Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell | Old Yellow Moon

Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell have known each other for close to forty years and they knew that one day they would make an album together. Thankfully that day has come! "Old Yellow Moon' was released earlier this week.

Harris was introduced to Crowell's music in 1974 by Brian Ahern, her former husband and producer of her early albums.  Ahern produced the new CD.  Harris heard "Bluebird Wine" from a cassette tape that Ahern played for her, and "that was the ticket," she said. That early Rodney Crowell song, which Crowell never recorded, is included on the new album with Rodney taking the lead vocal and Emmylou, the back-up.

Crowell contributed four songs to the project, with others coming from Kris Kristofferson, Matraca Berg, Hank DeVito, Roger Miller and Allen Reynolds. It is obvious that a lot of thought went into the choice of songs, but after listening to the album a few times, I feel like they could take ANY song in the world and make it their own.

The years playing on the road and in the studio, and their life experiences have added up and inform every note on this record. Both Harris' and Crowell's voices have never sounded better. Their finesse in delivering a song is on par with the best of the best, and there are many moments of absolute brilliance. Brian Ahern, Vince Gill, Bill Payne, Stuart Duncan provide top notch accompaniment.

Harris and Crowell talk about the project in this video, shot in Crowell's home studio, with Crowell's dog listening in and observing the action

JD McPherson | Signs & Signifiers

Oklahoma born vocalist and guitarist JD McPherson gets deep inside the music on his debut album Signs & Signifiers. R&B, Blues, Rockabilly and Hip-hop have influenced his sound and he goes way beyond a mere retro trip back through these styles. He cuts a new path with his sharp eye and ear. Recorded in the Chicago attic studio of producer/bassist Jimmy Sutton, it's "100% analog". Alex Hall is on drums, piano and organ. You'll get the idea with these videos. Great groove, honest(leads)to goodness.

Julia Stone | It's All Okay

I just played the new Julia Stone on mvy's What's New For Lunch-love it!! Check out the video...dark night, vintage Thunderbird, steering wheel on the right, blond and eventually barefoot Julia.

Joe Pug | The Great Despiser

Joe Pug has done a clever thing in using Shawn Stuckey's artwork on his CD covers and his website. Not only is it beautiful, but when we received his new album this week and I saw that familiar style on the cover drawing, I knew Joe was back in town.

"The Great Despiser", which will be released April 24th, is the follow-up to 2010's "Messenger". Here's Joe baring his soul once again with his resonant, somewhat mournful vocal delivery and beautifully straightforward guitar finger-picking and strumming. He communicates the importance of the songs he's written through his unwavering commitment to every note. About half of the songs have full band arrangements and it's great to hear Joe rock out. He keeps a balance, though, and doesn't forsake the winning simplicity of just his voice and guitar.

I listened back to an interview I did with Joe backstage at Newport Folk 2009 and his performance from that same year. Something to keep you going until the album is released in April...

Click here for the interview

Click here for the Newport Folk performance

Adam Cohen | Like A Man

When it was finished, Adam Cohen brought his new album to his father. "Listen Dad, don't play the record while I'm here," he said. Leonard Cohen called his son the next day and told him he had listened to the record. "It took me to a place where nothing else matters," the elder Cohen said, "I'm so proud of you, and you're record should be called 'Like A Man'." And it is.

Adam released two solo albums, his self-titled solo debut in 1998 and "Melancolista", sung almost entirely in French, in 2004. His band Low Millions released "Ex-Girlfriends" late in 2004.

With this new release, Adam Cohen comes of age and embraces his legacy. He calls it a homage to his father and a recognition that he is indeed in the "family business." Adam "consulted" his father through his music and wants his son, Cassius (pictured above with Leonard and Adam), to be able to do the same.





***Side note--I met Adam around the time of the release of "Ex-Girlfriends" in Boulder, CO. We sat down for an interview under a small shelter outside a hotel in a rainstorm. And after his performance that night at The Fox, I ran into him in the theater lobby and he told me he was starving. He didn't seem to know where the closest source of food was, but I did. So went across the street to bought him a slice of pizza.

I've always remembered these two "meetings", because he was so warm and completely present. The setting of that interview (rain falling, just the two of us under that shelter) took me to a place where nothing else mattered. He seems to have this effect on people. And I've never seen anyone so happy to be offered a slice of pizza.

Dr. Dog | Be The Void

"That's right! You start with 7 guys in a room staring at one another, and then 5 months later you've got a record." So says Dr. Dog and today is the day that fans of Philadelphia based band can pick up "Be The Void".

Ten years of making music together has produced one of best indie bands working today. Loose in vibe and feeling, tight and intricate in arrangements, Beatlesque, Kinksesque, Bowiesque. Have you thought about Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" recently? Could this be part of the inspiration for "Warrior Man"? Song I love--"Get Away."

Bhi Bhiman

Check out this video and the great big and clear voice of Bhi Bhiman (pronounced "Bee Beeman")! Bhiman is opening for Martin Sexton on a string of dates in the Midwest starting on Thursday 1/19 in Ann Arbor, MI.

Bhi Bhiman "Guttersnipe" from Bhi Bhiman on Vimeo.

Best of Uncharted Waters 2011 Part 3

As the final days of 2011 roll by, I'm taking a long look back and still taking in the beauty of this past year's music. Still can't get enough of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Paul Simon, Feist, Katie Herzig, Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling, on and on. I'm listening on my new iPod nano a lot of the time and I can't believe how good it sounds.

As one year ends and another begins, we're offered a chance to mark the spot, reflect on the amazing gift that artists give us and themselves with their work and know that this past year's music leads us on into what will soon fill our ears in the new year.

I found this great video of Laura Marling's "I Was A Card". There's nothing I can write that matches the artistry here.



Best of Uncharted Waters 2011 Part 3

“I Was Just A Card” Laura Marling A Creature I Do Not Know
”Timshel” Mumford & Sons Sigh No More
”Discoverer” R.E.M. Collapse Into Now
”One Ticket To The Moon” Dave Stewart The Blackbird Diaries
”Sugar Boogie” Marcia Ball Roadside Attractions
”Dancing At A Funeral” Brett Dennen Loverboy
”Sounds Like Hallalujah” The Head and the Heart The Head and The Heart
“Waking Sleep” Katie Herzig The Waking Sleep
”Spilling Faith” Ben Harper Give ‘Til It’s Gone
“Little By Little” Gregg Allman Low Country Blues
”Scarlet Town” Gillian Welch The Harrow and the Harvest
“Half Moon” Iron and Wine Kiss Each Other Clean
”Major Minus’ Coldplay Mylo Xyloto
“Towers” Bon Iver Bon Iver
”House Full Of Empty Rooms” Kathleen Edwards Voyageur
”Questions for the Angels” Paul Simon So Beautiful Or So What

Best of UW 2011 | Part 2

Each segment of this Best of Uncharted Waters 2011 demonstrates what an amazing outpouring of music we saw over the last twelve months. There's so much variety, depth of feeling and excellence of performance. Check out the list for Part 2 below and see if you agree.

Alison Krauss and Union Station added to the brilliance of the year with "Paper Airplane". It's Alison's 14th record and once again her sweet voice, understated fiddle playing and the band's flawless accompaniment make this an inspiring listening experience.

Here's "Miles To Go."



Best Of Uncharted Waters 2011 Part 2

"Battery Kinzie" Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues
"Old Tin Can" Catherine MacLellan Sillhouette
"Weird Summer" Mike Doughty Yes and Also Yes
"Take It All" Adele 21 XL
"Jesus" Amos Lee Mission Bell
"Humpty Dumpty World" Ry Cooder Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down
"City Of Refuge" Abagail Washburn City Of Refuge
"Love and Altar" The Low Anthem Smart Flesh
"Sunset Over Hope Street" Ari Hest Sunset Over Hope Street
"Come See About Me" Tedeschi Trucks Revelator
"All The Way Under" John Hiatt Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns
"Miles To Go" Alison Krauss and Union Station Paper Airplane
"Sweet Louise" The Belle Brigade The Belle Brigade
"Rox In The Box" The Decemberists The King Is Dead
"The Most" Lori McKenna Lorraine
"Early In The Morning, I'll Come Calling" James Vincent McMorrow Early In The Morning

Uncharted Waters | Best of 2011

I've been taking a look back over the music released this past year and zoning in on the songs and artists that I played on Uncharted Waters, mvy's new music show. It's quite illuminating to re-visit SO MUCH great music-there hasn't been a year like this in a while.

Last Friday I started a three part series in which I will play the best of the best of 2011. Out of the 500 plus songs I featured over the year, I found close to 100 that I consider significant. So the 45 songs that will be part of this best of series really represent the cream of the crop.

I'll post each segment's list (find Part 1 below) along with a video of one of the songs from that week. Check out the video of "I've Got This Friend" by The Civil Wars. The duo of Joy Williams and John Paul White was big news and their album Barton Hollow was one of the records that made this year shine!



Best Of Uncharted Waters 2011 Part 1

"Underneath The Sycamore" Death Cab For Cutie Codes and Keys
"All My Possessions (Ode To Troy)" Chadwick Stokes Simmerkane II
"Only God Can Save Us Now" Over The Rhine The Long Surrender
"The Day is Coming" My Morning Jacket Circuital
"Vicksburg Stomp" Hot Tuna Steady As She Goes
"I've Got This Friend" The Civil Wars Barton Hollow
"Try To Understand" Eric Lindell Between Motion and Rest
"Last Leaf" Tom Waits Bad As Me
"No Button" The Little Stevies Attention Shoppers
"Captivity" Ben Sollee Inclusions
"What'll I Do" Lisa Hannigan Passengers
"Sugar Mama" The Deep Dark Woods The Place I Left Behind
"Run Away" Sarah Jarosz Follow Me Down
"Miracle" Superheavy Superheavy
"Tango For Django" Robbie Robertson How To Become Clairvoyant
"Cicadas and Gulls" Feist Metals

Laura Marling | A Creature I Don't Know

The delicacy of precisely placed fingers on a guitar's nylon strings, words sung with care and clarity. A voice speaking from the past, or is it the future, or the spiraling present moment? "...me and time go way back when...", sings Laura Marling in the song "Don't Ask Me Why". The British singer-songwriter's third album "A Creature I Don't Know", recorded with all acoustic instruments in London by Ethan Johns wafts up like invisible smoke and infiltrates. It carries like the wind; there you were, here you are, changed.

At 21, Laura Marling is confident from years of listening and playing, at first with her parents and siblings in her home in Eversley, Hampshire, England. The youngest of three, she heard the music of Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and James Taylor around the house. She stared playing guitar as a child, began performing as a teenager and was a member of England's Noah and The Whale. Marling set out on a solo career in 2007.

With literary references to John Steinbeck and Robertson Davies, and sonic nods to Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, this collection of songs has great depth and power. The living thing that is the record album is all the more vibrant with questions unanswered, time undefined and an interior wanderlust. Thank you, Laura Marling.

Feist | Metals

Suggestive, reflective, askew. An image that looks like a photograph, but is it? Just by seeing the cover of Feist's new album "Metals", you get an idea of what's inside. The funny thing is, I didn't see the "F" in the deadwood tree until now and I didn't realize that "Metals" was printed upside down. Either I wasn't paying attention as I pulled out the CD multiple times to listen to over the last few days or, and I think this is it, there's some kind of sleight of hand going on.

Leslie Feist knows how to cast a spell. And it seems even more so now, or maybe in new ways. She took a year-long break from touring and music making at the end of the last decade after going at it non-stop for seven years. "I was being still and trying to learn how to be quiet and remember silence isn't aggressive," she says.

On her return last autumn, she spent three months writing the record in a garage behind her house. In January of this year longtime collaborators Chilly Gonzales and Mocky, joined her in Toronto to arrange the record and then the three, plus percussionist Dean Stone and keyboardist Brian LeBarton, all settled in Big Sur, California to record.

The beauty and the beast of living for life and art and nature rise up through every track. Gentle, swelling vocals, group singing, sweeping synthesizers, and great guitar playing from Feist. "I feel a little more like a narrator now," she says. "Rather that saying here's my truth, I am able to say here's something I just observed to be true. Which depending on the day can be absolutely not true. There's less certainty with time, as much as you'd assume the opposite to be the case."

She found her way to the album title "Metals" as she was thinking about "quiet, raw, dormant ore versus the highly engineered result of forging that into skyscrapers." and the word "'mettle' as in a man proves his mettle by how his reaction takes him from raw act to reaction." "Metals" is a potent, primordial exploration.

Katie Herzig | The Waking Sleep

There are lots of ways to go about recording an album. For Katie Herzig, on the new "The Waking Sleep", it was "building" a record, assembling fragments of sound into a spacious, openly woven album. When she and co-producer Cason Cooley set up in the studio to start, Katie said "I don't have any songs!" Sound by sound, word by word they emerged.

"Find your voice, find your voice, make a noise," she writes in "Make a Noise". Finding her voice on this record came as she went. From this side, it feels like a giant door opened, and lo and behold, on the other side, there was a path and a process leading to all that she knew deep inside, all that she was capable of.

There is a big world that she and Cooley fashioned inside the tracks, spending hours experimenting with individual sounds, most musical, but some natural sounds--hands rubbing together, a hand brushing over someone's beard. The sound of daily life. Sounds upon sounds, layered and buried, songs rising up to life, and now with the album complete, we're all invited in for the lift, the joy, the revelation.

Bon Iver | Bon Iver

Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and his brother Nate found a ranch style house a few miles from their childhood home in Wisconsin. And in the space that once housed an indoor pool, Justin created a recording studio and his new self-titled album, a stunning follow-up to 2008's "For Emma, Forever Ago".

Vernon has assembled a great supporting cast of musicians including pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz and bass saxophonist Colin Stetson. Bon Iver is out on tour, with friends The Rosebuds on some dates and Kathleen Edwards on others, and many of the shows are sold out.

Chadwick Stokes | Simmerkane II

The first solo album from State Radio and Dispatch band member Chadwick Stokes, was released Tuesday. "Simmerkane II" was recorded in Jim Parr's studio in Oak Bluffs and produced by John Dragoneti. Lots of Chad's musical friends, including Parr, Dragoneti, Embree, White Buffalo and Carly Simon collaborated. A bonus CD is included with three tracks that Chad recorded with The Sierra Leone Refugee Allstars

Chad and his brother took a train-hopping trip across country last summer and many of the songs were inspired by that experience. The songs are tender and insightful. The beautifully detailed lyrics tell stories that reveal a sharp eye and a deep heart.

Chadwick Stokes stopped by mvyradio this week.
Listen here

Tedeschi Trucks Band | Revelator

Husband and wife Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi have been talking about doing an album together for years and now with their new CD "Revelator", the time has come. The two met in 1999 when Susan was opening for The Allman Brothers Band, the group that Derek has played with since he was a teenager. They married in 2001. One would be hard-pressed to find a better title for the record. Much is revealed, and at the heart of it all is their joyful, life-long commitment to the pursuit of musical excellence. It seems that the power of this collaboration could eclipse their successful solo careers, at least for a while.

Susan and Derek spent 2010 writing songs, assembling an amazing band and finally recording the album in their Jacksonville, FL home studio, Swamp Raga. Grammy-winning engineer Jim Scott, co-produced the album with Trucks, and like the primary pairing of Tedeschi and Trucks, this match anchors and focuses the record. "Revelator" is a spirited, loving coming together of two major talents, smack dab in the middle of their prime, supported by a close-knit cast of accomplished players.

Sarah Jarosz | Follow Me Down

Sarah Jarosz has just turned 20 and the musical maturity that she displays on her new CD "Follow Me Down" reveals a talent that sounds and feels much older, more seasoned than her years. She commands the space on the record with her confident singing and proficient playing on mandolin, banjo and guitar. Her youth is not lost, and comes through in the wonder and joy of discovery that is evident in each song.

Some of the best players in the folk, country and bluegrass world provide support. Vince Gill, Jerry Douglas, Dan Tyminksi, Victor Krauss, Shawn Colvin, Stuart Duncan join in. Most of the songs are written by Sarah and the covers are well chosen. Chris Thile and The Punch Brothers collaborate on Radiohead's "The Tourist" and Vince Gill and Jerry Douglas bring it on home with Sarah on Bob Dylan's "Ring Them Bells". Gary Paczosa produces with great care.

Hot Tuna | Steady As She Goes

It's been 20 years since Hot Tuna released an album, so the new "Steady As She Goes" is a welcome arrival and well worth the wait.
Produced by Larry Campbell at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock NY, the album is firmly fixed in the 60's and 70's acoustic/electric rock n' roll that Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady first established in The Jefferson Airplane and their early days in Hot Tuna.

According to Kaukonen, both he and Casady felt very comfortable and free to create in the recording process due Campbell's support of their vision and the producer's clear view of what the final product would sound like. Not only did Campbell produce the record, but he plays multiple instruments, including fiddle and violin, recalling the great sounds of Papa John Creach. Barry Mitterhoff is on mandolins and Skoota Warner on the drums, making this a real band album. Teresa Williams provides harmony vocals, and in a couple of songs sounds like The Airplane's Grace Slick. The effect is perfect, and it's one of the many fine touches that serve to recapture a sound that could well be lost and forgotten but lives on in their music making.

Abagail Washburn | City Of Refuge

Abagail Washburn's artistic aspiration of bringing traditions forward and creating music that offers "a line of connection between hearts" is more than realized in her new album "City of Refuge".

The singer, songwriter and clawhammer banjo player who was with the bands Uncle Earle and Sparrow Quintet, collaborated with many musicians on the record including songwriter, vocalist and instrumentalist Kai Welch and producer and percussionist Tucker Martine, who has worked with Tift Merrit and Decemberists. Washburn decided to work with both Welch and Martine for their indie flair, purposefully going outside of the folk music world to get a new sound working into her music.

Washburn's voice is captivating, both in it's purity and expressiveness. The tone and presence of her banjo is perfectly suited to the Asian musical colors that infuse the album. "I wouldn't be a musician if it weren't for China", she says. She lived there for years and was to return to become a lawyer in Beijing when she got sidetracked and became a musician. The music of that country seems to be written in her soul and provides a unique sensibility here.

Brett Dennen | Loverboy

"Loverboy", the new album from Brett Dennen is a joyful, spirited and confident cruise. The movement comes in the sweet match of music and lyrics, each urging the other on. There are a lot of musical ideas and styles working- folk-rock, soul, world, pop- and it all settles into an inviting groove.

The liner notes give meaning to the album title. Brett writes, "This is an ode to the wonderful feeling of love. Whether it be romantic, friendly, or just plain caring for people." The feel is loose but precise, it floats and busts out like a bird set free. Great songwriting, tight band. Production by Brett, with Martin Terefe assisting on a few tracks.