We hit the summer of 2011 raring to go as we look forward to AUK’s 10th anniversary celebrations, scheduled to light up the socialist republic of Liverpool in November. Aside from running the site our editor Mark is hard at work securing the stellar cast which will appear, hammering out the contracts and the riders (sausage rolls, fizzy drinks and a box of Celebrations chocolates are on offer).
Meantime, at the coalface, AUK lumbers on but the good old Way Back machine unfortunately doesn’t when it comes to archiving the news items of the time. Some dedicated digging reveals that we reveal a track from the second Mumford & Sons album slated for early 2012 release and we mention an upcoming album, “The Lost Notebooks Of Hank Williams” which will feature covers by Dylan and Jack White among others. In August we note that Marshall Grant, the guitarist credited with creating Johnny Cash’s signature “boom chicka boom” rhythm had died. However, that’s about it.
We do seem however to have joined Twitter as a new sidebar has appeared on the archived pages
On the live front there are a host of reviews still available in the online archive. The list includes Band Of Heathens, Okervill River, Phosphorescent (two reviews), The Chapin Sisters, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, The Zac Brown Band, Richard Thompson, Nathaniel Rateliff and The Jayhawks. The last mentioned featuring the return of Mark Olson to the fold. You can read many of these reviews here.
It being summer, AUK attended a couple of festivals and there’s a lengthy and highly entertaining write up of the Maverick Festival by Louise Rodgers (read it here) which features a host of names familiar to AUK readers alongside headliners such as Blue Rodeo and Melanie (yip, that Woodstock Melanie). Louise proves to be a dab hand at describing some of the performers (writing about Feral Mouth’s cello player she notes, “It’s brilliant entertainment, as if Paul McKenna had hypnotised Dave Grohl and sent him back on stage with a huge inflatable banana”). Jeremy Searle has his annual visit to the Cambridge Folk Festival and you can read that here.
There are several archived interviews, kicking off with Greg Readling of Chatham County Line and continuing with The Redlands Palomino Company, Duane Eddy, Hurray For The Riff Raff (on their first visit to the UK), Danny Wilson (talking about his new line up of The Champs on “Hearts & Arrows”), Abigail Washburn, Dave Alvin, The Felice Brothers and The Milk Carton Kids. Again, you can access all these interviews here. We also have a new feature, The Dirty Dozen, a set list of 12 questions emailed to musicians for a quick and easy feature. Our first subject was Warwickshire-based guitar player, singer and songwriter Wes Finch. The less said about one American artist who we sent our questions to and who emailed back saying something along the lines of “what the fuck, it’s not exactly Hemingway, is it?” the better.
It has to be said that across these four months there was a bumper crop of great music released with our June disc in particular stuffed full of great tunes. While May’s CD might not feature many well known acts (aside from Howe Gelb and his Band Of Gypsies, Eliza Carthy and Dropkick) June is packed full of them with The Felice Brothers, Oh Susanna, Pokey LaFarge, Peter Bruntnell, Sloan, Jim White and My Morning Jacket all present and correct. July’s not far behind including as it does Fountains Of Wayne, Rod Picott, They Might Be Giants, Dave Alvin, The Silos and Steve Martin (yes, that Steve Martin). The Arctic Monkeys are also present for some reason. Not to be outdone we bow out in August with the likes of Danny & The Champions Of the World, The Jayhawks, Jeffrey Foucault and Austin Lucas on board while a sad coincidence meant that your writer was just accepting the fact that Joe Ely had died a few days prior when track 18 rolled into earshot. It was bittersweet to say the least to listen to Ely’s ‘Not That Much Has Changed’ from his 2011 release “Satisfied At Last”.
Amidst these name acts, there are, as always, some lesser-known gems, and we kick off immediately with one of them, Mount Moriah’s ‘Only Way Out’. Whether they are fit to be considered not well known these days might be open to debate but they certainly have been eclipsed by the success of H.C. McEntire’s solo career. Also on the May disc is the low country rumble of Kate Maki’s ‘The Signal’, a great song from an Ontario-based school teacher, while June offers us the wispy sounds of Arthur Alligood on ‘Turn It Over’. Gerard Starkie was originally in a band called Witness whose album “Under A Sun” was AUK’s first ever album of the year way back in 2001. Ten years later he pops up here with his song ‘All The Licks’. Finally, in August, there’s some huffing and puffing from Gothenburg in the shape of Next Stop: Horizon who wheeze through ‘Reed Organ Song’ along with some zippy country gospel rock from The Warped 45s on ‘Pale Horse’.
On then to the hidden tracks our editor Mark tacks on to the end of each CD. Here his picks include Loudon Wainwright’s ‘Grown Man’ on the May disc while June offers us the excellent ‘To Live Is To Fly’ from Townes Van Zandt. Less well known are The Young Republic whose ‘Blue Skies’ graces the July edition but it appears that Mark is quite fond of the band as he wrote about them here in 2020. Finally we go old school on the August disc for a vintage recording of Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb’s Orchestra as she sings ‘A Tisket A Tasket’. A reminder that AUK is not an island, it’s a peninsula.
Stay tuned for the next edition where AUK celebrates its 10th anniversary in some style.
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 2011. All details here.
Vintage screenshots grabbed via The Wayback Machine.
Man, I loved that Mount Moriah album. Away to find and play. Lament was a favourite. Thanks.