Willie Breeding - Grey Skies EP

Every time Tom visits, it kinda reminds me of when I was a kid and my grandparents would come into the house with a bag of goodies. He's always got a CD and new music that I've either never heard or haven't paid nearly enough attention to. He's like my own musical Santa Claus. This time it was an EP by Brooklyn based Country Rock artist Willie Breeding. The CD hasn't left my player yet. (I'll give it back soon. I swear!)

I didn't get into the so named country rock until I lived in the South and because of this, I attribute most of the good stuff to Southern musicians. Now that I'm a Northeast girl again, I thought my days of discovering nearby local boys that want to make me rip my jeans and take swigs straight from the bottle while simultaneously crying into it were over. I'm so happy to find I was wrong.

The EP starts out with the title track "Grey Skies". I know we're all sick of the descriptive musician batter but hear me out on this little bit of cake mix. Picture Rufus Wainwright after a three week bender, standing out in the rain with a beat up cowboy hat hanging halfway off his head and holding his own beating heart in both hands while trying to play an old acoustic guitar thats seen so many better days with his teeth! Ok. That didn't quite get it. It's more like, Ryan Adams but with real sadness and swagger. These aren't fabricated love songs, they're real and if you can get past the sweetness of his voice, you can feel that he means it. Breeding's songs are chuck full of life and sadness and the two mix perfectly. Lyrics like "I know where to find you/and I know where you've been/and you're not worth the trouble you get in", collimate exactly what we look for in a sweet country folk ballad, simple and heart picking.

I'm looking forward to picking up his full length album Cheap Vodka Rain very soon. I'm looking at it like a crush. This isn't a love affair that will last forever (I save those for the likes of Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle) but for now it fits and it's good enough.

If It Ain't Stiff

I recently acquired a USB turntable. It's an inexpensive one. I found it refurbished on woot.com for sixty dollars whereas I've seen it for over a hundred retail. Despite it not being direct drive, (I'm spoiled, I know) I couldn't help myself. It's been set up for awhile but due to some frustrating software issues I've only recently started really playing with it again. It's got me digging through old LPs and 45s that I haven't messed with in awhile, recording them to mp3 and dragging the tracks with me via iPod on my daily train commute.


I've been making empty promises to friends and other music geeks that I'd start putting together a decent mix compilation once I got the thing working. I'm starting on that but in the interim I've been copying most of my Stiff collection to mp3. On trying to make good on a request, I recently copied over my Live Stiffs comp and have been listening to it pretty frequently for the last few days. It's got me back into the swing of the power pop and re-established my girlish crush on the Stiff Foundation Of Goofy Looking Motherfuckers. It's like a homecoming and I missed these boys an awful lot.

Although my record, Live Stiffs is actually the reissue of Stiffs Live, the original concert of all Stiff artists took place in 1977, a year after the Stiff label was created. The artists on this early tour consisted of Larry Wallis, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury (& The Blockheads), Wreckless Eric and some other guy named Nick Lowe. Although each song is credited to the individual artist, most of the show consisted of all artists playing with the others. (i.e. Ian Dury played the drums for Wreckless Eric whereas Nick Lowe played bass for Larry Wallis' performance) The result is a delicious tasting brew of the beginnings of England's New Wave scene.

Although the entire compilation is these early Stiff boys at their finest, my absolute favorite is Wreckless Eric's Semaphore Signals. (I've posted a youtube video with Eric's Live BBC 1980 recording of this song. If you're short on time, hop ahead to 6:58.)



This litle gem (God I love the internet) is from the tour itself and features the video of the comp recording of Eric performing Reconnez Cherie as well as a young Nick Lowe talking about his impending fame.



All this said, the best part of this comp is the last track featuring the whole group singing Sex & Drugs & Rock and Roll. You're going to have to pick the record up yourself up to hear it though.

You know, or I could put it on a mix cd.

Sugar Man

Part of the joy of being a record collector and music lover is the discovery. Sometimes the whole thing feels like some sort of fantastic treasure hunt. Sure, you'll sometimes go awhile not finding anything new that shakes you up. Sometimes things will begin to feel stale. You start to think maybe you've reached the end, that there's nothing new to throw you into an electric frenzy. Then it happens. You get turned on to something new and it shakes you all up and you begin to remember why you're in it in the first place.

This happened to me recently and I'm still riding the afterglow. After being alerted to a show happening the same night and the blurb description of this guy, Sixto Rodriguez, sparking my interest I showed up to check it out. It couldn't have been better. The soft spoken, Michigan born Rodriguez managed to hold the attention of everyone in that little room from the first song until the last.
He only released two studio albums, Cold Fact in 1970 and Coming From Reality in 1971. If you can only pick up one of his albums (seriously try for both though!) I am already madly in love with Cold Fact. The following song, Sugar Man is from that album:



For more info on Sixto Rodriguez, visit: sugarman.orgjavascript:void(0)

Enjoy!