Live music listings: September 2008

Doors 7.30
£12 door

If you haven’t already heard of Hayes Carll, you soon will. In the three years since his self-released second album, Little Rock became available, Carll has toured relentlessly in North America and abroad (performing over two hundred shows a year), founded a successful singer-songwriter music festival on the Gulf Coast of Texas, secured a record deal with Lost Highway Records, and has even seen Little Rock become the first self-released album to reach #1 on the Americana Music Chart. He’s only getting started.

On his new album, Trouble In Mind, the 32 year-old Carll navigates his way through both stormy weather and calm, sun-drenched waters with ease, emerging with songs that melt even the hardest heart in town (a feat he manages on the plaintive, world-weary "Don't Let Me Fall") or heat up a roadhouse (like the ruggedly strutting "Wild as a Turkey"). Their impact is heightened by the fact that they're songs born of both immersion in the works of his songwriting heroes and plenty of real world experience.

Of his last outing, Little Rock, Irish Times raved "This is the first mighty country record of the year, a bruised, bedraggled affair full of jagged memories and wry observations."

Those elements certainly permeate Trouble In Mind, but there's a much sharper focus to the material, thanks in part, to more time in the studio and some great players sure to be familiar to roots-rock aficionados, including, Dan Baird, Darrell Scott, Will Kimbrough and former Flying Burrito Brother Al Perkins.

Carll’s live performances continue to win over fans everywhere. His clever, irreverent lyrics and sharp observations combined with his warm Texas drawl make his stories and anecdotes as compelling and entertaining as his songs. There’s that sweet taste of honey followed with the sharp sting of a wisecrack. Never is that tongue-in-cheek humour more obvious than on the red neck rant “She Left Me For Jesus”, where a clueless lover is upset and suspicious over the changes in his girlfriend. “Now she’s acting funny and I don’t understand. I think that she’s found her some other man. She’s left me for Jesus, and that just ain’t fair. She says that he’s perfect, how can I compare?” “You know I’m always a little nervous when I sing that song. Like Ray Wiley Hubbard says, the problem with irony is that people don’t always get it.”

“He evokes Townes Van Zandt lyrically, Guy Clark emotionally, Steve Earle stylistically and Ray Wylie Hubbard spiritually.” - Boston Herald

“…a familiar type-a mushmouthed drawler who’s smarter about the beat than his shambling ways would make your think and funnier than shit when he wants to be, which is often.” **** stars, - Blender

“Here’s a guy who takes regular old rockin’ Texas folk country and just adds new songs to the canon… right there alongside the songs of Van Zandt, Clark, Earle, Crowell, Shaver, Keen, Hubbard, et al. Houston, we have a poet. “ - Houston Press

Support comes from Travis Linville, who'll also be joining Hayes onstage.

Travis Linville...
plays music, lives in the woods, sleeps in hotels, slams coffee, writes songs, sees the world, talks to his dogs, runs a recording studio, eats like a horse, thunks the banjo, slides the dobro, mashes the keys, charms stray cats, shoots pool and basketballs for money, has a van for sale, drinks pale ale, has a myspace page, takes Heather out to eat mexican food, watches meet the press, has Johnny Cash's autograph, draws fake beards and armpit hair in people magazine, has performed onstage with Willie Nelson in Luchenbach, TX, walks the lineage, is not the perfect country and western song, eats turtle necks for lunch, knows over 4000 highway songs, once said yes sir to a female cop, plays guitar on two "Live at Billy Bob's" albums, went broke in Nashville.

The sound: heady songwriting sung effortlessly over a clever bed of guitar mastery ... Richard Thompson on a pint of Bob Dylan.

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