Friday, September 12, 2008

DBT Week in Review - 9/12/08

DBT!

We'll start off with Righteous Path from the Paradiso in Amsterdam:



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Ain't Shonna just the grandest thang ever:

MLB.com/Entertainment: News | MLB.com: News:

"'Since I was a little baby,' she says. 'Literally. I learned to walk with a baseball bat in my hand. My momma played in a league until I was a teenager. My daddy coached my brother's team.'

And Tucker played in her Killen, Ala., youth softball league from the age of 5 until the age of 11, when she decided she'd rather play hardball.

'I was the only girl in the baseball league,' she says. 'I played third base and first base. After that, I went back to softball in junior high and made varsity in high school.'"
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Creative Loafing Charlotte | Music | Features | Keep on Truckin':

"'I'm Sorry Huston' was written in 20 minutes after an odd experience at her house one day. 'I live out in the country in Alabama and the people that do know me know that I'm on the road most of the time,' she says. 'So, I don't get people just stopping by, especially at seven o'clock in the morning. There was a knock at the door and there was this little man and he was so intense and so wanting me to help him with the neighbor's horses so bad. I couldn't help him at all. I was in my pajamas and he wanted me to walk across the street with him over there and make sure he could read the address on the mailbox right.'"
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Check out the nice pics of DBT performing at The Green Man Festival in Wales:

Smashing Mag / Drive-By Truckers(ドライヴ・バイ・トラッカーズ)in The Green Man Festival @ Glanusk Park, Crickhowell, Brecon Beacons, Wales, UK (15 to 17 Aug '08)

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Awwwww, cute....



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Don Chambers + Goat

Don recently released his new album which was co-produced by Patterson.

Falling off the Edge of the World rocks mine and Highwater is like shittin' in high cotton.

MySpace.com - Don Chambers and GOAT - Athens, Georgia - Concrete / Gospel / Minimalist - www.myspace.com/donchambers

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allmusic ((( Zebulon > Overview ))):

"Don Chambers' blue-collar rasp may warrant comparisons to Bruce Springsteen, but the haunting, backwoods rock & roll that permeates Zebulon is more closely aligned with the distorted country-rock of the Drive-By Truckers. Appropriately, DBT frontman Patterson Hood lends his help to the effort, co-producing the entire album while adding backing vocals to a pair of songs. Brimming with muscled guitar riffs, twang, and fiery mesquite melodies, Zebulon is a passionate record, one that confronts the hardships of the South with an angry swagger. Yet the album is also lush, foregoing the ramshackle, breakneck pace of cowpunk bands in favor of a sound that crackles and burns. Chambers' hefty baritone is placed front and center, his melodies booming with reverb during tracks like 'Paint the Moon', while Hood's production captures a veritable swamp of guitars, pedal steels, and swirling organs. 'Highwater' is the highlight here, a slow-building mixture of harmonies and piano chords that eventually gives way to a guitar-filled catharsis, but Zebulon remains solid throughout."
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Got mine ordered. What about you?

Amazon.com: Zebulon: Don Chambers & GOAT: Music

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Jason Isbell

Jason speaking truth... much of it.

Myspace.com Blogs - The Shape We’re In - Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit MySpace Blog

I'd like to start out by saying I'm not a politician, but that's not exactly true. Politics aren't limited to those who hold or seek office. Anyone who tries to bring people together toward a common goal is a politician. Anyone who understands or attempts to understand anything about group dynamics is a politician. By profession, as the wonderfully articulate James McMurtry would attest, "I'm a beer salesman," but I'm of the mind that if we want things to be different, we must affect change. We must be heard.

I'll give you some words I sang at the top of my range and voice, in repetition, most nights for six years, words I don't remember uttering even once since I began this phase of my life: "I'm scared shitless of what's coming next." Never has that been so true.

I miss singing those words. I miss singing all those words, but more than that, I miss seeing people in the audience who actually felt like they had some control over their individual and collective fates. It seems, in hindsight, that the folks I met on the road seven years ago were more hopeful, more convinced that they too had some kind of voice.

"You get the government you deserve." I've heard it said and I've said it myself. I'm not sure if it's true, but it's the kind of sentiment I can get behind. Cold, stubborn, rallying, almost. We don't, however get the education we deserve. We don't get the freedom to worship (and NOT to worship) we deserve. We don't get the health care we deserve. We don't get the renewable energy we deserve. I think this is because we aren't given the information we deserve.

It seems to me that the modern conservative movement treats the general American public like children. Because Americans can't raise their kids properly, they should have to pray in school. Because American women can't handle the responsibility of choice, they shouldn't be allowed to have abortions under almost any circumstances. Because some Americans are so strange and misguided that they have become attracted to members of their own sex, they should be denied the rights of heterosexuals until they clean up their loathsome act. I can't make myself see the logic in this last one. If marriage is so sacred, where's McCain's first wife? If family is so important, where is Cindy's half-sister and why does she keep referring to herself as an only child?

I believe that, if given enough information, Americans can make good choices. I think two daddies can have a perfectly normal life with a functional, sane, and well-adjusted child. I think atheists can be kind and generous. Every time I'm stuck in traffic in Atlanta or Birmingham or Boston, I am happy that abortion (and birth control) hasn't yet been outlawed. Sounds rough, I know, but how many people do we really need?

Are these the real issues, though? Maybe the help we need isn't in decision making, but in the creation of opportunity. Will pouring money (tax-cuts) on the top really cause the divide between rich and poor to reduce it's size? I don't know. I'm not an economist. I do know of, however, a lot of beat-up trailers with McCain signs in their front yard. These folks had Bush signs in their front yards a few years ago. Reagan signs when the trailers were new and shiny. I think the irony is lost. I think these people, for the most part, vote with bibles in hand while they starve to death. You might be able to roll a joint with that rice paper, but you can't eat it. Meanwhile the same government they support waits for the surplus to trickle down. We need a steady stream, not a trickle.

I'm going to vote for the man who doesn't hug W. in public. I'm going to vote for the man who Rudy Giuliani can't stand. I can't stand Rudy Giuliani. He mocks hope. Maybe Obama doesn't have a lot of experience. Neither did Thatcher. Maybe he has a strange name that sounds somewhat foreign. I'm not scared by that. I look at Obama, I listen to him speak, and I trust him. More importantly than that, I think he trusts us. I think he believes in our decision-making ability. Hopefully that will continue.
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Music

Heart to McCain/Palin: Back off on 'Barracuda' - Sound Effects - Boston.com

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Album leak welcomed by Metallica

Popularity of a Hallucinogen May Thwart Its Medical Uses - NYTimes.com

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Film

My grad school best bud R. Keith Harris in yet another Southern based film:

"A Brush With Murder" Trailer


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4 comments:

Jez said...

Man, that DBT video sounds and looks so good! I'll be doing a post about the DBT on themusicisthemessage.blogspot.com this Thursday. How convenient! Just in time for your DBT in review.

AAW said...

Damn, Jez, you blog junkie! How many blogs do you have now! ;)

Be sure to send me that post so I can link it!

Have you checked out the entire Paradiso show? Go to DBT's MySpace page and you can watch it all. Great stuff.

Jez said...

I watched and shared most of it with a friend on Saturday night. Tears come to my eyes during certain parts of songs, because it sounds so good. Mostly the last verses of "Zip City" where Patterson is harmonizing with Cooley. "A Ghost to Most" would have been a big hit in the 70s. Okay, maybe not a "big" hit, but if you go back and listen to a lot of those not-so obvious "southern" bands back then (I'm thinking Redbone, Wet Willy, and the boys who did "Don't Pull Your Love"), the same kind of feel is there. I think it's become my favorite Cooley song. On Saturday night I was reading the lyrics while listening to it and thinking, "Is this about political change?" Coule be one too many tripels in the belly by that time, though.

AAW said...

It is a fantastic recording, Jez. Search that same site for a Bettye Lavette show. She gives DBT a nice shout out.

I agree, Ghost has political leanings. Great tune.