Truck Festival - Part 3 - Solace in The Saloon - Don Gallardo & Friends

Another artist returning once again to The Saloon Bar was Don Gallardo. When in his native United States he performs with his band 'How Far West'. In the UK it is 'Don Gallardo and Friends' and they are many.

Don Gallardo and Friends, Saloon Bar stage, 22 July 2017.

If you haven't heard him live, or failing that heard the live LP --- Don Gallardo & How Far West - Nashville: Live Sunday Night at Third & Lindsley (2017) --- then you need to do that. Really.

The new studio LP, the successor to 'Hickory' (2015), should be out before the end of this year and we were treated to some songs from that. The set finished with a truly magnificent rendition of 'The North Dakota Blues', taken from the aforementioned studio album but that concludes the live one too.
In fact we got some of the live set pretty much as-it-was-in-Nashville but in a mucky little dive-bar in rural Oxfordshire: Life is art, but actually being there is simply like nothing else imaginable!

The full five-piece (and the sound guy too, far right). There really was an audience but it is just not in-shot.

That is not to say that these were the only artists to appear on stage during the gig; far from it.

This was a duet with Hannah Rose Platt.

If you want me I'll be in the bar...

Another attempt to write a post about a road-trip through music has just been cunningly subverted, this time by a festival announcement. As for the title, it's just a case of me with apologies to Joni.
For all that I shall start with the artists and the LP that I was intending to start with anyway.

This album has been out in the US for a while now but is released in the UK very shortly and there is a tour in the offing too. It should be clear that we are on a trip and that we are starting in California. Or at least this outfit is.

Speedbuggy USA - South of Bakersfield (Wagon Wheel Records, 2015).

The four-piece are purveying the Bakersfield sound of Californian country rock that grew up in counterpoint to the increasingly highly polished and produced sounds emanating from Nashville in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This music is definitely the concern of ordinary, blue-collar folk.  They are coming to a small festival that takes place on a farm in Oxfordshire, England in July. It is rather appropriately called Truck Festival. Those trucks may run on rails as in this, taken from 'South of Bakersfield'. Speedbuggy USA plays Truck Festival on Sunday 17 July.

In fact this trip through music is defined only by the end-point of the various journeys and that is a single small stage - The Great Western Saloon Bar - at the above mentioned gathering. The starting points vary wildly and indeed some of the artists have already been mentioned in these pages. Here is the full schedule.

Applewood Road headline on Friday. Top of the bill on Saturday is BJ Barham, perhaps better known as the on-going lead singer and songwriter for American Aquarium. This is his solo side project that includes the soon-to-be-released LP 'Rockingham'. Robert Chaney, whom I mentioned with regard to his album 'Cracked Picture Frame' early last year, is a must-see as far as I am concerned. In fact there is nothing that I don't want to see, whether I have seen that act or artist live before or have not! Indeed, and as well as the above, at the very least these six have already been mentioned by me specifically in regards to LP releases: The Black Feathers, Danni Nicholls, Delta Bell, Redlands Palomino Company, The Rosellys, Paul McClure. I know quite a bit about them. I have seen Stevie Ray Latham live too, I think, but I need to look into that.
What interests me now is all the rest of the artists on the above list; many of which I know little or nothing about. There is no point whatsoever in going to festivals just to see acts that one is already well aware of.
What I dig up about this will form the second part of this post.

Truck Festival 2015 - The Saloon Bar

I said that I'd be back with this information as soon as I knew what was happening. Here is what I now think that is.

Lots to like here - I'll be starting with Delta Bell and not just because she/they are the first act playing on that stage on Friday;  the very same is already firmly installed on my list of 'ones to see'. I'm delighted to find that she is on the programme.  I shall, therefore continue with my theme of starting with the artists on the small stages and those that open any stage.
Don Gallardo, Porchlight Smoker, Stevie Ray Latham and so much more...
"Start at the beginning, continue to the end, and then stop." maybe.