Blabber’n’Smoke’s Top Ten for 2013

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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.

Mark Collie & his Reckless Companions. Alive At Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary.

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We presume that everyone in the world with an ounce of sense has copies of or knows about Johnny Cash’s prison albums recorded in Folsom and San Quentin. They added an outlaw sense to Cash’s reputation, he seemed to be at one with the inmates. a jailbird made good ( although he never did time, just nights in the cells for drug busts and weirdly enough picking flowers). We mention this because the Cash albums are the template for this fine document, Alive At Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary, an album recorded 12 ago but shelved after it was the victim of record label politics at MCA.
Country artist Mark Collie knew Cash and in the late nineties he decided to emulate the man in black with his own prison concert firmly believing in the power of song and hoping that he could inspire at least some of the inmates to reconsider their paths. Weaving his way through red tape he eventually pitched up at Tennessee’s toughest jail in October 2011 with a stellar band and guests, the results of which are finally unveiled here. It’s a glorious recording and while the songs don’t have the familiarity that Cash’s songs had when he played his gigs they have a full bodied band feel to them with Collie and crew pitching country, rock, blues and gospel songs with energy to burn. The Reckless Companions include Willie Weeks on bass, David Grissom, guitar, Chad Cromwell, drums, Shawn Camp and Mike Utley, keyboards, all seasoned veterans who have played with the likes of the stones, Clapton, Joe Ely, John Mellencamp, Dylan, Neil Young, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson so not your average pick up band. In addition Collie brought up the venerable bluesman Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown who delivers the solid Someday My Luck Will Change along with some tasty guitar licks and Kelly Willis (imagine the audience’s reaction) who offers two songs, the sparkling Heaven Bound and the chuck Prophet written Got A Feelin’ For Ya which she delivers with a blowsy abandon, God knows why there wasn’t a riot.
Collie and the band deliver the goods throughout the album as he raps with the inmates and then launches into songs he wrote with the gig in mind. They’re hard luck tales, songs of redemption and ruin bolstered by gutsy playing. On The Day I Die is a death row epic where Collie sings “In the morning they’ll come and I’ll break my last bread and the preacher will read while they’re shaving my head” Dead Man Runs Before He Walks is a prison escape song which draws an energetic response from the inmates while the opening lines of I Could’ve Gone Right, “Twenty third birthday I picked up a gun, this time to get my dope I had to kill someone” is a sucker punch for the captive audience. The band deliver Doug Sahm type Texas tales (Maybe Mexico), country laments (Rose Covered Garden) and hard driving rock (Reckless Companions) with equal aplomb and it’s exciting to listen to these down the line. A cover of Folsom Prison Blues that brims with energy caps it all.
A worthy companion to the Cash discs this is a vibrant and ultimately uplifting listen and if there’s anything criminal about it it’s the fact that Collie had to wait over a decade to see it realised.

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