There are a couple of new musical acts I’d like to talk about for a few minutes, one of which I discovered all on my own by looking for cheap boogie on Amazon, and one that I found wandering through my office. I buy a lot of music, and thus am looking for the best deals I can find, and I’ve found that there are a ton of bargains to be found at Amazon’s MP3 downloads store, where most songs are still only a buck, and they run specials on bunches of older stuff each month for $5 per album. Most months you can find at least one Avett Brothers album there, and I can usually find something I like. This month I came across one real winner – Roger Alan Wade‘s Stoned Traveler. I took a flyer on this one and honestly think it’s one of the best things I’ve bought since I got Bleu Edmondson’s Lost Boy album. Wade sings alone with his guitar on most of them, and the honesty in his songs is almost painful on some tracks. For anybody who likes Red Dirt music like Reckless Kelly or Bleu Edmondson, this album would be well worth it.

The second group I wanted to talk about are a bunch of local boys, fronted by Avett Brothers bassist Bob Crawford and David Childers, the lawyer from Belmont who also happens to be one of the best damned songwriters I’ve ever listened to. Period. He’s Darrell Scott level good, and I was bummed when I heard that he was hanging up his guitar to focus on his law practice because there wasn’t enough money in the music business for him. If there were any justice in the music world, David Childers and Gina Stewart would be millionaires and the Jonas Brothers would be playing for pennies, but there’s not. The Overmountain Men is the side project that Bob cooked up when he decided he wanted to play some gigs with David and his son Robert. Since I like Bob (and the Avetts) and I like David and his lyrics, I thought I’d wander down last night to the CD release party.

As did everybody else in the free world. Seems a cover article in Creative Loafing (the free local arts weekly) will bring a few folks out in the cold. And it was a little chilly last night. So when I got there 20 minutes before the band was supposed to start, the gig was already sold out. But I’m not exactly the faintest of hearts, and I thought the odds were pretty good that once the band kicked in, some of the kiddies that were there hoping this would be some kind of Avetts-in-disguise gig would leave. And while I was waiting, Bob came out with a stack of CDs and gave them out to those of us who (potentially) wouldn’t be able to get in to see the show. So I got the CD, but since I’d come out of the house (and you know how hard it is to actually leave after you’ve been lodged in the recliner watching Ingloriuos Basterds) I figured I’d just hang for a little while and see if I could get in.

It only took about two songs for the crowd to thin out enough for me to get in, and the set was pretty killer. They did most of the album, along with some stuff off David’s older CDs, and a few covers to boot. The crowd was into it, and the beer was plentiful and cheap, so I had a great time. My ears didn’t ring too badly after the show, which is the mark of a good sound tech, so I thoroughly enjoyed myself. So if you’re looking for some good new music, there’s a pair that I highly recommend. And for a bonus, the new Lady Antebellum album is better than any big-time country album has any right to be.

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