New Country Duo - South of Eden

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 Hey Folks,


 


 Just wanted to pass along some info on a new country duo coming out of Nashville. They are unlike anything I have heard before and both have stellar voices. I am promoting them as much as I can cause I think they deserve to be up there with the best...(and some of the worst that are up there, unfortunately) Both have an impressive history in the business already. They have an album on Itunes and their website is


www.SouthofEden.net


They have a Facebook too (just look up South of Eden) and I think they are first.

Merle Haggard: Misery and Fandom

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For whatever reason, country music hit its financial stride during the seventies. With Willie Nelson issuing no less than four classic (there were others, but we’re talking about stone classics) during the decade and Merle Haggard reconfiguring the general populace’s perception of the genre, it was a good time for the music.

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Help with song title

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I am trying to find the song title or artist of a song that seems to be made up of phrases of other song titles.  It contains such phrases as LA river, songs about Texas, when it's all said and done, singing all night long, little bit softer now, little bit louder now. 


Can anyone help?


 

Jason and the Scorchers: Still Country After All These Years

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Jason and the Scorchers have been working out an equation balancing aggressive rock tones cribbed from seventies bands and traditional country stuff for just about thirty years. For the most part, the band works out what it had in mind – and relatively easily.

Each of the ensemble players possesses untoward amounts of musical ability as recognizable in its rock presentation as its straight country stuff. At times, the band pushes tempo to the breaking point, frequently finding itself referred to as the forbearers of alt country and cow punk. And while that’s well and good, it’s pretty easy to figure out that Mike Ness and Social Distortion were recording in this general arena (that group favored punk over country, but the mix is still there) at least three years before the Scorchers were on fire.

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Papa Charlie Jackson: Bad Timing Blues

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Like any number of pre-ware blues players, the impetus of Papa Charlie Jackson’s career is up for debate. It’s generally agreed upon that the man hailed from New Orleans, moved to Chicago and kicked the bucket by 1938. But everyone seems foggy on the details – not to shocking considering the time.

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George Pegram: A Rounder's First

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Deciphering Americana occasionally gets bogged down by the fact that people seek out whatever gets deemed authentic. Of course, the difference in one’s ability to play banjo has nothing to do with whether or not one was properly trained, or if the instrument was picked up over time and learned by watching and listening intently. There is a visceral manner of performance that some simply can’t capture, but that again might be as prevalent in music classes as it is in informal jams.

George Pegram, though, is generally viewed as an authentic banjo player – whatever that means. More importantly, he most likely perceived himself to be an American and attempted to relate that through his performances and the works he choose from this country’s song book.

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Cooking Country: Bluegrass, Out of Academia

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It’s interesting to land upon a group that birthed the careers of two pretty well known players, but remains relatively unknown. Not that Country Cooking is either the greatest thing you’ve ever heard or the worst. It’s a really solid band able to mix rough hewn tempos and a sense of Appalachian otherworldliness while referencing the most progressive of progressive of bluegrass music.

Comprising Tony Trishka and Russ Barenberg, two eventual stalwarts of the Americana genre, Country Cooking arose from the meeting of college students during the late sixties. Of course, the music the band choose to investigate had very little to do with academia, it’d be difficult to differentiate between this ensemble and one from Kentucky.

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Stars of the Grand Ol' Opry: Jim & Jesse and Flatt & Scruggs

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It’s odd to think that more than any other genre, country and bluegrass have offered up stars in pairs or in the configuration of a family. The Carter Family ostensibly laid the foundation, and the songbook, for subsequent generations. And while Bill Monroe made his name fronting a band, it was his earlier work with his brothers that allowed for his following success. In that band, the Foggy Mountain Boys, he fronted though, was a guitarist and fiddler that would leave his employ and gain a wider renown than even Monroe.

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Darol Anger and Mike Marshall: The Bluegrass Duo

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Everything about the David Grisman Quartet is related back to jazz music – even the bluegrass the group plays is indebted to that other American art form. Counting innumerable sidemen over time, each making a unique contribution to the ensemble and subsequently having solo recording careers of their own cements the tie between the DGQ functioning like group’s sporting horn players out front.

But what of those folks who’ve moved through the ranks of David Grisman’s ensemble?

Two – well these two, at least – continued on in solo capacity, but also shared the recording studio a few times.

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Porter Wagoner - "The Rubber Room" (Video)

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Porter Wagoner is a dark guy. He has songs dealing with killing as retribution and here, "The Rubber Room" deals with insanity. It's all unsettling, but in a listenable way.