David Banks. Until The End. Little Red Recording Co.

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a2418294322_16David Banks was a member of The Whybirds who flew the flag for UK Americana until they called it a day in 2017. A band composed of talented writers and singers, it was only to be expected that we’d hear more from the members and drummer, Luke Tuchscherer, was first out of the traps with three excellent albums to his name. Now, Banks steps up to the plate with an album engorged with glorious guitar flourishes which straddles the chiming world of power pop and gliding country rock. With Tuchscherer in the drum seat, Banks and producer David Corney provide the myriad guitars, keyboards, mandolin and Dobro, the trio sounding much larger than one would expect.

Someone To Lean On launches the album with a joyous rush of guitar charged rock which has the energy and immediate rush of Tom Petty’s American Girl and it’s Petty along with other stalwarts such as Big Star who are brought to mind as the disc plays on. Call Me Up has big brash chords and California harmonies while I Think I’m Gonna Be OK buzzes with the energetic fizz which characterised the Long Ryders in their heyday. Putting the flash bang wallop to one side there are some mellower numbers including Apologies From Sun St. and You Never Knew, both in the vein of Big Star’s Thirteen while The Best Of Me is the best Eagles song never recorded by the Eagles (back in the days when Jackson Browne was writing their hits).

It’s easy to toss around all these names and while the influences are undoubtedly, there Banks is no mere copyist. He captures the sounds and, importantly, the vibrancy, which informs the artists we’ve mentioned and pours out some grand songs, much in the way that Bennett Wilson Poole did last year. Have a listen to the closing title song and see if you are not bowled over.

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Luke Tuchscherer. Always Be True. Clubhouse Records

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a2490739415_16With The Whybirds, Luke Tuchscherer’s drumming “day job,” winding themselves up (final dates here here) Tuchscherer returns to his solo career following up his fine debut You Get So Alone At Times It Just Makes Sense from 2014. That album saw Tuchscherer named second best UK artist by Americana UK at the end of that year with the disc also reaching second place in the best album category. Three years on and he’s back with an album that is just a little bit more upbeat than its predecessor which owed much to the late Townes Van Zandt’s world weariness. Tuchscherer himself says, “I’m very proud of the first album and I was absolutely blown away with the reception it got, but as a performer, I found that I didn’t always want to play some of those songs live. A lot of those tracks only lend themselves to “sit down and shut up” venues, which I love playing, but they’re often hard to find! I wanted to make an album where I could play pretty much every song live – no matter the gig.”  Mind you, it’s not a bundle of laughs as Tuchscherer still injects an emotional heft into the songs, the almost sing-along jaunt of These Lonesome Blues barrels along with some jollity but it’s really all about him waiting for his old friend, the blues, to come calling.

There’s a lengthy cast list in the musician credits here but essentially Tuchscherer has assembled a crack team who purvey a fine country rock sound that can be acoustically snappy as on the Dobro driven Be True ( with BJ Cole on the Dobro) or glowering as the guitars are plugged in. At times it’s simply sublime; the swirling kaleidoscope of guitars (acoustic, electric, pedal steel) and keyboards on the yearning Amanda Jane is almost hypnotic while the cascading piano and guitars of Love Don’t Come Easy remind one of the Jayhawks at their best. Much of the album actually recalls the “new wave” of “alt country” acts who sprang up in the 1990’swith the first two songs (Waiting For My Day To Come and Don’t Put Me Out) quite propulsive, not as hard scrabbled as Uncle Tupelo but sharing that sense of tying up old time Americana with country rock and a post punk attack.  Don’t Put Me Out in particular is eminently listenable, a jangled pop song with honeyed pedal steel.

Tuchscherer hits the heights however with two songs that hark back to the seventies. The superb Outside Looking In, is a diatribe which is half disdainful, half self pitying as he gazes in at the other half, at the “total pricks talking shit in fancy dress.” The song itself is in fancy dress, a glorious conglomeration of pedal steel fuelled LA disdain somewhat akin to Gene Clark’s sumptuous Some Misunderstanding from No Other. When The Dream Dies is a seven-minute reverie ridden with curling, chunky and sinewy guitars slipping in between a series of vignettes of death and loss. This sense of loss closes the album as Tuchscherer sings the simplest of songs here, a rippling acoustic tribute to a dead friend on the touching A Song For Jack Brown.

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Best of 2014

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There’s a lot or pros and cons when it comes to listing end of year best ofs or favourites. Two years ago Blabber’n’Smoke eventually plumbed for the pros outweighing the cons so this is the third time we’ve presented what, when it comes down to it, is an arbitrary choice of remembered listen. Albums that have stood the test of (a relatively short) time, the ones we’ve returned to or recommended to others in the pub. Above all it’s been fun to look back, read the reviews and see if they still stand. So with this in mind the following are the official Blabber’n’Smoke 2014 picks, in alphabetical order.

Blue Rose Code. Ballads Of Peckham Rye
Birds Of Chicago. Live From Space
Fire Mountain. All Dies Down
Bradford lee Folk and The Bluegrass Playboys. Somewhere Far Away
Cahalen Morrison & Eli West. I’ll Swing My Hammer With Both My Hands
Jim Keaveny. Out Of Time
Parker Millsap. Parker Millsap
Michael Rank & Stag. Deadstock
Sturgill Simpson. Metamodern Sounds In Country Music
John Southworth. Niagara

Random honourable mentions go to

Lucinda Williams Down Where the Spirit Meets The Bone,
The Johnny Cash Native American album reboot, Look Again To The Wind,
Danny and The Champions Of The World’s Live Champs!
Dan Michealson & The Coastguards Distance
Cale Tyson’s EP, High On Lonesome,
Luke Tuchsherer’s debut You Get So Alone at Times It makes Sense,
Petunia’s Inside Of You,
Ags Connolly How about Now,
Chris Cacavas & Edward Abbiati. Me And The Devil along with Abbiati’s band Lowlands who delivered the excellent Love Etc.,
Zoe Muth. World Of Strangers,
Hank Wangford & The Lost Cowboys. Save Me The Waltz .
Grant Peeples and the Peeples Rebublic. Punishing The Myth.
Simone Felice. Strangers.
Bronwynne Brent. Stardust.
Sylvie Simmons. Sylvie (allowing an honorary mention here for Howe Gelb who produced).
The War On Drugs. Lost In The Dream.
Lynne Hanson. River Of Sand.
Gal Holiday & The Honky Tonk Revue. Last To Leave.
And finally John Murry’s EP, Califorlonia which is brilliant and hopefully just an appetiser for his follow up to the majestic Graceless Age.

Digging through the archives it’s been noticeable that there’s been a fine contribution this year from Scottish acts who dip into or draw from an Americana well to a greater or lesser extent. While Blue Rose Code’s Ballads Of Peckam Rye features above the following are all stellar contributions to the local scene.

Dropkick. Homeward
Dumb Instrument. The Silent Beard (with the Scottish song of the year, Suffering from Scottishness).
John Hinshelwood. Lowering The Tone.
The David Latto Band. Here Today, Ghost Tomorrow EP
Norrie McCulloch. Old Lovers Junkyard
The New Madrids. Through the Heart of Town.
Red Pine Timber Company. Different Lonesome
The Rulers Of The Root. Porky Dreams
Ten Gallon Bratz. Tales From The Long Shadows

Although his album, Little Glass Box came out in 2012, Fraser Anderson is a major find of the year while another local lad, Daniel Meade unleashes his Nashville recorded Keep Right Away in January. Hopefully folk will have long enough memories to recall this when it comes to compiling the 2015 lists. In the meantime it can be first on the New Year shopping list.

Luke Tuchscherer. You Get So Alone At Times That It Makes Sense.

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“Drummer makes solo album” is seldom a cause for celebration (there are exceptions of course, just see Levon Helm and Simone Felice) but in the main it’s not the best of news. It does help if the drummer in question has a track record as a writer and singer and Luke Tuchscherer ably manages both duties in addition to the sticks in his day job with country rockers, The Whybirds. While The Whybirds muscled up on their last release, A Little Blood, at times coming across as a power trio, here Tuchscherer goes in the opposite direction, ditching the rock in favour of an excellent set of acoustic based songs which hark back to seventies LA country folk with pedal steel, keyboards and occasional strings sweetening the mix.

The album title is a direct lift from a volume of poetry by Charles Bukowski, barfly and bum, a man able to create art from abject degradation and the privations of a serious drink habit. Gritty stuff but while Tuchscherer dwells for the most part here on lost love, fumbled lust and solace in drinking his writing is more of a doomed romantic bent with little of Bukowksi’s self disgust. Rather he recalls the existential emptiness of Townes Van Zandt, forlorn and resigned, telling a tale over which he has no control. Indeed there are moments on the album such as (To Make It Worse) I’m Falling In Love Again with its weeping cello and mournful harmonica which recall Townes on the likes of Our Mother The Mountain. There are shades of other forebears on the album with the snarly Dobro driven (Lord Knows) I’m A Bad Man recalling Steve Earle while Three Long Days lopes along like one of Steve Goodman’s bitter sweet laments. In the main however Tuchscherer takes on familiar styles delivering his downbeat tales with sweeteners such as the breezy Bakersfield sound on When Day Is Done and The Band like rootsy stomp of One Of Us. Women is a sprightly country gem of a song with some sparkling mandolin but the standout song is Hold On with its wearied vocal refrain and superb acoustic bedrock adorned by some evocative guitar stylings.

Tuchscherer’s blessed with a fine voice, slightly weary in its delivery and he’s ably supported by Whybirds band mates, Dave Banks on guitar, mandolin and banjo and Ben Haswell on guitar along with Max Hart on piano and pedal steel, Nick Mailing, bass, Simon Rinaldo, Hammond and Chris Corney on Dobro, banjo and lap steel at various times while producer Tom Peters handles drum duties. While the Whybirds remain a going concern it appears that Tuchscherer has assembled his own band, The Penny Dreadfuls, to accompany him on some live dates. Hopefully he’ll make an appearance north of the border at some point soon.

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