Secret Seven Records has just released a collection of Blaze’s songs on vinyl for the first time. It is limited to 500 copies and contains some of his best known songs, has great liner notes by Sybil Rosen and a beautiful cover photo of Blaze by C. P. Vaughan. Nice sound to the disc and class artwork makes for a nice addition to the collection. Head over to Secret Seven Records and order a copy or to read more about it.

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There is also a documentary on Blaze that is making its way around the film festivals called Duct Tape Messiah. I have not seen it yet, but I am looking forward to the day I can.

(in no particular order)
[Artist/Title/Label/Genre/Format]

01. Danny Wheeler ‘Universal Language’ (W10 Records) Drum & Bass CD
02. Photodementia ‘Figure 3′ (Photodementia) Electronic/ Techno LP/Cassette
03. Raleigh Moncrief ‘Watered Lawn’ (Anticon) Leftfield Pop CD
04. V/A (Rick Jones/ Michael Cole/ Michael Jessett) ‘Fingerbobs- Original Television Music’ (Trunk) LP/ Cassette
05. Sunn O))) ‘OO Void’ (Southern Lord)  Doom Rock
06. Bone Orchard ‘Stuffed To The Gills And Other Fishy Tales’ (Freud) Post-Punk/ Goth/ Psychobilly 2CD
07. Tappa Zukie ‘In Dub’ (Jamaican Recordings) Dub LP/CD
08. Tony Crombie & His Friends ‘Whole Lotta Tony’ (Fantastic Voyage) Jazz CD
09. The Ronnie Ross Quintet ‘Stompin With The Ronnie Ross Quintet’  (Fantastic Voyage) Jazz CD
10. The Free Design ‘Kites Are Fun’ (Light In The Attic) Soft-Psych/Pop CD

11. The Free Design ‘Heaven Earth’ (Light In The Attic) Soft Psych/Pop Soft-Psych/Pop  CD
12. The Free Design ‘ You Could Be Born Again’ (Light In The Attic) Soft-Psych/Pop CD
13. The Free Design ‘Stars Time Bubbles Love’ (Light In The Attic) Soft- Psych/ Pop CD
14. The Free Design ‘Sing For Very Important People’ (Light In The Attic) Soft-Psych/Pop (Light In The Attic) CD
15. Blaze Foley ‘Clay Pigeons’ (Secret Seven) Outlaw Country LP
16. Happy Refugees ‘Return To Last Chance Saloon’ (Acute) Post-Punk LP
17. William Fowler Collins ‘The Resurrections Unseen’ (Type Records) Avant-Garde/ Noise LP

New Single Releases 05.12.11

(in no particular order)
[Artist/Title/Label/Genre/Format]

01. Wilkinson ‘Tonight/ Pistol Whip’ (Ram Records) Drum & Bass 12″
02. Modified Motion & Faction ‘Only You Know (Majistrate Remix) / Sci-Fi (Supreme Being Remix) (Innovation Records) Drum & Bass 12″
03. Krakota & Juda/Lomax  ‘Sooty/ Palomar (Remix)’ (Integral Records) Drum & Bass 12″
04. Curfew ‘Vandal/ Asylum’ (Bad Taste Recordings) Drum & Bass 12″
05. Killawatt ‘Sidewinder/ (Ipman’s Worldwide Remix) (Black Box) Dubstep 12″
06. TMSV ‘Myth/ Flow’ (Box Clever) Dubstep 10″
07. Mensah/ DJ First Aid & Pulsar ‘The Resistance/ Bombaclat’ Dubstep 12″
08. Aquasky ‘Raise The Devil’ EP 1 (Passenger) Breaks 12″
09. Trash Talk ‘Awake’ (True Panther Sounds) Hardcore/Punk 7″
10. Stranger Cole & Lester Sterling ‘Bangarang/ Version (The Avengers)’ (Jamaican Recordings) Reggae/Dub 7″
11. Leroy Smart ‘Wreck Up My Life/Version’ (Jamaican Recordings) Reggae/Dub 7″
12. Eric Donaldson ‘Cheery Oh Baby/Version’ (Jamaican Recordings) Reggae/Dub 7″

New Album Releases 21.11.11

(in no particular order)
[Artist/Title/Label/Genre/Format]

Indie
01. King Krule ‘King Krule’ True Panther Sounds Leftfield-Pop/Singer-Songwriter MCD
02. Sun O))) ‘OO Void’ Southern Lord Doom Rock 2LP
03. Tim Buckley ‘Tim Buckley (Deluxe Edition)’ Rhino Handmade Classic Singer-Songwriter 2CD
04. Beau Brummels ‘Bradley’s Farm (Expanded Edition)’ Rhino Handmade Classic Country-Rock 2CD
05. Bobby Charles ‘Bobby Charles (Deluxe Edition) Rhino Handmade Classic 70′s Country/Swamp Pop 3CD
06. Blaze Foley ‘Clay Pigeons’ Secret Seven Outlaw Country LP
07. Pete Swanson ‘Man With Potential’ Type Records Leftfield/Techno LP (plus Bonus CD)

Dance
01. NHS200 ‘A Visual Compendium Of Hospital Records’ Hospital Records Book
02. Danny Wheeler ‘Universal Language’ W10 Records Drum & Bass CD
03. Boof  ‘Shh, Dandelions At Play’ Running Back Electronic CD
04. Elektro Guzzi ‘Paraquet’ Macro Recordings Electronic/ Techno CD

New Single Releases 21.11.11

(in no particular order)
[Artist/Title/Label/Genre/Format]

01. Amoss ‘Minus/Splitface’ Horizons Music Drum & Bass 12″
02. Twisted Individual ‘Touching Cloth’ Grid Recordings UK Drum & Bass 12″
03. Troy Gunner ‘Fool’s Gold/Heads in Hands/ Dancing in the Leaves’ Mindset Records Electronic/Garage/Dubstep/Automatic 12″
04. Gerry Read ‘All By Myself’ / ‘What A Mess’ Fourth Wave Deep House/Detroit House/Chicago House 12″

FX is not moving forward with Outlaw Country.

The project, which is both a crime thriller and family drama set against the backdrop of organized crime and royalty in the south, had been awaiting a decision for months.

The collaboration between FX Productions and Fox TV Studios, which went through some retooling earlier this summer, starred Luke Grimes, Haley Bennett, Mary Steenburgen and John Hawkes. 

Outlaw had been pitted against FX’s other pilot option, comic book adaptation Powers. The waiting game carried on care of the network’s desire to see the latter’s special effects, but after seeing a finished product the network has requested similar retoolings, according to sources.

Powers, a Sony TV production, is based on the long-running Image/Icon comic series by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming is a police procedural with supernatural element. Jason Patric stars as Christian Walker, a cop who works in the Powers division of the police force and deals with crimes involving those endowed with special abilities.

The Divorcees‘ first two records, You Ain’t Gettin’ My Country and Last of the Free Men, are packed with that famous rolling backbeat pioneered by the likes of Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson all those years ago.

In keeping one foot in the past and another in the future, the Divorcees are one of Canada’s ones to watch in country music.

Check out the Divorcees’ official website for tour dates and free streaming of both of their albums.

That has one of those days where you just feel like you should drink unGodly amounts of beer and listen to Outlaw Country until the wee hours of the morning.

Preferably in a place where there is enough room to dance to the fast songs and cry for the slow songs and spit on the floor without anyone caring over the fact that you did so and if you’re lucky you can pick a fight with a total stranger at the end of the night to round the evening off nicely.

No particular reason really. Not that it was really a bad day per say. Just one of those days. Something in the air perhaps. Or more likely in my blood. Genetic. It builds up over time until it erupts. So going with that theory it is a much better option to periodically release it thus avoiding the larger  violent eruption.

Seriously, is it just me?

With 38 Number One Hits, Haggard has been one of the most influential figures in country music during the last half-century. Along with [mp3com-artist]Willie Nelson[/mp3com-artist], [mp3com-artist]Johnny Cash[/mp3com-artist] and [mp3com-artist]Waylon Jennings[/mp3com-artist], he reinvigorating country music with a new rebellious attitude.

In the late 1950s and ’60s, country music was dominated by the lush Nashville Sound. But a handful of artists never fit that mold. Following the example of the big rock artists of their day – like [mp3com-artist]The Beatles[/mp3com-artist], [mp3com-artist]The Rolling Stones[/mp3com-artist] and [mp3com-artist]Bob Dylan[/mp3com-artist] – these innovative artists (later branded as “outlaws”) refused to let the sound of their music be dictated by some studio exec. They wanted creative control and the freedom to make music that represented who they were.

This might not sound terribly revolutionary, but during the era of the Nashville Sound, many artists–even top-selling stars–had little control over the sound of their music.

The outlaw country singers looked different, too–with scruffy beards, long hair and lots of denim. They were also pretty rebellious as people too, many of these artists wound up spending time in jail.

Today’s spotlight artist, [mp3com-artist]Merle Haggard[/mp3com-artist], wasn’t technically part of the Outlaw movement of the 1970s, but musically, his brand of hard-edged honky-tonk and personal, often introspective lyrics made him far closer to that group in spirit.

Haggard had been in and out of juvenile detention centers as a kid, and he even spent three years at San Quentin for robbery–experiences that he turned to for some of his most classic songs of the 1960s. He also grew up in Bakersfield, California, which, as home to icons like Buck Owens and Wynn Stewart, became known as a country music hotbed that didn’t play by the same rules as Nashville.

Haggard turned that hard-edged upbringing into some truly moving songs–and has proven to be one of the most powerful songwriters in modern American popular music.

Merle’s newest album, Working in Tennessee, just came out this week on Vanguard Records. At age 74, he’s got nothing to prove, but he isn’t playing it safe either. He’s just doing what he’s always done, telling it like it is.

[mp3com-download url="http://files.radio.com/downloads/time-based/merle-haggard-working-in-tennessee.mp3 " artist="Merle Haggard" song="Working In Tennesee" expiration="01/01/2012" email="none" year="2011" label="Vanguard"/]

Stay tuned to MP3.com for more free country music downloads all week long.

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On the Scene in Nashville

Singer/songwriter Steve Young at the SxSE Music Feast in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

for California sounds and sensibilities. So when I heard that outlaw singer/songwriter Steve Young was coming to perform at a South By Southeast concert in Myrtle Beach, I was very excited. Besides just being a fan of his talent, I knew the Georgia born musician had also been a transplant to L.A. and figured he’d be telling stories and playing some California music.

I wasn’t disappointed. This Southern boy has a soft spot for L.A. and it shows in his lyrics. “Silverlake” (Switchblades of Love/1993), which he performed simply and beautifully, is an unabashed love letter to a neighborhood just near downtown L.A. When Steve lived there back in the late 60s, it was a sweet little barrio and artists’ refuge  … before it became “too gentrified,” as he commented during the show. I love his line, “Silverlake is about more than gold.”

His rendition of Warren Zevon’s “Carmelita,”  an edgy tale of a heroin addict on the skids, was somehow starkly warm, fitting because Los Angeles is the ultimate contradiction.
But let me get off the California bent here and talk about this artist, and artist he is.

Growing up throughout the South, Young was an early Elvis fan and by his teenage years was already a skillful guitarist. He moved to New York City in the early 60s, becoming part of the folk music scene in Greenwich Village.

Steve Young’s music is hard to pigeonhole. It’s blues, it’s folk, it’s country, it’s even Celtic. But above all it’s Southern, and it’s soulful.

The South By Southeast show was a super all-acoustic concert, just a songwriter and his music.
Steve’s son Jumal Lee Young was supposed to join him at the Music Feast, but he’s been sick and couldn’t make it.

So, for two hours, Steve Young shared his tales of the road with us, giving us the backstory for each tune, very much the same format as his live album, Stories Round the Horseshoe Bend (2007). Just a songwriter and his music. And a wicked sense of humor.

“The song’s pretty famous; I’m not, but the song is,” he quips, introducing “Seven Bridges Road”(Rock Salt & Nails/1969), his tune that was recorded live by the Eagles for their Eagles Live album (1980). It was also covered by Alan Jackson, Dolly Parton and Tracy Nelson, among others.

Talking about “Lonesome On’ry & Mean”(Seven Bridges Road/1972), Young’s tune made famous by outlaw country artist Waylon Jenning, the songwriter deadpans, “Yeah, I don’t know why Waylon wanted to make this his image, but he did. I mean the song’s about givin’ up drink and drugs and performing sober. Waylon never realized that.”

Other tunes he performed included his “White Trash Song”(Seven Bridges Road/1972) about his family, mind you; the eloquent “Montgomery In the Rain” (Seven Bridges Road/1972), a hit by Hank Williams, Jr. and traditional songs like “Little Birdie” and “Hoboin’.”

It occurred to me during these old folk tunes, that Young’s talents as a vocalist and his arrangements are equal to his songwriting skills – which are considerable.

If you get a chance to experience Steve Young live, jump at it. This is exactly why I “Trust the Frog.” (www.steveyoung.net)

[mp3com-artist]Steve Earle[/mp3com-artist]‘s career has had its ups and downs but through it all it’s been his love for music that has pulled him through.  The strength of Country music lies in its  storytelling and conveying of honest emotion.  And the stories are usually backed up by the singer’s  own history. Through the tales they tell in their songs, country stars like  [mp3com-artist]Johnny Cash[/mp3com-artist], [mp3com-artist]Merle Haggard[/mp3com-artist], [mp3com-artist]Willie Nelson[/mp3com-artist] and [mp3com-artist]Kris Kristofferson[/mp3com-artist] all created larger than life personas for themselves through there music.

[mp3com-artist]Steve Earle[/mp3com-artist] certainly had his own story too – he famously recessed into drug abuse and was imprisoned for two years in the early90′s, only to emerge a clean and reformed man – and while his songs generally aren’t autobiographical works, they are all informed by his life experience. It seems as though Country artists are unique among musicians in that they often  get better as they get older.

Check out this cut from [mp3com-artist]Steve Earle[/mp3com-artist]‘s newest album I’ll Never Get Out of this World Alive.

[mp3com-download url="http://files.radio.com/downloads/time-based/steveearle.mp3 " artist="Steve Earle" song="Meet Me In the Alleyway" expiration="10/09/2011" email="none" year="2011" label="New West"/]

It has everything to do with me having a shitty day at work and feeling tense and taut like a wire. My first year here at the Firm was pretty rough: I was absolutely miserable and stressed constantly, to the point where I was sick all the time. Things have gotten better, but sometimes a day is nothing but a series of minor disasters and it feels like my first year again.

A lot of things got me through that first year when it was rough every day. My amazing wife. My wicked cool kids. Counting down the days until I could quit my job and not owe money to the Firm. Stuff like that. One of those things was Waylon Jennings.

I discovered Ol’ Hoss last summer when I got in a mood to throw more country music into the mix instead of just all metal all the time. I was starting to read western novels, and I was starting to get homesick for the South, and both of those deserve a country soundtrack. But I don’t really like suburban pop-country (I’m talking to you, Keith Urban), so I set about discovering all the old outlaw country legends, and Waylon Jennings jumped out at me like few things ever have.

You know how sometimes you hear a song and immediately, right from the first listen, you know it just knocked about three other songs from your top ten to just make room for it? That’s how it was with “This Time.” I first heard it on the bus on the way to work in the middle of one of the worst times of last year–I had an absolutely disastrous year-end review that I had been mortally dreading for months, and I was insanely busy right around a holiday when I had made plans to spend time with family. But this song came on my headphones and it changed my life.

So here it is, because today’s the kind of day when I need this kind of song.

The Hickman-Dalton Gang is an outlaw country duo of Johnny Hickman(Cracker, awesome guy, guitar hero) and Jim Dalton(Railbenders, Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers). They return in 2011 with their second release after the EP Volume I in 2008. Volume II is basically only available online.

Dalton and Hickman split the 10 songs right down the middle at 5 each. Johnny Hickman kicks the album off with “Wildcard” a mindless rocker to set the tone of this album being more electric than the band’s last release.

Hickman also puts on record for the first time his telling of Mr. Wrong. Cracker released this song back in 1992 on their self-titled debut but it was sang by David Lowery even though Johnny Hickman wrote it. Hickman remains true to the Cracker version except adding a few lyrics. The new lyrics fit in perfectly with the lowlife Mr. Wrong revealing that on top of everything else, he is married. Mr. Wrong indeed.

Hickman’s best work comes late in the album with “(Come On Back To) Stockton” and the swinging “No Easy Way To Say Goodbye.” Jim Dalton doesn’t phone this one in either, “Let’s Toke The Whole Day Off” is a great tounge in cheek style song and “You Got A Problem” is a drunken sing-along waiting to happen.

The album finds the duo not trying to get on CMT but just having fun. The album sounds as if the guys just want to sing some songs in a smokey bar and it is a great listen because of it.

Key Tracks: “You’ve Got A Problem” “(Come On Back To) Stockton” “Mr. Wrong”

Name:   Kevin Brown
Genre:  Rock & Roll/Outlaw Country
Latest Release:  Spirits
Release Date:  October 1, 2008

This, That, or the Other
1. Underground OR Mainstream? Mainstream
2. Maintain Artistic Integrity and Vision OR Make a lot of Money? (OR Both)??? Integrity = Money
3. Studio OR Stage? Both
4. Spirituality OR Hedonism? Spirituality
5. Make Love, Have Sex, OR %$*!?  ?

Fill in the Blank
6. Music is my blood.
7. I’m musically inspired by everything.
8. If I could have made any music video it would have been “Ashes to Ashes” by David Bowie.
9. If I was a super hero I’d be Batman.
10. Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll should change to  ?,  ?, and ?. (OR Not)

Short Answer
11.  I make music because:   I have always been drawn to it like a magnet.  I could not believe how easy songwriting came to me when I began.  It made the magnet stronger. 
12. I want my fans to:  Be present.
13. If I could only share one thing about myself it would be:  I did something.   
14. Wild Card!  Bob Dylan and John Lennon changed my life at a young age and they continue to do so to this day.
15. I want my musical legacy to be:  There.

The video Kevin Brown wishes he would have made!

Listen to “That One Thing” from Kevin Brown’s 2002 release, Callin’ the Heavens & Closin’ the Bars.  Click on the cover to go to his official site.