The WayBack machine cupboard is still pretty bare for the final months of 2009 so basically we’re down to throwing out some crumbs here. From much searching it seems that in the last four months of the year AUK interviewed the following: The late Bap Kennedy, Larry Campbell, Austin Lucas, The Bottle Rockets, The Deadstring Brothers, Sam Baker, Eileen Jewell, The Tragically Hip, Madison Violet, Danny Schmidt, Tom Russell, Son Volt and Guy Clark among others. Amazingly a couple of these are archived so if you click on the hyperlinks in the list you can read their words of wisdom. A shout out here to Soren McGuire who was our interviews editor back then and who conducted most of these incisive chats.
On the live review front there’s no such luck. We can view a list of the acts we reviewed but nothing seems to have been archived, a pity. Here’s that list – End of the Road Festival, Doghouse Roses, Band of Heathens, Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express, Howe Gelb, Eilen Jewell, Eric Taylor, Seasick Steve, James McMurtry & The Heartless Bastards, Indigo Girls, Tinariwen, Steve Martin, Steve Earle, the Flaming Lips, The Lost Brothers, Damien Jurado, Great Lake Swimmers, Deer Park and Catherine MacLellan with Gurf Morlix.
With nothing to report on the news front either it’s time then to dive into the CDs, five of them, given that in December we sent out a “best of 2009” as in previous years. There’s the usual mix of familiar names and some not so familiar. Who recalls The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir who released an album on Bloodshot Records or Lazarus Clamp, a punky outfit from Leicester? Surprisingly The Arctic Monkeys pop up on the September disc while Mumford & Sons open our November offering. Apologies for that.
Regarding the big hitters it seems like there’s been nothing like a fallow period over all the months and years we’ve been revisiting here. From the beginning AUK has been fortunate enough to have tracked, reviewed and supported some of the pillars of Americana and this quarter is no exception. Over the five CDs in question we feature The Willard Grant Conspiracy, Tim Easton, Dawn Landes, Chris Smither, Drive By Truckers, Joe Pernice, Chuck Prophet, Vic Chesnutt, Dave Rawlings Machine and Rickie Lee Jones, along with a host of others. It’s the gift which keeps on giving, really, but there are also the also-rans, those bands and acts who never achieved much recognition but who left a definite footprint. In fact, the first of the songs we’ve selected here is by a band who are not so much unknown as unheralded. Scotland’s Dropkick surely deserve to be much better known and they appear on the October disc with the excellent ‘Don’t Know Where It Ends’, taken from their album “Abeley Hotel”. Elsewhere there’s the weird folk drones of Adrian Crowley’s ‘Three Sisters’, the psychedelic ‘Graven Wood’ from The Clientele and the vulnerable tones of Ruby Throat on ‘Naked Ruby’.
As ever, the monthly discs contain a “hidden” song at the end, all chosen by our editor Mark. September features the Belgian band Deus, sounding a bit like Wilco on ‘Instant Street’. The Broken Family Band ‘s ‘Mother O’ Jesus’ is the October pick while Dylan’s offspring Jacob and his band The Wallflowers pretend to be Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers on ‘Some Flowers Bloom Dead’ in November. Fittingly festive it’s Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci who close the December disc with their song ‘Christmas Eve’.
And, given it’s Christmas there’s a bonus “best of 2009” disc sent out which is stuffed full of songs from artists AUK has reviewed over the year. It’s a great listen and a reminder that while not every year can be considered classic, all of them have their nuggets within.
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 2009. All details here.
Vintage screenshots grabbed via The Wayback Machine.
And here’s the dearly departed Vic Chesnutt sticking it to Republican Dick Cheney…
