OLD KERRY McKEE - Wooden Songs


@ Web // FB // Label - fb // iTunes // AMZN

Wooden songs are crackly with history, with soil and human grease. They are subliminally powered by 16HP and him and standing arm in arm with them and every american blueser that came before but filtered through Swedish sun and forest floor. While they remind one of the aforementioned they do not bow, but rather they are used as starting blocks to sonic expansion. 

Textures take Wooden songs to a different focus using an audio palette of blues-infected folk brushed with samplings of old record crackles, radio broadcasts, the clatter and drone of machinery and whatever to bring out layers of ghosty familiarity. It's music that is as wonderfully odd and dextrous as Malcolm Holcomb, as menacing as a primitive church of Christ riven 16HP and others and as mysterious as  your dead Uncle's collection of blues 78s that were kept near  that back room in the basement. The one with the dirt floor. 

There's a creepy David Lynchian vibe throughout Wooden Songs, sinister and primitive sounds of tension and harvesting at night, underpinned by Nick Drake-like melodies and fanned by suggestions of Tim Eriksen's studied appalachian death moans. Sweden is always selling us back our culture in interesting permutations and with varied success. Old Kerry McKee is a raw winner. 
Swedish high lonesome metal machine music rules.  









Mississippi Meets New Mexico:: CW AYON - Lohmador!



@ Facebook // CDbaby // Reverbnation // BandCamp 

CW Ayon has just released his fourth
album and its just as fine as previous. His groove is more refined now, and his delivery sexier but no less tight. The dude plays some smoothass hill country blues, except CW's hills are the mountains of New Mexico (but evidently the Mississippi runs through them.) 

If you or a friend are new to the post-R.L. Burnside/Junior Kimbrough lovin' blues scene and want to ease on in, or you've been listening to this stuff for a dozen years and want something fresh- You want this album.

Here's a free taste:

PS- Check our CW Ayon with Old Gray Mule

*Tonight* Last Nights Presents: Tin Horses, Bakes, Bronze Float @ Death By Audio Brooklyn, NY




Tin Horses (ft. member of Purling Hiss)

Thursday October 25th
49 S. 2nd St. Brooklyn, NY 
8pm | $7 | All Ages

Kickstarter:: THE HALLELUJAH BUMS on Vinyl

Here's a cool Kickstarter that Mike Powers of Yellow Dog Records turned me on to. It's a collection of songs from Alan Lomax's "American Ballads & Folk Songs" Book. Recorded in Mississippi by Mississippi musicians. Musicians like Ted Gainey, Justin Showah of Jimbo Mathus' Band and Hill Country Records, also featuring, "Chalmers Davis from Little Richard's band, Carl Massengale from the Revelators and the Holy Rollers, Robert Chaffe from Kudzu Kings, Max Williams from George McConnell & the Nonchalants to pick a little guitar and slide, and Jeff Callaway from Oxford's music scene to blow his horns."

 "A southern patchwork of hobo hymns, worldly reels, and badmen breakdowns, this record sounds best riding backroads during the gloam with cold tallboys in tow." Justin says, "I tried to conjure the spirit of a different Mississippi hero for each song, such as Rose Hemphill on "Bullyin Well", friend Ed Dye on "Shortenin Bread" & "Liza Jane", Jim Dickinson on "Casey Jones," Othar Turner on "John Henry," and True Loving Five on "Tone Them Bells."

I like that the rewards (there are only four of them) on this one are simple: Twenty bucks gets you the record and a digital download. Up from that you can get white vinyl and a couple other cool options. If you know the names involved you know this'll be some real good stuff. Give 'em yr money!







MUDLOW - SAWYERS HOPE


Facebook // OnLine // Motor Sounds Records // iTunes // 

My new favorite album comes from one of my favourite bands in the universe. Mudlow, from the English seaside city of Brighton, asked me to write the liner notes for Sawyer's Hope and I was honored to do so.  My notes are below followed by a song by song interpretation.


Thomas Wolfe wrote that  “...our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cut-purse went unhung.”  If that sliver of catholic prose had a soundtrack it would be played by Brighton UK’s Mudlow.

Mudlow plays literate southern music without continent, drifting and fraught with terroir.  It is at once humid, torrid, and familiar; a wholly indecent sound.  It’s the grist, gristle and grit of the hard luck life.  Noir skies meet muddy boots.  The old trouble. 


Tobias plays guitar, howls and sings, winks like Popeye and writes songs.  The stalwart Matt Latcham plays drums, craftsman Paul Pascoe plays bass and records the music.  Sullen sweetheartist Paul Trimble blows the saxophone. 

Named for a particular island off the western edge of downtown South Purgatory, sitting hard by a slow-burning swamp just down the road from the old General Tire factory (long abandoned).  Port-side stands a tough and brazen little burlesque bar, lit like a set from Twin Peaks.  It’s there, downstairs, framed by smoke-rimed red velvet curtains that Mudlow swing their craft. 

They play cool, cruel and criminal, lounged and louched versions of Frank’s Wild Years at The Stooges Funhouse for love-worn ghosts, sinewy butchers and Gutter Twins, as a sway-backed barmaid, mouth full of gold and skin scented of hyssop, serves marked cards and moonshine to lost North Sea sailors, southern kings, and their curs. 

Their music is the soundtrack for a film as yet unimagined, the saxophoned theme to a tempest-tossed and dreamless sleep.  Night hues meet dawn of day in salt air and sea light.  A morphine blues follows a sloe gin waltz. 


1
Taut, violet-tinged boozy fanfares mingle with mad juke joint hoe-downs.  Foghorned and rainsoaked Waitsian tinklers hear the music the dust makes on the soles of shoes at the bottom of a lurched and half-hidden staircase.  Run until you fall.

2
A Brighton-By-The Mississippi boogie shakes it down till it stays down.
 A leaf-sprung and primered F150 on a rainslick Hove country road.
 Lights out.  Listening.  No second chances.

3
Your last call after last call.  A lonely saxophone cries from an empty bridge. Jake-legged and sodden, one arm around your new true-love’s waist.  You got some fight left in you yet.  Roll ‘em!

4
Ghosts shine darkly with your energy.  Faded howls and ringing bells.
 The chrome groove digs underground.  Cave-like.

5
Troubles are trawling for good times.
They’ll find them alright.
Down by the boathouse.

6
Zane Merite.  Queen of something, somewhere south of south Louisiana.  Or Borneo.  Rusted-through boats and bodies, hot tropical rain wails in the blood-colored night sky.

7
A slow ballroom blues dance spin,
toe properly turned out.

8
Hooker’s heat and boogie,
the tight Memphis night air.
Don’t get too close to the water.

9
Soil. It’ll hold it.

10
Sitting under the power-line giants above the Snake River canyon at full-moon midnight.  The air fairly crackles.  The dirt lit shades of white and black.  Below, along the riverbank, the primal shadows of bodies lit by bonfire sway low to the echo of deep, dank grooves.  Sparks fly, only to be carried by the cool wind as it slips behind the moon which moves its way down the deep, sensual and ancient valley.

Somewhere a back-door slams, unknown voices cross. Blue/white light hypnotizes down the highway.  Footsteps scuffle in the raw heat.  Love spelled wrong, backwards and reborn.

Free Album of Mudlow Odd & Ends & Rareities:





Voluminous Thank-Yous! go to April Fecca, boss/editor for NowThisSound, for being a rubber wall to bounce sentences off, without whom this post wouldn't have been worth a tinker's damn.



CHiCKEN DiAMOND - II!


Our man in France is back with a deeper, heavier, cruchier, creepier, trippier blues thang. One-Man Band-style Stooges Blues. Here's four tracks to taste. If you dig 'em you are gonna want the rest. Wicked:


miXendorp - No More My Lord - Von vs Jimpson & Axe Gang (miXendorp edit)

One reviewer on Soundcloud labeled this utterly superb. 
I have no argument. 
It is indeed. 
The diabolical miXendorp.

 No More My Lord - Von vs Jimpson & Axe Gang (miXendorp edit) by m i X e n d o r p

Keel Her - Riot Grrrl | Track Feature



Keel Her give us a supple and thoroughly charming off-kilter lo-fi pop music. There is enough nostalgic punch to keep any 20 something year old satisfied for a few hours pleasure. Rose Keeler-Schäffeler's soaks her ram shackled songwriting in references of the past with a tongue in cheek mentality that seems to honor and poke fun at all the moments in pop culture which she could seemingly hold dear.

"Riot Grrrl" kicks starts everything here and is Keel Her's first "hi-fi" musical statement. She leaves her comfortable, presumably smokey, bedroom and enters an actual recording studio. The guitars are still jangling away and Keeler-Schäffeler's recognizable melodic hooks are all in place. There is a clarity and accessibility that her own home-recorded output can only hint at. The more professional attitude and recording quality could be a factor of this being one of her most widely available releases to date but also feels like a natural progression the DIY pop songsmith.


For Keel Her's US debut Gnar Tapes go back into Keeler-Schäffeler's demo vaults from the past year or so to dig up some of the best treats that may have gone overlooked. "Steve Holt" is a fine example of what she is capable of committing to tape all on her own. It is falling apart while simultaneously congealing into perfection. Yum...

Keel Her's "Riot Grrrl" 7" will be available this December 3rd by Critical Heights while her self-titled US debut is available now via Gnar Tapes

The Return of The Man Known as HONKEYFiNGER!

@ Facebook // OnLine

Four new tracks on Soundcloud from the ever righteous HONKEYFiNGER!
The gentleman has added a second guitarist so he's no longer strictly a one-man band, he's opening six shows for The Jim Jones Revue, and he's got enough tracks recorded for a new album plus a bunch of B-Sides, he just needs a media industrialist to do the heavy-lifting of these slabs out to the masses. Or he'll do it all hisself, again. More on all that sometime in the near future. Meantime: BLAST!

 Latest tracks by HONKEYFINGER




The JiM JONES REVUE - Savage Heart Documentary








Chris Cohen - Monad | Video Feature


Even if you are not familiar with his name you have most likely heard the work and playing of Chris Cohen at some point in the past fews years. He has been in the background, both as a live member and active contributor, of countless memorable groups such as Deerhoof, White Magic, The Curtains, Haunted Graffiti, & Cass McCombs to name only a few. It is easy to understand why so many folks seem to gravitate towards him as his own music is a thoughtfully crafted affair that is sip away into. There is nothing abrasive that strikes out at the listener, everything seems to fit right into place, & moreover "Monad" feels like meeting an old dear friend for the first time in years. The song feels is perfect for slipping into the 

Chris Cohen's cohesive and sonic mastery as displayed throughout "Monad" are mirrored in the subtly breathtaking beauty of its visual accompaniment.  The music video directed by Kate Dollenmayer creates a visual cohesion through it's sly reference to Cohen record jacket for Overgrown Path. The abstract and shifting black and white patterns evoke only the album cover and shifting nature in Cohen songwriting. Someone can get sucked into watching this on repeat and may come out it feeling as though they've been to some hypnotist and unloaded all of their emotional baggage without realizing it. A fresh start perhaps...

Chris Cohen's "Monad" is taken from his debut full-length album Overgrown Path available now via Captured Tracks.

Living and breathing the hard day's night...


Whilst it's been a bit of a journey, along with a sometimes fraught learning curve, it really is a great joy to have finally launched our little book, The Secret Chord. This has been a co-authored project with my buddy Jonathan Evens who has been brilliant at curating all my vague ideas into something tangible as well as encouraging me to take the step of now writing words rather than principally music. We have taken heed of others and their projects, too, such as Sam Norton, Kester Brewin and Liz Hinds, as all of whom have completed self managed publishing projects and freely shared their progress.

So far The Secret Chord is available on Amazon Kindle with the paperback hot on its heels for release at the end of this month. If you don't own a Kindle there are some excellent freebie Apps for PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android tablets and smartphones.

To supplement the book, both in physical form and when reading it on a non internet enabled Kindle, we have embarked on creating The Secret Chord website with all the web links and biographical notes along with some extra goodies. This will be more dynamic as we have plans for lots more content real soon...

We very much look forward to hearing your thoughts, please be gentle!

P

New Video:: MOLLY JEAN ONE-WHOAMAN BAND - Waitin' (official)


BOOM.BOOM.BOOM.

DIVA - Inverted Image | Video Feature


Diva returns with a refined version of the lullaby atmospheric song craft that she has previously presented on The Glitter End. This time Diva Dompé has updated her recording process or something as "Inverted Image" offers a much clearer and dare I say studio sounding version of her work and it suits her well. The subtle and haunting melodies created here all rest upon the bed of a slowly grooving bass line & the small flutter and squelch of synths.

The video does a fantastic job at capturing Diva's fairytale nature. It is presented through a monochromatic lens that creates a sharp vision of a world that could be taken from the dreams of a child. Dompé travels throughout singing and swaying throughout the lullaby groove and shimmering world that has been created around her.

Diva's album Moon Moods is  available now on cassette via Leaving Records and CD & Vinyl via Critical Heights.

Help RAY CASHMAN Raise Some Dough For His New Album!


 My name is Ray Cashman. I am an American roots musician living in Nolensville, TN. I play guitar, cigar box, and banjo. I sing and write my own songs. Growing up in southeast Texas, I was influenced by an abundance of music. Rock and country were the two mainstays but there was plenty of blues, cajun, conjunto, zydeco and western jazz being played on the radio and around festivals and county fairs.


I have recorded and released 4 independent albums in the last 8 years. One of my albums Texassippi Stomp was on the Grammy nominating ballot for “best traditional blues album of 2007”

I would like to talk to y’all today about my latest project “ Rough and Tumble South”. I have written 12 songs that reflect the region of America I have lived and respected, the South.
These are songs about love, food, music, murder, illicit substance and the yearning to leave small town America.

I have taken the blues from MS, country from TX, AL and TN. Appalachian Folk from the mountains of VA, KY and eastern TN, and cajun and zydeco from the swamps of LA

Along with a couple of fine seasoned Nashville musicians, we hope to pull the musical influences of the South into this album. We would greatly appreciate the opportunity to bring this project to a broader audience, and I greatly appreciate your support. Thanks y’all.

I am trying to raise $5000 to pay for recording and mastering dept. I also need money to pay for the art design and the pressing of the compact discs. I would also like to secure public relations and radio airplay if possible. Without public relations and airplay the cd stands little chance of being heard by a broader audience.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Walk Like A Giant | Video Feature


It's a strange thing to begin discussing Neil Young & Crazy Horse's latest offering in the form of the video for "Walk Like A Giant". There are few words or adjectives that feel comfortable using while writing this. These are folks that need no introduction to almost anyone alive in the western world today. These guys are walking legends, influenced others influences, have created lasting records that will continue to grow in their scope for days to come. To top things off is that their new material stands on the same ground as anything from the past. 

The video for "Walk Like A Giant" starts out depicting grainy images of legends of the North American landscape of a real and cryptozoological nature before slipping into some psychedelic kaleidoscopic visions. The video only features a portion of the song's  epic track length but maintains the same punch if in a condensed "5-hour energy" kind of way. It may just be small shot to consume but will keep you going for some time to come. Young and company prove that they are able to pick up whenever they last left off and the searing guitar solos only cement this fact. It is hard not to sit back and bask in the glory this classic group are still able to conjure up. 

Neil Young & Crazy Horse's newest album Psychedelic Pill will be available via Reprise Records this October 30th.

Panache Booking + Last Nights Showcase w/ Gap Dream, MV & EE, Paperhead, & Herbcraft Saturday October 20th 2012

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Last Nights & Panache Booking Present

Gap Dream
MV & EE
Paperhead
Herbcraft

Saturday October 20th, 2012
Big Snow
89 Varet St. Brooklyn, NY
Doors 8pm | $7 | All Ages

RSVP on the Facebook Event Page

Missoula's BLACK MOUNTAiN MOAN


@ Reverbnation // Facebook // free MP3 of Haunted.

Black Mountain Moan is a newish band out of Missoula. They're off to a great start but have a ways to go. However, they have an interesting bio and I liked their...well...haunting song called Haunted a lot and they gave me permission to post it as a free down load for y'all. Say Thank You.

Here's a paste of their bio. Keep your ears out for these guys:

Black Mountain Moan is a Hill Country Blues band based in Missoula, Montana. Guitarist and Vocalist Zach has honed his guitar work and singing while playing with R.L. Boyce on a trip to Mississippi, who has been a part of Othar Turner and Jessie Mae Hemphill's bands, in Como Mississippi. Drummer Jeff has been playing off and on for the last 10 years. Having lived in rural communities in Clay Co. Tennessee Jeff absorbed the traditional music of Appalachian America. Bringing those rhythms to Montana and meeting Zach last year the two got together finding common ground in the blues and roots music from those regions. Vic Stampley was added to the lineup about 6 months after Jeff and Zach got together. Vic has been playing harmonica since he was little and spent summers with family in Yazoo County Mississippi. Learning blues harmonica on a hitch-hiking trip across the U.S. Bass player and freestyler Tahj Bo has recently joined the group bringing a deep groove to the music. A strong Mississippi back beat drives the hypnotic sounds of the North Mississippi hills that now ring out in the mountains of Montana. Black Mountain Moan has shared the stage with Lightnin' Malcolm and Cameron Kimbrough, Watermelon Slim, All Night Long Blues Band, Hillstomp, The Bridge, Yeti, and many more.



Earn - Performance II | Album Feature


This is not a new direction for Matthew Sullivan's Earn. His droning, shimmering, and often cinematic compositions are at the forefront of some new breed of underground ambient music. This is ambient music for the generation that has come after hardcore and noise music have been assimilated rather deeply into musical culture. Sullivan has built a back catalogue of music that is knee deep since adopting the Earn moniker in 2008.

Yet has no been since  Performance II and its predecessor putting him into a prestigious tier of experimental composers by the shear fact through a focus on live recordings. I had the fortunate experience of seeing him perform, a rare treat for the east coast, and was blown away. This process showcases his mastery of live mixing away from the tools of studio control. The ability to control and subtly shift the ambient / noise environment requires attention to minute rhythms and builds of momentum and is what Sullivan excels at. This is some deep listening.

Earn's cassette Performance II is available now via Ekhein.

Slim Twig - Altered Ego | Video Feature


Slim Twig has the flair of a 60's showman without question. Perhaps he was born into the role as fate would have it but that may be a different story altogether. "Altered Ego" taken from Twig's latest album makes its entrance with an energy drum solo before mellowing out into the song natural pace. Anyone that begins a single with a drum solo is definitely making a statement and probably knows how to use an exclamation point. The demented Elvis croon (a compliment in this instance) which comes afterwards ushering in the song's structure breaths over a slinky bassline that etches a deep groove in the listeners eardrum.

The video itself, which was directed by George Fok, presents Twig putting on full rockstar regalia. Set in a strange space reminiscent (or maybe it is! Only those who know know) of an art-gallery making Slim Twig and his creepy companions seems that much more epic in the nonchalant rampage that follows. "Altered Ego" displays the same classic pop sound on mood stabilizers vibe that he's been building up too with his recent work. It is a sound that will stay bouncing around your head long afterwards.

Slim Twig's full length album Sof' Sike is available now via Paper Bar Records.