(AUDIO) Rosanne Cash to release The List on October 6 2009

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash will release her 12th studio album, entitled The List, on Manhattan Records on October 6th, 2009. This stunning work features Cash’s contemporary interpretations of 12 classic songs culled from a list of essential country tunes that her legendary father Johnny gave her in 1973, and filtered through her own unique, sophisticated perspective.

Known primarily for her stellar songwriting, Cash showcases her incredible voice on The List — her first-ever covers record. As a result, the album is Rosanne Cash like you’ve never heard her before as she embraces her heritage and sings for the pure love and beauty of these songs which have shaped who she is as an artist.

The idea for The List came about while Cash was on tour promoting her 2006 studio album, the critically heralded, Grammy-nominated Black Cadillac — a reflective song cycle about the loss of her father, mother Vivian Liberto, and stepmother June Carter Cash. During the well-received multi-media event Black Cadillac: In Concert, Cash told audiences how, when she was 18, her father became alarmed that his daughter appeared to lack a deep understanding of country music (having been obsessed with The Beatles and steeped in Southern California rock and pop music). Johnny gave her a list of the “100 Essential Country Songs” and told her that it was her education and she should learn them all.

“The list was far-ranging and thorough,” Cash says. “It was assembled from my father’s intuitive understanding of each critical juncture in the evolution of country music. There were old Appalachian folk ballads, and the songs of Jimmie Rodgers and Woody Guthrie. The influence of gospel and Southern blues were crucial. Then he segued into rockabilly and the birth of modern country music by way of Hank Williams, and up to the present, which was then 1973. He also included a couple of his own songs. I endeavored to learn them all and it was an education,” she says. “I looked to that list as a standard of excellence, and to remind myself of the tradition from which I come. This album enables me to validate the connection to my heritage rather than run away from it, and to tie all the threads together: past and future, legacy and youth, tradition the timelessness.”

Through her stylish interpretations, Cash manages to transcend genre on The List, proving that these songs deserve a permanent place in the American Songbook. Produced and arranged by Grammy-Award winner John Leventhal (Cash’s husband, who also contributes striking guitar work throughout), The List includes Cash’s covers of songs by The Carter Family (“Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow”), Hank Williams (“Take These Chains From My Heart”), Jimmie Rodgers (“Miss The Mississippi and You”), Hank Cochran/Patsy Cline (“She’s Got You”), Merle Haggard (“Silver Wings”), and Bob Dylan (“Girl From the North Country,” famously done by Dylan and Johnny Cash in 1969). The album also features a host of special guests whom Cash admires, including Bruce Springsteen (on “Sea of Heartbreak”), Elvis Costello (on “Heartaches by the Number”), Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy (on “Long Black Veil”), and Rufus Wainwright (on “Silver Wings”).

The List is the first album Cash has made since she underwent surgery in 2007 for a benign brain condition, from which she has fully recovered. When it came time to record a new album, Cash was happy to step back from the heavy themes of Black Cadillac and do a covers record that showcased her voice. It also has enabled her to finally share with the world the list of songs her father passed down to her alone.

“If my father had been a martial arts master, he might have passed a martial arts ‘secret’ on to me, his oldest child,” Cash says. “If he had been a surgeon, he might have taken me into his operating room and pointed out the arteries and organs. If he were a robber baron, he might have surveyed his empire and said, ‘Honey, some day this will all be yours!’. But he was a musician and a songwriter, and he gave me The List.”

AUDIO
“Sea of Hearbreak” feat. Bruce Springsteen–
imeem: http://bit.ly/iwtMP
iTunes: http://bit.ly/UK8lj

“Long Black Veil” feat. Jeff Tweedy–
imeem: http://bit.ly/3XipTf

Jeff Tweedy discusses ‘The List’ with Meredith Ochs on Sirius|XM’s Outlaw Country channel–

The track-listing for The List is as follows:
1. “Miss the Mississippi and You”
2. “Motherless Children”
3. “Sea of Heartbreak” (w/ Bruce Springsteen)
4. “Take These Chains From My Heart”
5. “I’m Movin’ On”
6. “She’s Got You”
7. “Heartaches by the Number” (w/ Elvis Costello)
8. “500 Miles”
9. “Long Black Veil” (w/ Jeff Tweedy)
10. “Silver Wings” (w/ Rufus Wainwright)
11. “Girl From the North Country”
12. “Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow”

MP3 — Dale Ann Bradley releases Don’t Turn Your Back

MP3 Dale Ann Bradley – Don’t Turn Your Back

It’s 9  a.m. on a rainy January day in Nashville, five  days into 2009.  Dale Ann Bradley is coming  up the studio steps without a raincoat, carrying  a guitar and a folder full of lyrics.   She’s been on the road for 14 straight days,  it’s 25 degrees and pouring, but never mind all  that.  She’s been shaping the concept of  her new project, the follow-up to her Compass  Records debut Catch Tomorrow, for  months, and she can’t wait to kick off the first  song. She’s let her heart guide her way through  stacks of songs, looking for those that capture  something beyond great music, something that  gives voice to what she’s been living and  breathing in her own life for the last year.  

So take a seat around the coffee table  at the Compass Sound Studio–where Dale Ann  Bradley sits with an old D-28 and producer and  banjoist Alison Brown puts her gentle mark of  genius on arrangements–and let Dale Ann tell  you about Don’t Turn Your Back in her  own words: “It needs to be more than a record,”  she’s says. “This is my dream album. I want it  to inspire people to hang in with whatever  they’re facing–to find the hope and inspiration  to keep going. I want to share the music that’s  touched me and I want to put everything into it  that has been given to me over the past  year.”

This is Dale Ann Bradley. She’s  the 2007 & 2008 IBMA Female Vocalist of the  Year and has been hailed by Alison Krauss and  Ricky Skaggs as one of the greatest vocalists in  country and bluegrass music. A former Coon Creek  Girl and mainstay at Kentucky’s Renfro Valley  Barn Dance, Bradley commands a list of awards as  long as Highway 40, yet a few minutes with her  tells you she is something even more than  extraordinarily gifted–she’s extraordinarily  human. A Primitive Baptist preacher’s daughter  out of the hills of Kentucky where no musical  instruments were allowed, Bradley grew up in a  self-described “backwoods holler” down a rural  road where electricity and running water weren’t  available until she was in high  school–something she has more in common with  the first generation of bluegrass than her  contemporaries in today’s scene.

Dale  Ann Bradley is nothing if not a great  storyteller, but her ability to step into  someone else’s shoes and make their story her  own for a few minutes, that is what allows every  note sung and played on Don’t Turn Your  Back to be believable. In the company of  some of best bluegrass pickers and singers  including Stuart Duncan (fiddle/banjo), Deanie  Richardson (fiddle), Alison Brown (banjo), Gena  Britt (banjo), Steve Gulley (vocals), and Mike  Bub (bass), Bradley explores Don’t Turn Your  Back’s undeniable themes of bravery and  hope through the eyes of mothers, lovers,  trains, and one shiny, soon-to-be-lucky penny.  

Staying true to her  daughter-of-a-preacher roots, Don’t Turn  Your Back includes three bluegrass gospel  numbers: the humorous “Rusty Old Halo”, The  Carter Family’s “Fifty Miles of Elbow  Room”,  and the traditional “Heaven”, which  features reigning IBMA Entertainers of the Year  Jamie Dailey and Darrin Vincent. Sharing her  love of classic rock and its influence on her  music and voice, Bradley includes bluegrass  versions of Fleetwood Mac’s “Over My Head”and  Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down”, yet stays close  to tradition with the Kentucky mountain ballad  “Blue Eyed Boy”. Courage is the silver thread  running through all twelve tracks of Don’t  Turn Your Back, and it is in these songs  that Bradley lays out all she’s got: “Anybody  Else’s Heart But Mine” teaches us how to push  through a broken heart, “Will I Be Good Enough”  (Branscomb, Claire Lynch on guest vocals)  whispers hope to uncertain parents, and “Music  City Queen” (Bradley/Branscomb) documents the  dauntlessness of those who come to Nashville  seeking stardom. The title track calls for  giving life’s highway one more  chance.

Dale Ann Bradley’s mountain  soprano has been called “shimmering” (The  Washington Post)

Audio Streams: Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music Available June 2

Audio Stream for “You Are My Sunshine”:

Quick Time 

WMV

Audio Stream for “You Don’t Know Me”:  

Quick Time

WMV

 

Purchase link

Although it may have shocked some people at the time, Ray Charles’ fascination with country and western music was anything but an overnight development. As a child in Florida, he’d listened to the Grand Ole Opry’s radio broadcasts through the Southern skies. Thus his 1962 gold-certified album Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music and its encore Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music, Volume 2 represented a lifelong dream – and may have transformed country music along with it.

The two albums, which featured the hits “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” “Take These Chains From My Heart” and “You Don’t Know Me,” will be reissued together in an expanded reissue titled Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music, Volumes 1 & 2 by Concord Records on June 2, 2009. New liner notes by musicologist Bill Dahl are included alongside original notes by Rick Ward and Charles’ longtime recording supervisor Sid Feller.

            The reissue release is part of Concord’s ambitious Ray Charles reissue program that launched this year. A 17-time Grammy winner, Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee and #10 in Rolling Stone’s Greatest Artists of All Time, Charles has sold more than 10 million CDs in the SoundScan era alone.

“Since joining ABC’s roster in late 1959 after permanently altering the rhythm & blues landscape that sired soul, Charles had been contemplating an LP of country chestnuts for years,” Dahl writes. “So to him it wasn’t a radical concept. What was earth shattering was the way he redefined each song. When Ray unleashed the roaring horn section from his recently formed big band, those country evergreens swung like never before.”

            In preparation for the album, Charles asked Feller to bring him the biggest country and western hits from the preceding 20 years. According to Ward, “Completely confused and wondering what possible use Ray could make of such material, Sid began collecting songs. The more he thought about Ray’s idea, the more excited Sid became. And by the time the sessions rolled around, he was nearly the most enthusiastic person on the studio.”

            Initially skeptical at first themselves, ABC Records gave Charles artistic freedom and was pleased when Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music became the label’s first million-selling album. A lot of this was due to the success of its first single, “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” Never intended to be a single, the Don Gibson-penned track was buried deep in the album sequence.

Yet when actor Tab Hunter covered the song, Feller quickly edited Charles’ rendition to single length and got it into the marketplace in enough time to bury the Hunter version. It topped the pop and R&B hit parades and won a Grammy for Best R&B Recording. “You Don’t Know Me” also proved a massive R&B and pop seller.

A few months later, Ray and his team convened at Capitol Studios in New York to plan Volume 2, Ray mining another dozen country standards. Within the month, the album was at retail and proceeded to reach #2 on the pop album chart.  Hank Williams’ “Take These Chains From My Heart,” which kicked off the “ballad side” of Volume 2, became another huge Charles hit in mid-1963.

Having made countless new country converts by giving these 24 songs a soul-steeped urban dimension, Charles continued to dip into the country and western songbook. He covered Johnny Cash’s hit “Busted” to Grammy-winning acclaim in 1963, and his remakes of Buck Owens’ “Cryin’ Time” and “Together Again” hit during the mid-’60s. “Then again,” Dahl writes, “Ray’s unique vocal interpretations inevitably made any song from any genre entirely his own.”

Video for “You Are My Sunshine”

Video for “You Don’t Know Me”

Track Listing:

01. Bye Bye Love (2:09)
02. You Don’t Know Me (3:14)
03. Half as Much (3:24)
04. I Love You So Much It Hurts (3:33)
05. Just a Little Lovin’ (3:26)
06. Born to Lose (3:15)
07. Worried Mind (2:54)
08. It Makes No Difference Now (3:30)
09. You Win Again (3:29)
10. Careless Love (3:56)
11. I Can’t Stop Loving You (4:13)
12. Hey, Good Lookin’ (2:10)
13. You Are My Sunshine (2:58)
14. No Letter Today (3:02)
15. Someday (You’ll Want Me to Want You) (2:38)
16. Don’t Tell Me Your Troubles (2:04)
17. Midnight (3:14)
18. Oh, Lonesome Me (2:10)
19. Take These Chains from My Heart (2:52)
20. Your Cheating Heart (3:30)
21. I’ll Never Stand in Your Way (2:15)
22. Making Believe (2:48)
23. Teardrops in My Heart (3:00)
24. Hang Your Head in Shame (3:12)

FREE MP3 Raul Malo – Lucky One (coming March 3 2009)

 Raul Malo is set to release his first album of original songs in a decade on March 3rd 2009.  

TCB plans a full review of the album later this week, in the meantime circle that release date on your calander and enjoy this free MP3 of the album’s title track.

Lucky One – MP3 

Raul Malo’s Fantasy Records label debut album, Lucky One, finds him fully shedding his musical shackles. “I have been fighting my whole life against people who want to pigeonhole music. I feel like I’ve got no restrictions anymore.” Malo is known for his work as the frontman of the Grammy Award-winning, globally platinum- and gold-certified band the Mavericks. Following two albums of covers, Lucky One is Malo’s first album original material in seven years.

The CD will hit the streets on March 3rd, fronted by the lead single “Hello Again.”

Malo has earned much critical respect over the years. USA Today applauded “a voice that seems to have no limits of range or versatility.” The New York Times said, “Malo has an exceptional voice, a burnished tenor that harks back to Roy Orbison and the great Cuban singer Beny Moré.” Rolling Stone added, “Raul Malo has a voice on par with the best of ‘em: Sinatra, George Jones and Orbison.” And The Wall Street Journal opined: “Malo’s superb voice is big and melodic with a natural vibrato. Exquisite.”

Malo wrote Lucky One over a two-year period at his Nashville home and was so happy with the results that several of his home demos appear as final versions on the CD. For the balance of the album, he once again enlisted Steve Berlin, best known for his work with Los Lobos and who worked on Malo’s 2001 Today album, as co-producer. “I trust Steve musically,” Malo says. “Art comes first with him. That’s the most important quality of all. Nothing gets in the way of that.”

Lucky One follows You’re Only Lonely and After Hours, two CDs of cover songs written by Malo’s favorite tunesmiths including Kris Kristofferson, Dwight Yoakam, Willie Nelson and Roger Miller.

“How could that not influence my songwriting on Lucky One?” Malo asks. “It certainly had an effect on how I wrote for this. There’s an appreciation for song structure, melody and lyric that these guys certainly had.”

Songs on Lucky One range from the upbeat “Moonlight Kisses,” to songs like “One More Angel” and “Rosalie,” which take on mortality and the loss of life. “Hello Again” is a deceptively upbeat, swinging tale of heartbreak, and the closing track “So Beautiful” is an ultimately uplifting benediction influenced by events in and outside Malo’s home.

Lucinda releases four song politically charged EP – LU in 08

Lucinda Williams has released a politically-charged, digital only, four-song Live EP titled Lu in 08. The EP features three covers and one Williams original. The tracks will be Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” Bob Dylan’s “Masters Of War,” Thievery Corporation/Flaming Lips collaboration “Marching The Hate Machines” and the unreleased “Bone Of Contention.” The three covers were recorded live in Greensboro, NC in September 2007 and “Bone Of Contention” in Milwaukee, WI of July 2008. 

 

LU IN ‘08 follows on the heels of Lucinda’s critically-acclaimed new album LITTLE HONEY.

 

LU IN ‘08

Digital-only

10/28/08

 

Musicians
Vocals & Acoustic Guitar – Lucinda Williams
Electric Guitar – Doug Pettibone, Chet Lyster
Bass – David Sutton
Drums – Butch Norton  

Streaming tracks available here

Produced by Tom Overby

http://www.lucindawilliams.com