Palo Duro Records

Popmatters.com reviews The Best Of the 2007 Americana Music Festival

November 20, 2007

Palo Duro Records artists Trent Summar & Dale Watson listed among the best!

PopMatters attended the 8th annual Americana Music Festival in Nashville, which ran from 31 October until 3 November. The showcases and Awards Ceremony, held in various, cozy venues, including the famed Ryman Auditorium ran from good to oh, so damn good. The entire event is comfortable, unassuming, and high-quality. It had us thinking we might just pack up everything and move down to Nashville, just to be close to this sweet music and delectable food on a daily basis. Below are our hard-to-pare-down picks from this year. We’ll be back, next.

1. Buddy Miller

2. Lyle Lovett

3. Trent Summar and The New Row Mob

Trent Summar and his New Row Mob put on a smoking show the first night of the festival and he was an absolute revelation. Summar is all hillbilly cool with a cocksure swagger and electrifying performance chops. His music is best described as cowpunk and Summar has called it “farm rock,” but even that doesn’t do this consummate performer justice. Summar penned the Gary Allen hit, “Guys Like Me,” and yet as I raved about him to anyone who would listen at the festival, I kept hearing “Trent who?” That needs to change and right now, mister.—Sarah Zupko

4. Patty Griffin

5. Dale Watson

Honky tonk as pure as the driven snow from this Austin, Texas mainstay, Dale Watson’s smooth baritone brings to mind Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash and his crack band could give Willie’s crew a run for their money. Watson’s set was one of the finest of the festival and brought traditional country music to an adoring, appreciative crowd. If you want to experience this for yourself, pick up 2002’s Live in London, England for a bit of what Don Walser would call “pure Texas”.—Sarah Zupko

Read the entire list at popmatters.com

Popularity: 28% [?]

by Paul E. Comeau

Dale Watson is going through a prolific streak. Given that Watson is a honky-tonk singer, the songs on Whiskey or God cast a wider net than most both in terms of musical influences and subject matter. Several songs (”Sit and Drink and Cry,” “Tequila and Teardrops,” and the title song) are worthy additions to the canon of drinking songs. “No Help Wanted” does likewise for the trucking song repertoire, but then Watson also offers us “Truckin’ Queen,” a song about a transvestite trucker. Watson was playing catch-up on Whiskey or God. The album consists at least partly of old songs and fan favorites that the artist had yet to record.

From the Cradle to the Grave, on the other hand, came about quite suddenly. While the singer was moving his family to Baltimore, he was offered a chance to record in a Tennessee log cabin that once belonged to Johnny Cash. He spent the first three days writing 10 new songs and then recorded them with his band in two days. Watson seems to have been inspired as much by Cash’s spirit as by his sound. The songs deal with soul-baring and weighty life and death issues.”Yellow Mama,” for example, is a song about a condemned man, the song title referring to Akabama’s infamous electric chair. Several songs evoke Cash’s sound, and on “Runaway Train,” the last track, he briefly references a few of Cash’s most famous songs. (more…)

Popularity: 21% [?]

PDR-0802

Dale Watson

People I’ve Known, Places I’ve Been

Produced by Dale Watson

Digital Release: July 17, 2007

Popularity: 16% [?]

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Popularity: 32% [?]

Review by DC Larson, Rockabilly Magazine #34

Dale Watson, “Whiskey Or God” (Palo Duro)

5 STARS

Holy fire and alcoholic escape share more than visceral palliative benefit.

Each leaves both the haunting spectre of last night’s respite and the new morn’s reality of enduring hardships. Limber-legged old school country acknowledges that while both spirit and spirits may be weak, the flesh remains willing.

Recommended Tracks: “Sit and Drink and Cry,” “Whiskey Or God”

Popularity: 13% [?]

The Nashville Scene published a Music Critic’s review of 2006, including this gem from Kent Wolgamott:

I came across one very heartening trend in 2006—at least here in Lincoln, Neb.: the ascendance of what I’ve been calling the next generation of outlaws. Hank III packs local clubs when he plays here, Shooter Jennings tore up an outdoor festival and the Red Dirt acts from Oklahoma—Cross Canadian Ragweed and Jason Boland & the Stragglers—draw as well or better than the new Nashville acts. That may have something to do with Lincoln being a college town, but the music I hear from Shooter, Hank III, Wayne “The Train” Hancock, Dale Watson and The Derailers is what I call country.

KENT WOLGAMOTT, LINCOLN JOURNAL STAR

[Full Article]

Popularity: 22% [?]