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Features
10 Asleep At The Wheel
Frontman of the Austin-based swingers, Ray Benson, talks to Duncan Warwick about the
New Routes they’re taking.
18 CMA Songwriters Series
Spencer Leigh gets the lowdown from this year’s visiting tunesmiths.
November 2018
For nearly 50 years Ray Benson’s band has ensured
that ‘Western Swing Ain’t Dead ... It’s Just Asleep At
The Wheel.’ The multiple Grammy-winning band take
the listener down some New Routes on their latest.
The band’s frontman and giant of Texas music talks to
Duncan Warwick.
Asleep Wheel
AT
THE
A
sleep At The Wheel don’t need to reinvent the wheel, they’ve
already done that. It was a 2006 album titled exactly that. But
for their latest, New Routes, they might have gotten hold of some
highly polished alloys. The album marks something of a change
in the sound of the Western swing juggernaut that has been rolling for
very nearly 50 years and the title couldn’t be more suitable. Whilst there
is nothing that will frighten away long-time fans of Ray Benson’s mighty
machine, it finds The Wheel tackling Guy Clark’s Dublin Blues and embraces
shades of rockabilly on a terrific version of Paolo Nutini’s Pencil Full Of
Lead.
“Well, it’s different people.” reflects the lofty frontman. “When I started
assembling this new band… when I first met Katie (Shore), I actually used
to have a bar in town and she was playing there and I saw her on a YouTube
feed and I said, ‘that’s the style voice that I love… and oh, oh my gosh she
plays fiddle,’ so we got her in the band, and over the period of a few years,
she’s been with the band four or five years now, she joined the band when
she was 26-years-old and then she brought Connor (Forsyth), her old piano
player from a band they had together, and then we needed a slappin’ bass
player and got Josh (Hoag), and then Jay (Reynolds) on the clarinet and sax,
so all of a sudden I had a new band of really talented folks. So I thought,
‘Well it’s time to do what Asleep At The Wheel has done for 50 years, make
eclectic records based on the talents that are in the band.”
The title was suggested by Benson’ long-time drummer Dave Sanger.
“Dave’s been with me for 33 years and I said, ‘Dave, we gotta figure a name
for this album, whaddaya think?’ and he said ‘New Routes - R-O-U-T-E-S’.”
One track from the new release picking up attention is the witty yet
poignant Willie Got There First, which was written by Seth Avett of
Americana favourites The Avett Brothers and it features the siblings on the
track.
“We’ve been good friends with The Avett Brothers,” recalls Ray, “and Seth
sent me that and said, ‘Hey, I wrote this song, what do you think about it?’
I said, ‘Wow, that’s incredible.’ Normally I do not cotton to those kind of
tribute songs where you mention the titles and talk about the guy because
they tend to be trite… but this was poetry. I was so impressed, I said to Seth,
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22 Stella Parton
11
Page 10
Fresh from her Masterchef appearance, the other Parton speaks to Kelly Gregory about
her new album and more.
26 Dustin Sonnier
KASSI
ASHTON
TENILLE
TOWNES
Louisiana’s best kept secret is the traditional country singer you need to know about.
“
56 Ian Tyson
The Canadian legend by Larry Delaney.
I love hearing my friends and fellow performers talking about their
songs and playing them,” the singer and songwriter Tenille Townes
told me, “It is my favourite way of listening to music.”
I agree. I had heard about these songwriters-in-the-round
evenings in Nashville but I hadn’t experienced one until the
Bluebird Café came to Liverpool in 2015. Since then the Country
Music Association has staged two concerts at St. George’s Hall in Liverpool,
this year’s with Ashley Campbell, Chris DeStefano, Kassi Ashton and
Tenille Townes. I have now written about all three of them for CMP and I am
hooked. It is a marvellous way of hearing creative performers and you can
enjoy watching the way they react with each other and with the audience.
When I told Ashley Campbell that she was standing where Charles Dickens
and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle read their stories, she said, “Wow! That is
beyond cool!”
I went backstage to interview the performers before the show and found
them harmonising on Easy by the Commodores. “Very country,” I remarked,
“but shouldn’t you be rehearsing a Beatles song for tonight?” “No, no” said
Chris DeStefano, “We’re not rehearsing anything. We’re just having fun. If
there is anything on stage tonight, it’ll be spontaneous.”
Oddly enough, I think that the biggest overall influence on country
music since the 1960s and through to now have been the Beatles. “You’re
probably right,” says Chris, “Everybody knows their work. They set the
bar for songwriting and performing and I don’t think anyone has reached it
since. I’ve got my hands on a multi-track of Sgt. Pepper and I am able to
play the horn arrangements or the bass parts and they are just magic on
their own. Put them together and it is absolute brilliance. No one else but
the Beatles and George Martin would have thought of putting reverb and
delay on a bass guitar but that’s what they do on With A Little Help From My
Friends and the vibe is just incredible.”
Chris DeStefano was raised in New Jersey and studied film music at
Berkeley, spending 10 years in the film industry and learning from great
composers. “I knew Jerry Goldsmith and I will always be a fan of his work.
You don’t have to see the film Poltergeist to be terrified: just listen to his
score – that music is terrifying in its own right. Then I went to Nashville for
a songwriting camp. I got a hit with Why Ya Wanna for Jana Kramer the
following year and I found I was making so many friends there. I love co-
writing. They help you and you help them. It’s great.”
Tenille agreed: “Songwriting is like the craziest thing. You find yourself
SPENCER LEIGH
AT THE CMA
SONGWRITERS
SERIES
60 Eliza Gilkyson
The Austin folk legend and activist speaks to Spencer Leigh.
aSHLEY
CAMPBELL
opening up and talking about very vulnerable things with people you
have just met for the first time. It is like a sacred, safe place and you
become instant friends because you are going to these places.”
Unlike the old Brill Building days where someone wrote the words and
someone else the music, the songwriters of today do both. “To me it is
hard to write one without the other,” says Tenille, “They feed off each
other and whatever the music is saying needs to match what the lyric is
saying. Everybody is different but in Nashville, those two things go hand
in hand.
Chris is best known for writing with Carrie Underwater including the
gospel-based Something In The Water. “I brought the track in with
pretty much the instruments you hear on the record but with no melody
and no lyric. Carrie had the idea for Something In The Water and that’s
her brilliance really. It was a familiar sounding title but it was saying
something in a way that had never been said before. It was baptismal
water. It was a very special song and I did feel that God was in the room
when we wrote it.”
Another big one for Chris was Rewind by Rascal Flatts and I loved
the way that he brought George Strait into the lyric. “Yeah, well, Waylon
and Willie were doing that sort of thing all the time and I love it. Actually,
I had ‘Gonna talk Tom Petty into giving us an encore’ and it was the
Flatts who changed it to George Strait. If you hear me sing it now, you
never know who I’m gonna put in there.” Chris didn’t do Rewind on the
show but Ashley sang Nothing Day with the lyric “I’ve smoked a joint
with Willie Nelson’s son”.
Although there was some structure to the CMA show, it did have
a spontaneous feel in that one performer could sense what another
performer was doing and then knew what to do next. In a way, I would
prefer it without the regimented order of performance – first Tenille, then
Chris, then Kassi and then Ashley – and, as they went round five times,
we heard 20 songs. Nothing wrong with that but it would have been
good if someone had said, “I must follow that song of so-and-so with this
one of mine”, but that route can lead to anarchy if you have one pushy
singer, so it is probably best their way. That apart, I loved its informality
and even though it was in a theatre, it was like a concert in your living
room as it was relaxed and good-natured.
Any hot-blooded male will envy me for being backstage with three
stunning ladies, but I don’t understand modern living. Ashley told me
CHRIS
DeSTEFANO
that her witty song Better Boyfriend was the result of bad internet
dating. What is that all about? Why should a gorgeous woman, and
the daughter of a country legend to boot, be seeking dates on the
internet? Still an excellent song has come from it. “Thanks, I was trying
to write that song the way Roger Miller would. He would say, ‘Why can’t
I say ‘Ninja fighter’ in a country song?’ and he would put it in. He is my
ultimate songwriting hero.”
What, I say, even more than Jimmy Webb? “Oh, there’s no
comparison as they are very different. Jimmy told me that he wanted to
write songs for Glen Campbell and then it happened. He writes the most
beautiful poetry set to the most beautiful music. He doesn’t often do
co-writes but he has said that we must work on something together and
I will have to take him up on that.”
On her album, The Lonely One, Ash performs Carl And Ashley’s
Breakdown with Carl Jackson, who was also associated with her
father. The banjo, I said, is an unfashionable instrument. “Excuse me!”
said Ash, “it is not! The banjo is certainly very cool these days. It is
becoming a lot more popular in every genre of music. You can hear it
in mainstream pop and rock and not just in bluegrass and folk. A lot of
people play it loud and hard but I’ve found you can get a lot of things out
of it if you play it soft and mellow.”
I commented that even Glen Campbell couldn’t make the bagpipes
fashionable, but did he ever play anything other than Mull Of Kintyre?
Ashley thought for a moment, “I can’t recall any other tunes he played
on the bagpipes but he could have done as he said you played it like a
recorder. I know he took one of the drones out to get a cleaner sound.”
Ash spent a lot of time on stage with her dad when he had
Alzheimer’s disease. “When he was diagnosed, he decided not to
cancel his touring schedule of 20 dates but it went so well that we did
150! I know other musicians were interested to see how he was coping.
When we played in Liverpool, some musicians from the Philharmonic
Orchestra came to see him and we all went to a pub afterwards. I
remember it well as there was a springer spaniel there.”
And how difficult was it? “Well, my dad had good nights and bad
nights but most of them were okay. If he was starting to go in the wrong
direction, he might look to me for help and sometimes I would adjust the
capo for him, but the audiences loved him. If he forgot the words, they
would sing along and so it was a beautiful thing.”
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Reviews
STELLA
PARTON
Kelly Gregory gets the lowdown on Celebrity Masterchef, family,
relationships, acting, and the new album, Survivor, from Dolly’s
little sister.
30 Album Reviews
I
t isn’t easy when your elder sister is one of the biggest stars in the world, but Stella
Parton has been releasing her own albums since the late 60s and having hits in her
own right since 1975’s I Want To Hold You In My Dreams Tonight. Fresh from her
recent appearance on BBC’s Celebrity Masterchef and with a brand new album,
Survivor, recently released, the ‘other’ Parton continues to do her own thing. The trouble
is, when your big sis is none other than Dolly Parton it can be hard not to mention it, and
the media always does.
“Well, it goes with the territory. There’s not much I can do about it, I accept it, and I
love her,” says Stella resolutely. “I just run my own race, I stay in my lane, do things the
way I want to according to my personality and my beliefs and my standards and I leave
her business to her. We’re sisters first and foremost and we will always be sisters last.
But I mind my own business and I have a lot of people criticising me because I don’t align
with the way she handles her career but that’s, I think, unfortunate and uninformed
people would say stuff like that. I do as I please. I have a right to be me as an individual, I
have a right to be me as an artist as an individual. I’ve always carved out my own niche in
the world and in my industry. I understand that that’s part of the territory. I just have to
accept it and I do. I accepted that a long time ago, decades ago, and it doesn’t bother me
at all; it bothers other people a hell of a lot more than it bothers me.”
On Masterchef Stella won the hearts of both her fellow competitors and viewers alike,
and not just because she had a penchant for making dishes that included bourbon at
every opportunity. Her down-homey Southern charm was irresistible but recalling the
show she says, “It was quite traumatic, let me say. It was nothing like I had hoped it
would be but I survived so…
“I liked all of them,” she says of her competitors. “They were all very sweet and Lisa
[Maxwell] and I really got along well and Clara [Amfo] and I bonded very well. So the two
girls that I was in the competition with, in my heat, I really bonded with them and I hope
Regulars
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4 News
8 Tour Guide
15 The David Allan Page
16 Nice to meet y’all... - Carson McHone
21 Corner Of Music Row
50 Nice to meet y’all.. - Kimberly Kelly
53 Lonnie Ratliff
54 Americana Roundup
63 Nice to meet y’all.. - Mason Ramsey
Dustin Sonnier has been Louisiana’s best kept secret for far too
long. That could be all about to change discovers duncan Warwick.
DUSTIN
TIME
S
ome people can be hard to track down and Dustin
Sonnier was one of them. First coming to my attention
with a self-titled EP release in 2008, the Louisiana-
based traditionalist proved elusive for years. With no on-line
presence and the odd track on YouTube I had visions of some
backwoods Cajun singer living miles from anywhere in an
alligator infested bayou who ventured to the local bar to sing
some country songs now and again. And I might not have been
too far off. “I grew up way out in the sticks but in the last eight
years I’ve moved to the city. I need to be close to an airport
and I need to be able to move around and get things done
pretty quickly,” admits the singer from Vatican, Louisiana.
Back then, in 2008, with songs such as his stone country
Leave Hurt Enough Alone, the honky tonkin’ Two Steps At
A Time or his cover of Eddie Rabbitt’s Two Dollars In The
Jukebox it was obvious that this 21-year-old had absorbed
an awful lot of hardcore traditional country. Sonnier’s profile
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remained low however, and despite establishing himself on
the Louisiana club circuit it wasn’t until 2016 that more music
became available. Another EP, this one was simply titled
‘Country’, and whilst that’s been done before, rarely can so
simple a title have been more appropriate.
Now though, Sonnier has upped his game, upped his profile
(he now has a website) and has been generally putting himself
about rather more. He even played some dates in France
last year. One thing that needs to be dealt with right away is
whether he is any relation to the Come On Joe accordionist
Jo-el Sonnier. The answer is a flat no, but Dustin laughs at the
question. “No man, I get it a lot.
“Jo-el actually lives about an hour and a half from. We’ve
done shows together over the years and we’re good friends.
I actually just did a show with Jim Lauderdale a little north of
Dallas and that was the first question he asked, ‘Any kin to Jo-
el’. There’s no other Sonniers that have ever done anything.
27
IAN TYSON
A CANADIAN LEGEND
FOUR STRONG WINDS
AS HALF OF THE DUO IAN & SYLVIA AND
RESPONSIBLE FOR SONGS SUCH AS SOMEDAY
SOON AND HIS SIGNATURE FOUR STRONG WINDS,
IAN TYSON HAS EARNED HIS LEGENDARY STATUS
IN A CAREER SPANNING SIX DECADES
by Larry Delaney
Charts
T
he first names that surface
when you think of Canadian-
born singers will likely include
Anne Murray, Paul Anka,
Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell,
Neil Young, Bryan Adams...
but seldom does that list make
mention of Ian Tyson, perhaps the most creative
of all Canucks... yet someone who has flown under
the radar, at least when it comes to international
recognition.
Ian Tyson has been part of the music scene,
especially in Canada, for more than six decades,
and until just recently sidelined by heart surgery,
had remained active on the recording and the tour
scene. Now 84, he tells his fans that this latest
setback with his health is only temporary and that
he will “be back” !! No one doubts the claim.
During his lengthy career Ian Tyson has pretty
much done it all. He initially surfaced during the
‘folk scene’ of the 1960’s, as part of the duo Ian &
Sylvia, with his then wife, Sylvia (Fricker) Tyson.
Their folk days eventually merged into heading-
up the seminal country/rock band The Great
Speckled Bird. After the break-up of the duo (and
the marriage) Ian Tyson pursued a solo career
as a ‘country’ singer, releasing several critically
acclaimed albums; and then, by the late 1980s, he
re-discovered his horse-ranching roots with a series
of ‘cowboy’ song albums, familiarly identified as his
‘Cowboyography’ music; a musical form he remains
devoted to.
Throughout this ongoing musical evolution the
one constant was Ian Tyson’s song writing talent.
The very first song he wrote, Four Strong Winds,
from the early ’60s era, has become his signature
64 Americana & UK Country Charts
65 Billboard Country Charts
Courtesy of Billboard Inc.
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song, although initially identified as an Ian & Sylvia
‘classic’. Bobby Bare countryfied the song in 1965,
earning a #3 spot on the Billboard Country Charts;
with subsequent albums cuts by Waylon Jennings,
Johnny Cash, David Houston, George Hamilton IV,
Flatt & Scruggs, Hank Snow, among many others...
the song also earning crossover attention with
recordings by such diverse artists as Bob Dylan,
John Denver, The Seekers, Harry Belafonte and Trini
Lopez.
While Four Strong Winds (inducted into the
Canadian Songwriters Hall Of Fame in 2003), would
eventually be named “the greatest Canadian song of
all-time” in a 2005 poll of CBC Radio listeners; the
Ian Tyson song Someday Soon would attract even
greater attention by Nashville recording artists...
Kathy Barnes (1976), Moe Bandy (1982) and Suzy
Bogguss (1991) all scored Billboard Country Chart
Hits with Someday Soon, which was also recorded
by Glen Campbell, Tanya Tucker, Lynn Anderson,
Crystal Gayle, Skeeter Davis, Chris LeDoux, and
others.
Likewise his song Summer Wages (with the
memorable opening line “Never hit seventeen when
you play against the dealer”) has been recorded by
Nashville artists Bobby Bare, George Hamilton IV,
Nanci Griffith, J.D. Crowe & New South, Tony Rice,
Chesapeake, David Bromberg, etc); as well as being
a major chart hit in Canada for Gary Buck.
Other notables who have recorded an Ian Tyson
composition include Judy Collins, Michael Martin
Murphy, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Jerry Jeff Walker,
Chris Hillman, Roy Drusky, The Jordanaires, and
occasional co-writer Tom Russell; in addition to
dozens of Tyson’s fellow-Canucks who have for
years mined the Tyson song catalogue.
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