Day: February 7, 2021

New music release: Normal Isn’t Normal Anymore by Rod Abernethy

Normal Isn’t Normal is Rod Abernethy’s new album. Photo: google

Rod Abernethy is the 2019 Winner of American Songwriter’s Bob Dylan Song Contest for his riveting performance of “Oxford Town.” His last album The Man I’m Supposed To Be—produced by the legendary Don Dixon (REM, Marti Jones, The Smithereens, Marshall Crenshaw)—reached the top 10 in 2018 on the Folk DJ Chart. As a composer, he has scored and produced music for over 80 video games including the Electronic Art’s blockbuster hit “Dead Space” which won a BAFTA Award in 2009 for Best Original Score, and Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” for Vivendi Universal which won Video Game Soundtrack Of The Year in 2003.  Now, Abernethy is proud to add his new full-length album Normal Isn’t Normal Anymore to his vast catalog of works and is available for purchase here. (IVPR, 2021)

Normal Isn’t Normal Anymore is a mixture of guitar virtuosity and world-class songwriting, most of which happened on Abernethy’s last year of touring. The album has received praise from fans and critics alike, including The Wall Street Journal, who complimented his “impressive guitar-picking.” According to American Songwriter, the lead single Another Year, is “a message as poignant as it is heartwarming…this idea of unity, so valuable and necessary in these times of polarization and strife, is so beautifully done.”

Abernethy’s knack for songcraft spans from finding excitement in the mundane day-to-day to making sense of the heavier bits of life; the latter being apparent in “My Father Was A Quiet Man” and the former in the rollicking “Birds In The Chimney.” The album also features two of Abernethy’s lively, intricate guitar instrumentals like “Over The Fence,” a rollicking six-string instrumental adventure about the family coonhound who jumps the fence and roams the downtown area for hours. With star performances from some of Nashville’s finest including Will Kimbrough on guitar, it should be noted that Normal Isn’t Normal Anymore is just as much about musicianship as it is songwriting, and neither take the back seat to the other.

Normal Isn’t Normal Anymore Track Listing:
1. Just Around The Corner
2. It’s Always Something
3. Whiskey & Pie
4. My Father Was A Quiet Man
5. Birds In The Chimney
6. When Tobacco Was King
7. Normal Isn’t Normal Anymore
8. Changing
9. Just Get In The Car
10. Another Year
11. Over The Fence
12. Oxford Town

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band releases all-star cast cover of Bob Dylan classic song

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band gathers all-star cast for a timely cover of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin. Photo: google

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band gathers an all-star cast for a timely cover of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’. In the fifty-seven years since Bob Dylan released his career-altering folksong, the times he sang of did seem to change. But now, in another period of national unrest, a President refusing to concede defeat or peacefully transfer power, and a renewed fire for justice in the long-fought battle for civil rights, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s new version of Dylan’s classic sounds more poignant and insistent than ever before. On Friday, JamBase shared NGDB’s star-studded version of Dylan’s classic and is available for “name your price” purchase on the band’s Bandcamp page with all proceeds going to Feeding America. On February 8, the song will become available on digital service providers with those proceeds also going towards Feeding America’s cause. (IVPR, 2021)

Amidst the compounding, pleading verses of Scottish ballad by way of Greenwich Village, the Dirt Band’s distinguished musical guests—Jason Isbell, Rosanne Cash, The War And Treaty, and Steve Earle, all of whom are no strangers to writing and singing their beliefs on record, each step to the microphone to contribute a verse with Isbell also adding slide guitar—carry the same tone and energy in their voices as the song’s writer did almost six decades ago; an unfortunate but earnest reaction to the all too evident parallels between now and then. “It moved me deeply then and that hasn’t changed,” NGDB founding member and lead singer Jeff Hanna notes. “The lyrics are as relevant today as they were when Dylan wrote it. Maybe even more so.”

Produced by Ray Kennedy, “The Time’s They Are A-Changin’” was collectively recorded up and down the east coast. John Leventhal recorded his wife, Rosanne Cash’s vocals in their New York City home studio and Steve Earle contributed his verse via the world-famous Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village. In Nashville, NGDB and guests joined Kennedy in his Room & Board Studio. Rounding out the already outstanding cast of characters on this track are all the current members of NGDB—Jeff Hanna (lead vocals and acoustic guitar), Jimmie Fadden (drums), Bob Carpenter (accordion), Jim Photoglo (electric bass), Jaime Hanna (electric guitar), and Ross Holmes (fiddle and mandolin)—as well as Fred Eltringham (Sheryl Crow, The Wallflowers) on additional drums and Nashville songwriting legend—and Jeff Hanna’s better half—Matraca Berg on harmonica and harmony vocals. “We’ve got great admiration for all of these folks, not only as artists, but more importantly, as people,” says Hanna.

“I’ve been a fan of Bob Dylan’s since I was a teenager, living in California. I was fortunate enough to see him sing The Times They Are A-Changin’ in concert the year the song was released: 1964.” – Jeff Hanna.