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Artist: Collin Herring
Title: Past Life Crashing
Website:
http://www.myspace.com/collinherring
Style: Roots/Alt. Rock/ Alt. Country
Rating: 8.9 out of 10
By Senior Writer C.W. Ross
Past Life Crashing is the third release from Collin. Since his last release, The Other Side of Kindness, in 2005 Collin's life has been like a whirlwind of turmoil. He had to go into rehab twice along with getting married and divorced.
In the songs found on this release Collin bares his soul for you to see. Even though the song lyrics deal with strife, trouble and painful times they also hold out the hope of pulling yourself out of your bad situations and being triumphant over them.
In his press material Collins says about the songs, " I was just doing what I love to do, having no other choice than to get what is inside of me out."
The songs are filled with Collin's signature roots alt. rock meets Texas country. The release does take a side trip on the last two tracks with more of an experimental side to those songs.
Past Life Crashing took over 2 and a half years and included many song rewrites and production changes. You'll also find multiple artist that helped out including, Ken Coomer (former drummer for Wilco), Kathleen Edwards, Audley Freed (Black Crowes, Cry of Love), and Andrew Duplantis (Meat Puppets). His father Ben Roi Herring who played pedal steel and keyboards along with contributing some vocals also joined Collin.
Collin made sure that the songs weren't overworked though. He said that, "I wanted them to sound frayed enough that people heard them and felt the way I did when I wrote them."
Collin Herring already has a growing reputation as both a singer songwriter and a leader in the alt. rock music world and Past Life Crashing will only help to continue that growth. This release is ripe with soul baring songs that work on so many different levels.
Artist: Garry Segal
Title: Taking Notes
Website:
http://www.todyeforband.com
Style: Roots Rock / Americana
Rating: 8.25 out of 10
By Senior Writer C.W. Ross
After 20 years of musical success recording and touring with his rock/blues band Garry and the Moodswingers, Garry has decided to embark on a solo career.
Taking Notes offers up a very interesting collection of musical styles on its 7-tracks of music.
The release starts-off with "Two Broken People" a root's rocker with acoustic guitar, piano and organ driving its steady beats.
Track-2 "Wrong Dogs"- is a dobro filled swamp music song that has campy-humor lyrics.
Track-3 "Without Rain" breaks out the soul of country music the pedal steel. This melodic song also features nice sweet harmony vocals from Joan Schroeder that work well against Garry's vocals with their slightly grizzled edge.
Track-4 "I Keep Drinkin', " takes a trip down the jazzy-blues road with its smoky sax and jazzy guitar solo. The song also features both an interesting intro and outro of whistling.
Track-5 "Wind Will Blow," breaks out the mandolin and banjo for a visit to bluegrass music land.
Track-6 "Cartwheels" is where Garry starts to let his stellar harmonica work come out in this melodic blues song.
Garry's harmonica playing has earned him an endorsement deal with the world renowned Hohner Harmonica.
The CD finishes up with track-7 "Everything's Jake" an instrumental track where each instrument takes its turn in the song's musical spotlight.
I liked all 7 songs found on Taking Notes with the wide variety of styles that worked together thanks to Garry's lyrics that are filled with talk of failed dreams, humor, and hope.
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Indie Music
