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HONKY TONKING WITH MARCEL PROUST, EMMYLOU AND LUCINDA. A LA RECHERCHE DES GIGS PERDUES

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Got up this morning, I felt like Marcel Proust ..

It’s not every day that I feel like I ‘m stepping into the cowboy boots of the great French novelist. But this morning, listening to the playlist from the Afterword Americana- Alt country thread, I experienced a severe case of A la recherche des gigs perdues. A very overwhelming sensation. It was as though a honky tonk angel had dunked her donut in my large glass of Jack Daniels in a dimly- lit, rodeo bar in Amarillo, and memories of many long-forgotten gigs and favourite country songs just came flooding back.

Where did my enthusiasm for pedal steel guitars, lonesome cowboys and Stetson hats start? Was it watching telly – Bonanza, Rin Tin Tin and Rawhide? Or maybe at the cinema – Stagecoach, High Noon. A Fistful of Dollars and The Magnificent Seven?

John Peel must take a lot of the credit. So many tracks that he played that are still favourites. Poco – Rose of Cimmaron. Judy Collins – Someday Soon. Gram Parsons – Love Hurts. Grateful Dead– Ripple. Head, Hands and Feat – Country Boy. And somewhat more recently …Laura Cantrell – Not the trembling kind.

I’m not so sure I’m too keen about the label AMERICANA.

For example, here are some of my favourite Americana artists and I don’t think any of them are too keen about the label….. Cowboy Junkies, Basia Bulat, Ian and Sylvia, Daniel Lanois, k d Lang, Le Vent du Nord, Joni Mitchell, Fred Eaglesmith, Neil Young, Kathleen Edwards, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, William Prince, The Band, Les Cowboys Fringants, Robbie Robertsson ……Mark Carney….
OK, Mark’s never sung, and rumour has it that he loves THE CLASH, but you know what I mean. I’m a fan.

Thinking about Alt Country artists, it struck me that many of my favourites are not only great songwriters but also excellent raconteurs who could give Billy Bragg or even Jackie Leven a run for their money.

Mary Gauthier, Otis Gibbs, The Handsome Family, Lyle Lovett, Fred Eaglesmith…
Here in Sweden we have a rather successful promoter, record label and festival organiser called ROOTSY who specialise in Americana music. They’ve done great things promoting both local talent and visitors from across the pond.

I’ll end up with a personal story. Quite a few years back, ROOTSY had arranged a Swedish for the excellent Otis Gibbs. To my horror, they had no gig in Stockholm. I contacted them to complain and they told me that on the 10th October, Otis had a free evening before he flew home. If I could find a venue, I could book him. My son’s school at that time had a large school hall which was perfect for concerts. I talked to the parents of his classmates. Could we do a benefit concert for the Class Trip?
They were enthusiastic and I managed to persuade the headmistress of the school to let us have the hall for the evening. Tickets sold like wildfire. But I was very nervous. I’d never seen Otis live. Could he deliver? Damn right he could. He brought the house down.

Please share songs by your favourite alt country artists, from Jimmie Rodgers to Weyes Blood, from Kitty Wells to Ian Noe.
The Paper Kites, Hank Wangford, The Triffids.. the choice is yours

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Comments

  2. Oh go on then…Lyle Lovett and His Unfeasibly Large Band, made up of absolutely top-notch musicians (check out the piano player) and four of the coolest backing singers you’ll ever hope to see.

    That’s Right You’re Not From Texas. Sheer joy.

    • What a superb start to this thread @mikethep. Texas Swing at its finest.

      What a band, not least the late, great Sweetpea Atkinson from Was (Not Was) on backing vocals. Lyle gets the very best musicians.

      When we finally got to see him with an, albeit smaller, band here in Stockholm last year, the musicians were all superb.

  4. Another singer who had a superb band when I first saw her in the late 1990s was Lucinda Williams.

    I had come over to visit my brother in New York and on the first day I bought a copy of the Village Voice to look for live music. Eureka. Lucinda was playing that very evening at a theatre in a small town up the Hudson River .an hour north of Manhattan. There was a phone number but no one answered..

    I did what any normal person would have done and jumped on the first train. I got there mid-afternoon and joined a small queue of ardent fans hoping for returns. It didn’t look too hopeful but I stuck to my guns. As the concert grew nearer, a few returns dribbled in. The others in the line were impressed by me. This dude has come all the way from Sweden to see Lucinda.

    Finally I got lucky and bought a ticket a face value from a well-dressed chap whose date had stood him up. He was very charming and told me that he was a judge. But if I wanted to smoke a reefer, he’d turn a blind eye.

    Lucinda and her band were quite superb and well worth the journey. I was particularly impressed by the guitarists. Here’s a clip featuring what must be the band I saw.

    Here’s the complete concert. Enjoy..

    I googled. Kenny Vaughn and John Jackson are the guitarists.

    • A splendid choice.
      We went to see Dean in 2024 on our wedding anniversary.
      This is my wife’s favourite song of his, so I emailed Dean in advance and requested it.
      She was very happy and surprised when he dedicated it to us.

      • Lovely story and a special memory. It’s one of my many favourites of his. It’s on his Whisky Hearts album. Amazon used to sell the LP for under £15. It came with a free CD of the album!

  6. My first date with the current Mrs. T was exactly 50 years ago, 15th February 1976. A good friend of mine had got some front row tickets for Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band at the Bristol Hippodrome on her first tour here, and we went along to see one of the most fabulous bands I have ever had the pleasure of enjoying. Clearly, that night looms large in our story ( we married two years later) and playing Emmylou always takes me back to those days. We saw her at the same venue in 2003, but we will also be seeing her in Bristol on her final tour later this year, 50 years on, so that has a pleasing circularity to it. That band had the brilliant James Burton on guitar…and they did this of course…

  8. We could do a whole thread about roots musicians from Texas. There are some wonderfully idiosyncratic characters.

    Singer-songwriter Blaze Foley for example who is celebrated by Lucinda Williams in the song Drunken Angel. He was shot dead only 39 years old during a dispute at a friend’s house

    Give his song, Clay Pigeons a listen,

    And then there’s the multi-talented, magnificently eccentric, Terry Allen,, who is an internationally famed visual artist as well as being a musician.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Allen_(country_singer)#:~:text=Terry%20Allen%20(born%20May%207%2C,spans%20several%20albums%20in%20the

  9. It’s Friday evening and I’m sitting at home with a bottle of Jack Daniels listening to a playlist of country favourites and thinking about the fact that there are few other musical genres where the songs are deliberately written with the explicit goal of making us cry into our beer.

    Can you imagine listening to Tales from the Tobographic Oceans and burstíng into tears?

    Or pogoing in the Metallica Moshpit and having a good sob?

    By contrast, I think I’d be a bit disappointed if a country jukebox didn’t have several serious tear-jerkers.

    Jolene – Dolly Parton
    He stopped loving her today – George Jones
    D I V O R C E – Tammy Wynette
    Love hurts – Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris
    Ruby don’t take your love to town
    Seeds and stems again – Commander Cody
    Orphan Girl – Gillian Welch
    Old King – Neil Young
    Lately I’ve let things slide – Nick Lowe
    What made Milwaukee famous – Jerry Lee Lewis

    This bloke even did a list of his TOP 1O Tearjerkers….

    https://d227.cms.socastsrm.com/2019/04/11/deriks-top-ten-saddest-cryin-in-your-beer-country-songs/#

    Anybody here got any favourite tear-jerkers?

    • Thanks @rigid-digit. An excellent video of a beautiful cover version. They all look so young.

      There are some interesting comments…

      Peter Carr wrote

      I made that promo. It was the day after filming a concert in Aberdeen showcasing the songs from Almost Blue, the album EC made in Nashville with Billy Sherrill producing. We filmed those sessions recording too, for The South Bank Show ‘Elvis Costello in Nashville.’ None of us was feeling very crisp that day in Aberdeen and we borrowed the girls and the fiddle being played by John McFee from a local school.

      Adampaullmeredith writes

      I hope you all know this is a George Jones original and he and Elvis were very good friends!

      wiki is very informative. John McFee from the Doobie Brothers played pedal steel on the album. Is that him in the video?

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_Blue#:~:text=The%20Doobie%20Brothers%20member%20John,add%20an%20authentic%20country%20sound.&text=%22Almost%20Blue%20%E2%80%93%20Elvis%20Costello,Elvis%20Costello%20%26%20the%20Attractions%22.
      At the suggestion of Columbia Records’ executive Greg Geller—who signed Costello to Columbia in America in 1977—Costello sang “Stranger in the House” as a duet with country musician George Jones in 1979, which appeared on the latter’s My Very Special Guests album the same year. Costello first met Jones’s longtime producer, Billy Sherrill, during an initial session in Nashville, Tennessee a year earlier. When Jones failed to show up, the two became friends and agreed to work together if Costello desired to create a country album.

  13. Record label boss, Author, journalist, musician and all round great guy Ned Sublette combined his love of country with his love of Cuban music in his album Cowboy Rumba. I really like it, but it’s maybe not for purists. Here’s the title track.

    Merengue version of Ghost Riders In The Sky

  15. I’d like to mention a few memorable gigs by Canadian roots artists.

    Daniel Lanois played the Gino nightclub on 5 February 1990. @DuCo01 has just provided me with the date. 36 years ago. It was one of the very first gigs we saw together.

    He is a wiz at finding the best concerts and then getting the very best seats.

    Daniel was magnificent and the band were the meanest looking bunch of reprobates I’ve ever seen, Recruited from the Louisiana State Pen by the look of things.

    Thanks to this rather decent review

    https://viennesewaltz.net/2020/04/22/cowboy-junkies-ghosts-review/

    I now know that i saw the Cowboy Junkies at the Mean Fiddler in Harlesden on the 7th August 1996, I’d flown over from Sweden to do a road trip to West Wales with my brother and his wife from New York and my Dad and we were leaving early the next morning.

    There was a Tube strike for all of London. And the gig was sold out.

    Three very good reasons for not trying to get to Harlesden.

    That didn’t stop me. While I was standing in the queue for the returns, the band walked out and asked us all if we could recommend somewhere to eat. Face to face with the fragrant Margo Timmins and I was tongue-tied.

    I managed to get a ticket and the gig was wonderful. To my delight, the support act was none other than Susanna Hoffs from the Bangles who did a magnificent version of Eternal Flame.

    Fred Eaglesmith is probably a household name in Canada but fairly unknown in Sweden, I was very pleased to catch him at Mosebacke. Excellent songs and he’s a very witty raconteur.

    Le Vent du Nord from Quebec are favourites at Celtic Connections.

    And finally there’s the charismatic singer-songwriter, Basia Bulat. I’ve seen her once with a band and then another time when she did a freebie in a hotel lobby.

    The second gig was very memorable as I got to chat with her at the merch table,. She was so very charming. Yet another Canadian artist to look out for. Her song HEART OF MY OWN should have been a mega-hit.

  16. On reading your post, my first thought was Courtney Marie Andrews, probably because I will be attending her gig in Glasgow (St Judes) on 23rd February. I last saw her there in 2017. So, she’s all growed-up now. This song is from her latest release.

    • I also saw Courtney early on in her career. @the-californian

      She was playing in a smaller room at the Debaser club and had just one very versatile musician with her. She was relaxed, told a lot of anecdotes and it was a fine show.

      Looking around the audience, who should I spot but local heroes, Klara and Johanna Söderberg aka First Aid Kit.

      A year or two later, Courtney returned and played a much larger venue with a full band. i wasn’t there but i read in the review that the Söderbergs were there and had joined her on stage. I just googled and here they are..

      And here is my favourite CMA song…

      The last time I saw her was with her band at Roskilde.

      The legendary COW AND ALIEN must have been rather a distraction.

      • And so it goes around @kaisfatdad

        In 2018, I attended a First Aid Kit gig at the famous Glasgow Barrowlands. It was a great night. On March 5th, I will be attending a James Yorkston solo gig in the bijou Catstrand, New Galloway which is fairly local to me but 30k from everywhere. His latest album is Songs for Nina & Johanna (The Cardigans & FAK). In April, James has a few gigs in Sweden with Johanna. So, there you go…

        • I am very glad you are a fan of First Aid Kit @the-californian, The girls grew up in Enskede in the southern suburbs of Stockholm and just down the road from me.

          James did a wonderful concert here last autumn with Nina Persson and the mighty Second Hand Orchestra and Johanna made a guest appearance for a couple of songs.

          It was a remarkable evening.

  17. Here’s a gig trouvé for you. Last night, at HOTA (Home Of The Arts) in the unlikely surroundings of the Blade Runner hellhole that is Surfers Paradise, we saw the blessed Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Two hours of just them – it was fantastic. I enjoyed lending them my polished bass vocal stylings on I’ll Fly Away, along with about 1000 other blokes.

    They kicked off with Elvis Presley Blues. Here they are, long ago.

  18. I think Tom Russell is one of the best American songwriters in the period of Americana and no-one chronicles the golden age of America (The 50’s and 60’s) better than he does. Guadalupe is such a beautiful song and arguably Gretchen Peters sings it the best but it is Tom’s song and it his version I am posting because I want to post it as a tribute to him. He has been very quiet recently and believe there have been some health issues. Would dearly love to see him one more time:

    • Thanks a lot for mentioning Tom Russell @SteveT. He is another very unique performer who has always gone his own way.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Russell

      I really ought to investigate his back catalogue, I feel shamefully ignorant.

      Tom Russell is from California as is that other maverick, Ry Cooder.

      Ry has played with so many different musicians that he is impossible to pigeonhole. But he really deserves a mention here.

      I’ve only ever had one chance to see him live, He played at the Gröna Lund funfair in my very first year in Sweden, Rather unfortunately the gig was the night before a very important exam that I was taking to become a fully qualified TEFL teacher.

      I met one of my colleagues at the gig and he was very surprised that I was not at home swatting. Exams can always be re-taken. Ry Cooder concerts are a once in a lifetime opportunity.

      ‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiWOAUwxrWg&list=RDhiWOAUwxrWg&start_radio=1

  19. Tom Russell, Terry Allen, May Gauthier, Ned Sublette, Gillian Welch, Ry Cooder, Lyle Lovett …..

    We’ve had more than a few idiosyncratic talents on this thread-

    I’d like to add Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band whose album, New Threats from the Soul, was mentioned on the @DuCo01 Best of 2025 list.

    His lyrics and arrangements are in a class of their own,

  20. Some new names! About 20 years ago. Can’t remember the name of the venue, but it was at the corner of Shandwick Place and Lothian Road in Edinburgh. Underground venue. Only a dozen or so in the audience. I should have got autographs etc, but I was trying to record the gig and had a couple of mics sticking out my jacket. It was difficult to be inconspicuous.

    Amy Allison who’s the daughter of Mose Allison, and has the strangest, most nasal singing voice I have ever heard. Amy Rigby, who at the time(I think) was married to Will Rigby…Steve Earle’s drummer, and was the biggest little bundle of energy ever. They were accompanied by Mark Spencer who was in Son Volt at the time, on lap steel. Two separate American artists touring together, as they had both signed with Spit and Polish records, in……Glasgow??? Davy Scott(Pearlfishers)was there too and accompanied Amy Allison if I remember correctly. He might have had something to do with the label.

    • Thanks a lot @bigsteviecook. That post really made my evening.

      I’m very chuffed that the sundry comments and memories on this thread suddenly reminded you of that very remarkable evening.

      So many talented musicians on the same stage for one glorious gig.

      That Joey Ramone song is a cracker.

  21. I suspect that few of you here would expect that a thread about Americana would include a post-punk band from Leeds.

    But when the great American novelist, Jonathan Franzen, made an appearance here at Kulturhuset, Stockholm and was asked about his favourite band, he named the Mekons.

        • After you comment I got looking for Mekons offshoots @hubert-rawlinson and stumbled across FREAKONS, Freakwater playing together the Mekons,

          I suspect somw of you may be interested. Freakwater were a new name for me and i was impressed. They are very likeable.

          • According to John F Keenan who put them on at the Duchess here’s his reply to me.
            ” Yes, you have a great memory. According to Jon Langford, ‘The Church of Country & Western’ was concept that led to The Waco Brothers, which at that time featured Eric Bellis and Barkley McKay. ”

            The Waco Brothers are playing Leeds later in the year put on by John F Keenan

            • Nice work @hubert-rawlinson. Your meander into the world of the Mekons, reminded me of MEKONVILLE, a three day festival in Suffolk which took place in July 2017 and celebrated the band’s 40 years of music making. A friend of mine went over from Malmö to work as a volunteer.

              Each night featured a different line up of the band from throughout their history. This review describes it all in loving detail.

              https://mekons.de/news/?p=781

              Special guest at the festival was the wonderfully eccentric Bonnie Prince Billy who has been a Mekon fan for many years.

              What a peculiar and fascinating cove he is.

              This INDEPENDENT review describes him well…

              He is almost unrecognisable from his intense 90s beginnings, when his silence between songs and startling appearance – he resembled a US civil war soldier nursing a thousand-yard stare – didn’t foretell a future in which he might present a little like Brian Eno in Roxy Music and enthuse at length about a Peter Doig exhibition.

              https://observer.co.uk/music/pop/article/bonnie-prince-billy-is-keeping-the-faith

              I was very to catch BPB live here in Stockholm together with Dawn McCarthy singing songs from their Everly Brothers covers album, WHAT THE BROTHERS SANG.

              All very low-key and restrained and their voices complemented each other extremely well.

              I chatted with them both at the merch table after the gig. She was bubbly and talkative. He was like a character from an American Gothic melodrama by William Faulkner. Aloof, mysterious, charismatic and drily amusing.

                • Fascinating. Thanks a lot @retropath2. You DJs really your fingers on the pulse.

                  Here’s a little extra background….

                  https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/news/sally-timms-bonnie-prince-billy-new-single-life-is-scary-horses

                  William Oldham — the musician behind the Bonnie “Prince” Billy moniker — describes “Life is Scary Horses” as a “spiritual cover” of Timms’ and Jon Langford’s composition “Horses”. The track was released in 1988 by Sally Timms and The Drifting Cowgirls on their album Somebody’s Rockin’ My Dreamboat, which Oldham went on to cover in 2004.

                  Just over twenty years later, “Life is Scary Horses” sees Oldham invite Timms to sing on the track and appear in the accompanying video, directed by filmmaker Braden King. Discussing the song, Oldham explains: “A primary reason to cover a song comes from the unanswered questions the song poses in our individual or collective psyches, and I have mulled ‘Horses’ -generated questions over and over and over again in all sorts of circumstances until finally I thought I could bring those questions to life in a new composition, a new recording, of what can technically and essentially be called a new song.”

                  Here’s the original performed with gusto by The Mekons…’¨

  22. Today @DuCo01 gave me some great news.

    On my birthday in early October, The Delines will be playing at the Debaser Club in Stockholm.

    I’ll be there. But I’m a little disappointed that they are not by now playing a somewhat bigger venue.

    These days Willy Vlautin is as feted as a novelist as he is a songwriter.

    He is a great storyteller in both his novels and his songs.

      • I really dislike gigs at enormous sports arenas and far prefer smaller venues. But they can get a bit too small.

        My favourite Swedish radio show has been playing Jimmie Rodgers lot recently. A fine singer who never sang in a sports arena,

        The Yodelling Brakeman wrote some fine songs.

        You may remember this one from OH BROTHER…..

  23. This lot are so obscure they’ve almost vanished. My friend won all their CDs on GLR and they played at our local pub – we were the only ones there. Not phased, they did the full show and were brilliant. We chatted to them after – nice blokes.

      • Yes and very cool. They could reasonably have been pissed off that there was no one there but they gave it 100%, all the dynamics etc. I was most impressed.

        • Good for them True professionals. It’s marvelous that you still remember the gig so fondly @twang.

          The magic of the merch table meeting.

          It does make me think that the promoter should have tried a little harder to attract an audience.

          In my OP i mention ROOTSY the promoter that has worked very hard to spread the word about American acts here in Sweden. As well as arranging tours, they also have both a summer and winter festival with top name acts and some interesting newcomers.

          Here’s Ian Noe, who @DuCo01 is a great fave of playing live in Falkenberg on the west coast.

          And now Dylan Earl playing a Rootsy house party in Norrtälje.

          https://www.youtube.com/watchv=_BvuBqCGGKU&list=RD_BvuBqCGGKU&start_radio=1

          There are several artists who have really built up an enthusiastic fanbase here in Sweden thanks to Rootsy and other dedicated promoters.

          Israel Nash, Ron Sexsmith and Eilen Jewell are just a few of them.

          And of course Otis Gibbs. I simply must post another song of his songs. If he comes to your town, go and see him.

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