Tag: Hank Williams

3×3: Jake La Botz on Bertolt Brecht, Blind Boy Fuller, and a Hopeful Amount of Laundry

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Artist: Jake La Botz
Hometown: Nashville, but originally from Chicago
Latest Album: Sunnyside
Personal Nicknames: Jake (real name Jakob)

 

Almost home! #nashvillehereicome #musichwy

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What song do you wish you had written?

“I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” — Randy Newman

Who would be in your dream songwriter round?

How many in a “round”? I don’t think I’ve been to one yet. I’m going to guess six. Hank Williams, Thomas A. Dorsey, Bertolt Brecht, Skip James, Lou Reed, Henry Mancini.

If you could only listen to one artist’s discography for the rest of your life, whose would you choose?

Blind Boy Fuller

 

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How often do you do laundry?

I own approximately two weeks worth of clothes. So, hopefully, not more than two weeks.

What was the last movie that you really loved?

The Lobster

If you could re-live one year of your life, which would it be and why?

You stopped my mind with that one. Sorry, I can’t come up with an answer!

 

San Diego: playing here at 10pm TONIGHT

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What’s your go-to comfort food?

Thai or tacos

Which Whiskey is your favorite — Scotch, Tennessee, Myers, Shivers, or Gentry?

The most expensive one. I’m too cheap to buy it. Keeps me sober.

Mustard or mayo?

Spicy mustard

Photo credit: Joshua Black Wilkins

LISTEN: Sunny Sweeney, ‘I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight’

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Artist: Sunny Sweeney
Hometown: Longview, TX
Song: “I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight”
Album: Trophy
Release Date: March 10, 2017
Label: Thirty Tigers

In Their Words: “I’m so excited that I finally recorded this song. It’s my favorite country song ever, written by the one and only Chris Wall. The melody has gotten me since the first time I heard it years and years ago. I chose not to change the gender, because that’s the way he wrote it. Also, I’ve always loved when a title makes you think the song is going to be about something else.” — Sunny Sweeney

Photo credit: Christina Feddersen

Jade Jackson, ‘Motorcycle’

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There’s just something about the art of the musical kiss-off: a song that doesn’t chase or proclaim love, but leaves it shaking its head, trying to trace back its steps to the moment where everything fell apart. For Jade Jackson, this is “Motorcycle,” a moody, sing-spoken minor-key proclamation in the form of a folk song, delivered in a message to a former lover. “My motorcycle only seats one,” she sings to a melody that’s part Western saloon, part Twin Peaks, before riding off confidently into the sunset. It’s this approach, both soothing and subversive, that caught the attention of Social Distortion’s Mike Ness, who produced her debut album. He knows a thing or two, after all, about applying a sort of scrappy punk ethos to a country palate — what we once called “cowpunk,” before the omnipresence of Americana took over. The raspy-voiced Jackson, who grew up in California (the place where that meeting of roots and rage first converged), started writing music at 13, and her taste — part Hank Williams, part the Smiths — comes through loud and clear in her unique combination of deadpan and delicate.

Watch the exclusive premiere of “Motorcycle” here, captured in emotive black and white. Jackson’s debut LP will be out this Spring on Anti-.

John Prine with Holly Williams, ‘I’m Tellin’ You’

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Keeping the circle unbroken in country music is a very serious thing — legacy, family, and tradition are not to be taken lightly, with certain last names (Williams, Jennings, Cash, to name a few) holding the most shimmering of golden thrones. There's that legacy, and then there are the interlopers: like a singer/songwriter from Illinois named John Prine who, without any actual geographical or genetic pre-programming, manages to carry in his body some of thickest, most brilliant blood in the business, grabbing a laugh in the same sentence as a tear. Few can blend wit and wisdom like Prine can, often because he takes that storied circle and warps it into loops and figure eights, without ever losing its original foundation.

Despite his unparalleled skills as a songwriter, one of Prine's most beloved LP's is 1999's In Spite of Ourselves, a collection of classic country duets that contained only one original: the title track, sung with Iris DeMent, which boasts lines about big balls and underwear-sniffin' while still managing to paint a sincere picture of love enduring, for better or worse. It's a purely Prine move that, on an album of reverence, he still warped tradition to suit his splendors and squeezed sweetness out of a panty-puffer.

Thus it's why his version of "I'm Tellin' You," off For Better, Or Worse — his casual companion to In Spite of Ourselves — is one of the truest examples of how Prine, even when not driven by his own pen, twists and tangles the past in his own tender humor. One of the album's more unassuming little ditties, the duet with Holly Williams bends tradition (Williams, of course, is the granddaughter of Hank and her grandmother, Audrey Williams, used to perform the tune) with the Prine eye, turning it from a solo affair into a push-pull conversation. "You better straighten out, I'm tellin' you," they sing to each other while a mischievous fiddle dances along. Prine saw the charm in those aged words but knew that all love is a two-way street — not just preserving the circle, but turning it into a sphere.

LISTEN: Luke Winslow-King, ‘Heartsick Blues’

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Artist: Luke Winslow-King
Hometown: New Orleans, LA
Song: “Heartsick Blues”
Album: I’m Glad Trouble Don’t Last Always
Release Date: September 30
Label: Bloodshot Records

In Their Words: “'Heartsick Blues' is a song about surviving heart break. It’s about realizing something is wrong when your love starts listening to a different kind of music. It's about cheating on the dance floor at a country two-step honky-tonk night with a band called the Wasted Lives.

I included titles of cliché Hank Williams and Tammy Wynette songs in the second verse: 'She's singing "Please Release Me" and "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." It's thinking about her "Cold, Cold Heart" that makes we want to die.'" — Luke Winslow-King

Photo credit: Martina Monopoli

Michaela Anne, ‘Easier Than Leaving’

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In country music, a "weeper" is a real thing: a song that's somewhere between a ballad and a hopeless confessional, that places more emphasis on a forlorn guitar and rare, raw lyricism than showboat vocals (though they're often part of the package, too). Think Hank Williams' and Patsy Cline's saddest moments or, later, Townes Van Zandt's — jewels like "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" that struck a perfect balance on the Southern scale with barn-burning honky-tonk, keeping it all delicately teetering in line.

But then the '90s happened and, for better or worse, ballads got the Faith Hill and Shania Twain treatment — notes hit the ceiling and power bombast replaced subtle solemnity. Simplicity, this was not. Luckily, there's been a new bubbling interest in bringing back the genre's delicate, melancholy roots: most of Daniel Romano's Come Cry with Me, Andrew Combs' "Too Stoned to Cry," Margo Price's "Hands of Time," and even Miranda Lambert's "Holding On to You." Now Michaela Anne, on her sophomore album, Bright Lights and the Fame, has an LP full of them — heartbreakers so grounded in self-awareness that they never sound anything but authentic, yet never too indulgent to ring just like diary scribbles.

One of the LP's best is "Easier Than Leaving," which opens with a snapshot in time of a fading relationship: "Sitting at the table, back's against the wall / Coffee's getting colder as I wait for you to talk." Who hasn't felt that tension, taken a last gasp at peaceful air before they fully breathed in the inevitable reality they knew was coming? With a clear quiver, Anne, who moved to Nashville from New York City two years ago, reinvents the lost age of those weepers in the way someone equally schooled in both the forebears — like Williams and Cline — and its modern folk interpreters — like Gillian Welch and Conor Oberst who carried the emotive torch when mainstream Music Row was too busy belting — might. "Easier Than Leaving" might not change her lover's mind and force them to stay, but it will just continue to help put soft, strummed country sadness back on the map.

WATCH: Michaela Anne, ‘Bright Lights and the Fame’

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Artist: Michaela Anne
Song: “Bright Lights and the Fame”
Album: Bright Lights and the Fame
Release Date: May 13
Label: Kingwood Records

In Their Words: "Hank Williams once said 'I love you, baby, but you gotta understand when the Lord made me, he made a ramblin’ man.' I’ve always wondered what the song would have been from the wife who stayed behind and may not have even wanted a life on the road. So this is for all those women who loved and lost a wandering cowboy and never got to tell their side of the story." — Michaela Anne

Photo credit: Angelina Castillo

LISTEN: Andy Ferrell, ‘Another New Year’s Eve’

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Artist: Andy Ferrell
Hometown: Boone, NC
Song: “Another New Year’s Eve"
Album: At Home and in Nashville
Release Date: March 24

In Their Words: "The song is very much about New Year's Eve. That’s the setting of all of the scenes, and I actually wrote it on New Year's Eve/day. It's supposed to take place in the '50s or '60s — although that's really up to the listener to decide, since the only indicator of time is that it's after Hank Williams died in1953.

The song is my interpretation of a lot of people's feelings about a new year which is that, more often than not, people almost always have regrets about the year that's coming to a close and vow the next one will be better. Hence the understated chorus: 'It's alright with me, another New Year's Eve.' I tried to paint a picture and set a mood of melancholy beauty." — Andy Ferrell

Watch Tom Hiddleston Perform as Hank Williams

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The Hank Wiliams biopic I Saw the Light isn't out until November 27, but if you want a sneak preview of what you can expect from the film, check out this clip of star Tom Hiddleston performing as the legendary singer after the film's premiere in Nashville.

Other Roots Music News:

• Willie Nelson won the Gershwin Prize. 

• Del McCoury won a Bluegrass Star Award from the Bluegrass Heritage Foundation. 

• Natalie Prass has a new EP coming November 20. 

• Ryan Adams performed "Welcome to New York" on Kimmel.

• Bob Dylan released an unheard version of "Subterranean Homesick Blues." 

• Anthony D'Amato shared a new song with All Songs Considered.

Watch the First Clip from ‘I Saw the Light’

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Hank Williams fans have been eagerly awaiting I Saw the Light, the Tom Hiddleston-starring biopic set for a premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this week. Now, take a look at the first clip released from the film, courtesy of Hiddleston himself.

Other Roots Music News:

• Kacey Musgraves and Willie Nelson shared the video for their duet "Are You Sure."

• Listen to "One That Got Away," the new song from the Legendary Shack Shakers, at Rolling Stone. 

• In a quick but important break from the roots world, Survivor threatens to sue Mike Huckabee and Kim Davis over their use of "Eye of the Tiger." 

• Brittany Howard, Mavis Staples and more joined forces for a super jam with Stephen Colbert.