as i mentioned in my previous post, last year was easily my least productive year in regards to writing to my blog. but that does not mean i was not listening to or going out to see music. i just could not find the time to share it with all of you. so here are a few items i have gone back and selected. there is no rhyme or reason here, and they are in no particular order. just a few things i felt needed to be talked about.

decemberists ‘as it ever was, so it will be again’

starbucks used to sell music at the counter when you were ordering your coffee, and i would usually pick up something maybe once or twice a month if it caught my eye. it has been nearly twenty years since i took a flyer on a band i had never heard of – the decemberists. the album was ‘the crane wife’, and after a spin or two, i was hooked. i have followed them ever since, and have bought pretty much everything they have put out. but i still think that is their best. i had actually been a little disappointed over the last decade or so, until now. this release might not be as good, but it comes close. they had taken a break for a while (or, more accurately, their chief songwriter had), and it seems to have rejuvenated them. a very interesting and diverse collection of songs, as usual. maybe the most unusual is the final piece, called ‘joan in the garden’ which is nearly twenty minutes long. very experimental and sometimes dream like, it ends with a rocking outro that brings it all home. it may take you a few times to digest the whole thing, but it does grow on you.

ray lamontagne ‘long way home’

a similar story here, as i was an early adopter to ray’s stuff, and coincidentally his first album ‘trouble’ came out about the same time as ‘crane wife’. again, i have followed him ever since. my initial draw to him was his 70’s retro sound – somewhat of a hybrid of van morrison, cat stevens, james taylor, etc.

he started to veer away from that after a few successful albums and went a lot heavier and edgier, usually not to the good. but over his last few albums he has come back around and found his groove again. this is a great overall album and served me well over the summer.

billy strings ‘highway prayers’

i know i keep writing about him, but he just keeps pumping out new music and i am just trying to keep up. this album gives us twenty tracks of originals delivered in more traditional bluegrass and country settings, again returning back to the form that made him famous to begin with. (as you can see there is a bit of a theme here).solid playing, and solid songwriting. solid, solid, solid.

johnny blue skies ‘passage du desir’

never heard of johnny blue skies? that’s ok, nobody else had before the release of this album. his real name is sturgill simpson, and you may have heard of him. apparently he had made a promise not to make more than five studio albums at some point, and so adapted this moniker. again, a return to his unique musical stylings and superb songwriting, and this album is one of his best. repeated listenings will be rewarded.

justin townes earle ‘all in – unreleased and rarities (the new west years)’

long time readers of mine will know the love i have for this man’s work, and someone we lost way too early. this is a posthumous collection of material he had recorded but not released from his years with the new west record label. what a songwriter. i hesitated to provide a sample of the material below by choosing his cover of the fleetwood mac hit, but he does it well and i think the video captures him in a beautiful way.

dave alvin and jimmie dale gilmore ‘texicali’

these two veterans of….actually, i am not sure how to describe them. dave alvin made his mark in the l.a. punk/country scene in the 80’s in a band he founded called the blasters. jimmie dale gilmore is from west texas and is maybe best known as one of the members of the flatlanders in the seventies – an early contributor to what would later be dubbed ‘alt-country’, whatever that means.

the two teamed up for an album in 2018 called ‘downey to lubbock’ (their two hometowns), and they have been pretty much touring together ever since. i did buy that album when it came out, and i can recommend as well. this one got stuck in the cd player for a while. good stuff, if you like this sort of thing. and i do.

wyatt flores ‘half life’

here is a fairly new artist that i picked up on the sirius xm ‘outlaw country’ station. wyatt hails from the red dirt country in oklahoma, where so many great artists have blossomed from over the last 15-20 years. this is an ep, so only about 8 songs with a running time of about 25 minutes. but please give him a listen. another theme of all of my selections here was that i played them a lot, because they all deserved that kind of attention. this one is no different. latch on to him now before anyone else does, so you can say you heard him when.