Favourite albums of 2015

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Well it’s that time of year again when we make up lists. Some get songs written about them (Santa’s naughty or nice one), some guide us around the supermarket, ensuring we don’t forget that all important stuffing. Blogs. Well, blogs do their “best of the year” lists so here’s Blabber’n’Smoke’s list of our favourite albums of the year. They’re not in any order (other than alphabetical) so there’s no number one and no losers, just some great music. 2015 was a bumper year for country music with young artists wresting the spotlight away from the ‘bros; back home there were some excellent releases that have received international recognition on websites, blogs and radio stations scattered across the globe. I’ve separated local releases simply because I think it’s important to highlight Scottish made music, had it been a straightforward top ten several of these would be in there. I’ve provided links to reviews where possible.

My thanks to all the artists, PR Agents and labels who have been kind enough to submit their efforts for Blabber’n’Smoke scrutiny, we love you. To them and to all readers have a happy festive season however you care to celebrate it.

Anna & Elizabeth. Anna & Elizabeth. Free Dirt records

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Brent Best. Your Dog, Champ. At The Helm Records/Last Chance Records

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David Corley, Available Light, Continental Song City

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Danny and The Champions Of The World, What Kind Of Love, Loose Music

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Justin Townes Earle. Single Mothers/Absent Fathers. Loose Music

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Barna Howard, Quite A Feelin’, Loose Music

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Sam Lewis Waiting On You. Brash Music

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Jeremy Pinnell OH/KY Sofaburn Records, 2015

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Michael Rank & Stag. Horsehair. Louds Hymn Music

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Daniel Romano, If I’ve Only one Time Askin’, New West Records

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Pharis and Jason Romero, A Wanderer I’ll Stay, Lula Records

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Sacri Cuori, Delone, Glitterbeat

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Cale Tyson, Introducing Cale Tyson, Clubhouse Records

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Homegrown

Stevie Agnew & Hurricane Road. Bad Blood & Whiskey. Skimmin’ Stone Records

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Dark Green Tree, Secret Lives, Haven Records

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James Edwyn & the Borrowed Band – The Tower

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Daniel Meade Keep Right Away. From The Top Records

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Iain Morrison. Eas. Peatfiredog Records.

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Findlay Napier. VIP Very Important Persons Cheerygroove Records.

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Dean Owens. Into The Sea. Drumfire Records

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The Wynntown Marshals, The End Of The Golden Age, Blue Rose Records

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Honourable mentions

Lewis and Leigh Hidden Truths EP.

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Blue Rose Code Grateful

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And that’s about it. Lots to look forward to in the New Year, not least albums from Norrie McCulloch and Blue Rose Code in the next few weeks and of course, Celtic Connections. See ya.

Glasgow Americana Roundup Pt. 3

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Sunday and the action has shifted from the South Side to the city centre, The CCA in Sauchiehall Street, for two shows, an afternoon matinee and the closing concert of the Festival, Hazy Recollections.

Krista Detor/Sam Lewis

First up was Krista Detor from Bloomington, Indiana accompanied by her husband, David Weber on guitar and Mike Lindauer on bass. For some reason Ms. Detor chose to place her keyboard front and centre on the stage with a cloth around it. Seated behind this she appeared at times to be interviewing the audience, at other times celebrating a religious rite with the keyboard an altar. Although no religion was involved there was at times an ecclesiastical feel which for this writer was emphasised by the resemblance of some of the songs to the late Judee Sill’s work, in particular the striking delivery of Clocks Of The World. Other songs, the languid Castle in Wales, the dream like Can I Come Over and For All I Know, a song dedicated to her son, were reminiscent of other songstresses from the early seventies such as Dory Previn and Joni Mitchell.

No shame in that of course as Ms Detor is a fine writer and well able to step away from the keyboard ballad (although not from behind the keyboard) to offer the bar room styled Steal Me A Car and the boho beat of Middle Of A Breakdown. In addition she donned accordion for her rousing version of the Cinderella story, Belle Of The Ball while her song introductions were a world away from the stately delivery of the ballads. Mention must be made of Weber’s guitar playing which adorned the keys wonderfully.

Sam Lewis sort of wandered on to the stage. Clad in denim, bearded and with long lank hair he seemed the epitome of the seventies minstrel, an image he didn’t attempt to dispel with his various references to his “recreational activities,” some of which were hilarious – at one point wandering over to the promo picture of himself projected onto the backdrop and saying, “I don’t remember this photo shoot at all.” Any notion that he is just a stoner with a guitar however soon evaporated as he worked his way through songs from his two albums (his greatest hits as he called them) along with some fine covers. A fine guitarist he managed to project the songs despite them being stripped of the fine arrangements, soul and country, which adorn them on the albums.

There’s no getting away from the fact that his voice sounds at times like James Taylor, at other times Dylan in Nashville circa ’69 but his writing and performance overshadows that, his opening gambit, Reinventing The Blues setting out his wares, laid back songs with a soulful country feel. Aside from the tales of high times Lewis explained the origin of some of his songs with a fine sense of dissection, the hypnogogic state described on In my Dreams and memories of his grandmother’s house on Virginia Avenue. He was fulsome in his praise for Fred Eaglesmith describing him as a mentor (and deriding him for his poor jokes) and paid tribute to Willie Nelson with a cover of Hands On The Wheel from Red Headed Stranger (acknowledging the song’s writer Bill Callery). Nelson was again mentioned as an influence when Lewis sang an excellent Never Again from his Waiting For You Album. His delivery here was superb and one was reminded of a visitor to last year’s festival, Sturgill Simpson who was about to go stratospheric. With the right breaks, Lewis could head in the same direction.

Thanks to Alistair Fleming for photography

Glasgow Americana Festival 2015 : 7th to 11th October.

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This week sees the ninth annual Glasgow Americana Festival and as always it’s an excellent opportunity to see and hear some top notch acts in an intimate setting far removed from the arenas and concert halls that often act as a barrier between audience and artist.

Festival director Kevin Morris will be no stranger to readers here as he is responsible for The Fallen Angels Club who promote shows throughout the year, his keen ear responsible for bringing the likes of Sturgill Simpson to Glasgow well before his star was in the ascendancy. The past week’s been a bit of a blizzard of last minute preparations for Kevin but he was kind enough to take some time to speak to Blabber’n’Smoke. We started by recalling the first festival back in 2007 which Kevin organised as a tribute to Billy Kelly, a key player in the local and national scene going back to the days of Mayfest and who was responsible for Big Big Country, Glasgow’s first Americana festival. Mary Gauthier appeared that year and was recorded in The Herald describing Kelly as “an angel,” his patronage among the significant stepping stones on a career that has taken her to Nashville as a major label recording artist.

Kevin: The Glasgow music scene sadly lost Billy in 2007 and he has been hard to replace ever since. Glasgow Americana has tried to fill the gap that was left after Billy’s sudden passing, and hopefully Billy is looking down us with an approving look at what we have achieved since we started in 2007. We always have a wish list year on year and go about trying to make it happen, we are lucky to have these amazing artists making the festival as part of their tours. We already have some ideas for both 2016 and 2017, so we will see what develops, but probably best to get the 2015 festival out the way first.

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Over the nine years there have been numerous artists performing but we wondered if there were any particular moments that stood out for Kevin

There have been loads and that it is a very good and a tricky question, I suppose one that does stand out was Alejandro Escovedo at The Arches in 2011. Also our Americana Saturday in 2012, we had Sam Baker playing the matinee show in The CCA and then Eliza Gilkyson play the evening show that year, that was a very special day indeed.

Kevin and his team are well known for their hospitality for the acts he puts on with many returning time and time again and who regard Kevin as a friend and not just the promoter. He told us a little bit about a special occasion for him earlier this year.

I have been very lucky with the people I have met through putting on shows, and have made so many friends from across the pond. Myself and my wife Lauren got married in Austin, Texas in June of this year. While we were there we met up with some musician friends that have played for us over the years, including Sam Baker, Eliza Gilkyson and Chip Dolan. On our wedding day we were very fortunate enough to have Alejandro Escovedo as a witness at our wedding ceremony over looking Barton Springs. Not your average day for a wee boy from Bothwell.

With that Kevin was back attending to business for what will be a busy week for him. The Festival kicks off on Wednesday 7th October with Bruce Cockburn playing at St. Andrews in the Square while Tom Russell plays the same venue on Friday 9th. Other venues are The Glad Cafe which has Danny Schmidt and Betty Soo on a matinee show on 10th October and Lewis & Leigh and Curtis McMurtry (son of James) that same evening while The CCA has Kathryn Williams and Michele Stodart (The Magic Numbers) on Thursday 8th October and a matinee show from Sam Lewis and Krista Detor on the11th.
The festival ends with Findlay Napier’s Hazy Recollections, his peripatetic event that showcases several acts and is hosted by Napier himself, the man responsible for one of the finest Scottish albums this year in his disc Very Important Persons. His VIPs for the night will be Sam Lewis, Dark Green Tree and Kera Impala and it’s shaping up to be a very interesting evening.

We’ll leave the final words to Kevin as we tried to get him to spill the beans on whether he had any particular artist or group who would be his ultimate Glasgow Americana catch, his “bucket list” as such. Kevin pondered on this before replying… Yes, but I’m not telling you anything else about that.

Full line ups and dates are here http://www.glasgowamericana.com/

Reviews of the latest albums from some of the acts are here
Sam Lewis
Lewis & Leigh
Tom Russell
Findlay Napier
Dark Green Tree

And finally here’s a clip of Sturgill Simpson closing last year’s Glasgow Americana Festival.

Sam Lewis. Waiting On you. Brash Music

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2015 is shaping up to be a bumper year with numerous releases mentioned previously on Blabber’n’Smoke (have a look around, I’m not going to recite them again) looking to settle into the “classic” album status once the dust has settled. Well, here’s another one, a superb collection of soulful country cuts from North Carolina via Nashville musician Sam Lewis. Waiting On You is Lewis’ second album and is the latest chapter in what could be considered a dream come true for this young musician. Apparently he’s yet another of those discovered at an open mic night good luck stories with Nashville producer Matt Urmey spotting his potential a few years back and hooking him up for his first release. Talent will out and if the quality of the backing musicians here is any gauge then Lewis has it in spades.

The album is excellent from start to finish. Lewis flows from country to folk to Southern soul with ease, his voice is a warm honeyed balm, at times recalling the ease of Charley Pride then heading into Dylan Nashville Skyline crooning mode. He gathers up antecedents such as Van Morrison, The Band and Dan Penn with Spooner Oldham and pours them into the songs. His regular band, JT Cure on bass and Derek Mixon, drums are joined by luminaries Darrell Scott, Mickey Raphael, Will Kimbrough and The McCrary Sisters although these are merely the icing on the cake – Lewis and his songs are the stars here.

There are 12 songs and each one is special. There’s the country element, sad and forlorn on Texas which is adorned by Raphael’s signature harmonica sound, down home country blues on Little Time with Kristina Train on backing vocals and dusty honky tonk on I’m Coming Home. 3/4 Time is a jaunty quickstep that funnels Sturgill Simpson into Van Morrison Tupelo Honey territory with some Sun Records action thrown in. Hard to believe perhaps but when the cork was popped on the song these were the aromas that wafted out. Time here to mention the production (by Lewis and Oliver Wood) as the drums and bass are so crisp and there’s a fine snap to the backing vocals, overall the album just sounds great, warm and comfortable.
Lewis dips his toes into soul waters with Waiting On You which actually recalls James Taylor initially before Gabe Dixon’s Wurlitzer piano wades in and The McCrary Sisters envelop the song in a Gospel veil. The McCrary’s feature again on the sublime country soul of Love Me Again which flows wonderfully with a similarity to Dylan’s Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You and on the slow burn of Talk To Me while She’s A Friend drives straight to the heart of Muscle Shoals territory with some Stax thrown in for good measure. There’s some bare boned folk blues on Virginia Avenue which has Lewis backed by the nifty resonator guitar picking of Welsh wizard Martin Harley and to top it all there’s a roustabout rock’n’roll jaunt on Things Will Never Be The Same with Garth Hudson rinky dink organ swirlings from Dixon and killer guitar from producer Wood.

A great album, perfect from start to finish and obviously well recommended. Good news is that Lewis is touring the UK in October including a date for Glasgow Americana Festival. Dates are here.

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you can hear some songs from the album here and there’s an interview with the man here