IT IS THAT TIME AGAIN..for TONS of my friends to converge upon the Junebug Ranch in Cookeville Tennessee for my personal favorite music festival of ALL TIME Muddy Roots Music Festival , now we are expecting REALLY bad heat this weekend so there will be NO vinyl sold in the merch booths by the festival. I’m pretty sad about that because I wanted to focus on buying a lot of vinyl but it’s ok because I plan to spend a BUNCH of money on CD’s.
You’re going to be getting told about a BUNCH of bands I have never covered on this website but have always wanted to. Some of them just don’t always get close to my area for me to feature, and to be honest there’s just so many bands to cover I can’t always catch them all. You know there’s a ton of websites out there ripping on pop country and honestly I even enjoy some of it…but here I have so much to write about and dwell on I just don’t have time to write about how crappy it is.
I’m home right now but I’m getting packed up and ready to go to Cookeville and get settled into my room at America’s Best Value Inn and this year they gave me the best deal I have ever had while attending this festival. I am extremely happy with my price for three nights and it gives me the option to spend more money on the festival so I can support the bands and some places to eat that are locally owned.
I’ll admit I’m so excited tonight because I have never seen some of this years lineup live in a setting like this and I’ll be featuring most of what I get to see in this weekend’s articles. WHO will be my top 5 acts this year? Will it once again be Hillbilly Casino? I am not sure right now…I have so many past shows there that have just blown me away, Joseph Huber is always a sure bet as is one of my first bands I’ll cover in the morning..Matt Woods.
This hotel is extremely nice and looks clean VERY good price. I had several hotels competing for my business and they set me up with discounts upon mentioning the festival I arrived in town around 1PM and took a swim and got settled in. I got to the festival around 4 and reconnected with so many people and had some new readers come introduce themselves to me.
This article here is from the Pre show last night which took place in the big tent stage across from the Muddy Merch tent and included this fine young man who is having his album release party tonight Dylan Walshe who is now on Muddy Roots Records. Mr. Dylan is a truly gifted performer and songwriter from overseas and I loved his Irish folk laced roots music and I plan to get an album today.
His first song “Raggle Taggle Gypsy O” was an old Irish Folk ballad that immediately got the crowd whipped into having fun and dancing. I’m excited and buzzed just to be sitting on vendor row down here folks surrounded by old friends and new ones. He proceeded that with a song called “At Sea” and another one called “Death Dance” however my favorite songs of his were forthcoming.
“Blind Is Blind” is probably my favorite song he does I just love the melody and the way he presents the song. Very different and unique in it’s own right. Mr. Dylan deserves recognition for his authenticity here this weekend, he definitely sticks out from a musical standpoint. ‘Gone” was his nest song he played followed by a song he wrote when he was injured and couldn’t play called ‘City Sisters”, I enjoyed that one too.
He played a song originally by the Clash called “Straight To Hell” (not to be confused with Hank 3). I enjoyed his version very much with his style of it all and he followed that with “Same Old Prayer” and closed his set with a Pogues song “If I Should Fall From Grace With God”. After his set I went out to a friend’s camp for hot dogs, yum.
This next band I have been wanting to cover for some time now and they are also now on the Muddy Roots Records label and they are the mighty Tillers. Their new album Hand On The Plow is a truly awesome album. Now then I’ll be featuring them later this weekend as well with different songs, but for now they opened this set with “Train That Carried My Gal”..honestly they played one I missed.
‘There Is A Road” was a toe tapping hopping song, this band is very energetic and has good stage presence. They drew a fairly good sized aura about the tent tonight. They followed that with a good fiddle song called “The Carolina Breakdown”, which featured some great solo work. You know their album “Live At The Southgate House” is an underground classic that I secretly enjoy, well it’s no secret anymore that’s what this website is for to tell YOU about these hidden gems that you don’t hear about most places.
They followed their next song with a song about Cincinnati in the 1920’s called “The Georgia Street Beat” which was my favorite of this set. I love their song “Willy Dear” it’s VERY sad and a truly vivid story of pain..anyways they followed that with “New York Town” which is a Woody Guthrie song originally.
“Jake Leg Blues” and “I Gotta Move” were two of their closing songs of this set and like I said I’ll be featuring them again this weekend soon. This band is a true Cincinnati Legend and in their area they are a big draw at local clubs and festivals and I think they will have great growth as a band.
