DAVE'S DIARY - 16 APRIL 2018 - PREVIEW OF EPISODE 19 - SERIES 34
LUKAS NELSON AND SINGING SIRE WILLIE HEADLINE NU COUNTRY TV
Lukas Nelson and singing actor sire Willie Nelson headline Nu Country TV on Saturday April 21 at 9 pm on Channel 31/ Digital 44, with a video filmed at their Luck movie town.
Californian Jon Pardi also returns to the show repeated Monday at 3 pm and filmed and edited by Laith Graham.
Gippsland dairy farmer's son and secondary teacher singer-songwriter Michael Waugh illustrates family life in the bush.
Austin sextet Mike & The Moon Pies debut on the show featuring fellow Texan born singer-songwriter Lee Ann Womack.
Texan Zane Williams appears in Behind Bars with some social comment.
Nu Country TV is a highlight of C 31 streaming list on Digital 44.
Further info - https://www.c31.org.au/
THE NELSON CLAN JUST OUTSIDE AUSTIN BUT IN LUCK
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Lukas Nelson recruited his dad Willie, who turns 85 on April 29, for an intimate jam session at home on their range.
They shared music and picturesque bliss with horses at Willie's movie town Luck in Just Outside Of Austin from Lukas' self-titled debut album Promise Of The Real, released in August 2017.
The song glorifies quiet life in the countryside and praises beauty in nature and family.
As Willie says “when you are in Luck you are in Luck - if not you are out of Luck.”
Another album Willie Nelson and the Boys showcased Willie and sons Lukas and Micah singing country classics.
It featured seven recordings of songs written by Hank Williams with other curios Can I Sleep in Your Arms and My Tears Fall.
Most of the 12 tracks were recorded in 2011 at Pedernales Recordings Studio in Austin.
Lucas, Micah and their sire also performed Willie's historic hit Healing Hands Of Time and My Tears Fall on Nu Country.
Lukas and The Promise of The Real toured Australia this year.
Willie, Micah, Lukas & The Promise Of The Real join Neil Young in new movie Paradox directed by Neil's actress partner Daryl Hanna.
"Time is fluid in this far-fetched, whimsical Western tale of music and love," describes the movie that premiered at South By South West festival in Austin in March.
"Somewhere in the future past, the Man in the Black Hat hides out between heists at an old stagecoach stop with Jail Time , the Particle Kid and an odd band of outlaws. Mining the detritus of past civilizations, they wait for the Silver Eagle, for the womenfolk and for the full moon's magic to give rise to the music and make the spirits fly."
Lukas co-produced music for a 2018 remake of classic Hollywood film A Star Is Born , directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Cooper and Lady Gaga.
Lukas & Promise of The Real appear in the film as Cooper's band.
Further info - http://lukasnelson.com/
JON PARDI HARVESTS HAY FROM HEARTBREAK
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Californian Jon Pardi harvests hay from heartbreak when he mixes healing power of hay and horses.
Pardi, 32, borrowed imagery from the movie Hud to drive home his message in She Ain't In It - seventh track on his second album California Sunrise, released in June , 2016.
The album debuted at No. 1 on Billboard Country chart with 24,000 copies sales.
Jon plays the role of a broken-hearted cowboy, pining for his long-lost love.
Memories of his sweetheart continue to haunt him as he attempts, in vain, to continue about his life at the farm.
Pardi revealed the cinematic style of the video came from an old treatment of his 2016 hit Dirt On My Boots.
"The treatment almost reminded me of the movie Hud, ” Pardi explained.
“I loved that it was entirely in black and white, and a mini-movie. This is definitely the most cinematic video to date and leans toward the emotion behind the song and the nostalgia of long-lost love."
Pardi is the permanent opening act on Texan Miranda Lambert's Livin' Like Hippies Tour.
Other supports include Brent Cobb, Turnpike Troubadours , Lucie Silvas, the Steel Woods , Sunny Sweeney, Ashley McBryde and Charlie Worsham.
Pardi also appeared on Nu Country with Heartache On The Dance Floor, Dirt On My Boots, Head Over Boots and Back On The Back Roads .
He visited Whiskey Bent Saloon, Nashville, to film What I Can't Put Down .
Pardi grew up in Dixon but ignited his career at Butte Junior College in Chico where he started Northern Comfort and moved to Nashville on February 23, 2008, with his dog, PA system and $7,000 savings.
He used a credit card to pay for lifeguard training to earn money until he landed a publishing deal 18 months later.
Further info - http://www.jonpardi.com/welcome.html
MICHAEL WAUGH BALING TWINE
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Michael Waugh has no need for baling twine in his day job as arts media teacher and house master at Scotch College in leafy Hawthorn.
But his dad and fellow farmers used twine for many tasks on their family dairy farms in Gippsland to make ends meet.
Baling Twine is on Waugh's second album The Asphalt & The Oval produced by Shane Nicholson on NSW Central Coast.
Ironically, Baling Twine - a staple on most farms - was not just inspired by the Waugh family farm.
“Baling Twine is a true story - but it's not mine,” Waugh, now 47, revealed.
“With the first record I'd had many opportunities to play music in different parts of Australia. I was playing a show out near Guilford and it was on a Dingo reserve. Dingoes might not bark but they enjoy doing backing vocals when there's a singer entertaining people at a fundraiser near their paddock.
“While I was singing Dairy Farmer's Son and My Dad's Shoes there was a man sitting up in the front row, crying. He was a big man and he told me later that he often didn't cry, especially in public, but that those songs had hit a nerve. Then he told me the story about twin brothers from the Bega area and how the little farms around them had been bought up by massive corporations and how the making do attitude and ingenuity that I'd grown up with couldn't compete against the shape of the contemporary dairy industry. Finally, one of the brothers couldn't take it anymore.
“When I drove home from the show, I wrote Baling Twine . I didn't get the man's name but I got his story. I hope that this song pays tribute to some of the true heroes of Australia who are fighting every day just getting out of bed and putting on a pair of gumboots.”
CLICK HERE for a Waugh CD feature review in The Diary on February 26.
LEE ANN WOMACK SINGS TROUBLE AWAY
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Texan Lee Ann Womack showcases her debut single-video All The Trouble from ninth album The Lonely, Lonesome & The Gone.
Lee Ann, now 51, reflects on a broken relationship alone in an almost empty apartment.
Her second husband Frank Liddell produced it at Sugar Hill studio in his home town Houston where artists diverse as George Jones, Willie Nelson, Lightnin' Hopkins and Beyoncé made milestone recordings
Lee Ann wrote six of 14 tracks - three with frequent co-writers Adam Wright and Waylon Payne.
“I wanted All the Trouble to sound like East Texas,” she says of the single written with Wright and Payne.
“I wanted it to sound like church music I grew up on, mixed with George Jones, mixed with songs I would make up in my head as a young girl. I wanted all of that on this record and it all came together on All the Trouble.
“When I was a little girl and heard people singing about sin and redemption in church. I hadn't experienced those things, but I could feel what they were singing about. But I soon learned I'd rather hear George Jones or Willie Nelson sing gospel, because I want to hear a real sinner sing those songs. They don't seem so I've got all the answers, but more ‘I'm looking for answers.' Really, we're all looking for answers.”
Womack, daughter of a small town East Texan DJ, won a Grammy with Willie Nelson for their 2002 duet, Mendocino County Line .
In 2010 during her recording hiatus she sang Liars Lie on Tim McGraw-Gwyneth Paltrow Country Strong movie soundtrack.
Lee Ann played a sheriff - Chief Deputy Claire Wades in a small East Texas town in another movie Noble Things.
Ironically, Womack competed for CMA awards with fellow Texan Miranda Lambert who shares Liddell as producer.
It's a far cry from Belmont University, Nashville, when she met and wed singer-songwriter Jason Sellers in 1990.
They divorced in 1996 - five years after having a daughter Aubrie Lee, also a singer.
Womack gave birth to second daughter, Annalise Liddell, in January 1999 after marrying Liddell.
Lee Ann appeared on Nu Country with Chances Are from eighth album The Way I'm Living .
The six time CMA winner scored her first CMA award 15 years ago for I Hope You Dance.
That same year George Strait and Alan Jackson's version of Larry Cordle-Larry Shell penned satiric Murder on Music Row , featuring her harmonies, won Song of the Year.
CLICK HERE for a Lee Ann CD review in The Diary on March 28, 2005.
ZANE WILLIAMS BRINGING COUNTRY BACK
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Zane Williams returns live with help from Asleep At The Wheel icon Ray Benson on his Texas Music Scene TV show in Austin.
Abilene born Zane, now 40, told how fellow Texan Cody Jinks inspired him.
Bringing Country Back - a rallying cry for a return to authenticity and substance in mainstream country - is title track of Zane's sixth album that was released on April 14, 2015, and debuted on Billboard at #31.
"I think of country music as poetry for the common man," Williams says.
"The stories that draw you in, the simple truth stated in a way you wish you could've said. There's an honesty to country music that totally grabbed me the first time I heard it."
Zane appeared on Nu Country in a morality tale about a preacher's daughter and Good Samaritan mechanic in his video for Jayton And Jill on fifth album Texas Like That - featuring 10 original songs.
The son of two Texan college professors moved as a child to Kentucky, West Virginia, and California as his parents pursued academic careers.
Zane sang harmony in church and composed instrumentals on the family piano.
He graduated as a mathematics major at Abilene Christian University and moved to Nashville in 1999.
Williams also had a cameo on Nu Country in Kevin Fowler's Sellout Song - another Zane original.
Further info - http://zanewilliamsmusic.com/
MIKE & THE MOON PIES SMOKE EM
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Austin sextet Mike & The Moon Pies mixed music with fishing, hunting and highway travel in their live video for Smoke Em If You Got Them .
It's on their fifth album Steak Night At The Prairie Rose - the Houston bar where Mike first played at 14.
They also made a video with fellow Austin singer John Baumann for satiric song Country Music's Dead at John T. Floore's Country Store at Helotes near San Antone.
The band was formed by singer-songwriter Mike Harmeier in 2007.
Other members are drummer Kyle Ponder, guitarist Caitlin Rutherford, bassist Preston Rhone, and steel guitarist Zachary Moulton.
Willie Nelson's harmonic ace Mickey Raphael guests on weeping steel waltz The Worst Thing and Wedding Band on the new album that also features gambler's lament Beaches of Biloxi and We're Gone .
Further info - https://www.themoonpies.com/
VALE DR SALLY PERCIVAL-WOOD
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Our condolences to former Federal MP and Nu Country benefactor Pete Steedman on premature passing of his partner - Deakin University author Dr Sally Percival-Wood at 58 on April 10 after a long battle with cancer. Dr Percival-Wood's most recent publication was Dissent - The Student Press in Sixties Australia (Scribe Publications - 2017.) The acclaimed author, academic and historian battled her terminal illness to finish her book - one of several during her career. It featured many features from counter culture magazines diverse as Digger and student magazines featuring Pete's writings as a journalist and magazine editor. Further info - https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/dissent |
HOW TO KEEP NU COUNTRY ON AIR
We need your support as we celebrate Nu Country TV's 34 th series with Australian record companies and artists teaming to ensure our survival.
We have Kip Moore's third CD Slowheart from Dave Parker at EMI and Blake Shelton's 12th CD If I'm Honest from Karen Black 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 Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, Gary Allan, Dierks Bentley, Eric Church and late larrikin legend A.P. Johnson.
CLICK HERE for our Membership Page for full details.