James Yorkston & The Big Eyes Family Players – Folk Songs (Domino).

James Yorkston takes a break from his usual band The Athletes and teams up with The Big Eyes Family Players to release an album of traditional folk songs, done the Yorkston way. The opener, Hills Of Greenmoor, is Lo-Fi folk and will bring a new wave of interest in the genre. As with a number of the songs on this album, Yorkston first heard it sung by Anne Briggs. Just As The Tide Was Flowing has melancholy and gentle tones. Very short, like most of the songs on the album, at just over 2 minutes. James Green of The Big Eyes Family Players says it leaves you with feelings of longing and sadness and resignation – not a barrel of laughs then. Martimas Time is another Anne Briggs one. It’s Old English and has been recorded often. Yorkston’s plaintive vocal is off set by gentle backing from the band. Mary Connaught & James O’Donnell has a bit of a faster pace with even a drumbeat! Irish tune but Yorkston has replaced the melody with one of his own. Thorneymoor Woods has an eerie opening and is a poacher’s song. Quintessential English folk with harmonium and too-ra-eh’s but don’t expect a lively tune though.

I Went To Visit The Roses is another Irish one. Interesting harmonium on this one – it was found on an Edinburgh street and has mouse proof pedals!! Pandeirade de Entrimo is a Galician instrumental which is led by the violin and recorded by Yorkston before on his The Lang Toun single. It’s a bit of a Tango in its execution and has a very Latin feel. Little Musgrave is from the 16th century, at least. It’s often been changed and Yorkston has changed it again – it’s such an organic song. Rufford Park Poachers is another that Yorkston has changed the melody on. He learned it during his many long train journeys but couldn’t replicate the guitar from the Nic Jones version that he was learning it from. Sovay is a famous old song and this is such a sorrowful version of it. A tale of a woman who dresses up as a highwayman and robs her own man, as if you didn’t know. Low Down In The Broom is a galloping finish and was rattled off in a day at the end of recording. I’m so glad that they had time and energy left to do this because it’s one of the album’s highlights.

http://www.jamesyorkston.co.uk/
http://www.dominorecordco.com/

David Blue.

Watermelon Slim -- Escape From The Chicken Coop (NorthernBlues Music).

Blues giant Watermelon Slim goes to the country heartland of Nashville for his latest offering and the opener, On Caterpillar Whine, the Nashville influence hits you right between the eyes. It’s where blues meets country with classy slide guitar from Slim, a high tempo and it is a very good start. Skinny Women and Fat Cigars is good time, honky tonk music and although you may try not to like it, you will not succeed. You See Me Like I See You is old time country where the additional vocal from Jenny Littleton fits in perfectly. Stuart Duncan on fiddle and Paul Franklin’s twanging steel guitar lend an air of authenticity. Slim has always made reference to his trucking days and this album is no different with tracks such as Wreck On The Highway. This has the mandolins and harmonised chorus’s that you would expect of mountain music. Friends On The Porch has some thoughts from the Watermelon man. This short poem is spoken throughout and is surprisingly not too much out of place. Should Have Done More is a tale of human inadequacy as Slim brings country to Nottingham, England. The overall grungy feel of the music compliments the pointed lyric very well.

Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life is a superb title and what a life Slim must have had. This is good old style country played in a contemporary way and may even get some people searching back and checking out old Hank himself. America’s Wives is another that mixes old and new country and has the obligatory steel guitar from Paul Franklin to the fore. The Way I Am is a statement from Slim and it is Nashville through and through. He has such an easy way and that steel guitar reverberates again. It’s Never Too Hard To Be Humble treads a well worn country theme of trucks, not surprising seeing that Slim was a trucker in a previous life. Slide guitar on this is a standout and it sounds like it was recorded in one take. It’s said that country music covers four main themes; prison, farms, trucks & trains and Slim more than covers the trucks theme. That is confirmed on the final three tracks. 300 Miles is a true American tale, the Honky Tonk Truck Drivin’ Songs continues the theme and things are rounded off perfectly with 18:18 Wheeler, which has the listener feeling like they are in a moving truck. Stuart Duncan’s fiddle keeps the pace up and makes it a true driving song.

This is a superb collection of Nashville inspired songs and well worth a place in your collection even if you don’t like country music. However, if you are looking for Slim’s blues side then check out his sublime last album, No Paid Holidays, with standout tracks such as the rich sounding Blues For Howard, the shuffling You’re The One I Need and the heart aching And When I Die.

http://www.northernblues.com/
http://www.watermelonslim.com/

David Blue.

Rock and Roll Tourist – Graham Forbes (Northumbria University Press).

Former Incredible String Band bassist Forbes has come up with a great idea. Go and watch gigs, write a book and get paid for it! Seems simple, doesn’t it? What I have missed out is the fact that Graham Forbes has a talent for explaining his surroundings in such a way that you can almost feel that you are there. His accounts of going to see such diverse bands as The Bootleg Beatles, Anthrax and Hayseed Dixie as well as music heavyweights Kiss, U2, Elvis Presley and BB King don’t glamorise life on the road but will still make you want to be a rock n roll star. Sometimes things don’t turn out such as the time that Graeme went to see Chuck Berry in Glasgow and the “cantankerous old sod” didn’t turn up. Eminem did the same in Hamburg. But these aren’t the tales of the road that you want to hear. You want to hear about what it’s like to travel with a band, don’t you? Take Anthrax, for instance. They’ll really be rock n roll, won’t they? Forbes’ main problem was how he was going to get from Galway (where he had just seen Amos Garrett) to Oxford, where Anthrax was playing. The resulting paragraphs sum up public travel in the UK and are hilarious. Anyway, back to Anthrax. After seeing them in Oxford, Graham travels across the Channel with them to Calais and then on to Brussels. Graham describes the toilet on the tour bus as smelling like a tent for geriatric elephants – I don’t think that any other descriptors are required. However, days of hard drinking and wrecking hotel rooms are all in the past and now Scott Ian and Charlie Benante are Anthrax’s answer to Aerosmith’s Toxic Twins – they are the Blackberry Brothers! Rock and Roll, eh?

If you only read one music book this year then make it Rock And Roll Tourist.