Americana and roots music - No Depression

The Americana and roots music authority

Grant Alden
  • Male
  • Morehead, KY
  • United States
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I completely agree. I was eating at a Cracker Barrel over the weekend and they were playing this CD. It wasn't bad, but I didn't understand the purpose. The Statlers were awesome, and anyone who devotes a whole CD to covering them should try to do s…
1 hour ago
Grant - I love how you describe what a lot of people would think is a great gig as "work". I know exactly what you mean. I had a position once where I spent a lot of time in bars and HAVING to do it did become work after a while. Sometimes talking a…
3 hours ago
Really i appreciate you for doing such a great task...It cleared off all my doubts..Wanna try and implement your way of writing as well .Thanks for sharing this wonderful piece of information. Thanks, Bryan Depression disability
9 hours ago
"Art and atmosphere, sophisticated beyond my patience." I love that line. I like this blog, (and Grant, I think it shows that you're not in that bad a mood). I understand the touch chore it is to go through the mail. I only get a couple of CDs a m…
9 hours ago
I wonder if your A&R guy was with the Decca execs who turned down the offer to sign up the Beatles in January 1962? I'm reading a great book right now that details every song recorded by the Beatles..."Revolution in the Head" by Ian MacDonald. He sa…
17 hours ago
I keep thinking of an art car, with CDs for scales, but I fear the glint off sunlight would be almost as dangerous as my wife's disapproval of such foolishness. Not to mention the time and chemistry involved in affixing them to the poor old truck.
18 hours ago
Your job's a lot like mine, Grant. I often feel guilty about things I haven't listened to properly - especially when I read a review of the CD by someone who really considered it carefully and gave it time. But, I don't know if there's any way aroun…
19 hours ago
A blog post by Grant Alden was featured
Back when ND was a print magazine and it was my job to try to sort through the hundreds of CDs which came my way each month so as to find the next Whiskeytown, I used to have days when I'd listen to fragments of things I'd never heard of. I could cl…
20 hours ago
Grant Alden added a blog post
Back when ND was a print magazine and it was my job to try to sort through the hundreds of CDs which came my way each month so as to find the next Whiskeytown, I used to have days when I'd listen to fragments of things I'd never heard of. I could cl…
21 hours ago
Hey Kim, send me the coupon. We have a Cracker Barrel just down the road and we will use it.
on Friday
As I read this, I couldn't help but think about what gets lost whenever people record cover tunes. There tends to be this sense that it has a feeling for them, but that feeling comes off more as their own nostalgia for how they felt when they sang a…
on Thursday
It's so refreshing to read a bad review these days. All these non-professional blogger types here usually say that if they don't like something, they don't write about it. But a critic needs not to just pick the best that comes across the desk, but…
on Thursday
A blog post by Grant Alden was featured
The announced mission of the duo formed Jamie Dailey and Darren Vincent (yes, Rhonda's brother) was to keep alive the storied tradition of the brother duos who at one point formed the backbone of country music: the Monroes, the Delmores, the Louvins…
on Thursday
Grant Alden added a blog post
The announced mission of the duo formed Jamie Dailey and Darren Vincent (yes, Rhonda's brother) was to keep alive the storied tradition of the brother duos who at one point formed the backbone of country music: the Monroes, the Delmores, the Louvins…
on Thursday
Right on!
February 2
Sounds like a great move, Grant. Lookin' forward to hearing it.
February 1

Grant Alden's Blog

Grant Alden

This is what the work used to be (part one)

Back when ND was a print magazine and it was my job to try to sort through the hundreds of CDs which came my way each month so as to find the next Whiskeytown, I used to have days when I'd listen to fragments of things I'd never heard of. I could clear a shelf of 100 CDs in a good afternoon, probably finding one thing really worth finding in all that, and spending a few minutes with another goodly handful of artists whose work I was casually familiar with… Continue

Posted on February 8, 2010 at 10:36am — 6 Comments

Grant Alden

Dailey & Vincent do the Statler Bros.; a quick review

The announced mission of the duo formed by Jamie Dailey and Darren Vincent (yes, Rhonda's brother) was to keep alive the storied tradition of the brother duos who at one point formed the backbone of country music: the Monroes, the Delmores, the Louvins (and the Stanleys, and the McReynolds, and the Blue Sky Boys, and...).

Their fourth long player in two years, Dailey & Vincent Sing the Statler Brothers, appears not on their principal label (Rounder), but in one of those side deals th… Continue

Posted on February 4, 2010 at 8:00am — 4 Comments

Grant Alden

An attempt at blatant self-promotion...

doomed to fail, because I suck at such things.

But.

This is what I'm supposed to do.

I'm supposed to tell y'all that my radio debut happens on WMKY this weekend, 8 pm Saturday and Sunday nights (all times are EST, for those of you who somehow don't know exactly where I live and in what time zone it happens to fall...). Up against the Super Bowl. Timing, they say, is everything. (Though, in fairness, the guy who scheduled this didn't know there was a football game. Or says he didn't.)

This is… Continue

Posted on February 1, 2010 at 2:00pm — 3 Comments

Grant Alden

An unwanted political digression about life, liberty, and the Supreme Court

Note: I wrote this a few days and posted it at dailykos, where I waste a certain small amount of time and have virtually no audience, the meritocracy being what it is. I realize that many here to not share my politics, and that even more of you don't come here to talk politics. Fine. Skip this one.

But the magazine I once edited was a political statement of its own kind, and I am a political person. And I'm a writer, which means I write about the things which engage me. So as long as I'm to
Continue

Posted on January 24, 2010 at 8:01am — 9 Comments

Grant Alden

Hope I Die Before I Get Old

Apparently Aunt Karol died toward the end of New Year’s Eve, though I didn’t hear for at least ten days and even then my big brother didn’t know how to spell her name.

It wasn’t a surprise, for we knew she was in hospice, and she was 95, about the average lifespan for her side of the family. Karol was youngest of thirteen (born in ten years with one set of twins), and her first husband – so family lore has it — passed along a venereal disease which kept her from bearing children. Maybe that’s w… Continue

Posted on January 21, 2010 at 3:52pm — 3 Comments

Comment Wall (6 comments)

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At 4:27pm on November 5, 2009, Rob Carey of The Headlocks said…
Glad to be friends, Grant!
Hope you enjoy the songs I've posted from my band The Headlocks.
I read No Depression all the time and would like to think that our new record Cuckoo Bird would have been received well somewhere among its pages...
Glad to be here on NoDepression
Rob
At 4:18am on November 3, 2009, Karin Wright said…
Hi Grant,
Thank you for the friendship.
Regards
Karin
At 6:42pm on September 22, 2009, Rob Taylor-Manning said…
i typically just ask what you've been listening to for my Americana needs. i'm still trying to figure out how i stumbled into my latest love - Rachel's.
At 5:57am on August 17, 2009, Alan Edwards said…
Hi, Grant,
Alan at Appleseed Recordings here. I tried sending you the press release below to your grant@nodepression.net address and it bounced back. Would you care to share your new e-mail address, and should we still be sending you review copies of our releases? Is Peter now at the Seattle address or still in NC. Please let me know, and please read on,
Alan

For music feature program consideration...

Indie Record Label Appleseed, Haven for "Heritage" Folk/Roots Artists,
Celebrates 100th Release: New CD/DVD by Buffy Sainte-Marie

West Chester, Penn. -- It's appropriate that an independent CD label with a roster of creatively vibrant and often politically active musicians from the past five decades would mark its 100th release with a CD/DVD package in August by Buffy Sainte-Marie, the first recordings in 18 years from the once-blacklisted Native American folksinger-songwriter.

What's surprising is that the label, Appleseed Recordings, is not only surviving but successfully spreading its idealistic belief in music's power to move people and effect social change to new generations. The company's activist outlook and its core of "heritage" artists -- respected musicians associated with the folk and protest movements of the Sixties and beyond, but many of them long absent from the recording studio -- have inspired guest appearances on its special projects by contemporary performers such as Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Bonnie Raitt and dozens more. The twelve-year-old label has been recognized by nine Grammy nominations and, finally, a Grammy Award in 2009 for one of its main inspirations, Pete Seeger.

West Chester, Penn.-based Appleseed was founded by music-loving former lawyer Jim Musselman, who forged his own social conscience as one of consumer advocate Ralph Nader's "Raiders," forcing the auto industry into mandatory installation of airbags in motor vehicles in the Eighties. Determined to start a record label of musical and historical value, Musselman has gradually assembled a roster of releases by many giants of topical and personal songwriting as well as traditional music, including Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, Sweet Honey in the Rock, former Byrds leader Roger McGuinn, Tom Rush, Jesse Winchester, Holly Near, and David Bromberg; a British contingent that includes Donovan, Al Stewart, and John Wesley Harding; and other international artists including Tommy Sands (Northern Ireland), Dick Gaughan (Scotland), and Sharon Katz (South Africa). This week's release of Canadian-born Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Running for the Drum" CD, which includes a biographical documentary DVD, "Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life," marks the overdue return of another independent musician who paid for her activism with a de facto airplay ban during the Nixon years in the Seventies.

"Appleseed has built its reputation as a label unafraid of politics, a place where an artist can speak his or her mind without fear of censorship," to quote the online All Music Guide. The company backs up its idealistic outlook by contributing a percentage of its profits to environmental, human rights, and other progressive organizations -- more than $250,000 to date.

Aside from releasing highly praised solo albums by its artists, Appleseed has issued albums of Underground Railroad and Spanish Civil War songs; "Give US Your Poor," a charity CD that paired established musicians such as Natalie Merchant with their down-and-out counterparts to benefit the homeless (for which Merchant was named ABC-TV's "Artist of the Week" in 2007); archival recordings of previously unreleased traditional American folk ballads; and expanded reissues of out-of-print LPs. In 2007, the label released "Sowing the Seeds - The 10th Anniversary," a 2-CD set celebrating its first decade with catalogue highlights and new recordings, including a historic pairing of Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen on the latter's "Ghost of Tom Joad." Numerous outspoken musicians on other labels, including Joan Baez, Steve Earle, Ani DiFranco, and Billy Bragg, have recorded as guest artists for Appleseed.

Appleseed has also been greatly responsible for the restoration to the public consciousness of folk and activist icon Pete Seeger and introducing his music to a new, young audience. One of the label's earliest releases was a 2-CD tribute to Seeger called "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," the first of three such tributes featuring mostly exclusive new recordings of Seeger-associated songs performed by Bruce Springsteen (his first real contact with Seeger's music, which led to his "Seeger Sessions" recordings and tours almost a decade later), Jackson Browne & Bonnie Raitt, Judy Collins, Donovan, actor-musician-activist Tim Robbins and a virtual who's who of classic and contemporary folk music. Fittingly, Seeger's "At 89" CD in 2008 brought the label its first Grammy Award (for "Best Traditional Folk Recording"); Pete's appearance with Springsteen performing "This Land is Your Land" at the pre-Obama inauguration "We Are One" concert in January 2009 added another link in the chain of tradition.

Equally gratifying to Appleseed has been the use of its recordings in times of political strife and human anguish. Years after its inclusion in Appleseed's first Seeger tribute, Springsteen's version of the Seeger-adapted "We Shall Overcome" civil rights song was used by NBC-TV news as the soundtrack to a video montage of self-sacrifice and suffering in New York City in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, broadcast nightly for a week. Grieving families also played the song for comfort in the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. On the day of the US invasion of Iraq, Musselman added some updated lyrics to Seeger's Vietnam-era protest, "Bring Them Home," and brought Seeger into the studio to sing a timely new version, later augmented by Earle, Bragg, and DiFranco, for inclusion on 2003's Grammy-nominated "Seeds," the third of Appleseed's Seeger tributes. Springsteen subsequently wrote, performed and recorded additional verses to "Bring Them Home."

Musselman finds great satisfaction in combining his commitment to social justice with his passion for music: "We are more than a record label; we are a vision, in many ways using music as a tool of social change and peace. We also are unlike most labels in that we initiate many of our projects and then approach artists to share that vision."

For more information about Appleseed Recordings, to arrange an interview with Jim Musselman, or to request a review copy of Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Running for the Drum" (US only), please contact me via the phone number or e-mail address below. You can also visit our website, www.AppleseedMusic, for more information.

Thanks and stay cool,
Alan

Alan Edwards
Appleseed Recordings
(ph/fax) 215-628-4562
(e-mail) JoeVinyl@aol.com
www.AppleseedMusic.com
29 Betsy Lane
Ambler, PA 19002
At 6:10am on July 18, 2009, carmen bitsy t didier said…
I read an article of yours at a friends house in Oxford mag. on "Writing on Writing". I am now a fan of your crisp and mindful writing. Anything you may need to know about raising chickens, geese, peacocks, guineas, turkeys or ducks, please feel free to ask as I am expert in these matters.
At 9:56am on February 17, 2009, No Depression said…
Hi Grant!

Welcome to the ND community site. If you have a minute will post a short test blog so we can test the RSS feed feature to pull your content to the home page.
 
 

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