Author: mark

sturgill simpson, ‘cuttin’ grass, volume one, the butcher shoppe sessions’

when sturgill had to cut his ‘sound and fury’ tour short due to the pandemic, he retreated back to his home and ruminated on his next step. he did a fundraiser for musicians in june to an empty ryman auditorium with a bluegrass band, and made a promise to his fans that if they raised enough money, he would record a new album. well, he kept his promise, and the setting in retrospect was omniscient.

because nearly everyone stopped touring, he was able to gather up some of the best bluegrass minds around, and get them all in a studio to revisit 20 songs from his catalog. you could be suspicious and think that this was going to be a throw away ‘picking with sturgill’, but you would be wrong. you see, sturgill got started in the music business as a bluegrass artist, and only turned to country and americana formats later in his career. in a recent interview i heard he did with elizabeth cook, he said that after going through these sessions, he realized that many of these songs were at their heart bluegrass in nature, but were molded to fit the genre he was working in at the time. i knew most of these songs already, but they sound so natural in these new settings that he may be completely right.

let us first start off with the musicians he worked with. maybe first and foremost is the incredibly talented sierra hull, who kills it on mandolin here, and also does some great backing vocals. tim o’brien and mark howard are on guitars trading rhythm and leads, scott vestal is on banjo, and stuart duncan is on bass. his longtime bandmate miles miller is on the drums. it was recorded at butcher shoppe studios, unfortunately the last session ever done there.

the band and sturgill sound like they have been playing together forever. sturgill’s vocal stylings are not what you would consider to be in the bluegrass tradition, but it works so well here. on top of that, his often metaphysical lyrics sound better and more profound in this setting. it really just gels and sounds like it should have always been this way.

if you like sturgill or you like bluegrass, either way you will want to add this to your collection. i just found out that he released volume two this weekend, and i have heard a handful of cuts off of that. you might as well get both.

chris stapleton, ‘starting over’

because he got his start in nashville, both with the band steeldrivers and writing hit songs for other country artists, it was probably natural that when he hit it big with his 2015 ‘travellers’ album, he was cast in the country genre. but that album, and his next two, showed that he was comfortable adding other influences to his songs.

when i added the cd to my itunes library, it tagged it as ‘country & western’. it is not. this is a multi genre album that skillfully mixes r&b, rockabilly, americana and soul, just to name a few. chris is at the top of his game here, and i think this is his best album yet. it opens with ‘starting over’, and ends with ‘nashville, tn’ – the latter a farewell to the city that got him started. he is clearly trying to make music of his own interests, while also making it hard to categorize his work. as i have mentioned before, i tend to be attracted to artists that defy description.

he coproduced it with dave cobb, and every track is well constructed and artfully played. he wrote or cowrote 11 of the 14 tracks. his three covers are an obscure john fogerty song, and two from guy clark (interestingly placed back to back near the end of the album). the lineup is considerably strengthened by adding in some outstanding work by the two ex petty hands, mike campbell and benmont tench. as always, his wife morgane adds great backup vocals.

listen to mike campbell’s guitar on this rocker:

but this is probably my favorite song. if you have ever had a dog that held a special place in your family, and then watched it succumb to old age, you will have a hard time keeping your emotions in check on this track. one of the great dog songs ever.

this post is dedicated to kobe, our friends’ dog who embodied everything about this song. ‘i can tell you right now, that a dog has a soul’. yes it does.

r.i.p., kobe.

allman betts band, ‘bless your heart’

the allman betts band has backed up their wonderful 2019 debut album (‘down to the river’) with an equally impressive sophomore offering, ‘bless your heart’. as a reminder, the lead members of the band are devon allman (gregg’s son), duane betts (dickie’s son), and berry duane oakley (berry oakley’s son). All are reluctant to categorize themselves as an ‘allman brothers’ sons’ band, but for various reasons they have drifted together and created something that advances the legendary band’s legacy while also allowing them to forge towards new directions and sounds. recorded at muscle shoals studios in alabama, under the watchful eye of engineer/producer matt ross-spang (isbell, margo price, john prine), the 13 songs clocking in at 72 minutes feature a wide variety of styles and arrangements – acoustic, blues, soul, and straight up rock and roll. their fathers’ musical heritage is in their genes, and you can hear it infused in much of the music, but you will also hear other influences like black crowes, ryan adams, grateful dead, and many others.

that being said, the centerpiece of the entire album might be the 12 minute instrumental ‘savannah dream’, penned by betts. i have seen it compared to one of his father’s masterpieces, ‘in memory of elizabeth reed’, which is both fair and unfair. fair in that it is a gorgeous and expansive composition that has unique melodies and layers, with room for improvisation from all of them and also gets downright nasty in the guitar solo sequences. unfair in that he will always be compared to the career of his father. at least for now.

even though the three descendants had known each other nearly all their lives and played together occasionally, this version of the band had barely played much together before recording their first album. they took that out on the road last year and began to gel as a unit. by the time I saw them in early february of this year, they were a well honed machine, putting on one of the best shows i have seen in a while. with a three guitar attack of allman, betts, and slide player johnny stachela, they not only have distinct styles but serious chemistry.

i am looking forward to seeing them on the road again soon.

toots hibbert, 1942-2020

let me tell you a little story. in the early eighties i was in college and my musical horizons were exploding. in the summer between my junior and senior year i was getting heavy into reggae, and as usual, once i lock into something i go in deep. i was starting to build a little catalog of not only the biggest names – marley, tosh, jimmy cliff and the like – but also newer acts like black uhuru and steel pulse. and, of course, i had a great little album called ‘funky kingston’ by toots and the maytals.

so i felt well prepared when a few guys from my fraternity decided to head down to jamaica for our senior spring break excursion. we had our little boom box and i brought my tape case that probably had room for 12-15 of my best reggae tapes. after an arduous flight into montego bay, we had about a two hour taxi ride to our campsite in negril. we found a guy willing to take us there, and he helped us secure a case of barely cold red stripe beer. as we started making our way through the countryside, i asked him if i could play one of my tapes for the ride. he said yes, and so i started rattling off some of the names above, until i got to toots. all of he sudden he turned and said ‘toots, mon, play the toots, mon’. and so i did.

and so a few white kids from the midwest got our first taste of the jamaican back country as our driver careened through those roads, listening to ‘funky kingston’, occasionally seeing the western caribbean coastline as we headed to the small town of negril.

it was my first realization that there is reggae that we were exposed to in the states, and then there was the music that was popular on the island itself. and there is really no one who is more loved and respected on that island than toots hibbert. he had 31 number one singles there. there are some that say he first coined the term reggae, with his 1968 song ‘do the reggay’.

besides being one of the founders of the genre, he was also arguably it’s most soulful singer, often compared to otis redding. and by most accounts that i have seen, he was also a very kind and generous soul who always called jamaica home. he had a long and prosperous career, and i last saw him at jazzfest two years ago. he still had it going on at the age of 75.

‘reggae got soul’. yes it does, and toots was the best.

if you want a little something to get an idea of the influence he had here in the states, i would recommend a tribute album to him done in 2004 called ‘true love’, where the likes of clapton, bonnie raitt, keith richards, and so many others played with him on his biggest hits. it is really a fantastic compilation.

there was also a documentary on his life put out recently by the bbc that was really well done.

rest in peace, my friend.

bill and brint, this one’s for you.

kathleen edwards, ‘total freedom’

i started listening to kathleen edwards when she released her first album, ‘failer’ , in 2003. that launched a fairly successful career and she was a fixture on the americana scene from that point moving forward. i wasn’t exactly a diehard fan though, and so i was a little surprised a couple of months ago when i heard a new track of hers on sirius xm and thought to myself ‘i hadn’t heard that name in quite some time’. unbeknownst to me, she had been frustrated with the commercial success of her 2012 effort ‘voyaguer’ and, battling clinical depression and health issues, completely gave up on the music business and opened a small coffee shop in ontario (amusingly called ‘quitters’).

the shop was a success, she straightened out her life, and she got used to the quiet suburban life with her dogs. she found sustenance in the daily interactions with her customers, and didn’t look back.

then maren morris asked her to come to nashville for the weekend a couple of years back to help her cowrite a song, and she went, thinking it would be a nice break from the coffee shop. the process was intriguing to her, and all of a sudden she felt the urge to start writing her own songs again, and the flood gates opened.

she had been through a number of troubled relationships, both during her musical career and the hiatus, and much of the material is a reflection on that. as her producer said, this album is about ‘dogs and exes’. she gets much of her original band back together, and you can tell she put her heart and soul into it. the songwriting is right up there with some of her best, and the melodies are usually quite infectious. my first run through it was on my back porch on a beautiful saturday evening, and i got hooked on the very first track (‘redfern’).

welcome back, kathleen.