Entries associated with the tag "Country Music":

According to his current label, Yep Roc, the ultra-prolific Jim Lauderdale plans to release three stylistically disparate albums in nine months. Two are already out: last fall he issued a fine bluegrass outing called The Bluegrass Diaries and in February he released Honey Songs, which doesn't fall neatly into any category. (The third will be a collaboration with Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, their second effort together.) The dominant feel on Honey Songs is the cosmic vibe of chill 70s country, but Lauderdale's songs embrace and transcend just about every style of American music. Bluegrass, honky-tonk, soul, rock 'n' roll--they all collide and coexist with little fanfare.

Cut with a crack band that includes James Burton, Garry Talent, and Al Perkins (and backup vocals from Emmylou Harris, Kelly Hogan, Buddy Miller, and Patty Loveless), the new record is packed with Lauderdale's typically catchy melodies. The powerful tunefulness of his songs is what defines them, far more so than any genre signifiers he might happen to use, and Honey Songs includes some of his strongest. On a ballad like "It's Finally Sinking In," an otherwise roiling Crazy Horse grind contrasts with Lauderdale's dolorous melody (and Perkins's sublimely liquid pedal steel), which is so gorgeous it's easy to miss the pain.

Lauderdale's consistency might be his biggest enemy, since it makes it so easy to take him for granted. He doesn't make bad records, and aside from organizing albums around relatively benign themes like "bluegrass," he refuses to dabble in conceptual bullshit. He just puts his stuff out there. Ignore it, though, and it's your loss.

Lauderdale plays solo on a diverse roots-music bill dubbed "The American Beauty Project" Saturday night with Ollabelle, Larry Campbell, Catherine Russell, and Teresa Williams at Dominican University in River Forest.

Today's playlist:

Kay Adams, Wheels & Tears (Sundazed)
Rashim, Suns.Shadows (Mosz)
Dells, It's Not Unusual: The Very Best of the Vee Jay Years 1955-1965 (Charly)
Dead Meadow, Old Growth (Matador)
Jane, Berserker (Paw Tracks)

In the liner notes to her new 4-CD box set, Songbird (Rhino), Emmylou Harris is quoted as saying, “If there’s one thing you can take from all the music in this boxed set, it’s that it would only take one song, the excitement and the possibility of one song that I wanted to sing, to keep me going.” It’s only in the last decade or so that Harris has been writing a significant amount of music; like any country singer worth her salt, she’s made her name putting a distinctive spin on great tunes written by others, and her crystalline, delicate voice has made her work stand out for more than 30 years.

The first two discs of Songbird are mostly culled from studio albums, but the second half of the collection includes plenty of previously unreleased material, collaborative efforts, and a surprisingly large number of compilation appearances. In a testament to her love of a good song, there are pieces she contributed to tribute albums honoring Gram Parsons, Hank Williams, Webb Pierce, Woody Guthrie, Townes Van Zandt, Kate Wolf, and Tammy Wynette. Of course the thing Harris is most famous for is her gorgeous, ghostly harmony singing, a skill that first emerged though her early work with Parsons. She’s made several records with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt, and she turns up singing here with everyone from Johnny Cash to Willie Nelson to Beck to the Pretenders. I often think of one-off collaborations as arch exercises, but I have no doubt with Harris it’s almost always about the music and her joy in singing. Last year she released All the Roadrunning (Warner Brothers/Nonesuch), a full-length partnership with Mark Knopfler, a guy whose guitar skills are almost always undercut by bad production and uninspired songwriting, but this record was the first I actually enjoyed from him since the first Dire Straits album. He wrote or cowrote every song, and Harris brings a beautiful depth and melodic grace to all of them.

Songbird contains some terrific song-by-song commentary by Peter Cooper, and reading each of the blurbs provides a portrait of Harris almost as vivid as the songs themselves. The book is packed with photos and other ephemera, and there’s a DVD with music videos, live performance footage from WTTW’s Soundstage (from 1978), and interviews. The set is officially released on Tuesday, but since Harris is a doing a signing at Borders on Michigan on Sunday at 1 PM, you’ll be able to pick it up a bit early.

Harris performs Saturday evening at Ravinia.

Today’s playlist:

Giacinto Scelsi, the Orchestral Works 2 (Mode)
Liu Fang, Pipa Music From Chinese Folk Roots (Philmultic)
Baby Dodds, Talking and Drum Solos (Unheard Music Series/Atavistic)
Kevin Ayers, Whatevershebringswesing (Water)
Eddie Hazel, Game, Dames & Guitar Thangs (Collector’s Choice)

My earliest memory of western swing legend Bob Wills is from a record shop I worked at in the late 80s, where a couple of my coworkers responded to every one of the bandleader’s frequent interjections—“Well, all right,” “Aw, yeah,” “Yes,” “Yes, yes,” or “Uh huh”—with a resigned “shut up, Bob.” That response makes loads of sense after listening to Legends of Country Music, the terrific career-spanning box set that Columbia/Legacy released earlier this year. But while that particular aspect of Wills’s musical personality could be irritating, his repertoire, rhythmic sophistication, and killer band more than compensated.

While I prefer Milton Brown & His Musical Brownies—Brown was the original lead vocalist for Wills, but he was soon eclipsed by Tommy Duncan, who stuck with the band for decades—this is the body of work that most often represents the beauty and joy of western swing, one of the most crucial building blocks of honky-tonk. This four-disc, 105-song set includes all the hits--from “Steel Guitar Rag” to “New San Antonio Rose”—with plenty of hot playing from the great steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe. While Wills's sizeable oeuvre has been mercilessly excavated over the years, I had never before heard “Crippled Turkey,” a 1936 instrumental where his modal violin playing sounds like John Cale taking a stab at old-timey music . Some of the later material—from the 50s on—descends into pure hokum, but by then Wills had already cemented his importance.

Among Wills's many disciples was fellow Texan Waylon Jennings, who saluted him with “Bob Wills Is Still the King” in 1974. It’s one of 92 tracks on another Legacy box set, Waylon's own Nashville Rebel. Jennings will always be known as the progenitor of country music’s outlaw movement, and the collection features some classics from Honky Tonk Heroes, the 1973 album that announced his break with Nashville. But the first disc covers his early years, back when he didn’t have the cojones to flaut convention so brazenly. There’s a cut with Buddy Holly, who was the first to hire Jennings, and plenty more from the days before he grew out his hair and lambchop sideburns.

As a denizen of the 70s, Jennings cut his fair share of dreck, and it’s hard to know why someone thought it necessary to include his take on “MacArthur Park” here. Then again, his theme from “The Dukes of Hazzard” still sounds great. The 142-page booklet is crammed with amazing photos spanning his entire career, with everyone from Muhammad Ali to Metallica’s James Hetfield.