the UK home for americana music
At AUK we are on a quest to find the ‘Top 10 Americana Albums Ever’. Over the coming weeks and months each AUK writer will in turn, present their own personal selections. When each writer has had their say, a shortlist of the most frequently chosen albums will be drawn up and voted on, in order to generate the definitive AUK writers top ten. Continue reading “AUK’s top 10 Americana albums ever: Rick Bayles”
It could have been called ‘America’, but it is justifiably called ‘The Band’. Legend has it that it was conceived as a concept album relating to different aspects of America and the Deep South. It is carefully planned and structured, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, awesome as those parts are. It still stands out in sharp contrast to almost everything else in the contemporary soundscape. Continue reading “The Band “The Band (50th Anniversary Edition)” (Capitol/UMe, 2019)”
When The Band’s seminal eponymous second album was released fifty years ago on September 22, 1969, not much more was known about the reclusive group than when they released their landmark debut ‘Music From Big Pink’ to widespread critical praise and bewilderment, just the year before. Continue reading “The Band release 50th anniversary edition of second album”
Our occasional feature on the whys and wherefores of Americana is back – this time featuring prolific writer and former metal fiend turned Gram Parson aficionado Mark Underwood. He once upon a time used to write for Music Week don’t you know (we didn’t). Continue reading “What Is This Americana Thing Anyway…?”
It’s that time again when the great and the good of Americana-UK ‘fess up and tell it like it is in their individual journeys into the genre we all know and love. This week Ben Roberts – a man who survived being a metalhead and a drummer to make it to the promised land of musical goodness (quite why he doesn’t have the mighty Wilco’s “Heavy Metal Drummer“ on his list we don’t know – but could probably find out…) Continue reading “What Is This Americana Thing Anyway…”
On July 1, 1968, The Band’s landmark debut album ‘Music from Big Pink’ seemed to spring from nowhere and everywhere. Drawing from the American roots music panoply of country, blues, R&B, gospel, soul, rockabilly, the honking tenor sax tradition, hymns, funeral dirges, brass band music, folk, and rock ‘n’ roll, The Band forged a new style that some argued changed the course of popular music. Fifty years later, the mythology surrounding Music from Big Pink lives on through the evocative storytelling of its songs including “The Weight,” “This Wheel’s On Fire,” “Tears of Rage,” and “To Kingdom Come,” its enigmatic cover art painted by Bob Dylan, the salmon-colored upstate New York house – ‘Big Pink’ – where The Band wrote the songs, and in myriad descendant legends carried forth since the album’s arrival. Continue reading “The Band’s “Music From the Big Pink” gets 50th anniversary re-release”
A nice little piece up in Rolling Stone Country today where they talk to The Band’s Robbie Robertson about a number of things including his former band’s influence in creating the “americana” genre despite being Canadian. They report: “Leave it to a Canadian to supposedly “invent” Americana music. A road warrior since the late Fifties, Robbie Robertson left an indelible mark on folk, rock & roll, blues and all points between through the second half of the the 20th century. He’s been the Band’s guitarist. Bob Dylan’s right-hand man. Ringo Starr’s sideman. Martin Scorsese’s go-to film composer. Continue reading “Robbie Robertson – people told us: “You’re americana””