Displaying items by tag: blues

“With one foot planted firmly in Appalachian music culture and the other always expanding and evolving, the Black Lillies have created a unique sound embraced by fans old and young.”

- Vanity Fair

Black Lillies front man Cruz Contreras knows a thing or two about the road.

After co-founding Robinella and the CCstringband with his wife, he spent nearly a decade traveling the road and making music from coast to coast. When his marriage – and the band – dissolved in 2007, he returned to the road ... this time, as the driver of a truck for a stone company. It was here, over a year spent rolling down the highways of East Tennessee, that the songs and sounds that would form the nexus of The Black Lillies were conceived.

And "Runaway Freeway Blues," the band's third studio album, was realized exactly there ... on the road. When the Lillies weren't playing their 200-odd gigs during 2012, they were in Wild Chorus Studio in their hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., working with Scott Minor of Sparklehorse to craft a beautiful ode to restless spirits and rambling hearts. Rooted in the mud-rutted switchbacks of Appalachia, "Runaway Freeway Blues" is the sound of a band that's becoming something of a phenomenon across the country.

Contreras and his bandmates – harmony vocalist Trisha Gene Brady, multi-instrumentalist Tom Pryor, bass player Robert Richards and drummer Bowman Townsend – have grown from a few friends sitting around campfires and living rooms to a band that shows up in far-flung cities where folks to whom they've never played before already know the words to the songs. Eschewing record labels, they've still managed to conquer the Billboard Top 200 charts (Runaway Freeway Blues debuted at #43), put three tracks in Country Music Television's top 12 requested videos, and film a nationally broadcast commercial for Twizzlers. They've been featured on numerous television specials and played festivals as widespread as Bonnaroo, Rochester Jazz Festival, MerleFest, and CMA Fan Fair. Despite trafficking in a richer, more authentic brand of country and Americana than what gets played on mainstream country radio, they've still been invited to perform at the Grand Ole Opry more than twenty times – a record for an independent act.

The Black Lillies, in other words, have come a long way from those early days, when Contreras channeled heartache and regret into a stunning debut. "Whiskey Angel" was the sound of a man drowning his sorrows, and an introduction to someone who had languished behind the scenes for too long. As the guy who loaned out his initials to Robinella and the CCstringband, which flirted with national fame a few years ago with a hit ("Man Over") on Country Music Television, an appearance on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" in 2003, and albums on both Sony and Dualtone, he was known best as a mandolin virtuoso and bandleader.

Starting over, he stunned friends and peers in the East Tennessee music scene with a voice that makes you think of Randy Travis or Dan Tyminski or even the great Ralph Stanley in his prime: steeped in regret, seasoned with pain and tempered in the fires of hard times. It served "Whiskey Angel" well, and when "100 Miles of Wreckage" was released in 2011, the band seemingly burst onto the national stage – spending five solid months in the Americana Music Association's radio charts (four of them in the top 15).

That record was the sound of a man taking stock of his life and his past, regarding the pain and the turmoil with a measure of wistful acceptance. Which brings us to "Runaway Freeway Blues," which finds the band focused on the horizon, filled with the nervous energy of excitement at the unknown future waiting on the other side of that distant hill, enthusiastic about the journey as much as they are about the destination.

The emotional arc of the new record is brilliant, so vivid and detailed with lush harmonies and instrumental virtuosity that's as powerful in the quieter moments as it is explosive during jubilant ones. You can cherry-pick any number of songs from "Runaway Freeway Blues" and find gold. Banjo, pedal steel, piano and everything else lift this record up on wings of uncommon grace and stunning vitality, and when Contreras and Brady combine their voices, it calls to mind classic duets from times long gone: George and Tammy. Gram and Emmylou. Johnny and June. From gentle Laurel Canyon folk rock to the honky-tonk heartache of classic country to winding jams, "Runaway Freeway Blues" is an album that defies easy categorization.

It was conceived on the road, inspired by the road and completed there as well: Contreras mixed the album while on tour, by phone and email, coordinating overdubs and guest instrumental appearances (Josh Oliver, formerly of the everybodyfields; banjo player Matt Menefee, who's toured with Mumford & Sons, Levi Lowery and Big & Rich; and a host of Tennessee's finest musicians on horns, harmonica and percussion) while playing into the wee hours of the morning, driving all night and setting up in the next city to do it all over again.

It's breakneck, brazen and beautiful. It's the sound of a band that's rooted in East Tennessee but more at home piled into a van stacked with gear, windows down and aimed toward the next gig. It's an album that lets long-time fans as well as relative newcomers to the Black Lillies phenomenon know that this train isn't stopping anytime soon.

It can be argued that it was Booker T. Jones who set the cast for modern soul music and is largely responsible for its rise and enduring popularity. On classic Stax hits like "Green Onions," "Hang 'Em High," "Time Is Tight," and "Melting Pot" the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Musicians Hall of Fame inductee and GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award recipient pushed the music's boundaries, refined it to its essence and then injected it into the nation's bloodstream. In June of 2013, Sound the Alarm, the new album from Booker T, finds the Hammond B3 organ master looking ahead yet again, laying down his distinctive bedrock grooves amid a succession of sparkling collaborations with some of contemporary R&B's most gifted young voices.

No strangers to the OFOAM stage, The Sister Wives will kick off the first annual Ogden Roots and Blues Festival in style!

Ranging from soulful blues to fiery rock to all-out dance band, the Sister Wives defy the conventional norms typically set for all-women bands with the range and depth of their musical energy and virtuosity.

The Sister Wives display a multitude of musical attitudes in a style that is part Stevie Ray Vaughn, a little Sippie Wallace, and a little Allman Brothers.

Their live shows persuade even the most skeptical that "Girls Rock!".

"Korene Greenwood, bassist and singer, has become something of a fixture on the Ogden music scene. She has played with a number of outfits, including fronting her own band, The Great Danes.

The titian-haired musician first started out at age 16, playing country at a college hangout in her birthplace of Provo. She took it up because, after seeing "Coal Miner's Daughter," she aspired to be Loretta Lynn.

Though she started out in stone country, one of Greenwood's strengths, then and now, is that she can handle pretty much any style. She does everything from classic rock to traditional country with The Great Danes, and at times they welcome Rockabilly Hall of Famer Hal "Holiday" Schneider, of Ogden, onstage to sing a few uptempo R&B and rock 'n' roll gems.

Greenwood also plays in the roots rocking blues trio The Bastard Redheads with fellow Ogden musician Dan Weldon (as well as with Salt Lake City's B.B. Mendelson), and also can call herself an honorary Kap Brother, since she sometimes sits bass for that outfit and for other musicians who have spun off the Kaps' Ogden music collective.

Though she based out of Provo, Greenwood played music throughout the West as a young woman. Through her booking agent in the '80s, she met the gents who [became] The Great Danes -- Danish brothers Lynn and John Smith. They were known then [and now, again] as The Horse Brothers....

Even though Greenwood moved to Roy about 17 years ago, she didn't know the players in the Ogden music scene until about 12 years ago, because she continued to perform with Salt Lake City-based bands. It was in that time frame she started attending the jams at Beatnik's (now part of Brewski's on Ogden's Historic 25th Street).

Brad Wheeler, a musician and afternoon radio personality on KRCL 90.9 FM, was then the manager of the nightclub, and made some key introductions for Greenwood. There, she made fast friends and became musical partners with Dan Weldon, who hosted the jam session for a time. She also was introduced to the Kaps, as well as Schneider and others she plays with, such as singer/songwriter/guitarist Scotty Haze and blues singer Kristi DeVries.

There is one Ogden musician Greenwood met that she has yet to work with, and she still holds out hope of it happening.

"I would really still like to jam with Joe McQueen," she said of the Ogden saxophone legend. "I like him because he can play all the old classic stuff. And I just love that stuff." Linda East Brady, Ogden Standard-Examiner

Bill "Watermelon Slim" Homans has built a remarkable reputation with his raw, impassioned intensity.

Two brothers decide to form a band, adapting the blues, folk and other roots‐music sounds they loved as kids into their own evocative sound and twining their voices in the sort of high‐lonesome harmony blend for which sibling singers are often renowned.

OFOAM & the Egyptian Theater Foundation are bringing Dave Alvin & the Guilty Ones to Ogden not only to provide great music but to support the preservation of Ogden’s beautiful Peery’s Egyptian Theater, one of only a handful of Egyptian Theaters still standing, one of two existing “atmospheric” ceilings that currently exist, and Utah’s only remaining bona-fide Movie Palace. The building façade needs repairs, from the leaking canopy, to the plaster damaged exterior and columns.

Repairs will be accomplished with the oversight and approval of Ogden’s Historic Society. Plans are underway for the repairs and we need your help! A portion of our ticket sales ($18 adv./$20 day of) and any direct donations will be put to work to continue Ogden’s love affair with this beautiful venue. For tickets and more information visit the Peery's Egyptian Theater website.

Dave Alvin has been receiving critical acclaim for his song tracks on the popular TV show “Justified”. He was picked by the show’s music supervisor because Dave’s voice was the voice that he felt would be playing in the main character’s head.

"Alvin headlined opening night for the Ogden Music Festival three years ago, playing in a folk duo with Chris Miller. Miller and Alvin will be plugged in with their full band, The Guilty Ones, (Brad Fordham and Lisa Pankratz round out the band) for the Egyptian show.

“You know Dave likes to say there is soft folk music and loud folk music, and he likes to play both,” said Michelle Tanner, founder of OFOAM. “With this Egyptian show, we’re having him back to Ogden to play the loud kind.”" Linda Brady, Ogden Standard-Examiner

"Dave Alvin is steeped in Americana – not just the genre but a deep river of American myth that keeps giving him characters to write about. Former guitarist for roots heroes the Blasters, Alvin fills his 11th album with small towns, highways and losers we imagine he’s encountered on countless tours. Though Alvin has often switched between electric and acoustic, almost everything here is plugged in – above all Alvin, an underrecognized guitar hero. Two songs are addictive: the tear-jerker "Black Rose of Texas" and "Johnny Ace Is Dead," a tragicomedy powered by Steve Mugalian's backbeat and Alvins' burning Strat." Rolling Stone

Bettye LaVette is one of the most soulful singers alive. She started life in Muskegon, Michigan in the late '40s but moved to Detroit with her family when she was six years old. Unlike most of her peers, she did not grow up in a Baptist church singing gospel. As she says, "I am a child of the blues", which was the music she heard as a young child. Her soul is so deep, that it is assumed that she must have started in church.