Tag Archives: Roots music

How I Picked My Favorite Albums of 2018

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A week ago, give or take, the columnists and reviewers of No Depression received a note from Stacy Chandler, our chief for all things web related and self-described “killer of spam, keeper of the style guide, friend of good music and the good people who make it and listen to it,” letting us know that if we wanted to send her a top ten list of our favorite roots music titles for 2018, she’d be pleased to do something with them. What exactly she planned to do with them I didn’t know, and since I normally don’t participate in such things because I covet my status as the world’s largest collector of half-empty glasses, I deleted the email. Then I changed my mind.

Many of you know that in addition to writing for this website I also aggregate articles primarily about roots music and its weak-kneed country cousin Americana, posting several times each day on multiple platforms. Over the past few weeks I’ve stumbled upon and read endless lists for best rock, folk, indie, Americana, roots, blues, jazz, country, K-pop, hip-hop, live, and reissued albums of the year. While in the past I’ve just skipped or skimmed over them, this year was different.

While new album releases have dipped from a previous high of 130,000 titles per year to a more manageable 75,000 in 2018, when you’re not actually purchasing music because you’re accessing it through the stream at $9.99 per month, the act of finding and listening to new stuff is like having a giant crack addiction. After you the fill up the tank you still want more. And you can have it. Which leads me to why I’ve been searching through all these lists for things I’ve missed or never knew existed, and then adding them into my library with facial recognition and the flick of a thumb.

I’m not just looking for new music, but also books, films, Scandinavian television series on Netflix, the latest discounts on electronic gadgets that I have zero interest in ever buying, celebrity hairstyle transformations and facts about Dove Cameron, whose first kiss at age 17 was with Luke Benward. Not a clue as to who either of them are, but they must be important. I’ve also come across the ten best record stores in America, the best all-in-one turntables, the 13 best blues guitarists in the world, best concerts of the year, ten best music festivals of the year, seven English classic songs to sing out loud with children, and the best song from every Journey album (which is a bit presumptuous if you ask me).

Publishing your own personal list for other people to see and judge, unlike casting a vote in a poll by secret ballot, seems akin to standing naked in front of your tenth-grade public speaking class, and that just sucks. As you can tell by the photo above, I chose to utilize a rather simple system that I discovered on a Pinterest list of ‘easy home projects for the indecisive person’. And that’s me. Because in the day to day and by and by, my favorite music is usually whatever I’m listening to in the moment. So with that said, and in absolutely no particular order, here are a few of my favorite albums for 2018.

Sarah Shook and The Disarmers – Years

John Prine – Tree of Forgiveness

Pharis and Jason Romero – Sweet Old Religion

Joshua Hedley – Mr. Jukebox

Marissa Nadler – For My Crimes

I See Hawks In L.A. – Live and Never Learn

Milk Carton Kids – All The Things That I Did and All The Things I Didn’t Do

Lindi Ortega – Liberty

The Jayhawks – Back Roads and Abandoned Motels

Brandi Carlile- By The Way, I Forgive You

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com

If You Could Name Just One Album

Moby Grape Debut Album / Columbia Records

Many of you who have been reading my articles over the past almost-ten years also follow my Facebook page, Americana and Roots Music Daily. I started it up about three years ago and it can best be described as an aggregation of news stories, art and photography, historical notations, my own writing, and music videos, as well as a place where people can connect and have conversations about music. It’s not a business venture, but just a hobby that has slowly grown from some of my friends to a couple of thousand people from all over the world.

Earlier this week, on a slow news day when I really couldn’t find much to post, I decided to put up a picture of a 51-year-old album that has meant a lot to me and posed this question:

If you could name just one album that has had a major impact on your musical interests and appreciation … damn this is hard. Go. (For you youngsters who don’t recognize my choice, it’s the first Moby Grape, in mono.)

It’s really an unanswerable question to ask of someone, since we maintain a huge jukebox inside our brains that is acquired over time, triggering our memories and creating a baseline of shifting interests and taste. It’s nether a fair assessment to choose one over another, nor does it say much about anything. I could have easily chosen any of a couple dozen if I gave it more thought, yet this is the one that first popped into my mind.

Without spending too much time explaining my choice, I’ll just say that Moby Grape released this self-titled album when I was 15 and there has not been a span of more than a couple of weeks that has since passed where I don’t listen to at least one or two of the 13 tracks. I stared at and studied the cover photo by Jim Marshall endlessly, alone in my bedroom, fascinated and enchanted with the band members’ hair, facial expressions, Don’s finger on the washboard, and the scarf wrapped around Skip’s neck. It came with a free poster that I hung on the wall and it was my go-to album cover for rolling joints. The music featured a rarely heard three-guitar attack, every member was a songwriter, each took turns singing lead vocals, and the production was crisp. They were rock, country, blues, jazz, and soul … often with all five elements surfacing in less than three minutes. Before they self-destructed a few years later, I got to see them live on three occasions. They were my guys.

Over on Facebook people began responding to my question, and within a few hours it was seen by thousands of people, many of whom shared their own choices. Here’s just a few of them:

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – Will the Circle Be Unbroken
Flying Burrito Brothers – Gilded Palace of Sin
Little Feat – Dixie Chicken
The Beatles –White Album, Sgt. Pepper’s, Revolver, and Rubber Soul
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band – East West
Uncle Tupelo – Anodyne
Sex Pistols – Never Mind the Bullocks
The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground
Grateful Dead – Workingman’s Dead
J.J. Cale – Naturally
Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited and The Basement Tapes
R.E.M. – Reckoning
John Fahey – The Legend of Blind Joe Death
Gillian Welch – Time (The Revelator)
Golden Smog – Down by the Old Mainstream
Various Artists –The Rock Machine Turns You On (Columbia Records sampler)
Elton John – Elton John
Bruce Springsteen –Nebraska and Born to Run
Terry Allen – Lubbock On Everything
Steve Earle – Guitar Town
Fred Neil – Bleeker and MacDougal
The Byrds – Fifth Dimension and Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Paul Revere and The Raiders – Greatest Hits
Delaney and Bonnie – Accept No Substitute
Mothers of Invention – We’re Only in It For the Money
Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass – Whipped Cream and Other Delights
Tom Petty – Wildflowers
The Band – Music from Big Pink
Arlo Guthrie – Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys
Buffalo Springfield – Retrospective
Simon and Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Waters
Hiatus Kaiyote –Tawk Tomahawk
Camper Van Beethoven –Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart
Neil Young –Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
Tim Buckley – Blue Afternoon

Other albums mentioned were by Ella Fitzgerald, Waylon Jennings, Jackson Browne, Jean Ritchie, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, NRBQ, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Keith Jarrett, Dave Brubeck, Sly and The Family Stone, Duane Allman, John Coltrane, Beach Boys, Linda Ronstadt, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones.

With the exception of my friend and surrogate daughter Charly, a 23-year-old woman from Germany who listed Hiatus Kaiyote (great name!) as her choice, you could conclude that we fans of roots music are getting up in years. As more than one noted, it seems that we are most connected to the music from our youth. And so despite a slow news day, it brought about an interesting moment of reflection, and a helluva good list of music.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboardand Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.

Easy Ed’s Guide to Roots Music Videos

Alan Lomax filming American Patchworks

Hardly a day goes by when I’m not visiting YouTube multiple times, and it’s usually to search for music-related clips or the occasional instructional video on things like how to clean my Magic Bullet smoothie maker, fix a busted radiator hose, or the best way to store bananas. If I’m ever stuck on a tech problem, it seems like there are thousands of 14-year-old kids who have filmed and uploaded detailed solutions. Education, art, fashion, politics, news, old radio shows and television commercials, speeches, health, fitness, 5K parachute jumps off the roof of Dubai skyscrapers, cute cats, funny dogs, and kitchen sinks: If you can think of something you want to know more about, I guarantee you’ll find it. While YouTube is probably the easiest and my favorite roots music video source, there’s a few other places you might want to explore.

I thought I’d share some search tips and links to some of the long-form and historical musical content I’ve come across through the years. But it’s accompanied by a warning and advice: video content often comes and goes like a case of beer and a bag of chips on Super Bowl Sunday. It’s often a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t proposition, as content owners have the absolute right to demand that it gets pulled off the site, or if they prefer, they can choose to let it stay up and share in the advertising revenue. So keep that in mind. If I share a link that’s dead by the time you read this, just search the title and it’ll likely pop up from another user’s account.

Lost Highway: The Story of American Country

This four-part series was produced back in 2003 and it first aired on BBC and then again on CMT in the United States in 2010. For the latter version, Lyle Lovett was hired to replace the original English narrator. The series traces the history of country music from the Appalachian Mountains and up to the present-day multibillion dollar industry it has become. It is not quite definitive, and there are a number of small but annoying inaccuracies. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty interesting series and you can try this link to start you out. I’ve only found the BBC version so far, but I’ll keep looking for Lyle.

Mother Maybelle’s Carter Scratch

I’m clueless what the origin is of this one, and I wonder if it was perhaps released under a different name. It’s not a documentary per se, but offers a number of clips with an oral history provided by Johnny Cash, Maybelle’s daughters, and a few others. Guitarists will enjoy the focus on her playing style, but it’s not technical in the least. I think much of it comes from The Nashville Network archives, Johnny’s television show, and the Grand Ole Opry. It’s an interesting way to spend an hour. Here’s a sample for you.

Alan Lomax: Archives and Documentaries

Not only did Lomax travel around the world making audio recordings, he also shot a huge amount of film stock. The official Alan Lomax Archive has its own channel on YouTube, and “is a resource for students, researchers, filmmakers, and fans of America’s traditional music and folkways. Shot throughout the American South and Southwest over the course of seven years (1978-1985) in preparation for a PBS series, American Patchwork, which aired in 1991, these videos consist of performances, interviews, and folkloric scenes culled from 400 hours of raw footage, many of which have never been seen publicly.”

American Patchwork consisted of five one-hour documentary films that focused on African American, Appalachian, and Cajun music and dance. While you can search for the individual titles on YouTube, the complete series is best found here. These are the titles of all five: The Land Where the Blues Began, Jazz Parades: Feet Don’t Fail Me Now, Cajun Country, Appalachian Journey, and Dreams and Songs of the Noble Old.

Folkstreams

Connecting documentary filmmakers with niche audiences, Folkstreams is a nonprofit website streaming major films on American vernacular culture. The films on are often produced by independent filmmakers and focus on the culture, struggles, and arts of unnoticed Americans from many different regions and communities. The site is divided into various categories, and if you choose music we’ll probably lose you for a few weeks. There are well over a hundred 30-90 minute documentaries posted covering every area of roots music, including some you never knew existed.

The Johnny Cash Show

This 58-episode series ran from June 7, 1969, to March 31, 1971, on ABC and was taped at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Many of the episodes are scattered throughout YouTube in their entirety or broken into hundreds of individual clips. This was far from the schlock production you might think would have been produced back then, with the first show’s guests featuring Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Doug Kershaw. Other guests represented all areas of music from blues, folk, country, pop, jazz … you name it. If you haven’t seen it, go forth. Here’s two scoops.

Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest

From 1965 to 1966, Pete Seeger hosted 39 episodes of Rainbow Quest. It was taped in black-and-white and featured musicians playing in traditional American music genres such as folk, old-time, bluegrass, and blues. The shows were unrehearsed, there was no studio audience, and songs were often traded between Seeger and his guests.

Odds and Ends

Here’s a few more I’ve found this bottomless well, and I’m sure to have only skimmed the surface.Historic Films Stock Footage Archive seems to have thousands of clips, with a large proportion devoted to music. A&E’s Biography episodes are up on YouTube, and while most aren’t music-related, there are a few gems, including The Everly Brothers and Hank Williams. And in no particular order: Rebel Beat: The History of LA Rockabilly, Rock N’ Roll Country Blues Archive Videos, Grand Old Opry Classics, Town Hall Party, and Smithsonian Folkways channels all deserve two thumbs up.

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Americana and Roots Music Videos: RPM 4

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An occasional series of Americana and roots music videos. Sharing new discoveries, and revisiting old friends.

Those of you who have been reading my weekly No Depression columns over the years or following my daily Facebook posts at The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily hopefully view me as an observant musical news aggregator and occasional agitator. I usually spend an hour or so each day on the hunt for interesting articles, news stories, photography, art, and video clips that are hiding in plain sight but require a bit of sleuthing to assemble in one place. It’s done only out of curiosity, and to expand my own musical knowledge while staying on top of the new and discovering the unique. The act of sharing it with y’all is simply my hobby; no different than assembling little boats inside a bottle or building birdhouses in the workshop. So instead of picking one topic for this particular Broadside, here are a few things I hope you find of interest.

The Queen of Rockabilly Partners with a Runaway

Wanda Jackson, the 80-year-old singer-songwriter and guitarist who began performing back in 1955 and often toured with (and briefly dated) her friend Elvis Presley, is not quite ready to retire. In a 20-year period, she hit the charts with 30 singles and to date has released over 40 albums. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009 and two years later released a collaboration with Jack White titled The Party Ain’t Over, and followed that up a year later with Unfinished Business, produced by Justin Townes Earle.

The new project will be released in 2019, and Joan Jett will be producing a set of new songs co-written by Wanda along with some Nashville-based folks including Angaleena Presley of the Pistol Annies and “Ex’s and Oh’s” singer Elle King.”The songs on this project are very dear to my heart, as a lot of them are based on my own life experiences,” said Jackson. “I’m really looking forward to sharing what Joan and I have been working on.”

The Elmore James Tribute Album

To celebrate the 100th birthday of Delta blues master Elmore James, last January Sylvan Songs Records released a tribute titled Strange Angels: In Flight With Elmore James that features Tom Jones, Bettye LaVette, Keb’ Mo’, Warren Haynes, Billy Gibbons, Shelby Lynne and others with all profits going to charity. Since it came out just after the holiday season, it’s possible you may have missed this gem, although it was written up in Rolling Stone (who reads that anymore?) and posted on the NPR website.

Music Radar has recently published an excellent biography of Elmore that I highly recommend, and it includes interviews with a number of the tribute’s participants.

The Sweetheart of the Rodeo Tour

You may have heard by now that Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman are teaming up with Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives for a number of concerts to celebrate the release of The Byrds’ 1968 classic album (McGuinn and Hillman are unable to use the band’s name — it’s owned by David Crosby but you never know, he might pop up as a surprise guest along the way). Tickets went on sale recently here in NYC for a September show at Town Hall.

Although I went to buy mine the day they were released to the public, it was already sold out to folks who had Ticketmaster’s “platinum” access and could snatch them up in a presale two days earlier. Now they’re being scalped at $350 each, so unless someone out there wants to help me out, I’ll be home alone that night watching Netflix. It’s interesting to note that the show in Nashville at the Ryman had (as of this writing) quite a few seats available at $35 face value. Check out this Brooklyn Vegan article to see if the show is coming to your town.

John Coltrane Goes Top 40

John Coltrane’s posthumously released Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album, with songs recorded back in 1963, was just released debuted at #21 on Billboard’s Top 200 chart. In an article published on Forbes‘ website, tenor saxophonist and one-time Coltrane collaborator Sonny Rollins likened The Lost Album‘s discovery to “finding a new room in the Great Pyramid.”

Coltrane’s legend as one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time sadly didn’t blossom until after his death in 1967 at 40 years old. While Giant Steps and A Love Supreme would each offer excellent entry ramps to his music for the new listener, this new album also offers a fresh insight into what made Coltrane so unique.

An Albert Lee Interview

Australia’s wonderful Beat Magazine recently reported on Albert Lee’s current tour with Peter Asher that is taking him throughout the world. At age 74 the versatile guitarist, known for his super-fast guitar picking based on the styles of Chet Atkins and James Burton, is doing a set with Asher that is acoustic and focused on both stories and songs.

“There are a lot of good players out there,” Lee says. “I started out loving country music, but country has changed a lot and I can’t say that I really like a lot of the stuff coming out of Nashville now — they’re good players, good singers — but the kind of music I like is called Americana. It was always country music until about 20 years ago when it became more pop. You don’t seem to hear a clean guitar on those Nashville records any more, it’s more of a rock and roll guitar.”

Keith Richards

Every night at The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily I post a video to close out the day. I like to mix up the old and new, and try to find things lost or forgotten. One night it could be Jackie Wilson on The Ed Sullivan Show, and on another maybe June Carter and Don Gibson doing a duet of “Oh Lonesome Me.” This one is likely something you’ve seen before, but I just came across it recently and it’s one of my favorites. Let’s go with Keith down to South Carolina, where I hear there are many tall pines.

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, here at therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email is easyed@therealeasyed.com

Americana and Roots Music Videos: RPM 3

Museum of Applied Art

An occasional series of Americana and roots music videos. Sharing new discoveries, and revisiting old friends.

Surfing in the digital stream and scouring YouTube for new music, old tunes and whatever I can find of interest. Here’s a few things that caught my eyes and ears this season.

Amilia K Spicer

Amilia’s Wow and Flutter, which was released last year, is full of earworms. Calling her music “red-dirt noir,” she co-produced it with multi-instrumentalist Steve McCormick and put together with the help of friends like Eric Heywood on pedal steel, Tony Gilkyson and Gurf Morlix on guitars, Dylan/Stones bassist Daryl Johnson, and Wallflower/Foo Fighter Rami Jaffee on keyboards. Last week when I told her I couldn’t stop listening to it, she said “Yay! The Glue Album!” And so here we are: tunes that stick like bubblegum on a hot asphalt highway. We’ll kick it off with a live version of Spicer’s “Windchill” and then a video she directed and produced for “Fill Me Up.”

The Tillers

The Tillers‘ self-titled album came out last March and is their fifth in ten years. Based in Cincinnati, they started out playing the great folk classics of the ’50s and ’60s, busking on the corners and playing bars that pass around a hat for tips. Over time they have developed into a super-tight stringband that doesn’t strictly adhere to one genre or another. They often sound like old-time Appalachian, other times they’re the Ramones on acid. They gotta love Iris DeMent’s quote: “The Tillers … I could sit and listen to them all night long!”

Pat Reedy & The Longtime Goners

Pat Reedy is another musician who started out busking, making a name for himself on the streets of New Orleans. He put out a couple of albums with the Longtime Goners of great Cajun-style country before moving to Nashville and morphing into a band of honky-tonk outlaws. He’s an unabashed day-job construction worker who happens to write some great songs, and this summer he and the band are on the road promoting That’s All There Is (And There Ain’t Anymore).

Little Jimmy Dickens and the Columbia Classics Series

I’m going to close this out with two more tunes that each come from older compilations. The first is a Little Jimmy Dickens song that comes from the second volume of the five-disc Columbia Country Classics series. Born in Bolt, West Virginia, and standing at four-foot-eleven, he started out performing as Jimmy The Kid before he was discovered by Roy Acuff and signed to Columbia Records. He was a longtime member of the Grand Ole Opry, joining in 1948 and making his final appearance just weeks before he passed away at age 94. Along with Hank Williams, Minnie Pearl, and her husband Henry Cannon, he co-wrote “Hey Good Lookin’” sitting on an airplane in 1951. Only Williams got the songwriting credit.

Dave Rawlings Machine

Back in 2014 there was a one-night-only concert in New York’s Town Hall that was released as a film documentary along with a soundtrack album titled Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of Inside Llewyn Davis. It was far better than the original fictionalized feature film depicting a ’60s folksinger, and featured a ton of musicians, including Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, the Punch Brothers, Elvis Costello, Jack White, Joan Baez, and Marcus Mumford, and it was produced by T Bone Burnett. For me, this is the standout track, and in these unsettling times, one that really sticks.

his article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.