{"id":8151,"date":"2013-12-11T19:07:21","date_gmt":"2013-12-11T19:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=8151"},"modified":"2013-12-11T19:07:21","modified_gmt":"2013-12-11T19:07:21","slug":"hillbilly-highway-new-releases-northsouth-of-the-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2013\/12\/11\/hillbilly-highway-new-releases-northsouth-of-the-line\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillbilly Highway &#8211; New releases, North\/South of the line"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/2013\/12\/11\/hillbilly-highway-new-releases-northsouth-of-the-line\/68-09-musiclocal-scottnolanandjoannamiller2-web_1100_594_80_c1\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8153\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-8153\" alt=\"Scott Nolan Joanna Miller\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stylusmagazine.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/68-09-MusicLocal-ScottNolanandJoannaMiller2-web_1100_594_80_c1-500x270.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"270\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>by Sheldon Birnie<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Just when you think you&#8217;ve got all the new releases you can handle on your plate, the powers that be load up a bunch for ya.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>This is great news if you&#8217;re always wanting something new to cruise to, something new to get you through the cold days of winter and into the hot summer festival season. Luckily, after a fall full of great roots releases, this winter aint looking too shabby, neither.<\/p>\n<p>First of all, this Friday local poet laureate <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scottnolan.ca\/\" target=\"_blank\">Scott Nolan<\/a> and his longtime travelling companion Joanna Miller are releasing a live record almost two years in the making, now.\u00a0<em>North\/South<\/em> features songs recorded down the street at the Park Theatre and the Red Clay Theatre in Dultuh, Georgia. Featuring great renditions of classics like &#8220;Bad Liver \/ Broken Heart&#8221; and &#8220;No Bourbon &amp; Bad Radio&#8221; as well as some rip-stompers and reimagined ditties from\u00a0<em>Montgomery Eldorado,<\/em> this record captures what Nolan and Miller at their raw finest. If you haven&#8217;t seen them do their thing, do yourself a favour and get to the Park on Friday, or, at the very least, pick up this disc at your local independent retailer and crank it up.<\/p>\n<p>Secondly, while we were putting the current issue of <em>Stylus<\/em> together, ol&#8217;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fredeaglesmith.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a0Fred Eaglesmith<\/a> pulled a fast-one and released his latest record,\u00a0<em>Tambourine.\u00a0<\/em>While his last release, <i>6 Volts,<\/i> was undeniable out of the gates,\u00a0<em>Tambourine<\/em>\u00a0feels more like a grower than a shower. There are some solid tracks from the get-go, like the heartbreaking &#8220;Tell the Engineer&#8221; and &#8220;Whip a Dog,&#8221; as well as some that will likely work their way further into my soul, like &#8220;Small Town&#8221; and &#8220;Drunk Girl.&#8221; Then there&#8217;s a few that see Fred and his band of Highway(wo)men taking some risks, like &#8220;Nobody Gets Everything,&#8221; which may or may not payoff down the line. Whether they do or not, it doesn&#8217;t really matter, because Fred&#8217;s will pump out another album in a couple years that will change tacts, confounding his purist fans and delighting those of us who dig seeing where Fred will go, and what tricks he&#8217;ll pull (successfully or not), next.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest thrill, for me, this past week or so was the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/news\/drive-by-truckers-return-to-simplicity-on-english-oceans-20131203\" target=\"_blank\">official announcement<\/a> that a new Drive-By Truckers album will be released in March of 2014. As a\u00a0<del>obsessed<\/del> devout fan of the band, I&#8217;ve followed the recording process of the new disc &#8212; titled\u00a0<em>English Oceans\u00a0<\/em><em>&#8212;\u00a0<\/em>via founding member Patterson Hood&#8217;s Instagram with barely contained excitement. The fact that it is now ready to rumble, with yet-to-be-released artwork by the inimitable Wes Freed coming down the pipe has me all fired up. Not to mention the fact that half the album&#8217;s tracks are penned by Mike Cooley, who generally takes backseat on the songwriting duties to Hood. While I love Hood&#8217;s tunes, there&#8217;s something about Cooley&#8217;s voice that speaks to me in particular. Tracks like &#8220;One of These Days,&#8221; &#8220;Uncle Frank,&#8221; &#8220;When the Pin Hits the Shell,&#8221; and &#8220;Pulasky&#8221;, to name just a few, have always cut to the chase without painting too broad a canvas.<\/p>\n<p>And if that weren&#8217;t enough, another local troubadour and down right brilliant songwriter Del Barber announced the official release of his next album,\u00a0<em>Prairieology<\/em>, in March, with a release gig at the Park Theatre March 24. I&#8217;ll be sitting down with Del over a beer or three in the coming weeks to talk all about it, so keep your eyes on the Highway, and make sure to pick up your copy of the Feb\/March Stylus (the first in our 25th volume!) for the full story. Until then, enjoy the tuneage and keep warm, y&#8217;all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Sheldon Birnie Just when you think you&#8217;ve got all the new releases you can handle on your plate, the powers that be load up a bunch for ya.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[432],"class_list":["post-8151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","tag-hillbilly-highway"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}