Here’s a fascinating first album to review in 2023. Grey DeLisle put her musical career on hold for fifteen years while raising a family but, like many others, the pandemic changed her plans and she found herself revisiting her favourite songs and uploading covers of them to social media. In turn, this led to working with producer Marvin Etzioni on a covers album, and what an interesting set of covers they are. She’s now working on an album of originals for release this year. Grey’s been compared to Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette but, with the odd exception, these songs aren’t heartbreak country.

You wouldn’t expect a country artist to be covering ‘Another Brick in the Wall’, would you? No, but that’s the album’s opening song and Grey obeys the First Rule of Covers Club; make the song your own. Whereas the Pink Floyd original is strident and confrontational, with a full band sound, Grey’s version is much slower and built around an arrangement that’s paradoxically minimal but with a full band plus strings and horns. Grey’s vocal doesn’t push hard, but it’s close-miked and dominates the mix.

The straightforward country songs like ‘Tonight You Belong to Me’, ‘Borrowed and Blue’ and ‘Valentine’ are delivered beautifully with Grey’s voice evoking the Queens of Country (more Dolly and Patsy than Loretta and Tammy to my way of thinking) with the usual side orders of strings and pedal steel; it’s on the songs with less traditional arrangements that Grey and the band work their magic.

Just a few examples for you. ‘Girl’ is a reworking of an ’Electric Warrior’ T Rex song in triple time with a gorgeous string section replacing the horns from the original, while Marie Knight’s ‘Calvary’ starts as a straightforward gospel song at the lower end of Grey’s vocal range before the first chorus erupts into a New Orleans jazz funeral with strident horns. And let’s not forget John Barry’s Bond theme ‘You Only Live Twice’, (with The Satellites Four) delivered in a very easy listening style Grey’s take on ‘Georgia on My Mind’ at the higher end of her vocal range adorned by some plaintive harmonica from Mickey Raphael (Willie Nelson’s harmonica player).

‘Borrowed’ certainly demonstrates the eclecticism of Grey DeLisle’s musical tastes and her willingness to deconstruct and rebuild a song to create a whole new work. There’s an art to reinterpreting just one song, but it’s a completely different challenge creating a coherent album full of reworkings; Grey DeLisle aces it.

‘Borrowed’ is released in the UK on Regional Records (RR0617) on Friday January 6th.

Here’s a link to the video for ‘Another Brick in the Wall’:

Confusingly, there are two Steve Dawsons on the Americana scene, both very highly regarded and both featured on Music Riot at various times. This Steve Dawson is the one from Chicago and member of Dolly Varden and Funeral Bonsai Wedding whose powerful album “At the Bottom of a Canyon in the Branches of a Tree” was reviewed here earlier this year. Here are some of the things that made 2021 a good year for Steve.

For me personally 2021 was a peak year. A project I’d been working on for over 3 years was released as “At the Bottom of a Canyon in the Branches of a Tree,” and very well received. The contrast of my good fortune with so much loss and hardship in the world due to the pandemic was sobering and clarifying. I do think (hope) that the pandemic and the uncertainty it caused has made people more grateful for the things that matter, and that includes live music and connection. Here’s a few things that I am grateful for in 2021.

Waxahatchee singing Dolly Parton’s, “Light of A Clear Blue Morning” This came out in 2020 but I started listening to it in the spring of 2021 and it was the perfect song to slowly emerge from the nightmares of the Trump era and lockdown. I taught online guitar and songwriting classes during the lockdown and sang this version of this song with them all. It was healing. Katie Crutchfield’s voice on this track is otherworldly.

The long-delayed release concert for my album from 2020, “Last Flight Out,” at the Old Town School of Folk Music, Chicago
I recorded an album called “Last Flight Out” with my folk-jazz group, Funeral Bonsai Wedding, that featured the Quartet Parapluie String Quartet in 2019 and it was released in May, 2020, at the height of the pandemic. The release concert for the record had to be rescheduled four times. This past October we finally were able to do the show and for many it was the first live event they’d been to in over 18 months. I’ve never experienced a show that was that cathartic for the audience and musicians together and I don’t know that I will ever again.

Pravda Records

My new album, “At the Bottom of A Canyon In the Branches Of A Tree,” was released on a legendary Chicago indie label called Pravda Records. I couldn’t be happier to be a part of their roster of artists. Thank you Kenn, Melissa and Sheila!!

Bandcamp

Bandcamp really shines in the online music world. They really showed up for indie musicians by creating “Bandcamp Friday” on the first Friday of each month since the pandemic began – by waiving their share and having the artists and labels get all the income. In a world enamored by the greed of Spotify and Amazon, Bandcamp is a miracle.

Kath and Kim Diane and I were introduced to this super wacky Australian sitcom from the early 2000’s by a friend and now we can’t stop watching it and quoting lines back to each other. “Look at moy, look at moy, look at moy…”

This was the first album I listened to on January 1 2018. Kind of appropriate really; after hearing so much beered-up musical stodge over the festive period, this is the perfect aural January detox to accompany the real thing. The Wailin’ Jennys (Heather Masse, Nicky Mehta and Ruth Moody) have been together fifteen years (hence the title), but this is their first album in six years. It’s worth waiting for; it’s gorgeous. They interpret nine very different songs but the common thread running through all of them is those three fabulous voices and the heartbreakingly pure harmonies. It’s possible I might mention that again at some point.

Everything is built around creating a setting for those flawless voices to deliver interpretations that are technically and emotionally perfect. Generally speaking, the musicians have a fairly light touch throughout the album; this is all about putting those three voices straight upfront and centre. When full string band arrangements are used, they tend to build up in layers to push the song to a higher level, which works particularly well on the timely cover of Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers” and the Jane Siberry song, “The Valley”. “Boulder to Birmingham”, Emmylou Harris and Bill Danoff’s plaintive elegy to Gram Parsons has a full band sound with some lovely two-guitar picking and percussive upright bass; none of it threatens to overwhelm the vocals.

For all the subtle and delicate playing, the a cappella or virtually a cappella material that really shines brightly. Paul Simon’s “Loves Me like a Rock” gets the handclap and fingerpop treatment, Dolly Parton’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” begins with a solo vocal before the stunning harmonies join, but the best is saved till last. The album’s final song is an a cappella cover of Hank Williams’ “Weary Blues from Waitin’” which not only has the expected beautiful three-part harmonies but features some incredibly precise three-part glissando harmonies. I have honestly never heard that done with such precision.

So now you’re going to ask if I like it, yeah? What a great way to start the year. But you don’t have to take my word for it; a click on any of those song links will take you to Spotify where you can hear it for yourself.

“Fifteen” is released on True North Records on Friday January 5 2018.

String bands, bluegrass generally; it’s not for everyone and I guess most bands making music in this genre today must be trying to attract a few new listeners, but how do you do it? You can try playing traditional tunes and be better than anyone else, but that’s not likely to bust you out of the genre. You can write new songs in the bluegrass idiom, but that’s risky unless they’re very good. The third way is to cover familiar songs in the string band style, and that’s the way The High Bar Gang have gone with their previous album of gospel songs and this album of heartbreak and death country songs. And they did one more revolutionary thing; they recorded the album in stereo, as opposed to using the traditional one–mic technique.

Despite a few lovely guitar solos, particularly on the opener, Dolly Parton’s “Silver Dagger” and the penultimate “Rock Salt and Nails”, the sound of The High Bar Gang is built on a solid basis of ensemble playing, the interplay between bass and guitar and the more percussive mandolin and banjo creating the rhythms that drive the songs underpinning a rich and varied series of textures and melodic settings created by seven players with various combinations of guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle and upright bass. There’s even some time signature variation, with almost half of the songs in ¾ time.

And then there’s the voices, working together in all sorts of combinations; two-part and three-part harmonies featuring in “How Many Times Have you Broken my Heart?” and “She’s More To Be Pitied” (sounding like a reply to the Arlie Carter and William Warren classic “Wild Side of Life”) and the male/female duet combination of “Branded Wherever I Go”. They all have that seemingly effortless lustre that only happens when a true gift is polished to perfection.

If you look at this as an experiment in adapting songs to a string band style, it’s a complete success; it should win over a few more fans to a genre that’s almost a polar opposite of everything we hear on mainstream radio. There are lovely interpretations of classic songs by Dolly Parton, Earl Scruggs, Roy Acuff, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, all accented with perfect harmonies and melancholy fiddle fills. Who knows, it may even help them earn a well-deserved breakthrough to a wider audience.

“Someday the Heart Will Trouble the Mind” is out on August 19^th on True North Records (TND622).

Rosanne Cash and John Leventhal supported by Dean Owens at The Union Chapel; now there’s one that ticks all the boxes. The sound in the venue is outstanding for acoustic performances (it is a working church after all), the audience is receptive and the atmosphere’s always warm and friendly; even the security staff are pleasant. If ever there was a perfect venue for Dean Owens to play his biggest London show so far, this was the one and he wasn’t about to disappoint.

He opened with “Shine like the Road after the Rain” and immediately had the audience on his side; none of this polite applause nonsense, this was a crowd that immediately recognised great songwriting and performance. With only a thirty minute slot, Dean chose his songs carefully with four from his new album, the intensely personal “Into the Sea”, which we reviewed earlier this year. The gentle longing of “Valentine’s Day in New York” set a few toes tapping before the triple emotional whammy of “Virginia Street”, “Evergreen” and “The Only One”. The last song should have suffered from the loss of Will Kimbrough’s studio harmonies, but it didn’t; the audience listened entranced and gave the song the best response so far. Which left enough time to fit in “Raining in Glasgow” (just one of Dean’s anthems) and a completely unplugged crowd-pleasing romp through Buck Owens’ “Love’s Gonna Live Here”. And leave them wanting more…

Rosanne Cash is a bona fide country legend, regularly bracketed with Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton and with good reason; she’s written some superb songs and also recorded some fine interpretations. The current European tour, with her husband, guitarist and songwriter John Leventhal, is nominally in support of her last album, the double Grammy winner “The River & the Thread” but it’s obvious that the show is much more than that. It’s about the links between that album, the delta, the blues and the history of the Southern states, and the various tributaries gradually joined up as the set progressed.

So, not surprisingly, songs from the latest album were heavily featured, particularly at the start of the set, which opened with “Modern Blue” and featured “Etta’s Tune”, “The Sunken Lands” and “The Long Way Home”. “The River & the Thread” featured again towards the end of the set as we heard “When the Master Calls the Roll”, “World of Strange Design” and “Money Road”, while the middle section featured some of the greatest hits including “Tennessee Flat Top Box”, “ Sea of Heartbreak” and “The Way we Make a Broken Heart”. The obligatory “Seven Year Ache” made an appearance towards the end of the set after many audience requests (and there’s a very personal story behind that one which I’ll share with you another day) but the focal point of the entire set, where the rivers and threads were gathered together, was a Bobbie Gentry song.

Rosanne and John’s performance of “Ode to Billie Joe” was heart-rending, the minimalist guitar picking underpinning the lyrical contrast between domestic banality and sensational events which are never fully explained. The song silenced the audience and drew the best response of the night while joining the dots in the overall picture the duo created; if you need a definition of tour de force, this was it.

Predictably enough, there were a couple of (well-deserved) standing ovations to round off an evening of powerful songs delivered by three gifted performers and everyone left happy and emotionally drained. Doesn’t that just define a great gig?

 

This exciting five-piece band from Canterbury headlined the Africana fundraiser tonight, raising money for projects in Kenya.  They formed in 2011 and only a year later, won the accolade of the UK’s best unsigned act.  They describe their music as ‘Fip Fok’ (the title of their first EP), a bouncing hybrid of folk, pop and hip-hop; even checking them out on You Tube before the gig, I was excited about the evening’s entertainment.  They feature a unique set-up of guitar, banjo, double bass, violin and beat-boxing so the sound is unlike anyone else I’ve heard.

The support acts: Brighton’s The Beatnik Horrors and singer songwriter, George Olgivie were good too making the long wait for the headliners a real warm up.  The Beatnik Horrors are a post-Chilli Peppers rock act with 3 guitars and helium vocals from their tom-boy lead singer, Ari playing memorable and distinctive songs.  George Olgivie is an acoustic singer-song-writer with a nice vibrato, playing covers and original material who will release a self-penned EP in July.

It was late in the evening when the Butterfields started  their set; C&TB are used to playing a variety of arenas from busking, which they still do, to thousand-seater theatres, but they seemed particularly at home in this large music pub, having brought some of their loyal tribe with them.  The audience are mainly students who gave them a warm welcome, but the venue is sadly not packed, probably due to the cool, wet weather.  They kick off slowly with Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You”, but turn up the tempo half way through with some impressive beat-boxing.  Then it’s swiftly into Supertramp’s “Breakfast In America”, or their unique twist on it.  The crowd are on their feet and stay there for all of the hour long set  but the fun really began when they launched into seven original songs, starting with “Scarecrow”, apparently a tribute to the band’s variety of long or be-dreadlocked hair.  I was glad I had worn my dancing shoes as I was soon jigging around too, as were, I noticed, the support acts.  The last couple of times I have been at such a lively feel-good gig were Basement Jaxx in Brixton and going back further still, The Pogues in Kilburn on St Patrick’s night in ’87!  It was almost as if C&TB were playing a unique hybrid of both in this festival atmosphere.

Fan favourite “Astronaut” was next, utilising the strong musicianship of each member of the band, including Dulcima the female lead’s vocals.  Percussion duties were entirely the domain of the beat-boxer of the group, who had astounding energy, variety and talent, later soloing in a most entertaining way, but each band member, like in a jazz quintet, got to show their impressive individual skills in a short spot-light.  The next highlight, and there were many, was the new single “Warriors” which went down very well with the crowd and is released this week.  All this and a radio presenter I chatted to, who had interviewed them earlier in the day, confirmed what a nice bunch Coco & The Butterfields are, and they look the part too.

The evening of exuberance concluded with “The Hip Hop Song” and Flo Rida/T-Pain’s “Low”.  I hope the band get the wider audience they deserve; in an era of karaoke pop and synthesised dance, this band are the real thing constructing an original sound with great musicality and a very infectious energy.