Link: John Amadon on BandCamp

Seven Stars is that gleam in the eyes of the 1970s with its heart pointed to the South. However, John Amadon lives in Portland, and from reading up on the multi-instrumentalist, I don’t think either was his intention.

But Seven Stars is a beautiful release, filled with the mystery and intrigue that was built around strong songwriting and passionate affiliation to powerful vocals that tugs at the heartstrings.

A little bit Diamond and Rust and a little bit Player, a touch of Elliott Smith and a little bit of Band Of Horses, you can imagine what all of this wrapped together would sound like.

I’m not a big fan of the somber acoustic ballad, but “All Patched Up” is as good as any Urge Overkill song due to the swift transformation to electric power pop that pushes out of the song into new directions, only to be touched on before the chorus hits. And when the glowing guitar solo becomes reality, holy shit, I want to get my lighter out and salute the man for making something as relevant right now as it could have been 15 years ago.

I could get addicted to these songs. They are easy-going while being exciting all in the same breath. Amadon makes it seem so simple. The Cold Spring Harbor piano serenade on “Bitter Prayers,” pushes that Elliott Smith envelope. It’s an argument raiser between influences on Billy Joel or Paul McCartney.

It just proves how diverse Amadon can be on this album and still make it all feel consistent. Exploring these songs over, I can pick out my favorites, but I can also say that every song is solid in some way or another. And by the end of it, you will be satisfied.

Link: Sassparilla’s Official Website

What an appropriate name for a roots rock/bluegrass/saloon romper of a band. When you listen to The Darndest Thing, you can smell the tar coming from the train tracks and feel the steam emitting off of the steamboat during a lazy trip down the Mississippi.

It’s as easy as that. Sassparilla is escapism to a simpler time, marred by a time of transit, progressiveness, and social change. Morality is in question, and mortality always looming one step behind, and music being a catalyst for both.

Sassparilla is a band from Portland. With a group that consists of Kevin “Gus” Blackwell (vocals, cigar box guitar, national resonator guitar), the father and son combo of Ross “Dagger” MacDonald (harmonica) and Colin “Sweet Pea” MacDonald (washtub bass), Naima (vocals, accordion, washboard), and Justin Burkhart (drums), they have the potential and reputation of creating a sonic blast of sweat-socked hootenannies. But a listen to The Darndest Thing, you feel more folk-rock tugging at their shoulders and a laid-back approach to their dog days concoctions.

Besides the Southwest, Portland would be a logical destination to inspire a band to create a mood like this. I would call The Darndest Thing kitschy in the most unconventional of terms and for Portland standards, trendy in the most unsuspecting of ways.

According to Blackwell, every record that this band does is a little different each time, so  it shouldn’t come as a surprise making something a little more sedate and brooding was in the cards. But it is. It also helps that The Eels’ Chet Lyster is at the helms of the production booth. That helps explain the direction the band took with this album.

“New Love” starts us out with a swampy drawl like a low-lit cabaret buried in the Deep South. It combines the sin and salvation with lusty desires. But “Same Old Blues” is like a street party that roams through the alleys and moss-covered streets of Savanna. It’s one of the more lively songs you will get on this album.

It’s not like “Bone Colored Moon” or “My First Lover” are snoozers in the slightest. Look at them as a more laid back, laissez faire approaches implied by conventional methods. On a song like the latter, the harmonica crying into the night sounds so tasty it almost hurts.

There are moments Sassparilla sounds a lot like early Alejandro Escovedo. It’s only when they present a smoothed-out roots rock vehicle with a life-burden contemplative tone to their lyrics does this come to light — “Fumes” immediately comes to mind.

But as the band prepares to make their grand exit with the song “You’ve Got It Bad,” it’s what we have come to know Sassparilla to be, the bearded bard twisting tales with the tongue by candlelit and a sketchy bottle of something in one hand. The fiddle wailing notes, more dramatic than the banjo’s picking. As the washtub bass serves as the rhythmic mediator between the two, it’s a fine departure and the close to another chapter in this band’s existence.

Link: http://brettdetar.com/
(You can download the album for free at his website)

Where do all the aging punks go? They usually exchange their busted-up electric guitars for a busted-up acoustic and try to charge the stage like a leathered folk singer taking charge of a revolution. The results are generally not good.

But what happens when the lead vocalist for a famous alt-rock band ages? He exchanges the electrified power of rock for the dusty confessions of alt-country. And for the ex-vocalist of The Juliana Theory, it works to glorifying results and fortifies Brett Detar as being an accomplished artist for the ages.

Bird In The Tangle is one of the best alt-country album I have heard. The production is crystal clear and the drive behind every song is performed at 110 percent.

The slow-moving  “This City Dies Tonight” preserves the essence of traditional Country and plays like it emits from a corner of an old Texas diner jukebox on a hot summer day, where “The Devil’s Gotta Earn” gives the impression that Slim Cessna is behind the hootenanny.

From the revivalist sound of “Cocaine Whiskey and Heroin” to the intimate Country waltz of “Caged Bird” there is not a bad moment on this album. If you did not know better, you would think Detar has been following the gleam of Nashville his entire life.

Link: http://www.chrismarshallmusic.com/

Chris Marshall sings about the soil like he was kicking up dust in the Tex-Arkana landscape. It’s that crying plea from the slide guitar. It’s the back porch strumming. It’s the voice that exemplifies an emotion of a simpler time and a more thought-provoking array of beauty and place. The smell of fresh, cut grass. The plow in the field. The sweat on the brow. However, for Marshall, that simpler life lies in the Northeast in Portland and the soil comes from an upbringing from being the son of a minister.

“There’s a world that is just outside of your metaphorical, metaphysical..,” you get the point. And that point is that Chris Marshall’s August Light travels beyond the typical and revels in the experience of the world spinning around. Marshall’s music is here to help put things into perspective.

The song, “Look Out The Window” is the one that has sparked the most popularity and is just a hint of the solid base in which this album rests on. Marshall does not go out of his way to impress you, nor does he express any glitz and glamour. Marshall’s alt-country aura is that of purity and that says a lot.

From front to back, August Light is a great listen when you need things to slow down and you want to kick back and relax with the finer points of summer just in reach, be it drenched in lemonade, the beer tap working overtime and the county fair just down the road. And if you just need something to get you through the day, Marshall has something just for you.

Star Anna And The Laughing Dogs
Alone In This Together
Local 638
Rating: 3.2 out of 5

Link: http://staranna.com/home.cfm

Star Anna has the voice that sounds like it has experienced many hard-edged lives yet fragile enough to break at any given moment. And not that “quarter after 1, I’m a little drunk and I need you” fragility. I am talking about emotions like glass sitting at the edge of the world and about ready to fall off fragility. It’s what makes this collection of country rock and folk meanderings a curiousity.

Alone In This Together is really not that great of an album, or so that’s what it starts out to seem. “Shine” is just your typical moderate country rock song that shows little of the true emotion of Star Anna. It’s when you get to the title track where you discover the true charm of this singer.

It’s when she incorporates soul into her country music demeanor where it clicks; about as much as when Ray Charles brought country into his soul music.

“Bird Without Wings” is a beautiful back porch. It’s when she transforms from gravel-rough storyteller to night crooner in the melody that pulls everything together. But it is nice when The Laughing Dogs turn out that Austin grit on “Time” like they were Escovedo’s backing band. Or that late-night intimacy on “Gold And Silver.”

Dig deep in the sand, and you will pull out a gem of an album that bears needing some polishing, but glimmers in its own right.

Link: www.watertowerbucketboys.com

Listening to Water Tower Bucket Boys gives me the itch for Hillbilly Happy Hour at The Melody Inn (http://www.melodyindy.com/). Fringe bluegrass and foot stompers get together at the historic bar for some end-of -the-week hootenanny, and this album comes at a perfect time.

The only difference is that you will want to shed those shoes and squish yer barefeet in the bluegrass. Trade in those tall boys and bottlenecks for Mason Jars because “Crooked Road” is a dedication to the corn whiskey and moonshine that stain the foothills.

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club are to the Dead Kennedys what the Water Tower Bucket Boys are to Prince. These sexy finger pickers take the essence of Bill Monroe and up the ante like Ronnie Dawson and a bag full of pixie sticks but with some Howard Crockett suaveness.

Okay maybe “Telegraph” and “Tequila With Lime” celebrate the slower side of life, but “London Breakdown” and “Blackbird Pickin At A Squirrel” are straight-up rockers and will have the house a’ shakin’ before can get that first “Yee-Haw” out.

Sole Kitchen is top-notch work by a group of excellent and professional musicians who know how to titter on the edge while maintaining a firm foundation in the bluegrass tradition.

Kort
Invariable Heartache
City Slang
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Link: http://blog.cityslang.com/?p=1114

As popular country music continues to lose its ever-loving charm and Nashville dives deeper within itself as the glitz and glamor of Hollywood-laden stars and incapable alternative country cross overs are all the rage at the top, it’s as if country music has switched magnetic poles and are experiencing a role reversal.

But there are some who are preserving the roots of country music simply for the music itself, and let’s face it, good nostalgia. Cortney Tidwell and Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner  do just that with their collaboration Kort.

Invariable Heartache is filled with gems that shine by the glare of broken hearts and lonely nights filled with 11 tracks from the Chart Records catalog. When you hear Wagner’s trembling deep baritone on “April’s Fool,” you immediately think to yourself instant classic that will be forever be lost in time.

Speaking of classic, the two come together to re-create the Conway Twitty song “Pickin’ Wild Mountain Berries,” that became a duet with Loretta Lynn. Their version blends more soft pop sheen to the slight tinge of bluegrass that keeps the song moving. It gives off the glow of a softer demeanor, but like a good memory, the imagery is still as powerful.

And when Tidwell takes over on the microphone, the notes on “I Can’t Sleep With You” and “Only A Memory Away” stretch out into the heavens that rain down with the cries of the pedal steel. If this is heartache, then it fits like a great pair of denims.

You want to hear what true American country music sounds like, this is it.

Link: http://www.endlessnest.com/store/index.php#sonnysand

You smell that? Smells a lot like the remnants of tar from the train tracks down the road on a hot, summer day. But it’s not a hot, summer day. It’s 10 degrees outside and snow is on the ground.

Must be the rusty strings that illuminates from Sonny Smith, like a house adorned with Christmas lights or that Sunday afternoon after a swim down at the river.

Sonny & The Sandwiches’ rawness and acoustic simplicity makes me appreciate their spirit, but makes me want more out of them. Only four songs for them to make an impression, Sonny & The Sandwiches warms you like a round of bluegrass spirituals. That’s how “Throw My Ashes From This Pier When I Die” plays out. “Cathedral In The Desert” sounds like a cassette of an old Grateful Dead bootleg you bought out of some random van.

These are not exceptional tunes, but the band’s modesty plays into their music and that alone gives the sound enough to give them a try.

Link: http://www.tinalie.com/

With a voice like Tina Lie, how can you not stop and listen. This is not your typical indie singer/songwriter fodder. She is not your typical modern day crooner. If her voice alone tells the story, you would swear that Tina Lie has lived a rough and ragged life deep in the grassroots of American music and making her stronger than most female vocals out there. When she sings a song you know she means business no matter how messed up her hair gets after rocking out or how contemplative and personal she can become.

And the country-rusted music is equally as strong. Like the heat of the Texas sun and reminiscent of Alejandro Escovedo’s roots rock approach, you can only expect this band to have both feet firmly planted on the ground.

From the beginning, you will be entranced just how good “Black Swan” is and the way all of the elements of the band come together. So what if it sounds like a beer or Chevy Silverado commercial.

“Gambling With The Stars” is the exact opposite. A gentle piano number, Tina Lie can carry a song with such intimacy through, pulling out soft melody somewhere within that body of hers.

But like all rock and roll affairs, things pick up with “Pirate’s Heart.” Acoustic on electric, wrapped around a Hammond, this is a dust-kicking jam, as she shows off her fangs.

The album juggles around between both styles, within the 12 songs she gets somethings more than right and others slight compliments to the gems that lie within.

Link: http://www.myspace.com/themorningpages

The Morning Pages come out with a big city sound while being small town auteurs, perfectly penning out the essence of country living. Bringing in that Old Country style Merle Haggard/Johnny Paycheck sound within a bluegrass context (“Stumble Towards The Light” is a lyrical ode to Appalachian Mountain religion), The Morning Pages’ debut is a soundtrack to that apple pie sitting on the windowsill and the back road dirt stirring behind the truck while rolling amongst the wildflowers.

“Live With You” sounds like an upbeat Acetone thanks to the influence of the farfisa as much as it sounds like a sped up version of something that could fit inside R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction. It’s the Haight-Ashbury qualities that drift their song outside the box. At least for a moment.

They bring it back with some beer-drinkin’ honky tonkin’ on “Out In The City.” The fiddle never felt more comforting.

“Move To The Country” is anthemic for this band, and lyrically spoken to be a vivid testimony to the outsiders. “Let’s move to the country and learn how to forget.” It’s the slower life this band raises their glasses to.

It’s as if The Morning Pages took their love for country music and exploited their talents to put a sparkle on an antique style. This is not progressivism for progressive sake, this is a historic sound properly and courteously proposed by a band who understands how to surprisingly sling shot the genre into modern context.