07.25.06 (MusicPortal.com) Australian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist XAVIER RUDD has signed a worldwide deal (except for Australia and Canada) with Anti- (home to Tom Waits, Daniel Lanois, Neko Case and Michael Franti, among others), and will see his new album "Food In The Belly" released in the U.S. next year. "I am excited about the opportunities that lie ahead with Anti-," commented Rudd on the signing. "I feel it is a good 'connection' because of their approach to music, which is evident in Anti-'s catalog of artists." Rudd, whose travels as a renowned surfer has both shaped and help spread his music, is an accomplished recording artist. "Food In The Belly" follows the successful chart album "Solace," from which Rudd has developed one of the most passionate and rapidly spreading grassroots audiences of recent times. His original live performances have helped him build an international reputation - literally with his own hands and feet. From his bare soles on a wooden resonator box to the breath humming in his yidakis (didgeridoos), his work resonates from the ground up and the inside out. "'Food In The Belly' is a celebration," says Rudd, who hails from Torquay, on Australia's south-east coast. "This is a shaky time and we have our issues, but most of us in the western world are incredibly fortunate. It's not gonna be this way forever and I feel really appreciative. I guess that gratitude became a theme of this album." "Food In The Belly" is Xavier Rudd's sixth album, and was recorded by himself and co-producer Todd Simko in an autonomous, uncompromising style that reflects a truly independent musical spirit. "We recorded it in May in Vancouver, in a house converted into a studio," he explains. "I was living in a little cabin surrounded by deer on Bowen Island, so I took a ferry to the studio every day. The cabin was like a retreat when I was tired of recording. It kept me feeling fresh and connected to reality. The dude who owns the studio collects these old instruments so we used some of them on the album. Most important, he had a two-inch tape machine so we didn't use computers at all. I played everything live."
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07.20.06 (MusicPortal.com) German Rock veterans FURY IN THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE are about to release a new album in "Every Heart Is A Revolutionary Cell," which is due for issue in Europe next week on July 31st via SPV Recordings. There are various different ways of counteracting the routine that threatens a successful band that has been around for several years. However, "Every Heart Is A Revolutionary Cell" continues the consistently personal and extremely organic path the group from Hannover have been following for nearly two decades now. "This is a real in-house album with a conscious demo flair," Thorsten Wingenfelder, brother of vocalist Kai Wingenfelder and one of the band's founder members, explains. "There's no guiding hand on this album, and that's precisely what we want the listeners to hear." Yet the band have arrived at a significant point in their career. They're about to celebrate their 20th anniversary in 2007, and it goes without saying that this illustrious event will involve various festivities. But how to conclude the first two decades? A question that the six musicians answer in their typically relaxed style: with an album that hits the raw, almost brusque mean somewhere between departure and years of experience. "Some of the numbers are based on live tracks that have consciously been kept raw, with our own - you could almost say naive - capabilities as sound engineers and producers. But it worked. A few years ago we wouldn't have been able to come up with such an album." As always when they get down to the preparations for a new album, the six musicians "argued, fought, loved, talked and drank a lot," Because, says Wingenfelder: "Art consists of realizing when a song has been completed. Once you've missed the right moment, the way back isn't always easy. Luckily we still notice immediately when a track works." During that process, Fury In The Slaughterhouse wrote a number of songs that couldn't have been more typical of the band, yet they explore the challenge well on "Every Heart Is A Revolutionary Cell."
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07.18.06 (MusicPortal.com) Singer/songwriter JENNIFER O'CONNOR will release her next album, "Over The Mountain, Across The Valley and Back To The Stars," on August 22nd via Matador Records. O'Connor's career began in Atlanta, where after college she joined Violet, a band compared to X and the Pixies. She started playing solo after quitting Violet and moving to NYC. Her influences are other artists with a fresh take on self-awareness, from Destroyer, Silver Jews, Aimee Mann, and Smog, to Dylan and Petty, as well as Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Dizzee Rascal. Jennifer O'Connor released her debut EP, "Truth Love Work," in 2000. Time Out wrote: "O'Connor is another Liz Phair or Elliott Smith waiting to happen. Her understated guitar-based songs lack the primping, preening and obviousness of Phair and the sad-sack whining of Smith. Rather, her matter-of-fact lyrics tell stories that us regular joes can relate to." Her self-released, self-titled debut followed in 2002, and Red Panda released the acclaimed "The Color And The Light" in May 2005. "Over The Mountain, Across The Valley and Back To The Stars" is her 3rd full-length, but it has the immediacy of a debut. The past year saw many personal upheavals which informed it more than she expected. "It's been so tumultuous, I think that inevitably crept into my songs," she says. "I wouldn't say that I always write from experience, but I did a lot of it on this record." For her most emotional songs yet, she self-produced and got rid of reverb and extraneous sounds, giving them an urgency that her other records didn't always have. She explains, "There's a lot of space; we purposefully pared everything down to what was necessary for the song." While O'Connor writes (and often performs) alone on guitar, each song here (save the acoustic single-take 'Today') is fleshed out with a band that includes her longtime drummer Jon Langmead, James McNew (Yo La Tengo) on bass, Kendall Meade (Sparklehorse) on keyboards and vocals, and other friends including Britt Daniel (Spoon) on vocals, and Al Weatherhead, who produced "The Color And The Light" and plays guitar on many tracks.
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07.17.06 (MusicPortal.com) Sugar Hill Records recording artist RILEY BAUGUS will release a new album in "Long Steel Rail" on August 8th. In his formative years, old-time musician Baugus often played with and learned from elders of the tradition in North Carolina and Virginia, including legendary old-time fiddlers Tommy Jarrell (a National Heritage Award recipient). Earnest study and total immersion in the wealth of knowledge available to him by virtue of being an insider from the region gave Riley Baugus access to experience that positioned the North Carolina native as a standard-bearer and direct link between the art's pre-commercial beginnings and today. On "Long Steel Rail," Baugus continues to embrace his role in the lineage singing, fiddling, and playing banjo with absolute love and respect for the humanity and tradition that first brought music into his life. It's the style that first brought Riley Baugus into the spotlight in the blockbuster film "Cold Mountain," and the sound that snagged the attention of Sugar Hill. Produced by Tim O'Brien and Dirk Powell, "Long Steel Rail" stands squarely in the realm that Sugar Hill has come to define - that of quality roots Americana music. Riley Baugus represents not only the best of the old-time banjo, but also Sugar Hill's commitment to preserving and fostering the growth of traditional music. Baugus hails from rural North Carolina, not far from where Barry Poss first founded the Sugar Hill label more than 25 years ago. The label itself owes its existence in part to the hollow-backed banjo, played in the traditional clawhammer style. Poss himself fell under the spell of the old-time banjo as played by greats like Fred Cockerham and Tommy Jarrell and abandoned academics to follow music and eventually form the label. Old-time music itself deeply informed Bluegrass music, which was the mainstay at the small indie for the first decade. In those respects, the addition of Baugus to the Sugar Hill roster is nothing less than perfect. Riley Baugus first came to music through his family. His father brought home countless records from fellow North Carolinian Doc Watson and others, which Baugus says touched him on a molecular level. Starting on the fiddle, but quickly moving on to the banjo, Baugus learned the "Round Peak" style of playing at the knee of Tommy Jarrell.

07.03.06 (MusicPortal.com) In the months leading up to his passing on September 12th, 2003, JOHNNY CASH had been recording new material with producer Rick Rubin. Tomorrow on July 4th, "American V: A Hundred Highways" -- an all-new Johnny Cash album taken from those sessions -- will be released through American Recordings/Lost Highway Records. It will include the last song Johnny Cash ever wrote. The songs that comprise "American V: A Hundred Highways" are as eclectic an assortment as any on the previous albums in the American series: 'Help Me,' a poignant plea to God, the hauntingly beautiful ballad 'If You Could Read My Mind,' 'God's Gonna Cut You Down,' a traditional spiritual, the touching 'Love's Been Good To Me,' the heartrending 'On The Evening Train,' and 'Further On (Up The Road)' are among the tracks on the new album. Songwriters for the tracks run the gamut from Hank Williams to Rod McKuen to Bruce Springsteen. In addition, two original Cash compositions are featured, 'Like The 309' and 'I Came To Believe.' 'Like The 309' is the last song Cash wrote and, like his first recorded single, 1955's 'Hey Porter,' is a song that incorporates one of his favorite settings, trains: "Everybody take a look/See I'm doin' fine/Then load my box/On the 309." 'I Came to Believe' is a song he wrote and originally recorded earlier in his career, and addresses the pain of addiction and connecting to a higher power. "I think that 'American V' may be my favorite of all of the albums in the American series," said Rubin. "It's different from the others, it has a much different character. I think that this is as strong an album as Johnny ever made." The months following the May, 2004 passing of his wife June Carter Cash, were among the most physically and emotionally painful times in Cash's life, but keeping focused on the recording of "American V: A Hundred Highways" proved to be his salvation. Rubin remembers, "Johnny said that recording was his main reason for being alive, and I think it was the only thing that kept him going, the only thing he had to look forward to." Cash and Rubin began recording the songs that would find their way onto "American V: A Hundred Highways" in 2002, specifically on the day after they finished "American IV: The Man Comes Around" which was released that November. Johnny feared that "American IV" might be his last release, so Rubin suggested that he... [full story]
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[Folk News: June 2006]
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