I’ve been a fan of Jerry Joseph almost as long as he’s been a touring musician. Today, I clicked on his site as was pleased to see a link to this short doc by Jason Scianno.
I’d love to see a feature length doc on Jerry someday. So much so, I might have to produce one (with his blessing, of course).
Troubling times came silverlined
Found a diamond in the rough now I’m gonna make it mine
Donna the Buffalo’s new album, Silverlined is out today. Unlike their last record, Life’s a Ride, which was recorded in DTB’s home studio, (The Tracking Shack, in Perry City, New York) Silverlined went many miles, and has many hands in its making. Only one track was recorded in their home studio; two were recorded at Yes Master studio in Nashville, Tennessee, ten at Echo Mountain in Asheville, North Carolina, and several vocal tracks were laid down at Sound Cell Studio in Huntsville, Alabama.
Guest artists Bela Fleck, Claire Lynch, David Hidalgo and Amy Helm appear on the record.
James McMurtry, son of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and Oscar-winning screenwriter Larry McMurtry, is a brave writer in his own right. One listen to “Cheney’s Toy” off his latest album, Just Us Kids, is proof enough.
You’re the man
Show ’em what you’re made of
You’re no longer daddy’s boy
You’re the man
That they’re all afraid of
But you’re only Cheney’s toy
Washington Post reporter J. Freedom du Lac says McMurtry is a “famously caustic observer of Americana.” Freedom du Lac also says McMurtry, 46, has crafted one of the year’s best albums in Just Us Kids, which artfully mixes provocative portraits with political screeds.
McMurtry’s dad is justifiably proud of his son’s work and achievements. “One element of music is poetry, and poetry is a lot harder than fiction,” his father says. “A lyric is the hardest form. You have to concentrate and squeeze those words. I respect James a lot for having found his own art and done it so well.”
When McMurtry is at home in Austin, he performs a midnight set every Wednesday night at the Continental Club on South Congress. He’s almost always preceded onstage by singer-songwriter Jon Dee Graham.
Graham says, “He’s pretty fucking precise; I think he’s always looking for the right words. And as a songwriter, I respect the hell out of him. He’s able to create, whole cloth, out of thin air, things that never happened to people who don’t exist, and to make them funny, witty, insightful and a general comment on the world. How do you do that?”
MP3: “Cheney’s Toy by James McMurtry
Courtesy of Flickr user, Mike Bouchard
Jim DeRogatis, music critic for Chicago Sun Times likes Alejandro Escovedo’s new album, “Real Animal.” Not as much as I do, but that’s okay.
Blame a midlife crisis or a fury prompted of any number of dramas in Alejandro Escovedo’s life, from divorce to a near-fatal bout with Hepatitis C but at age 57, the veteran Texas roots-rocker has returned for the first time in his long solo career to the aggressive, at-times punk-rock sounds of his earliest band, the Nuns, with a few hints of pioneering alternative-country combos Rank & File and the True Believers thrown in for good measure.
Co-written with Chuck Prophet, produced by the legendary Tony Visconti (David Bowie, T. Rex) and propelled by a crack band that includes Chicago-based violinst Susan Voelz, “Real Animal” is rife with borrowed licks from Bowie and one of Escovedo’s biggest heroes, Lou Reed.
I’m still listening for the best track on a record full of contenders. Andrew Dansby of The Houston Chronicle likes the opening track, “Always a Friend.” He says it “as infectious a pop song as Escovedo has written.” I like track four, “Smoke.”
[MP3] “Smoke” by Alejandro Escovedo
In February, The Panderers released their debut EP entitled “Hotshot’s Boy” on Snack Bar, a label created by Mike Doughty.
According to the band’s MySpace, the EP was produced by Dave Wilder and Pete McNeal, who came together on the deep belief in a trove of songs authored by singer/songwriter Scott Wynn. Scott’s roots stem from deep east Kentucky coal country where his father and uncles worked coal as did their father before them. Scott is the first of his family not to work coal and to attend college. Scott borrows much from the baseness and humility of coal country, but you have to remember that coal can also be fire. So, the music pretty much reflects that….very base, bare, rootsy…and/or pure fire.
Silver Jews’ new album, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea was released on Tuesday.
Here’s some of what Paste has to say:
Though chief semite David Berman sounds less electrified and more gentrified than usual on Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, he’s the rare songwriter who’s better for it.
As a vehicle for Berman’s words, just as much as a follow-up to his 1999 poetry collection Actual Air would be, Lookout Mountain is a volume to be consumed in one’s own time, filed on the shelf, and eventually taught in seminars as an example of form and poise.
In other words, this one’s a must have. But I wouldn’t file it on a shelf. Put it into listening rotation, straight away.
[MP3] “San Francisco, BC” by Silver Jews
Rolling Stone reporters are soaking up the music in rural Tennessee this weekend. Kevin O’Donnell has this to say about Battles, a band I’ve never heard of until now.
Battles were a solid choice to perform on the first night of the fest. The New York-based four-piece — fronted by Tyondai Braxton, the son of jazz musician Anthony Braxton — turned out a killer hour long set of tricked-out, prog-rock grooves, which ranged from avant-garde electro-jazz to freaked-out space funk. The clear highlight of the group’s set was “Atlas,” a fantastic piece of robo-rock that mixes Daft Punk-style electro-grooves with industrial atmospherics.
Here’s a video that helps introduce the band:
[MP3] “Race In” by Battles
Thanks to Mike Went West, I now know about emerging singer-songwriter Robert Francis.
Like Deer Tick, Francis is an insanely-talented young singer-songwriter (albeit with slightly less buzz). Hailing from Los Angeles, he sounds nothing like his surroundings. Actually, he doesn’t even sound like he’s from this century.
His music exudes both innocence and angst, hope and despair. His debut One By One is an earnest, introspective, timeless folk record that will undoubtedly be cherished by those lucky enough to stumble upon it.
His debut album, One By One on Aeronaut Records came out last August. It’s playing in my iTunes at this moment. Francis has a haunting, floating on the wind sound.
Categorizing his own music as “a small monsoon of emotion,” the Brentwood, Calif. native who, as a young boy, would sneak into clubs to watch his sisters perform, recorded One by One in a friend’s living room and on the second floor of his parents’ house. At eight years old, Robert Francis was invited up on the stage at The Mint Club in L.A. to perform with actor Harry Dean Stanton and singer Chaka Kahn. Ry Cooder, number eight on Rolling Stone’s “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time,” gave Francis a vintage National guitar at age nine. When Francis was 16, John Frusciante, best known as the guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, took him on as his only student.
Interestingly, there’s another Robert Francis, a poet, who passed away in 1987.
[MP3 Offering] “All My Trains” by Robert Francis
Aubrey Sabala is “everything your mother warned you about and more–he girl next door who puts into words all that you’re thinking but are afraid to say.”
Witness:
Aubs, who works at Digg, is attending Sasquatch Festival at The Gorge this weekend. Okkervil River played their love-inducing festival set yesterday.
Andrea Myers at City Pages doesn’t care for the new Mason Jennings album, In The Ever. But Seattle blog Sound on the Sound answers any and all critics with, “Mason Jennings doesn’t play music to be cool. He plays because he has something to say.”
I’ve never listened to his music until now, so my experience of In The Ever is totally fresh.
Coming off his 2006 major-label effort, Boneclouds, Jennings decided to retreat to a studio in the woods, where he set himself up with a laptop and two microphones. The title comes from his son talking about where he came from before he was born, “Ya know dad, when I was in the Ever?”
“It was pretty raw, but fun, because that’s how I grew up working,” says Jennings about the recording process for In the Ever. “I wanted to do it quickly in a childlike way. I’d write songs in the morning, record them in the afternoon and finish them up by night.”
I tend to like my folk a little rougher around the edges, but I’ve been listening to this record over and over in my truck. It’s habit forming, and that’s lofty territory for any artist.
[MP3 Offering] “Fighter Girl” from In The Ever