Love Canon’s ‘Cover Story’ Out Today On Organic Records – w/ Guests Jerry Douglas, Aoife O’Donovan, Keller Williams

Love Canon’s Cover Story Out Today On Organic Records
With Guest Artists Jerry Douglas, Aoife O’Donovan, Keller Williams,
Michael Cleveland, Eric Krasno, Alex Hargreaves, Mike Barnett, and more!

Available on all outlets at → https://clg.lnk.to/yNLcf

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA — LOVE CANON releases Cover Story, their 4th album, TODAY, July 13, 2018, on Organic Records. They are master instrumentalists with a charismatic lead vocalist, and they cleverly bring their acoustic-roots sensibilities to the electronic-tinged pop hits of the 80s and 90s to create a fresh set of classics. A plethora of special guests join in on the album including Dobro master Jerry Douglas, Aoife O’Donovan, Keller Williams, Michael Cleveland, and Eric Krasno, among others.

LOVE CANON pleases audiences of many walks of life, which is testified by early listens in publications running the gamut of genres including Bluegrass Today, JamBase, The Boot, and Cover Me Songs!

Blue Ridge Outdoors writes, “Love Canon is leading an eighties acoustic revival. But make no mistake. Love Canon is most definitely not a tribute band. This is not kitsch or schtick. These guys are bad ass pickers, with as much (if not more) prowess on their instruments as the bluegrass bands out there tackling more traditional Bill Monroe or Stanley Brothers standards. These guys prove their brilliance in their interpretations of these songs and the attention to detail and the work on Cover Story is simply genius.”

The band’s diehard fans are music lovers first and are drawn to the wide-ranging stylings of lead singer and guitarist Jesse Harper matched with banjo master Adam Larrabee, mandolin pickin’ by Andy Thacker, Darrell Muller holding down the low-end on standup bass, and the slick sounds of resonator guitar king Jay Starling on the Beard MA-6. It’s acoustic rock! Acclaimed fiddler Alex Hargreaves [Turtle Island Quartet, Sarah Jarosz] does all of the fiddling on this record with the exception of two tracks, and he occasionally joins them on tour.

LOVE CANON has taken many of the suggestions called out at their high-energy live shows as well as from their guest performers to offer nine invigorating tracks to bring it to the max! From the instrumental album opener, “Prelude (Angry Young Man)” by Billy Joel, to the unforgettable chorus of Howard Jones’ “Things Can Only Get Better” to the 7/4 timing of Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill / Icecaps Of Pentatonia” (with guest vocalist Mark Errelli [Lori McKenna, Paula Cole and Josh Ritter]), they run the gamut of songs from the cassette generation.  

When LOVE CANON was first thinking of putting together a guest artist record Jerry Douglas was at the top of their list. He not only acquiesced, but proposed the great Mr. Mister tune, “Kyrie Eleison.” Mike Barnett [Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, Bryan Sutton Band] joins in on fiddle for this track.

Aoife O’Donovan seamlessly blends her beautiful vocal harmonies with Harper on Paul Simon’s “Graceland,” and, with ten International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Fiddle Player of the Year awards under his belt, Michael Cleveland steps in blazing on fiddle.

“Stripped of its slick ’70s country production and replaced with upbeat horns and killer harmonies, ‘Islands in the Stream’ is a perfect laid-back love ballad when performed by Love Canon,” writes The Boot about the band’s take on the Barry Gibb [Bee Gees] classic. It features Lauren Balthrop [Dear Georgiana, Balthrop Alabama, The Bandana Splits], singing the tarnation out of the Dolly Parton part, while Harper takes on Kenny Rogers complete with a saxophone and trumpet section at the end featuring Charlottesville Jazz legends Bobby Read and John D’earth [Bruce Hornsby and The Noisemakers].

Another great example of using bluegrass instrumentation to imitate the ambient electronic processed sounds is the very epic, cinematic version of Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy The Silence,” complete with a soaring string arrangement at the end by Trey Pollard of Richmond, Virginia’s Spacebomb Studios.

Guitar hero Eric “Kraz” Krasno does a bang-up job with a fierce guitar solo on Squeeze’s “Tempted,” a song he recommended. Keller Williams brought the closing track, “Driver 8” (R.E.M.), to the band’s attention as a personal favorite; Keller wanted to do an uptempo bluegrass arrangement and LOVE CANON was envisioning a reggae/dub version, so they compromised and added the jaw-dropping classical fiddle work of Mike Barnett.

As seasoned virtuoso string players who have been touring the mid-Atlantic since 2010, LOVE CANON stays true to the approach, arrangements, and keen artistry of these nostalgic hits. Cover Story was engineered by Rob Evans at Dave Matthews Band’s Haunted Hollow Studio in the band’s hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia and mixed by Wayne Pooley, Bruce Hornsby’s Engineer/Producer. Cover Story is a follow up to the band’s previous efforts, Greatest Hits Volumes 1-3.

With this adventurous chapter in their Cover Story, LOVE CANON proves they don’t just know music history but have a vision for where music can go.

 

Love Canon photos credited to Sandlin Gaither

Cover Story Track Listing:
1. Prelude (Angry Young Man)   2:22 [Billy Joel]
2. Things Can Only Get Better   5:01 [Howard Jones]
3. Kyrie Eleison   4:13 [Steven Park, John R Lang, Richard J Page]
4. Graceland   5:56 [Paul Simon]
5. Islands In The Stream   4:04 [Barry Gibb, Maurice Gibb, Robin Gibb]
6. Enjoy The Silence   5:09 [Martin L Gore]
7. Solsbury Hill / Icecaps Of Pentatonia – Medley   5:29 [Peter Gabriel]
8. Tempted   5:21 [Christopher H Difford, Glenn M Tilbrook]
9. Driver 8   6:37 [Peter Buck, Bill Berry]

LOVE CANON is:
Jesse Harper – Guitar, Lead Vocals
Adam Larrabee – Banjo, Vocals
Andy Thacker – Mandolin, Vocals
Darrell Muller – Standup Bass, Vocals
Jay Starling – Resonator Guitar, Vocals

Guest Artists:
Alex Hargreaves – Fiddle – 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8
Sam Wilson – Backing Vocals – 2
Jerry Douglas – Dobro – 3
Mike Barnett – Fiddle – 3, 9
Michael Cleveland – Fiddle – 4
Aoife O’Donovan – Vocals – 4
John D’earth – Trumpet – 5
Bobby Read – Tenor Sax – 5
Lauren Balthrop – Vocals – 5
Trey Pollard – String Arrangement – 6
Colin Killalea – Nylon String Guitar and Backing Vocals – 6
Mark Erelli – Lead Vocals – 7
Erik Krasno – Lead and Backing Vocals and Electric Guitar Solo – 8
Daniel Clarke – Wurlitzer Piano – 7
Keller Williams – Lead Vocals – 9

Available on all outlets at → https://clg.lnk.to/yNLcf

Find out more about LOVE CANON at www.lovecanonmusic.com.

 

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Town Mountain to Release Renditions of two Grateful Dead Tunes ~ Bluegrass with Swagger

Town Mountain: The Dead Session
Artwork by Taylor Swope

To Honor the Grateful Dead in the year of the band’s 50th Anniversary
Town Mountain recorded bluegrass versions of two of their favorite Grateful Dead songs

Town Mountain: The Dead Session
Features “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo” & “Big River”
Due Out Fri, Nov 13th

“Wow, I like these hard-core acoustic honky-tonk takes on two Grateful Dead favorites!” —David Gans, musician and co-author of This Is All a Dream We Dreamed: An Oral History of the Grateful Dead.”

Town Mountain is excited to announce the independent release of Town Mountain: The Dead Session on Friday, November 13, 2015. “Each member of this band has enjoyed the music of the Grateful Dead for quite some time,” says vocalist and guitarist Robert Greer. “It seemed only fitting for Town Mountain to pay respect to some musical heroes in this year, their 50th year of existence.” They recorded an impromptu set of two of their favorite songs from the Grateful Dead’s catalog, “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo” and “Big River” at the widely acclaimed Echo Mountain Recording Studios in their hometown of Asheville, NC.

This is the Grateful Dead done in Town Mountain’s hard drivin’ style filled with a honky tonk edge and barroom swagger. The resulting sound is touched by Jerry Garcia with Jimmy Martin and John Hartford… Fitting since Hartford played a short stint in Old and In The Way before Vassar Clements filled out the band on fiddle, and Garcia’s first instrument was a banjo as he was influenced by bluegrass music throughout his career. Narrowing down to just two was not an easy task for Town Mountain.

“What can I say about “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo”? It’s just perfect. Lyrically it’s amazing,” says banjoist Jesse Langlais. “Robert Hunter can be so descriptive yet so vague in the point he’s trying to get across. Which is great for the audience because it allows listeners to choose what they want the song to be about. In my opinion that’s what a good songwriter does. He leaves the song open to interpretation.”

Langlais says, “Musically, Mississippi was extremely fun to play with exciting changes and a lot going on melodically… almost like there’s two songs in one. On the original studio version of this song Vassar Clements plays fiddle. Bobby and I tried to mimic the interplay that Jerry and Vassar had on it. This is just an amazing song, and and it made sense for us to record it because it had a bluegrass master involved. We adopted it into Town Mountain’s repertoire without changing the integrity of the song.”

“Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo” was written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter and originally released on Wake of the Flood in 1973. It was performed over 230 times live by The Dead over the years and the song was also the second set opener of the second night of the Fare Thee Well shows in Santa Clara this year.

“Big River” was written by Johnny Cash in 1958. But true to The Dead’s fashion they would take other people’s songs or traditional songs and make them their own. They had a knack for finding covers that were transcendent of the original artist and they played it in almost 400 live performances.

“We’ve always liked their version of country music. Even their original albums we’re steeped in that sound. Workingman’s Dead is full of country music influence,” explains Langlais. “The Dead kept the sentiment of ‘Big River’ but translated it to make an audience who may not have known what country music was love it. That audience for them was typically a younger more rock or jam influenced fan but they still ended up knowing the song and singing along.” “Big River” fits right into Town Mountain’s sound and wheelhouse.

Town Mountain. Photo by Sandlin Gaither.

The core of Town Mountain is Robert Greer on vocals and guitar, Jesse Langlais on banjo and vocals, Bobby Britt on fiddle, Phil Barker on mandolin and vocals, and Adam Chaffins on bass (Adam is featured on “Mississippi”). Evan Martin plays drums on both tracks. Jon Stickley fills in on bass and guitar in “Big River” and Jack Deveroux lays down the pedal steel on “Big River.”

For the cover art, Town Mountain turned to long time Grateful Dead artist Taylor Swope. Taylor has been creating official Grateful Dead art since the former VP of Grateful Dead Productions discovered her in a parking lot at a show in 2003 and offered her a license on the spot. Her work has become iconic in it’s own right, having become widely associated with the generations of Deadheads who have grown up in the wake of Jerry Garcia’s passing.

Riding the wave of excitement that followed Fare Thee Well where her poster was one of only four featured at both stadiums, and sharing Town Mountain’s deep appreciation for American roots music, Taylor says she “thoroughly enjoyed creating this image. I am obsessed with swimming and water in general, so when Town Mountain asked me to draw them a river with a Steal Your Face, it was a natural fit.”

Town Mountain is no stranger to playing covers, and what has become one of the group’s more memorable live performance songs is their version of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire,” which they first recorded in 2008’s Heroes & Heretics. Town Mountain’s version “I’m On Fire” has reached over 1 Million listeners on Spotify and has garnered over 430,000 views.

Town Mountain is also prolific in songwriting; each member contributes their well-supplied vat of original material. They are finalizing their next studio release which was produced and engineered by GRAMMY winner Dirk Powell in his studio, The Cypress House, in south Louisiana. For a sneak peek at what to expect on the future album, watch the band perform a new original song, “Wildbird,” in this wonderful session filmed by Hype Music Festivals at the 2015 Suwannee Springfest in Live Oak, FL →  http://bit.ly/Wildbird_byTownMountain_HYPE.

Town Mountain is in it for the long haul… check out out where they’ll be travelin’ to next and keep an eye on TownMountain.net for further dates as well as a brand new selection of merchandise. For updates from the road, please visit facebook.com/TownMountain, twitter.com/TownMountain, and instagram.com/townmountainbluegrass

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Shannon Whitworth & Barrett Smith Release “Bring It On Home” on Nov 20th

Shannon Whitworth & Barrett Smith’s “Bring It On Home”

A Duo Album Featuring:
The Songs of Paul Simon to A.C. Jobim to Sam Cooke

“Bring It On Home is that hidden diamond that may be the best recording to cross this desk all year.” —C. Michael Bailey, All About Jazz

“From start to finish, Bring it on Home is crafted with love… a timeless collection” —Alli Marshall, Mountain Xpress

National Release Date: November 20th, 2012

(Asheville, NC)– Shannon Whitworth and Barrett Smith are thrilled to announce the release of a new duo album, Bring It On Home. Independently recorded, it is set for National release on November 20, 2012.

In Bring it on Home, Shannon Whitworth and Barrett Smith offer up a collection of their favorite songs by their favorite songwriters. From Paul Simon to A.C. Jobim to Sam Cooke. All About Jazz writes, “Relaxed and confident, Whitworth and Smith work their way across an almost 100-year landscape of music that is the crowning achievement of the song writer’s craft. They do so with quiet percussion and carefully chosen accompaniment that makes this perfect listening music: appealing to both nostalgia and the appreciation of fine music making.”

In this eclectic album, Shannon and Barrett take turns singing lead, backing each other on harmony vocals, and playing various instrumentations with Shannon on ukulele, banjo and Barrett on electric and acoustic guitars, upright bass, and piano. From the jazzy elegance of “Moonglow”, to the mystic folkiness of Paul Simon’s “Duncan”, to the Latin groove of “Corcovado”; this album pays tribute to the art of great songwriting, with fresh arrangements that make for a truly great listen.

Bring It On Home started as a brainstorming session on a late night, cross-Canadian road trip with the Shannon Whitworth Band, which Shannon had been touring and recording with since her days of leading the The Biscuit Burners and Barrett had later joined in 2010 after swapping places with a member of the acclaimed bluegrass band Town Mountain. In this particular tour, Shannon and Barrett were an opening act for Chris Isaak, and they spent the long slow drive from Winnipeg to Saskatoon trying to compile the perfect mix tape. Somewhere in the late night hours, they realized that this mix-tape was actually a compilation of the cover songs that they had both dreamed of someday recording – their own random dream tribute album.

Two months later, Shannon and Barrett were in Asheville’s Echo Mountain Recording Studio with a team of talented friends and musicians from the area who helped to breathe the album to life. Legendary drummer Jeff Sipe (Aquarium Rescue Unit, Leftover Salmon) and master multi-instrumentalist Mike Ashworth formed the core rhythm section, and Justin Ray and Jacob Rodriguez took a break from touring with Michael Buble to contribute on trumpet and saxophone. Virtuoso bluegrass fiddlers Nate Leath and Nicky Sanders (Steep Canyon Rangers) added violins to Melissa Hyman’s cello lines while Michael Libramento, of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, played keyboards.

In recording Bring it on Home, the Shannon and Barrett looked to songs that inspire them, and hope to pass that inspiration on.

Bring it On Home ~ Track Listing

1) Bring It On Home To Me (Sam Cooke) 3:50 Soulful & Rockin
2) Moonglow (Delange, Mills, Hudson) 3:24 Jazzy & Mellow
3) You Can Close Your Eyes (James Taylor) 3:40 Folky & Mellow
4) Duncan (Paul Simon) 4:13 Folky & Beautiful
5) I Get Ideas (When We Are Dancing)  (Sanders, Cochran) 3:01 Jazzy & Sultry
6) Louise (Paul Siebel) 3:29 Folky & Funky
7) Sway (Molina, Ruiz, Gimbel) 2:52 Saucy & Latin
8) Bird On The Wire (Leonard Cohen) 3:49 Intense & Beautiful
9) Corcovado (Quiet Nights) (A.C. Jobim, Gene Lees) 4:31 Latin & Mellow
10) Green Grass (Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan) 3:47 Ethereal & Jazzy
11) I’ll Be Your Lover, Too (Van Morrison) 4:59 Rockin Ballad
12) You Are My Sunshine (Jimmie Davis) 3:59 Folky & Mellow

 Recorded at Echo Mountain Recording in Asheville, NC
Engineered by Julian Dreyer
Mixed by Neilson Hubbard
Mastered by Jim DeMain
Produced by Barrett Smith
Released November 20, 2012

BarrettSmith.com
ShannonWhitworth.net

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Archive: Interview with the Bearded Guitar Master Larry Keel

Thorough and fun interview with Larry Keel by NICK HARRAH For The Herald-Dispatch in Huntington. Nick also wrote a great review of Keller & the Keels “Thief” as well. Check out the album review here.

Below are long excerpts from the interview:

The holidays are a time for being thankful, being with family and friends and maybe doing some charity. It’s all these things too for flatpicking guitar master Larry Keel.

Talking over the phone the day before Thanksgiving from the mountains of Southwest Virginia, Keel, like many others this time of year, talked about being home for the holidays; thankfulness, charity and family came up right away.

Talk about progressive-yet-traditional bluegrass, touring with his wife and bassist Jenny Keel, and an insurance policy on his near-iconic beard, also came up.

Keel, with his band, Natural Bridge (Jenny Keel: bass/vocals; Mark Schimick: mandolin/vocals) and the help of his brother, his old friend Will Lee, are playing more than a few charity events over the holiday season.

…

Supporting causes ranging from a domestic violence shelter, to Toys For Tots, to a no-kill animal shelter benefit at the end of the month with his longtime friend and collaborator, the Fredericksburg, Va.-based “one-man jam band” Keller Williams, for Keel, already established as a kind of bluegrass deity for his fiery pickin’, it’s great to lend his music to great causes.

“It’s wonderful,” Keel said of playing the various benefit shows. “I really want to do as many of those as I can each and every year. It’s just special. I’m just extremely blessed and fortunate to be able take what I do and translate that across to people who are in need this time of year.”

…

Playing with Williams, whether it’s covering other people’s songs on “Grass” and “Thief,” or having Williams produce Keel’s 2009 record “Backwoods,” or playing some dude’s couch like they did for a contest this year, is always great, Keel said. Learning and playing a few of the 13 cover songs on “Thief” was a fun challenge for Keel.

“He picked out all the tunes and showed us versions of ’em and we got his arrangements down and went out and performed ’em,” he said. “A lot of the songs I’d never heard the original versions of, like (Marcy Playground’s) ‘Sex and Candy.’ We’d go out and play ’em and people would be singing along and I’d be like ‘I guess I’m the odd man out.’ I didn’t even know any of the words,” Keel said laughing. “We just had a great time being spontaneous.”

The most immediate shows were set to be ones with his older brother Gary, and Larry talked about the early influence on him.

“He bought me a guitar when I was 8 years old, and taught me how to play melodies and rhythm guitar and all that,” he said. “After all these years, getting to get back together to play shows with him over the holidays, it’s one of the most special times of the year for me. It’s super special.”

Talking about his exposure to progressive bluegrass and his incorporation of that into his love of traditional bluegrass, Keel explained how it all came together.

“Well, you know, I’ve always loved bluegrass, that’s definitely always been the heart and soul of my music,” he said. “But from an early age I’ve liked all kinds of music. From jazz to reggae to blues and rock and roll, of course. I guess listening to it so much and loving all those different styles, it just kind of crept into my music. Kind of infected it, in a good way, you know?

“I just love every kind of music. Well, most of it. This new country or new rock developed for record sales, it just doesn’t have a heart or a soul.”

Keel and Natural Bridge are joined by Keel’s old friend Will Lee from Keel’s first band, Magraw Gap, formed in the early 90’s.

“Will has come back out on the road with Natural Bridge and will be at the V Club show and at 123 as well,” he said. “We’ve been really excited about that. Will and I have been playing music together for 25 years or more, and there’s a great chemistry there; we read each other really well.”

New music is on tap for Keel and Natural Bridge in 2011, Keel said. The band will be releasing digital downloads of new songs off Keel’s website. And as Keel brings his bluegrass into the digital age, and as the fans change the way the industry works, Keel changes with them.

“It seems like a lot of the bands and the music industry itself has changed so much, just in the last five years,” he said. “People aren’t buying CDs like they used to; people all have iPods or a computer and can pick their favorite four songs off a record for 99 cents apiece. So we’re getting on that train. On my website we’ll have a whole page dedicated to 99 cent downloads where I’ll be releasing a new song every 30 days or so. So we can take our time with, produce correctly and release the real version we want to release, so we can have something fresh out there.”

And as Keel keeps putting his own contemporary spin on traditional bluegrass, looking back, he realizes making music is what he was bound to do.

“I heard a quote one time, some musician once said they can’t see themselves doing anything else,” he said. “It’s what I’ve always known I wanted to do.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: http://www.herald-dispatch.com/life/x846271976/Larry-Keel-brings-band-to-the-V-Club-to-support-various-charities?i=0

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