i subscribe to ‘no depression’ magazine, which is a great roots/americana music publication. i highly recommend it. i get the hard copy version, but i am also signed up for their email list. i get a couple each week, and one of those is their review of new releases. a few weeks back i found one with a band called ‘mighty poplar’. they sounded interesting, so i grabbed it.

in a nutshell, this is somewhat of a bluegrass ‘supergroup’, although none of these artists currently hail from traditional bluegrass bands. noam pikelny (banjo) and chris eldridge (guitar) are in the punch brothers group, greg garrison (bass) is in leftover salmon, alex hargreaves (fiddle) tours with billy strings, and lead vocalist and mandolinist andrew marlin is the frontman for watchhouse (formerly mandolin orange).

if you are familiar with the folk and bluegrass festival scene, you will likely recognize all of those bands, and as such these artists typically cross each other’s paths on the festival circuits. more importantly, they often jam with each other – either onstage or in the backstage sessions that are so frequent during these festivals.

they started to build a camaraderie and a text group chat, but finding time to get together to record some music proved difficult over the years, due to their conflicting travel schedules. and then covid hit. they discussed songs to record and arrangements all online or in their group chats. they chose not to write any of their own material, but instead focus on either older standards or bluegrass interpretations of songs they liked in common.

once ready to go, they did a quick 3 day recording session in nashville in october of 2020. for whatever reason, they did not get around to mixing and mastering it until last year, and they put it out a few weeks ago. i have made my way through the material 3-4 times, and it has really grown on me. they have a real chemistry and respect for the genre. (the band title comes from a live recording they admire of bill monroe, where he introduces a song and explains that it has been ‘mighty poplar in these parts’.)

somehow they have found a way to tour together, and they head out on the road next month. we have just recently discovered they will playing at one of my favorite local venues in september, and i am sure i will be there. please check them out.

nickel creek, ‘celebrants’

either in that same article, or some other source at the same time, i read about nickel creek’s new album, ‘celebrants’. they haven’t released any new material (or toured together) since 2014, so i decided to check it out. i was not quite prepared for what i was about to hear. my recommendation here is to stream a little bit before you commit. i don’t necessarily mean this in a bad way, but it is not what i was expecting. it is brilliant, though. if you are thinking this is some variant on a bluegrass recording, it is not. it is three exceedingly talented musicians playing traditional bluegrass acoustic instruments in a very progressive way. the writing, arrangements, playing and vocals are all very well done. it definitely requires concentrated listening. there aren’t really any toe tappers here. i will give you a sample below. they are also touring soon.

i have had a few things marinating on my desk here in the redeyegin studio for the last month or two, and so instead of doing an in depth review of them individually, i thought i would just take this cloudy sunday morning and do a blast post on a number of them. there is no particular theme here, and they are in no particular order.

first aid kit – ‘palomino’

as i have mentioned numerous times before, i get recommendations from various places for things to listen to, and mrs. redeyegin is no exception. she will often send me a picture of something on sirius radio of a song that catches her pretty little ear. this was one of those. first aid kit is a swedish folk duo that has been around for a while, comprised of sisters johanna and klara soderberg. i had their last album, but had not heard their latest – ‘palomino’. they are very good writers, with gorgeous harmonies. they tend to land on the pop side of styles, but get a lot of play in the americana circles. i felt the album was very good overall.

tom petty and the heartbreakers – ‘live at the fillmore 1997’

in january of 1997 petty and his band took a break from the big venue shows and did a 20 night run at the fillmore auditorium in san francisco. of the 20 shows, six were professionally recorded, and they used some of the best of those sets to put out a four cd box set with great liner notes and pictures. they used the opportunity of 20 shows to not only run through some of their hits, but also cover some songs of artists that had inspired them over the years. one small issue i have is the references, both in the videos below and the liner notes, to the venue being legendary and steeped in history. of course the fillmore auditorium has been around for a long time, but they were thinking of the fillmore west, which was it’s more famous cousin, but was only open from 1968-1971. a really great release for the petty fans out there.

billy strings – ‘me/and/dad’

billy has skyrocketed to bluegrass fame in the last few years, and it is nice that he took some time in the studio (and occasional live events) to pay tribute to the person who taught him how to play guitar – his dad. they hunker down in a nashville studio with some bluegrass legends and work through a number of bluegrass and country standards. the playing is great, although the vocals struggle at times (terry’s best singing days might be behind him). but i found it a worthwhile addition to my collection.

charley crockett – ‘the man from waco’

i first started hearing charley’s name and music just a couple of years ago, but never leaned into it very much. but then i started hearing cuts from his new release, and decided to take the plunge. he is a great writer, and the styles presented here are varied, but with a texas theme to them. it is somewhat of a ‘concept’ album, as many of the songs’ subjects tie together as they move along. definitely someone to keep our eyes on.

david bowie – ‘moonage daydream’

this is a film about bowie’s contributions to not only the field of music, but other art forms as well. although there are some details of his upbringing and personal life, this in your face production spends most of its time on his lifelong obsession with pushing cultural norms and exploring, in his words, his quest of understanding ‘chaos and fragments’ that most of humankind overlooks. it is a fascinating montage of live musical footage from most of his major tours, along with interviews, personal philosophical musings, and other archival footage never seen before. at times it gets very intense, so be prepared for that. but if you dig bowie, this is a must see.

bob dylan – ‘fragments’

and last, but not least, i have to give some mention to dylan’s newest addition to his bootleg series – ‘fragments – time out of mind sessions 1996-1997’.

it is hard to believe that ‘time out of mind’ has been out 25 years now. many dylan fans cite this album as one of their favorites (including myself), and in some ways it was a turning point in his career. he had not released anything in nearly seven years before this, and was widely considered to have his best years behind him. but this album laid waste to that notion, and won him a grammy for best album of the year.

for some reason (unrelated to the release of this box set) i had pulled this off the shelf a few weeks back and sat down in the man cave with a piece of bourbon and listened to it all the way through. i had forgotten how good it was, and how much i remembered every nuance. i must have really burned it down to the ground when it came out. and then, by chance, i heard a dj mention this box set and i ordered it immediately.

i am going to insert a pathetic but funny story here. i ordered it through amazon, and it was supposed to get here last saturday. i got an email alert that my package was undeliverable – likely because my dog was barking at him in the driveway. i was so desperate to get the package that i jumped in my car and tracked down the driver up the block aways.

by sunday afternoon i had gotten through all five discs of the box set. the first disc is a different mix of the original album. the next two are outtakes of the original songs, plus of the three or four songs that did not make the cut. the fourth is a compilation of live versions of these songs, and the last one is a reissue of some of these songs that were originally released on another box set ‘ tell tale signs’. the book that came with it is really well done, and provided for good reading and insights as i was listening to the music.

likely only of interest to the most hard core dylan fans, but i know i have quite a few of those in my subscriber list, so this one’s for you.

enjoy.

when i first heard of this book about a month ago, i knew i had to get it quick. i finished half of it the first night i had it, and was done with it by the end of the next night. but as soon as i was done i knew that it deserved at least one more go through before putting down my thoughts.

it was initially described to me as bob writing essays on 66 songs that have influenced him. i can say that it is that, but quite a bit more. he never speaks about himself or his music here, and at no point is there a discussion as to what the criteria are for the selections. it just goes head first into the first one, and never stops. they vary in length between just a few paragraphs to some that are 5-6 pages. and although there is not a consistent format to each one, there are a few themes. he will always list the song and the artist who is singing it, and the year it was released. from there he may comment on the writer(s), the artist (if different), the song subject, the history of the song, and anything else he feels might color the picture a little better. he also starts off quite a few of them by riffing in only the way he can, creating stream of consciousness manifestos on the characters or subjects of the song at hand. less occasionally, he will use the song or artist as a jumping off point to go into forays about the state of our world today, be it consumerism, war, drugs, media bias or divorce lawyers.

but all of that is just window dressing to what this book is all about – bob paying homage to the art and craft of songwriting. he started writing this in 2010, and i am guessing that he came back to a few of these a few times. when at his best, he points out things to you about the song or performance that you might not hear after listening a few times. a vocal phrasing, an unorthodox arrangement that somehow works, a crucial rhythm guitar part. a lyric that says just enough, or a phrase that could be taken multiple ways, or maybe one that keeps you guessing.

the songwriters and artists are all over the map here, from hank williams to the clash, from elvis presley to elvis costello, johnny cash to bobby darin. he dips into many genres, including country, blues, rock, soul, r&b and jazz.

the second time through the book i took more time to digest it, and then started doing something i had considered doing the first time through – getting off the couch and finding some of these songs that i had not heard before. or, if i did know the song, going back to it after bob points out something that had escaped me. i thought i knew the song ‘pancho and lefty’ pretty well, having at least 4-5 versions in my collection, including the original one by townes van zandt himself. bob touches on townes’ early tragic history, and speculates as to if that is what made him the writer that he was. he then spends some time on the willie nelson/merle haggard version of the song, and then delves into the two characters and fleshes out his vision of what really happened in that story. i will not hear that song the same again.

i expect that i will spend some portion of this winter doing some version of the above – picking the book up off of the table in the man cave, finding a chapter that speaks to me, and then finding the song on youtube and doing a deep dive into it.

and i think that is what bob would have wanted.