Tag: classic country

MIXTAPE: Kelly Jones and Teddy Thompson’s Favorite Duets

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Hey everybody! Teddy and I had ball writing and recording our album of duets, Little Windows. While preparing for the sessions, we couldn’t help but reflect on our favorite duets from our contemporaries and heroes/heroines of the past. Here is a list of tracks that stand out to both of us as examples of how irresistible the male-female collaboration can be. Enjoy!

xo Kelly and Teddy

KELLY’S PICKS

Meryl Haggard & Bonnie Owens — “Just Between the Two of Us”
I love how so many classic country songs will take a cliché or a well-worn phrase and turn it on its ear. This song does that so well. It also addresses a very real phase while falling out of love — the dreaded malaise of indifference. What an appropriate theme for both a man and woman to sing together.

Buckingham Nicks — “Frozen Love”
This is the one and only song co-written by both Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks on their self-titled duo album from 1973. The entire album is GREAT. It’s filled to the brim with sweet melodic nuggets in both the vocals and the guitars, but this song, in particular, showcases both to great effect.

Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell — “Keep on Lovin’ Me Honey”
This song from 1968 is an example of some of the finest singing, arranging, and playing in the history of American music. Marvin and Tammi trade lines, harmonize, and sing in unison alongside the accompaniment of expert musicians performing excellent arrangements. My heart skips a beat every time the bridge comes around and Marvin exclaims, “Oh Tammi!” … It’s the little things, I guess.

The Mastersons — “If I Wanted To”
Even if these guys weren’t my friends, I’d still dig their music. This song is so infectious, it always fills me with pure joy as I drive down the highway, windows down, speakers blaring … It’s a great song to add to your “Wow, I’m falling in love with someone” playlist.

John Travolta & Olivia Newton John — “You’re the One That I Want”
"Oo, Oo, Oo, honey!" Watching the movie Grease was the first time I heard and saw the power of the boy-girl duet. John was so cute in his blue jeans and black leather, and Olivia could not be stopped in those spandex. After June 1978, every good girl would try to go bad singing along to this one — me included.

Buddy & Julie Miller — “Keep Your Distance”
Americana at its finest. Buddy and Julie are the king and queen of this kind of Texas country-rock, as far as I’m concerned. Their voices are a match made in music heaven; Buddy’s guitar playing is some of the best you’ll hear; and this song (coincidentally written by Teddy’s dad, Richard Thompson) is fantastic songwriting — clever, coherent, and emotionally accessible.

TEDDY’S PICKS

Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty — "After the Fire Is Gone"
A great contrast in styles here that works a charm. Loretta is so keening and righteous, and Conway is the most laid-back dude in the world. I like to imagine him sitting on the edge of a stool singing this, possibly eating a ham sandwich between lines. Why is no one named Conway anymore? Such a great name.

Allison Krauss and Robert Plant — "Gone Gone Gone"
A modern take on an Everly’s classic. It’s a vocal pairing that shouldn’t work, really, isn’t it? Somehow they glue together gloriously, though. I think a great deal of the credit for this track goes to producer T Bone Burnett. Whatever he did in the studio to get these sounds, especially the vocal sounds, justifies his place as one of the great modern-day producers.

Richard and Linda Thompson — "A Heart Needs a Home"
Mum and dad killing it on a song that breaks the hearts of all who hear it. It is a tremendous song, and they are at their peak here as a duo. It’s something of an anomaly for them, too, as it’s a positive sentiment. Shock horror!

George Jones and Tammy Wynette — "Someone I Used to Know"
One of my all-time favorite songs and one that Kelly and I sang together early on in our relationship. A top-notch, classic country song. Reminds me a bit of "She Thinks I Still Care." I love that conceit, "Oh her/him? I barely remember them. They mean nothing to me." Ha!

Linda Rondstadt and Aaron Neville — "Don’t Know Much"
You’ll have to excuse the guitar solo — it was the '80s. Linda is a monster of a singer. It’s a great loss that she can no longer do it due to a Parkinson's diagnosis. But she left us with hundreds of great records. This is another case of two very different voices combining to make something extraordinary. Linda is such a strong singer and very straight whereas Aaron Neville is the king of the soft and melismatic. Heavenly stuff.

Roy Orbison and k.d. lang — "Crying"
This was the first version of "Crying" I ever heard. It was quite a hit when it came out in the late '80s. It was on Top of The Pops in the UK! Roy was the greatest. Top five singers of all time for me, and there aren’t many that can hang with him, but k.d. holds her own and then some.

Photo credit: Sean James

WATCH: The High Bar Gang, ‘I Still Miss Someone’

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Artist: The High Bar Gang
Hometown: Vancouver, BC
Song: "I Still Miss Someone"
Album: Someday the Heart Will Trouble the Mind
Label: True North Records

In Their Words: "For our sophomore record, Someday the Heart Will Trouble the Mind, on True North Records, we chose ‘Cheatin and Hurtin’ as the loose overall theme. Shari does a beautiful job of re-interpretting Dolly Parton’s version of the Johnny Cash classic, 'I Still Miss Someone.' The perfect last sad song on our CD." — Colin Nairne (mandolin)

"I love singing this beautiful Johnny Cash / Dolly Parton classic. There likely isn’t a soul who doesn’t relate to this song. And being surrounded by this remarkable gang of musicians, singers, and friends capturing the live performance is, to my mind, doing it the way it was meant to be done." — Shari Ulrich (fiddle and vocals)

Photo credit: Karen Walker Chamberlin

STREAM: The Western Flyers, ‘Wild Blue Yonder’

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Artist: The Western Flyers
Hometown: Fort Worth, TX
Album: Wild Blue Yonder
Release Date: July 29
Label: Versa-Tone

In Their Words: "Wild Blue Yonder is a labor of love for us Western Flyers. This is a recording of three great friends who share the same passion for playing music deemed obsolete by record labels and industry executives all across America. However, we find lots of fine folks everywhere who share our passion and enthusiasm for timeless, well-crafted music.

The songs on Wild Blue Yonder are a collection of the music we love — authentic Bob Wills-inspired Western Swing, hot jazz and swing standards, cowboy tunes, classic country songs, and toe-tapping, old-time fiddle tunes. Great lyrics, great music, and great musicianship never go out of style. Wild Blue Yonder is our tribute to the music and musicians we love from the 1920s to the 1950s. It is our hope that the album inspires folks to jump into their time machine and revisit the wonderful songs from this special period of American music." — Joey McKenzie

Photo credit: Ben Bohorquez

Luke Bell, ‘Sometimes’

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Where does "throwback" end and "reinvention" begin? Somehow, we can smell music that's too stuck in the past, like the musky odor that lingers on a pair of thrift store corduroys: They look nice on the hanger and all, but don't really work for modern life or wear well with the times. Luke Bell, who grew up in Wyoming's ranch culture and now lives in Nashville, has plenty of vintage sheen — a deep, honky tonk-meets-soda shop croon that hiccups and yodels along, a penchant for innocent flicks of piano and steel guitar that swing and sway through tales of hurt and heartbreak where the melody keeps the glass wet but cheeks dry.

But "Sometimes," the first single from his forthcoming self-titled release on Thirty Tigers, doesn't sound like something queued up on your granddad's radio. Swirling Buddy Holly quirk and Elvis Presley quivers into his classic country constructions, there's a freshness to his interpretation of the genre, as if instead of attempting to resurrect a bygone era, he's just trying to pick up where it might have left off, using a levity and acuity that is often best gained by those who study their forefathers without trying to purely emulate them. There's a purity to "Sometimes," too, that's stripped of the sarcasm often attached to anti-Music Row arbiters who worship Waylon Jennings but translate it all into a cartoonish vision of what could have been — the only bitterness here is what Bell feels for the woman whom he loved but had to leave, his "watermelon woman" and his "cornbread queen." Nothing musky-smelling about that.

LISTEN: Violet Delancey, ‘Lost Along the Way’

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Artist: Violet Delancey
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Song: "Lost Along the Way"
Album: When the Clock Strikes Midnight
Release Date: February 19
Label: Honky Tonk Fairytale Music

In Their Words: "'Lost Along the Way' explores the nature of love as it changes with the passing of time. The new album contains songs that orbit around a coming of age theme, and this song examines the fall from innocence experienced with the loss of love. Co-written with producer Brent Truitt and featuring guitarist Bryan Sutton, the song tells a tale as old as time with a sound that echoes music from decades gone by." — Violet Delancey

Photo credit: Scott Simontacchi

LISTEN: The Cactus Blossoms, ‘Change Your Ways or Die’

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Artist: The Cactus Blossoms
Hometown: Minneapolis, MN
Song: “Change Your Ways or Die”
Album: You’re Dreaming
Release Date: January 22, 2016
Label: Red House Records

In Their Words: "I wrote this song a couple of years ago as a warning for anybody that might be in a little over their head. It’s all about the point where cause, effect, and consequence meet. That point where you’re not sure if it is possible to stop what you’ve started. The American buffalo roamed the great plains for thousands of years, but a long-barreled rifle unravelled their future in 10. It’s a strange thing to be born into a world full of nuclear weapons, climate change, genetically modified crops, and invasive technology that is stranger than George Orwell’s fiction. If it stops snowing during the Minnesota winters, we will know there’s no going back … but at least we can sit and have a beer out on the patio and toast with an 'I told you so’." — Jack Torrey

Photo credit: Nate Ryan

Squared Roots: Rhiannon Giddens Studies the Songs of Dolly Parton

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Dolly Parton turns 70 in January. And, while that might seem impossible, it takes that span of time to accomplish all that she has over the course of her various careers as a songwriter, a singer, an actress, and a businesswoman.

Rising out of the ashes of unspeakable poverty in east Tennessee, Parton blazed a trail like none other. From her early days with Porter Wagoner through her unrivaled run in the '70s and '80s to her artistic eclecticism of the '90s to today, Parton has composed more than 3,000 songs (by her own admission), charted 42 Top 10 country albums, and garnered more awards than anyone can count. She even has a TV movie of her life, Coat of Many Colors, slated for release in December.

In contrast, Rhiannon Giddens emerged only a decade ago as part of the Carolina Chocolate Drops after studying opera at Oberlin Conservatory. Though the Drops were known for their passion for and handling of old-time music, Giddens has taken a different tack with her solo debut, Tomorrow Is My Turn, and her guest appearance on Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes. But, with everything she does, Giddens keeps one eye on the past and one eye on the now.

I gotta say … for whatever reason, I thought your pick would be maybe a little less polished — like Hazel and Alice or Ola Belle Reed or somebody like that. So why Dolly?

Well … I'm kind of obsessed with her right now. I guess I've been focused so much on the non-commercial parts of country music and old-time music — you know the Ola Belle Reeds and the Hazel and Alices. I love that so much, but as of now, I'm a more commercial artist. I'm not making CDs while doing something else. It's what I do for a living and I've had a bit of radio play. So I've been really thinking about what Dolly did — and she still does. I mean, she's not writing as much as she was. She definitely had a golden period of songwriting.

The thing that fascinates me about her is how she worked feminism into pop songs. That's kind of what I'm fascinated with right now because, as I look at being a songwriter myself, as I've developed over the last couple of years as a songwriter with definite activist urges, wanting to figure out how to say things while making them effective to as many people as possible … I've been really digging into her early stuff and been kind of amazed at the strength of writing and the really strong feminist themes wrapped up with this sort of smile. I've just been kind of fascinated with it. I've been talking about her every night because I do one of her songs in my show.

So according to the Gospel of Wikipedia, she has written more than 3,000 songs over the span of her career. What does it take to hit a milestone like that?

I mean … what I think is … of course, you'd have to ask her to get the answer. You can't pull all of that … I mean, you can pull all of that from yourself. But I think you'd probably go crazy in the process. I think you have to observe and see what's happening to other people, find things to write about that maybe nobody else ever thought of. If you're really engaged with life, you see that. That's what I think.

Yeah, it seems like the level of empathy that she must have — especially coming from … it's crazy to think of where she came from and where she is now. She's the most honored female country artist in history … and so much more.

Yeah.

I was reading that she got some early words of encouragement from Johnny Cash, then the gig with Porter Wagoner, and off she went. Now here we are 50 years later.

And, still, you think about how she's written that many songs and yet, is she known as a songwriter?

Right!

I know. She's not. And I think part of that's her image. That is sort of the image that she's put out there. I still think people have a hard time seeing a pretty smile and a pretty voice, and they have a hard time connecting that she has a razor-sharp brain … and those songs!

Yeah, you don't get where you are — where she is — by not having the razor-sharp brain.

She is so freaking smart. Oh my God! She's such an inspiration. Just watching what she's done with her career, how she's taken care of her family and people at home … how she's all-successful. Stuff doesn't come up and then collapse, you know? Books for children all over the world? And she does it all without fanfare.

And it's hard to imagine — because she did start as a songwriter with the songs for Bill Phillips and Kitty Wells and stuff — but it's hard to imagine a world where she rested on that, on those songwriting laurels, and didn't pursue being a performer. But what if she had just kept to songwriting? What do you think …

Oh, that would be a sad loss! There are people out there who can write but can hardly sing. But her voice is beautiful. Her phrasing's gorgeous. She's such a great performer and a great actress. She's a real triple threat. There are not many of those out there, really, where each thing is just as great as the other.

She's also — even just within music, taking aside Dollywood and acting — she's had so many different musical lives, as it were. I'm a child of the '70s, so I have to confess to loving 9 to 5 and Best Little Whorehouse in Texas … that was my childhood.

Oh yeah!

But your favorite era is the early stuff? Which cuts?

Right now, I'm obsessed with the early stuff. There's one record that's got a ton of stuff on it … which isn't really fair because I have a bunch of songs on my iPod, but … "A Little Bit Slow to Catch On," "Just Because I'm a Woman," "I'll Oilwells Love You." I've been writing all the lyrics down, studying how she does this stuff. "The Only Way Out (Is to Walk Over Me)" … just so good! That's the stuff that's not known, in addition to “Jolene” and "Coat of Many Colors" and that kind of stuff … you know, "9 to 5."

I first was introduced to her through her second bluegrass record, Little Sparrow. That was the first time I really … I had seen that stuff growing up, and I knew “9 to 5,” but the first time I really got a sense of Dolly as an artist was Little Sparrow. I loved it. I thought it was beautiful. One of my first introductions to old-time music was actually at the end of "Marry Me" — there's this like little old-time jam that kind of fades off. And I was like, "That sounds so good!" It's funny to think about that, before I knew about old-time or anything.

Everything old is new again, I guess.

You know? The lyrics of "I'm a I'm a little bit slow to catch on, but when I do I'm caught on. I'm a little bit slow to move on, but your baby's a-movin' on" … I mean that early stuff, I'm really into it right now.

Rhiannon Giddens photo by Dan Winters; Dolly Parton photo courtesy of RCA

LISTEN: Jeremiah Daly, ‘My Darlin’ Rose’

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Artist: Jeremiah Daly
Hometown: Jacksonville, FL
Song: ”My Darlin' Rose"
Album: The Darkness Will Be Over Soon
Release Date: November 13

In Their Words: "I wrote 'My Darlin' Rose' in a total of 20 minutes. I was staring at a painting of a rose a girl had given me, and wrote this song about her. Growing up, my entire family played old country music whenever we got together, so writing it felt like a tribute to my roots." — Jeremiah Daly

Instructions: Grab your sweetheart and sing along.

Photo credit: Jonathan Kemp

LISTEN: Jacob Tovar, ‘One Track Minded Baby’

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A lot of artists employ a throwback sound when making their records, but not all of them have a voice that naturally matches up to it. Not so for Oklahoma's Jacob Tovar. His voice sounds like it should be crackling out of an AM radio or a jukebox between Patsy Cline and Kitty Wells. This guy's brand of classic country is capital “T” Throwback and with good reason.

Tovar grew up on a farm in Perry, OK, working the land and, quite literally, riding the range. An honest-to-goodness singing cowboy in an era of frat boy wannabes, Tovar pursued his musical potential after a move to Tulsa landed him in the local honky tonk scene. Now, he and his band can see their Jacob Tovar and the Saddle Tramps eponymous debut album just out on the horizon. The second single is "One Track Minded Baby."

“I wrote 'One Track Minded Baby' about my baby girl — she was about one-and-a-half at the time. I take care of her during the day, and she is insistent upon being in my space every second. She was following me around to the point that I couldn't even go to the restroom alone, and this song was inspired by those moments spent with her.

Jacob Tovar & the Saddle Tramps drops on August 28 via Horton Records.

 

Photo by Phil Clarkin