Punch Brothers’, Who’s Feeling Young Now?

Completed over three weeks at Blackbird Studios in Nashville, Who’s Feeling Young Now? was produced by Grammy Award winner Jacquire King (Kings of Leon, Tom Waits, Modest Mouse). Ten songs from the album were written by Punch Brothers, with the band’s friend Josh Ritter co-writing lyrics on two tunes (“Hundred Dollars” and “New York City”). Additionally, the album contains the band’s interpretations of Radiohead’s “Kid A” and the Swedish group Väsen’s “Flippen.” The new album is Punch Brothers’ follow-up to 2010’s Grammy-nominated Antifogmatic.

Legendary producer T Bone Burnett recently said of Punch Brothers, in an interview with American Songwriter magazine: “That’s one of the most incredible bands this country has ever produced. Chris Thile, their mandolin player, is probably a once in a century musician, like Louis Armstrong was a once in a century musician. Chris is one of those kind of cats.”
-review from nonesuch

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It’s been about a week since Scott Miller stopped by the WNRN studio, played three songs live, and talked to Anne Williams about his life and career. Even if you missed his concert, it’s not to late too listen to his interview! Check it out below!

January’s Acoustic Sunrise CD of the Month is “Voyageur” by Kathleen Edwards.

From Amazon.com:

Kathleen Edwards’ ‘Voyageur’ is the acclaimed Canadian singer-songwriter’s fourth album, and her first since ‘Asking for Flowers’ (2008). Produced by Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) and Edwards, ‘Voyageur’ is less of a departure than it is a journey, and like any transforming trip, it demands that we let go of any preconceptions about the destination. ‘Voyageur’ evokes a spectrum of overwhelming feelings within the atmosphere of a lucid dream. Edwards’ characters speak to the grief, loneliness, shock, and confusion that come with endings as well as the hope and irrepressible joy that accompany new beginnings, but the stories are told with a seductively quiet strength. Aided by the musical support of fellow travelers Justin Vernon and Norah Jones, ‘Voyageur’ features standout tracks such as “Change the Sheets,” “Mint,” and “A Soft Place to Land.”

Acoustic Sunrise December CD of the Month: “Wolftown” by Carl Anderson

WNRN is celebrating Virgina native Carl Anderson’s first full-length album “Wolftown” with a CD release party on Saturday, December 10 at The Southern Café and Music Hall. The Carl’s album was recorded at White Star Sound in Louisa County and produced by Dave Stipe.
Ticket information here

Tom Waits’s, Bad As Me

Waits, of course, is an expert at feeding the mystery surrounding his deeply weird but strangely accessible music; to interview the man is to be led into a catacomb of misdirection and non sequiturs. But on his 20th album Bad As Me, out Oct. 24, Waits and Brennan continue to craft songs marked by uncommon empathy. Waits’ first all-new studio record in seven years, it toggles constantly between heartsick vulnerability and hell-bound defiance: He may attempt to wake the devil in the stomping title track, commiserating with a lover who’s “the same kind of bad as me,” but a few songs later, he’s grimly mourning his status as “the last leaf on the tree” — a survivor, but a lonely one.

For Waits, vulnerability and defiance are two sides of the same coin anyway; just listen to the blisteringly ramshackle “Satisfied,” in which satisfaction and death are practically interchangeable. He may exude fatalism in “Pay Me” — a punch-in-the-gut ballad in which he memorably sings, “All roads lead to the end of the world” — but his delivery is a carefully controlled mix of ruefulness and realism. For Waits, ugliness and beauty both find ways to persist against all opposition. But in the end, amid these 13 songs’ furious clatter and gutter-level grime, beauty improbably wins out.

-NPR.org

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Check out our interview with Blitzen Trapper! They chatted with Anne Williams and played five songs from their latest album American Goldwing.

Tune in at 9AM to hear our full session with Blitzen Trapper! They talked with Anne Williams and played five songs. Check out the first video from the session and don’t forget to tune into Acoustic Sunrise to hear everything.

This time out, we have a happy (we hope) and clean (we’ll take his word) Adams, making perhaps his sparest, mellowest record to date. His wife makes an appearance, singing a lovely, high harmony, and his friend Norah Jones pitches in, too. At the controls is the venerable Glyn Johns (father of Adams’ sometime producer, Ethan Johns), who, at nearly 70, has records to his credit by The Who, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and more.

The result, Ashes & Fire, is soulful and low-key; not without edge but certainly more lean and hushed than, say, Easy Tiger. The lyrics are considerably softer — “I will shelter you with my love and my forgiveness,” he sings, later adding, “Do you believe in love?” — but he’s allowed to have a honeymoon record, right?

It helps that Ashes & Fire, out Oct. 11, features the delicious work of keyboardist Benmont Tench, on loan from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Tench adds color and character, particularly in “Dirty Rain.” It’s not his first time working with Adams, and here’s hoping it’s not the last.

-NPR.org

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Irish folk/pop songstress, best known (still) for the seven years she spent touring and recording with Damien Rice, follows her acclaimed, Mercury Prize-nominated debut Sea Sew with this new ten track project produced by Grammy-winning producer Joe Henry (Solomon Burke, Allen Toussaint) and engineered by Ryan Freeland (Ray LaMontagne)…Hannigan says the new songs (and album title) come from the “loves, heartbreaks, confusions and friendships that we take with us through life”…Ray LaMontagne duets on the stark lament “O Sleep” // Release: Passenger (September 20, ATO)// Sounds like: the luxury of time played a big part on the songwriting as Hannigan says she “took her time” in putting the songs together…a low-voltage but palpable energy permeates many of the tracks — notably on the bristling “Knots” and “What’ll I Do”…

Quote: “Many of [the songs] were written while I was away from home or on the road, and the feeling of transience and nostalgia that this constant traveling evoked seemed to seep into every song.” // What we like: there’s an air of mystery in the lead track (and free download) “A Sail”, some dark shadows creeping into the wistful melody…the title track is typically wonderful Hannigan fare, sweet and unassuming…”Paper House”, with a whispered intensity, is one of our faves…while she put some time into the songwriting, Passenger has the urgency of a project that has tried to capture a live feel to the production and arrangements — we can’t remember an album that has such an extraordinarily intimate vocal mix and presence…

-Direct Current

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Before joining Neko Case on stage at The Jefferson last night, Doug Paisley visited Anne Williams during Acoustic Sunrise.  The pair covered everything from Doug’s Canadian ties to his musical inspirations and the possibility of a new album from the alt-country singer (whatever that means).

Photo courtesy of Doug Paisley.

Angela Easterling dropped by Acoustic Sunrise this morning with her guitar player, Brandon Turner.  Angela is putting out a new album, Beguiler, and did us the favor of playing a few tracks from the CD as well as explaining the stories behind her lyrics.

Photo Courtesy of Angela Easterling.

Mariana Bell woke up early to join Anne Williams in the WNRN studio this morning.  Tonight the singer-songwriter will charm the audience at Mockingbird Roots Music Hall with Peter Bradley Adams, but before hitting the stage she took the time to answer a few of Anne’s questions and play several songs on air.

Photo Courtesy of Mariana Bell.

Ollabelle, a band beloved for “breathing new life into old sounds” (NPR), has emerged from a five year period of great artistic and personal change – including marriages, births, tours and other projects – to deliver their most assured, deeply felt album to date, Neon Blue Bird, due August 16 via Ollabelle Music/Thirty Tigers.

Neon Blue Bird was produced by Ollabelle and recorded in Athens, NY and at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock. It contains five original tracks, two traditional songs arranged by the band, plus covers of Paul Kelly, Taj Mahal, Chris Whitley and a goosebump-certified take on Stephen Foster’s classic, “Swanee River.” The album is the follow-up to 2006′s critically acclaimed Riverside Battle Songs, which inspired the Washington Post to name Ollabelle “one of the hottest bands going in roots music,” and saw tours with Ryan Adams, Alison Krauss and others. Emmylou Harris said of the band, “Every time I hear something on the radio I truly love, it’s Ollabelle.”

-Cybergrass Bluegrass Music News

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Staunton/Charlottesville based band, The Judy Chops, was in the WNRN studios this morning to talk to Anne Williams and play some music from their first full album “Give Her The Gun”. Hear “Old Virginia’s Gone Cold”, “Tell Me How”, and “Home”! Also find out about their musical inspirations, creating the music, and where the name “Judy Chops” comes from, so listen here!

The Devil Makes Three joined Anne Williams in the broadcast studio this morning.  The acoustic trio treated our audience to several songs and some conversation before they take the stage tonight at The Southern.

Photo courtesy of The Devil Makes Three.

Imelda May, Mayhem

“The London-based Dubliner is an imperious, take-no-prisoners personality who can certainly electrify a tune with the tigerish yelps and whoops that run deep into the marrow of the blues. In fact, on the moodier pieces, May has a tone that slightly recalls Carmel, the singer whose raw, somber songs have aged well in the past two decades. Like Carmel, May writes the bulk of the material and impresses with both melody and lyric, none more so than the hard times chronicle of Kentish Town Blues, which smartly distills the realities of life at the low end of the social scale, right down to “those stews that lasted three days into four”.

Mayhem effectively proves that Imelda May is an artist of real substance and it will be interesting to see how she develops in due course, for as much as she has the rock‘n’roll template down pat it would be a shame if it became a sine qua non. There are times when the band slides into Cochraneisms that border on pastiche, but several others when the arrangements tilt into a pleasingly undefined stylistic space and suggest that May could be more than a retro queen who can sport a quiff with style.”

-BBC Music

Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues

The image of Fleet Foxes has always been that of mountain men — outcasts stuck in a woodland cabin, seemingly transported here from centuries ago. Pecknold furthers this image by covering songs like “False Knight on the Road” and “Silver Dagger”, songs that date back to the early 20th century and perhaps earlier. It is an image that has led critics to call them “timeless” and “authentic.” Pecknold’s attention to the past blends with the band’s composite sound of shapenote-inspired Appalachian harmonies, acoustic instruments mixed with sparse warm electronic sounds. And indeed, as folk revivalists, Fleet Foxes are nothing but authentic.

Helplessness Blues continues this trend. Pecknold’s lyrics make no attempt to modernize; “Bedouin Dress” makes a Yeats reference when he sings “One day at Innisfree/One day that’s mine there.” Yeats, an early 20th century Irish poet, wrote a poem called “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”, describing a bucolic place of solace.

Herein lies Pecknold’s inspiration for the entire album, an unsurprising theme for someone who describes himself as suffering from “social anxiety.” Constantly, we find Pecknold continually wanting to climb back into his shell, or perhaps to his orchard, as apples are a key image in many songs on the album. “If I had an orchard, I’d work ’till I’m sore,” he repeats on the title track after expressing his wish to be no more than “a functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me.”

Perhaps most telling is the memorable line in “The Shrine/An Argument”, the band’s most experimental work to date. “Sunlight over me no matter what I do,” he sings, no, screams in frustration, allowing his voice to rasp for the first time in memory. The song ends with a strange, free-jazz inspired bass clarinet solo over unconventional tremolo chord planing. Fleet Foxes use new instruments and sounds on Helplessness Blues to expand their seemingly all-encompassing American style.

Some of these new inclusions are more logical, such as the violin melody in “Bedouin Dress” or the fiery acoustic jam session ending “Sim Sala Bim”. It’s the classic sound of a band evolving into their prime, trying anything they want and making it work every time. Despite the expansion into more myriad territories, nothing on Helplessness Blues is a throwaway track; nothing lacks in quality. Helplessness Blues is, without a doubt, the best release of the band’s career.

Source: Sputnikmusic.com

This morning Andrea, Pete, and Josh of Birds and Arrows came up to speak with Anne Williams at the NRN studios! They will be promoting their new record, We’re Gonna Run at The Garage tonight, with an upcoming release party on the 7th at Chapel Hill, NC. Hear about putting the band together, followers, facepaint, how music is made awesome with cellos, and listen to “Time Alone” and other songs. Tune in here!

Listen below to the interview and hear some live music from The Dreamtime Project.   The DTP will open for Trees on Fire for Charlottesville’s Waldorf School Spring Gala!