Drive-By Truckers - Live from Austin TX

Drive-By Truckers Live From Austin TX (DVD/CD)
New West Records
www.drivebytruckers.com

If you’re partial to analogies, let’s say the Drive-By Truckers’ 2009 compilation CD The Fine Print (A Collection Of Oddities And Rarities 2003-2008) was a super-8 home movie and the band members are your kids. And over the course of that record, you can watch them grow. That makes this dual DVD/CD live release a snapshot in 4/4 time, a musical Polaroid of a band touring behind an extremely strong record (Brighter Than Creations Dark) with a ton of great new songs. Shaking off the lineup changes that saw guitarist and songwriter Jason Isbell leave, keyboardist Spooner Oldham step in on The Dirt Underneath tour, the addition of Jay Gonzales on keys and a greater role for sideman John Neff, the band shows strength and resolve. The core remains the same, with Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley providing the vocals, guitars and stories, while Brad Morgan on drums and Shonna Tucker on bass have coalesced into a formidable rhythm section.

Appearing on Austin City Limits as a first timer, evidently the band wanted to showcase their songwriting talent as much as their reputation as a raucous rock band that slings sweat with the best of them, and as such we are treated to a fined honed set of music that is as solid as Morgan’s backbeat and as soaring as one of Neff’s pedal steel solos.

The same thirteen songs are on both DVD and CD, although the some of the stories and between-song banter are cut from the audio disc. The most compelling story is an updated tale of Hood’s momma Jan and her trucker husband, Chester, “Eighteen Wheels of Love,” first heard on the band’s 2002 live release, Alabama Ass Whuppin’. Patterson knows how to tell a story and this one is worth the price of the disc all by it’s own self. Luckily, the rest of the record is just as good. The Truckers like their alt-country and rock with a splash of soul and use this base to spin their tales of the down and out, dispossessed and dispirited with both passion and compassion. Mike Cooley’s countrified tunes “Perfect Timing,” “A Ghost To Most” and the acoustic, heartbreaking “Space City” sit well alongside his rockers “Marry Me,” the Stones-ish “3 Dimes Down” and “Zip City,” while Hood’s tales of life in the ragged Southern trenches “Puttin’ People On The Moon,” “Heathens” and “The Righteous Path” are balanced by celebratory “The Living Bubba” and “Let There Be Rock.” Shonna steps up to the mic with her lush “I’m Sorry Huston.”

The audio and video quality on both discs is stellar, befitting the performances. If you’re a fan of the Drive-By Truckers, this is what you’ll want to pull out when someone asks you about the band. If you’re not a fan, you will be after this one.

Curtis Lynch
Playgrounds Magazine March 2010
www.playgroundsmag.com

Will Kimbrough - Wings

Will Kimbrough

Wings

Daphne Records

www.willkimbrough.com

There are lots of words you can use to describe Will Kimbrough: singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, award winner, and on and on. But if you asked Will, I’d bet that husband and father would beat those out hands down. On Wings, his fifth solo record, his relationship with his family and with himself form the core for many of the ten songs, none more so than the opening track, “Three Angels,” a love song to his wife and two daughters (“Everybody has an angel, I’ve got three.”).

DADDY bandmate Tommy Womack’s 2007 CD There…I Said It! was also a journal about what it means to be a grownup, although their visions differ. (Of course, that disparity between the two is what makes their band so special.) Where Tommy fought and scratched his way to adulthood, Will seems to embrace it warmly. Wings is an album of love and contentment, with an uplifting warmth that permeates each song.

But it wasn’t that long ago that Will was also railing at the world around him. On 2006’s Americanitis, Kimbrough was a rock, a smooth one for sure, but one that skipped across the water with force, kicking up spray as it hurled itself against a raging torrent. Now, on Wings, he is that same rock, only this time, it is sitting in the middle of the stream, enjoying the feel of the rushing water as it flows on by. Same rock. Different speed.

Kimbrough’s folksy Americana sound is spiced with pop and Memphis R&B, seasoned with his own banjo, mandolin, guitars and keys and gets plenty of help from Paul Griffith (DADDY) on drums, Tim Marks (Taylor Swift) on bass and Pat Buchanan on guitar. The title track, co-written with Jimmy Buffett, is one of my favorite songs so far in 2010. (The song also appears on Jimmy’s newest, Buffet Hotel, which features Kimbrough’s songs and guitars.) With Wings, Will Kimbrough has crafted a record for grownups that doesn’t make you feel old.

Curtis Lynch

Playgrounds Magazine March 2010

www.playgroundsmag.com

Timi Conley - Nerd Sexy

Timi Conley
Nerd Sexy
Row Your Boat Records
www.rowyourboatrecords.com

Timi Conley bends it like Beck in a genre-blending exercise in which the longtime Athens musician comes across like the Prince of Clarke County, writing, recording, mastering and playing nearly every instrument on every track. Throughout the fifteen tracks on Nerd Sexy, Conley picks his way through acoustic blues, electro pop, hip-hop beats and new wave bleeps like he’s strolling down a buffet line.

Nerd Sexy, Timi’s first solo record, is a fun listen, messy and entertaining, strewn all over a musical map that encompasses everything from The Flaming Lips to Jim White.

Curtis Lynch
Playgrounds Magazine
February 2010
www.playgroundsmag.com

Packway Handle Band - What Are We Gonna Do Now?

Packway Handle Band
What Are We Gonna Do Now?
Self Released
www.packwayhandleband.com

You know what I say? The Packway Handle Band can pretty much do whatever they want. The Athens-based band is already lauded for their tightly spun harmonies, material that includes a growing batch of their own extremely well-written songs, quirky cover choices and a string of impressive live performances. And with What Are We Gonna Do Now? they seem poised to step things up a notch and stand toe-to-toe with the best folk/bluegrass bands around. This is their fourth full length studio release (there was also a 2007 live EP) and their consistency and quality has to be reckoned with. This one, self-produced and recorded at fiddler Andrew Heaton’s house, is a departure from their stage show, where the band crowds around twin condenser microphones, stepping up to add a lick or sing a line, because on this record, each member recorded their parts separately. A minor point perhaps, but to my ears, there’s a different sense of space and warmth, a depth that comes from extra brushstrokes courtesy of sax and flute on a couple of tunes.

Heaton’s wry songs, “What Is A Packway Handle?,” which does absolutely nothing to answer that question (which is of course the point), and “I’m Glad You’ve Got My Priorities So Straight” provide the winking, smiling counterpoint to Michael Paynter’s five contributions. Paynter’s “Off My Knees” has surging bluesy riffs that explode into a chorus of layered harmonies, while “Outskirts” sports emotionally expressive lyrics that for some reason remind me of Dylan, circa Blood on the Tracks. Guitarist Josh Erwin chips in with three tracks including the instrumental “Horse vs. Technology.” This release is easily their most accomplished and well-rounded and I’d put it up against anyone else in that vague Americana/folk/bluegrass category that people want to talk about.

What Are We Gonna Do Now? I don’t know; just let me know when you do it.

Curtis Lynch
Playgrounds Magazine
February 2010

Drive-By Truckers - The Fine Print (A Collection of Oddities And Rarities 2003-2008)

Drive-By Truckers

The Fine Print (A Collection of Oddities And Rarities 2003-2008)

New West Records

www.drivebytruckers.com

Rock ‘n roll bands who embark on a recording career have a certain path they tend to follow: independent releases, major record deals, first releases, maybe a sophomore slump, a live record, rejection by their early fans who think they’ve sold out, lineup shuffles, (and if you’re lucky) a greatest hits CD, solo records, DVDs, and finally, after logging enough hours in the studio, they dump out an odds-n-sods compilation, which may or may not be worth a shit.

Friends, this one is worth at least one shit, maybe two.

Typically, these things are for the hard-core fans who want everything the band has ever done and while I’m not going to tell you its essential listening, I will say that it’s a representative sample of the band during this time, which spans the albums Decoration Day, The Dirty South, and A Blessing and a Curse. This is a period that follows their masterpiece Southern Rock Opera and includes the departure of guitarist, vocalist and writer Jason Isbell, who left the band after playing on the three DBT albums mentioned above. Isbell has two of the strongest tracks here: “TVA” and “When the Well Runs Dry. “ Patterson’s excellent and informative liner notes even say that the latter should have been on 2008’s A Blessing and a Curse and I agree. It would certainly have made for a stronger record, which in retrospect was not a high-water mark for the band. The other ten songs here consist of covers, unreleased and alternative versions.

The covers include Tom Petty’s “Rebels,” recorded for a King of the Hill episode, a truly inspired take on Tom T. Hall’s “Mama Bake A Pie (Daddy Kill A Chicken),” Warren Zevon’s “Play It All Night Long” (the chorus “Sweet Home Alabama/play that dead band’s song” mocks the Lynyrd Skynyrd /DBT comparisons), and the finale, “Like A Rolling Stone,” where each of the vocalists take turns on the verses (and features bassist Shonna Tucker’s first lead vocals with the band). The alternate take of “Goode’s Field Road” doesn’t convey the dark fatalism of the version that ended up on Brighter Than Creation’s Dark although Mike Cooley’s “Uncle Frank” (originally on Pizza Deliverance) makes for an interesting counterpoint to Isbell’s “TVA.” Hood’s liner notes mention that they had intended to release these as a two-sided single, but those plans never came to fruition.

The unreleased originals include a full band version of Hood’s “George Jones Talkin’ Cell Phone Blues,” “The Great Car Dealer War,” which is yet another tragically poetic southern tale that was left off of The Dirty South, and Mike Cooley’s acoustic “Little Pony and the Great Big Horse.” Of all the songs here, only “Mrs. Claus’ Kimono” leaves me lukewarm, and that’s a pretty good batting average. The Fine Print just proves that the stuff the Drive-By Truckers leave behind in the studio is better than the dreck that passes for rock-n-roll on the radio today.

Curtis Lynch

Playgrounds Magazine January 2010

www.playgroundsmag.com

Mission Door - Peter Cooper

Mission Door
Peter Cooper
Red Beet Records
http://www.petercoopermusic.com


On “Thin Wild Mercury,” a song co-written with Todd Snider, Peter Cooper tells the story of how folksinger Phil Ochs gave Bob Dylan some honest feedback about his new sound and was summarily ejected from the star’s limo, along with the harshest insult Dylan could muster: “Phil, you’re not a writer, you’re a journalist.”

That he chooses to relate this tale is revealing – since Peter Cooper is both. As the music writer for Nashville’s daily paper, The Tennessean, he covers a scene that is too often over-covered and does it with style and simplicity. As a singer-songwriter, Cooper’s songs are eloquent without being stilted and manage to tug a heartstring just as easily as they can coax a smile.

Mission Door is the East Nashville resident’s first full-length album and he loads it up with friends like Snider, Nanci Griffith, Jason Ringenberg (Jason & The Scorchers), Dave Roe (Johnny Cash), Jan Gunderman (Jayhawks, Last Train Home), Paul Griffith (DADDY), and steel guitar impresario and Hall of Famer Lloyd Green, who also co-produces. Indeed, Green’s swoops and swells on the pedal steel permeate the record like a shot of moonshine – it takes your breath away, and then makes you feel warm all over.

Of the twelve tracks, Cooper wrote or co-wrote ten of them. The other two were written by Eric Taylor, a past award winner at the Kerrville Folk Festival. With a voice that’s softly worn around it’s perimeter, like the rounded edge of a bar, Cooper tells the stories of people who would, on the whole, rather not be in the situations they’re in. Check out the Charlie Rich fan who finds himself in the middle of a barroom shootout (Taylor’s “All The Way To Heaven”) or the poor guy who resorts to postulating that predestination is the reason he’s sitting at the bar getting drunk (“Sheboygan”). Amidst all that, he manages to sneak in two definitive songs about a couple of legends: Hank Aaron and Townes Van Zandt. First, I defy anyone to find a song about sports that is a truer blend of heroism, determination, racial mores and the confusing and often brutal attitutes of race in the South in the 60s and 70s than “715 (for Hank Aaron) or a take on Townes that cuts as close to the legendary bone as the line "after the show, if you could call it a show," from “Take Care.”

If Mission Door was a class, it would be Good Songwriting 101, and if Peter Cooper keeps this up, he’ll quickly be teaching on a graduate level. Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs would be proud.

Curtis Lynch
Playgrounds Magazine November 2009
www.playgroundsmag.com

Grant Peeples - Pawnshop

Grant Peeples

Pawnshop

www.grantpeeples.com

This Floridian’s second release sounds like a rusty-hinged wooden gate swinging wildly, beating out a rhythm in the chaos of a hurricane, but unlike the fickle storm, Peeples knows where he’s going and what he’s after. Pawnshop is eleven extraordinary tunes (There’s alternate, FCC compliant versions of two tracks.) that are direct and intelligent. In fact, Peeple’s rough-edged drawl of a voice often hides the depth of his lyrics until you give the songs a couple of listens. But whether he’s railing against capital punishment, the economy and our apathetic society, or singing about trailer-park breakups (“Leaving her was easy once she’d done throw’d all my shit out in the yard”) or Real Country, (“it ain’t pretty.”), Grant Peeples is consistently entertaining, provocative and not afraid to shoot straight.

Curtis Lynch

Playgrounds Magazine July 2009

www.playgroundsmag.com