Have a good weekend dear reader – we leave you today with news of Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman who on Wednesday night re-united at downtown L.A.’s vintage, cathedral-like Ace Hotel Theatre. Billboard report: “The night’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo 50th anniversary album tribute offered such a steady stream of—mostly quite intriguing—curatorial observations that some attendees may have wondered if they had happened upon a “So You Want to Be A Rock and Roll Star” Ted talk that, happily, kept threatening to break out as a concert extravaganza of guitar-drunk Americana. Continue reading “Hillman and McGuinn play at Byrds tribute gig”
Not every A-Z artist is a complete unknown, sometimes it’s good to remember just how good some of the seminal bands really were. The Byrds are the band that spawned a thousand jangly guitar bands, seemingly destined to be ‘rediscovered’ every ten years or so. The Byrds famously invented country-rock on ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo‘ – although even putting aside the many other contenders for that claim there is the small matter of previous material on ‘Younger then Yesterday‘ and ‘The Notorious Byrd Brothers‘. 
HATS are a celebratory kind of a band; their music rings with the joy of making music, not the artistic struggle. The songs don’t sound like they were wrung from a tormented soul, more like they escaped like blissful bursts of inspiration. They’re an Americana band, blending most of the touchstones, corralling folk, blues, country and rock. Footsteps relies on acoustic guitar and harmonies to gain a foothold, gradually introducing the piano, electric guitars and drums with a relaxed easy charm that is infectious. 
Sadly the track is embedded on Rolling Stone’s page so you’ll have to 
News courtesy of Stereogum this morning who report: “This fall, the Byrds’ Chris Hillman will release his first studio album in over a decade, Bidin’ My Time. It was produced by Tom Petty at his studio in SoCal, and featured guests on the recording include fellow Byrds David Crosby and Roger McGuinn, Herb Pedersen (who also served as executive producer), John Jorgensen, Jay Dee Maness, a bunch of Heartbreakers affiliates, and more. The album contains a few reworkings of old Byrds tracks and a number of Hillman originals. Check out the tracklist and a teaser for the album below. 
to have been there – February 7th and 8th 1969 at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West! The irony is that The Byrds were a warm up act on this occasion, a sound check for others including Paul Butterfield, and just happened to be recorded by the Columbia engineers who were there and thankfully the tapes were kept. This is a fantastic record of one of the great bands in their 1960’s country rock heyday featuring the line up of Roger McGuinn on lead vocal and guitar, John York on bass, Gene Parsons (not Gram!) on drums and one of the truly great guitarists and innovators Clarence White whose distinct style shines through here and really lights up the performance.