Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three 2/24 at the HCFTA

Eilen Jewell and Pokey LaFarge February 24 at the HCFTA

Ten years ago in a small bar with corrugated aluminum sheets for siding called The Alley, the Sangamon Valley Roots Revival was born. Call it what you will...honky-tonk, rockabilly, hillbilly, alt.country, roots rock or just good American music, the SVRR has made Springfield a regular stop for traveling troubadors. Inspired by the likes of BR549, Wayne Hancock and the legendary Big Sandy, we wanted to do our part to pass along and preserve the roots of American music. The SVRR, built on the punk rock spirit of DIY (Do It Yourself), owes its success and longevity to the thousands of roots music fans of the Sangamon Valley.

So if the good lord's willing and the creeks don't rise, join us at the Hoogland Center for the Arts on September 24. You'll be dazzled by Big Sandy and his Fly-Rite Boys, Two Tons of Steel, Caffeine Patrol, plenty of friends and fellow music lovers dancing to the bop. Come one, come all, sinners and the saved alike. It's music man, it's the beat, the beat, the beat. It get's in your soul and you have no choice but to get real gone!

Artists that have graced a SVRR stage:

Johnny Dilks

Ray Condo and his Riccochets

Ryan Adams

Deke Dickerson and his Ecco-fonics

The Lucky Stars

Dave Stuckey and his Rhythm Gang

The Ranch Girls

Junior Brown

Southern Culture on the Skids

Big Al Downing

Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys

The Bellfuries

Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys

Wanda Jackson

Link Wray

Charlie Louvin

Marti Brom

The Four Charms

BR549

Mandy Barnett

Del McCoury Band

Robbie Fulks

Kim Richey

The Woggles

The Cynics

The Black Diamond Heavies

Nick Curran and the Nitelifes

Cigar Store Indians

Infamous Stringdusters

The Romantics

Sarah Borges

The Shazam

The Boss Martians

Los Straitjackets

The Forty-fives

Dale Watson

Charlie Robison

Bare Jr.

Rosie Flores

Hot Club of Cowtown

Crazy Joe and his Mad River Outlaws

Carl "Sonny" Leyland

The Honeybees

The Sprague Brothers

Chris Scruggs

Dallas Wayne

Wayne Hancock

Justin Townes Earle

The Bottle Rockets

The Deadstring Brothers

Jason Ringenberg

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Little Rachel

Sonny Landreth

Wanda Jackson's hair 1966

That my friends is some great hair!!

Taste Of Downtown American Music Show

Taste of Downtown (Springfield)
American Music Show lineup:

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit


Former member of the Drive By Truckers, Jason Isbell explores the roots of his Florence, Alabama home recording his second solo release at the famed FAME recording studio in Muscle Shoals , AL. Soulful with country styling, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit inhabit the world of southern rock that blends every element of the American music catalogue into something rooted yet new.

Spin Magazine 4 Stars - Southern rock is a minefield of rebel flags, drinking songs, and dudes yelling "Free Bird!" With Drive-By Truckers, singer-guitarist Jason Isbell learned to embrace some of those clichés; on his gritty, vibrant second solo album, he begins to transcend them. "However Long" personalizes working-class disaffection into a defiant anthem; stormy rocker "Soldiers Get Strange" is almost certainly the best tune ever written about post-traumatic stress disorder; and multiple tales of warm, lonely barrooms and the warm, lonely relationships they breed uncover new truths while traversing well-trod emotional terrain.



The Lucky Stars



The Lucky Stars play raucous good time dance music that sets the mood for a rollicking Saturday night on the town, as well as their very own brand of heart-broken blues that can provide the perfect soundtrack for the inevitable Sunday morning hangover.
The characters behind this music, Sage Guyton and JW (Jeremy Wakefield) stumbled upon each other one whiskey-soaked night at The Cattle Call Saloon, a long forgotten Hollywood Honky Tonk. The Hillbilly band that Sage was playing with that night caught J.W.'s ear, especially since he'd recently started learning to play the steel guitar and was looking for a band to join up with. Several bottles later, the two were waxing philosophical about their mutual interest in 1940s and 1950s Western and Hillbilly artists such as Merle Travis, Tex Williams, and Bob Wills, and by the time last-call rolled around they had decided to band together in the hopes of creating original music that would help keep the spirit of the music they loved alive.
Many of their heroes, were among the mid and south westerners who moved to California during the 1930s and 1940s in order to pursue employment during the depression and war years, bringing their musical culture with them. As a result, the music that flourished in Los Angeles at that time was an inventive hybrid of Celtic fiddle music, Blues, Cowboy folk tunes and early Dixieland jazz--music that later became known as Western Swing. Fittingly, The Lucky Stars are based in Hollywood, the town in which this music reached the height of its popularity via the burgeoning film industry.
Described as "kick-ass" and "heart-warming " by young and old respectively, The Lucky Stars appeal to diverse audiences, and are equally comfortable performing for a room of WWII veterans at The Elk's Lodge or opening for an all-ages Melvins' show at the Whiskey A Go-Go (which is, incidentally, how they got their record deal). So, whether you feel like cutting a rug or crying into your beer, The Lucky Stars have just the right musical accompaniment to suit your mood!

JEFF the Brotherhood

Lo-fi rock in all of its glory. Praise be to rock!

“Right now it doesn’t get any better than rock team JEFF The Brotherhood. They’re very awesome and weird, and I think everybody here in a band should see them. Their sheer lack of professionalism combined with their seemingly unintentional disregard for by-the-book “rock rules,” combined with their right-on teenage humor makes them by far the most interesting live group in Nashville.” - Nashville Scene
”Depending on the song, Nashville’s Jeff the Brotherhood can recall either a metallic stoner-rock outfit or a melodic power-pop band. The group sounds confident and convincing in either guise.” -Time Out New York
"JEFF The Brotherhood are a duo comprised of singer/guitarist Jake Orrall and drummer Jamin Orrall (fake?), blew my mind with speedy riffs, frenetic drumming, and loose solos. JEFF take big ’70s rock and squeeze it into the basement, creating a kind of D.I.Y. stadium sound, one that fuses the divergent genres of punk- and blues-based rock ‘n’ roll." –Limewire

Otis Gibbs

A modern day folk troubadour with Midwestern roots. Billy Bragg’s a fan and Woody Guthrie and Joe Hill look on admiringly. What more do you need?

Otis Gibbs is an old-school troubadour out of Wanamaker, Ind., who sounds only too happy to pick up the mantle of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger in championing the working stiff and blue-collar America in song. On "Grandpa Walked a Picketline," due Jan. 20, he sings of everyday folks, not always the desperate or destitute, but the overlooked and underappreciated.
"Calling out tonight to anyone who's tired of being down," he writes in "To Anyone," echoing Guthrie's famous line about hating a song that makes you feel no good, or born to lose.
"Caroline" follows a woman much like the matriarch in Dolly Parton's "To Daddy," who leaves her family behind when she lights out in search of fulfillment after a lifetime of neglect. Gibbs gets impressively Dylanesque in "Preacher Steve," about a charlatan who uses religion rather than snake oil to fleece his flock: "Preacher Steve could walk on water while the whole world's dying of thirst."
Gibbs brings his characters to life with a vocal growl that sounds just one pack of Camels shy of Tom Waits, and he's assisted ably by a team of roots-music veterans, including bassist Don Dixon, steel guitarist-Dobro ace Al Perkins, mandolinist Tim Easton and producer Chris Stamey.
There couldn't be a better time for a voice this insightfully compassionate. – Randy Lewis LA Times


Lucky Patterson and the Wolf Crick Boys

Hee-Haw lovin, white lightin’ drinkin’, juke joint jumpin’, Sunday mornin’ repentin’ outlaws from the sticks of Sangamon County

Carl Smith RIP

Updated: Country Music Hall of Famer Carl Smith dies at 82
Published by Peter Cooperon January 17, 2010in News. 56 Comments
Tags: carl smith, CMA, country, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, feature2, feature4, goldie hill, grand ole opry, johnny sibert, merle kilgore, obituaries, waylon jennings.


Click to see a gallery of Carl Smith photos.
Master honky-tonk stylist Carl Smith, the dashing “Country Gentleman” who was among the most successful Nashville-based artists of the 1950s, died Saturday, Jan. 16 at his home in Franklin. The Country Music Hall of Famer was 82.

“From the minute he came out, I wanted to look like him, tried to comb my hair like him and learned every song he ever recorded,” Waylon Jennings once said of Mr. Smith, who retired from music in 1978 and bred champion cutting horses for decades. Many other artists of Mr. Smith’s generation spent the 1980s and '90s working on stages. Mr. Smith preferred spending time on his 500-acre Franklin ranch, with his horses, his dogs and, until her death in 2005, his wife, singer Goldie Hill.

“I just wanted to play cowboy,” Mr. Smith told The Tennessean’s Tim Ghianni in 2003. “My philosophy is doing what I want to do.”

In his youth, what Mr. Smith wanted to do was sing country music. He was born in 1927 in the small East Tennessee town of Maynardville, also the birthplace of Roy Acuff. As a boy, he listened to Knoxville radio stations WROL and WNOX, and to the Grand Ole Opry, and he mowed neighbors’ lawns to pay for guitar lessons. In 1944, while in high school, he began singing on Cas Walker’s WROL radio show.

Three years later, after a Navy stint and several other radio residencies, he appeared on the Grand Ole Opry as a guest of Hank Williams. In May of 1950, he signed a recording contract with Columbia Records and a radio contract with WSM.

“My first job at WSM was six or seven days a week at 5:15 in the morning,” he told The Tennessean. “The announcer would put me on and then just leave. I started being on the Opry pretty regularly. They didn’t say you were a ‘member’ of the Opry back then. You just were on it or you weren’t.”

Radio exposure on WSM and on the Opry helped Mr. Smith to gain notoriety, as did his tours with Hank Williams and others. Beginning in 1951, he launched a streak of 21 straight Top 10 country hits, including “Loose Talk,” “Hey Joe!” and “Let’s Live A Little” and eight-week No. 1 “Let Old Mother Nature Have Her Way.” His singles sold between 100,000 and 500,000 copies each, making him one of country’s most popular artists. And that popularity was enhanced by a stage presence that blended an East Tennessee drawl with a measure of refinement.

“He was on shows when I was real, real young,” said Hank Williams Jr. “The guy was real striking to the ladies. I remember their reaction when he went on stage.”

One of the ladies impressed by Mr. Smith was June Carter, who married Mr. Smith in 1952. They divorced after four years together and after the birth of daughter Carlene Carter, who became a renowned singer-songwriter. In 1957, he married singer Goldie Hill, who gave up her promising music career to become a housewife.

“When I married her, I thought she was going to support me,” Mr. Smith said in 2003. “Instead, I had to support her.”

Mr. Smith’s easy manner and sharp stage wear (he preferred elegant suits to gaudy rhinestones) led to his “Country Gentleman” moniker, but his appeal was not strictly visual. By late 1951, he was leading one of country music’s finest bands, called The Tunesmiths, a group that featured steel guitarist Johnny Sibert, now a member of the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame.

With Sibert, Mr. Smith forged a sound that, as journalist Chet Flippo wrote in liner notes to Columbia’s The Essential Carl Smith: 1950–1956, “fell almost precisely on the line dividing traditional from modern country.” Emotional ballads nodded to the work of forerunners like Acuff, but Mr. Smith’s uptempo recordings possessed a snarl that preceded rock 'n' roll by several years and that came to be of great influence to new-era honky-tonk revivalists such as BR549 and Chris Scruggs (whose mother, Gail Davies, had a Top 5 hit in 1981 with her cover of Mr. Smith’s 1952 hit, “It’s a Lovely, Lovely World”).

In 1954, Mr. Smith was one of four founders of the Cedarwood/Driftwood publishing company, which grew into a place as a major Nashville publisher. He left the Opry in 1956, and began working often on television (he was a part of the first live television broadcast from Nashville, on WSM Channel 4). His Carl Smith’s Country Music Hall show ran for five years in Canada, bringing “hillbilly” music to our northern neighbors.

Mr. Smith’s run of hits cooled in the 1960s, though he reached No. 10 on Billboard’s singles chart in 1967 with “Deep Water” and had several other top 20 records. In 1973, after 23 years and around 15 million records sold, Mr. Smith ended his association with Columbia Records. He recorded briefly for Hickory Records before deciding to take what he called “early retirement.”

In the 1990s, many of Mr. Smith’s fans and friends began making noise about the fact that the Country Gentleman had not yet been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Waylon Jennings did not attend his own 2001 induction, saying that he would not go into any hall of fame that didn’t include Mr. Smith.

“People forgot about Carl Smith, because he got out of the limelight,” said “Ring of Fire” cowriter Merle Kilgore in 2003. “He made money and made good investments in property, and he stopped singing.”

When Country Music Association members voted Mr. Smith into the Hall in 2003, Hank Williams Jr. said, “That took a while, didn’t it? Something went right today.”

Informed of his induction on August 5, 2003, Mr. Smith said, "I appreciate it very much. I was afraid I was going to have to die before this happened."

That fear was unrealized. Mr. Smith’s Hall induction was an acknowledgment that his time as a hit-maker and innovator had not in fact been forgotten, and that his quiet retirement years did not lesson the import and impact of his bustling 1950s.

The well-loved singer's visitation will be Monday, Jan. 18 from 5–8 p.m., at Williamson Memorial Funeral Home, 3009 Columbia Ave., in Franklin. His funeral service will be Tuesday, Jan. 19, at 11 a.m., and both the visitation and the service are open to the public.

Reach Peter Cooper at 615–259-8220 or pcooper@tennessean.com.

Bedrock 66 Live Shows in 2009

Here's who will be heating up the Hoogland:

February 27


Nashville "A-list" singer/songwriters Kim Richey and Sally Barris

Kim Richey released two of the best country flavored roots rock albums of the nineties. Although the records were critically acclaimed, they remained in the John Hiatt ranks of roots music, that is terribly good but not omnipotently profitable. Leave that part to others, Richey's songs did make a considerable amount of fame and fortune for the likes of Trisha Yearwood (Believe Me Baby I Lied), Radney Foster (Nobody Wins), not to mention Brooks and Dunn, Mindy McCready and many others.

Sally Barris is a Minnesota native, a folk singer with a beautiful voice and the co-writer of a Grammy nominated song performed by Trisha Yearwood and Keith Urban! As a Nashville songwriter, Barris is part of the country music industry that is both legendary and relatively unknown. As a writer she has had her songs performed by the far better know, Yearwood and Urban, Martina McBride, Leann Womack, Kellie Pickler, and Kathy Mattea. As a performer, Barris doesn't quite fit in the mainstream country scene. Her voice and style are more reminiscent of Nanci Griffith or Allison Moorer. Barris is plugging her third cd Resless Soul and is predicted by many reviewers to be on the brink of a break through herself. www.sallybarris.com

For her most recent release, Chinese Boxes, Richey worked with the legendary son of Beatles Producer George Martin, Giles Martin. The result is a lush pop album that is both rooted in America but flavored through an English lens. www.kimrichey.com

Tickets in advance - $15 | at the door - $17


March 14


Justin Townes Earle with Jason Ringenberg
One of the most talked about debut albums has been Justin Townes Earle's "The Good Life". Named for the legendary songwriter Townes Van Zandt by his equally legendary father, Steve Earle, Justin Townes Earle has lived up to the hype on his first record. At 25, Townes Earle is an old soul and his music reflects it. He has written songs about the civil war that illicit a feeling of centuries ago. He also writes about lost loves and life's travails that one wouldn't guess that a twenty-five year old could experience. He's also a traditionalist in terms of the music. Steel guitars and Hank Williams influences appear along side of organ drenched blues that could have come out of Muscle Shoals. It's clear that Justin Townes Earle's first record would have sold simply because of his famous names. The truth is his record would be great by any other name and more importantly he will sell many more to come. http://www.bloodshotrecords.com/artist/justin-townes-earle

Listen to Justin on Morning Edition, December 29th, 2008
Read "World's Forgotten Boy" article about Justin
Jason Ringenberg is a true Illinois treasure. Growing up on a hog farm in north central Illinois and later a bar hopping country punk playin' rocker at SIU-Carbondale, Ringenberg went on to found one of the Eighties most inspired infusions of American roots music and punk rock, Jason and the Scorchers. Termed "cow-punk" at the time the Jason and the Scorchers recorded for the major label EMI. It wasn't long before the band was playing nationally and then internationally. (sharing a stage early on with a relatively unknown R.E.M.) After the Scorchers broke up (only to reappear on special occassions) Jason released a number of critically acclaimed solo lps that continue to mine the fertile land between the Ramones and Hank Williams, Sr. After becoming a family man himself, Jason created a new release for his creative passion, Farmer Jason. Farmer Jason has penned and performs such classics as "Punk Rock Skunk" and Moose on the Loose". (Famer Jason will perform at 2 PM on the 14th at the Suggs Studio on campus at UIS, more info to come.) www.jasonringenberg.com

Tickets in advance - $15 | at the door - $20



April 17


The Del Moroccos
The Del Moroccos are a powerful new 8 piece Rock n' Roll band (guitar, bass, drums, piano, tenor/bari sax, and 3 sexy frontwomen) who put out an awesome full-length show of dirty R'N'R, R&B material with girl group vocals. Knock the Ray-ettes and Link Wray together, with a blast of garage, a hit of late '50s black rock n' roll, dress 'em up like Johnny Cash, and you get a raucous, mean mix of "'50s garage". The members are veteran Chicago musicians from the rockabilly, surf, ska, jazz and R & B scenes, from bands including: Mighty Blue Kings, Jimmy Sutton's Four Charms, Deals Gone Bad, Cave Catt Sammy, The Stranger, Kevin O'Donnell's Quality 6, Reluctant Aquanauts and The Stacks. The Del Moroccos lead guitar player Jimmy Sutton, hand picked the line up for this relentless new sound. The Del Moroccos set list features choice selections of obscure, rockin' early independent record label songs and wild originals, capturing a sound that teeters somewhere between the 50's and 60's, and is performed with the emotion of early punk and mod revival. New on the scene, the Del Moroccos have shared the stage with SUN rocording artist Hayden Thompson, and the Queen of rockabilly, the legendary Wanda Jackson.http://www.myspace.com/thedelmoroccos

Tickets in advance - $15 | at the door - $17