Past Programs
Country - 2008
Old Crow Medicine Show
25/11/2008
On their new CD Tennessee Pusher, Old Crow Medicine Show continue their assertion that old-timey music was the punk of its day, full of rough edges and exuberant energy and stories about those living on the edges of society.
From their start in New York State as neophyte acoustic musicians, Old Crow Medicine Show have worked hard, touring almost constantly, playing in small towns wherever they could find an audience. Doc Watson’s daughter saw them busking and picked up her dad, who was so impressed that he hired them for his prestigious Merlefest. Although the band moved to Nashville and has played at the Grand Ole Opry, they have retained their outsider status, maintaining that music should be played live and from the heart, not as a commodity to be packaged and sold. Their new CD features great drummer Jim Keltner and was produced by Don Was. But for one traditional track, it’s full of tales of outsider hillbillies, with no fewer than 3 tracks about rural drug dealers. Their loose harmonies and gently wailing tones call to mind another group that was born in New York State - ‘The Band’.
Garry Walsh
24/11/2008
While in Co. Cork, Ireland, in September, I discovered Garry Walsh, who plays a repertoire of rare tunes taught to him by his parents and grandfathers on mellifluous flutes and whistles, pitched in keys which don’t usually feature in Ireland’s musical lexicon.
Garry was raised in the country, 15 miles from Manchester, where, because of his isolation, he learned the tunes of his Co. Louth and Cork ancestors from his Dad (a pianist, accordionist, trombonist and jazz fan) and his Mom (a lilter). Garry learned the whistle from his Dad and didn’t take up flute until he was 21. But, although Garry didn’t frequent the session scene, his dad’s strictness and the rich repertoire he inherited stood him in good stead. In Ireland’s rich and generously shared music culture, the tunes Garry learned were so rare that Dublin’s Irish Traditional Music Archive couldn’t find previous notated or recorded examples of them. When Garry was offered a job in Cork, he leapt at the chance and put together a regularly-playing band to bring his family’s ‘secret repertoire’ back to Ireland, the circle complete at last on his debut CD Uncovered.
Two-Faced Friday
21/11/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
14/11/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Two-Faced Friday
07/11/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Ricky Scaggs and Bruce Hornsby (repeat of 18/1/08)
31/10/2008
On his CD collaboration with Ricky Skaggs, Bruce Hornsby retains his own musical identity while playing with Ricky and other leading bluegrass players and takes it somewhere else with his supple piano and the unusual songs he’s written.
There’s one called The Dreaded Spoon about a closet gourmand, and their version of a Rick James song about a groupie, Superfreak, is, well...surprising. The playing is great throughout and Ricky and Bruce harmonise well together. In the process of making the record, Ricky turned Bruce on to old timey musicians Roscoe Holcomb, Doc Boggs and Clarence Ashley, and Bruce turned Ricky on to Bud Powell, Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett.
Teddy Thompson (repeat of 22/8/07)
16/10/2008
Talented singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson’s new CD Upfront and Down Low is mostly an album of classic ’50s and ’60s country songs, made fresh by distinctive string arrangements and Teddy’s perfectly measured vocals.
In what started out as a fun little project rather than an album, Teddy concentrated on getting the maximum feeling and meaning out of the songs before worrying about making it sound like a ‘real’ country record. Robert Kirby, who is renowned for his work with Nick Drake, arranged most of the string parts, while Teddy’s dad, Richard Thompson, provides some guitar twang on three tracks. If you give it a chance, you’ll hear the beauty of a simple country song, thanks to Teddy’s sensitive and unique treatments. Despite being the son of British folk-rock legends, country music is what Teddy was brought up on, the music that’s closest to his heart and the music that speaks to him the most.
Two-Faced Friday
05/09/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
David Bromberg Quartet
27/08/2008
Newly remastered and now widely available, David Bromberg Quartet’s Live New York City 1982 captures Bromberg and a red hot acoustic band playing and singing a typically eclectic mix of Appalachian music, Blues, Western Swing and Gospel.
David and his band are obviously having a good time at this concert (at a well known concert hall whose name can’t be used in the packaging or advertising). His guitar pushes its limits on a 10-minute fiddle tune medley and the audience is totally simpatico. We’ll also hear tracks from Bromberg’s recent CD Try Me One More Time, his first studio album since 1990.
CD of the Week - Loudon Wainwright III
18/08/2008
Since he was a young man, Loudon Wainwright has been writing songs about getting old, so the 13 songs he revisits on his new CD, Recovery, the last one composed in 1974, have a richness gained from the singer-songwriter’s actual ageing.
Joe Henry and Loudon worked together on his previous release, Strange Weirdos, Music From and Inspired by the film ‘Knocked Up’, and it was Joe who finally got Loudon to respond with more than a shrug to the idea of reworking some of his early catalogue. The new arrangements build subtly on Loudon’s original guitar-only accompaniments and the songs are still great - no one plumbs the emotional life of the self-obsessed as funnily, or as lovingly and insightfully, as Loud-O.
CD of the Week - Ry Cooder
11/08/2008
Ry Cooder is in fine form on his latest CD, I, Flathead, his humorous and loving vision of California of the ’50s and ’60s, a world of Western Swing lovers, unsuccessful songwriters, carnies and drag racers.
On this, the 3rd of his California trilogy, Cooder’s voice is rich and confident, whether singing or speaking, and his liner notes, in the persona of the record’s nominal author, Kash Buk (and the Klowns), are as surreal and funny as anything out there. The music is spare, held down by three fine drummers, and Cooder’s guitar is on the mark with a big tip of the hat to Hollywood emigrant Merle Travis. The songs are well-written vignettes of the colourful characters who came from elsewhere to make Southern California the land of a million dreams. Ry’s song Steel Guitar Heaven manages to evoke the maverick world of early Californian Western music with nary a steel guitar played. This tribute to this unique time and place is so subtle and real that you can smell the knotty pine panelled country music clubs, the petrol fumes and the California eucalypts.
Crooked Still
30/07/2008
Expanded from a quartet to a quintet for their 3rd CD, Still Crooked, Crooked Still continue sing the dark lyrical themes of Appalachia while double bass, cello and violin saw away in the groups’ unique line-up.
After their cellist Rushad Eggleston departed, they replaced him with two members - cellist Tristan Clarridge and young California-born fiddler Brittany Haas, who really adds something to the mix with her deep understanding of the driving rhythms of old-timey fiddling. Aoife O’Donovan’s vocals are more self-assured and the group continues to develop their sound that asks the question, ‘What if the old Appalachian music was played on the dark woods of cellos and double basses?’
Emmylou Harris
16/07/2008
Emmylou Harris’ CD, All I Intended to Be, her first new CD in 5 years, reunites her with her former producer (and husband) Brian Ahern for a languorous, melancholy set of country-ish songs of which Emmylou’s 5 originals excel.
She’s backed by a great set of musicians and, on some tracks, with her bluegrass buddies from her Washington D.C. early music days.
Bob Carlin and Cheick Hamala Diabate
09/06/2008
On From Mali to America, Bob Carlin and Cheick Hamala Diabate play an assortment of banjos ranging from ancient African to modern American ones in their quest to recapture the banjo’s early, African role in American music.
Cheick plays a variety of ngonis and a gourd banjo, while Bob plays a modern 5-string banjo, minstrel banjo and gourd banjo. Solo Tounkara plays acoustic guitar. Performing pieces from both sides of the Atlantic, this is a long-awaited re-discovery of the banjo’s roots.
CD of the Week - Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson
12/05/2008
Husband and wife team Kasey Chambers’ and Shane Nicholson’s debut CD, Rattlin’ Bones is a laid-back, delightfully relaxed and artfully written acoustic alt-country album.
Shane and Kasey co-wrote nine of the songs and, rather than one vocalist taking the lead, their voices usually intertwine in the tradition of the Louvin Brothers, Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons, and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
Truckstop Honeymoon
12/05/2008
On Truckstop Honeymoon’s latest CD, Diamonds in the Asphalt, real-life and musical partners Mike West and Katie Euless use the country genre to ironic, humorous effect with songs that magnify the mundane aspects of life into crises.
There’s Mike’s song The Perfect Pair of Sunglasses which describes his tortured decision over which pair to buy at a truckstop, and there’s Katie’s song, (Me and My) Bad Attitude, which personifies her bad attitude as another character schizophrenically co-habiting her body. Mike’s originally from Australia and ended up in New Orleans via Manchester, but Katie and Mike and their two kids are now refugees from Hurricane Katrina, based in Kansas.
Pete Fidler
05/05/2008
It’s been an unusual road from guitarist in Melbourne psychedelic band Tyrnaround to his passion for the dobro that’s resulted in Pete Fidler’s debut dobro CD, Slide Night.
It was the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? that inspired Pete to pick up the dobro when he was in his 30s. He quickly learned the speed licks of dobro giant Jerry Douglas and Slide Night is in response to repeated requests from dobro fans for a solo Fidler CD. It’s mostly composed of Pete’s compositions, with Peter Somerville, Hamish Davidson and Ruth Hazelton on banjos, and Nick Charles and Pete himself on the guitars.
CD of the Week - Jeff Lang
05/05/2008
On Half Seas Over, Jeff Lang, accompanied only by his own guitars and Grant Cummerford’s bass, channels the dark Appalachian and Celtic sounds and tales that Greil Marcus referred to as the ‘Old, Weird America’ on an outstanding set of original songs.
Jeff seems to be going from strength to strength - his voice and guitar work continue to evolve in a beautiful way and his songs, like dark short stories, go way beyond the ‘Moon in June’ school of songwriting. He ends the CD with a dark joke of a song set in Newman, Western Australia, in which attempts to force a local to sing the Appalachian murder ballad Pretty Polly result in the creation of a new murder ballad story.
Van Morrison
30/04/2008
Van Morrison may not be offering much new on his 33rd studio album, Keep it Simple, but the clarity of the production, the band’s tasteful playing and his unique, still strong voice carry it over the line.
Interestingly, its debut at #10 on the Billboard charts made it Van’s highest ever US chart position of any Morrison album. Long time Morrison sidekick, Bay Area keyboard man John Allair, shines on the organ and the album features two female steel guitarists - Sarah Jory and Cindy Cashdollar. Van wrote all the songs and, although his writing seems lazy at times and his curmudgeonly attitude despite his success sours some songs, one wonders what one would think if this were his first album - a great discovery, perhaps?
CD of the Week - The Audreys
28/04/2008
On their second CD, When the Flood Comes, Adelaide group the Audreys stay their course as purveyors of understated gothic country tales with surprise twists.
Their excellent debut CD, Between Last Night and Us, won the 2006 ARIA award for best Blues and Roots Album and put them on tour more than they’d ever been, bringing on a songwriting drought of 18 months which they finally broke, then teased out more songs by staying at New York’s famous Chelsea Hotel, one time home to Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jack Kerouac and Dylan Thomas. As on their first CD, Shane O’Mara is the engineer, producer and mixer and he does a great job, achieving an even darker sound this time.
Drive-By Truckers
10/04/2008
With a loose, alt-country sound, these musicians from Muscle Shoals, Alabama and Athens, Georgia, have a keen and loving eye for the excesses of their own American South. The Drive-By Truckers’ new CD, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, is their best yet.
The band’s principal songwriters, Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, sing about the encroaching responsibilities of work and family (among other things) from the contrasting points of view of the hell-raiser and the protective dad. With 19 songs about widely varying subjects that usually include a battler struggling with a moral dimension, the album is a fascinating trip through the minds of creative Southerners who are aware of the paradoxical natures of their rich cultural heritage and second-nation status.
Shelby Lynne
25/03/2008
Alabama-born singer Shelby Lynne’s new CD, Just A Little Lovin’, is an album of covers of songs done by Dusty Springfield, but she replaces the originals’ huge string and horn-laden original productions with a small band that tastefully draws attention to Shelby’s perfectly measured vocals.
Shelby has always dumbfounded record companies by changing her focus for successive records - straight country to Memphis Soul to Western Swing to alt-country to rock - all good, with integrity, so it was no surprise when a record company man in a dark bar in Hollywood said that they didn’t know what to do with her last record. Towards the end of this frustrating evening, she remembered a conversation that she’d had with one of her admirers, Barry Manilow. Barry asked her whether she’d ever considered covering the Dusty Springfield songbook. According to Shelby, the record man almost dropped his drink, got all saucer eyed and said, ‘Well, I can see getting behind that.’ Next was choosing a producer - key to a project like this where it could end up sounding like another cover record sounding like it was made for all the wrong reasons, despite the fact that Dusty’s been an inspiration to Shelby. Phil Ramone was the man chosen and his stripped-back production, with only drums, bass, guitar and keyboards, makes this covers album truly original.
Sam Baker
17/03/2008
Sam Baker’s brush with death from a guerilla bombing in Peru in 1986 gave him a thankfulness to be alive and a desire to ‘do one great piece of art’ - his debut CD Mercy - which is now joined by the equally beautiful Pretty World.
After the bombing Sam had to relearn guitar upside-down and had great difficulty finding words for things. The latter difficulty influenced his songwriting in that he has to find words - they don’t just come - and when he sings them, it’s in short, truncated phrases that emphasise the individual words, which he’s painstakingly edited to tell his stories in song. Another thing that has transformed him from a self-described ordinary writer is his abiding thankfulness and wonder at being alive and his ability to appreciate the charm of ‘ordinary’ life in his fellow Texans. Continuing with the pedal steel and violin dominated sparse landscapes of his first CD, Pretty World looks compassionately at his fellow humans, gives thanks for the ordinary things of life, and in one song, revisits the day that changed his life.
Merle Haggard
27/02/2008
Merle Haggard has done excellent tribute albums to Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Wills and Lefty Frizell, but The Bluegrass Sessions is the first time Merle has recorded his rich voice and insightful songs with a Bluegrass band.
Not surprisingly it sounds great, with inspired playing from mandolinist Marty Stuart and dobro man Rob Ickes, and beautiful harmonising from Alison Krauss. Hag revisits some of his own classic songs bluegrass style and offers up some new ones that, as usual, show a new side to this still-evolving giant of a singer-songwriter.
Crooked Still
19/02/2008
Boston group Crooked Still continue to create their unique Bluegrass/Old-Timey sound driven by sawed and plucked double bass and cello on their second CD, Shaken by a Low Sound.
Rushad Eggleston is the cellist, Corey DiMario the bassist, Aoife O’Donovan adds the contrastingly light-toned vocals, and Gregory Liszt’s 4-fingered banjo work completes the group. It was produced by Lee Townsend and recorded in the San Francisco Bay area, with contributions from local musicians. And Rushad Eggleston, also known as ‘Sneegoblin’ (don't ask) makes his vocal debut.
Two-Faced Friday
15/02/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
The SteelDrivers
13/02/2008
When Chris Stapleton sings songs he wrote with Mike Henderson in his raw, soul-drenched voice with an all-acoustic, no-overdubbing group, it’s apparent that the SteelDriver’s self-titled debut CD has carved out a new direction in Bluegrass.
For Mike Henderson, the group brings together the two sides of his musical personality - the bluegrass mandolinist and the hard-rocking blues slide guitarist. Mike and Chris had been writing songs together for a while and Mike, in the mood to play some bluegrass, thought, ‘Here are some songs we could do.’ They recruited excellent fiddler/vocalist Tammy Rogers, banjo man Richard Bailey and bassist Mike Fleming, to put together a repertoire for a once a week gig in Nashville - but the chemistry indicated that they had the potential to do much more than that. They cut their CD in one big room, doing no overdubs, but simply starting a tune over if a mistake was made. It’s an album of strong original songs, great playing and the outside-the-mould, silk to sandpaper tones of Chris’ soulful vocals.
Ricky Scaggs and Bruce Hornsby (repeat of 8/8/07)
18/01/2008
On his CD collaboration with Ricky Skaggs, Bruce Hornsby retains his own musical identity while playing with Ricky and other leading bluegrass players and takes it somewhere else with his supple piano and the unusual songs he’s written.
There’s one called The Dreaded Spoon about a closet gourmand, and their version of a Rick James song about a groupie, Superfreak, is, well...surprising. The playing is great throughout and Ricky and Bruce harmonise well together. In the process of making the record, Ricky turned Bruce on to old timey musicians Roscoe Holcomb, Doc Boggs and Clarence Ashley, and Bruce turned Ricky on to Bud Powell, Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett.
Teddy Thompson (repeat of 22/8/07)
10/01/2008
Talented singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson’s new CD Upfront and Down Low is mostly an album of classic ’50s and ’60s country songs, made fresh by distinctive string arrangements and Teddy’s perfectly measured vocals.
In what started out as a fun little project rather than an album, Teddy concentrated on getting the maximum feeling and meaning out of the songs before worrying about making it sound like a ‘real’ country record. Robert Kirby, who is renowned for his work with Nick Drake, arranged most of the string parts, while Teddy’s dad, Richard Thompson, provides some guitar twang on three tracks. If you give it a chance, you’ll hear the beauty of a simple country song, thanks to Teddy’s sensitive and unique treatments. Despite being the son of British folk-rock legends, country music is what Teddy was brought up on, the music that’s closest to his heart and the music that speaks to him the most.
CD of the Week - Jeff Lang
05/01/2008
On Half Seas Over, Jeff Lang, accompanied only by his own guitars and Grant Cummerford's bass, channels the dark Appalachian and Celtic sounds and tales that Greil Marcus referred to as the 'Old, Weird America' on an outstanding set of original songs.
Jeff seems to be going from strength to strength - his voice and guitar work continue to evolve in a beautiful way and his songs, like dark short stories, go way beyond the 'Moon in June' school of songwriting. He ends the CD with a dark joke of a song set in Newman, WA, in which attempts to force a local to sing the Appalachian murder ballad 'Pretty Polly' result in the creation of a new murder ballad story.
