No Depression....

[Martycaster]

I heard of another CD sampler called "No Depression...What it sounds like" Vol 1... to be released March 9. The tracklist includes;

The Time of The Preacher - Johnny Cash
Is Heavin Good Enough For You - Allison Moorer
Faithless Street - Whiskeytown
Five Hearts Breaking - Alejandro Escovedo
Cowboy Peyton Place - Doug Sahm
Does My Ring Burn Your Finger - Buddy Miller
Parallel Bars - Robbie Fulks/Kelly Willis
Thrice All American - Neko Case and Her Boyfriends
Down to The Well - Kevin Gordon/Lucinda Williams
Dam - Kasey Chambers
Farther Along - Hayseed/Emmylou Harris
How I Love Them Old Songs - The Hole Dozen
No Depression in Heaven - The Carter Family


Thought I'd pass this information along if anyone is interested.

[Busgaljan]

Good lineup. I think this might already be available in Austin.

[WallabyTed]

Hey, Neko Case. Haven't heard her for yonks. Loved that `Furnace Room Lullaby'. Is this one as good?

[hardcountry]

just heard doug sahm's "cowboy peyton place" for the first time today and i really like it. i've heard some covers of his tunes in the past, but never heard how he originally did them. i don't think i've ever heard "parallel bars", which probably sounds strange since i like both kelly and robbie. might be worth checking out. and it's only fitting that they included "no depression in heaven" since that's where the term "no depression" was derived from.

[tcb]

Thought I'd pass this on:

No Depression magazine has been attempting to chronicle the amorphous brew sometimes known as alternative country or alt-country. It's not an easy task.
No Depression editors Peter Blackstock and Grant Alden, in the liner notes to the remarkable collection of songs collected on "No Depression: What It Sounds Like (Vol. I)" (released on March 9 by Dualtone records), write that the question of whether "alternative-country music actually exists — remains a curious riddle, open to furious debate."
The key, they continue, is that "the definition is elusive precisely because, as with all true art, this music pays no mind to strictures or bounds. And yet somewhere, somehow, there is a commonality, a harmonizing chord struck between the cracks of the styles and genres that blend together amid the artists portrayed in our pages."
So what is alternative country, then? After spending some time listening to the 13 songs on "No Depression," replaying the disc over and over, really allowing it to filter into my consciousness, I can honestly say I still don't know.
And that's a compliment.
Obviously there are some common threads running through the songs. All of them have some connection to country and folk music, but not all of the songs are what would traditionally be referred to as country songs.
Johnny Cash, for instance, one of country music's greatest voices opens the disc singing "Time of the Preacher," a song written by Willie Nelson, one of country music's greatest songwriters. But the version of "Time of the Preacher" here is a long way off from what you might expect to hear at the Grand Ole Opry or on Country Music Television. It is a big brash country rock song on which the explosiveness of Seattle grunge metal scene meet the intimacy of the country storyteller.
On the other extreme is Whiskeytown's "Faithless Street," which features a melancholy violin and slide guitar. The song comes from disillusioned rocker Ryan Adams and harkens back to the country-rock of Bob Dylan's "Nashville Skyline" and Gram Parsons' work with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, music that was far more country than rock, especially when compared to the so-called country-rockers that were to follow.
Each cut on this disc explores a different aspect of what the alt-country movement is about. There are mournful ballads — Allison Moorer's "Is Heaven Good Enough for You," written following the death of her mother, and Neko Case and Her Boyfriends' "Thrice," a tribute to her hometown of Tacoma, Wash. — and the mid-tempo rocker "Dam" by Kasey Chambers, which shuffles in on an acoustic guitar. "Well one day soon, that dam is gonna break / And it will wash you away from me," she sings, the anger bubbling to the surface with the electric guitar.
There is Buddy Miller's country blues, the caustic "Does Your Ring Burn My Finger," with its cowboy baseline and hard-driving rhythm. The southern drawl in his delivery is full of the kind of anger and longing that is too often missing from popular country radio and may just be the highlight of the disc.
Breaking genre boundaries is normal for Lucinda Williams, who joins Kevin Gordon on his "Down to the Well" and it is something Alejandro Escovedo does on the marvelous "Five Hearts Breaking", a wry, poignant song that exists somewhere between country and some other musical style – as does The Hole (a cobbled together outfit featuring former Jayhawk Mark Olson, his wife Victoria Williams and "friends"), who sing a beery paean to the old songs, "How I Love Them Old Songs."
Deep country flavor comes from three cuts: Doug Sahm's Texas classic "Cowboy Peyton Place"; Hayseed and Emmylou Harris' twangy rendition of the traditional, "Farther Along"; and from Robbie Fulks and Kelly Willis' "Parallel Bars," which swings on slide guitar and tight band and a questionable, if decidedly countrified pun — "Parallel bars, one at my feet, one on the opposite side of the street / Where two hearts that just can't meet hide 'til the heartache's gone."
And, of course, there is the great Carter Family, the first family of country music, closing out the disc with the song that gives the magazine its name: "No Depression in Heaven," a thick Depression-era mountain song that reminds us that there is something bigger than what is in front of us.
Basically, there is not one bad song on "No Depression" and it functions as a solid primer for listeners interested in this amorphous, open-ended genre. What this disc does has less to do with crafting a definition than with blowing apart older ones. It cuts past the hard and fast delineations set out by the record industry, blurs the lines between the major musical categories raising questions, pondering answers and generally opting for good music and little hype.
Here's hoping No Depression, the magazine, sticks around for a long time and that it produces several more volumes of "No Depression: What It Sounds Like."

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