Shane Yellowbird – Rising Star (Update)

by Jim Poulton

In November, 2011 the 12^th Annual Native American Music Awards (Nammys) were announced at a gala show and concert in New York. Check out their website for all of the artists who were honored. In my book, though, one artist who really stood out was Shane Yellowbird.

Yellowbird grew up in Hobbema, Alberta and is Cree. He exploded onto the country music scene in 2006 with the release of his debut album Life is Calling My Name. The album garnered Yellowbird four top ten singles and a host of awards, including Rising Star of the Year at the Canadian Country Music Awards, Best Country Recording at the Nammys, and Aboriginal Entertainer of the Year at the Aboriginal People’s Choice Music Awards (APCMA).

Pickup Truck, one of the songs from Life is Calling My Name, reached the top 5 in Canada in the summer of 2007. Backed by excellent musicians, Yellowbird has a mellow, confident voice, an easy demeanor, and a great sense of humor. He’s fun to listen to – it’s easy to see why he made a splash.

Yellowbird released his second album, It’s About Time, in 2009, and again he nabbed a bunch of awards (including Best Country Recording at the Nammys and Single of the Year, Country Album of the Year, and Male Entertainer of the Year at APCMA). Two songs on the album, Bare Feet on the Blacktop and Watching You Walk Away, reached the top ten in the Canadian Country Music charts. On the strength of his second album, Yellowbird was the subject of a documentary by director Antonio Hyrnchuk. The 30-minute television special chronicled the days leading up to Yellowbird’s debut performance at the Grand Ole Opry in November of 2009:

Take a listen to Bare Feet on the Blacktop. A rousing song with great instrumentation (an impeccable mix of country and bluegrass flatpicking – listen especially to the guitars), Yellowbird displays his easy ability to paint compelling visual images with his lyrics.

Update:

In March of 2012, Yellowbird released a single video of his song Sedona, Arizona. Here's a teaser for the video (warning, it ends half way through):

And here's a new YouTube recording of one of his best songs, I Get That a Lot These Days:

Check out Yellowbird at his website.

Country Pumpkins - Halloween Hits to R.I.P.

By Bennett Owen

Carved Pumpkin. Credit: CharleenWiseman.com

There are some country songs out there that send a chill up my spine every time and no matter how often I hear them.  It's the ones that don't quite tell the whole story that get to me most...the ones that haunt you of an evening as you turn the lyrics over and over trying to make sense of the mystery. Dolly Parton did it with 'Jolene' and country crossover artist Mindy Smith covers the song beautifully...dare we say, hauntingly?  This one'll stick with you:

1925: Cowboy Song Shoots to the Top

By Jim Poulton

Carl T. Sprague. Credit: Bluegrass Messengers

Carl T. Sprague – not exactly a name you associate with a hit record, but Sprague is the name of the man who recorded the first cowboy/country ‘hit.’ In 1925, the young Texan traveled to Camden, New Jersey to record ‘When the Work’s All Done This Fall.’ The song – remarkably clear and concise for a recording from the first quarter of the 20^th century – went on to become a huge hit, selling over 900,000 copies (a recording was considered successful in those days if it sold 5,000).

Another of Sprague’s early hits was ‘The Cowboy,’ recorded in 1927.

Sprague was born in 1895 on a ranch near Houston, Texas. As a young man, he accompanied his uncle, who had worked as a cowboy from the late 1880s, on cattle drives between Texas and the railheads in Kansas. That’s where he first heard the poems, ballads and songs of the drovers who lived their lives on the move, sleeping under the stars and spending hot days coaxing stubborn cattle into line. Sprague imbibed the complete atmosphere of life on the trail (along, perhaps, with a little Texas whiskey), and from it emerged a direct and sincere voice almost perfectly suited to portraying the sometimes grand and sometimes tragic life of the cowboy.

XIT Ranch, Texas. 1903. On day herd with the XIT outfit in Texas. Credit: Library of Congress.

Sprague served in World War II and went to college at Texas A & M. During his college years, he played in a band and conducted a weekly radio program. In 1925 Victor offered him a recording contract, but between 1925 and 1929 he recorded only 33 songs. As with so many other musicians of the era, the Great Depression stepped in to squash any hopes he had of making music his full-time profession.

Sprague did not record again until 1972, when he cut an album for a German folk label. He was 77. He died on February 19, 1979.

Credit: DixieArchive

This Tornado Loves You – The Case for Country

By Bennett Owen

“Neko Case turned up 40 years too late to be one of the great country voices of the fifties.”

- Rolling Stone

Credit: MediaAuTimeout

And she’s a redhead.

“The ache in her voice is wrenchingly human.”

 - Spin

Credit: wbez

Did I mention she’s a redhead?

“Neko could harmonize with a garbage disposal and make it sound beautiful.”

- Anonymous Fan

Credit: Bloodshotrecords

Nice head of hair. Now that I’ve exposed my one and only human frailty, have a listen:

A tornado as metaphor for the inner turbulence of a tortured and beautiful soul.  Is there any other kind? 

On her website Neko exclaims that she can’t believe she’s got her own rock band. I wonder how difficult it would be to convince her she doesn’t. When I give her a listen (on a daily basis) I hear nothing but old school, traditional, honest to God country. Need some more proof?

Credit: nekocase

Look at her latest album cover, out there perched on top a horse. A Mustang. OK, it’s a Ford Mustang. Well, actually it’s a ’67 Mercury Cougar named Angie Dickenson. Granted, Neko takes the stage with alt. rock bands like The New Pornographers. She lives in Vermont, a long way from Nashville and avoids the country music capital because, “playing a show there has been hard on us.”  Read on for the story behind that cryptic comment.

But before you do, listen to that voice.

Some hear Patsy Cline, others say she channels a young Dolly Parton. She’s even been compared to Stevie Nicks although I’m not sure that was meant as a compliment. 

Case says she was obsessed with country music as a child growing up with her Grandmother. “It was like a soundtrack for the good times I had as a kid,” she remembers. You don’t have to read too far between the lines to know that those good times were few and far between.  As a teenage runaway, Neko developed a true passion for music that sustained her through many a rough patch. “It makes you feel like you’re not alone,” she told NPR.

Credit:Messyheadblues

The melancholy seeps into her lyrics … a writer of puzzling lines open to interpretation. The emotions they evoke are often sad yet completely avoid self-pity. Not one to use her craft for self-aggrandizement, or sentimental love, or settling scores, she points to Hold On Hold On as one song with biographical elements:

“The most tender place in my heart is for strangers. I know it’s unkind but my own love is much too dangerous.” 

Dark stuff and yet her live performances are invariably boisterous and energetic, as if she’s genuinely having a good time. With you, her one and only fan. It’s a uniquely country trait. Neko describes herself as a blue-collar musician … no dreams of selling out football stadiums, she thrives on the intimacy of sharing the same time and place with her audience, a sentiment captured in this exchange with Puremusic.com:

PM: I’m moved by how much you put into a song. I always feel like you’re actually giving the listener something as if saying, “well here I am. Here it is.”

NC: Ah, thank you. I try. If you were inside of my body you would be hearing, “I got to hit that note … oh my God they’re going to know I’m a fraud! Lift that note! Lift that note … aaaah!”

Her admitted pet peeve is auto tune and pitch shifting, the technological leveling of the musical playing field. She spurns the high tech, preferring endless hours of practice, constantly honing and refining the natural talent within her.  Now hear the result as she transform the childlike phrase ‘la-dee-da’ into a venomous, raging accusation:

Neko once asked a studio techie in Toronto how many people don’t use auto tune and he replied “You and Nelly Furtado.”  “I’m not a perfect note hitter either,” she admits, “but I don’t cover it up with auto tune.”

A technological crutch a lot of Nashville regulars rely on. Cruel irony perhaps that Neko has been handed the equivalent of a ‘you’ll never sing in this town again,” card and all that due essentially to a clothing malfunction. Suffering from heatstroke on a hot July stage she basically stripped down to the basic essentials and the Grand Ol’ Opry couldn’t ‘bare’ it. They banned her for life despite her profuse apologies. “I wasn’t trying to act cool,” she remembers. “I wasn’t trying to kick out the stage lights like Johnny Cash.”

Credit: unleashedsoulgaming

Frankie Ballard – A Buncha Talent

By Jim Poulton

Credit: MusicRemedy.com

Ever hear of Frankie Ballard? Probably not. It was only three years ago that he won Kenny Chesney’s Next Big Star competition for Michigan, two years ago that he staged his first showcase for record companies (he got a contract with Reprise Records from it), and a year ago that his first song, Tell Me You Get Lonely, was released (it made it to number 33 in the charts in early 2011). This week, he released his first album, Frankie Ballard.

Ballard is a young man from Battle Creek, Michigan (where they make Special K and Rice Krispies) who is definitely making a place for himself in the Country Music scene. This year, he’s going to be the opening act for Taylor Swift’s U.S. tour (hard to get much better than that), and he’ll also tour with the great Bob Segar.

Credit: Great American Country

Ballard’s music is probably best categorized as a country/blues/rock double-crossover. He has the country-boy persona down pat (he can say ‘thang’ with the best of them other sangers), but he also has the instincts of a rocker. His first hit, Tell Me You Get Lonely, is all country, but it also gives you a wall of sound reminiscent of 80s rock, and it even has traces of blues riffs (Ballard says he was influenced by Stevie Ray Vaughan, B. B. King, Buddy Guy, and Eric Clapton).

Ballard’s blues chops are even more audible in A Buncha Girls. He’s a confident guitarist who does his own leads – and is good enough to deserve to. While the lyrics in A Buncha Girls at first sound a bit sophomoric, they get better midway through:

“They got high-dollar jeans, belly-button rings, pretty pink painted up toes,
They’ll drink your drinks, make you think, you’re their right-now romeo,
They say sha-la-la, hey hey hey with the band and party all night long,
Laugh about it in the morning, lookin’ at all the pictures and blame it on alcohol.”

Check Ballard out at his website here. You can see a different version of A Buncha Girls on his home page, and there is a two-part interview that will introduce him to you. I think you’ll be hearing more from this guy.