Tessy Lou Williams Self-Titled Self Release
Musicians residing in Nashville seldom leave the Music City to take up roots in the country, it’s usually the other way around. But that’s precisely what the parents of Tessy Lou Williams did when they upped sticks and left Nashville for the small town of Willow Creek in Montana. They continued their music careers on the road from that base, often with Tessy and her siblings in tow. It’s fair to say that country music was in her blood from a very young age.
Tessy Lou previously fronted the three-piece Tessy Lou and The Shotgun Stars, which included her father Kenny on bass and Bryan Paugh on fiddle. The band moved to Austin from Montana and recorded two albums during ten years living and playing in Texas.
She journeyed to Nashville to record this debut solo album at Station West in Berry Hill. It’s produced by Luke Wooten, whose has worked with the cream of country artists including Glen Campbell, Brad Paisley, Dierks Bentley, Sunny Sweeney and Toby Keith. She also gathered an impressive bunch of musicians to contribute to the album, all session players and artists in their own right. Brian Sutton guests on guitar, alongside pedal steel player Mike Johnson, Aubrey Hainie on fiddle and Ashley Campbell on banjo. Backing vocals were added by Jon Randall, Carl Jackson, Brennen Leigh and Jerry Salley. Two of the songs, Mountain Time In Memphis and Busy Counting Bridges are co-writes with Salley, who has previously had his songs recorded by Loretta Lynn, Brad Paisley and Toby Keith.
Having the right producer and musicians never guarantees an impressive end result, strong material and the skillset to deliver them are also essential ingredients. Williams wins on both counts. Her vocal style is very much on a par with that of Lee Ann Womack and Ashley Munroe, or more simply put, prime for delivering classic country songs. All the standard country music narratives are aired on the songs. Tears, heartbreak, devotion, longing and of course drinking, all get explored, but it’s Williams' pristine vocals and the melodies within the songs that are the winners.
Swinging fiddle and pedal steel launch the opening song Your Forever Will Never Say Goodbye before Williams’ vocal kicks in and you’re instantly left in no doubt where her sentiments lie. Without a trace of pop crossover, she also sticks consistently to her country guns on rousing gems Midnight Arms and Round and Round. Her tearjerkers include the Webb Pierce cover Pathway Of Teardrops and One More Night which hints at shades of Alison Krauss & Union Station. Brennen Leigh worked with her on the lyrics of Somebody’s Drinking About You and also adds backing vocals on the song.
Like so many of her female peers keeping the flame alive for country music, it’s unlikely that songs from this album will feature in what masquerades for country music on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, which is a shame because the album is a stone walled collection of bona fide country songs.
Review by Declan Culliton
Watkins Family Hour Brother Sister Thirty Tigers
The 2015 self-titled debut album by siblings Sara and Sean Watkins was an all covers affair, featuring eleven tracks that re-visited a wide range of artists from Roger Miller to Fleetwood Mac. Following the success of that project they decided to set the time aside to write original material for this album. Given the many side projects that they are both engaged in alongside their solo careers, it’s not surprising that a gap of five years exists between that debut album and its successor. Together with their solo careers, Sara has been recording and touring with Grammy nominated I’m With Her and Sean has been active with Fiction Family, his collaboration with Switchfoot frontman Jon Foreman.
The couple, who have been gracing stages since childhood, have also been hosting a monthly residency at LA’s Largo Club for the past eighteen years, where they perform with a variety of invited guests. They’re also founding members, alongside Chris Thile, of Grammy winning progressive bluegrass band Nickel Creek.
The final result of their teamwork is an album that includes seven self writes, alongside three well-chosen covers: Courtney Hartman and Taylor Ashton’s Neighbourhood Name, Warren Zevon’s Accidentally Like A Martyr and Charley Jordan’s Keep It Clean.
They approached BROTHER SISTER from a slightly more laid-back manner than many of their previous projects. Lead vocals are shared and Sara’s skilled fiddle playing and Sean’s expert guitar prowess take pride of place. The vocals impress throughout, whether individually or on their trademark harmonies and most particularly on The Cure which kicks the album off in fine style. An instrumental introduction is followed by their colliding harmonised voices on this song, the album’s stand out track.
Instrumentals Snow Tunnel and Bella Ivan both showcase their capacity to create powerful musical collages with only two instruments. Just Another Reason and Keep It Clean raise the tempo somewhat and the previously noted Accidently Like A Martyr gets a makeover. Starting at a snail’s pace with Sara taking lead vocal alongside plucked fiddle and guitar, the hushed quality of their remake of the song is both striking and atmospheric. The album is no more or no less than expected from two exceptionally talented musicians who consistently craft music that is both uplifting and extremely easy on the ears.
Review by Declan Culliton
Caitlin Cannon The TrashCannon Album Self Release
Washing your dirty linen in public is never pleasurable, particularly when your laundry basket is overflowing. Caitlin Cannon has done just that with The TrashCannon Album, which is fuelled by autobiographical and deeply intimate life issues that she has lived and continues to live through. Alcoholism, bad choices and relationships, family difficulties, gender inequality, minimum paid employment and the continuing incarceration of her brother in a maximum-security prison in Alabama are all communicated on the twelve tracks on the album.
With that baggage to contend with, you’d be forgiven for predicting a dark and demanding listen, only to be consumed by the listener when in a suitable mood. On the contrary, Cannon has taken an altogether disparate approach, lacing the album with humour, satire, dreamy ballads and toe tapping melodies. Naturally, the core subjects do emerge when the lyrics kick in, but by that time it is more than likely that you’ll be engaged, hook, line and sinker.
With or without the personal history behind the songs, she manages to shake the cocktail mixer in a number of directions and deliver an album that embodies rockabilly, countrypolitan, classic country ballads and drop dead gorgeous 1960’s style bubble-gum pop.
Cannon is a native of Alabama, who headed to Stephens College in New York on a theatre scholarship, with stars in her eyes. Like so many others, she became disillusioned with acting and theatre and the inevitable rejection and failures that go hand in glove with that scene. She turned to song writing in her mid-20’s and started getting slots performing in a local bar in Brooklyn, having formed her first band, Caitlin Cannon and the Artillery.
She eventually moved to Colorado and formed her next band The Cannonballs, an all-girl outfit. With her confidence growing as a writer and performer, she decided to bite the bullet and record this solo album. With a lifetime of experiences to draw on, she hooked up with fellow musician and producer Megan Burtt to work with her.
Cannon puts her cards on the table from the word go, with the breezy and chipper opener Going For Bronze. Despite what is drummed into us about the rewards for hard work and education, Cannon reflects on the actuality in the real world as she reflects “So, I busted my ass and I did all that, just to pour coffee in a Starbucks hat.”
Similar dead-end existences surface on Better Job and Mama’s a Hairdresser. The latter is a grungy delight, telling the distressing back story of her mother working all hours to raise money to fund visits to her brother, a life offender incarcerated in a maximum-security jail since the age of seventeen. Barbers and Bartenders are correctly credited as unqualified counsellors - many would concur given the current lockdown - on the classic countrypolitan track of the same name and Dumb Blonde gives a thumbs up to the astute females that play the game to their advantage and are the real winners ( “playing dumb is the smartest thing a blonde can do”)
Deliver is the first song written when she reached sobriety. It’s a dynamic ballad written in the third party with the opening lines “The corner bar, the liquor store, they are not on my way home anymore.” The pain and need to advance are placed in parallel alongside a relationship that only provides temporary highs and needs to end by way of moving on. It’s a quite beautiful ballad, Cannon’s vocal working alongside some evocative pedal steel. Drink Enough offers an equally powerfully sentiment, the short-lived alcohol high and the inevitable low that follows. It’s presented by way of an instantly catchy power pop song with a melody that I’m finding insanely difficult to leave behind!
Cannon, to her absolute credit, has delivered a knockout album, without anything resembling a weak track. It oozes emotion, spirit and animation and is simply a joyful and mischievous listen from start to finish. I do hope it’s not a ‘one off’ and that we can look forward to more output from an artist that can write dynamically and deliver with equal assurance.
Review by Declan Culliton
Jono Manson Silver Moon Self Release
As a native New Yorker, Manson was active in the 1990’s scene that included a prominent presence at the legendary Nightingale Bar on second street. It was a small venue that hosted many great bands and provided a stepping stone in the early careers of Blues Traveller, The Spin Doctors and Joan Osborne, among others. He moved to New Mexico at the height of the scene and made Santa Fe his new home. This album, his tenth, was recorded at the Kitchen Sink, his recording studio, that has been his creative hub for many years now.
The thirteen tracks clock in just shy of 50 minutes and there are a host of great musicians who shared studio space with Manson in bringing this eclectic mix of music to fruition. All the songs were written by Manson, including seven co-writes, four of which are with his wife, Caline Welles.
The title track is a fine blues tune that features Warren Haynes on slide guitar and it is a really good example of the quality playing that is brought to the table here. Loved Me Into Loving You Again is a soulful duet with Joan Osborne, complete with horn section and easy groove. Jason Crosby contributes on organ and pianos, while Jon Graboff plays guitars, mandolin, sitar and pedal steel. Both players provide lots of colour to the melodies and the engine room of Ronnie Johnson on bass and Paul Pearcy on drums/percussion provide the drive and the gear changes.
Other players are Eric Ambel, Eric Schenkman, Paolo Bonfanti and Eric McFadden, all of whom play electric guitar on individual tracks, while Jay Boy Adams adds slide guitar to the excellent song, Every Once In A While. There are different styles across the project but Manson leads from the front throughout, playing acoustic and electric guitars, banjo and taking all lead vocals. He sings in a smokey, blues vocal tone and songs like I Believe and Shooter highlight his prowess. The Christian Thing is a gospel influenced, shared vocal with Eliza Gilkyson and Terry Allen, with warm keyboards and pedal steel filling out the key message of unity.
The Wrong Angel is a great blues workout and an appropriate way to end what is a very enjoyable album and one that will bring much pleasure to afficianados of Roots/Americana with plenty of sweet musical union, just imagine The Band jamming with John Hiatt.
Review by Paul McGee
Andrew Hawkey Long Story Short Self Release
This singer songwriter has lived a very colourful and varied life since an isolated upbringing in Cornwall. Looking at his biography, it’s apparent that Hawkey has been a long-time student at the university of life and continues to study there! He has played music for many years either as a band member or on a solo basis, rubbing shoulders with the great and the good of the industry. He has also been a music promoter, a studio co-owner and had a role in running the indie label, SoSo, during the 1980’s.
Now living in the Welsh countryside, Hawkey has recorded these ten songs at Addaband Studio in Mochdre, Wales and co-produced the project with Clovis Phillips, who also restored and updated one of the tracks, Spirit, which had started life in a garden shed back in 2016. All these years of experience can do is try and impart a wisdom of the journey taken, with the gentle production creating an intimate environment for the easy melodies and the ensemble playing of the studio musicians.
Hawkey plays 12-string guitar, piano, organ and harmonicas. He also provides lead and harmony vocals, his vocal tone carries a warmth and the delivery is unhurried. Clovis Phillips contributes on acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums and percussion and he is joined by Penny Joubert who plays banjo on Golden Heart (On a Rusty Chain), a song about living independent and free, despite the price that sometimes has to be paid. Spirit is another fine song with a remembrance of younger days and feeling strong in the face of life and all its challenges, a rekindled energy. The owner of the original ‘song shed’, Zoe Spencer, joins Hawkey on vocals and delivers a fine performance.
Elsewhere, Bel Merriman and Penny Joubert deliver excellent backing vocals on three tracks, adding to the overall mellow feel of the album. Jones On Me is a blues tune with an easy groove and some great harmonica and organ from Hawkey, with Phillips adding superbly judged guitar lines. The title track closes the album with a message that looking back is not always the right thing to do when you can choose to look forward instead - ‘Well, it takes a cold heart to stop what was started, It takes a warm one to soften the pain.’ Gentle songs, played with real feeling and an album that resonates with honest emotion.
Review by Paul McGee
Dave Goddess Group Once In A Blue Moon Self Release
This is a nice helping of Americana Roots Rock, served up with a real swagger by Dave Goddess (lead vocals, guitars), Tom Brobst (keyboards, saxophone), Mark Buschi (bass, background vocals), Chris Cummings (drums) and Gary Gipson (guitars, background vocals). This core band is joined by Steve Patterson (keyboards), Robbie Bossert (pedal steel), Corey Purcell (button accordion) and Valerie Borman (Backing vocals).
Goddess co-produced with Konrad Carolli at studios in Pennsylvania and NYC and their sound is immediate and energetic. Opener, When You’re Happy, I’m Happy has a strong rhythm and some nice guitar lines while the title track has a slow tempo and some fine pedal steel, as does When the Past Caught Up With John Henry Weaving, the hoarse vocal tone of Goddess adding authenticity to the story song.
Dance When You Can has a nice Tom Petty influenced arrangement and rolls along at a fast pace. The band are very much in step with the music across all ten tracks and play with real groove and gusto throughout.
All songs are written by Goddess, including one co-write, with many highlights, including All Talk and No Action (‘I got a hotel room, but she had reservations’) and Volunteers (‘We don’t need promises, we need victories), as the assembled musicians crank up the sound and really take flight.
Review by Paul McGee
Adam “Ditch” Kurtz Storms of Steel Self Release
Your enjoyment of this album will, I think, depend largely on two things - firstly your love of the sound of the pedal steel guitar and secondly on your familiarity and love of the Randy Travis classic 1986 album STORMS OF LIFE. I’m a fan of both so, for me, this is an entertaining listen. Adam Kurtz is a self-taught steel player, who has accompanied artists such as Chris Shiflett, Sarah Shook and Jason Hawk Harris. He is a solid working player who has an obvious love for his chosen instrument. There are additional instruments on the recording including bass, drums and acoustic guitar, all in the main, played by Kurtz, which provides a musical base to build upon and let the steel guitar soar.
Beyond that there’s not a lot to say. It is essentially a case of listening and allowing the waves of steel guitar to wash over you, as you take in Kurtz’s passion for his instrument and also be reminded of Travis and his deep baritone country vocals. The two offer a different perspective on the same set of songs and your preference will largely depend on how much you feel those song stand up without the iconic voice. However, taken on its own terms, this is a successful if somewhat specialised release, that will find its own fans and if you are a lover of the instrument this is one of a select few albums where the instrument is well to the fore. It certainly highlights Kurtz’s skill and dexterity which allows a number of different moods to be explored with some satisfaction.
Review by Stephen Rapid
Kevin Stonerock Twilight Town Self Release
A singer/songwriter who is accomplished in writing songs that tell stories and are an amalgamation of country, folk and rock influences. This is his 7th release, his debut album DAY BEFORE TOMORROW came out in 1978. It is a fine album that will have broad appeal and features eleven songs written by Stonerock and also co-produced by him and Gabriel Stonerock. It was recorded with a set of seasoned musicians, who play alongside with Stonerock who contributes lead and harmony vocals, some electric guitar (alongside fellow lead guitarist Gabriel Stonerock). He also plays baritone and acoustic guitars as well as bass and banjo. The pedal steel is from veteran player Ed Ringwald, forming part of the overall sound which also includes piano and fiddle. The sum of all the parts is a sound that is varied and interesting, fitting easily into a contemporary but relatively loose umbrella of Americana.
The opening track Too Young To Quit is a solid rockin’ song that is as good as it gets as an example of melodic roots/rock. It is a rumination about the on-the-road life of a musician troubadour, with an aversion to getting something akin to a real job. Life on the road and the people that are met along the way provide the subjects for songs like Life Of The Party and Gypsy Road. Black Diamonds is not only about the brand of guitars strings that were used by everyone at a particular time. They were (then) inexpensive and available everywhere back in the day. The song also relates to the men who used them and is a tribute to those (often unsung) players and the instruments they played. Other songs such as I Wish I Was A Riverboat seem to be a metaphor for life on the move set in earlier times. Railroad Man is also a song set in earlier times which looks at the life of a man who does not work for any particular company but moves around in his work. Stonerock researched this for a commission for a historical society. If he wasn’t a railroad aficionado before, he became something of one after researching the project.
The title track has some pleasing twang, which suits the song’s sense of creating the will to carry on and find a place in some far away (twilight) town. The closing track The Town Where I Was Born is a gentler look back at what could have been an upbringing in any Mid-Western small town and is Stonerock’s recollection of the people and places that made an impression on him growing up. All of these songs reveal Stonerock as a writer of some finesse and thoughtfulness. I’m not acquainted with Stonerock’s previous albums, but this new album sounds like the culmination of his career to date. It is one of those albums that deserves a wider recognition, so a quick visit to his website will give you some background and insight to the man and his music (and some selected videos).
Review by Stephen Rapid
Ben Bostick Among The Faceless Crowd Simply Fantastic
Another storyteller who easily fits among the new names, both male and female, who are developing their craft as songwriters and performers. This is Bostick’s third full album release and has touches of such diverse influences as Bruce Springsteen and Johnny Cash through to Otis Redding and country icons like John Cash and Merle Haggard - among many others. However, a little time in the company of his warm voice and engaging songs and you will find yourself enjoying listening to these dark, weary, world worn songs. For instance, the opening duo of Wasting Gas and Absolutely Emily where the music is subtle and understated, with such elements as harmonica and Hammond added to the overall mood of often what amounts to quiet despair. Although Working For A Living is a tougher theme it works again with a sparse backing that features what sounds like a tea-tray being bashed on someone’s head and is a convincing percussion device here given the stark nature of the world unveiled.
This hard road ahead is again the subject of I Just Can’t Seem To Get Ahead, one that is clearly laid out in the title where the man is burying his dreams while drawing in debt. There have been mentions of the aforementioned Springsteen’s Nebraska in comments about this album, although musically it is never quite as black and white as that album. The lyrics address a similar anguished world view from the prism of a seemingly endless life of toil, something the lead character of The Thief wants to bring things to a conclusion in a different and tragic way “I keep hoping for blue lights coming up behind, coming to relieve all this pressure on my mind.” He is a man who realises “I ain’t no Jesse James” but has a family he wants to be able to feed and is forced into some desperate decisions.
There is little information with the album in terms of production and musician credits (though his long-time guitarist Kyle LaLone is on hand for some telling guitar). Regardless, these are Bostick’s songs and they are presented in a way that he wanted them to sound. If the subject matter sounds a little harrowing, then in contrast the collective 10 tracks hold together in a way that many examples of the blues songs can do by offering something akin to hope in the way that they are performed here. There is little pretension in these fictional tales of woe, but a lot of underlying truth for a layer of working lives that find it hard to ever get out of a rut. The music here has not placed any such restriction on itself and will be a just reward for those who don’t like their music all light and jolly. So, let’s hope Bostick rises above the fate of the title. He deserves to.
Review by Stephen Rapid