DAVE'S DIARY - 15/9/2014 - PREVIEW OF EPISODE 3 - SERIES 24
HUNTER VALLEY SINGERS HEADLINE NU COUNTRY TV
Hunter Valley singer-songwriters Kirsty Lee Akers and Melody Pool headline Nu Country TV on Thursday September 18 at 10.30 pm on Channel 31, Digital 44.
Acclaimed hit writer Brandy Clark debuts on the show, repeated Monday 5.30 am and 2.30 pm and Thursday 2.30 am.
Waco singer-songwriter Wade Bowen also performs a Clark penned parody of truck songs on the show, filmed and edited by Laith Graham
Texan troubadours Billy Joe Shaver and Hayes Carll return to Behind Bars after winning enthusiastic fans on their Australian tours.
Nu Country TV is a highlight of the C 31 streaming list on Digital 44.
Just follow this link on your computer or mobile phone - http://www.c31.org.au/program/view/program/nu-country-tv
ACRES OF SHAME IN THE NAKED VALLEY
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Kirsty Lee Akers returns to the show with a graphic video for her satirical song Dirty Farmer's Daughter from her third album Naked. The singer, now 26, parodies the procreation proclivities of an agrarian she may or may not have met in her travels. Like so many reality rooted rural requiems from days of yore the victim in Dirty Farmer's Daughter is forced to give up her child for adoption. That song is a distant descendant of John Prine tune Unwed Fathers , once cut by the late Tammy Wynette. Kirsty wrote seven of the songs on her album with fellow Hunter Valley singer Melody Pool. They include That's How You Get Famous - a modern version of the Hollyweird casting couch. She won Tamworth Starmaker and a Golden Guitar as a teenager but took a 12-month hiatus after rejection by a Nashville label. |
The singer toured here with Texan troubadour Hayes Carll - also a guest on this week's show.
She is now back in Nashville performing in Sounds Australia and Americana Festival and releases a new single this month.
Kirsty plays the famous Bluebird Café again, followed by song-writing sessions with Jim Lauderdale, Robert Ellis Orrall, Kim Richey, Jerry Salley and Lee Groves.
She has been working with producer Trey Bruce - son of late veteran tunesmiths Ed and Patsy Bruce who toured here in the seventies after writing Waylon & Willie hit Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys .
“It has been extremely hectic, but it's very exciting for me to be able to chase my dreams over here. I can't wait for Americana , and to write with Jim and the other guys at the song hub will be amazing. I have been a fan of his work since I started out in this industry!”
CLICK HERE for a Kirsty feature in our Diary on August 23, 2011.
MELODY – THE HURTING KIND
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Melody Pool scored mainstream exposure on her recent tour with Kiwi tourist Marlon Williams.
The Kurri Kurri raised singer-songwriter debuts on our show with her ballad Somebody You've Never Met Before from her debut album The Hurting Kind .
She recorded her album in Nashville with producers Brad Jones and Jace Everett who toured here with Akers in 2011.
After releasing the album independently, Melody signed to Mushroom-Liberation Music who re-released it in July 2013.
Melody toured with Californian duo The Milk Carton Kids , who invited her to tour Europe .
Everett says “ The Hurting Kind will break your heart.”
Melody dedicated the album “to anyone living on the hurting scene”.
Further info – http://melodypool.com.au/
BRANDY CLARK EARNS HER STRIPES
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Washington singer Brandy Clark debuts here with Stripes - a humorous song - from her 2012 album 12 Stories . The acclaimed songwriter has penned hits for fellow young guns - Texans Kacey Musgraves and Miranda Lambert. Clark, now 37, has lived in Nashville for 16 years and co-wrote Lambert's #1 hit Mama's Broken Heart and The Band Perry chart-topper Better Dig Two. She also landed songs on albums by artists as diverse as Gretchen Wilson, Ashton Shepherd, Reba McEntire, Sheryl Crow, Keith Urban and Darius Rucker. |
Clark is nominated for two 2014 Country Music Association Awards for New Artist and Song of the Year for Musgraves hit Follow Your Arrow.
“I've watched CMA Awards every year for as long as I can remember,” Clark revealed.
“To be a nominee in both Song and New Artist is truly a thrill and dream come true.”
It's her first nomination as an artist after her debut with critically acclaimed 12 Stories released after several years honing her craft as songwriter.
“I hope it will hit as many ears as possible,” Clark said.
“But more than hitting ears I hope it will hit lot of hearts. My goal as writer is always to write songs that people who aren't songwriters would write if they were songwriters. So I hope that's what this record will do. I hope someone who's in Middle America taking their kids to school and going and working at a bank or grocery store will say, ‘That's my song.' That's what I really hope.”
Clark was also nominated in 2013 for Song of the Year for penning Mama's Broken Heart with co-writers Shane McAnally and Musgraves, who share Song of Year nomination this year.
Brandy was reared in Morton , Washington - a logging town of only 900 people in the shadow of Mount St. Helens .
Her indie album features Vince Gill on background vocals and debuted at #28 on Billboard.
On January 6 this year Clark made her network CBS network TV debut with Stripes on The Late Show With David Letterman.
Clark opened for Sugarland singer Jennifer Nettles on her 2014 tour and wrote satiric Songs About Trucks for Waco country singer Wade Bowen.
Further Info - http://brandyclarkmusic.com/
WACO WARRIOR WADES INTO BATTLE
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Wade Bowen returns with Songs About Trucks from his fifth album, due for release in October. The Texas Tech University graduate hails from Waco - hometown of Steve Martin and where Billy Joe Shaver hangs his hat. Bowen was a member of the band, West 84 , with Matt Miller, in 2001. He released his 2002 debut album, Try Not To Listen , a live disc in 2003 and another studio album in 2006. |
In 2008 Wade released If We Ever Make It Home and on November 21, 2009 cut his second live album at famous Billy Bob's Texas in Fort Worth , Texas.
The album was released on April 27, 2010 as a CD/DVD combo.
He is the brother-in-law of Cross Canadian Ragweed singer Cody Canada and co-wrote Don't Break My Heart Again with Pat Green.
Wade released Justin Niebank produced 2012 album The Given - his first for a major label and featuring nine of his originals.
The Given explores relationships from desolation to domestic difficulties and features Texan icon Guy Clark on late Townes Van Zandt classic To Live Is to Fly .
Further info - http://wadebowen.com
BILLY JOE SHAVER WACKO FROM WACO
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Veteran outlaw Billy Joe Shaver returns to the show with a live version of a song he wrote with Willie Nelson about a shooting in Waco in 2007.
Billy Joe, now 75, was the gunman in Wacko From Waco .
Shaver sings of how he shot a knife wielding dude outside Papa Joe's Texas Saloon honky tonk in Waco suburb Lorena.
The victim stirred Shaver's whiskey with a rusty knife and the singer was acquitted in 2010.
That didn't happen here on any of his tours.
He opened for Waylon, Willie and The Highwaymen, cut a live album at the Corner Hotel in Richmond and returned here with singing Texan crime novelist Kinky Friedman in 2002.
Billy Joe also performed a special after midnight birthday show for this diarist at Paul Madigan's long defunct Druids' lodge on the mean streets of Brunswick .
He recently released new album Long in the Tooth, produced by Ray Kennedy and Gary Nicholson , on the Lightning Rod label.
It features Hard to Be an Outlaw - a duet with Willie - that appears on Nelson's album Band Of Brothers and The Git Go that also graces Willie's disc.
Shaver is bemused about his image of a hell raiser in Nashville in younger days.
“Half the stories are a blown-up bunch of bullshit,” Shaver jokes.
“One time these two guys tried to roll me in the alley behind the old Ryman in Nashville and I whupped ‘em and left ‘em lying there. By the time I'd walked to the other end of town, people were already saying I'd beat up five guys, fucked ‘em up so bad, kicked a hole in their damn car - all kinda crazy shit! The more I tried to deny it, the worse it got.
“And there's a guy in Nashville that goes around telling people he's me! That don't help me none either. Making out with girls and writing hot checks. I always tell ‘em, “Look at his hand and see if he's got anything gone.” If he went and chopped his fingers off to be me, he's a pretty dedicated motherfucker!”
Billy Joe has fond memories of late fellow Texan Townes Van Zandt who also played Madigan's in Brunswick .
“My wife Brenda just hated Townes,” he revealed recently.
“I met him when she and I lived in Houston , and we got into LSD. All these kids were into it, and they had places where you could hit it and watch movies, with mattresses on the floor where you laid down because after you took that shit, you couldn't walk. My wife would have to come and almost scrape us off the pavement.
“Years later, after she'd had cancer a couple years and was getting close to death, a doctor told me she wasn't going to make it through the night. So I told her I'd had a dream that she had passed and that Townes was up there to greet her. She hated that guy so bad she said, ‘I ain't going.' She lived another year almost.”
CLICK HERE for a Billy Joe feature in The Diary on April 11, 2007.
HAYES CARLL - KMAG YOYO
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Fellow Texan Hayes Carll returns with the video for KMAG YOYO - title track of his fourth album that he toured here to promote in 2012.
"Kiss My Ass Guys, You're On Your Own is a military acronym," Carll, now 38, says.
"It's about a young soldier in Afghanistan who has a morphine-induced hallucination about working for the CIA. He gets hit by an IED and stuff goes through his head as he's hanging on.
"I wrote the music first and then needed something intense to match it, so I thought of blasting through the desert on a Humvee and riding a spaceship on LSD. I didn't set out to write a war or protest song but it kind of came together that way."
Carll was inspiration for singer Beau Hutton played by Garrett Hedlund in the Tim McGraw-Gwyneth Paltrow movie Country Strong .
He performed two Carll songs - Hard Out Here and Hide Me Babe - and Hayes sang Take Me Away after being head hunted by Country Strong music director Randall Poster.
Hedlund was also in 2004 McGraw film Friday Night Lights and played Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac movie On The Road .
Carll now lives in Austin - the city where he once sold vacuum cleaners - with his wife Jenna and Elijah - their 8-year-old son.
He played Northcote Social Club on Beer Can Hill with Kirsty Akers.
CLICK HERE for an exclusive Hayes Carll interview in the Diary on July 14, 2012.
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