Adam’s news rundown: June 2011
This is my first post of this kind and don’t expect it to happen regularly, but there has recently been a lot of news that I think No Depression readers will find interesting and that I feel I should pass along.
First of all, Bloodshot Records recording artist and legendary one-man band Scott H. Biram has announced that his next album Bad Ingredients will be released in October. It will be his first album since 2009’s Something’s Wrong/Lost Forever and, for my tastes, this is more exciting than the news of a new Gillian Welch album. I’m sure both will be great, though.
My second piece of news isn’t as heartening, but Wayne Hancock, a true giant among fans of real country music, has canceled all of his tour dates for July and August to enter a rehabilitation program. This isn’t the National Enquirer nor do I want it to be, but since I consider our music scene to be a family and a community I hope that you will all keep Wayne and his family in your thoughts and prayers.
Third, Outlaw Radio Chicago, the renowned underground country program formerly heard on Saving Country Music, will be premiering tonight in it’s new home at blackcountryrock.org/outlawradio with The Misery Jackals live in the studio.
Honky-tonk and rockabilly singer Jesse Dayton will be making his debut as a film director later this year with the release of the horror film Zombex. According to the film’s website, “Zombex is a throw-back zombie horror film set in historic New Orleans, using a pharmaceutical company as the culprit for outbreak, a private military contracting firm as the clean up, and a caravan to Austin Texas as the only hope for a vaccine…The story follows Charlie Thibideaux, a locally famous Zydeco player, as he slowly begins to discover why seemingly normal people are starting to turn into the undead, with all signs pointing to a new experimental drug given to post-Katrina survivors.” The film will star horror legend Sid Haig, who, like Dayton, is well known for his collaborations with Rob Zombie.
Speaking of country singers in the movies, Dwight Yoakam will be starring alongside Dennis Quaid and part-time musician Billy Bob Thornton in the film Jayne Mansfield’s Car, which will also be written and directed by Thornton. The film is set in 1969 and concerns three World War II veterans operating a cattle ranch.
And last but not least, Southern rock legends ZZ Top have completed their first new album since 2005 and one of the songs, entitled “Flyin’ High,” made a unique debut. According to the press release, “NASA Astronaut Michael Fossum, on his way to the International Space Station aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-02M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhastan, is treating his fellow astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the mission to a very appropriate sneak preview of a track that is slated to be in part of ZZ Top’s, as yet untitled, forthcoming album. Fossum has maintained friendships with Billy F Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard, the members of ZZ Top, for some time, dating back to even before the missions he flew aboard the US Space Shuttle in 2006 and 2008. He caught wind that one of the tracks on the new album, the band’s first studio recording since 2005, is entitled “Flyin’ High”…The reference obviously resonates with Astronaut Fossum regarding Soyuz trajectory and docking at the International Space Station. At 120 beats-per-minute, the song should keep the crew energized during the flight.”
Well, that’s it for now. Maybe we’ll try this again some time soon.