Red Dirt Skinners. Live At the Blue Lamp, Aberdeen.

Posted on by

Billed as an “official bootleg” and recorded in Aberdeen in July, Live At The Blue Lamp is a fine addition to the catalogue from the award winning married couple, Rob and Sarah Skinner, who have the distinction of being feted by both the blues and country fraternities. With Rob on guitar and drums and Sarah on sax and blues harp with both singing they inhabit a country blues world that in the UK started off with skiffle before being taken up by the beatnik community who all moved to Cornwall singing Josh White and Jesse Fuller songs. While Chicago heat was the primary fuel that fired the 60’s blues boom bands like McGuiness Flint and even Mungo Jerry kept the skifflish side alive. Live it seems the Skinners sit on this side of the fence with the sax adding a Dixieland touch to several of the songs. The album features songs from all of their three studio albums and while the “warts and all” one take capture means that the sound is slightly on the harsh side with the spoken introductions to the songs booming somewhat it does convey the sheer sense of fun and enjoyment that the band bring to their audiences almost as if this were a hootenanny.

They set up their stall on the opening Cornbread, Peas and Black Molasses which features the pair at their best, harmonising well while the song sashays with a Southern spiritual swing. Up All Night is more of a holler with a stomping beat while Girl In A Truck takes on the stereotypical chest beating bro country formula without the bombast with Rob declaring he doesn’t want a girl all dolled up, just a girl in a truck. There’s an odd detour next as they deliver a cover of Bowie’s Space Oddity, admittedly a very fine cover but at odds with the surrounding material. They also cover Dylan’s Forever Young which does fit into the canon but one gets the impression that these are primarily opportunities for Sarah to shine on the sax (she did win Instrumentalist of the Year at this year’s British Blues Awards) and it’s telling that both covers pale in comparison to the rest of the album.

Able to be tender on the likes of Lay Me Down they can also stoke the fires with a rousing Got My Mojo Working with Sarah channelling the last of the red hot mamas on breakneck sax and throaty vocals while Stuck is a sassy spurned lover rant. They close the album with the very fine countrified Browns Ferry Blues and the risqué romp of Hot Tamales which allows Sarah Skinner plenty of space to vamp on the sax.

website

Jason McNiff and The Lone Malones. God Knows Why We Dream. Tombola Records

Posted on by

Being a Yorkshire man of Irish and Polish descent is as good a reason as any for anyone to get into Americana and for Jason McNiff its produced results with his 2003 album, Nobody’s Son, voted Americana UK album of the year while April Cruel was nominated in the category of best alt-country album at the US Independent Music Awards in 2011. God Knows Why We Dream is his sixth release and his first with current band The Lone Malones who feature Polish fiddler and accordionist, Basia Bartz along with Neil Marsh of Ahab on drums and John Nicholls on bass and production duties.

McNiff sings with a whisper in his throat, a voice that has in the past occasioned comparisons to Dylan circa the Basement Tapes but here his light tenor comes across as more vulnerable, straining at times to keep up with the deft playing and arrangements. If one were to make a comparison to Dylan and The band it would be the spare but sprightly Planet Waves that you would reach for with McNiff’s lyrics the primary pointer as opposed to his singing.

The album opens with the wistful The Picture, Mcniff’s voice and guitar picking to the fore before the band weigh in and the song picks up some steam with Bartz’s fiddle adding a fine counterpoint to the gently swelling guitars. Throughout the album there’s a fine balance between country and folk with some hints of rock when the guitars break through especially on A Different Word which also features a haunting cornet played by Dan Kent. The scrabbled guitar flurries add a dark air to this plaintive love song while the coda features a solo that reaches to the heavens reflecting McNiff’s words “Looking at the stars tonight, there’s something strange, the billion and one stars, they don’t spell out her name, anymore” Brockdish wanders into Neil Young Stray Gators territory with its stumblebum guitars and prickly fiddle while Heart Of A Poet breezes along with gypsy fiddle and a galloping rhythm. While McNiff can do confessional such as his paean to L. Cohen on Thanks Leonard he’s able to offer the flowing Shy Truth and Before I Lose You, crammed full with rippling guitars and soaring fiddle that has a whiff of Mike Scott’s Waterboys about it (along with a sly reference to The Hobbit) . However the album’s crowning glory is the almost symphonic Game Over with Bartz’s fiddle swelling as McNiff takes to piano for a haunting ballad that has the pathos of Alex Chilton allied to the chilly dissections of mid seventies John Cale. A magnificent song.

website

Jingle Balls. Mr. Plow, Llewellyn & Kristin, Jim Byrne, The Lost Brothers Christmas music

Posted on by

Well it’s December so it’s safe to mention the C word. For the next four weeks it’s jingle all the way downhill as we get bombarded with “cute” adverts from mega million stores itching to squeeze more money from our pockets and have to endure endless loops of schmaltzy Xmas muzak in shops which are far too full of other people. Bah Humbug indeed. On the music side there’s a well-drilled and finely honed canon, chestnuts roasting and all that, fodder for the folk, the stuff of Christmas specials, funny pullovers and fake snow with some Slade thrown in for the “youngsters” which you can buy on any number of CDs with titles such as Now This Is Christmas Vol. 2014.

As always there’s another side to the coin and while for a time this Christmas underbelly was composed primarily of comic or smutty ditties, over the past few years there’s been a veritable outburst of reasonably fine Christmas songs. Along with this a wealth of blogs spring up around this time pointing folks in the direction of the darker side of the season with Blabber’n’Smoke’s favourite being Big Rock Candy Mountain who delve deep and bring up some astonishing items. Anyway, all of this is just a way of introducing some Christmas music that’s been sent in for review, so eggnog in hand (what on earth is eggnog?) here we go.

Mr. Plow weighs in with the grim noire of The Greatest Christmas Ever Seen that features some festive tropes, mentions of snow and percussion that is faintly reminiscent of sleigh bells, that identify its Christmas status but there’s no Ho Ho Ho here as he tells a tale of domestic violence, a woman battered as “the tills rang out their joyless greed.” Gabi Monk of The Good Intentions harmonises on vocals as the deadpan lyrics describe a Christmas of ambulances and hospital. It’s not going to be number one in the festive chart but all of the proceeds from sales are going to Refuge, a charity that supports victims of domestic violence. Available as a download there’s also a very fine and limited vinyl edition (with cool snow coloured vinyl) available from Pink Box Records that has an excellent wearied rendition of Away In A Manger on the flip side.

David Llewellyn & Ida Kristin offer up their reading of Christina Rossetti’s In The Bleak Midwinter, the song that has snuck Bert Jansch into many a home via numerous commercial Christmas compilations. Llewellyn & Kristin stay true to the familiar arrangement with its wintry air and old-fashioned Dickensian Christmas feel while they both sing well. The pair have their debut album, Songs Around The Kitchen Table out soon but in the meantime you can buy In The Bleak Midwinter here.

Glasgow songwriter, Jim Byrne download only For We Are Born To Doubt is a cracker (sorry) of a song as Byrne hymns the Cartesian way of life with some festive trappings such as a music box melody and heavenly choruses (provided by folk singers, the Linties). Towards the end Stuart Miller of The Linties speaks the chorus with a wonderfully couthy Scots tongue, reminiscent of Ivor Cutler that caps the song with a flourish. Expect to hear the likes of Iain Anderson and Tom Morton playing this in the next few weeks. For We Are Born To Doubt will be available from December 10th here

Finally (and capping a trip around the British Isles with England, Scotland, Wales and now Ireland all represented here) The Lost Brothers have Little Angel, another download only single which captures perfectly their wonderful Everly like harmonies on a song that is the most “Christmassy” one on offer here. It floats along like that flying snowman and evokes that simple sense of wonder and goodwill that films such as It’s A Wonderful Life manage. With brass flourishes building up towards the end it’s a song that will warm the cockles of your heart if you’re not a real curmudgeon. Little Angel is free to download but The Losties are asking folk if they can to donate to UNICEF via a link on the download

M. Lockwood Porter. 27.

Posted on by

Maybe it’s just a geographical coincidence or laziness on our part but when we listened to M. Lockwood Porter’s album 27 we were reminded almost immediately of Porter’s fellow Oklahoman, John Fullbright. Fullbright has blossomed into one of the best songwriters about these days with his arrangements and delivery recalling masters such as Randy Newman and Jimmy Webb while his songs hit the same nerve as the likes of Townes Van Zandt do. Porter lurks around the same territory with his songs tightly arranged, sprinkled with a touch of Americana (with pedal steel ornamenting several of the songs) but at his best he also recalls premier league songwriters with his song Secrets a meltingly wonderful confection that conjures up Brian Wilson’s vulnerability and wraps it in a Big Star production.
Big Star are revisited on the ode to Alex Chilton’s compadre, Chris Bell. Tributes to other writers, particularly dead ones can come across as mawkish or at worst, a tick box exercise but Porter manages to marry an excellent Neil Young type shuffle to an affectionate and worthy tribute to Bell that swells with emotion. It’s of note that the album title, 27, is Lockwood’s current age and also the age at which Bell and several other rockers died leading to the notion of the infamous 27 club.
Lockwood describes the album as “half break up, half quarter life crisis.” He looks back to his early years on the clamorous and percussive Mountains, describing his conversion to rock’n’roll almost as a religious experience. Different Kind Of Lonely harvests the sound of The Band on an organ kicked roustabout that sways and swaggers with a drunken joyousness while I Know You’re Gonna Leave Me celebrates rock music with a tremendous dynamic, part piano confessional, part soaring guitar, it recalls Wilco on their Being There album, superior pop rock which builds to an exciting climax. In addition there’s the mayhem of the Jim Steinman rockandrollrama of Restless that leaves the listener breathless and the more intimate There To Here that allows Lockwood to bare his soul for an instant. All in all a tremendous album.

website

Ten Gallon Bratz. Tales From The Long Shadows

Posted on by

Been a while since I heard from Ten Gallon Bratz, a band I reviewed for Americana UK back in 2006 but you can’t keep a good man (or band) down and Tales From The Long Shadows is a world away from their first tentative steps. Hailing from Greenock the Bratz are of a certain vintage that probably allows them to look back with some fondness to what passed for country rock back in the days before alt country kicked in. Their sound certainly reflects the likes of Poco, Guy Clark and the Eagles while there’s a Celtic tinge to some of their songs with Same Old Song seeming to come from time spent listening to The Waterboys.

A five piece band with three guitarists on board, they open the album with the guitar heavy stomp of Nothing Left To Say as the acoustics flail away and the electric guitar riffs in a Big Country style. It’s a big bold statement but in terms of the album somewhat misleading as what follows is more nuanced and dare I say, more interesting. Personally I’d prefer it at the end but there’s no doubt that it’s destined to be a crowd pleaser. The guitar crunching side of the band is revisited on the burnished bruise that is Fish Out Of Water, a shimmering groove that doffs its hat to Chris Issak and Jace Everett with its air of menace. For the remainder however the band allow their harmonies, allied to some fine picking, to showcase their talent and it’s here that that we find the heart of the band, one they offer live as testified some weeks ago when we saw them open for The Howling Brothers. While there’s a Ronnie Lane feel to the shuffling strut of Too Far Gone the band are at their best when they hunker down in their vision of American roots music. The addition of pedal steel by Iain Sloan (Wynntown Marshals) and fiddle (Alison McNeill, Reely Jiggered) fleshes out the sound on a slew of songs that drink deep from the Americana well. New King In Town has some very sweet and sorrowful Dobro and pedal steel flourishes as a relationship breaks down while All Fall Down swells musically despite the downbeat story. Brand New Old Fashioned Blues is a terrific tear stained lament with weeping pedal steel while Who’s Left To Save The Working Man delves into Steve Earle and Bruce Springsteen territory in their stripped down Woody Guthrie guises. Here the Bratz strive to celebrate and commiserate with the downtrodden and they succeed as they really nail it here.

website

The Rulers Of The Root/Kings Of Cheeze. Glad Cafe, Glasgow. Saturday 22nd November.

Posted on by

rulers 1

Trilogies are all the rage these days, a bit of a nasty hobbit I think but here’s Blabber’n’Smoke jumping on the three piece bandwagon with our third post on The Rulers Of The Root within the last fortnight. This flurry of activity was occasioned by the release of the band’s debut album, Porky Dreams which was given an official launch at the Southside’s Glad Cafe on Saturday. A packed venue saw the cafe’s staff running around looking for extra seating and a bit of a log jam at the bar, the only standing space available. Either the Rulers have a hell of a lot of family and friends or that the lure of picking up the album for a cut price one night only deal was too tempting an offer to refuse.

rulers 2

Fired up by the very enthusiastic crowd the band turned in a stellar set with the majority of the songs plucked from the album while others hinted at a fine follow up. Singer Patrick Gillies was on great form with his bagful of props put to good use as he careened through the rousing I’m Spartacus and bellowed mightily on the piratical Rose Of Jericho. With Mick Murphy and Chris Quinn anchoring the sound guitarist John Palmer slashed and burned throughout, his guitar razor sharp with some fantastic Wilco Johnson like fury on I’m Spartacus. Cat Fur was a highlight with its Beefheart growling while I’ll Be Your Doctor If You’ll Be My Nurse came across like some bawdy lovechild of Boris Pickett and Ian Dury. As befits a special gig some guests were invited up to join in the musical mayhem with Palmer’s wife, Fiona, playing ukulele on the slinky voodoo of Colon Man while their daughter, Lucy, added some haunting harmonies to the cowboy lope along of Charlie. Veteran Southside keyboard player, Alan French (AKA the Great White Shark according to Gillies), was also on hand to add his expertise to Charlie and the Bossa Nova groove of Sinaloa. Despite the oven like heat album favourites such as White On Rice, Maillot Jeune and Murdoch Browns were despatched with a degree of fury as the band all but melted on stage. The queue at the end of the show at the merch table was testament to the audience enjoyment.

If you weren’t there then you can get a hold of the album from The New Hellfire Club in The Hidden Lane and Love Music.

We should mention the opening act, Edinburgh’s Kings Of Cheeze, an act new to me. Semi acoustic, they put on an energetic set that veered from Lena Lovitsch like vocals from singer Trish Murry to a kind of mutated Ry Cooder meets Pere Ubu contortions with guitarist Dave Gray moaning and whistling as he jerked out some fine jazzy guitar runs. An infectious bunch they were jumping up and down in their seats as they played and are well worth further investigation.

Lowlands. Love ETC. Harbour Song Records

Posted on by

Over the past few years Blabber’n’Smoke has grown to expect great things from Lowlands. An Italian based band they’ve steadily built up a fine reputation with 2012’s Beyond an excellent Springsteen type album while main man Edward Abbiati delivered a tremendous collaboration with Chris Cacavas earlier this year on Me And The Devil. Love etc. finds Abbiati and the band in a more reflective mood as they ponder on those old perennials, love and loss, a mood influenced by Abbiati’s personal circumstances but, as has happened elsewhere, leading to a peak in the artistic process.

It seems that following on from some emotional knocks Abbiati wrote the title song, an attempt to dump the ballast and resurface and then built the album around this resurrecting songs he had written previously that fit into the theme of loss, bereavement and abandonment. Initially the album was acoustic but a live show with a horn section led to several of the songs being recorded in a single session with the band augmented by the horns. The end result is an album that recalls the loose limbed approach of The Basement Tapes as the band spin woozily throughout the songs with spiralling steel guitars, wheezy harmonica and parped trumpet and trombone fleshing out the sound. While some of the music portrays a sombre mood as on the cello clad You And I and the stripped down Can’t Face The Distance the majority of the album is like an exorcism of bad times as the songs sway and swing with abandonment and the horns are used to flesh out regret or joy.

The opening song, How Many, sets the scene perfectly as the band, curled lap steel and all are enveloped by the horn section who evoke an old fashioned and faded grandeur. This is intensified in the following title song as the horns sound like the Salvation Army and Abbiati swings like a New York troubadour in the seventies with wisps of Tom Waits and even Billy Joel sneaking in. I Wanna Be continues in this vein with Abbiati singing “I walk the streets at night/Try to find me a little light/I learn me a Dylan tune/Then I howl it to the moon.” As he sings this a clarinet homes in recalling Gershwin’s NY threnody creating a bit of a chill. You, Me, The Sky & The Sun uses the horns to create a devil may care attitude, a woozy stagger that is revisited on Happy Anniversary. The happy go lucky country jaunt of Wave Me Goodbye and the joyous trot that is My Baby lift the mood of the album suggesting that despite the clouds there’s some sunshine in Abbiati’s mind.

Overall Love etc. isn’t a gloomy album. There are moments that soar and tear at the emotions but at times there’s a tremendous ramshackle buoyancy about it, no more so than on the excellent Doing Time which sashays along with a winning swagger. There’s even a hint of the late sixties Dylan honey voice on Still I Wonder while the tender Goodbye, Goodnight , with only guitar, voice and accordion serves as an excellent sign off. Almost a lullaby in style it says goodbye to the past with some affection. Above all, it’s a warm, enveloping comfort blanket of an album, one to be savoured. And in case the above is somewhat long winded Chris Cacavas pretty much sums it up on Lowland’s website where he says “This album is fucking good. The best Lowlands yet?”

Website

The Rulers Of The Root. Porky Dreams

Posted on by

The Rulers Of the Root are a four man band with deep roots in music and sound. Two of the band have a fine pedigree in the local music scene stretching back to the eighties and three of them work as sound engineers offering others the benefit of their ears and expertise. Fate, work and family tossed them together on the same shore some years ago and it transpired that one of them was an aspiring wordsmith while another was itching to get back to the front line. And so it was that The Rulers Of The Root came about as singer and lyricist Patrick Gillies shared his jottings with workmate, John Palmer. Palmer, a guitarist of note, saw some promise in Gillies’ offbeat thoughts and together they set about setting them to music. Another co-worker, Chris Quinn was recruited for his sonic expertise and drumming skills while Palmer reached out to an old bass playing pal resulting in the laid back Mick Murphy squaring the circle as it were.

All of this was a few years ago and it’s only now that the band unveil their debut album, Porky Dreams. Three years in gestation, nurtured and formed in their womb like HQ, Porky Dreams more than delivers on the promise that those fortunate enough to have seen the band live in their rare forays out have glimpsed. It’s not as raucous as their live set, the clowning and costumes are absent but at the root of it all Porky Dreams is a fine, absurdist document, couched in a weird west of Scotland vision of Americana. At times it’s almost as if that cartoon character, Lobey Dosser, had sprung to life and played at Govan’s version of the Opry especially on the Hazlewood drawl of Millport Cowboy and the parched slide guitar infused Neilston Blues.
There’s a wider canvas however throughout the album as the band canter through a variety of styles with Gillies’ rough hewn vocals and lyrics that draw from writers such as Conrad and Joyce as much as they do from the likes of Captain Beefheart, Ian Dury and Tom Waits drawing it all together. Whether he’s delivering a devastating portrait of a sailor’s life on Rose Of Jericho or launching into the Beefheart like flood of words, each one savoured for its sound as well as its meaning on Cat Fur, he commands attention. On paper “Rough skag a dull dick/ Saints bones, their tongues flick/ back street, a finger poke/ I’m not Rococco, I’m only Baroque” might make sense to some, on record it’s just brilliant.

While there are numerous references to local locales (the sailor in Rose Of Jericho drinks in the Scotia Bar before ambling down to the Broomielaw) the band steer clear of any kailyard romanticism and like a seaman they visit various ports with Tom Waits’ like bucket blues on Colon Man, Tropicana on Sinaloa, jazz noir on the Rupert baiting Murdoch Browns, Blockheads’ funk and thrust on I’m Spartacus, Dr. John voodoo on La Rue and dank and dark wailings on Elephant In The Room, a song Palmer says was influenced by Kevin Ayers’ cavernous Song From The Bottom Of A Well. It all coalesces in the title song which belts along with Palmer’s murderous slide guitar and a killer beat as Gillies prowls and growls. Like the Captain and the Gun Club thrown into a blender and cut to pieces it swings with a vengeance.

The band launch Porky Dreams at Glasgow’s Glad Cafe on Saturday 22nd Novenber.

Rulers Of The Root Facebook

Video can’t be shared here but click on it to see the hoodoo voodoo who do crew.

The Rulers Of The Root – Maillot Jaune from Clyde Jones on Vimeo.

Dan Michaelson And The Coastguards. Distance. The state51 Conspiracy

Posted on by

Shamefully this album has been glowering at me for three months, patiently waiting its turn in the queue. Shameful as when I refreshed my memory of the last Dan Michaelson album I heard it truly was one of the better albums of 2013 and the follow up, Distance, has a fair claim to be in the best of lists for this year. It’s similar to its predecessor (Blindspot) but there’s a slight shift in the music, in the main a muted low key Americana sound which just about tops the slurried wash of Blindspot. This reinforces the similarities to Bill Callahan that were evident on the last album but the band that this brings most to mind are Lambchop as the songs slowly unroll with brushed percussion and weeping pedal steel.

The singular point, evident from the start is Michaelson’s extraordinary voice. It permeates the room with its gravity, almost as if he’s next to your ear. Deep but fragile, ready to break down as it dredges emotions from the depths. And it’s the depths of despair that form the lyrics as Michaelson for the most part stands bereft and forsaken as the songs weep. Aside from Burning Hearts which breaks into a trot (although lyrically it’s still pretty dismal) the pace is slow allowing Michaelson plenty of space to wallow magnificently. There’s an elegant gloom to the album from the muted horns on the opening song Evergreen to the glacial piano that leads on the closing song Somewhere before the song glides into an instrumental section that evokes a wintry feel. One for the Christmas stocking surely.

website

Front Country. Sake Of The Sound.

Posted on by

It’s interesting to see and hear bluegrass evolving. Back when the Grand Old Opry ruled it was a mortal sin to have drums included and when the longhairs (in the shape of The Byrds) invaded all hell broke loose. By the seventies The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and The Grateful Dead were flying high with that lonesome sound while players like David Grisman and Peter Rowan were updating the genre. Bluegrass has been at times newgrass and elements of jazz and jam bands have been thrown into the mix but at it’s core it’s always been a bulwark or touchstone for those who see Nashville going through its periodical makeovers be it The Nashville Sound, the big hat arena rock style or the current bro movement. Despite the early straightjacket imposed by the Opry Bluegrass has proved flexible enough to adapt and adopt new styles and while there are numerous excellent examples of straight ahead old time bluegrass bands composed of youngsters there’s a sense that there’s a new wave of, and pardon the use of, “progressive” players working in the idiom with bands like Fish & Bird and Run Boy Run recent examples.

The above is really just a long winded way of introducing California’s Bay Area band, Front Country, who do use the terms progressive and chambergrass to describe their music. There’s no doubt that as a band they are extremely skilled and there are moments on their debut album, Sake Of The Sound, that are pure bluegrass in the true sense with Glacier Song being the best example. However there are moments when the instruments veer off almost like jazz or rock solos while a song such as Colorado uses the stringed instruments to create a powerful throbbing undercurrent before breaking out into traditional form on the middle eight. On the opening song, Gospel Train, they manage to conjure up a powerful spiritual blues that harks to both the delta and the electric violin stylings of Sugarcane Harris when he was with Zappa.

A six-piece band, Front Country are fronted by the immensely talented Melody Walker who along with guitarist Jacob Groopman (who’s also in the band) released the magnificent We Made It Home album last year. Walker and Groopman provide the vocals as well as guitars while Adam Roszkiewicz on mandolin, Jordan Klein, banjo and vocals, Leif Karlstrom, violin and Zach Sharpe, bass fill the line up. With original songs and some choice covers including a gutsy rendition of Utah Phillips’ Rock Salt & Nails the album might not be to the taste of traditionalists but a listen to the title song which manages to combine the pop sensibility of Fleetwood Mac while retaining a woody, organic feel should convince anyone looking for a sense of adventure in string band land.

website