Water Liars – Phantom Limb

Phantom Limb was released in February, but I’m shamefully only now hearing it. It’s excellent, and if you haven’t heard of Water Liars or their debut album, or maybe you’ve heard of ‘em, but haven’t gotten around to listening just yet, you should do so immediately. It’s a beautifully reckless revelation of the vulnerabilities inherent in stark realities. Water Liars will immediately resonate with fans of artists like Jason Molina, Damien Jurado, Jason Isbell, A.A. Bondy, etc.

This is just an excellent all around album. It’s soulful in just about every way. From their mournful harmonies to their slow warm guitar chords to their spacious and deep drum beats. It all seems to go well with a glass or more of bourbon. Ask me how I know.

Phantom Limb begins with a grungy distorted guitar riff that does its job in baptizing the weak of heart and easily distracted into the alluringly harsh realities of the Water Liars’ world. The first song, “$100,” is a rocker with a somewhat sweet melody and harmony. Perhaps a contradiction you may say, but it fits when you consider that the song is essentially a love song about inviting lust and danger by paying for the services of a prostitute that robs the narrator of his wallet and leaves him with a busted jaw. And despite lamenting that he “wishes he had never,” at least he got to feel perfection if only for a short while.

Songs like “Dog Eaten,” “Whoa Back,” “Low and Long,” and “On the Day” are heart breakers. They’ll make you cry if you’re not careful, but perhaps that’s what you need. It’s as if there’s just this dull constant throbbing pain of memories and regrets. Or if you’re in the mood for fighting, perhaps a song like “Short Hairs” is more your speed. You really can’t go wrong listening to this album, so sit back and relax and let some of the other engineering weirdness like feedback and tape hiss and recordings of poet sermons wash over you as you take it all in. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Water Liars: Website; Facebook

Go buy the album from Misra Records’ store

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Jeff Zentner’s Inspiration Is Poetic

Listening to Jeff Zentner’s new album A Season Lost, I had a feeling that Jeff would be an interesting person to talk to and get to know. And, I was right. When I asked Jeff if he would write a “Songwriter’s Point of View” he enthusiastically agreed, and asked if he could right about his favorite poet instead of a favorite album. And once I read about his inspiration, I definitely caught a glimpse into his songwriting, clearly seeing this inspiration in his lyrics. But not only can his inspiration be found in lyrics, it can also be felt. While reading this post, I could hear his songs playing as the soundtrack to each and every poem written by Joe Bolton. So, I encourage you to read on about Jeff’s inspiration and get to know him and his songs.

I discovered the Kentucky poet Joe Bolton about five years ago or so. I had played a show in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and a good friend, Jonathan Treadway, himself a brilliant poet, recommended him to me. His aim was true. The first poem I ever read by Joe Bolton was this:

“The Ohio”

Seven miles south of anywhere

You’d rather be, it is autumn

What sweetened shrivels,

What shriveled falls,

And what fell is leaf-rot,

A sick rich scent on the air.

You are paling, you are bored,

You are zipping up your jacket

And walking into a dynamo

Of twilight and raw wind,

Tossing your hair as a brief bruise

Of pink scores the horizon

Seven miles north, below the lights

From the bars and dance halls

Of small towns, the Ohio swells

With a cargo of barges,

And catfish twist through the bones

Of what never bothered to rise

These words hummed through me like I was a tuning fork. I resonated at exactly this frequency. I couldn’t get my hands on his book quickly enough. His poems have been collected in a single volume called The Last Nostalgia. When I got it, I could only read in small doses, such was the beauty and heartbreak it contained. Joe Bolton wrote of the landscapes and the heartscapes that I knew. He wrote of a building up and breaking down. He wrote of the beginnings and the death of love and life. He wrote about rivers and the pale twilight of winter evenings in the South. He wrote about desire and nights alive with the smell of wild honey. His poems were filled with wonder and despair in equal measure. His words made the most beautiful music I had ever heard.

 

…The old and the new songs of heartbreak sound the same

It’s only when the needle grinds in the grooves

That a sadness greater than your own comes on,

And the dead begin to live again, in you

– “The Prototypical Ghosts”

Joe Bolton is virtually unkown. You will never hear him mentioned in the same breath as other poetry greats such as Rilke, Rimbaud, Gilbert, and Whitman. But you should. He has soared to their heights.

 

…And when the sun, slipping

Behind a staggered row of pines

In Northern Mississippi or Tennessee

In late August,

Hangs the needles in its distant, momentary fire,

Then lets them go,

And the bickering cries of the gathering starlings

Rise in praise of the falling dark.

– “A Hymn to the Body”

I was asked to write this “Songwriter’s Point of View,” which normally features songwriters talking about the work of other songwriters. Make no mistake, there are many brilliant songwriters whom I love and who provide me with great inspiration. In fact, some of my favorites on earth appear on my latest album. But when it comes time to truly go to the well, so to speak, I look to my poets for inspiration. And Joe Bolton is supreme among them. I believe that a song should have lyrics that can stand on their own, and be read as poetry, without music. Lately, there is no music more beautiful to me than beautiful words in front of my eyes and the sound of wind in my ears. The Last Nostalgia is my lodestar for every phrase I write. It is gospel to me. I have never written quite the same way since. The title track from my album The Dying Days of Summer is a tribute to Joe Bolton.

After the many-colored but mostly blue

Seasons of our two solitudes – the hours

Of longing and the flight from longing, the years

Spent remembering as if memory were true -

We stand together on a balcony

Above the city of losses, the city of lights

Bouncing back off a starless sky, the city

Where we’ll try to save this night from the death of nights.

Ours has become a life in which the self

And the self’s other begin to anticipate the chances

Taken in the name of desire. Desire:

That sweet song the body sings to itself,

Or under the best of circumstances

The song two bodies sing to each other

– “The Name of Desire”

…Now, coming back to the place in autumn,

You watch rose- and wine-colored leaves swirl down,

And, seeing the stones now barely break the ground,

Think: So this is what it does to things, time.

The creek leaf-choked, you can hear the grass die.

Under the clouds, come. Sit. Hear the grass die.

– “Making Love in a Colored Graveyard”

Joe Bolton committed suicide in March 1990. He was 28.

Stream and buy Jeff Zentner’s A Season Lost
Jeff Zentner: Website; Facebook; Twitter
Buy Joe Bolton’s  The Last Nostalgia & Days of Summer Gone

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Arthur Alligood – One Silver Needle

Arthur Alligood has stitched together an excellent patchwork of songs on his new album One Silver Needle. As one of the best singer-songwriters in Americana, he has rightfully been dubbed the 2011 Mountain Stage NewSong Contest winner, and, as the winner, Alligood earned the opportunity to work with veteran producer Mikal Blue and ace musicians like drummer Jim Keltner (John Lennon, George Harrison, Bob Dylan), bassist Leland Sklar (James Taylor, Carole King, Jackson Browne) and guitarist Michael Ward (Ben Harper, The Wallflowers).

How it took this long for him to be recognized is beyond me because Alligood has been creating some of the best lo-fi Americana for about a decade and continues to do so but in a more polished manner on One Silver Needle. Instrumentally, the album is flawless. Vocally, Alligood is at his best. And, featuring a variety of styles that wasn’t often heard on previous albums, if heard at all, One Silver Needle shows considerable growth and allows the listeners to hear what Alligood is capable of doing. Kicking off the album with the roots rocker “Shouldn’t Be That Hard”, the listeners know they’re not getting the same Alligood, but one with more range and oomph. He returns to this roots raucous mid-album with “Go On Back”. The steady beat of the drums mixed with electric guitar and organ sustains and builds the story. Alligood keeps the great stories going with one about a small-town teenager’s desire to leave on the country-like “We Had To Run.” Continuing with outstanding songwriting, the country shuffle on the title track creates the perfect backdrop for the hopeful lament. Then, closing out the album are “Ochlockonee” and “Right Time Rain,”  where Alligood ends One Silver Needle with his characteristically gentle and soft way.

One Silver Needle is most certainly worthy of Mountain Stage endorsement and it’s Arthur Alligood’s best work to date. By sewing together a string of excellent songs, his title “One of the Best Singer-Songwriters in Americana” becomes “His Excellency of Songwriting.”

Buy One Silver Needle
Arthur Alligood: Website; Facebook; Twitter

“One Silver Needle”

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Spirit Family Reunion – No Separation

Let’s start with a preliminary conceit: “revival” folk bands are treading territory that their forefathers blazed far earlier. OK? It isn’t new; but really, how many artists create new sounds? If the choice for contemporary American country music is between ballads to plastic cups slurred by Ed Hardy-clad caricatures, or the toes-in-the-sand, margarita-in-the-hand vacation soundtracks of Buffet disciples, I’ll gladly follow a bunch of sweaty and earnest kids down a welcome, if not uncharted, path.

All that is to say that if you have a predispositions about enjoying old-timey roots music made this decade by a young band with an old soul, please leave them at the door. No Separation by New York’s Spirit Family Reunion has seldom left my turntable since I received the hand-printed LP in the mail three weeks ago. The six-member outfit draws comparisons to fellow New Yorkers The Felice Brothers, but Spirit Family Reunion is decidedly its own band. Their music is set in an anytime scene without any nods to past stylistic kitsch or forgotten turns of phrase, and while the self-released first album doesn’t do anything particularly new, the things it does are done exceedingly well.

No Separation features 12 tracks of high proof ruckus and hand-rolled laments that show a keen appreciation for when to kick things up and when to show restraint. On bangers like “I Want To Be Relieved” and “Green Rocky Road” banjo and fiddle ride ramshackle percussion to the brink. The more down tempo songs like “On My Mind” strip things down and let the harmonies do the heavy lifting. You really get the sense that these people love playing with each other and it really shines through hearing all those voices rise in unison. Throughout the album, the singers come together in tight harmonies that you can’t help but join in.

Best of all, No Separation offers everything a good collection of folk music should: melodies that stay in your head, an honest recount of both joyful and troubled times, inspiration and a confidence that things will turn around, a sense of community and an invitation to pull up a chair.

– Written by Brad Cardwell

Stream Songs From No Separation & Buy
Spirit Family Reunion: Website; Facebook

“I Want To Be Relieved”

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Jeff Zentner – A Season Lost

I’ve had Jeff Zentner’s new album, A Season Lost, for weeks now and after listening to it more than a dozen times, I still can’t quite describe its beauty, but I can tell you what draws me to to it time-and-time again.

A Season Lost is overflowing with Southern Gothic layers and textures that haunt the dreamy arrangements with strings and hushed vocals. It’s an album made for the steamy, foggy nights of the Mountain South. The eerie tone throughout the album creates some sort of morbid romanticism that transports the listeners to a desolate, bleak world where tragic figures turned heartbroken ghosts search for solace.

There doesn’t seem to be an on-going theme except for the unearthly tones that pervades A Season Lost. Oddly, it’s dark and sad, but not too depressive. The album showcases Jeff’s deft and uncanny ability to put together a complex song with complex emotion. I know I’m supposed to feel melancholy and downhearted, but I’m not feeling hopeless either. I feel strange, but a good strange. I can’t recall ever feeling this way while listening to other albums.

And, then there is the matter of the many great singers and musicians backing Jeff, levitating the album with each whispering note and every draw of the violin bow. Magnificent.

I think the only complaint I have is the cohesiveness of A Season Lost. Every song but one has a dismal thread that binds the album, and that song, “Bleed For You”, lacks the mysterious tones of the other songs, but it is also one of my favorite songs on the album. It’s sad and nostalgic but does not possess the strange and otherworldly tones heard throughout the album.  So, with the exception of this one complaint, A Season Lost is a collection of ghostly and gorgeous Southern Gothic.

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Jeff Zentner: Website; Facebook; Twitter

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Warren Byrom and The Fabled Canelands – The Fabled Canelands

The Fabled Canelands is the debut album from Warren Byrom and The Fabled Canelands, and it is a spectacular debut at that. The album is like a journey that begins moving West up over those Appalachian Mountains into the new frontier and ends where all water travels west of the mountains down the Mississippi River and into New Orleans. While rooted in the circumstances and perhaps myths of the past, this album is very much situated in the now. It expresses longing, and heartache, hope, despair, and wonder. However, perhaps most importantly, it leaves its listener with the sense that she or he is somehow better for having listened and taken in the lessons of those fabled canelands.

Warren Byrom has a fantastically expressive voice that radiates with a deep sense of hope and to some extent even a sense of innocence. Not the kind of hope and innocence that boarders on ignorance, but the kind that comes from having what one might call an “open soul.” You can’t help but connect with Warren and what he’s singing about. The other musicians on this album are excellent. They help stitch together a patchwork quilt into this blanket that covers everything in its warm goodness. The overall musicianship is great. It’s raw, but in all the right ways. It feels comfy. The album is country and folk of course, but what I think sets it apart is its artful use of the distilled elements of Dixie blues and jazz so effortlessly and creatively. The kind of jazz played here that seems to be lost on so many alt-country roots artists these days is the same kind that formed in the musical jambalaya of the Southern frontier before there were differentiations between jazz and blues and folk and country and string band music. However, here, Warren and band don’t fall into the other pitfall that often plagues some roots artists recently in that they never sound like a lost-in-the-past copy cat revival show. The music is influenced by the past while still remaining firmly in the now.

The album opens with “That First Kite,” which is an original arrangement that utilizes a James Baker Hall poem as its lyrics. Warren and band masterfully arrange this hauntingly beautiful song, which sets the mood for the rest of the album quite nicely.

The song “The Fabled Canelands” shows off the band’s more folk rock and alt-country sensibilities, but the increased pace and instrumentation doesn’t cause any loss in lyrical poignancy with lines like, “I feel like a bat, my signal ain’t coming back, it just disappears into the night.” There are a few other rockers on this album like “Heavy Dragoons” that sounds like it could have come off of any of Bob Dylan’s recent albums since Love & Theft or “Song for Jayce” that could easily feel at home on a Wilco record. You should listen to these with the stereo loud. Is it time for a road trip?

There are some other real gems on this album as well. “Home” is a beautifully sweet song about a broken relationship and longing to “put us back together.” It has a gorgeous and sublimely subtle organ part and to go with heartbreaking lines like, “The bird that marries the fish, where they supposed to be living?” Or there’s the folky jazz walkabout called “Sidewalk Kings of New Orleans” delivered with a drawl like a slightly inebriated Hayes Carll busking down on Bourbon Street. There’s the lyrically irreverent and classic country sounding song “Nickel and Dime” equipped with pedal steel guitar. As well as the weary cosmic folk dream called “Sleep.”

Overall, The Fabled Canelands is just a great record. I highly recommend it and consider it essential listening to roots music fans. I expect big things for Warren and band in the future. Check and see if they’re coming to a town near you and see them live.
–Written by Dee Thomas

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Warren Byrom and The Fabled Canelands’ Facebook

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Jeannot – Turner Street EP

It’s midnight on this hot and muggy night with the rhythmic sound of a fan blowing a slight breeze in my direction and the soft heartbreaking songs of Jeannot’s Turner Street EP bringing back memories of young summers and love.  Turner Street is a gorgeous sampling of John Glouchevitch’s songs that were produced and recorded by Philippe Bronchtein. Each song’s thoughtful lyrics sway and swing alongside a guitar, piano, and woodwinds disguising their individual sadness with light and breezy soundscapes. But, it’s the first track, “Tire Swing”, that has provided a gentle soundtrack for the remembrances playing out in my pensive dreamscape of a nascent and innocent romance that only two teenagers in love can create (and, adults only wish they can recreate) around tire swings and hot summer days.

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Jeannot: Facebook; Twitter

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Ben de la Cour – To The River Rise

Bob Dylan said this of New Orleans: “In New Orleans you could almost see other dimensions. There’s only one day at a time here, then it’s tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees. You never get tired of it. After a while you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs, like you’re in a wax museum below crimson clouds.” And, I can’t help but feel that singer-songwriter and NOLA transplant, Ben de la Cour, could relate to this statement. De la Cour who grew up in Brooklyn lived in London, Cuba and Paris. Ben set out on a unique path as an amateur boxer and frontman for a doom-metal band before leaving the aggression behind to become a melancholic singer-songwriter.

To The River Rise is Ben’s second solo record. This eleven song offering is less heavy than his last album, but that really isn’t saying a lot because To The River Rise is just as dark and haunting. Understated throughout the album, Ben’s deep baritone is the centerpiece throughout showcasing his incredible songwriting abilities as well as his strong guitar-playing skills. Songs like “I Went Down to Dido”, “To The River Rise”, “Memorial Day”, and “Drowning In the Wishing Well”  are the real testaments to the caliber of artistry this album possesses, and this without a doubt will stand the test of time.

New Orleans is place where the dead never really seem to die. Where cemeteries are above ground and referred to as “cities of the dead”, I can’t help but hear and see the ghost of Townes while listening to Ben. And, hence, making “I Went Down to Dido”, Ben’s tribute to the legendary songwriter my favorite song on the album. Townes’ spirit has touched Ben and left an eerie imprint on some of the songs on To The River Rise.

Preview & buy To The River Rise
Ben de la Cour: Facebook; Reverbnation; Myspace

“I Went Down To Dido”

“Memorial Day”

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The Honey Dewdrops – Silver Lining

I have made it no secret that I’m a mountain girl. I’d rather camp or visit family in the mountains than go to some of the world’s most beautiful cities. Why go when you can find some of the prettiest places on earth here? These hills and mountains of West Virginia and Virginia will always be a part of me just as the rivers that run through the land will always run through my veins. Roaming these ancient mountains, walking on the earth my ancestors have trod since the mid-1700s, and listening to the wind sing the songs they once sung is truly what I’m about. So, when I heard Silver Lining, the new album from Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish – the husband and wife duo who call themselves The Honey Dewdrops – an instant kinship was formed based on their music.

Founded on a solid base of guitar, clawhammer banjo, and mandolin, it’s this strong continuation of mountain tradition mixed with a slight modern sensibility that represents their Blue Ridge Mountain home as well as all of the other mountain ridges that make up this Appalachian region. Silver Lining is a mix of their own songs as well as a cover of The Seeger Sisters’ “Bright Morning Stars” that connects with me on a deep level, but it’s the powerful message of “Hills of My Home” that has affected me so greatly causing me to cry an ugly cry. It’s a song about the blight of mountaintop removal which has the capacity to politely and poetically persuade some of the staunchest Capitalist mine operators if only they had the heart to listen. It’s a song that would make our heroes of traditional folk music proud.

All-in-all, listening to Silver Lining is like listening to the songs of my heart. It’s an album that has a dual affect and effect on my soul. On one hand, these are songs that are capable of healing my homesick heart that longs to go back to the days and nights spent  in the Alleghany mountains of Virginia; then, on the other, The Honey Dewdrops have the ability to break this aching heart that longs for those young and innocent days in those wonderful mountains.

Stream & buy Silver Lining
The Honey Dewdrops: Website; Facebook; iTunes; cd baby

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Kalispell – Westbound

Give me an album or a song with a pedal steel guitar and a banjo, and I’m as happy as a cow in clover. And, happy is just what I am when listening to Kalispell’s new album Westbound.

Kalispell, is the work of Shane Leonard from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who is accompanied by Ben Lester (AA Bondy, S. Carey), Kevin Rowe (The Barley Jacks) and others. Westbound is Kalispell’s first full-length album, but it sounds like the fifth. I guess that during the six years it took to make it, Shane was able to create something familiar yet new. Listening to Westbound is like meeting someone for the first time but with the unshakable feeling that you’ve known them for years. In other words, it’s timeless but not trite.

Also, in the six years it took Shane to make this album he lived. He has traveled, moved from Massachusetts to Wisconsin, fell in and out of love, and never resting on his laurels, and it shows in his songwriting. On album opener “Fly Over”  with harmonica in hand and pedal steel guitar floating in the background, Shane gives us a solid and soaring country-flavored tune perfect for the Summer. However, under the uptempo music there is something deeper than your run-of-the-mill Summer tune. And, the mix of a clawhammer banjo and pedal steel jumping and dancing around lyrics like,

church taught me how to hold a grudge

my brother taught me how to let it go

he learned from his father

we learn from our father

isn’t that the way that this is supposed to go?

makes a crisp and clean song that is simple yet smart. And, my favorite on the album (go figure), “Sepia Ghost”, has the pedal steel front-and-center. Nothing frilly about this song. It’s a piece of slow, intimate goodness.  Lastly, because of my blue and sappy nature my attention was grabbed by another outstanding song “Lucky A Hundred Times”. The earnestness of the abstract lyrics like,

glowing from a television mind

honesty as currency – it feels like lying

go then, proudly

“I’ve been lucky a hundred times”

staring down a cold street light

“darling won’t you tell me when it’s in the right?

your goodbyes had me.

I’ve been lucky a hundred times”

connects with me on a deep emotional level that can not be explained.

These personal and poetic confessions set to a beautiful backdrop of banjo, pedal steel guitar, fiddles, and guitar makes Westbound a stellar first album. And, I am personally thankful to Shane for not rushing the creative process because there is a lot of living, moving, and loving that happens in six years and it’s all abstractly documented in this gorgeous musical diary.

Stream & buy Westbound
Kalispell: Website; Facebook; Twitter

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