The opening song on the Robbie Walden Band’s latest album, When the Rooster Crows, is 50 Years Too Late. Â It’s appropriately named because the record is what it would have sounded like if Merle Haggard had done a concept album in the late sixties when The Beatles first popularized the idea. Â Lyrically the project follows […]
Twangville Premiere: Ronnie Fauss covers Merle Haggard
Back in a earlier time (e.g. 2 years ago), Tuesday was widely known among US music aficionados as album release day. Then the world changed when the music industry decided that Friday would be a much better day to unleash new music. Well, with an ode to that bygone Tuesday era, Twangville if offering up […]
Merle Haggard Remembered
The interwebs are, understandably, full of posts with people’s favorite Merle Haggard songs after the legend passed away on Wednesday. Â You could certainly do a lot worse than spending time listening to your favorites all over again, and maybe venturing out into a few you aren’t familiar with. But there’s a lot more we owe […]
Bakersfield – Review & Giveaway
Although we tend to think of the rebellion against the slick production values that Nashville country music is perhaps best known for as a fairly recent phenomena, it dates back over 50 years to a group of artists, and a Capitol Records producer, that called Bakersfield, California, home. Â The Bakersfield Sound eschewed the strings and […]
Twangville Presents… Bill Janovitz
Any discussion of Bill Janovitz will undoubtedly start with his tenure as a member of Boston-based trio Buffalo Tom. Â For more than 25 years the group has released an incredible catalog filled with emotionally charged rock and roll. Â Songs like “Tailights Fade” and “Sunday Night,” to name just a few, have a raw intensity […]
Monday Morning Video: Peter Wolf and Session Americana
“Now we’re gonna just kinda roll with it,†said Peter Wolf as he joined extraordinary Boston musicians Session Americana for a surprise set last week. Imagine Wolf playing a house party in your living room, sitting around a table with a group of extremely talented and relaxed musicians, and you’ll get a sense of this […]
Hayes Carll – KMAG YOYO
Producing some stellar, if not downright seminal, works can be a real pain for an artist. Ask Lucinda Williams what’s it been like to answer questions about why each of her albums can’t be Car Wheels on a Gravel Road? Ryan Adams has tried for years to overcome the “Where’s the next Heartbreaker?” stigma. Classic […]
Merle Haggard, with Kris Kristofferson – Live at Mountain Winery
Sometimes you just can’t make this stuff up. There we were, all 1800 of us, singing along with Joan Baez, that darling of the counterculture, “We don’t let our hair grow long and shaggy, like the hippies out in San Francisco do. And I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee.” The occasion was the […]
Carrie Rodriguez – Love and Circumstance
Lots of people have covered the Hank classics. Â The Carrie Rodriguez version of I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, on her latest record Love and Circumstance, ranks right up there with the best of them. Â With Carrie on mandolin and Bill Frisell on guitar, there’s a richness to the instrumental that complements Carrie’s vocals and […]
Ten for Oh-Ten
2010 is shaping up quite nicely, thank you. Here are ten upcoming releases whose arrival is eagerly anticipated at the Twangville general store. FREEDY JOHNSTON, Rain on the City (Release date January 12th) Has it really been eight years since Johnston’s last album of originals? Johnston’s instrument of choice is an acoustic guitar, all the […]