Tag: New music releases

Marc Scibilia releases new single from Seed of Joy deluxe reissue

Marc Scibilia’s Seed of Joy album’s deluxe reissue is set for April 9. Rivals is the first single from that album. Photo: google

Born and raised in Buffalo, NY, chart-topping singer/songwriter Marc Scibilia has been on a steady rise ever since the 2012 release of his breakout single, “How Bad We Need Each Other.” In the last several years alone, he has racked up more than 125 million streams across platforms, garnered praise from the likes of pop star Demi Lovato and Matchbox Twenty’s Rob Thomas, and toured with James Bay, Zac Brown Band, Butch Walker, and Nick Jonas, among others. (IV-PR, 2021)

Since its release last year, Marc Scibilia’s album Seed of Joy has been streamed more than 130 million times across digital platforms, garnered 700,000+ monthly listeners on Spotify, and physical copies of the album sold out on the day they were announced. His fans—new and old—cannot get enough of his ability to observe profound moments in his personal life and craft them into universal anthems and ballads for others to love or grieve with. With Seed of Joy, Scibilia’s calling card is the purity found in simultaneously caring for his father during a hard-fought bout with brain cancer and watching life bloom in his young family. It is his simple reassurances of love that are equally felt when whispered to one or sung out to millions. On Friday April 9, Scibilia will share an expanded, deluxe edition of Seed of Joy with his fans, and its first single, “Rivals” is available right now at this link. 

A love song custom-made to reverberate from the rafters (just as soon as live music is back), “Rivals” exemplifies Scibilia’s mastery of the whispered verse turned soaring chorus; equally at home in sold out venues and on road trips with the windows down. “I wrote ‘Rivals’ at a hotel Munich, Germany, while on tour with Robin Schulz,” Marc says. “We were playing these massive arena shows. It was a career highlight but it reminded me of the things that are most important to me. I always had my friends, family…the things that have no rivals.” His stomping, brassy ode to those friends and family is a perfect fit for the same arenas from where it came.  He recently performed the song live via SPIN’s Instagram—watch the performance here. 

Posthumous Tony Joe White album Smoke from the Chimney

Tony Joe White’s Smoke from the Chimney is set for May 7 release. Photo: google

Across five decades as a performer and storyteller, Tony Joe White—a.k.a. “The Swamp Fox”—left an indelible mark on American music. His catalog offers indisputable classics such as “Polk Salad Annie” and “Rainy Night in Georgia” and his songs have been recorded by Ray Charles, Kenny Chesney, Waylon Jennings, Tim McGraw, Willie Nelson, Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, and Tina Turner. On Friday, May 7, Smoke from the Chimney, a nine-song album of never-before-heard Tony Joe White tunes, will be released on Easy Eye Sound. Produced by Dan Auerbach and rounded out by Nashville’s most seasoned studio musicians, Smoke from the Chimney started out as several unadorned voice and guitar demos from White’s home studio before being transformed into full band arrangements harkening back to the albums he recorded in the late 60s and early 70s in Nashville and Muscle Shoals—just as he was emerging as an internationally recognized songwriter and recording artist. (IV-PR, 2021)

On Friday, NPR/World Cafe gave fans their first listen of “Boot Money,” a gritty, thumping ode to keeping a little bit of extra scratch hidden away. “Boot Money” comes accompanied by an animated video from director Robert Schober which colorfully places White and Auerbach in the recording studio to kick off the tune before following along while White lives out the song’s storyline. Fans can see the video for “Boot Money” at this link and pre-order or pre-save Smoke from the Chimney here.

After his father’s death in 2018, Jody White, White’s son and manager, started transferring his father’s multitrack home recordings to digital files. Looking back on the moment he unearthed the demo of “Smoke from the Chimney,” he recalls a mix of happiness, gratification, and shock. As he continued to find other songs that did not make an album, he moved the material into a separate folder. Within a year, those select recordings would evolve into Smoke from the Chimney. Jody says that even in those basic tracks, that definitive Tony Joe White groove instantly stood out. “He always finds a tempo and a pocket that is exactly right. And it’s a little bit different than anybody else would choose themselves,” he says. Jody believes that his father would love the way Smoke from the Chimney turned out.

Smoke from the Chimney Track list:
Smoke from the Chimney
Boot Money
Del Rio, You’re Making Me Cry
Listen to Your Song
Over You
Scary Stories
Bubba Jones
Someone Is Crying
Billy

“Smoke From The Chimney” is more than a faithful tribute to one of the great Americana musicians and national treasures, performed by an ensemble who capture the DNA of Tony Joe White’s songs with beauty, warmth, and reverence.” – NPR’s Bruce Warren

New music release: The Waylon Sessions by Shannon McNally

The Wayon Sessions by Shannon McNally will be out Friday May 28, 2021. Photo: amazon

Born and raised on Long Island, Shannon McNally has, at various points, called New Orleans, Nashville, and Holly Springs, Mississippi, home, but it was in Los Angeles that she first came to national attention in the early 2000s with her Capitol Records debut, Jukebox Sparrows. She followed it up in 2005 with Geronimo, a critically acclaimed sophomore effort that prompted The New York Times to call her “irresistible” and the Washington Post to hail her as “a fine lyricist who often calls to mind Lucinda Williams.” With her new album, The Waylon Sessions, the prolific and wide-ranging Shannon McNally sets out to revisit the songs and spirit of Waylon Jennings, a legend with whom she has always had an ongoing fascination. The album will be released on Compass Records on May 28, 2021. (IVPR, 2021)

American Songwriter provided the very first glimpse into The Waylon Sessions with the premiere of “I Ain’t Living Long Like This” featuring Rodney Crowell, which first appeared on What Goes Around Comes Around in 1979. Hear McNally’s take on “I Ain’t Living Long Like This” here and pre-order or pre-save ‘The Waylon Sessions’ at this link ahead of its May 28 release via Compass Records in partnership with Blue Rose.

McNally knew that assembling the right band would be essential to capturing Jennings’ mix of laid-back charm and swaggering bravado, so she called AMA-winning guitarist Kenny Vaughan (Marty Stuart, Lucinda Williams) to help her assemble a team that included drummer Derek Mixon (Chris Stapleton), pedal steel legend and longtime Jennings bandmate Fred Newell, Texas keyboard mainstay Bukka Allen (Robert Earl Keen, Jerry Jeff Walker), and bassist Chris Scruggs (Marty Stuart, Charlie Louvin). Working live and raw, they tracked sixteen songs in just five days, relying on instinct and intuition to guide their decisions at every turn. As brilliant as the band’s performances are, it is McNally who breathes new life into the music here, tackling the tunes with an honesty and a maturity that transcends genre and gender. She does not swap pronouns or couch her delivery with a wink; she simply plays it straight, singing her truth as a divorced single mother in her 40s in all its beauty, pain, and power. The result is a rare covers record that furthers our understanding of the originals; an album of classics that challenges our perceptions and assumptions about just what made them classics in the first place.

The Waylon Sessions Track listing:
I’ve Always Been Crazy
You Asked Me To – feat. Buddy Miller
Out Among The Stars – feat. Jessi Colter
You Show Me Yours And I’ll Show You Mine – feat. Lukas Nelson
Black Rose – feat. Buddy Miller
This Time
I Ain’t Living Long Like This – feat. Rodney Crowell
I’m A Ramblin’ Man
Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys
Help Me Make It Through The Night
We Had It All

“My goal wasn’t to force anything onto the music that wasn’t there already. There’s a feminine perspective hidden somewhere inside each of these songs. My job was to find a way to tap into that and draw it out.” – Shannon McNally

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

New music release: Bullseye by The Shootouts

The Shootout’s sophomore album Bullseye will be released on April 30. Photo: google

The Shootouts are known for their energetic blend of honky-tonk, Americana, and traditional country. After releasing their acclaimed 2019 debut Quick Draw, the band charted Top 50 on Americana radio and in 2020, were nominated for an Ameripolitan Music Award for “Best Honky-Tonk Group.” They have shared the stage with luminaries Marty Stuart, Jim Lauderdale, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Radney Foster, Sheryl Crow, and many more. Produced by Grammy-nominee and BR549 founder Chuck Mead, their new album Bullseye ranges from catchy pedal steel-filled numbers (“Everything I Know”) to two-step worthy tunes (“Here Come The Blues”) to never recorded fan live favorites (“Rattlesnake Whiskey” and “Saturday Night Town”). (IVPR, 2021)

On Friday April 30, The Shootouts will release their sophomore album Bullseye via Soundly Music, but Wide Open Country just premiered a video for the album’s first track, “Rattlesnake Whiskey,” a live staple and fan favorite from the band’s catalog that is finally being immortalized on record. Fans can watch the video for “Rattlesnake Whiskey” at this link, pre-order or pre-save Bullseye here, and get a glimpse of the album’s eleven other songs via The Shootouts’ album preview video.

Equal parts vintage Nashville, Texas swing, and Bakersfield bravado, the new album draws heavily from the music on which the band’s members were brought up, packaging all of country music’s classic subgenres in their modern, signature sound. Produced by former BR459 lead singer Chuck Mead, Bullseye has The Shootouts mining their roots and expanding the territory they explored with their debut album, Quick Draw. The songs invoke a wide array of country music’s most important contributors, lassoing the band’s classic influences and bringing them straight into the present. The Shootouts’ mission with Bullseye was simply to create an album that puts a smile on listeners’ faces—music that helps them escape from the difficult times they have recently faced.

“For everyone’s sake, this needed to be a fun record. We’re living through a time where people are suddenly out of work, have lost loved ones, and have been experiencing unimaginable stress on a daily basis. Even if it’s just for 30 minutes, we want them to take a break, crank it up, and enjoy themselves.” – Ryan Humbert, The Shootouts’ lead vocalist, guitarist

Bullseye Track Listing:
1. I Don’t Think About You Anymore
2. Rattlesnake Whiskey
3. Another Mother
4. Hurt Heartbroke
5. Bullseye
6. Here Come The Blues
7. Everything I Know
8. Waiting on You
9. Missing The Mark
10. I Still Care
11. Forgot to Forget
12. Saturday Night Town

New album release: There Used To Be Horses Here by Amy Speace

Amy Speaces’ new deeply personal album with The Orphan Brigade will be out April 30 but the first single is out this week. Photo: google

Looking back on a twelve-month span between her son’s first birthday and the loss of her father, award-winning singer and songwriter Amy Speace created eleven new songs directly from her depth of personal experiences, childhood memories, coming of age in New York City, and losing a parent while learning to become one, to create her new full-length album, There Used to Be Horses Here, which will be out Friday, April 30th on Proper Records/Wind Bone Records. While many of the subjects on the album are heavy, There Used to Be Horses Here is not a sad record. Instead, it is a direct reflection of a year in Speace’s life, propelled by a playwright’s eye for detail, a performer’s gift of vocal delivery, a poet’s talent for concise writing, and the extraordinary musicianship of collaborators, The Orphan Brigade. The result is a sum much greater than its parts; a calling card for fans and critics alike to ask themselves whether Speace still fits only into the folksinger box she has long been placed in, or perhaps, with this new album, she deserves to be seen in a new light.  (IVPR, 2021)

This week, Rolling Stone premiered a music video for the album’s first single and title track, “There Used to Be Horses Here,” calling it “melancholy but gorgeous,” and noting that the video’s vivid imagery of a picturesque farm and its beautiful occupants serve “as a metaphor for all that we lose to both progress and the passing of time.” Speace laments, “During the last week of my father’s life, I drove [the road on the way to her parent’s house, past a farm she had grown to love] and the farm had been sold, gutted for condos, and the horses were gone. I wrote this song very quickly after he died, the loss of both the horses, my childhood, my parents’ house, and most acutely, my father all tied to the images in this song.” SiriusXM’s The Village also debuted the single with an exclusive interview, available here. Fans can hear “There Used to Be Horses Here” and pre-order or pre-save the album.

There Used to Be Horses Here Track listing:
Down the Trail
There Used to Be Horses Here
Hallelujah Train
Father’s Day
Grief is a Lonely Land
One Year
Give Me Love
River Rise
Shotgun Hearts
Mother is a Country
Don’t Let Us Get Sick