"Oh, and to add even more to the evening's pleasant musical surprises, before Slobberbone's set, Best told us that his solo album will be done this spring and that Slobberbone will finally hit the studio this summer to record their first new record in almost a decade."
"Joy Williams and John Paul White look and sound like the White Stripes' turn-of-the century country cousins. The duo has only been together since 2008, but they sing like they share the same mama -- or lover. Songs like 'Barton Hollow' and 'Poison & Wine' (trotted out on 'Grey's Anatomy') carry forward the work started by such cult roots heroes as Gillian Welch and David Rawlings -- adding a layer of California pop sensibility, courtesy of Williams' West Coast roots. It's emotionally raw stuff dressed up in an unapologetically tight production. Still, the heart of these songs never succumbs to the studio slickness. The Civil Wars could be the new front in the battle to save modern country's soul."
"Third Man Records is happy to announce the latest in our live show and live LP series, Drive-By Truckers.
In anticipation for their upcoming album, “Go-Go Boots” (out Feb 15th on ATO) and following up from their sold out show at The Cannery Ballroom, the Truckers will be performing a special matinee all ages show here at Third Man Records on this Sunday Jan. 30th that will be recorded direct to analog tape for release as a live LP (and a limited Black & Blue split colored LP for those in attendance)."
"“It’s already out as far as we are concerned,” said guitarist and longtime band member Mike Cooley. “They (fans) already know the words and they’re liking it.”"
The fourth floor of the Musee d'Orsay in Paris houses the greatest collection of impressionist art in the world. It's not even close. To my knowledge, there is no second place. I have had the good fortune and privilege to spend a fair amount of time there across a number of visits and every visit since my first has been somewhat similar:
First there is the sense of being in the presence of greatness. Of seeing things that represent the finest in the human spirit and the greatest aspects of our evolution. But after a while it's just overwhelming. The eyes, the mind just can't process any more, just doesn't compute. One monet starts to blend into another. And along w/ the highest high, that feeling of a supreme aesthetic experience , comes a kind of depression.
There is the knowledge that no matter what i do, i will never achieve a single moment of brilliance that approaches even the average of these great artists. That the very best i can do is simply ordinary. There is the certain knowledge that i will never touch people, move people, reach people in any way remotely like what these artists did routinely. I am not w/out ambition or w/out ego. Nor am i w/out talent. So this realization is, like i said, depressing, even amid the celebration, the glory, the rush of being surrounded by greatness and wondrousness.
"The Drive-By Truckers, The Big To-Do (ATO) When these Southern avengers ripped into 'This Fucking Job' in New York last spring, it was with the righteous incandescent anger and mutinous �lan that have made the Truckers the most dangerous cult band in America. It's time they got the breaks and lost the 'cult.'"
"David Hood, the house bass player describes his crew as “just some average-looking guys doing unusual things.” And so when Hood’s son, Anderson, turned out to be “not quite like the others” he wasn’t discouraged from letting his unusual habit of writing, constantly writing songs and poems—even if it meant that very little schoolwork got done."
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Several new screenings listed for the DBT documentary:
Smart, tough, touching and raw, Drive-By Truckers’ The Big To-Do� is the perfect album for our Great Recession times. This Georgia sextet merge arena-rock, alt-country, and indie-rock into a heady brew for songs about strip-club encounters, bad jobs, murder and the casual heartbreaks that make up too much of everyday life."
"Musicians rely upon artists to represent them visually from album covers to concert posters. Estel Gallery is pleased to feature current artwork by seven artists whose work has defined musicians, such as Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Buddy & Julie Miller, the Drive-By Truckers, Willie Nelson, Pavement, the Dave Matthews Band, the Waco Brothers, and Hillbilly Casino."
In some ways, watching the CMA’s made me extremely optimistic about the future of country music, that future just wasn’t happening on TV. No, the CMAs provided a great reminder that while “country’s biggest night” was turning into a 60-car pileup in Nashville, there was real country music being made just a few hours to the south in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. “Thank God for Doc Dailey,” I told my wife as we turned away from the televised chaos and made our way to bed. I went to sleep knowing full well that on my morning commute seven hours later, I’d be blasting Victims, Enemies, and Old Friends, relishing in country music the way it was meant to be. If ever there was a time and a need for Doc Dailey and Magnolia Devil, it is now.
"And he has lots of wisdom for other up-and-comers in the industry.
'Years ago, I would have said, 'Do it yourself,'' he said. 'Now, I think that's conventional wisdom. I think everybody kind of knows that ... I'd say keep it under your own roof for as long as you can.'"
"Oct. 22, 2010 @ 8:30 pm Admission: $20/$25 at the door. Price of admission includes live music from David Barbe & The Quick Hooks (featuring Patterson Hood!) and Kuroma, a tour of the brewery and a limited edition Nu�i’s Space 10th Anniversary pint glass from Terrapin Beer – plus drinks tickets to sample various brews! [...]"
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Music
PR stunt FAIL. One NEVER blocks a California freeway for a PR stunt. That shit will get you killed deader than dead.
"11) A Ghost to Most, the Drive-By Truckers. “I guess I’ll never grow sideburns, it’s a shame with all I’ve got to go between.” A just consistently great band, by turns funny and dark, but always sharp and always rocking. “So Cold the River” features a bright but resentful country boy, prone to flashes of temper, and the Drive-By Truckers and Reckless Kelly became the heart of my soundtrack for those point-of-view portions."
"A few hours after I meet Gelb, the Drive-by Truckers' Patterson Hood is onstage at the 40 Watt Club, in front of a crowd more in the mood for a raucous wake than a reverent memorial. Hood saw Chesnutt for the first time at the 40 Watt back in the mid-'90s and was blown away.
'Pretty much from the first song, I stood there with my mouth gaping open, amazed,' he tells me later. 'It was almost like a religious experience. He had this fearlessness about exposing things about himself or his feelings about things that might make people cringe or make his grandmama cry, but he could write about the most dark, primal stuff and still somehow be funny.'"
"As this little rambling comes to a close, I can’t help but extend the Truckers’ experience in the music world to the lives that we all lead. Today may be shitty. Yesterday may have been a trial. But, if you work hard, take a few chances, and trust your skills, you too could end up with the success you deserve. Or at least you will know you did the things that were true to your soul. Cooley, Hood and the rest of you, thanks for the lesson."
"When Patterson Hood finished singing, he laid his guitar down on stage, still plugged in and walked off. He was followed, one-by-one, by Mike Cooley and the rest of the band, leaving the stage empty when the music ended. Wow."
"Openers the Drive-By Truckers, a club-level band with the spirit of a '70s Southern rock act, likely earned a few new followers with their performance.
They delivered a roaring, hourlong set with far more energy — and a far higher volume — than most stage-warmers. Kudos to Petty for letting them really crank it."
"The crowd left drenched, but happy, after seeing one of the better rock shows to come through Little Rock since the last time the band was in town."
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Music I Fucking Love
Jeff Soileau posted his song "Muscle Shoals" on Patterson's Facebook page earlier this week. His son, Evan, created the video. Both song and video are very fine work. The first line is such a large part of the lore of the Shoals. So many variations of that story and not at all a myth. I've seen catfish 4-5 feet in length and so old that they had algae growing on their backs.
The rest of the tune is a great history lesson of Northwest, AL.
Yes, we were very close to being Detroit. Very close.
BUT, what really captured my fancy about this tune was the vocalist, Lera Lynn. An Athens native (wtf is in the water down their, seriously... Athen's should have its own MTV).
I couldn't be more enamored with this woman. I've always been a sucker for female songstresses but, lawdy, I've been listening to her all week long. No, it doesn't hurt that she OMG beautiful (hey, I think Shakira is beautiful too, but if she opens her mouth and the volume is still on, I'm reaching for a bat to smash things and knitting needles to puncture my ear drums) BUT, she also is a mighty fine strummer (been trying to copy her all week w/0 much luck) and her voice is this ethereal soul-rangy perfection.
So, yes, I'm musically smitten. This is what makes music so very special. It is like finding magic that's been there all along. Keeps hope alive.
Makes me want to move to Athens... and y'all know my going-back-to-the-south issues. Powerful stuff.
I've played this about 3o times this week. I'm really digging the production by AthensSoundies, too. This video moans 'Athens'. Porch singing, summer rain on broad, green leaves...
In a just world, Denton's Slobberbone would be selling more albums than Nickelback and Justin Bieber combined. At the very least, this song alone should have been included on the 2012 soundtrack. They could have it during that one scene where John Cusack was looking freaked out by all the destruction. No, the other one."
Best review of the year and English is the writer's 2nd language AND this is the first time writer has seen the mighty DBT. American music 'writers' take note:
"Back at the famous Canal tv show L' Album de la Semaine to see , completely unknown over here, American band from Alabama ( and based in Georgia) Drive-By truckers."
"Driven largely by the stirring writing of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, “The Big To-Do” is an album with evocative mini-narratives and tight yet unrestrained sound that grow more resonant by the listen, proving DBT the rare band that can string together 13 tracks without a single second of filler. One of the best records so far this year, it burnishes their reputation as first-rate rockers sensitive enough to color their songs with a cinematic brush."
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Encore performance this weekend on your local PBS.
"Then someone comes along and reminds me of what we can do in other forms. Bettye LaVette has been around since she was a teenager in the early sixties, largely ignored. She never, as she put it, 'crossed over.' Opportunities were lost, missed, unrecognized or unfulfilled. Then, in 2005 she released 'I've Got My Own Hell to Raise.' The great Joe Henry produced. The songs came from a slew of fine female writers: Aimee Mann, Dolly Parton, Joan Armatrading, Lucinda Williams. Immediately, that voice slapped you. Unashamedly aged, rough, ragged and under absolute control. On the song 'Just Say So,' she proved that she could find depths of longing and desperation in a lyric that the songwriters probably didn't even know existed.
She then released the brilliant 'Scene of the Crime' with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section."
"The stars are aligning for Bettye LaVette and the May 25 release of Interpretations: The British Rock Songboo, as Robert Plant has invited Bettye to open for his July tour. Bettye's 3rd album for Anti-, and the follow-up to her Grammy-nominated Scene of the Crime, is earning considerable praise from both the press and her artist peers, and she’s already booked for a performance on The Late Show with David Letterman for June 23.
The request to join the legendary Led Zeppelin vocalist on tour is not so much a notch in Bettye's belt as it is another link in the chain: Her latest work is an impassioned dissertation on the much-documented influence that American blues and soul had on British rock n' roll – but more than that, it's an exploration of how those echoes from a foreign shore in turn influenced and reshaped American blues and soul. Fittingly, Bettye’s rendition of the Led Zeppelin classic “All My Love,” will premiere exclusively on AOL’s “Spinner” April 27."
"Bret seems like a nice guy and has always done what most any other average American guy would do given the opportunity and selection of cowboy hats. In fact, Bret is America. He’s diabetic, sleeveless, and just trying to get back to his success from the 80’s. Bret Michaels is Mr. America, which is all the more reason he cannot die while under contract with Donald Trump."
"Billboard reports that according to Nielsen Soundscan, this year's Record Store Day marked the biggest single day for vinyl sales in the history of Soundscan, which started counting things in 1991. According to Billboard, RSD's co-founder, the Music Monitor Network's Michael Kurtz, also reports that stores including New York City's Other Music, Seattle's Sonic Boom, and New Jersey's Vintage Vinyl, had their most successful days ever. And sales were up all across the board.
Good work, people."
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Beer
Went to high school with Dale. Yet to get my hands on any of his brew.
"Oskar Blues Dale's Pale Ale - $9 (6-pack cans) Packed with tons of citrus from a heavy dose of American hops, this is the quintessential stateside IPA. Like most pale ales, it's on the hoppier side-which means its slightly bitter and sour. You know hops when you taste em. However, it's not as hoppy as a IPA (Indian Pale Ale). And we really like the can, which makes it easily transportable, great to bring to a picnic or barbecue or the beach. Technically speaking, beer lasts longer in a can because no light is allowed in."
"'When we go to see the Truckers play, we wear diapers so we don't have to go to the bathroom,' declares a young female fan early on in The Secret to a Happy Ending, a documentary about Southern rock band the Drive-By Truckers.
Similar devotion to the Athens, Ga.-based Truckers led Washington, D.C.-area filmmaker Barr Weissman to spend nearly six years making what he calls 'a love letter to rock 'n' roll.'"
"Did you grow up in a union home (or ever belong to a union yourself), or was work an important part of your upbringing?
MC: My dad was a Teamster for a few years. He drove dump trucks, hauling asphalt and gravel.
PH: My dad and I have both been members of the musicians union. My dad has been there for over 40 years. I was also partly raised by my great uncle who was a Teamster. He drove trucks for International Harvester from 1946 through 1976. I have very strong working-class roots, even though my dad is a lifelong musician. He was always more on the working man’s end of al of that (being a session musician)."
"Three years ago, Troy Gentry pled guilty to shooting a domesticated, caged bear named “Cubby.” This year the ACM gave Montgomery Gentry their humanitarian award. As horrible as that may be, it still shows more integrity than giving them an award for their music."
