The Gutter Twins
Maybe Rocks Off spent a lot of 2008 with his head in the archives, but he was paying attention to new stuff too. Occasionally. It's as easy as satellite radio, channel 47's (Ethel/Alt Nation) weekly new-music hour Submission/Transmission. Monday night, S/T happened to be playing its picks for the past year.
One thing is immediately apparent: the '90s are back, big time. The Black Keys' "Strange Times" is total Soundgarden, the Kills' "Tape Song" almost out-Breeders Kim Deal
Vanguard Records (Billy Bob Thornton & the Boxmasters, Kim Richey, the Watson Twins) announced today it will release Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm, a 14-song disc honoring the late musican known as Sir Doug, March 24. Artists include Delbert McClinton, Los Lobos, Alejandro Escovedo, Dave Alvin, Terry Allen, Charlie Sexton and former Afghan Whigs lead singer Greg Dulli.
Sahm's two sons, Shandon and Shawn, are also featured on Keep Your Soul. Shandon, who now fronts his own heav
A few weeks ago, Rocks Off could barely contain his enthusaism when he opened the mail - a momentous enough occasion in itself - and found an advance of Vanguard Records' Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm. He put it on as soon as he got home (his piddly office CD player is just not groovy enough to handle such a disc), and was hardly disappointed.
Whether it's ex-Afghan Whig and current Gutter Twin Greg Dulli growling "You Was for Real," Dave Alvin's kinetic honky-tonker "Dynamite
As much as he deserves one - make that several - Doug Sahm is a tricky subject for a tribute album. The late San Antonio native known as "Sir Doug" was a true musical polymath, a master of just about every form of post-WWII popular music, both the big ones - country, blues, rock and roll - as well as more regionally specific genres like conjunto, Norteno, Cajun and swamp pop. More often than not, Sahm would roll several of the aforementioned styles into one son
