Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1037 in the Series)  is Lyle Lovett, Pontiac I was a music distributor in 1987 and was sitting at my desk when a Senior Vice President named Dennis Sinclair walked in and tossed “Pontiac” on my desk. He said, “Carta,check this out, This is all you. I think you’ll really like it.” Senior VPs always got their hands on the goodies first. As I jumped in my Pontiac and headed on Route 83 southbound I popped the disc into the player. The first song I heard was “If I had a Boat” second up was “Give Me Back My Heart” then “I Loved You Yesterday” and on an on. OK, Lyle, you got me!...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#1017 in the Series) is Mark Knopfler and EmmyLou Harris, Real Live Roadrunning. To this day, I can still kick myself for not seeing this tour. EmmyLou Harris and Mark Knopfler .  This was 2006; I had just seen Mark in 2005. Yes, that was a fantastic show, but I decided I’d pass on this tour.  Then I listened to the album. I should have known!  Often if you miss an act’s tour, well, you can just catch the next one.  This is why I’m so angered about missing this tour.  I’m nearly positive that this was a one in a lifetime chance.  Do we really expect that they’ll team up and...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#997 in the Series) is Leo Kottke, Time Step Leo Kottke is one of my favorite fingerstyle guitar players. He is one of those players that the music reveals its complexity slowly. It often takes me multiple listens just to realize the intricacies and subtleness of a song. I realized how great his playing was while listening to a live performance and discovering that there was only one guitar being played. His ability to play multiple melody lines at once was just unbelievable to me. Slap on top of that his quirky sense of humor, he keeps me coming back for more. My discovery of Leo Kottke happened when I was thumbing through...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#975 in the Series) is Warren Zevon, The Wind In the final episode of season 2 of the hit Showtime series Californication, down on his self-inflicted luck, writer Hank Moody has just finished a book project and is ready to begin his post-project ritual. “Every time I finish a book, It’s Whiskey, Weed and Warren Zevon, It’s the little things” he says, while ”Keep Me in your Heart” plays delicately in the background. “Keep Me In Your Heart” is the emotional core of The Wind, the last album that Warren Zevon made prior to his death of lung cancer in September of 2003. The album was already in the works in late August...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#922 in the sSeries) is Nanci Griffith, Other Voices, Other Rooms Nanci Griffith, much like John Prine, is one of those artists that flies just under our musical radar much of the time. Even though she sounds very much like her, she does not have the name recognition of Emmylou Harris. She can stand quill for quill on the songwriting medal stand with Joni Mitchell yet you probably can’t name a song she has written, and she even has a bit of that sultry,girl next door vibe going on that we saw with Linda Ronstadt back in the day. Appearing on the scene in 1978 with her debut album There’s a Light...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#905 in the Series) is Matraca Berg, Lying to the Moon (RCA) So many perks, so many cool events, so many goodies and “what-nots.”  When I look back on my days in music distribution, you never knew from which angle the next cool thing was going to hit you.  One of the things I liked best was when one of the labels would bring in someone to perform at our conventions.  That was the way that this lovely songbird’s music would be introduced to me. Yes, it now has been over 20 years. How much did I love this record? Well, like I said, it’s 20 years  later and I’m still playing it,...

  Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Saddle Up The Palomino” by Neil Young American Stars And Bars was one of Neil Young’s most patchy albums, but that’s not because the material on the record is lacking. Quite the contrary, the songs are pretty much top notch throughout this “Whitman Sampler” of styles and sounds. However, the record does seem to get unfairly knocked for several reasons… For one, the record was recorded in several sessions between 1974 and 1977 with different lineups. This approach to recording doesn’t lend itself to a consistent listening experience. The entirety of the first side was recorded in April of 1977 with Crazy Horse and The Bullets (Frank Sampedro, Billy Talbot,...

  From a Nonesuch Records Press Release. Piece written by Michael Hill The title song of Old Yellow Moon, due out February 26, 2013, on Nonesuch Records, may be the concluding track on the first official album-length collaboration between Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, but it actually represents a starting point for this long-anticipated project, produced by Brian Ahern. These two old friends and occasional band mates, Harris explains, “were picking songs as we sat around Brian’s big kitchen table, with his extraordinary microphones hooked up to the computer just to make a demo. We would pick a key or toy around with an idea just to make a sketch.” Harris was going over Hank DeVito and Lynn Langham’s “Old Yellow Moon” with...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#588in the Series) is The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Volume II. Will The Circle Be Unbroken Vol II is, obviously, the follow up to the 1971 album. If you’re not familiar with the two, they were a pair of albums released by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band that featured a roomful of guest stars. The original album gave us names like Roy Acuff, Merle Travis, Vassar Clements etc. Volume II continued the tradition. Some wonderful names are on this release. Here we find, Johnny Cash, Sam Bush, Bruce Hornsby, EmmyLou Harris, Levon Helm, John Denver (Before he made a big splash), John Hiatt, John Prine, Rosanne Cash, Randy Scruggs, Roger...

Today’s Cool Album of the day (#144 in the Series) is the self titled album by, The Notorious Cherry Bombs. OK, who knows who these guys are? I’ll explain.