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08. März 2024

On March 7 TOWNES VAN ZANDT would have turned 80. The three singer-songwriter MARKUS RILL, MR. JONES and ROBERT HASLEDER dedictated album To Live Is To Fly to TvZ with 11 of his songs!

We took the following review from the online site country.de:
On New Year’s morning 1997, the life of one of the greatest and most influential US singer-songwriters came to an end: Townes van Zandt died at the age of just 52. He, who had written so many beautiful and sad country songs, was destroyed by his demons. The suffering of the world and himself and the means with which he tried to escape this suffering. He would have been 80 years old on March 7th.
In the year of his 80th birthday, the great tribute project “To Live Is To Fly” shows that Townes van Zandt’s art is also alive in this country and that artists explicitly refer to him. The three German Americana musicians Markus Rill, Mr. Jones and Robert Hasleder have recorded an album with twelve songs.
Eleven classics written by Townes such as the title song, “Tecumseh Valley” or “Pancho & Lefty” as well as the tribute song “The Late Great TVZ” by Markus Rill. Rill, who is one of the leading Americana musicians in Germany and Europe, learned his craft in Austin, Texas. Back in Germany he was allowed to open a concert for him and since then van Zandt has been one of his great heroes. “The Late Great TVZ” is a very moving song tribute to the great Texas singer-songwriter.
For Mr. Jones, the Americana singer-songwriter from Lower Bavaria, Townes “embodies the traveling troubadour like no other” when he discovered him in the mid-1990s. “I always had the feeling that these were songs ‘right from the bottom of the heart’ and not second-hand feelings,” he remembers. And further: “What was particularly fascinating was the fact that you could get so close to him and that he was the author of these poetic, often deeply sad songs, which always included a lot of autobiography.” And even today, Mr. Jones is always there surprised that “even after so many years, I can still discover new facets in the songs.”
The result is a fascinating album with gripping and moving versions of van Zandt’s songs: a tribute worthy of the great artist.

07. März 2024

We are very pleased with a new BASKERY album – V: End Of The Bloodline !

V: End Of The Bloodline is the latest offering from sisters Sunniva, Greta and Stella Bondesson whose combined talents coalesce to produce the divine sound of Baskery. The self-proclaimed ‘three bitches from Sweden’ can often be found in a chipper mood and aren’t averse to dabbling in a bit of rock, blues or even a dash of punk. This album however sees the girls bringing on the heartache with a dozen sublime and, for the most part, tear-drenched Americana folk/country tales of lost love and injustice delivered in their inimitable style.
For the uninitiated, Baskery’s secret lies largely in the versatility that is afforded by having three such talented individuals working in perfect harmony, all bringing something a bit special to the mix. Their instrumental flexibility includes Greta’s unique banjo/drums combo (with a bit of guitar and piano thrown in for good measure), while lead singer Sunniva is an accomplished guitarist in her own right, and Stella’s upright bass works perfectly for the band offering a completely different texture to the bass guitar.

All three have sublime voices which meld to magnificent effect bringing to life the full gamut of emotions expressed by their impressive songwriting to which, naturally, they all contribute. Sean Lakeman’s empathetic and uncluttered production suggests the Bondessons have found a kindred spirit while brother Seth contributes viola to a couple of tracks, offering a stamp of approval from folk royalty which affirms the high esteem in which Baskery are held by fellow musicians.
And so you have it, a fifth studio album from this talented trio to add to their already impressive back-catalogue and establish them once and for all as a force to be reckoned with. Parallels are inevitably drawn with other all-female acts and there are some obvious stylistic references, but when it comes to the overall Baskery sound, these sisters are very much doing it for themselves.
To say that there isn’t a bad track on the album would be no overstatement, and it’s impressive indeed that a band which seems constantly to be on the road somehow manages to craft each song with the perfectionist’s eye for detail and the poet’s ability to paint a picture in your mind.

25. Februar 2024

General Store Neuheiten / new releases Week 07-09/2024

Echo Dancing
ESCOVEDO, ALEJANDRO Echo Dancing 2-LP (gold vinyl)
€ 37,90*
Olustee
JJ GREY & MOFRO Olustee CD
€ 15,90*
Olustee
JJ GREY & MOFRO Olustee LP
€ 27,90*
Crow Gifts
KNOPFLER, DAVID Crow Gifts CD
€ 16,90*
El Viejo
LUND, CORB El Viejo CD
€ 15,90*
El Veijo
LUND, CORB El Veijo LP (clear vinyl)
€ 27,90*
Broken
TROUT, WALTER Broken CD
€ 15,90*
Broken
TROUT, WALTER Broken 2-LP (Transparent Vinyl)
€ 31,90*
05. Februar 2024

General Store Neuheiten / new releases week 02-06/2024

13. Dezember 2023

General Store Neuheiten / new releases week 47-50/2023

Town
ELLIOTT BROOD Town CD
€ 15,90*
Town
ELLIOTT BROOD Town LP
€ 27,90*
Last Rays Of A Dying Sun
RAIN PARADE Last Rays Of A Dying Sun LP (transparent blue vinyl)
€ 23,90*
Before + After
YOUNG, NEIL Before + After CD
€ 17,90*
05. November 2023

General Store Neuheiten / new releases week 44/2023

Zach Bryan
BRYAN, ZACH Zach Bryan CD
€ 16,90*
Only Dead For A Little While
GRAHAM, JON DEE Only Dead For A Little While LP (Opaque Fiesta Red Vinyl)
€ 27,90*
Dirt On My Diamonds Vol. 1
SHEPHERD, KENNY WAYNE Dirt On My Diamonds Vol. 1 LP (natural transparent vinyl)
€ 21,90*
Lost At Sea
SHIFLETT, CHRIS Lost At Sea LP (Ltd. Translucent Red Vinyl)
€ 24,90*
Southall
SOUTHALL Southall LP
€ 26,90*
Higher
STAPLETON, CHRIS Higher CD
€ 15,90*
Higher
STAPLETON, CHRIS Higher 2-LP
€ 36,90*
On Your Time
STEEL WOODS On Your Time CD
€ 16,90*
On Your Time
STEEL WOODS On Your Time 2-LP
€ 33,90*
16. Oktober 2023

General Store Neuheiten / new releases week 39-42/2023

Donlands
LEGER, JERRY Donlands CD
€ 15,90*
Ozarker
NASH, ISRAEL Ozarker CD
€ 15,90*
Ozarker
NASH, ISRAEL Ozarker LP
€ 22,90*
Southall
SOUTHALL Southall CD
€ 15,90*
Cousin
WILCO Cousin CD
€ 14,90*
Cousin
WILCO Cousin LP
€ 22,90*
05. Oktober 2023

WATER AND SAND, side project of Todd Thibaud and Kim Taylor, are back with their third album on Blue Rose, Hey Love!

TODD THIBAUD is a consistently convincing, reliable artist who always stays true to his musical vision. He does not change things up dramatically but finds variety in nuances of arrangement and production. After all, the consistently high quality of his songs and his mellifluous, warm voice create an irresistible and familiar atmosphere. This was already true of his first band, The Courage Brothers, in the early to mid-90s. With his 1997 solo debut Favorite Waste Of Time, the man from Vermont made his first mark on the songwriter/pop canopy. It was followed by a slew of classic Blue Rose studio albums Little Mystery (1999), Squash (2000), Northern Skies (2004), Broken (2008), Waterfall (2013), and Hill West (2019).
KIM TAYLOR is an American singer-songwriter. She has released 5 full-length records and toured with numerous notable acts including Kasey Chambers, Ron Sexsmith, Grace Potter and Over the Rhine. In 2013, Taylor starred in the Sundance and Berlinale selected Indie film, I Used To Be Darker. Her fifth full-length record, Songs of Instruction, is a 10 song collection of her signature intimate folksy narrative songwriting style.

For several years Thibaud and Taylor had the same management. Their idea was that both musicians should try writing songs together that the management could then submit to their contacts. Both finally met each other in person at SXSW several years ago and struck up a friendship.
While they were at SXSW, they made plans to get together for a writing session the next time Kim traveled to Boston from her home in Ohio. When she was in Boston they met up and actually had no luck that day writing a song, but discovered that they really liked singing together. The idea for a collaboration project came from that meeting. They talked about how interesting it would be to focus the songwriting for their collaboration on the struggles and joys of relationships/marriage etc. Both of them were busy with their own projects at the time, but they agreed to stay in touch and make this happen as soon as the time was right. After a few years had gone by without any progress, it was Taylor who took the initiative and got the ball rolling for what would become WATER AND SAND.
„We struggled coming up with a name for our project, sending each other lists of potential options, but nothing seemed to really resonate“, Thibaud recalls. „Both of us were in the process of writing songs at that time for our forthcoming album, and Kim sent me one of her new ones called ‚Water and Sand‘. I loved the song as soon as I heard it, and as the two of us discussed it, I think we both agreed that it would actually make a good band name for our project. We ran it by our management and some trusted friends/family, and everyone seemed to like it. I think for us the name relates to the balances that life imposes and requires of us. The two sides of the coin. The Yin and Yang. The life giving water and the gritty, abrasive sand. There are many joys and good times in our lives, but of course, there are also times of struggle and pain. I think the name points to those co-existing experiences.“
Weiterlesen / Read more

05. Oktober 2023

Exclusively available in Europe at the Blue Rose webshop: Austin’s own SOUTH AUSTIN MOONLIGHTERS newest releases!

Travel Light
Travel Light
CD
€ 15,90*
SOUTH AUSTIN MOONLIGHTERS – Travel Light
The South Austin Moonlighters from Austin, Texas are truly a band that won’t let anything get them down! At the beginning of the 2010s, they started out with great ambitions as a permanent club fixture in the legendary Saxon Pub in South Austin – all of them seasoned musicians who had earned their spurs with well-known acts such as Stonehoney, Mother Truckers, Whiskey Sisters, Deadman and Mike Zito: Phil Hurley, Josh Zee, Lonnie Trevino Jr. and Phil Bass made a big statement in Texamericana rock right from the start, scoring points with their versatility of four songwriters/singers as well as a live EP and the first studio CD ‚Burn & Shine‘ (2013, on Blue Rose). Some people already saw them as the next Resentments or Band Of Heathens! But it wasn’t until 2016 that the next album ‚Ghost Of A Small Town‘ (also on Blue Rose) was released with Chris Beall as the new guitarist and singer/songwriter for Josh Zee. Actually a really big hit and all fans of Little Feat, Los Lobos, the Beat Farmers, John Fogerty, John Mellencamp, the Flying Burrito Brothers and Arc Angels should burst into excitement! But somehow the good part disappeared, constant, national touring hardly took place, and personal problems threw sand into the team’s gear. In 2019 the almost forgotten South Austin Moonlighters were reborn! With a new drummer (Daniel James for Phil Bass) and under the healthy influence of the famous guitarist Anders Osborne as producer and arranger, South Louisiana quickly found its way back to the old class – while band boss Lonnie Trevino Jr. did without his own material and lead vocals this time, The two guitarists Phil Hurley and Chris Beall dominated the scenario with three and five extremely strong songs respectively, in which two original cover versions also found their place: ‚Machine Gun Kelly‘, Danny Kortchmar’s legendary early masterpiece from 1970 (for James Taylor), as well as the iconic Stephen Stills medley ‚Daylight Again’/’Find The Cost Of Freedom‘ to round off this fantastic CD. It wasn’t just here that Beall & Hurley delivered their well-measured electric/acoustic guitar bravura with slide & solo interludes that simply make you happy!!

From Here To Home
From Here To Home
CD
€ 15,90*
SOUTH AUSTIN MOONLIGHTERS – From Here To Home
And once again – of course also due to Corona – far too long a time passed before the South Austin Moonlighters found their way back into the spotlight! Four years have passed since their comeback album ‚Travel Light‘ and, of course, there has been another personnel change: founding member, singer, songwriter and guitarist Phil Hurley has left to pursue a solo career. His replacement is Hunter St.Marie, who has been in the Austin scene for a long time and has proven his quality with various projects. He focuses on S.A.M. fully on the 6- and 12-string guitars, with and without slide, defining his role as lead guitarist as much darker, earthier, sharper and more experimental than Hurley before. His song and lead vocal parts are now again taken over by bassist Lonnie Trevino Jr., who shares this job with Chris Beall 50/50 – no foreign titles this time. In addition to an audibly more relaxed way of working in various Austin studios with different sound engineers, some ex-citing guest musicians were also brought in: guitarist Jacob Hildebrand (Deadman), the two keyboardists Daniel Creamer (Texas Gentlemen, Nikki Lane, Paul Cauthen) and Anthony Farrell (JJ Gray & Mofro, Greyhounds) and drummer Fred Mandujano (Deadman, Shinyribs) give some tracks the final spice. Through successful crowdfunding, the band was able to hire none other than the famous Steve Berlin for the producer job! The Los Lobos veteran (already a producer for such high-profile artists as Beat Farmers, Chuck Prophet, Leftover Salmon, Fabulous Thunderbirds, Fastball, Matt An-derson and Deer Tick) has once again done a great job and given the South Austin Moonlighters an overall earthy a more soulful, compact, „heavier“ sound with a spe-cial emphasis on the rhythm section, but which also proves its suitability for ra-dio in the opener ‚Nashville‘ or in the chorus-strong ‚Box Of Memories‘ or in the title song – Texas radio style, of course ! Other tracks like ‚Make A Livin‘, ‚Then Away, Farewell‘, ‚Faded Into Gray‘ and ‚Deltaman‘ are dominated by shuffle, funk, soul crooning and swamp rock. Very ripe, high quality and completely convincing!

05. Oktober 2023

Exclusively available in Europe at the Blue Rose webshop: New album Year Of The Dragon by BLUE WATER HIGHWAY!

BLUE WATER HIGHWAY are a long-standing Texas band from the Austin scene, or more precisely: from San Marcos in the not far away Hill Country. For over 10 years they have been delighting their local fans with ambitious, demanding releases (after several EPs from 2015 onwards, at least 6 full albums at regular intervals!) and courageous, frenetically celebrated live performances. During the Corona phase, the band, which started as a quintet and soon expanded into a sextet, lost two members, but this does not at all detract from the complexity of their sound and instrumental sophistication. Unlike on ‚Paper Airplanes‘, their first post-Corona work from 2021 with a number of additional studio musicians, recordings in Nashville and producers from „outside“, they have now completely relied on themselves. Year Of The Dragon was arranged, recorded, recorded and produced exclusively by the four pro-tagonists: The undisputed bandleader Zack Kibodeaux delivered all 10 songs and also mainly sang.

He also plays acoustic and electric guitars, harmonica and key-boards/synth. In addition to his usual guitar arsenal, lead guitarist Greg Essing-ton can also be heard with keyboards/synth and programmed sound layers, but also with banjo, dulcimer and piano. Together with Catherine Clarke, he impresses with heavenly harmony vocals in a class of its own. He „gets“ to lead a Kibodeaux song just like Clarke does when she refines the wonderfully voluptuous 5:42 ballad ‚Bar-fly‘ towards the end. The fourth in the group, the actual bassist Kyle James Smith, also takes on the job of drummer for these recordings and turns out to be a true multi-instrumentalist with additional contributions on electric guitar, keyboards, piano, synth and programming! Americana purists should be reassured that the numer-ous keyboard and programming parts take place in the background and only seem song-oriented. On the other hand, the overall very personal, almost private new BWH album has become an extremely varied, multi-layered musical tour de force, in which well-known Texas roots/country stereotypes find practically no place at all, but fresh, modern structures and contemporary arrangements reign supreme. The final mix by Craig Alvin (Will Hoge, Kathleen Edwards, Kacey Musgraves, William Clark Green) certainly plays a part in this. So right from the start we experience an irresistible mix of Lumineers, Avett Brothers, Jamestown with the airy, melodic title song through the Springsteenesque critical ‚A Gun Is A Killing Tool‘ and the folkabilly of ‚High Cotton‘ to the fiddly guitar ‚Rockabye Motel‘ Revival and The Lone Bellow, garnished with some Fleetwood Mac, Crowded House and Wilco.

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