Here Comes The Flood - a weblog about music

The Belleville Outfit, a promising country/bluegrass sextet with a penchant for swing, goes on tour again, starting off with a date in their hometown Austin.

• 04/18 Old Settler's Music Festival, Austin, TX
• 04/19 Southwest School of Art and Craft, San Antonio
• 05/01 Threadgill's World Headquarters, Austin, TX
• 05/02 Rolling Oaks Bar & Grill, San Antonio
• 05/04 Momo's, Austin, TX
• 05/10 Saxon Pub, Austin, TX
• 05/11 Gruene Hall, New Braunfels
• 05/16 The Crystal Bay Casino, Crystal Bay, NV
• 05/17 The Ol' Factory, Sand City, CA
• 05/18 The Palms Playhouse, Winters, CA
• 05/22 Strawberry Music Festival, Yosemite, CA
• 05/26, Kerrville Folk Festival, Kerrville, Texas
• 05/29 Threadgill's World Headquarters, Austin, TX
• 06/06 Pagosa Folk & Bluegrass Festival, Pagosa Springs, CO
• 06/14 GLT Concert on The Square, Bloomington, Ill.
• 08/29 The Four Corners Festival, Pagosa Springs
• 09/19 Chattanooga Downtown, Chattanooga, TN
• 09/26 Albino Skunk Bluegrass Festival, Greer, SC
• 10/19 Joshua Tree Roots Music Festival, Joshua Tree, CA

MP3: The Belleville Outfit - Caroline
MP3: The Belleville Outfit - Wanderin'

» bellevilleoutfit
» myspace.com/thebellevilleoutfit

Read my review of Wanderin'.

Another Mule show for you. They are joined by Trevor Garrod and Josh Clark (Tea Leaf Green) for I'm Waiting For The Man. Josh returns for the After Midnight encore.

Gov't Mule
2008/04/16
Innsbrook Pavillion
Richmond, VA, USA

» Grab your torrent

Serious music geeks just love alternate takes, live recordings and such. They are able able to put up with a crappy sound if need be. Fire and Water was the breakthrough album for UK rock band Free in 1970 and contained the classic All Right Now, an anthem for the denim clad rockers worldwide rocker, then and now. You will find seven versions on this 2CD set which is great, but you will listen to BBC John Peel Live In Concert version only once. There are four songs from this concert and with the exception of Don't Say You Love Me, sourced form a new "Off Air" tape, these tracks sound like 8th gen tapes that have been stored in a damp cellar. They might have gone to the trouble to at least include speed-corrected versions.

On the upside there's the John Peel session they recorded on April 6th 1970 and shows you a band at their peak. Andy Fraser Simon Kirke, Paul Kossoff and Paul Rodgers were on fire on stage at the time and there's plenty more proof on the second disc where you can hear previously released tracks from the box set Songs Of Yesterday and the Free Live album. A couple of alternate mixes and three different takes of All Right Now recorded for a video taping of that song round off the set.

MP3: Free - All Right Now
(BBC Sounds Of The Seventies session. Recorded 1970/06/04. Broadcasted 1970/06/23)

Paul Kossoff: Back Street Crawler (Deluxe Edition)
When Free broke up guitarist Paul Kossoff finally made Back Street Crawler, the solo album that he had been talking about. His former band mate Paul Rodger stepped up to the mike for vocals on Molten Gold. On the original album his Tuesday Morning took the whole of side 1, with a running time of 17:39. It is exploration of blues rock to the fullest with John "Rabbit" Bundry on organ. The Deluxe Edition offers 6 radically different takes, giving the listener a front row seat in the recording studio. Kossoff was full of ideas and he wanted to try them all.

While Free's Fire And Water can be accused of scraping the barrel, Back Street Crawler offers value for money, where the fluff only consists of a little over a minute run through of The Lady Is A Tramp.

MP3: Paul Kossoff - Tuesday Morning Groove

Both 2CD sets have booklet with a nice essay written by David Clayton who penned the Free book Heavy Load and is running the Free Appreciation Society. Both sets are released on Universal.

» myspace.com/freeappreciationsociety

Digital video equipment is dirt cheap these days and you no longer need a megabudget to make your own live DVD. The Chicago blues rock Steepwater Band hooked up with the video crew of Firepit Friday and they filmed their set on November 16th at The Rutledge in Nashville.

Filmed with a static tripod at the mixing desk and close-ups with hand-held equipment, you can see and hear the band from a point of view that captures the live concert experience really well. It's bit wobbly at times, but hey, you don't stand still yourself when you watch a rock band fring on all cilinders, do ya?

1. Indiana Line
2. Collision
3. Fire Away
4. Revelation Sunday
5. Halo
6. Wheel
7. Mercy
8. Baby, You're On Your Own
9. Bonus: Revelation Sunday promo video

Watch the Revelation Sunday video. And yes, here's a preview of the live footage.

» steepwater.com
» myspace.com/thesteepwaterband

Umphrey's McGee are offering all the proceeds of their April 8th show at the city of DeKalb, where tragedy struck on February 14th at Northern Illinois University:

The city of DeKalb and students of NIU have welcomed us for many years, and after hearing the news of the tragedy on February 14th, we decided to give back and do whatever we could to help express how much the community has meant to us. On April 8th, we donated all of our UM Live sales to the NIU February 14th Memorial Fund as well as proceeds from poster and ticket sales. In that spirit of giving back, we are providing for all of our fans an opportunity to download our return performance to DeKalb for free. We encourage all Umphrey's fans interested in donating to this worthy cause to visit:

http://www.niu.edu/memorial/scholarships.shtml

Download the matrix recording at archive.org.

MP3: Umphrey's McGee - Fearless > Partyin' Peeps
(live at the Egyptian Theatre, DeKalb, IL - 2008/04/08)

» umphreys.com
» myspace.com/umphreysmcgee