Lucinda's new single "Real Love" 
                            now available for purchase through all digital partners.

                                Click here to purchase the new track at iTUNES 
                                                                        or
                                        Follow this link to download at AMAZON

                                    LITTLE HONEY :: Available October 14, 2008


TRACKLISTING:

Real Love
Circles And X's
Tears Of Joy
Little Rock Star
Honey Bee
Well Well Well
If Wishes Were Horses
Jailhouse Tears
Knowing
Heaven Blues
Rarity
Plan To Marry
It's A Long Way To The Top

Produced by Eric Liljestrand and Tom Overby
 

Beyond all the usual good stuff – gravelly blues guitars, distinctive vocals and a studious avoidance of cliché – Lucinda Williams’ ninth album finds her (mostly) playful and at peace. The joy of making music is her subject on “Real Love”. There are a few songs where the mod gets less sunny, but then that’s life, which is all that Williams aspires to cover.

» www.democratandchronicle.com

Until recently, Flynn was acting in an all-male Shakespearean troupe called Propeller. He came with the group to New York last year for a run in Twelfth Night and Taming of the Shrew. Characters from Shakespeare's plays, such as Feste and Hamlet, have affected his songwriting. "There's always those kind of luminary figures that seem to speak the truth," he says. "The whole play seems to be around them in a way."

The name of Flynn's album even comes from Shakespeare's stage directions. He says that the word would appear every now and again as "alarum off," meaning that some commotion was happening just offstage. "I quite liked the idea that the noise happening offstage was this album," Flynn says.

Ideas for Flynn's songs don't just come from the distant past. "Hong Kong Cemetery" tells the story of Flynn visiting his grandfather's grave in Hong Kong. "The song's a kind of musing on what it was like for my father at the time of [my grandfather's] death and the sort of generational divide," Flynn says.

He says he was inspired to write the song "Shore to Shore" after reading about a tragic accident in the newspaper: A girl named Blessing had been hit by the same No. 12 bus in south London that Flynn himself once rode. Blessing's father also drove a bus on the No. 12 line, a few behind the one that killed his daughter.

"It was quite a shocking story to read about," Flynn says. "I was trying to work out how we're supposed to place tragedy like that in our heads and in our sense of how the world works in terms of our faith and compassion."

Henry David Thoreau's Walden inspired "The Box." "Thoreau's saying that somewhere along the line we've gone horribly wrong in collecting all this stuff," Flynn says. "It was really that whole thing set to a story basically in a song."

When Flynn comes to the U.S. for his tour this fall, he'll make a stop near Thoreau's old stomping ground in Concord, Mass. He just might stop by.

» www.npr.org

» www.houstonpress.com

Few have segued sports careers into lucrative recording contracts like Donavon Frankenreiter. His music - like his surfing - is smooth, loose, and upbeat, hitting the peaks with perfect timing. His lyrics: simple but meaningful, positive and groovy. He is a charismatic funny man with a wandering spirit and a righteous soul.

Surfline caught up with the pro surfer-turned-musician on the verge of his third full-length album release, Pass It Around. Here's what 'Diamond Donnie' had to say prior to hitting the road for another tour around the world.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED OR CHANGED SINCE YOUR LAST RECORD?

I really tried to work with as many musicians as possible, bringing different people into the studio and adding their flavors to the record. Eight of the ten songs on the record feature guests, from Ben Harper , who plays guitar on the title track, "Pass It Around," to G.Love, who plays on "Sing a Song," Grant Lee Phillips, a mariachi band, and more.

HOW WAS RECORDING AT SUNSET SOUND IN HOLLYWOOD? PRETTY LEGENDARY, YEAH?

Insane. So much history there. From Jim Morrison to Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Prince, The Doobie Bros, Van Halen - all the greatest records from like, '65 to around '95 were done there. The recording engineer had some amazing stories, and they haven't touched anything in the studio over the years. The microphone was the same one Jim Morrison sang into.

IF THOSE WALLS COULD TALK... WHAT A TRIP. STOKED YOU GOT TO EXPERIENCE THAT.

For sure. Especially 'cause nowadays so many people need to record on a tight budget and make an album on their buddy's computer. I mean, a lot of great records are made that way, plus the music industry and the labels are under increasing pressure these days to stretch their budgets. So yeah, I feel really fortunate.

WHAT IS THE TITLE TRACK, "PASS IT AROUND," ALL ABOUT?

It's about promoting good vibes, good energy, having a good time and embracing the moment. Just whatever makes you feel good, whether you're at a concert, in the water, or just in daily life.

I DIG THE TRACK "YOUR HEART," WITH ITS COOL ORGAN SOUNDS AND DRIVING BEAT. WHAT INSTRUMENT DID YOU USE ON THAT ONE?

It's cool how that song came together. I gave a demo of the melody - just a harmonica track - to Joe Chiccarelli, our producer. His idea was to really try something new with the addition of a mariachi band, and the sound of the piccicato really comes through. I've been going to Mexico and South America so much, and I like that type of musicianship.

WHAT INSPIRES YOU TO PLAY AND SING THESE DAYS?

Everyday life. My family, my wife, my kids, traveling. But mostly because I just enjoy doing it so much. If things aren't going so great, or I'm having a bad day, I surf or play music, and that makes me smile, makes me feel alive. These things are therapeutic for me. Some people do yoga to escape or feel better; that's how music is for me. I can break out the guitar in my living room or be at a big show - it doesn't matter. As long as there's music, I'm happy.

THE CLOSING TRACK, "COME TOGETHER," IS ALSO REALLY SONIC, WITH COOL SMOKEY GUITARS. WHAT IS THE MESSAGE THERE?

I wanted to do something that was not really political, but about the wars that are going on - the religious wars, wars over oil, and racism - and just ask, "why we can't all just get along and be together." I love the musicianship on that one too. The way it evolved. Some people do yoga to escape or feel better; that's how music is for me. I can break out the guitar in my living room or be at a big show - it doesn't matter. As long as there's music, I'm happy.

WHAT ARE THE MAIN PROS AND CONS FOR YOU AS A TRAVELING MUSICIAN?

I love traveling, being on the road. And I'm getting ready to leave on tour for the next six or seven weeks during the release of the record, so that will be fun. But being away from my family will be really, really heartbreaking. They travel with me a lot, but my oldest son is starting school soon, so not this time around. My son Hendrix is five and a half now, and Ozzy is one and a half. I'll be missing them so much, but the upsides definitely make it all worth it.

YOU'VE BEEN PLAYING A LOT OF GIGS AT BILLABONG'S WCT EVENTS AROUND THE WORLD, AND HAVE SOME OTHER COOL PROJECTS GOING ON WITH THEM TOO, YEAH?

Those guys have been insane; they've really supported me. They brought my whole family and whole band to Tahiti recently. They're also embracing me with a signature clothing line soon too. You'll be the first to receive my new stick-on moustache and a pair of bell-bottoms.

I'LL ROCK THAT SHIT. BRING IT ON, MAN.

[Laughs]. But playing at those events with the Top 44 is definitely great. I love hanging out with Andy and Bruce, and I love seeing Slater. Occy always seems to be floating around, and Curren, and they'll all get up on stage and jam with us. Those are some of my best friends, man. I really only see some of them at those events, and I have so much fun when I do.

Pass It Around hits store shelves on August 19th with 10 fresh tracks, including some legendary guest appearances. For more, check out Donavon on iTunes, or at myspace.com/donavonfrankenreiter.

» www.surfline.com

» xpn.org

Brown Trout Blues came out on 1st September. For Folk’s Sake caught up with the lovely Johnny Flynn only to find out he didn’t know a thing about its release.

FFS: Tell us a bit about Brown Trout Blues, where did the inspiration for the song come from?
Johnny Flynn: Well it’s loosely based around experience wanting somebody or something to be a certain way in a relationship and wondering how it could change. But then realising that that would defeat the point and that you can’t change someone they have to change themselves. The title is a thing that me and my dad had [Johnny’s dad was stage actor Eric Flynn, who died in 2002 - Ed]. We used to go trout fishing a lot and we caught a lot of rainbow trout, but we wanted to catch brown trout because they were quite rare so if we went out for a day and didn’t catch a one we’d say we had the Brown Trout Blues, so it’s kind of a joke that I called it that.

Brown Trout Blues is a really heartfelt song, do you ever find it difficult to recreate the emotion you felt when you wrote a song on stage or in the studio?
Yes it can be really hard I mean I guess that’s the skill, if you’re a good performer you can get to that state. When I’m playing with the band we all know what we have to do to get into the right mood before going on stage.

When we were doing our album our producer, Ryan Hadlock, was really keen to create the right atmosphere he even ran around lighting candles and stuff, it was funny. It’s really important, though. Especially in the studio if you do a take and it doesn’t have the energy or spark or whatever then you might have blown it cos you just can’t afford to do it again. There’s real time pressure and it can be a struggle.

It’s bizarre, sometimes I forget what I was writing them about because it’s such a precise emotion you’re only feeling it at the time when you’re writing and you’ve only felt it once, it can be hard.

Do you think the acting helps [Johnny was a stage actor before his music career took off]?

It’s the same thing but you’re not trying to fool anyone or be contrived about it. You just are, when you sing that song, you’re pondering that time when you felt that way. One of my acting teachers used to say that good acting isn’t acting at all it’s just reacting, you’re reacting to the text or the character or whatever.

How are you expecting the song to do commercially, does that stuff matter to you?

I don’t think it will do very well commercially but I don’t really care, I didn’t even know it was coming out because we did the video for it quite a while ago and we’re getting ready to go on tour [Johnny embarks on a US tour with Laura Marling on 13th September - Ed]

You and Laura are joint headlining, do you have a support act too?

Mumford and Sons are playing on the tour as well, most of them would have been there anyway because half of Mumford and Sons are in Laura’s band.

Your sister, Lillie, has been doing backing vocals and playing the flute in The Sussex Wit, will she be going to America?

Lillie isn’t coming to America, she’s an actress too and she’s got a couple of really important auditions coming up. She’s also singing with Noah and the Whale’s band [the parts originally recorded by Laura Marling - Ed].

So who will be doing her part?

No one really, we might ask Laura to sing on some things, we just kind of do without. Slightly different arrangements, we’ve done that quite a few times now, it is different.

You’ve been an actor, and now you’re in a band, did you ever consider doing anything other than being on stage?

I thought I’d be an English teacher for a while. But I was quite stuck really when it came to seeing the careers advisor, the only thing I could really think of to do was go to drama school. I got a couple of places at university to read English but I ended up going to drama school.

Now the music has taken over do you think you’ll ever go back to acting?

I’d like to go back to acting but you really need to have infinite period of time available to go up for auditions and then know that you’ll be free to do the job, so with having a band and having to go off on tour on short notice the two don’t really work that well together. I am trying to combine the two now in a show that will tour next year. We’re trying to put together a piece of theatre entwined within a series of gigs with our band and a few of the other artists we’ve mentioned, based around the morality plays. We’ve just done our first meeting about it.

It sounds like a big undertaking, is it difficult trying to get everyone together now you’re all doing so well in your careers?

There’s time if you make it. The show would be quite a big operation and a big project for our band we’d have to dedicate ourselves to it and rehearse. We’ve got tours until the end of the year so it’s quite hard to work out when you’ve got time to do stuff.

Apart from that, what are your plans for the future?

We’re demoing the next album at the moment. We’ve just got all the songs together and we’re literally right now in the process of rerecording a song that we did too slow.

What’s the new album like compared to A Larum?

It’s quite different, I feel like a different person to how I felt when I wrote the first one, with a different voice really.

On the first album some of the songs were quite old, some were from a couple of years ago, they were a mixture. They kind of worked together, they were very much of that time period, I wrote them over about a five-year period.

On this new one there’s one song that’s actually really old that I wrote about four years ago and I rewrote a bit of it and it seems quite relevant now. I left it out of the first album because I couldn’t really connect with it but I can feel it now.

Interview: Lynn Roberts

» forfolkssake.wordpress.com

All right, so I just got Pass It Around from Donavon Frankenreiter. The first song I hit up was the title track, an easy groove that relaxes the mind and definitely makes you want to pass one around, but since I’m here alone, I use a bong. A little slack guitar adds the flavor of the Islands as the words lace the vibe which most surfers have, “Do what’s right for you and I’ll do what’s right for me, and just pass it around.” This song is more of a statement than a story, and one that I completely endorse, and though it is the title of this CD, it was the ninth track on the disc. This man isn’t trying to offend anyone he’s just trying to live Aloha.

It’s followed up with the final track, “Come Together.” For those of you who hate the old hippie, peace and love, tree-hugging stuff, this may not be a song for you. The dream, and I’m a realist, of everybody being cool with each other and no more wars, well, the feeling is still strong with Donavon and all I can say is, at least someone’s making the effort.

After debating about god again which did not make it to this page, I decided to start at the beginning of the disc, “Life, Love and Laughter.” My feet started tapping and I found myself bouncing about in my chair. Up beat and very happy, puts you one of those places that make you want to call up a few friends and have a shindig. Why not, with the following track it’s easy to do. A slow ‘70s disco love beat that flows like the smiles of summer on the faces of pretty girls at the beach. You’ll be busting out the bellbottoms as the funky groove hustles in. This song, “Too Much Water,” will be the next tune I’ll be singing to myself as I bebop around.

“Come With Me” is Donavon speaking truth. This is his love song and if you want to love a man like this, you have to go with him across the sea, searching for waves and good times. This is what makes him who he is and what he is going to do for in life, so follow if you want, but just remember he’s “like a stone just skipping across the sea.” Love songs like this are as simple and true as the people who sing them. The tune starts with some light strumming and plucking. His gentle, gruff voice calls out, “I cant go back/ wont do any good/ gotta live my life/ like I the way I said I would,/ gonna find myself/ in sun-filled trees/ gonna live my life/ on every breeze.”

If you want a little darker taste, then “Your Heart” proves that even Donavon has bad days. The beginning sounds like a Mariachi band is about to play, but as the song goes on I could swear I hear a hook from the song “Low Rider” by War, but slower. Wow, can low riders go any slower? As the Mariachi enters again, I picture surfing images from south of the border, with warm water, warm weather, and even warmer women. There’s even room for bongo drums on this disc and, kidz, I do love sound the bongo drums.

If you have the wave-rider mindset, than this CD has your name all over it. Like Jack Johnson mixed with Jimmy Buffett? Than you have Donavon. Simple, as in down to earth and genuine, is the best way to describe Pass It Around. Good grooves with honest lyrics relating and reflecting the man who is Donavon Frankenreiter. Pick this up and pass it around.

» blogcritics.org

» www.standup2cancer.org

» www.ryan-adams.com

» lateshow.cbs.com

» media.www.dailytexanonline.com

» www.jambands.com

A pro-surfer-turned-pro-strummer back story isn't all that Donavon Frankenreiter and pal Jack Johnson have in common. The latter's sunny approachability consistently shows up in Frankenreiter's music, too, including this new disc, which finds Frankenreiter pondering the universal — "Life, Love & Laughter" offers a good topical indication — via well-constructed pop-folk melodies.

The trademark surfer-to-folkie aesthetic — organic timbres, sunny moods, soft, inviting vocals — runs throughout, and like Johnson's songs, Frankenreiter's are all hummable, huggable, likeable uplift. Frankenreiter is nonetheless at his best here on Don Henley-meets-Fleetwood Mac nugget "Someone's Something," mixing those textures with just a hint of lovely moodiness.

» www.tennessean.com

Eleven years ago they painted their masterpiece, then promptly imploded.

BY FRED MILLS

It starts out innocently enough, courtesy a waltz-time slice of unassuming country-folk called "Inn Town." Things pick up a bit on the next track, "Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight," a loping honky-tonker wherein the singer opines (in subtle echoes of his spiritual godfather Gram Parsons), "This situation just don't seem so goddamn smart/ This situation is tearing me apart." Then comes the album's first genuine kick in the teeth: the churning powerpop of "Yesterday's News," a buoyant, Westerbergian chronicle of falling down and falling apart.

The album is Whiskeytown's Strangers Almanac, an Americana touchstone and an American classic in its own right. Just ask anyone who heard it when it first appeared in the summer of '97. Or ask one of its architects.

"It's a special record," says Whiskeytown guitarist Phil Wandscher, who for three years stood shoulder-to-shoulder (and sometimes fist-to-jaw) with singer Ryan Adams in carving out an iconic spot for the band. "Shit just fell into place, where songs weren't even work. They just happened."

By 1997 Whiskeytown's star was in full ascent. Adams and Wandscher had only met three years earlier, in Raleigh, N.C., but once the original five-piece came together things kicked swiftly into high gear. 1995 saw the release of both an EP and a full-length, while a triumphant SXSW showcase in the spring of '96 sparked a major label bidding war. Adams' songwriting genius and the volatile Adams-Wandscher chemistry helped make Whiskeytown one of the purest, most instinctive rock ‘n' roll groups since the Replacements a decade and a half earlier.

That ascent was not without incident, however. When several members quit after a trip to New York, Adams freaked out and disappeared, leaving Wandscher to track him down and convince him to restart the group. That they did, just in time to ink a deal with Outpost Recordings and head to Nashville to commence work on Strangers. But according to Wandscher, Adams went out of his way to butt heads with producer Jim Scott, aggravating the musicians in the process.

"It was just not happening, and Ryan would be in there as usual, fucking off, getting pissy if Jim didn't like a vocal take, and the next thing I know we're spinning our wheels for a couple of hours because Ryan keeps changing things. I don't know if it was passive-aggressive or some form of ADD or what!"

Adams also pulled his disappearing stunt a second time, bolting from the airplane he and Wandscher had just boarded and leaving the guitarist to make a trip to L.A. (for mixing and overdub sessions) alone. After he resurfaced the record company put him on a train, but by the time he arrived in L.A. Wandscher and Scott had already gotten the bulk of the work done by themselves. "All I knew was that I was in a deal where people had invested a lot of fucking money in this thing I was doing and I wanted to do it right. [Ryan] was lost in a sea of Jack Daniels and mental weirdness," says Wandscher.

The Strangers sessions yielded gold, however. For one thing, with Wandscher and singer/fiddle player Caitlin Cary co-writing half the album's songs, Whiskeytown was closer to a working democracy than anything control-freak Adams would have in his subsequent solo career, and the inherent tension fueled the collective muse. The addition of several key session players, notably John Ginty on keyboards and Greg Leisz on pedal and lap steel (Alejandro Escovedo sang on three tracks as well), smartly fleshed out the tunes' arrangements. And producer Scott, who'd previously worked on Tom Petty's Wildflowers, somehow managed to reign in Adams' worst tendencies and coaxed riveting, emotional performances from the vocalist. On the recently issued 2-CD Strangers Almanac (Deluxe Edition) the inclusion of a whopping 26 bonus tracks brings into further relief the original record's sonic muscle; a preproduction demo of "Excuse Me," for example, cut with Chris Stamey, simply doesn't hold a candle to the album version.

When Wandscher talks about individual songs, a note of pride creeps into his voice. "I love ‘Inn Town,' just the feel of that song. ‘Yesterday's News' - I loved it when we played those kinds of [high energy] songs. ‘Everything I Do' is one of the songs that's gotten used the most for licensing and stuff, and it's funny because we were just fucking around one day at practice and I came up with the guitar thing, he came up with a couple of chords, and boom - ‘All right, that's a song!'"

Wandscher also attributes the album's brilliance to some of the emotional changes Adams was going through. "For [Ryan], finally here was this opportunity to have everything he's dreamed of, yet it was obviously like a crossroads. He was letting go of a lot of things that were his past. That's one reason I really think it's a special record, because he had a place he was coming from. He had a home, he had a life, he had these things he'd worked hard for and had an attachment to. And I think it shows - that it is personal, that it's a place he was coming from, rather than just floating around and living in a hotel and not really having any attachment to anything."

It all ended badly, of course. Powered by booze and ego, Whiskeytown had always been a combustible proposition in concert, and on the Strangers tour things steadily deteriorated. Explains Wandscher, "I'd made this vow that I will stand behind this guy, I will stick with it as long as I enjoy playing the music. Then it just got to the point where it was like... he would play my guitar parts during shows so I didn't know what to play! It just got weird, man." Whiskeytown imploded one memorable night in Kansas City when Adams had an onstage meltdown, smashed his guitar and fired the band (with the exception of Cary).

Adams would front several more incarnations of Whiskeytown and record a third album, Pneumonia, although label politics conspired to delay its release until 2001. By that point the group had already broken up for good and Adams was well into his solo career. Just the same, Whiskeytown had managed to paint the proverbial masterpiece. That's a feat few bands can muster, much less lay claim to.

***

WHISKEYTOWN SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

Angels 7" EP (Mood Food, 1995)

Faithless Street (Mood Food, 1995) Reissued as expanded edition by Outpost, 1998.

Theme For A Trucker 2x7" EP (Bloodshot, 1997)

Rural Free Delivery (Mood Food, 1997) Early demos.

Strangers Almanac (Outpost, 1997) Reissued as 2CD "Deluxe Edition" by Geffen, 2008. Bonus tracks: 5 songs live 1997 KCRW-FM; 17 songs from the Baseball Park Sessions and Barn's On Fire sessions, produced by Chris Stamey; "Wither, I'm A Flower," from Hope Floats soundtrack; "Theme For A Trucker," from The End of Violence soundtrack; plus acoustic demos "Avenues" and "I Still Miss Someone." New liner notes by Peter Blackstock.

In Your Wildest Dreams EP (Outpost, 1997) Promo-only.

Pneumonia (Lost Highway, 2001)

» www.blurt-online.com

Singer-songwriter Johnny Flynn takes the title of his U.S. debut from a Middle English term. And this South African-born, Welsh-bred troubadour has also dabbled as a poet and a Shakespearean actor. He certainly brings plenty of old-world charm to A Larum, reviving the sounds of traditional English and Irish folk music. A multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, violin, trumpet, accordion, mandolin, banjo, harmonica, organ and percussion on the album, Flynn is just as adroit spinning stories with vivid characters and imagery. And his lilting cross provides just the right narrative tone for these tales that take a page out of Chaucer.

Download This: “The Wrote & Writ,” a lovely, literate ballad

All along this Laguna Beach surfer-turned- songwriter’s modest ambition and steady evolution has been nakedly on display. His 2004 debut was recorded under the auspices of pal Jack Johnson – so much so that at times it sounded as if Donavon’s sole aim were to be Jack Jr. Ramped up with funkier grooves, the appropriately titled Move by Yourself two years later seemed deliberately designed to get away from Johnson’s influence, a shift underscored by a leap from his mentor’s Brushfire Fairytales label to the Americana outlet Lost Highway.

Now, with his third proper album, Frankenreiter is (slightly) changing up his feel once more. Granted, the constants remain as firmly in place as his bushy ’stache: hopeful sha-la-la lyrical simplicity is his stock in trade (he implores everyone to “Sing a Song” and “Come Together,” he extols the virtues of “Life, Love and Laughter,” he urges “do what you want to” in the title track) and his soft, soulful voice is still a stonerific breeze that rarely alters direction from melody to melody – just the sort of sameness to get Donavon written off as a one-trick pony.

Yet here he has slipped that easygoing vibe into pleasingly sweet tunes that, for all their accessibility and potential to veer into cheesiness, are more musically sophisticated than anything else he’s put down. It’s his most accomplished work thus far, and so steeped in the silkier side of the ’70s that the album sometimes feels like a lost relic from a beach boy unstuck in time. “Too Much Water,” for starters, glides along like Steely Dan gone disco; the sentimentality of “Hit the Ground Running” and the loping gentility of “Someone’s Something” easily could be mistaken for saccharine staples from Ambrosia or America.

When he’s not so slavish in his attention to retro detail, however, Frankenreiter achieves the same laid-back lushness you get from a deeper songwriter like Josh Rouse, and he’s nothing if not consistent. It hardly matters who he enlists – here he’s got help from Ben Harper and Grant Lee Phillips, and wrote two with alt-country figure Thad Cockrell – or what flourishes he adds (he’s especially fond of Mexicali horns and G. Love’s harmonica), Frankenreiter and producer Joe Chiccarelli deftly maintain a Newport-at-sunset mood.

That’s Newport, not Huntington or Cabo or any wilder locale – this time Donavon’s going for posh and slick, and he achieves it effortlessly. Whether or not that “maturity” will win him the wider adult-pop audience he merits remains to be seen; he’s no John Mayer — he lacks the fire and chops — but Mayer’s fans could do worse than give him a test spin. That he has concocted such contoured, downright pretty songs without compromising his fundamentals, however – well, that’s another step forward. Maybe more than a baby step this time, too.

Grade: B+

» soundcheck.freedomblogging.com

» www.nashvillecitypaper.com

» www.examiner.com

It might take a second glance to realize this isn't THAT Donovan, the hippy dippy troubadour of "Mellow Yellow" fame, but rather THIS Donavon (note spelling difference), one with a tongue-twister of a surname. Truth be told, the two share similar sensibilities, namely a penchant for easy, breezy melodies and a fondness for a laidback lifestyle. And if there's any doubt about what inspires Donavon the younger's dayglo designs, then consider the fact that he's not only a musician but a diehard surfer dude who... get this... actually named his kids Ozzy and Hendrix. That's some groovy guy!

» blurt-online.com

» blog.cmt.com

Hayes Carll is coming for you, young rock fans. He will make a country music believer out of you. He'll have none of this namby-pamby, softly-strummed, lightly twang-tinged, big city “alt-country” stuff, either. Don't let his history degree from Hendrix College fool you, this is the real thing — songs about heartache, drinking whiskey and smoking dope. These are country tunes for people who hate country, where the steel guitars aren't poured on like syrup, and the lyrics aren't scrubbed clean for Bible Belt consumers. As part of a Texas tradition of iconoclastic songwriters like Willie Nelson and Lyle Lovett, Carll never plays it safe. On his third CD, “Trouble in Mind,” he continues to deliver the hard-rocking, hard-complaining goods.

True to form, Carll invaded Nashville to make the record and, rather than hire a bigwig country producer, opted instead for power pop legend Brad Jones to helm the project. The result is an album that gleams with sharp, rustic tones and balanced sense of space.

“Arkansas, my head hurts,” Carll nods to us as he opens “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart,” which sounds like a fairly generic country anthem before its third verse, wherein Carll delivers a solid political punch: “Doesn't anyone care about truth anymore? / Maybe that's what songs are for.”

One of his songs may even cause him a little public relations ruckus: “She Left Me for Jesus,” which Don Imus has already hailed as “The Greatest Country Song Ever Written.” It stops just shy of parody, but no doubt there are reactionaries lying in wait who'll demand his head for the line “If I ever find Jesus / I'm kicking his ass.”

Whether channeling John Prine's light touch and sense of humor on tunes like “Girl Downtown,” covering Tom Waits' “I Don't Wanna Grow Up” or hollering like a young Bob Dylan on “A Lover Like You,” Carll's voice cracks in all the right places. He's got the country music chemistry down pat, as well he should after four years of playing six nights a week in south Texas. Just you wait, rock 'n' roll kids. He'll pour whiskey down your gullet and you'll thank him for it.

» www.arktimes.com

Lucinda Williams has always been adept at painting landscapes of the soul, illuminating the spirit’s shadowy nooks and shimmering crannies -- but she’s never captured the sun breaking through the clouds as purely as on her new Lost Highway release, Little Honey. “I’m in a different phase of my life, so there are more happy moments on this album,” the singer-songwriter says of her ninth studio set. “ ‘Darkly introspective,’ is one phrase people have used to describe a lot of my songs. There are moody songs, but I’m looking outside myself a little bit more. These aren’t ‘boy meets girl, boy leaves girl, girl gets bummed out’ songs -- there’s a lot more than that going on.”

Williams wastes no time signaling that mood change, leading into Little Honey's opener, “Real Love” with a false start riff that's the six-string equivalent of a friendly wink – then sidling into the tune's hard-rocking vibe with a sensual slink that underscores the passion of finding exactly what that title indicates. The bluesy physicality of that tune is echoed in several of Little Honey's tracks, from the charmingly chugging “Honeybee” to the gorgeous melodies of “If Wishes Were Horses”.

“I’m stepping out and writing about things other than unrequited love. But because that’s not part of my experience anymore,” she explains, “doesn’t mean I’m going to stop being a songwriter. There are plenty of other important things to write about -- the state of the world, for one thing -- I don’t buy into the myth that because you get to a certain level of contentment, you have to throw in the towel.”

While Little Honey certainly has plenty to move the hips, Williams doesn't neglect her uncanny ability to do the same to the heart. The sparse delta delivery she affords “Heaven Blues” -- a keening consideration of what might await on the other side – hits home thanks to its arresting blend of hope and vexation, while the epic “Rarity” rides soft waves of brass (instrumentation never before heard on one of her discs).

“The one thing the songs have in common is directness,” she says. “The beauty of country and blues is their simplicity, it’s about getting things across in a really direct way. I’ve spent a while stretching out and going in different directions, which is my nature. But I feel that I can always embrace that original simplicity again -- that’s why I went back to record ‘Circles and Xs,’ which I actually wrote back in 1985.”

Over the course of a recording career that's now in its fourth decade, the Louisiana-born singer has navigated terrain as varied as the dust-bowl starkness of her 1978 debut Ramblin’ (recorded on the fly with a mere 250 dollar budget behind her) and the stately elegance of last year's West (which Vanity Fair called “the record of a lifetime”). Between those signposts, Lucinda Williams established a reputation as one of rock's most uncompromising and consistently fascinating writers and performers, earning kudos from artists as diverse as Mary-Chapin Carpenter (who helped win Williams a Grammy with her recording of “Passionate Kisses”) and Elvis Costello (who joins her for a duet on the Little Honey mini-drama “Jailhouse Tears”).

Williams learned the importance of professional integrity around the same time most kids are learning their ABCs, thanks in a large part to her award-winning poet father Miller Williams -- who invested her with a “culturally rich, but economically poor” upbringing where artistic expression was of primary importance. Later, she’d hone her vision playing hardscrabble clubs around her adopted home state of Texas, absorbing the influence of sources as varied as Bob Dylan and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

“I sometimes say I just started out singing folk songs acoustically by default,” she recalls. “Even when I was playing open mic nights by myself, I’d be sitting up on stage with my Martin guitar doing ‘Angel’ by Jimi Hendrix or ‘Politician’ by Cream alongside Robert Johnson and Memphis Minnie songs. It never occurred to me to pick just one style.”

She’s never settled for any sort of pigeonholing, entering the ‘90s with the slow-burning Sweet Old World -- a disc that, as much as any release, helped place the Americana movement at the forefront of listeners’ minds -- and cementing her own spot in the cultural lexicon with 1998’s rough-hewn masterpiece Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

The latter disc earned Williams her first Grammy as a performer, but rather than try to capture the same lightning in a bottle a second time, she stretched her boundaries on 2001’s Essence, an album rife with both cerebral interludes and soul-stirring stomps. In recent times, Williams has broadened her palette even further through frequent collaborations with kindred spirits -- acts as varied as The North Mississippi All-Stars and Flogging Molly -- who share her uncommon sense of non-revivalist traditionalism.

Little Honey continues that ongoing forward quest, mixing country, R & B and blues-rock elements with adventurous aplomb. The disc gets an added octane boost from the powerful chemistry between the musicians, primarily drawn from Williams’ latest road band (now collectively known as Buick 6) -- includes bassist David Sutton, Eels veterans Butch Norton and Chet Lyster as well as longtime collaborator Doug Pettibone.

Williams augments that core unit with a passel of like-minded folks spanning a huge chunk of the musical spectrum, from octogenarian singing legend Charlie Louvin to power-pop vets Susannah Hoffs and Matthew Sweet, the latter of whom helped arrange the Spector-tinged “Little Rock Star” -- applying studio skills that prompted Williams to dub him “this generation’s Brian Wilson.”

“I feel that this is the most eclectic record I’ve ever done, and I’ve always been known for being eclectic,” she says. “ For this album, I was comfortable just letting the songs flow, and not worried about being so serious and heavy and having to top myself -- and I think that shows.”

She needn’t have worried for a minute because, with Little Honey, Lucinda Williams has indeed topped herself again.

» www.musicremedy.com

Never having heard of this Donavon before, I was intrigued to hear some great song by him on a recent trip to Florida, and talk about your karma! Upon my return, what lands on my desk but this new CD by Mr. F, who apparently goes by his first name, judging by the size of the type they use here for his last name.

So you have this professional surfer dude, who also sings this groovy, mellow stuff, maybe from seeing some great sunsets all over the world, I figure, and he once rented a room from Jack Johnson’s parents in Hawaii, and they became pals. And another of Johnson’s musician pals, Ben Harper, makes a singing appearance here on the title cut. For the first time, Donavon uses some collaborators in songwriting, and some are notable: Grant Lee Phillips, Thad Cockrell and Mike Daly of Whiskeytown.

With song titles like "Too Much Water" and "Mansions on the Sand," it’s easy to see where Donavon finds inspiration.

And even for those of us who get no closer to a surfboard than having one of those Endless Summer posters in our apartment in the 1960s, this is great stuff, from his voice to the lyrics and the vibe.

Awesome, dude.

Rising LP sales are proving that every fashion comes back if you stick around long enough. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) reports that shipments of vinyl records, measured by dollar value, increased 36.6% from 2006 to 2007. But, while demand for albums has increased, record sales remain significantly lower than those of compact discs and digital media. More than half a billion CDs were purchased in 2007, compared with about 1.3 million vinyl LPs.

"Demand for records has grown, but it's kind of like the dandelion in the weed patch," says Geoff Mayfield, chart director at Billboard magazine. "Growth is high because the base is so small." The RIAA declined to comment.

Despite the minuscule retail figures, the format's popularity has never wavered over the decades among audiophiles, LP enthusiasts, and serious music collectors. Vinyl is often praised as the medium of warmth and richness, delivering playback that most closely represents a live musical experience. Purists sniff that digital routinely registers as cold and antiseptic. CDs can also suffer from a reduced spatial sense in a listener's soundstage. "Digital audio systems are mere easy-to-use devices for people who have yet to discover the joy of live music. It can be said that such systems are deflating music," according to the Web site of Samurai International, a Tokyo company that distributes high-end turntable tonearms and cartridges.

Ear Addiction

But for audiophiles, the sonic warmth of analog vinyl often comes with a hefty price tag. Some state-of-the-art turntables, such as Goldmund's Reference II model from Switzerland, sell for as much as $300,000. No matter—for some people, good audio is worth any price. "When you hear a song you know that sounds better than you've ever heard before, it's addictive," says Robert Harley, editor of The Absolute Sound, a monthly magazine covering high-performance audio. "You have to have it."

When it comes to the cutting edge of vinyl playback, the sky is truly the limit. A turntable can soar into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. A needle cartridge designed by Japan's Koetsu can set an audiophile back $15,000. Even the records themselves are subject to higher prices. Retail rates for heavier, and therefore more durable, albums weighing 180 to 200 grams start at $18.99. But, with the addition of art and specialty packaging, the cost of a 200-gram, limited-edition Japanese import of The Police classic Ghost in the Machine or Bob Marley's Burnin' can go for as much as $60, plus shipping costs.

While the higher tiers of advanced sound playback can induce wallet-clutching shock and awe, music lovers of modest means don't have to take out a second mortgage to enjoy a fine vinyl experience. "High-end buyers represent the extreme tip of the market," says Jonathan Atkinson, editor-in-chief of SourceMedia's Stereophile.com. That's not to say that great sound cannot be had with a pair of $600 speakers, a $500 turntable, and an amplifier costing less than $1,000, he adds.

Different audio media, such as eight-track and cassette tapes, have come and gone. And, as compact discs are increasingly supplanted by digital downloads, some speculate that even the mighty CD could one day fade into obscurity. However, if unit sales are any indication, vinyl, it seems, may indeed be forever.

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HOMETOWN: London
ALBUM: A Larum

WHY HE’S WORTH WATCHING:
At 25, Johnny Flynn is already contemplating the benefits of death, but when he sings, “Pray for the people inside your head / They won’t be there when you’re dead” on “Tickle Me Pink,” there’s a bit of disappointment mixed with his relief. His debut A Larum – with its spry guitar, healthy sighs of accordion and fiddle, and rollicking drumlins – would be a lovely way to shuffle off this mortal coil, but here’s hoping he lingers for awhile.

FOR FANS OF:
Fionn Regan, John Fahey, The Chieftains

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH:
“Well, thank you for this honorable mention, Mr. Paste. It’s been quite a year and this has really capped it off, or, as we say here in Britain, ‘Put the turkey on the Christmas table.’ And what a turkey. What a Christmas table. You might think the two are synonymous, but without a turkey, a Christmas table is nothing. You have given me that turkey.”