Category Archives: Music Review

Music Review: Austin Lucas – New Home In The Old World [Last Chance Records]

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I first heard Austin Lucas on a song on a promo compilation compiled by Suburban Home Records (specifically Suburban Home Records Mix Tape Volume 5.) The compilation was a great mix of current and classic performers but the song that kept me coming back was a demo version of Sleep Well, a languorous slice of sparse, somber beauty that haunted me and drew me in again and again.

Lucas is journeyman of sorts. In his career this Indiana native has navigated metal, punk, folk and country. His dexterity and fidelity to the craft led him to collaborations with fellow punk vets Chuck Ragan (Hometown Caravan) and Frank Turner (Under The Influence: Volume 7) and led to Lucas landing a spot on Regan’s post-punk foray into roots-folk collective known as The Revival Tour.

On first impression Lucas proves the idiom “You Can’t judge a book ..’ Much like Aaron Neville,
with whom Lucas not only shares a startling looks-to-voice disparity but also an expressive  vibrato.

Lucas’ voice also carries the high lonesome of Bill Monroe in the opener Run Around, a jaunty front-porch break-down and Sit Down, a lost love number accented with Todd Beene’s weeping pedal steel and barroom piano. These are songs I’d recommend to anyone bemoaning about country music’s glory days gone by.

Thunder Rail and The Grain with their ringing guitar hooks, earnestly cryptic lyrics are post-punk gems that show Lucas has been an astute student of 80’s era R.E.M. His voice even takes on Stipe-like qualities on the latter.

There is a more filled-out version of the aforementioned Sleep Well featuring Lucas’ sister Chloe on backing vocals. This version holds just as much poignancy as that demo introduction, though I do miss that harmonica.

Keys is a lyrical and poetic testament against the insidious seduction of war “ I was told once only battle can save me from my own worthlessness.” If truth is the first casualty of war it falls on the Lucas to offer truth sanctuary within his allegory.

Throughout this fine release is a crackerjack band comprised of Lucas’ father Robert – who handed down his music legacy to his boy, Lucas’ sister Chloe and wife Cate on vocals ,cChris Westhoff,  Jason Groth & Mike Kapinus from Magnolia Electric Company, Todd Beene from Lucero, Christian Rutledge from Bowery Boy Blue .

 

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW3AfUbYLx4[/youtube]

Music Review – Lucinda Williams – Blessed [Lost Highway]

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It’s a staple of the blues mythos that things are bad and bound to get worse – Born under a bad sign, Born to Lose, Ain’t No Luck But Bad Luck… yeah, not a lot of sunshine on this side of the street.

Since moving to L.A. and marrying her manager, Tom Overby, on stage after a Minneapolis, Minn. concert in a nod to the late Hank Williams (no relation)- who married his second wife, Billie Jean, on stage in New Orleans – the Queen of Americana Music has seemed more satisfied of late and, dare I say, happy.

Williams catalog, like the great songs from country and blues music, is full of great songs about lost or unrequited love, but happiness? How does that work?

On her 9th studio album, Blessed Williams’ proves it can work quite well. The album opener Born To Be Loved is a tender blues number of affirmations. “You weren’t born to be abandoned. You weren’t born to be forsaken, you were born to be loved.” Williams world-weary voice and great immediacy of Producer Don Was and musical accompaniment drains any sap that might have crept into the song Buttercup is a barn burner that continues analogous caparisons with love and the natural world that was part of her last release Little Honey.

Not that everything has been rosy in her life; Williams saw the death of her longtime manager Frank Callari and the suicide of musical contemporary Vic Chesnutt, but the respective odes to these lost friends, the Wicked Game-slink of  Copenhagen and the rocking Seeing Black take these difficult topics and reflects on them with maturity and grace.

This approach is also applied to Soldier’s Song , a statement on war told as a shifting narrative from the killing fields to Main Street. It’s striking in how Williams finds from the poignant to normality and back again to heartbreaking conclusion.

I Don’t Know How You’re Livin’ is a song of devotion and faith that rolls on waves of pedal steel and slide guitar and Convince Me simmers with a longing  from the narrator that succinctly sets the tone for the records, and Lucinda Williams new direction overall. She’s seems be be hopeful by creating songs that direct us toward, if not outright deliver at our feet, hope.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrN9Wgh5Aic&feature=related[/youtube]

Music Review: Sunday Valley – To the Wind and On To Heaven [self-released]

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Here is a record that has been on heavy rotation at Casa Twang for the past two weeks.

For the past decade or so Music City has fumbled like a mad scientist to piece together sure-fire radio hits from the worst parts of rock and country music , though there have been major financial success, the lifespan of the work is questionable. The musical limbs seem to reject each other. And we’re not talking about rap and country music here (shut it Colt Ford!) It’s country music and rock music. They share the same DNA for tap-dancing  jeebus sakes!

These hacks should take a page from South-Eastern Kentucky’s Sunday Valley. The trio’s name ,the title of their debut album (recorded at Shangri-la Productions in Lexington, Ky with producer Duane Lundy) and sizzling cuts like Jesus Boogie might lead you to believe they are a Christan band, and they might very-well be. But they travel the road straddling the spiritual and the secular blazed by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Ralph Stanley, Johnny Cash and Elvis. The borderlands of gospel, country and country music become a blur out the window of a pedal-to-the-metal 18-wheeler fueled on whiskey, a electrified Telecaster the holy Pentecost.

Case in point, the souped-up gospel of All The Pretty Colors and Sometimes Wine whips up a rightous ruckus as Sturgill Simpson sings with full-on abandon and treats his guitar like it spoke ill of his mama. Gerald Evans’ chugging bass and drummer Edgar Purdom’s tight , heated keep a heated, steady pace. There is also a nice uncredited fiddle and barrel-house piano to round things out.

Never Go To Town Again is Southern rock with the brake off. Simpson sets himself up in a John Henry-like man vs machine duet with his Telecaster. He wails and calls while the machine snarls and snaps with a fury that would  make Cerberus whimper.

Things throttle down a bit for some Allman Bros-esque Blue-Eyed soul. Oh, Sarah yearns dreamily toward a road-as-mistress theme and I Wonder and I Don’t Mind are great barroom weepers that burns with longing and regret, the latter tales off like a great, lost Marshall Tucker Band song.  Cut The Sails is straight-up acoustic fireside country ballad tracing back country music nautical roots in the spirit of George Strait  or John Anderson. These all really showcase the nuance and range of Simpson’s voice.

Simpson reportedly left a steady job with the railroad to pursue his dream of making music like they couldn’t dream of doing anything else. This is music that is as good-hearted as it is raucous,  full of piss and vinegar as well as good will, and and as ready to love as itchin’ to fight.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Vfx4OvpXE[/youtube]

Gurf Morlix – Blaze Foley’s 113th Wet Dream [Rootball Records]

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“He’s only gone crazy once. Decided to stay.” – Townes Van Zandt about Blaze Foley

For Gurf Morlix to create a tribute album for his Austin running buddy and fellow singer-songwriter, the late, great Blaze Foley, was a tricky endevour. Foley wrote songs with such singular originality edging toward cloying sentimentality and corny humor and instead delivering songs of heart-wrenching honesty and dry wit. Once hear Foley do a Foley song you can’t really imagine anyone else doing it.

Not that it hasn’t been tried before. Foley’s songs have been covered by John Prine (Clay Pigeons) and Merle Haggard (If I Could Only Fly.) And Foley has inspired others as as the subject of Austin contemporaries Townes Van Zandt’s “Blaze’s Blues” and Lucinda Williams’ “Drunken Angel.”

Foley’s legacy is ready-made for mythology. He used to jokingly claim to be the illegitimate son of Red Foley and Blaze Starr, to be a news broadcaster from Cincinnati and to have once tried to break into Caspar Weinberger’s house to “see what was on his VCR.” These whoppers are like a seeping breach between a rich source of song-craft inspiration and a need to recreate himself.

In truth Blaze Foley. Born in Marfa Texas (setting for the films Giant and There Will Be Blood and currently a thriving creative community) in l949. He performed in a family gospel act called the Fuller Family with his mother and sisters. He eventually landed in Austin, a city that prides itself on non-conformity, and with his duct-taped boots and clothing, sense of humor and stark, brutally honest songs, stood out.

Gurf Morlix is an Americana music pioneer. A New york native in1981 he moved to Los Angeles where he met a kindred spirit Lucinda Williams. He went on to lead her band for 11 years (1985 to 1996) singing, and playing guitar, and eventually producing her albums. His latter role as producer of Williams’ pinnacle Car Wheels On A Gravel Road led to their acrimonious split. Morlix then went on to play either guitar, bass, mandolin, dobro, pedal steel guitar, lap steel, banjo, piano, harmonica, and a variety of other instruments for and/or produce a literal who’s-who in the the Americana/rock field – Warren Zevon, Mary Gauthier, Robert Earl Keen, Slaid Cleaves, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Buddy and Julie Miller, Tom Russell, Guy Clark, Emmylou Harris, Michelle Shocked, Jimmy LaFave, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock, Mojo Nixon, Jim Lauderdale, Jerry Lee Lewis, Peter Case, Bob Neuwirth, Don Walser, Jon Langford, Steve Earle, Harry Dean Stanton, Charlie Sexton, The Plimsouls, Victoria Williams, James McMurtry, Flaco Jimenez, Rosanne Cash, David Byrne, Kevin Welch, John Prine, Dave Alvin and many more. Impressed yet?

Blaze Foley’s 113th Wet Dream is 15 Foley originals that display the dark-to-light shadings of the man’s talent. Displaying a sense of humor and song-craft Roger Miller would envy on the cuts Baby Can I Crawl Back To You, Big Cheeseburgers and Good French Fries and No Goodwill Stores in Waikiki and the unvarnished melancholy and longing of If I Could Only Fly (featuring renowned Texas singer/songwriter Kimmie Rhodes on backing vocals) and Cold, Cold World that would make his buddy Townes Van Zandt weep. Some of the songs – Oh Darlin’ and Rainbows and Ridges combine elements of both.

Morlix ‘s arrangements and delivery are straightforward and top notch playing adds just the right amount of adornment. Aside from the excellent musicianship Morlix, unlike Steve Earle’s 2009 tribute to his mentor Townes Van Zandt, appears to have no urge to put his personal stamp on the songs.

Morlix was there on that cold February day in Austin when they put Blaze Foley in the ground as a result of being on the business end of a 22-caliber rifle. He was not content to let his songs be buried with him.

This CD is released in conjunction with the documentary film, Blaze Foley: Duct Tape Messiah, which has been 12 years in the making.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFuOh2TXnHM&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KwR7fk1PGQ[/youtube]

Music Review: Truckstop Darlin’ – Truckstop Darlin’ [self-released]

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It still amazes me that in these terminally-bored-too-hip-to-care times any band would brandish that most maligned and unhip of genres; Southern rock. Broken hearts and barroom bloodstains on a plaid shirtsleeve, earnest stories of hard times begetting harder men backed by an accompaniment more akin to Black Oak Arkansas than the Black Keys. This music is not going to get you cred at your hoody-wearing hipster PBR bar (unless you’re being ironic.)

But like redneck culture (of which I count myself a member) Oregon’s Truckstop Darlin know they’re unrefined and take pride in stories well told, the hard beauty of sentimentality and the ragged craft of a well executed rock song.  And they’re more n’  happy to shove your smirking peckerwood mug in it.

How a scene built around this halfbred genre is being forged in the rainy green climes of the Pacific Northwest is even more of a head-scratcher. Portland Oregan seems like the last place you’d hear amped-up twang of Truckstop Darlin’ and partners  I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch In The House, Root Jack, the recently relocated Riviera as well as the literate roots-rock of  Kasey Anderson  For a place not marinated in the legacy of Dixie or the neo-brutal beauty of Cormac McCarthy this is fertile ground for great Southern rock.

Truckstop Darlin’s new, self-tiled album- mastered by Jon Burbank from  I Can Lick Any SOB In The House -  has all the ingredients for a classic Southern rock (or country for that matter) album – name-dropping Southern states (Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina)  musical legends (Merle Haggard) Saturday nights, hard times, copious whiskey, broken hearts – it’s there but done in ways that are both comfortable and draws from current rock music to inject a freshness.

The comparisons to early Drive By Truckers (back when they were full of piss, vinegar and Jack Daniels)and Uncle Tupelo are apparent, but there is a classic sound there as well. Tired Old Prom Queens is a Billy Joe Shaver-inspired song imagined for the Marshal Tucker Band.

Bluegrass State beings to mind early Southern-Gothic era REM and Anna Lee sound like it’s a lost B-side from The Band. King of the Highway’s lonesome asphalt-paved heartache that is as close to a straight-up country tune found here.  Down snakes along with a epic Big Rock sleaze that mixes gunpowder and melancholy to great results.

Broken Valentine is a revved-up post-punk-county song that is one of my favorites.  John Phelan’s gravel-throated delivery and stuttering buzz-saw guitar, the driving rhythm section of Eric Kotila’s drums and Nick Foltz’s  bass and Michael Winter pedal steel cry.

Truckstop Darlin’ shows what old can be made new and vital and can, for damn sure, kick your ass all over again.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZhb5oNrHsY&feature=related[/youtube]

Music Review: Hank Williams: The Complete Mother’s Best Recordings…plus!

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George Gershwin, Scott Joplin, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan – these are all men who have left their imprint on American music in their time and all music that followed. Another member of this influential group would be Hank Williams Sr. for the what the Pulitzer Prize Board described as his “craftsmanship as a songwriter” and his ability to “express universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life.” when he was awarded a special citation earlier this year.

Williams’ cannon is brief but significant cutting across genres and it is fitting that he is an inductee in both the Country Music and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It boggles the mind what he might have accomplished if hadn’t died in the back seat of that Cadillac convertible in the early hours off the morning on New Years Day, 1953 at the age of 29.

Time Life Records has increased that body of work by more than 50%. The much coveted, bootlegged and for the last 8 years litigated by the principles for the Hank Williams estate, Jett Williams and Hank  Jr. , Mother’s Best radio spots were made for Nashville station WSM (made famous by carrying the Grand ‘Ol Opry) when Hank and his band were on the road and not able to do their usual live performance.

If you lived within range of Nashville’s WSM radio station from late 1950 to late1951, and were an early riser, you could hear Hank and the a backing band  (early on the Drifting Cowboys later the Owen Bradley Quintet) live between 7:15 and 7:30 a.m. Hank and the boys (and sometimes his wife Audrie) would cut up with announcer Louie Buck, tell tales, pitch for the sponsor -Mother’s Best Flour, Cornmeal and animal feed and, yes, sing songs. Some of which were just a few days old and, with their seeming simplicity off-the-cuff style performance, belied their endurance as distinctive templates that guided many preceding songwriters in the craft of popular and country music.

Hank Williams: The Complete Mother’s Best Recordings….Plus! is fifteen audio discs containing seventy-two complete fifteen minute shows with over eighteen hours of great sounding songs from his childhood, such as “On Top of Old Smoky, and debuts of new recordings like Cold, Cold Heart and I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You) and Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain (and here I thought Willie Nelson wrote that one.) The real treat here is the between the music banter showing the human side of Hank as he jokes and chews the fat with Louie and the boys.

The “plus” in The Complete Mother’s Best Recordings…plus! is a DVD featuring two of Hank’s original band members, Don Helms and Big Bill Lester, last interviews. there is also a 108 page book, written by respected music writer and Hank Williams historian, Colin Escott, along with an introduction by Hank Williams, Jr. and afterword by Jett Williams.  This deluxe, limited box set is packaged in an antique working radio where the listener presses the radio dial and selections of Williams will play.

The collection is available from Time Life and early pre-orders are being accepted at www.hankwilliamsmothersbest.com or by calling (212) 991-5195.

Music Review: Joe Thompson – Yankee Twang (self-released)

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On his second release Joe Thompson takes us on a journey of a man caught between two worlds – the American northeast and the southwest. His birthplace of Western Pennsylvania,  his current residence of New York City and Texas, the source of his lineage (the birthplace of his parents if the narrative in Texas waltz is factual.)  All play a part in the shifting landscapes of Yankee Twang, but it appears that in this struggle of geographic and identity the main source of aesthetic inspiration is the Lone Star State.

With a barroom baritone that would truly make Randy Travis proud, Thompson opens Yankee Twang with Blue New York – a classic George Strait-like ballad of lonely nights and hard love in the city that refuses to let you sleep. The chorus calls out to Texas, Austin specifically, as remedy for the big city blues, but he sounds like a man that would cast his lot with any way out of Gotham –

Lucky Mistake is a Nashville hit as-yet not recorded by one of the CMA chosen hat-acts. Upbeat but not frothy and great to sing to at the top of your lungs. I hope Thompson is lucky enough to have Kenny Chensey pay him for the privilege of ruining it. Next is the song I hope to hear in every tequila bar in America – Luisa! Luisa! sounds has a Texas Tornadoes festive spirit that belies the sad story of the protagonist losing the song’s namesake. Tequila does that for you.

Sweet Texas Waltz is a gorgeous acoustic-led number that really being to bear the duality theme that runs throughout. “My Yankee blood’s rich with that black Texas mud, but a Yankee I am through and through.”  And this longing results  in “I wish I could dance that sweet Texas waltz, the way my mom and dad do.”

Summer ’93 reaches into West Texas and back in time to channel Buddy Holly’s rave-up rockabilly hiccup beat. I Could’ve Slept All Day is a damn fine lovely lament of tear-stained love and regret.

The song that stands out the most to be is the briefest on the release. At 2 minutes and 32 seconds Traction is a moody, menacing window into the heart of a man that gave all to love and recognizes his estranged reined back emotions seemingly in anticipation of, or causing, the end. It’s as stark edge of emotion in song as I’ve hard.

As a Texan that lived for five years in New York City I get a kind of reverse sense of cultural disassociation that Yankee Twang emits. Dirt and blood run thick as as Houston humidity and I feel a kinship to this generation-removed Texan brought up in the rust, instead of the Bible, belt. Thompson recently moved to Austin.  I hope he ventures outside that bubble and the reality matches the mythology this release is steeped in.

For fun Thompson has a cocktail companion to every song on the album.

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Music Review – Mat D’s: Plank Road Drag [self-released]

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Country and blues music has always mined the life’s mundane moments and extracted nuggets of domestic mythology shimmering with love, lust, booze, blood, tears, asphalt and diesel fuel.  With these elements masters like Hank Williams Sr., Neil Young, Townes Van Zandt and Bob Dylan – and latter day troubadours like Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle and Chris Knight – transcend whatever genre they are bridled with and forge minor pedestrian masterpieces.

This second solo release from Sioux City, IA’s Mat D (Mat deRiso) draws from the same humanistic sources. Assuming a more Americana tone than the country-rock his Profane Saints offers, Plank Road Drag works a well-worn sonic landscape but still manages to uncover many dusty gems.

Resurrection Cadillac, the album opener is bathed in the sanctified blues of Leadbelly and Lightnin’ Hopkins as it lurches forward like a revved-up version of Led Zeppelin’s back-porch stomper Black Country Woman.

Street souls collide in Ford Marriage. Mat D colorfully throws his Born to Run-style tramps toward a ramshackle wedding  – “I’ll trade a fan belt and a hub cap for a suit-coat and a tie, we’ll use her panties a a veil and wrap an old rag around her thigh and make a bouquet out of tumbleweeds and hold on ‘til we die, my my.” – until passion’s heat burns away all that’s left is matrimonial ash – ”Turns out a house of love don’t run on truck-stop grease and gasoline.”

Doomed romance continues with Cannonball as family plight and hardship runs as rough as their path toward Texas. Three A.M. refuels the dirt-floor romance, gliding like a fever-dream vision of trailer-part trysts. 40 Watt Moon is the fever aftermath recounting beautiful memories and empty bottles.

Ribbon of Dirt uses the hard-bluegrass of Steve Earle’s Copperhead Road to tell another hard tale of the road’s siren call and Motorbelle is a beautiful, moody white-trash serenade “she was silver and gold from the trailer, she was sequins and jewels from the trash, she was flesh, she was blood,she was lonely, spilling out of old strapless dress with her big hair all pinned up and perfect all that Tammy Faye make-up a mess.”

The album closes with the bluegrass-tinted title song, where Mat d uses hillbilly poetry that could easily be inspired by watching the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? with the sound down and Guy Clark on the turntable turned way up high.

Mat D’s Plank Road Drag is an ambitious record that hits on all cylinders to set a high water mark for any other contender for this year’s album of the year.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewROFZPZMco[/youtube]

Music Review: Joe Whyte – When The Day Breaks [Bridge & Tunnel Records]

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There appears to be a resurgence of sorts of the modern troubadour. the male singer/songwriter armed with only an acoustic guitar and the stories he weaves always teetering on the precipice between  emotional authenticity and cloying sentimentality. The balance becomes even more precarious when you have pop leanings as the term “pop” has been severed from it’s root “popular” into something fleeting and vapid.

A well-crafted song defies genre. Whether it’s Sinatra’s I did It My Way or Willie Nelson’s Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, there’s a craftsmanship that transcends and a balanced symmetry of sound and word. These types of songs also used to fall under the moniker of pop because they were “popular” not because they were reminiscent of sugary confection.

New Jersey based Joe Whyte’s new (FREE!) release, When The Day Breaks, is a slice of pop-Americana that straddles territory settled in the 70’s by pioneers like Gordon Lightfoot and Stephen Stills and currently being reshaped by the likes of the  Avett Brothers, Darrell Scott and Brice Robinson.

Rambling is the asphalt-hearted theme that runs through this release. The jangly channeling of Gram Parsons in the opener Please Believe Me portrays a sunny tempo belying the narrators compulsion to hit the  road and not allow anyone to fence him. It’s a Shame with its Dobro yawn supplies  a precisely suited accompaniment to reflect the dark dysfunction of a man destined to leave a caring woman knowing full well its the wrong thing to do,

This City is Alive has the narrator sit still in the City that Never Sleeps (sounding like a lost track from Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection) yet fights the urge to escape before it steals the person he’s finally discovered he is. Off to War is a different kind of leaving. A soldier being deployed wants more then anything to be home with his family and his solemn ache is the strongest testament against an unjust war.

Blending a pop songwriters instinct for precision and hook with the warmth and authenticity in storytelling that are the trademarks of folk and country Whyte rescues the much maligned genre and gives it beauty and depth.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFAxNsMArY0[/youtube]

Music Review: Somebody’s Darling – Self-Titled (Shiner Records)

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While attending the Americana Music Conference in Nashville last September  I was lucky enough to go to some great shows. John Fogerty , Charlie Robison, Radney Foster, The Bottle Rockets, Angela Easterling….all great. But the show that stuck with me most was my favorite sort, a complete surprise.

Texas has a long, rich legacy of musical contributions as big as the state itself, and they run the across all genres. But if anyone asked me for a recommendation of a current musician or a band that best personifies what I like best about Texas music I would hand them a copy of Dallas’ Somebody’s Darling self-titled release. Gritty, balls-to-the-wall rock,  not the anemic variety seeping from mainstream country station over the last decade from execs that think Creed is rad, but the kind of Lynyrd Skynyrd or Charlie Daniels (listen to the fiddle-banjo fueled barn-blazer Another Two Step to fetch a hankering for ‘shine and a bar fight) meets Replacements ( listen to the cuts Lonely as well as Farewell for power-punk ferocity spiced with pedal steel!) And with the current re-issues of Exile on Mainstreat you miss that 70’s Stones swagger just listen to Cold Hearted Lover for enough bluesy heat sure to burn a hole in your highball glass.

On the  brazenly fearless and apologetically sentimental yearn of the opener Horses and Easy Amber Farris takes her rightful place with other powerful Texas singers, like Janis Joplin and Michelle Shocked,  that can belt it out and also work the nuanced edges of a song. The band – David Ponder n searing Lead Guitar, Nate Wedan as a force to be reckoned with on  Percussion and the understated Michael Talley on Bass. This is a crack band that does what they should do, make it all seem seamless and effortless. The solid songs and passionate performance on this release and live shows why they were the winners of the Shiner Records’ Rising Star Competition and have a sterling future ahead of them.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3SN1pUmu94[/youtube]