New Music 2016 - Part 9 - Lucinda Williams - The Ghosts Of Highway 20

Here's another little sneaky listen. I have been waiting upon this LP for some time if I'm to be quite honest.

I'm writing whilst listening but I can share the prospect with you. This live stream is likely time-limited and may not be available in all countries.

I'll be back with you about my thoughts on this, but not until later.

New Music 2016 - Part 5 - Applewood Road

One day in 2014 three songwriters met in a coffee shop in East Nashville. They had not met before but they wrote a song called Applewood Road.
Shortly afterwards the three - Amber Rubarth, Amy Speace and Emily Barker - recorded it and decided to expand the project to a whole LP. In 2015 they had written the whole set and returned to the same place where they recorded that first song. This is that record and what you get is three part harmony and sparse acoustic accompaniment.

It was recorded at Welcome To 1979 Studio in Nashville around a single microphone to two-track tape using all analogue equipment.  The tapes were edited together and mastered at Gearbox Records, again using all analogue process and the acetate masters lathe-cut there too.

Applewood Road:

1. Applewood Road
2. To the Stars
3. Old Time Country Song
4. Home Fires
5. Honey Won't You
6. Give Me Love
7. Sad Little Tune
8. Lovin' Eyes
9. Josephine
10. I'm Not Afraid Anymore
11. Bring the Car Round
12. Row Boat
13. My Love Grows

It is released by Gearbox Records on 12 February 2016 (vinyl, digital). Here is a little preview:


Note added 10 February 2016: You can currently listen to a legal stream of the full album courtesy of For Folk's Sake, ahead of its release this coming Friday, here. Or indeed, courtesy of The Bluegrass Situation, here.

New Music 2015 - Part 63 - Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn - Banjo Banjo EP

I was making preparations for my trip to Green Man Festival 2015 whilst idly listening to this-and- that and just simply trying to keep up with music. I didn't have plans to post anything between now and the start of next week.
It only takes one track to totally derail a train and it doesn't matter which one.

Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn - Banjo Banjo EP.

It ranges from a Chinese song, Abigail speaks mandarin, to a cover of Europe's 'The Final Countdown' as a purely instrumental tune. What more could you ask? Except that possibly that you could stream it all, free and legally?

Well, courtesy of The Bluegrass Situation you can do exactly that and there is plenty more goodness to be found there, across all sorts of genres, to be discovered.

If you still want more clawhammer banjo from these two artists then here it is...

On the other hand this is exactly why I'm doing this. It is why I'm going to Green Man and then a couple of weeks later to End of The Road. It is why I'll try and stay out for fourteen hours a day, for three days in a row, listening to live music and trying to take photos of it. I want to do that.

New Music 2014 - Part 19 - Clara Engel - Looking-Glass Fire

I seem to be in a writing mood at the moment so I guess that it is best just to roll with it. In any case I just keep finding out about stuff that interests me and, as it often does, this tends to result in a positive-feedback loop all of its own. For times when this pattern fails I keep a list of things that I really ought to investigate but simply haven't done anything about. It may seem a curious way to work but that is how it is.

This is the latest release from Canadian artist Clara Engel, whom I have written about before in respect of the Madagascar EP (2011). It is another EP/mini-album and I am currently unaware if a physical release is planned, but no matter.
You can stream below but if you like what you hear please buy it. Only this way can independent artists subsist, let alone continue to record and thus make our lives a much richer place.      

There is plenty more by Clara to explore and enjoy. If you like the above then try her most recent full LP 'Ashes and Tangerines' (2014).

Not writing much but still listening...

OK. You are probably thinking that after three three-day festivals in six weeks I would, or perhaps should, be posting almost every day. Well. Let's just say it rarely works out quite like that.
It is not that I don't have plenty to write about; quite the opposite as I have heard so much live music that it takes a while for me to think about it all what it meant to me, and how it relates together or doesn't.  I've also been listening to more than a little new music too in the last two months - often just tracks posted as tasters on the internet etc. and while that might further complicate matters in terms of quantity it sometimes provides help in terms of inter-relation. A few of these things will have cropped up as un-linked items on the 'I've Just Listened To...' section on the side-bar, which I have recently moved to near the top as part of an ongoing rearrangement.
I hope to start to get my thoughts on the summer now gone and forthcoming releases trickling out soon but I shall be busy a couple of weekends.
  
Just a little later:
For the several people who have ended up here looking for 'music for Autumn' and/or 'music for Fall' (something I posted about at the start of summer last year) try this.

I love my house but were it to become detached from its terrace and dragged into the woods I think it might look much like this. I could live with that.
  
You can currently stream the whole album on Stereogum. It is released on vinyl and CD on October 17, 2011 by, as if I needed to say so, Bella Union.