White Ghost Shivers - Killing Tradition

Austin-based "hot jazz" ensemble the White Ghost Shivers are plugging in tonight at the Replay Lounge in Lawrence, KS, and playing a set of punked up versions of their 1920s-style fare. At their acoustic show last night I picked up a copy of a teaser EP featuring four of their songs redone in this style. Here's the original version of "Strictly Ornamental" from their latest full-length album Everyone's Got 'Em along with their new version.



Listen:

The White Ghost Shivers - Strictly Ornamental (acoustic album version)

The White Ghost Shivers - Strictly Ornamental (electric EP version)



Buy:

From Chicken Ranch Records

Creech Holler - With Signs Following

North Carolina singer-songwriter Jeff Zentner recently sent me With Signs Following, the recent album from his trio Creech Holler. While the broad categorization of alt country is probably okay for Creech Holler, a more appropriate label might be "distortion folk." A full half of the songs on this album are traditional (with another credited to Dock Boggs and four by the band), but these songs are hardly played in a manner that could be called traditional in any way. Relying on heavily over-driven electric guitar and brash rudimental drumming, this CD doesn't risk being mistaken for the work of folk purists. The songs are still very recognizable as traditional folk songs, making for a nicely jarring combination.

Listen:
Creech Holler - Wild Bill Jones

Buy:
From CD Baby

7 Shot Screamers at SXSW

One of these years I'm going to make it to South by Southwest. Not this year, though. Perusing the highlights lists, like the ones posted by Twangville, I've noticed a whole lot of great roots and alt-country that I'm going to be missing. One band that hasn't been pointed out is the 7 Shot Screamers. SXSW has them listed under the punk genre, which may be why they haven't been noticed by roots music fans. This is a prime example of the limitations of the one-and-one-only genre classification scheme the SXSW index uses.

The 7 Shot Screamers' blend of punk and rockabilly should appeal to a wide variety of punk and roots-oriented tastes. I've written about their first album. Their most recent album came out last fall on St. Louis-based garage rock label Big Muddy. They've also been touring with Exene Cervenka, formerly of X and the Knitters, as the current incarnation of her Original Sinners.

They're playing 8:00, Saturday at the Dirty Dog Bar in Austin.

Listen:
7 Shot Screamers - Love Always, Charlie
7 Shot Screamers - War Song

Buy:
From CD Universe

Kirk Rundstrom

I didn't know Kirk Rundstrom personally. I wish I had. He had a real presence over the Lawrence music community.



This was my first favorite song of theirs years ago.

Listen:
Split Lip Rayfield - The Day the Train Jumped the Tracks

Support:
The Kirk Rundstrom Cancer Fund

Top 10 of 2006, Part 3

Today we finish up the sample songs off my favorite albums of the year. My top two are perhaps the least well-known releases on this list, but don't think that I upped their placement just to have an unconventional top pick. I actually feel that these two albums are the best I've heard this year, surpassing the better-known and more-respected musicians who are below them on the list or not present at all.

3. Kris Kristofferson - This Old Road

Listen:
Kris Kristofferson - Pilgrim's Progress

Buy:
From Amazon

2. Bob Wayne and the Outlaw Carnies - Blood to Dust

Listen:
Bob Wayne and the Outlaw Carnies - 27 Years

Buy:
From Bob Wayne

1. Scott H. Biram - Graveyard Shift

Listen:
Scott H. Biram - Been Down Too Long

Buy:
From Bloodshot
From Amazon

Top 10 of 2006, Part 2

Today we continue the sampling of my top 10 of 2006. Follow the link for more detailed commentary.

7. Old Crow Medicine Show - Big Iron World

Listen:
Old Crow Medicine Show - I Hear Them All

Buy:
From Amazon

6. Solomon Burke - Nashville

Listen:
Solomon Burke - Valley of Tears

Buy:
From Amazon

4. Hank Williams III - Straight to Hell

Listen:
Hank Williams III - D. Ray White

Buy:
From Amazon

Scott H. Biram - Graveyard Shift

I got this album pretty soon after it first came out last month, but I never had the will to take it out of my stereo, I just wanted to let it keep playing over and over. This is the second Bloodshot album by Austin-based "dirty old one man band" Scott H. Biram and his fifth album overall. Unlike his previous record (which I reviewed here), this record really is just him, singing lead and harmony vocals and playing all the instruments: guitars, harmonica, Hammond B3 organ, and a plethora of percussion and "random noise." He is only joined by another person for one track; Ethan Shaw of Chili Cold Blood and the Moonhangers plays steel guitar on "18 Wheeler Fever."

His previous album The Dirty Old One Man Band has a very live feel (not surprising since a good half of it are concert-recorded tracks) and features backing by the Weary Boys to round out the sound on several tracks. The other tracks only have Scott playing what he could conceivably play simultaneously: guitar, foot-pedal percussion, and harmonica or voice. I don't know if that album was recorded with or without overdubs, but Graveyard Shift doesn't have any pretense of avoiding them. This gives a much richer texture as electric and acoustic guitars intertwine, voice and harmonica overlay, and Hammond B3 provides a foundation for all sorts of stuff that definitely couldn't be played by the same person at the same time.

This record is rather morose, as is indicated by the title and the album art. Scott continues to work through his near-death experience in a head on collision with a semi. His deep ambivalence to death and spirituality is puzzling as it makes him hard to categorize. His frequent use of the gospel call and response form as well as calling out to Jesus both come off as neither sincere nor insincere. His use of religious musical forms certainly cannot be grouped with the so-called irony of current indie rock, but it also doesn't have a place within gospel.

While this album doesn't quite teeter precariously between Saturday night and Sunday morning (it's more Saturday night) the way Bob Wayne's Blood to Dust does, I feel that it further represents a revival of the ambivalent relationship between gospel and the blues that was so important in the formative years of what we have come to call country music and which has been somewhat lacking recently.

Listen:
Scott H. Biram - Been Down Too Long

Buy:
From Bloodshot
From Amazon

Bloodshot Bill

I saw one man band Bloodshot Bill at the Replay Lounge last night. I missed the first part of the show 'cause of work, but the rest was really good. And apparently I look cool enough to work at the Replay 'cause two people mistook me for the doorman since I was sitting kind of near a door that you're not even supposed to come in. Guess they thought I was guarding it.

Well, Bloodshot Bill is crazy and Canadian and plays guitar, bass drum, and high hat all at the same time. He has a new record out in September from punk/psychobilly label Flying Saucer Records. In the mean time he's selling home-burned "limited edition" tour only CDs, which feature some tracks off the upcoming Trashy Greasy Rockin' 'Billy album as well as some tracks that aren't otherwise available on CD.

Bloodshot Bill inevitably draws comparisons to other one-man-bands Hasil Atkins, Bob Log, and Scott Biram, but those comparisons only go so far. Bloodshot Bill leans much more punk than any of these others. If Hasil Adkins started out trying to be Hank Williams' whole band, then Bloodshot Bill is a one man London Calling.

Listen:
Bloodshot Bill - Hide n Seek

Buy:
From Bloodshot Bill

Hank Williams III - Straight to Hell

Tomorrow night I'll be missing Hank III in the KC/Lawrence area for the fourth time in a year and a half. Hopefully he doesn't stop touring before I leave my second shift job, 'cause I'm looking forward to seeing him again.

I was originally hesitant to buy this album due to knowing many of the songs. I really enjoy the discovery of buying new albums and hearing stuff I don't know, and I thought that might be missing from this purchase as even two years ago when I last saw him at the Bottleneck, he was playing half of these songs. (That show on archive.org.) However, the arrangements are quite a bit different than what I remember and the bootleg versions I've come to know.

This album relies heavily on old-time instrumentation, going without drums for half of the tracks, often preferring dobro to the more countrypolitan steel, and featuring some amazing claw-hammer banjo by BR549's Donnie Herron. Hank name-checks the '70s outlaws several times, but the sound of this record largely bypasses a Texas influence, instead giving us a thoroughly Appalachian sound, although updated to include more than a nod at Hank's parallel interest in metal.

Lyrically, this album borders on the disturbing, concentrating on death and personal destruction of the chemical sort. I read an interview in which he said he isn't really that big of a hellraiser, that he saved his partying for on stage, but this album claims otherwise. Also, his insistence on the whole the-South-will-rise-again thing is somewhat annoying, especially when he parallels that with "real country" rising again, as if pop country was just another way northerners where subjugating the south. (I'm sure all the Dixie-loving Toby Keith fans would disagree.) However, when his celebration of rural Appalachian culture turns positive, such as in this song about the several famous residents of Boone Country, WV, this disc really hits the spot.

Listen:
Hank Williams III - D. Ray White

Buy:
From Amazon

7 Shot Screamers - I Was a Teenage 7 Shot Screamer

The 7 Shot Screamers are a punk rockabilly band out of St. Louis. I'm including them in my Tuesday night series of "local" bands because, well, because I can and I figure it's close enough.

I first saw the 7 Shot Screamers opening for Split Lip Rayfield a couple years ago. Honestly, I don't always expect much from the first of a three-band bill, but on this occasion I was rather surprised. In fact, I have to say these guys blew away the middle band whose mediocre country-rock sent me looking for a copy of Pitch and left me forgetful of their name.

The Screamers, although appearing as clean-cut, greased up rockabillies on their album cover, have a more glam look these days. The lead singer also engages heavily in glam histrionics, but don't let this turn you off; their music is sharp punk rockabilly reminiscent of the more '50s oriented numbers by the Clash. This album features mostly originals, but also several covers, including the one-two punch of Buddy Holly's "Maybe Baby" and the Stones' "Paint It Black" halfway through the album.

Check out some downloadable songs from their second album on their myspace page.

Listen:
7 Shot Screamers - War Song

Buy:
From mp3.com

Split Lip Rayfield - Should Have Seen It Coming

Split Lip Rayfield is probably the most prominant band from around my parts (at least that is germain to this blog). Guitarist Kirk Rundstrom was recently diagnosed with esophageal cancer and the band has been on hiatus since.

This is their most recent album and still includes mandolin player Wayne Gottstine who left the band last summer. The other two members are Eric Mardis on banjo and Jeff Eaton on gas tank bass (yes, a bass made out of a gas tank). Gottstine and Rundstrom wrote about half of the tracks each, with one (which happens to be one of my favorites) by Mardis. The bluegrass pickin' on this record isn't your grandad's (or even your dad's), rather it's pure metal mayhem on bluegrass instruments. The punk drive doesn't over-shadow the instrumental skills, though, particularly Mardis' fine banjo work. The raw four-part harmonies are another sweet spot on this album.

Listen:
Split Lip Rayfield - C'mon Get Your Gun

Buy:
From Bloodshot
From Amazon

Scott H. Biram - The Dirty Old One Man Band

If Scott H. Biram didn't have such a rough, son-of-a-bitch stage persona, his story might be considered inspirational. In early 2003, he was hit head-on by a semi, but only one month later, still in a wheelchair with IV bags attached, he returned to the stage.

He's a one man band of the Hasil Adkins sort (frequent references to chicken on this album draw to mind Adkins' Poultry in Motion), playing guitar and stomping his foot on an amplified box and singing through a distorted mic. On a couple of the songs on this record, he has the backing of Austin-based The Weary Boys, as well as his self-labeled Scott H. Biram's First Church of the Ultimate Fanaticism Gospel Choir. Some of the songs feature some pretty spooky CB radio recordings.

This album's currently on sale at Bloodshot Records as part of their effort to raise some money for their artists who are currently working on new stuff. (Also included are Bobby Bare, Jr., Paul Burch, the Meat Purveyors, and Wayne Hancock.) Scott's new album is due in July.

Listen:
Scott H. Biram - Whiskey
Scott H Biram - I See The Light/What's His Name?.mp3

Buy:
From Bloodshot

Soda and His Million Piece Band - Soda

I first heard about Soda and His Million Piece Band through the now-defunct podcast The Outhouse. They play some pretty gritty punk-influenced Americana/blues, complete with accordion, bari sax, and every kind of string instrument you can think of. The mix of instruments is really great and doesn't have the novelty to it that, say, my previous post the White Ghost Shivers has. The vocals are very course; I'm guessing they were recorded with a harmonica bullet mic.

This band is based in LA and hasn't traveled anywhere near me, which is understandable with a varying lineup of anywhere from 8 to 16 musicians. Their website said they were as SXSW and I wish they'd make their way up I-35 next time they're in Texas.

Listen:
Soda and His Million Piece Band - July.mp3

Buy:
From CD Baby

Truckstop Honeymoon

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, my local music scene found itself blessed with the seemingly permanent addition of former Ninth Ward residents Mike West and Katie Euliss, aka Truckstop Honeymoon, to our local scene. I've only been able to catch them once in the almost six months since, but I'm hoping to catch them soon, maybe outside at the Gaslight, like the show I just missed Monday.

Truckstop Honeymoon is a hard and raucous bluegrass/country/blues-holler married duo. They take their name from their wedding night stay at the Tiger Truck Stop in rural Louisiana. Their music is loud and fast and slow and soft and also includes some very humourous and sometimes macabre lyrics. I've included two tracks to show their range.

PS: They're playing this Friday night, 14 April, at the Uptown Theatre in KCMO with Drakkar Sauna, The Wilders, and others to benefit Kirk Rundstrom, singer/guitarist of Splitlip Rayfield, who is battling cancer. You should go.

Listen:
Truckstop Honeymoon - Weary Blues From Waitin.mp3
Truckstop Honeymoon - No Beer On Sunday.mp3

Buy:
From Mike West