Often put in the same bracket as Chris Rea and John Mayer but not as well known, this is Swiss native Fankhauser’s twelfth album.  Try My Love is a selection of sympathetically produced songs that brings out the best in him. Songs such as the big band blues of Make My Home Where I Lay My Hat sit comfortably beside soulful ballads like the eponymous title track and Please Come On Home. Production levels reach a high with one of the four live ‘encores’ , Down On Bended Knees, which has superb input from the horn section. He flirts with Country on the hidden gem, Roadhouse & Automobiles as well as with funk on It’s Gonna Rain. However, it is in the blues where Fankhauser seems happiest. This is heard on the swinging Jealous Kinda Fella, the mid-paced strolling blues of Cut Me…

FTB podcast #149 features the new album by THE GREAT UNKNOWNS called Homefront. Also new music from JOHN BATDORF, CAROLANN AMES and HUMMING HOUSE. Here's the iTunes link to subscribe to the FTB podcasts. Here's the direct link to listen now! Here is the RSS feed: http://ftbpodcasts.libsyn.com/rss.

Show #149

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If Bob Wootton didn’t start out in life sounding like Johnny Cash, then thirty years spent playing lead guitar for the big man certainly left their mark. The guitar sound is instantly recognisable, of course, but the voice is so remarkably close to that of the man in black that you feel that Johnny could have taken a few nights off every now and then and the folks would have been perfectly happy to hear Bob Wootton sing the songs.

When Johnny Cash retired from performance in 1998, Bob Wootton called it a day as well and took a job driving tour buses. A few years later, however, he ran into Brandon Sampson of Six Mile Grove who persuaded Bob to play a Cash tribute concert, with Six Mile Grove…

Phil Lee last toured the UK with The East Nashville Revue, playing Maverick, Summertyne & Leadenhall Americana Festivals, before that playing venues & festivals in England, Ireland Scotland & Holland  with his side-kick Tom Mason who he describes affectionately/typically as "like a beloved pet barely walking up-right" now hes got a sparkly new Dobro & a yearning to tour solo, here are the dates, & all you need to know about "the Might King Of Love" one of the worlds true originals & one of the finest American born entertainers since Jimmy Durante. …

www.kdooley.com

Colorado blues/folk musician Kevin Dooley calls his particular brand of music "American Celtic". You'd guess the Irish heritage isn't very far away at all with a name like that, though Kevin sings with an American accent that sounds thick with tobacco juice - he could be one of those familiar faces (and voices) that pops up in endless 1950s westerns. Moonlight Highway has thirteen songs that are a pretty inspired mix of Kevin Dooley originals (four of them) and a wide selection from some of the finest modern writers. There's a couple from the ever-anonymous folk tradition, too, and in all these choices he has managed to find wonderful songs that are far from being overfamiliar. Obviously the trad material (Ferryman and Old man at the Mill) will be pretty old, but there's a fair age range…

www.mundy.ie 

Irish singer-songwriter, Mundy who won favour with his version of Steve Earle’s ‘Galway Girl’ and his general grasp of fare akin to it; as in your finest American singer-songwriters. 

Born, Edmund Enright in Birr, Co Offaly Mundy is a fine student of the idiom and practitioner too. As he performs first-class versions of Bob Dylan’s ‘Buckets Of Rain’ (done stripped down fashion with only acoustic guitar for accompaniment but I hasten to add not as strong a version as that of Danny Schmidt!) the Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman haunting classic ‘Juanita’. Warmed in harmony vocals and pedal steel guitar is good but not as beautifully performed as the flowing ‘Looks Like I Am Up Shit Creek Again’. Performed in an accomplished fashion it too enjoys a similar and dare I see it superior backing quality. If all records were recorded with such style and…

On episode 71 of the Taproot Podcast, John Lilly talks about meeting Bill Kirchen and Bill's help on his most recent CD, Cold Comfort; how he funded the CD by winning a songwriting contest; working at the Country Music Hall of Fame and getting to visit "the cathedral of Country Music"; his yearly Hank Williams Tribute show; and introduces us to three songs on his Cold Comfort CD.

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On episode 72 of the Taproot Podcast, Lee Briante of The Far West talks about the importance of having video and internet media available for today's audience; how it made him feel to move to Los Angeles; and how recording in an American Legion hall brought their debut self-titled CD to life.

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 Recorded live at the Red Shack recording studio the latest ‘classic’ set of work from Texas-based singer-songwriter Eric Taylor has a wonderful set of old friends in tow. What a list it is too as in Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, Denice Franke, James Gilmer, Marco Python Fecchio, Rock Romano and his wife, Susan Lindfors Taylor who sings some harmony vocals and made her production debut with the recording. What a one to debut with and how wonderful it is to see them all rise to the occasion. 

Eric Taylor’s songs did deeper than any singer-songwriter I know. Like the stories he intersperses with them live on stage each every one is like a mini-novel in its own right. His grasp of the life of unique characters often walking in the shadows of the world. Coupled with his…