Twangville

A music blog featuring Alt-Country, Americana, Indie, Rock, Folk & Blues. Est. 2005.

Now & Then: The Deslondes’ Don’t Let It Die: Vol. 1 and the reach of The Blasters’ American Music

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The Deslondes’ Don’t Let It Die: Vol. 1 is a covers album with a clear purpose: to show where the band comes from and who they listen to. The record draws from country, soul, R&B, swamp pop, and roots music, with songs associated with artists including Swamp Dogg, Johnny Cash, Clifton Chenier, Shelby Lynne, Pat Reedy, and The Kernal. For a “Then” comparison, The Blasters’ 1980 debut American Music is a strong match. It is also a roots-minded record built from older American styles, balancing original songs with covers that show the band’s musical foundation.

Now & Then: Ryan Bingham & The Texas Gentlemen’s They Call Us The Lucky Ones and the reach of Doug Sahm and Band

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Texas music has always had a loose gate policy. Country can walk in with muddy boots, blues can grab the good chair, and somebody will eventually find an accordion. Ryan Bingham & The Texas Gentlemen’s They Call Us The Lucky Onesfits the house-party tradition: a road-worn singer stepping into a band that knows when to lean hard and when to let the dust hang in the air. Its clearest ancestor is Doug Sahm’s 1973 solo debut Doug Sahm and Band, the big-hearted Atlantic Records record that treated Texas roots music like a borderless language. 

Now & Then: Whitehorse’s All I Want Is All of It and the reach of Barton Hollow

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Whitehorse have always made tension sound like a room two people refuse to leave. On All I Want Is All of It, Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland return to early folk-rock romanticism with the mileage of a long musical and marital partnership, recorded with a ragged, farmhouse-studio looseness that lets the floorboards speak up too. The “Then” that helps frame it is The Civil Wars’ Barton Hollow, a 2011 touchstone for modern male-female roots duos built on intimacy, friction, and the dangerous sport of singing very close together. 

Now & Then: Hiss Golden Messenger’s I’m People and the reach of Veedon Fleece

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A good Hiss Golden Messenger record does not arrive like a statement from a mountaintop. It pulls up beside you at a gas station, coffee gone cold, with a half-finished thought about mercy, children, money, God, and whether the map is helping. I’m People fits that line perfectly: a road record with home on its mind, full of M.C. Taylor’s worn-in gospel of doubt and persistence. For a “Then,” Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece makes the sharper companion, not because Taylor sounds like Morrison, but because both albums use travel as a way to measure the soul’s weather.

Now & Then: The Milk Carton Kids’ Lost Cause Lover Fool and the reach of Bookends

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Some duos sing together. The Milk Carton Kids still seem to share one lung. On Lost Cause Lover Fool, Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan return to the close-mic folk architecture that made them feel less like revivalists than custodians of a fragile old machine. The “Then” is Simon & Garfunkel’s 1968 Bookends, a record that proved two voices and sharp writing could carry the weight of memory, aging, distance, and national unease without raising the temperature much above a murmur. Lost Cause Lover Fool was released April 24, 2026, with nine songs on Far Cry Records/Thirty Tigers.