Sorry for the self-promotion, but I was told I should start a thread regarding the release of Yell County’s new CD, What You Get. I’m the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of this group, and we’re happy to have our 2nd release out there, and being ever interested in other doper’s opinions, I wanted to let folks know so they could judge for themselves.
A couple of links to get you started…
On Amazon, you can preview songs/download the mp3 album…it’s also available on iTunes and possibly a few other places I’ve never heard of.
I am on an iPhone so will keep this short: I love this album. If The Smithereens, The Jam and Social Distortion had a love child, the result would be Yell County.
Thank you! I’m happy to be on the grid with this one and while it’s more or less just a labor of love, it’s something I can’t not do. I plan on doing this well past the unseemly stage (there already), and that’s just my punk attitude…
Given the quality of the music, please keep playing.
Is there any way you can post a link to a song or two - i.e., more than just an Amazon sample? If folks got to hear Uniform Straight, **Another Sunday **or Knee Jerk, they would walk right through the door - smart, fuck-the-establishment lyrics with tight chord changes and great melodies. This is good stuff.
And the guitar tones are so, so good - when you hear the distortion+tremolo tones on **Harsh Little Town **- that is just electric guitar Goodness right there. Sometimes you have a Rickenbacker and a fully-cranked Vox AC30 amp and you just have to let them do their thing, you know? And with the addition of the second guitarist, you have your anchoring rhythms with the Rick+Vox combo, and then the cool fills from your other guy - they tuck right in and sound melodic and great.
Just really well done all around. You should hoist this up on as high a flagpole as you can; it deserves a listen…
I loved the first CD, A Real Fine Hole, and this one is even better. Adding a lead guitar player enhances the sound of the band without changing its essential nature. My current favorite song is Harsh Little Town, but I think my favorite changes each time I listen. I really hope that one of my trips back to Maryland can be made to coincide with a Yell County gig.
Don’t know…people were taking pictures, at least…I was wearing white pants and a red shirt…it was like a cross betwen The Monkees and a Razorbacks football coach.
Agree all around, it’s a fun album, nice tone! Well done!!
Hey, Arky, anything you want to say about the new personnel lineup? You’ve added a lead guitar, how does change how you guys have done writing, arrangements, recording, whatever you see as the fundamentals? Is the old lineup the same? How did stumble into a new member, was it a planned or just one of those things happenstances, and how does it feel to not be a three-piece band now?
We added our lead guitarist because I’m not a lead guitarist, and trying to keep the guitar sound filled out was hard for me to do, especially when singing. I’m kind of klutzy, and we figured it would be great to have another guitarist in the fold to take some pressure off me/sound more competent.
He is somebody we all knew from the scene, is a great guitarist and a great guy. He can play all that wanky stuff, but is more firmly rooted in the garage. He gets it. We decided to ask him to join, he did, and we’re very happy. I know I’m having fun!
The other three of us are the same as on the first album. I definitely prefer being a quartet, as I can concentrate more on singing and we can do some contrapuntal stuff, etc. The songwriting process is the same; I write the songs, but everybody comes up with their own parts, hence the shared writing credit. We’re working on new songs now, and I think we’ll be using the same studio/engineer as with this album…maybe we can get our stuff together and put another one out sooner rather than later; I hope so, anyway.
And with the addition of the second guitarist, you have your anchoring rhythms with the Rick+Vox combo, and then the cool fills from your other guy - they tuck right in and sound melodic and great.