Tom Russell. The Rose Of Roscrae. Proper Records

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The first thing to say about this album is that if you intend to listen to it then best go out and buy some beers and snacks beforehand. Next, get a comfy seat, set up your audio for its best “widescreen” effect and prepare to sit through two and a half hours of prime Americana country folk opera. It’s an effort for sure to sit throughout The Rose Of Rosecrae but having done so on three occasions (along with several dips into individual songs) Blabber’n’Smoke can confidently declare that ultimately it’s an interesting and rewarding endeavour and that the album, while not quite the masterpiece that some are pronouncing, is poised to loom over competitors in year end lists.
Tom Russell is no stranger to themes and concepts with previous albums such as The Man From God Knows Where and Hotwalker comprised of songs and spoken word, sound collages and guest artists. The Rose Of Roscrae takes this to another level, it’s a full blown musical story that traces the journey of a young Irishman to America where he goes West (as young men were inclined to do) allowing Russell to include Celtic laments, talking blues, cowboy songs, square dance, slave songs, Native American chants, Gospel and Mariachi music. Weaving traditional songs, standards and his own material into his sonic tapestry Russell has engaged a luminous cast of characters using archive recordings and contemporary collaborations to flesh out the story, the list is daunting……………
Jimmie Dale Gilmore, David Olney, Johnny Cash, Joe Ely, Augie Meyers, Fats Kaplin, Barry Walsh, Jimmy La Fave, Gretchen Peters, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Walt Whitman, Moses “Clear Rock” Platt, Jack Hardy, David Massingill, A.L. “Bert” Lloyd, Finbar Furey, Sourdough Slim, Blackie Farrell, Tex Ritter, Glen Orhlin, Pat Russell, John Trudell, Henry Real Bird, Thad Beckman, Maura O’Connell, Eliza Gilkyson, The McCrary Sisters, Ian Tyson, The Swiss Yodel Choir of Bern, Bonnie Dobson, Lead Belly, Guy Clark, Dan Penn, Gurf Morlix, Pat Manske, The Voices of the Waverley School, Pasadena, California and The Norwegian Wind Ensemble.
You get the picture.
As we said the album is a night in, the songs rolling over you. Some are snippets, over in less than a minute but like connective tissue essential to the overall sinewy aural chew. However there is sustenance galore in many of the individual songs which cleave to Russell’s familiar styles, bold and proud American folklore with sparkling guitar and Dobro providing punch and his spoken soliloquies that paint campfire pictures with tender guitar backdrop. When his hero is thinking back to his homeland Russell captures a fine Hibernian air which is best heard when Finbar Furey provides an excellent Carrickfergus/ The Water Is Wide before Russell wades in with a fierce expatriate’s memories of the Irish landscape. Throughout the album Russell deploys his “actors” as a director might with Jimmie dale Gilmore’s high lonesome voice capturing the frontier while David Olney rants magnificently as a hang ’em high judge. Meanwhile Eliza Gilkyson is a fine vocal foil to Russell on the opening songs of the second disc as does Gretchen Peters before the story heads down to Mexico allowing Augie Meyers and Joe Ely to shine.
Overall there isn’t enough space here to dig deeply into the 52 songs that comprise The Rose Of Rosecrae. Suffice to say that it’s a bold adventure and one that by and large succeeds. It’s begging for a visual accompaniment, a stage show or film gathering all of the cast (although the deceased might have to phone it in) but it’s safe to say that for those who have enjoyed Russell’s previous thematic albums this is essential. As for the others I’d recommend a deep breath, some popcorn and open ears and prepare to be astonished. Tom Russell will be appearing in Glasgow as part of Glasgow Americana in October.

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The Hellfire Club. Songs For Fallen Stars. Strength In Numbers Records

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Blabber’n’Smoke noted The Hellfire Club’s single release of Sun In The Sky back here.  Now the album it’s taken from, Songs For Fallen Stars is being launched this Saturday at Stereo, Glasgow. Produced by Johnnie Smillie the album is  jangle packed classic Americana, think REM, The Long Ryders, Grant Lee Buffalo with some Waterboys and Neil Young thrown in for good measure and you’ll have an inkling of what’s contained herein.
The single opens the disc and pretty much sums up the album. Strong and propulsive songs, hooks a plenty with muscular guitar breaks while Nick Ronan’s fiddle work is a fiery Celtic addition to the American influences. All Because Of You has some abrasive mandolin adding a folky feel with the band almost going into jig time on the refrains with fiddle and guitars skirling like bagpipes. Cal dips its toes into Neil Young waters with a melody that recalls Powderfinger at times. It lurches along with a rough and ready feel, the guitars unfettered and snarling while the fiddle is a dervish in the background as Willie and Helen Brown duet, their sweetness contrasting with the din and clatter of the band. Overall the song comes across as a bruised and battered dose of reality without any studio sweetness added; it does recall Neil Young’s maverick attitude to country rock and one wonders if producer Smillie’s well known affinity for Shakey was to the fore here.
Private Campbell is gentler fare initially with its mandolin driven intro although it’s not long before some restrained fuzz guitar starts to breakthrough adding a grittier feel to this tale of a soldier’s grim doom. Again there’s a folky root to this song but the band abandon any folk pretensions for the portentous and eponymously titled The Hellfire Club. An attempt perhaps to create a band mythology it’s a bit of a mish mash of roaring guitars and East Of Eden fiddle driven prog rock but there’s no denying it’s stirring enough and tailor made for live performance especially the climatic ending. We’re on surer ground with the honky tonk country waltz of Absent Friends which boozily weaves its unsure path and the fast-paced romp of Dali’s Clock which repeats the assured country rock of the opening song with the rhythm section on top form. Montgomery maintains this form as the band go on an Odyssey through the old South with lashings of guitar sparking and feeding back over an inventive backdrop that evokes the hope and fears of the civil rights movement as it pitches from jangled melody to discordant chaos. Montgomery closes the album on a high note although it should be noted that there’s a following snippet of old timey fiddle that properly ends the playing, a trick used by the band throughout the album with four of the 13 tracks comprising these snippets.
Overall a strong showing from The Hellfire Club and definitely recommended for anyone interested in home grown Americana. The album launch is this Saturday, 14th March and if you attend you can buy the album for the once only reduced price of £5 and that’s a bargain these days. In addition you’ll see the band play the songs and sets from The Dirt and Les Johnson And Me. In addition you’d be supporting local music, ’nuff said.

Sons of Bill + The Wynntown Marshals. Stereo, Glasgow. Thursday 19th February

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The first promotion of the year from Glasgow’s Fallen Angels Club was a rerun of an event featured last year as part of their tenth anniversary celebrations. Same two bands, same venue, pretty much the same crowd although tonight was fuller than last year so word must be spreading.
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First up was Edinburgh’s Wynntown Marshalls with a seven song half hour set comprised of numbers from 2013’s excellent The Long Haul and three new ones from their forthcoming Blue Rose Records release, The End Of The Golden Age. Having spent several months recording the album the band seemed delighted to be back on stage and turned in a winning performance, gutsy and brilliantly played. Familiarity hasn’t dulled the pleasure one gets from The Long Haul Songs. The crunching rock of Driveaway dipped and soared with swirling keyboards before a thrilling (and loud) climax. Whatever It Takes allowed singer Keith Benzie to show he can give Jeff Tweedy a run for his money as a singer and songwriter as did Low Country Comedown which was given a fine country rock swagger with a Beatlish touch to the harmonies by the band before it segued with a wall of noise into Tide, bass player Murdoch MacLeod’s epic squall. I’ve seen the band play this song five or six times now and each time it takes on a different persona. Tonight, given the restrains of a support slot, it was tighter and shorter than it has been in the past but it remains a powerful piece with guitarist Iain Sloan cresting the waves with piercing guitar solos while the organ playing of Richie Noble steered it tonight in the direction of CS&N’s Long Time Coming. The three new songs from the forthcoming album (Red Clay Hill, Dead Sunflowers and the title song) all bode well for its release. Red Clay Hill was classic Marshals’ Americana with a fine jangled guitar chassis while The End Of The Golden Age came across as a fine slice of power pop with some barbed guitar and three part harmonies that were excellent, whetting the appetite for the new disc.

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Sons Of Bill could do no wrong from the start with the stagefront packed. While they showed that they can whip up a storm with fiery numbers such as Bad Dancer over the course of the set the balance was in favour of the softer edged harmony tinged offerings from their last album, Love And Logic. They opened with their tribute to Chris Bell, Lost In The Cosmos, a brave choice as its delicate delivery demanded attention from the audience but there was an immediate hush. Road To Canaan slowly built up into a thunderous climax before Siren Song screamed into view. Joey’s Arm has grown into a powerful arena like rock ballad but tonight it was eclipsed by the muscular rendition of Brand New Paradigm, another song that opens with lilting harmonies before whipping itself into a bit of a frenzy. With the three brothers Wilson taking turns at lead vocals and Sam Wilson proving himself adept at finger picking sensitivity and gut crunching electric lead the crowd were lapping this up. A three song encore however was almost anticlimactic with Sam and Abe Wilson turning in a guitar and keyboard stripped back Find My Way Back Home before the band launched into the chunky Turn It Up with a final number, the funereal Hymnsong ending the night on a minor note. While I felt that the set tonight was not as gripping as last year’s I was in the minority as chat in the queue for the Merch table was unanimously positive. It has to be said that the Sons Of Bill have the chops, the looks and importantly, the songs that could catapult them into the bigtime. This is their second tour in the UK, when they come back grab the opportunity to see them as they have the potential to outgrow venues like this.

Wynntown Marshals website

Sons Of Bill website

The Hellfire Club. Sun in The Sky. Strength In Numbers Records

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Been a while since we’ve heard anything from Glasgow’s Hellfire Club. However they’ve a new single which is launched today with an acoustic set from the band at The Rio Cafe, Partick tonight at 7pm. Sun In The Sky was produced by Johnny Smillie, guitarist with Thrum and will be available digitally from the usual outlets. As you can hear below it’s a fine jangled slice of Americana with a fiddle laced chorus that fairly drives the song along. Apparently a taster for their upcoming album, Songs For Fallen Stars, it certainly livened up our Friday morning especially the guitar lead towards the end which fades out all too soon.

The Hellfire Club Facebook page

Strength in Numbers Records

The Stray Birds. Fallen Angels Club. Glasgow CCA. Thursday 11th September.

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Glasgow welcomed the Pennsylvania roots trio The Stray Birds last night with the band riding high on the news that they’ve been signed onto the roster at Yep Roc records who will release their second full length album, Best Medicine, in October. Their appearance at Celtic Connections earlier this year was one of CC’s highlights and tonight they basically repeated their set from back then but as the old adage goes if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. They’ve obviously racked up some serious fans with song requests galore throughout the set and had it not been for the auditorium set up I’m sure there would have been some serious jigging going on. If nothing else their simple set up, Maya de Vitry and Oliver Craven on various instruments (banjo, fiddle and guitar) with Charles Muench the anchor on double bass works beautifully with all three well attuned to each other and well capable of kicking up a veritable shitstorm when required. Lead vocals revolved throughout the night with each taking the spotlight in turn as the others offered their harmonies leaning into a single voice mic. A veritable holy trinity of string band excellence.

While their stirring instrumentals such as Give That Wildman a Knife/Bellow’s Falls/Waiting on a Hannah fired up the crowd and Muench’s sly delivery of Make Me A Pallet On The Floor and Blue Yodel No. 7 where expertly staged the band showed that they have the song writing chops to distinguish them from the many other string band revivalists around these days. Dream In Blue and Harlem showcased de Vitry, sultry and down-home while Craven’s tribute to The Stanley Brothers and the loam of his land, My Brother’s Hill was somewhat breathtaking while he cod confessed to murky misdemeanours on No Part Of Nothing, a fine slice of old time bravado. Best Medicine, the title song from the forthcoming album bodes well for the band as de Vita commanded attention on a paean to old-fashioned record stores that could be seen as a musical equivalent to the loss of Sam The Lion in The Last Picture Show. Despite the sense of loss in the song it seems that the new album will be available on vinyl so there’s some hope therefore that at the very least The stray Birds might have a Technicolor moment.

The new album is availabe to preorder here

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Robbie Fulks Glasgow show.

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This Friday there’s a rare opportunity to catch the always excellent Robbie Fulks close up in action. Fulks is one of the greats of modern country music, a fantastic writer and performer, solo or with a band backing. His 1996 album Country Love Songs is a classic with She Took A Lot Of Pills (And Died) a personal favourite here. Last year’s release, Gone Away Backwards, is a tremendous collection of gentler, mostly acoustic country folk songs which Mojo called his best yet while Rolling Stone placed it in their top ten country albums of 2013.

Fittingly the show’s being put on by Glasgow’s Fallen Angels Club as Fulks played at their first ever Glasgow Americana Festival. Friday is a solo appearance and if he’s anywhere close to the form he was on when I saw him several years ago in the 13th Note then it should be a belter of a night. Great songs and wicked humour going hand in hand.

Tickets here

Glasgow Americana- Israel Nash Gripka/My Darling Clementine

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No sooner than No Mean City ends another Americana themed festival hits Glasgow in the shape of Glasgow Americana hosted by Fallen Angels promoter Kevin Morris. Packed into a week of mouth-watering gigs in a variety of venues this years event sees stellar names such as Israel Gripka Nash, Slaid Cleaves, Laura Cantrell, Darden Smith, Madison Violet, Devon Sproule, My Darling Clementine, Anna Coogan and Dean Owens appearing. The week culminates in a tribute evening celebrating Gram Parsons featuring James Grant, Roddy Hart, Madison Violet, Ben Glover, My Darling Clementine, The Parsonage Choir and The City Sinners.
The Parsons tribute night and the Cleaves show are already sold out so folk intending to attend any of the other shows would be well advised to head over to the website and book their seats now. In the meantime we thought we’d delve into some of the wares likely to be on sale at the various gigs.
We’ve already mentioned the excellent new release from Slaid Cleaves and the latest live offering from Madison Violet while Anna Coogan has long been one of our favourites. However it’s with a degree of serendipity that albums from My Darling Clementine and Israel Nash Gripka have recently dropped into the Blabber’n’Smoke mailbox with both of them boding well for their Glasgow appearances.

My Darling Clementine are husband and wife team, Michael Weston King (ex The Good Sons) and Lou Dalgleish and their album, The Reconciliation? is a celebration of classic country male/female duets with some southern soul thrown in for good measure. It’s not a pun to say that this effort appears to be a labour of love as everything about it appears to have been well crafted from the song writing and magnificent playing to the superb packaging that has a faded and scuffed vinyl album patina looking like the sort of platter one might find in a charity store bin. King and Dalgliesh spar and croon as well as any of their forebears including Tammy and George, Dolly and Porter and even Emmylou and Gram while the music flits from honky tonk to tear jerking Nashville rhinestone ballads and soul farm grit with backing from Richard Hawley’s band for the most part. There are no happy songs here although the final cut Miracle Mabel tells of the birth of King and Dalgleish’s daughter with a fine tenderness. The majority of the songs are about breakups and divorce (Unhappily Ever After featuring a guest vocal from Kinky Friedman standing out) and while there’s a barb in some of the lyrics where they strip away the showbiz tears and schmaltz and reveal the reality of domestic abuse and alcoholism ( No Matter What Tammy Said (I Won’t Stand By Him) for example stands Wynette’s melodrama on its head as Dalgleish abandons her man) listening to the album one could almost be sitting in a flea bit bar with a great jukebox belting out each of the songs here and quietly shedding a tear in one’s beer. Magnificent.

Israel Nash Gripka has been well regarded for some time with his two previous releases garnering favourable reviews. Now ditching the Gripka he unveils his latest offering Israel Nash’s Rain Plans following a relocation from his native Missouri to Austin Texas. God knows what Austin has done to him but if he could bottle it he’d make a fortune as this album astounds from start to finish. Nash wallows in the sumptuous sound that characterised the glory days of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with particular emphasis on the Young contribution. In addition there is a sweeping pedal steel vista that hovers over and around some visceral guitar work that sends shivers up the spine evoking Jerry Garcia’s work on Crosby’s seminal work If Only I Could Remember My Name. All of this might mark Nash as a mere copyist or revivalist but the sheer beauty of some of the songs here soon overwhelms any such thoughts with the middle eight and outro in Myer Canyon in particular stunning the listener into a state of awe. 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. Rather than go through this album song by song it’s sufficient to say that it burns brightly and holds its freak flag high and is a contender for the album of the year. If Nash can deliver even a tenth of this energy live then his show will be incandescent.

Check out the Glasgow Americana website

Annie Keating

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Short mention of what promises to be a fine gig tomorrow night in the State bar. Billed as a fringe addition to the Glasgow Americana Festival Annie Keating has delivered two fine albums in the past few years. We reviewed Water Tower View here saying

“Keating comes from a folkier side with an earthy delivery, her vocals husky, at times sounding like a female John Prine, at others reminiscent of the frailty of Melanie Safka. Her subjects are the usual folk topics, tales of losers for the most part and one might wonder what more there is to say about the underbelly of American life. However Keating has the ability to take a well worn scenario such as gambling in On the Loose and breathe new life into it.
With some very sympathetic backing from a variety of players all of these songs beg to be heard but the standout songs are The Borderline with a very restrained backdrop and Keating’s vulnerability well to the fore and the closing Scene I/Scene II which, as the title suggests, is like an aural movie. Intimate and engaging, an excellent recording.”

Her latest album For Keeps continues in a similar style and received good reviews including one in The Telegraph. We’d be there for a fine Friday night out but unfortunately won’t be in Glasgow. A pity as this is what we might be hearing.

Madison Violet. Come As You Are Live

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Canadian duo Madison Violet are no strangers to these shores and in advance of yet another foray into the UK including two Glasgow appearances they’ve released this live album which captures their show with a fine degree of accuracy. While their last two studio albums have been relatively polished affairs with their writing and vocal harmonies well to the fore here they stand naked (so to speak) armed only with those voices and their multi instrumental efforts assisted only by Adrian Lawryshyn’s double bass. Recorded at the Kulturkirche in Cologne towards the end of 2011 it features for the most part songs from their back catalogue with a few less familiar offerings including a version of a Kurt Cobain song, All Apologies and is available in two formats, a filmed version on DVD or bog standard audio on CD. Our review copy didn’t include the DVD but some Googling reveals that the DVD includes spoken intros to several songs which aren’t included on the CD which is a pity, a small quibble but somewhat annoying.

Apart from that they are in top form here while the audience deserve a mention providing as they do mass harmonies on Small Of My Heart (perhaps prompted beforehand) while they provide the sounds of many hands clapping on some of the numbers, a feature that does detract on a song such as Come As You Are. The duo (Lisa MacIsaac and Brenley MacEachern) are both in fine voice, individually and in harmony while the sound is bright without much evidence of studio polish post taping. With 17 songs packed into a little over an hour it’s a good approximation of a live show as they inject a degree of passion into songs such as The Ransom, Fallen By The Wayside and Best Part of Your Love while Prayed and The Woodshop are given reverential hushed treatments that chill the spine. Overall a fine souvenir if you’ve seen them live or a fine introduction if you are about to.

Madison Violet are touring the UK in October and have two shows in Glasgow under the Glasgow Americana banner, dates here.

Sam Baker. say grace

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Sam Baker appeared seemingly from nowhere around 2007 with an album, pretty world that just about devastated everyone who heard it. There had been a bit of a buzz about him after Gurf Morlix had handed Bob Harris a copy of Baker’s debut, mercy a short while earlier. For fans of well worn Texan tales there was a new kid on the block except this kid was middle aged, bruised and battered with a back story that astonished and a sense of humility that was in itself humbling for all who encountered him live or on disc. Having survived a terrorist bomb in Peru in 1986 Baker had been mangled and his road to recovery and eventually to recording informed and suffused his songs and there was universal agreement that he was a worthy successor to the likes of John Prine and Townes Van Zandt.
say grace is his fourth album and it’s safe to say that it’s as good as his first three and it’s tempting to say that its actually better. His bare melodies have been draped in some fine arrangements, more so than on pretty world and cotton and thankfully they have survived and even benefited from being dressed in their Sunday best. While there are still stark moments (with The Tattooed Woman and Migrants standing out) and the mood remains sombre throughout there is a richness and depth here that surpasses the earlier releases. In the meantime his unique voice continues to sound vulnerable, hurt and passionate, tugging at the emotions.
Baker paints portraits of characters for whom bad luck and trouble is a way of life as an old woman sees her mother in the mirror (Say Grace) and Mexican migrants are left to rot in the desert (Migrants). The worker in Ditch complains bitterly
“the crew’s a bunch of stoners, the boss is a shit, be a miracle if one of us does not get hit by a ton of pipe on a cheap ass chain swinging round the sky in this pouring ass rain”
but Baker allows these folk some ways out of their despair in the shape of either sex or religion. Isn’t Love Great tells the tale of a pair of unlikely lovers who are pillars of the community but who have kinky sex while Button by Button is a unlikely Romany tinged companion to Randy Newman’s You Can keep Your Hat On.
When these worlds collide as on Feast (where a deacon has what seems to be a wet dream) it inspires confusion and rapture, both captured on the song by stabs of angry guitar and a heavenly chorus. One can imagine Sweet Hour of Prayer by which follows being whispered urgently by the confused deacon but here Baker hands the vocals over to Chris Baker-Davies and Raina Rose for this devotional song which features some excellent piano from Steve Conn. Baker closes the album with another prayer, Go In Peace which resonates with his own life story. These last two songs were not written by Baker but presumably their faith and hope reflects that of his own, a faith and hope that has allowed him to triumph from adversity. One of the best albums we’ve heard this year.

Sam Baker is appearing at Glasgow Americana at St Andrew’s In The Square on Thursday 5th September. He always sells out so grab a ticket fast.

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