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

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.

Madison Violet. The Good in Goodbye.

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Back again after the festive break what better way to start Blabber’n’Smoke’s year than with a review of this Canadian duo with strong Scottish roots who are appearing as part of the forthcoming Celtic Connections.
Madison Violet moved on from their early pop rock sound (as Mad Violet) to embrace an earthier and countrified approach on their last release, No Fool For Trying. The result was almost universal praise with Americana UK calling them the best thing to come out of Canada since the McGarrigles. While we wouldn’t go so far as to say that there’s no doubt that they seemed set to become one of the bigger names on the Americana circuit.
Two years later The Good in Goodbye revisits territory covered in No Fool For Trying and is again produced by Les Cooper who also contributes various stringed instruments. With such a winning formula the old adage “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” applies and anyone who enjoyed the last album will certainly enjoy this.
Brenley MacEarchen and Lisa MacIssaac, (good Scots names) both sing wonderfully with their voices folding into each other on their harmonies. Cooper’s production is sympathetic and crystal clear while avoiding any sense of an airbrushed studio gloss. The songs themselves range from the country hoe-down of the traditional Cindy Cindy, the Stray Gator thunk of Come As You Are to the relatively unadorned celebration of a centenarian relative called Christy Ellen Francis that is sure to be a crowd pleaser (with the audience singing at the end) at their gigs. With just enough mandolin, Dobro and fiddle to satisfy the folk crowd while maintaining a very radio friendly sound expect to hear songs from this album appear on your favourite Americana, country and folk radio shows. Touring the UK over January and February they appear at Celtic Connections on 31st January and the album is available next week.

website

Come As You are