The Jacket's Festive Americana Jukebox

• The Handsome Family ‘So Much Wine’ taken from the 2000 Carrot Top album ‘In the Air’
• Sufjan Stevens ‘Justice Delivers Its Death’ taken from the 2012 Asthmatic Kitty box-set ‘Silver & Gold’
• Low ‘Just Like Christmas’ taken from the 1999 Kranky album ‘Christmas’
• Geva Alon ‘I See The Love’ 2B Vibes Music single release
• Robert Earl Keen ‘Merry Christmas From The Family’ taken from the 2004 New West Records album ‘Live from Austin TX’
• Hayes Carll ‘Grateful For Christmas’ taken from the 2011 Lost Highway Records album ‘KMAG YOYO’
• Tom Waits ‘Christmas Card Form A Hooker In Minneapolis’ taken from the 1978 Asylum album ‘Blue Valentine’
• Buck Owens ‘Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy’ taken from Aquarium Drunkard’s ‘Lit Up Like A Christmas Tree – A Vintage Holiday Mixtape’
• Brenda Lee ‘I’m Gonna Lasso Santa Claus’ taken from Aquarium Drunkard’s ‘Lit Up Like A Christmas Tree – A Vintage Holiday Mixtape’
• Hank Thompson ‘I’d Like To Have an Elephant For Christmas’ taken from Aquarium Drunkard’s ‘Lit Up Like A Christmas Tree – A Vintage Holiday Mixtape’
• Loretta Lyn ‘To Heck With Santa Claus’ taken from Aquarium Drunkard’s ‘Lit Up Like A Christmas Tree – A Vintage Holiday Mixtape’
• The Handsome Family ‘Stupid Bells’ taken from the 2002 Handsome Family Music album ‘Smothered and Covered’
• Mary Chapin Carpenter ‘Bells are Ringing’ taken from the 2008 Zoe album ‘Come Darkness, Come Light: Twelve Songs of Christmas’
• John Prine ‘Silver Bells’ taken from the 1993 Oh Boy album ‘A John Prine Christmas’
• Emmylou Harris ‘Silent Night’ taken from the 1979 Warner Brother / Rhino album ‘Songs From The Stable’
• Bruce Springsteen ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ 1985 Columbia records single release.

The Jacket's Americana Jukebox - Show #28

• Lindi Ortega ‘Cigarettes and Truckstops’ taken from the 2012 Last Gang Records album ‘Cigarettes and Truckstops’

• Anais Mitchell ‘Young Man In America’ taken from the 2012 Wilderland Records album ‘Young Man In America’

• Gilmore and Roberts ‘The Innocent Left’ taken from the 2012 Navigator Records album ‘The Innocent Left’

• Phantom Limb ‘High and Dry’ taken from the 2012 Naim Edge album ‘The Pines’

• Rob Baird ‘I Can’t Get Over You’ taken from the 2012 Carnival Recording Company album ‘I Swear It’s The Truth’

• Quiet Loner ‘We Will Not Forget’ taken from the 2012 Little Red Rabbit Records album ‘Greedy Magicians’

• Cahalen Morrison and Eli West ‘Our Lady of the Tall Trees’ taken from the 2012 Independent album ‘Our Lady of the Tall Trees’

• Fred Eaglesmith ‘Trucker Speed’ taken from the 2012 Bluewater Music album ‘6 Volts’

• Pete Gow ‘Child Bride' taken from the 2012 Clubhouse Records album ‘The Nebraska Sessions – A Tribute’

• Sons of Bill ‘Turn It Up’ taken from the 2012 Blue Rose Records album ‘Sirens’

This is my 'best of' list for 2012.  It was a real struggle to get down to just ten albums and if I had picked it a week earlier or a week later it would undoubtedly been different.  

The tribute to Guy Clark 'This Ones For Him' lost out to the Nebraska Sessions as I only wanted one various artists album on my list.  John Fullbright got in on one draft in place of Rob Baird but narrowly missed the final cut.  Morgan O'Kane occupies similar territory to Morrison and West but the sheer joy of 'Our Lady of The Tall Trees' meant that my Ol Timey / Bluegrassy slot when to them.

It pained me to leave out 'Hello Cruel World' by Gretchen Peters, 'Waiting For The Operator' by Mad Staring Eyes' and 'Live At Blue Rock' by MAry Gauthier.  If I had started listening to 'Babel' a bit earlier then Mumford and Sons may have made the cut and I completely missed that Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit had a live album out as I have immersed myself in 'Here We Rest' not realising that it was released last year.

But a top ten must, by definition, contain only ten albums and I am happy with my choices.  To see what the other Americana UK writers picked and for the combined top ten click here.

The Jacket's Americana Jukebox - Show #27

• Alabama Shakes ‘Hold On’ taken from the 2012 Rough Trade album ‘Boys and Girls'

• Felsen ‘Temporary Diamonds on Display’ taken from the 2012 independent album ‘Breaking Up With Loneliness’

• Old Tire Swingers ‘What You Give’ taken from the 2012 independent album ‘Old Tire Swingers’

• Southbound Attic Band ‘I Crossed A Line’ taken from the 2012 independent album ‘Living the Dream’

• The Avett Brothers ‘The Once and Future Carpenter' taken from the 2012 Universal Republic album ‘Carpenter’

• Bonnie Raitt ‘Right Down The Line’ taken from the 2012 Redwing Records album ‘Slip Stream’

• Mumford and Sons ‘I Will Wait’ taken from the 2012 Island album ‘Babel’

• John Fullbright ‘Moving’ taken from the 2012 Blue Dirt Records album ‘From The Ground Up’

• The Lumineers ‘Stubborn Love’ taken from the 2012 Dualtone Records album ‘The Lumineers’

• Vince Gill ‘Randall Knife’ taken from the 2011 Icehouse Music album ‘This One’s for Him: A Tribute To Guy Clark’

• Levon Helm ‘Tennessee Jed’ taken from the 2009 Dirt Farmer/Vanguard album ‘Electric Dirt’

Levon Helm ‘The Weight’ taken from the 2011 Vanguard Records album ‘Ramble at the Ryman’ 

There's a Grammy theme to this weeks show with the majority of the artists up for one or more awards c

The Jacket's Americana Jukebox - Show #26

• Ryan Bingham "Heart of Rhythm" taken from the 2012 Axster Bingham Records album “Tomorrowland”

• Aidan Knight "Singer-Songwriter" taken from the 2012 Outside album “Small Reveal”

• Lisa Marie Presley "Storm and Grace" taken from the 2012 Universal album “Storm and Grace”

• Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou "Arta Road" taken from the 2012 Independent album “La Femme De Fontenaille”

• Arlan Fieles and the Broken Hearted "Fire Drill" taken from the 2012 Not Pop Records album “Weeds Kill The Wild Flowers”

• Lucero "On My Way Down Town" taken from the 2012 Loose Music album “Women and Work”

• Lowlands "Keep on Flowing" taken from the 2012 Gypsy Child album “Beyond”

• Reckless Kelly "Hatax" taken from the 1998 Cold Spring album “Millican”

• Charlie Robison "Down Again" taken from the 2009 Dualtone Records album “Beautiful Day”

• Harry Oakwood Millionaire "Brothers" taken from the 2012 self released debut EP

• Rob Baird "Dreams and Gasoline" taken from the 2012 Carnival Recording Company album “I Swear It’s The Truth”

• Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit "Go It Alone" taken from the 2011 Lightening Rod Records album “Here We Rest”

• Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble "Pride and Joy" taken from the 1986 Epic album “Live Alive”

The Jacket's Americana Jukebox - Show #22

Track	Artist	Album
Cigarette Machine	Fred Eaglesmith	6 Volts
Lazy Days	Keston Cobblers Club	Fatea Showcase Sessions – Winter 2012
What Is Fear	The Galleons	Fatea Showcase Sessions – Winter 2012
Mist Covered Mountains Of Home	Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker	Fatea Showcase Sessions – Winter 2012
It May Be Too Late	Lucero	Women & Work
The Writing’s on The Wall	State Broadcasters	Ghosts We Must Carry
Now That The Night Has Come	The Lost Brothers	The Passing Of The Night
Open All Night	Mad Staring Eyes	The Nebraska Sessions
Johnny 99	Case Hardin	The Nebraska Sessions
Champeen	Case Hardin	Every Dirty Mirror
Heart Of The City	Chatham County Line	Lowe Country
The Carolinian	Chatham County Line	Live From Caroline
They Were Just Children	Chatham County Line	Speed Of The Whippoorwill
Chip Of A Star	Chatham County Line	IV

 Not only have I remembered to post the the playlist this week, I've also remembered to put links to the artist's websites!  I know, such efficiency - it's only taken me five months to get it right.

The Art of Walking

Like most people I think that I walk a lot.  The reality is that is the little I do is mostly functional; from door to car and car to door, from desk to shop floor and shop floor to desk or down to the shops and back.  Walking for pleasure has been a little lost on me.  I’ve have been up to Edale but it was with a cool bag for a picnic rather than a backpack for a days hike and I’d seriously consider taking golf up again rather than paying for a guided city walk – a two hour moving lecture by a self appointed expert.

But, there is another way.  A way that doesn’t involve the banalities of a blue badge guide, a bag of clubs or muddy boots and Gore-Tex (actually, being Manchester, the Gore-Tex would actually be a reasonable idea).  The Cornerhouse (the Arts / Film / Books establishment on Oxford Road) commissioned a series of walks curated by the LRM (Loiterer’s Resistance Movement) a “Manchester based collective of artists and activists interested in psychogeography, public space and the hidden stories of the city”.  It seemed to offer an urban ramble with play – an ideal way to spend a weekend afternoon.

There were three walks: The Sensual City, “a guided tour which utilises all your senses and explores Manchester through touching, tasting, looking, listening and feeling”; The All Seeing City, a walk that “examines the architecture of fear in the city and how we can banish it” and The Heart of the City where “Explorers will search for the heart of the city and produce a collaborative map of their findings”.

All started with an introduction in the Annexe of the Cornerhouse; a lovely light and airy room all bare wood and white walls which is, in fact, the only part of the building that I like.  Many love it’s design; full length windows on Oxford Road that allow you to sit and watch the world while drinking something for its overpriced bar but, to me, it is as much about being seen rather than seeing.  The introduction was a brief history of psychogeography (it started in France with The Situationists Internationale and finished when Ian Sinclair had made enough money out of it) and went on to describe what would be happening that afternoon.  All was achieved in twenty minutes and three slides.

The dozen of so of us took to the streets to open up our senses.  We walked towards the city centre along Oxford Road but quickly diverted down past Felini’s restaurant onto the Rochdale canal and back under Oxford Road.  Here you could hear the roar of the water running through a lock gate, feel the drop in temperature as you are shielded from the sun and imagine how different this would feel underfoot if it where not such a beautiful sunny day.  We turned around and walked along the canal in silence listening to a goose landing on the water, the sound of a tram and the hubbub of people enjoying a drink in the garden of the Rain Bar where we crossed over it went under Great Bridgewater Street and up the steps to Bridgewater Hall to the touchstone.

We stopped to reflect on smell and how it is linked to taste (think backs of restaurants) and how the city is continually trying control it.  As we approached the touchstone there was a little girl sliding on it.  Her dad told us her mantra was “If it slides, it works” – not a bad one to have.  The Italian Cararra marble stone is scratched and marked despite being covered in an anti graffiti solution.  If left long enough the city will always take hold and make its mark.

We wandered towards the new council building at 1 First Street, debating how welcoming it was or wasn’t.  With a walk such as this your eyes refocus in ways you would not expect as buildings take on a new perspective and you question why roads go a certain way.  On the way back to the Cornerhouse we stopped outside the Sailsbury pub underneath a ‘No Loitering’ sign.  Too late, that’s what had been doing for the past hour.

Back in the Cornerhouse there were two tables laid out with bottles, and phials, and pots full of a strange assortment of powders and liquids.  It was all edible and the group of people around one of tables tasted and smelt every thing (rosewater was not the favourite.  The table also contained balls of play dough in a variety of bright colours and the instruction to mould what ever took your fancy.  It was the other table, weighed down with similar wares that took the construction to heart.  There were bees, planes, canals and buildings.  It struck me as strange that one group went straight for taste and the other for touch.

The next walk took a similar route.  We started the same way but detoured onto Whitworth Street via an alley that had a remarkable number of CCTV cameras and we stopped at First Street.  We were asked to imagine what the space would be like at night and how it would make us feel. Would we be scared to walk here after dark? Is the lighting sufficient? Are there shadows in which a predator could lurk? Does the presence of CCTV make us feel safer? Does the absence of CCTV make us feel vunerable?  I was not expecting this.  I imagined a fear walk to be along the lines of one of the Jack The Ripper walks you get in London’s East End or the ghost walks in Edinburgh but this was fear of the present, of the now and if measures to allay those fears are counter productive and re-enforce them.

At First Street we split into small groups to play CCTV Bingo.  We were given a bingo card that, instead of numbers, had different types of camera in the boxes.  Some the types were ‘a camera on a pole’, ‘three cameras facing the same way’ and ‘a camera that looks like a space ship’.  When you spot your first camera you mark it on your card and walk in the direction the camera is facing and stop when you reach the next one.  This should be continued until the board is complete.  To date, no one has completed it.  This is not due to lack of cameras, it is just that some of them are rarer than others. Three facing the same way was the most popular in the part of town we found ourselves in (a collection of new buildings opposite the council).  When we returned to the Cornerhouse there was a discussion on what made you fearful (drunk people topped the list) write is down and banish them in a bucket of fire.  Unsurprisingly, the Cornerhouse were not too keen about having buckets of fire in there place so we made do with a couple of smoke bombs and a cap gun on the balcony.

The final walk was ‘The Heart Of The City’ and the temptation to sing the Whitesnake song was great but, thankfully for all around me, one that I resisted.  There was no guided element to this walk (maybe we could be trusted now to go out unsupervised) but we did have to follow a map; a map with a heart drawn on it.  Obviously there was a little licence involved here; I mean you couldn’t go straight through a building could you?  Well, the building happened to be a pub with an entrance on two streets (like the Old Nags Head and Rising Sun) you could.  There are an awful lot of alleys, passages and back streets in Manchester that also made keeping to the heart outline easier than I first thought would be possible.

Ultimately getting round the heart in the allotted time proved beyond us (and no, we didn’t stop in any of the pubs).  There were too many interesting things, open doors and broken windows to look in, courses of brickwork at strange heights you know the normal things you look for when out for a city walk.  We made it half way around before having to head back to the Cornerhouse for a chat about where we each felt the heart of the city was.  We were given a hand knitted heart with a label and a request to take it to your favourite part of the city and photograph it.

As I do not live in Manchester and am only a frequent visitor, my view of the city is different to most others (although, really, everybody’s view is different).  It lies in place already gone, café Pop where I first ate but also in the pubs were I have made many new friends and now the streets as know that they are not just a means to travel to pre-determined route but are places to explore and play

The Jacket's Americana Jukebox - Show #19

Track	Artist	Album
Our Lady Of The Tall Trees	Cahalen Morrison & Eli West	Our Lady Of The Tall Trees
I’m Gonna Start Living Again (If It Kills Me)	Hayes Carll	Lowe Country
Cigarette Machine	Mary Gauthier	Live At Blue Rock
Black Ribbon	Matraca Berg	Love’s Truck Stop
Don’t Ever Hold My Hand	Case Hardin
Atlantic City	Dreaming Spires	The Nebraska Sessions – A Tribute
Highway Patrolman	Danny George Wilson	The Nebraska Sessions – A Tribute
Rivers Will Flow	House Of Hats	Rivers Will Flow
Popular Flower	Nick Ferrio and his Feelings	Nick Ferrio and his Feelings
Silver Screen	Gilmore & Roberts	The Innocent Left
Mr Tambourine Man	The Byrds	Mr Tambourine Man
I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better	The Byrds	Mr Tambourine Man
Eight Miles High	The Byrds	Fifth Dimension
Turn! Turn! Turn!	The Byrds	Turn! Turn! Turn!

The Jacket's Americana Jukebox: Show #14

Track	Artist	Album
Go It Alone	Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit	Here We Rest
Lonely Are The Free	Steve Earle	I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive
Tennessee	Gillian Welch	The Harrow and the Harvest
L.A.Freeway	Radney Foster	This One’s For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark
Orphan Girl	Gillian Welch	Revival
Arkansas Blues	Hayes Carll	Flowers and Liquor
Brand New Kind Of Actress	Jason Isbell	Sirens of the Ditch
Yuma	Justin Townes Earle	Yuma
Hold On	Alabama Shakes	Boys and Girls
My Way Back Home	Dawes	Nothing is Wrong
Ballard of Frankie Dupree	Deep Dark Woods	The Place I Left Behind
Photographs	Robert Ellis	Photographs
Alabama Pines	Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit	Here We Rest
Come Around	Sarah Jarosz	Follow Me Down
I Love	Patty Griffin	Tom T Hall’s Songs of Fox Hollow
Waitin’ on the Sky	Steve Earle	I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive
Dang Me	Buddy Miller	The Majestic Silver Strings
Granny White Special	Chris Thile	Jam (Mark O’Conner)
Dance in the Darkness	Darrell Scott	Long Ride Home
Monkey and the Engineer	Dave Rawlings	A Friend of a Friend
Corn Bread and Butter Beans	Carolina Chocolate Drops	Carolina Chocolate Drops with Joe Thompson
Civil Wars	I Want You Back	Barton Hollow
Wrecking Ball	Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings	Soul Journey
Stopping By	Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit	Here We Rest
Movement and Location	Punch Brothers	Who’s Feeling Young Now?
The Story	Brandi Carlisle	The Story