For fans and musicians of Folk, Americana, Country, Blues, Singer-Songwriter, Rock, Roots & Acoustic and music from the Laurel Canyon late 60’s/early 70’s era.
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Our next LCM featured band have gone back to their roots with their first studio album in more than a decade. 'Blue & Lonesome' is the result and it's a thing of beauty. Bluesy, rootsy and a whole lot of rock & roll from one of the UK's premier bands The Rolling Stones. 'Hate To See You Go' is one of the great lead single and it really reminds us of John Lee Hooker.
http://www.rollingstones.com/
Our next LCM featured artist is an award-winning London based singer-songwriter who has enjoyed huge success in the last four years. Ed Sheeran also created his own record label and this bluesy cover of 'Make It Rain' was originally written by his second signing Northern Irish singer-songwriter Foy Vance. The track was used for the US TV series 'Sons Of Anarchy'.
Ed Sheeran's recording of the song was used in an episode in season 7 of the television series. Ed was an avid fan of the music for the series and mentioned it in a tweet. When the show's creator (Kurt Sutter) read the tweet, he proposed that Ed record a song for one of the episodes. As Ed was touring with Foy Vance at the time, and as one of Vance's songs (Make It Rain) started with the lyrics "When the sins of my father / Weigh down in my soul", Ed thought it was appropriate for the series and with Foy's approval, Ed recorded the song to be used in the episode "Red Rose" broadcast on December 2, 2014.
For our next LCM featured artist we head to California the home of an excellent new singer-songwriter Parker Millsap. At only 23 years of age Parker is already making waves in the music world. Playing a blend of blues, country, alt-country/Americana and folk music, Parker has been named one of Americana Music Association's 'Emerging Artists of the Year' after the release of his self-titled album in 2014. Parker plays guitar with a style that has drawn comparisons to Elvis.He also plays the harmonica, banjo and slide guitar. He reminds us of Paolo Nutini in some of his songs. Our LCM #TrackOfTheDay 'Pining' is one of the very catchy lead tracks from his new album 'The Very Last Day' released back in May this year.
Parker attributes his musical influence to growing up in a Pentecostal Church and listening to blues with his parents.He has opened for Patty Griffin, Old Crow Medicine Show, Shovels & Rope, Lake Street Dive, John Fullbright, Jason Isbell, and Sarah Jarosz.
Parker grew up in the tiny town of Purcell, OK (pop. 5,952) where he attended a Pentecostal church with his family three times a week for most of his youth. Though Parker doesn't consider himself very religious these days, the experiences engraved upon him inform his songwriting. Blending that fire and brimstone preaching with rock, country, blues and Waits-ian imagery, he has created a sound uniquely his own.
Parker first picked up an acoustic guitar at nine, then plugged in and went electric after getting into Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, eventually starting a cover band, Fever in Blue, with classmate Michael Rose who still plays bass with him today. After graduating high school, he moved to Northern California, where he interned at Prairie Sun Recording, the studio where Tom Waits recorded Bone Machine and Mule Variations. Returning to Oklahoma, he put down the electric guitar and got into songwriting, releasing an indie album in 2012, Palisade, which he sold from the back of his van.
A trip to Nashville found Parker playing at the Tin Pan South songwriter's festival, where his performance impressed Old Crow Medicine Show's manager so much that he invited Parker to open a string of dates for the band, later leading to a slot on their New Year's Eve gig at the Ryman Auditorium.
“I like to set goals for myself that are impossible to reach,” he explains. “That way, I always have something to aim for, a better song, different characters, new stories. I just want to pay the bills and feed my dog, and maybe buy a new guitar every now and then. That’s all I need. I don’t want to be Elvis Presley, but I wouldn’t complain if a million girls screamed for me, either. Just don’t tell my girlfriend that.” Parker Millsap is ready to share his Oklahoma roots with the rest of the country, and, hopefully, the world.
http://www.parkermillsap.com/
Photo Credit - Tim Duggan
For our next LCM featured artist we turn to Texan native but now Nashville based, Cale Tyson. This great singer-songwriter produces some special Country Soul with real heart, almost a cross between Hank Williams and Gram Parsons. He is heading to the UK soon with his band and is headlining at the Borderline, London on 6th November. Our LCM Track Of The Day is a live version of 'Somebody Save Me' taken from his second album 'Careless Soul'. released in April.
Born in a small Texan town of Cleburne, he was raised in Fort Worth, the home of Townes Van Zandt and the place where he first heard the classic country sounds that have inspired and enriched his gentle, melancholy, and undeniably whiskey-soaked sound.
With a nostalgic heart and an ear for melodies from long ago, Tyson’s EP, 'High On Lonesome' is a beautiful collection of songs that continue the legacy of some of the legendary songwriters whose music he first heard as a child - Gram Parsons, Guy Clark and Willie Nelson, to name but a few.
Recorded in Nashville, 'High On Lonesome' features some of the town’s finest players including guitarist Kenny Vaughan (Marty Stuart), keyboard player Tyson Rogers (Don Williams), John McTigue on drums and Mike Rinne (Caitlin Rose and Andrew Combs) on bass.
The end result is at once a loving tribute to the great country songwriters that have come before him and also a persuasive plea to those who might think that country music’s best days have been and gone. As long as Cale Tyson has a say in it, the best days might yet be still to come.
Cale released his excellent debut album 'Introducing Cale Tyson' in 2015 and release his second album 'Careless Soul' in April 2016.
http://www.caletyson.net/
Completing our trio of very talented and lovely ladies, we turn our attention to a Nashville based singer-songwriter Kyshona Music. Kyshona has just released her new album and our LCM #TrackOfTheDay is the excellent title track, which is guaranteed to get your head bopping and toes tapping. This is lovely rootsy, bluesy soul with loads of added funk. We love the sentiments in the lyrics too.
"For a singer-songwriter, there's no more basic function than getting onstage and getting something personal off your chest. The therapeutic qualities of the experience have seduced countless confessional composers, some of whom make known that they hold unfiltered expression as their highest artistic aim.
Kyshona Armstrong started out enabling others to enjoy the healing properties of songwriting, and keeping her thoughts to herself. When you're a music therapist to incarcerated and institutionalized adults and school children with emotional behavior disorders, artistic considerations aren't even on the table.
When Armstrong worked first in the state mental hospital, then the public school system in Georgia, she found that her co-writers often clung to chant-like, circular song ideas. "They would find this melody they liked and they would stick to it," she explains. "It was theirs to keep. It wasn't hard to hold onto."
Armstrong had focused on oboe at the University of Georgia — that and steel drums, which she played in the college's Hawaiian-shirt-sporting ensemble, Tropical Breeze. But since neither instrument was all that well suited to coaxing patients into musical self-expression, she got into singing, playing acoustic guitar and songwriting.
So Armstrong got on the college singer-songwriter circuit, blending skills of empathizing and entertaining. Her set lists might put a strummy version of Britney Spears' "Toxic" next to "Confined," a song she'd written with a couple of 20-somethings in the mental hospital. They were the hip-hop heads in the patients' band — otherwise made up of Elvis-obsessed middle-aged men — and they'd wanted a song in the group repertoire that spoke to their own experience.
Besides teaching institutionalized adults and emotionally troubled school kids how to have healthy interactions with instruments in hand, Armstrong served a similar mission on the board of the Southern Girls Rock Camp in Athens, Ga. And that made her a shoo-in to volunteer at last summer's Tennessee Teens Rock Camp, where she met a bunch of the women with whom she'll perform at the girl group tribute She's a Rebel a few days after playing her own show at 12th & Porter.
Armstrong moved to Nashville in January 2014, spending the first couple months commuting back to Athens to record her album Go, but easily made friends and landed bookings in local folk singer-songwriter, pop and soul scenes once she was around more.
Armstrong has reached the point where she embraces repetitive internal rhythms that emerge in some of her songwriting — likening them to both gospel spirituals and the viscerally simplistic utterances of her former patients — and she's delivering her roots-soul originals with articulate warmth and newly claimed authority".
written by Jewly Hight // Nashville Scene // February 2015
For our next LCM showcase band we travel to Edinburgh the home of an exciting new three-piece called Monticule. How would you describe their music? Well, if you said Soulful-Bluesy-Country-Rock you wouldn’t be far wrong. Their unique style has drawn comparisons to the likes of the Black Keys and Alabama Shakes. They also remind us here at LCM HQ of The Barr Brothers and we think they may be a 'band to watch' this year. Following high praise and regular radio play from BBC Introducing Scotland and Another Country with Ricky Ross with their singles ‘Vultures’ and ‘Pros & Cons’, Monticule have progressed to playing the main stages at the sold out Hebridean Celtic Festival and FyneFest in 2016. Our LCM#TrackOfTheDay and their latest single is the high energy and rocking 'Pro's and Con's'.
Formed in late 2014 their first year brought festival appearances and over 40 shows during the Edinburgh Fringe, starting a buzz around the capital. A sold out first press of their independently produced EP captured the essence of the band’s versatile and distinctive sound. Built upon the jazz influences of drummer Jason Irvine, the expressive and dynamic vocals of Jamie Struthers blend perfectly with the powerful guitars of younger brother Mike Struthers.
‘Fantastic voice and love the slide’ – Edith Bowman
‘Blues and Soul Hitting the Spot’ – Amazing Radio