That time John Prine and Ramblin' Jack had a chat with Bobby Bare

Watch Ramblin' Jack Elliott and John Prine talk songwriting with Bobby Bare and sing a few tunes back in 1985. 

Soul survivor Bettye LaVette chats with Margo Price

Soul great Bettye LaVette talks about singing for her fan Barack Obama and the early influence of Bobby 'Blue' Bland.

Listen to Bettye LaVette on Runaway Horses with Margo Price right here.

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings cover John Anderson tune for new tribute album

Easy Eye Sound's new John Anderson salute, Something Borrowed, Something New is out August 5th. Pre-order it here.  

Something Borrowed, Something New: A Tribute to John Anderson

“1959” performed by John Prine

 “Years” performed by Sierra Ferrell

“Wild and Blue” performed by Brent Cobb

“Low Dog Blues” performed by Nathaniel Rateliff

“Mississippi Moon” performed by Eric Church

“I Just Came Home to Count the Memories” performed by Gillian Welch & David Rawlings

“Shoot Low Sheriff!” performed by Tyler Childers

“Seminole Wind” performed by Luke Combs

“When It Comes to You” performed by Sturgill Simpson

“You Can’t Judge a Book (By The Cover)” performed by Brothers Osborne

“Would You Catch a Falling Star” performed by Del McCoury feat. Sierra Hull

“Straight Tequila Night” performed by Ashley McBryde

“I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be a Diamond Some Day)” performed by Jamey Johnson

Tyler Childers salutes the late great John Prine

Check out Tyler Childers' cover of John Prine's "Yes, I Guess They Oughtta Name A Drink After You" 

Producer/engineer David Ferguson shows 'em how it's done

David Ferguson – known for his work with John Prine & Sturgill Simpson – steps up to the mic for Nashville No More. 

Listen to David Ferguson chat about his overdue debut album on the Hippies & Cowboys podcast right here. 

LINKS

Nashville Scene The People Issue 2021: David R. Ferguson

Midweek Mixdown: Martin Belmont's Guest List

Sit back for two hours with guitarist Martin Belmont (of Ducks Deluxe & The Rumour) playing a typically well-chosen set of tunes on The Guest List #29. 

R.I.P. Knox Phillips, 1945-2020

Sadly, Memphis producer, engineer, studio owner and Sam Phillips' son Knox Phillips passed away on Wednesday at the age of 74.

LINKS
Commercial Appeal Knox Phillips, tireless champion of Memphis music, dead at 74

John Prine's collaborations you may have missed

Back around 1992, John Prine joined Dwight Yoakam and Joe Ely for a one-off version of "Sweet Suzanne." Check out more of John's collaborations below.

Quarantunes: Raul Malo salutes John Prine

The Mavericks' Raul Malo pays tribute to the late great John Prine with his own version of "I Just Want To Dance With You"

Writes Raul...
It is with a heavy heart that I write this today. I thought perhaps this virus would be a merciful one and spare our friend @John Prine. It did not. The world has now lost one of its greatest troubadours. That we all know. However I’m going tell you a little bit about what kind of guy he was. I had the pleasure and honor of “opening” for John a few years back. This was during my solo years, and I was at a real crossroads in my life as to whether or not I was going to be able to continue to do this for a living. John treated me with nothing but kindness and respect. His entire crew made sure I had everything I needed night after night. John’s character was apparent from the moment I walked through the backstage doors at whatever theater we were playing. It matters who’s in charge.

Throughout the years I would see John in all kinds of settings, from backstage at @Ryman Auditorium, to the Granny White Market (where we’d take our kids so they could grab their after school snacks). He always greeted me warmly. I can hear him clear as a spring day adding almost an extra syllable to my two syllable name...”hey Ra-uu-ul” he’d say with his unmistakably raspy drawl. Pleasantries would soon follow and then a short goodbye, knowing that we would see each other again.

I saw John many times after those years. His children and my children grew to be friends. His triumphs this year were celebrated at my house too. He was an inspiration not just personally and musically, but professionally as well. I often refer to John, and his label @Oh Boy Records, as a model for everything that we (@The Mavericks) are doing now. He set the example. He set the tone. Of course he did. He’s John Prine. – RM


Watch Raul Malo's rendition of "I Just Want To Dance With You" followed by John Prine's performance of his song accompanied by Roger Cook, Roger Greenaway and Phil Donelly back in 2003.

R.I.P. John Prine, 1946-2020

Sadly, singer/songwriter extraordinaire John Prine passed away at Vanderbilt University Medical Centre in Nashville. He'll be greatly missed. 

LINKS
CBC John Prine: "The worst thing you can have is a hit"
Hits Daily Double John Prine had a candy heart
American Songwriter John Prine: A Legendary Life

Hear John Prine join Swamp Dogg for "Memories"

"Memories" is off Swamp Dogg's new country album, Sorry You Couldn't Make It, out now on Joyful Noise Recordings. 

Watch Swamp Dogg's short film about Sorry You Couldn't Make it

Director Isaac Gale gives us a fly-on-the-wall view of Swamp Dogg making his new country album Sorry You Couldn't Make It in Nashville. 

Here's the scoop...
Jerry Williams’—aka Swamp Dogg—first love was country music, listening to it as a Navy family kid growing up in Portsmouth, Virginia. “My granddaddy, he just bought country records out the asshole,” Swamp remembers. “Every Friday when he came home from the Navy yard he’d stop off and get his records, like ‘Mule Train’ by Frankie Laine, or ‘Riders in the Sky’ by Vaughn Monroe.” His first time performing on stage, in fact, was a country song at a talent show when he was six years old: “I did Red Foley’s version of ‘Peace in the Valley.’”

While the 77 year-old Williams’ most enduring persona is the psychedelic soul superhero Swamp Dogg—a musical vigilante upholding truths both personal and political since 1970’s immortal album, Total Destruction To Your Mind—he will tell anybody who will listen that he’s considered himself country this entire time. “If you notice I use a lot of horns,” Swamp says. “But actually, if you listen to my records before I start stacking shit on it, I’m country. I sound country.”

Swamp began his professional singing career as Little Jerry Williams back in the ‘50s before working as an A&R man for Atlantic Records in the late ‘60s. His biggest hit is actually a country song: 1970’s “Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got).” Written with his best friend Gary U.S. Bonds, the track is country in that woeful, underdog-baring-their-soul sort of way that for some reason only country songs really ever allow themselves to be. Freddie North covered it first and made it a Top 40 pop song, but Johnny Paycheck took it all the way to #2 on the country charts in 1971.

Following 2018’s critically acclaimed, Ryan Olson-produced Love, Loss, And Auto-Tune—his first LP to debut on 11 Billboard charts (including at #7 on 'Heatseekers’) and his first chart ink since his 1970 song “Mama's Baby - Daddy's Maybe”—Sorry You Couldn’t Make It allows Swamp to finally dive into the sound he grew up playing. With the support of Pioneer Works Press, they recorded the album at Nashville’s Sound Emporium with Olson as producer once again, and backed by a crack studio band led by Derick Lee, a keyboard virtuoso who worked as the musical director of BET’s Bobby Jones Gospel Show for nearly four decades. Nashville guitar firebrand Jim Oblon combusts his way through lead duties, while frequent collaborator Moogstar and special guests Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), John Prine, Jenny Lewis, Channy Leaneagh and Chris Beirden of Poliça, and Sam Amidon join the action throughout.

A band of 14 players, including Vernon, Lee, Beirden, and Moogstar, among others, provides the background for Swamp’s devastating new take on “Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got).” Lead single “Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg” is one of Swamp’s most heartfelt songs to date and features Vernon on piano as well as backing vocals by Lewis and Leaneagh. He duets with country-folk legend Prine on two songs (“It’s the first time I seen John since the sixties!” laughs Swamp): the indelible, psychedelic ballad “Memories” and the reflective “Please Let Me Go Round Again.” Originally written and demoed in his forties, “Please Let Me Go Round Again” is a plea for one more chance at life, sung with acute emotional connection. Listen to Swamp Dogg's "Memories" with John Prine below.



These are narratives about love, of missing the one you love, of compassion, family and friends, and even the kind of love that transcends death. “I was looking for a new way for Swamp Dogg to go,” he explains. “Apart from me singing and writing most of the songs, I didn’t participate—in other words, I told ‘em, ‘Don’t ask me, I wanna see what happens without my influence.’ It was hard for me to do, ego-wise.”

Sorry You Couldn’t Make It sees Swamp come full circle, and closes what has felt to him like unfinished business. “They didn’t have any blacks in country until Charlie Pride came along,” he says. “But in time, all things change and that's what has happened to country music.” Surveying today’s Nashville reality, Swamp sees opportunity: artists as divergent as Darius Rucker and Lil Nas X are converging in a genre that he once worried might never give him his shot. “I'm anxious because it's like I've taken all my money and put it on one horse,” he says. “But I believe in this horse.”

Watch Isaac Gale's 13-minute documentary narrated by Lambchop's Kurt Wagner below. Get a limited-edition splatter wax copy of Swamp Dogg's Sorry You Couldn't Make It album with a bonus 3-song 7" while supplies last right here.

Hear Swamp Dogg's new country single feat. Jenny Lewis & Justin Vernon

Listen to "Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg" off Swamp Dogg's new country album, Sorry You Couldn't Make It out March 6th. 

Legendary soul singer/songwriter and producer Swamp Dogg has just announced that his new album Sorry You Couldn’t Make It, produced by Ryan Olson (Poliça), will be released on March 6th, via Joyful Noise Recordings and Pioneer Works Press. First single “Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg”—featuring piano by Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) and backing vocals by Jenny Lewis and Channy Leaneagh (Poliça)—is out now. Watch the  lyric video directed by Jacob Graham below. 

The follow-up to 2018’s critically acclaimed, Olson-produced Love, Loss, And Auto-Tune—Swamp Dogg’s first album to debut on 11 Billboard charts (including at #7 on 'Heatseekers’) and his first chart ink since his 1970 song “Mama's Baby - Daddy's Maybe”—Sorry You Couldn’t Make It allows Jerry Williams, aka Swamp Dogg, to finally dive into the sound he grew up playing: country. With the support of Pioneer Works Press, they recorded the album at Nashville’s Sound Emporium backed by a crack studio band led by Derick Lee, a keyboard virtuoso who worked as the musical director of BET’s Bobby Jones Gospel Show for nearly four decades. Nashville guitar firebrand Jim Oblon combusts his way through lead duties, while frequent collaborator Moogstar and other special guests John Prine, Chris Beirden of Poliça, and Sam Amidon join the action throughout.

While the 77 year-old Williams’ most enduring persona is the psychedelic soul superhero Swamp Dogg—a musical vigilante upholding truths both personal and political since 1970’s immortal album, Total Destruction To Your Mind—he will tell anybody who will listen that he’s considered himself country this entire time. “If you notice I use a lot of horns,” Swamp says. “But actually, if you listen to my records before I start stacking shit on it, I’m country. I sound country.”  

A band of 14 players, including Vernon, Lee, Beirden, and Moogstar, among others, provides the background for Swamp’s devastating new take on his biggest hit, 1970’s “Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got).” Written with his best friend Gary U.S. Bonds, the track is country in that woeful, underdog-baring-their-soul sort of way that for some reason only country songs really ever allow themselves to be. Freddie North covered it first and made it a Top 40 pop song, but Johnny Paycheck took it all the way to #2 on the country charts in 1971. He duets with country-folk legend Prine on two songs (“It’s the first time I seen John since the sixties!” laughs Swamp): the indelible, psychedelic ballad “Memories” and the reflective “Please Let Me Go Round Again.” Originally written and demoed in his forties, “Please Let Me Go Round Again” is a plea for one more chance at life, sung with acute emotional connection.  

These are narratives about love, of missing the one you love, of compassion, family and friends, and even the kind of love that transcends death. Sorry You Couldn’t Make It sees Swamp come full circle, and closes what has felt to him like unfinished business. “They didn’t have any blacks in country until Charlie Pride came along,” he says. “But in time, all things change and that's what has happened to country music.” Surveying today’s Nashville reality, Swamp sees opportunity: artists as divergent as Darius Rucker and Lil Nas X are converging in a genre that he once worried might never give him his shot. “I'm anxious because it's like I've taken all my money and put it on one horse,” he says. “But I believe in this horse.”

Swamp Dogg – Sorry You Couldn’t Make It 

1.Sleeping Without You Is A Dragg

2.Good, Better, Best

3.Don’t Take Her (She’s All I Got)

4.Family Pain

5.I Lay Awake

6.Memories (feat. John Prine)

7.I’d Rather Be Your Used To be

8.Billy

9.A Good Song

10.Please Let Me Go Round Again (feat. John Prine)

Watch John Prine perform "When I Get To Heaven" on The Tonight Show

"When I Get To Heaven" is off John Prine's new album The Tree Of Forgiveness in stores now. 

John Prine and Bill Murray recall their early days

Watch the new video for John Prine's poignant Summer's End

"Summer's End" is off John Prine's latest album, The Tree Of Forgiveness available from his site right here.

Happy 70th Birthday Guy Clark!

On this day back in 1941,  Guy Clark was born in Monahans, Texas and to celebrate the archetypal Americana song craftsman's 70th birthday, Austin’s Music Road Records is releasing the celeb stacked tribute This One’s For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark – on December 6. Hey, better a month late than never, right? 

Produced by Tamara Saviano and Clark co-writer of choice Shawn Camp, the double-disc set includes 30 tracks by 33 accomplished artists who are either longtime Clark pals (Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Terry Allen, Jerry Jeff Walker, Steve Earle, Joe Ely, Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill, Gary Nicholson) or those who wish they were, after having grown up on his unforgettable tunes. 

Volume 1
1.    That Old Time Feeling – Rodney Crowell
2.    Anyhow I Love You – Lyle Lovett
3.    All He Wants Is You – Shawn Colvin
4.    Homeless – Shawn Camp
5.    Broken Hearted People – Ron Sexsmith
6.    Better Days – Rosanne Cash
7.    Desperadoes Waiting For A Train – Willie Nelson
8.    Baby Took A Limo To Memphis – Rosie Flores
9.    Magdalene – Kevin Welch
10.   Instant Coffee Blues – Suzy Bogguss
11.   Homegrown Tomatoes – Ray Wylie Hubbard
12.   Let Him Roll – John Townes Van Zandt II
13.   The Guitar – Ramblin’ Jack Elliott
14.   Cold Dog Soup – James McMurtry
15.   Worry B Gone – Hayes Carll

Volume 2
1.    Dublin Blues – Joe Ely
2.    Magnolia Wind – Emmylou Harris & John Prine
3.    The Last Gunfighter Ballad – Steve Earle
4.    All Through Throwing Good Love After Bad – Verlon Thompson
5.    The Dark – Terri Hendrix
6.    LA Freeway – Radney Foster
7.    The Cape – Patty Griffin
8.    Hemingway’s Whiskey – Kris Kristofferson
9.    Texas Cookin’ – Gary Nicholson, Darrell Scott & Tim O’Brien
10.   Stuff That Works – Jack Ingram
11.   Randall Knife – Vince Gill
12.   Texas 1947 – Robert Earl Keen
13.   Old Friends – Terry Allen
14.   She Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere – The Trishas
15.   My Favorite Picture of You – Jerry Jeff Walker



Worry B Gone by Hayes Carll



Stuff That Works by Jack Ingram



Desperados Waiting For A Train by Willie Nelson




Dublin Blues by Joe Ely



Magnolia Wind by John Prine & Emmylou Harris