Metropolitan Groove Merchants
Metropolitan Groove Merchants
MGOLD002CD
On their second group album as Minor Gold, Tracy McNeil and Dan Parsons present ten songs, which they recorded with drummer Austin Beede and producer Dan Horne. He also played percussion, bass, and pedal steel, thus having a significant influence on the duo’s sound, which introduced itself as
Continue readingRegional Records RR0116
blown away
Drummer, keyboardist, and singer Revere Rivers recorded ten songs for his debut with Marvin Etzioni as producer. Etzioni was once a member of Lone Justice, but as a producer, he has worked with Counting Crows, Trombone Shorty, and Jonah Tochin, among others. They were brought together by Steve Weatherby, the second-in-command of the Virgin Music Group, and this turned out to be very fortunate.
Not only did Etzioni co-write three songs and play various instruments on occasional tracks, but the two kept it very open: Rivers’ drums and the bass of jazz musician Tim Brewer, Rivers’ father, serve the music intelligently while leaving space for the horns. They appear in every song and are an integral part of the sound: David Ralicke (Beck, Jamie Lidell, Kelly Clarkson, and others) arranged and played them so originally, overdubbing them, that they deepen and enrich Rivers’ melodies without overpowering them.
Often, his songs brings the work of Allen Toussaint to mind (for example in ‘Lofty Politics’ and ‘1st Sweet Kiss’), but he also adds much originality to the other songs.
Rivers proves to be an equally seasoned as inspired songwriter who can swing in a funky way as well as sing emotional ballads. Moreover,
Continue readingKnow Howe Music & Bassline Music
1 99066 17911 6
alive and kicking
American singer-songwriter Alice Howe caught the attention of veteran Freebo with the five songs from her debut EP ‘You Have Been Away So Long’ (2017).
The bassplayer that is famous for his work with Bonnie Raitt and who transformed into a singer-songwriter, took her under his wing on her debut ‘Visions’ (2019) and the somophore album ‘Circumstance’ (2023): he co-wrote songs, played bass, sang the choirs and produced the albums. They also toured Europe and the US together.
Now a live album of a performance during such an American tour has been released, containing fourteen songs that they recorded during a concert at the Rainshadow Recording Studio in Port Townsend in Washington state.
On it they both played acoustic guitar and bass, with the sound of Freebo’s fretless being unmistakable. They also alternately sing the lead and the choirs with as much enthusiasm as conviction. Therefore the setlist is a combination of songs from Howe’s three albums and from Freebo’s four solo albums since 1999, whereas they also play three songs that make it clear that Freebo’s and Howe’s roots lie in the seventies:
Not Pop Records 1 95269 35581 4
everlasting elegy
Arlan Feiles’ ninth album only contains nine songs: eight he wrote himself and a cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Story of Isaac’. It fits in seamlessly with the other songs, because on this thematic album Feiles poses big questions about his Jewish origins, ant-Semitism and the Israeli invasion of the Gaza strip. He does so in a musical mix of singer-songwriter, roots, folk and klezmer, but he always builds in a lot of space in his songs.
Feiles himself plays the double bass, the acoustic and Weissenborn guitar, the piano and organ. In Addition, Brad Gunyon plays the drums in two songs and David Mansfield plays the mandolin in three, which he combines with violin once and with Weissenborn one other time. Carmen Sciafani plays the slide guitar once and there are only three songs with backing singers: in ‘Oh, St. Louis’ it is Layonne Holmes and in ‘Ceasefire’ Tessa, Layla and Noah Feiles sing.
His songs are European-tinged because of the combination of genres and breathe the atmosphere of lamentations with the bare but penetrating sound and often repetitive music.
These elements provide a lot of emphasis on his lyrics, also because of his vocals, that are mixed to the front. Even more than on albums like ‘Blame Me’ and ‘What Kind of World’, Feiles interweaves the personal with the political in his lyrics, because he audibly struggles with the contradiction between his origins and the political reality of today: his ancestors came from Europe to the new world, but that destination has abandoned him.
In his songs he seems to sing about his family history more or less chronologically:
Continue readingShadville Records
lightning bolt
American singer-songwriter Rees Shad made his debut in 1994 and since released seventeen solo albums in a variety of genres, while also making four electronic music albums under the name Fester Spunk, as well as composing an operetta and music for plays and films. In these fourteen songs, however, Shad limits himself to Americana, although in some songs influences from blues, gospel and South American come into play. He played bass, dobro, acoustic and electric guitars, acoustic and electric piano and he sings, but in about half of his songs he is accompanied by Rob ‘Bobby Kay’ Kovacs on drums and percussion and Jeff Link on bass. Other relatively decisive roles are for Kemp Harris and Wanda Houston, who sing on four songs, and co-producer Doug Ford. Together with Shad, he was responsible for the transparent sound and he played guitar a few times, just like Rick Ruskin and Dario Acosta Teich.
In two songs horn players Marcus Benoit (tenor sax), Peter Grimaldi (trumpet) and John Savage (baritone sax) also play and in two others harmonica player R. B. Stone. In his songs, often written alone and sometimes with Lance Cowan, Shad turns out to be a man with a great sense of flowing melodies and the ability to write visual, narrative lyrics about the daughter of a nineteenth-century day labourer, a father who is absent because he pursues his own dreams and a woman abandoned by everyone. Some others are polemical, such as opener ‘Ain’t that The Way’, in which he sings about
Continue readingexceptional class
Singer-songwriter Edie Carey recorded twelve songs on her sixth solo album in 2022 that she wrote around the theme of the unexpected removal of everyday life’s veil by major events.
The title track opens the album symbolically: she sings how her father put her to bed as a small child, how her own child needs her less and less, how a car accident literally and figuratively turned her life upside down and how American society becomes more divided than ever, but:
Continue readingBlue Corn Music/Suburban
belated business card
American singer-guitarist Jeff Pankenhorn has been playing for others in and around Austin for more than twenty years, but has made four solo albums since 2003, none of which were released here.
The ten songs on his new one prove how unjustified that is: the first chords of opener ‘Bird Out On 9th’ form an acoustic riff that is as intriguing as it is unrelenting, supported by hypnotic drums, while he sings in a melancholic and enchanting way. After that he combines
Continue readingParaply 034
addictive desire.
You can hardly speak of a career in the case of the now 74-year-old singer-songwriter Greg Copeland: his debut ‘Revenge will come’ received very good reviews in 1982, but despite the role of school friend Jackson Browne, it got no support from his label, after which Copeland, who also worked as a lawyer, disappeared into anonymity for 26 years.
In 2008 the good, country-influenced album ‘Diana and James’ was released with guitar player Greg Leisz as producer and Browne as executive producer, and recently Copeland’s third album was released.
Leisz and Val McCallum are the distinctive guitarists and multi-instrumentalist Tyler Chester serves as producer,but Copeland holds the reins tightly. Otherwise, it is incomprehensible that Continue reading
Must Have Music/Continental Music LC03396
strong shoulders.
The eleven songs of vocalist guitarist Jim Weider, vocalist-keyboardist-saxophonist Marty Grebb, drummer Michael Bramm, bassist Albert Rodgers and keyboardist Brian Mitchell on this 2018 debut breathe the spirit of The Band from Weider’s first mandolin notes. Weider was a member from 1985 to 2000 of a late version of the legendary group that invented americana without knowing it and then in The Band drummer Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble Band. Mitchell was also in it, while Grebb and Rogers played in a group with keyboardist Garth Hudson.
The four compositions that Weider and Webb each wrote breathe the spirit of The Band with their equally stubborn and naturally sounding tempo changes and the characteristic polyphonic background vocals. Grebb’s voice is very similar in tone and emotionality to Richard Manuel’s, while the two songs written by Weider with Levon Helm Continue reading
Tiny Mountain Records TMRCD101
dream debut.
Joe Edwards’ first album begins with a declaration of love to Beth, the woman he loves. Almost in a whisper he sings about the emptiness he experienced and the fulfillment she gives him. The country influences of pedal steel come back later twice, but the other eight songs are rootsy through and through.
Edwards, who was a student at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and played drums(!)on tour with Australian folk rockers The Wishing Well, was able to interest Steve Dawson for his songs.
He produced and played his plethora of string instruments with Joe’s brother Alex on drums, keyboardist Chris Gestrin and bassist Jeremy Holmes.
They recorded the well-structured songs of singer-guitarist Edwards live in the studio, a method that Dawson swears by. This time too that resulted in a Continue reading
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