jason isbell, ‘foxes in the snow’

this just came out this past weekend. i received my copy on saturday and put it on while doing some errands in the car. i knew it was something special right out of the gates. after a long day working outside yesterday, i put it on while relaxing on the back porch and decided it warranted a proper listen.

let me first state that this is his first solo album (without the 400 unit) in ten years. on top of that, it is just him alone with his acoustic guitar. sparse, but captivating. i have now gotten through it maybe 4 times or so, and i am still processing the complexity and brilliance of the lyrics. i should also say that his guitar playing is extremely good. he is well known for his electric playing, especially on the slide, but his acoustic picking here is something i have not heard in a while.

about a year ago he announced his divorce from his wife and fellow band member amanda shires, and he does not deny that the process is the source for some of the material, maybe a majority of it. don’t let that turn you off. just as his journey into sobriety arguably was an inspiration for his 2013 breakthrough album ‘southeastern’, he seems genuinely inspired in both his songwriting and singing on this one. my first impression is that he realizes that at least part of the blame for their dissolution falls on him. knowing him like i do after following his career for over fifteen years, i do not doubt that it is true.

most fans of his think ‘southeastern’ is his finest work, not to be equaled before or since, and i fall in that category. but in just 48 hours of listening, i think this is as close as he has come. i hear echoes of that masterpiece in more than a few numbers. in an interview i just read, he was asked about making the departure to this solo acoustic format, and his reply was that he felt he had been doing the rocking 400 unit format for a while, and at age 46, he felt like he was a bit trapped in that role. i tend to agree. i have declined to catch him much on the road lately, even though i think their last few albums were interesting, because i stopped seeing anything new that i thought was worth my effort.

there are really just a few instances where you can tell that the subject matter is his relationship with amanda – both good and bad. but much of it could possibly be about her, but maybe about other relationships (it was his second marriage). and then there are songs that aren’t about women at all, but possibly tales about his rowdier youth. the title track might be the best song on the album (only jason could reference diphenhydramine in a love song). and then it closes with a song he was asked to write for his brother’s marriage – to be played at their first dance at their reception. he debuted it at that ceremony. nobody had had a chance to hear it before that. i would not be surprised if it is not the last time that song gets played in such a setting.

he is currently on tour solo without his band, featuring this material. i might have to go out and see him. see you there.

2024 nuggets

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.

norman’s rare guitars

last year was an interesting year for me, and not all of it necessarily good. probably the biggest time absorber was a long overdue house renovation, which took most of the year. plus a busy year at my day job and it all added up to squeezing out much of my leisure time, which includes my favorite hobby – music. it also took away my time and energy needed to keep up with my blog. but that is all behind me now and i hope to make up for it in 2025.

to help me with my writer’s block, i thought i would start off with an easy one – a documentary my brother steve turned me on to. ‘norman’s rare guitars’ is a very well done accounting of the store by that name in hollywood, and the tale of it’s founder – norman harris.

norm was a nominally successful musician in the late sixties who started a side job finding and then selling vintage guitars. after about a year or so it became his main gig, and word of mouth led to major musicians seeking him out to find guitars for them. his business exploded and his store is still in existence today and he probably has the largest collection of vintage guitars in the world.

this trailer will give you a taste of the magic of this place:

running time is over 90 minutes, so it is a bit of a commitment. but if you are into vintage versions of the premier instrument in rock and roll history, and the musicians who played them, you might find this interesting.

for marcus king fans, his in store spontaneous recording basically jump started his career:

next post will be a handful of releases i really sunk my teeth into last year but never got around to sharing with you.

and then a few books i felt that enlightened me to some more music history.

thank you for your patience, and we will see you soon.

the state of bluegrass today

i have been a fairly enthusiastic fan of the bluegrass genre for decades, and i have seen it go through ebbs and flows of overall popularity over the years. just when it seems that the interest seems stagnant, something comes along to introduce it to a new audience. examples include the newgrass revival band – which brought a more eclectic vision to the genre – to the jerry garcia led band old and in the way that introduced fans of the grateful dead to bluegrass. the movie ‘o brother where art thou’ had the same effect in 2000. the soundtrack for the film reached #35 on the billboard country charts that year.

i bring all this up because i have been seeing a similar phenomenon over the last year or so, and this time i believe it is because of a significant emergence of younger musicians embracing the tradition of the past, but then taking it to another level. i want to focus on three of them right now, but if you look around there are many more. it is quite refreshing.

molly tuttle

i have written about her before, but she is well worth revisiting. hailing from california, she broke on the scene in her early twenties and in 2017 became the first woman to win the international bluegrass music association’s guitarist of the year. she won again in 2018. her and her band golden highway have put out two great albums recently and have been touring hard for a number of years now, and the audiences and venues are definitely getting bigger.

sierra ferrel

sierra’s meteoric rise to fame has been much more dramatic – really just the last few years. brought up in west virginia, she escaped a rough life and made a name for herself busking in the streets. of the three here, her material is the most eclectic, mixing bluegrass with folk, gypsy jazz and others. this year’s release of ‘trail of flowers’ is a great example of this.

billy strings

again, i have written about him before, but i bring up him here because he is widely considered to be at the forefront of the youth movement i am referring to here. he just released his first live album, and it is pretty damn good. i have reviewed his studio albums in the past, but his live act is really what deserves attention. his excellent band can keep up with any acoustic bluegrass outfit in the country, but they can also add some electricity to their instruments and add a significant rock element to their shows. some purists might not like that, but i do. to each his own.

all three are interested in studying the past and doing their own interpretations for the future. all write their own material but also do interesting covers. all have great bands and tour relentlessly. i have seen all three at least once, and they are all worth getting out there to check them out.

jazzfest 2024

i returned last monday from what is now becoming an annual pilgrimage for me – another trip down to new orleans for the the jazz and heritage festival. two long weekends with a huge amount of artists to choose from, and once again my group selected the second weekend.

thursday has usually been my favorite day there, as the ‘fest’ experience is fresh, the crowds tend to be a little smaller, and it is a good day to visit the smaller stages and local acts. if you have never been there, on any given day there are 12 – 14 different stages with an average of 5-6 acts on each one, starting at around 11 am each day and ending promptly at 7 pm each evening. but this thursday was different as the rolling stones were the main event – a third attempt to get them there as the first two were cancelled because of covid and then mick’s health. so they not only booked the main draw on the opening day, but they also took the unprecedented move of closing all the other stages for the last two slots of the day. so it was crowded on the main stage, like nothing i had ever seen there.

the stones put on a great show, and had two local legends join them on stage – dwayne dopsie on ‘let it bleed’ and irma thomas on ‘time is on my side’. ivan neville’s dumpstafunk went on before them and killed it, but it was overall probably my least favorite day there.

friday got off to a late start as some thunderstorms moved through the area, but i was able to catch the last half of local act andrew duhon. enough that i made note to look into him more when i got home. cyril neville’s uptown ruler and then lil’ nathan and the zydeco big timers gave me some more local flavor – what i really come down here for.

i then caught allison russell in the blues tent, although she really is by no means a blues based artist. she has been making a bit of a splash nationally in the last year, and so i was anxious the see her live. she is a very talented woman, and a unique sound, but she went off on a political rant for a tad too long for me, and so i freed myself to find something else. i grabbed myself some jambalaya and headed off to the congo square stage and caught up with steel pulse for most of their time slot. i had not seen them live in probably over thirty years.

i was a huge fan of theirs when i was in college. although only about 3-4 members of the original band were still together, i am happy to report that they still sounded great and really nailed it. i finished with catching the last few songs of foo fighter’s set on the big stage before departing for the night.

saturday i started out with local zydeco artist yvette landry and the jukes. i have seen her here twice before and she is well worth the repeat visits. the rumble featuring chief joseph boudreaux junior had a real funky sound, and then i went to the gospel tent for some classic old school gospel from the zion harmonizers.

after some creole rice with chicken and tasso, i took a break from the sun and heat in the hospitality tent before heading over to catch nickel creek at my favorite smaller stage. i have to say that they might have been the highlight of my weekend. i was not crazy about their last album (i reviewed a few months ago), but they were very entertaining and sharp, and they were clearly happy to be there. i finished the evening as before, catching most of neil young and crazy horse at the big stage.

sunday was always looking to be the best overall day, and it really did not disappoint. we started off at the second biggest stage and caught local talent mia borders. she has a new album coming out in august and did a real energetic set. you will hear more from me on her later.

next up was a recently formed ‘super group’ called dragon smoke – made up of ivan neville, guitarist eric lindell, and the rhythm section of galactica. they lived up to the hype and burned it to the ground for about an hour. following them were the radiators, and i watched about half of their set before heading back over to the gospel tent (it was sunday after all). local soul artist jonte landrum had a solo spot there, and had her family accompany her as she belted out some gospel classics. that girl can sing. from there i went over to dwayne dopsie and the zydeco hellraisers. dwayne was very animated about his time on stage with the stones earlier in the festival, and did a couple of covers in their honor. bonnie raitt was next, and then i caught a bit of the wallflowers before heading home and closing out another successful trip to the big easy.