Rosie Flores "You Tear Me Up"

Whoo hoo, the long holiday weekend is coming. Hope you are planning something fun. There are festivals and gigs and opportunities to blow it out everywhere for this rite of passage, the functional end of the summer season! If you are going to be around Austin or in the Hill Country of Texas, you might want to check out Hayes Carll's Labor Day Bash at Luckenbach, happening Sunday, September 5th, with a totally kick ass line-up: Alejandro Escovedo, Jesse Dayton, The Trishas, Corb Lund, John Evans Band, and Rosie Flores. Shilah Morrow, the empress impresario of Sin City Social Club put this fabulous day together with Hayes' camp and Abbey at Luckenbach. An aside, I was just out at Luckenbach this past Saturday to see Robyn Ludwick and her band rock out under the trees. She has a sultry and moody new CD coming early next year produced by Gurf Morlix!

Actually, allow me to digress even more, as we will be catching up with Hayes and band, and Corb Lund, from the above mentioned line-up, for the Music Fog cameras in Nashville at the Americana Music Festival coming up September 8th--11th. Can't wait for that, too! Music Fog will be at the Convention headquarters, the Sheraton Nashville Downtown Hotel, with our cameras rolling. I hesitate to tell you who all we have set to perform at our private video shoots, but suffice to say there are 25 plus and we are still confirming more. But I can tell you there is still availability to stay at the Sheraton every night but Saturday, for $189/night plus tax.

Again from the above mentioned line-up, we have a Rosie Flores video for you today, from our marathon sessions at Threadgill's in Austin, filmed during SXSW 2010. If you will recall, when we posted the last Rosie video, she was healing from her broken arm. Her summer has been busy nonetheless! From her blog, "September has us performing through the Southwest, where I’ll be spending my birthday on the 10th of September in Santa Fe, NM. Then heading to Greenbay, WI playing the Oneida Casino with Big Sandy, and then meeting up with Ruby James, Gail Davies and Chris Scruggs for a nice country festival in the South of France. Check my website at “Tour” for details. Cheers, Rosie." And let us cheer Rosie on, as she delivers "You Tear Me Up!" from Bandera Highway. Rockabilly in the grand style.

- Jessie Scott

Matt King & the Cutters "Rockabye the Cradle"

The Pennsylvanian is an Amtrak train that rolls 444 miles from New York, through Newark to Philly, and on its way to Pittsburgh. I used to live in Pittsburgh, where I started my career in radio so very last century. A friend of mine, Ed Salamon, just published one of those "Images Of America" series books called "Pittsburgh's Golden Age of Radio." I am humbled to have been included. Pittsburgh is the birthplace of commercial radio, with the FCC granting KDKA a license to operate in 1920. And there used to be magic on the airwaves in Pittsburgh. I haven't been in so long that I can't know for sure, just making the assumption that it isn't now what it used to be. But then, what is? We are in the middle of such a seismic shift, so obvious when you take a train through rust belt towns and see boarded up building bearing graffiti and broken windows; factories and warehouses that used to be serviced by the circulatory system that was once these tracks. And you know things have changed when you get to a place in your own life where you have to explain your resume, as what was once held in esteem no longer even exists! Oh, but the changes we have seen over the last half century. The landscape, the wealth, the industry, the migration to the south from the north. From once thriving communities to rack and ruin. Meth labs and prostitution, and gigantic prisons to accommodate society's losing class.

Matt King posted a train tune on his website on August 16th, "Back To Baltimore." Matt writes about the changes the march of time has brought. And he delivers biting socially commentary, deceptively clothed in an easy to swallow musical pill. Goes down without you even realizing what you are ingesting. Music with a message, what a concept!

There are Texas gigs coming up, catch 'em when you can! The EP Matt King and the Cutters, came out in March. It was recorded old school style to one-inch tape by Vance Powell in Nashville. You will find a Jeff Lynne flavor there to the tune "Rockabye The Cradle," which Music Fog also recorded, during SXSW at Threadgill's in Austin.

- Jessie Scott

Tommy Womack "On & Off the Wagon"

Tommy Womack is a wordsmith. Pure and simple. Well, actually there is nothing simple about Tommy...pure and complex! How is that? The words manifest in all different kinds of ways. There are songs, some delivered solo, and some with bands current and past; in reverse order with DADDY, The Bis-quits, and Government Cheese. There are books, The Cheese Chronicles, which is in my estimation one of the finest rock and roll books ever written; The Lavender Boys and Elsie, the collected civil war era letters of Albert and Elsie Deveraux which came out in 2008; and now we await an illustrated children's book to be published this year called Jack The Bunny. He has even contributed columns to Music Fog's website from time to time. His blog over on his website is a literate and illuminating glimpse into his life. From it, posted back in May:

"On Tuesday I got my second day of recording done for my next solo venture. John Deaderick and I – the same team who gave you There, I Said It! - are at it again. Expect a 2011 release for this one. (It makes no sense to rush these things anymore, does it.) Songs recorded so far: “On & Off The Wagon,” “Play That Cheap Trick, Cheap Trick Play,” “It Doesn’t Have to Be That God,” “Bye & Bye,” “Wishes Do Come True,” “Pothead Blues,” “I’m Too Old to Feel That Way Right Now,” “Darling Let Your Free Bird Fly,” “Guilty Snake Blues,” and “I Love You to Pieces."

Whoo-hoo! A new Tommy Womack CD is an well anticipated and wholly awesome thing to contemplate!

Tommy came up on the Music Fog bus this past February, at Folk Alliance, and brought Lisa Gray with him to lay down one of the above mentioned new tunes. Is this a song about sobriety, about being on the road, about marital fidelity, about the human condition? Answer, likely all of the above. A lot to stuff in, delivered in just two minutes and thirty-eight seconds! "On and Off the Wagon."

- Jessie Scott