Our last Chain Gang entry was ‘Amarillo Highway’ by Terry Allen, so I decided to take the rather direct route (pun intended) of going from one highway to another, more specifically from a Texan one to a Calfornian one thanks to Golden State native Jesse Daniel.
Daniel’s country music origin story seems fitting of a classic country star: live hard, get into trouble, go to jail, discover country music, get clean and reinvent yourself as a musician. It sounds like a gimmick, but it’s true and more importantly, Daniel has the determination and talent needed for what deserves to be a long and successful career in music.
Rather than immediately hopping to another American state after Ljubinko Zivkovic’s stop in ‘Mississippi’ last week, let’s stick around long enough to visit ‘Biloxi.’ Biloxi is on the Gulf coast of Mississippi and singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester lived in Mississippi for a while during his childhood. He is also relevant to…
Rick Bayles sent us off down a new rabbit hole last week with The Country Soul Revue. The Larry Jon Wilson song he featured set me thinking about the film ‘Heartworn Highways’ which featured Wilson. The film’s producer Graham Leader talked about working with Wilson, who he "had to track…
Following on from the Drive-By Truckers, here’s a song featuring a whole load of real-life truckers. Erika Jonsson is a full-fledged americana star in her native Sweden, and is currently augmenting her living in the tricky post-Covid years by driving trucks. She put this video to her song ‘Queen of…
