What’s New for the 1st of March: Emma Bull’s War for The Oaks, Rosanne Cash’s ‘Runaway Train’, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, plus new Americana and jazz music

I’m worried about you
I’m worried about me
The curves around midnight
Aren’t easy to see
Flashing red warnings
Unseen in the rain
This thing has turned into
A runaway train

Rosanne Cash’s ‘Runaway Train’

There’s always music playing here in our Pub. Sometimes it’s a band such as Gentle Jack Jones out of what they called Big Foot country, often it’s just a fiddler by herself, it might be a group of whoever is playing here that’s been called the Neverending Session as it doesn’t really end, stopping for now but always starting up at some point, and then there’s whatever I like to play for recorded music.

On this colder than usual even for February day with a fire in the fireplace, behind glass so we don’t make this place cold with Pixel, one of our resident always stumped tailed black cats sleeping near  it, I’m watching a heavy snow fall outside.

So what am I playing? Well a little bit of the the Grateful Dead, their newer stuff as Garcia’s now in his eighties but bless him still fine vocally; Johnny Cash and his daughter Roseanne, sometmes making music together; Hunter from the Grateful Dead who has passed on, the Charlie Daniels Band with a new lead singer who did much more than ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’, and even Mark O’Connor, the trad fiddle player.

So what is playing now? Johnny Cash’s ‘God’s Gonna Cut you down”, and one minute while I ask Shazam on one of iPads to tell where it from. It’s from American  V: A Hundred Highways which was released by him a few yew years back.

It’s time for more coffee, mine’s black though I’ll have several with Irish Whiskey when I’m not working. So what’ll you have?

Carla looked out the window. “Listen. You don’t become a bar band and work your way up from there. There is no up from there. It’s a dead end. All you can become is the world’s best bar band.

We have only one novel this time but it’s an favourite of mine that I’ve read many times. Emma Bull’s War for The Oaks, s battle between the Fey and some of we mortal humans that is settled using music on Midsummers Eve. It tells the story of Eddi McCandry, a  musician who finds herself pulled into the faerie conflict between good and evil, though those labels are far too simple for what happens here.

It features music from Cats Laughing, or perhaps Cats Laughing plays music from the novel. I needed to ask Will Shetterkly, husband of Emma, which it is and  he said the band comes after the novel. So the band is named after the band here. Interesting.

We’ve got the trailer for a film version of the novel didn’t happen which has some of the music in the novel. For such a short trailer, there’s a lot there including Emma as a Fairy Queen and more than a few of Minneapolis fandom.

Gary here with some new music, starting with a new country duo record, Melissa Carper & Theo Lawrence’s Havin’ A Talk. ‘Whether fronting her own band on three acclaimed solo albums or part of a collaborative group like Sad Daddy, chronicling humorous human foibles or lovelorn heartache, or even celebrating the winter holidays in down home country style, Melissa Carper is surely one of the hardest working and most productive musicians on the Americana roots scene. Mere weeks after the release of A Very Carper Christmas she’s back with yet another album on an iconic theme, that of the male-female country duo.’

Next up is jazz trumpeter Ingrid Jensen’s Landings. ‘The lineup of this quartet is a bit unusual, with Jensen on trumpet joined by her longtime collaborator Gary Versace on organ, plus Marvin Sewell on guitars and Jon Wikan on drums. That make for some very interesting and engaging textures and colors in these selections that also have lots of melody and swing.’

I’m always up for a reissue of a rare or classic jazz record, and that describes Woody Shaw’s Love Dance. ‘Love Dance is a sterling example of soulful ’70s jazz, Shaw’s second release for Muse. For it, Shaw enlisted an amazing ensemble of young progressive players: saxophonists Billy Harper and René McLean, trombonist Steve Turre, pianist Joe Bonner, bassist Cecil McBee, drummer Victor Lewis and percussionists Guilherme Franco and Tony Waters.’

More new jazz is up next, with an album from Los Angeles alto saxophonist Nicole McCabe. ‘Color Theory is chock full of engaging melodies courtesy of McCabe, and she and her guest trumpeter, the hotshot Brooklynite Adam O’Farrill lay down loads of harmonies that range from creamy to eye-opening.’

From the Archives, to go with today’s theme here’s a deluxe box set of Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin. ‘This set is an excellent document of Johnny Cash at the top of his career. If you got interested in the man and his music from watching the 2005 biopic Walk the Line, you should check out San Quentin for a look at the real thing.’

We have a song written and performed by Johnny Cash’s daughter, Rosanne, that shows that she’s every bit as great covering her own material as she is covering his material as she did here. It’s ‘Runaway Train’ which comes from the same Bimbos concert in San Francisco that January evening. It details the end of a relationship that may or may not have been about her own such ending but it’s certainly heartfelt.