Hope you had a spectacular holiday. Me, I am sitting in the airport in NOLA, wondering if I will make it all the way back to NYC because of the storms and the attendant airport delays. I feel so sorry for the folks impacted by the tornado breakout in the South, tragic, especially on Christmas Day.
Today, we have something filmed at the Americana Music Fest 2011, from the amazing Elephant Revival. BTW, they have a brand new EP out. The song we bring you is the Music Fog recording of "Ancient Sea." Timeless music, perfect for the days after, and the days to come.
We have an early Christmas present for you today from a band of two that recently announced a hiatus from each other (they called it irreconcilable differences, but they are not married – at least to each other.) Joy Williams and John Paul White, better known as The Civil Wars, catapulted into the Americana world with meteoric trajectory. They won our hearts at the Americana Honors and Awards, and are nominated for a Grammy this year with Taylor Swift, who has been a fan of theirs since almost the beginning of their union. The Civil Wars: VH1 Unplugged will come out on January 15, 2013, and you will only find it on iTunes.
Here's hoping they reunite to tour behind it, as they create a communication on stage that is utterly captivating. Here is a taste, from 2011, when they played for the Music Fog cameras at Threadgill's WHQ during SXSW. The song is “From This Valley,” which can be found on the Mercyland, Hymns For The Rest Of Us album, which came out earlier this year.
The calendar has turned to the last page of the year. December is upon us, and the holiday season is about to kick into high gear. All I want for Christmas this year is to unpack all the boxes from my recent move, so I can actually entertain! Yahoo and yeehaw. I am only sorry that this year I don’t expect to be attending MusicFest at Steamboat Springs - missing it for the first time in a decade. Of course, the new gig comes first, and the rest of the Foggers are off globe-trotting. So they won’t be in attendance either. But then again, the travel takes us all kinds of places, with the ability to capture moments that are then preserved forever.
Got one of them today, from the 2011 MusicFest at Steamboat, the father and son collaboration of Kevin Welch and Dustin Welch. Of course Dustin has been a busy boy these days, he does workshops with Wounded Warriors to bring music creation to their lives. Check out Voicesofagratefulnation.org or soldiersongs.org for more information on this worthy project. Dustin is also readying his new album, Tijuana Bible, for late February release. He slid me a copy before I left Austin, and I can’t wait for you to hear it. Kevin is on tour in Canada now, and continues his songwriter workshops in Wimberley, TX. A beautiful thing indeed.
Speaking of beauty…here is the Music Fog recording of “Things I Cannot Change,” from Dustin’s forthcoming album!
