Party Dolls - Love Wars Baby - 2/14/14 - This Is American Music

Itunes : http://tinyurl.com/jwylk5a

Spotfiy : http://tinyurl.com/lvthwy9

At its core, Party Dolls is a collaboration between This Is American Music label mates The District Attorneys and Tedo Stone. These two rising bands have shared the stage many times, but it took one long year of heartbreak, restlessness and inspiration to bring them together in the form of Party Dolls. The high-chemistry new project also features members of Moths, Ruby the Rabbitfoot and Archers of Loaf side project Crooked Fingers.
 While The District Attorneys took their time, casually working on a new album (due out in late 2014), frontman/songwriter Drew Beskin amassed dozens of new songs he wasn’t sure could—or even should—fit with The District Attorneys’ sound. “Everything I was writing at the time,” Beskin says, “was dark, honest, therapeutic and true.” During this prolific period, Beskin began to bottle lightning—writing disarmingly intimate, emotionally direct tunes in an attempt to transcend the pain he was feeling in the wake of a bad breakup.

"These songs had to be written,” Beskin says. “At first, they were just for me, and for a long while I did not care if anyone else ever heard them. They poured out of me. They were about turning a negative into a positive."
 
Some time after the heart-wrenching period that birthed these songs faded into the rearview, The District Attorneys were invited to play a Valentine’s Day show with Southern rockers Ponderosa at Athens, Ga.’s Caledonia Lounge. Only half of the District Attorneys were available, but instead of declining, Beskin approached musician friends Tedo Stone and Jeremy Wheatley (Crooked Fingers), who joined him alongside District Attorneys bandmates’ Frank Keith IV and Walker Beard. Together, they learned Beskin’s newer, more personal songs, and Party Dolls was born.

With this simpatico group of players, the arrangements came instantly, effortlessly. Within a month’s time, the band made its live debut on Valentine’s Day 2013. The show was so well-received that Party Dolls decided to record an album, working on it in spurts over the course of a year whenever the band was able to gather for a session at bassist/engineer Frank Keith’s home studio in Athens.

Party Dolls’ debut, Love Wars Baby, is slated to drop on Valentine’s Day 2014, exactly one year to the day from the band’s first show. Though still peppered with first-rate rockers, the new album emphasizes acoustic-guitar ballads backed by a big drum sound and sweetened with a healthy dose of cello and piano. Beautiful and haunting, Love Wars Baby captures the more reserved, thoughtful side of The District Attorneys and Tedo Stone. It’s a vehicle for the prolific Beskin’s honest, inventive songwriting, showcased ably by Keith’s skillful engineering. With songs like the anthemic title track and the female-harmony-anchored “Indigo,” with heartbreaker “A Firecracker” and the epically catchy sea-chantey singalong “Sweetheart Moon,” this album is an impressive and revelatory debut from start to finish.

 ”These songs timestamp a very specific point in my life,” Beskin says. “For better or worse, I have a record I’m very proud of.”

Credits:

All songs by Drew Beskin 

Engineered and Mixed by Frank Keith IV at Madison Studios in Atlanta, GA

Mastered by Drew Vandenberg at Chase Park Transduction in Athens, GA

Produced by Frank Keith IV, Tedo Stone and Drew Beskin

Party Dolls are Drew Beskin, Frank Keith IV, Tedo Stone
with Jeremy Wheatley and Walker Beard

Cello by Jacob Morris
Lead Vocals on "Indigo" by Kathryn Boyd
Guitar solo on "You Let Me Know" by Clay Houle

"Love Wars Baby" by Drew Beskin and Daniel Womack

Artwork by Brian Manley (FunWithRobots)

Special thanks to Matt Martin, Rob Lawrence, Lee Berg, Allison Ward, Madison Studios, The District Attorneys, This Is American Music, Space and Time.

Buy on Bandcamp

Party Dolls - Love Wars Baby

Fire Mountain– All Dies Down– 5/20 release via This Is American Music 

Effortlessly alternating between Southern slow-burners and folk-rock jams, Fire Mountain’s first full-length album, All Dies Down (This is American Music), propels the band into the forefront of Southern indie rock and roll music. Taking a massive step forward from the band’s 2011 EP, Of The Dust. Lead singer/songwriter Perry Brown’s complex, heartfelt songs have led to this proud Troy, Alabama band making quite a name for themselves. Since their formation in 2009, Fire Mountain has recorded a Daytrotter session, was named by Paste Magazine as one of the "12 Alabama Bands You Need To Know Now [in 2013]”, and has relentlessly toured throughout the Southeast. 

Recorded and produced at the expert hands of Les Nuby (Verbena, Vulture Whale) at Birmingham’s Ol Elegante studios, these are songs that take a page out of a chapter in anyone's life. Time and again, Brown is able to express the human journey of love, life, and faith through his poignant, scalpel-like lyrics. Those words are buoyed up by the bands sonic sculptors—Adam Vinson on percussion, Walter Black on bass guitar, Ryan Richburg on electric guitar, and Bryan Segraves on the keys. 

“We tend to write a lot about life changes,” says Brown. “Our previous albums have been about changes and All Dies Down is no different. This album focuses mostly on the shift that occurs when you start to settle down in life and have to learn to get over yourself in order to live with another person.” 

Fire Mountain continues to improve on an already outstanding sound with All Dies Down. With growing acclaim and an aggressive ambition, the band is poised to be the next standout in the ever-fertile musical soil of Alabama. 

Released by: This Is American Music 
Release/catalogue number: TIAM0044 
Release date: May 20, 2014

Fire Mountain - All Dies Down

Have Gun, Will Travel - Fiction, Fact, or Folktale? 

Bradenton, Florida's Have Gun, Will Travel have a natural instinct for combining folk, pop, rock and classic country influences to create a sound all their own. "Their music has a great energy to it with infectious, sing-along choruses and refrains" remarked NPR's Robin Hilton. American Songwriter called HGWT's music "organic, infectious Americana Pop. Their music has a refreshing immediacy to it."

Over the course of three acclaimed albums, hundreds of shows and copious populist-radio airplay, they've nurtured a tradition of inviting all manner of gifted musicians to join the fray. The group's inclusive nature allows it to flesh out tunes that run the gamut from foot-stomping front-porch spirituals and evocative Texas swing to strum-punk rave-ups, hill-country historicals and more.

HGWT's music has been featured in a national Chevy TV commercial; multiple episodes of the PBS series Roadtrip Nation; and an episode of CBS's The Good Wife. Their previous albums have spent months on the CMJ Radio Top 200 chart. And their live performances have been described as rousing, rollicking, energetic and dynamic.

The band's highly anticipated, fourth full-length album "Fiction, Fact or Folktale?" will be available September 10th on CD and digital formats through This Is American Music. The album was mixed by HGWT's own Scott Anderson and mastered by Rodney Mills (Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Drive-By Truckers). Fall U.S. tour dates to be announced soon!

FOR MORE INFO ON HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL: 
https://www.facebook.com/hgwtmusic

FOR MORE INFO ON THIS IS AMERICAN MUSIC: 
http://thisisamericanmusic.com

Fiction, Fact, or Folktale

The Kernal - Farewellhello

Based in Jackson, TN, The Kernal & His New Strangers call the Downtown Tavern home and from that halfway point between two Tennessee music mecca’s, tour the country with their home-grown brand of Southern mystique.  Tied deeply to the legacy of the wandering musician and the historic Grand Ole Opry, the Kernal, a southern gentleman with an old soul and youthful ambition, found his sound and showmanship in the greats of the classic Country music scene like Del Reeves. “My dad,” The Kernal reminisces, explaining the impetus of the band, “met Sleepy LaBeef at Limebaugh’s Restaurant in Nashville. Lonzo & Oscar were looking for a drummer and he asked my dad if he could play a shuffle beat on the table. He did and he left for a 10-day run the next day. It worked out because soon he was playing with Sleepy.”  From there, his father found his way to The Kendalls, and eventually to the legendary Del Reeves, with whom he would play until Reeves’ death in 2007.  His father died in September of the same year and the seed was planted. This legacy of the old country music way, of rock and roll on the fly, was not lost on the Kernal, and he took it as starting point from which to build his own contribution to the cannon of southern music.

“It’s about old fabrics on new skin, and seeing how they get along, the frontman explains; the chemistry of tension with the old guard and the young gun, but with the respect and love that can only come from the South itself.

Farewellhello

Doc Feldman & The LD50 - Sundown at the Station

After years of supporting other musicians and playing in bands, including his most recently defunct band, Good Saints, veteran multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Derek “Doc” Feldman is releasing his first solo album Sundowning at the Station. The album was recorded by Jason Groves at Sneak Attack! In Lexington, Kentucky and is being released via This Is American Music on July 16th, 2013. Calling themselves “the LD50,” Doc enlisted the help of a few friends, including close friend and sometimes songwriting collaborator James Jackson Toth (aka Wooden Wand), to help fill out the sound.
Similar to an old, well-constructed house that has been lived in by lonesome, lost, and booze-lovin’ residents for centuries, each element on Sundowning at the Station serves its purpose and without one the others collapse. One might be tempted to listen to this album with a couple of pain pills and a shot of whiskey to numb the heartache, but the songs themselves serves as the vaccination from the real disease. Songs like the mournful “Ready” and the bluesy and bruised “Alive for Now” both sung with honesty and experience. Or there’s the earthy minimalist howl of “Can’t Quit You.” There’s the hardened and gritty “Cold Tile Floor” or lapsteel-laced “A Texas Moan,” both of which are collaborative songwriting efforts between Feldman and Toth. “A Texas Moan” has been re-worked here, but the song itself was originally released on a 7” vinyl split with Kill County when Doc and James were with Good Saints. Also of particular note is the weary yet hopeful “Battle Hymn” performed by Doc, but written by old friends and St. Louis, Missouri staples Brothers Lazaroff.

“Doc Feldman’s debut album Sundowning at the Station brings the gothic South front and centre. Find yourself immersed in a bluesy whiskey soaked ode to what real country should be…finally something to dig my teeth into again and again.” – Sandy Smith, Slowcoustic

“Doc Feldman’s new album sounds like the weary, worndown end of a dark barroom set. Tired, frustrated, and beaten, his songs are of a particularly compelling breed of Southern gothic. There’s hope there, but the kind of hope you find at the ass-end of a hot humid Southern day as you collapse on your bed for rest. There’s depth to these songs, and weight, and something that fills up your soul just a little bit.” – Devon Leger, Hearth Music


Cold Tile Floor

Have Gun, Will Travel - Standing at the End of the World

Trouble

High Road

The Places

The Show Must Go On

While We're Standing

Homicide

Push Your Button

Lay A New Rag (Upon My Head)

Good-Bye Flowers

songs off of This Is American Music's 2013 releases...eat it, drink it, shop indie.  

there's more where this came from. 

go to: www.thisisamericanmusic.com
cds and viny - www.thisisamericanmusic.bigcartel.com

Hurray For The Riff Raff - Western Cowboy

Tennessee

Party Dolls - Love Wars Baby - 2/14/14 - This Is American Music

Credits:

All songs by Drew Beskin 
"Love Wars Baby" by Drew Beskin and Daniel Womack

Engineered and Mixed by Frank Keith IV at Madison Studios in Atlanta, GA

Mastered by Drew Vandenberg at Chase Park Transduction in Athens, GA

Produced by Frank Keith IV, Tedo Stone and Drew Beskin

Party Dolls are Drew Beskin, Frank Keith IV, Tedo Stone
with Jeremy Wheatley and Walker Beard

Cello by Jacob Morris
Lead Vocals on "Indigo" by Kathryn Boyd
Guitar solo on "You Let Me Know" by Clay Houle

Artwork by Brian Manley (FunWithRobots)

Special thanks to Matt Martin, Rob Lawrence, Lee Berg, Allison Ward, Madison Studios, The District Attorneys, This Is American Music, Space and Time.

Love Wars Baby

Kindly Leave

Indigo

I Am Not The One You Love

Party Dolls - Vampire

Great Peacock - Making Ghosts

Fire Mountain - Be Your Eyes

Anchor Iron

Factory Line

Fire Mountain - At The Seams

Fire Mountain - Doing Fine

I've Been Wrong

Fire Mountain - Moving Target

http://calebcaudle.com/
https://calebcaudle.bandcamp.com/

"I would trade every last light in New York City, to be there tonight with you in New Orleans." - Caleb Caudle's Trade All the Lights from the upcoming album, Paint Another Layer on My Heart.

Caleb Caudle's last album, Tobacco Town brought him National exposure upon its release in 2012. With Blurt Magazine noting "jaw-droppingly fine songs steeped in classic Earle, Clark, McMurtry and Van Zandt." Caudle decided to take his American rich songs out on the road.

In just a year, Caudle played over 300 shows in 30 plus states, performed on the radio web sensation, Daytrotter, and even found time to pack up all of his belongings and make the move from North Carolina to New Orleans.

For the new album, which was all written during his time on the road, Caudle decided to record at Echo Mountain studios in Asheville, NC. Along with his producer and engineer, Jon Ashley (Dawes, Band Of Horses, The Avett Brothers), Caleb manages to craft a beautiful composition of his road worn songs with some help from Lydia Loveless (harmony vocals), Whit Wright (pedal steel), Jordan Powers (bass), Greg Herndon (piano), Tommy Scifres (guitar), and Jack Foster (drums).

Paint Another Layer On My Heart is a fully realized vision consisting of classic songs, instrumentation, and production.

"I just want to connect with folks. This album is about love and distance. That's something I feel like most people have had to go through, something that was very much a part of my life this past year." - Caleb Caudle

>>>>
Paint Another Layer On My heart was engineered by Jon Ashley at ECHO Mountain in Asheville, NC and mastered by Evan Bradford.

Bass/vocals: Jordan Powers
Drums: Jack Foster
Electric Guitar: Tommy Scifres
Pedal Steel: Whit Wright
Piano/B3 organ: Greg Herndon
Vocals: Lydia Loveless

Pre-Order

Caleb Caudle - How'd You Learn


"They told me all is fair in love and war, so I killed the one I've been fighting for." 

So went the process for Hunter Morris after the dissolution of his prior band Gift Horse.  A professional fly fishing guide by trade, he spent a year on the trout streams of north Georgia literally and figuratively far away from the music scene in his home of Athens, GA.  This time of reflection produced the songs that would become Blue Blood.  But it was the process of reinvention that provided the inspiration for these songs long before there were finished lyrics, structures, and arrangements.

Blue Blood began as a new solo project for Morris, but through the process of making demos in solitude and trying to find a new voice for his songs, what emerged was a collection of songs worthy of full band, psychedelic pop treatment.  And Morris knew just the person for the job.  He sent some of the songs to Hank Sullivant, who fronts Kuroma, was a founding member of The Whigs, and is currently the guitarist for MGMT,  and who had previously produced the Gift Horse LP “Mountain of Youth”. After hearing Morris’ demos, Sullivant immediately assumed a more involved producer/instrumentalist role and the studio version of Blue Blood became a collaboration between the two. Morris and Sullivant recruited J.J. Bower (Dead Confederate, Battle Tapes) to play the drums, as well as keyboardist Dave Spivey, and they recently completed what will be the debut Blue Blood LP "This Is The Life", which will be released in September of 2014 on This Is American Music.

The album was definitely the foundation upon which Blue Blood was built, as Morris and Sullivant essentially completed recording it before Blue Blood ever played a live show.  However, it is the live lineup of Blue Blood that has brought the songs into their own.  Morris says that having the songs recorded prior to forming a band to play them made the learning process much more efficient.  But it's what each member brings of their own playing style and personality that give the songs an added depth in the live setting.  

Blue Blood in the studio is: Hunter Morris: Vox, Guitar, Organ, Piano  Hank Sullivant: Bass, Guitar, Piano, Organ, Vox  J.J. Bower: Drums  Dave Spivey: Moog, Piano, Vox  Walker Howle: Lead Guitar on “The Buyout”



Blue Blood live is:  Hunter Morris: Vox, Guitar, Organ, Piano  Nick Robbins: Guitar, Vox  Dave Spivey: Keyboards, Vox  Noel Brown: Bass  Michael Gonzalez: Drums

All songs written by Hunter Morris Produced by Hank Sullivant Engineered by Joel Hatstat Mixed by Drew Vandenberg at Chase Park Transduction Studio Mastered by Joel Hatstat


bluebloodtheband.com

facebook.com/bluebloodtheband

This Is The Life

Corinth is in northeast Mississippi. It is not in the famed Delta. It is not on the redneck riviera of the gulf coast. It is nestled in the hills that will become the mountains. It is of the land  Mississippi Fred McDowell and the Hill Country bluesmen R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough sprouted roots. It is the big bright buckle of America's Bible Belt and it is the original home of Holy Ghost Electric Show. Depending on what you would imagine the sons of preachers playing rock music in Corinth would sound like, HGES sounds exactly what you imagine...or nothing like it. Brothers Cody (songwriter, lead vocals, rhythm guitar) and Jake Rogers (guitar and banjo), Will Shirley (guitar), Conner Wroten (bass), Austin Wheeler (drums) and Jesse James (trombone and keys), have created by way of their debut, THE GREAT AMERICAN, an album that speaks well beyond their years (the band has a median age of 22 years.)

The brothers Rogers were raised with issues of religion, race and moral equivocation worn on sleeves...not hidden or neglected in favor of more polite conversation. Their father started a church designed to bring rival gang members into the same building to worship together. This was their childhood. Cody's songs bear this out. Touching on these subjects and many others of both the personal and global variety, he weaves word and sound into anthems of triumph and wonderment. Musically, the band utilizes country and folk rhythms but indulges rock ‘n roll and noise rock, recalling influences as disparate as Topanga Canyon and the Elephant 6 Collective. As Rogers says, “America’s a melting pot, and our music is the same way." That fact is due, in part, to the fact that the band began to take its current form in the friendly college town of nearby Oxford, Mississippi...home of the Ole Miss Rebels, Fat Possum Records, John Currence, the Taylor Grocery and a musical culture and lineage that would make any big city jealous. It was in Oxford that HGES hones its sound and began to start winning over audiences. Whether standing atop tables at Proud Larry's or playing Fringefest at the Powerhouse Community Arts Center, Holy Ghost is steadily working and steadily welcoming more and more fans to the fold.

Honestly, there are two Holy Ghost Electric Shows. There is the band you listen to late at night on your headphones and there is the band you see whipping crowds into a frenzy and leaving nothing on the stage. HGES does an amazing job of taking the songs from their debut (as well as a few choice covers and new songs) and giving them room to erup live. Guitars are being traded...trombones marching through crowds...drum sets crashed...everyone is screaming...it's rock and roll and it's hot and it's sweaty and it's the Electric Show, to which audiences from all over the Magnolia State will testify. Preach.

http://theholyghostelectricshow.com/

The Holy Ghost Electric Show - Let The Waters Rise

The Acrostics - Going Nowhere

Flint Hill Specials - Some Kind Of Devil

10 - Steel & Stone

08 - Tuscaloosa

07 - Broken Hallelujah

Gone Down Swinging - The Only Sons

Transmissions

10 - Love Is All We Want

09 - Lonely

08 - Postcard Symphony

07 - Note He Wrote

06 - Love's To Fault

Transmission

05 - Knocking At My Door

04 - Fell In Love

03 - Summertime Suicide

02 - Hold On My Heart

01 - You Want It

"One of the hardest-working, most bone-shaking, original bands on the American roots music circuit." Jeff Biggers, The Huntington Post 

If your last album had critics describing your group as "The Last Waltz come back to life as one unified band"' and calling the album "a master class in Americana"2 and "an album that exhibits how great American roots music can be"3, what do you do for an encore?

If you're Cincinnati's roots/Americana powerhouse Magnolia Mountain, the answer is simple. You write even better songs. You bring even better players and  singers on board. 

You release an album that raises the bar even higher. You release an album like
Town and Country.

As the title suggests, Town and Country showcases Magnolia Mountain's  deft mastery of American  musical styles and casts  that stylistic net wider than  ever before.

From the opening old-timey  Appalachian vibe of "Black Mollie", through the bittersweet Americana lament "One Waking Moment", the  Dwight Yoakam-style swagger of "Baby, Let's Pretend", the driving hard rock of "Set on Fire", to the Stax/Volt R&B-infused workout "Rainmaker", Town and Country bolts out of the gate with a
whirlwind array of American music styles.

Town and Country is full of Magnolia Mountain singer  and songwriter Mark Utley's finest collection of songs  to date, an 18-song double album of remarkable range.
The band's signature interplay of acoustic and  electric instruments is on full display on the new album,  even moreso with the addition of talented newcomers  Jeff Vanover (guitar), Todd Drake (drums) and Kathy  Woods (fiddle) to the formidable lineup of Bob Lese  on mandolin, folk harmonica, and blues harp, Utley on  acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and banjo, and upright  bassist Bob Donis!.

Magnolia Mountain's trademark blend of gorgeous  	2-, 3-, and 4-part close harmony vocals is made even  	richer with the addition of Renee Frye, who now joins  	founding member Melissa English on harmony vocals.  In addition, the band is joined on this album by a veritable who's who of Cincinnati roots musicians, including Ricky  	Nye (piano/organ) David Rhodes Brown (lap steel/slide  guitar), Brian Hogg (sax), Mike Oberst (banjo), and more.

Town and Country reflects Magnolia  Mountain's "big tent" approach to
Americana music with songs like  the Byrds-meets-bluegrass "All My
Numbered Days", the mountain  flavor of "The Old Ways", the  country-punk scorcher "Shotgun Divorce" (a duet with Bloodshot  Records artist Lydia Loveless),  the gospel rave-up "Train to Glory", the menacing, dark gothic country of  "The Devil We Know", the slow R&B burn and epic sweep of the  heartbreaking "Cry for Me", through
to the intricately layered harmonies  	of the album finale "A Light to
Bring You Home".

Included are haunting covers of "Don't Leave Just Now"  by Cincy indie-rock giants Wussy, and "Just to Know What  You've Been Dreaming" by Will Johnson of Centro-matic.  Also featured is "The Hand of Man", the band's contribution  to 2011's anti-mountaintop-removal-coal-mining complilation, Music for the Mountains.

This album is the band's third with producer John Curley  	(Afghan Whigs) at Ultrasuede Studio in Cincinnati. Also  back from the first two albums are the stunning album cover
photos of world-renowned photographer Michael Wilson.

purchase- magnoliamountain.net  -  thisisamericanmusic.com


Train To Glory

Stepping temporarily away from the full-throttle thunder of his Tennessee rock ensemble Glossary, front man Joey Kneiser’s new solo album, The All-Night Bedroom Revival (Last Chance Records) treats its listener to a subtle, stripped-down taste of genuine songcraft from a writer at the peak of his skills.  The All-Night Bedroom Revival is exactly what its title claims it to be—a soulful effort full of the fervor and spiritual fire Glossary fans have come to expect from Kneiser’s writing.  This bedroom worship service, however, has the feel of a personal revival for a private audience, and the listener comes to it like a child catching a privileged glimpse of something intimate and exciting as they peer transfixed through a tear in the revival tent-wall.

 

This brief aside from Glossary’s rock energy allows Kneiser to dive fully into other styles of writing, and unsurprisingly, his songwriting holds up in any context.  “Big Ocean” proves Kneiser as good as country songwriter as anyone up the road in Nashville: “Mama had a heart like the ocean, biggest thing I ever seen./ She could love all day like her heart was made of gasoline…Daddy was as mean as a wild dog, sharp as the edge of a blade./ He could con a flood into thinkin’ that it needed rain.”  The record possesses an organic comfort that flows seamlessly from start to finish, showcasing Kneiser’s encyclopedic knowledge of the finer points of country, folk, blues, and rock.

 

As with his previous Glossary efforts, Kneiser treads familiar ground in The All-Night Bedroom Revival, but he does so in new ways, finding inventive turns of phrase and unexpected chord progressions to guide his listener along the well-trodden roads of small town stagnation and the frustrations it brings:  “This town smells like paper mills and broken wills. / I gave up my habits, except for the ones that kill” (Paper Mills).  While demonstrating Kneiser’s keen eye for social criticism, the record does far more than demean all things small-town-Southern.  Kneiser repeatedly touts the simplistic pleasures of such worlds, reminding that contentment amid the superficial and the chaotic abounds in things like “the sound of…feet dancing across the worn-out wood” (“Adelina”) and “… [Falling] asleep with a speaker by my head” (“He Put it in the Soul of Everyone”).  After all, there must be a reason Kneiser has lived and worked in Mufreesboro, Tennessee for so long.  Sharply aware of its shortcomings but quick to praise its beauties, Kneiser is a songwriter firmly rooted in his own sense of place.  Like Faulkner, he saw in his own “little postage stamp of native soil” something worth writing about, and in The All-Night Bedroom Revival, Kneiser reveals another adept glimpse into that something.

 

Nick Nichols

Joey Kneiser - Bruised Ribs

Recorded in Athens, GA at Easy Street Productions in the fall of 2012. 
Mixed & Mastered by TJ Mimbs at Easy Street Productions.
credits

released 21 December 2012 
Frankenstrangler is: 

TJ Mimbs 
Frank Keith IV 
Danny Hurley 

and this time involved: 
Emily Braden
Jeremy Wheatley

Run Run Rudolph [Chuck Berry]

Frankenstrangler - Little Saint Nick

Recorded in Athens, GA at Easy Street Productions in the fall of 2012. 
Mixed & Mastered by TJ Mimbs at Easy Street Productions.
credits

released 21 December 2012 
Frankenstrangler is: 

TJ Mimbs (The District Attorneys / Surf Bored) 
Frank Keith IV (The District Attorneys / Tedo Stone / Ruby The Rabbitfoot)
Danny Hurley - (Dana Swimmer / Lord Baltimore)

and this time involved: 
Emily Braden (The Breaks)
Jeremy Wheatley (Crooked Fingers)

Itunes -  https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/little-saint-nick-single/id771076534
Spotify -  http://open.spotify.com/track/33hqnrPGpuAeFNDmQnSj4v
www.thisisamericanmusic.com

Little Saint Nick [Beach Boys]

Last Christmas [Wham!]

          
After half a decade spinning wheels on the Great American Highway, through the brutal heartbreaks and dire sacrifices that come with chasing the mythical rock & roll dragon, Great Peacock’s Andrew Nelson and Blount Floyd have finally eased up on the throttle. Like rock & roll as it transitioned from the erratic abandon of the late ’60s to the country-tinged storytelling of the early ’70s—donning cowboy boots and dipping its bucket in the well of American folk music—they’ve put their electric guitars back in the case, rolled their stacks back from 11, and let a serene hush wash over them. Their sound now? Beautiful, unadorned, moving—the bountiful harvest of a deep friendship and an unbreakable musical bond.

“The hangover is definitely starting to wear off,” Nelson says. “The amps had gotten a little too loud.”

“With our old band, we’d been playing all this angsty downer rock,” Floyd explains. “So with Great Peacock, we wanted the songs to be simple, poppy—infectious.”

For the first time, Nelson and Floyd weren’t writing songs for themselves, but rather songs they hoped would connect with fans. With Great Peacock they would embrace an unselfish, unpretentious aesthetic. “I don’t want to alienate people any more,” Nelson says, laughing a bit as he recalls the darker, more confessional songs he used to write. “I’m at a point where I want as many people to like our music as possible.”

Floyd and Nelson met in their early 20s in Nashville, the former having come to MusicCity to break into recording and the latter to play rock & roll. When they first ran into each other, neither had any close friends in town yet, and their connection was instant. “From the moment we said ‘hello,’ we realized we were gonna be best friends,” Nelson says. “It’s the only time it’s ever happened in my life. Blount’s brother introduced us, and I was like, ‘This guy is cool!’”

About an hour later, they were shotgunning beers together. “And it’s not like there was a party going on, either,” Nelson explains. “We were talking about music and I said, ‘Let’s get some beer.’ So we went to the gas station and bought a 12 pack of Busch. At every moment in the night, we became better friends—I was like, ‘Dude, we should get the camouflage cans,’ and Blount was like, ‘Hell yes, let’s do it!’”

“And there was this guy in front of us buying a single gas-station rose,” Floyd recalls, “and he says, ‘Yo, can I get some cigarillos and a box of magnums?’”

“We were both like, ‘That’s real love, man. Real love,’” Nelson says. “‘This guy has his life figured out—we need to figure out ours!’ I don’t think we drank a single beer normal that night—we shotgunned the whole 12-pack.”

The new friends soon found that their musical chemistry was just as intense, and that their strengths and weaknesses were the perfect complement. “The big thing about us,” Nelson says, “is that I can’t sing harmony—I’m terrible at it. And Blount doesn’t have a strong lead voice. When we’re riding around listening to music, he never sings the melody; he naturally sings the harmony. So we’re a perfect fit—I need him to sound good, and he needs me.”

Since the pair started playing together, they’ve seen two bands—and about a dozen bandmates—come and go. Through it all, their musical partnership has been a constant. “We always seemed to get what each other was doing more than anyone else,” Nelson says. “He keeps me artistic, and I keep him grounded.”

As far as Great Peacock has already come—recording a stunning debut EP of harmony-driven acoustic pop, performing as part of stylish, socially conscious eyewear company Warby-Parker’s Class Trip, and landing a coveted spot at one of Paste magazine’s 2013 SXSW showcases—the group began, almost literally, as a lark. “We kept noticing this hilarious trend of bands with names like Fleet Foxes, Deer Tick, Vulture Whale—they all had two names,” Nelson says, “one of which was always an animal.”

Kidding around one night, Nelson and Floyd decided to start a new band called Great Peacock. “I thought it was gonna be this cockamamie joke,” Nelson says. “We’ve talked a million times about starting random bands—including a Southern-rock band called Swamp Ass—and didn’t follow through. But even for a while there, when we didn’t really have anything going, I never stopped writing songs because I have to write to maintain my sanity. It’s my version of therapy. And Blount hadn’t stopped, either. Writing gave us an excuse to hang out.

“But I still didn’t think we were actually gonna do it,” Nelson confesses about the new band. “Really, the only reason it happened is because we wrote ‘Desert Lark.’”

Without giving it much thought, Nelson and Floyd posted an acoustic demo of the song on Bandcamp. Friends, family and fans went crazy over it, begging them to follow through on the new project. “We didn’t expect that,” Nelson says. “I wasn’t planning on being in a band again. I really wasn’t.” The chiming, triumphant acoustic anthem would become the centerpiece of the Nashville duo’s new self-titled EP.

Great Peacock’s harmony-driven sound appeals to fans of indie-folk, but the group is different from contemporaries like Fleet Foxes and The Head and the Heart in that their music is inextricalbly linked with the South. It’s who they are—Floyd hailing from a family of Alabama peanut farmers, and Nelson a long line of Mississippi preachers and sharecroppers. “If I had my way in life,” Nelson admits, “I’d be a country singer. My dream is to be George Jones.”

“But those country singers don’t exist any more,” Floyd says.

So instead of trying to live in a long-gone past, Great Peacock draws from the same inspirations that once fueled their now-extinct forebears (geography, aging, love/hate family relationships, blood, death, birds), channeling them into an unmistakably modern sound. For Nelson and Floyd, it’s natural, inutitive. “We know that even though there’s a history we’re connected to, we’re of our time,” Nelson says. “We know most records aren’t made on tape any more, but we’re also very much aware that—no matter the year or the production style—the right melody can be timeless.”

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