The Wynntown Marshals. The Long Haul.

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It’s been a turbulent few years for The Wynntown Marshals with arrivals and departures (including guitarist Iain Barbour and drummer Keith Jones) that might have derailed lesser bands. However they’ve ploughed on with their other guitar wizard Iain Sloan picking up the baton dropped by Jones as the band’s indefatigable publicist and also employing an impressive array of strings to broaden their sound while bassist Murdoch McLeod has blossomed into a fine writer as evidenced by the two songs he’s penned here. With front man Keith Benzie remaining at the helm the Marshals are still recognisably The Marshals but there is a subtle shift in their sound as they seem more assured and confident, adding layers of sound in the production and leaving behind their more “twangish” Nashville flourishes. The end result is a triumphant return with The Marshals consolidated as a magnificent four piece after the long haul of the past few years.

They kick the album off with a bang with the frantic road trip of Driveaway’s muscular beat which pulverises along with a cracking guitar solo from Sloan soaring above the driving organ. A Kerouac inspired tale of cross country driving it captures the adventure and spirit of open highways as it sparks and fizzes and is a fine way for the band to announce their return to the fray. Canada is a Byrds’ like jangle fest with Benzie bemoaning a pair separated by oceans as he sings “I would get there if I could/but I admit I find it hard/I feel stuck in this corner/Like a stamp on a postcard.” Despite the yearning in the lyrics the song has a joyous and uplifting feel with some superb backing vocals from the band members. The epic Crashing (Like The Reds) showcases the band’s fuller sound which reflects the sophisticated country pop of Wilco’s Summerteeth album and, going further back, the polished power of L.A.’s wrecking crew. While it’s a rocker of the first degree the deftness of the changes along with the chiming guitars and crashing chords elevate it to sonic heaven. Murdoch’s North Atlantic Soul is another song that wraps itself in a multilayered tapestry of sound with waves of acoustic guitar buried under a sweeping pedal steel and another superb solo from Sloan. There’s plenty of variety to be had here. Curtain Call is a gentle, reflective and chilling tale of addiction, failure and suicide which features cello and violin. The opening lyrics “Here I sit in this dingy room/Alone with needle, tourniquet and spoon” could be from any number of rock’n’roll drug damage songs but Benzie pulls off a fine smoke and mirrors trick as the words reveal the song to be set in the bygone age of Victorian stage magicians conjuring up images from The Prestige.

There is in addition a fine wallop of that chunky Americana sound that the Marshals do so well. Low Country Comedown ebbs and flows like the Mississippi with the guitars churning away while Change of Heart chugs along in fine Stray Gators style with a chunky rhythm and sweet pedal steel while some Beatles’ styled psychedelic guitar corkscrews in the background. Benzie is accompanied on vocals here by Diane Christiansen (from Dolly Varden) and they truly sound like a heartbreaking couple.

The icing on the cake here is the awesome and sublime Tide. A mesmerising smorgasbord of wave washed guitars and swirling keyboards with parched vocals it swells like a tidal bore before hitting the shore and falling apart in trickles of sonic beeps and squiggles. Lyrically it’s faintly reminiscent of Crosby Stills and Nash’s Wooden Ships and indeed the vocals and the intricate guitars would not have been out of place on Deja Vu ( and would have made it a finer album!).

All in all The Long Haul is a worthy successor to Westerner as the Marshals expand their sound, widen their horizons and above all deliver a solid set with not a clunker in sight. The album will be available in July via their website and there’s a launch gig on July 12th at Broadcast in Glasgow. If you can’t wait that long they support Chuck Prophet at Oran Mor on May 1st and they promise to have some copies on sale.

Jim Dead. I’m Not Lost.

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“There’s a thunder looming” goes the weather forecast for Deadsville , that mythical hinterland where Jim Dead and occasional compadre Craig Hughes hunker down and sustain themselves with helpings of tinder dry musical epistles that smell of brimstone and dread. Expertly mapped out on Ten Fires, Dead’s last album, he returns to Deadsville in I’m Not Lost with Hughes riding shotgun having ditched the rhythm section somewhere back along the trail.

Dead and Hughes have indeed hunkered down in Glasgow’s Ohm studios and transformed the damp bleak Scottish winter into their sun scorched and parched mythical landscape. A six-song expedition this is leaner than and not as mean as Ten Fires. No one gets lynched but the outlook remains as bleak as bleached bones as Dead sings and almost moans in ominous fashion. Steady Us opens the disc with Hughes in a Morricone mood, his guitar cracking the sky open and then rumbling along with menace as Dead delivers some nihilistic words. Nine Years continues in this vein with Dead coming across like a voice from the grave, a sense that is accentuated by the whelps that close the song. Gold + Silver finds Dead solo, hesitant and fractured but Hughes returns with his switchblade guitar on the snappy suicide note of Giving Up The Ghost. Stealing A Mile is the standout track here, slow, brooding, filled with menace and foreboding. With Hughes’ guitar creating a sonic sandstorm over Dead’s acoustic drone Dead foretells of the storm a coming and proclaims “I’ve not cared much for sunny days or bright afternoons in the haze. Give me clouds and give me rain.” As on most of the songs the lyrics are opaque allowing the listener to imagine a scene while the music is almost cinematic.Dead states on his website that he’s been listening to Calexico and and it’s most apparent here. The closing song Head Full Of Booze however comes across almost as a traditional number lamenting the demon drink and the havoc it wreaks. With Hughes’ guitar more lyrical and almost pedal steel sweet it could have been Hank William’s last song.

Overall I’m Not Lost is another reason to reckon that Dead is our number one homegrown American artist. A download only release it’s merely a precursor to the full follow up to Ten Fires and at around £4 it’s a steal. You can get it here

Website

Mary Gauthier. Live at Blue Rock.

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Mary Gauthier is a particular favourite of Glasgow Americana fans having appeared here regularly and always beguiling the audience with her world weary observations, her trials and tribulations. So news of a live album caused some excitement at the Blabber’n’Smoke newsdesk and having finally arrived it proudly sits, a true, fly on the wall, unenhanced capture of a show, warts and all. Gauthier bares her soul, intense, emotionally connected to the characters she sings about. Supported by Tania Elizabeth on fiddle and Mike Meadows on percussion this almost amounts to a greatest hits compilation with selections from most of her albums although surprisingly only one from The Foundling, her autobiographical and award winning album.
With all of the songs well delivered its difficult to select highlights although one has to mention the sterling work by Tania Elizabeth whose fiddle playing is superb with a raw tortured feel about it adding a sense of drama to what are already fairly dramatic songs. However Gauthier’s delivery of Last Of The Hobo Kings is spinechilling while Our Lady Of the Shooting Stars is on a par with the best of Leonard Cohen’s sixties output. Our personal favourite here is Karla Faye, the stark tale of a drug raddled Texan prostitute who ended up on death row. The trio absolutely gels here wringing all the emotion out of the song. Karla Faye is followed by Gauthier’s most famous song, I Drink which again sounds superb with excellent fiddle from Elizabeth. The album ends on a raucous note with a spirited rendition of Wheel Inside The Wheel with dervish fiddling and Gauthier totally in command vocally. Cool and assured she rocks here with a vengeance. A great end to a great album although there is an unlisted (and very fine) version of Mercy Now with gospel sounding backing vocals which acts as an encore. An essential buy for Gauthier fans. She’s coming over to play some gigs promoting the album, unfortunately no Scottish dates mentioned so far.
Oct 11th. Bush Hall, London
Oct 13th.The Malbank Studio Theatre, Cheshire
Oct 14th. The Live Theatre, Newcastle

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Woody Pines/The Hot Seats. Glasgow. 29th April.

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Two great bands playing in two different venues on Sunday night required a modicum of planning however it was a toss of a coin that led me to visit the Woody Pines gig at Lauries Acoustic Music Bar first. This Trongate live music stalwart has changed its name recently and now proudly proclaims itself as Avant Garde. All well and good but this proved problematic for the band who apparently circled the area several times looking for Lauries Bar. Nevertheless by the time they appeared on stage they were unfazed by this slight hiccup and proceeded to turn the venue into a veritable southern roadhouse. The four piece North Virginia band led by the tousle haired Woody (who left his usual headgear to a barman in Ireland) immediately had the crowd going with a vibrant rendition of the traditional Long Gone Lost John before easing into Hank Williams’ Can’t Keep You Off My Mind. With guitarist Lyon Graulty switching between clarinet and some fine slide guitar playing the band slid from New Orleans type vamps to old time country blues with 99 Years a particular delight as Felix Hatfield excelled on the washboard sounding like a full drum kit. Crazy Eyed Woman loped along splendidly and an extended version of Counting Alligators with a spoken rap from Woody recounting a trip along Highway 61 encapsulated their appeal with a tight rhythm and a lot of swing.
Sadly the desire to see The Hot Seats led us to leave Woody and his band at half time in order to hoof it on up to The Universal and due to crossing the Glasgow dateline we caught most of their set. Another band who drink from the old time music well The Hot Seats are a (mostly) bearded raggle taggle crew who swap instruments with gay abandon and to great effect. Anyone who’s heard their latest live album would know what to expect but in truth the humour and sheer vibrancy of their set has to be seen live. The first song we caught, Trouble in Mind was a steamroller of banjo, fiddle and guitar flailing away, a great start. In full flight the five-piece band serve up an unplugged wall of sound that can make the hair on the back of the neck stand up. No Plans from their next album was an outstanding example of this, forget the cinematic Soggy Bottom Boys, this is the real deal. Playing tunes by the likes of Gid Tanner’s Skilletlickers and Earl Scruggs there was plenty of bluegrass action and even a turn by Shannon Dunne, an American “flatfooter” who whetted the audience’s appetite for a dance. The sly entendre of Peaches allowed the band to wallow somewhat in a vaudevillian humour fully realised on Soft John Blues, a fabulously louche country slouch that pays tribute to that old viagra.
Earlier on Woody Pines had commented on the somewhat cramped confines of his gig lamenting the lack of dancing space. At The Universal there was no such problem and by the closing and rousing Another Day, Another Dollar you couldn’t see the band for the dancers.
If this had been a battle of the bands then I’d declare it a draw and the only loser was the reviewer who haplessly missed out on the second set from Woody Pines. It’s safe to say however that both bands are smoking hot and if you get the chance to see one or both then do so.

Sarah MacDougall The Greatest One Alive

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One of the finest Canadian exports of the last few years Sarah MacDougall is playing the Glasgow Americana Festival (Brel on 9th October) and luckily enough she has a brand new album that those fortunate enough to attend should be able to get their hands on. The Greatest One Alive is a tremendous little album. Small but perfectly formed its ten songs are all delightfully crafted with MacDougall’s excellent vocals well to the fore. She has a great voice, husky and tender with a slight sense of vulnerability. She also evokes, both in her writing and singing a sense of the great cold outdoors, perhaps due to her Swedish background. Despite this the album also embraces a warm and celebratory experience with a spring in the step of a piece such as Song #43. Chillier climes and notions do inhabit the less adorned songs. Permafrost with its chilling pedal steel is hypnotic while Cold Night illustrates perfectly those moments, late at night and alone when rumination and recrimination deny sleep.
There are some fine and tender musical moments throughout the album with We’re All Gonna Blow Away and The Greatest Ones Alive swelling with pride from the speakers. The opening song Sometimes You Lose, Sometimes You Win grabs you from the start with its windswept sweep where acoustic guitars and piano pile into each other achieving a degree of perfection. This ensemble playing reaches its peak on It’s a Storm! (What’s Going On?) where MacDougall and her vocal partners are assisted by some fine rumbling percussion to create some musical onomatopoeia. However the most arresting song is the one that she delivers all by herself, MMM, a terrific and tender love song.

Website

We’re All Gonna Blow Away

Anna Coogan. The Wasted Ocean.

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A marine biologist who grew up in New England listening to sea shanties, Anna Coogan is no stranger to the second element. The Wasted Sea, follow up to her acclaimed debut The Nocturnal Among Us is in the main a set of songs about the sea and the folk who live and die on, near or under it. A delicate album, there are no rollicking bawdy ballads here, rather forlorn tales of women awaiting the return to shore of their men or mourning those who do not return. Coogan sings beautifully and is ably supported throughout by a superb group of musicians who cosset the songs with some fine Dobro, mandolin, violin and banjo, the soft mallet drumming on the opening song, The Sons Will Join Their Fathers could almost be the waves lapping the shore.
Despite the delicacy of the playing there is plenty of emotion on show here. Coogan can sound steely, hurt, lost at times. On her fine cover of Phil Och’s epic The Crucifixion (dedicated to her father and perhaps an odd inclusion but it does feature a verse about a mariner) she builds up a righteous anger. The highlights however are Come Ashore Love, a haunting song that features Colby Sander’s Dobro and Come The Wind, Come the Rain where Coogan sings accompanied only by Eyvind Kang’s violin on a song that is the closest the album gets to a traditional folk sound.
A fine successor to her debut album, The wasted Ocean is well recommended to anyone who likes Kris Delmhhorst, Alela Diane or Rachel Harrington. She is well acquainted with Glasgow having appeared at Celtic Connections and indeed mentions this fine city in her liner notes (noting that the spark for the album was lit on a “soggy Glasgow morning). She’s appearing at Glasgow Americana on October 6th.
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Come Ashore, Love

Blaze Foley and Gurf Morlix: Glasgow Americana Festival

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It’s not often that a world premier of a movie occurs in Glasgow, Even less so when it’s a film about a musical legend. If I Could Only Fly is a movie about Blaze Foley, a singer and songwriter, friend of Townes Van Zandt, companion of Gurf Morlix, and it is Morlix who will be there at the film’s première this Sunday at the GFT. Following his gig at Brel in the late afternoon as one of the highlights of the Glasgow American Festival Morlix will join Glaswegians in a celebration of the Texan hell raiser and inspiration for Lucinda Williams’ song Drunken Angel.

Details for the GFT show here

Coming to You: The Fox Hunt.

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Another string band from the good ole USA, the Fox Hunt apply a youthful vigour to the tried and tested American mores as purveyed by the likes of The Wilders and The Black Crown String Band. Hailing from Virginia their latest album “Long Way To Go,” is chock-full of fiddles, banjo and mandolin.

With an eye on tradition but a contemporary style there’s no gloss on their songs. They’re earthy and full of grit, as real as you can get and if they sound anything like the album a must to see. They’re playing The Classic Grand on Saturday, 17th July, and to top it all, according to a recent review they do a version of Plastic Jesus, a great song that I’ve only heard on crackled old vinyl so to hear it live would be a blessing, so altogether now………. Jesus, Plastic Jesus, sitting on the dashboard of my car………………..
Hear them here, toe tappingly real and coming to Glasgow.

Jim Dead

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Well, with a name like that you have to listen, don’t you? I heard Mr. Dead a few weeks back on a session he did on the Sunny Govan Switchback. With an interesting list of influences and some songs that beggared belief that they didn’t originate in some dusty back town off of Route 66 I went in search of him. With two releases, a solo album and a single (backed by The Doubters) under his belt he had this to say for himself.

You were in a “succession of local bands” before coming to your present incarnation. What type of music were you playing then and what led you to the current set up?

I sang and occasionally played guitar in rock bands since 1997. My big influences were the bands that came form the ‘Alternative Rock’ explosion in the 90’s … Nirvana, Blind Melon, Jane’s Addiction etc. Among the rock music I had some Johnny Cash and Tom Waits … but I started paying a great deal of attention to alternative Country / Americana in 1998 or so after I heard Whiskeytown’s Strangers Almanac and Richard Buckner’s Bloomed and Devotion & Doubt. They were shaping how I wrote songs and I brought that influence in to the music I was writing with the band … certainly within the lyrics … and Whistle of a Distant Train came from then. I guess Jim Dead began when the ideas I was bringing in weren’t sounding as I imagined. I never specifically wanted to play country music, but I wanted to strip the songs right back and focus on the words and the stories.

I read of a T Shirt that said “ Old Punks Never Die, they just go Country.” Not that we’re saying you’re old but any relevance there?

Could be that it’s easier to sing? I guess it would be fair to say that it’s a lot easier to tell a story without shouting. It’s also a completely different feeling … and a complete departure. It’s like missing the rush-hour and getting a seat on the bus.

Who or what are the particular influences in your style and songwriting?

There’s so many … Johnny Cash is obviously a huge influence, as is Richard Buckner, Tom Waits, Mark Lanegan, Damien Jurado and Steve Earle. There’s been other artists that I’ve heard over the years that have had an impact on what I’d like to bring to my music, but I always tend to come right back to those early influences.

Where does Jim Dead and the music come from?

I have an interest in the mysterious, and that Golden Age of Medicine Shows and Carnivals. It’s about a community that existed back then, where those sorta shows would come along and stir up the imagination of the locals … so I write about everyday things that happen in a sleepy town called Deadsville.

Go Tell the Congregation was all about hope … and the familiar settings for bleak Americana records, but it was doing things a little different without being gimmicky. For me the album was a reaction, and exploring how people react to things.

Your album was a stripped down affair, the EP with the Doubters had more flesh on it. Will you be pursuing one of these directions or continuing on both fronts?

At the moment I’m working on my own and with the Doubters. Most gigs that I’ve played have been solo, though those guys had been involved in two great events at the end of last year. Essentially it’s solo where I get the most enjoyment … maybe because that’s how the songs were written and nothing gets lost. But it’s been great to see how the songs translate with those guys and I’m sure I’ll keep recording with them and we’ll do some shows. I see The Doubters as a collective … and there’s still work to be done. I want to stretch myself … see what we can do.

Aside from the usual suspects you mention Giant sand/Howe Gelb as influences, when did you hear of them? Anyone else that you haven’t mentioned?

A friend of mine introduced me to Giant Sand … there’s something about the sound that just pulls me in. At times it’s ramshackle. And when you listen to their discography it’s sorta like listening to Howe Gelb’s never-ending road trip … crazy, vibrant, dusty and tired.

Whiskeytown, The Afghan Whigs are also great bands that have a bit of an influence in how I structure things.

Current favourite albums/songs?

Surprisingly I think Johnny Cash is the only ‘country’ artist that I’ve been listening to. American VI was a huge record … I just think it’s great. I’ve been listening to Mos Def [The Ecstatic] and the Wu-Tang Clan [Iron Flag and 8 Diagrams] … though I guess you could say that there’s a link between Hip-Hop and Country. And a friend of mine has introduced me to James Apollo. And Craig Hughes’ Pissed Off, Bitter and Willing to Share.

Finally, what’s coming up. Anything you want to plug?

Since this is a wonderful chance to plug myself, my debut record, Go Tell the Congregation, is available via iTunes, CDbaby and Amazon MP3 … all the latest Jim Dead news is on MySpace.com/JimDead.

I have a few gigs coming up which should be great. I’m playing Café Tibo on Duke Street with Lou Vargo on April 18th … I’m particularly looking forward to that. Then I’m playing at That Devil Music (The State Bar) alongside Craig Hughes and Man Gone Missing on May 7th. The Doubters are playing The Free Candy Sessions at The Liquid Ship on Great Western Road on May 14th.

I’m also working on some new songs and I’m hoping to get some new music out there soon.

Best of luck with that then.

Bone Blue Moon when done with The Doubters has a forlorn, fatalistic sense about it. The electric guitar sings as if in a canyon and Dead sounds like he’s kinfolk of Will Oldham on a song that drinks deep from the dark well of American folk. On the same song and shorn of the ornamentation provided by the band the solo Dead sounds as if he’s been touched by the ghost of Harry Smith. Spooky stuff indeed..

Check him out here

Jim Dead and the Doubters. Bone Blue Moon

Jim Dead. Before I Die