A tribute album featuring Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams and Beachwood Sparks among others was announced yesterday along with details of a new Neal Casal Music Foundation (NCMF) which has been created “to honour the memory of the late great, multi-dimensional artist through an ongoing series of charitable endeavors.” The initial focus of the foundation is to provide instruments and lessons to students in New Jersey and New York state schools where Casal was born and raised, as well as to make donations to mental health organizations that support musicians in need. NCMF is being spearheaded by Neal’s longtime manager Gary Waldman along with a team of Casal’s friends. Continue reading “Neal Casal Foundation and tribute album announced”
The broad-church of Americana sometimes divides us. But one thing that most fans would agree on is that artists like Lucinda Williams personify the spirit and sound of the genre. Williams is the sort of musician who generates excitement when a new release is imminent. Such expectations could be stifling and restrictive; they could serve to limit creativity and experimentation. However, in Williams’ case, the opposite is true – it seems to inspire the famous perfectionist to produce some of her best work. 
In 1998 when ‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road’ was released my musical tastes were much more rock-oriented and my gradual assimilation into all things Americana was really just beginning and I paid it scant attention at the time. That all changed though in late June of 2002. I’d bought, and was hugely enjoying Williams’ next album ‘Essence‘ and faced with a 350-mile drive from Chicago, where I lived at the time, to a friend’s summer lake house in northern Wisconsin, I’d splashed out on some more CD’s (for those old enough to remember them) and of course one of them was ‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road‘. 
Merle Haggard has always been categorised as one of the great American Country Singers but, when it comes to songwriting, his talents are often overlooked. So, when a bunch of top Americana singers and songwriters came together, to produce a tribute to Haggard as a writer, it was time to take a proper, in-depth listen to some of the songs that came from his pen. 