Monthly Archives: September 2024

Record Of The Week # 159

Music

49 Winchester – Leavin’ This Holler

For what is a fine album I must declare a disappointment. I’d long harboured the romantic notion that the band’s moniker came from the rifle of the same name. I’d envisaged an album sleeve like The Eagles’ Desperado classic with hirsute outlaws (creating havoc before presumably galloping into the sunset.) Hey-ho, it turns out to be Isaac Gibson’s early home address in Castlewood, Virginia. However, that’s the end of the disappointment as this is an important listen with Gibson’s voice and tunes being the draw.

The sound is the rockier end of country. However, it’s an organic sound with arrangements that include pedal steel and fiddle often with an acoustic foundation. There are no session musicians watching the clock here.  The band are still young and originate from around Castlewood where Gibson started his musical career in school. The title track is about a break up and leaving the ‘Holler’. They’re the valleys of the Appalachians. Gibson unleashes his winsome and yearning baritone to tell us of his heartbreak and his need to flee. Maggie Antone duets and adds pleasing harmonies. Fast Asleep intriguingly employs the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, as you do! Someone knew a contact and they stepped up and contribute considerable beauty to what is actually a sad song about fractures in a relationship. Bus Shelton’s tasteful electric guitar solo is sublime.  

Much to my pleasure some tinctures of Southern Rock creep in on the love song Rest of My Days where some brass also gets in on the act. Traveling Band, about the grind of following the white lines of the Interstate has the same feel, whereas Yearnin’ For You must be a future crowd pleaser as a delightful melody sits on top of a galloping two step rhythm. Anchor signs off the album. The orchestra returns as this slow burning track builds into something of a power ballad with Gibson seemingly being put through the wringer as he wrestles with internal strife. Truly epic.

It’s a very tight, together sound with quality arrangements from Stewart Myers. This is his second outing with the band and follows 2022’s Fortune Favors The Bold. The band have enjoyed a growing profile and fanbase with international touring. With Gibson’s song writing, his voice and this excellent band it seems that this release will only accelerate their fortunes. A 2024 highlight for me.

Record Of The Week # 158

Music

Hannah Juanita – Tennessee Songbird

Juanita was an archetypal wannabee who arrived in Nashville with a guitar, dog and a head full of songs in her early twenties. She’s since been paying her dues by gigging around Music City as well as getting some higher profile support slots. The delight is that Juanita (a nom de plume) writes and sings traditional country music. Most of the compositions here are from her own pen. She’s talented but the album catches fire after teaming up with Mose Wilson, another traditional country music artist with his own career, to co-write a few of the songs and for him to play on and produce the album: it’s a superb partnership. I have to credit the other musicians on the album who elevate the whole affair, none more so than Jeff Taylor on piano. As records go this is all killer and no filler.

Fortune has a lilting pace where she mourns that fortune has left her and now she’s left with her mistakes in the tricky business of love. I especially love Jeff Taylor’s accordion and the vocal harmonies she creates with her own double tracking. If the lyrics are comfortingly predictable then Granny’s Cutlass Supreme shakes things up. Here grandma in a bikini (?) and martini keeps her Oldsmobile in a tip-top-tastic condition with polish and elbow grease. This nonsense enjoys a funky rhythm plus some gruff and deep vocals from Riley Downing (The Deslondes). There’s plenty of references to Honky Tonk in the lyrics and Honky Tonkin’ For Life  – “When the music starts / I feel it in my heart / Singin’ is the life for me / I’m a honky tonk angel” reaffirms where her happy place is as the electric guitar picks, the pedal steel serenades as the snare keeps a steady beat with the bass. Certainly, this is one for a trip on to the hard wood floor.

We finish with the heartbreaker Blue Moon. Her voice, with a minimum of accompaniment, starts as a beautiful siren call as she laments that having thought she’d moved on from a lover she ends up melancholy with the appearance of the lunar vision. The song builds from an acoustic guitar and slow honky-tonk piano to strings. This is a heartening collection that encourages you to believe that along with other contemporary artists such as Sierra Ferrell, Brennan Leigh and Summer Dean there’s a female traditional country scene laying down a fine body of work to help us all keep the faith.

Meat Free Toad in the Hole, China & Monet – Week 36 : 2024

Journal

You’ll not need to be a rocket scientist to work out that most of my time has been spent hovering around Ives Towers cleaning, cooking, gardening, sorting out trades and variously tripping out to post or collect parcels and shopping for my bride (since our return from Austria with her broken ankle.)  I have borne this yoke, as you must agree, heroically yet less kind close friends did observe that it was time I returned the favour after all those years of wifely servitude. I suspect the pleasing image of me bedecked in a pinny flourishing a feather duster in one hand and the Dyson in the other drove them to such disloyalty. However, there has been the benefit of everyday being a ‘school day’.

Who knew there were certain ways to clean a work surface? That the dish washer goes on once a day and that the washing machine has various settings? If there’s a qualification on how to use an air fryer then I’ve nailed that. If my burden has increased then so has the workload of the sales staff in Tesco. I suspect they’re now watching, in trepidation, the car park for my arrival. I was pretty good at spinning round and collecting meat, chocolate biscuits, frozen stuff, beer and dairy but complicated stuff like certain exotic brands of salad dressing, small bottles of shampoo with formulas that seem to be a cure for smallpox, various spray soaps (??), flax seeds etc have necessitated collaring a member of staff and asking for help. For example, who knew Auntie Bessie made a meat free toad in the hole or where it lurked?

One of Anna’s several frustrations include being unable to climb the stairs. A solution to the daily ‘will you find me x and bring it down’ has been helped by WhatsApp. We call each other and put on the video camera; I get guided to the ‘third drawer in the cabinet near the window, on the left hand side, in the spare room, where beneath the birthdays cards where you’ll find…’ I have now been to the deep recesses of the property that I barely knew existed let alone what the furniture contained. Everyday is indeed a school day.

Anna is now into her recovery after the operation and is optimistic, stoic and calm. It’s going very well but it’ll take time. I’d like to say it’s one step at a time but in her case currently it’s one hop at a time! Obviously in our situation concerts and socialising has taken a hit including a wedding bash in Scotland. Anna has been fulsome in thanking everyone for their kind thoughts and gifts. The kindness has been overwhelming.

Felt I should be honest with Rodney as his valet wasn’t. Seems he liked my help.

This has left a little time for reading and I have completed a quite brilliant book on the rise and global intentions of China. It’s called The Hundred-Year Marathon by Michael Pillsbury. I tracked this down in Columbia, South Carolina on my travels. It’s written by an American China expert who worked for several Presidents and has had a high profile with China over decades; all helped by his being fluent in Chinese. It’s not a happy story for the West as China seeks to dominate. This is by economic absorption and elimination of competitive industries (mainly by state subsidy of their own production) or more aggressively dominating near nation states by military might. Their inexorable rise continues at the price of democracy or freedom of speech not just in China but all over the world. Much of the commentary is how the West were mugged in plain sight by the Chinese playing up to US misconceptions and naivety over decades. It’s very readable and not a sensational Sino hostile read but a measured deep dive into the history and the track record of the Communist Party and its relentless ‘progress’ on this path. Beware.

Lastly, with the Mighty Jessney and Mrs Blues (or Steve and Sharon.). I went to York Art Gallery to see Monet’s Water Lilies. The exhibition included other Impressionist artists of the late 19th Century and some of his influences such as Japanese prints. It was interesting and I approached it with curiosity but I am to fine art what Kylie Minogue is to brick laying.

Over a century on with so much technology it’s hard to place yourself in this era when no doubt this art was seen as adventurous, brave and new. Anyway, it was a great hour or so and maybe I should study more.