The first snow fell today, and I’ll have to celebrate it with something like Neil Young - Comes A Time, Grateful Dead - American Beauty and Bob Dylan - Nashville Skyline.
Try the Jayhawks. Their most mellow CD is “Rainy Day Music”. You’ll really like it.
Wilco’s latest, “Sky Blue Sky,” would definitely fit the bill.
Try Uncle Tupelo, or its bastard children, Son Volt and Wilco.
“The Trinity Sessions” by Cowboy Junkies sounds like new-fallen snow to me!
Aha! A chance to introduce someone to my favorite band of all time:
Pearl Jam’s cover of Victoria Williams’s Crazy Mary is a fine example of the genre.
Speaking of which, here’s Victoria Williams.
Ghosts of the Great Highway, by Sun Kil Moon (amazon link)
Very Neil Young in vocals and execution - great, open acoustic stuff, with some songs also featuring distorted guitars, but used as a washed-out layer of sound that the reason of the music sits within - very airy and open.
I can’t recommend it highly enough for this category of music. Really great.
Jesse Winchester’s album Humour Me is a beautiful, gentle experience.
Mark Knopfler. You might remember him as the guitarist from Dire Straits. He has awesome solo work that’s well… more like “Brothers in Arms” Dire Straits than “Money for Nothing” Dire Straits. Check out his album “Shangri-La”
Also, he has an album with EmmyLou Harris called “All the Roadrunning” which is AMAZING. Despite the fact that no one’s ever heard of it, it reached #17 on Billboard in 2006 – How does that happen? It’s a mystery.
Pure Prairie League reformed in 2005 with the original lead singer, Craig Fuller, back in the lineup. The 2005 album, All In Good Time , has some great country rock on it. Craig Fuller is one of my favorite singers.
Lucinda Williams.
“Car Wheels. . .” is her best album.
Her more recent efforts are more mellow, though, “Essence” and “world Without Tears”.
I haven’t listened to “West”.
This winter is going to be soft! I haven’t listened to everything yet, but so far, Wilco, Sun Kil Moon and Bottle Rockets are favourites. Thanks a lot!
I’ll just tag on another favourite of mine, in case anyone’s interrested and haven’t heard it: America’s self-titled.
Try Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers. They certainly played a few rockin’ songs (Big Mouth Blues is the first one that comes to mind), but even those ones are pretty country-flavored, and they did some great stuff with the country-rock sound that the Byrds made famous. Not surprising, really, considering the personnel overlap between the two.
Try a album by The Shins. They have a mellow, acoustic guitar-based sound with definite folk and country influences, but with a sheen of British psychedelia over top of it, even though they’re American. Chutes Too Narrow is a good album to start with.
Songs: Ohia is pretty good. *Tigress *is my favorite song.
I just discovered “Heavenly Day” by Patty Griffin. One of the most lyrical, evocative, beautiful songs I’ve heard in many a day. Let me know how you like it.
She has several other good songs, too.
Victoria Williams is probably one of my 3 or 4 favorite things about this planet.
I like Victoria Williams too (and Lucinda for that matter.)
There is also:
The New Riders of the Purple Sage
I have a genre on my iPod I invented to accomodate a certain kind of dark, atmospheric music with a swampy twang: I call it Hillbilly Goth. Here are the artists under that rubric:
The Blacks
Carla Bozulich
The Geraldine Fibbers
Hank Williams III
Jim White
Jo Carol Pierce
Johnny Dowd
Pinetop Seven
Robbie Fulks
Toni Price
Victoria Williams