http://lachlanbryan.com/

              After a successful solo outing, Aussie country singer Lachlan Bryan got his old band back into the studio and came up with this cracker of an album. It was released in the autumn of last year in Australia and subsequently picked up a major award as “Alternative Country” album of the year. Such acclaim means any belated praise from me is superfluous, but I’m keen to point out to Flyin’Shoes readers just how good this is.

             I think you could ditch the “alternative” part of that award title. This is country music rooted in the thread that connects Willie Nelson to Steve Earle and, as such, will sound like familiar territory to an awful lot of mainstream country fans. The renegade life out on the edge, the teetering between God and the devil, the bad boy who always…

FTB Show #252

SETH ADAM -Old Broken Ladder Steel Tempered  RAE BILLING - I Only (Want It All) Walls and Fences FEARING & WHITE - Save Yourself Tea and Confidences

(mic break)

LAURIE LEWIS - Garden Grow…

http://www.carrietree.co.uk

Brighton folk singer-songwriter Carrie Tree has appeared at numerous festivals and toured or collaborated with among others Damien Rice, Fink, Duke Special, Ben Taylor, Martha Tilston, Runner and the great Carly Simon no less! Home To The Invisible was recorded in Sussex, Cornwall and for the two tracks featuring Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the Headroom studios in South Africa. The latter was for the recording of “Mama Kita” and “Thousand Days”; and with some traditional African instruments put to good use a new (and needed) greater dimension is given to her music.

While Tree’s whispery vocals and the stripped, at times near bare instrumental approach is to…

http://www.donnailissee.com

http://twitter.com/donnaulisse

 http://hadleymusicgroup.com

Bluegrass singer-songwriter, Donna Ulisse (pronounced You-liss-ee)—nominated songwriter of the year by the IBMA the last two years forgoes her own material, other than two co-writes with her husband, Rick Stanley (cousin of Dr. Ralph Stanley) on her latest album. 

Their songs “Showin’ My Roots” and “I Always Had A Song I Can Lean On” speak a great deal about how Ulisse decided on music as a career, and how songs have always been a great comfort to her during hard times (as illustrated in the lyrics of…

The Health & Happiness Hour - Sara Grey in Session and conversation 16 April 2014 by Rob Ellen's Medicine Show on…

http://www.stubbyfingers.ca/

         New Brunswick blues/rock man Matt Andersen is back with a new album. A great guitarist, he’s even more notable as a vocalist, a natural heir to the likes of Joe Cocker. Teaming up with producer Steve Berlin at The Sonic Temple studio in Nova Scotia, the decision seems to have been made to go with the commercial possibilities of that voice. Weightless sounds very much like an album that Joe Cocker could have made at some point in his long career. A fine collection of blues-based rock/soul (heck, it’s all in there) songs – topped off with one irresistible gem – provide classy entertainment, a wall of wondrous sound. That voice is featured above all, but we also get the requisite mix of keyboards, rousing backing vocals…

Brennan Leigh & Noel McKay

Brennan Leigh and Noel McKay are two musicians that seemed destined to connect... Although they are accomplished singer/songwriters seperately, to hear them together is magical... Their songwriting styles meld seemlessly as they pull the audience, willingly, into the experience that is a Brennam Leigh & Noel McKay performance...

http://www.pjpacifico.com/

           PJ Pacifico, Connecticut-based singer-songwriter, has been over in the UK this week and will be back in July for a further push of his sweet, folk-based pop music. Actually, I’m with those who think that pop music is folk music; at its most trivial, it is disposable (and meant to be so) but occasionally the folk at large will take a pop song into its collective embrace in a way that makes it truly folk music.

           Anyway, five new songs here from Mr Pacifico. He’s six albums into his career (hell, he doesn’t look old enough) but this ep represents something of a fresh start. Produced by Kit Karlson of Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, Overlooking The Obvious features co-writes with Karlson, Kellogg and Garrison Starr, a fine singer-songwriter…

http://www.guntherbrown.com/

      Hailing from Portland, Maine, Gunther Brown are a four piece rock-based Americana band. Their debut album presents a pleasingly lo-fi rough and ready approach to their music that sounds refreshingly honest and straightforward. Songwriter and lead vocalist Pete Dubuc has a voice with built in rasp that speaks of a life full of hardworn experience - and probably a fair deal of whiskey.  A kind of life-soured sadness pervades the album; love is something that doesn’t work out or, if it does, it won’t last long (check out the ironically titled Forever). The mood is epitomized by a line in Headlights and Highways: “your fondest memories only make you sad, you can’t go back”.

        Well, we frequently enjoy music that enables…