Woodpile 3: "Oh! The Southlands!" b/w "I Was Just Thinking..."

Hey all!  Hot on the heels of another super hush-hush (aside from the volume, that is) pre-Homecoming Buttsteak & the Haggises 5 convocation down in Charm City, here's another couple acoustical numbers to soothe aching ears and warm wintry hearts.

"Oh! The Southlands!", written a few years back, is a tribute not only to the Southlands, but also to the Northlands.  Tricksy, how I did that, huh?  I just felt that, maybe on account of the often anemic musical culture we run,  the northern parts don't receive the musical love as the southern ones.  And when there is a regional hit, you might get something like Dick Curless' "Tombstone Every Mile", singing about ice and snow.  So it's been a small goal of mine to make my periodic contribution to resolving the north-south imbalance, losing battle though it shall ever be.  The intro to this one is a rip-off of vintage music-hall Kinks, far as I'm concerned, and the rest is a straight-up country rocker material. 

"I Was Just Thinking...." is one of the first songs I'd written, way back in '95 or so.  From the sound of the original, I still had quite a bit of Hawaii-via-Austin, TX's Poi Dog Pondering sunny folk-pop in my system, and was more immediately lifting from Uncle Tupelo's beautiful, loping instrumental "Sandusky", off their fine acoustic "March 16-20, 1992" record.  In the big picture, this version strays hardly at all from my original 4-track version, other than being cleaner, sporting more abundant and snazzier instrumentation, and having a clearer sense of self.  It burbles along like many of my acoustic "ensemble" efforts do-- a sea of plunking from which little snippets float to the surface now and again.  I'm working on that...

jk

SoundCloud:                     https://soundcloud.com/johnk-rkbs

Cut/ paste:
"Oh! The Southlands!":      https://app.box.com/s/jd1yi8tjpzah9ktc91oa
 "I Was Just Thinking...":    https://app.box.com/s/iuie6kd0d6c8wt7g76l7

Stream:

Woodpile 3: "Traverse City Blues" b/w "Old Grey Dog"

Well, belated Happy 2014 for anybody on the receiving end.  If you're somehow feeling bereft of the warm fuzzies of Christmastime, do check out the last post for this year's holiday tunes.  Or just beat back the dark and snow and/ or deep freeze and/ or weird super-thaw with some other nwoody classics...

Also, briefly and clerically: 
1. The SoundCloud page remains an OK option for streaming pleasure:  https://soundcloud.com/johnk-rkbs/
2. Subscribe/ follow either here or there and we can dispense with your email getting spammed.

Anyhoo....

First off, "Traverse City Blues" is not a blues at all.  More of a Neil Young lift that dates back to the Baltimore days.  It was a rocked-up electric favorite of the Honcho band, and has been a go-to hootenanny-type acoustic picker as well in the years since.  What you have here is a stab at the latter.

Second off, the titular "Old Grey Dog" is not a dog at all, but a Greyhound bus.  The song is your basic escapist tribute to Chicago, and to following the Heileman's Old Style Beer signs from bar to bar down the long, straight avenues.

JK

Cut-and-past these links:

Traverse City Blues:            https://app.box.com/s/uckkgipenigykex3czu3
Old Grey Dog:                    https://app.box.com/s/9y9tvz7cg7uapliv9xxg

Stream here: