Nick A. Zaino, III: February, 2001

Whiskey, Painkillers, and Speed Will Carry Me Home

Richmond Fontaine (www.richmondfontaine.com) has been busy touring and recording their fourth album, the follow-up to 1999’s great Lost Son. The last album was full of elegiac tunes and pick and blast chestnuts, all tied together by singer/guitarist Willy Vlautin’s stories about beautiful losers and psychotic loners. The new one is said to be an acoustic album. “We're trying to finish our new record, and it's been slow going ,” Vlautin says. “But I think it'll be our best one. We just got back from a short tour with Slobberbone, and now we're about to go in the studio again.” The band is also talking about releasing a live album, but that has been pushed back.

Just arriving on my desk is Catch-All, a disc by a band called Swag, the latest roots pop supergroup. Members include Wilco’s Ken Coomer, Jerry Dale McFadden from Sixpence None the Richer, Robert Reynolds of The Mavericks, Tom Peterson of Cheap Trick, and solo artist Doug Powell. True to the band’s name, the promo package included lots of weird items, including a Swag pin, Swag matches, and a Yeproc chocolate button (Yeproc is the band’s label). They even throw in a Macromedia Flash video of the first tune, “Loner”. Expect to see a lot in the press about the band when the album starts to hit stores in March. A bunch of your big name magazines have committed to doing features. It’s not hard to tell why. Everything about this band tells you they’re having the time of their lives beating out unabashed retropop that Paul McCartney would have been proud to have laid down in his four-track, living room studio in 1970. If you’re not having fun listening to this album, you’re missing the point. (www.yeproc.com)

The world of great indie labels will lose another member when Tar Hut Records, in Worcester, Ma, closes operations. The label, home to bands like Martin’s Folly, The Ex-Husbands, and Angry Johnny and the Killbillies, is now winding down and selling off the rest of their inventory, including It’s Heartbreak That Sells, the Ray Mason tribute album. Retail space is getting harder to crack, so when a big distribution deal soured on them, they found it tough to place their records. “It's just not a good time to have an indie label,” says Jeff Copetas, who worked for the label up until last year. “Basically we had a distribution deal and no way to promote our records or get them into stores because it was so expensive to do so. So that, in a very brief nutshell, is why it's being shuttered. I am extremely proud of all the records we put out. That'll never be taken away from me.” The only good news is that the rest of the folks involved also have day jobs, so they won’t be left searching.

On a much more positive note, there is a new alt.country radio show being broadcast over the Web every Friday from noon to three (EST). It features a diverse playlist of artists that don’t normally see the light of day at most stations, and in a lot of markets. It’s called The Rural Electric, and it’s based at WVGS 91.9 in Statesboro, Georgia. You can find a link from the host’s homepage at www.geocities.com/yalternaboy/ruralradio.html, or go straight to http://www.stp.gasou.edu/WVGS/index.html, the radio station’s Web site. The host, known simply as Tim, brags, “I will play the folk music of Townes Van Zandt, Blaze Foley, John Prine, Guy Clark, Greag Brown, etc. I will play the straight forward alt/country of Frog Holler, Willard Grant Conspiracy, Vigilantes of Love, etc. I play country stuff like the Star Room Boys, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams III, etc. I play indie like the Flaming Lips, Centro-matic, Belle & Sebastian, etc.” He’s even managed to get a hold of as yet unreleased recordings by Jay Farrar and Whiskeytown – one of the only places you’ll be able to hear this stuff without waging an aggressive campaign on trading boards and E-Bay.

On a personal note, I get to show off some of my own music this month when I open for The Heygoods and The Rivergods this month at Melissa Morris’s singer/songwriter series on February 18th. (Okay, shameless self promotion, so shoot me. And go to www.melissamorris.com for more info.) The Heygoods (www.heygoods.com) is basically Katie and David Champagne, both Boston scene veterans, with other talented folks backing them up, including members of the Tarbox Ramblers. Katie was in Great Atomic Power and David shared the stage with Morphine’s Mark Sandman in Treat Her Right. The Rivergods (www.therivergods.com) is a great, ever-evolving roots band from the New London, Connecticut scene. If you’re in Somerville, Ma, that night, drop in and say hello. I’ll be the one who’s not famous.

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