The Steve & Ben Somers Country Band. The Highway Is My Home

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Way back in the dark ages (well, the seventies) TV talent shows were fairly popular. This was of course way before the Simon Cowell perversities that pollute our minds these days. There was Opportunity Knocks and New Faces, the latter with a panel of judges who were in the main Tin Pan Alley types. I mention this as Steve Somers, father of Ben, notes in the liner for this album that his first break was as a winner on New Faces in the mid seventies, he even provides a link to a video of the performance on his website, a rabbit hole I fell into as I spent far too long watching related time capsules on YouTube. It certainly was a different world back then.

Anyway. Since then Steve’s kicked around the business playing and singing or supporting dozens of artists (Lonnie Donegan, Joe Brown, Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, Billy Jo Spears) and leading his own bands which have generally played Country and Western Swing. Ben’s been a musician for as long as he can remember and again has an impressive resume having worked with Dr. John, Taylor Swift, Seal and Dizzee Rascal (first time appearance for Mr. Rascal on Blabber’n’Smoke I believe).  Together the pair have played their favourite Country songs for some time but for The Highway Is My Home they’ve gathered together a tight little band to deliver 11 cracking slices of good old fashioned delights.

With Steve on acoustic guitar and Ben on double bass they share the vocals and are backed by Matt Park on pedal steel and Chris Haigh on fiddle with electric guitar duties shared between Rob Updegraff and Marcus Bonfanti. A talented bunch as a brief glance at their respective CVs will confirm and as such well able to nail the various strands of classic Country they tackle here. The guitars fizz and burn while the pedal steel is a delight throughout. The highlight is their version of Dallas Frazier’s Elvira goes back to its original Southern soul grit groove with Park and Updegraff’s respective solo turns quite magnificent.

Ten of the songs are covers, some familiar (TVZ’s Loretta, Bob Wills’ San Antonio Rose and Hank’s Jambalaya), others less so (Paul Burch’s If You’re Gonna Love (C’est Le Moment) and Sydney Bechet’s Wabash Blues). They’re all delivered with panache with the band dipping into Western Swing, bluegrass and lovelorn waltzes with an out and out rocker on the thrilling Seven Nights To Rock. The one self penned song, The Highway Is My Home, pales somewhat in comparison to its neighbours. A breezy number similar in vein to Gentle On My Mind it’s delivered excellently with some valiant fiddle and fluid pedal steel but ultimately it fails to pack the punch delivered by the other songs.

And if you want to watch the youthful Mr. Somers on New Faces look here.

Website

Floyd Domino and Maryann Price. Upfront. New Tex Records

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Floyd Domino and Maryann Price are both veterans of the Western Swing revival of the seventies, Domino most memorably as a member of Asleep At the Wheel while Price was the voice on several of Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks’ finest recordings. Both have extensive CVs beyond these achievements with Price being an integral part of the Kinks’ 1974 line up and also spending time with (those guys again) Asleep at The Wheel, Domino playing and recording with Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, George Strait and Waylon Jennings. So far so pedigree.

Upfront finds them in the company of Gary Bristol on bass and Michael Holleman, drums along with Kenny Kosek (ex Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band) on fiddle as they delve into the jazzier roots of their respective careers on a selection of covers and self penned originals that run the gamut from Annie Ross vocalese to Gypsy swing and some sumptuous late night jazz sophistication. Price’s voice has moved on from her Hot Licks days, a little lower, more experienced but with a fine sense of mischievousness lurking within while Domino’s piano shines like Oscar Peterson’s or even the Duke himself at times. Allied to some very fine fiddle from Kosek and the solid rhythm section the set is as tight as the proverbial duck’s A while retaining the essential element of swing with all of the numbers at the very least toe tapping or (on the slower numbers) causing the listener to cast about for a dance partner.

Aside from the performances the song selection is something of a triumph. No dog eared covers here that have been trampled to death in the past. Dan Hicks has two numbers featured, Cowboy’s Dream #19 and O’Reilly At The Bar both of which recall the Hot Licks’ hip reinterpretation of swing music with the latter’s bar fight shenanigans wonderfully portrayed. Henry Hipken’s Who Knows What Tomorrow Might Bring swings mightily with Chico Marx piano (only better played) and vibrant gypsy fiddle opening a world of romance and danger. Another Hipkens cover, I Must Be Doing Something Right has Price playfully adopting a naive innocence delivered with a Mae West tongue in cheek as the band lay down a fantastic backdrop, cheeky and elegant. On The Last Day Of Pompeii (by Michael Peter Smith) is another number that recalls the vapid elegance of the pre war jet set, fiddling while Rome burns ( to mix a metaphor) as Price relates all the things she could have done had she known the top was about to blow. Is All Of this For Me is a velvet curtain of a song, dinky, late night, almost orchestrated as the fiddle hovers over an excellent piano solo and a Noel Coward like stiff upper lip romance.

Price maintains the quality with Everybody’s Talking About The Same Thing a witty and coquettish inquiry into love while The Apology (co-written with Domino) allows her voice to slip and slide within an update of Julie London’s Cry Me A River. They close the album with the excellent The Damndest Finest Ruins, written by Domino that pulls in Steely Dan and Charlie Mingus with the vocals adorning the jazz chops of the band with Holleman sparkling on cymbals while Domino plays his best.

It maybe odd to find what amounts to a jazz album coming from Texas but these guys have the chops and the end result encapsulates music from New York to San Francisco with a detour south in between. Some time spent looking at the New Tex website shows that they have several other tasty offerings with Domino featuring on piano on The Great Recession Orchestra’s album, Double Shot, a tribute to the Mississippi Sheiks and 1940’s Texas swing while there’s a tribute to Milton Brown featuring many of the same players. Hear over here to check them out.

get the album here

June Bugs

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Old time American music continues today with countless proponents picking, strumming, fiddling and sometimes even yodelling, reaching back into the past and updating it with varying degrees of success. Here we have Western swing, Appalachian folk songs and bang up to date country rock.

The Quebe Sisters Band. Timeless

The Quebe Sisters Band are Texans who do like their Bob Wills and Spade Cooley. The three Quebe sisters all play fiddle and sing while Joey McKenzie strums and Drew Phelps’ upright bass provides the beat. The 14 songs here are all covers including “Across The Alley from the Alamo,” “Along The Navajo Trail” and “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” familiar songs, perhaps too familiar at times. That said the album starts off with a cracking “So Long To The Red River Valley” and when they tackle Billy Strayhorn’s “Take The A train” the fiddle playing and guitar sounds like Django and Grappelli duelling. Perhaps the only complaint about the album is that with the vocals sounding at times like the Andrews sisters this is a bit too retro, a bit too safe especially if you like a little bit of grit in your music.
The Quebe Sisters Band appear in the UK for the first time in July for a bunch of dates including The Cambridge Folk Festival.

Jeni and Billy. Longing For Heaven

Jeni and Billy trade in the same homespun feel as the Quebes although it belongs on the back porch as opposed to bars and dance halls. Theirs is the sparse folk sound of the mountains and backwoods folk, god fearing, hardworking, scraping a living but finding joy in family and friends. The pair play guitar, banjo and mandolin while Jeni Hawkins carries the vocals with Billy Kemp adding counterpoint. Together they create a warm, honest sound as natural as flowers in a field. With a mixture of traditional and original songs they sing of drunkards, jilted lovers and ruined lives. Half of these songs could be turned into tear-stained movies, “The Ballad of Sally Kincaid” tells of a girl seduced by a thieving preacher who hangs himself leaving her to end her days in shame. “Father Will You meet Me In Heaven” is the story of Johnny cash’s brother, Jack’s tragic death seen as a redemptive moment for their father’s godless ways. A previous album, Jewell Ridge Coal, documented the lives of miners in south-west Virginia and here they sing a song for Cecil Roberts, the President of the United Mine Workers of America. It’s a reminder that even these days mining is dangerous, deadly even.
A pretty stunning album for anyone into old-time Americana. Jenni and Bily are currently touring in England.

Zoe Muth and The Lost High Rollers.

Zoe Muth draws on classic country sounds with lashings of pedal steel and dobro and a voice that could have graced Nashville recordings anytime in the fifties to the present day. While the debt to tradition is there Muth and her band come across as an up to date Emmylou Harris and The Hot Band. Muth writes all of the songs with a worn and weary take on modern life, cosmopolitan as opposed to rural her lost souls are stuck in a neon lit nighttime dead end. The full band sound throbs and swings with some excellent playing, a rock solid rhythm section lay down a beat while steel guitar, dobro, banjo and mandolin hammer home the country roots. Over this Muth sings like a wounded angel, vulnerable yet tough and above all else she can write. All of the songs here have a hook that should have radio station playlisters drool. “Hard Luck Love” is a stone solid classic radio friendly song while “The Last Bus” is a superb portrait of a drifter drifting the lonely highways and bus stops, hungry and broke she can sing and play guitar but seems doomed to go on in ever decreasing circles. While this may be the highlight here Muth delivers again and again. “The Middle of Nowhere” is Loretta Lynn arriving in a big city while “Not You” is another Lynn type perky put down of a philandering partner. Overall this is a mighty fine album and Muth is definitely one to watch.

Listen here
The Quebe Sisters “So Long To The Red River Valley”

Jeni and Billy “I Saw A Man At the Close of Day”

Zoe Muth “Not You”