New Music 2017 - Part 17 - The Vintage TV Recordings - Danni Nicholls

Three months into 2017 and the days are longer. I have some 2017 festival tickets booked but the summer still feels a way off. Over the Easter weekend I intend to embark on another virtual road trip through music whilst also considering the fact that logic dictates at least some of the defining LPs of 2017 must have now been released, the consequent problem there being that I may not actually know about them yet.
Before that I'm going to indulge in my liking for live recordings; to wit that which is the title of this post. I finally saw Danni Nicholls live at Truck Festival last July after a couple of false starts due to venue issues resulting in shows cancelled to the detriment of all concerned.

This comprises tracks from both LPs and I have mentioned them before in posts. They are 'A Little Redemption' (2013) and 'Mockingbird Lane' (2015).  The play list here is as follows:

• Long Road Home
• Leaving Tennessee
• Beautiful Game
• Hey There, Sunshine
• Beautifully Broken
• Between Forever and Goodbye
• Where The Blue Train Goes
• Let Somebody Love You
• A Little Redemption

If you like this you will like both the studio LPs too.  I believe that her third LP is in the works. Be that as it may I strongly recommend that you also need to catch the artist live-for-real because even the best, most sensitively produced, live recording doesn't hold a candle to being there in person.

Danni Nicholls, Saloon Bar stage, Truck Festival, 16 July 2016.

New Music 2015 - Part 18 - Danni Nicholls - Mockingbird Lane

In Spring 2013 UK-based Danni Nicholls and her largely acoustic take on Americana, tinged with country blues, came to my attention courtesy of her first full-length LP 'A Little Redemption' and I mentioned it, as part of the new transatlanticism, here.
That album was crowd-funded and very well received. She has wasted no time planning and plotting the follow-up and in keeping control of the process to herself. 'Mockingbird Lane' has been recorded (in East Nashville, like its predecessor), mixed and mastered and entirely crowd-funded through PledgeMusic. This does, incidentally, show that people are still very much willing to pay for music that they believe in and up-front too.
It is too early for album art or any of that so here instead is the title track 'Mockingbird Lane'.

Recorded live in the most famous garden shed in Somerset and quite possibly the UK. For lots more acoustic diamonds, amongst the dust, inevitable spiders and amazing collection of ephemera, pay a visit to Songs From The Shed.
Thinking about it, here is the title track of the first LP 'A Little Redemption', recorded in the same session.
Astonishing as this might be, all is not lost.

You haven't actually missed the boat - it doesn't cast off until 22 March. You can still grab a piece of the action.
The album was fully released, physically and digitally on 23 October 2015.

New Music - Part 16 - Americana Both Sides of the Atlantic

This is about two albums that I have come to my attention in the last couple of days. One has been released only recently and the other is due in six weeks or so: both incorporate several trends in the way new music, and the music industry in general, is changing shape in an almost organic way.
I'm actually going to start with the one that has not yet been released for, without it, I would very likely not have discovered the one that has.

This is the début album from the Brighton/London based singer-songwriter. Crowd-funded, it is self-released on June 30, 2013. This is not to say for a minute that it is going to be some parochial take on Americana.
It was recorded in East Nashville under the guidance of Chris Donohue (Emmylou Harris and, more recently, The Civil Wars) with many well known roots musicians playing parts. Neither is it an album of covers and standards for, with one exception she has written or co-written all but one of the songs in this collection. For a more extensive biography see here.
  

The second album is this - the history behind it is even more complicated than at first it might seem.

This is their latest studio album and a 2013 release by, as were the forgoing ones, Chicago-based independent label Bloodshot Records. At the heart of the band are two natives of Detroit, MI who some while back decided to reverse the migration that led to the explosion of blues and rock, and relocate to Tennessee: Kurt Marschke (lyric, guitar vocals)  and JD Mack (drums), not brothers as it might seem, and the line-up had already been prone to evolution as is so often the case. The fact is that then it did include brothers from London: Spencer Cullum (guitar, lap-steel and pedal steel) and Jeff Cullum (bass). Then the dynamic changed again.
These two albums serve to define, to an extent, just where things are now and how much has changed; much of it for the better I believe.