Release Day Picks: October 20th New Album Highlights

Each week Release Day Picks profiles new LPs and EPs Team JamBase will be checking out on release day Friday. This week we highlight new albums by Willie Nelson, Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn, Oteil Burbridge, Margo Price, Destroyer, Pigeons Playing Ping Pong and Bill MacKay & Ryley Walker. Read on for more insight into the records we have all queued up to spin.

Willie Nelson And The Boys – Willie’s Stash, Vol. 2

The Scoop: For the second volume of his Willie’s Stash series, country music legend Willie Nelson has dipped into the recording sessions that yielded his 2011 release Heroes. Volume 2 features Nelson, along with his sons Lukas Nelson and Micah Nelson, putting their spin on a selection of country classics – leaning heavily on the music of Hank Williams. The core trio, who were assisted by a slew musicians in the studio, offer up a 12-track effort that has a distinctly loose and live feel as Nelson and his offspring blend vocals and swap lyrics, making you feel like you’re hanging out at the hippest honky-tonk in Texas. Check out the music video for “My Tears Fall”:

Label: Legacy Recording

Producer: Buddy Cannon

Number Of Tracks: 12

Running Time: 39:42

Guest Musicians: Mickey Raphael, Kevin “Swine” Grantt, Bobby Terry, Jim “Moose” Brown, Mike Johnson, Tony Creasman, Barry Bales, Lonnie Wilson, Melonie Cannon, Shannon Finnegan

Tracklist:

1. Move It On Over
2. Mind Your Own Business
3. Healing Hands Of Time
4. Can I Sleep In Your Arms
5. Send Me The Pillow You Dream On
6. I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
7. I’m Movin’ On
8. Your Cheatin’ Heart
9. My Tears Fall
10. Cold, Cold Heart
11. Mansion On The Hill
12. Why Don’t You Love Me

Stream / Download / CD/LP

Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn – Echo In The Valley

The Scoop: Husband/wife duo Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn set out to explore three finger and clawhammer style banjo playing across the 11 tracks making up Echo In The Valley. The couple’s follow-up to their 2014 self-titled debut album was recorded exclusively by the pair of pickers on seven different banjos “ranging from a ukulele to an upright bass banjo.” The songs on the album were primarily written by Washburn and Fleck, though they included some adaptations of traditional tunes as well. “This time, we really wanted to truly write together,” Bela stated. “We spent a lot of our time on the lyrics, deciding what we want the songs to communicate, both literally and under the surface.” Stream the single “If I Could Talk To A Younger Me” below:

Label: Rounder Records

Number Of Tracks: 11

Running Time: 46:33

Guest Musicians: N/A

Tracklist:

1. Over The Divide
2. Take Me To Harlan
3. Let It Go
4. Don’t Let It Bring You Down
5. Sally In The Garden / Big Country / Molly Put The Kettle On
6. My Home’s Across The Blue Ridge Mountains
7. Hello Friend
8. If I Could Talk To A Younger Me
9. On This Winding Road
10. Come All You Coal Miners
11. Bloomin’ Rose

Stream / Download / CD/LP

Oteil Burbridge – Water In The Desert

The Scoop: Bassist Oteil Burbridge may be best known for his work with Dead & Company, ARU and the Allman Brothers Band, but he’s a great songwriter in his own right. Burbridge shows off his compositional skills on Water In The Desert, an album produced by David Ryan Harris in which every track was written by Oteil. “I started writing the songs on this record about ten years ago,” said Burbridge. “They are all songs about love in some way; finding out how to love yourself, hoping that another loved one will love you just as you are, believing in someone when they find it hard to believe in themselves, love gone wrong, or finally finding the “perfect fit.” I feel like every problem we have on earth in some way comes back to the lack of love. That’s really what this record is about.” Guest include his brother Kofi Burbridge and vocalists Alfreda Gerald and Mark Rivers. Check out a trailer for the tour in support of the album:

Label: Self-Released

Producer: David Ryan Harris

Number Of Tracks: 9

Guest Musicians: David Ryan Harris, Kofi Burbridge, Dave Yoke, Lil’ John Roberts, Sean O’Rourke, Miguel Atwood Ferguson, Alfreda Gerald, Mark Rivers

Tracklist:

1. Water In The Desert
2. Chasing
3. Ocean
4. Enough For Two
5. Nothing
6. Let Somebody Love You
7. By My Side
8. She Is Love
9. Until You Come Home

CD/LP

Margo Price – All American Made

The Scoop: Last year Margo Price burst onto the scene with her debut album Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, a collection of confessional country-rock songs about Price’s personal struggles to make it in the music business. Now roughly 17-months later the singer-songwriter returns with her sophomore effort All American Made. This time around Price is expanding her sonic palate, combining traditional country sounds with elements of soul, R&B, funk and tinges of psychedelia, while also getting to duet with one of her musical heroes – Willie Nelson on the jazzed-inflect track “Learning To Lose.” The 12-song effort also see Price writing songs that have more of a sociopolitical charge to them. Check out the music video for “Weakness”:

Label: Third Man Records

Producer: Margo Price, Jeremy Ivey, Matt Ross-Spang, Alex Munoz

Number Of Tracks: 12

Running Time: 45:57

Guest Musicians: Willie Nelson, The McCrary Sisters, Dillion Napier, Jamie Davis, Luke Schneider, Kevin Black, Micah Hulscher, Joshua Hedley, Cory Younts, Lester Snell, Ashley Wilcoxson, Erin Rae

Tracklist:

1. Don’t Say It
2. Weakness
3. A Little Pain
4. Learning To Lose
5. Pay Gap
6. Nowhere Fast
7. Cocaine Cowboys
8. Wild Women
9. Heart Of America
10. Do Right By Me
11. Loner
12. Al American Made

Stream / Download / CD/LP

Destroyer – ken

The Scoop: Canadian rockers Destroyer return with their 12th studio album ken, whose inspiration is best described by the band’s mastermind Dan Bejar:

Sometime last year, I discovered that the original name for “The Wild Ones” (one of the great English-language ballads of the last 100 years or so) was “Ken.” I had an epiphany, I was physically struck by this information. In an attempt to hold on to this feeling, I decided to lift the original title of that song and use it for my own purposes. It’s unclear to me what that purpose is, or what the connection is. I was not thinking about Suede when making this record. I was thinking about the last few years of the Thatcher era. Those were the years when music first really came at me like a sickness, I had it bad. Maybe “The Wild Ones” speaks to that feeling, probably why Suede made no sense in America. I think “ken” also means “to know.”

Produced by the band’s longtime drummer Josh Wells and recorded “in the jam space/studio space that the group calls The Balloon Factory,” additional Destroyer personnel including Ted Bois, John Collins, Nicolas Bragg, David Carswell, Joseph Shabason and J.P. Carter appear on the record, though it was not tracked as “band” like their previous LP, 2015’s Poison Season. Here’s the video for the album track “Tinseltown Swimming In Blood”:

Label: Merge Records

Producer: Josh Wells

Number Of Tracks: 11

Running Time: 39:42

Guest Musicians: N/A

Tracklist:

1. Sky’s Grey
2. In the Morning
3. Tinseltown Swimming in Blood
4. Cover From the Sun
5. Saw You at the Hospital
6. A Light Travels Down the Catwalk
7. Rome
8. Sometimes in the World
9. Ivory Coast
10. Stay Lost
11. La Regle du Jeu

Stream / Download / CD/LP

Pigeons Playing Ping Pong – Pizazz

The Scoop: The fun that Baltimore’s Pigeons Playing Ping Pong provide at their raucous live shows comes through on their latest studio album, Pizazz. Pigeons recorded the 11-track effort with Steve Wright in their hometown at Wright Way Studios. The new album is PPPP’s first with new drummer Alex Petropulous. Alex breathes new life into some of the live staples found on Pizazz. Pigeons also recruited a horn section to contribute to tracks “The Liquid” and “Doc.” Listen to “Fun In Funk,” the first single of PPPP’s Pizazz:

Label: SRG-ILS Group

Producer: Steve Wright

Number Of Tracks: 11

Guest Musicians: Mario D’Ambrosio

Tracklist:

1. Fun In Funk
2. Something For Ya
3. Ocean Flows
4. The Liquid
5. Porcupine
6. Henrietta
7. Too Long
8. Doc
9. Fox & Toad
10. Offshoot
11. Poseidon

Stream / Download / CD/LP

Bill MacKay & Ryley Walker – SpiderBeetleBee

The Scoop: Back in 2015, Chicago-based guitarists Bill MacKay and Ryley Walker teamed up on Land Of Plenty, an album of gorgeous winding psychedelic-tinged instrumentals inspired by a month-long residency they did together in their hometown at the Whistler. The duo has reunited for a second go-round with SpiderBeetleBee. The eight-track collection finds the pair “brewing further explorations in mixed-and-matched idioms, turning composed melodies inside-out via improvisation, and finding in the blend a shared Walker/MacKay pasture, serendipitously located somewhere between Appalachia and the Highlands.” Check out the music video for “Lonesome Traveler”:

Label:Drag City Records

Producer: Ryley Walker

Number Of Tracks: 8

Running Time: 31:02

Guest Musicians: Katinka Kleijn, Ryan Jewell

Tracklist:

1. The Grand Old Trout
2. Pretty Weeds Revisited
3. Lower Chestnut
4. Naturita
5. I Heard Them Singing
6. Stretching My Dollar in Plano
7. Lonesome Traveler
8. Dragonfly

Download / CD/LP

Compiled by Jeffrey Greenblatt, Andy Kahn and Scott Bernstein.