mon 21/05/2012

country music

Amanda Shires, Woodend Bowling and Tennis Club, Glasgow

In a members-only bowling club, down a side street in a residential part of Glasgow I'd never visited before last night, Texan fiddle-player and songwriter Amanda Shires stood wearing the most magnificent pair of cowboy boots I had ever seen.They...

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Giant Giant Sand give away mp3

Maverick songwriter Howe Gelb has launched Giant Giant Sand - the new incarnation of his loose collective Giant Sand - and previewed their new album Tucson with a track giveaway. Gelb describes Tucson as "a country-rock opera" revolving...

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The Arts Desk Radio Show

Welcome to theartsdesk's first radio show with Peter Culshaw and Joe Muggs, recorded with the extremely able help of Brendon Harding at Red Bull Studio London.In the course of this show, Peter and Joe take a look at the depth and breadth of music...

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Afrikan Boy Hard Times video unveiled

After some time as a cult favourite thanks to diverse DJ play, the reworking of reggae classic "Hard Times" by Afrikan Boy with grime producer Darq E Freaker and country/soul singer Jeb Loy Nichols has a video.Afrikan Boy, South London rapper and...

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The Civil Wars, Shepherd's Bush Empire

The Civil Wars are one of those bands rendered suddenly white hot in the UK by a classy performance on Later with Jools Holland. They’re a photogenic country-ish acoustic singer-songwriter pairing whose style is just un-country enough to fit neatly...

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Nanci Griffith, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow

“I know what I was angry about when I wrote this,” Nanci Griffith told the crowd as she introduced “Hell No (I’m Not Alright)”, “but you can get your anger out about whatever you want.”It seemed a little odd that Griffith left the big hook (if the...

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Black Cab Sessions: music TV catches up with the net?

Tonight on Channel 4, a new music series begins with a fantastic premise. A group of music obsessives drive around the USA in a London black cab, finding interesting musicians and recording them performing and talking in the back of the cab. Sounds...

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Carolina Chocolate Drops: Leaving Eden and Moving On

Something falls with a clatter from one of Dom Flemons’s pockets. The Carolina Chocolate Drops’s banjo player, guitarist and all-round picker and plucker has a lot of pockets. Earlier, he’d produced a pipe from one, a tobacco pouch and tuning pipes...

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Lindi Ortega, Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh

Canadian singer-songwriter Lindi Ortega took to the stage last night in a rococo Edinburgh broom cupboard looking like a country-fried Amy Winehouse in widow’s robes. As with most first impressions, it proved misleading. The visuals might have...

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The Joy of Country, BBC Four

The makers of this short history of country music had done a good job of rounding up interviewees, who included such veterans as Ray Price, Merle Haggard and Charley Pride alongside the offspring of several country legends. We met Shooter Jennings (...

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Unfinished Business: Writing Songs With the Dead

Creative time travel is very much in vogue. For musicians especially, it appears that death is not so much The End as an opportunity to extend the possibilities of the franchise. Early in 2012, American alt-country type Jay Farrar and My Morning...

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First Aid Kit, Bush Hall

When theartsdesk last saw folkie Swedish sister act First Aid Kit, they were both still teenagers. It was a dank February night and they beguiled a tough Edinburgh club with voices that sounded like they belonged somewhere in A Midsummer Night’s...

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