On Tuesday, March 5, Son Volt releases its seventh album Honky Tonk (2013). The country Bakersfield Sound influences the album, and lead singer Jay Farrar described why the band chose the album’s title: “Honky tonk music is about heartache, heartbreak, the road.” For those like me who have been following Farrar and Son Volt since the band spun off from Uncle Tupelo, the new album captures what was great about the band from the very beginning, even though Farrar’s current version of Son Volt has different band members than when they started. Just listen to the fiddle on the opening track, “Hearts and Minds”:
Here is Son Volt’s teaser video for the appropriately entitled “Bakersfield” from the album:
American Songwriter magazine is streaming the album for a limited time, so hop to their website to hear the rest of the tracks. Farrar also has a new memoir Falling Cars and Junkyard Dogs coming out this month about his career, including the breakup of Uncle Tupelo that led Jeff Tweedy to create Wilco. After listening through the tracks, I am excited about the new release. With new and upcoming releases from Son Volt, The Mavericks, Steve Earle, and others, it is already looking like a good year for Americana music.
What is your favorite Son Volt album? Leave your two cents in the comments.
The Mavericks, who split up in 2003, are back with a new CD, In Time (2013). While lead singer Raul Malo has had a successful solo career and multi-instrumentalist Robert Reynolds and other band members have had some success on their own, they still sound great together.
I remember listening to their debut self-titled album on a cassette in my car in 1991 when “What a Crying Shame” was all over the radio, so I am glad to hear them together again, even if the listening source has changed. Now, I can listen to them on my computer, and you can too because for a limited time the album is streaming below. Check out the new In Time CD from the Mavericks and hear the various musical influences from Tex-Mex, Cuba, Hawaii, Latin rhythms, Bakersfield and more. [March 9 Update: The stream of the new album was only available for a limited time, so I have replaced the now-dead stream with the video for one of the songs from the album, “Born to Be Blue.”]
The other members of the band include drummer Paul Deakin, keyboardist Jerry Dale McFadden and guitarist Eddie Perez. The Mavericks’ website notes that during the eight-year hiatus, the band members rarely spoke and had not even been in the same room together. When they decided to reunite for this album, the members just showed up. According to Malo, the band was back in sync in the first minute, “We started playing, and it just happened. It was that explosion of sounds! There’s this beautiful simplicity to this, because when we play together, we know each other so well.”
Listeners seem to agree about the chemistry. The Los Angeles Times gives the CD four stars out of four, and the CD is getting a lot of other good reviews from places like Paste.
While you enjoy the music, think on the friends you have not talked to in the last eight years. Maybe it will inspire you to pick up the phone.
What is your favorite song on the new album? Leave your two cents in the comments.
I know some Chimesfreedom readers are big Bob Seger fans, so they will be excited to hear that this week Seger played a new song during his “Rock and Roll Never Forgets” tour performance at the Huntington Center in Toledo, Ohio. On his first tour since 2011, Seger explained that the new song, “All the Roads,” is “kinda about the career.” He wrote “All of the Roads” in September, so we can hope there is more coming. Check it out.
In Toledo, Seger and his Silver Bullet Band, which now also includes guitarist Rob McNelley, played “All the Roads” during a 24-song, two-hour and 10-minute show. According to Rolling Stone, his performance of “Like a Rock” was the first time he had played that song live since 1996, resting the song after it was used in a Chevrolet commercial. But when he sang the song this week, it was a heartfelt Bob Seger song, not a truck-selling song.
Seger played some interesting covers too, including “California Stars,” which was recorded by Wilco and Billy Bragg when they put music to Woody Guthrie’s lost lyrics on the CD Mermaid Avenue (1998). It’s a great song, and Seger does a good job on it.
As we previously reported, Steve Earle’s new CD The Low Highway will be released April 16. In the meantime, today Earle premiered on CMT a video for one of the songs on the new album, “Invisible.”
Earle continues to use his music to address social issues and this new video is no exception. The video follows a homeless man around the streets of New York. Meanwhile, Earle plays his guitar on a rooftop, daring us to look around us, as he sings about people passing the “invisible” homeless without knowing. Check it out.
What is your favorite Steve Earle album? Leave your two cents in the comments.
The song “I’ll Take You There” by the Staples Singers originated out of a songwriter grieving his murdered brother.
Cleotha “Cleedy” Staples, the eldest daughter of Roebuck “Pops” Staples who sang in the Staple Singers, passed away February 21, 2013. Cleotha, who had Alzheimer’s, was 78.
The Staple Singers — which also included Cleotha’s sisters Mavis, Pervis and Yvonne — started in the 1940s and recorded many memorable songs like “Respect Yourself” and “Uncloudy Day.” But when most people hear the name of the group, the first song that comes to mind is the classic “I’ll Take You There.”
The song first appeared on the album Be Altitude: Respect Yourself (1972). In 1972, “I’ll Take You There” went to number one on both the Billboard R&B Singles chart and the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In this TV performance excerpt, you can see Mavis Staples to your right singing lead while Cleotha is on your far left of the singers. Pops is playing guitar.
The uplifting song comes from a tragic story. Stax vice-president Al Bell began writing “I’ll Take You There” after attending the funeral of his second brother who was murdered.
According to Bell, after returning from the funeral, he sat on the hood of a bus in his father’s back yard and began hearing the bass line and then the words. He then gave the song to the Staple Singers, who were a gospel act at the time.
Regarding the music, Wikipedia points out that the opening to “I’ll Take You There” comes from a Jamaican instrumental reggae tune from Harry J All Stars called “The Liquidator.” The tune is now often used before football matches (that’s “soccer” for us in the states). Check it out.
It is a cool opening riff that helped make “I’ll Take You There” so memorable. But it is also the blending of the voices of the Staple Singers including Cleotha Staples that explains why we still listen to the song more than forty years later. RIP Cleotha Staples. What is your favorite song by the Staples Singers? Leave your two cents in the comments.
