We are lucky to be surrounded by love and laughter in our family. I mean, hands up, who here plays 'bands' at the weekends? Most of us, in one way or another, I'd guess. But I bet not many of us would throw ourselves into it with such aplomb as the Lonesome gang (junior version). Top marks for the dress-up, D - not many girls can wear a rock cape with such conviction. One of us is 10 today. Happy birthday Q. XXX And in honour of our babies, in [...]
We're having an Indian Summer here in the UK, I've just got back from vacation in Wales and we spent every day on the beach making sandcastles and paddling in the sea. This kind of weather always makes me want to whip out the 12 string rickenbacker ( 360/12MG ), get a band together and just jangle some classic countryrock in a Byrds style. The first few tracks I heard from A.H.A.B. occupy the same kind of ground as some other bands soundtracking my Summer - Grantura and the Tailors . Both are [...]
We're having an Indian Summer here in the UK, I've just got back from vacation in Wales and we spent every day on the beach making sandcastles and paddling in the sea. This kind of weather always makes me want to whip out the 12 string rickenbacker ( 360/12MG ), get a band together and just jangle some classic countryrock in a Byrds style. The first few tracks I heard from A.H.A.B. occupy the same kind of ground as some other bands soundtracking my Summer - Grantura and the Tailors . Both are [...]
That's Kingston Bridge as in Glasgow, by the way. An incongruous choice of a title - this is about as far away from an impersonal motorway (cold, grey and long) as you can get. Chris Flew writes and makes impeccable Scottish americana folk, as well as doing all kinds of creative filmy things. He's opened for lonesome types Laura Veirs and Damien Jurado , among others, and that alone should be enough to get you all to take a listen. It's a lo-fi swoon of an album, full of twang, a [...]
It's been a bit of a week all round, hasn't it? Let's knock it on the head with a spot of Annie Keating. This is good stuff for a Friday - warm and tender, easy listening in the best of ways. Belmont is not only a lonesome Rosebud of a name, more importantly (to you lot, anyway) it's a proper slab of big-hearted americana. Twangy joy with some cracking slide guitar - think Bonnie Raitt crossed with The Comforters. Nice. Listen: Annie Keating - [...]
I've written about this before and here we are again. Post-holiday Sunday blues, a conversation about will-making and then an aggressively sentimental radio programme have left me feeling the call of home. Time for a trip to the seaside, I think. Listen: The Lonesome Sisters - Going Home Shoes ( Buy ) Listen: Dennis Wilson - Carry Me Home Listen: Patti Griffin - Long Ride Home ( Buy )
Just a quick post today, but this is what lonesomemusic is all about - this is from the Just the two of us album, that i don't seem to be able to find anywhere selling, although I'm sure it's on one of the many compilation albums somewhere. Listen: Dolly Parton & Porter Wagoner - the Party
This album has quietly nestled its way to my heart in the same way that Leatherbag did last year. It's revving up to be one of my favourite records of the year. Good lord, it's a raw and unflinching look at the joys and horror of love, all to a bittersweet boy/girl vocal, with added cello. Approach with caution. Delicious. Listen: Jordan T West - Heart Hurts Listen: Jordan T West - The Procreation Song Buy
We posted about Donna Beasley way back in January and it's high time we reminded you of how good she is. Donna is out and about touring, so keep an eye on her calendar if you're lucky enough to be in or around Nashville. Sigh. Here's a demo that didn't make it onto the Good Samaritan album because it was too personal. As Donna says, it's the song she "sang the day I walked into my husband's recording studio - a musical record of the day we met. As he likes to say, [...]
San Diego CityBeat has a piece on the Beachwood Sparks reunion for SP20 and best of all about a new album slated for 2009. Long term readers will know that any swirly mix of Beach Boys, the Band, a bit of Byrds and some Laurel Canyon vibes with pedal steel ticks about all my criteria for a lonesome post. Here's the very last thing they left us with - the last track on the excellent Make the robots cry Listen: Beachwood Sparks - Ghost Dance 1492
Some strange, stark and lovely songs from Ruth Minnikin. Do any of you know her from The Guthries? I can see why people compare her to Leonard Cohen and Gillian Welch - it's the mix of an unflinching gaze and a spot of playfulness. You don't often get heartbreak, banjo, cracked vocals and french horn all in one go, do you? Recorded in just a couple of days, Folk Art is a 30 minute sprint through some of the most inventive and affecting music I've heard for ages. Recommended. [...]
My friend Andy plays in a band called Van Tramp , they play classic rock and have a great singer who thankfully doesn't sound quite as much like Rod Stewart as he used to. They are way too upbeat for posting here, but Foy Vance's vocals reminded me of them when I first heard his songs and he has quite a few lonesome worthy tracks, my favorite of which I'm posting here. Taken from his album Hope, an album that has an astonishingly strong first half and a second half about which I'm undecided, Foy manages [...]
Well here we are, four years on and still managing to keep ourselves and a few (hundred) others entertained. What am I on about? We've been having this conversation between ourselves for a good couple of decades by now and there's plenty more where this came from. So, long live the mix of rambling, introspection, in-jokes and genuine love of music that keeps this place ticking over. Happy Birthday to us. It's a laugh, isn't it? Listen: Dillard and Clark - Four Walls Listen: The Three [...]
Neil Halstead has a new album out sometime soon, there's a taster mp3 called Paint a face doing the rounds at all the best mp3blogs if you'd care to look. Listening to it (and admiring Neil's impressive facial hair) reminded me of John Phillips' April Anne - the first track on his John the Wolfking of LA album. Recorded just after the Mamas and Papas split with steel guitarist Buddy Emmons and guitar legend James Burton this beautifully wistful album offers a mix of steel guitar, Elton-like piano parts, confused beautiful people and images of [...]
Dave Hosking is from Sydney, or at least he says that's where he is at the moment, but his accent makes it difficult to believe he's not english. This is from the debut Marmalade Hill EP, unfortunately Dave forgot to tell me how exactly you are supposed to actually get hold of it, but maybe he'll add it in the comments. This is classy folk-pop, kind of like the Nizlopi in that there's definitely cross-over potential here. I was reading just the other day about the TV series and indie films that are proving better at launching smaller artists, something [...]
A man blessed with three first names is rare indeed, and this one is armed with what looks like a 52 telecaster a crack team of ace musicians and the kind of big love of honky tonk songwriting shared by lonesome favourites Two Dollar Pistols. Check the live session out on that link below, this is a band that I very much want to see if they make it to the UK. They sent me an email informing me they were going to release a 7" record, you can buy it on that link down there. In an ideal [...]
This was the soundtrack as I walked into the centre of London. It was early, there were very few people around and the cool edge to the air had yet to be stifled by the July Sun. If it had been Paris people would have been hosing down the pavements and running into patisseries to buy croissants, and I'm sure they were doing that in the more swinging bits of London, but where I was they were collecting the bins and standing in doorways having a fag. I wonder if Catherine has to do that now... Listen: Catherine Howe [...]
This is the year of two revivals in my mind, Joni Mitchell & Leonard Cohen. Any song that brings both of these to mind has got to worth a little of your time surely? Add to that a little Jose Gonzalez and the fact that you'll need headphones to hear the various shifting textures going on underneath what I initially took to be a very simple arrangement, like recorders there's not enough clarinets in rock if you ask me. A fellow survivor of the toilet circuit in London (or so his biog says), but you'd never know it to hear [...]
Beth and I watched a fantastic compilation of Johnny Cash's TV shows from the late sixties/seventies and the standout was undoubtedly the songs that felt like cowboy films in their own right. The Felice brothers new(ish) album is just like that, end to end, cinematic storytelling. This is seriously great music and lyrics, real art. The arrangements (check the piano intro), the instrumentation (great trombone) and the turn of phrase (I'm still being checked by the head hanging in the lobby). Listen: The Greatest Show on Earth and check this one too: [...]
I love Euros Childs. But I have it on good authority (Kate) that I'm not allowed to marry him and bear his children because the world isn't ready for that amount of curly hair. At the very least, apparently we'd have to have some sanction in place from some kind of higher power. Hey ho. Chops passed me by a couple of years ago but I picked it up in the jumble-like Zavvi sale for a measly pound (yep, a whole one of your English pounds) a few weeks back and it's been in altenate rotation [...]
lonesome music
Avicii – Two Million
Beck – I Just Started Hating Some People Today
H&M Lookbook Mujer y Hombre Otoño 2012.
