Country Westerns is a three-piece rock band from Nashville that sounds nothing like its name. Drummer Brian Kotzur (Trash Humpers, Silver Jews) and singer-songwriter-guitarist Joseph Plunket (The Weight, Gentleman Jesse) began working on songs together in 2016, after bonding over the shared desire to be in a band in a town full of solo artists and guns-for-hire. Following a couple of years writing and playing shows with varying lineups, Sabrina Rush (State Champion) joined the band as bassist. The now complete Country Westerns recorded their debut album in New York and Nashville, encouraged by friend and producer Matt Sweeney. Plunket’s raspy bravado and subtle twang, his insistent 12-string guitar riffs, Kotzur’s dynamic and metronomic drumming, and Rush’s harmonic bass playing create hyper catchy rock songs, with lyrics that bend towards poetry and punk rock sneer in equal measure. Their self-titled debut is slated for release in 2020 on Fat Possum Records.
Georgia native Katie Pruitt was liable to offer up a pretty different set depending on when you saw her. Wielding her electric guitar, the arrangements were built around jazzy, fluid dynamics, her intently detailed lyrical vignettes giving way to the tumultuous release of an instrumental break that seemed to unleash all the emotions left unsaid by the narrator. The twang in Pruitt’s voice became more of a grounding device when she switched to her acoustic, she appeared as the winning “Artist on the Rise,” and sounded more like she’d taken the country ballad form and turned it inside out.
Katie Pruitt spends much of her debut album Expectations wrestling with the ones that encircled her growing up and realizing that they only have as much power as she gives them. That’s a big deal for someone who grew up gay in a Christian household in Georgia, feeling shame for being different and hiding it, and fear that revealing her true self would result in rejection from her family and friends—sentiments tempered by the late-blooming knowledge that even at her lowest she had a support system to help raise her back up. Pruitt channels those feelings into the 10 songs on Expectations, an album that leans heavily toward modern folk, with elements here and there of rock and pop: The title track, for example, has an ’80s radio-rock feel with gleaming guitars and a sleek rhythm. The real draw here, though, is her voice, which can sound delicate and feathery. She’s also capable of sudden, robust power, and she can switch from one to the other in a flash
On Wednesday night, I stumbled into a bar on 6th street and Janis Joplin’s spirit appeared in the voice of one Katie Pruitt, a Nashville-based singer/songwriter from Atlanta, Ga. whose powerhouse voice and wise, beautiful modern love songs absolutely blew me away. Pruitt is far and away the most passionate performer I’ve seen this week, delivering her songs with that same likable, strong-willed intensity as Brandi Carile. She sounds a bit like Carlile, too, seamlessly matching up her edgy Americana grit with soft country tones. Her song “Grace Has A Gun,” written about a unfavorable ex-girlfriend, is witty, sad and potent. “She had a gun under bed,” Pruitt sings. “And that wasn’t the most terrifying thing about her…at all.” Later on in the set, another clever sound byte sticks out: “You’re way too generous with all the fucks you give,” she sings. Pruitt is unapologetically herself, and her energy is a welcome addition to the Americana sphere. Like Joplin, she tells stories of broken relationships and she sings with her entire face, from her core. It left me speechless. I’m quite certain we’ll be seeing a lot more of her.
An indispensable part of growing up is that moment when a new experience — a story, an image, a person — puts its first crack in the foundation of your worldview. Across 10 tracks, Katie Pruitt’s debut album, Expectations, is an excavation of all those fractures and the latticework they leave behind. The 26-year-old singer-songwriter deconstructs the idea of who she should be as handed down by her family (“Georgia”), her Catholic school (“Loving Her”), Hollywood (“Wishful Thinking”) and the South (“Normal”). It’s a lot to squeeze into one album, but there’s a heady sense of momentum to these songs, led by Pruitt’s diamond-cut voice, biting turns of phrase and masterful arrangements. On the other side of everyone’s expectations, Pruitt emerges as the bold author of her own future.
The second album from Waylon Payne is a defiant account of addiction, trauma, and recovery. It’s the first effort in 13 years from Payne, a Nashville-based country songwriter, and it tells the story of his past decade overcoming drug abuse, homelessness, and the loss of his parents in four breath taking acts. He confronts his demons on the gorgeous “Dangerous Criminal,” and comes out on the other side on the rollicking “Back From the Grave,” which was co-written by country heavyweights Brandy Clark and Clint Lagerberg. It’s a masterpiece of humanist storytelling and there’s something close to closure on the closing act highlight “Santa Ana Winds.”
In interviews this year, Waylon Payne spoke of the songs on his second album, Blue Eyes, The Harlot, The Queer, The Pusher & Me, as though they were works of unfiltered emotional purging. In fact, his intimate sharing about the warping of pivotal relationships in his life abounds in a thoroughly earthy kind of profundity. From his gusts of ruefulness during “High Horse” — about his father’s death preventing a reckoning — to his elegant pining during the orchestrated pop tune “Old Blue Eyes” — for a companion he lost to shared addiction — and his terse but deeply felt desperation during the churning country-blues of “All the Trouble,” his range as a personalized storyteller is riveting.
From the album ‘Blue Eyes, The Harlot, The Queer, The Pusher & Me’
There’s something comforting about the sound of familiar music. No matter how dark the outside world may seem, we can huddle by ourselves and play our favorite songs for consolation and reassurance. Nashville’s Molly Tuttle has taken this a process a step further. The multi-talented singer-songwriter and instrumentalist taught herself how to use Pro Tools digital audio workstation to record and engineer while stuck at home alone. She then sent them to producer Tony Berg in Los Angeles, who employed session musicians to fill in the parts from their home studios. The result, “…but I’d rather be with you” is a lovely, low-key, intimate affair.
In March 2020, Tuttle experienced the devastating tornado that tore through much of East Nashville, followed by the globalpandemic. While sheltering at home, she found solace by revisiting favourite songs in an attempt to “remind myself why I love music.” An idea for an album emerged, to be recorded with Los Angeles-based producer Tony Berg (Andrew Bird), despite being over 2,000 miles apart.
Tuttle’s list is esoteric and reveals the pleasures of having catholic tastes. She chose a wide range of material, including one track each from the National, the Rolling Stones, Arthur Russell, Karen Dalton, FKA Twigs, Rancid, Grateful Dead, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Harry Styles, and Cat Stevens. Tuttle keeps the arrangements simple and uncluttered. She plays flawlessly here without ever showing off. The same thing is true for her voice. She lets it sparkle and shine when the song calls for it, such as on her version of the Stones‘ semi-psychedelic “She’s a Rainbow” or in the giddy moments of falling love as on Arthur Russell’s “A Little Lost”.
Margo Price’s album is the work of a singer ready to shake up preconceived notions. The Nashville musician has been doing that all along to a degree, but That’s How Rumors Get Started is a conscious—and sometimes self-conscious step out from under the shadow of all the “bright future of country music” buzz that surrounded her previous solo work. That’s How Rumors Get Started is Price’s third LP as a solo artist, after three previous albums fronting the Nashville band Buffalo Clover. If that group had a shaggy late-’60s blues-rock bent à la Big Brother and the Holding Company, Price certainly leaned more toward the sound of fiddles and pedal steel guitar on Midwest Farmer’s Daughter in 2016 and All American Made in 2017. The latter even featured a duet with Willie Nelson. This time around, there’s as much blustery rock and hard-edged soul as there is country twang. Margo Price has paid her dues, both professionally and personally. Whereas she honours those challenges, she rejects singularity as the underlying factor in defining her music and identity. In That’s How Rumors Get Started, Price reimagines Americana’s sound as well as her position within the genre.
Some of that change is probably due to Price’s old pal Sturgill Simpson, who produced the album and assembled a band to play on it, in place of Price’s usual road band. On the other hand, the mix of sounds is more in line with what Price presents onstage in concert. When it works here, she demonstrates a certain amount of breadth as a performer. Yet it doesn’t always work. There’s a difference between upending expectations and contrarian posturing, and the song writing on That’s How Rumors Get Started isn’t consistently sharp enough to strike the right balance. Price goes for broad strokes on these 10 songs, musically and lyrically.
“That’s How Rumors Get Started”, an album of ten new, original songs that commit her sky-high and scorching rock-and-roll show to record for the very first time. Produced by long time friend Sturgill Simpson (co-produced by Margo and David Ferguson), the LP marks Price’s debut for Loma Vista Recordings, and whether she’s singing of motherhood or the mythologies of stardom, Nashville gentrification or the national healthcare crisis, relationships or growing pains, she’s crafted a collection of music that invites people to listen closer than ever before.
Margo primarily cut That’s How Rumors Get Started at Los Angeles’ EastWest Studios (Pet Sounds, “9 to 5”). Tracking occurred over several days while she was pregnant with daughter Ramona. “They’re both a creation process,” she says. “And I was being really good to my body and my mind during that time. I had a lot of clarity from sobriety.”
While Margo Price continued to collaborate on most of the song writing with her husband Jeremy Ivey, she recorded with an historic band assembled by Sturgill, and including guitarist Matt Sweeney (Adele, Iggy Pop), bassist Pino Palladino (D’Angelo, John Mayer), drummer James Gadson (Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye), and keyboardist Benmont Tench (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers). Background vocals were added by Simpson on “Letting Me Down,” and the Nashville Friends Gospel Choir, who raise the arrangements of “Hey Child” and “What Happened To Our Love?” to some of the album’s most soaring heights.
Margo Price and her steady touring band – Kevin Black (bass), Jamie Davis (guitar), Micah Hulsher (keys), and Dillon Napier (drums) – will perform songs from That’s How Rumors Get Started at dozens of shows with Chris Stapleton and The Head & The Heart this spring and summer, in addition to festival appearances and more to be announced soon.
“That’s How Rumors Get Started” follows Margo’s 2017 album All American Made, which was named the #1 Country/Americana album of the year by Rolling Stone, and one of the top albums of the decade by Esquire, Pitchfork and Billboard, among others. In its wake, Margo sold out three nights at The Ryman Auditorium, earned her first Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, and much more.
Released July 10th, 2020
New album, “That’s How Rumors Get Started” out now
With some of the best songs of her career, her band Gravy at her side, and producer Butch Walker behind the console, Nashville singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cook headed to L.A. to make a banger of an album. While it may be more West Coast shine than Tennessee dirt, the country livin’ in the lyrics is unmistakable. She writes of playing loose with the truth in “Two Chords and a Lie,” drops redneck bon mots like “Don’t go selling crazy/We’re stocked up here” in “These Days,” and puts you right in the room with her and her ailing father in “Daddy I Got Love for You.” Egged on by Walker in brawny tracks like “Bones,”Cook even reveals her inner rock goddess. The results are glorious.
“Two Chords and a Lie “ by Elizabeth Cook Written by : Elizabeth Cook Produced by : Butch Walker
Nashville-born indie rocker Sophie Allison reaches deep inside herself with her second album, Color Theory, building on the emotional honesty of her 2018 breakthrough, Clean. Born in 1997, Allison is a proudly Nineties-fueled songwriter, with a little Liz Phair in her guitar and just a touch of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe in her vocals. (Not to mention the way she sings about “Night Swimming.”) Color Theory has some of the year’s loneliest songs, taking on depression, insecurity, and illness as she admits. Yet she always keeps you rooting for her to make it.
Margo Price’s take on classic sounds is at once familiar and daring, an infectious blend of Nashville country, Memphis soul, and Texas twang. The release is a beautiful summary of Margo’s triumphant three-night run at The Ryman Auditorium in May 2018, and features guest appearances from Emmylou Harris, Jack White, and Sturgill Simpson.
A note from Margo: “Two years ago today I headlined the Ryman and it was something I had dreamed of since I was a little girl. We did three nights in a row and recorded all of them. I am so excited that we are releasing it – the recordings are rough and the performances are raw, but there was a magic there and the band was on fire. We played unreleased songs, alternative album versions and lots of special guests. I hope it moves you.”
Aaron Lee Tasjan, aka ALT, is a songwriter and guitarist and performer. I’d stay away from him if I were you. Big trouble. It’s tough to take Aaron Lee Tasjan seriously when he calls himself a folk singer. Though the shaggy-haired, 30-year-old Nashville transplant is perfectly capable of quieting a room with storytelling songs and acoustic fingerpicking, there’s a whole lot of other music in his repertoire—not to mention on his resume. His incisive electric guitar playing landed him prime glam rock gigs, first with Semi Precious Weapons, then a latter-day line-up of the proto-punk New York Dolls—both far better known for the flaunting of fabulous rock ‘n’ roll androgyny than for anything remotely folk-leaning.
He also secured a spot in the hard-edged roots rock outfit Drivin’ N Cryin’. The solo work that Tasjan’s committed himself to since—including his magnetic New West Records debut Silver Tears—makes use of his slouching self-awareness, bohemian intellect and wicked wit, as well as his fondness for psychedelic eruptions, sophisticated studio pop flourishes and easy twang. He’s wagering that the Americana scene, no matter its traditionalist rep, has room for such motley impulses. We’re excited to announce the new Aaron Lee Tasjan album, Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!, is on its way! The fourth full-length album from the enigmatic Nashville songwriter will be released February 5th, 2021.
The debut single from the album, “Up All Night,” is equal parts alternative pop and glam rock stomp.
Dark and beguiling; Nashville three-piece All Them Witches blend blues rock with garage, psyche and stoner rock to create hypnotic songs with a truly intense feel. Their immense creativity has resulted in a truly prolific output, with each new record eagerly awaited by their devoted international fanbase.
The trio includes drummer Robby Staebler, guitarist Ben McLeod and bassist Charles Michael Parks Jr. who is also the band’s singer. Now, with the release of their sixth album ‘Nothing as the Ideal’ which critics and fans agree is their best yet; All Them Witches announce headline dates to showcase their new material.
Formed in 2012, All Them Witches immediately showed immense creative strength with their prolific output resulting in the self- release of their first full length record ‘Our Mother Electricity’ in the same year. Inspired by the heavy sound of Black Sabbath but also their willingness to experiment, they achieved cult status throughout the US and reached listeners in Europe and around the globe. Their innovation continued with the ‘Extra Pleasant’ EP which saw them record using only two microphones plugged directly into a cassette recorder, creating an almost mythic quality to their song writing which appealed to fans. The ensuing years would see an inexhaustible flurry of creative energy with a constant release of albums, including ‘Lightening At The Door’ (2014), ‘Dying Surfer Meets His Maker’ (2015), ‘Sleeping Through The War’ (2017) and ‘ATW’ (2018).
Sensing that their next album would be something truly special, the Tennessee troupe relocated to London to record in Studio 2 of the iconic Abbey Road. Enlisting the aid of their long-term friend Mikey Allread as mixing engineer once again, they set about creating new album ‘Nothing as the Ideal’.
“As soon as we walked in, all of that touristy stuff is just gone. It is a funky, vintage, dirty studio, just bad-ass and super-awesome. The staff there was such a joy to work with, and the room we were in was Studio Two, which was The Beatles’ room.” – Ben McLeod
Some of the magic of the studio which helped craft some of the greatest rock and roll records of all time must have seeped into the band as album ‘Nothing as the Ideal’ is their best yet. The mystical element of their music is taken even further with complicated song structures explored to their fullest extent and delicately balanced melodies are fused with hard rocking riffs to produce one of the most compelling records of the year. Make sure you see All Them Witches when they return to the UK to play the new material from ‘Nothing as the Ideal’ plus tracks from right across their mighty career at headline dates during September 2021
The Fat Angel Sings 