How does such a song com to be? Well, Brett explains that in this case very easily: “It was a bleak winter during the middle of the pandemic. One night around 4 a.m. Rennie started screaming in her sleep. She screamed, ‘Come into the circle Joseph! There’s no moon tonight.’ Scary as it was, I thought, man, that’s a good chorus!” The rest is musical magic, dark magic no doubt, but magic nonetheless.
As soon as the first chords of this fine album chime in the listener’s ears, this oozes class and quality. Smith is a prolific songwriter and guitarist with ten previous albums to his name and an amazing roster of acts he’s previously worked with, including Mary Gauthier, Keb Mo, Justin Townes Earle, Griffin House, Rory Block, Dave Moore and Kelly Willis.
His mind was firmly on the Next Generation in the writing of these songs – specifically about his granddaughters and the world he’s leaving for them.
‘Wait for the Night’ is a classic rock song about living for the time when one is no longer at work, the joy of escape to do something that you actually want to do. Austin based singer-songwriter Rick Hornyak knows of what he sings – he was playing guitar in his teens and writing songs, playing open mic’s but at the same time holding down an exhausting full-time job as a steelworker at a local factory owned by Trent Reznor’s grandfather.
Recorded in Nashville she has assembled a fine body of backing musicians who have worked with the likes of k.d.lang, Brothers Osborne, and Miranda Lambert to name but a few. Her guitar work honed with playing over two hundred shows a year is exceptionally clean and precise. Not only that her vocals are also very strong throughout, reminiscent on a number of tracks of Sheryl Crow at her finest.
The third album from indie/folk rock band Under the Rug moves on from the blistering ‘Dear Adeline‘ (released early in 2022), an album chronicling the breakup of a relationship and grief over the loss of a beloved mother. The band consists of lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Casey Dayan, guitarist Sean Campbell and drummer Brendan McQueeney and over a period of ten years or more they have been making a name for themselves with their quirky, enigmatic, sometimes beautiful songs.
It might seem odd to some that Americana UK is premiering this new song from Farees, which will be released everywhere on the 30th of March. It’s a song that sees Farees taking what may seem like a radical new direction – ‘She Talks With Jesus‘ is a song that has a narrative folk ballad form, with an injection of Beatlesque power-pop which could not be further from the neo-funk and hip-hop that Farees is better known for. But, as he proclaims on his website, “Change is my only tradition.“