when the now famous roxy nightclub in west hollywood decided to open its doors in september of 1973, they invited neil young to be their inaugural act. graham nash and cheech and chong were the openers. neil brought his band at the time – the santa monica flyers – and they were basically auditioning songs they had just recorded for the album that would eventually be released in 1975 as ‘tonight’s the night’.

let me interject right here: of all the things neil has done in his long career, my two favorite releases are ‘tonight’s the night’ and ‘on the beach’. written and recorded during a dark period in his life and career, they are not happy folky top forty material. if you want that, check out ‘comes a time’. this material gets much closer to what i consider to be the true genius of neil. one of the pioneers in fusing rock, country, and folk into a new genre, it was a sound that would launch a thousand alt country and americana acts for decades to come. listen to these two albums and then go listen to some early wilco, son volt, jayhawks, etc.

it’s all there.                                

this was a period when neil was rebelling against the fame he had recently experienced due to the tremendous commercial success of his ‘harvest’ album, and the saccharine offerings from crosby stills nash and young. he and the band had also been dealing with the double loss of guitarist danny whitten and their roadie (bruce berry) to drug overdoses. neil had actually kicked danny out of the studio because he was so strung out on heroin that he couldn’t play. just a few hours later he got the call from the coroner’s office that he was dead. neil took responsibility for both deaths, and much of the material in both of these works – especially ‘tonight’ – is a bit of a cathartic exercise in dealing with the loss.

of all the bands that neil put together over the years, this is also one of my favorites. nils lofgren on guitars and keyboards, ben keith on pedal steel, and his crazy horse rhythm section of billy talbot and ralph molina. they had been working on these numbers all summer in a studio just up the road in hollywood. the performance captured here, and recently released from neil’s archives, is a jaunty trip through most of the songs that would be heard two years later. keep in mind that the crowd has not previously heard any of the material, and still was very supportive (and drunk). they also throw in ‘walk on’, which would later appear on the ‘on the beach’ album. there is some hilarious stage banter from neil, which is almost worth the price of admission itself. as i alluded to above, this is not for everyone. but if you are a fan of this period of neil’s work, or if you are a student of roots americana and are looking for some of the source material, look no further.

it has been four long years since the minnesota based trampled by turtles have released a studio album.  the band had taken a long hiatus, mostly due to road weariness and personal struggles. lead singer and founder dave simonett even quit the band for a while. founded in 2004 in duluth, all the members of the band had previously been in rock and punk bands and had zero experience in anything bluegrass. but at some point they started experimenting with adding acoustic instruments to their repertoire, and then they started realizing that they had some success with hybridizing their sound. by 2008 they had their first top ten record with ‘duluth’.

when confronted with traditionalists who claim that they are not a real bluegrass band, they proudly agree with them. as their fiddle player ryan young says, ‘we are a rock and roll band that plays bluegrass instruments. we’re closer to neil young than bill monroe in terms of the structure of the songs and how they are written or played’. that being said, i would categorize them in the bluegrass genre, albeit with a bit of octane added. if you are not familiar with them, i would put them in the same category of avett brothers, turnpike troubadors, and maybe old crow medicine show.

when they got back together in a cabin in the northwoods of minnesota after not seeing each other for over a year, they weren’t planning on putting together material for a new album. but within hours of reuniting, they learned of tom petty’s death, and somehow this prompted a burst of creativity that put them in the studio two months later. they decided to go back to how they started recording, all of them seated in a circle and running through each song a few times before hitting the ‘record’ button. the result is a well balanced ensemble of ballads and fast paced ditties. the first cut and single is ‘kelly’s bar’, and is a good introduction to the overall theme of the 12 song offering. like the troubadors and old crow, they are all accomplished musicians, and put on a helluva show (‘live at first avenue’ is a good example of their live performance). i have been waiting for this one for a long time. it is worth the wait.

old crow’s newest studio album was released last friday, partially to commemorate their twentieth year as a group. the title is a reference to tennessee, the state they have called home since 2000. string bands were a dime a dozen when they first started busking in the streets, but ocms eventually started breaking away from the pack based on their strong songwriting and original material. that continues here for the most part, and their musical prowess has only gotten tighter over the years. instrumentally, this is as good an album as they have put out. lyrically, it doesn’t have a big hit like ‘wagon wheel’ or ‘sweet amarillo’, but the songs are serviceable and occasionally very good (‘old hickory’). my quibble is with the execution of the vocals or the format. on a few cuts they seem to try to emulate some of the bands that were influenced by their earlier work – namely avett brothers, mumford and sons, trampled by turtles, etc. – and as such possibly become a caricature of themselves. luckily this only applies to 2-3 cuts, and the rest is pretty good. the results might have been a function of their approach when they prepared to come into the studio.

recorded in the summer of 2016 shortly after playing ‘blonde on blonde’ at the country music hall of fame museum, they met in the fabled rca studios in nashville with dave cobb on the knobs. they had over two dozen songs as candidates, but cobb convinced them to not arrange, rehearse or practice any of the material before coming in. being twenty year road warriors, the ensemble playing is infused with the spirit of their high energy live performances. but maybe the arrangements and song structures could have used a little more marinating before the final tracks were laid down. much of the feel of the album is a raucous party atmosphere. we also get the first electric guitar track on an album since 2004 (dave rawlings and his telecaster on ‘wagon wheel’).

in ‘look away’, you will hear echoes of ‘dixie’, the old traditional song of the south. ketch secor wanted to get it up to speed with the current controversies of the civil war, and it is one of the more thoughtful pieces on the album. ‘old hickory’ is a fictional account of a local musical legend, and you can hear shades of dylan’s ‘you ain’t going nowhere’ in the chord structures.

other than my previously mentioned issues, i am having a hard time putting my finger on why i can’t give it more hearty endorsement. i haven’t been as enthusiastic about their work since willie watson left them in 2011. they lost one of their best vocalists, and he was a member that kept them more in the traditionalist vein. that being said, this a very decent outing for one of the best string bands out there.

it is hard to believe, but this is john prine’s first collection of new original songs in thirteen years. he has certainly been active with other projects (his collection of duets, ‘for better or worse’, for example), but selfishly i have been yearning for new material from the man whom i consider to be on my very short list of the best singer songwriters of my generation. dylan (another person on that list) once famously remarked that prine’s ‘stuff is pure proustian existentialism, midwestern minds trips to the nth degree’. at only ten songs and a little over thirty minutes long, i wish there was more. but what is currently being offered is definitely worth the wait. he is 71 now and has had two bouts of cancer in the last twenty years (squamous cell carcinoma in his neck in 1998, and lung cancer in 2013). as such, his voice is not like it was in the past. however, like dylan, the magic of his songs are in the lyrical constructions, and these ten songs will sound vaguely familiar to anyone who has been a fan of his work over the last fifty years. any vocal misses are easily smoothed out by the wonderful harmonies provided by brandi carlisle, amanda shires, and jason isbell, to name a few.

maybe his advancing age or health issues have informed his writing here, as there is plenty of material about death and dying and loneliness. but if you really think about it, he has always infused these themes into his best work since the beginning (think ‘sam stone’, ‘hello out there’, to name a couple). john is in many ways a people’s poet, utilizing country folk idioms as his palate for his simple but thought provoking lyrics, often embellished with a wry sense of humor. the last cut, ‘when i get to heaven’, is a partially spoken word song that allows him to imagine the list of things he will do when he gets inside of the pearly gates. of course he wants to see his mom and dad and brother and aunts, but then he gets to the chorus where he admits ‘i’m gonna have a cocktail, vodka and ginger ale, yeah i’m gonna smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long’. even though i know he really wants that smoke (he had to quit due to his cancer), here’s hoping we have a few more albums out of him before he gets to have it. he is heading out on tour (alas, nowhere close to me), so add this album to your collection and go out and see the legend.