Texas based singer-poet Courtney Patton's latest solo album, Electrostatic, has been set loose upon the world, and even a precursory listen proves the musically gifted Jill-of-all-trades has put the four years between album releases to excellent use. Whereas Patton's previous work was an endearingly stripped down and lyrically personal approach to the creative process, the new album delves deeply into melodic craft without losing any of Patton's poignant and raw writing charm.
For those headed to Americanafest, it’s important to remember one thing, you’re never going to be able to see everything or everyone that you want. For some attending, they’re there for the networking and conference sessions. For others, it’s reuniting with old friends or discovering new artists. For me, my main objective is always to photograph and listen to artists that are new to me or that I’ve known about and have yet to see, as they haven’t toured in my part of the country.
This year, the team from the Amp was able to experience Americanafest over five days. At times we divided and conquered showcases, other times we banded together and hit all the same shows in a night. At any rate, there was always a special event or showcase to keep our schedules jam-packed.
Cassie Latshaw doesn’t have your typical background. She grew up on an exotic animal farm near Bristow, Oklahoma and was opening for artists like Ray Price and Sammy Smith before the age of 12. These days she’s a realtor by day and songwriter at night, regularly appearing on stage at well-known venues like the Mercury Lounge in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Oklahoma native, John Fullbright, was first propelled upon the Americana music scene as an original member of the well-loved Turnpike Troubadours, and later established himself firmly as a gifted lyricist with the release of two solo albums, notably Grammy nominated "From The Ground Up" in 2012. After the release of his 2014 sophomore album, "Songs," Fullbright vanished abruptly into the belly of the Tulsa music collective for eight quiet years, only to re-emerge recently with a new solo album, "Liars," scheduled for release September 30th, and an evolved approach to songwriting and music production that relies on collaboration and community rather than heavy handed singer-songwriter perspective.
The Amp is honored to highlight the second annual OUTLaw Pride Fest, Texas’ first queer country festival. Headliner and longtime industry favorite Sarah Shook & the Disarmers will take the stage September 24 at Rustic Tap in Austin, TX. LGBTQ+ supporting artists include Joy Clark, Julie Nolen, Paisley Fields, Andrew Sa, the Secret Emchy Society, Mya Byrne, Mercy Bell, Lilly Milford, Mary-Charlotte Young, and Stephanie Cash.
We’ve got a fun one for you today from Nashville-based artist, Will Payne Harrison. We’re premiering his latest single, “Don’t Drink Well Whiskey in the Lonestar State.” It rides the line of being equal parts funny and cautionary tale. The single appears on Harrison’s upcoming album, Tioga Titan, out on October 21st. A rollicking tune featuring Meredith Krygowski on fiddle and Gabe Tonon on baritone guitar. It’s a song that would feel right at home being played at any dance hall in the state of Texas. You might be surprised to learn that this honky-tonk vibe isn’t the sound Harrison originally tried to capture in his first couple of albums. “I’ve always wanted to be a bluegrass musician, but I just don’t have the chops so it comes out as Americana," he chuckles. "For these new songs, I paid attention to what the fans were really digging into previously and decided that I should release a full album of honky-tonk since those were the tracks that resonated most with listeners." If you think the light-hearted nature of “Don’t Drink Well Whiskey in the Lone Star State” is indicative of the tone of the rest of the album, you’d be wrong. Although Harrison knows how to keep things light, he also can write a tearjerker.
Adam Hood is a self-avowed maker of Southern songs. “One of the t-shirts I sell at every show simply says ‘Southern songs’ and that's a good summary of what I do. It's what I've always done." When Hood’s lyrics are not actually checking off the names of cities around the South they still speak from the perspectives of the best of our Southern writers. "It's southern music," he says, "That's what it represents: the soulful side of southern music, the country side of southern music, the genuineness of southern culture, and the way I grew up.”
Josh Abbott, John Baumann, William Clark Green and Cleto Cordero, AKA The Panhandlers are out to prove that lightning can, actually, strike twice with their upcoming second album. Ahead of this anticipated release, on September 2nd they put out the first single “Where Cotton Is King.”
“This is actually the very first song we tried writing with all four of us, back on our first writing trip to Marfa in 2019” said Abbott. “We even recorded it for the first album but it just wasn’t quite right. I’m glad we’re all mature enough to know when to pull a song. And because we did, we were able to finish it in 2021 the way it deserved.”
You could call Taylor Hunnicutt Alabama’s Sweetheart, and for certain, you wouldn’t be wrong, but you’d be glossing over a woman who is also gritty, raw, fierce, and soulful. She might be sweet, but she’s the epitome of ‘fuck around and find out,’ and I don’t think you wanna.
A small-town, Southern Alabama native, Taylor has graced stages with artists and friends like Joshua Ray Walker, Mike and the Moonpies, Jaime Wyatt, Daniel Donato, Lilly Hiatt, Early James, 49 Winchester, Them Dirty Roses, and fellow Alabama artists Red Clay Strays.
Arkansas born folksinger, Joe Purdy has released four meritorious bodies of work over the course of the last five months, bringing his total album count up to an impressive 18 albums and firmly establishing himself as a consistently prolific songwriter. More notable than the quantity of albums is the quality and method of the latest releases. After taking a six year hiatus to heal a significant case of songwriter's burnout, Purdy has returned to his musical career with genuine gusto and is cranking out thoughtful, well-written, tastefully produced tracks at a head spinning pace, much to the benefit of loyal folk audiences who have missed his understated and pure approach to the craft since his 2016 album release of Who Will Be Next?
What is Consciousness?
What is Godliness?
What is the Eternal Living Soul?
What is Heaven or Nirvana, Salvation or the Brahma?
Is it All Just Lies That We Are Told?
This could be a lesson plan for a college-level course in Existentialism or the topics for a really deep intellectual conversation among religious scholars. Could be. But what they really are is the opening verse of the song “God Consciousness” from BB Palmer’s new EP Krishna Country Gold, released August 19. There’s a lot going on here lyrically and musically. The words continue to explore some of the basic questions man has been asking about his existence for centuries, set in ¾ time with honky-tonk instrumentation, including a fiddle break which shifts into an electric guitar-driven groove with actual sitar melodies and all sung in Palmer’s unique voice, which has been best described as a “barroom tenor.” That’s a lot to take in for a song that clocks in at just under three minutes.
A clean mix of wittiness and heel-pounding sonics, Lance Rogers’ latest single, “Pretty Gone,” is here - and it’s pretty damn good.
“This song is sort of a humorous song about a guy that lost his beautiful girlfriend and is trying to figure out how it happened,” Rogers said of the piece. “As the song progresses, it becomes apparent that he drinks too much and he was really the problem the entire time.”
Fresh off of the renowned Red Barn Radio stage, which features the finest of Appalachia’s music scene, Rogers' sound glowed on the July 20th live broadcast, blending tunes from his 2021 self-titled release, as well as new works - all while backed by a full band to further compliment his dusty, dirt-road tone.
They say to rise you gotta fall. Sometimes that means it feels like the bottom is falling out and you’re losing everything. Since spring of 2020, that feeling has been common for many, and for some in the music industry, like the Vandoliers, they didn’t even know if their new self-titled album, The Vandoliers, would ever even be heard. Fast forward to 2022: Not only have they opened for Flogging Molly and Turnpike Troubadours, but they toured Europe for the first time and scored a spot on Flogging Molly’s Salty Dog Cruise. Now they’re about to release their fourth album and this may be the best album the Vandoliers have made. If you’ve ever attended a Vandoliers show, it’s a range of emotions. You’ll hear fist-pumping rowdy drinking songs, beautifully crafted story songs and heart-stirring ballads. Listening to the new album, The Vandoliers, is no different. Upon first listen, you pick your favorites, then you listen again to the lyrics and instrumentals and it’s likely that favorites will emerge. Maybe it’s the hot licks from Travis Curry’s fiddle, the keyboard stylings of Cory Graves or the distinctive voice of Josh Fleming, that make it hard to pick just one. Whatever it is, it’s an album you’re going to want to let live on your turntable for the foreseeable future.
What do you say when the word goes by through a window? How do you talk about home when the ground always seems to be shifting under your feet? John Calvin Abney answers this throughout the narrative weaved on Tourist. With this album, you get the feeling of going home to the same landscape and piece of nostalgia, but there is also a layer of deja vu or perhaps a sensation of the uncanny valley. Nothing is different, yet somehow nothing is the same. Also an expression of a life lived passing through towns from one stop to the next. Two themes somehow juxtapose to a single sentiment that’s difficult to put into words, unless you're John Calvin Abney, who somehow knows exactly how to do just that.
Kentucky’s own queen, Sydney Adams, has just released one of the hottest new country EPs of 2022. Sydney has been singing since she was just 12 years old starting at the Cumberland Mountain Fall Festival a little over a decade ago. A few years later at 15 she began writing her own songs. Adams hails from the little East Kentucky town of Corbin. When she’s not dominating the Kentucky Scene, she spends her time gigging down in Tennessee. Sydney’s voice is a true representation of the East Kentucky Sound whether she’s singing her own songs, or ripping up covers like Lorde’s “Royals.”
A sure sign of a band coming into their own, carving out their spot in a particular scene, is consistency in their sound and familiar musical threads that permeate each subsequent album they release. As fans, we appreciate this because we can anticipate what is coming on new records; we get the same terrific elements that made us take an interest in (or heck, fall in love with) the band in the first place. One can likely think of a few historical examples of bands that experimented in a different sound or direction, with unfortunate and disastrous results. Consequently, appreciation for what the band was or might become in the future waned. Fans were left wondering, “will what comes from their future releases be what attracted me to them in the first place? Or will I only be disappointed about what could have been?”
Today we’ve got the video premiere of Chris Canterbury’s new single, “Heartache for Hire,” off his upcoming album, Quaalude Lullabies, “a nine track collection of mostly sad songs that offers on-the-nose lyrical phrasing, subtlety loose production, and an honest insight into razor-edge topics like addiction, depression, and loneliness.” Quaalude Lullabies is the first studio album from Chris in five years and will be released on September 23rd.
Walk into a room of Americana or singer/songwriter fans and say “John Moreland” and I guarantee you at least one person in the group will be ready to tell you why he’s the greatest living songwriter. Talk to a room of musicians, and you’ll likely hear “he’s a songwriter’s songwriter”. I’m in the latter camp, and I’ve heard a lot of others say the same. With some songs you hear a set of common words arranged in a way that changes what every word means, John Moreland does this like a wizard guarding the secrets that we all are trying to unlock.
Long time listener, first time caller.
Most of my days are spent translating human to engineer and engineer back to human. The product being a very technical sales job from one to another. No one enjoys it, but it is the dance we dance. Amateur writer status aside, huge music fan. My listening interests lean towards the whatever-the-hell genre Peculiar, Missouri would fit into.
We are lucky here in Tulsa. Not only do we have music history on our side, but we also have the Mercury Lounge, arguably the best 100 cap room in America. Now, if third grade geography beat you up, you might not be aware that Tulsa is in Oklahoma or that Oklahoma is right next to the great state of Arkansas. Besides being one of the most beautiful states in the union, Arkansas is home to some of my personal favorite songwriters. I’ve been fortunate enough to catch all of them, except Willi Carlisle.
