Billie Reneé - Songs From The Heart

Perhaps the surest sign that bluegrass has grown to a mature musical form is the fact that it has now segmented itself into a number of subsets. Each has its own dedicated following, with artists catering to the style, labels that record and promote the music, agencies that specialize in promoting it, and festivals committed to preserving it.
There is the traditional sound, what used to just be called bluegrass, the more progressive style where performers use the common instruments associated with Bill Monroe to play music that bears little resemblance to his Blue Grass Boys, and looser configurations that merge folk, swing, and grassy approaches to original music. There are the jam grass bands that take after The Grateful Dead, and the retro grass outfits that take us back to the 1950s. There are even bands intent on recreating the music of the big ’80s rock groups, with acoustic instruments.
That all this is viewed generically as “bluegrass” serves our music well in the main, though it can lead to confusion among some consumers. And like all factions, each surely feels that their is the “true bluegrass,” the one that will win out in the end.
Perhaps the largest component these days is what might be called contemporary bluegrass, given to tightly-crafted songs, more sophisticated arrangements, and high-level instrumentalists, delivered by skilled vocalists. It retains most of the elements that defined the earliest examples of the music, and has begun to absorb what a few years ago was known as acoustic country. And the further that pop country moves away from its traditions, the bigger the door for bluegrass to incorporate that sound.
This is where an artist like Billie Reneé Johnson shines, in this contemporary bluegrass realm, and where she is likely to find a great many fans thanks to her new Songs From The Heart album from Truegrass Entertainment. It shows her to be a fine bluegrass singer, with a very attractive voice, and the power and range to sing this music with the aggressive edge that has become its hallmark.

Folk Music in America

“Folk Music in America” is a series of 15 LP records published by the Library of Congress between 1976 and 1978 to celebrate the bicentennial of the American Revolution. It was curated by librarian/collector-cum-discographer Richard K. Spottswood, and funded by a grant by the National Endowment for the Arts.
The music, pulled primarily from the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song (now Archive of Folk Culture), spans nearly a century (1890-1976) and virtually every form that can be considered American music. This includes native American songs and instrumental music, music of immigrant cultures from all over the world, and uniquely American forms like blues, jazz and country.

Download “Folk Music in America” (1.1GB) (Individual links below)

At 15 LP records (252 songs, 12 hours), the series stretches what can be considered a single publication, but represents a somewhat comprehensive survey of American folk music of the 20th century. The booklets (included here in PDF form) transcribe lyrics, share images and tell short stories about sources and symbols helpful in understanding the material. Each disc is organized along a theme, which follow. Click the links below to download the “discs” individually, or the image above to download the whole anthology. If you absolutely have to choose, I’m partial to volumes 1, 6 and 14.

1. Religious Music – Congregational and Ceremonial
2. Songs of Love, Courtship, and Marriage
3. Dance Music – Breakdowns and Waltzes
4. Dance Music – Reels, Polkas, Etc.
5. Dance Music – Ragtime, Jazz, Etc.
6. Songs of Migration and Immigration
7. Songs of Complaint and Protest
8. Songs of Labor and Livelihood
9. Songs of Death and Tragedy
10. Songs of War and History
11. Songs of Humor and Hilarity
12. Songs of Local History and Events
13. Songs of Childhood
14. Solo and Display Music
15. Religious Music – Solo and Performance

http://www.generationbass.com/2013/08/19/folk-music-in-america-download-252-songs-covering-nearly-a-century-of-music/ 

Pierce Edens' Gritty Appalachian Roots

Pierce Edens’ new release, Stripped Down Gussied Up, is both haunting and fiery; a concoction of psychedelic-grunge-roots, with Eden’s raw, tortured country bray at the helm. Pierce Edens Stripped Down Gussied Up June 2, 2017 Life is the intersection of empty and full, dark and light. This relationship, inherent in all things, is the underpinning of Pierce Edens’ new release, Stripped Down Gussied Up dropping June 2nd.  Over the last ten years, Edens has been drawing on his roots in Appalachian songwriting and blending them with the gritty rock and roll sounds that captivated him in his teenage years. Here again, Edens pulls together light and dark— Stripped Down Gussied Up is both haunting and fiery; a concoction of psychedelic-grunge, with Eden’s raw, tortured country bray at the helm.     His fifth fully independent album, Edens has taken his singular voice back home to Western North Carolina. Edens recorded Stripped Down Gussied Up in his childhood home, which he stripped and renovated into a studio a few years back. Even the environment, thus, is an incarnation of the album’s crux. Edens said, “Recording often feels paradoxical; like taking a song and distilling it down, then building it back up from the bare bones.  It's like pulling your skin off your back and then putting a nice shirt on, maybe a coat too. This is me doing that. Stripping down, gussying up.”

Cary Morin – Cradle to the Grave

Acoustic, country blues is one of the purest forms of Americana music.  It also may be the most difficult to master.  To capture the sound and spirit of a Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt or Lightnin’ Hopkins takes tremendous musicianship and a feel for the music that few artists possess.
But Cary Morin, a Crow tribal member who grew up far from the Mississippi Delta in Montana, has tapped directly into the roots of country blues. With his impeccable finger picking and occasional steel guitar playing and crusty, expressive vocals and song writing, Morin has developed a style that stands apart as true “Native Americana.”  Morin’s deft blues picking and raw singing are reminiscent of Corey Harris’s early recordings.
Morin has performed professionally since forming his first band, The Atoll, in 1989 and later as a part of the Pura Fe Trio.  In the last several years, Morin’s solo career has progressed as he won the Colorado Blues Challenge Solo Championship in 2013 and 2014.
Morin’s Cradle to the Grave is his fourth solo album, following Streamline, Tiny Town and Together.  The album is entirely acoustic, and all songs were written by Morin except for eclectic covers of tunes by Willie Brown (“Mississippi Blues”), Prince (“Nothing Compares 2 U”) and Phish (“Back on the Train”).  Blues-based tunes like the title track, “Lay Baby Lay” and “Watch Over Me” form the cornerstone of the album.  Check out “Laid Back” below.
But Cradle to the Grave isn’t entirely blues.  Morin’s heartfelt “Dawn’s Early Light,” written to support the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and “Trust” are compelling folk songs, and Morin’s picking on “Mishawaka” is spellbinding.  Morin is a unique talent, and this album is a pleasure.

Stuart Wyrick - East Tennessee Sunrise

Wyrick has played banjo with a number of bluegrass groups including the Dale Ann Bradley Band and Brand New Strings and is now a member of Flashback. His new solo release features top–name bluegrass musicians and a host of excellent singers.
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No one sings “Walking the Floor Over You” like its composer, Ernest Tubb. Originally recorded with just Tubb and Fay “Smitty” Smith on electric guitar, he re–recorded it with the Troubadors. Fiddler Bobby Atcheson doesn’t get air time in this version of Tubb’s many renditions but Tim Crouch shares the kickoff on Wyrick’s version with Keith Garrett singing lead and Kenny Smith covering Billy Byrd’s spot on lead guitar.

Gillian Welch - Boots No. 1

“If any of y’all wanna give me shit about my twang, you can just do it,” Gillian Welch once told a chatty San Francisco crowd in 1994. It was two years before Welch would release her debut Revival, but the California-bred daughter of two entertainers was already anticipating the skepticism that would greet her when she rose to prominence in the mid-to-late ’90s singing about destitute coal miners and Depression-era whiskey runners with an unsettling familiarity for someone born in New York City, raised in Los Angeles, and who found their lifetime musical partner at a conservatory in Boston. 

In 1994, Welch’s repertoire consisted largely of a number of songs that would never find their way onto a record, a handful of traditional tunes, and some John Prine covers. For an artist with an aesthetic as carefully and consistently rendered as Gillian Welch, it’s strange to think of a time when she wasn’t producing or reproducing that aesthetic, but was, rather, searching for it herself.

That sense of fresh discovery and wide-eyed experimentation can be heard plainly on Boots No. 1, Welch’s first archival release that serves as a 20th anniversary expanded release for her debut LP.  The two-disc collection is comprised of outtakes, demos, and alternate takes culled from the Revival sessions, a time when Welch and guitarist Dave Rawlings were first honing in on their precise sound, mood, and style. 

...

All of which goes to show that the authenticity scare that surrounded Welch upon her arrival feels, twenty years later, almost unrecognizably dated. Perhaps it’s because Welch herself, who would go on to play an integral role in Americana’s big-bang O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack just a few years later, has since become the very aesthetic and artistic paradigm for 21st-century roots singer-songwriters. Or, perhaps, it’s because the anxieties about Welch’s authentic credentials were so misguided in the first place.

Michael Chapman - 50

In the press release that accompanies Michael Chapman's 2017 album 50, the iconic British guitarist refers to it as his "American album." While the material does sound less idiosyncratically British than much of Chapman's body of work, 50 could be more accurately described as his indie rock album. He's best known as a master of the acoustic guitar, but on these sessions, the dominant instrument is the electric guitar of Steve Gunn, who also produced the sessions. Gunn assembled a band of like-minded musicians whose passions encompass indie rock, experimental rock, and the more abstract corner of Americana, and while Chapman's impassioned vocals ride over the top and his acoustic guitar is audible in the mix, the band doesn't bow to Chapman so much as encourage him to keep up with them. It's significant that six of the ten songs on 50 are numbers Chapman has recorded before, and while the new interpretations are bold and often muscular, these new takes recast the music in a more aggressive and less folkie manner than one might expect from him. If the spotlight seems less tightly focused on Chapman on this album, he certainly sounds engaged with the music, and his vocals on numbers like "The Mallard," "Memphis in Winter," and "Money Trouble" are strong and defiant, bringing his stories of lives along the margins to vivid life. And even though Gunn and his cohorts threaten to steal the show with their folkie but clamorous brand of indie rock, the heartfelt racket summoned by Nathan Bowles, James Elkington, and Jimy Seitang fits Chapman's music better than one might expect. (Besides, venerable U.K. folk singer and songwriter Bridget St. John is on hand to keep Chapman company and contribute vocals.) Chapman is an artist who has never had a problem with upending creative expectations, and if 50 isn't the sort of music many of his longtime fans would expect from him, it's also passionate, literate, and the work of an artist who wants to make the most of his late-era career. Not many artists sound this determined and engaged, especially at the age of 75.

The Revelers - Play the Swamp Pop Classics Vol. 2

Louisiana has many rich musical traditions, including Cajun and Zydeco. Another variation, swamp pop, is popular among locals but hasn’t reached the same level of mainstream success as its more popular musical cousins. Southwest Louisiana outfit the Revelers is hoping to spread the swamp pop gospel with a series of EPs, the most recent of which being Swamp Pop Volume 2.
Of the project, the band says:

“For our second Swamp Pop collection, we’re once again paying homage to our heroes from southwest Louisiana by carrying the swamp pop torch and preaching its merits to all who have ears. Outside of Louisiana, swamp pop hasn’t gotten the recognition that Cajun or Zydeco music might receive, but within our region, it’s still featured on radio and continues to bring listeners and dancers out to the clubs where it is performed live. Our goal with this EP is to continue to spread the unique music and culture that we are so proud of.”

Howdy Forrester and John Hartford - Home Made Sugar and a Punched Floor

In Their Words: "Brand new release of a set of home recordings made by John Hartford and fiddling legend Howdy Forrester. This recording preserves a repertoire of many rare, old Hickman County, Tennessee, tunes that Howdy had learned as a boy from his Great Uncle, Bob Cates. Hartford plays banjo, Forrester fiddles, and the two share informal discussion about the tunes and their sources."

Chuck Johnson – Blood Moon Boulder

Chuck Johnson’s impact on the contemporary guitar world continues to be felt. His first two solo records signaled the arrival of a unique player, steeped in various forms of playing and influence, yet distinctly modern. Johnson eschews a weathered traditionalism for the wide-scope expanse of 21st Century Americana.

On his third album, Blood Moon Boulder, Johnson reaches a compositional peak in a nod to the picturesque naturalism of the American landscape. The dynamics of his range can be felt on this singular record, a soundtrack-like listen that rewards the ear with rich detail.

The Weeping Willows – Before Darkness Comes A Callin’

Melbourne alt-country and folk duo The Weeping Willows recorded this, their second album, in Los Angeles and though that city isn’t renowned for its roots scene as much as say, Nashville, they’ve captured an impressive, lived-in, warm and lush sound. 

Their authenticity and craft as singers, as songwriters and in Andrew Wrigglesworth's sublime guitar playing makes this a hypnotic and alluring album. They've taken a detour down some darker and moodier paths this time and it works exceedingly well. Dark folk, blues and country musings on nature, death and doomed romance suit them well and puts Wrigglesworth and Laura Coates right up there with the finest Americana music you'll hear this year. 

 

Adam Young - Elementary Carnival Blues

 Adam Young celebrates the release of his debut solo record, Elementary Carnival Blues – an album that has seen the musician dive into some stellar alternative country sounds and work with some incredibly talented types along the way. While his work with seminal bands in Daisygrinders and Big Heavy Stuff perhaps would indicate a a similar rockier sound would follow on his new album, Young acknowledges his own musical roots on Elementary Carnival Blues and brings to us a record that is gorgeously authentic and rich in promise.

Ian Fitzgerald - You Won’t Even Know I’m Gone

Ian Fitzgerald, about to release his fifth album, is as prolific as he is little known. He has been making music for more than 10 years and has kept evolving his style along the way. Fitzgerald is a folk musician, but his style dabbles in country, rock and even the blues. His latest album, “You Won’t Even Know I’m Gone,” seems to be the culmination of those years of experience.
All 10 songs on the album are masterfully written, played and produced. The album is a pleasure to listen to and its songs are best described as toe-tapping. They have so many levels of sound, beginning with Fitzgerald’s drawling voice and moves on to the guitar and the fiddle...

Officialdom Rules.

Ags Connolly - Nothin' Unexpected

Ags Conolly isn’t going to fool anybody. In a discipline of music where authenticity is everything, especially in the traditional realm, the English born, raised, and currently-residing songwriter already starts with marks against his ability to articulate or even accurately interpret an artform that is distinct to the American South and West, and born from rural landscapes, wide open spaces, and a life experience the British Isles just can’t re-create, however close certain English locales may come in certain instances.
But the good news for Ags Connolly is he doesn’t try. He understands this fundamental limitation more than anybody. And that is the key to his music. Nothin’ Unexpected is traditional country, meaning you’ll hear fiddle and steel guitar, and many other indicators that your brain will immediately recognize as the familiar modes of country’s original and authentic sound. But it’s all done in a voice and perspective authentic to Ags himself instead of trying to stretch the truth, or do his best impression. And through this, he’s able to be both country, and authentic, despite his place of origin...

Rev. Sekou's debut solo album, featuring the North Mississippi Allstars, is out everywhere!!!!

Rev. Sekou heads out on tour with the North Mississippi Allstars next week, announces UK dates and Paste Live today!

 

 

As Rev. Sekou's album drops this weekend we're also announcing that he'll be heading over to the UK with the North Mississippi Allstars for a handful of dates at the end of June. Exclaim! gave Rev. Sekou's debut solo album a 9/10, ending it by saying "Rev. Sekou, thank you for taking us back to church. Your hope and healing has long been necessary." Mother Church Pew has called it "one of the most important and relevant albums...of 2017". Sekou did an in-studio on WNYC earlier this week, which will be live soon, he's doing a Paste Live session today, taping World Cafe next week and you can hear this interview from yesterday on Sputnik Radio's By Any Means Necessary with Eugene Puryear where he and Sekou discuss the new album, the importance of music in movement work, and what exactly neo-liberalism is.
His first single, a call to action that begins with an excerpt of a speech Sekou did while on the ground teaching non-violent resistance tactics in Ferguson, "Resist", premiered on Noisey with Sekou's reimagining of Bob Marley's "Burnin' and Lootin'" coming up on Afropunk, No Depression put out the last single, "Loving You Is Killing Me", Oxford American and Colorlines featured the full album stream.

To make his debut album, In Times Like These, noted activist, author, documentary filmmaker and theologian Rev. Osagyefo Sekou went back to his Southern home searching for his family’s musical roots in the deep Arkansas blues and gospel traditions. Produced by six-time Grammy nominated Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars, featuring Luther’s brother Cody Dickinson, and supported by Thirty Tigers, Rev. Sekou’s debut solo album is a new vision for what Southern blues and rock can mean today. In Times Like These is drenched with the sweat and tears of the Mississippi River, the great tributary that ties so much of the South together. The album’s sonic landscape captures the toil of Southern field hands, the guttural cry of chain gangs, the vibrancy of contemporary street protest, backwoods juke joints, and shotgun churches—all saturated with Pentecostal sacred steel and soul legacy.   In Times Like These’s opening song, “Resist,” opens with a rousing speech given by Rev. Sekou at a rally in Ferguson, Missouri, protesting the shooting of Michael Brown. Upon hearing about Brown’s death, Sekou immediately returned to his hometown of St. Louis, MO, taking to the streets in a series of protests and interfaith demonstrations that led to his being arrested multiple times. “Resist” surrounds the listener with the spirit of protest.   The images of Ferguson’s protests are burned into Sekou’s mind even today, and led to his moving cover of Bob Marley’s classic, “Burnin’ and Lootin’,” which captures the feeling of the riots. “In Times Like These”—the album’s title track—confronts the sense of helplessness that many feel in this current political moment.  Carried by congas and explosive steel guitar, the song moves around the central line “In times like this, ain’t no one going to save us, we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

Tour with North Mississippi Allstars
5/10 Philadelphia, PA -World Cafe Live
5/11 New York, New York - Bowery Ballroom
5/12 Boston, MA - The Sinclair
5/13 Pawling, NY - Daryl House Club
5/16 Toronto, ON - Mod Club
5/17 Detroit, MI - El Club
5/18 Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall
5/19 Nashville, TN - Third Man Records
5/20 Atlanta, GA - Variety Playhouse
6/1-3 Austin, TX - Antones
6/4 San Antonio, TX - Sam's Burger Joint
6/6 Houston, TX - The Heights Theatre
6/7 Dallas, TX - Kessler Theater
6/9 Santa Fe, NM - The Bridge @ Santa Fe Brewing
6/13 Salana Beach, CA - Belly Up
6/15 Los Angeles, CA - The Roxy Theatre
6/16 San Francisco, CA - The Independent
6/17 San Francisco, CA - Slim's
UK Tour Dates
June 25 @ Oran Mor Glasgow, United Kingdom
June 27 @ Komedia Brighton, United Kingdom
June 28 @ Dingwalls London, United Kingdom
June 29 @ The Ruby Lounge Manchester, United Kingdom

NPR premiere the feminist anthem and title track off Rachel Baiman’s new record, “Shame”

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Wyckham Porteous weekend special

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Battle of Broken Hill – Handsome Young Strangers

It’s an absolute pleasure to pretty much see out 2016 at pretty much where we came in, raving about Australian celtic-punk bands! It’s been another outstanding year for the Aussies with both The Rumjacks and The Go-Set continuing to tour like crazy all over the world leaving nothing but good wishes and lot’s of new fans in their wake. Well hopefully we can soon add Handsome Young Strangers to that list as it would be
criminalplain wrong to not tour this, especially in London! Now Handsome Young Strangers are not a new band they actually formed way back in 2004 as a sort of loose collective and it wasn’t until 2007 they recorded for the first time, the Shane Warne EP in honour of the hard drinking and hard living Aussie cricketer. This was followed by another EP, Melbourne Town, in 2009 and in 2011 their debut album Here’s The Thunder Lads! hit the streets and the following year another EP, Thunderbolt, was their last release till now. They could quite rightly consider themselves some sort of super group given the amount of talent in their ranks including past and present members of, among others: Sydney City Trash, The Rumjacks, Roaring Jack and The Bottlers....

The Mavericks

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The Reasonant Rogues video

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Thorbjørn Risager - Change My Game

Despite the title, Thorbjørn Risager -- supported by his band the Black Tornado -- doesn't change his game on this 2017 album. He remains faithful to Southern soul and Chicago blues. Playing the songs with conviction if not invention, Risager revels in convention: as fun as the soft rock detour "Hard Time" is, he's best when he's following a familiar path, sinking into simmering soul and R&B. Sometimes the tempo kicks up -- "Hold My Lover Tight" is propulsive, as is "Maybe It's Alright" -- but Change My Game usually keeps things low-key and that's its appeal: never showy, the album is steeped in tradition but prefers to keep things lively and fun.

Lindsay Straw and the legacy of fierce women in balladry

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Bill Hunt – Upwey

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Dead Man Winter - Furnace

I don’t blame Dave Simonett for wanting to take some time away from what has been his main gig for 15 years as the frontman of the bluegrass-esque Trampled By Turtles. As stellar of a collective of musicians as Trampled By Turtles is, at some point the experience of a string band is going to feel limiting to someone who beyond all their other musical faculties is a songwriter first.
We saw this with Jason Isbell when he left the riff happy Drive-By Truckers, and with the respective members of the .357 String Band when they split up. We’re living in the era of the song, and no matter how good of a musician you are, or how well you can sing, what separates you from the pack is your ability to tell a story that touches the audience, and all other concerns waterfall beneath that.
Dave Simonett and friends have put together a remarkable effort here under the name Dead Man Winter, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit timid in approaching this project. Though Trampled By Turtles may be known by many for their breakneck compositions, the true fans of the band know them best for heartbreaking, slow ballads that will make even the most steeled of disposition steamy-eyed.
Furnace is about Simonett’s divorce, and more about Simonett’s divorce. And what is interesting is how he resists the temptation of doing anything other than blaming himself. For an album with such a singular theme inspired by a breakup, there is no true bitterness or vitriol that gets communicated, or if it is, it’s too subtle for the anger to be palpable in these songs. The music is rock or folk rock, maybe alt-country at most, maybe even pop rock at times, but the power of the songwriting and the sensible but still intelligent arrangements keep you engaged. It’s almost shocking when Dave Simonett let’s fly a swear word, which he does numerous times (usually towards himself), when the songs sound so upbeat. About the only concern is by the end of the album, it sounds like the same kernel of a melody was used on multiple songs to an attentive ear.