Hands On The Radio - The Weeks

Our next LCM featured band The Weeks have been described as high-energy, rowdy, raucous, longhair Mississippi glam rock. Hailing originally from Jackson this great four-piece is now based in Nashville. Big thanks to our friend Dave Postal at Laurel Canyon Radio in LA for the recommendation. Our LCM #SongOfTheDay is a live version of 'Hands On The Radio' taken from their 2017 sophomore album 'Easy'. The video was filmed at the Paste Studios in New York.

The band will be on a UK tour in July with their London date at The Garage on the 20th.

"We moved to Nashville in 2010," remembers frontman Cyle Barnes, who formed the band in Jackson, Mississippi, with his three longtime bandmates: drummer (and twin brother) Cain Barnes, guitarist Sam Williams, and bass player Damien Bone. "We spent 2011 to 2015 touring. November 2015 was the first time we ever spent an entire month in Nashville."

Those years on the road were eye-opening for The Weeks, all of whom were just teenagers when they began playing together in 2006. By their early 20s, the guys were touring Europe with Kings of Leon, promoting the newly-released 'Dear Bo Jackson' in front of 20,000 people each night. Back in America, The Weeks continued playing their own club shows, too. The experience taught them how to bridge the gap between arena shows and smaller gigs. In short, it taught them how to be themselves, no matter the audience.

Appropriately, 'Easy' consolidates the band's strengths. While the songs on 2013's 'Dear Bo Jackson' were thick with horn arrangements, strings, and guest appearances, Easy is a leaner, louder beast. The Weeks began working on its 11 tracks after returning home from a long tour and taking some time to rest, reflect, and regroup. Newly energized, they began writing songs at Sam and Damien's home in Nashville, with Cyle and Williams splitting the bulk of the songwriting duties. The whole process relied on collaboration, with the full band fleshing out the newer songs.

"Everyone would come to the house, make food, hang out, and play music 'til four in the morning," Williams remembers. "We wrote 25 songs, then picked our favorites for the final tracklist.

Whitehouse Road - Tyler Childers

We head Kentucky to meet our next LCM featured artist the excellent singer-songwriter Tyler Childers. A big thank you to Hannah Aldridge for the recommendation. Our LCM #SongOfTheDay is a great live version of 'Whitehouse Road' recorded at a OldVinyl Session last year. It was filmed in Oceanway Studios on Music Row in Nashville. The song is taken from Tyler's debut album 'Purgatory' released in January.

If you would like to see Tyler live in #London he is playing at Dingwalls on the 4th September

Like many great Southern storytellers, singer-songwriter Tyler Childers has fallen in love with a place. The people, landmarks and legendary moments from his childhood home of Lawrence County, Kentucky, populate the 10 songs in his formidable debut, 'Purgatory', an album that’s simultaneously modern and as ancient as the Appalachian Mountains in which events unfold.

The album, co-produced by Grammy Award winners Sturgill Simpson and David Ferguson, is a semiautobiographical sketch of Childers’ growth from wayward youth to happily married man, told in the tradition of a Southern gothic novel with a classic noir antihero who may just be irredeemable. 'Purgatory' is a chiaroscuro painting with darkness framing light in high relief. There’s catharsis and redemption. Sin and temptation. Murder and deceit. Demons and angels. Moonshine and cocaine. So much moonshine and cocaine. All played out on the large, colorful canvas of Eastern Kentucky.

Tyler had been searching for a certain sound for his debut album for years as he honed his craft, and was finding it elusive when his friend, drummer Miles Miller, introduced him to Sturgill Simpson, the Grammy Award-winning musician and fellow Kentuckian. Tyler sent Sturgill a group of his songs, then went to visit him in Nashville.

“And he said, ‘There’s this sound. I know what you’re trying to get at, the mountain sound,’” Tyler recalled. “’So I asked, ‘What are you doing?’”

Intrigued, Sturgill enlisted the aid of Ferguson, the Grammy Award winning sound engineer. They assembled a band that included multi-instrumentalists Stuart Duncan, Michael J. Henderson and Russ Pahl, bassist Michael Bub and Miller on drums, of course, and helped Tyler make a debut album of consequence that announces an authentic new voice.

“I was writing an album about being in the mountains,” Tyler said. “I wanted it to have that gritty mountain sound. But at the same time, I wanted a more modern version of it that a younger generation can listen to—the people I grew up with, something I’d want to listen to.”

Purgatory

By Tyler Childers

Buy on Amazon

Burn Out - Midland

If you are a big fans of the Eagles then you really need to check out our next LCM featured artists, the excellent Austin based band Midland. We have been championing their music since the release of their debut EP back in the autumn of 2016. Our LCM #SongOfTheDay is their latest single 'Burn Out'. We have chosen a wonderful acoustic version for you to enjoy :) Their debut 'On The Rocks' is a great and for all travelling musicians it makes a fantastic road trip album as well.  

Midland were a big hit at C2C 2018 and played a fantastic headline set at Omeara shortly after as well. as part of their first European tour. They are back for a UK tour in November & December, so please check them out live if you can. Highly recommended. Their #London date is at the O2 SBE on December 6th.

With all the chest-thumping going on in Nashville today, where bluster and swagger have replaced heart and soul, you half expect some of country music's male stars to be sporting bruises. Which is what makes Midland, a trio of friends based in Dripping Springs, Texas, so undeniably refreshing. Made up of singer Mark Wystrach, lead guitarist Jess Carson and bass player Cameron Duddy, Midland is the embodiment of Seventies California country, all smooth Eagles harmonies and heart-on-your-sleeve lyrics. Their songs are intoxicating country sung with the twang of George Strait. And it's impossible to resist.

Midland — the guys took their name from a Dwight Yoakam song — excel in setting a mood, transporting the listener to another place and time. This is music made for wide-open skies, endless deserts and wondering where the road is going to take you next.   "We write with a very visual storytelling approach. We paint that big picture and go to that place," says Mark. "Where is this story going? Let's paint it."   It's no coincidence then that it was in an especially scenic setting where the band first came together — at Cameron's wedding in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. There, casual friends Cameron and Jess formed a musical and personal bond while picking songs together on Jess's cabin's front porch. The connection was only strengthened when they found themselves jamming with Cameron onstage later that week at his rehearsal dinner.   "It was this serendipitous chain of events," says Mark, an Arizona native. "And it was the best week ever."   "All of us playing together happened only because Mark and I both showed up in Jackson Hole a week before the wedding with time to kill," adds Jess, originally from the Pacific Northwest.   "But, by the end, we knew the three of us had amazing chemistry," says Mark.   Armed with the newly married Cameron's nest egg, Mark, Jess and the California-raised Cameron decamped for the Sonic Ranch studio, near El Paso, Texas. They cut 15 songs and, bolstered by the outcome, realized they had a unique sound.   "When we went to the Sonic Ranch, we became a band. We walked away believing in what had happened," says Mark. "All of our souls, our imaginations, were wrapped up in these 15 songs. We went all-in."   "And then we all moved out to Texas," says Cameron with his gregarious laugh.  

Now signed to Big Machine Records, Midland is in the studio refining and expanding their catalog with ace songwriters like Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne. The sessions have yielded some of the most traditional-sounding country music to come out of Nashville in a decade. Lead single "Drinkin’ Problem" evokes Gary Stewart — one of Midland's biggest inspirations, along with Merle Haggard — as Mark croons, "They call it a problem, I call it a solution / just sitting here with all my grand illusions."   "It's talking about something that's real, but it's told in a way that it can be tongue-in-cheek, depending on how the audience experiences it," says Mark.   Adds Cameron, "Every good country song has that versatility. But the best are the ones you can listen to when you're angry, sad, happy or however you may be feeling."   "Electric Rodeo," with its plaintive piano, sweeping strings and high-in-the-saddle chorus, is a prime example of the "picture" the band so often talks about creating. And the majestic "Nothin' New Under the Neon" sounds like vintage Eddie Rabbit.

Whether they intended it or not, Midland have filled a void in country music, and soon they can do likewise on country radio. Like their inspirations the Eagles, they are writing and recording songs with mass appeal.   "The commonality with the Eagles is that we set out to make soulful, catchy and accessible music," says Mark. "Our greatest compliment is when somebody who says they're not a country music fan says they really like our songs."   But those songs succeed because of one key ingredient: the friendship of Mark, Jess and Cameron. To a number, they each agree it's their secret formula.   "Midland isn't manufactured," says Cameron. "We are three real friends who stumbled upon making music together."   "We are a band," adds Jess. "That's a big part of the spirit of what we do, that group experience and camaraderie. And it is ever-evolving."   Midland's music is truly a sound decades in the making that’s just right for today.