Hillfolk Noir Skinny Mammy’s Revenge

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Tradition has always been important in Americana music whether it be listening to primitive recordings from the early 20th Century, still vital all these years later or reclaiming and updating the past. Think of The Band who opened up a wide American vista for the Woodstock generation or The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s seminal “Will The Circle be Unbroken” which introduced a host of country pioneers to a new audience. This drive to celebrate the past and indeed to achieve a degree of authenticity continues to this day with several fine artists we’ve reviewed here digging deep into the backwaters of American traditional music and bringing it bang up to date.
Hillfolk Noir, a four piece band from Boise, Idaho are a particularly fine example of how to go about this. With a string band set up they’ve sat around one microphone in an old street market to record this album. The 20 songs are all written by guitarist and main man Travis ward but the majority of them are updates on classic songs, tunes and themes that anyone familiar with the genre will recognise.
There’s no spit and polish here. The songs tumble out unadorned, raw and at times rowdy although the album takes some to warm up. The opening slide driven blues of Red Eyed Crow sounds somewhat weedy, a bit like a skiffle band warming up while the following Dying Bed Blues stumbles somewhat. Blessed be then the opening chords of Run Mollie Run where they suddenly seem to be much more self assured, from here on in the remainder of the album is a delight. Washboard Blues channels Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee while Do It Again vamps splendidly with musical saw adding another dimension. With ragtime picking and call and response songs the album as a whole is a bit like listening to a Smithsonian Institute archive. The highlight is The Love I Thought I’d Never Know, a ballad of unrequited love that fails to surmount class barriers.
Hillfolk Noir manage to capture the essence of American music in spades. They also have one of the best press quotes We’ve seen in a long time, namely “Much better than the crap on the radio”(Amy Garrett, Boise Weekly)which just about sums up this review. Skinny Mammy’s Revenge is one part of two releases, both “on-location field recordings, ” the other being “Live at the Old Idaho Penitentiary” with the band performing live in an old prison block at the historical Old Idaho Penitentiary and an album I’m off to search out.

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Somefolk

Trailer Star “Black River”

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As the world goes wonky with financial instability and summer temperatures in October (apart from Scotland where the heavens opened) Blabber’n’Smoke hunkered down in the bunker and set to listening to an album that’s been sitting on the hard drive for some time. Black River is purportedly the final album from Trailer Star, the last in a line of intriguing releases swathed in a mythology summoned from the mind of the man behind it all, Shaun Belcher, Originally Trailer Star was meant to be a legendary Berkshire bluesman who met an untimely end. As his executor Belcher was able to release a series of cassettes and CDs of his music. This culminated in a well received tribute album Moon Over the Downs where Belcher was able to corral a bunch of artists to cover his songs. Now he’s decided to draw to a close this episode with Black River stating

“This is Trailer Star’s final and exhaustive round up. All tracks recorded between 2005-2010. These are all the late great Trailer’s recorded tracks and signals the final volume in the three CD Trailer Archive series from Tstar records.”

Mythology apart the album sounds primitive, home made and home grown. The sound recalls the ambience Neil Young created with Campaigner, stripped down but chockfull of emotion. It’s intimate and ultimately very personal with songs relating to the death of Belcher’s father dominating the latter part. Much is said about the redemptive power of music and one hopes that these stark and dark tales ultimately did some good for the author.
For the listener it’s hard going at times but glory can come from misery. The canon is stuffed full of songs from disenfranchised black bluesmen, poor sharecroppers, troubled minds. Trailer Star mines the same seam as the late Skip Spence on some of the songs here. The fragility and the feeling of being on the edge of toppling over is balanced by the skeletal beauty of the songs.
The album is available in several ways, in fact the whole story of Trailer star can be read on the website where the various albums can be listened to and even on occasion downloaded. Head over there to look at the whole impressive saga.

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Black River

Mare Wakefield. Meant To Be.

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Mare Wakefield is yet another of those talented writers and performers whose albums tumble into Blabber HQ with increasing regularity. Whether its something in the water or just plain old talent a good percentage of them have a firm grasp on what makes a good album, a good song and the chops to deliver the goods. In the pantheon of female (and this goes for the guys also) performers in the Americana field there are the stars (you know who they are), the hardy perennials who will always get a mention and then the workers at the coalface. Time and again I’m astounded and impressed by the quality of the music produced by people I’ve never heard of, who plough their own field and come up with the goods. Wakefield is yet another one of these.
Based in Nashville this is her fifth release. A vibrant and impassioned singer she can deliver straightforward confessional songs then delve into a big band arrangement with sassy horns and a great sense of swing. Wicked is one such song, deliciously salacious it conjures up rain swept neon lit passions while Red Dress has a New Orleans shuffle with stride piano. The central song on the album is About the War where Wakefield sings about her dreams of tending to wounded soldiers and of watching generals, safe behind the lines, drinking fine wines. In a brave move she allows a “long haired hippie from Galilee” to enter her dream to tell her to forgive them but the dream and the wars go on. Reading this one might think of the hippie tendency to regard Jesus as “one of them” but Wakefield avoids any such seventies mawkishness in what is really a very good song.
The album ends with the eight minutes long “bonus” of Dear J where Wakefield ditches her fine back up musicians (who include Will Kimbrough and Fats Kaplin, two musicians who seem to be appearing with increasing regularity recently). An open letter in the style of L. Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat it’s a wordy recollection of times spent with an old flame, some regretted, an acknowledgement that time moves on and that what was meant to be doesn’t always happen. A great end to what is really quite a fine album.

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Always Valentine

Mat Gibson. Forest Fire.

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Five years ago English songwriter Mat Gibson cut a very impressive album in Philadelphia with his band The Broken Hearts. Packed full with fine guitar slinging Gibson came across as a UK equivalent of Ryan Adams at times. Since then he seemed to disappear from view until this re-emergence as a solo artist on Clubhouse Records. In the interim it appears that he spent several years in Quebec and something of the Canadian landscape (or mindscape) appears to have returned with him as Forest Fire is a set of stark, minimalist songs which sound as if they were conjured up on freezing plains with the writer isolated, miles from anywhere. The sound of the North Country (think of The Jayhawks here) also appears to have had some influence. This is most evident on Yonder Burning Tree where Gibson’s harmonica and guitar could have come straight from Hollywood Town Hall. Gibson plays all of the instruments sticking in the main to acoustic guitar with sparse accompaniment from his harp and occasional keyboards. There are some other embellishments, the slide guitar on the opening song Lord Only Knows, played by Jonathan Berry lends a plaintive air to what is an excellent song. Forest Fire drips like an icicle, a pale fire indeed as Gibson sings of seeing forest fires sending plumes of smoke into the air as he flew back from Quebec. On this elegiac song with heartrending vocals and a perfect marriage of guitar and strings Gibson’s lyrics cast a perfect light on the stress and strain and regret left behind when a relationship ends. The aeroplane metaphor is revisited in Icebergs where Gibson sings of having nowhere to land, buffeted by the forces of nature conspiring against him. An airborne version of Titanic, Gibson sings of “the band playing silently on” as the ‘plane circles endlessly.
After the glacial outpourings of the previous songs the final cut, Where Demons Go, adds some muscle with some electric guitar thrashing. Almost an exorcism after the confessional nature of what came before it Gibson asks “won’t you give me one more chance to make things right with us.” Whatever the answer there’s no doubt that that this album marks the return of a major talent to our shores and it’s to be hoped that we don’t have to wait five years for the follow-up.
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Lord Only Knows

Latest Blabberings

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Here’s a few of the albums which have been rocking this joint over the past week.

Betty Soo and Doug Cox Across the Borderline: Lie to Me.

Blabber’n’Smoke first encountered Betty Soo a few months ago. Now she’s teamed up with ace guitarist Doug Cox to produce a fine, simple and superb album of covers. Soo is of Korean stock and hails from Texas while Cox is Canadian. Meeting at a guitar camp (indeed, do such things exist?) they appear to have shared a mutual admiration for Doug Sahm (whom Cox worked with) and soon Cox was touring with Soo. Together they cooked up the idea for this album wanting to share their favourite songwriters with the listener. Hence an album of songs by the likes of Loudon Wainwright, Butch Hancock, Sahm and Guy Clark along with lesser known talents such as Jeff Talmadge and Betty Elders.
Stripped back, the album features the pair on vocals with Cox’s fine resophonic guitar playing shining throughout. It’s an intimate affair, perfect for late night listening and the song selection is spot on. While the goofy country of Big Cheeseburgers (by Blaze Foley) and the bluesy Boxcars (Butch Hancock) are superb readings they excel on a pair of ballads. Betty Elders’ Light in Your Window showcases Soo’s fine clear voice while Guy Clark’s Dublin Blues ends the album on a high note.
Soo and Cox will be touring the UK in September and appear in Scotland for three dates.

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Brothers Reid. Top of the Old Road

Brothers Reid are a band from Aberdeen who take Americana by the scruff of the neck and give it a good shake. A busy bustling band this debut might be a little muddy in its production but they have a fine line in their mixture of West Coast influenced rock with some folk influences thrown in. Starting off with Done and Dusted the harmonies and sinewy guitars hint at evenings spent listening to old Steve Miller and Moby Grape albums. Flea Circus continues in this vein but it’s the third song, Farmboy Blues which catches the listener’s ear. While it has a hint of the Grateful Dead’s country leanings the band steer it away from homage with an extended coda that has some fine guitar and strings. The outright folk embellishments on the following song City Lights come as a bit of a shock at first but are a brave reminder that the band hails from Scotland and not California. Despite that California is never far from the mind as they deliver their epic Roll On, a guitar churning slow flowing piece that sounds like it might be a killer heard live. Similarly the closing title song, a blues boogie whose harmonica parts recollect Canned Heat could have an audience on its feet yelling for more. Promising.

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JD Malone & the Experts. Avalon

For a debut album his is a bit of a behemoth. Based in Philadelphia Malone and crew have produced a package that one generally expects from established bands. Comprising of two discs, the actual album on CD (with 13 tracks and five bonus cuts) and a DVD of them rehearsing in the studio it looks mighty impressive. Best of all however is the fact that Malone et al pull this off with no sign of filler throughout this bar the repetition of one song, Just Like New which has a “radio edit” version tacked on. Fitting perhaps as this band are nothing other than radio friendly with their version of blue collar American rock. Ringing and stinging guitars, sweet pedal steel and a rocking rhythm section back up Malone’s impassioned vocals on a series of songs that sound as familiar as hell after a few listens. The jangling intro Silver From is straight out of Earle county while the spooky Emmit Meets a Demon recalls the Byrds’ forays into swamp rock. Leave Us Alone has hints of the Jayhawks as has the Ballad of Mr. Bardo.
Covers of Creedence’s Fortunate Son (a great version by the way) and Tom Petty’s I Should Have Known It (on the DVD) show where the band are coming from. While they won’t win many awards for originality they do deserve an award for delivering this fine slice of energetic and rocking Americana.

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The Hot Seats Glasgow gig

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Just time to note that The Hot Seats, a fantastic band from Virginia are playing at Lauries Bar this Thursday. Winners of a Herald Angel award for their appearance at the Edinburgh festival a few years ago they’ve also wowed the crowds (as we say) at Celtic Connections. Old time country, Appalachian yearnings and good old bluegrass fun this is a rare chance to see them in an intimate venue and it looks to be a great night.

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Same Old Mill

Roundup time again

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Been a while since I looked at some of the albums gathering dust at Blabber’n’Smoke. Here’s a few that are about to hit the shops.

First up is a fine EP from the splendidly named Water Tower Bucket Boys. Based in Portland, Oregon this four-piece string band have a sound that’s slightly off kilter from traditional bluegrass and revivalist peers. While they are able to conjure up songs that sit well within the country canon such as Pilgrim Song they add a vibraphone on R Song and on Meet Me Where the Crow Don’t Fly a typewriter provides the percussion. Despite this the overall impression is of a band who know their roots and have the musical chops to deliver. The mandolin and banjo on Pilgrim Song are excellent and Meet Me Where The Crow Don’t Fly is a brilliant stroll through a dark Americana with some devilish fiddling. In fact all five songs are well worth hearing. The band start an extensive UK tour later this month.
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Pilgrim Song

Fearing and White are essentially a two man super group if such a thing can be said to exist. Canadian Stephen Fearing is probably best known over here as a member of the superb Blackie and the Rodeo Kings while Belfast born Andy White has carved a fine reputation for himself over the years. The two have been writing songs together for several years but only recently managed to record any of them. Anyone familiar with either of these guys won’t be surprised by what’s on offer here. More to the point they won’t be disappointed either. The 13 songs are all well crafted and well delivered with Fearing and White playing all of the instruments and sharing vocals while percussion is ably handled by Ray Farrugia. Fearing’s guitar is the predominant instrument on several of the songs tearing big bluesy chunks out of the likes of Under The Silver Sky, a fine Blackie type song and Say You Will, a slow rolling number that could have been crafted by J.J. Cale. The remainder consists of full bodied workouts such as Mothership, a bubbling pop stew with big chords breaking the surface and acoustic based ballads with Fearing and White harmonising like brothers heard best on the fantastic What we Know Now.
All in all a fine album and well recommended if you like literate honest to god songwriting and delivery. The duo are scheduled to play in Glasgow in October.
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What We Know Now

The Carrivick Sisters hail from Devon and From The Fields is their fourth release. Playing guitars, mandolin, banjo and fiddle between them they veer from English folk to old time Americana across this album. They harmonise well and when they are joined on two songs by the esteemed B.J. Cole on pedal steel they achieve a sound that is not too short of sublime. Both appear to be accomplished players with some fine guitar and fiddle playing in particular featuring. Writing in a traditional field they have a fine grasp of what makes the music tick with some of the songs seeming almost to be plot summaries from the pen of Thomas Hardy. This is most to the fore on Flowers With Jamie and the spinechilling Charlotte Dymond while the title song is an acappella telling of a lovers’ tryst that ends in tragedy. With an excellent instrumental The Mouse, The Bird & The Sausage (named after a Brothers Grimm tale) included this is an impressive album that belies the sisters’ relative youth. They come to Scotland in September appearing in Edinburgh.

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Charlotte Dymond

Geoff Baker. Where are You Now?

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A Californian songwriter Geoff Baker came to our attention a few years back with a sparkly entertaining EP that had a fine mixture of quirkiness and melancholy about it. Three years later this full-blooded album appears, upping the melancholia on a selection that often refers to loss and sadness. Baker says of it
“This album starts between midnight and dawn, on a dark street in Berlin in the fall of 2001, days after the death of a close friend and partner in musical crime, seven sheets to the wind, stumbling home, guitar in hand, Nearing your front door a few minutes later, out of breath and out of paper, you find an empty pack of cigarettes on the sidewalk and write, on the only side of the foil that will ever let you write, “Where are you now?” It’s half honest and half rhetorical.
In short, this became an album about people you miss, places you’ve been, things that went wrong, and things you did wrong. But it’s also about how powerful memories are, where to look for the good, and how no thing, no place, and nobody that ever mattered to you can ever really be lost. “
The first thing to strike one here is the overall sound of the album. Despite his stateside status the majority of these songs have an autumnal English feel to them Paul Simon did this in the sixties and Baker follows in his footsteps. While he plays the majority of the instruments himself he’s assisted on a few songs and when the cello parts, played by John Mescall appear there is a definite whiff of Nick Drake in the air. Although there are some uptempo songs (the title song, Girl From Kinnelon and Continental Drift) even these maintain the overall theme of loss.
The woody tones of the opening song One step Further Than You have Ever Dared To Go sets the scene. Its rippling guitars and husky vocals invite the listener in and set up themes that are revisited. On Barbwire Fences in Kansas adds a touch of Americana with some plaintive pedal steel from Bruce Kaphan. A meditation on memorials there’s a touch of Jay Farrar’s style about it and Baker captures a fine sense of desolate locations and sadness. The sense of loss and loneliness culminates in the unadorned Not To Worry (Even Jesus) where Baker sings accompanied only by a solo guitar on a beautiful song with lyrics that are baffling, almost haiku like. “Light that I caught beating on my window, Was you and telling me to move along, You were saying not to worry, What has been can never be gone, Not to cling so fiercely to the earth, When I don’t know what anything is worth.”
The effect is mesmerising. Baker follows this up with a stunning song, The Middle of Nebraska, which starts off with just guitar accompaniment and gently builds up with mandolin and then fiddle and cello cosseting the song. Although this is the highpoint of the album there are several other gems. All The Same has a definite Drake feel in the arrangement while In the First Week of April is an old fashioned narrative ballad concerning a veteran of the Gulf wars who relives his traumatic memories. The closing song When I Was Young I Never Wanted The Sun seems to point to a feeling that runs through the album, a sense of displacement, of being out of joint when Baker finds himself living outwith his native California. On his website he notes where he was when he write these songs, places like Amsterdam, Cork, Berlin, Kansas and New Jersey. This might go some way to explain the wintry feeling to these songs and although it might be tough for Baker to forego the sunshine state if his sojourns are responsible for these beautifully crafted songs then here’s to him spending more times in colder climes.

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The Middle of Nebraska

Jim Dead. Ten Fires

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What is Americana? The simple answer might be that it’s music (or literature, art) that refers to America, in particular to that continent’s (primarily the US of A) heritage. So a broad church with country, bluegrass, jazz, swing and god knows how many others getting a shout in. But are, for example, Kings of Leon Americana? U2? Jack Johnston? The answer of course is yes and no. Or rather, it depends. It depends on the singer, the song, the listener, the situation and for an awful lot of folk in the end it doesn’t matter. And perhaps therein is the rub. For if it does matter to you then you probably know the answer already.
Americana is a feel, an intuition, a knowledge of and respect for, well, Americana. It has depth, history, tradition. Tradition that harks back to the great immigrations that peopled the USA, that recalls the natives who were displaced by the newcomers, the poverty and violence experienced by the Negro slaves, the violence of the civil war, the culture that grew out of all of these. The tradition continued in modern times, the civil rights struggles, the protest songs, the discovery of their own culture by the late sixties generation which fed into the No Depression generation of the eighties which in itself reached back into the distant past also.
It’s easy for anyone anywhere in the world to be captivated by Hollywood cowboys, Lonnie Donegan records or books by Cormac McCarthy. Dig deeper and chances are you’ll find Americana, a fabulous land with a fabulous story. And best of all you don’t have to be American.
Jim Dead is a man who I reckon has done his fair share of digging. So much so that he inhabits a mythical Americana hometown, Deadsville. Deadsville is a mixture of all of the above however Dead has sculpted it into shape. A dust blown dread place with frontier justice, where gunslingers are replaced by guitar slingers, where the blues are amplified and dragged from the past and shot into Technicolor glory.
Calling up a new version of his band The Doubters consisting of Craig Hughes on guitar, James Duffin on bass and Tommy Duffin on percussion and harmonica, Dead offers up twelve songs that portray Deadsville as a scary place to be. Telling stories of lynchings, drugs and death the band walk throughout the landscape with a powerful swagger. Several of the songs here reach epic proportions both in length and delivery. The combination of Dead’s and Hughes’ guitars conjure up visions of Crazy Horse and the Drive By Truckers. While there are quieter moments such as the opening song Silence has No Place Here, Hotel, (with a touch of Willie Vlautin about it) and My Heavy Heart, My Aching Bones, there remains a sense of doom, of hopelessness in them. However the big hitters here are when the band plug in. The loping Bone Blue Moon has the feel of hank Williams backed by Creedence Clearwater, the song does indeed feel as if Dead is howling at the moon. Untitled has some spooky, almost psychedelic tinges, when Dead repeats the refrain Baby, Baby there is a sense of what could have been if Led Zeppelin were an American band. Hughes’ playing on this epic is spectacular, full of menace, coiled, ready to kill. Mean–Eyed River Snake is a mean tale of the death of a girl as retold by a confused, possibly pilled up youth who may have seen too many drive in horrors. It ends in a confusion of babbling while Hughes’ guitar rumbles in the background. The Hallelujah Revolver perhaps tries too hard here to achieve a proper dynamic, a gospel song from hell it’s the one song where the feel is muddied, Having seen a gobsmackingly good live version done by this line up of the band it’s possible we were spoiled beforehand. Honours must go to the stand out song here however. Jim Landstrom Must Die is a killer track. A deceptively jaunty riff leads into a sorry tale of a jive travelling salesman who gets lynched after selling bottles with “stars that fell from from the sky.” Peckinpaw in parts, “ hang him up by his legs, slit his throat so the streets turn ruby red” the band really gel with some tremendous bass playing and a cracking vocal performance from Dead.
If this album was by a crew from the south west of the USA chances are it would be hailed to the heavens. As it is it’s perhaps the best example I’ve heard so far of a local band setting up residence in that fabled Americana. Definitely one to buy.
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Jim Landstrom Must Die

Old Dollar Bill. Lucky From Kentucky.

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When I wrote about the latest Wilders’ gig in Glasgow I noted that they had appeared here so often recently they were becoming akin to locals. Interesting then that they have indulged in a spot of musical miscegenation, teaming up with Edinburgh duo Old Dollar Bill for this release. Furthermore it’s a bit of a menage a trois as another popular visitor, namely Woody Pines is also involved.
Before we get too confused what we have here is a one track CD single, the title song from the forthcoming Old Dollar Bill album, their second. Before you ask “why should I buy a single with one song that’s going to be on the album anyway?” I’d point out that, in this day and age of digital downloads it’s an actual physical artefact and comes with some very attractive packaging and for the price of a pint is well worth getting.
As for the song itself Old Dollar Bill and the tourists (as they’re described in the notes) spend almost six minutes on a splendidly loose limbed picaresque tale of a “whisky drinking, finger pickin’ bluegrass man.” The bass playing of Nate Gawron and Dobro from Phil Wade certainly fill out Old Dollar Bill’s sound. Woody Pines introduces the song and Stephen Clark and Ike Sheldon swap vocals. Like Hank Williams without the heartbreak it’s good time music and it sounds as if they had a whale of a time recording it. The enthusiasm certainly spills out of the speakers. It’s a tremendous performance and akin to having a jam session in your room.
Available at gigs and here it’s a great opportunity for fans of all three bands involved to get a piece of the action. You can hear it on the Old Dollar Bill MySpace page.