Palo Duro Records

We are excited to announce the musical lineup for the debut Chattahippie Music Festival, featuring the best talent in Americana, Rock, Blues, Jam, Country, Folk and Bluegrass from around the nation! With over thirty artists from ten states, this promises to be a great celebration of peace, love and music!

Northwest Georgia Bank presents the 2008 Chattahippie Music Festival featuring: Pure Prairie League, Chris Knight, The Derailers, Charlie Louvin, Walt Wilkins & The Mystiqueros, Two Tons of Steel, Elizabeth Cook, Dallas Wayne, The Gougers, Gary Nicholson, Jason Eady & The Wayward Apostles, Laura Cantrell, Buzz Cason & The Love Notes, Beggars’ Caravan, Lou Wamp, Roger Alan Wade, Dane Varese, Joe Moss, Trent Summar & The New Row Mob, Jimmy Davis, Michael Johnathon, Band of Heathens, Doug & Telisha Williams, Miles from Nowhere, Michael Hearne & South by Southwest, Tommy Alverson, Billy Block, Whitey Johnson, Penguin, Tressie Seegers, Darryl Lee Rush, and The New Binkley Brothers.

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Popularity: 30% [?]

Review by Mary Jane Farmer

I’ll admit I fell down on the job in getting notes about this CD out to you sooner. The reason, I’ll also admit, is that MFN had grown so between the first time I heard them live and this production, I didn’t think it showed them off. I told producer Joshua Jones it was good, even great, but not MFN. I was wrong, I learned, after putting miles on my little car to hear Miles From Nowhere live again and again. They have grown professionally, and this CD authenticates that growth and the chemistry of the band, stemmng from their own mix of musical influences.

Produced by Jones on Shiner Records after Miles From Nowhere became their 2006 competition winner, “Bloodline” came out at least six months ago. MFN fans already have their copies. For others, go get it.

Miles From Nowhere is unique in that they combine country with a fine sense of easy listening, rock, and danceable ballads. Someone said the band is as like a huge scrambled egg, only its scrambled music. You have to listen close to determine if Merrol Ray or Adam Walker is singing lead or playing lead guitar, or if they are switching leads back and forth. Ray, Walker, and another band member, drummer Wesley Joe Malone,  penned most of the songs, with Jones providing “Queen of California” to them, never expecting to get the quality cover they gave. The fourth band member is bass guitarist Joe Allen Jordan, a steady-as-she-goes sort of musician.

“When I Get Mean” moved along the Texas Music Chart for a while, as did the title cut before it.

This, too, is distributed by Palo Duro Records, and those who don’t want to wait until the next time Miles From Nowhere plays in their area can order the CD online, www.palodurorecords.com.

Popularity: 14% [?]

There are times and moods that call for country music to be a bit rough around the edges and ornery. On Bloodline, Miles From Nowhere deliver on this belief. Echoes of country, rock, the blues and the Outlaw movement mingle together to make this album a contemporary southern rock success. Produced by Dan Baird of Georgia Satellites fame, Bloodline, is full of crunchy guitars that bounce and good ol’ boy lyrics that bite.The title track kicks off the album and the rolling guitar intro and vocal delivery demonstrate a strong Neil Young influence. “Give Me the Road” is exactly what one would expect it to be based on the title. Continuing in that vein, like every good southern rock band dating back to the days of Skynyrd, Miles From Nowhere know how to deliver a good power ballad, between boastful batches of bravado. “Faces” fills that role here and does so very well, with perhaps the best lyrics on the album and the hook of: this face in the mirror is getting harder and harder to see. It’s a classic tale of being unsure of your past, confused about your future and the difficult task of trying to reconcile the two. “Hard Livin’ Man” and “I Can’t Win” are honky tonk barn barn burners of songs that harken back to the golden age of 70’s Outlaw movement. “Mona Sue” has a plucky bass line and a rocketing chorus featuring Doobie Brother-esue harmonies. While not reinventing the wheel by any stretch of the imagination, Bloodline, illustrates a band delivering an outstanding dose of blues filled southern rock. Miles From Nowhere seem to realize, rightfully so, that sometimes music is just mean’t to be fun. When the mood calls for something just a tad bit rowdy and rocking, this might be the record you should reach for… Story by Brad Beheler, Lone Star Music Magazine

Popularity: 14% [?]

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Popularity: 52% [?]

The boys from Miles From Nowhere want everyone to know they’re honest, God-fearing, hard-working, blue-collar country folk. It’s evident in the way they play and they way they sing and the songs they write. Especially in the songs they write.

On their debut album, Bloodline, MFN goes to great lengths to celebrate life in the country and their heritage as products of North Texas farmers and mill workers. Much of the CD is devoted to this subject, and there are moments certain lines seem cribbed from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath – lyrics rooted in earthy heartache and dusty hopelessness. And the music of this prototypical “red dirt” band harkens Neil Young with Crazy Horse on downers: melancholy guitars, distorted, crunching their way through every dimly lit verse and darkened chorus. The album is fraught with mid-tempo, slow-burners – from the title track, singer/lead guitarist Merrol Ray’s ode to familial patriarchs, to “Stand”, singer/rhythm guitarist Adam Walker’s love-loss ballad – that can leave the listener listless by album’s end.

But there are several bright spots in this collection, and those do well to outshine the other tracks. “When I Get Mean” is an in-your-face, driving ditty that just dares you to tangle this foursome. The song is best when drummer Wesley Joe Malone’s hypnotizing jungle beats and bassist Joe Allen Jordan’s thump-thump-thumping anchor Ray’s slicing guitar hook – the audio equivalent of the cinematic masterpiece Fight Club: you just want to give someone a good ass-kicking. Other up-tempo numbers, “Hard Livin’ Man” and “Mona Sue”, have a way of getting stuck in your head days later and make you eager to hear them again.

For the money and the genre, Bloodline, is a good buy and a good listen. It might not stand the test of time, but that’s not to blame Miles From Nowhere. With producer Dan Baird of the Georgia Satellites at the helm, one would expect more of an audio tapestry of a band whose live shows are increasingly more high energy than what is captured here. And not that there’s anyone or anything to blame; you get what you get any time you work in Nashville (where the album was recorded).

Bloodline will, however, stand as a solid introduction to this new Texas country band. Winners of the 2006 Shiner Rising Start contest, Miles From Nowhere has the potential to follow where other country rockers and Southern rock grandfathers have gone before. The only question will be when they stop following and blaze their own trail…

James Dunning is a singer/songwriter who fronts Lost Immigrants, a Texas-based Americana band.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Review by Tom Geddie, Buddy Magazine

A self-professed mix of Cross Canadian Ragweed, George Jones, Shooter Jennings, Waylon Jennings, and the members’ own imaginations, Miles from Nowhere is a young country-rock band with a potentially fine future. Bloodline, the group’s second CD, is an attitude-filled romp through a youthful, rough-edged, macho land where there’s ample hope for realization, despite all the burned bridges.

Among the well-crafted songs is the lead-off title tune, which establishes the idea of a hard-working, proud presence as “another stranger in a strange land.” “(What you gonna do) When I Get Mean” is about exactly what the title says; in “Stand,” a man says goodbye to his pain and misery, but will miss her; in “I Can’t Win,” which is the CD’s purest country song, his baby’s leaving him. “Queen of California” laments his baby’s move to the West Coast, claiming she’s “just another girl to me.”

Bloodline was produced by Dan Baird, former lead singer for Georgia Satellites, who adds harmony vocals, electric slide guitar, percussion, and B3 organ to the band’s sound. The CD is a good, fairly consistent listen for a band — cousins Merrol Ray and Adam Walker (vocals, guitars), Joe Allen Jordan (bass), and Wesley Joe Malone (percussion) — that could be on the edge of a breakthrough.

Popularity: 21% [?]