CD releases, artists touring, festival previews, news from UK venues and anything else that people are talking about
Conversations with international and UK artists about their music, their inspiration and their future plans
Sorting through the mass of new releases for the hidden gems, as well as reviews of live shows, festivals, books and movies
Some ideas for thematic CD samplers or iPod playlists. Add your own suggestions or submit an entire list
To all the supporters of this site and of the music.
I'm sorry to announce that Backroads is taking a break, and it will probably be permanent. You will already have noticed that the amount of material being posted has reduced dramatically in the past few months.
This triple-disc compilation offers the perfect chance for anyone impressed by seeing Hot Club of Cowtown or The Coal Porters play live to further explore the roots of their music. Selling for less than the cost of a single CD, it provides plenty to attract the interest of anyone with a hankering for some full-tilt bluegrass.
You can hardly accuse Scotland's The Sunshine Delay of rushing things. They've been playing together since 2001, yet this is only their second album, following up on their 2004 debut Outrageous Expectations. Although they've come up with a consistently melodic collection of songs, they struggle to stamp out a sufficiently individual identity to really impress.
Scott Cook is a Canadian songwriter based in Alberta and this is his third solo album. He is one of those songwriters who believe in travelling and playing. He performed 156 shows in 2010, and somewhere along the way it provides him with the material to produce an album every couple of years. As befits a man who spends his life on the road, the songs are simply delivered in a style that at times borders on talking. Yet that simple style is more than most songwriters can hope for and Moonlit Rambles is an excellent album full of stories.
The Band of Heathens have announced that Colin Brooks, one of the Austin band’s three founders and frontmen, has decided to leave “to explore other interests”.
Brooks founded the band in 2006 along with Ed Jurdi and Gordy Quist, and the three have shared the songwriting and lead singing, supported by bassist Seth Whitney and drummer John Chipman. They have made three studio albums, most recently Top Hat Crown & The Clapmaster’s Son.
Peter Case at The Cluny/Cluny 2, Newcastle
The Good Lovelies at House Concert - Barnsley
Southern Tenant Folk Union at Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford
Nicky Swann at Crumplehorn Inn, Polperro, Cornwall
Kimmie Rhodes at CCA, Glasgow
The caption on the bio page of the Orbitsuns’ website reads: “This is country, folks, but not as you know it.” That’s maybe not surprising given that this is a band born from the left field of plenty of other music genres.
It's been 11 years since Vinnie Dombroski, the Detroit-based lead singer of both post-grunge band Sponge and fetish rock band Crud, decided he needed yet another band to accommodate his artistic output, and the Orbitsuns were born.
To all the supporters of this site and of the music.
I'm sorry to announce that Backroads is taking a break, and it will probably be permanent. You will already have noticed that the amount of material being posted has reduced dramatically in the past few months.
This triple-disc compilation offers the perfect chance for anyone impressed by seeing Hot Club of Cowtown or The Coal Porters play live to further explore the roots of their music. Selling for less than the cost of a single CD, it provides plenty to attract the interest of anyone with a hankering for some full-tilt bluegrass.
Country songs are traditionally about trains and trucks. Since this site isn’t really about country music, this is a list about train and truck crashes.
Brian Burns is up first, with the story of an extraordinary incident in the history of the west – the deliberate crashing of two trains into each other as a publicity stunt in 1896. More than 30,000 spectators turned out to see the crash, and two died when the boilers unexpectedly exploded on impact. Burns has another true story song that could also have made this list – “The Train Wreck at Kiowa Creek”.
