Americana Archives - Hometown Caravan

Hello Emerson

Hello Emerson was founded in Columbus, Ohio by Sam Emerson Bodary in 2015. Quickly joined by percussionist / musical director Daniel Seibert and keyboardist Jack Doran.

Hello Emerson’s midwestern songwriting now resonates internationally – particularly in Germany – with recognition from Rolling Stone Germany, DPA, and Deutschlandfunk Kultur. With comparisons to John Darnielle (The Mountain Goats), Andrew Bird, Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes), and Sufjan Stevens. Their debut record was heralded as “a find for the genre” and “the sublime intersection of the best American indie-folk bands.”

Their 2020 sophomore effort, How to Cook Everything, solidified their reputation as an earnest, humble, and insistent voice in indie-folk singer-songwriting. With contributions from 50 local musicians, Hello Emerson crystallized life in a big town / small city amidst personal and political tensions. Confirming, denying, and otherwise complicating midwestern stereotypes within song’s narrative.

DPA compared them to Andy Shauf, going “far beyond normal folk pop standards,” while MDR Kultur christened them, “among the best indie bands in the USA.” Stateside, they were humbled with a hometown award for the best local release of 2020.

We count Hello Emerson among the best indie bands in the USA. His greatest strength is finding the true depth of everyday stories without making a fuss. (MDR Kultur – Radio feature on 2/10/2020)

There’s no getting around the Americana indie folk rock band Hello Emerson. The comparisons with Conor Oberst or Ryan Adams are still justified, and Sam Bodary could hardly wish for better references. With ‘How To Cook Everything’ he once again succeeds in a varied and multi-layered Americana indie folk rock album. ‘How To Cook Everything’ has become a huge successor to ‘Above The Floorboards’, establishing Bodary as a brilliant songwriter. Sounds & Books

Amazingly mature debut of a young, literary American: Sam Bodary is just 23, but this sounds like the sublime intersection of the best American indie folk bands. Glitterhouse

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Chuck Ragan

Chuck Ragan Biographie:

After playing in numerous bands in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Chuck Ragan teamed with Chris Wollard, Jason Black and George Rebelo, with whom he relocated from Sarasota, FL to Gainesville and formed Hot Water Music. That band quickly emerged as one of the American punk scene’s most distinctive and inventive units, winning a reputation as a riveting live act while releasing such well-received studio albums.

Feeling the urge to stretch out creatively, Ragan ventured into a more acoustic approach with the side project Rumbleseat, which released several singles and the album Rumbleseat Is Dead. After Hot Water Music disbanded in 2005, Ragan enthusiastically embraced his new status as solo troubadour, exploring an expanded palette of acoustic and electric textures on the acclaimed albums Feast or Famine, Gold Country and Covering Ground, as well as the stripped-down live set Los Feliz and a series of limited-edition subscription singles released in 2006 and 2007, and later compiled on CD as The Blueprint Sessions.

In 2008, Ragan launched the long-running Revival Tour. A series of collaborative acoustic adventures featuring a diverse assortment of punk, bluegrass and alt-country performers. In addition to Ragan, the Revival Tour, which has visited Britain, Europe, Australia and Scandinavia as well as North America.

In 2012—the same year that Ragan reunited with Hot Water Music to record their album Exister—the veteran road warrior released his first book. The Road Most Traveled, a collection of insights and anecdotes on the touring life that serves as both a personal memoir and a helpful how-to handbook. He is currently working on a second volume.

As his book makes clear, and as Till Midnight confirms, Ragan takes his musical mission seriously, drawing inspiration and emotional sustenance from the songwriters and music he surrounds himself with, his family and friends along with the close and loyal relationship with his audience.

“The way I see it,” Chuck Ragan observes, “we’re faced with tons of inspiration every day. Every step of this life has a way of teaching you something, showing you something, opening your ears and your heart to something. I have all these friends out there, and this community that supports me, who believe in what I’m doing and who believe in the power of music and the power of community.

“It’s a blessing and a privilege to stand on stage and play music for people,” he continues. “I meet so many folks out there, and they’re so hospitable and so kind and say such nice things to me about the songs. The support and the energy that I get from them is what makes it possible for me to keep doing this. And when I’m there and in that moment, it’s important to me to give it back to them as strongly as they’re giving it to me.”

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Digger Barnes

Digger Barnes is a musician, based in Hamburg, Germany. He has performed extensively in Europe and the US and collaborated with various artists of the Americana genre. Being a songwriter, recording artist and touring musician for more than 20 years, he currently works as a composer for stages and screens. For more information, please visit: portdelaselva.org

Info:

An abandoned theme park, by the side of the road two old dinosaurs made of fiberglass. A car passes, followed by a cloud of dust. At the wheel a mustached man, on the backseat a guitar case.

Over the past 10 years, singer-songwriter Digger Barnes has been documenting his life on the road and capturing it on record. Tales of longing, melancholy and morbid charm are his trademark and the material of the “Diamond Road Show“. The “Diamond Road Show“ is a peculiar type of road movie – a bastard bearing the DNA of cinema and concert alike.

Digger Barnes developed this show-format alongside his friend, painter and video-artist Pencil Quincy. In previous years many miles were traveled to bring the “Diamond Road Show” to people at home and abroad. Yet here too, the outsider breaks with the norm: Instead of bringing the film show solely to clubs or cinemas, the tour, not unlike the road itself treads unfamiliar territory. Barnes takes his road trip to cemeteries, chapels, old gas stations, boxcars, squats and doesn’t even shy away from psychiatric institutions, high-brow theaters or airplane hangars. Being constantly on the road, Digger Barnes’ life and the fictional episodes of the “Diamond Road Show” merge and become inseparable.

Discography:

“Near Exit 27“ (2017, B&Q)
“Frame By Frame“ (2014, Hometown Caravan, B&Q)
“Every Story True“ (2012, Hometown Caravan, B&Q)
“Time Has Come“ (2009, Hometown Caravan, B&Q)
“Digger & Allie“ (2007, Sabotage)
“My Name Is Digger“ (2007, Sabotage)
“The Trailer Tapes“ (2006, Self-released)

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The Gentle Lurch

The Gentle Lurch “We are passing our days / Like two snails / Slowly crawling past each other / A shared office, alright / But aren’t we supposed to be brothers?” . Workingman’s Lurch, just as the title track suggests, is a pessimistic album that deals with work. Going to work, being at work, stagnation, approximating death.

It’s the third album by a band from Dresden, Germany, called The Gentle Lurch. Its members hail from the rural Ore Mountain region nearby. They like to pause in between albums until each and everyone has forgotten about their existence. Their last (double-) album stems from 2009 and Americana-UK spoke of “Dresden‘s Answer to Wilco – a sprawling, experimental epic…” with regards to it back then. Rolling Stone Germany compared them to Lambchop and Tindersticks.

Since then, the three core members and singers Cornelia Mothes on piano, Frank Heim and Lars Hiller on various string instruments were joined by Ronny Wunderwald on drums and Timo Lippold on bass. Possibly as a consequence, the band has been overheard speaking of Workingman’s Lurch as an “honest-to-God rock record” which, most likely, is an indication of their skewed self-perception. It’s the opposite of a perfectly rounded offering. Each song has got its own will, develops its own strategy and momentum. Ludwig Bauer has written two harrowingly beautiful string arrangements and, from time to time, an obscure ‘Choir of Mothers’ expands the polyphony of voices of the band’s three lead singers.

Yet, drums and bass provide a much firmer framework for this new set of songs. They let them become more concise and, at times, louder than on previous albums. ‘Our Bodies Become The Ground‘ rolls like scree avalange from the speakers. Also, Cornelia Mothes takes up much more room on this record, confronting Lars Hiller’s stoic sing-song manner of recitation with a comforting, almost redemptive element. She also brings a previously unfound directness and pop-affinity to this record. Therebeside, plenty of remnants of the old Gentle Lurch remain: close to standstill, precariously groping, a sound like rotten wood.

Their songs are lyric-heavy and narrative. The lyrics like to twist and turn to mystery like the closing observation of a short story by Flannery O’Connor. It’s difficult to call them a folk band, but it’s also difficult to call their output experimental music. There are only three choruses on the whole album. Most tracks are like journeys from point A to point B, others level and rise like waves on an ocean. They use elements of Folk, Country and Americana, because they like their emotional directness. But they realign them into something different. At times, as confrontational as on ‘All Things Come’ which tilts from complaint over into consolation on a single organ note, changing singers as well as harmonies mid-song. There is the strangely rotating chord progression that propels ‘Cannot’, or the groove torpedoing the gospel of ‘On How To Tamp Leaks‘.

Workingman’s Lurch also marks the first time, the band has worked with an external producer. Johannes Gerstengarbe usually stands for a more polished, radio-friendly production style. It was a conscious decision to combine the band’s crude approach with his aesthetics. Mastering was done at Soundcurrent in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The almost two years of recording took place in an abandoned, former chocolate factory surrounded by old GDR-housing projects depicted in the albums artwork and which – apart from a few early 90ies satellite dishes – appear to have gone untouched by the German unity and the Quarter century that has passed.

Then of course, the album’s title is also a distant echo to Workingman’s Dead by Grateful Dead (1970). Whereas that record could be viewed as a swansong of the innocence and cultural liberation of the 1960ies, Workingsman’s Lurch is the swansong of an unaffected, self-sufficient life. It doesn’t describe a cultural phenomenon but a biographical one: integration into employment, the groan of material, the deadlock, the grind and creak, the repulsion of nonfunctional parts. „There was something that sat on my heart like a moth.” (Nesting)

buy Workingmans Lurch

Drag The River

Drag the River began when Jon Snodgrass (of Armchair Martian) and Chad Price (of All) began writing some country songs on the side. During the 10 years since their beginning, both Armchair Martian and All have ceased to exist and Drag has become the main outlet for both songwriters. Drag The River has accomplished so much without label support. They tour all year long, self-release their records, and secure publicity, all on their own terms. This is their first label supported release in years. Fans of Uncle Tupelo, The Replacements, Lucero, and LImbeck will love this album. The band is perfecting a sound we call Country and Mid-Western!

Drag The River sind sicher einer der Urahnen des Alt-Country-Rock-Revivals der letzten Jahre, die Bands wie Gaslight Anthem oder Lucero beeinflußt haben.
Bereits 1996 in Fort Collins / Colorado als Seitenprojekt der Punk-Veteranen Chad Price (All), Jon Snodgrass und Paul Rucker (Armchair Martian) und J.J. von den Nobodys gegründet, teils umbesetzt, Touren mit Lucero und Rocky Votolato, unzählige Veröffentlichungen, haben sie sich – anders als viele Wegbegleiter und Nachkommen – nie an Radiotauglichkeit oder Massengeschmack angepasst.

Auch auf dem nagelneuen Album glänzen sie mit 10 sehr guten, durchdachten Songs, die meist in rockigem Midtempo gehalten sind. Komplex mit Orgeln, Pianos, Slidegitarren, und nach Haystacks riechenden Orange-Amps bestückt, dazu die unverwechselbaren Stimmen von Price (für viele immer noch der beste All-Sänger) und Snodgrass, und die erdigen Texte, mit viel Euphorie vorgetragen. Eine hervorragende Platte selbst für die jenigen, die eigentlich übersättigt sind mit cowboystiefeligen selbstmitleidigen Männer-Rock-Nummern, dazu ist diese Platte zu sympathisch, vielseitig und enthusiatisch. Hooray.

Heated Land

This little poem by an unknown writer well catches the mood behind the music of Heated Land, a band project founded in 2012 in Dresden, Germany around the work of singer- songwriter Andreas Mayrock. Inspired by many old and some contemporary artists of genres like Americana, blues and folk, the songs of Heated Land wander through wide landscapes and little ghost towns, bringing up feelings of longing, lostness, nostalgia and hope.

“Now the heated land is cooling off
under a big black sky.
Where a cruel god pinned a million stars.

A raven sails through the roaring silence,
while the sun´s escaping the dusty soil
like faint smoke – bringing memory and song.“

Members: Andreas Mayrock – vocals, guitar I Alexandre de Ligonnès – harp, voc I Chrstoph Dehne – drums I Simon Preuß – contrabass I Raja Ghraizi – guitar …. and more.

Austin Lucas

It’s been over two decades since the songwriter AUSTIN LUCAS packed his bags and left Bloomington, Indiana. The Midwestern town where he spent his childhood years falling in love with rock & roll, embracing his punk roots, and standing his ground whenever intolerant locals didn’t understand his way of life.

AUSTIN LUCAS returns to that place—both creatively and physically—with his seventh studio album, Immortal Americans. Written after a tumultuous period that found Lucas getting sober, supporting his partner through a battle with cancer, and breaking up with his longtime record label. Immortal Americans is a clear-eyed album for murkier times, rooted in stripped-down heartland rock songs that find the artist reflecting upon the changes in both his hometown and himself.

Co-produced by Lucas and Will Johnson (Centro-matic) and recorded/engineered by Steve Albini. Captured in a series of live, full-band performances, Immortal Americans was written after Lucas resettled in Bloomington. He’d been away for years, touring the world as an independent solo artist before signing a record deal with New West in 2013. In many ways, the albums he released during that period were reflections of the music he’d grown up with. From the mountain music of his father (bluegrass musician Bob Lucas) to the punk records that soundtracked his teenage years. Appropriately, Lucas earned a fan base as a folksinger with punk roots or was it the other way around? While touring the country with artists who represented both ends of that spectrum, sharing shows with Willie Nelson one minute and Chuck Ragan the next.

Somewhere along the way, his vices began to get the best of him. He started drinking too much. He gained weight. His marriage crumbled. Albums like 2013’s cowpunk-inspired Stay Reckless and 2016’s Between the Moon and the Midwest shone a light on those challenges, tackling everything from divorce to depression. When Lucas hit rock bottom though, he stopped writing about his temptations and instead, left them behind for good. He headed back to southern Indiana, resettling himself in a town that had changed considerably since he left.

There, in a region suffering from an opioid epidemic, an HIV crisis, and a homelessness problem. Lucas focused on rebuilding his career and his body. He got sober, shedding more than 100 pounds. He recounted the stories of his youth, where he dodged beer cans hurled by passing drivers. As he once more walked the Bloomington streets, he learned to embrace his own fighting spirit again. The album’s title track, “Immortal Americans,” emerged from that period of self-discovery.

“My friends and I had to fight for who we were,” he remembers of those early days in the Midwest, “and it was an alienating, anxious, and oftentimes scary way to live. This song is about that fight. It goes out to the most marginalized and at-risk human beings who live in our country. all the people who live on the outside of mainstream society and have to fight every day for their identities and for their existence—because those are the true immortal Americans.”

Meanwhile Austin Lucas ‘ new partner was fighting a different sort of battle. Lucas had discovered a lump on her body during their first evening together and the mass turned out to be cancerous. He became not only her romantic partner, but her caretaker too, nursing her back to health after a life-altering surgery and a string of energy-sapping chemotherapy sessions. Lucas continued writing music throughout the process, strumming an acoustic guitar quietly while his girlfriend slept in the next room. Although much of Immortal Americans is influenced by that experience, album standouts like “The Shadow and Marie”. Tackle the experience directly, shining a light on his partner’s vitality and unending beauty.

“The song opens up with dark lyrics,” he admits, “but the overall point is, ‘We’re still alive. We still have so much to be grateful for. As long as we’re still here, there’s beauty and joy.’ I wrote it to remind my lover that even though she’d been through a crazy ordeal in which her body was permanently changed, she was still beautiful to me. The song may start out on a low note, but as it builds, it goes to a place that’s brighter. It pushes toward something better. In many ways, that’s the theme of the whole record.”

When it came time to record his new songs at Steve Albini’s studio in Chicago, Lucas didn’t reach too far beyond the songs’ unplugged origins. He’d already been cut loose from his record label, which meant he was free to chase down his muse without any sort of outside influence. He consolidated his sound accordingly, stripping away the electric guitars and dense sonic landscapes that had permeated his recent albums. In their place, he focused on acoustic instruments and a restrained rhythm section, gluing everything together with lyrically-sharp songs. That measured the distance between his rocky past and even-keeled present. The band—whose members included his Dad, who’d traveled north to play banjo with his son—crowded into the same room at Electrical Audio and played together, resulting in an all-analog album that’s both raw and real.

“I wanted it to sound like human beings playing instruments,” says Lucas, “I knew the best thing for this batch of songs was for them to sound as organic as possible. I sang live, playing guitar at the same time, and we worked very quickly. It was an in-the-moment kind of album.”

Immortal Americans is Austin Lucas’ homecoming album, created during a whirlwind period of tumult and regrowth. With its gothic heartland sound and autobiographical lyrics, it’s also Lucas at his most honest, rooted in a string of largely unamplified anthems that don’t rely on electricity to pack a punch.

“I was watching the changes in Bloomington and reflecting upon the changes in my own life,” he sums up. “Not all of this is happy stuff, but there’s hope. There’s light in the darkness. I really do believe in second and third chances, because I know how many chances I’ve received. You have to keep fighting, because that’s what makes life worth living.”

Or, in other words, that’s what makes you immortal.

Wayne Graham

About Wayne Graham:

When Hayden and Kenny Miles first played in a band together, they were only eight and thirteen. Their father had founded a church in their hometown Whitesburg in South East Kentucky and they were backing the services on drums and bass. Music has been an essential part in the family for over three generations. Hayden learned how to play the drums by watching his uncle and Kenny was taught by his father and cousin. Even their grandparents were singing and playing instruments. Life revolved around three pillars: family, hard work, and music.

Still nowadays, Whitesburg is an isolated place. The area, and that’s a scientific fact, has one of the lowest qualities of life in all of the US. Since the mid 1970s the area is in a state of constant recession. Lowest per capita income, shortest life expectation, firm republican domination. The name Wayne Graham is a composition of both their grandfather’s first names. Both were coal miners as well as Kenny’s and Hayden’s father and uncle. The latter actually witnessed the violent riots of the United Mine Workers Union Strikes, which were put into pictures by Barbara Kopple in her Oscar winning film HARLAN COUNTY, USA .

The answer to how the two brothers and their delicate and ornery Alternative Country fit into that picture is rather simple: they don’t. There’s a bit of Hard Rock in the area but apart from that, music mostly takes place in churches. Ideally, it ought to be kept strictly ‘oldtimey’.

About the album Mexico

Wayne Graham‘s album “Mexico” the first one to be released in Europe is already their fourth, even though the two brothers are only 26 and 21 . It’s not entirely clear whether it is their upbringing or the feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world. But the album oozes a seemingly supernatural maturity, “Mexico” , is concise and clever. Extremely catchy but never mundane. Artistic but not overly intellectual .

The songs are often rather short and the remarkable, airy production , which takes place in the basement of their parents’ house. Feels like an exercise in reduction. Beautiful chords and melodies , an incredibly melodic style of drumming and always at the right moment. Wayward little details, breaks and lyrics , written for eternity.

When asked about it, Songwriter Kenny Miles modestly states that he doesn’t want to steal their audience’s time. Eventually, his songs are like answers to questions, which might not have been asked in the first place.

Thematically, Mexico circles around the tragic death of their best friend last October. The first verse of the title track goes: “It was in your bloodstream on the day you died, til they replaced it with formaldehyde.”

The It resurfaces in almost all of these songs but is never properly named. It is not a substance nor a trait, but the mystic connection between the three friends , which have played music together since their early childhood.

Fellow Man tells the story of one of their last nights together. The endless late night front porch conversation, when suddenly they hear a clicking sound approach. It turns out to be a wolf walking down the nightly streets of Whitesburg, passing them by as they sit breathless on their their porch.

Here’s how Kenny Miles puts it into words: “Like the wolf outside we are led by desire, we are ruled by by the time we have lost.” And suddenly one gets reminded that music actually possesses these abilities: to express something beyond pitiful facts and numbers, an essence of something grand and almost unthinkable.

Wayne Graham wants you to know one thing.
We are a band, not a person!

Members: Kenny Miles- guitar, piano, vocals I Hayden Miles- drums, vocals I – bass I Lee Owen – guitar, vocals

The Green Apple Sea

Eight years ago Stefan Prange, creative head and songwriter of The Green Apple Sea from Nuremberg. Decided to move to the countryside out of despise for the mechanisms of modern day life. He slowly said his farewells to the Indie music scene, planted potatoes instead and trained the local kids football team.

Stefan didn’t want to be a musician anymore, songwriting was not an option either. He was sure, he never wanted to play live again. His home was his castle. The only problem: his songs didn’t think much of that. They kept coming and somehow even seemed alright at first glance. Hence, Prange began singing them into his phone, in secret of course, and scribbling down lyrics on electricity bills. His former bandmates, to whom he eventually slipped his new ideas. Were as enthusiastic about the new songs as he was.

So step by step Stefan Prange said goodbye to his football coach job. Instead of growing potatoes, he entered Open-Mic nights on Sundays, to test the new songs in front of an audience. Subsequently he travelled to London to play a Communion Records Clubnight and a Daytrotter Session – things that laid beyond his wildest dreams. Shortly after, the band went into the studio and began recording a new album. It took them four years. It is here now and goes by the name “Directions”.

The recording of “Directions” was more difficult than any of its predecessors for The Green Apple Sea. They wanted to create something really good after Pranges long creative break and their last record “Northern Sky/Southern Sky” (2010), which had received rave reviews upon release. Everything took longer than planned. Years and years and years.

What remains is the organic band sound which is so typical for The Green Apple Sea. Everything is intertwined and yet, every instrument and every melody has its place and remains distinguishable. Choirs and harmonies stay one of their trademarks and almost every song starts with a signature melody, most of them played by producer Chrisitan “Wuschi” Ebert on keyboard or piano. Melody as the basic ingredient of songwriting. The song starts and everyone immediately knows which band is on.

Like almost no other band The Green Apple Sea know how to connect melancholy and bitterness with sparkling, country influenced pop songs. However, it is not only the inherent contradiction, the splendid contrast between lyrics and music, which makes this band so extraordinary.

It’s also the songs. These handcut, finely crafted songwriting prototypes. If anyone should ever ask what songwriting is about, just play them any random title by The Green Apple Sea. This should answer the question. Each and every song on “Directions” has got such a disarming radiance it seems crystal clear why it took them eight years to come up with them. It feels as if they are going back to the term ‘album’ in it’s original sense with “Directions” – a collection of singles. This is not a album on which songs depend on one another, they don’t require the context or the neighbourhood. Each and every one deserves the limelight.

Members: It’s complicated! All these people are The Green Apple Sea sometimes: Henrik Schoch, Frank Theismann, Christian Ebert, Frank Mollena, Stefan Prange, Lena Dobler, Hans-Christian Fuss, Tobias Helmlinger, Flo Kenner, Patrick Göbel, Frieder Graef, Frank Schwab