Can I just go ahead and declare that Jackson Taylor & The Sinners are officially the funnest band in country music right now? Do I have the unilateral authority to do that? Can we somehow get that certified through oath and affirmation? Because hot damn, if their latest album Crazy Again doesn’t leave you in a good mood, then you’re one hell of a red ass.

Jackson Taylor & The Sinners inhabit this strange niche in the music world; one that sometimes results in the band being overlooked when people are talking about the “best” in any given sphere of country. Their spirit and sound is more akin to the underground, with a punk attitude and sometimes provocative language. But logistically The Sinners are embedded more into the Texas / Red Dirt scene, despite being based now out of Wichita, KS. Over time their ability to cross mindsets, styles, and scenes has left them with no expectations to fulfill, a truly unique sound, and a wide swath of fans that resulted in Crazy Again being the first of their career to chart on Billboard.
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The Sea and Cake is an indie rock band with a jazz influence based in Chicago. The group formed in the mid-1990s from members of The Coctails (Archer Prewitt), Shrimp Boat (Sam Prekop and Eric Claridge), and Tortoise (John McEntire); the group’s name came from a willful reinterpretation (as the result of an accidental miscomprehension) of “The C in Cake”, a song by Gastr del Sol. Starting with 1997’s The Fawn, the group has relied on electronic sound sources, such as drum machines and synthesizers, to color its music, but has retained its distinctive post-jazz combo style. The band has shied away from releasing singles, preferring the album format. Contrary to his multi-instrumentalist role in Tortoise, John McEntire almost exclusively plays drums in The Sea and Cake
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Folk legend Paul Simon will celebrate the 25th anniversary of his classic album, ‘Graceland,’ this August. Various indie artists are paying tribute to the landmark release with a music video series covering songs from the record. The first one up is Givers and their rendition of ‘That Was Your Mother.’

Givers are joined by legendary saxophonist Dickie Landry, who has worked with Paul Simon himself, Bob Dylan, Talking Heads and more. Givers have a strong connection with ‘Graceland’ as they grew up listening to the Simon classic.

“Most of us grew up with that album in our household — it’s probably made its way into our subconscious, and it’s influenced the way we play as a band,” singer-guitarist Taylor Guarisco told Rolling Stone.

The Louisiana band and Landry give ‘That Was Your Mother’ a slower pace while staying true to the original. Their take on the song would perfectly fit any weekend afternoon BBQ.
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After breaking through with their DYI effort Ain’t Goin’ Back To Jail, JB and the Moonshine Band have released their follow-up album Beer For Breakfast through Average Joes Entertainment and it finds the four piece band (JB Patterson, Gabe Guevara, Hayden McMullen and Chris Flores) from East Texas ready to take on the world. The immediate thing to know about the album is that the production is much better, something JB attributes to actually “having a budget” to record the record.

Beer For Breakfast kicks off with the rollicking title track and Texas chart single (already Top 30 there) and while it definitely feels like a Texas-style honky tonker, the song still isn’t ‘too rock’ for mainstream audiences. It shows off the band’s tight sound, a sound that is further showcased on the fun “Dog,” a tune which compares the non-complaining love of man’s best friend with that of a nagging woman. It’s a theme that’s been explored before but still manages to sound fresh enough to suggest a potential radio single. Another strong rockin’ song that recalls Cross Canadian Ragweed is “Yes.” The song, which is the last of the twelve tracks on the album, showcases the quartet’s ability to bring the southern country rock and is without a doubt a song that will certainly be a highlight of their concerts.
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For Scott Matthew the definition of the title „Unlearned“ is to put something learned out of your mind. „you have to make an effort to forget your usual way of doing and considering something, so that you can learn a new way.“

He always loved to reinterpret the songs from his favorite singers, writers and composers and add them as encore to his setlists. This is still part of his concerts and the audience is looking forward every night to this “personal hitparade”.

The collection of his personal hits on the upcoming album like Harvest Moon (Neil Young), No Surprises (Radiohead), To Love Somebody (Bee Gees) or Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division), reinterpret only with his mesmerizing, heart-melting and captivating voice and the Scott Matthew typical instrumentation of piano, strings, guitar and ukulele, all have been put through his process of unlearning. They all have been unlearned and they stand as new and undiscovered entities.

Scott Matthew says: „The challenge is to gently remove preconception of what you have learned these songs to originally be.“

The album will be available on Digipak CD, Vinyl (180g) and Digital Download.

“The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.”
Gloria Steinem
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If I Can Dream

There must be lights burning brighter somewhere.
Got to be birds flying higher in a sky more blue.
If I can dream of a better land,
where all my brothers walk hand in hand.
Tell me why, oh why,
oh why can’t my dream come true?
Oh why?

There must be peace and understanding sometime.
Strong winds of promise that will blow away
all the doubt and fear.
If I can dream of a warmer sun,
where hope keeps shining on everyone.
Tell me why, oh why,
oh why won’t that sun appear?

We’re lost in a cloud
with too much rain.
We’re trapped in a world
that’s troubled with pain.
But as long as a man
has the strength to dream
he can redeem his soul
and fly…

Deep in my heart there’s a trembling question.
Still I am sure, that the answer’s
gonna come somehow.
Out there in the dark,
there’s a beckoning candle, yeah.

And while I can think, while I can talk.
While I can stand, while I can walk.
While I can dream.
Please let my dream come true…
Right now.

Performed by
Elvis Presley
Comeback Special, December 1968
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From the Inside is the 11th studio album by Alice Cooper, released in 1978. It is a concept album about Cooper’s stay in a New York sanitarium due to his alcoholism. Each of the characters in the songs were based on actual people Cooper met in the sanitarium. With this album, he saw the addition of three former members of the Elton John band: lyricist Bernie Taupin, guitarist Davey Johnstone and bassist Dee Murray.
The lead single from the album was “How You Gonna See Me Now”, an early example of a power ballad, which reached #12 in the US’ Hot 100 chart. A music video was also created for it.
The album is also notable for having been used to form the characters and storyline when Alice Cooper was featured in a comicbook, Marvel Premier #50.
The album’s cover image features the opening manner of doors leading into a hospital waiting room. The doors feature Cooper’s face.
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Country music savior and critically-acclaimed songsmith Sturgill Simpson has been making waves all over the country with his new breakout album High Top Mountain released on June 11th, and now he threatens to take the high-flying act international by boarding a puddle jumper and puttering over to the Land of the Rising Sun to record the video for his heart-pounding, hot plate, house on fire, country as hell, soon to be hit single “Railroad of Sin.” ‘Godzillabilly’ is what’s he’s patterning the theme, as the Kentucky native and Nashville resident takes a high arching swan dive deep into culture shock.

Johnny Cash may have not been born in Nagasaki, and bullet trains may not be equipped with lonesome whistles, but the Orient is where Hank Jr. picked up his official nickname for Waylon Jennings: “Watashin!” which means, “old #1″ and you’d be hard pressed to find a more modern resemblance to Waymore than one Sturgill Simpson. So keep clear of the closing doors, strap in tight, and get ready to speed away on Sturgill Simpson’s “Railroad of Sin.”
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Hell, let’s just cut to the chase right at the outset. The Hickoids defy easy and neat description, or even messy description, though “messy” was often applied to the band’s members and their shamelessly uninhibited punk rock run for the wilted Texas yellow roses from 1985 through ‘92 — one of the mildest descriptions, in fact. The tags hung around their scrawny and unruly necks like name and number slates in arrest photos include but are hardly limited to cowpunk, white thrash, glambilly, hard-corn, psychobilly, hick rock, acidbilly and out on bail. All in a way apply, but none and even the sum of those terms do these magnificent musical reprobates full justice.

To truly “get” The Hickoids as they were in their original wild, wooly and damned loud and raucously ragged magnificence, combine tequila with beer chasers (not the other way around), psychedelic shrooms, demon musical seeds spewed by The Sex Pistols, The Ramones and Iggy & The Stooges, honky-tonk and “Hee Haw,” hay bales scattered in the air, power chords and toxic twang galore, battered cowboy hats and tattered thrift store dresses, and their Austin hometown in all its late ‘80s cheap rent/booze/pot/living slacker splendor. That’ll give ya a bracing taste of what was and now, nearly 20 years after they sputtered to a halt, returns anew. Or simply mix the notions “Texas” and “punk rock,” multiply

As more indie and punk bands from the 1990s reform in the 2010s, fans have a right to be skeptical, or, at the very least, cautious. This seems particularly apt with a band like the Oblivians, whose essential charm was rooted in a drunken, sweaty ineptitude that placed blood, guts and mangled blues over pure technique and musicianship. How do you recreate such intense, chaotic moments when, chances are, you can’t even remember them?

In the case of the Oblivians’ excellent new album on In the Red — the trio’s first in 16 years — apparently they don’t even bother to recollect. Jack Yarber, Greg Cartwright and Eric Friedl have all had notable careers since the dissolution of the band and, particularly in the case of Yarber and Cartwright, developed into truly skilled players. Yarber has carved himself a nice niche as a reliable purveyor of well-crafted trad-rock that mines the barrooms, pawn shops, and back alleys of the South for inspiration. He plays the classic foil to Cartwright, who has slowly built a name for himself as one of the finest songwriters in America, whether as a behind-the-scenes ace for the likes of Mary Weiss of The Shangri-Las or as the main man of the mighty Reigning Sound. Friedl, to his credit, has put in time with several Memphis punk one-offs, including Bad Times (with Jay Reatard), The Dutch Masters, The Legs, and band-as-weeknight-drinking-club The True Sons of Thunder. He’s also developed Goner Records from a smalltime operation into one of the more respected indie labels around (to say nothing of the store of the same name).
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