-Baltimore area she will be performing at the The Birchmere on August 10th and the Rams Head Onstage August 13th. Hope to see you there.

Preview Patterson Hood's "Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance" this weekend

Here's a press release via Thirty Tigers that we wanted to share.

Athens, GA – Patterson Hood will be releasing his third solo record, Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance, on September 11^th on ATO Records. Hood co-produced the album with long time Drive-By Truckers’ collaborator David Barbe, who also plays bass on the album. All of his DBT band mates make appearances on the record (Mike Cooley, Jay Gonzalez, Brad Morgan and John Neff) as does Scott Danbom and Will Johnson from Centro-matic and Kelly Hogan. Hood’s father, famed Muscle Shoals bassist, David Hood also plays on the record.

Hood originally started out writing a book that was a half-assed fictionalization of a very turbulent period of his life when he was 27. The book eventually stopped coming but the songs continued to pour out. Most of this album comes from a short period of time between February and June of 2011. Hood says, “The songs begin in the period that the book was set in, but don't end there, as they really just were the impetus for writing about the life I am living now and contrasting it with the troubled times of two decades ago. It is in some ways the most personal album I've ever made. There has always been a lot of me in all of the albums we've done, but usually semi-disguised as character sketches and stories, but the first person narrative in this one is pretty firmly rooted in autobiography, albeit in two dramatically differing time periods.”

“I co-wrote this song with my dear friend Kelly Hogan, who also came in to sing it with me. She began the lyrics as a song for our late dear friend Vic Chesnutt and I re-wrote it with the intention of her recording it for her album. She ended up letting me put it on my album and it's a highlight to me.”

 

Hood and Downtown Rumblers will be previewing songs from the record with shows this weekend at XPoNential Music Festival in Philadelphia and the Bell House in Brooklyn. Their fall headline tour will be announced soon.

July 20           Winston-Salem, NC     Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art*

July 21           Camden, NJ                  XPoNential Music Festival*

July 23           Brooklyn, NY                Bell House*

Aug 03           Charleston, SC             Pour House**

Aug 16           Lexington, KY               Lexington Opera House** w/ Todd Snider

Sep 14            Pinnacle, NC                Jomeokee Music & Arts Festival*

Oct 12            Austin, TX                     ACL FESTIVAL*

*denotes shows with Patterson Hood and the Downtown Rumbers

**denotes Patterson Hood solo shows

Sam Bush Becomes a Senior on SBTV

Legendary minimalist Sam Bush turned 60 last month (remember when you thought sixty years old was OLD) and celebrated by participating in Freshman Senior discount shopping days at the Kroger in Bellevue, Tennessee. You can check out these videos as well as his musical videos at SBTV. Love the video on his Gibson mandolins and the classic Bluegrass vinyls.