Catching an All-Night Station: Son Volt Re-Issuing “Trace”

Trace Son Volt Remaster In 1995, Jay Farrar — fresh off the dissolution of Uncle Tupelo — released the album Trace with his new band Son Volt. The album was an instant classic, and I still maintain that the album as two of the greatest alt-country songs ever released, “Windfall” and “Tear-Stained Eye.” Now, Son Volt is releasing a twentieth anniversary edition of the album with bonus tracks in a 2-CD set.

The original album also remains as one of the great modern meditations on themes of alienation and rural living, with lyrics touched by Farrar’s efforts to come to terms with the breakup of Uncle Tupelo. As Richard Byrne wrote at the time of the original release in Riverfront Times (St. Louis): ” Trace is a long love poem to the Mississippi River, with passages of sheer poetic intensity. It’s also an emotional chronicle of the breakup of Farrar’s former band. . . . Much of Trace has a spirit and a substance that many of the great American novels of this century have.”

Rhino Records and Warner Brothers Records are working together to release the expanded and remastered deluxe edition of Trace, which in addition to the album will include eight demos of album tracks. Also, the second CD will feature a 15-track live set from a February 12, 1996 show at The Bottom Line. There also will be an LP version, downloadable tracks, and an expanded booklet.

Jay Farrar will also be hitting the road to perform songs from the classic album, billing the tour as “Jay Farrar Performs Songs of Trace.” He will be joined by original pedal steel player, Eric Heywood, along with Gary Hunt, who plays a number of instruments. May the new release and tour take your troubles away, as in this 1996 Austin City Limits performance of “Windfall.”

The new remastered and deluxe version of Trace hits stores on October 30.

What is your favorite Son Volt song? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    “Ranch Party” With Johnny Cash & Patsy Cline

    Ranch Party

    In 1957, Tex Ritter’s Ranch Party television show featured a number of guests, including a young Johnny Cash playing his new hit song “I Walk the Line.” Also, Ritter introduced another young artist, Patsy Cline, who was born on September 8, 1932 as Virginia Patterson Hensley in Gore, Virginia. Here, Ritter introduces her as “a little lady that great things have been happening to here in the past year or so.”

    So, go back to the 1950s and remember from before Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash became legends. The show featured several other talented country and rockabilly artists too. Check it out.



    Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Crazy Horse: The Last Warrior Standing, Defending the Old Way of Life

    On September 5, 1877, Crazy Horse (Tashunca-uitco) was killed while resisting his captivity in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson in Nebraska. During a struggle, a U.S. soldier stabbed Crazy Horse with a bayonet. Many things are still debated about that day, including the name of the soldier and how Crazy Horse resisted.  But it was the end of the great military leader of the Oglala Lakota.

    Crazy Horse was one of the Sioux leaders who defeated George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana Territory in 1876. After the infamous battle, U.S. soldiers had pursued Crazy Horse and his followers until the Native Americans, suffering cold and starvation, surrendered in May 1877.

    Crazy Horse Photo
    Disputed photo that some claim is of Crazy Horse.

    In 2005, singer-songwriter Marty Stuart released Badlands: Ballads Of The Lakota. The concept album recounts Native American history and struggle. Stuart brought his outstanding musical and storytelling skills to the music.  He has created other wonderful concept albums too, including his excellent The Pilgrim (1999).

    On the epic song “Three Chiefs” on Badlands, Stuart sings from the point of view of Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse. He recounts what they might have said after their deaths when they went to another world.

    In the segment in the song about Crazy Horse, the song recounts his death: “In a jailhouse in Nebraska, it was on September 5,/ Crazy Horse was fighting hard to keep himself alive.” After his death, he meets God, who asks what Crazy Horse has to say. Crazy Horse responds:

    “Upon suffering. Beyond suffering. The Red Nation shall rise again.
    And it shall be a blessing for a sick world.
    A world filled with broken promises. Selfishness and separations.
    A world longing for light again.”

    Crazy Horse foretells that the Native Americans will bring healing to the land of suffering.

    “I see a time of seven generations when all of the colors of mankind
    Will gather under the sacred tree of life.
    And the whole earth will become one circle again.
    And that day, there will be those among The Lakota,
    Who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things.
    And the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom.”

    After Crazy Horse’s death, his body was placed on a burial scaffold, and later his parents took his remains to an undisclosed location. Experts suspect the remains are in an area around Wounded Knee, South Dakota, but no one is sure of the exact location.

    As Stuart sings, “Touch the Clouds took his body, back home to his family,/ Nobody knows where they laid him down, to set his spirit free.” In the video below, two of Crazy Horse’s great grandsons talk about Crazy horse’s death and burial.

    Photo via public domain. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Patty Griffin Releasing “Servant of Love”

    Griffin Servant of Love In September, Patty Griffin will release her ninth studio album, Servant of Love. Chimesfreedom is a big fan of all of Griffin’s albums, so we are excited to be getting another CD from Griffin.

    Not surprisingly, with an album title about “love,” some are reporting that the album is an accounting of Griffin reflecting on her break-up with Led Zepplin singer Robert Plant, who had worked with her on her 2013 album American Kid. The press release for the album, however, explains that on the album Griffin follows “the transcendentalism of writers like Emerson and Whitman.” Thus, the album is grounded “in the natural world” and finds “patterns there which speak both to human experience and to the call of the spirit.” Hmmm… sounds deeper than “screw-you-Robert-Plant.”

    Two of the tracks from the album have hit the Internet, so you can get a sense of the album yourself.  One is “Rider of Days.” Consistent with the talk of transcendentalism in the press release, NPR noted that the song is “more impressionistic than literal, but Griffin’s deceptively simple lyrics locate the emotional core of her bicycle-riding narrator.”

    Another song from Servant of Love is “There Isn’t One Way.” Like NPR’s statement about “Rider of Days,” the Wall Street Journal noticed some vagueness in the song even though Griffin has revealed that she wrote the song after a seven-hour conversation with a friend. In the song, she explains, “There isn’t one way, isn’t one way/ There’s just you and your heart and a part you’ve got to play.”

    Servant of Love will be released in Europe on September 11 and in the U.S. and elsewhere on September 25, 2015. The album, produced by Craig Ross, is Griffin’s first to be released on her new self-owned imprint in conjunction with Thirty Tigers.

    What do you think of the new Patty Griffin songs? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    New Track from Darlene Love: “Forbidden Nights”

    Introducing Darlene Love

    Steve Van Zandt is finally fulfilling a 35-year promise to produce an album by 1960s legend Darlene Love. The upcoming album Introducing Darlene Love includes the song “Forbidden Nights.”

    Introducing Darlene Love is her first album of secular songs in three decades. Listen to one of the tracks from the album,”Forbidden Nights,” in the video below. It sounds great, and the video filmed in Asbury Park, NJ also features appearances by Van Zandt, Joan Jett, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, David Letterman, Paul Shaffer, and Bill Murray.

    The album includes songs written by Van Zandt, Linda Perry, Joan Jett, Bruce Springsteen, and Elvis Costello. It also features a cover of “River Deep — Mountain High,” which was originally recorded by Ike and Tina Turner with Love’s former producer Phil Spector. Introducing Darlene Love goes on sale on September 18.

    Leave your two cents in the comments.

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