JUST ANNOUNCED! LSD Tour: Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle & The Dukes, and Dwight Yoakam! The pre-sale exclusive to Steve Earle & The Dukes’ fans starts this Monday, March 26th at 10AM local time (password: STEVE). Tickets go on sale to the public on Friday, March 30th at 10AM local time. King Leg will be opening the show as Special Guest on the tour. Presented by SiriusXM Radio. List of dates below. Get more info here    LSD TOUR DATES TUE 6/12 Boston, MA – Blue Hills Bank Pavilion WED 6/13 New York, NY – Beacon Theatre FRI 6/15 Bethel, NY – Bethel Woods Center for the Arts SAT 6/16 Gilford, NH – Bank of NH Pavilion SUN 6/17 Oxon Hill, MD...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#954 in the series) is Steve Earle and the Dukes, Terraplane. Steve Earle’s new album Terraplane is being billed as his blues album. We’ll talk about that a bit more in a minute. More importantly I think – it’s a Steve Earle and the Dukes album, and a damn fine one at that.  Steve Earle has had many different personas and approaches in his career, Country rock and roller, hard core troubadour, singer songwriter, bluegrass musician, political activist, you name it  – but mostly I think the best name to fit him – if he even needs one – is a folk singer.  And if you don’t think folk singers can play or sing the blues then you...

Song Of The Day by Eric Berman – “Pocket Full Of Rain” by Steve Earle & The Dukes (& Duchesses)  Steve Earle is an American Storyteller, poet and novelist, and his brand new album is certainly his best and most varied since Transcendental Blues, which came out almost 20 years ago. Recording with his crack live band, The Dukes (& The Duchesses) consisting of Chris Masterson on guitar, Eleanor Whitmore on violin, Kelley Looney on bass, Will Rigby on drums, singer Allison Moorer on piano and Siobhan Kennedy on vocals, makes all the difference in the world here. There’s an electricity that crackles through the grooves on The Low Highway that could only come from a group of musicians...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#662 in the Series) is Steve Earle, Townes The year was 1971 and singer songwriter Joe Ely, Texas National Treasure, and once considered to be the musical heir apparent to fellow Lubbock resident Buddy Holly, was driving on the outskirts of town when he spotted on the horizon a straggly Howard Hughes looking dude, wearing a back pack, wandering on the shoulder of the main road leading into the city. Ely pulled over and offered the travelling stranger a ride to the other side of town.  As a kind gesture to thank him, the stranger reached into the back pack, pulled out one of the fifteen albums that resided there, no clothes...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#632 in the Series) is Levon Helm, Dirt Farmer. (Vanguard Records) Every year since the early 80’s I’ve come up with my own Album of the Year. This won easily as my Album of Year in 2008.  (It was actually released late in late 2007, I know! You’ll understand soon.) We all know Levon Helm as drummer, picker and lead vocalist of The Band.  If you’re a fan of The Band, or just Americana music in general, you must add Dirt Farmer to your collection. It was strange.  I actually had this album for quite some time before I really got into it.  I had it, gave it a quick spin when...

  Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#567 in the Series) is Lydia Loveless, Indestructible Machine – NEW MUSIC REVIEW (Bloodshot Records) The first thing that hits you between the eyes when you look at the CD cover from the new release by Lydia Loveless, Indestructible Machine, is a mostly black and white female Huck Finn anti Norman Rockwell looking drawing of Lydia swigging from a gas can.   The second thing you see when you turn the cover over is a picture of the diminutive songstress smoking a cigarette next to two empty bottles and a well-played guitar. If by taking these two images into your own internal data base your resulting output delivers an alt-country version of country...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#462 in the Series is John Hiatt, Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns Sometimes it amazes me how long I’ve been listening to music that John Hiatt either wrote for others, or for himself.  I think the first time I ever heard something written by John was when I would listen to my Three Dog Night, Hard Labor album back in 1974.  He was in good company there, ‘T.D.N.’ always chose some great songwriters, Hoyt Axton, Laura Nyro, Randy Newman etc. I also heard some of his songs when listening to my dear Rosanne Cash albums. Her covers of tunes like “Pink Bedroom” and “The Way We Make a Broken Heart” were two of...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#297 in the Series, and #21 in the Live, Saturday Night Series) is Steve Earle and the Dukes, Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator. Steve Earle kicked off his career with two “4-Star”- country-rock, Americana, singer-songwriter styled albums. Then he decided to change his band and resurfaced with a bit of a harder sound.  That sound was evident on Copperhead Road and also on The Hard Way.  This live album was released from recordings of that tour. I loved those first two albums and was quite glad that a good chunk of them are represented here. We needed some good live versions of “Guitar Town, Someday, Good Ol’ Boy (Gettin’ Tough), I Ain’t...

  FOSTER & LLOYD IT’S ALREADY TOMORROW Pre Order Your Autographed Copy of ‘It’s Already Tomorrow’. (FYI, You will be ordering via Foster and Lloyd’s site, not mine.) All Pre-orders will be shipped the week of April 19th. Price: $15.00 + $4.00 s&h      Foster and Lloyd It’s Already Tomorrow Looking back at the history of music, you can pinpoint those times when change takes place…something new replaces the old. Music that once sounded “like this” suddenly sounds “like that.” In the 1930’s, country music was considered to be the sound of hillbilly string bands. When the music was electrified, a honky-tonk shuffle played with a drummer became the new sound. It was still country. In the mid-to...

Today’s Cool Album of the Day (#182 in the Series) is Steve Earle, Guitar Town. His first and still my favorite. I saw him at the Park West shortly after his second album; Exit 0 was released. But I always liked this one. The Chicago market was onto Steve Earle pretty early thanks to WXRT.  They played this album from day one, If not earlier.  What’s a great thing about Steve Earle too is that he’s never forgotten that. He’s repaid the favor to them many times over.   They were not the only help he had here.  Steve Dahl was onto him early as well. “Guitar Town,” plus “My Old Friend the Blues” and “Someday” were some of the...