DAVE'S DIARY - 2/10/ 2017 - PREVIEW OF EPISODE 13 - SERIES 33
COUNTRY BELLES HEAD TRANSPORT THEME NU COUNTRY TV
Fanny Lumsden and fellow NSW singer-songwriter and trucking troubadour Jayne Denham headline our Nu Country TV transport theme show on Saturday October 7 at 9 pm on Channel 31/Digital 44.
Texan Walt Wilkins and bluegrass band The Earls of Leicester perform train songs on the program repeated Monday at 8 am.
Former Marine and Iraq war survivor Gethen Jenkins chooses a van for concert travel on the show filmed and edited by Laith Graham.
Sydney trio The April Family also return with a cheating lament.
Nu Country TV is a highlight of C 31 streaming list on Digital 44.
Just follow this link on your computer or mobile phone - http://www.c31.org.au/series/487
Viewers can access Nu Country TV shows at the same link.
FANNY LUMSDEN ON THE ROAD AGAIN
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Fanny Lumsden took a road trip far from Tallimba in the shadows of Mt Buffalo in her rustic new video.
“I grew up there, but now live on a farm in the Upper Murray, under the shadow of the Snowy Mountains not Mount Buffalo,” Fanny revealed.
“That is where my grandma lives in Victoria in the shadows of Mt Buffalo.”
Fanny, 31, frequently travels rural roads in her small town hall touring schedule.
Her latest video, made by Anna Phillips and Sam Brumby, follows Fanny's recent central Queensland tour. “We really wanted to make something that really felt like the last 88,000 km in three minutes, however also truly captured the area and showed both the lack of glamour and the grit of being on the road, alongside the romantic, incredible experiences you get from living on the road,” Fanny explained.
“This is our 5th clip with Anna Phillips and Sam Brumby and they truly know how to turn my words, music and what's in my head into glorious moving pictures. We hope it inspires more people to get right out and check out the little towns and everything in between. Roll on my friends. Roll on.”
Roll On is first single from her second album A Real Class Act, released on September 22 .
Luckily Fanny's wheels - her 1978 pop-top Millard Caravan - avoided trucks, trains, kangaroos and other road kill.
“Roll on is unapologetically, a driving song and an account of the past 80,000 km that we have clocked however I wrote it at the 60,000 km mark, as is evident in the song,” Lumsden revealed.
“It was actually the last song I wrote for the record, right before we went into the studio.”
The crowd funded album is on Red Dirt Road Records - the label Fanny and husband Dan Stanley Freeman operate and promote on her sixth annual Country Halls Tour.
It follows her ARIA nominated debut album Small Town Big Shot that won 2017 Golden Guitar and CMC Awards for Best New Talent.
Fanny plays Osborne's Flat on Friday October 13 and Out On The Weekend festival in Williamstown on Saturday October 14.
It's a long trip from studying rural science at University of New England where her song-writing grew.
“I think because my degree was science and factual focused it made me more creative in my writing.”
Further info - http://www.fannylumsden.net/
JAYNE DENHAM TEXAS STACKS
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NSW Central Coast chanteuse Jayne Denham took the wheel of another truck in her video for Stacks filmed at Maitland, Sydney and Texas. The singer premiered it at a Dallas trucking show. Stacks - one of 13 Denham videos - is on her new EP that follows three albums Jayne - daughter of a truckie - has moved to the Central Coast from a farmlet at Hartley, west of Katoomba. Stacks was directed by Phil Taylor and sponsored by Lawrence Livestock Transport. “I'm so proud of my Director, Phil Taylor, for turning this new video clip around so quickly and in time for my arrival in the USA to perform at The Great American Trucking Show,” Jayne revealed. “I'm really pleased that the clip shines a light on some very cool trucks from around the world and cheers on an industry we cannot do without.” |
Jayne wrote Stacks with Phil Barton and Brian White, who also produced the track at Rascal Flatts bassist Jay DeMarcus' studio in Nashville with Jay playing bass.
“While writing for my next record in Nashville , my producer, Brian White and I were brainstorming ideas about trucking songs,” Jayne explained.
“He mentioned the title Stacks which immediately took me back to my childhood. I remember as a kid going to truck races and seeing all those blinged up rigs screaming around the track. One of my favourite parts of the day was when the drivers would put the pedal to the metal and you would hear this loud roar and smoke come from those 11 feet of galvanized Chrome Stacks.”
CLICK HERE for a previous Jayne Denham CD review in The Diary on June 5, 2013.
EARLS OF LEICESTER TRAIN LAMENT
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Illustrious bluegrass band Earls Of Leicester return alive and picking at the Old Settlers festival in Austin.
They perform The Train That Carried My Girl From Town from their second album Rattle & Roar.
Band leader co-founder Jerry Douglas, 61, has won 14 Grammys including The Earls debut disc.
Their name honours bluegrass pioneers Ear1 Scruggs and Lester Flatt.
Douglas was inspired to play Dobro because of legendary Flatt & Scruggs dobroist Josh Graves and Earls' fiddler Johnny Warren is son of long-time Foggy Mountain Boys fiddler Paul Warren.
Other band members are prolific singer-songwriter Shawn Camp, Barry Bales, Charlie Cushman and West Virginian singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist Tim O'Brien.
Tim performed 2011 Port Fairy folk festival with his band Oceans Two and recorded 13th album Traveller in 2003 with research from a 1987 Australian tour.
O'Brien's band Hot Rize and alter ago Red Knuckles & The Trail Blazers played a Mittagong bluegrass festival and Sydney gigs.
Douglas 's 14th solo album also shares the name Traveller - 15th album What If was released on August 18.
Douglas and Bales also guest in Alison Krauss's band Union Station .
Jerry scored the Get Low movie starring Robert Duvall, Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek and wrote music for it.
CLICK HERE for a Tim O'Brien feature in the Diary on January 1, 2015.
Further info - http://www.jerrydouglas.com/
WALT WILKINS GOES LOCO
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Texan Walt Wilkins also performs a train song live at Threadgills South in latter day hometown Austin.
Walt, now 55, was born in San Antone and spent 11 years as a songwriter in Nashville.
He released Trains I Missed on Vigil - sixth of his 13 albums.
Award winning North Carolina bluegrass band Balsam Range also cut Trains I Missed as title track of the fourth of their six albums.
Walt was born in San Antonio , raised in Austin and bought his first guitar at 13 from lawn mowing money.
He enjoyed an 11 year Nashville stint as a songwriter before returning to Cedar Park , Austin , in 2015.
His dad was an Air Force fighter pilot whose romance bloomed when he took Walt's mum to a Tommy Dorsey dance in San Antone.
Walt's spiritual music journey began at 8 when his dad played records by artists including Jimmy Webb and Glen Campbell
Wilkins also cut discs with Austin super group The Mystiqueros and wife Tina Mitchell Wilkins.
The Mystiqueros feature Wilkins, drummer Ray Rodriguez, bassist Bill Small, lead guitarist Marcus Eldridge, singer/guitarist Jimmy Davis and a rotating cast of musicians
“I've always been inspired to write, and it started when I was young,” Wilkins revealed.
“I haven't stopped learning and growing ever since. I write about life because I am inspired by it.
“There's always something going on. We're all tangled up with different things, when really, we all hurt and love in the same way.”
Wilkins says his Nashville stint was a learning experience.
“I got the opportunity to write with some of my heroes.”
Wilkins has since produced albums by artists including Brandon Rhyder, Pat Green, Jamie Richards, Sam Baker, Bonnie Bishop and his wife, Tina.
“My most memorable moments throughout my career always have my wife in them,” Wilkins said. “Whether it's a long drive across Texas , or singing on stage with the woman I love, we've created some priceless memories.
“As I got settled into Texas and my family got settled back here, the songs I noticed a theme of happiness.
“Not satisfaction. I'm always trying to write better and sing better. But it was just kind of I noticed a theme of gratefulness in a lot of the songs. I'm so grateful to be home in Texas , and so grateful for the work I get to do. A lot of the songs started to hang together with that theme, of being happy with a simpler life here, just playing.”
Further info - https://www.waltwilkins.com/
GETHEN JENKINS VETERAN WITH A VAN
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Former West Virginian marine and Iraq tour of duty veteran Gethen Jenkins debuts with a road song using a van as transport in Where The Honky Tonk Belongs.
Gethen was born in Huntington, West Virginia , and played guitar in his teen years in Indian village Galena on the Yukon, deep in Alaskan tundra
He then spent eight years in the Marines and returned to music after a tour of duty in Iraq.
Gethen formed the Freight Shakers quintet whose music embraced pure bluegrass, whiskey soaked honky tonk and roots country.
He has played over 1,000 live shows with artists diverse as Billy Joe Shaver, David Allan Coe, Shooter Jennings, Wanda Jackson, Dale Watson, Junior Brown, Whitey Morgan, Asleep At The Wheel and Marshall Tucker Band.
Where The Honky Tonk Belongs is the title of his new 6 track EP on Five Music .
“The relationship between the listeners and music is what I feed on,” Jenkins revealed.
"I couldn't be more excited about sharing this album with the world. These songs reflect some of my life experiences, both good and bad. I'm grateful to have the opportunity to get this album into the hands of people that love country music as much as I do. After all, that's truly where the honky tonk belongs.”
Further info - http://www.gethenjenkinsmusic.com/
APRIL FAMILY HIT BLUES ROUTE
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Sydney trio the April Family return with their song about a woman who hits the road after discovering she has been cheated on.
The vanquished victim found a hidden note hanging in clothes in her hallway.
You Are Just The Blues is the fourth single from their debut album What We Know Now, released in April.
Kylie Whitney, Casey Atkins and Michael Carpenter - a prolific singer-songwriter, producer and video director - formed April Family in 2015.
We featured their videos for You're Someone That I Never Knew and 1943.
Whitney worked at Carpenter's Love Hz studio as an assistant and popular backing vocalist.
They worked on Whitney's debut album Something About Ghosts , released in early 2015.
Carpenter joined Atkins in bands for almost 15 years and played on shows supporting Whitney's album release.
Michael also recorded with The Cuban Heels and has released solo discs including The Big Radio.
He and Blue Mountains singer Allan Caswell wrote Back When I Was Older in regular song-writing sessions.
Further info - http://www.mcarp.com
VALE TROY GENTRY
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We also feature a tribute to singer-songwriter Troy Gentry of Kentucky duo Montgomery Gentry who died at 50 in a tragic helicopter accident on September 8 - same day Texan singing actor Don Williams died at the age of 78.
Gentry and Georgian helicopter pilot James Evan Robinson died when their chopper crashed en route to a concert at a resort at the Flying W airport in Medford , New Jersey .
Troy and duo partner Eddie Montgomery, who turned 54 just 22 days later, had just recorded their ninth album and planned to perform songs from it at the concert.
“Our world was turned upside down in an instant and nothing could have prepared us for this," Eddie revealed.
“Over the past few months T-Roy and I have been working on what I think is the best record of our career. In the last few weeks we had been talking about what our first single would be. Then on September 8th, none of that mattered."
Better Me , one of the songs from the album that Montgomery Gentry recorded, was played during Gentry's memorial at the Grand Ole Opry on September 14.
" Better Me is a song we all loved and Troy sings his ass off on it," Montgomery added.
"It speaks volumes about his life and who he had become and everyone he touched and how much he loved his family. I am so proud of this song and also to call him my friend, my family, my brother for 30 years."
We feature another Montgomery Gentry video for My Town .
CLICK HERE for a Montgomery Gentry CD review in The Diary on January 29, 2007.
HOW TO KEEP NU COUNTRY ON AIR
We need your support as we celebrate Nu Country TV's 33rd series with Australian record companies and artists teaming to ensure our survival.
We have Kasey Chambers 11th CD Dragonfly and Blake Shelton's 12th CD If I'm Honest from Karen Black and Tony Midolo at Warner Music.
We also have other CDS by major artists you can win by becoming a Nu Country TV member or renewing membership.
They include singing actor Tim McGraw, Ashley Monroe, Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, Gary Allan, Dierks Bentley, Eric Church and more.
CLICK HERE for our Membership Page for full details.