Musically the record is full of foot-tapping, hand-clapping melodies tied together by the banjo riffs of Luke Anderson.  It’s not that the other instruments play any less a part in the overall sound, it’s just there’s something binding about the banjo parts throughout the disc.  A little to the left of this center is an old-timey sound like on Where the Winter Goes.  To the right is a rock-laced Americana sound of songs like Waitin’ On the Sun that reminded me of early Tom Petty or his Mudcrutch alter ego.

I think it’s the stories that really shine on this album, though.  54 Miles tells the tale of a fan going to an EBJ concert (and has a kind of hall of mirrors feel when the band sings about going to see said band).  My Old Pickup Truck could be a bluegrass anthem to well-loved vehicles everywhere.  Talkin’ To John About the Weather gets a little more philosophical when it goes into the difficulty of trying to create the sound of winter when it’s not snowing, or singing about the virtues of whisky when there’s not an open bottle in front of you.  My favorite is probably Sittin’ By the River, which is about, well, just sitting by the river and enjoying what life is sending your way.  Or maybe it’s a metaphor for something deeper and I just never felt the need to probe it any further.  Same thing.

 Eastbound Jesus clearly has a great attitude about their music.  Their first album was called Greatest Hits, Volume 1.  Where this has progressed to on Northern Rock is a record without pretension that’s just a lot of fun, and perfect for your summer listening pleasure.

 Shawn Nelson and The Good Buds – Enough

Back in 2011 I reviewed San Juan Street from Shawn Nelson and was enamored of the protagonist perspective in many of his songs along with the variety of musical influences.  So I was happy to see he has an EP out with his band, now known as The Good Buds.  This project has some of that feel, but seems to concentrate on the philosophy of getting by in today’s world when you’re part of the 99%.  It’s not exactly feel good music, but it never crosses the line to melancholy or tears-in-your-whisky music.  And the EP does finish with a nice finger snapping tune, Yea Ya Right, that name checks a lot of Texas music favorites.  The music itself is well crafted and along with a particular style of laid back delivery I found this to be a really compelling listen.  The only disappointment is there are just 4 songs.

 Western Youth – Leaving the Station

This is the debut record from an Austin-based band that struck that vein in my arm where the rock and roll goes.  Part Ryan Adams, part Reckless Kelly or Drive By Truckers, the 5 songs here have you playing air drums on a frequent basis.  Somewhere, Somehow and Black Freightliner are straight ahead roots rock, while Waste Of Time kicks it up a notch with some horns that add another tasty layer on top for when too much is just enough. Should’ve Been Me leans more to a ballad tempo, but with a feedback vamp Crazy Horse would be proud of.  Falling Down explores the alt country side of roots music and is the song I find myself going back to most often.

 Wicked Saints – Don’t Kill the Blackbird

The third EP gem I’ve picked up lately is from LA-by-way-of New-Orleans band Wicked Saints.  There’s a lot of ear candy in these songs.  So the title track has its going down the road feel, but with a sweet banjo groove.  Baby Gray Bird is an acoustic Sunday morning song with a Great Gig In the Sky moan that’s just perfect.  Roll With the Changes starts with an almost chant.  Pavan has this slightly discordant sound that injects not just a sound but a jittery feel to the music.  The info for this collection is that it’s the first seven finished songs from an upcoming LP.  If the rest of that record is anything like this EP it’s going to be a dynamite release.

I suppose there are a couple of main points to drive home about this record.  The first is the variety of musical influences Russell showcases, whether intentionally or not.  On Sweeter Than the Scars, the opening cut, I found myself thinking of Leon Russell and that casual feel and delivery.  Song Of Lime Juice & Despair certainly calls to mind Jimmy Buffet, but with a mastery of yodeling that no Parrothead would recognize.  Limpia Hotel is a delightful honky-tonk Hawaiian waltz about west Texas.  And in the intentional category, the band does a cover of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes hit from the 70′s, If You Don’t Know Me By Now.

The second point is Russell’s ability to turn a phrase.  As someone who chooses to try to write something people will enjoy every week, I can’t get enough of his lyrics.  Take that opening cut, Sweeter Than the Scars, where he observes: “Dreams are about the future—-Songs are about the past—-Sometimes it takes a suture—-To make the feeling last.”  An elegant way of saying hurts so good.  On Take Me Lake Charles he doesn’t just sing about looking forward to the casino, he boasts, “Twenty-one’s coming I can feel it in my bones—-I’ll have to change my name to Savings and Loan.”  In Sweet Potato he leads with a description of personality if I’ve ever heard one, “My lips are chapped—-But they crack with flavor.”

 Gulf Coast Museum is pretty well impossible to categorize.  There’s no one theme that I can discern.  The musical style, while certainly Americana, is broadened by a crack set of musicians that stretch genres with ease.  In the lyrical category Kevin Russell can tell a story of time or place, or just make observations on life.  This isn’t some break-up album or venting at some political or business target.  So at the end of the day what I’m left with is this album is greater than the sum of its parts and a spectacular example of what craftsmanship in music sounds like.

Who Was That Band? Festivals like this always have impromptu appearances by various musicians in sets by their friends.  OSMF is certainly no exception.  The best one I saw was half of Milk Drive sitting in for much of the Wood & Wire set on Thursday night.  Very appropriate that this was at the campground stage as late night jamming at OSMF is how Wood & Wire got together.  A somewhat surprising set on Saturday late afternoon as The Reivers took the stage to promote their first album in 22 years.  But the clear winner in this category was Casey Driessen and his Singularity project.  Featuring, well, no one but himself, he managed to extract virtually every instrument out of his fiddle except horns.  And that was probably just because he didn’t want to show off.  Half the people back stage were fiddle players.

Jerry Douglas

 Rock and Roll!!! Although ostensibly, at least originally, a bluegrass festival, OSMF director Jean Spivey does a magnificent job of mixing up the music and keeping things fresh.  There’s always a little rock and roll and this year was no exception.  Son Volt played a set that reminded you of who put the Alt in Country.  After seeing The Dunwells here and last fall in a Friday-evening-in-the-park appearance in Nashville, I have to say these guys are just one brief hit from the arena circuit.  But I don’t think anyone topped Jerry Douglas and his band for rocking out the crowd.  Playing a number of songs from his recent Traveler album that featured nobodies like Eric Clapton and Dr. John, Douglas was bringing it home.

Elephant Revival

 Old Is New  Traditional Americana music is a key ingredient of OSMF and there are always highlights here.  Della Mae put on awesome shows both Thursday night and Friday afternoon.  The Carolina Chocolate Drops had the crowd besides themselves dancing to everything from Haitian a capello to a version of the Johnny Cash/June Carter hit, Jackson.  My favorite, though, was Elephant Revival with its blend of Billie Holiday-era jazz and modern folk that comes across as a sort of updated Fairport Convention.

Peter Rowan

 New Is Old  Not far from traditional Americana is the idea of putting a new spin on an old classic.  The Giving Tree Band had their feet planted firmly in the 70′s with their covers of The Band, The Faces, and The Grateful Dead in one ecstatic 3-song romp on Thursday night that had the campground sparking it up.  The Gourds did an awesome version of Werewolves of London in their closing set Saturday night.  But the highlight here was definitely Peter Rowan covering Peter Rowan with a salsa version of Panama Red that was so in-the-moment for a sun-soaked Saturday afternoon.

Top Showman If you spend much time at festivals you start to gain an appreciation for how some musicians can just charm a crowd with their presence and charisma.  You have to give kudos to Slim Richey, a fixture on the Austin music scene, for pulling together a last minute fill-in band to cover a cancellation that featured Dennis Ludiker of Milk Drive.  They were having so much fun it was contagious.  It’s hard to top Kevin Russell and The Gourds for a party band that flat-out owns any venue they play.  On this beautiful weekend in April, though, the honors went to Fred Eaglesmith and his Traveling Steam Show.  Part 60′s blues review (with the band dressed to generate the heat for steam), part vaudeville with Fred’s corny jokes, and part political tent revival, their closing shows Thursday night and Friday night were a spectacle.

Her latest record is Thorn In My Heart and although producer Neilson Hubbard extracts fine performances from Richey and her bandmates it’s the songs that keep pulling you back in.  The hooks are just all over the place.  Take my favorite from the album, No Means Yes.  It’s a catchy sweet, slow waltz with good country piano that’s a very traditional sound.  But even better she reminds us “it feels so right to be so wrong” and no means yes could be an anthem to having fun when you know better.  Or Angel’s Share about addiction where you “drink it up til there’s nothing left but the angel’s share”.  Sad, but so true.

The overall feel of the album is clearly a country record.  The title song, and opening tune, sets the right precedent as something you just know you’ve heard on the radio, although you almost certainly haven’t.  Breakaway Speed isn’t just another song about leaving someone, but about doing it as fast as you can, “breakaway speed.”  London Town is a foot-tapper and benefits greatly from some choice trumpet bits.  The non-standard country instrumentation also takes center stage on Love Is, where a clarinet adds just the right amount of melancholy.

It’s nearly impossible to listen to Thorn In My Heart and not think so-and-so really needs to sing this song for a couple of the selections.  Play the what-if game and see what you think.  For me, I think Margot Timmons has to tackle the overwhelming weariness of Take Me To the Other Side.  And I want to hear Erika Wennerstrom power chord her way through I Will Wait, that here Kim records with Trisha Yearwood, the singer of that Grammy nominated Richey song.

Burning Days is more wide-ranging and shows the breadth of talent of not just Beck and Cauthen, but also their band.  One of the things that shows up more is a kind of indie rock bent.  Only God Can Take A Woman isn’t just indie, but has some hints of psychedelia to it.  A Keep Austin Weird influence I suppose.  The title track has some pop syncopation to it.  Feel the Fall, my favorite tune of the album, starts with the familiar moment of hum when a guitar is plugged into an amp and then proceeds down a fine lo-fi path.  It also has my favorite line of the disc, “does a heart make a sound if it breaks when no one is around?”

Fans of the first album shouldn’t despair too much, though.  The group didn’t entirely abandon their Americana harmonies.  To Whom is full of them, with a touch of the Everly Brothers thrown in.  Almost There starts in that vein, too, but then goes for a little more guitar show-of-force.  Selfish Mind combines the acoustic guitar and banjo with some pedal steel like what so rounded out their debut sound.  Not too far afield, the opening number, Hurt Someone, and the closer, The Mansion, both have a bit of Mumford-ish in them that frankly suits this band pretty well, too.

 If you’re new to Sons Of Fathers you’ll enjoy the harmonies and catchy lyrics of Burning Days.  If you were a big fan of the debut, give this one a second listen because the expansion of their sound points to bigger and better things as the band’s recognition grows.

Brand New Day, the upcoming debut release under the band’s new nom de plume, weaves tales of lives adrift in a new reality, all set atop a superb Americana soundtrack.  Good And Sober, perhaps my favorite NAF song of the album, weighs in on the revelation for why it’s finally time to find a cure, “when I was a boy each day was a gift, and I want to unwrap them again.”  Everywhere, the competing nomination to Good And Sober, is a lighthearted, jangly romp featuring Gene Parsons on banjo that clearly invokes his Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers heritage.

Philosophically, the album contains a couple of bookends: Hypocrite, a feel guilty, NOT, anecdote about the 1 percent, while How Do We Do It covers the less upbeat choices of the 99 percent, boosted in its loneliness by the sound of the single piano of Paul Knowles, half of the New American Famers duo, run through the echo machine.  I also have to point out there are several sweet, sweet injections of trumpet from Nicole Storto, the other half of the duo, notably Don’t Wait For Me Here and Faking the Divine.

 I have to close my review of this extremely well-crafted project with a shout-out for the cover of the 70′s Electric Light Orchestra hit, Can’t Get It Out Of My Head.  Although I always liked the original, it was clearly a victim of the production excesses realized with the recent introduction of 24 track recorders.  Knowles strips it to its elements and then, with the assistance of the Real Vocal String Quartet, reconstructs it to outshine the original.  It’s yet one more example of how New American Farmers are embracing many of the early influences of Americana, and then rearranging them to build the new musical life of the inhabitants of Mars, Arizona.

“There is a world of wisdom inside a fiddle tune”- Jay Farrar, Down the Highway

Honky Tonk is a surprising return to form for Jay Farrar.  A country rock pioneer who co-fronted the legendary Uncle Tupelo, Farrar’s post-Tupelo work has been decidedly mixed. His first record under the Son Volt moniker was the iconic Trace, which is thought by many to be one of the crowning achievements of the No Depression scene of the 1990’s. Since the release of Trace, Farrar has drifted. He’s produced a half dozen records under the Son Volt moniker, including 4 with this new lineup christened in 2005. He’s also collaborated on projects with the likes of Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Anders Parker (Varnaline), Will Johnson (Centro-Matic), Steven Drozd (The Flaming Lips), and Ben Gibbard (Death Cab). But, he’s never made anything that approached the standard set with Trace. For my money, Honky Tonk at least approaches that standard.

The biggest problem with Farrar is also his biggest asset, his voice. It is a dusty baritone that once described as so evocative that he could sing the dictionary and people would still listen. Unfortunately, that analogy has proven more apt than one would have thought. Farrar has a tendency to write lyrics that show off an overly verbose vocabulary and even worse has at times sounded exactly like he was singing the dictionary. The latter issue is what really lowered the stakes for me. Farrar’s lethargic delivery causes the listener to lose (or never accept) the emotion of the song. Luckily, Farrar seems more energetic than he has in years on Honky Tonk.

 The dueling fiddles that open the record announce a different sort of Son Volt record. Though most of the record is not quite as honky tonk as the title would have you believe, the record does ring with a more traditionalist attitude. Whether it’s inspiration from the classics, the adding of lap steel guitar to his list of credits, or just a good batch of songs, Farrar’s performance on this record finds an emotional resonance that causes the listener to commiserate. Highlights include the Trace-like Wild Side and the quotable Down the Highway, which recalls the classic, stripped down Uncle Tupelo record March 16-20, 1992.

Eli Petersen

The name of this album, Honky Tonk, says it all.  It’s filled with pedal steel and fiddles in addition to the guitars and drums you expect from Son Volt.  The set list for the disc is mostly filled with country waltzes and 2-step honky tonk ballads.  Half of the songs would be at home on any jukebox on any dive in middle America.

Fortunately for Jay Farrar fans, he keeps his lyrical talent pushing forward, even as the music harkens back to a simpler time in country music.  On Livin’ On he suggests that “without time, there is no devotion.”  On Barricades he admonishes “don’t let the barricades of life keep the wild spirit still.”  That’s pretty much what you expect from a Son Volt song.

What grabbed me about Honky Tonk, though, was the music.  Arguably it’s the next logical step from Farrar’s original country rock influences like Graham Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers.  With the classic country back-beat, songs like Hearts And Minds and Wild Side could segue straight into today’s alt country or just as easily introduce a Patsy Cline number.  At the end of the day that’s what attracted me so much to this record.  It’s classic sound will play just fine on today’s alt-outlaw-alternative radio channels as easily as it would in any of the sh*t kicker bars where I grew up.

It’s been 8 years since the last record from the band and In Time is probably everything you would expect if it had been more like 8 months.  The Voice, the horns, and the electric guitars are all there.  I suppose that combination of instruments dates back to Doug Sahm and the Sir Douglas Quintet.  Aside from The Mavericks and Calexico, though, there’s still almost no one taking advantage of the great sound they create together.

Many of the songs on the album are the mix of salsa (samba? Cubano? I don’t know my Latin genres very well), country and rock-and-roll that makes The Mavericks so unique and their sound so quickly identifiable.    Back In Your Arms Again, Lies, Fall Apart and Come Unto Me all fall into that category, as well as a separate Spanish language version of Come Unto Me.

 What makes the record special, though, is several cuts where the band pushes at the corners of their typical sound.  That’s Not My Name is a Patsy Clink-like waltz from the golden age of country music.  As Long As There’s Loving Tonight is a rockabilly piece that Brian Setzer really needs to cover.  Finally, there’s Call Me When You Get To Heaven, featuring the mythical McCrary Sisters, that builds to a long crescendo finish like a Latino Hey Jude.

If you’re already a Mavericks fan you’ll no doubt love this In Time.  It’s good.  And if you didn’t get a chance to become a fan the first time around here’s your opportunity to pick up where you never started.

Featuring former members of South Austin Jug Band and Green Mountain Grass among others, Wood & Wire build on a couple of musical themes in their self-titled recording debut.  The first vein is a slightly cynical version of the world from the perspective of a ne’er-do-well.  Mexico tells of an escapee’s run to the border, complete with the presumably mirror-shaded pursuer’s constant admonition, “what say you lay down that gun, son.”  Nowhere and Gone reminds us of the less glamourous side of being on the road, and is punched up with some fine fiddle from guest Brittany Haas.  My favorite of the entire album, though, is Rollin’ In the Washingtons.  While much of America thinks stacks of hundreds is what defines excess, the boys in the band sing an ode to how much fun starving musicians can have with a much more modest stash.

The second musical vein is a more traditional bluegrass set.  Bet the World with its chorus of “I bet the whole damn world that the sun don’t shine like it does when you’re mine”, is an unabashed love song.  Coal Mining One tells of the time when the company store was the place that had everything you needed, even if it had nothing you wanted.  Fool Out Of Me is, in my opinion, the best of this lot.  Recorded around a single microphone, it just oozes Depression-era acoustics with the sweet vocal harmonies.

 On a final note I have to mention that the nucleus of Wood & Wire came out of a late, late night jam at one of my favorite festivals, Old Settler’s Music Fest.  It just goes to show you can’t predict inspiration, but if you’re open to hearing something new you can absolutely witness it.