It was not only his first appearance in front of a live audience since January 2020, but also the first Broadway play of any kind since the outbreak began.

And the capacity crowd, which included many well-heeled Springsteen fans, greeted him with the iconic “Brooooce” shout, drowning out the anti-vaccine protestors assembled outside the theater.

“It’s nice to see everyone here tonight,” he said to the audience. “We’re not wearing masks and sitting next to each other in the same room. It’s been a long time coming. It’s a huge excitement. What a year it has been. I’ve been on the globe for 71 years and have never seen anything like this last year. And I was fortunate. We stayed fit and productive. With the E Street Band, I released a record. Letter To You is a film that we made. I hosted a radio show, recorded a podcast with President Barack Obama and was chained and imprisoned.”

He’s referring to the November 2020 incident in which he was charged for DUI after only two shots of tequila. Until this program, he had not publicly commented on the topic. It resulted in the most serious charges being dropped and a fine of $540.

“I didn’t get up one morning, hop on my motorcycle, and say, ‘I guess I’ll drive to jail,’” he explained. “After that, I had to go to Court! The United States of America vs. Bruce Springsteen was my case. It’s always comforting to know that the entire country is against you. ‘You have committed an act so vile that it has insulted the entire United States! You, my obstinate, law-breaking, bridge-and-tunnel buddy, have consumed two shots of tequila.’ 

It served as a reminder that a lot has changed since Bruce Springsteen first Broadway engagement.

That was before the epidemic, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter and Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.

The general structure of the show will be familiar to anyone who saw the previous run or the Netflix special. However he did drop a handful of different songs and rearranged some of the spoken-word parts to reflect everything that has changed.

Unfortunately, his mother’s health has deteriorated in recent years, and he appeared to be fighting back tears as he updated the audience on her condition before a touching rendition of The Wish. “She’s been suffering from Alzheimer’s for ten years,” he explained. “She’s 95 years old. Her desire to dance, on the other hand, has not faded. When she sees me, she smiles and gives me a kiss. She makes a sound that I know indicates ‘I love you.’ When I put on Glenn Miller, she starts moving in her chair, reaching out for me to take her in my arms and dance.”

There was a political segment, in which he replaced his comments about Trump and Charlottesville with a new speech.

“These are hard and troubling times,” he remarked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen, definitely not in my lifetime, a period when democracy itself, not just who is going to run the show for the next four years, but the survival of democracy itself, was so seriously challenged. The Rule of Law, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution have been so casually bludgeoned, ignored, and trampled on that I fear for our future. I understand those people on the street. It’s a scary period, full with uncertainty.”

He made no mention of George Floyd or Black Lives Matter, but he followed that statement with a haunting rendition of “American Skin (41 Shots)” that revealed exactly where his mind was at. This song was penned over 20 years ago in response to the death of Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo at the hands of the New York Police Department. It was extremely powerful, delivered just one day after Derek Chauvin’s punishment.

All of his previous Broadway shows ended with Born to Run, but he skipped it this time in favor of I’ll See You In My Dreams from the Letter To You album. It was the perfect climax to his statement about how nobody is truly gone as long as we remember them.

If all goes as planned the world will see him return to the road with the E Street Band in 2022. Until then, Springsteen will be holding court on Broadway, reminding fans that good times are ahead.

The post Bruce Springsteen Returns to Broadway appeared first on moonshinereunion.com.

The album was recorded just days before the release of his best-known live album, Live at Folsom Prison.

It also landed him, now a well-known and celebrated country performer, smack dab in the middle of the late-1960s counterculture.

Going inside that Grateful Dead-owned ‘psychedelic total-environment dance venue’ in the heart of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury counter-culture was as bold as shutting himself in with maximum-security prisoners two hours away.

Cash’s set may have deviated from his regular one owing due to the setting. The album includes two Bob Dylan covers. It also features renditions of songs from Dylan’s own catalog that were neglected at the time. 

Going to Memphis, which Cash originally recorded in 1959, is an epochal black blues chain-gang chant. It was collected on the tape recorder of the famous musicologist, Alan Lomax, inside a Mississippi prison in the 1940s.  The song harkens back to a not-too-distant period of cruel, compelled labor and punishment in the American south. Cash’s career had been uneventful during this period. This reminds us why he became, and continues to be, our most enduring musical conscience.

The technique Stanley recorded it gives it a different character to Folsom and San Quentin.

Because they were recorded in venues that were not designed to capture superb audio, the last two have a raw immediacy. Carousel, on the other hand, was recorded using techniques Stanley learnt while working as the venue’s in-house engineer.

Bear’s recording provides us with an entirely new perspective on Johnny’s live sound at this creative peak. It’s definitely the most accurate representation of what it sounded like to be in the audience. This recording is out of the ordinary. Johnny is centered in the stereo soundstage on every other Johnny Cash song you’ve ever heard. Johnny, on the other hand, is totally on the right channel, while the Tennessee Three are all on the left.

At the Carousel Ballroom will be available on CD and double-LP vinyl. It will include a booklet with new articles by Cash’s son, John Carter Cash, Starfinder Stanley, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, and Dave Schools of Widespread Panic. As well as new art by Susan Archie and a reproduction of the original concert poster by Steve Catron.

The post New Johnny Cash live album release appeared first on moonshinereunion.com.

Nick Wayne

He has a sound that has been described as a mix of Justin Timberlake and Chris Stapleton. If you area a fan of Dierks Bentley, Keith Urban, and John Mayer you should definitely check out this album.

It may sound like a fairy tale to have one of your heroes record your song before you even have a publishing deal. However that is exactly what happened to newbie Nick Wayne. Keith Urban heard “How Do I Get Close” shortly after Wayne penned it in 2015 and cut it right away. Then, by chance, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill recorded it. Neither version made it onto their albums, but the buzz was enough to give Wayne the boost he needed.

On his new two-song EP, Two Sides, the Nashville native demonstrates his profound love of both soul and country music. On it he draws inspiration from Bill Withers and Usher to Dierks Bentley and Keith Urban.

He believes some new country artists come to this genre trying to make it for a little bit before crossing over into what they truly want to achieve, which is become a mainstream pop artist. He´s from Nashville and the honesty of it all means he’ll only make it if it’s genuine and good.

There may be many musicians like that, but there are also many artists who keep the rest of the world from listening to country music. It simply doesn’t feel as authentic, and there’s a reason for that.

Wayne’s falsetto voice and soulful melody take center stage alongside bluesy guitar on his own version of “How Do I Get Close,” a sparse arrangement that strikes a striking balance of light and shade.

Cashavelly Morrison

Fans of Neko Case, the Watson Twins, and David Lynch-style film noir should appreciate Morrison’s style.

Cashavelly Morrison sings in a coolly expressive voice that conjures up a cinematic feel. It’s a perfect match for her lyrics’ exquisitely drawn mini-dramas. Ryan MacLeod, her husband/partner/co-writer, grew up playing old-time folk-music murder songs in his native North Carolina (where they live), and his day job is as a psychiatrist. The ideal skill set to invoke dark ways.

The duo’s second album Hunger combines gorgeous sounds to create terrifying stories with a staggeringly high death count. They’re currently promoting the record with a series of finely choreographed videos, while also finalizing tour plans for 2019.

Their first record was inspired by an attempt to create a novel set in West Virginia in the early 1900s. She was conducting research and speaking with an old miner. He gave her these incredibly vivid anecdotes about the world of coal-company communities.

 ‘Ashes White’ on this album was inspired by him telling her about black men disappearing into coke ovens without anyone ever knowing.

Kellogg, Stephen

Fans of Tom Petty, Ryan Adams, and Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska era will want to listen to this singer´s work.

Although Stephen Kellogg has published eleven albums and performed over 1500 performances in the previous decade, the main portion of his career has been spent as the front man for his band the Sixers. With the release of his new solo album Objects in the Mirror this month, Kellogg is ready to establish himself as an artist capable of replicating the force and energy of a full band with only his voice and guitar.

Objects in the Mirror, produced by Will Hoge was recorded in a single week in Nashville. It captures Kellogg’s songwriting talent, candor, and sensitivity and offers it in a soulful, folk-rock style that is refreshingly free of pretense and studio polishing. Kellogg has also published a companion essay collection called Objects in the Mirror: A Storyteller’s Take on What Matters Most, which will be published next year. Kellogg is now on a solo headlining tour that will last until the end of December. After that he will embark on a full-band tour in March.

He seeks to play music to explain the contents of his heart. In order to accomplish that he approaches it conversationally. He achieves this by editing all of the songs live and leaving the vocal passes unedited.

The post New Country artists you should check out appeared first on moonshinereunion.com.

The musical scene changed during the next five years as Americana music became a legitimate hot property. Traveller by Chris Stapleton was the seventh best-selling album of 2016. It sold nearly one and a half million copies, placing it just below recordings by pop megastars Adele, Beyoncé, and Rihanna.

According to Merriam-Webster, Americana music is “a form of American music with origins in early folk and country music.”

Country and western, Appalachian, gospel, roots-rock, folk, bluegrass, R&B, and blues are all represented in this tapestry. Americana bands often comprise of mostly acoustic instruments, although they can also include a complete electric band.

It was early folk and gospel singers who laid the groundwork for coutrny and Americana music. Some of the modern blueprints came from the Western swing movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Its icon, Bob Wills, attained a national profile in the 1930s. Wills had a direct influence on Willie Nelson, helping to define his open-minded approach to music.

Nelson has paid a heartfelt tribute to Wills while also acknowledging a greater obligation to one of music’s true pioneers: Hank Williams. Williams, who died on January 1, 1953, at the age of 29, crammed a lot into his short life. These include the 29 songs he recorded, including “Hey, Good Lookin’, and ” “Why Don’t You Love Me? The Smithsonian Institution recognized him as a guiding light in 1999, with its first-ever discussion about country music.

Williams, like many pre-war musicians, learned to sing in a church choir (in Alabama).

His music blended the musical styles of his Deep South surroundings. This included Western swing, Appalachian mountain music, honky-tonk, country blues, and gospel music. It was his knack for penning painful confessional story songs that distinguished him as a very talented song writer however.

Williams was one of the first American singer-songwriters to articulate the common people’s profound personal feelings, dreams, and heartaches in direct and evocative songs. Leonard Cohen described his songwriting as sublime. Bob Dylan stated that Hank’s songs were the model principles of poetic songwriting. Artists as different as Louis Armstrong, Elvis Presley, and Al Green have covered Williams’ compositions.

Williams influenced hundreds of musicians, including country giants like Johnny Cash, who made an entire tribute album to the idol. These include singers like George Jones, Gram Parsons, and even modern rock stars like Beck, Keith Richards, and Tom Petty. When Ryan Adams and his fellow alt.country singers of the 1980s and 1990s tried to find their path, they turned to the man who could write a masterpiece like “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.

Williams, who was hard-drinking and straight-talking, was possibly country music’s first rebel. This trait was copied by the self-proclaimed outlaw country artists of the 1970s. They sought to take some of punk music’s defiant spirit into country’s mainstream. Hank Williams was Americana 70 years before the term became popular.

The post Hank Williams and the beginning of Americana appeared first on moonshinereunion.com.