“One, two, one-one-one-one…” are the first words you hear as frontman/singer/songwriter Cody Cannon and his longtime band kick off Whiskey Myers’ seventh studio album, released Sept. 26, with an exuberant bang.
The drums click out an ominous beat, perhaps mimicking a lit fuse, appropriate for opening track “Time Bomb” as Cannon sings “I’m waiting around to explode/Praying for another day.” The three guitar lineup twists, tangles and grinds out serious Southern grease and we’re off into another impressive entry of Myers’ exemplary catalog.
The East Texas bred six-piece has been honing its rugged red clay blues/country roots since forming in 2007, touring constantly and winning fans one stop at a time on the endless road.
Category: country-rock
“We believe in some pretty strict rules,” says Pink Stones frontman Hunter Pinkston. “We also believe in breaking them. This band was built on reimagining tradition, on honoring the old ways while pushing them someplace new.” On their intoxicating new album, Thank the Lord… it’s The Pink Stones, Pinkston and his bandmates do precisely that, offering up a joyful, adventurous take on ’60s twang that blurs the lines between cosmic country, folk, bluegrass, soul, and psychedelic rock. Recorded once again with co-producer/engineer Henry Barbe (Drive-By Truckers, Deerhunter) in the band’s hometown of Athens, GA, the collection showcases a more deliberate, mature side of The Pink Stones’ sound, one that reflects all the personal and sonic growth…
Southern rockers Robert Jon & The Wreck’s new album Heartbreaks & Last Goodbyes is set to release on August 22 via Joe Bonamassa’s Journeyman Records. Produced by nine-time Grammy winner Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, Rival Sons), it’s RJ&TW’s ninth studio album-hard to believe-this band continues to develop and sound fresh.
Recorded in Savannah, GA, the band lived together throughout the writing and recording process. The album is cohesive, reflecting a laser focus on the material and the band’s interconnectedness. It’s raw and edgy but somehow their most compact. Heartbreaks & Last Goodbyes is certainly the best RJ&TW album to date. It reflects their evolution as a band with sharp musicianship…
The Magic Time Machine of Love finds Nashville’s Burrito Brothers-Chris P. James (vocals/keys), Bob Hatter (guitars), Tony Paoletta (pedal steel) and Peter Young (drums)-pushing cosmic-American music into tomorrow with eleven tracks that mingle fresh songwriting with daring reinventions: Gram Parsons’ voice, isolated via the same AI technology used on the Beatles’ “Now and Then,” soars alongside the band on “Pride of Man” and “More and More,” while Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” appears in a lush country-soul arrangement restoring Keith Reid’s unused verses. Original Flying Burrito alumni Jon Corneal and Ian Dunlop swagger through “Used to Do,” steel-guitar legend Al Perkins adds shimmer to “More and More,” and the James Brothers lend harmonies…
Blue Rodeo’s Greatest Hits Vol. 2, released in 2025, is a 14-track collection celebrating the band’s 40th anniversary, featuring fan favorites from their entire career, from “Outskirts” to “Many a Mile”. The album includes two new tracks: a cover of The Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody” and the piano-driven ballad “After the Rain”.
“Greatest Hits Vol. 2” is a well-regarded collection for both long-time fans and those new to Blue Rodeo. The album’s comprehensive nature, strong new material, and good sound quality contribute to its positive reception. However, established fans might find it redundant if they already own the band’s core albums.
Reviewers on Amazon.com found the album to be a great introduction to Blue Rodeo…
Clarence Tilton is a five-piece band from Omaha, Nebraska, featuring brothers Chris Weber, guitar and vocals, and Corey Weber, guitar, vocals, and pedal steel, who grew up in a small agricultural town where the cattle outnumbered the people by ten to one. Having learnt guitar on borrowed instruments and bonded over such influences as The Allman Brothers, Neil Young, Son Volt, and The Flying Burrito Brothers, the brothers eventually joined forces with Craig Meler on bass, Paul Novak, guitar and vocals, and Jarron Wayne Storm on drums, percussion, and vocals releasing their eponymous debut album in 2015. It would be another four years before their somewhat ironically entitled follow-up, Start Already Lost, would see the light of day, only for…
Christian Parker and company’s Back at Home is a natural extension of these same musicians’ previous – and equally unaffected – tributes to the Byrds. 2023’s Sweethearts: A Tribute to the Byrds’ ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo, offers their homage to that group’s original landmark fusion of rock and country, while the very next year’s Change Is Now is a more general acclamation of the iconic American band’s eclectic approach.
In what may well be the first entry in a series–at least based on its main title American Cosmic Revival Volume I — Parker and his sympathetic bandmates now delve further into the earliest work of Gram Parsons. The late singer and songwriter’s International Submarine Band was integral to the formulation of the hybrid that…
Four years on from their widely-praised debut album Human Traffic, West Country rockers Richard Davies & The Dissidents return with their second album High Times & Misdemeanours; their first release on Gare du Nord Records.
After years as a collaborator, gun for hire, and band member – most notably with London bands The Snakes and Tiny Monroe – in 2020 guitarist Richard Davies embarked a solo adventure with the unveiling of Human Traffic.
That first album as featured artist, lead vocalist and principal songwriter, went down a storm, even finding itself included – alongside the Stones, Deep Purple and Idles – in the Spanish national daily El Pais’s Is rock dead? 18 recent albums prove it isn’t listing.
Rose City Band’s music is sun-kissed timeless country rock whose seemingly effortless momentum carries the joy of its creation without ignoring the darkness pervading our consciousness. Led by guitarist/vocalist Ripley Johnson, the music of Rose City Band is rooted in his love of private press records of the mid to late 70’s. The band, in addition to Johnson, features pedal steel guitarist Barry Walker, keyboardist Paul Hasenberg and drummer John Jeffrey who enmesh a keen sense of rhythmic drive and melody with gentler, sumptuous atmospheres. Sol Y Sombra digs its heels into insatiable grooves, its parade of catchy songs conjuring a sunset drive through an open desert, both a celebration of a sojourn and a reach for the warmth of home.
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – Scotiabank Saddledome, Calgary, AB, November 16, 2024 (2024)
27-song set
“My Hometown” and “The River” return to the set.
Three songs from 2020’s Letter to You: “Letter to You,” “Last Man Standing,” and “I’ll See You in My Dreams”.
“Last Man Standing” features a new arrangement.
“I’ll See You in My Dreams” is performed solo acoustic to end the show.
One song from 2022’s Only the Strong Survive: “Nightshift” (written by Franne Golde, Dennis Lambert and Walter Orange, popularized by The Commodores).
Concert stalwarts like “Because The Night,” “Dancing in the Dark,” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” are performed in tighter, shorter versions.
“Thunder Road” is the main-set closer.
One of the hardest working bands around is back with Red Moon Rising. Robert Jon and the Wreck has frequently been releasing singles leading up the album. Red Moon Rising is produced by Kevin Shirley and released through Joe Bonamassa’s Journeyman Records. It comes just a little over a year since 2023’s Ride Into The Light. The band consists of frontman Robert Jon Burrison (leads vocals/guitar), Henry James Schneekluth (lead guitar), Warren Murrel (bass), Andrew Espantman (drums), and new keyboard player Jake Abernathie.
Red Moon Rising opens with the punchy rocker “Stone Cold Killer,” which was released as a single back in 2023. “Trouble” has a great groove as Robert Jon belts, “She’s T-R-O-U-B-L-E she’s trouble.” “Red Moon Rising opens with the…
Teddy and the Rough Riders (T&RR) are Jack Quiggins (vocals and guitar) and Ryan Jennings (vocals and bass – and some keys) and assorted session men on their new album Down Home. The duo met as friends growing up in Nashville, spent time exploring the rock scene in the city and then delved into the traditional sounds of their home. The group has a regional popularity which has seen them win Austin’s Ameripolitan Award as the Best Honky Tonk Group 2024. And what’s more, they are one of Margo Price’s favourite bands so she offered to produce their first record label release in 2022, a warmly welcomed self-titled offering that AUK enjoyed. An earlier independent release “The Congress of Teddy and the Rough Riders” (2019), was a very competent…
The first track on this, Kyle Daniel’s debut album, is the hard rock, “hard man” song ‘Can’t Hold Me Back’ with him stating “I’m back, I’m bullet-proof, 10 feet tall/ Back, no backing down at all”.
It makes you wonder what the album is going to be like. However, those of you who are not fans of heavy rock can be assured that this is not typical of what follows. There is an impressive range of Southern rock styles, with some excellent and memorable melodies and changes of pace throughout the album. The lyrics, which cover a range of subjects, are usually lighter than the above example, giving the album a “good-time rock n’roll” feeling.
Daniel is unsurprisingly, given the title of the album, from Bowling Green, Kentucky, a town…
Steel Saddle is a six-piece Canadian band from Montreal. On their debut album, their relatively orthodox country rock instrumentation of guitars (electric, acoustic, pedal steel), organ/piano, bass and drums is augmented by a 3 piece horn section (tenor/baritone sax and trumpet). Vocals are handled by 4 of the band with an additional female backing vocal credited on several tracks. The main writers credited on the ten original songs are; Austin Boylan (lead vocals/acoustic guitar) and Mackenzie Sawyer (electric bass).
The album opens briskly with ‘Free in the Morning’, a lively danceable number with the horn section very much to the fore. The overall feeling is predominantly country, although the horns blend nicely, and don’t sound as though they…
“Today I met the asphalt face to face / Spilt my brains all over that dirty place,” sings Rob Leines on ‘Headcase’, the title track from his third LP, and while it’s a song whose lyrics are to be taken quite literally (it’s about the time he got concussion while riding on his skateboard), the rest of Headcase is more of a figurative look into the workings of his brain. It’s an album that was born out of a prolonged period on the road, with Leines and his band honing their skills as a stellar Southern rock live act, giving them an electric energy that has transferred from the stage to the studio with no vibrance lost.
“I wanna rinse my body in a mountain stream / Hang my hat from the limb of a tree / Scrub my hands as if they’d come clean / Then dry them…
The various curators of the New Riders of the Purple Sage vault have certainly done right by the band in recent years. Besides tendering packages including recordings of performances in the group’s formative days – with Jerry Garcia on pedal steel – archivists have also issued vintage content of NRPS in its later heyday.
Herewith Hempstead, a 1976 show that supplies something of a missing link in the band’s history. Having migrated from their original label home of Columbia Records, these true cosmic cowboys now worked under the aegis of MCA Records, where they had released New Riders, produced by none other than Bob Johnston, supervisor of so many recordings of Bob Dylan.
Commencing to tour in support of what was…
Christian Parker’s Change Is Now is as laudable in its own way as its predecessor, a combination reimagining and expansion of Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968), the Byrds’ first full-length foray into the fusion of rock and country music.
Subtitled A Tribute to the Byrds, this sequel overseen by the resident of Elmore James’ New York state birthplace stands on its own terms as a work unto itself.
Fifteen tracks that span the nine years of the iconic American band’s history represent a discerning cross-section of their eclectic work and remind of the enthralling grace and elegance in their sound. Yet, in stark contrast to the often Zen-like tranquility of the source recordings, there’s an insistent edge to these takes…
Ace are thrilled to be working with seminal singer-songwriter, toast of this year’s Olivier Awards and all-round Sheffield legend Richard Hawley on this, the first volume of a compilation series of some of his favourite singles. These are a choice selection of 28 7”s that Richard has collected on his travels around the globe, through friends, family, collectors, word of mouth, thrift shop finds, pub jukebox gems and all that’s in-between. Richard refers to the glue that joins these selections together as ‘Little Bangers’ as they are all mini hand grenades, bright lights that explode and fizzle out, some big names, some rarities, some lost souls, some obscurities, some by artists he actively enjoys knowing almost nothing about other than they want to get him on his feet and dance.
Gram Parsons said in 1972 “The idea’ll keep going. It’s not like it’s dead. Whether I do it or anybody else does, it’s got to keep going.” And indeed Burrito Brothers in varying forms and identities have done exactly that. The current holders of the keys Chris P James, Tony Paoletta, Peter Young, and Steve Allen, have been at it for a decade now.
The second song ‘Bethlehem Bell’ is where the Beach Boys could have taken a country tune. Gentle harmonies, pedal steel, and a slide guitar solo. All the ingredients in fact to make it a very listenable experience. ‘Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy’ throws in a touch of humour, ‘Christmas Moon’ is a an exquisitely constructed ballad, which stands apart from the mostly mid-tempo trot of the rest of the album. ‘The Feast of Stephen’…
Raised by a bluegrass musician father, music was in the blood of Peter Kegler, the frontman of Half Stack, from an early age. He and fellow founder members – drummer Digger Barrett and guitarist Marley Lix-Jones, met at UC Santa Cruz, eventually recruiting, after graduating, guitarist Oliver Pinnell and bassist Callum Beals to form the line-up as it stands.
Having previously traded in whiskey-soaked rock, the Sitting Pretty has a mellower, chiming sound, with Kegler now sharing vocals alongside fellow songwriter Lix-Jones. The album opens with the psychedelic late ’60s West Coast vibe of ‘I Might Try’, proceeding into the guitar-jangling, drawled country feel of Burnt with its theme of lack of focus (“I’ve got a life to live but it makes no…
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