Rodney Rice – Self-Titled Years ago, Rodney Rice was working on oil and gas rigs in Texas when he struck up a conversation one night with Jason McKenzie, the longtime drummer for the late/great Billy Joe Shaver. McKenzie suggested Rice, A nascent singer and songwriter at this point, check out the Congress House studio in […]
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Layng Martine Jr. – Music Man (Bloodshot Records) Dating back to the early 1960s Layng Martine Jr. has written songs for a slew of musicians across various genres, from Elvis Presley and Reba McEntire to The Pointer Sisters and Trisha Yearwood. A member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and a Grammy nominated songwriter, […]
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Country Westerns – Forgive the City (Fat Possum Records) Nashville-based trio Country Westerns have channeled The Ramones’ frenetic get-in-break-shit-and-get-out energy on their sophomore effort, cramming in a dozen songs onto their record with each hovering around the two-and-a-half-minute mark. Forgive the City may be a straight-ahead rock record, but there are no denying the punk […]
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The Wood Brothers – Heart Is The Hero (Honey Jar/Thirty Tigers) For Heart Is The Hero, The Wood Brothers’ latest LP, they opted to record the entire album completely analog to 16-track tape, rather than employ a much more modern digital process. They did this intentionally to put limitations to the music, opting to capture […]
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Susanna Hoffs – The Deep End (Baroque Folk) The Bangles co-founder Susanna Hoffs is no stranger to a cover song. Across three separate albums teamed with Matthew Sweet, the duo gave their takes on dozens of artists from Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys to XTC and Echo And The Bunnymen. So, it’s not strange […]
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Chickasaw Mudd Puppies – Fall Line (Strolling Bones Records) When Georgia’s Chickasaw Mudd Puppies last put out a record, Nirvana was just starting to take over the world, Michael Bolton was still a couple of years away from becoming a punchline and Taylor Swift was only two years old. Thirty-one years later, the band – […]
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Peter Case – Doctor Moan (Sunset Blvd. Records) As a member of the groundbreaking proto punk band The Nerves, former frontman for the wildly underrated Plimsouls, and a remarkable solo artist for the past three decades, Peter Case has earned the right to deviate from the music people expect from him at this point. And […]
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Mike Stinson & Johnny Irion – Working My Way Down (Blackwing Music) Mike Stinson and Johnny Irion started working on a record together years ago. And, well, sometimes life gets in the way and projects get put on the backburner. In this case, this one sat on the stove for almost 30 years. In the […]
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Volores – Ages (Self-Released) Ages, the debut from husband-and-wife duo Volores starts out on the staid “All That We Could Need,” a decent if underwhelming track that hides the band’s real talent. But quickly enough, on the powerfully affecting “Carrion Cry” that band make up for lost time. The song not only flaunts the band’s […]
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Jaimee Harris – Boomerang Town (Thirty Tigers) Much like Springsteen decades before her with Born To Run, Jaimee Harris has her own tale of wanting to break out of her “death trap” town. In Harris’ case it’s not a New Jersey cage on Highway 9, but a small Texas burg that she’s cleverly coined Boomerang […]
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