Tag: tim easton

WATCH: Tim Easton, “Speed Limit”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Tim Easton
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Speed Limit”
Album: You Don’t Really Know Me
Release Date: Aug 27, 2021
Label: Black Mesa Records

In Their Words: “My friend Tree Butcher said the opening line in a sentence and I just wrote it down. It became a song very quickly and it’s the first tune where my daughter helped sort out some lyrics as well. Both my mother and father make an appearance in this one, so the family theme is established further. This is a healing song that is played with a lot of energy to remind you to slow down. The chorus lyric ‘when the pain of staying the same outweighs the strain of making changes’ is an inner rhyme sequence of pain, stay, same, weigh, strain, make, and change — seven rhymes in just 13 words. This is something I learned from listening to hip-hop, or something I was reminded of by listening to hip-hop. ‘The worst enemy I ever had is the one inside my head’ is a notion I got from the poet Gregory Corso who said that the worst critic he ever had was himself.” — Tim Easton

Photo credit: Robby Kline

The String – One Year With Covid

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

It’s been a year since the music industry slammed to a halt due to Covid-19. Performing artists had to adjust financially, logistically, emotionally and more.

LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTS

Now with a year’s hindsight, The String sought out a sampling of roots musicians to hear how they coped. Many found unexpected gifts. Some started new businesses. Everybody learned a lot about themselves and their field.

Featured: Kyshona Armstrong, Jill Andrews, Tim Easton, Robert Greer, Molly Tuttle, Rob Ickes, Doug and Telisha Williams, Garrison Starr, Sarah Jarosz, Suzanne Santo and Jerry Pentecost. With music by all.

 

WATCH: Nashville Covers Dylan for SAFPAW, “All I Really Want to Do”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Nashville Covers Dylan for SAFPAW
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “All I Really Want to Do” (Bob Dylan)
Release Date: November 18, 2019

In Their Words: “Each person involved with this project donated their time and skills to make this happen. We all see what Laurie Green of Southern Alliance for People and Animal Welfare (SAFPAW) is doing for our community, and we love the spirit and songs of Bob Dylan, so we have merged concepts and talents to raise awareness for something truly worthwhile.” — Tim Easton

Donations can be made here.

Editor’s Note: New West Records artist Aaron Lee Tasjan, ANTI- artist Darrin Bradbury, Cafe Rooster Records artists Brian Wright, Sally Jaye, Jon Latham, and Nikki Barber of The Minks, spearheaded by Tim Easton and producer Gabe Masterson, gathered at Club Roar Recording studio to record Bob Dylan’s “All I Really Want to Do” to raise awareness for SAFPAW (Southern Alliance of People and Animal Welfare). Directed and edited by Stacie Huckeba, the live video session marks the fifth consecutive year that Easton, Huckeba, and Masterson have partnered to record and film a Bob Dylan cover for a Nashville-based charity.

WATCH: Tim Easton, ‘Old New Straitsville Blues’

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Tim Easton
Hometown: Nashville, TN
Song: “Old New Straitsville Blues” (alternate take)
Album: Paco & the Melodic Polaroids
Release Date: April 13, 2018

In Their Words: “New Straitsville is a small town in Southeast Ohio where they have a Moonshine Festival. Also, an infamous coal mining strike occurred there in 1884, when the miners gathered in a nearby cave to unionize … and probably drink a lot of moonshine. They ended up setting the mine on fire.

I went into that cave with Paco, my Black Gibson J45 acoustic guitar, and set out to write a historic coal mining tune, but then realized I knew nothing about coal mining, and just wrote verses that were truer to my own life.” — Tim Easton

Photo credit: Michael Weintrob

Tim Easton, ‘Before Your Own Eyes’

Posted on by Editor

If a song falls off social media, does it make sound? Once upon a time, there was a world where the one thing that mattered was our own opinions and our own visceral reactions to the way we absorbed art or even basic human interaction — maybe we'd be alone in a car, hearing a new track on the radio, or spinning a just-released LP in the privacy of our bedrooms, the only peanut gallery in sight a sleeping cat on the pillow nearby. It was a freeing environment in which to explore and experience music, and especially to make it. If only we had known how quickly things might change, we may have been able to stop it: But no one warned us how those "likes," those tweets, that steely-white glow might infect us and addict us until it was far too late. Now, a word's worth is far too often only measured in metrics.

"Look at everybody in this room," sings Tim Easton on "Before Your Own Eyes," a seminal track off his new LP, American Fork. "No one's really talking to each other. They’re all consumed with what to love, who to hate, and what to ignore." In a soulful, solemn shake that evokes Bob Dylan's Love and Theft, Easton speaks to a world so captivated by the little device that they hold in their hand that it's hard to find space for anything in their heads or hearts. Easton's not preaching for us all to return to some impossible, tech-free utopia ("I’m not saying you should smother the fire, step on the spark, or unplug the wire," he sings), but he is weary about just how much is being missed — or not even created at all — when we become enslaved to the screen. It's a reminder to let your own emotions simmer and stew after you listen to a particularly poignant song, not a version condensed into 140 characters written for everyone but yourself. Because, in the Internet age, it's our own character at risk of being liked, shared, and clicked away before our own eyes. All we have to do is look up long enough from the glow to realize it.

LISTEN: Mary Gauthier, ‘Sorry You’re Sick’

Posted on by Editor

For most of his career, such as it was, Ted Hawkins was a street performer in Southern California, entertaining tourists and locals alike on the Venice Beach Boardwalk and the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica — his sandpaper voice a perfect companion for his poignant tunes. Many musical types tried to “discover” him over the years, so Hawkins ended up with a handful of releases on different labels, big and small, before he passed away in 1995. His debut, 1982's Watch Your Step, even won a five-star review in Rolling Stone.

On October 23, the first-ever tribute album to Hawkins will find its way into the world. Cold and Bitter Tears: The Songs of Ted Hawkins features a host of superb singer/songwriters — including James McMurtry, Kasey Chambers, Mary Gauthier, Tim Easton, and Sunny Sweeney — paying their respects to the largely unknown great. As his Los Angeles Times obituary read, “At the time of his death, Hawkins remained the greatest singer you’ve never heard. Hawkins clearly was transported somewhere else as he sang, and when he became aware of the audience, he seemed dazed: [Everyone] applauding wildly, some in tears from the sheer, sad beauty of his songs.”

The first track to emerge from Cold and Bitter Tears is Gauthier’s rendering of “Sorry You're Sick.” She says of the pairing, "I knew I could find the center of that song because I'm an alcoholic. I'm in recovery and sober a long time, but I know that feeling of being in a room with someone who's dope sick or booze sick and what you need to get them is dope or booze. Having experienced it, it touched me and brought me back to a time in my life that was truly difficult. [Hawkins'] songs are timeless. What matters is that people get to hear them and this project will increase the opportunity to discover these songs.”

Cold and Bitter Tears: The Songs of Ted Hawkins drops on October 23 via Austin's Eight 30 Records.

Track listing:
“Big Things” • James McMurtry
“Cold and Bitter Tears” • Kasey Chambers and Bill Chambers
“One Hundred Miles” • Tim Easton
“Sorry You’re Sick” • Mary Gauthier
“Strange Conversation” • Jon Dee Graham
“Happy Hour” • Sunny Sweeney
“I Got What I Wanted” • Randy Weeks
“Baby” • Tina-Marie Hawkins Fowler with Elizabeth Hawkins
“I Gave Up All I Had” • Gurf Morlix
“Bad Dog” • Danny Barnes
“Bring It on Home Daddy” • The Damnations
“My Last Goodbye” • Ramsay Midwood
“Who Got My Natural Comb” • Shinyribs
“Whole Lotta Women” • Steve James
“Peace and Happiness” • Even Felker