Library of Congress Reveals National Recording Preservation Plan; Music City Roots Adds Affiliates; Free Vandaveer, Milk Carton Kids Downloads
- Doyle Lawson wants to be your valentine. Here he is playing “Love Me Tender” with his band, Quicksilver.
- Jamey Johnson did a lengthy and revealing Rolling Stone interview. An excerpt: “I wish I could tell you that I am writing. I’m not. I wish I could tell you I’m gonna go home next week and record another album. It’s not likely to happen. I feel pretty used by the music industry, in that my contracts are written in such a way that I don’t get paid. And that makes me wanna quit working for whoever thinks it is that I work for them. But I’ve clearly got a job that I can’t quit.”
- Steve Martin and his wife welcomed their first child back in December.
- Vandaveer’s fourth studio album, Oh, Willie, Please, will be released April 30. Here’s a version of “Pretty Polly” that the band is offering as a free download.
- Here’s a video of the April Verch Band playing “Broken” in the WAMU Bluegrass Country studio.
- Jonathan Bernstein of American Songwriter reviewed Kacey Musgraves and Little Big Town’s recent NYC concert.
- The weekly Music City Roots radio show will now be syndicated to 25 affiliates across the country.
- The first Flatlands Country Music Festival is coming to Kansas City in September. Toby Keith and Luke Bryan are the scheduled headliners.
- Gurf Morlix is streaming a song a week from his new album until its March 5 release date.
- Chuck Dauphin of Billboard wrote a feature on The Mavericks and their new record, In Time.
- Dauphin also profiled The Henningsens.
- Jason Boland & The Stragglers will release their next album, Dark and Dirty Mile, on May 14. Boland coproduced the record with Shooter Jennings. (via press release)
- Speaking of Jennings, he announced a string of new tour dates.
- Here’s a fascinating NPR piece about the Library of Congress’ National Recording Preservation Plan, which aims to preserve rapidly deteriorating historical audio recordings. An excerpt from the LoC press release on the topic: A web of interlocking issues currently threatens the long-term survival of our sound-recording history, from a lack of storage capacity and preservation expertise to rapidly changing technology and disparate copyright laws governing historical recordings. Major areas of the nation’s recorded-sound heritage have already been destroyed or remain inaccessible to the public. Experts estimate that more than half of the titles recorded on cylinder records—the dominant format used by the U.S. recording industry during its first 23 years—have not survived. The archive of one of radio’s leading networks is lost. A fire at the storage facility of a principal record company ruined an unknown number of master recordings of both owned and leased materials. The whereabouts of a wire recording made by the crew members of the Enola Gay from inside the plane as the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima are unknown. Many key recordings made by George Gershwin no longer survive. Recordings by Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and other top recording artists have been lost. Personal collections belonging to recording artists were destroyed in Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. Many rights holders have not permitted researchers or the general public to listen to the recordings they legally control outside the limited scope of facilities maintained by legitimate research institutions. One survey of reissues of historical U.S. recordings created between 1890 and 1964 determined, “On average, rights owners have made available 14 percent of the historic recordings that they control from the various eras.” A gospel-music historian estimated that only a few of the thousands of gospel recordings that have been produced are now available commercially.
- Scott Galupo of The Washington Post reviewed Tuesday’s Mike Auldridge tribute show, featuring performances by Emmylou Harris, Jerry Douglas, the Seldom Scene, and many more.
- The Civil Wars teamed up with T-Bone Burnett to record the soundtrack for A Place at the Table, a documentary about poverty in America. Here’s one of the songs from the soundtrack, “Long Time Gone.”
- Sleepy Man Banjo Boys will be at the TED Conference in California later this month; the band’s “9 minute stage slot will include a few songs, and some prepared remarks from the boys.”
- Peter Guralnick remembers Solomon Burke in this Nashville Scene feature.
- Heartworn Highways Revisited is in the works, reports Saving Country Music.
- Nick Rynerson’s new “God and Country Music” column tackles the “weird categories” of Americana and Folk Grammys: The Grammys split the traditional “Folk/Americana Award” into, as they said, acoustic vs. electric dominant instrumentation. Now the “Best Folk Album” goes to an acoustic album and “Best Americana Album” goes to an electric album. Or at least that is how it’s supposed to work in theory. However, this categorization is awkward at best and misleading at worst. The albums nominated for best Americana album this year (with maybe the exception of Bonnie Raitt’s kind of weird 2012 album) aren’t by nature completely plugged in…and the folk nominations don’t meet 1964 Newport Folk Festival Standards for “acoustic music” either… Americana/Folk is simply way too broad to separate based on acoustic and electric. People have been trying to get a handle on what exactly “Americana” is for a long time and this categorization doesn’t seem to hit the nail on the head. Trying so hard to categorize and systematize it makes it even more elusive.
- Matteo, a band based out of Salt Lake City, plays music that blends American folk and traditional Chinese music.
- Chet Flippo asks, “What was so great about the Grammys?”
- Paste premiered the title track from Amy Speace’s upcoming release, How to Sleep in a Stormy Boat. The album, due out April 16, features John Fullbright, Ben Sollee, and Mary Gauthier.
- Paste also premiered a new Milk Carton Kids video. You can download a new song from the Kids, “Hope of a Lifetime,” here.
- Will Hodge of CMT Edge interviewed Zach Williams of The Lone Bellow.
Tagged In This Article
Amy Speace // April Verch Band // Ben Sollee // Bonnie Raitt // Chet Flippo // Doyle Lawson // Emmylou Harris // Gurf Morlix // Jamey Johnson // Jason Boland and the Stragglers // Jerry Douglas // John Fullbright // Kacey Musgraves // Little Big Town // Luke Bryan // Mary Gauthier // Matteo // Mike Auldridge // Milk Carton Kids // Peter Guralnick // Seldom Scene // Sleepy Man Banjo Boys // Solomon Burke // Steve Martin // T. Bone Burnett // The Civil Wars // The Henningsens // The Lone Bellow // The Mavericks // Toby Keith // Vandaveer // Zach Williams
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February 14, 2013 at 10:48 am
BTW. You can see and hear most of the songs from the Mike Auldridge tribute show on You Tube by searching under– “Mike Auldridge tribute” Here’s a clip of Satan’s Jeweled Crown and in it, Emmylou relays an amusing bit about John Duffy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ribwG85yG8I
February 14, 2013 at 10:54 am
Thanks, Arlene. Good stuff.
February 14, 2013 at 4:06 pm
Jamey needs to quit his label and go join up with the songwriter publishing house on ABC’s “Nashville” that just gave Avery that $ 100,000 royalty advance check! (lol)
I’m really intrigued to see if Kacey Musgraves gains any long term radio and career momentum from “Merry Go Round” and all these big name artist concert tours she will open for this year. Sunny Sweeney hit the Top 10 with “From A Table Away” but sputtered after that. Kacey does have the distinct advantage over Sunny of easily being mistaken for Miranda Lambert. Hmm…
So Music City Roots is starting radio syndication huh? It better be on Americana branded stations if they hope to keep anyone tuned in! I listen to MCR live while at work but apart from the Bluegrass emphasis episodes most of the music presented just isn’t very enjoyable. Interesting, unusual, and off the wall yes, but enjoyable not so much.
February 14, 2013 at 4:24 pm
Well, if you find most Music City Rots music not enjoyable, Rick, syndication must be DOOMED!! You’re the only person they were going after.
February 14, 2013 at 4:53 pm
Rick, like the rest of us, has a right to like or dislike whatver he wants. It doesn’t have to mean any more than that. By the way, I like MCR based upon what I have got to listen to. Hopefully that will expand.
February 14, 2013 at 5:44 pm
“Rick, like the rest of us, has a right to like or dislike whatver he wants. It doesn’t have to mean any more than that.”
His post very clearly – unmistakably, even – said more than that.
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