James Hyland "Come to Me"

Last night was the first time I perceived the sun going down earlier than it was at summer's height. I know, I am a little slow on the uptake here, just been busy and not out at sundown much, I suppose. This past weekend, there was oyster stew and football, and nothing says fall to me like soup, sundown, and screaming at the TV. Our buddy Jenni Finlay posted an autumn recipe on Facebook:

All Saints Soup

1 pound ground beef
1 small yellow onion, chopped
1 small can chopped green chilies
1 pkg hidden valley ranch dressing (envelope)
1 pkg taco seasoning mix (envelope)
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 can pinto beans
1 can hominy (white or yellow - I use yellow to make the soup more colorful)

Brown ground beef and chopped onion in a big pot. Add green chilies. Add envelopes of seasonings. Stir to mix completely. Add cans of veggies and beans (just dump them in with water and all). You can add two cans of any one of these if you want to make it go further. This is especially good served with cornbread and garnished with fresh chopped cilantro, grated cheddar cheese, and a squeeze of lime.

Now, mind you, it's still 90 degrees in Austin, but that feels like a marvelous cooling off from the 100's of a few weeks back. Everything is relative.

Jenni has a fine roster of folks she works with, among them, is James Hyland. For 10 years, he was the lead singer and principle songwriter for the acclaimed South Austin Jug Band. Back in March, he and Kim Deschamps took part in our video shoot at Threadgill's during SXSW. This song, "Come to Me," was originally featured on the SAJB release Strange Invitation. The song is reborn now, as a much slower and intimate version, on James Hyland & The Joint Chiefs' new CD, Celestial Navigation, which just came out last week. There is a cool video of some of the recording process here. He describes his music as "the love child of Beck and Bob Dylan’s band at a Tom Waits party, while Willie Nelson's "Sad Songs and Waltzes" plays on the jukebox.” Waits and Beck, huh...now I am not sure if it's major lust, or forever unattainable. Nonetheless, it is delicious. Pass the spoon.

- Jessie Scott

Susan Cowsill "The Way That It Goes"

I wanted to take a minute and tell you the tale of Sheila Francis, whom we met on our very first outing to MusicFest in Steamboat Springs 2009, as the fledgling company called Music Fog. It was the last day, and Ben Krech was hell bent on executing an idea he had for a "Gondola Concert Series," getting artists to play while in motion in a confined space, and filming it. We tweeted for a "contest winner" to take the ride in the gondola with Paula Nelson and George Devore for this private mini-concert up and down the mountain. Sheila answered the tweet, and magically appeared in the allotted 5 minutes. Since then, she has gamely interned on many other Music Fog road trips, and contributed articles from events we didn't cover; all while she was getting her degree in accounting! A couple of road trips back she wound up behind the Music Fog camera, as an operator, and though that was neither her career path intention, nor ours, we are digging what she is putting down! Don't forget the Music Fog motto is, "How hard can it be?" So, most of our Nashville sessions feature Sheila on camera two, and you can clearly see that she "gets it." Some beautiful shots there!

Our last session on the last day at the Americana Fest in Nashville was with a legend. I have a policy of not telling anyone on the crew when they are going to be in the presence of royalty, so I didn't say Susan Cowsill of THE COWSILLS, though I guess it's not that common of a name, is it? Susan was also with the Continental Drifters, one of the most amazing live bands I have seen over the last 20 years! Susan and band - Russ Broussard, Sam Craft, Jack Craft, and Mary Lasseigne - came in early, and sussed out our 'studio set' the Sweet Suite at the Sheraton Nashville Downtown. Susan checked out the fine guitars we had on hand from Gibson, and decided to play the Hummingbird. She broke a string towards the end of this song, the first in her set, so she grabbed the Songwriter Deluxe Standard for the remaining songs. Nice choices, huh?! The drum kit was on loan from Somebody's Darling, who you will see very soon here at Music Fog. The feeling of tiredness was catching up with us from having recorded 36 previous sessions, the struggles to stay on schedule, and the OMG moment of coming back to our space that morning to discover that a vendor had mistakenly tore down our set; they had removed our "mojo." Frantic phones calls, emails, and texts yielded their return, and then the race was on to rebuild and get the set ready for the day. What originally took over three hours to build, was reset in about twenty minutes! And magic ensued on that last session of the last day.

Susan Cowsill's latest CD is Lighthouse, and was beautifully reviewed by David Fricke in Rolling Stone magazine. In a song that is guaranteed to make you cry, to make you ponder the ebb and flow of the seasons, the eternal pull of the cycle of life, here is "The Way That It Goes," which can be found on the new album.

- Jessie Scott

Morgan O'kane "Time"

The Music Fog crew is busy doing the due diligence, getting ready for another trip, but this time on a private shoot for an artist. Sometimes we move like a military cadre, quietly making our preparations out of the line of sight. There is a clandestine feel to it. We are scattered in different cities, and that is not an obstacle to us as a company, what with communication being what it is these days. But when we get mobilized, it has a kind of George Peppard "A Team" vibe, though I hear it with different music. Of course, the "A Team" is back as a movie this year. I get a little worried that our culture spends so much time recycling rather than inventing. I guess there are always periods like this before moving on, but it seems we've been in ennui land for a decade. TV shows coming back to life as movies, sequels, prequels, and now I see that Cheap Trick is playing Vegas doing a reprise of Sgt. Peppers! Yikes.

Photo Credit: Martin Diver Photography

We don't subscribe to the notion that everything good has already been invented, and that there is nothing new to explore. The building blocks remain the same, but even when people pick up threads from before, they can create something new. And so it is with the melting pot of Americana. Throw all that roots music into the gumbo pot, and form something that isn't a pure bit, but instead a Heinz 57 of music. Morgan O'kane is true to the roots, but his music has a rock and roll energy to it. We hold this truth to be self evident, that a society without artists is a less rich one. You have to have dreamers, schemers, to move things forward. Morgan O'kane, Ferd Moyse and Zeke Healy have been on a campaign of their own, to conquer Europe these last three weeks. They are playing a free show this Thursday (9/23) at King's Cross Social Club in London, and we are all invited to their Hootenanny. This ain't your Grandpa's string band music!

- Jessie Scott