So, welcome to 2012. There’s a new cover design for the monthly CD sent out to the Friends Of Americana UK, all packed with a selection of songs plucked from the latest releases, along with our editor Mark’s pithy comments on them all. Your correspondent has always been quite fond of this year’s cover, which features a lonesome and perplexed-looking cardboard character, a perfect metaphor for the hapless band of writers who have populated AUK over the years.
Perhaps our cover hero is perplexed because there’s no evidence at all of our annual Readers’ Poll to be found in the archives. Perplexed myself, I eventually discovered that we didn’t run one. As explained by our editor a year later, when we revealed the winners of the 2012 poll with Mark writing, “So after a year’s Glastonbury style hiatus, the visitors poll of the year returns.” Perhaps a result of a prolonged hangover following our 10th birthday celebration.
Anyhow, it looks like 2012 is a barren year in terms of what’s been archived on The Wayback Machine; a quick glance displays only a couple of captures across the months, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, here’s what we can glean from January to April.
Our live reviews kick off with several from Glasgow’s Celtic Connections Festival, including CW Stoneking, Bonnie Prince Billy and Jonathan Wilson. We also cover Pokey LaFarge, Laura Viers, Kathleen Edwards, Roseanne Cash and Craig Finn. Ever modest, we also ran a review of our 10th-anniversary showcase, which you can read here. 
Craig Finn pops up again when we interviewed him in January, and there are also chats with Simone Felice, Fountains Of Wayne, Jay Farrar, Dawes and one of the organisers of Kilkenny Roots Roots Festival, John Cleere. There’s only a couple of these archived, and you can check them out here. Our questionnaire, The Dirty Dozen, gets some responses from Pokey LaFarge, Richard Warren, Straylings, Matt Anderson, Two Wings, Mike Ferrio, and Gabriel Minnekin.
On then to the CDs, our monthly reward for those who dipped into their pockets to support the site, 80 cuts in all (plus four hidden tracks). There’s only a handful of big hitters scattered throughout them, with appearances from Gretchen Peters, Jim White, Kathleen Edwards, Amanda Shires, Simone Felice, Cowboy Junkies, Loudon Wainwright, and John Doe & The Sadies being the most familiar. We have to mention Charlie Parr’s cover of The Beatles’ Rocky Raccoon; it’s great fun, while Sons Of Bill’s Santa Ana Winds is recommended for anyone who needs a quick fix of turbo-charged American rock. But, as always, there’s a wealth of songs to listen to, and some of the lesser well-known acts deliver some excellent songs.
The January disc opens with Austin’s Deadman on If I Lay Down In The River taken from their debut album, a fine, slightly Band-influenced number from a band who seem to have disappeared. Also on the January disc is the low-key wonderfulness of The James Low Western Front, whose Whiskey Farmer is another song which digs into the roots of americana. Your writer was extremely pleased to find Marvin Etzioni appear on the March compilation with a song plucked from his excellent album Marvin Country. Etzioni was a founding member of Lone Justice and has recently made some waves as one-half of Thee Holy Brothers. His first solo album is a hidden delight, studded with guest stars such as Lucinda Williams, who appears on Lay It On The Table and I’d urge all to check it out. Also underrated is Rich Hopkins and his Luminarios, who just about define a grungy desert rock sound, sort of a meeting of Neil Young with Green On Red, on the blistering A Stone’s Throw, which appears on the April disc.
As for those hidden tracks, all selected by our editor Mark, January delivers Richmond Fontaine’s Calm, a reminder that AUK has long been tuned into Willy Vlautin, while there’s some bluegrass from Nickel Creek on February’s disc as they lilt through Stumptown. March throws up a bit of an outlier as we listen to Lobo singing Me And You And A Dog Named Boo, a UK hit in the 70s, while we head into classic country territory on April’s Saginaw, Michigan by Lefty Frizzell.
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 2012. All details here.
Vintage screenshots grabbed via The Wayback Machine.
