Category: Music

New Album from John Mellencamp: “Plain Spoken”

John Mellencamp is releasing a new album September 23, 2014, Plain Spoken. The album, from Republic Records, does not do anything unusual but features the great songwriting and singing we expect from Mellencamp. The songwriter recently told USA Today that his lyrics are inspired by “Steinbeck, Hawthorne, Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams.”

The first single from the album is “Troubled Man.” Give a listen below.

What is your favorite John Mellencamp song? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    “It Ain’t You” From Ray Benson and Willie Nelson (Song of the Day)

    Ray Benson Willie Nelson

    Bismeaux Records earlier this year released a second solo album from Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel. The new album, A Little Piece, features the song “It Ain’t You” with Willie Nelson.

    TwangNation explains that Benson and Nelson have been friends for more than forty years, going back to when Nelson advised Benson to move to Austin in 1973. Benson explains that he could not believe that nobody had yet covered the song written by Waylon Jennings and Gary Nicholson. He asked Nelson to record it with him because, “The song is about growing old and yet feeling and acting young…it felt so appropriate for us to do.”

    The video of the beautiful song captures images of Nelson and Benson through the years. Check it out.

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    Song of the Day: Hal Ketchum “I Miss My Mary” and the True Story Behind It

    Ketchum Past Point of Rescue One of the many great country albums of the early 1990s was Hal Ketchum‘s Past The Point Of Rescue (1991). I picked up the CD after hearing Ketchum’s “Small Town Saturday Night” from the album and seeing the video that included scenes from the movie The Terror of Tiny Town (1938). But the entire CD ended up on repeat play at my house for some time. One of the standout tracks on the album is “I Miss My Mary,” which reminds me of some of the great songs written by Keith Whitley.

    In “I Miss My Mary,” the singer recounts leaving his lover and child behind. The title gives away the sentiment of the song, but Ketchum’s aching vocals and the song’s lyrics reveal a lifetime of stories and sadness.

    Ketchum explained in an interview that the song has a true story as its source. While Ketchum was at the Orchard Inn bar in Northern California, he struck up a conversation with an old man who told how he had left his wife and child forty years earlier on that exact date. Inspired by the story, Ketchum went back to Texas and wrote “I Miss My Mary.”

    In the video from 2007 below, one may see that Ketchum’s appearance has changed since 1991, but his voice is still awesome. Check it out.

    In later years, like the speaker in “I Miss My Mary,” Ketchum went through some challenging times. Ketchum explained to Billboard that he lost his taste for making music for awhile, and Twang Nation revealed how a 1998 diagnosis of the neurological disorder acute transverse myelitis required Ketchum to relearn basic motor skills.

    Ketchum continued making music, and he had a new album come out in  2014 called I’m The Troubadour. The album’s genesis came from when Ketchum began writing songs in a cabin in Texas.  I’m the Troubadour was Ketchum’s first album since 2008.

    Update: I’m the Troubadour would be Ketchum’s final album. On November 23, 2020, Ketchum died at his home in Fischer, Texas, due to complications of dementia.  He was 67.


    What is your favorite Hal Ketchum song? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    4 Little Girls on a “Birmingham Sunday”

    4 Little Girls On September 15, 1963, racists exploded a bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, injuring several people and killing four little girls aged 11-14: Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley. The incident is largely seen as a turning point that helped inspire the Civil Rights Movement.

    In Spike Lee’s excellent documentary about the incident, 4 Little Girls (1997), many of the people who knew or were related to the girls give moving stories about the events surrounding the bombing.

    It would be decades before some of those involved in the bombing would be brought to justice.  The movie interviews former Alabama Attorney General William Baxley, who reopened an investigation into the bombing in the early 1970s, resulting in the conviction one of the men involved in the bombing in 1977.

    Baxley had long been interested in pursuing justice in the case even before he was attorney general. In the movie, he explains how he used to listen to Joan Baez’s song “Birmingham Sunday” every day.

    “Birmingham Sunday,” which was written by Richard Fariña, appeared on Baez’s album, Joan Baez/5 (1964).  It was released in the year after the bombing.

    The way the song helped inspire Baxley through the years to help bring some justice to the tragedy helps show the power of song. Spike Lee’s movie 4 Little Girls also shows the power of film.


    Photo of church window at 16th Street Baptist Church, donated by the people of Wales after the bombing, via public domain.

    Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Alt-Country Tribute to Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.”

    Producers Logan Rogers and Evan Schlansky have gathered some artists to put an alt-country spin on Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 album, Born in the U.S.A. The result, Dead Man’s Town: A Tribute to Born in U.S.A. (2014), features artists such as North Mississippi Allstars, Holly Williams, Joe Pug, Apache Relay, Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires, Justin Townes Earle, and Blitzen Trapper.

    For now, you can listen to a stream of the full album below. Each of the artists puts a new spin on the one of the twelve tracks on the album. Check it out.

    Standout tracks includes Holly Williams mining the sadness underlying “No Surrender,” Justin Townes Earle reworking and slowing down “Glory Days,” and Quaker City Nighthawks finding the country heart of “Darlington County.” Dead Man’s Town will be available September 16.

    What is your favorite song on the album? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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