This weekend, Kentucky singer-songwriter Daniel Martin Moore will be performing twice in Wisconsin. On Friday night, July 29, Moore will be part of WMSE Radio Summer Camp at Linneman’s Riverwest Inn in Milwaukee, hitting the stage around 11pm. Tickets for Summer Camp (including Sunday’s Backyard BBQ) are availble here. The next night, Saturday, July 30, Moore will hit the stage at the North Mendota Supper Club in Madison for an intimate house show. Doors open at 8pm, with opening act Count This Penny starting around 830pm. Tickets are $10 each and 100% goes to the artists. To RSVP, please send an email to nmsc1402@gmail.com. In advance of these two shows, MoB sat down with Moore to discuss his new Sub Pop record, In the Cool of the Day, his relationship with My Morning Jacket, and one of his favorite causes, ending mountaintop removal coal mining.

1. talk a bit about your new record, in the cool of the day, and how it came to be. what has it been like promoting/releasing a record with spiritual undertones to a predominantly pop/indie audience? what has the response been as you play these new songs in a live setting?

Thankfully, the response has been welcoming.  I’ve never imagined this album as a religious record, and I don’t think many people have heard it that way.  It’s a collection of songs that I hope is presented in a way that transcends any specific interpretation.

2. on your records and in a live setting, your sound is at once sparse and including full sounding. how did you come to develop the unique dmm sound?

That spareness of production is something I gravitate toward, not sure how it developed, it’s just sorta always been there.  I love a big production, too, though, to be sure (George Harrison’s, “All Things Must Pass” is one of my very favorite albums, and it’s hard to imagine more going on in a recording!).  So it’s really up to each individual song, and up to each collection of musicians, to determine how it will all come together.  Some songs lend themselves to an epic treatment, and some are best left more spare.

3. we can’t very far into an interview without asking you about your relationship with jim james and my morning jacket. how did you get hooked up with jim, how do you both – as great songwriters – talk shop and make music, and what was it like to open for mmj earlier this year?

Ben Sollee introduced me & Jim when we were all thinking about the Dear Companion album.  What a wonderful musician he is – all the guys in MMJ are beyond words.  Sharing the stage with them is pure joy.

4. i became aware of you and your music through the dear companion record and the strong stand you take against mountaintop removal coal mining. what has the response to the record and your efforts been like in your home state? is there growing support for ending MTR or is it still an uphill battle?

The response has been tremendous, even thought he album is just a small part in a much larger movement.  Support for ending MTR has grown & grown over the last 4 decades.  Dear Companion is one more voice in a rising chorus against the thoughtless destruction & corruption.  Kentucky’s citizens are mobilizing & getting educated around the issue more and more all the time.  It’s an inspiring thing, and we’re happy to be a part of a shift toward sanity (because what comes next, after everything is destroyed?) & for basic human rights (shouldn’t folks have water that isn’t poison?).  I think that as we all learn the truth about what MTR is & what it does to our communities & health, we will come together to put a stop to it.  That day is growing closer all the time.

5. right now – july 19, 2011 – what are the five records you have been digging lately?

1.  Gramma’s Boyfriend, S/T
2.  Guitar Party, Birthday
3.  Maiden Radio, Lullabies
4.  Nic Jones, Penguin Eggs
5.  Neil Young, On the Beach

Buy: Daniel Martin Moore – In the Cool of the Day

By Jeff Kollath

A mid-April show in Madison should be preceded by a walk around the Capitol, a beverage or meal on State Street, not getting stuck in traffic or sloshing around in an inch of ice-flecked slush. Mother Nature’s cruel tricks were not lost on the Decemberists – they opened with ‘Raincoat Song’ – while a late-set ‘Calamity Song’ made us wonder if the end times are actually near, as nearly everything that could possibly fall from the sky, save for frogs, pelted Madison on Monday afternoon. Despite the band’s best efforts, they too fell into the typical sluggish Overture Center slow start (see also: Wilco), beginning slow and light, confusing an audience that was clearly ready to jump up, dance, and sing along. The Overture Center is a wonderful place, but its strength is also its weakness when it comes to rock shows – it has a strong identity crisis and both bands and fans alike have a hard time figuring out how to act. There were a number of open seats on the floor, and lots of room in front of the stage, so when Colin Meloy urged everyone up to come on down, it filled the floor, giving fits to security staff who eventually cleared the floor again. Meloy pleaded with the staff to let everyone come back, which they eventually did, giving the band and the show a needed shot in the arm.

Having ex-Nickel Creek fiddler/vocalist Sara Watkins sitting in throughout the entire show was a highlight. She not only provided additional layers of texture and emotion with her fiddle and rhythm guitar, but also superb backing vocals, both of which shone through on ‘Don’t Carry It All’ from January’s The King is Dead, with its rich natural references reminding the crowd that spring is, in fact, just around the corner. After a stellar “16 Military Wives,” Meloy’s guitar tech emerged from the back with a 12-string guitar emblazoned with a ‘Wisconsin Solidarity’ sticker. The set closer, ‘This Is Why We Fight,’ was an apt closer for a show that started out a bit disjointed, was somewhat divided in the middle, and brought it all back together at the end – solidarity, indeed.

While the Overture Center is a difficult place for ‘rock’ bands to figure out, opener Justin Townes Earle had a hold of it right away, using a big chunk of the stage to pace, strut, sing, and shout. On the surface,  Earle’s brand of acoustic country-blues would appear to be a better fit for a roadhouse, but he has always had difficult being heard over clinking bottles and a talkative crowd. New lead guitar loops/samples added a great deal to his Earle’s sparse, yet crystal clear sound that  filled the entire room. Last night was the best Earle has sounded in some time, confident, clear voiced, and energetic, reminiscent of the first time I saw him at Rathskellar in 2008.

Barracudas from Tonality Magazine on Vimeo.

On Friday, April 15,  shed your tax day blues with Salt Lake City’s The Devil Whale as they make their Madison debut with a house show at the North Mendota Supper Club. Featuring lyrics by frontman Brinton Jones, the band has a vintage, yet forward-looking sound that will appeal to fans of Destroyer, Ryan Adams, and Frontier Ruckus. Their 2010 EP, Young Wives, randomly showed up in our mailbox last fall and we were immediately hooked. It should be a great, energy-packed show. Supporting The Devil Whale will be Count This Penny, a Madison duo transplanted from East Tennessee. Veterans of the club scene in Knoxville, Count This Penny is just starting garner a following in Madison, receiving a big push from ISTHMUS a couple weeks ago. If you like the Everybodyfields, the Civil Wars, or some old school Gram and Emmylou, you will dig Count This Penny. Doors open at 8:30 with a showtime of 9:00. An $8 donation at the door will get you in for this excellent double bill – send an email to nmsc1402@gmail.com for the address and other info.

Muzzle of Bees is proud to present Minnesota bluesman Charlie Parr for two back-to-back concerts in Madison and Milwaukee later this month. Alternating between a resonator guitar and a banjo, Charlie channels blues legends like Charley Patton in his music, but puts his own, Midwestern spin on Piedmont style blues. Plus, he picked up his first guitar in a trade for a Johnson outboard motor – now that’s dedication! Charlie will play at the North Mendota Supper Club in Madison on Saturday, February 26 at 830 ($10 donation – RSVP requested at nmsc1402@gmail.com) before heading to Milwaukee on the 27th for a show with Christopher Porterfield at Linneman’s. Tickets are $8 and you can pick them up via Brown Paper Tickets.

MP3: Charlie Parr – “I Dreamed I Saw Jesse James Last Night”
MP3: Charlie Parr – South Of Austin, North Of Lyle”

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Don’t forget that you can check out The Black Swans at the North Mendota Supper Club in Madison THIS Friday, February 11. The band is heading back east after touring up and down the West Coast. Like most of us around here, they ran into some rough winter weather on the latest leg of the tour, so let’s give them a nice dose of Wisconsin hospitality. Admission is by donation ($10 suggested) and doors open around 830pm.  For more information, drop a note to nmsc1402@gmail.com

Kickstarter: The Black Swans – support “Don’t Blame the Stars” on vinyl
Myspace: The Black Swans

By Jeff Kollath

Today, the music world lost another great, as Charlie Louvin (born Charles Loudermilk), founding member of the Louvin Brothers and member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, passed away at the age of 83 from pancreatic cancer. A World War II and Korean War veteran, Louvin and his brother, Ira, became one of the country music’s most celebrated duos, their soaring, close harmonies and traditional ballads at the core of their defining sound. Walking a fine line between sacred and secular throughout their career, the Louvin Brothers scored hits with murder ballads (“Knoxville Girl”), warnings about the atomic bomb (“The Great Atomic Power”), songs about temperance (“You’re Running Wild”), and songs about the Lord (“River of Jordan”). While Charlie lived as a teetotaler, piety was merely a veneer for Ira, whose drinking and temper drove the brothers apart numerous times, until finally splitting for good in 1963. Before Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix smashed their guitars, Ira Louvin was smashing his mandolin in a drunken rage.  Ira died in 1965 after a car accident in Missouri.  Charlie had a long and relatively successful career as a solo artist, releasing fourteen albums between 1965 and 1974, performing regularly on the Grand Ole Opry, and serving as one of country music’s wise, elder statesmen. Louvin’s songs have long been admired by rock artists, such as Gram Parsons who brought “The Christian Life” to the Byrds for 1968’s seminal Sweetheart of the Rodeo. In recent years, Louvin’s songs have experienced a resurgence, with artists like Nick Lowe, Ron Sexsmith, Elvis Costello, and Jeff Tweedy, not to mention Emmylou Harris who had a top 5 hit with “If I Could Only Win Your Love” in 1975.

Download: Charlin Louvin Daytrotter Session
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Buy: The Louvin Brothers – Tragic Songs of Life | The Louvin Brothers – Satan Is Real

Columbus, Ohio’s The Black Swans are out on the road in advance of their new record, Don’t Blame the Stars, which will be out on Misra Records this spring. The new record features songs recorded with violinist Noel Sayre, who passed away suddenly in 2008. A Muzzle of Bees favorite – they played a stellar show at Linneman’s back in the Fall – the band comes highly recommended by Strand of Oaks front man Tim Showalter for their heartfelt lyrics and honest emotions. You can check out the Black Swans at the North Mendota Supper Club in Madison on Friday, February 11. Doors will open at 8:30 with the show to start around 9:00 – tickets are $10 and available via RSVP at nmsc1402@gmail.com.

The Black Swans have a Kickstarter campaign in progress raising funds to have their aforementioned future release pressed on vinyl.