i was having a cocktail with a friend of mine the other day and the subject of non satellite commercial radio came up and the lack of good quality music there these days. my comment in reply to her was something like, ‘that is not measure of whether there is actually great music out there, but rather the nature of the radio business these days’. my contention is that things have never been better in regards to musical choices. you just have to seek it out. along those lines, here are 6 albums i picked up in the last few weeks.

lilly hiatt – ‘walking proof’

source – outlaw country sirius xm

one of my favorite songwriters of all time is john hiatt. here we have a great album by one of his daughters, lilly. this has actually been out for a while now, and i knew it was out there, but i can’t give you a good explanation of why i delayed. if you consider taking a flyer on any of these selections today, i would ask you to strongly consider this one. it would be unfair to compare her songwriting to her father, but i think she holds her own. i am sure if you were to ask him he would be damn proud. and she has a great voice.

 

pretenders – ‘hate for sale’

source – american songwriter magazine

this ageless band has put together a great new addition to their collection. chrissie has never written or sounded better, and martin chambers still brings it on drums. i first saw her when she returned to her hometown at blossom music center in cuyahoga falls in 1981 right before i went off to college. loved her then, still do.

 

margo price – ‘that’s how rumors get started’

source – pitchfork magazine

i was an early adopter on margo, and i posted on her first album before she became well known. i wasn’t nearly as enamored of her second album, as i think her success and political posturing got to her head. on this one she steers away somewhat from her nashville roots and gets a little seventies rock on us. sturgill simpson produces, and the songs are well done and varied in styles. i have seen a number of reviews give comparisons to latter era fleetwood mac and stevie nicks, and there is some merit to that. however, i think margo is a better singer. she easily tackles all the material here vocally

 

gillian welch and dave rawlings – ‘all the good times’

source – reader dave c. from jersey

somewhat of a quarantine session, gillian and dave set up an old reel to reel in their house and laid down ten cover tracks of some of their favorite songs by artists such as prine, dylan, norman blake and a few others. the version of prine’s ‘hello in there’ might be the best i have ever heard. here we have elizabeth cotton’s classic ‘oh babe it ain’t no lie’.

jerry garcia and john kahn – ‘garcialive, volume 14’

source – jerrygarcia.com

tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of jerry’s untimely passing. i am sure i will get in a retrospective mood sometime soon this weekend, and this may be part of my soundtrack. here jerry and his longtime garcia band bassist john kahn present a short acoustic set in a small venue in the heart of new york city. the crowd is part of the show here, up in the mix and egging these guys on. billy strings does the liner notes and goes into great length on how he first got turned on to jerry by listening to his bluegrass work with david grisman, and then gives great descriptions of the twelve songs presented here. i really miss jerry. the world would be a better place if he were still around.

the texas gentleman – ‘floor it!!!’

source – american songwriter magazine

as they used to say in monty python, ‘and now for something completely different’. a bunch of texas studio musicians who have also been part of backup bands for country artists like kris kristofferson and george strait, among many others, these guys just put out their second studio album, and it is highly interesting. if that description gives you a notion of what kind of music they would bring, you would likely be totally wrong. often when i have trouble explaining or categorizing an artist’s sound, i usually find it to be worth the time. and that has never been more true than with this hour long tribute to the pop and rock bands of the seventies. you will here glimpses of little feat, steely dan, the meters, solo mccartney,  randy newman, leon russell and so on. not for everyone, but if that sounds interesting to you, give it a spin.

 

as i have been saying for months now, it has never been more important to support our musicians out there. try out a few of these.

as we head towards the midpoint of the summer, here are a few things that i have been listening to that may potentially be suitable to sonically adorn any post solstice activities you may be contemplating.

ray lamontagne – ‘monovision

his best release in years, this one takes him back to the strengths that drew me to him in the first place – organic, soulful songs that pay homage to some artists we like in common. ‘misty morning rain’ has an ‘astral weeks’ feel to it, and the opening to ‘rocky mountain healin’ will remind listeners of neil young’s ‘long may you run’. ray produced, engineered, wrote and played everything. at first i felt it might have limited the spontaneity of it, but repeated listenings have changed my mind.

 

blackberry smoke – ‘live from capricorn studios’

the legendary capricorn studios in macon georgia were recently totally restored to it’s original configuration. at one point in the mid seventies nearly every important southern rock band laid some tracks down there, including a local band that made it big, the allman brothers. here blackberry smoke pays tribute to some of them by covering six tracks with some guests. also comes with a dvd. all proceeds go to a covid fund that benefits musicians and venues. here is a classic from wet willie, with jimmie hall on lead vocals:

 

corb lund – ‘agricultural tragic’

i first heard of this guy when hayes carll played one of their cowritten songs at the last show i saw of him. outstanding songwriter – clever, authentic,  and often quite humorous.

 

sarah jarosz – ‘world on the ground’

if you follow modern bluegrass at all, you likely know of sarah. she is an extremely talented multi instrumentalist, one of the best clawhammer banjo players on the planet. she also happens to be an extremely good songwriter, and it is the latter that is on display here. legendary producer and musician jon leventhal collaborates with her on this one, and what we get is a ten song cycle of character sketches, most of them slower paced. this goes well with a glass of wine at the end of a quiet evening.

 

neil young – ‘homegrown’

another one of neil’s ‘lost’ albums, this one was mostly recorded in 1974, and was supposed to follow ‘on the beach’. but much of the material was about his relationship with actress carrie snodgrass, and that was deteriorating at the time. neil reportedly found it too painful to finish the project and released ‘tonight’s the night’ instead. neil fans will recognize ‘love is a rose’ and ‘star of bethlehem’, which were eventually issued on his ‘decades’ greatest hits album. they may also recognize ‘white line’ by the crazy horse version off of ‘ragged glory’. here it is presented as a duet with robbie robertson.  there are a couple of clunkers in here, but the serious neil fan will want to check this out.

 

jerry garcia band – ‘garcialive volume 13’

when the e street band wasn’t touring, clarence clemons would often hang out on the west coast and jam around. he played a few times with the dead, and he and jerry struck up a friendship, not only musically but personally. in 1989 jerry convinced him to tour with his band, and here we have a complete sample of that tour. the unlikely pairing clearly enjoy the format, and they push each other to the limit. i can’t point to a song from this show that approaches mediocrity. the soloing gets a little over the top sometimes as the try to outdo each other. but most of the time there is magic, and the interplay near the end of ‘dear prudence’ is just simply beautiful. a good choice for the saturday afternoon cornhole session.

what are you listening to?

steve’s twentieth studio album is the result of a project he was asked to write some music for that involved a mining disaster ten years ago. in april 2010 a coal dust explosion 1000 feet underground killed 29 miners. the mining company was found to be at fault. the idea was to go to west virginia and interview the survivors and the families of the victims, and turn it into a play. the play went into production early this year, with steve doing the songs here acoustic style on the stage with them. in the meantime, steve gathered his band and the mastersons and created a more fleshed out version of these songs.

‘ghosts of west virginia’ explores the hardships of the coal mining life and does so using a number of musical styles – gospel, folk, bluegrass, celtic, and rock. recorded at new york city’s electric lady studios, it has a gritty and authentic sound to it. the first seven songs are directly from the play, and two of the last three are directly related (‘black lung’ and ‘the mine’), while the third is only tangentially related (‘fastest man alive’, about chuck yeager, who was born in west virginia). many of the songs are dripping with despair and anger, like the centerpiece ‘it’s about blood’, where steve eventually calls out the names of all 29 deceased as the song gets more and more intense. but there are also songs celebrating the good things about their lives, like the infectious ‘union, god and country’.

steve is rather well known for his liberal political views, but in a number of interviews he has mentioned that he ‘decided to make an album that spoke to and for people that didn’t vote the way he did’. another way he explained it was that if we don’t have common beliefs with others, then we need to learn how to communicate better. how appropriate that sounds right about now. steve earle absorbed the material and the people, and has told their story well.

 

upon hearing that jason and his band were ready to release their next studio album, i was preparing myself to write something i hoped would not be true – that he had hit a plateau in his career and would never live up to the phenomenal ‘southeastern’ album from 2013. even though i had been impressed with his songwriting since his drive by truckers days, ‘southeastern’ was the album that put him on the map nationally, and has since helped cement his reputation as one of the great singer songwriters working today.

his two following albums, ‘something more than free’ and ‘the nashville sound’, were very good, but not consistently great like their predecessor was. i was getting the impression that he might have been resting on his laurels a bit, or maybe distracted by his marriage and raising their daughter. if you follow him on twitter, you will know that he is very active on there, with his substantial wit, his appreciation of other artists, but also his very vocal political opinions.

so as i threw the disc in my car player on the way home from work the other day, i was already jaded and ready to be disappointed once again. by the time i got to about the third or fourth track, though, i knew i was going to be wrong. this is his best work since ‘southeastern’, and it is also substantially different from that album. ‘southeastern’ had him writing material fresh off of getting married and getting sober, and much of the material was personal in nature. the production was more sparse and acoustic, his first partnership with producer dave cobb.

for ‘reunions’ he continues his work with cobb, but his writing is less drawn on personal experience than before. he has been purposefully trending this way for a while now, with a few exceptions (‘it gets easier’ is specifically about the daily struggles of sobriety). the songwriting is about as good as anything he has ever done, which means it is as good as anybody else writing today. the sonic qualities and the production are quite different though, and that is part of the reason why i just can’t get it out of that cd player. isbell wanted a sound more reminiscent of the rock he heard on the radio in the 80’s such as dire straits and squeeze. there is more layering and depth to nearly all the songs, and i don’t think the 400 unit has sounded better musically. typical of this is the opener, ‘what’ve i done to help’, an almost later era motown/marvin gaye groove driven by jimbo hart’s bass line. oh, and that is david crosby on backup vocals. ‘overseas’ is also a standout, with some great anthemic solos from guitarist sadler vaden. on the more reflective side, he gives us ‘st. peter’s autograph’ which he wrote about his wife amanda shire’s grieving over losing one of her close friends, guitarist neal casals, to suicide last year.

jason and amanda have never sung better together, even though they were having marital issues during the recording sessions. a great example of this is the closing song of ‘letting you go’, where they envision the day that their daughter gets married. i can tell you that if one of the redeyegin twins were to become betrothed, this would be a contender for the father/daughter dance.

this one will likely be in a heavy rotation this summer, and rightfully so.