DAVE'S DIARY - 30/10/2017 - PREVIEW OF EPISODE 17 - SERIES 33
STEVE AND JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE HEADLINE NU COUNTRY TV
Frequent Australian tourists Steve Earle and son Justin Townes Earle headline Nu Country TV in our family celebration at 9 pm on Saturday November 4 on Channel 31/Digital 44.
Indiana singer-songwriter Alex Williams debuts with a Steve Earle penned Townes Van Zandt tribute song on the show repeated Monday at 8 am.
Texan singing actor Kris Kristofferson and Big & Rich open with historic anniversary song 8th of November.
Kiewa Valley born singer-songwriter Gretta Ziller returns to the program filmed and edited by Laith Graham and Tennessee troubadour Dustin Lynch takes a surfing safari on his debut.
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.
STEVE EARLE AND OUTLAW MENTOR WILLIE
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Virginia born, Texas raised rebel Steve Earle is joined by mentor and fellow singing actor Willie Nelson, 84, on the title track of his 18th solo album So You Wanna Be An Outlaw. “It was about artistic freedom,” Earle, now 62, says of the title. “It was about being country acts figuring out that rock acts had a freedom to make records that they did not have. “I just think I'm better at writing about it now. I kind of always knew what the job was. My teachers were Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and Harlan Howard. I got to Nashville in 1974 and knew what you're supposed to do. But the part about giving it up, you either are willing to do that or not.” Earle toured here in 2005 with Alabama born former singing spouse Allison Moorer. Their marriage was Steve's seventh but they split in 2012 two years after their son John Henry Earle was born. |
Moorer is now partner of another Texan tourist Hayes Carll.
Earle says stress of their son's autism diagnosis was the “straw that broke the camel's back” in the marriage.
“But I think she was going to leave me anyway,” Earle said.
“She traded me in for a younger, skinnier, less talented singer-songwriter.”
Earle and Moorer - who had a cameo in his City Of Immigrants video on his 2007 album Washington Square Serenade - moved to Greenwich Village from Nashville.
They lived on famed Bleeker St - locale of the cover photo of Bob Dylan's Freewheelin' vinyl album.
Moorer, 45, inspired several love songs on Washington Square Serenade that won Earle a Grammy for best contemporary folk-Americana album.
Earle doesn't regret being single.
“There are women, but I like sitting where I want to in the movies and when you go to a theatre at the last minute you can get a really good seat if you're looking for a single,” he quipped.
“Being single in New York City doesn't suck.”
Earle's rehab from heroin addiction in the nineties enabled him to rebuild finances but, like Shotgun Willie, was ambushed by divorce and IRS debts.
His IRS debt grew so big he agreed to license a song for a commercial - in 2005 The Revolution Starts Now was inked for a TV ad for Chevy pickups.
But karma collided with the singer who first crashed charts in 1986 with Guitar Town.
Chevy inexplicably killed the ad days after it began airing.
Earle hadn't signed a contract so he only got a fraction of the money he'd been promised.
"It just goes to show you," he says, "when you finally get ready to sell out, nobody's buying."
CLICK HERE for a Steve Earle feature from the Diary on November 12, 2005.
JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE
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Justin Townes Earle was named after legendary Texan singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt who died at 52 on New Years' Day in 1997.
The singer, now 35, returns with Memphis road trip social comment tune Maybe A Moment from his eighth album Kids In The Street.
Justin's spring tour included Out On The Weekend festival at Williamstown and Melbourne Recital Centre with Joshua Hedley and The Sadies.
Kids In The Street follows recent albums Single Mothers (2014) and Absent Fathers (2015).
Earle's sobriety, marriage, and fatherhood have been rewarding.
“Life has changed a lot for me in the last few years,” Justin revealed.
“I got married and am getting ready to become a father, and this is the first record that I've written since I've been married. There's definitely an uplifting aspect to this record in a lot of ways, because I'm feeling pretty positive. When I wrote songs in the past, I was looking in on what I was feeling, but this record's more about looking outward on what's happening and writing about subjects like gentrification and inner-city strife. This record also has more of a soul influence to it, and it's got a deeper connection to the blues than anything I've done before.”
He eulogised mother Carol-Anne - third of his dad's six wives - in Mama's Eyes on second album Midnight At The Movies.
" Mama's Eyes was a very concentrated effort by me to make sure that everybody that listens to my music realises that I am not an asexual product of Steve Earle," Justin revealed.
"I was raised by Carol-Ann Earle, not Steve Earle, and I grew up with her rules. I wanted mama to get a little credit because she broke her ass for me when I was growing up. She'd work three jobs at a time and really worked her ass off to make sure that my head stayed above water. And I was not an easy kid to keep up with. I was a pain in the ass. And I wanted to make sure that mom got hers because people write and talk about dad all the time. He gets plenty of attention."
Earle promoted debut disc The Good Life and video on Nu Country on his first Australian tour in 2008.
Justin once played in a The Swindlers with Dustin Welch - son of California born latter day Nowra resident Kevin Welch.
CLICK HERE for a Justin Townes Earle CD feature in The Diary on March 3, 2010.
CLICK HERE for Anne Sydenham's live review in our concerts section on October 2, 2009.
BIG & RICH FIND TEXAN RHODES SCHOLAR KRISTOFFERSON
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Singing actor-Rhodes Scholar and former Army pilot Kris Kristofferson introduces the video of evocative Vietnam War song 8 th Of November for superstar duo Big & Rich. John Rich, former Lonestar singer and Texan Pentecostal preacher's son, formed Big & Rich with Big Kenny Alphin after becoming hit writers in Nashville. 8th of November was inspired by a Vietnam veteran Big Kenny met in a Deadwood, South Dakota bar. Niles Harris, one of just four of the 173rd Airborne Brigade to survive a 1965 ambush by more than 1,200 Viet Cong, also gave Kenny his hat. The song is on their second album Coming To Your City. Big & Rich also appeared on Nu Country with a travelogue about a brunette who decamps Nashville and heads out Route 66 on a joyous journey to the west coast. |
California - the song's destination - is on their sixth album Did It For The Party.
Big & Rich rocked the Billboard club in Melbourne CBD with Cowboy Troy and Tennessean troubadour Chris Young on their 2015 Australian tour - their second.
It was even more momentous than an hilarious scene in TV show Boston Legal when James Spader mounted a mechanical bull in Texas to Big & Rich hit, Save A Horse - Ride A Cowboy .
Singing actor Tim McGraw played a bartender in another Big & Rich video for Loving Lately - written by Big Kenny, Rich and Tim who has toured here twice - for their fifth album Gravity .
McGraw, now 50 and singing spouse of Faith Hill, served drinks to a loser in love at a bar in Dickson - one time home of veteran outlaw David Allan Coe - south west of Nashville.
It's near Fairview where Steve Earle lived with former wife Teresa.
CLICK HERE for a Big & Rich CD feature in The Diary on August 29, 2007.
ALEX WILLIAMS FORT WORTH BLUES
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Indiana outlaw Alex Williams honoured Townes Van Zandt with his live version of Steve Earle penned Fort Worth Blues.
The Pendleton born singer was a big fan of Steve, Hank Williams Jr, Willie Nelson and the late Waylon Jennings, Guy Clark and Townes as a student.
Now Alex, 26, released debut solo album Better Than Myself after a 2012 indie disc with Williams & Co - fellow students at Belmont University in Nashville.
Williams thanks Hank Jr for getting Willie's harmonica player Mickey Raphael into the studio for his album.
Alex was opening for Hank in Nashville and Raphael was at the show playing with Kentucky Coalminer's son Chris Stapleton.
“That was awesome,” Williams says of recording with Raphael who appears on the Better Than Myself title track, Few Short Miles (Bobby's Song) and Old Tattoo.
“He's such a nice guy.
“I want to write songs that make people feel like they don't have to do everything this world tells you to do because there's a lot of expectations. I might be a douche when I say that. But that's how I feel.”
Few Short Miles was inspired by a Texan fisherman who bravely fought cancer.
“I used to play gigs at a seaside trucker bar my cousin owned that was south of Houston in a little town in Sargent,” Williams explained.
“I was 17 or 18, and I met Bobby at one of the gigs I was playing and he was a really inspiring guy. We became really good friends in a short period of time while I was playing down there. I decided to write a song about it. He had cancer for a while and I didn't know that until the last few weeks before he passed.”
Old Tattoo is a tribute to his late grandfather and the strength of his mother and grandmother following his passing.
“I didn't know my grandpa that well,” Williams recalled.
“I just saw my mom and my grandma and how they dealt with that so easily. It's really hard to do for somebody that can just hide that and keep moving on. It was just one of those things I wish I knew him better than I did.”
Williams credits soulful peers for his success.
“It's good to be surrounded by people who are doing the same things you're doing,” Williams said.
“I love what Cody Jinks is doing. I dig what Margo Price is doing. Jamey Johnson, Jinks, Paul Cauthen - I would love to be into that world. I'll play with anybody.”
Further info - http://alexwilliamsofficial.com/
DUSTIN LYNCH SMALL TOWN BOY
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Tennessean Dustin Lynch indulges in a surfing picnic in Small Town Boy from his third album Current Mood.
“It's a collection of the last three years of my life, all the relationships, the travels,” Lynch, 32, revealed.
“It's been a crazy three years, in a good way; it's been fun. I don't put a lot of my personal life, personal time, on social media, so this was my way of giving everybody a peek behind that curtain.”
Lynch co-wrote seven of the 13 songs on Current Mood with hit writers Ben Hayslip, Ross Copperman, Craig Wiseman, Rhett Akins, Zach Crowell and others.
“I think it's cohesive because every song is something I've either written about or I've recorded of what I've been through the past three years,” says Lynch who moved from Tullahoma to Nashville in 2003 where he studied Biology and Chemistry at Lipscomb University.
“I think my natural progression of life is what's kind of holding all of that together. The best songs will always win, and my songs I write have a worse shot of making it than outside songs. The songs kind of chose me, to be honest. The songs found me. It was more a song-by-song natural progression. The reason I think you hear some R&B, pop, country is each song became kind of a passion project of mine."
Further info - https://www.dustinlynchmusic.com/
GRETTA ZILLER BLUES AND BLOOD
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Gretta Ziller returns with Slaughterhouse Blues - first single from debut album Queen Of Boomtown.
The former Trinity College chorister hails from south of the mighty Murray river at Thologolong near Wodonga in Kiewa Valley.
Her album was recorded at Woodstock Studios , Balaclava, and produced by New Zealand born, Melbourne-singer-songwriter Paul Ruske.
“Working with Paul was the most amazing experience,” explained Ziller who earlier released two EPS.
“Not only is he such a beautiful person and talented musician, but he understood me and what I wanted with this record. I approach my songwriting a little bit like a bower bird.
“I am a collector of ideas and thoughts. The Notes app in my phone is full of one liners and song ideas. I don't write specifically about every day stuff in my life, I tend to take an idea or emotion about something that is relevant or emotionally attractive to me and roll with it. I draw on the emotion of needing change a lot when I write, I'm a person that likes and craves change.”
Gretta, a 2011 CMAA Academy Of Country Music graduate, dabbled in musical theatre after learning violin, cello, double bass and bagpipes as Pipe Band Coordinator at Scots School , Albury, from 2004-2010.
Ziller headed south to Melbourne where she graduated with a Bachelor Degree in Voice while in Trinity College Choir before overseas tours.
Further info - http://grettaziller.com/
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.