AUK’s Back Pages No.6

It’s the middle months of 2006 we revisit here. The shiny new website is pretty much unchanged as is the format of the CDs sent out to those Friends of Americana UK who subscribe. News wise it’s a pretty fallow period, mainly reports of new album releases, but there’s a slew of live reviews. We cover Willard Grant Conspiracy, Howe Gelb with his gospel troupe, Cosmic Rough Riders, Silver Jews, Be Good Tanyas and Los Lobos and Jonathon Aird gives a big thumbs up to John Fogerty at the Hammersmith Apollo. AUK’s very own version of John Peel, Keith Hargreaves makes what I think is his debut for the site, reviewing shows by Josh Rouse and Willard Grant. And, seeing as it’s summer, we visit a couple of festivals, Wychwood, the Cambridge Folk Festival, Billy Bragg and The Handsome Family playing at Cheltenham Racecourse while Patrick Wilkins wires in an exhaustive report of Lollapalooza in Chicago. On the interview front there’s a slightly tetchy chat with Richard Buckner

There’s a new feature article, Classic Americana. It’s an early version of our more recent forays into the world of essential songs and albums and, to be honest, most of the selections would fit securely into our latest musings. The introduction reads thus – “Americana as an established genre may not have always been called “americana” – nevertheless, certain albums over past decades have paved the way for what we now think of as alt-country and americana. In this series, we take a regular look at some of the albums that have had an impact on our writers, whether at the time of their original release or at a later date retrospectively. These are the albums that anyone with a historical interest in the genre should at least check out – despite the high standard of much of the genre’s output today, the key is whether an album can stand the test of time. These ones unreservedly do.”

Most of these features were written by Mark Phillips and in order we examined Harry Smith’s “Anthology of American Folk Music”, Merle Haggard and The Strangers’ “Okie From Muskogee (Live)”, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”, Steve Earle and the Dukes’ “The Hard Way”, Townes Van Zandt’s “Townes Van Zandt”, The Souther Hillman Furay Band’s debut album and The (Original) Carter Family’s “Can the Circle Be Unbroken”. Reading these via The Wayback Machine it’s quite impressive how much time and attention has gone into these articles which are almost forensic in their detail.

Looking into the sidebars of the then site is of interest. Click on Giveaways and you’re directed to a page which just says “coming soon,” we were such a tease. Of more note is a link to various AUK friendly websites which include the record label, Circus 65, home to Chris Mills, Quiet Loner, The Havenots and the Guthries, a link to an americana Ezine called, somewhat weirdly Cheeseball.net, and to two radio shows, presumably now defunct – AmericanaOK, broadcasting out of Edinburgh and The Miller Tells Her Tale, also from Scotland.

On to the discs then and immediately there’s a double whammied blow to the heart as May’s edition opens with songs by Neal Casal and Karl Wallinger (World Party), a grim reminder that both are no longer with us. That sense is compounded as the May disc ends with a Townes Van Zandt number (although, to be fair, a posthumous release as he had departed the planet several years previously) while Tom Petty turns up on the August edition. Another corpse, in the form of Gram Parsons also makes an appearance. That old grim reaper has been far too busy of late.

Of the big hitters, Neil Young pops up on the June disc with a song taken from his album “Living With War” while Steve Earle (with a bombastic rendition of a Randy Newman song), The Handsome Family, Calexico, Dave Alvin, T-Bone Burnett, Johnny Cash, Allison Moorer and Los Lobos all get a shout out. Roddy Hart, not a name you might associate with AUK, turns in a fantastic Dylan like number. Surprisingly, Erasure, the electronic pop band also turn up although a little digging shows us that their then current album, “Union Street” was a collection of their older songs “re-interpreted in an acoustic or country & western style.”

As always there’s the raft of lesser known acts. Strip Club deliver a twang fuelled dark song called ‘Cold Comfort’ while the triumvirate of Kieran Kane, Kevin Welch and Fats Kaplin turn in the excellent ‘I Can’t Wait’. Boris & The Saltlicks are quite engaging (with Boris eventually getting more attention as a member of the Hoth Brothers), Peter Mulvey is quite transcendent with his song ‘Horses’ and Viking Moses flies the flag for weird folk. The most welcome memory here is reserved for Hellwood, a one off collaboration between Jim White and Johnny Dowd with their song ‘Fireworks Factory’ appearing on the August disc and a fine reminder to dig this deliciously dark album out again.

Our hidden songs, appended to each disc and chosen by our editor Mark are as follows. The May disc takes us back to the bucolic sounds of Loggins & Messina on ‘Watching The River Run’, June finds another sadly missed artist, Grant McLennan on a quite glorious slice of dappled jangly pop with ‘In Your Bright Ray’. There’s a real left field choice on the July disc as the fairly obscure The Go! Team are selected. Their instrumental, ‘Everyone’s A VIP’ has samples pinched from Fred Neil and Laura Nyro and, given that this writer has never heard of them before, I’ll be digging into them. Finally, the August disc has a song by the Irish band, The Adventures, ‘Don’t Blame It On The Moon’. It’s a song obviously close to Mark’s heart as he mentioned it again on AUK in a post from 2019 .

You can still be a friend of Americana UK in this digital age and, amazingly, it’s now cheaper to do so than it was in 2006. All details here.

Vintage screenshots grabbed via The Wayback Machine.