Happy March to our Laurel Canyon Radio listeners. We’ve got a treasure trove of new music coming out in March and April and here’s a gaggle of it here. The Laurel Canyon influences come from all sides; from the twangy rock of T-Bone produced artist Logan Ledger, to the straight ahead 70s vibe of Sunny Ozell and the Mastersons, we’ve got another great hour of new independent music from all over the damn place.
The episode is here to play on demand:
Pokey LaFarge – End Of My Rope
Hometown: Los Angeles via St. Louis, IL
Album: From his 8th album, “Rock Bottom Odyssey” out April 10 on New West Records.
Review Snippet: ‘The man singing these songs isn’t exactly the same man who wrote them,’ says Pokey LaFarge of Rock Bottom Rhapsody, his eighth and latest studio release. ‘This album is about the story of who I used to be.’ In early 2018, LaFarge ‘ searching for the sort of artistic freedom and inspiration he wasn’t finding in the Midwest ‘ relocated from his longtime home base of St. Louis, Missouri, to Los Angeles, California. New songs came quickly to LaFarge in his new environment, but new temptations soon found him, as well. Though he declines to get into specifics, LaFarge admits that he experienced a significant ‘fall from grace’ during the last months of 2018. ‘Things sort of started to unravel in my mind,’ Shortly before the recording of Rock Bottom Rhapsody began, LaFarge experienced a spiritual awakening ‘ and the faith he re-embraced in his hour of darkness helped to buoy him through the making of the album. Though he was struggling for spiritual equilibrium at the time, LaFarge at least had some rock-solid musical support to lean on. Recorded primarily at Reliable Recorders on Chicago’s Northwest side, Rock Bottom Rhapsody was produced by LaFarge’s friend and collaborator Chris Seefried (who also co-wrote several of the album’s tracks), and features the considerable talents of guitarist Joel Paterson, keyboardist Scott Ligon, upright/electric bassist Jimmy Sutton, and drummer Alex Hall. Musically, LaFarge continues to mix and match a wide variety of styles and traditions, while never losing track of his own vision This record is kind of like Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan hanging out with chanson singers and French jazz bands in like the forties, but I was never trying to make it sound like a particular person. Despite the trying period that preceded its recording, Rock Bottom Rhapsody is ultimately far more uplifting and life-affirming than its title would suggest. ‘That desperation, that struggle,’ LaFarge ponders, ‘Did it add something to the record? It certainly did. I mean, I don’t know if it made it better; it just is what it is. It’s not up to me to decide if people are going to feel that’
Next Time in LA: March 29 at the Roots Roadhouse at the Echo in Echo Park.
Album: From the album “No Time For Love Songs” out March 6 on Red House Records.
Review Snippet: No Time for Love Songs explores the emotional challenges of a morally compromised era, and reflects the experiences that the pair has accumulated in their travels. Those experiences helped to inspire the big-hearted songcraft of such compelling new tunes as “Spellbound,” “Circle the Sun,” “Eyes Open Wide,” “The Silver Line,” “There Is A Song to Sing” and the album’s poignant title track, which showcase the Mastersons’ organic harmonies, stirring melodies and insightful lyrics, which consistently offer clear-eyed optimism in the face of loss and discouragement.
Next Time in LA: February 29 at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach.
Album: From the album “Overnight Lows” out February 29 on Chitin Records.
Review Snippet: ‘Overnight Lows’ gleams with engaging melodies and intelligent word plays, performed with a sophisticated fluency in pop, jazz, soul and Americana dialects that makes it a delight to behold. Players on the record include Jay Bellerose (Robert Plant, Alison Krauss), Tyler Chester (George Ezra), Andy Hess (The Black Crowes, David Byrne) and Rich Hinman(Sara Bareilles). The album was recorded at Village Studios in Los Angeles. Sunny and her husband Sir Patrick Stewart now divide their time between Brooklyn and Los Angeles, and it was on the West Coast that her new album came into being, sculpted from lyrical and musical sketches that she carried in her pocket during Overnight Lows’ careful incubation. The album displays Sunny’s love of language and an intimate, soulful delivery,f rom the cruising feel of ‘Driving Highways’at one end’with its clever incorporation of a key line from Dobie Gray’s 1970s soulful singalong ‘Drift Away” to the bluesy, smoochy’Take You Down’at the other. ‘Almost like self-analysis,’ she adds, ‘I went back through it and thought’Holy sh*t, there’s a lot about night in here, and not sleeping, and wrestlin gwith memories.’
Jim Bachmann – Last of A Dying Breed )with Meredith Moore
Hometown: Phoenix
Album: From the album “Arizona Burrito” released in December on Ripsnort Records.
Review Snippet: With a mellow, easy voice and wise songwriting that hints of a life of honest living, Jim Bachmann has been entertaining the Phoenix scene over the past decade, sharing the stage with heroes and friends such as Billy Joe Shaver, Whitey Morgan and the 78’s, Dallas Moore, Shinyribs, The SteelDrivers, Ramsay Midwood, Mike and the Moonpies, Tony Martinez, The Reeves Brothers, Jeremy Pinnell, Paul Cauthen and more. Bachmann’s music blends Americana, Roots, Blues and Country into a sound that stays true to tradition while serving up his own blend of Sonoran Desert soaked good-timin’ stonerbilly
Album: EP I Am Now will be released March 27 on Label Logic
Review Snippet: His songs have also been recorded by Bon Jovi, Nick Jonas, Backstreet Boys, James Arthur and many others. As a producer, he’s worked with the likes of Kip Moore, Jessica Simpson, Taylor Swift and Danielle Bradbery.
Album: From the album “Someday I Will Make It Up To You” released February 14 on Tooth And Nail.
Review Snippet: In North Central Washington State, Tyson Motsenbocker grew up in the apple orchards and pine forests at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. It’s the pastoral sound of his childhood that has defined the sound of his music, even among the freeways and fast pace of his new Southern California home. After the release of two EP’s Until it Lands and Rivers and Roads Motsenbocker defined himself as a mature lyricist and accomplished songwriter, sharing the stage with the likes of David Bazan, Vance Joy and James Bay.
Next Time in LA: Teragram Ballroom on February 28.
Album: From the album “Lessons Of War” self-released on February 3.
Review Snippet: Photo by DENNY
Matt McGinn and Ciara O’neill’s “Bubblegum” is the folk revival’s Derry Girls: a plaintive and devastating reassessment of the futilities of war, its horrors, effects and after-effects
The rise of Gabriel Moreno’s Lantern Society is slowly taking over East London’s nightlife, Catherine Rudie’s Möbius Kiss the airwaves, and Josienne Clarke’s output the Rough Trade release schedule. Step out of the light for a minute and you’ll hear the whisperings of a folk renaissance – not with banjos and flutes or medieval tales of ogres and prostitutes (Richard Dawson aside) – reinstating the troubadour as a someone who can have a political resonance post-Dylan.
The movement’s latest reinforcement comes via County Down, with Northern Irish songwriter Matt McGinn’s Lessons Of War and his new track “Bubblegum”. It’s based on the teenage diaries of Bronagh McAtasney, written daily throughout the Troubles in 1980s Derry. She now tweets these entries as @NrnIrnGirl1981, wondering whether she’ll get her hair permed in the same sentence as recounting the IRA men getting shot by SAS soldiers. “Bobby Sands MP was buried today & only 11 people were into our class. We spent a lot of the time telling jokes and altogether the day was mostly free. Adam & The Ants are no. 1 – Stand & Deliver. Bucks Fizz are finally going down.”
Matt McGinn heard this on the radio, driving down to a session where he and Mick Flannery were planning to do some writing together. “It was mad how everyday things that a teenage girl has to deal with – boys, pop stars, homework – were talked about in the same breath as bombs, hunger strikes, soldiers and riots,” says McGinn. “My mind raced back to my own childhood. Experiences of ‘the Troubles’ that until now were normal parts of growing up, suddenly hit me as vulgar and nonsensical.”
Enlisting the help of fellow County Down vocalist Ciara O’neill and Damien Rice’s cellist Vyvienne Long, he and Flannery created a devastating and elegiac account of war on our doorstep. The three chords that talk about the onset of hunger strikes are the same that unassumingly trawl through memories of TOTP Christmas number ones, alongside a strangely shattering refrain about teenage boy troubles (“Mama I like Johnny down the street, but I don’t know if he likes me”).
Album: His self-released eponymous debut album will be released April 3 on Rounder.
Review Snippet: Written by Burnett, “(I’m Gonna Get Over This) Some Day” brings a more cheerfully gritty pragmatism to the current moment. “It reminds me of something Johnny Cash would’ve recorded, where he’s addressing a serious matter in a very lighthearted way,” says Ledger. “In this case it’s forgiveness, and T Bone put a political lens on it: it’s about forgiving people who think differently from you, and trying to find some common ground.” The only other track on the album not authored by Ledger, “Skip a Rope” offers a playful yet potent update of Henson Cargill’s 1967 single—a No. 1 hit on the country charts, spiked with still-pertinent social commentary (“Never mind the rules, just play to win/And hate your neighbor for the shade of his skin”). “It’s sad that a song recorded so long ago is just as relevant now, but I think it’s important to show that there’s a progressive side to traditional music, and that we shouldn’t ever lose that,” says Ledger.
Album: Debut album self-titled came out on January 31 on Hard Bark Records.
Review Snippet: Jon Niemann (Gospelbeach) and Frankie Palmer kindly added keys and pedal steel, respectively. The results are roll-your-window-down Americana mixed with a healthy dose of outlaw country goodness that might just hit the sweet spot on the ears just as the sun starts to set on the horizon.
Album: From the album You Kin B The Sun out February 7 on Arts And Crafts.
Review Snippet: Best known as one of the lead singers of the Be Good Tanyas, Ford’s is deeply influenced by this wild life thing…RH Harris and the soul stirres, Joni Mitchell, Iron and Wine, Bessie Smith, Al Green, Sean Hayes, Pauline Lamb, JT and the Clouds, Prince, Joan Armatrading
Next Time in LA: March 24 at the Satellite
Website: https://frazeyford.com/
MohaviSoul – Lay Your Needle Down
Hometown: San Diego, CA
Album: From their album “Live at the 42nd Annual Huck Finn Jubilee on Mannequin Vanity Records.
Review Snippet: San Diego based MohaviSoul has released their 3rd album called “Hometown Blues” on Mannequin Vanity Records. Randy Hanson and Mark Miller are established bluegrass writers and have combined their efforts to come up with one of the best contemporary bluegrass albums.
Band Members include Mark Miller (guitar, vocals,) Randy Hanson (Mandolin, Vocals), Orion Boucher (Bass, Vocals), Jason Weiss (banjo, Vocals) and features by John Mailander(Fiddle), and Will Jaffe (Dobro). The band is able to blend all types of bluegrass, that include traditional, newgrass and original material. It is bluegrass from the soul and harkens back to the origins of bluegrass music blended explicitly with a contemporary sound. Their Outstanding playing on all tracks tell they love what they do.” On My Way” best exemplifies each player solo instrumentation and ability to blend their unique sound. The song “Until I Go” energizes those listening to want to get up and dance till the morning light. It is a great blend of roots and newgrass. If You get a chance
to see them in concert do so. You will not be disappointed. They make you feel right at home.
Album: From the ep “From The Garden” released on January 20 on Nettwerk Records.
Review Snippet:
Davis John Patton is a musician from the United States Midwest. His music brings together unique, gentle instrumentation andgraceful melodies similar to artists like Bon Iver, Novo Amor, and Sufjan Stevens.
Album: From the album “New Ways” released in November on Secret City Records.
Review Snippet: There’s the heat of the night and the cool blue of morning, hints of Prince and Bill Withers, the limbo of a lover’s transatlantic flight. “Hot Tears” is all hot-blooded memory. “Apalachee Plain” is a clamorous goodbye. “I’m Not Your Lover” would be a perfect love-song were it not for its chorus—a song that lets two opposites be true at once. “That last record I made for me,” Vollebekk admits. “This one is for someone else.”
Jose James – Nobody Knows My Name featuring Laura Mvula and Kris Bowers
Hometown:
Album: No Beginning No End 2 comes out March 6 on Rainbow Blonde Records.
Review Snippet: You’d be forgiven for previously assuming that José James was a man with something to prove. There was that decade he spent reshaping jazz with the genre-blurring verve of a crate-digging beat guru. And that time he declared his jazz career was over, ditched the bands, and became a solo R&B star. And then there were the last couple years he spent living in Bill Withers’ shoes — recording and touring that legendary songbook for the Lean On Me project, a feat as brazen as they come. Now, well, it’s not that James is out of mountains to climb, but sometimes you gotta stop to consider the one you’ve already got under your feet. Thus, the satin-voiced songwriter’s latest is No Beginning No End 2, a sequel to his 2013 album that resurrects the bold eclecticism we first fell in love with, while taking us on a journey through both celebration and introspection.
Album: Title track from their new self-released album.
Review Snippet: Lifelong friends and deep-north natives, musical group Michigan Rattlers play heavy-hearted folk-rock with an aching dose of Midwestern nice. Graham Young (guitar), Adam Reed (upright bass), Christian Wilder (piano), and Tony Audia (drums) began writing music and performing together in their Northern Michigan high school.
Next Time in LA: The Roxy Theatre March 18 in West Hollywood
