Gary Hayes Country

Last night I ventured out into the Gallatin area of Tennessee where my friends Mr. Bradley and Miss Jenny Towle have a wonderful place they call The Amulet Farm, which is a rustic yet centralized homestead that hosts events. I must say one of my only regrets is that I didn’t get to see it all during the daytime and I didn’t get to stay long enough this time. I’ll do more articles from their shows in the daylight hours and display more of the venue in the future, as time allows.

I am always catching smaller more intimate shows for better opportunities to interact with artists on a more deeper level than just the music. Oftentimes I consider my job to find out the news and bring it to your computer screen first before anyone else..that’s a journalists job to get the scoop before the next person does. So do I have a scoop on Joseph Huber, truly I believe I do in fact I have more than I can reveal to you at this juncture. YES I DO want to announce all what I have but we got legal schmegal stuff and I have to respect Mr. Joseph and what is integral to his needs as well. In essence I have a duty to inform you but I cannot do that at the expense of another artist and more often than not…a friend.

Now folks in the coming months you know of  my ongoing ever popular festival series I write about 8 months a year, in fact I am the ONLY music related website that currently writes about over 175 nationwide festivals per year. Well in the upcoming month of May I shall be attending and covering the Chicago based Moonrunners music festival which is now a Muddy Roots production.

The reason I raise this festival is for two main reasons, one he is playing at this festival and two he is releasing his fourth solo studio album the day before this festival entitled “The Suffering Stage”. From the three songs I was treated to this weekend I can already tell you this will indeed be a must have album to add to your collection. Now I’ll be honest here I don’t believe he can beat “The Hanging Road”, but alas I said that about “Tongues Of Fire” beforehand…and it did respectively.

I can tell you this album will have several lengthy tracks and was a timely project that he spent a great deal of care with, and given his songwriting ability I wonder if there will be any poignant songs such as “Wanchese And Manteo” that fill this album. He has a unique ability to connect with a listeners mind and capture you for three or four minutes with his lyrics, and much like Tyler Childers he has a VERY distinct delivery and voice. He is NO cookie cutter artist in any way shape or form, and the band he is currently traveling with compliments each other with grace. Upright bassist  Mr. Eston Bennett and fiddle player Mr. Jason Loveall combine their talents to make this trio work and you can sense the ease they have for one another.

He in fact began his entire set with two new songs that I captured on video and for respect of Mr. Joseph we will keep that null at this juncture until I am verbally (or emailed) allowed to make them public from his camp. Now the first new song is called “You Showed Me”, and it was an upbeat song followed by a gambling song with different meanings called 16 10″ (I’m not certain if it will be numerical or spelled Sixteen Ten). The third new song he revealed to us last night was in my opinion the best one called “Diminish Things”, which did display some truly fine lyrics. Not much delving into the structure of any of these right now until I am given a green light to dissect them to you.

“Fell Off The Wagon” is one of the staple songs he has been doing in his sets for quite a few months now and it’s always a good upbeat songs that everyone enjoys, and he followed that with one called “Downtime” from his obscure first album “Bury Me Where I Fall”. If you can find his first album on CD it is considered a rare find to a Roots Music collector like myself and it’s always a treat to have some of those songs included.

The above video is from tonight’s performance of “Drop In The Bucket” and that was followed by “Old Mountain Tune’. He closed his first set with “Hanging Road” which he pointed out that his father inspired him to record that song and cited him as an influence.

His second set began with “Same River Twice” and another one of my favorites “Two Tongue Swear”. His second set contained many newer songs the likes of “Coming Down From You” before he went into the only two cover songs of the evening and one was a Public Domain folks song called “O Shenandoah”. His other cover was that of a John Prine song before rolling into “Hello Milwaukee” which is one of his songs of great regret that in spite of his getting to see much of America on tour his mind was stalled back in his hometown of Milwaukee Wisconsin.

“Father, Why These Stones” was next along with his second album “Tongues Of Fire” and his final closing song was “Dance Around The Daggers”. Truly a fine performance at a very intimate and friendly setting, with a beyond awesome bunch of people I am very blessed to call my friends. Music has many friends from many walks of life and more often than not during music events, differences and opinions are placed aside and forgotten. This is my journey into further music tonight that shall be published this afternoon.