The best new-to-me act I saw a couple of weeks ago in Nashville at AmericanaFest was East Nashvillian India Ramey. Her music is a throwback combination of Bakersfield twang, New Jersey attitude, and Appalachian harmony. She threw in a little spaghetti-western flair and two-step rhythm on her recently released album, Baptized By the Blaze. The […]
Mayer’s Playlist for Summer 2024, Part 2
The Money or the Time, Goodnight Texas (from the 2 Cent Bank Check Records release Signals) Goodnight Texas have built a career around storytelling. Their early albums were thematic period pieces, snapshots of time vividly captured in song. Later albums, including the recently released Signals, may lack an overarching narrative but are no less compelling […]
Tony Martinez – Everywhere West
The story is not an unusual one. A successful sideman works his tail off for years, building his chops and accumulating a catalog of songs, or at least the scraps and pieces of them. Then one day kismet stops by and everything falls into place to release an album. That’s the short version of how […]
Lasers Lasers Birmingham – Mystery Highway
If you’re a musician in California, you can feel a bit cloistered. Between Palm Springs and Lubbock there’s a lot of not much. So faced with an 8+ hour drive to the next gig east of the Mojave, or picking up 4 gigs in the 400 miles from LA to San Francisco or Sacramento, it’s […]
American Aquarium – Fear of Standing Still
By the time most bands have released a dozen or so albums, they are past their prime. They may still be releasing solid material, but the zenith is clearly in the rear view. Thankfully American Aquarium isn’t most bands. BJ Barham’s band is scarred, and road worn for sure. Lineups have changed and morphed over […]
Mayer’s Playlist for Summer 2024
So Glad You Made It, Fantastic Cat (from the Missing Piece Group Records release Now That’s What I Call Fantastic Cat) Fantastic Cat showcase their humor by maintaining a countdown clock until they’re eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, prominently displayed at their shows. Yet, it’s not entirely a joke – if […]
Matt Hillyer – Bright Skyline
One of the by-products of our social media driven lives is that nothing can be just OK anymore. You can’t be good at something, you have to be fantastic. There’s no such thing as a bad day; it was terrible. Despite the sparkle from your feed, the unfortunate reality is most of us are just […]
Jenny Don’t & the Spurs – Broken Hearted Blue
Sound-color synesthesia is when a certain sound causes you to see things in a certain color. I don’t have it, but I experience a related effect when I listen to the latest from Portland, Oregon, based Jenny Don’t & the Spurs. It’s called Broken Hearted Blue and evokes the washed-out, slightly sepia-toned tint of an […]
VIDEO PREMIERE: Them Dirty Roses – Birmingham Steel (Lyric Video)
We at Twangville are thrilled to be premiering the lyric video for Alabama based Southern Rockers, Them Dirty Roses, latest single “Birmingham Steel”. The video highlights the history of the steel industry in Birmingham and the North Central part of the state where the band grew up. I must admit I share some of their […]
Grant Langston – aLAbama
There’s an axis on the songwriting philosophy spectrum that ranges from serious and important to fun and lighthearted. Country musician Grant Langston, originally from Alabama, but residing in LA for the last couple of decades, has spanned that entire range. His first couple of records leaned toward serious ballads, but his new one, aLAbama is […]