Daniel Meade and The Flying Mules. Let Me Off At The Bottom album release show. The Rum Shack, Glasgow, Saturday 29th May.

Posted on by

daniel-meade-and-the-flying-mules-lst198937

Lady Luck’s been smiling on Glaswegian Daniel Meade, either that or several years of hard graft is paying off as his song writing skills and musicianship are making waves well beyond his hometown. Following rave reviews for his independently released and Nashville recorded album, Keep Right Away, at the beginning of 2015 and support slots with artists such as Sturgill Simpson, Pokey LaFarge, Diana Jones and Old Crow Medicine Show Meade was signed to the well respected UK label At The Helm Records (joining an illustrious roster that includes Brent Best, John Moreland, Austin Lucas and Good Luck Mountain) earlier this year. The first fruit of this union, Let Me Off At The Bottom was released last week with some very positive press reviews in the run up to the day and the weekend saw Meade and his band The Flying Mules launch the album in fine style in Glasgow’s South Side.

Let Me Off At The Bottom is Meade’s third official release and the first to feature the band. Recorded in Glasgow (with mixing done by Morgan Jahnig in Tennessee) it’s a fine capture of the raucous hillbilly rock’n’roll and honky tonk country that Meade and The Mules (Lloyd Reid – guitar, Mark Ferrie – double bass, Thomas Sutherland – drums) excel in. Meade’s songs drink from the well of Hank Williams and Jerry Lee Lewis (among others) and The Mules (who have notched up several hundred gigs over the past two years) are a well oiled music machine (not in the sense of well drunk). Their recent stint at The Kilkenny Roots festival in Ireland (five gigs in four days) is a contender for the festival highlight.

P1050161 copy

Anyway, a capacity crowd turned up for the album launch. A good number were aware of the band but the audience was swelled by the show’s inclusion in Glasgow’s South Side Fringe Festival. This allowed the opportunity to see several folk, who before the band came on ask what sort of music they played,  pretty soon get up and join the party. And a party is what is was, the band in great form, the music infectious and impossible not to sit still for. There’s a great deal of nuance in Meade’s songs but live it’s much more primal as they cram sixty years of folk, blues, country and rock’n’roll into the set. With a batch of songs from the new album and some favourites from his back catalogue Mead and the band certainly ripped the joint.

P1050152 copy

The band ripped into the opening trio of songs, Back To Hell, Not My Heart Again and There’s a Headstone Where Her Heart Used To Be creating an instant buzz before Meade sang the plaintive He Should Have Been Mine, a switch in mood but one which had the audience captivated. As far as I recall this was the only ballad of the night, the remainder being full blown rockabilly rock although the occasional country lope hove into view. With no  piano to hand Meade stuck to guitar for the night, showing some fine picking skills on Lock Up Your Daughters, a song which also included fine breaks from guitarist Lloyd Reid and bassist Mark Ferrie. Please Louise is a definite crowd pleaser, the bawdy lyrics going down a bomb, the girls at the front checking that it wasn’t their big behind Meade was singing about. If It’s Not Your Fault (I Guess It’s Mine) showed off the band dynamics starting off as a skifflish railroad beat before picking up steam. By the end there were dancers at the front and the back of the crowd (more space there to jitterbug I presume) and there was a definite (and justifiable) swagger about the band as they launched into Long Gone Wrong, a song that just about sums them up with its Sun Records rhythm and harmonies along with Meade’s lyrics that nail the travelling musician’s life. The set ended they offered one more song, a fine rendition of Sonny Terry’s Hooray, Hooray, a fine end to the night.

P1050178 copy

There was an opening set for the evening from Sorbet, a guitar/bass/drum trio who ventured into the avant-garde as they responded to a backdrop of films which included the first two parts of Jean Cocteau’s Le Sang d’un Poète. They were followed by guitar/drums duo The Rivers who describe themselves as “country grunge”.  An exciting pair with jangled guitar and frantic percussion there was a Buzzcocks like rush to a song that I think was called your Love Is On My Side while their new single, Nine Miles High is worth checking out.

Daniel Meade and The Flying Mules. Let Me Off At The Bottom. At The Helm Records

Posted on by

ath19848

Time then for Daniel Meade, Glasgow’s own hillbilly hell raiser, to raise the bar with his third official release and the first album to feature his wingmen, The Flying Mules. The Mules (Meade – guitar and piano, Lloyd Reid – guitar, Mark Ferrie – double bass, Thomas Sutherland – drums) are well kent faces locally with several regular slots in city bars and are veterans of tours with Pokey LaFarge and Sturgill Simpson. Indeed, they appeared as Simpson’s band on his latest Glasgow date, the US chart topper unsure about appearing before a Glasgow audience on his lonesome at the cavernous O2ABC. Meade himself has recently toured supporting and then playing alongside Diana Jones with several of the songs here making their first appearance. Now, hot on the heels of five packed shows in four days at the Kilkenny Roots Festival in Ireland last weekend, The Mules are set to unleash Let Me Off At The Bottom on the world.

Equally at home with Jerry Lee Lewis styled rockers and George Jones like laments Meade has the ability to take country music clichés and turn them into rockabilly poetry, the honky tonk hell raisers and beer stained weepers delivered with a Glaswegian gallusness. There are some fine examples in the rollicking There’s a Headstone Where Her heart Used To Be with Meade explaining, “Well I met lots of women on this rocky road, I love them whether long short or tall. Some for a weekend some twice as long but I still love them all.”  Of course he’s derailed by a femme fatale, a merry widow whose lips taste of candy, laughing with his friends as he looks on from beyond. It’s delivered with a vengeance, Meade’s honky tonk piano driving the song with an excellent guitar solo from Reid that’s half Les Paul, half Chet Atkins.

There are several hi-octane belters here, The Mules firing on all cylinders, the rhythm section tight as the proverbial duck, bass supple and slapping while the traps are expertly deployed. Back To Hell opens the album with a locomotive energy, Meade introducing one of the album’s themes, the demon drink, from the beginning. It’s a breathless dash from start to finish, again Reid throws in one of his seemingly  effortless solos, the notes curling from his guitar sweet as honey. Ghosts and Crocodiles has a jug band like infectiousness to it while Please Louise is a guaranteed crowd pleaser as Meade tries to back pedal from a shotgun marriage, his lyrics delivered expertly over the barrelhouse keyboards and fretboard wizardry, a Jordonaires type chorus the icing on the cake. He hasn’t learned his lesson on the avaricious rocker Lock Up You Daughter and it’s back to the drink for the closing The Bottle Called For Me, a saloon bar knockabout that ends with a good old rabble rousing chorus.

As infectious as these songs are (and a good indication of how superb the band are live) The Mules have other strings to their bow. As evidenced on his last album Meade can turn his hand to old time country songs and waltzes (as on his duet with Diana Jones on Help Me Tonight) and there’s a brace of these sadder tear stained moments on the album. Meade has an acute grasp on the topics that engaged George Jones and Hank Williams (heartbreak mostly), while his voice can convey the hurt just as well as the good times. He Should Have Been Mine laments with a fine plaintive piano and Poison Dart lopes along with some sweet guitar curls and a lonesome prairie feel. Best of all is the powerful confessional of Leave Me To Bleed, Meade, superbly accompanied by Siobhan Wilson on harmonies, reaching into the darker recesses of country music, his bride dead before the wedding, guilt and faith confused, the music a back porch funereal.

Midway twixt the light and dark there’s an excellent country ramble on Count The Roses which delves into George Jones territory with some style while the title song recalls the Everly Brothers with its harmonies. Like Pokey Lafarge, Meade has the ability to write songs that seem to have been around forever and here he’s forged a set of songs that cover a panoply of half a century of rockabilly and country music. The album’s a whirligig of rabble rousing honky tonk and forlorn laments all delivered with some panache.

Let Me Off At The Bottom is released on May 27th on At The Helm Records. There’s an album launch in Glasgow at The Rum Shack on the Southside on the 28th May.

website

At The Helm Records

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daniel Meade Interview/Redneck Dinner Party

Posted on by

cover170x170

Regular readers will be familiar with Daniel Meade whose album Keep Right Away was released way back in January . Produced by Old Crow Medicine Show’s bassist, Morgan Jahnig and featuring Diana Jones on one song the album was well received with one Texan based producer getting in touch with Blabber’n’Smoke asking about “this guy from Glasgow.” Fast friends with Sturgill Simpson, Ms. Jones and the Old Crow boys, when he’s not gigging away (this year saw two tours in Europe and shows in England with Pokey Lafarge) Meade can be regularly seen at several regular pub and club residencies in the Glasgow area either in a duo setting with his wizard guitar buddy, Lloyd Reid, or with his four piece Flying Mules. In fact when I interviewed Pokey LaFarge at his last Glasgow gig he asked the first question, “Do you know if Daniel is playing anywhere tonight?”

So it was great news that Meade has a new release available, Redneck Dinner Party. A new release but not a new album as such. Recorded in 2008 when Meade’s band was then called The Meatmen it’s an eleven song burst of rockabilly and country thrash, all penned by Meade, in a similar vein to Keep Right Away’s lead single Long Gone Wrong. Inevitably it’s not as polished (although polished is not a word one would generally use here) as Keep Right Away although the sound is clear and vibrant, the bass thudding from the speakers as the band seem to be having a ball. This is evident from the start with the raucous title song, an uproarious paean to hillbilly cooking where it seems everyone in the studio (and the street outside) are involved in the backing vocals and general noises that punctuate the song. It’s like a Glasgow version of Robert Earl Keen’s Merry Christmas From The Family taken at a faster pace with the family hyped up on Buckfast (and without the Christmas element of course).

This souped up take on country music permeates the album as Meade delves into familiar themes (drink, love, infidelity) and brands them with his own mark. The songs barrel along with some ferocity, the Killer piano on My Band’s Better Than Your Band worth the price of admission alone. Songs such as Pie Eyed Joe, Sod’s Law and That Girl’s Old Enough To Be Your Mother are tremendous slices of old fashioned Sun Records rockabilly although it’s a fair bet that had they been recorded back then they would have sat in the vaults for years as Meade is earthier than those God fearin’ folk back then would have allowed with lyrics like “so get your hat on your head and your ass on home.” God knows what they would have made of Shitkicker Blues, the frenzied album closer which sounds like a demented Nick Cave hallucinating in a Gospel tent.

Aside from the Jerry Lee Lewis inspired rockerama Meade finds time to visit another touchstone, Hank Williams, on the graceful country of She Lost My Heart In New York and the tumbledown heartbreak of Sweethearts and Broken Hearts, the latter having the potential to become a classic of the genre.
For an album that was hastily recorded to sell at gigs Redneck Dinner Party is simply superb and more proof, if needed, that Meade has his finger on the pulse of classic roots American music. Happily he was available to spend some time with Blabber’n’Smoke to talk about the album and bring us up to date.

11056539_675962065872900_3511545192124466341_o

Redneck Dinner Party dates back to 2009, why have you decided to reissue it?

It’s not really a re-issue as such as it was never issued at the time it was made, it only ever made it to crudely home-burned CDs that we would sell at gigs to fund getting to the next gig. I came across it again by chance earlier this year when my parents were moving house and it was in amongst a box of old CDs. I hadn’t heard it in years but it still sounded great (to me), so I thought I’d just release it properly for old times sakes really.
The majority of it was written when I spent a few months in L.A when I was 22 or 23, and I was introduced to all this great country music over there. I was already getting into Old Crow Medicine Show and there was a lot of similar cool stuff happening, it was great to be around and I guess I brought some of it home with me.
We recorded it at TornFace Studios with our good friend Chris Gorman. I don’t remember too much about the session but I hear it was a lot of fun! It somehow managed to get into Mark Lamaar’s hands and he played ‘I Remember Now’ on BBC Radio 2, and I just remember thinking that was it, we made it! Oh to be young…

So who’s playing on the album with you?
We have Richard Anderson on bass, now of the Shiverin’ Sheiks, Danny Shepherd on drums and on electric guitar we have Lloyd Reid, of course. This was actually the first thing we ever worked on together, still going strong!

Listening to the album today what sort of memories does it conjure up?

Just good ones really, we were just young guys having a very good time and I think it comes across like that. It’s hardly the most accomplished album you’ll hear, lyrically or musically, but that doesn’t matter, it’s just a lot of fun. I think the album/song titles and content would suggest that it’s not going to be one to ponder over, just get a few tipples down your throat and go for it, and I’m glad to say a lot of folk did just that, on a weekly basis. We used to play two gigs every Saturday in Glasgow for a couple of years, Maggie Mays, 6-8, then The Butterfly and Pig, 10-12, and it was always a party. Good, mad times.

Back to the present is there any news on a follow up to Keep Right Away?

Well myself and The Flying Mules do in fact have a new album recorded and good to go, it should be with you in the Spring. More details to come soon.

As usual you’ve been busy this year, touring with Diana Jones, Pokey LaFarge and about to go out with The Proclaimers. You’ve been abroad in Europe, how did those shows go?

I’m glad to report they’ve all been great, different in their own ways and never two crowds the same. That’s why it’s so much fun heading out with other acts like Pokey, Diana and The Proclaimers, you never know what to expect from night to night, fair keeps you on your toes. Plus you get to watch them every night and that’s a privilege, especially with acts of their calibre. I mean last night we were watching ‘Sunshine on Leith’ being sang back at The Proclaimers by 1600 punters in Motherwell from behind the stage, that’s something special!

Last time we talked you said Jerry Lee Lewis’ Live At The Star Club was your favourite album. I believe you saw Jerry Lee Lewis when he played in Glasgow this year. How was that and are there any other performers you would fight your way through to see?

It was great, strangely emotional knowing that I probably won’t have the chance to ever see him play again but he was still amazing at 80 and I managed to briefly meet him, shake his hand and say thank you, and he said it right back! I’d waited a long time for that, if it wasn’t for him I probably wouldn’t be doing any of this so I’m glad I got the chance. My brother and I also met James Burton and Kenneth Lovelace, it was just one of those days..
I’ve been lucky in that I’ve seen most of my heroes live, but I’d still like to see Tom Waits and probably Tom Petty, there are probably more but not that I’d have a fight for, I’ve got soft knuckles and a softer nose so it would have to be someone ridiculous, probably someone raised from the dead, Big Bill Broonzy or Hank! Let me know if that happens cheers and I’ll gladly get in the ring.

Any plans for the New Year?

Taking a few weeks off actually, recharge and get to working on whatever’s next, whatever that may be. Any requests?

Redneck Dinner Party is available on CD although its a limited edition, you can purchase a copy from Daniel here while stocks last. It’s also available on itunes here

Daniel Meade. Long Gone Wrong/ Help Me Tonight

Posted on by

Blabber’n’Smoke first encountered Daniel Meade when he played a fine set in support of Sturgill Simpson at Glasgow’s Admiral Bar back in February. He was impressive, a Woody Guthrie meets Guy Clark sort of guy dressed in mod threads. His encounter with Simpson was fortuitous as the Kentucky singer, riding high on reviews of his tremendous Metamodern Sounds In Country Music, took a shine to Mr. Meade with the end result being that he and his compadre Lloyd Reid were invited to act as the defacto Simpson band on the man’s next UK tour playing some illustrious dates. Next month Simpson’s bringing his own band over for his next tour but faithfully has Meade supporting him on these gigs.

In the interim Meade’s been busy with an opportunity to record in Nashville and the first fruits of this have been unveiled on a download single available from this week. The results confirm that Meade has his finger firmly on the pulse of classic rootsy country folk with both songs impressive indeed.

Long Gone Wrong is a classic rockabilly thrash in the original sense. No turbo charged twang guitar here but rollicking fiddle and harmonica, dynamite piano, scrubbed guitars and Jordonaires like hollers add up to a fine collision of Lonnie Donegan and Joe Ely. It’s raucous and it rocks like a wildcat. Help Me Tonight is the flip side of the coin (and the record) as Meade visits saloon bar territory with tacky piano stuttering along to this wearied love song that is graced by the addition of the wonderful Diana Jones who duets with Meade on a song that stands tall against comparisons to the great country duets with an antebellum feel and a sepia stained sound. Hopefully there’s more of this to come.

Daniel Meade Facebook

buy it here

Blabber’n’Smoke’s Top Ten for 2013

Posted on by

I succumbed to the idea of a top ten for the first time last year and if nothing else it’s been useful looking back at it over the past few days and comparing it to the list below. Was it a good year for music? I don’t know. Has there ever been a bad year? All I can say is that I’ve enjoyed listening to music this year as much as the last one and the year before that and so on. Many of last year’s list still get regular plays here so at least I liked them and the number one, John Murry’s Graceless Age has had a second wind with its eventual release Stateside. It may seem odd to have an artist with two entries in the list but both albums by Michael Rank & Stag are simply superb examples of what Blabber’n’Smoke would define as Americana; rooted in the country with a frontier outlook and a fierce regard for the common folk. And a happy coincidence to have two works from Howe Gelb mentioned also as he continues to plow his singular field. Both albums have striking images of Gelb threatening to turn him into an Americana icon, part Mt. Rushmore, part Dorothea Lange, for Blabber’n’Smoke, he’s a hero. Anyway, here’s what rocked our boat over the past twelve months.

1. Doc Feldman & the LD50. Sundowning At The Station. This Is American Music

Soiled songs and dusty ballads sounding like a wounded Crazy Horse. A triumph for label of the year, This Is American Music.

And here’s the man himself

2. Michael Rank and Stag. Mermaids. Louds Hymn

Wracked and raw country folk and rock from North Carolina’s Michael Rank. In the space of two years he’s delivered three albums (one a double disc set) that in a fit of hyperbole we said it sounded as if Keef had left the Stones in ’69, joined The Band and recorded with Neil Young frying honeyslides in the kitchen. At the very least it comes close.

3. Israel Nash Gripka. Israel Nash’s Rain Plains. Loose Music

Guitars weave and wander with a ferocity and lyricism that defies description and he repeats this throughout the album and there’s a moment in the title song where the guitars fizz and burn just like the best firework you’ve ever seen.

4. Cam Penner. To Build A Fire. Independent

“Ukuleles, guitars, banjos were strummed. Floors were stomped. Kick drums were kicked. Feet stumbled. Thighs, knees, hands, slapped, clapped. Voices strained and bent. Fingers gripped, grabbed, picked. Arms and hands flung. Skin wrapped tight strained and stretched. Body and sound thrown against wood and metal.”

5. Michael Rank & Stag. In The Weeds. Louds Hymn
No apologies for the second appearance from this tall, stick thin North Carolina rock’n’roll ragamuffin. The sonic slurry he conjures up is nothing less than mesmerising.

6. Sam Baker. Say Grace. Independent

Baker’s wounded heart goes from strength to strength

7. Diana Jones. Museum of Appalachia Recordings. Proper Records.

She’s not well known but whenever we mention her there’s a flurry of activity from folk who recognise Jones’ ability to sound as old as the hills and bang up to date, the thinking man’s Gillian Welch?

8. Birds of Chicago. Birds of Chicago. Independent.

JT Nero makes an honest woman of Allison Russell as they formally pair up for a laid back celebration of harmony singing and some Tupelo honey.

9. Dead Flowers. Midnight at The Wheel Club Hee Haw Records

Dark and deep, vocally and lyrically, a trip through North America and the soul.

Dead Flowers – The Beach from deadflowers on Vimeo.

10. Wynntown Marshals. The Long Haul. Blue Rose.

Local heroes, The Wynntown Marshals survived some turbulent years with band members coming and going. With new crew on board they came up trumps with a bigger, more layered sound and another fine songwriter in the shape of bassist Murdoch McLeod who penned the amazing Tide. Topping off a great year for them the band were snapped up by the very discerning blue Rose label.

Honorable mentions

Howe Gelb. The Coincidentalist
Howe Gelb. Dust Bowl
Mark Collie & his Reckless Companions. Alive At Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary.
J. R. Shore. State Theatre.
The Coals A Happy Animal
Benjamin Folke Thomas. Too Close to Here
Slaid Cleaves. Still Fighting The War
Thriftstore Masterpiece presents Lee Hazlewood’s Trouble Is A Lonely Town.
The Quiet American. Wild Bill Jones
Amanda Pearcy. Royal street
Heidi Talbot. Angels Without Wings
Jim Dead I’m Not Lost
Rachel Brooke. A Killer’s dream
Great Peacock E. P.

Diana Jones. Museum of Appalachia Recordings. Proper Records.

Posted on by

When I reviewed Diana Jones‘ previous album, High Atmosphere I said it simultaneously sounded sixty years old and contemporary. Her careworn voice and superb ability to author heartbreaking tales of hardship and woe had a deep affinity to pre-war country recordings while the delivery by a stellar bunch of musicians led by producer Ketch Secor was top notch. Two years later and with a bunch of songs written while on tour Jones decided to eschew a studio with “isolation booths for a variety of musicians to overdub parts” and instead headed for the Museum of Appalachia in Clinton, Tennessee, a living museum and part of the Smithsonian Institute where she set up shop in a cabin with Matt Combs (fiddle, mandolin, banjo, mandola, viola) and Shad Cobb (fiddle, mandolin, guitar). With a log fire, one electrical outlet and one naked light bulb in the cabin they spent two days recording and the end result is this Museum of Appalachia Recordings album, 11 songs that are as old as the hills and as fresh as today’s milk.

Jones’ voice stands out immediately with its air of resignation and wearied tone. At times reminiscent of Karen Dalton she sounds as if she’s lived these tales. And such tales. Jones tries to show a redemptive path to God’s grace on O Sinner while Drunkards Daughter is a cautionary tale of how the sins of the father rest on the daughter. Song For a Worker is an uplifting song of praise to the Lord’s day when the workers rest and worship while Satan sets the temptation of Jesus to a mandolin driven jaunt. The overall tone of the album is reverential reflecting the God fearing folk of past times, humbled in their poverty, battered and bowed on a daily basis but buttressed by a belief in their faith and the promise of a better life thereafter. Misguided perhaps but there’s no denying that back in the days this belief allowed folk to endure hardship we can’t imagine now and Jones captures this with an astounding veracity. Simply put every song here is a delight and sitting back listening to the strings and things melting and meshing together one can almost imagine sitting in that log cabin and being transported to those yesteryears. An excellent record.
label website