320 kbps | 85 MB | UL | OB | TB
Big Country Bluegrass has been making music for 30 years, and LET THEM KNOW I’M FROM VIRGINIA is a celebration of the bands’ commitment to—and love of—traditional bluegrass music. Big Country Bluegrass performed its first show in January 1987 and since that time has made many notable contributions to the bluegrass community. This recording, the bands’ fourth with Rebel Records, does the same!
Living in Southwestern, Virginia—one of the hotbeds of bluegrass music—Tommy and Teresa Sells named their new band after the Jimmy Martin instrumental “Big Country.” Over the past thirty years there have been personnel changes, but the Sells have maintained an amazingly consistent sound, guiding the group based on their deep respect for the first generation of bluegrass artists. Currently, the band is made up of Tommy on mandolin, Teresa on guitar and vocals, Eddie Gill on guitar and lead vocals, Tony King on bass, Tim Laughlin on fiddle and harmony vocals and newest member John Treadway on banjo and harmony vocals.
Big Country Bluegrass is known for their hard-driving music and its fine selection of material. The band has had a long standing and fruitful relationship with Tom T. and the late Dixie Hall—a combination that has produced such hits as “The Boys in Hats and Ties,” “I’m Putting on My Leaving Shoes” and “Bluefield West Virginia Blues,” songs that have all reached #1 on Bluegrass Unlimited’s National Airplay Chart. This album features two more Tom T. & Dixie Hall originals, “The Old Crooked Trail” and “If I Ever Get Home,” as well as songs by such fine writers as the late James King, Glenn Alford, Marvin Morrow, Tracy O’Connell and Eric Marshall, among others.
Lovers of mountain music will find LET THEM KNOW I’M FROM VIRGINIA a treat. As Dale Morris says in the liner notes, “If you enjoy bluegrass performed with all the right ingredients of taste, timing, and tone, and delivered in a heartfelt and spirited mountain style, then this recording is a must for your collection. The musical journey of Big Country Bluegrass continues.”
Blues Rocktress Samantha Fish goes all in with her 4th Ruf Records release delivering a heavy dose of CHILLS & FEVER. Recorded deep in America’s Rust Belt in Detroit the city that has filled America’s musical tapestry with it’s legendary Motown Sound to it’s embedded Punk music scene spawning top acts from Iggy Pop to the White Stripes. On Chills & Fever Samantha makes musical history enlisting members of the punk blues band The Detroit Cobras along with producer Bobby Harlow (The GO/ Jack White) to record a futuristic set of songs and a chilling walk through memory lane. Samantha’s soulful sultry voice and hot rod guitar slinging is layered against a poly rhythmic horn entrenched background all mixed and mastered by Jim Kissling (The Crystal Method, Fat Boy Slim) delivering a cool, exciting, and one of the best American Roots records of 2017.
320 kbps | 121 MB | UL |
All praise Creation Records founder Alan McGee, for he was right: The Jesus and Mary Chain will return next year with their first new album in 18 years, Damage and Joy.
Due out March 24th via ADA/Warner Music, the long-awaited follow-up to 1998’s Munki was produced by Killing Joke co-founder Martin Glover, aka Youth, who also plays bass on the record alongside JAMC touring drummer Brian Young and Lush bassist Phil King.
The album’s first single and opening track, “Amputation”, premiered on Steve Lamacq’s BBC 6 Music today. Better yet, you don’t really need your ear buds; this one’s pure melody, sounding like something off an indie soundtrack from 1996.
Troubadour Jeb Loy Nichols presents his classic-in-the-making new album Country Hustle, forthcoming via on his own label City Country City on 17th March 2017.
“Country Hustle has been, like most things in my life, a slow, meandering process. It started life three years ago when I met Andrew Hale, Sade’s keyboardist and co-writer. He invited me, when I was visiting London, to come to his studio and make some music. I’ve lived on a remote small holding in Wales for twenty years and there’s always plenty to do; fences to be mended, trees to plant, wood to chop, starlings to watch, vegetables to harvest, walks to take. I don’t get to London very often so it was a while before I could take Andrew up on his offer. Over the course of the next couple years, when I had reason to visit London, we’d meet and make music. We worked quickly, sometimes with friends, sometimes on our own. We recorded, over three years, thirty songs. I also managed a couple days with Benedic Lamdin and a few afternoons with St Francis Hotel – between us we recorded the tunes for Country Hustle. It’s definitely a Country Soul record – the country music I grew up with in Missouri, mixed with the soul and hip-hop I loved in New York and London, filtered through the quiet spaces of Wales.”
Jeb Loy Nichols
Rising from international fame with Les Ambassadeurs to solo superstardom, Salif Keita, the “Golden Voice of Africa,” is one of the most highly regarded musicians on the continent. Once cast out of his community for albinism, his stupendous voice has taken him all around the world. Over his 50-plus year career, he has been backed by blazing electric ensembles from Paris or New York, and a superb, mostly Malian band featuring acoustic African instruments.
Now you have a chance to experience for yourself how this Malian master plays with the flavors of rock music, r&b, Afrobeat, Latin and French pop—and for free! Afropop is giving away two tickets to his performance on Sat., April 1. Enter to win by emailing info@afropop.org with Salif Keita in the subject line, with your full name in the body of the email. Good luck!
Presented by World Music Institute at The Town Hall, 123 W. 43d St., New York, NY on April 1, 8 p.m., with a pre-performance Q & A at 7 p.m. moderated by Afropop’s own Banning Eyre.
